Swain, S., ed. 2000. Dio Chrysostom: Politics Letters and Philosophy. Oxford.
Van Hoof, L. 2010. “Greek Rhetoric and the Later Roman Empire: The Bubble of the ‘Third Sophistic.’” Antiquité tardive 18: 211–224.
Veyne, P. 2005. L’Empire gréco-romain. Paris.
Vix, J.-L. 2010. L’enseignement de la rhétorique au IIe siècle ap. J.-C. à travers les discours 30–34 d’Ælius Aristide. Turnhout.
Webb, R. 2009. Ecphrasis: Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice. Abingdon.
Whitmarsh, T. 2005. The Second Sophistic. Oxford.
Wright, W. C. 1921. Philostratus, The Lives of the Sophists; Eunapius, Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists. London and Cambridge, MA.
Zweimuller, S. 2008. Lukian, “Rhetorum praeceptor”: Einleitung, Text und Kommentar. Hypomnemata 176. Göttingen.
CHAPTER 14
DIO CHRYSOSTOM
CLAIRE RACHEL JACKSON
THIS chapter examines Dio Chrysostom and his place within the Second Sophistic. The first section considers Dio’s biography and the ways later interpreters have sought to categorize Dio based on his biographical experiences, with the second section demonstrating a more nuanced approach to his self-presentation. The third explores Dio’s self-positioning between Greek and Roman in the imperial world and his interrogation of these identity models, while the fourth considers how his literary-critical speeches directly question the role of the Greek literary canon and mythic tradition in the Second Sophistic, despite their seeming superficiality. Although unable to cover Dio’s works in full, this chapter uses specific case studies to explore major themes in his works and offers detailed approaches to situating Dio and his eclectic corpus within the Second Sophistic.
BIOGRAPHY
Many of the facts about Dio’s life are shrouded in the speculation of later interpreters. According to Pliny his full name was Cocceianus Dio (Ep. 10.81–82; Gowing 1990), and he later acquired the epithet Chrysostom (“golden-mouthed”), seemingly on account of his eloquence. He was born into a wealthy family from Prusa in the province of Bithynia around 40–50 AD, and seems to have inherited Roman citizenship from at least one of his parents (Or. 41.6; Jones 1978, 6–7; Swain 1996, 190–191). It is clear from his work’s literary allusiveness and rhetorical underpinning that he received an elite education, and it has been suggested that he was a pupil of the philosopher Musonius Rufus, although this is far from certain.1 In Philostratus’s fictional biography The Life of Apollonius of Tyana, Dio appears as a philosophical advisor to Vespasian (V A 5.27–38), but no evidence supports this (Sidebottom 1996). During the reign of Domitian, Dio was sentenced to exile, and while it has been proposed that this was on account of imperial disfavor incurred through active opposition, unsavory friendships, or his activities as a philosopher, the precise cause and extent of his exile remain unclear (Verrengia 1999, 66–85 outlines the evidence and a plausible reconstruction; see also Desideri 2007). He was apparently recalled after the accession of the emperor Nerva, and according to the chronology proposed by Jones 1978, 133–140, Dio thereafter immersed himself in local politics in Prusa, but still traveled widely, even being part of an embassy to Nerva’s successor, Trajan. Based on this biography, therefore, Dio emerges as an elite, well-educated orator whose experiences from the provinces to the heart of Rome have the potential to reveal the interaction between Greek culture and Roman power at the heart of the Second Sophistic.
In his own works, however, Dio presents a more complex picture of this relationship, one which challenges any attempt to ignore the complexities of Dio’s self-presentation in favor of a more linear biographical reading. Dio’s extant corpus comprises eighty speeches (listed in full in Swain 2000a, 8–10), of which at least two (Orr. 37 and 64) are almost certainly falsely attributed and were written instead by Dio’s pupil Favorinus (on which see Amato 1995), and two are probably a single speech which was separated at some point (Orr. 77, 78). Across these speeches, Dio covers a tremendous variety of subjects, including addresses to the emperor Trajan, speeches on local politics in his Bithynian homeland and other provincial cities, polemical literary-critical pieces, discussions of philosophical topics, and others which resist simple classification (Russell 1992, 7–8 offers a self-admittedly imperfect schema for categorizing Dio’s works). Moreover, when considered holistically, it becomes clear how frequently Dio adopts different rhetorical personas and inconsistent, even contradictory positions. For example, Dio often styles himself as a Cynic philosopher (e.g., Or. 72), but he also incorporates Socratic or Stoic perspectives into his work, as Brancacci (2000) discusses. Similarly, he sometimes criticizes canonical authors such as Homer and Euripides for their gauche style or deceptive content (Orr. 11, 66.6), but elsewhere he praises their work effusively (Or. 53). Finally, while at times Dio emphasizes his personal connection to the emperor and his involvement in the political system (Orr. 1, 3, 45, 47), at other times he criticizes sycophantic attitudes toward Rome and advocates for a life free of politics (Orr. 7.103–108, 36.17). Combined with what we know of his life, this diversity of subject-matter, inconsistent tone, and contradictory positioning raises questions about how to understand and categorize Dio and his corpus. Is he a moral philosopher with a coherent agenda, or a sophist adopting whatever position fits the occasion? Does he embrace Roman imperial power sincerely, or is this pose just a foil for the greater value of Greek culture? Is Dio’s appreciation of canonical Greek authors genuine, or are they merely deployed as antiquated models against which Dio can define his own originality and authority? How, in other words, do we situate Dio within the Second Sophistic?
