Sophia, agōn, paideia, pathos

Reading Assignment, Text Access

Read:

• This Study Guide, all of it, with quiz response prompt, etc. Study guides are always a required read
• Lucian The Vision, in Complete Works vol. 1 pages 1-7 (Brightspace)
• Lucian Slander, a Warning, in Complete Works vol. 4 pages 1-11 (Brightspace)

Quiz Response Prompt

• Link to Sophia, agōn, paideia Brightspace "quiz" (or better, journal entry).

As we're still just getting acquainted, for this first quiz response prompt, I simply want you to record your impressions of the assigned readings. Does any of this feel like familiar stuff? Remind you of anything? What's unfamiliar? Strange? New? What would you like to see discussed? For more ideas on what to write, see below. . . .

Length? Let's give this two generous paragraphs — use your judgment.

Introduction to Texts

Sophia, agōn, paideia, pathos; "skill, contest, culture, emotion": those are the four main themes of the course. They and associated values are introduced with these three initial readings, which cover education and an orator's career choice (Lucian's Vision) and the dangers encountered by those who, when they play politics, try to play by the rules (Lucian's Slander, a Warning). We won't have had time to fill in all sorts of essential background, though here I fill in some. For now, try to feel as if you're touring some very old place but very new to you. What is the overall layout? What stands out? What would you want to take a "picture" of to share with others? What will you tell others when you get home?

Concepts

For now, a few words on key concepts mentioned above (note, though, that these concepts are explored on the "Terms" page). We can already start looking for the relevance of these in the sophia etc. readings. . . .

• sophia is usually translated as "wisdom," but in ancient Greek it could, and often did, mean "skill," "craft," or "cleverness," a way with words, for instance (i.e., eloquence). Those possessing sophia in the sense just mentioned could be termed "sophists" (sophistai, singular sophistēs), especially if they professed to teach sophia to others, and most especially if they took money for it. Sophistic, all that pertains to the practice and profession of a sophist, figures prominently in our course
• agōn means "contest," whether a formal contest with set prizes, for instance, a race, or "contest" in a more general sense, that is, any situation involving competitiveness or rivalry. Much of this course is about the culture of competition ("agonism") in the Roman Imperial East, ca. 50-250 CE
• paideia means, literally, "education." For our period, it refers as well to the cultural capital that comes from a deep and extensive knowledge of Greek language, literature, and culture, and in particular, rhetoric. But it also had to do with personal comportment, speech, dress, social savoire faire — breeding, in other words
• pathos means "emotion" or "passion." In our readings, what emotions or passions have to do with agōn-"competition"?

Author Notes: Lucian of Samosata

Lucian (ca. 120-ca. 190 CE) was born in the town of Samosata, present-day Samsat, in what is now Turkey. In his time, it was at the eastern extreme of Roman Syria. Lucian was not himself Greek, but he had a thoroughly Greek education and pursued the career of a sophist, a teacher-practitioner of rhetoric. On the topic of Lucian's ethnic idenity, in the Double Accusation, the author makes a fuss over his foreignness, and how his education and eloquence opened doors for him throughout the Empire. Says "the Syrian" (i.e., Lucian), "[Rhetoric] made a Greek of me!" (Double Accusation sect. 30, trans. Fowler).

Lucian as sophist seems not to have achieved success as huge as some others did, but Lucian did get a chance to bring his writings to the attention of the emperor Lucius Verus. He traveled widely, spending time in Italy, Gaul (present-day France), and Greece.

We have all manner of prose from him, including declamations, dialogues, and assorted essays. He was a master of humor and irony; today, we consider him a satirist.

The Vision

The Greek in the manuscriptscalls this work Peri tou enupniou ētoi bios Loukianou, "On the Dream, or the Life of Lucian." This is our paideia piece, a reflection on education in "the classics," and the cultural and professional cachet that such an education brings.

• Make sure to read the paideia entry on the Terms page.

The accuracy of the piece we can't know, but it provides an amusing look at how Lucian came to choose paideia as his entrée into professional life.

The bulk of the piece describes a dream that Lucian says made up his mind to pursue paideia. As such, it recalls all sorts of stuff in the Greek literary tradition:

• Dreams as moments when we see our future are all over ancient literature
• The ride on the flying chariot perhaps is meant to recall the myth of the chariot (the chariot of the soul) in Plato's Phaedrus
• Note the rhetorical trope of prosōpopoiia-"personification"
  • Lucian introduces Sculpture and Culture as quasi-divine women
  • That recalls the (older) sophist Prodicus' (400s BCE) story of the choice of Heracles. A young Heracles at a crossroads in life has to choose between Virtue and Vice, who likewise appear to him as women
  • This choice of Lucian's also recalls the mythic Judgment of Paris, who had to choose which of three goddesses, Hera, Athena, or Aphrodite, was the most beautiful
  • There are also echoes of Hesiod's encounter with the Muses, how they chose him to be a poet
  • As a student rightly once pointed out, there is also an evocation of Achilles' choice between a brief but heroic life and a long but obscure life in Homer's Iliad (8th cent. BCE)
  • There is a key comic evocation in the tug-of-war between Sculpture and Culture, each pulling on Lucian, wanting to claim him for themselves. In Aristophanes' Assemblywomen (ca. 393 BCE), two elderly ladies intent on having their way with a young man similarly start to pull him this way and that. All these evocations in Lucian's piece are almost too much, but they're typical of second-sophistic literature
  • There is arguably still another evocation: the choice between the old, dusty education and the new, attractive sophistic education in Aristophanes Clouds (423 BCE)

In recalling the literary-rhetorical tradition, Lucian's essay is both true to its theme and typical of literature of the second sophistic.

Questions for you: What social class does Lucian seem to come from? Why does Lucian choose Paideia-"Culture"? What are the values associated with paideia? What does its contrast with sculpture (a physical craft) seem to say about values of the time? Does any of this remind you of education today? Are education and/or competition something that only elite people think about?

Notes keyed into page numbers

Slander, a Warning

Lucian presents this piece almost as a public service announcement. Just as television used to be full of messages warning people not to smoke, this essay warns readers to be on guard against slander or "trash talk," in Greek, diabolē. My question for you is: Who is the intended audience? Those in a position to listen to slander (Who would they be?) and to harm innocent people based on it (Who would they be?)? Or those likely to fall victim to slander too-easily believed by others?

The work contains a description of a lost painting by the Greek artist Apelles (4th century BCE). There is little reason to suppose that the story that Lucian tells as background is true (for the story, see Lucian's text), but the general situation described by Lucian, plus the description of the painting and of the figures depicted in it, are of great interest to us.

(The image just below dates to much later; it is Italian-renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli's impression of what Apelles' painting might have looked like.)

At least two things in the essay are of interest to us. First, there is the description of various competitive situations, including athletics, familiar to Lucian's audience. Then there are the emotions, notably including envy, phthonos, that arise from (among other things) competitive situations, and that prime people to utter, and to listen to, slander.

(The image below is of an inscription, 500s CE, from the Greco-Roman city of Aphrodisias, in Asia Minor— present-day Turkey. It's part of a series of inscriptions commemorating one Albinos, who had paid for repair work in the city's southern public square. It reads, ho phthonos tukhēn ou nikai, "Envy does not vanquish Fortune!")

Questions for you: Is there anything in Lucian's essay that we can learn from, either about the society in which Lucian lived or about our own world? Do we need to be on guard against other people's, maybe our own, trash talk? What does that kind of talk do to people? What does it have to do with competition?