Homer is a dancer (Ὅμηρος ὀρχεῖται): The poet in Choricius
Fotini HADJITTOFI
(Universidade de Lisboa)
Abstract
This paper aims to shed some light on Choricius' conception of poetry, and subsequently of declamation, as literature and fiction, by examining two sides of the same coin: the rhetor's imagining of poetic activity (i.e. how he represents poets and their creative work) and his comments on his own methods, concerns, and (poetic) models. The centre of attention for this study will be Choricius' Dialexeis (Preliminary Talks), which preceded the reading of his Declamations, and the Protheôriai (Explanatory Comments), which introduced the orations in their published version. Choricius' poets are presented as active inside their own poems, directing their characters or even, paradoxically, as the real agents of their characters' actions; this will be seen as a link uniting rhetoric and poetry, as Choricius uses the same vocabulary of the "active poet" to speak about Demosthenes and himself. Finally, this paper will look at the representation of Homer as a "dancer" in Dialexis 12. In a new twist, we have in this Preliminary Talk Homer, no longer as a director, but as an actor who impersonates and, in a way, becomes his characters. This idea will also be shown to have parallels in the conceptualisation of the rhetor himself as a kind of actor, and will also be examined against Choricius' most well known work, the Defence of the Mimes.
Résumé
Cet article vise à éclairer la conception de la poésie – et par suite de la déclamation – chez Chorikios, en tant que littérature et fiction, en examinant les deux côtés d'une même médaille: l'imagerie de l'activité poétique (c'est-à-dire comment le rhéteur représente les poètes et leur travail créatif) et ses commentaires sur ses propres méthodes, ses préoccupations et ses modèles (poétiques). Cette étude portera principalement sur les Dialexeis de Chorikios qui précédaient la lecture de ses Déclamations et sur les Protheôriai qui introduisaient les discours dans leur version publiée. Ici, les poètes de Chorikios sont présentés comme actifs dans le cadre de leurs propres poèmes, dirigeant leurs personnages ou même, paradoxalement, comme les vrais agents des actions de leurs personnages ; nous considérons ce fait comme un lien unifiant la rhétorique et la poésie, puisque Chorikios utilise ce même vocabulaire du « poète actif » pour parler de Démosthène et de lui-même. Enfin, cet article se penchera sur la représentation d'Homère comme « danseur » dans la Dialexis 12. Dans cette Dialexis, nous voyons Homère non plus comme un metteur en scène mais comme un acteur qui personnifie et, d'une certaine manière, devient ses personnages. Il sera également démontré que cette idée a des parallèles dans la conceptualisation du rhéteur lui-même comme une sorte d'acteur et elle sera aussi examinée par rapport à l'œuvre la plus connue de Chorikios, l'Apologia mimorum.
Choricius' Dialexeis (Preliminary Talks) which the orator delivered in his own persona before performing his Declamations, and his Protheôriai (Explanatory Comments), which accompanied the published version of his speeches, have so far been completely ignored in the, admittedly, meagre scholarship on Choricius. Yet, in these short pieces we get a precious glimpse into the rhetor's world, his own (and his audience's) expectations and his thoughts on his own work. This paper will focus on Choricius' representation of poets in the Dialexeis and Protheôriai, arguing not only that he sees himself as a poet composing in prose, and thus in need of divine inspiration, but also that the level of authority and control that is attributed to poets (and by extension rhetors) is significant for Choricius' demarcation and defence of the literary and the fictional against the Platonic (and, by this time, also Christian) charges of deception, vice, and immorality.
Choricius' style is certainly very much influenced by poetry; one of his ancient readers, Photius, points out that his language is extremely figured and predominantly poetic, which, for Photius, means "slipping into frigidity". Choricius himself, however, is confident in his use of poetic figures and tropes, and seems to espouse the collapse of all barriers between poetry and prose. In his Dialexis 6 he says, "Come then, O Muses, and take up with me the oration that these wise men here have ordered me to deliver". He then goes on to defend his invocation of the Muses: "I cannot discover, my friend, why on the one hand it is customary for the poets to ask so freely for the Muses […] But if, on the other hand, anyone should fashion words without meter – they are words nonetheless – and this is his work, many think it is not quite appropriate for such a person to ask for the Muses. Yet Socrates the Athenian, although he was not a poet, asked the Muses to be present and to tell him what he should say to Phaedrus". Choricius is aware that he is encroaching on the territory of poets, and chooses to defend himself by citing the most anti-poetic of philosophers – taking his words literally and suppressing the Socratic irony.
