Epicharmus on God as Mind (ΝΟΟΣ). A Neglected Fragment in Stobaeus. (With some remarks on early Pythagorean metaphysics and theology). (original) (raw)
Theophrastus. Appraising the Ancient Sources, eds., J. van Ophuijsen and M.Van Raalte, pp. 355-383, 1998
The barbarian Sophist: Clement of Alexandria’s Stromateis and the Second Sophistic
2014
Clement of Alexandria, active in the second half of the second century AD, is one of the first Christian authors to explain and defend the nascent religion in the terms of Greek philosophy and in relation to Greek paideia. His major work, the Stromateis, is a lengthy commentary on the true gnosis of the Christian faith, with no apparent overarching structure or organisational principle, replete with quotations from biblical, Jewish, Greek 'gnostic' and Christian works of all genres. This thesis seeks to read this complex and erudite text in conversation with what has been termed the 'Second Sophistic', the efflorescence of elite Greek literature under the Roman empire. We will examine the the text as a performance of authorial persona, competing in the agonistic marketplace of Greek paideia. Clement presents himself as a philosophical teacher in a diadoche from the apostles, arrogating to himself a kind of apostolic authority which appeals to both philosophical notions of intellectual credibility and Christian notions of the authentic handing down of tradition. We will also examine how the work engages key thematic concerns of the period, particularly discourses of intellectual eclecticism and ethnicity, challenging both Greek and Roman forms of hegemony to create a space for Christian identity. Lastly, this thesis will critically examine the Stromateis' intertextual relationship with the Homeric epics; the Iliad and the Odyssey are used as a testing ground for Christian selfpositioning in relation to Greek culture as a whole. As we trace this variable relationship, we will also see the cross-fertilisation of reading strategies between Homer and the bible; these developing complex allegorical methods not only presage the rise of Neoplatonism, but also lay the foundations for changes in cultural authority which accompany the Christianisaton of the Roman empire in the centuries after Clement. iii ACKnowledgements Timotheo Whitmarsh et Marco Edwards professoribus, omnium eruditissimis, multas gratias ago, qui non solum de paideia docent, sed etiam eam operibus comprobant. si hic libellus quid veritatis exprimit, filius vel frater verba eorum habeat; sed quacumque erret, vitia cuncta mihi tribuantur. familiae vero quattuor laudandae sunt; prima in qua natus et primum educatus sum. secunda, discipulorum magistrorumque societas, a qua proficiebam in sapientia aetate: non beneficia Scholae Grammaticae Trinitatis Sanctissimae, Collegii Sancti Pauli, et Collegii Corporis Christi praetermittam vel despiciam. tertiam, ecclesiam Dei commemoro, per quam alebar, fovebar, corroborabar, imprimis Domum Puseianam, sedem pietatis et doctrinae, quo fidem Catholicam didici. quattuor, uxori meae, quamquam haec verba non intellegit, etiam quantum debeam in verbis ego comprehendere non possim, gratias ago et laudem confero. A.M.D.G. S.R.T 2.vii.2015 καταλείπειν. οἱ μέν γε παῖδες σωμάτων, ψυχῆς δὲ ἔγγονοι οἱ λόγοι. αὐτίκα πατέρας τοὺς κατηχήσαντάς φαμεν... 4 At any rate, it would be comic, if we were to reject the writing of serious authors, to accept those who are quite a different sort of writer. Theopompus and Timaeus, who compose profane stories, and moreover Epicurus, the leading light of godlessness, and even Hipponax and Archilochus-must they be allowed to write so shamefully, while the one who heralds the truth must be prevented from leaving behind to succeeding generations something useful? I think it is a fine thing to bequeath good children to posterity. For there are children of the body; but words are the progeny of the soul. Indeed, we call those who teach us our fathers… 'Serious' authors are weighed up against their opposites: Theopompus and Timaeus were historians notorious for scurrility; 5 Hipponax, a ribald poet of the sixth century; 6 Archilochus, famous for his wit. This literary positioning firstly demarcates genres, separating out ἡ τῶν σπουδαίων γραφή, and it demarcates content, disavowing Epicureanism, with its denial of providence; 7 like Christians, Epicureans were apt to be denounced as atheists, 8 with the result that clear differentiation was imperative. 