Vita Apollonii

This chapter examines the genre of epistolography, which flourished and proliferated in the variety of its forms and uses in the Empire. The epistolary genre in the Second Sophistic is first briefly situated within rhetorical theory and practice, then contextualized within both earlier Greek literature and developments in Latin letters. The variety of Greek literary uses of the letter form in the Second Sophistic is then illustrated with a series of subgenres and examples. Surveyed are collections of fictional and pseudonymous letters (including Aelian, Alciphron, Philostratus, Apollonius of Tyana), epistolary novels (Chion of Heraclea, Themistocles), shorter narratives in letter form, and letters embedded in longer narratives (including the Greek novels and Lucian’s Verae Historiae).

Introduction

L. Flavius Philostratus (c. 170 CE–c. 240s), Philostratus II or “the younger,” is one of several related Philostrati; the division of works in the corpus among them is a vexed question (see the Question of the Philostrati). Philostratus was a sophist or rhetor, who may have received patronage from the imperial family, including Julia Domna. Probably beginning his education in Athens, where he held local offices (including hoplite general and prytanis), he was later active as a sophist, performing display oratory and teaching, in Athens, Rome, and Ionia; he has some connection with Lemnos (Life of Apollonius of Tyana (Vita Apollonii) 6.27.4), and was perhaps born there. He coined the phrase Second Sophistic to define a literary and cultural movement, in his Lives of the Sophists, a collection of short biographies of those he considered as representative of the “Second” style of Greek oratory. Its subjects are largely contemporary with his own era but begin with Aeschines in the 4th century BCE; its style is contrasted with that of the “First Sophistic,” including Gorgias. He was especially influenced by Herodes Atticus, whose biography is the most important in Lives of the Sophists (VS), and whose oratory he witnessed personally. But his literary output is large and varied in both theme and genre. It encompasses more biography in the Life of Apollonius of Tyana (VA), the perhaps heavily fictionalized life of a “holy man” and “wonder worker” of the Neronian age; Platonic dialogue mixed with revision of the Homeric version of the Trojan war and cult worship of Greek heroes in the Heroikos; a collection of miniature descriptions of paintings (ekphrases) in the Imagines; a collection of literary Letters including epigram- and elegy-influenced Erotic Epistles as well as letters addressed to historical persons and other authors; and a treatise on Greek athletic history and practice, the Gymnastikos. He wrote at least one extant epigram (Planudean Anthology 110), and may also have been the author of the Pseudo-Lucianic dialogue Nero, and one of the short treatises or Dialexeis transmitted in the Philostratean corpus (these minor and doubtful works are not treated in this bibliography). In addition, he wrote many lost works, including sophistic declamations, discussions and introductions (meletai, dialexeis, prolaliae) to be performed in public. Philostratus wrote in an Atticizing Greek that is, however, stylistically florid and quite idiosyncratic; in style, literary and narrative technique, and choice of subjects, he is one of the most original Greek literary artists of the imperial or perhaps any era, reworking the themes of the classical era in a manner far more creative than simply imitative.

The author suggests a new approach to the problem of the
sources of Philostr. Vita Apol. III. 34. On the basis of “hermetic”
traces in the texts (androgyne cosmos, cosmos as alive being and hermetic interpretation of ἐκείνου νοῦς) the author argues possible neopythagorean influence upon Philostratus. In the first place Numenius of Apamea is the most probable source for VA III. 34 so far as the fragments of this philosopher are under direct influence of Corpus Hermeticum.

In modern fictional biography as in other fictional forms, one of the clearest markers of deliberate fictionality is the unrealistic, ‘psychic’ omniscience of the narrator; this enables him to persistently represent the internal world of his subjects to a level which (even when logically possible) would be highly implausible were it found in an historical biography. Indeed as Cohn argues (following Hamburger) this is one of the distinguishing features of fictionality: far from being merely a narrative device (‘internal focalisation’, ‘zero focalisation’), it is constitutive of a narrative’s fictional status, since it is logically ruled out by non-fictional narratives. This is found in abundance in Greek fiction (e.g. epics, novels), but the earliest fictional(ised) biographies are concerned with verisimilitude and self-authentication: therefore they usually employ direct speech or quoted letters where more overtly fictional forms employ internal focalisation (leading to difficulties scholars have had in deciding authorial intentions with regard to fictionality or historicity in ancient biographies). This chapter investigates the use made of ‘psychically’ omniscient narration, and the question of its usefulness in determining fictionality, in ancient Greek biographical narratives. At this early stage in the development of fiction itself and of fictional biography, however, other markers of (intentional) fictionality need to be sought, namely: the lack of realism in portraying characters as saying or writing certain things (either tout court, or to or in the presence of certain other characters); the lack of realism in conceiving how the narrator came to know (especially private) utterances and letters by their biographical subjects. The chapter therefore also investigates these features and the information they can yield regarding ancient Greek biographical texts’ fictional status. Examples are taken from Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, the Alexander Romance, the Life of Aesop or Aesop Romance, and Philostratus’ Vita Apollonii, and comparisons made with Plutarch’s more historical bioi and the ancient novel. It concludes that the use of psychically omniscient narration does indeed distinguish fictionalising from more historical forms of Greek biographical narrative, as in much modern biographical writing.

Cohn, D. 1999 The Distinction of Fiction Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press
Hamburger, K 1973 Die Logik der Dichtung Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta