II. HERODORUS, FR. 14

I print Fowler's text (EGM 1.237–8), delineated by Jacoby (FGrHist 31 F 14) from chronicles connected with John Malalas' and John of Antioch's Chronographiai.Footnote ¹⁰ The indexing numbers and translations are mine.

Scholars have struggled to identify the authentic Herodoran material.Footnote ¹¹ The last reference to ‘philosophizing’ apparently quotes Herodorus, and the fragment's explanatory middle part looks like a paraphrase of his explanation. In this section I address questions of attribution, leaving analysis for the next section.

This remark about Heracles' birth would not have been written by Herodorus so near to his remark about Heracles' eleventh labour in a seventeen-book treatise about him. Nor does the reference to ‘three-evening’, the dalliance issuing in the conception of Heracles, have any relevance to Herodorus' point about philosophizing.Footnote ¹² Strikingly, ‘evening’ arises again in the second sentence, which is about philosophizing, but this juxtaposition probably issues from the compiler's free association.

Heracles initiated ‘philosophizing in the evening places'. That this fragment glosses the evening places as ‘the sun-setting places' (ἤτοι ἐν τοῖς δυτικοῖς) suggests that this is an old commonplace grown unfamiliar. The evening places (ἑσπερίοις) must be the land of the Hesperides.Footnote ¹³ But the West is Italy,Footnote ¹⁴ which historiographers from Aristotle believed received philosophy after the East and Asia Minor.Footnote ¹⁵ Herodorus might also have thought so.

Here begins the fragment's rationalizing programme. This sentence could well be paraphrasing Herodorus' idea.Footnote ¹⁷ Early mythology says that Zeus transformed an apotheosized Heracles into a constellation. Our author undercuts that view in two ways. He makes Heracles' kin responsible for (the story of) the apotheosis, and accounts for the constellation by appeal to their naming of it.Footnote ¹⁸ The author appears to disbelieve that Heracles was actually divine or immortal. Such scepticism is of a piece with the early-to-mid-fourth-century tradition of myth-rectification, to which Herodorus surely belongs.Footnote ¹⁹ The implication for philosophizing here could be that it aims for something other than an actually divine (or blessed) afterlife, the view that is hazarded in Plato's Phaedo.

The association of Heracles with a lion-hide and club is Classical,Footnote ²⁰ as is debate about the proper identification of the constellation; at least the Aeschylean Prometheus Unbound has it as or depicting Heracles.Footnote ²¹

This passage provides the allegory or rationalization at the core of this fragment, introducing it with ‘that is, …’. Its Herodoran provenance depends on two factors: its consistency with sentence [6], which is probably Herodorus', and the likelihood that Herodorus constructed the list of three negative virtues (τὸ μὴ ὀργίζεσθαι, τὸ μὴ φιλαργυρεῖν, τὸ μὴ φιληδονεῖν).Footnote ²³ Both factors tell in favour of authenticity. Sentences [5] and [6] are in fact consistent, as I show below.Footnote ²⁴ And it is likely enough that Herodorus would write this list of virtues: by the fifth century, intellectuals had given increasing attention to clusters of phil- prefixed terms,Footnote ²⁵ and Prodicus' allegory of Heracles refers throughout to the obsession with pleasure, and by implication the need for wealth and the propensity to impatience, precisely the vices negated by Herodorus.Footnote ²⁶

This passage would count as ‘allegory’ if it made a claim not about the literal truth but instead about the interpretative value of the story it was allegorizing. A ‘rationalization’, by contrast, replaces one story with another that is more likely true even if less interpretatively valuable. In this fragment, sentences [3] and [7] provide rationalizations. Sentence [3] replaced actual apotheosis with apotheosis asserted by kin; sentence [7] will replace a set of actions attributed to a single Heracles with those actions distributed across eight distinct Heracleses. We cannot directly perceive whether sentence [5] serves as allegory or rationalization—that is, whether the author replaces the dragon-slaying story with a psychological account because he takes the psychological one to be more meaningful and valuable to think about (‘allegory’), or because he takes it as more likely true (‘rationalization’). Nevertheless, given sentences [3] and [7], I suspect that this sentence too is rationalization, and is thus consistent with Herodorus' overall rationalizing project.Footnote ²⁷

This sentence includes the noun ‘philosophy’. Because the participle ‘philosophize’ at [6b] is surely Herodorus', this sentence likely gives the substance of Herodorus' understanding of philosophy.

This sentence summarizes the rationalization. Because the summary follows the rationalization immediately, we might doubt that Herodorus wrote both. The summary is presented as a reason to believe the rationalization (γάρ), as though belief in the summary is justified by its source in ‘wisest Herodorus'. This makes Herodorus look responsible for [6a] but not for [5]. Against this, Herodorus might have summarized himself later in his book (as authors do), and the chronicler juxtaposed the rationalization (which may have been longer in the original version) and the summary. Because [6b] is directly attributed to Herodorus, but makes sense only in light of [6a], we should attribute the content of [6a] to Herodorus.

The activity ‘philosophizing till death’ is attributed directly to Herodorus (καθὼς … συνεγράψατο). The fact that ‘philosophy’ cognates were used twice above suggests that the chronicler wanted to gloss and capture this arresting and memorable claim about Heracles' ‘philosophizing’.Footnote ²⁸ Yet, this clause is problematic in two ways. We have a reason to doubt that it is really Herodorus who is being named here. Even if he is being named, we also have reason to doubt that we should attribute this clause in particular to him.

