Antonius Diogenes an Lucian

Wot A Sharples on dead people, Swain on Lucian R. W. Sharples (University College London): More on dead people LCM 17.5 (May 1992), 74 I am pleased that my remarks (‘On Chrysippus, Sophocles, and dead people who aren't there any more’, LCM 16. 6 [Jun. 1991], 91-2) have prompted H. J. Blumenthal’s interesting comments on the use of Odyssey 11. 602 by the Neoplatonists (Pronouns, dead persons, and some Neoplatonists’, LCM 17. 4 [Apr. 1992], 64). I would like, however, to clarify one point. I entirely agree with Dr Blumethal's comment that the atrés of 602 is not so much an indication of the unsuitability fof the demonstrative to accompany a dead person, as a function of the need to explain the juxtaposition of earlier and later views of the dead Heracles’ location by defining one of them as the real one.’ I did not intend to suggest that aÿrés here was an example of the restriction of the demonstative pronoun to living people; rather, after referring to this in connection with the demonstatives oöros and fe, I went on to compare the insistence of Plato’ Socrates in Phaedo 115c that his dead body will not be his real self, and in that context to mention cases, including that in the Odyssey passage, where there is an issue over where the real self is located. aúrós came into the discussion simply as an indicator of which is the real self in these cases. (This was indeed noted by Erwin Rohde, who spoke of the distinction between an elôwAor and the fully animated aurds; Psyche, English tr. by W. B. Hillis, New York 1966, vol.1, p. 53 n. 79) As for other demonstratives, I noted that Socrates in the Phaedo is quite happy to refer to the corpse he will have left behind by the remote demostrative éxeivos. I take, indeed, the point that the insertion of Odyssey 11. 602 has only been prompted by the need to reconcile two versions of the myth; but that does not affect the fact that the word aërés could be used to contrast the real self with what was not the real self — whether by Homer or by Onomacritus — and it was the possibility of that contrast that was the only point of my comparison with the Phaedo passage. Dr Blumental's citation of Plotinus Enneads 4. 3. 27 indeed shows that the lines could be utilised to make a philosophical point, in spite of their dubious origin. Copyright © 1992 R. W. Sharples Simon Swain (All Souls’ College, Oxford): Antonius Diogenes and Lucian LCM 17.5 (May 1992), 74-76 According to Photius (Bibl. 111ab32ff.) the novel of Antonius Diogenes called The Incredible Things Beyond Thule was the ‘source and root’ of Lucian’s True History. It is unlikely that Photius means this literally. The statement also applies to the lost work called the Metamorphoses of Lucius of Patrae, of which the anonymous extant Lucius or Ass is an abridgement. Photius’ summary of Antonius has no trace of metamorphosis. Hence, as is correctly argued by J. R. Morgan (CQ 3511985], 475-490), Photius is talking in terms of chronology, believing as he did that Antonius was writing much earlier than Lucian and Lucius, about the time of Alexander the Great (Morgan p. 490). Antonius’ novel may be second century in date, if the two 2nd-3rd century papyri (PS11177; P. ‘Oxy. 3012) are anything to go by. He might still be a target of Lucian’s humour. However, as Morgan ‘argues (p. 490), Lucian’s (literary) parody fends not to be aimed at contemporaries. Certainly, Lucian does say that his targets in the True History are the ‘poets, historians and philosophers of old (rüv rada», 1.2). And this appears to be largely the case, even though in the second book of the True History literary parody gives way to more familiar targets of Lucian’s, the cultural stars like Socrates and Homer who are gently mocked as a way of mocking their imitators in Lucian’s own age. If there is no direct relationship between Antonius and Lucian, they may at any rate have had comparable aims. According to Photius (111a34-40), ‘Antonius says of himself that ronrfs éort Kapwdlas malards and that, even if he is inventing incredible lies (dmora Kai pevén wAdtrot), he does however have for most of his fiction the testimonies of older writers, from whom he compiled these things with much effort. He lists at the start of each book the men who have described such things before, so that his incredible stories should not seem to be without authority. Of recent translators Morgan alone (p. 482) takes rounris dor: Kapmdlas madaràs as ‘he is a poet of Old Comedy’. Henry in the Budé Photius has ‘le narrateur d’une intrigue ancienne’, obyoE

