The Oxford Handbook of the Second Sophistic

by Daniel S. Richter

  The Life is a work of balances and tensions, which despite the apparent closing down of interpretive possibilities through the dominant figure of Apollonius, in fact leaves a great deal of room for its readers, and leaves the ontological status of its protagonist, as a god incarnate or an exceptional man, an open question.

  18.2 HEROICUS AND IMAGINES

  18.2.1 Heroicus

  The Heroicus is a dialogue on the nature of heroes, that is, of the figures of traditional epic still potent in the contemporary landscape. The speakers in the dialogue are an initially skeptical Phoenician merchant and a Vinetender, who communes regularly with the soul of Protesilaus, the first Achaean warrior to leap ashore at Troy. The first parts of the dialogue set the scene in the Vinetender’s idyllic property, sketching a suitable place both for the continued epiphanies of Protesilaus and for the conversation on the “real story” of the Trojan War that follows. This early part of the dialogue sees the Phoenician’s rapid conversion from skepticism to belief, the very rapidity of which makes it difficult for readers to follow him.51

  With the Phoenician’s conversion complete, the Heroicus moves into its central and longest section, on the correction of Homer. Rewriting Homer, as has often been noted, was a popular sophistic pastime; perhaps the best-known example is Dio Chrysostom’s eleventh (“Trojan”) discourse, but there are also the supposed eyewitness accounts of Dictys of Crete and Dares of Phrygia.52 Like these texts, Protesilaus, as reported by the Vinetender, has some revisions to make to the Homeric account of the Trojan War. Homer, we are told, contacted the ghost of Odysseus, who acted as the poet’s inside source, but who made Homer swear that he would not mention Palamedes (43.12–14). This Faustian pact has vitiated Homer’s account, at least according to the Vinetender, who has his own source from beyond the grave.

  The long central section of the text gives details of the physiognomy, activities during life, and posthumous habits of all of the major heroes of the Trojan War. Dominating the dialogue are the figures of Protesilaus and Achilles. The former appears primarily as a hero of cult rather than of epic, unsurprisingly perhaps given his very brief appearance at Troy. Achilles receives the longest narrative of any of the heroes, beginning with his childhood53 and ending with his posthumous existence on the island of Leuke in the Black Sea (54), where he is now married to Helen. Perhaps the most remarkable development is the musical Achilles whom we see performing his own song, an invocation of Echo (55). The potential for this transformation lies in the fact that Achilles is the only character in the Iliad who sings (Il. 9.189) and is also the Homeric character whose style of speaking is closest to that of the narrating voice of the poem.54 The Philostratean Achilles becomes a metaliterary figure, embodying the echoing aesthetic of the Heroicus (and of the Corpus Philostrateum), with his invocation of Echo as Muse, and a song in which he immortalizes Homer, who had immortalized him.

  It is the image of Achilles’s afterlife, as a reflective yet still potentially violent presence, with which the catalog of heroes ends. We return briefly to the frame to see the lengthening shadows of evening as the dialogue comes to a close. The text as a whole moves from the arrival of the Phoenician from his mercantile world into the slower rhythms of the pastoral idyll, from there into the Homeric past and the heroic afterlife. This is a text, in other words, carefully structured around shifts in temporal mode, which brings its readers step by step to a state as near timelessness as narrative can approach: the afterlife of Achilles is not merely a thing of circles and echoes, it is also without growth and decay, and without consequences.

  As is the case with the Life of Apollonius, divergent views have been and are taken regarding the purpose of the Heroicus. It has been considered a piece of propaganda for the revival of hero cult,55 a merely playful piece of Homeric revision,56 and a secretly Epicurean and ironic critique of its religious subject matter.57 Even if readers are to see some degree of religious “seriousness” in the text, it is important not to lose sight of its sophistic and playful elements. Nonetheless, it is a recurrent feature of Philostratus’s works that such elements do not undermine the possibility of “serious” content. The Heroicus seems equally intent on undermining and establishing its own authority: the rapid conversion of the Phoenician should raise some disbelieving eyebrows, and an astute reader will note how similar the Vinetender’s reliance on Protesilaus is to Homer’s on Odysseus; we are told that Protesilaus is far more reliable, but by the close associate of Protesilaus himself. This subtle calling into question of its own sources does not go so far as to negate its contents altogether, but it does encourage a certain readerly distance and wariness: the serious play with traditions can only take place if there is no final authority to close interpretation down.58

