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PHILOSOPHY IN DIO CHRYSOSTOM, ON ANACHÔRÊSIS (ORATION 20)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2024
Abstract
This article uncovers the intellectual traditions behind Dio Chrysostom's Oration 20: On Anachôrêsis. The examination reveals a variety of subtexts and traditions with which Dio engages, and shows that at its core the text inspects three types of lives promoted by three philosophical schools: Epicurean, Stoic and Peripatetic. They are never referred to directly, however, which raises questions concerning Dio's strategy of not acknowledging the sources of the ideas with which he engages. The article also develops our understanding of anachôrêsis and the controversies surrounding it in pagan antiquity.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
References
1 On Dio's interaction with the pseudo-Platonic Sisyphus (in Or. 27) and Axiochus (in Or. 30), see Menchelli, M., ‘Discorso, dialexis, dialogos. Variazioni sul tema e generi letterari in Dione di Prusa (e Dione lettore dell’Appendix Platonica)’, in Amato, E. et al., Dion de Pruse: L'homme, son œuvre et sa postérité (Hildesheim, 2016), 277–93Google Scholar.
2 Piety: Euthphr. 5cd, courage: La. 190de, temperance: Chrm. 159b, justice: Resp. 331c, virtue: Meno 71d; beauty: Hp. mai. 286d. Cf. Xen. Mem. 1.1.16: Socrates enquired τί εὐσεβές, τί ἀσεβές, τί καλόν, τί αἰσχρόν, τί δίκαιον, τί ἄδικον, τί σωφροσύνη, τί μανία, τί ἀνδρεία, τί δειλία, τί πόλις, τί πολιτικός, τί ἀρχὴ ἀνθρώπων, τί ἀρχικὸς ἀνθρώπων (‘what is godly, what is ungodly; what is beautiful, what is ugly; what is just, what is unjust; what is prudence, what is madness; what is courage, what is cowardice; what is a state, what is a statesman; what is government, and what is a governor’).
3 Gerson, L.P., ‘Definition and essence in the Platonic dialogues’, Méthexis 19 (2006), 21–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 21.
4 On philosophical tradition of retirement, see Festugière, A.-J., Personal Religion Among the Greeks (Berkeley, 1954), 53–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 The examination of the relationship between the philosophical and the monastic use, and potential influence of the former on the latter, requires a separate study, which would take into account the intervening adaptation of the philosophical discourse of retirement by early Christian authors, from Origen to the Cappadocian Fathers. The importance of the pagan philosophical background for the Christian anachoretism is emphasized by Festugière (n. 4), 57–8, 66 and Guillaumont, A., ‘Anachoresis’, in Atiya, A.S. (ed.), The Coptic Encyclopedia (New York, 1991), 1.119–20Google Scholar.
6 Isoc. 10.41–4; Dio Chrys. Or. 11.11–14. Cf. also Dio Chrys. Or. 17.14 where responsibility for the outbreak of the Trojan war is assigned solely to Paris. Gangloff, A., Dion Chrysostome et les mythes. Hellénisme, communication et philosophie politique (Grenoble, 2006), 244Google Scholar connects Dio's subversions of myths with the Cynic tradition.
7 Anderson, G., ‘Some uses of storytelling in Dio’, in Swain, S. (ed.), Dio Chrysostom. Politics, Letters, and Philosophy (Oxford, 2000), 143–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 154.
8 Kim, L., ‘Dio of Prusa, Or. 61, Chryseis, or reading Homeric silence’, CQ 58 (2008), 601–21Google Scholar, at 601.
9 Cf. the maxim ‘the wise man will take part in politics, if nothing prevents him’ in Diogenes Laertius 7.121; also Plut. Stoic. rep. 1033C–E. For different adaptations of this principle within Stoicism, see Wildberger, J., The Stoics and the State. Theory – Practice – Context (Baden-Baden, 2018), 148–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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11 For more on such misrepresentation, which appears to go back to Epicurus’ lifetime, see D. Sedley, ‘Epicurus and his professional rivals’, in J. Bollack and A. Laks (edd.), Études sur l’épicurisme antique (Lille, 1976), 121–59, at 128–33; cf. Sen. Ben. 4.13.1 (Epicureans retreat to their gardens to enjoy a sluggish life resembling sleep and spend time eating and drinking); Plut. Non posse 1098C–D, Adv. Col. 1125D. On the temptation of a life of indulgence and unrestraint, away from public scrutiny, see Plut. An recte 1129A–B.
12 See G. Roskam, A Commentary on Plutarch's De latenter vivendo (Leuven, 2007), 69–84 on Stoic arguments against the Epicurean recommendation to withdraw from society.
13 Before Plato, from Homer onwards, ἀναχωρεῖν referred mostly to a retreat from the battlefield, from a confrontation or a difficult situation, and this is also the chief meaning of the derived noun from Herodotus onwards. The term referred to physical movement from one place to another, safer one; relevant spatial specificities may be indicated by the prepositional phrases (ἐκ, ἀπό ‘from’; εἰς, ἐπί ‘to’).
14 For the key significance of metaphors when speaking about the soul, see D. Cairns, ‘ψυχή, θυμός, and metaphor in Homer and Plato’, EPlaton 11 (2014), online at https://doi.org/10.4000/etudesplatoniciennes.566.
15 The myth was clearly of some interest to Dio, who devoted to it Orations 52 and 59, though Philoctetes, who did not handle isolation well, is not the best model.
16 Philostr. V A 7.16. For the development of deportation ad insulam, see S.T. Cohen, ‘Augustus, Julia and the development of exile ad insulam’, CQ 58 (2008), 206–17. Plutarch dedicates much space to islands as a banishment destination in On Exile.