Swain on Lucian explaining in a note that ‘il va de soi qu'il ne s’agit pas, à cette époque tardive, de la comédie ancienne’, but ‘on donne ce nom [raya] à des satires ou à des contes fantastiques qui n’avaient pas de démonstration propre’.! Henry is followed by Sandy in Reardon’s very useful recent edition of English translations.2 Who is right? Henry’s assertion about «wuw6la goes back to Rohde? Rohde was writing before the accumulation of epigraphical evidence revealing a healthy interest by second sophistic Greeks in putting on productions of established comedies and in the composition of new ones.‘ So, although The Incredible Things beyond Thule is set in the distant past (cf. the reference to Aenesidemus, the early 5th century tyrant of Leontini, at 110a6), there is really no reason to take malaıd xwuqdlaas an ‘ancient story’; Antonius says, as Morgan has it, that he is a poet of Old Comedy. ‘Poet of Old Comedy’ makes one think of Aristophanes, still widely read in the second sophistic.3 Morgan, rejecting Reyhl’s notion that Antonius was referring to comedies written by himself, says rightly that the statement need only refer to the Incredible Things and suggests that it meant that Antonius’ novel contained obscenities which Photius suppressed or ‘fantastic parody’ that he did not understand $ The real explanation may be a little different. The narrative structure of The Incredible Things beyond Thule is immensely complex. It consists of boxes within boxes. There is a covering letter to Antonius’ sister, Isidora, apparently itself covered by another letter to one Faustinus; there is another letter relating the discovery of the tablets on which the story was allegedly written down; there is Alexander the Great who found them; thereafter a string of narrators — Erasinides from Cymbas from Deinias from Dercyllis from Mantinias — who relate the story through each other. This overblown structure begins to look like parody in itself.” That the piling on of details should not be taken seriously is confirmed by the top layer of covering, the letter to Faustinus, where Antonius makes the statement that he has ‘for most of his fiction the testimonies of older writers, from whom he compiled these things with much effort’ (110a36-38). Antonius overtly signifies that his complex chain of narrators is bogus and no guarantee of the truth, and happily admits that the ‘discovery’ of the Incredible Things is his own fictional use of the trite idea of Bücherfund.® It is worth noting that Apuleius in The Golden Ass also piles on contradictory details of the geographical origin of his first-person source, the narrator Lucius who had been transformed into an ass.? We are not supposed to be able to tell where Lucius came from. In the True History Lucian invites us to believe initially that he depends closely on sources: ‘I would cite [my sources] by name, were they not recognisable to yourself as you read’ (1. 1); the invitation has not gone unheeded.!0 However, the labour is a fruitless one, for as Lucian says at 1. 4, ‘since I had nothing true to relate, TR. Henry, Photius. Bibliothèque II (Paris 1960), 147. 2G. N. Sandy, in B. P. Reardon (ed.), Collecfted Ancient Greek Novels (Berkeley 1989), 781 (‘the author of an ancient story’). 3 E. Rohde, Der griechische Roman und seine Vor laúfer? (Leipzig 1914), 270 (251) n. 2, 377 (351) n. 1 (for Rohde’s later suspicions that Antonius was a comic actor in his own play see L. di Gregorio, Aevum 42 [1968], 199 n. 1). 4 Though he knew of some examples — op. cit. 270 (251) n. 2 (Antonius’ «wuwöla is ‘viellecht wörtlich zu nehmen’); some of the best evidence for the vibrancy of the festivals comes from victory inscriptions for the Theban Mouseia, which attest prizes inter alia for actors of old tragedy and old comedy (i. e. classical material) and both composition of and acting in new comedy and new tragedy (i. e. new productions; see A. Schachter, Cults of Boeotia II (BICS Suppl. 38. 2, London 1986), 176-8, nos xvi (IG VII. 1773), xvii (SEG 3. 334). 5 Though perhaps not always with ease: cf. Plutarch, Quaest. conviv. 712a on Old Comedy requiring commentaries. 6 Morgan 483; K. Reyhl, Antonius Diogenes: Untersuchungen zu den Roman-Fragmenten der ‘Wunder jenseits von Thule’ und zu den ‘Wahren Geschichten’ des Lukian (Diss. Tübingen 1969), 6 (though note 114 ‘Damit charakterisiert Antonius Diogenes auch seine Apista’); cf. di Gregorio loc. cit. in n. 3. 7 Cf. J.J. Winkler, Auctor and Actor (Berkeley 1985), 270. 8 It could be argued that Antonius is merely saying that there are parallels among older writers for the sort of adventures his heroes have, rather than for specific adventures; this seems rather unlikely. 9 Met. 1.1 Hymettos Attica et Isthmos Ephyraea et Taenaeros Spartiatica . . . mea vetus prosapia est . . [2] Thessaliam nam et illic originis maternae nostrae fundamenta a Plutarcho . . . prodita. 10 Notably by A. Stengel, De Luciani Veris Historiis (Diss. Rostock 1911).

