GREEK CULTURE IN THE ROMAN WORLD Editors susan n. axcoex, Brown Univers, sab nusiean, Comput Chisi Collee, Oxford stuow coupittet, Unieniy of Cambridge MICHAEL SQUIRE, Kings College London “The Grek cure ofthe Roman Emit ofr ich ld of dy. Bxtrordinary nights canbe une Into process of mulialtul contac and exchange policl and idcoloical onic and he cetvity ‘fa changing polygon empite: During this perio, many fundamen elements of Wester city were Tring se in place from the tie of Christan, wo an infuential stem of edueaso, wo logrved trite cuts This yrs the first wo foes onthe esponseof Greek cule co is Roman imperial, ‘erting a ign phenomenon in x own ight. To this cad, ic wl publish erignal ad inaovate oes i the ary ataclogy,eplgaphy, hor, psopby,rigon and erature ofthe empire, ‘vith an emphasis on Greck mesa Recent titles in she series ‘The Macnder Valle: A Hiri Ggrapy from Ani t Banton Peer Thonemnn Gree and he Angaston Clr Reseltion ‘AJ. S. Spanos Rethinking the Go Pileophia Reading of Religion nthe Pes Hellenic Print Perr Van Nafilen Sains and Symposia Te Literate of Fd an the Spas in Grec-Romen ‘and Early Chrasian Cate “oa Konig ‘Te Scie Word of Ileus in he Roman Expire Sophos, Phileapher, and Criians Kendra Elena Religion end Iden in Perley af Te: The Limits of Hells in Late Angi “ron Johnson ‘Syrian Ident nthe Grace Reman Wald ‘Nathaniel J Andrade “The Sen of Sgn Rabin altar: Jewish Way of Sern in Late Ansiqity Racha Nels Roman Phrygia: Care and Soi Patt Thonemana | Homer in Stone: The Table aca inter Roman Context David Pein ‘Man ae Anal n Sevran Rome The Literary Imagination of Claudia Ais ‘Seven D. Sih Reading Fetion wih Lach: Fake, Freak and Hyperey ‘Karen a Mhcalaigh Grech Naratvs of oe Reman Empire unde the Savers Casas Die, Pion ‘ond Hodis ‘Adama M, Kemeis GREEK NARRATIVES OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE UNDER THE SEVERANS Cassius Dio, Philostratus and Herodian ADAM M. KEMEZIS CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS.CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Univesity Punting Howse, Cambridge enz 8, United Kingdom (Camabidge University Pres spat of che Universiy of Cambridge. [ic furhers the Universi’ mision by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of ‘dation, leaning and research ar the highest incenational evel of excellence wor cambridge oe, Information on this le: wor cambridge orp'9710 7062726 (© Adam M. Keres 2014 “This publication isi copyright. Subjec wo starutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collacive licensing agreements, ino repraduction of any part may ake place without the written ‘permission of Cambeldge University Pres. Fine published 2014 Printed inthe United Kingdom by Clays, Sve ple A ental record fer this publication i aval from the Briss Library Library of Congres Cataloging in Publication data ‘Kemeas, Adam M.,1977~ author. Greek saraives ofthe Roman Empire ander the Seveans : Cassius Dio, Philostacs ‘and Herodian / Adam M. Kemeis piges_ cm. ~ (Grockculeure inthe Roman wos) sus 97241-107-06272-6 (hardback) 1 Greek prose lteranute, 2. Rome ~ History Severans 193-235 3. Cass Dio Coccelanus, 4. Herodian. 5. Pilosatus, che Athenian, sti and century ~ 32d ennury. 1. Tide. masns6.x46 2014 937 07-3 2014019436 sex 978-1107-06272-6 Hardbacle Cambridge Universcy Press has no eesponsibilty for che persistence or accuracy of ‘as for external or thid-paty internet websites refered ro in this publication, ‘apd doesnot guarantee that any content on such websites sor wil remain, ‘scourte or appropeat For my mother. SarahAcknowledgements Contents Note on texts and translations 2 wavy Introduction From Antonine to Severan Cassius Dio: the last annalist Philostratus’ Apollonius. Hellenic perfection on an imperial stage Philostratus’ Sophists: Hellas’ Antonine Golden Age Herodian: a dysfunctional Rome Conclusion: from “Severan” to “third-century” Appendix: 3 The date of composition of Dio's history ‘The dates and addresees of Philotratus’ Apollonius and Sophists The date sope and author of Heradian’s history Bibliography Index 282 294 298 309 35Acknowledgements ‘This book began about ten years ago when David Porter suggested to me that Cassius Dio would be a good author to look at for a Ph.D. field exam. ‘My largest debt remains to him, for the good counsel and instruction he offered throughout the subsequent dissertation. process, for his continued support and friendship, and for the uncounted times in the revision process when some insight of his from years before has found its way back into my memory, wich enlightening results. The generous and astute contributions that Sarah Abbel-Rappe, Susan Alcock, Bruce Frier, Jim Porter and Ray van Dam made to that dissertation are still felt everywhere in this book. My thanks go out once again ro my other professors, fellow-students and friends from that time, for their wisdom and companionship. In the time that I have been revising the book and preparing it for publication, my debts of gratitude have increased much. The process has been cased immeasurably by the patience and cordial professionalism of Michael Sharp and his colleagues at Cambridge University Press. 1 am heavily indebted also to the series editors and the anonymous readers for their trenchant and salutary comments. Many friends and colleagues were generous with their time in reading or discussing various parts of the project at different times, of with bibliographical suggestions and answers to ques- tions, especially Rob Chenault, Matthew Clark, Kendra Eshleman, Kris Fletcher, Alain Gowing, Dina Guth, Patrick Hogan, Julie Langford, Jared Sccord, and the several members of the History & Classics Department ‘writing group at the University of Alberta. Roshan Abraham, Christopher Jones, Susann Lusnia, Andrew Scott and Joel Ward were kind enough to share with me or permit me to use not-yet-published work. Michael May and the staff of the University of Alberta libraries have provided unfailing succor in my hour of bibliographical need. Needless to say, the efrors, omissions and infelicities that may be found in what follows are entirely my ‘own, and persist in spite ofthe best efforts of those just mentioned. Acknowledgements ix ‘Most of this book was written or revised in Edmonton, where the faculty and staff of the History and Classics Department of the University of Alberta proved to be the most welcoming set of people a new scholar could ask for. I can’t imagine where I'd be without the fellowship of my colleagues, the inspiration of my students and the conviviality of the Thursday Underground Suppor Group. To all of my family for their Jove, understanding and spiritual support, © Sarah Miller, my mother, to whom this book is dedicated, for encouraging my intellectual activities by her words and example my whole life, and to Liz. Czach for being all one could wish for ina wife, a friend and a sympathetic colleague, I will never cease to be grateful, and I can never be grateful enough.Note on texts and translations ‘The four texts that are the main subject of this book are each in its different ‘way textually problematic, and a brief explanation is in order of the texts Ihave followed and the ways I have cited them. The most complex problem is presented by Cassius Dio, above all because the text of his latter books has mostly had to be reconstructed from quotations and epitomes. This is admirably done in the edition of U.P. Boissevain (1898), but that work’s formidable scholarly authority comes at the expense of convenience: Dio is an exceedingly awkward author to cite. For all citations from the fragmen- tary books, T have included afterwards in parentheses the source of the fragments as follows: (Xips.) — Xiphilinus; (EV) — Excerpta Valesiana; (Zon.) ~ Zonaras; (EM) ~ Excerpta Maiana; (EU) — Excerpta Ursiniana, (PP) — Peter the Patrician. In addition, it is usually necessary to cite two book numbers, because Boissevain (and following him Cary in the Loeb edition) used a different system of numbers and divisions from all previous editions, while preserving the old chapter and section numbers even where his re-ordering of passages or moving of book-divisions had disrupted the sequence of the chapters. This means that in many instances the Boissevain book number by itself does not uniquely identify a passage: his Book 62, for instance, contains two sections numbered “1,” neither of which is at the beginning. Given this, and since many references in earlier scholarship still use the old numbering system, I have cited passages using first Boissevain’s book number, then the traditional number in brackets, which can be found at the top of the right-hand page in Boissevain, or in the margin of Cary. Lastly, there area few instances in which due to transpositions of fragments and typographical errors, a given passage is exceedingly diffcule to locate in Cary’s Loeb: for those I have given volume and page numbers as wel. I apologize for the inelegance. Neither of Philostratus’ longer works has received a proper critical edition since Kayser’s unsatisfactory 1870-1 Teubner, though in the case of the Apollonius, one is now in progress, edited by G.J. Boter. Ac present, for the Note on texts and translations xi Apollonius, C.P. Jones’ 2005 Locb represents an important advance, and Thave used it, with some exceptions that are noted. For the Sophists, I have used Kayser faute de mieux. Herodian, by contrast, has received a remark- able amount of editorial attention for such an otherwise neglected