Aelius Aristides between Greece, Rome, and the Gods 9004172041, 9789004172043

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INTRODUCTION

wv.

lIARRrs

Aelius Aristides' Embassy Speech to Achilles (Oration XVI) seems at first reading a ham-fisted piece of work. It takes the form of a speech aimed at assuaging the wrath of Achilles with Agamemnon, like the speeches that Homer gives to Odysseus, Phoenix and Ajax in Iliad IX. I But unlike the clever speeches of Odysseus and Phoenix, it would have been much more likely to inflame Achilles than win him over: 'you seem to hate your fellow-countrymen', says the fictitious orator, 'and fear battle too' (sect. 6). Aristides, however, was not attempting to put himself in the place of a Bronze-Age prince or an archaic poet-though he was attempting as so often to live in the past and to take his audience there with him-, but to demonstrate with maximum cleverness the lack of logic, from his own point of view; in Achilles' behaviour; and in this aim he more or less succeeded. The subtle understanding of furious anger that was demonstrated by Aristides' contemporary Galen was not the sophist's forte, but it was not his interest either. The Embassy Speech to Achilles can serve rather well as an introduction to some of the investigations that are carried forward in this book. In the first place, it shows Aristides in his literary context. The speech displays of course an intimate knowledge of Homer-and no overt interest in anything that had been written since Homer's time about the wrath of Achilles or about anger more generally (between the lines, however, one can see that Aristides, though he avoids anachronism, was familiar with the cliches about moderate anger that were part of the Greek and Roman cultural patrimony). So what was Aristides' relationship to archaic and classical Greek literature? Not simple, for while it is obvious that knowledge of the poetry of that era was a cultural marker, in fact the cultural marker, of an educated Greek, there

I As to how Aristides came to be writing on such a theme, see Kindstrand 1973, 215---216. According to Behr 1968, 95, the 'substance' of this declamation is 'the importance of fame', but that is an eccentric judgement.

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W.V. HARRIS

was emulation involved ('modesty', as Raffaella Cribiore observes later in this volume, 'was not an attribute of Aristides'), and individual taste too. The studies grouped in the first part of the book are concerned above all with the sophist's intimate mental connection with the literary and mythical traditions of the Greeks. What does the pattern of Aristides' citation of the archaic poets mean, and what in particular does it mean that he so generously cites Pindar (Ewen Bowie's culminating question)? How, in flattering the Athenians, is he to deal with the truthloving and unavoidable Thucydides, who was willing to show them at their worst (Estelle Oudot's theme)? Were the great classical myths still important, still viable, in the world of the Second Sophistic, and how could they be adapted for contemporary use (the questions answered here by Suzanne Said)? In this context too we can place Glen Bowersock's discussion of Aristides' detestation of the pantomimes, those solo performers who brought much of the repertoire of the classical theatre before the Antonine public. Another striking feature of the Embassy Speech to Achilles, especially if you come to it fresh from Homer, is its repeated reference to the Trojan War as a conflict between the Greeks and the 'barbarians': 'if you must be permanently angry, I would say that it should be with the barbarians, our natural enemies' (sect. 4) (the latter trope reappears in sect. 26). 2 In the Iliad Odysseus and Phoenix speak of the harm that Achilles has done the Achaeans by his withdrawal, but Homer never of course calls the Trojans barbarians;" Aristides applies the term to them seven times in a few pages and concludes his speech on this note. That will seem banal. But there is more: it will have been a sleepy Greek listener or reader who never for a moment thought that Aristides might be alluding to the Romans in the guise of their Trojan 'ancestors', especially since, as Laurent Pernot points out in detail in his contribution to this book, both Aristides and his public were accustomed to the practice of 'figured speech'. At all events, Aristides' thoughts and feelings about Rome and its empire were more complex than used to be realized when 70 Rome (Or.

2 The 'barbarians' had been the 'natural enemies' of the Greeks, at least for many, since Pi. Rep. V.47oc, if not earlier. 3 The Carians are barbarophonoi in ii.867. This difference between Homer and Aristides has often been noticed: see for instance Boulanger 1923, 274.

INTRODUCTION

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XXVI) was taken at face value. The third part of this volume-the papers by Pernot, Francesca Fontanella and Carlo Franco-accordingly considers the political aspects of his writings. 300 years after the annexation of provincia Asia the Greeks were still not wholly reconciled to their subordinate though privileged role." Plutarch had warned a young man elected to office in a Greek city that for crossing their Roman rulers, 'many' had suffered 'that terrible chastiser, the axe that cuts the neck' (Praecepta rei gerendae 17 = Mor. 813£). Who could be at ease in such a situation? But Greek attitudes gradually changed: every individual had his point of view; but Celsus Polemaeanus represents one stage, Plutarch another, Aristides yet another, Lucian and Cassius Dio still others. There are two other important elements in Aristides' identity (and here I leave behind the Embassy Speech to Achilles), apart of course from his main identity as an orator and a sophist.' These two elements, closely connected with each other, are his religiosity and his status as an invalid." We have mainly concentrated both of these topics in the second part of the book, holding that with Aristides the personal is to some extent prior to the political. We have called this whole collection Aelius Aristides between Greece, Rome, and the Gods in part because the clearest element in Aristides' personality is his religiosity, and an important part of his preferred identity consisted of his devotion to Asclepius. Pernot, in the footsteps of Bowersock, reminds us how Aristides used this identity as a means of squirming out of office-holding, but no reader of the Sacred Tales could doubt that the devotion was real as well as convenient. It suited both Aristides' narcissistic personality'JtExa), presumably a reference either to frr. 172-181 West or to frr. 185-187 West. In the first Tarsian oration, Oration 33, Dio picks out Archilochus as a paradigm of an outspoken critic, the role that he himself is adopting towards the people of Tarsus. He shows knowledge of the secondary tradition about Archilochus' poetic gifts and his death (33.12), comparing and contrasting him with the praisepoet Homer. A little later, at 33.17, he cites the first two lines of four tetrameters, fro 114 West, on the better type of general, O't'Qa't'T]y6£, then paraphrases lines 3 and 4 in a way that suggests he had a text slightly different from that cited by Galen. Finally he invokes Archilochus again near the end of the speech (33.61). 12 [Dio] 37.47 quotes a line of Sappho, fro 147 Voigt, which may indeed be the reference of Aristides Or. 28.51 (see above), but this speech is generally agreed to be by Favorinus, not by Dio. 13 Dio is indeed our only source for the full text of this fragment, which may be a complete poem. 14 For citation of this poem in imperial Greek sources see frr. 196-204 Davies, and for its highlighting on Tabulae Iliacae, Horsfall 1979.

EWENBOWIE

Oration 60, Nessus or Deianeira, opens with a report of criticism of Archilochus for having his Deianeira deliver an almost epic narrative (Qa'ljJw60uouv) of her wooing by Achelous at the very point at which she is the victim of sexual assault by Nessus (fr. 286 West). Dio seems to know this poem and discussions of it, and his remarks are a valuable clue to its identification as one of Archilochus' now well-documented narrative elegies. 15 Dio Oration 74, On Mistrust, also seems to know fro 173 West, though I suspect that his relation of it to Archilochus' prospective marriage to a member of Lycambes' family arises from his familiarity with the secondary tradition and not from a careful reading of the poem.

Maximus

of Tyre

Maximus has an especially large number of citations of Anacreon and Sappho, concentrated in and prompted by his four Dialexeis on Eros (18-21 Trapp). Some 15 fragments of Sappho are cited in one paragraph of Dialexis 18, viz. 18.9, and these are Maximus' only citations of Sappho. The same paragraph has four of Maximus' citations of Anacreon. Anacreon is also mentioned in Maximus' list at Dialexis 37.5 of poets whose poetry either calmed or excited their audiencesPindar, Tyrtaeus, Telesilla, Alcaeus and Anacreon. He has no citation of Alcaeus, and neither citation nor even mention of Aleman and Ibycus, or of the elegists Callinus, Mimnermus and Theognis. Solon is mentioned several times, but not for his poetry. The one citation of Stesichorus, opening Dialexis 21.1, OUX E01;' E't1)!!O£ Myo£, ascribed by Maximus to the poet of Himera, 6 'I!!EQuto£ 'toLTJ'tT]£, in words that assign it to his Palinode, may well be taken from Plato Phaedrus 243a. The Palinode is, of course, the only poem of Stesichorus of which Aristides shows knowledge. Simonides also gets only one citation, the phrase XUAE:1tOV Eo{}A6v E!!!!EVaL, i.e. fro 542.13 Page, at Dialexis 30.1, where Maximus ascribes it to an old song, XaLa :n:UAUWV ~o!!u: this too may well come from Plato, in this case from Protagoras 339c. There is no mention of Bacchylides, but as with Aristides, albeit to a much lesser extent, there is some use of Pindar: perhaps the reference to Etna in Pythian 1.20 at Dialexis 5.4 and Dialexis 41.1; perhaps Pythian 3.1ff. for Chiron at

15

See Bowie

2001.

ARISTIDES AND EARLY GREEK LYRIC, ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC POETRY

IS

Dialexis 28.1. But there is only one verbatim citation, that of fro 213 Snell-Maehler, as the introductory text of Dialexis 12, the subject of which is whether it is right to commit injustice against somebody who has done so to onesel£ In this case Maximus seems very likely to have used a text of Pindar, since the earlier quotation which may have drawn the passage to his attention, by Plato in Republic 36Sb, constitutes only two of the four lines cited by Maximus. Like any author, of course, Maximus can come up with surprises: in his case the surprise is the citation of the first two lines of Ariphron's Paean to Hygieia, PMG fro 813 Page, described as an uQXaLov {lolla and not attributed nominatim to Ariphron."

Philostratus

if Athens' Apollonius

In his Apollonius Philostratus' chief poetic intertext is Homer, and there are also several citations of or allusions to Attic tragedy, especially to Euripides. Again lyric and elegiac poetry is rare. Archilochus figures twice: a reference to his 'shield' elegy, fro S West, at 2.7.2, and to his elegy addressed to Pericles on the occasion of the death of friends at sea, fro 13 West, at 7.26.2: in both cases the poet is named. Sappho's poetry is mentioned at 1.30, but nothing is quoted, nor is there any verbatim allusion. Pindar is twice cited: at 7.12.4, Pythian 1.10-13 is paraphrased (the lyre charms Ares), and at 6.26.2 Philo stratus refers to a poem mentioning a i'laLIlOlv that watches over the source of the Nile (fr. 282 Snell-Maehler), Again, as with Archilochus, Pindar is named each time. The same locus, 6.26.2, has the only certain mention of Stesichorus, predictably of his Palinode, referred to by precisely this title: Stesichorus himself is called simply uV~Q 'IIlEQaLo£.17 The final lyric intertext of the Apollonius, as in the case of Maximus, is a surprise: at 3.17.2, Sophocles' Paean to Asclepius (PMG fro 737a Page)."

16 For the resurrection of Ariphron's Paean in the second century A.D. see Bowie 2006, 85--86. 17 4.II.S may also derive from the Palinode. 18 For a fuller discussion of the citations in Philostratus' Apollonius see Bowie forthcoming (a); for discussion of Sophocles' Paean in the second century A.D. see Bowie 2006, 84-85'

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EWENBOWIE

Aristides After these comparisons the thinness of the harvest from Aristides looks less surprising. Moreover it seems that one category of his compositions, I-tEAE'taL, is one in which citation of the poets was unusual. Aristides of course makes extensive use of the Iliad for his Embassy to Achilles (Oration 16), but understandably he does not cite any of Book g-Book 9 had not been composed at the dramatic date of Oration 16! Or. 8.18 and Or. 11.65 refer to Tyrtaeus as a poet sent by Athens to help Sparta, but none of his poetry is quoted. Appeals to Athenians never cite Solon; those to Thebes never cite Pindar. I take this to be a feature of the genre, and think that this view is supported by the absence of poetic quotation in Polemo's two surviving I-tEAE't'aL. Where, then, does Aristides quote early poetry, and what is the basis of his choices? The speeches in which quotation abounds are Orations 2, 3, 28 and 45. 19 Oration 28 is a special case to which I shall return. Orations 2 and 3 are attacking Plato and philosophers in defense of rhetoric, and it might be suggested that Aristides' habit of citation is something he has caught from philosophical writing. Oration 45, to Sarapis, may be Aristides' earliest extant work, perhaps from April 142 A.D. 20 Here too a special explanation can be offered. In this Oration Aristides is setting out his case that prose has as strong a claim as poetry to be used for hymns to the gods: as has been well argued by Vassilaki, Aristides tackles this task first by citing poetry, and prominently Pindar's poetry, in order to criticize it, and then moves on to use allusion to the poets to achieve mimesis of poetry" In each case, however, we see the phenomenon that stands out in Aristides' citation of early poetry; his preference for citing Pindar. Often Pindar is the only early poet to be cited. Only twice are there speeches where another poet is cited and Pindar is not: in Or. 18.4, the monody for Smyrna, Aristides names Sappho and seems to paraphrase her (see

19 Perhaps Oration 20 should be added, but the presence of three Pindaric citations is hardly enough. 20 For the date of Oration 45 see Behr 1981,419. Behr's notes there (op. cit., 420-422), show how much citation from Homer is also to be found in this speech (and, at Or. 45.18, an allusion to Ariphron PMC fro 813 Page; cf above on Maximus of Tyre). Our other candidate for Aristides' earliest surviving work is The Rlwdian Oration 25, for whose Aristidean authorship see]ones 1990. For an analysis of Aristides' procedures in Oration 45 see Russell 1990, 201-209; Pernot 1993a, II, 642-645; Vassilaki 2005. 21 Vassilaki 2005, unfortunately unaware of Russell 1990.

