Opening on Olympus and concluding with two trials involving ‘the Syrian’ (an obvious Lucianic persona), Lucian's Double Indictment (= Bis Acc.) presents a fantastical scenario that draws on Old Comic, Platonic and biographical models.Footnote 1 In the first of the Syrian's two trials, a personified Rhetoric accuses the Syrian of abandoning her, his legitimate wife, for his lover, Dialogue. Dialogue, in turn, accuses the Syrian of hubris, asserting that the Syrian rendered him a generic freak when he forced him to accept ‘jokes, iambos, cynicism, and Eupolis and Aristophanes’ (ὁ σκῶμμα καὶ τὸν ἴαμβον καὶ κυνισμὸν καὶ τὸν Εὔπολιν καὶ τὸν Ἀριστοφάνη, Bis Acc. 33).Footnote 2 Amidst this literary fantasy, Lucian seemingly adds an element of realism when the Syrian specifies that he was ‘almost forty’ (τετταράκοντα ἔτη σχεδὸν γεγονότι, Bis Acc. 32) at the time he left Rhetoric for Dialogue. This is notably not the only instance in which we find this age attributed to a Lucianic alter-ego: Lycinus in the Hermotimus (= Hermot.) is likewise described as being ‘almost forty’ at the time of the dialogue. This is strikingly also the same age at which the dialogue's eponymous interlocutor—he is sixty at the time of the dialogue—began his own philosophical education (αὐτὸς κατὰ σὲ γεγονὼς ἠρξάμην φιλοσοφεῖν τετταρακοντούτης σχεδόν, Hermot. 13).Footnote 3
It is tempting to explain this coincidence by reading these references to age biographically, and until recently characters such as the Syrian and Lycinus were viewed as little more than thinly veiled stand-ins for Lucian himself. According to this reading, their shared age reflects that of Lucian when he became interested in philosophy. As such, it has been used as a tool both for dating these two dialogues and for determining a rough arc to Lucian's career, namely that he began his career as a public speaker and converted to philosophy when he was forty, only to become dissatisfied with its contemporary practice.Footnote 4 Increasingly, however, more nuanced readings have underscored how Lucian complicates—primarily through the names he attributes to these characters—attempts at reading these passages biographically. Lucian, as is often noted, rarely inserts his own name into a text, but instead prefers to create characters whose names (the Syrian, Lycinus, Parrhesiades, Tychiades) invite an authorial connection, even as the absence of Lucian's own name undermines the certainty of that connection.Footnote 5 Rather than simply acting as stand-ins for Lucian, these characters invite us to examine the relationship between the author and ‘the created self’ that they embody, bringing into relief the distance between the two.Footnote 6
At the same time, they also blur the boundary between the fictional world of the text and the reality of the author, exemplifying, as Whitmarsh has argued, Genette's concept of metalepsis.Footnote 7 In the specific case of the Syrian, this blurring of boundaries is amplified by the fact that the character lacks a name beyond the gentilic, ‘the Syrian’, and, prior to his trials, is referred to simply as a ‘public speaker’ (τοῦ ῥήτορος, 14). When the personification of Justice notes that no name has been recorded for the Syrian in the docket of cases (οὐ γὰρ ἐγγέγραπται τοὔνομα, 14), Hermes’ response is only to confirm the character's profession and place of origin, thus reaffirming the relative anonymity of the character. It is clear that these details are intended to invite comparison with Lucian, yet Justice's and Hermes’ lack of knowledge regarding any further specifics about the Syrian renders his identity ultimately uncertain. This anonymity persists through his two trials, such that Lucian appears to tease us by providing a narrative of the Syrian's career at the same time as he refuses to name him.
Lucian's games involving self-reflexive protagonists, however, are nothing new; important precedents for them can be found in Old Comedy and in Platonic dialogue, two-thirds of the complex literary triad that Lucian hails as the inspiration for his own unique satiric style.Footnote 8 As Sidwell has shown, Lucian shows particular interest in the self-satirizing aspect of Old Comedy.Footnote 9 The parabasis is the clearest example of this; yet Lucian also draws on moments in which the comic poet appears to stage himself as a character: Rhetoric's prosecution of the Syrian, for example, recalls the basic scenario of Cratinus’ Pytine, while Lucian's presentation of Parrhesiades in the Fisherman evokes the figure of Dicaeopolis of Aristophanes’ Acharnians. Footnote 10 Similarly, the fact that Lucian never explicitly casts himself as a speaking character in his dialogues recalls Plato's own complicated authorial presence. While Plato mentions himself as a witness both to Socrates’ conversations and to the events of the Apology (34a), he is notably absent from the Phaedo (Πλάτων δὲ οἶμαι ἠσθένει, 59b), a detail that, as Ní Mheallaigh has noted, ‘draws our attention more sharply to the role of the author’.Footnote 11 That Lucian appreciated Plato's games involving authorial identity is made evident by a joke in the True History: during his visit to the Isles of the Blessed, the narrator notes that, while he saw Homer, Odysseus, Socrates and others, Plato alone was not there (Πλάτων δὲ μόνος οὐ παρῆν, 2.17).
