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II. Sophistic Performance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2016
Extract
Imperial Greece was a culture of the written word. Texts were produced and circulated in impressive numbers., in the form of papyrus scrolls and the new technology of the codex book; some were then annotated, illustrated, commented on, or translated. Cities were stuffed with stone inscriptions recording decrees, awards, honours, donations, and commemorations. The imperial bureaucracy was in large part a machinery for the circulation of writing, in the form of edicts, rescripts, and letters. Even the very bodies of slaves were often tattooed. In an increasingly literate world, even those incapable of reading must have sensed the power and burden of the written words that hovered wherever they turned.
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References
1 See esp. Millar (1977); and, on literacy and power in the ancient world in general, Bowman and Woolf eds (1994).
2 See in general Harris (1989).
3 On classical Athens as a ‘performance culture’, see Goldhill and Osborne eds (1999).
4 Bowie (1990), 83–4; Furley and Bremer (2001), 24–5.
5 Alcock (1994); also Kennell (1988).
6 Augustan History, Hadrian 15.9; see further Whitmarsh (2004b).
7 See Easterling and Miles (1999), concentrating primarily on later antiquity.
8 Jones (1991).
9 On sophistic performance, see also Anderson (1994), 55–68; Gleason (1995); Gunderson (2000); and esp. Connolly (2001).
10 On the Lives of the Sophists, see Avotins (1978); Anderson (1986), 23–120; Swain (1996), 396–400; Billault (2000), 72–85; Schmitz (forthcoming); Whitmarsh (2004c). On the sources and historical reliability of the text, see Jones (1974), Swain (1991). According to the Suda (s.v. Thilostratus’ 1–3) there were three different Philostrati. The question of attribution has raged (see most recently Lannoy (1997)), but it is not in doubt that the author of the Lives of the Sophists was Flavius Philostratus, the most important of the Philostrati, and author of In Honour of Apollonius of Tyana (see ch. 5): cf. the cross-reference at VS 570.
11 On improvisation, see Russell (1983), Schmitz (1997), 156–9, Korenjak (2003).
12 This is the interpretation of Schmitz (1997), 156–9.
13 Korenjak (2000).
14 See Korenjak (2000), 68–95.
15 An allusion to the saying of Archimedes, ‘Give me somewhere to stand and I shall move the world’: see Reader (1996), 20.
16 See e.g. Whitmarsh (2001), 261–3.
17 See also Gunderson (2000), 149–83, with 161–2 on this passage.
18 On this passage, see further Russell (1983), 84–6; Anderson (1994), 57–9.
19 Comparable is the spat between the hirstute Timocrates and Scopelian, ‘who had given himself to pitch [used for depilation] and hair-removers’ (VS 536).
20 On which see ch. 1, ‘Sophistry in action’. On Herodes’ late arrival, see Korenjak (2000), 73.
21 There are extant Panathenaic Orations by the 4th-century BCE orator Isocrates and Aelius Aristides (see Oliver (1968)).
22 This is a relatively common theme: see Apsines, Art of Rhetoric 1.48, 72; 2.15; 3.8 Ç=RG pp. 1.339, 342, 351, 355).
23 Gleason (1995).
24 Gleason (1990), reworked as Gleason (1995), 55–81; Barton (1994); see also Hesk (2000), 219–27 on the classical Athenian background.
25 Greek, Latin, and Arabic texts of the physiognomical writers can be found in Förster (1893), now reprinted by the University of Michigan Press. A translation of Polemo’s Physiognomies is forthcoming, by a team led by Simon Swain.
26 Comparable is the case of Marcus of Byzantium (briefly mentioned above), who ‘was unkempt in his beard and hair, as a result of which most people thought him too much of a rustic to be intelligent’ (VS 529); but ‘the character of his brow and the intelligence of his face revealed him a sophist’ (VS 528). Onomarchus of Andros is another scruffy, rustic-seeming sophist (VS 599).
27 Pseudo-Aristotle, Physiognomies. 814b.
28 Gleason (1995), 57.
29 See e.g. Whitmarsh (2004a), 52–67.
30 See Rutherford ed. (1990) for an introduction to these ideas; further bibliography at Whitmarsh (2001), 35 n.147.
31 See further Whitmarsh (2001), 90–130. We have already seen that Philostratus simply uses the phrase ‘Greeks’ (Hellénes) to designate students of rhetoric (VS 571, 588, 613, 617; above, ch. 1 n. 35). The existence of lower-class sophists has been asserted, but is unlikely: see Bowie (1982), 54–5.