ARISTIDES AND EARLY GREEK LYRIC, ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC POETRY

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above); the speech's only other poetic allusion is to Odyssey 6.231, which follows closely in Or. 18.4 and is not signalled. In the very short Oration to Heracles, at 40.6, Aristides' phrase 'tOUi; vouou; 'tOLi; O:ltAOLi; oUY'KEQavvui; mqy allude to the expression in Solon fro 36.15 West, 0J-t0ii ~LTjV re 'Kat bL'KTjV ;uvaQJ-tooai;, a line that it is clear from Or. 28.138 that he knew; but that there is an allusion here is far from certain. The big question, then, is 'Why Pindar?' It is a question to which there can be no certain answer." The citations attest Aristides' good knowledge and admiration not only for the epinicia but for several works of Pindar in other genres too. And within the epinicia he shows no knowledge of the Nemeans. To me the most persuasive explanation is that Aristides responded to Pindar's praise of the importance of outstanding natural capacities, which Aristides was convinced that he himself had, and of the importance of sustained effort in realizing these capacities, something Aristides was also more than ready to apply. Such praise could also be found in Bacchylides and, doubtless, already in epinicia of Simonides that we have lost: but no ancient critic questioned Pindar's poetic superiority. Dio in his second Kingship Oration picked out his AaJ-t:ltQo'tTj'ta 'tiii; cpuOEWi; (2.33), and his supremacy was affirmed unhesitatingly by Longinus' On the Sublime: 'tL M; EV JlEAEm JlUMOV av Elvm BUXXUAihT]~ EAOLO Tl mV()uQo~, XUL EV 'tQUyq>()L~ ~IOlV 0 Xtoc Tl vi] dLa ~o(POXAfj~; EJtEL()i] ol JlEV (i()LCX:7t'tOl'tOL xaL EV 't

α προορAν ρχον φσει κα0 δεσπζον φσει, τ8 δ4 δυνKμενον [τατα] τF. σ,ματι πονεν ρχμενον κα0 φσει δολον· δι8 δεσπτMη κα0 δολFω τα%τ8 συμφ ρει; 1254a: κα0 ε%&?ς κ γενετ7ς *νια δι στηκε τ μ4ν π0 τ8 ρχεσ&αι τ δ’ π0 τ8 ρχειν; 1255a: @τι μ4ν το!νυν εOσ0 φσει τιν4ς οJ μ4ν λε&εροι οJ δ4 δολοι. 17 18

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nature dictates that power should be exercised by the best people, in this case the Romans, justly and in defence of the interests of the weaker: ‘An non cernimus optimo cuique dominatum ab ipsa natura cum summa utilitate infirmorum datum?’ (Cic. De rep. 3.37). Later on, Dionysius of Halicarnassus was to exhort his readers not to grieve over the fact that they had to submit to the power of Rome, on the grounds that this had come into being in a just and proper way and was like a natural law that time cannot destroy. The law is that those who are superior will always rule over those who are inferior: μτε χ&εσ&αι τM7 XποτKξει κατ τ8 εOκ8ς γενομ νMη (φσεως γ ρ δ" νμος :πασι κοινς, ]ν ο%δε0ς καταλσει χρνος, ρχειν ε0 τ.ν Tττνων το?ς κρε!ττονας) (Dion. Hal. Ant.Rom. 1.5.2). Modern scholars, while almost unanimously recognizing the Aristotelian origin of this theory, divide into those who affirm and those who deny the mediation of Panaetius and/or Posidonius in adapting it to the Roman Empire.20 Since Augustan times this formulation had become ‘canonical’,21 so it is difficult to identify the source from which it reached To Rome. But when Aristides in section 91 writes κατ φσιν, it is possible to recognize a more specific reference to the theory of a law of nature (a reference that is explicit earlier, in section 20), that is to say to a theory that found its most complete ancient expression in Stoicism: we find this theory mentioned in two fragments of Posidonius22 from which I think that it is reasonable to deduce that he used exactly this kind of argument to justify Roman imperialism.23 The possible echo of Panaetius traceable in sect. 58 and those of Posidonius in sects. 68 and 91 could therefore allow us to identify a Middle Stoic influence on Aristides which probably came to him through Dionysius.24 We should remember in any case that the arguments of Aristides in sects. 58 and 91 and of Dion. Hal. 1.5.2 had clear-cut precedents in Cicero, who certainly knew and made use of the works of both Panaetius and Posidonius.25 20 In favour: Capelle 1932, 98–104, Walbank 1965, 13–15, Garbarino 1973, I, 37–43, Pohlenz 1948–1949, I, 206, Gabba 1990, 211, Gabba 1996, 172. Against: Strasburger 1965, 44–45 and n. 50, Gruen 1984, I, 351–352, Kidd 1988, 297, Ferrary 1988, 363–381. 21 Gabba 1996, 172. 22 Poseidonios F 147 and F 448 Theiler, with the latter’s comm. (vol. II, p. 385). 23 Capelle 1932, 98–101, Walbank 1965, 14–15, Gabba 1996, 172. 24 Cf. Fontanella 2007, 118 and 143–146. 25 This idea of Rome’s vocation to rule other peoples persists in Cicero’s last works. See Phil. 6.19: ‘Populum Romanum servire fas non est, quem di immortales omnibus gentibus imperare voluerunt … Aliae nationes servitutem pati possunt, populi Romani est propria libertas’.

polybius’ doubts about the roman empire

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The passage in which Aristides interprets Roman constitutional arrangements as a ‘mixed constitution’26 shows once again how he reworked a tradition that went back to classical Greece but had subsequently been elaborated and transformed in both the Hellenistic and Roman worlds. However your political system is not like any other but is a mixture of all of them (κρAσις Yπασ.ν τ.ν πολιτει.ν), without the disadvantages of any of them; hence it is precisely this system of government that has turned out to be successful. If you consider the power of the people and how easily they obtain everything they desire and ask for, you will think that it is a democracy, apart from the single fact that it avoids the mistakes that the people make. If you look at the Senate deliberating and exercising power, you will conclude that it is a perfect aristocracy. But when you look at the overseer and chairman of all this, thanks to whom the people are able to obtain what they desire and the few are able to govern and wield power, you will see the man who possesses the most perfect monarchy, free from the evils of tyranny and above the prestige of a mere king (sect. 90).

The model of the ‘mixed constitution’ was present in the Greek political debate from the fourth century BC, as we can see from both Plato and Aristotle.27 It was taken up by Peripatetic and Stoic thought in the third century out of ‘a desire to define the relationship between the βασιλες, the ruling class of the cities and the mass of the people within the new Hellenistic πλις’.28 The first person to have applied this schema to Rome (and therefore not just to any πλις but to an imperial power) had been Polybius, who had asked himself the question ‘how and with what form of government (π.ς κα0 τ!νι γ νει πολιτε!ας) the Romans had in only fifty-three years conquered and subjugated almost the whole inhabited world’ (6.2.3; cf. 1.1 and 64). Polybius had identified

26

It is to be observed that in the Panathenaikos too (1.383–388) Aristides applies the scheme of the mixed constitution, though in a diachronic fashion, to the transition at Athens from monarchy to aristocracy and finally to democracy, remarking at the same time how in each of these phases the three elements were to a certain extent combined. In fact the description of a city’s political system and in particular praise for its mixed constitution were considered obligatory themes in panegyrics on cities (Menander Rhetor 1.3, sects. 359–360 Russell and Wilson; Pernot 1993a, I, 211), though that does not mean that in Aristides’ case the theme lacked ideological content (either in To Rome or in the Panathenaikos). 27 Plato (Laws 712d) interprets the Spartan political system in this fashion, while Aristotle (Pol. 1273b) applies it to Solonian Athens. 28 Carsana 1990, 15.

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the monarchic element in the Roman system in the consuls, the aristocratic element in the Senate and the democratic element in the popular assemblies: a system of reciprocal checks between these three elements was able to maintain them in equilibrium in such a way as to make this form of government stable and not liable to decay like ‘pure’ systems of government (cf. Polyb. 6.11–18). Undoubtedly Aristides’ identification of the aristocratic element with the Senate looks like a rhetorical anachronism that owes much to the classical model of the mixed constitution and to Polybius,29 and the reference to the text of Polybius is undeniable (see especially 6.11.12).30 But let us remember that Cicero too, in De republica (1.69, 2.57), had made a ‘mixed and moderate constitution’ the basis of his ideal state—though it was a constitution based on the interaction of three principles (potestas, auctoritas, libertas) present in a single united ruling class, and not, as in Polybius, on the equilibrium of three juxtaposed powers (consuls, Senate and people).31 Aristides, in speaking of a κρAσις Yπασ.ν τ.ν πολιτει.ν, seems almost closer to a Ciceronian view (though his reference to Polybius is beyond doubt), not least because To Rome makes it obvious that the Polybian principle of reciprocal control and equilibrium ‘has been replaced by a hierarchical system’,32 which is a unified system because it is headed by the emperor, the person ‘thanks to whom the people are able to obtain what they desire and the few are able to govern and wield power’. The passages of To Rome examined so far show that Aristides, though he never cites Polybius explicitly, knew and used the Greek historian’s work; but also that he had made his own the essential arguments that had been worked up in both the Latin and Greek worlds in defence of the Roman Empire. The appropriation of these themes in To Rome can be understood as a response to the doubts raised by Polybius in

29

But at the end of the passage Aristides mentions not the Senate but the ‘few’: the use of the term Pλ!γοι, though it may rather oddly evoke one of the ‘degenerate’ regime forms, oligarchy, nonetheless makes it possible to interpret the aristocratic element in the Aristidean mixed constitution in a wider sense, by identifying it with the governing class of the whole empire, already defined in sect. 59 of To Rome as the χαρι στερν τε κα0 γενναιτερον κα0 δυνατ,τερον element. 30 ‘La citazione ‘sintattica’ del testo […] sta forse ad indicare […] una continuità di rapporti tra Roma e gli esponenti delle classi dirigenti del mondo greco; un filo che lega Polibio, storico greco vissuto all’epoca degli Scipioni, ad Elio Aristide, originario della Misia nell’età degli Antonini’: Carsana 1990, 74–75. 31 Cf. Ferrary 1984. 32 Carsana 1990, 78.

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the so-called second introduction to his history; but Aristides’ answer to Polybius seems even more explicit in the sections of To Rome that immediately follow the comparison with the hegemonies of the Greek city-states (sects. 58–70). Here, first of all, he identifies in the diffusion of Roman citizenship the characteristic ‘that more than any other deserves to be noticed and admired, because there is nothing like it in the world’ (sect. 59). Being great, you have created a great city, but you have not given yourself airs about this and you have made it wonderful not by excluding people from it, but rather you have sought out a population worthy of it. You have made ‘Roman’ the name not of a single city but of a whole nation, and not just of a single nation but of a nation that is a match for all the others together. For you no longer divide the nations into Greeks and barbarians, and indeed you have demonstrated the absurdity of that distinction—for your city by itself is more populous than the whole tribe of the Greeks. You have instead divided humankind into Romans and non-Romans, so far have you extended the name of the capital city (sect. 63).

