Thirteenth Oration of Dio Chrysostom

The Thirteenth Oration of Dio Chrysostom: Complexity and Simplicity, Rhetoric and
Moralism, Literature and Life

Author(s): John Moles
Source: The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 125 (2005), pp. 112-138
Published by: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies
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Journal of Hellenic Studies 125 (2005) 112-38
THE THIRTEENTH ORATION OF DIO CHRYSOSTOM: COMPLEXITY

AND SIMPLICITY, RHETORIC AND MORALISM, LITERATURE AND LIFE*
Abstract: This paper takes the Thirteenth Oration as a test case of many of the questions raised by the career and
works of Dio Chrysostom. The speech's generic creativity and philosophical expertise are demonstrated. Historical
problems are clarified. Analysis shows how Dio weaves seemingly diverse themes into a complex unity. New
answers are given to two crucial interpretative problems. Exploration of Dio's self-representation and of his handling
of internal and external audiences and of temporal and spatial relationships leads to the conclusion that he has a serious
philosophical purpose: the advocacy of Antisthenic/Cynic paideia in place of the current paideia both of Romans and
Athenians. Paradoxically, this clever, ironic and sophisticated speech deconstructs its own apparent values in the
interests of simple, practical moralizing.
FROM his own day on, Dio of Prusa has always been a controversial figure: variously character-
ized as sophist, philosopher (whether Cynic, Stoic, Platonist or general Socratic), sophistic
philosopher, philosophical and political turn-coat, earnest moralist, relentless self-advertiser,
friend and critic of Rome, counsellor of emperors, middling local politician, literary and philo-
sophical bantam, of the same stature, among philosophers, as Plutarch or Epictetus, or, among
literary figures, as Lucian and the novelists. All these questions converge in Or. 13: in von
Arnim's judgement, 'one of the most beautiful of Dio's pieces',l but also one of his most
demanding.
STRUCTURE
The structure of the speech can be variously analysed.

There is a simple bipartite division between the Greek world (1-28) and the Roman (29-37).
From a more detailed thematic perspective, the structure is tripartite. The first part (1-13
relates the decree of exile passed against Dio, his fluctuating responses, consultation of Delphi
embarkation on his wanderings and beginning to be regarded as a philosopher. The second (14
28) summarizes the philosophical teaching that he then dispensed: his virtual and admitted quo-
tation of Socrates' teachings. The third (29-37) summarizes the philosophical teachings, again
avowedly Socratic, that he gave in Rome.
But if one analyses how the speech achieves its enormous progression from Dio's account of
his exile to a philosophical programme for the salvation of Rome, a quadripartite structure
emerges: (1) exile raises the problem of Dio's own moral response and triggers his wanderings
(1-11); (2) on these wanderings, people ask Dio about good and evil and the duties of man (12);
(3) in reply, he imitates Socrates, who discoursed about money, education, the city, the necessary
connection of private and public, concord, the need for a good teacher, and the valuelessness of
imperialism (13-28); (4) in Rome, he applies these Socratic categories to the case of corrupt con-
temporary Rome (29-37).
None of these analyses, however, adequately conveys the depth and detail of the speech's
organic unity, which will gradually become clear.
There is one structural problem. The speech ends (37; Dio is summarizing what he said to
the Romans): 'I did not, however, say that it was difficult for them to be educated, "since" (I
* Versions were given at the Newcastle Mike

Classics
Trapp for commenting on other versions; and JHS's
referees for stringent critiques. Surviving errors, and
Seminar (5 December 2001), the International Plutarch
translations, are all my own work. The text is Cohoon
Society (Nijmegen, 2 May 2002) and the colloquium
'Greek Bodies, Roman Control' (Corpus Christi (1939), cross-referenced with Verrengia (2000).
College,
Oxford, 18 May 2002). I thank: all who commented I Von
on Arnim (1898) 334.
those occasions; Paolo Desideri, Malcolm Schofield and
THE THIRTEENTH ORATION OF DIO CHRYSOSTOM 113
maintained) "when you were better than nobody in the past, you learned easily a
things that you wished: I speak of horsemanship, bowmanship and hoplite w
original ending must be lost,2 but analysis will show that the speech is substantial
One problem with the progression of the argument must be deferred.3
CONTEXT AND DATE
That the place of delivery was Athens, focus of a third of the speech (14-28), cannot immediate
be proved (the ancient title In Athens Concerning Exile may only be an inference), yet will seem
persuasive. The speech was made after Dio was exiled (1). Most scholars date the speech after
the end of the exile (AD 96), partly because the great majority of Dio's extant works are post
exilic and partly because of Dio's description in section 1:
when it came to me to be exiled on account of a stated [keyojouvrii] friendship with a man who was
not base [&v6pb; oi -novipob],4 but who was very close to those who were then fortunate and ruling
[,c6v ... z6te e 8aitg6vov -re izai &pX6vrov] but who was put to death because of those things because
of which he seemed blessed to many and indeed to practically everyone - because of his relationshi
and kinship with those people, this accusation [airir;] having been brought against me, that indeed
[8ii] I was the man's friend and counsellor, for this is the custom of tyrants, just as it is among the
Scythians to bury cupbearers and cooks and concubines with their kings, so to those who are being pu
to death by them to add others for no reason [aizdr].
These scholars take 'those who were then fortunate and ruling' as an allusion to a now defun
Flavian dynasty,5 and they believe in the Flavian contacts that Dio himself claimed.6
But in an influential attack upon that belief,7 Sidebottom takes 'ruling' as referring merely t
'leading Romans', as sometimes elsewhere in Dio.8 This seems impossible. The phrase shou
refer to a general category: close kinship to 'the then dynasty' makes sense (such kinship did
undo some); close kinship to 'the then leading Romans' does not. The man's very high rank is
further supported by his 'seeming blessed to many and indeed to practically everyone', by h
being compared to 'kings' and by the clear allusions to Herodotus 1.5.3-4, 6.1, and 30.2-33 (th
mutability of ea68tatovif, Croesus the 'tyrant', the deceptiveness of worldly E6attgovia and
'calling no man happy until he is dead'). As in Herodotus, 'the then fortunate' were 'fortunat
only in their self-estimation and that of the world, and the reality comes in 24, where Dio's trans-
parent allegory9 makes Domitian a 8aL~ov and his subjects KaK0o8aigoveg, and in 31, where
Dio tells the Romans they need a good education 'if they are going to be fortunate (E68caitoveq
in actuality and in truth, and not, as now, in the opinion of the many'. In 33, the full phras
ebaig ove~ KQx ~ipxovrte is applied to the Romans in general, of the 'self-rule' necessary for
6 7.66: [before the exile] I knew the homes and

