Other, less strict Atticists include Lucian and the historian Arrian of Nicomedia (writing ca. 130–160).5 Arrian is an example of a typical Atticist, taking special care to avoid certain koinê forms and constructions and to ensure that his vocabulary adheres to the strictures of the Attic lexica (Tonnet 1988, 1:299–350); that Arrian, despite his efforts, is not as successful as Aristides should be attributed to the latter’s skill, rather than any inadequacy on the part of the former. Lucian, on the other hand, displays a more profound familiarity with the Attic dialect than Arrian, reflected in the enviable ease with which he employs it in a wide range of genres—narrative fiction, comic dialogue, satirical essay—for which no precise classical models existed. But his attitude toward vocabulary contrasts starkly with that of Aristides; Lucian does not feel the need to restrict his choice of words to those attested in Attic prose, but frequently employs terms taken from Attic comedy as well as new words that he has built from a classical Attic base. As André Boulanger (1923, 410; cf. Schmid 1887–1897, 2:311) succinctly put it, while both are Atticists, “Lucian only intends to enrich and improve the language of his time . . . while Aristides tries to repudiate it.”
The discrepancy between Aristides and Lucian might also have something to do with the different genres in which they worked (Wilamowitz-Möllendorff 1900, 25–27). Nearly all of Lucian’s oeuvre stands apart from the declamations and speeches that form the core of Aristides and other purists’ literary production. And within Aristides’s corpus, works such as the private, informal Sacred Tales are far less rigorous than his historical speeches set in the classical period, like the Sicilian Orations. In fact, in the third volume of Der Atticismus, Schmid (1887–1897, 3:346–349), following ancient rhetorical treatises, separated Atticizing prose into two categories: (1) “political discourse” (λόγοςπολιτικός), used in declamation and formal oratory and modeled on Thucydides and the Attic orators, and which required a relatively strict Atticism; and (2) “simple discourse” (λόγος ἀφελής), which took its inspiration from Herodotus, Xenophon, and Plato, and featured a relaxed Atticism, more appropriate for belle-lettristic writing, that actively sought out poetic and Ionic words and forms.
The chief surviving representatives of “simple” discourse are Philostratus and Aelian (ca. 170–230). In their attempt to cultivate an air of informality and naturalness, they avoid taking an overly judgmental attitude toward koinê, poetic, or Ionic forms, but they also frequently employ certain attested, but rare, Attic features thought to convey “simplicity,” like the nominative absolute or the unaugmented pluperfect (Schmid 1887–1897, 3:346–347). The result does not resemble any existing classical prose, but neither is it closer to the contemporary “living” language—if anything, it is more artificial, more recherché, than that of their purist counterparts. The goal of the “political discourse” practiced by Aristides, Lesbonax, and Herodes seems to have been to replicate classical Attic oratory, in dialect and style, while Lucian applied his impeccable classical Attic to novel content and literary forms. Philostratus and Aelian, on the other hand, work in genres far removed from the purist demands of “political discourse” (letters, miscellanies, dialogue) and no longer feel the need to have their language resemble actual classical Attic, preferring to shape it for their own creative ends.
This more relaxed attitude toward Atticist practice can also be observed in the lexicography and scholarship of the second and third centuries CE. The “purist” Phrynichus in his Selection of Attic Words restricts his sources for proper Attic to the tragedians, Plato, Xenophon, Thucydides, the Attic orators, and especially Old Comedy (thought to represent particularly “pure” Attic). But other “Attic” lexica, like Pollux’s Onomasticon (Bethe 1900–1937) and that of the so-called Anti-Atticist (Bekker 1814, 75–116), are far less strict, frequently citing non-Attic authors, like Homer, Pindar, and Herodotus, as authorities. This broadening of linguistic interests to encompass poetic dialects and vocabulary should be viewed in the wider context of imperial antiquarianism; from this perspective, Pollux’s work on the vocabulary of classical Athens could be seen as stemming from a passion for knowledge about classical Athenian customs and culture as a whole, rather than merely Atticizing purism (Radici Colace 2000; Tosi 2007).
