The text that has been preserved among Plutarch's writings under the title βίοι τῶν δέκα ῥητόρων (Lives of the Ten Orators, henceforth LTO) is, on the one hand, an invaluable and often the best source about the canonical Attic orators: it is, for example, our only source for the verdict against Antiphon after the oligarchic revolution of 411 and for Lycurgus’ state copy of the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. On the other hand, it is a shambles, containing dubious anecdotes, obvious factual mistakes, and blatant contradictions.
The text has been both lucky and unlucky to have been admitted into the corpus of Plutarch's writings: lucky in that this was, in all likelihood, the decisive reason why we have it in its transmitted form, as an independent text, at all. Its bad luck consists in the burden the seal of Plutarchean authorship has brought with it, in that it has almost raised the expectation that it should equal Plutarch's genuine works. Scholars have criticized LTO for having neither the source value nor the intellectual or literary merits of the βίοι παράλληλοι – or they have, in the usual manner of apologists, stood up for the text and highlighted the qualities it does seem to exhibit.Footnote 1 Criticism of LTO is indeed unfair, though not for the reasons the apologists cite.
Critics base their judgements on the false premise that they are dealing with a conventional ‘work’, authored by an individual (or, for the sake of the argument, a collective) and passed down in copies with only the usual distortions of manuscript tradition. Instead, LTO belongs in the category of open and unstable texts: rather than being preserved in a fixed form the text was constantly altered by any reader who saw fit to add or change contents. The verbal form did not claim to be of artistic standard; only the information that was provided was of interest: the text was designed to be ‘used’, not enjoyed for its form; hence the ‘apographs’ were often not verbatim copies but were freely rephrased. The principal mode of composition was summed up by Arnold Schaefer, in a Gymnasialprogramm in which he refuted Plutarchean authorship:Footnote 2
Censeo autem vitas decem oratorum non multo post Dionysii Halicarnassensis aetatem ab aliquo grammatico breviter esse descriptas in usum eorum, qui ad lectionem oratorum antiquorum accederent: post, quum in scholis rhetorum lectitari non desinerent, a compluribus hominibus doctis indoctisque temporibus diversis interpolatas et amplificatas esse.
The most recent critic quotes these lines, only to dismiss Schaefer's theory; and the phrase ‘the author of the Lives’ is common, showing a lack of awareness of the problems that surround the production of the text.Footnote 3
My aim in this paper is not only to revive and defend Schaefer's theory but to demonstrate the ways in which the particular production process has shaped the text. I undertake to show how the process of compilation brought about the features that have struck interpreters, although they become easily explicable once we accept that the text is unstable.
At the end I shall add a few cautionary considerations about the methods of investigation that can be applied to the text, and its general interpretability. Accepting instability means we have to give up some forms of treatment we subject ‘intentionally’ authored texts to. Both literary and historical analysis needs to be aware of the origins of the text and thus the unique value and the perils connected with LTO.
1. INSTABILITY
The idea that many texts’ main characteristic lies in their changeability rather than an enshrined original form is commonly accepted by those working on the textual tradition.Footnote 4 Sometimes both approaches, the genetic and the ‘antiquarian’ literary, can be of interest with regard to the same text. Take, for example, the ending of Aeschylus’ Seven, where interpolations can be deleted as a departure from the original, or studied in themselves as documents of reception.Footnote 5
The most obvious examples of instability are functional texts, often of the technical kind. Books and texts that were ‘used’ rather than read for their own sake were always liable to be adapted to the purposes of the ‘user’, with little or no regard for the original form. This may take the form of major redactions,Footnote 6 but probably more often we deal with interventions on a far smaller scale. Two passages by Galen illustrate the general problem and the main mechanisms that cause changes:Footnote 7
Since many people have distorted my books … deleting some things, adding others and changing more, I believe it is better to show first the origin of the distortion and then the subject matter of each treatise I wrote.
(De lib. propr. Prol. 5 Boudon-Millot = 19.10 Kühn)Sometimes, I had written in two ways about one matter – one version in the text and the other in the margin – in order to choose one of them when I had evaluated them in quiet. But then the first copyist wrote them both, and when I did not pay attention to what had happened and did not correct the mistake, the book was passed on to many people and remained uncorrected.
(In Hipp. Epid. I Comm. I 36 Wenkebach = 17/1.80 Kühn)With texts that have no author but only a series of contributors the mechanisms are still the same. If such numerous and substantial changes of his text occurred even in Galen's lifetime, it is not hard to imagine that changes amassed as time elapsed. Where a reader's experience and individual findings lead to his making isolated alterations to a text, it would be wrong to speak of a revision or a new edition of that text. Individual changes can accumulate and gradually replace larger parts of the original content, and in the end the text may look very different, while never undergoing a systematic revision to give it back its unity.