author, perhaps because he has many more manuscript cruxes than the other texts. Thave used the most recent Teubner edition, Lucarin’s of 2005, but with reference also to the editions of Mendelssohn (r883), Stavenhagen (1922) and Whittaker (1969). Details are nored where appropriate. For other authors Thave generally used the most recently avaible Oxford or Teubner editions. However, since the physical format of several of these editions is quite different, I have preferred to use the “Loeb page” asa standard unit of text- length, regardless of what edition I have consulted when quoting o citing the author in question. Translations are my own except where otherwise noted, and in general I have emphasized clear and accurate expression over stylistic fidelity o the originalCHAPTER Introduction ‘What modems call the fourth dynasty of the Roman monarchy began with Septimius Severus’ accession in 193 and ended in 235 when his great-nephew ‘Alexander Severus was overthrown and killed. There was thus a generation born in the 160s whose longer-lived representatives experienced the entire cera as adults. Their experience of imperial politics wes entirely unlike that of their parents and grandparents, who had lived through the ninety-five years (97-192) from Nerva's accession to Commodus' death. In that earlier period, six Roman emperors had reigned, not counting subordinates who never atained sole rule, All but the lst had died of nacural causes and passed ‘on the throne to his chosen successor. The Severan period lasted less than half as long, but in chat time seven men were recognized in Rome as principal emperor. Only one of them, Septimius Severus, died of natural causes, and contemporaries speculated frely that his son and successor tried his best to hasten that death." In that same interval there occurred two civil ‘wars and astring of palace coups and overthrows of favorites and pretenders. ‘The Antonine era had seen highly disruptive epidemics and barbarian raids, but the monarchy had been an element of stability, at least on the symbolic evel. In the Severan period, by contrast high politics was a realm of turbulence and periodic chaos. In a culture where all historiography was political narrative, the Severan generation would have lived through far ‘more history, as they defined it, han had any generation in memory, and it would make a far more interesting story than had the preceding century. “That said, politics is not the only feld in which the present is connected to the past, and the generation just mentioned might easly have identified continuities, political and otherwise, that managed to co-exist with the * SeeDio 7776145. Oph): Hada. 3.35 for Carsl’s pose role inte death of Severs. Both wet the matt at uncer, but Dio reports as fat ewo eater unsveces attempts by Canal on his father ile (Dio 7.76.14 Xiph).2 Introduction appearance of chaotic change.? The Mediterranean core regions of the empire were if anything more fice of external military threats than they had been under Marcus Aurelius. By the 2208, new and more powerful enemies were starting to emerge, especially in the shape of Sassanid Persia, but that change had yet to manifest itself in ways that registered widely in most parts of the Roman Empire. The political unity of the empire remained unquestioned; there was still one principal emperor ata time, located mostly in Rome. If Septimius and Caracalla had spent a lot of time with the army, s0 had ‘Trajan and Marcus. The ruling classes at the imperial and local levels were sil able to pass on what they saw, demographic realities notwithstanding, as their inherited class prerogatives. Even if turnover among the elite was relatively high, the new arrivals came from only a few rungs down the ladder, and could generally be assimilated into the shared elite culture based, above all, on a Greco-Roman literate education.’ Even at the end of the 230s, 2 socially ‘marginal figure like Maximinus ‘Thrax still seemed like the exception as emperor, and the aristocrats who overthrew him still thought of themselves as the norm. ‘On an economic and cultural level, what change was occurring was ineremental and less noticeable. Perhaps urban elites could sense that the civic life of their communities was slowing down, and that surplus wealth zo longer flowed as it used to into euergetic largesse.* Nonetheless, this was ‘atime of limited communications and rudimentary statistics. One's parti- ‘cular region would have had its own problems at some times and not at ‘others, and people might have projected those problems onto their views of the empire as a whole, but that had always been the case. Even if there really ‘were a reduction in the overall average, that would not automaticaly result in people's accurately perceiving that global fact and incorporating it into their view of imperial history The “growth” of Christianity is even harder + For comtemporary perrptios ofthese continuities, se Peter 990, si > For the demograpiesarmore of provincial elites, specially Inthe east, se Zuldethock 201. For cgi cg wna tpt eo Sven psd hough eh cen “The economic dimenaions of dhe “thd cenrry cre” remain a subject of considerable dispute, as doc the quesion of when sich 2 ers boa, existed. Duncan-Jons 2004 ss forth 2 ideale numberof quantitative indices For economic dimupion over the cause ofthe thled eorury In some of these cas, notably chow slated 1 seement densy as determined by ‘rchacloglcal survey, cadence for change of ome kind ges back othe ist decades of he cents; Im others sch as hosed wo coinage, the problems donot econ evident unl he 308 ola. For the nnd to conser eioal penpecive ln ny asesment of an empire-wide ri see Witch! 2004. For the quantative evidence of reduced lvl of eure, sx Zulderhock 2009, 18-22 * Thecidemi of the oe may in ality ave ben an mpir-wie evene capable fering 2 uring polatfora gand-hinoril arte, bit says nach about ancient dea ofhistory hat we hve ite ‘fidener of eantemporaris using fo tha purpe. Introduction 3 to pin down asa perceived cultural phenomenon, and we should not assume that contemporaries would have attributed particular significance to what we in retrospect think of as the causes ofthat religion's eventual triumph. Much, in shore, remained the same, but did people remark its failure to change or ‘consider whether in Future it might do so? ‘There was a prestigious genre of literature devoted to narrating the vicissitudes of war and high politics, but there was no analogous privileged mode by which to describe the phenomena nowadays explored by social, economic and cultural historians. That absence {as it scems to us) did not of course prevent people from noticing such changes or from communicating what they noticed through the whole array of textual and other media at their disposal, even if that communication was not their sole or explicit objective, and neither have scholars been slow to find ‘ways of bringing the resulting discourse to light. “The Severan eraisfruitfil ground for exploring the tension between these two different kinds of change, precisely because itis a moment when this odd disconnect emerges between instability in politics and relative stability clsewhere. Modern scholarship has thus found the period alittle difficult to place. For political historians iti typically the start of a narrative that extends through the third century and often on into late anciquity.® In liverary studies, especially of Greek, ic is typically seen as the end of a narrative that began in the early 1st century ap.” A body of recent scholarship, to which this book is intended to contribute, has looked at the Severan years asa self contained period in which politcal change needs to be viewed alongside continuities elsewhere.’ Particular attention has been paid to imperial self- presentation, to how the various emperors articulated relationships between themsclves, their people, taeir predecessors and the gods: on the whole the focus has been more on non-literary than on literary sources.? This book will draw very heavily on this work, especially in Chapter 2. The * Assen lathe divisions in anges seal histories of he empl, which tend wo begin a volume in ‘ihe io or 19s and run upto are ofl pola, eg, Chol 997; Can and Rowse 195, Seulel 2001, Porer 2004 Bown, Camsey and Camezon 2003: Ando 201. 