Late Antique Letter Collections A Critical Introduction and Reference Guide Edited by CRISTIANA SOGNO, BRADLEY K. STORIN, and EDWARD J. WATTS UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Oakland, California © 2017 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sogno, Cristiana, 1969. | Storin, Bradley K., editor. | Watts, Edward Jay, editor. Title: Late antique letter collections : a critical introduction and reference guide / edited by Cristiana Sogno, Bradley K. Storin, and Edward J. Watts. Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2016]. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2016014718 | isbn 9780520281448 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: lcsh: Classical letters—History and criticism. | Letter writing, Classical. | Civilization, Classical, in literature. Classification: lcc pa3042 .l38 2016 | ddc 880.09—dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016014718. Manufactured in the United States of America 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 16 15 CONTENTS Acknowledgments vii List of Abbreviations ix Introduction: Greek and Latin Epistolography and Epistolary Collections in Late Antiquity 1 Cristiana Sogno, Bradley K. Storin, and Edward J. Watts How to Use This Book 11 1. Latin Letter Collections before Late Antiquity Michele Renee Salzman 2. Greek Letter Collections before Late Antiquity Christopher P. Jones 3. The Letter Collection of the Emperor Julian Susanna Elm 4. The Letter Collection of Basil of Caesarea Andrew Radde-Gallwitz 5. The Letter Collection of Gregory of Nazianzus Bradley K. Storin 6. The Letter Collection of Gregory of Nyssa Andrew Radde-Gallwitz 7. The Letter Collection of Libanius of Antioch Lieve Van Hoof 8. The Letter Collection of Ausonius Charles N. Aull 9. The Letter Collection of Ambrose of Milan Gérard Nauroy 13 38 54 69 81 102 113 131 146 10. The Letter Collection of Evagrius of Pontus 161 Robin Darling Young 11. The Letter Collection of Quintus Aurelius Symmachus Cristiana Sogno 12. The Letter Collection of John Chrysostom 190 Daniel Washburn 13. 14. The Letter Collection of Synesius of Cyrene David Maldonado Rivera 205 The Letter Collections of Jerome of Stridon 221 Andrew Cain 15. The Letter Collection of Augustine of Hippo 239 Jennifer V. Ebbeler 16. The Letter Collection of Paulinus of Nola 254 Dennis Trout 17. The Letter Collection of Theodoret of Cyrrhus 269 Adam M. Schor 18. The Letter Collection of Isidore of Pelusium 286 Lillian I. Larsen 19. The Letter Collection of Sidonius Apollinaris 309 Sigrid Mratschek 20. 21. The Letter Collection of Ruricius of Limoges Ralph W. Mathisen The Letter Collection of Avitus of Vienne 337 357 Brendan McCarthy 22. The Letter Collection of Ennodius of Pavia 369 Stefanie A. H. Kennell 23. The Letter Collection of Aeneas of Gaza 384 Edward J. Watts 24. The Letter Collection of Procopius of Gaza 394 David Westberg 25. The Letter Collection of Barsanuphius and John Jennifer L. Hevelone-Harper 26. The Letter Collection of Cassiodorus 433 Shane Bjornlie 27. Papal Letters and Letter Collections Bronwen Neil List of Contributors 467 Index 469 449 418 175 TWENTY-FOUR The Letter Collection of Procopius of Gaza DAVID WESTBERG Procopius (ca. 465–after 526) was active as a sophist in Gaza. Apart from his own letters—the subject of this essay—our primary source of information for Procopius’s life and activities is the funeral oration by Choricius, his pupil and successor as city sophist in Gaza.1 Procopius was a Christian, born in Gaza, and received his education in Alexandria, after which he returned to his native city, where he spent the rest of his life. He had three brothers—Philippus, Victor, and Zacharias—to whom many of his letters are addressed.2 He was probably a member of the board of proteuontes in Gaza (Ep. 42), and through his brothers, particularly Philippus and Zacharias, who were civil servants in Constantinople, he acted as an intermediary between his hometown and the imperial regime (Ep. 59 and 84). Procopius’s oeuvre is unusually varied. Photius refers to his works as “both numerous and diverse” (Bibl. cod. 160: πολλοί τε καὶ παντοδαποί). The corpus can be roughly divided into “exegetical” writings, “sophistic” writings, and letters. The first group consists of commentaries on books of the Old Testament, primarily in the form of collections of quotations from earlier writers on biblical passages.3 There are extant commentaries on the Octateuch (except for Ruth), Kings, Chronicles, Isaiah, Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes. The exact attribution of these works is sometimes difficult, partly as a consequence of the genre’s intrinsically anthological character (liable to later expansion as well as abbreviation and conflation with other commentaries); good editions of many of the works are still lacking. In his commentaries Procopius primarily provides information concerning the historical level of the text, often relating different opinions without settling on one.4 The second group consists of various rhetorical works, reflecting Procopius’s role as sophist and teacher: first, there are three extant dialexeis and four ethopoiiai.5 The dialexeis and three of the ethopoiiai are thematically united in their celebration of the arrival of spring 394 through the story of Adonis and Aphrodite and in their use of the rose as a symbol for this. It is probable that they were delivered in connection with the “Day of the Roses,” a celebration that probably occurred in May and for which we also have some extant poems by John of Gaza.6 The fourth ethopoiia (Op. VII) is not connected to the theme of spring, but renders the words of Phoenix after the failed embassy to Achilles and is perhaps rather to be viewed as a classroom exercise in connection with Procopius’s “Metaphrases of Homeric Verses,” from which two fragments have been preserved.7 Photios (Bibl. cod. 160) commented upon this work, which he says was originally “an entire book—metaphrases of Homeric verses reshaped into various forms of discourse” and which he believed revealed Procopius’s rhetorical ability. Among Procopius’s orations, the only one preserved in full is his Panegyric to the Emperor Anastasius. 8 The oration adheres closely, sometimes verbatim, to the prescriptions of Menander Rhetor for the basilikos logos. To Procopius’s rhetorical output also belong two ekphraseis, the (fragmentary) Ekphrasis horologiou and the Ekphrasis eikonos.9 The former is a description of a mechanical clock in Gaza; the latter describes an image containing scenes from the story of Hippolytus. From references, especially in the Lexicon Seguerianum: On Syntax, some lost rhetorical works may be attributed to Procopius as well of which a few short fragments survive.10 Procopius’s wide range of interests is also indicated by fragments from his philosophical polemical writings against Proclus’s “Theological Headings” and “Chaldaean Philosophy.”11 As far as we know, 169 letters by Procopius’s hand are preserved together with an additional five to him from his addressee Megethius.12 The recipients and contents of the letters are diverse. The letters are addressed to a large number of friends, relatives, and colleagues as well as to fellow students, other sophists, and pupils. They contain advice, requests for favors, and recommendations.13 Taken together, Procopius’s letters provide us not only with facts from the cultural history of sixth-century Palestine, but also—and above all—with a rich image of sophistic self-fashioning. Some of the gaps, in light of what we know about Gazan culture from other sources, are also intriguing. I shall discuss a few of the thematic threads that run through the letter collection, though the unpacking of much must remain outside the scope of this essay. To begin with, however, some remarks must be made concerning the letters’ textual tradition and their present editorial status. Neither issue is straightforward or unproblematic. None of the manuscripts with Procopius’s letters contain all of the 174 letters that survive, and the bulk of the collection seems to have undergone various revisions: an original one by Procopius himself or a compiler, and subsequent revisions as letters were adapted to form part of