This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Lucian's Hermotimus. Essays about Philosophy and Satire in Greek Literature of the Roman Empire Garcia Ehrenfeld, Claudio Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 02. Oct. 2021 LUCIAN'S HERMOTIMUS, ESSAYS ABOUT PHILOSOPHY AND SATIRE IN GREEK LITERATURE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD in Classics Research By Claudio García Ehrenfeld Supervisor Michael B. Trapp Abstract This dissertation considers the interaction between philosophy and satire in Greek literature of the Roman Empire through a detailed study of Lucian's Hermotimus. The argument is divided into three parts. Chapters 1, 2 and 3 show that recent studies of the dialogue value it according to two distinct ethic and aesthetic scholarly traditions (developmentalist and unitarian) which find themselves in opposition when defining the value of scepticism in Lucianic literature. Chapters 4 and 5 address the form of the Hermotimus, and argue that despite its aporetic tendencies its main character, Lycinus, gives a moral message. Chapters 6 and 7 examine the ways in which the Hermotimus is a parody of protreptic literature and invites its readers not to live in any particular way, but to think about the rhetoric of other protrepic and aporetic philosophical texts of the second century AD. In the dissertation’s conclusion some guidelines to reading the Hermotimus as a destabilizing aischrologic text are presented. 2 Index Acknowledgments...........................................................................................................5 Introduction.......................................................................................................................7 Chapter 1. From the First Readings of Lucian to Voltaire......................................17 1. Setting the Aesthetic Framework. The Hermotimus and Christianity......17 1.2. Adapting the Framework to the Reformation.........................................25 1.3 Lucian’s Religious Scepticism.....................................................................32 Chapter 2. Lucian in the Modern Academy..............................................................38 2.1. Adapting the Aesthetic Framework to Romantic Aesthetics..............40 2.2. The Developmentalist Reading of Lucian................................................41 2.3. The Unitarian Reading of Lucian...............................................................48 2.4. Lucian, a Writer of Entertaining Fiction...................................................54 Chapter 3. Rescuing the Philosophical Content of Lucian’s Comedy.................63 3.1. Subverting Romantic Aesthetics: F. Nietzsche’s Values of the Comic............................................................................................64 3.2. Bakhtinean Values of the Comic................................................................69 3.3. Adapting the Framework to New Values of the Comic.........................75 3.4. Lucian, the Critical Philosopher.................................................................80 3.5. Conclusions to Chapters 1, 2 and 3............................................................84 Chapter 4. The Aporetic Form of the Hermotimus...................................................87 4.1. Hermotimus’ Hopes in Stoic Philosophy.................................................89 4.2. Lycinus’ λόγος..............................................................................................93 4.3. Lycinus’ Proposed Κοινὸς βίος................................................................100 4.4. The Hermotimus’ Ἀπορία...........................................................................104 4.5. Hermotimus’ Conversion..........................................................................107 Chapter 5. The Moral Message of the Hermotimus...............................................112 5.1. Eikonomachia................................................................................................113 5.2. The Philosophical Quest: A Road, a Maze and a stormy Sea..................................................................................116 5.3. Lycinus’ Attack against Hope..................................................................120 5.4. The Descent from the Utopian to the Real City.....................................125 5.5. The Moral Message of the Hermotimus....................................................129 3 Chapter 6. The Hermotimus as a Parody of Platonic Themes..............................134 6.1. Lycinus as a Parody of Socrates...............................................................134 6.2. Hermotimus as Opsimath.........................................................................137 6.3. The Philosophers of the Hermotimus as Platonic Sophists....................141 6.4. The Parody of the Socratic Investigation about Virtue.........................146 6.5. Parody of the Metaphor of the Road and of the Destination of Philosophy......................................................150 Chapter 7 Perplexity as Lucian’s aesthetic Aim.....................................................161 7.1. The Parody of Protreptic Discourse.........................................................162 7.2 The Comparison of the Tabula of Cebes and the Hermotimus...........................................................................................165 7.3. Lucian’s Pun on Academics, Pyrrhonists and Stoics Ending in Aporia............................................................................171 7.4. Perplexity as an aesthetic Aim in Lucian’s Fiction................................178 Chapter 8. Conclusions...................................................................................................................190 8.1. Friendship and Reputation.......................................................................193 8.2. Quarrel between Favorinus of Arles and Epictetus..............................200 8.3. A Stoic Reader of the Hermotimus............................................................202 8.4. A Sceptic Reader of the Hermotimus........................................................205 8.5. Final Observations........... .........................................................................208 Bibliography.................................................................................................................215 4 Acknowledgements This thesis is about education. Few Mexican students of the humanities have had the privilege of studying abroad on a full scholarship as part of a public and scientific education system, and this doctoral thesis would not have been possible without the generosity of The National Council of Science and Technology in Mexico (CONACYT). The second privilege offered to me has been the opportunity to study with a great expert in second century literature and philosophy. This thesis owes everything to the enlightening guidance of Prof. Michael Trapp, who has at all times also been a supportive and caring teacher. The commentaries of Dr. Saul Tor have kept me on the right track and spurred me on towards completion. At various points Ismene Lada Richards has helped me escape the meaningless caves into which a student like myself often risks falling. It has in addition been an honour to work with Prof. Lada Richards as a seminar leader, as with Prof. Raphael Woolf and Dr. Lucy Jackson. I extend my gratitude to the Staff of the KCL Classics Department, to the staff at the Maughan Library, and all the workers at KCL, ICS Library, Senate House, and the British Library. These hardworking staffs are essential to the institutions from which students benefit hugely. Writing in a foreign language can be a challenge as difficult as climbing the tallest mountain, and editing is at least twice as hard. I thank Siân Hunter Dodsworth for the care, patience and love that she has shown in helping me making this thesis more intelligible to the English reader. It is no secret that this thesis has been written amidst political turmoil taking place in Syria, Mexico and the United Kingdom. In Britain, there is uncertainty as to how rights to education will be ensured. In Syria, a war has killed hundreds of thousands of students, teachers and future