4.This is the widely accepted date for the allegorist, but it is by no means secure.
5.In the same way I would normally suppress the fact that I used Google to remind myself of the date of Dio’s Olympicus.
CHAPTER 30
1.This chapter does not distinguish between more “philosophical” strains of rhetoric (like Plutarch and Dio) and those of sophists like Lucian and Aristides, a distinction that may be meaningful in other contexts. My focus, as will become clear, is on texts that announce themselves as part of the historical, truth-telling tradition as opposed to those that do not.
2.In Bowie 1974, which continues to be the main starting-point for discussing this body of literature.
3.Sidebottom 2007.
4.Declamation was not precisely a “background” to written texts except in the sense that it would have been part of each sophists’ pedagogical training; the writings of Dio Chrysostom, Plutarch, Lucian, and Aristides, for example, seem to present a mixture of speeches that were performed and those that were not, but we cannot even be sure that any “performance” text we possess was delivered in the form in which we have received it (Russell 1983, 15).
5.I further explain my use of the word “hybrid” in section 30.2, “Greek”/“Roman,” below.
6.What Bubenik (2007, 345) calls the final stage in the development of koinê: the “nativized.”
7.A variety of other figures who write in Greek could also fit into this broader defnition of Second Sophistic: for example, Galen, who rejects Greek while wanting to show competence in it (Swain 1996, 60), and the Flavian Josephus, whose Atticism has long been recognized (Mason 2005, 75–76; see also Redondo 2000), and who has been included in Second Sophistic scholarship, e.g., Gleason 2001. Then there are native Italian writers like Aelian and the lost Asinius Quadratus (BNJ 97), who write in Attic Greek.
8.According to Aulus Gellius NA 5.18, Verrius Flaccus thought that ἱστορία in Greek referred to knowledge of current events (and thus was to be distinguished from annales), which suited Cassius Dio and Herodian at any rate.
9.ἱστορία: App. Preface 1; Cass. Dio 37.17; Herodian 1.1.3. συγγράφω and συγγραφή: Arr. Anab. Preface infra; Indika 17 (with additional references to the Alexander-history as συγγραφή at Indika 19, 21, 23, 26 and 40); Cass. Dio Preface. Arrian’s other main model, Xenophon, uses neither ἱστορία nor συγγραφή to describe his own work.
10.Schmitz 2011, 305–306 notes the proliferation of inscriptions and coins that celebrated men of the elite explicitly as sophistai and rhetores, and sarcophogi emphasizing their paideia, as well as Atticist lexica and rhetorical handbooks that “demonstrate the growing pressure for all members of the upper classes to acquire and display competence in linguistic classicism.” See also Borg 2004.
11.Momigliano 1978, 1. See especially Woodman 1988, 70–116 for Cicero’s theory on historiography and its subsumption into rhetoric. This need not imply a lack of regard for truth, however: as Laird 2009, 199–200 points out, Cicero says in De Legibus 1.5 that in history “everything is directed towards truth” (ad veritatem
12.A historiography “modeled after Newtonian physics, mechanistic, deterministic, prognostic, and deduced from the laws of human nature,” which was further claimed by “scientistic strands of Marxism . . . claiming that Marx was the Newton of historiography, who founded a deterministic prognostic science of historiography deducible from the economic laws of dialectical materialism” (Tucker 2004, 210–211).
13.Pioneered by Hayden White in the early 1970s. For a recent assessment of White’s thought and impact see Doran 2013.
14.Ameling 1997, 2476; Momigliano 1978, 9.
15.Murray 1897, 186.
16.For Thucydides’s use in imperial rhetorical education, see Iglesias-Zoido 2012.
17.For another interpretation of the Abdera scene, see Möllendorff 2001.
18.For discussion on the possible existence or nonexistence of each named author, see now the commentaries on Antiochianos (BNJ 207), Crepereius Calpurnianus (BNJ 208), Demetrios of Sagalassos (BNJ 209), and Kallimorphos (BNJ 210).
19.On Lucian’s parody of the “rhetoric of numbers,” see Greenwood 2006, 121–124 with discussion of Catherine Rubincam’s fundamental work on the rhetoric of numbers in antiquity (1979; 1991; 2003).
20.Translations of Lucian, Arrian, Appian, Cassius Dio, and Herodian are modified from Loeb.