2 Reiske (1798); von Amim (1893) xxxivff.; Cohoon
(1939) 120-1; Desideri (1978) 254; Highet (1983)
tables80;
of satraps and kings'; development in
Verrengia (2000) 169. Momigliano (1951) 152 (1975) 972; (1969) 258-60;
3 P. 124. Jones (1973) 307-8; (1978) 14-17, 44-5, 123; Desideri
4 Generally taken morally; Whitmarsh (2001) 160 (1978) 138-9; Moles (1978) 84-5, 93; (1990) 333;
and Moles (2003a) 190 prefer the socio-political 'of no (2003a) 189-91.
mean station'. The latter is guaranteed by the contrast 7 Sidebottom (1996), himself influenced by Rawson
(1989), followed by Claassen (1999) 271 n.115, 291
between rnovrlpo) and -Ua&xtla6VwV tE K ci d&p6vrwv, the
former is at least retrospectively implicit: 'not base' n.33; Salmeri (2000) 61 n.33; Whitmarsh (2001) 156.
essays both. 8 Sidebottom (1996) 451 and nn.35-6, cf Dio 1.44,
5 Emperius (1847) 103-8; von Arnim (1898) 230; 13.33 (not the same usage, though thematically related to
Desideri (1978) 189; Jones (1978) 138; Verrengia (2000) 13.1: discussion in the text), 39.4, 79.1 and Mason (1974)
74. 110-15; cf Cohoon (1939) 90: 'high officials'.
9 See n. 115 below.
114 JOHN MOLES
genuine good fortune and secure rul
e6aigtJove; Ki 9ipxovre; of 1 should

spond to the 'tyrants'. Moreover, as
at the end of the speech create an imp
rule of the former, a contrast that
'r6gime change'. Reconstruction of
likely delivery date.11
GENERIC AFFILIATIONS
Following the ancient title, scholars have taken Or. 13 as a Hep't pi4q, and appreciation
Dio's handling of exilic topoi has grown steadily. Whereas Haisler and Doblehofer detect only
one topos,12 Verrengia sees that Dio covers some topoi by implication,13 and Claassen that, in t
opening, consolatory section, Dio refashions the usual writer/addressee relationship into an
internal dialectic, with Dio himself both questioner and questioned.14 Whitmarsh no
numerous reversals of topoi: creation of conversational immediacy through the omission of
formal prologue (1), failure to attribute the exile to philosophical Rtaxpproia (1), apparently
'accidental' becoming a philosopher (3; 11-12), and the simplicity of the means by which Dio
'discovers' philosophical truths (2; 3; 7).15
More could be said. Exilic cosmopolitanism is reflected in Dio's claim that competent philo
sophical teachers can be Greeks, Romans, Scythians or Indians (32). Exilic rejection of Athen
civic ideologyl6 is additionally pointed when Athenians are both internal and external audienc
Whereas exile characteristically entails physical separation and philosophical alienation from
'the city', Dio the dramatic character ends up in Rome (29ff.) and Dio the speaker speaks in
Athens. While Dio preserves the traditional cosmopolitan sentiment (32), he 'homes in'
Rome as the central place of the earth (36). These last examples illustrate the challenging-ne
of Dio's response to the exile genre: the logic of the speech progressively moves away from
and finally 'rejects' it, the focus becoming ever more civic.
For numerous other genres also signify. Philosophical autobiographyl7 and protreptic (16, 2
are obvious. There are also affinities with a Floktze8ial and with a Flp' 7ratxitS;. Debate
dialectic between old and new types of nxat86Ei is a theme of non-philosophical works such
Aristophanes' Clouds (to which Dio alludes).19 The speech also has features from epic20 a
tragedy,21 with Dio 'hero' of both.22 Herodotean and Thucydidean allusions23 import a histor
graphical quality, as of a narrative formally 'true', imbued with high seriousness and moral
10 P. 125; this contrast is also structural in17theJouan (1993b).
Kingships: Jones (1978) 118-22; Moles (1983a) passim;
18 Similarly, the Borystheniticus: Schofield (1991)
(1990) passim. 57-92; Moles (1995b), esp. 191; and the Euboicus: Moles
11 Von Amim (1898) 331, 334; Jones (1978) (1995b)
53-4,
178-9.
135; Sheppard (1984) 162, 173; further support19for 19, a
23 - Nub. 965, 967, 985-6 (p. 130).
post-exilic dating in sustained parallels with 20 4the
- Od. 1.48-59; 81; 10 - Od. 11.119-34; 10-11: p.
123 and122,
Kingships (nn.10, 101), especially Or. 1 (nn.117, n.121.
129, 135, 143, 183, 186, 189, 217, 220), crucial parallels
21 Cf. the shrewd allusion of Dio's biographer
with Or. 79 (p. 129), and points of contact with (VS 488) to 'the man's going off stage [par-
Philostratus
odos]
Olympicus (nn.192, 219) and Or. 72 (n.167); to the Getic tribes'; 1 - Hdt. 1.32.1; 2-4 - Diog.
contra
n.133. Laert. 6.38 (Diogenes' tragic verses); 2, 20 (emphasis on
12 Hdisler (1935) 37, 55; Doblehofer (1987) 42. io~ruXia); 5 - Soph. El. 233-6 (note t6nov for the MSS
13 Verrengia (2000) 87-8, 135.
v6otov); 14 ('like a god from a machine'); 20-1 (disquisi-
14 Claassen (1999) 25, 166. tion on tragedy).
15 Whitmarsh (2001) 160-2. 22 P. 124.
16 Whitmarsh (2001) 142-5, 151 (Musonius); 172, 23 1 Hdt. 1.32; 1 (Scythian royal burials) Hdt.
175-8 (Favorinus); Socrates'/Dio's rejection of the epi- 4.71.4; 6-8 - Hdt. 1.55; 1 - Thuc. 5.26; 6 - Thuc. 1.70.3;
taphios tradition (23-6) is particularly relevant; on that 15 - Thuc. 1.22.
tradition within exile literature: Whitmarsh (2001) 175-7.
purpose, and having particular concern with 'the city', its authority deriving from
exilic status.24 The toukaxoyootov ('serio-comic') tradition is also relevant.25