Let us first consider the name. As it turns out, no manuscript actually attributes this passage to ‘Herodorus'. Some manuscripts and Cedrenus refer to ‘Herodotus'; the remaining, Slavonic, manuscripts refer to ‘Diodorus’. But Herodotus is impossible, since Herodotus' sole work does not include this story, and the one time he uses the verb φιλοσοφεῖν (1.30) he does so in a way that would not make sense in the Heraclean context. Diodorus is less implausible, since not all his work remains, and he writes frequently about Heracles in what does remain; yet, in the extant work he already gives a thorough account of the Hesperides episode and its various interpretations, with nothing like what John Malalas prints.Footnote ²⁹ Herodorus is not otherwise mentioned in the manuscripts of John Malalas or in their recensions, and so it is plausible that a scribe might have found the name Ἡρόδωρος unfamiliar and corrected it to a more familiar and epigraphically very similar name, Ἡρόδοτος or Διόδωρος. Actually, we can readily account for these two manuscript readings only from an original Ἡρόδωρος; a slip from ‘Herodotus’ to ‘Diodorus’ or the other way makes little sense. The fact that Herodorus is not otherwise mentioned is not itself evidence against his being quoted; John Malalas cites seventy-five different writers, including other obscure historians.Footnote ³⁰ And many writers knew Herodorus well into the Common Era.Footnote ³¹ Given the fame and length of Herodorus' work on Heracles, and the ensuing comment that whoever said ‘philosophizing till death’ also asserted eight Heracleses, which we can expect from the rationalizing Herodorus,Footnote ³² editors have been right to correct the name to ‘Herodorus’.Footnote ³³

Now let us consider the clause-attribution. John Malalas' Chronographia treats in his own voice a tremendous variety of people as philosophers; might he be responsible for saying that Heracles did philosophy? In the early books about ancient Greece, most of John Malalas' attributions of philosophy are unsuspiciously conventional: Democritus (4.15), Thales (6.4), Anaximander (6.13), Heraclitus, Socrates and Pythagoras (6.16). Others make sense given the broad Byzantine definition of philosopher: Hippocrates (4.15) and Solon (6.6). Yet others are obviously being rationalized as culture heroes: Hermes (1.14), Syros (2.9), Teiresias (2.14), Endymion (3.9), Prometheus (as inventor of ‘grammatical philosophy’) (4.3), Marsyas (4.7).Footnote ³⁴

Only John Malalas' first mention of philosophy, five sections before the Heracles passage, casts some doubt on the attribution. He says that Aphrodite became a philosopher and married ‘the Athenian philosopher Adonis’. After Ares killed Adonis, both Aphrodite and Adonis descended to Hades, where it is said that together they practised philosophy until death (λέγονται δὲ ὁμοῦ πεφιλοσοφηκέναι <σωφρόνως> μέχρι θανάτου, 1.9).Footnote ³⁵ The similarity in locution could suggest that ‘philosophized until death’ is a late verbal trope and not a direct quotation. But we should resist this suggestion for two reasons. Herodorus could very well have written the phrase, since the prepositional phrase ‘until death’ (μέχρι θανάτου) is rare but evidenced by Socratics and intellectuals in the fourth century.Footnote ³⁶ He probably would have, too: Heracles was so characterized by excessive desires that his apotheosis, real or merely asserted, would depend on his philosophizing till death; or, indeed, he could die once he so tamed them. Further, John Malalas' story about Aphrodite, which is the only other time he uses ‘philosophize until death’, long predates him.Footnote ³⁷ Thus the story could very well have had Classical roots. Aphrodite, like Heracles, is known for her strong sexual desire. Her apotheosis would thus require that she too philosophize, by restraining her desires and by doing so with discipline (σωφρόνως).Footnote ³⁸ Thus the account Herodorus gave of Heracles could also have been given by a contemporaneous rationalizer of Aphrodite; both stories caught the eye of later chronographers.

The final clause gives information about Herodorus (ὃς καὶ … ἱστορεῖ):Footnote ³⁹ he is the one who further rationalized the stories of the hero by dividing them between eight lives. We see such divisions in Diodorus (for example, 1.24.4), and already knew of multiple Heracleses from Megasthenes' discussion of an Indian founder so named (for example, Strabo 15.1.6–7).

III. HERODORAN PHILOSOPHY

Herodorus treats philosophizing as a continuous activity, in Heracles' case the time between this labour and his death.Footnote ⁴⁰ He also treats it as extraordinary and heroic, perhaps implicitly responsible for Heracles' being (said to have been) apotheosized.Footnote ⁴¹ His details are provocative. Heracles, wielding a club and protected by a lion hide, kills the dragon Ladon (son of Typhon) and gets the three apples (guarded by the dragon for the Hesperides in the west).Footnote ⁴² After the longer rationalizing interpretation [5], the fragment includes the more compact summary about Heracles' success:

We have here a windfall of significant vocabulary from Classical Greek intellectual reflection—καρτερικός, θρασύς, σώφρων, λογισμός, ἐπιθυμία, ἀγών—applied to mythological storytelling. The dragon here is ‘base desire’, the wielded club is ‘a steadfast soul’, the protective hide is ‘boldest sound-minded calculation’, and the slaying is ‘triumph in an earthly contest’. Heracles' labour is transmuted into an occasion of self-overcoming. The mythical becomes psychological, the cosmic becomes earthly. Mastery of one's impulses involves the martial virtues: strength, bravery and endurance. Herodorus treats as monstrous, even as alien, those desires that might otherwise have been treated as one's own and as internal to one's person. It is either more likely (if Herodorus advances a rationalization) or more meaningful (if it is an allegory) to think that Heracles triumphed over some part of himself than that he literally triumphed over Ladon.

