Philosophy and the Ancient Novel [1 ed.] 9789491431937, 9789491431890

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Philosophy and the Ancient Novel

ANCIENT NARRATIVE Supplementum 20 Editorial Board Gareth Schmeling, University of Florida, Gainesville Stephen Harrison, Corpus Christi College, Oxford Heinz Hofmann, Universität Tübingen Massimo Fusillo, Università degli Studi dell’Aquila Ruurd Nauta, University of Groningen Stelios Panayotakis, University of Crete Costas Panayotakis (review editor), University of Glasgow Advisory Board Jean Alvares, Montclair State University Alain Billault, Université Paris Sorbonne – Paris IV Ewen Bowie, Corpus Christi College, Oxford Jan Bremmer, University of Groningen Stavros Frangoulidis, Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki Ronald Hock, University of Southern California, Los Angeles Irene de Jong, University of Amsterdam Bernhard Kytzler, University of Natal, Durban Silvia Montiglio, Johns Hopkins University John Morgan, University of Wales, Swansea Rudi van der Paardt, University of Leiden Michael Paschalis, University of Crete Judith Perkins, Saint Joseph College, West Hartford Tim Whitmarsh, Corpus Christi College, Oxford Alfons Wouters, University of Leuven Maaike Zimmerman, University of Groningen

Subscriptions and ordering Barkhuis Kooiweg 38 9761 GL Eelde the Netherlands [email protected] www.barkhuis.nl

Philosophy and the Ancient Novel edited by

Marília P. Futre Pinheiro and Silvia Montiglio

Book design: Barkhuis Cover design: Nynke Tiekstra, Rotterdam Image on cover: “Eros e Psique”. Stained glass, 1954 @ Almada Negreiros, SPA / Pictoright, 2015. Location: PT-Lisboa: Museu da Assembleia da República. Fotography by Carlos Pombo, ©Arquivo Fotográfico da AR. ISBN 9789491431890

Copyright © 2015 the editor and authors All rights reserved. No part of this publication or the information contained herein may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronical, mechanical, by photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the authors. Although all care is taken to ensure the integrity and quality of this publication and the information herein, no responsibility is assumed by the publishers nor the authors for any damage to property or persons as a result of operation or use of this publication and/or the information contained herein.

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction

VII IX

O URANIA M OLYVIATI Growing Backwards: The Cena Trimalchionis and Plato’s Aesthetics of Mimesis

1

P ETER VON M ÖLLENDORFF Stoics in the ocean: Iambulus’ novel as philosophical fiction

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U RSULA B ITTRICH The Caring Gods: Daphnis and Chloe as Pronoia Literature

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R ICHARD S TONEMAN Tales of Utopia: Alexander, Cynics and Christian Ascetics

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S TEFANO J EDRKIEWICZ Targeting the ‘intellectuals’: Dio of Prusa and the Vita Aesopi

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W ALTER E NGLERT Only Halfway to Happiness: A Platonic Reading of Apuleius’ Golden Ass

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R ICHARD F LETCHER Ex alienis uocibus: Platonic Demonology and Socratic Superstition in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses

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V ERNON P ROVENCAL The Platonic Eros of Art in the Ancient Greek Novel

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S TEVEN D. S MITH Platonic Perversions: Horror and the Irrational in the Greek Novel

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G ARY R EGER Apollonios of Tyana and the Gymnoi of Ethiopia

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Abstracts

159

Autobiographical Notes

165

Indexes Index locoroum General Index

169 169 173

Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to thank my fellow editor, Silvia Montiglio, for her continual collaboration and friendly support in producing and preparing this volume. Both editors would like to thank Maaike Zimmerman for preparing the index of the volume with diligence and professional meticulousness. A special word of gratitude is also due to the contributers, who patiently and accurately revised and improved their Lisbon ICAN papers for publication. I would also like to thank Roelf Barkhuis once more for his unfailing support and professional commitment. We are also indebted to Sociedade Portuguesa de Autores particularly to Ms. Ana Rita Duarte and Ms. Florbela Januário) and to its Dutch sister organization (Pictoright) for granting us permission to reproduce Almada Negreiros’ stained glass, ‘Eros e Psique’. We owe Dr. Cátia Mourão, curator of the Museum, and Ms. Manuela Magalhães, curator of the Arquivo Histórico-Parlamentar of the Assembleia da República, thanks for providing us with a high resolution image of the stained glass. I extend my gratitude to David Konstan, for his kind revision of the English style of the Introduction. Finally, Ms. Nynke Tiekstra deserves also a special mention for her fine work in designing the book’s front cover. Marília P. Futre Pinheiro

Introduction M ARÍLIA P. F UTRE P INHEIRO Universidade de Lisboa

The present volume contains ten expanded and revised papers presented at the Fourth International Conference on the Ancient Novel (ICAN IV), held in Lisbon at the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian in July 2008. The work presented at ICAN IV was at the forefront of scholarship in the field, and the emphasis on the interdisciplinary character of ancient fiction helped to encourage new approaches and directions for further research. Under the heading, ‘Philosophy and the Ancient Novel’, the papers assembled in this volume explore a relatively new area in scholarship on the ancient novel: the relationship between an ostensibly nonphilosophical genre and philosophy. This approach opens up several original themes for further research and debate. As Richard Fletcher states, ‘discussions of the origins of the novel-genre in antiquity have centred on the role of Socratic dialogue in general and Plato's dialogues in particular as important precursors’ (p. 99 of the present volume), and he notes that ‘Platonising fiction was popular in the Second Sophistic and it took a variety of forms, ranging from the intertextual to the allegorical’ (p. 98 of the present volume). In turn, Vernon Provencal observes: ‘The presence of Plato in the ancient Greek novel reflects his renewed status among the Greek elite as an intellectual pillar central to their cultural hegemony under Roman rule’ (p. 110 of the present volume). The papers in this collection cover a variety of genres, ranging from the Greek and Roman novels to utopian narratives and fictional biographies, and seek by diverse methods to detect philosophical resonances in these texts. Ourania Molyviati, ‘Growing Backwards: the Cena Trimalchionis and Plato’s Aesthetics of Mimesis’, explores the figure of the labyrinth to reinterpret the Cena Trimalchionis. Starting from Socrates’ claim that a ‘ name’ is an imitation which, when used properly, reveals the essence of things, Molyviati’s paper has a threefold purpose: to connect the significance of the name labyrinthus with Socrates’ theory of language and mimesis; to examine the analogy between the labyrinthine Trimalchio and contemporary teachers of rhetoric, who have

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corrupted the true rules of eloquence and use rhetoric as a mere exercice of psychagogia, instead of searching for the true meaning of all that exists ; and to demonstrate that the fictional author claims for his written monumentum, his literary labyrinthus, the status of true rhetoric, ‘because the incorruptibility and stability of the written world discloses the truth about Trimalchio’s art of psychagogia’. Peter Möllendorff, in ‘Stoics in the Ocean: Iambulus’ Novel as Philosophical Fiction’, revisits one of the most renowned utopian accounts in Hellenistic literature, which was summarized by Diodorus Siculus. Möllendorff takes the utopian nature of the Diodoran excerpt and the references to social-Utopian motifs as the basis for an analytic-hermeneutic reading of the text as a philosophically oriented fictional narrative. This ideological dimension is consistent with Diodorus’ own affinity to Stoic doctrines and with the practice of allegorical interpretation. Nevertheless, Möllendorff concludes that there is no evidence that Iambulus’ noves was intended as a fictional model of a Stoic ideal society. The role of divine pronoia in the plot of Longus’ novel, Daphnis and Chloe, is the subject of the next paper, ‘The Caring Gods: Daphnis and Chloe as Pronoia Literature’, by Ursula Bittrich. The idea of divine intervention in human affairs has haunted Greek philosophers ever since Plato, and is also a central issue in Longus’ novel. Starting from the discussion of the philosophical roots of the concept, Bittrich examines how the notion of divine providence operates on the protagonists and is manifested in the reciprocity between the human and the divine. Merciful, caring and benevolent deities, whether personified or mere abstract entities, like Eros, are also agents of transformation: ‘In Longus’ novel discordant elements are not violently demolished, but rather tamed in a process of gentle transformation’. Although destructive forces are present, they are not a real danger for the harmony of the whole. Daphnis and Chloe is thus a novel of rescue, reconciliation and salvation through divine intervention. On the Life of the Brahmans is a short Greek text usually assigned to Palladius, probably the 5thcentury Bishop of Helenopolis, in Bythinia. It is a slightly reworked version of an independent opusculum preserved on a papyrus of the mid-second century AD (Geneva papyrus inv. 271), which is included in a collection of Cynic diatribes. Palladius’ work describes one of Alexander’s most memorable encounters: the episode with the Naked Philosophers or Brahmans, who live what we may call an ideal life, set apart from the rest of the world, and in accord with the laws of Nature. In ‘Tales of Utopia: Alexander, Cynics and Christian Ascetics’, Richard Stoneman presents a conspectus of ancient utopian thought and examples of attempts to create an ideal society in practice. He argues that

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early Christian ideas borrow from Cynic thought, which was also one of the motive forces for early Christian anchoritism, and ‘that the model of the Brahman’s society lay somewhere behind some early Christian views of ascetic life.’ What is the function of culture (paideia) and the role of the ‘intellectual’ (pepaideumenos) in the Greco-Roman world of the first centuries AD? In his paper, ‘Targeting the “Intellectuals”: Dio of Prusa and the Vita Aesopi’, Stefano Jedrkiewicz discusses the notion of paideia and the parallel quest for ‘authentic’ knowledge by way of an intertextual dialogue between two works which, for all their apparent differences, seem to share some common ideological assumptions: the Vita Aesopi (or Aesop Romance), an anonymus text written in the first centuries AD, and Dio of Prusa’ erudite Discourses. The Aesop Romance is a polemical and popular text, which reflects a widespread satirical discourse targeting ‘intellectuals’, i.e. the philosophers, whose image remains rather controversial throughout this period (as is evident in many of Lucian’s dialogues). ‘The Vita apparently doubts that institutionalized paideia can provide the right instruments: something different is needed, and this is what Aesop apparently puts forward.’ The next two essays offer a Platonic exegesis of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. In ‘Only Halfway to Happiness: a Platonic Reading of Apuleius’ Golden Ass’, Walter Englert argues that the reason why Apuleius, in Book 11, depicts Lucius’ conversion as sincere but still incomplete is that he means to indicate that Lucius needs to move beyond a literal or superficial interpretation of Isis and Osiris and take on a more Platonic, allegorizing, view of them. Englert points to a number of jarring features in the final book that cause us to question Lucius’ conversion to Isis. After exploring the Middle Platonic context in which Apuleius developed his Platonism and examining the major Platonic elements in the Golden Ass, Englert argues that Apuleius, as a philosophus Platonicus, has written a text that portrays Lucius as a superficial follower of Isis, unable to understand the deeper truths that lie beneath the symbols and rituals of the cult he is practicing, and that he is, therefore, only halfway to happiness. The next paper focuses on the topic of Platonic demonology and Socrates’ daimonion. Taking as a starting point Apuleius’ lecture De deo Socratis, in ‘Ex Alienis Vocibus: Platonic Demonology and Socratic Superstition in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses,’ Richard Fletcher investigates how Apuleius’ fiction is related to the rest of his Platonic corpus. Apuleius approaches Socrates’ daimonion as the basis for a general theory of Platonic demonology, stressing the ethical import of Socrates’ exemplary model. According to Fletcher, the focus on the authority and transmission of Plato’s views, the decision to begin with Platonic demonology move from there to the Socratic daimonion, and the concluding ethical protreptic,

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are key features of Apuleius’s Platonic project. However, the Metamorphoses, rather than taking the form of an allegorical version of Platonic doctrine, introduces some major challenges to Platonic demonology, and illustrates how philosophical thought is reflected in a fictional text. Apuleius is not alone as a writer of ‘Platonic fiction’ in antiquity. In ‘The Platonic Eros of Art in the Ancient Greek Novel’, Vernon Provencal reads the ancient Greek novel as a new art form from a Platonic perspective. At first sight, the harsh reality of lived experience depicted in these fictions seems to undermine the Platonic subjection of the erotic impulse to the divine principle of beauty, to kalon. However, as Provencal stresses, the ancient Greek novel is best characterized as a quasi-Platonic erotic fantasy, wherein the ‘transcendent divinity of to kalon is imagined as immanent in the idealized humanity of heroic lovers’. Assuming that the union of godlike human beauty, art, and eros is a sublimation of the erotic impulse toward to kalon, Provencal considers that ‘the erotic fantasy is itself a Platonised world of idealized appearances, of heroes and heroines whose only virtue is their Platonic devotion to the beautiful, the just and the good, now as immanent in the idealized world of appearances rather than transcendent of ordinary reality’. Steven Smith, in ‘Platonic Perversions: Horror and the Irrational in the Greek Novel’, also considers the presence of Plato in the Greek novel, but explores deviations from Platonic idealism and from the novels’ putatively noble aims, focusing rather on the narrative’s indulgence in the grotesque and the irrational. Starting from the Platonic dual nature of the soul, which by nature tends toward the good despite the presence of the irrational within the soul itself, Smith analyzes two scenes of extreme violence (Leukippe’s violent Scheintod in Achilles Tatius’ Leukippe and Kleitophon and the scene of necromancy and the old woman’s gruesome death in Heliodoros’ Aethiopica), through which we witness the ‘darker side’ of certain characters, whose souls are continually bound up in a struggle between the noble and good and the perverse fulfillment of their basest desires. The appeal to Platonic theory is expressed through allusions to Plato’s Symposium, a prime intertext, and is consistent with the literary and philosophical irony that pervades Achilles’ and Heliodorus’ novels. The final paper brings focuses on the interaction between famous historical characters (Alexander and now Apollonius) and the so-called ‘naked’ (gymnoi) philosophers, haling from India. The main focus is on the travels and adventures of Apollonius of Tyana, a famous thaumaturge of the first century AD, which Philostratos narrates in his fictional biographical work, Life of Apollonius of Tyana. In ‘Apollonius of Tyana and the Gymnoi of Ethiopia’, Gary Reger concentrates on the encounter of Apollonius with an exiled group of Indian sages in

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Ethiopia (Nubia, on the Nile south of Egypt). Relying on evidence of various kinds, Reger demonstrates that many of the geographical details in the account of Apollonius’ visit to these sages are demonstrably wrong, which leads him to affirm that ‘Philostratus takes us into a world of geographic fantasy.’ Reger argues that the confused Egypto-Ethiopian geography serves Philostratus’ purpose of portraying Apollonius as a new and better Alexander, ‘in search not of conquest but of sacred knowledge and wisdom’, and that the background for this competition is inevitably the realm of the marvelous, a ‘geography of the imagination’.

Growing Backwards: The Cena Trimalchionis and Plato’s Aesthetics of Mimesis1 O URANIA M OLYVIATI Thessaloniki, Greece quid faciamus homines miserrimi et novi generis labyrintho inclusi? (Petr. 73,1)2 We were the most unfortunate men of the world. What were we supposed to do trapped inside an unusual labyrinth? Encolpius evokes the name of an artwork from the field of monumental architecture, the labyrinth, to describe his experience of space inside Trimalchio’s house. The evocation of the particular name has raised the suspicions of the interpretative community that the story is not truly about a banquet. Scholars have read the sign of the labyrinth as a metaphor for the social status and morality of the freedmen class in Rome.3 Trimalchio’s house has been interpreted as an underworld,4 an abode of shadows, part of a world that lacks a sense of reality,5 ————— 1

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I would like to thank the American School of Classical Studies at Athens for granting me access to the library facilities to do my research. I am indebted to Professor Stavros Frangoulidis for discussing with me parts of this paper. I am also indebted to Professor Marília Futre Pinheiro and to Professor Silvia Montiglio for their helpful comments, which improved the presentation of the paper. This article is based on the text of Petronii Arbitri Cena Trimalchionis, ed. Martin S. Smith, Oxford, The Clarendon Press 1975. Arrowsmith 1966, 314 , reads in the Cena a hunger for death in all its forms. The theme of ‘bread and circuses’ dominates Echion’s speech. This is the world of ex-slaves who have been raised to the level of freedmen from nothing; they have been raised from the dead. Newton 1982, 318, suggests that the Cena alludes to the inhabitants of the sedes beatae (Aeneid 6, 642-678) and is a parody of their heroic status. Courtney 2001, 73. Courtney 1987, 408-10, suggests that Petronius’ source is not Virgil but Plato’s Protagoras. The house of Callias, which Socrates-Odysseus visits, is a sort of Hades. Hence, there is an analogy between Petronius’ condemnation of the life-style prevailing in Trimalchio’s house and the condemnation of the sophists by Plato. Philosophy and the Ancient Novel, 1–18

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a sort of house of the dead,6 ‘a maze of pleasures that eternally turn back upon themselves without surfeit’.7 However, the labyrinth is a work of monumental architecture, famous for the dolus and ambages of its intriguing design. In Roman literature monumental architecture functions as a metaphor for a literary work.8 Frequently, authors compare their works to stone monuments and borrow features from the monumental architecture of Rome to assign to their work the durability of stone structures.9 In the Georgics Virgil compares his poem to a templum dedicated to Caesar (3,12-16).10 In Odes III, 30 Horace employs funeral imagery to suggest the immortality of his spirit through his long-lasting literary artifact (non omnis moriar, multaque pars mei /vitabit Libitinam: usque ego postera / crescam laude recens, ‘I shall not wholly die, a large part of mine will survive death and my after fame will keep me always new’,6-8).11 Livy compares his history of Rome, Ab Urbe Condita, to a monumentum filled with exempla to be imitated or shunned12 The interest of the fictional writer, narrator, and actor of the Cena in monumental architecture, the contrasts he creates between literacy and orality, and the maze-like structure of the subject matter suggest that the hidden author Petronius adheres to that tradition. This article examines how Encolpius, who records his memories of the banquet (si bene memini, Petr. 30,3), exploits the sign of the labyrinth to explain by the analogy of Trimalchio that what contem————— 6 7

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Bodel 1994, 239. Holmes 2008, 50, states that the Theseus - Labyrinth motif functions as a metaphor for ‘the broader idea of the journey through death in life’, which Petronius borrows from Plato’s Phaedo. ‘For Socrates the labyrinth consists in a series of speeches with his friends that seek to overcome the fear of death; for Trimalchio it is a maze of pleasures that eternally turn back upon themselves without surfeit’. Habinek 1998, 103: ‘Being written down in a text can, in Ovid’s view and that of many other ancient writers, help mortal humans transcend both temporal and geographical boundaries’. Miles 1995, 17, points out that one important aspect of the monumenta is their incorruptibility: ‘they are a direct survival from the past for which they provide evidence: they represent an unbroken link with the past, a part of the past that it is still available for direct, personal inspection’. Propertius also adheres to the same tradition (cf. Elegies 3,1,22-24; 3,2,25-26). See Carroll 2006, 30-58. Nisbet and Rudd 2004, 365, observe that in contrast to Pindar who used imagery of monumental architecture to glorify the achievements of someone else, the Romans evoked images of monuments to emphasize their own achievements. Propertius, Ovid, and even Lucretius (5,328) stress the power of poetry to immortalize (Nisbet and Rudd 2004, 367). West 2002, 262. Jaeger 1997, 8, 10, 13-14, points out that the history of Livy is in line with Augustan monuments, which ‘reshaped Roman space in a way that aimed to guide the perception, thoughts, and movements of those who entered it.’

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porary teachers of rhetoric practice in schools is nothing else but psychagogia. In contrast, the fictional author claims for the written artifact the place of true rhetoric which discloses and preserves the truth by the permanence of the written word. In the opening chapters of the Satyrica Encolpius denounces contemporary declamation as ventosa et enormis loquacitas which has corrupted the morals and the rules of eloquence (Petr. 2)13 and praises Sophocles, Euripides, the lyric poets, Plato and Demosthenes, Thucydides and Hyperides (Petr. 2), because they practiced in the past the ars severa or true rhetoric (Petr. 5,1). The theme is carried on in the Cena. Encolpius represents Trimalchio as the self -taught sophist who uses rhetoric to enthral his audience, whereas he poses as a Socrates type persona searching for meaning and the truth in everything he sees and hears (audivi … inveni, Petr. 33,8). He asks about the pictures in the atrium (Petr. 29,9), about the significance of the pun on the name of Carpus (Petr. 36,8), about the familia of Trimalchio (quae esset mulier illa, Petr. 37,1), about the significance of aper pilleatus (Petr. 41,1). Significant are the names labyrinthus, monumentum, templum each protagonist uses to impose different shapes on a single space, domus. The use of names as signifiers of rhetorical representations of space associates language with traditional literary theories of mimesis that described poetry in terms of painting.14 Relevant to the subject of this paper is Socrates’ theory on language and mimesis. In Cratylus15 Socrates rephrases Simonides’ doctrine by substituting ‘name’ (ὄνομα) for poiesis, and claims that a ‘name’ is an imitation, just as a picture is ————— 13

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nunc et rerum tumore … hoc tantum proficiunt ut, cum in forum venerint, putent se in alium orbem terrarum delatos, ‘but as it is, the sole result of this bombastic matter … is that the students, when they step into the market place, think that they have been carried into an alien world’ (Petr.1). Plut. Mor. 346f: “Simonides, however, calls painting silent poetry and poetry talking painting.” Horace restated ut pictura poesis (A.P. 361). Brink 1971, 369, notes that the sophists and the author of the Dissoi logoi (3,10) availed themselves of Simonides’ theory to emphasize the illusionist effect of painting and tragedy. According to Hermogenes, a name is given to a thing not by nature but by convention and custom. S.: “So then what each person says the name of a thing is, this is the name for each.”.H.:. “Yes.” S.: “And however many names someone says each thing has, it will have that many whenever he says so?” H.: “Well, Socrates, I for one cannot see any correctness of a name other than this: for me to call each thing by some name which I have set down, and you by another one which you have. In this way too with communities, we see that some of them have different names set down for the same things, both Greeks differing from other Greeks, and Greeks differing from Barbarians.” (Crat. 385d2-e3, trans. Barney 2001, 28). Cratylus, the advocate of naturalism and follower of Heracleitus, claims that knowledge of the truth is impossible, because the world is in flux (Crat. 440).

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(ἔστι δε που καὶ τὸ ὄνομα μίμημα ὥσπερ τὸ ζωγράφημα, Crat. 430e), which, when used properly, shows the nature of the thing though: ὀνόματος, φαμέν, ὀρθότης ἐστὶν αὕτη, ἥτις ἐνδείξεται οἷόν ἐστι τὸ πρᾶγμα. (Crat. 428e) Correctness of a name, we say, is the quality of showing the nature of the thing named.16 In 423e Socrates stresses that a name imitates the essence of a thing by letters and syllables: τί οὖν; εἴ τις αὐτὸ τοῦτο μιμεῖσθαι δύναιτο ἑκάστου, τὴν οὐσίαν, γράμμασί τε καὶ συλλαβαῖς, ἆρ᾽ οὐκ ἂν δηλοῖ ἕκαστον ὃ ἔστιν; ἢ οὔ; What then? If anyone could imitate this essential nature of each thing by means of letters and syllables, he would show what each thing really is, wouldn’t he? However, Socrates explains that imitation of the thing named does not mean exact reproduction but retention of the ‘intrinsic quality’, ὁ τύπος, of the actual thing (pragma): καὶ μηδὲν ἧττον ὀνομάζεσθαι τὸ πρᾶγμα καὶ λέγεσθαι, ἕως ἂν ὁ τύπος ἐνῇ τοῦ πράγματος περὶ οὗ ἂν ὁ λόγος ᾖ. (Crat. 432e) And the thing may nonetheless be named and described, as long as the intrinsic quality of the thing named is retained. The τύπος can be learned not from the names but through the things themselves:17 ὅντινα μὲν τοίνυν τρόπον δεῖ μανθάνειν ἢ εὑρίσκειν τὰ ὄντα, μεῖζον ἴσως ἐστὶν ἐγνωκέναι ἢ κατ᾽ ἐμὲ καὶ σέ: ἀγαπητὸν δὲ καὶ τοῦτο ὁμολογήσασθαι, ὅτι οὐκ ἐξ ὀνομάτων ἀλλὰ πολὺ μᾶλλον αὐτὰ ἐξ αὑτῶν καὶ μαθητέον καὶ ζητητέον ἢ ἐκ τῶν ὀνομάτων. (Crat. 439b) ————— 16 17

In translating Cratylus I consulted the Loeb translation. Barney 2001. Baxter 1992.

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How we can learn or discover realities is perhaps too great a question for you or me to determine; but it is worthwhile to have reached even this conclusion, that they are to be learned and sought for, not from names but much better through the things themselves. In 439a-b Socrates reiterates and stresses that a better and surer way of learning about realities is to learn from the truth, that is from the thing itself, both the truth about it and whether the image (the name) is properly made. The implications of Socrates’ theory are important for our understanding of the original meaning of the name labyrinthus, and how Encolpius uses it in a different context and age. The name labyrinthus represents an artifact made from letters and syllables, or, in broader terms, an artifact of words, which imitates the ‘intrinsic quality’ of the actual structure. Descriptions of the intriguing nature of the labyrinth survive in several literary works. Its intrinsic quality is the error. Catullus calls it inobservabilis error, ‘unobserved pathway’ (64,115). In the Aeneid it is inextricabilis error, ‘entangled pathway’ (6,27), and indeprensus et inremeabilis error, ‘undiscoverable and irretraceable wandering’ (5,591). Pliny (Nat. 36,19) emphasizes the multitude of the paths and counter - paths that are entangled (occursusque ac recursus inexplicabiles) and lead to doors which open to false corridors that lead back to the same paths. Ovid, on the other hand, uses the simile of the waters of the river Meander to represent the movement inside the labyrinth shifting back and forth: Non secus ac liquidis Phrygius Maeandrus in undis ludit et ambiguo lapsu refluitque fluitque occurrensque sibi venturas adspicit undas et nunc ad fontes, nunc ad mare versus apertum incertas exercet aquas, ita Daedalus inplet innumeras errore vias vixque ipse reverti ad limen potuit: tanta est fallacia tecti. (Met. 8,162-68) Not otherwise the Phrygian Meander plays in the watery waves, and flows back and forth in doubtful course, and turning back on itself beholds its own waves coming on their way, and sends its uncertain waters now towards their source and now towards the open sea. Thus Daedalus fills the maze with innumerable paths that even for him was difficult to return to the entrance: such was the deception of the building.

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In the Hymn to Hermes the poet describes how Hermes inscribed a palindrome on soil. He reversed the hoofs of the cows to appear that they were moving backwards as he was moving forward: ἀντία ποιήσας ὁπλάς, τὰς πρόσθεν ὄπισθεν, τὰς δ᾽ ὄπιθεν πρόσθεν: κατὰ δ᾽ ἔμπαλιν αὐτὸς ἔβαινε. (h. Merc. 77-78) (Hermes) reversed the marks of the hoofs turning the front back and the back front, as he was walking in the opposite direction. The effect was the illusion that the road was leading back to the point of departure: ὦ πόποι, ἦ μέγα θαῦμα τόδ᾽ ὀφθαλμοῖσιν ὁρῶμαι: ἴχνια μὲν τάδε γ᾽ ἐστὶ βοῶν ὀρθοκραιράων, ἀλλὰ πάλιν τέτραπται ἐς ἀσφοδελὸν λειμῶνα: (h. Merc. 219-21) Oh! Truly this is a great marvel that my eyes behold! These are indeed the tracks of the straight-horned cows, but they are turned back towards the valley of the asphodels. The labyrinth is also a space (tectum, Verg. A. 6,29; domus, A. 6, 27) of anceps dolus (A. 5, 589-90), of ambages(A. 6, 29). The traveler has limited vision of the road (parietibus textum caecis iter, a path woven with blind walls, A. 5, 589) and confronts a twofold trap: that of the many paths, which confuse him as to which one to follow, and that of the Minotaur: Ut quondam Creta fertur labyrinthus in alta parietibus textum caecis iter ancipitemque mille viis habuisse dolum, qua signa sequendi frangeret indeprensus et inremeabilis error. (Verg. A. 5, 588-91) As once in high Crete, the story goes, the Labyrinth contained a path woven with blind walls, and a two edged trap with a thousand trails, so that any signs that might be followed the undiscoverable and irretraceable path might confuse.

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The winding path renders the experience of the journey through the labyrinth a labor (A. 6,27). The name labyrinthus coined originally for the stone structure Encolpius applies to his experience of the reality inside Trimalchio’s domus. What does he mean? Why does he associate Trimalchio and his domus with the labyrinth? Again, in Cratylus Socrates claims that a name can be used properly at any time in history only if the speaker who uses it knows the original significance of the name of the thing named: καίτοι ὅτῳ τις τρόπῳ τῶν πρώτων ὀνομάτων τὴν ὀρθότητα μὴ οἶδεν, ἀδύνατόν που τῶν γε ὑστέρων εἰδέναι, ἃ ἐξ ἐκείνων ἀνάγκη δηλοῦσθαι ὧν τις πέρι μηδὲν οἶδεν: ἀλλὰ δῆλον ὅτι τὸν φάσκοντα περὶ αὐτῶν τεχνικὸν εἶναι περὶ τῶν πρώτων ὀνομάτων μάλιστά τε καὶ καθαρώτατα δεῖ ἔχειν ἀποδεῖξαι, ἢ εὖ εἰδέναι ὅτι τά γε ὕστερα ἤδη φλυαρήσει. ἢ σοὶ ἄλλως δοκεῖ; (Crat. 426a-b): So.: And yet if anyone is, no matter why, ignorant of the correctness of the earliest names, he cannot know about that of the later. However, it is clear that anyone who claims to have scientific knowledge of names must be able first to explain the earliest names perfectly, or he can be sure that what he says about the later will be nonsense.18 The use of the name labyrinthus suggests that Encolpius, as a student of the ars severa, is aware of the literary tradition about the labyrinth, knows the original use of the name, and recognizes it in Trimalchio’s banquet.19 In other words, Encolpius uses the name labyrinthus as a metaphor for the intrinsic quality of Trimalchio’s banquet. As it will be argued below, the essential quality of the Cena is psychagogia, “soul conjuring” through speech, which Trimalchio practices to control the minds of his guests.20 The fictional writer renders an intellec————— 18 19

20

Halliwell 2002, 44-48. The Satyricon, a work of ADE 1st century, shows influence from the second sophistic cultural movement. Whitmarsh 2005, 9, states that “‘sophistic’ has been aligned with literary sophistication; and ‘secondariness’ through intertextuality, allusiveness, and literary self-consciousness …theatricality, performance, playfulness and elusiveness have become indicators not of debased values but of a flourishing, energized culture reflecting actively on its own inheritance.” Rostagni 2002, 27, points out that ‘Plato represents Gorgias’ conception of rhetoric as the art of seduction and fascination, one that has the magical power to direct the human soul

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tual experience, psychagogia, literal and discernible to the reader through the maze-like form of the narrative which reproduces the error of Hermes’ palindrome, a path that as it moves forward leads back to the point of departure. The contents of the narrative reproduce stock themes from the dialogues of Socrates with the sophists to parallel Trimalchio to the sophists. Words and phrases expressing novelty introduce the reader to the uniqueness of Trimalchio’s world (res novas 27,3; miraremur 27,4; stupeo 29,1; novo more 31,8; novitas 35,1). Entrance into the triclinium is stepping into a strange world, the world of the sophist who can discourse on any subject (Plato, Grg. 447d448a) from astronomy and medicine to literary criticism, zoology, and etymology.21 First, the allegorical painting on the walls of the atrium alludes to Trimalchio’s expertise in the arts of disguise and of psychagogia: Erat autem venalicium titulis pictum, et ipse Trimalchio capillatus caduceum tenebat Minervaque ducente Romam intrabat.Hinc quemadmodum ratiocinari didicisset deinque dispensator factus esset, omnia diligenter curiosus pictor cum inscriptione rediderat. In deficiente vero iam porticu levatum mento in tribunal excelsum Mercurius rapiebat. (Petr. 29,3-5) There was depicted a market of slaves carrying identification placards, and Trimalchio with long hair holding Mercury’s staff was entering Rome led by Minerva. After that he had learned somehow accounting and, then, he was appointed treasurer. The attentive painter had explained with subtitles everything in detail. At the end of the wall gallery, Mercury was carrying Trimalchio away lifting him by the chin up to a tribunal placed high.

Trimalchio arrives at Rome from Asia in the company of Minerva, an allusion to Odysseus who enlists the aid of Athena for his successful use of the art of disguise as he enters the city of the Phaeacians (Od. 7,37-38). Later, Trimalchio compares himself to Ulysses (sic notus Ulixes? Petr. 39,3), who knows to asso————— 21

at its will and to persuade regarding good and evil, the just and unjust, the beautiful and the ugly, and so forth.’ I quote the translation of Ph. Sipiora of the original Italian text. Whitmarsh 2005, 15, describes the sophists as a group of intellectuals who taught a range of subjects from philosophy to rhetoric. In late 5th and 4th century sophistry became associated with rhetorical mastery, the ability to manipulate language for the delectation or persuasion of others.

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ciate with men in many different ways and to represent the same thought in many ways.22 His guests and audience proclaim him sophos (40,1). Trimalchio represents himself as naturally philosophos - he never heard a philosopher (nec umquam philosophum audivit, Petr. 71,12). Socrates implies that he never attended any sophist, when he claims humorously that he attended only the one drachma course of Prodicus on names (Crat. 384b). In the Gorgias (463a) Socrates considers Gorgias’ skill in speech not an art ‘but showing a shrewd, gallant spirit, which has a natural bent for clever dealing with mankind’. Trimalchio holds the caduceum, the wand of Mercury. In the Odyssey (5,47) we read that the wand bewitches men: it puts some to sleep and wakes up others. In the Aeneid (4, 241-43) Mercury's virga is the instrument by which the god calls the souls to the underworld, or puts men to sleep. In Ovid's Metamorphoses (1,671-72) Mercury's wand is called virga somnifera.23 The caduceum transfers to Trimalchio the magic power of Mercury ‘to lead the souls’, the art of psychagogia.24 Later in the narrative Trimalchio claims that he took hold of the mind of his master and became his heir (et ecce cepi ipsimi cerebellum quid multa? coheredem me Caesari fecit, Petr. 76,1 ‘I took hold of his brain. What more? He named me his heir together with Caesar.’). In Cratylus (394a-b) we hear Socrates saying mockingly that the sophist Euthyphro the Prospaltian ‘took possession of his soul’ (τῆς ψυχῆς ἐπειλῆφθαι) and, thus, he could talk about names as an inspired prophet. Gorgias regarded the orator “leader of the souls”.25 Trimalchio’s portrait as accountant and gymnast of young men (Petr. 29,4, 7), his interest in ball playing (Petr. 26,3) and chess (Petr. 33,2) allude to his skill in both intellectual arts and those that tend the body. In Gorgias (450d) Socrates claims that mathematics, accounting, and draught playing are intellectual arts.26 ————— 22 23

24

25 26

Rostagni 2002,26. cf. Met.1, 715-15: firmatque soporem/ languida permulcens medicata lumina virga, “and compels slumber, touching the drooping eyelids with his magic wand”. Originally psychagogia was related to necromancy, raising the spirits of the dead. The term appears in 5th century tragedy in connection with soul leading of the dead. In the second half of the 5th century it is employed metaphorically in a pejorative sense for the rhetoric of the sophists and Socrates (Aristophanes), but also in a positive sense for Socrates (Plato). Lopez Eire 2007,341. Dodds 1959, 197, mentions Plato’s distinction between the representational arts, which are considered less adequate to the depiction of living subjects, and words and speech, which belong to the intellectual arts. In Charmides 165e a similar distinction is drawn between architecture and weaving, which have a material product, and those like computation, which do not. In the Philebus Plato makes the most accurate distinction of arts (55d

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Cooking, the apophoreta, and the horologium highlight and allude to the skills of the sophist. Encolpius compares sophistic or bad rhetoric to cooking: qui inter haec nutrient non magis sapere possunt quam bene olere qui in culina habitant (2,1). The comparison of sophistic rhetoric to cooking is a stock theme of the Socratic discourse. Socrates considers cooking not an art but a habitude or knack, like rhetoric and sophistry (Grg. 463b).27 Trimalchio’s cook is Daedalus, who is master of disguise and deception, the counterpart of Trimalchio. At Trimalchio’s orders Daedalus constructs prodigies: a chicken hatches peacock’s eggs (Petr. 33,3-5); thrushes fly out from the side of the roast boar (Petr. 40,6).28 Daedalus’ technique anticipates Trimalchio’s prodigious rhetoric: the transformation of domus to a sepulchral monument. The apophoreta is Trimalchio’s fusion of traditional theories on the origins of language as Protagoras’ conventionalism (Crat. 386a) and Herakleitus’ naturalism,29 as well as Socrates’ theory on the correctness and proper use of names:30 ‘argentum sceleratum’: allata est perna, supra quam acetabula erant posita. ‘cervical’: offla collaris allata est. ‘serisapia et contumelia’: xerophagiae e sale datae sunt et contus cum malo. ‘porri et persica’: flagellum et cultrum accepit; ‘passeres et muscarium’: uvam passam et mel Atticum. ‘cenatoria et forensia’: offlam et tabulas accepit; ‘canale et pedale’: lepus et solea est allata. ‘muraena et littera’: murem cum rana alligata fascemque betae. (Petr. 56,8-10) “Stained silver” a servant brought in a piece of ham with leg over which was placed a vinegar dish made from silver; “cushion” a servant brought in a neck chop; “late learning and abuse” a servant offered salt dried herbs and a pole with an apple. “Leeks and peaches” a guest received a whip and a knife; “sparrows and fly-stopper”, raisin and Attic honey. “Things for dinner and things for the forum” a guest received a chop and writing tablets; “be————— 27

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29 30

ff.): the manual arts are divided into more or less scientific and the intellectual ones into pure and applied. Dodds 1959, 225. Both are branches of flattery, which is defined ‘as time-serving opportunism, which is not scientific, but demands a mind good at guessing and enterprising, with a natural gift for handling people.’ (463a6-b1). Socrates calls prodigy (τέρας) ‘the birth of some other creature say from a horse or from a man’ (Crat. 393b–c). Above n. 15. “Anyone who is ignorant of the correctness of the earliest names cannot know about that of the later” (Crat. 426a-b)

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longing to a dog and belonging to the foot” a servant presented us with a hare and a sandal; “sea-eel and letters”: a mouse tied to a frog and a bundle of beets.31 Trimalchio demonstrates here his knowledge of the original meaning of words by assigning names that show the nature of the gift,32 or its use, or the class to which it belongs. He turns thus classical and silver age Latin into metaphors. Sceleratum derives from the Greek noun skelos, leg,33 and was originally expressing the nature of perna. Similarly, the noun serisapia as compound formed by the adjective serus-a-um, late, dry, and the verb sapio-ere, to taste, expresses here literally the Greek compound xerophagiae.34 The nature of the gift contus, pole, and malum, apple, expresses the noun contumelia which makes sense as compound from the nouns contus, spear, and malum, apple.35 To the apophoreta of a mouse tied to a frog Trimalchio assigns the name muraena, the old form of the classical murena, which he turns to a compound formed by the nouns mus, mouse, and rana, frog, to express the nature of the gift.36 The next group includes words which suggest that there is a natural instrument for each action. 37 A whip is porrum, a name used for leeks, probably because the natural shape of leeks resembles a whip; persica Trimalchio assigns to a dagger (culter), an instrument for inflicting punishment, suggesting an etymology from Persica, the Persian peach, which was considered, according to a tradition quoted by Pliny the Elder, poisonous and an instrument of torture and punishment.38 Muscarium by analogy to apiarium39 is the honey, a natural trap for flies. ————— 31

32

33 34

35 36 37 38

39

Rimell 2007, 68, suggests that here there is collapsing of categories in the cryptic crossword puzzle. ‘Correctness of a name is the quality of showing the nature of the thing named.’ (Crat.. 428e). Smith 1975, 152. Smith 1975, 152. Theophrastus, Char. 27. 2-3ff.: ὀψιμαθὴς, later learner, is one who learns in old age stories, proverbial expressions, verses to recite but he will forget what comes next when he delivers them over the wine. Serisapia is probably a clever allusion to the character of Trimalchio. Contus, spear, and malum may allude to the Trojan War, a recurrent theme in the Cena. Possibly an allusion to the mock Epic The War of Frogs and Mice. Crat. 387a. Pl. Nat. 15, 14: falsum est venenata cum cruciatu in persis gigni et poenarum causa ab regibus tralata in aegyptum terra mitigata. Mart. 13.46: persica praecocia. Col. RR 5, 10, 20: et Persicum ante brumam per autumnum serito ; 9,4, 3. Smith 1975, 153: “perhaps a Persian sword”. Smith 1975, 153.

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The next group of names reveals the class of the thing named.40 Uva passa, raisin, belongs to the class Trimalchio calls passeres implying an earlier form passae res, ‘things spread out to dry’, by analogy to murena from the old form muraena. A chop is cenatoria, because it belongs to cena; writing tablets are forensia, belonging to forum. Canale is the hare. Trimalchio coins the form canale from canis by analogy to pedale from pes to associate chasing hares with dogs. Martial dedicates an epigram to canis vertragus which unlike other dogs brings the hare unharmed to his master (14, 200): Non sibi, sed domino venatur vertragus acer, Inlaesum leporem qui tibi dente feret. Likewise pedale is a sandal, a thing belonging to foot. The last item, Encolpius includes in his list, is a bunch of beets to which Trimalchio assigns the name littera, probably because their natural shape resembles the letter b.41 The names Trimalchio assigns to apophoreta advocate a kind of linguistic naturalism. Trimalchio is represented as someone concerned with timeliness. This is suggested first by the clock in the triclinium, which measures time in terms of quantity (horologium in triclinio et bucinatorem habet, ut subinde sciat quantum de vita perdiderit, Petr. 26, 9, “he has a clock in his dining room and a trumpeter to know from time to time how much from his life has been lost”).42 The mention of the 100-year-old Falernus Opimianus vinus (Petr. 34,6-7) associates time with the opportune and appropriate limit, the qualitative character of time. Thus, a date earlier Trimalchio did not serve his precious wine to guests multo honestiores (Petr. 34,7).43 Timeliness has also the sense of ‘opportune time to do something’ or of ‘the right measure in doing something’.44 Inside the world of his domus, a world of oral transactions, Trimalchio appears aware of the constraints of time and timeliness in his interventions to terminate one type of discourse and begin another, or in the composition of ad hoc epigrams to commemorate events of the banquet, or in his interventions to distribute justice to his ————— 40

41 42

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44

Crat. 394c , 402e: names also designate the class to which a ‘thing’ belongs. Smith 1975, 153: “uvam passam (raisins) is chosen simply for the pun”. Smith 1975, 153, says that the list ends with a worthless item. Enos 2002, 77-88, notes that the Athenians invented timing devices to measure pleading. The constraints of the water clock were in the minds of the orators. Smith 2002, 51 observes that, according to the chemistry of wine making, for great wines there is a time of maturity, when the development reaches its peak. It is at this time that the wine wil be at its best. There is a critical time for the vintage; prior to this point it is ‘too soon’ and after it has passed it is ‘too late’. Kinneavy 2002, 58.

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servants. This emphasis on timeliness suggests the ability of Trimalchio to exploit time in order to recreate himself and his world anew.45 When Encolpius and all the guests are intoxicated (lucernae mihi plures videbantur ardere totumque triclinium esse mutatum, ‘many candles seemed to me to burn and the dining room to have been transformed’, Petr.71) and after stories about witches and transformations, Trimalchio grasps the opportunity to create his monument of words, a sepulchral monument.46 The fictional writer Encolpius exposes the knack of Trimalchio to ‘lead the minds’ of his quests and audience through his cunning use of words.47 Names and words chosen from the family of Trimalchio and the contents of the domus,48 such as naves, Trimalchio, Fortunata, catella, Petraitis omnes pugnae, amphorae gypsatae, puer plorans-, and horologium (71,9-11), reshape the triclinium and produce the illusion of the exterior of a sepulchral monument decorated with the life-like images of Trimalchio and his family. The effect of psychagogia is reflected in the response of the guests: all break into a funeral lament (lamentatione triclinium implevit 72.1). From the triclinium monumentum49 Trimalchio ‘leads the minds’ of his guests through speech to triclinium templum (nunc templum est, Petr. 77,4).50 The autobiographical speech of Trimalchio (75,8-77,7), which stands for the ————— 45

46

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48

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Consigny 2001, 27. Poulakos 2002, 89, remarks that kairos was an important concept for the sophists and especially Gorgias. It refers to the marking of time with speech. Gorgias trusted the moment to speak on any subject; he responded orally to an opportune moment (90). Poulakos notes that Gorgias manufactured controlled opportunities within his texts to create the impression that his words were largely a function of kairos (90-91). Zeitlin 1971a, 660, suggests that the Cena represents a shifting reality. No one is what he seems. Human forms are unstable and beneath the humorous veneer lays the uneasy sensation that the world is not rational or coherent. The use of speech to construct a stone monument that does not exist is another one of Trimalchio’s devices that associates him with sophistic rhetoric. Gorgias claimed that speech is “an invisible material” which can achieve the most divine deeds (Hel. 8). Walsh 1984, 82. embolum navis (Petr. 30,2), Trimalchio with his two golden rings (Petr. 32.3), the horologium (Sat. 26,9), the amphorae gypsatae (Petr. 34,6), Fortunata (Petr. 37), the accidents of the slave boys (Petr. 54,1; 30,7; 34,2), the fights of Petraitis (Petr. 52,3) and the dog of Trimalchio (Petr. 64,6). Holmes 2008, 46-47, considers the image of Trimalchio’s house as a tomb and a labyrinthine underworld: the cook is Daedalus like the builder of the labyrinth; the number of the guests 14 like the companions of Theseus is a reference to the journey of Theseus through the labyrinth. Petronius represents Trimalchio ‘as a kind of anti-Theseus, not bringing salvation to his troupe, but leading them ever around in a shadowy realm where life and death converge.’ On the metaphor of domus - tomb: Wallace-Hadrill 2008, 40, who mentions Trimalchio’s house–tomb.

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traditional laudatio funebris, follow the scene of prothesis, the presentation of Trimalchio on a bier51 (fingite me mortuum esse, Petr. 78,5), and the invitation to parentalia (putate vos ad parentalia mea invitatos esse, Petr. 78,4). Trimalchio has effected a complete inversion of space, time, and of the action inside that space by means of cunning speech; the audience have been transported mentally to a templum, the sacred space of an immortal, and to a time far in the future, to the celebration of Trimalchio’s parentalia. Trimalchio’s rhetoric has reshaped the experience of Encolpius from labor to ludus, a funeral game in honor of his spirit, genius. The Aeneid describes a maze-like game for youngsters performed in the funeral games of Anchises, a lusus Troiae:52 inde alios ineunt cursus aliosque recursus adversi spatiis, alternosque orbibus orbes impediunt… (A. 5,583-85) Then, they perform other movements and counter movements confronting one another in the open space, and alternate circles with circles entangle… Here two opponent teams moving inside a labyrinthine space compete for victory by simulating flights and fights for amusement: Haud alio Teucrum nati vestigia cursu Impediund texuntque fugas et proelia ludo… (A.5, 592-93) In such a course the sons of Troy their vestiges entangle and weave in sport their flights and fights. The fictional writer exposes and renders concrete and discernible the art of psychagogia by the maze-like form of the narrative that leads the reader through a ————— 51 52

Kampen 1981, 53-54. The Lusus /ludus Troiae was celebrated officially by Sulla in 81 BC in the Circus Maximus. Two squadrons of youths of good birth paraded in armour on horseback, and carried out some complicated drill movements and then fought a sham battle. Scullard 1981, 3841, 183-85. Beacham 1999, 198-9, states that Trimalchio’s party is a moderate mimesis of Nero’s actual dinner parties: “the whole meal is staged as a variety show, with one sensational effect following another and frequent allusion to such things as mime, pantomime, gladiatorial displays, staged animal hunts, acrobats, musical fanfares, and spectacular scenic effects”.

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space of shifting shapes.53 The phrase errare coepimus marks the beginning of error (27,1). Encolpius marks space with speech, with the motifs of balneum, circuli ludentium, ianua, porticum, servus, canis, and puer which are shifting shapes. From the exterior of the house, which mark the motifs of balneum (26,12), circuli ludentium (27,1), and of puer vetulus lippus (28,4), Encolpius and his companions move forward through a door to the interior of the house, to porticum. From porticum, which mark the motifs of ostiarius (28,8) and the picture of canis ingens catena vinctus (29,1), they move forward to triclinium marked by the motifs of puer lippus Croesus (64,6) and Trimalchio’s live immense chained dog by the name Scylax (ingentis canis catena vinctus 64,7). From triclinium they move to porticum, which mark the motifs of the live canis catenarius (72, 7), the fish -pond (piscina), and of atriensis,54 and to a door (ad ianuam venimus, 72,7-10). From porticum they move to a space like the exterior of domus marked by the motifs of balneum (73,2) and of ludentes (73,4-5), and to another triclinium marked by the motifs of puer, who is now pretty (puer non inspeciosus 74,8), and canis (74,9), a name for Trimalchio. The movement through space constructs an error which as it moves forward appears to lead back to the beginning of the banquet. The movement inside Trimalchio’s space is analogous to the movement inside Hermes’ palindrome,55 which was constructed to deceive Apollo. It is a palindrome. The palindrome of Hermes inside Trimalchio’s space, and the caduceum of Mercury at Trimalchio’s hands link Trimalchio with psychagogia and deception. From this space in studied flux Encolpius and his friends run away through a side door that opens unexpectedly (78,8). At the surface, the ending perpetuates the confusion between reality and illusion. One wonders whether Encolpius’ escape is an accident or another one of the controlled accidents that manifest Trimalchio’s mercifulness.56 The open ending alludes to the open ending of Cratylus. Just before the dialogue breaks, Socrates poses the question: ‘is there eternal nature in things or things are in flux?’ (439e). ————— 53

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Bodel 1999, 44, observes that the narrative develops in the form of a series of concentring frames that give to the reader “the sense of methodically retracing a path out of an intricate, box-like, maze and thus of replicating the narrator’s perceptions.” He proclaims Trimalchio’s second law: ‘nemo umquam convivarum per eandem ianuam emissus est; alia intrant, alia exeunt’, no guest is allowed to depart from the same door; from one door they come in, from another they depart. Holmes 2008, 45, points out that ‘a recurring … motif is the image of Encolpius and his friends caught in a labyrinth.’ Certainly, the scene alludes to Aeneid 6,28-30. Daedalus helps Theseus out of the labyrinth because of his pity for Ariadne.