The linguistic banter in Athenaeus’s Sophists at Dinner, a massive compendium of literary, cultural, and political trivia written in the early third century CE, could be interpreted in a similar way (Strobel 2005, 143–144). For instance, Ulpian of Tyre, the character in Athenaeus known as “the Attico-Syrian” (Συραττικέ: 3.126f, 9.368c), and whose refusal to utter any word unless it was attested in an ancient author earned him the nickname Keitoukeitos (“Attested-Unattested”: 3.97c–d), is not so much an Atticist as an “archaist” (φιλάρχαιος: 3.126e)—dozens of the sources he cites date from the postclassical period (cf. 97c–99e and, e.g., 2.94c: Posidippus of Pella; 4.167c: Duris of Samos; 2.58b–c: Phylarchus). Ulpian may treat contemporary language with the same contempt as Phrynichus, and even be called an Atticist, but he has an antiquarian love of all things “ancient” (Swain 1996, 51). Indeed, Athenaeus’s work as a whole, which quotes and discusses texts both earlier and later than the classical period, is a reminder that imperial interest in the past could encompass far more than just “Attic” or “classical” literature. Atticism is thus just one element of a broad and variegated set of imperial engagements with the past.
To recap: the period from Augustus to the end of the first century witnessed the birth and subsequent evolution of stylistic Atticism, which I prefer to call classicism because of its focus on emulating “classical” (and not just “Attic”) authors. This classicism remains in force throughout the Second Sophistic. The development of linguistic Atticism, on the other hand, took place in three stages: the early second century CE, when we begin to see the first signs of a “positive” Atticism that reflects the growing prestige of the “Attic” dialect; the middle of the second century, when “positive” Atticism is joined by its purist “negative” counterpart, and when figures such as Arrian, Lucian, and especially Aelius Aristides thrive; finally, the late second and early third centuries, when a more relaxed kind of Atticism, that of the anti-Atticist, Aelian, and Philostratus, comes to the fore. Throughout this timespan, classicizing and Atticizing strictures did not act as shackles, forcing authors only to produce pale imitations and pastiches of the great works of the past; there was always considerable room for innovation and creativity. One need look no further than the extant work of Dio in the first century CE, Lucian in the second, and Philostratus in the third, to see three authors, each with a different relationship to Atticism, who have succeeded in producing some of the most accomplished Greek literary prose that has come down to us from antiquity.
DEFINING “ASIANISM”
Thus far, I have been speaking only of Atticism. What about “Asianism”? How does it fit into the linguistic developments laid out in the preceding section? First of all, Asianism is a stylistic phenomenon that is unrelated to the language purity central to Atticism. The two are thus not mutually exclusive; a given work can be written in the Attic dialect and in an “Asian” style. The Atticism to which Asianism has been opposed by modern scholars is not the linguistic, but the stylistic variety, or what I call “classicism.” Asian style, then, is the opposite, not of an Attic, but of a classical way of writing, based on the imitation of canonical Greek authors from Homer to Demosthenes.
In the imperial period, as I have mentioned, a number of authors strive, in varying degrees, to write in such a classical style: e.g., Aristides, Herodes, Lesbonax, Dio, and Lucian (Norden 1898, 387–402, for an attempt at categorization). Asian style, however, looks quite different. Consider the following passage, quoted by Philostratus from a declamation by the late second-century CE sophist Apollonius of Athens on a fifth-century BCE theme: “Callias tries to dissuade the Athenians from burning the dead” (VS 602: I have placed the clauses on separate li
nes to highlight the verbal effects).
1. ὑψηλὴν ἆρον, ἄνθρωπε, τὴνδᾷδα. Lift the torch high, man.
2. τίβιάζῃ Why do you do violence
3. καὶ κατάγειςκάτω and lead down
4. καὶ βασανίζειςτὸ πῦρ; and torment the fire?
5. οὐράνιόν ἐστιν, Heavenly it is,
6. αἰθέριόν ἐστιν, ethereal it is,
7. πρὸςτὸ ξυγγενὲς ἔρχεταιτὸ πῦρ. fire tends toward that which is akin to itself.
8. οὐ κατάγεινεκρούς, It leads not the corpses down,
9. ἀλλ’ ἀνάγειθεούς. but leads the gods up.
A translation can hardly do justice to the peculiarities of the original: four short sentences, broken up into clauses and balanced by isocolon (identical number of syllables [six] in lines 5–6, 8–9), homoeoteleuton (identical, rhyming, word endings: -εις, -ιόν, -άγει, ούς), antithesis (κατ- vs. ἀν-), repetition of words (κατάγει[ς], τὸ πῦρ, ἐστιν), and the recurrence of the same quantitative rhythms (e.g., at the end of lines 5–6 and 8–9; cf. Norden 1898, 414). The impression given by these lines is that of a song or a hymn, rather than a deliberative speech modeled on the prose of Lysias or Demosthenes. The setting, putative speaker, and content may be thoroughly “classical” and even Athenian, but the form is anything but.
