Sophistopolis as Cosmopolis: Reading Postclassical Greek Rhetoric

Abstract

This article examines the interplay between the Stoic concept of cosmopolis and Greek rhetorical discourses of the polis in the Roman imperial period. D. A. Russell's “Sophistopolis” (from Greek Declamation, 1983) and Doyne Dawson's work on utopian political theory (1992) serve as points of departure for developing a method of reading the political in Second Sophistic rhetoric. The text under examination is a major first-century oration: Dio Chrysostom's Euboean Discourse. Composed around 96 CE, after Dio's return from exile by Domitian, the Euboicus combines a castaway's rural fable with didactic commentary, forcing the utopian pastoral hard up against a lecture on economic and social distress in the imperial city. Dio creates disjunctive moods, city-visions, and speaking personae, performing a rhetorical tour de force while simultaneously constructing a political subject at the limit of creaturely need. A “cosmopolitical” analysis of Second Sophistic rhetoric finds the consummate artistry of the paideia addressed to imperial power and provincial realities, revealing civic breakdown and human suffering in the city-spaces of empire.

Notes

1. See “Longinus” 1935, On the Sublime, XLIV; Tacitus, 1942, “A Dialogue on Oratory,” ¶40–41; Quintilian, 1986, Institutio Oratoria, Book IX.

2. See Walker 2000 on the continuity of epideictic across eras in antiquity; O'Gorman 2005, on phantasia as a primary phenomenon in epideictic rhetoric with reference to Aristotle.

3. Musonius and his student, Epictetus, were banished in general sweeps to rid the city of philosophers: Musonius by Nero in 65 CE and again by Vespasian; Epictetus by Domitian in 93 CE. Dio, accused of conspiracy, was banished personally from Rome, Italy, and Bithynia by Domitian in 82 CE. Identifying intellectuals with Stoic leanings as both upholders and opponents of the principate, Brunt ultimately concludes that the late Stoic sometimes found himself in a position to act politically but that his actions were not inspired by a desire “to revalue or reform the established order, but to fulfil [sic] his place within that order” (1975, 32).

4. On parrhêsia as “speaking truth to power,” see Foucault 2001. For a stimulating critique of Foucault with reference to Stoicism, see Lévy 2009.

5. Scholars of Second Sophistic literature with investments in cultural studies, postmodern theory, and feminist theory include Simon Goldhill 2001; Helen Morales 2004; and Tim Whitmarsh 1998, 2001a,b, 2005, among others.

6. See Whitmarsh on the problem of bringing the assumptions of “expressive realism” to Second Sophistic rhetoric (2001b, 30).

7. See Walker on the stock themes of Roman declamation and debates about their value as training for political life (2000, 96–99). In his discussion of declamation (both Greek and Roman) in the Augustan period, Kennedy characterizes the practice as “literary composition, in which dangerous subjects could be touched on implicitly, subtly, or in an apparently imaginary context” (1994, 172).

8. See Jameson, especially “Conclusion: The Dialectic of Utopia and Ideology” (1981, 281–299), on reading literature for both critical and utopian impulses. Jameson's use of Burke's concept of the symbolic act (1981, 80–81), wherein the cultural performance is “affirmed as a genuine act,” is particularly useful for Second Sophistic rhetoric, located at the boundary of the literary and the instrumental. For scholarship on ancient rhetoric employing Jameson's approach, see Rose 1992 and Poulakos 1997. On the Stoic idea of the city, see Schofield 1999.

9. See Kennerly 2010 for a recent, measured assessment of Cicero's conversational rhetoric in De Officiis.

10. Kennedy's concept of “literaturization” (1980) is one form of this thesis, an evaluation also current during the period in sources such as “Longinus” and Tacitus: powerful rhetoric is only possible under democracy.

11. The bibliography on decorum is vast. Brunt's essay offers an accessible introduction, including a useful appendix (see especially items 5 through 9 on Panaetius and Epictetus, 34–35). See also Kennerly in this volume. Numerous scholars read ancient practices in light of the concept of habitus as detailed in Pierre Bourdieu 1977 .

12. On the participation of women in Cynic philosophy, see Dawson 1992, 13.

13. On figured discourse (eschêmatismenos logos), see Ahl 1984. Ancient points of reference are Demetrius (On Style), “Longinus” (On the Sublime), and Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, Book IX.

14. See Bowie 1970 on Second Sophistic histories with reference to Polybius, the first colonized Greek intellectual of note. Polybius discredits his contemporaries—Greek historians in the “tragic” mode—for their overly emotional accounts of Roman conquest (Book II. 55–63). Their works have not survived.

15. See Walker (2000, 83–94) on Greek and Roman intellectuals' rhetorical efforts to influence the exercise of imperial power.

16. In contrast, see Swain 2000 on the contrast between the “essentially quietist and academic” Plutarch, with his focus on individual conduct, and Dio Chrysostom's concern for “social questions from a communal Point of view” (4).

17. Ma 2000 considers Dio part of the “Second Sophistic” (108n1) as does Whitmarsh 1998.

18. References are to the Loeb edition (1949), translated by J. W. Cohoon.

19. Berry 1983 remarks “narrative of any kind is unusual in Dio” and further notes that, in the Euboicus, “the Pastoral comes to life with a realism which we do not usually associate with orations of the Second Sophistic” (71). See also Highet 1973.

20. Ma 2000 interprets the scene both as an imitation of deliberation in the classical polis and as a reflection of actual practice in Greco-Roman cities (especially 117–124). See also Moles 1978 and Salmeri 2000.

21. A familiar Greek critique of Roman law joins here with a Stoic doctrine from Epictetus: “Let others labour at forensic causes, problems and syllogisms: do you labour at thinking about death, chains, the rack, exile” (1961, Discourse 2, Chapter 1).

22. See Ma 2000 on this point (especially 122–123).

23. See Ma 2000 on redistributive economies of the Greco-Roman city (112).

24. See Desideri 2000 for an analysis of four spatial orientations appearing throughout Dio's works: the city of Rome, an idealized countryside as the site of freedom, barbarian spaces of possibility at the margins of empire, and the homeland, offering a new vision of the city.

25. In a reading finely attuned to Dio's multiple personae, Ma 2000 proposes that his account is “not about the polis, but about images of the polis, and the use of such images to talk to the polis about itself” (109).

26. Dio compares himself with Odysseus overtly in Oration XIII, In Athens, about His Banishment.

27. When Dio sanctions “representing the sorrows of Niobe or Thyestes by song or dance” (¶120), he marks himself off from a more common Second Sophistic endorsement of classical performative traditions and emotional states. He mentions specifically Athenian and Theban dramatic traditions, though he does admit the value of sacred choruses.