Satirizing the Sophists: Lucian s Dialogues of the Courtesans. Courtesans in ancient Greek literature have received renewed attention in recent years,

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1 Satirizing the Sophists: Lucian s Dialogues of the Courtesans Courtesans in ancient Greek literature have received renewed attention in recent years, but nearly all scholarship focuses on courtesans in fifth- and fourth-century BCE Athens. Little work has been done concerning courtesans in the so-called Second Sophistic (c. 50 CE- c. 230 CE), a time period characterized by the activity of sophists who, preoccupied with the past, often highlighted Greece s greatest literary achievements by reusing themes, stock characters, plot lines, and language in their works. Particularly neglected is Lucian s Dialogues of the Courtesans, a second century CE work featuring short conversations of courtesans, their lovers, and their friends. This paper explores Lucian s purpose in choosing courtesans as a topic and seeks to show how the Dialogues fit within his corpus. In the Dialogues of the Courtesans, courtesans appear in circumstances familiar from Greek New Comedy but instead of the typical happy resolution, Lucian allows the situations to play out to their logical conclusions, notably not always with the same mirth as found in his other comic dialogues. In fact, though some of the Dialogues of the Courtesans seem lighthearted and scholars have described the whole work as light and airy (Casson xvi), overall the themes (poverty, violence, jealousy) are serious which contrasts sharply with other Second Sophistic courtesans who are often witty and wealthy. Lucian, however, shows how ridiculous such depictions are. His courtesans are poor and seemingly uneducated. They do not quote Homer and the tragedians. They are not famous for their wit. In creating such a picture, Lucian essentially marks as foolish anyone who would chose to use courtesans as a means to glorify ancient Athens or himself. And, of course, that anyone is likely to be a sophist. The Second Sophistic begins roughly at the birth of Plutarch in 50 CE and continues until some time in the third century. Literature more than historical events distinguishes this period, 1

2 during which the Greek city-states were under Roman dominion, though, as Whitmarsh points out, the term Second Sophistic has been used in scholarship to refer to a historical period, 1 to a literary Zeitgeist within this period, 2 and to the imperial-greek habit of oratorical declamation 3 (4). As a result, There is... no strong consensus among modern scholars as to what the Second Sophistic is, beyond a vague sense that it is localized in the Greek culture of the first three centuries CE (Whitmarsh 4). The diversely used name comes from Philostratus Lives of the Sophists. Now ancient sophistic, even when it propounded philosophical themes, used to discuss them diffusely and at length; for it discoursed on courage, it discoursed on justice, on the heroes and gods, and how the universe has been fashioned into its present shape. But the sophistic that followed it, which we must not call new, for it is old, but rather second, sketched the types of the poor man and the rich, of princes and tyrants, and handled arguments that are concerned with definite and special themes for which history shows the way. (481) 4 The Lives of the Sophists, published sometime between 230 and 238 CE, features anecdotes about a number of famous sophists. Though not strictly biographical, the Lives of the Sophists grants us the opportunity to see what the Second Sophistic and its sophists were like showy speakers whose rhetoric-heavy compositions were often ex tempore speeches on themes and topics based in the past and who placed a strong emphasis on display, erudition, and paideia (ancient Greek for culture and education). In school, most ancient Greek students during the Second Sophistic would have learned to read using Homer and Euripides (Marrou 153) then moved on to the lyric poets, Menander, and Demosthenes (Marrou ). Students who advanced beyond grammar school learned, among other things, to compose rhetorical speeches known as declamations. 1 Swain 2 Anderson 3 Schmitz 4 Translation by Wright. 2

