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V. The Second Sophistic and Imperial Greek Literature
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2016
Extract
This book has focused so far upon the extraordinary popularity of epideictic oratory in the first three centuries of the Roman empire, the ‘Second Sophistic’ in Philostratus’ sense (notwithstanding its distant roots in the fourth century BCE). We have seen that these declamations were performance pieces, and that issues of identity were explored through the observation of the sophist’s body; that language and style were heavily theorized, but also highly experimental; and that the interpretation of these ingenious, mobile texts demands considerable resourcefulness and attentiveness. What I want to explore in this final chapter is the points of intersection between these aspects of sophistic literature and the wider literary culture of Roman Greece. I shall focus particularly on two areas, which are central to both oratorical declamation and wider literary culture: ‘the self and exotic narrative.
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References
1 See esp. Veyne (1978); Foucault (1986); Perkins (1995); Edwards (1997); Toohey (2004).
2 On ancient biography, see esp. Momigliano (1993), whose survey however thins out under the empire; on biography in the Roman empire, Swain and Edwards eds (1997).
3 Edited by Arrighetti (1964).
4 FGrH 90 F125-30.
5 For a fuller survey of imperial biography, see Swain (1997), 22–37.
6 In the most recent analysis, this explosion of interest in the biographical is attributed to changes in social and political structures, in particular a widening gap between elite and mass, coupled with a greater emphasis upon state surveillance and disciplining (through law, the military, and civic institutions): see Swain (1997), building on Veyne (1978) and Foucault (1986).
7 On which see esp. Pernot (1993).
8 Pernot (1993), 1.143-78.
9 See LSJ s.v. ϵίς IV.1.b., (mis)quoting Philostratus’ title. For recent bibliography on this text, see esp. Bowie (1978); Anderson (1986), 121–239; Koskenniemi (1991); Bowie (1994); Flintermann (1995); Swain (1996), 381–95, (1999); Eisner (1997), Billault (2000), 105–26. On the authorship of this text, see ch. 2 n. 10.
10 For which see Pernot (1993), 1.156-78.
11 For novelistic influences, see Bowie (1978), 1663–7, (1994); Billault (1991).
12 Cox (1983).
13 On the ambivalence of the ‘divine man’ in later antiquity, see Cox (1983). Bieler (1935-6) is still fundamental.
14 Apollonius’ divinity is alluded to at 2.40, 5.36, 7.38, 8.15. He is also linked with mortal heroes, Achilles (3.19; 4.11-12; 4.16) and Alexander (2.9-10; 2.20; 2.24; 2.33; 2.42-3; 3.53). Apollonius is frequently accused of being a goes (‘wizard’/’quack’), and the narrator’s denials are not always convincing: e.g. at 7.34, where he claims to Domitian that he cannot be a goes because a goes would magically escape from prison ... before magically escaping from prison (7.38)! On Apollonius’ tricksiness, see esp. Anderson (1986), 121–53.
15 The author of the Lives of the Sophists would have known, too, that sophists were often compared to Proteus: see ch. 1 n. 60.
16 Pernot (1993), 1.481-90, with 486 on the Alexander; also Branham (1989), 190–6, 209. On the Passing of Peregrinus is a comparable text, but less biographical in its structure. On the Alexander, see Jones (1986), 133–48; Branham (1989), 181–210; Clay (1992); Victor (1997).
17 Indeed, at the hands (and more) of an acolyte of Apollonius of Tyana (5).
18 Among the huge number of recent works on Plutarch’s Lives, particularly notable are: Russell (1972), 100–42; Scardigli ed. (1995); Swain (1996), 137–61; Duff (1999); Peiling (2002).
19 Esp. Pericles 1.4, 2.1-4 (virtue); Aemilius Paulus 1.1-3 (virtue); Demetrius 1.3-6 (vice). On these passages, see esp. Duff (1999), 30–49.
20 Menander Rhetor 372.5 Russell and Wilson; Julian, Oration 1.4d.
21 Duff (1999), 54–5. On moral complexity in the Lives, see also Peiling (1995).
22 Solon and Demosthenes, who receive lives, were of course authors as well as politicians.
23 For surveys, see Misch (1950); Basiez, Hoffmann and Pernot eds (1993). There is also valuable material in Momigliano (1993).
24 II-III Durrbach.
25 FGrH 90 FBI-9.
26 The question of precisely what accusations he is defending himself against, and why, is more complex: see recently Hadas-Lebel (1993), 128–30. Josephus’ best-known apologetic work is Against Apion a defence of the Jews against gentile prejudice.
