A Companion to Late Antique Literature

by Scott McGill

  Himerius, in borrowing diction from the poets and keeping to a reasonable time limit, is following the advice he gives in the “explanatory comment” (protheoria) for the speech (directly preceding it in the MSS). This brief preface gives some guidance, both to those who would use his speech as a model and to more general reading audiences, as to the nature of the type of speech in question and the criteria of success. He suggests that readers decide for themselves whether the epithalamios that he composed achieved what it set out to do, and if it has (which he also suggests), then it is a better guide to the techne of composing a speech than a protheoria could be – in other words, that it is a model worthy of emulation (Penella 2007, p. 10, on protheoriai). Himerius seems to have gone through the process of editing Oration 9, which presumably he did, in fact, deliver in some form. But the preservation in writing of this speech highlights for us the double aspect of epideictic’s aim to imbue often quotidian events with diachronic significance. First, the speaker connects the particular present event to timeless, universal examples via comparisons and, second, he tries to pass on the event to future memory. So also the classical epideictic genre, from its earliest prose instances like Isocrates’s Evagoras to such poetic forebears as Pindar’s epinicians, sought not just to compare the glorious past to the (often allegedly even more glorious) present, but also to add the hypothesis under consideration (whether person or thing or event) to this very repertoire of meaningful examples – in a sense, to turn the present into history. Himerius, by writing down and publishing his epithalamios, did this quite literally for Severus’s wedding. Yet (assuming a correspondence between the text and the prior verbal utterance), by glorifying the nobility of the families, the cosmic significance of Eros, and the worthiness of the bride, and by offering a rare display of learning and verbal beauty, he had already endeavored to persuade the attendant guests that they were at an event which was unique, worth remembering, and good.

  12.5 Monody

  Menander II, with good reason, ascribes the origins of the monodia to Homer, who has Andromache, Priam, and Hecuba pronounce monodies of Hector in the Iliad (434.10–15; Iliad 22.416–436, 477–514; 24.725–745, 748–759; see Alexiou 1974/2002). The purpose of this kind of speech, he explains, is to lament and express pity (434.19; threnein kai katoiktizesthai). Yet his instructions suggest that the successful monodist does not simply perform this emotional expression but perhaps chiefly provokes it in his bereaved audience: “You should use apostrophe:…O splendid and distinguished family – up until this day! What treasure do you possess like that you have lost?” (435.30–436.2; he advises a similar address to the city at 434.30). The orator is instructed to share in the grief as well. This is not a tasteless dwelling upon misfortunes but rather can be conceived of as a call for communal catharsis, building on an exchange of emotion between orator and audience.

  Although Menander’s topoi only explicitly envision the lament of individuals, the genre naturally could be extended to lament destroyed cities. Upon the destruction by earthquake of Nicomedia, where he spent some of his best professional years, Libanius composed a stirring monody that takes cues from his rhetorical predecessor Aelius Aristides (Karla 2007; Libanius had and admired a portrait of him (Ep. 1534)). The piece was first delivered in front of only four close friends before the written version of it was circulated much more widely (Ep. 33). His treatment of the event in certain letters describe the oration and its performance as having a curative effect both for him and his audience. The monody thus helps the bereaved overcome grief, partly, it seems, by vividly portraying the glorious city (61.7–10) and the disaster that strikes it (61.14–15). As the orator closes he expresses a desire to fly to the city and witness its ruin – though it would be horrifying, “the lover finds some consolation in throwing himself upon his beloved who lies dead” (61.23; trans. in Cribiore 2015). But his vivid ekphrasis has in a small way already allowed the audience some contact with fallen Nicomedia through his logos.

  Monody could be a deeply personal affair as well: Himerius composed a moving example on the death of his own son Rufinus (Or. 8), which focuses intensely on the father’s grief. He performs a monodic ekphrasis of the city of Athens, describing the many places that he will never visit again because they are filled with (formerly) happy memories of his lost son (8.14–19). Rufinus had died in Athens when Himerius was in Boeotia, preventing him from attending the funeral. He seems to reflect on the inability of words to replace actual presence at 8.9: “I am wrapping you in words, my child, since I have been prevented from wrapping you in a shroud” (see 8.19). It has been argued that the orator was in exile (see Penella 2007, p. 22). If so, his speech may signal an openness to being invited back and restored to Athens. Could this expression of grief thus allow everyone involved to effect a face‐saving restoration? In any event, this surprisingly subtle speech is on the whole quite faithful to Menander II’s recommendations for structuring the monody. Yet it is precisely in observing Himerius’s subtle departures from convention that we can see the ways in which he introduces themes more pertinent to himself than to the mourned (Watts 2015). It seems that we have much yet to appreciate about the creative and nuanced ways in which late antique authors communicated through highly formalized rhetorical channels.