17 This is in line with the Stoic approach. As B. Inwood, ‘Rules and reasoning in Stoic ethics’, in K. Ierodiakonou (ed.), Topics in Stoic Philosophy (Oxford, 1999), 95–127, at 127 argues, ‘the Stoics advocated a situationally fluid, heuristic process of choice’ in ethics (at 98); the necessary act of rational choice ‘exercises the practical reason, cultivation of which leads towards virtue’.
18 On Theophrastus’ conception of the contemplative life, see T. Bénatouïl, ‘Théophraste: les limites éthiques, psychologiques et cosmologiques de la contemplation’, in T. Bénatouïl and M. Bonazzi (edd.), Theoria, Praxis, and the Contemplative Life after Plato and Aristotle (Leiden, 2012), 17–39; S. McConnell, Philosophical Life in Cicero's Letters (Cambridge, 2014), 118–23. The Peripatetics appear to have differed in their approach in this regard; in particular, according to Cicero (Att. 2.16.3) there was a difference between Theophrastus and Dicaearchus (see McConnell [this note], 115–60 for a reconstruction of this controversy; cf. also the skeptical approaches to Cicero's evidence in P.M. Huby, ‘The controversia between Dicaearchus and Theophrastus about the best life’, in W.W. Fortenbaugh and E. Schütrumpf [edd.], Dicaearchus of Messana. Text, Translation, and Discussion [Abingdon and New York, 2001], 311–28 and W.W. Fortenbaugh, ‘Cicero's Letter to Atticus 2.16: “a great controversy”’, CW 106 [2013], 483–6). Hieronymus of Rhodes (third century b.c.e.), according to later sources, advocated an untroubled life (τὸ ἀοχλήτως ζῆν, Clem. Al. Strom. 2.21.127) and a life of tranquility (ἡσυχία, Plut. Stoic. rep. 1033C); see S.A. White, ‘Lyco and Hieronymus on the good life’, in W.W. Fortenbaugh and S.A. White, Lyco of Troas and Hieronymus of Rhodes. Text, Translation, and Discussion (New Brunswick and London, 2004), 389–409, at 395–403.
19 Philo is also influenced by the Septuagint, where the notion of ‘the isolated place’ (ἡ ἐρημία or ἡ ἐρῆμος) is a recurrent one and in which isolation is associated with revelation and close association with God—but also with danger and destruction. For ἡ ἐρημία or ἡ ἐρῆμος in the Bible and early Christianity, see A. Guillaumont, ‘La conception du désert chez les moines d'Egypte’, RHR 188 (1975), 3–21; R.B. Leal, Wilderness in the Bible. Towards a Theology of Wilderness (New York, 2004). On the desert as the anti-thesis of the city in Philo, see D.T. Runia, ‘The idea and the reality of the city in the thought of Philo of Alexandria’, JHI 61 (2000), 361–97, at 371–2; on the negative connotations of the desert in Alleg. 2.85, F. Calabi, God's Acting, Man's Acting. Tradition and Philosophy in Philo of Alexandria (Leiden, 2008), 170.
20 K. Reinhardt, ‘Das Parisurteil’, in K. Reinhardt, Tradition und Geist: gesammelte Essays zur Dichtung. Herausgegeben von C. Becker (Göttingen, 1960 [1938]), 16–36, at 17; T.C.W. Stinton, Euripides and the Judgement of Paris (London, 1965), 5, 8–10.
21 Fr. 361 Radt.
22 SVF 3.197. Cf. Ath. Deipn. 12.510b–c, where the poets of old are said to have represented the judgement of Paris as choice between virtue and pleasure.
23 Xen. Mem. 2.1.20–33. For the association between the judgement of Paris and Xenophon's Heracles story, see Ath. Deipn. 12.510b–c; Reinhardt (n. 20), 17; Stinton (n. 20), 8.
24 In fact, this inconsistency was criticized by philosophers from other schools. It is the first accusation that Plutarch makes against the Stoics in Stoic. rep. 1033A–C, and is mentioned by Serenus in Seneca, Tranq. 1.10.
25 For Socrates and Diogenes in Dio, see Brancacci, A., ‘Dio, Socrates, and Cynicism’, in Swain, S. (ed.), Dio Chrysostom. Politics, Letters, and Philosophy (Oxford, 2000), 240–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
26 Maximus of Tyre, for instance, besides mentioning multiple times Socrates and Plato, refers also frequently (sixteen times) to Epicurus. Stoic philosophers—Zeno, Cleanthes, Chrysippus—as well as Epicurus appear recurrently in Discourses of Epictetus.
27 The modern reader frequently finds such a seamless transition between different arguments and positions confusing and awkward; Cohoon in his translation of 20.11 adds ‘you will object’ (which has no equivalent in the Greek) to encompass the counterargument within the main speaker's discourse. Yet such partial, simplified dialogization is a recurrent feature in Hellenistic and imperial ‘popular’ philosophy, in particular in the Cynic and Stoic moralizing tradition with which Dio was particularly close: in this type of speech representation, the personality of the secondary speaker gradually vanishes and his individuality is obliterated. Cf. the simplified dialogization in the extant fragments of Teles, a Hellenistic Cynic philosopher: Jażdżewska, K., Greek Dialogue in Antiquity: Post-Platonic Transformations (Oxford, 2022), 210–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Wehner, B., Die Funktion Der Dialogstruktur in Epiktets Diatriben (Stuttgart, 2000)Google Scholar examines different dialogic modes in Arrian's Diatribes of Epictetus.
28 Pelling, C., ‘What is popular about Plutarch's “popular philosophy”?’, in Roskam, G. and Van der Stockt, L. (edd.), Virtues for the People. Aspects of Plutarchan Ethics (Leuven, 2011), 41–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
29 Pelling (n. 28), 57.