2. BEGINNINGS
The title of LTO already indicates its relevance for a readership in the Roman era: the ten orators constitute the classical canon. So ‘academic’ interest rather than the literary ambition of a biographer caused the compilation to be initiated. For we can see relatively clearly how the collection of biographical sketches came into being.
Every unstable text needs a first version, or ‘core’, which can be changed by later ‘users’. For LTO we have to assume that the biographical series started as a collection of excerpts from other texts: we are in the exceptional position of possessing some of the main texts the core was made of. Foremost are the stylistic essays on Attic orators by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, which opened with biographical sketches. In the four cases in which we have the relevant sections (Lys., Isoc., Isae., Din.) it is apparent that this source stood at the start of LTO. The verbal parallels (solid lines) are too close to be coincidental, and the order of information is identical. The Life of Lysias is a good example:
Λυσίας ὁ Κεφάλου Συρακουσίων μὲν ἦν γονέων, ἐγεννήθη δὲ Ἀθήνησι μετοικοῦντι τῷ πατρὶ καὶ συνεπαιδεύθη τοῖς ἐπιφανεστάτοις Ἀθηναίων. ἔτη δὲ πεντεκαίδεκα γεγονὼς εἰς Θουρίους ᾤχετο πλέων σὺν ἀδελφοῖς δυσίν, κοινωνήσων τῆς ἀποικίας, ἣν ἔστελλον Ἀθηναῖοί τε καὶ ἡ ἄλλη Ἑλλὰς δωδεκάτῳ πρότερον ἔτει τοῦ Πελοποννησιακοῦ πολέμου, καὶ διετέλεσεν αὐτόθι πολιτευόμενος ἐν εὐπορίᾳ πολλῇ καὶ <παιδευόμενος παρὰ Τισίᾳ τε καὶ Νικίᾳ> μέχρι τῆς συμφορᾶς τῆς κατασχούσης Ἀθηναίους ἐν Σικελίᾳ. μετ’ ἐκεῖνο δὲ τὸ πάθος στασιάσαντος τοῦ δήμου ἐκπίπτει σὺν ἄλλοις τριακοσίοις ἀττικισμὸν ἐγκληθείς. καὶ παραγενόμενος αὖθις εἰς Ἀθήνας κατὰ ἄρχοντα Καλλίαν, ἕβδομον καὶ τετταρακοστὸν ἔτος ἔχων, ὡς ἄν τις εἰκάσειεν, ἐξ ἐκείνου τοῦ χρόνου διετέλεσε τὰς διατριβὰς ποιούμενος Ἀθήνησι.
(Dion. Hal. Lys. 1)Λυσίας υἱὸς ἦν Κεφάλου τοῦ Λυσανίου τοῦ Κεφάλου, Συρακουσίου μὲν γένος μεταναστάντος δ’ εἰς Ἀθήνας … τὸ μὲν πρῶτον συνεπαιδεύετο τοῖς ἐπιφανεστάτοις Ἀθηναίων· ἐπεὶ δὲ τὴν εἰς Σύβαριν ἀποικίαν τὴν ὕστερον Θουρίους μετονομασθεῖσαν ἔστελλεν ἡ πόλις, ᾤχετο σὺν τῷ πρεσβυτάτῳ ἀδελφῷ Πολεμάρχῳ … ὡς κοινωνήσων τοῦ κλήρου, ἔτη γεγονὼς πεντεκαίδεκα, ἐπὶ Πραξιτέλους ἄρχοντος, κἀκεῖ διέμεινε παιδευόμενος παρὰ Τισίᾳ καὶ Νικίᾳ τοῖς Συρακουσίοις, κτησάμενός τ’ οἰκίαν καὶ κλήρου τυχὼν ἐπολιτεύσατο ἕως Κλεοκρίτου τοῦ Ἀθήνησιν ἄρχοντος †ἔτη ἑξήκοντα τρία τῷ δ’ ἑξῆς† Καλλίᾳ ὀλυμπιάδι ἐνενηκοστῇ δευτέρᾳ τῶν κατὰ Σικελίαν συμβάντων Ἀθηναίοις καὶ κινήσεως γενομένης τῶν τ’ ἄλλων συμμάχων καὶ μάλιστα τῶν τὴν Ἰταλίαν οἰκούντων, αἰτιαθεὶς ἀττικίζειν ἐξέπεσε μετ’ ἄλλων τριῶν. παραγενόμενος δ’ Ἀθήνησιν ἐπὶ Καλλίου τοῦ μετὰ Κλεόκριτον ἄρχοντος, ἤδη τῶν τετρακοσίων κατεχόντων τὴν πόλιν, διέτριβεν αὐτόθι.
(LTO 835C–E)There can be little doubt that Dionysius’ work forms the backbone of the Life. Use of the same source or reverse dependency can be excluded.Footnote 8 At the same time, some smaller divergences (dotted lines) seem to derive from correction, reformulation or interpretation of Dionysius’ text. For example, ἐν εὐπορίᾳ πολλῇ is turned into something concrete, a κλῆρος and an οἰκία, possibly a misinterpretation of the original text.Footnote 9 The archon year is disambiguated, making clear which Callias was meant.Footnote 10 So the wording and even the sentence structure of Dionysius’ text are treated almost ad libitum; the linguistic form is disregarded but the substance preserved.