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However, the fictional writer counters to Trimalchio’s space of shifting shapes the stability of the written literary labyrinth which mirrors and is an image of the essential quality of Trimalchio’s cena, psychagogia. In Cratylus (440a) Socrates connects the stability and permanence of things with knowledge, because, he states, ‘knowledge too cannot continue to be knowledge unless continuing always to abide and exist’. The fictional author Encolpius claims for his literary labyrinthus the place of true rhetoric though, because the incorruptibility and stability of the written word discloses the truth about Trimalchio’s art of psychagogia.57 In Cratylus 439a Socrates reiterates and advances the premise that those names, which are correct, are not only images (eikones) of the real things (pragmata) but are also like (eoikota) the real things. The literary labyrinth, which imitates and mirrors Trimalchio’s psychagogia, poses also itself as psychagogia but positive.58

Bibliography Arrowsmith, W. 1966. ‘Luxury and Death in the Satyricon’, Arion 5, 304-31. Auerbach, E. 1953. Mimesis, trans. W.R. Trask, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Barney, R. 2001. Names and Nature in Plato’s Cratylus, New York and London: Routledge. Bartsch, S. 1994. Actors in the Audience. Theatricality and Doublespeak from Nero to Hadrian, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Baxter, T. M.S. 1992. The Cratylus. Plato’s Critique of Naming, Leiden, New York, Köln: E. J. Brill. Beacham, R.C. 1999. Spectacle Entertainments of Early Imperial Rome, New Haven: Yale University Press. Beck, R. 1999. ‘Some Observations on the Narrative Technique of Petronius’, in: S.J. Harrison (ed.), Oxford Readings in the Roman Novel, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 50-73. Bodel, J. 1994. ‘Trimalchio’s Underworld’, in: J. Tatum (ed.), The Search for the Ancient Novel, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 237-59. Bodel, J. 1999. ‘The Cena Trimalchionis’, in: H. Hofmann (ed.), Latin Fiction. The Latin Novel in Context, London and New York: Routledge, 38-51. Bourboulis, Ph. P. 1964. Ancient Festivals of Saturnalia Type, Thessaloniki: Etaireia makedonikōn spoudōn.

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Zeitlin 1971a, 633 noticed Petronius’ fondness for opposites: “Petronius seems not to order experience but to disorder it, by irony and ambiguity of tone, by disorganized plot, by shifting characterizations, and by bewildering incongruities, to name only few of his more prominent ‘failings’. But …we should expect to find in the Satyricon an inner coherence and an interrelation of form, style, literary devices, plot, and mode of characterization, themes, images, and symbols which create a world-view that is intelligible when seen within the framework of its own inner logic”. Gorgias in the epilogue of the Encomium of Helen (21) remarks that he wrote the defence of Helen as a response to other opposite discourses and for his own amusement.

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Brink, C. O. 1971. Horace on Poetry. The ‘Ars Poetica’, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brooks, P. 1984. Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative, New York: Random. Cameron, A. M. 1970. ‘Myth and Meaning in Petronius: Some Modern Comparisons’, Latomus 29, 397-425. Carroll, M. 2006. Spirits of the Dead. Roman Funerary Commemoration in Western Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cipolla, G. 1987. Labyrinth. Studies on an Archetype, Toronto: Toronto University Press. Connors, C. 1998. Petronius the Poet: Verse and Literary Tradition in the Satyricon, Berkeley: University of California Press. Consigny, S. 2001. Gorgias: Sophist and Artist, Columbia: University of South Carolina. Conte, G. B. 1996. The Hidden Author. An Interpretatiion of Petronius' Satyricon, Berkeley: University of California Press. Courtney, E. 1987. ‘Petronius and the Underworld’, AJPh 108, 408-10. Courtney, E. 2001. A Companion to Petronius, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Detienne, M., J. –P Vernant. 1978. Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society, trans. J. Lloyd, Chicago: Chicago University Press. Doob, P. R. 1992. The Idea of the Labyrinth from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Dodds E.R. (ed.) 1959. Plato, Gorgias. A revised text with introduction and commentary, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Enos, R.L. 2002. ‘Inventional Constraints on the Technographers of Ancient Athens’, in: Ph. Sipiora and J.S. Baumlin (eds.), Rhetoric and Kairos, Albany: State University of New York, 77-88. Flower, H. 1996. Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Fowler, W.W. 1916. The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic. An Introduction to the Study of the Religion of the Romans, London: Macmillan. Habinek, Th. 1998. The Politics of Latin Literature. Writing, identity, and Empire in Ancient Rome, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Halliwell, S. 2002. The Aesthetics of Mimesis. Ancient Texts and Modern Problems, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Holmes, D. 2008. ‘Practicing Death in Petronius’ Cena and Plato’s Phaedo, CJ 104.1, 43-57. Holt, Ph. 1979-80. ‘Aeneid V. Past and Future’, CJ 75, 110-21. Jaeger, M. 1997. Livy’s Written Rome, Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press. James, E.O. 1961. Seasonal Feasts and Festivals, New York: Barnes & Noble. Jensson, G. 2004. The Recollections of Encolpius. The Satyrica of Petronius as Milesian Fiction, Groningen: Barkhuis Publishing & Groningen University Library. Kampen N.B. 1981. ‘Biographical Narration and Roman Funerary Art’, AJA 85, 47-58. Kinneavy, J.L. 2002. ‘Kairos in Classical and Modern Rhetorical Theory’, in: Ph. Sipiora and J.S. Baumlin (eds.), Rhetoric and Kairos, Albany: State University of New York, 58-76. Laird, A. 1999. Powers of Expression, Expressions of Power. Speech Presentation and Latin Literature, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Layard, J. 1942. Stone Men of Malekula: Vao, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lopez Eire, A. 2007. ‘Rhetoric and Language’, in: I. Worthington (ed.), A Companion to Greek Rhetoric, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 336-349. Maltby, R. 1991. A Lexicon of Ancient Latin Etymologies, Leeds: Francis Cairns Publications.

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Miles, G. B. 1995. Livy. Reconstructing Early Rome, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Maiuri, A. 1945. La Cena di Trimalchione di Petronio Arbitro, Napoli: R. Pironti. Marmorale, E. V. (ed.) 21961. Cena Trimalchionis. Testo Critico e Commento, Firenze: La nuova Italia. Newton, R. M. 1982. ‘Trimalchio’s Hellish Bath’, CJ 77, 315-319. Nisbet, R.G.M., Rudd, N. 2004. A Commentary on Horace, Odes, Book III, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Petersmann, H. 1999. ‘Environment, Linguistic Situation, and Levels of Style in Petronius’ Satyrica’, in: S. J. Harrison (ed.), Oxford Readings in the Roman Novel, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 105-123. Plaza, M. 2000. Laughter and Derision in Petronius’ Satyrica: A Literary Study, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. Poulakos, J. 2002. ‘Kairos in Gorgias’ Rhetorical Compositions’, in: Ph. Sipiora and J.S. Baumlin (eds.), Rhetoric and Kairos, Albany: State University of New York, 89-96. Relihan, J.C. 1993. Ancient Menippean Satire, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Rimell, V. 2002. Petronius and the Anatomy of Fiction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rimell, V. 2007. ‘The Inward Turn: Writing, Voice and the Imperial Author in Petronius’, in: V. Rimell (ed.), Seeing Tongues, Hearing Scripts: Orality and Representation in the Ancient Novel, ANS 7, Groningen: Barkhuis & Groningen University Library, 61-85. Rostagni, A. 2002. ‘A New chapter in the History of Rhetoric and Sophistry’, trans. Ph. Sipiora, in: Ph. Sipiora and J.S. Baumlin (eds.), Rhetoric and Kairos, Albany: State University of New York, 23-45. Rudd, N. (ed.) 1989. Horace: Epistles Book II and Epistle to the Pisones (Ars Poetica), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scullard, H.H. 1981. Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic, London: Thames and Hudson. Sedley, D. 2003. Plato’s Cratylus, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Slater, N. W. 1990. Reading Petronius, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Smith, M. S. (ed.) 1975. Petronii Arbitri Cena Trimalchionis, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smith, J.E., 2002. ‘Time and Qualitative Time’, in: Ph. Sipiora and J.S. Baumlin (eds.), Rhetoric and Kairos, Albany: State University of New York, 46-57. Walsh, G.B. 1984. The Varieties of Enchantment, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. West, D. 2002 (ed. and trans.). Horace, Odes III. Dulce Periculum, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Whitmarsh, T. 2005. The Second Sophistic, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zeitlin, F.I. 1971a. ‘Petronius as Paradox: Anarchy and Artistic Integrity’, TAPhA 102, 63184. Zeitlin, F. I. 1971b. ‘Romanus Petronius: A Study of the Troiae Halosis and the Bellum Civile’, Latomus 30, 56-82.

Stoics in the ocean: Iambulus’ novel as philosophical fiction P ETER VON M ÖLLENDORFF Universität Giessen1

We neither know the title of the work Diodorus excerpts in his Bibliotheca Historica (2,55-60), while attributing it to a certain Iambulus, nor do we have any information on the identity of its author. Yet it is the name of an author Lucian deems worthy of being singled out for special mention in the proem of his True History (1,3).2 Generically speaking, the account of a voyage to the Islands of the Sun in the Southern Ocean, given by the first-person narrator Iambulus, and dated back to the 3rd or 2nd century B. C.,3 is generally attributed to the novelistic genre. This is suggested by the great number of pivotal motifs of the later romantic novel and adventure novel, especially prominent in the frame narrative concerning the outward and return journey: double abduction, danger to life, enslavement, double storm at sea, homecoming (implying an overall ringcompositional structure). It is precisely when we consider Iambulus’ account as novelistic that the composition of the middle part attracts our attention. Comparable novels develop a quite complex plot throughout, they are action-oriented, and they introduce a wide range of characters who have an impact on the protagonists’ actions. This ————— 1

2

3

I am much obliged to Katrin Dolle for her translation; any remaining mistakes are, of course, my own. Cf. Winiarczyk‘s fundamental literature survey: 1997, 128-153, esp. 129-131. The name Iambulus – Diodorus leaves open the question as to whether he is to be identified as the author or only as the first-person narrator and protagonist – is either of Aramaic or Arabic (more precisely, Nabataic) origin; cf. Altheim 1948, 155. If, following Cizek 2006, 57, Iambulus may well be called a ‘marchand arabe hellénisé’, we would thereby have a Hellenistic pioneer for figural exoticism in the novel of the late Roman imperial period (i.e. Heliodorus). On Iambulus’ text being only vaguely datable, cf. Winiarczyk 1997, 146f. Suggestions range between the 4th century B.C. and the publishing of Diodorus’ Bibliotheca in the middle of the 1st century B.C. Philosophy and the Ancient Novel, 19–33

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even holds true for the great and widely imitated text, the prototype of the Greek novel, the Odyssey, especially Odysseus’ apólogoi. According to Diodorus’ excerpt, in Iambulus this part was substituted for a description of the island‘s inhabitants, their institutions, their customs and traditions. The novelist seeks to arouse an impression of an ideal place in his description, as some examples may illustrate:4 ... for by reason of the fertility of the island and the mildness of the climate, food-stuffs are produced of themselves in greater quantity than is sufficient for their needs (2,57,1) ... There are also in the island abundant springs of water, the warm springs serving well for bathing and the relief of fatigue, the cold excelling in sweetness and possessing the power to contribute to good health. Moreover, the inhabitants give attention to every branch of learning and especially to astrology (2,57,3) ... And the inhabitants are extremely long-lived, living even to the age of one hundred and fifty years, and experiencing for the most part no illness (2,57,4) ... They do not marry, but possess their children in common, and maintaining the children who are born as if they belonged to all, they love them equally (2,58,1) ... In each group the oldest man regularly exercises the leadership, just as if he were a kind of king, and is obeyed by all the members (2,58,6) ... Although all the inhabitants enjoy an abundant provision of everything from what grows of itself in these islands, they do not indulge in the enjoyment of this abundance without restraint, but they practise simplicity and take for their food only what suffices for their needs. Meat and whatever else is roasted or boiled in water are prepared by them, but of all the other dishes ingeniously concocted by professional cooks, such as sauces and the various kinds of seasoning, they have no notion whatsoever (2,59,1) ... And at the festivals and feasts which are held among them, there are both pronounced and sung in honour of the gods hymns and spoken laudations, and especially in honour of the sun, after whom they name both the islands and themselves (2,59,7). These examples suffice to show that Iambulus‘ chief concern was the depiction of a perfect utopian commonwealth in his novel, maintaining a stable and ‘dispute-free’ social order, which is perfect in many regards – communal thinking, education, healthy and wise conduct of life, natural religiousness – under opti-

————— 4

All translations are by C. H. Oldfather (Loeb edition 1935).

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mal climate conditions.5 Iambulus seems to have stressed its perfection in such an explicit way that even this short epitome makes the emphasis clear: ‘Moreover, the fruits in their islands ripen throughout the entire year, even as the poet writes: Here pear on pear grows old, and apple close / On apple, yea, and clustered grapes on grapes, / And fig on fig’ (2,56,7). These two verses are taken from the description of Alcinous’ garden on the isle of the Phaeacians (Od. 7,120f.). They are almost proverbial for the perfection of a place and its inhabitants. Since it is unlikely that the epitomator added these Odyssean verses of his own accord, they should be considered as pertaining to the original and indicating the wellbeing of the Greek arrivals who, due to their intellectual education (2,55,2), express their appreciation for their new lives by using a classical quotation. Possibly the action was rather reduced in this central section. Nevertheless, it was not completely replaced by mere description. Diodorus’ excerpt shifts from one observation to another, and neither an associative nor a systematic structure of his description can be determined. The reason may be to some extent an original representation of these data, linking the perception and narration on the part of the characters to their gradual acquaintance with the island, their strolls, their new encounters, etc., and so proceeding in an unsystematic way, with the purpose of creating a certain degree of tension in the reader.6 The excerpter Diodorus, concerned with the ‘facts’ more than with the (possibly meagre) narrative frame, ignored the latter in favour of a mere listing of the former.7 That Iambulus’ narrative is a fictional text conforming to the novelistic genre, and that it is not based on any actual experience on an island in the Indian Ocean, was plausibly argued by Marek Winiarczyk in his survey of the literature on Iambulus.8 It is a utopian novel, the narrative of which is not only in line with a contemporary tendency to idealise ‘primitive’ peoples, but is also guided by the literary topics of the locus amoenus and the concept of a Golden Age, which has likewise come down to us through literature.9 Moreover, the doubled motif ————— 5

6 7

8

9

On this estimation, cf. Ferguson 1975, 124-129, Holzberg 1996, 628, Winiarczyk 1997, 142; cf. now Winiarczyk 2011, 181-203. Cf. Holzberg 1996, 627. This is comparable to Lucian’s approach when describing the customs and traditions on the moon in the middle part of his VH 1,22-26, possibly imitating Iambulus’ work, which he explicitly mentions as intertext in the proem of his work (VH. 1,2). Winiarczyk 1997, 143-146; id. 2011, 190-196. These sections also review the identification of the Islands of the Sun with Sumatra, Ceylon, Sokotra and Madagascar, a discussion spanning centuries from Ramusio in the 16th century to Ehlers, 1985. Cf. Winiarczyk 1997, 134-137, id. 2011, 188, and the extensive discussion in Montanari 2009, 51-68.

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of the voyage to and from the archipelago of the seven Islands of the Sun, taking four months respectively, in my view is central to assuming a fictional utopia. It is the motif of a voyage, the course of which gets out of control both times due to heavy storms. The effect of such a motif is that the way towards the island (which moreover without any doubt is stylized into a myth in the initial Ethiopians‘ story of 600 blissful years, resulting from the voyage of two scapegoats) is obscured as such and cannot be travelled a second time by the narrator. Nor will the reader be able to follow or survey its route. This motif, that I would like to call a ‘utopian leap’, is indeed peculiar to all ancient and many modern utopian travel writings. It has a double purpose. The motif gives the impression of authenticity, of the depiction‘s probability, to a superficial naive reader or to any reader who approaches the text in a first, merely delightful reading. It thus functions as some kind of verification. An experienced and educated reader, however, recognises the ‘utopian leap’ as a signal for reading the following in an analytic-hermeneutic way and not only as fiction, but as a utopia, and thereby as a text claiming social relevance. In doing so it demands to be interpreted by the reader. It is quite interesting under these circumstances that Iambulus‘ description of the Island of the Sun Archipelago implies references to social-utopian motifs of late classic and Hellenistic philosophical schools beyond the already mentioned literary reminiscences.10 I only mention the most important ones, compiled by Winiarczyk:11 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

The islanders are handsome and strong There is neither slavery nor any hierarchic social structure There are neither temples nor gymnasia Women and children are ‘owned’ by the community Work is obligatory Food is plain The old and the sick depart this life voluntarily by suicide, or rather, euthanasia 8. Indifference towards the postmortal body 9. Importance of education and astrological interest 10. Solar cult and worship of celestial bodies

————— 10 11

Cf. Winiarczyk 1997, 135, esp. n. 21-23. Winiarczyk 1997, 138; id. 2011, 188f.

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If such a reference can be substantiated as the novel‘s basic motive, then we would be confronted with the novum of a philosophically oriented fictional narration,12 a narrative which, almost in an emulative development of the Platonic myths, where we already find the combination of narrative action and philosophical content, combines dramatic action with the concept of an ideal society. Indeed the text of an author like Iambulus would have to be considered the birth of the modern utopian novel. We may ask whether Iambulus favoured any one of the philosophical schools in his depiction. This is not a superfluous question, since such an ideological accentuation may facilitate the explication of some motifs, possibly even the whole setting of the novel. Nay, maybe it even reveals some aspects of the literary effect Iambulus aimed at. Let us start with Diodorus: Why was he interested in recounting that novel in such an extensive way within his historiographical depiction, a novel which he as a well-educated person probably had recognised as fictional?13 One reason may be that he felt some ‘ideological’, that is, philosophical affinity, because already in the first sentences of his proem Diodorus presents himself as a Stoic. For better comprehension, I start by giving a brief summary of Stoic ethics and thereby calling to mind its essential concepts. Stoic ethics gives a hierarchy of things which deserve approval, are neutral or should be denied: a hierarchy of virtues (ἀρεταί), neutral modes of behaviour and values (ἀδιάφορα), and of vices (κακίαι) [SVF 1,190]. The general formula the Stoic takes as the basis for this hierarchy is based on the notion of a connection between human nature and the nature of the world: Diodorus‘ contemporary Posidonius of Rhodes combined Stoic metaphysics, according to which the power of the logos streams through the whole world and through all life, and the ancient theory of a proceeding degeneration of human civilisation. Correspondingly, man was closer to the logos’ influence in early times than he is now. Therefore he likewise saw the triad ascent - culmination - descent in every individual as in every people and in the whole world. This connection between world and man is as inevitable as the process of degeneration. Therefore, living in accordance with nature (ὁμολογουμένως τῇ φύσει ζῆν) [SVF 1,179] must be imperative, i.e., doing what is appropriate (τὸ καθῆκον) [SVF 3,495] to man as being part of the cosmos and of nature; according to Judith Perkins this means ————— 12

13

Euhemerus‘ utopia of Panchaia may indeed be older than the work of Iambulus, but, although this text is often referred to as a travel novel or a utopian novel among scholars (cf. the documentation in Winicarczyk 2011, 134-136), I cannot find any narrative embedding in it. Perkins 1995, 77-103, shows that later novels of the Roman imperial period make recourse with special emphasis to Stoic positions, especially in delineating the protagonists and their behaviour. Cf. again Lucian’s (polemic) criticism in VH 1,3.

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bringing ‘one’s life into conformity with the actual course of events’.14 Man arrives at an inner unity with himself, at feeling completely belonging to himself (οἰκείωσις), when, with the help of contemplation, he discovers something within his own self, which is profoundly and truly beneficial for him [e. g. SVF 1,197]. This harmony with oneself then extends and becomes harmony with relatives, friends, fellow men, eventually with the whole world. The Stoic sees himself obliged to act consistently and responsibly, and in a way not only beneficial to himself but also to all the others (κατορθώματα) [SVF 3,494]. Only by fulfilling the social roles assigned to him, his different πρόσωπα, can he be a ‘good man’.15 He may therefore not withdraw from community life, but is demanded to help co-creating this life in its full extent, also beyond the narrow borders of one‘s own community. The Stoic way of thinking is a cosmopolitan one [SVF 1,262]. It is already the proem in the first book of Diodorus‘ Bibliotheke that shows us how very committed Diodorus is to following Stoic positions: all men shall profit from reading it since they are all members of one big community; Diodorus regards himself as the advocate of some ‘divine providence’ (πρόνοια) [SVF 1,176], which the Stoic school deterministically holds responsible for human actions. He presents the Stoic idea of cyclical world-time as well as that of cosmic harmony. The universal world process seems to him to be the domestic politics of a single polis; he thereby uses an image already popular in the old Stoic school. Finally, in Bibl. 1,2,4, he mentions Heracles, the Stoic wise man par excellence, as prototype of the Stoic performer of beneficiality.16 If Diodorus regards his historiography as some Stoic instrument, then its single elements should conform to such an intended literary effect as far as possible. The search for Stoic ideas therefore seems to suggest itself in a text like Iambulus‘ excerpt, which is loaded with philosophical motifs, for, as it is, this may well have been one of Diodorus‘ selection criteria.17 Due to lack of space, in the following only certain aspects will be thrown into sharp relief, and I wish to point out here that the proper question is directed only secondarily towards verifying or falsifying the factuality of such allusions, but primarily towards what kind of effect their - in my view undeniable - existence has on the understanding of the novel and of Iambulus‘ authorial concern. ————— 14 15 16 17

Cf. Perkins 1995, 79. Cf. Perkins 1995, 96-103. Cf. Sacks 1990, 55-82. Holzberg 1996, 624 shows that Diodorus’ selection criteria for excerpts were subjective.

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On the Stoic allusions of the lowest level in a certain sense, the taking over of single motifs, which has especially aroused the interest of scholars, I refer to Ferguson,18 and I only give two examples here: The inhabitants of the Isles of the Sun have to depart this life when reaching a certain age; this implies a peaceful resigning from power: ‘In each group the oldest man regularly exercises the leadership, just as if he were a kind of king, and is obeyed by all the members; and when the first such ruler makes an end of his life in accordance with the law upon the completion of his one hundred and fiftieth year, the next oldest succeeds to the leadership’ (2,58,6). This maxim of intentionally ending one‘s own life is analogous to the Stoic concept of life and death as adiáphora: Zenon of Citium, founder of the Stoic school, intentionally departed life in 262 B.C., as did his successor Cleanthes in the year 233 B.C. At the same time this habit regulates the handover of power within the social group: since the exact point of time for the change of government is predictable, options for conflicts related to it are at least quite reduced. The fact of putting aside the proper individual will to live for the sake of community interests is, as has been said, Stoic as well. As a second example I would like to quote the islanders‘ specific religiosity: ‘And they worship as gods that which encompasses all things and the sun, and, in general, all the heavenly bodies. ... And at the festivals and feasts which are held among them, there are both pronounced and sung in honour of the gods hymns and spoken laudations, and especially in honour of the sun...’ (2,59,2,7). Such a pantheistic and at the same time materialistic concept may also be combined with the Stoic doctrine. Especially the cyclical character of the orb‘s movement, quite familiar to the inhabitants of the Isles of the Sun due to their interest in astronomy, may almost symbolically be understood as the periodic generation, existence and destruction of the cosmos within the ekpyrosis. At the same time the Stoics locate divine presence in the world, not beyond: God is the world, nature and the universe. Likewise he is the logos, that is, the power of reason controlling each thing and everything, and making it follow a harmonious course [SVF 1 160, 162, 175]. That is why revolt and the desire to live out one‘s individuality are futile. Accordingly, since there is no rivalry among them, they never experience civil disorders and they never cease placing the highest value upon internal harmony (ὁμόνοια, also a highly significant term in Stoic thinking; 2,58,1).19 But it is the islanders‘ cult practice, especially their singing of hymns, which seems to be prefigured in Stoic doctrine, when thinking of Cleanthes‘ famous Hymn to Zeus. ————— 18 19

Ferguson 1975, 124-129. This was the title of Chrysippus‘ work Περὶ ὁμονοίας.

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Let us move on to a higher level and inquire about the islanders‘ phenomenology of basic attitudes. The conduct of life in harmony with life‘s surrounding world demanded by Zenon and Cleanthes, τὸ ὁμολογουμένως τῇ φύσει ζῆν [e. g. SVF 1, 552, 555] is already provided for through nature‘s abundance on the Isles of the Sun. Still the islanders live in a deliberately resource-sparing way (2,59,1-4). At the same time the inhabitants of the Isles of the Sun stick to a certain kind of diet, that is, they provide for a perfect maintenance of their proper physical balance, although their circumstance of life would allow them to indulge in an extensive life of luxury. Life in the commune and commitment to the community, as it is seen in the community of wives and children, in the obedience to the eldest of the group, eventually in the mutual service (2,59,6), correspond to the Stoic principle of οἰκείωσις. This principle propagates the fulfillment of one‘s own self by way of useful activity within the closer community of the family, within the political community, eventually within the whole humanity [SVF 3, 346].20 It is only the consequent fulfillment of this active cosmopolitan way of life, that the islanders, being and remaining autarchic and autochthonous due to their natural harmonious way of life, are also open to foreigners: But when they [Iambulus and his companion] were now drawing near to the island, some of the natives met them and drew their boat to land; and the inhabitants of the island, thronging together, were astonished at the arrival of the strangers, but they treated them honourably [ἐπιεικῶς]21 and shared with them the necessities of life which their country afforded (2,56,1). Nevertheless, this presupposes the arrivals‘ will to integrate: after all, the oikeíosis only functions in such a homogeneous group as that of the inhabitants of the Isles of the Sun, in which all members are interested in the community‘s well-being. As a matter of fact though, once both arrivals were merchants (2,55,2), they represent a profession which, in terms of background and education, quite to the contrary makes the personal pursuit of gain be near and dear to them. Thus the failure of integration efforts is inevitable:22After remaining among this people for seven years Iambulus and his companion were ejected against their will, as being malefactors and ————— 20 21

22

Cf. Steinmetz 1994, 613-615, and most recently Bees, 2004. On this term, which classifies the islanders from their first appearance as one of those marginal peoples usually idealised in Greek tradition, cf. Montanari 2009, 53-55. In the context of philosophical discourse objections were raised against the excessively Epicurean lifestyle of the Phaeacians in the Odyssey; cf. e.g. Hor. Ep. 1,2,28f. and 1,15,25. If the already mentioned prominent quotation from the Odyssey (2,56,7) mentioned above was uttered by one of the Greek protagonists, then this would be an implicit sign for the philosophically versified reader, prior to the final éclat, of their incomprehension of the islanders‘ intuitions and thereby for their eventual inability to integrate.

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as having been educated to evil habits (ὡς κακούργους καὶ πονηροῖς ἐθισμοῖς συντεθραμμένους; 2,60,1). Considering that Diodorus‘ excerpt pays much attention to detail, especially in the framing parts, it is even more striking that he does not mention any specific purpose for their expulsion. I therefore do not believe that there was any concrete offence, the more so as emphasizing this expulsion as happening against their own will (ἄκοντας) in combination with some (single) misdeed would not make any sense in my opinion.23 I rather think it probable that after seven years the islanders came to the conclusion that Iambulus and his companion as such represented a threat to their ideal community, that they, due to their predisposition, were incapable for οἰκείωσις in the sense of feeling at home, and that they therefore had to be removed. Or, to put it another way: they proved incapable to fulfill their roles within this new society, a society distinguishing itself by the assignment of a clearly outlined range of tasks and hierarchic places, and forcing suicide on its members as soon as they cannot cope with these tasks any longer. Accordingly, Iambulus and his companion are not punished (since this would imply an intent to improve them), but expelled. The Greeks‘ obvious distress about this decision is adequate to that. Thinking in that direction, the information about the seven years of their stay makes some Stoically determined sense as well.24 Stoic pedagogy determined the seventh year of a child as the one in which the first step towards maturity was reached [SVF 2, 83]. At this point of time the child had acquired all proleptic concepts it needed to make decisions that were reasonably justified, cataleptic, that is, deliberate and therefore responsible, even though the child was not sufficiently mature to form a complete dianoia.25 I therefore suggest to understand the period of seven years within the partial narration of their expulsion as the period foreigners, like children, were admitted in order to reach the required attitudes of ὁμολογουμένως ζῆν and of οἰκείωσις self-responsibly; when the islanders finally, after that lapse of time, found that the foreigners – ————— 23

24

25

Contrary e.g. Nesselrath 1993, 41-56, who suspects (52f.) erotic complications, and Holzberg 1996, 627, who assumes some sacrilegious act. Montanari 2009, 63 on the other hand is correct: ‘...les habitants de l’île du soleil mettaient probablement moins en accusation les deux voyageurs pour telle ou telle faute particulière qu’ils ne remettaient en cause ... les valeurs du monde auquel ces deux hommes appartenaient. ... cet exil forcé des deux compagnons exprime symboliquement l’altérité radicale existant entre l’île du soleil et le reste du monde.’ Winiarczyk 1997, 147f. stresses the high frequency of mentionings of the numbers seven and four, understood by him numerologically, without giving any hint though to the specific hermeneutic significance of such symbolics. Cf. Pohlenz 1984, 56 and the documentation 32f.

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and it is only now that the peculiar wording makes sense – had been raised (συντεθραμμένους) to bad customs and might not be reshaped into Stoic conformism, the foreigners were removed in order to prevent any harm to the community. Assuming this, the possibility that Iambulus‘ novel might be intended as some fictional narrativation of a Stoic state utopia gains complexity. Iambulus then would not have contented himself with accumulating social utopian topics of Stoic provenance. He rather would have approached a grave issue of Stoic ethics and pedagogy. For on the one hand the Stoic school claims that everything, cosmos and individual, is combined through the logos‘ causal nexus, that therefore everything is predetermined (πρόνοια) and that every doing directed against this natural demand eventually is due to fail. On the other hand, though, the freedom, ἐλευθερία, of the individual that makes his decisions responsible, is propagated. Was there, under these circumstances, any option for the individual to make use of his natural abilities in another way, autonomously and antideterministically? Exactly that is the problem, the confrontation between determination and human autonomy, which remains unsolved in Stoic philosophy.26 The compatibility of man and nature is not a matter of course but needs to be achieved by everyone. This gives rise to a potential conflict, and it was only therefore possible for Iambulus to narrativise Stoic ideas, that is, to design a novel with an action (in the emphatic sense of making a decision with the option of success and failure, not only in the reductionist sense of mere acting). It is exactly this conflict - spread on two groups of protagonists, the islanders and the arrivals - that enables the significant combination of frame narrative and description of a utopia. Of course it is significant against this background, that Iambulus explicitly addressed the topic of ‘education’, based on an aptitude test on the Isles of the Sun (2,58,5): Each group of the inhabitants also keeps a bird of great size and of a nature peculiar to itself, by means of which a test is made of the infant children to learn what their spiritual disposition is; for they place them upon the birds, and such of them as are able to endure the flight through the air as the birds take wing they rear, but such as become nauseated and filled with consternation they cast out, as not likely either to live many years and being, besides, of no account because of their disposition. A child able to remain on the back of the bird without any fear - a bird, which may be seen as a quasi totemic representative of the respective group -, shows thereby on the one hand that it will be able to live in close communion with nature, embodied by the animality of the bird, on the other hand it thereby already proves its ability to integrate in the group repre————— 26

Cf. Forschner 1981, 104-113; generally Bobzien 1998.

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sented by the bird. At the same time it demonstrates its innate ability to control its affects (ἀπάθεια), which, from a Stoic point of view, is of primary significance for voluntarily accepting what is predetermined by nature, and therefore its behaviour is significant for coping with exactly this conflict between individual propensity and fateful determination. If this motif, fantastic at first view, turns out to be comprehensible when accepting a Stoic concern prevalent in the text, then another paradox of the utopian description opens up for a Stoic interpretation. This concerns a physical anomaly of the islanders (2,56,5f.): they have a peculiarity in regard to the tongue, partly the work of nature and congenital with them and partly intentionally brought about by artifice (ἐξ ἐπινοίας φιλοτεχνούμενον); among them, namely, the tongue is double for a certain distance, but they divide the inner portions still further, with the result that it becomes a double tongue as far as its base. Consequently they are very versatile as to the sounds they can utter, since they imitate not only every articulate language used by man but also the varied chatterings of the birds, and, in general, they can reproduce any peculiarity of sound. And the most remarkable thing of all is that at one and the same time they can converse perfectly with two persons who fall in with them, both answering questions and discoursing pertinently on the circumstances of the moment; for with one division of the tongue they can converse with the one person, and likewise with the other talk with the second. Certainly, the ability to reproduce any natural sounds, resulting from their forked tongues, may be understood in a Stoic way as a deliberately perfected ability to live ‘consonantly’ with nature. But thereby we are not yet doing justice to the detail of the description and especially to the last part of it. Would not there be more meant here than the mere concretisation of a perfected group life, in which it is possible to prevent any harmful disagreement between two individuals who are just supposed to communicate with each other, through many simultaneous individual dialogues? The search for a Stoic analogue might lead to the practice of allegorical interpretation, to be noticeably found in Stoic literary criticism.27 This method serves the purpose of integrating fictional literature into the philosophical discourse by interpreting elements in the literary text that obviously are invented, untrue, improbable, as a discourse on truth deliberately enigmatic, and by being able in this way to philosophically make use of the authoritarian episteme, especially of the mythic narration. It operates on the assumption of two different levels of statements within a single text, which are hierarchically distinct. Nevertheless, the level of the literary significant is awarded some intrinsic value, namely that of emotional involvement and aesthetic perfection. If, on top of that, the related————— 27

Cf. Buffière 1956, 137-154 and passim, as well as Bernard 1990, 11-21.

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ness of literary significant and allegorical significate is not provided by a proper (third) interpretational text, then something independent and distinct is revealed on both levels, corresponding to the meaning of ἀλληγορία, ‘to say different things’. It is exactly this art of saying one thing and another at the same time, which the single speakers of the Islands of the Sun with their forked tongues do master; and, as an allegorically operating hermeneut tries to perfect his art, thus the islanders are anxious to physically perfect their ability to communicate simultaneously. Considering this we have now arrived at a point in our interpretation, which may already be called speculative. Going beyond though would hardly be admissible, since here the fact that we do not possess the original text but only an excerpt calls for a halt. That is, a reductive editing of the text has already taken place. Diodorus states explicitly, at least at two points, that he obviously does not reproduce longer explanations by Iambulus.28 Thus in 2,59,4, he says the animals on these islands were of quite a peculiar nature (παρηλλαγμένας φύσεις), paradox to such an extent that it sounds unbelievable. And at the end of his excerpt Diodorus mentions (2,60,3) Iambulus‘ adding some pieces of information on India as well, which at that time was unknown to other men. Diodorus therefore was interested in partially excerpting certain aspects and themes of the original depictions in a detailed way, but in deleting others, especially those which were intended to create distrust in the reader. He considered it part of his duty as a historian to select his information in a critical way.29 We cannot therefore rule out the possibility that the text‘s dominant Stoic style is the result of Diodorus‘ Stoic preferences and his aiming at a literary effect. Let us therefore look at the initial question on whether the text might be classified as novelistic. If this could be brought into line with the text‘s stoicizing tendency as well, it would again lessen concerns about Diodorus‘ possible influence, since the genre of the novel is not amenable to the being influenced by the excerptor. Novelistic examples from later times, more comprehensively or completely surviving, have one common salient feature in common: they intensely speak of themselves, their aesthetics and their poetics. This metapoetic level has been sufficiently established in much of the research on the novelistic genre, so that we may ask for its existence in Iambulus‘ novel as well. At this point I would like to bring up for discussion the following considerations based on the localisation of the novel‘s main part in the Indian Ocean, far from the known world. The choice for this setting was not inevitable, as can be seen in ————— 28 29

Cf. Winiarczyk 2011,183. On this last point cf. especially Wiater 2006, 248-271, with regard to Iambulus 264f.

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the utopian text by Euhemerus, which was written at about the same time, and which is indeed settled in the periphery of the oecumene as well, but still within sight of known shores. Contrarily to that, choosing an isle within the distant ocean Iambulus possibly alludes to a contemporary debate on fictionality, a debate, which the Stoics took an unequivocal stand on: the discussion on the displacement of poetic actions into the exterior ocean, the ἐκτοπισμός, or rather ἐξωκεανισμός. This debate first and foremost concerned the books 9-12 of the Odyssey, in which, at the court of Alcinous, king of the Phaeacians, Odysseus tells the tale of his journey, and it concerned in particular the controversial question as to whether this odyssey was historical and had happened in a historically and geographically real space (or might have happened).30 Extreme positions were represented by the Stoic Crates of Mallos on the one hand, who held the opinion that Homer had given a realistic description of the world‘s shape with his geographic material, and by the Alexandrian Eratosthenes of Cyrene on the other hand, who regarded psychagogy and entertainment as poetry‘s sole function, and who located the apologues of the Odyssey in the ocean‘s region, and passed off the exokeanismós as a sign for this mere poetic edification, but as historically untrue.31 That this could virtually be seen as an anti-Stoic stroke becomes obvious through Strabo‘s polemics in the late 1st century B.C.: he took the genuinely Stoic view, that poetry first of all served the education of the people (which he believed to be not sufficiently educated for indoctrination through historiography and philosophy), and that is why the most eminent poet, and therefore tutor of all, Homer, packaged historical and geographical facts in fabulous literature, in order to make them more ‘digestible’.32 That is, he ascribed a comprehensible location in the Mediterranean region to the Homeric apologues, but believed that the reason for their relocation into the ocean, the exokeanismós, which (against Polybius‘ opinion) could not be denied, was owed to Homer‘s educational intent: he supposed the truth to be more digestible if it was blended with invention (Str. 1,2,9; the term itself Str. 1,2,10 and 1,2,17), a position already established by Plato as is well known, and later adopted by the Epicurean Lucretius. In order to strengthen his (strategically not undisputable) position, ————— 30 31

32

Cf. Romm 1992, 172-214, Buonajuto1996, 1-8, and Kim 2010, 56-71. A differentiated presentation of Eratosthenes‘ positions, who generally conceded Odysseus‘ journeys to be historical, but who viewed Homer as a deficient historiographer, in Kim 2010, 56-60. Eratosthenes‘ statements on Homer are available in Berger 1880, fr. I, A, 1-21. On the homeric-cratetic world view cf. Mette 1936, 58-96. For the shortcomings of such a view cf. Kim 2010, 64-67.

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Strabo attacked his predecessor Eratosthenes as a failed Stoic (Str. 1,2,2) and as semi-educated. Such debates thus were en vogue in Hellenistic literary criticism and scientific theory; they also encroached upon Hellenistic literature itself by taking the detour of metapoetically legible motifs and segments of action, as research on the Argonautica by Apollonios of Rhodes has made plausible.33 For Strabo as a Stoic the use of literature as a philosophical means was at stake on the one hand, on the other hand was at stake the credibility of the Stoic thesis on the logos as pervading everything, world and man: the logos was unlikely to evade literature, literature was also supposed to be intimately tied to reality. This is why Strabo‘s interest in allegory as well as his intention to explain the exokeanismós as some didactic device is easily understood. The Stoic school thus was highly interested in the ability of literary narrations to become historicised. The relocation of some pedagogically valuable material into the distant ocean was something a Stoic was able to light-heartedly approve of, especially if the adressee himself was not a scholar. If indeed Iambulus was concerned with stoically shaping the utopian space of the Islands of the Sun, or, to put it in ‘Strabonian’ terms, with adding fantastic stories to a basically educative philosophical text,34 then the exokeanismós of the event could not only be acceptable from his point of view, but even be significant for its function. On top of that he was ready to concede the joy of ‘revealing’ such a metaliterary strategy to an educated reader. This concession may well - as suggested by Diodorus‘ explicit excerpt - result from the (possibly even in the original) prominent use of the verbatim quotation from the Odyssean episode at the Phaeacians‘ court: that is to say, if Homer‘s Odyssean narratives were indeed the primary subject of the discussion on the exokeanismós, then such a quotation, especially if emphasised, could serve as a short key for someone knowing or even following this debate, and directly interrelate Iambulus‘ shaping of a utopia with that controversy.

————— 33 34

Cf. Romm 1992. Strabo, writing on Homer, calls this προσμυθεύειν (Str. 1,2,19), which results in creating a kind of ‘historical fiction’ (Kim 2010, 68. Perhaps we witness here a Hellenistic / postHellenistic process of popularizing knowledge by fictionalizing it: Iambulus – who, then, should be dated not too early – would have participated in this process by writing a ‘philosophical fiction’.

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Bibliography Altheim, F. 1948. Weltgeschichte Asiens im griechischen Zeitalter II, Halle: Niemeyer. Bees, R. 2004. Die Oikeosislehre der Stoa. I. Rekonstruktion ihres Inhalts, Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann. Berger, H. 1880. Die geographischen Fragmente des Eratosthenes, Leipzig: Teubner. Bernard, W. 1990. Spätantike Dichtungstheorien, München: De Gruyter. Bobzien, S. 1998. Determinism and freedom in Stoic philosophy, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Buffière, F. 1956. Les mythes d’Homère et la pensée grecque, Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Buonajuto, A. 1996. ‘L‘ἐξωκεανισμός dei viaggi di Odisseo in Cratete e negli Alessandrini’, Atene e Roma 41, 1-8. Cizek, E. 2006. ‘L‘esprit militant des Stoïciens et le premier Etat communiste de l’histoire’, Latomus 65, 49-61. Ehlers, W. 1985. Mit dem Südwestmonsun nach Ceylon. Eine Interpretation der IambulExzerpte Diodors´, WüJbb N.F. 11, 73-84. Ferguson, J. 1975. Utopias of the classical world, London: Thames and Hudson. Forschner, M. 1981. Die stoische Ethik, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. Holzberg, N. 1996. ‘Novel-like works of extended prose fiction’, in: G. Schmeling (ed.), The novel in the ancient world, Leiden: Brill, 619-653. Kim, L. 2010. Homer between history and fiction in imperial Greek literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mette, H. J. 1936. Sphairopoiia. Untersuchungen zur Kosmologie des Krates von Pergamon, München: Beck. Montanari, S. 2009, ‘Morale et société idéale dans l’utopie d’Iamboulus’, in: B. Pouderon, C. Bost-Pouderon (eds.), Passions, Vertus et Vices dans l’ancien Roman. Actes du colloque de Tours, 19-21 octobre 2006, Lyon: Maison de l' Orient et de la Méditerranée, 51-68. Nesselrath, H.-G. 1993. ‘Utopie-Parodie in Lukians Wahre Geschichten’, in: W. Ax, R. F. Glei (eds.), Literaturparodie in Antike und Mittelalter, Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 41-56. Oldfather, C. H. 1935. Diodorus of Sicily. The Library of History. Books II.35-IV.58, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Perkins, J. 1995. The suffering self. Pain and narrative representation in the early Christian era, London: Routledge. Pohlenz, M. 61984. Die Stoa. Geschichte einer geistigen Bewegung, Göttingen: Vadenhoeck und Ruprecht (11959). Romm, J. 1992. The edges of the earth in ancient thought, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sacks, K. 1990. Diodorus Siculus and the First Century, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Steinmetz, P. 1994. ‘Die Stoa’, in: H. Flashar (ed.), Ueberweg. Die Philosophie der Antike Bd. 4,2, Basel: Schwabe & Co. Wiater, N. 2006. ‘Geschichtsschreibung und Kompilation. Diodors historiographische Arbeitsmethode und seine Vorstellungen von zeitgemäßer Geschichtsschreibung’, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 149, 248-271. Winiarczyk, M. 1997. ‘Das Werk des Jambulos. Forschungsgeschichte (1550-1988) und Interpretationsversuch’, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 140, 128-153. Winiarczyk, M. 2011. Die hellenistischen Utopien, Berlin: De Gruyter.

The Caring Gods: Daphnis and Chloe as Pronoia Literature U RSULA B ITTRICH Aristotle University Thessaloniki

Whoever reads Daphnis and Chloe will be struck by the harmonious interaction between the novel’s protagonists and their protective deities, Pan, the Nymphs, and, above all, ‘Eros the Shepherd’. He, who at the very end of Daphnis and Chloe (4, 39, 2) receives an altar from his newly married protégés, can be considered an emblematical representation of the novel’s generic quality as a pastoral romance that has often been stressed by scholars, while at the same time he acts as a supreme coordinator of plot development.1 The purpose of this article is to examine the crucial significance of personified Eros or abstract love for the plot of our novel in the light of a philosophical concept which was widely discussed in the first and second century AD, that of divine pronoia, the gods’ concern and care for mankind.2 It can be traced as a central issue in a whole set of philosophical and literary texts of the time, to such an extent that Otto Weinreich has been prompted to coin the term ‘PronoiaLiteratur’.3 To begin, I will discuss the philosophical roots of the concept. Then I will turn to Longus’ novel to apply the notion of divine providence to the protagonists, Daphnis and Chloe. Third, my focus will be the exploration of the pronoia theme in the construction of the narrative; and in a final section, I will compare in more detail the most salient features of the various philosophical concepts of pronoia to the treatment of the theme in D&C. ————— 1

2

3

On Daphnis and Chloe as a pastoral romance, see e.g. Rosenmeyer 1969, 9; Zeitlin 1990, 417. On Longus’ intentional juxtaposition of shepherding and providence see Morgan 2003, 188: ‘But in this novel shepherding is revealed […] as the analogue of Love’s providential care for mankind.’ See Weinreich 1909, 124-136. Philosophy and the Ancient Novel, 35–49

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The question of whether there is such a thing as divine providence has haunted Greek philosophers ever since Plato’s forceful arguments for divine intervention in human affairs. In the Phaedo, Plato has Socrates refer to the gods as shepherds and mankind as one of their flocks, and he returns to the same image in the Laws:4 Alongside with helmsmen, commanders of armies and physicians, the gods are again compared to herdsmen who are actively involved in man’s struggle to avoid the bad and strive for the good (906 A): ‘But our allies are gods as well as demons, and we are the flock of the gods and demons.’5 A markedly different view is set forth in the myth of the Universe and its reversal of rotation in the Statesman.6 In this legend, the idealized vision of the reign of Kronos is related to the image of an active god who guides the universe by imparting its rotation to it, whereas the present situation of daily turmoil and a continuous decline is connected with the image of a reversed rotation, after the ‘Pilot of the ship of the Universe’ has let go of the rudder and retired to his watch-tower in a place apart.7 In the middle of the third century B.C. Chrysippus, the third head of the Stoic school, attempted to establish the notion of pronoia as an integral part of his concept of a strongly anthropocentric teleology. The extreme position of Chrysippus and his school was provocative enough to elicit strong reaction. The most determined adversaries were the Epicureans. Deriding the Stoic providence as a ‘soothsaying old woman’,8 they took human sufferings and illness as evidence for the carelessness (apronoesia) of the gods,9 and in contrast to the Stoic concept of causality Epicurus tried to explain any ongoing event through a fortuitous deviation of atoms without any external or internal cause.10 The Peripatetics held the more moderate view that providential effects do not descend below the lunar sphere.11 During the first and second century A.D., immediately preceding D&C, the attitude of the Greeks under Rome was that of a passive, if not grateful, subservience. Philosophers such as Plutarch were ready to accept the Roman rule as a ————— 4

5 6 7 8 9

10 11

Cf. Pl. Phd. 62B: οὐ μέντοι ἀλλὰ τόδε γέ μοι δοκεῖ, ὦ Κέβης, εὖ λέγεσθαι, τὸ θεοὺς εἶναι ἡμῶν τοὺς ἐπιμελουμένους καὶ ἡμᾶς τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ἓν τῶν κτημάτων τοῖς θεοῖς εἶναι. The translations are my own, if not otherwise specified. Cf. Pl. Plt. 269C–274D. Cf. Pl. Plt. 272E. Cf. Cic. N. D. 1, 18 : anus fatidica. Cf. Wendland 1892, 12-17. For ἀπρονοησία as a terminus technicus of Epicurean doctrine see e.g. Alex. Aphr. Fat. 203, 11. Cf. Cic. Fat. 22. Cf. Bréhier (1963, 31) on Plotin, Enneades 3, 2, 6.

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fact in accordance with fate.12 This attitude of resignation and the loss of political influence had brought about not only a renaissance of old religious beliefs as a mystical reaction against rationalism, but also a revival of the debate on divine providence. It was taken up in philosophical treatises such as Philo’s On Providence and Ps.-Plutarch’s On Fate, which had their focus, inter alia, on the question of why, if providence exists, there is also room for evil. The way the Platonists tried to handle this problem markedly differs from that of the Stoics, who held that the bad is an existing phenomenon of its own standing. Chrysippus even went so far as to regard it as a prerequisite for the good. In his view, it is not only a necessary foil to recognize the good in its full quality, but also an indispensable factor within the harmony of the whole:13 Just as it is necessary for the serpent’s poison and the hyena’s bile to be in some medicines, there is similarly another fitness in things which requires the wickedness of Meletus to be conjoined with the justice of Socrates and the dissoluteness of Cleon to go along with the nobility and goodness of Pericles. [SVF II 1181 (= Plutarch, De communibus notitiis 1065B, quoting Chrysippus)] The Platonists, by contrast, following along the lines of their master’s assumption that the evil does not exist on equal terms with the good,14 tried to account for the presence of evil in the world by assuming various kinds of providence that differ in their quality, depending on the position in the hierarchy of being occupied by the overseeing divine or semi divine entity. This is the point of departure also for Ps.-Plutarch, who in the De fato sets forth his model of a threefold providence following along the lines of the Platonic dialogues Timaeus and Laws. According to this model, which was adopted also by later neoplatonic philosophers such as Nemesius of Emesa, Chalcidius and Hierocles of Alexandria,15 there are three different kinds of providence. The first one, which is men————— 12

13

14

15

Cf. e.g. Plu. Phil. 17, 2: ‘Their [i.e. the Romans’] strength, μετὰ τοῦ δαίμονος, was growing great in all areas, and the end was near to which it was necessary (ἔδει) that the fortune (of Greece) must come in its cycle’. For more textual evidence see Swain 1989, passim. See further SVF II 1169: … nullum adeo contrarium est sine contrario altero. Quo enim pacto iustitiae sensus esse posset, nisi essent iniuriae? … Though in his Laws 893D sqq. Plato acknowledges the existence of a bad world soul, in 897B-C he denies that the bad world soul ever gets a firm hold on the world, as does the good world soul (ψυχῆς γένος ἐγκρατές). Cf. Bergjan 2002, 307-310. See further Apul. Pl. 1, 12, who accounts for a double providence: that of the first, transcendent god, and next that of the caelicolae and daemones subordinated to him.

