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FIGURES OF SILENCE IN DIO CHRYSOSTOM'S FIRST TARSIAN ORATION (OR. 33): APOSIOPESIS, PARALEIPSIS, AND HUPOSIôPêSIS*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 March 2013
Extract
Dio Chrysostom's First Tarsian Oration (Or. 33) is arguably one of his most entertaining works; it is certainly one of the most peculiar. The speech, which some scholars date to the reign of Vespasian (69–79 ce) and others to that of Trajan (98–112 ce), is addressed to the citizens of Tarsus, a prosperous city in the province of Cilicia in south-eastern Asia Minor. In terms of content and structure, the First Tarsian bears less resemblance to the more ‘political’ Second Tarsian (Or. 34) than to two of Dio's better-known speeches, the Rhodian (Or. 31) and the Alexandrian (Or. 32). In these, as in the First Tarsian, Dio severely criticizes his putative addressees – the given city's inhabitants – for practising an activity that he finds reprehensible and symptomatic of deeper moral failings. For the Alexandrians it is their uncontrolled and wanton behaviour at public performances; for the Rhodians their economically profitable but ethically suspect habit of re-dedicating statues by changing their labels. The First Tarsian's similarities with the Alexandrian are particularly striking: both feature a long exordium in which Dio explains why he has decided to blame and chastise, rather than praise, his listeners, followed by a sustained attack on the vice in question that employs a battery of remarkably parallel mythological allusions, rhetorical analogies, and anecdotes.
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Footnotes
*
Earlier versions of this article were delivered to audiences at the University of Waterloo and Florida State University; the discussions following those talks have contributed considerably to my thinking about this topic. Special thanks to Sira Schulz for her comments, especially since she is no friend of those who emit sounds from their noses. All translations are my own, unless otherwise indicated.
References
1 On the date, see the overview by Bost-Pouderon, C., Dion Chrysostome: trois discours aux villes (Orr. 33–35). T. II: commentaires, bibliographie et index (Salerno, 2006), 11–40Google Scholar.
2 von Arnim, H., Leben und Werke des Dio von Prusa (Berlin, 1898), 448–55Google Scholar; Bost-Pouderon (n. 1), 22–31 and 39, on the interrelations between all three speeches.
3 Or. 33.35 and 50. Subsequent citations of this oration will be by paragraph number alone and will appear in the text. I cite from the Greek text of Bost-Pouderon, C., ed., Dion de Pruse dit Dion Chrysostome. Œuvres. Premier discours à Tarse (Or. XXXIII), Second discours à Tarse (Or. XXXIV), Discours à Célènes de Phrygie (Or. XXXV), Discours borysthénitique (Or. XXXVI) (Paris, 2011)Google Scholar.
4 But see the discussion in the section on Ῥέγκειν below.
5 In the ninth century, Photius was already commenting on the opacity of the speech, referring to Dio's subject as ‘some strange and offensive custom involving the uttering of a sound’ (παράλογόν τι καὶ ἐφύβριστον ἔθος κατὰ φωνῆς ἀπήχησις; Bibl. 166b [in Henry, R., Photius. Bibliotheca (Paris, 1959–77), 109, 11–12Google Scholar]). Not much had changed over a millennium later; in the preface to his 1940 Loeb translation of the First Tarsian, H. Lamar Crosby admits a similar aporia: Cohoon, J. and Crosby, H. L. (eds.), Dio Chrysostom, vol. III (Cambridge, MA, 1940), 273Google Scholar.
6 For surveys, see Bost-Pouderon (n. 1), 149–59; Kokkinia, C., ‘A Rhetorical Riddle: The Subject of Dio Chrysostom's First Tarsian Oration’, HSCPh 104 (2007), 407–22Google Scholar. Bost-Pouderon (n. 3), 7–9, collects a few more recent items.
