A Companion to Late Antique Literature

by Scott McGill

  In examining the relationship between classroom media and literary composition, each of these elements is of interest. The word‐lists confirm that alongside Homer, Hesiod and Menander shared “a reading audience in [Christian] Egypt” (Clarysse and Wouters 1970, p. 229). The set of chreiai attributed to Diogenes and material related to the fables of Babrius attest continued reliance on common literary content. Given the compositional building blocks consistently encountered in extant handbooks, a subsequent list comprised of twenty‐four maxims is as interesting.

  The fourth maxim in this alphabetically organized sequence – predictably – begins with delta: “An old tree (Δένδρον παλαιὸν) is not easily replanted” (P. Bour. 1). Illustrating the links between classroom and literary practice, in what has been deemed the earliest collection of the “sayings” ascribed to late ancient Egyptian monks, one encounters the same maxim reframed as a simple chreia. Countering assessment that premises resistance to literate pursuits as “one of the most characteristic features of ‘Eastern’ monasticism” (Marrou 1956, p. 333), it is preserved in a collection addressed to a Latin‐speaking audience: “A hermit said, ‘A tree cannot bear fruit if it is often transplanted. So it is with the monk’” (AP_PJ 7.36 [Ward]).

  A slightly elaborated Greek articulation remains aptly attributed to an “old man” (gerôn): “An old man said, ‘Just as a tree cannot bring forth fruit if it is always being transplanted, so the monk who is always going from one place to another is not able to bring forth virtue’” (AP_N 204/AP_GS 7.43 [Ward]). Elsewhere, the same maxim appears in a lengthier ergasia framed as an exhortation to young monks:

  A prolonged stay outside the cell is harmful [paraphrase]: it deprives you of grace, darkens your thinking, extinguishes your longing [cause]. Note how a jar of wine left in its place for a while to lie unmoved renders the wine clear, settled, and perfumed [contrary]. But if it is carried about here and there, it leaves the wine troubled, cloudy [comparison], and showing evidence at the same time of the unpleasantness and badness coming from the lees [example]. Compare yourself then to this example and draw benefit from the experience. Break off relationships with a multitude of people, lest your mind be distracted and disturb the way of stillness [epilogue]. (Evagrius, Foundations 8 [Sinkewicz])

  Belying depictions of “urban intellectualism facing off with desert wisdom” (Rappe 2001, p. 423), this third expansion of late ancient fragmentary content is attributed to Evagrius, a prolific desert abba. Originally composed in Greek, Evagrius’s deftly executed ergasia also survives in Syriac.

  29.4.2 P. Cotsen‐Princeton 1

  In contrast to the century of research that attends the P. Bouriant 1, P. Cotsen‐Princeton 1 is among the most recently published school artifacts. Like the more familiar Bouriant notebook, this Coptic codex is comprised of a varied range of content. As provisionally catalogued by Scott Bucking (2011), its seventeen sections appear to be uniformly pedagogical in focus. Contents include an extensive syllabary and a wealth of word‐lists. Largely drawn from texts in Hebrew and Christian Scripture complementary content, includes a list of nomina sacra and variously configured tongue twisters (chalinoi). The final portion of the codex is comprised of passages. Albeit less than systematically organized, the first is an excerpt drawn from Paul’s letter to the Romans; the last, a series of blessings. Situated between these concluding sectors is a penultimate collection of attributed ‘sayings’ or chreiai (P.Cotsen‐Princeton 1).

  These particular chreiai are designated by the editor as “part of an important tradition of monastic literature known as the Apophthegmata Patrum.” Here (as above), this genre is described as “a vehicle through which the moral and spiritual aspects of Egyptian monastic life could be taught” (Bucking 2011, p. 68). Examined within a wider literary frame, however, the pedagogical valence of such content remains implicit. Like the repurposed biblical detail that structures the codex as a whole, these texts readily serve both as technical models and as conduits for inculcating moral virtue.