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tioned already in the Timaeus, is completely aloof from evil, given that He who deploys it, the Father and Artisan of all things, is essentially good and wishes all things divine and primordial to become as similar as possible to Him.16 The secondary providence, which Ps.-Plutarch places on the same level as fate,17 is linked up with secondary gods, heavenly entities that according to Plato’s Timaeus are ruling and guiding ‘the mortal creature in the fairest and best fashion possible, except for the case that it might itself become the cause of its own evils’.18 Finally, Ps.-Plutarch introduces a third kind of providence that he relates to ‘demons stationed in the terrestrial regions as watchers and overseers of the actions of man’.19 Given that demons are only semi divine, it follows that they are themselves not entirely free from evil. Following along the lines of Xenocrates of Chalcedon, the genuine Plutarch characterizes the nature of demons as ‘possessing both the passion of a human being and the power of a god’.20 Yet, though he endows the semi divine administrators of the sublunar sphere with a potential of wickedness, he never abandons the Platonic assumption that the bad does not exist on equal terms with the good. Even in a writing such as his On Isis and Osiris, where under Zoroastrian influence he acknowledges that there are opposite tensions in the universe, he does not push the fundamental dualism so far as to endow each principle with equal strength:21 while he calls the creator of good a god and that of evil a demon, he clearly suggests that the good should be considered as the prevalent force. This notion is further illustrated by way of an Egyptian legend about Hermes and Typhon the dragon, the wicked adversary of Isis: … they relate that Hermes, having ripped out the sinews of Typhon, used them as lyre-strings, claiming that this denotes that reason regulated the universe and made it harmonious out of discordant parts; and it did not wipe out ————— 16

17 18

19 20

21

Cf. Pl. Ti. 29D7-E3: Λέγωμεν δὴ δι’ ἥντινα αἰτίαν γένεσιν καὶ τὸ πᾶν τόδε ὁ συνιστὰς συνέστησεν. ἀγαθὸς ἦν, ἀγαθῷ δὲ οὐδεὶς περὶ οὐδενὸς οὐδέποτε ἐγγίγνεται φθόνος· τούτου δ’ ἐκτὸς ὢν πάντα ὅτι μάλιστα ἐβουλήθη γενέσθαι παραπλήσια ἑαυτῷ. Quoted by Ps.-Plut. in his De fato 573C. Ps.-Plut. Fat. 574B. Cf. Pl. Ti. 42E2-4: … καὶ κατὰ δύναμιν ὅτι κάλλιστα καὶ ἄριστα τὸ θνητὸν διακυβερνᾶν ζῷον, ὅτι μὴ κακῶν αὐτὸ ἑαυτῷ γίγνοιτο αἴτιον. Quoted by Ps.-Plut. Fat. 573F. Cf. Ps.-Plut. Fat. 573A. Cf. Plut. Defect. 416D, where Plutarch seems to recur to Xenocrates: ... ἡ δαιμόνων φύσις ἔχουσα καὶ πάθος θνητοῦ καὶ θεοῦ δύναμιν. Compare Xenocrates, fr. 222, 3: δεδείξεται μετὰ μαρτύρων σοφῶν καὶ παλαιῶν, ὅτι φύσεις εἰσί τινες ὥσπερ ἐν μεθορίῳ θεῶν καὶ ἀνθρώπων, δεχόμεναι πάθη θνητὰ καὶ μεταβολὰς ἀναγκαίας, οὓς δαίμονας ὀρθῶς ἔχει κατὰ νόμον πατέρων ἡγουμένους καὶ ὀνομάζοντας σέβεσθαι. On the dualistic approach of the De Iside et Osiride, see Griffith 1970, 21-25.

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the destructive element, they aver, but maimed its power.22 (Plut. Is.Osir., 55, 373C-D) The creation of concord out of discordant elements, which is so poignantly illustrated in this mythical incident, will emerge as one of the most prominent features of D&C. But before I turn to the novel, I would like to touch at least briefly upon the traces the concept of pronoia has left in other literary texts dating from the late second century A.D. As is only natural, it has found particular and manifold use in the context of numerous miracle stories. In his On Animals Aelian goes so far as to include the animals in the realm of divine providence, while at the same time he endows them with human-like features and even virtues.23 As I have stated above, the anti-rationalist tendency that is manifest in writings of this kind is a general characteristic of the times. A passage from the prose hymn On Zeus written by the rhetorician Aelius Aristides is one of the most incisive testimonies for the new religious conservatism: But Homer was far from being properly inspired when in the assembly of the gods he depicted Zeus as forbidding the gods to care for mankind. Zeus did not forbid this, nor will he ever forbid this, as long as he respects himself. For it is not fitting for him to change nor to hold a different point of view either through forgetfulness or repentance of that which he originally held when he created the gods to care for mankind and mankind to be worshippers and servants of the gods, an arrangement which was going to be especially fitting and expedient for both.24 (Aristid. On Zeus, 22) The concept of reciprocity between the human and the divine that is expounded in these lines aptly matches the overall tendency of Longus’ novel, which I will now examine on the grounds of my doxographical remarks on the notion of pronoia.

————— 22 23

24

For the translation, see Griffiths 1970, 207. On the inclusion of animals in divine providence, see Ael. Nat. An. 11, 31: πρόνοιαν αὐτῶν [sc. τῶν ζῴων] οἱ θεοὶ ποιοῦνται, καὶ οὔτε αὐτῶν καταφρονοῦσιν οὔτε μὴν ὀλιγώρως ἔχουσιν. εἰ γὰρ καὶ ἀμοιρεῖ λόγου, ἀλλὰ γοῦν συνέσεως καὶ τῆς καθ’ ἑαυτὰ σοφίας οὐκ ἀτυχεῖ. On human-like features or virtues in animals, see e.g. Ael. Nat. An. 3, 5, where Aelian calls the pigeon the ‘most temperate of all birds’ (ὀρνίθων σωφρονεστάτην), 3, 8, where he talks about ‘compassionate (οἰκτιρούσαι) mares’, and 11, 31, where a horse is described as having a ‘dauntless spirit’ (θυμὸν ἀνδρειότατον). The translation is Behr’s (1981, 255).

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For an appropriate understanding of the novel it is important to emphasize that its protagonists are close to the divine.25 They have been called ‘archetypes’,26 and as such they show the might of a cosmic eros. In contrast to other novels that are full of unexpected turns of a capricious Tyche, the almost godlike nature of Daphnis and Chloe is probably the reason why, throughout the novel, they are shown to be the immediate protégés of Eros, Pan, the Nymphs, and Dionysus. Their very names place them on a suprahuman level: as has been observed, ‘Chloe’ was a cult name of Demeter,27 and ‘Daphnis’ is reminiscent of the mythical cowherd and legendary founder of the bucolic genre. But whereas the latter is depicted in Theocritus’ first idyll as a titanic, almost tragic figure, whose deadly fate gives rise to the reproachful question πᾷ ποκ’ ἄρ’ ἦσθ’, ὅκα Δάφνις ἐτάκετο, πᾷ ποκα, Νύμφαι; (66), the hero of Longus’ novel is obviously a favourite with the nymphs. Divine care is counterbalanced by the protagonists’ pious actions such as prayers, offerings and the adornment of the Nymphs’ statues with flowers, and this seems to be a perfect illustration of the mutual arrangement of give and take between mankind and the gods described in Aristides’ Hymn to Zeus. I quote only one passage from Longus’ text: … they drove their flocks down on to the plain, and knelt joyfully before the Nymphs, bringing them bunches of grapes on the stem as first fruits of the vintage. Even before that time they had never passed by without a thought: every day at the beginning of grazing they would stop at the shrine, and on their way home from grazing they would kneel in worship, and they never failed to make some offering, a flower or a fruit or fresh foliage or a libation of milk. Later they were repaid for this by the gods …”28 (D&C 2, 2, 4-6) Throughout the novel, there are indeed numerous examples of divine interventions in favour of Daphnis and Chloe. In one of the most crucial moments of the novel, when Daphnis is ready to die after Chloe has been abducted by the Methymnaeans, the Nymphs appear to him in a dream to announce her return.29 When he is at a loss how to court Chloe effectively, they intervene once again in a dream, telling him that he will find a purse on the nearby seashore, next to a ————— 25 26 27

28 29

See Schönberger 1960, 13 on the way Longus likens his protagonists to gods. Cf. Chalk 1960, 45. Cf. Hunter 1983, 17 with n. 6 on p. 106, where, inter alia, Paus. 1, 22, 3 is quoted as evidence. The translation is Morgan’s (2004, 53). Cf. D&C 2, 23, 1-5.

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putrefying dolphin, where it has been washed ashore from the very ship of the Methymnaeans.30 Given that μεθυμναῖος is an epithet of the wine-god,31 it has been rightly pointed out that the dolphin, too, carries a Dionysiac meaning:32 according to a well-known story, the Tyrrhenian pirates were transformed into dolphins by the god Dionysus, when they tried to abduct him on their ship to sell him for a large ransom, mistaking him for a mortal, yet exceedingly handsome youth. On a closer examination, the charming detail of the rescuing purse turns out to be a marked reversal of the ransom motif. While Daphnis is enjoying the special care of the Nymphs, Chloe, though she is first introduced as a foundling in the grove of the Nymphs, later changes hands to become a favourite with Pan. The result is a chiastic structure of protection. After Chloe has been abducted by the Methymnaeans, it is Pan the Fighter who, on their way home, intervenes by way of a whole series of Dionysiac miracles: the land seems ablaze with fire. A splash of oars creates the impression that the ship is going to be attacked and someone gives the call to arms in fear of a virtually non-existent enemy. The ship, unable to be moved, is surrounded by dolphins. Bunches of ivy are wound round the horns of Daphnis’ goats, and Chloe is seen wearing a crown of pine, a traditional attribute of Pan himself.33 A war-like sound of pipes is heard.34 At night, Pan appears to the commander of the Methymnaeans in a dream, asking him to release Chloe and the herds.35 The incident can be read against the background of a whole set of miraculous stories of salvation through divine intervention: already in Herodotus, the Athenian victory at Salamis is attributed to the divine support of Iacchus,36 and the real hero of Marathon appears to be Pan the Saviour.37 Interestingly enough, Herodotus has him complain about his neglect by the Athenians.38 Likewise, in Longus’ novel Pan starts his rescue operation in spite of the fact that he has hitherto been unduly disregarded by Daphnis and Chloe, a fact somewhat reproachfully hinted at by the Nymphs.39 The incident shows that ————— 30 31 32 33

34 35 36 37 38 39

Cf. D&C 3, 27, 2-5. Cf. Plu. Quaest. conviv. 648E; Orph. Fr. 280. Cf. Merkelbach 1988, 53 and 181. According to a myth related e.g. in Lucian, DDeor 2, 22 and Nonn. D. 2, 85 the Nymph Pitys, while trying to escape from Pan, is transformed into a pine. To commemorate her, Pan winds a crown of pine and puts it on his head. For the whole series of Dionysiac miracles, see D&C 2, 25, 3-26, 3. Cf. D&C 2, 26, 5-27, 3. Cf. Hdt. 8, 65, 1-3. Cf. Hdt. 6, 105, 1-3. Cf. Hdt. 6, 105, 2. Cf. D&C 2, 23, 4.

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divine providence in this novel exceeds mere reciprocity, though from this time on Pan is, of course, included in the pious attentions of his protégés. Yet, Pan and the Nymphs are only subordinate gods in comparison with Eros, who is the most important deity of the novel. When Daphnis is fifteen and Chloe thirteen, both Dryas and Lamon have a dream in which the Nymphs deliver the children to a cheerful little boy with wings, whom out of their rural ignorance they cannot recognize. As has often been pointed out, it is in his quality as a cosmogonic Eros that the god who introduces himself as ‘older than Kronos, older than all Eternity’ appears in Philetas’ garden.40 The god who at the end of the novel receives an altar as Eros the Shepherd is here represented as a wanton boy, and he describes his activities as follows: ‘Now I pasture Daphnis and Chloe, and when I have brought them together in the morning, I will come into your garden …’.41 The image of a shepherd, employed here as a symbol of divine care, does have a long tradition. Already in Homer the Atreidai are called ‘shepherds of the masses’42, and in Plato’s Phaedo, Socrates refers to the notion of the gods as shepherds and of mankind as one of their flocks.43 The imagery perfectly illustrates caring benevolence, yet, while in the case of Pan and the Nymphs divine care is counterbalanced by the pious actions and votive offerings of Daphnis and Chloe, their relationship with Eros is an even more intimate one, given that Philetas tells them that they have been consecrated to Eros as a libation, so that in this case, without any intermediate attestation of piety, they seem to be themselves the offerings. In requital, they are the direct object of the lovegod’s attention, as is assured by Philetas: ‘Love is taking care of you.’44 If we apply the notion of Love’s providential care to the narrative, we can observe that Eros functions as the supreme coordinating principle of events, especially in the light of what Pan once says about Chloe, calling her ‘a maiden from whom Love intends to make a story’.45 As has been rightly observed, ————— 40

41 42 43

44

45

Cf. D&C 2, 5, 2; on the passage see e.g. Hunter 1983, 32, who describes the god Eros, as he appears in Philetas’ garden, as ‘the cosmogonic Eros of Hesiod (Th. 120)’. Cf. D&C, 2, 5, 4. Cf. e.g. Il. 2, 243. Cf. Pl. Phd. 62 b: οὐ μέντοι ἀλλὰ τόδε γέ μοι δοκεῖ, ὦ Κέβης, εὖ λέγεσθαι, τὸ θεοὺς εἶναι ἡμῶν τοὺς ἐπιμελουμένους καὶ ἡμᾶς τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ἓν τῶν κτημάτων τοῖς θεοῖς εἶναι. See also Pl. Criti. 109 b-c, where, once again, the gods’ care for early man is depicted as the shepherd’s care for his flock. Philo carries the image of shepherding even further when in his De sacrificiis Abelis et Caini, 105 he likens the passions to animals which have to be controlled by the Nous as their shepherd. Cf. also his De somniis, 153. Cf. D&C 2, 6, 2: … Ἔρωτι ὑμῶν μέλει. Compare also 2, 23, 5, where the same assurance is given by the Nymphs: Τἀ δἐ ἄλλα μελήσει περἰ ὑμῶν Ἔρωτι. Cf. D&C 2, 27, 2; on Eros as a coordinating principle of the narrative see Morgan 2003, 74-75: ‘But love is not just the subject of the plot; in its personification as Eros it also

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Love’s role in Longus’ novel is indeed that of a ‘motor of plot development’,46 which I now intend to demonstrate further by way of an excursus on some of the novel’s key motifs and their erotic implications. Let us begin by examining the notion of pasturing a bit more closely. Given that, as we have seen, it is intimately related to the figure of Eros, it has an erotic undertone in many of its occurrences: in her love monologue Chloe wishes she were one of Daphnis’ goats, so that she might be pastured by him.47 The imagery is again used by Gnathon, when he asks Astylus to procure him Daphnis’ favours, and in connection with some young rustics, who at the time of the winevintage wish to be pastured by Chloe.48 Another key motif is that of the myrtle, which is obviously connected with the name of Daphnis’ foster mother, Myrtale.49 Since it is sacred to Aphrodite,50 the erotic connotation of the myrtle is clear right from the start. Chloe likens Daphnis’ hair to myrtle-berries from its black colour.51 Philetas finds Eros in his garden beneath pomegranate-trees and myrtle bushes and when he approaches him, the little boy pelts him with myrtle-berries just as in Theocritus’ idyll 6 Galatea throws apples at Polyphemus’ flock.52 There are myrtle trees in front of Dryas’ yard just as there are in Lamon’s garden, as though the plants were an image for the bonds of love between Daphnis and Chloe.53 I will now turn to a couple of motifs that in their subsequent occurrences throughout the novel are increasingly laden with an erotic undercurrent. Among them is certainly the oak-tree (drys): being, as it were, contained in the name of Chloe’s foster father, ‘Dryas’, the oak-tree is a motif that is referred to at various stages of the plot. It is the favourite resting place of Daphnis and Chloe, where Daphnis will sit and play the syrinx, just as Philetas used to do when he was young and in love with Amaryllis;54 so one function of this motif is to create a link between presence and past and to establish the notion of the everlasting power of Eros. It is the same oak-tree where Daphnis, after he has fallen into a —————

46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

54

controls it, both directly and through Pan and the Nymphs, who represent its masculine and feminine aspects.” See further Chalk 1960, 33, who calls Eros “the supreme controller of the events in Longos’. Cf. Morgan 1994, 74. Cf. D&C 1, 14, 3. Cf. D&C 4, 16, 3; 2, 2, 2. Cf. Hunter 1983, 17. Cf. e.g. Paus. 6, 24, 6. Cf. D&C 1, 24, 3. Cf. D&C 2, 4, 1. 4; Theoc. 6, 6-7. Cf. D&C 3, 5, 1; 4, 2, 2. On the myrtle and its occurrences in Longus, see further Chalk 1960, 38. Cf. D&C 1, 13, 4; 2, 5, 3.76.

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pit, is examined by Chloe and decides to take a bath, which turns out to be the starting-point of Chloe’s love for him.55 The first time, when Daphnis and Chloe are lying side by side according to Philetas’ advice, they are doing so under the oak-tree, and the tree is also the place where Daphnis rests after Chloe is restored to him from the hands of the Methymnaeans.56 When winter is over, Daphnis and Chloe, after they have made their offerings to the Nymphs and Pan, immediately turn to the oak-tree and are sitting there when Lykainion approaches them with her hidden intention to teach Daphnis a lesson in love-making.57 Finally, Daphnis is standing under the tree when he and Chloe mime the legend of Pan and Syrinx.58 As we can see, the oak-tree is a continuous point of reference with patent erotic implications, and it is used by Longus to mark some important moments of his protagonists’ love story.59 The same holds true for two conspicuous objects that are linked up with the young lovers in a rather intimate way. When they start tending their flocks together, they pass their time, as Longus puts it, with ‘pastoral and childish games’60: Daphnis makes a syrinx out of reeds and practices playing it, while Chloe weaves a cricket-trap.61 What is introduced as the toys of innocent children turns out to evolve into reiterative motifs throughout a gradually unfolding love story. When Chloe first falls in love with Daphnis, she listens to him playing his syrinx and thinks that the music is the cause for his beauty.62 Also, she wishes to become herself his syrinx.63 Out of her great distress, she leaves the cricket that she has caught in her trap untended.64 Daphnis, in turn, who is said to have been ‘more talkative than the crickets’, grows silent and tosses his pipes aside after he has received a first kiss from Chloe.65 At the start of summer, Daphnis teaches Chloe to play his syrinx: after she has blown into it, he snatches it from her and runs it over his own lips, thus stealing another kiss from her.66 A little later, when Chloe falls asleep, a cicada flies into her bosom to escape a ————— 55 56 57 58 59

60 61 62 63 64 65 66

Cf. D&C 1, 12, 5-6. Cf. D&C 2, 11, 1; 2, 30, 2. Cf. D&C 3, 12, 2; 3, 16, 1. Cf. D&C 3, 12, 2; 4, 15, 2. See also Morgan 2004, 161 on the oak-tree as a ‘recurrent location marking some of the novel’s most significant and intimate moments’. Cf. D&C 1, 10, 2. Cf. D&C 1, 10, 2. Cf. D&C 1, 13, 4. Cf. D&C 1, 14, 3. Cf. D&C 1, 14, 4. Cf. D&C 1, 17, 4. Cf. D&C 1, 24, 4.

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swallow and is being picked up there by Daphnis.67 In Longus’ narrative the cicada is somewhat parallel to the cricket: they are mentioned alongside in 3, 24, 2: ‘They hunted garrulous crickets, caught noisy cicadas’. Therefore, there is some good reason to relate the cicada incident to Chloe’s weaving of the crickettrap. If we take into account that the trap was made to catch crickets and that the cicada was fleeing from a swallow, the two events are additionally linked with each other by their shared metaphor of hunting, a commonplace in all erotic literature. The syrinx motif, in its turn, comes to a climax when Daphnis and Chloe invite all members of the rural community to a thanksgiving celebration in honour of Pan the Fighter, after he has rescued the maiden from the hands of the Methymnaeans. On that very occasion, Philetas the cowherd, the protagonists’ wise instructor in the mysteries of love, plays with great artistry various tunes on his syrinx, a mighty instrument that, as Longus puts it, creates the impression ‘as if it was the very set that Pan first constructed’.68 Daphnis and Chloe contribute to the celebration by way of a mimetic dance: while they act out the legend of Pan and Syrinx, Daphnis, who performs the part of Pan in pursuit of the fugitive nymph, so beautifully plays on Philetas’ pipes that the latter gives them to him as a present,69 and we might well interpret this gesture of succession as a symbol of Daphnis passing from childhood to maturity in matters of both art and love. On the grounds of my previous remarks it is obvious that the cricket and the syrinx motif occur at various crucial points of the protagonists’ love story, while at the same time they are increasingly laden with erotic connotations. Getting back to our initial question, I will now examine whether some of the most salient features of the above-mentioned philosophical concepts of pronoia can be traced in Longus’ novel. Daphnis and Chloe are once spoken of as ‘children whose life has been saved through the gods’ providence’.70 Astonishingly enough, the agents of this divine benevolence are animals: after his exposal, Daphnis is saved by a goat that neglects its own offspring to feed the human baby and is therefore felt by Lamon to be an exemplar in philanthropy. Chloe in turn enjoys the care of a ewe that seems to teach Dryas a lesson in compassion and love for the child. Moreover, when Daphnis is in danger of being abducted by some pirates, it is the cattle of Dorkon the cowherd that help him to get back to the shore safe and sound. ————— 67 68 69 70

Cf. D&C 1, 25, 1-3. Cf. D&C 2, 35, 1. Cf. D&C 2, 37, 3. Cf. D&C 1, 7, 2: ἐδόκει δὲ πείθεσθαι θεοῖς περὶ τῶν σωθέντων προνοίᾳ θεῶν.

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This is reminiscent of the high esteem animals enjoy in the work of Aelian, contemporaneous with Longus’. As I have mentioned above, in his On animals Aelian does not hesitate to include them in the realm of divine providence as creatures that are worthy of divine help and, at the same time, can be turned into agents of the gods’ benevolence towards human beings.71 If we read the novel in the light of the various philosophical concepts of pronoia that have been outlined at the beginning of this article, we first have to acknowledge that the protective deities of Daphnis and Chloe certainly do not show any traces of grudge or humanlike passions as we find them in Plutarch’s demons, whom he conceives of as the overseers of the sublunar world. By contrast, Longus’ pastoral gods turn out to be essentially good and benevolent, yet, of course, they cannot prevent the protagonists from becoming the victims of a number of more or less violent attacks launched against them by some ambiguous, if not depraved, characters. We might feel reminded of the younger gods of Plato’s Timaeus, second in level in Ps.-Plutarch’s model of a threefold pronoia, who, as we have mentioned above, are ruling and guiding mankind ‘in the best fashion possible’, but nonetheless do not have complete control over some evils the individual might incur, which is probably the reason why Ps.-Plutarch in his De fato has secondary providence exist side by side with fate.72 Yet, there is something more to the care displayed by the deities of Longus’ novel. First, their repeated interventions in favour of their protégés put them on a level that appears to be higher than fate. While it is one of the most striking features of the Daphnis of Theocritus’ first idyll that he ‘fulfilled his bitter love till the end that was fated for him’73 – clinging to his fate in such a rigorous manner that not even Aphrodite appears to be able to save his life – Longus on the other hand goes out of his way to show that his protagonists owe their lives to caring gods and their spectacular rescuing actions. Second, one of the most striking features of these gods is their transformative power, which manifests itself in the development of some of the novel’s side characters. To begin, let us look at two incidents where Daphnis and Chloe are rescued in turn by persons who at first were introduced as vicious and evil plotting. Dorkon, the cowherd, is introduced in the first book as a rival suitor of Chloe. At his first appearance he helps her to rescue Daphnis, who fell into a pit ————— 71

72

73

See above, p. 3. See further Ael. NA 11, 35: … ἐς τοσοῦτον ἄρα τὰ ζῷα θεοφιλῆ ἐστιν, ὡς καὶ ὑπὸ τῶν θεῶν σώζεσθαι, καὶ σώζειν ἐκείνων βουλομένων ἑτέρους. See above, p. 4, with note 18. Compare further Plat. Ti. 42D, where the Artisan of all things is said to have sown the younger gods ‘to the end that he might not be chargeable for the wickedness of which they would be severally guilty’ - ἵνα τῆς ἔπειτα εἴη κακίας ἑκάστων ἀναίτιος. Cf. Theoc. 1, 93.

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when chasing a billy-goat. In want of a rope, Chloe unties her breast-band, and the two of them use it to pull Daphnis out of his entrapment.74 Since that day, we are told, Dorkon had been amorously inclined (ἐρωτικῶς … διετέθη) towards Chloe.75 Judging from the name ‘Dorkon’, which apart from its pastoral connotations (δόρκων = ‘deer’) is also related to derkomai (‘I see clearly’), we can infer that it was probably the glimpse he caught of Chloe’s physical beauty which brought about his infatuation for her, and the point has been made that Dorkon thus appears as a personification of the ‘male gaze’.76 Determined to have his way with Chloe, even if by force, Dorkon ends up trying to attack her in the guise of a wolf, yet remarkably enough his villainy goes unnoticed and his futile attempt seems to Daphnis and Chloe nothing but a pastoral joke.77 When Daphnis has fallen into the hands of pirates, Chloe once more asks Dorkon for help. Since he himself has been seriously wounded and robbed of his cattle by the pirates, he tells Chloe how to avenge him and, at the same time, rescue Daphnis. He advises her to play a certain tune on his syrinx, with the effect that the cattle leap into the sea, causing the ship to capsize. Daphnis, who is flung overboard together with the pirates, manages to get safely ashore while clinging to the horns of the cattle.78 Dorkon is now honoured by the couple as their euergétes, ‘benefactor’, and they bury him with great respect.79 Dorkon is matched by Gnathon, the self-indulgent servant of Astylos, whose very name signifies ‘jaw’ and who at his first appearance is described as ‘nothing more than jaws, a stomach, and the parts below the stomach’.80 Being a ‘natural pederast’,81 he falls in love with Daphnis, but his attempt to attack him from ambush fails as much as Dorkon’s assault on Chloe. After he has persuaded Astylos to take Daphnis with him to town as his servant, it turns out that his beloved is actually the son of Dionysophanes, the master of the estate, and therefore Astylos’ brother. Gnathon is not only ashamed, but tries to make up for what now appears to be a highly inappropriate pursuit of a social superior. When Chloe is attacked by another suitor, Lampis the cowherd, Gnathon frees her ————— 74 75 76

77 78 79 80

81

Cf. D&C 1, 12, 4. Cf. D&C 1, 15, 1. Cf. Morgan 2003, 182. For the etymological link between δόρκων and δέρκομαι see Morgan 2004, 163, where he refers to St Basil’s Homil. in Prov. 6,4 (PG 31, 1500c): Ἡ μὲν γὰρ δορκὰς ἀνάλωτός ἐστι τοῖς βρόχοις δι’ ὀξύτητα τῆς ὁράσεως, ὅθεν καὶ ἐπώνυμός ἐστι τῆς οἰκείας ὀξυδορκίας. Cf. D&C 1, 20, 1-21, 5. Cf. D&C 1, 28, 3 – 31, 1. Cf. D&C 1, 31, 3. Cf. D&C 4, 11, 2: Ὁ δὲ Γνάθων, […] οὐδὲν ἄλλο ὢν ἢ γνάθος καὶ γαστὴρ καὶ τὰ ὑπὸ γαστέρα, … For the etymology of Gnathon’s name, see Morgan 2004, 229. Cf. D&C 4, 11, 2: φύσει παιδεραστής.

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from his hands and restores her to Daphnis safe and untouched. Like Dorkon, he has undergone a change from villain to euergétes.82 As a further example of evil transformed I should like to rely on the motif of the rescuing purse that makes it so much easier for Daphnis to approach Dryas and ask for his daughter’s hand. As mentioned above, the purse was washed ashore from the ship of the Methymnaeans, who, though they carry the typical features of evil-plotting town-dwellers, are thus unwittingly turned into benefactors of Daphnis. The three examples may be read as illustrations of the Platonic assumption that the evil does not exist on equal terms with the good. Indeed, in Longus’ novel there is no such thing as an evil of its own standing. Everything is bathed in a gracious light. While some vicious activities remain unnoticed in the first place, evil is finally transformed into good. Even such a wicked figure as Lampis the cowherd, who wantonly devastates his master’s garden, is finally granted pardon and admitted to the protagonists’ marriage feast.83 Only the anonymous pirates get, as it were, their just deserts, when they suffer shipwreck the moment they are trying to abduct Daphnis together with the cattle of Dorkon.84 The evil in this novel is not just a necessary foil to recognize the good, as Chrysippus takes it.85 Rather, what is typical of Longus’ narrative is the creation of concord out of discordant elements. In this context, I would like to get back to the legend about Hermes and Typhon, quoted above from Plutarch’s On Isis and Osiris.86 The story of Hermes cutting out the sinews of Typhon and using them as strings for his lyre is interpreted by Plutarch as an image for Reason, which cripples the destructive force for the sake of a harmonious whole. In Longus’ novel, discordant elements are not violently demolished, but rather tamed in a process of gentle transformation. The bad is not altogether absent, which means that it would be misguided to overstress the role played by the idea of the Golden Age, albeit popular in the second century, in this particular novel.87 Yet still the numerous incidents of tarachos, ‘disturbance’, and thorybos, ‘uproar’, are not a real danger to the harmony of the whole. Destructive forces occur, but they are subject to a divine providence that is essentially good and benevolent. ————— 82

83 84 85 86 87

Compare also Morgan 2004, 243: “the word εὐεργέτης (‘benefactor’) connects Gnathon and Dorkon.” Cf. D&C 4, 38, 2: οὐκ ἀπῆν οὐδὲ Λάμπις συγγνώμης ἀξιωθείς. Cf. D&C 1, 30, 2. See above, p. 3. See above, p. 4-5. Cf. Hunter 1983, 21.

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Bibliography Behr, C.A. (ed.) 1981. P. Aelius Aristides. The Complete Works. Vol. II. Orationes XVIILIII. Transl. into Engl. By C.A. Behr, Leiden: Brill. Bergjan, S.-P. 2002. Der fürsorgende Gott: Der Begriff der Pronoia Gottes in der Apologetischen Literatur der Alten Kirche, Berlin - New York: de Gruyter. Bréhier, E. (ed. and trans.) 1963. Plotin. Ennéades VI, Paris : Les Belles Lettres. Chalk, H.H.O. 1960. ‘Eros and the Lesbian Pastorals of Longos’, JHS 80, 32-51. Gould, J.B. 1970. The Philosophy of Chrysippus, Leiden: E.J. Brill. Griffiths, J. Gwyn (ed.) 1970. Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride, Cambridge: University of Wales Press. Hunter, R. 1983. A Study of Daphnis and Chloe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mason, H.J. 1979. ‘Longus and the Topography of Lesbos’, TAPA 109, 149-163. Merkelbach, R. 1988. Die Hirten des Dionysos. Die Dionysos-Mysterien der Römischen Kaiserzeit und der bukolische Roman des Longus, Stuttgart: B.G. Teubner. Morgan, J. R. 1994. ‘Daphnis and Chloe: Love’s own sweet Story’, in: J. R. Morgan and R. Stoneman (eds.), Greek Fiction. The Greek Novel in Context, London and New York: Routledge, 64-79. Morgan, J.R. 2003. ‘Nymphs, Neighbours and Narrators: A Narratological Approach to Longus’, in S. Panayotakis, M. Zimmerman, W. Keulen (eds.), The Ancient Novel and Beyond, Leiden: Brill, 171-189. Morgan, J.R. (ed.) 2004. Longus. Daphnis and Chloe, Oxford: Aris & Phillips. Rosenmeyer, T.G. 1969. The Green Cabinet. Theocritus and the European Pastoral Lyric, London: Bristol Classical Press. Schönberger, Otto (ed. and trans.) 41989. Longos. Hirtengeschichten von Daphnis und Chloe. Griechisch und Deutsch, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag (19351). Snell, B. 31955. ‘Arkadien’, in: B. Snell (ed.), Die Entdeckung des Geistes, Hamburg: Claassen & Goverts. Swain, S. 1989. ‘Plutarch: Chance, Providence, and History’, AJPh 110, 272-298. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. 21907. ‘Die griechische Literatur des Altertums’, in: von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff et al., Die griechische und lateinische Literatur und Sprache, I. 1., Berlin und Leipzig: Teubner, 3-238. Weinreich, O. 1909. Antike Heilungswunder. Untersuchungen zum Wunder-glauben der Griechen und Römer, Gießen: Verlag von A. Töpelmann. Weinreich, O. 1962. Der griechische Liebesroman, Zürich: Artemis. Wendland, P. 1892. Philos Schrift über die Vorsehung, Berlin: R. Gaertners Verlagsbuchhandlung. Zeitlin, F. 1990. ‘The Poetics of Erôs: Nature, Art, and Imitation in Longus’Daphnis and Chloe’, in: D. M. Halperin, J. J. Winkler, F. I. Zeitlin (eds.), Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 417-464.

Tales of Utopia: Alexander, Cynics and Christian Ascetics R ICHARD S TONEMAN University of Exeter

The Geneva Papyrus inv. 271 One of Alexander’s most memorable encounters is that with the Naked Philosophers or Brahmans. The episode is known in several versions, including the Alexander Romance, Plutarch’s Life of Alexander and a Berlin papyrus (13044) of ca. 100 BC; in addition it was reworked as an independent opusculum preserved in Geneva papyrus inv. 271.1 This last can be characterised without hesitation as a Cynic diatribe, since it is followed in the papyrus by a patently Cynic work, a letter of Heraclitus (a Cynic hero).2 The papyrus is datable to the mid second century AD. It is a work of particular interest because it was reworked, rather lightly but with important differences and additions, in a work probably by Palladius, Bishop of Helenopolis (b. 364), De gentibus Indiae et de moribus Bragmanorum.3 Palladius’ work describes how the Brahmans are set apart, by the dispensation of God, from the rest of the world, and live naked on the banks of the river Ganges (1,11). They live on green plants and the fruits of trees (1,12, cf. 2,7,10). The men live on the far side of the river, the women on the near side, and they meet in the cold months of July and August for sexual congress. The second part of the essay comprises the preaching of the chief of the Brahmans, Dandamis, ————— 1 2 3

Martin 1959; Photiades 1959; Berg 1970; Stoneman 1994a and 1995. Demonstrated by Photiades 1959. On Heraclitus as a Cynic hero see Malherbe 1977. Edited by Derrett 1960, Berghoff 1987. Translation: Stoneman 1994b, 34-56. My own forthcoming edition of the Greek and Latin recensions of the Alexander Romance (volume I 2007, volumes II-III Mondadori, forthcoming) will contain in volume III the first edition of the text of this work preserved in MS A of the Alexander Romance. On the Latin translations see Wilmart 1933.

Philosophy and the Ancient Novel, 51–63

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which boils down to an attack on desire: ‘What do you want to carry off from us?’ Dandamis asks; ‘We do not have what you are looking for; and you do not desire what we have. We honour God, love men, have no care for wealth, despise death, take no thought of pleasure; but you fear death, love gold, seek pleasure, hate and despise God’. There follows a specific attack on gluttony and on the Roman games. As I hope to have shown in an earlier article,4 the material in this diatribe probably derives largely from Onesicritus, a Cynic philosopher who was despatched by Alexander to interview the Brahmans at Taxila. Onesicritus, it is to be presumed, wrote up the encounter in terms that appealed to his own philosophical position; however, I believe that many details of what he wrote are consonant with Indian thought and derive from what he learnt on this occasion: his work was not simply a freely invented Cynic tract.5 The Brahmans of the papyrus live what is clearly intended to be seen as an ideal life, a model which others would do well to follow. Such a project may be referred to as ‘Utopia’, a project for a better way of life or organisation of society. If we can establish this as a positive project put forward by Cynic thinkers, it will strengthen the now prevailing opinion that Cynicism is worthy of study as a philosophical movement in its own right, as well as for its influence on early Stoicism.6 Is it right to call the Brahmans’ society a Utopia? The Brahmans’ polity has many points of contact with other ideal societies described by Hellenistic writers.7 These include: Theopompus’ Meropis (FGrH 115F75c = Aelian VH 3,18), whose inhabitants are happier than the Hyperboreans;8 Euhemerus’ Panchaea, a paradise watered by the Fountain of the Sun; and Iambulus’ Island of the Sun. This is located in the Indian Ocean and is probably to be identified, as Schwarz argues, with Taprobane (modern Sri Lanka). Iambulus discovers the island as a result of being set adrift in a boat after a period of captivity in Ethiopia, a feature which closely recalls the adventure of the Theban scholar who is presented in Palladius as the source of the narrative about the Brahmans. Unfortunately, we do not know whether the original Cynic version of the Brahmans text included any form of this preamble. The people of this island ————— 4

5

6 7

8

Stoneman 1995. Further parallels with Indian thought are assembled in the commentary to my forthcoming edition, volume II. Cf. Brown 1949. Navia 1998 holds the somewhat extreme position that Cynics were directly influenced by the gymnosophists and by Indian Pasupatas; cf. Ingalls 1962. Erskine 1990. A useful survey is Green 1990, 391-5. D. S. 6,1,4 for Euhemerus’ Panchaea, D. S. 2,5560 for Iambulus’ Islands of the Sun. See Winston 1976, Graf 1993, Schwarz 1982. On utopian aspects in the ancient novel: Futre Pinheiro 2006 and literature cited there. Romm 1992, 67

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live to an advanced age (150 years) and wives and children are held in common as a means of achieving harmony. Both these points recall the Brahmans text, with its description of the great age reached by the inhabitants of Taprobane, and the details of their sexual arrangements. These are in fact not identical to those of Iambulus’ state; whereas Iambulus describes a sexual communism that recalls Platonic theory, the Brahmans keep their women on the other side of the river and mate with them at set times – in this they form a counterpoise to the well known myth of the Amazons who achieve congress with the neighbouring men in an analogous way.9 One striking feature of the utopias of Euhemerus, Iambulus and Palladius is that they are all on an island. In fact, they are on one particular island, namely Taprobane. Taprobane, in ancient geographical thought, ran parallel to the coast of India and was frequently conceived as being located in the River of Ocean which surrounded the ‘far side’ of India. Thus it was not infrequently described as the beginning of ‘another world’. Its paradisaic qualities, which are still a major feature of the modern tourist literature, surely led to the localisation of the earthly paradise of Christian thought in a similar position, just beyond the River of Ocean in the Far East.10 Is it natural to expect Utopia to be located in Paradise? Imaginary ideal societies range from the idea of a Golden Age, to a Land of Cockaigne, to the Jewish-Christian Paradise. All these concepts differ from Utopia in that they are universal: everyone alive at the time participates in the ‘Golden’ order. A utopia, by contrast, is always a construct, shared by a select few in a remote place. The canonical utopias of the English renaissance, of Thomas More, Francis Bacon and Henry Nevile, all fall into this category, as does Tommaso Campanella’s City of the Sun.11 If a utopia stricto sensu must contain political details (many of More’s come from Plato), this is at odds with the rejection of politics by Cynic thinkers. However, I believe it is appropriate to regard the Cynic ideas as a utopia in a different but related sense. Cynic Utopias are hermeneutic devices or ————— 9 10 11

Ps.-Callisth. 3,25 Stoneman 1994c; see above all Weerakkody 1997. Campanella’s ‘City of the Sun’ describes an insulated society, located (of course) on the island of Taprobane. The inhabitants are descendants of the Indian Brahmans (37, 69) and are also identified with Pythagoreans. The description includes details of their hierarchy, their breeding practices and communal eating; their agricultural methods, but also their methods and weapons of war and their methods of execution. Not a Paradise then. Their religion is a ‘natural’ form of Christianity, and in many respects their society mirrors that of contemporary Italian city-states but in a better regulated form. Their advanced social organisation has led them to invent such conveniences as the self-propelled boat and a method of flight (details which recall the fantasy land of the comic poets as much as any issue of human organisation. Cf. Flashar 1974).

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spiritual exercises. They are suited to the intensely individual style of the Cynic. Crates described a Utopian island called ‘Pera’.12 The word means ‘knapsack’, and the clear implication is that the Cynic carries his Utopia with him wherever he goes. He does not need a society around him – indeed, he is not part of one – to make his Utopian conditions. Living a natural life, he is free from such constraints. Aristotle wrote (Pol. 1253a4-5, 25-9) that a man without a polis must be either a beast or a god. The Cynic takes the route of being a beast in order to become a god. In modern terms, the pursuit of Cynicism is a lifestyle choice not a political programme. Viewed from another perspective, the Cynic becomes a kosmopolites, a citizen of the universe, to whom poleis are irrelevant.

Putting Utopia into Practice Several examples are known from antiquity of attempts to create an ideal society in practice (and many more from other historical times: see e.g. Holloway 1966). 1. When Cassander’s younger brother, Alexarchus, established his communist Utopia at the city of Ouranoupolis on the Athos peninsula,13 he represented himself as king sun and the citizens were citizens of heaven. We know frustratingly little about his programme, though the description of his invented language (of which James Joyce might have been proud) is entertaining; but it does seem to have been a genuine attempt to set up a community or polis on new and revolutionary lines. As a result it attracted some real political adventurers; but its life was short.14 2. The conclusion that the Cynic utopia is an internal state or at best a society of a few (like a rather scruffy college) prompts consideration of the related puzzle concerning the Stoic politeia of Zeno. Considerable discussion has been devoted to the question of what Zeno wrote and whether he envisaged an actual stoic state, based on antinomian communism, as a realistic possibility.15 If we accept the view of Malcolm Schofield that Zeno’s Politeia actually contained nothing about political arrangements or the economy, but simply considered how a group of Stoics (of whatever size) might live an appropriate and self————— 12 13 14

15

D.L. 6,85. Ath. 3,98D; Str. 7 frg. 35. On Alexarchus see Baldry 1935; Ferguson 1975, 108-10; Vogt 1975; Africa 1961. Some other examples of real political programmes include that of Cercidas of Megalopolis for a redistribution of wealth (Moles 1995) and that of Phaleas of Chalcedon for equalization of property (Arist. Pol. 2,7, Ferguson 1975, 50). In general: Dawson 1992. Schofield 1999, Dawson 1992, Erskine 1990.

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sufficient life while largely ignoring the political world around them, then we may see here a close parallel to the Cynic Utopia I have been trying to define. 3. Philo’s de vita contemplativa, which describes the way of life of the Therapeutae, a Jewish sect located outside Alexandria, follows the same general structure as Palladius’ Life of the Brahmans, with a description of their way of life followed by an attack on luxury and drunkenness (44-56). Key features of the life of the Therapeutae include their dwelling in solitary places, the separation of men and women (32-3), minimal clothing and shelter (38), abstention from blood food (73) and taming desire (74), and their contemplative nature. The way of life described falls into a continuum in ancient thought, since Jews were said to be descended from Indian philosophers called Calani (i.e. Brahmans) by Clearchus,16 while both were seen as having features in common with Pythagoreans. They lead the way of life regarded by Aristotle (EN 10,7-8) as the highest for man, and their location in Egypt is particularly favourable to their austerity.17 There are also points of contact between the Therapeutae and the Essenes, who have been analysed by Doron Mendels in the terms of a Hellenistic utopia.18

Christian versions of Utopia To these historically known or mooted ideal societies let us add two fictional ones from the Christian period, both based on the polity of the Brahmans. The first is the apocryphal work known as The History of the Rechabites,19 which was later rewritten as a Christian work under the title ‘The Narrative of Zosimus’, perhaps as late as the seventh century. The Narrative of Zosimus is preserved in Slavonic, Syriac, Ethiopic and Arabic texts; in the Slavonic version the Blessed Ones are in fact named as Brahmans. It also entered the medieval Jewish rewriting of Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews known as Yosippon: now the Blessed are called the ‘sons of Yonadab’. The Christian story concerns a hermit, Zosimus, who travels on a camel to the Land of the Blessed. These latter turn out to be the descendants of Rechab, one of the Lost Tribes of Israel, and their home is the Earthly Paradise. One of their number describes their way of life: ————— 16

17 18 19

Jos. Ap 1,22. Cf. D. L. 1,9 who says that Clearchus traced the descent of the gymnosophists from the Magi. Porph. Abst. 4, 6-8, Taylor 2003, 46 and 56. Mendels 1979. Greek text: James 1893. Translation (from Syriac): Charlesworth 1985, 2, 443-461. See Knights 1993 and 1995.

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Hear, ye sons of men, hear the way of life of the blessed. For God placed us in this land, for we are holy but not immortal. For the earth produces most fragrant fruit, and out of the trunks of the trees comes water sweeter than honey, and these are our food and drink. We also pray all night and day… With us there is no vine, nor ploughed field, nor works of wood or iron, nor have we any house or building, nor fire nor sword, nor iron wrought or unwrought, nor silver nor gold, nor air too heavy or too keen. Neither do any of us take to themselves wives, except for so long as to beget two children, and after they have produced two children they withdraw from each other and continue in chastity, not knowing that they were ever in the intercourse of marriage, but being in virginity as from the beginning. And the one child remains for marriage, and the other for virginity. And … all our day is one day. In our caves lie the leaves of trees, and this is our couch under the trees. But we are not naked of body as ye wrongly imagine, for we have the garment of immortality and are not ashamed of each other…. We know also the time of our end, for we have no torment nor disease nor pain in our bodies, nor exhaustion nor weakness, but peace and great patience and love… If one quits the body in his youth, the days of his life here are 360 years, and he that quits the body in old age, the days of his life here are 688 years. (10-12) In this remarkable narrative the chief traits of the hellenistic utopia are entirely adapted to the Jewish-Christian vision of the Earthly Paradise. A much briefer account of a similar way of life in the Far East is that given of the Camarini in the Expositio Mundi et Gentium, a Christian Latin cosmography datable to AD 359 (4-7). (The Camarini are also described in the Hodoiporia apo Edem tou Paradisou, probably a Nestorian work from preIslamic Syria, where they become the Macarini, i.e. Makarioi or Blessed Ones.)20 The Camarini are located in the East, perhaps in Eden itself; they are good and pious, and they eat no food except bread that falls from heaven and a drink made from wild honey and pepper. They live a communal life without a supreme ruler; they are without disease and their clothing is so pure that it cannot be defiled. They do not sow or reap, but collect precious stones which are washed down by the rivers. They know the dates of their death and build their own coffins in good time and then wait by them. Their next neighbours are, it turns out, the Brahmans.

————— 20

Klotz 1910; Pfister 1911; Rougé 1966, 56-63.

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Christians on Cynics I wish to turn now to another form of social organization within but independent of the political society, that of early Christian monks or anchorites. The project of living a life entirely focussed on spiritual matters, and regardless of society, seems a form of anachoresis. I suggest that one of the motive forces for early Christian anchoritism was Cynic thought, and that the model of the Brahmans’ society lay somewhere behind some early Christian views of the ascetic life. In putting forward this suggestion, I wish to distinguish it from the case argued by Gerald Downing (1992) that Jesus and the apostles were seen by contemporaries as resembling cynics, inasmuch as they were shabby, ascetic wanderers whose minds were on higher things.21 While this argument seems to me to have some plausibility, Downing becomes less persuasive as he follows his argument into late antiquity, for he sees as influence of Cynics what could simply be influence of the earlier Christians. I propose rather to look at the way that cynic ideas are transmogrified in the writings of the Church fathers. Curiously, Downing makes no mention of the text which would best support his argument, namely Palladius’ On the Brahmans. This work, as we have seen, is an adaptation of a Cynic diatribe to a Christian milieu. It has been described by earlier scholars who have worked on it as a Christian protreptic, and I myself have expressed adherence to this view.22 I am no longer so confident. The level of Christianisation in the work is really very light, consisting mainly in the insertion of allusions to God where the older text had ‘the gods’. References to providence are left to stand, and the discourse on the wild beast shows of the Roman empire, which have been regarded as a topic particularly close to the hearts of Christian thinkers (who might be eaten by the beasts), does not show any signs of Christian concerns. In particular, there is no trace of the sexual renunciation which is a hallmark of most Christian writing on the ascetic life,23 though elimination of desire is important. In fact, the women and men are separated but meet at regular intervals for mating. (I have encountered one Christian text which envisages a similar arrangement: Nilus of Ancyra, Logos Asketikos 7124 describes a life according to nature, which involves humans having sex ‘once a year, like animals’).

————— 21

22 23 24

Cf. Julian’s objections to monks; he sees Cynics and Christians as being very similar. Eun. VS 6,11,6-7 (p. 423 Loeb) says that monks ‘look like humans but live like pigs’. Berg 1970; Derrett 1960; Stoneman 1995. Grimm 1996; Shaw 1998. PG 79, 804-806; ed. Diaz Sanchez-Cid 1994.

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I would now prefer to think that Palladius (if he is the author) came across an old text which appealed to him because of its high moral tone, and made what is little more than a fair copy with stylistic updating, changing the most blatantly non-Christian references to a more appropriate form but otherwise not interfering with its message. The Brahmans’ utopia is left to speak for itself. It might be an early work, a first sign of the interest in asceticism that drives the betterknown Lausiac History.25 Nonetheless, this Cynic work was, as we have seen, found to be of particular interest to more than one Christian writer.26 Here I focus primarily on its relation to the practices of the early Christian ascetics as described in handbooks. (The semi-fictional Saints’ Lives do not work so well for this purpose, since they rely on miracles and fights with demons for their effects, not on achievable ascetic goals.) The aim of the ascetics was, via askesis, to achieve hesuchia or apatheia27 and to become citizens of heaven. The main topoi that the groups have in common are remoteness; vegetarianism and abstinence,28 including sexual abstinence; elimination of desire and rejection of wealth; prayer and contemplation. Of these, sexual abstinence requires a comment. While Cynics practised deliberate shamelessness, and Brahmans aimed to eliminate all kinds of desire, Christians aimed to suppress the sexual drive altogether.29 Many ascetics would deliberately induce temptation in order to fight actively against it, which is not the same as eliminating it.30 Diogenes, however, would have understood the encounter, described by Gita Mehta (1980), of an embarrassed American with an Indian holy man who tells him: ‘Desire is the seat of all confusion, my son. It clouds the reason. It produces the immoderate response. The body is exhausted unnecessarily. Watch me and learn’. And the naked fakir revealed himself in the phallus rampant. The sadhu applied an ash-covered left hand to its relief and discoursed on. ————— 25 26 27 28

29

30

On Palladius’ career see Hunt 1973. There is also a Latin translation of Palladius attributed to St. Ambrose: Wilmart 1933. Nilus, Asketikos 1, 6 etc; Evagrius Ponticus, Praktikos 33, 58, 68, 81. Common to many pagan philosophers: Shaw 1998. Wimbush’s (1990) collection of ascetic sources contains remarkably few pre-Christian examples of this common topos. Jerome (adv. Jovin. 2,15,17) argued that there had been no meat-eating before the Fall, and thus vegetarianism was a way to recover Paradise. While community of women was a feature of most ancient utopias, it is notable – and was duly noted by Campanella 65 – that the early Christians held everything in common except their wives: e.g. Clem. Al. EP 5 (PL 130,57); Tert. Apol. (PL 1,472). Stob. 4,22, against marriage, is misogynistic rather than spiritual in its arguments. E.g. Stob. 3,7,23; but already Musonius Rufus 6 had enjoined practice in resisting pleasure.

