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PUSHING FORTY: THE PLATONIC SIGNIFICANCE OF REFERENCES TO AGE IN LUCIAN'S DOUBLE INDICTMENT AND HERMOTIMUS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2019

Anna Peterson
Anna Peterson*
Affiliation:
The Pennsylvania State University
*
[email protected]
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Extract

Opening on Olympus and concluding with two trials involving ‘the Syrian’ (an obvious Lucianic persona), Lucian's Double Indictment (= Bis Acc.) presents a fantastical scenario that draws on Old Comic, Platonic and biographical models. In the first of the Syrian's two trials, a personified Rhetoric accuses the Syrian of abandoning her, his legitimate wife, for his lover, Dialogue. Dialogue, in turn, accuses the Syrian of hubris, asserting that the Syrian rendered him a generic freak when he forced him to accept ‘jokes, iambos, cynicism, and Eupolis and Aristophanes’ (ὁ σκῶμμα καὶ τὸν ἴαμβον καὶ κυνισμὸν καὶ τὸν Εὔπολιν καὶ τὸν Ἀριστοφάνη, Bis Acc. 33). Amidst this literary fantasy, Lucian seemingly adds an element of realism when the Syrian specifies that he was ‘almost forty’ (τετταράκοντα ἔτη σχεδὸν γεγονότι, Bis Acc. 32) at the time he left Rhetoric for Dialogue. This is notably not the only instance in which we find this age attributed to a Lucianic alter-ego: Lycinus in the Hermotimus (= Hermot.) is likewise described as being ‘almost forty’ at the time of the dialogue. This is strikingly also the same age at which the dialogue's eponymous interlocutor—he is sixty at the time of the dialogue—began his own philosophical education (αὐτὸς κατὰ σὲ γεγονὼς ἠρξάμην φιλοσοφεῖν τετταρακοντούτης σχεδόν, Hermot. 13).

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 68 , Issue 2 , December 2018 , pp. 621 - 633
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2019 

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References

1 The text of the Double Indictment is that of Macleod, M.D., Luciani Opera, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1974)Google Scholar. Translations of the Double Indictment are adapted from Sidwell, K., Chattering Courtesans and Other Sardonic Sketches (New York, 2004)Google Scholar.

2 Despite our lack of the original play, it is generally presumed that Lucian's inspiration for Rhetoric's prosecution of the Syrian in the Double Indictment is Cratinus’ Pytine. This connection has recently been promoted by Sidwell, K., ‘Letting it all hang out: Lucian, Old Comedy, and the origins of Roman satire’, in Olson, S.D. (ed.), Ancient Comedy and Reception: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey Henderson (Berlin, 2013), 259–74Google Scholar. Similarly, the scenario of a figure on trial for their approach to philosophy cannot help but recall Plato's Apology. See Whitmarsh, T., Greek Literature and the Roman Empire: The Politics of Imitation (Oxford, 2001), 263–4Google Scholar. For a discussion of how Lucian appropriates Plato's own authorial games, see Mheallaigh, K. Ní, ‘“Plato alone was not there … ”: Platonic presences in Lucian’, Hermathena 179 (2005), 89–103Google Scholar. As I will discuss below, the Syrian's twin trials are preceded by five involving long-dead philosophers (Polemon, Dionysius, Aristippus, Diogenes and Pyrrho) that restage moments from each philosopher's biography; see Braun, E., Lukian, ‘Unter Doppelter Anklage’—Ein Kommentar (Frankfurt am Main, 1994), 123–212Google Scholar.

3 The text of the Hermotimus is that of Macleod, M.D., Luciani Opera, vol. 4 (Oxford, 1987)Google Scholar. Translations of the Hermotimus are adapted from Kilburn, K., Lucian, vol. 6 (Cambridge, MA, 1959)Google Scholar.

4 For examples of this reading, see Anderson, G., Lucian: Theme and Variation (Leiden, 1976), 177–81Google Scholar and Jones, C.P., Culture and Society in Lucian (Cambridge, MA, 1986), 167–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a skeptical view of this approach, see Hall, J., Lucian's Satire (New York, 1981), 16–44Google Scholar. This question is addressed most recently by Bozia, E., Lucian and his Roman Voices: Cultural Exchanges and Conflicts in the Late Roman Empire (New York, 2015), 9–12Google Scholar, which accepts the ages given as evidence of when the two texts were composed.

