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Review of Hafner, Lukians Schrift ‘Das traurige Los der Gelehrten’

2020, Gnomon 92.3

Review of Markus Hafner, Lukians Schrift ‘Das traurige Los der Gelehrten’. Einführung und Kommentar zu De Mercede Conductis Potentium Familiaribus, lib. 36. Stuttgart: Steiner 2017. 411 S. (Hermes. Einzelschrift. 110.). Having to spend more on clothes than you can afford in order to impress a prospective employer, breaking out in a sweat when they ask you a question, and, subsequently, feeling completely squeezed after pay nego- tiations. These experiences are all too familiar to those on the (academic) job market today, yet they come straight from Lucian’s work De Mercede Conductis (also known by the English title On Salaried Posts in Great Houses). The painfully entertaining piece is a dissuasion (apotreptic) warning its (probably fictional) addressee Timokles against taking up a position as a teacher in a rich Roman household, and was written in the second century CE. The work has now for the first time received an in-depth scholarly commentary, published in the ‘Hermes Einzelschriften’ series and submitted as a dissertation to the Ludwig-Maximilians- Universität in Munich in the winter semester 2015/2016.

GNOMON 92, 2020 HEFT 3 B 20953 KRITISCHE ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR DIE GESAMTE KLASSISCHE ALTERTUMSWISSENSCHAFT HERAUSGEGEBEN VON MARTIN BENTZ · RUTH BIELFELDT PETER EICH · HANS-JOACHIM GEHRKE CHRISTOPH HORN · MARTIN HOSE JOSEPH MARAN · KATHARINA VOLK PAUL ZANKER SCHRIFTLEITUNG MARTIN HOSE (VERANTWORTLICH) UND OLIVER SCHELSKE f e au b a g de Aus ine- chbeck. l n O ar y. elibr 92. BAND 2020 Sonderdruck VERLAG C.H.BECK MÜNCHEN HEFT 3 Vorlagen und Nachrichten than rules of conduct prevents eudaimonism from providing firm guidance to agents who must decide what to do in particular situations even if they do not themselves possess complete (or any) virtue. As Annas indicates, there are promising lines of argument which the eudaemonist can use to defend her position against both of these criticisms. However, an additional, prior problem needs to be addressed, that of whether and how a human life has a single end. One thought taken from Bernard Williams is that human life is too multifarious and diverse in joys, sorrows and achievements to have a single organizing purpose. 1 To deal with this question the conceptual resources of the human function as described by Plato, Aristotle and other ancient philosophers may be mobilized. If humans by nature achieve excellence as they carry out a distinctive activity of living rationally, this may address the worry that human life cannot fruitfully be oriented toward a single end. It would also strengthen the responses given to the other two criticisms mentioned earlier; the human function is arguably best achieved in the life of virtue, and the requirements of this human function will direct us towards particular human actions and away from others. Philadelphia Andrew Payne Markus Hafner: Lukians Schrift ‘Das traurige Los der Gelehrten’. Einführung und Kommentar zu De Mercede Conductis Potentium Familiaribus, lib. 36. Stuttgart: Steiner 2017. 411 S. (Hermes. Einzelschrift. 110.). Having to spend more on clothes than you can afford in order to impress a prospective employer, breaking out in a sweat when they ask you a question, and, subsequently, feeling completely squeezed after pay negotiations. These experiences are all too familiar to those on the (academic) job market today, yet they come straight from Lucian’s work De Mercede Conductis (also known by the English title On Salaried Posts in ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 1 Bernard Williams, ‘Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy’ (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1985), 46– 53. 273 Great Houses). The painfully entertaining piece is a dissuasion (apotreptic) warning its (probably fictional) addressee Timokles against taking up a position as a teacher in a rich Roman household, and was written in the second century CE. The work has now for the first time received an in-depth scholarly commentary, published in the ‘Hermes Einzelschriften’ series and submitted as a dissertation to the Ludwig-MaximiliansUniversität in Munich in the winter semester 2015/2016. The publication comes shortly after the publication of the author’s annotated translation of Lucian’s piece Apologia, which, for reasons I return to below, forms a diptych with De Mercede Conductis. 