Greek Declamation and the Roman Empire 1009297120, 9781009297127

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GREEK D E C L AM AT I O N AN D TH E RO M A N EMPIRE

A Greek declamation was an ‘imaginary speech’: a fictitious speech composed for a rhetorical scenario set in classical Greece. Although such speeches began as rhetorical exercises, under the high Roman empire they developed into a full-blown prestigious genre in their own right. This first monograph on Greek declamation for nearly forty years re-evaluates a genre that was central to Greek imperial literature and to ancient and modern notions of the ‘Second Sophistic’. Rejecting traditional conceptions of the genre as ‘nostalgic’, this book considers the significance of Greek declamation’s reenactment of classical history for its own times and integrates the genre into the wider history of the period. It shows through extended readings how the genre came to constitute a powerful and subtle instrument of identity formation and social interaction, and a site for free thinking on issues of major contemporary importance such as imperialism and inter-polis relations. william guast is an assistant master at Winchester College and was previously the A. G. Leventis Research Fellow in Ancient Greek at the University of Bristol.

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greek culture in the roman world Series Editors JAŚ ELSNER, University of Oxford SIMON GOLDHILL, University of Cambridge CONSTANZE GÜTHENKE, University of Oxford MICHAEL SQUIRE, King’s College London Founding Editors SUSAN E. ALCOCK JAŚ ELSNER SIMON GOLDHILL The Greek culture of the Roman Empire offers a rich field of study. Extraordinary insights can be gained into processes of multicultural contact and exchange, political and ideological conflict, and the creativity of a changing, polyglot empire. During this period, many fundamental elements of Western society were being set in place: from the rise of Christianity, to an influential system of education, to long-lived artistic canons. This series is the first to focus on the response of Greek culture to its Roman imperial setting as a significant phenomenon in its own right. To this end, it will publish original and innovative research in the art, archaeology, epigraphy, history, philosophy, religion, and literature of the empire, with an emphasis on Greek material. Recent titles in the series The Lives of Ancient Villages: Rural Society in Roman Anatolia Peter Thonemann The Death of Myth on Roman Sarcophagi: Allegory and Visual Narrative in the Late Empire Mont Allen Roman Ionia: Constructions of Cultural Identity in Western Asia Minor Martin Hallmannsecker Late Hellenistic Greek Literature in Dialogue Jason König and Nicolas Wiater The Christian Invention of Time: Temporality and the Literature of Late Antiquity Simon Goldhill The Moon in the Greek and Roman Imagination: Myth, Literature, Science and Philosophy Karen ní Mheallaigh

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GREEK DECLAMATION AND THE ROMAN EMPIRE WILLIAM GUAST Winchester College

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Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge cb2 8ea, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, ny 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 103 Penang Road, #05–06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467 Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a department of the University of Cambridge. We share the University’s mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781009297127 doi: 10.1017/9781009297158 © William Guast 2023 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment. First published 2023 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. A Cataloging-in-Publication data record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. isbn 978-1-009-29712-7 Hardback Cambridge University Press & Assessment has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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For my parents

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Contents

Preface List of Abbreviations

page ix xi 1

Introduction 1

18

Exempla and Exemplarity

2 Declamation, Life, and the Imagination

53

3 Text and Performance Context

71

4 Identity Parade

92

5 Macedon

119

6 Strife and Concord

151 180

Conclusion Appendix 1 The Authenticity of Herodes Peri Politeias Appendix 2 Other Sources for Declamation References Index

vii

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189 191 194 213

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Preface

This book considers the significance of Greek declamation’s re-enactment of classical history for the times in which it was written. Despite the great growth in work on Greek imperial literature in recent decades, declamation, which was central to the culture of the Greek East, is still too often sidestepped entirely, given only cursory treatment, or left to specialists in rhetoric. I give serious and sustained attention to the genre and seek to integrate it into the wider history of the period. The period studied is the first three centuries of the common era. This might at first surprise, given that it constitutes neither the beginning nor the end of the genre’s story, and that, of the hundred or so declamations that have survived in full, only twenty-four date from this period. But there are good reasons for such a focus. This is the first period for which we have sufficient evidence for a general study to be possible, the Hellenistic evidence being simply too scanty. Furthermore, it is a formative period in the history of the genre. The star declaimer Aelius Aristides enters the canon of Greek rhetoric in this era, creating expectations about what declaimers and declamation should look like. Moreover, Philostratus’ Vitae sophistarum, the indispensable starting point for this period, and the concept of the ‘Second Sophistic’ that it propounds, have been key in determining ancient and modern ideas of declamation and sophistry. Finally, in terms of the scholarly landscape, this is one of the most neglected periods in the history of this neglected genre; declaimers and declamations from Late Antiquity have been and continue to be studied much more intensively. The publication of this book marks the end of a long journey. My first debt is to four institutions without which this research would simply not have been carried out: the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which funded my master’s degree; the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, which funded my doctoral studies; and the A. G. Leventis Foundation and the Institute for Greece, Rome, and the Classical Tradition at the University of ix

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x

Preface

Bristol, which jointly funded three years as a postdoctoral fellow. Chapter 4 (reproduced with permission) represents an updated and expanded version of Guast (2017). My view on the authenticity of the Peri politeias attributed to Herodes in Appendix 1 is repeated from Guast (2019). My second debt is to the small army of supervisors who have supported my work: Ewen Bowie, the supervisor of my master’s degree, and Tim Whitmarsh, Chris Pelling, and Jaś Elsner, who supervised my doctorate. I am grateful to all my Doktorväter for their unfailing generosity with their time, their ideas, their professional know-how, their networks, and their books both during my degrees and particularly afterwards, even when I had left the profession. Ewen Bowie and Simon Goldhill then began the process of turning thesis into monograph with their trenchant observations at my doctoral viva, a process that the series editors and external reader continued later on; I am very grateful to all of them. Much of this work benefited from the feedback of audiences in Nijmegen, Budapest, Pisa, Oxford, Toronto, Bristol, and Cambridge. Corpus Christi College, particularly my ‘college advisors’ Stephen Harrison and Constanze Güthenke, was also an invaluable source of support of all kinds, and I profited from discussions with the ‘Coffeesophists’ who met there in 2012 to 2013, particularly Dawn LaValle, Stuart Thompson, and Dan Jolowicz. Outside Oxford, Glenn Most had some wise words during my stay in Pisa, and Malcolm Heath has offered advice and generously shared with me his unpublished catalogue of Greek and Latin declamation titles. At Bristol, my mentors Nicoletta Momigliano and Patrick Finglass guided the footsteps of this early-career researcher, and Ellen O’Gorman and Richard Cole filled me with ideas about exemplarity and metalepsis. Friends provided support both academic and non-academic along the way, particularly Sam Baddeley, Alex Beard, Roberta Berardi, Anna Magdalena Blomley, Nicolette Busuttil, Lyndsay Coo, Daniel FinchRace, Jessica Glueck, Jonathan Griffiths, Alex and Lewis Marraccini, Hal McKend, Ingrid Ockert, Geraldine Porter, Emily Rutherford, Sophie Schoess, and James Thorne. My thanks go also to my supportive and talented colleagues at Winchester College, as well as to the boys (and now girls), who have lived up to their reputation in their polite interest in the progress of this book. But the greatest debt of course is to my parents, John and Barbara Guast, for unfailing and unquestioning support of every kind since 1987.

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Abbreviations

The abbreviations used for Greek and Latin texts are those of H. G. Liddell and R. Scott, A Greek–English lexicon9 (Oxford, 1940) and P. G. W. Glare (ed.), Oxford Latin dictionary (Oxford, 1982), or, where those works fail, S. Hornblower, A. Spawforth, and E. Eidinow (eds.), The Oxford classical dictionary4 (Oxford, 2012); journal titles are abbreviated according to the conventions of L’Année philologique. I list here all additions to or departures from the abbreviations laid down by the above-mentioned reference works, and, for the sake of convenience, a few of their abbreviations for less familiar authors and works: Anon. Seg. Rh. Aps. Pr. Aps. Rh. Aristid. BNP CCJ Chor. Decll. D. Cass. D. Chrys. [D. H.] GRS Hermog. Id. Hermog. Stat. Him. IG II2

‘Anonymous Seguerianus’, Ars rhetorica Apsines, On figured problems Apsines, Ars rhetorica Aelius Aristides H. Cancik, H. Schneider, and C. F. Salazar (eds.). Brill’s new Pauly: encyclopaedia of the ancient world. 15 vols. Leiden, 2002 Cambridge classical journal Choricius, Declamations Dio Cassius Dio Chrysostom Ps.-Dionysius of Halicarnassus P. Janiszewski, K. Stebnicka, and E. Szabat. Prosopography of Greek rhetors and sophists of the Roman empire. Oxford, 2015 Hermogenes, De ideis Hermogenes, De statibus Himerius J. Kirchner. Inscriptiones Atticae Euclidis anno posteriores. Berlin 1913–40 xi

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xii IGRom. ILS Lib. LSJ Marc. Aur. OGI OLD Philostr. VS Polem. Plut. PGR PS Ps.-Hermog. Inv. RE RG Sopat. Rh. DZ Syrian. In Hermog.

List of Abbreviations R. Cagnat. Inscriptiones Graecae ad res Romanas pertinentes. Paris: 1906– H. Dessau. Inscriptiones Latinae selectae. Berlin, 1892–1916 Libanius H. G. Liddell and R. Scott. 1940. A Greek– English lexicon9. Oxford, 1940 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations W. Dittenberger. Orientis Graeci inscriptiones selectae. Leipzig, 1903–5 P. G. W. Glare (ed.). Oxford Latin dictionary. Oxford, 1982 Philostratus, Vitae sophistarum Polemo Plutarch, Praecepta gerendae reipublicae H. Rabe. Prolegomenon sylloge. Accedit Maximi libellus De obiectionibus insolubilibus. Leipzig, 1931 Ps.-Hermogenes, De inventione A. Pauly, G. Wissowa, and W. Kroll. RealEncyclopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft. Stuttgart, 1893–1980 C. Walz. Rhetores graeci. 9 vols. Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1832–6 Sopater (GRS 338–9), Diairesis zetematon Syrianus, In Hermogenem commentaria

I cite Aphthonius’ Progymnasmata, Apsines’ Ars rhetorica, Hermogenes’ De statibus and De ideis, Ps.-Hermogenes’ De inventione, and Longinus’ Ars rhetorica according to the editions of Patillon;1 Aristides’ works according to the editions of Lenz and Behr (1976) and Keil (1898); Syrianus’ commentaries on the works of Hermogenes by page and line number in the edition of Rabe (1892); Minucian by page and line number in Spengel and Hammer (1894); Nicolaus of Smyrna’s Progymnasmata by page and line number in Felten (1913); Hadrian of Tyre by page and line number in Amato (2009); and Menander Rhetor by page and line number in Spengel (1853). I cite Himerius’ declamations using the numbering of Colonna (1951); the 1

Patillon (2001); Patillon and Brisson (2001); Patillon (2008); Patillon (2009); Patillon (2012a); Patillon (2012b).

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List of Abbreviations

xiii

Aristides scholia by the numbering in Dindorf (1829); and Ps.-Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ Ars rhetorica by volume, page, and line number in Usener and Radermacher (1899). I cite Aelius Theon’s Progymnasmata according to the edition of Patillon and Bolognesi (1997), who use the page numbers of Spengel’s edition but with their own numeration of the lines, which differs slightly from that of Spengel. Of the two declamations of Polemo, the first, in favour of Cynegirus, is referred to as ‘A’, and the second, in favour of Callimachus, as ‘B’. Foerster and Richsteig (1929) give each of Choricius’ works two numbers: a Roman numeral indicating position within the whole corpus and an Arabic numeral indicating position among Choricius’ works of the same genre (the three genres being declamations, dialexeis, and other speeches). Thus, Choricius’ declamation Polydamas is both number X within Choricius’ works as a whole and number 1 within his declamations. In this book, Choricius’ dialexeis, declamations, and other speeches are cited by the Arabic numerals. Translations are my own unless otherwise specified.

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Introduction Classical Presences

In the first three centuries of the common era, the Greek elites of the Roman empire would throughout their lives gather more or less regularly in council chambers or theatres or other public venues in cities all over the east (and several in the west also), from Antioch to Arelate, to hear men imagining that they were Demosthenes denouncing himself after the Athenian defeat at Chaeronea, or Nicias refusing to open the gates of Athens when Cleon returned victorious with Spartan prisoners from Pylos in 425 bce, or even a philosopher claiming a reward for tyrannicide after he had merely persuaded a tyrant to abdicate.1 This book asks why. Such performances, of course, were declamations.2 A declamation was an ‘imaginary speech’: not a real speech composed for a real situation and a real audience, but rather fiction – a fictitious speech composed for a fictitious situation; such speeches have their origins in school exercises. Declamation scenarios came in two forms. Historical declamations, in which a definite historical scenario is envisaged, are invariably set in the fifth and fourth centuries bce and taken from the most famous episodes of that history as narrated in canonical classical texts.3 The second sort of declamation lacks a specific historical context or named historical figures but is nonetheless still set within what Russell felicitously dubbed ‘Sophistopolis’,4 a generic polis that very much resembles classical Athens; such a declamation is called a plasma (πλάσμα). 1

2

3

Philostr. VS 542; Aps. Rh. 1.100; Hermog. Stat. iv 2. For surveys of declamation scenarios, see Kohl (1915) (historical scenarios only), Russell (1983) 21–39 (plasmata only), Russell (1983) 107 (a breakdown of historical scenarios by period), Swain (1996) 91–6, and Patillon (2001) xci–cii, which has a much wider chronological range than this study (xcii n. 4). On declamation’s geographical range, see Puech (2002) 17–23 and Bowie (2004). On the venues for declamations, below pp. 81–4. For Greek declamation generally Russell (1983) is the indispensable starting point, though this work, which has its origins in ‘a series of afternoon epideixeis’ (vii), is somewhat held back by the bemused detachment with which the genre is viewed. Other accounts of the genre are to be found in Bowie (1970) 4–10, Reardon (1971) 104–14, Kennedy (1974), Anderson (1993) 55–64, Swain (1996) 90–6, Schmitz (1997) 10–15, 112–27, 198–205, and Whitmarsh (2005) 19–22. Russell (1983) 106–28. 4 Russell (1983) 22.

1

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2

Introduction

Twenty-four declamations from this period have survived in full or in significant fragments,5 all probably written in the second century, the work of six authors.6 Of these six declaimers, Lucian has got closest to entering the classical canon.7 Born in Samosata, he seems to have studied rhetoric in Ionia and then travelled all over promoting his work. There is evidence for his presence in Gaul, Antioch, Macedon, Rome, Athens, and Egypt; he seems to have been involved with the court of Verus when the emperor was staying in Antioch in 163 to 166; and finally, under Commodus, he worked for the prefect of Egypt, which implies that he had at some point obtained Roman citizenship. He is best known today as a dazzling essayist who penned devastating satires on the pretensions of his contemporaries. In his own account of his life, in as far as it can be reconstructed from various autobiographical remarks in his works, he began as a conventional orator and declaimer, before abandoning rhetoric for a broader range of genres, but this self-presentation should not necessarily be trusted, and it is possible that Lucian continued to author more conventional rhetorical works later in his career also.8 In any case, four striking declamations survive (Phal. 1, Phal. 2, Tyr., and Abd.).9 In the Tyrannicida, a man claims the reward given to tyrannicides after his killing of a tyrant’s son drove the tyrant to suicide.10 In the Abdicatus, a man trained as a doctor opposes his father’s attempt to disown him after he refuses to treat his stepmother.11 In Phalaris 1, the notorious tyrant of Acragas seeks to persuade the Delphians to accept the bronze bull he has sent as an offering; in Phalaris 2, which follows on from Phalaris 1, an ordinary citizen of Delphi speaks in favour of Phalaris’ plea.12 5

On the extant corpus, see Guast (2019). In addition to the twenty-four extant declamations from this period, we also have about 260 other titles. I give brief introductions to the rhetoricians and other writers whose works preserve most of these titles and all sorts of other useful information about the genre in Appendix 2 (pp. 191–3), together with similar accounts of three important later declaimers, Libanius, Himerius, and Choricius, whose work I will periodically have occasion to cite. 7 For Lucian’s biography, see Baldwin (1973) 7–20, Hall (1981) 1–44, and Jones (1986) 6–23; for the Galenic testimony, see Strohmaier (1976). Lucian’s absence from Philostratus’ Vitae sophistarum is puzzling: as Anderson (1986) 87 says, ‘None of the conventional explanations for the omission of Lucian is really convincing.’ It may be that his omission has nothing to do with his relative status but is rather the result of some other cause, perhaps even a quarrel with Herodes. 8 Guast (2018). 9 Text in Macleod (1972); English translations in the Loeb Classical Library (Harmon (1913), Harmon (1936)). There are fictitious speeches in other Lucianic works, such as the Bis Acc., but these can hardly be considered declamations. 10 Bompaire (1958) 245–6; Heath (1995) 175–8; Tomassi (2015); Guast (2018). 11 Berry and Heath (1997) 409–14. 12 Keil (1913); Bompaire (1958) 265–7. This last pair of texts is frequently referred to straightforwardly as declamations, yet in truth they are very unusual in both their subject matter and their presentation (below, pp. 15–16). 6

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Introduction

3

Despite the brilliance of his other works, Lucian should not necessarily be regarded as a minor declaimer; though his claim to have been among the most expensive sophists (Apol. 15) is perhaps to be taken with a pinch of salt, the evidence for his presence all over the Mediterranean, as well as the fact that he was known to Galen, suggest an author of some considerable standing. The next best known of my subjects is the orator Aelius Aristides (117– c. 180/7).13 Today his fame rests above all on his extraordinary Sacred Tales (Hieroi logoi) (Orr. 47–52), a unique and very personal account of how Asclepius helped him in his lifelong fight against illness, principally through revelations in dreams. But the prominence of this work in the modern understanding of Aristides is somewhat anachronistic. Though the Sacred Tales are mentioned in Philostratus’ biography, his real focus is on Aristides’ oratory, and in particular his declamations, of which he mentions eight. Such a focus is also implicit in our manuscripts, which banish the Sacred Tales to the end of the corpus – and indeed put Aristides’ declamations before his ‘real’ political speeches. Despite his illness, Aristides had a long and successful career. He was born to a wealthy family in Hadriani in Mysia; his father, who had citizenship in Smyrna also, received Roman citizenship shortly after Aristides’ birth. Aristides was probably educated in Smyrna by the grammatikos Alexander, who went on to teach Marcus and Verus;14 he also studied in Athens at the time of Herodes Atticus and (if the Suda is to be believed) with Polemo in Pergamum. In the course of his career, he is known to have delivered speeches in Cos, Cnidus, Rhodes, Alexandria, and, later in life, Smyrna and Rome. He also had an extended stay at the sanctuary of Apollo in Pergamum from 145 to 147 when his illness was at its height; here too he delivered speeches, and indeed he understood oratory to be part of his recovery. He was important enough as an orator to perform for the emperor himself in 176 in Smyrna, and he acquitted himself well; his self-confidence was such that he was able to put on a show of coy indifference to the emperor’s arrival for a few days, only coming when summoned (VS 582–3). Unusually for a public figure at this time, he avoided public office, wriggling out of being archiereus (‘high priest’) of Asia, tax collector in Smyrna, and eirenarch (‘justice of the peace’) in Hadriani, and ultimately securing from the governor a total exemption from all liturgies. He did nonetheless have some involvement in 13 14

Boulanger (1923); Behr (1968); Bowersock (1969) 36–40; Behr (1994). The grammatikos taught language, literature, and basic rhetoric.

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Introduction

politics, twice welcoming the incoming Roman governor of Asia (Or. 17, 21), addressing the koinon (‘provincial council’) of Asia on the subject of concord (Or. 23) and the city of Rhodes on the same theme (Or. 24), and most famously in successfully petitioning the emperor for assistance after Smyrna was struck by an earthquake in 177 (Or. 19; cf. 18, 20). Though his declamations seem to have been unusual in certain respects, their sophistication and length, together with the fact that they make up fully half of the extant declamations from this period, make Aristides something close to the hero of this study. We have twelve declamations in all.15 Orations 5 and 6 are a pair of declamations for and against sending reinforcements to the Athenian expedition to Sicily during the Peloponnesian War.16 Oration 7 argues that Athens should accept the Spartan offer of peace after the events at Sphacteria in 425 bce;17 Oration 8 is a speech by a Spartan against the proposed destruction of Athens after her final defeat in 404. Orations 9 and 10 are two attempts at the same scenario, Demosthenes’ attempt to persuade the Thebans to join Athens in resisting Philip immediately prior to the Battle of Chaeronea.18 Orations 11 to 15 represent Athenian deliberations after the Battle of Leuctra, and the individual speeches make arguments in favour of allying with Sparta, in favour of allying with Thebes, and in favour of neutrality.19 Oration 16 is a rare mythological declamation based on Iliad 9, in which the speaker attempts to persuade Achilles to accept Agamemnon’s gifts and return to battle.20 These works won Aristides the respect of contemporaries and posterity alike. Though Philostratus criticises his poor improvisational skills and reports some criticisms by others, the tone of his account is very much respectful, and he calls Aristides ‘the most technically correct of the sophists’ (τεχνικώτατος σοφιστῶν, VS 585).21 Other authors to praise Aristides include the rhetorician Hermogenes, the lexicographer Phrynichus, Galen,22 and Menander Rhetor, and he continued to enjoy a high reputation in Late Antiquity and Byzantium.23 If Aristides and Lucian were in some ways outsiders, our next declaimer was not.24 Herodes Atticus (c. 101–77) was born in that most classicising of 15 16 18 19 20 22 23 24

Text in Lenz and Behr (1976); translations in Behr (1981). Heath (1995) 214–23 translates Or. 15. Discussion (mostly paraphrase) in Boulanger (1923) 271–93. Text, French translation, and commentary in Pernot (1981). 17 Russo (2016). Tomassi (2016). The fifth speech is analysed briefly in terms of rhetorical theory by Heath (1995) 211–13. Kindstrand (1973) 215–19. 21 Cf. Eshleman (2012) 132–3. This remark is preserved in Arabic (Schröder (1934) 33). For these and other contemporary and later opinions, see RE ii.1 col. 891–2. Graindor (1930); Ameling (1983); Tobin (1997).

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Introduction

5

locales, Marathon. His father had been the first Greek from the East to be elected consul (specifically, consul suffectus), and his ancestors had been archiereus of the imperial cult in Greece. As a child, he received a traditional education and lived in Rome during his father’s consulship. He received a string of honours: at Athens, he was agoranomos (‘market overseer’), eponymous archon, and agonothetes (‘steward of the games’) of the newly established Panhellenium; at Rome, he was quaestor, tribune of the people, praetor, and ultimately consul ordinarius. He also held the post of corrector of the free cities of Asia. This last office gave him the power as the emperor’s representative to regulate the affairs of cities that had previously lain outside of the governor’s jurisdiction. Such a power was novel and potentially quite intrusive to the touchy cities of Asia Minor, and its exercise must have required considerable tact. He undertook building projects on an enormous scale all over Greece, including the Panathenaic stadium and his Odeon at Athens, the nymphaeum at Olympia, and a spectacular theatre at Corinth; allegedly he aspired even to cut through the Isthmus of Corinth (VS 551–2). He was on familiar terms with the imperial family: as a young man, he had been sent on an embassy to Hadrian, who had only just become emperor; he had taught the future emperor Marcus Aurelius and his brother Verus rhetoric as boys; and he may late in life even have initiated the former into the Eleusinian mysteries as mystagogus. But for all the privileges he enjoyed, his political career was stormy. In the late 130s, he got into trouble for trying to prevent the execution of his father’s will, which had promised one mina a year to all Athenian citizens; in the early 140s, in an obscure legal case against a political rival, Demostratus, he ended up ranged against Marcus’ confidant and former tutor Fronto. Later, in the early 170s, in a complicated chain of events he found himself in a quarrel with the two governors of Greece, the Quintilii brothers, and his Athenian enemies, who accused him of tyranny; the case eventually came before Marcus, who, if Philostratus is to be believed, acquitted Herodes against his better judgement.25 His personal life was no less melodramatic. He was acquitted of the charge of having killed his wife, and of the six children he fathered and three he adopted, only one survived to adulthood. Herodes, in short, was larger than life, surpassing his contemporaries in his wealth, the honours he received, his imperial connections, his building projects, and even his quarrels. In Athens, he was at the very heart of Greek 25

On this quarrel, see Graindor (1930) 111–36, Bowersock (1969) 93–100, Ameling (1983) 136–51, Kennell (1997), and Tobin (1997).

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Introduction

imperial culture, but he was also intimate with the imperial court and, as corrector of the free cities of Asia, part of the imperial administration. Not for nothing was he the central figure round which the whole of Philostratus’ Vitae sophistarum is constructed. Yet there is a risk that all this other activity, recorded in such dramatic detail by Philostratus, coupled with the loss of all but one of his works, might cause us to forget that Herodes’ primary occupation was as a practitioner of rhetoric. Philostratus indeed specifically states that Herodes was more in love with extempore oratory than he was with the reputation that came with being a consul and the descendant of consuls (VS 536). Among the honorific appellations bestowed on him by his peers in Philostratus, we find ‘King of Words’ (τὸν βασιλέα τῶν λόγων, VS 586, 598, from Hadrian of Tyre and Rufus of Perinthus), ‘Tongue of the Greeks’ (Ἑλλήνων γλῶτταν, VS 598, from Rufus of Perinthus), ‘equal to Demosthenes’ (ὡς Δημοσθένης, VS 539, from a crowd at Olympia), and the ‘Fatted Orator’ (σιτευτὸν ῥήτορα, VS 565) on account of his extensive learning. According to Philostratus, ‘Greece’ (Ἑλλάδος) itself proclaimed him to have entered the canon of the ten Attic orators (VS 564); Philostratus judged him the best of sophists in every respect (VS 565); when he worried aloud about what legacy he would leave, one Ctesidemus cited first his speeches ‘saying that they left nothing for another man to do’ (ὡς οὐκ ἐχόντων ὑπερβολὴν ἑτἑρῳ, VS 552). Nor is testimony to Herodes’ eloquence only found in his admiring biographer Philostratus. In Aulus Gellius, we hear that ‘he far surpassed almost all the men of our time in the distinction, fluency, and elegance of his words’ (fere omnes memoriae nostrae universos gravitate atque copia et elegantia vocum longe praestitit, 19.12.1). Astonishingly, only a single declamation by Herodes has survived, and a rather short and plain one at that. In this text, set in the fifth century bce, the speaker attempts to persuade the people of Larissa to join Sparta against the Macedonian king Archelaus.26 While Herodes was corrector of the free cities of Asia, he took the chance to go to Smyrna to hear declamations delivered by Polemo of Laodicea. For all that Herodes was himself a very accomplished orator, he was bowled over by the local sophist’s performance. He heard three declamations over three days and confessed in a letter to a friend that he had listened ‘to Polemo’s first declamation like a juror, to the one after that like a lover, ’ (τὴν μὲν πρώτην ὡς οἱ δικάζοντες, τὴν δ’ ἐφεξῆς ὡς 26

Text and commentary in Albini (1968); text and Italian translation in Mariotta (2006). Brief discussion in Boulanger (1923) 101–2.

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Introduction

7

οἱ ἐρῶντες, , VS 538); he responded in characteristic fashion with a gift of 150,000 drachmas, which he later upped to 250,000. Later, when he was acclaimed for his version of one of the declamations that he had heard Polemo deliver, he quipped ‘read Polemo’s declamation and you will know a man!’ (τὴν Πολέμωνος . . . μελέτην ἀνάγνωτε, καὶ εἴσεσθε ἄνδρα, VS 539); when the crowds at Olympia were acclaiming him as being as good as Demosthenes, he expressed the wish that he could at least be as good as Polemo (VS 539); later, he praised the declaimer before the emperor Marcus. Who was this man? Like Herodes himself, Polemo was born into a distinguished family, descended from the Hellenistic kings of Pontus and men of consular rank (VS 530).27 But Polemo seems to have been altogether more brash – for instance, travelling with a long train of baggage animals while he rode in a chariot (VS 532) – and he was happy to declaim on the spot, even before Herodes when he came to Smyrna as corrector (VS 536–7). Like Herodes, he was showered with honours by his (adopted) city: he held the office of strategos (‘general’), presided over the Olympic games established by Hadrian there, and had the right to ride on the sacred ship of Dionysus that was dragged to the centre of the city each year as part of a religious parade (VS 530–1). Like Herodes, Polemo was on familiar terms with emperors. Philostratus reports that he secured enormous benefactions for Smryna from Hadrian, and indeed Polemo appears first in an important inscription listing the city’s benefactors (IGRom. iv 1431). When it came time for the temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens finally to be dedicated, it was Polemo to whom the emperor turned (VS 533). Polemo indeed received so many favours from the emperor that his great-grandson could make a show of rejecting gifts from the emperor with the words ‘crowns . . . and immunities and free meals and the latus clavus28 and priesthoods were bequeathed by my great-grandfather to his descendants. So why today should I ask you for what I have so long possessed?’ (στεφάνους μέν . . . καὶ ἀτελείας καὶ σιτήσεις καὶ πορφύραν καὶ τὸ ἱερᾶσθαι ὁ πάππος ἡμῖν τοῖς ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ παρέδωκε, καὶ τί ἂν αἰτοίην παρὰ σοῦ τήμερον, ἅ ἐκ τοσούτου ἔχω; VS 611). But as in the case of Herodes, Philostratus presents the relationship as a very personal one, recounting how Hadrian intervened to save Polemo from the charge of peculation (VS 533) and how Hadrian took with good humour Polemo’s indignant expulsion of Antoninus from his house when he arrived home to find that the emperor’s son had taken 27 28

Jüttner (1898); Gleason (1995) 21–54; Campanile (1999); Quet (2003). This ‘broad purple stripe’ was worn by senators on their tunics as a sign of rank.

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Introduction

up residence there (VS 533–5). In short, as Philostratus put it, Polemo conversed with rulers from a position of no inferiority (ἀπὸ τοῦ μὴ ὑφειμένου, VS 535). Like Herodes, Polemo was very active in the turbulent political life of his adopted city. Philostratus describes briefly Polemo’s role in settling stasis (‘strife’) between the two factions of men from the higher district and men from the shore (VS 531), and a more general role in correcting political mistakes (VS 531). But as in the case of Herodes, we should not forget that Polemo’s main occupation (along with a side interest in physiognomy) was that of teacher of rhetoric, and his school in Smyrna is said to have attracted students from far and wide (VS 531). As we have seen (p. 6–7), he may even have been a better declaimer than Herodes; the orator Dionysius of Miletus said that he got heart palpitations when he considered how many admirers Polemo had, saying that ‘to some of them his mouth seems to have twelve springs, while others measure his tongue in cubits’ (τοῖς μὲν δωδεκάκρουνος δοκεῖ τὸ στόμα, οἱ δὲ καὶ πήχεσι διαμετροῦσι τὴν γλῶτταν, VS 525); several generations after, Hippodromus the Thessalian considered comparison of his oratory with Polemo’s as tantamount to a comparison with an immortal god (VS 616); later ages shared this judgement.29 We have a pair of declamations in which the fathers of two fighters killed at Marathon, Cynegirus and Callimachus, argue in turn that it was their son who fought most bravely of all those who died in the battle, and that they therefore have the right to deliver the eulogy over the dead.30 Philostratus’ biography for our next declaimer, Hadrian of Tyre, is rather shorter, but enough to show that he was a sophist very much in the mould of Herodes Atticus and Polemo; indeed, he had been a student of the former and delivered the eulogy at his funeral (VS 586). We know that he was in Rome in 163, where we find him in attendance at one of Galen’s lectures (xiv 627 Kühn); we also find him in Ephesus in the 160s; in 176, Marcus made him chair of the school of rhetoric in Athens; in around 180, he was appointed the head of the Greek school of rhetoric at Rome; finally, shortly before his death, Commodus appointed him to be the secretary of his Greek correspondence, his ab epistulis Graecis (VS 590). Like his predecessors, he was familiar with emperors, impressing when he delivered a declamation on a topic proposed by Marcus and winning the usual 29 30

Stegemann (1952) RE xxi.2 cols. 1354–7. Reader (1996) offers a text, very literal translation, and commentary, but that text is problematic (Stefec (2013) 113–14), and much of the commentary aimed at beginners. Stefec’s Oxford Classical Text is to be preferred (Stefec (2016)). Brief discussions in Boulanger (1923) 92–4, Reardon (1971) 107–9, Schmitz (1997) 200–5, and Whitmarsh (2012) 74–6.

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Introduction

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catalogue of civic honours for his troubles: a seat of honour at public games, immunity from taxes, priesthoods, and other gifts (VS 588–9). The style, too, was brash: expensive clothes, grand arrivals at lectures in a carriage with silver bridles, games, wine, hunting (VS 586–7). And even in a shorter biography, Philostratus still finds space for dramatic local politics. In the case of Hadrian, he had been accused of murder after his students had the offensive student of a rival sophist beaten up, and the student subsequently died (VS 587–8). His oratory was well regarded: Herodes, on hearing Hadrian declaim as a youth, had remarked ‘these could be the great fragments of a colossus’ (κολοσσοῦ ταῦτα μεγάλα σπαράγματ’ ν εἴη, VS 586); Menander Rhetor later recommended him as a model (386.29–387.2); Libanius possessed a copy of his works (Ep. 546). We have two very short declamations. The manuscripts accurately describe the scenario of the first as follows: ‘efforts to put to death a woman convicted of witchcraft by burning result in failure. Another woman promises to burn the woman and succeeds in doing so. Hadrian the rhetor moves that this woman be burned also’ (ἁλοῦσά τις γυνὴ φαρμακείας οὐχ οἵα τε ἦν καυθῆναι∙ ὑπέσχετό τις ἑτἑρα γυνὴ καύσειν αὐτὴν καὶ ἔκαυσεν. ἀξιοῖ Ἀδριανὸς ὁ ῥήτωρ καὶ ταύτην καῆναι, 70.1–5). In the second, mercenaries who have washed away an enemy camp by diverting a river protest when they are denied their pay.31 The final declaimer whose work has survived to our time is the shadowy Lesbonax. Despite our ignorance of his career, he may in fact have been a significant declaimer. A complimentary reference in the scholia to Lucian compares him to Nicostratus, another orator whom rhetorical theorists clearly regarded highly.32 We have three surviving declamations.33 In the first extremely short and possibly incomplete piece, an Athenian exhorts his fellow citizens to take vengeance on the Thebans for the destruction of Plataea in 427 bce. Of the second, slightly longer piece, we can only say that it is an exhortation to battle: there is no indication of either time or place. The third piece, of a similar length to the second, is another exhortation to battle, this time clearly a battle against Spartans, probably set shortly after 413 bce.34 31

32 33 34

Texts in Amato (2009); Italian translations in Amato and Ventrella (2009). The latter text was long attributed to the Babyloniaca of Iamblichus (including, rather surprisingly, by Russell (1983) 4 n. 9), but an examination of the manuscript shows that this is clearly incorrect (Schneider-Menzel (1948); Borgogno (1973)). Rabe (1906) 189. For the testimonia on Nicostratus, see RE xvii.1 cols. 551–3. Text and brief Latin commentary in Kiehr (1907). Discussion in Amato and Sauterel (2010). Kiehr (1907) 7.

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Our declaimers, in short, were men of the world. They were among the leading men of their cities or adopted cities, showered with honours. They associated with emperors, sometimes even on quite familiar terms. But they did not necessarily have easy lives either: they knew setbacks in their political lives and tragedies in their personal lives. And yet for all that, these men devoted enormous amounts of time and energy to role-playing as figures from the fifth and fourth centuries. This book seeks the reasons for this extraordinary outburst of classicism. The question cuts to the heart of Greek imperial literature. It is not just that Greek declamation ranks among the most significant cultural practices of the Roman empire, though it certainly does. In the genre’s more or less continuous 1,700-year history, which runs from the Hellenistic period to the fall of Byzantium,35 we know of roughly 500 unique declamation titles36 mentioned in about 3,000 citations,37 and there are over 1,000 entries in Janiszewski, Stebnicka, and Szabat’s Prosopography of Greek rhetors and sophists of the Roman empire,38 twenty-seven declaimers mentioned in the Suda,39 and nine in Photius’ Bibliotheca;40 we even know of two Roman emperors who declaimed, Hadrian and Manuel II Palaeologus (1391–425).41 Most elite males would have been acquainted with declamation at first hand, through themselves declaiming in the course of their education.42 Those who excelled could become professional declaimers and potentially superstars, known as ‘sophists’,43 giving performances all over the Mediterranean, as the careers of Lucian or even the sickly Aristides show. The rest of the elite sat in the audience (and while there is some controversy over the size of audiences, there can be no doubt that the visit of a star sophist was a major cultural event in 35

36 37 38 39 40 41

42 43

Hellenistic declamation: Lasserre (1979) 159–61; Fairweather (1981) 104–15; Kremmydas (2013). Byzantine declamation: Kennedy (1983) 320–1, Constantinides (2003), Maggiorini (2015), and below, pp. 180–2. This figure is derived from an unpublished catalogue of declamation titles shared with me by Malcolm Heath. Patillon (2001) xci–cii. Obviously not all of these figures declaimed themselves, though many did: even of those who did not, a great number supported declamation through the production of rhetorical theory. α 528, α 3918, α 4203, β 259, γ 9, γ 132, γ 481, ε 2741, ε 3750, ι 348, θ 342, θ 343, κ 1449, λ 486, μ 1010, ν 394 & ν 395, ο 327, ο 912, π 809, π 1951, π 2108, π 2301, π 2375, σ 189, σ 475, φ 421 & φ 422, φ 423. Codd. 90, 100, 128, 132, 133, 134, 135, 165 & 243, 246–8. Photius apparently read some declamations of Hadrian (cod. 100), which he describes as ‘distinguished by their moderation in language, and not unpleasant’ (εἰς τὸ μέτριον τοῦ λόγου ἀνηγμέναι καὶ οὐκ ἀηδεῖς). Manuel II Palaeologus: Boissonade (1830) 274–307; Foerster (1903) 5.226–7. Marrou (1965) 303–7; Cribiore (2005) 231–8. Bowersock (1969) 12–15; Bowie (1970) 5. The term seems also more neutrally to designate simply a teacher of rhetoric (Brunt (1994) 30; Swain (1996) 97–8), and many declaimers did indeed teach.

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elite life;44 even Roman emperors sometimes came along).45 The sums declaimers commanded could be astronomical, such as the 250,000 drachmas Herodes paid Polemo (Philostr. VS 538).46 The epigraphic and numismatic record reinforces the picture given to us by our written sources, with a great upsurge in the occurrences of the terms ‘orator’ (ῥήτωρ) and ‘sophist’ (σοφιστής) in this period; we even have an inscription commemorating Lollianus as ‘excellent . . . in declamations’ (μελέτῃσί . . . ἄριστον).47 One particular index of declamation’s importance can be seen in the vast mass of rhetorical theory offering guidance in how to declaim that was produced in this period.48 Aristotle’s rhetoric was superseded, while many of the handbooks written in this period became canonical in later centuries, above all the works of Hermogenes. The notion of stasis (στάσις), the key ‘issue’ at the heart of any dispute, went from being simply a pointer to a list of topics likely to be useful in a particular case to the heart of the whole system, offering a sophisticated ready-made template for one’s speech. Stylistic analysis, too, got enormously more complicated, moving from the classical division into three or four tyes of style to up to thirteen or even twenty types of style. Particularly notable for our purposes is the lively culture of commentary on declamation that this theory sustained. While much of the surviving evidence for rhetorical commentary is later, we can with confidence project back to our period the writing of prolegomena (‘introductions’), hypotheses (‘summaries’), theoriai (‘theoretical prefaces’), and commentaries to our declamations. As I argued in my doctoral thesis, this paratextual material reveals that declamation did not simply follow theory’s rules, but rather was in dialogue with theory, frequently extending, nuancing, splicing, testing, critiquing, disregarding, or even parodying it.49 44

45 46 47

48

Schmitz (1997) 160–8 makes the case for large audiences but relies on sophistic sources, which obviously have an interest in presenting audiences as as large as possible. Nesselrath (1998) and Korenjak (2000) 41–6 further caution that the most typical venues for sophistic performances, such as council chambers, had relatively limited capacity, probably in the hundreds; the kinds of close interaction between author and audience we see in declamation also speak in favour of relatively smaller audiences (cf. below, pp. 86–87). But we know of at least one declamation performed at a festival (Luc. Pseudol. 5), where audiences could have been very large indeed, and it is hard to believe that Herodes Atticus’ Odeon, which could hold 5,000, was not used as a venue for declamation. Cf. below, pp. 81–4. Philostr. VS 577, 582–3, 588–9, 593, 601 and 625–6, and perhaps 614 and 623; cf. also Sen. Controv. 10.5.21–2. Cf. VS 521, 538, 574, 605 and Schmitz (2017) 172–4. Schmitz (1997) 14–17; Puech (2002) 6. Lollianus: Puech (2002) 327–9. Such evidence goes a long way towards refuting Brunt’s famous dismissal of the Second Sophistic as a mere ‘bubble’ (Brunt (1994)), which followed on from Wilamowitz-Möllendorff (1925). Heath (1995); Heath (2004). 49 Guast (2016).

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All this theoretical activity reveals the sophistication of the thought and the sheer quantity of cultural energy that went into declamation: the genre was an altogether more thoughtful business than has sometimes been supposed, with declaimers well aware that their words could be preserved and potentially picked over for years if not centuries to come. This is all significant. But the ultimate significance of declamation’s classicism lies not in the number of declamations produced nor the number of declaimers active nor even the fees they commanded. Nor is it to be found in the comparative neglect of Greek declamation, in contrast to the progress made elsewhere in the study of Greek imperial literature, which has been a real growth area in Classical Studies since the 1970s, with a rash of work on the novelists,50 Lucian,51 Dio Chrysostom,52 Pausanias,53 Plutarch,54 and Philostratus,55 to name only the most central figures, and in contrast to Latin declamation, which is now relatively well studied.56 Important too is declamation’s influence on other contemporary genres, though that influence can be felt in historiography, in the Greek novel, in philosophy, and in epistolography, to name only its most notable manifestations;57 indeed, in Reardon’s seminal study, rhetoric is one of the major literary currents of this period, with chapters devoted to ‘la création rhétorique’ (the creative use of rhetorical forms) and ‘la rhétorique appliquée’ (the use of rhetoric in other genres).58 But the most urgent reason for an investigation of declamation’s classicism is that the question of the relationship of classical past and 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

57

58

A huge topic: for orientation, see Bowie and Harrison (1993), Swain (1999), and Whitmarsh (2008). Baldwin (1973); Anderson (1976); Hall (1981); Jones (1986); Branham (1989); Billault (1994); Goldhill (2002); Bartley (2009). Desideri (1978); Jones (1978); Moles (1978); Swain (2000). Habicht (1985); Arafat (1996); Musti and Bingen (1996); Alcock, Cherry, and Elsner (2001); Hutton (2005); Pretzler (2007). Jones (1971); Russell (1973); Scardigli (1995); Swain (1996) 135–86; Mossman and Bowie (1997); Duff (1999); Pelling (2002); Stadter (2015). Anderson (1986); Flinterman (1995); Billault (2000); Bowie and Elsner (2009); Hodkinson (2011). A selection of recent studies: Bloomer (1997); Bloomer (1997a); Richlin (1997); Connolly (1998); Imber (2001); Kaster (2001); Gunderson (2003); Habinek (2005); Corbeill (2007); Dugan (2007). For all the interaction between Latin and Greek declamation, most ancient sources do seem to distinguish the two traditions clearly: Philostratus mentions no Latin declaimers at all, and while modern criticism is probably right to see in Seneca the Elder no particular prejudice against Greek declamation as a whole, his Controversiae nonetheless work with a fairly clear distinction between Latin and Greek (Sussman (1978) 90–1; Fairweather (1981) 23–6). Historiography: Reardon (1971) 206–19; Anderson (1993) 105–14. The novel: Russell (1983) 38; Anderson (1993) 156–70; Whitmarsh (2005) 86–9. Philosophy: Anderson (1993) 133–43. Epistolography: Reardon (1971) 180–5; Anderson (1989) 113–15; Rosenmeyer (2001) 259–60; Vicente Sánchez (2011). Reardon (1971) 155–231. Cf. Boulanger (1923) 42–9 (rather negative) and Whitmarsh (2005) 74–89.

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imperial present is fundamental for all literature in this period,59 and indeed for this period’s wider culture; Millar called this ‘the most crucial question about the culture and society of later Antiquity’.60 Much Greek imperial literature, as is well known, is written in an Atticising Kunstsprache (‘artificial language’) that imitates the language of the classical literature of fifth- and fourth-century Athens,61 and, as Bowie demonstrated long ago, many other genres share with declamation (though never quite to the same degree) the high proportion of classical subject matter (the history of the Greek world after the death of Alexander was not often treated by authors in this period, and when it was covered, it was usually in the context of Roman history).62 In nonliterary culture, meanwhile, we find Roman names Hellenised, along with contemporary jargon: ‘Fronto’ becomes Φρόντις, provinces σατραπεῖαι (‘satrapies’).63 The same archaism can be observed in the art of the period, where the classical canons of Phidias, Myron, and Polyclitus became unimpeachable, and even in systems of measurement and dating.64 Our answer to the problem of declamation’s classicism, then, will have implications for the entire culture of the period.

Greek Declamation and the Roman Empire When it comes to the relationship of past and present in declamation, the majority of scholars have emphasised the differences between the typical subject matter of declamation and the world in which it was produced; Schmitz describes this view as one of ‘a literature that had turned away from the world’.65 This has tended to lead to declamation being read (or indeed, not being read) as ‘nostalgic’, as a chance for imperial Greeks dissatisfied with their apparent political impotence in the Roman empire to escape to a happier past. But the nostalgic genre thus envisioned would be at odds with the sophistication and indeed self-awareness of previous and contemporary Greek literature, and indeed at odds with current scholarship on Greek imperial literature, which is uncovering contemporary significance in 59 60 61

62 63 64 65

Anderson (1993) 69–85, 101–32; Swain (1996) 65–100; Whitmarsh (2001) 41–89. Millar (1969) 12. Schmid (1887) is the fundamental work on Atticism: see also Reardon (1971) 81–96, Kennedy (1983) 45–51, Anderson (1993) 86–100, Swain (1996) 43–64, Schmitz (1997) 67–96, Whitmarsh (2005) 41– 56, and Kim (2017). Bowie (1970). For the Hellenisation of Latin names, see Luc. Hist. conscr. 21; for technical terms, see Mason (1974). Art: Bowie (1970) 34–5. Measurement and dating: Bowie (1970) 33–4. ‘Eine weltabgewandte Literatur’ (Schmitz (1997) 18).

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a range of genres.66 Most importantly, it would be at odds with the almost universal ancient assumption that the past was useful for the present. This book takes a different approach. The book falls into two halves, with the first putting forward a model of past–present relationship for the genre which is then exemplified and explored through extended readings of declamations in the second. Such extended readings are important to my argument. It is my conviction that it is precisely and only in the texts of Greek declamation, in all of their details, that the genre’s sophisticated interaction with the present is fully to be grasped. Such extended readings are revealingly absent from most traditional accounts of the genre. In Chapter 1, after rejecting the notion that declamation’s relationship with the past was one purely of nostalgia, I explore the modes by which declamation’s audiences could make use of the history that was presented to them, drawing on the ways in which the classical past is used in other imperial genres, particularly biography and political oratory, but ultimately considering also what is distinctive about declamation. In the second chapter, I move from modes to materials, and through a survey of the corpus of surviving first- to third-century declamations, set out the great range of areas in Greek imperial life for which the genre offered materials for reflection. In the third chapter, I examine in detail what is known about the performance context of declamation to consider how in very practical terms an audience might be led from a fiction set in the world of classical Greece to the world in which they lived. The theoretical foundations laid, I then proceed in the second half of the book to examples. In Chapter 4, I consider declamation and the individual, and the way in which declaimers (and sometimes their audiences too) skilfully manipulated declamation’s parade of characters as powerful and subtle instruments of identity formation and social interaction. In Chapters 5 and 6, I move beyond the individual to consider declamation within the broader context of Greek imperial history. Declamation offered raw materials for thinking about a great range of issues, but in these chapters, I take as my case studies the contemporary significance of declamations on Macedonian imperialism and on strife between cities. Through these studies, Greek declamation emerges as something like the Greek tragedy of the imperial age, a privileged site for free thinking on issues of major contemporary importance; various parallels to tragedy will be noted passim. Finally, in the 66

For the political import of the Greek novel, see Alvares (2001a); Alvares (2001b); Connors (2002); Schwartz (2003); Alvares (2007); Smith (2007) 10–13, 82–3 n. 57, 90–2, 134–40; Jolowicz (2021). Smith (2014) 67–99, 159–65, 170–6, 215–48 has demonstrated how even a work on animals like Aelian’s De natura animalium can offer thoughtful reflections on Severan Rome.

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Conclusion, I widen the chronological framework and survey briefly declamation’s interaction with the contexts in which it was composed in other periods, from the Hellenistic period to Byzantium and the Renaissance, and offer some concluding reflections on declamation’s ability to be relevant, in all periods and in the Greek imperial period in particular. It is as well to be clear about the basic mode of argument from the outset. We do not have direct evidence for the contemporary significance of Greek declamation, outside of one or two brief remarks in our sources. The argument of this book is rather principally inferential, with the cumulative weight of evidence – both of the similarity of past and present and of the frequency with which Greek imperial audiences moved between the two – turning a possibility into an overwhelming probability. Such a mode of argument is of course common in classical literary criticism, most obviously in studies of the politics of Greek tragedy in recent decades. Individual readers may well differ in their verdicts about individual cases (just as ancient audiences doubtless did), but to be disappointed by a lack of smoking guns would be to misunderstand the argument. One thing that the second half of the book does not contain is extended readings of plasmata. Unfortunately, the surviving evidence does not permit this. Of the twenty-four declamations that have survived from our chosen period (the second and third centuries), no more than seven could be considered plasmata, and almost all of these are atypical in some way. Lucian’s Tyrannicida and Abdicatus are typical in length and subject matter, but as I have argued elsewhere, the Tyrannicida is a kind of parody of the whole genre, and I suspect that the Abdicatus is also.67 Furthermore, while plasmata are loosely set in a world that evokes the classical past, there is nothing in the scenario of the Abdicatus, nor indeed in Lucian’s realisation of it, that is specific to the classical period, or indeed to any period of Greek history. It is of limited use, therefore, in exploring the contemporary relevance of classical Greek history in the time of the Roman empire. Lucian’s other two declamations, meanwhile, Phalaris 1 and Phalaris 2, are unique in both subject matter and presentation. Declamations on archaic history are very rare, and this pair represents to the best of my knowledge the only declamations in either Greek or Latin that involve the tyrant of Acragas. It is also to the best of my knowledge unparalleled for a declamation to be set within a frame narrative (Phalaris’ words in Phal. 1 are relayed by ambassadors). These texts should probably therefore be 67

Guast (2018).

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regarded as being on the very periphery of the genre. Finally, these are also very short texts: the first is seven pages in the edition of Macleod, and the second only four. Hadrian of Tyre’s two surviving declamations suffer from the same problem: while they are assuredly plasmata, they are extremely short (one and two pages long, respectively), to the point that they should perhaps be considered fragments. The final surviving plasma is Lesbonax’s second declamation. But this text is only six pages long and is colourless to the point that it is unclear both whether it is a plasma or a historical declamation and whether it is a full declamation or a fragment. The inadequacy of the corpus of second- and third-century plasmata is manifest when we compare them to the plasmata of Libanius or Choricius, which match historical declamations in their elaboration, both in length and style. Plasmata of such sophistication were almost certainly delivered in our period (albeit less commonly than outright historical declamations),68 but the vagaries of transmission mean that none of these have reached us, or rather reached us in their original state. The contemporary relevance of plasmata, then, is something that can be proved only in general, not in detail. I draw on the texts of the surviving plasmata wherever possible to support my readings of the historical declamations in the second half of this book, and, as will be seen, quite a lot can be divined about the contemporary resonances of plasmata from the great number of titles we know of, above all in the second chapter. I intend this book to be a contribution to (if not a work of) Reception Studies. I have found stimulating much recent work on the reception of classical antiquity and hope that my work may in turn be of interest to reception scholars and thus repay a little of my debt. I would not be so bold as to claim for my subjects the title of ‘the first Classicists’ (even Homer, after all, is a classicist of sorts), but in the longue durée of reception, they are certainly among the first, and the question of how Roman Greeks made sense of the canonical texts of Greek literature, written five or more centuries before, in a world very different from their own, is very much a question of reception, and will, I hope, prove suggestive for those pondering similar questions in later periods. Such ‘Ancient Reception Studies’, which brings ancient and modern reception into dialogue with one another, is an area of real promise for the future. This book’s title alludes to Bowersock’s seminal Greek sophists in the Roman empire (1969), but does so through the lens of Whitmarsh’s Greek 68

E.g. ‘the adulterer unmasked’ (ὅ τε μοιχὸς ἐγκεκαλυμμένος, VS 542) or ‘the man who fell in love with a statue’ (τοῦ τῆς εἰκόνος ἐρῶντος, VS 598–9).

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literature and the Roman empire: the politics of imitation (2001). Just as Bowersock aimed to restore the sophists to their rightful place in the history of the Roman empire, and Whitmarsh sought to add the sophists’ literary output to that story, so I aim to make the picture (more) complete by focusing on the most important part of that literary output, the sophists’ declamations, and asking what these can contribute to the history of the time. My focus on the dynamics of past and present should not be taken to indicate that I do not consider other aspects of the genre worthwhile avenues of enquiry. In recent times, Schmitz has advanced the study of declamation considerably by showing how the genre was one of many vehicles for a literary language and culture that reflected and maintained the privileged position of Greek elites; Whitmarsh’s 2005 libellus takes a similar line.69 Rhetorical theory, too, has only a supporting role in this study, though here too I consider the approach assuredly a valuable one. But it is the question of declamation’s classicism that seems most urgent. 69

Schmitz (1997); Whitmarsh (2005). No account has yet been given, however, of why such material was delivered in the form of a declamation, rather than simply in non-declamatory epideictic speeches such as, for example, Aelius Aristides’ lengthy and influential account of classical Athenian history in his Panathenaic Oration (Or. 1). Furthermore, such an approach cannot (yet) account for individual declamations: it cannot really explain why this scenario was preferred to that, or why a given scenario was developed in this way rather than that.

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chapter 1

Exempla and Exemplarity

This chapter – and indeed ultimately this whole book – sets out to take declamation’s classicism seriously. After rejecting as tendentious ancient and modern accounts of declamation that stress the difference between classical past and imperial present, I explore the resources the genre offered to authors and audiences for reflecting deeply on their lives – not simply by providing examples (exempla) to follow or avoid, but also by helping them to get a sense of the distinctive qualities of a contemporary situation, to appreciate correctly a situation’s true scale, and to recognise abiding truths about human character, motivation, and decisionmaking. (This chapter is concerned with the modes by which the past could be processed; a full survey of the particular spheres of interaction between declamation and life is postponed until Chapter 2.) Some of this the genre has in common with other imperial genres, but I also consider the distinctive flavour of the reflections that declamation could trigger, implicit, and open-ended.

‘As If They Were Some Great Good’ Scholars have traditionally stressed the gap between the classical history that declamation explores and the context in which it was composed, with the practice of declamation seen as constituting an interaction with that past no more sophisticated than a sort of general nostalgic longing for lost political and military freedoms. Marrou declared that declamation ‘turned its back on the real’; Bowie spoke of an ‘attempt to pretend that the past is still present’.1 This modern idea is not without ancient antecedents. There are some sources that appear to talk of the irrelevance of declamation in the high Roman empire; some of these, indeed, have become almost clichés of 1

‘tournait . . . le dos au réel’ (Marrou (1965) 304); Bowie (1970) 36.

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declamation scholarship. In Lucian’s Rhetorum praeceptor, an admittedly unsympathetic character attacks conventional teachers of rhetoric as: νεκροὺς εἰς μίμησιν παλαιοὺς προτιθεὶς καὶ ἀνορύττειν ἀξιῶν λόγους πάλαι κατορωρυγμένους ὥς τι μέγιστον ἀγαθόν, μαχαιροποιοῦ υἱὸν καὶ ἄλλον Ἀτρομήτου τινὸς γραμματιστοῦ ζηλοῦν ἀξιῶν, καὶ ταῦτα ἐν εἰρήνῃ μήτε Φιλίππου ἐπιόντος μήτε Ἀλεξάνδρου ἐπιτάττοντος, ὅπου τὰ ἐκείνων ἴσως ἐδόκει χρήσιμα. (Luc. Rh. pr. 10) presenting for imitation dead men from ancient history, and expecting you to dig up speeches that have been long buried as if they were some great good, and to vie with the son of a sword-maker [Demosthenes] and some other fellow [Aeschines], the son of one Atrometus, a primary school teacher, and that too in peace time, when there’s no Philip invading nor Alexander issuing commands – times when their speeches perhaps seemed useful.

Meanwhile, in a much less well-known but perhaps more straightforward passage Maximus of Tyre criticises declamation for concerning itself with subjects long dead or fictitious: οὐ περὶ Θεμιστοκλέους μόνον τοῦ μηκέτι ὄντος, οὐδ’ ἐπ’ Ἀθηναίοις τοῖς τότε, οὐδ’ ὑπὲρ ἀριστέως τοῦ μηδαμοῦ, οὐδὲ κατὰ μοιχοῦ λέγοντα μοιχὸν ὄντα, οὐδὲ κατὰ ὑβριστοῦ ὑβριστὴν ὄντα. (Max. Tyr. Or. 25.6)2 [He should] not speak only about the long-dead Themistocles, nor in praise of Athenians of that era, nor about a hero who doesn’t exist, nor in condemnation of an adulterer when he is an adulterer himself, nor against a rapist when he is a rapist himself.

These are the only two sources that allude to declamation specifically,3 but this sense of the difference between the classical history so beloved of the genre and the changed circumstances of Roman Greece can be found more widely in the literature of this period. Dio Chrysostom, for example, haranguing the Nicomedians on concord, discourses at length on the difference between the stakes in the present quarrel and those in the quarrels of Sparta and classical Athens (Or. 38). The present quarrel, he says, is not a fight for land and sea (22), or empire (25, 38), or liberty (27), nor over the right to impose taxes (22, 25, 26), nor even over where legal cases would be heard (25–6). The primacy that the Athenians and Spartans 2

3

The references to the stock characters of the ἀριστεύς and the μοιχός make it certain that it is declamation that is in view here. For the ἀριστεύς, see p. 63 n. 58; for the μοιχός, see e.g. Hermog. Stat. iii 2, iv 9, VS 542, 619. I consider the much-discussed passage from Plutarch’s Praecepta reipublicae gerendae (Mor. 814a–c) below (pp. 22–23).

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fought over and the primacy that Nicomedia and Nicaea are fighting over (24–5) are quite different things, he insists: ‘in proposing this struggle of yours do they speak of it as similar to that of the Athenians and Spartans?’ (trans. Crosby (1946); τοῦτο ὡς ὅμοιον ἐκείνῳ προβαλλόμενοι λέγουσιν; 25). Aristides pursues a very similar line of argument when speaking to the koinon of Asia in his Concerning Concord (Or. 23). The Athenians, Spartans, and Thebans, he argues, fought over autonomy and tribute (59); the present-day cities of Asia, by contrast, are fighting over none of these things (60) but rather are ‘dreaming’ (ὀνειρώττομεν) and fighting over a ‘shadow’ (σκιᾶς) of the past (63).

The Uses of History This view is well-enough attested that it cannot be dismissed out of hand. But whenever an argument is made for the relevance of the past, it is always possible for critics to place the emphasis on differences between past and present: if there were not differences of some kind, there would be mere identity. As Goldhill puts it, while the gap between example and generality is potentially damaging, it is also constitutive of the whole process of exemplarity.4 In truth, to focus on these few sources constitutes special pleading of the most extraordinary kind. For beside Lucian or Maximus of Tyre denouncing the irrelevance of the classical history that declamation relives must be set the pervasive view, still very much current in this period, that history was useful. As Millar put it, ‘it was the universal assumption of Antiquity that historical exempla were not mere verbal adornment, but that their perusal was both an essential element in character training and a primary means of acquiring the political and military skills necessary for public life’.5 The use of history was thought to consist most fundamentally in exemplarity:6 history offered examples of virtue to imitate and vice to avoid.7 In our period, explicit affirmations of history’s exemplary function can be found in Dio Chrysostom, Aelius Aristides, and even Lucian himself, and Aristides and Lucian are of course the authors of some of 4 6

7

Thus, Goldhill (2017) 416, summarising Goldhill (1994). 5 Millar (1969) 13. Exemplarity is now big business in Classical Studies, particularly on the Roman side. A full bibliography would be impossible, but I have profited particularly from Roller (2004), Roller (2018), Langlands (2008), Langlands (2011), and Langlands (2018). Work on Renaissance literature stole a march on Classics in this area: see particularly Hampton (1990). Maximus of Tyre grants only the first of these propositions, worrying that recounting evil actions will inspire fresh evils in our own time (Or. 22.6).

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The Uses of History

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our extant declamations.8 Plutarch in his Vita Demetrii compares himself to the aulos player Ismenias, who exhibited both good and bad musicians to his students, in order that they might learn whom to imitate and whose style to avoid (1.6); in his Quomodo quis suos in virtute sentiat profectus, he likens the great men of the past to a mirror before which readers can arrange and remodel themselves (85b).9 Such an approach is ultimately grounded in the belief that history to a greater or lesser degree repeats itself. This view finds explicit and canonical formulation in Thucydides (1.22) and is echoed ever after (e.g. Polyb. 9.2.5–6).10 Furthermore, there is no reason to think the past was only viewed in this way in formal history writing. Aristides himself says in his non-declamatory oratory that ‘there is this benefit to be gained from a knowledge of the past – using the most well-known examples for the present’ (ἔστι δὲ τοῦ παρεληλυθότος χρόνου τοῦτ’ ἀπολαύειν, παραδείγμασι τοῖς γνωριμωτάτοις χρωμένους εἰς τὰ παρόντα, Aristid. Or. 24.23). Indeed, writers recruit classical history to their side with such regularity in so many Greek imperial genres that for every isolated attack on the relevance of this material, one could readily cite 10 or 100 Greek imperial authors simply getting on and using it, usually so secure in such a procedure as to not feel the need for justification. For moderns, this may be uncomfortable. Centuries of historicism have trained us to look as much for discontinuity between the classical world and the present as continuity, while attacks on the canon and postmodernism’s scepticism towards any grand narratives have made the exemplary status of the classical past suspect.11 Yet our subjects (who had not read Koselleck) were classicists in the radical sense, men deeply committed to the idea of a great exemplary stream flowing down from the fifth and fourth centuries to their own time. Nor is it clear that we should attach much weight to the evidence of Lucian’s Rhetorum praeceptor or of Maximus of Tyre in the first place. As Whitmarsh has argued, drawing on work on satire in Latin and English literature, the voice of Lucian’s works is often self-deconstructing, and the humour very often at its own expense as much as at the expense of the 8

‘For history has one job, and one end: what is useful’ (ἓν γὰρ ἔργον ἱστορίας καὶ τέλος, τὸ χρήσιμον, Luc. Hist. consr. 9). Cf. D. Chyrs. Or. 18.9. 9 For exemplarity in Plutarch, see Pelling (1995) and Duff (1999), esp. 52–71. I make frequent use of Plutarch’s Vitae as a suggestive model for the reading of declamation in this chapter, not only because the Greek lives often treat the same characters as regularly feature in declamation, nor simply because of the existence of excellent recent studies, but also because they seem to have been much read in this period (Duff (1999) 3), something which both reflects and likely would have furthered the popularity of the modes by which they relate to the past. 10 In our period the idea is found (with Stoic flavouring) in the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (10.27). 11 Goldhill (2017).