Another example from the late second century CE, from the beginning of a speech by the philosopher-orator Maximus of Tyre on a familiar Platonic topic (Or. 4.1), displays similar characteristics, with an even more striking use of antithesis and parallelism (Trapp 1997, 1960–1964).
καὶ γὰρποιητικὴ τί ἄλλο ἢ φιλοσοφία, For what else is poetry if not a philosophy that is
τῷ μὲνχρόνῳ παλαιά, ancient in age,
τῇ δὲ ἁρμονίᾳ ἔμμετρος, metrical in rhythm,
τῇ δὲ γνώμῃ μυθολογική; mythological in thought?
καὶ φιλοσοφίατί ἄλλο ἢ ποιητική, And what else is philosophy if not a poetry that is
τῷ μὲνχρόνῳ νεωτέρα, younger in age,
τῇ δὲ ἁρμονίᾳ εὐζωνοτέρα, more ordinary in rhythm,
τῇ δὲ γνώμῃ σαφεστέρα; clearer in content?
Finally, a description of a painting from the first book of Achilles Tatius’s second-century CE novel Leucippe and Cleitophon (1.2–3), in which the antitheses, parallelisms, and sound effects are more varied in their interplay, but just as evident:
Εὐρώπης ἡ γραφή· The painting, of Europa;
Φοινίκωνἡ θάλασσα· the sea, of the Phoenicians;
Σιδῶνοςἡ γῆ. the land, of Sidon.
ἐντῇ γῇλειμὼνκαὶ χορὸςπαρθένων. On land a meadow and a band of maidens.
ἐντῇ θαλάττῃταῦροςἐπενήχετο, On sea a bull is swimming,
καὶ τοῖςνώτοιςκαλὴ παρθένοςἐπεκάθητο, and on his back a beautiful maiden is sitting,
ἐπὶ Κρήτηντῷ ταύρῳπλέουσα. sailing to Crete on the bull.
For all of their differences, these three passages share a set of stylistic features—extremely short clauses, simple syntax with little to no subordination, and a constant use of devices designed to emphasize rhythm, balance, and repetition—that occur in such combinations only occasionally, if at all, in classical authors. Other examples of this so-called Asian style from the second and third centuries CE are found in Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe, the fragments of Iamblichus’s Babylonian Tales, the speeches of Favorinus and Polemon, other sophistic passages quoted in Philostratus’s Lives of the Sophists, and in some of Philostratus’s Letters (Norden 1898, 344–450; Pernot 1993, 381–394). On occasion, it even appears in orations by otherwise classicizing writers, such as Aelius Aristides’s Monody to Smyrna or Lucian’s On the Hall.
While some of these Second Sophistic authors hail from Asia Minor or Asia understood more broadly, many do not (e.g., Favorinus is from Gaul; Apollonius is from Athens). Moreover, the stylistic label “Asian” is never used of contemporary orators in the Second Sophistic (unless one counts Philostratus’s enigmatic references to “Ionic” style at VS 598, 619). Every reference found in imperial texts of the late first and early second centuries CE—Petron. Sat. 2, Plut. Ant. 2, Quint. 9.4.103 and 12.10.16, Suet. Aug. 86.3, Theon, Prog. 71—alludes to the earlier first-century BCE Asian-Attic debates (on which, see below), and the latest orators who are called “Asian” in antiquity are five Augustan-era declaimers mentioned by Seneca the Elder, writing in the 30s CE (Controv. 1.2.23, 9.1.12, 9.6.16, 10.5.21: Fairweather 1981, 245–303; Winterbottom 1983).6 So why do modern scholars call this style “Asian”? A proper explanation of the complicated history of this term would require much more space than I have here; what follows is an extremely selective and simplified account, highlighting aspects I feel are important for an understanding of the Second Sophistic (see Kim forthcoming for a more detailed treatment).
