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
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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
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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
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2
Hafner, M. 2017. ‘Lukians Apologie.
Einleitung, Übersetzung und Erläuterungen’. Classica Monacensia 50. Tübingen.
3
Macleod, M.D. 1974. ‘Luciani Opera’.
Vol. 2. Oxford.
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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
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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
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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