The Sophistic Roman: Education and Status in Quintilian, Tacitus and Pliny Brandon F. Jones A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2015 Reading Committee: Alain Gowing, Chair Catherine Connors Alexander Hollmann Deborah Kamen Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Classics ©Copyright 2015 Brandon F. Jones University of Washington Abstract The Sophistic Roman: Education and Status in Quintilian, Tacitus and Pliny Brandon F. Jones Chair of Supervisory Commitee: Professor Alain Gowing Department of Classics This study is about the construction of identity and self-promotion of status by means of elite education during the first and second centuries CE, a cultural and historical period termed by many as the Second Sophistic. Though the Second Sophistic has traditionally been treated as a Greek cultural movement, individual Romans also viewed engagement with a past, Greek or otherwise, as a way of displaying education and authority, and, thereby, of promoting status. Readings of the work of Quintilian, Tacitus and Pliny, first- and second-century Latin prose authors, reveal a remarkable engagement with the methodologies and motivations employed by their Greek contemporaries—Dio of Prusa, Plutarch, Lucian and Philostratus, most particularly. The first two chapters of this study illustrate and explain the centrality of Greek in the Roman educational system. The final three chapters focus on Roman displays of that acquired Greek paideia in language, literature and oratory, respectively. As these chapters demonstrate, the social practices of paideia and their deployment were a multi-cultural phenomenon. Table of Contents Acknowledgements ........................................................................... 2 Introduction ....................................................................................... 4 Chapter One. Investing in Education ................................................ 10 Chapter Two. Learning Greek (and) Self-Control ............................ 48 Chapter Three. Roman Imitation and the Attic Past ......................... 80 Chapter Four. Roman Allusion to a Greek Past ................................ 113 Chapter Five. Epideictic: Sophistic Strategies of Self-Fashioning ... 150 Conclusion ........................................................................................ 187 Bibliography ..................................................................................... 190 1 Acknowledgements One central concept of this study is that education and status are social entities that cannot be acquired without the aid of teachers, colleagues and friends. This is particularly true in my case, to such an extent that space will not allow for due acknowledgment of all that have had a positive impact on this study. Prior to coming to the University of Washington, the Classics Departments of Emory University and Boston College, and Peter Bing, Mike Lippman, Christine Perkell, Louise Pratt, Werner Reiss, Ted Ahern, Kendra Eshleman, Gail Hoffmann, Emil Penarubia and Mindy Wolfrom, in particular, played fundamental roles in developing my interests and abilities. The Department of Classics at the University of Washington has proven to be a supportive and fruitfully challenging environment for graduate studies. My colleagues have taught me much, and, moreover, have been patient and supportive friends. I am particularly grateful to the following: Ashli Baker, Ed Bertany, Henry Burden, Richard Buxton, Naomi Campa-Thompson, Lissa Crofton-Sleigh, Allison Das, Melissa Funke, Matthew Gorey, Karl Griggs, Martin Halprin, Josh Hartman, Alex Kennedy, Eunice Kim, Bridget Langley, Megan O’Donald, Morgan Palmer, Colin Shelton, Ben Tiefenthaler and Adriana Vazquez. The members of the Classics faculty at UW have likewise gone well beyond their professional obligations, improving both my work and my experience in Seattle. I am particularly grateful to Larry Bliquez, Stephen Hinds and, most of all, the members of my reading committee: Cathy Connors, Alex Hollmann and Deb Kamen. They not only offered thoughtful and constructive comments on the dissertation, but have also been generous mentors in ways that go far beyond dissertation research. My advisor Alain Gowing has patiently kept the 2 door to his office and classroom ever open to me and even managed to do so with a consistent smile. He encapsulates all the best characteristics of Quintilian’s vir bonus, and I am extremely fortunate to have worked with him. The Classics Department at UW has been extremely generous with travel and dissertation research funding in the form of Jim Greenfield scholarships and Philip and Estelle Delacy fellowships. The department has also generously hosted too many kind and