7 Callander, T., ‘The Tarsian Orations of Dio Chrysostom’, JHS 24 (1904), 67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Bonner, C., ‘A Tarsian Peculiarity (Dio Prus. Or. 33) with an Unnoticed Fragment of Porphyry’, Harvard Theological Review 35 (1942), 2 and 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 Highet, G., ‘Mutilations in the Text of Dio Chrysostom’, in Ball, R. J. (ed.), The Classical Papers of Gilbert Highet (New York, 1983), 95Google Scholar. Swain, S., Hellenism and Empire (Oxford, 1996), 214–15Google Scholar, declares that the real subject of the speech is homosexuality. Houser, S., ‘Eros and Aphrodisia in the Works of Dio Chrysostom’, ClAnt 17 (1998), 253–5Google Scholar, narrows Dio's object of censure to men who take the passive role in sexual relations. Cf. Jones, C. P., ‘Tarsos in the Amores Ascribed to Lucian’, GRBS 25 (1984)Google Scholar, 181: ‘“snorting” is obscure, but may be some kind of sexual license’.
10 Desideri, P., Dione di Prusa (Messina, 1978), 125–6Google Scholar; anticipated by Mras, K., ‘Die προλαλιά bei den griechischen Schriftstellern’, WS 64 (1949), 76 n. 18Google Scholar. See also Welles, C. B., ‘Hellenistic Tarsus’, Mélanges de l'Université Saint Joseph 38 (1962), 68Google Scholar; and Millar, F., ‘Local Cultures in the Roman Empire: Libyan, Punic and Latin in Roman Africa’, JRS 58 (1968)Google Scholar, 127: ‘perhaps…he is reproving the people of Tarsos for the peculiar accent with which they spoke Greek’. See further the variations of Pernot, L., La rhétorique de l'éloge dans le monde gréco-romain (Paris, 1993), 582Google Scholar; and Veyne, P., ‘L'identité grecque devant Rome et l'empereur’, REG 112 (1999), 543 n. 168Google Scholar. Tarsus had only became a ‘Greek’ city after Alexander; on its attempt to refashion a properly Greek ancestry via mythic founders such as Perseus and Heracles, see Bost-Pouderon (n. 1), 42–55, with reference to previous scholarship.
11 Bost-Pouderon (n. 1), 167–79, gives probably the best attempt at a solution so far because it explains both Dio's ‘orientalizing’ and his ‘sexual’ accusations. On effeminacy and Imperial Greek oratory, see Gleason, M., Making Men (Princeton, NJ 1995), 121–30Google Scholar; on Asianism and Imperial Greek rhetoric, see Pernot (n. 10), 371–80.
12 Welles (n. 10), 68. See also Jones, C. P., The Roman World of Dio Chrysostom (Cambridge, MA, 1978), 74CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ‘a more general relaxation of morals’. Bost-Pouderon, C., ‘Le ronflement des Tarsiens: l'interprétation du Discours XXXIII de Dion de Pruse’, REG 113 (2000), 646–51Google Scholar, proposes that Dio's target is the Tarsians' apaideusia, or lack of culture.
13 Kokkinia (n. 6). This ingenious solution persuasively resolves many of the contradictory things Dio says about the Tarsians' activity; unfortunately, one of the things about which Dio seems clear is that, if one is to take him literally, the sound that the Tarsians make emanates from the nose: τουτὶ…τὸ τῶν ῥινῶν (50), a phrase that Kokkinia does not discuss. In fact, she falsely claims (at 417 n. 52) that Dio's next sentence, ‘For you must not suppose that…some local disease has descended upon your noses’ (ἐπιχώριόν τι νόσημα ταῖς ῥισὶν ἐμπεπτωκέναι; 50), is ‘the only place in the speech where Dio speaks of the Tarsians’ noses'.