collections of stylistically exemplary works. There is, therefore, no “standard” set of letters, only different collections in different manuscripts. Consequently it is difficult to define an urtext (if there ever was one), and even more so to determine a “publication date.” Regarded as a collection, Procopius’s letters exist only in their later reception. The letters, however—especially taken as a corpus—mirror the times and concerns of a sophist around 500, before the Arab conquest and iconoclasm but after the Origenist The Letter Collection of Procopius of Gaza 395 Stemma (based on Garzya and Loenertz) TABLE 24.1 Stemma φ x χ ψ ω Aldine edition y z Siglum Manuscript Date (c.) Number of letters P N V F Va Vat B Ne W A L Cod. Patm. gr. 706 Cod. Neap. gr. III A.14 Cod. Vat. gr. 306 Cod. Laur. gr. XXXII 33 Cod. Vat. gr. 633 Cod. Vat. gr. 944 Cod. Ambr. gr. 784 Cod. Neap. gr. II C.33 Cod. Vind. phil. gr. 321 Cod. Ambr. gr. 81 (B 4 sup.) Cod. Leid. Voss. gr. Q 64 eleventh–twelfth thirteenth–fourteenth thirteenth–fourteenth fourteenth thirteenth–fourteenth fifteenth late fourteenth fifteenth fourteenth tenth sixteenth–seventeenth 6 10 154 113 9 14 14 13 49 61 31 R Ve ma Cod. Reg. et Pii 139 Cod. Marc. gr. VIII 14 Cod. Matr. gr. 4637 sixteenth early seventeenth fifteenth Ma M O Cod. Matr. gr. 4637 Cod. Laur. gr LVII 12 Cod. Ox. Auct. T.IV.4 fifteenth fifteenth sixteenth 61 61 8 (additions to Ma below) 43 43 6 controversy and in the middle of a redistribution of spiritual and earthly power between the traditional aristocratic elite and an up-and-coming class of church authorities—bishops as well as desert fathers. In other words, the letters reflect a historical moment in the transition from late antiquity to Byzantium. As a Christian sophist Procopius embodies both the conservatism and the modernity of his age, its problems and its prospects. THE TEXTUAL TRADITION AND EDITORIAL STATUS The Manuscripts Procopius’s letters have been transmitted together with other collections of letters from late antiquity or Byzantium. There are about forty manuscripts containing Procopius’s letters. The manuscripts shown in table 24.1 are the most important (in the discussion that follows I will refer to the manuscripts by sigla).14 As noted above, the extant collections known to us derive from an original set of letters, which no single manuscript contains in its entirety. The oldest extant manuscript is A, which dates from the tenth or early eleventh century. This important witness to much Greek epistolography contains 61 of Procopius’s letters (as well as letters by Aeneas).15 The most comprehensive witness for Procopius’s letters, however, is V, dating from the thirteenth to fourteenth century, which contains 154 letters as well as the address to Ep. 163, after which 396 David Westberg the manuscript is mutilated. The manuscripts F, P, V, and W all seem to derive from the same hyparchetype (x), which contained more than 158 of Procopius’s letters. F is apparently an unfinished copy of V; W contains two larger continuous selections, while P contains only the first five letters. The common denominator for these manuscripts is the order of the letters, which also forms the basis of their order in the current standard edition by Antonio Garzya and Raymond-Joseph Loenertz.16 Table 24.1 is based on the stemma codicum in the Garzya and Loenertz edition. In addition, there are two manuscripts reported by Garzya in a later article.17 These are Ἄθως, Μονὴ Μεγίστης Λαύρας Μ 91, and Ἀθῆναι, Βιβλιοθήκη τῆς βουλῆς, both of which, judging from the selection of letters and their order, seem to be descendants of y (they are included in the fuller presentation provided in the appendix to this essay).18 There are also three manuscripts mentioned by Eugenio Amato that contain the correspondence with Megethius: Μετέωρα, Μονὴ Ἁγίας Τριάδος 95 (dating from 1778); Μετέωρα, Μονὴ Ἁγίας Τριάδος 110 (from 1804); and Cod. Marc. gr. 521 (thirteenth century).19 Apart from F, P, V, and W, which ultimately seem to derive from x, a number of manuscripts contain more specific selections of letters. Seven such selections can be identified, represented by the manuscripts Ne, N, B, Va, A, M, and O and some of their derivatives. According to Garzya and Loenertz the first six selections were made from the larger corpus, while the selection in O is based on that of M.20 Since the edition by Garzya and Loenertz, additional letters have been found. A brief letter (Ep. 168) was published by Leendert Westerink in 1967 from Oxon. Barocc. 131 (1260– 70),21 another (Ep. 167) by Enrico Maltese from Esc. gr. 224 [Φ.III.15] (fifteenth century), and in 2005 Amato published an edition of six letters between Procopius and Megethius from Cod. Marc. gr. 521 (thirteenth century).22 Editions and Translations Since no single manuscript contains all of Procopius’s letters, the number of letters included in the editions have varied depending on which manuscript the editor used, and, in later editions, gradually increased as letters from different manuscripts were gathered into single editions, and new material was discovered. The following editions may be noted: 1. The Aldine editio princeps of the letters by Marco Musuro in 1499 contains the same 81 letters that are found in A. According to Garzya and Loenertz both the Aldine and A derive from a common, now lost hyparchetype y. 2. In Angelo Mai’s Auctorum classicorum (1831) the number of letters is 104. Mai used V as the basis for the text of Procopius’s letters. Mai’s edition was reprinted, with a Latin translation, by Jacques-Paul Migne in PG 87 (1860). 3. Rudolf Hercher’s edition in Epistolographi graeci (1873) is the first edition of Procopius’s letters that approaches modern scholarly standards. For the 163 letters published, Hercher used several manuscripts, including M and V, and provided the text with a critical apparatus. The Letter Collection of Procopius of Gaza 397 4. After Hercher, Nicola Festa published an additional three letters from W,23 and the most recent comprehensive edition by Garzya and Loenertz (1963) thus contains 166 letters, one of which is addressed from Megethius to Procopius. The process has been ongoing, and in the subsequent time a number of additional letters have been found and edited. As stated at the beginning, the number of letters is now 169, with an additional five addressed to Procopius from the rhetorician Megethius; more manuscripts containing known letters have also surfaced.24 All letters known to this day were translated into Italian and commented upon by Federica Ciccolella and Eugenio Amato in 2010.25 The letters’ current editorial status mirrors the lack of a stable collection in the manuscripts. Although Garzya-Loenertz is still the standard edition of the letters, it must be supplemented with additional letters. The Garzya-Loenertz edition must be used with some caution, however, since it contains a number of errors that have been noted gradually over the years.26 Ciccolella’s and Amato’s translation reproduces the Greek text of the various editions (thus primarily Garzya-Loenertz), but in the Italian translation and commentary various emendations are taken into account. The textual situation is therefore a bit complicated: we know that the Greek of Garzya-Loenertz is faulty in many instances, and we often know how it probably should be corrected, but no one has actually revised the Greek text yet. Ciccolella’s and Amato’s presentation of the letters is therefore currently the best place to start, as all the evidence currently available at least can be found there, and the translation and commentary are of great help in understanding the letters. THE GAZA SETTING Gaza around 500 was a prosperous city.27 Kilian Seitz, among others, speak of its “glückliche geographische Lage.”28 The city was situated close to Egypt, on the nexus of a number of important trade routes and on the border of the desert, which allowed for trade with the Arab nomads. The climate was pleasant, and Gaza was famous for its wine production.29 Along with trade, intellectual life also thrived in Gaza during the late fifth and early sixth centuries, and the “rhetorical school of Gaza” is the immediate context for Procopius. There is mention of a sophist from Gaza