The Oxford Handbook of the Second Sophistic

by Daniel S. Richter

  While the sophistic performance was thus symbolically marked off as a privileged cultural space, the anecdote shows that such declamations were not spatially removed from the real world: sophists were not restricted to any professional venue. Megistias teaches in a temple. Sophists often declaimed in concert halls or theaters, but we know that they also used town halls (bouleutêria) or market places for their performances. Korenjak, after an overview of the available evidence, rightly concludes that there was hardly a place in a town of the Roman Empire from which sophistic declamations would be excluded.9 And as we see in Philostratus, not only these formal occasions, but also sophistic teaching was a semipublic affair, conducted in a space that was accessible to anyone. While Megistias is surprised to see a stranger whom he does not recognize, it was obviously possible to sit in on a sophist’s lesson; a similar event occurs when the sophist Marcus of Byzantium attends the school of his famous contemporary Polemon: while some members of the audience recognize him, Polemon himself at first does not know him but is surprised that his listeners all look to “the rustic” (es ton agroikon, VS 1.24, 529). These anecdotes make it clear that sophistic teaching was performed in a public setting.

  News of Hippodromus’s success spreads like a wildfire in town, and “all educated people in Smyrna” (tōn kata tēn Smyrnan pepaideumenōn) flock to the place where Megistias teaches to listen to Hippodromus’s declamation. We often hear similar stories about the popularity of sophistic performances: Aelius Aristides boasts that when he announced a declamation in Pergamon, the crowd in the town hall was so dense “that you could not even push a hand through it” (while a competing sophist drew an audience of seventeen only).10 We will not take these allegations at face value: they are certainly exaggerated, and audiences were more often in the hundreds than in the thousands of listeners.11 But they demonstrate that publicity was an important part of a sophist’s business. His was not a profession which was exercised for a few customers only, but it was, at least in his own mind, addressed to a larger public, to all members of the educated elite in the Greek speaking world.

  WERE SOPHISTS IN IT FOR THE MONEY?

  One of the elements which drives Philostratus’s narrative is the cognitive advantage that we readers have over one of the characters: we know that the man who enters Megistias’s classroom incognito is a famous sophist while Megistias himself is completely unaware that he may be a colleague. These different levels of knowledge create a tension; we are looking forward to the moment when he will see his error, and we are not disappointed: the scene in which Hippodromus is taken for a madman but proves that he is a superb speaker is well prepared and narrated. Hippodromus may have retired, but he has kept up his rhetorical exercises (meletai), and the opening of his speech demonstrates his rhetorical abilities. It is clear that he would not have been able to hold his own in the elite group of Megistias’s school if he had not been scrupulous about his rhetorical exercises even in his retirement. Sophistic declamation was a highly specialized business that required systematic training and continuous practice, and Hippodromus takes it seriously: “he learned more by heart than any of the Greeks, and he was the most widely read.” Sophistry is more than a mere hobby-horse: it is a serious occupation which demands a good deal of energy and attention. The training took several years and was expensive,12 and from Philostratus’s Lives we can see that this was the formative period of a young member of the social elite in which he found friends, learned to admire his teachers and to despise their competitors. When we look at Hippodromus’s behavior after he has revealed his name, we can also observe some pride in good craftsmanship: even after his declamation has been acknowledged as being of superb quality, he insists on continuing his speech to the end (“but observe me through the whole of the argument”), a further indication that for him, a sophistic declamation is a serious matter which demands the full attention of both performer and audience. In this sense, then, sophistry was certainly a profession.

  Schools of rhetoric were ubiquitous in the Roman Empire; every town could be expected to have some sort of establishment where basic competence could be acquired; major centers hosted “graduate schools” in which some well-known sophist taught advanced students, who might spend several years in such a city solely for the purpose of learning from such a celebrity. The casualness with which Hippodromus takes the presence of some slaves with books as a sign of the presence of such a school is an indication of how commonplace they must have been. Megistias runs such a school; the exchange between him and Hippodromus takes place after the regular lesson has finished.13 At first, he assumes that Hippodromus is the father of one of his students; such parent-teacher conferences seem to be a common aspect of his occupation.