14 On the First Tarsian as ‘refused encomium’, see Pernot (n. 10), 582–3; Bost-Pouderon (n. 1), 269–70.
15 Bost-Pouderon (n. 1), 269: ‘une forme de prétérition’. On paraleipsis, see Lausberg, H., Handbook of Literary Rhetoric. A Foundation for Literary Study (Leiden, 1998)Google Scholar, §§ 882–6.
16 Montiglio, S., Silence in the Land of Logos (Princeton, NJ, 2000), 140Google Scholar, in a discussion of classical Attic oratory.
17 The On Style passages occur in discussions of brevity (βραχυλογία) and concision (συντομία) respectively; cf. Lausberg (n. 15), § 880, who notes that figures of omission are generally subsumed under the more general rubric of brevitas.
18 Contrast On Style 222 (= Theophr. F 696 Fortenbaugh), which assumes that the listener's act of inference will be immediately successful.
19 Montiglio (n. 16), 116 and 129, following Ricottilli, L., La scelta del silenzio. Menandro e l'aposiopesi (Bologna, 1984), 12Google Scholar.
20 Lausberg (n. 15), § 887. A favourite example of the handbooks is from Demosthenes' On the Crown (Or. 21.3): ‘I could on my part – but I do not want to say anything offensive at the beginning of my speech’ (ἀλλ' ἐμοὶ μὲν – οὐ βούλομαι δὲ δυσχερὲς οὐδὲν εἰπεῖν ἀρχόμενος τοῦ λόγου).
21 The in-depth study of Ricottilli (n. 19) is primarily concerned with emotive (or affective) aposiopeses (cf. Lausberg [n. 15], § 888), which highlight the emotional state of the speaker and the social taboos that force them to break off their speech; so too Montiglio (n. 16), 116–57. Modern rhetoricians tend to make interrupted speech central to aposiopesis; for ancient critics, what mattered was the ‘lapse into silence’ by the speaker, whether or not the sentence was grammatically incomplete (as noted by Lausberg [n. 15], § 889).
22 Cf. On Style, 254, where ὑπονοεῖν is used to mark what is implied in reference to obscurity: ‘And (strange as it might seem) even lack of clarity (ἡ ἀσάφεια) is often a sort of forcefulness, since what is figured out (τὸ ὑπονοούμενον) is more forceful while what is openly stated is despised’. For a discussion of the various associations of ὑπονοεῖν and ὑπόνοια, especially in relation to allegory, see Pépin, J., Mythe et allégorie, second edition (Paris, 1976), 85–7Google Scholar. As is well known, Plutarch (De aud. poet. 19E) notes that ὑπόνοια (‘hidden meaning’, ‘hint’) is the classical word for what was called ἀλληγορία, or ‘allegory’, in his own day; cf. ὑπόνοια in Xen. Symp. 3.6; Pl. Resp. 2.378D.
23 Translation from Kennedy, G. A. (ed.), Invention and Method. Two Rhetorical Treatises from the Hermogenic Corpus (Atlanta, GA, 2005)Google Scholar.
24 As Quintilian remarks, it is thus essential that ‘in aposiopesis what is left unsaid (quid taceat) is either uncertain or at least needs to be explained at some length…’ (9.3.60). Translation from Russell, D. A. (ed.), Quintilian. The Orator's Education (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2002)Google Scholar.
25 Bost-Pouderon (n. 1), 145–9; Cohoon and Crosby (n. 5); Bonner (n. 8); and the literalists listed in n. 9 above. The word ῥέγκειν means both ‘to snore’ and ‘to snort’.
26 One could also read Dio's closing exclamation – ‘I cannot say it in a more appropriate way (οὐ γὰρ ἔχω…εἰπεῖν εὐπρεπέστερον)' – to mean that he could not find a better, more accurate term for it, implying that ῥέγκειν was a poor substitute. Alternatively, it could refer to the fact that he was unable to use a more ‘respectable’ word; εὐπρεπής can be taken in both of these senses of ‘appropriate’.