Hence No envy (φ&ονς) enters into your empire: you in fact were the first people to rise above jealousy, having made all things generally available and having conceded to all who are capable of it the chance of taking their turn in command as well as being commanded. Not even those who are excluded from positions of power nurture resentment (μσος). Given that there is a single system of government shared by all, as if this were a single city-state, it is natural that those who hold office treat people not as foreigners but as fellow-citizens, and under your government even the mass of the population feels safe from those who hold power among them… For your rage and vengeance (Pργ τε κα0 τιμωρ!α) immediately catch up with them if they dare to upset the established order. Thus it is natural that the present state of affairs pleases and suits (κα0 ρ σκει κα0 συμφ ρει) both the poor and the rich and no other way of life any longer exists. There has emerged a single harmonious system of government (μ!α Yρμον!α πολιτε!ας) that includes all … (sects. 65–66).

These sections obviously balance sections 44–46, where Aristides emphasizes the hatred that the various hegemonic Greek city-states aroused against themselves.33 The terms employed by Aristides to describe disaffection towards the rulers (φ&ονς and μσος) are used by

33 One recalls that not being capable of extending their citizenship to other peoples is given as the reason for the ruin of the Greeks by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (2.17.2)

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Polybius (6.7.8) to refer to the disaffection that arises when the ruling power ceases to pay attention to the interests of its subjects and thinks only of its own profits, which leads to the degeneration of monarchy into tyranny, which in turn leads to attempts to overthrow it: ‘thus they provoked envy (φ&ονς) and hostility, then hatred (μσος) and violent anger (Pργ), until monarchy gave way to tyranny’. There is no such disaffection towards the Romans, according to Aristides. While rage, Pργ, refers in Polybius to the rage of the subjects towards tendentially tyrannical power, and in Aristides too targets those who abuse their power, it is not in the latter writer expressed by the subjects but by the central Roman power itself, which directs it towards those who ‘dare to overturn the established order’.34 So great is the convenience of the Roman Empire for the subject peoples that they all stay close to you, and no more think of parting from you than ship-passengers think of parting from their helmsman. Just as bats in caves cling to each other and to the rock, so all of them are attached to you and fearfully take care that no one falls down from the clinging mass: they are more likely to fear being abandoned by you than to think of abandoning you themselves (sect. 68).

Finally, thanks to the Romans, peace reigns throughout the oikoumene: Peoples no longer struggle for empire and supremacy (ρχ7ς τε κα0 πρωτε!ων), because of which all previous wars have been engaged. Some people, like quietly running water, live voluntarily in peace, pleased to have put an end to troubles and misadventures, and aware of the fact that they had fought to no purpose against shadows. Others do not even know that once they had an empire—they have forgotten the fact: just as

and also by Claudius (at least in the account that Tacitus provides of his famous speech on the extension of the ius honorum to the notables of Gallia Comata: Ann. 11.24.4). 34 The end of sect. 66 of To Rome (κα0 γ γονε μ!α Yρμον!α πολιτε!ας :παντας συγκεκλεικυα) is verbally reminiscent of Polyb. 6.18.1, where, à propos of the mutual relationships that exist between the various elements in the Roman political system (consuls, Senate, people), the historian speaks of Yρμον!α: τοιατης δ’ οNσης τ7ς \κKστου τ.ν μερ.ν δυνKμεως εOς τ8 κα0 βλKπτειν κα0 συνεργεν λλλοις, πρ8ς πKσας συμβα!νει τ ς περιστKσεις δεντως *χειν τ"ν Yρμογ"ν α%τ.ν, Sστε μ" οLν τ’ εBναι τατης εXρεν με!νω πολιτε!ας σστασιν: cf. Volpe 2001, 308. A final ‘Polybian citation’ is perhaps detectable in sect. 103 of To Rome: ‘once you arrived… laws appeared, and people began to put trust in the altars of the gods’ (&ε.ν βωμο0 π!στιν *λαβον)’. Here Aristides may have had in mind Polyb. 6.56, where δεισιδαιμον!α towards the gods and the π!στις afforded to oaths are recognized as strong points in Roman society: so Oliver 1953, 948, and R. Klein in his edition, 118 n. 138.

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in Er the Pamphylian’s myth, or at least Plato’s, the city-states that were already on their own funerary pyre as a result of their mutual rivalries and struggles came back to life in a moment as soon as they all accepted your hegemony. They cannot say how they reached this state, and they can do nothing but marvel at it. They feel like a man who was dreaming a moment ago and suddenly wakes up to find himself immersed in a new reality (sect. 69).

Just this eulogy of peace, contrasted with the lives lived by the various peoples before the advent of Rome, allows us to understand better another aspect of Aristides’ response to Polybius’ problem about the Roman Empire. It is obvious that when he refers to those peoples that had fought ‘for empire and supremacy’ Aristides intends to refer in the first place to the ones whose histories he has sketched in the opening sections of his encomium, that is the Persians, Macedonians and Greeks.35 But the Romans too were well aware (as can be seen in the pages of Cicero) that they too, from at least the time of the Second Punic War, had fought wars de imperio.36 How the Romans of that time saw their wars is a matter of some controversy. Cicero later on took a moralistic stand, asserting (probably in the footsteps of Panaetius)37 that ‘wars are only to be undertaken in order to assure peace without injustice’ (De off. 1.35). Cicero seems not to have been able to make up his own mind about what constituted iustae causae for war.38 In To Rome, however, all this problematic is absent: what matters is the present, a world hegemony in which, theoretically at least, peace reigns (sects. 69–71). How this situation had been arrived at, one cannot (as Aristides remarks) say, or one would prefer not to, and hence the wars de imperio only seem to concern the past of other peoples and not that of the Romans. To everyone, and above all to the Greeks, the Romans brought peace.39 Demosthenes too (On the Crown 18.66) describes Athens as ε0 περ0 πρωτε!ων κα0 τιμ7ς κα0 δξης γωνιζομ νην, and sees Philip as initiating war Xπ4ρ ρχ7ς κα0 δυναστε!ας. 35

See for instance Cic. De off. 1.38, with Brunt 1978, 159–191. Cf. Gabba 1990, 194. 38 Cf. Harris 1979, 165–175, Brunt 1978, 177, Ferrary 1988, 410–415. 39 The idea that the Romans have brought peace to peoples who have shown themselves to be incapable of attaining and preserving it by themselves is already to be found in the letter of Cicero to his brother in which he observes, with regard to the province Asia, that ‘nullam ab se neque belli externi neque domesticarum discordiarum calamitatem afuturam fuisse, si hoc imperio non teneretur’ (Ad Q. fr. 1.1.34). Tacitus likewise makes Petilius Cerialis say in his speech to the Treviri and the Lingones that 36 37

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Aristides, having sketched in the preceding sections the unsuccessful history of the Greek hegemonies, thus demonstrates how Rome’s rise to power was in a sense a fulfillment of the objectives that the Greeks themselves had pursued but had not succeeded in achieving. ‘It fell to the political dominion of the Romans to bring about that consortium of cities united by a shared consensus to master city—the only possible way of unifying the Greek world’.40 Aristides’ attention is centred on a present in which Greece enjoys the fruits of Roman rule and on a past that could be said to have fully justified that rule. There is complete silence on the other hand about what stood chronologically between the two periods in question—Rome’s conquest of the Greek world, during which Rome combined acts such as the proclamation of the freedom of Greece by Flamininus in 196 with acts of brutal imperialism such as the destruction of Corinth in 146. The silence in which Aristides covered the history of the Hellenistic period is of course to be connected with the archaizing and classicizing elements in the style, citations and often in the subject matter of the authors of the Second Sophistic.41 But another consideration will have played an even bigger role—that it was better not to bring up now a period that was one of the most problematic, from an ‘ethical’ point of view, in the history of Rome. Polybius reserved judgement on that period, at least in public, but extended his history to the last of the Macedonian Wars and to the Achaean War, that is to say to the time when ‘the common misfortune of all Greece had its beginning and its end’ (3.5.6). Aristides prefers not to speak about these events. The reader may wonder whether this silence about Rome’s methods of conquests indicates not so much approval of Roman hegemony however it was achieved but rather, as Pernot argues elsewhere in this volume, tacit resignation in the face of a power that it seemed no longer possible to question. ‘terram vestram ceterorumque Gallorum ingressi sunt duces imperatoresque Romani nulla cupidine, sed maioribus vestris invocantibus quos discordiae usque ad exitium fatigabant’ (Hist. 4.74.2). 40 Desideri 2002, 149. 41 Cf. Bowie 1970. Though this tendency definitely has the effect of reminding the hearer of the glorious literary-historical past of Hellas, the interpretation of this allusion as an intentional challenge to Roman rule should not be generalized. In fact, ‘by recreating the situations of the past the contrast between the immense prosperity and the distressing dependence of the contemporary Greek world was dulled’ (Bowie 1970, 41), and ‘since Greek identity could not be grounded in the real political world, it had to assert itself in the cultural domain and so as loudly as possible’ (Swain 1996, 89).

chapter eleven AELIUS ARISTIDES AND RHODES: CONCORD AND CONSOLATION

Carlo Franco

Introduction The prosperous civic life of the Greek East under Roman rule may be seen as the most complete development of Greek civilization in antiquity. In this context the so-called Second Sophistic played a crucial role, and its cultural, social and political dimensions continue to attract the attention of contemporary scholars.1 Beyond its literary interest, the rich and brilliant virtuoso prose of the Greek sophists, together with the evidence of coins, inscriptions, and archaeology, provides historians with invaluable material for the study of civic life. The connections between higher education and social power, rhetoric and politics, central and local power, rulers and subjects, are becoming more and more evident. On the surface, the subjects approached by the orators were escapist (although perhaps no more escapist than a conference of classical scholars today), but on many occasions the sophists’ speeches were closely connected to the time and place of their delivery, thereby opening the door to historical analysis. In this context, Aelius Aristides rightly ranks among the most interesting and intriguing personalities: apart from the fascinating Sacred Tales and the solemn Encomium To Rome, other writings of his appear worthy of careful study. Having examined the Smyrnean Orations elsewhere, I will focus in this paper on two speeches about the ancient city of Rhodes that are included in the Aristidean corpus.2 They are good case studies for examining the impact of natural disasters on the Greek

Anderson 1989; id. 1993; Whitmarsh 2005. These texts ‘can only be understood when read in conjunction with other speeches in praise of cities’ (Bowersock 1969, 16). 1 2

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cities in the Roman Empire, as well as the social tensions that these disasters revealed. The size and beauty of those poleis were sometimes darkened and challenged by serious crises. But it was precisely in such emergencies that the educated discourse of the orators played a pivotal role. Leaving aside the momentous problem of the sophists’ political efficacy, we may claim that their speeches met above all the emotional needs of the cities: lamenting the disaster and preaching moral values, the orators tried to restore mutual confidence and concord, thereby preserving the deepest values of ancient civic life.3

The Rhodiakos In modern critical editions of Aristides’ works, the sequence of the two Rhodian speeches reverses their chronology: Oration 24, To the Rhodians on Concord, was apparently delivered more or less five years after Oration 25, the Rhodiakos. In order to examine those texts from a historical point-of-view, it is expedient to observe their proper chronological order by considering the Rhodiakos first.4 Oration 25 was delivered in Rhodes some time after a tremendous earthquake, which razed the city in 142 AD. It is at once a commemoration of the ruined city, a memorial of the catastrophe, and an exhortation to the survivors.5 After an exordium, which laments the total loss of Rhodes’ former greatness and beauty (Or. 25.1–10), there is a heartfelt exhortation to endure the disaster (11–16). The earthquake and its effects are vividly described in the central section of the speech (17–33), which goes on to reassess the importance of Rhodes and the duty of endurance (34–49). The oration then turns to a consolation, with an empathetic narration of the most ancient traditions of Rhodes and a forecast of the reconstruction (50–56). After a series of historical examples (57–68), it ends with the appropriate peroration (69). In his 1898 edition of Aristides’ works, Bruno Keil asserted, primarily on stylistic grounds, that the speech was not written by Aristides.

