Is the Sage the Sophist's Mouthpiece?
Political Interpretations of Philostratus' Life of Apollonius
Corpus Christi Classical
Seminar, Oxford 8 February 1995
This
is the text of a talk for the Corpus Christi Classical Seminar in
February 1995. It was essentially a viva voce prepublication of the
final section of the fourth chapter of my Power, Paideia
& Pythagoreanism, that at the time was being
translated by Peter Mason, who also corrected the English of this
paper.
Introduction
Political
interpretations of Philostratus' Life of
Apollonius:
a survey
Political
interpretations of Philostratus' Life
of Apollonius: four objections
Allusions
to the
Severan period in the Life
of Apollonius
Concluding remarks
Titles
mentioned
Introduction
In a footnote to a major
article, published in 1978, on the traditions concerning
Apollonius of
Tyana
and on Philostratus' romanticized biography of this first century
Pythagorean
philosopher and miracle worker, Ewen
Bowie referred to a couple of
publications which contained an interpretation of Philostratus' Life of
Apollonius
as a politically tendentious piece of writing: an 1889
dissertation by a young German, Johannes
Göttsching, and an article
published
in 1941 by the Italian scholar Aristide Calderini. Bowie
briefly
dismissed
the thesis defended by Calderini, but he saw "some
plausibility
in
Göttsching's arguments, though they cannot be taken so far as
Göttsching
wishes." Today's talk may be considered an elaboration of
Ewen Bowie's footnote. What I intend to do is the following. In the
first
place, I shall present a survey of what, for brevity's sake, I have
labelled 'political
interpretations' of Philostratus' Life
of Apollonius, starting with Göttsching's
dissertation and following the trail up to the 1980's. Secondly, I
shall point
out what are, in my opinion, four objections to these
interpretations. In the
third place I shall try to formulate some criteria which should be
followed in
tracking down allusions to the author's lifetime, the Severan period,
in the Life
of Apollonius, and I shall present and discuss the results
of the application
of these criteria. Some concluding remarks will round off this talk.
Before I make a start with the implementation of this programme,
however, three preliminary points should be brought up. Firstly, we
should
recognize that political interpretations of Philostratus' Life of
Apollonius are very tempting indeed, given both the
biography of the author
and the contents of the work. 
Philostratus was a member of a family
which
belonged to the upper echelons of the Athenian citizen body and which
produced
members of the senatorial order in the next generation. He was
probably a
member of the Athenian council and held the position of hoplite general
in that
city in the first decade of the third century. Moreover, for some ten
years he
was a protégé of Julia Domna, the wife of Septimius Severus and the
mother of
his successor Caracalla. The
Life of Apollonius itself was
commissioned by the empress, although it was completed after her death
in 217.
Philostratus' other major work, the Lives of the sophists,
was dedicated
to the proconsul of Africa, Gordian senior, in the winter of
237/238. As for the contents of
the Life of Apollonius,
even a cursory reading is sufficient to convey
the impression that the protagonist is a philosopher involved in
politics, a
man who intervenes in civic conflicts and who establishes relations of
varying
cordiality with several first-century emperors, among them Vespasian,
Titus and
Domitian. Besides, even students familiar with imperial Greek
literature will
be struck by the presence of a very pronounced sense of Greek
superiority in
the Life.
At first sight, therefore, the search for a political tenor
in the Life of
Apollonius
does not seem too far-fetched.
The second preliminary point I want to bring up concerns
the meaning of a few words which, until now, I have used rather
uncritically.
What is a politically tendentious piece of writing? When do I classify
the
interpretation of a literary work as 'political'? I have to admit that
an
attempt to answer these questions on the level of literary theory is
beyond my
capabilities as a historian. Therefore, I shall confine myself to a
somewhat
less ambitious undertaking and offer you a preliminary inventory of
the main
characteristics of the interpretations of the Life of Apollonius
that
I have labelled political. We are dealing with a text about a
first-century
figure who had been dead for more than hundred years, when his
biographer
reached maturity. Consequently, the first condition that political
interpretations
of the Life of
Apollonius have to meet is a willingness on the part of
their defenders to perceive a substantial number of allusions to early
third-century situations and events in a narrative set in the first
century.
Naturally, one should distinguish an unintentional anachronism from a
deliberate
allusion. The second characteristic of the interpretations under
discussion
is, therefore, a willingness on the part of their advocates to argue
that such
allusions have been included by Philostratus with the intention of
drawing the
attention of his readers to certain events and situations. The most
sweeping
political interpretations of the
Life of Apollonius thus consider substantial
parts of the text to reflect Philostratus' opinions on issues ranging
from
relations inside the imperial family to foreign and military policies
and from
taxation to socio-political life in Greek cities. Moreover, they
envisage the
act of writing the text as a conscious effort to convey these
opinions to an
intended readership. If such interpretations are valid, we may,
without
further ado, consider the
Life of Apollonius
a politically tendentious
piece of writing.