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subject satirised.12 So too in the Rhetorum praeceptor: while part of the joke must indeed be the potential absurdity of studying speeches that were hundreds of years old, in view of the widespread belief in the usefulness of the history they contained, the joke seems to be on the character, the ‘bad teacher of rhetoric’, too literal-minded possibly to comprehend how one could draw inspiration from classical history; the joke surely derives much of its force precisely from flying in the face of this deep-seated cultural assumption. Maximus of Tyre, meanwhile, was a philosopher; as such, his self-definition was bound up with not being a sophist, the figure to whom the philosopher was opposed in the cultural economy of imperial Greece.13 It is natural therefore for him to reject declamation, the characteristic rhetoric of the sophist, and it is in such a context of rivalry that our quotation is found. For Maximus is considering ‘what sort of thing beauty in words is’ (ποῖον οὖν ἐστιν τὸ ἐν λόγοις καλόν, 25.4). His answer will ultimately be (in Trapp’s words) ‘morally improving philosophical oratory’.14 Such a bold argument, going against the common understanding of eloquence, necessarily requires Maximus to reject the most obvious rival candidate, rhetoric, and to do so in the strongest terms. The accusation of irrelevance levelled against declamation, therefore, is clearly instrumental. Being instrumental does not stop an argument from being sincere, of course, but the following accusation – that declaimers are adulterers and rapists – suggests that we are dealing here with partisan slander from an opponent of sophists, rather than considered reflection. Another passage that has attracted much attention in this regard is to be found in Plutarch’s Praecepta gerendae reipublicae. Contemporary Greek politicians, Plutarch complains, ‘foolishly stir up the masses by urging them to imitate the deeds, purposes, and actions of their forefathers, though they are unsuited to the present times and circumstances’ (ἀνοήτως τὰ τῶν προγόνων ἔργα καὶ φρονήματα καὶ πράξεις ἀσυμμέτρους τοῖς παροῦσι καιροῖς καὶ πράγμασιν οὔσας μιμεῖσθαι κελεύοντες ἐξαίρουσι τὰ πλήθη, 814a), and as instances of such unsuitable exempla, he cites the battles of Marathon, Eurymedon, and Plataea, all topics of declamation. It is precisely because such history is unsuited to the present times that it should be ‘left to the schools of the sophists’ (ἀπολιπόντας ἐν ταῖς σχολαῖς τῶν σοφιστῶν, 814c), Plutarch thinks. It is important, however, to be precise about what Plutarch is objecting to here. He certainly does not think that all classical history is irrelevant. On the contrary, the Praecepta gerendae reipublicae take for granted the idea of 12

Whitmarsh (2001) 252–3.

13

Sidebottom (2009).

14

Trapp (1997) 206.

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learning from history; in this very work, Plutarch gives examples of the sorts of lessons that he thinks can be learned, and his own Lives, the majority of which cover figures from classical history, are in large part motivated by such a possibility.15 What distinguishes the lessons that Plutarch would prefer readers took from history – the Athenian amnesty after the overthrow of the thirty tyrants, or the fining of Phrynichus for producing a tragedy on the capture of Miletus (814b) – from the alleged declamatory clichés that he criticises appears to be the hackneyed and demagogic character of the latter. What Plutarch seems to be doing then, is not rejecting the relevance of classical history, but rather merely arguing for its more nuanced application – and at the same time confirming his calm philosophical temperament through his rejection of rabble-rousing clichés and parading his own comprehensive knowledge of that classical history.16 Finally, Dio Chrysostom’s and Aristides’ scepticism about declamation is clearly strategic. It makes sense when urging concord between rival cities to play down the significance of what is at dispute, and pointing out the differences between past and present is a rhetorically effective way of doing so. This does not prove that this is what these authors or anyone else ‘really’ thought about the similarity of past and present, and indeed in other contexts we shall soon see the same authors adopting quite the opposite position. In truth, the ready modern acceptance and foregrounding of ancient sources disparaging declamation’s relevance may in truth owe something to the fact that this idea aligns neatly with colonial discourses familiar in the modern world, for the idea that Greek culture could only replay classical history while the world moved on around it looks suspiciously like another instance of the notion of a timeless Orient, albeit one geographically further west than normal.17 Furthermore, this view probably also owes something to the greater number of such voices on the Latin side, though here the complaint is in fact somewhat different, focusing not so much on the gap between past and present as on improbable scenarios, which were more common in Latin declamation on account of its much higher proportion of plasmata.18 15 16 17 18

Duff (1999) 295 notes the contrast. Plutarchean biographies of figures from classical history: Them., Per., Alc., Tim., Pel., Arist., Phil., Lys., Cim., Nic., Ages., Alex., Phoc., Dem., Dion, Art. For Plutarch’s remark on leaving such clichés to the schools of the sophists, see below p. 27. ‘Orientalism assumed an unchanging Orient’ (Said (1978) 96). Thus, Petronius claims that declamation addresses ‘none of the things which we are familiar with’ (nihil ex his, quae in usu habemus, 1.1), while Tacitus speaks of ‘subject matter shrinking back from truth’ (materiae abhorrenti a veritate, Dial. 35). See also Sen. Controv. 3 pref. 12–14, 9 pref. 5, 10 pref. 12 and Quint. 2.10, 8.3.23, 10.5.14–21, 12.11.15–16. The closest we get to this sentiment on the Greek

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Declamatory Exemplarity In his speech Concerning Concord, in which Aristides tries to calm the famous rivalry that existed between the three leading cities of the province of Asia, namely Smyrna, Pergamum, and Ephesus, Aristides directs his audience to the example, commonly treated in declamation, of Athens and Sparta. When the two leading cities of Greece were at peace with one another, we hear, they and indeed all Greece benefited, but when they were divided, all of Greece suffered (23.42–51). What is notable about this exemplum is that not only does it use the same history that declamation regularly evokes to make a point about contemporary politics (that is common enough), but that even the language that Aristides uses in evoking the classical past resembles that used in declamations on the same topic. Consider the following: καὶ συστάντων ἐπὶ τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἁπάντων ὡς εἰπεῖν ἀνθρώπων, ὥστε τὴν μὲν θάλατταν ἐμπλησθῆναι τριήρων, τὴν δὲ γῆν πεζῶν, εἶναι δὲ τὴν προσδοκίαν τῶν κακῶν ἐν κέρδους μέρει τῷ μὴ αὐτά γέ πω παρεῖναι, οὐκ ἠπόρησαν ὅ τι χρήσονται, ἀλλὰ ἀκούοντες μὲν γῆν καὶ θάλατταν μεταβάλλοντα εἰς ἄλληλα, ἀκούοντες δὲ ἥλιον κρυπτόμενον τοῖς τοξεύμασιν, καὶ ποταμοὺς ἐπιλείποντας πίνουσι τοῖς ἐπιοῦσι, καὶ ἔθνη καὶ πόλεις ὅλας ἀναλισκομένας εἰς δείπνου λόγον τῷ βασιλεῖ . . . (Or. 23.43) And when all mankind, more or less, combined against the Greeks, so that the sea was filled with triremes, and the land with infantry, and the anticipation of suffering was regarded as a gain, because the sufferings themselves were not yet present, they were not at a loss about what to do, but though they were hearing that the land and the sea had changed into one another, and though they heard that the sun was being concealed by arrows, and that the rivers were failing as the invaders drank them, and whole nations and cities were being used up for the reckoning of the King’s dinner . . .

Rivers drunk dry, land and sea mixed together, the sun’s light blocked by the mass of Persian arrows – this is precisely the hyperbolic language of surviving declamations on Marathon, from those of Polemo to Himerius’ declamation Themistocles against the Persian King (Or. 5).19 There could

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side is perhaps Plutarch’s talk of ‘the dramatic subject matter . . . of the drones . . . who practise sophistic’ (τῶν πραγμάτων τὰ δραματικὰ . . . κηφήνων . . . σοφιστιώντων, De recta ratione audiendi 42a). Mixing land and sea: Polem. Decl. A 36 (‘a sea battle on land for the first time’ (πρῶτον . . . ναυμαχίαν ἐν γῇ)); Luc. Rh. pr. 18; Him. Or. 5.3, 5.4. Innumerable arrows: the fate of Callimachus in Polem. Decl. B, propped up even in death by the mass of arrows with which he had been hit; Luc. Rh.

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hardly be a clearer example of the potential contemporary resonance of declamatory history. It is fundamental to the argument of this book that this potential was realised, and that classical history as presented in declamation was variously applied – by authors and audiences, consciously, semi-consciously, and unconsciously – to the circumstances of life in the Greek east of the Roman empire. To deploy history in this way would have been particularly natural in an oratorical genre, and for authors and audiences whose education had been largely rhetorical, given how fundamental the example (παράδειγμα) – frequently though not always historical – was to Greek rhetoric.20 The sceptic might object that this is not how contemporary audiences read declamation in our sources, where our texts most commonly seem to be read through the lens of rhetoric. In the glamorous world of public declamations by the most famous declaimers, the world of Philostratus’ Vitae sophistarum, the emphasis is on style,21 and in another source, we hear of audience members leaping to their feet when a performer managed his third figure in the same sentence (Inv. iv 4.25.3–8). The various paratexts (prefaces, prolegomena, hypotheses, commentaries) that are found along with declamations in our manuscripts are similarly focused on technical aspects of rhetoric, albeit with a slightly more sober tone.22 In view of this, Plutarch’s characterisation of schools of rhetoric as a less political space where emotive topics like the Persian wars can be discussed without danger (PGR 814a) looks telling. In truth, we should expect there to have been a range of audience responses. Here, the evidence of Plutarch’s De recta ratione audiendi is important. (While Plutarch is principally writing about listening to philosophical lectures, oratory enters the work several times.)23 In this work, Plutarch draws an opposition between his ideal audience, which pays attention to and therefore profits from the speaker’s words (47a), and a range of less attentive listeners who immediately raise objections (4), are distracted by their envy of the speaker (5), or are blinded by the reputation (7), the appearance (7), or above all the style of the discourse (7–9). ‘It is necessary therefore to remove the excess and emptiness of the language and

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pr. 18; Him. Or. 5.3, 5.4. Drinking rivers dry: Him. Or. 5.4, Covering the land with soldiers: Him. Or. 5.6. Generally resource-hungry: Him. Or. 5.6. Arist. Rh. 2.20, Ps.-Arist. Rh. Al. 8, and, in our period, Aps. Rh. 6, Anon. Seg. Rh. 154–6, Ps.Hermog. Inv. iii 7, and Minuc. 341.10–343.3. Heath (2004) 307–8. 22 Guast (2016) 30–112. Note the references to prolaliai and declamations (7–9). For prolaliai, see below, pp. 74–5.

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to pursue the fruit itself’ (διὸ δεῖ τὸ πολὺ καὶ κενὸν ἀφαιροῦντα τῆς λέξεως αὐτὸν διώκειν τὸν καρπὸν, 8), Plutarch concludes. Here is a promising candidate for a more engaged audience member who pays attention to aspects of a performance other than style.24 Furthermore, he later goes on to concede that it is after all permissible to take pleasure in a work’s style, providing that content remains uppermost in the audience’s mind (9). How widespread was such an attitude? Plutarch positions himself as a voice crying in the wilderness against popular practice (3), but we may suspect that it suited Plutarch’s own philosophical self-fashioning to exaggerate the extent to which he was in a minority. The De recta ratione audiendi then provides suggestive evidence for more thoughtful audience responses to declamation, and further considerations speak in favour of those thoughtful responses. For instance, a hard-and-fast distinction between reading for rhetoric and reading for content is untenable. Here, perhaps, we have been misled slightly by modern pejorative conceptions of rhetoric, which tend to see it as an art concerned with mere verbal adornment. In truth, style was only one part of ancient rhetoric. Also very important was invention (the discovery of arguments), an area of rhetoric that was indeed the subject of significant theoretical debate and change in this period, with the notion of ‘stasis’ (στάσις), the key ‘issue’ at the heart of any dispute, moving to the centre of the system.25 Furthermore, style cannot be divorced from content. An antithesis, for instance, may be brought out by the style with which it is expressed, but it requires an underlying antithesis of ideas. One of the most sophisticated theorists of style in our period, Hermogenes, himself a declaimer, considered that his different types of style were created not only by formal linguistic features but also by content, and he placed what he regarded as the characteristic thoughts of each style at the head of his account of that 24

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It is true that Plutarch at points denounces the works of the sophists as nothing but style (7–8). But such attacks are almost de rigueur for the philosopher, to whom the image of the sophist was opposed in the cultural system of imperial Greece. Furthermore, his description of these sophists’ style reveals that not all sophists are in view. He complains about ‘softness’ (μαλακότησι), ‘balanced clauses’ (παρισώσεσιν), and ἐμμελείαις, a difficult term that nonetheless seems to refer to some sort of musical quality. These reference to some of the more showy rhetorical figures, together with the reference to ‘softness’, make it certain that Plutarch is referring to what scholarship has called the ‘Asian’ style (for which, see Kim (2017) 53–60). But such a style was far from ubiquitous in declamation. The twelve extant declamations of Aristides are certainly not captured by such a description, nor those of Herodes and Lesbonax, nor Hadrian of Tyre’s first declamation; it fits Lucian, but only in parts. Only Polemo’s two surviving declamations, and Hadrian’s second, are really in this style. Plutarch’s claim to be attacking ‘the majority of the sophists’ (τῶν πολλῶν . . . σοφιστῶν, 7) therefore seems exaggerated. Heath (1995).

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style (Id.). Intense engagement with rhetoric, therefore, and even intense engagement with style, necessarily means intense engagement with content too. The evidence from Plutarch’s Praecepta gerendae reipublicae, too, needs to be considered carefully. For Plutarch is telling us about something that did not, in his view, happen in the schools of the sophists: the masses were not foolishly stirred up there, as they could be in more public venues (ἀνοήτως . . . ἐξαίρουσι τὰ πλήθη, 814a). But this leaves open the possibility of other sorts of engagement with declamation’s contents in the schools – not the foolish stirring up of the masses, but perhaps the sober reflection of the sons of the elite. And in fact there is good reason to think that declamation was the scene of such reflection. Scholars have already shown how the early stages of rhetorical training were designed to impart non-rhetorical content, such as ethics, alongside technical skills. Teresa Morgan has shown that gnomic texts were common in education from the earliest levels.26 Craig Gibson has brought out clearly the moral dimension of the progymnasmata exercises that preceded declamation.27 Not only were three of the four first exercises explicitly moral in focus (the fable, chreia (anecdote), and maxim), but, as Gibson shows, the rhetoricians were uncomfortable with the exercises that had no obvious moral content, such as narration, and sought to bring out what they saw as their latent moral focus; even the very sequence of exercises, he argues, was determined with moral pedagogy in mind.28 As Gibson says, ‘the good composition exercise will thus be good in both a stylistic and a moral sense, each aspect serving to reinforce the other, with both simultaneously contributing to the development of the stylistically and morally good writer and speaker’.29 Similarly, Webb sees in the progymnasmata variously ‘concern for the preservation of the social order’, ‘the symbolic representation of overbearing power and ambition’, and ‘an ideal of self-control’.30 Rhetoricians frequently describe the benefits of their exercises in terms of exemplarity. For example, Nicolaus remarks of the chreia that ‘it always either directs us towards something good or keeps us from something base’ (πάντως γὰρ ἐπί τι ἀγαθὸν προτρέπει ἢ πονηροῦ τινος εἴγρει, Prog. 23.12–13). 26 27

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Morgan (1998) 120–51 (though see also Cribiore (1999)). The exercises were fable, narrative, chreia (anecdote), maxim, refutation, confirmation, commonplace, encomium, invective, syncrisis (comparison), ethopoeia (speech in character), ecphrasis, thesis (general question), and introduction of a law. See Clark (1957) 177–212; Kennedy (1983) 54–73; Lausberg (1998) 485–99; Webb (2001). The four surviving treatises are translated by Kennedy (2003). Gibson (2014). 29 Gibson (2014) 7. 30 Webb (2001) 303.

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Furthermore, these exercises sometimes adumbrate some of the particular modes of reading of declamation that I will be exploring later in this chapter. Now given that many of these progymnasmata exercises, such as the exercise of ‘commonplace’ or encomium, were the very building blocks of declamations, is it credible that the moral dimension of rhetorical Bildung which had been so prominent at this earlier stage simply vanished when a student reached declamation? But the schools of the sophists were not the only place, nor even the most important place, in which declamations were performed. For, as we shall see in Chapter 3, declamations were also delivered in much more public contexts, such as council chambers or theatres or temples. Even here, however, ‘scholastic’ modes of reading were not necessarily absent. For any hard-and-fast division between ‘school’ declamations and public performances is untenable, as Philostratus’ Vitae sophistarum and other texts make clear.31 One need only think of the visiting sophist Hippodromus casually wandering into the lesson that Megistias was giving in a temple at Smyrna, or Herodes Atticus evaluating the public performance of the visiting Alexander Clay-Plato with his students afterwards (VS 573, 618–19). No declamation, then, should necessarily be thought of as wholly public: it is clear that there is rather a spectrum, and that we can at best speak of ‘more’ public or ‘more’ pedagogical texts. But where that public context was more or equally prominent, the contemporary or personal relevance of declamations would have been salient for other reasons. For the declaimers were now very often also leading politicians, the settings were sometimes political spaces such as council chambers, and the audience now of an age to be actively engaged in politics: the metaleptic jump from declamation to extra-declamatory context was now a rather shorter one than in the schools. Thus whether a declamation was more ‘scholastic’ or ‘public’, there are good reasons to think that audiences engaged with more than just the declaimer’s rhetorical talents. One final factor militating in favour of more thoughtful audience responses is time. It would be natural to expect more thoughtful readings as time went on, both as audience members pondered what they had heard (or read) for the first time and as particularly noteworthy speeches were circulated and studied. The accessibility of Philostratus’ Vitae sophistarum has perhaps left us with a slightly distorted picture of the prestige afforded to extemporisation in declamation. As Malcolm Heath has shown, it was quite normal to write down declamations and other performances of rhetors, even relatively ad hoc performances.32 Furthermore, if we add up all the references to texts of 31

Cf. Stramaglia (2015), esp. 25–6 and 42–6.

32

Heath (2004) 255–76.

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declamations in Philostratus, the evidence is considerable. Philostratus himself knew of eight or ten extant declamations of Hermocrates (VS 612); he also knew of about thirty extant declamations by Hippodromus and knew them well enough that he is able to pick out by name three he regards as best (VS 620). Polemo’s works were apparently sufficiently widely available that Herodes Atticus could urge a complimentary audience to read them (VS 539). That is perhaps not so surprising, given Polemo’s standing, but even a declamation that the less well-known Philagrus had originally delivered in Asia was so admired that students in Athens had a copy by the time he came to perform there (VS 579). And these texts were clearly picked over carefully. Quirinus deleted some parts of his teacher Hadrian of Tyre’s speeches that he considered incorrectly expressed (VS 621); some of Dionysius of Miletus’ students knew his declamations by heart (VS 523–4); Rufinus knew his father’s speeches well enough to be accused of having plagiarised from them (VS 599), though whether he knew them by heart or from written texts is unclear; and a phrase from a declamation of Herodes is described by Philostratus as ‘that oft-repeated line’ (τὸ θρυλούμενον ἐκεῖνο, VS 574). Heracleides, active at the turn of the second and third centuries, seems to have published a revision of the works of Nicetes, whose floruit may be placed as far back as the emperor Nero (VS 512). These declamations at least were clearly not throwaway productions. It seems reasonable to assume, then, that alongside responses to declamations concerned principally with rhetoric and style, there existed a significant number that considered the wider implications of the fiction, whether in public or school contexts. It is on such responses that this book is focused.

Lost in Translation? Yet for all their tendentiousness, Lucian in his Rhetorum praeceptor and, to a lesser extent, Plutarch in the Praecepta reipublicae gerendae, do seem to have put their finger on a real worry about how in practice classical history might prove useful: there were significant differences between the classical period and the Greek imperial period. To cite a famous example, very few, if any, of those who declaimed or attended declamations on tyranny can ever have experienced such a form of government.33 Nor would imperial Greeks often have been involved with deliberations about the conduct of war, a common source of declamatory disputes: of those few cities that still 33

Tyranny in declamation: Luc. Bis acc. 32, Salt. 65; Philostr. VS 481; Russell (1983) 32–3; Malosse (2006).

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had navies, none can ever have had occasion to consider burning their ships to stop their soldiers from deserting, nor can many cities in this period have ever had the chance to consider denying burial to enemy dead.34 And many declamatory conundrums, particularly those found in forensic declamations, would not have been common in any period, even the classical: few Greeks can ever have seriously contemplated taking up a life of nomadism.35 Yet to take such differences as fatal to the usefulness of declamation’s history would be naive. First, because (to repeat Goldhill’s dictum) the gap between an example and the situation to which it is applied is a necessary precondition for exemplarity, without which there would be mere identity.36 ‘It is only,’ as Goldhill puts it, ‘through the negotiation of a play of difference and similarity that the hero functions as a model.’37 Second, because (to cite that famous dictum of Reception Studies), ‘meaning . . . is always realised at the point of reception’ by a ‘reading community’ doing the receiving against its ‘horizon of expectations’;38 or, to use the metaphor that I shall prefer in the following pages, because audiences are capable of readily translating between the circumstances of one period and another. In doing so, indeed, they continued a practice they had learned in school with the progymnasma exercise of the fable, which was explicitly (albeit rather simply) allegorical: as Aphthonius put it, it was ‘a false story resembling truth’ (μῦθος λόγος ψευδὴς εἰκονίζων, Aphth. i 1.2–3). Thus from an early stage, students were habituated to translating rhetorical narratives in ethical terms.

Categorical and Structural But the process of translating an exemplum from past to present is a slippery one. Just how much of the past context are we to bring into the present? And to which present ends is the exemplum to be deployed? In what follows, I will try to tame the exemplum a little by looking at the ways in which it tends to be deployed in Greek imperial culture. But it should be stated at the outset that an exemplum can never be tamed entirely, and that this is not necessarily a bad thing. We shall return to this point in the conclusion to this chapter. 34 35 36 38

Aps. Rh. 5.6; Hermog. Stat. ii 4.7–8. Greek navies: D. Chrys. Or. 31.103. Nomadism: Aps. Rh. 1.48 (= 1.54, 1.72, 2.15, 3.8); VS 572, 620 (but see below, pp. 66–8). Goldhill (1994). 37 Goldhill (2017) 416. Martindale (1993). For ‘interpretative communities’ and ‘horizon of expectation’ (‘Erwartungshorizont’), the foundational texts are Fish (1981) and Jauss (1970), respectively.

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We may begin thinking about this question with a suggestive remark from Plutarch once more, from the Quomodo quis suos in virtute sentiat profectus. Plutarch here recommends that, at the outset of any venture (of which he gives as an example the taking up of political office), one should ask oneself: τί δ’ ἂν ἔπραξεν ἐν τούτῳ Πλάτων, τί δ’ ἂν εἶπεν Ἐπαμεινώνδας, ποῖος δ’ ἂν ὤφθη Λυκοῦργος ἢ Ἀγησίλαος (85a) What would Plato have done in this situation, and what would Epaminondas have said, and what sort of a man would Lycurgus have shown himself, or Agesilaus?

This question is not developed here, but it is part of Plutarch’s wider project of providing through his writing about great men a ‘mirror’ in which the reader can shape his own life.39 Something very like Plutarch’s question would have been very familiar to ancient authors and audiences raised on the rhetorical exercise and literary device of ethopoeia, the speech in character. Plutarch’s question necessarily calls for some degree of translation; this is clearly an injunction to something more than the straightforward copying of the conduct of great men. What seems to be recommended for imitation is rather some deeper and more fundamental aspect of the famous figures of classical history that might serve as a consistent guide in any situation; one suspects that Plutarch if pressed would have identified this element as ‘character’ (ἦθος) (just as the corresponding rhetorical exercise is precisely a ‘speech in character’ (ἠθοποιΐα)).40 That such a practice could guide action is hugely suggestive for declamation, given that declamation – in contrast to historiography or indeed any other genre of the time – is nothing but asking what such-andsuch a classical figure would have said in a given situation.41 It is a short step from asking what Demosthenes would have said on his embassy to Thebes to imagining what he might have said on an embassy to the emperor. So one first element that might abide in the translation from classical past to imperial present is character. Contemporary political oratory helps fill out our understanding of past– present translation. Dio Chrysostom, when speaking to the Prusans, says in 39 40

41

Duff (1999) 30–4. The term more familiar to moderns, prosopopoeia (προσωποποιία), is in fact used only by Theon among the writers of extant progymnasmata treatises; Ps.-Hermogenes, Aphthonius, and Nicolaus all use ethopoeia. On the moral effects of this exercise, see Gibson (2014) 18. See König (2012) 41–52 for the wider Greek imperial culture of communing with the leading figures from classical history and literature.

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the course of drawing an analogy between the career of Epaminondas and his own that ‘in those days these things were possible, but now times are different, apart from the business of goodwill and zeal, which are always and forever similar’ (τότε μὲν γὰρ ταῦτα ἦν δυνατά, νῦν δ’ ἕτεροι γεγόνασιν οἱ καιροί, πλὴν τά γε τῆς εὐνοίας καὶ τῆς προθυμίας ἀεί ποτε ὅμοια, Or. 43.4). Aelius Aristides, meanwhile, introducing his exempla in his speech to the cities of Asia on concord, says ‘even if the situations are not similar, and the times are not quite alike, good sense at least is somehow always the same’ (καὶ γὰρ εἰ μὴ ὅμοια τὰ πράγματα μηδ’ οἱ καιροὶ παραπλήσιοι, τό γε εὖ φρονεῖν ἀεί πως ταυτόν ἐστιν, 23.41); later in the same speech, he says that stasis ‘always does harm, by its nature, and that harm happens in accordance with the times’ (βλάπτειν . . . ἀεὶ πέφυκεν, ἡ δὲ βλάβη πρὸς τοὺς καιροὺς ἀπαντᾷ, 23.54), an argument he develops at length (23.53–8). In his speech to the Rhodians on concord, he counters concerns about the difference between the past and present in a very similar way: ‘let none of you be unafraid on the grounds that times have changed; no, consider this charge that is common to all stasis – that it always deprives men of the goods that they enjoy, by its nature’ (μηδεὶς ὑμῶν ἐν ἀδείᾳ ποιείσθω τὸ τοὺς καιροὺς ἑτέρους εἶναι, ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνο κοινὸν ἐνθυμείσθω κατὰ πάσης στάσεως, ὅτι τῶν παρόντων ἀγαθῶν ἀει πέφυκεν ἀποστερεῖν, 24.30). These formulations all propose a remarkably similar approach to past–present translation. The καιροί (‘the times’, ‘opportunities’) or πράγματα (‘circumstances’, ‘situations’) may differ, but what abides is virtue and vice: ‘goodwill’, ‘zeal’, ‘good sense’ (εὔνοια, προθυμία, τὸ εὖ φρονεῖν), and stasis. Though the accent here is less on the character of individuals, this approach is in its fundamentals the same as that put forward by Plutarch, with moral principles staying the same over time while externals differ. This is something deeply anchored in the Greek historiographical tradition by Thucydides’ statement that the unchanging character of τὸ ἀνθρώπινον (what we might term ‘human nature’) will allow his readers to understand situations that will arise in the future on the basis of his account of the past (1.22.4), and it is perhaps not a coincidence that two of the explicit expressions of this idea that we have just considered concern stasis, of which Thucydides had given a memorable and expressly exemplary account (3.70–85).42 To model the sort of past–present translation that is going on here, we may borrow a distinction developed by Roller for the analysis of Roman exempla, namely that between ‘categorical’ parallels and ‘structural’ ones. ‘Categorical’ parallels concern ethical 42

Cf. Thomas (2011).

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categories; ‘structural’ parallels involve other more superficial features. The sort of translation we have been describing clearly neglects structural parallels and focuses on categorical ones.43 But while the ethical category stays the same, it seems there can be really quite considerable differences between the structural features of past and present situations. Aristides, a sickly orator, once compared himself in a dream to the dynamic Alexander the Great (Or. 50.49), just as Arrian compared his literary achievements to the military achievements of the Macedonian conqueror (An. 1.12.5). Marcus Aurelius, meditating on the cyclical nature of history, implicitly compares his court to those of Hadrian, Antoninus, Philip, Alexander, and Croesus (10.27): while the first two of Marcus’ comparisons were reasonably predictable, the last three and particularly the last one were less so. Gregory of Nazianzus, finally, considers a Persian expedition against Greece as a parallel to the persecution of Christians.44 If we are to read classical history and declamation as the imperial Greeks did, then, we must be prepared to ignore what to us might feel like quite glaring discrepancies in the structural features of the potential comparanda.

Description Yet moral inspiration is not the only thing that the past can give us. The past can also increase our understanding of the way the world works. As Dio Chrysostom says of historians, when giving advice on reading: τοῖς δ’ ἱστορικοῖς διὰ πολλὰ ἀνάγκη τὸν πολιτικὸν ἄνδρα μετὰ σπουδῆς ἐντυγχάνειν, ὅτι καὶ ἄνευ τῶν λόγων τὸ ἔμπειρον εἶναι πράξεων καὶ εὐτυχιῶν καὶ δυστυχιῶν οὐ κατὰ λόγον μόνον, ἀλλὰ ἐνίοτε καὶ παρὰ λόγον ἀνδράσι τε καὶ πόλεσι συμβαινουσῶν σφόδρα ἀναγκαῖον πολιτικῷ ἀνδρὶ καὶ τὰ κοινὰ πράττειν προαιρουμένῳ. ὁ γὰρ πλεῖστα ἑτέροις συμβάντα ἐπιστάμενος ἄριστα οἷς αὐτὸς ἐγχειρεῖ διαπράξεται καὶ ἐκ τῶν ἐνόντων ἀσφαλῶς καὶ οὔτε εὖ πράττων παρὰ μέτρον ἐπαρθήσεται, δυσπραγίαν τε πᾶσαν οἴσει γενναίως διὰ τὸ μηδ’ ἐν οἷς εὖ ἔπραττεν ἀνεννόητος εἶναι τῆς ἐπὶ τὸ ἐναντίον μεταβολῆς (D. Chrys. 18.9) But the historians it is absolutely necessary that a political man read zealously, for many reasons: because even disregarding the speeches they contain, being experienced in undertakings and good turns of fortune and bad – not solely those that happen to men and cities in accordance with expectation, but also those that sometimes happen against expectation – is 43

Roller (2004) 23–4.

44

Or. 43.45.

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Exempla and Exemplarity something absolutely necessary for a political man who has chosen to take part in public life. For the man who knows very many things that have happened to others will accomplish best what he himself sets himself to, and see it through safely in the circumstances, and will not be elated beyond measure when he fares well, and will bear all misfortune nobly on account of not being unaware even where he has met with success of the possibility of a change in the other direction

In view of the centrality of history to declamation, these remarks are suggestive for how original audiences read the genre. Given how many spheres of human life declamation covers, and the rich history and literature on which it draws, an education in declamation is necessarily also an education in war, peace, international relations, conflict resolution, corruption, despotism, passion, crime, and families, to name only a few key themes (cf. Chapter 2). Indeed, the many declamations that were plasmata – declamations dealing not with specific historical episodes but rather with stock characters and situations set in a generic classicising polis – would perhaps have been particularly suited to this. We might term this declamation’s ‘descriptive’ function, in contrast to its ‘protreptic’ capabilities (I borrow these terms from Pelling’s distinction between protreptic and descriptive moralism in Plutarch’s Vitae).45 This again is something that follows on naturally from the progymnasmata exercises that students tackled before declamation. As Clark noted long ago, exercises like fable and narration put the emphasis on ‘the general moral idea illustrated rather than on the story for its own sake’, and this approach is also seen in the chreia, the commonplace, and the thesis.46 Nicolaus of Myra, the author of a treatise on progymnasmata, is explicit on this point. ‘Some chreias show how things are’ (τῶν χρειῶν ἔτι αἳ μὲν δηλοῦσιν, ὁποῖά εἰσι τὰ πράγματα, 22.10– 11), he says, citing a chreia that shows that speech is the strongest thing in human society (22.12–14); he expresses the same opinion about maxims as well, citing in this instance the maxim that ‘most people are bad’ (οἱ πλεῖστοι κακοί, 27.13). Here I will give three examples of the sorts of general truths that are rehearsed in the course of almost any declamation. I focus here on particularly gnomic passages, since it is in these that declamation’s ‘descriptive’ quality is seen most clearly, but in truth any reasonably generalisable aspect of a declamation can function in this way. 45

46

Pelling (1988) 15–16; cf. Pelling (1995) and Duff (1999) 52–71. The distinction between the ‘protreptic’ and ‘descriptive’ is not necessarily hard and fast, for new insights achieved in the course of a declamation regarding, for instance, international diplomacy or the slipperiness of argument might well have moral consequences. Clark (1957) 209.

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I start with a simple example, from Hadrian of Tyre’s first surviving declamation. In arguing that the woman on trial, who had helped the city put to death a convicted witch, was herself a witch, the speaker says: κολάζει γάρ τις ὃ φεύγει, ζηλοτυπεῖ δὲ ὃ μετ’ ἄλλων ἔχει. καὶ γὰρ λῃστὴς ἤδη λῃστὴν ἀπέκτεινεν ὑπὲρ σκύλων ὠργισμένος καὶ τύραννον καθεῖλέ τις μοναρχεῖν ἐθέλων. τοιοῦτόν τι γεγένηται καὶ τὸ νῦν ὑπὸ σοῦ τετολμημένον (70.29–71.4) A man punishes what flees his grasp, and gets jealous when other people also have what he has. And in fact ere now a robber has killed a robber in anger over spoils, and a man has deposed a tyrant because he wanted to be sole ruler himself. Your present act of daring has been something of this sort too.

In the first of Aristides’ declamations on the Sicilian expedition, meanwhile, the speaker makes the following claim in support of enlarging the Athenian empire:47 νῦν δ’ ἐνταῦθα δὴ καὶ κάλλιστα ἴδοι τις ἂν ὡς θεῖον τὸ χρῆμα τῆς ἀρχῆς· αὐτὴ γὰρ ἑαυτὴν σῴζει. ὥσπερ γὰρ ἐν τοῖς ἰδίοις οἴκοις ἑνὶ μὲν καὶ δυοῖν οἰκέταιν χαλεπὸν χρήσασθαι, οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ κατ’ ἀλλήλων ὑπάρχουσιν, οὕτω κἀν ταῖς δυναστείαις τὸ πλῆθος τῶν δεδουλωμένων βεβαιοῖ τὴν ἰσχὺν τοῖς προσειληφόσι· πάντες γὰρ ἐν κύκλῳ δεδίασιν ἀλλήλους (Or. 5.39) Now here one may see best how divine a thing empire is. For it preserves itself. Just as in private homes it is difficult to manage one or two servants, but great numbers of servants act as a foil against one another, so too in empires having a mass of people enslaved firms up the power of those who have added them to it. For they all fear one another in turn.

In the introduction to the second of Aristides’ declamations on the Sicilian expedition, finally, the speaker in his introduction waxes abstract on his opponent’s allegedly deceptive rhetoric: εἰ μὲν ἦν ταῖς τῶν λόγων ἡδοναῖς προσάγειν τὰ πράγματα, δυστυχία μὴ τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον αἱρεῖσθαι δημηγορεῖν· ἐπεὶ δ’ οὐχ ὅπως ἂν σχήματος οἱ λόγοι σχῶσι, τοιαῦτα ἀποβαίνει τὰ πράγματα, ἀλλ’ ὅπως ἂν ἐκεῖνα τύχῃ τέλους, οὕτως οἱ ῥηθέντες ἐν ἀρχῇ περὶ αὐτῶν ἔδοξαν ἔχειν λόγοι, δεῖ δέχεσθαι τοὺς ἐπ’ εὐνοίᾳ καὶ μὴ μικροῦ μέρους ἡμέρας τὸ μέλλον ἅπαν προΐεσθαι. ὅπου γὰρ οὐδὲ ἐν αὐτοῖς τοῖς πράγμασιν εὖ φρονούντων ἐστὶ τὰ μείζω τῶν ἐλαττόνων ἀποδίδοσθαι, ἦ που λόγου γε χάρις πρόσκαιρος οὐκ ἀντάξιον τῆς εἰς ὕστερον ἀσφαλείας τῶν ὅλων. (Or. 6.3–5) 47

On this claim, see Pernot (2007) 227–30 and below, pp. 109–10 n. 71.

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Exempla and Exemplarity If it were possible to guide events through the charm of our words, it would be unfortunate to choose not to speak in this manner. But since events do not turn out in accordance with the style of speeches, but rather speeches that have been delivered about an affair at the start are reckoned as successful as the outcome of that affair, it is necessary to welcome speeches made in good will and not to abandon the whole future for a small part of a day. For given that not even in the heat of the action itself is it thought characteristic of men of sense to sell objects of greater value for a lesser price, surely the temporary charm of a speech is not worth as much as the safety of everything in the future.

Now there are no truths in any of these passages that could not ultimately have been divined without declamation; indeed, many in the audience had probably come to similar conclusions already. Yet to hear again these lessons is still of value. First, what may have been only an unarticulated thought is here expressed explicitly (‘crystallised’, we might say) and in eloquent and even memorable form, with, for instance, polyptoton in Hadrian’s declamation (λῃστὴς ἤδη λῃστὴν) or business metaphors in Aristides’. The lesson taught or retaught therefore sinks in all the more deeply. Second – and this is perhaps more important – to hear the lesson not simply stated abstractly but rather in a real argumentative context contributes to the ongoing and neverending process of the calibration of such ideas. Most of us are aware, for instance, of the power of seductive oratory to lead us astray; yet expressed only generally, this idea does not leave us much better off when deciding whether this or that piece of oratory is genuinely deceptive or actually constitutes reasoned argument. But to hear this idea not simply as a universal principle but rather as one contentiously evoked by one side in a debate forces us to consider whether the principle is in fact applicable in this particular situation, and so to calibrate with further precision our own sense of where the line between persuasion and deception lies.48

Diagnosis Classical history’s value for the present, however, need not be confined to similarity, of whatever kind. For difference between the past and the present can frequently be as enlightening as similarity. A contemporary classical reception may make this point clearer. When Donald Trump swept to the US presidency in 2016, he was repeatedly compared to a whole series of famous Romans, from Julius Caesar to Augustus, Caligula, Nero, 48

Stadter has made similar arguments for how readers learn from Plutarch’s Lives (Stadter (1997), Stadter (2000)).

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and Commodus.49 Yet such comparisons were easy to counter with a moment’s thought. Donald Trump, for example, had been elected, however imperfectly, while Roman emperors almost invariably either inherited power or seized it for themselves by violence (or both), with the democratic procedures of the comitia a mere formality. Roman emperors too, from at least Vespasian onwards, had the right to do whatever they thought in the best interests of the state;50 Trump, by contrast, was more or less constrained by a famous system of checks and balances. And so on. Yet while the comparison itself usually failed to convince, the very failure of the comparison was itself enlightening: the process of thinking through the difference between Donald Trump and Roman emperors threw into relief a range of somewhat underappreciated aspects of Trump and his position. This example is salutary. The past does not have to be identical to the present to be useful; it can just as well inform through difference. As Güthenke says, ‘exemplarity . . . also allows for negative responses, rejection, doubt, and dislike . . . the difference implied in similarity matters and signifies, too’.51 This use of the past I shall call ‘diagnosis’, in its radical sense of distinguishing between similar instances.52 (Given the infinite variety of human life, we are perhaps more likely to see dissimilarity than similarity in any given juxtaposition of past and present; accordingly, we may in fact have more to learn from the former than the latter, even though it is the latter that often gets the bulk of the attention.) This point is crucial in considering the role that declamation played in Greek imperial society. To have value for the present, Greek declamation does not necessarily have to be strikingly similar; or even, as we have been exploring, translated into contemporary terms, it can just as well be meaningful through its differences from contemporary life. This use of difference to promote understanding was natural in ancient thought and particularly ancient rhetorical thought, having been learned from an early age in education. The most obvious instance of this is the preliminary rhetorical exercise (progymnasma) of the syncrisis, the comparison, a tool Plutarch famously elevates to a structural principle in his Lives.53 But comparison is more fundamental than that, for among the sources from which rhetorical theorists regularly urge students to derive arguments are what is opposite to, greater than, or lesser than the topic under discussion.54 49 53 54

Morley (2017). 50 Brunt (1977). 51 Güthenke (2020) 52–3. 52 LSJ s.v. διάγνωσις a.1. For syncrisis, see Theon Prog. 112.23–115.12, Ps.-Hermog. Prog. 18–20, Aphth. x, and Nicol. Prog. 59– 63. For Plutarchean syncrisis, see Duff (1999) 243–309. In technical terms, these are ‘common topics’ (applicable to all kinds of speech, as opposed to the ‘special topics’ particular to forensic, deliberate, and ceremonial oratory). See Aristotle Rh. 2.23 and

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Let us now try an ancient example. The declaimer Herodes Atticus was also the most famous Greek politician of our period.55 Like Demosthenes, Herodes is recorded as having broken down in a speech before a foreign potentate (in Herodes’ case, Marcus Aurelius; in Demosthenes’ case, Philip, an event replayed in declamation).56 But in Philostratus’ partisan account, it is the differences – that is, the failure of the comparison – that are telling. For while Herodes reckoned his failure so grave that he made as if to kill himself, Demosthenes asked for honours from Athens for his embassy. We also know from Philostratus’ lengthy life of Herodes that he was at one point accused of tyrannising (τυραννευομένων) his home city (VS 559).57 Now, one major source for the figure of the tyrant in imperial Greece was declamation, which featured a great many scenarios concerned with tyranny.58 And for those looking for similarities between Herodes and the declamatory tyrant – as his opponents might well have been – there were many available.59 Those suspected of tyranny in declamation are often rich, as Herodes was, and when the place is specified in a declamation on tyranny, it is always Athens; one pair of lost declamations by Aelius Aristides actually concerned Critias, a member of the Thirty Tyrants who had ruled Athens in 404 to 403, and to whose style Herodes’ style was compared by Philostratus.60 Yet there were also obvious differences between Herodes Atticus and the declamatory tyrant. Herodes was not, for instance, as far as we know, amassing arms, which is sometimes the grounds for an accusation of tyranny in declamation, nor were philosophers trying to persuade him to give up his power, nor did he maintain disinherited youths, nor had he castrated anyone, all attested features of the declamatory tyrant.61 But while for many (including, it seems, Marcus Aurelius, who had to adjudicate between Herodes and his enemies and acquitted Herodes of all charges) the comparison would ultimately have failed, nonetheless, that failure would have facilitated a better purchase on

55 56

57 59 60

61

Top. and, in our period, Aps. Rh. 8, Anon. Seg. Rh. 171–81, Ps.-Hermog. Inv. iii 7.1–8, Minuc. 343.4–351.11, and Theon Prog. 107.24–108.32, 122.13–123.2, 124.23–125.19. For Herodes and his surviving declamation, see above, pp. 4–6 Breakdown: Aeschin 2.34–5; Philostr. VS 565 (Philostratus is incorrect, however, in connecting the failure to recover Amphipolis with this embassy). Demosthenes’ breakdown in declamation: RG vii 442.1–2. For Herodes’ conflicts with the Athenians, see p. 5. 58 Cf. above, p. 29 n. 33. Cf. Anderson (1986) 112: ‘what amounts to a neat declamation subject’. Wealth: Hermog. Stat. iii 9.3–5 (= 12.5–6), 17.3–6, 19.2–4; Aps. Rh. 1.25. Athens: Aps. Rh. 2.4 (= 10.50), 10.21. Critias: RG iv 171.4–173.19 with Hermog. Stat. i 22.3–5. Herodes’ style: Philostr. VS 564. Arms: Hermog. Stat. iii 23.5–7; Aps. Rh. 1.49. Philosophers: Anon. Seg. Rh. 217; Hermog. Stat. iv 2.2–3. Disinherited youths: Hermog. Stat. iii 9.3–5 (= 12.5–6). Castration: Philostr. VS 569.

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the politician’s real status. It reminds us that he was not, for all his power and influence, in a position so absolute that he could, for instance, commit the horrible crimes of tyrants against the people of Athens. Additional ‘failed’ comparisons between Herodes and the other classical political leaders of declamation could improve our sense of the man and his position still further, each failed comparison refining our understanding, moving us asymptotically towards perfect comprehension. While none of these are insights which could not, eventually, have been achieved in the absence of declamatory comparisons, figures from classical history nonetheless stand as fixed points in the firmament, among which a contemporary personality or action can quickly be located.

Rescaling We looked above at passages in which Dio Chrysostom and Aristides presented the past as so different from the present as to be of little use in the contemporary world.62 Armed with the notion of diagnosis, however, we can discern a present-facing function even for such negative comparisons. Specifically, Dio and Aristides’ views represent a very common subspecies of diagnosis, which I will call rescaling, in which some contemporary phenomenon is made to seem more or less important through a comparison with a similar phenomenon in the classical past. In the case of both Dio and Aristides, the high stakes in the clash between classical Athens and Sparta are used to make present quarrels (between Nicomedia and Nicaea in one case, and between the cities of Asia in the other) appear much smaller. As Plutarch puts it: ‘what position of leadership, what glory is there for those who emerge victorious from such disputes?’ (τίς γὰρ ἡγεμονία, τίς δόξα τοῖς περιγενομένοις; Plut. PGR 824e). As with our wider category of ‘diagnosis’, rescaling is something that emerges naturally from rhetorical training, particularly the common topics of what is greater or lesser than whatever is under discussion, as well as the progymnasma exercise of syncrisis. Theon provides an example of how this might work in the course of walking his imaginary student through the progymnasma exercise of ‘commonplace’: theft can be scaled up by comparison to temple robbery, while temple robbery can be scaled down by comparison to theft (108.3–14). In cognitive psychology, this might be considered an example of anchoring, the exploitation of the human tendency to rely heavily on the first readily available piece of information 62

Cf. above, pp. 19–20.

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when making judgements: a barely reasonable price for a used car may seem a good deal when compared to the salesman’s outrageously high opening offer.63 Examples of this phenomenon abound in Greek imperial oratory. In Aristides’ monody for Smyrna after the destruction wrought by an earthquake in 177, the (alleged) failure of history to provide any real parallels for what has happened brings out the unprecedented scale of the tragedy Smyrna has suffered: ὦ παιδιὰ μὲν Ἰλίου πόρθησις, παιδιὰ δὲ Ἀθηναίων ἐν Σικελίᾳ συμφοραὶ καὶ κατασκαφαὶ Θηβῶν, καὶ στρατευμάτων ὄλεθροι καὶ πόλεων δύσεις, καὶ πάνθ’ ὅσα πῦρ καὶ πόλεμοι καὶ σεισμοὶ μέχρι τοῦδε ἀπειργάσαντο. (Or. 18.7) Oh the sack of Troy was child’s play! Child’s play, too, were the disasters the Athenians suffered in Sicily and the levelling of Thebes, and the destruction of expeditions and the passing of cities, and all the things which fire and war and earthquakes have accomplished up until now.

In this way a contemporary situation is scaled up by comparison with classical history. Notice particularly the use of the same history that we regularly encounter in declamation – the Sicilian expedition and the destruction of Thebes, the former of which had been the topic of declamations by Aristides himself: this is a strong hint of the ways in which audiences might deploy the same material in reflecting on their own lives.64 Favorinus, meanwhile, on hearing that the Athenians had cast down a statue of him after he seemed to have fallen out with the emperor Hadrian, cleverly scaled down the slight against him and simultaneously scaled up his own status through a deft comparison with Socrates’ condemnation at the hands of the Athenians, saying:65 ὤνητ’ ἂν . . . καὶ Σωκράτης εἰκόνα χαλκῆν ὑπ’ Ἀθηναίων ἀφαιρεθεὶς μᾶλλον ἢ πιὼν κώνειον (Philostr. VS 490) Socrates too would have benefited if he had been deprived by the Athenians of a bronze statue rather than drinking hemlock. 63 64

65

The bibliography on anchoring and other such ‘cognitive biases’ is immense, but the starting point was Tversky and Kahneman (1974). Sicilian expedition: Aristid. Orr. 5–6 (= VS 584); VS 574; Aps. Rh. 1.11 (= 3.10); Hermog. Stat. v 18.2– 4. Destruction of Thebes: VS 595–6; Aps. Rh. 1.61; Suda s.v. Γενέθλιος (γ 132); Ps.-Hermog. Inv. iii 11.2–5. Socrates too appears in declamation, though not very frequently: see Philostr. VS 542 and Aps. Rh. 1.20.

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Dio Chrysostom, finally, disparages the Athenians of his day for various disreputable practices by comparing them unfavourably with the Athenians of the classical period, saying: εἰ μέν τις ἢ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ἐπιτιμῶν λέγει ταῦτα, καὶ δεικνὺς οὐκ ὄντας ἀξίους τοὺς ἐνοικοῦντας τῆς πόλεως οὐδὲ τῆς δόξης, ἣν οἱ πρότερον γενόμενοι κατέλιπον, ἢ καθόλου τὴν Ἑλλάδα ἐλεῶν εἰς ὃ πέπτωκεν, ὅταν τοιαῦτα πράττωσιν οἱ χρόνον τινὰ δόξαντες αὐτῆς προεστάναι, καλῶς αὐτὸν ἡγοῦμαι λέγειν (Or. 31.117) If someone says these things either by way of criticism of the Athenians, showing that the inhabitants of Athens are not worthy of the city nor of the glory which those who came before left to them, or by way of pitying the state into which Greece has fallen, when a people who used to be regarded as the foremost in Greece commit such acts, I think that he is speaking well.

That the Athenians of the classical period make frequent appearances in declamation goes without saying. Diagnosis generally and rescaling in particular can easily have protreptic overtones, for to show that something is much larger than one’s audience has grasped is implicitly to direct the audience to take more notice of it, while to show that something is much smaller is to do the opposite. The idea of such protreptic rescaling also helps us to think about the effect of some of the more troubling declamation scenarios. For many declamations on the face of it present examples of moral actions so extreme that no person could plausibly imitate them. A hero kills his son for prostitution (Hermog. Stat. vi 4.4–5): but while Greek sentiment in any age would recoil from such a degrading profession, most would regard the killing of one’s own offspring as extreme. In the course of a long siege, after some have resolved to expel the city’s children as useless, the children’s parents offer to be killed in their place (Anon. Seg. Rh. 141): even if, as some ancient theorists suggested, such an offer is not totally sincere, but rather an attempt to shame one’s opponents into changing course, the parents of this scenario are at least prepared to make an extreme self-sacrifice.66 How could imperial Greeks possibly have related to such acts? Yet the popularity of early Christian martyr acts or indeed in modern times of exemplars of virtue such as Nelson Mandela or Mother Theresa suggests that extreme acts of virtue must have some function. At a lower level, such stories might simply be striking hyperbole. Killing one’s son for prostitution is not something that should be literally imitated; but it is a forceful way of 66

For insincere self-denunciation, see [D.H.] Rh. 2.329.14–17 and Sopat. Rh. e.g. 51. Declamatory pleas to be allowed to die are known as prosangeliai. Cf. Russell (1983) 35–7.

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expressing the idea that for a free man to prostitute himself is morally abhorrent. But it is possible to go further. As Langlands writes of exemplarity in Valerius Maximus, drawing on the work of Flescher on supererogation in contemporary morality, ‘by appearing to ask the reader to go beyond the call of duty, supererogatory acts compel one to reassess one’s very idea of what duty is and of what can and should be demanded of one if one is to aspire to virtue’.67 Offering our lives for our children or indeed killing them when they go astray may well be beyond us, but such scenarios can still prompt us to ask whether whatever limits we do set ourselves are reasonable. So the use of extreme examples in declamation represents a very bold scaling down of the present, challenging audiences to push the boundaries of what is morally possible. We may not have the courage to ascend the acropolis and slay the tyrant ourselves, like the tyrant-killers of declamation, but such scenarios might well lead us to reconsider whether we can do more than Tacitus’ father-in-law Agricola, solemnly getting on with being a good man under a bad emperor and leaving the active resistance to others.68

Meta-exemplarity While declamation itself, being history without any sort of external frame, offers us no explicit guidance on how it is to be read, this is not to say that it does not implicitly predispose audiences to read in certain ways. As recent work on historiography and exemplarity has stressed, textual frames aside, a narrative may itself offer reflections on the ways in which it can be read.69 Thus, for example, as Roller has described, when Polybius describes how Horatius sacrificed himself to save Rome by having his comrades tear down the bridge he was defending while he was still on it, it is implied that Horatius did so in imitation of predecessors: the case of Horatius thus contains not only an exemplary injunction to bravery in imitation of Horatius, but also a meta-exemplary injunction to follow moral examples generally.70 Given how often declamations themselves invoke classical history, declamation could hardly help but transmit a strong general meta-exemplary message about the value of the past. As the speaker in Aristides’ First Leuctran oration puts it, ‘we must think that that time has come back’ 67 68 69

Langlands (2008) 174, drawing on Flescher (2003). For declamations on tyranny, above, p. 29 n. 33. Good men and bad emperors: Tac. Agr. 42.4. 70 Langlands (2008); Grethlein (2011); Grethlein and Krebs (2012). Roller (2004) 2.

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(νῦν τοίνυν χρὴ τοῦτον ἐκεῖνον νομίσαι τὸν καιρὸν ἥκειν, 11.42). In the immediate context, he is talking about how Athens’ ability to preserve or destroy Sparta after the Battle of Leuctra mirrors the power that Sparta held over Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian war in 404, but such words epitomise the exemplary mindset of imperial Greece. It is, moreover, notable that the fictitious speakers of declamations use many of the specific modes of invoking the past that we have reconstructed for declamation’s audiences. For example, it was argued above (pp. 30–33) that declamation’s audiences probably often concentrated on the moral or ‘categorical’ similarities between declamation and life, neglecting superficial or ‘structural’ features of the two. So in declamation do we find, for example, the speaker of Aristides’ To the Thebans: concerning the alliance i, in the course of urging the Thebans to action against Philip, saying – apropos of an invocation of the fate of the Olynthians as a warning of what might happen to Thebes – ‘do not, if the names of the places are different, think that the situations differ’ (μὴ γὰρ εἰ τὰ ὀνόματα ἕτερα τῶν χωρίων, τά γε πράγματα ἡγεῖσθε διαφέρειν, Or. 9.11). This is not just the same thought about past–present ‘translation’ as is found in Aristides’ nondeclamatory oratory, but it is even expressed in similar language.71 We also suggested a closely related way in which the past might be translated into the present: by focusing on the moral character of a hero from the past and asking how he would have acted in a given contemporary situation. This too is found in declamation, again in the To the Thebans i, in which the speaker concludes by asking ‘if Epaminondas were alive, which of these two courses would he recommend to you?’ (εἰ περιῆν Ἐπαμεινώνδας, πότερ’ ἂν τούτων ὑμῖν συνεβούλευεν, Or. 9.46). (Recall that Epaminondas was one of the figures of classical history for whom Plutarch asked this question.) Declamation also uses the past to point general truths about human life, the mode of relating to the past we called ‘description’ above (pp. 33–36). The speaker of Aristides’ second declamation on the Sicilian expedition, after having mentioned the Persian expedition and Carthage’s failed attempt to restore Terillus, the deposed tyrant of Himera, abstracts what he explicitly calls a ‘law’ (νόμος) of human life from these two episodes, specifically a ‘law . . . of large overseas expeditions’ (νόμον . . . τῶν ὑπερορίων καὶ μεγάλων στρατειῶν, 6.51). Finally, rescaling too is found within the fiction of declamations. In the first declamation on the Sicilian expedition, which argues in favour of reinforcements (Or. 5), in an effort to calm his fellow citizens’ anxieties 71

Above, p. 32.

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about the outcome of the war, the speaker asks rhetorically whether the present position is worse than the annual Spartan invasions of Attica, or the plague that afflicted Athens in 430 bce, or even the darkest moments of Xerxes’ invasion (5.30–2). The obvious answer – that it is not – implicitly scales down the difficulties that Athens is facing with the Sicilian expedition and thus supports the case the speaker is making. In short, the audience of a declamation would not have had to look far for models of how the classical history they were watching might be used.

Declamatory Classicism Thus far, I have been arguing that declamation should be understood in terms of the culture of exemplarity that was so pervasive in this period. But now in closing I want to consider what was distinctive about declamation’s use of the past. Plutarch described his project in his Lives as ‘spending time with and living with’ (συνδιαιτήσει καὶ συμβιώσει) the great men of the past (Aem. 1.1), and this formulation could serve well as a manifesto for so much of Greek elite interaction with classical history in the time of the empire. Some sought communion with the past through physical proximity and contact with the relics of the past: thus Pausanias’ Periegesis, where each monument in his tour of Greece triggers a historical memory, or hero cult, usually constructed around the tombs and bones of heroes.72 Others literally dreamed of the past: not just Aristides, but Polemo too, who erected a statue of Demosthenes on the basis of a dream.73 Another technique known to scholarship as ‘pseudo-documentarism’ sees authors pretend to have found some hitherto-unknown written record of the past. While the fiction seems to have been open, and sometimes actually ironic, even the fiction of the direct link to the past that a new document would provide is tantalising.74 Thus, Dio Chrysostom pretends to have learned a truer account of the Trojan war from an aged Egyptian priest, who himself relied on ancient inscriptions made in temples and on columns on the basis of interviews with Menelaus (Or. 11.37–8); the fourth-century Ephemeris belli Troiani purports to be the journal of one ‘Dictys of Crete’, a supposed companion of Idomeneus during the Trojan war. These modalities combine in that astonishing work of Philostratus, the Heroicus, a dialogue set at the shrine of Protesilaus, the first Greek hero 72 74

Jones (2010) 66–74. 73 Puech (2002) 399–400. Hansen (2003); Mheallaigh (2008); Whitmarsh (2011) 86–9.

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to be killed at Troy, in which a local vine dresser tells a passing Phoenician sailor about the conversations that he has had with the Greek hero in dreams. Rhetoric itself of course made a significant contribution to this striving for the past with its progymnasma exercise of ecphrasis (vivid description) and energeia (the associated vivid language). The literature of the time bears witness to a vogue for these techniques: Philostratus’ own Imagines is the first really extensive prose work structured entirely around this ecphrasis, and Lucian in his De historia conscribenda (20, 57) satirises its excessive use. Virtual reality, then, was big business in imperial Greece. But in this competitive marketplace, declamation had powerful and distinctive technologies of its own. First, the genre presents history in dramatic and firstperson format; second, the genre is ‘controversial’. When we say that declamation is dramatic, we mean that declamations do not simply describe history but rather stage it, in something like real time. When we further say that declamation is first-person, we mean that the declaimer (and we should remember that most Greek elites would have delivered declamations themselves in the course of their schooling at least) actually pretends to a greater or lesser extent to be the part that he is playing and addresses the audience as if they are his fictitious audience. Furthermore, if the declaimer is extemporising,75 his acting is not simply that of an actor delivering a memorised script, but rather the result of him actually thinking through the historical situation in real time; whether the declamation is delivered extempore or not, the audience does not know in advance what the author will say and so processes the historical situation in a similarly ‘live’ fashion. This first-person quality of declamation is important. Both intuitive reflection and recent work on cognition suggest that narratives will feel more real in proportion as they reproduce the distinctive characteristics of human experience – of which a first-person perspective is an important part. Quintilian even believed that acting a part could have lasting effects since, as he puts it, ‘frequent imitation passes into one’s character’ (frequens imitatio transit in mores, 1.11.2). Performing declamations was an important part of Bildung. Such simulations are ultimately flawed, of course. No declaimer can ever fully become the part he is playing, nor can his audience ever fully become the part that he imagines them to be. But this failure is important. Goldhill has already observed that classicism in general ‘insists on a gap between the here and now of modernity and the past of antiquity, a gap constitutive of 75

On extemporisation, see pp. 75–76 below.

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critical self-consciousness’ (my italics).76 In declamation, one simultaneously is and is not the character that one is playing; the interplay between the two is space for ethical reflection. The ‘controversial’ nature of declamation only adds to such effects. Because declamations are usually centred for good pedagogical reasons around scenarios in which a case could be made for both sides of the argument (and sometimes of course both cases were actually made),77 both author and audience were forced actively to engage with a finely balanced scenario and its details, rather than just knocking over an easy target. These two qualities – being dramatic and being controversial – make declamation a technology for virtual reality rivalled perhaps only by dreams (and manifestly more reliable). In particular, declamation enjoyed a number of advantages not available to conventional historiography. Grethlein has catalogued ancient historians’ techniques for bringing the past to life. To compare Grethlein’s inventory to the techniques available to declamation:78 history sometimes uses the imperfect to put us in the middle of the action, but declamation is necessarily always in the present tense; history can make use of internal focalisation, but declamation is always focalised through the eyes of participants in history; speeches contribute particularly to history’s vividness, because it takes roughly as long for readers to read a speech in a history as it would have done for the original audience to hear it, and because they allow the narrator to disappear for a while, but declamation is nothing but speeches; historians can put us back in the moment they are describing by reminding us of other courses of action that the actors in their narratives could have taken, while declamation, through its habitual interest in ‘controversial’ topics, does this as a matter of course. But the most important characteristic of declamation’s use of the past is this. The history that declamation presents stands alone, uninterpreted, a pure exemplum. In most other genres and media, the past is interpreted for the audience: it is cited (above all, in non-declamatory oratory) to address a definite problem, or (elsewhere) at least to push a definite position or attitude to the past. Even historians and biographers will implicitly and usually at least some of the time explicitly interpret what 76 77

78

Goldhill (2017) 422. Polem. Decl. A & B; Aristid. Orr. 5–6. Cf. Lib. Decl. 7–8 and 9–10, Chor. Decl. 1–2 and 5–6, and Pernot (1981) 81–6. Even when this does not happen, the speakers of many declamations nonetheless cite possible counter-arguments to their position in an effort to refute them (the technical term for which is an antithesis (ἀντίθεσις) (e.g. Hermog. Id. i 4.9)). Grethlein (2013) 27–182.

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they serve up to readers, however light their touch. But in declamation, to use once more a distinction developed for Plutarch, there can be no explicit moralism at all, only implicit.79 This lack of explicit interpretation has important consequences. First, whatever meaning is produced by the text requires more work than usual on the part of the audience. But this need not make the meaning any less potent; on the contrary, it might be all the stronger for being implicit. As Quintilian says (of innuendoes): ‘the judge searches himself for something which perhaps he would not believe if he heard it, and believes that which he thinks he has discovered himself’ (iudex quaerat illud nescio quid ipse quod fortasse non crederet si audiret, et ei quod a se inventum existimat credat, 9.2.71).80 There is a parallel here with the approach to Greek tragedy that sees the genre as deliberately reflecting on contemporary concerns in a ‘timeless register’ that allows tragedians to raise more radical questions than would be tolerated if they were posed directly.81 But while such implicit moralising may potentially be more potent, the risk for the declaimer is also less, for in the case of innuendoes the audience takes on a(n unusually large) share of the responsibility for the creation of meaning. Declamation here has something in common with the ancient rhetorical concept of ‘figured speech’ (λόγος ἐσχηματισμένος). A figured speech is one that has a covert rhetorical purpose supplementary to (or even contradicting) its ostensible purpose, or to put it more simply, one that says one thing and means another;82 such speeches enjoyed something of a vogue under the empire.83 The most common reason for using figured speech was safety: figured speech allows one to say directly what it might be dangerous to say openly, for example in criticising a tyrant.84 (There is 79 80

81 82

83 84

Duff (1999) 52–71. Compare Demetrius’ remark on a passage in Plato that ‘it appears much more forceful because the matter itself makes the forcefulness apparent, and the speaker does not need to spell it out’ (πολὺ δεινότερος ὁ λόγος δοκεῖ τοῦ πράγματος αὐτοῦ ἐμφαίνοντος τὸ δεινόν, οὐχὶ τοῦ λέγοντος, Eloc. 288) and Ahl (1984) 176–9. Timeless register: Taplin (1986). Indirect moralising in tragedy: Pelling (1997); Pelling (2000) 164–88. For general accounts of figured speech, see Demetr. Eloc. 287–95, [D.H.] Rh. 2.295–358, Quint. 9.2.65–99, Aps. Pr., Ps.-Hermog. Inv. iv 13, Ahl (1984), Schouler (1986), and Pernot (2008a). For a thorough study of the multifarious uses of the term σχῆμα, focusing principally on the classical period, see Catoni (2008). Pernot (2007) 213–14. Strictly, a figured declamation would say one thing to make another understood within the world of the fiction. A declamation that makes reference to the world outside the fiction is obviously not ‘figured’ in this literal sense. What we are talking about is rather figured declamation in a metaphorical sense: declamations that say one thing within the world of the fiction to make another thing understood in the real world.

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some similarity also to the ideas of ‘theatricality’ and ‘doublespeak’ in Roman culture in this period, such as, to cite a famous example, the analogy drawn between Nero’s killing of his mother and the story of Orestes.)85 But declamation’s implicit moralising and figured speech do not line up precisely, and we will have occasion to nuance the notion of declamation as figured speech in the second half of this study.86 But the metaphor of ‘translation’ that I have used to describe how Greek imperial audiences could make classical history meaningful for their own times points to the final and perhaps most important distinctive feature of declamatory classicism. Contemporary translation studies have shown just how shaky the image of the perfect, faithful translation is. What counts as a faithful (or indeed useful or simply good) translation will depend on the context in which the translation is received, the purpose for which it was made, and the target language into which the source text is to be translated.87 Given the infinite variety of contexts, the infinite variety of purposes for which translations are made, and the varieties of the target language into which a source text is translated, translation is necessarily multiple.88 Furthermore, there is instability in the source text too. For (to quote one of those provocative half-true formulas) all translation is interpretation. There is no meaning inherent in the source text waiting patiently for a faithful translator: as Martindale put it, ‘translations determine what counts as being “there” in the first place’.89 Drawing together these different threads, Reynolds has proposed a move from the traditional ‘channel’ model of translation, ‘in which a single text is translated by one person out of one language into another language’, to the metaphor of translation as a prism ‘opening up the plural signifying potential of the source text and spreading it into multiple versions’.90 Mutatis mutandis, these same factors apply to the ‘cultural translation’ that imperial Greece applied to classical history: there was a range of interpretations of the past, translated in a range of contexts and with a range of purposes; as Goldhill remarks of exemplarity, the reader’s intention’s – the reader’s desires – are both constitutive of the use of the exemplum, but also potentially profoundly disruptive. This makes our declamations potentially highly polysemous. Further contributing to such polysemy is the fact, to which we have already alluded, that 85 86 88 89

Suet. Nero 39 (mentioned by Philostratus at VS 481); D. Cass. 61.16.2; Bartsch (1994). Below, pp. 116–118, 140–1. 87 Goldhill (2017), esp. 429–31. For the role of context in meaning, see e.g. Cruse (2011) 103–126. For the role of purpose (skopos) in translation, see Reiss and Vermeer (2013). Martindale (1993) 93. 90 Reynolds (2019) 2–3.