My argument in this essay is that the significance of understanding Lucian's use of personae in light of Plato's own authorial games is heightened by considering the role that references to age assume in the autobiographical fictions that Lucian constructs for the Syrian and for Lycinus. Although references to age continue to be taken at face value and used to date both the Double Indictment and the Hermotimus to the middle portion of Lucian's career, the complexity of Lucian's use of names should caution us against taking these details literally. There are, in fact, good reasons to suspect that this detail is itself another component in Lucian's pointed engagement with the figure of Plato. As the opening of the Seventh Letter records, Plato was himself ‘almost forty’ (σχεδὸν ἔτη τετταράκοντα γεγονώς) at the time of his first voyage to Sicily.Footnote 12 Lucian's attribution of this specific age to these two personae thus encodes a moment of apparent Platonic autobiography into both the Double Indictment and the Hermotimus. In doing so, Lucian reconfigures the original Platonic narrative into a commentary on the disparity between past and present philosophy.
THE SEVENTH LETTER AND THE FUNCTION OF AGE
Among other examples of Platonic biography, such as that offered by Diogenes Laertius, the Seventh Letter stands out for its claim to record the philosopher's own retrospective views on his time spent in Sicily.Footnote 13 Because of this, it has long attracted both great interest and, consequently, speculation regarding its authenticity.Footnote 14 Whatever our own doubts may be about the Letters’ authenticity, this was not an issue in antiquity. Both Aristophanes of Byzantium (third century b.c.e.) and Thrasyllus (first century c.e.) included them in their collections of Platonic writings (Diog. Laert. 3.61), and their authenticity did not come into question until roughly the fifth century c.e. For later authors, the Seventh Letter represented an important witness to Plato's relationship to Dion and Dionysius II, as well as serving as a model for philosophical self-fashioning.Footnote 15 Plutarch, for example, relies heavily on the Letters, and in particular on the Seventh Letter, in his Life of Dion.Footnote 16
In this context, A.D. Morrison's approach to the Platonic Letters is a useful one. Rather than grapple with the question of authenticity, Morrison proposes that the Platonic Letters be approached as one might a historical novel, in which the character ‘Plato’ is developed through an epistolary narrative told partially in the form of flashbacks. The character of ‘Plato’ reflects significant aspects of its namesake's life and work, and the collection as a whole represents an intriguing approach to the ancient auto/biographical narrative.Footnote 17 Cicero himself seems to have recognized in the Seventh Letter the potential that the epistle held for constructing a narrative of one's own life. In a letter to Atticus regarding a request he has just received from Caesar, Cicero quotes from the Seventh Letter (Cic. Att. 9.13.4):
qua re ita paratus est ut, etiam si uincere non possit, quo modo tamen uinci ipse possit non uideam. ego autem non tam γοητείαν huius timeo quam πειθανάγκην. ῾αἱ γὰρ τῶν τυράννων δεήσεις᾽ inquit Πλάτων ῾οἷσθ᾽ ὅτι μεμιγμέναι ἀνάγκαις’.
Thus, he [Caesar] is equipped in such a way that, even if he is unable to win, I nevertheless cannot see any way how he can be defeated. I fear not so much his guile as his compulsion disguised as persuasion. ‘For’, said Plato, ‘you know that the requests of tyrants are mixed with compulsion’.
Cicero's quotation of the Seventh Letter serves to underscore the Platonic persona that Cicero is adopting as much as it paints Caesar as a tyrant. Specifically, Cicero's interest in the Seventh Letter lies in the image of Plato as a philosopher engaged in political affairs, which, as Sean McConnell has shown, offered Cicero a model for the construction of a similar identity for himself in the letters to Atticus from early 49 b.c.e.Footnote 18 Although this citation is brief, it none the less testifies to an awareness among ancient readers of how the Seventh Letter is itself an exercise in constructing, defining and ultimately monumentalizing an image of Plato as a politically engaged philosopher.