There are, however, less far-reaching forms of the same
approach. For example, the position of the alleged allusions in the
narrative
may range from central to marginal. Thus some interpreters may look
upon the
characterisation in action and speech of the protagonist or other
important
characters as reflecting Philostratus' views on contemporary
socio-political
reality, while others regard only a couple of minor anecdotes or
remarks as
possibly significant. Moreover, interpreters may confine themselves
to the
proposition that the alleged allusions to early third-century events
and situations
betray an awareness on the part of Philostratus of such events and
situations,
without suggesting that the Athenian sophist wanted to convey a
specific
message to the readers of his Life
of Apollonius. For the moment, I want
to include these less far-reaching interpretations in my enquiry, but
it should
be obvious that I do not disregard the differences between such
interpretations
and the interpretation of the Life
as politically tendentious in the
proper sense of the word.
My third and last preliminary point is a warning. Perhaps
some of the older interpretations which will pass in review will
strike you as
either far-fetched or outdated or both. None the less, my aim is not to
entertain you with some curiosities from the past of classical
scholarship nor
to score easy victories over convenient whipping-boys. On the
contrary, by
uncovering and discussing the assumptions of these interpretations
and by
presenting my objections to them, I hope to sharpen our insight into
the
presuppositions on which more fashionable readings - including my
own - are founded. The extent to which I have succeeded will, in
other words, become apparent from your willingness to criticise the
assumptions
in the second and third parts of my talk, dealing with the
objections to
political interpretations and with what I consider allusions to
contemporary
events and situations in the
Life of Apollonius.
Political
interpretations of Philostratus' Life of
Apollonius:
a survey
So much for my
preliminary points. I shall now present a brief survey of political
interpretations
of the Life of Apollonius
which have been proposed during the last
hundred years. The
first of these, defended by Johannes
Göttsching in
his 1889
dissertation
,
certainly falls within the limits of political
interpretations
in the proper sense of the word. Göttsching claimed that with the
establishment
of the Severan dynasty the imperial power had passed into the hands of
African
and Asiatic barbarians. In reaction to this development, which was
lamented
by traditionally-minded Romans and cultured Greeks alike, Philostratus
assigned his hero the role of 'Herold des Hellenismus', 'herald of
Hellenism'. According to Göttsching, the stark contrast
between
Hellenic
virtues and barbarian vices that is to be found in the Life should be
read in this light. Göttsching also claimed to be able to detect
numerous
allusions to the behaviour of the Severan emperors. Thus he believed
that the
descriptions of Vespasian, Titus and Domitian and their mutual
relations
presented Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla in disguise, while
Philostratus'
portrait of Nero stood for that of Elagabalus. Assuming that the
writer would
not have dared to publish a work of this kind during the reign of
Elagabalus,
so that the Life
could not have been issued before the reign of Severus
Alexander, Göttsching formulated the hypothesis that at least one of
Philostratus' intentions was to advise the young emperor by means of
the
explicit recommendations and the positive and negative examples of
monarchical
behaviour contained in the
Life of Apollonius.
Göttsching's ability to recognise allusions to the
Severan emperors is very great, so a couple of examples must be enough
to
illustrate his method. In book 4 chapter 22,
Apollonius rebukes the Athenians for watching gladiatorial games in
the theatre
of Dionysus. Göttsching refers to Cassius Dio (77.6.2) for
Caracalla's enthusiasm
for such spectacles and suggests that the rebuke of Philostratus'
Apollonius
should be understood as in fact aimed at Caracalla. In book 6 chapter
32, Philostratus reports that Titus was poisoned by Domitian.
Göttsching
points out that Geta was murdered by Caracalla and claims that the
relation
between the Flavian brothers, as described by Philostratus, refers to
the
Severan brothers.
A second scholar who
interpreted the portrayal of the
Flavian emperors by Philostratus as a complex of deliberate
allusions to
Septimius Severus and his sons and who claimed that the Life of Apollonius
contained an explicit message for a specific addressee was Aristide
Calderini,
who
also proposed a new dating of the Life. According
to
Calderini, the
Life of Apollonius - or at least a first version of the
work - was not completed after Julia Domna's death in 217, but in
the years between 202 and 205, between the author's arrival in Rome and
the death of
Plautianus. The main argument adduced by
Calderini for this claim is
the fact
that Philostratus repeatedly makes mention of the disastrous effect
of bad
counsellors and informers on emperors; in this connection Calderini
referred,
among other passages, to book 8, chapter 7, section 16 (section 50 in
Jones' Loeb), the
peroration of the speech in his defence which Apollonius, according to
Philostratus,
had written for his trial before Domitian. Such passages, Calderini
claimed,
were intended to warn Septimius Severus of the praefectus praetorio
Plautianus,
and Philostratus functioned as a political instrument in Julia
Domna's
struggle against the influential prefect. On the basis of this
hypothesis,
Calderini postulated the death of Plautianus as the terminus ante
quem for
the composition of the first version of the Life. He then
proceeded to
find further support for this hypothesis. For example, he interpreted
the
encomium of the harmonious participation of young and old in political
power
which Philostratus puts in the mouth of Apollonius before
Titus (VA
6.30), as
an allusion to the position of Caracalla as co-regent of Septimius
Severus. The report that Vespasian was sixty years old in 69
(VA 5.29) referred,
according to the Italian scholar, to the age Septimius Severus was to
reach in
206.
