The Uses of Bookishness EWEN BOWIE Corpus Christi College, Oxford 1. Introduction This paper addresses some of the different ways in which the surviving texts of Greek novels recognise and make play with their textuality, their status as a book to be read, and directs its focus particularly upon The Incredible things beyond Thule of Antonius Diogenes and upon Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe. It does so because these two texts appear to be much more interested than the others in flaunting their textuality. Of these other novels (which I briefly discuss first) those of Xenophon and Achilles give their readers no overt nudge to remind them that they are engaged in an act of reading, while that of Heliodorus does so only very late in his work: Chariton occupies an interesting, intermediate position. The openings of Xenophon and of Achilles Tatius plunge the reader in medias res without any gesture towards the reading process: ‘There was in Ephesus a man among those who had the greatest power there, Lycomedes by name. To this Lycomedes was born, by a wife from that area, Themisto, a son Habrocomes …’ and ‘Sidon is a city on the sea; the sea that of the As- syrians; the city the mother-city of the Phoenicians; its people the father of the Thebans . .’1 The same technique is adopted by Heliodorus in his fa- mous opening ‘As day was just spreading its smile and the sun was casting its beams down upon the ridges…’: only after ten books does Heliodorus ————— 1 X. Eph. 1,1,1: ἦν ἐν Ἐφέσῳ ἀνὴρ τῶν τὰ πρῶτα ἐκεῖ δυναμένων, Λυκομήδης ὄνομα. τούτῳ τῷ Λυκομήδει ἐκ γυναικὸς ἐπιχωρίας Θεμιστοῦς γίνεται παῖς Ἁβροκόμης . Ach. Tat. 1,1,1 Σιδὼν ἐπὶ θαλάττῃ πόλις· Ἀσσυρίων ἡ θάλασσα· μήτηρ Φοινίκων ἡ πόλις· Θηβαίων ὁ δῆμος πατήρ. Readers and Writers in the Ancient Novel, 115–126 116 EWEN BOWIE imprecisely describe his work as ‘the composition … which a Phoenician man from Emesa composed’.2 Chariton’s opening creates for the reader a narrator, but a narrator with features of the oral, as suggested by his verb ‘I shall narrate’, as well as of the written, hinted at by his self-description as ‘secretary’ (ὑπογραφεύς): ‘I, Chariton of Aphrodisias, secretary to the rhetor Athenagoras, shall narrate an amatory affair that happened in Syracuse.’3 There is no clear marker of tex- tuality in his recapitulations either at 5,1 ‘How Callirhoe was married to Chaereas … this was set out in my earlier account (λόγος): and what fol- lowed I shall now narrate’ or at 8,1,1 ‘How Chaereas … captured Aradus … was set out in my earlier account (λόγος).’4 Interestingly, however, we find Chariton introducing a term indicating textuality a few lines later: ‘And I think that in fact this last written work will be most pleasurable to my read- ers.’5 This presentation of the work at Book 8’s opening as a written compo- sition is ultimately endorsed in Chariton’s envoi at its end: ‘This is what I have written up about Callirhoe.’6 The movement of Chariton’s terminology from words which are poised between orality and textuality to a word which is definitively textual, ‘I have written up’ (συνέγραψα), may reflect the au- thor’s own awareness of moving from a mode of story-telling which had strong affinities with oral narration to a para-Thucydidean written text. It would require the eye of faith to see here some impact of the work of Anto- nius Diogenes, which I argued recently might after all have been written as early as the 50s or early 60s AD.7 But I would like to retain the idea of some such impact during Chariton’s period of composition as at least a formal possibility. Quite independently of that or of any other hypothesis about the date of Antonius Diogenes, however, let me now turn to the ways he plays off oral- ity against textuality. ————— 2 Hld. 1,1,1 ἡμέρας ἄρτι διαγελώσης καὶ ἡλίου τὰς ἀκρωρείας καταυγάζοντος and 10,41,2 τὸ σύνταγμα . ὃ συνέταξεν ἀνὴρ Φοῖνιξ Ἐμισηνός. For the term σύνταγμα cf. Diod. Sic. 1,3; Plut Mor. 1036c = de Stoic. Rep. 10. 3 Ch. 1,1,1 Χαρίτων Ἀφροδισιεύς, Ἀθηναγόρου ῥήτορος ὑπογραφεύς, πάθος ἐρωτικὸν ἐν Συρακούσαις γενόμενον διηγήσομαι. 4 Ch. 5,1,1-2 ὡς μὲν ἐγαμήθη Καλλιρόη Χαιρέᾳ ... ταῦτα ἐν τῷ πρόσθεν λόγῳ δεδήλωται· τὰ δὲ ἑξῆς νῦν διηγήσομαι and 8,1,1 ὡς μὲν οὖν Χαιρέας ... κατέσχεν Ἄραδον ... ἐν τῷ πρόσθεν λόγῳ δεδήλωται. 5 Ch. 8,1,4 νομίζω δὲ καὶ τὸ τελευταῖον τοῦτο σύγγραμμα τοῖς ἀναγινώσκουσιν ἥδιστον ἔσεσθαι. 6 Ch. 8,8,16 τοσάδε περὶ Καλλιρόης συνέγραψα. 