The Ideal of Athens in the Roman Empire Dissertation

POTS OF HONEY AND DEAD PHILOSOPHERS: THE IDEAL OF ATHENS IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Aaron Walter Wenzel, M.A. Graduate Program in Greek and Latin ***** The Ohio State University 2009 Dissertation Committee: Professor Anthony Kaldellis, Adviser Professor Tom Hawkins Professor Richard Fletcher Copyright by Aaron Walter Wenzel 2009 ABSTRACT Athens was the most important cultural center of Greek antiquity and there have been numerous histories written about ancient Athenian authors and about the city of Athens. My work differs fundamentally from these in that it is an intellectual history in which Athens is not the generator of this culture, but an object of this culture. In other words, the literary culture to which Athens gave birth in turn made Athens into an icon for that culture. Specifically, my work examines how during the second to fifth centuries AD Athens came to denote not just a specific community but a larger idea that was defined differently in the “culture wars” of late antiquity, whether as a symbol for Greek culture as a whole, the glorious (and now-lost) classical past of Greece, a specific philosophy, or (later) the errors of paganism. “Athens” meant something different to everyone who invoked it as a symbol in late antiquity. I have strategically chosen three case-studies which exemplify different “axes of tension” which run through the debates over the meaning of “Athens.” The first case-study looks at the differing views of Athens in two second-century figures, the itinerant Roman emperor Hadrian and the Greek travel-writer Pausanias. Hadrian attempted to establish Athens as a kind of cultural capital of the eastern Mediterranean, but a capital which served as a proclamation of Roman imperial power. Pausanias, on the other hand, used Athens as a way to remember Greece’s pre-Roman past and so maintain ii a sense of Greek identity which had no reference to the Roman empire. This chapter, then, looks at two different positive evaluations of Athens as a cultural symbol, but a symbol caught between Roman imperial power and Greek self-definition. The second case-study focuses on the early third-century writer Philostratos, who displays a tension between a localized vision of Greek culture based on Athens and a cosmopolitan, universalized vision of that culture with no specific center. This chapter, therefore, highlights debates over how and whether Greek culture should be based on the specific locale of Athens or not, a debate which had been in existence since the time of Alexander the Great. The final case-study looks at criticisms of Athens by an orator and a philosopher: Libanios and Synesios, who postulated alternatives to a culture based on Athens, namely the ideals associated with the cities of Alexandria and Antioch. This chapter explores the objections to the utility of the ideal Athens. Because I see the symbolism of Athens as something that is constantly changing and being negotiated in different periods and intellectual settings, I situate each author’s works in their larger social and cultural context in order to understand the part he played in the ongoing construction of “symbolic Athens.” The creation of an ideal Athens is bound up with issues of Hellenism and Greek culture. I argue that imperial-era Hellenism was not necessarily an abstract phenomenon based solely on the Greek language and the canon of classical texts, an idea that has been expostulated by numerous scholars over the last two decades. Instead, I believe that iii intellectuals frequently grounded their Hellenism in the geographical locale of Athens, the home of the texts they read so ardently. More importantly, I argue that the debates over Athens’ cultural importance demonstrate that Hellenism was never a unified cultural paradigm. Rather, Hellenism was internally divided and its adherents debated among themselves as to its very definition and essence. These tensions inherent in Hellenism were inherited by post-classical periods, up to and including our own, continually informing how we view the ancient world. Indeed, my own dissertation itself is caught up in this on-going process of the objectification of Athens. iv Dedicated to my parents v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Anthony Kaldellis, who has guided this project since its inception over lunch four years ago. Along the way, he has offered invaluable advice and astute criticisms, pushed me to write clearly and forcefully, and shaped my thinking about this topic and about the ancient world more generally in countless ways. This dissertation would not have been possible without his gracious and encouraging feedback and support. Thanks, too, to Tom Hawkins and Richard Fletcher for their continuous comments and suggestions