A
third attempt to interpret part of the Life of
Apollonius in terms of relations in the Severan
court was
undertaken by
Friedrich Lenz, in an
article published in 1964. Lenz'
reasoning, at
least in
this article, is not particularly convincing, and there would
not be
any reason
to rescue this publication from a well-deserved oblivion, were it not
for the
fact that Lenz named Caracalla as the addressee of a hidden message in
the Life
of Apollonius, thus bringing the number of
alleged
addressees of
Philostratus' work in the Severan family to three.
A Marxist version of
the interpretation of the Life
of
Apollonius as a politically tendentious piece of writing
was produced
by
the Russian scholar Elena
Schtajerman in a work first published in
1957, The
crisis of slave society in the western half of the Roman empire.
I have
consulted the German translation, published in 1964. Schtajerman's
book
contains a long chapter on the political programmes and ideological
currents of
the early third century, which assigns a prominent place to
Philostratus' Life
of Apollonius. She regards the Greek
intellectuals who
surrounded Julia
Domna as representatives of an intelligentsia which was closely
connected with
the municipal aristocracy. 
As
a result of the decline of the cities,
this
intelligentsia became increasingly dependent on the provincial
aristocracy, a
dependency which was accompanied by feelings of hostility on the part
of
clients towards their patrons. The imperial bureaucracy offered a way
out of this
dependency. However, Caracalla objected to sophists and other
representatives
of the intelligentsia. At the instigation of Julia Domna, who
disagreed with
her son on this score, Philostratus addressed his Life of Apollonius
to
the municipal aristocracy with a political programme that reflected the
interests and views of this aristocracy. His political ideal was an
empire, as
it had been in the Antonine period, founded on a smoothly functioning
urban
self-government. This ideal implied respect for the rights of the
social elite
in the cities; at the same time, it demanded that the members of this
elite
should not evade their obligations and should allow the rest of the
citizen
body to share to some extent in their possessions in order to
guarantee social
harmony. The implementation of this ideal was to be guaranteed by a
strong
imperial authority, which must neither degenerate into tyranny, nor be
dependent on the representative body of the provincial aristocracy,
the
senate. As regards foreign policy, the municipal aristocracy, unlike
the
provincial aristocracy, advocated a policy of peace: plans of conquest
should
be abandoned and war should be avoided at all costs.
In certain respects, Schtajerman's treatment of the Life
has to be distinguished from the interpretations by Göttsching,
Calderini and
Lenz. The Soviet scholar did not claim that the Life of Apollonius
was
addressed to a member of the imperial family; in her view,
Philostratus' work
was addressed to the urban elites of the Roman empire. As a result, she
was less
fixated on the episodes involving emperors in the Life and paid more
attention to those episodes in which the protagonist intervenes in the
socio-political life of cities. Nevertheless, she did interpret the
Life
as the packaging of a political programme and the main character as
the author's
mouthpiece. For instance, she claimed to detect a clear preference for
dynastic succession above adoption in the Life. In this
connection,
she referred to the meeting between Apollonius and Vespasian in
Alexandria, as
described in book 5 (chapters 28 and 35). The
activities and
speeches of Philostratus' Apollonius in Greek cities reflected, in her
opinion,
the views of the author of the Life
on the problems of civic life in
the
Severan period.
In the 1970s and 1980s,
bourgeois scholars again took over the torch. Both Geza Alföldy, in an
article
published in Greek,
Roman and Byzantine Studies of 1974 and Lukas de
Blois in his inaugural lecture of 1981 (published in Historia in 1984)
used the Life of
Apollonius as evidence for the perception of the
onset of the third-century crisis by contemporary Greek authors.
Alföldy and
De Blois especially referred to book 5 chapter 36, a speech of
Apollonius
before Vespasian containing recommendations on the exercise of
imperial power.
In this speech, whose contemporary relevance had already been stressed
by
Schtajerman, the emperor is advised to moderate the tax burden, to use
his
absolute power wisely, to respect the law, to honour the gods, to keep
his sons
properly under control, to curb the extravagance of the imperial slaves
and
freedmen, etc. Alföldy considered this speech, together with the
Maecenas
speech in book 52 of the Roman
History of Cassius Dio, an expression of
the author's conviction "that, in spite of all present evil,
the sound
world of the past could be restored." De Blois referred to
the advice
of Philostratus' Apollonius to moderate the tax burden as one of
several
examples to illustrate the frequency of complaints on this score among
Greek
authors of the first half of the third century - complaints that
were often combined with expressions of dissatisfaction at the amounts
of
money squandered on the military.
There are important differences between the approach of
Göttsching, Calderini, Lenz and Schtajerman, on the one hand, and the
utilization of Philostratus by Alföldy and De Blois, on the other.