There is one puzzling detail here. This summary seems to some readers to have given the wrong gloss of the club and the hide. We might expect the club to be something active and used in attack, the hide something passive and used in defence. The ‘boldest sound-minded calculation’ might seem the more plausible club, an active offensive weapon. The ‘steadfast soul’ might seem the more plausible hide, a passive defensive shield.

Yet, we should resist treating the summary as backwards, which assumes a picture of philosophy as dialectical sparring, adapted from the tradition of Gorgias (Hel. 13) or the Dissoi Logoi (1 and 9). In the ‘dialectical sparring’ picture, one person defeats another—or, in the psychological rationalization, one's own inclinations—by active deployment of thoughtful, even audacious, argumentation. Reason and verbal articulation are active forces. But rejecting the summary for its unusual picture of philosophizing begs the question about the familiarity of Herodorus' usage of φιλοσοφεῖν.

In fact, Herodorus' interpretation of Heracles makes sense in its own terms, with the dragon-desire defeated by a steadfast soul. We might take that steadfast soul to tame or neutralize desire, not simply to defend prophylactically some true self as it were behind that soul. For Herodorus, Heracles masters his violence with resolve. This is a familiar fourth-century observation, as Aryeh Kosman has shown for the Platonic dialogues, where (self-)mastery replaces active effort with passive constancy.Footnote ⁴³

Similarly, ‘boldest sound-minded calculation’ may serve, like the lion hide, for defensive protection and not just for offensive sallies. Suppose that Heracles' steadfast soul leaves some desires unmastered; he remains somewhat angry, greedy or lustful. Calculation (λογισμός) could, with some effort and skill, fend off the still-active desire.Footnote ⁴⁴ Though Herodorus does not explain how, perhaps Heracles could determine that the costs of desire-satisfaction outweigh any gain, on the model of the ‘art of measurement’ in Plato's Protagoras (353c1–357e10). Or Heracles could figure out what opposed desire would be sacrificed by giving into the problematic desire, say shame for anger, and play them off each other, on the model of the vulgar virtues in Plato's Phaedo (68d1–69b1).Footnote ⁴⁵ In either case, calculation might be ‘sound-minded’ (σώφρονος) because it serves to constrain Heracles and to unify or integrate his goals. In this it contrasts with the ‘variegated’ (ποικίλον) desires against which it fights, erratic, contrary and arbitrary. It might be ‘boldest’ (θρασυτάτου) in its opposition to the intimidating threats of desire, threats that, in the end, prove ‘impoverished’ (πονηρόν).

Herodorus' priority of steadfastness over reason looks remarkably plausible. The successful life does seem to depend on constancy in the face of challenges. Only infrequently must that constancy call in reason as backup, to rebuke or negotiate with impulses. Despite this plausibility, Herodorus’ rationalized picture of philosophy remains a bit indeterminate. The summary of the rationalization relates each psychic element to a mythic element, but does not relate ‘philosophizing until death’ to anything in particular. The phrase's circumstantial position makes it free-floating. Given the structure of the summary, it must, however, refer to something. These are the three possibilities:

1. 1. The allegorical interpretation calls the club philosophy; in the summary, the club means having a steadfast soul; thus philosophizing is having a steadfast soul.

2. 2. The summary otherwise disregards getting the three apples, so ‘philosophizing’ means getting the three apples; since the three apples are the virtues of avoiding anger, avarice and indulgence, philosophizing is avoiding anger, avarice and indulgence.

3. 3. The circumstantial clause summarizes what precedes it; philosophizing is triumphing in the earthly contest through a steadfast soul and boldest sound-minded calculation.

The first two possibilities depend on the consistency between the rationalization [5] and its summary [6a]. In the rationalization, the dragon is the ‘impoverished and variegated calculation of sharp desire’ (τὸν πονηρὸν καὶ ποικίλον τῆς πικρᾶς ἐπιθυμίας λογισμόν); in the summary, the dragon is, more simply, ‘base desire’ (φαύλης ἐπιθυμίας). These are consistent: the summary's adjective ‘base’ simplifies the ideas that the dragon-as-desire is intrusive (sharp, πικρᾶς), clever (calculating, λογισμόν), polymorphic (variegated, ποικίλον) and undignified (impoverished, πονηρόν). Again, in the rationalization the hide is ‘noble mind’ (γενναῖον φρόνημα), and in the summary it is ‘boldest sound-minded calculation’ (θρασυτάτου καὶ σώφρονος λογισμοῦ). Both φρόνημα and σώφρονος share the root φρήν. Self-assurance is signified by both ‘noble’ and ‘boldest’.

These parallels between the rationalization and its summary suggest that philosophy, in the rationalization, has its equivalent in the summary. The simplest reading then is possibility 1, that philosophizing is a steadfast soul. In this case, philosophy is at most supported by, not constituted through, ‘boldest sound-minded calculation’, where philosophy is more essentially self-mastery than reasoning with oneself.

But in favour of possibility 2 is the reasoning that because the rationalization has four elements—dragon, club, hide and result of the victory—the summary should also have four elements. Since the rationalization's fourth element is the victory-result, the summary's fourth element, ‘philosophizing’, should be victory. Victory psychologized is the overcoming of anger (ὀργίζεσθαι), avarice (φιλαργυρεῖν) and self-indulgence (φιληδονεῖν). Thus possibility 2 treats philosophy as successfully overcoming one's desires. Possibility 1 treats philosophy as the primary means by which one successfully overcomes one's desires, which thus differs mainly conceptually, not practically, from possibility 2.