3 The teacher decided what the subject was to be, laying down the rules and making suggestions. The speeches were then learnt by heart and delivered in public action being an essential part of oratory with a certain amount of show. The teacher and his fellow-pupils would be there, and sometimes, at least, the speaker s parents and friends. (Marrou 286) Originally, these speeches on imaginary themes were meant to prepare the would-be orator for real life by teaching him how to compose speeches that he would actually need for serious occasions (Marrou 202). Over time, these school exercises morphed into a genre of cultural entertainment outside of the classroom: It is not clear at what point such declamations became more than simply a part of rhetorical training and joined panegyric and commemorative speeches in the rôle of public entertainment: certainly by the second half of the first century A.D. declamation seems to have moved into the first rank of cultural activities and acquired an unprecedented and almost unintelligible popularity. (Bowie 5) As Philostratus illustrates, the performance of a declamation by one of the most successful of these sophists, like Herodes Atticus (571), was hugely popular and could command large audiences (Russell 76). The sophists declamations (along with other Second Sophistic literature) were characterized by a preoccupation with the glories of the past (Goldhill 8). As E. L. Bowie observes, the favoured themes of the sophists harked back constantly to the classical period... The most prominent themes derive from the history of Athens, the greatest of the classical Greek cities, or Alexander, the greatest individual Greek (Bowie 170). Sometimes the sophists also reached further back into their history in order to focus on Homer and the mythological period of Greece (Bowie 172; Swain 93). Even themes based in imaginary places and situations are vaguely set in the classical past (Russell 106), and this fascination was evident in more than theme. Archaisms in vocabulary choice and dialect also indicated that the literature looked backward (Bowie ; Russell 109). The sophists training, which involved a great deal of 3

4 imitation of classical authors, played a role in their choice of style and theme (Bowie 36), but, as McClure argues, the sophists fixation was not on the actual past, but an idealized, scholarly past found in libraries and monuments, fragments and ruins (McClure 27). Without political or military power, the Second Sophistic Greeks may have focused on an idealized past in order to feel powerful while still under Roman dominion (Bowie ). As recent scholarship has shown (Swain, Bowie, Bowersock), different sophists speaking on different archaizing topics could have had a variety of feelings toward their relationship as Greeks to Rome, but whatever their political reasons for doing so, focusing on events and stories from the past did uniformly allow sophists to flaunt their education and their knowledge of arcane facts and words. Courtesans, though a fairly popular feature in classical and Hellenistic literature, do not overtly represent bygone Greek military prowess, political acumen, the Greek relationship to Rome, or literary greatness, so the purpose of their use by Second Sophistic authors is not immediately clear. Courtesans were often associated with cleverness and therefore urbanity. Several fourth century BCE authors had written treatises on the witticisms of Athenian courtesans in particular (McClure 28). Thus representing Athens specifically and the city (versus the countryside) in general, the courtesan can point to the idealized past the sophists seek to recreate in their declamations and other works. As a result, courtesans allowed sophists both to recall Athens cultural greatness and to display their own erudition and paideia, because use of specific literary quotes from classical literature, even about courtesans, could show a sophist s thorough knowledge of literature and history. Three major works of the Second Sophistic, Lucian s Dialogues of the Courtesans; Book 13 of Athenaeus Deipnosophistae; and Alciphron s Letters of the Courtesans, focus on 4

5 courtesans. Athenaeus Deipnosophistae, a sympotic dialogue written around 200 CE, features twenty-nine named guests including sophists and philosophers at dinner discussing a number of topics and quoting from a wide range of Greek literature dating all the way back to Homer. Book 13 focuses exclusively on love, sex, and prostitutes. The major speakers are Cynulcus the philosopher and Myrtilus the sophist grammarian who face off on courtesans and paideia. Early in the book Cynulcus disparages courtesans and Myrtilus for his connections to them. Though he speaks negatively about the courtesans, Cynulcus uses examples of famous courtesans, as when he blames Aspasia, Pericles famed mistress, for the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (569f- 70a). Myrtilus defends himself in an encomium of hetaeras 5 in which he recounts several anecdotes, many quoted from the Hellenistic poet Machon, illustrating the witticisms of courtesans. The courtesans make jokes and plays on words (571a-610a passim), quote Sophocles (579a), and boast about their beauty and the prices they demand (571a-610a passim). Despite the fact that so many of the passages quoted by the dinner guests come from classical literature, McClure has recently argued that the picture of courtesans that emerges reveals more about the period in which the Deipnosophistae was composed than about the fifth or fourth centuries: As constructions of Greek speaking sophists living in Asia Minor, Egypt, and elsewhere in the Roman Empire, the hetaeras [courtesans] of the Second Sophistic reflect contemporary concerns with self-representation and display, nostalgia for the classical past and its importance for negotiating self-identity (McClure 2). The choice of quotations used (or ignored) by the individual speakers of the Deipnosophistae, then, is determined in part by their own status as sophists. As sophists, they are not striving for accuracy, but entertainment, proving a particular argument, and showing off. This means that the picture of courtesans in Athenaeus is not complete; instead the courtesans, as presented by the dinner guests, largely emerge as famous 5 The name given to the section by McClure (51). 5