  Preserved at a stage more developed than the maxims encountered in P. Bouriant 1, the passages readily exemplify the genre’s characteristic flexibility. The first, a narrative of considerable length, begins with a simple chreia: “Apa Basilios said that it is appropriate for the monk to live a life of poverty” (P. Cotsen‐Princeton 1, fols. 157–69; Bucking 2001, pp. 68–69). Two subsequent and relatively brief portions remain only partially legible. However, a final passage manifests classic chreic (and aptly monastic) form: “An old man said that …” (P. Cotsen‐Princeton 1, fols. 170–76 [Bucking 2011, pp. 68–69, pl. 94–100]). Examined in pedagogical context, the codex as a whole, and these passages in particular, challenge assessments that have characterized monastic literature articulated in “the language native to [a given] region” as the simple homespun wisdom of constituencies who remained “uneducated and suspicious of book learning” (Wilken 2012, p. 103). They again bely depictions that position “urban intellectualism facing off with desert wisdom” (Rappe 2001, p. 423).

  29.4.3 O.Col.inv. 766

  The hybrid character of a third piece of school evidence is as suggestive. Published by Raffaella Cribiore, it is inscribed on an ostracon of Theban provenance (O.Col.inv. 766; cf. Cribiore 1997). Penned in Greek, the preserved passage is drawn from a sermon, elsewhere attributed to Basil of Caesarea. Here, this extracted content – like the elaborated chreia in P.Cotsen‐Princeton 1 – has been repurposed to serve as a copying exercise and, more explicitly, a vehicle for classroom practice with accents and lexical signs (Cribiore 1997).

  Such pedagogical deployment of homiletic content adds provocative dimensionality to scholarly depictions of communities comprised of simple rustics “untouched by the literary culture and refinement that formed the outlook of their bishops” (Wilken 2012, p. 103). Further elucidating the static media and fluid content that linked ancient/late ancient classroom practice with derivative compositional habits, the sermon itself is emblematic of a textbook elaboration of the familiar maxim “Give heed to yourself:”

  “Give heed to yourself:” this admonition, like a good counselor who reminds you of human things will be useful to you when you are enjoying brilliant success and your whole life goes with the stream. And even when you are cast down by crisis it might profitably be recited again and again by your heart that you may not fall into boastful pride because of vanity nor for desperation become ignobly disheartened. Is wealth your boast? Are you proud of your ancestors? Do you find cause for glory in your fatherland, in physical beauty, in the honors universally given to you? Give heed to yourself for you are mortal, “for dust you are and unto dust you shall return.” Pass in review those persons who have enjoyed positions of eminence before you. Where are those who held the exercise of political power? Where the peerless orators? Where are they who had charge of the national assemblies – the famous breeders of horses, the generals, the governors, the sovereigns? Are not they all dust? Are not they all legend? Is it not true that a few bones are the memorial to the life of these men? (Basil, Homilia in illud: “Attende tibi ipsi” [CPG 2847]; cf. Cribiore 1997)

  Like the maxims encountered in P. Bouriant 1 and arguably incorporated into the penultimate passages of P. Cotsen‐Princeton 1, the core sentence – often attributed to one (or more) of the seven sages – finds echo across a broad swath of philosophical and monastic literary articulation. Rather than a “fragmenting of substantive thought” (Kaster 1988, p. 12), Basil’s skillful elaboration reflects classical deployment of standard media – the reworking of malleable content to address a new historical moment and/or audience.

  29.4.4 O.Cairo 44674.118

  A final artifact again affirms foundational late antique links between gnomic and chreic, biblical and apophthegmatic, classroom and literary source material. Faintly visible on two faces of a small “Epiphanian” ostracon is content comprised of material most broadly defined as two Coptic maxims and a chreia (O.Cairo 44674.118; cf. Winlock and Crum 1926). P
er Winlock and Crum’s provisional transcription, the verso’s “maxims,” in more familiar guise, double as Proverbs 13.7 and 13.13:

  There are those who make themselves rich, having nothing, and there are those who humble themselves, while being very [wealthy] (Prov. 13.7).

  He who despises a matter, he will be despised; the one who acts according to the commandment, [this one] is safe; nothing good will happen [(to a deceitful son)] (Prov. 13.13).