7 Thus such foundational sci of the "Soooad Sophie” as Swain 1996, Schmit 1997 and ‘Whitmash 200 forall their metodolgkal ves, gros ty or otherwise on 2 psiodzation of roughly so 0-250. This i no small put due tothe continuing influence of Philosrats presentation ofthe Second Sophie for which see Chaper Surviving Latin Iierature fom the pet is exiguous enough 1 male podation something of x non-ise: Cont 1999 in fic fal {ckon politcal event aa strucuing device, bu the ele that one chapter oftweny-ight pages (659-620) fcr cover mre than ear fam 193 0306 * Forihe broad ealturl penpectva see the ais eye in Sai, Haeson and Elsner 2007 ° Considering only the bat seven yas, signicart menogaphs inch Cordovana 2007b; Handy 200g; Lichter 2; Rowan tor: Langford 201 and Lani forthcoming as wells che ey in Sain, Hartson ad Eknet 2007 and Foust and Lelie art and two recent books on Elagabals ‘Arézabalgay Prado 2or0 and Is 202).4 Introduction ‘main body of the book, however, aims in some sense to make this scholarly ‘exercise reflexive by looking at the historiographical texts that have always been privileged as sources of facts about the Severan period and using them 10 consider how contemporaries approached the same problems of change and continuity that present themselves to moderns. The texts in question are the politica-historical works of Cassius Dio and Herodian, as well a the two long narrative works of Philostratus, the Apollonius and the Sophists. Taken together, I argue, these constitute a re-emergence, in highly innovative and diverse forms, of critical narrative discourse on the recent past, a type of literature that had found litle scope under the Antonines. This re-emergence came about because political events rendered unviable the consensus view of the political past that had prevailed under that carlier dynasty. ‘To understand the significance of political narratives for broader cultural history, we nced to examine the role they played in the ideology and work- ings of Roman monarchical government. Afterall, one might suppose, in a society of limited communications, great linguistic and cultural diversity and conservative agrarian social structures, that people not directly involved in the ups and downs of high politics at the imperial center would take little cognizance of them. Nonetheless, there is ample evidence from inscriptions, art and literature that at least the elites of the empire, and those non-clites ‘who participated in urban culture, did indeed register these events. They did so in media ranging from civic architecture to sub-literary prophecy, speak: ing from all kinds of perspectives to all kinds of audiences." What is most important for our immediate purposes, however, is how in imperial political culture che past functioned as a means of communication between the emperor and his various constituencies of subjects. Many recent studies of the Roman monarchy have stressed the ideological importance of expressions of broad consensus." From Augustus’ time on, the validity of the emperor's rule rested heavily on repeated demonstrations of enthusiastic assent by his various groups of subjects, from the Senate through the equestrian order and the citizen communities of Italy to the provinces and the frontier armies. He wat cle ot ply wih loyalty as the holder of a political office, but with graticude and veneration as the guarantor of peace and prosperity, the Crnbiment of dine providene andthe exer fis soy earn virtues. The point is not whether these expressions reflected genuinely held For imperil hinory in Sibyline prophecy, sce Pores 1990, ep. 132-40, Ror loc communes _,etprng imptal nave ate actecural environment ce Revell 2005, 17. Imponant ontabudons be: Incide Ando 2000; Rowe 2003 Lobut 2008, Cardvana 2007 cpliciy wes Severin Aff a a cae eudy of such models Foc he petal lead seus of ‘cnpero a hey component of thir al presentation, ee Nora 2% Introduction 5 belief, What mattered was chat people integrated the emperor into their collective identities, into how they defined their own communities, their personal roles within them and their collective needs and aspirations. The ‘emperor's need for these expressions of consensus gave his subjects a critically important avenue of ideological communication through which to respond to his initiatives and seck recognition of their own various agendas. Narrative was an essential component of that communication. Part of what emperors needed consensus approval of was their own version of their personal and dynastic histories and the significance of those stories within the larger history of the Roman people. Augustus’ various modes of self- presentation, as classcizing avatar of Apollo, as righteous exponent of tradi- tional morality oras populist representative of rota Italia all make sense only if fone accepts a series of historical narratives. These include recent events in which Octavian was directly concerned, such as the career and death of Julius (Caesar and the founding of the Second Triumvirate, but also the story of ‘more distant eras, the virtuous early years of Rome succeeded by a period of ‘moral decline that Augustus reversed. Augustus wanted to emphasize both, those aspects of his rule that preserved Rome's continuing identity as an imagined community and those that emphasized progress, expanded hori ‘ons and new achievements. Narrative served to delineate key elements of continuity and change in the new monarchy. "These stories are told by Augustus himself, in the Res Gestae and the architecture of his forum, but they were repeated and commented on by his subjects, from Virgil and Livy through the communities whose public discourse survives in epigraphic form. Once again, these expressions did not need to be sincere to be significant. Even if one reads in them subversion or covert dissent, the Augustan narrative remains dominant even as the object (of negative reaction. After Philippi and Actium, there was no affirmative way to deploy an equally powerful altemative. Later changes of dynasty would call forth additions to this foundational narrative, most notably Trajan’s story of how he redeemed Rome from the tyranny and corruption of the Flavians and later Julio-Claudians. The literature of that period artificially emphasizes the idea of Domitian's death as a watershed, and virtually the whole Tacitean_ corpus can be read as a comment on the narrative put forth by the primus (prince The critical point for the emperor was not so much that people should believe the facual truth ofthese narratives, although evidently that was useful, but rather that they should spontaneously repeat and augment them, that they should incorporate his version of events into how they defined their " On Domisan's death a anal watershed in eure, see Clean 190.6 Introduction ‘own world and their place in it. To be the emperors loyal subject was to have a memory of suffering with him under previous bad rulers, or being rescued by him from their tyranny, and that memory needed to be uniform or at least compatible across all sorts of status, class and ethnic lines within imperial society. By the reigns of Antoninus and Marcus, as I will argue in the next chapter, the key consensus narrative was in fact a completed story, in which a series of peaceful transitions of power from one ostensibly virtuous rule to the next gave the impression ofa present fice from the forces of historical change, and a world where history had all but ended with Augustus, ‘The Severan emperors spent the whole of their era trying to achieve this sort of consensus acceptance of a narrative. They never succeeded, and the literacy works studied in this book area testament to their failure. Septimius Severus was a skilled propagandist, but he found it very difficult to put forth consistent and generally acceptable version of his own rise to power, or of the future dynastic stability that his various possible successors would repre- sent. Those successors in turn had still harder tasks that they approached in ‘most cases less competently than Septimius. By the 220s, the empire had fallen into a pattem in which the emperor was an adolescent cipher, and the various interest groups that held power around his throne were finding it harder and harder to construct an ideologically adequate narrative of how ‘he got there. The principal narrative works of Dio and Philostratus are all products of ths late phase, while Herodian’s work was produced during a still later period when the eycle of boy-emperors had gone through its last iteration with Gordian III. Their works are thus in dialogue with three decades of constantly changing dynastic propaganda, and they all parallel the emperors’ own efforts to relate recent history to the larger narrative of the Romen world. What is new and remarkable is that, where the literature of other periods of the Principate had largely worked within the same overall consensus narratives as the rulers, even when authors questioned and sub- verted them, each of these four narratives differs greatly in its basic premises from those put forth by any emperor, and from the other three narratives under study. T's not chat they reflect widely differing ideologies or segments of society. All four author-narrators (the distinction between constructed and historical authors isa point to which I will reuzn) present themselves as members of a unified imperial elite that saw itself as an organic continuation of cultural traditions going back into the archaic pasts of Greece and Rome, although in practice it was defined according to norms laid down in the second century. ‘They all sill operate within an ideology of imperial consensus whose roots can be traced back to Augustus. There are thus many things on which they do Introduction 7 not disagree, either with one another or their rulers. None of these narratives, will meaningfully question the appropriateness of placing all political and cultural power in the hands of a classically educated cite; nor the essential primacy and self-sufficiency of the dominant Greck and Roman traditions of the empire's Mediterranean core in answering all important cultural ques- tions, and the need for other influences to be subordinated or translated into ‘a Greco-Roman idiom; nor the necessity, permanence and, at least as an ideal, the beneficence of the Roman imperial system as the political guarantor of social and cultural order.” On the whole, the emperors’ ideological agendas were also relatively traditional, andthe parties in the various conflicts differed little in what they wished to do with the empire once they gained control of t.