This selective reading of Platonic ideas on poetry can also be seen elsewhere in Choricius' work. In Dialexis 3 Choricius says that his "songs" (τὰ ᾄσματα) are pleasant, sweet, and fresh. He also explains where his successful singing derives from: again it is divine inspiration, but this time the orator is compared to a Bacchant: "They say that Dionysus' chorus, the Bacchae, had the usual limitations of human women up to the time when they joined him. But, they say, when they took up their wands and fell under the spell of the god, they became so happy that the Nymphs transformed the waters for them, and streams did not flow as usual; Dionysus turned the water into milk and honey for his retinue of women". This idea could also take us back to a Platonic passage: in the Ion, Socrates describes the inspired poet as a Bacchant, who reaches his absolute best while on Dionysiac ecstasy, and composes poetry only when outside of himself. For Plato, this means that the poet does not possess any skill or art, being himself possessed by external forces – an experience that, on the one hand, elevates him above other people, but on the other, negates his intellectual capacities and makes him comparable to the female Bacchants.
Choricius might claim for himself and his art access to a superior kind of knowledge or skill, on a par with poetry, but he is not at all willing to give up on his own or the poets' intellectual command over what they create. In fact, the poets, and by extension the orator, seem to exert supreme and unparalleled control over their work. In Dialexis 11, which was delivered in between the two different sessions in which Declamation 5 was apparently performed, Choricius explains that his interval is akin to what Homer "does" in the Odyssey, when he introduces Demodocus in the middle of the feast:
Τὸν Ἰθακήσιον Ὅμηρος εἴτε τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἐλεήσας τῆς κατὰ θάλατταν πλάνης εἴτε τὴν ποίησιν ἐθέλων διαποικῖλαι, ἵνα ἔτι μᾶλλον θέλγοι τοὺς ἐντυγχάνοντας ἐξ ἑτέρας εἰς ἑτέραν ἄγουσα τέρψιν, τὸν Ὀδυσσέα τοίνυν ὁ ποιητὴς εἰς Ἰθάκην μὲν οὔπω, ἐς Φαιακίαν δὲ ἄγει, νῆσον μεγάλην τε καὶ εὐδαίμονα, καὶ τοῖς Αλκίνου βασιλείοις αὐτὸν ὑποδέχεται καὶ ξενίζει καί τινα παρὰ τον πότον προσάγει κιθαρῳδόν, τὸν πέρι Μοῦσ᾽ ἐφίλησεν, ὁ δὲ μεσοῦντος τοῦ δείπνου τὴν λύραν ἀναλαβὼν ἡδίω τὴν εὐωχίαν ἐποίει τοῖς δαιτυμόσι μέλους τε ἁρμονίᾳ καὶ διαστάσει τῶν ὄψων.
Homer does not immediately bring Odysseus to Ithaca, but takes him first to Phaeacia, a large and prosperous island. The poet does this either because he took pity on the man of Ithaca for his wandering on the sea or because he wants to add variety to his poem, so that it may charm its readers even more by taking them from one delight to another. Homer welcomes and entertains Odysseus in Alcinous' palace and introduces a lyre-player in the midst of the drinking, "one whom the Muse greatly loved." [Od. 8.63] In the middle of the dinner, this man took up his lyre and made the feast more pleasant for the guests by the sound of his song and by occasioning a break in their eating.
There are three interesting aspects here. The first is that Choricius projects onto Homer an interest in the contemporary poetic buzzword of poikilia (variety): Himerius, in the fourth century, wrote a protreptic discourse on the value of poikilia (Or. 68), while Nonnus, in the fifth century, composed his sprawling epic, the Dionysiaca, as a ποικίλον ὕμνον (1.15) for Dionysus. The second is that Homer is presented as a straightforward model for Choricius: if Homer pursues poikilia, Choricius too should avoid performances that would be too monotonous (the issues of monotony and variety will come up again later). The most striking feature of this passage, however, is its presentation of Homer as the omnipotent, ultimate director behind all narrative developments, and as the real agent of everything that happens inside his poem. Homer – the director takes (ἄγει) Odysseus to Phaecia, and introduces (προσάγει) a lyre-player to the feast. Homer is, in fact, not only a director, but also an (invisible) actor: he himself welcomes (ὑποδέχεται) and entertains (ξενίζει) Odysseus in Alcinous' palace.