Neither
Alföldy nor De Blois claimed that Philostratus tried to convince an
intended
readership of the views contained in Apollonius' speech to Vespasian,
nor did
they explicitly label the
Life a politically tendentious piece of
writing. They did suggest, however, that the recommendations of the
main
character of the Life
of Apollonius are evidence of a 'consciousness
of crisis' - a
Krisenbewusstsein in Alföldy's phrasing -
on the part of the author. In their opinion, the speech of Apollonius
bears
witness to the perception of early third-century socio-political
reality by
Philostratus as well as to the remedies that the Athenian sophist
envisaged
for contemporary ills. In all fairness I should add that Philostratus'
work is
not central to their respective arguments. Of the witnesses adduced by
Alföldy
and De Blois, other authors, for example historiographers such as
Cassius Dio
and Herodian and orators such as the author of the Eis basilea, a
mid third-century encomium, play a much more important part.
Nevertheless,
Alföldy and De Blois do make assumptions about Philostratus'
perception of the
situation of the Roman empire in the first half of the third century,
and these assumptions should be
stated and examined with the same rigour as the more sweeping
suppositions of
scholars who offer a full-blown political interpretation of the Life of
Apollonius.
Political
interpretations of Philostratus' Life
of Apollonius: four objections
The
arguments presented
in favour of political interpretations of the Life of Apollonius
have
generally met with a degree of scepticism. Göttsching's ideas were
almost
immediately dismissed in a review by J. Miller, and Emilio
Gabba
refuted Calderini's hypothesis in an appendix to an article on Cassius
Dio, published
in 1955. Moreover, Friedrich
Solmsen and Jonas Palm
criticized the
search for a
contemporary political tenor in general. Graham
Anderson too, in his
monograph
on Philostratus, has made pertinent observations on this score. In
passing,
these scholars mentioned several fundamental objections to political
interpretations of the Life,
without, however, going into a full
consideration of the subject.
What are the main objections to the interpretations that
have passed in review until now? In the first place, scholars like
Göttsching,
Calderini and Schtajerman have neglected the fact that Philostratus
must have
taken considerable pains in outlining the historical background to
the alleged
activities of his hero. In my opinion, there can be no doubt that the
sophist
drew heavily on imperial biography and historiography on the Roman
empire in the first century.
I
should add that this holds true regardless of the question as to
whether he
found some indications for contacts of Apollonius with emperors in
traditions
directly connected with the Tyanean sage. Even where Philostratus had
access
to such traditions, he elaborated them with material taken from
imperial
biographical and historiographical sources. The results of his efforts
are
quite respectable, in spite of some chronological mistakes and
historical
improbabilities.
Let me
try to illustrate
the consequences of this observation. We have seen that Calderini took
the
report that Vespasian was sixty years old when he came to power as an
allusion
to the age that Septimius Severus was to reach in 206. Tacitus'
Histories
(2.74.2 and 5.8.4),
however, show that Vespasian's age played a part in discussions
during the
establishment of the Flavian dynasty. The same is
true of
the emphasis on dynastic succession that Schtajerman noticed in
Philostratus'
description of the alleged meeting between Apollonius and Vespasian and
that
she interpreted as the expression of the Athenian sophist's opinion.
Again,
dynastic continuity was an important topic in the historiography on the
first
years of the Flavian regime, as can be seen from Tacitus' Histories
(4.52.1) and Josephus' Jewish
war (4.596). The references to the disastrous effects of
the activities of informers, according to Calderini intended as a
warning to
Septimius Severus of the influence of Plautianus, are nothing more than
an
authentic touch in Philostratus' portrait of Domitian. The
activities of
informers under the last Flavian emperor are highlighted by Pliny
(Panegyricus
35.2).
As for Göttsching's view that Apollonius' prophecy of the poisoning of
Titus
by Domitian was an allusion to Geta's death at the hand of his brother
Caracalla,
we should note that Cassius Dio (66.26.2) held Domitian responsible
for Titus'
death,
although he does not mention poison in this connection. The
first
reference to poisoning in the extant literature is not found until the
fourth
century, in Aurelius Victor (Caesares
10.5 and 11.1). It does not seem implausible,
however,
that rumours of poisoning had already found expression in
second-century
literary versions of Titus' death. The development of the tradition on
the
death of Titus and Domitian's alleged part in it were overlooked by
Göttsching.
I realise, of course, that a reference to a first-century
event by Philostratus, even if he found it in historiography or
imperial
biography, can still have been understood by his contemporaries as an
allusion
to a third-century event. Such a reading can even have been intended
by
Philostratus himself. The report of Titus' death and of Domitian's
part in it
may be a case in point. Interestingly, Herodian (4.5.6) has
Caracalla, in his
defence
before the senate after the liquidation of Geta
,
refer to earlier
instances of
emperors having eliminated their brothers, explicitly citing the case
of
Domitian and Titus. However, by reckoning with the
probability that
Philostratus did a quite respectable amount of homework for his
portraits of
first-century emperors, we can eliminate at least a number of the more
far-fetched interpretations of passages in the Life as allusions.
Moreover, if the observation that in drawing his imperial portraits
Philostratus used imperial biography and historiography on the first
century
on a considerable scale is correct, it belies the assumption that he
systematically attempted to fit the characterisation of first century
emperors
into a third-century mould. Once again, this does not exclude the
possibility
of allusions to the behaviour of the Severan emperors, but such
allusions, if
they can be made plausible, have a much more incidental character than
was
suggested by scholars such as Göttsching, Calderini and Schtajerman.