* We are stil far from the ideologically fragmented world of the later third and fourth centuries. Nonetheless a crack is emerging in the edifice of imperial elite unity. For all that these authors and their rulers agreed on, they disagreed on the significance of recent historical events, and how those events were to be integrated into a larger story. "To understand why this is, one must realize how large a role political stability played in Antonine consensus ideology, and how much it sup- ported even aspects of that ideology that had little explicidy to do with. imperial politics. Marcus and his immediate predecessors presented them- selves as virtuous figures who were fully integrated into a beneficently ordered social, economic and culcural landscape based on the elite cultural assumptions I have just identified as persisting in Severan narratives. Their unbroken sequence of peaceful successions, accompanied by constant apressions of political consensus, guaranteed that order, but also repre- sented and affirmed it. Subscribing to the consensus surrounding the ruler implied accepting the ruler’s claim to guarantee a beneficent order, which in ‘urn implied agreeing that such an order existed. Since the series of relatively peaceful successions was a demonstrable fact that was easy to affirm, it could do a lot of ideological work by standing in for the larger order of things.” Having everything seem right in the political sphere made the entire system seem more right, and, crucially, provided a narrative to explain that right- ness, asa product of the process of expansion and political stabilization that © "The one apparendy eal ecto she sand pin ita Pisa has Apollon ist Fscdy ead rin fn exhgy Ths point wl ned lyn Chapter but ‘Ss aw a eg oe ino ng a tery dn ‘ould ave cated gna allen the dominant wealtons in + Cael alter posttag and lg religous activites ar paral cepns but a then he ray wtion wold suger which we aps Sone pole net wa ssdted with saci 0 Tne, Hada and Maras but seve to 2 per thar ceed rel eles for comes marae8 Introduction supposedly ended when Augustus created the existing monarchical tate. In the decades after 180, however, that appearance of rightness became ever less. sustainable, much as emperors tried to preserve it. The claim of political stability was too much at odds with observable reality ta serve as a support- ing explanation for anything, Icis not that there was a widespread sense of complete criss: it was still possible, indeed often desirable, to assert that the basic order of things was functioning, but it was no longer possible to use political events as proof of that claim. ‘So what did one use instead? The four narratives examined in this book represent four different answers. ‘They are all still invested in consensus imperial ideology as it existed in the late second century (the period that all the narrators present as their own youth), even though the political circum stances that gave that ideology narrative coherence are gone, Thus their shared focal point is th idealized status of the Antonine age. They all agree that Marcus was an ideal emperor, and they allstae (or in the case of the Philostratean works imply) that che current regimes are failing to mect his standard. In some cases, they do suggest, explicdy or implicitly, how this situation might be remedied, but what is of more interest is how they construct literary worlds in which some other clement falfls the function that political stability used to, namely that of providing a narrative of how change and continuity affsee the existing order. The significant differences are in the selection of the key elements, and the kinds of story that can be built around them. It will be the task of this book to illuminate those differences. Literature and methodology After the next chapter, which deals with the narratives put out by the various ‘emperors, the core of this book consists of four chapters, one each on the historical works of Dio and Herodian, and one each on Philostratus’ Apollonius and Sophists. In each case, I will be asking how the text constructs the Roman Empire as a narrative world, and how in each world political change, especially that from the Antonine to Severan dynasties, manifests itself and relates to change or continuity in cultural structures. This question leads on toa larger one, namely how the Antonine-Severan dynastic change affected the cultural landscape of the Roman Empite, or atleast its urban and. lite segments. That second question is very much ahistorical one, relating to a reality outside the texts. This is not a “literary” study in the sense that my ‘overall aim is not to produce a poetics of Severan historiography, nor to place these works within the development of the historiographical or any other Literature and methodology 9 genre. Nonethless, my methods will be mostly literary ones, including at times poetic and formal analysis. As will be evident from my language to this point this isto be a study not of authors but of narratives, and those narratives wil he spoken of a creating different Roman empires rather than differently reflecting a single external one. Thus in this book, ancient histories and other non-fiction works will be read “as fiction” in the restricted sense that I will focus on those literary characteristics that are shared by historical apd onal nares. This isn lone in ti an innovative o unorho dox stance, nor is it an ideological choice based on any conviction of mine that the past is radically at able or ante or tha wadtonal hore ‘methodologies are inadequate to apprehend it. As already noted, this book aims to answer historical questions about how people in the past understood and conceived of their own past and present. My methodology has been chosen as the one most suitable to the particular historical problem posed by the literature addressed in this study. 5 “That problem, in its broadest terms, is as follows. All these texts, simply by ther existence as critical narratives ofthe imperial Roman past, ae instances of the same phenomenon, the culeural effec of dynastic political change. For ‘most of the second century after Tacitus and Suetonius, Roman literature in cither language all but ceased to produce large-scale narratives of the post- ‘Augustan period.” In the 220s to 240s, we see several such narratives emerge, all ambitious and innovative in form. It is an easy intuitive leap to connect this emergence to the new political instability of the period, and Chapter 2 will argue for making that leap. It is more difficult to get at the specifics of what each work has to tell us about political and cultural change. None of them gives an adequate explicit account of how recent events have altered the world-view of the author and his peers. This is hardly surprising: ancient historians are above all concerned with events and never pay as much * sean 05 ean sb agin ons oc ier ct ain ity flo nace emer fe Ge sor ln ny ase poe oe ete esnetn af the hel pane spre et ons fom ea ese ee aay oi ea nal urs aril sing we ea py re ey hey ac inom of meer, sam) bo hr ooo Sod ate tec on be ep heel ean + Aina ae aed Chee’ lo Keer. Fo ie ba ‘apc unl gg pepo hp Gi na ops ‘Zope tn Kn gi ad cone ae pu a waned ogee Feat and exp for Re He sts Spence on fr bis (hod bung emp, aan adh a of at) ha ed rt tenses ar ad scans nhc my concnon welt ser iccapeSseY pests ae py ec nr oni ad Se pa co te Se10 introduction. attention to structural factors a their modern heirs would wish. Cassius Dio does have some valuable analysis, Herodian considerably ess, and Philostratus scarcely any at all. But one cannot conclude from this either that Dio’s explicit ‘statements represent a complete account of how his own times affected him, cr that Philostratus’ comparative reticence means he and people like him were relatively unaffected by those same times. One cannot narrate events without at least implicitly describing the structures within which they take place.” ‘The problem for a modern interpreter is how to talk about that description in four such different narrative works. For reasons that will be discussed presently, traditional methodologies that focus on the views of autho: as historical individuals are not wel suited to the task, hence the need to look at these texts as literary narratives. The last few decades of scholarship have hugely expanded the number of available methodologies, mostly by employing various forms of rhetorical analysis. This study is heavily indebted to these methodological advances, and my standard approach throughout will be to examine the structure of narratives, the function of various elements within them and the techniques employed by narrators to gain authority for their material. The particular ‘methodologies involved will vary from text to text according to what aspects of the narrative are most relevan: to my overall historical question, i.e. which aspects best reveal, explicitly ot otherwise, the effects of dynastic change. For Dio and Herodian, for instance, I will pay rather more attention to issues of formal generic structure than with cither of the Philostratean texts. Cultural geography will be a major part of my analysis of the Apollonius and of Herodian, but considerably les for Dio or the Sophias. None of my readings will be based primarily on intertextuality or word-and-sentence-level stylistic, 2 Seen SE mana tiga Tec oa alge SS rience ren Spicioes etcetera Tee pois aden ateteraa ae ula tamara emtrarnee tee Scat pe cern eercegwerrie ree reer tae hip a atta somene Bei ioet Sot ee mere Sete a trae Sens hae tan ea atnelitps pa ats emacs Se ceagrsecritoenebtd neat aces ic ser oe ma chat recent emperors based on it aoe ee Literature and methodology n and metaliterary analysis will be relatively scarce.”