Generically, then, the speech is richly creative and complex.
PHILOSOPHICAL MATERIAL
Dio's consultation of Delphi reflects Chaerephon's consultation on behalf of Socrates.

reactions to the oracle largely imitate Plato's Apology.26 There are other extended traces of
work27 and nods also at the Socrates of the Gorgias.28
The Delphic narrative also evokes the (pseudo-)biographies of Diogenes and Zeno.29 E
as the trigger of philosophizing further recalls Diogenes,30 and there are other plausible Diog
traces.31
The Socratic logos (14-28) raises huge controversy. The closeness of 14-17 to t
Cleitophon32 makes many scholars think that Dio is following it directly,33 but others th
Antisthenes is the common source.34
This dispute is one of the key elements in the general debate concerning the presence o
absence of Antisthenes in Dio, a debate which connects with two others: the extent of Cyn
influence on Dio and the importance within the general Socratic tradition of Antisthenes him
Brancacci has recently reaffirmed Dio's extensive use of Antisthenes, notably in the Third a
Fourth Kingships and in Or. 13, whereas Trapp sees Plato as the dominant source. This
agreement concerns also the kind of Socrates projected in the sources and inherited by Dio, w
Brancacci insisting on a distinctively Antisthenic/Cynic/Dionian Socrates qua dogmatic tea
of positive moral truths and Trapp denying that distinctiveness.35 The dispute affects the in
pretation of Or. 13 and cannot be evaded.
The verbal resemblances are as shown below.
Or. 13 Cleitophon
(1 - description of Socrates) 'shouting a

straining his voice' (14)
(2 - description of Socrates) 'like a god fr

a machine, as someone has said' (14)
(3 - description of Socrates) 'censuring' (1
24 1 Thuc. 5.26. 31 E.g. 2-5 - Diog. Laert. 6.38; 33 - Diog. Laert.

25 P. 134. 6.29, with H6istad (1948) 116-26; Diogenes' writings
26 Detail in Moles (1978) 99, cf also von Amim survived and Dio read him: Giannantoni (1990) 4.484;
(1898) 227; Verrengia (2000) 137; Trapp (2000) 231; Moles (2001).
Whitmarsh (2001) 162 and n.114; contra Brancacci 32 Genuine?: hesitantly, Slings (1999) 215-34; no
(2000) 249; Momigliano (1969) 261, followed by Jones matter here: authenticity was anciently accepted.
(1978) 47, detects Xen. An. 3.1.5-8; implausibly: 33 Hagen (1891); Wegehaupt (1896) 56-64; Desideri
Verrengia (2000) 137. (1978) 253 n.3; Claassen (1999) 167; Slings (1999) 94-6;
27 14 Ap. 29d (Cohoon (1939) 101 n.2; Whitmarsh Trapp (2000) 231, 234; Verrengia (2000) 88-91;
(2001) 163 n. 116), perhaps also - Clit. 407e (Verrengia Whitmarsh (2001) 163-4.
(2000) 147); 28 - Ap. 30a-b, 36c (cf also 3 lb, 24d-25a); 34 Diimmler (1882) 8-11; (1889) 1-17; von Arnim
33 Ap. 36d. (1898) 256-60; Caizzi (1966) 92ff.; Giannantoni (1990)
28 E.g. 29, cf 14 - Gorg. 509a (though also - Xen. 4.350-3, cf V A 208; Brancacci (1992) 3310 n.3; (2000)
Mem. 4.4.5-6, cited by Dio himself in 3.26-7). 251-2.
29 Moles (1978) 99; Jones (1978) 47. 35 Brancacci (2000); Trapp (2000), esp. 233 and n.59.
30 Diog. Laert. 6.21, 49.
116 JOHN MOLES
(4 - Socrates starts speaking)

'Where 'Wher
are you rushing
rushing to, human beings?' (16)
(5) 'Do you not know

'Do you
that
notyou
know
are that
doin
the things that things
are that are
necessary, innecessar
concer
selves with all and
money your serious
trying to efforts
acquire
way, in order that
haveyou
no may have
concern if it in
your
yourselves and may hand
handing it it down
down, in ev
will n
quantity to your
ly,children? But
nor do you ofthe
find th
themselves and before them ofor
can be learned, yourse
if it
fathers, you have
or all alike had
training, no conce
people who
found no adequate
them
or helpful
adequately,
training
nor ev
w
will be able to of your
use yourselves
money in that w
rightly
and not
harmfully and unjustly and
without penalty,
which you should hav
ered a more serious matter than mone
sons and daughters and wives and br
friends, and they also you.' (16)
(6) 'But is it by 'But seeing

learning that
from both
your par
teaching your children
sons have learned
- lyre-playing, wre
letters that you and gymnastic,
think which
that you will t
inhab
in a more plete and
disciplined education
better for vir
way?' (
less bad concerning m
despise the present typ
seek those who will m
disharmony? It is actu
tunefulness and negli
the lack of co-ordinati
that brother behaves towards brother and cities
towards cities without co-ordination or harmony,
engaging in strife and warring and doing and suf-
fering the most extreme things.' (407c-d)
Items 2-5 are very close, and so is item 1.37 Any nEnat8eF6igvog must take Dio's 'as some-
one has said' (item 2) for a 'pointer' to the very popular Cleitophon.38 Item 6 is also close. While
the positive 'good teacher' theme of 407c-d does not appear in the Socratic logos, it does appear
when Dio is speaking in propria persona (31ff.): seemingly, Dio himself has transferred it
there,39 to fit the speech's general movement from negative to positive.40 Thus Dio is here fol-
lowing the Cleitophon directly.
The rest of the Socratic logos (17-28) enlarges on the inadequacy of conventional education.
Dio is writing freely.41 The refutation (23-7) of the claim that Athens' military victories showed
her superior education controverts the epitaphios. The anachronistic allusion in 26 to Cnidus,
taken by Cobet as illustrating the historical ignorance of later rhetoricians and sophists and by
von Arnim and Giannantoni as showing Dio's uncritical reliance on a text written after 394 BC,42
36 Textual problems in 16 and 17 (Verrengia (2000) 39 Slings (1999) 94.

