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The Date of the Oration of Tatian

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

G. W. Clarke
G. W. Clarke
Affiliation:
Nedlands University of Western Australia.
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Extract

It is some years since Professor R. M. Grant published in this review an article on the above topic [46(1953), 99ff.]. In it he advanced an attractively neat and confident case for solving the long-debated question of the dating of Tatian's Oration. It was written, he concludes, “after the year 176, perhaps in 177 or 178,” and this conclusion he draws from straightforward internal evidence: Or. 23.2 alludes to events of 172/3, 19.1 to those of 176, and 6.2 probably to those of 177. The purpose of this note is plainly negative; it is merely to introduce a note of hesitant scepticism into Professor Grant's confident claim.

Type
Notes and Observations
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 60 , Issue 1 , January 1967 , pp. 123 - 126
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1967

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References

1 Hawthorne, G. F., Tatian and his Discourse to the Greeks, HTR 57(1964), 161ff. at 173fCrossRefGoogle Scholar. For another explanation, Grant, R. M., The Heresy of Tatian, JTS 5(1954), 62ff. at 65CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a survey of the variable opinions of early Church writers on the resurrection, Refoulé, F., Immortalité de l'âme et résurrection de la chair, Rev. de l'Hist. des Rel. 163(1963), 11ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 See Dodds, E. R., Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety (Cambridge, 1965), 130, n.1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Grant, R. M., Studies in the Apologists, HTR 51(1958), 123ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, G. F. Hawthorne, art. cit. at 175ff.

4 “… ignis illud excidat an terra contegat, an ferae distrahant … utrum proiectum aves differant, an consumatur ‘canibus data praeda marinis’ …”; cp. Sen. de tranq. an. 14.3ff., de rem. fort. 5.1–2, 4–5. Minucius Felix echoes the Senecan epistle in Oct. 11.4, as he does this passage of Tatian in 34.10 (cp. also Athenag. de Resur. 8).

5 “sive maria naufragos devorent, sive flumina praecipites trahant, sive harenae obruant, sive ferae lacerent, sive volucres discerpant …” Cp. Sen. Controv. 8.4.1.

6 In the Oration Tatian appears to use βασιλεύς in the singular (19.1 and 19.4) or in the plural (3 and 10) indifferently. This suggests he is making general remarks (cp. A. Puech, Recherches sur le Discours aux Grecs de Tatian [Paris, 1903], 10).

7 For the evidence Marrou, H.-I., A History of Education in Antiquity (trans. Lamb, G., London, 1956), 441 n.10.Google Scholar

8 Lucian, Eun. 3, 8; cp. Philost. Vit. Soph. 2.2.566, with the same figure for the salary of the rhetor's chair established at the same time. Curiously Marrou (op. cit., 303) takes Tatian's figure for the philosopher's salary, Philostratus' for the rhetor's, but, without argument, neglects the figure supplied by Lucian.

9 HTR 46(1953), 100 n.5.

10 Grant, R. M., The Chronology of the Greek Apologists, Vig. Christ. 9(1955), 25ff. at 28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 The holders of the chairs for Greek and Latin rhetoric in Rome were centenarii from Vespasian's day, Suet. Vesp. 18. For other evidence of salary figures, DACL 4.1762ff. s.v. École (H. Leclercq); for a (Severan?) a declamationibus latinis who was trecenarius (a personal assistant of the Emperor?), H.-G. Pflaum, Les Carrières procuratoriennes équestres sous le haut-empire romain (Paris, 2[1960]), 613ff.

11a See the commentary of A. S. Pease (repr. Darmstadt, 1963) on Cic. de divinatione 2.34.

12 Cp. A. Puech, op. cit., 10 n.2: “ici encore la phrase a un sens général et il est difficile d'en tirer une conclusion particulière.”

13 Latest edition and commentary by J. H. Oliver and R. E. A. Palmer, Minutes of an Act of the Roman Senate, Hesp. 24(1955), 320ff. (= Bruns, Fontes Iuris Romani Antiqui [Tübingen, 19197], 207ff., Dessau ILS 5163).

14 Oliver and Palmer, art. cit., 331. A beneficent citizen could also of course establish a new festival, e.g., Pliny, Ep. 4.22.1.

15 “Latrones etiam Dalmatiae atque Dardaniae milites fecit.”

16 M. Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, vol. 2(Oxford, 19572), 591f. (to which should now be added An. Épig. [1956], 124, the career of M. Valerius Maximianus); cp. Garzettt, A., L'impero da Tiberio agli Antonini (Bologna, 1960), 513f., 521f.Google Scholar For interfecti a latronibus, CIL 3, 1579, 8009, 8021, 8242.

17 Note the activities of M. Valerius Maximianus, “at (sic) detrahendam Briseorum latronum manum,” after 175 (An. Épig. [1956], 124).

18 Why, for example, does Tatian eschew the employment of βασιλεύς, which he uses freely elsewhere, if he intended this passage to be taken as referring to the Emperor?

19 Parker, H. M. D., A History of the Roman World from A.D. 138 to 337 (London, 1958 2), 24 and 316 n.67Google Scholar; cp. CAH xi, 352.

20 Elze, M., Tatian und seine Theologie (Göttingen, 1960), 43fGoogle Scholar. is studiously noncommittal on the dating (c.160–175).