CHAPTER TEN

DIO’S EXILE: POLITICS, PHILOSOPHY, LITERATURE

Paolo Desideri

Many passages of the speeches (or ƭɝƥưƫ) which make up the oeuvre of the Bithynian ƷƫƭɝƴưƷưƳ Dio, who lived between the end of the fi rst and the beginning of the second century AD,1 contain references to an exile (Ʒƶƥə) which the author had experienced in previous years.2 Although the nature and extent of this exile and even the question whether it hap- pened have been much discussed among modern scholars,3 my opin- ion remains that a technical measure of banishment was in fact taken. This conviction of mine rests fi rst of all on the external evidence for Dio’s life. Dio’s contemporary , whose rich testimony is absolutely consistent with Dio’s own remarks,4 does not mention Dio’s exile at all (there was, however, no reason why he should!), but the event

1 Cf. Desideri (1978), Jones (1978). A still fundamental work is von Arnim (1898). For a brief review (with a bibliographical update) see Desideri (1994) 841–56; for an exhaustive outline of Dio’s reception in modern times see Swain (2000b) 13–48. 2 Cf. Desideri (1978) 187–200, Jones (1978) 45–55. Recently the problems of Dio’s exile were re-examined by Sidebottom (1996), and more thoroughly by Verrengia (2000) 66–91. An entire chapter of Whitmarsh’s book ((2001b) 156–67) is devoted to Dio’s exile; however, I cannot accept his general thesis that “the trope of exile was used to construct identity in the Greek literature of the early ” (p. 178), at least if it is intended to mean that this is the main thing to be said about Dio’s exile. 3 When expounding some aspects of Dio’s biography in his Vitae Sophistarum (1.7 p. 488), the Severan age author Philostratus said that “he [sc. Dio] had not been ordered to go into exile”, but simply “vanished from men’s sight, hiding himself from their eyes and ears, and occupying himself in various ways in various lands, through fear of the tyrants in the capital [i.e. Rome] at whose hands all philosophy was suffering persecu- tion” (trans. Wright (1921), [sc. ưȸ] ƱƲưƴƧƵɕƸƪƩ ƣȸƵˑ ƷƶƥƧʴƮ . . . Ƶư˃ ƷƣƮƧƲư˃ ȀƯɗƴƵƩ ƬƭɗƱƵƺƮ ȁƣƶƵɜƮ ȬƷƪƣƭvːƮ ƵƧ Ƭƣɚ ɈƵƺƮ Ƭƣɚ Ǵƭƭƣ ȀƮ Ǵƭƭʤ ƥʧ ƱƲɕƵƵƺƮ ƦɗƧƫ ƵːƮ ƬƣƵɔ ƵɘƮ ƱɝƭƫƮ ƵƶƲƣƮƮɛƦƺƮ, ȹƷʠ ɋƮ ȌƭƣɟƮƧƵư ƷƫƭưƴưƷɛƣ Ʊʗƴƣ). This position was revived in recent years by Brancacci (1985) 97–104, and most recently by Civiletti (2002) 377–8, but is generally rejected by scholars (see Verrengia (2000) 66 n. 1). 4 In one of Pliny’s epistles toTrajan (and in the emperor’s reply; cf. Plin. Ep. 10.81–2) Dio is mentioned as someone who is apparently on good terms with himself, and who is, at the same time, a politician of the Bithynian Prusa, a member of one of the city’s prominent families, who is involved in an important civic project, who is attacked by one of his countrymen, well-known as a former protégé of Domitian: see Desideri (1978) 1–2 and 401–6; none of these details is at odds with Dio’s texts.

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is assumed, to say the very least, in an important passage of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations (1.14) and in Lucian’s Peregrinus (18), where Dio is included in lists of political ‘martyrs’ and exiled philosophers.5

Dio’s own testimonies have sometimes been discarded as literary fi c- tions,6 and it is possible, even likely, that Dio embellished some of his experiences in order to give his moral discourse a more interesting aspect and greater persuasive force.7 However, the literary dimension can hardly be proved to be the main interest in any of Dio’s speeches, which are nearly always the written version of what had originally been orally delivered speeches.8 After Verrengia’s objections I am no longer so positive that Dio was exiled only from the territory of his home town, the Bithynian city Prusa, or from the province of at the most.9 For our present purpose, however, the important thing is that during a certain (long) period Dio apparently lived an exile’s life, and, above all, that he subse- quently presented this period as that of an exile’s life. In fact it is highly probable that some of Dio’s preserved speeches were pronounced or written during his exile.10 Although I must admit that it is impossible to demonstrate this beyond doubt, one should not deny that such speeches had existed. For when speaking about the way he had behaved during his exile towards an unnamed bad emperor (in fact, Domitian), Dio explicitly says in front of his Prusaean countrymen that he had chal-

5 Cf. Desideri (1978) 13–20. 6 See pp. 199 ff. below (especially on Dio’s speech In Athens, On his Exile). 7 This may be the case of one of his most famous speeches, in which exile is men- tioned, the Borysthenitic (Or. 36.1); the same can be said of other speeches, too, which contain important autobiographic references, like the Euboean (Or. 7), the Olympic (Or. 12), and the Charidemus (Or. 30) (if the latter is Dionean, as some scholars are now inclined to think: see Moles (2000) and the discussion by Menchelli (1999) 29–52). For an assessment of the relationship between the moral and literary aspects of Dio’s oeuvre see Anderson (2000). 8 There are of course some Dionean texts which cannot properly be termed ‘speeches’, like Or. 18 (On Training for Public Speaking), which ought to be considered a letter, or Or. 52 (Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, or the Bow of Philoctetes), which is actually a literary essay—on this text see Luzzatto (1983). Many Dionean ‘literary’ texts have not been preserved: see Desideri (1991b) 3922–5. 9 Cf. Desideri (1978) 192–4 and Verrengia (2000) 78–85, whose judicial arguments in favour of a ban extended to Italy (and Rome) I fear I must accept (as for his interpre- tation of the relations between sections 14 and 29 of Or. 13 (In Athens, On his Exile) I am much more uncertain). 10 Cf. Desideri (1978) 200–37.

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