Choricius is not the first orator to use this trope. Lieberg has studied its presence in Himerius, and has named it the "Figur des handelnden Dichters". In their vast majority, the occurrences of this figure in Himerius belong to the sub-category that could be called "the poet as director" (as opposed to "the poet as actor / agent"), and where we have a strong presence of the verb "to lead" (ἄγειν). In Himerius, Sappho and Pindar take Apollo to Mt Helicon (Or. 46.6), while Alcaeus leads Apollo away from the Hyperboreans (Or. 48.11). The vocabulary of this trope comes straight out of the tradition of literary criticism: already in the Hellenistic period, the scholiasts commenting on Homer and the tragedians employ this type of expression to analyse the oikonomia of a narrative. The verb ἄγω and its cognates are often used by the scholiasts for saying that the poet "introduces" or "brings on stage" a certain character. The same verb has another interesting use in the scholia: it is the verb of choice for saying that the poet "captures" the audience or causes them to feel in some particular way. For example, ἄγειν τοὺς θεατὰς εἰς τὴν φαντασίαν (literally, "to lead the spectators into phantasia") means making them see something as if it is happening before their eyes. The word ψυχαγωγία, which can loosely be translated as "diversion" or "entertainment", literally means the "carrying along" of the soul of the audience. In the passage cited above, Choricius uses the expression ἐξ ἑτέρας εἰς ἑτέραν ἄγουσα τέρψιν (taking them from one delight to another), which reads like a scholion on Homer and on how the poet manages to lead his audience into a particular state of mind: here, delight.
Although the "Figur des handelnden Dichters" is, indeed, mostly used for poets (and predominantly, in Choricius, for Homer), it also appears in relation to prose authors. Himerius (in Or. 41.10) already has Herodotus "constructing" Babylon himself (Ἀσσυρίαν τινὰ πόλιν ἐγείρουσα). The orator calls Herodotus the "Carian Muse" (Καρίνη Μοῦσα), and ascribes to him the power to not only build up the city of Babylon, but also divide and surround it by means of a river (βαρβάρῳ ποταμῷ σχίζει καὶ περιβάλλει τὴν πόλιν). Here, Herodotus is not a director, but an actor / agent with supernatural powers. His poetic language (τὴν μικροῦ νικῶσαν καὶ ποίησιν) gives him the authority to "create" an entire city, river included – a power that Himerius must also be aspiring to, as he constructs, in this Oration, the city of Constantinople as the new world capital.
Now, to return to Choricius, but maintaining the Herodotean thread, in the Explanatory Comment which appears before his declamation on / as Miltiades (Decl. 4), Choricius says that the way Miltiades is represented by Herodotus (in 6.132-136) leaves something to be desired; that is, the orator would have liked to hear Miltiades defend himself in court (Decl. 4, θεωρία 2-3):
Ἡροδότῳ μὲν οὖν πεποίηται σιωπῶν τῇ χειρὶ μόνον τὸ πάθος ὑποδεικνύς, ἐγὼ δὲ τῆς Μιλτιάδου γλώσσης ἀκούειν ἐπιθυμῶν ἠχθόμην τοιοῦτον ὁρῶν ἄφωνον ῥήτορα. ἂν οὔν τῶν οἰκείων μνησθῇ που τροπαίων, νεμεσάτω μηδείς [...] εἴ τῳ φαίνεται πρὸς ζῆλον καὶ μίμησιν Ὅμηρος ἀξιόχρεως εἶναι. λαβὼν γὰρ ἐξ Ἀχιλλέως τὴν κόρην καὶ τοῖς κήρυξι παραδοὺς καὶ δι᾽ ἑκείνων κομίσας πρὸς Ἀγαμέμνονα φρονήματος μετὰ τὴν ὕβριν τὸν Φθιώτην ἐπλήρωσε καὶ δέδωκεν αὐτῷ καταλέγειν τὰς πόλεις τῶν Τρώων, ὅσας εἷλε τοῖς ὅπλοις, ὅσας ἐχειρώσατο ναυμαχῶν.
He is represented by Herodotus as a silent character who only indicates his injury with his hand. But for my part, I wanted to hear Miltiades' tongue, and it distressed me to see such an orator remain speechless. If he recalls his triumphs, let no one find fault [...] if, that is, it appears to anyone that Homer is a useful model to emulate and copy! For when he had taken the girl from Achilles, handed her over to the heralds, and brought her through them to Agamemnon, he filled the Phthiotian [Achilles] with pride as a consequence of the insult and allowed him to list all the Trojan cities he had captured by his arms and all those he had mastered in naval battles.
The verb πεποίηται, with its obvious etymological connection to poetry, again alludes to the creative power of figured language. Here, Miltiades is not only represented, but also "made", created, as the verb ποιέω suggests. The fact that there must, at some point, have taken place a trial of Miltiades, in which he might have remained silent is completely irrelevant for Choricius. The Miltiades we have in Herodotus is, for him, already a literary construct. Choricius goes on to say that he prefers to emulate Homer, who allows Achilles to defend himself by listing all his exploits. The figure of the poet as director or agent crops up again: Homer is the one who takes (λαβὼν) Briseis from Achilles and delivers (παραδοὺς) her to the heralds and through them to Agamemnon. If we were to imagine the scene, as described by Choricius, in terms of a dramatic performance, Homer would have to be a silent figure, who intervenes in these exchanges between his characters and does things "through" them (δι᾽ ἑκείνων) – something admittedly difficult to visualise.