For the Lives of Hyperides, Aeschines and Demosthenes the relevant sections of Dionysius are lost. But in the first two cases it is possible to detect the same principles of arrangement and a chronological thread; the latter may have suffered from the wealth of biographic material that could be added.Footnote 11 The Life of Lycurgus comes with its own main evidence appended to the end of LTO: the decree which confirms that his son Lycophron is entitled to Lycurgus’ hereditary honours. The authenticity is confirmed by an inscribed copy of the same decree (IG II2 457). The greatest disorder is, conspicuously, found in the remaining two biographies, of Antiphon and Andocides, for which there is no such starting point.Footnote 12
So in all likelihood a first ‘editor’ or compiler must have taken major sources for each of the ten school authors and united them in one collection.Footnote 13 Some smaller changes indicate that this person did not just copy but already made changes to the texts. For example, in the Life of Isaeus a passage from the stylistic section of Dionysius’ treatise has been incorporated into the biography.Footnote 14 In the rest of LTO there is no sign that later users added content from the same source. So the inclusion of this bit is likely to have happened at the point when the Lives were separated from the text of his essays.
3. CHANGES
Textual variation in our manuscripts of LTO does not exceed the level of most literary texts.Footnote 15 This means that after a period of instability the text became stable again. The most likely cause is the ascription to Plutarch, which lent the text authority and moved it beyond the group of ‘working texts’.
In the period between the initial compilation and the stabilization the treatise circulated, passing from hand to hand and undergoing constant changes. The most important types are deletion, alteration and addition. The first two are hard, if not impossible, to recognize: in cases where we have the ‘source text’, it is clear that some information has been changed; but it is not always feasible (as above) to identify the hand of the original compiler. Additions after the first compilation, by contrast, can stick out clearly, on account of both content and form. They will constitute the bulk of the subsequent discussion.
In some instances it may be possible to find an alternative explanation for the phenomena that I ascribe to the open nature of the text, be it narratological or based on other literary sophistication. These explanations will, however, often be more complicated than the model of instability. The cumulative evidence should count in favour of openness as the dominating factor that shaped the text.
(i) ‘variorum’
An extreme form of accretion is the ‘variorum commentary’,Footnote 16 a list of different versions of the same information, often naming ancient authorities. The variorum commentary is typical for open texts of a scholarly nature, most importantly scholia: readers who find a variant add it to the existing scholion. The versions thus accumulate progressively.
In this manner we can explain, for example, the information about Demosthenes’ education: the orator – who enjoyed a particularly rich afterlife and a flourishing biographical tradition – is said to have been taught by Isocrates, Isaeus and Plato, studied Thucydides and the philosophers Zethus and Alcidamas, and listened to speeches of Callistratus (844B–C). The named sources are Hegesias of Magnes and Ctesibius; the rest is attributed to τινες or οἱ πλεῖστοι.Footnote 17
(ii) Ill-matching content
Many additions reveal that they were made by later hands through their incongruity on the level of content: they can (a) repeat or (b) contradict the rest of the text or (c) be without significance for a biography.
(a) The Life of Isocrates is particularly rich in repetitions. The recurring information is not implied or mentioned casually, but is often the main point of the statement. For example, it is mentioned twice that Isocrates had a weak voice and did not perform in public: once in the roughly chronological biography in the context of his activities (837A) and once in a string of anecdotes (838E). That he wrote a theoretical work we learn in 837A and 838F; that the only trial he ever spoke at was the one of the Antidosis speech in 837A and 838C; that he taught for money and acquired considerable wealth occurs three times (837C, D–E, 838A), reflecting the motif's prominence in the ancient biographical tradition.Footnote 18 Aphareus is introduced three times as his son by Plathane, the second time obviously without awareness of the previous mention:Footnote 19 838A ἐγένετο δ’ αὐτῷ καὶ παῖς Ἀφαρεὺς πρεσβύτῃ ὄντι ἐκ Πλαθάνης, 838C ἥ τε γυνὴ Πλαθάνη, μήτηρ δὲ τοῦ ποιητοῦ Ἀφαρέως (the third time 839B has ὡς προείρηται). And the Life of Isocrates is not the only part of the treatise that shows peculiar doublets.Footnote 20
(b) In other places different pieces of information are hard to reconcile and unlikely to be included by the same person: Isocrates, for example, is said not to have charged Athenians for his teaching, but later Demosthenes allegedly could not afford it (837D, 838F).Footnote 21
(c) Finally, LTO contains redundant information: Dionysius of Syracuse is specified as Διονυσίῳ τῷ τυράννῳ in 833C, although he was mentioned just three sentences earlier. It is easy to see that this formulation was copied in verbatim from a different source in which Dionysius had to be identified. Even stranger in a collection of biographies of orators is the case of Hyperides who attended lectures Πλάτωνος … τοῦ φιλοσόφου ἅμα Λυκούργῳ καὶ Ἰσοκράτους τοῦ ῥήτορος (848D). Both Lycurgus’ and Isocrates’ biographies have preceded, and the latter's identity with ὁ ῥήτωρ could be presumed.