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declamation focuses (in the first instance, for didactic reasons) on disputes in which there is something to be said on both sides. Such texts will naturally offer a range of subject positions to audiences. I alluded to this issue earlier under the rubric of a problem, but while it is certainly disruptive, it is ultimately an advantage, getting the most out of our texts and allowing them to speak to a wider audience. We will see numerous instances of this sort of polysemy in the second half of this study. Polysemy of this kind is another characteristic that declamation shares with Greek tragedy, where it has long been recognised.91 Declamation, then, constitutes a strikingly evocative, potent, and flexible technology for approaching the classical past in the Greek imperial period. The rise of declamation accordingly represents an important development in the historiographical culture of ancient Greece. This is a new mode of accessing the past, different from traditional historiography or art or architecture or ritual. Traditional historiography offered extended linear narratives with some claim to truthfulness; declamation substituted the creative re-enactment of a selection of scenes from the classical era, and sometimes indeed openly counterfactual scenarios. Such a new mode of presenting the past necessarily goes hand in hand with a change in the meaning of the past. For Aristotle, traditional historiography had been less philosophical because it dealt in the mere contingencies of events, whereas poetry dealt not with what had happened but with the sort of thing that might happen. As such, poetry revealed ‘universals’ (τὰ καθόλου), particularly regarding the ways that different types of people are likely to speak or act.92 But Aristotle conceded that his distinction was not hard and fast. Poetry only relates ‘more’ (μᾶλλον) of the universal, and if, as Thucydides thinks, history repeats itself, then what has happened could be suggestive for the sort of thing that might happen. Now declamation is well placed to bring out this potentially ‘philosophical’ quality in history. Historiography usually has to offer a more or less continuous and more or less comprehensive narrative; accordingly, it cannot avoid including mere contingencies. Declamation, by contrast, is vastly more selective, focusing only on a circumscribed programme of single episodes of great importance – resistance to Persia, Pylos and Sphacteria, a decision to emigrate – and largely neglecting any wider narrative. Declamation therefore has (in Aristotelian terms at least) a much greater philosophical potential than history and indeed is perhaps as close to Aristotelian poetry as it is to history. 91 92

E.g. Vernant and Vidal-Naquet (1972); Goldhill (1984); Goldhill (1986); Pelling (1997) 220–1. Po. 1451a–b.

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There is some similarity here to the model of reading Latin declamation suggested by Mary Beard. Beard suggested that for Romans, declamation fulfilled the role of ‘myth’. By this term Beard variously meant ‘a fictional world of “traditional tales” for negotiating, and re-negotiating, the fundamental rules of Roman society’; ‘a focus for the re-presentation and constant re-resolution of central Roman/human conflicts’; and ‘an arena for learning, practising and recollecting what it is to be and think Roman’.93 Spawforth too has suggested that the Persian wars in particular achieved such a mythical status in imperial Greece, again drawing a parallel with contemporary scholarship on Latin declamation.94 There would be an elegant parallelism here, for while Rome begins with a mythologised history and only later adds Greek poetry to its myths, Greece begins with a rich poetic mythology, but now in the imperial period adds an increasingly mythologised history in the form of declamation. Further support for the ultimately mythological or ‘philosophical’ nature of declamation’s history can be found in the slapdash approach to historical detail of many of our declamations. While Aristides may have cared for such niceties, it seems that his careful recreations were probably exceptional.95 Most other declaimers were rather less concerned. The declamations of Lesbonax, for instance, such as they are, are almost utterly devoid of historical data: a small detail gives the first one away as concerned with avenging the Plataeans; of the second, we cannot say more than that it is an exhortation to battle against Sparta; the third is just an exhortation to battle against an unspecified enemy. The same is true of the declamation attributed to Herodes, for while it does contain some flashes of detail on fifth-century Larissa, whole sections go without any sort of anchoring information at all. Polemo’s declamations on Cynegirus and Callimachus show a little more historical contextualisation, but even their history is ultimately superficial. Not unjustly did Reardon conclude that Polemo ‘does not provide a single historical fact’.96 As Kennedy says, ‘no attempt was made to preserve historicity . . . Declamation not only did not teach law, it did not teach history either’.97 A further sign of this mythologisation of history may be seen in plasmata. Heath has shown that many plasmata scenarios represent historical scenarios with the specific historical details stripped out.98 This change is particularly revealing, for it suggests that 93 95

96

Beard (1993) 56. Cf. Whitmarsh (2005) 71–3. 94 Spawforth (2012) 139. Webb (2006a) 31–2; cf. Kennedy (1983) 81. Even Aristides’ concern for historical accuracy is not so strong: in his Oration 7, set in 425 BCE, Plato’s Republic is cited (7.28) about fifty years before it was written (Schmitz (1997) 204). Reardon (1971) 109. 97 Kennedy (1983) 81. 98 Heath (2004) 251–3.

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what was most important in these scenarios was something other than, or something beyond, history. What we might call declamation’s ‘dehistoricisation’ of the past also makes declamation an important part of the wider story of fiction in Greek literature. While long-term literary trends are hazardous to diagnose and still more hazardous to explain, it is notable that, broadly speaking, the rise of the novel coincides with the heyday of declamation’s ‘dehistoricised’ view of the past. It may be, therefore, that declamation should be seen among both the causes and the symptoms of a growing interest in prose fiction in Greek imperial literature. Certainly declamatory plasmata share with Greek novels the classicising setting, and historical declamations share with the works of Chariton and Heliodorus and the fragmentary Metiochus and Parthenope a rather more specific classical setting.99 And there are some striking overlaps between the subject matter of certain declamations and some of our surviving novels: what is probably a fragment from Hadrian’s first declamation has actually been argued by some to be a fragment of Iamblichus’ Babyloniaca.100 It is notable, too, that the Greek term for nonhistorical declamations, plasma, eventually ends up getting attached to our novels, even if the date of this development is quite uncertain.101 The rise of prose fiction may even be traceable within the genre of declamation itself, for on the available evidence it looks as if the fictitious plasmata won out in the long term over historical declamations: of the fourth-century Libanius’ fifty-one surviving declamations, only about half are historical, while of the fifth-/sixth-century Choricius’ sixteen surviving declamations, only one is historical.

Conclusion So contrary to ancient and modern assertions that declamation’s classical history had nothing to offer the imperial present beyond bland nostalgia, the genre turns out to offer rich resources to audiences for thinking about their own lives. We have seen how audiences were able to ‘translate’ the classical past into something of meaning to the imperial present: as a stock of exempla to follow or avoid, particularly with reference to character and 99

100 101

The fragmentary Ninus and Sesonchosis also have definite historical settings, but those settings (ancient Egypt and ancient Mesopotamia, respectively) make them rather different from historical declamations. Cf. p. 9 n. 31. The colophon of the W manuscript of Achilles Tatius describes his novel as ἐρωτικὰ πλάσματα (‘erotic plasmata’).

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morality; as a yardstick or yardsticks against which to measure the present, frequently for rhetorical effect; and as a source of eloquent and provocative reflections on human life. If we wanted to sum up this diverse range of responses, we could turn to a term used by Plutarch in one of the more reflective prologues to his Lives, that to the pair Pericles–Fabius.102 The good (τὸ καλόν), Plutarch tells us, draws us towards itself and forms our character (ἠθοποιοῦν) ‘not by imitation . . . but by investigation [ἱστορίᾳ] of the deed’ (οὐ τῇ μιμήσει . . . ἀλλὰ τῇ ἱστορίᾳ τοῦ ἔργου, 2.4); earlier in the same prologue Plutarch has talked of his readers as ‘investigators’ (τοῖς ἱστορήσασιν) of virtuous deeds (1.4). These are striking and revealing formulations. What Plutarch is enjoining on his readers is (for this pair of Lives at least) not (simply) imitation of history, but rather something more – investigation (ἱστορίᾳ, ἱστορήσασιν). Duff glosses this term as ‘not simply looking, but also investigating, considering, testing’ – in short, precisely the kind of active processing of history that we have presented in this chapter.103 102

Duff (1999) 34–45.

103

Duff (1999) 39.

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chapter 2

Declamation, Life, and the Imagination

Plasmata imitate all the legal cases that real life puts together (ὅσας γὰρ ἡ πεῖρα συνίστησι δίκας, τοσαύτας μιμεῖται τὰ πλάσματα) (Chor. Theoria to Decl. 5)

In the last chapter, we explored the modes by which declamation’s audiences might relate the classical history presented in declamation to their own situation. In this chapter, we will put some flesh on the bones of this theory by exploring the contemporary resonance of the full range of declamation scenarios, from murder to war and migration to building projects. Declamation’s critics ancient and modern have often complained about a perceived gap between declamation and ‘real life’. Yet such a complaint is naive. First, as we said in the last chapter, the gap between example and generality is constitutive of the whole process of exemplarity: without a gap, there is only identity. Second, among the characteristic mental operations of the imperial Greek contemplating the classical past was what we dubbed ‘translation’, in which seemingly quite large structural differences can be ignored providing the moral question remains the same. Third, because the difference between exemplum and its (attempted) application can itself be telling (a process we dubbed ‘diagnosis’). But there is more. As we shall see throughout this chapter, declamation’s critics frequently tacitly exclude the element of fantasy from their definitions of ‘real life’. But in truth these are loaded definitions: fantasy is an important dimension of lived experience and critical in the formulation of cultural value; to ignore fantasy is to obscure an important sphere of interaction between declamation and extra-declamatory context. And finally – prosaically but importantly – because declamation’s opponents are simply wrong on positivist grounds. From stasis to rivalries with neighbours to embassies to foreign powers, Sophistopolis was not so far from the average Greek imperial city.1 1

Cf. Webb (2006a) 45. On life in the Greek Roman empire in general, see especially Jones (1940), Magie (1950), Sartre (1991), Mitchell (1993), and Dmitriev (2005).

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This chapter will explore declamation’s imaginary as a whole, while case studies of individual declamations will be reserved chiefly for the second half of the book.

‘As If in a Drama’ On the Latin side particularly, the charge that declamation is ‘unreal’ (and therefore irrelevant) often begins with the sensational interpersonal conflicts it embraces:2 murder, rape, disownment, incest, wicked stepmothers.3 Indeed, declamation scenarios on these topics are often cast in particularly extreme forms: a coward charges his wife with adultery when his son distinguishes himself in battle (Hermog. Stat. iii 2), or it is asked whether a eunuch can be said to have committed adultery (Hermog. Stat. iv 9), or a man falls in love with a statue (VS 598). Yet however much one might doubt the truth of such cases, they were emphatically part of the ‘real’ Greek imperial imaginary, as part of a culture of accusation and counter-accusation among members of the empire’s Greek elites, including many of our declaimers;4 furthermore, with so many accusations flying around, it is far from impossible that some of them may even have been true.5 Herodes Atticus was accused of murdering his wife Regilla (VS 555–6), and the sophist Hadrian was accused of having his students murder an irritating student of another sophist (VS 587–8); the sophist Heliodorus was also accused of murder, though the details are unclear (VS 626–7).6 In such a world, the question addressed so often by declamations, of what quantity or quality of evidence was required to prove murder (e.g. Aps. Rh. 1.43), was far from academic. No direct real-life accusations of rape are known, but stories of scandalous love affairs of various sorts were certainly common. The mother of the sophist Hermocrates of Phocaea is alleged to have had a love affair with a slave after the death of her husband (VS 610), and Proclus of Naucratis was devoted to a mistress after 2

3

4 6

See p. 23 n. 18. For the purposes of this chapter, I define ‘interpersonal conflicts’ as crimes or other offences or quarrels that largely take place between a small number of people qua private individuals, lacking partly or entirely a public dimension. Thus, Marrou (1965) 304: ‘ce ne sont que tyrans, pirates, rapts, viols, fils déshérités dans des conditions invraisemblables’. Murder: Hermog. Stat. i 8 (= iii 18, iii 31), i 11 (= iii 2, iii 33), iii 4, iii 39, iii 45, vi 4, xi 13, xi 13; Aps. Rh. 1.43, 1.79; Ps.-Hermog. Inv. i 1.10 (= ii 7.26), i 1.27. Rape: VS 569. Disownment: Hermog. Stat. ii 5, ii 12 (= x 6); Ps.-Hermog. Inv. iv 13.13–19 (three scenarios). Incest: Ps.-Hermog. Inv.i 1.10 (= ii 7.26), iii 8.3 (for the implication of incest in these first two instances, see Kennedy (2005) 7 n. 8), iv 13.16. Stepmothers: Luc. Abd.; Hermog. Stat. iii 39, 45. Anderson (1986) 57–63. 5 As Russell (1983) 13 reminds us, truth can be stranger than fiction. On Herodes and Regilla, see Pomeroy (2007).

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his wife’s death (VS 603–4); Onomarchus’ declamation about the man who fell in love with a statue even finds a parallel in a contemporary discourse attested in multiple contemporary sources about a man who was smitten by passion for the Aphrodite of Cnidus.7 The most elaborate such story attaches to the sophist Scopelian (VS 516–18), who (according to Philostratus) resented the concubine his father took up with after his mother’s death and was accused by the concubine of being in love with her; this concubine then prevailed upon a slave of Scopelian’s father to allege that Scopelian had encouraged him to poison his master; Scopelian’s father consequently disowned his son and made the slave his heir.8 The extraordinarily literary quality of this tale is explicitly acknowledged by Philostratus, who describes these events as happening ‘as if in a drama’ (ὥσπερ ἐν δράματι):9 among its obviously declamatory elements are (attempted) murder, poisoning, and disownment, and the concubine in this scenario is functionally the same as the stepmother of declamation, who often comes into conflict with her husband’s children by his previous marriage;10 the scenario’s very complexity, too, is typical of declamations involving conflicts within families.11 Another very high-profile disownment is represented by Herodes disinheriting his son Atticus for his dissolute lifestyle (VS 558),12 and indeed it is a declamation concerning a conflict between father and son that triggered Choricius to utter the epigraph which sits at the head of this chapter. Even the eunuchs of declamation, finally, could be seen in the contemporary world in one very famous instance, that of Favorinus, who made that status into an important part of his self-presentation.13 That Philostratus’ Vitae sophistarum does not give undue prominence to these sorts of stories and accusations is strongly suggested by their appearance elsewhere, from Lucian’s De morte Peregrini and Alexander to Polemo’s physiognomy and, later, Libanius’ autobiography.14 In such a world, one should hardly be 7

Luc. Im. 4, Am. 15–16; Philostr. VA 6.40.1–2. Cf. Plin. Nat. 7.127, 36.4.20–1. On this episode, see Campanile (1999) 271–3. On sex in this period, see Richlin (2017). 9 Drama of course was acknowledged as a significant resource for declaimers, e.g. VS 590, 620. 10 Poisoning: Hermog. Stat. iii 4, iii 39; Pasetti (2015). 11 Anderson (1986) 59: ‘This too has the makings of the most complex and fantastic controversia . . . We are left to infer either that the training in fictitious declamation themes was in fact much closer to real-life situations than is usually assumed, and we should perhaps begin to change our view of Graeco-Roman declamation accordingly’ (italics mine). Cf. Campanile (1999) 273. 12 Papalas (1972). 13 On eunuchs, see Richlin (2017) 125–7. On Favorinus as a eunuch, see Gleason (1995) 3–20, 131–58 and Holford-Strevens (2017) 233–8. Cf. below, p. 114 n. 89. 14 Luc. Pegr. 10; Alex. 56. Physiognomy: e.g. accusations of sorcery against Favorinus (Gleason (1995) 7). Libanius’ autobiography: e.g. Or. 1.43 (poison, magic), 1.69 (accusation of murder), 1.147 (adultery, castration, and mutilation). Cf. Anderson (1986) 44 with n. 5. 8

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surprised that the declaimer Polemo enjoined severity against adulterers and murderers on the Smyrnaeans (and temple robbers too) (VS 532).15 In short, the sort of scandals in which declamation deals were precisely those that gripped the imagination of the imperial Greek polis.

War: What Is It Good For? The frequency of war in declamation is a second oft-cited reason for characterising the genre as ‘unreal’. Certainly, there were a great many declamations concerned one way or another with the topic. A hard core concerns the conduct of war itself. In particular, declamations explore the lengths to which one may legitimately go to defeat an enemy. In a crisis, is it permissible to ignore the law forbidding an alien to mount the walls (Hermog. Stat. ii 10)? Can it be justified to burn one’s own ships to stop troops from deserting (Aps. Rh. 5.6)? In a siege, would it be right to kill the old as militarily useless and a drain on resources?16 Outside these scenarios, a greater number concern what we might call ‘international relations’. By this term, I understand all relations between two poleis or between a polis and a foreign state.17 Many scenarios concern war and peace – for example, a speech in favour of sending reinforcements to those in Sicily (Aristid. Or. 5), or one regarding a possible Lydian alliance with Sparta (Ps.Hermog. Inv. ii 4.3). Others have a Panhellenic dimension: someone proposes a war against Medisers (Aps. Rh. 1.11), or the Arcadians are attacked for being mercenaries (VS 522), or the Spartans are charged with wrongs against the Greeks for buying Theban prisoners from Alexander and slaughtering them before the trophy at Leuctra (Ps.-Hermog. Inv. iii 10.11); in a more conciliatory mood, there are proposals to remove trophies erected to mark victories over fellow Greeks.18 Other scenarios consider international obligations towards refugees and exiles.19 There are also disputes over symbolic capital. The Athenians and Spartans argue over who should have first place in a procession (Hermog. Id. ii 10.27), or squabble over a golden crown sent by the Persian king ‘to the best city’ (τῇ ἀρίστῃ τῶν πόλεων, Aps. Rh. 2.10 (= 3.17)); Alcibiades offends the Eleans 15

16 18

Specifically, Polemo urged that they not be handled in Smyrna but rather by the governor, who could impose the death penalty (cf. Civiletti (2002) 481). Temple robbers occur only once in declamation, but in a text that was to become canonical and as an example of one of the more important kinds of scenario (specifically, the stasis of ‘definition’ (ὅρος)) (Hermog. Stat. ii 2 (= iv 15)). Ps.-Hermog. Inv. i 2.4, Anon. Seg. Rh. 141. 17 Cf. below, pp. 154–155. Aps. Rh. 1.12; Philostr. VS 538–9. 19 VS 595–6; Ps.-Hermog. Inv. i 1.22.

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War: What Is It Good For?

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when after his victory in the chariot race at the Olympics he says that he comes from ‘the best . . . city’ (τῆς ἀρίστης . . . πόλεως, Ps.-Hermog. Inv. ii 4.5). Yet to dismiss such scenarios as ‘unreal’ or not part of ‘everyday life’ would be rash. For as Cédric Brélaz has shown, even in a time of relative peace, the wars of classical and Hellenistic Greece remained a vital part of the Greek imaginary.20 Cities still displayed numerous public artworks celebrating famous victories, which were also celebrated in festivals, such as the Eleutheria games at Plataea; ephebes still underwent military training and in emergencies were used to defend the city; walls, too, were still proudly maintained.21 The title of ‘general’ (στρατηγός) was still used to refer to important magistrates of various sorts in many cities, and at Smyrna and Athens in particular such jobs seem very often to have been held by sophists.22 In particular, relations between cities were often described in terms of war and peace. What we have here is a translation of past into present, with a focus on the moral or, in the terms of the last chapter, ‘categorical’ dimension (disputes between cities and their resolution) and a neglect of the ‘structural’ differences in the ways those disputes are pursued – war or diplomacy. Thus, urging concord with Apamea before the Prusans, Dio Chrysostom says that ‘peace is better than war’ (εἰρήνη κρείττων πολέμου, 40.26); similarly Aristides, when urging concord on the cities of Asia, draws an analogy with war, when one seeks to have as many allies as possible (23.35). The emperor Claudius, meanwhile, writing to Alexandria on the recent clashes between Greeks and Jews, had insisted that the proper term for what transpired was really ‘war’ (πολέμου).23 The absence of conflict could be conceived in military terms too. Favoured Greek cities such as Aphrodisias still enjoyed the title of ‘friend and ally’ (φίλη τε καὶ σύμμαχος) of Rome (and Greek σύμμαχος, from μάχομαι ‘I fight’, is somewhat more martial than English ‘ally’); indeed, this title was insisted on with renewed energy under the Severan dynasty.24 Given that diplomatic relations were often described using martial language of this sort, it was easy for declamation audiences to translate from declamations on war to reflections on diplomatic relations. 20 22

23 24

Brélaz (2008). 21 On walls, see below, pp. 69. Magie (1950) 643–5; Brélaz (2008) 168. Sophist generals: Dmitriev (2005) 262. On the hoplite generalship at Athens, see Sarikakes (1951). Cf. Whitmarsh (2001) 189 on martial imagery used of sophists. Smallwood (1966) no. 370 l. 74. Jones (1940) 131 with n. 67; Brélaz (2008) 191–3. For Aphrodisias, see Reynolds (1982). Severans: Heller (2006) 356.

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The rivalries of declamation – above all between Athens and Sparta – find ready contemporary parallels in the famous polis rivalries of this period.25 (I explore this connection fully in Chapter 6 below). In Asia, there was lively competition between Ephesus, Smyrna, and Pergamum, and the Bithynian rivalries – between Nicomedia and Nicaea, Prusa and Apamea – are well known from the speeches of Dio Chrysostom. The declamation scenarios about peace and, in particular, about taking down trophies erected over Greeks chime nicely with the numerous exhortations to concord found in the literature of this period;26 concord as an ideal is also well attested epigraphically and numismatically.27 On an empire-wide level, in the time of the ideology of pax romana,28 celebrated by Aristides himself in his Regarding Rome (Or. 26.92–106), declamations on war throw into greater relief the blessings of peace, through the processes of diagnosis or rescaling. If Sparta cannot currently go to war against Athens, because of both the restraining hand of the Roman administration and the sheer lack of an army, to relive, for instance, a victorious Spartan army’s deliberations in 404 bce about whether to destroy Athens once and for all (Aristid. Or. 8) is also to be thankful that Athens is currently safe from such a fate. Given the importance of pax in imperial ideology, this would be no trivial function. Nor should the ever-widening circle of war’s metaphorical reach be stopped there: war is a powerful metaphor in any period, from the Roman love poets’ militia amoris (‘romantic military service’) to modern Wars on Drugs or Terror.29 Finally, while war may have been more in the realm of fantasy in the Greek imperial period, it was certainly not absent either, both in the form of civil war between would-be emperors and in the form of foreign incursions. That this period has traditionally been thought of as a peaceful one is (to repeat) ultimately a subjective decision about what matters, about what is ‘real’, in this case a decision by Roman imperialism to pass over as unimportant violence that it could not contain – a decision which modern Classics, itself implicated in modern imperialism, has too often been content quietly to accept. Aristides himself, in fact, is one of the main sources for the incursion of the Costoboci into Greece in 170 and their subsequent sack of 25 26 27

28 29

On this phenomenon, see Magie (1950) 1500–1; Merkelbach (1978); Sartre (1991) 190–8; Heller (2006). On Nicomedia and Nicaea, see the classic article of Robert (1977). Below, Chapter 6. On homonoia (concord), see Sheppard (1984); cf. also Thériault (1996). On coins, see Franke (1997). A very poorly preserved inscription hints that the sophist Polemo may have been involved in forging closer links between Smyrna and Pergamum (Puech (2002) 405–6). Woolf (1993); De Souza (2008); Parchami (2009) 15–30. Militia amoris: Murgatroyd (1975); Lyne (1996) 71–8; Drinkwater (2013).

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Tyranny

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Eleusis; to this we may add the Parthian invasion of Syria in 161, during the course of which Roman armies suffered several heavy defeats, and the rebellion in 175 of Avidius Cassius, the legate of Syria, who at one point also had control of Egypt.30 The civil war that followed the death of Commodus was also fought out in Asia Minor: Byzantium made the mistake of backing Pescennius Niger against Severus and endured a terrible siege for three years, even being reduced to cannibalism by the end (D. Cass. 75.10– 15). After such an experience, a declamation scenario about cannibalism among the besieged inhabitants of Potidaea (432–430 bce) might have seemed all too close to home.31 And the third-century crisis, which saw numerous civil wars and foreign invasions, reveals clearly how close to the surface these twin evils lurked even in the quieter periods of the second and early third centuries. Furthermore, even in more peaceful decades, banditry remained endemic, and the city employed a range of officials in an attempt to keep the peace, including eirenarchs and paraphylaces (‘justices of the peace’) and the men they commanded, the diogmitai; border disputes, too, were far from unknown.32 In such a world, Plutarch’s talk of a politician being crowned for his success as a general (PGR 804e), or his worries about unsuitable men commanding armies (812e), or Dio’s statement that among the titles the people offer their leaders is that of (military) ‘champion’ (ἀριστεύς, 48.10) look less fantastical than they might at first appear.

Tyranny When it comes to politics within a city, one group of declamations has been the subject of particular criticism on the score of ‘realism’: those regarding tyrants.33 But here too fantasy – or perhaps in this case we should say ‘nightmare’ – has been excluded from the real. For while literal tyrannies were indeed largely unknown in this period, the discourse of tyranny was very much part of life.34 ‘Bad’ emperors, naturally, were often cast as tyrants;35 the governor, too, as the local representative of 30 31 32 33 34 35

Costoboci: Aristid. Or. 22; Paus. 10.34.5; Birley (1987) 164–5. Parthians: D. Cass. 71.2.1. Avidius Cassius: Birley (1987) 183–9. Aps. Rh. 1.54. Banditry: Shaw (1984); Grünewald (1999); Brélaz (2005) 52–6. Civic responses: Brélaz (2005) 69– 230. Border disputes: Burton (2000); Heller (2006) 86–98. Cf. Marrou quoted above, p. 54 n. 3. Kennell (1997); Mestre and Gómez (2009). The non-literal use of the term is of course deeply embedded in the tradition: for Thucydides’ Pericles, the Athenian empire was a tyranny (2.63.2). Tiberius–Vitellius (VA 5.27.1; cf. 5.32.2–3), Nero (Philostr. VA 5.10.2; [Luc.] Nero 6), Domitian (Plut. De frat. Amor. 487a; D. Chrys. Orr. 40.12, 50.8; Philostr. VS 488, VA passim), Commodus

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Roman power, could be a tyrant (D. Chrys. Or. 38.36, 43.11); Greek politicians could also be so figured, as could their cities (D. Chrys. 38.35), Roman soldiers (D. Cass. 77.17.2), and even the people.36 This is a classic instance of a ‘categorical’ translation of the past into present terms that focuses on morality and character: what matters is not tyranny as a form of government, but rather tyranny as the exercise of excessive and illegitimate power of any sort – whether an emperor who disregards the senate, or a local politician who has become too powerful. We might compare the use of the figure of the king in Greek tragedy: though there was, as Easterling puts it, ‘no one, on the face of it, less relevant to the experiences and problems of fifth-century Athenians than a hereditary monarch’, the tragic king nonetheless turns out to be capable of embodying all sorts of contemporary concerns.37 Declamations on tyranny, then, offered space for reflection on illegitimate power. Once this is understood, the particular concerns of declamations on tyranny start to look very germane indeed. Many scenarios considered what sort of evidence would suffice to prove an accusation of aiming at tyranny: the possession of a thousand suits of armour (Hermog. Stat. iii 23), looking at the acropolis with tears in one’s eyes,38 or tyrannical ancestors (Ps.-Hermog. Inv. i 2.10)? In a world where the label was flung around so easily, but in a sense beyond the literal, this was a serious question, even if the signs of tyranny were now usually different (though not always: Herodes potentially had a tyrannical ancestor in his father).39 And in a world of so many (metaphorical/translated) tyrants, the question of how far one should go to get rid of a tyrant was pertinent too: would it be permissible to call in external help, as in the scenario in which Athens considers asking Sparta to depose the Thirty Tyrants (Aps. Rh. 10.21)? Or to offer the tyrant immunity in return for his abdication (VS 569)? Or even to violate the right of sanctuary (Hermog. Stat. i 22)? Would one tyrant be better than thirty (Aps. Rh. 2.4 (= 10.50))? And when the ‘tyrant’ has been overthrown, who should take credit, or, as the question appears in declamation, for how much of a tyrant’s overthrow does one have to have been responsible to claim the prize for tyrannicide (Luc. Tyr.)? And just as it

36

37

(Hdn. passim esp. 1.3.1, 1.4.3, 1.16.1), Commodus (D. Cass. 74.2.1–2; Hdn. 2.1.3, 2.1.8, 2.2.5, 2.3.1, 2.3.8, 2.3.10, 2.4.2, 2.4.7, 2.6.5), Caracalla (D. Cass. 79.17.4; Philostr. VS 625; Hdn. 3.2.9, 5.1.5), Maximinus (Hdn. 7.1.1, 7.1.4, 7.3.1, 7.4.1, 7.5.5, 7.7.7, 7.10.2, 8.3.5, 8.5.9). Politicians: Hipparchus (VS 547) (taking ἐπὶ τυραννικαῖς αἰτίαις as ‘on charges of aspiring to tyranny’: for an alternative reading, see Civiletti (2002) 504); Herodes (VS 559); Dio Chrysostom (Or. 47.18, 47.24–5). People: D. Chrys. Orr. 32.28. Easterling (1985) 3. 38 Hermog. Stat. iii 19 (= iii 22); Aps. Rh. 2.3 (= 5.13). 39 VS 547, 559.

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would have been controversial for the Athenians of declamation to call in Sparta to rid themselves of the Thirty, so too was it controversial to resort to Roman authorities to solve internal problems,40 as Herodes and the Athenians had to do in their quarrel.41 A particular cluster of declamatory topoi is to be found in Philostratus’ account of Vespasian’s conference with the philosophers Apollonius, Euphrates, and Dio Chrysostom at Alexandria before seizing power (VA 5.27–38). We hear that tyranny is natural to the young, a claim made in Lucian’s declamation Tyrannicida (5.33.2);42 Dio promises Vespasian that he will give philosophers such raw material for their speeches as to outshine the declamatory tyrannicides Harmodius and Aristogeiton (5.34.3);43 and there is discussion of how much credit either Vespasian or the philosophers can take for Nero’s fall (5.34.4–5), something considered in the numerous declamation scenarios in which a tyrannicide’s right to a reward is disputed.44

Stasis But tyranny was not the only sort of political crisis that could rock Sophistopolis. There is also frequent strife within the city. The rich frequently clash with the poor, and there are four declamations in particular on the rivalry of Cleon with either Nicias or Alcibiades.45 Conflicts such as these were assuredly not confined to the imagination.46 Polemo suppressed what is explicitly presented by Philostratus in terms of stasis (ἀστασίαστον, ἐστασίαζεν) at Smyrna (VS 531); the declaimer Proclus of Naucratis fled from the stasis that afflicted his hometown (VS 603). Dio Chrysostom’s speeches provide ample evidence of conflict within Prusa,47 and Plutarch takes as his final example in the Praecepta gerendae reipublicae a private and rather mysterious quarrel at Sardis that had apparently led to rebellion and war (825d), and he warns that people often suspect politicians of conspiring against them (813a–c). Such strife is not well attested epigraphically, for obvious reasons, though there is one striking example from Cibyra in which a leading citizen is praised for ‘having put down 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

Plut. PGR 814e–816a. For the quarrel, cf. above, p. 5 n. 25. For other examples, see Dmitriev (2005) 308–9, 320–1. See also Brélaz (2005) 60–3. Luc. Tyr. 4–5, 16. For these famous tyrannicides in declamation, see Aps. Rh. 3.5 and Hermog. Stat. i 22. Ps.-Hermog. Inv. iii 9.3; Hermog. Stat. iv 2; Luc. Tyr; Anon. Seg. Rh. 217. Hermog. Stat. i 23; Aps. Rh. 1.98–100 (three scenarios). Brélaz (2005) 56–9; cf. Pekáry (1987). E.g. Orr. 43, 45, 46, 47, 48. See Salmeri (2000) and Bekker-Nielsen (2008).

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a great conspiracy which was greatly troubling the city’ (καταλύσαντα συνωμοσίαν μεγάλην τὰ μέγιστα λυποῦσαν τὴν πόλιν, IGRom. iv 914); this is doubtless the tip of an iceberg of strife in cities in this period. The prevalence of strife is also evidenced by the stress laid on concord: Dio Chrysostom and Aristides are both moved to deliver exhortations to concord within cities, and the virtue is also celebrated epigraphically and numismatically.48 Closely connected to such strife is the extraordinary number of declamations that concern misconduct of some sort in public life.49 There is treachery, corruption, and bribery: Themistocles is tried for helping Persia,50 and Pericles suspected of treason because the Spartan king Archidamus did not burn his crops when invading Attica (Ps.-Hermog. Inv. iii 6.5); Demosthenes swears that he did not take the bribe of fifty talents (VS 538, 542), and Archidamus denies having taken bribes from Pericles (Hermog. Stat. i 10). There is error and failure on a grand scale. First, there is military failure: Demosthenes denounces himself after Chaeronea (VS 542), or Mardonius (ahistorically) defends his advice to the Persian king after the battle of Plataea (Hermog. Stat. i 23). Then there is oratorical failure: Demosthenes is prosecuted for breaking down in a speech before Philip (VS 626); a charge is brought against Isocrates for keeping silence, then, when he promises to speak, he is charged again for proposing that Athens give up its naval empire (Aps. Rh. 1.27). And finally there is diplomatic failure: Aeschines acts in a tragedy at Philip’s court and is crowned victor but on his return is prosecuted by Demosthenes for false embassy (Ps.-Hermog. Inv. i 1.13); Demades goes on an embassy to Philip, and, when asked what sort of place Athens is, draws an image of it on the table, and on his return home he is indicted for hubris (Ps.-Hermog. Inv. i 2.7). Parallels from Greek imperial discourse are just as easy to spot here. Herodes in the course of his quarrel with the Athenians was accused before the emperor of trying to corrupt the governors of Greece (VS 561); Polemo was accused of having embezzled the greater part of 250,000 drachmas (VS 533);51 Philostratus records with admiration Quirinus’ steadfast refusal to enrich himself as advocatus fisci (VS 621); Plutarch too warns the statesman against peculation (819e). Dio Chrysostom provides evidence for further accusations of misconduct: he claims to have been accused of 48 49

D. Chrys. Or. 39; Aristid. Or. 24. Cf. Plut. PGR 824d. For epigraphic and numismatic evidence, see above, p. 58 n. 27. Anderson (1986) 64. 50 Aps. Rh. 10.12 (= 10.42). 51 Cf. below, p. 110.

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persuading the proconsul to torture, exile, and kill the people (Or. 43.11), all indeed classic crimes of the rhetorical tyrant;52 he is also, like the Rich Man of declamation, accused of suppressing democracy (Or. 43.12).53 Politicians were also often found culpable in their management of the grain supply, a topic we will return to in the next chapter. The persistent evasion of various civic offices and liturgies on the part of the rich, Aristides and Favorinus included, finds a particular declamatory resonance in the scenarios concerning Leptines’ law abolishing exemptions from liturgies.54

Champions, Olympians, Saviours, Foster-Fathers Even honours for those who have benefited Sophistopolis (a much smaller category!) cause controversy.55 Most such scenarios concern the rewards due a hero: is no reward too large, even a life?56 Dio Chrysostom reveals particularly close parallels between declamatory and contemporary honours in one of his addresses to the people of Prusa when he says: ‘is it not you who often praise us all day long, calling some of us “champions”, others “Olympian”, still others “saviours”, and others “foster-fathers”?’ (οὐχ ὑμεῖς ἐστε οἱ πολλάκις ἐπαινοῦντες ἡμᾶς δι’ ὅλης τῆς ἡμέρας, τοὺς μὲν ἀριστεῖς λέγοντες, τοὺς δὲ Ὀλυμπίους, τοὺς δὲ σωτῆρας, τοὺς δὲ τροφέας; Or. 48.10); local politicians and Roman emperors, too, were sometimes addressed in such terms by the Greek cities.57 All of these terms are paralleled in some way in declamation: ‘champion’ (ἀριστεύς) is the vox propria for a military hero in the genre,58 while ‘Olympian’ (Ὀλύμπιος) is precisely Pericles’ contested title in one declamation (Ps.-Hermog. Inv. i 1.17);59 political leaders frequently act as τροφεύς (literally 52 53 54

55

56 57

58 59

See e.g. Luc. Tyr. 5; Lib. Prog. 7.4.10–14. For this ‘affair of the “wicked governor”’, see Jones (1978) 102–3. For the rich aiming at tyranny in declamation, see Hermog. Stat. iii 9 (= iii 12); Aps. Rh. 1.25. VS 527; Aps. Rh. 3.7; Aristid. Or. 4.3. Aristides and exemptions: Boulanger (1923) 137–43; Behr (1968) 61–8 passim; Bowersock (1969) 36–40. Cf. below, p. 112. Favorinus and exemptions: VS 490; D. Cass. 69.3. Evasion generally: Sartre (1991) 144–7. We witness discussion of the sophist Rufinus’ entitlement to the exemption in a letter from Severus and Caracalla to Smyrna (Puech (2002) 438–43). This category of scenarios may ultimately owe something to the controversy over the crown awarded to Demosthenes that was the occasion for that orator’s classic De corona (Or. 18) and Aeschines’ response (In Ctesiphontem) (Or. 3). Aps. Rh. 10.29; Ps.-Hermog. Inv. i 2.4 Ὀλύμπιος: D. Chrys 31.116 (cf. Philostr. VA 8.7.21). σωτήρ: IGRom. iv 570; OGI 548; Sartre (1991) 405–6 (Hadrian). τροφεύς: IG vii 70–2 (Hadrian). The otherwise unknown sophist Pollianus of Philadelphia was honoured by his polis for being ‘a supplier of corn for life’ (διὰ βίου σειτοδότιν) (Puech (2002) 413–14). Russell (1983) 24–5. Plutarch uses the potential readings of this title to explore Pericles’ achievement (Per. 8.2–3, 39.2).

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‘feeder’) in providing food in a time of famine60 – just as in real life the city elites sometimes averted crises at their own expense61 – and often save the city in some way from enemies internal or external. And these honours could be as controversial as those fought over in declamation. The emperor Marcus’ famous letter to the Athenians settling their quarrel with Herodes Atticus contains arbitration on disputed elections to priesthoods, including the post of torch-bearer at the Eleusinian mysteries (δᾳδουχία, 11.1–15);62 the philosopher and orator Favorinus, meanwhile, saw statues of himself at Athens and Corinth thrown down after he fell out of favour with Hadrian.63

Embassies When it comes to the many declamations on embassies, the translation from classical past to imperial present is easy. Even though these declamatory embassies may owe something to the famous dispute between Demosthenes and Aeschines over an embassy to Philip, and perhaps also to the embassies undertaken by fifth-century sophists,64 embassies continued to be a major part of polis life, only with a difference in the identity of the imperial potentate, with Rome – whether in the form of an imperial governor or the emperor himself – playing the role that had once belonged to Persia or Macedon;65 one fairly certain instance of a translation from an embassy before Philip to an embassy before Caracalla will be considered in Chapter 4 (below pp. 97–9). Bowie counts about 200 documented embassies for the period covered by Philostratus, and relations with Roman governors and emperors were important enough to cities that they were to some degree institutionalised in the establishment of the civic offices of syndikos and ekdikos to negotiate with the Roman authorities.66 Our declaimers were often involved: the sophist Scopelian apparently managed to persuade Domitian to rescind his edict that all vines in Asia should be pulled up and that no more should be planted, with such success that penalties were now threatened for those who did not plant vines;67 Polemo secured 10 million drachmas from Hadrian for construction projects at Smyrna (VS 531), and his ambassadorial activity was also celebrated epigraphically;68 Aristides persuaded Marcus to contribute to the rebuilding of Smyrna after the earthquake of 178, though characteristically did 60 62 64 65 67

Aps. Rh. 1.66, Pr. 3; Ps.-Hermog. Inv. iv 13.3. 61 Jones (1940) 216–18. Text in Oliver (1989) 366–88. 63 Philostr. VS 490; [D. Chrys.] 37; Gleason (1995) 8–20. Aeschin. Or. 2; Dem. Or. 19. Fifth-century ambassadors: Gorgias (D.S. 12.53.1–5), Hippias (Pl. Hp. Ma. 281a; Philostr. VS 495), Prodicus (Pl. Hp. Ma. 282c; Philostr. VS 496). Anderson (1989) 143. 66 Bowie (1982) 37. Syndikoi and ekdikoi: Dmitriev (2005) 213–16. VS 520, VA 6.42; Suet. Domit. 7.2, 14.2. 68 Puech (2002) 396–9; Quet (2003).

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so via letter rather than in person (Aristid. Or. 19; VS 582); Nicagoras of Athens is known to have gone on an embassy to the emperor Philip (Suda s.v. Νικαγόρας (ν 373)).69 But embassies were not confined to sophists: Bowie counts only sixteen sophists or rhetors serving as ambassadors, and calculates that 75 per cent of embassies for which we have sufficient information were undertaken by men with no known sophistic qualifications.70 Dio Chrysostom, for instance, claims that his grandfather enjoyed such intimacy with the emperor that, had he lived a little longer, he might have secured a grant of freedom for Prusa (Or. 44.5). Just as many declamations are concerned with failed or false embassies, so do we find Dio Chrysostom mounting a vigorous defence of his conduct in the face of claims that, while the envoys sent from other cities to congratulate Trajan on his accession had secured enormous benefits, his own delegation had come away with nothing (Or. 40.13–15); Plutarch too is concerned that those who go on embassies actually have the necessary oratorical skills (PGR 812e, 819c) and even suggests nominating inappropriate ambassadors as a way to stop ‘inopportune’ (ἀκαίρους) embassies (819a).71 Even the ambassadors’ expense claims that form the subject of the declamation at Hermog. Stat. ii 8 were a contemporary concern: Pliny and Trajan both sound horrified at the expenses granted to ambassadors from Byzantium on quite routine missions (Plin. Epp. 10.43–4), and some ambassadors ostentatiously refused to claim expenses; Vespasian limited embassies sent to him to three members, and other emperors after him seem to have attempted to reduce the number of expensive embassies.72

Religion Eight declamation scenarios involve festivals: six the Eleusinian mysteries, two the Olympics.73 Various scenarios consider whether there are any circumstances in which one should change any aspect of these festivals. 69

70 71 72 73

Further sophistic embassies: Polemo to Trajan (VS 521, 536); Polemo (from beyond the grave) to Pius (VS 539); the sophist Marcus of Byzantium to Hadrian (VS 530); the sophist Alexander ClayPlato to Pius (VS 570–1); the sophist Apollonius of Athens to Septimius Severus (VS 601); the sophist Heliodorus to Caracalla (VS 625–6). Bowie (1982) 37. Cf. Bowersock (1969) 47. Compare Quintilian: ‘cases of misconduct on an embassy are common among the Greeks, even in real life’ (male gestae legationis apud Graecos et veris causis frequens, 7.4.36). Waiving expenses: Dmitriev (2005) 145, 149–50. Vespasian’s limit: Dig. L 7.4.6. Other emperors: Williams (1967). Mysteries: Luc. Pseudol. 5; Hermog. Stat. iv 22; Aps. Rh. 2.13 (= 2.19, 3.11, 5.8), 1.85 (= 2.18); Ps.Hermog. Inv. II 5.3, 6.20 Olympics: Aps. Rh. 1.77; Ps.-Hermog. Inv. ii 4.5.

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When the Persians invade, is it permissible to hold initiations into the mysteries at sea? Would it be wrong in a financial crisis to charge a fee for initiation? How Greek does one have to be to secure admission to the mysteries? Little translation is needed here. Not only was the worship of the gods an important topic at any period in Greek history, but it was, if anything, still more important in the imperial period. In particular, next to the declamations on the Eleusinian mysteries we may set the great increase in opportunities for religious initiation in this period,74 a phenomenon in which many declaimers participated: Apollonius of Athens was hierophant at Eleusis (VS 600), and his involvement is attested epigraphically;75 Nicagoras of Athens was herald of the temple at Eleusis (VS 628) (also attested epigraphically);76 Marcus Aurelius asked Herodes Atticus to be the one to initiate him into the Eleusinian mysteries (VS 563). Besides the scenarios on the Olympics we may set the great increase in the number of agonistic festivals: Mitchell calls such games ‘one of the dominating features of civic life throughout the Hellenised East, but above all in Asia Minor’,77 and probably all cities staged competitions of some sort; Aristides in his Regarding Rome hyperbolically imagines the whole world as attending a festival (Or. 26.97).78 Sophists were often involved: Hermaphilus of Tomus is known to have served as agonothete (‘steward of the games’), and Lysimachus was agonothete for life of the Lysimacheia, which either he or a relative had founded.79

Scythians and Sophists The contemporary resonance of the seven declamations in which various peoples consider migration, and the three on the closely related topic of Scythian nomadism (with one particular Scythian scenario occurring no fewer than five times in Apsines), is less immediately obvious.80 These scenarios are: those who suffer from bad health on the plains consider moving to the mountains; the Catanians debate abandoning their city when fire flows down from Etna; the Sicilians debate emigrating after repeated earthquakes; the Egyptians debate emigration when the Nile ceases to flood; and the Lydians consider the same course of action when 74 75 77 79 80

Hopfner (1935); Nilsson (1957) 45–66; Burkert (1987). Puech (2002) 100–16. Cf. below, pp. 112–13. 76 Puech (2002) 357–60. Mitchell (1993) 217. 78 Jones (1940) 230–4; Mitchell (1993) 217–25; Sartre (1991) 184–6. Puech (2002) 295–7, 338–41. Migration: VS 620, 575; Aps. Rh. 3.15; Ps.-Hermog. Inv. ii 2.1 (four scenarios). Scythian nomadism: Aps. Rh. 1.48 (= 1.54, 1.72, 2.15, 3.8); VS 572, 620.

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the Pactolus ceases to bear gold. But cities were often being abandoned or founded,81 and most of these catastrophes, or something very like them, did occur in this period, as in all periods. There are frequent earthquakes in the Mediterranean, and Aristides himself bears witness to a major earthquake in Smyrna; volcanic eruptions, too, not least on Etna, were common.82 Even the very response to an earthquake that we find in one declamation – taking it as a cue to settle a conflict (Ps.-Hermog. Inv. ii 4.8) – is mentioned by Aristides as if it is usual practice when talking about conflict between the cities of Asia (Or. 23.74). Yet perhaps more salient to the Greek elites who declaimed, as well as their audiences, was the movement of individuals, which was often hotly contested in this period. That the mass migrations of declamation could speak to individuals is clear from the way that Lucian sees a reflection of his itinerant career in stories about Scythians (Scyth.), with there also being something more than a little Lucianic in the Scythian’s probing questions about Greek culture in his Anacharsis and Toxaris. We will also consider below a highly likely instance of Scythian nomadism in declamation used to figure an itinerant sophist (cf. below, pp. 101–3). The globalisation that the advent of the Roman empire had wrought on the Mediterranean had made questions of home and belonging, and of local and global, especially pressing, particularly for the mobile GrecoRoman elite that composed and consumed declamation.83 Members of the Greek elite were highly mobile and regularly had loyalty to more than one place. Many enjoyed citizenship and residency not only in their hometown but also in other nearby towns,84 and often Roman citizenship too;85 and while service in the imperial administration often took them far abroad, sometimes for extended periods, at the same time some still preferred local politics.86 Travel was safer than it had been in previous centuries, and not just it seems in imperial ideology;87 there even seems to have been a growth in tourism.88 Teachers of rhetoric took advantage of this opportunity, moving from city to city after the fashion of their fifth-century predecessors.89 Given the prestige, students, and ultimately income that a famous sophist could bring to a city,90 it is no surprise that a declaimer 81 82 83 87 89

Jones (1940) 59–84; Sartre (1991) 123–6; Mitchell (1993) 80–99. Earthquakes: Aristid. Orr. 18–20 and 21.6–13; Ambraseys (2009). Volcanoes: Stothers and Rampino (1983). Whitmarsh (2010). 84 Jones (1978) 94. 85 Sherwin-White (1973). 86 Salmeri (2000). De Souza (2002) 195–7. 88 Casson (1974) 229–329 Cf. Cribiore (2007) 80–2; Kaster (1988) 126–8. 90 VS 516, 531–2.

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was often pulled in different directions by his hometown, the competing regional centres of Athens, Smyrna, Pergamum, and Ephesus, and Rome itself.91 Some philosophers were also wanderers, too, such as Cynics, and, with a slightly different emphasis, Dio Chrysostom. Wandering itself was also part of the Greek imperial imaginary. The itinerant Cynic philosopher is a popular figure in Greek imperial literature,92 and it is notable that the Cynics sometimes valorise the Scythians as exemplars;93 the Greek novels too also offer a range of reflections on wandering, as does Philostratus’ almost-novel, the Vita Apollonii.94 Exile, in particular (real and/or imagined), was a key part of the philosophical imaginary. It is an important part of the self-presentation of Musonius Rufus, Dio Chrysostom, and Favorinus, and Whitmarsh concludes that ‘the language of exile expressed the writer’s alienation from the tradition and values of the Classical world’.95 And just as the Scythians of declamation fall ill when they settle in cities, so did Musonius draw a contrast between the healthy life of the exile and the sickness that the ease of city life could induce;96 Dio Chrysostom, too, meditates at length on the evils of city life;97 Plutarch, finally, reflects on exile in broad terms in his De exilio.

Of Canals and Kings On the face of it, the construction projects of declamation are very different from those that the authors and audiences of declamation would have witnessed. Declamation considered projects such as building walls for Sparta (VS 514 and 583), Xerxes’ canal through Athos (Aps. Rh. 1.39), or the question of bridging the Danube (VS 575). At Athens, meanwhile, we find Conon offered the same honours as the tyrannicides for building the Long Walls (Aps. Rh. 3.5), and a proposal to sell the fleet to pay for the rebuilding of the city (Aps. Rh. 1.17); we also find Demosthenes proposing a canal through the Chersonese isthmus to slow Philip’s advance,98 while 91

92 95 97 98

Scopelian’s native Clazomenae begged him to open a school there, but he preferred Smyrna, considering his hometown an inadequate stage (VS 516); many cities were ‘lovers’ (ἐρασταί) of Polemo, Philostratus tells us, before describing in particular how Smyrna courted him with honours (VS 530); an important inscription (Puech (2002) 455–7) reveals that the sophist Soterus was induced to move from Athens to Ephesus by a salary of 10,000 drachmas a year, which just so happened to be the salary of the chair newly established by Marcus Aurelius at Athens (for the chair, see Avotins (1975)). On the pull of Athens for students and teachers, see Bowie (2015) 241–8. Montiglio (2005) 187–203. 93 Montiglio (2005) 191–2. 94 Montiglio (2005) 221–61. Whitmarsh (2001) 179–80. 96 Whitmarsh (2001) 133–80. D. Chrys. Or. 7; Desideri (2000); Ma (2000). In two sources: Ps.-Hermog. Inv. iii 3.10 (= iii 6.12, iii 11.2) and Aps. Rh. 1.44 (=1.72, 3.16).

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Philip himself appears as a potential builder in the scenario in which he offers to rebuild Greek cities if the Greeks will give up their intention to make war against him (Aps. Rh. 1.91, 2.8). In a world of theatres and bathhouses, what relevance could such buildings have? Yet while the specific building types may sometimes have differed, construction was a hot topic at all periods of Greek history, and indeed particularly so in the Roman empire.99 Cities in the Greek east seemed almost continually engaged in ambitious building projects, to the extent that public buildings have been seen as becoming the defining feature of the polis in this period.100 Trajan was incredulous when Pliny as governor of Bithynia asked him to send an architect from Rome, quipping ‘you can’t possibly be lacking architects’ (architecti tibi deesse non possunt, 10.40). The problems with Nicaea’s buildings are well documented in the letters of Pliny and the speeches of Dio Chrysostom,101 and in particular we know of many sophists involved in large-scale projects in the Greek east.102 Ethical translation from past to present is easy here. Furthermore, the two most common buildings in declamation – walls and canals – both remained important in the Roman empire. While we do not typically associate city walls with this period, as part of the abiding military culture on which we have already touched, even those cities that did enjoy relative security built, maintained, and took great pride in their walls.103 Dio Chrysostom desired to equip Prusa with walls (Or. 45.13); Ps.-Aristides lamented the destruction of Rhodes’ walls in an earthquake, walls which he sees as having been a source of great pride for the city (Or. 25.7–9; cf. 42, 48–9); Aristides himself advised the cities of Asia not to value walls and other buildings over good sense (Or. 23.68–9); Nicaea and Prusias ad Hypium celebrated their new city walls on coins;104 and Severus punished Byzantium for its opposition in the civil war that followed the death of Commodus by tearing down its walls (D. Cass. 75.15.4). Walls were also good to think with: Philostratus, for example, has Apollonius of Tyana belittle the walls of Ecbatana by telling the Parthian king that the Spartans had no need of walls (VA 1.39.1). In Aristides’ Regarding Rome (Or. 26.79–84), meanwhile, the vast and distant perimeter of the empire is contrasted favourably with the ostentation of Babylon’s walls, and the Spartans’ stubborn refusal to build walls at all. 99 100 101 102 104

On euergetism (of all kinds), see Zuiderhoek (2009) with Meyer (2011). Mitchell (1993) 80–1, 198. Pl. Epp. 10.23, 70, 81; D. Chrys. Orr. 45, 47, 48. Cf. Plut. PGR 819a. VS 511, 549–551, 568, 605, 613; Puech (2002) 190–4, 396–9. 103 Brélaz (2008) 176–9. Mitchell (1993) 213.

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Nor did canals lack contemporary resonance. Next to all the canals we find Xerxes digging or Demosthenes proposing in declamation, we may set Nero’s famous failed attempt to breach the isthmus of Corinth,105 and Herodes’ desire to do the same (VS 551–2);106 Philostratus actually explicitly links Nero’s project to that of the Persian king (Nero 2), which suggests that it would have been easy for declamation audiences too to jump from Persian canals back to Roman ones.107 The bridging of seas also finds a parallel in Caligula’s famous bridge of boats across the Bay of Naples, with the emperor in some sources explicitly connecting this project with Xerxes’ bridging of the Hellespont.108 The reality of all of these projects may be called into question, but that canals were part of the Greek imperial imaginary cannot.

Conclusion To look simply for one-to-one correspondences between declamation and ‘real life’ is naive. For first, as we have seen, traditional conceptions of ‘real life’ in the Greek east are neither natural nor neutral. Rather, they often follow ideological contours set down by previous ages. They often neglect, for instance, the very real role of war in this period. In particular, such a search excludes the imaginary. Once we admit into ‘real life’ the characteristic fantasies and fears of the Greek imperial age – of being a champion, of cutting a canal across the isthmus of Corinth, or of giving it all up for a life of nomadism; or, negatively, of being enslaved by a tyrant, of failing on an embassy, or of being accused of adultery by a wicked stepmother – then Sophistopolis looks rather more familiar. Furthermore, when we bear in mind that the imaginary is a hall of mirrors – that it distorts and reforms reality in characteristic ways, among them ethical translation (where the situation changes but the moral question does not) and diagnosis (where the focus is on difference) – then the contemporary potential of declamation scenarios becomes still more obvious. Declamation, then, offered a rich field for diverse reflections on contemporary life, and in the second half of this book we will deploy the modes of interpreting the past described in the previous chapter to look at some of the most interesting case studies of this interaction. But first we must examine the performance context of declamation to see how the jumps from art to life worked in practice. 105 106 107

J. BJ 3.10.10; Suet. Nero 19.2; Paus. 2.1.5; D. Cass. 62.16; Philostr. VA 4.24, Nero 2–3. Cf. Quint. 3.8.16; Plin. 4.4.10. This coincidence is noted by Anderson (1986) 33 and Civiletti (2002) 511. Anderson (1989) 142. 108 Bridges (2015) 171–3. Cf. Malloch (2001).

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chapter 3

Text and Performance Context

We begin with a much-discussed parallel between declamation and life: Λολλιανὸς δὲ ὁ Ἐφέσιος προὔστη μὲν τοῦ Ἀθήνῃσι θρόνου πρῶτος, προὔστη δὲ καὶ τοῦ Ἀθηναίων δήμου στρατηγήσας αὐτοῖς τὴν ἐπὶ τῶν ὅπλων, ἡ δὲ ἀρχὴ αὕτη πάλαι μὲν κατέλεγέ τε καὶ ἐξῆγεν ἐς πολέμια, νυνὶ δὲ τροφῶν ἐπιμελεῖται καὶ σίτου ἀγορᾶς. θορύβου δὲ καθεστηκότος παρὰ τὰ ἀρτοπώλια καὶ τῶν Ἀθηναίων βάλλειν αὐτὸν ὡρμηκότων Παγκράτης ὁ κύων ὁ μετὰ ταῦτα ἐν Ἰσθμῷ φιλοσοφήσας παρελθὼν ἐς τοὺς Ἀθηναίους καὶ εἰπὼν “Λολλιανὸς οὐκ ἔστιν ἀρτοπώλης, ἀλλὰ λογοπώλης“ διέχεεν οὕτω τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, ὡς μεθεῖναι τοὺς λίθους διὰ χειρῶν αὐτοῖς ὄντας. Σίτου δὲ ἐκ Θετταλίας ἐσπεπλευκότος καὶ χρημάτων δημοσίᾳ οὐκ ὄντων ἐπέτρεψεν ὁ Λολλιανὸς ἔρανον τοῖς αὐτοῦ γνωρίμοις, καὶ χρήματα συχνὰ ἠθροίσθη . . . κατηγορῶν μὲν γὰρ τοῦ Λεπτίνου διὰ τὸν νόμον, ἐπεὶ μὴ ἐφοίτα τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ἐκ τοῦ Πόντου σῖτος, ὧδε ἤκμασεν· “κέκλεισται τὸ στόμα τοῦ Πόντου νόμῳ καὶ τὰς Ἀθηναίων τροφὰς ὀλίγαι κωλύουσι συλλαβαί, καὶ ταὐτὸν δύναται Λύσανδρος ναυμαχῶν καὶ Λεπτίνης νομομαχῶν.”1 (Philostr. VS 526–7) Lollianus of Ephesus was the first holder of the chair of rhetoric at Athens, and he also led the Athenian people as hoplite general. Formerly this office involved holding the levy and leading the Athenians out to war, but these days it is concerned with the food supply and the grain market. When there was an uproar in the bakeries, and the Athenians were about to stone Lollianus, Pancrates the Cynic, who after these events pursued philosophy at the isthmus of Corinth, came before the Athenians and said ‘it is words, not bread, that Lollianus sells’, and in this way so pacified the Athenians that they let go of the stones that were in their hands. And when a shipment of grain had arrived from Thessaly and there was no money in the treasury to pay for it, Lollianus told his students to make contributions, and a great deal of money was collected . . . 1

I read νομομαχῶν rather than the νομοθετῶν that Stefec prints here, for the latter looks very much like a gloss on the hapax νομομαχῶν.

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Text and Performance Context When Lollianus was prosecuting Leptines for the law he had brought, since the Athenians had stopped receiving grain from Pontus, the high point of his speech was this: ‘The mouth of the Pontus has been barred by a law, and Athens’ food supply is being held back by a few syllables, and Leptines with his laws is as powerful a force as Lysander was with his ships.’

This declamation was set in the fourth century bce and was inspired by Demosthenes’ Contra Leptinem. It is imagined that Leptines’ bill, in which it was proposed to abolish all exemptions from liturgies, has been ratified, and that Leucon of Bosporus, who had previously enjoyed such an exemption, has retaliated by stopping shipments of grain to Athens, causing a shortage, as Demosthenes had warned might happen (Dem. 20.29–40).2 In the premodern world, the food supply was always precarious and therefore always controversial, even in the high Roman empire. Dio Chrysostom had to reject the idea that he has been profiteering in a time of grain shortage (Or. 46.8–9),3 while in his account of the life of the philosopher Apollonius of Tyana, Philostratus narrates a similar grain crisis during which the chief magistrate was almost burnt alive (VA 1.15.2–3).4 Given that Lollianus as hoplite general at Athens had faced at least one bread riot and, on another occasion, had to raise money from his own students when there was no public money to pay for a shipment of grain from Thessaly, it must be asked: did Lollianus intend his audience to hear in the declamation in which he condemned Leptines an allusion to his own position, and to some aspect of his work in securing Athens’ food supply? Was Lollianus perhaps excusing a failure on his part to secure the grain supply for the contemporary Athenians? While several scholars have briefly remarked upon the coincidence between Lollianus’ real-world occupation and his artistic output, they have generally remained cautious about seeing any intentional link between the two. Russell says (of this instance and of the possibility of the phenomenon in general) ‘in default of clearer evidence, we should be sceptical’;5 Anderson follows Russell in saying that ‘Lollianus does not actually seem to have used his rhetoric against Leptines in front of the real mob’;6 the commentaries of Rothe and Civiletti say simply that such a declamatory scenario might have been of particular interest to a man who was concerned with Athens’ grain supply.7 Only Pernot comes out in

2 3 6

On this declamation scenario, see Kohl (1915) 67, Rothe (1989) 48–50, and Civiletti (2002) 471. Jones (1978) 19–25. 4 On food riots, see Erdkamp (2002). 5 Russell (1983) 108–9. Anderson (1986) 63–4. 7 Rothe (1989) 49; Civiletti (2002) 471.

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favour of a deliberate ‘relationship’, though reasonably stating that the limitations of the evidence make it ‘impossible to be more precise’.8 I propose to leave this question open for the time being and to return to it at the end of the chapter. For while we have seen that there were extensive similarities between declamation and the Greek imperial imaginary (Chapter 2), and that audiences had a range of modes at their disposal for relating past to present (Chapter 1), there is still something more that can be added: an account of just how in practice – whether in a declamation’s first performance or in subsequent reading – the audience could move from declamatory past to extra-declamatory present. It is such an account that this chapter aims to provide. Through a careful examination of all aspects of the experience of a declamation, from the declaimer’s prefatory remarks to the physical setting of the declamation and the actions and language of author and audience, we will see that declamation, far from shutting out the world beyond its fiction, repeatedly includes it in the performance.9 Some aspects, such as the various kinds of textual frame within which the declamation was set, tend to bring out the parallels between the dramatis personae and the author; others, such as the location of the performance, tend more to draw attention to the wider context. Such an account necessarily involves a considerable amount of reconstruction. We only have information about the performance dimension of a small number of declamations, and what information we do have is typically scrappy: we know where one declamation was performed, the prefatory remarks that preceded another, and the audience reaction to a third; only rarely do we have a more complete picture. But the fact that we can glimpse so much blurring between the past of declamation and the Greek imperial present even in the relatively scanty information we have strongly suggests that such a phenomenon was a regular part of declamatory culture. In such a culture, the threshold for transference from a fiction to its context is much lower, and the chance that it occurred in Lollianus’ declamation on Leptines, as well as in the surviving texts we will go on to examine in the second half of this book, very much higher. 8 9

Pernot (2007) 222–5. On the performance dimension of Greek declamation and oratory more generally, see Russell (1983) 74–86; Anderson (1986) 27–38, 43–53; Anderson (1989) 89–104; Anderson (1993) 53–64; Pernot (1993) 423–75 (properly on encomia, but a rich and valuable treatment); Gleason (1995); Schmitz (1997) 198– 205; Korenjak (2000); Whitmarsh (2005) 23–40; Thomas (2017). There has also been important work on the performance dimension of Latin oratory: see especially Gunderson (2000); Corbeill (2002); Corbeill (2004) 107–67; Corbeill (2006). For an exploration of the narrative levels of Latin declamation, see Mal-Maeder (2007) 41–64.

