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Beyond the Second Sophistic
Beyond the
Second Sophistic
Adventures in Greek Postclassicism
Tim Whitmarsh
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
BerkeleyLos AngelesLondon
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University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
© 2013 by The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Whitmarsh, Tim.
Beyond the Second Sophistic : adventures in Greek postclassicism / Tim Whitmarsh.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-520-27681-9(cloth, alk. paper) e–ISBN: 978-0-520-95702-2
1. Greek literature—Rome—History and criticism. I. Title.
PA3086.W55 2013
880.9′001—dc232013002937
Manufactured in the United States of America
22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In keeping with its commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on Natures Book, which contains 30% post-consumer waste and meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z 39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).
CONTENTS
Preface
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: Beyond the Second Sophistic and into the Postclassical
PART ONE. FICTION BEYOND THE CANON
1.The “Invention of Fiction”
2.The Romance of Genre
3.Belief in Fiction: Euhemerus of Messene and the Sacred Inscription
4.An I for an I: Reading Fictional Autobiography
5.Metamorphoses of the Ass
6.Addressing Power: Fictional Letters between Alexander and Darius
7.Philostratus’s Heroicus: Fictions of Hellenism
8.Mimesis and the Gendered Icon in Greek Theory and Fiction
PART TWO. POETRY AND PROSE
9.Greek Poets and Roman Patrons in the Late Republic and Early Empire
10.The Cretan Lyre Paradox: Mesomedes, Hadrian, and the Poetics of Patronage
11.Lucianic Paratragedy
12.Quickening the Classics: The Politics of Prose in Roman Greece
PART THREE. BEYOND THE GREEK SOPHISTIC
13.Politics and Identity in Ezekiel’s Exagoge
14.Adventures of the Solymoi
References
Index
PREFACE
This volume consists of ten substantially revised and updated essays and five previously unpublished. I am immensely grateful to the original editors and publishers, all of whom have graciously permitted republication. It would be tedious, even if it were possible, to list all who deserve thanks for shaping the ideas in here, but at the risk of invidious omission let me record that my ideas about the Second Sophistic and its limitations have been formatively shaped by discussions with Jaś Elsner, Simon Goldhill, Constanze Güthenke, Brooke Holmes, Richard Hunter, Larry Kim, Helen Morales, Dan Selden, and Froma Zeitlin. I owe a huge debt also to those who have offered me the opportunity for discussion of these ideas in variously inchoate forms, among them Eran Almagor, Alain Billault, Peter Bing, Barbara Borg, Bracht Branham, Jésus Carruesco, Honora Chapman, Katharine Earnshaw, Marco Fernandelli, Tom Habinek, Owen Hodkinson, Marko Marinčič, Emeline Marquis, Francesca Mestre, Teresa Morgan, Maren Niehoff, Michael Paschalis, Jim Porter, Jonathan Price, Tessa Rajak, Zuleika Rodgers, Kim Ryholt, Thomas Schmitz, Eva Subias, Ruth Webb, and Nicolas Wiater. My wonderful friends and colleagues at Corpus Christi College—Ewen Bowie, Ursula Coope, Jaś Elsner (again), Peter Haarer, Stephen Harrison, John Ma, Anna Marmodoro, Neil McLynn, and Tobias Reinhardt—have been an ever-present source of inspiration and advice both intellectual and practical during the shaping of this project. I am also indebted to a number of my former colleagues at the University of Exeter (where I worked for the years 2001–7), especially Chris Gill, Rebecca Langlands, Francesca Stavrakopoulou, and John Wilkins: without their support, tolerance of crude experimentation, and tough quizzing the ideas in this book would never have made it to this stage. Erich Gruen, Fergus Millar, Thomas Schmitz, and Stephanie West have saved me from various egregious misprisions, although others will surely remain. Special thanks to my amazingly patient and forgiving parents (Judy and Guy) and children (India and Soli); this book is for them all.
All translations, unless otherwise indicated, are my own.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The following chapters are revisions of previously published material; permission from the various publishers to revisit that material is gratefully acknowledged.
Chapter 1, “The ‘Invention of Fiction,’ ” revised from “Prose Fiction,” in A Companion to Hellenistic Literature, edited by M. Cuypers and J. Clauss (Oxford: Blackwell, 2010), 395–411.
Chapter 4, “An I for an I: Reading Fictional Autobiography,” revised from the article of the same name in Cento Pagine 3 (2009): 56–66 (available online at http://www2.units.it/musacamena/ iniziative/SCA2009_Withmarsh.pdf [sic]); appears in slightly different form in The Author’s Voice in Classical and Late Antiquity, edited by A. Marmodoro and J. Hill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 233–47.
Chapter 5, “Metamorphoses of the Ass,” revised from the