(iii) Lack of structure
In addition to problems with the content, the open nature of the text and the accumulation of information without a clear plan can also have consequences for the structure. The link between consecutive bits of information is often missing or at best tenuous, in many cases formally established only by δέ or δὲ καί.Footnote 22
Additions frequently interrupt a coherent train of thought that is taken up again later. Isocrates’ father is introduced in the following way (836F):
Θεοδώρου μὲν ἦν παῖς τοῦ Ἐρχιέως τῶν μετρίων πολιτῶν, θεράποντας αὐλοποιοὺς κεκτημένου καὶ εὐπορήσαντος ἀπὸ τούτων, ὡς καὶ χορηγῆσαι καὶ παιδεῦσαι τοὺς υἱούς. ἦσαν γὰρ αὐτῷ καὶ ἄλλοι, Τελέσιππος καὶ Διόμνηστος. ἦν δὲ καὶ θυγάτριον. ὅθεν εἰς τοὺς αὐλοὺς κεκωμῴδηται ὑπ’ Ἀριστοφάνους καὶ Στράττιδος.
The original link is between flute production and comic ridicule.Footnote 23 But ὅθεν is too far apart from its antecedent to make the sentence linguistically plausible.Footnote 24 Rather, the mention of the factory prompted someone (else) to insert the reference to the choregia and the privileged education of Theodorus’ sons. This, in turn, led to the addition of the names of Isocrates’ brothers – either by the same or by a third person. But the additions do not stop there. I regard it as likely that another person, mistaking Telesippus and Diomnestus for Isocrates’ sons and finding his θυγάτριον mentioned in 839Β, added her at the start of the life.Footnote 25
There are a few cases in which the copyist integrated a marginal note in the ‘wrong’ place in the text. The list of laws proposed by Lycurgus (841F–842A) ends with a piece of moral legislation suppressing lavish display by women. The next section – predominantly moral anecdotes about Lycurgus (842A–E) – starts with his wife violating that same law; so the connection seems well motivated. However, halfway through this section we find the sentence εἰσήνεγκε δὲ καὶ ψηφίσματα Εὐκλείδῃ τινὶ Ὀλυνθίῳ χρώμενος ἱκανωτάτῳ περὶ τὰ ψηφίσματα (842C). While this sentence sticks out as alien in the anecdotal context, it is perfectly fitting as an addition to the list of laws. But instead of adding it there, where it would have destroyed the transition from laws to anecdotes, it was inserted at a random joint gap within the next section. This kind of ‘mistake’ to some extent resembles transposed lines in poetry, but it differs in that restoration of the ‘displaced’ bits does not restore an organically flowing text: for it was never an integrated part of the ‘original’ and constitutes only an alternative continuation of a given section (i.e. the motif of moral legislation).
Some additions elucidate a marginal aspect and then drive the narrative into a different direction. As a consequence, the contribution may lose its relevance for the biography entirely. Such additions of details away from the basic narrative structure can be wholly disproportionate if the source lends itself to the easy export of information. Lists in particular can amount to considerable length, even if they add no discernible value to the subject (i.e. the orator's biography). The list of honours for Demosthenes’ nephew Demochares is such a case,Footnote 26 but the most obvious example is the enumeration of Lycurgus’ descendants. This list, possibly deriving from a genealogy, traces Eumolpidae down to a time 400 years after the orator's death.Footnote 27 The biographical part continues afterwards, so the list is not an epilogue on the future of the family. There is no consistent interest in the further history of the families of other orators either. The list is therefore unlikely to be due to a person compiling the entire collection and shaping it with a specific design in mind, but rather to a reader unable to dispense with a piece of knowledge he stumbled upon. Otherwise more systematic integration of such material might be expected.
Another group of additions retains the relevance for the biography but leaves the narrative sequence: these tails of varia at the end of many Lives cannot be subsumed into any clear category. Rather, it seems that random information for which no suitable link was found was added at the end of the text.Footnote 28
The most interesting tail is that to the Life of Aeschines: the first part of that text follows a relatively clear chronology, ending with the establishment of a school in Rhodes during his exile and his death on Samos. The second section, on the work, is relatively brief, listing the three genuine speeches and showing that the (now lost) fourth must be spurious (840E–F). The rest of the Life consists of biographical varia in no clear order. They partly repeat or contradict information given in the first partFootnote 29 and so show no clear awareness of the rest. Their lack of structure indicates that the end of the text served as a depository that absorbed ‘also seens’ and piled up over time.