Leopold 1986, 818. The speech has been often disregarded because of its similarity with Oration 23: according to Reardon, ‘Il n’y a aucunement lieu d’analyser le discours Aux Rhodiens’ (1971, 134). The Rhodiakos is not considered at all, following Boulanger 1923, 126 n. 14. 5 Chronology: Behr 1981, 371; Guidoboni 1994, 235–236. Local context: Papachristodoulou 1994, 143 f. 3 4

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Keil’s judgment, accepted until recently,6 has heavily conditioned the critical evaluation of the text: the speech has generally been considered a spurious and tasteless piece, deprived of literary, not to say historical, value.7 It may be useful to remember that, before Keil, important scholars like Dindorf and Schmid judged the Rhodiakos perfectly appropriate to the style of Aristides.8 Recent studies have reconsidered the question and shown that Keil’s condemnation was too hasty and probably wrong. The bulk of the evidence adduced against an attribution of the text to Aristides was discussed and rejected by Jones.9 Upon careful scrutiny, no element of content and language was seen to conflict explicitly with the authorship of Aristides.10 Nor do small factual discrepancies with other Aristidean works support the attribution to a different author.11 Consistency was not the mark of the genre. It was the special occasion, the kairos, that dictated the choice of material to the orator, even in historical narratives: ad tempus orator retractat sententiam, as was wisely observed.12 If we were to adopt consistency as a criterion

Anderson 2007, 341–342. Keil 1898, 72, 91. As unauthentic, the Rhodiakos receives only a short mention in Boulanger (1923, 374 n. 1). General introduction: Behr 1981, 371 (with analysis of the structure); Cortés Copete 1997, 175–178. For a different hypothesis, namely that the extant Rhodiakos is spurious and that the original Rhodian speech was delivered in Egypt and subsequently lost, see Behr 1968, 16 and n. 48. 8 Aristides’ style was perfectly consistent with the Atticist mode. According to the careful analysis in Schmid 1889, vol. II, the Rhodiakos shows no remarkable difference from the other texts of the Aristidean corpus (Jones 1990). Norden (1909, 420–421) found the Smyrnean Monody and the Eleusinian speech divergent from the ‘normal’ Aristidean style. 9 Jones 1990. The highly mannered use of topoi is studied by Pernot 1993a, II, index s.v.; Cortés 1995; Cortés Copete 1995, 29 ff. 10 Much was made of the allocution to the daimones (Or. 25.33). This seems allowed by Men. Rhet 2.435.9–11: see Puiggali 1985, quoting in a note not only Or. 25.33, but also Or. 37.25, Or. 42, and Or. 46.32. 11 According to the author of the Rhodiakos, the members of the democratic group that recaptured Athens in 403 BC were seventy in number (Or. 25.64, as in Plut. Glor. Ath. 345D; see Xen. Hell. 2.4.2, Diod. 14.32), whereas Aristides (Or. 1.254) says that they were ‘little more than fifty’ (sixty, according to Paus. 1.29.3). The contradiction is of slight import and should not be used as a proof against the Aristidean authorship of the Rhodiakos. A rhetor was not bound to consistency in the evocation of ancient deeds. On the treatment of the events of 404/3 BC by the authors of the Second Sophistic: Oudot 2003. 12 In the Smyrnean Orations Aristides gives three different accounts of the origins of that city, choosing between several traditions according to the circumstances and the different aims of his speeches: Franco 2005, 425 ff. 6 7

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for judging a speech’s authenticity, the study of these texts would face a mountain of contradictions.13 The strongest argument against the authenticity of Oration 25 is based on a debatable argumentum e silentio: in the speech To the Rhodians, On Concord, Aristides does not refer to any prior declamation given on the island, despite the fact that he refers to his actions on behalf of the city, as well as to some prior visit paid to Rhodes (Or. 24.3, 53, 56). Moreover, he says that he is addressing the Rhodians tên prôtên. The meaning of these words has been much discussed: should we understand ‘for the first time’, as the more common usage suggests, or ‘for the present’? Whichever interpretation is chosen, the expression seems compatible with the attribution of the Rhodiakos to Aristides. But if this is the case, why did he fail to quote his previous speech about the earthquake? Here, too, various answers, which have underlined the difference between oral performance and written texts and between public and private declamations, have been given. There may be a more compelling explanation. When he was in Egypt, Aristides met the Rhodian ambassadors who were seeking help after the disaster (Or. 24.3). Five years later, in the same way, Rhodian delegates again came to meet him, presumably in Pergamum this time, and requested help for their city in the name of prior relations: the meeting in Egypt, but not the form of the aid given, is duly recalled. The oration On Concord is remarkably reticent about many themes, so the silence about Aristides’ previous involvement with Rhodes may be not so relevant and should be considered in a wider context. The speech is fully oriented towards the present situation of Rhodes; the earthquake is briefly alluded to only at the beginning and at the end of the text, as though it had been forgotten and completely obliterated by the rapid renaissance of the city. I will discuss at greater length later what the real motive for these choices may have been. The same attitude appears in the Aristides’ Panegyricus to Cyzicus, where the very reason for the reconstruction of the temple, viz. an earthquake, receives no mention at all. This attitude may explain the omission in the Concord oration: Rhodes faced a new crisis, that is, stasis, and needed encouragement. So it might have seemed inappropriate to recall the earlier disaster. 13 In Or. 33.29, for example, Aristides criticizes the ‘cursed’ sophists because they ‘persuade you that even Homer’s greatest quality was that he was the son of the Meles’, which is precisely one of the greatest sources of civic pride prized by Aristides in the Smyrnean Orations (Or. 17.14 ff.; Or. 21.8).

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In addition to relevant similarities to the oration On Concord, which might eventually outnumber the alleged discrepancies, the Rhodiakos shares many themes, like the beauty or sea power of Rhodes, as well as several stylistic echoes, with other works. All of these similarities led a specialist like Keil to express the bizarre hypothesis that Aristides himself imitated the Rhodiakos (allegedly the work of a different author) in his Smyrnean orations. It is high time to abandon such a theory, since neither the analysis of content, nor that of style, provides irrefutable evidence against the authenticity of the Rhodiakos.14 Indeed, the debate on its disputed authorship is showing signs of reaching a generally accepted conclusion. The diction of the Rhodiakos is compatible with Aristidean authorship, and authorship of the Rhodiakos is also consistent with Aristides’ biography. In the description of the earthquake, the author of the speech compares the rumble of the collapsing buildings with the noise produced by the Egyptian cataracts (Or. 25.25): this may be a fresh memory, for, in fact, when he went to Egypt, Aristides saw the cataracts, a customary detour for tourists on the Nile.15 Thus, the Rhodiakos could plausibly have been delivered during the journey back from Alexandria to Asia.16 To sum up, I will assume that the speech was written by Aristides. But in order to avoid bias in the analysis of the text, I will for the time being maintain a neutral designation and speak of ‘the author of the Rhodiakos’. The first theme worth consideration in the text is the description of Rhodes, which obviously refers to the days before its destruction. At the beginning of the speech, the orator recalls the ‘many great harbours’, the ‘many handsome docks’, the triremes and the bronze beaks ‘along with many other glorious spoils of war’, the temples and the statues, the bronzes and the paintings, the Acropolis ‘full of fields and groves’, and above all ‘the circuit of the walls and the height and beauty of the interspersed towers’. Up until the day of the earthquake, he says, the ancient renown of Rhodes had remained largely intact: although the glory of past sea battles was irremediably lost, ‘all the rest of the city was preserved purely pure’.17 All this material follows the familiar 14 Linguistic and philological analysis does not always definitively confirm or reject the debated authorship of ancient texts: see as a case-study the ‘Tacitean fragment’ created and discussed by Syme 1991b. 15 Arist. Or. 36 passim; Philostr. VAp 6.26. 16 Cortés 1995, 207. 17 Or. 25.1–8. All translations of Aristides are from Behr 1981.

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pattern of the laudes urbium and reveals a high level of rhetorical artistry: its function is to prepare us for the subsequent reversal of destiny and the total destruction of all the city’s treasures, statues and monuments. Although largely conditioned by rhetoric, the description is not a mere literary essay. The task of an orator in front of a civic community was to choose relevant aspects of the local reality and to reshape them, creating an idealized image of the city, not a false one.18 Thus it is possible to compare aspects of the speech with the actual city, so far as it is known from literary and archaeological evidence. Let us first consider the naval structures. At the beginning of the Imperial Age, the glory of ancient Rhodian sea power was still considered among the greatest and best-preserved sources of Rhodian pride.19 The time of its thalassocracy, however, was over. After the great battles of the Hellenistic age, the Rhodian navy had been marginalized by the increasing, and eventually prevailing, role of Rome. During the last century of the Republic, the Rhodians were still fighting against the pirates and collaborating with Caesar.20 But after heavy depredations at the time of the siege by Cassius in 43 BC, the size and strength of the Rhodian navy had been reduced to insignificance. Only commercial exchange and the local patrolling of the islands still under Rhodian rule continued.21 So the author’s reference to triremes, ‘some ready for sailing, others in dry dock, as it were in storage, but if one wished to launch and sail any of them, it was possible’ (Or. 25.4), seems an elegant way to describe the present state of the Rhodian navy: the docks and the huge triremes are preserved, but not all of them are actually in use. The author of the Rhodiakos is fully aware of this situation, since he praises this state of affairs as unique to Rhodes among the Greek cities: ‘only when one was with you, did he see precisely, not only hear, what the city was’ (2). Thus, the orator can transform the remains of the sea power into a justification for eulogy: for Rhodes has ‘sensibly

18 This attitude allows us to undertake a historical analysis of these speeches, as in the case of Dio’s speeches for Tarsus or Nicomedia, or Aristides’ for Smyrna: Classen 1980; Bouffartigue 1996. 19 Strabo 14.2.5 reports that the ‘roadsteads had been hidden and forbidden to the people for a long time’, in order to preserve its secrets, as in the Venetian Arsenal: Gabrielsen 1997, 37 ff. 20 Pirates: Flor. 1.41.8; Caes. BC 3.102.7; Cic. Fam. 12.4.3. Alexandria: BAl 1.1, 11.1–3, 13.5, 14.1, 15, 25.3–6, App. Civ. 2.89. 21 But see Cic. Fam. 12.15.2 (Lentulus): Rhodiosque navis complures instructas et paratas in aqua. Rhodes and commercial routes in the Imperial Age: Rougé 1966, 132 f.

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given up its empire’, without losing any of its structures or its name (8) and without diminishing the greatness of its ancestors.22 Archaeological excavations have revealed significant traces of the dockyards beneath later Roman structures;23 it is tempting to suppose that they were abandoned after the earthquake. Surely, no one could possibly have forecast at the time of the speech that the Rhodian navy would recover something of its former glory when in the third century AD the seas became less safe. A decree possibly dating to the beginning of the third century AD honours an Ailios Alexander, who patrolled the area of the Rhodian Chersonese and ‘provided safety and security for sailors, seizing and handing over for punishment the piratical band active at sea’.24 The memories of this great past provided the Rhodians with considerable moral strength. As a witness to the fierce character of the citizens in the face of extremely serious situations, the author of the Rhodiakos quotes an old local saying: Καιρ8ς δ4 νν ε$περ ποτ4, { νδρες =Ρδιοι, σ.σαι μ4ν XμAς α%το?ς κ τ.ν περιεστηκτων, βοη&7σαι δ4 τF. γ νει τ7ς νσου, στ7ναι δ4 πρ8ς τ"ν τχην λαμπρ.ς, ν&υμη& ντας Xμ.ν τ8ν το πολ!του κυβερντου λγον, ]ς *φη χειμαζομ νης α%τF. τ7ς νεcς κα0 καταδσεσ&αι προσδοκ.ν τοτο δ" τ8 &ρυλομενον, λλ’ { Ποτειδ ν, $σ&ι @τι Pρ& ν τ ν ναν καταδσωk (25.13).

Now is the time, O men of Rhodes, to save yourselves from these circumstances, to aid the race of the island, and to stand gloriously against fortune, keeping in mind the words of your fellow citizen, the helmsman, who, when his ship was tempest tossed and he expected that she would sink, made that famous remark: ‘Know well, Poseidon, that I will lose my ship on an even keel’.