The second objection to political interpretations is the
commonplace, not to say hackneyed character of most of the
recommendations on
political topics that the main character of the Life of Apollonius
expresses, especially in his speech to Vespasian on the exercise of
autocracy
in book 5 chapter 36. With one exception - to which I shall return
presently
- I can find nothing in this
speech that could not have
been written around 100 A.D. and much that could have been written -
and in fact was written - in any speech on kingship from
the fourth century B.C. onwards. Consider, for example, the
recommendation to
moderate the tax burden (VA
5.36). In other third-century authors,
statements
on the tax burden are directly linked to the problem of the demands
made by the
military, as in Cassius Dio (77.10.4) and the speech
Regarding
the emperor ([Aristides], or.
35.30); the
relevance to the first half of the third century of
utterances
that stress the connection between the costs of the armies and the tax
burden
goes without saying. In the
Life of Apollonius, this link is notably
absent. The admonition to help the needy and guarantee the rich the
safe
enjoyment of their wealth seems to be simply an elaboration of a
standard
ingredient of manuals on royalty, and I fail to see any special
indication
pointing to the early third century, as De Blois does. Two
very similar
pieces
of advice from the fourth century B.C. can be found in Isocrates and
Aristotle.
Isocrates (Ep.
7.4) preaches to Timotheus of Heraclea the usual respect for the
possessions
of the rich, while Aristotle (Politica 5
1310b40-1311a2) states that the
king ensures that neither
the
wealthy nor the mass of the people suffer injustice - a
clear
parallel with the policy of running with the hare and hunting with the
hounds
advised by Philostratus' Apollonius.
There are,
admittedly, passages in the Life
of
Apollonius that can be interpreted as an allusion to Roman
military
policy.
For example, in book 2 chapter 26, the Indian king Phraotes
tells
Apollonius that he keeps the barbarians on his borders in check by
payments,
and even uses them as border troops. This policy, which is judged very
positively by Apollonius, must have been interpreted by at least a
significant
part of Philostratus' readers as alluding to a Roman practice that was
common
in the early third century. This has been pointed out by Herbert Grassl, and
Schtajerman took this passage to reflect Philostratus' own point of
view: the
Athenian sophist was, in her opinion, advocating a low-profile military
policy.
It is not improbable that Philostratus was aware of some of the
problems
connected with the defence of the borders of the empire; after all, he
had been
present in the imperial headquarters during Caracalla's operations on
the Rhine and Danube border in 213. But are we
entitled to understand Phraotes' policy and Apollonius' approval as
reflecting Philostratus' own opinion?
For the moment, I will leave this question unanswered
and turn to a third objection to political interpretations of the
Life of
Apollonius. The description of the activities and
utterances of the
main
character in the realm of politics is an important component of
Philostratus'
portrayal of Apollonius as a philosopher rather than as an obscure
miracle
worker. In other words, Apollonius' alleged contacts with emperors and
his
interventions in civic life in Greek cities are essential to
Philostratus'
professed apologetic programme. The
early imperial age had an
aggregate of
clear-cut conceptions of the socio-political role of the
philosopher. These
conceptions, which had their roots in the Classical and
early-Hellenistic
periods, have been listed and analysed by Johannes
Hahn in Der
Philosoph und
die Gesellschaft. Philostratus modelled his hero in
accordance with
these conceptions. In his contacts with Vespasian and Titus,
Philostratus'
Apollonius is the philosophical adviser of the virtuous king; the
confrontation with Domitian is presented as the crowning event of a
tradition
of philosophical resistance to despotism, and Apollonius reveals
himself as an
undaunted adversary of a tyrant. By intervening in situations of civic
discord, Philostratus' hero fulfils another expectation bound up
with the
philosopher's role: the philosopher as an impartial arbiter of
conflicts.
Political interpretations of the
Life of Apollonius tend to assume
that the employment of such conceptions by Philostratus in his
portrayal of
Apollonius betrays the sophist's own convictions. Schtajerman, for
example,
concluded from the behaviour towards Domitian attributed to Apollonius
that
the author of the Life,
despite his predilection for strong imperial
authority, was opposed to tyrannical regimes. I am afraid that this
amounts to
an unacceptable identification of the author with the main character of
his
work. If Philostratus wanted to portray Apollonius as a philosopher, he
had to
turn to deeply rooted and widely held conceptions of the philosopher's
role,
such as the philosopher as the opponent of a tyrant. We should not
forget that
such conceptions were rather idealistic. I venture the suggestion that
many
philosophers were wise enough not to model their actual behaviour in
relations
with autocrats on such conceptions. The claim that a sophist shared
these conceptions
cannot be considered valid on the basis of their presence in a literary
text
such as the Life of
Apollonius. To make such a claim acceptable, one
should adduce evidence from Philostratus' other writings.
This brings me to my fourth objection to political
interpretations of the Life
of Apollonius: only too often, scholars
who
have proposed such interpretations have neglected, insufficiently
digested or
misinterpreted Philostratus' other writings, especially the Lives of
the
sophists. Among Philostratus' writings, this work, in
which he deals
with
his own cultural milieu and that of his predecessors, should take pride
of
place as a source for the Athenian sophist's values and convictions.