already in the late fourth century in an oration by Libanius (Or. 55.6), but the extant Gazan material dates from around 500, when rhetorical and philosophical activities seem to have peaked in the city. The “rhetorical school” is a vague concept, however. It is often used in a broad sense, encompassing various intellectuals, either active in the city or born there, such as Procopius, Aeneas, Zacharias, Choricius, Timotheus, John, and others. In this broader sense, the looser term “intellectual circle” is perhaps preferable, denoting a social network and shared interests, rather than a formal structure. There was, however, also a rhetorical school in the narrow sense, headed by Procopius, who was the official sophist of the city, and later by his student Choricius. Both of these aspects of intellectual life in Gaza are reflected in Procopius’s Letters. The region was also an early center of monasticism.30 Hilarion (291/2–371) founded his 398 David Westberg monastery ca. 340 in the area of Deir el-Balah, close to his birthplace, Thabatha, south of Gaza. According to Jerome, Hilarion’s eremitic community was the first one in Palestine and an immediate parallel to Egyptian monasticism under Antony, who was an important model for Hilarion.31 Soon after, Sozomen testifies to a monastery at Bethelea (ca. 360),32 and in ca. 390 another monastery was founded at Nahal Besor by Silvanus, who moved his community of twelve monks from Scetis to Palestine after barbarian attacks in Egypt.33 Silvanus’s disciple Zeno (d. 451) in turn founded a hermitage at Kefar Shearta ca. 440.34 At about the same time, Abba Isaiah (d. 491) founded a coenobium at Beth Dallatha ca. six kilometers southwest of Thabata,35 and Peter the Iberian (also d. 491) a monastery close to Maiouma.36 With Abba Isaiah, Peter the Iberian, and Severus we are drawing closer to Procopius both chronologically and in terms of recorded cultural contacts between the monks and the sophists of Gaza.37 The biographies that Zacharias Scholasticus wrote on both Isaiah and Peter the Iberian are testimonia to ascetic-sophistic contact. Zacharias was born (probably in the late 460s) in Gaza’s harbor city of Maiouma, and studied in Alexandria. He took up profession as a lawyer in Berytus and eventually became bishop of Mytilene.38 Both the Life of Isaiah and the Life of Peter the Iberian (from which only a minor fragment is extant) were composed presumably around 490, when Zacharias was active as a lawyer in Berytus.39 In a much-quoted passage from the Life of Isaiah, we are also told that Aeneas of Gaza used to discuss difficult philosophical problems with the holy man, who solved them in a way that satisfied the philosophical demands and at the same time proved the truth of Christian doctrine.40 In the mid- to late fourth century Gaza had been the scene of religious controversy. The church historians Socrates and Sozomen describe the city as an outpost of resistance against Christianity. The violent overthrow of a pagan cult is recorded in the Life of Porphyry by Mark the Deacon (though this is a much-debated and problematic text).41 We are told that there were eight pagan temples in Gaza and that the most prominent among them was the Marneion, dedicated to Zeus Marnas. The great triumph noted in the Life of Porphyry is the destruction of the Marneion in 402 and the construction of a new church on the site. After the prosecutions of pagans, disturbances continued in the form of Christological confl icts, which began to escalate with the teachings of Nestorius in the late 420s, in the aftermath of the Origenist controversy.42 The leading monks and ascetics of the Gaza region were highly involved in these disputes. After the Council of Chalcedon in 451, an anti-Chalcedonian revolt broke out, and Peter the Iberian was appointed bishop of Maiouma by Theodosius, the antipatriarch of Jerusalem.43 Peter’s disciple Severus—later to be patriarch of Antioch (512–18)—was a leading figure of the anti-Chalcedonian movement, and was part of a “circle of law students” in Berytus to which Zacharias Scholasticus also belonged.44 This anti-Chalcedonian movement helped to shape Zacharias’s biographies of Severus, Isaiah, and Peter the Iberian.45 Severus, Zacharias tells us, left Berytus and his profession as a lawyer in order to enter a monastery near Maiouma. After living both as a coenobitic monk and as a hermit, he bought and renovated a monastery in the region.46 After a period of relatively peaceful relations between Chalcedonians and anti-Chalcedonians in the area, the situation The Letter Collection of Procopius of Gaza 399 became more problematic again around 508 as a result of the clash between Severus and his former abbot in Alexandria, Nephalius. This Nephalius may be the recipient of six of Procopius’s letters (Ep. 15, 67, 95, 108, 121, and 146).47 If he is, the correspondence offers an interesting example not only of Procopius’s ecclesiastical contacts and interests, but also of Chalcedonian and anti-Chalcedonian networks and, depending on the letters’ date, their relevance and possible irrelevance. A fi nal example of contact between the sophistic and the monastic milieus may be adduced. Eric Wheeler notes that the sophist mentioned in Dorotheus’s Discourse 2.36 is not named, but that “it does seem likely that it was in fact his old friend and teacher, Procopius of Gaza.”48 Regardless of the exact identity of this sophist, the situation forms a kind of parallel to Aeneas’s visits to Abba Isaiah and shows that there were indeed mutual contacts and dialogue on spiritual matters and—as the scene recorded by Dorotheus shows—misunderstandings and fundamental differences in how to approach an issue. The discussion concerns humility (ταπείνωσις), and the sophist wishes to understand how Abba Zosimus can regard himself as a sinner when he is a holy man. The old man is unable to reply and merely states that this is the way he is,49 an answer that does not satisfy the sophist’s demand for rational argument. Familiar with both traditions, Dorotheus then acts as a mediator by making an analogy with technai (sophistics and medicine) and how skills can become gradually internalized until it is no longer possible for the practitioner to analyze his practice in detail. Dialogue, then, was going on; Dorotheus, however, is presented as an exception, and his ability to move in both camps was actually a matter of some concern for Barsanuphius and John (cf. Ep. 308).50 These rare testimonies are an important corrective to the image of the Gazan cultural climate that we may glean from Procopius’s letters. Although these intense monastic pursuits took place at exactly the same time that Procopius was active in Gaza and its immediate vicinity, very little of them is reflected in the letters.51 PROCOPIUS’S NETWORKS AND SOCIAL INTERFERENCES The addressees of Procopius’s letters can be roughly divided into the (occasionally overlapping) categories of family, current and former students, friends and colleagues (grammarians, sophists, rhetors/advocates), and other dignitaries (governors, bishops).52 Many of the letters are addressed to intellectuals in Alexandria and Caesarea. Gaza in the late fifth and early sixth centuries has been labeled “a cultural colony of Alexandria.” Gazans known to have attended schools in Alexandria are Procopius himself, Aeneas of Gaza, Zacharias Scholasticus, and the advocate Diodorus (on whom see below).53 A fine example of an intellectual active in Alexandria is the iatrosophist Gessius, to whom five of Procopius’s letters are directed (Ep. 16, 102, 122, 125, and 164).54 A certain Petrus is the addressee of Ep. 135. He may have been a grammaticus or a sophist.55 He is perhaps the same Petrus who is referred to as ὁ λογιώτατος Πέτρος in Ep. 35, and whom Procopius asks the 400 David Westberg advocate Ilasius to support. Petrus had a promising student, Epiphanius, whom Procopius praises in Ep. 135. There are references to a false “accusation” (κατηγορία) and a “sycophant” in Ep. 135, but whether this is connected with Petrus’s need for judicial assistance in Ep. 35 is difficult to say. Five of Procopius’s letters are addressed directly to Epiphanius (Ep. 19, 55, 60, 99, and 148). He is perhaps identical with the