® This isnot because there are not interesting things these approaches can tell us about these texts. If ‘my aim were a complete account of the rhetorical objectives and functioning of the texts in themselves, I would use more of these techniques, and more fally. Since | am instead using them as instances of a particular historical phenomenon, I have chosen those aspects ofthe texts in which that phenom- enon is most present. To givea more claborate statement of what that phenomenon is, and thus ‘what the overall thesis of this book is, I am anguing thar political change under the Severans expanded a discursive space that under the Antonines hhad been rather restrictive, so that people found new ways of using narrative to talk about and imagine how the political history of the Roman world functioned and affected them. This comes through in different aspects ofthe different texts under study, hence the eclectic nature of my methodology. ‘One concept that I will be employing in all four cases, however, is that of narrative worlds. The key common element in these narratives is that they create a version of the Roman Empire in which the narrated events take place, which can be viewed asa “world,” a narrative construct influenced but not determined by extemal reality as perceived by readers. While one routinely speaks of “the world of the Iliad,” or “the world of Dickens,” the idea of literature as world-building has been explored more fully in ways that can fruitfully be applied to factual narratives. Narrative “worlds” or “story- worlds” are, in David Herman's formulation “global mental representations enabling interpreters to draw inferences about items and occurrences either explicitly or implicitly included in a narrative,”* Making sense of even simple narratives requites far more information than we are explicitly given by the narrator, We need to make assumptions and inferences in order to «establish everything from causality to characterization to ethical judgements, and we do this not by separately interrogating every gap in our explicit information, but by building a general model of “how things work” within this narrative. As Herman puts it “interpreters attempt to teconstruct not just what happened — who did what to or with whom, for how long, how often and in what order ~ but also the surrounding context of environment All of chose approaches have ben appli in exemplary fahion vo Tacs, For 8 metry Approach sce dove all Sao 2008 Tor alien Henderon 1989 and O'Gorman 2000; for imercrtuaiy, various ofthe ey in Woodman 2009 and Miler and Woodman 200 * Herman 2002 9-23 expa his concep ofthe storywerd (quoted marron p10) and the et of the book argu fora new form of saratlogy bated sound i. Whe Herma’ approach dws heavily on cope igus, and thu speaks of ment representations” loadin dhe minds of ‘reales, he seldom speak in cms of diferent sper of eae, and in practic he representations fancton as proper of ex that apply wo constuced deal ede.2 Introduction embedding existents, their attributes and the actions and events in which they are more or les centrally involved.”** ‘This reconstructing is done based both on readers’ knowledge of the external world and on cues in the text itself. It is these cues, combined with whatever intended audience we construct, that allow us to speak ofa given literary work as having its own storyworld. That world will relate differently to external reality in different works anc genres. A “realistic” novel in a contemporary setting will incorporate morc of the readers’ own world into its storyworld than a science-fiction novel set on another planet, but both remain autonomous fictional creations. Even in the most ostensibly realistic of novels, characters do not act quite like people around us, if only because they have all kinds of personal circumstances that have no direct analogues ina given reader's experience and must beimaginatively reconstructed from the text. Similarly, even the most bizarre sci-fi planets are in many of their mundane aspects uncannily similar to Earth, if only because no text could. describe an infinity of differences, and readers will tend to fill in the gaps using data from their own world.”® ‘Most importantly for our purposes, literary worlds that correspond to historical times and places are not complete and transparent models of them. Jane Austen and the late-wentieth-century historical novelist Patrick O'Brian both describe England around 1800, but Austen's world (ot worlds) is defined above all by the social conventions governing women’s search for suitable husbands, while O’Brian’s is dominated by the naval aspects of the Napoleonic wars. The wars exist in Austen's world, and hhusband-seeking women exist in O’Brian’s, and on occasion they affect the pilot, but far less textual work is done establishing them, and the text does not rely heavily on them for its meaning. The difference in this case is an ‘obvious function of plot and genre. To look within a single genre, the ealy- rnineteenth-century Paris of Hugo's Les Misérables is far more fully defined in topographical and historical terms than that of Stendhal’s The Red and the Black, a stylistic choice that stems from the works’ different shetorial aims, but this does notin itself make the frst a better or even a more realist novel than the second.” In all four cases, the different techniques of world- building allow the narratives to assign very different meanings to given times and places while still maintaining a similar degree of correspondence * Heman 20023, According to what Ryan 1991, 48-60 calls the “principle of minimal deparcre.” % owe his example 0 Ruth Scodel ° Fora diction ofthe diferent casanships dren fexonal word can hae to ely 0 Ronen 1994, 2-9, fom whom Tak the example of Senda’ Pac, Literature and methodology B between the narrative world and historical reality. Another important concept is thar worlds are characterized not only by the elements that exist in them, bur the modalities thar govern these elements and determine “the way things work” there. These delineate what in a given world is physically possible, normative obligatory, aesthetically valued, customary, believed and so forth, and what is not, either for people in general or for individual characters.** ‘As will be clear from the examples just given, the concept of storyworlds is most often applied to modern prose fiction. Literary theorists first started using it precisely as a way of theorizing the distinctive semantic properties of fiction.”7 Nonetheless, the processes through which texts build worlds are not by any means restricted to novels. They take place in non-fictional texts and can be studied using the same toolsas their novelistic counterparts. ‘This is all the more truc of ancient historical writing, since it consists mostly of linear narratives focusing around a relatively few discrete actors, be they individuals or collectivities such as “the Athenians.” Assuming one accepts that narrative structure is not inherent in historical events, but is imposed con them by the people describing them, then the phenomena associated with historical narratives, such as the worlds they cteate, are properties of the narratives themselves." Readers of Tacitus use textual cues and their knowledge of the external world to reconstruct his version of Julio-Claudian Rome, which elements are present and significant, what is possible, permis- sible and desirable and so forth, in ways similar to those used by readers of T, Claudius, and the worlds of the two texts are distinct but analogous. In constructing and evaluating those worlds, readers will conceive of their relationship to reality differently according to the genetic conventions governing ancient historiography and twentieth-century historical fiction. Nom-fictional historical works claim a unique closeness between their tex- tually created worlds and the world of external realty. ‘That claim works differently at different times and places according to the generic conventions % -Thisscheme's ily related by Dole] 998 1-32 For ln the ements of a ictional word are ordered scoring to four modes, which he conceives categories of fora lope operators that a be always tv, emmetimes re or never ue, The categorie are the ali ws flog ad ‘ature according ro which thing ar necessary, psbleor impasse); “deontc™ (norms according {0 which thingy obizory,permisibleo forbidden; “axologil (ue stems acoring 0 srhich things ace god, iniferene or bad) and episemic™ yes aecrding to which ‘hag now ae tom The i nx it al” mig ay spp the wold in general o “subjective,” applying ony toa given chance. 1 cof ponsbe wor har ks rors in modal ogi and phleopyof lnguage, and began in the pos and gg tobe wd by Ine hed who wasted semantic approach vo the gio tional {ext Important work in ths talon include Pavel 986 Ryan 199 Ronen 1994; Doll 998 Forfa formulations ofthe ien that are statue i ot inherent in events, sce White 19 and Ankers 983, 79-95,4 Introduction and disciplinary practices operating, a: well as to readers’ epistemological or ‘ontological ideas of external ralty.”