The views
on the relations between Greek intellectuals and Roman emperors that he
expresses in the biographies of his cultural heroes are markedly
different from
the idealised conceptions of the relations between philosophers and
rulers
that we find in the Life
of Apollonius. There is, of course, a certain
amount of common ground. 
Both
in the Life of
Apollonius
and in the
Lives
of the sophists, emperors are expected to show respect
towards people
who
represent Greek culture. This does not mean, however, that the
relations
between monarchs and Greek intellectuals as envisaged in the Lives of
the
sophists exhibit the idealised conceptions that we find
embodied in
the Life
of Apollonius. Philosophers were expected to
display
frankness in
voicing
criticism of monarchs: the ideal of parrhēsia.
Philostratus' advice,
on
the other hand, is “not to provoke tyrants or excite to wrath their
savage
dispositions” (Vitae
sophistarum 500), and he condemns the behaviour of his
senior
colleague
Antipater, who openly lamented the murder of Geta by Caracalla, as
essentially
foolish (Vitae
sophistarum
607). Philosophers were expected to cast themselves in the
role of
moral and spiritual guide and personal confidant in their relations
with those
in power. Philostratus, on the other hand, views the relations between
emperors and Greek intellectuals - philosophers and sophists alike -
almost exclusively in terms of cultural patronage. For example,
Hadrian's
interest in Greek culture was, according to Philostratus, a form of
diversion
from imperial concerns (Vitae
sophistarum 490). He certainly does not disdain such a
view of
Greek literary culture; on the contrary, in the preface to the Lives
of the
sophists he expresses the hope that his work will serve
precisely this
entertainment function for Gordian (Vitae
sophistarum 480).
Here we
touch on the
wider issue of the conceptions that sophists themselves held of the
social
function of their chosen profession. Obviously, this is too
comprehensive a
problem to be dealt with in brief, even if I had a firm view of the
matter -
which I have not. I can only say that I am inclined to side with those
scholars
who stress the self-awareness of the sophists as artists and who tend
to play
down their alleged sense of public responsibility. Aelius Aristides,
in one of
the most moving passages from his
To Plato: in defence of oratory,
compares his dedication to oratory with an addiction to alcohol or sex
(or.
2.432 Behr). The point of this comparison is, as Aristides himself
makes
explicit, the
personal and unsocial character of his enjoyment of practicing
eloquence. He
adds, however, that he derives from oratory "a joy and pleasure perhaps
more
fitting of a free man." This passage sums it up beautifully. There is
no
pretence of a function of oratory in political life; a few lines
earlier,
Aristides has explicitly stated that, due to changes in political
reality, such
pretensions are outmoded. Oratory is a goal in itself. On the other
hand, it
has a social function in that it is a mark of distinction of the
gentleman. It
is an asset valued both for its own sake and as a strategy of social
distinction.
The person who masters the intricacies of sophistic eloquence
accumulates symbolic
capital - to use a fashionable but not wholly inappropriate
Parisian expression.
The objections to political interpretations of the Life
of Apollonius that I have listed can be subsumed under two
headings. On
the
one hand, such interpretations tend to assume that the author's
opinions and
convictions can be deduced from the repertoire that he employs in
portraying
his protagonist as a philosopher involved in politics: a repertoire
consisting
of historical details, standard ingredients from speeches on kingship
and
conventional conceptions of the philosopher's role. In the second
place, such
interpretations tend to disregard the evidence for Philostratus'
outlook
contained in the Lives
of the sophists.
Allusions
to the
Severan period in the Life
of Apollonius
The objections to
interpretations of the Life
of Apollonius as Tendenzliteratur
that I have put forward so far do not imply that the possibility can be
ruled
out that the Life
contains incidental allusions to early third century
situations and events. In fact, I have left open the possibility of
reading
allusions to the murder of Geta in Philostratus' version of the death
of Titus (VA
6.32) and to Roman payments to barbarian enemies in
the policy
ascribed to
the Indian king Phraotes (VA
2.26). Before dealing with these and
similar
cases, however, I shall try to formulate some criteria that should be
followed
in attempting to track down allusions.
I think that there are two types of case in which it is
justified to suspect allusions to early third-century events and
situations:
when in describing first-century actions or situations and the comments
on them
by the protagonist of the Life
of Apollonius, the author commits
certain
evident anachronisms which reflect recent events or the situation of
his own
day; and when there are very close correspondences between activities
attributed to first-century emperors and rulers outside the Greco-Roman
world
in the Life,
on the one hand, and the actions of early third-century
emperors, on the other. In both cases, it must be shown to be plausible
that
contemporaries of Philostratus who were reasonably well informed about
the
relations in court and the course of action of the imperial
administration in
the previous decades must have been reminded of recent events or
existing
situations when they read certain passages in the Life. Only in cases
where these criteria are satisfied can we speak of a genuine allusion.