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Framing In a typical declamation performance, proceedings began with the declaimer making some prefatory remarks in his own persona, though this may have been omitted in more educational contexts. In modern times, this has become known as the prolalia (προλαλιά).10 Today we have perhaps ten surviving prolaliai by Lucian,11 though we cannot be sure that these preceded declamations specifically rather than another sort of oratory,12 along with quite a smattering of fragments and testimonia, principally from Philostratus’ Vitae sophistarum, as well as perhaps five prolaliai to philosophical works by Dio Chrysostom;13 we also have prolaliai for the later declamations of Himerius and Choricius.14 The prolalia seems to have been a regular part of the performance,15 to the extent that Philostratus considers it worthy of comment that Proclus of Naucratis only rarely delivered prefatory remarks (VS 604). So many, perhaps most, of the declamations that we have today must have been preceded by prolaliai in performance; we know from a casual remark that Aristides delivered prefatory remarks referred to as ‘before the contest’ (προαγών) before a declamation at Smyrna (Or. 51.33). Whether these missing prolaliai were available to later audiences reading these declamations is unknown, but far from unlikely. In addition to the ten Lucianic prolaliai we have preserved, Philostratus clearly had access to or knew of texts of many declaimers’ prolaliai, and the Suda knows of more.16 It is true that the prolaliai of Lucian and Himerius have become orphaned from the speeches they originally introduced, but there is no reason to think that this was always the case, or that prolaliai could not be reunited with their declamations by readers on the basis of their contents: in the manuscripts of the twelve declamations of the fifth-/sixth-century Choricius of Gaza, ten are 10

11 12

13 14

15

For definitions, and a survey of all the texts, fragments, and testimonia, with discussion, as well as the relevant theoretical texts, see Pernot (1993) 546–54. See also Stock (1911); Mras (1940); Anderson (1977); Branham (1985); Nesselrath (1990). Luc. Bacch., Herc., Electr., Dips., Herod., Zeux., Harm., Scyth., and probably Prom. es and Dom. Lucian’s prolaliai hint only of a ‘speech’ (λόγος) or ‘speeches’ (λόγοι) to follow (Herod. 7, Scyth. 10); Bacch. 5 suggests that the work to follow might be comedic, but even this does not rule out one of Lucian’s declamations, for there is subtle humour to be found in these also (Guast (2018)). D. Chrys. Orr. 19, 42, 54, 57, 72. Whether what the manuscripts of Himerius term laliai or dialexeis (both equivalent to prolalia) preceded declamations or other sorts of works or whether indeed they were stand-alone pieces is not always obvious (Penella (2007) 9–10), but Orr. 38 and 46 look likely to have preceded declamations. Of the twenty-five prolaliai that we have for Choricius (conventionally known as dialexeis), 5–6, 8– 17, and 20–5 are known to have been preliminary to a declamation. Russell (1983) 77. 16 Pernot (1993) 553–4.

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preceded by prolaliai, and in many cases the pairing can be confirmed by comparing the contents of the prolalia with the declamation it precedes.17 Given that such paratextual material is always at risk of being lost, the preservation of these prolaliai suggests that they added something valuable to the reading of declamation. What is crucial about these prefaces for our purposes is the declaimers’ frequent use of imagery and allegory to talk about themselves. This is clearest in the prolaliai of Lucian: their short narratives are invariably followed by what Lucian himself on one occasion terms a ‘moral’ (ἐπιμύθιον) in which he explains ‘in what respect I resemble the story’ (καθ’ ὅ τι τῷ μύθῳ ἔοικα, Bacch. 8). For example, in the Dipsads, after telling his audience of the poisonous dipsad snake’s great thirst for water, Lucian explains that his own desire for his audience has been as great (Dips. 9); in the Zeuxis, Lucian compares the reception of his works to those of Zeuxis, admired more for novelty than technical excellence (Zeux. 1–7). Some of Lucian’s prolaliai even involve more than one allegorical narrative of this sort: in his Herodotus, he tells stories about the eponymous historian and the painter Aetion to explain his strategy for promoting his works and then embeds within the story about Aetion an interpretation of the painter’s depiction of Alexander the Great’s wedding night (4–6). We can also glimpse further use of imagery in the little evidence Philostratus gives us for prolaliai. Marcus of Byzantium in a prolalia used the rainbow as an image for a speech (VS 528); Athenodorus the sophist ridiculed the work of Pollux of Naucratis as the ‘gardens of Tantalus’ (οἱ Ταντάλου κῆποι), ‘likening the lightness and superficiality of his speech to an apparition which is both there and is not’ (τὸ κοῦφον τοῦ λόγου καὶ ἐπιπόλαιον φαντασίᾳ προσεικάζων οὔσῃ τε καὶ οὐκ οὔσῃ, VS 595); Pollux himself seems to have used a florid description of Homer’s Proteus as an image for sophistic literary versatility (VS 592–3).18 This phenomenon can also be observed in the philosophical prolaliai of Dio Chrysostom (Orr. 57, 42), and it is frequent in those of Himerius and Choricius. So when the declamation begins, the audience have already been considering the extradramatic significance of the tales the declaimer is weaving: this would have primed audiences to do the same for the coming declamation. After the prolalia, the declaimer typically asked his audience to choose what scenario they would like to hear declaimed, though, as with the prolalia itself, this does not seem to have been so common in strictly educational contexts.19 Audiences seem frequently to have chosen scenarios of relevance to themselves. I know of eight instances from our period of audiences giving 17

Penella (2009) 28–9.

18

Wright (1921) 238 n. 1.

19

Korenjak (2000) 116–20.

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declaimers titles to declaim. In only two of these eight is there no discernible parallel between the performance context and the subject matter of the declamation. The emperor Marcus, Philostratus tells us, tested the rhetorical abilities of Hadrian of Tyre, newly appointed to the chair of rhetoric at Athens, by giving him the title ‘Hypereides, when Philip is at Elatea, pays heed only to the counsels of Demosthenes’ (τὸν Ὑπερείδην τὸν ἐς μόνας ἐπιστρέφοντα τὰς Δημοσθένους γνώμας, ὅτε δὴ ἐν Ἑλατείᾳ Φίλιππος ἦν, VS 588). Herodes’ students at Athens, meanwhile, proposed to the visiting Philagrus a title that they knew he had already declaimed to catch him out passing off old material as improvisation (VS 579). In the other six, all of which will be explored fully in the next chapter, there is a likely connection (even if the finer details of the correspondence are not always recoverable).20 For instance, the Athenian audience’s suggestion that the wandering sophist Alexander Clay-Plato declaim on the Scythians seems to be a friendly invitation for Alexander to valorise his own mode of life. Now it may well be that a correspondence between the performance context and the fiction of the declamation was a memorable event that made the audience suggestion more likely to be recorded. But given the fragility of memory and the patchiness of our evidence, six recorded instances of this happening are not an inconsiderable number. Furthermore, the survival of two audience suggestions that do not seem to mirror the context make it clear that the scenario proposed could be remembered for other reasons. Given that a declamation was often delivered more or less instantly, declamation would therefore have been a genre with an uncommon potential to respond closely to present circumstances. Furthermore, even when the declamation was not actually delivered extempore (something to which Philostratus perhaps gives undue space and reverence),21 the lead time between the choice of scenario and the performance still seems often to have been relatively short: Isaeus spent the morning rehearsing before delivering speeches in the afternoon, while Proclus rehearsed the day before; even the meticulous Aristides is supposed to have said ‘propose the scenario today, and hear it tomorrow’ (τήμερον . . . πρόβαλε καὶ αὔριον ἀκροῶ).22 It is at this juncture – after any prolalia, and after the scenario has been chosen by the audience or teacher – that the second sort of declamatory 20

21

(1) The title proposed by the emperor Caracalla to Heliodorus in Rome (VS 626); (2) The title proposed by Megistias to Hippodromus in Smyrna (VS 619); (3) The title suggested by a passer-by to Aristides at Pergamum (Or. 50.18); (4) The title the Athenians decided to set Alexander Clay-Plato (VS 572); (5) The title the Athenians then set for Herodes Atticus (VS 574); (6) The title proposed by Hadrian of Tyre’s audience at Olympia (Luc. Pseud. 5). Heath (2004) 251. 22 VS 514. VS 604, VS 583; Anderson (1986) 31–2.

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preface, the protheoria (προθεωρία) is probably to be placed. A protheoria usually consists of short prefatory remarks on the problems of rhetorical theory raised by the scenario about to be declaimed, though sometimes also with more general remarks of the sort that we might more typically expect to find in a prolalia.23 We do not have protheoriai for our period. But given the existence of protheoriai for the later declamations of Libanius, Himerius, and Choricius,24 and given the existence of an equivalent form in Latin, the sermo, roughly contemporaneously with our period (in the Minor declamations attributed to Quintilian), the chances that they were delivered before second- and third-century declamation as well must be considered quite high. Indeed, we have evidence of a preliminary theoretical remark, if not a full protheoria, delivered by Aristides. John Doxopatres tells us in a scholion to Hermogenes De statibus that before a declamation on Critias, Aristides remarked ‘I know that this case “lacks issue”, but for the sake of exercise I have chosen to declaim the weaker part’ (ἐπίσταμαι μὲν ὅτι οὐ συνίσταται, ὅμως δὲ γυμνασίας χάριν τὸ ἀσθενέστερον πρόσωπον μελετῆσαι προῄρημαι).25 Whether protheoriai were delivered orally before the declamation (and then recorded in writing), or whether they were added to the written versions after the first performance, is unclear, and the evidence on this point ambiguous; it may well be that both happened.26 One might be tempted to see theoriai in particular as purely didactic prefaces of a sort that would not have been used in a public declamation performance. Even if that were true, however, it would still mean that almost all members of the literary elite who attended such public performances would be familiar with such prefaces from their rhetorical education. In truth, however, as we have already said, in general any hard-and-fast division between ‘school’ declamations and public performances is untenable.27 Furthermore, if we examine the theoriai to later declamations, there is some evidence for rhetorical theoriai delivered outside of a purely educational context.28 23 24 25

26 28

Nolè (2013), Penella (2009) 15–16. Protheoriai are preserved for Libanius Decl. 3, 4, 6, 12, 24, 25, 34, 40, 43, 45, 46, and 49, in fragments for Himerius Orr. 1 and 3, and in full for all of Choricius’ extant declamations bar the eleventh. Gloeckner (1908) 16. ‘Lacks issue’ (συνίσταται) is a technical term, referring to a case that cannot reasonably be declaimed owing to some deficiency in the structure of the debate, in this case because it is so one-sided, as John Doxopatres’ earlier remarks reveal, presumably since Aristides was arguing in support of a notorious tyrant. For cases lacking issue and one-sided cases, see Hermog. Stat. i.13– 23 with Heath (1995) 66–9. Nolè (2013) passim. 27 See p. 28 above. Libanius Declamation 46, which has a fairly theoretical theoria, was clearly performed outside of the schoolroom (Penella (2014) 109). In the prolalia to the declamation Polydamas (Dialexis 5), Choricius talks of tracking down in the city those knowledgeable about rhetoric (2), while in

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Yet these protheoriai are important for our purposes not because of their theoretical content but rather because of the more general remarks that they sometimes contain. In particular, we on several occasions find declaimers comparing the story of the coming declamation to the context in which they are performing. When the character that Choricius will be playing in the coming declamation is in some way similar to himself, Choricius foregrounds the similarity. In the protheoria to Declamation 12, justifying his choice to play the part of an orator rather than the general against whom the orator is contending, Choricius says: ‘I – for I know how to give speeches, not how to make war – have fittingly chosen the one whose profession is the same as my own’ (ἐγὼ δέ – ῥητορεύειν γὰρ οἶδα μᾶλλον ἢ πολεμεῖν – τὸν ὁμότεχνον ἐμαυτῷ δικαίως ἐξελεξάμην, 5). Similarly, in the protheoria to Declamation 5, Choricius justifies his choice to play the part of the young war hero in dispute with his father by reference to ‘an old saying that people like others of their own age’ (trans. Penella) (ἥλικα γὰρ δὴ καὶ ὁ παλαιὸς λόγος τέρπειν τὸν ἥλικα, 6), adding ‘I commend the father as a subject to elderly misers who share his characteristics’ (τὸν μὲν οὖν πατέρα πρεσβύταις ἅμα καὶ φιλαργύροις ὑπόθεσιν ὡς ὁμοτρόποις αὐτῷ παραπέμπομαι).29 And yet in the next declamation, in which Choricius plays the old man, it is the difference between the declaimer and the part he is playing that is foregrounded: Choricius explains that he has taken the part of the father ‘though I am neither a great lover of money by nature nor a father of children’ (οὔτε χρημάτων . . . σφόδρα πεφυκὼς ἐραστὴς οὔτε παίδων ὑπάρχων πατήρ, 6). There is also an extraordinary interplay between art and life in the protheoria to Libanius Declamatio 25. The declamation scenario is ‘someone proposes the restoration of Lais from exile’ (γράφει τις Λαίδα πάλιν κατάγειν). (Lais was a famous courtesan; this scenario imagines that she has been banished.) In this protheoria, uniquely, Libanius speaks not only in the voice of the theoretical preceptor but also as the part he is about to play, blending the sort of comments typically expected in a protheoria, such as ‘the arguments for advantage counterbalance all these points on their own’ (πᾶσι γὰρ τούτοις τὸ συμφέρον μόνον ἀντίρροπον, 3) with in-character remarks like ‘we will go through what Lais did to us’ (ἡμεῖς δὲ τὰ πεπραγμένα Λαίδι καθ’ ἡμῶν . . . διέξιμεν, 2). The effect is that

29

Dialexis 6, reference is made to ‘these . . . wise men’ (οἵδε . . . οἱ σοφοί) redundant who have ordered Choricius to declaim (6.4). Penella (2009) 15–16 suggests that an older Choricius might be making a wry joke here. He might be, but I know of no positive reason to think so. On this pair of declamations and their prefaces, see also Russell (1983) 82–4, who takes Choricius at his word.

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the two voices seem to merge, and we begin to wonder whether in-character comments in this protheoria like ‘my soul was pained and grieved to see such infamy coming on Corinth and men trying to persuade you to repent of what you had decided about Lais’ (Ἔπαθον τὴν ψυχὴν καὶ συνήλγησα τοσαύτην ἀδοξίαν Κορίνθῳ κατασκευαζομένην ὁρῶν καὶ πεῖσαί τινας ἐπιχειροῦντας ἐφ’ οἷς ἐγνώκασι περὶ Λαίδος μεταμελεῖσθαι, 1) are not to some degree to be attributed to Libanius also. As we will see in this chapter, for a declaimer to ‘peep out’ in this way behind the part he is playing is actually widely attested in other aspects of declamation performance too. It is notable that we find one comment comparing the fiction of the coming declamation to the performance context in one of Choricius’ prolaliai rather than his protheoriai. In the first prolalia to Choricius’ Declamation 6, in which the father opposes his son, Choricius makes a remark rather similar to that in the protheoria to this declamation that we considered above: ‘so I should have been old as well, and had a miserly character too. For the thing that a speech is imitating appears more clearly when the speaker is of the same age and disposition as the character he has devised for himself’ (ὥστε μοι καὶ γήρως ἔδει τὰ νῦν καὶ ἅμα φιλοχρήματον εἶναι τὸ ἦθος· ἐναργεστέρα γὰρ ἡ τοῦ λόγου φαίνεται μίμησις, ἡνίκα ὁ λέγων ἡλικιώτης ἐστὶ καὶ ὁμότροπος, ὅτου ἂν ἑαυτῷ πλάσας τυγχάνοι, Dialexis 12.4).30 In the usual sequence for extempore declamation, this would be impossible, for the prolalia preceded the choice of the declamation scenario.31 But it is clear from this prolalia and others that it was normal for Choricius to deliver his prolaliai after the declamation scenario had been decided. This surely must also have been the case for the declaimers in our period who did not extemporise, for it would be absurd for someone like Aristides to utter a prolalia, elicit a theme, and then wait a day to deliver the declamation itself. It seems, then, that in some circumstances prolaliai too could also be used to draw out the contextual resonances of the coming performance. So there is clear evidence that later declaimers used the two species of declamatory preface explicitly to relate the fiction they were about to declaim to the context of the declamation, and particularly to their own situation. It is possible that this is only a later development, but given how patchy our knowledge of these prefaces in our period is, it is quite possible that this phenomenon (attested for the fourth and fifth/sixth centuries) 30 31

Some of Choricius’ declamations had two prolaliai, one before each of the two halves of the performance, which had been split on account of the length of the text (Penella (2009) 29–30). Plin. Ep. 2.3.1–2; Gel. 9.15.4.

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occurred in the third and second centuries also. Even if declamatory prefaces in our period did not explicitly relate art to life in this way, the later evidence is certainly suggestive of the latent potential of declamation to blur with the extra-declamatory reality, for neither the scenarios declaimed nor the circumstances of life had changed beyond recognition in the intervening period. When we encounter declamations second-hand through the reports in Philostratus, obviously we do not get to experience the prolalia and/or protheoria that preceded the original performance. But the boundaries between Philostratus’ main narrative and his accounts of declamations are also often strikingly fluid. This is in fact true of Lollianus’ declamatory denunciation of Leptines.32 That declamation is introduced in Philostratus with the following words: ‘When prosecuting Leptines for the law he had brought, since the Athenians had stopped receiving grain from Pontus, the high point of his speech was this’ (κατηγορῶν μὲν γὰρ τοῦ Λεπτίνου διὰ τὸν νόμον, ἐπεὶ μὴ ἐφοίτα τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ἐκ τοῦ Πόντου σῖτος, ὧδε ἤκμασεν, VS 527). As this sentence literally reads, it is Lollianus who denounces Leptines, and not Demosthenes. The same is true of Lollianus’ next declamation: ‘and opposing the Athenians when, in a financial crisis, they were deliberating selling their islands, he puffed out the following’ (ἀντιλέγων δὲ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ἀπορίᾳ χρημάτων βουλευομένοις πωλεῖν τὰς νήσους ὧδε ἔπνευσεν, VS 527). In both cases, on the face of it, it seems to be Lollianus who speaks, not his fictitious subject, and there is no explicit clue that these are declamations at all; such blurring raises the possibility that some of the fictitious speaker’s sentiments are to be attributed to their author Lollianus.33 Suggestive too are some verbal parallels between Lollianus’ political activity and his declamation pointed out by Pernot: Philostratus’ use of the word σῖτος for both is perhaps not so surprising, but the occurrence of the word τροφαί in the description of the hoplite general’s role and in Lollianus’ declamation is more notable.34 A declamation of Isaeus is introduced in the same way: we hear of him ‘condemning Python of Byzantium’ (κατηγορῶν δὲ τοῦ Βυζαντίου Πύθωνος, VS 514), with no hint that this is a declamation, and the same sophist’s declamation on the fortification of Sparta is also introduced with an ambiguous ἀγωνιζόμενος (‘contending’, VS 514), a term which could refer both to the fighting of a real legal case (LSJ s.v. ii) and, as a technical term, to playing a part in declamation.35 Such blurring is 32 33 34

Pernot (2007) 222–5. Wright’s Loeb translation has to add the introductory words ‘his theme was to’ on both occasions (Wright (1921) 121). Pernot (2007) 225. 35 Webb (2006a) 33. ἀγωνίζεσθαι: Wright (1921) 567.

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characteristic of Philostratus’ work, particularly in his Imagines, where for instance a boy looking at a painting of Menoeceus is urged to hold out his garment to catch the blood shed by the hero (Im. 1.4), or the narrator affects not to know whether a bee in the depiction of Narcissus is real or painted (1.23), but the evidence we have been considering in this section suggests that it was a common way of thinking about declamation too. So when a declamation began, its framing had often already primed the audience to compare, contrast, and blend the fiction they were about to enter with the context in which it was performed.

Location Most declamations were delivered in the cities of the Greek east. 36 We will look at particular performance venues in a moment, but we should first consider the significance of this general setting. For Greek declamation, like Greek tragedy, was a genre to a significant degree experienced by audiences in the same physical space that its fictions traversed, that same landscape so rich in reminders of the past as described by Pausanias. This was as true for the first performance as it was for later reading. Oliver Taplin has written powerfully about the effects that such an overlapping of fictitious and real space can have in Greek tragedy: The crucial fact for Greek tragedy is that the places of myth are geographically, topographically, the same places as still existed in the ‘classical’ times of the play’s creation . . . It is crucial, I believe, to the enduring power of Greek myth that it is set in places that have enduring reality; and this is essential for the way that tragedy was not, and is not, unapproachably remote. The narratives are set in a time that is distant; an era that is distant in its heroic power and greatness, and even in the hugeness of its glory and its sufferings. But the places are the same: not only the towns, the cities, but the mountains, rivers, coasts and landmarks. Locality is a kind of spark that jumps across the gap between the present of the audience and the past world of myth. I am suggesting, then, that this meeting of kinds of place in the crucible of the theatre is an important factor in creating that coexistence of distance and nearness that lies at the heart of the power of Greek tragedy, even now as then. Moreover, this convergence of the mythical place and the mind-place of the spectator would surely be all the more powerful for someone who had actually been to the place in question and had witnessed its continuing reality.37 36 37

On the significance of the location of a declamation performance generally, see Trapp (2018). Taplin (2010) 5.

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Mutatis mutandis, such reflections are highly suggestive for Greek declamation (for ‘distant in its heroic power and greatness’, we might read ‘distant in its political and military independence’). But in the imperial age, such effects were perhaps even greater, for the obsessive classicism of this era meant that certain key locales of classical Greek history were richly cultivated in people’s minds as cities of the imagination as well as real locales. Cities like Athens were both still important cities in the Greek world and vividly familiar from Greek literature;38 one could visit Marathon or Chaeronea (and Plutarch of course lived most of his life at the latter);39 Elatea, whose seizure by Philip provoked a panic at Athens and was the subject of several declamations, was still a strategic location on the road into central Greece, and still three days’ march from the borders of Attica.40 A declamation of Aristides considers what is to be done with Athens after its defeat in the Peloponnesian war in 404 bce (Or. 8): the prudence of Sparta’s decision to put Athens’ benefactions to Greece above inter-polis rivalry is brought home by the classical monuments still to be seen in Roman Athens, or to be read about in Pausanias. In another, when Pericles proposes laying waste to Attica, Nicias (disingenuously) suggests beginning with Eleusis: the folly of such a plan is all the more salient in an age when the mysteries were flourishing (cf. above, pp. 65–66).41 The lowly state of Roman Thebes – together with the frequent literary revisiting of the city’s destruction – was a pointed reminder of the stakes in declamations concerning Alexander’s notorious decision.42 More specifically, a great many historical declamations involving Athenian history, and even plasmata, are set in a world that evokes classical Athens. Given that of the forty-four to forty-six instances recorded by Bowie of declaimers active in particular cities, between nineteen and twenty, almost half the total, are known to have been active in Athens,43 many declamations on Athenian history will have been performed in the city in which they were set.44 Such alignments make the past more accessible: Lollianus’ 38 39 41 42 43 44

On Roman Athens, cf. below, p. 83 n. 45. On Roman Sparta, see Cartledge (2002). Paus. 1.32.3–7, 9.40.5–12. 40 Hermot. Stat. vii 2; Aps. Rh. 1.9, 2.6; Philostr. VS 589. Aps. Rh. 1.85 (= 2.18). Paus. 8.33.2. Declamations: Philostr. VS 595–6; Aps. Rh. 1.61; Suda s.v. Γενέθλιος (γ 132); Ps.Hermog. Inv. iii 10.11. Bowie (2004) 76–81. But Philostratus probably gives undue prominence to Athens (Jones (2008) 114–15). ‘Look at these trophies here of your fathers, and the naval battles, the one at Artemisium, and the one at Salamis, the battle at Plataea, the inscription on the trophy at Marathon. When I order you to look at these, I am ordering you to look at the acropolis here and the Parthenon and the booty’ (ἀποβλέψατε δὴ εἰς τὰ τρόπαια τῶν πατέρων αὐτὰ ταῦτα καὶ τὰς ναυμαχίας, τὴν ἐπ’ Ἀρτεμισίῳ, τὴν ἐν Σαλαμῖνι, τὴν μάχην τὴν Πλαταιᾶσι, τοὐπίγραμμα τοῦ

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declamation on Leptines recalls his own career not simply because both involved grain crises, but also because both took place at Athens. The lessons of declamation’s history were to be seen all around. The geography of Athens, indeed, is well enough known for us to be able to glimpse even more specific effects.45 In one declamation, the Athenians deliberate dragging Critias away from the statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton where he has taken refuge (Hermog. Stat. i 22); the fact that one could go to Athens and still see the statues to which Critias is imagined to have fled (Paus. 1.8.5) brings past and present closer together, especially in a city where accusations of tyranny were flung around lightly (above, pp. 59–61). In another, a rich young man is prosecuted for aspiring to tyranny after he repeatedly looks at the acropolis with tears in his eyes: if such a declamation was performed in almost any location in Athens, the acropolis would have been visible to the audience (and Athens of course was not the only city with an acropolis); that celebrated acropolis would of course have been visible in the mind’s eye to many more.46 Other more generic alignments of this sort are also likely to have occurred. We know of one declamation performed in a city’s council chamber (bouleuterion), and as these were widely used for other kinds of oratory, this was probably common.47 Such a setting would have made a transfer from declamatory politics to real-world politics all the more natural.48 Speeches were also delivered at festivals.49 We know of one declamation performed at the Olympic games entitled ‘Pythagoras prevented by one of the Athenians . . . from taking part in the Eleusinian rites on the grounds that he is a barbarian, since he used to say that before this life he had once been Euphorbus’ (ὁ Πυθαγόρας κωλυόμενος ὑπό τινος Ἀθηναίων . . . μετέχειν τῆς Ἐλευσῖνι τελετῆς ὡς βάρβαρος, ὅτι ἔλεγεν αὐτὸς ὁ Πυθαγόρας πρὸ τούτου ποτὲ καὶ Εὔφορβος γεγονέναι, Luc. Pseudol. 5). The declaimer here would have been speaking in one major Panhellenic context (the Olympian games) in the persona of someone speaking at another (the Eleusinian mysteries). That such an alignment might have been used by the declaimer to make reference to the

45 46 47 48

Μαραθῶνι τροπαίου. ὅταν δὲ εἰς ταῦτα ἀποβλέψαι κελεύσω, εἰς ταυτηνὶ τὴν ἀκρόπολιν ἀποβλέψαι κελεύω καὶ τὸν Παρθενῶνα καὶ τὰ λάφυρα, 11.63) says the speaker of Aristides’ First Leuctran oration: if this speech was ever performed, or ever reperformed or studied at Athens (the last of which at least is quite likely), there would have been a strong alignment between the real and fictitious settings of the declamation. On Roman Athens, see Shear (1981); Walker (1997); Boatwright (2000) 144–57; Raja (2012) 91–135. Hermog. Stat. iii 19 (= iii 22); Aps. Rh. 2.2 (= 5.13). Aristid. Or. 51. 31–4. Other kinds of oratory: Korenjak (2000) 31–2. Cf. Korenjak (2000) 29, 59. 49 Aristid. Or. 51.16; Philostr. VS 618; Luc. Herod. 1; Pegr. 32.

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world outside the declamation seems more likely when we recall that (according to Lucian) the declaimer had arranged in advance for this scenario to be selected by his audience when he offered them an apparently free choice. It may be that the declaimer had explicitly sought out a scenario that aligned with his performance context; the fact that the declaimer thought that an audience might plausibly believe that such an alignment had arisen by accident suggests that such a situation could occur with relative ease.

Body Language In modern dramatic forms, the actor typically does his best to conceal his true identity. They wear a costume, make-up, even prosthetics; their voice is changed to match the part. In declamation, by contrast, the author made no effort to disguise himself in this way:50 it should therefore have been correspondingly easier to understand the words spoken as deriving from or having relevance not merely for the character he was playing but also the declaimer himself. We begin with the voice. Though the declaimer was in character, it is clear that distinct personal styles could still be recognised.51 Herodes Atticus modelled himself on Critias (VS 564); Proclus of Naucratis blended Hippias’ and Gorgias’ styles (VS 604). Sometimes the discrepancy between the part played and the declaimer’s own style must have been striking: the exuberant style of Polemo’s extant declamations on Marathon would have been jarring in his ‘Demosthenes swearing that he had not received a bribe of fifty talents’ (Δημοσθένης ὁ τὰ πεντήκοντα τάλ αντα ἐξομνύμεννος, VS 542). Nor would such a discrepancy have been unique to Polemo. The florid style employed by many declaimers in this period is obviously at odds with the typical style of the characters from classical history that they impersonated: the audience’s schooling would have taught them that those authors did not generally indulge in cadences as poetic as Apollonius of Athens’ οὐ κατάγει νεκρούς, ἀλλ’ ἀνάγει θεούς (‘it does not take corpses downwards, but leads the gods upwards’, VS 602).52 More prosaically, Pausanias the sophist is known to have delivered his declamations with a thick Cappadocian accent (VS 594) that rarely if ever can have suited the character he was impersonating. Such mismatches would have been all the more salient given that many audience members 50 52

Russell (1983) 82. 51 Russell (1983) 109–10. Florid style: Norden (1898) i 407–10; Kim (2017) 53–60. Apollonius of Athens: Rothe (1989) 193.

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and readers would have studied style intensively in the course of their education, if indeed they did not attend lectures on theory in adulthood, as Marcus Aurelius did;53 certainly much was being written by rhetoricians on style, and for Philostratus style is clearly one of the most important parts of the performance.54 And while some audience members may have gone no further, attention paid to style leads naturally to attention paid to content, as we have seen (n. 55), not least for an earnest auditor like Plutarch.55 As regards appearance, there is no evidence for costumes; the famously scruffy Marcus of Byzantium seems to have been scruffy whatever part he was playing (VS 529).56 Some even brought their ailments into the declamation hall. There is a memory in Philostratus that Polemo’s joints were so feeble that he had to be carried in a litter to his performances (VS 537), and Aristides vividly describes overcoming physical weakness when declaiming (Or. 50.22) and on one occasion spoke from his sick bed (Or. 47.64). This might not be significant if we had no reason to think that audiences paid any attention to a declaimer’s appearance. But Philostratus documents numerous instances of audiences playing close attention to appearance, particularly to the signs of gender;57 indeed, such attention was perhaps particularly to be expected given the popularity and widespread diffusion of physiognomical ideas in this period, a subject on which the declaimer Polemo himself had written;58 for Quintilian, physical appearance and delivery were so important that they could give a reputation for genius (12.5.5). Declaimers, then, acted their declamations looking and sounding entirely like themselves. As far as we know, Lollianus declaimed about 53 54

55 56

57 58

D. Cass. 71.1 (cf. Patillon (2009) ix–x). Style features in contemporary rhetoric: Anon. Seg. Rh. 240–53; [Aristid.] Rh.; Ps.-Hermog. Inv. iv; Ps.-Hermog. Meth. passim; Longin. frr. 48.171–368, 49.50–72. Cf. Hagedorn (1964); Patillon (1988) 101–300; Pernot (1993) i 339–52; Patillon (2002a); Patillon (2002b); Heath (2004) 45–8. Style in Philostratus: Heath (2004) 307–8. Above, pp. 25–6. Can this mismatch, or that between Pausanias’ Cappadocian accent and the character he was playing, be attributed to malice on the part of Philostratus or his sources? In the case of Pausanias, it is not improbable: Pausanias was apparently known as a ‘cook who spoiled expensive dishes with bad seasoning’ (μάγειρον πολυτελῆ ὄψα πονήρως ἀτρύοντα, VS 594). But Philostratus certainly seems to regard Marcus highly, having him triumph in the face of the great Polemo’s contemptuous failure to recognise him (VS 529, a particularly embarrassing failure for the physiognomist), though Philostratus’ opening remark that the Greeks do not honour Marcus as he deserves suggests that some at least were ill disposed towards him. Perhaps it was from some such intermediate source that a tradition of Marcus’ scruffy appearance arose. Nonetheless, Philostratus’ evidence at the very least suggests that such a mismatch in appearance between sophist and his subject was not unthinkable. Anderson (1986) 25 suggests that Byzantium’s opposition to Severus may have harmed Marcus’ standing. E.g. VS 528–9, 570–2, 576, 612, 618–19, 623; Anderson (1986) 69–70. Gender: Gleason (1995) 74–6. Gleason (1995) 28–81.

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the grain supply looking and sounding exactly like the hoplite general that he was. Ceteris paribus, we should expect such an arrangement to make it easier for audiences to refer the words spoken not (only) to the fictional character declaimed but also to the declaimer himself.

Dropping the Mask The modern actor is not supposed to ‘drop the mask’ – to speak and act in their own person – outside of exceptional contexts such as comedy. Declaimers, on the other hand, seem to have done this frequently, either partially or totally, in the course of their performances, particularly through physical gestures and metarhetorical comments. The effect of such interruptions is to remind the audience/reader of the declaimer standing behind the declamation; consequently, it becomes easier to refer the words of the declamation to the declaimer himself. The first category of such interruptions concerns the declaimer’s gestures. Perhaps surprisingly, the majority of documented physical actions on the part of declaimers derive not from the declaimer as the part he was playing, but rather from the declaimer as author.59 Aristides is said to have been unable to contain his anger at audiences who did not approve his performances (VS 582);60 if one fell asleep in one of Philagrus’ declamations, one ran the risk of actually being struck by the enraged performer (VS 578); on another occasion, Philagrus is said to have got so angry that he was unable to speak (VS 580).61 (They had been warned: when Polemo first came to Athens he told his audience that they would not be evaluating his oratorical performance so much as he would be evaluating their taste (VS 535).) Scopelian is said to have made a habit of striking his thigh during declamations, ‘slowly stirring up both himself and his audience’ (ἑαυτόν τε 59

60 61

Korenjak (2000) 80–1. There are exceptions, however: Scopelian, we hear, was particularly good at acting the ‘arrogance’ (φρόνημα) and ‘frivolousness’ (κουφότητα) of barbarians, going as far as to shake when he spoke, ‘as if in a Bacchic frenzy’ (ὥσπερ βακχεύων) (VS 519–20); Rufus of Perinthus is said to have been able to act characters quite unlike himself, effacing his own personality in performance in favour of the part he was playing (VS 597); Herodes, declaiming on the Sicilian expedition before Alexander Clay-Plato, is said to have uttered his famous line ‘Ah, Nicias, ah, father, so may you see Athens’ (ναὶ Νικία, ναὶ πάτερ, οὕτως Ἀθήνας ἴδοις, VS 574) with tears in his eyes. Cf. Aristid. Or. 28.120 (not specifically of declamation), where an orator is said to burst with anger that individual audience members are each only attending to one stylistic virtue of his speech. This anger does not seem likely to have come from the character that Philagrus was playing, for Philostratus describes the sophist as prone to anger right at the start of his biography and specifically contrasts his inability to handle ‘his own anger’ (τὴν αὑτοῦ χολήν) with his facility in handling declamation scenarios (VS 578).

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ὑπεγείρων καὶ τοὺς ἀκροωμένους, VS 519; cf. Luc. Rh. pr. 19): this too looks likely to have been outside the fiction. Polemo had the most extensive range of body language of all. We hear of him coming forward to declaim with a beaming smile, smiling as he rounded off periods, leaping up from his chair ‘when he came to the high points of his declamations’ (περὶ τὰς ἀκμὰς τῶν ὑποθέσεων), and stamping on the ground ‘at certain places in his declamations’ (ἐν τοῖς τῶν ὑποθέσεων χωρίοις, VS 537). While some of these actions may (also) have been concordant with the fiction, many of them (such as stamping at high points) clearly derive from Polemo the author and accord rather with the supremely confident character that Polemo displays throughout Philostratus’ account of his life.62 The audience were lively too, to the point that sometimes the declaimer dropped the mask permanently by ending the performance, as happened to the sophist Severus (VS 614); Philostratus’ defence of failures of this sort suggests that such an occurrence was by no means uncommon (VS 614). But the performance could be broken off in happier circumstances also: Hippodromus, newly arrived in Smyrna, declaimed with such brilliance before the sophist Megistias that Megistias ‘could not contain himself for admiration, and running up to him begged to know who he was’ (ἐξέπεσεν ἑαυτοῦ ὑπὸ θαύματος καὶ προσδραμὼν αὐτῷ ἱκέτευε μαθεῖν, ὅστις εἴη, VS 619); Alexander Clay-Plato was so impressed by Herodes’ declamation on the Sicilian expedition that he interrupted the declamation to praise Herodes and so effectively ended the performance (VS 574). Such mask dropping, whether partial or total, temporary or permanent, reminds us vividly of the declaimer behind the declamation, in a way relatively unfamiliar in the modern world. One particular sort of mask dropping concerns rhetoric. For there is significant evidence of declaimers stepping out of character to a greater or lesser degree during a declamation to comment on the specific techniques that they are deploying, positioning themselves as masters of rhetorical theory, a phenomenon we might call ‘metarhetoric’.63 Aristides actually

62

63

For an extreme example of a declaimer’s assertive behaviour, albeit in a comic vein, consider Lucian’s Bad Teacher of Rhetoric, who recommends abusing audiences that do not applaud one’s performances, commanding anyone about to leave to sit down, and, in short, establishing a tyranny over the crowd (Rh. pr. 19). Stramaglia (2015) 26–7. Hesk (2000) uses the term ‘metarhetoric’ for any reference by a speaker to his own persuasive abilities (or his opponent’s). I use it here in a slightly narrower sense to indicate explicit reference by an author to the techniques of rhetorical theory deployed in his speech. Some of the gestures we have already considered have a fair claim to be metarhetorical inasmuch as they comment wordlessly on the rhetorical dimension of the declaimer’s performance.

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offers an explicit account of such a practice (in contemporary oratory in general) when he says: φημὶ γὰρ αὐτῶν εἵνεκα τῶν λόγων συμβαίνειν ἀνάγκην πολλάκις παραφθέγξασθαι τόν γε δὴ καθαρῶς ἁπλοῦν καὶ φιλάνθρωπον, εἰ δὲ μή, τοὺς πολλοὺς ἐκφεύγειν ἔστιν ἃ τῶν κρειττόνων ἢ λαθεῖν (Or. 28.119) I say that even a man who is perfectly without guile and courteous often has to make a remark in passing on account of his words themselves, and that if he does not, some things too good to miss will escape most people.

So pervasive does this phenomenon seem to have been that Hermogenes actually retrojects it onto classical authors, claiming, for instance, that when Demosthenes says in his In Aristocratem (24) that he is using language ‘modestly’ (ἐπιεικῶς), he is showing off the stylistic quality of ‘modesty’ (ἐπιείκεια, Id. ii 6.4); this is not the only example of this phenomenon.64 This sort of rhetorical self-positioning has a long history. It is found as early as Gorgias’ proto-declamations Helen and Palamedes, which present the sophist as a master of persuasion, calmly offering a defence against every possible prosecution argument in strikingly abstract terms, and Poulakos and Wardy have shown precisely how much implicit rhetorical theory is present in these works.65 Hesk furthermore has identified an ‘anti-rhetorical’ stance adopted by many fifthand fourth-century figures who position themselves as straight talkers unmasking the rhetorical strategies of their opponents. In Thucydides’ Mytilenian debate, for instance, both speakers claim to have detected rhetorical deception in their opponent’s speeches.66 And after our period, we find metarhetoric in the declamations of Choricius, as well as fairly extensively in Latin declamation,67 though in these works, the metarhetoric seems to be pedagogical, a continuation of schoolroom practice, rather than self-promoting. We saw in Chapter 1 how ethics and rhetoric were inextricably bound together in ancient education. Audience attention to metarhetoric therefore implies audience attention to the wider ethical implications of the fiction they were witnessing. But also important for our purposes is the manner in which that attention is redirected: these frequent out-ofcharacter comments break the dramatic illusion and remind us periodically of the declaimer behind the declamation. The clearest instances of such metarhetoric in our surviving declamations from this period can be found in Lucian’s Tyrannicida and Polemo’s two 64 66 67

Rutherford (1998) 32. 65 Poulakos (1983), Poulakos (1995), and Wardy (1996). Hesk (2000) 248–58. Winterbottom (1983) 67–70; Innes and Winterbottom (1988) 4–6. Cf. Stramaglia (2015) 27. Choricius: e.g. Decl. 12.69 (cf. Penella (2009) 10). [Quint.] Decll.: Stramaglia (2015).

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surviving declamations. We begin with Lucian. The most glaring instance is the words ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς ἐς τέλος (‘from beginning to end’, 14), used by the speaker of a narrative passage (14–18).68 This phrase clearly echoes the rhetorical heading of τὰ ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς ἄχρι τέλους (conventionally translated ‘sequence of events’), that is, the narration of what has happened (with appropriate rhetorical slanting) with which certain sorts of cases are to open (e.g. Hermog. Stat. iii 10–11). As (inter alia) the first recommended argumentative step in cases of ‘conjecture’ (στοχασμός), the first sort of case covered by Hermogenes’ De statibus, this term is likely to have been particularly familiar to those who had been through a rhetorical education.69 Technical too, though a little less glaring, is the would-be tyrannicide’s indignant rejection of the thought that his action might be ‘incomplete’ (ἀτελῆ, 9).70 In Hermogenes, incomplete (ἀτελῆ) actions are precisely those about which questions of definition (such as the present case) arise (Stat. ii 2).71 As I have argued elsewhere, this work subtly attacks declamation. The metarhetorical comments lay bare the argumentative contortions that rhetorical precepts sometimes required and thereby undermine the whole enterprise;72 Lucian himself is thus positioned as the knowing critic of rhetoric. This exposure of rhetoric therefore has something in common with the often-inept rhetorical outpourings of Clitophon in Achilles Tatius’ novel Leucippe and Clitophon.73 The most extensive metarhetoric, however, is to be found in Polemo’s declamations. The scenario for the pair of speeches is this: it is imagined that there is a custom that the funeral oration after a battle should be given by the father of the best fighter from among the dead. The fathers of two Greek casualties at Marathon, Cynegirus and Callimachus (the latter of whom had led the Athenian army), make the case for their respective sons. Cynegirus had died when his hands were cut off as he clung to a fleeing Persian ship; Callimachus had been killed by enemy projectiles but remained standing, even in death, his body propped up by the weapons with which it had been 68 69

70 71 72 73

Heath (1995) 178. Lucian’s declamation is actually not a case of conjecture but rather ‘definition’ (ὅρος), but there is nothing to stop the headings of one kind of case being used in another, and indeed the heading ‘presentation’ (προβολή) in definition is said by Hermogenes to be the same as ‘sequence of events’ (τὰ ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς ἄχρι τέλους) (Stat. iv 2.1–2). What we know of the chronology makes it unlikely (though not, as usually thought, entirely impossible) that Lucian knew Hermogenes’ work specifically (see Guast (2018)), but even if he did not, he is clearly still using theory from the same tradition as Hermogenes (Heath (2004) 176). Heath (1995) 177. The speaker is claiming the reward offered to tyrannicides, but his opponent objects that driving a tyrant to suicide by killing his son, as the speaker has done, does not qualify. Guast (2018). ‘Comically overwrought’ is how Whitmarsh characterises their effect (Whitmarsh (2020) 33).

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pierced. Polemo uses metarhetoric to heighten his achievement in making a forceful case for both sides. The first speaker, Cynegirus’ father, explicitly anticipates and thereby tries to neutralise the rhetorical strategies that he thinks will be used against him, but his opponent, Callimachus’ father, then turns that metarhetoric round and uses it to argue his own case. When Cynegirus’ father, in the first speech, uses the word σχῆμα (‘appearance, shape, figure’) to disparage Callimachus’ death (contrasted with his own son’s ἔργα, ‘deeds’), the sense of this word often blurs with that of the rhetorical σχῆμα, that is, a rhetorical ‘figure’. Callimachus’ death, he claims, is only the σχῆμα ζῶντος ἐν νεκρῷ (a7): literally, ‘the posture of a living man in a dead body’, but also, metarhetorically, the ‘figure “living man in a dead body”’. In the same chapter, Callimachus’ achievement is derided as the mere semblance of a στάσις – a semblance of ‘standing’, in that Callimachus was not so much standing as unable to fall. But στάσις was also the technical rhetorical term for a speech’s ‘issue’, the point to be contested; with this sense of the word, the accusation is that Callimachus has only the appearance of a case to argue.74 (There was in fact in rhetorical theory a complicated classification of the kinds of cases that ‘lacked issue’ and could not therefore be argued.)75 A second cluster of rhetorical terminology comes in chapters 26 to 27. In chapter 26, Cynegirus’ father goes as far as to dismiss Callimachus’ feat as a παράδοξος στάσις (‘paradoxical act of standing’). παράδοξος (‘paradoxical’) is used as a technical term in rhetoric to refer to one of the classifications of the subject matter of a speech (along with reputable, disreputable, etc.).76 When paired with the word στάσις, the rhetorical meanings of both words come to the fore: Callimachus’ στάσις, his whole case, is paradoxical. Callimachus’ achievement is then attacked again as a σχῆμα μόνον (26) and a σχῆμα κενόν (27): non-technically, as ‘just an appearance’ and ‘an empty appearance [i.e. of e.g. virtue]’, and, rhetorically, as ‘just a rhetorical figure’ and ‘an empty rhetorical figure’. But in the second speech, Callimachus’ father fights back with his own metarhetoric and cleverly redeploys the technical terms that his opponent had used against him. Now it is Cynegirus’ act that is branded an empty show: it was an ἐπίδειξις (b29; cf. b33), a term meaning non-technically a ‘display’, but in rhetoric specifically an oratorical display, in contrast to the ‘deed’ (ἔργον) of his own son; now it is Cynegirus’ death that is derided as a mere rhetorical figure (σχῆμα, b33, 35). Thus, when a rhetor declaimed, besides the character that he was playing, his public persona also shone through, frequently dropping the mask 74

For ‘issues’, see Heath (1995) 18–24.

75

Cf. above, p. 77 n. 25.

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Heath (1995) 257.

Conclusion

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through physical gestures and metarhetorical comments, thereby making it easier to refer the words of the declamation to the declaimer himself.

Conclusion Let us return to Lollianus’ declamation on Leptines with which this chapter opened. Many, as we said, have been struck by the similarity between the grain crises Lollianus faced as hoplite general and the grain shortage that the declamation envisages. That there is a suggestive alignment between life and art here is not disputed; indeed, as we established in Chapter 2, such alignments were common. What is much harder to decide, however, is whether (in the absence of direct evidence) that alignment was likely to have been noticed and exploited. A judgement either way runs the risk of seeming arbitrary, a matter of taste even. Yet in reality, such judgements are not arbitrary at all but depend rather on one’s assumptions about the way Greek declamation worked. They only look arbitrary when such presuppositions remain unstated. If the genre is thought a priori to be divorced from the real world (cf. Chapter 1), in cases of doubt, scholars will naturally come down on the side of opposition to any contemporary relevance, as Russell, Anderson, and others do in this case. But when one reflects that Lollianus was probably speaking in response to an audience suggestion, and possibly speaking extempore; that his declamation was probably preceded by preface(s) which compared either their own fiction or even the fiction of the declamation to Lollianus’ own situation; that he was speaking in the city where his fiction was set, perhaps in a building marked out for political discourse; that he did so looking and sounding like Lollianus – wearing neither costume nor mask, nor with any props, but using his own distinctive voice and style – and regularly stepping out of the fiction to act or speak on various points in his own person, and with his audience responding to him not just as Leptines, but also as Lollianus; and when we reflect, finally, on the fundamental Greek imperial habit of seeing the past as useful for the present, and the range of available modes by which audiences could interpret similarity and difference for their own time (Chapter 1), then the prospect that some drew lessons for the contemporary world from Lollianus’ fiction moves from possible to probable. In short, if the account of the experience of declamation audiences that we have given in this chapter is at all accurate, then scholars should be significantly less cautious than heretofore in arguing that authors and audiences drew implications for their own time from declamations. It is to such arguments that we now turn.

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chapter 4

Identity Parade

Demosthenes at Pergamum In the autumn of 145 ce, Aelius Aristides, who at this point had been suffering from a terrible illness for almost two years, was convalescing at the sanctuary of Asclepius in Pergamum. He had given up on oratory and referred to this period of his life as a καθέδρα, a ‘time of inactivity’.1 In the fourth of his Sacred tales (Hieroi logoi), his account of his illness, he tells us about a declamation he delivered during his stay in Pergamum.2 Even though, as he reminds us, his illness had forced him to give up oratory (Or. 50.14), he was commanded by Asclepius in a dream to go to the Temple Stoa and declaim (Or. 50.14–15). Accordingly, he went to the Stoa, where a man who chanced to enter at the critical moment suggested a scenario. That scenario was ‘When Alexander . . . is in India, Demosthenes advises that it is time to act’ (Ἀλεξάνδρου . . . ἐν Ἰνδοῖς ὄντος συμβουλεύει Δημοσθένης ἐπιθέσθαι τοῖς πράγμασιν, Or. 50.18, trans. Behr).3 The known dates of Alexander’s sojourn in India mean that the scenario must be set in 327 to 325 bce, though the proposed rebellion is historical fiction. Aristides comments ‘so immediately I accepted the omen, both of Demosthenes speaking again and the fact that the words were about hegemony’ (εὐθὺς μὲν οὖν ἐδεξάμην τὴν φήμην, τὸν Δημοσθένη τε αὖθις λέγοντα καὶ τοὺς λόγους ὄντας περὶ τῆςἡγεμονίας, Or. 50.18). The notion of Demosthenes speaking ‘again’ (αὖθις) must refer to his relative political inactivity between Alexander’s accession in 336 and the imagined dramatic date of this scenario;4 ‘hegemony’ (ἡγεμονίας) indicates the prospect of 1

2 3 4

For a reconstruction of this period of Aristides’ life, see Behr (1968) 23–60, 121–2. Καθέδρα: Orr. 48.70, 49.44. For this sense of the word, see LSJ s.v. a.ii.2. That Aristides had rhetorical inactivity in mind specifically is suggested by the choice of a term that could also refer to a chair of rhetoric (Israelowich (2012) 109–11). On the Sacred tales, see Petsalis-Diomidis (2010); Israelowich (2012); Downie (2013). On this scenario, see Kohl (1915) 80–1. It is also found at Syrian. In Hermog. ii 181.8–11. For Demosthenes’ inactivity in these years, see Worthington (2000).

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The Masquerade

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Athens recovering its position as a leading Greek power after its subordination to Macedon following the Battle of Chaeronea. Aristides takes Demosthenes’ ‘speaking again’ (αὖθις λέγοντα) as a hint that, like Demosthenes, he too will return to the practice of oratory after a protracted period of unusual silence;5 the fact of the words being about hegemony (τοὺς λόγους ὄντας περὶτῆς ἡγεμονίας) he takes as a sign that, just as Athens in this scenario has in prospect the recovery of its political leadership of Greece, so he is about to begin the process of recovering a metaphorical hegemony in the field of oratory.6 We see in Aristides’ interpretation of the proposed declamation title many of the modes of relating past to present explored in Chapter 1. We see bold translation and rescaling: from a sickly declaimer’s baby steps towards the recovery of his reputation to an imagined rebellion against Alexander the Great instigated by the greatest orator of classical Greece, with the translation, as often, neglecting considerable superficial differences between the two situations to focus on the moral question, here that of the courageous reassertion of one’s prerogatives in the face of great difficulties. Given that Aristides has not yet attempted speaking at the time the scenario is announced, the title also has some exemplary force: as Demosthenes (in this counterfactual universe) rebels against Alexander, so should Aristides fight his illness.

The Masquerade In finding an analogy for himself in literature in this way, and in particular, in seeing himself in classical history, Aristides (and other declaimers whom we will shortly be considering) joined the great imperial masquerade.7 Our authors had been trained from their youth to imagine themselves as others. Among the progymnasmata exercises was the exercise of ethopoeia, in which the student imagined what words a certain person might say in a certain 5 6

7

Downie (2013) 117 n. 63. Aristides certainly at times saw himself as metaphorically ‘first’ among the Greeks (πρῶτος, Orr. 33.32, 50.87), and political terms were sometimes used to describe a declaimer’s status: the declaimer Herodes Atticus was ‘the king of words’ (τὸν βασιλέα τῶν λόγων, Philostr. VS 586, 598), while Lucian’s Bad Teacher of Rhetoric holds out the same prospect to his prospective student (βασιλεὺς ἐν τοῖς λόγοις, Rh. pr. 11), also advising him to exercise a ‘tyranny’ over his audiences (τυραννίς, Rh. pr. 19); we also find the word ἡγήτωρ (‘leader’), which is obviously from the same root as ἡγεμονία (‘hegemony, leadership’) used to describe pre-eminence in an intellectual sphere in an inscription from the 220s in which one Callaeschrus, a devotee of Plato, is described as a σοφίης ἡγήτωρ (‘leader in wisdom’) (Puech (2002) 278–81). Cf. Anderson (1986) 33–6; Webb (2006a) 34–7.

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situation, such as Datis meeting with the Persian king after the Battle of Marathon, or Achilles being deprived of Briseis;8 one could also do an ethopoeia of a generic character, such as a general addressing his soldiers or a eunuch who has fallen in love.9 It is not surprising, therefore, that an interest in character permeates Greek imperial literature. The novelists imagined an extraordinary range of characters, from rustics and a parasite in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe to a fisherman and hetairae in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica; Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe also includes a range of more-or-less historical characters such as the Persian king Artaxerxes II and the Sicilian general Hermocrates.10 Epistolography, meanwhile, was, if anything, even freer in its range of characters: Philostratus in his extraordinary Love Letters appears variously as a poor man, an exile, a masochist, and a foot fetishist; twenty letters of farmers are preserved for Aelian; Alciphron meanwhile in four books played the part of fishermen, farmers, parasites, and courtesans. Lucian, too, plays with some of these voices in his comic dialogues, particularly the courtesans of the Dialogi meretricii and the named characters from history or myth that appear in the Dialogi mortuorum. In such a world, it is only to be expected that authors and audiences would ponder the personal relevance of the characters who feature in declamation; we have already considered this culture of fictive self-presentation in the prefaces that preceded declamations.11 The creativity of Aristides’ self-presentation as Demosthenes in this passage is best understood and appreciated in terms of this culture. In the world of Greek imperial rhetoric, everyone claims to be or wants to be or is said to be Demosthenes. Yet by presenting this equation as the consequence of the chance, unknowing comment of a bystander, Aristides makes what otherwise might have been a clichéd claim innovative and forceful: it is an ‘omen’ (φῄμη), with a suggestion of divine approval, and a kind of prophecy of future greatness. But such creative twists on familiar images are in fact common in the identifications that orators propose in their declamations. This chapter explores the culture of declamatory role-playing exemplified by Aristides’ declamation. Though roles from classical history are most often taken on by declaimers for themselves, we shall also see instances of them being foisted on declaimers by their audiences, and of roles found for others present at the performance. After a brief preparatory 8 10 11

9 Theon Prog. 115.19–20; Lib. Eth. 11.15. Theon Prog. 115.16–17; Lib. Eth. 11.26. On character in the Greek novel, see Temmerman (2014). On the loosely historical setting of Chaereas and Callirhoe, see Hägg (1987). Above, pp. 74–80.

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Interlude: Philostratus as Evidence

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interlude on the reliability of Philostratus’ Vitae sophistarum, I look at four examples from this text. Though all of the declamations in these examples are known only as a title or as a title and a few fragments, in each case Philostratus’ account provides enough information about the contexts in which they were performed to be able to reconstruct the role-playing they involved with reasonable confidence. I then pursue the same phenomenon in Polemo’s pair of declamations for the Marathonian heroes Cynegirus and Callimachus. Here, the lack of an account of the original performance context is offset by the chance to examine a full text. These first five instances are clear, but it is unlikely that this phenomenon was limited to the examples we can discern in our surviving evidence, in view of the large cast of characters that peopled declamation (including many stock characters), the numerous similarities between these characters and the people of imperial Greece (Chapter 2), and the range of ways of relating past to present available to imperial Greeks (Chapter 1). For this reason, I go on to survey a number of further suggestive alignments between declamation scenarios and the careers of those who performed them and touch on instances of declamatory role-playing in earlier Latin and later Greek declamation. Though certainty is impossible, the evidence suggests that we are dealing with a widespread phenomenon. Finally, I bring together and develop the various insights from the discussion of individual examples to draw conclusions about why declamation was so often used to figure imperial Greeks as characters from classical history in this way.

Interlude: Philostratus as Evidence The next three examples are taken from Philostratus’ Vitae sophistarum; it would seem sensible, therefore, to consider at this point this work’s evidential value. One concern we might have is that the blurring of art and life seems to be a characteristic interest of Philostratus (cf. above, pp. 80–81). Is it possible that the declamatory role-playing we will see is merely a further instance of this phenomenon, something that Philostratus has added to the raw materials at his disposal? This seems unlikely, for two reasons. First, while Philostratus provides the majority of our examples, we have enough evidence to suggest that these were not unique. We have already looked at the case of Aristides’ dream, and our fifth example will be that of Polemo’s two extant declamations, where the reconstruction of the roleplaying depends as much on the texts of the declamations as it does on Philostratus. Among the further possible cases with which we will finish are

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two from Aristides both hypothesised without reference to Philostratus, and there are strong candidates on the Latin side, as well as in later Greek declamation. The predominance of Philostratean examples of this phenomenon for the second and third centuries makes our evidence for this period lopsided, to be sure, but the existence of examples from other sources both before, after, and roughly contemporary with the Vitae sophistarum is grounds for confidence in Philostratus’ testimony. A second reason for confidence comes from an examination of Philostratus’ working methods in the Vitae sophistarum. At a general level, the genre of this text, fairly characterised by Swain as a cross between pure biography and the blend of biography and doxography exemplified by Diogenes Laertius, implies a significant commitment to truth.12 Indeed, we find Philostratus engaging in a reassuring range of truth-seeking practices, such as citing different types of evidence, giving alternative versions, and correcting the errors of others: this is clearly a different sort of text from the Vita Apollonii, and Swain’s overall judgement is that, where data given in Philostratus can be independently verified, they are usually found to be correct.13 Philostratus’ personal involvement in the world he describes is also important. As Swain says, ‘to distort the substance of the information received from his teachers and friends – members of the same cultural and economic class – would involve Philostratus in a disrespect of which he shows no sign’.14 This pressure would have been particularly strong in the case of the declamations of Heliodorus and Hippodromus discussed below (pp. 97–101). Both sophists were more or less contemporary with Philostratus, and he actually witnessed Heliodorus’ declamation in person.15 Philostratus’ source for Hippodromus’ declamation, meanwhile, performed before Megistias, seems to have been Megistias himself (VS 618); furthermore, Hippodromus had taught Philostratus’ son-in-law (VS 617), and on one occasion in his narrative of Hippodromus’ life, Philostratus slides into presenting himself as a first-person witness;16 he had also probably met Hippodromus’ kinsman Philiscus at the court of Julia Domna (VS 622). While Philostratus’ connection to other episodes was obviously more distant, he claims at various points to be offering new 12 13 15

16

Swain (1991) 151. I am indebted throughout this paragraph to Swain’s article. For a narratological view of Philostratus, see Whitmarsh (2004) 435–9. Swain (1991) 158–9. 14 Swain (1991) 152–3. Philostratus witnessed Heliodorus’ appearance before Caracalla in 213 (VS 625–6, esp. ἡμῖν ‘to us’ in 626), and this sophist was still alive when Philostratus was writing (VS 627); Hippodromus’ dates are roughly 156–230. For the biography of both figures, see GRS 159, 176. ‘We expected to hear a speech’ (ᾠόμεθα λόγου ἀκροάσεσθαι, VS 617).

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Figuring Fright: Heliodorus Meets Caracalla

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material and material that he gathered from personal contacts: any substantive distortion of what he had been told might have run the risk of offending his informants.17 Finally, where declamations had been written down and had survived until Philostratus wrote the Vitae sophistarum (something more likely in the case of the near-contemporary work of Hippodromus and Heliodorus), titles and quotations could be checked: Philostratus tells us that there were ‘about thirty’ (τριάκοντα ἴσως) declamations of Hippodromus still extant in his time (VS 620).18 So genre, social ties, and the possibility of cross-checking together make it unlikely that Philostratus could have engaged in much finessing of the scenarios he mentions to make them more appropriate to their author or context. It is further reassuring that in the one case that we can independently verify, Aristides’ declamations on the Sicilian expedition (Orr. 5–6), Philostratus reports the scenario correctly (VS 584), and that for another declamation, performed by Aristides before Marcus, Philostratus actually refuses to give the title because of the proliferation of variants (VS 583). This is not the action of a man who is cavalier about declamation titles.19

Figuring Fright: Heliodorus Meets Caracalla The first example of declamatory role-playing in Philostratus involves the sophist Heliodorus (VS 625–6). After his colleague on an embassy to the emperor Caracalla had fallen ill, he tried to postpone his suit, and an official had to bring him into court ‘against his will, dragging him by the beard’ (ἄκοντά τε καὶ τοῦ γενείου ἕλκων, VS 626); his opening words to the emperor were a plea that he not harm his case by pleading alone. The emperor then unexpectedly called Heliodorus ‘such a man as I have not yet encountered, a discovery of my own times’ (οἷον οὔπω ἔγνωκα, τῶν ἐμαυτοῦ καιρῶν εὕρημα) and shook his cloak at him (VS 626). At first, Philostratus says, Heliodorus thought that the emperor was mocking him (διαπτύοι, VS 626), but in reality, this was a rather cryptic (perhaps deliberately cryptic) expression of approval, and Caracalla went on to grant Heliodorus equestrian status. Reassured by this happy turn of events, the sophist was then bold enough to invite the emperor to hear him declaim at some point. Perhaps he was too bold and had missed the latent 17 18 19

New material: ‘part of it unknown’ (τὰ δὲ ἠγνοημένα, VS 566). Personal contacts: Ctesidemus the Athenian (VS 552) and ‘my own teachers’ (τῶν ἐμαυτοῦ διδασκάλων, VS 585). For the circulation of texts of declamations, see above pp. 28–9. This reticence is notable given Philostratus’ practice elsewhere of reporting variant traditions without expressing a preference (e.g. VS 559, 585).

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menace of the emperor’s odd behaviour, for the emperor replied that Heliodorus should declaim immediately and proposed the scenario ‘Demosthenes on trial for cowardice after he had broken down in a speech before Philip’ (ὁ Δημοσθένης ἐπὶ τοῦ Φιλίππου ἐκπεσὼν καὶ δειλίας φεύγων, VS 626).20 This title refers to an incident in 346 bce, when, according to Aeschines, Demosthenes broke down while addressing Philip on an embassy at Pella.21 This scenario clearly figures the context in which the declamation is performed: the ambassador Heliodorus, who tried to postpone his appearance before the emperor, is the orator Demosthenes accused of cowardice on his embassy;22 the jump from an ambassador appearing before one foreign potentate to another is a ready translation. Though the emperor is clearly making fun of the timid ambassador in front of him, one should not miss how much more potent Caracalla’s put-down is for being delivered in this roundabout fashion, rather than directly. For a declaimer to be figured as Demosthenes is normally a flattering scaling up of an imperial orator’s status. Yet here, that scaling up is almost instantly vitiated by the fact that the comparison is with Demosthenes at a low ebb: what we have now is rather a scaling down. (A particularly low ebb, we might think, on the principle that just as the great Demosthenes’ highs were higher than ordinary orators, his lows might have been lower also.) And it is all the more pointed for coming from an emperor not known for philhellenism. In contrast to most other emperors in the Vitae sophistarum, Caracalla stands out as, at best, inconsistent in his support for paideia. In one memorable incident, he deprived the sophist Philiscus of immunities he had secured through the offices of the emperor’s mother Julia Domna, quipping ‘I would never deprive cities of those who are going to perform liturgies for them for the sake of a few wretched little speeches’ (οὐ γὰρ ἄν ποτε διὰ μικρὰ καὶ δύστηνα λογάρια τὰς πόλεις ἀφελοίμην τῶν λειτουργησόντων, VS 623), and Dio Cassius and Herodian both comment on Caracalla’s lack of interest in education.23 That an emperor with such a reputation can suddenly play the sophist’s game by producing a plausible declamation scenario and at the same time insult the sophist before him represents a triumph on his part. It is striking also that, in the logic of the analogy, Caracalla corresponds to Philip, the 20 21 22 23

Such a change of temper on the part of the emperor is quite consistent with Philostratus’ image of Caracalla elsewhere (Civiletti (2002) 653). Aeschin. 2.34–5. This scenario is also found in the scholia to Hermogenes’ De statibus (RG vii 442.1–2). Cf. Kohl (1915) 68. The aptness of the scenario was spotted by Millar (1969) 12–13 and Anderson (1989) 94. D. Cass. 78.11.2–3; Hdn. 3.10.2–4, 4.3.2–4.

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Magicians and Rhetoricians

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intimidating foreign potentate before whom the speaker experiences a breakdown.24 While it was doubtless in a general sense ennobling to appear as a figure from classical history, in Greek literature Philip is generally a somewhat more ambivalent paradigm of monarchy than Alexander.25 Perhaps the ambiguity of this comparison simply escaped Caracalla; but it is also possible that Caracalla actually understood its menacing connotations perfectly well and welcomed them as a further means by which to terrorise the timid ambassador before him. This is present figured as past, then, but in a quite unexpected and forceful way.