  The ostracon’s recto contains what appears to be a paraphrase of this content. It is presented as a chreia, again attributed to Basil. Elsewhere, it remains “unattested:”

  Apa Basilios – for who has ever been blessed because he had property, or who has been saved while in bodily rest.

  Although by virtue of traditional cataloguing this artifact has long escaped categorization as school related, both adoptive form and adaptive content appear distinctive. The combination of two “moral maxims” gleaned from Proverbs and a “saying” attributed to a famous monk remain pedagogically provocative (Cf. Larsen 2013b; 2017; 2018).

  29.5 Audience

  In her groundbreaking work on ancient education, Cribiore has underscored the challenges inherent to identifying more advanced literary strains of classroom investment (1996). The artifacts examined here affirm these assessments. The iterative media and modes through which late ancient “literature” is disseminated, often limit the use of either descriptive delineation or material manifestation to securely distinguish whether respective articulations should be assigned school and/or literary provenance (cf. Cribiore 2001; Larsen 2009, 2018). Uniformly patent, however, is the degree to which classroom media continue to define the trajectories of composition that ultimately transferred and transformed diverse cultural, religious, and compositional threads into the literature of late antiquity. As emergent sources serve as useful measures of both confluence and re‐configuration, they link disparate audiences in juxtapositions that remain implicitly hybrid.

  29.5.1 Maxim/ Chreia

  As students were encouraged to report “the assigned chreia ... with the same words or in others” (Theon, Gymn. 101 [Kennedy 2003, p. 19]), simply mimicking the teacher may at times have been the norm. For example, in elucidating the chreia, Aphthonius takes as his example the rearticulation of a well‐known maxim, here assigned to Isocrates: “Isocrates said: ‘The root of education is bitter, but the fruits are sweet’ (Progymn. 23 [Kennedy 2003, p. 98]; cf. Ad Demonicum 1.47). Ultimately, however, a student’s mastery was manifested in adept elaboration. For example,

  The blessed [Praise] Syncletica said, “It is a struggle and great toil at first for those who approach God, but then it is unspeakable joy [Paraphrase]. Just as they who want to start a fire are engulfed in smoke and reduced to tears at first and in this way attain the desired object, so too [ComparisonA] – for it says, ‘Our God is a consuming fire’ [Heb. 12:29] [Testimony] – must we start the divine fire within ourselves with tears and toil” [ComparisonB] (AP_GS 3.34 [Wortley])

  As elaborative elements are woven into an elegantly crafted ergasia, paraphrase and expansion masks the familiar form of Isocrates’s simple chreia. Less “simple homespun wisdom” (Wilken 2012, p. 105), than sophisticated manipulation of a classic rhetorical form, the verbal tenor of this late ancient reframing preserves both the chreia’s technical and morally useful (khreiôdês) character.

  29.5.2 Fable

  Deft adaptation is similarly illustrated in late ancient reworking of familiar fables. For example, included among content collected by Babrius, one encounters a storyline originally excerpted from the writings of Hesiod:

  Prometheus was a god, but of the first dynasty. He it was, they say, that fashioned man from the earth, to be the master of the beasts. On man he hung, the story goes, two wallets filled with the faults of humankind; the one in front contained the faults of other men, the one behind the bearer’s own, and this was the larger wallet. That’s why, it seems to me, men see the failings of each other very clearly, while unaware of those which are their own (Fabula 66 [Perry]; Cf. Diogenes Laertius 6.27).

  In late antiquity, the fable’s protagonist appears in alternate guise. Simultaneously, the overall “moral” is preserved as the narrative is recast to address a new historical setting and audience:

  A brother at Scetis committed a fault. A council was called to which Abba Moses was invited, but he refused to go to it. Then the priest sent someone to say to him: “Come, for everyone is waiting for you.” So he got up and went. He took a leaking jug, filled it with water and carried it with him. The others came out to meet him and said to him: “What is this, Father?” The old man said to them: “My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the errors of another.” When they heard that they said no more to the brother but forgave him. (AP_G Moses 1 [Ward]; Cf. AP_G Pior 3)

  Underscoring the inherent malleability of requisite forms, further condensation results in the same teaching being recast as a simpler chreia:

  Abba John said: “We have put the light burden on one side, that is to say, self‐accusation, and we have loaded ourselves with a heavy one, that is to say self‐justification.” (AP_John Colobos 21 [Ward]; Cf. AP_G Bessarion 7)

  As each articulation renders the lines that tether classroom practice with literary production at once subtler and more patent than perhaps at any other point in history, recurrent threads weave together both continuity and change.