σοφιστής Epiphanius to whom Aeneas wrote Ep. 12 and 23. Epiphanius later became an advocate and provincial governor and was active in Alexandria.56 The rhetor Agapetus (Ep. 87), to whom Procopius sent his speeches for review, had previously been in Alexandria but returned to his native Elusa. In Caesarea we find the advocate Sosianus (Ep. 21, 50, 64, 107, and 157), to whom Procopius recommends the promising Diodorus (Ep. 21). This Diodorus becomes one of Procopius’s most frequent addressees. Ep. 8, 23, 29, 31, 32, 72, 77, 94, 98, 110, 111, 118 (probably), 127, 128, 129, 133, and 140 are all addressed to him, and he is mentioned in Ep. 21.7 (which is the recommendation to Sosianus) and 22.1 (to the advocate John, another frequent addressee). It is probable that this is the same Diodorus σχολαστικός to whom Aeneas’s Ep. 7 and 22 are directed. In Diodorus’s case something of a biography may be reconstructed on the basis of Procopius’s letters. Diodorus was a native of Gaza (Ep. 77 and 110) and met with Procopius while at Alexandria, presumably as a student (Ep. 127). Diodorus was later active in Caesarea, where he was obviously successful, but also seems to have grown arrogant, for which Procopius rebukes him (Ep. 23 and 29).57 He is a good example of the mobility between the various intellectual centers at the time.58 Three letters (Ep. 52, 96, and 109) are directed to the advocate Silanus, who had once been Procopius’s fellow student in Alexandria. Silanus’s relatives Macarius (Ep. 97 and 153 and mentioned in 96.1 to Silanus) and Zosimus (also Ep. 153) were in turn Procopius’s disciples and also studied law under a certain Babylas (Ep. 153.1; perhaps in Berytus). Macarius later became a skilled lawyer.59 A special case is Procopius’s correspondence with the young rhetor Megethius, encompassing seven letters, which has survived in a separate tradition.60 Finally, in this selective cluster of addressees it may be noted that Ep. 147 and 165 are addressed to a Musaeus. Whether this is the author of Hero and Leander has been a matter of some debate for more than a century.61 Like Libanius, Procopius kept in touch with his former students and his students’ families; this was obviously a necessity in the world of late antique education. We find the following students and former students (though the statuses of Evagrius and Ulpius are uncertain): Evagrius (Ep. 161), Macarius (Ep. 96.1, 97, and 153), Megas (Ep. 26.8, 27.7, 42.19 and 24), Nestorius (Ep. 66, 66.8, 70, 75, 150), Nilus (Ep. 137.4 and 162), Orion (Ep. 8.11, 92, 115, 139, 144, and 155), Sozomenus (Ep. 151), Ulpius (Ep. 49, 51, 51.9 and 18), Zonaeus (Ep. 78.1), and Zosimus (Ep. 153). Among the recipients of Procopius’s letters, there are a great number of advocates (σχολαστικοί). This tells us something about the rhetorical climate in late antiquity, especially in Palestine. Many students seem to have come to Alexandria (or Gaza) for rhetorical training The Letter Collection of Procopius of Gaza 401 and then moved on to Berytus to study law. The intellectual centers in which Procopius had his contacts were to some extent Alexandria, but even more Caesarea, and to a certain degree Berytus and Antioch. These are some aspects of Procopius’s network, as they can be ascertained from the preserved letters. We may note that there are many personal connections and often relationships that seem to have evolved over a period of time. As one might find reasonable, a certain distance seems to have been required: we do not find, for example, Marcian, Choricius, or Aeneas of Gaza in the letters either simply because they were in Gaza and were in regular contact with Procopius anyway, or because letters to them (or indeed mentioning them) have not been preserved. Hierius, the teacher of Latin who is the addressee of Ep. 13 and mentioned in Ep. 145.1,62 is an interesting testimonium to the study of Latin in the region, not least in light of the complete absence of references to Latin literature in both Procopius and Choricius.63 It is also noteworthy that there are no monks or holy men among the addressees, monks and holy men are not mentioned in the letters, and monastic, ascetic, or even ecclesiastical issues are not touched upon. It should also be noted that those letters that we modern readers might want to bring together on the basis of the addressee (i.e., on a biographical or prosopographical basis, which is also the way I have presented some of the letters above—for example, those to Gessius or Diodorus) are not clustered in that way in any manuscript (the correspondence with Megethius being an exception). ON THE SOPHIST’S PROFESSION From addressees we now move to some of the topics treated in the letters. Procopius was obviously a man of many talents, and the breadth of his writing has often been commented on (to the degree that it has been questioned whether a single person could have been so prolific). As noted above, in addition to “rhetorico-sophistical” works,64 Procopius also compiled commentaries on the Old Testament and wrote a Refutation of Proclus’s Elements of Theology, of which two fragments are preserved. Apparently Procopius considered it his interpretive duty to go beyond the traditional sophistic domains to include sacred texts and philosophy—a combination of topics that appears as well in Aeneas of Gaza. This wider range of interests perhaps reflects that the sophists at Gaza were all Christians and in contact with the regional ascetics, who had a perceivable influence on the city.65 Gaza was a fairly small intellectual milieu, in which personal connections and capabilities were more important than the limits of one’s profession. At the same time, precisely this same fluidity could be seen as a danger, and the professional domains in need of defense. In Procopius’s letters (again, as we have them), we thus find a pronounced sophistic persona and frequent remarks on the sophistic profession and its distinctive traits compared with other professions. In his funeral speech for Procopius, Choricius presents what he conceives as the two primary duties of a sophist: to astonish his audience, and to introduce students to (“initiate them into”) the writings of the ancients—and not least to provide them with a firm grasp of Attic Greek.66 As one might expect, such issues appear also in the letters, and a number of 402 David Westberg features of sophistic self-fashioning may be noted there. As stated in connection with the discussion on Procopius’s network above, most of his addressees were active sophists and lawyers. If there ever were letters to monks or spiritual leaders, they are not preserved. References to classical authors and figures vary, as one would expect, with the addressee. In the letters to Gessius, for example, we find references to Socrates, Aristotle, Anaxagoras, and Pythagoras.67 In general the letters are written in a learned, Atticizing style and represent a high linguistic register (demanding a similarly high competence in the recipient). The language is classical with occasional deviations, such as the use of the Latin term curiosus in Ep. 12, which deals with an urgent practical matter and is directed to his own brother.68 There are also literary motifs and connections to other works by Procopius and the Gaza school, such as the spring motif found in Procopius’s dialexeis. Procopius also remarks on the self-image and behavior of sophists, including himself. In Ep. 18 to his brother Zacharias, Procopius emerges as a sophist of high learning, but also as one who lives in a world that prompts rhetorical pieces centered on stale literary commonplaces like the arrival of spring or the myth about Adonis and Aphrodite:69 You can call me “sophist” again and say that I love applause; and add “brow” and “vanity” and whatever you like! . . . I could not deny my own art; and if you select as proper to it only that which pertains to presumption, perhaps too much of the art belongs to you as well, so that I fear that as much as you take part of it. . . . But I shall be silent out of respect for you. Perhaps you wonder why I, being a sophist and already beholding spring, when it is necessary to dignify it with speech, I neglect it in silence? In my letters you search for flowers and swallows and the sea turned calm; for the fair Adonis and Aphrodite, the one who loved him madly. You are surprised that you do not hear of the rose and the grace [bestowed] on it again. But I could not say any such thing, especially to you, and never again you will laugh and call me a tasteless sophist.70 His brother seems to have derided him for behaving like a typical exhibitionistic pepaideumenos of the Second Sophistic. Procopius singles out a few key terms commonly associated with sophists and sophistic self-importance: “applause,” “the [high] brow,” “vanity.” The brow—either contracted in concentrated thought or raised in arrogance—was a facial marker of a sophist. Philostratus, in his description of Marcus of Byzantium, remarks that “the expression of his brows and the gravity of his countenance proclaimed Marcus a sophist.” 