21.Appian does not connect truthfulness and rhetoric in an explicit way. In Preface 12 he creates an impression of truthfulness through labor, explaining the way he worked on different “national” stories before bringing it all together: “Being interested in it, and desiring to compare the Roman prowess carefully with that of every other nation, my history has often led me from Carthage to Spain . . . at last I have brought the parts together.” But certainly a rhetorical force is contained in the overall structure of the preface, which over the course of eight Loeb pages’ worth of Greek overwhelms the reader with a “mini-periegesis” (Woolf 2011, 97) of the Mediterranean and the history of Rome’s conquests.
22.On Herodian and Thucydides, see Stein 1957.
23.This is also reflected literally in Lucian’s final image of the Pharos lighthouse, whose architect wrote his name on the base, covered it with gypsum on which the name of the reigning king was inscribed, and only later gained fame when water washed away the king’s name to reveal his own.
24.Price 2015 highlights Appian’s truth-claim about the Roman empire: it was uniquely able to overcome the stasis that normally destroyed a state.
25.Josephus (J.A. 1 pr.) is more explicit than our Antonine and Severan authors on the importance of truth-telling to historiography. He gives four reasons that people undertake history-writing. Some wish to show their rhetorical skill; others wish top gratify those about whom they are writing; Josephus counts himself among the third and fourth types who are driven to write history out of concern for the facts and for the sake of bringing such facts out into the open for the purpose of public edification. (Noted by Price 2015, 45 in connection with Appian.)
26.Habinek 2005, 50, for example, stresses the “limitless possibilities of language” found in handbook treatments of rhetorical style.
27.“It is not that the rhetorician has carte blanche to lie. Rather, society grants him a licence to create. The truth he speaks is not the truth of empirical science but the truth of art. His goal is not to reflect but to create, and to create something socially significant” (Habinek 2005, 53).
28.Also, our historians’ chariness concerning their future reputations has not been wholly justified by their fates: the Byzantines, for example, saw Polybius and Herodian as their models, not Thucydides, and Arrian is still considered the most reliable of the Alexander-historians.
29.Whitmarsh 2007, 29–30.
30.Mehl 2001.
31.See Eshleman 2008.
32.Acknowledging that there is no stable definition or way to characterize this “movement” of the Second Sophistic, Schmitz 2011, 305 provides the following limiting definition of the Second Sophistic as “a cultural movement that gained particular prominence in the second and third centuries AD, and that was characterized by linguistic classicism, improvised declamations on historical and judicial topics, and professional performers who would often come from the highest echelons of society in the eastern half of the Roman Empire.”
33.Swain 1996, 33–42; the subtitle of Whitmarsh’s 2001 monograph Greek Literature and Roman Empire.
34.Lost are a History of Affairs after Alexander, a History of Parthia, and a History of Bithynia. Lucian also mocks Arrian for writing a biography of the brigand Tillobarus, but this may refer to something contained in the Bithynica itself. See J. Radicke’s commentary on FGrH 1069 F 52 (Lucian, Alexander 2).
35.Bosworth 1993, 272.
36.Bosworth 1980, 35–36. For Thucydides’s influence in Arrian, see Tonnet 1988; for Herodotus’s, see Grundmann 1885.
&n
bsp; 37.Bosworth 1993, 226.
38.See especially Stadter 1981.
39.For the reception of Homer in the Second Sophistic, see Kim 2010.
40.Bosworth 1980, 25.
41.Note that the distinction between an “Ionic” Indika and an “Attic” Anabasis, which itself shows a heavy Ionic strain, can be overplayed (see, for example, Brunt 1976, xiv).
42.This can go beyond literary references: see Müller 2014 on Arrian’s eagerness to show his knowledge of Greek visual arts in the Periplus and the Anabasis.
43.As I have argued elsewhere, e.g., in Asirvatham 2005 and 2008, 113–114. By “Roman interest” I am referring to the imitatio Alexandri of Roman strongmen, not Latin writers, who were largely negative toward Alexander (see especially Spencer 2009).
44.Leon-Ruíz 2012, 179. Bosworth 1980, 8–11 argues for an early date based on Arrian’s apparent unfamiliarity in the Anabasis with, for example, Cappadocia (where he was legate in 131/132), with which he shows familiarity elsewhere. For partial support of Bosworth’s evidence and a dating in around the 120s, as well as a general discussion of the problem of dating the Anabasis, see Leon 2012, appendix 1. Appian’s borrowings from Arrian have been used to help date the latter, but as Brodersen 1988, 461 notes, we do not need Appian for Arrian’s dating.
45.Bowden 2013; Carlsen 2014.