  12.6 Epitaphios

  The funeral oration of Pericles (Thucydides 3.34–46) was the most famous original example of the classical Greek form of epitaphios (prose eulogy) (M.R. II.418; “Dionysius” 277; see Synesius, Dio 1.13). By the Roman period, however, what had originally been one form was generally distributed among the monody, epitaphios logos, and paramythetikos (speech of consolation). According to Menander (II) and actual late antique practice, the epitaphios was a form designated for some time after the death of the laudandus. Thus, while including some emotional lamentation (M. R. II.419.11–420.9), the speech was to include many of the topoi of a typical praise encomium (Russell and Wilson 1981, pp. 331–332). Libanius first composed his brief monody for Julian and later followed it with the much longer funeral oration (see Felgentreu 2007, Watts 2014).

  Most of our late antique examples are epitaphs of individuals rather than of groups. Gregory of Nazianzus’s epitaphios on Basil of Caesarea (Or. 43) is one of the most famous. It is very instructive to compare it with the eulogy delivered by the brother of the departed, Gregory of Nyssa, as the differing way each orator treats his relationship to Basil in his speech reveals much about the impact Christianity had on the culture of friendship, as David Konstan (2000) has shown. Nazianzen’s more traditional approach allows for ample depiction of his own intense relationship with the man (e.g. 43.14–22), while Nyssen’s explicit eschewing of the topoi of family, country, and so forth as “worldly” (PG 46.816A–B) signals that his version of epitaphios has already taken a major stride in the direction of hagiography – Basil was not simply virtuous but, even from childhood, as otherworldly as a true saint should be (789B). Both eulogies compare Basil favorably with holy figures from both Old and New Testaments (Nyssen, 789D, 792A; Nazianzen, 43.70–76), much as Isocrates praised Evagoras as surpassing Trojan War heroes in excellence (Evag. 65). The purpose of this Christianized traditional trope (M. R. II.420.31) is again not just sheer hyperbole but part of fashioning the deceased as a new moral paradigm for present and future generations of the church. Epideictic is in such a way the vehicle by which Gregory of Nazianzus presents Basil as a nomos empsychos for posterity (43.80).

  12.7 Festal Oration

  Whether they were celebrated on the small scale of a hamlet or deme or boasted the attendance of something as large as the entire Greek world (conceptually), religious festivals in the ancient Mediterranean were events central to the articulation and reinforcement of group identity (Iddeng 2012, for overview and investigative methodology). Through the Roman era festivals had, thus, become one of the main vehicles for propagating a self‐conscious Hellenism in the urban centers of the eastern Mediterranean. These celebrations of Greek culture had as t
heir forebears gatherings that had since the Archaic period been (alongside the symposium) one of the original contexts for performance and consumption of Greek literature – the world of rhapsodes, drama, dithyrambs, and so forth (see Hesiod Works and Days 654–657; MacDougall 2015, pp. 12). For this reason, the intertextual nexus pertaining to festivals was unusually dense and could be activated to subtle or striking effect by a skilled rhetor such as Gregory of Nazianzus (this subject has recently received an illuminating full length study: MacDougall 2015). Late antique “panegyric” speeches, depending on the needs of the rhetorical situation, could heavily involve other forms of epideictic. Thus for the Sminthiac Oration (to Apollo at Alexandria Troas) Menander’s topoi devote much space to praising the god (437.6), but Libanius’s Antiochikos (Or. 11), delivered presumably at the Antiochean Olympic games at Daphne, in substance is primarily a long “praise of a city” (see M. R. I.346.27); despite the original Elean Olympics being banned in 392, the Antiochene counterpart seems to have continued into the sixth century (Webb 2008, p. 35). Himerius addresses his oft‐cited Oration 47 to Basilius on the occasion of that governor’s visit to the Panathenaic games in the early 380 s, and he uses most of his space praising this “friend of the Muses” before moving on to a rhetorical mimesis of the Panathenaic procession (on which see MacDougall 2015, pp. 48–51).