71 The brow reappears in another letter to Zacharias that brings up the same topic (Ep. 46.6–9): I shall not bear not to be brilliant, to raise my brow high and to follow the rule of my own art. Let this, then, be a matter for jesting with me, so that as usual I will offer the material for your mockery. For you make me [more] happy in mocking me—you know it well—than others when they bring me much praise. The Letter Collection of Procopius of Gaza 403 We recognize, then, the image of the typical sophist. But it is difficult to estimate the value of these remarks. The letters were written to Procopius’s own brother, who was a welleducated man, too, and the tone is jesting, perhaps even self-deprecating. We may note, however, that the brow appears also in the less jocular context of Ep. 29, when Procopius rebukes his friend Diodorus, who had gone to Caesarea to pursue his profession as an advocate. It seems as if Diodorus was to busy there to maintain proper contact with his old friends (Ep. 23 and 77 to Diodorus are on the same theme), and when Procopius criticizes him he uses “brow” as a synonym for “arrogance.” The theme of arrogance in the letters, symbolized by “the brow,” may therefore be seen as a symptom of Procopius’s active engagement in defining his role as a sophist. He was conscious of the traditional connotations of arrogance and prima donna behavior that the word “sophist” had, and he clearly distanced himself from much of this. At the same time he wanted to defend the concept of the “sophist” and defined himself as one, probably in an era when this role was questioned and the traditional sophistic domains ran the risk of becoming annexed not only by philosophers but also by advocates and monks. The letters then reflect nothing less than the search for a sophistic self-definition. This image of Procopius as a redefiner of the sophistic profession is confirmed on the one hand by his ventures into genres best regarded as lying on the sophistic fringe (e.g., his commentaries on the Old Testament), and on the other hand by Choricius’s funeral speech, in which Procopius’s attempts to make his art useful to society far beyond the traditional display oratory are constantly brought to the fore. As much as it was Procopius’s concern to retain traditional forms of expression and the core of the sophistic identity, for him this was a matter of exploring what relevance the sophistic profession could have in a new, Christian, era. This brings us to the topic of (at least some of) the sophist’s virtues. ON THE SOPHIST’S VIRTUES Just as in Choricius’s funeral speech, a deeper view of what the sophistic profession entails also emerges from the letters. In many of the letters, we get an image of Procopius as a person with a strong sense of what is right and just, and with a desire to put these insights into practical action. When praising his deceased teacher, Choricius remarks (Or. 8.25): Apart from the things I have mentioned, he was the greatest help to all those whom some need oppressed, either sickness or poverty. For he frequently visited the bodily sick and zealously imitating Gorgias of Leontini, when he compellingly persuaded those who underwent medical treatment—for “the sick are hard to please” (Eur. Or. 232)—to accept the prescriptions. And at his own expense he lightened the poor in their difficulty. This was richness to him, this was the gold of Midas. 404 David Westberg This attitude appears also in the letters. One aspect of it could be labeled the sophist’s dikaiosynē, or “righteousness,” which in Procopius’s case takes the form both of standing against abuses of power and corruption at court, and of helping people who were for some reason unable to defend themselves. In a number of instances Procopius seems to have exploited his powerful relations (and not least his brother Zacharias) in order to help people who were not able to defend themselves: in Ep. 6 to Zacharias—one of the longest letters in the entire collection—Procopius speaks on behalf of an elderly mother who had been beaten and exploited by her son; in Ep. 12, again to Zacharias while he was (probably) praeses insularum at Rhodes, he asks his brother to end the abuse of power exerted by a curiosus (agens in rebus) on the island against Gazan merchants; in Ep. 14 to Palladius, probably the governor at Gaza,72 Procopius speaks on behalf of the widow and children of the advocate Isidorus, who were at risk of losing their homes because of a neighbor, and a similar problem is treated in Ep. 137 to his brothers Zacharias and Philippus, where Procopius sets out to help the young priest Nilus; in Ep. 67 to Nephalius, Procopius recommends a young, physically exhausted deacon who is unfit for manual labor but who could assist a bishop and is skilled in rhetoric;73 in Ep. 73 Procopius asks the advocate Castor to look into the case of a relative of a victim of slander74 —and there are further examples. Connected to this sense of righteousness is what may be termed the sophist’s sophrosynē: the insistence on the sophist’s morality and rejection of excess, with regard to, for example, greed, gluttony, and hubris. In Ep. 131 Procopius criticizes his former student Sabinus for his greed and unscrupulous social climbing. By behaving in this manner Sabinus has, Procopius says, “fallen away in equal degree from virtue and philosophy” (Ep. 131.3–4). The letter is a reply to Sabinus’s reproach of Procopius for his poverty. Often, however, the philosophical interest takes the form of a “philosophy for life,” with the sophist as a teacher of morals and a vir bonus in the Isocratean tradition. The letters of consolation to Gessius (Ep. 102 and 125), though in many respects traditional, fall into this pattern—the expression τοῖς ἐκ φιλοσοφίας φαρμάκοις (Ep. 125) may be noted. Again this insistence on moderation and admonition of others is mirrored in Choricius’s funeral speech, in which we find Procopius not as the sophistic showman, but rather as an idealized philosopher, who is modest in dress, eating, and drinking, and less interested in captivating his audience than in improving them.75 CONCLUSION What then are Procopius’s letters, and why were they preserved? Seitz labeled them “Probestücke,” but, arguing against previous scholars who had regarded them as basically fictional, he believed that they reflected real situations even if they were conceived as rhetorical exercises.76 Today, this argument would probably be cast aside: there is no reason to doubt that Procopius’s letters are “real” letters, in the sense that they were written by Procopius and sent to an addressee as part of an exchange (in contrast to “fictitious” letters such as The Letter Collection of Procopius of Gaza 405 those by Alciphron). Wolfgang Aly suggested that the letters may have been written to be sent, but were then used as teaching materials.77 At the same time they are “literary” letters, written in the Attic dialect and a learned register (in contrast to many of the letters found on papyri), and this literary character has probably been underlined in the process of selection and the creation of collections.78 In many instances the various collections and selections of Procopius’s letters have been transmitted along with other letters, and their most obvious use is as rhetorical pieces for imitation. Which aspects or addressees may have been fi ltered out in this process is, unfortunately, very much a matter of speculation. NOTES 1. Choricius’s Ἐπιτάφιος ἐπὶ Προκοπίῳ is Op. VIII ( = Or. 7) in Richard Foerster and Eberhard Richtsteig, eds., Choricii Gazaei opera, Bibliotheca Scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana (Leipzig: Teubner, 1929); see also Claudia Greco, Coricio di Gaza: Due orazioni funebri (orr. VII–VIII Foerster, Richtsteig), Hellenica 36 (Alexandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2010); and Aldo Corcella, “Coricio di Gaza, Discorso funebre per Procopio,” in Rose di Gaza: Gli scritti retorico-sofistici e le Epistole di Procopio di Gaza, edited by Eugenio Amato, Hellenica 35 (Alexandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2010), 507–27. 