2 Hafner is to be praised for his prolific scholarship showcasing these relatively under appreciated works. In addition to a commentary the book contains an overview of scholarship on De Mercede Conductis, an expansive introduction, as well as a text and translation. The text is taken from Macleod’s edition except for about a dozen small changes, which are listed together in the introduction (85) and discussed in the commentary; 3 in most of the cases Hafner reverts to readings from pre-Macleod editions. Hafner’s aim for his commentary is to place Lucian’s text in the relevant literary and cultural discourses, moving away from the earlier focus on extracting biographical information about the author from his work. With this approach Hafner follows, as he acknowledges, the general trend in contemporary Lucian scholarship and in the study of the Second Sophistic. Hafner’s introduction (23–85) contains a schematic structure and summary of the work as a whole, a discussion of the realities of life in the Roman East for teachers of philosophy and rhetoric, a discussion of the Roman house as it features in the piece, some aspects of its rhetoric and connections to other ancient literature, a brief analysis of style and language, and a discussion of the transmission of the text. The author takes a nuanced position in the main debates about ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 2 Hafner, M. 2017. ‘Lukians Apologie. Einleitung, Übersetzung und Erläuterungen’. Classica Monacensia 50. Tübingen. 3 Macleod, M.D. 1974. ‘Luciani Opera’. Vol. 2. Oxford. GNOMON 3/92/2020 DOI: 10.17104/0017-1417-2020-3-273 © Verlag C.H.Beck 2020 Autorenbeleg zum persönlichen Gebrauch aus: Gnomon 92|2020/3 274 Gnomon Bd. 92, 2020 De Mercede Conductis. So, although he believes it possible that the piece was influenced by Juvenal’s Satires, he agrees that the similarities could just as easily be due to the fact that the two authors drew on the same social phenomena and discourses (12). Further, he argues against the older interpretation of the work as criticism of Rome on Lucian’s part. Instead Hafner understands the piece as a critique of the failure of social mobility through paideia, which reflects discussions and questions prevalent at the time rather than Lucian’s personal views (19–20, 40–41). The strongest section of the introduction is the discussion of how De Mercede Conductis is embedded in earlier literary traditions. Hafner shows that Lucian fashions his first person speaker after the mendacious Odysseus to parody historiographical «Beglaubigungsstrategien» (48–51): the unnamed narrator tells the story of the plight of the private teacher out of order, actually signaling that he will do this with Odysseus’ own words from the Odyssey, and he relies on witnesses who are Odysseus-like victims exaggerating and editing the testimonies of their suffering. Secondly, he traces strong resonances between the visual aspects of Plato’s description of the cave in the Republic and Lucian’s description of the teacher’s progression through the house of the wealthy Roman patron in De Mercede Conductis. Also, the closing remark of Lucian’s piece, ‘god is not to blame (anaitios), the blame belongs to he who has chosen’ is an almost verbatim quotation from the myth of Er in Republic, where the phrase concerns the choice of one’s daimon (74–78). The allusion underlines how high the stakes are in De Mercede Conductis: the speaker asks Timokles, and by extension the audience, what kind of pepaideumenos they will be, free or ‘enslaved’ to a rich Roman patron? For Hafner these kinds of quotations and references are not just «Bildungsausweise» serving to show off the author’s paideia and to challenge the audience, but rather they together construct Greek literature as an «Erinnerungsraum» within the text (79). The connection between De Mercede Conductis and Apologia exists in the fact that Lucian presents the latter piece as a defense against the possible charge of hy- pocrisy: the first person speaker of Apologia has taken up a position in the imperial service in Egypt, but how could he after critiquing Greeks working for Romans so harshly in De Mercede Conductis? The speaker answers this charge by making a distinction between working for a private Roman individual, which amounts to slavery, and working for the emperor, which is actually honorable (Apol. 11–12). In his analysis of the first person speaker of De Mercede Conductis Hafner argues that his ethical appeal is undermined entirely both by the already mentioned parody of «Beglaubigungsstrategien», and by the alleged hypocrisy that is addressed in Apologia (56, 79f). But here Hafner’s analysis is at risk of stepping into a pitfall common in interpretations of ambiguous satirical speakers. Cancelling out the narrator’s voice renders the satirical text empty: to what is the audience expected to respond? 1 Ultimately the narrator’s appeal, as problematic and ambiguous as it may be, is not erased. The work still forces the audience to consider the place of paideia in society, whether or not they find themselves in Timokles’ shoes. Apologia is also important because it explicitly discusses the contemporary reception setting of De Mercede Conductis. Lucian has the speaker of Apologia say (through his imagined critic Sabinus) that the latter work was in fact first performed in front of a large crowd, and subsequently circulated in written form among educated readers (Apol. 3). We need not take Lucian at his word when he says De Mercede Conductis drew a large live audience, but we have little reason to doubt that he did perform the work. 2 While Hafner acknowledges this in ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 1 On this issue, specifically in Juvenal scholarship, see Uden, J. 2015. ‘The Invisible Satirist. Lucian and Second-Century Rome’. Oxford: 3–8. 