What results do
we get when we apply such criteria? I
think that it is almost inevitable to conclude that the report of
Titus' death
and the alleged part of Domitian in it must have been understood by
Philostratus' readers as an allusion to the murder of Geta by
Caracalla, and
the same applies to the report of Phraotes' habit of buying off
barbarian
invasions:
readers of
the Life
must have understood the passage as
alluding to Roman practice. In 'The pepaideumenos in action', Graham
Anderson has made the interesting suggestion that the claim
of a
foolish
Indian king that he is 'identical with the Sun' is an allusion to
Elagabalus
(VA 3.28).
I think that Anderson is right, and I would take this as a
confirmation of Göttsching's dating
of the completion of the Life
of Apollonius after Elagabalus' death in
222. In drawing conclusions from allusions such as these, however,
great
caution should be exercised. To take one example, I do not want to deny
that
Philostratus regarded imperial fratricide as a regrettable form of
action and
that he probably retained rather unpleasant memories of his stay in the
Severan
court as far as the years 211 and 212 were concerned. This seems to be
confirmed by his letter to an ‘Antoninus', possibly Caracalla, accusing
the
addressee of having sacked his own house (Ep. 72), a letter
which, I suspect, was written after 217. In view of Philostratus'
reaction to
the behaviour of his colleague Antipater in connection with the murder
of Geta,
however, it seems likely that his main conviction in matters of this
kind was
that they were no concern of his.
Two other passages which meet my criteria for being taken
as allusions to early third-century situations deserve more serious
consideration as evidence of Philostratus' concerns. The first of
these (VA
7.42) is a charming story about a boy from Messene whom
Apollonius meets in Domitian's dungeons. The reason for the boy's
captivity is
his refusal to give in to the emperor's amorous advances, but he blames
his
father in the first place for his unenviable situation. Instead of
giving him a
proper Greek education, his old man has sent him to Rome to study law.
Fortunately, the boy has at least fruitfully followed the lessons of a
grammaticus, so he has a ready answer to Apollonius' allusion to
Hippolytus.
The anecdote is clearly anachronistic; it reflects the situation in
the second
half of the second and early third centuries, when the study of Roman
law
became popular among young men from the eastern provinces. The
development is
beautifully illustrated by the autobiography of Gregory the
Wonder-worker, who
in the 230s was told by his tutor that the study of Roman law opened up
several
attractive career perspectives. It is a development that must have
filled a
sophist such as Philostratus with apprehension; for the author of the
Lives
of the sophists literary culture was the quintessence of a
cherished
Greek
identity. In spite of the playful character of the allusion, something
of this
apprehension shows through in the anecdote about the boy from Messene.
The
second allusion that may be evidence of Philostratus'
concerns is Apollonius' final recommendation to Vespasian (5.36) .
The sage
advises the emperor to send Greek-speaking proconsuls to Greek public
provinces, while Latin-speaking public provinces should be ruled by
Latin-speaking proconsuls. The motivation of this advice is a sign of a
relatively far-reaching identification with the exercise of Roman rule:
Apollonius refers to the case of a proconsul of Achaea who was
insufficiently familiar
with Greek customs and became a plaything of his provincial assessores.
The advice itself, however, expresses an equally far-reaching desire
that the
emperor should take Greek identity into account in selecting governors
for the
eastern provinces. The fact is that the contrast of 'Greek-speaking'
and 'Latin-speaking'
candidates for governorships probably means that 'Greek-speaking'
candidates
are not just people with a working knowledge of Greek. After all, an
overwhelming
majority of senators from Italy and
the west must have been reasonably fluent in that language. It is, I
think,
almost unavoidable to conclude that Philostratus' hero advises the
emperor to
select people from the eastern half of the empire, whose mother tongue
was
Greek, as governors of eastern provinces. In relation to the dramatic
date of
Apollonius' speech, the year 69, this piece of advice seems to be
anachronistic: although there was to be a notable increase in the
number of
senators of eastern origin under the Flavian dynasty, and although
several of
them were promoted to governorships in the eastern provinces, I prefer
to think
that Apollonius' recommendation reflects the situation in the Antonine
and
Severan periods, when a significant part of the senatorial order was of
eastern
origin. According to Geza Alföldy,
the evidence for the period 138 -
160 shows
a clear trend for senators from the Greek east to be appointed as
imperial
legates in eastern rather than in western provinces, and the same
tendency can
be detected in the holding of praetorian and consular proconsulates. In
his
continuation of Alföldy's work for the period 180-235, Paul Leunissen
claims
that the available evidence suggests a break in this trend: in
appointments of
imperial legates, no tendency to take the geographical provenance of
the
candidates into account can be detected. As far as proconsulates are
concerned, substantial evidence is only available for the proconsulate
of Asia, but this is rather striking: of
the 21 proconsuls whose geographical provenance is known, twelve
certainly came
from the western half of the empire, and another six probably came from
there
as well. I have to admit that I always become slightly nervous when I
see the
prosopographical evidence on which such claims are based. If, however,
Leunissen is right, it seems plausible that this development was to a
certain
extent perceived by the social elite in the Greek-speaking provinces,
and this
may have resulted in a measure of dissatisfaction. I find it very
attractive
to suppose that the advice which Philostratus puts into the mouth of
his hero
and for which, of course, no precedent at all existed in speeches on
kingship,
is an expression of this dissatisfaction.