  All of this could be interpreted as a sign that Megistias was a professional teacher, very much like a modern professor at an institution of higher education (even if his establishment seems to be a one-man show). Was he a professional sophist in the sense that he made a living from his teaching? Unfortunately, in the case of Megistias, we do not have enough evidence to answer this question. We have more knowledge about Hippodromus: he held the imperial chair of rhetoric at Athens and thus received a regular salary of 10,000 drachmae per year.14 Such endowed chairs (thronos or kathedra) existed not only in Athens, but also in Rome and in some other major centers of Asia Minor.15 Their holders received a regular salary, which was paid by the emperor or by the cities. Competition for these positions was stiff, and holding one of them brought immense prestige.16 However, Philostratus’s narrative makes it clear that Hippodromus is independently wealthy: he leaves his Athens chair to administer his property (ploutou) which had begun to deteriorate—the salary he receives is obviously less than he could make from managing his assets. Hence, Watts (2006, 34) is certainly right when he asserts: “the appeal of these chairs derived from the status attached to the position and not from the salaries they paid.”

  Nevertheless, it is true that sophists charged for their teaching, and Philostratus often mentions that large amounts of money changed hands: Proclus of Naucratis demanded a lump sum of 100 drachmae from each student (VS 2.21, 604); Damianus of Ephesus offered a discount on his fees when he saw that students had trouble paying (2.23, 606); Polemon asked 12,000 drachmae for representing a rich Lydian in court (1.22, 525). All of which suggests that sophists were professionals so far as they demanded payment for exercising their skills.

  However, some details might give us pause. Philostratus (VS 1.25, 539) relates that when Polemon had performed a series of declamations in Athens, Herodes Atticus sent him the sum of 150,000 drachmae, or fifteen times the annual salary of the imperial chair of rhetoric at Athens.17 But Polemon refused to accept the money—until Herodes raised the sum to 250,000 drachmae. Polemon was a powerful and rich individual, and he certainly was not in need of this money (or else he would have accepted the initial payment). He found the sum insufficient for his perceived status as the foremost sophist of his period. Refusing it showed that he was not somebody who had to work for wages;18 instead, he demonstrated that he was receiving a donation from a peer; the exorbitant amount reflects and enhances his dignity and honor. When Polemon refused the initial payment, he was not haggling over a particular sum of money, he was heightening and demonstrating his social status.

  When Philostratus highlights the enormous sums that sophists received, he is eager to depict them as members of the upper class who are not wage earners but receive lavish gifts from members of their own group. One reason why he is so eager to emphasize this aspect of sophists may be that in terms of social status, sophists were in a somewhat delicate position: on the one hand, many of them came from rich and powerful families and considered themselves representatives of the cultural and social elite of the Roman Empire. On the other hand, most were involved in some sort of teaching and demanded money for their services. This made them perilously similar to members of a much lower class, schoolteachers, who taught basic literacy and cultural skills to yo
unger students. Philostratus wants to depict sophistry as one of the most noble and important occupations, hence the stress he puts on the nature of these payments. We may compare the modern use of the word “honorarium,” which certain professions use instead of “fees” or “wages.” The etymological origin connects this term with “honor”: an honorarium is given as a point of honor; it is a “voluntary donation.” This emphasizes that the money which is given for certain services is not a form of payment, but represents a free exchange of help and gifts among equals.

  THE “CIRCLE OF SOPHISTS”

  Even if sophists were not card-carrying members of a formal club, Philostratus uses the expression “the circle of sophists” several times, most often when he considers whether or not certain individuals are worthy of being included into this circle.19 There can be no doubt that sophists were perceived as a group of practitioners who shared certain traits; this is especially visible when they are opposed to other groups such as philosophers.20 It is thus not surprising that for Philostratus, sophistry is a technê,21 consisting of skills and systematic knowledge, comparable to occupations such as medicine or architecture.

