The Oxford Handbook of the Second Sophistic
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In structure, the imperial measures of the second century are not different from the support that early first-century emperors had given to the cities and sanctuaries of the eastern provinces (cf. Spawforth 2012, 233–270). However, it is the sheer quantity of Hadrian’s benefactions that seem to have set or confirmed a trend. His example may have prompted more and similar benefactions by members of the municipal and provincial elites, and he himself may have been influenced by the magnificent style of living and lavish expenditure enjoyed by some Greek and Asian households of members of the wealthy Greek intellectual elite like Herodes Atticus (Galli 2002). Hadrian’s travels made personal contacts even more important, and access to the emperor was easier to obtain. The emperor’s open ear for excellent speeches and erudite talk encouraged people to dare such an approach in order to gain privileges for an individual or—via (rhetorically excellent) ambassadors—for a city and its sanctuaries or for a province (cf. Millar 1977, chaps. 7–8). A precondition of all this was knowledge of the art of erudite conversation and, most of all, the art of oratory.
38.2 PRIESTHOODS AND THE SUPPORT OF CULT AFFAIRS AND FESTIVALS
It would be misleading to highlight the priestly offices of sophists, orators, and philosophers in the Greek world without at least hinting at their other activities as benefactors in various fields, sometimes as magistrates or ambassadors of their hometown or province. As ambassadors they might have the prominent duty of enhancing the status of a city by winning permission for a second temple of the imperial cult (neokoria), such as M. Antonius Polemon obtained from Hadrian for Smyrna together with other cult-relevant awards like a sacred contest, theologoi, hymnodoi, and so on.17 A rich man, Polemon took over the office of strategos and was responsible for minting coins that made reference to Antinous, which is probably a hint of a short-lived cult that Polemon installed in Smyrna after the death of Hadrian’s beloved.18 Polemon belonged to the highest socio-economic strata of his province, as did the high priests of Asia, who were also acclaimed sophists:19 Ti. Claudius Polemon of Kibyra (IGRom. 4.883; 907 and more), perhaps related to the just-mentioned famous Polemon, was another such high priest of the imperial cult, as was his contemporary Sellius Sulla in the second century (IGRom. 4.1643). Literary accounts of such offices are rather rare: aside from Scopelian of Clazomenae (VS 515), Philostratus mentions in his biographies only Euodianus of Smyrna, a descendant of a family with many high priests of Asia (VS 596), and Heraclides the Lycian, who became high priest of Lycia (VS 612). The widespread engagement of sophists in the imperial cult was part of their social and political life and civic engagement (Bowersock 1973, 182). The existence of the imperial cult in the provinces added not only more festive days and festivals, new priesthoods, new sanctuaries and altars, but also a change in the kind of entertainment offered. Roman elements are added to the Greek ones, especially venationes and gladiatorial games; as the term “entertainment” may suggest, these elements were usually not regarded as part of the traditional Greek cult-oriented festival and they were therefore criticized in Greek intellectual circles, and not only by the sophists; this did not hinder the rich sophists named above from taking over these costly duties in the context of the imperial cult and so demonstrating their influence and special relationship with the highest authorities of the empire. Some of them held provincial high priesthoods and also a city’s priesthood of the imperial cult, but others held only municipal priesthoods, such as M. Flavius Antonius Lysimachus and the very rich Claudius Aurelius Zelos, both in second-century Aphrodisias (MAMA 8.501; SEG 26.1219), the rhetors Hermaphilus in Tomis, and Hermocrates (see above) and Nicomedes (IvPergamon 3. 31) in Pergamum.
However, only a few attestations of sophists holding cult offices concern specific nonimperial priesthoods, for example, in the first century Timocrates, priest of the goddess Roma in Cilician Antioch,20 Mestrius Plutarchus, priest of Apollo in Delphi (Plut. Mor. 700; CID 4.150), and L. Flavius Philostratus, priest of Hephaestus in Lemnos (IG 12.8.27, cf. Puech 2002, 282f.). In second- or third-century Athens, the sophist Apollonius was hierophant of the Eleusinian goddesses at Athens (IG II².3811); Licinnius Firmus was priest of Zeus Polieus (IG II².3563.29–30 with Anth. Plan. 322); Sospis, a pupil of Chrestos of Byzantium, was priest of the Altar (of the goddesses Demeter and Kore) in Eleusis (VS 591); and Apollonius of Athens was hierophant in Eleusis (VS 600).