149-53) are immaterial. 40 P. 124.
37 Because Dio, ps.-Plut. 4e and Epict. 3.22.26 all 41 Desideri (1978) 253 n.3; Slings (1999) 94, 96; pace
Trapp (2000) 234 n.62 and Wegehaupt (1896) 57-63.
understand Socrates here to be 'shouting': Slings (1999)
95. 42 Cobet (1878) 65; von Arnim (1898) 258;
38 The formula in Dio: Slings (1999) 95 n.174. Giannantoni (1990) 4.350-1.
is better explained as sophisticated imitation of Platonic anachronisms in the

Symposium.43
If there is no Antisthenic influence on the Socratic logos, the final part of the sp
contains Antisthenic elements.
One is Archelaus' invitation to Socrates (30), only recorded in Antisthenes' Archelaus.44 A sec-
ond case, not noticed hitherto,45 requires lengthy demonstration, but has important consequences.
The speech's closing words (already quoted) distinguish between true philosophical edu-
cation, which is 'not difficult', and the Romans' military expertise, represented as a kind of
education: 'I did not, however, say that it was difficult for them to be educated, "since" (I main-
tained), "when you were better than nobody in the past, you learned easily all the other things
that you wished. I speak of horsemanship, bowmanship and hoplite warfare".'
Now, an Antisthenic fragment (Themist. De virt. p. 43 Mach) runs:46
But if you wish truly to learn that wisdom is something lofty, I invoke neither Plato nor Aristotle as
witnesses, but the wise Antisthenes, who taught this road. For he says that Prometheus spoke to
Heracles as follows: 'Your labour is very cheap, in that your care is for human things, but you have
deserted the care of those things which are of greater moment; for you will not be a perfect man until
you have learnt the things that are loftier than human beings, but if you learn those things, then you
will learn also human things; if, however, you learn only human things, you will wander like a brute
animal.' For the man who studies human things and confines the wisdom and intelligence of his mind
in such cheap and narrow things, that man, as Antisthenes said, is not a wise man but like to an ani-
mal, to whom a dung-pit is pleasing. In truth, all celestial things are lofty and it behoves us to have a
lofty way of thinking about them.
This must come from Antisthenes' Heracles. The scene reworks the Prodican Choice of
Heracles, with an admixture of the Aeschylean interpretation of the relationship between
Prometheus (- intelligence) and Zeus (~ power).47 The choice is between 'human' and 'celes-
tial' 'learning' and is not absolute: 'learning' only the former will leave Heracles in a bestial
state; 'learning' the latter is far the more important, but will immediately secure the former;
Heracles will then be a 'perfect man'.
A passage in Dio's Fourth Kingship (Diogenes the Cynic is the dramatic speaker) contains
the following elements (29-33):
(i) the 'double paideia', one part of which is divine, the other human, the former
superior and 'easy', the latter inferior, but both necessary for complete education;
(ii) the claim that knowledge of the divine paideia easily confers knowledge of the human;
(iii) Heracles as representative of divine education;
(iv) the sophists, including Prometheus, as representative of human education;
(v) road imagery (good and bad roads);
(vi) comparison between human education/sophists and animals.
Many have taken this passage as Antisthenic.48 Trapp, however, holds that 4.29-33 is merely
one of a series of items drawn from Alcibiades I, ex hypothesi the Platonic 'master-text' of the
43 Menex. 244d-46a (including Cnidus) and Symp.46 Antisthenes F27 Caizzi; V A 96 Giannantoni
182b and 193a (which Dio noted: Moles (2000a) 201Moles (2001) and (2003b).
n.37). 47 Kitto (1961) 61.
44 Diimmler (1882) 8-11; Giannantoni (1990) 4.350; 48 Diimmler (1882) 14; Weber (1887) 241; von Fritz
Brancacci (2000) 249-50. (1926) 78; Hiistad (1948) 56-9; Moles (1983a) 270;
45 H6istad (1948) 171-3 argues a plausible general Brancacci (2000) 254-5; Giannantoni (1990) 4.312-13;
case for Antisthenes' 'double paideia' in Or. 13; cf also Whitmarsh (2001) 191 n.43.
n.69.
118 JOHN MOLES
Fourth Kingship.49 The parallels add