If this proposal is acceptable, this would mean that,
although literary culture was essential to Philostratus' conception of
Greek
identity, his highly pronounced Greek self-awareness also found
expression in
an interest in the manning of the governorships of the eastern
provinces. This
is not really surprising: even though the importance of careers in the
imperial administration in providing status is sometimes played down in
the Lives
of the sophists in favour of sophistic achievements, an
interest in
such
careers is evident from almost every page of this work. Just like the
story
about the boy from Messene, Apollonius' advice on the manning of
proconsular posts alludes to the
kind of issues that did concern Philostratus: the cultural identity and
prestige of the social elite in the eastern half of the empire.
Concluding remarks
In sum, I think that
interpretations of the Life
of Apollonius as a politically tendentious
piece of writing mistake the author's repertoire for his convictions
and values
and often amount to neglect of the more direct evidence for
Philostratus' outlook contained in the Lives
of the sophists. On the other hand, I
hope to have succeeded in demonstrating that a plausible case can be
made for
the existence of incidental allusions to early third-century events and
situations in the Life
of Apollonius. The number of such cases could
probably be increased. We should not presume, however, that such
allusions
testify to Philostratus' concerns and opinions on current affairs
unless
additional evidence from his other writings can be adduced. Such
evidence
suggests that special significance should be attributed to the
allusions to the
appeal that the study of Roman law held for Greeks, and to the
appointment of
governors in the Greek provinces of the empire. They bear witness to
Philostratus' preoccupations and interests, while other allusions are
evidence
of a rather unsystematic perception of some aspects of contemporary
reality.
With due respect for Alföldy and De Blois, I think that signs of a
consciousness of an impending or actual crisis are hard to find in
Philostratus'
writings. The Lives of
the sophists lack any of Cassius Dio's nostalgia
for the Antonine period. Perhaps the value of Philostratus' writings as
a
source for the attitudes to be found among the social elite in the
eastern half
of the empire in the Severan period should be looked for as much in the
limitations to his perception as in what he did perceive.
Titles
mentioned
Alföldy,
G.
(1974), 'The crisis of the third century as seen by
contemporaries', GRBS 15: 89-111 [reprinted in: Die
Krise des
römischen Reiches. Geschichte, Geschichtsschreibung, und
Geschichtsbetrachtung. Ausgewählte Beiträge (Stuttgart 1989),
319-341].
Back to text.
Alföldy,
G.
(1977), Konsulat und Senatorenstand unter den
Antoninen. Prosopographische Untersuchungen zur senatorischen
Führungsschicht
(Bonn).
Back
to text.
Anderson,
G.
(1986), Philostratus. Biography and belles lettres
in the third century AD (London).
Back to text.
Anderson,
G.
(1989), 'The pepaideumenos in action: sophists
and their outlook in the Early Empire', in: ANRW
2.33.1: 79-208.
Back to text.
Blois,
L. de
(1984), 'The third century crisis and the Greek elite
in the Roman empire', Historia 33: 258-277.
Back to text.
Bowie,
E.L.
(1978), 'Apollonius of Tyana: tradition and reality',
in: ANRW 2.16.2: 1652-1699.
Back to text.
Calderini,
A.
(1940/1), 'Teoria e pratica politica nella "Vita di
Apollonio di Tiana"', RIL 74: 213-241.
Back
to text.
Gabba,
E.
(1955), 'Sulla Storia Romana di Cassio Dione',
RSI 67: 289-233.
Back to text.
Göttsching,
J. (1889),
Apollonius von Tyana (Leipzig)
[dissertation].
Back to text.
Grassl,
H.
(1982), Sozialökonomische Vorstellungen in der
kaiserzeitlichen griechischen Literatur (1.-3 Jh. n.Chr.)
(Wiesbaden).
Back to text.
Hahn,
J.
(1989), Der Philosoph und die Gesellschaft.
Selbstverständnis,
öffentliches Auftreten und populäre Erwartungen in der hohen Kaiserzeit
(Stuttgart).
Back to text.
Lenz,
F.W.
(1964), 'Die Selbstverteidigung eines politischen
angeklagten. Untersuchungen zu der Rede des Apollonios von Tyana bei
Philostratos', Das Altertum 10: 95-110.
Back to text.
Leunissen,
P.M.M.
(1989), Konsuln und Konsulare in der Zeit von
Commodus bis Severus Alexander (180-235 n.Chr.). Prosopographische
Untersuchungen zur senatorischen Elite im römischen Kaiserreich
(Amsterdam).
Back to text.
Miller,
J.
(1890), review of Göttsching (1889), Berliner
Philologische Wochenschrift 10: 1422-1426.
Back to text.
Palm,
J.
(1976), Om Philostratos och hans Apollonios-biografi
(Uppsala).
Back to text.
Schtajerman,
E.M.
(1964), Die Krise der Sklavenhalterordnung im
Westen des römischen Reiches (Berlin).
Back
to text.
Solmsen,
F. (1941), 'Philostratos
(9)-(12)', in: RE
20.1: 124-177 [= Kleine
Schriften 2 (1968),
92-118].
Back to text.