27 In addition, Dio frequently uses musical terms to refer, metaphorically, to the nasal activity: e.g. τὸ μέλος: 36; μουσική: 42; ῥυθμός: 42, 56.
28 E.g. paragraphs 36, 45, 50, 55, 56 in Cohoon and Crosby (n. 5).
29 A point already noted in passing by Welles (n. 10), 68: ‘metaphor’; Kokkinia (n. 6), 408, 410.
30 Bost-Pouderon (n. 1), 257 n. 70, refers to this as an example of aposiopesis (‘réticence’).
31 Reiske, J. J., Dionis Chrysostomi orationes, second edition (Leipzig, 1798)Google Scholar. Κερχνίστριαν, a neologism derived from κερχνίς, is supplied based on his conjecture τὰς κερκνίδας for the manuscripts' τὰς κερκίδας at 38. On this issue, too complicated to go into here, see Bost-Pouderon (n. 3), 172–3 n. 5, 176 n. 1.
32 Bost-Pouderon (n. 3), 31 at paragraph 45, line 3.
33 I refer to the figure as huposiôpêsis, rather than periplokê or its approximate translation ‘circumlocution’ (see Montiglio [n. 16], 137), in order to emphasize its relation to the other figures of silence, despite the fact that it is not a standard term in the ancient rhetorical repertoire (it is absent from Lausberg [n. 15]). Periplokê appears as a figure in Pseudo-Hermogenes' On the Method of Forcefulness, 8; in his commentary on Method, Gregory of Corinth equates the figure with huposiôpêsis, quoting the definition of this latter term given by Menander Rhetor in the third century ce. The term huposiôpêsis also appears in the scholia to Demosthenes and Aeschines. On these issues, see Heath, M., Menander. A Rhetor in Context (Oxford, 2004), 97–8, 116–18, 121CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
34 F3 in Heath (n. 33), 97. Later in the same passage Menander comments that huposiôpêsis ‘hints (αἰνίττεταί) at what has been left unsaid’.
35 The close connection between these figures and the figures of silence is based on their shared interest in the ‘suspicion’ or the ‘hints’ left behind in the minds of the audience. The figure of emphasis, for example ‘leaves more to be suspected (relinquit in suspicione) than has been actually asserted’ (Rhet. Her. 4.54.67; cf. Quint. 8.3.83 and Lausberg [n. 15], § 888.1, on ‘emphatic aposiopesis’). The affinities can be seen in the following definitions: one type of figured speech proceeds ‘by hinting and insinuation’ (δι' ὑπονοίας…καὶ ἐμφάσεως): Apsines, Figured Problems, 5; ‘Another trope that must be used in figured speeches (εἰς τὰ ἐσχηματισμένα) involves paraleipsis and aposiopesis’: ibid., 27; ‘Emphasis is a phrase amplifying the thing stated by means of hinting (δι’ ὑπονοίας)': Trypho, On Tropes (in L. Spengel, Rhetores graeci [Leipzig, 1853–6], iii.199, lines 15–16). On figured speech, emphasis, and the First Tarsian, see the brief discussion by Bost-Pouderon (n. 1), 279–82.
36 An island near Tarsus, just off of the Syrian coast, originally Phoenician, but fully Hellenized by this time. Dio typically associates it with negative stereotypes of ‘Phoenicians’ as luxurious and dissolute. Cf. 42, where Dio similarly connects the degeneracy of the sound with ‘Phoenician’ music: ‘…now Aradian music prevails, and now it is a Phoenician rhythm that delights you.’
37 ‘Aposiopesis is a kind of expression that intensifies (ἐπιτείνων) what it passes over in silence’: Alexander, On Figures (in Spengel [n. 35], iii.22, lines 7–9). On ‘amplification produced by the suggestive force of the unsaid’, see Montiglio (n. 16), 129–30.