Herodotus is not the only prose author to whom the power to "create" worlds and characters is ascribed. In the Explanatory Comment to Declamation 8 (the "Spartan citizen" who criticises Praxiteles for modelling a statue of Aphrodite on the courtesan Phryne), Choricius speaks of Demosthenes' famous attack on Aeschines in Or. 19 ("On the False Embassy"). This is how Choricius summarises Demosthenes' speech (Decl. 8, θεωρία 2):
οὔτω πάλαι καὶ Δημοσθένης πικροτέραν εἰργάσατο τὴν Αἰσχίνου τῆς ἀσελγείας διαβολήν. συμπόσιον γὰρ ἀθροίσας τυραννικὸν καὶ πρὸς τὴν εὐωχίαν ἐκεῖνον εἰσπέμψας, εἶτα καταμεθύσας τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ παροξύνας ἐκ μέθης εἰς ἔρωτα γυναικὸς Ὀλυνθίας ατροκλέα πρὸς το συμπόσιον ἄγει, σωφροσύνῃ προσκείμενον ἄνθρωπον, ἔλεγχον τῆς ἀναιδείας Αἰσχίνου τὴν εὐκοσμίαν ἐκείνου προφέρων.
In a similar spirit long ago, Demosthenes also elaborated a rather bitter attack on the licentiousness of Aeschines. For after gathering a tyrannical driking party and introducing Aeschines to the feast and then making the man drunk and, while he was in a drunken state, inciting him to a passion for an Olynthian woman, Demosthenes' account brings Iatrocles to the party, a man devoted to self-control, providing proof of the shamelessness of Aeschines by introducing that man's decency.
Demosthenes himself is the one who gathers together a party in the house of a tyrant (ἀθροίσας), sends Aeschines to the feast, gets him drunk, and brings in Iatrocles, a very decent man, to serve as a foil to Aeschines' lack of morals. The translation used here, by George Kennedy, introduces the word "account" in the phrase "Demosthenes' account brings (ἄγει) Iatrocles to the party", even though there is no word for "account" in the original text. Its addition is necessary, for a modern audience not to be misled into thinking that Demosthenes physically led the man to the party, but in Choricius' text this is precisely what we have: Demosthenes, like Homer in the cases examined above, acting as a director inside his narrative, and bringing a character on stage. Whether Iatrocles was in fact present or not at the party is irrelevant; what matters for Choricius is that Demosthenes uses (or "introduces") him successfully for rhetorical effect.
Choricius' characters even apply the figure of the "active poet" to each other. It is significant that the "miserly old man" of Declamation 6, says of his opponent (his son), "you made the beautiful one sit (ἐκάθισας) working at home, while you implausibly took (προήγαγες) the other out into the marketplace" (6.29). The son, who, in the previous declamation, had argued in favour of marrying the beautiful, but poor, girl he is in love with, instead of the rich, but unattractive, bride his father has chosen for him, had indeed presented (in Declamation 5.33), as part of a hypothetical (but very likely) scenario, the beautiful girl as a skilful housekeeper who would always stay at home, while the rich girl would be making frequent outings to show off her outfit. The young man's father disagrees with his son's predictions, and "uncovers" his version as a fiction, and an implausible one at that: what happens in his son's scenario is clearly directed by him, and need not have any basis in reality.