  Who was competent to decide if an individual deserved to be admitted into this circle? When we analyze Philostratus’s account, it becomes clear that there is an intricate network of academic affiliations and competitions and that he is unabashedly subjective in his judgments: practitioners of sophistry who are affiliated with his teachers and friends are included, while others are disparaged as “playthings rather than real sophists” (VS 2.23, 605) or as declaiming “in low wine-shops” (2.33, 627).22 As our anecdote about Hippodromus and Megistias shows, for the public perception of a sophist, the most important factor was the recognition by his peers. The culminating point of Philostratus’s narrative is the long-awaited moment when Hippodromus proves his sophistic competence. His behavior indicates the self-confidence (or even arrogance) of the man who is certain that he knows his trade: he lets Megistias propose a topic (hypothesis) for his declamation, and after a moment’s preparation, he begins his speech. Improvisation was considered an important part of a sophist’s trade, and Hippodromus demonstrates that he is able to give an impromptu speech on an arcane topic.23

  Yet it is not only Hippodromus who is put to the test. As we have seen, Philostratus’s readers know more than his Megistias, and thus his reaction to the declamation of this person (unknown to him and potentially a madman) is as significant as Hippodromus’s artful declamation. As a true connoisseur, he has to hear only a few words of Hippodromus’s speech to recognize that the speaker must be a sophist in his own right. When Philostratus says that Megistias was “besides himself” (exepesen heautou) with admiration, he is not claiming that he had lost control of himself and of the situation;24 much rather, this is the only reaction that is adequate to such a superb performance. We may compare an encounter between Alexander and Herodes Atticus (VS 2.5, 574). Again, a few words suffice to elicit the admiration of the true expert: “In the course of his argument, with tears in his eyes, [Herodes] uttered that famous and often quoted supplication: ‘Ah, Nicias! Ah, my father! As you hope to see Athens once more!’ Whereupon they say that Alexander exclaimed [anaboêsai]: ‘O Herodes, we sophists are all of us merely small slices of yourself!’ ” Alexander’s exclamation is a sure indication that he is a true specialist, that he has grasped the sheer brilliance of Herodes’s words.

  As often, Philostratus’s story invites (or rather coerces) his readers to adopt this interpretation: if we want to be worthy members of the educated elite (pepaideumenoi), we had better understand the overwhelming mastery of Hippodromus’s or Herodes’s words.25

  By his sound judgment, Megistias thus demonstrates that he too is a real professional whose spontaneous judgment is right on target. And it is immediately confirmed: when more and more people gather to listen to Hippodromus, he improvises a new speech on the same topic, but manages to give it a completely different turn, an exploit for which other sophists are also praised in Philostratus’s Lives of the Sophists.26

  It is this mutual recognition which is key to understanding the anecdote. Similar scenes occur several times in Philostratus’s work, as in a tale about Marcus of Byzantium who attends a class in the school of Polemon, one of the greatest of all sophists (VS 1.24, 529). Like Hippodromus, he is at first mistaken for someone who is far below the status of a famous sophist. But when he speaks up and offers to perform a declamation, “Polemon, who recognized him partly by his Doric dialect, addressed himself to Marcus in a long and wonderful speech on the spur of the moment, and when he had declaimed and heard the other declaim he both admired and was admired.” Philostratus’s style, with its word play on ethaumasthê kai ethaumasen, underlines the reciprocity that is the defining moment of the scene: ultimately, a successful sophist is the only judge competent to decide who should be included into the “sophistic circle.”

