‘ἕως μὲν ἀγαθῶς εἶχε μοι τὰ περὶ τὸ σῶμα καὶ ἁβρῶς μὲν ἡ θρὶξ ἔσταλτο καὶ κομψῶς, συμμέτρως δὲ καὶ οὐ κατὰ φιλοσόφους καθεῖτο τὸ γένειον, πλατὺν μυκτῆρα τῶν ἐν τούτοις δυστυχούντων κατέχεον· οὐκ ἔστι γὰρ ὅς με φαλακρὸς οὐκ εὐθὺς ὶδὼν ἰλιγγίασεν· οὐκ ἔστι δὲ ὅς μοι βαθυπώγων περιτυχὼν οὐκ ηὔξατο οἱ χανεῖσθαι τὴν γῆν· νῦν δέ, εἰς ἐμὲ τοῦ τῆς ἀσχημοσύνης κύβου μεταρριφθέντος, οὐ περιμείνας τοὺς ἐξ ἄλλων λεσχασμοὺς καὶ τὰς βλασφημίας, ἑαυτὸν αὐτὸς καθ’αὑτοῦ κατήγορον ἵστημι καὶ τῆς ἐμῆς ἐμφορεῖσθαι χλεύης τοῖς ἐθέλουσι δίδωμι. καίτοι καὶ Συνέσιον οἶδα τὴν φαλάκραν καλλωπισάμενον καὶ Ἰουλιανόν γε οὐκ ἀγνοῶ τὸν οἰκεῖον, ὡς ἐν προσχήματι ψόγου, σεμνύμαντα πώγωνα.’Footnote 1
[. . .] as long as I enjoyed bodily health, and my hair was thick and groomed, my beard grew symmetrically and not in the manner of the philosophers (ou kata philosophous), I have poured a rude sneerFootnote 2 upon those less fortunate in this respect. There was not one baldy who would not become dizzy, when he saw me. There was not one beardy who would not pray for the earth to swallow him, when he met me. But now, that the die of ugliness has turned upside down for me, I did not await gossip and slander from others. I set myself as my own accuser. I allow those who are willing to take their fill of my own joke.Footnote 3 Furthermore I do know that Synesios boasted of baldness and it is not unknown to me that Julian, under the pretence of psogos,Footnote 4 praised his own beard [. . .].
This fragment comes from the letter written by Theodore Prodromos to the orphanotrophos Alexios Aristenos at the end of his illness or immediately after it.Footnote 5 Prodromos who at some time in the 1140s suffered from smallpox, in both letters and poems, described minutely the symptoms and the course of the illness.Footnote 6 The poet repeatedly complains that while he lost his hair, his beard grew uncontrollably.Footnote 7 As he said in the letter, he was ready to be mocked the same way he mocked others (‘I allow those who are willing to take their fill of my own joke’). We would like to argue that the ‘joke’ refers, most likely, to Prodromos’ earlier little piece, a vicious attack on an old man:
Ἰαταταιὰξ τῆς ἁδρᾶς γενειάδος
ὅση καθεῖται μέχρι τοῦ προκολπίου
τῷ πεμπέλῳ γέροντι σαπρῷ Θουκρίτῳ.
Ἰαταταιὰξ τῆς κινάβρας, τοῦ γράσου.
5 Φεῦ τοῦ τοσούτου τῆς ὑπήνης φορτίου.
Ὃση μὲν εἰς ἔκτασιν, εὶς εὗρος δ’ὅση,
ἁπλῶς δὲ πάσας τὰς διαστάσεις ὅση
Ἐντεῦθεν, οἶμαι, κατακυπτάζεις, γέρον,
φέρεις δὲ καὶ κύρτωμα καὶ σφαιροῖς ῥάχιν·
10 ἡ γὰρ γενειὰς τὸν τράχηλόν σου κλίνει
πολλή τις οὖσα καὶ βάρους οὐ μετρίου. [. . .]
30 Πλανᾷς σεαυτὸν καὶ ματαιάζεις, γέρον,
τὴν ἁδρότητα τῆς μακρᾶς γενειάδος
εἶναι νομίζων δεῖγμα φιλοσοφίας.