Appearing early in the Seventh Letter, the reference to Plato's age marks an important shift in the life of the philosopher:
ὅτε γὰρ κατ’ ἀρχὰς εἰς Συρακούσας ἐγὼ ἀφικόμην, σχεδὸν ἔτη τετταράκοντα γεγονώς, Δίων εἶχε τὴν ἡλικίαν ἣν τὰ νῦν Ἱππαρῖνος γέγονεν, καὶ ἣν ἔσχεν τότε δόξαν, ταύτην καὶ διετέλεσεν ἔχων, Συρακοσίους οἴεσθαι δεῖν ἐλευθέρους εἶναι, κατὰ νόμους τοὺς ἀρίστους οἰκοῦντας·
For when I originally arrived at Syracuse, being nearly forty years old, Dion was of the age which Hipparinus has now reached, and the views, which he had then come to hold, he continued to hold unchanged; for he believed that the Syracusans ought to be free and dwell under the best laws.
The Seventh Letter itself purports to be Plato's response to a request for political advice by the comrades of Dion following the latter's assassination. A large component of this response therefore is a retrospective account of Plato's ill-fated involvement with Dionysius II and the politics of Sicily. This involvement began in 387, when Plato was nearly forty and first met Dion, and in two subsequent visits in 367 and 362, when he was convinced to return by the promise that Dionysius had become interested in philosophy. These hopes were famously dashed, and the letter has traditionally been read as an apology for Plato's Syracusan activities, one that specifically employs Platonic autobiography as a powerful protreptic for philosophy.Footnote 19 Set within this broader apologetic context, the detail of Plato's age at the time of his first voyage functions as an important transition, marking a shift away from the purely contemplative life of a philosopher in Athens to political engagement in Sicily.
It is within this context that, as I will suggest, we should read Lucian's attribution of the age of ‘nearly forty’ to his own characters as they question the value of philosophy. My discussion of Lucian's use of this age first considers how the reference to the Syrian's age in the Double Indictment contributes to the dialogue's broader engagement with the tradition of philosophical biography, and then explores how this specific age functions as a marker for philosophical conversion in the Hermotimus. My treatment here of Lucian's personae is, of course, far from comprehensive; the limited goal of this essay is to advance our understanding of the literary resonances embodied in these characters. By examining these two references to age, I will discuss how Lucian's engagement with Platonic models includes the biography of Plato himself and, more broadly, how the biographies of others inform the autobiographical fictions that Lucian constructs.
A PLATONIC LIFE? PHILOSOPHICAL BIOGRAPHY IN THE DOUBLE INDICTMENT
The Double Indictment can be divided roughly into three sections: an opening discussion on Olympus between Zeus and Justice regarding a backlog of lawsuits that have been allowed to accrue; five intermediary trials involving philosophers of the fourth and third centuries b.c.e. and personified concepts, occupations and schools; and the prosecution of the Syrian by Rhetoric and Dialogue. Given the fact that the final two trials appear to stage Lucian's engagement with the comic, philosophical and rhetorical traditions, it is not surprising that this portion of the dialogue has attracted the most scholarly attention.Footnote 20
To divorce these two trials from the preceding five trials, however, is to miss the full extent of the biographical games that Lucian is playing. Lucian in fact uses the characters of Justice and Hermes to insist that all seven trials be read in conjunction with one another. Following the initial discussion on Olympus about the legal backlog, Zeus commissions Justice and Hermes to empanel juries in Athens. As the two are in the process of determining jurors for each case, Justice objects to the addition of the Syrian's trials on the grounds that they are more recent than the previous ones. Hermes, however, counters this objection by insisting that their similarity to the older cases demands that they be heard in conjunction (Bis Acc. 14).
One of the benefits of reading the Syrian's two trials in light of the preceding five trials is that we begin to recognize that the ‘biography’ that the final trials construct for the Syrian is in fact closely based on the patterning of the previous trials. In the five initial trials of the dialogue, Lucian stages biographical anecdotes, drawn from the respective philosopher's biographical tradition, but recast as comic court-cases.Footnote 21 The full docket of cases includes Intoxication vs the Academy (Polemon), the Stoa vs Pleasure (Dionysius), Luxury vs Virtue (Aristippus), Banking vs Diogenes, Painting vs Pyrrho, Rhetoric vs the Syrian, and Dialogue vs the Syrian. Of the five trials preceding the two involving the Syrian, only the first two are developed to an extent commensurate with the two focussed on the Syrian.