  However, as all these anecdotes make clear, you had to fight to obtain this form of recognition: sophists were alpha males and reluctant to give you respect and honor unless you were willing to challenge them. Philostratus points out that “having quarreled with a sophist was evidence enough” for those who claimed that Favorinus was a sophist himself, “for that spirit of rivalry of which I spoke is always directed against one’s competitors in the same craft” (VS 1.8, 491).27 Competition and “cultural one-upmanship”28 were hallmarks of the sophist: Plutarch tells the gruesome story of the sophist Niger who had swallowed a fish bone; nevertheless, he insisted on declaiming when another sophist wanted to perform for fear “that he might be perceived as giving in” (Advice about Keeping Well 131a–b). Niger died in the exercise and provided Plutarch a paradigm of competitiveness gone wrong.29 Yet there are also examples of a more playful mode of rivalry. When Polemon was still a young man, Dionysius of Miletus made an ambiguous remark about him, claiming that he “possessed strength, but it does not come from the wrestling-ground” (VS 1.22, 525). Dionysius had heard Polemon speak in an actual lawsuit and wanted to imply that his style had impressed him, but he was less efficient as an advocate than as a sophist.

  When Polemon heard this he came to Dionysius’ door and announced that he would declaim before him. And when he had come and Polemon had sustained his part with conspicuous success, he went up to Dionysius, and leaning shoulder to shoulder with him, like those who begin a wrestling match standing, he wittily turned the laugh against him by quoting “Once O once they were strong, the men of Miletus.”

  Polemon’s witty quotation of a well-known proverb demonstrates not only his willingness to take up Dionysius’s challenge, but also his skillful manipulation of the cultural code of the pepaideumenos.

  Sophistry is thus one of the numerous playing fields (or sometimes even battlegrounds) on which members of the social elite found an outlet for the competitiveness which pervaded ancient society.30 Wealthy individuals were willing to ruin their families to outdo rivals in lavish public spending (euergetism);31 inscriptions go to great lengths to find new superlatives honoring an individual as the “first and only among the sophists”;32 and even in a private setting, Plutarch warns against “sophistic competitions” which may spoil a dinner party by letting it degenerate into “ambitious or aggressive rivalry.”33 Hence, every sophistic performance was a crisis: what was at stake was the social status of the speaker.

  Something of this social relevance is visible in our anecdote about Hippodromus and Megistias: the tension here is halfway between Polemon’s witty wrestling match and Niger’s deadly fish bone. The unknown stranger offering to declaim is a challenge to Megistias’s authority, a riddle which he solves successfully. The decisive moment when this stranger triumphantly pronounces his name (“I am Hippodromus the Thessalian, and I have come to practice my art on you”) is similar to a number of other anecdotes in Philostratus where sophists reveal their identity. One of the most memorable examples can be found in his biographical sketch of Dio of Prusa, who has been forc
ed into exile by the emperor Domitian and has been hiding in anonymity. When Dio learns that the emperor has been killed, he quotes a line from the Odyssey (22.1) in which Odysseus gives up his disguise as a beggar, “and thus revealed that he was no beggar, nor what they believed him to be, but Dio the sage, [and] he delivered a spirited and energetic indictment of the tyrant” (VS 1.7, 488).

  However, this significant act of revealing your name and thus your identity as a sophist was not without risks: if the audience or your interlocutor failed to recognize you (or pretended they did not know you), you were in danger of losing your face. This is what happened to Philagrus: he got into a heated argument with a student of Herodes Atticus who pretended he had no idea who he was (VS 2.8, 579): “ ‘And who are you?’ inquired the other. . . . Whereupon Philagrus said that it was an insult to him not to be recognized wherever he might be.”34 As a sophist, you had to make a name for yourself; you always had to confirm and uphold your status by showing your knowledge, your mastery of the sophistic technê, and your unswerving confidence. And the sophists found this challenging themselves: “when [Polemon] saw a gladiator dripping with sweat out of sheer terror of the life-and-death struggle before him, he remarked: ‘You are in as great an agony as though you were going to declaim’ ” (VS 1.25, 541). If keeping your calm when faced with difficulties and critical challenges is an aspect of professionalism, the sophists certainly were professionals.