These ambiguities have led later writers to adduce Dio’s biography, and his exile in particular, as the key to structuring his corpus. For the fifth-century Synesius, Dio’s exile was the catalyst for a conversion from sophistry to philosophy, a conversion so definitive and absolute that for Synesius all of Dio’s writings can and should be labeled as written either before or after his exile (Dion 1.15). While it is true that Dio does adopt philosophical positions as well as the characteristically indirect flippancy of sophistry, none of Synesius’s examples of Dio’s pre-exilic sophistry, such as the Encomium to a Parrot, have survived, making it difficult to uncritically adopt this binary categorization (see Desideri 1973 for more on Synesius). By contrast, Philostratus categorizes Dio in his third-century Lives of the Sophists as one of the philosopher-sophists, as opposed to those who are pure rhetoricians, which breaks down the kind of dichotomy advocated by Synesius. Indeed, Philostratus denies that Dio was ever officially sentenced to exile, and states instead that he chose to go into hiding voluntarily out of fear of the despots in the capital (VS 488), which undermines Dio’s own claims to have been exiled for speaking out bravely against the tyrannical Domitian (Or. 45.1). And yet, Philostratus’s denial of Dio’s exile is not merely polemical or insincere, as by denying Dio an official exile, he excludes him from the iconic fate of imperial philosophers, for whom exile legitimized their reputations for speaking truth to power (Whitmarsh 2001, 134–180, esp. 140–141). In other words, Philostratus reinforces his categorization of Dio as a quasi-philosopher who seems to be a sophist by denying him the distinguishing trait of a “true” imperial philosopher, meaning that his works cannot be so easily separated out into playfully sophistic and sincerely philosophical. Despite their opposed conclusions, for both Philostratus and Synesius, Dio’s exile (or lack thereof) is a way of structuring Dio’s eclectic corpus and situating him within an imperial world.
This use of Dio’s exilic biography as a structuring principle for his corpus is still visible in modern scholarship, most obviously deriving from von Arnim 1898’s magisterial work (on the significance of which, see Swain 2000b, 27–33). This view, however, ignores the complexity with which Dio himself manipulates his own exilic self-presentation. In a now-seminal article, John Moles (1978) has demonstrated not only how unproductive Synesius’s conversion narrative is for understanding Dio’s corpus,
but also how it derives from Dio’s own presentation of his exile. Similarly, Tim Whitmarsh (1998) has shown how Philostratus’s denial of Dio’s exile responds to and questions Dio’s rhetorical manipulation of this exilic narrative, which reactivates the ambiguity surrounding Dio’s position in the imperial world. As a result, by comparing Synesius’s and Philostratus’s perspectives, it is clear not just how Dio’s biography can be used to interpret his corpus but also how Dio himself manipulates this biography. In Oration 13 (On Exile), for example, Dio presents his banishment as the result of an unfortunate friendship with a powerful, unnamed man (1), and states that although he did become a philosopher after his exile, this was not deliberate but instead the result of so many people mistaking him for one (10–13). As Moles (2005) has shown, Oration 13 is an artfully constructed piece, balancing Greek and Roman, sincerity and irony, and Dio’s self-consciously flippant “accidental” conversion to philosophy slyly highlights this rhetorical role-playing and his strategic construction of an exiled-philosopher persona. This becomes even clearer when put in contrast with Oration 45.1, where Dio states that his exile was due to his frank criticisms of Domitian, a claim which better fits with this particular speech’s overall tone of self-justification before his native city. The malleability and fictionality of Dio’s own presentation of his exile, explored further in Jouan 1993a, demonstrates his capacity to adopt and manipulate different rhetorical personas, and consequently the impossibility of taking Dio at face value.