In the first, Lucian replays the well-known anecdote that Polemon, a notorious party-animal in his youth, drunkenly crashed a lecture of Xenocrates and, despite his highly intoxicated state, was so captivated by Xenocrates’ lecture on self-control that he embraced the philosophy of the Academy.Footnote 22 Lucian's version of this tale imagines that Intoxication is suing the Academy for robbing her of her only true friend and faithful slave. True to her nature, Intoxication cannot argue her case because she is too drunk and, in a joke about the Academic sceptics’ ability to argue both sides of a question, the Academy speaks as both the prosecution and the defence. The jury finds in favour of the defence, and Polemon's conversion to the Academy is confirmed (Bis Acc. 16–17).
In the second trial, Lucian likewise re-imagines a moment of philosophical conversion, this time that of Dionysius’ decision to leave the Stoics for the Cyrenaic school, which in Lucian's configuration is represented by the figure of Pleasure. The inspiration behind this trial is the anecdote that a period of disease convinced Dionysius that pain should be avoided and prompted him to quit the Stoics for either the Cyrenaics or the Epicureans.Footnote 23 Lucian has the Stoa assert that Pleasure has seduced Dionysius, his lover (ἐραστὴν ἐμόν), by dressing herself up as a prostitute (ἑταιρικῶς ἐσκευασμένη, Bis Acc. 21). Epicurus, however, stands in as Pleasure's spokesman, and the trial becomes a clever way for Lucian to make a joke both about the enmity between the Stoics and the Epicureans and about the similarities between the Cyrenaic and the Epicureans schools. While Epicurus and Pleasure win in a landslide, the Stoa insists on appealing to Zeus, and the case is left unresolved.
This delay in the verdict prompts Justice to lump the third trial involving Aristippus in with the second on the grounds that the two cases are quite similar. The fact that Aristippus’ case is not heard sets the pattern for how the ensuing two trials are presented: Diogenes chases Banking off with a stick (Bis Acc. 24), and Pyrrho fails to appear in court because he does not believe in ‘true judgment’, an obvious joke about the extremity of Pyrrhonian scepticism (οὐδὲν ἡγεῖται κριτήριον ἀληθὲς εἶναι, Bis Acc. 25). Although these three cases are not fully developed, it is notable that they all involve figures associated with important philosophical innovations: Aristippus is credited with founding the Cyrenaic school, Diogenes becomes the prototypical Cynic, and Pyrrho creates Pyrrhonian scepticism.
Braun notes in his commentary on the Double Indictment that these trials seemingly defy classification as a group owing to their lack of a clear chronological order and inconsistency in their formulation of the respective lawsuits.Footnote 24 Yet, Lucian seems to have provided us with an organizational pattern based on the types of anecdotes that they embody and in their presentation. The first and the second trials centre on the philosophical conversions of Polemon and Dionysius, and the latter three depict figures credited or closely associated with significant philosophical movements. This pattern illustrates a broader interest within the Double Indictment in the narratives of conversion and innovation that typically make up the biography of a philosopher, and as such anticipates the narratives presented in the Syrian's trials. Like his predecessors within the middle section of the dialogue, the Syrian abandons Rhetoric for philosophical dialogue and will himself claim to have brought important innovations to that genre.
Beyond what they demonstrate about Lucian's strategies in his presentation of the Syrian, these trials also anticipate the intersection between biographical narrative and the philosophical apology that Lucian puts on display at the dialogue's conclusion. It is important to stress here that I am not proposing that the Syrian's trials be read as a biography of Lucian, but rather that the biographical tradition, particularly that of philosophers, functions as an important intertext within the Double Indictment on a par with Old Comedy and Platonic dialogue. That Lucian is engaged with different methods of self-presentation is apparent in Rhetoric's initial prosecution, in which she charges that the Syrian abandoned her, his legitimate wife, for Dialogue, despite the fact that she bestowed on him a Greek identity and a public career (Bis Acc. 27). This scenario, as Sidwell has convincingly shown, is reminiscent of Cratinus’ Pytine, itself a pseudo-autobiographical play in which Comedy sues the poet for divorce because his drinking has led to her neglect.Footnote 25 In an attempt to defend himself against Rhetoric's accusations, the Syrian contends that she was in fact the unfaithful one, and, even if this were not the case, it was only proper that a man who was ‘almost forty’ should leave behind the ‘noisy hubbub in the law courts and leave the jurors to have some peace’ (καλῶς εἶχέ μοι ἀνδρὶ ἤδη τετταράκοντα ἔτη σχεδὸν γεγονότι θορύβων μὲν ἐκείνων καὶ δικῶν ἀπηλλάχθαι καὶ τοὺς ἄνδρας τοὺς δικαστὰς ἀτρεμεῖν ἐᾶν, Bis Acc. 32). The Syrian's reference to his age at the time of his exchange of Rhetoric for Dialogue is thus an emphatic element of his defence.