  18.2.2 Imagines

  Like the Heroicus, the Imagines engages with the mythic past, this time through descriptions of sixty-five paintings in a private collection in the Bay of Naples. Here too, there is a striking treatment of time, freezing particular moments of myth within the painted image.59 When speaking of “the Imagines,” it is generally the first series of ekphraseis that are meant. The second set of Imagines which come down to us are written by a grandson of the author of the first set, in imitation, and as a kind of homage, to his grandfather’s work.60 To return though to the first: these share with the other texts of the corpus an interest in interpretation; much as Apollonius had spoken of the practices of educated viewers (V A 2.22), so the Imagines teach their readers how to achieve an educated viewing. The heaping or cataloguing approach which this text takes to myth can readily be paralleled in the central section of the Heroicus, and in the gradual accumulation of mythic predecessors used to characterize Apollonius, as well as in the serial approach of the Lives of the Sophists.

  Beyond offering descriptions of particular works of art, the text presents itself as a lesson in how to view. In the introduction, the Sophist who speaks these descriptions, states that he was staying in the house of a wealthy friend and admiring his gallery of paintings, when he was asked to give an account of them for his friend’s son and some other, slightly older, local youths. The aim of the text is not, he says, to recount the history of painting, but to give descriptions for the young, “from which they can learn to interpret and pay attention to what is admirable” (proem 3). It is in this light, as instructions in the art of viewing, that the following descriptions should be taken. They are far more than simply rhetorical exercises; they obliquely and with great sophistication enact issues in the viewing of art.

  One recurrent pattern in the Imagines is the reduplication of some aspect of the painting qua painting through the actions of the figures and objects within it. That is, some feature which all paintings must have by their nature is taken and explored through the objects represented: the arousal of the viewer’s desires and their inevitable rejection by the image are doubled by the figures who emphatically reject all desires (2.32 “Palaestra,” 2.5 “Rhodogoune”); the memorializing of the dead which images can perform is doubled by the depiction of such memorializing, whether verbally (2.7 “Antilochus”) or in the form of an image within the image (1.7 “Memnon”). In all of these instances, the content of the image is turned to a consideration of the nature of images in general.

  Blurring of the line between representation and reality is another recurrent move in the Imagines and one with complex ramifications. It is, firstly, part of what Newby has aptly called the text’s oscillation between erudition and absorption, that is, between a cool, intellectual control of the painting and an emotive immersion in it.61 Moreover, this blurring of reality and representation also adds a note of disquiet to the sophist’s contemplation of the aesthetic appeal of blood and violence. While the image remains an image, we can perhaps follow him in his appreciation of the bloom of blood against skin, but when the frame of the painting proves to be permeable and its contents accessible to our own world, the aesthetic distancing dissolves.62

  Further questions arise whe
n we move beyond the individual image: the overall structure of the series of ekphraseis becomes more elusive the more closely it is examined. Sometimes, images which are widely separated from each other form an evident pair (for instance, Memnon [1.7] and Antilochus [2.7]). On other occasions, there are sequences of related paintings (paintings of Heracles, 2.20–2.25). Attempts have been made to reconstruct the gallery, most notably in the ingenious study of Lehmann-Hartleben, who argued that Philostratus had on some occasions misunderstood the images and their relationship to each other.63 Another eminent restructuring of the images is that of Goethe.64 What the text offers, rather than any final “correct” structure, are countless possible associations between pairs and groups of images; it is in this respect a work which leaves itself remarkably open to reconfiguration and recombination. What the “corrections” of Goethe and Lehmann-Hartleben really demonstrate is the need felt by some readers to arrive at a finality which the Imagines themselves refuse.