46.Brunt 1976, ix.
47.Bucher 2000 is excellent on the program and structure of Appian’s work. The structure appears to have been as follows: the initial preface and book 1 deal with the Roman era of the kings, after which there are twenty-three books, each dealing with a chapter of Rome’s conquest of the known world (book 2: central Italy; book 3: Samnites; book 4: Gauls; book 5: Sicilians; book 6: Iberians; book 7: Hannibal (Second Punic War); book 8: Carthaginians, with an appendix on the Numidians; book 9: Macedonians, with an appendix on the Illyrians; book 10; Greece and Ionia; book 11: Seleucids, with an appendix on the Parthian Wars; book 12: Mithridates; books 13–17: Civil Wars; books 18–21: Egyptian Wars). Photius calls book 22 “the hundred years”; book 23 the Dacian book, and book 24 the Arabian book, with the implication that the last two were about Trajan. We have books 1–5 only in fragmentary form, and 18–24 are lost; extant are the preface, books 6–9 (without the book 8 appendix on the Numidians; book 9 on the Macedonians is fragmentary), and books 11–17 (without the book 11 appendix on the Parthians, which may have been unfinished).
48.Most have at any rate affirmed some degree of borrowing from Arrian (see, e.g., Brodersen 1988; Reuss, 1899).
49.Strebel 1935; see also Pitcher 2011, 759–760.
50.Woolf 2011, 95–98.
51.Gowing 1992, 279.
52.Bucher 2000 argues that Appian was writing for an Alexandrian audience who knew little of Roman history, which explains his penchant for treating Roman customs as foreign ones.
53.Hering 1935. Norden (1898) does not include Appian in the category of “free” Atticism alongside Arrian and Cassius Dio (1:344–407); the alternative category is “strict” Atticism, which belongs to writers like Aristides; for the Latin/Greek bilingualism of Appian and other sophists, see 1:363.
54.Richter 2011, 148–151. On Syrians and Rome in general, see Andrade 2013.
55.The evidence suggests that he wrote his work under Antoninus Pius (138–161) and Marcus Aurelius (161–180). Fronto’s letter to Antoninus Pius recommending Appian for a procuratorship provides the terminus post quem, since Appian mentions it in his preface. Appian states in book 13.38 (the first book of the Civil Wars) that Hadrian’s policy of having some parts of Italy ruled by a proconsul did not last long, but he does not mention that it was reinstated by Marcus Aurelius, which means he wrote this section in 166 at the latest). See Bucher 2000, 415–416.
56.The distinction between Antonine (avoiding contemporary history) and Severan historiography has been argued most strongly by Kemezis 2010.
57.Millar 1964, 39–40.
58.For a survey of Severan literature, see Whitmarsh 2007.
59.Bibliotheca 71. On the influence of Thucydides on Dio, see Litsch 1893 and Kyhnitzsch 1894.
60.More Roman than Greek: Gabba 1959, 378; (more subtly) Kemezis 2014, 27–28; Palm 1959, 81–82. Culturally Greek, politically Roman: Millar 1964, 191; Swain 1996, 404–405.
61.Kemezis 2014, 18.
62.Cass. Dio Roman History 55.12.
63.Cass. Dio Roman History 72.35.
64.This is not to say that these comments do not reflect the reality of the emperors’ educations; the contrast I am interested in between Cassius Dio and writers like Plutarch and Dio Chrysostom, for whom paideia is definitively Greek, and who only on the basis of its Greekness appreciate an emperor’s paideia.
65.Philostratus said that Aelian spoke Attic like a native: VS 2.31.
66.Initially by Alföldy 1971a, 430; also Kolb 1972, 161. Cf. Bowersock 1975, who describes Herodian’s treatment of Elagabalus as more sober than Dio’s.
67.On the relationship between encomium and Herodian (and others before him), see Zimmerman 1999.
CHAPTER 32
1.I am grateful to Aldo Tagliabue for helpful comments on a draft of this chapter.
2.See Casevitz 2002, 248: epistolography in the second century CE has become “un genre à la mode.” More specifically, Schmitz 2004, 87: “Fictional letters were one of the favorite genres of the first centuries CE; about thirty such collections have been transmitted to us.” Cf. Rosenmeyer 2006, 7, 29–30. Hercher’s huge edition (1873) contains most Greek letters surviving by literary transmission from all of antiquity.
3.On M. Aurelius’s correspondence with Fronto, see chapter 16 in this volume.