The most obvious consequence of the controlled process of evolution is the absence of a consistent principle of arrangement. In large parts of LTO an original chronological order (that is Dionysius’) is still identifiable, but the added material has not been made to fit into it. At the same time, a new alternative arrangement – common motifs or a ‘literary’ reason for giving up chronology as an ordering principle – is not detectable.Footnote 30
(iv) Consistency in sources and attitudes
The next complex of effects of instability concerns consistency transcending the factual level: either (a) in the use of a source or (b) in the implied attitude.
(a) Instead of many diverse additions or a single long block (such as Lycurgus’ descendants) in one place, information from the same source can be scattered over a longer stretch of the text. Schindel has demonstrated that the Life of Lysias draws heavily on Timaeus.Footnote 31 On the other hand, this use is isolated, and Timaeus is unlikely to be used as a source elsewhere.
Even clearer, and more purposeful, is Pitcher's demonstration how in the same Life archon years provide a rigid chronological framework, for which he suggests a chronographic source.Footnote 32 The framework is further strengthened by additional reference to Olympiads and the intervals between two events.Footnote 33 It is hardly conceivable that a similarly rigorous chronology would not have been at ‘the author's’ disposal in other Lives, most notably in that of Demosthenes.Footnote 34 So the focus on absolute and relative dating is not a general concern in these biographies. Rather, some ‘user’ added the information when he became interested in one orator – the use of a specific source brings with it a method of including information that sets apart one stretch of text from the rest.
(b) LTO displays heterogeneous interests, which are indicative of its open composition. A significant example is the treatment of style. In Dionysius’ essay series On the Ancient Orators the biographical sketches served only as the introduction to the treatment of the orator's style. That aspect, however, seems to have been largely cut out at the early stages of LTO, as virtually nothing of Dionysius’ evaluation is preserved therein.Footnote 35 However, interest in style was revived later and then taken from a different source:Footnote 36 the ‘interpolator’ of the stylistic remarks had no knowledge (or did not mind) what was the principal source of LTO, and took to a different author, possibly Caecilius of Caleacte.Footnote 37
Again Pitcher's findings are of great relevance in connection with LTO’s ‘interests’. He identifies two strands of ‘narrative’ that he interprets as attempts to shape a series of biographies into an account of cultural history: the first is an interest in rhetorical innovations, which causes the succession of orators to be moulded into a continuous development of Attic oratory; the second is the recasting of material ‘in order to make it accord with the more traditional dichotomy between rhetoric and philosophy to which [the assumed ‘author’] himself adheres’.Footnote 38 However, as Pitcher concedes, LTO does not carry this distinction through consistently, and it will be easier to view the conflicting agendas as a result of the accretion of material. In some cases, philosophical notions were indeed removed from the text of Dionysius:
Δείναρχος ὁ ῥήτωρ υἱὸς μὲν ἦν Σωστράτου, Κορίνθιος δὲ τὸ γένος, ἀφικόμενος δὲ εἰς Ἀθήνας, καθ’ ὃν χρόνον ἤνθουν αἵ τε τῶν φιλοσόφων καὶ ῥητόρων διατριβαί, Θεοφράστῳ τε συνεγένετο καὶ Δημητρίῳ τῷ Φαληρεῖ.
(Dion. Hal. Din. 2)Δείναρχος Σωκράτους ἢ Σωστράτου, ὡς μέν τινες ἐγχώριος, ὡς δέ τισι δοκεῖ Κορίνθιος, ἀφικόμενος εἰς Ἀθήνας ἔτι νέος, καθ’ ὃν χρόνον Ἀλέξανδρος ἐπὶ τὴν Ἀσίαν <ἐστρατεύετο > , κατοικήσας αὐτόθι ἀκροατὴς μὲν ἐγένετο Θεοφράστου τοῦ διαδεξαμένου τὴν Ἀριστοτέλους διατριβήν, ὡμίλησε δὲ καὶ Δημητρίῳ τῷ Φαληρεῖ.
(LTO 850B–C)LTO abolishes the notion that the time of Dinarchus’ arrival in Athens was the heyday of philosophy in Athens, substituting a political date. This could be explained in accordance with Pitcher in the way that ‘the author’ removed an unwanted correlation between rhetoric and philosophy. At the same time, however, the passage contradicts both Pitcher's ‘narrative strands’: firstly, it runs counter to his claim that the text is shaped so as to tell the history of the genre:Footnote 39 both here and soon afterwards Dionysius’ remarks about the blossoming and decline of oratory are left out or reduced (Dion. Hal. Din. 2): Δημοσθένους μὲν καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ῥητόρων φυγαῖς ἀιδίοις καὶ θανάτοις περιπεσόντων, οὐδενὸς δ’ ὑπολειπομένου μετ’ αὐτοὺς ἀνδρὸς ἀξίου λόγου becomes simply τῶν μὲν ἀνῃρημένων ῥητόρων τῶν δὲ πεφευγότων. The explicit statement about the decline and fading of Attic oratoryFootnote 40 – a cadenza that would be highly appropriate for the last biography in the series – has been deleted.