  CONCLUSIONS

  The defining trait of these very different works is a profound and creative engagement with the Hellenic past. How this engagement takes place is, however, quite different in the various works. The Life of Apollonius condenses the Hellenic tradition into the person of Apollonius, while the Heroicus imagines the ghostly continuity of foundational events; the Imagines meditate on the past in miniature, and the Lives of the Sophists construct a partial history of the Second Sophistic, a movement which, as Philostratus depicts it, turned obsessively to the past, interpreting and performing it in the Roman present. The educative tone of Philostratus has often been observed,65 but this is not a bossy didacticism: the works are saved from this partly by the ingenuity and wit of their author, and partly by the consistent avoidance of allowing a final authority. What may appear to be such an infallible authority is invariably undermined in subtle ways. In a group of texts for which, I would argue, the nature of interpretation is a leading concern, this preservation of room to interpret is important; readers are not merely provided with models of interpretation but also with the opportunity to hone their own hermeneutic skills.66

  FURTHER READING

  There has been a marked growth in scholarship on the Corpus Philostrateum in recent years. Nonetheless, there are still relatively few volumes addressing the corpus as a whole: in addition to Anderson 1986 and Billault 2000, there is more recently the volume of essays edited by Bowie and Elsner 2009, and Miles 2017. There have also been several valuable books dedicated to specific Philostratean texts. For the Life of Apollonius, see Demoen and Praet 2009, Flinterman 1995, Schirren 2005, Bäbler and Nesselrath 2016; on the Heroicus, Aitken and Maclean 2004, and the German translation and extensive commentary by Grossardt 2006. Beschorner’s earlier translation and commentary (1999) remain useful, and the monograph of Hodkinson 2011 is a valuable addition. The Imagines have attracted some recent interest, including Baumann 2011; Costantini, Graziani, and Rolet 2006; Primavesi and Giuliani 2011; Squire 2013; and on the reception, Ballestra-Puech, Bonhomme, and Marty 2010.

  There are a growing number of important articles and book chapters. The work of Bowie on Apollonius of Tyana (1978), on Philostratus’s relationship to the novel (1994), and on the Lives of the Sophists and Philostratus’s own life (1982, 2009) are fundamental. Elsner’s studies of the Imagines (2007a, 2007b, 2001) and the geography of the Life of Apollonius (1997) have been justly influential.

  Along with the extension of secondary literature have come translations of the texts. The Imagines is still served by the aging Loeb of Fairbanks 1931; in French, see the translation of Bougot, revised by Lissarrague 1991, and in Italian, Abbondanza 2008, and Pucci and Lombardo 2010. Jones’s 2005 translation of the Life of Apollonius replaces Conybeare 1912. For the Heroicus there is the German translation of Grossardt 2006 and in English, Maclean and Aitken 2001, as well as the Loeb of Jeffrey Rusten, in a volume with the Gymnasticus translated by Jason König (Rusten and König 2014). In Italian, see Rossi 1997. The Philostratean Letters are available in a Loeb by Benner and Fobes 1949, and the Lives of the Sophists in the translation of Wright 1921. The Dialexis is translated by Swain in Bowie and Elsner 2009, 356–357, and also in Rusten and König 2014.

  For the text of Philostratus, we are still largely dependent on the edition of Kayser 1870–1871. A new edition of the Life of Apollonius, under preparation by Boter, is eagerly awaited; see the preliminary study of the manuscripts: Boter 2009. For the Heroicus, Kayser is superseded by De Lannoy 1977. Stefec 2016 improves the text of the Lives of the Sophists in innumerable details. Commentaries or extensive notes exist for some, but by no means all, of the texts in the corpus. On the Imagines, see Abbondanza 2008 and Schönberger 1968; on the Heroicus, Grossardt 2006. A commentary on the Life of Apollonius is in preparation by multiple authors, under the direction of Flinterman. In the meantime, the fullest notes remain those of Mumprecht 1983. For the Lives of the Sophists, see Civiletti 2002.

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