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The Christian fathers were well aware of Cynics and Brahmans as models for their practices. It is not hard to find Christian writers who show admiration for Cynics, if in tempered form. Derek Krueger’s study of ‘Diogenes the Cynic among the Fourth Century Fathers’31 collects allusions in Basil, John Chrysostom, Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Stobaeus, not to mention Gregory Nazianzen who called Diogenes ‘a rose among the thorns’ (Poem 1,2,10, ll. 215-216). Jerome, too, in his Life of Paul (17), mentions that ‘this old man satisfied thirst with the hollow of his hand’. Gregory is a fine example because of his admiration for the Cynic Maximus, whose practices he saw as combining the best of Diogenes and Christianity – until Maximus became his enemy and Gregory attacked him in the exact terms in which he had formerly praised him: ‘Like Adam I was deceived by a sinful tasting; beautiful to behold was the bitter tree…. Such is the philosophy of today’s Cynics, barking dogs – that is all their Cynicism consists in. What do you have in common with Diogenes or Antisthenes? What has Crates to do with your lot?’32 Still in the fourth century, Theodoret discusses practical virtue in Book 12 of his Cure of Pagan Maladies, and contrasts the Christian ‘athletes of virtue’ with Antisthenes, Diogenes and Crates, who ‘do what they do for the sake of glory, not virtue’ (32). Diogenes and Crates have many points in their favour, as do the noble savages among whom he includes the Hyperboreans and the Brahmans, as well as the Centaur Chiron (48), but Diogenes became a ‘slave to pleasure’ and set a bad example by having sex in public; Antisthenes, however, preferred madness to pleasure.33 If we regard the Brahmans as a kind of subset or special case of Cynics, there are plentiful examples of parallels to be found in the Church Fathers. ————— 31 32 33

Krueger 1993. Poem 2,1,11, ‘on his own life’, 960-961, 1030-1033. For some hostile references to Cynics see Aug C.D. 14,20; Hieron. adv. Jovin. 2,8,14; Tertullian’s attack on Marcion as being like a Cynic (because he comes from Sinope); Justin, Apol. 2,3 on his quarrel with Cynic philosopher Crescens. On the favourable side: John Chrysostom, Comparison of Monk and King and Against the enemies of monastic life, which praises Socrates and Diogenes: 2,4, PG 47, 337 and 339. In general, however, Chrysostom is opposed to Diogenes: Krueger 1993. Basil praises Diogenes (Krueger 1993, 79-80, and see Buora 1973-4). Isidore of Pelusium [Ep. 3,154 (PL 78, 848-849)] praises the austerity of Diogenes and Antisthenes, as well as Plato, Socrates and Phocion. A special case of the Christian Cynic is the Holy Fool. Krueger 1996 has exhaustively studied the figure of Symeon, and the tradition of holy foolishness in late antiquity and then in Russia has been explored by Ivanov (2006). Though having much in common with Cynics, holy fools are not at all monastic, and therefore I do not pursue this connection further here.

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Clement (Strom. 3, 60,1) gives a brief account of the Brahmans in the course of a discussion of the virtue of continence. Elsewhere (3,5-10) he gives an account of the Carpocratians, who live in a ‘city of the sun’ and practise community of women and enjoy koinonia with the gods: their way of life as Christian ascetics (of a kind) has obvious points of contact with the Hellenistic utopias. Hippolytus (Haer. 8,7,20) writes of the Encratites that ‘such as they are judged to be rather Cynics than Christians, seeing that they pay no heed to what was said to them aforetime through the Apostle Paul’ (His objection is that one should receive food and drink with proper thanks).34 Nilus of Ancyra (d. ca. 430) described the life of the anchorite as a life among the beasts, even like the beasts, as a way of shaking off the polis, avoiding the corruption of society and coming closer to the divine (201,61); he even refers (202,61) to ‘the justice of lions’, which is superior to that of humans. Only Christians, he says, are real philosophers (93,1), and instances the monks’ rejection of meat and of husbandry (though they do garden). Unlike most Christian writers, there is little about sexual renunciation in Nilus,35 and much more about dietary abstinence. He even quotes the sons of Yonadab as an example of a sect of Jews who have chosen the ascetic way of life, thus establishing a direct line back to the Brahmans. Another work that goes under the name of Nilus is de caede monachorum, ‘On the slaughter of the monks’:36 it is certainly not by him though it has been used as a biographical source since it takes the form of a narrative told by Nilus about the capture of his son by invading Blemmyes (probably in 407-408). It is an exciting adventure story, rather like an American tale of the wild west with dastardly savages threatening hideous deaths to the noble Christians, and a livelier example of the ancient novel than many other Christian romances. In chapter 3, 7-8 ‘Nilus’ gives an account of the way of life of the monks of Nitria, in terms which have by now become familiar. They use no money, and eat no meat or bread, but only fruits and greens; as a result their libido is greatly reduced, and their enkrateia is so extreme that they eat just enough to stave off death. They yield to physis only by necessity and, shunning worldly glory, they talk only to God. The impression that we are revisiting the Brahmans once more is accentuated by the following section (12) which compares their way of life with that of athletes in the gymnasium. These points are only a small sampling of Early Christian ideas which borrow from Cynic thought and in particular from the Cynic project of building an ————— 34 35 36

On enkrateia see also Stob. 3,17. See n. 27. Link 2005

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independent community within the wider world, but they show that the main points occur in both Christian and Cynic writings: community with the gods, animal=natural, rejection of wealth and the elimination of desire, both for food and for sexual congress. A community of anchorites can be a kind of Cynic state, and even an individual anchorite can be a citizen of the kosmos if not of the state. But a perfect society must be immutable. The Brahmans are not in Paradise though they live next door to it. Christians had to go one step further, and the price they paid for the establishment of an ideal community that worked was the rejection of sexual reproduction.37 No amount of education could be guaranteed to ensure that sons and daughters of the citizens would grow up to exhibit all the characteristics of the ideal city. That could only be done by creating citizens of those who came from their own free will. Christian monks are, as it were, elective Brahmans. Dandamis, and perhaps even Diogenes, would have felt at home on Mt. Athos.

Bibliography Africa, T. W. 1961. ‘Aristonicus, Blossius and the City of the Sun’, International Review of Social History 6, 110-24. Baldry, H. C. 1956. Ancient Utopias, Southampton: Camelot Press/University of Southampton. Berg, B. 1970. ‘Dandamis: an early Christian portrait of Indian asceticism’, C&M 31, 269305. Berghoff, W. 1987. Palladius; de gentibus Indiae et de Bragmanibus, Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hain. Brown, T. S. 1949. Onesicritus: A Study in Hellenistic Historiography, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Buora, M. 1973-4. ‘L’incontro di Alessandro e Diogene. Tradizione e significato’. Atti dell’ Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti 132, 247 ff. Donno, D. J. (ed and trans.) 1981. Campanella. The City of the Sun: A Poetic Dialogue. Tommaso Campanella, Berkeley: University of California Press. Charlesworth, J. H. (ed.) 1983-1985. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Vols. 1-2, London: Darton, Longman & Todd. Cole, Th. 1967. Democritus and the Sources of Greek Anthropology, Cleveland, OH: Western Reserve University Press (American Philological Association Monographs 25). Dawson, D. 1992. Cities of the Gods, New York: Oxford University Press. Derrett, J. D. M. 1960. ‘Palladii de Vita Bragmanorum Narratio’, C&M 21,108-135. Díaz Sánchez-Cid, J. R. (ed. and trans.) 1994. Nilo de Ancira: Tratado Ascético, Madrid: Edition Ciudad Nueva. Downing, F. G. 1992. Cynics and Christian Origins, Edinburgh: T & T Clark.

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The Shakers, to take one example, made the same discovery in eighteenth century America: see Holloway 1966, 64-79.

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Erskine, A. 1990. The Hellenistic Stoa, London: Duckworth. Ferguson, J. 1975. Utopias in the Classical World, London: Thames and Hudson. Flashar, H. 1974. Formen utopischen Denkens bei den Griechen, Innsbruck: Universität Innsbruck (Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft Heft 3). Futre Pinheiro, M. 2006. ‘Utopia and Utopias: a Study on a Literary genre in Antiquity’, in: S. N. Byrne, E. P. Cueva, and J. Alvares, (eds.), Authors, Authority, and Interpretation in the Ancient Novel, Groningen: Barkhuis Publishing & Groningen University Library, 147-71. Goulet-Cazé, M.-O. and Goulet, R. (eds.) 1993. Le cynisme ancient et ses prolongements, Actes du Colloque International du C. N. R. S. (Paris, 22-25 juillet 1991), Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Graf, D. F. 1993. ‘Early Hellenistic Travel Tales and Arabian Utopias’, Graeco-Arabica 5 (Athens: European Cultural Centre of Delphi), 113-117. Green, P. 1990. Alexander to Actium: the Hellenistic Age, London: Thames and Hudson. Grimm, V. 1996. From Feasting to Fasting. The Evolution of a Sin, London: Routledge. Holloway, M. 1966. Utopian Communities in America, 1680-1880, New York: Dover. Hunt, E. D. 1973. ‘Palladius of Helenopolis. A Party and its Supporters in the Church of the Late Fourth Century’, JThS n.s. 24, 456-480. Ihm, S. 2001 (ed.). Ps.-Maximus Confessor. Erste kritische Edition einer Redaktion des sacro-profanen Florilegiums Loci Communes, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. Ingalls, D. H. H. 1962. ‘Cynics and Pāśupatas: The Seeking of Dishonor’, HThR 55, 281-298. Ivanov, S. 2006. Holy Fools in Byzantium and Beyond, Oxford: Oxford University Press. James, M. R. (ed.) 1893. Apocrypha Anecdota II: A Collection of Thirteen Apocryphal Books and Fragments (Texts and Studies 2.3), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Karttunen, Klaus 1989. India in Early Greek Literature (Studia Orientalia 65), Helsinki: Finnish Oriental Society. Klotz, A. 1910. ‘Hodoiporia apo Edem tou Paradeisou achri ton Romaion’, RhM. 65, 607 ff. Knights, Ch. 1993. ‘The Story of Zosimus or the History of the Rechabites?’, JSJ 24, 235245. Knights, Ch. 1995. ‘Towards a Critical Introduction to the History of the Rechabites’. JSJ 26, 324-42. Krueger, D. 1993. ‘Diogenes the Cynic among the Fourth Century Fathers’, Vigiliae Christianae 47, 29-49. Krueger, D. 1996. Symeon the Holy Fool. Leontius’ s Life and the Late Antique City, Berkeley: University of California Press. Link, M. 2005. Die ‘Erzählung’ des Pseudo-Neilos: ein spätantiker Märtyrerroman, Munich and Leipzig: K.G. Saur. Lovejoy, A. O. and Boas, G. 1935. Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Malherbe, A. J. 1977. The Cynic Epistles, Atlanta: Scholars Press. Manuel, F. E. and Manuel, F.P. 1979. Utopian Thought in the Western World, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Martin, V. 1959. ‘Un recueil de diatribes cyniques: Pap. Genev. Inv. 271’, MH 16, 77-115. Mehta, G. 1980. Karma-Cola. The Marketing of the Mystic East, London: Jonathan Cape. Mendels, D. 1979. ‘Hellenistic Utopia and the Essenes’. HThR 72, 207-222. Moles, J. F. 1995. ‘The Cynics and Politics’ in A. Laks and M. Schofield (eds.), Justice and Generosity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 129-158. Navia, L. E. 1998. Diogenes of Sinope: the Man in the Tub, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

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Pfister, F. 1911. ‘Die Hodoiporia und die die Legende von Alexanders Zug nach dem Paradies’, RhMus 66, 468-470. Photiades, P. 1959. ‘Les diatribes cyniques de papyrus de Genève 271, leurs traductions et elaborations successives’, MH 16, 116-139. Pleij, H. 1997. Dreaming of Cockaigne. Medieval Fantasies of the Perfect Life, New York: Columbia University Press. Romm, J. S. 1992. The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought: Geography, Exploration and Fiction, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rougé, J. (ed. and trans.) 1966. Expositio Totius Mundi et Gentium (Sources Chrétiennes 124), Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf. Ruffell, I. 2000. ‘The World Turned Upside Down: Utopia and Utopianism in the Fragments of Old Comedy’, in: D. Harvey and J. Wilkins (eds.), The Rivals of Aristophanes, London: Duckworth, 473-506. Schofield, M. 21999. The Stoic Idea of the City, Chicago and London: University Press of Chicago Press (19911). Schwartz, F. F. 1982. ‘The Itinerary of Iambulus—Utopianism and History’, in: G.D. Sontheimer and P.K. Aithal (eds.), Indology and Law: Studies in honour of Professor J. Duncan M. Derrett, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 15-55. Shaw, T. M. 1998. The Burden of the Flesh. Fasting and Sexuality in early Christianity, Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Stoneman, R. 1994a. ‘Who are the Brahmans?’, CQ 44, 500-510. Stoneman, R. 1994b. Legends of Alexander the Great, London: Everyman. Stoneman, R. 1994c. ‘Romantic Ethnography: Central Asia and India in the Alexander Romance’, AncW 25, 93-107. Stoneman, R. 1995. ‘Naked philosophers: Alexander and the Brahmans in the Alexander historians and the Alexander Romance’, JHS 115, 99-114. Stoneman, R. 2003. ‘The legacy of Alexander in Ancient Philosophy’, in: J. Roisman (ed.), Brill’s Companion to Alexander the Great, Leiden: Brill, 325-346. Stoneman, R. (ed.) 2007. Il Romanzo di Alessandro, vol. I (trans. T. Gargiulo), Milano: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla/ A. Mondadori. Taylor, J. E. 2003. Jewish Women Philosophers of First-Century Alexandria: Philo’s ‘Therapeutae’ Reconsidered, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vogt, J. 1975. Ancient Slavery and the Ideal of Man (trans. T. Wiedemann), Oxford: Blackwell. Weerakkody, D. P. M. 1997. Taprobane: Ancient Sri Lanka as known to the Greeks and Romans, Turnhout: Brepols. Wilmart, A. 1933. ‘Les textes latines de la lettre de Palladius sur les Brahmanes’, Revue Benedictine 45, 27-42. Wimbush, V. 1990. Asceticism in Greco-Roman Antiquity, Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Winston, D. 1976. ‘Iambulus’ Islands of the Sun and Hellenistic Literary Utopias’, ScienceFiction Studies 3, 3, 219-227.

Targeting the ‘intellectuals’: Dio of Prusa and the Vita Aesopi S TEFANO J EDRKIEWICZ Rome

1. The Vita Aesopi (or Aesop Romance), an anonymous text written in the first centuries A.D., tells a paradoxical success story. Aesop, a most ugly slave, becomes divinely endowed with an exceptional wisdom; he gains freedom, raises to the top of the social hierarchy, turns into a world-famous sage; death, incurred in Delphi, grants him posthumous revenge and heroic status.1 The Vita exploits a long tradition that had been heaping multiple anecdotes onto the famous storyteller. ‘Aesop” was already well known at least since the second half of the 5th century B.C. for having been a slave in Samos and a victim of the Delphians. In the early Empire (e.g., for Plutarch and Dio of Prusa),2 he is illustrious both as a wise man of sorts and as the eponymous author of fables. The Vita uses the two original data, slavery and violent death in Delphi, as building-blocks supporting a ‘tragic’ architecture, which provides the consistency demanded for the tale of an exemplary life: the protagonist meets defeat immediately after success, and achieves everlasting glory at the price of his life.3 The Vita, an instance of ‘consumption’ literature typically focusing on ‘content’ rather than ‘form’, intends its readership to derive considerable pleasure from the counter-cultural exploits of the main hero (extending for almost 80 chapters out of 142): finally, the unschooled Aesop asserts his own peculiar wisdom by ————— 1

2 3

The Vita Aesopi has been preserved in two versions, G (I-II century AD?) and W (III-IV century AD?), and some fragmentary papyri. Most recent overall discussion: Jouanno 2006, 14-22 and Kurke 2011, 159-201 (about which see Jedrkiewicz 2013). Editions used here: Ferrari 1997, for G; Karla 2001, for W. For Plutarch's lively interest in Aesop, see Jedrkiewicz 1997. For Dio of Prusa, see infra. Tragic development is specially stressed in Vita G in order to provide a consistent biographical pattern: Jedrkiewicz 1989, 157-182. An overall structural analysis: Holzberg 1992. Philosophy and the Ancient Novel, 65–80

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proving that his master, Xanthos the Philosopher, effectively lacks scientific competences, teaching skills, and morals. Among the various contemporary depictions of Aesop's exploits, the Vita is unique in taking such a decidedly polemical orientation.4 Yet this text also echoes the general discourse which articulates the idea of ‘culture’ at the time of the Second Sophistic. In the Greco-Roman world of the first centuries A.D., paideia indeed ranks as a paramount value: it enshrines and reproduces the Hellenic cultural tradition, includes methods to acquire knowledge and ethical principles. It also provides a restricted group with access to what is considered to be ‘knowledge’. Cultural pre-eminence therefore entitles to, and is the mark of, elitist supremacy.5 Thus the Vita begs the very question: ‘what is real knowledge?’ It begs it by the special bias of making fun both of institutionalized learning (paideia) and of the institutionalized man of learning (the ‘intellectual’, pepaideumenos). But this approach too recalls a widespread contemporary trend: sham ‘intellectuals’ are quickly taunted for not performing their task. The philosophers, whose image remains rather controversial throughout this period, are specially singled out for criticism.6 Xanthos, the laughing-stock in the Vita, firmly belongs to this group. 2. Therefore, two questions arise: (a) What does the Vita really target? A faulty individual or a faulty system? (b) Who is mocking whom? Are the pepaideumenoi laughing at themselves or is somebody else deriding them? The first question invests the interpretation of Xanthos as a literary character. Is this individual a bad, that is, an incompetent, pepaideumenos? If so, Aesop’s blows would in fact be aimed at cultural impostors, not at institutionalized culture as such. Alternatively, is the paideia that Xanthos represents a bad one, in the sense that it finally amounts to no real knowledge? Aesop’s program would then be an extremely radical one: to expose the existing system of learning as worthless in its whole. The second question may produce two widely divergent answers as well. Is Aesop’s counter-cultural performance the expression of a self-critical attitude arising from within the cultural establishment, or is it the mark of some ‘external’ opposition against the monopolization of knowledge by the social elites? The first answer would imply that some ‘intellectuals’ at least were aware of the shortcomings of their own group. The second would brand ‘high’ culture as such ————— 4 5 6

See e.g. the discussion in Jedrkiewicz 1997, 133-40. Hahn 1989, 192-6; Flaig 2002, 121-5. ‘Philosopher’ means somebody able to discuss subjects of a theoretical and ethical nature. The philosopher’s bad image: Jerphagnon 1981.

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as an alien, meaningless phenomenon in the eyes of the subaltern classes, yet fully instrumental in legitimizing social domination by the pepaideumenoi. The overall grotesque reversal at the core of the Aesopic biography would attempt to undermine that supremacy.7 But complications arise. Aesop’s counter-cultural activities appear to be substantially connected, by and large, to learned representations and doctrines.8 The hero of the Vita draws many of his critical overtones from Socrates and from Socrates’ crazy duplication, Diogenes the Cynic:9 two characters represented, in early Imperial times, as devoted to unmasking sham intellectuals and exposing all the various aporias produced by current erudite, or not-so-erudite, practices. Such polemics originate from within the cultural system they criticize. Dio of Prusa, in the second half of the 1st century A.D., is a case in point: this typical pepaideumenos extols ‘high’ literary tradition, and nevertheless submits the current cultural discourse to recurrent criticisms, not least by introducing an ironical Socrates or a sarcastic Diogenes as acting personae in his text.10 It is well known that Dio also refers to ‘Aesop’ (and reproduces or mentions a fable, either labeling it ‘Aesopic’ or not) more than once.11 The Dionian character obviously cannot be identified with the hero of the Vita tout court. It is therefore all the more striking that several pages of Dio, discussing the function of culture and the role of the ‘intellectual in contemporary society, may be read as subtexts to some given episodes in the Vita. This paper is no exercise in Quellenforschung: it does not aim at establishing ‘derivations’ from Dio’s Discourses to the Vita Aesopi (or vice versa, for that matter), but tries to identify some of the common ideological assumptions that these two literary ensembles, for all their apparent differences in authorial origin, textual strategy, and overall orientation, seem to share at a closer look.

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8 9 10

11

Perry 1936, 15-6; La Penna 1962, 302-306; Winkler 1985, 282-283, 287-291; Jedrkiewicz 1989, 174-176 with explicit qualifications at 209-212. Vita G seems to emphasize this meaning, also by mentioning a hostility between Aesop and Apollo. Contrarily to some current views, the latter opposition, however, does not need to allegorize cultural subversion: see now Jedrkiewicz 2009, 188-196. Hägg 2003, 68: parody hits almost any philosophical school. Jedrkiewicz 1989, 111-27. ‘Mad Socrates’: Ael. V. H.14, 33; D. L. 6, 54. Dio’s ideological and cultural agenda: Desideri 1978. Socrates and Diogenes as Dio’s models: Döring 1979, 91-93; Brancacci 2000, 256-260. ‘Aesop’: D. Chr. Or. 12, 7; 32, 63; 33, 16; 72, 13-14. Telling a fable in full: Or. 12, 7-8; 33, 16; 72, 14-16 (the animal story told at Or. 34, 5 does not qualify as an Aesopic fable). Mentioning a fable: Or. 47, 20; 55, 10.

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3. Xanthos looks like a typical representative of the Second Sophistic. His knowledge is acquired by learning and spread by teaching. A most famous and authoritative philosopher (GW 20), he performs impromptu before his admiring students (G 23) (Dio too is ironical about those teachers ‘who are lifted aloft as on wings by their fame and disciples’).12 Scholastikoi flock at his dinner-parties as at some exciting sessions of travaux pratiques (GW 52). Having been schooled in Athens by the best specialists in all disciplines, Xanthos boasts of an exemplary paideia (G 36). In front of some threatening omens, the polis of Samos naturally turns towards such an outstanding scholar as the best source of intelligence and advice (G 81): the intellectual has a political role to play precisely because of his epistemic excellence.13 Xanthos fails. No surprise to the reader: at this stage of the plot, Aesop has conclusively exposed him as a foolish, ignorant and dishonest individual. The Professor lacks the prerequisite for any claim to paideia: control of logos (‘I’ll teach him how to speak’, Aesop keeps repeating: G 36, 38, 40, 41, 51). He is marred by the philosophically capital sin, inability to rule oneself: he is led by his wife initially (G 22, 29, 31, 44-46, 49-50) and finally by his servant (from GW 68 onwards). For good measure, he is resentful and devious (GW 42, 49, 56, 58, 61, 74, 77, 79), a miser (W 24, G 27, 80, 90), a drunkard (GW 68). He is the true slave: the slave to his own passions. No morals, no knowledge: as Dio puts it, effective freedom can only be enjoyed by the authentically wise.14 Aesop belongs to the most subversive kind of slaves: those who take their masters’ place. The Vita shows how substance must prevail over appearance, so allowing the presumed ignorant to display real knowledge and the presumed powerless to exert effective power. Such ideas are also active within Dio’s philosophical views. Knowledge, he asserts, belongs to those who appear to lack it at first sight: in his Discourse 12, as in Vita GW 25, being aware of one’s own ignorance is the precondition for reaching any knowledge worth the name. Dio develops this Socratic paradox precisely by means of an Aesopic fable: for all his brightness, the peacock, the apparently omniscient sophist, is no match for the unattractive owl, the authentically wise philosopher, whose initial assertion was: ‘I am not wiser than you’.15 Dio, following Socrates’ example, is willing to ————— 12 13

14

15

D. Chr. Or. 12,5 (transl. Cohoon). Education and political functions: Bowersock 1969, 43-58; Schmitz 1997, 45-52; Flaig 2002, 124-127. ‘Moral” slavery: D. Chr. Or. 14, 17-18; see also Or. 32, 90. Reciprocally, Aesop is a ‘free” slave: Jedrkiewicz 1989, 205-207. Or. 12, 1-16; Socrates’ ‘ignorance”: Or. 55, 8. The Socratic opposition ‘appearance vs. content”: Or. 12, 5. The related metaphor of a good wine within an unattractive flask (amphora) appears both at Or. 49, 11 and Vita G 26.

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look stupid and ridiculous at first, provided he may in the end vindicate authentic paideia against its spurious counterpart, sophistry. The Vita ignores the quarrel opposing ‘sophists’ and ‘philosophers’, which is ongoing in Imperial times and exploited by Dio for his own (variable) authorial ends: yet Aesop too, when appearing in public, undergoes mockery and insult at first, only to eventually impress his superior wisdom on everybody.16 Aesop can be harsh and derisive (e.g. at W 24, GW 26, G 31-2, 36, 45-6, 53, 55, GW 67, GW 124-6), a behaviour recalling Dio’s contention that it is the philosopher’s duty to be pikros (‘caustic’) in his polemics, not minding the resulting hostility.17 Real knowledge is real power: Dio defines the philosopher as the ultimate ruler,18 and Xanthos realizes that he bought himself a master (G 40). 4. Now comes an ideological climax. In the Vita, a gardener humbly begs the Professor to answer a question, a trivial one, yet so haunting as to make him sleepless: why do wild plants grow far better than domestic ones (G 35)? Xanthos flairs an authentic philosophical problem here, notwithstanding his initial assumption that no manual worker would ever give a thought to ‘scientific’ matters; however, he cannot think of an answer. He tries to escape by declaring that ‘divine providence is in charge of everything’: Aesop laughs the explanation away. Xanthos boasts of his personal education, the best in the whole Greek world: Aesop stresses how useless that is just proving (G36). Eventually, Xanthos takes shelter behind social dignity: theoretical discussions belong to the conference-hall, the akroaterion, not the orchard; let the slave Aesop solve the problem by means of mere ‘practical expediency’ (he is polypeiros) (G 37).19 Thus, the socially prominent, academically trained full-time scholar proves to be well below the expectations of the ignorant: the gardener had naturally pinned his hopes on him; how can the solution come from that ugly slave (GW 37)? Well, it just cannot come from somebody who is unable to react to simpleworded questions asked by simple-minded interlocutors (it can be easily inferred that this character will only feel safe when performing in front of a selected audience, so admirative that they will never raise awkward questions). What is the worth of such an ‘intellectual’?

————— 16 17

18

19

Or. 13, 29-37; 32, 11; 72, 9-10; Vita WG 24-26, 87-88. Pikros: Or. 32, 18. Cf. Or. 12, passim; Or. 32, 8-11; 33, 4-5 ff.; 34, 2-3; 35, 1. See Desideri 1991, 3994. Or. 49, 3: the philosopher can rule himself (cf. ibid.9-11), as well as his family and his polis. On the learned presuppositions of this debate, see Jedrkiewicz 2009, 186 n.58.

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Dio’s answer: the philosophers who ‘will not appear before the people or even deign to converse [with them] … wishing to maintain their dignity, are seen to be of no utility’.20 Of course, to provide a speech effectively bridging cultural gaps is never easy. In particular, to face a mass-audience is a daunting prospect. This is why both courage and competence are required to that end, according to Dio; and so much is implied in the Vita episode where Aesop calmly confronts the hostile Samian assembly, and eventually gains general applause for his eloquence (a crucial scene: the hero is winning his freedom).21 According to Dio, along with the Seven Sages, Socrates and Diogenes,22 no other than ‘Aesop’ masters the rhetorical and conceptual instruments required for universal communication. To tell a fable is to convey a given meaning by way of an image, something precisely recommended by Dio for putting abstract yet relevant ideas within reach of an unsophisticated public.23 An outstanding oral performer in the line of Socrates and Diogenes, this storyteller can produce the kind of discourse allowing even a culturally disparate public to grasp the inherent message: his impressive little tales convey striking analogies instead of abstract arguments.24 In the Vita Aesop solves the gardener’s problem precisely by means of a parable: earth is like a mother to wild plants, like a stepmother to cultivated plants. Now, Dio does deplore the abysmal incompetence of several pepaideumenoi: but Aesop’s sarcasms are explicitly aimed at the educational curriculum producing such an amount of totally pointless learning: ‘I am not laughing at you, I am laughing at your teachers’ (G 36). What Aesop calls into question is the value of the existing culture as an epistemic system. The implication is not just that individual education does not need to depend from social position.25 It is, above all, that a lack of rhetorical efficiency in spreading knowledge among those who most need it precisely because they lack it must betray a lack of cognitive competence. A paideia designed for the exclusive use of the pepaideumenoi can only produce logoi finally having no epistemic relevance whatever. The ————— 20 21 22

23 24

25

Or. 32, 20 (transl. Lamar Crosby). D. Chr. Or. 32, 22-24, 37-38; Vita GW 86-90. Or. 72,10-13; 8,7; 54,1-3; 72,11 (on Socrates and Diogenes being always available); 72,12 (the Seven Sages). Or. 55,9-11. Images in Dio’s discourse: Desideri 1991, 3909; 3916-7; 3929; 3945-6. Appreciation for Aesop’s oral sophia and rhetorical technique: Or. 72, 11-13. Aesopic fables as ‘the most adequate response to the specific problems of popular education’: Desideri 1991, 3950. Similarly, at G 59 Aesop shows that ethical values too can be universally shared: he identifies a peasant (agroikos) who behaves urbanely (he is politikos) and displays the supreme virtue of not being a busybody (he is aperiergos).

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institutional scholar who proves unable to instruct the ignorant can provide knowledge to nobody at all, because he has none himself. 5. Xanthos’ lack of competence is not restricted to the realm of nature. He is ineffective in politics as well. The failure to interpret the prodigy foreboding King Croesus’ onslaught against Samos represents Xanthos' conclusive defeat (GW 81 ff.): as Dio explains, the pepaideumenos proves his worth by imparting vital assistance to the city.26 But Xanthos’ personal paideia is as useless to the community as it was to the gardener; it also appears to be useless to him, a recognition that drives him towards suicide (Aesop makes the point with due irony: G 85). It is now up to the slave, the real philosopher, to save Xanthos’ life and to provide the Samians with appropriate advice (GW 86-100). As a free man, Aesop can become a political advisor: to the Samian polis first, then to Croesus (G 98-100), then to King Lykourgos in Babylon (GW101124). There, having been appointed Chief of the Royal Household (G 101), he holds supreme knowledge in alliance to supreme power (the perennial dream of all ‘intellectuals’...). He has now reached the highest level of philosophical performance: to rule the rulers - again, in Dio’s words.27 The idea that knowledge is the best and most natural support for power also inspires the Romance of Ahiqar.28 The interpolation of part of this work within the Vita (= chapp.101-124) is far from casual: it confirms that political expertise is an essential part of Aesop’s wisdom. By exhorting Croesus to ‘reconcile’ himself with Samos (G100), Aesop acts in the interests as much of the threatened city as of the threatening king (Dio provides the idea that the philia established between a basileus and his subordinates is most beneficial to both).29 In the service of Lykourgos, Aesop triumphs over the rival Pharaoh Nectanebo in a riddling competition, and peacefully achieves an overwhelming victory for Babylon (GW 102, 105-6, 108, 111-23). A competent philosopher is worth a standing army. The reverse proof is given by the monarch who is so foolish as to deprive himself of the support of knowledge. Thus, at a certain moment Lykourgos sentences Aesop to death on a false charge (the execution does not take place), only ————— 26 27

28

29

Or. 7, 49. Cf. 49,13: a philosopher must be useful to his polis. The philosopher as a political adviser: D. Chr. Or. 49,3 (indeed, as the effective ruler: ibid. 6-8). For this ideology in Imperial Rome: Desideri 1978, 80-90; for its Dionian formulations: Desideri 1991, 3955-3956; for Dio’s theories about the ideal monarchy as the ‘rule of wisdom’: Desideri 1991a, 3897. An updated discussion of this typical specimen of Oriental ‘wisdom literature’ in its relation to the Vita Aesopi is provided by Contini - Grottanelli 2005. Or.1, 20-25, 30-32; 3, 86 ff.; 12, 22, 24.

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to discover that, left to himself, he can no longer hold his ground in competition against Nectanebo (GW104-6): he instantly loses any self-control, succumbs to fits of rage and depression, kills the most loyal of his remaining assistants, and envisages suicide (G 106). Clearly, when deprived of their philosophical advisers, monarchs turn into tyrants. This degeneration is duly described and blamed by Dio.30 Dio stresses the existence of one supreme authority in the kosmos, Zeus. In exerting power, human rulers should strive to replicate the behaviour of that supremely wise and benevolent ruler.31 Aesop, for whom a king’s power deserves ‘the same honor as that of God’ (G 109 - transl. Daly 1961), exploits a similar ideological apparatus when refuting Nectanebo’s claims to monarchical supremacy over Lykourgos. By means of some apposite mises en scène, the Pharaoh likens himself to the celestial bodies (Moon or Sun) shedding light all around (GW 112-15): Aesop counters that Zeus, holding supreme might in the universe, controls light and darkness at will; since it is Lykourgos who is like Zeus, Lykourgos obviously extends his sovereignty over Nectanebo as well (G 115). Dio’s Discourses (explicitly) and the Aesopian biography (implicitly) share one same political background. The occasionally unstable relationship between the Greek poleis (Prusa included) and the overarching Roman empire appear to find an echo, in the Vita, in the shifting relationship between Samos and King Croesus, which only Aesop's diplomatic genius sets on a cooperative path. In the Vita, therefore, Aesop plays a very Dionian role: he acts as the prominent local ‘intellectual’ whose paideutic resources allow his own city to negotiate with the Imperial powers, and at least to hold its ground against them (chapp. 96-100). The kings Aesop has to deal with are as difficult and dangerous to handle as any Caesar in the Dionian text.32 How can this attachment to absolute rulers square with Aesop’s originally subversive attitude? The protagonist of the Vita, who was dumb before divine intervention, engages in polemics as soon as he can speak (G 9), yet ends up as an adjuvant to his former opponents (Xanthos and Croesus, and additionally Lykourgos). He was most disrespectful to his master when a slave; as soon as he becomes a free individual, he is fully deferential to the masters of all men, the kings. Before declaring them entitled to divine honors (G 109), he carefully ————— 30 31

32

Or.1, 7, and 81: the tyrant is liable to become insane and to undermine his own power. Or.1, 28-41. Cf. Or. 36, 35-37: the kosmos as ‘the polis of Zeus’. Dio’s Zeus as the model monarch: Desideri 1991, 3954. Dio, however, seems to be much less enthusiastic than his contemporary Plutarch about the degree of conformity of the Roman Empire to the divine paradigm: Swain 1996, 200-206. On such role as enacted in Dio's Discourses, see Swain 1996, 186-241.

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speaks the truth to Croesus in such a way as not to antagonize the monarch (he notably uses a parable, a diplomatic form of argument: G 98-99) and bows to the ground in front of the potentate (G 100). Lykourgos realizes that Aesop is ‘the pillar of his kingdom’ (G 106).33 How consistent is this Aesop? Fully, Dio would presumably answer, for his own Diogenes is unpleasant to his interlocutors precisely in order to help them. Properly applied, harshness is a paideutic instrument.34 Moreover Aesop, unpleasant or not, not only never refuses to be helpful in the Vita: he never challenges the principle of authority. When a rural slave, he resents being mistreated by the supervisor: but if only the master knew (G 13)! He declares that a servant’s duty is to be useful (admittedly, with that touch of roguery which he derives, as a character, from his colleagues of the Old and New Comedy)35 (G 17-19). On the verge of being sold to his new owner, he pledges not to run away so long as he is well treated (G 26).36 And it is with perfectly good faith that he declares his ‘good disposition’ (eunoia) to Xanthos. (G 63). 6. In addition, the sarcasms uttered by the grotesque critic might emanate from a learned source: a fragment of Euripides for Xanthos’ benefit (fr.1059 Nauck2, at G 32), a famous Homeric line for the discomfiture of the Delphians (Il. 6. 146 at G 124), and, when in Babylon, a string of maxims coming from well-established traditions of wisdom.37 Whatever their harshness, Aesop’ utterances bring no substantial innovation to tradition. In the Vita everybody is made aware of Aesop's relentless opposition to Xanthos, yet Aesop's own brand of knowledge, whatever the initial perception, is definitely not presented as extravagant in its substance: Aesop's divine sponsors are the universal patrons of culture, the Muses.38 ————— 33

34

35 36

37

38

The ability in dealing with absolute rulers is a traditional Aesopic quality: Diod. Sic. 9, 28,1 (Aesop explains how kings should be handled). Pace Winkler, Aesop's role in the Vita is by no means restricted to uttering ‘critical truths about authority’ and ‘unspeakably irreverent thoughts about rulers that are forbidden to normal citizens’ (Winkler 1985, 287). Aesop certainly opposes Nectanebo, but this is part of his mission in the service of another King, Lykourgos. Diogenes: Or. 8,5-8. On Aesop, cf. Jedrkiewicz 1989, 191; Holzberg 1992, 56-69 (Marincic 2003, 62-3, 65-66 can see no consistency in Aesop’s behaviour). Goins 1989. Cf D. Chr., Or. 10, 3 and 7: Diogenes approves of the slave running away from his unworthy master; 49,2: it is the bad ruler who is eventually left alone or disobeyed. The maxims uttered by Aesop at GW 109-10 are no mere transposition from the Romance of Ahiqar: see Luzzatto 2003. On Aesop's relation to the Muses in the Vita, see Jedrkiewicz 2009, 176-187.

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How radical is then the counter-cultural Aesopian alternative? Aesop knows much better than everybody else: does that imply that he also knows differently? In a way, yes. The Aesopian cognitive practices include a peculiar, strongly differentiating feature: the epistemological relevance of the bodily stratum. Not yet Xanthos’ slave, the wise guy had implicitly ‘philosophized’ by teaching objects to walk (peripatein).39 Scatological references recur whenever Aesop is at his most scathing: he will turn into a ‘pure Demosthenes’ if he sees anybody performing bodily functions (so Xanthos declares: G 32). Explicit, continuous references to food, excreta and sex recall the inverted world of Attic comedy.40 What is up goes down, and vice versa: one always risks defecating one’s brains (G 67). Arithmetical problems are raised as practical jokes about bodily properties (‘how many legs to one roasted pig?’, the correct answer being ‘five’) (GW 42-3). At dinner, the relation of the One to the Many is embodied in Aesop’s action of boiling a single lentil for a whole soup, which moreover allows him to highlight the importance of linguistic correctness (GW 39-41). When Xanthos gets praise by his guests for having designed a ‘philosophical’ menu, Aesop, once more as a cook, provides the appropriate refutation: diarrhea (he just serves an excessive amount of the material instruments of logos, tongues: GW 51-55). By becoming the (occasional) lover of Xanthos’ wife, Aesop assumes the Professor’s prerogatives in the sexual area too (W 75-6). In Delphi, he narrates how the beetle triumphed: by threatening to drop dung on Zeus (GW 137). Aesop is the (literally) embodied emblem of the contrast between appearance and reality; he usually performs by oral and visual means, with spoken words and meaningful gestures (the written word is merely a trick to build and solve enigmas: G 78-80, 122).41 He refers to corporality as much as he relies on his own body to express his ideas.42 No doubt, body language is relevant to ‘high’ culture as well.43 In the Vita, Xanthos is indeed made to dissert about the ‘silent philosophy’, as he calls it (G 23), and described as he attempts to manipu————— 39 40 41

42 43

Jedrkiewicz 1989, 196 n. 34. Jouanno 2006, 41-2. At G 100, Aesop writes down his mythoi and places the resulting ‘book’ in Croesus’ Royal Library. Whether such action transgresses the boundary between ‘high” and ‘low” culture (as argued by Finkelpearl 2003, 46) or not, this is the final touch to Aesop’s role as a royal adjuvant: the collected Aesopian wisdom will remain at the exclusive disposal of the Lydian kings. Moreover, this might be a late textual addition, introduced when the text of Vita G was being reproduced in the manuscripts as an introduction to the series of collected Aesopic fables: cf. Holzberg 1999, 47. See Jedrkiewicz 1989, 189-90, 192. Perry 1952, 43 ad loc. points to the parallel provided by Philostr. Im. I 3 (= Perry Test. 52): a literary description of a painting representing Aesop's fables ‘in action’. Nonverbal communication is also theorized by Quint. I 9,4.

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late the bodily stratum himself (he urinates during the walk, much to Aesop's astonishment: GW 28), yet in such episodes he appears as inept as ever. In the first instance, he produces some pompous speculations about the arcane wisdom of putting a monster like Aesop on show for sale between two nice-looking slaves, and wholly misses the point: the two are hiding their physical shortcomings, while Aesop is so ugly that he simply cannot hide it; he must show the truth. In the second case, Xanthos degrades philosophy by using it to legitimize his gratuitously indecent bodily posture (Aesop: ‘Really convincing!’). This is the ‘low’ ground on which Aesop seems to oppose ‘high’ culture most radically. And yet, Dio too can occasionally produce meaning by way of scatology.44 So goes the scene in Oration 8: immediately after recounting Heracles’ labors to a large audience including many self-styled ‘intellectuals’ (‘sophists’), Diogenes (who else?) squats on the ground and performs an indecent act. The philosopher had just been trying to spread the notion that ethical behavior consists in shunning pleasure and in striving for what can be even strongly unpleasant, the hard task of ponos. Everybody had enjoyed the tale; everybody now turns away in disgust; which proves that nobody has understood the philosopher’s message, ‘go for ponos - even if it looks repulsive’. Dio thus depicts an actual cognitive operation almost as the Vita might do. His Diogenes uses an obscene gesture for an epistemic purpose: to evaluate the effective impact of a lesson on the addressees (zero, in this case). 7. Back to the initial questions: (a) is Xanthos’ failure the mark of a flawed ‘intellectual’ or of a flawed culture? (b) Whose point of view does the Vita adopt in describing such a failure? And an additional question needs to be raised now: (c) what is the use of culture? Answering (a) is only apparently straightforward. Xanthos is being targeted, not for being a ‘perfect’ representative of the contemporary cultural system, but for being ridiculously ‘imperfect’; yet he performs so badly as to discredit the whole paideia he boasts of. When Dio criticizes incompetent ‘intellectuals’ he denounces those individual pepaideumenoi who shun their responsibility and pervert their role.45 The Vita seems to go definitely further in intimating (remember the scene in the orchard) that the present elitist paideia is structurally unable to provide any real knowledge at all. But the alternative Aesop provides ultimately relies on what a real pepaideumenos should know.

————— 44 45

Or. 8.36. Cf. Whitmarsh 2004, 458-459. Or. 32,10.

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Answering (b) is not easy either. The lack of a self-generated, reflexive critical capability must be considered as a structural deficiency within a given cognitive system. Can effective criticism against institutional paideia be produced only by outsiders to the system? Both the Vita and Dio produce a mixed reaction. Xanthos is such a mediocrity that even the scholastikoi around him can notice his shortcomings (e.g. W 24). But Aesop is needed in order to cause the disciples to burst out: ‘You are wrong, Master!’ (G 53; cf. G 26); and he is the one who flatly tells Xanthos: ‘you are talking nonsense’ (G 36). Truly, he is not totally alone; somebody else is also made to shout, ironically, ‘Really, what a nice philosopher you are!’: the Professor’s wife (G 31). A slave and a woman, the latter philosophically incompetent, although being sophé (‘astute’: G 32), have to be called in to expose the institutional wise as a substantial fool. Can such a blow at paideia come from anybody other than the marginal, the outsiders, those lacking paideia? But, again, in the end paideia is not what Aesop lacks: he detains it best of all... Dio's most impressive criticism of his fellow-pepaideumenoi (the ‘sophists’) is implemented in Discourse 8: it calls the emblematic outsider Diogenes into play. Yet Dio seems to beware of outsiders. One of the reasons why he deplores the substantial incompetence of a large number of ‘intellectuals’ is that such failures leave a free hand to those dubious characters who preach all sort of nonsense in the streets, the Cynics46 (when Dio happens to call Diogenes a Cynic, it is to blame him for uncivilized behavior).47 The Dionian Diogenes looks somewhat similar to the Aesop of the Vita: he antagonizes the pepaideumenoi, is harsh and sarcastic, attracts scandalized reactions, silences whoever calls him a busybody (polypragmon).48 Yet Dio never says a word about Aesop's countercultural exploits. However, he introduces this character by a curious turn of phrase: ‘some people’ believe that he was wise and clever, and ‘possibly they are not wholly mistaken in their supposition’.49 Does that suggest that some other people might see ‘Aesop’ differently, as the uncompromising countercultural hero apparently described in the Vita? Even if aware of such views, Dio chooses to ignore them: for him, a viable cultural alternative can only be put forward by those who effectively know what culture is. This is proved by his Diogenes: both an insider and an outsider, sending philosophical messages by ————— 46 47

48 49

Or. 32,9; 34, 2. Or. 64,18. Elsewhere, Dio attempts to rectify the most typically ‘Cynic’ features traditionally attached to Diogenes, such as bodily neglect and the like (see notably Or. 6, 812). Diogenes however keeps the deceptive appearance of a beggar (e.g. Or. 8, 1). Or. 4, 30-2. Or. 72,13 (transl. Lamar Crosby 1951).

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means of mythological tales in the ‘high’ cultural tradition while achieving his performance by means of obscene body-language. As for question (c), Dio and the Vita agree on a main principle: gardeners are entitled to philosophical curiosity and philosophers to satisfy it. The Vita apparently doubts that institutionalized paideia can provide the right instruments: something different is needed, and this is what Aesop apparently puts forward. For Dio as well, the solution is an Aesopic (Socratic, Diogenic) kind of discourse, implementing a potentially universal mode of didactic communication.50 Unfortunately, this answer too is ambiguous at best. In the Vita, storytelling is no invincible weapon. Aesop seems to close his brilliant career by a miserable failure in Delphi. So far, he had always been gaining the upper hand in face-to-face exchanges with common women and men, philosophers, kings, and the Samian ekklesia: now the Delphians are incensed by his reckless insults and unmoved by his parables.51 Is it because they perceive only hostility and no benevolence in his attitude?52 Or because any wise man worth his reputation must tragically die of a sudden lapse of wisdom?53 Or because mass-audiences, fables or no fables, are ultimately impervious to philosophy, culture, knowledge?54 For sure, the hero is avenged by the gods and reaps a posthumous triumph. As for the Delphians, they will pay heroic honors to the dead Aesop, but will apparently remain the same ignorant and dishonest lot that the living Aesop had to face. At the very end, Dio might prove equally pessimistic. He asserts that the general public, if properly addressed, can prove responsive to philosophical discourse.55 But he also piles up qualifications: some audiences demand entertainment, not instruction;56 others refuse whatever morals may be preached;57 only the happy few can understand philosophy;58 and, like the owl of the Aesopic fable, philosophers, nowadays, make no rhetorical impact at all.59 Nobody is made wiser by Diogenes’ failed performance, after which, like the (once again, ————— 50 51 52

53

54 55 56 57 58 59

Cf. Desideri 1991, 3906-3907, 3941-3942. GW 124-141: Aesop narrates seven parables (out of fifteen in the whole Vita). Aesop’s insults open and close the episode (GW 124-26: three instances; G140-41: two instances). For discussion of Aesop's failure, death and ultimate victory in Delphi, see Jedrkiewicz 2009a. Cf. Ferrari 1997, 36. Or. 32,24. Cf. Desideri 1991, 3931-3932. Or. 32,4-11; 41-42, 49-50 and passim. Or. 72,6-8. Cf. Or. 5,1; 11,14-15; 60,2. Cf. Whitmarsh 2004, 459-460, on Or.11,1. Or. 12,9; 72,16.

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Aesopic) frogs as soon as the snake leaves the pond, the ‘sophists’ resume the noises they call ‘culture’.60 8. Anyway, for Dio as for the Vita, the ‘intellectual’ can have no other task than to diffuse authentic knowledge both upwards and downwards, so to speak, for the benefit of kings and pepaideumenoi as well as of common people. If this is indeed the message, it would be inaccurate to label both the possible author(s) and the intended readership of the Vita as uncompromisingly ‘popular’ opponents of institutionalized paideia.61 The Vita would rather reproduce the point of view of individuals whose exposure of the failures of elitist culture is only made possible by their (great or small) acquaintance with that very culture.62 Such criticisms need both to originate within the system and to put it at a distance. The very activity of passing sarcastic judgments on ‘high’ culture from a marginal position, while at the same time reaffirming that knowledge is a universal value (as done by the Vita), requires the appropriation of some relevant segments of the current erudite discourse (such as produced by Dio). With its constant questioning of the notion of paideia, its parallel quest for ‘authentic’ knowledge, and its representation of Aesop's ultimately tragic existence, the Vita Aesopi could well be an instance of such a ‘marginalist’ orientation producing an utopia.

Bibliography Bowersock, G.W. 1969. Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Brancacci, A. 2000. ‘Dio, Socrates and Cynicism’, in: S. Swain (ed.), Dio Chrysostom: politics, letters, and philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 240-260. Cavallo, G. 2007. ‘Il lettore comune nel mondo greco-romano tra contesto sociale, livello di istruzione e produzione letteraria’, in: J. Fernández Delgado et al. (eds.), Actas del Simposio Internacional Universidad de Salamanca 17-19 Noviembre de 2004. Cassino: Università degli Studi di Cassino, 557-576. Contini, R., Grottanelli, C. 2005 (eds.), Il saggio Ahiqar. Fortuna e trasformazioni di uno scritto sapienziale. Il testo più antico e le sue versioni, Brescia: Paideia Editrice. Daly, L.W. (ed. and trans.) Aesop Without Morals: The Famous Fables, and a Life of Aesop, New York and London: Thomas Yoselof. Desideri, P. 1978. Dione di Prusa: un intellettuale greco nell'Impero Romano, MessinaFirenze: Casa Editrice G. D'Anna.

————— 60 61 62

Or. 8,1. (the sophistai): allusion to fable 44 Perry (cf. Phaed.1,2). The term ‘popular’ is most reluctantly used here only for want of anything better. The possible author of the Vita Aesopi as a ‘marginal’: Jedrkiewicz 1989, 177-178. Cf. also Hägg 2003, 66-68; Cavallo 2007.