Magicians and Rhetoricians A second example of this phenomenon in Philostratus is found in Hippodromus’ declamation ‘the magician who was demanding to die when he had been unable to kill another magician who had committed adultery’ (τὸν μάγον τὸν ἀποθνὴσκειν ἀξιοῦντα ἐπειδὴ μὴ ἐδυνῄθη ἀποκτεῖναι μάγον μοιχόν, VS 619).26 This scenario is seen by Rothe as yet another example of ‘the completely unrealistic, indeed absurd, legal cases that were declaimed in the imperial period’.27 And at first glance, to be sure, the interest in such a theme would appear to be purely artistic: a chance for a dramatic prosangelia (a scenario in which the speaker pleads to be allowed to die), for parallelism and contrast between the two magicians, and for the paradox of the magician who couldn’t do magic.28 Yet for this declamation, Philostratus’ unusually full account of the context in which it was performed (VS 618–19) reveals a close connection between declamation and context.29 On arriving in Smyrna for the first time, Hippodromus enters the lesson of a distinguished local sophist (‘a distinguished man’, τις . . . τῶν ἐπιφανῶν, VS 618), Megistias, without explaining himself. Having thus secured the rhetor’s attention, he at first refuses to state his business, waiting until he and Megistias are alone,30 and then 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

For Roman emperors figured as Philip of Macedon, see below, pp. 128–9 and 134–5. Asirvatham (2010). A reconstruction of the full background to the scenario is attempted by Rothe (1989) 241. ‘Die völlig unrealistischen, sogar absurden Rechtsfälle, über die in der Kaiserzeit deklamiert wurde’ (Rothe (1989) 241). For prosangelia, see above, p. 41 n. 66. On the context, see Schmitz (2017). Anderson (1989) 94 notices the aptness of the scenario. How long he waits depends on how we take διακωδωνίσας (VS 619). If we follow LSJ (s.v. iii), the verb means ‘dismiss by the sound of a bell’, and Megistias sends his students away immediately so as to be able to speak with Hippodromus; other authorities, however, take this verb as meaning ‘test, examine’ and believe that Megistias finishes his lesson first. Certainty is impossible (for the debate, see Civiletti (2002) 639 and Rothe (1989) 239), though for Megistias to calmly finish his teaching

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proposes to declaim himself, even going as far as to demand (with obvious symbolism) that Megistias swap his ‘gown suited to public speaking’ (δημηγορικὸν ἱμάτιον, VS 619, trans. Wright) for his own traveller’s cloak.31 This is obviously highly provocative behaviour. Megistias duly proposes the title ‘the magician who had resolved to die when he had been unable to kill another magician who had committed adultery’ (τὸν μάγον τὸν ἀποθνῄσκειν ἀξιοῦντα ἐπειδὴ μὴ ἐδυνήθη ἀποκτεῖναι μάγον μοιχόν, VS 619). Now this scenario, however fantastical, presents clear parallels with the present situation. In both the real world and the proposed fiction, we have a pair of rival professionals, rhetoricians and magicians. The translation from rhetoric to magic is easy when we recall that the former was often figured in terms of the latter;32 some sophists are even alleged to have used not just metaphorical but real magic against their rivals,33 and Hippodromus came from Thessaly, a region known for magic.34 In both the real world and the fiction, the relative status of the two professionals is in question: one magician resists the other’s attempts to kill him, while Hippodromus, an unimpressive-looking newcomer in Smyrna (‘rather boorish to look at’, ἀγροικότερός τε ὢν τὸ εἶδος, VS 618) seeks to win the respect of a locally established sophist.35 That these parallels were intended by Megistias is made all the more likely by the fact that this scenario is to the best of our knowledge unique. But Megistias is doing something more than simply using the present context as inspiration. There is also something rather aggressive about the scenario he has suggested. Hippodromus is being scaled down, asked to play the part of the lesser of the two professionals, the magician who couldn’t kill his colleague, and who was so distressed by this that he wanted to die; Megistias corresponds to the other magician, impervious to his rival’s skills.36

31 32 33

34 35 36

before speaking to the upstart would represent a deliciously prickly response to the intrusion on his lesson. For the ἱμάτιον (himation) as the garment typically used by sophists for their performances, see Civiletti (2002) 639–40. For the connection between rhetoric and magic in Gorgias, Plato, Isocrates, Aristotle, and the Second Sophistic, see de Romilly (1975); for sophists’ interest in magic, see Civiletti (2002) 588. Gleason (1995) 7 (Polemo); Apul. Apol; Lib. Or. 1.43, 62–3, 71, 98, 248. Cribiore (2007) 92 n. 40 comments (of accusations of magic levelled at Libanius): ‘the continuous accusations of magic that are a consequence of success are almost tedious in their occurrence but need to be taken very seriously’. Thessaly: Anderson (1986) 29. There might further be a pun in figuring Meg-istias as a μάγος (‘mag-ician’). For the sophistic fondness for nicknames, see Anderson (1989) 160 and Heath (2004) 40–1. Is it significant for Megistias that this magician is also an adulterer? We are told that Hippodromus has come to Smyrna to learn the local type of eloquence (618), which Hippodromus himself later calls the ‘Ionian’ style (619), i.e. the ‘Asian’ style full of rhetorical figures. Now there does seem to be

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Moreover, he has skilfully placed the newcomer in a catch-22 situation: either he tries to meet the rhetorical challenge, but in doing so has to play the part of a failed and suicidal professional, or he refuses this demeaning suggestion but thereby fails the challenge. As it turns out, Hippodromus declaims so successfully that he wins the admiration of both Megistias and ‘the cultured men in Smyrna’ (τῶν κατὰ τὴν Σμύρναν πεπαιδευμένων, VS 619). The one quotation that Philostratus gives from the declamation, and the one at which Megistias ‘could not contain himself for admiration’ (ἐξέπεσεν ἑαυτοῦ ὑπὸ θαύματος, VS 619), is ‘but myself at least I can [kill]’ (ἀλλ’ ἐμαυτόν γε δύναμαι): perhaps in his declamation Hippodromus adopted, or aimed to adopt,37 the specific strategy of abasing himself to such an extent that Megistias felt compelled to yield.38 The scenario ‘the magician who had resolved to die when he had been unable to kill another magician who had committed adultery’ (τὸν μάγον τὸν ἀποθνῄσκειν ἀξιοῦντα ἐπειδὴ μὴ ἐδυνήθη ἀποκτεῖναι μάγον μοιχόν) turns out to figure the circumstance in which it was suggested and functions as a sophisticated vehicle for the contestation and negotiation of status between sophists.

The Moulding of Alexander Clay-Plato A third example of declamatory role-playing from Philostratus is the sophist Alexander Clay-Plato’s Scythian declamation (Philostr. VS 571– 4). Alexander is one of the sophists about whose career Philostratus gives us a relatively large amount of information. One of the leitmotifs of that career in the Vitae sophistarum seems to be travel. We hear that he practised in Antioch, Rome, Tarsus, and, ‘by Zeus’ (νὴ Δία), the whole of Egypt, where he met the mysterious naked philosophers (VS 571);39 when he

37

38 39

some connection between authors who composed in this style and accusations of sexual impropriety. Favorinus, who seems to have sung the conclusions to his speeches and charmed audiences with the sound of his voice and rhythm of his words (491–2), was famously accused of adultery (489), while the ‘bad teacher’ in Lucian’s Rhetorum Praeceptor recommends frequent singing in declamations (19; cf. 15) together with adultery (23). (For singing as a feature of Asian rhetoric, see Kim (2017) 59.) It is possible, therefore, that Megistias’ ‘adultery’ stands for his Ionian style, though with limited knowledge of the context one can hardly be sure. Philostratus’ phrasing (ἀρξαμένου δὲ τῆς ὑποθέσεως καὶ εἰπόντος) leaves it unclear whether these were actually the very first words of Hippodromus’ attempted declamation. For scholars’ differing opinions and translations, see Civiletti (2002) 641. Such a strategy would fit with Philostratus’ account of his modesty and decorous behaviour towards his seniors (VS 616–17). One ‘Alexander the Rhetor’ (Ἀλέξανδρος ῥήτωρ) turns up on a statue base of the second or third century from Memphis, dedicating the statue ‘to the most fertile Nile’ (Νίλωι γονιμωτάτωι) (Puech (2002) 46–7). This is tantalising, but as Puech rightly says, ‘la banalité du nom interdit toute tentative d’identification’.

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delivered his declamation on the Scythians, he was making what Philostratus explicitly describes as one of his few visits to Athens, that centre of (Philostratean) sophistic activity.40 Even this visit, however, was a mere stop on the way to Pannonia, and the journey from the east (perhaps from his home in Seleucia) to Athens is explicitly described as a long one; its length is also foregrounded by the tragic idiom he utters on arrival, ‘here . . . let us bend the knee in rest’ (ἐνταῦθα . . . γόνυ κάμψωμεν, VS 571),41 and his prolalia includes (along with an encomium of Athens) an apology for not having visited the city sooner. This self-fashioning as a wanderer contrasts with Herodes Atticus, whose Hellenism was more static and grounded in Athens and Attica, and indeed it is from that most quintessentially Attic of demes, Marathon, that Herodes comes to Athens to hear Alexander (VS 571).42 It is hardly surprising, then, that the scenario proposed concerns travel: ‘a man encourages the Scythians to return to their former itinerant lifestyle after they fall ill living in cities’ (ὁ τοὺς Σκύθας ἐπανάγων ἐς τὴν προτέραν πλάνην, ἐπειδὴ πόλιν οἰκοῦντες νοσοῦσι, VS 572).43 Given that this title puts Alexander in a position to praise the wandering lifestyle, it seems to be a friendly invitation for Alexander to valorise his own mode of life as that of Herodotus’ Scythians; this is a translation and a scaling up.44 Just as, as Alexander says in the course of his declamation, waters that keep on the move are sweeter (VS 573), so too, perhaps, is Alexander the better for his wandering lifestyle. The scenario chosen for Herodes’ response, ‘the wounded in Sicily beg the departing Athenians to kill them with their own hands’ (οἱ ἐν Σικελίᾳ τρωθέντες ἦσαν αἰτοῦντες τοὺς ἀπανισταμένους ἐκεῖθεν 40 41 42

43

44

On this visit and the significance of the titles declaimed, see Trapp (2018). Cf. [A.] PV 32 ‘not bending the knee’ (οὐ κάμπτων γόνυ), of not being able to rest. Anderson (1986) 35. Herodes’ interests were not solely limited to Athens, of course: he held Roman offices, and he owned property and had buildings erected in many places besides his hometown. But set beside Alexander Clay-Plato, he represents the more static end of the spectrum. For Herodes, cf. above, pp. 4–6. On this scenario see Kohl (1915) 14–15; it also appears at Aps. Rh. 1.48 (= 1.54, 1.72, 2.15, 3.8). Hippodromus performed a scenario referred to by Philostratus as ‘The Scythians’ (οἱ Σκύθαι, VS 620). Quite a number of Alexander’s known declamations in fact seem to have some connection with travel. Besides his declamation advising those who live in the mountains to migrate to the plains, presumably similar to his Scythian declamation (VS 575), Philostratus also reports another scenario in which he spoke in favour of Darius bridging the Danube, and a third in which he sought to dissuade Xerxes from making a second expedition against Greece (VS 575), though this last scenario puts the speaker in the position of arguing against migration; among the unplaced quotations from his prolaliai, too, it is notable that one is flowery praise of the land of Arabia (VS 574). Anderson (1989) 93–4. For parallels between declamations on migration and real-world migration generally, see above, pp. 66–8.

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Ἀθηναίους τὸ ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ἀποθνῄσκειν, VS 574) also seems to have relevance to the context, particularly the ‘oft-repeated line’ (τὸ θρυλούμενον) mentioned by Philostratus, ‘Ah, Nicias, ah, father, so may you see Athens’ (ναὶ Νικία, ναὶ πάτερ, οὕτως Ἀθήνας ἴδοις). The solidly Athenian Herodes was valorising his city before a declaimer who had only now, at long last, fulfilled the expectations of the Athenians and visited their city, and indeed it is notable that Alexander is said to have spoken up at this point, which seems to have been the end and therefore perhaps the climax of the declamation.45 But there is a bitter contrast here, for the quotation from the declamation seems to be the voice of a soldier who knows he will not live to return home to the city in which Herodes is rooted and which Alexander has finally reached.46 Once again, declamation proves to be a sophisticated vehicle for social interaction among sophists, albeit less aggressively than in the case of Hippodromus and Megistias.47

A Literary Inheritance A final example from Philostratus does not quite concern a full declamation scenario, but is all the more telling for that.48 The sophist Rufinus, the bastard son of the sophist Apollonius of Naucratis, ‘having produced no original sophistry, and nothing from the heart’ (σοφιστεύσας οὐδὲν γόνιμον, οὐδὲ ἐκ καρδίας, VS 599), Philostratus tells us, resorted instead simply to reusing his father’s phrases and epigrams. When criticised for this practice, he responded ‘the laws . . . allow me to use my inheritance’ (οἱ νόμοι . . . διδόασί μοι χρῆσθαι τοῖς πατρῴοις), figuring the dispute as a legal case. His critics, however, turned Rufinus’ legal imagery against him and responded: ‘they do . . . but for those born in accordance with the laws’ (διδόασι μέν . . . 45 46 47

48

Suggestively, we find oaths among the techniques listed by Quintilian as useful in effecting emphasis (in its technical rhetorical sense of a ‘hidden meaning’) (9.2.98). Trapp (2018). Anderson (1986) 49 notes similarities between Hippodromus’ visit to Smyrna and Alexander’s visit to Athens: the underlying pattern he summarises as ‘The great man arrives in an unusual disguise: at first no one recognises him, least of all the eminent teacher he has come to visit. They engage in a conversation which soon reveals the visitor’s surprising virtuosity. Thereafter he engages in an astonishing display and is acclaimed accordingly’ (the element of disguise being transferred in the case of Alexander to Herodes, who arrives in a hat). A further similarity between the two encounters that Anderson notes is that both sophists go on to repeat their performance in different words. Perhaps reference to one’s own position through the medium of declamation should be seen as a further element of this story pattern. Odysseus, whose great revelation in Od. 22, as Anderson suggests, perhaps lies behind both of these scenes, is of course frequently spoken about in the Odyssey in figured language of various sorts. Anderson (1986) 61–2.

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ἀλλὰ τοῖς κατὰ νόμους γεγονόσι). Now, while no declamation scenario is proposed and attempted in this instance, Rufinus’ brief exchange with his critics is nonetheless figured as (part of) a declamation. Declamations commonly addressed questions of inheritance,49 but more importantly, the argumentation deployed in this exchange is precisely that which one would expect to find if this were a real declamation. In terms of rhetorical theory, Rufinus’ response to the initial accusation makes the case a ‘counterplea’ (ἀντίληψις), the sort of dispute in which one defends one’s potentially culpable actions on the basis of an alleged absolute right to act as one did. So here Rufinus confesses to borrowing his father’s material but maintains nonetheless that this was not forbidden, saying ‘the laws . . . allow me to use my inheritance’ (οἱ νόμοι . . . διδόασί μοι χρῆσθαι τοῖς πατρῴοις). Compare Hermogenes’ formulation of the counterplea: ‘it is allowed and no law has forbidden it’ (ἔξεστι καὶ οὐδεὶς κεκώλυκε νόμος, Hermog. Stat. v 10). The prescribed response to a counterplea is an ‘objection’ (μετάληψις), and in this case Rufinus’ critics use the form of objection in which the prosecution tries to show that the counterplea does not apply in this instance: ‘they do allow this . . . but for those born in accordance with the laws’ (διδόασι μέν . . . ἀλλὰ τοῖς κατὰ νόμους γεγονόσι). Again, compare Hermogenes: ‘even if it is possible, still not under these conditions, nor like this’ (εἰ καὶ ἔξεστιν, ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἐπὶ τούτοις οὐδὲ τοιαῦτα, Hermog. Stat. v 11). That the circumstances of everyday life can so readily slide into a declamatory scenario in casual conversation is particularly suggestive of how easily authors and audiences could figure their personal circumstances in declamation.50

Polemo at War The two surviving declamations of Polemo offer a complementary perspective to that of the examples discussed so far. On the one hand, we lack any information about the specific context(s) in which these declamations were performed; on the other, they present an instance of the imperial present figured as classical past in all the detail of a full text, rather than just in titles or fragments. 49 50

Russell (1983) 31–2. Similar (Rothe (1989) 77–8), and similarly suggestive, is Philagrus’ complaint when charged with reusing old material in what was supposed to be an extempore declamation that he was being ‘kept from what was his own’ (τῶν ἑαυτοῦ εἰργόμενος) (VS 579). In terms of rhetorical theory, this would be another counterplea, and it is notable that Philostratus subsequently uses an explicit legal metaphor to describe the dispute (‘he did not evade conviction on a charge that was already believed’, oὐ διέφυγε τὴν ἤδη πεπιστευμένην αἰτίαν).

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The scenario for this pair of speeches (to repeat briefly) is as follows. It is imagined that there is a custom that after a battle the funeral oration is given by the father of the best fighter from among those who died. In these declamations, the fathers of two Greek casualties at Marathon make the case for their sons, Cynegirus and Callimachus, of whom the latter was leader of the Athenian army (polemarch). Cynegirus had died when his hands were cut off as he clung to a retreating Persian ship; Callimachus had been killed by enemy projectiles but remained standing, even in death, his body propped up by the weapons with which it had been pierced. It is my contention that the fates of these two fighters, who were chosen by Polemo from a number of traditional heroes of the battle, and whose sufferings receive more attention in these declamations than in previous accounts, evoked the sufferings of Polemo himself, who fought and lost a lengthy battle against a wasting disease of the joints.51 ‘With his joints hardening’ (λιθιώντων αὐτῷ τῶν ἄρθων), Polemo famously wrote to Herodes Atticus that, albeit metaphorically, ‘I have no hands’ (χεῖρας οὐκ ἔχω, VS 543), just as Cynegirus lost his hands. And just as Callimachus in these declamations is imagined as struggling to stay standing (B3, 11, 12, 14, 15, 38, 47, 53, 54, 55, 56, 58, 60), so standing too must have been difficult for Polemo. In the same letter to Herodes, he said ‘I have no feet’ (πόδες οὐκ εἰσί μοι, VS 543), and there is a memory in Philostratus that he had to be carried in a litter to his performances (VS 537); presumably his habit of standing for the high points of his speeches (VS 537), and therefore remaining seated for the majority of the time, is to be traced to foot trouble also, for the usual procedure was to deliver the prolalia seated but to stand throughout the declamation itself.52

51

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Besides Cynegirus and Callimachus, other notable participants in the battle included Miltiades, Epizelus/Polyzelus, Echetlus, Sophanes, and Ameinias. On the Marathon tradition, see Hinck (1873) 47–54 and Reader (1996) 30–40. Compare den Dulk and Langford (2014) 221 n. 46, who say suggestively with reference to Polemo’s suicide that ‘noble death was also a topic on which Polemo gave public discourses’. On Polemo’s self-presentation generally, see Gleason (1995) 21– 54, esp. 21–9. Connolly (2001) 85 notes the pain that standing in performance must have caused Polemo. Philostratus also, however, in the same chapter, refers to Polemo as sometimes stamping the ground during his speeches: presumably this habit dates from a time before his illness had begun to make standing difficult or occurred only after Polemo had already stood up for a high point, in which case it would likely have been a further instance of the sophist making a show of overcoming physical limitations (den Dulk and Langford (2014) 228). For the convention of standing for the declamation itself, see Clarke (1968) and Vössing (2003). One final point of contact between Polemo and Callimachus was that the former was also – in name at least – a general, holding the office of strategos, Smyrna’s senior magistracy (Amandry and Burnett (2015) no. 1972). For the generalship at Smyrna, see Cadoux (1938) 194.

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Cynegirus and Callimachus both show spectacular endurance in the face of suffering. Such endurance is not simply something inherited from the tradition: on the contrary, Reader concludes his survey of Polemo’s sources by singling out such ‘bombast’ as one of the defining features of the sophist’s treatment of the material.53 This bombast echoes Polemo’s own willing embrace of pain. Polemo urged his doctors when treating him to ‘dig and carve in the stone-quarries of Polemo’ (ὀρύττειν καὶ τέμνειν τὰς Πολέμωνος λιθοτομίας, VS 543, trans. Wright),54 while Callimachus taunts the Persians, saying ‘pelt me; do not hold back. Why are you not pelting me? I demand missiles’ (βάλλετε καὶ μὴ φείδεσθε. τί δ’ οὐ βάλλετε; ἐγὼ δέομαι βελῶν, B56). Both the sophist and his subjects also showed extraordinary obstinacy. Polemo famously willingly chose to undergo the living death of being buried alive, still even then thinking of declaiming (‘give me a body and I will declaim’ (δότε μοι σῶμα καὶ μελετήσομαι, VS 544)),55 just as Callimachus even when pierced through with arrows went on ‘fighting without a soul’ (χωρὶς ψυχῆς μεμαχημένον), a ‘corpse stronger than death’ (νεκρὸν θανάτου κρείττονα, B2; for the same insistent idea, cf. B1, 11, 12, 15, 47, 50, 52, 53, 55, 60); the same resistance to physical necessity can be found in Cynegirus too, who ‘rebuked his nature for being feeble and demanded his hands back from it’ (ὡς ὀλίγῃ κατεμέμφετο τῇ φύσει καὶ χεῖρας ἀπῄτει παρ’ αὐτῆς, A11). Polemo and his subjects are also specifically concerned not to be seen to fail: ‘hurry, hurry – may the sun not see me silent’ (ἔπειγε, ἔπειγε, μὴ γὰρ ἴδοι με σιωπῶντα ἥλιος), cried Polemo as he was buried alive (VS 544); Callimachus stayed standing as the Persians were sailing away, ‘so that he might not fall in the presence of any foreign witnesses’ (ὡς ἂν ἐπὶ μηδενὸς μάρτυρος ἀλλοτρίου πέσῃς, B14). Obviously Polemo’s death happened after these declamations were delivered, but it is plausible to assume that Polemo’s behaviour at his death showed the same attitudes towards his illness that he had adopted in life.56 53 54

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Reader (1996) 40. Anderson (1986) 70 (supported enthusiastically by Civiletti (2002) 501) suggests ‘perhaps he saw himself as giving orders to the Athenian prisoners in Syracuse’: if so, it would be another instance (albeit brief) of Polemo figuring himself as (suffering) characters from classical history, even if outside a declamation. There is a curious parallel here with the Latin declaimer Labienus, who committed suicide by having himself walled up inside his family tomb after his works were proscribed and burned (Sen. Controv. 10 pr. 7). There are good reasons to think that Polemo’s illness was lengthy. We know that it was already significantly advanced when Herodes witnessed him declaim (VS 536–9), for Philostratus identifies Herodes as his source for Polemo’s habit of arriving at declamations in a litter on account of his illness (537). From the fact that these encounters took place when Herodes was corrector of the free cities of Asia (537), we can date them to 134/5 ce. (Polemo’s plaintive remarks about his illness in

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Translating and scaling up his own struggle against illness into the martial struggles of the heroes of Marathon in this way is not hard to imagine for the arrogant Polemo,57 just as Aristides translated his struggle against illness into political terms; in a later century, Libanius too made illness part of his identity.58 And sophists often translated their rhetorical endeavours into martial terms: Scopelian described his rhetoric as like beating the shield of Ajax, and Polemo himself, when asked to go on an embassy for Smyrna in place of the aging Scopelian, imagined his prayer that he might enjoy Scopelian’s persuasive powers as like Patroclus asking for the arms of Achilles.59 Yet one should also not miss what a bold and creative figuring this is. One does not normally think of classical history as offering powerful models for those suffering from chronic illnesses, and to go from arthritic declaimer to Marathonian hero is daring indeed. These speeches contain several striking opportunities to underline the blending of Polemo and his subjects in performance.60 Consider, for example, Callimachus’ aristeia, which is so insistently presented in these speeches as a feat not just of not falling, but also of standing. Given that, as Philostratus tells us, standing was difficult for Polemo, but that he nonetheless did so for the high points of his performances, there arises the tantalising possibility that by bringing himself to stand for the high points (of which there are many) of these speeches, Polemo underwent and performed the sufferings of Callimachus before the very eyes of his audience, taking the fondness of sophists for identifying with famous figures from classical history to an extreme. If this was so, then a line like Callimachus’ reported last words to himself late in the second

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a letter to Herodes (543) cannot be dated, but might well also come from this period.) Suggestive too is the appearance of Polemo’s name on a poorly preserved letter from Hadrian to Pergamum in 132 (Puech (2002) 399–401). If (as Puech suggests) Polemo’s involvement with Pergamum is to be connected with his stays at the healing sanctuary of Asclepius in the city, then Polemo’s illness may have started even earlier. However, a letter of Marcus to Fronto (2.5) reveals that the sophist was well enough to go to Italy and declaim as late as 143, perhaps a year before his death. So there are at least nine years, and quite possibly more, during which Polemo was both ill and able to declaim about it. Polemo was reportedly ‘so arrogant that he talked down to cities, talked to rulers without any hint of inferiority, and talked to gods from a position of equality’ (ὑπέρφρων . . . οὕτω . . . ὡς πόλεσι μὲν ἀπὸ τοῦ προὔχοντος, δυνασταῖς δὲ ἀπὸ τοῦ μὴ ὑφειμένου, θεοῖς δὲ ἀπὸ τοῦ ἴσου διαλέγεσθαι, VS 535), and when putting up a statue of Demosthenes, gave patronymic and demotic for the greatest orator Greece had ever known, but referred to himself simply as Polemo, as if he were the more famous of the two (Puech (2002) 399–400). For Libanius, see Leppin (2011) 428. Cf. Anderson (1986) 30–1 on sophists’ ‘bizarre privations’. For conquering physical pain as an (alternative) strategy of self-presentation in this period, see Francis (1995). VS 520, 521. Cf. Whitmarsh (2001) 189. On theatricality in declamation, see Connolly (2001) esp. 85–6.

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speech – ‘stand unmoved, Callimachus’ (στῆθι, Καλλίμαχε, ἀκίνητος, B58) – delivered by a barely standing Polemo, could have been extraordinary.61 Again, this sort of behaviour would not have been unprecedented. For making a show of overcoming physical impairments to declaim, we could look to the career of Aristides,62 who proudly talks of the πανήγυρις (‘national assembly’, 47.64, trans. Behr) that came to his house to hear him speak when he was ill (‘contending right from my bed’, αὐτόθεν ἐκ κλίνης τοὺς ἀγῶνας ποιουμένῳ, 47.64),63 and who describes the breathing problems that he had to overcome at the start of the very performance with which we opened this chapter (Or. 50.17);64 Demosthenes too (to whom Polemo had dedicated a statue at Pergamum)65 was believed to have had to overcome significant physical disadvantages to advance in his oratorical career;66 in Philostratus’ Vitae sophistarum, we also find declaiming described with athletic and gladiatorial metaphors, not least in Polemo’s famous remark to a nervous gladiator, ‘you’re as anxious as someone about to declaim’ (οὕτως . . . ἀγωνιᾷς, ὡς μελετᾶν μέλλων, VS 541).67 A second opportunity for underlining the merging of sophist and subject in performance concerns Cynegirus’ and Polemo’s hands.68 Right at the end of his speech, Cynegirus’ father utters the words ‘I stretch forth hands to you that are like those lying fallen on your behalf’ (χεῖρας ὑμῖν ὁμοίας προτείνω ταῖς ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν κειμέναις, A49). Now while the point of comparison (ὁμοίας) is explained in what follows – Cynegirus’ father puts his hands on the tomb, as Cynegirus put his hands on a Persian ship – at the moment in the speech at which Cynegirus’ father says these words, that point of comparison is not yet clear. Given that the speaker before their eyes famously had a wasting sickness of the joints, the audience could have heard χεῖρας ὑμῖν ὁμοίας προτείνω ταῖς ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν κειμέναις as ‘I [Polemo] stretch out hands to you that are similar to those [of Cynegirus] that fell on your behalf’ – similar not in their audacious seizure of disputed property, but rather in their state of health, Polemo’s arthritic hands matching those 61

62 65 66 67 68

In bringing such suffering so graphically before the eyes of his audience, Polemo’s performance might also perhaps have had more than a little in common with the spectacle of Galen’s gory vivisections, for which see Gleason (2009). Downie (2013). 63 Downie (2013) 102. 64 Downie (2013) 123–5. Cf. above, p. 107 n. 57. D.H. Dem. 53; Plut. Dem. 4.4–5, 6.4–7.6, 11.1; [Plut.] Vitae decem oratorum 844e–f. Downie (2013) 117. On the attention paid to hands in a rhetorical performance, see [Cic.] Rhet. Her. 3.15.26–7; Cic. De orat. 3.220; Quint. Inst. 11.3.84–124. In describing the appearance of Alexander Clay-Plato, Philostratus describes him as having ‘fingers . . . that were of good length and well suited to holding the reins of speech’ (δάκτυλοί . . . εὐμήκεις καὶ τῇ τοῦ λόγου ἡνίᾳ ἐπιπρέποντες, VS 570).

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lying amputated on the plain of Marathon.69 These are perhaps the moments at which the identification of the two pairs of hands could have been most to the fore, but there are others: at A42, Cynegirus is described as ‘giving up someone else’s hand, as it were’ (ὥσπερ ἀλλοτρίαν χεῖρα διδούς), in a clever reuse of this Isocratean formula; at A39, we hear the suggestive line ‘if we had had such hands as you had’ (εἰ τοιαύτας χεῖρας εἴχομεν οἵας σύ).70 One final suggestion of the sophist standing behind these declamations comes in the great number of words from the same πολεμ- (‘war’) root that is found in Polemo’s own name (Πολέμων), mostly in references to Callimachus’ role as polemarch. In the space of only three short chapters at A13 to A15, we find five uses of πολεμάρχος, and one of πολεμαρχέω; Callimachus’ father at the end of his speech cries out ‘O Polemarch, dread image of the Polemarch god’, a phrase all the more striking in the Greek for its immediate repetition of the πολεμ- root (ὦ πολέμαρχε πολεμάρχου θεοῦ δεινὸν εἴδωλον, B52). We even in the same chapter hear of Callimachus ‘putting on the garment of war’ (ἐνδὺς τὴν τοῦ πολέμου στολήν, B52). This phrase is all the more suggestive when we recall that στολή could be used to refer to the garb of a sophist (e.g. VS 587, 623).

Further Examples How commonly did authors and audiences engage in declamatory roleplaying of this sort? In view of our limited information about the specific contexts in which particular declamations were performed, the instances that we can discern today are probably only the tip of the iceberg. I now attempt to glimpse the underside of that iceberg, by examining a number of other suggestive alignments between the topics of declamations and the lives of declaimers.71 69

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If Polemo were to have actually stretched out his hands at this moment or others during the performance, the double meaning would have been obvious; the deictics in ‘this – the right hand of Cynegirus – was the spear of Athena; this – the hands that brought the light of freedom – was the fire-brands of the gods’ (τοῦτο ἦν τὸ δόρυ τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς ἡ Κυναιγείρου δεξιά, τοῦτο δᾷδες τῶν θεῶν χεῖρες ἐλευθέριον σέλας φέρουσαι, A36) might also have offered a particularly appropriate moment for a gesture. If Polemo’s hands appeared visibly diseased, so much the better. The equation is complex by this stage, to be sure (strictly three sets of hands are now involved – Cynegirus’, Cynegirus’ father’s, and Polemo’s), but the similarities would have been more salient if reinforced visually and would have been easier to spot after the more obvious points of similarity between Polemo and his subjects earlier in the speech. I find some of the details of the examples put forward in Pernot (2007) problematic. The first two examples, both taken from Dio Cassius (59.20.6, 67.12.5), are rhetorical denunciations of tyrants (in this instance actually in progymnasmata (preliminary exercises) rather than full declamations). These are

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We might start with Polemo, given the role-playing in his extant declamations. Philostratus records three declamatory prosangeliai performed by this sophist, cases in which the speaker seeks permission to die (VS 542–3).72 Given the use that Polemo makes of his illness in his extant declamations on Marathon, it seems by no means implausible that these prosangeliai also made capital out of his illness or coming death. Furthermore, it was probably hard to avoid self-reference in his ‘Demosthenes swearing that he had not received a bribe of fifty talents’ (Δημοσθένης ἐξομνύμενος ταλάντων πεντήκοντα δωροδοκίαν, VS 538), given that Polemo is known to have been accused of embezzling the greater part of quarter of a million drachmas (VS 533) and was attacked for venality in contemporary epigram.73 Similarly suggestive alignments can be found in the life and works of Aristides. In his Concerning a remark in passing (Περὶ τοῦ παραφθέγματος, Or. 28), Aristides lists four characters from classical history that he has played in his declamations:74 Demosthenes, Miltiades, Themistocles, and Aristides

72

73 74

understood by Caligula in the first instance and Domitian in the second as directed at themselves and are accordingly punished. But the emperors’ readings in both cases are taken as indications of bad character: is it not precisely the point that only paranoid emperors like Caligula and Domitian would see allusions to themselves that are not really there in these texts? Pernot’s answer, that it is the emperors’ excessive response (exile, in one case, and the death penalty in the other) that is at fault, while their reading of the rhetoric is sound, is not totally convincing. Pernot’s third example is the case of Lollianus that we have already considered (pp. 71–3, 80, 91): this is surely the strongest case, especially in light of the verbal parallels between declamation and life that he identifies in the text of Philostratus. Pernot’s fourth example, however, does not concern a declamation but rather involves Demosthenes’ Contra Leptinem being used to refer to contemporary life (VS 601): this can only be considered suggestive. The final example Pernot cites is found in Aristides’ first declamation on the Sicilian expedition, in which the speaker argues that enlargement will actually strengthen Athens’ empire, as the different subject peoples will fear one another, like slaves in a large household (Aristid. Or. 5.39). Pernot hears in this passage an unflattering reference to the Roman empire and to the classic imperial tactic of divide-and-rule. Is this credible? At the point at which this remark comes, the audience has just been through thirty-eight chapters of dense Aristidean argumentation: is such a brief reference really enough to trigger a jump to the present day? Even Pernot sounds a little unsure, conceding that ‘nulla obblighi a riferire tale ragionamento alla situazione contemporanea’ (228). ‘Xenophon resolved to die after Socrates’ death . . . Demosthenes bringing himself to trial after Chaeronea, and Demosthenes pretending to consider himself deserving of the death penalty after the Harpalus affair’ (ὁ Ξενοφῶν ὁ ἀξιῶν ἀποθνῄσκειν ἐπὶ Σωκράτει . . . ὁ μετὰ Χαιρώνειαν προσάγων ἑαυτὸν καὶ ὁ δοκῶν θανάτου ἑαυτῷ τιμᾶσθαι ἐπὶ τοῖς Ἁρπαλείοις). The third Demosthenic declamation that Philostratus mentions, ‘Demosthenes advising the Athenians to flee on their triremes as Philip approaches’ (ὁ ξυμβουλεύων ἐπὶ τῶν τριῆρων φεύγειν ἐπιόντος μὲν Φιλίππου) is also close to a prosangelia, for such a proposal would have incurred the death penalty, ‘Aeschines having ratified a law that anyone who made mention of the war should be killed’ (νόμον δὲ Αἰσχίνου κεκυρωκότος ἀποθνῄσκειν τὸν πολέμου μνημονεύσαντα). For prosangelia, see above, p. 41 n. 66. Ammianus of Smyrna, Greek anthology 11.180–1. Cf. Anderson (1986) 34. The term he uses is ὑποκρίνομαι: strictly, this verb does not necessarily refer solely to declamations but might also include ethopoeia.

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the Just, the famously upright Athenian politician of the fifth century bce (28.6). The first three names are unsurprising: Demosthenes features in countless declamation scenarios, and Miltiades and Themistocles are not uncommon.75 But Aristides the Just is almost unheard of as a character in declamation. He features once in Hermogenes’ De statibus, and once in the somewhat obscure prolegomena to this work, in both cases in scenarios that are said to be implausible, for they involve accusing this proverbially just character of theft.76 So it is striking that Aelius Aristides mentions declamations he has delivered as Aristides the Just, especially in a list of characters that are meant to exemplify his declamatory activity. Given the examples of role-playing in declamation we have seen so far, we might start to wonder whether Aelius Aristides ever exploited the homonymy between himself and his fictitious subject in such declamations: he does after all explicitly draw attention to their shared name, referring to Aristides the Just as ‘homonymous’ (ὁμώνυμον). But the possibility that Aelius Aristides made reference to himself through the character of Aristides the Just becomes a probability when we consider the use that he makes of his namesake elsewhere in his oeuvre. In his On the four (Πρὸςὑ Πλατώνα ὑπὲρ τῶν τεττάρων, Or. 3), he makes an explicit comparison between himself and his fifth-century namesake (described as ‘homonymous’ (ὁμώνυμον) again), arguing that his pursuit of oratory is even purer than that of the fifth-century Athenian politician, as he refuses fees or the sportulae of patrons (3.99) (in the terms of Chapter 1, this would be diagnosis and rescaling). Meanwhile in his To Plato: in defence of oratory (Πρὸς Πλάτωνα ὑπὲρ Ῥητορικῆς, Or. 2), in defending his own profession of oratory, he cites Aristides the Just as a clear example of an obviously good orator (2.346–61), and the homonymy is obviously meant to be suggestive. So given the use that Aelius Aristides makes of Aristides the Just to talk about himself in his nondeclamatory speeches, what more natural explanation for his extremely unusual declamations on this figure than that these too exploited the homonymy?77 75

76

77

Miltiades: Aps. Rh. 10.5 (= 10.7, 10.21, 10.42); RG iv 720.1–3 (= Syrian. In Hermog. 2.165.4–6), v 76.1–2. Themistocles: Libanius Decl. 9–10; Himerius Or. 5; Apsines Rh. 1.17, 10.12 (= 10.42); Ps.-Hermog. Inv. iii 6.20.2–11; RG iv.185.21–5 (= RG vii.165.3–6; Syrian. In Hermog. ii.42.18–19), RG iv 102.4–15 (= iv 122.27–123.2, v 44.14–22, vii 24.21–5; PS 211.24–212.1), RG iv 122.7–9, iv 567.10–12 (= Syrian. In Hermog. 2.121.24–122.1), RG v 44.11–14, v 75.14–15, viii 389.17–18; Syrian. In Hermog. 2.163.9–11. Hermog. Stat. i 18.2–3; PS 208.16–18. Another reason for Aristides the Just’s absence from declamation is probably the poverty of the historical tradition, which is largely limited to Plutarch’s rather thin Vita Alcibiadis. To figure oneself as Aristides the Just also has classical warrant, for Aeschines claims that Aristides’ hero Demosthenes adopted the same pose (Aeschin. 2.23).

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A second such case in (Aelius) Aristides concerns his lost declamation Contra Leptinem (Or. 4.3). Given Aristides’ well-publicised fight for exemption from liturgies,78 we might be tempted to hear in Demosthenes’ defence of exemptions an echo of Aristides’ own position; indeed, we know from Philostratus of an instance of Demosthenes’ own Contra Leptinem being used in this way to refer to real-life exemptions (VS 601). Strictly, the chronology will not allow this, for the declamation was written at some point during Aristides’ stay at Pergamum,79 while the dispute over exemptions began shortly after Aristides had left. But as Martin says, the fact that Aristides delivers this declamation so shortly before he runs into trouble with exemptions is striking, and it is possible that Aristides knew or suspected what was coming, for while he was at Pergamum he had dreamed of being addressed as ‘high priest of Asia’ (Ἀσιάρχης), the first of the offices he would seek to avoid (50.53).80 A further suggestive alignment can be spotted in the life and works of the sophist Apollonius of Athens. Philostratus tells us that in his later years he was hierophant, the chief priest of the mysteries celebrated at Eleusis.81 But while a number of sophists are known to have held this office, it looms larger in Apollonius’ biography than in others. As a hierophant, he is described as ‘in the beauty of his voice falling short of Heracleides, Logimus, Glaucus, and others like them, but in majesty and grandeur and adornment seeming superior to many of his predecessors’ (Ἡρακλείδου καὶ Λογίμου καὶ Γλαύκου καὶ τῶν τοιούτων ἱεροφαντῶν εὐφωνίᾳ μὲν ἀποδέων, σεμνότητι δὲ καὶ μεγαλοπρεπείᾳ καὶ κόσμῳ παρὰ πολλοὺς δοκῶν τῶν ἄνω, VS 601); Philostratus further tells us that he was buried near the road to Eleusis in an Athenian suburb where the annual procession to the mysteries rested (602). Epigraphic evidence corroborates this picture.82 A first statue base found at Eleusis reveals that Apollonius erected his own statue there: the inscription celebrates his role in the mysteries, describes his eventual decision to give up rhetoric to focus solely on his post as hierophant, and refuses to give his name, in accordance with the practice of mystery cults (IG ii 2 3811). A second statue base which probably refers to our Apollonius further celebrates his role in the ceremonies (IG ii 2 3662). Philostratus tells us that Apollonius once delivered a declamation entitled ‘Callias tries to dissuade the Athenians from burning the dead’ 78 80 81

Above, 63 n. 54. 79 Behr (1968) 59–60. Martin (2006) 208–9. For the date of the dream, see Behr (1994) 1207 n. 276. On declaimers/declamation and religion, cf. above, pp. 65–66. 82 Puech (2002) 100–8.

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(τοῦ Καλλίου, ὃς ἀπαγορεύει τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις πυρὶ μὴ θάπτειν), from which he offers the following fragment: ὑψηλὴν ἆρον, ἄνθρωπε, τὴν δᾷδα. τί βιάζῃ καὶ κατάγεις κάτω καὶ βασανίζεις τὸ πῦρ; οὐράνιόν ἐστιν, αἰθέριόν ἐστιν, πρὸς τὸ ξυγγενὲς ἔρχεται. τοῦτο τὸ πῦρ οὐ κατάγει νεκρούς, ἀλλ’ ἀνάγει θεούς. ἰὼ Προμηθεῦ δᾳδοῦχε καὶ πυρφόρε, οἷά σου τὸ δῶρον ὑβρίζεται· νεκροῖς ἀναισθήτοις ἀναμίγνυται. ἐπάρηξον βοήθησον κλέψον, εἰ δυνατόν, κἀκεῖθεν τὸ πῦρ. (VS 601–2) Lift the torch up high, sir! Why are you assaulting the fire, and bringing it down, and torturing it? Fire is heavenly and ethereal: it goes towards what is akin to itself. It doesn’t lead dead bodies downwards, but the gods upwards. O Prometheus torchbearer and fire-bringer, how your gift is being dishonoured! It is being mixed with the unfeeling corpses. Bring aid, help, and steal the fire, if it is possible, even from there!

In the mouth of a hierophant, a number of features of this declamatory fragment would make one think of the mysteries. In the midst of some theological and philosophical language (οὐράνιον, αἰθέριον, ξυγγενές), the speaker uniquely invokes Prometheus as a ‘torchbearer’ (δᾳδοῦχε), which was the name of a priest of the mysteries second in importance only to the hierophant himself. Furthermore, the fire exalted in this passage was critical to the mysteries, for the climax of initiation was the hierophant exhibiting sacred objects to initiands while bathed in radiant light, and Apollonius actually celebrates this moment in the inscription on the base of his statue at Eleusis, reminding viewers how they have seen him ‘appearing from the palace / in the shining night’ (ἀνακτόρου ἐκ προφανέντα / νυξὶν ἐν ἀργενναῖς, IG ii 2 3811.1–2); this light is also celebrated in inscriptions pertaining to another hierophant, Glaucus (with whom Philostratus compares Apollonius), and in the literary sources.83 While the details of any allusion intended or heard are surely lost forever, the overlap between the imagery of the Eleusinian mysteries and the language of this hierophant’s declamations leads one to suspect that something of this sort was going on. One final intriguing case worthy of consideration comes from Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius. When in book 5 of this work Vespasian enters Egypt to begin his campaign to become emperor, Dio Chrysostom and the philosopher Euphrates, who both happen to be present, encourage

83

IG ii 2 3661.3, 3709.10–11; Plut. Quomodo quis suos in virtute sentiat profectus 81e; D. Chrys. Or. 12.33.

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general rejoicing, and after a potted history of the ‘tyrannies’ (τυραννίδες) that had afflicted Rome after Augustus’ death, Philostratus writes: Ἀπολλώνιος δὲ παραπλησίως μὲν Εὐφράτῃ καὶ Δίωνι περὶ τούτων ἔχαιρε, μελέτην δ’ αὐτὰ οὐκ ἐποιεῖτο ἐς πάντας ῥητορικωτέραν ἡγούμενος τὴν τοιάνδε ἰδέαν τοῦ λόγου (5.27.2) Apollonius was pleased by these events as much as Euphrates and Dio, but he did not make them the subject of a public declamation, considering such a style of speech to be too rhetorical.

The self-positioning is striking.84 Not for Apollonius the philosopher the glamorous genre of declamation, the same genre that would soon attract emperors to its performances.85 Here by contrast, somewhat tendentiously, rhetorical exercise is attacked as ‘too rhetorical’ (ῥητορικωτέραν), a typical philosophical position – though in using the term ἰδέα, Apollonius perhaps has his cake and eats it by parading his knowledge of this technical term of rhetorical theory at the same time as he rejects rhetoric.86 Implicitly, what Apollonius did not do (make recent events the subject of a declamation) is what Euphrates and Dio Chrysostom did. While this looks like an explicit reference by an ancient source to the practice of reflecting on the contemporary world through a declamation, on closer examination, it may not be literal declamations that are in view. For while Dio at least is known to have written some more ‘sophistic’ compositions and is said by Synesius to have had a juvenile sophistic phase before devoting himself to philosophy,87 there is no evidence that Euphrates ever declaimed, and declamation is unlikely in a philosopher. What seems to be going on is that Philostratus is describing Euphrates’ and Dio’s speeches to the Alexandrians encouraging rejoicing as like or as good as rhetorical exercises. Furthermore, if the brief history of Rome’s tyrannies immediately before this passage represents the content of the two philosophers’ speeches, this would further explain the description of these speeches as declamation, for tyranny of course was a declamatory subject par excellence.88 So while this passage ultimately turns out not to refer explicitly to turning the contemporary world into a declamatory fiction, it does talk about such a practice metaphorically.89 84 85 86

87 89

On the competing types of the philosopher and the sophist, see Sidebottom (2009). Cf. pp. 76, 139. Philosophical attitudes to rhetoric: Sidebottom (2009) 86. ἰδέα has various meanings in the history of rhetoric (Ernesti (1795) 158–9); here it seems to have a fairly general sense as ‘style’. Cf. Rothe (1989) 64. VS 487; Synesius Dio 1–4.1. 88 Cf. above, p. 29 n. 33. Somewhat surprisingly, Behr (1968) 95 claimed that Aristides’ declamation The speech of the embassy to Achilles (Or. 16) is ‘replete with personal allusions’, though the relevant footnote is more restrained

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To these further second- and third-century Greek examples we may add earlier Latin and later Greek examples. Whether this is to be ascribed to the similarity between the contexts in which these declamations were performed or a shared tradition (or both) is probably ultimately unknowable; nonetheless, it suggests a deeply embedded culture of declamatory role-playing.90 When Porcius Latro was declaiming before Augustus about adopting a grandchild born of a prostitute (Controv. 2.4), the statement ‘that man is now by adoption being raised from the depths and inserted into the nobility’ (iam iste ex imo per adoptionem nobilitati inseritur, 2.4.13) was heard by some as a reference to Augustus’ adoption of the humble Agrippa’s grandsons.91 The declaimer Quintus Haterius, meanwhile, performing a scenario about a father suing a young man for damages after he had been torn away from the graves of his three sons and dragged off to a party, burst into tears middeclamation, reminded by his material of the son he had lost (Controv. 4. pr. 6).92 He seems then to have exploited the similarity between his own position and that of his fictitious subject in detail. ‘I believe that some will be surprised that I’ve come to the forum when I have only recently lost my sons’ (credo mirari aliquem, quod in forum amissis modo liberis veniam 4.1), said his fictitious subject: his real-world audience might have been surprised that he had come forward to declaim in such a circumstance. The most commonly alleged case in later Greek declamation is that of Libanius Decl. 1, where the figure of Socrates is said to stand for the emperor Julian.93 Other possible examples are to be found in the declamations of the sixth-century Gazan orator Choricius. The prolaliai and

90

91 92

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in talking of ‘comments drawn from Aristides’ life’. Some of the discourses found in both texts (the importance of reputation, the mortality of human things) are so common in Greek literature that the match is hardly salient (contrast Cynegirus’ unusual wound and Polemo’s unusual illness), but others are a little more distinctively Aristidean (e.g. disdain for money, 16.23–4). Still, the parallels are brief and few in number, and it is not easy to see what Aristides aims to achieve by them. There is also a striking similarity between Hermogenes’ declamation about a man on trial for murder for killing a eunuch he had found in bed with his wife (Stat. iv 6.9) and the way that the famous eunuch Favorinus seems to have escaped conviction on a charge of adultery on the grounds that he was a eunuch (Luc. Eun. 10; Philostr. VS 489), though the fact that Hermogenes was not born until after or shortly before Favorinus died means that we would only be dealing with a fairly distant sort of artistic inspiration here. We might even see declamatory role-playing by fifth-century sophists as well, for as Too (2000) 22 suggests, there is something more than a little Gorgianic about the eponymous speaker of Gorgias’ Palamedes. Gunderson (2003) 101–4. This incident is described in the preface to book 4, and the declamation title in question is then the first of the scenarios for which epigrams are given in this book (Controv. 4.1); it is natural therefore to understand these epigrams to be those of Haterius. On this episode, see Gunderson (2003) 97–101. Further possible Latin examples are discussed by Pernot (2007) 219–22. Markowski (1909) 169–70; Norman (1969) 462–3 n. b; Russell (1996) 19–20 (cautious).

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theoriai that were prefaced to these works often foreground similarities between the declaimer and his subject, as we have seen,94 while Decl. 12, in which Choricius plays the part of an orator and which ends with the fictitious orator asking as a reward for his public service that ‘your sons attend my school’ (τοὺς ὑμετέρους υἱεῖς εἰς ἐμὴν φοιτῆσαι παλαίστραν, 12.116), practically cries out to be read self-referentially. Declamatory role-playing, then, looks to have been a widespread phenomenon under the empire.

Conclusion We are now in a position to offer the first part of an answer to the question with which this book opened: why did Roman Greece pour such energy into imaginary speeches set hundreds of years in the past? This book suggests that a significant part of the answer lies in the contemporary resonance of classical history, and this chapter in particular has explored that answer at the level of the individual, exploring the rich opportunities for role-playing that declamation offered to the Greek elites of the empire. Let us now draw some conclusions about the ends to which this declamatory role-playing was put. I mentioned in the first chapter of this book the ancient rhetorical concept of figured speech as a potential model for declamation’s interaction with the contemporary world, with particular reference to the first of the traditional reasons for resorting to figured speech: safety.95 Pernot has pioneered this approach for the sorts of interactions we have been describing in this chapter.96 But in our examples, literal safety can hardly be considered to be at issue. None of those who figure reality in declamation – neither Maximus/Aristides nor the emperor Caracalla nor Megistias nor Alexander Clay-Plato’s audience nor Polemo – have any real fear for their safety. Indeed, given that an audience choosing a scenario to be declaimed is at least temporarily in a more powerful position than the declaimer, opportunities for a weaker party to conceal in the medium of declamation criticisms that would be dangerous to state openly would generally have been limited to the declaimer’s particular interpretation of the scenario given to him. A concern not for literal safety, however, but rather for a broader, ‘social’ safety does seem to be operative in some of our examples; this is somewhat similar, indeed, to a second, less familiar traditional goal of figured speech, 94

Cf. above, pp. 74–80.

95

Above, pp. 47–8.

96

Pernot (2007).

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that of propriety.97 Whenever one makes bold claims about oneself (as several of our declaimers do), one runs the risk that those claims will be contested and rejected by others, and the evidence of Philostratus suggests that public humiliations were long remembered.98 Lucian in his De historia conscribenda is very harsh on a contemporary historian’s aspirations to be a second Thucydides (15), and the propriety of self-praise was much discussed in this period, forming the subject of treatments by Plutarch and Aristides himself.99 If failure occurs in a fictional realm, however, there is the possibility of denying the claim. In the face of Hippodromus’ provocative intrusion on his lesson, Megistias uses a declamation title to suggest his great superiority over the newcomer. But when Hippodromus turns out to be a skilled declaimer, there is no direct proof of what Megistias had tried to do. Similarly, in the rather charged encounter between Herodes Atticus and Alexander Clay-Plato, the figuring of the sophists as various fictional declamation characters allows them to negotiate their respective statuses in greater safety.100 The notions of social safety and deniability will not work for all of our examples, however. Aristides actually makes the equation between himself and Demosthenes more or less explicit, and while Caracalla does mask his disapproval of what he seems to see as Heliodorus’ cowardice by figuring the sophist as a cowardly Demosthenes, the emperor’s aggression is so flimsily disguised that it is hardly deniable; Polemo, too, is unlikely ever to have wanted or needed to deny any similarity between himself and the heroes of Marathon. This is a knowing, self-conscious sort of figured speech in which speaker and audience collude in a transparent fiction. The effect of this sort of figuring of a person in declamation is perhaps closest to what Quintilian lists as a third goal that some pursue in figured speech (not present in other accounts, either in Latin or Greek), namely ‘elegance’ (venustas). ‘By its very freshness and variety’ (ipsa novitate ac varietate), Quintilian explains, ‘it gives more pleasure than if it were a straightforward account’ (magis quam si relatio sit recta delectat, 9.2.66). 97

98

99 100

The sort of impropriety that figured speech is designed to circumvent, however, is much stronger than the sort of self-assertion seen in our examples: at Ps.-Hermog. Inv. iv 13.4, for example, it is employed to avoid having openly to accuse one’s father of incest. The Vitae sophistarum include Herodes’ failure before Marcus (VS 565) and Philagrus’ sham extemporising (VS 579–80); Lucian too claims to have caught a declaimer attempting precisely the same ruse, and that using plagiarised material (Pseudol. 5). Plutarch De se ipsum citra invidiam laudando; Aristides’ Concerning a remark in passing (περὶ τοῦ παραφθέγματος, Or. 28). See Rutherford (1995) and Pernot (1998). There is much of this in Gleason’s analysis of sophistic self-presentation (Gleason (1995) 9–10, 13, 25). Aristotle, too, was familiar with the technique (Rh. 3.17.16).

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The philosopher Maximus of Tyre says something very similar about the role of myth in communicating philosophical doctrines. He regards it as a ‘decoration’ (κόσμῳ, Or. 4.5) and argues that the difficulty of getting to the true meaning itself stimulates interest: ‘the human soul honours less what is in front of it but marvels at what is absent’ (ἡ ἀνθρωπίνη ψυχὴ τὰ μὲν ἐν ποσὶν ἧσσον τιμᾷ, τοῦ δὲ ἀπόντος θαυμαστικώς ἔχει, Or. 4.5); if a reader thinks he has found a hidden meaning, he treasures it all the more: ‘it [a human soul] loves what it has stumbled across as if it were its own work’ (τυχοῦσα δὲ ἀγαπᾷ ὡς ἑαυτῆς ἔργον, Or. 4.5). Similarly, in Quintilian’s view listeners take pride in having spotted allusions (9.2.78). What strikes one most considering the examples assembled in this chapter is the sheer creativity with which authors and audiences made use of the cast of classical history for their own ends. Aristides made a virtue of necessity and boldly figured his first steps to physical and professional recovery as the Athenian recovery of hegemony from Macedon, with a hint of divine approval to boot; Caracalla belied his reputation as an uncultured emperor to beat a Greek sophist at his own game by imagining him as the greatest Greek orator but only at his lowest ebb; Megistias cleverly placed a rival sophist in a catch-22 situation in which he could either fail the rhetorical challenge presented to him or act the part of a failed and suicidal sophist; Alexander Clay-Plato’s audience paid him a compliment by finding a classical analogue even for his unusual lifestyle; finally, Polemo, in a similar fashion to Aristides, daringly reimagined his feeble body as that of a hero of Marathon. Declamatory role-playing, then, constituted a subtle yet powerful tool for claiming and negotiating status and identity in the Greek imperial period.

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chapter 5

Macedon

Demosthenes at Thebes In 338 bce, with Philip having in various ways subdued all the other major Greek powers, Athens remained the only serious impediment to total Macedonian domination of Greece.1 As a prelude to a march through Boeotia to Athens, Philip had seized Elatea in Phocis, a dramatic high point in Demosthenes’ presentation of the events (18.168ff.).2 Athens hurriedly sent an embassy to Thebes, officially Philip’s ally, under the leadership of Demosthenes, to seek an alliance or, failing that, at least assurances that Thebes would not join a Macedonian attack on Athens. When they arrived, however, they found Philip’s own ambassadors already in Thebes under the leadership of the notorious Python of Byzantium, full of confidence.3 As allies, Philip’s ambassadors were allowed to address the Thebans first and delivered a powerful speech invoking that alliance, urging them to punish Athens for past wrongs and promising rich material rewards if they did so, and the devastation of Boeotia if they did not. Next, it was Demosthenes’ turn to speak. The rhetorical challenge that he faced was not small: in addition to the pre-existing alliance between Thebes and Macedon, and the disadvantage of speaking second, the most serious obstacle was the long-standing enmity between Thebes and Athens. Yet for all that Demosthenes triumphed and secured the desired alliance with Thebes. The end result, of course, was disaster: defeat for Athens and Thebes at Chaeronea, which marked the end of Greek resistance to Philip and ushered in the period of Macedonian ascendancy that ultimately led to the destruction of Thebes itself by Alexander in 335. 1 2 3

The key sources are Dem. Or. 18.168–87, 211–14, D.S. 16.84–5.1, and Plut. Dem. 18. This moment is picked up in several declamation scenarios (above, p. 82 n. 40). Thus, Diodorus, followed by Aristides in Orr. 9–10. Plutarch, however, drawing on Marsyas, does not mention Python in his list of ambassadors.

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Plutarch reports the speech and its impact as follows: ἡ δὲ τὸν ῥήτορος δύναμις, ὥς φησι Θεόπομπος, ἐκριπίζουσα τὸν θυμὸν αὐτῶν καὶ διακαίουσα τὴν φιλοτιμίαν ἐπεσκότησε τοῖς ἄλλοις ἅπασιν, ὥστε καὶ φόβον καὶ λογισμὸν καὶ χάριν ἐκβαλεῖν αὐτοὺς ἐνθουσιῶντας ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου πρὸς τὸ καλόν, οὕτω δὲ μέγα καὶ λαμπρὸν ἐφάνη τὸ τοῦ ῥήτορος ἔργον ὥστε τὸν μὲν Φίλιππον εὐθὺς ἐπικηρυκεύεσθαι δεόμενον εἰρήνης, ὀρθὴν δὲ τὴν Ἑλλάδα γενέσθαι καὶ συνεξαναστῆναι πρὸς τὸ μέλλον (Dem. 18.3) The power of the orator, as Theopompus says, fanned the fires in their hearts, inflamed their ambition and thrust all other considerations into the shade, with the result that, inspired by the speech to take noble actions, they cast off all thought of fear and rational calculation and obligation, and the orator’s achievement seemed so great and brilliant that Philip immediately sent ambassadors asking for peace, and Greece became full of expectation and was roused up together in the face of what was coming

But that great speech was lost, and tantalisingly, Demosthenes explicitly declines to give an account of it in his great defence of his conduct in the De corona, saying only that he would give his life to be able to repeat what he said then.4 About 500 years later, Aelius Aristides filled that gap with not one but two declamations representing Demosthenes’ words to the Thebans on that occasion (Orr. 9–10). The intrinsic rhetorical appeal of the scenario is obvious, and the loss of the original offers Aristides a chance to play the part of Demosthenes without the risk of being corrected by history. Perhaps part of the appeal also is the poignant inadequacy of the declamations, in two senses: first, in that Aristides’ careful reconstruction of the context and of Demosthenes’ language only intensifies the frustration of not having access to the original; second, in that the drama and brilliance of Demosthenes/ Aristides’ speech contrasts painfully with the utter failure of the policy advocated. But given the range of ways of relating past to present available to imperial Greeks (Chapter 1), and the manifest similarities between the classical past and their own time that these could reveal (Chapter 2), it is to be expected that here too they found food for thought for their own time.5 But if there was 4

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There were in fact good rhetorical reasons for Demosthenes to omit such an account. As Goodwin (1901) 152 suggests, the speech likely contained many promises and expectations that defeat at Chaeronea and the destruction of Thebes three years later would have made seem naive. Aristides obviously draws heavily on Demosthenes’ extant speeches in these declamations, but that cannot explain why this historical period or this particular scenario were chosen, nor why these particular Demosthenic ideas, images, and words were chosen and arranged in this way, let alone

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declamatory role-playing of the sort described in the last chapter going on in these speeches, it has been lost forever, for there is no obvious match with what we know about the biography of Aristides, and we cannot compare the declamations to the immediate context in which they were delivered either, for we are utterly ignorant about this. Yet individual role-playing is not the only species of contemporary resonance that a declamation can display. In this chapter and the next, we will broaden the focus to look at the relationship between declamations and the wider political, cultural, and social context of the Greek east of the Roman empire. We may compare scholarship on Greek tragedy once more, which moved away from seeing interactions with the ‘immediate politicking’ of fifth-century Athens towards a picture of a genre more concerned with ‘the universal’, or, to put it another way, less concerned with the Athenian democracy specifically than with the more general problems of the polis in classical Greece.6 As we shall see, at this level too declamation offers rich resources to imperial Greeks for understanding, navigating, and reimagining the world in which they lived, from exempla to follow or avoid to comparanda to diagnose or rescale their own situation. These modes of relating to the past were reconstructed and described in Chapter 1, but it is only in the close reading of extended examples, as in the previous chapter, that we can get a full understanding of these processes. This chapter will take these two declamations of Aristides as its primary case study in looking at Macedon in declamation.7 These are the only extant declamations in which Macedon features, but we will also consider some other declamations about Macedonian imperialism that exist only as fragments or titles, and so put together a tentative picture of the state’s role in declamation more generally. We will conclude with an examination of a short but rich fragment from Pollux’s declamation On the islanders, which involves Athenian and Persian imperialism but seems to incarnate many of the same discourses. We shall see that (Macedonian) imperialism was ‘good to think with’: that the image of the domineering and rapacious foreign invader was highly provocative, sufficiently similar to contemporary concerns to provoke readers to compare past and present, yet sufficiently different to suggest new reflections on old problems.

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account for Aristides’ own original contributions. Aristides makes particular use of the Philippics (especially the second), the Olynthiacs, and On the crown (Boulanger (1923) 290–1; Tomassi (2016) 124–9). Taplin (1986) 167, 173; Rhodes (2003). Previous work on these texts: Boulanger (1923) 290–1 (largely paraphrase); Tomassi (2016). Aristides’ rhetoric (in the technical sense) is not the focus of this chapter. In particular, I do not compare and contrast the two speeches’ different approaches to the same rhetorical scenario.

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As I have said, we will not be dealing with straightforward contemporary allusions of the conventional literary sort – consciously intended references to something external to the text, designed to be clearly recognised by the audience. I doubt that Aristides consciously intended his readers to reflect on his declamations in every one of the ways I describe, or that the audiences of these texts were always explicitly aware of having the reactions I enumerate. In many cases, they must have been, just as the producers and consumers of historical exempla in other genres are usually explicit about how such material is to be interpreted. But in other cases, I suspect that both author and audience were driven by a vague but nonetheless strong sense that this material was fascinating and important, without explicitly being able to articulate precisely why. Nor do I imagine that the different responses I describe would have been mutually exclusive. On the contrary, I consider it likely (not to say axiomatic) that most audiences, and indeed most individual audience members, will have had multiple reactions to these texts, reconsidering their position during and after the performance and in the various rereadings that the texts probably enjoyed, perhaps even holding contradictory positions simultaneously.8 These texts, then, should be seen as functioning not as a code but rather more as a kaleidoscope, drawing their light from the outside, but subjecting it to a constantly changing series of mutations and permitting different audiences to see different things at different times. I also talk regularly in what follows of ‘Greek’ and ‘Roman’ readings of these texts. I use quotation marks to foreground the permeability of these categories in this period.9 The leading citizens of eastern cities enjoyed ever-growing access to Roman citizenship and political offices,10 while on the other hand, Roman elites participated extensively in Greek culture, as they had done for centuries.11 I consider therefore that many readers could read and indeed did read these texts as both ‘Greeks’ and ‘Romans’, either sequentially or even simultaneously. Loyalties were almost certainly mixed: this is, after all, how power tends to work, by implicating its subjects within 8

For evidence of the afterlives of declamations, see above, pp. 28–9. Dio Chrysostom vividly imagines a rather chaotic afterlife for his speeches (though these did not include declamations) (D. Chrys. Or. 42.4–5). 9 These terms are, as Whitmarsh (2001) 2 puts it, ‘“imaginary” rather than geopolitical entities’. Cf. also Whitmarsh (2001) 20–1. 10 Whitmarsh (2001) 18. Sophists were no exception: among the sophists who were consuls or senators or who had relatives in these categories were Herodes Atticus, Polemo, Polemo’s grandson Hermocrates, Aristocles, Amphicles, and Apsines (Ameling (1985) 32). 11 Greek and Roman identities in this period are an enormous topic: see e.g. Woolf (1994); Swain (1996); Woolf (1998); Whitmarsh (2001); Spawforth (2012); Madsen and Rees (2014).