Some of the second-century “kings of eloquence,” such as Herodes Atticus, who had once borne this title and had been agonothetes of the Panathenaia (cf. Puech 2002, 392–393), or the third-century historian and orator P. Herennius Dexippus, who had likewise been involved in financing the festival, the equipment of the ship and the clothing of the goddess (IG II².3198), were imitated in their cultic duties and title even by late antique sophists (IG II².3818).
In Philostratus’s account, the wealth and social standing of the sophists is an important topic and he often praises them if they had presided over festivals with great distinction and lavish expenditure,21 for example, Rufus of Perinthus, who presided over the Panhellenic festivals at Athens with remarkable distinction (VS 597). Not only Athens, but also other centers of eloquence profited from a similar commitment to that of Polemon, who presided over the Olympic Games inaugurated by Hadrian in Athens and took part in the procession on the sacred ship that was brought to the agora of Smyrna (VS 530, 541). Noteworthy also is Hippodromus the Thessalian of Larissa (VS 616), who twice presided over the Pythian Games with more expenses and glamor than ever and with an extraordinary sense of fairness as umpire. In addition, Hippodromus’s high reputation is manifest in his chair of rhetoric at Athens and the speech he held on the last day of the Olympic festival on the occasion of the final sacrifices (VS 617–618).
The impression one gets is that the rhetors were heavily involved in the religious life of the cities where they were citizens or in which they taught and lived. On the other hand, the many exemptions and privileges sought and received (see above and Laes and Stubbe 2014, 82–83) made any duty fulfilled for a city, its deities, or citizens seem, in contrast, an act of benevolence.
38.3 “RESTITUTIONS” OF CULT TRADITIONS
From the late third century BCE, individual and collective identities began to be defined with reference to the archaic and classical eras and their intellectual and cultural achievements, and to the long genealogies of wealthy citizens. There were several waves of restoring neglected traditional cults (or at least what was thought to be traditional at a given time). This was widespread under Augustus and during the imperial period.22 The use of local religious and mythographic traditions as arguments was reinforced by the growing role of embassies, oratory, and sophistic performance for competitive public display, and by the pursuit of individual recognition and common or communal privileges (Bowie 1970, 2007). Kata ta patria (according to old tradition) was an easy and telling argument. There are extant several literary and inscribed references to “reforms” and “restitutions” of cult and rituals in the imperial period, though their connection to sophists like Herodes Atticus is not always clear and the character of a “restitution” of an old tradition may be questioned in many such cases. We can observe that the recourse to ancient traditions at times created a completely new interpretation, as in the case of Herodes Atticus’s technical innovation of creating a mechanical means of transporting the Panathenaic vessel (Philostr. VS 550), or his gift of fashionable, pure white clothes for the Eleusinian procession, replacing the traditionally black garments of the ephebes, which made them lose their traditional context, obviously already no longer understood;23 or Tib. Claudius Nicomedes (ca. 180/192 CE), who received an honorific decree of the Ephesian gerousia because of his engagement on behalf of the famous cult of Ephesian Artemis. Nicomedes initiated a “revival” of the Lysimachean tradition of mysteries and sacrifices in the cult of Artemis (IK Ephesos 26.l.2–4) and added gifts of money, which the gerousiasts were to receive in the context of the feasts and banquets (l.11–12). Distributions of food
and money for participants at feasts and banquets had become fashionable during the second century CE and often underscored the socio-economic differences in society through the differing amounts of money that specific groups and individuals were to receive. The character of the cults was obviously changed by these innovations, just as the sacred landscape of Ephesus in 104 CE was changed by the newly organized procession in honor of Artemis, paid for by C. Vibius Salutaris (IK Ephesos 27). This procession, featuring a great number of imperial portraits, set a new focus on the Ephesian youth (Rogers 1991). Hymnody “as a form of spiritual sacrifice” (Chaniotis 2003, 187) was another important aspect which did exist before the imperial period but which in that period received a more prominent place in the hierarchy of rituals and in the esteem of the wealthy and well educated.24 Epigrams and poetry presented as hymns in sanctuaries underlined the exclusiveness of both the author and the reader who understood the texts.