27 See esp. Harrison (2000), 39–88, with 42–7 on the rhetorical background.
28 See further Whitmarsh (2001), 291–2.
29 On Lucian’s self-fashioning through texts such as this, see Said (1993); Dubel (1994).
30 Rutherford (1995), 199–201. Add Alexander’s On the Difference between Praise and Encomium = RG 3.2-4.
31 See Rutherford (1995) on this text.
32 Most fully by Schwartz (1965).
33 See most recently Whitmarsh (2001), 122–4; Goldhill (2002b), 67–9.
34 Said (1993); Dubel (1994); Whitmarsh (2001), 248–53; Goldhill (2002b), 67–82.
35 The exception is the False Sophist, where the name ‘Lucian’ is given to one of the interlocutors (but it is never used in the text proper, and may be an interpolation).
36 Nigrinus 1; True Histories 2.28; The Dream or Lucian’s Life (title); Alexander or the False Prophet 55; On the Death of Peregrinus 1; Epigram 1 Macleod. See further Whitmarsh (2001), 253.
37 Said (1993), 270 (my translation).
38 Misch (1950), 2.495-510 (though denying that this is true autobiography); Quet (1993), 213–16. See further Behr (1968); Pearcy (1988); Perkins (1995), 173–89; Swain (1996), 260–74.
39 Dodds (1965), 39–45, ably dismissed by Swain (1996), 106–9.
40 Perkins (1995), 173–89.
41 See also the classic discussion of Brown (1989).
42 Quet (1993), 236–9.
43 Philostratus, VS 581. In a passage of his commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, transmitted in Arabic, Galen also alludes to Aristides’ health problems; the passage is translated at Behr (1968), 162.
44 The text is uncertain, but there is no reason to doubt the word hupokritēs.
45 Pearcy (1988); Whitmarsh (2004f).
46 See e.g. Sturrock (1993).
47 On the dating, see most recently Bowie (2002b) (on the early novels). Heliodorus is sometimes placed in the third century (see e.g. Swain (1996), 423–4), but there is no strong evidence.
48 For orientation on the immense bibliography, see Bowie and Harrison eds (1993); more recent works of a general nature include Swain ed. (1999); Schmeling ed. (2003). The novels are also frequently discussed in terms of the supposed ‘invention of the self (see above), in particular for their focus on sexual ethics and marriage. See esp. Konstan (1994); Cooper (1996); Goldhill (1995).
49 Rohde (1914), 361–87. Russell (1983), 38 modifies this view, claiming that rather than the declamations inspiring the novels, ‘both are expressions of a common culture’. On the connections between the novel and epideictic oratory, see also Reardon (1974); Cassin (1986).
50 Anderson (1993), 156–70.
51 For a balanced view, see Stephens and Winkler (1995), 316–18; see also OSG 327- 30 on this sophist. The Phoenician Story is well discussed by Winkler (1980).
52 Swain (1996), 423–4.
53 Ch. 4 n. 28.
54 See ch. 4, ‘Mythologies’.
55 On declamatory pirates, see Russell (1983), 26.
56 The boukoloi or ‘bandits’ of Lollianus, Achilles Tatius 3–4 and Heliodorus 1–2, for example, are certainly attested in contemporary society: see Cassius Dio 71.4, and further Winkler (1980).
57 This is particularly prominent in Chariton and Achilles Tatius. Paradoxes in Chariton: 2.8.3, 3.2.7, 3.3.2, 3.3.13, 3.4.1, 4.1.2, 5.8.2, 8.1.2, 8.1.9, 8.6.10. Paradoxes in Achilles: 2.18.6; 4.4.1; 6.2.3 (paradoxos); 4.14.5; 4.14.8; 5.1.6; 5.23.5; 6.2.8; 6.4.3 (paralogos); ‘novel’ (kainos, listing only the uses meaning ‘of a novel kind’) phenomena in Achilles: 1.9.5; 2.14.4; 3.3.3; 3.16.4; 4.4.6; 4.7.15; 4.12.1; 4.14.8 (bis); 5.1.6; 5.14.4; 6.7.3; 6.21.2. See further Anderson (1993), 163–5.
58 Whitmarsh (2001), 78–87. The passages from Achilles and Polemo cited below are also compared at Whitmarsh (2001), 79.
59 kratoumenēn is a pun: it could mean either ‘held’ or ‘conquered’. The paradoxical confusion of land and sea can also be found in the second fragment of Hadrian of Tyre, printed at Hinck (1876), 45–6.
60 Compare 1.10, ‘Eros is a self-taught sophist’. The allusion in both cases is to Plato, Symposium 203d; cf. Xenophon, Education of Cyrus 6.1.41.