Ἦ γὰρ τὸν Ἀθήνηθεν ἄνδρα τὸν μέγαν
τὸ τῶν λόγων αὔχημα, τὸν θεολόγον,
35 τὸν ἄντικρυς νοῦν, τὴν ὑπέρ φύσιν φύσιν,
τὸν υἱὸν Ἀρίστωνος, ᾧ κλῆσις Πλάτων,
καὶ τὸν φυσικώτατον Ἀριστοτέλην,
καὶ τὸν πυρὸς πάρεργον Ἐμπεδοκλέα,
τὴν τῶν Σταγείρων ἄκραν εὐετηρίαν,
40 καὶ τὸν Σάμιον τῷ γένει Πυθαγόραν,
καὶ τὸν σπαρέντα Σωγφονίσκῳ Σωκράτην,
εἰ μὴ μακρὰς καθεῖντο καὶ γενειάδας
καὶ μέχρις αὐτῶν ἀστραγάλων ἱγμένας,
καὶ τῆς κινάβρας ἔπνεον καὶ τοῦ γράσου,
45 ἄστροις δ’ἀπεικάζοντο τοῖς πωγωνίας,
ὅσον τὸ τοῦ πώγωνος, οὐ τὸ τοῦ φάους,
οὐκ ἂν σοφοὺς ἔφαμεν, οὐ φιλοσόφους
οὐκ ἂν δικαίους καὶ καλοὺς καὶ κοσμίους;Footnote 8
Yow ow ow!Footnote 9 That bushy beard,
which that decrepit, putrid old man, Thoukritos,
lets fall all the way down to his breastFootnote 10
Yow ow ow! That smell, that stench of goat!
5 Oh, the enormous burden of that beard!
How long it is, how wide,
quite simply, how huge in all its dimensions.
That's why you're stooping down, old man.
And you wear this bulge and you bend your back:
10 For that beard is pulling your neck,
As it is quite big, and of immoderate weight. [. . .]
30 You're foolishly deluding yourself, old man,
taking the exuberance of your beard
to be a mark of wisdom.
Indeed, the man from Athens, the great one,
the glory of reason, the theologian,
35 the purest intellect, nature above nature,
the son of Ariston, whom they called Plato,
and the greatest student of nature, Aristotle,
the ultimate fruit of Stageira,Footnote 11
and Empedocles, the victim of fire,Footnote 12
40 and Pythagoras, the Samian by descent,
and Socrates, sown by Sophroniscus,
if they did not let their beards grow down
all the way to their ankles,
and did not reek with the stench of goat,
45 if they were not like comets [bearded stars]
(concerning the beard and not the light)
would we not call them philosophers, or wise
or just, or noble and decent?
The butt of Prodromos’ ridicule is a certain Thοukritos,Footnote 13 the rare name, attested only in a handful of instances,Footnote 14 pointing undoubtedly to Lucian's satire as the source.Footnote 15 This old man pretends to be a philosopher and his main claim to this appellation is his long, goatish and unkempt beard.Footnote 16 In his poem Prodromos also introduces yet another Lucianic figure, the Cynic Menippos, whose axe might help to get rid of the beard and which might symbolically mean the satirical purpose of the text which itself acts as a tool for unveiling the old man's lack of wisdom (Against an old man 23–29):
Μένιππος ἐγγὺς καὶ γινώσκεις τὸν κύνα
ναυπηγικὴν εὔθηκτον ἀξίνην φέρει·
25 χρήσει γὰρ ἡμῖν τοῦτον ὁ γλυκὺς Σύρος,
ἐκτῶν ἑαυτοῦ δελτίων ἀποσπάσας.
Καὶ, τοῦ κυνὸς φθάσαντος, οὐαί σοι, τάλαν·
οὐ γὰρ μόνην σου τὴν ὑπήνην ἐκτέμῃ,
ἀλλὰ ξὺν αὐτῇ καὶ μέρος τῶν ὀφρύων.
Menippus is close, and you know the dog,
He carries a well-sharpened shipwright's axe.