Secondly, LTO apparently puts additional emphasis on Dinarchus’ philosophical connections: Theophrastus is given extra philosophical credentials by reference to his headship of the Peripatos. The relationship between him and Dinarchus is specified as that between teacher and student, and Dinarchus thus turned into a man trained in philosophy. So we can see, within a few lines, both an extension and a reduction of elements suggesting an overlap between rhetoric and philosophy.
The prominence of Socratics in other parts of LTO is likewise notable. The number of orators allegedly attending Plato's lectures almost sounds as if the Academy spread stories about its influence on Athenian intellectual life,Footnote 41 which a semi-learned reader then added to LTO.Footnote 42 We also hear of a meeting between Demosthenes and Diogenes (847F) and how Isocrates mourned Socrates’ death (838F). These examples must have originated from a source favouring the philosophers, as the former come out on top: Demosthenes is hiding from Diogenes, who does not miss the opportunity to score against the morally inferior orator; and Isocrates pays his tribute to the philosopher, just as Lysias did with his own Apologia (836B).
Far from inferring that this shows that ‘the author’ wanted to give his orators a philosophical air or to suggest the close proximity of these fields, I would rather contend that any consistency in such matters is absent. This inconsistency, however, is a result of the absence of an ultimate author and hence the lack of uniform authorial intention. This does not exclude the possibility that the same attitude is visible in different parts of the text – they may even derive from the same ‘user’. But theories about an intentional pattern or shift in LTO’s gist would, at any rate, require a greater degree of consistency.
(v) Alterations based on misunderstandings
In some instances it is clear that ‘contributors’ misunderstood the text they found. This led to wrong information,Footnote 43 but it has also affected the sense and even the syntax. In the Life of Hyperides, sloppy reading has resulted in a lack of coherence in the narrative (849A–B):
μετὰ μέντοι τοῦτο νεκρῶν ἔδωκεν ἀναίρεσιν ὁ Φίλιππος φοβηθείς, πρότερον οὐ δοὺς τοῖς ἐλθοῦσιν ἐκ Λεβαδείας κήρυξιν. ὕστερον δὲ μετὰ τὰ περὶ Κραννῶνα συμβάντα ἐξαιτηθεὶς ὑπ’ Ἀντιπάτρου καὶ μέλλων ἐκδίδοσθαι ὑπὸ τοῦ δήμου ἔφυγεν ἐκ τῆς πόλεως εἰς Αἴγιναν ἅμα τοῖς κατεψηφισμένοις.
The first sentence deals with the aftermath of the battle of Chaeroneia. πρότερον separates two stages of the process of clearing the battlefield: at first (i.e. immediately after the battle) the Macedonians do not allow the Athenians to recover their dead soldiers, but after a diplomatic mission they finally grant permission.Footnote 44 The writer of the second sentence seems to misconstrue πρότερον and to misunderstand or neglect what it is referring to. So he adds a ὕστερον δέ on a different kind of ἔκδοσις after another battle sixteen years later, viz. the extradition of the (living) orators.
In the Life of Lycurgus (among others) the free handling of the text has led to inaccuracies, as the comparison with the original decree of Stratocles (IG II2 457) and the copy transmitted in LTO show. All three mention the work that Lycurgus has done on the gymnasium in the Lyceum. The decree in LTO (852C) has καὶ τὸ γυμνάσιον <τὸ> κατὰ τὸ Λύκειον κατεσκεύασε καὶ ἄλλαις πολλαῖς κατασκευαῖς ἐκόσμησε τὴν πόλιν. The inscription is mutilated (fr. b 7–9), but must have run καὶ τὸ γυμνάσιον τ/[ὸ κατὰ τὸ Λύκειον ἐπεσκεύ]ασεν καὶ ἄλλαις δὲ πολλαῖς πολλαῖ/[ς κατασκευαῖς ἐκόσμησεν] ὅλην τὴν πόλιν.Footnote 45 ἐπεσκεύασεν is a specific description of Lycurgus’ activity: he did not build but rebuild the gymnasium;Footnote 46 κατασκευάζω, by contrast, is a more general term that covers both the erection and the equipment of a site. In using it LTO 852C is thus correct but less precise than the inscription, even though the mistake is probably due to a typical scribal mistake caused by the occurrence of κατασκευαῖς shortly afterwards. The difficulty arises when the process is reversed and a later user of the text replaces κατασκευάζω by an unambiguous term (LTO 841C): καὶ τὸ ἐν Λυκείῳ γυμνάσιον ἐποίησε. The person who copied the text simplified the formulation and, out of ignorance of the original sense, gave it a narrower meaning that no longer represents the meaning of the original ἐπεσκεύασεν.