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Desideri, P. 1991. ‘Tipologia e varietà di funzione comunicativa degli scritti dionei’, ANRW XXXIII. 5, 3903-3959. Desideri, P. 1991a. ‘Dione di Prusa tra Ellenismo e Romanità’, ANRW XXXIII. 5, 3882-3902. Döring, K. 1979. Exemplum Socratis. Studien zur Sokratesnachwirkung in der kynischstoischen Popularphilosophic der frühen Kaiserzeit und im frühen Christentum, Hermes Einzelschrift 42, Wiesbaden: Steiner. Ferrari, F. (ed.) 1997. Romanzo di Esopo. Introduzione e testo critico a cura di F.Ferrari. Traduzione e note di Guido Bonelli e Giorgio Sandrolini, Milano: Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, 5-45. Finkelpearl, E. ‘Lucius and Aesop gain a voice’, in Panayotakis et. al. 2003, 37-51. Flaig, E. 2002. ‘Bildung als Feindin der Philosophie. Wie Habitusformen in der hohen Kaiserzeit kollidierten’, in: A. Goltz et al. (eds.), Gelehrte in der Antike, Alexander Demandt zum 65. Geburtstag, Köln-Weimar-Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 121-136. Goins, S.E. 1989. ‘The Influence of Old Comedy on the Vita Aesopi’, CW 83, 28-30. Hägg, Th. 2004. ‘A Professor and his Slave’, in: T. Engberg-Pedersen (ed.), Conventional Values of the Hellenistic Greeks, Studies in Hellenistic civilization VIII. Århus : Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 1997 = Hägg, Th. Parthenope: Studies in Ancient Greek Fiction (1969-2004). Edited by L. B. Mortensen, T.Eide. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 41-70 (quoted). Hahn, J. 1989. Der Philosoph und die Gesellschaft. Selbstverständnis, öffentliches Auftreten und populäre Erwartungen in der hohen Kaiserzeit, Heidelberger Althistorische Beiträge und Epigraphische Studien 7, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. Holzberg, N. 1992. ‘Der Äsop-Roman. Eine strukturanalytische Interpretation’, in: N.Holzberg (ed.), Der Äsop-Roman. Motivgeschichte und Erzählstruktur, Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 33-75. Holzberg, N. 1999. ‘Äsop’, in: K. Brodersen (ed.), Grosse Gestalten der Griechischen Antike. 58 historische Portraits von Homer bis Kleopatra, München: C.H. Beck, 45-50. Jedrkiewicz, S. 1989. Sapere e paradosso nell’Antichità: Esopo e la favola, Roma: Edizioni dell'Ateneo. Jedrkiewicz, S. 1997. Il convitato sullo sgabello. Plutarco, Esopo e i Sette Savi, Pisa-Roma: Istituti editoriali e poligrafici internazionali. Jedrkiewicz, S. 2009. ‘Aesop and the Gods. Divine Characters in the Aesop Romance’, Métis, N.S. 7, 171-201. Jedrkiewicz, S. 2009a. ‘A narrative pastiche: Aesop’s death in Delphi (Vita Aesopi, chapp. 124-142)’, Seminari Romani di Cultura Greca 12, 135-157. Jedrkiewicz, S. 2013. ‘Between abjection and exaltation: Aesop once again’, QUCC 102, 199-211. Jerphagnon, L. 1981. ‘Le philosophe et son image dans l'Empire d'Auguste à la Tétrarchie’, Bulletin de l'Association G. Budé, 167-82 (quoted) = Jerphagnon, L. Au bonheur des sages. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 2004, 183-205. Jouanno, C. (ed.) 2006. Vie d’Ésope, Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Karla, G. A. (ed.), Vita Aesopi, Serta Graeca 13, Wiesbaden: Dr.Ludwig Reichert Verlag 2001. Kurke, L. 2011. Aesopic Conversations. Popular tradition, cultural dialogue and the invention of Greek prose, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lamar Crosby, H. (ed. and trans.) 19511. Dio Chrysostom, Discourses 61-80. Fragments. Letters, vol. V (Loeb Classical Library), London : Heineman / Harvard : Harvard University Press (20112, Literary Licensing).

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La Penna, A. 1962. ‘Il Romanzo d’Esopo’, Athenaeum 40, 264-313. Luzzatto, M. J. 2003: ‘Sentenze di Menandro e 'Vita Aesopi'’, in: M.S. Funghi (ed.), Aspetti di letteratura gnomica nel mondo antico, Accademia toscana di Scienze e Lettere ‘La Colombaria’, Serie Studi 225, Firenze: Olschki, 35-52. Marincic, M. 2003. ‘The Grand Vizier, the Prophet, and the Satirist’, in S. Panayotakis et al (eds.), The Ancient Novel and Beyond, Mnemosyne Supplementa 241, Leiden-Boston: Brill, 53-70. Perry, B.E. 1936. Studies in the Text History of the Life and Fables of Aesop, Haverford: Monograph Series, American Philological Association 7. Perry, B.E. 1952. Aesopica. A series of texts relating to Aesop or ascribed to him or closely connected with the literary tradition that bears his name, Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Schmitz, T. 1997. Bildung und Macht: Zur sozialen und politischen Funktion der zweiten Sophistik in der griechischen Welt der Kaiserzeit, München: Beck. Swain, S. 1996. Hellenism and Empire. Language, Classicism, and Power in the Greek World, AD50-250, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Whitmarsh, T.J.G. 2004. ‘Dio Chrysostom’, in: I. de Jong et al. (eds.), Narrators, Narrateees, and Narratives in Ancient Greek Literature, Studies in Ancient Greek Narrative 1, Leiden-Boston: Brill, 451-64. Winkler, J.J. 1985. Auctor and Actor. A Narratological Reading of Apuleius's Golden Ass, Berkeley - Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Only Halfway to Happiness: A Platonic Reading of Apuleius’ Golden Ass W ALTER E NGLERT Reed College, Portland

A. Introduction: The World of The Golden Ass Apuleius’ Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) is a difficult text. It has a deceptively simple plot: a man named Lucius, traveling in Greece looking for excitement and magic, gets turned into an ass, has a series of misadventures, and finally is changed back to human form as part of a religious conversion to the worship of the goddess Isis. But what kind of work is it? Scholars in the last few decades have proposed many answers to this question. The work has been interpreted variously as a Religious Conversion Text,1 a type of Platonic Philosophical Allegory,2 a Sophist’s joking entertainment,3 and as a work that is ambiguous and ultimately refuses to help the reader decide between a religious and a playful interpretation.4 I will review briefly several of the most popular ways of reading the work, and then propose a different interpretation. I will agree with J. Winkler5 that Apuleius undermines our confidence in Lucius’ conversion to Isis, but disagree about what this means for an understanding of the text. I will suggest a possible reason why Apuleius both has Lucius convert to the worship of Isis and Osiris, and calls his conversion into question: to indicate that Lucius needs to move beyond a literal or superficial interpretation of Isis and Osiris and take a more Platonic view of them. Apuleius depicts Lucius’ conversion as sincere but still ————— 1

2

3 4 5

Religious readings of the work have been many. For a helpful survey, see Shumate 1996, 11-14. For Platonic readings of the text, see Wlosok 1969, Heller 1983, De Filippo 1990, Dowden 1998, O’Brien 2002. Harrison 2000, 252-259. Kirichenko 2008 takes a similar approach. Winkler 1985. Winkler 1985. Philosophy and the Ancient Novel, 81-92

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incomplete. Lucius is headed in the right direction, but because he has not gone far enough he still appears somewhat foolish. I will argue that Apuleius, as a Platonist, has written a text that encourages his readers to see that Lucius is only halfway to happiness. Before turning to the text, I need to say something about what we know about its author Apuleius.

B. Apuleius of Madauros (c. 123-?) Apuleius was born in the town of Madauros, North Africa, in approximately 123 AD, during the period of the ‘Second Sophistic’ (c. 60-230 AD), when sophistai, or ‘wise men,’ traveled around the cities of the Roman empire, giving display speeches, calling themselves philosophers, and writing works of great verbal sophistication. Apuleius was one of these sophist-philosophers. He wrote in Latin, knew Greek fluently, and called himself a philosophus Platonicus.6 He was trained in rhetoric and philosophy in Carthage and Athens, and traveled extensively. A number of Apuleius’ works display his allegiance to Platonism: a speech titled the Apologia in which he defended himself against the charge of magic and declared himself to be a Platonic philosopher; a work entitled De Deo Socratis, which discusses Socrates’ famous divine voice in the context of Apuleius’ belief in daemons and the daemonic realm; the De Platone, a philosophical handbook which sets out Platonic physics and ethics in two books; and the De Mundo, a Latin translation of a pseudo-Aristotelian work that treats the nature of the world and its supreme divine ruler.7 Many scholars have downplayed the extent of Apuleius’ Platonism, but enough remains of his work to see that it was central to his self-definition and view of the nature of reality.8

C. The Golden Ass: A Religious Reading When we first begin reading the Golden Ass, it does not strike us as a religious text. The first 10 books seem like an entertaining Romance or Milesian Tale, but ————— 6 7

8

Apol. 10,6. For an analysis of Apuleius as a philosophus Platonicus, see Hijmans 1987. Doubts have been raised in the past about the authorship of the De Platone and De Mundo, but scholarly consensus now seems to be that they are genuine. See Dillon 1977, 309311, Gersh 1986, 218-219, and Harrison 2000, 174-180. For a concise account of what Apuleius’ conception of himself as a Platonic philosopher might have looked like, see Gaisser 2008, 1-39.

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in Book 11 the work suddenly appears to have transformed itself into a religious conversion narrative. Many readers accept this conversion at face value. Book 11 begins with a completely different feeling than the helter-skelter world of the first 10 books, and tells how Lucius, still an ass, receives a vision of Isis. The goddess tells Lucius that he will be returned to human shape the next day by eating roses at her religious festival, and that he should devote his life to her. Lucius participates in the Isiac festival, eats roses, returns to human shape, and devotes himself to the worship of the goddess. He is initiated into her mysteries, and then goes to Rome and devotes his life to Isis. He is initiated twice more, this time into rites that include Osiris, and the novel ends with his election to the board of Pastophori as a priest of Isis and Osiris. At the end of the Golden Ass, then, Lucius seems to have changed his life completely and embraced the worship of Isis and Osiris, and many have taken the work to be a sincere record of a religious conversion. However, there are, as Winkler pointed out, serious problems with such a straightforward reading.

D. The Golden Ass: Winkler’s ‘no authorized interpretation’ reading. In his influential interpretation of the Golden Ass, J. Winkler argued persuasively against this religious conversion reading. He maintained that the text sets up an irresolvable tension between two radically opposed interpretations. In Winkler’s view, there are many aspects of the text that are intended to prevent a single ‘authorized’ reading. The main features he points to are two: first, throughout the first 10 Books, the text places great stress on how difficult stories are to interpret. For example, in the first book we hear Aristomenes’ story about Socrates and the witch Meroe. Aristomenes’ companion rejects the tale, while Lucius accepts it. Readers are given no basis to tell what their attitude toward the tale should be. This initial crisis of interpretation for the reader is repeated multiple times as we make our way through the text. Second, in Book 11 Apuleius includes a number of details that cause the reader to have second thoughts about how to interpret Lucius’ newfound religious happiness. Winkler points to a number of jarring features of the last book that cause us to question Lucius’ conversion to Isis, including: (1) the priest of Isis is named Mithras (like a pope being named Martin Luther);9 (2) the followers of Isis misunderstand the reasons for Lucius’ salvation (they say at 11,16 that he is saved because of his innocence and faith); (3) Lucius is annoyed at having to go through three initia————— 9

Winkler 1985, 245. Beck 2000, 562 argues that the name Mithras may not be as odd as Winkler thinks in this context.

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tions, not one as he had expected, and at having to spend all of his money. This makes the reader suspect he is being duped; (4) the final image that the text leaves us with is the bald head of Lucius, which signifies his worship of Isis, but also is the traditional sign of the mime-comedian, the ancient equivalent of the stupid buffoon.10 Winkler argues that the work gives no authorization for deciding which of the two readings of the ending, as a picture of a sincere religious conversion or as a demonstration of comic religious gullibility, is right. In his view, ‘The effect and intent is to make us see Lucius two ways—as a redeemed Isiac and as a dupe—and to be unable to decide on the author’s authority which is finally correct’.11 Winkler’s indeterminate reading of the text is attractive, but I think another reading is possible to take account of the data that he assembles so well. Apuleius, clever and committed Platonic philosopher that he is, is presenting Lucius’ conversion to Isis as sincere, and undercutting the reader’s view of it at the same time, not to leave the reader in a state of indecision or confusion, but to suggest that Lucius has not gone as far as he can or should in his conversion to Isis. The remainder of the paper will explore the Middle Platonic context in which Apuleius developed his Platonism, examine the major Platonic elements in the Golden Ass, and suggest why Apuleius represents Lucius, the devoted follower of Isis, as needing to go further and to understand Platonically Isis and the world view she represents.

E. The Golden Ass: A Modified Philosophical Reading 1. The Philosophical Context of the second century: Middle Platonism In Apuleius’ time, Platonic philosophy had made a resurgence. As noted earlier, Apuleius identified himself as a Platonist, but Platonism had undergone some changes in the five and one-half centuries that separated him from Plato. Apuleius belonged to a movement that was later labeled ‘Middle Platonism.’12 Middle Platonists,13 working from the dialogues of Plato, and adding elements drawn from the works of Aristotle, the Stoics, Neo-Pythagoreans, and ————— 10

11 12 13

van Mal-Maeder 1997, 101 takes Lucius’ bald head as a sign of slavery, indicating his new servitude to Isis. Winkler 1985, 216. On Middle Platonism, see especially Dillon 1977, Gersh 1986, and Whittaker 1987. In what follows I sometimes speak of the Middle Platonists as a group, but it is important to remember that individual Middle Platonists differed in the way they elaborated various aspects of Platonism.

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Gnostics,14 elaborated a complex philosophical system. Individual Middle Platonists worked out aspects of Platonism in various and idiosyncratic ways, and given our sources it is not always possible to give a coherent account of them. Four elements of Middle Platonic thought of the 1st and 2nd c. AD are particularly important for interpreting the Golden Ass. They are (a) the structure of the universe, (b) the nature of the human soul, (c) the problem of free will, and (d) the treatment of the myths concerning Isis and Osiris. First, building on Plato’s doctrines, Middle Platonists of the period taught that the universe was divided into different levels of reality, including the divine realm (the realm of God and the Forms), the physical world (the world of perception in which we live), and, in between them, the daemonic realm, where various kinds of daemons or spirits live and mediate between the human and the divine levels. This daemonic realm was hinted at in some of Plato’s own writings (especially the Symposium), but Middle Platonists, including Apuleius in his treatise De Deo Socratis, elaborated on it in greater detail.15 Second, Middle Platonists developed Plato’s doctrine of the tripartite soul. They taught that the human soul, depending on which of its parts dominated, went in one of two directions: if the rational part dominated in a person, his or her soul would tend towards the divine, if the lower elements (high spirit and the appetites) dominated, the soul would be attracted to physical objects in the world around us. Third, Middle Platonists addressed the Problem of Free Will.16 They distinguished Providence from Fate, and argued that the parts of the soul were differently situated with regard to them: the highest element of the soul, our rational daemon, was free from fate, and participated in God’s providence, while the lower elements, more closely attached to the body, were governed by Fortune or Fate, and thus were not free. Apuleius, as a committed Platonist, knew and espoused versions of these views on the structure of the universe, the soul, and free will. All three are relevant to a reading of the Golden Ass, and along with a fourth element of Middle Platonism, they help provide a philosophical context for the novel.

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On the different philosophical elements in Middle Platonism, see Dillon 1977, 43-51, Whittaker 1987. For the possible relationship of Gnosticism to Middle Platonism, see Dowden 1998, 3-11. On De Deo Socratis, see Harrison 2000, 136-173. For an account of Apuleius’ views on daemons, see Gersh 1986, 309-311. Dillon 1977, 325.

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Plutarch and the Platonic View of the Worship of Isis and Osiris: De Iside et Osiride

A fourth element of Middle Platonism is even more germane than the three just mentioned to understanding the Platonic context of the Golden Ass: its treatment of the myths and cult of Isis and Osiris.17 Isis and Osiris were important Egyptian divinities the worship of whom in their Hellenized versions spread throughout the Roman Empire. Some Middle Platonists allegorized the myths of Isis and Osiris. One of these allegorizing Middle Platonists was the writer and philosopher Plutarch, whom Apuleius has Lucius name as his ancestor at the beginning of the Golden Ass (1,2), and mention a second time in Book 2 (2,3). Plutarch, in an essay entitled On Isis and Osiris (De Iside et Osiride),18 argued for a Platonic reading of the Isis and Osiris myth, identifying Osiris’ soul with ‘God’ at the highest level of reality, Osiris’ body with the logos, or ideas immanent in matter, and Isis with the ‘World Soul-cum-Matter’.19 In addition, Plutarch also allegorized the great enemy of Isis and Osiris, a figure named Seth or Typhon, as ‘all that nature contains that is harmful and destructive’.20 Interestingly, Seth was represented as an ass figure in Isiac myths. Thus when Apuleius was writing, Isis, Osiris, and Seth were not only figures of Egyptian mythology and the subjects of a popular religion, but also symbols used by Middle Platonists like Plutarch to explain the nature of the universe in symbolic and Platonic terms. 3. Platonism in the Golden Ass There are Platonic references from the beginning of the Golden Ass to the end. Scholars have long known and pointed out many Platonic elements in the work,21 and I will mention only a few of the most important for my argument. First, scholars22 have noted that one of the central themes of the work, curiositas, should be closely linked to the Platonic concept of polypragmosunê, or ————— 17

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19 20 21

22

Scholars who argue for the importance of Plutarch’s De Is. for understanding the Met. include Wlosok 1969, Walsh 1981, De Filippo 1990, Dowden 1998. Hunink 2004 argues against this view. Dowden 1998, 8 writes that the function of Plutarch’s De Is. is ‘to draw the Isis religion into Platonic and intellectual discourse’, calling it ‘an aggressive, and authorizing, act of interpretation’. Dillon 1977, 206. De Is. 369a. Important discussions of the Platonism of the Met. include Wlosok 1969, Schlam 1970, Mortley 1972, Walsh 1981, Heller 1983, De Filippo 1990, O’Brien 2002. See especially De Filippo 1990. Other useful treatments of curiositas in Apuleius include Schlam 1968 and Wlosok 1969.

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‘being a busybody’, when the rational part of the soul is enslaved by the appetites. Curiositas is one of Lucius’ major traits in Books 1-10, and in Book 11 he learns to give up his curiositas/being a busybody, and begins to have reason rule his other soul parts. Second, Apuleius has Lucius mention at the beginning of the Golden Ass (1,2) that he is related to Plutarch and Sextus, both famous Platonists, for no apparent reason other than to have the reader call to mind Platonic philosophy and contemplate Lucius’ and the work’s relationship to it.23 Third, it is striking that in the earliest tale of the work, Aristomenes’ tale, a character named Socrates is introduced. As others have pointed out,24 this can hardly be coincidence, and must be meant to remind us of the more famous Socrates that Lucius the ass mentions later in the work (10,33) and to make us notice the great differences between the two figures. Fourth, as has long been noticed, the novella of Cupid and Psyche contains many Platonic elements. Apuleius apparently invented the story, developing its main theme of Cupid/Eros as a daemon that bridges the gap between the human soul and the divine realm, adapting Plato’s account of Eros from the Symposium.25 Fifth, there is the theme of the ‘philosophizing ass’ (asinus philosophans) (10,33), when Lucius mentions Socrates and says that the outstanding philosophers (egregii philosophi) of his day still follow his teaching. Those distinguished philosophers would primarily be Middle Platonists, and this passage is thus another nod to Platonism. The final and most important feature is Apuleius’ prominent use in the Golden Ass of Osiris, Isis, and the ass figure (equivalent to Seth in Isis myths), figures whom, as we just noted, Middle Platonists like Plutarch had allegorized as the highest God, the World Soul, and the evil aspects of the material world respectively.

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24

25

In 2,3 Lucius’ relationship to Plutarch is again noted. See Heller 1983, 325 for the reference to Platonism through the two mentions of Plutarch. Keulen 2003 presents a detailed study of the figure of Socrates in Met. Book 1, and concludes (130) that the figure of Socrates in Book I ‘is an icon of the philosopher gone mad’. The bibliography on the story of Cupid and Psyche in the Met. is vast. Most modern commentators agree that there are many Platonic elements in it, but disagree about their extent and purpose.

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It is thus clear that Apuleius, a Platonic philosopher, has constructed a novel that is permeated with Platonic elements from beginning to end. Why has he done this? What do we make of it in terms of Lucius’ conversion to Isis in Book 11, and Winkler’s observation that there are elements of Lucius’ conversion that seem to undermine it in the reader’s mind? The two major approaches taken to the problem of this tension since Winkler wrote have been: (1) to view the Isiac convert Lucius as a dupe and see the Platonic elements as features of the novel that are not ultimately serious, but meant to be witty and entertain,26 or (2) to maintain, against Winkler, that while there are witty elements in Book 11 as in the earlier books, Lucius’ conversion to Isis and Osiris is not undermined, and must be taken seriously and is consistent with Apuleius’ Platonism.27 Neither approach is entirely satisfactory. The former interpretation fails to explain fully why Apuleius, a Platonist, would include many Platonic elements in his work if they were only intended to be humorous, while the latter approach underestimates the extent to which Lucius seems to remain, as Winkler argues, a rather dimwitted dupe after his conversion to Isis in the final book. A way out of this dilemma is to separate the religious and philosophic aspects of the text, especially in Book 11, and to deny that the narrator Lucius’ conversion to Isis is to be viewed as completely unproblematic from the perspective of the author Apuleius’ view of Isis in Platonic terms.28 Many scholars have written as if Lucius’ Isis conversion and Apuleius’ Platonism are fully compatible, but it is important to observe that Middle Platonists, at least as far as we can tell from evidence presented in Plutarch’s De Is., did not advocate a literal acceptance of the myths or cult of Isis. In two passages near the beginning of the essay, Plutarch writes the following to Clea, the addressee of the work:29 The search for the truth requires for its study (mathêsis) and investigation (zêtêsis) the consideration of sacred subjects, and it is a work more hallowed than any form of ritual purity (hagneia) or temple service (neôkoria)… (351e-f)

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28

29

Harrison 2000, Kirichenko 2008. Panayotakis 2001 writes from a similar perspective. De Filippo 1990, Dowden 1998. Graverini 2007, 57-105 argues in detail against many of Winkler’s points. Lateiner 2000, 328-331 helpfully stresses the differences between the narrator and author in Book 11. The translations are based on those of the Loeb edition (Babbitt 1936), with modifications made for clarity.

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It is a fact, Clea, that having a beard and wearing a coarse cloak does not make philosophers, nor does dressing in linen and shaving the hair make followers of Isis; but the true follower of Isis is he who, when he has legitimately received the things shown and the things done connected with these gods, investigates them with the faculty of reason (logôi zêtôn) and engages in philosophy (philosophôn) in studying the truth contained in them. (352c) The distinction that Plutarch makes in these passages is important. He argues in effect that there are two ways to worship Isis, one superficial, one true. The superficial follower of Isis dresses in linen, shaves his head, and performs all the rituals of Isis, but seems to miss what is really important about Isis. The true follower, whom we might also label the philosophical follower, goes beyond these trappings and uses the faculty of reason to investigate and philosophize about the truth contained in the various elements of the cult. This Middle Platonic distinction between two types of the followers of Isis seems crucial for understanding the end of the Golden Ass. Lucius is never shown understanding the Isis cult on anything other than what Plutarch, and, I would argue, Apuleius, would describe as a superficial level. Lucius dresses and acts the part of a follower of Isis, but he is not, in Middle Platonic terms, thereby a true, philosophical adept of Isis. He completely misses the point that would be clear to a Middle Platonist of Apuleius’ time. Isis, to be truly understood, is meant to be approached philosophically and allegorically, not literally. Indeed, on this interpretation the Golden Ass can be read philosophically and as playing a double trick on us as readers by the end of the novel. First, it jolts us with Lucius’ conversion to Isis in Book 11, causing what Winkler characterized as a crisis in interpretation, and then it disturbs us a second time with suspicions that Lucius is being duped and is almost becoming an ass again in his worship of Isis. On such a reading, it is essential to separate out the attitudes of Lucius the narrator from Apuleius the author in Book 11. Lucius the narrator is very proud of the progress he has made, and to the reader he may seem better off than in books 1-10, but he still appears naively happy and gullible. Apuleius the author, on the other hand, is portraying Lucius as a superficial follower of Isis, as someone who has started off on the right track, but who is not philosophizing and using his faculty of reason to understand the deeper truths that lie beneath the symbols and rituals of the cult he is practicing.30 ————— 30

Apuleius, as a Platonist, may feel he can neither describe the highest realities in language, nor should he discuss them in front of a popular audience. See Apuleius Plat. 1,5, where he says the highest nature is unnamable, difficult to discover, and not explainable

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Even if Lucius seems unable to make this final transition to philosophy, Apuleius may have hoped that the final humorous yet disconcerting twist would spur at least some of his readers to look beyond Lucius’ literal interpretation of Isis, Osiris, and Seth/Typhon and interpret them as Platonic allegory, and to search for the true realities that they symbolize. In short, the text may be meant to lead readers towards an allegorical, Platonic reading of Isis and the nature of reality, and to help them accomplish a conversion that Lucius never completely succeeds in making, a turning of the soul from the evils of the physical world and the dominance of the lower parts of the soul (symbolized by Seth/Typhon as an Ass) to the divine and unchanging realm of the forms, seen as the realm of Isis and Osiris, accessible only to the highest part of the soul.

F. Conclusion Given what we know about Apuleius’ Middle Platonic beliefs, and his subtle but pervasive use of Platonic images and themes throughout the Golden Ass, it seems that by the end of Book 11 he intends us to see that Lucius has only made it halfway to happiness. Lucius has made significant progress, and is no longer caught up in the basest sorts of human attitudes and actions. But as a worshiper of Isis, he is still too literal and simplistic in his understanding, and thus gets completely absorbed in its rites, multiple initiations, and related expenses. He is in a sense still duped, even if in the right direction. He needs to take one final step. In 10,33 he had called himself a ‘philosophizing ass’ as he idly commented on the death of Socrates and the human condition. In Book 11, he stops being an ass, but he also, unfortunately, never starts being truly philosophical. He needs, in other words, to devote himself to the Platonism that has been hinted at throughout the text, and become a philosophizing human, following Isis, but in an informed, philosophical way.

Bibliography Babbitt, F. (trans.) 1936. Plutarch, Moralia, Isis and Osiris, Vol. 5, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Beck, R. 2000. ‘Apuleius the Novelist, Apuleius the Ostian Householder and the Mithraeum of the Seven Spheres: Further Explorations of an Hypothesis of Filippo Coarelli’, in: S. G. Wilson and M. Desjardins (eds.), Text and Artifact in the Religions of Mediterranean

————— to the many (in multos). On this passage and some of its implications, see Mortley 1972, 588-590.

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Antiquity: Essays in Honour of Peter Richardson, Studies in Christianity and Judaism 9, Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 551-567. De Filippo, J. 1990. ‘Curiositas and the Platonism of Apuleius’ Golden Ass’, AJPh 111, 471492. Dillon, J. 1997. The Middle Platonists, London: Duckworth. Dowden, K. 1998. ‘Cupid and Psyche: A Question of the Vision of Apuleius’, in: M. Zimmerman et al. (eds.), Aspects of Apuleius’ Golden Ass, Volume II: Cupid and Psyche, Groningen: Bouma's Boekhuis, 1-22. Gaisser, J. H. 2008. The Fortunes of Apuleius and the Golden Ass: A Study in Transmission and Reception, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gersh, S. 1986. Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism: The Latin Tradition, Volumes I and II, Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. Graverini, L. 2007. Le Metamorfosi di Apuleio: Letteratura e Identità, Pisa: Pacini Editore. Harrison, S. J. 2000. Apuleius: A Latin Sophist, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Heller, S. 1983. ‘Apuleius, Platonic Dualism, and Eleven’, AJPh 104, 321-339. Hijmans, B. L. 1987. “Apuleius, Philosophus Platonicus.” ANRW Band II.36.1, 395-475. Hunink, V. 2004. ‘Plutarch and Apuleius’, in: L. d. Blois, J. Bons, T. Kessels, D. M. Schenkenvelt (eds.), The Statesman in Plutarch's Works. Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference of the International Plutarch Society, Nijmegen/Castle Hernen, May 1-5, 2002, Vol. I: Plutarch's Statesman and His Aftermath: Political, Philosophical, and Literary Aspects, Leiden/Boston: Brill, 251-60. Keulen, W.H. 2003. ‘Comic Invention and Superstitious Frenzy in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses: the Figure of Socrates as an Icon of Satirical Self-Exposure’, AJPh 123, 107-135. Kirichenko, A. 2008. ‘Asinus Philosophans: Platonic Philosophy and the Prologue to Apuleius’ Golden Ass’, Mnemosyne 61, 89-107. Lateiner, D. 2000. ‘Marriage and the Return of Spouses in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, CJ 95, 313-332. Mortley, R. 1972. ‘Apuleius and Platonic Theology’, AJPh 93, 584-590. O’Brien, M.C. 1991. ‘Apuleius and the Concept of a Philosophical Rhetoric’, Hermathena 151, 39-50. O’Brien, M.C. 2002. Apuleius’ Debt to Plato in the Metamorphoses, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press. Panayotakis, C. 2001. ‘Vision and Light in Apuleius’ Tale of Psyche and Her Mysterious Husband’, CQ 51, 576-583. Sandy, G. 1997. The Greek World of Apuleius: Apuleius and the Second Sophistic, Leiden: Brill. Schlam, C. 1968. ‘The Curiosity of the Golden Ass’, CJ 64, 120-125. Schlam, C. 1970. ‘Platonica in the Metamorphoses of Apuleius’, TAPhA 101, 477-487. Schlam, C. 1992. The Metamorphoses of Apuleius: On Making an Ass of Oneself, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Shumate, N. 1996. Crisis and Conversion in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Tatum, J. 1979. Apuleius and the Golden Ass, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Trapp, M. 1990. ‘Plato’s Phaedrus in Second-Century Greek Literature’, in: D. Russell (ed.), Antonine Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 141-174. Trapp, M. 2001. ‘On Tickling the Ears: Apuleius’ Prologue and the Anxieties of Philosophers’, in: A. Kahane and A. Laird (eds.), A Companion to the Prologue of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 39-46.

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Turcan, R. 1975. Mithras Platonicus, Leiden: Brill. van Mal-Maeder, D. 1997. ‘Various Aspects of Narrative Technique in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, in: H. Hofmann and M. Zimmerman (eds.), Groningen Colloquia on the Novel, Vol. 8. Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 87-118. Walsh, P.G. 1981. ‘Apuleius and Plutarch’, in: H. J. Blumenthal and R. A. Markus (eds.), Neoplatonism and Early Christian Thought, London: Variorum Publications, 20-32. Whittaker, J. 1987. ‘Platonic Philosophy in the Early Centuries of the Empire’, ANRW II.36.1, 81-123. Winkler, J.J. 1985. Auctor & Actor: A Narratological Reading of Apuleius’s Golden Ass, Berkeley: University of California Press. Wlosok, A. 1969. ‘Zur Einheit der Metamorphosen des Apuleius’, Philologus 113, 68-84.

Ex alienis uocibus: Platonic Demonology and Socratic Superstition in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses R ICHARD F LETCHER Ohio State University

Is ethics about hearing voices?1 Socrates was famous for hearing voices or at least the ‘certain kind of voice’ of his so-called daimonion.2 Yet this curious, supernatural peculiarity is somewhat at odds with Socrates’ streetwise, ethical philosophical project of calling philosophy ‘down from the heavens’.3 Indeed Socrates’ Epicurean critics latched onto this discrepancy by showing how the daimonion betrayed Socrates’ ethical project as grounded in superstition.4 Even the Platonist Plutarch in his treatise On Superstition included one of the attributes of the superstitious person as someone who ‘will not walk down a lane if his daimonion has not permitted it’.5 Perhaps as a result of its peculiarity as an easy target for criticism and satire, there is a tradition of Platonism, beginning with the account in the pseudo-Platonic ————— 1

2

3

4 5

Dolar 2006, 83. This question leads into Dolar’s discussion of Socrates’ daimonion called ‘The Voice of the Daemon’. For another important discussion of voice and Socrates’ daimonion, see Goldblatt 2006. τινα φωνὴν, Plato Phaedr. 242c, translated as uocem quampiam in Apuleius Soc. 20, 165. For a variety of approaches to interpreting Socrates’ daimonion see Destrée and Smith 2005. For this characterization of Socrates’ philosophical project, see Aristotle Metaph. 987b12, Cicero Acad. 1, 15 and Tusc. 5, 10. Apuleius references it too, but as part of his own discourse at Soc. 3, 124, ac iam rebus mediocritatem meam longe superantibus receptui canam tandemque orationem de caelo in terram deuocabo (‘I will sound a retreat from matters far above my mediocrity, and finally call my speech down from heaven to earth.’). Kleve 1983, 242-243. Plutarch De superst. 7, Mor. 168d. Philosophy and the Ancient Novel, 93–107

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Epinomis (984b-d) and Xenocrates, which integrated Socrates’ daimonion into a more developed theory of Platonic demonology grounded in references to the daimonion and expanded through readings of the Symposium and Phaedrus. As such, the daimonion became a topic for sustained treatment in Platonic writing under the Roman Empire, written by Plutarch, Maximus of Tyre and Apuleius respectively.6 Each of these works attempts to answer a number of pressing questions surrounding the figure of the daimonion, such as: what is it? how does Socrates heed it? (i.e. does he actually hear it or see it? or just sense it?) and what does it tell him to do? In spite of their shared subject matter, the differences between the works of Plutarch, Maximus and Apuleius have too often been underestimated.7 If we focus on Apuleius’ lecture De deo Socratis, there are three main differences as to how this text approaches Socrates’ daimonion compared with Plutarch and Maximus.8 Apuleius is the only one of the three authors who grounds his account in an acknowledged Platonic demonology, which he explicitly states is Plato’s own account. Apuleius asks his audience to imagine that they are hearing Plato’s ‘very own opinion’ (sententia sua) through his (Apuleius’) ‘own voice’ (mea uoce, Soc. 6, 132) or Plato’s ‘divine opinion’ (diuina sententia) through Apuleius as ‘interpreter’ (me interprete, Soc. 16, 155). Both Plutarch and Maximus, while well aware of the Platonic context for the discussion of both the daimonion and daimones in general, refrain from such explicit invocation of Plato’s role in their discourses, either by citation or direct engagement with Platonic texts. On Plutarch’s part, this constitutes an ambitiously subtle approach to the topic that vies with Platonic dialogue itself in its dramatic ingenuity and thus proclaims his evident Platonic affiliations via literary emulation. As for Maximus, this betrays his general concern for Hellenic paideia and Plato’s role within Second Sophistic cultural interests, and not with an acknowledged, explicit Platonism as such. One result of this first difference is marked at the structural level of Apuleius’ lecture, which, after an initial discussion of Platonic demonology, leads into the topic of Socrates’ daimonion as a specific example. This order – Platonic demonology to Socratic daimonion – is another unique feature to Apuleius’ account, as Plutarch and Maximus both move from Socrates’ daimonion to the ————— 6

7 8

Plutarch’s De genio Socratis is an extraordinary dramatic philosophical dialogue set within the historical narrative of the Theban uprising in 379 B.C.E, Maximus of Tyre’s Orations 8 and 9 are philosophical orations on the topic delivered in Rome; Apuleius’ De deo Socratis is a philosophical lecture, the setting and contexts of which cannot be gleaned from the text, aside for projecting a Latin-speaking audience. For example, in the discussions of Soc. in Sandy 1997 and Harrison 2000. For a fuller discussion of these differences, see Fletcher 2014, 147-151.

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general theory of Platonic demonology, from Socratic example to Platonic system. This movement of Apuleius’ argument transfers the emphasis away from the singular question of Socrates’ daimonion (the ostensible focus of Plutarch’s and Maximus’ works) to how Socrates offers us an exemplary model to cultivate our own daemon in terms of an ethical life according to Plato’s philosophy. The final difference between Apuleius’ lecture and Plutarch’s dialogue or Maximus’ oration is the ethical protreptic with which it concludes. Apuleius ends his speech by calling for his audience to follow the example of Socrates and cultivate their own daemon in order to live an ethical life in accordance with the study of Platonic philosophy. In the move from the discussion of the daimonion to this ethical call, Apuleius asks the following rhetorical question (Soc. 21, 167):9 quin potius non quoque Socratis exemplo et commemoratione erigimur ac nos secundo studio philosophiae paris similium numinum cupientes10 permittimus? Why are we not also encouraged by the example and remembrance of Socrates and why don’t we entrust ourselves to the beneficial study of the same sort of philosophy, longing after similar divinities? The ensuing emotive protreptic to follow Socrates’ example and live an ethical life is markedly absent from the other two contemporaneous treatments of Plutarch and Maximus. While Maximus’ speech has some significant moments in which the account of daimones turns into a debate over virtue and vice and while Plutarch’s dialogue can be read as debating the differences between the theoretical and practical life, Apuleius makes the ethical care of the self the culminating focus of his discussion.11 These three differences between Apuleius’ lecture and the other two discussions of the same topic in the Roman Empire – the conspicuous focus on the authority and transmission of Plato’s views, the structural order of moving from Platonic demonology to the Socratic daimonion and the concluding ethical protreptic – are not isolated details, but work together as part of key features of Apuleius’ Platonic project, which I have dubbed the ‘impersonation of philoso————— 9

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11

For Soc., I use the Latin text of Moreschini 1991 and the translation is my own. For further discussion of this important passage, see Fletcher 2014, 118-119. Here, as in Fletcher 2014, I diverge from the text of Moreschini 1991, as I find no precedent for caueo + gen, while cupio + gen. is more common. The Foucauldian echo is intended here, given that Soc. plays a pivotal role in the definition of the concept of the ‘care of the self’. See Foucault 1986, 45.

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phy’.12 As I have argued in depth elsewhere, Apuleius’ ‘impersonation of philosophy’ is a consistent methodology across his corpus that develops from the core work De Platone et eius dogmate to differing, but related, manifestations in his cosmological treatise (De mundo) and philosophical, forensic and epideictic lectures (De deo Socratis, Apologia and Florida). In this often underestimated ‘dry’ handbook, Apuleius grounds his discussion of Platonic philosophy in Plato’s biography to focus on what Plato ‘said’ as a ‘biographical exegesis’, which we can see functioning at the very opening of De deo Socratis (Soc. 1, 115): Plato omnem naturam rerum, quod eius ad animalia praecipua pertineat, trifariam diuisit censuitque esse summos deos. Plato divided the whole nature of things – as concerns the chief living beings – into three parts and judged gods to be the highest. Apuleius, however, does not stay within the confines of this foundation of ‘biographical exegesis’, but introduces other voices, ranging from ‘conceptual personifications’ to ‘authorial personification’. In De Platone Apuleius allows key Platonic figures like Humankind (homo), the Beholder of Virtue (spectator uirtutis) or the Sage (sapiens) to take the reins of the narrative. When read onto De deo Socratis, this ‘conceptual personification’ takes the form of the example of Socrates himself as the embodiment of the Platonic sapiens.13 Finally, there are moments in De Platone when Apuleius deviates from both Plato’s authority and his ideas, to speak for himself and on behalf of his readers, especially in the second book on Platonic ethics. In this case, the ethical protreptic that concludes De deo Socratis is a fully developed example, where Apuleius moves from Platonic demonology to the example of Socrates to deliver a fully-fledged protreptic before his audience. Rather than just an interpretive strategy imposed on Plato by (my reading of) Apuleius, we can see how such ‘impersonation’ works within Plato’s dialogues and how readers have approached them, with the topic of Socrates’ daimonion as itself exemplary. While neither Socrates’ daimonion nor daimones are unique to Plato, Platonic texts do present the classic cases of both the singular Socratic version and the collective intermediary class of beings.14 All the same, how the ————— 12

13 14

The original phrase I used in the ICAN Lisbon presentation was ‘exegetical ventriloquism’, but since then I have developed my own terminology based on the idea of impersonation more generally. For an introductory account, see Fletcher 2014, 16-20. See Fletcher 2014: 164-172. The daimonion is referenced in the Apology, Phaedrus and Theages, while the daimones are only mentioned in passing at Symp. 202e-203a.

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one relates to the other is anything but clear from Plato’s dialogues. Unlike the accounts of Plutarch, Maximus and Apuleius, Plato’s discussion of the one does not coincide with the discussion of the other. For example, in the Symposium, the classic treatment of daimones, there are references to ‘all that is daimonic’ (202d) and ‘the daimonic man’ (203a), without any specific account of Socrates’ daimonion. This is especially odd, given that it seems to have been some warning by the daimonion that causes Socrates to arrive late at Agathon’s house.15 Conversely, in the Apology, when rebutting the charge of not believing in the gods, Socrates says that since he believes in ‘daimon related matters’ (27c) he must believe that daimones exist. He then proceeds to define daimones as either gods or their children, and challenges the prosecution by asking who would believe that there are children of gods and not gods themselves? Nowhere in this account is there any glance towards discussion of the daimonion, which has a prominent position elsewhere in the speech.16 The Platonic separation of daimones from Socrates’ daimonion has even been ascribed to a specific aim not to name internalised divinities, aside from the specific, extraordinary example of Socrates, but to keep what is daimonic outside in the hierarchy of beings in the universe – humans, demons, gods.17 However, it is interesting that the immediately post-Platonic theory of daimones does the opposite by not highlighting the issue of the daimones’ relationship to Socrates, but persists with the externalised daimones as an expression of the hierarchy of beings in the universe. The key Symposium passage has been called ‘a basic proof text for the later Academic theory of daemons’.18 Diotima’s comments regarding daimones (202d-203a) as existing between gods and men, was the basis for extended accounts of daimones by the author of the Epinomis and Xenocrates.19 Here the issue of the role of Socrates in traditions of Platonism becomes salient as the specific example of Socrates is overlooked in favour of a markedly Platonic and systematic demonology. ————— 15

16 17

18 19

It has been argued that, when Alcibiades later calls Socrates a daimonic man (Symp. 219b-c), he is referring directly to Socrates’ daimonion. See Destrée 2005, 76 with n. 23 for further references. Plato Apol. 31d. Van Riel 2005, 41-42, argues that this is on account of Plato’s religious traditionalism in not believing in an internalised divinity, with Socrates’ daimonion the exception that proves the rule. Dillon 2003, 129. See also, Brenk 1986, 2085-2086. On their demonological theories within the contexts of the Academy in Plato’s wake, see Dillon 2003. On Xenocrates’ metaphysics, with specific reference to his demonology, see Dillon 1986, Schibli 1993. On Philip of Opus in general and projected as the author of the Epinomis, see Tarán 1975.

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In terms of how impersonation works for interpretive strategies in reading the dialogues, they begin with the standard question ‘who speaks for Plato?’.20 However, when it comes to the subsequent traditions of Platonism, this question is less often asked. In many senses, the dialogic sophistication of the Platonic texts becomes subsumed under the more monologic authorial voice in the later dogmatic Platonic tradition (with writers like Cicero and Plutarch as refreshing exceptions). Yet, for Apuleius, this is markedly not the case, since we can point to the narratological sophistication of the Metamorphoses to ground our arguments about the complexity of his Platonic methodologies in other works. However, the Metamorphoses introduces some major challenges to Apuleius’ method of the impersonation of philosophy in general and the topic of Platonic demonology in particular. While there have been no shortage of ‘philosophical’ and ‘Platonic’ readings of Apuleius’ fiction, some of which even utilize De deo Socratis to ground their claims, the Metamorphoses is not as explicitly ‘Platonic’ or ‘philosophical’ in the way that the other works of his corpus are. Nonetheless, although Apuleius is not alone as a writer of ‘Platonic fiction’ in antiquity, his extant philosophical works offer a special case whereby we can examine strategies of reading philosophical thinking within a fictional text. 21 Platonising fiction was popular in the Second Sophistic and it took a variety of forms, ranging from the intertextual to the allegorical.22 The former can be seen in how fictional narratives used allusions to Plato’s dialogues, especially the erotic dialogues (Symposium and Phaedrus) as part of their setting and narratives as a means of adding literary prestige to a traditionally ‘low’ genre.23 The latter can be seen in the use of the popular contemporary practice of allegorical reading for fictional narratives, which were understood to convey basic philosophical truths.24 Both approaches (allusive and allegorical) demand a certain interpretative method that seeks to uncover philosophical resonances or structures in an ostensibly non-philosophical genre. Nonetheless, there is a strong historical argument in favour of seeing the development of fiction in antiquity as explicitly originating in the Socratic dialogue, and Apuleius’ Metamorphoses ————— 20

21 22 23

24

See Press 2000. In my original ICAN paper in Lisbon I followed Goldblatt 2006, 89 who refers to Platonic dialogues as ‘ventriloqual’ dialogues, but I have since encompassed this terminology under the general idea of ‘impersonation’. The following section paraphrases parts of Fletcher 2014, 262-291. For a neat balancing of these two approaches, see Morgan and Jones 2007, viii-ix. For example, in Trapp 1990 for the Phaedrus in Daphnis and Chloe and Marinčič 2007, 180-181 for the Symposium as framing device in Leucippe and Cleitophon. On the Symposium in ancient fiction in general, see Hunter 2006. For example, on the use of Homeric allegory in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica, see Lamberton 1986, 148-160.

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fits easily into the allusive, allegorical and generic range of fictional Platonising in the period. For example, since antiquity the Cupid and Psyche episode has been singled out as a Platonic allegory, which itself originates in Plato’s own myth-making in his dialogues.25 Moreover, discussions of the origins of the novel-genre in antiquity have centred on the role of Socratic dialogue in general and Plato’s dialogues in particular as important precursors.26 The Metamorphoses has been described as ‘a Platonic dialogue between author and reader rather than characters in the script’.27 The dialogic qualities of the narrative are initiated by the Prologue, but continue in the narrative exchanges developed throughout the text. For example, Aristomenes’ tale of ‘Socrates’ is perhaps the paradigmatic narrative for this conception of the novel as a dialogic genre after the mode of the Socratic dialogue. Beyond the general question of genre, the uncovering of Platonic themes, names and situations in the Metamorphoses has taken up most of the energy of scholars. The core theme of metamorphosis has been understood according to the Pythagorean-Platonic transmigration of souls.28 The appearance of the theme of curiositas in both Apuleius and Plutarch has been explained by their shared Platonist credentials.29 Themes directly related to specific dialogues have been entertained, including the justice and the law in the Republic and Laws, desire in the Symposium and pleasure in the Philebus.30 One particularly fruitful area of Platonic reference is that of the naming of characters. From the Socrates of Aristomenes’ tale, to Philebus and Thrasyllus, Apuleius’ Platonism appears to be the explanation for Apuleius’ name-choices.31 Another level to this approach is to read certain scenes in the novel as responding to Apuleius’ own reworking of Platonic themes elsewhere in his corpus, and it is to such scenes I want to now turn. The setting of the end of Aristomenes’ tale of Socrates (Met. 1, 5-19) has been repeatedly registered as marking a direct Platonic reference.32 After the ————— 25

26

27 28 29 30

31

32

For a nuanced discussion of Cupid and Psyche as Platonic myth, see O’Brien 2002, 7790. On Socratic dialogue in Bakhtin’s genealogy of the novel (and its Kristevan reception), see Fletcher 2004, 247-253. Winkler 1985, 126. Schlam 1970, 480. Walsh 1970, 182; DeFilippo 1990. Republic: Tarrant 1999; Laws: Krabbe (2003) 373-414; Symposium: Dowden 2006; Philebus: Krabbe 2003, 337-372. On Philebus, see Krabbe 2003, 337-372; Thrasyllus: Repath 2000; Thelyphron: O’Brien 2004. See Sandy 1997, 253, O’Brien 2002, 77-78, Kirichenko 2008, 93-95 and Winkle 2013, 315.

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night in which he witnessed (what he thought was) Socrates being killed by vengeful witches, Aristomenes describes how he and his rejuvenated companion sat down by a plane tree (Met. 1, 18) to eat and then how Socrates drank from the stream that flowed nearby (Met. 1, 19). This setting has been read as an explicit reference to the setting of the Phaedrus - the discussion under a plane tree near the River Ilissus. The role of the river has also been seen in relation to its appearance in a ‘summary’ in De deo Socratis in the following passage (Soc. 19, 164-165): in huiuscemodi rebus uocem quampiam diuinitus exortam dicebat audire – ita enim apud Platonem -, ne quisquam arbitretur omina eum uulgo loquentium captitasse. quippe etiam semotis arbitris uno cum Phaedro extra pomerium sub quodam arboris opaco umbraculo signum illud adnuntium sensit, ne prius transcendet Ilissi amnis modicum fluentum, quam increpitum indignatum Amorem recinendo placasset; In these types of situations [i.e. when he was in danger] Socrates used to say that he heard some voice from a divine source (so it says in Plato), just in case anyone should think that he took his omens from the crowd of speakers. For even when he was alone with Phaedrus, with no other witnesses, outside the boundary of the city, in the shade of a tree, he sensed that announcing signal telling him not to cross the little stream of the River Ilissus until he had appeased, through a recantation, the indignation of Love, which he had stirred up by his critique.33 Alexander Kirichenko has made the link between the two passages so as to add weight to the Platonic reference in the Metamorphoses: What further corroborates the idea that Socrates’ river-crossing handicap may be intended as part of the Platonic allusion is that Apuleius shows interest in the corresponding passage from the Phaedrus elsewhere - by summarizing it in De Genio Socratis [sic].34 In making the De deo Socratis passage subject to the interpretation of the Metamorphoses by stating that Apuleius was ‘summarizing’ the Phaedrus passage, Kirichenko does not explore Apuleius’ specific use of the Phaedrus passage in ————— 33

34

Here I get the chance to correct the typo in the text and translation of Fletcher 2014, 273 which has omnia for omina. Kirichenko 2008, 94.

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this part of his lecture. Rather than merely summarizing the Platonic passage, Apuleius expands on it to enrich Plato’s text by bringing it into the broader debate about Socrates’ singular daimonion, Platonic demonology and ideas about omens and other forms of religious superstition. Here is the passage that immediately follows the reference to the Phaedrus (Soc. 19, 165): cum praeterea, si omina obseruitaret, aliquando eorum nonnulla etiam hortament haberet, ut uidemus plerisque usu euenire, qui nimia ominum superstitione non suopte corde sed alterius uerbo reguntur ac per angiporta reptantes consilia ex alienis uocibus colligunt et, ut ita dixerim, non animo sed auribus cogitant. In addition, if he [Socrates] had been in the habit of seeking out omens, he would have occasionally understood some as encouraging his actions as well, as we see happen in practice to many people, who are excessively reverent towards omens and are ruled not by their own heart but by another’s words, and who skulk through alleyways culling instructions from the words of others, who think, in other words, not with their minds but with their ears. Apuleius’ portrait of the people who are ‘excessively reverent towards omens’ (nimia ominum superstitione) has been brought to bear on the characterization of Lucius in the Metamorphoses. Maeve O’Brien paraphrases this passage, together with its accompanying reference to Socrates, as follows: Apuleius exhorts the wise man to listen to his own soul. The fool is ruled by the words of others. He has such a desire for this discourse that he looks for it through alleyways and becomes a prisoner of this discourse. A detrimental effect results because he thinks with his ears and not with his mind. Lucius is always too anxious to listen to the words of others from Diophanes to Milo, from Aristomenes to Thelyphron. 35 O’Brien’s characterization of Lucius as a ‘fool’ who listens with his ears contrasts Socrates as the ‘wise man’ who listens with his soul. However, in the De deo Socratis passage, this distinction is not so clear-cut and an alternative reading is available. While I have discussed elsewhere ways in which such readings of De deo Socratis may be productive for the types of episode O’Brien mentions in which Lucius’ gullible heeding of the tales of others is clear, here I want to focus on the tension within the De deo Socratis passage and how that tension ————— 35

O’Brien 2002, 66.