6 women who sometimes earn enough to become rich and are often educated, witty, and attractive. Alciphron, a sophist writing at some point later than Athenaeus and Lucian, was clearly influenced by them both. His Letters of the Courtesans are fictional letters written by the fifth and fourth century BCE lovers of courtesans and the courtesans who are either famous themselves or are the courtesans of famous men. As in Athenaeus, the courtesans in Alciphron can sometimes be witty and are clearly well educated, as they are said to be the authors of many of the letters. In addition to being witty, many of Alciphron s courtesans are cheerful and playful, feeling mutual love for their lovers. Throughout the Letters, the women represent the idealized past of the sophists in which even lowly prostitutes can read and write, love and are loved. The world depicted is urbane and the lives of the courtesans happy ones. In addition, names like Menander, Praxiteles, Phryne, Bacchis, Thais, and Demetrius would be very familiar to Alciphron s audience. The letters reference well-known incidents from the lives of famous poets, authors and their courtesans. By including such characters and elements of their lives from their circulated biographies or works, Alciphron displays his sophistic paideia just as Athenaeus had done before him. Lucian s oeuvre is rather diverse, with examples of comedic dialogue, essays, prolaliai, and declamations and, as all authors of the Second Sophistic do, Lucian shows evidence of influence of the past in all his works. He writes in elegant Attic (Whitmarsh 46), not the spoken koine of his time, and many of his works take place in Athens featuring themes from earlier writers (Bowie 173). He also goes to great lengths to show off his paideia. As a result, it would not have been hard to guess, if Lucian had not told us, that he started his literary career as a practising sophist and commanded high fees (Bowie 173). Lucian, as a foreign-born immigrant to Greece, wanted to emphasize his mastery of Greek and its classics but he had to 6

7 find a way to be great among greats, to set himself apart from his contemporaries. He achieves this in two ways: first, in order to emphasize his own abilities, he points out the deficiencies of others in works like The Teacher of Rhetoric and The Mistaken Critic in which he directly attacks his sophistic counterparts who try to secure the greatest gains through the least effort. Second, he upstages his contemporaries by handling the same historical topics and themes but by going beyond them. He outdoes his models and satirizes the present and the past by finding and pointing out the ridiculous or inglorious in Greek culture and history featured in the classical examples, instead of glorifying Greek culture like many other Second Sophistic authors. His satire, then, is aimed not just at the topics which he treats but at those who rely on those topics without critical analysis of them. The Dialogues of the Courtesans, as one of these indirect attacks, shows the ways in which courtesan life, as portrayed by the other sophists, is laughably inaccurate. Courtesan life rightly understood and accurately presented does not glorify Athens. Lucian includes many themes familiar from fifth and fourth century BCE literature in his Dialogues of the Courtesans but repeatedly he thwarts the audience s expectations. He creates a comedy of errors reminiscent of the Menander s New Comedy in Dialogue 2 but instead of the courtesan being revealed as a marriageable daughter of an Athenian citizen, Lucian s Myrtium threatens suicide and there is no marriage at the end (2). In Dialogue 6, he features a mother/daughter courtesan pair but unlike Gnathaena s ribald daughter Gnathaenion referenced in Athenaeus who is a clever adult demanding large fees, Lucian s Corinna is clearly a young child. She cries when she realizes her mother has sent out her to be a prostitute but her mother claims they cannot survive without the money (6). Mention of financial burdens appear in several dialogues highlighting the life threatening poverty courtesans endure without a client s 7