5 Lucian uses his own name only four times, three of which are in the context of biographical works (The Passing of Peregrinus, Alexander the False Prophet and Nigrinus). The fourth example comes in the True History, when the narrator of the main narrative (as opposed to the prologue-speaker) famously inscribes ‘Loukianos’ on a plaque he sets up in the underworld (2.28). For a discussion of the function that authorial or pseudo-authorial names play in Lucian's dialogues, see Mheallaigh, K. Ní, ‘The game of the name: onymity and the contract of reading in Lucian’, in Mestre, F. (ed.), Lucian of Samosata, Greek Writer and Roman Citizen (Barcelona, 2010), 83–94Google Scholar and Reading Fiction with Lucian: Fakes, Freaks, and Hyperreality (Cambridge, 2015), 172–83. Ní Mheallaigh builds on the theories of Lejeune, P., ‘The autobiographical contract’, in Todorov, T. (ed.), French Literary Theory Today (Cambridge, 1982), 192–222Google Scholar. Whitmarsh, T., Beyond the Second Sophistic: Adventures in Greek Postclassicism (Berkeley, 2013), 72–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar also addresses this aspect of Lucian's literary style.

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7 In the most clear-cut examples, metalepsis is the transgression of the narrative frame separating the fictional world from the real world. See Genette, G., Narrative Discourse. An Essay in Method, transl. Lewin, J.E. (Ithaca, NY, 1983), 234Google Scholar. On the process of metalepsis in respect to Lucian's use of narrators, see Whitmarsh (n. 5), 72. For a list of other examples of metalepsis in ancient literature, see de Jong, I.D.F., ‘Metalepsis in Ancient Greek literature’, in Grethlein, J. and Rengakos, A. (edd.), Narratology and Interpretation. The Content of Narrative Form in Ancient Literature (Berlin and New York, 2009), 87–115Google Scholar, at 88 n. 4.

8 This triad includes Old Comedy, Platonic Dialogue and Menippean Satire. The clearest expression of this can be found at Pisc. 25–6; cf. Bis Acc. 33 and Prom. es 6.

9 This is an idea that Sidwell, K. has been developing; see, in particular, Aristophanes the Democrat: The Politics of Satirical Comedy during the Peloponnesian War (Cambridge, 2009), 62CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Sidwell (n. 1).

10 On these connections, see Rosen, R.M., ‘Lucian's Aristophanes: on understanding Old Comedy in the Roman Imperial period’, in Marshall, C.W. and Hawkins, T. (edd.), Athenian Comedy in the Roman Empire (London, 2015), 141–62Google Scholar and Storey, I., ‘Exposing frauds: Lucian and comedy’, in Marshall, C.W. and Hawkins, T. (edd.), Athenian Comedy in the Roman Empire (London, 2015), 163–80Google Scholar, at 178–9. Sidwell, K., ‘The dead philosophers’ society: new thoughts on Lucian's Piscator’, in Bartley, A. (ed.), A Lucian for Our Times (Cambridge, 2009), 109–18Google Scholar suggests that the inspiration for the authorial persona of Parrhesiades comes from Lucian's other comic model for the Fisherman, Eupolis’ Demes.

11 See Ní Mheallaigh (n. 2), 90.

12 The text of the Seventh Letter is that of Burnet, J., Platonis Opera, vol. 5 (Oxford, 1907)Google Scholar. Translations of the Seventh Letter are adapted from Bury, R.G., Plato, vol. 9 (Cambridge, MA, 1929)Google Scholar. For a discussion of the verbal aspects of the specific allusions in Double Indictment and Hermotimus, see pages 8 and 11 below.

13 For a list of Platonic biographies, see Boas, G., ‘Fact and legend in the biography of Plato’, Philosophical Review 57 (1948), 439–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 439. For a discussion of letters as a form of biographical writing, see Trapp, M., ‘Biography in letters; biography and letters’, in McGing, B. and Mossman, J. (edd.), The Limits of Ancient Biography (Swansea, 2006), 335–50Google Scholar, esp. 339–40.

14 The authenticity of the Letters is disputed. On the question of their authenticity, see Bluck, R.S. (ed.), Plato's Seventh and Eighth Letters (Cambridge, 1947), 181Google Scholar; Gulley, N., ‘The authenticity of the Platonic epistles’, in Fritz, K. von (ed.), Pseudepigraphia 1 (Geneva, 1972), 103–30Google Scholar; and Guthrie, W.K.C., A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 5 (Cambridge, 1978), 399–401Google Scholar. For arguments in favour of the Seventh Letter’s authenticity, see Fritz, K. von, ‘The philosophical passage in the Seventh Platonic Letter and the problem of Plato's “esoteric” philosophy’, in Anton, J.P. and Kustas, G.L. (edd.), Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy (Albany, NY, 1971), 408–47Google Scholar. For the other side of the debate, see Eldelstein, L., Plato's Seventh Letter (Leiden, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For more recent statistical analyses of this question, see Ledger, G., Re-Counting Plato: A Computer Analysis of Plato's Style (Oxford, 1989), 148–53Google Scholar, and Keyser, P., ‘Stylometric Method and the Chronology of Plato's Works’ (review of L. Brandwood, The Chronology of Plato's Dialogues [Cambridge, 1990]), BMCR 2 (1992), 58–74Google Scholar.

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16 For a useful chart of the references, see Zadorojnyi, A., ‘The ethico-politics of writing in Plutarch's Life of Dion’, JHS 131 (2011), 147–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 152.