2 On performance of Lucian’s dialogues specifically see Bellinger, A.R. 1928. ‘Lucian’s Dramatic Technique’. New Haven; cf. Ureña Bracero, J. 1995. ‘El diálogo de Luciano; ejecucion, naturaleza, y procedimientos de humor’. Amsterdam. On performance of Lucian’s works in general (speeches and dialogues) see Mheallaigh, K. ní 2014. ‘Reading Fiction with Lucian: Fakes, Freaks, and HyperrealGNOMON 3/92/2020 DOI: 10.17104/0017-1417-2020-3-273 © Verlag C.H.Beck 2020 Autorenbeleg zum persönlichen Gebrauch aus: Gnomon 92|2020/3 Vorlagen und Nachrichten 1 his publication on Apologia, in his work on De Mercede Conductis he consistently considers only the reading audience of the piece (e.g.: 47, 53, 64, 67f, 172, 201). In this way he gives us just part of the picture. For instance, when discussing the many direct addresses in the piece, and moments where the audience is included through hortatory first person plural verbs (‘Let us…!’) he discusses the effect that these features would have had on readers (e.g.: 127f, 141f, 162f, 179). Clearly, such figures can work to draw in a reading audience, but the effect is even more powerful in a live setting, where the performer would be speaking to his audience members directly. Hafner’s discussion of Plato’s Republic as a significant intertext for De Mercede Conductis opens up a promising line of inquiry for this work, and, in my view, the author could profitably have expanded this part of his discussion. If the patron’s house is made to resemble the cave from the Republic, what are the possible implications of this? Is the point simply that entering a wealthy Roman household condemns the pepaideumenos to doing sham philosophy and to trafficking in paideia for appearances’ sake? Or is this allusion also meant to say something about the (im)possibility of doing ‘real’ and ‘free’ philosophy in the world outside these prisons? Secondly, the quote from Republic at the closing of the piece is prefigured in two moments (Merc. 3 and 4) where the narrator refers to himself as being ‘free of blame’ (anaitios). He warns the addressee(s) of the dangers of being a private teacher: if someone still chooses this path they will only have themselves to blame for the consequences. Once these two uses of anaitios are capped with the Republic quote about the theos anaitios at the closing of the piece (Merc. 42), it becomes clear that the speaker has fashioned himself, rather unsympathetically, as a figure of godlike innocence. Hafner’s German translation, which is printed facing the text, is easy to read, yet hews closely to the Greek. The commentary ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– ity’. Cambridge: 146–7n12; cf. Baumbach, M.; Möllendorff, P. von 2017. ‘Ein literarischer Prometheus. Lukian aus Samosata und die Zweite Sophistik’. Heidelberg: 222. 1 Hafner, M. 2017 (see above). 275 follows the text and translation. At the beginning of each chapter Hafner includes a brief summary of the contents before proceeding to his very detailed notes. The author gives us a philological commentary aimed at scholars and advanced students with an interest in the text (there is no help with the language, and most of the passages from other Lucianic works, or other ancient authors are left untranslated). Hafner masterfully fills out the literary web that Lucian drew on to write his piece, contextualizing De Mercede Conductis within Lucian’s corpus, within Greek literature from Homer up to the second century CE, and within the social and literary (Greek and Latin) environment of the early Roman Empire. In addition to making these intertextual connections, Hafner is highly attuned to the details of Lucian’s language and stylistics, and helps us appreciate Lucian’s skill in this regard. Hafner’s commentary will from now on be a major resource to scholars working on Lucian and on imperial Greek literature, and will hopefully stimulate further research on De Mercede Conductis and its counterpart Apologia. Together these pieces tell us a lot about reading and performance culture in the Roman East, and, if we strip away the layers of exaggeration, about private teachers in wealthy Roman households. But they also force us to continue to think about how societies value education and inquiry: in Lucian, for the prospective teacher his ‘soul and whole life’ are in the balance, while for the rich patron paideia is merely ‘quite a pleasant pastime’ (Merc. 11). Hanover, NH (USA) Inger N.I. Kuin Christian Criste: Voluntas auditorum. Forensische Rollenbilder und emotionale Performanzen in den spätrepublikanischen quaestiones. Heidelberg: Winter 2018. 404 S. (Kalliope. 15.). Winning the goodwill of the audience (voluntas auditorum) is the aim of any orator because goodwill is one of the main paths towards persuasion. In his discussion of the exordium in his youthful work De inventione, Cicero discusses ways in which to gain the goodwill of the audience, mainly in a forensic context (auditorum volun- GNOMON 3/92/2020 DOI: 10.17104/0017-1417-2020-3-273 © Verlag C.H.Beck 2020 Autorenbeleg zum persönlichen Gebrauch aus: Gnomon 92|2020/3