I, though this hardly diminishes the
Nevertheless, of the six itemized e
ment, and the emphasis on philosop
verbal parallel here). By contrast, A
the sharp distinction between huma
motif of the two roads and the com
Or. 4.29ff., then, reflects Antisth
had himself read the Heracles.
Now Or. 13.37 resembles Antisthenes' double paideia in the distinction between two types
of education (the only two envisaged),52 of which the first is the true education and the second is
allowed only limited utility; the emphasis on the 'easiness' of the educational programme; and
the thought that 'if you've got the one form of education, the other follows'. Antisthenic
influence coheres with the implicit commendation of moral 'strength',53 with Dio's earlier use
of Antisthenes at 30, and with his use of the Antisthenic paideia in Or. 4.29ff. and elsewhere.54
The passage, however, differs from Antisthenes' double paideia in four respects. First, the
two types of education are not distinguished in terms of 'divine' and 'human'. Second, the non-
philosophical education is not conventional education but military expertise. Third, conven-
tional education is accorded not slight value but, implicitly, no value at all. Fourth, whereas in
Antisthenes possession of the philosophical education allows the 'easy' acquisition of the non-
philosophical education, here the pattern is reversed.
But these differences are explicable. The true education is generally sanctioned by the divine
in Or. 13.55 As Dio addresses the Romans and substitutes their military supremacy for conven-
tional education, he is trading on two assumptions: first, that the Romans do power, not culture,
which is left to the Greeks;56 second, that there is some affinity between Roman virtue and Cynic
virtue.57 Thus the Romans' military supremacy and the alleged 'ease' with which they acquired
it indicate the 'ease' with which they can acquire the true philosophical education, and the
reversal of the Antisthenic pattern has further protreptic force. The implicit dismissal of con-
ventional education also accords with the more radically Cynic or Diogenic positions8 that the
speech as a whole adopts on this issue. Finally, to increase the complications, I believe that
Or. 13.37 also engages with Aeneid 6.847ff.59 In sum, Antisthenes' double paideia underlies
Or. 13.37 and Dio's adaptation of it shows great didactic resourcefulness.
So much for specific philosophical sources.60
The general 'feel' of the speech is Cynic:61 witness the evocations of Diogenes; Dio's empha-
sis on his humble attire,62 'self-chastening' and 'wandering', and on others' calling him a
vagabond and tramp as well as a philosopher (10-12);63 the appeal to the Scythians64 and
49 Trapp (2000) 226-7, cf 232-4; the authenticity of 57 Griffin (1993) 251-8; (1996) 197-204.
Alcibiades I (advocated by Denyer (2001) 14-26) is here 58 Diog. Laert. 6.73, 103-4.
immaterial, authenticity being anciently accepted. 59 Space, however, precludes discussion of this possi-
bility here: Moles (2003b).
50 H6istad (1948) 213-20; Moles (1983a), esp. 268-9
n.65. 60 Whitmarsh's claim that Dio is engaging with
51 E.g. Diog. Laert. 6.44, 70; Antisthenes and
Musonius' Iepi ptyifg;: p. 121; another possibility:
Cynicism: p. 119; 'easiness' in Or. 13: p. 123. n.140.
52 Similarly 24, where the Persians have no education 61 Dudley (1937) 150-1; Moles (1978) 99-100; Jouan
(1993a) 393.
but some military 'training', a significantly parallel pas-
sage, as it emerges (nn.115, 156). 62 Cf., e.g., Kindstrand (1976) 161-3; p. 135.
53 P. 122; in Antisthenes, e.g. Diog. Laert. 6.2, 6.14-15. 63 Dio's Cynicizing representation of his wanderings:
54 H6istad (1948) 50-7, 86-94; note that Or. 4 is 1.9,
a 50-1; 4.1, 6-11 (Diogenes - Dio); 6.1ff. (Diogenes -
year earlier than Or. 13 (nn. 11, 101). Dio); 7.9, 81; 8.1 (Diogenes - Dio); 12.16-20; 19.1;
55 P. 123. 33.15; 36.1; 45.1; further Montiglio (2000) 98ff.
56 Virg. Aen. 6.847-53; Petrochilos (1974) 58-62; 64 See, e.g., Martin (1996).
Whitmarsh (2001) 9-17.
Indians;65 the implicit cosmopolitanism;66 the advocacy of philosophical 'strength

philosophical claim that things are 'easy' ;68 the savage attacks on material things;
philosophical message that individual and civic 'good fortune' is secured by 'self-
(33-5).69
Dio's use of the Apology and the Gorgias hardly undermines this Cynic 'feel', since Socrates
was generally appropriated within the Cynic tradition, and Dio's Socrates differs from Plato's in
that he does not make the minimalizing claim that his wisdom consists only in the fact that he
does not know but appears as a forthright exponent of positive moral doctrine. Thus, rightly,
Brancacci.70
Dio's deployment of the Cleitophon is also apposite. Whereas that work's Socrates is
ironized by his inability to explain what virtue is,71 Dio largely discards the irony and uses the
Cleitophon image of Socrates as a representative of moral virtue at its most robust and uncom-
promising. This procedure, also adopted by Dio's fellow Stoic, Epictetus, in his On Cynicism
(3.22.26), is philosophically justified, because the Socrates parodied in the Cleitophon was very
like the Socrates championed by the Cynics and by Antisthenes. Use of the Cleitophon also
underwrites the move from individual ethics to social and political ones.
Use of Antisthenes is also compatible with the Cynic 'feel' of the speech, since, whoever
founded Cynicism, Antisthenes undoubtedly influenced it,72 as Dio knew.73 On the whole, Or.
13 inclines towards the 'soft', here Antisthenic, type of Cynicism, which (here) involves the
acceptance of human beings' social and political obligations, however redefined, and an intense
concern with the well-being of 'the city', rather than towards the 'hard' Diogenic version.
More generally, Dio's rich play with the metaphorical and moral implications of place and
travel74 can be regarded as Platonic75 and/or Herodotean,76 although such play is also found within
Cynicism, albeit in less developed form.77
Discussion of Or. 13's philosophical content must tackle the question of irony. A certain
degree of ironization is intrinsic alike to the model of the Cynicized Socrates and to the self-
representation of the Cynic himself;78 hence these elements are 'always already' present both in
Dio's representation of Socrates and in his self-representation. Nevertheless, Dio has somewhat
increased that irony by introducing the sorts of equivocation highlighted by Whitmarsh,79 includ-
ing the characterization of Socratic doctrine and of himself, Dio, as 'old'/'old-fashioned'
(archaios):
(14) ... while I was upbraiding all the others and first and most of all myself in these and similar ways,
sometimes through lack of resources I would go to a certain old logos, spoken by a certain Socrates ...
65 See, e.g., Brown (1949) 38-51; Moles (1995a) 146-9. Diogenes); Diog. Laert. 6.2; H6istad (1948) 10-11;
66 Moles (1993); (1996); pace Montiglio (2000) 99- D6ring (1995); Goulet-Caz6 (1996) 414-15 (favouring
100.
Antisthenes); influence: von Fritz (1927); DSring (1995).
67 P. 122. 73 Or. 8.1, with Brancacci (2000) 256-7.
68 N.51 and p. 123. 74 P. 122.
69 Though extant Dio does not use the word 75 See, e.g., Pender (1999).
aruripcexta, he often comes close, as at 34-5: Xavrt6vov 76 See, e.g., Redfield (1985).
... SeIoeo0e (virtually the standard definition). Dio's 77 Diog. Laert. 6.73 with Moles (1995a) 139-40;
formulations hereabouts resemble Diog. Laert. 6.11 Diog. Laert. 6.37, 68.
(Antisthenes); I suspect implicit punning on 78 Cynic theatricality and exaggeration (both devel-
OC/l&pKlEta/self-cApijl, as perhaps in Plato (e.g. Rep. opments of Socratic characteristics) and their clear pro-
369b; Polit. 271d) and (surely) in lost Cynic material. treptic/paideutic justification: Diog. Laert. 6.35;
Dio's thinking about this idea: Brenk (2000). Kindstrand (1976) 208-9; Moles (1983a) 274-6; (1983b)
70 Brancacci (2000) 249. 108-9; p. 000 below; contra Branham (1996); cf also the
71 Slings (1999) 209-12. spoudaiogeloion: n.204.
72 Dudley (1937) 1-15, 54-5; Giannantoni (1990) 79 Whitmarsh (2001) 160-7.
4.223-33; (1993); Moles (2000b) 417 (all favouring
120 JOHN MOLES
(29) ... so to all the others I used to s