Recourse to examples of ‘vulgarized philosophy’ was common enough in sophistic rhetoric, and especially in consolatory texts. The Rhodiakos also reveals a rich display of traditional wisdom, very apt for a popular assembly. Needless to say, the sailor’s phrase, which is widely attested in the classical writers, was particularly fitting for a Rhodian public.25 See also Dio Or. 31.103–104. Cante 1986–1987, 181 n. 10: ‘bacini di carenaggio, capannoni dei neoria, piani di alaggio’. 24 AE 1948, 201 = BullEp 1946–1947, 156; see De Souza 1999, 218–219. The brave man was also limênarchês. 25 Pernot 1993a, II, 603. Other occurrences of the saying were collected first by Haupt 1876, 319. A preliminary list ranks: Teles 62.2 Hense [= Stob. 34.991 Wachsmuth-Hense]; Enn. 508 Skutsch [dum clavum rectum teneam, navemque gubernem = Cic. QF 1.2.13]; Sen. Ep. 85.33 [‘Neptune, numquam hanc navem nisi rectam’]; Ep. 8.4 [aut saltem rectis, 22 23

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As a complement to the memories of past sea power, the author mentions the monuments which had borne witness, at least until the day of the earthquake, to Rhodes’ ancient strength: ‘bronze beaks’ and ‘many other glorious spoils of war’, some ‘taken from the Etruscans’ pirate fleet, some from the campaigns of Alexander, others from wherever each had been brought into the city’ (4). As is typical in the culture of the Second Sophistic, the memory of the past is limited to the Age of Alexander, and the approach is largely generic and selective. Rhodes had fought against the pirates already in the fourth century BC, before the Age of Alexander, and had won power and glory, but the author of the Rhodiakos does not mention this phase of Rhodian history.26 Actually the spoils exposed in Rhodes were not all the result of military operations, nor was the Rhodian attitude towards piracy unambiguous, since Rhodes had taken part, as has been recently argued, in a system of raids in the eastern Mediterranean.27 Other events in the local history enjoyed even greater renown. Of the sieges, for example, the author says, ‘and of old you showed to visitors the engines of war made from the shorn hair of your women, and it was a wonderful thing’ (κα0 πKλαι μ4ν τ κ τ.ν γυναικ.ν τ.ν ποκειραμ νων μηχανματα δε!κνυτε τος πιδημοσι κα0 &αυμαστ8ν _ν, Or. 25.32). Apparently female hair was commonly used for torsion

catapults in the Hellenistic and Roman epochs: Heron asserts that such hair is long, strong, and elastic—particularly suitable for military engines. After the great earthquake of 227 BC, King Seleucus II gave the Rhodians, among many other gifts, a large amount of hair. And a few years later, in 220 BC, the favor was returned by the Rhodians, who allegedly sent several tons of (female?) hair to Sinope as help against the attack by Mithridates.28 In the tradition of war stratagems, the use of female hair during sieges was seen as a sign of dramatic emergency and of a shortage of resources.29 Thus the machine is quoted as a brilliant aut semel ruere]; Prov. 1.4.5; Cons. Marc. 5.5; 6.3 [At ille vel in naufragio laudandus, quem obruit mare clavum tenentem et obnixum]; Quint. 2.17.24; Isid. Orig. 19.2. (both quoting Ennius); Plin. Epist. 9.26.4; Max. Tyr. Decl. 40.5e. 26 Diod. 20. 81.2–3; Strabo 14.2.5. See Gabrielsen 1997, 108 f.; Wiemer 2002, 117 ff. 27 Gabrielsen 1997, 176 n. 134; id. 2001. 28 Heron Belopoiika 30; Plb. 5.89.9; 4.56.3. The chronology is somewhere blurred: Walbank 1957–1979, I, pp. 511–512; 621 ad loc. In general see Marsden 1969, 87 ff. (and 75 n. 7: no evidence for women’s hair in Plb. 4.56.3). 29 Garlan 1974, 220, n. 3. See in general Vitr. 10.11.2: ad ballistas capillo maxime muliebri, vel nervo funes, and anecdotes about different cities, e.g. Strabo 17.3.15; Frontin. 1.7.3; Flor. 1.31.10; 2.15.10 (Carthage); Caes. BC 3.9.3 (Salona); Polyaen. 8.67 (Thasos); SHA

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symbol of heroic endurance that encompasses the whole civic body, from the soldiers to the women, and thus becomes an inspiring image for the Rhodians resisting the present catastrophe. The war engines dated presumably to the siege by Demetrius, more or less four centuries before, but all details are omitted in the speech: the orator uses the anecdote solely as a source of exhortation for the survivors. Some have suspected a play on words involving the shorn women in the past and Rhodes’ present condition, which is like that of a mourning lady.30 The opposition is between the past and the present: before the earthquake the Rhodians took pride in showing the war machines that had preserved their city; now the city itself appears destroyed. Nevertheless, there was chance in the misfortune, since ο% γ ρ πολ μFω ληφ&εσα Xμ.ν T πλις ο$χεται ο%δ’ νδρ.ν χε!ρων φανεσα, ο%δ’ *στησεν π’ α%τ7ς τρπαιον ο%δε0ς, ο%δ’ π8 τ.ν Xμετ ρων να&ημKτων τ παρ’ αXτF. τις Jερ κοσμσει, Sσπερ Xμες τος *ξω&εν λαφροις τ"ν Xμετ ραν α%τ.ν πλιν κατεκοσμσατε (Or. 25.59).

…your city did not perish captured in war, nor was it seen to be conquered by other men, nor did anyone triumph over it, nor will anyone adorn their temples with your offerings, as you have adorned your city with foreign spoils.

Thus, paradoxically, the orator may confidently judge the destruction of the city by earthquakes a reason to praise Rhodes, since the city ‘perished with a record of total invincibility’ (62), a claim that is surely false, but aptly conceals the defeat inflicted by Cassius. After praising the spoils and the memories of the past, the orator turns to Rhodes’ artistic ornamentation: τεμ νη δ4 &ε.ν κα0 Jερ κα0 γKλματα τοσατα μ4ν τ8 πλ7&ος, τηλικατα δ4 τ8 μ γε&ος, τοιατα δ4 τ8 κKλλος, Sστ’ ξια εBναι τ.ν λλων *ργων χαριστρια, κα0 )ς μ" εBναι διακρναι τ! τις α%τ.ν μAλλον &αυμKσειεν (Or.

25.5).31

There could be seen the precincts of the gods, temples and statues, of such number, size and beauty, that they were worthy thank offerings from all the rest of the world, and that it was impossible to decide which of them one would admire more. Maxim. 33.3 (Aquileia); Lact. Div.Inst. 1.20.27; Serv. ad Aen. 1.720; Veget. 4.9 (Rome, Gallic siege). The mention of Rhodes and Massilia in Frontin. 1.7.4 was apparently interpolated. 30 Dindorf 1829, I.809 n. 4, ad loc. Towers as the city’s hair: Eur. Hec. 910 f.; Troad. 784. 31 Apparently no mention of the Deigma: Plb. 5.88.8; Diod. 19.45.4.

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The praise of Rhodes’ artistic treasures was typical. Some celebrated paintings by Protogenes were said to have been spared by Demetrius and were later recorded by Strabo.32 Pliny the Elder, relying on the authority of Mucianus, stated that there were thousands of signa in Rhodes,33 although the famous oration by Dio Chrysostom informs the reader that, in his time, the Rhodians engaged in the dubious practice of recycling old statues for new honorands.34 The practise, albeit common elsewhere, was criticized by Dio.35 The author of the Rhodiakos, to be sure, does not mention this deplorable habit, but states that any one of the monuments that could be seen on the island ‘was a sufficient source of pride for another city’ (5).36 The speech then turns to the city walls, ‘a wonder […] which could not satiate the eye’ (7). This sort of praise also was very common in ancient descriptions of cities.37 According to Strabo, the Rhodian enceinte was among the most noteworthy structures of the island, and Dio Chrystostom assures us that the Rhodians took great care and spent a large amount of money in order to keep their walls wellmaintained (although they were reluctant to pay for new statues!). Pausanias ranked the Rhodian walls among the best fortifications he had seen: since his journeys are dated to the middle of the second century AD, this could mean that he saw them after their reconstruction.38 But an orator was not supposed to give technical or realistic details; rather, his task was to select relevant elements and convert them into perfect

Demetrius: Gell. 15.31.1; Strabo 14.2.5. NH 34.7.36. See also NH 33.12.55; 34.7.34, 63; 35.10, 69, 71, 93 for more information on Rhodian artistic treasures. 34 On the image of Rhodes in Dio Or. 31: Jones 1978, 26 ff. See Plb. 31.4.4 for the dedication of a Colossus to the Roman people in the precinct of Athena (Lindia?). Post-Hellenistic Rhodian statuary has not been the subject of intensive research: see Gualandi 1976, 18. Late Hellenistic casting-houses for large bronzes are studied in Kanzia and Zimmer 1998. Some monuments appear to have been restored after earthquakes: Papachristodoulou 1989, 186 n. 29b (dated to the first century AD for palaeographic reasons). 35 Recycling of statues at Athens: Paus. 1.18.3; Mycenae: Paus. 2.17.3, where criticism of the practice appears implicit in the text. As a sign of economic shortage: Sartre 1991, 138. 36 The same topos appears in Plin. 34.7.41–42 in reference to the Colossus and other large statues: sed ubicumque singuli fuissent, nobilitaturi locum. In the Rhodiakos, mention of the Colossus occurs at Or. 25.53. 37 Franco 2005, 391 ff. 38 Strabo 14.2.5; Dio Or. 31.125,146; Paus. 4.31.5, with Moggi and Osanna 2003, 493 (ad 8.43). 32 33

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forms of the topos. The Rhodiakos describes the towers, which could be seen from a distance when sailing to or from Rhodes and served as a sort of lighthouse.39 Enceintes had no real importance in a world completely pacified by Rome, but the Rhodian walls had a long history. They had played a role in a huge flood at the end of the fourth century BC, and later in the great siege by Demetrius Poliorcetes.40 Following those events, according to historical tradition and to the archaeological evidence, they had been restored after the earthquake in 227 BC (this phase is probably the one alluded to by Philo) and again after the Mithridatic wars.41 But such wars and troubles had no place in the eirenic discourse of the orators. Praise belongs to a peaceful city, where walls are no longer used and buildings fill the areas close to the enceinte (Or. 25.7), a situation exactly contrary to what ancient military engineers recommended for defence in the case of a siege.42 In comparison with other elements of the speech, the description of the city itself is rather hasty. The author takes note of the Acropolis, whose terraces have been identified in modern excavations,43 and the general appearance of the city, marked by the regularity of its buildings: ‘Nothing higher than anything else, but the construction ample and equal, so that it would seem to belong not to a city, but to a single house’ (ο%δ4ν 5τερον \τ ρου Xπερ χον, λλ διαρκ7 κα0 $σην τ"ν κατασκευ"ν ο`σαν, )ς γ νοιτ’ #ν ο% πλεως, λλ μιAς οOκ!ας, 6). The shape of the city was especially praised in antiquity, not only because of its regular grid but also because of its theatre-like structure, which Rhodes, among other cities, shared with Halikarnassos, although the resemblance between the city’s shape and a theatre belonged more to the city’s ideal image than to its real layout.44 In his description of the

39 On the topos see by contrast Arist. Or. 27.17 (after the building of the great temple, only Cyzicus does not need a lighthouse). 40 Flood in 316 BC: Diod. 19.45. On Demetrius’ siege see now Pimouget Pédarros 2003. 41 Diod. 20.100; Philo Byz. Bel. 84 f., 85; App. Mithr. 94; Kontis 1963; Konstantinopoulos 1967; Winter 1992, Philemonos-Tsopotou 1999. See the historical analysis in Pimouget Pédarros 2004. 42 See the prescriptions of Philo Byz. Bel. 80. This was actually attested by the archaeological excavations. 43 Kontis 1952, esp. 551 f.; Konstantinopoulos 1973, esp. 129–134. 44 Theatroeidês: Diod. 19.45.3, 20.83.2; Vitr. 2.8.11; Arist. Or. 25.6. Modern research in Kontis 1952; id. 1953; id. 1954; id. 1958; Wycherley 1976; Papachristodoulou 1994, id. 1996; Caliò and Interdonato 2005, esp. 91 ff. about Rhodes.