So far I have argued that in Choricius there is an explicit and positive emphasis on poetry as a model, not only in terms of language and stylistics, but also in terms of the confident self-representation of the author and his creative potency. My suggestion is that in Choricius we have an acute realisation of how the highly figured (and often rhythmical) rhetorical prose of the time achieves a world-creating power similar to that of (epic and tragic) poetry. This kind of rhetorical prose, and especially declamation, has come to fulfil functions that the poetry actively produced at the time perhaps no longer fulfils. As stylised language it has the power to interrogate moral and social priorities, by presenting "moral agents faced with choices that admit of more than one morally right and /or socially sanctioned solution". This type of conflict and dilemma, once expressed primarily in epic and tragedy (and later the novel), is now expressed in declamation. Declamation also becomes the secular genre par excellence through which readers and listeners can experience the vicarious emotional involvement that is so characteristic of fiction: the opportunity "to experience from a secure imaginative distance situations and feelings which they are unlikely to experience in their real lives, indeed, which they would often go to great lengths to avoid". For that to happen, however, the audience has to be able to recognise fiction for what it is; the ideal reader, listener or viewer is self-conscious of his own suspension of disbelief. Choricius dramatises his own knowing credulity when he presents himself as a reader / viewer of Homer's performance, which is compared to that of a pantomime (Dialexis 12):
Surely you have seen choruses in Dionysus' [precinct]. I imagine that, in that context, you have observed, on some occasion, a dancer charming the stage with male roles as he dances the part of the Thessalian [Achilles], or of the Amazon's boy [Hippolytus], or of some other man. On some other occasion, I am sure, you have seen a dancer's excellent representation of the coveted daughter of Briseus [Briseis] and of Phaedra in love. The dancer tries to persuade the audience, not that he is representing something, but that he actually is what he is representing (οὐχ ὅτι ἄρα μιμεῖται, ἀλλ´ὅτι πέφυκε τοῦτο ὃ δὴ μιμεῖται). Homer also "dances" in this manner in his epic poems (οὕτω καὶ Ὄμηρος ὀρχεῖται τοῖς ἔπεσιν). Don't you see that the poet appears to be anything he wants to be? Be assured that he captures my imagination (παρασύρει τὴν φαντασίαν)! Whether he plays the role (ὑποκρίνοιτο) of the young man of Aetolia [Diomedes], the old man of Pylos [Nestor], or any one of the Achaeans at all or of those with whom the Greeks were at war, I seem to see the person whom the poet happens to be representing.
This is exactly what Choricius is encouraging his own audience to do: look at his fictions, accept, and enjoy them as such. It should be noted that this Dialexis comes right before Declamation 6 ("The Miserly Old Man"), where Choricius explicitly declares, in his Protheôria, that his imitation of the old man comes from his art, since he is neither miserly nor a father. I take these comments to be an invitation to his audience to suspend their disbelief, and see him as an old man. The "Spartan citizen" in Declamation 8 makes a similar point when he says that sometimes in the theatre it happens that an actor does not particularly resemble the character he is playing, for example Phaedra, and yet the spectators are able to suspend their disbelief, and recognise him as Phaedra because of the other characters surrounding him, namely Hippolytus and the nurse (8.31-32). The "Spartan", however, is not willing to go all the way in his acceptance of fictions: not only does he refuse to accept a statue modelled on Phryne as representing Aphrodite, but he also declares that he does not believe in the marvellous events narrated in the Iliad: that horses and rivers speak, that the gods fight over men, etc. "How can I plausibly trick myself into believing it?" (8.87: πόθεν ἐμαυτὸν πιθανῶς ἀπατήσω;), the "Spartan" asks, and goes on to say that the statue is not justified by poetic licence (8.90: ποιητικῇ ἀδείᾳ), but instead shows poetic audacity (ποιητικῆς αὐθαδείας); the sculptor has gone too far for this sceptical viewer (and reader).
While allowing for different audience reactions, like that of the "Spartan", what Choricius holds up as ideal for his listener or reader is his own attitude of seeming belief in poetic fictions, while acknowledging their status as fictions ("I seem to see the person whom the poet happens to be representing"). His audience should become "Spartans" of the classical period when listening to his "Spartan", while at the same time remain aware of the sophist behind the verbal impersonation, performing the role of the "Spartan".
Choricius aims to "become" each and every one of the characters he impersonates, like his model, Homer – the dancer. His representation of Homer as a pantomime dancer was probably striking in its contemporary context. First of all, the "traditionalist" attitude in rhetoric was that the orator should be anything but a dancer. Aelius Aristides, in his attack against those who "betray the mysteries of oratory", declares that the rhetor "should not please (τέρπειν) the crowds in the way those slavish people, those dancers, mime artists, and magicians do". Secondly, Choricius does not make Homer a mime but a pantomime, that is, a dancer who plays a whole set of characters in one and the same performance, but remaining silent throughout his act. According to Ruth Webb, this is one of the most alien and frightening aspects of the pantomime for the hyper-educated elite, whose status depended to a great extent on their correct use of language. Thirdly, the emphasis on "becoming" or "being" (πέφυκεν) all those characters that Homer or the pantomime dancer happen to be representing takes us back to Plato's attack on Homer and the rhapsodes in the Republic and the Ion. For Plato, Homer's imitation of "all kinds of forms" (Republic 397c5: παντοδαπὰς μορφὰς), which also involved "becoming" many different persons, sets him apart from good men, who would only imitate good men performing good deeds, thus resulting into a uniform, "monotonous" style. Choricius' positive representation of Homer as a pantomime dancer involves taking a stand against the well-established Platonic (and later also Christian) tradition that linked theatricality and mimetic poetry with immorality and effeminacy.