4. THE PARALLEL LIFE OF LTO: PHOTIUS AND THE ΓΕΝΟΣ OF ANTIPHON
The period of instability probably ended with the ascription to Plutarch.Footnote 47 The history of LTO is, however, more than the history of the text we have. By this I do not mean that the text, like the great literary texts, had an afterlife. One should rather speak of a parallel life (albeit not in Plutarch's sense), which developed alongside and independent from LTO.
The sequence of copying and altering led to a variety of texts that differ more or less from ours. We possess at least two other texts that are ‘related’ to LTO in different degrees.Footnote 48
The detailed and excellent study by Jacques SchampFootnote 49 (ignored by more recent treatments of LTO) examines the precursors and history of the ten biographies in the Bibliotheca (nos. 259–68) of Photius. The church father had in front of him an anonymous treatise which he calls a ἱστορία.Footnote 50 Schamp convincingly argues that this text derived from an already altered and replenished version of LTO. Some of the stylistic remarks in particular have been copied in from Libanius, others probably from Caecilius and possibly a plethora of other sources.Footnote 51 In addition, Photius (and/or some of his forerunners) has tried to remedy some of the flaws of the text by some proper ‘editing’: rearrangement of particularly topsy-turvy information, the deletion of excessive irrelevant material and contradictory versions.Footnote 52 Some polish was added, and some of the offences against Atticist taste were emended.Footnote 53
So while LTO was already transmitted in a relatively fixed form, another copy continued as a text for use and active cooperation. The practice continued to Photius himself, who does not see any necessity to acknowledge his source more than in passing, and without any specification of the text.
The second ‘alternative version’, the Γένος at the start of an edition of Antiphon's speeches, shows how far apart two versions of one original text can be. It was separated from the collection and used independently,Footnote 54 and thus bears witness to the way in which the instability of a text affects not only its wording and content but also its form and use.
The Γένος is based on a selection of the material in LTO, with subsequent changes:
κεκωμῴδηται δ’ εἰς φιλαργυρίαν ὑπὸ Πλάτωνος ἐν Πεισάνδρῳ. λέγεται δὲ τραγῳδίας συνθεῖναι.
(LTO 833C)εἶτα φιλοχρήματος ὢν καὶ οὐ πολλὰ ἐκ τούτου κερδαίνων τραγῳδίας ἐποίει.
(Γένος)In the Life the two pieces of information are juxtaposed, and the juxtaposition looks like the typical product of a compilation of the unstable type: on the one hand Antiphon's greed (presumably evident from writing speeches for others), on the other hand the tragedies, actually written by another person of the same name. One of the contributors to the Γένος, by contrast, assumed a causal connection between the two and turned the writing of tragedy into a profitable profession.
As a general characteristic in comparison with LTO, the Γένος is much more ordered and linear in the presentation of its material, as well as shorter. Much of the excess and largely irrelevant material (including the verdict against Antiphon of 411: 833E–F) is missing. Whether it was cut or rather added to the Life after the Γένος had become independent is, however, hard to say.
The Γένος also includes little bits of information that are missing in the Life: Antiphon's tribe Aiantis could either be a later addition or something deleted by later users of the Life.Footnote 55 One example, however, strongly indicates that changes to the Life were made after the Γένος had first been spun off:Footnote 56
πρῶτος δὲ καὶ ῥητορικὰς τέχνας ἐξήνεγκε, γενόμενος ἀγχίνους· διὸ καὶ Νέστωρ ἐπεκαλεῖτο.
(LTO 832E)εἰς τοσοῦτον προῆλθε δεινότητος ὥστε Νέστωρ ἐπεκαλεῖτο διὰ τὴν ἐν τῷ λέγειν ἡδονήν.
(Γένος)The second explanation makes much better sense given the Homeric allusion (e.g. Il. 1.249), and it is reasonable to assume that it derives from an earlier stage of LTO; the extant text of LTO is the result of some disfigurement of the text that obscures the meaning of the name ‘Nestor’ in this context: it is clear that there have been later changes that make that meaning very hard to infer (if the same explanation was still meant to be given at all). The focus has shifted from exceptional skill to being πρῶτος (NB chronologically the first rhetorical teacher, not the most skilled speaker). If διὸ καί refers to Antiphon's being the first (rather than ἀγχίνους, which in Homer is used only for Odysseus: Od. 13.332), the tertium comparationis between Antiphon and Nestor has disappeared. The text may have originated from a shortened version, for which a connection to the nickname Nestor was then sought.
5. WORKING WITH UNSTABLE TEXTS
After these observations on the compilation of LTO, it is now time to draw conclusions from its characteristic instability. LTO is illustrative and longer than most continuous unstable texts but by no means unique. We can see many of the same phenomena in other biographies: [Marcellinus’] Life of Thucydides is a relatively ordered one.Footnote 57 With the various vitae of Virgil we have another chance of seeing how the biographic tradition branches out,Footnote 58 and those of Persius and Aesop also deserve attention.Footnote 59 The process that generated these writings appears to have been similar to that which generated the scholia, as is the status they have among their readership. Only LTO faces the high expectations of ‘authored’ biography.