Possibility 3, by contrast with possibilities 1 and 2, ignores the original story and treats ‘philosophizing’ instead as encapsulating the fragment's summary [6a]. Philosophizing thus involves triumphing over desire through (διά) the steadfast soul and the boldest sound-minded calculation. Thus it involves both self-mastery and the thoughtful continence that sweeps up after self-mastery's imperfections. This is a more complex picture of philosophy than either previous possibility allows, as concerned primarily for self-discipline but secondarily with the ability to reason, as occasion demands, about the pleasures most worth pursuing.

Which possibility to prefer being unclear, at least we see that for Herodorus philosophizing is characterized by a steadfast soul, which in Heracles' case is peacefulness and patience, indifference to the accumulation of money, and restraint of an otherwise prodigious sexual appetite. Success in life comes from his wholehearted possession of these virtues. Further, philosophizing either involves, or has as a back-up, or is related to the ability to reflect actively on one's desires, convincing oneself not to accept one's (base) desires as reasons for action. Heracles' completion of this labour, and his valorization thereafter, testifies to the heroism of philosophy.

This appears to subordinate or at least to de-emphasize reason's role in philosophizing. A sceptical reader might, in reaction, be tempted to narrow the conceptual distance between reasoning and steadfastness of soul, which possibility 3 (but not 1 or 2) could encourage. Perhaps the soundness of reasoning provides the essence of the steadfastness of soul. Or, less radically, perhaps it provides one or the only condition for the steadfastness of soul. The ‘essence’ interpretation asserts that the steadfast soul is nothing but bold and sound-minded calculation. One becomes resistant to the claims of desire through or because of this active and stabilizing sort of thinking. This is the ‘Socratic intellectualist’ view, which holds that virtue, for example σωφροσύνη, comes through knowledge, and knowledge comes through analytic, critical and reflective argument. Against this interpretation, however, is the evidence of the rationalized story and Herodorus' locutions. Heracles has distinct pieces of equipment: the club and the hide. Perhaps the hide contributes to his triumph only counterfactually, keeping him alive in (the non-eventuating) case he were to be struck. Even were he to have been struck, presumably that protection would not itself have caused Ladon's defeat, since the dragon is not said to have died from exhaustion or a broken knuckle.

Some problems with the ‘essence’ interpretation are avoided in the ‘condition’ interpretation. The latter interpretation accepts the conceptual, psychological and even temporal distinctions between the correlates of the club and the hide. In this reading, the hide—that is, the protection, the sound-minded calculation—allows or underwrites or enables the use of the club. After all, it would be folly to enter a violent contest without defensive preparation; and so even were the hide never struck by the foe, confrontation with the foe depends on its being donned. The ‘condition’ interpretation may therefore present a plausible picture of the relationship between reasoning and the steadfastness of soul. But this interpretation seems actually to have no important consequences for Herodorus' concept of philosophizing. In the first place, fr. 14, at sentence [5], rationalizes only the club as philosophy. So even were the hide (= reasoning) a condition for using the club (= philosophy), any particular condition for philosophy need not be part of philosophy.

I began the paper by saying that Herodorus' use of ‘philosophy’ tells against the common view of the word's pre-Platonic sense as connected to intellectual cultivation, theoretical interest or concern for wisdom. I have just shown that fr. 14 treats Heracles' philosophizing instead as the development of a steadfast soul, which appears to differ from mental development and intellectual cultivation. But another fragment of Herodorus might put pressure on this view.

IV. HERACLES AS PHYSICIST

Clement records the following from what is likely Herodorus' long treatise on Heracles (fr. 13 = Strom. 1.15.73.2):

Heracles is thereby said to know astronomy and perhaps astrology; he has the ability to understand the stars and perhaps to predict events on their basis. Does this astronomical knowledge have anything to do with his philosophizing?Footnote ⁴⁸ Some commentators have thought so.Footnote ⁴⁹ But the evidence is weaker than it may seem. Fr. 14 does not speak at all about knowledge of cosmology, only about the containment of desire. Fr. 13 makes no connection between cosmological or celestial knowledge and the control of desire. The fact that Herodorus may attribute multiple qualities to his Heracles does not mean that he takes the term ‘philosophizing’ to include all that we might. All the same, such strong scepticism may seem unsatisfying, and there are at least three possible rejoinders, to which I now turn.

First, Servius, eight centuries after Herodorus, claims that ‘astronomy, that is, reason’ (caeli scientiam … haec est ratio) allowed a ‘philosophical’ (philosophum) Heracles to defeat his monsters.Footnote ⁵⁰ Servius is glossing the line of the Aeneid that introduces Iopas' song on the moon, sun, origins of man, meteorology, constellations and the seasons (1.742–6; Iopas was taught by Atlas). Yet, Servius does not say whether the monsters were Heracles' desires. Indeed, we have no reason to take Servius to give us information about the Herodoran tradition of interpretation, since we know there were many distinct rationalizations of Heracles' labour.Footnote ⁵¹ And Diodorus retells a version where the Hesperides were Atlas' daughters; when Heracles saved them, Atlas both helped Heracles complete his labour and also taught him astronomy and astrology; there is no hint that Heracles' eventual knowledge of stars helped him in his fighting.Footnote ⁵²

Second, much closer to the date of Herodorus, the fragments of Antisthenes discuss the relationship between Heracles' knowledge of high, even cosmological, matters and his success in human matters.Footnote ⁵³ Themistius (a.d. c.380) quotes Antisthenes' Heracles, through some intermediary text (On Virtue 5–23, trans. from Syriac by Menahem Luz):