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city, the author considers only the elements pertaining to Hellenic culture (like the Rhodian fondness for paideia),45 but he does not record any ‘Roman’ element: this is hardly surprising, when we consider the attitude of intellectuals in the Second Sophistic. Thus, no mention is made of the many statues decreed (or reused) to honour Roman citizens, nor is there any mention of the imperial cult.46 The author is silent, too, about the gladiators, although this may reflect the actual situation: Louis Robert years ago remarked upon the peculiar absence of gladiatorial documents in Rhodes.47 In the Rhodiakos by Dio Chrysostom, the consistent preference for Hellenic practices is strongly contrasted with the excessive acceptance of Roman customs in Athens. Dio quotes a law from Rhodes that ‘forbade the executioner to enter the city’ (31.122).48 The author of the Rhodiakos may refer to the same law when he writes, ‘it was not even in keeping with your religion to pass a death sentence within the walls’. The allusion to the Rhodian law is debatable, however, since the orator is making a rather different point about the perverse impact of the earthquake, which transformed ‘the city which could not be entered by murderers’ into a ‘common grave for the inhabitants’ (Or. 25.28). It is easy to see that any orator appointed to praise Rhodes could walk a well-trodden path, a path amply supplied with literary and historical models; it would be even better if the author, as is the case here, was familiar with the place and the local traditions. The outlines for a eulogy of Rhodes were already established in Hellenistic times, as Polybius’ digression on the great earthquake of Rhodes in 228/7 BC makes clear.49 Relying on local sources, the historian lists in great detail the gifts received by the city from several kings, dynasts and cities after the disaster. He sings the praises of Rhodian freedom, opportunity, and conduct, following the classical scheme described by the rhetorical treatises (thesis, physis, epitêdeumata).50 In Polybius’ epoch, Rhodes was at the peak of its international power: the historian’s statements, or those of his sources, were the basis 45 Oratory and culture: Arist. Or. 25.67 (and Or. 24.6). Rhodian citizens praised for paideia: Blinkenberg 1941, 2.449 and 2.465 D (second century AD). Decay of Rhodian rhetoric in the Imperial Age: Puech 2002, 367–369. 46 Statues of emperors and Romans: Dio Or. 31.107–108, 115. 47 Robert 1940, 248. 48 Dio Or. 31.122, with Swain 2000, 44. 49 Plb. 5.89–90, with Walbank 1957–1979, I, 16–22; Holleaux 1968 [1923]. 50 On Polybius’ sources see now Lenfant 2005.

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for all subsequent praise.51 The tone of Strabo’s Rhodian section is similar to that of Polybius. Here again, contemporary elements and second-hand information are mixed together: =Η δ4 τ.ν =Ροδ!ων πλις κεται μ4ν π0 το \ω&ινο κρωτηρ!ου, λιμ σι δ4 κα0 -δος κα0 τε!χεσι κα0 τM7 λλMη κατασκευM7 τοσοτον διαφ ρει τ.ν λλων Sστ’ ο%κ *χομεν εOπεν \τ ραν λλ’ ο%δ4 πKρισον, μ τ! γε κρε!ττω τατης τ7ς πλεως (14.2.5).52

The city of the Rhodians lies on the eastern promontory of Rhodes and it is so far superior to all others in harbours and roads and walls and improvements in general, that I am unable to speak of any other city as equal to it, or even as almost equal to it, much less superior to it (trans. H.L. Jones).

Strabo praises above all the eunomia, the politeia, the care for naval affairs, and the city’s faithful conduct towards Rome, all of which resulted in Rhodes being granted the status of autonomy and receiving the large number of votive offerings that adorned the city. Especially celebrated are the provisions granted by the local government to the poor: the redistribution of wealth is considered an ‘ancestral custom’ (patrion ethos). The description of the city, stylized rather than based on autopsy, is nevertheless not remote from reality: some elements, such as the ‘Hippodamian’ plan or the harbours, have been confirmed by modern archaeological research.53 A brief historical outline also provides some useful hints. The Dorian origins of Rhodes are discussed in reference to Homer: here Strabo’s fondness for the poet joins with local tradition.54 The image of Rhodes put forth by later authors followed the same pattern. The loyal attitude displayed by the city during Mithridates’ siege won it wide celebrity and esteem.55 In the second century AD, Aulus Gellius quotes at length from Cato’s speech Pro Rhodiensibus, writing that ‘the city of the Rhodians is renowned because of the location

51 The local historians are likely to have played an important role in the formation of this literary image of Rhodes, but their works are irremediably lost to us: Wiemer 2001. 52 See Pédech 1971. 53 Harbours: Kontis 1953, esp. 279 n. 2. 54 The other poetic authority incorporated into the praise of Rhodes was Pindar. As we know from a scholion to the seventh Olympian, the text of the Ode was carved in golden letters in the temple of Athena Lindia: Gorgon, FGrH 515 F18. 55 App. Mithr. 24 ff.; Liv. perioch. 78; Vell. 2.18.3; Flor. 1.40.8. See Campanile 1996, 150 f.

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of the island, the beauty of its monuments, their skill in sailing the sea, and their naval victories’ (6.3.1), and repeats this praise in the context of an anecdote about Demetrius’ siege of the island (15.31.1). Apollonius of Tyana’s short visit to the island is also of interest: according to Philostratus, the holy man debated with Damis in the vicinity of the Colossus, engaged a talented flautist in conversation about his art, and rebuked both a rich and ignorant young man and an overweight boy fond of food. The island appears here in all its wellbeing and prosperity, although apparently Apollonius did not pay homage, not even from a critical perspective, to the beauty of Rhodes, as he did, for example, in Smyrna.56 The brilliant ekphrasis of Rhodes from the beginning of the Amores ascribed to Lucian is also worth attention. After his departure from Tarsus and his visit to the decayed cities of Lycia, on the way to Cnidus, the narrator arrives in Rhodes (6–10), where he admires the Temple of Dionysus, the porch, and the paintings; he does not see any sign of decline or crisis, nor does he mention the earthquake.57 The Amores are commonly believed to be a later composition.58 The authorship of Lucian has been denied because the text does not allude to the earthquake of 142 AD, among other reasons. But this silence does not imply a terminus ante quem. In Xenophon’s Ephesian Histories, which are dated toward the middle of the second century AD, there is a nice description of Rhodes that includes the crowded festivals of the Sun, the votive offerings, and the altar of the gods, without making any reference to the earthquake:59 the peculiar ‘atemporality’ of these texts, which show no interest in historical change, conditions the selection of local details. The earthquake of 142 AD suddenly destroyed this magical world: ‘The beauty of the harbours has gone, the fairest of crowns has fallen, the temples are barren of statues, and the altars, the streets and theatres are empty of men’ (Or. 25.9). The orator turns the description into the lamentation, exploiting the same classical topoi of the laus urbis, such as the origins of the city, but from a different point of view: if, according 56 VAp 5.21–23 and 4.7 for Smyrna. For the flautist’s name Kanos see SEG XXI 854b; Suet. Galba 12; Plut. Mor. 785B. See also the rebukes by the cithara-player Stratonicus in Plut. Mor. 525B. 57 The omission of the earthquake has been considered, perhaps erroneously, a relevant proof against Lucianic authorship. Aristides, too, in the speech On Concord, evokes the incomparable beauty of Rhodes without a hint of the recent disaster. 58 Jones 1984; Degani 1991, esp. 19. 59 Xen. Eph. 5.10–13.

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to the myth, Rhodes had emerged from the sea, now ‘the city has sunk beneath the earth and has gone from mankind’ (29). And if Zeus had ‘poured wealth’ and ‘rained down gold’ on the island, as Homer and Pindar had once sung, now ‘the god of fortune’ has poured on Rhodes very different gifts (30). The orator’s efforts are directly primarily to restraining the grief of the survivors and delivering a persuasive exhortation to them: their sufferings do not admit of any consolation, nonetheless, ‘they must be endured’ (34). He must prove that so terrible a catastrophe is bearable and that the Rhodians, because of their glorious past, must be confident that the city will flourish again. The skill in arguing in many different ways about a single subject was a sophistic heritage: the author of the Rhodiakos had only to follow the scheme of reversal. For as far as sophistic rhetoric is concerned, just as destiny transforms happiness into desperation, so misfortune will assuredly be transformed into a renewal of prosperity. Take Rhodes’ past, for example. When the Rhodians created the new city of Rhodes by unifying Lindos, Cameiros and Ialysos at the end of the fifth century BC, they did not choose an existing schema, but created a totally new one.60 Thus the reconstruction of the city after the earthquake ‘is much easier […] than the original foundation was’, because what is needed is ‘only to make a Rhodes from Rhodes, a new city from the old one’ (52–53). The argument about the monuments in the city, like the walls, is different. The earthquake has destroyed them, but their loss is bearable because, according to the old saying, ‘Not houses fairly roofed, nor the well-worked stones of walls, nor avenues and docks are the city, but men who are able to handle whatever circumstances confront them’ (ο%κ οOκ!αι καλ.ς στεγασμ ναι ο%δ4 λ!&οι τειχ.ν ε` δεδομημ νοι ο%δ4 στενωπο! τε κα0 νε,ρια T πλις, λλ’ νδρες χρ7σ&αι τος ε0 παροσι δυνKμενοι, 64). Thus, ‘even if your walls fell ten times, the dignity of the city will not fall, so long as one Rhodian is left’.61 All of the local traditions could be used by the orator to promote endurance and confidence—except, it would appear, the tradition of a negative omen that had oppressed the city from its very foundation.62 All the ancient sources are collected in Moggi 1976, 213–243. See also Or. 25.42. On the topos, which comes from Alcaeus fr. 112L–P and Thuc. 7.77.7, see Pernot 1993a, I, 195 ff. 62 Not considered in Blinkenberg 1913, who focuses above all on Homer and ancient legends. 60 61

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The author asserts that the earthquake has already fulfilled the oracle, so that one can hope that the reconstruction of the city may rest upon ‘more fortunate and better omens’ (69). The reference would have been perfectly plain to the audience, but it is less evident for us. One must turn to Pausanias. Speaking about Sikyon, he attributes the final decline of the city to an earthquake that ‘damaged also the Carian and Lycian towns, and shook above all the island of Rhodes, so that it was believed that the ancient prediction of the Sybil to Rhodes was accomplished’ (2.7.1). It is difficult to define the period alluded to by Pausanias, since the passage seems to be vague in its chronology. Elsewhere, Pausanias records the same earthquake, adding that it occurred under Antoninus.63 Thus, even if the identity of the events is not assured, one may assume that the oracle alluded to by Pausanias is the same as that mentioned in the Rhodiakos. The content of the prophecy is preserved, as it seems, in the so-called Oracula Sibyllina, among several others concerning earthquakes. The tone is obscure and allusive, and thus does not allow irrefutable identification, but the passage provides good elements for the analysis of the Rhodiakos. }Ω =Ρδε δειλα!η σ· σ4 γ ρ πρ,την, σ4 δακρσω·/ *σσMη δ4 πρ,τη πλεων, πρ,τη δ’ πολ σσMη,/ νδρ.ν μ4ν χρη, βιτου δ τε πKμπαν *δευκς*

(Orac. Syb. 7.1–3).

O poor Rhodes! I will mourn you as first. Thou shall be first among the cities, but also first in ruin, deprived of your men, totally *deprived* of life.

And again: κα0 σ, =Ρδος, πουλ?ν μ4ν δολωτος χρνον *σσMη,/ Tμερ!η &υγKτηρ, πουλ?ς δ τοι 'λβος 'πισ&εν/ *σσεται, ν πντFω δ’ 5ξεις κρKτος *ξοχον λλων (Orac. Syb. 3.444–448).64

And you, Rhodes, for a long time shall be free from slavery, O noble daughter, and great prosperity shall be upon you, and on the sea you shall reign over other peoples.