Could one claim that the aspects outlined above, in conjunction with the general message of Choricius' Apologia mimorum, amount to a serious defence of the literary and the fictional? In a way this is true, in that Choricius makes explicit what is obvious for us: that human nature does not change with the theatrical impersonation of different characters, and also in that he gets quite close to stipulating a positive model for the audience's suspension of disbelief and for the world-creating power of figured language. On the other hand, even in Choricius' works the concepts of "literature" and "fiction" remain unnamed. In the Apologia mimorum, the vocabulary of playing and of children's games (παίγνιον, παιδιά) is strikingly and tellingly recurrent. Choricius defends the mimes (and by implication the realm of the fictional) by saying they are just a game (30: ὅλον παιδιά τις εστι). According to Plutarch (Life of Solon 29.7), Thespis, the inventor of dramatic mimesis, was asked by Solon after one of his performances "if he was not ashamed of telling such great lies in front of so many people. Thespis replied that there was nothing wrong with doing and saying such things in play (μετὰ παιδιάς)". The connection with childishness and frivolity remains in Choricius (as it does in the Christian Fathers, when they try to defend the study of classical literature): he cannot (yet) speak about "the imaginative exploration of the self" in fiction; like Thespis, "he can only protest the infantile harmlessness of his art". An important step has been made, however, in that emotional involvement with art is identified as delightful, and the poet (or orator) is celebrated, instead of being (Platonically) condemned, for his capacity to transform himself into different characters.
On the Dialexeis see the comments by R. J. Penella (ed), Rhetorical Exercises from Late Antiquity. A Translation of Choricius of Gaza's Preliminary Talks and Declamations, Cambridge, 2009, pp. 26-32. All translations of Choricius are taken from this work. The Greek text is that of R. Foerster, Choricii Gazaei Opera, Stuttgart, 1929. On the position of the Dialexeis within the Chorician corpus see C. Telesca, Sull'ordine e la composizione del corpus di Coricio di Gaza, in RET, 1 (2011-2012), pp. 89-93 and 97-100.
I am indebted here to an important study by Ruth Webb, in which she has argued that Choricius' "enterprise" involved celebrating the power of language to create worlds (even though he does not have words for the concepts of "fiction" or "literature"), and pointing towards the idea that the literary is an autonomous zone, which is neither Christian nor incompatible with Christianity (even though he also does not have a word for the "secular"). See R. Webb, Rhetorical and Theatrical Fictions in the Works of Choricius of Gaza, in S. F. Johnson (ed), Greek Literature in Late Antiquity: Dynamism, Didacticism, Classicism, Aldershot, 2006, pp. 107-124.
On Photius and the other Byzantine readers of Choricius see E. Amato The Fortune and Reception of Choricius and of his Works, in R. J. Penella, Rhetorical Exercises, pp. 261-302; for the quotation from Photius' Bibliotheca see p. 270. On Roman declamation being "infected" with poetry, and thus denounced as degenerate and effeminate see A. Richlin, Gender and Rhetoric: Producing Manhood in the Schools, in W. J. Dominik (ed), Roman Eloquence: Rhetoric in Society and Literature, London, 1997, pp. 97-99.
On the intimate relationship between poetry and prose in the "Third Sophistic" see, for example, G. Agosti, La voce dei libri: dimensioni performative dell'epica greca tardoantica, in E. Amato – A. Roduit – M. Steinrück (eds), Approches de la Troisième Sophistique: Hommage à Jacques Schamp (Collection Latomus, 296), Brussels, 2006, p. 40.
Choricius' invocation of the Muses is itself a citation of the Platonic Socrates: cf. Dialexis 6.4: ἄγετε οὖν, ὦ Μοῦσαι, ξύν μοι λάβεσθε τοῦ λόγου and Pl. Phdr. 237a: Ἄγετε δή, ὦ Μοῦσαι, εἴτε δι' ᾠδῆς εἶδος λίγειαι, εἴτε διὰ γένος μουσικὸν τὸ Λιγύων ταύτην ἔσχετ' ἐπωνυμίαν, "ξύμ μοι λάβεσθε" τοῦ μύθου.