brilliant visiting lecturers to name here. Finally, a university Presidential Fellowship provided financial assistance as I finished my research. The greatest support, however, has been that of my family. My parents, Kathy and Randy Jones, have done much to help me obtain an education that they never had the opportunity to pursue. I dedicate my efforts to them. Introduction During the first and second centuries CE—a cultural and historical period termed by many as the Second Sophistic1—the construction of identity and self-promotion of status often depended upon an elite education. While themes and arguments have varied, some common features come to the surface in most discussions of this period and the terms by which an ancient author is deemed “sophistic.” These include a preoccupation with the following: elite education in the literary canon; linguistic purity, archaism and novelty; and competitive epideictic oratory and rhetoric including invective and encomium. This period of history in the Mediterranean offered fertile ground for advancing status by means of these academic pursuits.2 By 50 CE administration of the Mediterranean had firmly shifted from the hands of imperial Italian aristocrats to one individual princeps. With this shift, one of the primary avenues to political and civic power—the military—was closed off to an even larger majority. Positions in the imperial circle were not limited to high-born Roman aristocrats such as the Claudii, but extended as far as provincials and even freedmen. And thus skill in the arts of rhetoric or philosophy, which could be kept out of the political sphere (at least on the surface) became a safer means to advancement—and one open to Mediterraneans from various cultural and social backgrounds.3 1 This period (50-250CE), known to Classical scholars as the Second Sophistic, has been defined variously by the originator of the term, Flavius Philostratus, in the third century CE, German scholars such as Erwin Rohde and Wilhelm Schmid in the nineteenth century, American and British scholars such as Glen Bowersock, Ewen Bowie and Graham Anderson in the twentieth century and an increasing number of contemporary scholars around the globe today. See Eshelman 2012: 4n16, Swain 1996: 1 and Whitmarsh 2005: 4-10 for definitions and surveys on the term and its scholarship. 2 This shift did not begin at once. Signs are clear in the work of Cicero, Pollio and Varro, who found an alternative means to advancement in their studies. Displays of paideia were likewise a favorite topos of poets as early as the Neoterics. This movement, then, is better seen as an ongoing process that reached a peak during the high empire. 3 There are, of course, limits here. The majority of social climbers were already of relatively high status. Likewise, rhetoric and philosophy could very well lead to exile. But this was not a necessary conclusion. 4 5 In discussing this cultural and historical period of opportunity, however, scholars have observed a link between these academic preoccupations and an attempt at emphasizing a “Greekness” or Greek identity which bolsters status.4 In emphasizing Greekness, few scholars have even considered Latin authors as participants in the Second Sophistic. Those who have done so have either focused on later Antonine figures such as Apuleius, Aulus Gellius and Fronto,5 or have focused on organized imperialistic strategies by which an organized Roman power adopted Greek culture only to display dominance.6 Yet, for individual Romans, just as for Greeks, engagement with a past, Greek or otherwise, provided a way of displaying education and authority, thereby promoting status. We ought, then, to be willing to recognize this type of engagement with the Greek past not just in Greek authors or marginal Roman figures, but among imperial Latin authors at large. I aim to press this suggestion by examining the ways in which Quintilian, Tacitus and Pliny, first- and second-century Latin prose authors, display a remarkable engagement with the methodologies and motivations employed by their Greek contemporaries—Dio of Prusa, Plutarch, Lucian and Philostratus, most particularly. We might understand the elasticity of this multi-culturalism better if we consider how much the social and political “Roman” world was constituted by those who were not native Romans. Even the three Latin authors I shall investigate, though identified as Roman, were provincial. Quintilian was born around 35 CE at Calagurris in Spain and, after some education at Rome, returned to Spain before being recalled to the capital by Galba. Tacitus was likely born around 56 CE in Gallia Narbonensis in southern France and has at least familial connections to 4 E.g., Bowie 1974, Swain 1996, Whitmarsh