Similar oracles could refer to any big earthquake from 227 BC onwards, including the serious one of 142 AD. The Sibylline prophecies are a reminder of the symbolic and religious dimension of earthquakes in antiquity. Apart from the gods, however, there was also the political Paus. 2.7.1; 8.43.4. Orac. Syb. 4.101 = 8.160 may refer to the earthquake recorded in Paus. 2.7.1: see Geffcken 1902, ad loc. 63 64

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dimension of the event, such as the request for help and the problems of reconstruction. This was the task for the ambassadors, and required careful study: it is hardly surprising that natural catastrophes became a common subject in imperial and late antique literature. This subject was studied in the schools of rhetoric and appeared in the works of men of letters and historians.65 More than a century ago, Rudolf Herzog proposed the label of genos seismikon for this specific genre of speeches about earthquakes and suggested locating its origin in Rhodes.66 This kind of rhetoric was particularly linked to the life of the ancient city, and orators focused their attention especially on the cities. The collapse of buildings, the destruction of urban beauty, and the death of men and women struck the general imagination much more than the destiny of the rural areas did.67 This explains why in the Rhodiakos, after a sympathetic description of the earthquake, small islands around Rhodes receive only a short and dismissive mention: to the dismay of the cultivated, a great and beautiful city was in ruins, while unimportant places like Carpathus and Casus remained intact (Or. 25.31).68 But let us come to the earthquake itself. The author of the Rhodiakos was not in Rhodes when the disaster occurred. Thus the speech does not reflect any personal experience of the events, and the high dramatic style, the impressive list of ruins and casualties, and the heavy rhetorical expression are the substitutes for autopsy; this is the normal case in antiquity, with the possible exception of the letter of Pliny the Younger about the eruption of the Mount Vesuvius. At ‘that wretched noon hour’ says the orator, - δ4 qλιος τελευταα δ" ττε π λαμπε τ"ν \αυτο πλιν, κα0 παρ7ν ξα!φνης πKντα -μο τ δεινK. Xπανεχ,ρει μ4ν T &Kλαττα κα0 πAν ψιλοτο τ.ν λιμ νων τ8 ντ8ς, νερριπτοντο δ4 οOκ!αι κα0 μνματα νερργνυντο, πργοι δ4 πργοις ν πιπτον κα0 νε,σοικοι τριρεσι κα0 νεFc βωμος κα0 να&ματα γKλμασι κα0 νδρες νδρKσι, κα0 πργοι λιμ σι, κα0 πKντα λλλοις (Or. 25.20).

65 In the Progymnasmata by Aelius Theon, the seismos is listed among the themes for ekphraseis (118.18 Patillon-Bolognesi). 66 Herzog 1899, 141 ff. 67 Guidoboni 1994; Traina 1985, and now Williams 2006. Contempt for outlying areas: Arist. Or. 19.7–8. 68 This may explain also some inaccuracies about the administrative status of the islands in relationship to Rhodes: Fraser and Bean 1954, esp. 138 n. 1; Papachristodoulou 1989, 43 ff., Carusi 2003, esp. 219 ff.

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carlo franco The sun for the last time shone upon his city. And suddenly every terror was at hand at once. The sea drew back, and all the interior of the harbours was laid bare, and the houses were thrown upwards, and the tombs broken open, and the towers collapsed upon the harbours, and the storage sheds upon the triremes, and the temples upon the altars, and the offerings upon the statues, and men upon men, and everything upon one another.

The destiny of the population is a plurima mortis imago: κα0 οJ μ4ν τ ς \αυτ.ν φεγοντες οOκ!ας ν τας \τ ρων π,λλυντο, οJ δ’ ν τας \αυτ.ν Xπ’ κπλξεως μ νοντες, οJ δ4 κ& οντες γκαταλαμβανμενοι, οJ δ4 πολειφ& ντες Tμι&ν7τες, ο%κ *χοντες ξαναδναι ο%δ4 αXτο?ς α συνεναι, that is, ‘to meet privately’ (probably in his or in his student’s residence), which contrasts with Libanius’ expression ξω συνεναι, ‘to meet students at school’ (Ep. 1038.1). Aristides considered his declamations models for instruction and occasionally met some young men to correct their rhetorical imperfections. His involvement with teaching was probably not very significant and did not leave a profound mark on him. The nineteenth -century Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi, who studied Aristides in his youth, reported an amusing adespoton epigram which may have referred to a namesake of the renowned rhetor: ‘Hail to you seven pupils of the rhetor Aristides, four walls and three benches!’58 This epigram in any case may have been realistic if it alluded to Aristides having a school. Two other orations are usually taken to show that Aristides had some involvement with teaching. In 147 he wrote Or. 30, the Birthday Speech to Apellas, who, the scholion explains, was his pupil.59 Very little, however, 54

This usage is compatible with Libanius’ terminology. Watts 2006, 31. 56 See, e.g., Philostratus, VS 483.25 with the meaning ‘friend’, and Aristides, Sacred Tales 1.23 and 4.23, besides 5.29. 57 Philostratus, however, may have believed they were students. 58 See App.Anth. 5.31; Prolegomena to the Panathenaic Oration Dindorf 1829, 741; Cugnoni 1878, 54; Tommasi Moreschini 2004, 11–12 and 269. 59 On this scholion, see Behr 1981, 390 n. 2. 55

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indicates that this boy was indeed his student. In the phrase ‘We, your relations, kinsmen, teachers, companions, and all of your dear family’, the word ‘teacher’ does not necessarily refer to the orator. The speech is a conventional and artificial presentation of the city’s and the family’s glory and of the accomplishments of the young man. When he composed it, Aristides had just emerged from a nearly two-year period of incubation in the temple of Asclepius, so that his acquaintance with Apellas must have been quite recent. Years later, in 161, he wrote Or. 31, The Funeral Oration for Eteoneus, a young man who apparently studied with him. Aristides seems to have been more involved in this youth’s upbringing. And yet one perceives that some remarks may be out of place. A vain Aristides seems to be in competition with his student, as when he says that Eteoneus was so devoted to him that he never even conceived of being at his level (Or. 31.7–8). In a speech concerned with the study of rhetoric, the boy’s silence—sometimes considered a positive quality in antiquity60— nevertheless occupies too much space in the background of the effusiveness of his teacher.61 The insistence on Eteoneus’ handsomeness (four remarks in such a small compass) also sounds a bit excessive.62 When the orator says that in studying and declaiming Eteoneus used gestures that would be appropriate in a painting, one cannot agree more: the silent Eteoneus belongs in a painting (Or. 31.8). Aristides, the masterful orator, appears at the end in a grand, emotional consolation that Libanius, if he knew the passage, cannot have failed to appreciate, as when Eteoneus is compared to ‘a poet who has ended his play while people still desire to see him and hear him’.63 If we now return to the question I posed at the beginning, many of the reasons why Aristides appealed so strongly to Libanius, and implicitly to other rhetors in the fourth century, are already clear. In the fourth century, when rhetoric was not as effective as before and rhetors had lost some of their power, it was comforting to remember an age when ‘rhetoric flashed like lightning’.64 Aristides was a shining protagonist of that age, and applying his rhetorical rules reinforced the illusion that one could revive it. For Libanius, moreover, rhetoric and Cf. Or. 2. 384–385. On silence, Or. 31. 8 and 10. 62 On this boy’s beauty, Or. 31.4, 11, 12, and 15. 63 The ¯ethopoiia of the deus ex machina pronouncing words of consolation is quite moving. 64 See Libanius, Or. 2.43. 60 61

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the worship of the gods were connected not only because, as he told the emperor Julian, ‘rhetoric moved you towards reverence for the gods’, but also because Aristides’ conception of oratory inspired by ‘a sacred and divine fire’ stirred him.65 Aristides powerfully roused the emotions, and his authoritative tone and confidence in his own ability strongly attracted a sophist who doubted he could make a comparable impact. So what was Libanius reading under Aristides’ portrait? So many are the words of his predecessor that may have appealed to him, but we know with certainty that he identified with Aristides declaring his love for rhetoric in Or. 33.19–20: Alone of all the Greeks whom we know, we did not engage in oratory for wealth, fame, honor, marriage, power, or any acquisition… But since we were its true lovers, we were fittingly honored by oratory… For me oratory means everything, signifies everything, for I have made it children, parents, work, relaxation and all else.

Libanius was under the same spell.

65 See Libanius, Or. 13.1; Aristides, Or. 28.110, and, e.g., the myth of Prometheus in 2.396–399. Cf. Swain 2004, 372–373.

chapter fourteen AELIUS ARISTIDES’ RECEPTION AT BYZANTIUM: THE CASE OF ARETHAS

Luana Quattrocelli Non posso sapere se lo sono o no. Voglio dire che lo sciamano è un messo celeste: fa da intermediario tra Dio e gli uomini. Perché la malattia non è altro che un’offesa all’ordine cosmico. Dio abbandona l’uomo, si allontana da lui… e allora interviene la malattia— Sándor Márai, La sorella

In addition to providing much interesting material for the history of religion and rhetoric, the Sacred Tales of Aelius Aristides offer a starting point for understanding the success of the author among his contemporaries.1 In these six orations, while talking about his oratorical performances, Aristides refers more than once to his universal reputation (Or. 47.50; Or. 50.8, 19, 26), to the delirious enthusiasm of the crowds (Or. 50.20, 48, 101; Or. 51.16, 29, 32–33), to insistent requests from friends and acquaintances to write and deliver speeches (Or. 47.2, 64; Or. 48.1–2; Or. 50.17, 24, 95; Or. 51.30), and to the high esteem that bestowed on by the emperors (Or. 47.23, 36–38, 41, 46–49; Or. 50.75–76, 92). All of these remarks, however, would appear to contradict the need that Aristides felt to write an entire oration, To Those Who Criticize Him Because He Does Not Declaim (Πρ8ς το?ς αOτιωμ νους @τι μ" μελετF,η), in order to complain bitterly about the scant interest in attending his performances that people showed. One may wonder if Aristides’ long absences from the rhetorical scene were really due to the poor condition of his health and to the orders given by Asclepius, or if, instead, all of these reasons were only excuses designed to hide the reality of fickle success. Besides, it should not be forgotten that a panoramic view of

1 I would like to thank Professor William Harris for giving me the opportunity to present this paper before such an important audience.

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Greek rhetoric in those years would have included the works of great professionals of the calibre of Polemon, Herodes Atticus, and Apollonius Tyanensis. Although Aristides made a great display of his success, he often worried about the judgement of posterity. In a dream, he replies to a doctor who is insisting that he recite something: ‘Because, by Zeus, it is more important for me to revise some things which I have written. For I must also converse with posterity’ (Or. 51.52).2 He writes elsewhere: ‘After the inscription, I became much more eager, and it seemed in every way to be fitting to keep on with oratory, as our name would live even among future men, since the god happened to have called our speeches “everlasting” ’ (Or. 50.47). Posterity has indeed paid Aristides all the honours of which he dreamt while he was alive. Among the late Imperial Age rhetoricians, Aelius Aristides is the only author whose oeuvre has been handed down nearly complete: fifty-two orations (only the beginning of Or. 53 is preserved).3 The survival of Aristides’ corpus was due to the great admiration that rhetoricians in later centuries had for him, as well as to the high position reserved for him in schools and in scriptoria. If in the third century Apsines, Longinus, and Menander Rhetor already considered Aristides to be a classical author and quoted him as a model for style and composition, in the fourth century Aristides was often studied and imitated in lieu of the classical authors themselves. Libanius (314– 393 AD) shows himself a true devotee of Aristides, imitating him just as Aristides had once imitated Demosthenes. And Himerius (300/10– 380/90 AD), a representative of the Asiatic style, which was very different from Libanius’s Atticism, does not neglect to acknowledge Aristides as one of his masters, especially in the Panathenaicus. As Libanius’s pupils, even two church fathers of this period, Basil and John Chrysostomus, took Aristides as a model, as did all the Christian authors whose rhetorical style was deeply influenced by the Second Sophistic. Even a fourth-century papyrus,4 containing a rhetorician’s funeral oration, celebrates Aristides as Smyrna’s second son after Homer.

2 All translations of the Sacred Tales are by C.A. Behr; the text used is Keil 1898. Translations of the scholia are my own, with the assistance of David Ratzan. 3 F. Robert is preparing an edition of the fragments and the lost works of Aelius Aristides as part of the ‘Aristides Programme’, which will result in an edition of the complete works under the direction of L. Pernot (CUF, Les Belles Lettres). 4 Berliner Klassikertexte V, 1, 1907, 82–83. See Schubart 1918, 143–144.