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its domination;12 Wallace-Hadrill’s metaphors of ‘bilingualism’ and ‘codeswitching’ might also be helpful here.13 One need look no further for a reader capable of such code-switching than one of the few audience members of Aristides’ declamations known to us by name, the philhellenic emperor Marcus himself (VS 582–3).

To the Thebans: Concerning the Alliance i–ii (Aristid. Orr. 9–10) The proem to the first speech expresses the major topics of both: Philip’s habitual deception and Athens’ goodwill towards Thebes (1). The speaker then contrasts Philip’s alleged self-interest with Athens’ sincere desire to assist, citing her assistance to Thebes at the Battle of Haliartus and her assistance to Greece in the Persian wars (2–4). The case of Olynthus, initially favoured by Philip but then utterly destroyed, is cited as a warning; the speaker also recalls Athens’ earnest efforts to aid that city, even in the face of Olynthian hostility (5–13). No amount of fawning subservience to Macedon will save Thebes, as is demonstrated by the cases of Amphipolis and Pydna, both of which had offered Philip divine honours; on the contrary, given Thebes’ strength and pride, Philip will always regard it as hostile. The speaker then mocks the idea that Philip has been helping Thebes through a catalogue of his recent conquests that reveals clearly his self-interest (14–17). Philip is next accused of a divideand-rule strategy, hiding his hostile intentions towards Thebes like a wrestler, as he has done with Olynthus and Phocia, in an effort to separate her from Athens (18–21). The speech then switches to its second main theme, the relationship between Athens and Thebes. Thebes is urged not to let outsiders meddle in the relations between Greek cities, but rather to present a unified front. It is then objected that it would seem unjust to rake up old hatreds at a time when Athens was offering aid, and foolish too, given the danger the city now faces. If the Thebans find it hard to believe that Athens is suddenly so concerned for their welfare, they are directed to Athens’ aid to various cities in the struggle against Macedon, all of whom she had not had good relations with previously (22–9). In the face of the Macedonian ambassadors’ references to past quarrels between Athens and Thebes, the speaker cites various mutual kindnesses, including Athens welcoming Oedipus and the children of Heracles, or, in more recent times, how Thebes had sheltered Thrasybulus and other Athenian exiles at the time of the Thirty Tyrants, and how Athens had forced the 12

Whitmarsh (2012) 62.

13

Wallace-Hadrill (2008).

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withdrawal of the Spartan garrison from the Cadmea in 379/8 bce (30–3). As the speech moves towards its conclusion, we have another denunciation of Philip as an enemy of all Greece, and the inertia of the Greeks is bemoaned. Worst of all, the speaker claims, is that Philip’s deception leads cities to work against their own interests. This passage contains some of the most florid imagery of the speech, with Philip described variously as a criminal, a tornado, a hurricane, a mist, darkness, an earthquake, winds, an apparition in the sky, and a tidal wave (34–7). In the final section of the speech, after a brief reminder of Thebes’ reputation for Medising, the speaker evaluates the options of neutrality and siding with Philip. In the former case, Thebes would betray Athens while at the same time irritating Philip, while siding with Philip is denounced strongly as a betrayal of Greece (38–45). A final paragraph imagines how horrified Epaminondas would have been at the prospect of Thebes siding with Macedon against Greece (46). The opening to the second speech (1–5) begins with a range of considerations: Philip’s untrustworthiness, the stakes for Thebes’ reputation, and a contrast between Athens’ desire that Thebes be her equal and Philip’s desire to rule, and, ultimately, to be ‘King of the Greeks’ (Βασιλεὺς Ἑλλήνων). Philip may offer gifts, but the speaker warns that all those who have received gifts from him in the past have eventually met with ruin at his hands (6–8). Philip’s support for Thebes in the war against Phocis is dismissed as self-interested, and it is argued that strategic considerations make it obvious that Philip will want to control Thebes (9–11). But the city should not out of a misguided sense of gratitude give Philip what he wants at the cost of great danger to itself (12–17). The speaker then works to mitigate the impact of Thebes’ historic grievances against Athens that the Macedonian ambassadors have raked up. The proper response to such quarrels is to resolve on friendship in future, not to maintain the enmity. Wrongs have been committed on both sides, or, if the Thebans do not concede that any wrongs have been committed on their part, the present would be a peculiar moment to start, given that most of the alleged wrongs suffered by Thebes happened long ago, and at a time when the two cities actually often cooperated (18–22). Athens’ kindnesses to Thebes are then compared to what Macedon has done. The speaker points to Athenian aid to Thebes against Sparta at the Battle of Haliartus, and to the liberation of the Cadmea; these cannot compare, it is said, to Philip’s assistance against the Phocians (23–5). The speaker then addresses, as in the first speech, the two options presented by Philip to Thebes: simply to let Philip pass through or actively to join in the invasion of Attica. To do the latter

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Philip, Persia, and Parthia

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would be to do something more immoral than necessary; to do the former would be to give Philip an excuse for future action against Thebes, action which in any case would be harder to resist once Athens is out of the way (there is perhaps a hint here of Thebes’ coming destruction at the hands of Alexander) (27–31). After a brief reminder that Thebes had voted to destroy Athens after her defeat in the Peloponnesian war (32–3), we move into the last major section of the speech. The struggle is framed as one of freedom versus slavery, with dire warnings about Thebes’ future reputation if she sides with Philip. The danger to Thebes is then stressed again, and precedents for Theban aid to other cities are cited (34–40). After final attacks on the ambassadors (Thessalians, who have brought slavery on themselves, and Python, who betrayed his city) (41–2), the speech closes with a brief peroration urging unity (43).

Philip, Persia, and Parthia A declamation on war with foreign powers needs less translation than some. Rome’s biggest foreign rival, and, perhaps more importantly, the most prominent of Rome’s enemies in imperial discourse, not least because of the prestige that Alexander’s conquests had bestowed on campaigning in that part of the world, was Parthia, and accordingly it is no surprise to see that it has been suggested (albeit briefly) that behind Macedon in these declamations may in some sense stand Parthia.14 A Parthian connection would make most sense, as Behr says, if these declamations were written around the time of Verus’ campaigns (162–6 ce), which is certainly a possible date. This campaign seems to have made a big impression on authors, as Tomassi points out: even Lucian, whose interest is not often stirred by affairs of state, devotes an entire work to the historiography of the conflict (Hist. conscr.).15 But given that the eastern frontier had seen major campaigning at the end of Trajan’s reign (113–18) and was never entirely quiet, the parallel would probably have been available at most moments in Aristides’ career; continued trouble in the east later on (under Severus, 197– 202, and frequently during the third century)16 might have been a factor in the survival of these declamations out of all those composed by Aristides.17

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Behr (1981) i 487; Tomassi (2016) 144. 15 Tomassi (2016) 144 n. 73. A concise summary of Roman conflicts with Parthia and the Sassanians is offered by Schottky (BNP s.v. ‘Parthian and Persian wars’). For Aristides’ lost works, see Behr (1981) i 413–14. It is perhaps also significant that these are the most Demosthenic of Aristides’ (surviving) works. They were therefore perhaps central to the output of an

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Behr does not, however, specify in detail what might have led the reader from Macedon to Parthia. This gap is filled by the work of Asirvatham,18 who argues that Aristides has added barbaric characteristics to his depiction of Philip and the Macedonians that evoke the Persians, who are so frequently used as analogues for the Parthians in Roman discourse as to be practically synonymous with them.19 Polyaenus, for example, in the preface to his Strategica, a work dedicated to Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, draws a parallel between war with Persia and the war with Parthia and anticipates ‘victory over Persians and Parthians’ (κατὰ Περσῶν καὶ Παρθυαίων νίκην). Asirvatham does not list the ‘barbaric’ elements in Aristides’ picture of Philip, but they are plentiful. The war against him is three times compared explicitly to the Persian wars in various ways (9.4, 9.24, 9.38), and once to the war against the Amazons (9.33), itself an analogue for the Persian wars in fifth-century discourse, notably on the Athenian acropolis;20 Philip is also denounced at the stirring climax of the first speech as a ‘barbarous man, by nature apart from us’ (βάρβαρον ἄνθρωπον καὶ φύσει κεχωρισμένον, 9.44).21 Aristides makes much of Philip as a ‘king’ (βασιλεύς, 10.5), the most famous and characteristic of all Persian titles: it is the ‘one word’ (ἑνὸς ῥήματος), ‘the first of all in his treaties and letters’ (ἐν ταῖς ἐπιστολαῖς αὐτῷ καὶ ταῖς συνθήκαις πρῶτον ἁπάντων), a word which ‘reveals to all’ (πρὸς ἅπαντας καὶ καταμηνύει) his intentions – to be ‘King of the Macedonians’ (Bασιλεὺς Μακεδόνων), ‘king of this land’ (ταύτης . . . βασιλέα), ‘King of the Greeks’ (Βασιλεὺς Ἑλλήνων). Furthermore, by far the most common image used of the struggle with Philip, occurring no fewer than fourteen times over the course of the two speeches,22 is that of freedom versus slavery, which of course is an absolutely typical image of Persian power in classical literature:23 ‘we would never yield to him like slaves’ (οὐδαμῶς ἂν ὑπείξοντας ἐν δούλων μοίρᾳ, 9.15), says the speaker of the first declamation.24 A translation from the war against Philip to Rome’s rivalry with Parthia is also invited by a meta-exemplary remark early on in the first

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orator who modelled himself on Demosthenes, and of great interest to ages in which the Athenian orator was held up as the supreme model. Asirvatham (2008) 211–16. 19 Schneider (2007) 70–5; OLD s.v. ‘Persēs’ 1b. Hurwit (1999) 353 n. 53. For Philip as a foreigner, albeit without specific Persian comparisons, see also 9.14 and 9.24. 9.2, 15, 16, 40, 41, 43, 45, 46; 10.3, 34, 35, 36, 41, 42. E.g. Hunt (1998) 48–50; Hall (1996) s.v. ‘slavery’. For the ‘exceptionally low status’ that a user of the term δεσπότης implies for himself, see Dickey (1996) 95–8.

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speech, that ‘the war against the barbarians and those who have long been ill-disposed towards us has been decreed by nature’ (τὸν δὲ πρὸς τοὺς βαρβάρους καὶ πάλαι κακόνους πόλεμον φύσει προειρῆσθαι, 9.24). In the fiction of the declamation, the speaker is urging the Thebans to draw lessons from the Persian wars for the fourth century, but an imperial audience can in turn use the exemplum of Greece’s struggle against Macedon as a lesson for their own time.25 But what is the contemporary import of such a translation? For a Roman – that is, for anyone who identified, however temporarily or partially, with the Roman state, its history, and its interests, which would necessarily include many members of the provincial elites – some of the appeal must have been the ennobling of Rome’s eastern conflicts by making them heirs to Greece’s glamorous struggle against Philip and the Persian wars; this is the sort of scaling up that we have seen so often in declamation, only this time on the level of geopolitics. Indeed, Spawforth has shown that the equation of Parthian and Persian was very common in Roman imperial propaganda26 and has indeed suggested that declamations on the Persian wars served precisely this propagandistic purpose.27 But what would those reading as Greeks have made of such an equation? Some, to be sure, might have bridled at the implied elevation of Rome’s history to the level of that of classical Greece and insisted on Greek primacy: somewhat before our period, Livy wrote about a Greek historian, perhaps Timagenes,28 who liked to claim that Alexander would have been able to conquer Rome (9.18.6).29 But a more common ‘Greek’ attitude seems to have been to regard Greece and Rome as equals. This is exemplified by the pairings of Greek and Roman figures in Plutarch’s Lives, and also in Plutarch’s balanced discussion of the possible outcome of a clash between Rome and Alexander (Plut. De fort. Rom. 326a–c), as well as Pausanias’ similarly judicious thoughts on a clash between Athens and Rome (1.11.7). To those holding such attitudes, the implied equation of Greece and Rome in the identification of Parthian wars with Persian wars would probably not have been too disagreeable. Even those who personally found this interpretation distasteful might nonetheless have found it useful on occasion: the Athenian hoplite general Tiberius Claudius Novius presumably did his standing with Roman officials no harm when he put up an honorific 25 26 29

On meta-exemplarity in this pair of speeches generally, see below pp. 147–9. Spawforth (1994). 27 Spawforth (2012). 28 Sordi (1982) 777–8. Though Philip and Alexander are obviously both Macedonians, in this case as so often Alexander is regarded as a fundamentally Greek figure.

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inscription on the Parthenon in 61/2 ce that implicitly identified Nero’s Parthian war with the Persian wars.30 But the fit between Philip and Parthia is not perfect. Images of Philip as a Persian are not ubiquitous in these declamations but rather surface only sporadically, leaving much about the depiction of the Macedonian that cannot be read in this way. Moreover, given that there were of course some declamations about the Persians, to get to the Parthians through a Persian Philip seems circuitous; it also confuses the matter, for while Greece triumphed over Persia, Greek resistance to Philip was ultimately futile – decidedly not, one imagines, how most ‘Romans’ imagined or hoped their efforts against Parthia would turn out. None of this necessarily matters: leaving the dramatic fiction to think about the present ultimately depends on the reader, and many readers do not need much in the way of suggestion from a text to read it in accordance with their pre-existing inclinations. The discrepancies between Rome’s position vis-a-vis Parthia and Athens’ position vis-a-vis Macedon might even open the door to less optimistic or even subversive conclusions. A ‘Roman’ or indeed a ‘Greek’ might be led by the ultimate defeat of Athens to consider how Rome might itself one day fall: Rome, after all, was the successor to Macedon in the popular ‘sequence of five empires’, all of which thus far had eventually fallen.31 As the emperor Marcus says, contemplating world history in his Meditations: ‘consider mindfully the rest32 of the records of different times and of whole nations – observe how many despite their strenuous exertions fell in a brief while and were dissolved into their elements’ (ὁμοίως καὶ τὰς ἄλλας ἐπιγραφὰς χρόνων καὶ ὅλων ἐθνῶν ἐπιθεώρει καὶ βλέπε, πόσοι κατενταθέντες μετὰ μικρὸν ἔπεσον καὶ ἀνελύθησαν εἰς τὰ στοιχεῖα, 4.32.2).

Philip the Despot Still, the discrepancies between Macedon and Parthia are certainly sufficient to open the door to readers with other inclinations to draw different conclusions from these texts. What other associations did Philip and Macedon have for Greek imperial audiences? One fairly common association is between Macedonian kings and Roman emperors, particularly ‘bad’ emperors. In Philostratus’ Vita Apollonii, at the opening of book 7, by way of a prelude to Apollonius’ confrontation with Domitian, Philostratus gives a long list of other philosophers who have opposed 30 32

Spawforth (1994) 234–7. 31 On the ‘sequence of five empires’, see below, pp. 133–4. In the passage immediately preceding, Marcus has been talking about the time of Trajan.

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tyrants, among whom are numbered Diogenes of Sinope, who rebuked Philip for the Battle of Chaeronea; Crates of Thebes, who scornfully rejected Alexander’s offer to rebuild his city after destroying it; and Callisthenes of Olynthus, who opposed Alexander’s introduction of Persian court ceremonial (7.2). These comparisons to Macedonians are continued in the narrative proper when Apollonius sets out a detailed comparison between a Syracusan sent by Domitian to trick him into a treasonous utterance and Philip’s representative Python (attacked in our declamations (10.42)), whom Apollonius describes as ‘going on an embassy to the Greeks to secure their slavery’ (πρεσβεύων παρὰ τοὺς Ἕλληνας ὑπὲρ τῆς δουλείας αὐτῶν, 7.37). Meanwhile, in an episode from Philostratus’ Vitae sophistarum that we considered in the last chapter, a bullying Caracalla proposes a declamation title to the sophist Heliodorus that figures himself as Philip on the occasion of Demosthenes’ famous breakdown on an embassy at Pella (VS 626).33 Finally, in Suetonius we hear that on the day that Caligula was murdered, the same tragedy was performed in Rome as had been performed at the games during which Philip of Macedon had been killed (Cal. 57.4). In short, there is something about menacing emperors that seems to have people reaching for Philip of Macedon as an analogy: it seems a plausible inference, therefore, that presentations of Philip of Macedon in declamation might have had people reflecting on such emperors. Furthermore, if we look at the rich imagery with which Philip is described in these declamations, we find much that is familiar from the historians’ picture of ‘bad’ emperors such as Caligula, Nero, and Domitian. As we said above, the most frequent, if not to say insistent image in these two declamations (with no fewer than fourteen occurrences), is that of master (δεσπότης) and slave (δοῦλος).34 While this discourse was frequently associated with Persia, it was also deployed in other contexts, and one of its most characteristic uses – and one with which Aristides and many in his audiences, as members of the empire’s GrecoRoman elite, would have been familiar – is to characterise the relationship between emperor and senate under ‘bad’ emperors.35 The Latin evidence for this image is naturally more extensive, but we find the discourse in Greek also. In Dio Cassius, the discourse is applied to Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, and Domitian.36 Philostratus also frequently applies the image to Domitian in his Vita Apollonii, a work which at times comes to sound very 33 36

Above, pp. 97–9. 34 Cf. above, p. 126 n. 22. 35 Roller (2001) 214–17, 233–64. D. Cass. 58.27.4, 61.15.3, 62.24.2, 62.6.4, 67.4.7, 67.7.4, 67.13.4.

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similar to the depiction of such emperors in Latin writers. A man eager to be a governor is described as courting a ‘raging and savage master’ (τὸν λυττῶντά τε καὶ ἄγριον δεσπότην, 7.31.2); an attractive young man to whom Domitian has taken a fancy describes the emperor as a tyrant who wants ‘to be master of the free’ (δεσπόζειν τῶν ἐλευθέρων, 7.42.5); addressing the emperor, Apollonius says that the philosopher Euphrates considers him a despot (δεσπότην, 8.7.46).37 Finally, Dio Chrysostom uses the image of Domitian also, proud never to have spoken a ‘servile’ (ἀνελεύθερον) word to him (50.8).38 The suggestion of a ‘bad’ emperor in these declamations’ slavery imagery is developed by other parallels between Philip and emperors. Time and again, we hear of Philip’s ‘greed’ (πλεονεξία), both for territory and for treasure. The most forceful such complaint comes in the second speech, when we hear of Philip (in what is only an extract from an even longer period) ‘despoiling the whole of Greece and exempting nothing, not temples, not offerings, not walls, not horses, not arms, not money, not lives, not harbours, not the constitution, but disrupting everything as if with a thunderbolt, and utterly obliterating some things, and treating others as he wishes’ (ἅπασαν τὴν Ἑλλάδα συλῶν καὶ οὐδὲν ἐξαίρετον ποιούμενος, οὐ νεώς, οὐκ ἀναθήματα, οὐ τείχη, οὐχ ἵππους, οὐχ ὅπλα, οὐ χρήματα, οὐ σώματα, οὐ λιμένας, οὐ πολιτείαν, ἀλλὰ πάντα ὥσπερ ὑπὸ βροντῆς κινῶν, καὶ τὰ μὲν ἄρδην ἀφανίζων, τοῖς δ’ ὅ τι ἂν βούληται χρώμενος, 10.15); all in all, one may count no fewer than ten references in these speeches to greed on the part of Philip.39 Greed of course is a regular feature in accounts of emperors like Caligula, Nero, and Domitian, who are forever forcing rich Romans to commit suicide to get at their estates, ransacking the provinces, or dreaming up bizarre new money-making schemes.40 The accusation that Philip is plundering the temples and offerings of Greece (10.15) is particularly close to the notorious 37

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Apollonius, by contrast, claims to consider Domitian a ruler (ἄρχοντα), but this seems to be an attempt to flatter the emperor into treating him fairly, rather than a considered verdict. Cf. also the image at 8.7.20 in which Domitian is figured as the ‘master’ (δεσπότης) of some bee-keepers. For the servile connotations of ἀνελεύθερος, see LSJ s.v. 9.12–13, 17, 21, 33–5, 37; 10.14, 15, 38. Tac. Ann. 15.45, 52, 16.14; Suet. Cal. 22.2, 38–42, 57.1, Ner. 32, 38.3, 40.4, Dom. 3.2, 12.1–2; D. Cass. 59.4.5, 10.7, 14.1, 15, 21, 22.3–4, 25.1, 61.5.5, 63.11, 17, 63.22.2, 67.4.5. It is true that Philip’s greed in Aristides is more territorial than material, but the move from territorial acquisitiveness to material greed is an easy metaphorical shift, and one practised by Aristides himself (e.g. 9.10–11, 34); indeed it is sometimes hard to tell whether a given accusation of greed is material or territorial (e.g. 9.33: earth and sea are being ‘plundered’ (λῃστευομένη)). Nor in fact is out-and-out material greed entirely absent (e.g. 10.15: Philip is described as ‘carrying off’ (συλῶν) inter alia dedicatory offerings and money).

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confiscations Nero made from Athens, Delphi, Olympia, Thespiae, and Pergamum to make good the financial deficit after the fire of 64, depredations frequently mentioned in our sources;41 we even hear in Pausanias of one Greek statue that was stolen by Caligula, restored by Claudius, and then stolen a second time by Nero (9.27.3–4). The resentful recollection that Philip, a foreigner, had presided over the Pythian games (9.44, 10.15) is similar to another notorious act of Nero’s against Greece, namely having festivals radically altered to suit his cultural pretensions.42 A further characteristic of ‘bad’ emperors is the claiming of divine honours. Caligula is alleged to have had temples erected to himself and to have received sacrifices as a god; Domitian was said to have been addressed as ‘lord and god’ (dominus et deus); even milder forms of the phenomenon from history provoke Plutarch’s ire.43 So in our declamations is it alleged that Amphipolis has sacrificed to Philip as a god and Pydna erected a temple to his father (9.14). Divine honours for Philip also feature in the following declamation reported in Apsines: ‘Demades proposed that Philip be regarded as a thirteenth god. Demosthenes spoke in opposition and was defeated. He proposes that a temple to Philip be established as well’ (ἔγραψεν ὁ Δημάδης τρισκαιδέκατον θεὸν νομίζειν τὸν Φίλιππον· ἀντειπὼν ὁ Δημοσθένης ἡττήθη· καὶ γράφει καὶ νεὼν ἱδρύσασθαι Φιλίππῳ, Rh. 1.19). As Apsines explicitly says, this proposal is not serious, but rather a ‘figured’ speech intended to make the Athenians realise the absurdity of worshipping Philip.44 Another keynote of Aristides’ presentation of Philip is the Macedonian’s deceit and faithlessness.45 Such qualities are commonly found in the scandalous episodes that pepper the careers of ‘bad’ emperors, such as, for example, the extraordinary incident in which, after failing to kill his mother, Nero had to accuse her of trying to kill him, and the senators were accordingly forced to rejoice at murder;46 deceit, indeed, becomes a leitmotif of Tacitus’ Annals, and is also something attributed particularly to Domitian, both by Suetonius and, memorably, by Tacitus in his Agricola.47 There is some difference, to be sure (Machiavellian Macedonian scheming versus the open charade of Nero’s 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

In addition to the sources mentioned above, p. 130 n. 40, see Griffin (1984) 211 n. 15. Suet. Ner. 22.3–24.2; D. Cass. 63.8–10. Suet. Cal. 22.3; D. Cass. 59.4.4, 59.28.1–8. Suet. Dom. 13.2; Plut. De Alex. fort. 338a–b. Other episodes: Tac. Ann. 14.15, 15.74; Suet. Cal. 22.2–4, 33.1, 52.1. Cf. VA 4.31.2. For figured speech, cf. above, pp. 47–8. 9.1, 13, 18, 19, 28, 35, 36, 37; 10.1, 5, 13, 28. Suet. Ner. 34.2–4; Tac. Ann. 14.1–13; D. Cass. 61.12–16. Suet. Dom. 11; Tac. Agr. 39–45; D. Cass. 67.1–2, 67.4.1–2.

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reign and the inscrutability of Domitian), but the sense that one cannot trust the man in power is common to both. Senators and others who saw their perceived oppression by a ‘bad’ emperor in the domineering, greedy, faithless, and impious Philip would have been in good company. For such projection of senatorial slavery onto others is actually a widespread phenomenon in Greek and Roman literature of this period. In a popular reading of Tacitus’ Agricola, the slavery of the Britons in that work is regarded as in part a mirror for senatorial slavery: when the perspective shifts back to Rome at the end of the text, close parallels with the British narrative make it clear that ‘the Britons have been acting out the plight of the senatorial class under Domitian’;48 Lavan has also made similar suggestions concerning Florus and Dio Cassius.49 I suggest that something similar may be going on in Aristides’ declamations – that the classical Athenians of these texts would, for some readers, be acting out the plight of the senatorial class under ‘bad’ emperors. But why ‘act out’ senatorial slavery, and why in this oblique way? A senator or equestrian would have good reason to approve of these declamations as a denunciation of this sort of tyrannical behaviour, and as such potentially also a useful warning to an emperor not (yet) involved in such activities: this is history as negative exemplum, as so often. Yet the emperor himself, and his court, at whom others might see this discourse as being directed, might have his own very good reasons for being seen to approve such performances, for each new imperial dynasty almost invariably sought to legitimise its rule at least in part by the claim to have replaced a despotic regime. He might even welcome the example, even if he did not see it as directed at himself: several of the emperor Marcus’ Meditations reveal a concern to avoid tyrannical behaviour.50 And even if the emperor did feel that he was being criticised, it was the mark of the non-tyrannical ruler to put up with παρρησία (‘free-speaking’), an ability which Marcus was grateful to have been taught (1.6); in Roman terms, it was civile (‘the part of a good citizen’) to listen.51 Only a bad emperor – with a guilty conscience – would take umbrage, just as Caligula had banished Carrinas Secundus for a rhetorical exercise of some sort against tyrants, and Domitian had executed 48 49 50 51

Lavan (2011) 303. This sort of reading of the Agricola goes back at least as far as Liebeschuetz (1966). Lavan (2013a) 145, 147. Rutherford (1989) 65 n. 56. For Marcus’ ‘co-option of oppositional rhetoric’, see Whitmarsh (2001) 216–18. For allowing free speech as the mark of a good emperor, cf. e.g. Tac. Hist. 1.1. On imperial attitudes to sophistic culture (official patronage versus private reservations), see Rutherford (1989) 80–9.

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a sophist called Maternus for the same.52 Furthermore, each of the groups we have considered could gain something from the others’ approval of this discourse. The emperor may see in the universal opprobrium heaped on the despot support for his own rule, while the senator may see in the emperor’s approval of the performance an undertaking to avoid despotism. Thus, these declamations’ denunciation of tyranny is far more than simply one-to-one allegory. Rather, these discourses are capacious enough for multiple different groups to find something of value to themselves, and even to imagine that their readings are shared by others.

Rome and Macedon I now explore a wider identification: not merely between Philip and the type of the ‘bad’ Roman emperor, but between Macedon and Rome more broadly. This might surprise,53 given the fairly negative picture of Macedon in these texts and the pro-Roman sentiments expressed in many of Aristides’ other works,54 but Macedon is in fact very common as an analogue of Rome in this period. Just as ‘bad’ emperors seem to make people think of Philip, so does the Roman empire as a whole often have Greek and Roman imperial audiences reaching for Macedon. While the identification of Macedon with Rome probably offers more to those operating with a Greek identity, particularly those with less positive feelings towards Rome, there is also, as we shall see, much here for those operating from a Roman perspective too. That there was an appreciation of the broad similarities between the two empires at the time is evidenced by the existence in contemporary historiography of a theory of ‘five empires’, which saw Rome as the successor to Macedon in a sequence of world empires (with Macedon preceded in turn by Media, Persia, and Assyria).55 This scheme is actually used twice by 52

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Carrinas Secunudus ‘because as part of his practice he had delivered a speech against tyrants’ (ὅτι λόγον τινὰ ἐν γυμνασίᾳ κατὰ τυράννων εἶπεν, D. Cass. 59.20.6); Maternus ‘because when practising he had said something against tyrants’ (ὅτι κατὰ τυράννων εἶπέ τι ἀσκῶν, D. Cass. 67.12.5). On these two episodes, cf. above, p. 109 n. 71. Whitmarsh sees nothing here, despite looking, though he remains receptive to the possibility of seeing Rome in declamation: ‘the story of Demosthenes as proud defender of Greek freedom against foreign tyranny continued to resonate under the empire’; ‘while the reader enjoys glorious narratives of Greece’s military past, the gates to the realm of fantasy are open wide. Words like “freedom”, “conquest”, “enslavement” are powerful, evocative terms, with a tendency to resist any safe compartmentalization in the ancient past’ (Whitmarsh (2005) 68, 70). Most obviously in Or. 26, Regarding Rome, but elsewhere also: see Pernot (2008b) 175. For the theory, see Swain (1940); for its down-dating to the second half of the first century bce, see Mendels (1981). In the imperial period, it can be found in Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Ant. Rom. 1.2– 3), Strabo (Alonso-Núñez (1984)), and Appian (Praef. 6–11, Pun. 132). Further back, but in the same vein, Polybius offers us the extraordinary scene in which Scipio weeps for Carthage, seeing in its

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Aristides himself (1.335, 26.91), and on the second occasion in particular briefly enough to suggest that it was well known. The comparison is readily comprehensible. Besides the fact that both were imperial powers, a further similarity to Greek eyes at least between the two could be found in Rome’s traditionally ambiguous position between Greek and barbarian. The continual, strategic redefinition of Macedon in classical sources as alternately Greek and barbarian is well known;56 for Rome’s ambiguous status, one might think of Strabo’s approval of Eratosthenes’ grouping of the Romans among the ‘civilised’ (ἀστείους) barbarians (1.4.9), or Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ description of Latin as ‘neither utterly barbarian nor completely Greek’ (οὔτ’ ἄκρως βάρβαρον οὔτ’ ἀπηρτισμένως Ἑλλάδα, Ant. Rom. 1.90.1). Narrowing the focus slightly, further evidence for the familiarity of the comparison between Macedon and Rome is provided by the frequency with which we find Roman emperors figured as Philip. We have already seen quite a number of examples of this in situations where the emperor appears threatening or domineering. But even ‘good’ emperors can be so figured. This fact implies a wider appreciation of the structural parallels between Macedon’s empire and Rome’s, regardless of who was ruling at any given time. Speaking before his hometown of Prusa, Dio Chrysostom tells the story of how Aristotle used his position as the tutor of Alexander to prevail on Philip to resettle his hometown of Stagira, which had been destroyed in war, but found his plans thwarted by mean-spirited locals and ultimately came to regret his efforts (Or. 47.9–14). So too, Dio says, he now regrets his efforts to secure support from the emperor to rebuild Prusa, given the obstructionism of his political rivals. A much more extended, though rather more allusive, use of Macedonian rulers to figure Roman emperors is to be found in Dio’s Kingship orations (Orr. 1–4), particularly the second and fourth of these, which are both dialogues.57 The second is a dialogue between Philip and Alexander; in the fourth, the Cynic philosopher Diogenes discourses before Alexander the Great on the true king; the first, too, opens with an allegorical narrative about Alexander and the famous aulos player Timotheus (1–2). While these texts only discuss

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destruction an echo of the falls of Troy, Assyria, Media, Persia, and Macedon, and a foreshadowing of Rome’s own eventual destruction (38.22.1–3). E.g. Engels (2010); Hatzopoulos (2011). Jones (1978) 115–23; Moles (1990); Whitmarsh (2001) 181–216; Sidebottom (2006). For Dio’s attitude to Rome generally, see Moles (1995).

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questions of kingship in the abstract and never explicitly address contemporary concerns, Alexander and Philip are clearly in some sense standing for Roman emperors, however obliquely. Aristides himself, meanwhile, figures Roman emperors as Macedonian kings in his funeral oration for his teacher Alexander (Or. 32), where he compares his teacher’s role in advising Roman emperors to Aristotle’s association with Philip and Alexander (32.29). Finally, whether Favorinus was exiled or not,58 he casts himself in his On exile as Diogenes of Sinope and Crates of Thebes, two philosophers who tangled with Philip and Alexander (2.1 Barigazzi (1966)). So Greeks talking about Roman power reach regularly for Macedon. It seems a plausible inference, then, that Macedon when presented in declamation would have offered materials for reflection on Rome. And indeed, the dominant discourses of these declamations frequently echo contemporary ideas about Roman power. The most common image, as we have already seen, is that of master and slave.59 Though this discourse is indeed frequently used to describe Persians and domineering emperors, as we have said (pp. 126, 129–30), it is perhaps most common of all in Greek assessments of Rome’s empire. For Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Rome had advanced ‘by always enslaving everything that opposed her’ (ἀεὶ πᾶν δουλουμένη τὸ ἀντίπαλον, Ant. Rom. 1.3.4); the literary critic known today as Pseudo-Longinus, whether we date him to the first or the third century ce, discusses at length the view of an opponent who thought that the ‘slavery’ (δουλεία) of the present age had led to a decline in rhetoric;60 Philostratus has Apollonius charge Vespasian with enslaving Greece by revoking Nero’s grant of freedom (VA 5.41.1–4). Plutarch is a little more nuanced: in his view, though the Greek statesman’s leg is fettered, his neck need not go under the yoke (PGR 814f). The image is frequent in Herodian too (2.9.12, 7.2.1). Indeed, according to Herodian, it was through infighting that the Greeks ‘were easy for the Macedonians to capture and became slaves to the Romans’ (Μακεδόσιν εὐάλωτα καὶ Ῥωμαίοις δοῦλα γεγένηται, 3.2.8): this pairing is particularly suggestive, for it seems to hint that Greece’s defeat by Macedon and her present subordinate position under Rome are part of the same phenomenon.61 Pausanias hints in the same direction: in his account of the Second Macedonian War, as the Roman general Flamininus subdues the Macedonians, the Achaeans foresee that ‘in place of Philip and his Macedonians, the Romans were coming 58 60 61

Swain (1989); Fein (1994) 244–5; Gleason (1995) 147–8. 59 Above, p. 126 n. 22. 44.3, 44.5, 44.10. Longinus’ opponent probably also believes that slavery began with Macedon, for it is unlikely that he has a high opinion of the Hellenistic period (Heath (1999) 53–4).

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to be their masters and to give orders to them and the whole of Greece’ (ἀντὶ Φιλίππου καὶ Μακεδόνων Ῥωμαῖοι σφίσι τε ἥκοιεν καὶ τῷ Ἑλληνικῷ δεσπόται προστάττειν, 7.8.2). The reference, of course, is to Philip V of Macedon but is left unspecified; ‘Philip and the Macedonians’ (Φιλίππου καὶ Μακεδόνων) could easily also remind readers of Philip II, Demosthenes’ enemy.62 The greed frequently attributed to Philip in these texts also has obvious connections with contemporary depictions of Roman imperialism.63 At the Battle of Pharsalus, Plutarch has some Greek onlookers (conveniently present at the battle without being involved in the fighting) meditate on the terrible damage that ‘greed’ (πλεονεξία) has done to the Roman state (Pomp. 70); he also ascribes Sulla’s sack of Athens to his need to sate the greed of his soldiers (Sull. 12.8–9). Dio Chrysostom explicitly addressed Romans (Or. 13.29–37) on the topic of wealth and luxury, referring to the ‘mass of possessions which has all been gathered together from all sides into this one place, since luxury and greed reign’ (χρήματων . . . πλήθους, ἃ πάντα πανταχόθεν εἰς ἕνα τοῦτον ἤθροισται τὸν τόπον, τρυφῆς ἐπικρατούσης καὶ πλεονεξίας, 36). Somewhat earlier, Dionysius of Halicarnassus had lamented how Roman boundary stones now only had a ritual function: the Romans, Dionysius says, do not ‘separate . . . what is theirs from the property of others; rather, the extent of their holdings is determined not by the law, but by a desire for all things, a distasteful attitude’ (ὁρίζουσί . . . ἀπὸ τῶν ἀλλοτρίων τὰ οἰκεῖα, ἀλλ’ ἔστιν αὐτοῖς ὅρος τῶν κτήσεων οὐχ ὁ νόμος, ἀλλ’ ἡ πάντων ἐπιθυμία, πρᾶγμα οὐ καλόν, Rom. Ant. 2.74.5). More specifically, Philip is said in these declamations to be even worse than a moneylender who sets very high interest rates, is imagined as a tax collector (9.11), and is said to have seized Greece like a debtor in default (9.34). Such imagery is particularly evocative of Asia Minor’s sufferings under Roman tax collectors and moneylenders,64 a story still told in the imperial period (e.g. Plut. Luc., App. Mith.): Appian tells of how Mithridates had the republican general Manius Aquilius executed by drinking molten gold, an obviously symbolic fate (Mith. 21). But this also has contemporary resonance: tax was controversial in all periods, and there is evidence that moneylenders too were still causing trouble.65 More generally, it has long 62

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This of course was an image with a long history: as far back as Polybius, we find Rome’s aid to Greece in the Second Macedonian War being described as the precursor to a war with those same Romans in which defeat will mean slavery (9.37.7). Cf. above, pp. 130–1. Of course, such greed was perhaps to be expected from an empire that had begun as an assortment of criminals and runaway slaves, as the traditional slander had it (Plut. Rom. 9; D.H. 1.4.2–3). Mitchell (1993) 29–30. On taxation under the empire, see Sartre (1991) 84–9. On moneylenders in this period, see below, p. 144.

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been established that provincial extortion continued to be a real problem under the empire.66 Philip and his Macedonians are suggestively similar to Rome in smaller details too. These speeches cast Philip as a foreigner (9.14, 9.24), a barbarian,67 and worse than an Amazon (9.33). So were Romans often cast as barbarians: Strabo considered them to be such, albeit civilised barbarians (above, p. 134), and Dionysius of Halicarnassus had to fight hard against such an idea;68 further back, we find the idea expressed several times in Polybius.69 Philip is also described, with quite some fanfare, as we have already noted, as ‘king’ (10.5) (cf. above, p. 126). Roman emperors were of course standardly designated ‘king’ in Greek,70 and Aristides’ claim in these declamations to unmask Philip as a would-be king has some similarity with Appian’s insistence in the preface to his history that Roman emperors really are kings (βασιλεῖς), despite their preference for other terms (6). Four times in these declamations Philip is cast as a Spartan;71 Rome’s esteem for and emulation of Sparta is well known.72 Philip is actually said to surpass Sparta’s ‘cleverness . . . and wickedness’ (δεινότητος . . . καὶ τοῦ κακουργεῖν, 10.28), and Aristides mentions in particular Sparta’s claim during the Peloponnesian war to have been fighting for the ‘freedom . . . of the Greeks’ (τῶν Ἑλλήνων . . . ἐλευθερίας), contrasted with their subsequent turning on Corinth (10.29). Rome’s sack of Corinth in 146 bce was still a chilling memory (Paus. 7.16.7–9), and Rome had twice famously proclaimed the freedom of the Greeks: first in 196 bce,73 and most recently during the reign of Nero,74 a grant rapidly revoked by Vespasian, as Pausanias and Philostratus remind us.75 ‘The freedom of the Greeks’ in particular is such a charged phrase that it would be hard not to think outside the dramatic fiction of the declamation; this is perhaps somewhat similar to the ‘zooming devices’ that Sourvinou-Inwood identified in Greek tragedy, ‘which had the effect of bringing the world of the play nearer, pushing the audience into relating their experiences and assumptions directly to the play’.76 One of Philip’s specific strategies in these declamations is that of ‘divideand-rule’: by sowing dissent among the Greek cities, Philip can stop them 66 69 70 73 76

Brunt (1961). 67 9.4, 24, 44. 68 1.4.2–3, 1.89.1, 7.70.1. 5.104.1, 9.37.6, 11.5.6–8, 18.22.8. On this point, see Champion (2004) general index, s.v. ’Romans, as barbarian people’. Mason (1974) s.v. 71 9.39; 10.28–30. 72 Spawforth (2012) 86–102. 74 Polyb. 18.44; Plut. Flam. 10ff. Nero: ILS 8794. 75 Paus. 7.17.3–4; Philostr. VA 5.41. Sourvinou-Inwood (1989) 136. Cf. also Easterling (1985) 9 on how anachronism in Greek tragedy can make even familiar narratives into prompts for thinking critically about contemporary arrangements.

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from uniting against him and conquer them one by one.77 This tactic is also mentioned in other declamation scenarios. In the rhetorical theorist Apsines, we find a scenario entitled ‘Philip has sent a garland to “the goddess” after the events at Olynthus’ (ἔπεμψε Φίλιππος στέφανον τῇ θεῷ μετὰ Ὄλυνθον, Aps. Rh. 3.18). That this action on the part of Philip is to be interpreted as an attempt by Philip to sow discord among the Greek cities is confirmed by Apsines’ explicit comment: the ambiguous dedication (‘to the goddess’) is designed to set the cities fighting over the garland. In another scenario, Philip offers to rebuild the Greek cities he has destroyed after the Greeks vote to make war on him (Aps. Rh. 2.8 (= 1.91)). This too is interpreted as an attempt to divide the Greeks, as is a third scenario involving Alexander: ‘Alexander sent a letter saying that in the accounts of Darius he had found evidence that Demosthenes had received fifty talents, and Demosthenes is put on trial for taking bribes’ (ἀπέσταλκεν Ἀλέξανδρος ἐν τοῖς Δαρείου λογισμοῖς εὑρηκέναι λέγων εἰληφότα Δημοσθένην πεντήκοντα τάλαντα· καὶ κρίνεται δωροδοκίας, Aps. Rh. 2.9; cf. VS 538/542). Declamatory Macedonians, it seems, like to divide and rule. So too real-life Romans, it is alleged. Dio Chrysostom claims that the Roman governors of Bithynia pursue precisely this strategy, allying themselves now with Nicaea, now with Nicomedia (Or. 38.36): ‘do you not realise the tyrannical power which your dissension offers to your rulers?’ (οὐκ ἐπαισθάνεσθε τῆς τυραννίδος, ἣν ἡ στάσις ἡ ὑμετέρα δίδωσι τοῖς ἄρχουσιν ὑμῶν), he asks indignantly. In such an environment, unity is key, as we hear several times in these declamations,78 and accordingly the traitor is a particularly reviled figure:79 Philip’s ambassadors, including the notorious Python of Byzantium, are called ‘traitors to their own fatherlands . . . a shameful example for all the Greeks’ (προδόται τῶν ἑαυτῶν πατρίδων . . . αἰσχρὸν παράδειγμα πᾶσι τοῖς Ἕλλησιν, 9.45); it is easy to take such a gnomic utterance as having wider significance outside the fiction of the declamation. Traitors also feature in three other declamations about Macedon: Python is brought to trial for ‘crimes against the Greeks’ (τῶν εἰς τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἀδικημάτων, Aps. Rh. 1.62) and for ‘treason’ (προδοσία, VS 514),80 while the Theban 77 78 79 80

9.20, 22, 34, 45; 10.26, 27, 31, 43. Aristides makes use of this same idea (that Greek infighting enabled the rise of Philip) when arguing for concord between the cities of Asia (Or. 23.61). 9.34; 10.43. 9.45; 10.42. The most obvious traitor to Macedon in Greek declamation is of course Aeschines (e.g. VS 580). Philostratus’ description of the scenario and the extract he quotes make it clear, however, that he has confused Python of Byzantium with Leon of Byzantium; nonetheless, his confusion suggests that Python was almost the archetype of a politician who betrayed his city.

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flute player Ismenias is prosecuted after Alexander’s death for having played as Thebes was being destroyed (Aps. Rh. 1.61). So too in contemporary life: it is alleged that Dio Chrysostom conspired with the Roman governor of his province against his fellow citizens (43.11). Pausanias even seems to draw a link between betraying Greece to Macedon and betraying Greece to Rome. In an excursus on Greek treachery, he jumps from the final betrayal of Athens in the time of Philip all the way forward to the Achaean Callicrates, whom he sees as having betrayed the Achaean League to Rome (7.10.1–5).81 These texts, therefore, take Macedon, one of the most common analogues for Rome, and then proceed to depict it in a very negative way, and in a way that evokes some of the worst contemporary charges against the empire, however obliquely. How many would have read these texts in this way? While scholars have in recent years cautioned against the notion of any straightforward political ‘resistance’ to Rome in Greek imperial literature, and rightly so, given authors’ and audiences’ embeddedness in the circuits of Roman power,82 obliquely expressed reservations about Rome are certainly not unique in Greek imperial writing, as is now being recognised.83 Nor are they unique even to Aristides. In the passage mentioned above in which Aristides compares his former teacher Alexander’s association with the emperors Marcus and Verus to that of Aristotle with Philip and Alexander (32.29), it is notable that he specifies that it was not, unlike Aristotle’s association with the Macedonian kings, an association with ‘hostile people and enemies of the Greeks’ (δυσμενέσι καὶ τοῖς πολεμίοις τῶν Ἑλλήνων). While any sort of collaboration is explicitly denied, it is hard to believe that silence on this point would not have been more effective than the denial we have, for that denial raises precisely the spectre of collaboration. Pernot has noted several similar moments in Aristides’ career:84 in a dream in the Sacred tales, Aristides appears before the emperor but breaks court etiquette by refusing to kiss him (Or. 47.23),85 while his encounter with Marcus in Philostratus’ Vitae sophistarum has, as Pernot sensitively perceives, ‘an air of detachment’,86 with Aristides delaying his appearance before the emperor on the grounds that he was occupied with a ‘preliminary meditation’ (θεώρημα, VS 582).87 81 83 85 87

Cf. above, pp. 135–6. 82 Whitmarsh (2012); cf. also above, pp. 122–3. See e.g. Woolf (1994) 125–6; Pernot (2008b) 176–7; Madsen (2014). 84 Pernot (2008b). Pernot (2008b) 178–9. 86 Pernot (2008b) 182. On sophists’ cagey encounters with emperors, see also Flinterman (2004) 364–5 (who stresses that not all encounters are like this), König (2014) 252–8, and Kemezis (2014) 221–4.

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Particularly interesting for our purposes is Aristides’ use of the language of liberty and slavery in his epideictic oration Regarding Rome. ‘You alone of all the rulers there have ever been rule men who are free’ (μόνοι γὰρ τῶν πώποτε ἐλευθέρων ἄρχετε), Aristides says to the Romans: governors are appointed ‘not to be masters’ (οὐκ ἐπὶ τῷ δεσπότας εἶναι), nor ‘are the people, like a household, spoken of as belonging to so-and-so, to whomever they were given to serve’ (ὥσπερ οἶκος τοῦ δεῖνος ἀκούει τὸ ἔθνος, ὅτῳ παρεδόθη δουλεύειν, 26.36, trans. Behr). Once again, denials raise the spectre of their opposites; ‘you rule free men’ (ἐλευθέρων ἄρχετε) in particular is rather paradoxical.88 We find the slavery metaphor used elsewhere in the speech with similarly ambiguous implications. We hear that the city of Rome has not built walls ‘as if a master were to show himself afraid of his own slaves’ (οἷον εἴ τις δεσπότης δεικνύοιτο τοὺς ἑαυτοῦ δούλους φοβούμενος, 80). The comparison is negative, to be sure, but if we follow Aristides’ train of thought here, what makes the comparison negative is that Rome is not fearful of its subjects, and not (necessarily) that those subjects are not slaves. Later on in the speech, Aristides discusses the sequence of world empires (91): ‘the others – those holding power before you – were masters and slaves of one another in turn . . . and Macedonians served Persians, Persians Medes, and Medes Assyrians’ (οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἄλλοι οἱ πρὸ ὑμῶν δυναστεύσαντες δεσπόται καὶ δοῦλοι ἀλλήλων ἐν τῷ μέρει γιγνόμενοι . . . καὶ ἐδούλευσαν Μακεδόνες Πέρσαις, Πέρσαι Μήδοις, Μῆδοι Σύροις). But what distinguishes Rome from previous empires here is not, as we might expect, and in accordance with chapter 36, that its empire is not slavery, but rather that ‘you alone are natural rulers, one might say’ (μόνοι γάρ ἐστε ὑμεῖς ἄρχοντες ὡς εἰπεῖν κατὰ φύσιν, trans. Behr), though the verbal echo of chapter 36 here (μόνοι γὰρ, ‘you alone’) perhaps primed us to expect ‘rule free men’ (ἐλευθέρων ἄρχετε) once more; there is nothing here to suggest that the Roman empire differs from its predecessors in respect of slavery. The negative reflections on Rome available in our declamations, then, and the thought that Rome is, like Macedon, an enslaving power, are far from being without precedent in Greek imperial literature, and not without precedent in Aristides’ own oeuvre also. What are we to make of this? As in Chapter 4, the idea that declamation uses ‘figured speech’ to say safely what could not be said openly does not quite seem right here.89 Negative views about imperial power are expressed 88 89

Compare Pliny’s paradox in his Panegyricus: ‘you bid us to be free, and so we shall be’ (iubes esse liberos; erimus, 67). Cf. Tomassi (2016) 144.

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quite openly outside declamation. Indeed, it is only from, for example, Pausanias freely lamenting Greeks who betrayed their country to Rome or Dio Chrysostom condemning Roman indulgence that we know about such anti-Roman discourses. Where these declamations differ from nondeclamatory texts – what they do that other texts do not or cannot – is in presenting an extreme negative vision of imperialism, and it is here I suggest that their distinctive role is to be found. In these declamations, in contrast to the general view of Roman power as benign, or at worst, deserving of occasional, specific censure, audiences can put the mask of ‘despotic imperial power’ on Rome and see how it fits. The fit is unlikely to be perfect, but the attempt is nonetheless heuristically useful. Imperial Greeks may not be facing disasters such as the destruction of Thebes by Alexander, but the pessimistic mindset of these declamations might just make one more conscious of, for instance, as we saw, the ‘tyranny’ that dissension between Greek cities offers to Roman governors (above, pp. 137–8). Or audiences may of course reject the mask and use its pessimism as something to push against, by means of diagnosis or rescaling: superficial similarities between Rome and Macedon may evoke meditation on more fundamental differences between the two. Maybe some would have felt that Aristides’ Regarding Rome was right; maybe it was true to say of the Romans that ‘you alone of all the rulers there have ever been rule men who are free’ (μόνοι γὰρ τῶν πώποτε ἐλευθέρων ἄρχετε, 26.36). But what about those reading as ‘Romans’? While we might think that they would not want to identify with such a negative portrayal of imperial power, when we set the discourses present in these texts in context, it becomes clear that there also is much here for ‘Romans’. Pro-imperial ‘diagnoses’ (in the terms of Chapter 1) are certainly possible for Romans. At the broadest scale, for instance, the comparison between Macedon and Rome often led to a distinction between Macedon, one of four previous inferior empires in the ‘theory of five empires’, and Rome, the fifth, which was the best and would last forever.90 Thus, for instance, Rome’s empire in Aristides’ own Regarding Rome is ‘the best in every way and the greatest’ (τῆς πάντα ἀρίστης καὶ μεγίστης, 1.335). Similarly, Plutarch in his De fortuna Romanorum pictures a personified Fortune settling in Rome permanently after brief stays with a range of other foreign powers, including Macedon (317f–318a), and then imagines her as a following breeze that now favours Rome continuously, after having favoured the Macedonians for a brief time only (324b). But those reading as ‘Romans’ need not necessarily have 90

Swain (1940) 13–14.

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recoiled from a closer identification with the Macedonians. For example, the dominant image of Macedonian power in these declamations, that of enslavement, is in fact as common an image of Roman imperialism in more obviously ‘Roman’ sources as it is in ‘Greek’ sources. As Lavan has proven at length in a series of articles and a monograph,91 ‘we should not be misled by our own conviction that slavery is morally unjustifiable into presuming that to describe an empire as enslavement is necessarily to condemn it’; such metaphors do not imply ‘condemnation of Roman rule or sympathy with Rome’s subjects’; ‘on the contrary, they celebrate Roman success’.92 Slavery is a metaphor that Caesar, Cicero, Tacitus, and Pliny all use to talk about their empire;93 it is even how Jupiter talks, in Aeneid 1, in a passage generally neglected in favour of the more famous passage in book 6: veniet lustris labentibus aetas, cum domus Assaraci Phthiam clarasque Mycenas servitio premet, ac victis dominabitur Argis.

(1.283–5)94

As the lustral cycles pass, there shall come an age when the house of Assaracus will oppress Phthia and famous Mycenae with slavery, and will be master in conquered Argos.

Furthermore, if a ‘Roman’ felt that the declamations in some way gave voice to Greek disquiet, the thought might well have brought him satisfaction: to borrow Hutton’s wonderful image, there is little pleasure in having tamed a lion if the lion does not occasionally roar to remind onlookers of the skill of its tamer.95 A Pliny, meanwhile, might have seen an opportunity for posturing condescension. Seeking to persuade a friend to be a mild governor of Greece, he had written ‘in ill health, slaves and free men are no different, but the free men are treated more gently and more softly’ (in adversa valetudine nihil servi ac liberi differant, mollius tamen liberos clementiusque tractari, Ep. 8.24.5). At the same time as ostensibly pleading for better treatment for contemporary Greeks, he also manages to imply that their current position is indistinguishable from that of slaves. A Tacitus, on the other hand, might have seen Aristides’ declamations as a further justification of Roman mastery over the Greeks. As Lavan has nicely teased out,96 Tacitus’ Agricola presents slavery as maintained by slavish traits such as compliance, passivity, and 91 93 95

96

92 Lavan (2007); Lavan (2011); Lavan (2013a); Lavan (2013b). Lavan (2013b) 74, 114. Lavan (2013b) 73–155. 94 Cf. 282: ‘Romans, masters of the world’ (Romanos rerum dominos). ‘The Romans may have derived some measure of self-validation from seeing the Greeks express an independent spirit in their literature. Having tamed a lion, after all, is a more satisfying accomplishment than having tamed a lapcat’ (Hutton (2005) 43). Lavan (2011).

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silence, which slavery itself propagates. One lesson such a reader might draw from the restaging of Philip’s conquest of Greece, then, could be that, if the Greeks had been enslaved hundreds of years ago, they must be all the more servile today; as Vespasian was alleged to have said, ‘Greece has unlearned freedom’ (ἀπομεμαθηκέναι . . . τὴν ἐλευθερίαν τὸ Ἑλληνικόν, Paus. 7.17.4). But would a ‘Roman’ really have been so untroubled by the negative images of imperial power in these texts? The fact that some might have revelled in them does not exclude the possibility that others, on other occasions, might have felt uncomfortable wearing the mask of domineering imperial power. One should, Plutarch says, avoid forcing Romans to be ‘masters more than they would wish’ (μᾶλλον ἢ βούλονται δεσπότας, PGR 815a); Dio Chrysostom too says that it would be foolish to think that the Romans want to rule over ‘slaves’ (ἀνδραπόδων, 31.111). From a Greek point of view, to go on and on about enslavement in declamation might seem a clever strategy. Instead of contesting one’s subordinate position, this strategy involves increasing still further the power of one’s superiors to the point that it becomes painful even to the superiors themselves and compels them to correct their own behaviour; in modern terms, we might call such behaviour ‘passive-aggressive’. Such a strategy is effective because the impetus to change comes not from outside, but rather from the imperialists themselves, and so is much more likely to be successful.97 This, then, would be an instance of declamation’s implicit moralising allowing for conclusions that might be rejected outright if stated openly.98

Pollux’s On the Islanders (VS 593) Imperialism also features in a short but rich fragment from Pollux’s declamation ‘the islanders who sell their offspring to pay the tribute’ (τοὺς νησιώτας τοὺς τὰ γένη πιπράσκοντας ἐς τὴν ἀπαγωγὴν τῶν φόρων) preserved in Philostratus (VS 593). That this story was somehow compelling to Greek imperial audiences is suggested by the fact that it occurs three times in three different sources,99 making it one of the most 97

98

99

There was of course a good classical precedent for even highly cultured states recognising the despotic character of their empire in Pericles’ famous admission in Thucydides that the Athenian empire constituted nothing less than a ‘tyranny’ (τυραννίς, 2.63.2) (cf. also Isoc. 8.114–15). Cf. above, pp. 46–7. Once again, we are not dealing with figured speech in the traditional sense here: the risk is not that the declaimer will come to some harm, but rather simply that his words will fall on deaf ears. VS 593; Aps. Rh. 4.3; Ps.-Hermog. Inv. i 5.8.2–3. Rothe (1989) 148 connects to this scenario Aristides’ declamation ‘a truce is declined after the killing of offspring’ (οἱ παραιτούμενοι τὰς σπονδὰς μετὰ τὸ κτεῖναι τὰ γένη, VS 585), the islanders preferring to kill their children rather than sell them into

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widely attested scenarios in this period. On the strength of the other instantiations of this scenario and another declamation on islands and islanders in which the tax-collecting authority is identified (VS 527), it may safely be assumed that the islanders of this scenario are subjects of classical Athens.100 But what was so fascinating about this story? The most natural contemporary point of reference for empire and (excessive) taxation is again obviously Rome, and there is a strikingly direct parallel in Plutarch’s Vita Luculli, where we hear that after the depredations of Roman tax collectors and moneylenders in Asia, the people were reduced to selling their children and even themselves into slavery (Luc. 20); Tacitus reports the same about the Frisians (Ann. 4.72.2).101 This was a story from the past, but the evidence of Plutarch tells us that it was still being told in the Greek imperial period, and there are hints of continuing problems in Plutarch’s De vitando aere alieno, where the figuring of moneylenders as foreign invaders and the reference to the financial centres of Roman Greece (Athens, Patrae, Corinth) suggests a contemporary concern.102 (It is moneylenders who are attacked here, to be sure, rather than tax collectors, but the movement from one to the other is not difficult, given that the activities of the latter tend to drive people to the former.) But can Roman imperialists be figured as Athenians? The comparison is less common than that with Macedon, but certainly possible: Plutarch regularly pairs biographies of Athenian empire-builders with those of Roman imperialists,103 and in Philostratus, the incorruptibility of the sophist Quirinus as advocatus fisci earns him a comparison to the fifthcentury Athenian Aristides the Just, who returned to Athens from having arranged the tributes of the islands in the same shabby cloak in which he had departed (VS 621).104

100 101 102 103 104

slavery, but this seems speculative; Civiletti (2002) 595 considers Aristides’ scenario merely ‘simile’. The scenario is also discussed briefly in a fifteenth-century rhetorical text by Matthew Camariotes (RG vi 632.10–24). Even in the fifteenth century, such a scenario was not unconnected to contemporary concerns: Camariotes lived through the Turkish conquest of Byzantium, after which Mehmet is said to have sent 400 Greek children to each of the three leading Muslim potentates of the time (Runciman (1965) 151 n. 1). It is impossible to know when precisely this declamation is supposed to be set. Rothe (1989) 148 suggests during the struggle with Philip or c. 425 bce, but the date is not important for my reading. ‘Dieses Thema in der Zeit der “zweiten Sophistik” deshalb beliebt war, da es ein aktuelles Problem berührte’ (Rothe (1989) 149). Swain (1996) 176–7. Thus, Themistocles and Camillus, Pericles and Fabius Maximus, Alcibiades and Coriolanus, Aristides and Cato Maior, Cimon and Lucullus, and Nicias and Crassus. Smith (2007) 43–9 works hard to find Rome in imperial literature that mentions classical Athens but to my mind pushes his material too far.

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But in the fragment we have, it is actually Persian imperialists, not Athenian, who are in view. This extract (said to be part of the conclusion) comes from a letter written to his father by one of the children, now a slave in Persia: δουλεύω βασιλεῖ δῶρον ἐκ σατράπου δοθείς, οὔτε δὲ ἵππον ἀναβαίνω Μηδικὸν οὔτε τόξον λαμβάνω Περσικόν, ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ ἐπὶ πόλεμον ἢ θήραν, ὡς ἀνήρ, ἐξέρχομαι, ἐν γυναικωνίτιδι δὲ κάθημαι καὶ τὰς βασιλέως θεραπεύω παλλακάς, καὶ βασιλεὺς οὐκ ὀργίζεται, εὐνοῦχος γάρ εἰμι. εὐδοκιμῶ δὲ παρ’ αὐταῖς θάλατταν Ἑλληνικὴν διηγούμενος καὶ τὰ τῶν Ἑλλήνων μυθολογῶν καλά, πῶς Ἠλεῖοι πανηγυρίζουσι, πῶς Δελφοὶ θεσπίζουσι, τίς ὁ παρ’ Ἀθηναίοις Ἐλέου βωμός. ἀλλὰ καὶ σύ, πάτερ, μοι γράφε, πότε παρὰ Λακεδαιμονίοις Ὑακίνθια καὶ παρὰ Κορινθίοις Ἴσθμια καὶ παρὰ Δελφοῖς Πύθια καὶ εἰ νικῶσιν Ἀθηναῖοι ναυμαχοῦντες (VS 593) I am a slave to the king, having been given by a satrap as a gift, but I neither mount the Median horse nor take up the Persian bow. No, I do not even go out to war, or to hunt, like a man, but rather I sit in the women’s quarters and wait on the king’s courtesans. The king doesn’t get angry about this because I’m a eunuch. But I’m well regarded among the courtesans because I can describe the Greek sea to them and tell them the lovely stories of the Greeks – how the Eleans celebrate their festival, how the Delphians give oracles, and what the Athenians’ altar of pity is. Write back to me father, and tell me when the Spartans celebrate the Hyacinthia, and when the Corinthians celebrate the Isthmian games, and the Delphians the Pythian games, and whether the Athenians still win their sea battles.

Persian imperialists are actually readier analogues for Roman imperialists than Athenians; it may be that this declamation offered reflections on imperialism through two different empires. The jump from Persian to Roman is easy enough.105 βασιλεύς (‘king’) was one of the standard designations for the Roman emperor in Greek literature of this period, as was ‘satrap’ (σατράπης) for proconsuls;106 Persia, of course, like Macedon, was an analogue for Rome in the ‘theory of the five empires’ (above, pp. 133–4). Though this analogy could doubtless be interpreted in different ways, the Persian empire generally had fairly negative connotations and continued to do so in the imperial period; certainly when Rome or Romans are figured as Persia or Persians, the comparison is often negative. Philostratus has Apollonius of Tyre figure Vespasian as a more successful 105

106

‘The imaginative leap from Rome to Persia was not hard to make . . . That Rome could be imagined, however fleetingly or subtly, as a new Persia, gives an interesting new inflection to historical declamations’ (Whitmarsh (2005) 67). Mason (1974) s.vv.

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Xerxes for taking away Greece’s freedom (5.41.2), and in Plutarch’s De vitando aere alieno, the probably Roman moneylenders are described as bringing chains for Greece like the agents of Darius (829a–b); Josephus has Agrippa describe the empire’s subjects as prostrating (προσκυνεῖν) themselves before Rome (BJ 2.366, 380), an act characteristic of the Persian court (LSJ s.v. i.2). So the Persian setting would certainly have made thoughts of Rome available to audiences. But that many did in fact make this jump from such a historical setting to the contemporary world is made much more likely by the close similarities between the images that appear in our fragment and the language used explicitly to talk about Roman power in Lucian’s De mercede conductis. In this work, Lucian attacks Greek intellectuals who accept patronage in the households of great Romans.107 Both the Greek intellectual in this work and the boy sold into slavery in Pollux’s declamation are forced into the service of the imperial power by poverty (Merc. cond. 5–6); in both cases, their position is that of a slave, whether literally, in the case of the boy, or metaphorically, in the case of the Greek intellectual.108 In both cases, that service is emasculating. Just as the islander is a eunuch who sits in the women’s quarters with the king’s concubines, so in Lucian we hear how Thesmopolis the Stoic sat uncomfortably next to beardless men with depilated legs and a man with rouged cheeks and underlined eyelids: ‘if it had not been for repeated entreaties, he would have sat down with a hairnet on his head’ (εἴ γε μὴ πολλὰ δεηθῆναι αὐτοῦ, καὶ τὸν κεκρύφαλον ἔχοντα ἐπὶ τῇ κεφαλῇ ἂν συγκαθίζεσθαι, Merc. cond. 33). A particularly close parallel comes in the boy’s role within the Persian court, serving up nuggets of paideia to his masters: this corresponds not only to the substance of what Lucian’s intellectual does, but even its form. The boy describes facing a series of questions from his masters, on Olympia, on Delphi, and on the altar of pity at Athens; Lucian’s intellectual faces a similar grilling, which he refers to as an ‘examination . . . to see if you are learned in the arts’ (ἐξέτασις . . . εἰ οἶσθα τὰ μαθήματα, Merc. cond. 11, trans. Harmon), facing questions like ‘who was the king of the Achaeans?’ (τίς ἦν ὁ βασιλεὺς τῶν Ἀχαιῶν;). In both cases, the questions are embarrassingly basic, of the sort one might direct at a grammatikos;109 in both cases, we are far 107 108 109

Whitmarsh (2001) 279–93. For a sophist criticised for going to be the hireling of a family in Macedon (not necessarily Roman), see VS 599. Merc. cond. passim, esp. 23–4. Compare the questions directed to grammatikoi in Plutarch’s Quaestiones convivales, e.g. ‘tell us for what reason Homer had Nausicaa washing her clothes in the river, not the sea, when the sea was nearby, and probably warmer, clearer, and better at washing’ (εἰπὲ δι’ ἣν αἰτίαν Ὅμηρος ἐν τῷ ποταμῷ πλύνουσαν οὐκ ἐν τῇ θαλάττῃ, καίπερ ἐγγὺς οὔσῃ, τὴν Ναυσικάαν πεποίηκεν, καίτοι θερμοτέραν γε καὶ διαφανεστέραν εἰκὸς καὶ ῥυπτικωτέραν εἶναι, 627a). Cf. Cribiore (2005) 208–9.