fashioned and stale,80 and when they
not dare to speak any word of my ow
as I was fully conscious of my own gr
This irony requires further consid

to an 'old logos' falls within a broa
wisdom'.83 This move is often made
From this survey Or. 13 emerges a
HISTORICAL PROBLEMS
There are three: (a) who was the Roman whose fall caused Dio's exile? (b) Where was Dio exi
from? (c) How reliable is Dio's account of his becoming a philosopher? All three historical pr
lems have important interpretative implications.
(a) Possibilities are: Q. lunius Arulenus Rusticus; M. Arrecinus Clemens; L. Salvius O
Cocceianus; T. Flavius Sabinus; non liquet.87
The crucial passage has already been quoted.88 There are two criteria: (i) the man must b
closely related to the Flavians;89 (ii) Dio's exile was long.90 Rusticus, killed in, or shortly bef
93,91 is excluded by (i) and (ii). Clemens, executed in 93, is excluded by (ii). Otho Cocceianu
is excluded by (i). Sabinus, cousin of Domitian and cos. 82, the year of his death,92 satisfies
criteria, as do also Dio's Flavian contacts.93 The man's identity and the date of Dio's exile a
worth (re-)establishing for the historical reconstruction of Dio's early career.
But a problem remains. Was Dio in fact Sabinus' <pi(oc/amicus and Y6fpouoc/consiliarius
Is Dio admitting this or merely recording the charge and then, while implying Sabinus' innoc
either leaving the truth of the alleged relationship between himself and Sabinus open or impl
its non-existence? Verrengia takes yoj7gPvrlg as 'cosiddetta' and comments: 'da tale amicizi
Dione intende prendere le distanze'.94 On this reading, 6il is presumably also distancing.95
the usual reading, however, these words merely gloss the charges as stated.96
Since Dio characterizes Sabinus as 'not base' and compares himself to Scythian kings' cup
bearers, cooks or concubines, he is not denying that he 'knew' Sabinus. He represents Sabin
(qua 'not base') as innocent; Sabinus' innocence necessarily makes Dio also innocent, but
innocence seems to exceed this: Scythian cup-bearers, cooks and concubines are not ki
friends and counsellors, and the aitia made against Dio was without aitia (even on its
terms, 'without cause'). Thus ke~yogvvrlg and 86i do have a distancing quality. Dio is represen
himself as legally cleaner than clean, though the full implications of this dextrous passage o
80 s oiXa (Capps) is certain: cf. Or. 12.12

Desideri
(with(1978) 189; Moles (1978) 93; (2003a) 190-1;
Russell (1992) 169). non liquet: Schmid (1903) 852; Swain (1996) 189 n.8;
81 Translation: p. 124. Verrengia (2000) 66-77 (useful overview).
82 P. 132. 88 p. 113.
83 Boys-Stones (2001). 89 p. 113.
84 Moles (1983b) 116 and n. 103; Boys-Stones (2001) 90 12.16; 40.2, 12; 45.10.
7-8, 13-14, 24-5. 91 Verrengia (2000) 70-1.
85 1.8, 53, 75; 3.1-3; 11.37; 12.12, 27-8; 36.34, 58-60; 92 Verrengia (2000) 70 n.16; 76-7.
72.11-12, 15-16; Desideri (1978) 351 n.14; Moles (1990) 93 N. 6; my treatment meets Verrengia's difficulties
308, 321, 368 n.40, 370 n.79; Swain (1996) 202-5. ((2000) 76-7).
86 Pace Long (2002) 123: 'Dio's recourse to Socrates 94 Verrengia (2000) 68 and n.8.
is trite and self-serving.' 95 Denniston (1954) 230.
87 Respectively, Mommsen (1869) 84 n.4; Jones 96 Von Amim (1898) 228; Cohoon (1939) 91;
(1990); Sidebottom (1996) 451-2; Emperius (1847) 103- Desideri (1978) 188; cf Denniston (1954) 234-5.
8, followed by von Arnim (1898) 223ff.; Jones (1978) 46;
become clear later.97 As to the facts, Dio admits that he knew Sabinus; his im
he was his friend or counsellor, doubly motivated as it is, does not establish a h
I conclude that Dio was close to Sabinus. Dio had the highest court contacts a
mighty.
(b) Where was Dio exiled from? Prusa, certainly (Or. 19.1-2); on the usual forms of exile,
also Bithynia, qua province, and Rome and Italy, qua communis patria of Roman citizens.98 But
Desideri has repeatedly maintained that Dio's exile took the lighter form of civitate pellere, since
sections 29ff. have Dio philosophizing in Rome.99 These sections are usually read as referring
to Dio's philosophizing after his recall and return to Rome in 99/100,100 when he philosophized
before Trajan among others.10l Resolution of this problem must be deferred.102
(c) How reliable is Dio's account of his becoming a philosopher?
Simple acceptance103 is immediately threatened by the elaborate Socratic, Diogenic,
Antisthenic, Zenonian and Cynic associations which Dio invokes.104 There is every reason to
accept Fronto's testimony that Dio learnt philosophy from Musonius Rufus, i.e. before the
exile.os05 Hence another reading of the speech: as a self-serving rewriting of Dio's autobiography.
By post-dating his philosophizing, Dio buries his early pupillage under Musonius, his unsavoury
oscillations between philosophy and sophistry and his collaboration with Vespasian's campaign
against philosophers in 71.106 From these perspectives, Or. 13 conveys a most misleading
impression.
What, then, of Whitmarsh's claim that Dio is here engaged in a Freudian/Bloomian struggle
for 'authority' with his teacher, Musonius?107 Since another of Dio's works alludes obliquely to
Musonius,os08 some other works show Musonian influence,109 and Musonius' Hepi tpuy4; was in
Greek, Dio 'the man' can hardly have been unconscious of his master's voice. But it is another
question whether Musonius is 'in the text'. There are no significant parallels nor any 'contra-
dictions' so sharp as to imply polemic. Any active presence of Musonius would sabotage the
narrative's basic credibility.110
Thus on the general issue of when and how he became a philosopher Dio should still be
convicted of disingenuousness. This, however, does not provide a sufficient explanation of the
speech or even of the function within it of Dio's autobiography.111
The important question of the historicity of the consultation of Delphi involves so many other
questions that I defer it.112
97 P. 123. 106 Moles (1978), esp. 96-100.