Historians have wondered about the source value of LTO, as it seems to juxtapose excellent information and authentic material with utter nonsense. Disappointingly, it is not possible to say that either a historical genius or a fool is behind the ‘work’, as both may be true. It is not possible to extrapolate from the value of some bits to that of others and describe the treatise as generally reliable. It is equally impermissible to credit ‘the author’ with a careful working method and proficiency in source criticism. For example, after the first, true version of Antiphon's death (which is backed up by the evidence of the attached documents), two impossible ones are added by formulations of the type ‘others say’ (833A–B οἱ δ᾿ … ἱστοροῦσιν … ἔστι δὲ καὶ ἄλλος λόγος). These formulations should be read as typical for additions of the variorum category rather thanFootnote 60 as signs of a historically critical mind.
So unless we are given the source and able to corroborate the information, we have to be extremely cautious; disappointing though it may be, we must treat the text as a collection of isolated bits of information, each demanding to be read independently of the rest. As shown above with Lycurgus’ role in the restoration of the gymnasium in the Lyceum, a small misunderstanding can have a considerable impact on the meaning; even where information is based on excellent evidence, it can misrepresent the truth.
On the side of literary and cultural history, the text does not help us much to establish the date of the canon of the ten orators.Footnote 61 For the beginnings of LTO are impossible to date: the only terminus post quem is Dionysius, but he operated with a canon of six plus Dinarchus.Footnote 62 Other dates are of no value in establishing the time when LTO was established. The latest date referred to is the mid first century a.d.Footnote 63 But because of the unstable nature of the text this does not exclude compilation earlier than that. On the other hand, the adaptability of unstable texts makes it possible that the collection even started with the seven men Dionysius treats as particularly important, and that the rest were added as the later canon stabilized.
Moreover, it has become clear that unstable biographies ought not to be subjected to the same interpretative methods as their stable literary counterparts: their methods of ‘composition’ are entirely different, influenced by their respective purposes. The key function of LTO was pure information. The position of the Γένος of Antiphon (as those of other orators) indicates that the role of these texts is not that of an independent reading. They do not exist primarily to be studied for their own sake, but as complements to the study of the speeches. At philosophical schools students learned something about the thinkers before they studied their works. Even Galen demanded from his readers knowledge of his life;Footnote 64 and the position of biographies at the start of manuscripts of poetic works or commentaries and introductory works points in the same direction. When we think of the genre and the educational background, it is evident that this must be even more likely in the case of the orators in the rhetorical schools: a basic idea of the person and the historical and biographical background enhances the understanding of the speech and helps account for certain arguments and stylistic choices.Footnote 65 In the case of Isaeus, who did not perform in court or in the assembly, the latter is arguably the primary purpose. Some knowledge about the curricular authors may also count among the cultural knowledge expected from everybody of a certain social standing. On the other hand, the lives of orators could be mined for material to be used in declamations. Some topics set in rhetorical schools draw on situations mentioned in LTO, while in other declamations there are allusions to episodes referred to in the biographies.Footnote 66
So the incoherent ‘agenda’ of LTO proves to be a result of the multiple influences on the text, which are an inextricable part of its history and directly linked with its function. Plutarch and Satyrus, authors of ‘literary’ biographies, certainly intended more with their works, even if it is open to debate what exactly.
Although it cannot be ruled out that some people who used and contributed to LTO tried to convey certain ideas or contribute some concept to it, I hope to have shown that such attempts have proved futile: the innate chaos of the unstable text has prevented any such undertaking from having a significant impact, and the whole cannot be said to conform to any idea of literary design. Once we realize how the text works – that it is a textus of information ‘woven together’ by different people – it is possible to see that we should be wary of looking for a unitary source and design which formed the ‘work’ and of playing ‘literary’ games without clear awareness and consideration of their limits.
Instead, LTO is interesting in its own right for what it is. For, what the text gives us is an insight into the dissemination of knowledge, the way ‘educational’ material was proliferated, replicated and put to use. We have here an example of what people read to inform themselves about the authors of their canon, and a demonstration of how much they (mis-)understood and what they were willing to accept or were able to question. From LTO it becomes clear that it would be wildly optimistic always to expect a sophisticated reading list including Theopompus and Plutarch when people set out to read Demosthenes or to write speeches ‘for him’.Footnote 67 Unfortunately, it is out of reach for us to know whether the information provided derives from teachers or from students who read beyond the syllabus.
LTO complements the view of intellectual culture beyond the high level of Plutarch and others; it is probably situated at a formative stage. It thus adds to the evidence we have on the educational papyri from Egypt – and it may in this way be of greater use to us than a text that informs us about the agenda of some anonymous author.