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from the cooperative, egalitarian pursuit of knowledge idealised by Plutarch in his depiction of symposium conversation in his Quaestiones convivales.110 Lucian’s intellectual comes up with the wrong answer (‘“they had a thousand ships”, you say’, “χίλιαι νῆες ἦσαν αὐτοῖς”, λέγεις); it may be that Pollux’s boy is not able to answer all his masters’ queries either, for the questions he sends to his father may be requests for information he has been asked for but does not know.111 The penniless intellectual of the De mercede conductis comes even closer to Pollux’s Persian slave when Lucian starts to deploy Persian imagery to describe the Roman household in which he is serving. The master of the house is imagined as the great king himself (Merc. cond. 9); if the hireling meets with success in the Roman household, Lucian says ‘you have captured Babylon’ (Βαβυλῶνα εἴληφας, Merc. cond. 13). Persian imagery enjoys its most extended development in chapter 29, where it is said that at dinner with his master the hireling must behave ‘just as at Persian dinners’ (ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς Περσικοῖς δείπνοις), fearful that some aspect of his behaviour may displease the eunuchs, described as holding the Persian offices of ‘ears’ (ὦτα) and ‘eyes’ (ὀφθαλμοί) of the king.112 Without the full text of this declamation, we cannot tease out fully the implications of this fragment or draw broader conclusions about the declamation as a whole. Yet the widespread use elsewhere in imperial literature of Persia and, to a lesser extent, Athens as models for thinking about Roman imperialism, and, in particular, of the language and images used in the extant fragment to talk about Roman patronage in Lucian’s De mercede conductis, together strongly suggest that this declamation would have offered raw materials to audiences for reflecting on Rome; and given that that comparison is often negative, and clearly negative in Lucian, that this declamation could have been a stimulus to negative reflections in particular.

‘Use the Exemplum!’113 It was shown in Chapter 1 (pp. 42–4) that declamations not only presented raw materials for use in the contemporary world, but also, in a phenomenon termed ‘meta-exemplarity’, offered implicit guidance on 110 111 112

113

König (2012). For grammarians in Plutarch, see Eshleman (2013). Rothe (1989) 150 seems to take it this way. For ‘eyes’ (ὀφθαλμοί) and ‘ears’ (ὦτα) as part of the Persian king’s spy network, LSJ s.vv. ὀφθαλμός ii and οὖς i. Even the bow that Lucian imagines metaphorically bent against the hireling may continue the Persian imagery, for the bow to the Greek mind was an oriental weapon (LSJ s.v. τόξον), as indeed in this fragment of Pollux. χρήσασθε τῷ παραδείγματι (Aristid. Or. 9.9).

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how to use those materials. Aristides’ declamations To the Thebans: concerning the alliance i–ii (Orr. 9–10) stand out for the frequency and sophistication of their meta-exemplary reflections. Two points are important here. First, these declamations seem repeatedly to foreground their own exemplary status: that is, the speakers seem aware of and parade the fact that whatever is done will become an exemplum for future generations. The speaker of the first declamation encourages the Thebans to join the Athenians in leaving a good example for posterity (τοῖς μεθ’ ἡμᾶς, 9.46); negatively, earlier in the same speech, the Thebans had been urged to avoid becoming a negative example like the fate of the Olynthians (9.9). Obviously within the fiction of these texts, the speakers cannot be thinking specifically of what Greek imperial audiences will make of what is happening, but open-ended statements of this sort nonetheless function as an extra incitement to contemporary audiences to draw lessons from the history presented in these texts. More specifically, the Thebans are urged by the speaker of the first declamation not to be misled by superficial differences between Olynthus and Thebes: ‘do not, if the names of the places are different, think that the business itself differs’ (μὴ γάρ, εἰ τὰ ὀνόματα ἕτερα τῶν χωρίων, τά γε πράγματα ἡγεῖσθε διαφέρειν, 9.11). Again, while such a statement makes sense within the scenario of the declamation, it also gives licence to contemporary audiences to be relatively free in ‘translating’ what they see into contemporary terms. But at the same time as this encouragement to draw lessons, both of these speeches also show a strong awareness of the difficulties of interpretation. First, there is the general difficulty of interpreting Philip’s deceptive behaviour. Philip is a man with ‘secret intentions’ (τὰ ἀπόρρητα τῆς γνώμης), who works ‘by secret means’ (δι’ ἀπορρήτων), and who conceals the truth (συγκρύπτων . . . τἀληθές, 10.5), and Aristides deploys a whole series of images, principally in the first of the two declamations, to stress Philip’s inscrutability. Like a wrestler, Philip avoids forecasting what techniques he is going to use and so avoids forewarning his opponent (9.18); the Greeks, in the grip, as it were, of a ‘dream’ (ὕπνος) or ‘laziness’ (ῥᾳθυμία), are unable to comprehend what is happening (9.34). Philip’s coming is like bad weather that impairs perception: ‘a mist or darkness has overtaken everything, as it were, and we cannot recognise either that man or ourselves’ (ὥσπερ ὁμίχλης ἢ ζόφου πάντα κατειληφότος οὔθ’ ἡμᾶς αὐτοὺς οὔτ’ ἐκεῖνον γνῶναι δυνάμεθα, 9.36). Philip is further a ‘portent’ (φάσματος, 9.37), of the sort that would send one to Delphi or Dodona in search of an interpretation; he is said to have put on Hades’ cap of invisibility (9.37); his plans must be apprehended piece-by-piece, as one fits a mosaic together (10.9); at the end, like a playwright, he will present an ‘unexpected conclusion’ (τὰ τέλη . . .

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παρ’ ἐλπίδας, 10.11). Amid such confusion, discernment becomes difficult: ‘we are not able to recognise either that man or ourselves’ (οὔθ’ ἡμᾶς αὐτοὺς οὔτ’ ἐκεῖνον γνῶναι δυνάμεθα, 9.36). Second, the difficulty of learning from exempla is foregrounded. An extended passage in the second speech reflects on the difficulty of using the past. It seems that the same history that the speakers think argues so forcefully in favour of alliance between Thebes and Athens has also been used by the Macedonians to argue for precisely the opposite conclusion (10.18–22). Past quarrels between Thebes and Athens have been used as exempla to argue that enmity is a natural state of affairs between the two cities (18). The speaker would obviously rather see these as examples to avoid, and so he now has to offer some account of how we can know which exempla to follow. But his answer, that one should imitate all that has been done well and avoid all that should not have been done (19), is not really very helpful, for deciding which is which is bound to be controversial. There is also a problem of time. To what extent does the force of an exemplum depend on its age? If precedents for enmities have been disregarded in the more recent past, why are they being invoked now (21)? By the last chapter of this section we approach a kind of exemplary aporia: the difficulties are such that at one point it is even suggested that no exempla should be remembered (22). While this is essentially a reductio ad absurdum of the opponents’ objections to the Athenians’ use of examples, and the speaker of course remains committed to the importance of the past in guiding present decisions, this section, together with these declamations’ warnings about the difficulty of reading Philip’s behaviour, foregrounds problems of interpretation. In sum, this meta-exemplary material pushes us to think, and to think hard, about the meaning of the history we see being played out – to distinguish that which is to be imitated from that which is to be shunned, whether old or new, to look beyond words to facts, to interpret the omens, forestall our opponent, remove Hades’ cap, finish the mosaic, anticipate the ending, and try to recognise in the mist and darkness just who the ‘we’ (ἡμᾶς) of these declamations and Philip really are – in short, as the speaker of the first declamation urges, to use the exemplum (9.9) and to try out the range of contemporary meanings for these texts that we have been exploring.

Conclusion This chapter has looked at the broader contemporary significance of declamation, focusing on declamations that address imperialism, and taking as its case study Aristides’ To the Thebans: concerning the alliance

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i and ii, as well as a fragment from Pollux’s On the islanders. As we have seen, the contemporary implications of these texts cannot be reduced to simple political allegories. On the contrary, while there are occasional moments of striking topicality, the image of the domineering, rapacious, impious, foreign invader has proved to be a highly polyvalent one, with connections to several contemporary discourses. The result is that audiences can and must decide for themselves what they will see in the kaleidoscope of possible identifications for declamatory imperialists, from Parthians to ‘bad’ emperors to Roman imperialists tout court; there are, furthermore, a range of ways in which they might interpret what they see, from simple exemplarity to more sophisticated relationships to the present. Ultimately, these texts offer reflections on the very process of historical interpretation itself and its difficulties, forcing us to be more considered in our views. What these declamations provide, then, is not so much practical guidance (though unsophisticated readings are always available for unsophisticated audiences) as much as enrichment: a plentiful stock of suggestive stories and sophisticated ways of using them, to be taken and used by different audiences for different ends.

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chapter 6

Strife and Concord

425 and 404 In 425 bce, six years after the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war, Athens unexpectedly captured almost 300 Spartan prisoners on the island of Sphacteria, just off Pylos. The loss of so many men was a grave blow to Sparta, and so the Spartans quickly offered generous peace terms. The Athenians, however, elated by their success, preferred to press on with the war.1 This, in the view of no less an authority than Thucydides, was a mistake.2 It took painful defeats at Amphipolis and Delium before Athens would accept peace, in 421, and that peace, of course, did not hold. By 404, after defeat at the battle of Aegospotami had left Athens with, as Xenophon puts it, ‘no ships, allies, or grain’ (οὔτε νεῶν οὔτε συμμάχων αὐτοῖς ὄντων οὔτε σίτου, 2.2.10), Athens surrendered, now in a terribly vulnerable position (X. 2.2.3, 10).3 Given the brutal suppression of revolts among its own allies, most notably after the siege of Melos, when all of the island’s men had been killed and the women and children sold into slavery, the Athenians feared the worst, and when the Spartan ephors called an assembly, Corinth and Thebes, and other Spartan allies besides, pressed for the destruction of Athens. Yet while Athens had arguably made the wrong decision in 425, Sparta made the right one on this occasion, preferring to preserve Athens, a decision that must have looked all the more judicious from the perspective of the Greek imperial period, when the culture of classical Athens had become so prestigious that Aristides himself would call the city ‘the fatherland, as it were, and common hearth of the nation’ (τοῦ γένους ὡσπερεὶ πατρίς . . . καὶ ἑστία κοινή, 1.61; cf. 1.14) and claim that ‘all have actively chosen your customs and made themselves adopted sons of the city as far as they are able’ (πάντων ἐξεπίτηδες τὰ ὑμέτερα ᾑρημένων καὶ εἰσποιούντων ἑαυτοὺς ὡς δυνατὸν τῇ πόλει, 1.323).4 1 3 4

The whole episode is described at Thuc. 4.2–4.41. 2 4.21.2, 41.4, 65.4, 5.14.2. The relevant ancient sources are X. 2.2.3–23 and D.S. 13.107. Cf. Cic. Flac. 17; Plin. Ep. 8.24.2.

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These two momentous decisions form the subject of a pair of declamations by Aristides: On behalf of making peace with the Lacedaemonians (Or. 7), in which an Athenian urges his fellow countrymen to accept the Spartan offer of peace in 425, and On behalf of making peace with the Athenians (Or. 8), in which a Spartan speaks in favour of preserving Athens in 404. As their placement beside one another in the manuscript tradition acknowledges, the two situations are in many ways similar, in that in both texts the speaker urges his fellow citizens not to press home an advantage over the enemy, but rather to show moderation, and a number of parallels between the two suggests that Aristides conceived of them as such.5 In this chapter, I will take these two declamations as my primary case study in exploring the contemporary import of declamations on relations between Greek cities in the classical period. The issues at stake and the discourses and images of these declamations echo those found in real-world conflicts between cities in this period, and outside declamation, many Greek imperial authors explicitly draw parallels between classical and contemporary strife. I consider particularly the opportunities afforded by reliving this history in the form of declamation. But first, let us survey our two case studies.

On Behalf of Making Peace with the Lacedaemonians (Aristid. Or. 7) The speaker, an Athenian, opens by celebrating the fact that Athens has (perhaps somewhat unexpectedly) achieved what it desired at the start of the war and stresses the opportunity that the present occasion offers (1). 6 He then expatiates on the danger of getting carried away with success, the risks inherent in contentiousness, and the uphill battle faced by a speaker who tries to moderate his audience’s conduct (2–4). Next comes a reflection on the uncertainty of human fortune, not least as evidenced by the reversal the Spartans have undergone; the Greek imperial audience might well see foreshadowed here Athens’ difficulties later in the war (5–6). For the Athenians to reject peace now, the speaker argues, would be to show themselves inconsistent, given how strenuously they had urged Sparta 5

6

The two speeches are thus perhaps a variant on the common didactic pairings of two speeches making the same case (cf. Aristid. Orr. 9–10; VS 571–4, 619; D. Chrys. 18.18; Lib. Decl. 3–4, 19–20). On the other hand, inasmuch as the first speaker is Athenian, and so presumes throughout that Athens is in the right, while the second speaker, being Spartan, does the opposite, our two speeches at the same time also resemble didactic pairs of speeches for and against a given position (cf. above, p. 46 n. 77). On this speech generally, see Russo (2016).

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to avoid conflict before the war (7–8). The speaker then argues, somewhat elaborately, that to make peace now wins Athens the credit of preferring peace, both before war broke out and now, and the credit of having won a great victory (10–14); the speaker also argues that the risks of continued war are much greater than any advantages that might be accrued thereby (12–13). There is in any case no justification for further fighting. In the past, Sparta forced Athens to fight, but now the Spartans are proposing to give up their interference in the affairs of other cities, an activity which they are anyway no longer in a position to continue (15–19). The speaker then returns to the theme of the unpredictability of the future, and the risk that Athens’ luck might change. Many of his remarks again sound ominous to those who know what followed. Peace is free from danger, and, the speaker reiterates, honourable, whereas to continue the war at this stage risks being charged with insatiability, cruelty, and folly (20–5). ‘Do not’, the speaker concludes this section, ‘await that day when you shall seem to desire peace out of necessity’ (μὴ τοίνυν ἐκείνην τὴν ἡμέραν ἀναμείνητε, ἐν ᾗ κατ’ ἀνάγκας δόξετε τῆς εἰρήνης ἐπιθυμεῖν, 25). Examples from the past of Athens willingly yielding are cited, including its decision to abandon the city itself before the Battle of Salamis. It is only against barbarians, it is argued, that wars should be pursued to the bitter end, while among Greeks simple victory should suffice (26–8). There is little risk of future Spartan aggression, for popular opinion would be against them if they renewed the war after having sued for peace; their recent experience in any case is likely to have made them more circumspect. In a final hint at what is to come, the speaker prays either that his audience follow his counsel or that fortune favour their next decision (29–31).

On Behalf of Making Peace with the Athenians (Aristid. Or. 8) The speaker of our second declamation is a Spartan addressing his fellow countrymen and their allies in the Spartan assembly. Along with a basic captatio benevolentiae disavowing any partiality towards Athens, his opening stresses his two major arguments against the destruction of Athens: that Sparta has already achieved everything it set out to achieve, and that it would be dishonourable (1–3). Specifically, to destroy Athens now would suggest that they had fought the war not, as they claimed, for the sake of the freedom of the Greeks, but rather out of envy of Athens’ empire (4). In any case, utter destruction is a far worse fate than the deprivation of liberty to which Athens subjected so many cities, and it would be inconsistent to have fought a great war for the liberty of the Greeks and then to destroy

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utterly a Greek city when it could be saved at so little cost. Indeed, to destroy Athens would be to imitate the Athenians’ worst crimes – their own destruction of Melos and Scione, crimes for which the speaker even advances some tentative excuses. Sparta should not stoop so low, nor indeed is the destruction of Melos to be compared with that of Athens. Sparta would earn a terrible reputation if it were to acquiesce in Athens’ destruction, and the allies now arguing for it in time may come to blame Sparta, but it is not an act that can be reversed. In any case, while the destruction of a city in the midst of a war might just be understandable, to annihilate a city after victory has been won is another matter. If all cities were to behave like this, there would be no end to the violence. Total destruction is something that should only be contemplated in the case of barbarians, not Greeks (5–13). Athens has been humbled, and Sparta has achieved its aims: there is no longer any occasion for fear or envy or anger (14–16). In any case, Athens’ recent crimes are outweighed by its preeminent benefaction to all of Greece, namely defeating the Persians, as well as other acts (17). There is in fact a long history of mutual kindnesses between Athens and Sparta, and to destroy Athens would be to imitate barbarians (18–21). Indeed, if the barbarians attack once more, Greece will very likely have need of Athens’ assistance (22). The other Spartan allies can hardly complain, for Sparta has served them well (23). The Athenians would probably have treated the Spartans the same if the positions were reversed, or, if they would not have done so, at least let Sparta show itself superior to Athens (24).

Declamatory War and Peace These were not the only declamations concerned with relations between cities. In Pseudo-Hermogenes, in one scenario an earthquake and in another an eclipse of the sun lead to proposals for peace (Inv. ii 4.8, 10). In the rhetorician Apsines, meanwhile, we find the following scenario: ‘when the Greeks decide to end the Peloponnesian War, someone brings a motion to remove the trophies [erected by Greeks over other Greeks] as well’ (ἔδοξε τοῖς Ἕλλησι καταλῦσαι τὸν Πελοποννησιακὸν πόλεμον· γράφει τις καὶ τὰ τρόπαια ἀναιρεῖν, Aps. Rh. 1.12); Polemo is known to have performed this scenario, as is Herodes Atticus (VS 538–9), which makes it one of the most popular declamation scenarios known to us. The specific idea that to destroy an enemy city as an act of revenge would be to go too far, as the speaker argues in Aristides’ On behalf of making peace with the Athenians (Or. 8),

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is found in another scenario from Apsines: ‘some people destroyed a city. The refugees have brought those who destroyed the city to trial before the Greeks, and won their case. When discussion turns to the penalty, they propose that the perpetrators suffer the same fate’ (κατέσκαψάν τινες πόλιν. οἱ διαφυγόντες ἔκριναν τοὺς κατασκάψαντας ἐπὶ τῶν Ἑλλήνων, καὶ ἐνίκησαν, εἶτα περὶ τῆς τιμωρίας ὄντος τοῦ λόγου ἀξιοῦσιν αὐτοὺς τὰ ἴσα πάσχειν, 1.7). In another, the Spartans are charged with ‘crimes against the Greeks’ (τῶν εἰς τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἀδικημάτων) when they buy Theban prisoners from Alexander and execute them before the trophy erected by the Thebans for their victory over Sparta at Leuctra (Ps.-Hermog. Inv. iii 10.11): here again we see a declamation that considers the question of how far cities may legitimately go in pursuing their rivalries with one another. Many other declamations consider not reconciliation between cities, but rather cooperation of some sort, such as military alliance, whether the cities in question be Athens and Thebes (Aristid. Orr. 9–10, 12, 14), as we saw in the last chapter, or Athens and Sparta (Aristid. Orr. 11, 13; Aps. Rh. 10.21), or even Larissa and Sparta (Herodes, Peri politeias); there are also two declamations concerning alliances between generic cities (VS 579, 585), and proposals for general Greek alliances against Macedon or Persia (Aps. Rh. 1.86, 2.10 (= 3.17–18)). Declamations promoting conflict between cities will also have necessarily involved many of the same discourses as those arguing for reconciliation or cooperation, only in negative. Into this category we may place declamations complaining about or proposing to avenge (perceived) wrongs, including Medising (Aps. Rh. 1.11), the Spartan destruction of Plataea in 427 (Lesb. Rh. 1), a fictitious refusal by the Messenians to take in the refugees from the destruction of Thebes in 335 (VS 595–6), and, in the case of the Arcadians, being mercenaries (VS 522). Nor are declamatory disputes exclusively military. In one ahistorical scenario, Alcibiades, having won a chariot race at Olympia, on being asked his city (so that it could be announced), replies ‘the best . . . city’ (τῆς ἀρίστης . . . πόλεως). When this perceived arrogance earns him a flogging, he proposes a punitive expedition against the Eleans, describing their behaviour as an ‘outrage’ (ὑβρίζοντες, Ps.-Hermog. Inv. ii 4.5–6). In other scenarios it is the Athenians and the Spartans who are at loggerheads, arguing over who should have first place in a procession (Hermog. Id. ii 10.27), or which city should have the golden crown sent by the Persian king ‘to the best city’ (τῇ ἀρίστῃ τῶν πόλεων, Aps. Rh. 2.10 (= 3.17)).

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Strife Past and Present So imperial Greeks endlessly staged and restaged in declamation the conflicts between the cities of classical Greece. What was it about this history that so fascinated audiences? While the Peloponnesian war was an extended military conflict between two independent states, the disputes of the Greek imperial period, however numerous they were, were usually conducted through diplomacy. But though the way in which cities pursued conflicts had changed significantly, the sources of friction were largely the same as they had ever been, and the discourses that surrounded conflict remained very similar. As Heller remarks when comparing the conflicts of classical and imperial Greece at the conclusion to her study of strife between cities in Asia and Bithynia under the high Roman empire: it is remarkable that all these forms of domination can be found, mutatis mutandis, in the imperial world: control of large-scale currents of exchange, income from financial contributions provided by other cities, the functions of a judicial centre and religious centre imposed on other cities. Despite the radically different context, the essential characteristics of the power relationships remain unchanged: for the dominant cities, the boosting of their sources of revenue and a feeling of superiority; for the others, financial strain and a feeling of injustice, which led to complaints and acts of resistance that were liable to degenerate into open conflict.7

In what follows I will make the case that the conflicts of classical Greece so fascinated because in them imperial Greeks saw themselves and their own situations. My real-world examples mostly come from the provinces of Asia and Bithynia, not merely because these conflicts are among the most extensive and the best documented in the empire and because there is a good tie-up of literary and epigraphical/numismatic evidence here, but also, for my purposes, because one of the major literary sources for strife in Asia (Aelius Aristides) also happens to be the author of the declamations that we will be considering. The parallels are not exact, to be sure. But we have by now already witnessed numerous instances of imperial Greeks’ willingness to ignore superficial differences when translating between past 7

‘Il est remarquable que toutes ces formes de domination se retrouvent, mutatis mutandis, dans le monde impérial : maîtrise de courants d’échange à grande échelle, rentrée de contributions financières fournies par d’autres cités, fonctions de centre judicaire et de centre religieux imposées à d’autres cités. Malgré le contexte radicalement différent, les caractéristiques essentielles de ces rapports de force demeurent inchangées : pour les cités dominantes, augmentation des sources de revenus et sentiment de supériorité, pour les autres, efforts financiers et sentiment d’injustice, qui entraînent des plaintes et des résistances susceptibles de dégénérer en conflit ouvert’ (Heller (2006) 367).

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and present, especially where there is some similarity in the underlying moral questions. Furthermore, if declamations reproduced exactly the discourses of contemporary discussions of concord, they would only have amplified existing notions. There is assuredly difference: indeed, it is precisely in these declamations’ differences from the contemporary situation that some of their distinctive contribution to contemporary debates about concord is to be found. But those telling differences are only visible against a backdrop of more general similarity. It is to such similarity that I now turn, looking first at more concrete similarities between declamatory and contemporary conflicts, and then at similarities in the sphere of discourse. I make particular use of five speeches from this period concerned with concord: Dio Chrysostom’s Second Tarsic discourse (Or. 34),8 To the Nicomedians on concord with the Nicaeans (Or. 38), Delivered in his native city on concord with the Apameans (Or. 40), and To the Apameans on concord (Or. 41),9 and Aelius Aristides’ own Concerning concord (Or. 23). I do not think in most cases that our declamations are making anything like specific allusions to real-world conflicts (the different sources are too diverse in date and geography for that), but I do think that our texts participate in shared discourses of strife and concord that we can see throughout the Greek east in these centuries.10 Both classical Athens and Sparta as presented in Aristides’ declamations and the cities of contemporary Greece were involved in disputes over territory. In the declamations, we hear that after the events at Pylos, the 8

9 10

Jones (1978) 76–82. The Second Tarsic discourse is in one sense the odd one out here, in that whereas the other four speeches on concord from this period concern rivalries between cities of more-or-less equal size and power, Tarsus, the provincial capital of Cilicia, was much larger than the cities with which it was at odds. That does not mean that this speech does not show parallels with our declamations, however. Some of the discourses of strife and concord seem to be applicable whatever the size of the cities involved (and Dio actually draws an analogy between Tarsus’ quarrels with its smaller neighbours and those of the leading Asian cities of Smyrna and Ephesus (48)); furthermore, our declamations also give some coverage to Athens’ relations with its allies/subjects, a situation closer to that of Tarsus. On these three related speeches, see Jones (1978) 83–94. For the chronology of Dio’s works, see Jones (1978) 133–40; for that of Aristides’, see Behr (1968) 128–30. No one could call Bithynia the heart of declamatory culture, but there is no reason to doubt that it had students, teachers, and performers like any other province of the Greek east (even if many of the Bithynians involved in rhetoric known to us seem eventually to have moved away to further their careers). There is one Bithynian sophist in Philostratus, Quirinus (VS 620–1) and a sophist, P. Aelius Samius Isocrates from Nicomedia, attested epigraphically (Puech (2002) 447); we know of one young man who came to Bithynium-Claudiopolis to study rhetoric (Puech (2002) 487–90), and two young men from Prusias who studied rhetoric abroad (Puech (2002) 482–4). Finally, though Dio was not, of course, a declaimer, Bithynia’s involvement in the world of the sophists is further shown by the fact that Polemo travelled to Bithynia to study with him (VS 539), and that Favorinus claimed to have been his student (VS 490, 492). Cf. Bowie (2014).

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Athenians can even contemplate taking over the Peloponnese (7.13), and, negatively, that they are no longer faced with having to give up Aegina or to leave Potidaea (7.17); one of the specific attractions of the peace offered by Sparta is further that no territory need be surrendered (7.26). The Spartan who opposes the destruction of Athens similarly takes as an argument in favour of reconciliation the fact that all of Athens’ territorial ambitions have now been decisively thwarted: now (in a reversal of the Athenian’s speech) the Aeginetans can get back their land (8.10, 23), and the Corinthians have recovered Potidaea and their colonies (8.23); there is no longer any prospect of the Athenian empire reaching as far as Lake Maeotis, nor are Sicily or Carthage under threat, and the Athenians no longer think of the sea as their territory (8.14). While large-scale wars between Greek imperial cities were assuredly very rare, there were nonetheless in this period still a great many territorial disputes. Burton can list no fewer than eighty-two instances across the whole of the Roman empire in these centuries,11 and territory is also cited by Dio Chrysostom in a general discussion of concord as among the reasons why some have preferred war to peace (38.16). These conflicts were by no means trivial. To a significant degree, as Heller has put it, territory for a Greek city was synonymous with resources.12 Territory was first and foremost in this period as in all periods a source of food, whether through the growing of crops or the pasturing of animals. Moreover, the more territory a city had, the greater its tax receipts. A piece of land could also be all the more valuable if it were crossed by important trade routes or gave access to the sea. But land was not solely a source of income. The categories of citizen and resident alien required agreed boundaries. The precise location of the borders between communities was also important in ensuring that the burden of vehiculatio, the obligation to provide transport and supplies to imperial officials, was shared fairly between cities. Specific pieces of land could also have important religious functions. Even barren or impassable land could serve as a natural fortification. Furthermore, the kind of territorial conflicts mentioned in Aristides’ declamations, such as the tug-of-war over Aegina or Potidaea, with now one side, now the other having control of a disputed territory, rather than one side conquering it outright, is actually typical of territorial conflicts in the imperial period. We know, for instance, that at some point before 110/111, the governor of Asia, Pomponius Bassus, recognised Heraclea’s right to a piece of sacred land that had belonged to it in the past but was at the time part of the 11

Burton (2000).

12

Heller (2006) 23.

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territory of Apollonia. When Apollonia began to encroach on this land, the Roman authorities erected stelai announcing their decision, but even after this, Heraclea was still sufficiently concerned by its neighbour’s aspirations to seek recognition of their right to the land from the emperor himself.13 Closely related to territorial disputes, and in some cases overlapping with them, were questions of trade and taxation. The major instance of this from the Peloponnesian war, referenced in both of Aristides’ declamations, is the Megarian decree (7.17, 8.23), which forbade Megarians from trading at Athens or in the markets of any of the Athenians’ allies, thereby strangling Megara economically.14 The Spartan arguing against the destruction of Athens also makes a reference, in describing the great height from which Athenian power has fallen, to ‘so and so much money coming in each year’ (χρήματα φοιτῶντα ἑκάστου τοῦ ἔτους τόσα καὶ τόσα, 8.14), which presumably refers to the tribute payments of Athens’ allies. Here too there are ready echoes of contemporary concerns.15 The use of ports, access to the sea, and import and export duties seem to have been at issue in the enmity between the Bithynian cities of Caunos and Calydna;16 the evidence of Dio Chrysostom shows that Tarsus enjoyed privileged access to the sea (Or. 34.8); and, if we read between the lines, such access seems once to have been at issue in the enmity between Nicomedia and Nicaea also.17 More generally, Nicomedia seems in some way to have restricted the export to the interior of products arriving in Bithynia at its port, with neighbouring cities compelled again and again formally to petition for (improved) access to imports, or to turn to personal connections with prominent Nicomedians who might be able to help outsiders bypass the restrictions, or, ultimately, to resort to smuggling.18 Dio Chrysostom’s speech to the Prusans on concord with Apamea (Or. 40) also suggests some sort of commercial conflict between the two cities, the former of which cultivated wheat and owned great forests but had no access to the sea, and the latter of which had access to the sea but no resources beyond olives.19 But it was not only commercial disputes between Greek imperial cities that could have financial consequences. The status of assize centre for which cities competed brought with it significant financial 13 14 15

16 18

I follow here Heller (2006) 90; though some elements of the reconstruction are necessarily tentative, the outline of the conflict is clear. The basic account is Th. 1.67.4, 1.139.1–4, 140.3–5, 144.2. Ignorance about the precise terms of the Megarian decree, from which the imperial Greeks doubtless suffered as much as we do (Thucydides’ account being rather sketchy), would only have made contemporary comparisons easier. Heller (2006) 98–100. 17 D. Chyrs. 38.22; Heller (2006) 100–2. D. Chrys. 38.32; Heller (2006) 102–4. 19 Heller (2006) 105–8.

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advantages, evoked vividly by Dio Chrysostom: the great influx of people when the governor was visiting is said to lead to a rise in prices and a drop in unemployment, and presumably an increase in tax receipts also.20 Heller has even argued that assize centres collected provincial taxes for Rome and profited thereby themselves, though this view has not won universal acceptance;21 if this is correct, assize centres would have been collecting money from cities around them somewhat in the manner of one of the leading cities of classical Greece. Competition in the matter of imperial cult had similar financial consequences. If a city was granted the right to hold games in honour of an emperor or to erect a temple, the entire province contributed, again putting the city in the position of classical Athens or Sparta, receiving financial contributions from lesser cities;22 the centres of imperial cult also doubtless benefited financially from an influx of people similar to that experienced by an assize centre. The cities that emerged victorious from all this competition would indeed have seen ‘so and so much money coming in each year’ (χρήματα φοιτῶντα ἑκάστου τοῦ ἔτους τόσα καὶ τόσα, Aristid. Or. 8.14). But it is not solely territory or revenues over which declamatory and Greek imperial cities fought. It is notorious that a great deal of the conflict between Greek imperial cities concerned what today we might call ‘symbolic capital’, with cities fighting over prestigious titles such as ‘first’ (πρώτη) or ‘metropolis’ (μητρόπολις) or ‘temple warden’ (νεωκόρος).23 This ‘war of words’ finds a close parallel not in Aristides’ declamations but rather in several declamation scenarios already touched on concerning symbolic capital, known only from mentions in rhetorical handbooks. In two, there is a dispute over the title of ‘the best’ (ἡ ἀρίστη). In the first, Alcibiades uses this term to describe his city at the Olympic games, while in the second it is inscribed on a golden crown sent to the cities of Greece by the king of Persia.24 While this title is not identical to any of those fought over by Greek imperial cities, it is certainly similar in its meaning to the title of ‘first’ (πρώτη) claimed by several cities, as well as Ephesus’ use of ‘greatest’ (μεγίστη) in the title of ‘first and greatest metropolis of Asia’ (ἡ πρώτη καὶ μεγίστη μητρόπολις τῆς Ἀσίας).25 A further similarity in the 20 22 23 24 25

D. Chrys. 35.15–16 (cf. 48.11); Heller (2006) 137–9. 21 Heller (2006) 139–49; Bartels (2007). Heller (2006) 179–210. On titles generally, as well as other privileges, see Guerber (2009); cf. also Heller (2006). On the neōkoria, see Burrell (2004). Above, pp. 154–5. Heller (2006) 288–90. We even know of at least one sophist, Hermocrates, who (probably) defended his city’s claim to the title of ‘first’ (πρώτη) in an embassy, so it is not inconceivable that some declaimers had championed the claims of cities to titles in both declamation and life (assuming, as

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case of the disputed golden crown is that the honour is dispensed by an imperial power, Persia, just as Rome had to confirm the titles and others honours claimed by Greek cities. And just as Apsines’ comments make it clear that the Persian king intended to throw the Greek cities into discord with his gift, so too does Dio Chrysostom allege that Roman governors use the title of ‘first’ (πρώτη) to stir up discord between Nicaea and Nicomedia and so get away with their crimes (38.36–7).26 Sometimes the parallels in this area get so close as to make the declamation scenario seem almost allegorical.27 In one, Athens and Sparta fight over first place in a procession (Hermog. Id. ii 10.27): in real life, Athens and Sparta competed every four years for the right to lead the procession at the Eleutheria festival that commemorated the Battle of Plataea.28 Another very close parallel is to be found in Apsines’ sketch of an epilogue for the scenario ‘some thought that the Spartans should put an end to the rule of the Thirty’ (τινες ἠξίουν τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους καταλῦσαι τὴν ἀρχὴν τὴν τῶν τριάκοντα).29 Contrasting Athens’ past power with its present misfortunes, Apsines imagines a speaker saying: ‘the Athenians . . . are no longer contesting the primacy of Greece’ (οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι . . . οὐκέτι μὲν ἀμφισβητοῦσι τῶν πρωτείων τῆς Ἑλλάδος, Aps. Rh. 10.21). Not only does the term used here for ‘primacy’, πρωτεῖα, evoke the desirable title of ‘first’ (πρώτη), but this exact term (πρωτεῖα) is used by Greek imperial authors, including Aelius Aristides, in their reflections on concord, sometimes precisely in this semi-technical way, and on other occasions more loosely to describe the supremacy over its rivals for which each city strove; the same meanings can also be observed epigraphically.30 But as we saw in Chapter 1, the focus of imperial Greeks’ use of classical exempla was above all ethical.31 Indeed, two of the explicit ancient accounts of this focus that we considered in Chapter 1 were from Aristides’ own Concerning concord (Or. 23), as part of his justification for citing the Peloponnesian war as a relevant exemplum for the cities of Asia in his own time. Aristides says explicitly: ‘even if the situations are not similar, and the times are not quite alike, good sense at least is somehow always the same’ (καὶ γὰρ εἰ μὴ ὅμοια τὰ πράγματα μηδ’ οἱ καιροὶ παραπλήσιοι, τό

26 28

29 31

most do, that the Hermocrates honoured at the Asclepieum in Pergamum is the same Hermocrates to whom Philostratus dedicated a biography (VS 608–12); see Puech (2002) 297–307). Heller (2006) 314–24. 27 Cf. above, p. 137 n. 76 on the parallel with anachronism in tragedy. Robertson (1986). The similarity is so close that Robertson takes Hermogenes as talking about the real-world competition (96), but given that Hermogenes envisages a dispute ‘after the Persian wars’ (μετὰ τὰ Μηδικά), it seems more likely that it is a historical scenario that he has in mind. Aps. Rh. 10.21; cf. 2.4, 10.50. 30 Aristid. 23.12, 27; Heller (2006) 334–8. Cf. above, pp. 30–3.

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γε εὖ φρονεῖν ἀεί πως ταυτόν ἐστιν, 23.41), and a little later in the same speech: εἰ δ’ ὅτι μηδεὶς νῦν πόλεμος [πάρεστι], φλυαρίαν τις ἡγεῖται ταῦτα, αὐτὸς ἀγνοεῖ ληρῶν . . . ὁπόταν μὲν πόλεμος παρῇ, τοῖς τοῦ πολέμου πράγμασιν ἡ στάσις λυμαίνεται, εἰρήνης δ’ ὑπαρχούσης τοῖς τῆς εἰρήνης ἀγαθοῖς ἐχθρόν ἐστι. βλάπτειν μὲν γὰρ ἀεὶ πέφυκεν, ἡ δὲ βλάβη πρὸς τοὺς καιροὺς ἀπαντᾷ (23.53–4)32 But if someone thinks that this is nonsense on the grounds that there are no wars these days, he doesn’t realise that he is the one who is talking rubbish . . . Whenever war is present, strife harms the conduct of the war, but when peace is at hand, it is hostile to the blessings of peace. For its nature is always to do harm, but the harm happens in accordance with the times.

When we turn to this ethical dimension of the declamations, we find discourses that are similar to those used in real speeches about relations between Greek cities in the imperial period. Both the Athenian and the Spartan in Aristides’ declamations deploy discourses of oppression and freedom. The Athenian insists that, now that Athens has humbled Sparta at Pylos, there is no prospect any more of ‘interference’ (πολυπραγμοσύνης) on the part of the Spartans, that the Athenians will continue to enjoy the right of making decisions (τὸ βουλεύεσθαι) about their empire, and that nobody will order them (κελεύει) to do things against their will (ἐάν τε βούλησθε ἐάν τε μή, 7.17). Similar ideas recur in chapter 22, where the war thus far is justified on the grounds that it would not have been right to accept Spartan orders (προσέταττον), a decision seen as parallel to the decision to resist the ‘slavery’ (δουλεύειν) that the Persians had intended to impose on Greece. These discourses are mirrored in the Spartan’s speech. We hear that Sparta undertook the war against Athens for the sake of Greek freedom (8.3, 4, 5, 6), or, to put it another way, because of the Athenians’ ‘lack of moderation’ (τὴν ἐκείνων ἀμετρίαν, 8.4, cf. οὐ μέτρια ἐποίουν, 8.11). The Athenians, it is said, have been ‘odious and unbearable’ (ἐπίφθονοι καὶ βαρεῖς, 8.18); they have shown ‘greed’ (πλεονεξίαν) and have been ‘enslaving’ (δεδουλωμένους), are ‘unable to stop, and making everything their own’ (οὐδαμοῦ στῆναι δυναμένους, ἀλλὰ πάντα ἑαυτῶν ποιουμένους, 8.14). In short, the Spartans felt that it was necessary to ‘chasten the arrogance’ (σωφρονίσαι τὴν αὐθάδειαν, 8.14) of the Athenians. Such discourses are 32

Aristides expresses similar thoughts on the continuing importance of concord in his Panegyric in Cyzicus, though on this occasion without invocation of any specific example: ‘these things . . . have been the best from the beginning and are suitable to the present circumstances’ (ταῦτα . . . ἐξ ἀρχῆς τὰ κράτιστα καὶ τοῖς παροῦσι καιροῖς προσήκοντα, 27.45).

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common throughout the declamatory corpus: the various speakers in Aristides’ five Leuctran orations repeatedly discuss relations between Athens, Thebes, and Sparta in these terms,33 as does the speaker of Herodes Atticus’ Peri politeias in arguing for an alliance between Larisssa and Sparta,34 and the speakers of Lesbonax’s declamations do so too.35 This language of freedom and oppression echoes the language of contemporary inter-city conflicts, particularly those between large and small cities. Dio talks of a prejudice against Tarsus as being ‘oppressive and overbearing’ (ἐπαχθῆ καὶ βαρεῖαν, 34.10): compare the Spartan’s description of the Athenians as ‘overbearing’ (βαρεῖς, Aristid. Or. 8.18). Tarsus’ neighbours Soli and Adana are also said to ‘be burdened’ (βαρύνεσθαι, 34.14) by Tarsus: notice again a word from the βαρυ- root. Dio further urges Tarsus to follow the example of Sparta’s isolationism after the Persian wars, describing Sparta’s conduct as ‘self-control’ (ἐσωφρόνιζε, 34.49), and Aristides uses the same root in his Concerning concord to describe what the Thebans should have done to maintain their position of hegemony after the Battle of Leuctra (τοῦ σωφρονεῖν, 23.50). This same root is used in both of Aristides’ declamations: the Athenian twice presents accepting Sparta’s peace offer as ‘self-control’ (σωφρονίζειν, 7.4; σωφρονεῖν, 7.12), and the Spartan uses the same word, this time with the factitive meaning of ‘make to behave with self-control’, or ‘chasten’, when he talks of ‘chastening’ (σωφρονίσαι) Athens’ arrogance (8.14).36 Another key notion found in both declamations and real-world speeches on concord is ‘moderation’. Just as the Athenian in Aristides’ declamations had urged his fellow citizens not to be contentious ‘beyond moderation’ (πέρα τοῦ μετρίου, 7.3), and 33

34

35

36

Greed (πλεονεκτέω / πλεονεξία): 11.53, 58, 61 (×2), 12.2, 8, 22, 48, 13.2, 14.6. Moderate/immoderate behaviour (μέτριος/μετρίως/ἀμέτρως / μετρία): 11.16, 39, 42, 45, 46, 12.35, 41, 13.7, 10 (×3), 31, 14.11, 15.13, 43. Envy (φθονέω/φθόνος): 11.34, 12.22, 23, 37. Slavery (ἀνδραποδισμός/ἀνδραποδίζω/ καταδουλόω/συγκαταδουλόω): 11.7, 11, 12, 15, 12.28. Minding one’s own business/interfering (τὰ αὑτῶν πράττειν/τὰ ὑμέτερ’ αὐτῶν πράττειν/περιεργάζομαι): 12.12 (×2), 15.5. Arrogance/insolence (ἀγνωμοσύνη/ἐπήρεια): 11.9, 12.2, 38, 46, 13.2, 9, 28, 15.17, 21. Thus, the speaker opposes those who think that an alliance will mean ‘being slaves’ (δουλεύειν, 26) to the Spartans and argues that Sparta’s existing allies, neither paying tribute nor having to put up with a Spartan magistrate, are autonomous (αὐτονόμους) and masters of their own affairs (τῶν ἑαυτῶν κρατοῦντας, 28–9). For the speaker of the second, defeat will mean slavery in place of freedom (2.6–7, 11), while the speaker of the third also sees enemies as bringing ‘slavery’ (δουλεία, 3.6) to an Athens that enjoys great ‘freedom’ (ἐλευθερίᾳ, 3.13) and describes the Spartans as ‘outrageous’ (ὑβρισταῖς, 3.9). We also find the term used with similar meaning in Aristides’ To the Thebans: concerning the alliance I–II (Or. 9–10): the first speaker talks of the Thebans’ previous ‘self-control’ (σωφρονεῖν) (9.22) towards Athens when it came to disputes between the two cities, and the second speaker describes the two cities’ mutual aid to one another at times in the past when relations were strained as ‘selfcontrol’ (σωφρονεῖν) (10.21).

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the Spartan alleged precisely that the Athenians had in fact shown a ‘lack of moderation’ (τὴν ἐκείνων ἀμετρίαν, 8.4), so does Dio urge Nicomedia and Nicaea, as leading cities, to treat the other cities of Bithynia kindly and ‘with moderation’ (μετρίως) and not ‘like tyrants’ (τυραννικῶς, 38.35), and exhorts his fellow Prusans to be zealous in ‘moderation’ (μετριότητος) in their conduct towards others (40.24). Dio further claims that Prusa’s status as an assize centre ‘irritates’ (κνίζει) other cities, urging his fellow citizens ‘not to make yourselves odious’ (μὴ παρέχειν ἑαυτοὺς ἐπιφθόνους, 40.33). The term ‘odious’ (ἐπίφθονος) was used by the Spartan in Aristides’ declamations, when the Athenians were described as ‘odious and unbearable’ (ἐπίφθονοι καὶ βαρεῖς, 8.18).37 Finally, while these specific word roots are not mirrored in our declamations, allegations we hear in Dio – that Tarsus ‘treats outrageously’ (ὑβρίζειν) and ‘vexes’ (ἐνοχλεῖν) its weaker neighbours (34.14, 27), as well as an injunction to the Apameans not to be arrogant’ (ὑπερηφάνους) neighbours (41.10) – nonetheless belong to the same general discourse of freedom and oppression. A subsidiary discourse in discussions of strife is that of ‘envy’ (φθόνος).38 The cities around Tarsus, Dio Chrysostom claims, ‘envy the city on account of a long rivalry’ (φθονῶσιν ἐκ πολλοῦ ἀντιφιλοτιμούμενοι, 34.27); the size of the city makes its people an ‘object of envy’ (ἐπίφθονοι, 34.27). And in his speech to the Nicomedians, we find Dio opposing concord to, inter alia, ‘envy’ (φθόνον) once more (38.43); in his speech to his fellow Prusans, he talks of how strife leads men to resent the good fortune of others (εὐτυχήμασι νεμεσῶντας, 40.20). This discourse of envy is matched in the Spartan’s declamation (Aristid. Or. 8). The Spartan asserts that the war against Athens was undertaken not ‘out of envy at their power and good fortune’ (φθόνῳ τῆς δυνάμεως αὐτων καὶ τῆς εὐδαιμονίας), but rather for the sake of Greek freedom (8.3); a chapter later, the same formulation more or less repeats itself when the Spartan claims that to destroy Athens would make it seem that the war had been waged not out of concern for Greek freedom, but rather out of envy of Athens (τῇ πόλει φθονήσαντες, 8.4) after all. Finally, declamations also echo some of the real-world discourses about concord, though the similarities are perhaps slightly less extensive here than for the discourse of strife. At the broadest level, the underlying 37 38

In urging moderate behaviour on Tarsus, Dio also claims that Athens’ immoderate behaviour towards its allies after the Persian wars led to ‘odium’ (φθόνος, 34.50). In the previous paragraph, I cited uses of words from this root where the sense had atrophied to little more than ‘odious’ or ‘obnoxious’; in this paragraph, words from this root carry the more radical sense of ‘envy’.

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movement of Aristides’ two declamations – a plea not to press home an advantage over the enemy, but rather to show moderation and win a good reputation thereby39 – matches the movement of Dio’s Second Tarsic oration (Or. 34), in which Dio inter alia argues that Tarsus should not press its (justified) claims against its neighbours with full force,40 but rather let small matters go and thereby win a reputation for magnanimity.41 At the lexical level, too, there is one notable similarity in the two genres’ discourses of concord. In the first declamation, the Athenian argues that to choose peace would be to show ‘benevolence’ (φιλανθρωπίᾳ, 7.24), and in the second, the Spartan suggests that his city will be guilty of hypocrisy if it does not now ‘show benevolence’ (φιλανθρωπεύσασθαι, 8.5) towards Athens; words from this root (φιλανθρωπ-) are also commonly used by speakers urging reconciliation in Aristides’ Leuctran orations.42 This root occurs in three of Dio Chrysostom’s four speeches on concord. Dio urges the Tarsians to show ‘benevolence’ (φιλανθρωπίᾳ, 34.48) to the other lesser cities nearby, tells his fellow Prusans that it is disgraceful to be inferior to others in ‘benevolence’ (φιλανθρωπίας, 40.24), and urges the Apameans to imitate the ‘benevolence’ (φιλανθρωπίᾳ, 41.9) of the Romans in their conduct towards nearby cities. Finally, there is a parallel in the idea found in both genres of an opposition between conflicts with Greeks, where some limits must be observed, and conflicts against non-Greeks, which may be pursued more freely. In the first declamation, the Athenian argued that only against barbarians should wars be pursued to the bitter end, while among Greeks simple victory should suffice (7.27–8). We find a slightly different version of this idea in Aristides’ To the Thebans: concerning the alliance i (Or. 9). Wars among Greeks, the speaker argues, are like outbreaks of ‘faction’ (στάσεσι) and should be ended as quickly as possible, while ‘war against those who are barbarians and who have long been hostile to us has been declared by nature, and these diseases and their course are not the result of individual happenings, but their limits are eternal’ (τὸν δὲ πρὸς τοὺς βαρβάρους καὶ πάλαι κακόνους πόλεμον φύσει προειρῆσθαι, καὶ μὴ καιρῶν εἶναι ταῦτα νοσήματα καὶ φοράν, ἀλλ’ ἀθανάτους ἑστάναι τούτων τοὺς ὅρους, 9.24). Similar thoughts are found in real-world speeches on concord. In trying to discourage the Nicaeans and the Nicomedians from strife, Dio says (with implicit disapproval) that the two cities are fighting with one another like Greeks against barbarians 39 42

7.11–12, 14, 23–4, 26, 28, 8.4, 16, 24. 40 12–13. 41 43–8. 11.5 (×2), 6, 39, 58, 70, 12.63, 69 (×2), 13.10, 20, 14.10.

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(38.46), and in Aristides’ own Concerning concord, we read: ‘perhaps one could forgive bearing a grudge and being contentious towards those of other races, but not a single person would say that it shows good sense or fortune to be so faithless and quarrelsome towards one another’ (τῷ μὲν πρὸς τοὺς ἀλλοφύλους ἐθελέχθρως καὶ φιλονείκως ἔχειν τάχ’ ἄν τις εἴη συγγνώμη, τὸ δὲ πρὸς αὑτοὺς οὕτως ἀπίστως καὶ στασιαστικῶς διακεῖσθαι οὔτε γνώμης ἀγαθῆς οὔτε τύχης οὐδ’ ἂν εἷς φήσειεν εἶναι, 23.41).

‘As If the Decree against Them Had Just Been Written Up’ Despite superficial differences, then, declamations on conflicts between cities in classical Greece, and Aristides’ On behalf of making peace with the Lacedaemonians (Or. 7) and On behalf of making peace with the Athenians (Or. 8) in particular, have significant structural similarities with the intercity conflicts that racked imperial Greece. That audiences noticed such similarities, and interpreted them – that they actively related what they heard in declamation to their own times – is made likely by the fact that, outside declamation, Greek imperial authors regularly used the wars of classical Greece to talk about concord between cities. Addressing the koinon of Asia on the topic of concord, Aristides develops at length the example of relations between the different cities in classical times, and above all Athens and Sparta (23.42–9, 59–61); Dio Chrysostom covers the same example in the course of speaking to the Nicomedians about concord with Nicaea (38.24–5, 38) and when addressing the people of Tarsus about concord with various smaller cities (34.49–51). The conflict is also sometimes in the background even when it is not mentioned explicitly. In Dio’s speech to Prusa on concord with Apamea, for instance, Dio’s reference to enemies invading a city’s territory and firing its crops (40.33) echoes the annual Spartan invasion of Attica in the course of the Peloponnesian war. Similarly, his rejection of the notion that the Nicomedians should wage a war with Nicaea ‘that is not a short one, the kind that would be waged with arms and have by way of consolation a speedy outcome, but rather a war that is long and unceasing, so that it is left for our children and descendants, and never offers any hope of cessation’ (οὐ σύντομον, οἷος ἂν τοῖς ὅπλοις ἐγίγνετο καὶ παρηγορίαν εἶχε τὸ τάχος τῆς διακρίσεως, ἀλλὰ μακρὸν καὶ ἄπαυστον, ὥστε αὐτὸν ὑπολείπεσθαι καὶ τοῖς παισὶ καὶ τοῖς ἐκγόνοις καὶ μηδέποτε σχεῖν ἐλπίδα καταλλαγῆς, 38.21) echoes the Spartan king Archidamus’ warning on the eve of the Peloponnesian war that it would be so hard to defeat

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Athens that the war might end up being left to their children (Th. 1.81.6). There is in fact only one speech from this period that takes concord as its theme that does not make reference to the Peloponnesian war, Dio Chrysostom’s short To the Apameans on concord (Or. 41). Finally, in a peculiar case from Philostratus’ Vitae sophistarum, the Megarians are described as pursuing a contemporary quarrel against Athens ‘as if the decree against them had just been written up’ (ὥσπερ ἄρτι τοῦ πινακίου ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς γεγραμμένου, VS 529).43 More generally, it is notable how Greek imperial authors writing on concord between cities frequently use war as a metaphor or point of reference. For example, in his speech to the Prusans on concord with Apamea (Or. 40), discoursing on strife generally but ultimately with reference to the quarrel between these two cities, Dio Chrysostom laments how unpleasant it was always to have opponents ‘making war’ (πολεμοῦντας, 40.20) on one and states that ‘peace is better than war’ (εἰρήνη κρείττων πολέμου, 40.26). In Dio’s speech to the Nicomedians on concord with the Nicaeans (Or. 38), in playing down the stakes of the conflict, Dio points out that the two parties are not fighting for land or sea (ὑπὲρ μὲν οὖν γῆς ἢ θαλάττης οὐ δὴ μαχόμεθα, 22). In the second half of the speech, the general military language then blends into the specific comparison with the Peloponnesian war to which we have already made reference; at the end, there is also a comparison (to which we have also already made reference) between the two cities’ conflict and the fight against barbarians (46). Aristides also uses the comparison between war and strife in his speech to the cities of Asia on concord (Or. 23). Just as in war every city would want as many allies as possible, so too, Aristides says, should the cities of Asia seek friendship as far as possible (23.35); later he suggests that, just as in a siege garrisons should be stationed close together, so too should the cities of Asia stick together (23.75). But his longest invocation of war is found in the extended comparison between strife and war from chapters 54 to 58. Wars are sometimes straightforward, he asserts, and sometimes have successful outcomes, while strife ruins peace (55); wars are sometimes actively sought (56) for the reputation or power or security they bring (57); strife is condemned by Homer (58). Though this comparison is negative, this is yet another example of an imperial Greek using war to think about the non-military conflicts between cities in his own time. Conflicts between their cities, then, regularly made imperial Greeks think of war and of the Peloponnesian war in particular. That thoughts also travelled in the opposite direction – that war and the Peloponnesian 43

For the Megarian decree, cf. above p. 159.

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war as presented in declamation in turn stimulated reflection on the conflicts between the cities in their own time – is a conclusion that is hard to avoid.

‘Why Do We Have to Be So Insanely Competitive?’ We must now ask more precisely what conclusions audiences might have drawn from declamations on concord and strife; the speaker of Aristides’ On behalf of making peace with the Lacedaemonians (Or. 7), quoted above, offers one suggestion.44 As ever, we can get part of the way by looking first outside the genre at the conclusions drawn from the same history that declamation treats. At the broadest level, the history of Athens and Sparta’s relationship is taken to have exemplary force: cities should pursue concord and avoid strife, which indeed is the direction in which both of the speakers of our declamations are arguing. This is a general lesson that Dio Chrysostom and Aelius Aristides draw in the course of their speeches on concord: καὶ πρότερον γὰρ δήποτε ἀκούω τὸ αὐτὸ τοῦτο γενέσθαι στάσεως Ἑλληνικῆς αἴτιον, καὶ πολεμῆσαι περὶ τῶν πρωτείων τοὺς Ἀθηναίους καὶ τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους. καὶ διότι μὲν οὐδὲ ἐκείνοις ἐλυσιτέλησεν ἡ στάσις καὶ ὁ πόλεμος, ἀλλὰ πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἀγωνιζόμενοι περὶ τῶν πρωτείων ἀπώλεσαν αὐτὰ ἀμφότεροι, καὶ ὑμεῖς ἅπαντες ἐκεῖνα ἴστε (D. Chrys. 38.24–5) For indeed in the past too, I hear, this same thing was a cause of strife among the Greeks, and the Athenians and Spartans went to war over primacy. That for them too strife and war were not profitable, but that in competing against one another for primacy they both lost it,45 you all know. ἐκεῖνοι γὰρ μέχρι μὲν ταυτὰ ἐφρόνουν καὶ μίαν γνώμην εἶχον [περὶ τῶν πραγμάτων], ζηλωτοὶ μὲν αὐτοὶ πᾶσι τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἦσαν, πολλῶν δὲ καὶ μεγάλων ἀγαθῶν ἀλλήλοις τε καὶ τῶν ἄλλων τοῖς δεηθεῖσιν ἑαυτῶν αἴτιοι . . . ἔδειξαν ὅσου τινὸς ἄξιον εἴη πρᾶγμα αἱ πρῶται πόλεις ταυτὸ φρονήσασαι (Aristid. 23.42–3)46

44 45 46

τί δεῖ τετυφωμένως οὕτω φιλονεικεῖν, Aristid. Or. 7.22. This presumably refers most immediately to the rise of Thebes in the fourth century and ultimately to the eclipse of all the Greek cities by Macedon. Notice the designation of classical Athens and Sparta as the ‘first’ (πρῶται) in Greece, one of the titles for which Greek cities contended (above, pp. 160–1).

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For as long as they thought like this and had the same view about politics, they themselves were envied by all the Greeks and were responsible for many great blessings both for one another and for others who had need of them . . . They showed what a valuable thing it is when the first cities think the same. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐστασίασαν περὶ τῆς ἡγεμονίας . . . ἀνεῖπεν μὲν ὁ κῆρυξ ὁ Σπαρτιάτης, ὥσπερ ἐκ θεῶν του καταπεμφθεὶς, ὅτι ἐκείνη ἡ ἡμέρα μεγάλων τοῖς Ἕλλησι κακῶν ἄρξει· ταῦτα δ’ οὐκ εἰς μακρὰν ἐτελεῖτο (Aristid. 23.48) But when they began to engage in strife about the leadership of Greece . . . the Spartan herald (sent down from the gods, so to speak) declared that that day would be the beginning of great evils for the Greeks. And it was not long before these things came to pass.

Thus, one readily available reading of our declamations is – by the sort of ethical ‘translation’ that we have seen so often – as pleas for concord in Aristides’ own time. As the Athenian speaker puts it, ‘why do we have to be so insanely competitive?’ (τί δεῖ τετυφωμένως οὕτω φιλονεικεῖν, 7.22). Given how disastrous strife was for Athens and Sparta, we might also say that implicitly there is a degree of scaling up in such arguments too. To compare Greek imperial cities’ disputes over taxes or titles to the Peloponnesian war is to make such disputes – and their potential negative consequences – seem much larger, obviously in an effort at deterrence. But the fit is closer than that: the very events of our declamations are often cited in support of this argument. For Aristides goes on to cite, in the chapter after the third extract above, as an example of one of the ‘great evils for the Greeks’ (μεγάλων τοῖς Ἕλλησι κακῶν) consequent on strife between Athens and Sparta, Sparta’s stunning defeat in 425, the background to our first declamation: οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἀήττητοι καὶ ἀπόρθητοι δοκοῦντες εἶναι ζῶντες ἤγοντο αὐτοῖς ὅπλοις, καὶ περὶ σπονδῶν ἐδέοντο (23.49) For they [the Spartans], though they seemed to be invincible and incapable of being taken by siege, were captured alive, arms and all, and sought a truce.

Athens’ decision to reject the peace offered by Sparta in 425, meanwhile, is interpreted very negatively by Aristides in his To Plato: in defence of the four (Or. 3): εἰ ἐπεβίω Περικλῆς καὶ μὴ πρότερον ᾤχετο ἀπιὼν, οὐκ ἂν εἰς ἔσχατον κακῶν ἐξοκεῖλαι τοὺς Ἕλληνας, ἀλλ’ ἐπειδὴ τοὺς ἄνδρας τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων εἶχον Ἀθηναῖοι καὶ Πύλον, οὐδὲν ἂν αὐτοὺς πλέον ζητῆσαι, ἀλλ’ εὐθὺς ἐλευθέρως ἂν ταῦτ’ ἀποδόντας ποιῆσαι τοῖς Ἕλλησι

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170

Strife and Concord κοινὴν εἰρήνην. οὐδὲ γὰρ αὐτὸν τὸν πόλεμον πλεονεξίας ἕνεκα αὐτοῖς προελέσθαι συνεβούλευσεν, ἀλλὰ τοῦ μὴ τῶν ὑπαρχόντων ἀποστῆναι· ἀρχὴν δ’ ἐκεῖνός γε οὐδ’ ἠξίου γίγνεσθαι πόλεμον, ἀλλὰ δίκῃ διαλύεσθαι περὶ τῶν διαφόρων. οὕτω καὶ πόλεμον ἐξ εἰρήνης ᾔδει δέχεσθαι καὶ παρὸν εἰρήνην ἄγειν οὐδαμοῦ τὸν πόλεμον προῃρεῖτο (3.121) If Pericles had survived and had not passed away beforehand, the Greeks would not have run aground on the most extreme of evils, but when the Athenians had the Spartans’ men and Pylos, they would not have sought anything more, but straight away would have freely given these back and established a common peace for the Greeks. Nor did he advise them to choose war itself for the sake of greed, but to avoid giving up what they had. That man did not even think it fit that there be war at all, but rather that their differences be settled by arbitration. Thus he knew how to accept war after a period of peace, and, when it was possible to be at peace, he never preferred war.

Notice here even the same discourses used by the speakers of Aristides’ declamations: the notion of Athens ‘seeking more’ (πλέον ζητῆσαι) and of ‘greed’ (πλεονεξίας) (cf. πλεονεξίαν, Aristid. Or. 8.14). Pericles’ knowledge of the right time to make war and the right time to make peace is also similar to an argument made by the Athenian speaker in the first declamation (Or. 7.10–12). Similarly, the ultimate consequence of the decision Athens took in 425 – Athens’ total defeat in 404, the background to the second of our declamations – is presented as a negative exemplum in both Dio Chrysostom and Aristides in their speeches on concord, the latter of whom sees it as another of the ‘great evils for the Greeks’ (μεγάλων τοῖς Ἕλλησι κακῶν): ἃ μηδ’ εἰπεῖν ἔστ’ ἀδακρυτί, ταῦθ’ ἑωρῶντο πάσχοντες, ἕως τά τε τείχη ταῖς ἑαυτῶν χερσὶ κατέσκαψαν καὶ τῆς ἡγεμονίας ἁπάσης ἀπέστησαν (Aristid. Or. 23.49) They were seen to suffer things which it is not possible even to mention without weeping, until they pulled down their walls with their own hands and gave up the whole of their hegemony. τοῖς δὲ Ἀθηναίοις συνέβη, μέχρι μὲν οἰκείως πρὸς αὐτοὺς αἱ πόλεις εἶχον καὶ κατ’ εὔνοιαν ἡγοῦντο, εὐδαιμονεῖν, μετὰ ταῦτα δέ, ὡς ἐγκλήματα καὶ φθόνος αὐτοῖς συνελέγη καὶ μὴ βουλομένων ἄρχειν ἠξίουν, πολλὰ καὶ δυσχερῆ παθεῖν· καὶ πρῶτον μὲν ἁπάντων ἀπολέσαι τὸν ἔπαινον καὶ τὴν εὐφημίαν, ἔπειτα καὶ τὴν ἰσχὺν καὶ τὰ χρήματα, καὶ τελευταῖον ὑπὸ τοῖς ἐχθροῖς γενέσθαι (D. Chrys. 34.50)

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But as for the Athenians, while the cities were well disposed towards them and the Athenians showed goodwill in their leadership, they flourished, but afterwards, when charges and envy were heaped up against them and they saw fit to rule over men against their will, they suffered many disagreeable things. First of all they lost their standing and reputation, and then their strength and their money, and finally they came under the power of their enemies.

