This book, based on H.'s MA dissertation submitted to the University of Exeter in 2003, has been revised and published with ‘the addition of some material in chapter 3’ (p. 8) and an updated bibliography. H. divides his text into an introduction plus three chapters, in which issues such as genre, programmatic aspects, intertextuality, knowledge and authority are discussed.
Heroicus, written by Philostratus in the third century a.d., is set as a dialogue in the Thracian Chersonese (which is located almost exactly on the shore opposite to Troy) between a local Vinedresser and a visiting Phoenician. The Vinedresser cultivates and lives in close contact with a hero from the Homeric past, Protesilaus. Protesilaus has another version of the Trojan War and accuses Homer of having been fooled by Odysseus. He retells the story, accusing Odysseus of murdering Palamedes, who is, in his version, the true hero. The dialogue begins with the Phoenician doubting what he is being told, and ends with his complete ‘conversion’.
Before I comment on H.'s work, it is relevant to position the Heroicus among recent scholarship on Philostratus. As noted by H., there are some recent studies on Philostratus such as J. Elsner and E. Bowie, Philostratus (2009 and see CR 60 [2010], 397–400) and K. Demoen and D. Praet, Theios Sophistes. Essays on Flavius Philostratus' Vita Apollonii (2004 and see CR 60 [2010], 77–9). E.B. Aitken and J.K.B. Maclean's Philostratus' Heroikos. Religion and Cultural Identity in the Third Century C.E. (2004 and see JHS 126 [2006], 165) marks a change in attitude towards this neglected and underestimated work. However, the Heroicus has received much less attention than other works in the Philostratean corpus, which H. attributes to the fictional character of the text and a lack of good translations.
The introduction synthetizes the arguments that will be developed in the book, exhibiting recurrent themes of the Heroicus. According to H. there are three issues addressed by Philostratus in this text: (a) a revision of Homer's account of the Trojan War in the Iliad; (b) emulation of Platonic-style dialogue; (c) reflection on the hero cult in the third century c.e. An up to date review of the scholarship on the Heroicus is also offered. The introduction notes that H.'s ‘book is twofold’ (p. 15). On the one hand the book presents a reading doing justice to the complexity of the text's formal, structural and intertextual features, in order to showcase its relationship with the Platonic dialogue tradition; on the other, H. confronts us with another objective which, I believe, is a little overambitious. He aims to show ‘the relationship between (my reading of) the Heroikos and Philostratus’ concerns with sophistry and philosophy evident in his other works, and therefore with the literary and rhetorical culture of the time' (p. 16). It seems to me that generalisations like that can be dangerous, since they create high expectations that are almost impossible to meet in such a slim volume, if we consider the broad and diverse textual production of Philostratus' age.
In the second chapter, H. registers important aspects of the eight chapters of Heroicus that can be considered relevant to the intertextual play he is going to analyse. He begins by pointing out the difficulty of establishing comparisons with other texts of the kind, since the Philostratean corpus does not offer another example. Obviously, as H. points out, the paradigm for the dialogue genre is Plato (although others had used the genre, such as Lucian). Here, it should be interesting to analyse why Philostratus chose the dialogue genre. A possible suggestion would be because of Plato, since it could be argued that Philostratus is at the centre of the sophistic response to and critique of Plato in the period named by himself ‘Second Sophistic’. Some scholars, such as Graziani (‘La vérité en image, la méthode sophistique’, in M. Costantini, F. Graziani, S. Rolet, Le défi de l'art. Philostrate, Callistrate et l'image sophistique [2006], pp. 137–51), believe that this intertextual play is also evident in Philostratus' other texts, for instance, the prologue of Imagines. Then, H. analyses the first characters that appear in the dialogue (the Vinedresser and the Phoenician), and notes that the mode of their presentation reveals the play with identity that will be carried on throughout the text. These characters and their possible identification with previous literary or mythical models are discussed at length.
H. discusses the role of Protesilaus in the dialogue. As a witness in loco of the Trojan War, his historias will be the source of arguments for the Vinedresser's discussion with the Phoenician (Heroicus 6.1 and p. 37) and his role will be that of authority. As an ocular witness, Protesilaus' presence adds a further level to the arguments, since it associates the Heroicus with Herodotus' text, not only by explicit reference to the Histories but also through the relationship between the narratives found in Herodotus (9.116) and Homer (Il. 15.705–6). From that, H. moves to the relationship of Heroicus and Plato's dialogues, especially with the Phaedrus, the Symposium and the Theaetetus. He explains: ‘At the same time, however, a thread of Platonic inquiry into knowledge and its transmission is introduced into Protesilaos’ authority' (p. 39).
The second section, ‘Phaedran relocation’, deals with specific relationships between this Platonic dialogue and the Heroicus. H.'s main arguments for focussing the discussion on the Phaedrus and not on other dialogues are summarised thus: ‘The whole of the Heroikos’ opening section is a complex reworking of the more conventionally dialogic parts of Phaedrus introducing its lengthy discourses (logoi) on love' (p. 43). What we can see, according to H.'s argumentation, is that the ‘Heroikos can be read as a programme for the discourse on poetic logoi which constitutes the bulk of the text: a Phaedran examination and criticism of a text’ (p. 59).
The third chapter discusses the revision of Homer's account of the events at Troy from the point of view of Protesilaus presented by Philostratus. It is divided into two sections. In the first, H. shows Protesilaus as a character who criticises the Homeric canonical view, and in order to do that, Philostratus constructs his ethos inside the dialogue as not only a wise man, an instructor at practical philosophy and a master of both Socratic and sophistic criteria, but as a holy man (theios aner), ‘a title applied to figures of philosophical, religious, or magical wisdom in the 3rd century ce’ (p. 62) such as Apollonius of Tyana in another of Philostratus' texts. The ethos thus constructed confers on the persona of Protesilaus an auctoritas in this Roman literary universe and, in consequence, allows Protesilaus to challenge Homer. The last section discusses two other heroes, Odysseus and Palamedes, who will be constructed in the Heroicus as ‘rival sources’ for the reporting of the Trojan War.
In the last chapter H. discusses the position of the Heroicus in Philostratus' œuvre as a whole. He returns to its relationship with the Phaedrus, which is a dialogue on discourses, ‘a text about logoi, about texts and tales and their interpretation therefore creating tensions and ironies when some of its logic is applied to itself as a text’ (p. 103), and from that he constructs his arguments on how Heroicus can be read as a text on sophistry and philosophy, on the reworking of myths by different authorities, a discussion of the oral and the written text and their relation with truth, and on the play of the various identities that can be read under each character of the dialogue.
H.'s book, together with the work of Aitken and Maclean, constitutes a welcome addition to Philostratean studies and, in particular, is a thought-provoking work on the Heroicus, offering a careful reading and literary analysis of this intriguing piece of imperial literature.