Antisthenes' Prometheus, and then apparently Antisthenes himself, advocates for reason. Reason (or calculation; Luz observes that malîlûthâ is from melâ = λόγος) is an exalted skill concerned with more than mere experience. A person must seek to learn it; it does not come simply through toil and hardship. Themistius adds that reason directs itself to ‘heaven’, and takes up astronomical calculation. So he seems to deploy Antisthenes to argue that Heracles' success comes through cosmological knowledge. If Antisthenes argued this, it would be possible for Herodorus, his contemporary and potential reader, also to have had this connection in mind. But it is in fact unlikely that this passage from Themistius shows Antisthenes to have argued for a connection between cosmological knowledge and moral capacity. While the precise end of Themistius' quotation of Antisthenes is uncertain (I have inserted the closing quotation-marks), it seems necessary that Themistius is responsible for the final sentence. It is in the final sentence, and nowhere else, that reason is associated with astronomical thought. In fact, Antisthenes' ‘reason’ is given almost no determinate content—it is not said to be dialectic competence, theology, comparative anthropology, mathematics, science or anything else we might find in Plato or Aristotle. Of course, reason must differ somehow from experience or from technical skill, but it could just as well be self-reflection, clarity of mind or articulation of purpose. In other words, Antisthenes could have in mind the exercise of προμήθεια, sticking to one's life-organizing principles, rather than reacting to those (worldly) objects of desire most immediately present.Footnote ⁵⁴ Thus even were Herodorus directly influenced by Antisthenes, we would not yet have grounds to think that the physical, astronomical or prophetic knowledge that fr. 13 says he acquired must underlie the ‘philosophizing’ that fr. 14 says he practises.

Third, there are reasons to believe that Herodorus was influenced by Pythagoreans, or at least by Pythagorean questions.Footnote ⁵⁵ His interest in ἄλιμος, the appetite-suppressing drug (mallow or asphodel) favoured by philosophers (fr. 1), aligns him with the Pythagoreans, as does his interest in the moon and in Heracles' stature (frr. 4, 19).Footnote ⁵⁶ Were Herodorus influenced by the Pythagoreans, then he could conceivably have linked philosophy and cosmology. Guthrie describes the Pythagorean concern for cosmology in a useful way:

Through the idea of κόσμος the Pythagoreans could link astronomy and self-knowledge, cosmology and self-discipline. But none of Herodorus' fragments suggest he did the same. The advanced reasoning displayed by Heracles, in fr. 14, involves only outplaying one's desires, and fr. 13 simply provides a rationalization of the mythic idea of ‘pillars of the cosmos’. We have no way of knowing what Herodorus thinks Heracles did with that celestial or natural knowledge. Thus I conclude that we must resist assuming that, for him, philosophizing requires intellectual development in the manner provided by lessons, theories, schools and abstract thought, in particular in astronomy, physics and prophecy.

V. HERODORUS AND HIS INTELLECTUAL CIRCLE

Herodorus' understanding of philosophy must have come from somewhere; it would do him no good to invent a meaning, and fr. 14 gives no notice that he is consciously innovating or modifying a use.Footnote ⁵⁸ No evidence supports the idea that Herodorus absorbed a usage local to Pontic Heraclea, and Herodorus obviously belonged to a much wider republic of letters. Called a ‘sophist’,Footnote ⁵⁹ he had a thirst for every sort of knowledge, and the great length of his Heracles suggests that he must have read tremendously. He surely read material that discussed ‘philosophy’. The material available to him depends on the decade in which he wrote his volume.

The best information about the period of Herodorus' life comes from fourth-century remarks about his son, Bryson. The Platonic Epistle 13 (360c), purporting to be from the 350s, treats Bryson as by then famous enough to have followers. In History of Animals 6.5 (563a5), Aristotle invokes Bryson ‘the sophist’ to identify his father, Herodorus, whose remarks about vultures interest him.Footnote ⁶⁰ That Aristotle mentions Bryson suggests either that he wants to connect Herodorus to Aristotle's Peripatetic associates via their friend Bryson or that Bryson is more well known than his historian and mythographer father; or even that Herodorus is long gone.Footnote ⁶¹ Diogenes Laertius identifies Bryson as a teacher of the Cynic Crates (c.365–285) and the sceptic Pyrrho (c.360–270; cf. Suda π 3238).Footnote ⁶² The Suda (σ 829 s.v. Σωκράτης) mentions the tradition that Bryson studied with Socrates, but also records a view that Bryson studied instead with Euclides or with Clinomachus (π 3238).Footnote ⁶³ If we accept the claim that Bryson studied with Socrates, then Bryson must have been born by 420 (and thus must have been older than seventy, or dead, during Aristotle's writing career), and his father must have been born around or before 450. On this accounting, Herodorus could have written his book before Socrates' death. But given the Suda’s uncertainty that Bryson did study with Socrates, and given the silence about the relationship elsewhere, reliance on the connection is risky. Our other evidence unanimously suggests that Bryson would have been in his pedagogical maturity by the end of the 350s. This puts his birth no later than Aristotle's.Footnote ⁶⁴ This earlier date would put his father's birth as late as Plato's, but probably earlier. Herodorus could thus have written his book as early as the decade or so before Socrates' execution, or as late, theoretically, as Aristotle's History of Animals. Thus I accept Döring's dating of Herodorus' work as between 400 and 340, though potentially earlier.Footnote ⁶⁵