So how do we situate Dio within the Second Sophistic? It is clear that it is impossible to extricate Dio’s biography from his speeches, but equally clear that it cannot be taken literally. Instead, the autobiography Dio puts forward through his own orations needs to be appreciated as a facet of his rhetorical role-playing, where it can be manipulated, exaggerated, or rewritten entirely. The case studies which make up the remainder of this chapter, drawn from both well-known (the Kingships, Euboicus, Trojan Oration) and lesser-discussed works (On Beauty, the Libycus), demonstrate the value of this approach, as they allow Dio’s inconsistencies of persona to be put into dialogue with broader themes of the period, including relationships between past and present, Greek and Roman, philosophical sincerity and sophistic flippancy. In other words, by appreciating Dio’s manipulations of narrative and characters rather than positing a linear relationship between biography and rhetoric, we can better understand how Dio actively explores his own position within the Second Sophistic.
EUBOICUS (OR. 7)
The practical impact of Dio’s manipulation of these rhetorical masks can be seen in Oration 7, often called the Euboicus or Euboean Oration. In the first place, the Euboicus itself is a problematic text, given its uneven tone, unstable structure, and unclear context. In this speech, the narrator describes how, having been shipwrecked in Euboea, he met a huntsman with a troubled experience of local politics, and then observed the hunter’s rural lifestyle (1–80). Just over halfway through this lengthy speech, the narrator explains that the preceding narrative is an example of the morality of poverty, as demonstrated by classical poets such as Homer and Euripides (81–102). The remainder of the speech then becomes an invective against the vices of the city, particularly homosexuality and prostitution (103–152). As Donald Russell (1992, 12) puts it, “we began in the world of Theocritus; we end up in the world of Juvenal.” This abrupt tonal shift from pastoral idyll to urban social critique has prompted a number of questions about the structural integrity of the speech as a whole, in particular whether it is incomplete or whether it is actually an amalgamation of two speeches (Moles 1995, 179; Russell 1992, 12; Swain 1994, 169). The performance context of the speech is also unclear, as while there seems to be particular reference to Rome, with the mention of aqueducts (106), and the implicit exclusion of the Greeks (122), much depends on how we interpret the closing invective. This could be read as an attack on Roman decadence from the distance of a Greek city or, given the familiar literary basis of such criticisms, a self-reflexive reference to the city’s reputation, or even a sincere admonition to Romans themselves. In any case, as Moles (1995, 177–178) points out, the speech would have significance for multiple contexts, but this uncertainty demonstrates the ambiguities which surround the Euboicus.
These structural and contextual issues are made more potent by the self-consciousness with which the Euboicus manipulates the audience’s awareness of Dio’s biography. At the very beginning of the speech, the unnamed narrator (never explicitly identified with Dio) sets up an overarching tension between fact and fiction by stating that he will narrate something he experienced personally rather than heard from others (1). On the one hand, such assertions of a narrative’s veracity through personal experience are a hallmark of much imperial fiction, as Ní Mheallaigh (2008) demonstrates, and given the Euboicus’s potential connections to New Comedy (Highet 1973) and the Greek novel (Jouan 1977), this might well act as a knowing comment about its fictionality. On the other hand, for an audience aware of Dio’s exile such a claim problematizes this relationship between oration and biography rather than anchoring it, as Dio knowingly draws parallels between the huntsman’s isolated existence and his own experiences. When describing the purpose of the rustic narrative, the narrator calls it an example of both the life he himself has assumed (ὑπεθέμην) and that of the poor (81), with the double meaning of ὑποτίθμι as both “propose” and “assume,” encouraging the audience to compare Dio’s life with his subject-matter (Moles 1995, 179; Russell 1992, 132). And yet, throughout the text Dio consistently aligns himself with paradigmatic Greek literary models, which is perhaps slyly suggested by the opening comment that these experiences took place “practically in the middle of Greece” (1).2 For example, the narrator’s experiences of rustic hospitality after being shipwrecked while wandering round Greece are unavoidably Odyssean, and his philosophical persona ranges from Cynic to Socratic to Platonic (Moles 1995, 179). Moreover, the narrator’s oscillation between the rustics’ naïveté and the sophistication of his implied audience creates an ironical detachment which further destabilizes the audience’s perception of how far they should interpret the narrator’s experiences through Dio’s (Whitmarsh 2004, 460–463).3 The Euboicus, therefore, demonstrates not just the impossibility of separating Dio’s biography from his work, but also the extent to which Dio problematizes this relationship for his audience.