? But nether in Severan Rome nor in our ‘own time do readers unproblematically accept the claim that the worlds of text and reality are identical, Granted that it is possible to speak of historiographical narratives as generating narrative worlds, why is it useful to do so in this instance?” My overall contention is that the political changes in those periods caused people to re-imagine not only the recent period in which those changes took place, but their entire past and the ways in which it was manifested in the present. This effect makes itself felt in all sorts of aspects ofthe texts in ‘question, not just those that address contemporary history directly, or through some discrete figure such as metaphor or irony. In many cases I reed to make interpretive claims about texts as a whole, without necessarily claiming to give a full account of the text’s thetorical functioning and objectives. Thus while traditional shetorcal analysis will be constandy present, the concept of narrative worlds creates useful category into which to fit all of the somewhat disparate textual elements that are relevant to my project, and it allows me to explore now those texts expand the range of Roman political discourse in ways that go beyond their specific rhetorical purposes, To speak concretely of one of the texts, Philostrarus’ Apollonia has, on the explicit level, the least of any of these texts to say about Roman history. Its content and rhetorical objectives embrace a wide range of topics to do with Greek religion and culture, but I contend that it still has a good deal to tell us about how historical change, and specifically Roman dynastic history, ‘was perceived under the Severans. To make this argument, I certainly look at the several sections of the work in which Roman emperors are directly involved, but these do not give the entire picture. Aspects of the text * Dole 200, 35-9 pos a disinaon berwen tional and historical words that appease more sholue than what employed here. However, tke difeencs tat Dole ses shoal be eonetrued cro inane is ink er aig ten of ey genre and altura prac, for carrying ou basicaly the sue Iteray operation. Ths nal Doel Sys abou isoriography would pp ois pre-modern forms (ar he acknowl, 35 2.4) Te ‘not cleat how Doll's scheme woul account fer ancient htrtans wiingnest inven spechee and chances. More fundaenaly, Doll's empha on “the feodom ofthe ton maker and the constraints imposed on the historian” (9) Jon ot sufenly acknowledge how clay fmingene hiorcal practice, nor explain why novels ae x9 often willing so accept the roustaint” of socal reach ina effort ro make tele Gclon secures Reimer 002 represeats wy knowledge the only extended we of marave works methodology on zy of my main texts in his ease the Apollon See metbodoogal remarks a3)~44 He focus ot ‘Yay deen hovel questions o mine, mot regain the sans of magi nd mace working, His objective isto ws the Apolomi (nd the NE Ac) 9 lsmieae he socio-cultural seprecedin the ex anda be empha "ean othe Aplin cnn more Literature and methodology 15 including its cultural geography and its narratological structure are also influenced by the phenomenon. My reading of the text as a whole can be formulated in narrative-worlds terms as follows: “the Apollonius creates a world in which Apollonius acquired wisdom in India, led a revival of Hellenic cultural activity in Greece and played key roles in the rise and the fall of the Flavian dynasty, a world in which (for him at least), these things were all possible, allowed, and praiseworthy, and in which a certain kind of narrator finds out about and communicates all these things in a certain way.” One might approach the text by treating each of the state- ‘ments in quotes asa separate assertion about the real world, to be judged on its own thetorical terms. The approach used here is rather to reat the text as, a single rhetorical assertion, that its world is the real world in which readers live, an assertion that the text in turn undercuts with fairly evident fictional irony. The fact that such a narrative world was imagined and accessible in the 220s but not (so I would argue) in the 170s is the critical historical reality that I aim to illuminate. To be sure, that act of imagination served many rhetorical purposes, mostly related to Greck paideia and religion, and that purpose is part of its reality; it would be a sterile exercise to catalog the products of people's historical imagination without then asking what use they made of those products. For all of the texts I read, I aim to give readings of the whole text that will add to the specialist literature on that author and deepen our understanding of his literary creations. I have for this reason indulged in ‘many extended readings of episodes from Dio and Philostratus that have litle explicit relationship to Severan history, although I trust their relevance becomes clear in the course of my argument. Nonetheless, I would not claim in any of these cases that what I am talking about is the sole or even. necessarily the principal rhetorical objective of the text. I am certainly not indifferent to the question of what the Apollonius as a whole is about, but neither would I assert that it is wholly or mostly about Roman political history, and that Chapter 4 of this book is a comprehensive reading of the text. [do claim that the Apollonius has more to say about that subject than hhas generally been supposed, that it has certain key commonalities with Dio's and Herodian’s political histories, and that it adds to the possible ‘ways that readers could imagine what the Roman Empire was and how it functioned. These new discursive possiblities are in the first instance linked to the Apollonius overall thetorical project, but they are not inseparable from it. The world of the Apollonius created possiblities for others to adapt it to tell different stories about the political roles of different sorts of religious figures, though once again the full implications are beyond my16 Introduction scope here, The utility of my approach is (I hope) most clear in the case of a text such as the Apollonius, where truth-claims ate problematic and the Roman-historical content difficult to isolate from other material. But the same point applies to more straightforwardly historiographical works. In the case of Herodian, for instance, the cext’s overall ideological agenda is hhard to grasp and pethaps none too coherent; what he is asserting and why is perhaps less interesting than the way he does it, by constructing a world in which customary assumptions about what is possible, natural and com- ‘municable are systematically deconstructed. Such a vision could serve many different shetorical masters, and its existence within mid-third-century discourse about the recent past is peshaps more significant than what any cone author chose to do with it. Authors and history Keeping this larger discursive picture in mind, this book will still primarily be not a study of cisembodied fragments of discourse, but of four particular narratives by three authors with their own relationships to the overall social and cultural milieu, and it remains to give some impression of them, and of the overall shape ofthe book. My next chapter will focus not on historians but on emperors. The circumstances under which the Severan dynasty came to power required the new emperors to have a different relationship to the ‘Roman past than had Commodus, Marcus or Antoninus, who inherited the throne from biological or adoptive fathers whose memories they had every reason to cherish. Septimius especially needed to find a narrative to promote for his new dynasy, and to make connections with worthy predecessors, Each of his four immediate successors came to the throne under sudden and violent circumstances that required explanation and invited new narra- tives and uses of the past. One recurring question was how to present the dynasty’s relationship ro the Antonines, Scptimius had tapped into the authority of Marcus and his predecessors very directly, by bare-ficedly inventing an adoption of himself by Marcus, thus denying at least on one level that any dynastic change had taken place. Ie is unlikely that many people believed this literally, but neither could they simply refuse to deal ‘with the assertion. The emperor and his audience still had co figure out between themselves exactly what it meant, The same applied to each of his successors, including Macrinus, who had to decide whether the elimination ‘of Caracalla should mean the end of the Severan age. I treat these imperial efforts asthe starting point for the general reassessment of past narratives by their subjects, Authors and history ” My object is not so much to examine how given individual events, such as reign-changes, were explicitly treated by any of these authors, nor how specific imperial propaganda initiatives were received. Rather, I will con- sider the whole structure and content of the various historical works to see how authors deal more generally with the issues of continuity and change that had exercised emperors and their image-makers for the decades down to the 2208. In particular I will be asking how a given literary natraive deals with the historical watershed that separated the contemporary Roman world from that of Marcus. This wll raise political questions regarding the ideo- logical basis of the Severan dynasty. The emperors were more anxious than ‘ever to locate both positive change and positive continuity in their own persons, and all chree authors are equally anxious to locate it elsewhere. Beyond the immediate dynastic question, however, there is also the question, of cultural change. Even though ancient