Outside of Plato's Seventh Letter, forty is itself a significant age. The Alexandrian librarian Apollodorus, for example, divided ancient lives into four twenty-year periods, with forty representing the ἀκμή of a person's career.Footnote 26 References, however, to the specific age of ‘almost forty’ are notably much rarer and do not occur outside of the Seventh Letter, the Double Indictment and the Hermotimus. In the Double Indictment, the Syrian's language (τετταράκοντα ἔτη σχεδὸν γεγονότι) echoes—with the exception of alterations in word order and the use of the dative γεγονότι for the nominative γεγονώς—the reference to Plato's age in the Seventh Letter (σχεδὸν ἔτη τετταράκοντα γεγονώς). By using this age to mark a transition from the public life of a sophist to the private life of a philosopher, Lucian writes a feature of Platonic autobiography into the fictional career-arc that he devises for the Syrian. Yet, in doing so, he notably reverses the direction of the transition that the Syrian makes. In the Seventh Letter, Plato describes his shift from the relative privacy of philosophical thought and literary production to public affairs and epistolography. The Syrian's transition likewise involves a change in genre, from rhetorical showpieces to philosophical dialogue; but whereas Plato shifts from private to public, the Syrian's shift represents the abandonment of a public career for a private one. As the Syrian describes it, the choice to align himself with Dialogue stemmed from a desire to go ‘to the Academy or the Lyceum to walk about with this excellent person Dialogue engaging in quiet conversations which have no need for ovations and applause’ (εἰς δὲ τὴν Ἀκαδήμειαν ἢ εἰς τὸ Λύκειον ἐλθόντα τῷ βελτίστῳ τούτῳ Διαλόγῳ συμπεριπατεῖν ἠρέμα διαλεγομένους, τῶν ἐπαίνων καὶ κρότων οὐ δεομένους, Bis Acc. 32). In the second-century context of the Double Indictment, the decision to become a philosopher is figured as an idealistic recollection of Plato's Academy, in significant contrast to the transition that Plato in the Seventh Letter made six centuries earlier. The shift is both a statement about the political differences of the Greek and the Roman worlds and about the cultural prestige afforded philosophy in the second century.Footnote 27
In the narrative of the Seventh Letter, Plato's decisions to visit Sicily over a period of twenty-five years stem from an unrealized desire that his advice can persuade Dionysius II to live a more philosophical life. In the case of the Syrian, this length of time is mirrored by the amount of time the Syrian spends with Rhetoric, which, although unspecified, is presumably enough time for the Syrian to acquire a rhetorical education.Footnote 28 Furthermore, like Plato's disappointment that Dionysius was not in the end a philosophically minded student, the idealistic hopes that the Syrian had for his time with Dialogue were dashed by Dialogue's dour appearance and abstruse style (Bis Acc. 34):
ἀλλ᾿ ἐγὼ οἶδ᾿ ὅπερ μάλιστα λυπεῖ αὐτόν, ὅτι μὴ τὰ γλίσχρα ἐκεῖνα καὶ λεπτὰ κάθημαι πρὸς αὐτὸν σμικρολογούμενος, εἰ ἀθάνατος ἡ ψυχή, καὶ πόσας κοτύλας ὁ θεὸς ὁπότε τὸν κόσμον εἰργάσατο τῆς ἀμιγοῦς καὶ κατὰ ταὐτὰ ἐχούσης οὐσίας ἐνέχεεν εἰς τὸν κρατῆρα ἐν ᾧ τὰ πάντα ἐκεράννυτο, καὶ εἰ ἡ Ῥητορικὴ πολιτικῆς μορίου εἴδωλον, κολακείας τὸ τέταρτον.
But I know what's really causing him grief: I don't sit and nit-pick with him about those tough and niggling questions: is the soul immortal? When the god was fashioning the universe, how many cups of unmixed essence of real being did he pour into the mixing bowl in which he mixed everything? And is Rhetoric a phantom of a portion of politics or a quarter of flattery?