98 Verrengia (2000) 83. 107 Whitmarsh (2001) 137, 164 the master-pupil
99 Desideri (1978) 193, 241-2 n.50; accepted by relationship has been translated into a contest of the
Whitmarsh (2001) 157 n.89. symbolic terrain of literary tropes and allusions').
'00 Von Amim (1898) 256, 332; Jones (1978) 53, 128; 108 31.122 with, e.g., Moles (1978) 82-3; Whitmarsh
Sheppard (1984) 162; Verrengia (2000) 79. (2001) 137 n.16.
101 Reaffirmation of delivery to Trajan as the primary 109 Geytenbeek (1963) 14-15; Brunt (1973); Russell
context for the Kingships: Moles (2003a) 195-201, cf. (1992) 150; Blomqvist (1995) 187; Houser (1998) 257-8;
Salmeri (2000) 89-91; contra Whitmarsh (2001) 186- Hawley (2000) 136-7; Brenk (2000) 262-6.
216, 325-7; the a priori plausibility of such contexts: 110 The nearest 'parallel' is the rejection of the play
Haake (2003); the dating 99/100: Salmeri, loc. cit.; Moles 'Rome'- 'strength' (Musoniusfr. 9, p. 44 Hense; p. 122;
(2003a) 196; other philosophical contexts: p. 129. n. 113), but this move is commonplace. As to the gener-
102 P. 124. al explanatory force of Whitmarsh's claim, I am scepti-
103 Nock (1933) 173-4; Kindstrand (1978); cal.
Blomqvist (1989) 225-6, 232. III Pp. 123 and 133.
104 Pp. 115-20. 112 P. 126.
105 Fronto 2.50 Haines 135 van den Hout; Moles
(1978) 82, 86; nn.108-9.
122 JOHN MOLES
MAIN THEMES
I here summarize main themes and note interconnections, without prejudging ultimate interpre-
tative questions:
(a) Place. Like all exiles, Dio faces the question: where can the 'displaced' exile 'place' him-
self (5)? The speech ends with Rome as the central 'place' of the world's riches (36). Place can
also be metaphorical: Apollo's oracular reply in 9 is itonto; - seemingly, 'out of place'. Physical
place is less important than moral place. Even at the end, Rome will not be truly 'strong' (34)
with the standard pun,113 unless she 'renames' herself under Dio's philosophical programme by
reducing her luxury, consumption and very population, thereby becoming a smaller place (34-5)
Places, too, are not what they seem: Rome under Domitian resembles Scythia at its most
barbarous (1), or Athens rent by war or stasis (1, 6);114 similarly, Socrates' description of Persia
under Xerxes (24) eerily evokes Rome under Domitian.115
(b) Travel. Dio, like many exiles, must 'wander'. He consults Delphi because Apollo is a
Ktavb pooo; (9): he can 'reach' the right advice or help humans to 'reach' the right goal
(iKav6S iKVEO~(uXl).116 By contrast, ordinary politicians are not 'competent to give advice' (22).
T6 icmav6v becomes one of the speech's philosophical desiderata (9, 16, 19, 22, 27, 32). Travel
can be both literal and moral/metaphorical or simply metaphorical (13, 16, 19). The speech itself
becomes a philosophical journey. When Dio starts his philosophical preaching (14), he 'goes to'
an old, Socratic logos, and it is the 'old' logos of the Cynicized Socrates which enables the moral
progress of Dio himself and of his individual listeners as he wanders and which is finally
capable of saving Rome (29ff.).117
The horizontal movement of travel is matched by vertical movement downwards through
time (16, etc.). The acme of the travel imagery is reached in 35, where Dio expatiates on the
rewards the Romans will gain 'when you have reached the peak of virtue', a phrase which com-
bines horizontal movement and vertical movement, and vertical movement in two senses
upwards to a peak of virtue and upwards in time.
The imagery of (a) and (b) is, indeed, almost all-pervasive, and, once established, energizes
ordinarily inert words. For example, in 13 'the present evils, great ignorance and disturbance'
and in 32 'the unchastenedness and havingness' are, as it were, 'places' to get away from
ouragivWo, a leitmotiv of the speech (1, 6 [bis], 12, 26), is similarly energized: moral problem
involve not only human beings as agents, who have to progress in the right way, but also as
passive before challenges which come from the outside. Ultimately, therefore, exile, wander-
ings and travel, while literal enough, are also metaphors for moral states or aspirations. By
contrast, place, while sometimes also metaphorical, retains important literal force in the case of
Rome, though she too has to 're-place' herself morally.
In this Dionian speech, as in others,118 the relationships between literal, metaphorical and
textual places and travels present puzzles. Apollo's oracle to Dio, seemingly 'out of place', is (9)
'not easy to put together' (oulgcxiv). Apollo, qua inav6bq oA3pouo;, tells Dio to keep on wan-
dering until he comes to the last place on earth, just as - Dio reflects - Teiresias, qua g6toi.oog,
told by
even Odysseus to wander
hearsay'. There untiland
are insistent hesuitably
'met together with'
oracular verbal (apt6L,,)
plays. people
Apollo poses 'who knew
a prophetic not the sea
puzzle both for Dio, qua dramatic character, and for Dio's audience/readers to 'put together'.
113 Erskine (1995); Whitmarsh (2001) 21, 149; cf 116 Cf. 30.1, 45 with Moles (2000a) 197-8.
n. 110 above. 117 The same enabling role of logos in the First
114 N.23. Kingship (Moles (1990) 311, 322, 325-6) and the
115 Domitianic are: (a) the Persian king (cf. Orr. 4 and Charidemus (Moles (2000a) 197-8); cf the related 'wan-
6; von Amim (1898) 261-2; Desideri (1978) 202, 244 n.5, dering physically'/'wandering in words' (4.37; 7.1, 127;
288); (b) the tiara (cf 1.79; 3.41; 4.25, 61); (c) the evil 12.16; Moles (1995b) 179; Whitmarsh (2001) 160).
daimon (cf 45.1); (d) the alleged military incompetence. 118 P. 126.
(c) The search for a competent philosophical counsellor. T6 pooUieaeYoat is an