2. For Procopius’s brothers, see PLRE II, s.vv. “Philippus 7,” “Zacharias 1,” and “Victor 6.” 3. These works are sometimes referred to as catenae, but the forms of the commentaries vary. 4. Some principal exegetical standpoints can be found in the introduction to his commentary on Genesis; see also David Westberg, “Rhetorical Exegesis in Procopius of Gaza’s Commentary on Genesis,” StudPatr 55 (2013): 95–108, with criticisms in Karin Metzler, ed., Prokop von Gaza: Eclogarum in libros historicos Veteris Testamenti epitome, Teil 1: Der Gensiskommentar (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015), xxvii–xxx. 5. Op. I–VII Amato. I refer to Amato’s 2009 Teubner edition (Eugenio Amato, ed., Procopius Gazaeus: Opuscula rhetorica et oratoria, Bibliotheca Scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana [Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2009]). I was not able to take into account his recent Budé edition (Eugenio Amato et. al., eds. and trans., Procope de Gaza: Discours et fragments, Collection Budé [Paris: Les Belles lettres, 2014]) before this essay was submitted. 6. Anacr. 4 and 5. The exact nature of this festival, and even its existence, have been debated. 7. Fr. VII Amato. See August Brinkmann, “Die Homer-Metaphrasen des Prokopios von Gaza,” RhM 63 (1908): 618–23. 8. Op. XI Amato. It was probably delivered sometime around 511. In addition to this fully preserved oration we also have a fragment from a Panegyric to the General Asiaticus (Op. X Amato), and recently Amato has attributed an Epithalamium for Meles and Antonina to Procopius as well (Eugenio Amato, “Un discorso inedito di Procopio di Gaza: In Meletis et Antoninae Nuptias,” RET 1 [2011–12]: 15–69). 9. Op. VIII and IX Amato, respectively. 10. These are collected by Amato. 11. Fr. VIII (two fragments) and IX (two testimonies) Amato. 12. The standard edition is Antonio Garzya and Raymond-Joseph Loenertz, eds., Procopii Gazaei epistolae et declamationes, Studia Patristica et Byzantina 9 (Ettal: Buch-Kunstverlag, 1963). Garzya and Loenertz remark that at a proofreading stage of the edition, it became apparent that Ep. 140 and 141 are two parts of a single letter (“en réalité deux parties d’une seule lettre” [xxxii; and see as well the addenda on 112]), where the latter part has been given the same addressee as 406 David Westberg the following Ep. 142. Amato (Rose di Gaza, 493n682) seems to cautiously agree on the basis of difference in tone between Ep. 141 and 142. If Ep. 140 and 141 should indeed be merged, the total number of letters from Procopius is 168. 13. For a general introduction to the letters, see Federica Ciccolella, “Le Epistole,” in Amato, Rose di Gaza, 288-503. 14. For details concerning the manuscripts and the stemma codicum, see Garzya and Loenertz, Epistolae et declamationes, ix–xxvi. See also the preparatory work carried out in Luigi Galante, “Contributo allo studio delle epistole di Procopio di Gaza,” Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica 9 (1901): 221–36. A list of manuscripts is at ecoledegaza.fr/liste-des-manuscrits-de-procope. 15. Davide Muratore, Le “Epistole” di Falaride: Catalogo dei manoscritti, Pleiadi 1 (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2006), 70–71; Galante, “Contributo allo studio,” 221–22. 16. Garzya and Loenertz, Epistolae et declamationes. 17. Antonio Garzya, “Varia Philologa (X),” Ἐπετηρὶς Ἑραιρείας Βυζαντινῶν Σπουδῶν 39–40 (1972–73): 342–45. 18. Antonio Garzya, “Varia Philologa (X)”; see also Eugenio Amato, “Sei epistole mutuae inedite di Procopio di Gaza ed il retore Megezio,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 98 (2005): 368n6. The order of the letters in the two MSS is the same as in the MSS A and R. The only notable features are Ep. 101, which is the second to the last letter in the Atheniensis, and Ep. 18 and 38, which conclude the selection in the Athonensis; none of these letters are found in any other extant MS from the y group. 19. See Amato, “Sei epistole mutuae inedite”; discussion of the MSS on 368. 20. Details in Garzya and Loenertz, Epistolae et declamationes, xv, with the tables on xviii. 21. Leendert G. Westerink, “Ein unbekannter Brief des Prokopios von Gaza,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 60 (1967): 1–2. For a detailed description of the MS, see Nigel G. Wilson, “A Byzantine Miscellany: Ms. Barocci 131 Described,” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 27 (1978): 157– 79. The letter is found among other letters by Procopius on folios 177–78. 22. Amato, “Sei epistole mutuae inedite”; Eugenio Amato and Aldo Corcella, “Lo scambio epistolare tra Procopio di Gaza ed il retore Megezio: proposta di traduzione e saggio di commento,” Medioevo Greco 7 (2007): 1–12; ongoing work by Amato et al. is on ecoledegaza.fr. 23. Nicola Festa, “Animadversiones criticae in Procopii Gazaei epistulas,” Bessarione 8 (1900– 1901): 36–42. 24. The letters not in Garzya and Loenertz, Epistolae et declamationes, were published in Westerink, “Ein unbekannter Brief”; Enrico V. Maltese, “Un’epistola inedita di Procopio di Gaza,” La Parola del Passato 39 (1984): 53–55; and Amato, “Sei epistole mutuae inedite.” 25. In Amato, Rose di Gaza. 26. Beginning with the thorough review by Paul Speck, “Review of Procopii Gazaei epistolae et declamationes, edited by Antonio Garzya and Raymond-Joseph Loenertz,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 59 (1966): 115–22; see also Garzya’s own remarks in Antonio Garzya, “Per la storia della tradizione delle Epistole di Procopio di Gaza,” in Texte und Textkritik: Eine Aufsatzsammlung, ed. Jürgen Dummer, Texte und Untersuchungen 133 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1987), 161–64. 27. Recent overviews of late antique Gaza can be found in Hagith Sivan, Palestine in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 328–47; and Michael W. Champion, Explaining the Cosmos: Creation and Cultural Interaction in Late-Antique Gaza, Oxford Studies in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 21–42; see also the essays by Hevelone-Harper and Watts in this volume. 28. Kilian Seitz, “Die Schule von Gaza: Eine literargeschichtliche Untersuchung” (PhD diss., Heidelberg University, 1892), 2. 29. Philip Mayerson, “The Wine and Vineyards of Gaza in the Byzantine Period,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research in Jerusalem 257 (1985): 75–80. The Letter Collection of Procopius of Gaza 407 30. An overview of the monastic settlements around Gaza can be found in Yizhar Hirschfeld, “The Monasteries of Gaza: An Archaeological Review,” in Christian Gaza in Late Antiquity, ed. Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony and Aryeh Kofsky, Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture 3 (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2004), 61–88. For the general history of Gazan monasticism, see especially Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony and Aryeh Kofsky, The Monastic School of Gaza, Supplements to VigChr 78 (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2006). 31. Vit. Hil. 14; see Samuel Rubenson, The Letters of St. Antony: Monasticism and the Making of a Saint, Studies in Antiquity and Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 35–46. 32. Sozomen, HE 6.32 (Sozomen was born in Bethelea ca. 380). 