32 For ‘the man’ used of sophists, see also VS 537, 564, 586. A solitary female orator, Aufria, is commemorated in a second-century inscription from Delphi: see OSG, 156–7 (n. 53). Another female orator, ? Ioannia, is commemorated in a CE fifth-century funerary stele from Egypt (OSG, 315–16).
33 Gleason (1995); see also Gunderson (2000) and esp. Connolly (2003). Athletics were also a crucial site for testing manliness: see van Nijf (1999), (2001), (2003); and König (forthcoming). On the limited opportunities for women in the imperial Greek world, see van Bremen (1996).
34 Herodes’ full name was Lucius Vibullius Hipparchus Tiberius Claudius Atticus: the last name commemorates his father., Tiberius Claudius Atticus Herodes, usually known simply as ‘Atticus’. The name could in fact be viewed as either Roman or Greek: Solin (2001), 197–8. For Herodes’ family, see Spawforth (1980); Ameling (1983), 1.3-35; Tobin (1997), 13–22.
35 Cf. the description of him by Marcellus of Side as ‘the tongue of the Athenians’ (EG 1046.37 = Ameling (1983), 2.153 no. 146.37); also n.b. the honorific ‘son of Greece’ (IG 2 3604b.3 = Ameling (1983), 2.94 no. 69.3). For this kind of phrase, see Whitmarsh (2001), 105 n.59.
36 For Philostratus’ privileging of Herodes, see esp. Anderson (1986), 82–4; Swain (1991).
37 On this passage, see Ameling (1983), 1.155-8; Swain (1996), 80; Schmitz (1997), 190–1; Tobin (1997), 261–3; Whitmarsh (2001), 105–8.
38 On Favorinus, see Gleason (1995), esp. 3–20; Holford-Strevens (1997); König (2001); Whitmarsh (2001), 118–21, 167–78.
39 Philostratus, VS 489.
40 Polemo, Physiognomies in Förster ed. (1893), 1.160-4; this translation from the Arabic is based on Gleason (1995), 7, who also provides the identification of the unnamed subject with Favorinus on the basis of the reference to a eunuch, born without testicles, from the land of the Celts.
41 Cf. Lucian, Demonax 12.
42 On Aulus Gellius, see Baldwin (1975), and esp. Holford-Strevens (2003); for Favorinus’ predominance in Gellius, see Gleason (1995), 148–53; Holford-S trevens (2003), 98–130.
43 Wright (1921), 25 plausibly identifies this as an allusion to Aristophanes, frag. 598 KA: ‘But he [Euripides] in turn licked around the mouth of Sophocles, smeared with honey as it was, as though it were a jar’. That the fragment is preserved by Favorinus’ teacher (VS 490; Whitmarsh (2001), 137 n.15), Dio Chrysostom (52.17), makes it more likely that the phrase was known to him.
44 On the constraints imposed by expectations and tradition, see Schmitz (1997), 214–31.
45 The term prolaliai is sometimes used, but it has no ancient authority. On Lucian’s prologues in general, see Branham (1985) (also Branham (1989), 38–46); Nesselrath (1990). Dionysus and You are a Prometheus in Words similarly address audiences who find his work ‘innovative’ {Dionysus 5; Prometheus 3–4).
46 Gleason (1995); Schmitz (1997), 97–135.
47 See esp. Osborne (1985); Winkler (1990), 45–70.
48 See esp. Bourdieu (1989).
49 Bourdieu (1977), 171–83, at 171.
50 Gleason (1995); Schmitz (1997). Philostratus notes the defining importance of philotimia to sophistry (VS 491).
51 Pollux, e.g., puts them together in his list of words marking aggression (Onomasticon 1.178). See also e.g. Xenphon of Ephesus, Ephesian Story 1.9.9; Cassius Dio 6.23.4, 28.96.1, 41.53.2 (although the two concepts are explicitly distinguished at 56.40.4); Maximus of Tyre 16.4; Athenaeus, Sophists at Supper 17e.
52 See further Bowersock (1969), 89–100; Anderson (1994), 35–9.
53 VS 526, 580, 601. See further Whitmarsh (2001), 188–90.
54 Orations 5 and 6 are set in Athens in 413 BCE and argue for and against the proposition that reinforcements should be sent to Sicily. Orations 11–15 deal with the aftermath of the battle of Leuctra (371 BCE): should the Athenians take sides with the Spartans or the Thebans?
55 For text, translation, and commentary, see Reader (1996), whose referencing system I follow.