What we can say is that Herodorus' account of Heracles comes in the midst of Greek intellectual reflection on Heracles. Prodicus' speech on the crossroads of virtue, repeated by Socrates to Aristippus in Xenophon's Memorabilia (2.1.21–34), must have been written before Socrates' death.Footnote ⁶⁶ In that speech, young Heracles sits wondering about the life he should adopt, when two women present to himself his real choice, between a pleasure-lined life of ease and a toilsome, rigorous life of virtue. This life of virtue is not a life of intellectual reflection or dialectical exchange but a life of pain and effort (πόνου καὶ ἐπιμελείας), care and benefaction (θεραπευτέον … εὐεργετητέον) and helpfulness and good deeds (ὠφελητέον … πειρατέον εὖ ποιεῖν). If Heracles wishes to perform well in war, he must learn martial skill from teachers, and practise it in the field (28). If he would live well overall, he must give up his desire for instant gratification, for money with which to satisfy every whim, and for whatever frustration he might feel toward friends. How he is to adopt this life, Prodicus' tale does not say. The implication is probably that the good life demands a conscious choice, a commitment to challenging activity, and a belief that such activity will redeem itself. Neither Virtue, Prodicus, Socrates nor Xenophon calls Heracles' path to virtue ‘philosophy’, and we cannot assume that Prodicus did either. But this picture of the good life for Heracles, in its silence about abstraction, the development of reason or the pursuit of knowledge, is consistent with Herodorus' picture.

Plato acknowledges the popularity of Heracles-talk among intellectuals (Symp. 177b, cf. Lysis 205c). His Callicles interprets Pindar's poetic reference to Heracles as vindicating his might-makes-right view of justice and as against Socratic philosophizing (Grg. 484b), and Socrates treats Heracles as an exemplary hero (Alc. 120e, Hp. mai. 293a). On three occasions Plato even makes Heracles Socratic, in his mastery at taking down claims and counterclaims. Socrates calls Heracles an excellent wrestler, after Theodorus has likened Socratic conversation to wrestling; by implication, Heracles is a vigorous interlocutor (Tht. 169b). When both Simmias and Cebes argue against the immortality of the soul, and request Socrates' further defence of his position, Socrates notes that the mythological tradition holds that not even Heracles could fight two enemies at once; when Phaedo tells Socrates to call on him as his Iolaus, he confirms a tentative equation of Socrates and Heracles (Phd. 89c). Socrates even rationalizes a Heraclean labour when, again confronting two opponents—the brothers Euthydemus and Dionysodorus—he judges himself worse than Heracles: and yet Heracles, he says, could not even fight the Hydra, a ‘sophist’ with such ‘wisdom’ that she could replace any ‘head of argument’ she lost (σοφιστρίᾳ οὔσῃ καὶ διὰ τὴν σοφίαν ἀνιείσῃ, εἰ μίαν κεφαλὴν τοῦ λόγου τις ἀποτέμοι), at the same time that he fought the crab, another ‘sophist’ (Euthyd. 297c). Again Socrates says Heracles called on his nephew Iolaus, and Dionysodorus asks whether Iolaus is also his nephew, thereby again likening Socrates to Heracles.

This Platonic evidence confirms what we knew already from the Prodican evidence, namely that Heracles took a prime place in Classical Greek intellectual reflection. But when Plato participates in such reflection, either by reporting the way in which Socrates actually spoke, or by imagining new anecdotes, he reads into Heracles something other than Prodicus did. In the three references to Heracles' wrestling and fighting excellence, Plato has Socrates treat the excellence as argumentative vigour and ability. This Heracles can, like Socrates, defeat all comers in dialectical exchange. This suggests that Plato reflected on the image of Heracles. But this is importantly not the image of Heracles that Herodorus takes up. The picture we glimpse from fr. 14, and even from fr. 13, has nothing of the argumentative, dialectical or conversational about it. While it is possible that Herodorus read Plato before having written his Heracles, it is clear that his having done so did not directly cause his rationalized reading of the Hesperides episode. (While it is of course possible that Herodorus read other parts of Plato's works that influenced his thoughts about steadfastness of soul, I do not believe that Plato's works make a strong link between ‘philosophy’ and steadfastness of soul; but this cannot be argued here.)

An even better match for Herodorus' fr. 14 than Prodicus or Plato is Antisthenes (c.445–365), who himself wrote at least one work on Heracles (Diog. Laert. 6.16, 6.18). Diogenes Laertius sums up Antisthenes' conception of the good life by observing that happiness requires virtue alone with Socratic strength (Σωκρατικῆς ἰσχύος), and manifests itself in deeds, needing neither much talk nor learning (μήτε λόγων πλείστων δεομένην μήτε μαθημάτων, 6.11). He proceeds to deploy martial language to describe this view. He calls virtue ‘an irremovable armour’ (ἀναφαίρετον ὅπλον ἡ ἀρετή), reasoning ‘a strongest wall’ (τεῖχος ἀσφαλέστατον φρόνησιν), and calculation (λογισμός), the term to which Herodorus drew particular attention, ‘an indissoluble wall we must prepare’ (τείχη κατασκευαστέον ἐν τοῖς αὑτῶν ἀναλώτοις λογισμοῖς, 6.12–13).Footnote ⁶⁷ Diogenes tells us that Antisthenes uses the example of Heracles to prove that hardship (πόνος) is a good thing (6.2), to take a strong anti-hedonist line (6.3) and to exhort a ‘life in accordance with virtue’ (6.104). From his experience hiking many miles daily to visit Socrates, Antisthenes learned to be steadfast and unmoved (τὸ καρτερικὸν … καὶ τὸ ἀπαθές, 6.2). He thought that virtue could be acquired (6.10), and, as he says in the Heracles, persists inalienably (6.105). Other authors emphasize Antisthenes' arguments against sexual pleasure and his lauding of σωφροσύνη above all other virtues.Footnote ⁶⁸ Additional information about Antisthenes comes from Xenophon's Symposium. The character Antisthenes argues against the desire for money, in favour of self-reliance for pleasure, and about the benefit in being generous and congenial to others (4.33–44), presumably in opposition to being quick to anger and jealousy.