9 4 Str. 1.1.1.1-2. 5 Mentioned, for example, by Cornelius Nepos, who described them as 'quidem duo maledicentissimi' (Alc. 11; BNJ 115 T 267b); see Flower (1994) for a more sympathetic reading of the historian than is generally gleaned from reading of the ancient testimonia.Ferguson (1991) identifies Theompompus as a comic dramatist of the late fifth to early fourth centuries, however, and leaves Timaeus as an unknown. 6 This is Hipponax of Ephesus, rather than Hippon/Hipponax the philosopher of the fifth century from Samos (OCD s.v. 'Hippon, also called Hipponax'; DK 38); although the latter was given the stock epithet 'the atheist' in antiquity, the former is mentioned as the inventor of the choliamb in the same breath as Archilochus at Str. 1.16.79.1. It is, of course, entirely possible that Clement has accidently conflated the two, but here it is clearly the poet's role as writer of verse that is germane to Clement's point. 7 'I motivi sono indicati nella negazione epicurea della provvidenza e nella divinizzatione del piacere.' Dessi (1982) 402, speaking of the scholarly consensus on Clement's rejection of Epicureanism-though Dessi goes on to present a more nuanced picture of Clement's engagement with the philosophy. 8 Christianity and Epicureanism alike were often tarred as ἄθεος by Greek and Roman commentators; the locus classicus is Lucian's Alexander, in which both groups are targeted by Alexander as ἄθεος. A desire to distance themselves from Epicureanism may be part of the underlying reason for the strong 4 Drawing lines around appropriate philosophical content happens at the level of inference as well. The language of τῶν σπουδαίων reminds us of Plato's seventh epistle, 10 in which serious men, concerned with the most serious subjects, will not commit their highest ideas to writing. 11 Clement appropriately refers to the text here, in an apologia for writing. The topos that words are the children of the soul is drawn directly from Plato, Phaedrus 278a, in a similar contestation of the value of the written word. 12 Writing here is defended as a form of procreation: words are children, and more (as Clement seems to elide writing with teaching) beget children of the soul. The etymological roots of paideia are exposed here: education as reaction against it. On the fortunes of Epicurus as an atheist, see Obbink (1989); for an exhaustive index of references to Epicurus' 'atheism', see Winiarczyk (1984), updated by Winiarczyk (1992b). On ancient atheism in general, see Winiarczyk (1992a), more recently Bremmer (2007), and Whitmarsh (forthcoming). 9 It was the one form of philosophy from which Christians, following in the footsteps of Middle Platonic precursors, explicitly and consistently distanced themselves: e.g. Clement, Protrep. 5.665: Ἐπικούρου μὲν γὰρ μόνου καὶ ἑκὼν ἐκλήσομαι, ὃς οὐδὲν μέλειν οἴεται τῷ θεῷ, διὰ πάντων ἀσεβῶν. ('Epicurus alone I shall willingly utterly forget, who thinks nothing is of concern to god, impious beyond all.') The theme is common in Clement; see Dessi (1982) 402 n.3 for a list of references, and Lilla (1971) 41-51 for antagonism in Clement (and Justin Martyr) towards Epicureanism, with the Middle Platonic background. Cf. de Faye (1906) 163; Wagner (1902) 222; Tollinton (1914) 2.145. The actual use of Epicurean writing and thought by Christians, however, is a more complex picture-see Erler (2009) 160-3; at 161: 'The Alexandrine theologians occasionally mix vehement polemics against Epicurus' teachings with respect for his person.' Occasionally Epicurean doctrines find favour even with Clement, such as the idea of Prolepsis at Str. 2.4.16.3; Epicurus is quoted favourably at 4.8.69-2-4; without acknowledgement, Clement also uses an Epicurean citation at 6.12.104.3. See also Dessi (1982). 10 Ep. 7.344c. 11 The Christian tradition here mirrors the Platonic; Jesus, like Socrates, never wrote (the closest is a finger in the dust in Jn. 8:1-11, itself a wandering pericope: see Barton and Muddiman (2001) ad loc.). In some sense the Christian insistence of the fulfillment of prophecy in Jesus' life is an explanation for this lacuna: his story was already written. Here, however, Clement's intertexts are entirely Platonic, even if he invokes in his Christian audience a reminiscence of the same dilemma in more specifically Christian terms. 