7 Bowie 2007a. THE USES OF BOOKISHNESS 117 2. Textuality and orality in Antonius Diogenes Diogenes (as he is almost always named by Photius, our chief source for the content and structure of The Ιncredible Τhings beyond Thule) offers a recur- rent tension between the textual and the oral. This is true in whatever way we reconstruct his written work from Photius’ summary, though of course the particular effects will be different if we think that Photius has altered the order in which a reader acquires information. The reconstruction that seems to be most widely accepted has a preface consisting of two epistles:8 in one of these Diogenes addressed Faustinus; called himself a poet of Old Comedy (which, we should recall, was a per- formance genre);9 claimed the testimony of his predecessors for most of what he told; and set out, apparently at the beginning of each book, the names of the men who had published such material earlier. It is worth noting that although he later insists on the bookishness of his own product, we do not know from Photius that Diogenes referred explicitly to books written by his predecessors, and the phrase ‘but at any rate he has the testimonies of older people about the majority of the tales he has spun’ allows for either oral or written sources (with the term τῶν μυθολογηθέντων, ‘the tales he has spun’, conjuring up intimations of orality).10 Books, reading and writing, however, dominate the second epistle, a dedication of his written works (συγγράμματα) to Faustinus’ sister Isidora: Photius is explicit that this was to be found ‘at the beginning of the book’.11 In it he first adduces the intermediary Balagrus (whose name is spelled Balacrus in other sources) writing to his wife Phila, daughter of Antipater, about the discovery of the burial inscriptions of Deinias, Dercyllis, Mantin- ias and family after Alexander’s siege of Tyre, then the discovery of cypress- wood tablets on which (as we have been told earlier by Photius 111a20-25) the Athenian Erasinides had, on Deinias’ instructions, written out the whole story as told in Tyre by Deinias to an Arcadian Cymbas.12 ————— 8 Stephens and Winkler 1995, 101-118 (and for a translation of Photius’ summary, 121- 129). 9 For some ways in which Diogenes does indeed appear to exploit Old Comedy see Bowie 2007b. 10 ἀλλ’ οὖν ἔχει περὶ τῶν πλείστων αὐτῷ μυθολογηθέντων ἀρχαιοτέρων μαρτυρίας, Photius 111a36-7: the translation of Stephens and Winkler 1995, 127 ‘ he has a library of ancient testimonials’ imports a bookishness not explicitly present in the Greek. 11 κατ’ ἀρχὰς τοῦ βιβλίου, Photius 111a41. 12 ‘He spun a tale’ (διεμυθολόγησε) 111a20, cf. ‘to narrate’ (διηγεῖσθαι) and ‘narrating’ (διηγούμενος) 109b3 and 7. It is not at all clear from Photius where in Diogenes’ text this 118 EWEN BOWIE The version of the genesis of the The Ιncredible Τhings beyond Thule that Isidora, and any like-minded reader, is encourage to adopt, then, is that the multi-volume written text of Diogenes with its prefatory, written epistles is a faithful replica of a similar written text, whose transcription was com- missioned by Balagrus: Photius’ participle in the middle voice, ‘he had the tablets transcribed’ (μεταγραψάμενος) does not of course imply that this Hellenistic war-lord executed the transcription with his own hand and eye. This written text that lay behind the written narrative of Diogenes was, he claimed, preserved on cypress-wood tablets (he might expect an alert reader to begin calculating how many tablets such a voluminous story would oc- cupy!) but was a version of the explicitly oral narrative of Deinias; and of course this oral narrative in turn encapsulated the orally communicated nar- ratives of Dercyllis and Azulis.13 If, as usually held, not just one but both of those letters stood before the main body of Diogenes’ work, then it seems overwhelmingly probable that at the outset he announced that it was to be a work in 24 books. This would certainly help to explain why Photius himself assigns it 24 books at the start of his summary: ‘Read: 24 books of Antonius Diogenes’ The Ιncredible Τhings beyond Thule.’14 It is also quite probable, on this scenario, that his list of authorities for each book was assembled in a section prefatory to the whole work, presumably (to judge from the phraseology of 111a39-40) in the epistle addressed to Faustinus.15 ————— information was to be found. The name Erasinides is indeed to be found in Attica, once, in 409 BC (cf. Lexicon of Greek Personal Names ii 153 s.n. Ἐρασινίδης) while Erasinos is found three times in the 6th-5th c. BC and eight times in the first three centuries AD (cf. Lexicon of Greek Personal Names ii 153-4 s.n. Ἐρασῖνος). But a learned author from Aphrodisias might know it as an Ionian-Attic name from the use of Erasinus in Cyzicus, Smyrna and Magnesia ad Sipylum, documented there for the imperial period, and of Erasinus in Miletus and Erasinides in Colophon, where they are documented for the 4th c.