8 support whereas the focus in Athenaeus classical quotes is often how rich courtesans can become. By pointing out the absurdities in the other Second Sophistic depictions of fifth-fourth century topics and themes, Lucian also calls attention to the ridiculousness of the authors who copy them without thinking through the scenarios logically. Over and over, the courtesans clearly display features from previous literature but again and again Lucian consistently allows the situations to play out to their logical conclusions, revealing how the stories would have likely worked out realistically and calling attention to the ridiculousness of those who would believe it could have been any other way. Lucian has been described as a mere imitator (Bompaire) and criticized for satirizing topics from so long ago (Highet). But, it is not just the past at which Lucian is poking fun. Throughout his works, including the Dialogue of the Courtesans, Lucian satirizes the Second Sophistic and his contemporaries obsession with the past. While other authors highlight the fifth-fourth century s greatest literary achievements by reusing themes, stock characters, and plot lines, Lucian goes beyond imitation as he reshapes these elements in such a way that they no longer glorify the past. The Dialogue of the Courtesans is one of the more inventive ways he manipulates themes from earlier literature. Instead of glorifying courtesan life or fifth century Athens, Lucian s courtesans are more realistic and the logical outcomes of the situations in which they find themselves point out absurdities in other depictions of these women. 8

9 References Alciphron, Philostratus, and Aelian. The Letters of Alciphron, Aelian and Philostratus. Loeb Classical Library,. Cambridge,: Harvard University Press, Anderson, Graham. The Second Sophistic : A Cultural Phenomenon in the Roman Empire. London ; New York: Routledge, Athenaeus, and S. Douglas Olson. The Learned Banqueters. The Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Bompaire, J. Lucien Écrivain, Imitation Et Création. Bibliothèque Des Écoles Françaises D'athènes Et De Rome, Fasc 190. Paris,: E. de Boccard, Bowie, E. L. "Greeks and Their Past in the Second Sophistic." Past & Present.46 (1970): Casson, Lionel. Selected Satires of Lucian. New York: Norton & Company, Inc., Goldhill, Simon. Being Greek under Rome : Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic and the Development of Empire. Cambridge, U.K. ; New York: Cambridge University Press, Highet, Gilbert. The Anatomy of Satire. Princeton, N.J.,: Princeton University Press, Lucian, A. M. Harmon, and M. D. Macleod. Lucian; with an English Translation. The Loeb Classical Library. 8 vols. London, New York: W. Heinemann; The Macmillan co. etc, Marrou, Henri Irénée. A History of Education in Antiquity. New York,: Sheed and Ward, McClure, Laura. Courtesans at Table : Gender and Greek Literary Culture in Athenaeus. New York: Routledge, Philostratus, Eunapius, Wright, Wilmer Cave France. Philostratus and Eunapius; the Lives of the Sophists. The Loeb Classical Library. London, New York,: W. Heinemann; G. P. Putnam, Russell, D. A. Greek Declamation. Cambridge Cambridgeshire ; New York: Cambridge University Press, Schmitz, Thomas. Bildung Und Macht : Zur Sozialen Und Politischen Funktion Der Zweiten Sophistik in Der Griechischen Welt Der Kaiserzeit. Zetemata. München: C. H. Beck, Swain, Simon. Hellenism and Empire : Language, Classicism, and Power in the Greek World, Ad Oxford ; New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, Whitmarsh, Tim. The Second Sophistic. Greece & Rome New Surveys in the Classics,. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press,

University of Groningen. Review of Laurent Pernot, Epideictic Rhetoric Kuin, Inger Neeltje Irene. Published in: The Bryn Mawr Classical Review

University of Groningen. Review of Laurent Pernot, Epideictic Rhetoric Kuin, Inger Neeltje Irene. Published in: The Bryn Mawr Classical Review University of Groningen Review of Laurent Pernot, Epideictic Rhetoric Kuin, Inger Neeltje Irene Published in: The Bryn Mawr Classical Review IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version