38 All of these practices were considered offensive: see Bost-Pouderon (n. 3), 27 n. 3, 172, 173.
39 In fact, the sound can even cause degeneracy, not merely symbolize it. At 40, Dio inveighs about the contagiousness of the sound and its ability to corrupt an otherwise sober soul. At 48–9, he vividly describes how the sound, emanating from the nose, enters through the ears of women veiled head to toe and infects their souls.
40 Bost-Pouderon, C., ‘Dion de Pruse et la physiognomonie dans le Discours XXXIII’, REA 105 (2003), 157–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar, has drawn up an impressive catalogue of parallels between the First Tarsian and the physiognomic treatises.
41 On this anecdote, of which a brief version featuring the Stoic Cleanthes in place of the anonymous physiognomist is told by Diogenes Laertius (7.73), see Gleason (n. 11), 77, and 55–81 on the general Imperial physiognomic obsession with the ‘hidden’ cinaedus.
42 Dio's remarks on physiognomy made prior to the anecdote (52) are similarly focused on detecting effeminacy, but until this point in the speech he has only connected the sound with ‘effeminates’ (androgunoi) in paragraph 39.
43 See Crosby (n. 5), 325 n. 1. Neither of Bost-Pouderon's commentaries (nn. 1 and 3) nor her treatment of this anecdote at Bost-Pouderon (n. 40), 166–71, offer any explanation. On sneezing in antiquity, see van der Horst, P. W., ‘Two Notes on Hellenistic Lore in Early Rabbinic Literature’, Jewish Studies Quarterly 1 (1993–4), 255–62Google Scholar, whose only comment on Dio's story is that it is ‘somewhat enigmatic’ (259).
44 This passage is bracketed as a possible interpolation (‘fort. excludendum’) by Bost-Pouderon (n. 40), 36; the only justification provided for this editorial decision is the fact that ‘its content relates to that of paragraph 41’: Bost-Pouderon, C., Dion Chrysostome. Trois discours aux villes (Orr. 33–35). T. I. Prolégomènes, édition critique et traduction (Salerno, 2006), 48Google Scholar.
45 On this passage, see Gleason (n. 11), 82–3.
46 Dio ends with a bizarre description of a hypothetical descent into depilatory perdition – first the beard is trimmed, then the face is completely shaved, then the legs, the chest, the arms, and finally the genitals – that concludes with a transformation into ‘effeminates’ (ἀνδρόγυνοι), which is the final word of the speech. In fact, Bost-Pouderon (n. 3), 39–40, marks these last two paragraphs (63–4) as an interpolation because they show Dio drifting away from his ostensible subject – the horrible sound that he has supposedly been at such pains to describe.
47 See Whitmarsh, T., Greek Literature and the Roman Empire. The Politics of Imitation (Oxford, 2001), 156–67, 215–16Google Scholar; Moles, J., ‘The Thirteenth Oration of Dio Chrysostom: Complexity and Simplicity, Rhetoric and Moralism, Literature and Life’, JHS 125 (2005), 134–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kim, L., Homer between History and Fiction in Imperial Greek Literature (Cambridge, 2010), 88–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
48 Lemarchand, L., Dion de Pruse. Les oeuvres d'avant l'exil (Paris, 1926), 125–6Google Scholar; Welles (n. 10), 68, suggests that it was ‘a burlesque attack on the city for its attitude toward philosophy’.
49 Whitmarsh (n. 47), 325–7, has suggested something similar for the Kingship Orations: the speeches are addressed to Trajan but may have been performed in Asia Minor as if they had been delivered to the emperor. On the circulation and transmission, authorized and otherwise, of Dio's speeches, see Or. 42.4–5 and Korenjak, M., Publikum und Redner (Munich, 2000), 166–7Google Scholar. For references to speeches delivered to multiple audiences, see Or. 11.6 and 57.11.
50 Bonner (n. 8), 1: ‘fiction?’; Welles (n. 10), 64: ‘literary’ not ‘actual’; cf. the brief summary at Bost-Pouderon (n. 12), 651.
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