Notice again the same conception of Athens’ overbearing behaviour as in our declamations: the Athenians are said to have ruled men ‘against their will’ (μὴ βουλομένων) and to have inspired ‘envy’ (φθόνος; cf. Aristid. Or. 8.3, 4). But the events that form the backdrop to our two declamations are not the only ones that are invoked in real-world speeches on concord. Many other historical episodes that feature in declamations are also invoked by Aristides and Dio Chrysostom as exempla in their political speeches. The ways in which these episodes are put to use offer starting points for understanding how audiences might have responded to these declamations. In his Concerning concord (Or. 23), for instance, Aristides develops at length the argument that victory in the Persian wars should be attributed to the good relations that existed between Athens and Sparta at the time (23.42–8) and, what is more, as we saw in Chapter 1, does so using language very reminiscent of declamations on the topic.47 While audiences doubtless drew a diverse range of lessons from declamations on the Persian wars, these remarks suggest that the importance of concord might have been one of them. And while some of the known titles of declamations on the Persian wars do not obviously show a concern with concord (which is not to say that the declamations themselves did not), others clearly do. We mentioned above the scenarios in Apsines in which the Persians seek to sow discord among the Greek cities by setting them fighting over a golden crown, and there is a similar scenario where the Persians send money to Athens and Sparta with the same aim.48 The potential negative exemplary force of such scenarios is obvious. Another scenario in which questions of strife and concord were probably at issue is Apsines’ ‘after the Persian wars someone proposes making an expedition against those who had Medised’ (μετὰ τὰ Μηδικὰ ἀξιοῖ τις ἐπὶ τοὺς μηδίσαντας στρατεύειν, Rh. 1.11.3–4). Whether one was arguing that those who had Medised should be punished for compromising the unity 47

Above, pp. 24–5.

48

Aps. Rh. 1.86.

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of Greece, or, on the contrary, that one should preserve unity by not punishing them, a declamation on such a theme is likely to have offered lessons for contemporary cities. Later in his Concerning concord (Or. 23), Aristides presents the period of Theban hegemony and then the rise of Macedon as the ultimate consequence of discord between Athens and Sparta (23.50–1). These periods were of course the subject of many declamations. In Aristides’ own Leuctran orations (Or. 11–15), set after Thebes’ crushing defeat of Sparta at the Battle of Leuctra, the Athenians discuss whether to ally with Thebes, Sparta, or neither side; in his To the Thebans: concerning the alliance i–ii (Or. 9–10), the Athenians try urgently to agree an alliance with their old enemy before Philip subdues Greece entirely. Outside declamations preserved in full, we also of course know of a great many other declamations set in the time of Macedon’s rise, though declamations concerned with Theban hegemony do seem to have been rare.49 In light of Aristides’ comments, one general lesson that could have been drawn then from the desperate situations depicted in such declamations is (once more) the folly of strife between Greek cities. A second way in which Greek imperial writers make use of the conflict between Athens and Sparta beyond regular exemplarity is to rescale contemporary issues, as well as to diagnose their distinctive qualities. This is how Aristides uses the conflict in his speech to the koinon of Asia (Or. 23): ἐνθυμεῖσθ’ ὅτι τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις τότε καὶ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις καὶ πρός γ’ ἔτι Θηβαίοις ἦν τι σχῆμα τῶν πρὸς ἀλλήλους πραγμάτων· προστασία γὰρ τῶν Ἑλλήνων καὶ τὸ δοκοῦν ἑαυτοῖς προστάξαι < . . . > καὶ κυρίοις εἶναι καὶ παρ’ ἐκείνους ἰέναι τοὺς δεομένους, καὶ χρημάτων δὴ σύλλογοι καὶ πολλὰ τοιαῦτα ὑπῆρχεν ὥσπερ ἀφορμὴ τῆς φιλονικίας . . . εἴ τις ἔροιθ’ ὑμᾶς ἀντὶ τοῦ στασιάζετε καὶ φιλονεικεῖτε καὶ ταράττεσθε καὶ τετύφωσθε, τί πρὸς θεῶν ἀποκρινεῖσθε; ὑπὲρ ποίας ταῦτα ποιεῖν ἡγεμονίας, ἢ τίνων συμμάχων, ἢ ποίων λιμένων, ἢ τριήρων, ἢ φόρων, ἢ τόπων, ἢ τί τοσοῦτόν ἐστι τὸ νικῶν τοὺς λογισμούς; (23.59–60) Consider that the Spartans and Athenians and also the Thebans had a certain dignity then in their relations with one another. For the leadership of the Greeks and ordering people to do what they had decided < . . . > and being in authority and the way that men had to go to them when they were 49

The only other example known to me from our period is the following: ‘When Alexander sold the Theban prisoners of war, the Spartans bought 300 and slaughtered them at the trophy at Leuctra. They are put on trial for wrongs against the Greeks’ (ἐπίπρασκεν Ἀλέξανδρος τοὺς Θηβαίων αἰχμαλώτους, πριάμενοι Λακεδαιμόνιοι τριακοσίους κατέσφαξαν ἐπὶ τὸ ἐν Λεύκτροις τρόπαιον καὶ κρίνονται τῶν εἰς τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἀδικημάτων, Ps.-Hermog. Inv. iii 10.11).

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in need, and indeed the collection of tribute money and many such things were the starting point, so to speak, for the rivalry . . . If someone were to ask you for what reason you engage in strife and rivalry and are turbulent and crazy, by the gods, what reply will you make? For what sort of leadership will you say that you do these things, or for what allies, or what kind of harbours, or triremes, or revenues, or territory, or what is so great that it overcomes rational calculation?

To contend against one’s neighbours when the stakes are so low is to fight over a ‘shadow’ (σκιᾶς, 23.63). Dio Chrysostom uses the Peloponnesian war in a similar way in his speech to the Nicomedians on concord with Nicaea (Or. 38). In Chapter 1, we saw the list of respects in which Dio saw the two cities’ conflict as differing from that of Athens and Sparta: unlike the two great rivals of classical Greece, Nicomedia and Nicaea are not competing for empire (25, 38), or liberty (27), or wealth (29), or power (29), or territory (39), or revenues (25, 26, 39), or the chance to send military governors to Nicaea (26), or even over where legal cases would be heard (25–6). The ‘primacy’ (πρωτεῖα) over which the cities are competing is, in Dio’s view, a specious primacy when compared to that for which Athens and Sparta struggled: τίνων πρωτείων; καὶ πότερον ἔργῳ καὶ πράγματι δοθησομένων ἢ περὶ ὀνόματος αὐτὸ μόνον ἐστὶν ὑμῖν ἡ μάχη; . . . ἡμεῖς δὲ οἰόμεθα, ἐὰν ἐπιγραφῶμέν που πρῶτοι, τὸ πρωτεῖον ἕξειν; ποῖον, ἄνδρες Νικομηδεῖς, πρωτεῖον; καὶ γὰρ δεύτερον ὑμᾶς ἐρήσομαι καὶ τρίτον (24, 28–9) What primacy? And is your fight about a primacy that in actual fact will be granted to you, or is it about a name and nothing more? . . . Do we think that if somewhere we are listed as ‘first’ we will have primacy? What kind of primacy, men of Nicomedia? Yes, I’m going to ask you a second time, and a third.

Such diagnosis (in the terms of Chapter 1) leads to a rescaling of the present conflict. Τhe cities, Dio concludes, are fighting over ‘nothing’ (οὐδέν), and the origins of the quarrel are ‘small . . . and trivial’ (μικρά . . . καὶ φαῦλα, 21); they are competing for ‘small’ (σμικρά) and ‘commonplace’ (τὰ τυχόντα) things (23), ‘exerting themselves and labouring for no reason’ (τὸ δὲ χωρὶς αἰτίας σπουδάζειν ἢ πονεῖν, 28), desiring ‘a foolish thing’ (ἀνονήτου πράγματος, 29), ‘the littlest things’ (τὰ ἐλάχιστα, 37), concerned with ‘vain conceits’ (κενόδοξα, 38). The consequence of such diagnosis and rescaling is ultimately protreptic: ‘it is not fitting even for private citizens to be at odds over these things, let alone cities of such size’ (οὐδ’ ἰδιώτας ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν στασιάζειν ἄξιόν ἐστιν, οὐχ ὅπως πόλεις τηλικαύτας, 21); their empty toil is ‘suitable only for fools’ (ὃ τοῖς ἀνοήτοις προσήκει μόνοις, 28).

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Finally, Dio Chrysostom undertakes similar rescaling when speaking to the Tarsians (Or. 34), drawing a comparison with the cities of classical Greece once more: καίτοι τὰ μὲν ἐκείνων εἶχεν ἀληθῆ δύναμιν καὶ μεγάλας ὠφελείας, εἰ δεῖ τὰς πλεονεξίας οὕτως καλεῖν· τὰ δὲ τῶν νῦν ἀμφισβητήματα καὶ τὰ αἴτια τῆς ἀπεχθείας κἂν αἰσχυνθῆναί μοι δοκεῖ τις ἂν ἰδών. ἔστι γὰρ ὁμοδούλων πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἐριζόντων περὶ δόξης καὶ πρωτείων (34.51) And yet their states possessed true power and great advantages, if one should refer to greed in that way. But someone who saw contemporary disputes and the causes for hatred would be ashamed, I think. For they are such as one would expect of fellow slaves quarrelling with one another over good repute and primacy.

Declamations on relations between the cities of classical Greece, then, offered abundant resources to imperial Greeks for thinking about relations between cities in their own time.

Conclusion But for all that our orators have to say about concord, it was clearly not an easy thing to talk about. Indeed, almost any sort of rebuke seems to have been sensitive: to rebuke a city is potentially to damage its reputation, weaken its position vis-a-vis its rivals, and perhaps ultimately lose it very real privileges. But concord seems to be a particularly difficult topic, as an examination of speeches on the topic shows.50 Dio Chrysostom’s To the Nicomedians on concord with the Nicaeans (Or. 38) opens with five chapters of captatio benevolentiae in which he carefully establishes his competence as an advisor, the city’s need of his advice, and the importance of the topic he is about to broach (1–5). Having finally named his topic as concord, he even now takes another chapter to work up to naming those with whom he would see concord established (6), and seemingly has to deal twice with audience interjections (6–7). Particularly striking is the claim, uttered twice, that no one has ever spoken to the Nicomedians about concord before (4, 51): we may suspect that this is hyperbolic, though that such a claim can be made suggests something about the difficulty of the topic. Things were not much better in Dio’s native Prusa (Delivered in his native city on concord with the Apameans, Or. 40). Though here at least Dio has made multiple speeches on concord, 50

Though the sample size is small indeed, it is interesting to compare Dio’s fairly direct criticisms of Alexandria in the very first chapter of To the people of Alexandria (Or. 32).

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and some sort of official reconciliation seems to be underway, he still has to urge his audience not to be irritated even by some very brief complimentary remarks of his on Prusa’s rival Apamea (22). The Apameans in turn do not seem to have been any less prickly (To the Apameans on concord, Or. 41). By this stage some sort of agreement had been reached, but, addressing the Apamean council, Dio still alludes to those for whom his presence is not pleasing on account of the historic rivalry between the two cities (2–3), and indeed much of this short address is another elaborate captatio benevolentiae aimed at ingratiating himself with sceptical Apameans. Nor were such difficulties confined to Bithynia. Down in Cilicia, Dio’s Second Tarsic discourse (Or. 34) again necessitated a lengthy captatio benevolentiae from Dio (1–7), this one ending with Dio likening his position in advising the city to that of a bird of ill omen pelted with stones (5–6). When he eventually gets to the topic, he talks of a ‘suspicion . . . that perhaps the irritation of neither the people of Aegae nor of Mallus is altogether unjustified’ (ὑποψίαν . . . τοῦ μηδὲ τοὺς Αἰγαίους τάχα μηδὲ τοὺς Μαλλώτας παντάπασιν ἀδίκως ἄχθεσθαι) and suggests that ‘perhaps something of this sort might be true about your city’ (ἴσως εἶναί τι τοιοῦτον περὶ τὴν πόλιν, 14). Though Dio overtly claims not to believe such allegations (15), their inclusion in his speech looks rather like an attempt to change the Tarsians’ behaviour indirectly, in the manner of figured speech. That he must proceed so obliquely tells us something about the strength of opposition there must have been in Tarsus to any talk of concord with its neighbours. Nor is this hesitancy confined to Dio. Aristides in his address to the cities of Asia (Concerning concord, Or. 23) has to work up to the topic of concord by first delivering brief encomia of the three leading cities of Asia. When he does finally get round to addressing concord directly, he has to urge his audience ‘to be willing to listen to this too with equal attention’ (ἐθελῆσαι καὶ τούτων μετὰ τῆς ὁμοίας ἀκοῦσαι γνώμης, 27); later on, he has to invoke the right of ‘free speech’ (παρρησίας) and draw an implicit analogy between his speech and the way that ‘doctors do not heal all diseases pleasurably’ (οὔκουν οἵ γε ἰατροὶ πάντα πρὸς ἡδονὴν ἰῶνται, 61); by chapter 68, he needs to plead once more ‘please give me a favourable hearing’ (ἀλλ’ ὅπως ἀκούσεσθε εὐμενῶς, 68). Like Dio, Aristides claims that his audience has not heard a speech on concord before, saying that ‘these men have done wrong in shrinking thus far from mentioning this topic to you’ (τοῖσδὲ ἡμάρτηται ἀποκνήσασιν μέχρι τούτου μνησθῆναι περὶ τούτων πρὸς ὑμᾶς, 80).51

51

‘These men’ probably refers to the representatives of the individual cities also present at the meeting of the provincial koinon at which Aristides is speaking (thus, Keil (1898) 54).

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In short, making the argument for concord was tough. In such circumstances, one would expect those working for concord to have welcomed anything that might help them achieve their goal. Declamation, with its repeated re-enactment of the history so often invoked in speeches on relations between cities, clearly has the potential to help. But declamation is also a different genre from real political oratory; accordingly, it should create distinct effects. Let us now in conclusion consider what is distinctive about declamation’s contribution to the debate. First, we should expect declamation’s invocation of history generally to have been much more immersive than that of political oratory. In Chapter 1, we saw how declamation’s dramatic, first-person, and ‘controversial’ format had the potential to bring the historical scenario alive more fully than even historiography could.52 When it comes to declamation and political oratory, the contrast is starker still, for typically political oratory rarely deploys the more advanced techniques of historiography such as internal focalisation or extensive quoted speech. The relative lengths of declamations and oratorical exempla matter too. While some declamations are very short, and some of the exempla deployed in real oratory relatively lengthy, declamations almost always cover historical episodes at greater length than regular oratorical exempla, and all other things being equal, we would generally expect lengthier evocations of history to be more affecting than briefer ones. The simulation of history is all the more moving in the case of Aristides’ On behalf of peace with the Lacedaemonians (Or. 7) because we already know the outcome. We know that Athens could have made peace from a position of strength in 425, and not lost the Peloponnesian war, and perhaps even been strong enough later to resist the rise of Thebes and Macedon, and this declamation is in fact shot through with a sense of foreboding about the future. This begins as early as the second chapter, when the speaker discourses on the danger of getting carried away by one’s good fortune, and continues throughout (5–6, 12–14, 22, 25). Particularly powerful is the speaker’s reminder that ‘we will not always be making war at Sphacteria, nor will it always be possible for our generals to sail against objectives ready to be taken or to bring back prisoners in accordance with their predictions’ (οὐ γὰρ περὶ Σφακτηρίαν γε αἰεὶ πολεμήσομεν, οὐδ’ ἐφ’ ἕτοιμα τοῖς στρατηγοῖς ἐξέσται πλεῖν οὐδ’ ἐκ προρρήσεως ἄγειν τοὺς πολεμίους, 20).53 Knowledge of the future also makes 52 53

Above, pp. 44–6. ‘In accordance with their predictions’ refers to Cleon’s bold promise before the Athenian assembly that he would kill or capture the Spartans at Sphacteria within twenty days of setting out from Athens, which he indeed managed to do (Th. 4.27.3–28).

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the conclusion sound ominous: the speaker prays that his views ‘either meet with your approval also, or that fortune follow what you decide instead’ (ἢ καὶ ὑμῖν συνδοκεῖν, ἢ μετὰ τῶν ὑμῖν αὖ δοξάντων γενέσθαι τὴν τύχην, 7.31). Despite such knowledge, we are powerless to help and must watch in silence as Athens’ best chance to conclude the war successfully slips away.54 In short, the lessons taken from declamation are likely to be much more powerful and lasting than those imparted by brief citations of the same history in the form of oratorical exempla. Indeed, the brief exempla of political oratory may well have derived a good deal of their force precisely from declamation’s repeated lengthy and immersive re-enactment of the history they invoked. Secondly, declamation is potentially much more open-ended in its contemporary import than the invocation of history in political oratory, and it is left to the audience to make the interpretative jump from past to present. As we have said before, one implication of this is to make controversial interpretations more palatable.55 For example, Dio Chrysostom’s suggestion that Nicomedia should allow its Nicaean neighbours (better) access to imports from the city’s port without having to make an application each time (Or. 38.32) might have been too much for a patriotic Nicomedian and might immediately have been rejected. But after the same patriot has heard even a victorious Spartan in 404 concede that Sparta too had committed atrocities in the course of the Peloponnesian war – for example in killing the Plataeans who surrendered to them in 427 and razing the town (Aristid. Or. 8.12) – and heard him recite the familiar catalogue of his enemy’s benefactions to Greece and to Sparta in particular (8.17–19), and list kindness that Sparta in turn had done to Athens in the past (8.19), and cite a past instance of Spartan forgiveness – specifically the decision to forgive those who had Medised after the Persian wars (8.20) – he might be readier to make concessions. Because the lesson he draws about concord is figured – because the folly of strife is understood at one remove, with Athens and Sparta related to Nicomedia and Nicaea – our proud Nicomedian is less likely to reject it out of hand as he might have done a direct suggestion that his city change its behaviour. We are typically much less resistant to impulses that come from within than to being told what to do by others. 54 55

See Grethlein (2013) for an extended study of the balance between ‘experience’ (i.e. vividness) and ‘teleology’ (i.e. the audience’s foreknowledge of what will happen) in history writing. Cf. above pp. 46–7.

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Strife and Concord

This is not the only implicit lesson in our declamations for the reflective audience member. A Nicomedian or Nicaean who sincerely believed that the other city was oppressing his own might have been unsettled by the echoes of the Athenian’s words in the Spartan’s: how can both sides have been fighting on the side of freedom against oppression? The audience’s knowledge of what came next makes the Spartan use of the discourse of freedom particularly unsettling, for the Spartan hegemony ushered in by Athenian defeat in 404 would prove harsher even than the Athenian tyranny it was supposed to replace. The more sensitive among the audience might be led by this to wonder whether their neighbours in rival cities were not spouting precisely the same self-justifying ideology as they were, and further worry that the use of such discourses was no guarantee that one was not oneself engaging in oppressive behaviour. The behavioural implication of such reflections should be a little less confidence, and a little more humility, in relations with other cities – precisely one of the goals towards which Aristides and Dio Chrysostom urge their listeners directly in their speeches on concord. But the fact that author and audience must make interpretative leaps for themselves in declamation also raises subversive possibilities. Polemo may have brilliantly argued in declamation that the trophies erected by the Greeks should have been taken down after the Peloponnesian war (VS 538),56 but he seems to have had no qualms about totally converting Hadrian from his former support for Smyrna’s neighbour Ephesus to offering lavish support to Smyrna.57 While this is the only instance we know of a declaimer speaking in favour of concord in declamation while engaging in inter-city rivalry in real life, it is likely that there were others. We certainly know of lots of declaimers who were also involved in championing the interests of their cities,58 and such activity must usually have been at least indirectly harmful to rivals, and sometimes directly, though our sources are typically too discreet to say so. Given that we also know of lots of declaimers who declaimed on reconciliation between the cities of classical Greece, it is unlikely that Polemo was the only politician to have done both. We cannot be sure what exactly was happening in cases like 56

57 58

Herodes said that he listened to this declamation ‘like a lover’ (ὡς οἱ ἐρῶντες) and offered 150,000 and then 250,000 drachmas in payment for this declamation and two others (VS 538); later, when complimented on his own version of the scenario, he is said to have remarked ‘read Polemo’s, and you will know a man!’ (τὴν Πολέμωνος . . . μελέτην ἀνάγνωτε καὶ εἴσεσθε ἄνδρα, VS 539). VS 531. A heavily reconstructed inscription hints that he may have been more friendly to Pergamum, however (Puech (2002) 401–6) Above, pp. 64–5.

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these, but the possibilities are intriguing. Should we imagine Polemo and his approving audience as hypocrites, saying one thing and doing another? This is probably too stark. Better, perhaps, to think in terms of selfdeception: of an audience (and author) who sincerely nod with approval when they hear good Panhellenic principles praised in the safely remote world of declamation, but almost unthinkingly circumscribe the contemporary impact of such an idea so that it does not interfere with their politics, perhaps concluding that it is their opponents, and not their own citizens, who are neglecting concord. In such a scenario, the declamation is not ignored, but rather interpreted partially, and actively facilitates the selfish promotion of one’s city’s interests. No one likes to feel like a hypocrite, after all. Declamation, then, represents an important missing piece in our picture of Greek imperial discourses of concord. By experiencing a staged recreation of the strife of classical Greece, the audience of declamation can learn for itself a lasting lesson in the prudence of concord, the potential dangers of runaway strife, the trivial stakes of contemporary conflicts, and ultimately the vacuousness of many cities’ arguments. As such, these declamations represent the most sophisticated of Aristides’ contributions to a central debate of his time.

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Conclusion Leptines Once More

A popular declamation scenario that we have already considered, attested in three different sources, concerns the fourth-century Athenian Leptines’ proposal to abolish all exemptions from liturgies, opposed by Demosthenes in his extant Contra Leptinem.1 While the loss of Aristides’ version of the scenario is to be lamented, especially given the sophist’s own lengthy fight to secure exemptions for himself, later generations filled this lacuna in the Aristidean corpus with two declamations on the scenario by another hand, the first arguing against exemptions and the second arguing in favour of them.2 Unlike Aristides’ declamations, however, these texts’ efforts to evoke the real historical situation they re-enact are limited; the level of historical detail is more akin to that of Polemo’s extant declamations. Fundamental parts of the debate as evidenced by Demosthenes’ own Contra Leptinem, such as the constitutionality of Leptines’ proposal, are totally ignored. Nor are any older laws that might be considered to be at odds with Leptines’ proposal cited; we also hear nothing of Apsephion’s alternative proposal (Dem. 20.88–101). Such changes are not, it seems, the result of the ignorance of the author, for similarities in terms of phrasing and content make it clear that he knew Demosthenes’ speech. Yet while one can readily understand why such legal questions might be passed over as less accessible to later centuries, even non-legal arguments used by Demosthenes are ignored. It being feared (to repeat what has been said before) that Leucon of Bosporus, who had previously enjoyed immunity, might stop shipments of grain to Athens if he were deprived of this privilege, Demosthenes reasonably refers to the necessity of such shipments, as well as a recent shortage of grain (Dem. Or. 20.31, 33); our author, however, is not so specific. Finally, these declamations are deeply confused about liturgies in classical Athens, referring to them incorrectly in places as something that everyone has to pay (1.34, 45), rather than only the rich, and 1

Above, pp. 71–3.

2

The spurious texts are found in Vat. gr. 714.

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including among them not only the trierarchy (1.28, 40), from which there were no exemptions, as Demosthenes explicitly states (Or. 20.26), but also some things which were not liturgies in the classical period, such as going on embassies or commanding armies.3 By this stage, we may feel confident that we can guess the reason for such departures from the historical record: the scenario is likely to have been shaped to bring it closer to the later context in which these declamations were composed, just as, for instance, Aristides’ declamation ‘when Alexander . . . is in India, Demosthenes advises that it is time to act’ (Ἀλεξάνδρου . . . ἐν Ἰνδοῖς ὄντος συμβουλεύει Δημοσθένης ἐπιθέσθαι τοῖς πράγμασιν, Or. 50.18, trans. Behr) is historical fiction, designed to match the circumstances of Aristides’ own career.4 The particular departures from the historical record in these Leptinean declamations have plausibly been explained by scholars as reflecting contemporary worries about financial difficulties caused by exemptions. But while the departures from the historical record may not surprise, the date of these compositions perhaps will: for it is the consensus of scholarship that these two texts are not only not the work of Aelius Aristides, but not even products of any author from antiquity, but rather the work of one Thomas Magister, a Byzantine author who lived c. 1275 to 1347.5 The closest parallel to the tax exemption with which Demosthenes was concerned in Magister’s own time was the exemption known as pronoia. Specifically, the pronoia gave Byzantine aristocrats the right to keep for themselves the taxes exacted from a region, though in return they were required to provide and lead a contingent of soldiers for the army.6 By Magister’s time, however, the exemption had become hereditary, and the obligation to provide troops was no longer enforced.7 Such a situation was obviously detrimental to the empire’s finances, and the financial situation got so bad under Andronicus II (1282–1328) that the Byzantine fleet was disbanded and the army reduced in size.8 But Andronicus also sought to mitigate the harm that pronoiai were doing to the empire, and levied a 10 per cent tax on the income from pronoiai, which was later increased to onethird.9 The parallel between the declamations and the circumstances in which they were written would be as follows: just as Leptines tried to abolish exemptions from liturgies in classical Athens, so was Andronicus 3 5 6 9

1.28, 40, 59. 4 Above, pp. 92–3. For the attribution, see Lenz (1942). My account of the contemporary significance of these texts is derived from Martin (2006). See also Gaul (2011) 136 n. 101. For the text, see Lenz (1963) 1–66. Laiou (2009) 810–11. 7 Nicol (1993) 109. 8 Nicol (1993) 107–8. Laiou (1972) 116, 123, 141.

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trying to reduce the exemption from taxation permitted by pronoia grants. That Magister was thinking of pronoia grants would then explain his strange presentation of exemptions in his declamations. He has made liturgies something for which everyone was liable to match the tax from which pronoia exempted a person, and included the commanding of armies among liturgies to match the traditional duties of the pronoia holders. But the possibility that Magister was thinking of the contemporary situation may be upgraded to a probability after consultation of his speech Peri basileias, where Magister (speaking here in his own voice) says that the emperor must respect private property (something which the removal of exemptions threatened) and urges that war orphans should enjoy the same privileges as their fathers (which would include the pronoia, which was by now inheritable).10 That the same Magister in his declamations plays the part of someone defending exemptions, and in particular, the part of someone defending the rights of Ctesippus, who had inherited his exemption from his father, cannot but be highly suggestive; that he argued the other side, too, however, suggests a certain open-mindedness also. Thus, we have seen the Leptines declamation scenario from the Greek imperial period to the last centuries of Byzantium. But the history of the scenario is in fact even longer than that, for a fragmentary papyrus from Hermopolis in Egypt reveals that it was being performed as early as the third century bce; 11 its story thus stretches over an incredible seventeen centuries. The Hellenistic version of the scenario understandably sticks rather more closely to the original context. In the fragment we have, which seems to have been part of a much greater whole, ‘Leptines’ introduces and defends the participation of his fellow litigants (syndikoi), attacks Demosthenes for hypocrisy in opposing his law after previously in his career having compelled the wealthy to pay their fair share of the costs of running the navy, and accuses Demosthenes of corruption; then, after reassurances that those who now enjoy immunities will not have to pay if they cannot afford it, and that the law will not be retroactive, he concludes by presenting his measure as designed to ensure the interests of the whole city. What this declamation may have meant to its author specifically, or to third-century Hermopolis, will probably never be known. But the issues it raises are of relevance to Hellenistic cities, which indeed had not changed

10 11

Migne (1857) 145.461–4, 478–82. P. Berol. Inv. 9781. Text in Kremmydas (2007). Cf. Canevaro (2018) 82–4.

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so very much since the time of Demosthenes’ Contra Leptinem. Canavero describes the speech’s contemporary import as follows: The issues discussed in this speech – the role of benefactions and benefactors in the running of the polis, the duty of the demos to show charis towards them, and the links between honours, reciprocity, and democracy – are all themes of key importance in the life of the Hellenistic poleis and Greek communities more widely, and it is not surprising that Demosthenes’ speech Against Leptines would enjoy such popularity.12

Nor is this an isolated example: Canevaro would also see contemporary relevance in another Hellenistic declamation preserved on papyrus, P. Hibeh 15, in which the Athenian general Leosthenes exhorts his fellow citizens to seize the moment after the death of Alexander to throw off the Macedonian yoke.13 And indeed in the Byzantine period, Thomas Magister’s declamations on Leptines are not an isolated example either, for similar arguments for contemporary relevance have been made for another pair of his declamations, which again treat the scenario of Polemo’s extant declamations (the question of whether Cynegirus or Callimachus fought more bravely at Marathon).14 Macedonia, Magister’s native Thessalonica, and the historically charged region of Mount Athos all suffered attacks from marauding Catalan mercenaries and Turks during Magister’s lifetime, including a siege of the city in 1308/9. Given that Thomas Magister figures the Turks as Persians elsewhere in his writings, Niels Gaul has argued that there is some reflection of these incursions in his declamations on Marathon. Contemporary relevance has even been seen in the declamation that the English Renaissance humanist Thomas More composed in reply to Lucian’s Tyrannicida in the time of King Henry VII.15 The nature of tyranny was much discussed in the Renaissance,16 and Erasmus remarked that More in particular had ‘always had a special hatred of tyranny’.17 But More’s Declamatio does not simply reflect aversion to tyranny or to Henry’s predecessor Richard III, who was generally regarded as having been a tyrant.18 For the scenario of Lucian’s Tyrannicida is that a man claims a reward for tyrannicide after he killed the tyrant’s son and the grief-stricken tyrant committed suicide. In replying to this work, therefore, More is in the position of opposing a grant of the prize for 12 14 15 17 18

Canevaro (2018) 84. 13 Canevaro (2018) 84–91. Gaul (2011) 136–41. Text in Lenz (1963) 67–90. Text and translation in Thompson (1974) 94–127. 16 Thompson (1940) 30. Illi semper peculiariter invisa fuerit tyrannis (Allen and Allen (1922) 15.87–8). Meyer (2014) 629; Logan (2007) 25–6.

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overthrowing a tyrant: this has troubling implications for Henry VII’s position, as Meyer has suggested.19 Finally, some declamations from late antiquity have attracted readings of this sort too. We have already mentioned the suggestion that Libanius’ Declamatio 1 (a defence speech for Socrates) functions in some way as a defence of Hellenism and of the emperor Julian’s reassertion of paganism.20 Gianliugi Tomassi, meanwhile, has explored the contemporary resonance of declamatory tyrants from Lucian to Choricius.21 Choricius, indeed, has perhaps attracted the most readings of this sort in recent years, in particular in the work of Simona Lupi. Lupi reads the struggle of a son against his father in Choricius Declamations 5 and 6 as reflecting the gradual liberation of the young from the power of their fathers in the time of Justinian;22 meanwhile, she reads Declamation 4, which features Miltiades, an Athenian general of the Persian wars, in the context of the emperor Justinian’s own wars against the Sasanians.23 Penella and Webb, finally, have explored the interaction between Choricius’ defence of male mime actors dressing up as female characters in his Defence of the mimes (ὁ λόγος ὑπὲρ τῶν ἐν Διονύσου τὸν βίον εἰκονιζόντων, Or. 8) and two of this author’s declamations that also feature men dressing as women (Decll. 3 and 11).24 In short, there is growing recognition of the contemporary importance of Greek declamation in almost every period of its history. It is time for the study of Greek imperial declamation to recognise that importance too, and to join the conversation.

Why Declamation? This book opened with a historical problem, that of imperial Greek declamation’s relentless focus on the classical period of Greek history. It has been the argument of the last six chapters that this material offered rich resources to contemporary audiences for thinking through the pressing issues of their own time. But the evidence just surveyed suggests that declamation – both in its classical subject matter and its generic form – offered such resources to many ages, just as Greek tragedy is probably best understood as having a timeless significance and as having been very much a product of the fifth-century Athenian imagination. Our study is starting to look like only one of many such studies that could have been written about the meaning of declamation throughout history. By way of 19 23

Meyer (2014). 20 Above, p. 115–16. 21 Tomassi (2015). 22 Lupi (2015). Lupi (2009); Lupi (2010) 69–87. 24 Webb (2006b); Penella (2013).

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conclusion, let us now draw together some of the threads of the previous chapters and try to articulate as best we can what it is that gives declamation this power. On the one hand, the world of declamation is never too far away. Though a declamation can in theory be about anything, historical scenarios are, as we have seen, almost without exception drawn from the period of Greek history that runs roughly from the Persian wars to the death of Alexander, with a particular focus on the Demosthenic period and on incidents treated in the canonical historians and orators; plasmata, too, work with the stock characters and situations so vividly characterised in Donald Russell’s reconstruction of Sophistopolis.25 There is much in its rich store of materials that would be of relevance in any age, or at least most ages – war, international relations, misconduct in public life, civil strife, and so on – and we may surmise that some declamation scenarios from classical history that were less accessible to later ages were eliminated by a kind of literary natural selection. Yet with the advent of the discipline of moral psychology, we can be more precise about why and how our texts continued to resonate in very different contexts from those in which they were composed. What is known as ‘moral foundations theory’, popularised by Jonathan Haidt in his 2012 book The righteous mind: why good people are divided by politics and religion, postulates six ‘moral foundations’ underlying human moral decision making. The six foundations are: care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, sanctity/degradation, and liberty/ oppression. In short, the more a given course of action involves care, fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity, and liberty, and the less it involves harm, cheating, betrayal, subversion, degradation, and oppression, the more likely a human is to approve of it. Obviously, one would have suggested some of these virtues and vices as the basis for human moral decision making without moral foundations theory. But the theory has articulated and refined our intuitions about how moral decisions are made, and, because it has been documented in a range of non-Western cultures,26 it allows us at last to start to put our hunches about human nature on a firmer footing. 25 26

Cf. above, p. 1 n. 4. For declamation’s range, cf. Guast (2019). It is certainly true that different individuals and different societies may emphasise one moral foundation over another: while political conservatives, for instance, tend to base their decisions on all six foundations equally, American-style liberals tend to prioritise the care/harm, fairness/ cheating, and liberty/oppression foundations over the other three. But all normally functioning human beings have these moral ‘taste buds’ (to use Haidt’s image).

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If we apply this theory to Greek declamation, it soon becomes clear that many scenarios activate multiple of the moral foundations on a grand scale. Consider, for instance, a declamation that we looked at in the last chapter, Aristides’ On making peace with the Athenians (Or. 8), in which Sparta contemplates what to do with Athens after the city’s final defeat in 404. At its most basic level, this scenario concerns the fairness/cheating foundation, which Haidt summarises as being about ‘proportionality and the law of karma’.27 The Spartans and their allies think that the Athenians should suffer for the wrongs they have done to the other Greeks. In particular, as we saw in the last chapter, the Athenians are presented as having been oppressive and overbearing in the management of their empire: this would activate the liberty/oppression foundation in their enemies as well. On the other hand, the fairness foundation also requires that we take into account Athens’ earlier benevolent acts towards Greece, above all in the Persian wars. Finally, a third relevant moral foundation in this scenario is the care/ harm foundation, which, as Haidt puts it, ‘makes us sensitive to signs of suffering’ and ‘makes us despise cruelty’.28 Can the Spartans bear to inflict the harm of outright destruction on Athens? Moral foundations theory sets on a firmer foundation our intuition that such a declamation scenario could move audiences strongly in any age – and in different directions too, according to the different weight that each audience member places on each of the moral foundations. The same sort of analysis could profitably be applied to any number of declamation scenarios. Moral foundations criticism is perhaps particularly natural for plasmata, where the absence of specific historical circumstances leaves the underlying moral issue more accessible. ‘If a foreigner mounts the wall, he must be put to death. During a siege, a stranger mounts the wall and fights heroically. He is charged under the law’ (ξένος ἐπὶ τὸ τεῖχος εἰ ἀνέλθοι, τεθνάτω, πολιορκίας οὔσης ἀνελθών τις ἠρίστευσε καὶ ὑπάγεται τῷ νόμῳ, Hermog. Stat. ii 10): such a scenario fairly obviously pits the moral foundation of authority (the concern that authority be obeyed, and all the more so in a time of crisis such as a war) against the moral foundation of fairness (in this case, the concern that the foreigner not be punished for a good deed). Of particular interest in this regard are the numerous scenarios concerning tyranny and imperialism. For tyrants and imperialists are perfect examples of the sorts of things that trigger the moral foundation of liberty/oppression, which Haidt summarises as ‘almost anything that is 27

Haidt (2012) 212.

28

Haidt (2012) 178.

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perceived as imposing illegitimate constraints on one’s liberty’;29 Haidt indeed invokes the notion of tyranny several times in his discussion, including tyranny in the ancient world.30 We said in Chapter 1 that the lack of literal tyrants in the Greek imperial age need not be an obstacle to the figure of the tyrant having contemporary relevance, given how important the figure of the tyrant was in the Greek imaginary; we may now take that explanation one step further and suggest that the figure of the tyrant is so often current because it encapsulates so well a fundamental human moral concern. In short, moral foundations theory helps us to articulate why the world of declamation will never feel too far from our own: because so many of its scenarios activate moral sensibilities that all humans share. But that feeling of proximity is not solely a function of the genre’s content, but also of its form. For declamation is also, as we have seen, a vivid medium, in that it restages history live and in a ‘controversial’ format.31 Both in its content and its form, then, the world of declamation is always near to our own, or at least, not so far away. That such a genre has frequently provoked reflections on the present should occasion no surprise. But the distance cannot be denied. By definition, the world of an imaginary speech is not our own. The gap can be fairly small. In P. Hibeh 15, as we have said, the Athenian general Leosthenes exhorts his fellow citizens to seize the moment after the death of Alexander to throw off the Macedonian yoke. This papyrus is dated on palaeographical grounds to the years 280 to 240 bce: the declamation, therefore, was written not even a hundred years after the events it relives.32 On the other hand, when Matthew Camariotes (d. 1490), who was megas rhetor of the patriarchal school in Constantinople in the fifteenth century, mentioned the scenario ‘the Athenians discuss whether it is necessary to bury the barbarians who fell at Marathon’ (βουλεύονται Ἀθηναῖοι, εἰ δεῖ θάπτειν τοὺς ἐν Μαραθῶνι πεσόντας τῶν βαρβάρων, RG vi 609), he was referring to events that had taken place nineteen centuries ago. Perhaps there is an optimum distance. Perhaps one of the reasons that declamation peaks in the imperial and late antique periods is that the classical world was far enough away to feel intriguingly different, but not so far away as to feel alien; perhaps the Hellenistic and Byzantine worlds were, on the whole, too close and too far, respectively. 29 32

Haidt (2012) 202. 30 Haidt (2012) 201–3. 31 Above, pp. 44–6, 176. Text in Grenfell, Hunt, and Turner (1906) i 55–61. Cf. Kremmydas (2013) 156–9 and Canevaro (2018) 84–7.

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But however near or far the world of declamation may have felt in any given period, we have repeatedly seen how distance – that same distance that has historically brought on the genre the charge characterised by Schmitz as ‘unworldly fantasy’ – is in fact crucial to declamation’s ability to speak to the world as powerfully as it does.33 These texts’ meaning(s) are never directly accessible: the audience must always draw the connection with the world outside the text themselves, even if the author sometimes sets things up to promote particular connections. The result is that the audience is never conscious of having been forced to see anything in declamation and so is more receptive to provocative ideas, from moderating the worst excesses of imperialism to concord with an old enemy. Furthermore, the fact that the audience must take the final step also brings with it the added advantage of deniability, whether in the form of outright denial, or in contesting how close the identification really was, or how seriously it should be taken. As we have seen, that deniability allows declaimers a certain freedom, for instance in proposing bold identifications of themselves with figures from the classical past. And finally, the requirement that the audience share in the work of drawing out the contemporary significance of a declamation’s fiction means that that significance is never quite predictable: because no one specific interpretation can explicitly be pushed by the author, declamation is always potentially polysemous. There can be no one obvious take-home message here. None of these effects could have been achieved in quite the same way by talking about the contemporary world directly. Paradoxically, declamation’s distance from the world is one of the reasons it is such an attractive medium for thinking about the world. Always somehow relevant, yet always also to a greater or lesser extent distant; immersive, provocative, deniable, polyvalent, and controversial: in short, the genre of Greek declamation represents a powerful technology for reflecting on contemporary concerns in any age. 33

‘Weltfremde Phantastik’ (Schmitz (1997) 11). Cf. above, pp. 46–8.

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appendix 1

The Authenticity of Herodes Peri Politeias

Though some have doubted the attribution to Herodes, and others have argued that it is to be dated to the fifth century bce,1 or even that it is a juvenile work,2 most of the scholars who have considered the provenance of the Peri politeias in recent times have come down in favour of a secondcentury date.3 As Schmitz says, ‘there are no rational reasons not to ascribe the speech to him’.4 No manuscript attributes the speech to anyone else. Manuscript attributions, of course, can be wrong: but they are right more often than not, and so the burden of proof is on those who would dispute them. The main arguments against authenticity are two: the speech’s rather plain style and its obscurity of theme. But the style of this work, plain though it is, is not so far off Philostratus’ account of Herodes’ style. His ‘rhetorical skill’ (δεινότης), we hear, ‘crept up on one rather than pressing hard’ (ὑφέρπουσα μᾶλλον ἢ ἐγκειμένη); his πνεῦμα (perhaps ‘force’) was ‘not vehement, but smooth and steady’ (οὐ σφοδρόν, ἀλλὰ λεῖον καὶ καθεστηκός); he mixed ἀφέλεια (‘simplicity’) into his speeches (564).5 It is true that Philostratus’ account does not fit the speech we have precisely: the biographer also says that Herodes’ ἀφέλεια was mixed in with his κρότος (perhaps ‘magnificence’), and among his other stylistic qualities is 1 2 3

4 5

A great number of scholars have made this argument: they are listed at Albini (1968) 11–12. The most significant contribution is that of Wade-Gery (1945). Ameling (1983) 119–20. Reardon (1971) 105–6; Kennedy (1972) 581–2; Anderson (1986) 113 (guardedly); Swain (1996) 94–5 with n. 78; Schmitz (1997) 113 n. 61; Guast (2019). Russell (1983) 111 describes attempts to date the work to the fifth century as ‘one of the curiosities of scholarship’. Anderson (1993) seems to sit on the fence but then in a footnote opines that neither Morrison nor Wade-Gery succeeded in proving a fifth-century date and concludes that ‘in the end there seems no reason why Herodes should not have succeeded in attaining an ideal’ (99 n. 67). ‘Rationale Gründe, ihm die Rede nicht zuzuschreiben, gibt es jedenfalls keine’ (Schmitz (1997) 113 n. 61). For δεινότης, see Ernesti (1795) 68–70, Wright (1921) 568; for πνεῦμα, Ernesti (1795) 273, Wright (1921) 573, Rothe (1989) 50, 177; for ἀφέλεια, Ernesti (1795) 51–2, Wright (1921) 568, Rothe (1989) 16–17, 272.

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included a κριτιάζουσα ἠχώ (‘a Critias-like sonorousness’), where ἠχώ refers specifically to sound effects; he is also described as ‘full of figures’ (πολυσχήματος, 564).6 But stylistic judgements are slippery indeed, as Russell cautions: certainly there is no decisive evidence against authenticity here.7 Obscurity of theme is a somewhat more objective quality, but small yet distinct groups of declamations on unusual themes are to be found both among extant declamations from this period and mentioned in Philostratus.8 Furthermore, a declamation set in Larissa seems a natural choice for a man who we hear was devoted to Critias (VS 564), given that the fifth-century politician is known to have spent time in Thessaly.9 6 7 8

9

On κρότος, see Ernesti (1795) 189–90, Civiletti (2002) 526–7, Wright (1921) 571, Rothe (1989) 123–4; on ἠχώ, Ernesti (1795) 154, Civiletti (2002) 527, Wright (1921) 570–1, Rothe (1989) 123–4. Russell (1983) 111. Thus, for example, we find in Philostratus ‘the Cretans . . . on trial concerning the tomb of Zeus’ (τῶν Κρητῶν . . . τῶν κρινομένων ἐπὶ τῷ τοῦ Διὸς σήματι, VS 569), ‘Araspes the lover of Panthea’ (τὸν Ἀράσπαν τὸν τῆς Πανθείας ἐρῶντα, VS 524), and ‘Solon asks that his laws be cancelled after Pisistratus obtains a bodyguard’ (ὁ Σόλων ὁ αἰτῶν ἀπαλείφειν τοὺς νόμους λαβόντος τὴν φρουρὰν τοῦ Πεισιστράτου, VS 542) (Herodotean, to be sure, but a rare scenario from the archaic period). Among the extant corpus, on the other hand, we might cite Lucian’s two declamations on Phalaris (another rare archaic scenario) and Aristides’ version of the embassy to Achilles (Or. 16) (the only Homeric scenario known from these centuries). Xen. HG 2.3.36; Mem. i.2.24; Anderson (1986) 113.

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appendix 1

The Authenticity of Herodes Peri Politeias

Though some have doubted the attribution to Herodes, and others have argued that it is to be dated to the fifth century bce,1 or even that it is a juvenile work,2 most of the scholars who have considered the provenance of the Peri politeias in recent times have come down in favour of a secondcentury date.3 As Schmitz says, ‘there are no rational reasons not to ascribe the speech to him’.4 No manuscript attributes the speech to anyone else. Manuscript attributions, of course, can be wrong: but they are right more often than not, and so the burden of proof is on those who would dispute them. The main arguments against authenticity are two: the speech’s rather plain style and its obscurity of theme. But the style of this work, plain though it is, is not so far off Philostratus’ account of Herodes’ style. His ‘rhetorical skill’ (δεινότης), we hear, ‘crept up on one rather than pressing hard’ (ὑφέρπουσα μᾶλλον ἢ ἐγκειμένη); his πνεῦμα (perhaps ‘force’) was ‘not vehement, but smooth and steady’ (οὐ σφοδρόν, ἀλλὰ λεῖον καὶ καθεστηκός); he mixed ἀφέλεια (‘simplicity’) into his speeches (564).5 It is true that Philostratus’ account does not fit the speech we have precisely: the biographer also says that Herodes’ ἀφέλεια was mixed in with his κρότος (perhaps ‘magnificence’), and among his other stylistic qualities is 1 2 3

4 5

A great number of scholars have made this argument: they are listed at Albini (1968) 11–12. The most significant contribution is that of Wade-Gery (1945). Ameling (1983) 119–20. Reardon (1971) 105–6; Kennedy (1972) 581–2; Anderson (1986) 113 (guardedly); Swain (1996) 94–5 with n. 78; Schmitz (1997) 113 n. 61; Guast (2019). Russell (1983) 111 describes attempts to date the work to the fifth century as ‘one of the curiosities of scholarship’. Anderson (1993) seems to sit on the fence but then in a footnote opines that neither Morrison nor Wade-Gery succeeded in proving a fifth-century date and concludes that ‘in the end there seems no reason why Herodes should not have succeeded in attaining an ideal’ (99 n. 67). ‘Rationale Gründe, ihm die Rede nicht zuzuschreiben, gibt es jedenfalls keine’ (Schmitz (1997) 113 n. 61). For δεινότης, see Ernesti (1795) 68–70, Wright (1921) 568; for πνεῦμα, Ernesti (1795) 273, Wright (1921) 573, Rothe (1989) 50, 177; for ἀφέλεια, Ernesti (1795) 51–2, Wright (1921) 568, Rothe (1989) 16–17, 272.

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included a κριτιάζουσα ἠχώ (‘a Critias-like sonorousness’), where ἠχώ refers specifically to sound effects; he is also described as ‘full of figures’ (πολυσχήματος, 564).6 But stylistic judgements are slippery indeed, as Russell cautions: certainly there is no decisive evidence against authenticity here.7 Obscurity of theme is a somewhat more objective quality, but small yet distinct groups of declamations on unusual themes are to be found both among extant declamations from this period and mentioned in Philostratus.8 Furthermore, a declamation set in Larissa seems a natural choice for a man who we hear was devoted to Critias (VS 564), given that the fifth-century politician is known to have spent time in Thessaly.9 6 7 8

9

On κρότος, see Ernesti (1795) 189–90, Civiletti (2002) 526–7, Wright (1921) 571, Rothe (1989) 123–4; on ἠχώ, Ernesti (1795) 154, Civiletti (2002) 527, Wright (1921) 570–1, Rothe (1989) 123–4. Russell (1983) 111. Thus, for example, we find in Philostratus ‘the Cretans . . . on trial concerning the tomb of Zeus’ (τῶν Κρητῶν . . . τῶν κρινομένων ἐπὶ τῷ τοῦ Διὸς σήματι, VS 569), ‘Araspes the lover of Panthea’ (τὸν Ἀράσπαν τὸν τῆς Πανθείας ἐρῶντα, VS 524), and ‘Solon asks that his laws be cancelled after Pisistratus obtains a bodyguard’ (ὁ Σόλων ὁ αἰτῶν ἀπαλείφειν τοὺς νόμους λαβόντος τὴν φρουρὰν τοῦ Πεισιστράτου, VS 542) (Herodotean, to be sure, but a rare scenario from the archaic period). Among the extant corpus, on the other hand, we might cite Lucian’s two declamations on Phalaris (another rare archaic scenario) and Aristides’ version of the embassy to Achilles (Or. 16) (the only Homeric scenario known from these centuries). Xen. HG 2.3.36; Mem. i.2.24; Anderson (1986) 113.

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appendix 2

Other Sources for Declamation

Second- and Third-Century Declamation Outside the declamations that survive in full from this period, we also have about 300 titles and numerous fragments. There are four major sources for these (key biographical information for these and other authors can be found most conveniently in GRS). Philostratus (c. 160/70–the 240s), Vitae sophistarum (230s) Philostratus’ Vitae sophistarum offers biographies of most of the more important declaimers from the period c. 60 to 230 ce. 1 It gives us about fifty declamation titles, including quotations from a number of them, as well as a wealth of valuable information about the culture that surrounded declamation, and in particular about the contexts in which declamations were performed. An indispensable source for declamation in this period. Apsines (Third Century), Ars rhetorica This Ars presents a fairly comprehensive survey of rhetorical theory and includes about ninety declamation titles, along with hints about how some of them might typically have been treated.2 Hermogenes (c. 160/1–230), De statibus The rhetorician Hermogenes’ De statibus is a rhetorical textbook on ‘division’, a preliminary stage in preparing a speech in which an overall case is broken down into different steps of argument to 1 2

Text in Stefec (2016). Commentary in Rothe (1989) (selected lives) and Civiletti (2002). Translation in Wright (1921). On Philostratus as a source, Reardon (1971) 115–18, Swain (1991), and above, pp. 95–7. Text and English translation in Dilts and Kennedy (1997); text, French translation, and commentary in Patillon (2001) (but cf. Heath (2002) and Kennedy (2004)). Heath (1998) argues that the work’s author was in fact Aspasius of Tyre.

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follow, according to which ‘issue’ (type of dispute) was involved.3 The text offers the titles of about sixty declamation scenarios and provides information about how many of them might have been handled. Ps.-Hermogenes (Second or Third Century), De inventione A slightly unusual work of rhetorical theory which discusses the introduction, narrative, and proofs of a speech and then closes with a chapter on style.4 Authorship is disputed, but the text seems to be at least in large part a work of the second or third centuries.5 The titles of about fifty declamation scenarios are mentioned, together with suggestions about how to handle many of them.

Later Declamation Since I regularly refer to later declamations, it may also be useful to survey here declaimers from later centuries whose work has survived. Libanius (314–93) Rhetorician and man of letters from Antioch who was highly regarded both during his lifetime and all the way to the end of Byzantium.6 Fifty-one declamations are preserved in full, not all of them genuine.7

3 4 5

6 7

English translation and commentary in Heath (1995); text, French translation, and commentary in Patillon (2009). English translation and notes in Kennedy (2005); text, French translation, and commentary in Patillon (2012a). For the debate, see Patillon (1997) 2079–83; Heath (1998); Heath (2004) 53–60; Kennedy (2005) xv–xvi; Patillon (2012a) xi–xv. Heath ascribes the work to Apsines, while Patillon prefers Aspasius of Ravenna. On either account, the work falls within the chronological bounds of this study (Aspasius of Ravenna being a third-century figure). Furthermore, Heath argues that the work traditionally attributed to Apsines knows Ps.-Hermog. Inv., while Rutherford (1998) 105–13 argues that (the real) Hermogenes knew it: if the former is true, then the work is not later than the third century, while if the latter is true it might even be from the second century. On the other hand, Kennedy presents strong arguments that the work was substantially rewritten at a later date, perhaps in part to fill a position in the Hermogenic corpus, since the author does not claim originality for much of the unusual theory that he deploys, and some of his most unusual terminology is found in the fourth-/ fifth-century Ars rhetorica of Fortunatus. One should be a little cautious, therefore, about drawing major conclusions solely on the evidence of this text. Petit (1955); Schouler (1984); Van Hoof (2014). RE xii.2 cols. 2542–4. Text in Foerster (1903); for introduction and a list of translations, see Penella (2014).

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Other Sources for Declamation

193

Himerius (c. 320–c. 396) ‘The leading political orator of his time’ (GRS 174) and a teacher of rhetoric who spent most of his career at Athens.8 Extracts from six declamations preserved in Photius’ Bibliotheca.9 Choricius (sixth century) One of the rhetors of the ‘school of Gaza’, the modern term for a group of rhetors active in sixth-century Gaza.10 Twelve declamations survive in full.11 8 10 11

9 Kennedy (1983) 141–9; Barnes (1987). Text in Colonna (1951); translations in Penella (2007). Seitz (1892); Downey (1958); Glucker (1987) 51–7; Geiger (2014); Amato, Corcella, and Lauritzen (2015). Text in Foerster and Richsteig (1929); translations in Penella (2009). See also Schouler (2005).

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Index

audiences, 10–11 Augustus, 115

accent, 84 Agricola, 42 Agrippa, 115 Alexander Clay-Plato, 87, 101–3, 116, 117, 118 Alexander the Great, 13, 92–3, 127, 134–5, 138 anchoring, 39 Apollonius of Athens, 112–13 Apollonius of Tyana, 113–14, 128–9 Apsines of Gadara, 191 Aristides, Aelius, 3–4 A monody for Smyrna (Or. 18), 40 Concering a remark in passing (Or. 28), 87–8 Concerning concord (Or. 23), 20, 24–5, 32, 161–2, 167, 170, 172–3, 175 declaims before Marcus Aurelius, 97 declamation at Pergamum, 92–3, 118 fight for exemption from liturgies, 112, 180 kathedra, 92 lost declamations, 110–12 On behalf of making peace with the Athenians (Or. 8), 151–79, 186 On behalf of making peace with the Lacedaemonians (Or. 7), 151–79 On sending reinforcements to those in Sicily (Or. 5), 35 reputation, 4 reservations about Roman power, 139–40 role-playing as Aristides the Just, 110–11 Sacred Tales (Orr. 47–52), 3, 92–3 The opposite argument (Or. 6), 35–6 To the Rhodians concerning concord (Or. 24), 32 To the Thebans concerning the alliance i–ii (Orr. 9–10), 43, 119–43, 147–50 Aristotle Poetics, 49 Rhetoric, 11 Asia (Roman province), 3–4, 5. See also Aristides, Aelius: Concerning concord (Or. 23) Athens, 82–3, 101–3, 143–4 defeat in 404, 82, 151, 170–1, 186

banditry, 59 Beard, Mary, 50 bilingualism, 123 body language, 86–7, 107–9 bouleuterion, 83 Bowersock, Glen, 16 Bowie, Ewen, 13, 18 Brélaz, Cédric, 57 bribery. See misconduct in public life building projects. See construction projects Callimachus. See Polemo: declamations canals, 70 Caracalla, 97–9, 116, 117, 118 characterisation in Greek imperial literature, 93–4 Choricius, 115–16, 193 Declamations, 51, 184 prolaliai, 75, 79 protheoriai, 78 code-switching, 123 concord. See strife between cities construction projects, 68–70 corruption. See misconduct in public life costumes, 85 Cynegirus. See Polemo: declamations ‘dehistoricisation’, 51 Demosthenes breakdown before Philip, 38, 97–8 Contra Leptinem (Or. 20). See Leptines embassy to Thebes, 119–20 imagined leading rebellion against Alexander, 92–3 ‘description’, 33–6, 43 ‘diagnosis’, 36–9 Dictys of Crete, 44

213

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214

Index

Dio Chrysostom, 113–14, 163–4, 166–7 A political address in his native city (Or. 43), 31 A speech in the public assembly at Prusa (Or. 47), 134 Discourses on kingship (Orr. 1–4), 134–5 On training for public speaking (Or. 18), 33–4 Rhodian oration (Or. 31), 41 Second Tarsic discourse (Or. 34), 171, 174, 175 To the Apameans on concord (Or. 41), 175 To the Nicomedians on concord with the Nicaeans (Or. 38), 19–20, 168, 173, 174 Diogenes Laertius, 96 ‘doublespeak’, 48 earthquakes, 4, 40, 67, 69, 154 ecphrasis. See progymnasmata: ecphrasis Elatea, 82, 119 Eleusis. See religion: Eleusinian mysteries embassies, 62, 64–5, 97–8 epigraphy, 11 eunuchs, 55, 146 Euphorbus, 83 Euphrates, 113–14 exemplarity, 176, See also meta-exemplarity; moralism structural and categorical, 32–3, 43, 60 exile, 68

meeting with Alexander Clay-Plato, 101–3, 117 Peri politeias, 50, 189–90 Hesk, Jon, 88 Himerius, 24, 193 Hippodromus meeting with Megistias, 28, 87, 99–101, 117 Philostratus’ conection to, 96–7 historicism, 21 honours, 63–4 Horatius Cocles, 42 Hutton, Will, 142 interpersonal conflicts, 54–6 Isaeus, 80 Ismenias, 21, 139 issue (rhetoric). See rhetorical theory John Doxopatres, 77 Julian (emperor), 115 kaleidoscope, 122

gesture. See body language Goldhill, Simon, 20, 30, 45, 48 Gorgias, 88 grain supply. See food supply Greeks, freedom of, 137 Gregory of Nazianzus, 33 Grethlein, Jonas, 46 Güthenke, Constanze, 37

Langlands, Rebecca, 42 late antique declamation, 184. See also Choricius; Himerius; Libanius Latin declamation, 12, 23, 50, 77, 88, 115 Leptines, 71–3, 80, 91, 112, 180–3 Lesbonax, 9 Declamations, 16, 50 Libanius, 55, 107, 115, 192 Declamations, 51 protheoriai, 78–9 Lollianus, 11, 71–3, 80, 91 Lucian, 2–3, 67 Abdicatus, 15 De historia conscribenda, 117 De mercede conductis, 146–7 Phalaris 1–2, 15–16 prolaliai, 75 Rhetorum praeceptor, 19, 21–2 Tyrannicida, 15, 89, 183

Hadrian (emperor), 7, 10 Hadrian of Tyre, 8–9, 76 declamations, 16, 35, 51 Haidt, Jonathan. See moral foundations theory Heliodorus meeting with Caracalla, 97–9 Philostratus’ connection to, 96–7 Hellenistic declamation, ix, 182–3 Heller, Anna, 156 Hermogenes. See also rhetorical theory De statibus, 191–2 hero cult, 44 Herodes Atticus, 4–6, 38–9

Macedon, 119–43, 147–50, 172. See also Philip II of Macedon as Parthia and Persia, 125–8 as Rome, 133–4 magic, 99–101 Mandela, Nelson, 41 Manuel II Palaeologus, 10 Marathon, 5, 102 Battle of, 104–9 Marcus Aurelius Meditations, 33, 128 Marrou, Henri-Irénée, 18 Martindale, Charles, 48

Favorinus, 40, 63, 68 figured speech, 47–8, 116–18, 140–1 five empires, theory of, 128, 133–4, 140, 141, 145 food supply, 64, 71–2

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Index masquerade, 93–5 Matthew Camariotes, 187 Maximus of Tyre, 19, 22, 118 Megistias meeting with Hippodromus, 28, 87, 96, 99–101, 117 meta-exemplarity, 42–4, 126–7, 147–9 metarhetoric, 87–90 migration, 66–8 Millar, Fergus, 13, 20 misconduct in public life, 62–3, 110 moral foundations theory, 185–7 moralism implicit, 46–8, 143 protreptic and descriptive, 34 Mother Theresa, 41 murder, 54 myth declamation as, 50–1 Nicaea, 69 conflict with Nicomedia, 19–20, 138, 159, 161, 164, 165, 166–7, 168, 173, 174, 177–8 Nicomedia. See Nicaea:conflict with Nicomedia nostalgia, 13–14, 18 novel, Greek, 12, 51, 68, 89, 94 Olympic games, 65, 83, 160 Orientalism, 23 Parthia, 125–8 passive-aggressive behaviour, 143 Pausanias, 44, 81 Pelling, Christopher, 34 Peloponnesian war, 151–79. See also strife: between cities: invocation of Peloponnesian war Pergamum, 92–3, 108 Persia, 50, 70, 126–8, 145–7, 160–1, 171–2, 183 Philip II of Macedon, 119–43, 147–50. See also Macedon as bad emperor, 128–33 deceit, 131–2 divine honours, 131 greed, 130–1 slavery, 129–30 deceit, 148–9 king, 126 as Roman divide-and-rule, 137–8 emperor, 98–9, 134–5 foreign, 137 greed, 136–7 Spartan, 137 Philostratus

215

Heroicus, 45 Imagines, 45, 80–1 Vita Apollonii, 61, 113–14, 128–30 Vitae sophistarum, 6, 25, 28, 55, 71–2, 80–1, 97–104, 143–7, 191 as evidence, 95–7 Photius Bibliotheca, 10, 193 physiognomy, 85 plasmata, 1, 15–16, 34, 50–1, 53, 186 Pliny the Younger, 142 Plutarch, 127 Comparatio Periclis et Fabii, 52 De recta ratione audiendi, 25–6 Praecepta gerendae reipublicae, 22–3, 27, 135 Quomodo quis suos in virtute sentiat profectus, 21, 31 Vita Demetrii, 21 Vita Demosthenis, 120 Polemo of Laodicea, 6–8, 87, 116, 178–9 declamations, 50, 89–90, 104–9, 110, 117, 183 puns on name, 109 venality, 110 Pollux On the islanders, 143–7 Porcius Latro, 115 postmodernism, 21 Poulakos, John, 88 progymnasmata, 27–8, 34, 39 ecphrasis, 45 ethopoeia, 93–4 syncrisis, 37 prolalia, 74–5, 79, 105 pronoia (Byzantine), 181–2 propriety, 116–17 prosangelia, 99, 110 protheoria, 76–9 Ps.-Hermogenes De inventione, 192 psuedo-documentarism, 44 Pylos. See Sphacteria, Battle of Pythagoras, 83 Python of Byzantium, 129, 138 Quintilian, 45, 47, 85, 117, 118 Quintus Haterius, 115 Reception Studies, 16, 30 religion, 65–6 Eleusinian mysteries, 65–6, 82, 83–4, 112–13 ‘rescaling’, 39–42, 43–4, 58, 93, 111, 141, 173 rhetorical theory, 11–12, 25, 26–7, 37, 89, 90, 104. See also progymnasmata; style Roller, Matthew, 32, 42 Roman declamation. See Latin declamation

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216 Rome as Athens, 144 collaboration with, 138–9 divide-and-rule, 138 emperors as kings, 134–5, 137 as enslaving power, 135–6, 140, 142–3 foreign, 137 greed, 136–7 tax collection, 136–7 as Macedon, 133–4, 141 oblique reservations about, 139–40 as Sparta, 137 tax collection, 144 Rufinus, 103–4 Russell, Donald, 1, 72 Schmitz, Thomas, 13, 17 ‘school’ declamations, 28, 77 Scopelian, 55, 107 Scythians in declamation, 66, 67, 68 Alexander Clay-Plato’s declamation, 101–2 self-praise, 117 Seneca the Elder Controversiae, 115 Sicilian expedition, 35–6, 43–4, 102–3 Smyrna, 4, 40, 64–5, 99–101 Socrates, 40, 115 Sophistopolis, 1 Spawforth, Tony, 50, 127 Sphacteria, Battle of, 151, 169–70, 176–7 stasis (politics), 32, 61–3 stasis (rhetoric). See rhetorical theory strife between cities, 151–79. See also war comparison to war, 57, 167 concord, 58, 164–6 envy, 164 freedom and oppression, 162–4 invocation of Peloponnesian war, 166–7, 168–71, 172–4

Index invocation of Persian wars, 171–2 invocation of rise of Macedon, 172 over territory, 157–9 over titles, 56–7, 160–1 over trade and taxation, 159–60 within cities. See stasis (politics) style, 11, 25, 26–7, 84–5, 90 Suda, 10, 74 supererogation, 42 Synesius, 114 Taplin, Oliver, 81 ‘theatricality’, 48 Thomas Magister, 180–2, 183 Thomas More Declamatio, 183–4 Thucydides, 21, 32, 49 Timagenes, 127 titles. See strife: between cities: over titles; honours tragedy, Greek, 14, 15, 47, 49, 60, 81–2, 121, 184 Translation Studies, 48 travel, 66–8, 101–3 Trump, Donald, 36–7 tyranny, 38–9, 59–61, 183–4 Valerius Maximus, 42 vehiculatio, 158 ‘virtual reality’, 44–6 Wallace-Hadrill, Andrew, 123 walls, 69 wandering, 68 war, 56–9, 154–5. See also strife: between cities civil war, 59 as part of imaginary, 57–8 Wardy, Robert, 88 Whitmarsh, Tim, 16, 17, 21, 68

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