PHILOSOPHERS AND PHILOSOPHY IN GREEK EPIGRAM
Dee L. Clayman
Though philosophy, in one form or another, was central to Greek culture throughout its history, when we look for its presence or in u- ence in Greek literature, it is not always easy to nd. One conspicuous exception to this rule is comedy, where philosophers and their ideas are regular targets of the poets’ barbs, and another is epigram. Why this is so is not so obvious. It depends in a general way on the intellectual sophistication of the best epigrammatists and their audiences, but its speci c source can be found in the sympotic setting of many epigrams. The symposium’s rules of engagement provided an opportunity for both philosophical discussion, on the model of Plato’s Symposium, and the exchange of apparently extemporaneous verse which was often satiri- cal in tone. Epigrams on philosophers, which tend to be critical if not scurrilous, combine these two activities typical of symposia and can be understood as a concise expression of their social context whether the sympotic setting is viewed as a literary construct or the historical occasion of a poem’s composition and performance.1 Below we survey the various ways in which philosophers, their technical language and their ideas are treated in the genre.
1. Epitaphs
Philosophers appear in a variety of epigram types including the most traditional, the epitaph.2 These assume a variety of forms. For example, a series on Diogenes the Cynic includes the conversation of a passerby with an element on the monument (Anon. AP 7.64), an address by
1 On this controversy see Reitzenstein (1893: 87–104) and Cameron (1995: 76–90) who argue that the sympotic settings of epigrams should be understood literally as the occasion for the composition and performance of epigram, and Giangrande (1968) and Bing (2000) who consider it to be a literary ction. We will return to the nexus of symposium, philosophy, and epigram in the discussion of Philodemus below. 2 See, e.g., Day in this volume.
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the monument to passersby (Antipater 77 GP Garland = AP 7.65), and admonitions by the deceased himself to Charon, the ferryman of the underworld (Honestus 2 GP Garland = AP 7.66; Archias 14 GP Garland = AP 7.68). Though several are anonymous and so dateless, probably the earliest is one ascribed to Leonidas of Tarentum whose career began in the second quarter of the third century B.C.:3 , , ’, , . < P . a = \ a ’ , D E . Sorrowful servant of Hades, who cross this water of Acheron in an ink-blue boat, receive me, the dog Diogenes, even if your horrendous barge is overloaded with the dead. My only accoutrements are a ask and wallet, an ancient cloak and an obol, the price of passage for the dead. Everything that I acquired in life, I bring to Hades. I leave nothing under the sun. (Leonidas 59 GP = AP 7.67) Here Leonidas, whose entire oeuvre, as we will see below, has a strongly Cynical cast, lists the traditional elements that de ne Diogenes’ legend- ary poverty and simplicity. So lightly did he travel that there would be room for him even in a fully-laden boat—though how could a boat with such an evanescent cargo be said to weigh anything?—and no material object would be left behind on earth. There is further irony in the image of Diogenes, whose Cynic perspective would have ruled out conventional beliefs about Hades and the afterlife, begging a place in Charon’s boat.4 Diogenes’ accoutrements regularly define the Cynic lifestyle in epigram and quickly become a cliché that Antipater of Thessalonica exploits, for example, when he presents Hipparchia, the wife of Dio- genes’ pupil Crates and a Cynic in her own right, explaining that she chose the Cynics’ wallet, staff, and the cloak which doubled as bedding,
3 On Leonidas’ date, see Gow (1958b: 113–7). Gutzwiller (1998b: 88–9) argues that it should be earlier. 4 For a discussion of the irony in conventional epitaphs for Cynics see Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004: 324–5 and n. 137).
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