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Damis the Epicurean

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

M. J. Edwards
M. J. Edwards
Affiliation:
New College, Oxford
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Extract

Damis is a character in, and his memoirs the putative source of, Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana. Many scholars have doubted the existence of these memoirs, some the very existence of the man. Against the latter party Graham Anderson has advanced an ingenious argument, which attempts to prove that the Damis whose existence has been doubted is identical with a bearer of the same name to whom existence has hardly ever been ascribed. His evidence comprises: (1) Lucian's dialogue Zeus the Tragedian, in which a certain Damis appears as the Epicurean tormentor of the popular divinities; (2) a tale now extant in mediaeval Persian, in which a philosopher named Dini performs a similar function; (3) the testimony of Origen that Moiragenes numbered among the men seduced by Apollonius ‘the illustrious Euphrates and a certain Epicurean’ (Contra Celsum 6.41). Between these reports he detects the following parallels:

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , December 1991 , pp. 563 - 566
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1991

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References

1 For discussion and bibliography see Bowie, E. L., ‘Apollonius of Tyana: Tradition and Reality’, ANRW II 16.2 (1978), 1652–99Google Scholar; Dzielska, M., Apollonius of Tyana in Legend and History (Rome, 1986), pp. 19–49.Google Scholar

2 Anderson, G., Philostratus (Beckenham, Kent, 1986), pp. 241–57.Google Scholar

3 On Moeragenes see Bowie (1978), pp. 1674ff. and Raynor, D. H., ‘Moeragenes and Philostratus: Two Views of Apollonius of Tyana’, CQ 34 (1984), 223–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I agree with Bowie (1978), 1673–80, and with Raynor (1984), against Anderson (1986), pp. 299–300, that Moeragenes himself need not have been a hostile witness; I argue that Philostratus attributes to him omissions rather than lies.

4 Anderson (1986), pp. 299–300 suggests that Philostratus charged Moeragenes with inaccuracy because it was politic to conceal the real ground of his distaste, i.e. the animosity of Moeragenes. But: (1) he does not tax Moeragenes with falsehood, and (2) it could only strengthen the case against Moeragenes to prove him guilty of prejudice, with a consequent propensity to error.

5 See Anderson (1986), p. 163 for the observation that Damis is not invoked to contradict other sources.

6 If ὡς πρς γητα insinuates that the term was a misnomer and μαγεα denotes a more respectable study, then the encounter must be supposed to have changed their minds, γης is pejorative at Contra Celsum 1.71 etc., but at 1.74 and in the Homily on Numbers 24.17 Origen speaks of mages with respect. If this distinction is present, however, it must allude to a pagan vindication of Apollonius, which Origen himself does not endorse.

7 The Euphrates of Philostratus is the Stoic extolled by Pliny, Letters 1.10, and Epictetus, Discourses 3.15.1. A similar change in the character of Damis is quite credible: it would not be any more difficult to transform than to invent him, and there may have been very little totransform.

8 See the discussions cited in note 1.

9 Against Bowie (1978), p. 1663, it seems to me that Protesilaus affords a better analogue than the vintner, who professes (like Philostratus) to be merely the reporter of another man's account. On the authorship of the Heroicus see Solmsen, F., ‘Some Works of Philostratus the Elder’, TAPA 71 (1940), 557–69.Google Scholar

10 Cf. Hebrews 2.6, where David is ‘a certain man’, and ‘certain poets’ at Acts 17.28 for Aratus and Cleanthes. In each case the easy solution of the riddle reminds the audience that the speaker has cited one of their own authorities. If Origen believed that he himself had divined the character of Damis, it would mean more to identify the sect than to name the man. The Socratic allusion at Gorgias 493a to ‘a certain man, Sicilian perhaps or Italian’, may not betoken ignorance of the name; cf. also Phaedrus 272c.

11 On the Platonism of Celsus see Contra Celsum 7.42 etc.,; Chadwick, H., Origen: Contra Celsum (Cambridge, 1965), pp. xxiv–xxviGoogle Scholar; Dillon, J., The Middle Platonists (London, 1977), pp. 400–1.Google Scholar

12 . Lucian's Celsus (Alexander 1) is said to be the author of a work against the magicians (Alexander 21). Origen's suggestion (Contra Celsum 1.68) that the author of the True Logos wrote such a book is his sole attempt to fix his identity. Lucian will be the source of his prosopography: had Origen known the writings of this Celsus at first hand he would have cited them.