Although the Syrian's larger argument rests on these questions appearing ridiculous to the jury, they in fact are derived from Plato's dialogues (the Phaedrus, Timaeus and Gorgias respectively). These are thus not quite the hair-splitting questions that the Syrian paints them to be; they are representations of Plato's works. The problem then is not the questions per se but the fact that Dialogue has not moved past them. In the character of Dialogue, we encounter the common Lucianic theme of the disparity between past ideals and present realities. Whereas the Seventh Letter explores whether a philosopher can and should be politically engaged, the Syrian's defence questions the very value of pursuing philosophy if it cannot make itself more relevant to contemporary society.
The presence of the author's name or one intended to invite authorial connection would seem, at first glance, to guarantee the non-fictional status of the narrative being presented—what Lejeune has called the ‘autobiographical pact’ that the author strikes with the reader.Footnote 29 Yet, it is important to recognize that the act of narrating one's life is not necessarily a retrospective account of an already formed self. Autobiographical narrative, instead, constructs identity, a process which, owing to the selectivity of memory or other factors, entails a certain amount of fiction.Footnote 30 The narrative that Lucian composes for the Syrian does not maintain the distinctions between ‘true’ and ‘false’, ‘authentic’ and ‘invented’, but instead blurs them. Lucian's refusal to ascribe a name to the Syrian seemingly denies the possibility of identifying him, and the character's relative anonymity is further reinforced by the fact that his βίος is crafted from the well-known biographical details of others.
PHILOSOPHERS AT FORTY: LYCINUS, HERMOTIMUS AND THE PROBLEMATIC ‘IDEAL’ STUDENT
Whereas the Double Indictment puts the autobiographical process centre stage, in the Hermotimus we find Lucian invoking Platonic autobiography to question the very teachability of philosophy. As a seemingly serious dialogue that explores the problems inherent in choosing one philosophical school over another, the Hermotimus represents something of an anomaly. Lucian signals his interest in Plato through the dialogue's opening scene, which reworks the opening of the Phaedrus. When Lycinus first encounters Hermotimus, the latter is lost in thought and gesticulating to himself as he rehearses a philosophical argument (Hermot. 1):
ὅσον, ὦ Ἑρμότιμε, τῷ βιβλίῳ καὶ τῇ τοῦ βαδίσματος σπουδῇ τεκμήρασθαι, παρὰ τὸν διδάσκαλον ἐπειγομένῳ ἔοικας. ἐνενόεις γοῦν τι μεταξὺ προϊὼν καὶ τὰ χείλη διεσάλευες ἠρέμα ὑποτονθορύζων καὶ τὸν χεῖρα ὧδε κἀκεῖσε μετέφερες ὥσπερ τινὰ ῥῆσιν ἐπὶ ἑαυτοῦ διατιθέμενος, ἐρώτημα δή τι τῶν ἀγκύλων συντιθεὶς ἢ σκέμμα σοφιστικὸν ἀναφροντίζων, ὡς μηδὲ ὁδῷ βαδίζων σχολὴν ἄγοις, ἀλλ’ ἐνεργὸς εἴης ἀεὶ σπουδαῖόν τι πράττων καὶ ὃ πρὸ ὁδοῦ σοι γένοιτ’ ἂν ἐς τὰ μαθήματα.
To judge from your book, Hermotimus, and the speed of your walk, you seem to be hurrying to your teacher. You were certainly thinking something over as you went along; you were twitching your lips and muttering quietly, waving your hand this way and that as though you were arranging a speech to yourself, composing one of your crooked problems or thinking out some sophistical question; even when you are walking along you must not take it easy, but be always busy with some serious matter which is likely to help your studies.
