CHAPTER THREE

J. H. WASZINK ON THE FIGURE OF THE 'DREAMING KRONOS'

First we shall follow the trail set out by Waszink in the forementioned articles. In the first of these he indicates various passages in Tertullian's writings possibly related to Aristotle's lost works. One passage states that, according to Theopompus, the demigod Silenus had described to king Midas the land of the Meropians.1 Waszink sees a link here with Aristotle's Eudemus, in the sense that 'the story of Meropis was undoubtedly invented by Theopompus, but he borrowed the feature of a revelation by Silenus from Aristotle's Eudemus.'1 Waszink goes on to consider the 'dreaming Kronos' item and proposes to assign it to Aristotle's Protrepticus, because in that work Aristotle apparently discussed the 'isles of the blessed' too.3 We must be grateful to Prof. Waszink for the clear way in which he has related texts from the later tradition to Aristotle's lost works. At the same time one may doubt whether the items cited derive from different Aristotelian writings. For, taken by themselves, they may well be connected with each other. It is easy to trace a line from the Meropians to the inhabitants of the 'isles of the blessed'; and likewise from Silenus, the companion of Dionysus, to Kronos. Theopompus' story about the Meropians4 is typically a story about a culture which differs radically from that of miserable, earthly mortals. The name 'Meropis' seems in fact to have been chosen by Theopompus in order to remind his readers of the passage where Hesiod describes the golden race of the meropes anthropoU living in the time that Kronos was king of gods and men.5 And the figure of the

1 Tert., Adv Berm. 25: 'nisi si et Sileno illi apud Midam regem adseveranti de alio orbe credendum est auctore Theopompo'; this can be linked to Pall. 2.1: 'vident si quis alius [sc. plures esse mundos putat], ad Meropas, ut Silenus penes aures Midae blatit aptas sane grandioribus fabulis'. In An. 2.3 Tertullian likewise mentions the Phrygian Silenus among a number of divine beings whose revelationshav e been consigned to writing and subsequently used by philosophy. 2 J. H. Waszink, 'Traces of Aristotle's lost dialogues in Tertullian\ VC 1 (1947) 139- 140. 3 J. H. Waszink, art. cit. 145 ff., with reference to Arist., Protr. fr. 12 Walzer, Ross; Β 43-44 During. 4 FGH 115 fr. 74. Cf. G. J. D. Aalders, 'Die Meropes des Theopomp', Historia 27 (1978) 317-327; id., Political thought in Hellenistic times (Amsterdam 1975) 69; K. Gaiser, 'Ein Gespräch mit König Phillip. Zum 'Eudemos' des Aristoteles' in Aristoteles, Werk und Wirkung, vol. 1 (Berlin 1985) 475. 5 Hes., Op. 109; cf. G. J. D. Aalders, art. cit. 320. WASZINK ON THE DREAMING KRONOS 17 daemon Silenus, traditional companion and helper of the liberating god Dionysus, can be easily related to the figure of Kronos the Titan through the Orphic tradition in which the Titans are held responsible for the death of Dionysus. Let us review the facts, a) In Theopompus the demigod Silenus relates a story about the idyllic life of the Meropians; b) in Aristotle's dialogue Eudemus or On the soul Silenus explains to king Midas the lamentable condition of earthly mortals, in response to the question: what is most desirable for man?; c) somewhere Aristotle told his readers about the possibility of achieving the same happiness as the inhabitants of the 'isles of the blessed', but we do not know precisely where. We shall thus have to consider the possibility, on account of the cross-connections between Silenus and Kronos on the one hand, and the 'isles of the blessed' and Kronos on the other hand, that the evidence on Silenus' revelation, the dreaming Kronos, and the isles of the blessed may well go back to a single Aristotelian source, i.e. the dialogue Eudemus. For it has proved difficult to validate During's strongly held view that the Aristotelian texts in Iamblichus' Protrepticus can only be assigned to Aristotle's work of the same name. Various scholars have adduced arguments showing that certain parts of Iamblichus' text do go back to Aristotle, but rather to his dialogue the Eudemusfi They have therefore concluded that Iamblichus borrowed material from various Aristotelian writings. I myself have proposed a further step, namely the assumption that the traditional titles Eudemus or On the soul and Protrepticus do not indicate two different writings by the Stagirite, but are the title plus generic name of one and the same writing.7 The content of the Eudemus, at least as far as it can be reconstructed, could well allow a combination of the above data. A philosophical exposition of what is most desirable for man, as apparently contained in the Eudemus, would have been more complete if it also allowed for traditional ideas about happiness, for instance the Hesiodic notion of an existence free from material needs and physical toil.8 Later we shall point out that the motif of the 'dreaming Kronos' moreover corresponds with various elements of the Eudemus in that it evokes the themes of 'dreaming', 'sleeping', and 'bondage'.

6 A. Grilli, 'Cicerone e VEudemo', PP 17 (1962) 96-128; J. Brunschwig, 'Aristote et les pirates Tyrrhéniens (à propos des fragments 60 Rose du ProtreptiqueY, RPFE 88 (1963) 171-190; H. Flashar, 'Platon und Aristoteles im Protreptikos des Jamblichos', AGPh 47 (1965) 53-79; K. Gaiser, art. cit. (n.4) 469 n.22 finds insufficient grounds for their conclusions with regard to Protr. lOa-c. 7 A. P. Bos, 'Aristotle's Eudemus and Protrepticus: are they really two different works?*, Dionysius 8 (1984) 19-51. 8 For the way Plato deals with Hesiod's rustic views on happiness, cf. Rep. 2 363a6 ff. Plato makes it clear there that his conception of happiness entails a sublimation not only of Hesiod's ideas, but also of the Orphic view, which had come to put great emphasis on the condition in the hereafter in discussions of human happiness.