25 For the sweet Syrian will provide us with it,
Having drawn it from his writing tablets.
And should the dog come first, woe to you, wretch.
For he will not only cut off your beard,
but also with it a part of your eyebrows.
These references leave no doubt as to whose steps the Byzantine author follows while composing his own text. It is indeed in Lucian's satire that the tradition of ridiculing bearded philosophers reached its peak, even if his relationship with philosophy as such was not so one-sided.Footnote 17 He had no clear preference for any particular school, though some are clearly treated with less sympathy (or more antipathy) than others, the dubious pride of place no doubt given to the Stoics.Footnote 18 For all their differences, Lucianic satire frequently lumps the philosophers together into one homogenous albeit quarrelsome group,Footnote 19 distinguished by a common set of features, the most notable being the beard.Footnote 20
In Lucian the philosopher's beard is no ordinary beard, and one ‘not to be treated lightly’.Footnote 21 It is, in the first place, distinguished by its size, literally ‘depth’ (bathytes); it resembles that of a goat (kinabra) or the goatish Pan; even Zeus, though himself sporting a considerable beard, must stretch it when he wants to casually merge into the company of philosophers.Footnote 22 It is also ‘bushy’ and perhaps unkempt (lasios), and therefore ‘heavy’ (barys), jokingly said to weigh more than five pounds.Footnote 23 It is sometimes grey, though not all Lucianic philosophers are men advanced in age.Footnote 24
Prodromos builds upon Lucianic tradition and his ‘philosopher’ shares many features with Lucianic types, the unkempt and goatish beard being only one of them – the most prominent and obvious. Prodromic Menippus will cut not only the philosopher's beard, but also a part of his eyebrows (vv. 28–29: οὐ γὰρ μόνην σου τὴν ὑπήνην ἐκτέμῃ/ἀλλὰ ξὺν αὐτῇ καὶ μέρος τῶν ὀφρύων). This is perhaps an allusion to the wrinkled forehead with lifted eyebrows, a clear sign of strained intellectual activity displayed by some of the philosophers in Lucian's texts.Footnote 25 The Lucianic philosopher is also characterised by the short cloak (tribon) over his shoulders, the satchel (pera) on his arm, and the walking stick (xylon) in his hand.Footnote 26 Prodromos on the other hand highlights that it is not the clothes that make the philosopher:
ὡς γὰρ φρονοῦσιν οὐ σοφὸς λέγοιτό τις
ποδῆρες ἱμάτιον ἐνδεδυμένος,
ἢ γοῦν ἐπ’αὐτῆς ἰγνύης ἐζωσμένος.
Οἷον Πλάτων ἄζωστος ἐν τῷ χθὲς χρόνῳ
80 μέσην ἐπ’αὐτὴν ἦλθεν Ἀκαδημίαν
καὶ τοῖς μαθηταῖς τούσδε τούς λόγους ἔφη·
εἰ σήμερον ζώσαιτο καὶ ζωσθεὶς λέγοι,
οὐ τοῦ χθὲς ἂν Πλάτωνος ἔσται βελτίων·
οὐ γὰρ στολαὶ κρίνουσι τοὺς ἐν τοῖς λόγοις,
85 οὐδ’ἐξαμοιβὴ ζώσματος καὶ βλαυτίου,
Just like among reasonable men no one will be called wise
dressed in a himation reaching to his feet
or wearing his belt around his thighs
As Plato for instance in yesterday's times
80 came to the heart of the Academy wearing no belt
and spoke these words to his students:
‘if Plato today were to put on a belt, and wear it whilst speaking,
he will be no better than Plato of yesterday’;Footnote 27
for it is not garments that distinguish men of knowledge,
85 nor the changing fashions of belts and sandals [. . .]