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can be brought to bear on aspects of Aristomenes’ tale of Socrates in the Metamorphoses, specifically in terms of how Socrates and Lucius are characterized with regard to concepts of superstition. Let us look at the whole passage of De deo Socratis that was referenced by Kirichenko and paraphrased by O’Brien in their readings of the Metamorphoses. (Soc. 19, 164-165): in huiuscemodi rebus uocem quampiam diuinitus exortam dicebat audire – ita enim apud Platonem –, ne quisquam arbitretur omina eum uulgo loquentium captitasse. quippe etiam semotis arbitris uno cum Phaedro extra pomerium sub quodam arboris opaco umbraculo signum illud adnuntium sensit, ne prius transcendet Ilissi amnis modicum fluentum, quam increpitum indignatum Amorem recinendo placasset; cum praeterea, si omina obseruitaret, aliquando eorum nonnulla etiam hortament haberet, ut uidemus plerisque usu euenire, qui nimia ominum superstitione non suopte corde sed alterius uerbo reguntur ac per angiporta reptantes consilia ex alienis uocibus colligunt et, ut ita dixerim, non animo sed auribus cogitant. In these types of situations [i.e. when he was in danger] Socrates used to say that he heard some voice from a divine source (so it says in Plato), just in case anyone should think that he took his omens from the crowd of speakers. For even when he was alone with Phaedrus, with no other witnesses, outside the boundary of the city, in the shade of a tree, he sensed that announcing signal telling him not to cross the little stream of the River Ilissus until he had appeased, through a recantation, the indignation of Love, which he had stirred up by his critique. In addition, if he had been in the habit of seeking out omens, he would have occasionally understood some as encouraging his actions as well, as we see happen in practice to many people, who are excessively reverent towards omens and are ruled not by their own heart but by another’s words, and who skulk through alleyways culling instructions from the words of others, who think, in other words, not with their minds but with their ears. Apuleius is discussing the fact that Socrates’ daimonion warned him against certain actions, but never encouraged him to actively do anything. Thus, when he was in danger, he would hear a ‘certain kind of voice from a divine source’. Both the example from the Phaedrus and the discussion of omens that follows it are part of Apuleius’ account of both the nature of this voice and Socrates’ ability to heed it. The former is contained in the caveat ‘just in case anyone should

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think that he took his omens from the crowd of speakers’ (ne quisquam arbitretur omina eum uulgo loquentium captitasse). This caveat is introduced by Apuleius to prevent a misunderstanding that may occur when thinking of Socrates’ daimonion as a voice. Indeed following this passage in the lecture, Apuleius makes the distinction between ‘a voice’ and ‘some voice’, wherein the former could be any old human voice, including those of seers, while the latter implies ‘something unusual or mysterious about it’ (quiddam insolitum et arcanum, Soc. 20, 166). In short, Apuleius is at pains to distinguish the divine quality of the voice by setting it apart from the chattering crowd’s indulgence of omens and the all-too-human pronouncements of seers. Yet what happens next gives an intriguing twist, wherein Apuleius moves from the topic at hand to focus not on the quality of the voice, but on Socrates’ ability to hear it. Apuleius imagines that even if Socrates were to listen to omens that made recommendations for his action he would not listen to them as other people do, people who are especially superstitious, but he would heed them with his soul and not his ears. In introducing this thought-experiment Apuleius is moving beyond the specific example of Socrates’ daimonion, which he has just acknowledged did not offer Socrates encouragement, to the innate abilities of Socrates himself and how they relate to us mere mortals. In this way, Apuleius is able to situate his account of Socrates within a broader ethical framework which paves the way for the concluding impassioned protreptic in which he asks why ‘men do not cultivate their own soul through reason’ (cur non etiam animum suum ratione excolant, Soc. 21, 169) following Socrates’ example. By emphasizing Socrates’ use of his animus to ‘hear’, Apuleius not only prepares for this ethical conclusion, but also makes an association between Plato’s immortal soul and the embodied daemon in an earlier part of his lecture (Soc. 15, 150-151).36 In short, within this brief juxtaposition of the scene from Plato’s Phaedrus and the thought-experiment of Socrates ‘listening’ to omens with his soul, we can find the structure and trajectory of the whole lecture in a nutshell.37 What happens when we return to the Metamorphoses with this reading of De deo Socratis in mind? In combining Kirichenko’s reference with O’Brien’s paraphrase we can see that Apuleius’ recourse to Plato’s Phaedrus in the Aristomenes-Socrates episode cannot be separated from a general framework of ————— 36 37

See Fletcher 2014, 162-164. In Fletcher forthcoming I dig deeper into this passage to explore how Apuleius is engaging with a debate within the Roman philosophical tradition between Epicureanism and Platonism on the topic of demonology. This discussion begins with the observation that Apuleius’ warning against understanding Socrates’ daimonion as ‘listening to the voices of others’ like a human-mediated omen, builds on an allusion to a passage of Lucretius’ De rerum natura (5, 1133-1134), following Harrison 2000, 163 with n. 104.

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superstition and the ideal response to it (i.e. the use of the animus as opposed to the aures). One implication is in reading Apuleius’ portrayal of the Socrates in the Metamorphoses as representative of a failing the true Socratic test of avoiding superstition through heeding with the soul, not the ears. As Wytse Keulen has deftly argued, Apuleius characterizes his fictional Socrates to fit the philosophical portraits of the ‘superstitious man’ in his Theophrastus and Plutarch.38 Even though Keulen quotes a passage of Plutarch’s On Superstition that incorporates the figure of adherence to one’s daimonion as an attribute of the superstitious man, he does not utilize De deo Socratis with its discussion of Socrates and demonology to make his claims about Socrates and superstition in the Metamorphoses. However, in many ways, Keulen’s account of how Apuleius ‘turns the portrayal of Socrates into a satire of superstition’ is precisely what Apuleius does in De deo Socratis, albeit through the portrayal of the real Socrates and the thought experiment of such a Socrates listening to omens, which unlike the excessively superstitious, he does so with his soul.39 As for the O’Brien’s paraphrase of the De deo Socratis passage to characterize the fool Lucius, who listens to others throughout the Metamorphoses, Keulen claims that the ‘satiric Socrates is a parallel to a Socratic Lucius’. While this reading is convincing on a whole, there is one moment at which the parallel may be between Lucius and the philosopher Socrates from De deo Socratis. When Lucius is asked to respond to Aristomenes’ tale we encounter the following explanation (Met. 1, 20): ‘ego uero’ inquam ‘nihil impossibile arbitror, sed utcumque fata decreuerint, ita cuncta mortalibus prouenire. nam et mihi et tibi et cunctis hominibus multa usu uenire mira et paene infecta, quae tamen ignaro relata fidem perdant. ‘Me?’ I said, ‘Oh, I think nothing is impossible. Whatever the Fates have decreed, just so everything pans out for us mere mortals. Since, to me, you and all humankind, many things occur in our lives that are wondrous and seem barely possible, but they are disbelieved when reported to someone lacking their own experience of them.40 When this response is read in terms of both parts of the De deo Socratis passage, we can catch a glimpse of a more favourable portrayal of Lucius the listener to ————— 38 39 40

Keulen 2003. Keulen 2003, 130. The text of Met. is Zimmerman 2012 and the translation is Relihan 2007.

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balance the more indulgent and curiosus character to come in the rest of the novel. For example, we may read his emphasis on the Fates (fata) as marking a commitment to a divinely-sourced foundation for human affairs which mirrors the divinely-sourced ‘voice’ of Socrates’ daimonion, as opposed to ‘a voice’ of some human mediator (e.g. a seer). In addition, in his characterization of disbelief as grounded, not in the miraculous occurrences themselves, but in the person who hears of them and their previous experiences, we could perhaps catch a glimpse of the Socratic animus-focused ‘listening’ as opposed to the voices of the crowd. Yet immediately following this moment, Lucius grounds his credence in pleasure and as soon as it appears, all hope is lost, as Lucius has been carried by his ears, when he should be ‘listening’, according to De deo Socratis, with his ‘soul’ (animus). This essay has been a modest contribution to how Apuleius’ Metamorphoses needs to be read in relation to the other works in his corpus. However, in doing so, readers must at the same time investigate the way those other works are written and do more than summarizing them and paraphrasing them in making claims about the Metamorphoses. In short, as Apuleius advises us to take the lead from Socrates and his daimonion in living our own lives, in hearing these voices elsewhere in the Apuleian corpus, we can embark on our own scholarly ethics of reading at the same time.41

Bibliography Brenk, F. E. 1986. ‘In the Light of the Moon: Demonology in the Early Imperial Period’, ANRW II. 16. 3, 2068-2145. DeFilippo, J. G. 1990. ‘Curiositas and the Platonism of Apuleius’ Golden Ass’, AJP 111, 471492. Destrée, P. 2005. ‘The Daimonion and the Philosophical Mission – Should the Divine Sign Remain Unique to Socrates?’, in: P. Destrée and N. D. Smith (eds.), Socrates’ Divine Sign: Religion, Practice and Value in Socratic Philosophy, Apeiron 38, 2, Kelowna, BC.: Academic Printing and Publishing, 63-79. Dillon, J. M. 2003. The Heirs of Plato. A Study of the Old Academy (347-274 BC), Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dolar, M. 2006. A Voice and Nothing More, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Dowden, K. 2006. ‘A Tale of Two Texts: Apuleius’ sermo Milesius and Plato’s Symposium’,in: W. H. Keulen, R. R. Nauta and S. Panayotakis (eds.), Lectiones Scrupulosae: Es-

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I am very grateful to the editors for allowing me the additional time I needed to allow me to not only reflect the original talk delivered at ICAN in Lisbon, but also to include developments in my thinking on Apuleius, both in Fletcher 2014 and the new work which will be part of Fletcher forthcoming.

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sayson the text and Interpretation of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses in Honour of Maaik Zimmerman. Groningen: Barkhuis Publishing, 42-58. Fletcher, R. 2004. ‘Kristeva’s Novel: Genre, Genealogy and Theory’, in: R. Bracht Branham (ed.), The Bakhtin Circle and Ancient Narrative. Ancient Narrative Supplementum 3. Groningen: Barkhuis Publishing, 227-259. Fletchler, R. 2014. Apuleius’ Platonism: The Impersonation of Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fletcher, R. forthcoming. ‘Apuleius and Roman Demonology’, in: R. Fletcher and W. Shearin, The Oxford Handbook of Roman Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Foucault, M. 1986. The History of Sexuality Vol. 3: The Care of the Self, New York: Random House. Goldblatt, D. 2006. Art and Ventriloquism, New York: Routledge. Harrison, S. J. 2000. Apuleius: A Latin Sophist, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hunter, R. 2006. ‘Plato’s Symposium and the traditions of ancient fiction’, in: J. Lesher, D. Nails, and F. Sheffield (eds.), Plato’s Symposium: Issues in Interpretation and Reception, Washington: Harvard University Press, 295-312. Keulen, W. 2003. ‘Comic invention and superstitious frenzy in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses: The figure of Socrates as an icon of satirical self-exposure’, AJP 124, 107-135. Kleve, K. 1983. ‘Scurra Atticus. The Epicurean View of Socrates’, in: Syzetesis, Studi sull’epicureismo greco e romano offerti a Marcello Gigante, Naples: Bibliopolis, 227253. Krabbe, J. K. 2003. Lusus Iste: Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, Dallas and Oxford: University Press of America. Lamberton, R. 1986. Homer the theologian: Neoplatonist allegorical reading and the growth of the epic tradition, Berkeley and London: University of California Press. Marinčič, M. 2007. ‘Advertising one’s own story. Text and speech in Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon’, in V. Rimell (ed.), Seeing Tongues, Hearing Scripts: Orality and Representation in the Ancient Novel, Ancient Narrative Supplementum 7, Groningen: Barkhuis Publishing, 168–200. Moreschini, C. 1991. Apulei opera philosophica, Stuttgart: Teubner. O’Brien, M. C. 2002. Apuleius’Debt to Plato in the Metamorphoses, Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press. O’ Brien, M. C. 2004. ‘Thelyphron the ‘weak-minded’ or what’s in a name?’, in: M. Zimmerman and R. van der Paardt (eds.) Metamorphic Reflections. Essays presented to Ben Hijmans at his 75th birthday, Groningen: Barkhuis Publishing, 161-173. Press, G. A. (ed.) 2000. Who Speaks for Plato? Studies in Platonic Anonymity, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Relihan, J. C. 2007. Apuleius, The Golden Ass, Indianapolis: Hackett. Repath, I. D. 2000. ‘The Naming of Thrasyllus in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, CQ 50, 627630. Sandy, G. 1997. The Greek World of Apuleius, Leiden: Brill. Schlam, C. C. 1970. ‘Platonica in the Metamorphoses of Apuleius’, TAPA 101, 477-487. Tarán, L. 1975. Academica: Plato, Philip of Opus, and the Pseudo-Platonic Epinomis, Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society. Trapp, M. B. 1990. ‘Plato’s Phaedrus in Second-Century Greek Literature’, in: D. A. Russell, (ed.) Antonine Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 141-173. Tarrant, R. 1999. ‘Shadows of Justice in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, Hermathena 167, 71-89.

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Van Riel, G. 2005. ‘Socrates’ Daemon: Internalisation of the Divine and Knowledge of the Self’, in: P. Destrée and N. D. Smith (eds.), Socrates’ Divine Sign: Religion, Practice and Value in Socratic Philosophy, Apeiron 38, 2, Kelowna, BC.: Academic Printing and Publishing, 31-42. Walsh, P. G. 1970. The Roman Novel, Bristol: Duckworth. Winkle, J. T. 2013. ‘Necessary roughness’: Plato’s Phaedrus and Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, AN 11: 1-39. Winkler, J. J. 1985. Auctor & Actor: A Narratological Reading of Apuleius’ Golden Ass, Berkeley and London: University of California Press. Zimmerman, M. 2012. Apulei Metamorphoseon Libri XI, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

The Platonic Eros of Art in the Ancient Greek Novel V ERNON P ROVENCAL Acadia University

1. The ancient Greek novel as quasi-Platonic cultural fantasy From a Platonic perspective, the art of the ancient novel is a profound sublimation of the eros of the soul for the divine, realized in the artifice of idealized erotic fantasy, in which the pedagogical paradigm of erastēs and erōmenos provides a new model for an erotic relationship of author and audience. Art no longer performs the traditional mimetic function of representing reality, but the creative function of constructing fantasy; it no longer serves the didactic purpose of educating the unenlightened, but the erotic aim of pleasuring the enlightened. A reader of Plato’s Republic might well regard the ancient novel as imprisoning its reader in the cave of images at the furthest remove from the transcendent reality of the intelligible Forms. But that interpretation fails to acknowledge the idealistic aspect of the ancient novel, above all, the idealized triumph of the good, just and beautiful over the adversity of worldly fortune. The ancient Greek novel can be better understood from the perspective of the Symposium as the progeny of the soul’s encounter with the intelligible reality of transcendent ideas, an encounter which gives birth to the artifice of erotic fantasy, in which things work out as they ought, for the good. As such, the ancient Greek novel is best characterized as a quasi-Platonic erotic fantasy, wherein the transcendent ideality of the good, the just and the beautiful is imagined as immanent in the souls, bodies and destinies of idealized lovers. From a historical perspective, the ancient Greek novel marks the appearance of a new art form, originating in the unique culture of the educated Greek elite (pepaideumenoi) of the early imperial period of the Roman empire, the cultural period of the Second Sophistic (roughly 50-250 CE), a culture deeply influenced

Philosophy and the Ancient Novel, 109–123

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by renewed interest in Plato.1 The ancient Greek novel reflects and sustains the cultural ideology of the pepaideumenoi as an elite destined to maintain their cultural hegemony under Roman rule by virtue of their paideia.2 The early imperial period experienced a resurgence of Hellenism among Greeks, most strongly felt in the Greek-speaking cities of Asia Minor from which come all the Greek novelists. This ‘Greek renaissance’3 occurred principally by way of a return to the ‘greats’ of classical Greek culture, especially Homer and Plato.4 As Plato became an ‘authority’ generally recognized by all, there also appeared a new interest in Plato’s original teachings among self-identified Platonists.5 Plato’s Greek texts became the subject of rigorous study and intellectual debate,6 and provided a new arena for showcasing the paideia that was the possession of the Greek pepaideumenoi. Studies have demonstrated the presence of some aspect of Plato in all the ancient Greek novels,7 but the dialogues which had the greatest influence were the Symposium and Phaedrus, whose presence is particularly evident in the ‘sophistic novels’ of Longus and Achilles Tatius.8 The presence of Plato in the ancient Greek novel reflects his renewed status among the Greek elite as an intellectual pillar central to their cultural hegemony under Roman rule. It has been argued that to sustain the cultural ideology of the pepaideumenoi, ‘the entertainment value’ of the ancient Greek novel ‘depends on the operation of certain key assumptions’:

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2

3 4 5

6 7

8

Cf. Swain 1996, 121: ‘During the Second Sophistic Platonism became the most influential creed’; Hunter 2012, 223: ‘the centrality of the Platonic tradition to all facets of educated life in the period of the so-called ‘Second Sophistic’. On the paideia of the early imperial period of the Second Sophistic generally: Preston 2001, 89-90; Whitmarsh 2005,13 and 2008a, 7; Bowie 2008,18; on paideia and the ancient novel: Whitmarsh 2008a, 7 and 2008b, 72-75; Stephens 2008, 57. Bowersock 1974, 1. De Lacey 1974, 4. On the relation of the Platonists to the Aristotelian Peripatetics, Stoics, and Epicureans: Dillon 1977, 113; Brittain 2008, 537; Sedley 2003, 20 and 32; Gill 2003, 39 and 51; Annas 2008, 271. Dillon 1977, 184. Hunter 2004, 2006, 2008b, 775-789 and 2012; Morgan, Repath, Dowden, Hermann and Ní Mheallaigh 2007; Morales 2004, 50-60; Zeitlin 2008, 102, with citations in note 35. Zeitlin 2008, 102: ‘These two dialogues on Eros were much in vogue during this period, not just in relation to the novel, whose erotics would benefit from Plato’s prestige and authority (however playfully or ironically deployed).’

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First, that the Greek world of the past—a world without Rome—is the only possible setting;9 second, that the city is the centre of Hellenic civilization, the place from which the heroes leave to face the dangers of the country and to which they return to find themselves once more in the bosom of their loved ones; and third, that the heroes should be two young people from the urban elite who are constantly obsessed with the values of faithfulness and marriage (and thus with the continuation of their own kind).10 While these ‘key assumptions’ may reflect the historical reality and cultural ideology of the Greek pepaideumenoi, it should be emphasized that they do so as idealized fictions: the Greek past of a world without Rome in which the novels are set is an idealized fiction; the antithesis of urban and rustic (running along the lines of traditional polarities of self and other: Greek and barbarian, citizen and foreigner, master and slave) is an idealized fiction;11 the heroes as young lovers destined for marriage is an idealized fiction. Indeed, while it is certainly the case that all the Greek novels have marriage and family as their telos, thus confirming the value of the oikos to the Greek elite as a primary means of maintaining their cultural hegemony under imperial rule,12 the very fact that the novel’s erotic interest in the young lovers ends in marriage indicates that what is not of interest—what constitutes a boundary of the Greek prose romance as a literary genre—is precisely the state of marriage. Possibly the popularity of the novels (even if we restrict their audience to the educated elite) arose from accompanying the lovers on their perilous journeys through worlds hostile to the Greek oikos.13 At any rate, as erotic cultural fantasy, reflecting and ————— 9

10 11 12

13

Saïd 1994, 217, points out that there is internal evidence demonstrating that ‘the Ephesiaca and Leucippe and Clitophon are ‘contemporary novels’ set in the empire, not set in the past like the ‘historical novels’, Chaereas and Callirhoe, the Aethiopica and Daphnis and Chloe; even so, it remains the case that Rome is virtually (if not absolutely) absent, which is at a far enough remove from present reality to place it in proximity to a past when Greece was not yet subject to Roman rule. Swain 1996, 109-110. Saïd 1999. Zeitlin 2008, 102, observes that, in such works as Plutarch’s Tale of Love, ‘Plato’s spiritual elevation of Eros and its role in the education and enlightenment of lovers … [were] turned … into platforms for current ideas about the sexes and their reciprocal relations that were oriented now towards marriage and its emotional pleasures, rather than pederastic love, as a means to the soul’s ascent.’ Cf. Morales 2008, 43; Goldhill 2008, 197-199. Hunter 2008a, 270 raises the question from the standpoint of the male reader: ‘What is it indeed that male readers want from the novel: to admire the suffering and virtue of chaste heroines, or to fantasize about having sex with them, or are these activities inseparable?’ Gratuitous sex and violence in the ancient novel has an obvious parallel in modern cinema (and comics or graphic novels):

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sustaining the ideology of the educated Greek elite under Roman rule, the proper subject of the ancient Greek novel is love not marriage, eros not philia.14

2. The Platonic eros of art Everyone desires immortality (pantes … tou gar athanatou erōsin)15… those whose procreancy is of the body turn to women as the object of their love, and raise a family … But those whose procreancy is of the soul rather than of the body … conceive and bear the things of the soul, … wisdom and the rest of virtue; it is the office of every poet to beget them, and of every artist whom we may call creative … And I ask you, who would not prefer such fatherhood to merely human propagation, if he stopped to think of Homer, and Hesiod, and all the greatest of our poets? Who would not envy them their immortal progeny, their claim upon the admiration of posterity?16 In the speech Socrates relates from Diotima in Plato’s Symposium, art, as the offspring of the soul’s desire for immortality, is a kind of byproduct of psyche’s eros for the divine principle of beauty, to kalon. The artistic impulse is not the highest realization of psyche’s eros but a lower step in a hierarchy of erotic activities by which the soul ascends toward the divine—the lowest activity is the sexual impulse to procreate, which we share with all living things; the highest activity belongs to the mystical vision of to kalon as the ultimate object of psyche’s eros: Nor will his vision of the beautiful take the form of a face, or of hands, or of anything that is of the flesh. It will be neither words, nor knowledge, nor a something that exists in something else, such as a living creature, or the earth, or the heavens, or anything that is—but subsisting of itself and by itself in an eternal oneness, while every beautiful thing partakes of it in such sort that, however much the parts may wax and wane, it will be neither more nor less, but still the same inviolable whole.17 —————

14 15 16 17

in both cases the vicarious enjoyment of the illicit and immoral is enabled by endings which abide by and even zealously endorse the moral code—legal and social—of its intended audience. For the contrary argument, see Perkins 1995, 41-76. Plato, Smp. 208d; Greek text, Dover 1980, 59; my translation. Smp. 208d-209d; trans. Joyce 1973. Smp. 210e-211b; trans. Joyce 1973.

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Though Plato cites epic’s immortality as an exemplary realization of artistic eros, by its own teaching the art form of the Symposium is a higher artistic fulfillment of the eros of art. As we know from the Republic, not all poetry— including Homer’s and Hesiod’s—is praiseworthy. Good poetry is that whose images of beauty inspire the soul so far as possible to forsake the body and ascend towards the ultimate vision of beauty; bad poetry is that which directs the soul downward, and imprisons it in the physicality of bodily feeling: And so in regard to the emotions of sex and anger, and all the appetites and pains and pleasures of the soul which we say accompany all our actions, the effect of poetic imitation is the same. For it waters and fosters these feelings when what we ought to do is to dry them up, and it establishes them as our rulers when they ought to be ruled, to the end that we may be better and happier men instead of worse and more miserable.18 The greatest artistic works will be those begotten by way of the sublimation of the pederastic love of erastēs and erōmenos: […] by constant association with so much beauty… he [the erastēs] will be delivered of the burden he has labored under all these years. And what is more, he and his friend [the erōmenos] will help each other rear the issue of their friendship—and so the bond between them will be more binding, and their communion even more complete, than that which comes of bringing children up, because [in works of art] they have created something lovelier and less mortal than human seed.19 It has been argued that Plato’s view of poetry (literature) changes between the Symposium and the Republic: whereas the Symposium praises the poet’s art (especially Homeric epic) as creative, the Republic critiques the poet’s art (again, especially Homer) as imitative.20 The Phaedrus (generally agreed to come after the Symposium and Republic) redeems the poet as a mediator inspired by divine mania (Phaedrus 245). The true poet sits alongside the true prophet as the medium of divine creativity, which is essentially the role of the artist assumed by the author of the ancient Greek novel.

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R. 606d; trans. Shorey 1973. Smp. 209b-c; trans. Joyce 1973. Asmis 1992.

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3. The sublimation of the Platonic eros of art in the ancient Greek novel The fantasy world created in the ancient Greek novel is a literal transgression of the Platonic commandment to reach beyond artistic fantasy to a divine reality, as does the ancient Greek novel’s focus on age-symmetrical, heteroerotic relationships which find ultimate consummation in marriage and children, of romances that end in weddings celebrating the restoration of the classical oikos. In the romantic fantasy of the ancient novel, then, this erotic impulse toward to kalon is sublimated in the artifice of a world in which the transcendent divinity of to kalon is imagined as immanent in the idealized humanity of heroic lovers. Life is idealized—not by erasing the harsh reality of lived experience, for if anything it is magnified a thousand-fold—but by representing life and reality as subject to the divine sovereignty of to kalon. It is a world whose dark shadows are cast by the salvific light of the Platonic good. The Platonic principle of to kalon manifests itself by way of instantiation in the visible beauty of bodies and the intelligible beauty of souls, laws, art, religion and philosophy (Smp. 209-211). In Symposium and Phaedrus, the focus is on the eros of the souls of lovers, aroused initially by their physical beauty and then nourished by their intellectual beauty. In the ancient Greek novel, the sublimation of the transcendent principle of divine beauty takes the form of presenting to kalon as immanent in the heteroerotic relationship of young lovers, with a focus on its presence in the inner life of their souls and in their outer lives of worldly experience. The focus on to kalon as immanent in the souls of the lovers is reflected in the characteristic dramatization of psychomachia, the inner conflict of reason and passion as a privileged site of dramatic conflict;21 the focus on its immanence in their worldly experience is reflected in the characteristic dramatization of events, with constant comparisons of persons, scenes and events to works of art, and the inevitable occurrence of dramatic spectacles, especially as the climax of the story. Heliodorus provides an excellent example of both the dramatization of the inner realm of psychomachia in which the spiritual eros of the soul battles the physicality of bodily lust, and the dramatization of external events by comparison to drama. Kalasiris introduces his story by relating how, as a priest, he fell

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Repath 2007; Fusillo 1999. At the time of the Second Sophistic, psychomachia has become a concern shared by self-identified Platonists with Aristotelian Peripatetics, Stoics and even the Epicureans—but in just this sense they are all the students of Plato, and it is likely that the Greek paideia embodied in the novel reflects Plato’s ascendancy which was not restricted to the professional philosophers such as Plutarch.

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prey to the lust of a ‘Thracian woman, in the full bloom of youth, second in beauty only to Chariklea,’ and ‘fully equipped for the sexual hunt’:22 It shames me to tell you this, but tell it I shall. The constant sight of her proved too much for me; the self-control I had practiced all my life fell before her assault. For a long time I pitted the eyes of my soul against the eyes of my flesh, but in the end I had to admit defeat and sank beneath the weight of carnal passion. This woman, I discovered, was the start of the ordeals that heaven had predicted awaited me; it was clear to me that she was but acting a part in the drama of destiny, a mask, as it were, worn by the malign power that guided my fate at that time.23 A generic hallmark of the ancient novel is its obsession with godlike or even greater-than-godlike beauty, art (especially tragedy, painting and sculpture) and eros. These elements are often entwined at the beginning of a story, and repeated throughout the narrative; in some novels, so excessively as to rouse suspicions of self-parody of the romance genre (certainly in Leucippe and Clitophon). This is easily demonstrated by the following catalogue, presented in the chronological order in which they appear in Reardon’s Collected Ancient Greek Novels. We begin with what is perhaps the earliest novel, Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe: She was a wonderful girl, the pride of Sicily; her beauty was more than human, it was divine … the beauty … of the maiden Aphrodite herself. Report of the astonishing vision spread everywhere, and suitors flocked to Syracuse …But Eros intended to make a match of his own devising. There was a young man called Chaereas, surpassingly handsome, like Achilles and Nireus and Hippolytus and Alcibiades as sculptures and painters portray them.24 Xenophon’s An Ephesian Tale begins by explicitly constructing an agōn of the elements of human beauty, art, and eros:

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23 24

Hld. 2,25; Reardon 2008, 398. All texts are cited by author, book and chapter; translations and pagination are those in Reardon 2008. Hld. 2,25; Reardon 2008, 399, emphasis added. Chariton 1,1; Reardon 2008, 22, emphasis added.

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[Habrocomes’] good looks were phenomenal, and neither in Ionia nor anywhere else had there ever been anything like them … Everyone in Ephesus sought his company … They treated the boy like a god, and some even prostrated themselves and prayed at the sight of him. He had a high opinion of himself … Everything that was regarded as beautiful he despised as inferior … He did not even recognize Eros as a god … And whenever he saw a temple or statue of Eros, he used to laugh and claimed that he was more handsome and powerful than any Eros. And that was the case: for wherever Habrocomes appeared, no one admired any statue or praised any picture.25 From these first two novels, we can already see how art is the middle term which mediates between the godlike beauty of our human protagonists and the power of eros. The erotic power of human beauty is identified by reference to a work of art, which is itself inspired by the eros for beauty. The erotic world inspired by beauty in which the ancient novel immerses its reader is the world of art. The next two novels begin explicitly with an ekphrasis, the rhetorical device popular in the Second Sophistic of describing a work of art, well-suited to a representation of the union of godlike human beauty, art and eros. First we have Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon: I saw a votive painting whose scene was set on land and sea alike: the picture was of Europa … on the sea swam a bull, and on his back was seated a beautiful maiden, sailing on the bull towards Crete … And Eros was leading the bull: Eros, a tiny child, with wings spread … Though the entire painting was worthy of admiration, I devoted my special attention to this figure of Eros leading the bull….26 In the ingenious construct of this novel’s narrative frame, our initial narrator immediately becomes the internal audience to the story of Leucippe and Clitophon, the setting for which is Plato’s Phaedrus.27 Of course, it is the superabundance of references to the Phaedrus (and Symposium)28 that suggests Tatius’ novel is a parody of the romance genre; at any rate, its acute self-awareness of its Platonic doctrine makes it highly instructive in exposing the novel as a construct of the Platonic eros of art. ————— 25 26 27 28

X. Eph. 1,1; Reardon 2008, 128, emphasis added. Ach. Tat. 1,1-2; Reardon 2008, 176-77, emphasis added. Morales 2003, xx; Ni Mheallaigh 2007. Morales 2003, xx-xxii; Repath 2001, 2007 (n. 66).

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At the other end of the spectrum, as far removed from parody as possible, is Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe, whose initial ekphrasis makes clear the extraordinary valuation of the world of art over that of nature or ordinary reality in Greek prose romance: When I was hunting in Lesbos, I saw the most beautiful sight [kalliste] I have ever seen in a grove that was sacred to the Nymphs: a painting that told a story of love. The grove itself was beautiful … But the picture was lovelier still, combining great artistic skill with an exciting romantic subject. Many people were attracted by its fame and came, even from abroad, to pray to the Nymphs and to look at the picture… [of] young people pledging love, a pirates’ raid, an enemy attack—and more, much more, all of it romantic. I gazed in admiration and was seized by a yearning to depict the picture in words … and produced the four volumes of this book, as an offering to Love.29 In Daphnis and Chloe’s ekphrasis, we go beyond Achilles Tatius’ comparison of the romance story to a painting, to see that the story is itself a work of art— itself the most beautiful thing (kalliste) there is to see. Finally, we come to the longest and last of our extant Greek novels, Heliodorus’ The Ethiopian Tale. The sophistication of the work is evident from its opening, a complex narrative structure whose strategy is to place the reader within the frame of the picture, by describing a scene of battle carnage on a beach as seen through the eyes of Egyptian bandits who have just arrived on the scene. At first, we seem at the furthest possible remove from the romantic world of eros, godlike beauty and art—but we soon are made to gaze upon the scene as a tragedy staged by a god, which then becomes a dark foil to the godlike human beauty of distressed lovers whose still repose is rendered by ekphrasis: In that small space the deity had contrived an infinitely varied spectacle, defiling wine with blood and unleashing war at the party, combining wining and dying, pouring of drink and spilling of blood, and staging this tragic show for the Egyptian bandits. They stood on the mountainside like the audience in a theater, unable to comprehend the scene: the vanquished were there, but the victors were nowhere to be seen …So they cast themselves in the role of victors and set off down the hillside … ————— 29

Longus prooimion (prologue); Reardon 2008, 288-289, emphasis added.

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Then they reached a point a short distance from the ship and the bodies when they found themselves confronted by a sight even more inexplicable than what they had seen before. On a rock sat a girl, a creature of such indescribable beauty that one might have taken her for a goddess. Despite here great distress at her plight, she had an air of courage and nobility. On her head she wore a crown of laurel; from her shoulders hung a quiver; her left arm leant on the bow, the hand hanging relaxed at the wrist. She rested the elbow of her other arm on her right thigh, cradling her cheek with her fingers. Her head was bowed and she gazed steadily at a young man lying at her feet. He was terribly wounded and seemed to be barely conscious … Even so he had a radiant, manly beauty, and his cheek appeared more gleaming white because of the red streak of blood running down it.30 Here, art represents life as imitating art. The pirates are depicted as acting like actors in a drama—assuming the role of victors; the very physical description of the lovers, especially of how the girl’s weight is distributed, presents them first as a statue. When she moves and speaks, the bandits are terrified, mistaking her for Artemis or Isis, or ‘that she was a priestess possessed by one of the gods and that she was responsible for the carnage before them.’ The ancient Greek novel is, of course, a work of art; but unlike previous works of art in which life is represented by art, here, life is represented as art— life is art. In the ancient Greek novel, art is used to create an artificial world in which life is a drama contrived by a god. Greek romance is full of dramatic moments unveiled by way of explicit comparisons to moments of drama, all leading toward the favorite conclusion of a dramatic spectacle of reconciliation that takes place on a public stage.31 Explicit comparisons of life to art abound. Vividly communicating the sheer delight taken in their contrivance is Chariton’s climatic scene of Chaereas’ ship entering the harbor of Syracuse before the eyes of the assembled crowd, the lovers concealed within a tent aboard ship: No one knew what to make of it, and they were all straining their eyes, when suddenly the tapestries were drawn back, Callirhoe could be seen reclining on a couch of beaten gold, dressed in Tyrian purple; Chaereas, dressed like a general, sat beside her. Thunder never so stunned the ears nor lighting the eyes of those who beheld them, nor did anyone who had found a treasure of ————— 30 31

Hld. 1,2; Reardon 2008, 354, emphasis added. Connors 2008 provides a study of the relation of spectacle and politics in the ancient Greek novel.

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gold ever cry out as did that crowd then, when beyond all expectation they saw an indescribable sight.32 Another stunning instance is the climax of the Ethiopian Tale, when we are finally released from the chaffing harness of dramatic tension to enjoy the reunion of Charikleia and Theagenes, as well as the jubilant confirmation of popular belief in the divine sovereignty of to kalon in human life: The populace cheered and danced for joy where they stood, and there was no discordant voice as young and old, rich and poor, united in jubilation, for though they had understood very little of what was said … perhaps they had been brought to a realization of the truth by the same divine force that had staged this whole drama and that now produced a perfect harmony of diametric opposites: joy and sorrow combined; tears mingled with laughter; the most hideous horror transformed to celebration; those who wept also laughed; those who grieved also rejoiced….33 In truth, that ‘small space’ in which Heliodorus’ ‘deity had contrived an infinitely varied spectacle’ is none other than the amphitheater of the mind of his audience, and the deity who contrives is, of course, none other than the author himself. If, like philosophers returning to Plato’s cave, we turn away from the dramatic stage of the ancient Greek novel on which love and beauty triumph over the ugliness of the world at the hands of beneficent gods, and reflect upon by whom and for whom this erotic cultural fantasy is created, we can see that the gods who contrive and those for whom they contrive are really the pepaideumenoi of the Greek elite—a realization which brings us to look at how the implied relationship of narrator/author and audience/reader in the ancient Greek novel reflects the Platonic paradigm of erastēs and erōmenos.

4. The Platonic paradigm of erastēs/erōmenos as author/audience in the ancient Greek novel. Addressing the audience in the first person as fellow erōtikos and offering to share his gift to Eros of a historia erōtos, Longus’ narrator establishes an erotic relationship between author and audience: ————— 32 33

Chariton 8.6; Reardon 2008, 120. Hld. 10,38; Reardon 2008, 586.

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I produced … this book, as an offering to Love … and something for mankind to possess and enjoy. It will cure the sick, comfort the distressed, stir the memory of those who have loved, and educate those who haven’t. For certainly no one has ever avoided Love, and no one will, as long as beauty exists, and eyes can see.34 .

In one way or another, all the ancient Greek novels begin by quickly establishing that what they have to offer the reader is a logos that would interest a fellow erōtikos, confident that ‘certainly no one has ever avoided Love’. In this sense, all of the novels present themselves as token offerings of love offered by the erastēs in courtship of the erōmenos. In keeping with the Platonic paradigm of pederastic pedagogy, Longus offers to educate his erōmenos in love. But is the education he offers anything other than an education in the art of the novel itself? The ancient Greek novel does not ask its audience to undertake the arduous spiritual ascent of the soul from the sensible realm of appearances to the intelligible realm of ideas. Instead, it invites us to immerse ourselves in the enjoyment of an idealized erotic fantasy in which life becomes art, a tapestry woven, as it were, on Kirke’s golden loom. The education in love offered by the ancient Greek novel is none other than the erotic enjoyment of the beauty of art.

5. Conclusion Whether Plato would admire the artistic achievement of the ancient Greek novel is a difficult question. On the one hand, the erotic fantasy of the ancient Greek novel evidently transgresses Plato’s teaching that the truly inspired artist should use the poetic art of image-making (mimesis) to aid the soul’s escape from the world of appearances. On the other hand, the erotic fantasy is itself a Platonised world of idealized appearances, of heroes and heroines whose only virtue is their Platonic devotion to the beautiful, the just and the good, now as immanent in the idealized world of appearances rather than transcendent of ordinary reality. In the Platonic idealization of life in the ancient Greek novel, lovers are destined to triumph over worldly adversity, and, in this triumph of an ennobling, chaste love of beauty over a degrading carnal lust for the body, the sovereignty of the Platonic principle of to kalon over the world of appearances is assured—as is the cultural hegemony of the Greek pepaideumenoi under Roman rule. ————— 34

Longus prooimion (prologue); Reardon 2008, 289.

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Bibliography Annas, J. 2008. ‘Plato’s ethics’, in: G. Fine (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Plato, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 267-285. Asmis, E. 1992. ‘Plato on poetic creativity’, in: R. Kraut (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Plato, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 338-364. Bowersock, G.W. 1974. ‘Introduction: the Greek renaissance’, in: G. Bowersock (ed.), Approaches to the Second Sophistic: Papers Presented at the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association, University Park, PA: Science Press, 1-3. Bowie, E. 2008. ‘Literary milieux’, in: T. Whitmarsh (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 17-38. Brittain, C. 2008. ‘Plato and Platonism’, in: G. Fine (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Plato, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 526-549. Burkert, W. 1985. Greek Religion, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Connors, C. 2008. ‘Politics and spectacles’, in: T. Whitmarsh (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 162-181. de Lacey, P. 1974. ‘Plato and the intellectual life of the second century A.D.’, in: G. Bowerstock (ed.), Approaches to the Second Sophistic: Papers Presented at the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association, University Park, PA: Science Press, 4-10. Dillon, J.G. 1977. The Middle Platonists: a Study of Platonism 80 B.C. to A.D. 220, London: Duckworth Press. Dowden, K. 2007. ‘Novel ways of being philosophical or a tale of two dogs and a phoenix’, in: J. Morgan and M. Jones (eds.), Philosophical Presences in the Ancient Novel, Ancient Narrative Supplementum 10, Groningen: Barkhuis Publishing and Groningen University Library, 137-149. Dover, K. (ed.) 1982. Plato Symposium, London: Cambridge University Press. Fine, G. (ed.) 2008. The Oxford Handbook of Plato, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fusillo, M. 1999. ‘The Conflict of Emotions: A Topos in the Greek Erotic Novel’, in: S. Swain (ed.), Oxford Readings in the Greek Novel, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 6082. Gill, C. 2003. The school in the Roman imperial period’, in: B. Inwood (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 33-58. Goldhill, S. 2008. ‘Genre’, in: T. Whitmarsh (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 185-200. Hägg, T. 1983. The Novel in Antiquity, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Halperin, D. 1990. ‘Why is Diotima a woman?’, in: D. Halperin, J. Winkler, and F. Zeitlin (eds.), Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 257-309. Hermann, F.-G. 2007. ‘Longus’ imitation: mimesis in the education of Daphnis and Chloe’, in: J. Morgan and M. Jones (eds.), Philosophical Presences in the Ancient Novel, Ancient Narrative Supplementum 10, Groningen: Barkhuis Publishing and Groningen University Library, 53-84. Hunter, R. 2004. Plato’s Symposium, Oxford Approaches to Classical Literature, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

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Hunter, R. 2006. ‘Plato’s Symposium and the traditions of ancient fiction’, in: J. Lesher, D. Nails, and F. Sheffield (eds.), Plato’s Symposium: Issues in Interpretation and Reception, Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 295-312. Hunter, R. 2008a. ‘Ancient readers’, in: T. Whitmarsh (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel, Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 261271. Hunter, R. 2008b. On Coming After: Studies in Post-Classical Greek Literature and its Reception, vol. 1, Berlin and New York: Walter De Gruyter. Hunter, R. 2012. Plato and the Traditions of Ancient Literature: The Silent Stream, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Inwood, B. (ed.) 2003. The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Joyce, M. (trans.) 1973. ‘Symposium’, in: E. Hamilton and H. Cairns (eds.), The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 525-574. Konstan, D. 1994. Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genres, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Morales, H. 2003. ‘Introduction’, in: T. Whitmarsh (trans.) and H. Morales (introd.), Achilles Tatius, Leucippe and Clitophon, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, viixxxii. Morales, H. 2004. Vision and Narrative in Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Morales, H. 2008. ‘The history of sexuality’, in: T. Whitmarsh (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 39-55. Morgan, M. 1992. ‘Plato and Greek religion’, in: R. Kraut (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Plato, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 237-247. Morgan, J. 1993. ‘Make-believe and make believe: the fictionality of the Greek novels’, in: C. Gill and T. Wiseman (eds.), Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World, Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 175-229. Morgan, J. 1994. ‘Introduction’, in: J. Morgan and R. Stoneman (eds.), Greek Fiction: The Greek Novel in Context, London and New York: Routledge, 1-12. Morgan, J. 2007. ‘The representation of philosophers in Greek fiction’, in: J. Morgan and M. Jones (eds.), Philosophical Presences in the Ancient Novel, Ancient Narrative Supplementum 10, Groningen: Barkhuis Publishing and Groningen University Library, 23-51. Ní Mheallaigh, K. 2007. ‘Philosophical framing: the Phaedran setting of Leucippe and Cleitophon’, in: J. Morgan and M. Jones (eds.), Philosophical Presences in the Ancient Novel, Ancient Narrative Supplementum 10, Groningen: Barkhuis Publishing and Groningen University Library, 231-244. Perkins, J. 1995. The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era, London: Routledge. Perry, B. 1967. The Ancient Romances. A Literary-Historical Account of Their Origins, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Preston, R. 2001. ‘Roman questions, Greek answers: Plutarch and the construction of identity’, in: S. Goldhill (ed.), Being Greek Under Rome: Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic and the Development of Empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 86-119. Reardon, B. (ed.) 22008. Collected Ancient Greek Novels, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press (19891).

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Repath, I. 2001. Some Uses of Plato in Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Cleitophon, Dissertation,University of Warwick. http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap/55550. Accessed 2014. Repath, I. 2007. ‘Emotional conflict and Platonic psychology in the Greek novel’, in: J. Morgan and M. Jones (eds.), Philosophical Presences in the Ancient Novel, Ancient Narrative Supplementum 10, Groningen: Barkhuis Publishing and Groningen University Library, 53-84. Saïd, S. 1994. ‘The city in the Greek novel,’ in: J, Tatum (ed.), The Search for the Ancient Novel, Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 216-236. Saïd, S. 1999. ‘Rural society in the Greek novel, or the country seen from the town’, in: S. Swain (ed.), Oxford Readings in the Greek Novel, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 83107. Sedley, D. 2003. ‘The school from Zeno to Arius Didymus, in: B. Inwood (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 7-32. Shorey, P. (trans.) 1973. ‘Republic’, in: E. Hamilton and H. Cairns (eds.), The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 575-844. Stephens, S. 2008. ‘Cultural identity’, in: T. Whitmarsh (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel, Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 56-71. Swain, S. 1996. Hellenism and Empire: Language, Classicism, and Power in the Greek World AD 50-250, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Whitmarsh, T. 2005. The Second Sophistic (Greece & Rome New Surveys in the Classics No. 35), Oxford: Oxford University Press. Whitmarsh, T. 2008a. ‘Introduction’, in: T. Whitmarsh (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 114. Whitmarsh, T. 2008b. ‘Class’, in: T. Whitmarsh (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 72-87. Whitmarsh, T. and Bartsch, S. 2008. ‘Narrative’, in: T. Whitmarsh (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 237-257. Whitmarsh, T. 2011. Narrative and Identity in the Ancient Greek Novel: Returning Romance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zeitlin, F. 2008. ‘Religion’, in: T. Whitmarsh (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 91-108.

Platonic Perversions: Horror and the Irrational in the Greek Novel S TEVEN D. S MITH Hofstra University

1. Introduction During his excursus on the dual nature of the soul, the Athenian stranger in Plato’s Laws exhorts that in one’s soul 'no one should voluntarily ever possess the greatest evil’, nor should one ‘live through one’s life in possession of that evil’ (ἐν οὖν τῷ τιμιωτάτῳ τὸ μέγιστον κακὸν οὐδεὶς ἑκὼν μή ποτε λάβῃ καὶ ζῇ διὰ βίου κεκτημένος αὐτό, 731c). Later during his conversation with Kleinias and Megillos, the Athenian reasserts his position that, since ‘all wicked men always are unwillingly wicked’, it follows that ‘the unjust man is I suppose wicked, but the wicked man is such against his will’ (οἱ κακοὶ πάντες εἰς πάντα εἰσὶν ἄκοντες κακοί ... ὁ μὲν ἄδικός που κακός, ὁ δὲ κακὸς ἄκων τοιοῦτος, 860d). Plato’s Athenian optimistically posits that the human soul by nature tends toward the good, and he cannot imagine that anyone would willingly separate himself from that ultimate good, despite the presence of the irrational within the soul itself.1 Some who are deemed wicked are in fact curable, having merely succumbed to the temptations of the baser element of their bi-partite soul. What is needed is a correction to the temporary perversion of the soul’s proper order, in which the stronger and better part of the soul is the master, and the weaker and inferior part is the slave (τὰ μὲν οὖν κρείττω καὶ ἀμείνω δεσπόζοντα, τὰ δὲ ἥττω καὶ χείρω δοῦλα, 726a). In the wicked, however, the worse and inferior part has become dominant, and the better and superior one needs to be back on top.2 ————— 1

2

Dodds 1945, 18. Names of authors, titles, and characters from the novels have been transliterated from their Greek form; for Plato and the titles of his dialogues, I have retained the conventional spelling. On the inconsistency regarding the origins of evil in Plato’s thought, see Meldrum 1950. On Socrates’ ironic adoption of an ‘irrational’ persona in the Phaedrus, see Schenker 2006. Philosophy and the Ancient Novel, 125–139

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This account of the Platonic soul, though a familiar topic, is helpful for understanding the philosophical discourse within which the characters from ancient Greek fiction were constructed. In philosophical terms one might describe the Greek novels as a series of scenarios in which the souls of various characters are tempted away from the ideals of truth and noble beauty postulated by Plato, sophistically crafting truth to suit their personal desires and at worst indulging in slavish pleasures. The characters of the Greek novels come through these philosophical ordeals with varying degrees of success. In the earliest complete novel, Chariton’s Callirhoe, examples of such deviations abound, as nearly every man whom Callirhoe encounters becomes a slave to his own erôs for the beautiful girl. Chaereas too, Callirhoe’s husband, learns to embrace the heroic manhood required of him, but there is no indication at the novel’s end that he has been cured of his dangerous jealousy and quick temper. Even the eponymous heroine herself must negotiate her own truth when she decides not to abort Chaereas’ baby, but to marry another man to save herself and her unborn child. Chariton writes the scene of Callirhoe’s decision with great pathos, but at the end of the novel, the reality of what she has done – becoming the wife of two different men – fills Callirhoe with shame when she is reunited with Chaereas (8,1,15), reminding the reader how far this ‘ideal’ heroine strayed from both her role as wife and the conventions of the genre.3 Such ambiguities continue to fascinate readers because they reveal virtuous subjects who, despite the philosophical optimism of Plato’s Athenian stranger, cannot help but demonstrate that their own morality is at times questionable: in the characters of the Greek novels, we witness souls continually bound up in a struggle with themselves. As Ian Repath has shown, Plato’s philosophy of the soul enabled the novelists ‘to convey psychological turmoil in an effective and powerful way’.4 It is possible to go one step further. Corresponding to this internal struggle within the characters, the novels themselves mimic the conflict described by Plato’s Athenian stranger. Though they tend toward the noble and the good (i.e. the reunion and/or marriage of the pure young lovers), the narratives are beset by temptations of the basest pleasures. I have two extreme cases in mind: Leukippe’s violent Scheintod in Achilles Tatius’ Leukippe and Kleitophon and the scene of necromancy and the old woman’s gruesome death in Heliodoros’ Aithiopika. The attraction of these grotesque episodes arises from their contrast ————— 3

4

On this tense moment in the novel, see Smith 2007: 101, 237-238 and Whitmarsh 2011, 63. Even if Chariton is the inventor of the genre (see Tilg 2010), the figure of the ideal wife as the embodiment of chastity and fidelity goes back to Homer’s Penelope; Chariton’s quotation of Od. 23, 296 at 8,1,17 makes it clear that he has this archetype in mind. Repath 2007, 81.

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with romance’s more idealizing tendencies. Diverting us from thoughts of fidelity and chastity, Achilles Tatius and Heliodoros luxuriate in the scopophiliac opportunities that they have constructed, giving voice to fantasies of erotic violence and a temporary indulgence in the irrational. In both episodes, the novels mark their departure from the rational by allusion to Plato’s quintessential erotophilosophical text, the Symposium. Achilles and Heliodoros have both obviously read Plato, but within these contexts the Platonic allusions are ironic,5 in that they participate in the textual perversion of the soul’s putatively natural order. These scenes of human sacrifice and necromancy not only depict the characters in the grips of a moral dilemma, but also implicate the reader in a narrative digression away from the fulfillment of the novels’ putatively noble aims.6 The scenes I discuss here are admittedly extraordinary and focused on characters – an unorthodox romantic hero and a peculiar Egyptian prophet, respectively – who are atypical of the genre. But these deviations from Platonic idealism are, I suggest, only the most radical examples of an ethical phenomenon that pervades the novels, even in the case of their idealized protagonists. What Achilles and Heliodoros offer in these gruesome scenes is an artistic challenge, on both the narrative and meta-narrative levels, to the position articulated by Plato’s Athenian stranger, namely, that no one would willingly do evil.