  29.5.3 Narrative

  Recognition of derivatively deployed content also lends unexpected texture to longer narration. For example, a narrative included in the pedagogical writings of Plutarch commends the importance of interspersing “rest” and “labor:”

  For, just as plants are nourished by moderate applications of water, but are drowned by many in succession, in the same fashion the mind is made to grow by properly adapted tasks, but is submerged by those which are excessive. Children must be given some breathing‐space from continued tasks, for we must bear in mind that our whole life is divided between relaxation and application. For this reason there have been created not only waking hours but also sleep, not only war but also peace, not only storm but also fair weather, not only periods of vigorous activity but also holidays. In short, rest gives relish to labor. We may observe that this holds true not merely in the case of living creatures, but also in the case of inanimate things, for we unstring bows and lyres that we may be able to tighten them again. The body generally is maintained by hunger and its satisfaction, and the mind by relaxation and labor. (Plutarch, Lib. Educ. 9c–d [Babbitt])

  Alternately, and aptly reconfigured, in late antique parlance, the same pedagogical juxtaposition supplies the structure for a familiar portrait of Antony relaxing with the brethren:

  A hunter in the desert saw Abba Anthony enjoying himself with the brethren and he was shocked. Wanting to show him that it was necessary sometimes to meet the needs of the brethren, the old man said to him: “Put an arrow in your bow and shoot it.” So he did. The old man then said: “Shoot another,” and he did so. Then the old man said: “Shoot yet again,” and the hunter replied: “If I bend my bow so much I will break it.’ Then the old man said to him: ‘It is the same with the work of God. If we stretch the brethren beyond measure they will soon break. Sometimes it is necessary to come down to meet their needs.” When he heard these words the hunter was pierced by compunction and, greatly edified by the old man, he went away. As for the brethren, they went home strengthened. (AP_G Antony 13 [Ward]; Cf. AP_PJ 10.2)

  Here again, the subtle skein that links Plutarch’s pedagogical preoccupations with Antony’s investment in forming a new generation of brothers is difficult to ignore.

  A final series of exemplars is characterized by eminently simple assignation. Three variations of essentially the same “active” chreia, are respectively preserved in both Greek and Latin:

  It was said concerning [Amma Sarah] that for sixty years she lived beside the river and never lifted her eyes
to look at it. (AP_ G Sarah 3 [Ward]; Cf. AP_PJ 7.19)

  They said of Helladius that he lived twenty years in his cell, and did not once raise his eyes to look at the roof. (AP_PJ 4.16 [Ward])

  They said of Ammoi that though he was ill in a bed for several years, he never relaxed his discipline and never went to the store cupboard at the back of his cell to see what was in it. (AP_PJ 4.11 [Ward])

  The appearance of parallel, but expanded, literary elements in Buddhist narrative tradition, introduces broader questions of ancient/late ancient dissemination:

  In the Great Cave of Kurandaka, it seems, there was a lovely painting of the Renunciation of the Seven Buddhas. A number of Bhikkus wandering about around the dwellings saw the painting and said, “What a lovely painting, venerable sir!” The Elder said, “For more than sixty years friends, I have lived in the cave, and I did not know whether there was any painting there or not. Now, today, I know it through those who have eyes.” The Elder, it seems, though he had lived there for so long, had never raised his eyes to look up at the cave. And at the door of his cave there was a great ironwood tree. And the Elder had never looked up at that either. He knew it was in flower when he saw its petals on the ground each year.” (Buddhaghosa, The Path of Purification 38) [Bhikku Nanamoli])