In this opening scene, Lucian appears to have rewritten the original scene from the Phaedrus. Whereas Socrates encounters the young Phaedrus on his way to relax after Lysias’ lesson, Hermotimus, one realizes as the dialogue unfolds, is a much older man and is rushing to class (Hermot. 1–2). When Hermotimus reveals that he spent the last twenty years studying with his Stoic teacher and that he believes it will take another twenty before he even catches a glimpse of virtue and knowledge, Lycinus can only express surprise and bewilderment at this extreme devotion (Hermot. 2). These changes, as Hunter has argued, function as reflections on the institutionalization of philosophy and suggest that, in the context of the Hermotimus, philosophers have now replaced what were, in Plato's dialogues, logographers and sophists.Footnote 31
Within the Platonic framework of the dialogue's opening (1–13), references to age contribute to the emphasis placed on the absurdity of Hermotimus’ passion for philosophy relative to Lycinus’ scepticism. Hermotimus, for example, defines his relationship to Lycinus in terms of age: ‘I myself was about your age when I began to study philosophy, about forty—as old as I believe you are now I imagine’ (καὶ αὐτὸς κατὰ σὲ γεγονὼς ἠρξάμην φιλοσοφεῖν τετταρακοντούτης σχεδόν—ὁπόσα οἶμαι σὺ νῦν γέγονας, Hermot. 13). The language that Hermotimus uses to describe his age when he began to study philosophy recalls that of Plato in the Seventh Letter with a few alterations: τετταρακοντούτης replaces τετταράκοντα; the noun ἔτη is absent; and the word order has been changed. In terms of these alterations, the shift in the word order holds particular significance. By delaying τετταρακοντούτης σχεδόν to the end of the main clause, the line seemingly stresses the fact that Hermotimus is ascribing this Platonically significant age to himself. This contributes both to the broader Platonic persona that Hermotimus is attempting to adopt and to the absurdity of this posturing. As Lycinus’ questioning quickly reveals, Hermotimus is far from an ideal student of philosophy, despite the lengthy span of his education.
Part of the absurdity surrounding references to age in this dialogue is the topsy-turvy relationship that it establishes between Lycinus and the dialogue's eponymous interlocutor. Given the fact that teachers are typically older than their pupils, the relationship constructed between these two characters is striking. At ‘almost forty’ Lycinus is ostensibly in a position to follow in Hermotimus’ footsteps as a pupil, but the dialogue stresses that the normal age relationship has been inverted. The combination of Hermotimus’ age—he is sixty—and the length of his study of philosophy should render him (especially if we are thinking in terms of Apollodorus’ divisions in ancient lives) in a position to instruct Lycinus; but the opposite is the case. As Lycinus’ questioning soon reveals, Hermotimus’ decision to study under a Stoic philosopher is based on little more than outward appearance and the general popularity of the Stoic school (Herm. 16–18). That Lycinus must step in and instruct him through a protracted dialectical exchange underscores the corruption of the nameless teacher who has done little more than take Hermotimus’ money.
In the context of the Hermotimus, the specific ages of the two participants, both at the time of the dialogue and, in the case of Hermotimus, at the time when he began to study philosophy, introduces a quasi-realistic detail that functions as part of a closely scripted Platonic encounter. Contributing to the Platonic tone of the dialogue's opening is the character of Hermotimus, whose extreme devotion to his philosophical studies seemingly embodies Plato's ideal student as defined in the Seventh Letter. Following the account of his arrival in Sicily for a third time, Plato describes how he immediately tested whether the rumours about Dionysius’ renewed interest in philosophy were true (340b–341a). To begin with, according to Plato, the teacher should explain the entire subject (πᾶν τὸ πρᾶγμα) to the would-be pupil, including how much work it will entail (ὅσον πόνον ἔχει, 340b–c). If he is a truly philosophic student (ἐὰν μὲν ὄντως ᾖ φιλόσοφος), he will not only praise the subject matter; he will also persist in his pursuit of it until he either reaches the goal of his studies under the guidance of a teacher or gets to the point where he can direct himself (οὐκ ἀνίησιν πρὶν ἂν ἢ τέλος ἐπιθῇ πᾶσιν, ἢ λάβῃ δύναμιν ὥστε αὐτὸς αὑτὸν χωρὶς τοῦ δείξοντος δυνατὸς εἶναι, 340c). Conversely, those who only claim to be philosophic will balk at the amount of work entailed in its study (340d–341a). By persistently pursuing a philosophical education and not becoming dissuaded at his lack of progress, Hermotimus seemingly brings to life Plato's definition of the ideal student; but here, once again, what was once an ideal for Plato is recast by Lucian as a negative quality. Persistence, in the second-century context of the dialogue, is no longer a mark of a devoted student, as Hermotimus would like it to be, but of a gullible and unsophisticated person, easily scammed by the corrupt philosophers.