2. Kleitophon the voyeur In Achilles Tatius’ novel, Kleitophon narrates in a detailed, objective mode the apparent sacrifice of his beloved Leukippe by Egyptian priests. He tells us that the Egyptians pour a libation over the girl’s head, that they sing a hymn to the accompaniment of a flute, that Leukippe is laid down on the ground with her hands tied to stakes, and that a sword is plunged into her stomach, from which the Egyptians then pull out her intestines for a sacrificial banquet. Kleitophon’s description is blunt and vivid, highlighting the scene’s shocking violence. The soldiers and the general with whom he has been traveling cry out at everything they see and they finally turn their eyes away from the spectacle. ‘But I,’ he says, ‘irrationally sat there and kept watching’ (ἐγὼ δὲ ἐκ παραλόγου καθήμενος ἐθεώμην, 3,15,5). ————— 5

6

Appropriately so, given the value of the symposium in the Greek world for ‘cultivating the civilized values of irony and wit’ (Whitmarsh 2004, 66). My point is echoed by Ní Mheallaigh, who argues that the ‘blurring of ontological boundaries’ (2007, 241) in Achilles’ novel is achieved at least in part by the framing of Kleitophon’s narrative within a philosophical discourse established by Plato’s Phaedrus.

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Kleitophon describes his state as of one who has been struck senseless (ἔκπληξις, 3,15,6) and the evil he witnesses strikes him like lightening (ἐνεβρόντησέ με). Finally, he compares himself to the mythical Niobe, whose immobility after witnessing the destruction of her children led people to think that she had turned to stone (ὡσεὶ λίθος, 3,15,6). Leukippe is the victim in this apparent sacrifice, but Kleitophon clearly casts himself also as a victim. The imagery here, furthermore, is remarkably similar to the imagery that Kleitophon used to describe his first reaction to seeing Leukippe at the beginning of the novel, when ‘she struck my eyes like lightening’ (καταστράπτει μου τοὺς ὀφθαλμούς, 1,4,2). That moment, love at first sight, also afforded Kleitophon an early opportunity to utter one of his many sententious remarks: ‘for the eye is the path where love makes its wound’ (ὀφθαλμὸς γὰρ ὁδὸς ἐρωτικῷ τραύματι, 1,4,4). Helen Morales has shown that there are strong erotic undertones in Kleitophon’s metaphorical petrifaction at watching his girlfriend being bound, pierced, and disemboweled.7 I would like to focus, though, on the phrase that Kleitophon uses, ἐκ παραλόγου, to describe the way in which he sat watching Leukippe’s disembowelment. The phrase ἐκ παραλόγου may simply mean ‘unexpectedly’,8 but given the emphasis on Kleitophon’s dumbstruck state, the phrase should be construed as Kleitophon’s attempt, after the fact, to make sense of a prior experience for which he has no explanation. He sat there and kept watching, in other words, ‘because of something that contradicts the faculty of reason’ (ἐκ παραλόγου). Kleitophon’s inability to rationalize and understand his reaction also accounts for his allusions to the myths of Marsyas and Niobe: the turn to myth is a narrative strategy for coming to terms with the irrational. With the erotic significance of the Niobe myth already established, it remains to explore Kleitophon’s allusion to the satyr Marsyas. After Leukippe has been led to the altar by the Egyptians, ‘one of the young men, laying her down on her back, tied her to stakes planted in the ground, just as the model makers depict Marsyas bound to a tree’ (3,15,4).9 Apart from being tied up, however, there is little similarity between Leukippe and Marsyas. The satyr Marsyas was, according to popular iconography, either seated or bound or hung vertically from a tree10 and his flaying was punishment for challenging ————— 7 8

9

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Morales 2004, 170. Thus Garnaud’s translation, ‘d’une mannière inattendue (2002, 91), and Whitmarsh’s ‘beyond all expectation’ (2002, 54) and ‘out of surprise’ (2003, 197). Cf. Winkler’s ‘contrary to all reason’ (Reardon 1989, 216). For Morales, Leukippe’s comparison to Marsyas stresses ‘her powerlessness and the bloodiness of the assault to follow’ (2004, 170). Weis 1992, 376-378.

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Apollo. Leukippe on the other hand is clearly supine (ἀνακλίνας αὐτὴν ὑπτίαν), and she is an innocent sacrificial victim. So what, then, is Marsyas doing here? The mythological reference is, I suggest, a literary allusion. The intertextual hint is in the word κοροπλάθοι, the ‘model makers’ who, Kleitophon says, sculpt little statues of the mythological satyr. Kleitophon’s reference to the little statues of Marsyas points us, then, towards Alcibiades’ speech in the Symposium, in which Socrates is famously likened ‘to these silenes that sit in the statuary shops’ (215a7-b1) and to the satyr Marsyas himself. Socrates is not only like Marsyas physically, but in another respect also: he is violent (ὑβριστής, 215b7). But Alcibiades does not have in mind the sexual hybris of satyrs,11 as he explains: Marsyas at any rate with his instruments used to bewitch (ἐκήλει) people by means of the power (δυνάμει) that came from his mouth, and even now, whoever plays on the flute the strains of Marsyas ... whether or not a talented flautist or a silly flute girl plays his strains, those sounds alone make people possessed (κατέχεσθαι) and they reveal that they are in need of (δεομένους) the gods and the mystical rites of initiation, because those songs are divine (διὰ τὸ θεῖα εἶναι, 215c1-6). Socrates has this same power over anyone who listens to him, and even Alcibiades is made to remember the slavish disposition of his soul (μου ἡ ψυχὴ ... ὡς ἀνδραποδωδῶς διακειμένου, 215e6-7). Socrates’ powers of control are considerable, as Alcibiades admits that under his influence, ‘I would not hold up’ against him, ‘for he compels’ Alcibiades to concede his moral failings (οὐκ ἂν καρτερήσαιμι ... ἀναγκάζει γάρ με, 216a4-5). Alcibiades would block his ears and flee from Socrates’ conversations so that ‘I would not grow old sitting there beside this man’ (ἵνα μὴ αὐτοῦ καθήμενος παρὰ τούτῳ καταγηράσω, 216a8). Socrates alone, says Alcibiades, of all the other Athenians, makes him feel ashamed of his way of life (ἐγὼ δὲ τοῦτον μόνον αἰσχύνομαι, 216b2-3). Socrates would like to think of himself as a benevolent Eros, a guide leading souls towards absolute beauty (210a-212a). For Alcibiades, however, though he is unquestionably fond of his teacher, Socrates represents a violent, potentially overwhelming force. Ideally, Leukippe represents the salvation of Kleitophon’s soul in reciprocal love, and so his comparison of Leukippe to Marsyas may at first seem appropriate. The image of Marsyas that Kleitophon sees before him, however, is not the Svengali-like guide described by Alcibiades, but the satyr whose arrogant pride ————— 11

Dover 1980, 166.

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in his own musical powers has gotten the better of him, the vanquished opponent, tied up and ready for Apollo’s knife. Kleitophon’s conceptualization of the scene suggests the metaphorical fulfillment of an unspeakable fantasy, wherein the lover who is in need of moral correction takes perverse pleasure in seeing the symbol of his moral salvation bound up and mutilated. While those around him bewail the outrage and turn away from the spectacle, Kleitophon cannot take his eyes away. Though the unspeakable fantasy implies the thrill of dominating a philosophical/erotic bully, Kleitophon paradoxically describes his reaction as intensely passive, an irrational indulgence in what Socrates might call the slavish disposition of his soul. That this irrational indulgence is expressed by allusion to Plato’s Symposium is consistent with the ironic representation of philosophy that pervades Achilles’ novel.12 The disturbing tension generated by Kleitophon’s voyeuristic perversion is only partially defused, though, when he reveals that the whole of the scene was a charade. The episode highlights Achilles’ theoretical interest in the ambiguity between the real and the representational: even as Menelaos demonstrates that Leukippe is still alive, the scene remains for Kleitophon an opportunity for narrative horror. As Menelaos opens the coffin, ‘Leukippe rose up (ἀνέβαινε) from below, a dreadful sight, o gods, and one to inspire chills. Her whole stomach gaped open, empty of its innards. And falling upon me she embraces me and we became one and fell together to the ground (ἐπιπεσοῦσα δέ μοι περιπλέκεται καὶ συνέφυμεν καὶ ἄμφω κατεπέσομεν)’ (3,17,7).13 The theatricality presupposes an underlying, irrational desire for the truly violent and erotic satisfaction in the death of the beloved. The text remains suspended between sadomasochistic play and real sadomasochism, between chaste love and necrophilia, from a Platonic point of view the most degraded form of bodily desire.14

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13

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Goldhill 1995, 66-67. On parody in Achilles Tatius generally, see Fusillo 1989 and Chew 2000. On the conflict within the soul wishing to look upon what one should not, cf. Pl. R. 440a, August. Conf. 6,13. Baumbach attempts to accommodate Merkelbach’s theory of the novel as a mystery-text by arguing that, at least in parts (e.g. 7,15,3-4), Leukippe and Kleitophon ‘ermöglicht eine übernatürliche und eine natürliche Erklärung’ (2006, 95). Leukippe’s Scheintod, however, deflates any pretensions towards religious epiphany. Nevertheless, Baumbach’s theory that ambiguity is a stylistic principal of fantastic literature still stands: I suggest that the ambiguity here is between the ideals of Platonic philosophy and the narrative’s indulgence in the irrational. Kleitophon’s narrative is the playful expression of what Kristeva calls ‘the truth of selfdivision (abjection/sacred). Here two paths open out: sublimation and perversion’ (1982, 89).

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Latent in Kleitophon, therefore, is the potential for becoming like the fisherman Aigialeus in Xenophon’s Ephesiaka. Aigialeus’ love for the Spartan girl Thelxinoe begins idealistically, and after a series of obstacles worthy of a novel, they spend the rest of their lives happily ever after in Sicily. Aigialeus’ romance turns horrific, though, when he reveals that after Thelxinoe’s death, ‘her body was not buried; rather, I keep her with me and I always kiss her and make love to her’ (τὸ σῶμα οὐ τέθαπται, ἀλλὰ ἔχω γὰρ μετ’ ἐμαυτοῦ καὶ ἀεὶ φιλῶ καὶ σύνειμι, 5,1,9).15 At this point, we are far from transcending the love of bodies promoted by Plato’s Socrates (Smp. 210b).

3. Kalasiris and the scene of necromancy Heliodoros offers another scene of resurrection at the end of Book 6 of the Aithiopika, when Kalasiris and Charikleia, upon a battlefield strewn with corpses, witness a witch’s reanimation of her dead son. As Charikleia discovers that the corpse is a source for prophetic inquiry, her fear turns into curiosity, and she implores Kalasiris to approach the scene so that they too might inquire into the whereabouts of Theagenes. Kalasiris refuses, though, saying that he is only enduring the old woman’s spectacle by necessity (κατ’ ἀνάγκην) and that it is improper for a priest such as himself either to attempt or to be present at such activities. For priests, prophecy is achieved through lawful sacrifices and pure prayers. Necromancy, says Kalasiris, is ‘for the profane (βεβήλοις) and for those literally slithering upon the ground and among the bodies of the dead’ (6,14,7). Like Kleitophon’s reference to the satyr Marsyas, several elements in the scene from Heliodoros also evoke Plato’s Symposium. In Plato’s dialogue, Alcibiades humorously declares that his fellow symposiasts are initiates in the mad desire for philosophy, but addressing the slaves and ‘anyone else who is profane (βέβηλος) and uncivilized’, he says, ‘you should close the great doors of your ears (πύλας πάνυ μεγάλας τοῖς ὠσὶν ἐπίθεσθε)’ (218b5-7). Alcibiades’ use of religious language is of course humorous, for he proceeds to describe his own failed seduction of Socrates as an embarrassing reversal of social norms regarding the behavior of erastai and erômenoi. Kalasiris’ belief, on the other hand, that the lowly art of necromancy is ‘for the profane’ (βεβήλοις) is serious, consistent as it is with his earlier discourse on the two kinds of Egyptian magic. The one, he says, is ‘common’ (δημώδης, 3,16,3) and moves along the ground (χαμαὶ ἐρχομένη), but the other is ‘truly wisdom’ (ἡ ἀληθῶς σοφία, 3,16,4) which ‘looks up towards the heavens’ (ἄνω πρὸς τὰ οὐράνια βλέπει), evoking ————— 15

See Whitmarsh 2011, 1-5.

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the distinction between the ‘vulgar’ or ‘all-common’ Aphrodite (Πάνδημον, 180e1) and the ‘heavenly’ Aphrodite (Οὐράνιον, 180e3) in Plato’s Symposium. That Kalasiris’ quasi-Platonic discourse on Egyptian magic was motivated by conversation at a symposium (παρὰ τὸ συμπόσιον, 3,16,2) makes the intertextual role of Plato’s famous dialogue all the more crucial.16 The Platonic allusions bring to mind Kalasiris’ well-known characterization as a charlatan. The first time we hear of Kalasiris’ commitment to the more heavenly form of Egyptian wisdom was during his lengthy narrative. In that context, despite his denigration of the lower sort of magic, Kalasiris did not hesitate to captivate Theagenes with a bombastic display, playing upon the popular stereotype of Egyptian magic (τερατεύεσθαι, 3,17,1).17 One must wonder, therefore, how seriously Kalasiris is to be taken when, at the end of Book 6, he declares that it is improper for a priest such as himself either to attempt or to be present at the old woman’s ghoulish rites. He says that he is a witness to the woman’s magic only because of the necessity of the circumstances (κατ’ ἀνάγκην, 6,14,5) – he is witness to these dark proceedings against his will. But this is far from the kind of overwhelming, immobilizing stupefaction that Kleitophon says he experienced as he watched the brutal sacrifice of Leukippe. Kleitophon, I suggested, on some level felt an irrational pleasure in seeing that gruesome spectacle, an enjoyment communicated by an allusion to and a clever inversion of Alcibiades’ encomium of Socrates. Here, Kalasiris’ now familiar protest against debased Egyptian magic combined with the scene’s allusions to the Symposium motivate recollection of Kalasiris’ well-known charlatanism and thus inflect Kalasiris’ speech with irony. When in the Symposium Alcibiades announces that the profane should close the great doors of their ears, it is the wit of an intoxicated charmer, but also an indication of how far Alcibiades had fallen from Socrates’ philosophical ascent towards truth. When Kalasiris, on the other hand, disdains the profane spectacle of the old woman’s necromancy, his pretext for watching seems weak, given his earlier performative dabbling as well as the fact that he continues watching what he knows he should not witness. The allusion to Alcibiades’ humorous remark reminds us that, for all the sanctimonious, philosophical talk about his priestly ideals,18 Kalasiris could have shut his eyes and covered his ears. Kalasiris’ rhetoric of compulsion ————— 16

17 18

Dowden is rightly suspicious about using the Platonic intertext to infer how Heliodoros schematized ‘human types’ (1996, 269). My aim here is to show, on the contrary, how the Platonic intertext reveals contradictions and complex characterization. Sandy 1982, 145, 163. Morgan has shown how, in the representation of Kalasiris, Heliodoros subverts in addition to Platonic discourse, the language and terms of contemporary Christian theological debate (2007, 41-42).

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(κατ’ ἀνάγκην) appeals to the Platonic theory, advanced by the Athenian stranger in the Laws, that no one willingly does evil. But by implying Kalasiris’ complicity in the necromantic spectacle, Heliodoros also implies the slavish, disordered state of Kalasiris’ soul. Kalasiris’ complicity is an indulgence in what he himself has called the ‘servant of uncontrolled pleasures’ (ἡδονῶν ἀκολάστων ὑπηρέτις, 3,16,3).19 The irony is compounded when, after cursing his mother, the resurrected soldier provides a detailed and correct summary of the events to come in the second half of the novel. Despite Kalasiris’ prohibitions, lowly Egyptian magic provides results. Whereas Kalasiris fails as a prophet to divine that his sons will not in fact kill each other,20 the dead soldier neutralizes in a single, unambiguous sentence what had been the source of Kalasiris’ greatest anxiety (2,25,5). The reader too benefits from learning what the future holds; it is the conceit of fiction that the reader is granted the perspective of τὸ μαντικόν without the priest’s lawful sacrifices and pure prayers.21 Although the dead soldier re-affirms Kalasiris’ status as a man beloved of the gods (θεοῖς φίλος, 6,15,4), Heliodoros has nevertheless framed this narrative prophecy not within a priestly discourse, but within the unseemly grotesquerie of a dead soldier’s resurrection. Everyone’s curiosity is satisfied: Kalasiris learns that he will save his sons in the nick of time, Charikleia learns that her story will end happily, and the reader interested only in the superficialities of plot need not continue reading, for Heliodoros has spoiled the ending of the novel. Readers experienced with the genre would, however, know that the outcome detailed by the dead soldier is the expected one. Kalasiris was on one level right, it seems: the kind of magic practiced by the old Egyptian woman, as well as the pleasure derived from reading about ‘mysteries so unspeakable and preserved by silence and darkness’ (τὰ οὕτως ἀπόρρητα καὶ σιγῇ καὶ σκότῳ φυλαττόμενα μυστήρια, 6,15,3) – these satisfy only ignoble curiosity. A graphic illustration follows when, in her attempt to ferret out the duo who have been spying on her, the old woman stumbles upon a spear planted in the ground and is pierced through the groin, thus ‘justly fulfilling on its very heels her son’s prophecy’ (τὴν ἐκ τοῦ παιδὸς μαντείαν οὕτω παρὰ πόδας ἐν δίκῃ πληρώσασα, 6,15,5). The shocking detail is the literal fulfillment of Kalasiris’ earlier warning that the vulgar magic of Egypt stumbles ————— 19 20

21

Cf. Winkler 1999, 323-324. Winkler is more generous in his interpretation of Kalasiris’ heavenly σοφία as, ‘an incomplete cognition’ that allows for ‘a certain indeterminacy’ (1999, 339). Thus Morgan in the introduction to his translation of the Aithiopika: ‘in a work of fiction Providence is only Plot in disguise’ (Reardon 1989, 350). Cf. Dowden 1996, 268.

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over itself most of the time (αὐτὴ περὶ αὑτὴν τὰ πολλὰ πταίουσα, 3,16,3).22 But the old woman’s ending is also the perverse fulfillment of the basest of erotic desires. The theme of the Aithiopika is pure love, but, like Leukippe’s apparent disembowelment before the eyes of her lover, the old woman’s genital penetration by a spear leads the reader to a very dark place and provokes a meditation upon just how far he or she is willing to follow a narrator who promises to satisfy depraved, irrational pleasures. The Athenian stranger from Plato’s Laws insisted that no one would willingly do or partake in evil. But Heliodoros shows us characters who are willing to dabble, and the reader too is implicated in the exploration of the morally repugnant. For some, the old woman’s deadly encounter with the shaft of a spear might be just the beginning of an odyssey of perversions, to be written in other imaginary narratives. For most, however, the old woman’s gruesome ending is enough to bear for the moment, and the eyes of the reader are once again trained upwards towards the heavenly.23 If Heliodoros’ intention was to spoil the ending of his novel, then the important thing is not merely knowing the goal, but ascending towards that goal. The attainment of true love will come only by the gradual comprehension of the divine plot along its proper course. It is fitting that the last words of the dead soldier are the telos of the heroine’s journey: Charikleia is driven in search of her beloved, ‘with whom, after countless hardships, countless dangers (μετὰ μυρίους μὲν μόχθους μυρίους δὲ κινδύνους), at the farthest reaches of the earth she will live in gleaming and royal fortune’ (6,15,4). There are strong echoes here of Diotima’s vision of the heights to which the true erôs may guide the willing follower and what challenges that disciple must endure along the way: ‘That’s it! – The very reason why also, Socrates, all those previous labors (οἱ ἔμπροσθεν πάντες πόνοι) were undertaken’ (Smp. 210e5-6). The perverse demise of the old woman provides a stark contrast to the dead soldier’s prophecy of ideal love between Charikleia and Theagenes. It is, however, by means of this elaborate indulgence in depraved magic and an erotics of death that the faithful, symmetrical love at the novel’s core and hence the novel’s noble intentions are re-energized.24 Nevertheless, a final Platonic allusion – not from the Symposium, but from the Theaetetus, a dialogue on the nature of knowledge itself – keeps the text suspended ambiguously between the desires of the profane and the lofty heights of philosophical pursuit. The old woman’s ungraceful stumble and accidental ————— 22 23 24

Sandy 1982, 165. Jones 2005, 83-84. Cf. Morgan’s interpretation of the thematic function of Knemon’s narrative (1989, 113).

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(ἔλαθεν, 6,15,5) death, on the heels (παρὰ πόδας), figuratively, of her son’s prophecy, evokes Socrates’ anecdote about the famous philosopher from Miletus: Just as Thales too, when he was star-gazing and looking upward (ἄνω βλέποντα), when he fell (πεσόντα) into a well, a witty, clever Thracian handmaiden is said to have laughed at him because he was eager to understand the things in the sky (τὰ μὲν ἐν οὐρανῷ προθυμοῖτο εἰδέναι), but the things in front of him and at his feet (παρὰ πόδας) eluded him (λανθάνοι αὐτόν, Tht. 174a4-8). The old Egyptian woman of course is not gazing upward like the philosopher, but rather hunting among corpses (τὴν κατὰ τοὺς νεκροὺς ἔρευναν, Hld. 6,15,5). Necromancy, as a nexus between the world of the living and the world of the dead,25 is an ideal metaphor for representing the text’s ambiguous suspension between high-minded philosophy and desires of a lower sort. Both the philosopher and the old woman share a similar fate, and neither the pursuit of wisdom nor lowly magic are free from the parody generated by the novelist’s allusive conceit.26 Kleitophon’s scopophilia and Kalasiris’ self-indulgent gazing upon the scene of necromancy are, as I indicated at the beginning of this paper, extreme illustrations of moments when novelistic characters become slaves – even if only momentarily – to the baser desires of their soul. Kleitophon and Kalasiris are, after all, unorthodox characters, the one an unreliable ego-narrator and the other an Egyptian priest whose metadiegetic function in the novel assimilates him to higher powers (both narrative and divine) beyond the ideal romance. I posit, however, that Plato’s psychic conflict pervades the novels and affects even the most ideal protagonists of romance. In the Aithiopika Charikleia’s sôphrosynê – not just in the sense of chastity, but in the sense of her overall ethical self-control – seems never in doubt, and Meriel Jones sees in this character a ‘Platonic moral superiority’ that ‘is pointed up by others’ belief in base magic, and her true, pure love for Theagenes is thus equated to philosophical enlightenment’.27 But Charikleia too, by her curiosity, is implicated in the old ————— 25 26

27

Ogden 2001, xvii. Cf. Jones, who sees in Charikleia a ‘Platonic moral superiority’ that ‘is pointed up by others’ belief in base magic, and her true, pure love for Theagenes is thus equated to philosophical enlightenment’ (2005, 97). But Charikleia too, by her curiosity, is implicated in the old woman’s base magic, and Heliodoros has already shown how Charikleia herself indulges in violent, daemonic behavior (6,8). Jones 2005, 97.

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woman’s base magic, and Heliodoros elsewhere in Book 6 shows how Charikleia herself indulges in violent, daemonic behavior. After closing herself away in privacy in the house of Nausikles, Charikleia indulges in a prolonged, violent lament because of her separation from her beloved Theagenes. The next morning, woken by Kalasiris, Charikleia greets the old man at the door of her bedroom without considering her appearance, and what Kalasiris sees astonishes him: disheveled hair, the tunic torn upon her breast, and her eye still swollen, indicating her madness prior to sleep (τῆς τε κόμης τὸ ἄτακτον καὶ τὸν χιτῶνα κατερρωγότα περὶ τοῖς στήθεσι καὶ ὄμμα ἔτι κυμαῖνον καὶ τὸ πρὸ τῶν ὕπνων ἐμμανὲς ἐπισημαῖνον, 6,9,2). Kalasiris rebukes Charikleia and asks her why she is behaving so excessively and immoderately (τί λίαν οὕτω καὶ ἄμετρα δυσφορεῖς, 6,9,3). He says that he hardly recognizes her and that she no longer appears to be her normal noble and prudent self (γενναίαν καὶ σώφρονα). It is only because of Kalasiris’ ethical criticism that the better part of Charikleia’s soul regains control: she blushes from the self-awareness of what she has done, and she returns to herself, once again embodying the behavior and psychic disposition appropriate for a heroine of romance. It may well be a momentary lapse, but the episode proves that even the most ideal protagonists of the Greek novels are not immune to the psychic conflict described by Plato.

4. Postscript As a postscript, I submit for consideration a relevant contemporary historical narrative: the firsthand account by Phileas of Alexandria of the torture of Christian martyrs during the persecutions under Maximinus, the Caesar in the East in the first decade of the 4th century (Euseb. Hist. 8,10). Situated chronologically between Achilles Tatius and Heliodoros,28 Phileas’ narrative presents the reader with a grisly catalogue of physical torment: the Egyptian Christians are beaten with cudgels and whips; limbs are torn off as victims hang helpless from the gibbet; stomachs, legs, and cheeks are torn open; joints and limbs are stretched to the breaking point. Subjected to all these punishments, writes Phileas, the victims provided a horrible spectacle, ‘bearing on their very bodies the varied and different inventions of their tortures’ (ποικίλας καὶ διαφόρους ἐν τοῖς σώμασιν φέροντες τῶν βασάνων τὰς ἐπινοίας, 8,10,8).

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I accept the standard 2nd century date for Achilles Tatius and a mid 4th century date for Heliodoros (see Morgan 2003, 417-421).

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The horror of Phileas’ vivid descriptions must match the ingenious creativity of the torturers, for the more horrific the violence and pain inflicted upon the body, the greater the Christian triumph. Whereas Maximinus’ inquisitors were obsessed with the bodies of their victims, the Christians, in their resolute commitment to their faith, claimed to have transcended bodily concerns. Phileas writes that, ‘extending in a pure manner “the eye of the soul” toward the almighty god and intending to die for their faith,’ the Christians ‘clung tightly to their calling’ (τὸ τῆς ψυχῆς ὄμμα πρὸς τὸν ἐπὶ πάντων θεὸν καθαρῶς τείναντες καὶ τὸν ἐπ’ εὐσεβείᾳ θάνατον ἐν νῷ λαβόντες, ἀπρὶξ τῆς κλήσεως εἴχοντο, 8,10,2). The ‘eye of the soul’ (τὸ τῆς ψυχῆς ὄμμα) of which Phileas speaks is a quotation from Socrates’ treatise on dialectic from Plato’s Republic (533d2), the locus classicus that defines the method whereby the philosopher may proceed toward a transcendent truth. Phileas therefore sees the suffering of Christian martyrs in Platonic terms as the stronger position in a philosophical debate. Paradoxically, though, for Phileas, as for Eusebius throughout the Ekklêsiastikê Historia, the transcendent victory of the Christians is marked, time and again, not by philosophical discourse or by descriptions of the soul’s ascendance, but by descriptions of the body’s graphic mutilation. Unlike in the novels, where scenes of grotesque horror are irrational indulgences, in Phileas’ account, grotesque horror is elevated to the level of a transcendent practice.29 Phileas’ letter to the members of his diocese is the last testament of a true zealot before his own execution. But this letter is framed within the text of another Christian: the Ekklêsiastikê Historia by Eusebius of Caesarea. If, as Eusebius would like us to believe, holding steadfastly to the true religion in Christ (τὸ ἀπρὶξ ἔχεσθαι ... τῆς ἐν Χριστῷ θεοσεβείας, 8,10,11) means welcoming torture and death, then a mischievous reader may ask: where is the account of Eusebius’ own glorious, gruesome martyrdom during this period of violent persecution? The answer, of course, is that it does not exist, as Eusebius survived the persecutions to become an influential Christian authority enjoying imperial favor with Constantine. The question remains: how did Eusebius manage to survive? We know that he was arrested and imprisoned in Egypt during the persecutions of the early 4th century, though he is silent on this crucial episode of his life. Decades later, Eusebius was publically embarrassed by his colleague Potammon, bishop of Herakleopolis in Egypt, for an apparent act of cowardice: Potammon lost an eye during their imprisonment for his commitment to the

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Cf. Perkins 2009, 56-57.

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Christian faith, while Eusebius was released unhurt, though not with a clear conscience.30 This gap between philosophical commitment and even the barest suspicion of hypocrisy, compounded with an equally suspicious delight in vivid literary representation – this is the very gap that the novels of Achilles Tatius and Heliodoros exploit not just for literary irony, but also for satirizing the high-minded posturing of figures of authority in the real-world. Rather than charting an uncomplicated ascent towards the science of what is true and beautiful (Smp. 210d), the novels stage elaborate opportunities to linger on the lower, corporeal rungs of Plato’s philosophical ladder. Even within the idealistic framework of the symmetrical love story, a source of pleasure in these texts is indulging the darker side of human nature and experimenting with irrational, perverse uses of the body.

Bibliography Barnes, T.D. 1981. Constantine and Eusebius, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Baumbach, M. 2006. ‘Ambiguität als Stilprinzip: Vorformen literarischer Phantastik in narrativen Texten der Antike’, in: N. Hömke and M. Baumbach (eds.), Fremde Wirklichkeiten: literarische Phantastik und antike Literatur, Heidelberg: Winter, 73-107. Chew, K. 2000. ‘Achilles Tatius and Parody’, CJ 96.1, 57-70. Dodds, E.R. 1945. ‘Plato and the Irrational’, JHS 65, 16-25. Dover, K. (ed.). 1980. Plato. Symposium, Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dowden, K. 1996. ‘Heliodoros: Serious Intentions’, CQ 46.1, 267-285. Fusillo, M. 1989. Il romanzo greco; polifonia ed eros, Venice: Marsilio. Garnaud, J.P. (ed.). 2002. Achille Tatius d’Alexandrie. Le roman de Leucippé et Clitophon, Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Goldhill, S. 1995. Foucault’s Virginity: Ancient Erotic Fiction and the History of Sexuality, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Jones, M. 2005. ‘The Wisdom of Egypt: Base and Heavenly Magic in Heliodoros’ Aithiopika’, AN 4, 79-98. Kristeva, J. 1982. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, L.S. Roudiez, trans., New York: Columbia University Press. Meldrum, M. 1950. ‘Plato and the ἀρχὴ κακῶν’, JHS 70, 65-74. Mignogna, E. 1997. ‘Leucippe in Tauride (Ach. Tat. 3, 15-22): mimo e “pantomime” tra tragedia e romanzo’, MD 38, 225-236. Morales, H. 2004. Vision and Narrative in Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clit ophon, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Morgan, J. 1989. ‘The Story of Knemon in Heliodoros’ Aithiopika’, JHS 109, 99-113.

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Epiphanius, Panarion 3,148 (Holl, ed.); see Barnes 1981, 148-149.

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Morgan, J. 2003. ‘Heliodoros’, in: G. Schmeling (ed.), The Novel in the Ancient World, Revised edition, Boston and Leiden: Brill, 417-456. Morgan, J. 2007. ‘The Representation of Philosophers in Greek Fiction’, in: J. Morgan and M. Jones (eds.), Philosophical Presences in the Ancient Novel, Ancient Narrative Supplementum 10, Groningen: Barkhuis Publishing & Groningen University Library, 23-51. Ní Mheallaigh, K. 2007. ‘Philosophical Framing: The Phaedran Setting of Leucippe and Clitophon’, in: J. Morgan and M. Jones (eds.), Philosophical Presences in the Ancient Novel, Ancient Narrative Supplementum 10, Groningen: Barkhuis Publishing & Groningen University Library, 231-244. Ogden, D. 2001. Greek and Roman Necromancy, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Perkins, J. 2009. Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era, London and New York: Routledge. Reardon, B.P. (ed.) 22008. Collected Ancient Greek Novels, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press (19891). Repath, I. 2007. ‘Emotional Conflict and Platonic Psychology in the Greek Novel’, in: J. Morgan and M. Jones (eds.), Philosophical Presences in the Ancient Novel, Ancient Narrative Supplementum 10, Groningen: Barkhuis Publishing & Groningen University Library, 53-84. Sandy, G.N. 1982. ‘Characterization and Philosophical Decor in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica’, TAPA 112, 141-167. Schenker, D.J. 2006. ‘The Strangeness of the Phaedrus’, AJP 127, 67-87. Smith, S. 2007. Greek Identity and the Athenian Past in Chariton: The Romance of Empire, Ancient Narrative Supplementum 9, Groningen: Barkhuis & Groningen University Library. Tilg, S. 2010. Chariton of Aphrodisias and the invention of the Greek love novel, New York: Oxford University Press. Weis, A. 1992. ‘Marsyas I’, LIMC VI.1, 366-378. Whitmarsh, T. (trans.). 2002. Achilles Tatius. Leucippe and Clitophon, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Whitmarsh, T. 2004. Ancient Greek Literature, Cambridge and Malden: Polity. Whitmarsh, T. 2003. ‘Reading for Pleasure: Narrative, Irony, and Erotics in Achilles Tatius’, in: S. Panayotakis, M. Zimmerman, and W. Keulen (eds.), The Ancient Novel and Beyond, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 191-205. Whitmarsh, T. 2011. Narrative and Identity in the Ancient Greek Novel: Returning Romance, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Winkler, J. 1999. ‘The Mendacity of Kalasiris’, in: S. Swain (ed.), Oxford Readings in the Greek Novel, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 286-350 (Originally published 1982, YCS 27, 93-158).

Apollonios of Tyana and the Gymnoi of Ethiopia G ARY R EGER Trinity College

Lucius Flavius Philostratos’ Life of Apollonios of Tyana (VA) presents itself as the biography of a wonder-working sage from a small town in Asia Minor who travels almost the length and breadth of the Roman empire in the first century CE, encountering emperors and philosophers, performing miracles, and confounding his enemies. Philostratos claims to have derived his knowledge of Apollonios’ travels from the memoir of one Damis, a native of Hieropolis; Damis’ account is especially crucial for the parts of Apollonios’ journeys set outside the boundaries of the empire, in India and, in the episode dealt with here, in Ethiopia (Nubia, on the Nile south of Egypt). Questions about the genre and sources of the VA have provoked vigorous scholarly debate; but for my purposes – to try to solve a minor puzzle in the imaginary geography of the Ethiopian episode – I will treat Damis as an invention of Philostratos and the VA as fiction.1 ————— 1

This paper explores some of the issues adumbrated in Reger 2009, 261 n. 28, and serves in general as a kind of companion-piece to that article. For the completion date of the VA, Flinterman 1995, 1-26; also Sirinelli 1993, 365-366; on the identification of the author, Koskenniemi 2006, 70-71 with n. 3-4, sums up the long debate. I leave aside the vigorous debate on genre; a good place to start is the essays in Demoen and Praet (eds.) 2009 and Bowie and Elsner (eds.) 2009. On Philostratos’ sources, Flinterman 1995, 67-88; for Damis as the source for India and Egypt, 81-82 with n. 120 and 123; for his origin in Hierapolis (= ‘Ninos’, not Nineveh), see Jones 2001. Philostratos mentions two other sources on Apollonios: biographies by Maximos of Aigai and Moiragenes. Both are generally accepted as real works, available to Philostratos (and some later writers, like Origen, Cels. 6.4 [FGrHist 1067 T 3]), lost to us. See Graf 1984-1985 and Raynor 1984. Whether the narrative is fiction or not is reviewed at Koskenniemi 1991, 9-15, who seems to favour fictionality (see Koskenniemi 2006, 73, 78); Flinterman 1995, 79 with n. 110-112, 80-85; Bowie 1978, 1653-1671. Cf. Flinterman 1995, 81 n. 117, following Anderson 1986, 172-173 n. 93. See Bernard 1999, 80, for the complete fabrication of Taxila in India, although Koskenniemi 2006, 81 n. 44, sees Philostratos as having ‘good Philosophy and the Ancient Novel, 141–157

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In two important episodes Apollonios meets with sages dwelling outside the boundaries of the Roman empire. In India he visits a group of philosophers under the leadership of one Iarchas, whose powers include the ability to levitate. During the time Apollonios spends with him and his acolytes he is instructed in deep matters of philosophy; these Indian sages are, indeed, the only people Apollonios ever encounters who are superior to him in wisdom.2 The other encounter takes place beyond the southernmost border of the Roman empire, in Ethiopia (Nubia), where Apollonios likewise meets and debates with another group of sages, the gymnoi, the ‘naked ones’. It is his travels to visit these sages and the geographic problems those travels present that are the topics I will address.

Geography in Knots We enter in Upper Egypt and Ethiopia a geography of the imagination, unbound by the topographical facts of the countryside, labile and vague. When Apollonios and his entourage depart from Memphis on camels, they keep the Nile on their right and head straight for the pyramids (VA 5,43,3). But if they headed south with the Nile on their right, they would have been on the east bank; the pyramids, of course, stand west of the Nile. At least here, however, Philostratos knows that the pyramids are at Memphis. Things get much murkier farther south.3 At one point he places the boundary between Egypt and Ethiopia at Meroe, the capital of Nubia, but at another at Sykaminos, which, if it is Hiera Sykaminos, as C. P. Jones suggests, lies about 129 km (80 miles) south of Aswan (VA 6,1,1; 2,1). This was the site of the border between Egypt and Ethiopia from 21/0 BCE.4 Once in Ethiopia, Apollonios turns his boat toward Memnon (VA 6,3,1, ἐπὶ Μέμνονος), the famous statue of Amenhotep III that stands outside Thebes – which is in Egypt, not Ethiopia, 232 km as the crow flies upriver from the boundary between Egypt and Ethiopia. According to Damis, Memnon was an Ethiopian king and the statue was worshipped by the Ethiopians (VA 6,4). Multiple details about it, its condition at the time of Apollonios’ purported visit, ————— 2 3

4

knowledge on… Taxila….’ On the reception of the VA in late antiquity, see now Jones 2006. Discussed in Reger 2009, with references. Jones 2005, 1,16-17; Anderson 1986, 215-220, and 1994, 173: ‘the visit to the Ethiopian gymnosophists seems to reflect a very suspect geographical location’. But Schneider 2004, 350, thinks Philostratos knows his geography fairly well. Welsby 1996, 70.

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and the way it made its sounds are demonstrably wrong.5 As Apollonios sails upstream, he encounters a young man, Timesion, who will be his guide throughout his Ethiopian journeys. Timesion, we are told, had fled Naukratis because of family problems and was making a living at Memphis as the operator of a small boat (VA 6,3,1, ναῦν… ἄκατον). The party next notices a man from Memphis who is waiting for the gymnoi to absolve him of bloodguilt for a murder. The tale Apollonios tells about him places the gymnoi at Memphis, which lies some 682 km north of Thebes.6 Geographical features – the First Cataract,7 the statue of Amenhotep III, and the city of Memphis – that in fact lie hundreds of km apart are compressed into the same imaginary space. Later, after his meeting with the gymnoi, Apollonios takes his companions to explore the sources of the Nile. They first encounter the Falls, οἱ κατάδουποι, where the stream of the Nile crashes down from mountains several hundred meters high with deafening noise. Proceeding on, they come to the first cataract, and then 25 stadioi (3-4 miles) distant to a second cataract, falling again from the mountains and horribly loud. Damis refuses to go farther but Apollonios and his guides venture on to a third cataract, where crags eight stadioi high hang over the Nile.8 Obviously, all this is yet more muddled geography. Apollonios and Damis supposedly visited the gymnoi in Ethiopia, which means they must already have been south of the first cataract. The cataracts do not fall from mountains – there are no mountains near the Nile, let alone peaks as high as Tmolos – and they lie hundreds of miles apart. Once again, Philostratos takes us into a world of geographic fantasy. Is all this simple confusion? Susan Mattern has argued that even well educated Romans of the Senatorial order possessed only a vague knowledge of the geography of their empire, filtered through literary notions about the size and shape of the earth and compromised by a lack of reliable maps.9 In principle, perhaps, it would then not be surprising for even a well educated man like Philostratos to be mistaken about the geographical relations between places on the distant southern Nile. However, we may want to be a little cautious about accepting uncritically senatorial ignorance. There is evidence of various kinds to suggest that the Roman state had means for securing detailed and accurate geo————— 5 6

7

8

9

Platt 2009, 139-140. VA 6,5,2; cf. also 6,4,3, which seems to imply that Apollonios goes from Memphis to the gymnoi. After his visit, Apollonios passes four cataracts in confused location, pausing at an Ethiopian village before abandoning the attempt to find the source of the Nile (VA 6,26,1-2, 27,1); for this as ‘the end of a sophic journey’, see Whitmarsh 1999, 25. VA 6,22,1, 23, 26,1: ὁ καταρράκτης… ὁ κατιόντων μὲν ὒστατος, ἀνιόντων δὲ πρῶτος; 26,2. Mattern 1999, 41-66.

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graphical knowledge about its empire; it just may be that that information did not make its way into a literary tradition bound by long-established convention.

Rome at the Edge of the World Syene at the first cataract had been established as the border between Romancontrolled Egypt and the kingdom of Meroe during the reign of Augustus. The Romans had a long history of interaction, both violent and peaceful, with the populations just beyond that border; it may behoove us to review the history, such as it can be reconstructed from exiguous evidence, of the shape of that contact. For our purposes, it will suffice to take two snapshots of Roman experience with this liminal space: during the first century CE, which encompassed the years of Apollonios’ visit to the gymnoi of Ethiopia, and the first few decades of the third century CE, during the lifetimes of Philostratos and his Severan patrons.10 The first prefect of Egypt, Gaius Cornelius Gallus, undertook an expedition in the Thebaid that, in fifteen days, won two battles and took control of five ‘cities’ (urbes, πόλεις). Then his ‘army passed beyond the cataract, into which place military forces had not been brought by the Roman people or the Egyptian kings… ambassadors of the Ethiopian king were heard at Philai and that king received into tutela, [and] a tyrant (tyrannos) was appointed over the Triakontaschoinos of Ethiopia from then on.’ Three cohorts were stationed at Syene to guard the border. There has been considerable discussion about the exact nature of the relationship worked out here between the Romans and the Ethiopian king – while the Latin version of the inscription says ‘eo[que] rege in tutela recepto’, language which suggests the creation of a clientship, the Greek version speaks of Gaius’ receiving proxenia from the king (προξενίαν παρὰ τοῦ βασιλέως λαβών) – but it seems clear at any rate that a mini-buffer state was erected between the first and second cataracts, which fell under joint Roman and Ethiopian influence.11

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11

See Locher 1999 for a summary of Greek and Roman activity in the vicinity of the first cataract. OGIS 654 (I Philae, 128; FHN II, 164) of 29 BCE, with Stickler 2002, 75-101 and Costabile 2001. I translate here the Latin version. In general on the history of RomanNubian relations, see Welsby 1996, 67-71.

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Gallus was recalled on suspicion of treason in 28 or 27 BCE, and a few years later, in 24 BCE, his successor Aelius Gallus withdrew the forces at Syene for deployment in Arabia, and the Ethiopians attacked, capturing Syene, Elephantine island, and Philai, enslaving the locals, and throwing down statues of Augustus. The new Egyptian prefect Publius Petronius rallied against them; the Ethiopian forces withdrew to Pselkis (Dakka). Petronius met them there with his troops and negotiated; after the negotiations failed, he attacked and captured Pselkis, then took Premnis, a ‘fortified city’ (ἐρυμνὴν πόλιν) further south, and marched on Napata, site of a royal palace, which he captured. He stopped his advance here because he judged the territory further south hard to move through, but during his return north he took the precaution of reinforcing the fortifications at Premnis and stationing there a force of 400 men with two years’ supplies. In response the Ethiopians marched north again against Premnis, but Petronius returned with his forces, anticipated the enemy, entered into discussions, and eventually dispatched their ambassadors to meet Augustus on Samos (21/0 BCE), where they obtained terms and the border was established at Hiera Sykaminos.12 Under Nero the Romans undertook another – or possibly two separate – excursions south of Syene, in 62 and/or 66 or 67 CE. The sources for this event are exiguous, although Pliny the Elder tells us that the praetorian troops – dispatched by Nero under a tribune to explore the region (ad explorandum) because Nero was contemplating a war against Ethiopia – found nothing but desert (solitudines).13 A very fragmentary papyrus mentioning cavalry, Ethiopians, and Trogloditai, may refer to a battle between Roman troops and Ethiopians under the eparchos Marcus Mettius Rufus, prefect of Egypt in 88/9-92 CE, although scholars have also attached this document to the expedition of Petronius.14 The soldier Paccius Maximus, an Ethiopian (Nubian) learned in Greek, recorded in verse on the temple at Kalabsha a dream he received from the temple’s god Mandulis.15 Non-violent Roman presence in this region is also attested in the ————— 12

13 14 15

Strab. 17,1,54 (FHN III, 190); Plin. Nat. 6,181-182 (FHN III, 204); D. C. 54,5,4-6 (FHN III, 205); RGDA 26 (FHN II, 166). Petronius’ praenomen is reported correctly in Pliny, as we know now from a papyrus: Bagnall 1985. On the basis of material excavated at Premnis/Qasr Ibrim, it has been suggested that Roman occupation continued even after the Roman-Nubian boundary was fixed further downstream at Hiera Sykaminos; see Alexander 1988, 77-79; Welsby 1996, 46-47. But Welsby 1998, 166-169, and Bussi 2004, 707, argue instead for occupation only to 21/0 BCE, and this seems right to me; see also FHN III, pp. 832-835. There are problems with Strabo’s narrative, but they do not affect my larger point about Roman knowledge of this region; see Welsby 1998, 167. Plin, Nat. 6,181 (FHN III, 204); Sen. Nat. 6,8,3 (FHN III, 209). Bersina 1989, but see Stickler 2002, 87 n. 371 for the other views. Burstein 1998. Kalabsha sits on the river between Philai and Qasr Ibrim.

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first century CE. A certain Apollonios, son of the arabarchos Ptolemaios, who was strategos of the Ombeitopolite nome and the nome around Elephantine and Philai and ‘receiver’ (παραλήμπτης) of the Red Sea, visited the temple at Pselkis around 60 CE; about five years later, in 65 CE, he returned, now a Roman citizen and himself arabarchos.16 The Julio-Claudians engaged in an extensive building program in the Dodekaschoinos – the approximately 120 km stretch of the Nile south of Syene up to Hiera Sykaminos – after the expedition of Petronius to assert authority over this region, now under Roman authority.17 Finally, perfectly accurate information about this part of the Roman world was indeed available. Pliny the Elder delivers circumstantial knowledge about the second cataract when he avers that the locals find themselves deafened by the noise (Nat. 6, 181). We know in fact that the Nile speeds up considerably at this point. But by far the most circumstantial account occurs in Strabo. As a member of the staff of the second prefect of Egypt, Aelius Gallus, he participated in an inspection trip up the Nile and reported his experiences in his Geography. Strabo knew the statue of Amenhotep was at Thebes, for he heard it himself; he visited the tombs of the kings. He also offers an eyewitness account of Syene and Elephantine island. He describes the Nilometers, recounts the sundials whose gnomons cast no shadow at noon during the summer solstice, and notes the three cohorts stationed at Syene.18 Passing to the first cataract, Strabo describes the skill of the boatmen who navigate it and made a kind of display for the prefect. He situates the temple of Philai 100 stadioi (about 12-13 miles, rightly) from Syene by wagon over a flat plain. Strabo also takes advantage of his personal experience to refute the ‘nonsense’ about Egypt retailed by Herodotos and others; in particular, the claims that the sources of the Nile lie at the first cataract near Syene and Elephantine and that the river there is bottomless are simply fantasy.19 In other words, by the year when Apollonios and Damis would have been visiting the gymnoi of Ethiopia – soon after the sage’s encounter with Vespasian in Alexandria, set in 69 CE, and the capture of Jerusalem by Titus in 70 CE20 – the Romans not only had long experience with exactly the region where Apollonios’ encounter occurred, but also had left a deep footprint: troops at Syene, ————— 16

17 18 19 20

OGIS 202 with Nachtergael 1999, 143, on the date and Burkhalter 1999, 50-51;Young 2001, 68-69 (on the trade). Cf. also Cuvigny 2005, 13-14. The arabarchos was the farmer of taxes in Egypt collected from trade with the East, including the Red Sea: Burkhalter 1999, 48. For the temples south of Philai (many now submerged), see Roeder 1911. Strab. 17,1,46-48. Strab. 17,1,49-50, 52. VA 5, 27-38.

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building projects in the Dodekaschoinos, soldiers and officials. A quite accurate report of the topography around the first cataract could be read in Strabo, who had probably written up his Geography during the reign of Tiberius.21 Of course, the kind of genteel ignorance of the facts of imperial geography for which Mattern has argued could have meant that ordinary members of the senatorial order who never came to Egypt – and they were, after all, forbidden by regulations imposed by Augustus himself – would never have absorbed any of this information. But let’s now consider our other snapshot – the reign of Septimius Severus and the experiences of Philostratos’ patron Julia Domna.22 In 199, after a visit to Palestine, Septimius Severus, Julia Domna, their two sons, and the emperor’s entourage entered Egypt by the eastern port of Pelousion and began a lengthy tour of the province. The presence of Julia and their sons is established by coins from Alexandria, inscriptions, and a wooden tablet depicting the imperial family.23 The emperor stopped in Alexandria, where he carried out political reforms including granting the city a boule, lavished money on public works, answered various appeals, and worshipped Serapis. He and his party also undertook a trip up the Nile. They paused first at Memphis to see the inevitable pyramids and Sphinx, with a side trip to the famous Labyrinth in the Fayum, and then continued to Thebes. There Severus undertook repairs on the statue of Memnon and recorded his work in an inscription that mentions his two sons and Julia Domna (IGRR I, 1113).24 The party proceeded right up to the frontier with Ethiopia and would have gone farther had an outbreak of the plague not prevented them.25 So Julia knew perfectly well from personal experience the geography of the Nile. Philostratos could not have hoped to pass off the befuddled account in the VA to a patron who had actually seen the statue of Memnon and the frontier of Ethiopia. And since Philostratos explicitly draws his narrative of the whole epi————— 21 22

23

24

25

Engels 1999, 109. Sirinelli 1993, 366, suggests that Philostratos accompanied her in Egypt, but Flinterman 1995, 19-22 (followed by Hemelrijk 1999, 123) dates their association from between 203 and 208. Hannestad 1944, 203-204, 213-214; IRT 392, 403, 422, and 434 with Caputo 1939, IGRR I, 1113; Neugebauer 1936, Norwicka 1994, see also Birley 1988, pl. 16. Fournet 1996, 144 n. 5, suggests that the χαλκεὺς Μέμνων Prepelaos may have been involved in this very restoration project. For the whole Egyptian journey, see Hannestad 1944, whose chronology, however, requires some correction (so Birley 1988, 250 n. 13); Birley 1988, 136-139. The chief sources are: D. C. 76,13,1-2; SHA Sev. 17,2-4; Malalas 293. Herodian dismisses the sidetrip to Egypt with a vague allusion to his ‘having corrected affairs in the East’, κατορθώσας δὲ τὰ κατὰ ἀνατολήν (3,9,10).