However, in Lucian's time (the latter part of the second century) beards had been in fashion for over two generations—their length growing steadily decade by decade—not only among philosophers or philosopher/philhellene emperors, but also ‘ordinary people’ (idiotai), as attested by the numerous kosmetai busts with ample, not infrequently lengthy and quite ‘philosophical’ beards.Footnote 28 The world of Lucian's satire therefore, where the philosopher is conspicuous and recognizable by his beard, does not seem to correspond in this particular respect to the world in which Lucian himself lived and wrote. Or, to be more precise, it is the bearded philosopher himself that seems incompatible in his peculiarity: not so much a historical, contemporary model, but a stock character with a long history, moulded in a different, beardless age.Footnote 29 An age – ushered in by the advent of Alexander the Great and concluded at the end of the 1st century CE – in which philosophers sought to distinguish themselves from their clean-shaven contemporaries by adhering to the customs of their bearded ancestors.Footnote 30
Prodromos' times are similar in this respect, for Byzantine reality was ostensibly bearded.Footnote 31 From the seventh century onwards beard became a social necessity, and each emperor after Phokas (602–610) sported one. It was not only a matter of fashion, but also a symbol of manliness, as it contrasted men with eunuchs who could not grow facial hair.Footnote 32 Beards may have even had political implications; they differentiated the Byzantines from the clean-shaven Latins.Footnote 33 Such a weighty issue may have perhaps led to excess, thus inviting ridicule. The authors of the entry ‘beard’ in the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, for example, argue, referring to Prodromos’ satirical work, that ‘the cult of beard was ridiculed by satirists such as Theodore Prodromos’.
However, there is reason to believe that the object of Prodromos’ ridicule is not the beard as such, but precisely the ‘philosopher's beard’. Prodromos himself in his letter says that before he was struck by the illness his beard ‘grew symmetrically and not in the manner of the philosophers (ou kata philosophous)’. Both texts, the letter and the satire, evoke the same image of a smelly, goatish overgrown beard, Footnote 34 that is the ‘philosopher's beard’. This is exactly the beard sported by the character from the text Against an old man.
We would like to propose that the figure of the old man, ‘Thoukritos’, is not an allusion to some identifiable person but rather to Prodromos’ contemporaries whose beards are described as ‘philosophical’. Philosophy and grammar/rhetoric were in fact hard to separate in twelfth-century Byzantium.Footnote 35 Prodromos in the Philoplaton speaks of ‘philosophical rhetoric and rhetorical philosophy’ (‘ἡ φιλόσοφος συνημμένως ῥητορικὴ καὶ ἡ ῥήτωρ φιλοσοφία’).Footnote 36 At that time the word philosophos denoted not necessarily people dealing with philosophy as such but rather educated men, rhetors, including also teachers.Footnote 37 It would be, therefore, tempting to assume that Prodromos targets in his satire his fellow grammatikoi whom he finds to be impostors. This interpretation is perhaps reinforced by the lines from the poem where the narrator says: ‘Thus long beards have nothing to do with judging/the intellect of both student and teacher’ (οὕτω βαθεῖς πώγωνες οὐδὲν εἰς κρίσιν/λόγου μαθητῶν καὶ διδασκάλων λόγου, vv. 87–88).
Perhaps this entire text is yet another witness to one of the topoi of twelfth-century Byzantine literature, that of the ‘false grammatikos’, the same which is also apparent in another Prodromic piece Amathes. This issue has yet to be researched more thoroughly. However, an abundance of teachers in Constantinople must have resulted in strong competition among teachers-rhetors.Footnote 38 Small wonder therefore that good teachers, like Prodromos might have feared the competition of older and not necessarily better colleagues.
The aim of this text might be to defend Prodromos’ peculiar way of teaching which he presented as a blend of grammar, rhetoric and philosophy as opposed to ‘pure’ philosophers who attempted to focus only on philosophy.Footnote 39 If this is the case, this text might be not only a satire but also a form of apology for Prodromos’ own didactic method.Footnote 40
Prodromos, as in his other textsFootnote 41 subsumes the ancient tradition and builds upon it, making it relevant to his own times and situation. The narrator on the one hand tells a timeless story which is rooted in Lucianic satires but on the other hand voices authorial, i.e. Prodromic, concerns. The tradition of ridiculing philosophers, though ostensibly Lucianic, is much more deeply rooted in classical antiquity, going back at least to the threshold of the Hellenistic age. Prodromic Thoukritos, the bearded philosopher, is thus both old and ancient.