All this attests to the antiquarian interests of the educated elites, of course, but above all these phenomena form one of many links from the contemporary Roman reality to an idealized past, an element that helped to strengthen and assert local identity and importance within the empire (e.g., Lafond 2005). Mythical origins and heroes, historical events and victories, protection by the gods, cult origins, and specific local cult features thus become the ingredients for a convincing speech, such as Dio Chrysostom’s Olympian speech (Or. 12; cf. Swain 1996, 197–206) or Aelius Aristides’s Isthmian spech in honor of Poseidon (Or. 46). This traditional, conservative aspect of the (intellectual) elite might be combined with contemporary popular taste, through an increase in the number of sacrificial animals and hence in the extent of the sacrificial banquet, or the distribution of money, the addition of animal shows and hunting and perhaps even a gladiatorial contest. Staging more and longer festivals, especially if they were intraregional or even Panhellenic events, provided a chance of receiving imperial permission for fairs with tax exemption (see De Ligt 1993, 253–255). The city, too, profited from the stimulation of the local economy. In addition, those of the elites who preferred the Greek tradition—with contests of musicians, of tragedy and comedy performances, poetry contests, and battles of words, but also with “Greek” athletic contests and weapon-dance performances—had also more occasions to celebrate, and occasional “Roman” contests demonstrated their closeness and familiarity with Rome and the imperial house.
It goes without saying that for the followers of Pythagoras these “Roman” festival traditions were inadequate, even repellent; for many Pythagoreans even most of the “Greek” traditions were too entertaining, and also not spiritual and ascetic enough. Laughter, excitement, and a full stomach, especially if filled with meat, were far removed from the “right” religious attitude.25 Criticism concerning the entertaining aspects of the festivals in honor of gods and deities was widespread and not restricted to the followers of Middle and Neoplatonism and Neopythagoreanism. This elitist philosophical and purist pseudo-Greek attitude is partly a new, sophistic way to express a deep personal religiosity, which is often combined with adoration of one universal highest divinity.26
38.4 THE SUBJECT OF CULT IN LITERATURE
Many texts of the late first to early third centuries deal in a learned manner with subjects of mythology and religion, discuss with a more or less philosophical approach divine qualities, the supernatural and superstition, mystery, and orphism, or integrate descriptions of cults and (real or “fictive”) ritual into literary texts and speeches. A great many of these texts are discussed in this volume.27 In this section the focus will be on the specific interest in cult.
In the late first and early second century stands the enormous oeuvre of the erudite Plutarch. He had been one of the two main male priests of Apollo in Delphi (from the mid-80s?), which may explain his two dialogues concerned with Delphi. Apart from the many notes and short remarks on cult and religion in the Table Talk and other texts, five treatises by Plutarch are concerned with the topic of religion in the widest sense: On Superstition, Isis and Osiris, The E at Delphi, The Oracles at Delphi No Longer Given in Verse, and The Obsolescence of Oracles.28 The respective topics are treated as learned disputes in which the literary authorities, their sayings, and interpretations are discussed. Thus, in Isis and Osiris, the Egyptian priests’ clothing and their purity and dietary rules (Plut. Mor. 352e–353f) are treated following the evidence of Hesiod, Herodotus, Hecataeus, Eudoxus, Aristagoras, and other authors, before Plutarch widens the topic to food in Egypt, priests and kings in Pharaonic Egypt, the Egyptian gods and their names, the etymology of Egyptian names, and the myth of Isis and Osiris and its variants. The other texts named above have a similar general structure—learned discussions of a number of subjects that are more or less loosely connected with the topic in the title.29 Compared to the prevalence of intertextual references and the art of citation, and to topics of mythology and (more) philosophical subjects, the treatment of religion in general, and especially the systematic treatment of single cults and rituals, seems to be of less interest to Plutarch.