4.See Hodkinson and Rosenmeyer 2013, 1–3 on the history and reasons for this.
5.Holzberg 1994b, 51; cf. Hodkinson 2012, 51–53 for a further example (Alciphron).
6.Holzberg 1994a; Rosenmeyer 1994; 2001, 234–252. On letters as/and biography, see Trapp 2006; Gibson 2012, 2013, with note 46 below; on letter collections as narratives or epistolary novels, Morrison 2014.
7.Anderson 1997.
8.See Hodkinson 2007a, 283–288; Hodkinson and Rosenmeyer 2013, 27–30.
9.See, e.g., Smith 1990, 35–41 in detail on the transmission of [Hippocrates’s] Epp. through epistolary collections as well as attached to the Hippocratic corpus from at least the first century CE.
10.On the Latin (and some Greek) letters between Fronto and M. Aurelius, see chapter 16 in this volume.
11.For a survey of Greek and Latin epistolography on erotic themes, including some comparison between the two traditions, see now Hodkinson 2014.
12.On the Heroides in connection with Greek (but not Second Sophistic) epistolography, see Rosenmeyer 1996; in general, see especially Lindheim 2003; Rosenmeyer 1997; Spentzou 2003.
13.On these aspects of Pliny’s letters, see especially Marchesi 2008; Gibson and Morello 2012.
14.On “letter books” as units of composition as opposed to the usual, indiscriminately applied “collections,” see Hodkinson 2007a, 283–288.
15.On this question in general, see Rochette 1997, arguing very plausibly for more influence of Latin on Greek authors than is usually accepted. When it comes to the late antique (fifth century CE?) fictional epistolographer Aristaenetus, scholars are more ready to see allusions to Ovid: see Drago 2007, 36–77 and index locorum for passages of Ovid discussed in commentary. There is a slowly growing trend in scholarship on imperial Greek literature to be more willing to see Greek authors alluding to Roman ones (a very convincing case is Hubbard 2011), but this has yet to be explored in any detail in relation to Greek epistolary literature of the Second Sophistic.
16.In Benner and Fobes 1949.
17.Cf. Alciphron 3.24.2, 2.34.1, with Schmitz 2004, 98–101 for (somewhat less overt) self-consciousness, including about the “surprisingly” good Attic of his lowly characters. On Aelian’s Atticism, see Schmid 1887–1897, vol. 3.
18.Summarized by Hunter 1983, 6–15; Anderson 1997, 2194–2199;
the most recent contribution to the debate, Drago 2013b, is more cautious on the connections between Ael. and Alciphr.
19.See Benner and Fobes 1949, 344–345.
20.Hodkinson 2013a; Smith 2014 (still arguing for an early date, but not thereby dismissing the Epp.).
21.Anderson 1997, 2203 describes Alciphron’s Epp. as “miniature meletai”; cf. Schmitz 2004, 90–91; Malosse 2005; see now Ureña Bracero 2013 and Vox 2013b.
22.Schmitz 2004, 90; cf. 98–104 on their self-consciousness.
23.Hodkinson 2007a; König 2007; Rosenmeyer 2001, 255–321.
24.See Whitmarsh 2005, 54–56, 87–89.
25.See Schmitz 2004, 89–93, 100–102 for Atticism and the classical period; Biraud 2010, Hodkinson 2012 on pastoral; cf. Drago 2013a on pastoral in Aelian. Note here also another common tendency of the Second Sophistic employed by both Alciphron and Aelian: turning poetic genres to prose forms. Benner and Fobes’s (1949) notes on the texts of Alciphron and Aelian throughout indicate metrical clausulae which might indicate lines appropriated from New Comedy, but also are a feature of artistic prose in the Second Sophistic; cf. in general Norden 1898; Biraud 2010, 2012 for a new approach to Alciphron’s “prose poems” using stress accent instead of quantity-based rhythms.
26.Brethes 2007; Funke 2012; Hodkinson 2012; Höschele 2014.
27.See Thyresson 1964 on the source; Hodkinson 2007a, 293–297 on the particularly epistolary adaptation. On New Comedy in imperial Greek epistolography, see now Drago 2014, and Funke 2016, Marshall 2016.
28.Hodkinson 2012, 51–52. The order of letters and arrangement into books is not certainly by Alciphron, but both have their logic (see Schmitz 2004, 88–89; Hodkinson 2012, n.49); Epp. 4.18–19 anyway stand out in length compared to the remainder.
The Oxford Handbook of the Second Sophistic Page 115