historiography largely restricted itself to the narrative of warSare and high politics, all three of these authors, were aware that change happened in the culeural sphere as well. The nature of Romanness and the defining features of imperial culture altered greatly lover the course of the second century as provincial clites became integrated into the central power structure, thus remaking both its character and their own. When a dynasty of Afiicans and Syrians took the throne, thar cultural change manifested itself on the highest political stage. When our three authors try to locate the important elements that vary or persist in the political narrative of the day, they are also defining what are for them the key new and old components of Roman identity. Furthermore, since they all write in Greek, the effectivdy dominane literary language of the empire, all three are also addressing the relationship between Greek and Roman pasts and cultural identities. Cassius Dio is our most obvious representative of the synthesized impe- rial culture that the decades of Antonine rule had produced in the upper echelons of Greco-Roman society." He was born in the mid-t60s and lived through at east most ofthe reign of Alexander. His family, at least on his father’ side, was from Nicaea in Bithynia, but we do not know whether she was born there or how much of his youth was spent there.” Hlowever, the » Yor Dio aan campl of Grek-Roman uu damien hing ee Madsen 2005, 4-5. © ‘Alough Dar eencsto Nia ais pers hareunay bea eda meaning wba there {beinicenee ln cerain, and He 199499 makers nget ese for Do's bingo ane spending {nach ofhisyouh in Rome. Te noun thar Cais Dio wed the name “Cocca” and as fun ct wo Dio Chorin ely bused on confison inthe Byeancne schol ado. ‘Son tis poin Going age though noc sce by eg Schmi997, 57 For Di’ tudo ‘Nica avin by hr work sep. 289 bow.8 Introduction defining clement of his identity, as he presents it in his work, is his member- ship in the Roman senatorial order. Unlike Tacitus, Pollio of Sallust, to name a few more frequently cited exemplars of senatorial historiography, Cassius Dio was born into the ordo. His father, Cassius Apronians, gov- ered several provinces and was probably a consul late in the reign of Commodus.” Dio himself served twice as consul, for the first time probably around 209, and again in 229, and his work gives details of several admi- nistrative posts he held in the 220s, His main literary product is singularly appropriate to this career and background: it is a Greek-language example ‘of a specifically Roman genre, the senatorial annalisic history. Its 80 books. ‘of which we have 26 in more o less complete form and substantial excerpts and summaries of many others, deal with events from Romulus’ time down to ap 229, and show a closer engagement with the Latin historical tradition, both on formal and thematic levels, than any previous Greek-language account of Roman history Div isthe frst author we know of since Livy to create full-scale narrative linking his own time to the entire course of both Republican and Imperial history. His view of the contemporary scene embodies the Severan aristo- crat’s nostalgia for the Antonine age. He famously claims (72.(71].36.4 {EV)) that after the death of Marcus, the empire moves from an age of gold to one of iron and rust. His history, which he appears to have conceived in the late 90s and produced over the following three decades, aims to put both the current and the previous dynasty in a larger perspective, and in panicular co stress the continuity of Roman governmental forms, going back to Augustus and ultimately to the Republic. Dio’s approach to what he seesas the decline going on around him is o write akind of history in which clements 0” political theory and static description are integrated into overall narrative. The effect is to highlight che contrast between the contingent ‘world of rulers and events on the one hand, and on the other what Dio posits as the constant underlying realities. For him, the Antonine era was the time when the surface reality of day-to-day events was most closely in touch with the deeper political meaning of the Roman stae as established by Augustus. In his own time the relationship has become ever more strained, and Dio's narrative recasts Severan nostalgia as a product of that strain. ‘The same nostalgia, otherwise directed, can be seen in the works of Philostratus, a man whom Dio probably knew at least slightly, but whose 2 orthe isc se Bare 84 242 Mle both Appian and Vales do hive accounts of event in both the epble and the post ‘Angoan Pane in both cs one side ofthe dvd kate fr as del han ac oe. Authors and history 9 narrative perspective on the Severan era is very different. The two authors are near-exact contemporaries, Pilostratus was also born in the x60s, appa rently on Lemnos, The works that will be examined in depth in this book seem to date from the 220s.** He is a hard man to fit into generic categories: he is not usually looked at as a historian, but calling him a biographer would entirely exclude such works as the Heroicus and Gymnastcus, and belies how different his two “biographical” works are from each other. Those two ‘works, the Apollonizs and the Sophists, will be considered in Chapeers 4 and 5 respectively.>” While neither one would meet any formal definition of ancient historiography, and Philostratus would not have thought of himself as working in the same gente as Thucydides, each in its own way represents @ very unusual form of narrative of the Roman Empire. The works both deal ‘with idealized figures who embocy Hellenic cultural or religious phenomena. The Apollonius isa highly fantastic account of the adventures of Apollonius of Tyana, a first-century AD religious celebrity who, while he really existed, cannot in real life have very closely resembled the transformative historical actor portrayed by Philostratus. The Sophists is a series of ancodotal and doxographical accounts of public performers of extempore declamations. Neither of these works has been ignored by scholars, but they have ‘generally been either rcad separately as evidence for rather different phenom- ‘ena, of read along with the non-narrative works into an overall picture of Philostratus as an author and of his agenda within the world of the Second Sophistic, the cultural milieu to which he gave a name.* I will highlight here several shared features of the two works that would have made them stand ‘out to contemporaries as a new departure from the cultural norms laid down in the second century. The frst is simply their subject matter: both works ‘make claims for the importance of their subject that would have struck. ‘contemporaries as radical, or at least eccentric. More striking, however, is how Philostratus advances those claims by placing his subjects within narra- tives that take place against a background of concrete Roman political events and characters. Thus the phenomenon, very unusual in pagan literature, of narratives in which Roman emperors and the Roman power structure have a ‘major but still peripheral role. ‘The main characters and the cultural questions > Forthelikelbood of Do and Phloata being acquainted, ee Moscoich 2004. For the dating of Philos’ works and her stibuon, ce Appendix $2, Both of Philoseatur’ quat-biographical works wil here be refered by the one-word es of ‘onvesence and in erences y the inns VA and V5 Tesould be noted that Potraus himelE ‘ver speaks is wn works a i, that he appeas wo cnvson a non-bogrphia tile forthe For further deal, sep. 58 below. 1» The separate tbllogaphics wil be addased inthe respective chaps. For thelr eynhetie, approche Anderson 1986, Bll 2c00 and the inoductry ess in Bowie and Finer 2009.20 Introduction they address are presented as Greek, and the two works together set forth a grand narretive in which Hellenic culture is revived from a dormant state by Apollonius and then sees a flourishing embodied and promoted by the Sophists, which reaches its peak with the figure of Hcrodes Atticus. Where Dio used the Greek language in a work whose form and cantentare essentially Roman, Philostratus constructs a Roman background against which to explore questions of Hellenic identity that Greek authors of the previous century had tended to deal with by projecting their discourse back into a world before or outside of Roman domination. For Philostratus, the story of Hellenic civilization isnot to be told ina Periclean setting, butin an Antonine one, except that in his version the mid-second century isthe age not of the Antonines but of Herodes, His own time, into which the Sephits reaches, is similarly not the Severan era, but rather a late extension of Herodes’ influence, jn which the third and fourth generation of the great man’s students maintain the glory that he created. Dynastic change is thus occluded, but the continuity that Philostrarus postulates is very different from that asserted by the emper- ors, and as such represents as much of a departure as does Dio’s flat dismissal of the official line. Herodian is a more shadowy figure than either Dio or Philostratus, and this isa reflection of the kind of history he writes, We have no meaningful knowledge of his geographical origins or social status, and even the time at which he is writin is hard to pin down, although the late 2403 seems to be the likeliest option, making him at least ten years younger than the other ‘wo authors. Our lack of knowledge stems from his own reticence. Dio