In contrast to Hermotimus’ mindless devotion, Lycinus describes his own prior scepticism about the claims of philosophers. As he explains to Hermotimus the challenges inherent in the selection of one school over the others, Lycinus likens philosophy to an ideal city—an obvious reference to Plato's Republic. According to this analogy, the different schools function as guides, who each claim to know the way to the city. Tellingly, Lycinus notes, one of the guides approached him fifteen years earlier, but he did not take him up on his offer (Hermot. 24):
ἤδη γάρ ποτε καὶ ἄλλοτε πρεσβύτου ἀνδρὸς ἤκουσα διεξιόντος ὅπως τὰ ἐκεῖ πράγματα ἔχοι, καί με προὔτρεπεν ἕπεσθαί οἱ πρὸς τὴν πόλιν· ἡγήσεσθαι γὰρ αὐτὸς καὶ ἐλθόντα ἐγγράψειν καὶ φυλέτην ποιήσεσθαι καὶ φρατρίας μεταδώσειν τῆς αὐτοῦ, ὡς μετὰ πάντων εὐδαιμονοίην. ‘ἀλλ’ ἐγὼ οὐ πιθόμην’ ὑπ’ ἀνοίας καὶ νεότητος τότε, πρὸ πεντεκαίδεκα σχεδὸν ἐτῶν·Footnote 32
In addition, at some other time I heard an old man telling how things were there and urging me to follow him to the city; he would guide me himself and enrol me on my arrival, make me a fellow-tribesman and let me share his clan, so that I might be happy with all the others. ‘But I would not listen’ at that time through folly and youth (it was about fifteen years ago …)’.
This detail has previously been read as a reference to Lucian's own supposed ‘conversion’ to philosophy at the hands of the philosopher Nigrinus;Footnote 33 but it is notably one that does not easily accord with the narrative of the Syrian in the Double Indictment, who is described as beginning his education with Rhetoric when he was a young man (μειράκιον, Bis Acc. 27). The Syrian, as Rhetoric relates, spent a long time under her tutelage and in her companionship (καὶ μέχρι μὲν πολλοῦ πάντα μοι ἐπείθετο καὶ συνῆν ἀεί, Bis Acc. 27).Footnote 34
As tempting as it might be to read Lycinus’ reference to his earlier encounter with philosophy biographically, such an approach overlooks Lucian's persistent recasting of familiar Platonic characters, scenes and arguments throughout the dialogue. In driving Hermotimus to exasperation within a dialectical framework, Lycinus, despite being the younger of the two, assumes the guise of Socrates. Although Lycinus subsequently explains that citizenship in the ideal city is acquired by all who work hard—music to the ears of Hermotimus—there is only one path to the city and the guides all make the same promise. In this context, Platonic intertexts—to the Phaedrus, Republic and Seventh Letter—bring into relief the discrepancies between Hermotimus, the philosophical student who shows little inclination to interrogate his surroundings, and the ideal philosophical figures of Plato and Socrates. In this context, the pseudo-Platonic world that the Hermotimus stages becomes a reflection of the dialogue's broader argument that problematic students such as Hermotimus are the result of the institutionalization of philosophy, which no longer allows for the kind of serious interrogation of societal assumptions and conventions that Socrates once demanded and that Plato's dialogues dramatized.
CONCLUSION
In the autobiographical fictions that Lucian constructs for the Syrian and for Lycinus, we find him drawing on Old Comedy, a genre known for bringing its poets on stage, and on Platonic dialogue, specifically its characters, scenarios and problematic authorial presence. The recognition of these Platonic and Old Comic intertexts has done much to move us away from presuming that characters such as the Syrian in the Double Indictment or Lycinus in Hermotimus are stand-ins for Lucian. In this context, the games that Lucian plays regarding the identity of the Syrian and Lycinus are themselves indebted to the identity games in which both the comic poets and Plato engaged. As a further component of these games, Lucian also includes details culled from the biographies of others into the narratives that he constructs for these characters. While this facet of Lucian's writings has been discussed in terms of Lucian's debt to Old Comedy, specifically the role of Cratinus’ Pytine in the Double Indictment, the incorporation of elements of ancient biography and other seemingly autobiographical works, and particularly the Seventh Letter, adds a particularly significant dimension to Lucian's use of seemingly autobiographical references. In her discussion of the relationship between autobiography and biography, Marcus contends that ‘recounting one's life almost inevitably entails writing the life of another’.Footnote 35 By mapping Platonic biographical topoi onto the narratives of the Double Indictment and the Hermotimus, Lucian playfully enacts this principle, encoding the life of Plato into the βίοι that he imagines for the Syrian and for Lycinus, even as they question the very value of philosophy as a contemporary practice. In doing so, Lucian plays with the possibility that these examples of ‘life-writing’ may in some way describe his own βίος. He tempts us to read biographically and, when that reading fails to hold up, points us to the fictions involved in composing one's own life.