There are similarities in the wording of the two passages, but in this case we cannot speak of a citation: cf. Dialexis 3.3: ἀναλαβούσας δὲ τοὺς θυρσοὺς καὶ κατόχους τῷ θεῷ γενομένας οὕτως ἤδη φασὶ τὰς Βάκχας εὐδαιμονῆσαι, ὥστε αὐταῖς καὶ αἱ Νύμφαι τὰ νάματα μεταβάλλουσι καὶ οὐ τὰ εἰωθότα ῥέουσιν αἱ πηγαί, γάλα δέ που τὸ ὕδωρ καὶ μέλι ποιεῖ ταῖς ἀμφ' αὐτὸν γυναιξὶν ὁ Διόνυσος and Pl. Ion 534a: βακχεύουσι καὶ κατεχόμενοι, ὥσπερ αἱ βάκχαι ἀρύονται ἐκ τῶν ποταμῶν μέλι καὶ γάλα κατεχόμεναι, ἔμφρονες δὲ οὖσαι οὔ, καὶ τῶν μελοποιῶν ἡ ψυχὴ τοῦτο ἐργάζεται.
On the figure of the inspired poet as empowered but also feminised see D. Fowler, Masculinity Under Threat? The Poetics and Politics of Inspiration in Latin Poetry, in E. Spentzou – D. Fowler (eds), Cultivating the Muse. Struggles for Power and Inspiration in Classical Literature, Oxford, 2002, pp. 141-159.
See G. Lieberg, Zur Figur des handelnden Dichters bei Himerios, in RhM, 133 (1990), pp. 180-185.
In Or. 9.19, Himerius himself would have led the Muses out of Athens, if he were a poet: ἤγαγον δ' ἂν ἐκ μὲν Ἀθηνῶν τὰς Μούσας.
See R. Meijering, Literary and Rhetorical Theories in Greek Scholia, Groningen, 1987, pp. 23, 127, and 183.
See ibidem, p. 21.
For another striking example see Dialexis 25.1: "Having brought the Achaeans together in an assembly (ἀθροίσας), the poet [Homer] puts the son of Tydeus [Diomedes] before (ἀνίστησι) the gathering as a speaker and puts into the young man's mouth (δίδωσιν ἔπη) the sort of advice that a counselor [...] would give."
The passage in full is: ἡ μὲν οὖν Καρίνη Μοῦσα, τὴν Ἡροδότου λέγω, τὴν μικροῦ νικῶσαν καὶ ποίησιν, Ἀσσυρίαν τινὰ πόλιν ἐγείρουσα, βαρβάρῳ ποταμῷ σχίζει καὶ περιβάλλει τὴν πόλιν. The reference is to Hdt. 1.178-180.
Choricius also claims for himself the power to "build" through his words: in his second speech in praise of the bishop Marcianus, he says that the church, which he has just described in his speech, is "constructed" also by him, not by means of stone and wood, but through those things that he knows how to work; see Laud. Marc. II 59: Εἴργασται τὸ τέμενος καὶ ἡμῖν, οὐ λίθοις δήπου καὶ ξύλοις, ἀλλ' οἷσπερ ἴσμεν ἐργάζεσθαι. I thank David Westberg for bringing this passage to my attention.
See F. Hadjittofi, Centring Constantinople in Himerios' Oratio 41, in D. Hernández de la Fuente – A. de Francisco Heredero (eds), New Perspectives on Late Antiquity in the Eastern Roman Empire, Newcastle, forthcoming.
For Choricius, as for Himerius, Herodotus serves as a model for the prose author who writes "poetry" or, as Choricius puts it, "sings"; see Dialexis 27.5: ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν εὖ μάλα Ἡρόδοτος ᾄδει.
The same participle is used for Homer as an "active poet" in Dialexis 25.1, cited above (note 12).
J. Connolly, The Strange Art of the Sententious Declaimer, in P. Hardie (ed.), Paradox and the Marvellous in Augustan Literature and Culture, Oxford, 2009, p. 339. There are more studies on the social and cultural functions of the genre in relation to Latin declamation. See, for example, A. Richlin, How Putting the Man in Roman Put the Roman in Romance, in N. Hewitt - J. O'Barr - N. Rosebaugh (eds), Talking Gender: Public Images, Personal Journeys, and Political Critiques, Chapel Hill, 1996, pp. 14-35; Eadem, Gender and Rhetoric, pp. 90-110; W. M. Bloomer, A Preface to the History of Declamation: Whose Speech? Whose History?, in T. Habinek – A. Schiesaro (eds), The Roman Cultural Revolution, Cambridge, 1997, pp. 199-215; R. Kaster, Controlling Reason: Declamation in Rhetorical Education at Rome, in Y. Lee Too (ed), Education in Greek and Roman Antiquity, Leiden, 2001, pp. 317-337; E. Gunderson, Declamation, Paternity, and Roman Identity: Authority and the Rhetorical Self, Cambridge, 2003.
J. R. Morgan, Make-believe and Make Believe: The Fictionality of the Greek Novels, in C. Gill - T. P. Wiseman (eds), Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World, Austin, 1993, p. 193.