12 δεῖν δὲ τοὺς τοιούτους λόγους αὑτοῦ λέγεσθαι οἷον ὑεῖς γνησίους εἶναι, πρῶτον μὲν τὸν ἐν αὑτῷ, ἐὰν εὑρεθεὶς ἐνῇ, ἔπειτα εἴ τινες τούτου ἔκγονοί τε καὶ ἀδελφοὶ ἅμα ἐν ἄλλαισιν ἄλλων ψυχαῖς κατ' ἀξίαν ἐνέφυσαν• See also Symposium 209a-d and Theaetetus 150d. For the tales of the Greeks are many and ridiculous, as they seem to me.' (Trans. BNJ) 15 This is generally the modern consensus, evident particularly in BNJ F19, F26, F27, F30, and F35b; see Drews (1973) 61, and more recently Bertelli (2001) 76-94; see contra e.g. Nicolai (1997) especially at 154-5. See also Fowler (2001) on the relationship between Hecataeus and his poetic predecessors. between author and audience, reader and writer, makes heavy demands on both parties. Reading and writing, as Jonathan Boyarin has noted, 'unlike the speed of light, are hardly constant at all times and places.' 29 Both practices are embedded in particular cultures, relationships, and social conventions. The Stromateis lies on a fault-line of cultures of reading and writing on a number of planes. Firstly, there is the intersection of (traditional, though not static) Greek and (developing) early Christian practices of reading and writing: Christian practices which themselves are liminal, between Jewish and Hellenistic worlds. 30 On another level, literate Christian cultures, which, although differing in many respects, all place so 26
Azoth Quest, 2024
This paper examines the opening line of the Orphic Hymn to Zeus: "Ζεὺς πρῶτος γένετο, Ζεὺς ὕστατος ἀρχικέραυνος" (Zeus was first, Zeus of the bright thunderbolt is last), as preserved in both later Orphic collections and, crucially, in the treatise De Mundo (Περὶ Κόσμου). The De Mundo attestation provides vital chronological context, as this philosophical work was either written by Aristotle himself (384-322 BCE) or composed in the Peripatetic tradition between the 3rd century BCE and the 2nd century CE. While scholarly consensus now generally favors post-Aristotelian authorship, the text's preservation of the Orphic line demonstrates its circulation in philosophical circles by at least the Hellenistic period, significantly predating later monotheistic formulations. Through careful linguistic, theological, and comparative analysis, this study demonstrates how this single line encapsulates fundamental concepts of Greek theological thought, particularly regarding divine supremacy and cosmic unity. The paper argues that this formulation represents a sophisticated theological development independent of and prior to similar monotheistic expressions in other traditions. The preservation of this line in De Mundo-a text that synthesizes Aristotelian, Platonic, and Stoic elements in its theory of divine cosmic governance-provides crucial evidence for how early Greek philosophical traditions interpreted and incorporated Orphic theological concepts, suggesting a complex interplay between mystical and philosophical approaches to divine unity in pre-Christian Greek thought.
Archaic Thought and Sophistry in Herodotus' Histories 3.38.1: Some Remarks on the Concept of νόμος
Lexicon Philosophicum: International Journal for the History of Texts and Ideas, 2017
The concepts of νόμος and φύσις were key to sophistical thinking. The sophistical opposition between the two concepts exerted a great influence in the fifth century BC. The objective of this contribution is to identify the presence of sophistical elements in Herodotus' Histories, taking a historical perspective. The approach will include an analysis of the notion of νόμος ('custom'). This examination is intended to demonstrate the thesis that Herodotus uses intellectual discussions from the fifth century BC but also transposes the concept of sophistry in order to restore an archaic conception of νόμος.
2008
At the end of the thirteenth century Sophonias the Philosopher wrote a paraphrasis of Aristotle's treatise De Anima [On the Soul]. This exegetical work is accompanied by a methodological preface which presents a discussion on the approaches of previous commentators followed by a description of Sophonias' own method. This preface and its various aspects constitute the core of this study. Through the analysis of this introductory part of Sophonias' paraphrasis I will elucidate puzzling questions concerning the purpose, ...