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sode directly from Damis,26 the geographic disarray indicts the source: Damis cannot have known what he was talking about, and Julia would have known that too.27 How can we account for these remarkable lapses? Let’s consider the encounter between Apollonios and the gymnoi to see whether there may be some clues there.

Apollonios and the gymnoi At first, the gymnoi, who live on a low hill near the Nile, avoid Apollonios; only after his guide clears up a misunderstanding do they deign to talk with him. In their conversations they are represented by their eldest, Thespesion. The first encounter is not auspicious; Thespesion brags about the gymnoi’s wisdom, and in reply Apollonios harangues them for their ignorance and deviation from the wisdom of the Indian sages, demonstrated particularly by the fact that Apollonios’ arch-enemy Euphrates had duped them into snubbing Apollonios at first (VA 6,7-11,20).28 Apollonios begins the discussion with a hard question: why do the Egyptians worship gods in the form of animals? Reply and counter-reply follow (VA 6,19,1-20,7). Then Apollonios asks about justice, and a learned treatment ensues deploying examples from the classical past like the fifthcentury Athenian Aristeides (VA 6,20,7-21,6). In the end, Apollonios converts the youngest gymnos, Nilos, to his way of thinking (VA 6,16).29 Apollonios’ encounter with the gymnoi inevitably brings to mind the most famous interaction in Greek literature between a Greek and naked philosophers: Alexander the Great’s colloquy with the gymnosophists of India. This incident is ————— 26 27

28 29

See Flinterman 1995, 81 n. 121. In striking contrast, another fiction set in Ethiopia-Nubia and written perhaps at about the same time as the VA – indeed, according to some scholars, by a rival also in the circle of Julia Domna; see, with due caution, Morgan 2009, 270-272, 280, with further references – gets the geography more or less right: Heliodoros’ Aithiopika. Heliodoros’ fiction, like the VA, presents wonder-working gymnosophistai and other elements that strongly suggest allusion to and perhaps rivalry with the VA. See also the debate between Apollonios and Euphrates in Ep. 16-17. For the idea that the Indians stand in for Pythagoreanism and the Ethiopians for Cynicism, see Reitzenstein 1906, 42-45, critiqued by Robiano 1992, 422-423, but accepted by Flinterman 1995, 87 n. 151, again strongly defended in Flinterman 2009, and likewise in modified form by Platt 2009, 148-149. In general on the encounter here: Anderson 1986, 215-220; Platt 2009, 144-154. Koskenniemi 2006, 77, notes that Philostratos displays little interest in Pythagoreanism in his other works (but not relevant if Flinterman 2009, 175, is right that Philostratos worked from a tradition that already set Apollonios in Pythagoreanism).

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recounted in a number of sources, the earliest a papyrus dated to the first century BCE.30 In Plutarch’s version, Alexander quizzes ten Indian wise men (he does not call them gymnosophists explicitly) on the condition that he will put to death the first to give a wrong answer, the eldest of the men to be the judge. Alexander poses ‘puzzling’, ἄπορα, questions like whether there are more living things than dead. The sophists return clever replies – such as, more living, because the dead no longer exist. At the end, Alexander calls on the judge for his verdict; he says ‘each answered worse than the other’. Alexander condemns the judge to death, but the sage chides Alexander for violating his own terms of debate, since the king had said he would execute the first to answer the worst. This clever response earns the gymnosophists commutation and gifts. The other versions of the encounter are more elaborate, but the basic idea is always the same: the king poses tricky questions and the gymnosophists offer clever answers.31 Apollonios’ and Alexander’s encounters share some general themes: an initial sense of hostility between the parties; a contest of wits and intelligence; the format of question-and-answer (though elaborated in the VA); and a place of meeting at a geographical extremity of the hero’s travels. But the differences are equally, if not more, compelling: not just the more sophisticated philosophical content, but particularly also the victor – for in Alexander’s case, his interlocutors win, but in Apollonios’ he has already defeated them before they have even begun. In other words, in what I take to be a deliberate allusion to Alexander’s encounter,32 Philostratos shows his hero engaged in the same kind of activity as the great Makedonian conqueror, but bettering him. This theme of ‘bettering Alexander’ is a leitmotif of the VA, particularly in the sections that deal with Apollonios’ travels on or beyond the edges of the Roman empire.33 For Philostratos fills his narrative with echoes, reminiscences, and explicit encounters with that most famous Greek – or rather Makedonian – to have traversed these edges of the Greek world. On the way to India, Apollonios successfully ascends Mount Nysa with its sanctuary to Dionysos, which Alexander abjured for fear his soldiers would be demoralized by the vines at the ————— 30

31 32

33

FGrHist 153, F 9 (P. Berolin. 13044), Nachov 1974; Plut., Alex. 64; Ps.-Kallisthenes, Vita Alexandri Magni (Kroll) 3,5,1-6,10. This riddling is identified by Philostratos explicitly as Pythagorean: see VA 6,13,13. However, since Philostratos has the Indian king Phraotes declare that Alexander never crossed the Hyphasis (VA 2,33), Alexander cannot have encountered the real gymnosophists, as Billault 2000, 123, notes. See also the intriguing stories about Alexander and King Kazia in the Talmud, in Anderson 2009, 219. Romm 1992, 117, sees Philostratos as portraying Apollonios ‘as a new Alexander, making his way around the world… in search not of conquest but of sacred knowledge and wisdom’.

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top (VA 2,9,2-3). He sojourns at the city of Taxila, where he meets an elephant that had fought for Poros against Alexander and survived; Alexander dedicated it to the sun and named it Ajax – and it outlived the conqueror by some 350 years (VA 2,12,2; 24,1).34 Indeed, it has been remarked that Apollonios’ itinerary from Babylon to the Indus tracks almost precisely Alexander’s.35 Apollonios’ crowning achievements in outdoing Alexander come, however, not where he trails the king, but at the moments he crosses the point where Alexander stopped. In India, Apollonios sees the battlefield by the Hydaspes river where Alexander and Poros fought, with gates bearing statues of the two leaders (VA 2,42). Then on the other side of the Hyphasis river he finds altars to Father Ammon, Brother Herakles, Athena Pronoia, Zeus Olympios, the Kabeiroi of Samothrake, the Indian Sun, and Apollo of Delphi erected by the Makedonian army, and a bronze stele with the simple inscription ‘Here Alexander stopped’, Ἀλέξανδρος ἐνταῦθα ἔστη (VA 2,43).36 When Apollonios passes beyond this point, he enters the marvelous realm of the Indian sages, not only the wise ones (σοφοί) living across the Hydraotes, whom Alexander had never conquered (VA 2,33,1), but the perfected ones living in the plain of the Ganges and led by Iarchas. Apollonios has passed into what Philippe Hanus has called the distant horizon of the marvelous, in an imaginary, fictive geography.37 The same thing happens in Ethiopia. There Apollonios explicitly ‘arrives at the boundaries of the Ethiopians and the Egyptians, which they call Sykaminos’ (VA 6,2,1: ἀφικόμενος γὰρ ἐπὶ τὰ Αἰθιόπων τε καὶ Αἰγυπτίων ὅρια, Συκάμινον δὲ ὀνομάζουσι). The sage stands immediately in another world, where gold, linen, ivory, herbs, perfume, and aromatics lie unguarded at the cross-roads; Egyptians come and take the goods, leaving behind payment in Egyptian products.38 Like the Indians, the Ethiopians have tamed the lion and the elephant. The gymnoi can make trees talk. We are again in the land of the marvelous, a parallel with India.39

————— 34

35 36 37

38

39

See also VA 2,20,2-3, where Apollonios views representations of the battle and hears of Poros’ respect for Alexander. Hanus 1995, 86 n. 12. See also Bernard 1999, 58. Arr., An.. 5,29,2. Hanus 1995, 91-94; Muckensturm-Poulle 1995, 118. When I wrote Reger 2009 I did not know Ildikó 1991, who sees the account of India as genuine and Damis as a reliable reporter. The story is obviously a borrowing from Herodotos’ famous account of trade between the Carthaginians and people living beyond the pillars of Herakles (Hdt. 4,196). Hanus 1995, 93-94. Elmer 2008, 441-442, sees the gymnosophists as explicitly connecting Ethiopia, ‘a deeply hybrid place’ (442), with India, and in detail, Schneider 2004.

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So Philostratos was at pains to stress that, in entering India, Apollonios had surpassed the feats of Alexander the Great; he had stood where Alexander stopped, and then went on. Now, Alexander had conquered all of Egypt, down to the First Cataract, where Persian authority had terminated with the garrison on Elephantine island. But Alexander himself had not traveled so far south. In fact, the farthest south he got was – Memphis. That town was his goal after departing from the oasis of Siwa, at least in some accounts of his return to the Nile valley after his consultation with Zeus Ammon.40 By confounding the terminus of Egypt with the site of Memphis, Philostratos has again situated Apollonios at the farthest point Alexander personally reached – and then sent him beyond it. In other words, in his travels in both India and Ethiopia, and in his encounters beyond Alexander’s last footprint, Apollonios explicitly outdoes Alexander the Great.

Alexander, Apollonios, and the Severan Emperors Alexander cast a haunting shadow over the reigns of the Severan emperors, starting with Septimius. When Pescennius Niger made his pitch in 193 for the purple, some people started calling him ‘the new Alexander’ (D.C. 75,6,2a). Septimius’ competition with Alexander’s shadow played out again in 197 with his Parthian expedition. Septimius built a fleet on the Euphrates and in the fall of 197 marched south, taking Babylon and Seleukeia on the Tigris, both of which the Parthians had deserted. He then captured Ktesiphon, the Parthian capital, and abandoned the city to pillage. According to Herodian, the royal treasury fell into his hands. On January 28, 198, Septimius took the title Parthicus Maximus – a double allusion to Trajan, who had been proclaimed emperor exactly 100 years before and whose own exploits against the Parthians, which earned him this very same title, echoed the deeds of Alexander.41 If anything Septimius’ successor Caracalla was even more obsessed with the Makedonian conqueror. According to Herodian he ‘was Alexander’ once he reached Thrake in 214 on his own Parthian expedition. He erected new bronze and marble statues of Alexander in all the cities and filled Rome with his images, even ordering a statue whose face was depicted as half Alexander, half Caracalla. He wore Makedonian clothes, ————— 40

41

Arr. An. 3,4,5 for the return to Memphis, but Curt. 4,8,1-2 has him return to the site of Alexandria and then travel to Memphis. D. S. 17,51,4 simply returns him to the Νile valley (εἰς τὸν Αἴγυπτον); Plut., Alex. 27 is silent. D. C. 76,9,1,3-4; SHA Sev. 16,1; Hdn. 3,9,9-11; Birley 1988, 129-130. For Trajan’s wistful thoughts on seeing the Persian Gulf, see D. C. 68,29,1: ‘If I were still young, I’d certainly cross the ocean against the Indians’.

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outfitted a group of picked young men as a phalanx, and renamed his generals after Alexander’s. Having crossed the Hellespont, he stopped at Ilion to sacrifice on Achilles’ tomb, exactly like Alexander 500 years before.42 And finally, according to the SHA (whose Life of the emperor is however ‘notoriously unreliable’), Severus Alexander, the last emperor of the dynasty, explicitly made comparisons with Alexander the Great. Such comparisons make sense in the context of the emperor’s war against the Sassinian (Persian) empire, even if the sources do not seem to permit a balanced assessment of the events. But Severus did dispatch forces against Ktesiphon and took the title Parthicus maximus (or Persicus maximus). All this gains added resonance if the VA was in fact completed during his reign, as some have argued.43 An explanation for Philostratos’ confused Egypto-Ethiopian geography now lies clear. Whenever Apollonios passes in the East beyond the point where Alexander stopped, he enters a world of mystery, wonder, enchantment. Griffins, ants that guard gold, precious goods left unguarded on the road, Indian philosophers who can levitate, 300 year-old elephants, naked Ethiopian wise men, satyrs tamed by inebriation – such are the marvels Apollonios sees. That he can experience these marvels for himself, first-hand, sets him above the Makedonian conqueror, who for all his mighty army and boundless energy, was denied them. It is only fitting that the geography where these wonders sit should likewise be not a mundane, familiar concatenation of place and people that anyone could read about in Strabo, but a realm unmapped, strange, and confusing. Philostratos wove into his book a theme of competition between soldier and sage, in which the sage wins every time. The soldier is explicitly Alexander, but implicitly the Severan emperors who envied and emulated him. Philostratos is making a claim about the comparative status of the warrior-king and the sophist: that the sophist is unquestionably superior. And so as Apollonios the sage outdoes Alexander the king, so may we infer the superiority of Philostratos the sophist to the emperors who vie with Alexander himself. This leitmotif, of course, has its roots in the long literary tradition arguing that philosophers are superior to tyrants.44 Philostratos’ desire to display Apollonios’ superiority to Alexander appears in another guise in the VA. Patrick Robiano has recently argued – to my mind quite convincingly – that in writing the VA Philostratos had Arrian consciously ————— 42 43

44

Hdn. 4,8,1-2, 4-5; D. C. 78,16,7 (Loeb). See Southern 2001, 61-62, with 301-302 n. 77 on the sources for the reign and their notorious unreliability. On the date of completion of the VA, see n. 1. I am very grateful to C. P. Jones for reminding me of the relevance of Severus Alexander here. Koskenniemi 2006, 74-75.

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in mind as a model, particularly as a pioneer of the amalgamation of different literary genres into a single whole: ‘the genius of Philostratos’, writes Robiano, ‘was to fuse these two original forms [meaning fiction and biography], something that gives his creation its original character, irreducible to prior models, and finally its logic’.45 But as Robiano insists, Philostratos sought not only to model his work after Arrian’s, but also to assert his superiority. Thus the competition between Alexander and Apollonios, which Apollonios always wins, can be regarded as paralleled by the competition between Alexander’s biographer Arrian and Apollonios’ biographer Philostratos – which Philostratos likewise wins.46 The account of Apollonios’ visit to the Ethiopian gymnoi is hardly the only episode in which Philostratos plays fast and loose with facts. Alain Billault has catalogued a number of further examples. Philostratos misrepresents the philosophical views and chronology of the philosopher Demetrios, welding into one episode events that actually occurred over three years. He is largely uninterested in real places; when he does pay attention to them, he typically simply mentions some stereotypical feature, like the Serapeion in Alexandria or the Akropolis in Athens (VA 4,25, 17). But perhaps the best instance comes in his treatment of Gades in Spain. He describes Baetica as ‘Greek’ and ‘philhellenic’ (VA 5.4). But already by Strabo’s day Baetica had completely lost its Greek heritage – the locals spoke Latin and the aristocracy was typically Roman. These distortions or outright misrepresentations, Billault argues, serve Philostratos’ larger purpose, to keep Apollonios at the center of the reader’s attention.47 So there is nothing out of the ordinary that he should contort Egyptian topography to serve larger purposes, as I have suggested.

Back to Damis, and Philostratos Now we can return to Damis. It has always been a problem that Philostratos avers so explicitly that Julia Domna gave him Damis’ memoirs. For, if true, how to explain Philostratos’ failure to deal with the obvious blunders? And if not ————— 45 46

47

Robiano 1996, 490. I owe a great debt here to Patrick Robiano but obviously cannot follow him in his penultimate suggestion that Philostratos magnified Alexander to flatter Caracalla (1996, 504). I see Alexander as diminished in Philostratos’ work, and prefer the relationship between the sage and power articulated in different ways in the monographs of Flinterman 1995 and Reimer 2002. Billault 2000, 95-96, 102-103; but see Gascó 1990 for a generally positive assessment of the account of Baetica.

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true, would Julia not have been implicated in Philostratos’ literary fraud? It seems to me that we may now have a way out of this dilemma. Julia visited Tyana twice: once in 200 with Septimius and almost certainly again in 215 with Caracalla, who like his mother was fascinated with this figure, and accompanied, no doubt, by Philostratos.48 It would not be surprising, given her interests, if she had indeed asked Philostratos to compose a reliable and polished life of the sage – perhaps indeed at or soon after the probable visit to Tyana in 215. Before he could complete his book, she committed suicide in 217. Meanwhile, as Philostratos’ project matured, the theme of Alexander vs. Apollonios, of kings vs. sophists, developed as a leitmotif of the book. To make it work, some manipulation of the facts was in order. Of course, with Julia dead, Philostratos may have felt freed from strict adherence to the geography she had known. At the same time, his readers might also have known the facts; so perhaps he sought to deflect criticism from himself for not knowing the geography of Upper Egypt by attributing his knowledge of the extra-imperial travels of Apollonios to the sage’s Syrian companion.

A few final thoughts The Life of Apollonios remains a complicated text, eluding efforts to capture it in a single, consistent interpretation. Behind the simple story of a traveling wonder-worker lies a serious literary purpose, textured and nuanced. It cannot be captured by assigning the text to a genre, whose standard rules it would obey, nor can its apparent blunders be written off as nothing more than carelessness or willful nonchalance about the facts. Themes like the competition between Alexander and Apollonios – which has been explored by many commentators, including Graham Anderson and Patrick Robiano – exercise their influence on the structure and content of the story. The view I have presented here, of a parallel competition between Apollonios the sophist and Alexander the conqueror on the one hand, and their biographers Philostratos and Arrian on the other, may help clarify the narrow geographical confusions on which I have focused, but it hardly exhausts possible understandings of the text, and certainly cannot pretend to be a complete explanation of Philostratos’ literary undertaking. I merely hope

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D. C. 76,15,4, see also 4,2 (Septimius); Halfmann 1986, 224, inferring the visit from D. C. 76,18,4 (IK Tyana T, 105) and VA 8.31 (IK Tyana T, 106), where Philostratos mentions a sanctuary to Apollonios at Tyana which he saw himself.

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that these ideas may contribute, in a small way, to the ongoing task of unraveling the complex skein of the Life of Apollonios.49

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I am very grateful indeed to C. P. Jones, who read an earlier version of this paper and saved me from several errors; to an attentive audience at the University of California, Berkeley, where I presented a longer version; and finally to Marília Futre Pinheiro, whose patience in awaiting the final version extended well beyond normal bounds.

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Abstracts Growing Backwards: The Cena Trimalchionis and Plato’s Aesthetics of Mimesis O URANIA M OLYVIATI This article attempts an interpretation of the entire Cena Trimalchionis. First, it discusses the significance of the name labyrinthus in the context of Socrates’ theory on the proper use of names, which Plato reports in the dialogue Cratylus. Second, it shows how the fictional author of the Cena exploits the sign of the labyrinth to explain by the analogy of Trimalchio that what contemporary teachers of rhetoric practice in schools is psychagogia. Simultaneously, the fictional author claims for his literary artifact the place of true rhetoric, because it makes knowledge of the truth possible by the stability and permanence of the written word. Stoics in the ocean: Iambulus’ novel as philosophical fiction P ETER VON M ÖLLENDORFF Iambulus’ description of customs and traditions on the Islands of the Sun mainly focusses on characteristics that eventually create the picture of an ideal Stoic community; this may be why the historian Diodorus, inclined to a Stoic worldview himself, takes such a great interest in this text. In my paper I discuss some significant Stoic motifs. I try to show that the confrontation between the islanders and their Greek visitors puts on stage a central question of Stoic philosophy, the relation between determination, education and individual liberty. I further argue that the fictional setting is to be seen in the context of the debate on exokeanismos, which repeatedly occupied Stoic critics between the third and the first century B.C. Finally, I present arguments supporting the view that the oceanic setting may be interpreted as a signal for the reader to understand the plot as a kind of allegory.

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The Caring Gods: Daphnis and Chloe as Pronoia Literature U RSULA B ITTRICH The aim of this article is to show the effect that the philosophical concept of divine pronoia has on Longus’ novel Daphnis and Chloe. Various ways of handling the idea of pronoia will be introduced, with a special focus on Chrysippus and passages from Ps.-Plutarch’s treatises On Fate and On Isis and Osiris. Read against the philosophical background of the concept of pronoia, the real function of numerous disturbing incidents of Longus’ novel will turn out to be twofold: while serving as examples to show the transformative power of the gods’ benevolence, they bring out to the full the overall design of Eros as a supreme coordinating principle of the plot. Tales of Utopia: Alexander, Cynics and Christian Ascetics R ICHARD S TONEMAN The paper traces tales of the blessed land visited by Alexander from an early Cynic diatribe and its successor, Palladius’ Life of the Brahmans, through several early Christian narratives. I argue that the Cynic kernel in the earlier texts is the key to their adaptation by Christian authors. Several Christian writings utilise Cynic sayings and doctrines, for example John Chrysostom’s comparison of monk and cynic in his Against the Opponents of Monasticism, Pseudo-Maximus Confessor’s extensive citation of Diogenes in his Loci Communes, and Gregory of Nazianzus’ account of his opponent Maximus the Cynic. The utopian project of some Cynics and some early Christian writers represented a criticism of the surrounding world. Diogenes, the ‘world-citizen’, can be contrasted not only with the fictional Alexander but with the monks who set out to be citizens of a heavenly city. Targeting the ‘intellectuals’: Dio of Prusa and the Vita Aesopi S TEFANO J EDRKIEWICZ The fictitious, supposedly ‘popular” biographical tale known as Vita Aesopi (IIIV centuries A.D.) turns the contemporary ‘intellectual” into a laughing stock. A large part of this text describes how the apparently ignorant slave Aesop proves to be incomparably superior in wisdom to his master Professor Xanthos. Yet, at

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the same time, the Vita implies that authentic ‘culture” (paideia) is the fundamental institution in social life and the best support to political power. Such ideas may recall some of the views proper to one of the foremost representatives of the Second Sophistic, Dio of Prusa (Chrysostom). Thus, an intertextual reading may point to some strikingly similar concerns being shared simultaneously by ‘high” and ‘low” literary texts: in particular, about the function that effective ‘knowledge” should play in society and about the kind of learning that a competent ‘intellectual” should therefore detain and put into effect.

Only Halfway to Happiness: A Platonic Reading of Apuleius’ Golden Ass W ALTER E NGLERT This paper offers a philosophical reading of the Golden Ass. After reviewing several influential interpretations of the work, the paper argues that Apuleius depicts Lucius’ conversion to Isis in Book 11 as sincere but naïvely limited. Using evidence from Plutarch’s On Isis and Osiris to demonstrate Middle Platonic attitudes towards Isiac religion, the paper argues that in Book 11 Apuleius helps his readers see that Lucius’ understanding of Isis and Osiris is too literal and not philosophical enough, and encourages them to go beyond Lucius’ limited perspective to a full Platonic understanding of the deeper truths Isis and Osiris represent. Ex alienis uocibus: Platonic Demonology and Socratic Superstition in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses R ICHARD F LETCHER This paper explores how Apuleius’ lecture about Platonic demonology and Socrates’ daimonion (De deo Socratis) may be read both in terms of his methodologies of Platonism throughout his corpus (e.g. his ‘impersonation of philosophy’) and also with an eye to how it investigates key ideas at work in the Metamorphoses (e.g. superstition in the Aristomenes-Socrates episode of Book 1). Rather than seeing the philosophical work as a mere ‘source’ for his Platonism, to be summarized or paraphrased in philosophical readings of the Metamorphoses, this paper calls for a more nuanced approach to the relationship between Apuleius’ fiction and the rest of his Platonic corpus.

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The Platonic Eros of Art in the Ancient Greek Novel V ERNON P ROVENCAL The ancient Greek novel marks the appearance of a new art form, originating in the unique culture of the educated Greek elite (pepaideumenoi) of the early imperial period of the Roman empire, the cultural period of the Second Sophistic (roughly 50-250 CE), deeply influenced by a renewed interest in Plato. From a Platonic perspective, the art of the ancient novel is a profound sublimation of the eros of the soul for the divine, realized in the artifice of idealized erotic fantasy, in which the pedagogical paradigm of erastēs and erōmenos provides a new model for an erotic relationship of author and audience. Art no longer performs the traditional mimetic function of representing reality, but the creative function of constructing fantasy; it no longer serves the didactic purpose of educating the ignorant, but the erotic aim of pleasuring the enlightened. Platonic Perversions: Horror and the Irrational in the Greek Novel S TEVEN D. S MITH Episodes of horror and the grotesque in Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus operate against a background of Platonic philosophy, indicating that the ancient Greek novel offers opportunities for a literary and aesthetic challenge to rational accounts of the world. Rather than charting an uncomplicated ascent towards the true and beautiful, the novels stage opportunities to linger on the lower, corporeal rungs of Plato’s philosophical ladder. Even within the idealistic framework of the symmetrical love story, a source of pleasure in these texts is indulging the darker side of human nature and experimenting with irrational, perverse uses of the body.

Apollonios of Tyana and the Gymnoi of Ethiopia G ARY R EGER In the Life of Apollonios of Tyana (217-238 CE), Philostratos narrates the travels and adventures of a wonder-working sage of the first century CE. His journeys take him to Ethiopia (the Sudan), where he defeats in philosophic conversation an exiled group of Indian “naked” (gymnoi) sages. Philostratos’ account of the geography of Upper Egypt and Ethiopia in this episode is deeply flawed, and it is a problem that he claims to rely on the eye-witness account of Apollonios’

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companion and first biographer Damis and that his readership had access to more accurate information. This paper argues that an explanation may be sought in the competition within which Apollonios frames his narrative, between Apollonios and Alexander the Great and between himself and Alexander’s biographers.

Contributors U RSULA B ITTRICH is Visiting Scholar at the Classics Department of the Aristotle University Thessaloniki. One of her major research interests lies in the area of Greek Tragedy. Recently, she has focussed mainly on dream narratives and oneirological texts, especially in the Second Sophistic (Artemidorus, Aelius Aristides). She has just finished a monograph on The Hieroi Logoi of Aelius Aristides in the Wider Context of Graeco-Roman Dream Literature. Select publications: Aphrodite und Eros in der antiken Tragödie. Mit Ausblicken auf motivgeschichtlich verwandte Dichtungen, Berlin – New York (de Gruyter) 2005. Athen, Stifterin des Logos: Die religiöse Überhöhung einer Stadt in Aelius Aristides’ Panathenaïkos, in: Millennium 8, 2011, 35-50.

W ALTER E NGLERT is Hoskins Professor of Classical Studies at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, USA. He specializes in ancient philosophy, particularly Hellenistic and Roman philosophy, and has published on Epicureanism, Stoicism, Lucretius, and Cicero. R ICHARD F LETCHER is an associate professor in the Department of Classics at Ohio State University. His book Apuleius’ Platonism: The Impersonation of Philosophy was published by Cambridge University Press in 2014. He is currently editing The Oxford Handbook of Roman Philosophy (with Will Shearin).

S TEFANO J EDRKIEWICZ is a free-lance classical scholar. Main areas of research: the connection between “low” and “high” culture in Antiquity, the changing role of the “intellectual”, the evolving function of the Aesopic fables, mainly as a communication device, and of Aesop, as a cultural icon, in the Greek and Roman world; also, Athenian drama and its socio-political context, with a special focus on communication and reception. Has produced several articles and two main books: Sapere e Paradosso nell’Antichità: Esopo e la favola (Rome 1989) and Il convitato sullo sgabello: Plutarco, Esopo e i Sette Savi (Pisa, 1997). He is presently working on Socrates as a literary character within Plato’s dialogues.

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V . M ÖLLENDORFF is Professor of Ancient Greek at the JustusLiebig-University of Giessen. Focus of his work are the Greek drama and the literature of the Roman imperial period, also poetological concepts and their application in literary criticism.

O URANIA M OLYVIATI received a B.A. from the department of Classics, Greece, an M.A. from the Department of Classics, McMaster University, Canada, and a Ph.D. from the Department of Classics, Ohio State University, USA. She has taught at York University, Ontario, Canada, and at the University of Thrace, Greece. Currently she is employed by the Ministry of Education, Greece. Her research interests are in Roman Epic, Latin Comedy, and Latin Novel. She has published in Greek Papyrology, Latin Palaeography, Virgil, Ovid, and Terence. Her current research interests are in Aeneid 1 and 6, and in Petronius. V ERNON L. P ROVENCAL is Professor of Classics at Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia (Canada). He is co-editor/contributor of Same-Sex Desire and Love in Greco-Roman Antiquity and the Classical Tradition of the West (Haworth Press, 2005) and author of Sophist Kings: Persians as Other in Herodotus (Bloomsbury Classical Monograph Series, July 2015). He is currently composing a classical reception study tentatively entitled, The Ass and the Automobile: The Golden Ass of Apuleius and Faulkner’s The Reivers. His most recent publication is an essay on teaching Homer’s Odyssey in the Halifax Humanities 101 outreach program in Each Book a Drum (2015, www.halifaxhumanities101.ca).

G ARY R EGER teaches Greek and Roman history at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut (USA). He has written widely on the economic history of the Hellenistic world, with a special focus on regionalism; he also serves as the epigrapher for the excavations at Hacımusalar (ancient Choma) in northern Lykia, directed by Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey.

S TEVEN D. S MITH is an Associate Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at Hofstra University in New York. He is the author of Greek Identity and the Athenian Past in Chariton: The Romance of Empire (Barkhuis and Groningen University Library, 2007) and Man and Animal in Severan Rome: The Literary Imagination of Claudius Aelianus (Cambridge University Press, 2014).

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R ICHARD S TONEMAN is an Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of Exeter and author of Alexander the Great; a life in legend (Yale 2008), and co-editor of The Alexander Romance in Persia and the East (Barkhuis 2012). His most recent book is Xerxes: a Persian life (Yale 2015). He is working on a study of Megasthenes and Greek writing about India. He is also Chairman of Westminster Classic Tours.

Indices Index locorum Achilles Tatius 1.1-2, 116 1.4.2-4, 128 3.15.5-6, 127 3.17.7, 130 Aelianus Nat. An. 11.31, 39 3.5, 39 VH 14.33, 67 Aelius Aristides On Zeus 22, 39 Apuleius Met. 1.2, 86, 87 1.15-19, 99 1.20, 105 2.3, 86 10.33, 87 Pl. 1.12, 37 10.6, 82 Soc. 1.115, 96 3.124, 93 6.132, 94 16.155, 94 19.164-65, 100 20.165, 93 20.166, 103 21.167, 95 Aristoteles Metaph. 987b1-2, 93

Pol. 1253a4-5.25.9, 54 Arrianus An. 3.4.5, 151 5.29.2, 150 Athenaeus 3.98d, 54 Augustinus C.D. 14.20, 59 Berlin papyrus 13044, 51, 149 Chariton 1.1, 115 8.1.15, 126 8.6, 118 Chrysippus SVF 2.1181, 37 Cicero Acad. 1.15, 93 Tusc. 5.10, 93 Clemens Alexandrinus EP 5, 58 Strom. 3.60.1, 60 Curtius 4.8.1-2, 151 Dio Cassius 68.29.1, 151 76.9.1.3-4, 151 76.13.1-2, 147 76.15.4, 154

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Dio Chr. Or. 1.28-41, 72 7.49, 71 8, 76 12.1-16, 68 12.7, 67 12.7-8, 67 13.29-37, 69 16, 67 32.10, 76 32.18, 69 32.20, 70 32.24, 78 32.63, 67 34.5, 67 47.20, 67 49.11, 68 72.13, 77 72.14-16, 67 Diodorus Bibl. 2.55-60, 19 2.56.5f., 30 2.56.7, 21 2.58.5, 29 9.28.1, 73 17.51.4, 151 Diogenes Laert. 6.54, 67 Epiphanius Panarion 3.148, 138 Eusebius Hist. 8.10, 136 Evagrius Ponticus Praktikos 33, 58 58, 58 68, 58 81, 58 FHN II.164, 144 II.166, 145 III.205, 145 Geneva papyrus inv. 271, 51

Gregory Nazianzen Poem. 1.2.10, 59 Heliodorus 1.2, 117 2.25, 114 3.16.2-4, 131 6.9.2-3, 136 6.14.7, 131 10.38, 119 Herodianus 3.9.9-11, 151 Hieronymus adv. Jovin. 2.8.14, 59 2.15.17, 58 Vita Pauli 17, 59 Hippolytus Haer. 8.7.20, 60 Homerus Od. 7.120f., 21 9-12, 33 Horatius C. 3.30, 2 Ep. 1.2.28f., 26 Hymn to Hermes 219-21, 6 77-78, 6 I Philae 128, 144 Isidore of Pelusium Ep. 3.154, 59 Joh. Chrysostomus PG 47.337, 59 Justinus Apol. 2.3, 59 Longus Prooemion, 117, 119 1.7.2, 45

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Longus (cont.) 2.2.4-6, 40 2.5.2, 42 2.25.3-26.3, 41 3.27.2-5, 41 Lucianus VH 1.3, 19 1.22-26, 21 Musonius Rufus 6, 58 Nilus Asketikos 1.6, 58 OGIS 654, 144 Ovidius Met. 8.162-68, 5 Petronius 29.3-5, 8 56.8-10, 10 71.12, 9 73.1, 1 75.8-77.7, 13 76.1, 9 Philostratus Im. 1.3, 75 VA 2.9.2-3, 150 2.12.2, 150 2.33.1, 150 2.42-43, 150 4.25.17, 153 5.27-38, 146 6.2.1, 150 6.3.1, 143 6.4.3, 143 6.5.2, 143 6.7-11.20, 148 6.13.13, 149 6.19.1-21.6, 148 6.26.1-2, 143 8.31, 154 27.1, 143

Plato Apol. 27c, 97 Cratylus 385d2-e3, 3 423e, 4 426a-b, 7 428e, 4 430e, 4 432e, 4 439b, 4 Gorgias 463a, 9 463b, 10 Nom. 731c, 125 860d, 125 893d, 37 906a, 36 Phaedo 62b, 36 Phaedrus 242c, 93 245, 113 Plt. 269c-274d, 36 272e, 36 Symp. 202d, 97 202d-203a, 97 203a, 97 208d-209d, 112 210e-211b, 112 215a7-b1, 129 215c1-216b3, 129 219b-c, 97 Tht. 174a4-8, 135 Tim. 29d7-e3, 38 Plinius Nat. 6.181-82, 145 15.14, 11 36.19, 5

172 Plutarchus Alex. 27, 151 64, 149 De superst. 7, 168d, 93 Defect. 416d, 38 DIO 55,373c-d, 38 351e-f, 88 369a, 86 Phil. 17.2, 37 Ps.-Callisthenes 3.5.1-6.10, 149 3.25, 53 Ps.-Plato Epinomis 984b-d, 93 Ps.-Plutarchus Fat. 573a-574b, 38 Quintilianus Inst. 1.9.4, 75 SHA Sev. 16.1, 151 Strabo 1.2.2, 34 1.2.9, 33 1.2.10, 33 1.2.17, 33 17.1.46-52, 146 17.1.54, 145 7 frg. 35, 54 SVF 1.160, 25 1.162, 25 1.175, 25 1.176, 24 1.179, 23 1.190, 23 1.197, 24 1.262, 24

IN D EX

1.552, 26 1.555, 26 2.1181, 37 2.83, 28 3.346, 26 3.494, 24 3.495, 23 Theocritus 1.93, 46 6.6-7, 43 Vergilius Aen. 5.588-91, 6 6.642-78, 1 G. 3.12-16, 2 Vita Aesopi 20 (GW), 68 22 (G), 68 23 (G), 68, 76 24-26 (GW), 69 26 (G), 68 26 (GW), 69 35-37 (G), 69 36 (G), 68 36 G, 70 40 (G), 69 42 (GW), 68 51-55 (GW), 75 52 (GW), 68 53 (G), 77 68 f. (GW), 68 75-6 (W), 75 81 (G), 68 81 ff. (GW), 71 86-90 (GW), 70 100 (G), 75 101-124 (GW), 71 112-15 (GW), 72 124-141 (GW), 78 Xenocrates frg. 222.3, 38 Xenophon Eph. 1.1, 115 5.1.9, 131

173

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General index abstinence, 58 Achilles Tatius, 115, 127 adiáphora, 25 Aelianus On Animals, 39, 46 aemulatio Philostratus ~ Arrianus, 153 Aesopus, 65 and absolute rulers, 72 political advisor, 71 Aigialeus, 131 Alcibiades in Plato’s Symp., 132 Alexander, 151 and the gymnosophists, 148 Alexarchus, 54 allegory, 30, 34, 86, 87, 90, 98 ἀλληγορία, 32 allusion, Platonic in Ach. Tat. and Hld., 127 in Hld., 134 anachoresis, 57 Anderson, G., 141, 142, 149, 154 animals agents of divine providence, 45 Antisthenes, 59 apatheia, 30, 58 Apollonius of Tyana and the gymnoi, 148 ‘surpassing Alexander’, 149 apophoreta, 10 apronoesia, 36 Apuleius De Deo Socratis, 85, 94 philosophus Platonicus, 82 Tale of Cupid & Psyche, 87, 99 archetypes, 40 Aristomenes, 99 Arrianus, 152 Arrowsmith, W., 1 art, 112, 116 in anc. Greek novels, 118 life compared to -, 118 askesis, 58 Astylus, 43

author and audience, 109, 119 Bacon, Francis, 53 Bagnall, R., 145 Bakhtin, M., 99 baldness, 84 Barnes, T.D., 138 Baumbach, M., 130 beauty divine -, 112, 115 Beck, R., 83 Bees, R., 26 Berg, B., 51, 57 Berghoff, W., 51 Bergjan, S.-P., 37 Bernard, W., 30 Billault, A., 149, 153 Birley, 147 Bobzien, S., 29 Bodel, J., 2, 15 Bowersock, G.W., 68, 110 Bowie, E.L., 110, 141 Brahmans, 51, 52 Brancacci, A., 67 Brenk, F.E., 97 Buffière, F., 30 Buonajuto, A., 33 Buora, M., 59 Bussi, S., 145 Camarini, 56 Campanella, Tomasso City of the Sun, 53 Carpocratians, 60 Cavallo, G., 79 Chalk, H.H.O., 40, 43 characterization Callirhoe, 126 Chaereas, 126 Charikleia, 135 Kalasiris, 132 Lucius, 101 characters in anc. Greek novels, 126 Chariton, 115 Chew, K., 130 Chrysippus, 36

174

IN D EX

cicada, 44 Cizek, E., 19 Cleanthes, 25 Clearchus, 55 concord created out of discordant elements, 39, 48 Connors, C., 118 Consigny, S., 13 ‘consumption’ literature, 65 Contini, R., 71 Courtney, E., 1 Crates, 54, 59 cricket-trap, 44 curiositas, 99 polypragmosunê, 86 Cynic thinkers utopian ideas, 53 Cynicism, 52, 148 Cynics, 77 hostile references to -, 59 daemones, 82, 94, 97 daimonion Socrates’, 95, 97 daimonion., 93 Damis in Philostr. VA, 141, 148 Philostratus’ invention, 153 dating of Ach. Tatius, 136 of Heliodorus, 136 of Iambulus, 19 of Philostratus' VA, 141 De Filippo, J.G., 81, 86, 88, 99 De Lacey, P., 110 demonology Platonic -, 94, 101 Derrett, B., 57 Desideri, P., 67, 70, 71, 78 Destrée, P., 93, 97 diatribe, 51 Diaz Sanchez-Cid, J.R., 57 Dillon, J.M., 82, 84, 97, 110 Diodorus Siculus Stoicism of -, 24 Diogenes, 59, 67, 70, 73, 76 Dionysophanes, 47

Dionysus, 40 μεθυμναῖος, 41 Diotima, 97, 112, 134 Dodds, E.R., 10, 125 Dolar, M., 93 Döring, K., 67 Dorkon, 46 Dowden, K., 81, 85, 86, 88, 99, 110, 132 Downing, G., 57 ecphrasis, 116 education (paideia), 21, 66, 70 Egypt, 144 Ehlers, W., 21 eikones (images), 16 ekpyrosis, 25 elite, Greek under Roman rule, 110 Elmer, D.F., 150 Elsner, J., 141 Encolpius, 3 Encratites, 60 ending of Apuleius’ Met., 89 of Cena Trimalchionis, 15 of Hld. Aeth., 134 enkrateia, 60 Enos, R.L., 12 Epicureans, 36, 93, 110, 114 erastēs, 113, 119, 131 erōmenos, 113, 119, 131 eros, 134 in Plato’s Symp., 112 Eros, 40, 42, 110 Erskine, A., 52 ethics, 96 Ethiopia, 142, 150 etymology, 11 euergétes, 47, 48 Euhemerus, 23, 33, 52 Eusebius, 137 evil in Plato’s thought, 125, 134 exokeanismós, 33 Expositio Mundi et Gentium, 56 ‘eye of the soul’, 137 fable, 70, 78 fate, 106 Ferguson, J., 20, 25

IN D EX

Ferrari, F., 65, 78 fiction idealized -, 111 Platonic -, 98 fictionality anc. debate on -, 33 of Philostratus' VA, 141 Finkelpearl, E.D., 75 Flaig, E., 66, 68 Flashar, H., 53 Fletcher, R., 94, 95, 99, 103 Flinterman, J.-J., 141, 148, 153 Forschner, M., 29 Foucault, M., 95 Fusillo, M., 114, 130 Futre Pinheiro, M., 52 Gaisser, J.H., 82 Gascó, F., 153 gaze male -, 47 geographical knowledge of educated Romans, 143 geography fictional -, 142, 150 in lit. tradition, 143 Gersh, S., 82, 84 Gnathon, 43, 47 Goins, S.E., 73 Goldblatt, D., 93, 98 Golden Age, 21, 48, 53 Goldhill, S., 111, 130 Graf, D.F., 52 Graf, F., 141 Graverini, L., 88 Greek poleis and Roman empire, 72 Green, P., 52 Gregory Nazianzen, 59 Griffith, J.G., 38 Grimm, V., 57 Grottanelli, C., 71 gymnosophists, 51, 142, 148, 150 Habinek, Th., 2 Hägg, T., 67, 79 Hahn, J., 66 Halfmann, H., 154 Halliwel, S., 7 Hannestad, K., 147

175 Hanus, P., 150 Harrison, S.J., 81, 85, 88, 94 Heliodorus, 127 Heller, S., 81 Heracles, 24 Heraclitus Cynic hero, 51 Hermann, F.-G., 110 Hermes and Typhon, 48 Herodotus, 150 hesuchia, 58 Hijmans, B.L., 82 Hodoiporia apo Edem tou Paradisou, 56 Holloway, M., 54, 61 Holmes, D., 2, 13 Holzberg, N., 20, 24, 28, 65, 73, 75 Homerus Odyssey 9-12, 33 Hunink, V.C., 86 Hunter, R., 40, 42, 48, 98, 110, 111 Iambulus, 19, 52 Ildikó, P., 150 India, 53, 142, 151 intertextuality, 21, 98, 129, 132 irony, 132, 133 Islands of the Sun, 19, 21, 25, 52 Ivanov, S., 59 Jaeger, M., 2 Jedrkiewicz, S., 65, 67, 68, 69, 73, 79 Jerphagnon, L., 66 Joh. Chrysostomus Against the enemies of monastic life, 59 Comparison of Monk and King, 59 Jones, C.P., 141, 142, 152 Jones, M., 98, 134, 135 Jouanno, C., 65, 75 Julia Domna, 147, 153 kairos, 13 Kalasiris, 131 Karla, G.A., 65 Keulen, W.H., 87, 105 Kim, L., 33 Kinneavy, J.L., 12 Kirichenko, A., 81, 88, 99, 100, 103 Kleitophon, 130, 135 Kleve, K., 93

176 Koskenniemi, E., 141, 148, 152 kosmopolites, 54 Krabbe, J.K., 99 Kristeva, J., 130 Krueger, D., 59 Kurke, L., 65 La Penna, A., 67 labyrinthus, 1, 3, 5, 7 Land of Cockaigne, 53 Lateiner, D., 88 Link, M., 60 literary criticism Stoic -, 30 locus amoenus, 21 Lopez Eire, A., 9 lusus Troiae, 14 Luzzatto, M.J., 73 Lykainion, 44 Macarini, 56 Marinčič, M., 73, 98 Marsyas, 128 Martin, V., 51 Mattern, S., 143, 147 Maximus of Tyre, 94 Maximus the Cynic, 59 Mendels, D., 55 Mercurius, 9 Merkelbach, R., 41, 130 metaphor architecture, 2 domus - tomb, 13 hunting, 45 labyrinth, 1 necromancy, 135 metapoetic level in anc. novels, 32 Mette, H.J., 33 Middle Platonism, 84 Miles, G.B., 2 mime, 84 mimesis, 3, 120 Mithras, 83 monks early Christian -, 57 Montanari, S., 26, 28 monumentum, 2, 3 Morales, H., 110, 111, 116 More, Thomas, 53

IN D EX

Moreschini, C., 95 Morgan, J.R., 35, 40, 42, 47, 98, 110, 132, 134, 148 Mortley, R., 90 motif myrtle, 43 oak-tree, 43 pasturing, 43 philosopher superior to tyrant, 152 syrinx, 45 ‘utopian leap’, 22 voyage, 22 Musonius Rufus, 58 myrtle erotic connotation, 43 myth Isis and Osiris, 86 Pitys, 41 myths Platonic -, 23, 99 names in Apuleius’ Met., 99 narrative authentification, 22 first-person, 19 Narrative of Zosimus, 55 Navia, L.E., 52 necromancy, 131 Nesselrath, H.-G., 28 Nevile, Henry, 53 Newton, R.M., 1 Ní Mheallaigh, K., 110, 116, 127 Nilus of Ancyra, 60 Logos Asketikos, 57 Nisbet, R.G.M., 2 Nymphs, 40, 41 O’Brien, M., 81, 86, 99, 101, 103 oak-tree, 43 Odyssey and Greek novel, 20 Ogden, D., 135 οἰκείωσις, 26 Oldfather, C.H., 20 ὁμόνοια, 25 Onesicritus, 52 orality vs. literacy, 2 Ouranoupolis, 54

177

IN D EX

paideia, 66, 76, 94, 110, 114 palindrome, 15 Palladius De gentibus Indiae, 51 De moribus Brahmanorum, 51 On the Brahmans, 57 Palladius, Bishop of Helenopolis, 51 Pan, 40, 41 Panayotakis, C., 88 Paradise Jewish-Christian, 53, 56 parody, 67, 115, 116 in Ach. Tatius, 130 pepaideumenos, 66, 70, 76, 109, 119 Peripatetics, 36, 110, 114 Perkins, J., 23, 112, 137 Perry, B.E., 67, 75 personification, 96 Phaeacia, 21 Phileas of Alexandria, 136 Philetas, 42, 43, 45 Philo De vita contemplativa, 55 philosophy in Ach. Tatius, 130 Philostratus author of VA, 141 Philostratus’ VA geography confused, 152 sage vs. soldier, 152 Photiades, P., 51 Plato on poetry, 113 Phaedo, 36 Phaedrus, 110 Protagoras, 1 Republic, 109 Symposium, 110 Platonism, 109, 110 Apuleius’, 95 Platonists, 114 Platt, V., 143, 148 Plutarchus, 37, 86 De genio Socratis, 94 Life of Alexander, 51 poetry ~ painting, 3 Plato's view of -, 113

Pohlenz, M., 28 Posidonius, 23 Potammon, 137 Poulakos, J., 13 Press, G.A., 98 Preston, R., 110 pronoia, 29, 35, 45 Greek philosophers on -, 36 ‘Pronoia-Literatur’, 35 providence animals included, 39 Ps.-Plutarchus De fato, 37 psychagogia, 3, 7, 9, 14, 33 psychomachia, 114, 126, 135 Pythagoreanism, 148 Ramusio G.B., 21 reader demands on the -, 22, 83 educated -, 26 experienced -, 133 male - of Greek novel, 111 of ‘consumption´ literature, 65 of Vita Aesopi, 79 readership of anc. Greek novels, 111 Reardon, B.P., 115 Rechabites, 55 Reger, G., 141, 150 Reimer, A., 153 Reitzenstein, R., 148 Relihan, J.C., 105 Repath, I., 99, 110, 114, 116, 126 riddles, 149 Rimell, V., 11 Robiano, P., 148, 152, 154 Romance of Ahiqar, 71 Romm, J., 33, 52, 149 Rosenmeyer, T.G., 35 Rostagni, A., 7 Rudd, N., 2 Sacks, K., 24 Saïd, S., 111 Sandy, G.N., 94, 99, 132 satire, 105 scatology in Dio Chr., 76 in Vita Aesopi, 75

178

IN D EX

Schlam, C.C., 86, 99 Schmitz, Th., 68 Schneider, P., 142, 150 Schofield, M., 54 scholastikoi, 68 Schönberger, O., 40 Schwarz, F.F., 52 Second Sophistic, 7, 66, 68, 82, 94, 98, 109, 114, 116 Septimius Severus Egyptian journey, 147 Seth, 86 Severan emperors and Alexander, 151 Severus Alexander, 152 SHA, 152 Shaw, T.M., 57 shepherd symbolic meaning, 42 Shumate, N.S., 81 significant names Chloe, 40 Daphnis, 40 Dorkon, 47 Gnathon, 47 Smith, M.S., 1, 11 Smith, N.D., 93 Smith, S.D., 126 Socrates, 67, 70, 87, 93, 129 character in Apul. Met., 99 Socratic paradox, 68 sophist, 3, 8, 77, 82 vs. warrior-king, 152 sôphrosynê, 135 Southern, P., 152 spectacle in anc. Greek novels, 118 Steinmetz, P., 26 Stephens, S.A., 110 Stoic ethics, 23 Stoic pedagogy, 28 Stoic philosophy πρόνοια ~ ἐλευθερία, 29 Stoics, 110, 114 Stoneman, R., 51, 53, 57 Strabo, 33, 146 superstition, 101, 105

Swain, S., 37, 72, 110, 111 Syene, 144 syrinx, 44 Taprobane, 53 Taxila, 52, 141, 150 Taylor, J.E., 55 templum, 3 Theodoretus Cure of Pagan Maladies, 59 Theopompus, 52 Therapeutae, 55 Tilg, S., 126 torture, 136 Trapp, M.B., 98 Trimalchio, 2, 8 Typhon, 86 utopia, 20, 29, 52, 53, 79 utopian novel, 21 utopian aspects in ancient novels, 52 Van Mal-Maeder, D.K., 84 Van Riel, G., 97 vegetarianism, 58 violence, 137 voice, 94, 96, 106 voyeurism, 130 Walsh, P.G., 13, 86, 99 Weerakkody, D.P.M., 53 Weinreich, O., 35 Welsby, D., 142, 145 Whitmarsh, T., 7, 76, 78, 110, 126, 131, 143 Whittaker, J., 84 Wiater, N., 32 Wilmart, A., 51, 58 Wimbush, V., 58 Winiarczyk, M., 19, 21, 22, 32 Winkle, J.T., 99 Winkler, J.J., 67, 73, 81, 83, 89, 99, 128, 133 Winston, D., 52 Wlosok, A., 81, 86 word play, 11 world soul, 86 Xenocrates, 94 Yonadab ‘sons of - ’, 55 Zeitlin, F.I., 13, 16, 35, 110, 111

IN D EX

Zeno of Citium, 25 politeia, 54 Zimmerman, M., 105 Zosimus ‘The Narrative of - ’, 55

179