The first use of “Attic” and “Asian” as stylistic labels occurs in the Brutus and Orator of Cicero, written in 46 BCE. Later authors reveal, however, that Cicero was defending himself against certain Roman orators (the Attici, or Attics) who had disparagingly labeled his rhetorical style as “Asian” (Quint. Inst. 12.10.12–18; Tacit. Dial. 18). At first, the distinction was simply between the Attici’s “direct” and “plain” manner of speaking, associated with Lysias and Hyperides, and Cicero’s “bombastic,” extravagant rhetoric, linked to first-century BCE Greek orators from the Roman province of Asia (under whom Cicero had studied: Brut. 314–316).7 In their polemic against Cicero’s style, the Attici had apparently adapted ethnic “Asian” stereotypes inherited from the classical Athenians—of luxury, effeminacy, and extravagance—to rhetorical discourse (Delarue 1982; Cicero’s comments on “Asiatic” oratory: Brut. 51, 314–316, 325–327; Orat. 25, 27, 212, 230–231); in a sense, the Attici could be said to have “invented” the concept of “Asian” oratory (de Jonge 2008, 14–16 and Wisse 1995; a Greek origin is posited, wrongly, I believe, by many others, e.g. Dihle 1977; Hidber 1996; Norden 1898, 149). But over the course of the next sixty years or so, the labels took on a life of their own, until they came to represent two more abstract, but similarly opposed, stylistic aesthetics: an exemplary, classical “Attic” moderation, prudence, and restraint vs. a categorically negative Hellenistic “Asian” extravagance, rashness, and excess (Hose 1999; Whitmarsh 2005, 49–54). Nowhere is this better evident than in the first Greek text where the terms appear, Dionysius’s preface to On Ancient Orators (ca. 25 BCE). There, the “ancient and philosophical” rhetoric (ἀρχαίακαὶ φιλόσοφος), which is said to have held sway until the death of Alexander the Great, is personified as a “temperate [σώφρων] Attic muse” ousted from her rightful position by “some Mysian or Phrygian woman, or a Carian monstrosity, who has arrived just the other day from the execution pits of Asia”; this “new” rhetoric is “vulgar,” “bombastic,” “shamelessly theatrical,” and “lives in luxury” (φορτική, ψυχροὺς, ἀναιδείᾳ θεατρικῇ, τρυφώσῃ) (de Jonge 2014; Hidber 1996).
Dionysius’s description is unfortunately rather short on stylistic details, and only a few lines survive from the various first-century BCE Greek orators whom he and others malign as “Asian.” The particular stylistic features that inspired such vitriol can, however, be illustrated in the prose of a third-centuryBCE orator from Asia Minor, Hegesias of Magnesia-on-Sipylus (FGrH 142). Although he apparently thought of himself an “Attic” orator in the mold of Lysias (Cic. Brut. 286), by the first century CE he was considered the “founder” of “Asian” rhetoric (Str. 14.1.41; cf. Cic. Orat. 231); he also happens to be the only “Asian” orator whose work survives in sufficient quantity for stylistic a
nalysis. For example, (F 24 = Str. 9.1.16):
1. ὁρῶτὴν ἀκρόπολιν, I see the acropolis,
2. καὶ τὸ περιττῆςτριαίνης ἐκεῖθισημεῖον, and the mark of the huge trident there;
3. ὁρῶτὴν Ἐλευσῖνα, I see Eleusis,
4. καὶ τῶν ἱερῶνγέγοναμύστης· and I have become an initiate into its mysteries;
5. ἐκεῖνοΛεωκόριον, there the Leokorion,
6. τοῦτοΘησεῖον· here the Theseion;
7. οὐ δύναμαιδηλῶσαικαθ’ ἓν ἕκαστον· I cannot point them out one by one.
The similarity with the passages quoted above is notable: short, clearly defined clauses with no subordination, but replete with repetitions and parallelisms: e.g., the anaphora of ὁρῶ, the antithesis of τοῦτο and ἐκεῖνο, the homoeoteleuton of -ον in lines 2 and 5–7, the isocolon in 1 and 3 (= seven syllables). In addition, five out of the seven clauses conclude with one of two rhythms, the cretic-trochee (– υ – | – ×: 2, 3, 6) or one of its resolutions (– υ υ υ | – ×: 4, 7), both of which occur far less frequently in classical authors (for details, see the tables in de Groot 1919; on Hegesias: Skimina 1937, 144–148). The remarkable consistency in the endings of the clauses (clausulae) combined with the other effects of sound and rhythm gives the sentence a repetitive, incantatory feel (Blass 1905, 27–33; Calboli 1987; Norden 1898, 134–138). Modern scholars, struck by the resemblance of Hegesias’s quintessentially “Asian” prose to that of certain Second Sophistic authors, have thus also designated the later style as “Asian,” even though the term itself was no longer in use in the imperial era.
The Oxford Handbook of the Second Sophistic Page 9