In the Protheôria of the previous declamation, on the old man's son, Choricius claims he is young, like the character he will impersonate. On whether Choricius' self-portrayal is honest and serious or wishful and humorous see Penella, Rhetorical Exercises, pp. 15-16 with further bibliography.
On ancient readings of and reactions to Praxiteles' Aphrodite / Phryne see, most recently, H. Morales, Fantasising Phryne: the Psychology and Ethics of Ekphrasis, in CCJ, 57 (2011), pp. 81-91.
Cf. R. Webb, Fiction, Mimesis and the Performance of the Greek Past in the Second Sophistic, in D. Konstan – S. Said (eds), Greeks on Greekness, Cambridge, 2006, pp. 39-41, and Eadem, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice, Ashgate, 2009, pp. 175-177.
Although the imagery of the (pantomime) dance becomes increasingly widespread in Late Antiquity, and, as Daria Gigli Piccardi pointed out to me, Plotinus (4.4.33) even makes the cosmos a pantomime dancer, whose various movements narrate all the changes in the course of the universe, Choricius' presentation of Homer as a pantomime dancer is striking, as I argue below, in that it addresses explicitly the controversial issues of poetic mimesis and authority, speaking to the Platonic criticism of mimetic representation.
See J. Connolly, Reclaiming the Theatrical in the Second Sophistic, in Helios 37 (2001), p. 80, where the translation of Aelius Aristides is taken from.
See R. Webb, Demons and Dancers: Performance in Late Antiquity, Harvard, 2008, p. 148.
On how, for Plato, "the identification involved in performing or reciting dramatic poetry represents a threat to the soul's unity" see S. Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimesis. Ancient Texts and Modern Problems, Princeton, 2002, pp. 91-97.
Connolly, Reclaiming the Theatrical, pp. 91-95 makes a similar point about the exaggerated lifestyle and heavily dramatised performances of some rhetors of the Second Sophistic, which she sees as a kind of resistance to Roman domination: "Greek sophists reclaim the theatrical aspects of rhetoric which Roman rhetoricians are so eager to disavow and demonize." On Christian attitudes towards dramatic performance see Webb, Demons and Dancers.
This idea is expressed especially clearly in Apologia mimorum 75-77 and 131-133. On the immutability of human nature in Choricius' Declamations see further F. Hadjittofi, Cross-dressing in the Declamations of Choricius of Gaza, in R. Poignault - C. Schneider (eds), Présence de la déclamation antique (suasoires et controverses grecques et latines), II, Lyon, forthcoming.
It comes up in paragraphs 23, 25, 29, 30, 33, 35, 41, 72, 78, 83, and 108. For the argument that the Apologia mimorum should not be seen as an altogether serious work, but rather that it is itself a paignion, which belongs to the world of Sophistopolis, see D. Westberg, Celebrating with Words. Studies in the Rhetorical Works of the Gaza School, Uppsala (Diss.), 2010, pp. 141-142; the author admits, however, that many reasonable arguments, such as that entertainment does not mollify men, recur in other Chorician works, and constitute a basically sound idea.
See Morgan, Make-believe, pp. 179-180, who provides an analysis of the passage in connection with the idea of fiction.
Ibidem. Christian authors who want to salvage the "classics" use the same (or a very similar) argument: reading classical texts is, as Basil argues "like play-fighting and dancing in preparation for real war". (De legendis gentilium libris 2: οἵ γε, ἐν χειρονομίαις καὶ ὀρχήσεσι τὴν ἐμπειρίαν κτησάμενοι, ἐπὶ τῶν ἀγώνων τοῦ ἐκ τῆς παιδιᾶς ἀπολαύουσι κέρδους). The whole of classical literature thus becomes a children's game, fit for those who are not yet of age to study the scripture. See R. Webb, Basil of Caesarea and Greek Tragedy, in L. Hardwick – C. Stray (eds), A Companion to Classical Receptions, Oxford, 2008, pp. 65-66, where the quotation from Basil is taken from. Significantly, in Choricius' praise of the bishop Marcian, the latter's study of Homer was undertaken while he was still a young man (Laud. Marc, II 7: νέος μὲν ὢν), because it appeared a "profitless merriment […] a fruitless delight" (ἀνόνητον εὐφροσύνην […] ἄκαρπον εὐθυμίαν). See C. Greco, Late Antique Portraits: Reading Choricius of Gaza's Encomiastic Orations (I-VIII F.R.), in WS, 124 (2011), pp. 100-103 on the Gazan attempts to "demonstrate the inoffensive charm of mythology".
I would like to thank the volume editors as well as the audience at the conference for their comments and suggestions.
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