As should be clear, Herodorus' fr. 14 shares much with the theses attributed to Antisthenes.Footnote ⁶⁹ The siege language is the most remarkable similarity. Beyond that, both treat thinking and mind as defensive, a ‘hide’ or a ‘wall’. In both, Heracles stands for effort in opposition to desire-satisfaction. The key to the good life is giving no more than due consideration to pleasures, wealth and irascibility. Argument and broad scholarly exposure have little importance. Antisthenes’ fame and vast publication (Diog. Laert. 6.18) make it entirely possible that Herodorus would have read or heard about his work. Cultural interchange between Athens and Pontic Heraclea (if Herodorus had not moved to Athens, as his son did) would even have made it likely.Footnote ⁷⁰ It is worth considering the possibility, then, that Herodorus represents Antisthenes’ view of ‘philosophy’. We cannot establish this directly, because the only testimony to Antisthenes’ view comes in three late and dubious passages. Nevertheless, we will look briefly at them.

Stobaeus tells the following story: asked by someone what he ought to teach his son, Antisthenes replied, ‘if he is to live with the gods, philosophy, if with men, rhetoric’ (εἰ μὲν θεοῖς μέλλει συμβιοῦν, φιλόσοφον, εἰ δὲ ἀνθρώποις, ῥήτορα).Footnote ⁷¹ In this witty riposte, Antisthenes seems to claim practical relevance for rhetoric while calling philosophy good only for those undergoing apotheosis. This makes some sense; a Hellenistic tradition associated Antisthenes with rhetoric, both directly and through the tutelage of Gorgias,Footnote ⁷² and, as we have seen, with a distaste for theoretical pursuits. But the same tradition also had Antisthenes abandoning rhetoric for Socrates.Footnote ⁷³ So perhaps Antisthenes meant quite the opposite by the riposte: whereas rhetoric has no better than mundane and instrumental value, philosophy elevates.Footnote ⁷⁴ Yet, this alternative view faces as many challenges. The same riposte is elsewhere attributed to Demosthenes (Florilegium Monacense 182), who would not have derogated rhetoric. And even had Antisthenes said this before he converted to philosophy, he would hardly have been famous enough for his sayings to be retained, and it may have been too early in the fifth century for ‘philosophy’ to be connected to the life of the gods. So it may seem that either the attribution to Antisthenes cannot be sustained or the riposte's vagueness prevents any useful interpretation. Yet, there is a third option. Heracles underwent apotheosis. So for him ‘philosophy’ would be suitable. Heracles’ philosophizing, as Herodorus presents it and the fragments of Antisthenes recorded in Diogenes Laertius and elsewhere suggest, was not theoretical; but it was even less rhetorical. So if ‘philosophy’ for Antisthenes means the self-overcoming adumbrated in Herodorus’ fr. 14, then the riposte is Antisthenic and determinate enough for fruitful interpretation.

Diogenes Laertius relates another anecdote about Antisthenes and philosophy. When Antisthenes ‘was asked what he gained from philosophy, he said that it was the ability to converse with himself’ (ἐρωτηθεὶς τί αὐτῷ περιγέγονεν ἐκ φιλοσοφίας, ἔφη, τὸ δύνασθαι ἑαυτῷ ὁμιλεῖν, Diog. Laert. 6.6).Footnote ⁷⁵ This obviously recalls Socrates’ description of thought in Plato's Theaetetus as ‘talk that the soul has with itself’ (λόγον ὃν αὐτὴ πρὸς αὑτὴν ἡ ψυχὴ διεξέρχεται, 189e6–7), which includes conversing, questioning, answering, affirming, deciding, agreeing and holding an opinion with itself (Tht. 189e8–190a6). Both Plato and Antisthenes could have taken the idea from Socrates, and taken it their own directions, Plato toward the idea of internal consistency (cf. Tht. 190a8–e4), Antisthenes toward the idea of self-sufficiency.Footnote ⁷⁶ We might take this as consistent with the riposte in Stobaeus: rhetoric involves convincing others and being convinced by them; only when one thinks for oneself does one qualify to live divinely. Herodorus’ psychologizing internal battle, with the soul's steadfastness and its backup λογισμός defeating the ‘impoverished and variegated’ λογισμός of sharp desire, might have its inspiration in Antisthenic internal debate. At any rate, Antisthenes is not said to have won from ‘philosophy’ knowledge of the world or wisdom or a love for abstractions—which we might expect were ‘philosophy’ to mean ‘intellectual cultivation’.

A final piece of (potential) evidence for Antisthenes’ view of ‘philosophy’ comes from an ostracon found in Oxyrhynchus.Footnote ⁷⁷ Stobaeus 2.31.76 had already attributed to Antisthenes the following slogan: ‘those intending to become good men must exercise their body with gymnastics and their soul with education (παιδύσει).’ The ostracon, probably residue of a student exercise, prints: ‘While the farmer tames (ἐξημεροῖ) his land, the philosopher tames his nature (φύσιν). Those intending to become good men must exercise their body with gymnastics and their soul with talk (λόγοις).’ The first sentence had already been known anonymously in the Florentine florilegium under the heading Περὶ ἀγωγῆς καὶ παιδείας; its juxtaposition with a purportedly Antisthenic line and its plausibly fifth/fourth-century provenance suggests that it could also be Antisthenes’.Footnote ⁷⁸ Of particular note is the verb, ἐξημερόω. In its only other Athenian usage, in Euripides’ Heracles, it twice refers to Heracles’ labours (πόνους) as a whole, the removal of savage beasts from the world (ἐξημερῶσαι γαῖαν, 20; ἄβατον δὲ χώραν καὶ θάλασσαν ἀγρίαν | ἐξημερώσας, 851–2).Footnote ⁷⁹ For Herodorus’ ‘philosophizing’ Heracles, the task is precisely the taming of one's wild beasts in the advancement of one's nature. Herodorus does not develop the reliance this self-taming would have on education or talk, but the remark about philosophy at Diog. Laert. 6.6 and Antisthenes’ Socratic tutelage makes it plausibly an Antisthenic view.