  One guiding objective of the panegyrikos logos that is more or less present in all of these is to make manifest to the audience the deeper significance of the event that they attend. This is especially clear in Gregory of Nazianzus’s festal orations (Or. 1, 38–41, 45; Harrison 2008), where, so claims the orator, the real purpose of the gathering is theoria, contemplation of the divine – both “theology” and “economy” (e.g. Or 38.8). The concept of theoria had originally denoted honorary spectatorship at religious festivals by delegations from other poleis, before being turned into a metaphor for the highest aspirations of philosophy in the classical period, especially in Plato (Nightingale 2004). Thus Gregory reinserts the goal of contemplative theoria into the literal setting of ritual spectatorship, which had originally given birth to the metaphor. Despite the fact that Christian orators, including Gregory, frequently contrasted the new religion’s own festivals (optimistically) as more spiritual, in contrast to riotous body‐oriented pagan festivals, the tradition of seeking the philosophical essence of the panegyris, or heortē, is quite old. Gregory walks a path well‐trodden by Dio Chrysostom, who in his speech at Olympia urged the attendants to contemplate the true meaning of the famous statue of Zeus by Pheidias (Or. 12). In such a way Nazianzen speaks about festivals like any proper pagan sophist should (MacDougall 2015, pp. 19–26, 103–112). The performance and experience of this tradition of discourse is, thus, one of the major points of continuity between classical and Christian Mediterranean culture and will surely be a rewarding subject for further study.

  12.8 Pure Sophistry?

  Another subset of epideictic not so well represented in surviving late antique literature but nonetheless important is the paradoxical encomium, in which a sophist demonstrates his talent by taking up a theme so inglorious as to seem impossible, such as Helen, the fly, salt, or Thersites (Gorgias, Lucian, Polycrates (lost), Libanius (Gibson 2008, p. 229)). This genre was, since the fifth century BCE, widely admired and reviled – we may infer the former from evidence of the latter. Imperial rhetoricians took it up with renewed vigor (for ancient sources Burgess (1902, p. 157–166) is still a very useful starting point). Paradoxography, though less clearly tied to occasion than the above types, most provokes the characterization of epideictic as literature for literature’s sake – whether that is good or bad depends on one’s perspective (and either way it is an oversimplification – Pernot 2015, p. 69; Webb 2003). We owe antiquity’s most elaborate, extended, and successful example to Synesius of Cyrene in his Praise of Baldness, which also preserves an extended fragment of the lost speech of Dio to which it responds, the Praise of Hair. The Encomium calvitii stands out for its sustained engagement with more serious philosophical doctrines (e.g. 7.1, 8.1); the bald head is, of course, closer to the shape of the heavenly bodies (9–11). But this philosophical stance has influenced the literary aspects as well: Much of the treatise’s humor comes from its insistent repudiation of sophistic trifles and deception – Synesius disavows prooimia in the middle of his own prooimion (4.3). Addressing a philosophically educated audience through this irony, he invites the reader to examine and critique his arguments, as well as question the relationship between the authorial voice and the historical author (Seng 2012). This is an important interpretive strategy to keep in mind for other, less ironic specimens of epideictic rhetoric as well. It has recently been argued that Synesius wrote the treatise not as a youthful showpiece, as earlier scholarship generally held, but rather after his more “serious” treatises On Dreamsand Dio. In the latter text he unironically defends the usefulness of lighter literary fare for serious philosophers; thus this encomium may be part of a wider literary program (Seng 2012). Erasmus mentions this Encomium as an important precedent for his Praise of Folly in that text’s prefatory epistle to Thomas More.

  12.9 Conclusion

  At first glance, late antique epideictic can occasionally seem like a bewilderingly trite exercise in tired formalities. But the evidence suggests that this cultural discourse was, in fact, an object of intense excitement and fanfare for ancient audiences, who were after all exposed to much more of it than even most modern experts could boast (or tolerate). When approached with sensitivity to the generic constraints and historical context, as well as with imaginative sympathy, these texts can come to life with meaning, nuance, and even beauty. Recent work has emphasized how the study of epideictic literature has much more to teach us about, among other things, the history of emotions in late antiquity (Cribiore 2013, pp. 89–95) and the mechanics of popular morality (Pernot 2015, pp. 91–100) – for unlike many philosophical and polemical texts, most epideictic rhetoric is pronounced by some sort of authorized representative of the community addressed and aims to refresh consensus around principles that, in theory, the audience already accepts. Epideictic does aim at persuasion (Webb 2003), and what is at stake is generally the values that a culture holds dearest. These are never as sturdy and unanimously accepted as encomiasts like to portray them, and this is precisely why many people looked to orators to insist upon them. In an era of cultural shifts and social upheavals such as the late antique Mediterranean world, it is possible that epideictic rhetoric had never before been so consequential.

  ADDENDUM

  I have not dealt here with the “school” of Gaza (especially Procopius and Choricius), which is an exciting area of development for the history of epideictic and late antique rhetoric more broadly, particularly in the wake of a project to publish new editions of all the works of the Gazan rhetors in the Collection des Universités de France (Budé) series (beginning with Procopius [Amato et al., 2014; see also the collected volume by Amato, Thénevet and Ventrella 2014]).

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