17 For further discussion of this, see Morrison, A.D., ‘Narrative and epistolarity in “Platonic” epistles’, in Hodkinson, O., Rosenmeyer, P. and Bracke, E. (edd.), Epistolary Narratives in Ancient Greek Literature (Leiden, 2013), 107–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 McConnell, S., Philosophical Life in Cicero's Letters (Cambridge, 2014), 65CrossRefGoogle Scholar points to another, more oblique reference to the Seventh Letter at 9.10.2. For a discussion of Cicero's Platonic persona in these letters, see ch. 2 passim. The translation of the above passage is that of McConnell.

19 For the protreptic function of the Seventh Letter, see Lewis, V., ‘The rhetoric of philosophical politics in Plato's Seventh Letter’, Philosophy and Rhetoric 33 (2000), 23–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 24–5. See also Kotzé (n. 15), 62–7.

20 See, for example, Branham, R.B., Unruly Eloquence: Lucian and the Comedy of Traditions (Cambridge, MA, 1989), 34–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Blondell, R. and Boehringer, S., ‘Revenge of the Hetairistria: the reception of Plato's Symposium in Lucian's fifth Dialogue of the Courtesans’, Arethusa 47 (2014), 231–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 231–2.

21 The presence of personified characters in these trials recalls the use of personified characters by the poets of Old Comedy, such as Comedy in Cratinus’ Pytine, Poetry in Aristophanes’ Poetry, and Music in Pherecrates’ Cheiron. For a discussion of this practice among the poets of Old Comedy, see Sommerstein, A., ‘A lover of his art: the art-form as wife and mistress in Greek poetic imagery’, in Stafford, E. and Herrin, J. (edd.), Personification in the Greek World (Aldershot, 2005), 161–71Google Scholar.

22 See Diog. Laert. 4.16–17. For a discussion of the anecdotes surrounding Polemon, see Dillon, J.M., The Heirs of Plato: A Study in the Old Academy (347–274 b.c.e.) (Oxford, 2003), 156–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 See Diog. Laert. 7.166, who states that he changed allegiance to the Cyrenaics. Ath. Deipn. 437e–f preserves the alternate version that he became an Epicurean.

24 Braun (n. 2), 125–6 chronicles the figures and schools in these trials but does not consider their overall significance to the dialogue.

25 On the connections to Old Comedy, see Sidwell (n. 2) and Peterson, A., Laughter on the Fringes: The Reception of Old Comedy in the Imperial Greek World (Oxford, 2019), 99–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 According to this schema, Plato was born in 427, and he was twenty when he encountered Socrates for the first time, forty when he founded the Academy, sixty when he travelled to Sicily, and eighty when he died. See Diog. Laert. 3.2. On this, see Nails, D., ‘The life of Plato of Athens’, in Benson, H.H. (ed.), A Companion to Plato (Oxford, 2006), 1–12Google Scholar, at 1.

27 On literary lifestyles as responses to the political hegemony of Rome, see Swain, S., Hellenism and Empire (Oxford, 1996)Google Scholar, esp. chs. 1–3; Whitmarsh (n. 2); Goldhill, S., Who Needs Greek? Contests in the Cultural History of Hellenism (Cambridge, 2002)Google Scholar, ch. 2.

28 For further discussion of the Syrian's age, particularly in comparison to that of Lycinus, see page 12 below.

29 On the ‘autobiographical pact’, see Lejeune (n. 5).

30 On the narrativity of autobiography as a genre, see Löschnigg, M., ‘Postclassical narratology and the theory of autobiography’, in Alber, J. and Fludernik, M. (edd.), Postclassical Narratology: Approaches and Analyses (Columbus, OH, 2010), 255–74Google Scholar.

31 Hunter, R., Plato and the Traditions of Ancient Literature: The Silent Stream (Cambridge, 2012), 1–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a fuller discussion of the literary resonances of the Hermotimus, see Möllendorf, P. von, Lukian. Hermotimos, oder, Lohnt es sich, Philosophie zu studieren? (Darmstadt, 2000)Google Scholar. On the connections between the Hermotimus and other dialogues within Lucian's corpus, see Peterson, A., ‘Philosophers Redux: the Hermotimus, the Fisherman, and the role of the dead philosophers’, ICS 41 (2016), 185–200Google Scholar.

32 I follow Kilburn (n. 3) here in reading φρατρίας for φατρίας, which I believe makes better sense.

33 On the possible connections in this reference between the Hermotimus, the Nigrinus and other Lucianic dialogues, see Anderson (n. 4), 83. See also Bompaire, J., Lucien écrivain, imitation et création (Paris, 1958), 529Google Scholar.

34 Plutarch uses μειράκιον to describe Brutus when he is twenty; see Brut. 27.2. See also Lucian, Dial. Mort. 9.4 for this understanding of this age.

35 Marcus, L., Auto/biographical Discourses: Theory, Criticism, Practice (Manchester, 1994), 273–4Google Scholar.