for improvement. The diverse viewpoints they have brought to bear on this project have challenged me to think critically about my arguments and conclusions. I am certain that this is a stronger dissertation because of that. I would also like to thank those who have heard and responded to parts of this dissertation: audiences at the annual meetings of CAMWS and the APA and, more importantly, the faculty and graduate students in the Department of Greek and Latin at The Ohio State University. Special thanks is due to my wonderful friends and colleagues Chris Bungard, Kristen Gentile, and Yasuko Taoka. They have often shared in my joys and frustrations as this project has progressed and I am grateful for their friendship along the way. There are also a number of people I would like to thank who did not have a direct bearing on this project but who have still contributed by (perhaps unknowingly) laying its vi foundations. Thanks to Art Robson and Kosta Hadavas for helping me to unlock the door to the ancient world and for inspiring me to become a classicist. Thanks to Michael DeHaven, Robert Kiely, and Martha Regalis for first showing me just how fascinating the Greeks and Romans can be. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my entire family for their years of love and encouragement. I would particularly like to thank my parents for instilling in me a life-long love of learning and an appreciation for the value of education and for their unflagging support as I pursued a career in something as arcane as Greek and Latin. Finally, I would like to thank Lisa Bevevino. Without her patience, kindness, and love, the two years it took to write this dissertation would have been nearly unbearable. vii VITA September 2, 1980…………………Born – Freeport, Illinois 2003 ……………………………….B.A., Classical Philology and Anthropology, Beloit College 2005 ………………………………M.A., Greek and Latin, The Ohio State University 2003-present……………………….Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Greek and Latin viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………ii Dedication………………………………………………………………………… …....v Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………………...vi Vita………………………………………………………………………………….....viii Table of Contents………………………………………………………………….........ix List of Abbreviations……………………………………………………………………x Chapters: 1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………………..1 2. Arches and Gateways: Hadrian and Pausanias in Athens………………………......18 3. Athens is Everywhere: Philostratos’ Athens and Cosmopolitan Hellenism………..84 4. Old Soldiers and Pots of Honey: The Critics of Athens…………………………...153 5. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………190 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………….207 ix LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS The following abbreviations have been used in the body of the text or in the footnotes: Ail. Arist. Panath . Ailios Aristeides, Panathenaikos Basil Caes. Basil of Caesarea Dam. Phil . Hist. Damaskios, Philosophical History De praescr . haer . De praescriptione haereticorum Dom . Domitianus Ep . Epistle Eun. VPS Eunapios, Vitae Philosophorum et Sophistarum Greg. Naz. Gregory of Nazianzos HA, VAC Historia Augusta, Vita Antonini Caracalli HA, VAE Historia Augusta, Vita Antonini Elagabali HA, VAS Historia Augusta, Vita Alexandri Severi HA, VH Historia Augusta, Vita Hadriani HA, VS Historia Augusta, Vita Severi Hdt. Herodotos, Histories Him. Himerios Isok. Isokrates Jul. Julian Lib. Libanios Or . Oration Paus. Peri . Pausanias, Periegesis Phil. VA Philostratos, Vita Apollonii Phil. VS Philostratos, Vitae Sophistarum Plut. Plutarch [Plut.] Pseudo-Plutarch Syn. Synesios Tert. Tertullian Thuc. Thucydides, Histories x CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The fifth-century BC Greek historian Thucydides once compared the cities of Athens and Sparta by asking his readers to engage in a thought experiment. “Suppose,” he says, that Sparta were to be deserted and that only the temples and the foundations of buildings remained. I think that, after much time passed, future generations would find it very hard to believe that it was as powerful as it was reported to be. ... Since the city is not regularly planned and does not contain extravagant temples and buildings, but is composed of villages in the ancient custom of Greece, its appearance would be somewhat lacking. But if the same thing happened to Athens, I think that one would conjecture from its mere external appearance that it had been twice as powerful as it really was. 1 The conclusion Thucydides draws from this experiment is that “we should not consider the appearance of a city rather than its power.” 2 History has proven Thucydides right: what little remains of Sparta today belies

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