Morgan on Virgil's 4th Eclogue never having had any interesting adventures, I turned to lying but of a far more honest kind than we see in others. For in this one respect I shall at least be telling the truth, when I declare that I am a liar”. If Lucian has used earlier authors, it is not as sources but as targets.11 There is no reason to think that he is really following them in details. At True History 1. 29 Lucian and his companions pass close to Cloudcuckooland. ‘1 thought of the poet Aristophanes, a wise man and a truthful one whose compositions are disbelieved for no reason’. Aristophanes is singled out for praise by Lucian because he had never pretended that his fantastic comedies were grounded in material reality. Herein may lie a parallel between Lucian and Antonius Diogenes. Both claim to be liars. Lucian says that his ‘sources’ were out-and-out liars who nevertheless professed to tell the truth, with the exception of one, Aristophanes, the inventor of Cloudcuckooland, who like Lucian himself was an honest fabricator. Antonius also totally undermines the authority of his ‘sources’ by putting forward a quite contradictory line of information (The only literary ‘source’ mentioned by name in Photius’ summary, Antiphanes of Berge, is slighted as ‘having spent too much time writing up marvels'.12). When Antonius asserts, then, that he is ‘a poet of Old Comedy’ he is once again staking a claim as an honest fabricator and is underlining that his Incredible Things is as intentionally parodic as Lucian’s True History. Copyright © 1991 Simon Swain Llewelyn Morgan (Ursinus): ‘Quantum sat erit’: epic, acne and the Fourth Eclogue LCM 17. 5 (May 1992), 76-79 cum canerem reges et proelia. Cynthius aurem uellit et admonuit ‘pastorem, Tityre, pinguis pascere oportet ouis. deductum dicere carmen.’ nunc ego — namque super ttibi erunt qui dicere laudes, Vare, tuas cupiant et tristia condere bella — agrestem tenui meditabor harundine Musam Ecl. 6. 2-8 The Augustan recusatio assumes an intimate correlation between political encomium and epic. Whether this reflects real pressure on Augustan poets to compose epics in praise of their patrons is a moot point. Certainly Virgil is not shy of contradicting himself: only 14 lines before the quoted passage we see Menalcas signalling Callimachean loyalties (cf. Callim. Aet. fr. 1. 29ff. Pf) and dedicating himself in perpetuity to the laudatio of Julius Caesar, all in the very same breath: dumque thymo pascentur apes, dum rore cicadae, semper honos nomenque tuum laudesque manebunt. Ecl. 5. 77-8 Nevertheless, fiction or not, the equation of epic and panegyric is a durable and important theme in Augustan verse, as is evinced by its regular reappearance in the work of Horace and Propertius, and elsewhere.’ If nothing else it served as a convenient peg on which to hang their championship of the literary ideals of the Hellenistic age. ! In the context of a poetic ethos which (officially) abjured epics and encomia the 4th Eclogue appears doubly aberrant, Not only is it entirely panegyrical, but it also seems to constitute an abject capitulation both to the travesty of epic represented by reges et proelia? and to the genuine article.: at 31ff., for example, a renascent Heroic Age envisioned by the poet duplicates not the original Heroic Age itself so much as the particular heroic deeds commemorated in epic verse. The passage is essentially Hesiodic in derivation, a distance descendant of the homily at Op. 106ff. on mankind’s progressive decline, of which the pernicious occupations of farmers, warriors and merchant seamen were supposed to be symptomatic; but its significance extends beyond the purely moralistic. Thetis (32) — as the mother of Achilles and wife of Peleus — anticipates more explicit references in 34 (Tiphys, Argo) and 36 (Troy, 11 For the method of Lucian’s parody cf. Piscator 6 (‘where else do I get the things I say, if not from yourselves, etc.?’) 12112a5-6: dv gnaw [Antonius] repl rovabrá tiva TeparoloyMuaTa Kareoxokarevaı. 1 Hopkinson, A Hellenistic Anthology, Cambridge 1988, pp. 98ff. 2 We have wars (bella 35, cf. 6.7; Troiam 36), heroes (16, 26, 35; Achilles 36), even a king (reget 17, occupying a position before the caesura corresponding to reges 6. 3). SWAIN Simon, Antonius Diogenes and Lucian : LCM XVII 1992 74-76. | When Antonius asserts that he is a « poet of Old Comedy » (Photius, Bibi. 111 a 3440), he is staking a claim as an honest fabricator and is underlining that his Incredible things beyond Thule is as intentionally parodic as Lucian's True history.