Herodorus’ fr. 14 seems to provide an Antisthenic view of ‘philosophy’, for reasons connected both to the content of that fragment and to its compatibility with the few late gnomological witnesses to that view. Because we know so little about Antisthenes’ view of ‘philosophy’ otherwise, this is a boon. It is a particular boon because Antisthenes, as a leading student of Socrates, may have developed one or more strands of Socrates’ view of ‘philosophy.’ And there is no doubt that understanding Socrates’ view matters to the history of philosophy.

VI. A GENETIC HISTORY OF ‘PHILOSOPHY’

There is no room here to give a general account of the history of the word ‘philosophy’. But the following is a conjectural sketch of that account. The term ‘philosopher’ may have been coined around the time of Pythagoras.Footnote ⁸⁰ We need not accept that Pythagoras himself coined it, or even that he was the first person to apply it to himself. But we might suspect that people called him ‘philosopher’, or his students and sympathizers ‘philosophers’, and that at some point the Pythagoreans accepted the name.Footnote ⁸¹ Pythagoras and those modelling their lives on his were probably distinguished by their breadth of travel, accumulation of wisdom literature from diverse sources, rigorous study, memorizing, belief in immortality and in aspirations to it, and discussion or defence of the views so developed. As Pythagoreans travelled (freely or forcibly) through Magna Graecia and mainland Greece, and as other travellers came upon them, the idiosyncratic life of ‘philosophy’ (= Pythagoreanism) may have become more broadly known. But in some vicinities certain aspects of this life might have impressed themselves more powerfully upon non-philosophers, and in other vicinities other aspects upon other non-philosophers. Thus the name ‘philosopher’ or the activity ‘philosophy’ might have ended up referring, within different circles, to different kinds of people or practices. For Ionians like Herodotus, the travel and the accumulation of knowledge might have been central (1.30). For those in Gorgias’ midst, discipleship in argument and analysis could be key (Hel. 13). We need not find an essential semantic commonality between these usages, or a technicalizing evolution, from broad-to-narrow connotation. We may see instead an origin in an external description of a specific group, and contingent development as the term spread.

It seems plausible that Herodorus’ usage—or if it is Antisthenes’, or one of Socrates’, then their usage too—has Pythagorean provenance tempered through several generations of reapplication. The Pythagorean regimen appears to have emphasized desire control.Footnote ⁸² This desire control may have been relatively distinct from argumentative skill, love for wisdom, concern for the abstract, or other modes of mental development. That for the Pythagoreans desire control might be only one ingredient in a complete life of philosophy does not mean that for Herodorus (or Antisthenes) philosophy must be so expansive. After all, Herodorus’ remark about Heracles mentions neither knowledge nor truth, neither learning nor wisdom, neither debating nor studying. It treats philosophizing instead as attainment of the virtues of restraint, an attainment that involves training primarily in steadfastness and secondarily in the self-directed calculation appropriate for withstanding the siren call of one's desires.

Herodorus does not see himself as presenting an iconoclastic, revolutionary or even revelatory signification of ‘philosophy’. He simply draws from the literature he reads and the particular pools of culture into which he immersed himself. Antisthenes is his likely literary or cultural influence. He may not be; but whether he is or not, we have no reason to think that Antisthenes himself has an iconoclastic, revolutionary or revelatory notion of ‘philosophy’. While he may have taken a more self-conscious attitude toward the notion of ‘philosophy’ than Herodorus—with too little evidence we cannot be sure—he too likely drew from some particular range of influences. These influences have been mostly hidden. Herodorus’ fr. 14 goes some way to revealing them. As we see, and as we may not have seen as decisively before this study, some people in the late fifth and early fourth century found ‘philosophy’ to describe, most saliently, the rigorous control of one's desires. They surely did not posit this explicitly against Plato's analytic-deliberative notion, Isocrates’ political-pedagogical notion or Aristotle's fundamental-explanatory notion. This is just how they heard the term being used and talked about. A genetic history, in particular one with its origin in observers early in the Pythagorean movement (for example), allows for multiple contemporaneous uses of the word ‘philosophy’. This recognition has important interpretative consequences.

At only one other moment in extant Classical literature is Heracles explicitly connected to ‘philosophy’.Footnote ⁸³ In Alexis’ (c.375–275) comic play Linus, Linus shows to Heracles his extensive library of excellent literature, and says that the book Heracles picks will reveal his nature. Heracles picks a cookbook. ‘You're clearly some philosopher’, Linus responds, ‘who, having passed over so many books, grabs the Art of Simus.’Footnote ⁸⁴ The joke implies that philosophers have wide interests in literature, but generally reject the indulgence of gluttony. It also implies that Heracles is among the least appropriately categorized as a learned reflective philosopher. This suggests that Herodorus’ equation of Heracles with philosophy would be memorably counterintuitive, or paradoxical, and good for citing in the future. But it does not mean that a philosophizing Heracles is, for Herodorus, impossible, or a joke. It means that on a certain understanding of philosophy—as the way of life concerned with virtue, self-control and the proper estimation of values—Heracles, like Socrates, is as model a life as any.Footnote ⁸⁵