33. Sozomen, HE 4.32; Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony and Aryeh Kofsky, “Gazan Monasticism in the Fourth–Sixth Centuries: From Anchoritic to Cenobitic,” Proche-Orient Chrétien 50 (2000): 26–28; Hirschfeld, “Monasteries of Gaza,” 70–72. A collection and discussion of the sources for Silvanus and his disciples can be found in Michel Van Parys, “Abba Silvain et ses disciples, une famille monastique entre Scété et la Palestine à la fin du IVe et dans la premiere moitié du Ve siècles,” Irénikon 61 (1988): 315–31 and 451–80. 34. John Rufus, Plerophoriae 8, 13, and 52; and Vit. Pet. 68, 71–75. Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky, “Gazan Monasticism in the Fourth–Sixth Centuries,” 29; Hirschfeld, “Monasteries of Gaza,” 72–73. 35. Hirschfeld (“Monasteries of Gaza,” 73) suggests that the coenobium was founded ca. 440; Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky (Monastic School of Gaza, 20) say that Isaiah arrived in the Gaza region “in the second half of the fifth century.” 36. According to Hirschfeld (“Monasteries of Gaza,” 74), it was fi rst founded as a laura and rebuilt as a coenobium in 492, when Theodore of Ascalon headed the monastery (V. Petri Ib. 144) 37. A survey of the sources for Isaiah and of his writings can be found in Derwas J. Chitty, “Abba Isaiah,” JTS 22 (1971): 47–72. 38. Zacharias is prosopographically problematic. A good biographical overview can be found in Geoffrey Greatrex, ed., The Chronicle of Pseudo-Zachariah Rhetor: Church and War in Late Antiquity, Translated Texts for Historians 55 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011), 3–12. 39. For presentations and discussions of the Life of Isaiah, see Edward Watts, “Winning the Intracommual Dialogues: Zacharias Scholasticus’ Life of Severus,” JECS 13 (2005): 447–51; and Greatrex, Chronicle of Pseudo-Zachariah Rhetor, 13 and following. The Greek text is lost, but a Syriac version is extant. The Life, which is rather a set of anecdotes, later formed part of a collective biography presented by Zacharias to the cubicularius Misael, probably ca. 520. 40. Zac. Schol. Vit. Is. 13, with discussion in Watts, “Winning the Intracommual Dialogues,” 449–51. Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky (Monastic School of Gaza, 19) say that Aeneas’s own dialogue Theophrastus contains anecdotes also about Zeno, testifying to cultural contacts. However, they refer to the dialogue only as a whole, in which Zeno is never mentioned by name. Champion (Explaining the Cosmos, 60), in a discussion of Theophr. 65, says that the holy man of the passage “has been identified as Zeno, disciple of Silvanus,” but only refers back to Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky. The specific arguments for this identification and whether there are other passages in the Theophrastus supposedly referring to Zeno are thus unclear to me. 41. Henri Grégoire and M. A. Kugener, eds., Marc le diacre: Vie de Porphyre, évèque de Gaza, Collection Byzantine (Paris: Société d’Édition “Les Belles Lettres,” 1930); partial translation with introduction in Claudia Rapp, “Mark the Deacon, Life of St. Porphyry of Gaza,“ in Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology, ed. Thomas Head (New York and London: Routledge, 2000), 53–75. See further Raymond Van Dam, “From Paganism to Christianity at Late Antique Gaza,” Viator 16 (1985): 1–20; Frank R. Trombley, Hellenic Religion and Christianization c. 370–529, Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 115 (Boston: Brill, 1993), 2:188–282. One may note with Lorenzo Perrone 408 David Westberg (“Monasticism in the Holy Land: From the Beginnings to the Crusaders,” Proche-Orient Chrétien 45 [1995]: 34n8) that the vehement fighting of paganism in Gaza was not carried out by the monks in the region, but through Bishop Porphyry’s recourse to imperial support. 42. A detailed account of the Christological controversies in fifth-century Palestine can be found in Cornelia B. Horn, Asceticism and Christological Controversy in Fifth-Century Palestine: The Career of Peter the Iberian, Oxford Early Christian Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). See also Jan-Eric Steppa, John Rufus and the World Vision of Anti-Chalcedonian Culture, 2nd rev. ed., Gorgias Dissertations: Early Christian Studies 4.1 (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2005); and Aryeh Kofsky, “What Happened to the Monophysite Monasticism of Gaza?,” in Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky, Christian Gaza in Late Antiquity. 43. Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky, Monastic School of Gaza, 25; Cornelia. B. Horn and Robert R. Phenix Jr., John Rufus: The Lives of Peter the Iberian, Theodosius of Jerusalem, and the Monk Romanus, Writings from the Greco-Roman World 24 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008), xlviii. 44. For an introduction to Severus, see Pauline Allen and C. T. R. Hayward, Severus of Antioch (London and New York: Routledge, 2004). 45. See Kofsky, “What Happened to Monophysite Monasticism?”; Watts, “Winning the Intracommual Dialogues”; Aryeh Kofsky, “The Miaphysite Monasticism of Gaza and Julian of Halicarnassus,” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 78 (2012): 81–96. 46. Vit. Sev. 97. Hirschfeld, “Monasteries of Gaza,” 75 and following; Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky, Monastic School of Gaza, 34. 47. See Ciccolella, “Le Epistole,” 449n91. 48. Eric P. Wheeler, Dorotheos of Gaza: Discourses and Sayings, Cistercian Studies Series 33 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1977), 27. 49. οὐκ οἶδα πῶς εἴπω σοι, ἀλλ’ οὕτως ἔχω. 50. See further Edward J. Watts, “Creating the Ascetic and Sophistic Mélange: Zacharias Scholasticus and the Intellectual Influence of Aeneas of Gaza and John Rufus,” Aram 18–19 (2006–7): 153–64; Champion, Explaining the Cosmos, 41. 51. Similarly, the roughly 300 letters preserved by Severus contain no references to Procopius or the Gaza sophists (though material may be lost: the total corpus has been calculated to exceed 3,759 letters). This heterogeneous collection, mostly preserved in Syriac translation, is not discussed in this volume, but for a brief introduction; see Allen and Hayward, Severus of Antioch, 52–54 (with select translations, 136–68). 52. A brief summary of the most important addressees can be found in Seitz, “Schule von Gaza,” 13–17. 53. For intellectual connections between Gaza and Alexandria, see Edward J. Watts, “Student Travel to Intellectual Centers: What Was the Attraction?,” in Travel, Communication, and Geography in Late Antiquity: Sacred and Profane, ed. Linda Ellis and Frank L. Kidner (Aldershot, UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004), 15n12. 54. Gessius, who is the addressee also of two of Aeneas’s letters (Ep. 19 and 20) and appears in Zacharias Scholasticus’s dialogue Ammonius, is the subject of an extensive discussion in Edward J. Watts, “The Enduring Legacy of the Iatrosophist Gessius,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 49 (2009): 113–33. For Procopius’s letters, see esp. 115–17. 55. PLRE II, s.v. “Petrus 22.” 56. Procop. Gaz. Ep. 19.7–10: οἱ νόμοι σε παρασκευάζειν ἠνάγκασαν σεμνὸν ταῖς ὀφρύσιν ἀνέλκειν, εἶτα φρόνημα νομοθέτου λαβὼν καὶ δόξας ἤδη τὰ Ῥωμαίων ἄγειν τῇ ψήφῳ, τοσοῦτον ἡμῶν κατεπήρθης. Alexandria in Ep. 99. 57. See further PLRE II, s.v. “Diodorus 3.” The Letter Collection of Procopius of Gaza 409 58. On this topic, see Watts, “Student Travel.” 59. PLRE II, s.vv. “Macarius 5” and “Zosimus 5.” Amato and Ciccolella remark (“Le Epistole,” 496n725) that one of Aeneas’s letters is addressed to a sophist Zosimus. 60. Ed. in Amato, Procopius Gazaeus; see Amato, “Sei epistole mutuae inedite”; Amato and Corcella, “Lo scambio epistolare tra Procopio di Gaza”; annotated translation in Amato, Rose di Gaza. 61. Thomas Gelzer (“Bemerkungen zur Sprache und Texte des Epikers Musaios,” Museum Helveticum 24 [1967]: 137 and following) argues for the identification, while Robert A. Kaster (Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity, Transformation of the Classical Heritage 11 [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988], 313) remains cautious. A summary of the discussion can be found in Amato, Rose di Gaza, 494n702. 62. PLRE II, s.v. “Hierius 8,” which notes that the same Hierius may be the addressee of Dionysius of Antioch’s Ep. 32. 63. On Latin authors from Palestine, see Joseph Geiger, “Some Latin Authors from the Greek East,” CQ 49 (1999): 606–17. 