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In the following century Synesius, who had no love for the sophists, accorded Aristides the same fame. The fame achieved in these centuries, sealed by Eunapius (who calls him ‘divine’), allowed Aristides and his orations to acquire first-class authority with lexicographers, the authors of rhetorical manuals, commentators, and erudite schools from the sixth century through the Byzantine period. At the end of the thirteenth century, Maximus Planudes was still making scribes copy a specimen of Aristides’ orations in his scriptorium for his library,5 and Theodorus Metochites wrote an essay On Demosthenes and Aristides.6 But even though Aristides escaped unharmed from the hostile attacks of Christian authors like Romanus Melodus, who had no scruples about mocking pagan authors like Homer, Plato and Demosthenes in his Hymns, he could not avoid the scorn of one tenth-century commentator, who attacked his personality as it emerges in the pages of the most autobiographical of his orations, namely the Sacred Tales. I am referring to the scathing notes written in the margins of the sheets of the manuscript Laurentianus 60, 3, (A) to the Sacred Tales, as a personal commentary on Aristides’ religious experiences. The commentary includes a series of notes, never published,7 which, lying outside the exegetical-grammatical typology of medieval comments, represent a genuine attack by a Byzantine author on a pagan one. Manuscript A, which is divided into two parts, Laurentianus 60, 3 and Parisinus graecus 2951, is the well-known manuscript of the Aristidean tradition that belonged to Arethas, the famous archbishop of Caesarea who read and commented on a number of pagan authors. The manuscript was prepared around 920 AD for Arethas by John Calligraphus,8 undoubtedly after Arethas had become archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia.9 Arethas himself (see fig. 1) added the titles, the capital letters, and the paragraph signs. He also wrote scholia in his neat majuscule,10 modifying the Sopater scholia and supplementing 5

See Quattrocelli (forthcoming). See Pernot 2006, 100–115. 7 Except for two cases that were edited by Dindorf in the scholiastic corpus (1829, III, 343–344). A complete edition of these notes will become an integral part of the Sacred Tales edition being prepared by L. Pernot and L. Quattrocelli for Les Belles Lettres. 8 See Keil 1898, vii; Behr–Lenz 1976–1980, xxvii n. 79; Lemerle 1971, 220 n. 52; Pernot 1981, 183. 9 Cf. Behr–Lenz, xxvii, n. 80. 10 Maass (1884, 764) speaks about the semiunciales solemnes used by Arethas for the scholia: ‘Ecce Arethas, quippe qui praeter solemnes scholiorum semiunciales non in sacris tantum verum etiam in profanis utitur uncialibus’. 6

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Fig. 1

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Fig. 2

them with additions to which he occasionally attached his monogram ΑΡΕΘ.11 These scholia cover Orations I–IV and some passages of μελ ται. In addition, one can read small notes to Orations XVII–LIII. That the reproachful notes in the margin to the Sacred Tales were also written by Arethas is proven above all by the handwriting, which faithfully imitates the unmistakable majuscule of Caesarea’s archbishop.12 The most characteristic letters are easily recognizable (see fig. 2): – alpha: with the rounded part that slips into the line space to distinguish itself from delta. – delta: in majuscule form. – epsilon: crescent-shaped. – kappa: more frequently in the majuscule form than in the minuscule one. – mu: sometimes enriched by an ornament. – nu: which alternates between the minuscule form and the majuscule one, sometimes inclined on the right. – the compendium for κα!. 11 12

On the personal notes added by Arethas, see Lenz 1964a, 58, 71–72, 84. Maass (1884, 758) was already certain of Arethas’s authorship of the notes.

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Arethas’s matrix is evident even in the arrangement of the note text as an inverted pyramid or in the shape of a funnel, closed with a little leaf or a small wavy line. Once the handwriting has been securely identified as Arethas’s, it is difficult to doubt that the ideas expressed are also his own, rather than copied from notes in other manuscripts. That the notes were copied is highly unlikely for two reasons: first, no copyist would have ever transcribed such extensive comments into his own copy, even if he had read them in the antigraph; second, and most importantly, there is a large repertoire of attacks in the same tone that Arethas addresses to other classical authors, enough to make Wilson speak of ‘the characteristic style’ of Arethas’s notes on other authors (1983, 212). Therefore, even the unedited notes to Manuscript A should be included among the other short polemical and scornful comments with which Arethas glossed the texts preserved in the manuscripts he owned. It is true that, like Photius, the philologist of Patras belongs to the period of the Byzantine culture commonly referred to as the ‘Renaissance’, which followed the Iconoclastic period. It is also true that, like Photius, Arethas made a career in the church, eventually becoming the archbishop in Cappadocia. However, if Photius provides an example of the tolerance shown towards the pagan literature of the past by the men occupying the highest offices of the church, this is not the case with Arethas. Those who deal with the Platonic textual tradition know the codex Clarkianus 39 very well: it contains twenty-four Platonic dialogues, that is, all of them except the Timaeus, the Republic, and the Laws. It was commissioned from John Calligraphus by Arethas while he was still deacon in November, 895 AD. In this manuscript, too, Arethas writes scholia in his own hand, and he adds strictly personal evaluations to them from time to time. Here is the passage from the Apology in which Socrates defends himself against the charge of atheism: εO δ’ α` οJ δα!μονες &ε.ν παδ ς εOσιν ν&οι τιν4ς D κ νυμφ.ν D *κ τινων λλων pν δ" κα0 λ γονται, τ!ς #ν ν&ρ,πων &ε.ν μ4ν παδας Tγοτο εBναι, &εο?ς δ4 μ; -μο!ως γ ρ #ν τοπον ε$η Sσπερ #ν ε$ τις jππων μ4ν παδας Tγοτο D κα0 'νων, το?ς Tμινους, jππους δ4 κα0 'νους μ" Tγοτο εBναι (Pl.

Apol. 27d–e).

If on the other hand these supernatural beings are bastard children of the gods by nymphs or other mothers, as they are reputed to be, who in the world would believe in the children of gods and not in the

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gods themselves? It would be as ridiculous as to believe in the young of horses or donkeys and not in horses and donkeys themselves. (trans. H. Tredennick).

Arethas glosses the text in this way: ‘you do well, Socrates, to compare the Athenians’ gods to donkeys and horses’. Obviously, Socrates has not done this, but the note gives us a glimpse of Arethas’s lack of philosophical subtlety and familiarizes us with one of his characteristic habits, namely that of conversing with his authors in a confidential and intentionally irreverent tone. For the scholiast from Patras, the text that he is reading is not just a monument of the past: the ancient author comes to life in front of him, provoking his likes and dislikes depending on his mood at that moment. A sort of dialogue opens up between the reader and the author. Arethas addresses the author directly, both to blame him and to express pleasure when he finds that he is in agreement with him.13 Socrates is again the target of Arethas’s sharp tongue in the Charmides. Our Christian reader comments on the description of the philosopher, who is struck by Charmides’ beauty in the Athenian palaestra, and thus gains the opportunity to reflect at length on σωφροσνη,14 in this way: ‘be cursed, Plato, for so cunningly corrupting simple souls’.15 At a later point, he goes to the heart of the philosophical discussion to defend Charmides and to attack Socrates once again:16 Socrates, you are deceiving the noble Charmides with your speeches and confusing him with sophistry. Because even if he has not shown adequate temperance (σωφροσνη), he was not in conflict with the truth. It is at least a part of temperance to act in a quiet and orderly way; for by quiet I mean non-violent, but you take it as the equivalent of lazy, and of course you spoil the reasoning.17

Since Arethas has no scruples about being so irreverent towards Socrates’ auctoritas, we should not be surprised that he behaves similarly, See Bidez 1934, 396. Pl. Chrm. 155d. 15 Arethas lashes out against Lucian for a pederastic issue (Sch. in Luciani Amores 54): μο0 μ4ν ο[τω παιδεραστεν γ νοιτο κτλ.], describing him as πKρατος: μγις ποτ , μιαρ4 κα0 πKρατε, τ8 σαυτο ξεπας. ξ,λης κα0 προ,λης γ νοιο. (‘With much hesitation you admitted this about yourself, you damned scoundrel! May you be utterly destroyed!’). A previous passage in the same work (Amores 35) had irritated Arethas’s sensitivity about the issue of male homosexuality: the Byzantine reader calls Lucian μιαρολγος, an adjective not found in the classical vocabulary. 16 Pl. Chrm.159a–c. 17 On this passage, see Lemerle 1971, 213–214; Wilson 1983, 206. 13 14

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if not more irreverently, towards another late-imperial author, namely Lucian. Lucian had already been the target of insulting epithets from the first Christian authors: in the ancient and medieval scholia to Lucian, the editor Rabe has registered no less than thirty-nine contemptuous terms used against him.18 Arethas readily adds his voice to the chorus of reprobation directed against Lucian, who nevertheless lived on among the favourite authors of Byzantine readers. Leafing through the comments on Lucian’s works, one realizes that of thirtynine spiteful allocutions, as many as fourteen can be read in the notes written by Arethas’s hand in the margins of the codex Harleianus 5694 (tenth century—E), and another thirty such epithets can be found in the three manuscripts (Vindob. gr. 123, eleventh century—B; Coisl. gr. 345, tenth century – C; Pal. gr. 73, thirteenth century—R), in which Rabe has identified scholia that can be ascribed to Arethas. Generally, Lucian is blamed for his jokes about Greek religion and philosophy, for his hyperbolic attacks against individuals, and for his presumed pederasty. In the dialogue Hermotimus, or Concerning the Sects (=Ερμτιμος D περ0 ΑJρ σεων) Lycinus, that is to say Lucian, is explaining to Hermotimus why no philosophical school can guide man in the quest for truth: ΛΥΚ. κατ τα%τ το!νυν :παντες μ4ν οJ φιλοσοφοντες τ"ν ε%δαιμον!αν ζητοσιν -πον τ! στιν, κα0 λ γουσιν λλος λλο τι α%τ"ν εBναι, - μ4ν Tδονν, - δ4 τ8 καλν, - δ4 @σα 5τερK φασι περ0 α%τ7ς. εOκ8ς μ4ν ο`ν κα0 τοτων 5ν τι εBναι τ8 εNδαιμον, ο%κ πεικ8ς δ4 κα0 λλο τι παρ’ α%τ πKντα. κα0 ο!καμεν Tμες νKπαλιν D χρ7ν, πρ0ν τ"ν ρχ"ν εXρεν, πε!γεσ&αι πρ8ς τ8 τ λος. *δει δ4 μοι πρτερον φανερ8ν γεν σ&αι @τι *γνωσται τλη&4ς κα0 πKντως *χει τις α%τ8 εOδcς τ.ν φιλοσοφοντων. εBτα μετ τοτο τ8 \ξ7ς #ν _ν ζητ7σαι, Fp πειστ ον στ!ν. ΕΡΜ. Sστε, { Λυκνε, τοτο φς, @τι ο%δ’ #ν δι πKσης φιλοσοφ!ας χωρσωμεν, ο%δ4 ττε πKντως 5ξομεν τλη&4ς εXρεν. (66)

LUC: In the same way, all philosophers are investigating the nature of Happiness; they get different answers, one Pleasure, another Goodness, and so through the list. It is probable that Happiness is one of these; but it is also not improbable that it is something else altogether. We seem to have reversed the proper procedure, and hurried on to the end before we had found the beginning. I suppose we ought first to have ascertained that the truth has actually been discovered, and that some philosopher or other has it, and only then to have gone on to the next question, which of them is to be believed. 18

They are listed in Rabe 1906, 336. See also Baldwin 1980–1981.

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HERM: So that, even if we go all through all philosophy, we shall have no certainty of finding the truth even then; that is what you say (trans. H W. and F.G. Fowler).

At this point, that is, at Hermotimus’s τλη&4ς εXρεν, the Christian orthodoxy in Arethas objects:19 jνα κα0 ε[ρMη, τ!ς sν εXρσει, βδελυρ,τατε, ν&ρωπος Wν; κα0 τ!ς τοτFω πιστεσει, τ7ς ν&ρ,που φσεως κατ σ4 ο%δ’ @λως χοσης τ8 κεκριμ νον κα0 διKπταιστον;

To discover it (sc. the truth), who, oh despicable person, will find it while he is still alive, since he is a man? Who, instead, will believe in this, since human nature, according to you, does not have the capacity for judgement and for not making errors?

Arethas uses the adjective βδελυρ,τατος, which Lucian often used against his rival in Pseudologistes, or the Mistaken Critic (Ψευδολογιστ"ς D Περ0 τ7ς ΑποφρKδος).20 If the convicia against Lucian reveal both the failure on Arethas’s part to acknowledge the pagan author’s irony and his habit of excessively literal interpretation,21 the mood is different in the notes written in the margin of the Sacred Tales in the Laurentianus 60, 3, whose content, in my view, confirms their attribution to Arethas. In the first note on the left margin of f. 36v, we read: λλ τ! τατης *δει τ7ς τοσατης κα0 νηντου πραγματε!ας, Αριστε!δη; κα0 τ7ς τοσατης το χρνου τριβ7ς; κα0 τ7ς φασματ,δους Pνειρ,ξεως; εO δναμις Xπ7ν τF. &εF. σου ΑσκληπιF., ξKντη σε νσου κα&ιστAν κα0 ν βραχει>A καιρο