and Philostratus both develop quite complex authorial personae in order to identify themselves more closely with whatever elements of Greco-Roman culture they present in their narratives as central, Herodian, by contrast, isa self-effacing narrator who seems deliberately to avoid any identification with specific clements of the world outside his text. He is the author of an cight-book history of the emperors from Commodus to Gordian III, and that is all chat he is. That history is in its way, the most radical and pessimistic of the three being considered here. It is explicitly an orthodox history with none of the formal innovations or unexpected cultural stances that would immediately have struck readers of Philostratus and Dio, For Herodian, however, the formal neatness of his work serves only to provide a contrast with its content, which is profoundly chaotic, not only in the sense thac a great many wars and upheavals take place, but also in the confusion and misdirection that afflict Herodian’s characters. His world is a night- imarish place in which characters good and bad alike are usually powerless to dictate the course of events, and have their expectations and intentions Authors and history Ey defeated at every turn not by the intentions of more astute characters, but bya general refusal ofthe world to function according to understood rules. Herodian presents this chaos as a specifically post-Antonine, or rather post- Marcus, phenomenon. The rules chat no longer apply are the rules of Marcus’ time, and within the world of Herodian’s narrative the rupture with that time is complete. The only element of continuity is the very form of that narrative. Where Herodian’s characters are irretrievably cut off from the idealized past, Herodian himself can still produce literature that adheres to the canons of that past, and the pleasure that his readers derive from that literature is their only link to that better world. In finding a historical context for this material, the traditional method has been to concentrate on the author. Such approaches read texts a5 expressions of the opinions and outlock of the historical individuals who wrote them. These individual traits are relevant to the wider society inas- much as one can discern, both from explicit statements and from external prosopographical data, the socio-cultural characteristics that the author shared with his peers and readers. Such approaches have already been profitably applied to Dio and to Philostratus, while Herodian simply does not give us enough information about himself to allow them much scope. In a study of these three authors together, however, this essentially bio- {graphical method can only give an incomplete picture. This is because the personal backgrounds and explicitly stated opinions of the authors do not actualy differ very widely, so that any study based on those aspects might properly account for similarities in thei texts, but not for the differences, although it is those differences that are the more interesting. We have already noted the basic ideological commonalities these men shared with fone another and with their rulers. All three wrote in Greek, had personal and family connections to the eastern half of the empire and had experience of the imperial court and administration.*° They all value Hellenic cultural heritage, atleast to the extent of writing in Atticizing Greek, but they have also fully internalized the political and social order created by the Roman = epee a epleni t parent teen ee pine ere eet taaeafpesneshan meer oma tna inca tise eed Sica uneamtcne + ef tow sanens en Heri’ cnr sao penn pes piers cis ec tas pe eeereerere sects Steelers eget te etegonsiaeraeremiee tome Sie esa eaecrece2 Introduction Empire. They all take monarchical government for granted but prefer emperors to maintain a respectful relationship with their elite subjects. They all venerate Marcus, tolerate Septimius Severus and execrate Flagabalus. ‘Naturally chere are differences of degree and emphasis, but on the whole simi sites oreo a three authors are as similar in hackground as were Arrian, Appian and Pausanias in the time of their rents, dnd if anything more diniarin the omick opine Nonetheless, they write profoundly. -nt narratives from one another, and from anything that the earlier three authors could have written. The difference lies not in the opinions they express about high politics, but in the way that they conceive of the relationships between those political events and the wider world centered around themselves. Each text’s world is based on different assumptions about what the key defining characteristics of Romanness ate, and abou: how these characteristics have changed between the idealized past and the imperfect present. Each work has its own con- ‘ception ofthe relationship of rulers to ruled, Greek to Roman and author to subject matter. Their works do not usually contradict one another on points of fact, but if one were to read them each as an argument for a given thesis and asstume that ideal readers were supposed to give fll assent to that thesis, then it is difficult to imagine one person assenting to all four. Traditional approaches do generally make that assumption, and thus we would get a scenario in which the elite is fragmented into “Dio people” who identified with the Senate, as opposed to “Philostratus people” who identified with Hellenic heritage, or “Herodian people” who were alienated from both. ‘These fissures would have to be mapped on to the relatively small differences in social background berween the three men, so that Dio writes primarily for his fellow senators, Philostratus for cultural professionals, and Herodian presumably for other faceless ciphers masquerading as minor bureaucrats." ‘To some extent this may actually have been the authors’ conscious intent, and I do indeed contend that these texts demonstrate the fragmentation of a previously ideologically unified elite. Stil, in a case lke this, an author-based approach tends toward redue- tionism and determinism, as if any two people who fit into the same socio cultural categories would agree on the same narrative. There is, however, {good reason to suppose that Dio exaggerates the extent to which al senators * Ia the cae of Dio scholars in i dsgee markedly concerning the socal and cultural satus of his intended readeshlp. Gowing 199, 292-5: iw 994, 420-4 and Por 21,334 se D's flow senators a primary address, A he other exten, Aalders g86, 290-1 Ser D's reaps ‘monoglo:povinal Gre Authors and history 4 ‘would agree with his arguments, and that the same is true for Philostrarus and sophists.** And after all, most potential readers were neither senators nor sophists. How can we use these texts to explore anything but the restricted social circles of their authors? It is for this reason that this will be a study not of authors, but of narratives, and it will concentrate mainly on the internal dynamics of literary works rather than the immediate circumstances of their composition. I will therefore be referring to such literary constructs as implied authors and ideal audiences, and to historical narrators on the page rather than to historians in external reality. This sacrifices a certain apparent clarity ~ it is more straightforward to write about what real people did and thought — but gains in breadth and complexity. Instead of looking for the dogmatically held opinions of one man, I am ‘es available to any reader of the time. Like everyone at all times, the inhabitants of the Severan empire cteated all kinds of narratives to make sense of changing circumstances and to define the identity categories into which they placed themselves and one another.” They did so within a set of discourses, parameters for defining what kinds of knowledge and communication were possible and autho- titative in a given cultural setting These parameters were limited but dynamic; thus the literary texts we will be reading both reflect existing discourses, and also add to chem inerementally. By creating literary worlds, they suggest new ways for their recders to understand their own worlds. “Thus its not a question of readers fully and consciously agreeing with any theses put forth by the various authors. The authors do indeed propound such theses, and to varying degrees they personally believed them and wished their readers to do likewise. But the cultural significance of a work isnot limited to the sum toral of people whom it persuades to believe a given proj . Even if most readers of Dio's history did not completely and in all circumstances share his senatorial viewpoint, they could nonetheless incorporate it partially and in some circumstances into the narratives that they themselves constructed of all sorts of events. At other times, for other purposes, the same readers might identify more with Philostratus’ narrative of Hellenic culture-heroes, without being critically troubled by the logical © Specify, Dio tends o presen his version fhe senza thos as more uve than it relly ‘for which so Kemet, alo Malini db 2009, while Pils cals thatthe Sphis {Tce al the feat practioner nthe empire, whereas ia fact includes elatieynarow “ction, mos of then linked pagal v0 Heroes Arius and thu wo hla for which se Eshleman 207 1254 © -Anest encapsulation ofthe difrence between hese swo complementary approaches tothe pas can ‘besen in the approaches of expectvely Greblin 2010 (emphasing the phenomenology of me) tnd Gelhe 2010 (ong + model deed from ethno socolog)