64. To borrow from the subtitle to Amato, Rose di Gaza. 65. See Watts’s essay on Aeneas’s letters in this volume. 66. Choricius, Or. 8.7. 67. Watts, “Enduring Legacy,” 117. 68. Stylistic issues are dealt with in Giuseppina Matino, “Nota all’epistolario di Procopio di Gaza,” Rendiconti della Accademia di Archeologia, Lettere e Belle Arti n.s. 71 (2002): 161–71; see also Giuseppina Matino, “La lingua delle Lettere di Procopio di Gaza,” Siculorum Gymnasium 57 (2004): 531–41. 69. Ep. 11 and 18. The motif of spring is developed especially in Dial. 1, 2, and 3 and Ethop. 1; 3 (and briefly in Ethop. 2.4; Descr. im. 1). See, too, David Westberg, “The Rite of Spring: Erotic Celebration in the Dialexeis and Ethopoiiai of Procopius of Gaza,” in Plotting with Eros: Essays on the Poetics of Love and the Erotics of Reading, ed. Ingela Nilsson (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2009), 187–211; Amato, Rose di Gaza. 70. Ciccolella (“Le Epistole,” 122) calls this letter “quella sorta di manifesto della sofistica gazea.” 71. VS 1.528: τὸ δὲ τῶν ὀφρύων ἦθος καὶ ἡ τοῦ προσώοπου σύννοια σοφιστὴν ἐδήλου τὸν Μάρκον. 72. PLRE II, s.v. “Palladius 16.” 73. For Nephalius, see Ciccolella, “Le Epistole,” 449n91. As noted above, he may be identical to the Alexandrian monk who opposed Severus of Antioch. 74. For Castor, see PLRE II, s.v. “Castor 3”; this is the only letter to him in the collection. 75. Or. 8.22–23; see also 19–20. Ciccolella (“Le Epistole,” 132) makes a similar observation. 76. Seitz, “Schule von Gaza,” 11–12. 77. RE 23.1:265–66. 78. See Michael Grünbart, “Byzantinische Brief kultur,” Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 47 (2007): 118–19. FURTHER READING Amato, Eugenio, and Aldo Corcella. “Lo scambio epistolare tra Procopio di Gaza ed il retore Megezio: Proposta di traduzione e saggio di commento.” Medioevo Greco 7 (2007): 1–12. . “Sei epistole mutuae inedite di Procopio di Gaza ed il retore Megezio.” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 98 (2005): 367–82. 410 David Westberg Ciccolella, Federica. “Le Epistole.” In Rose di Gaza: Gli scritti retorico-sofistici e le “Epistole” di Procopio di Gaza, edited by Eugenio Amato, 288–503. Hellenica 35. Alexandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2010. Galante, Luigi. “Contributo allo studio delle epistole di Procopio di Gaza.” Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica 9 (1901): 221–36. Garzya, Antonio. “Varia Philologa (X).” Ἐπετηρὶς Ἑραιρείας Βυζαντινῶν Σπουδῶν 39–40 (1972–73): 342–45. Garzya, Antonio, and Raymond-Joseph Loenertz, eds. Procopii Gazaei epistolae et declamationes. Studia Patristica et Byzantina 9. Ettal: Buch-Kunstverlag, 1963. Maltese, Enrico V. “Un’epistola inedita di Procopio di Gaza.” La Parola del Passato 39 (1984): 53–55. Matino, Giuseppina. “La lingua delle lettere di Procopio di Gaza.” Siculorum Gymnasium 57 (2004): 531–41. . “Nota all’epistolario di Procopio di Gaza.” Rendiconti della Accademia di Archeologia, Lettere e Belle Arti n.s. 71 (2002): 161–71. Westerink, Leendert G. “Ein unbekannter Brief des Prokopios von Gaza.” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 60 (1967): 1–2. The Letter Collection of Procopius of Gaza 411 APPENDIX Selection and Order of Procopius’s Letters by Manuscript ω x φ G-L P 1 2 3 4 5 6 ψ x V F 1 1 2 3 4 5 A 1 1 3 2 3 4 5 6 2 3 4 5 6 2 3 4 5 6 4 5 7 7 7 7 8 9 10 8 9 10 8 9 10 8 9 10 11 12 13 11 12 13 11 12 13 11 12 13 14 15 16 14 15 16 17 17 17 18 18 18 4 18 19 20 19 20 19 20 5 6 19 20 21 22 23 24 21 22 23 24 21 22 23 24 25 25 25 26 27 26 27 26 27 1 Va Vat B Ne 1 2 3 7 8 L R Ve ma Ma M O Addressee 3 1 4 5 23 Caisareius and Euboulus Hieronymus Pythius Germanus Ioannes his brother Zacharias his brother Philippus Diodorus Hieronymus his brother Philippus Zacharias Zacharias the grammarians Alypius and Stephanus and Hierius the Roman Palladius 5 Nephalius 6 the iatrosophist Gessius 1 his brother Philippus his brother Zacharias Epiphanius Strategius and Ilasius Sosianus Ioannes Diodorus Zacharias and Philippus his brother Philippus Eusebius Elias 24 6 25 7 7 2 26 27a 8 9 8 9 27 28 14 15 16 1 1 29 30 31 17 10 10 3 6 5 4 5 11 11 12 12 25 2 2 33 26 13 50 13 50 34 21 22 23 24 6 z Aldine edition W 14 15 16 N y 6 7 32 8 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 35 36 37 35 36 37 38 38 38 39 40 41 39 40 41 42 43 42 43 42 43 44 44 44 45 45 45 46 46 46 22 47 47 47 37 48 49 50 51 52 53 48 49 50 51 52 53 48 49 50 51 52 53 2 3 11 10 54 54 54 4 55 56 57 58 55 56 57 58 12 5 59 59 39 40 41 55 56 57 58 59 2 3 9 35 10 11 9 5 4 15 15 14 16 14 16 51 52 51 52 17 17 10 1 2 12 13 14 15 36 38 39 40 18 18 19 19 his brother Victor Diodorus ? Diodorus Diodorus Dorotheus 2 his brother Philippus Ilasius Elias his brothers Zacharias and Philippus his brother Zacharias Zacharias Zacharias his brother Zacharias Thomas his brother Zacharias his brother Zacharias his brothers Zacharias and Philippus 4 his brother Zacharias his brother Philippus Constantinus Oulpius Sosianus Oulpius Silanus his brother Philippus his brother Zacharias Epiphanius Ioannes Hieronymus? his brothers Zacharias and Philippus his brother Philippus (continued) APPENDIX (continued) ω x φ G-L P N F 60 61 60 61 60 61 62 63 64 65 62 63 64 65 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 83 84 84 84 85 85 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 86 87 88 89 90 91 86 87 88 89 90 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 7 ψ x V 4 y Va Vat B 3 6 Ne z Aldine edition W A L R 52a 52a 53 53 20 11 20, 54 55 12 21 21 22 27 23 22 27 23 24 25 26 24 25 26 56 56 Ve ma Ma 7 13 7 8 9 14 55 7 13 1 8 9 33 27 28 8 M O Addressee Epiphanius his brothers Zacharias and Philippus his brothers Athenodorus Sosianus Zacharias Nestorius Nephalius Thomas Palladius Nestorius Stephanus Diodorus Castor Ilasius Nestorius his brothers Zacharias and Philippus Diodorus Irenaeus Eusebius and Elias Phaedrus Hieronymus Zacharias and Philippus Zacharias and Philippus Zacharias and Philippus Zacharias and Philippus Hieronymus Agapetus Dorotheus Stephanus Sabinus Hieronymus 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 101 100 99 39 102 101 100 40 57 57 103 104 105 106 107 102 101 103 102 41 42 43 44 30 30 36 36 37 37 31 32 31 32 108 109 110 111 112 113 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 104 103 105 104 106 107 108 109 105 106 107 108 110 111 112 113 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 114 115 116 117 123 118 124 125 119 120 126 127 128 129 130 121 122 123 124 125 29 30 32 28 34 31 35 29 36 37 38 45 46 47 48 49 28 29 19 20 21 16 17 18 38 38 33 34 33 34 2 35 35 3 Orion Apollonious Diodorus Nephalius Silanus Macarius Diodorus Epiphanius his brothers Zacharias and Philippus his brother Zacharias the iatrosophist Gessius Stephanus Antiochus Stephanus Stephanus Sosianus and Ioulius Nephalius Silanus Diodorus Diodorus Nonnus Hieronymus and Theodorus Hermeias Orion Anatolius Dorotheus Diodorus? Pancratius Pancratius Nephalius 3 the iatrosophist Gessius his brother Philippus Hieronymus the iatrosophist Gessius Ioannes Diodorus Diodorus Diodorus Marcellus (continued) APPENDIX (continued) ω x φ G-L P 131 132 133 134 135 136 N 5 6 y ψ x V 126 127 128 129 130 131 F Va Vat B Ne Aldine edition W A L R 39 39 137 132 138 139 140 141 142 143 133 134 135 136 137 138 40 40 42 42 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 139 140 141 41 41 58 59 60 61 58 59 54 44 43 44 43 45 45 8 9 10 142 143 154 144 155 156 157 158 159 160 145 146 147 148 149 150 161 162 151 152 z Ve ma Ma 1 6 4 M O Addressee Sabinus Dorotheus Diodorus Stephanus Petrus his brothers Zacharias and Philippus his brothers Zacharias and Philippus Dorotheus Orion Diodorus [Cyriacus] Cyriacus his brothers Zacharias and Philippus Orion Eudaimon Nephalius Musaeus Epiphanius Ioannes Nestorius Sozomenus Pancratius Zosimus and Macarius his brother Zacharias Orion Ioannes Sosianus Ioannes the bishop Elias his brother Philippus Evagrius Nilus 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 x 46 47 48 49 46 47 48 49 Cledonius Gessius Musaeus Procopius (from Megethius) ? ? Megethius Procopius (from Megethius) Procopius (from Megethius) Megethius Procopius (from Megethius) Procopius (from Megethius)