Dio of Prusa at the end of the first century seems to present the standard treatment of how to deal with gods and oracles in public speeches on standard occasions.30 The text genre demands a conservative religious attitude, that is, accepting that the working of the gods is real and the oracles give good advice (e.g., Dio Chrys. Or. 13.9; cf. Desideri 2000). Speeches by later sophists held at public festivals may have presented a similar conservative attitude.31 The orators and their speeches are, however, less “banal” than one might assume and Dion turns out to be a “moralist,” with heavy criticism of many phenomena, attitudes, and conduct related to cult and religion in his time.32 Aelius Aristides presents more than one religious attitude in his work: there is the conservative pseudoarchaic one with descriptions of myths, cults, and rituals to honor and praise the powerful gods in his prose hymns to Athena, Dionysus, Zeus, Sarapis, Poseidon, Heracles, and so on (Arist. Or. 37–46); but he also introduces a mystical and very personal aspect in his devotion to Asclepius in his Hieroi Logoi.33
It is obvious that the “genre” of text determines the possible range of interpretations and the acceptable attitudes presented toward cult and religion. Not orations but short conversations are Plutarch’s main format for the topic. In the Obsolescence of Oracles the lightweight and short answer to the question why so many oracles no longer operate in imperial Greece is demography: fewer people proportionally need fewer oracles. However, Plutarch’s theme of the function of oracles is of relevance for other authors of the second century. The cynic Oinamaos of Gadara wrote About the Exposure of Cheats, in which he denies the possibility of prediction and the value of oracles (Hammerstaedt 1990), and the two “biographies” of Apollonius of Tyana (by Philostratus) and Alexander of Abonuteichos (by Lucian) are filled with allusions to the ongoing discussion about the value and efficacy of prophecy and oracles.34
The valuation of and search for spiritual experience (dreams, prophecies, oracles, with orphism, mysticism, with Neopythagoreanism and Middle and Neoplatonism) are one important intellectual trend at that time; another one is skepticism, with satirical overtones especially in criticizing everything connected to superstition, mysticism, and belief in miracles.35 However, it is not the “critical” philosophical treatises, but the elegantly styled digressions and anecdotes that give us details of what may have been the ritual and cult practice in sanctuaries with oracles of that time. Such room for details in the description of cult practice and religious background is found in the Greek novel, a strong literary format in the second and early third centuries. There is no Greek novel without religion, rituals, cult, priests, temples, and so on (Zeitlin 2008). However, there seems to be no standard set of divine interventions or use of the religious setting. The novel’s main subject, love and passion, with the necessary obstacles which the lovers who are the heroes of the works must survive so they can finally come together, is interwoven with miraculous salvation
s and interventions by deities. The setting in a sanctuary, initiation or other mystery rituals, or cult events like processions are often the background for surprising turning points: in Xenophon’s Ephesiaka (1.2), the Artemis festival in Ephesus, with its many bystanders, provides a lively background for the moment when Anthia meets her Habrocomes; in Achilles Tatius, the two lovers Leucippe and Cleitophon are rescued, after a short but decisive intermezzo in the Artemisium, because a sacred embassy from Byzantium arrives in Ephesus (7.12.2–4); and in Heliodorus, most of the male and female protagonists are priests or pretend to be priests, and, further, Theagenes and Charicleia fall in love at the ceremony of a torch ritual (3.1–6).36 It is not divine intervention but human-organized cult events to honor the gods that are the important elements of a turning point in the novels of the second and early third centuries. In addition, exotic settings add to the already charged atmosphere. In such a context, non-Greek gods, the staging of their cult, and the “otherness” of their priests and cult personnel are given some importance. Thus Isis is introduced into the Greek literary world with Xenophon of Ephesus and Apuleius: she flavors a novel with period atmosphere, but is no indicator of a groundbreaking change in the religious structure in the cities and the religious behavior of their elites.37 Mystery cults and exclusiveness go together, but this exclusiveness is defined by the group of the initiates and not necessarily by social status and literary education. It seems as if certain mystery cults, inter alia that of Melikertes-Palaimon, are of more “intellectual” standing.38