This all leads on to a final question, namely the purpose of the speech. According to Synesius, if the Euboicus is not considered to belong to Dio’s philosophical period, then it is impossible to see any of his works as philosophical (Dion 2.1–3). By contrast, in his Lives of the Sophists, Philostratus cites the Euboicus as an example of Dio’s sophistic works alongside the Encomium of a Parrot (VS 487), a decision strongly criticized by Synesius in the passage above. These contradictory reactions reflect the Euboicus’s ambiguity, as although the speech explicitly outlines its own moral stance about halfway into its lengthy narrative (81), there is no denying that if Dio aims to make a philosophical point, he does so in a remarkably indirect way. But as we have already seen, setting Dio as philosopher against Dio as sophist risks missing the larger point about the combination of these perspectives in Dio’s works. Instead, if we take the Euboicus in its extant form rather than trying to split it along its perceived fractures, it emerges as a deliberate problematization of these different facets of Dio’s self-presentation. For example, much like Dio’s “accidental” conversion to philosophy in Oration 13, his insistence upon having told a serious story rather than an idle one actually draws attention to his self-conscious digressiveness and flippancy, even when he claims to be advocating a moral point. By reading the Euboicus in this way, it becomes clear not only that it is impossible to distinguish Dio as sophist from Dio as philosopher, his biography from his rhetoric, but more importantly, that Dio himself actively problematizes and draws attention to the problems of such a rigid categorization of his life and work.
GREECE AND RO
ME
How, then, does Dio’s rhetorical manipulation of his own positioning fit into the broader context of the Second Sophistic? As has already been touched upon, Dio’s self-presentation as a wandering philosopher-exile is a distinctively imperial construction, and one which relies upon a contrast between Roman political power and Greek culture to make a claim for the meaning of the latter in the context of the former. But whether or not we take this contrast at face value has a long history of scholarly debate. Study of the Second Sophistic has long been dominated by the tendency to see Greek and Roman identities as a mutually exclusive binary, which reduces Greek writers to either obsequiously supportive or defensively subversive of Roman power. On this model, Dio’s position within this Second Sophistic context is defined by whatever pro- or anti-Roman attitude can be uncovered from his works, a position which we might already suspect to be inconsistent and difficult to assess as genuine. Recent scholarship, however, has challenged this simplistic dichotomy of Greek versus Roman and demonstrated the flexibility of such identities as constructs to be manipulated rather than innate, rigid forms (most prominently Gleason 1995; Goldhill 2001; Whitmarsh 2001). Viewed through this lens, Greek and Roman become instead fluid models for self-positioning rather than fixed allegiances, which can indeed be set in opposition but can also be combined, challenged, or collapsed entirely. Consequently, to situate Dio within his Second Sophistic context is a matter not simply of recognizing his manipulation of rhetorical personas, but also of exploring why Dio adopts such diverse, compound, and even contradictory positions.
These issues are epitomized by the Kingship Orations (Orr. 1–4), which outline the characteristics and duties of the ideal king (1.11). Moles (1990) in particular has explored these speeches extensively, but in this context they are most striking for how directly they address the stakes of this relationship between Greek culture and Roman power. Indeed, Orationes 1 and 3 purport to address the emperor himself, although they do not specify one by name, and Orationes 2 and 4 adduce Alexander the Great as an internal addressee, a key exemplar for Trajan (Moles 1990, 299–300). Consequently, Orationes 1 and 3 in particular have often been considered to have been delivered in Trajan’s presence, a context which raises the issue of Dio’s stance toward Rome. Dio’s flattery of his addressee as a noble ruler with near-godlike and yet well-disciplined power (Or. 3.3; see also Or. 1.36, 3.1–24) suggests that he is at the very least conscious of his audience, if not actually entirely sycophantic. By contrast, the more critical tone of Oration 4, with its disparaging presentation of Alexander, seems to suggest a more critical evaluation of Trajan, and validates Dio’s self-presentation elsewhere as a philosopher speaking truth to Roman power (as in Or. 45, discussed above). Consequently, this assumption that these speeches were performed before the emperor forces a false interpretive choice between the Kingships as obsequiously supportive of Roman power, or critically subversive of it. And yet, there is no external evidence that any of the Kingships were performed in Trajan’s presence. Another speech, the Nestor, claims that it will introduce words spoken before the emperor (Or. 57.11), and has led various scholars, most thoroughly Whitmarsh (2001, 325–327), to suggest that the Kingships were (re)performed in a Greek civic context. Rather than replicating a restrictive pro- or anti-Roman model, therefore, this new perspective instead questions the value of this imperial framework, whether recontextualized or entirely fictitious, and explores the stakes of Dio’s self-presentation as the emperor’s advisor within the broader possible performance contexts of the Second Sophistic.
The Oxford Handbook of the Second Sophistic Page 35