(1, 6, 8, 9, 11, 19, 22, 23, 24). Right decisions require the help of a comp
Apollo in relation to Croesus and Dio, Tiresias in relation to Odysseus (6-10).
oYtg[ouko; is transformed into a more explicit 8616 Kcahok (32, cf 17). This th
dimension to Dio's veiled and equivocal allusion to Sabinus (1). Dio's implicit d
association extended to friendship and counsel adumbrates an ideal counsellor
ship. Dio has now left behind the glittering, meretricious world of high-level
(d) The search for the right education. This theme first becomes explicit in t
section, which it proceeds to dominate (16ff.; 23; 24-6). Similarly, Dio in Rom
for good education and good teachers (31-3), and ends by expounding the An
paideia (37). But the theme is latent from the very beginning of the speech, as
literature and then to the Delphic oracle for guidance on the correct response
(e) In this speech, apart from the puzzling oracle, what seems hard is actually
and easy being used both of worldly states and of the intellectual and moral c
to cope with them. Exile and all other similar disasters seem hard: they are ac
with (2-8). And the speech ends (37) with the Antisthenic 'double paideia',
which are 'easy'.
(f) A related idea is that true philosophical virtues are the opposite of world
teristically those held by the ignorant majority (2, 7, 31). Exile, etc. are not e
way, goods: rt6vo;g ya06v (Diog. Laert. 6.2). The shape of the speech again
moral lesson. Sabinus seems very close to the 'fortunate rulers', but they we
tunate, and by the end the only 'good fortune' and 'rule' that matter are ph
fortune' and self-rule (31, 33).
(g) Divine authority is stressed throughout: the 8at&t6vtov (3), the various o
Delphi (2, 6-10, 36). This does not mean that 'religion' is more important tha
as in the Socratic-Antisthenic-Cynic philosophical tradition generally, the tw
implicated. The 8atxi6vtov co-exists with human ea68t~ovia. Xerxes/Dom
an 'evil spirit' and himself 'unfortunate' and the agent of 'misfortune' in othe
(h) As a dramatic figure within the text, Dio himself helps to knit together
parate elements and to embody major themes. His unclarified relationship w
brates the oa3oupolog and 8tS6wKcog; themes. His 'experiencing' of exile,
of Delphi and his and Socrates' sermons on the 'use' of wealth are all interlin
Xpeotlat (3, 9, 16, 23):120 the right 'use' of apparent misfortune, of oracles and
is always the same thing: the right individual and collective response to exte
Dio's initial apparent misfortune anticipates all the other problems. His povert
ures Socrates' attacks upon Athenian materialism and his own attacks upon Ro
His 'wandering' is itself morally ambiguous: it can be a symbol of folly, a ro
itself already a form of 'truth' (,rl pexa -~ %1jfEta).121 Dio dangles these alternatives in 10-11:
exhorting myself in this way [according to the example of Odysseus] neither to fear nor to be ashamed
of the thing, and putting on humble dress and in all other respects chastening myself, I began to wan-
der [Xil&jrlv] everywhere. And the people who chanced to meet me, when they saw me, some of them
called me a wanderer [&Xlttrv], but certain others actually a philosopher.122
119 Pace Brenk (2000) 269-70. 14.122-7; Hdt. 1.29.1-30.2; 4.76.2; P1. Apol. 22a;
120 Similar play in Or. 10 (2ff.): both perhaps inspired Redfield (1985) 98-9.
by Hdt. 7.140-1 (p. 000 and n.147). 122 Closely similar are 1.9 (Dio's self-introduction in
121 The ambiguity: Moles (1990) 309, 322; Montiglio the First Kingship), with Moles (1990) 309, and 72.2, 11.
(2000); Whitmarsh (2001) 162, 198-200; Hornm. Od.
124 JOHN MOLES
And not only do Dio's experiences
becomes the o4ig3oo; of everybod

the end. Dio's own education, which
level on which Dio's self-representa
Odysseus, with tragic figures and w
though the effect is undoubtedly p
away from the personal towards th
First Kingship, Euboicus, Diogenics
rich philosophical myth.124
(i) As much of the above material
'correction' or 'redefinition' of sev
'rule' and 'education' to true, from
fact thoroughly comprehensive.125
The sheer thematic density of Dio
SPECIFIC INTERPRETATIVE PROBLEMS
There are two: (a) sections 29ff.; (b) section 9.

(a) There are strong objections to Desideri's claim that sections 29ff. show Dio ph
sophizing in Rome during the exile:126
(1) Dio writes (29): 'so to the others I used to say practically the same things [as Socrates
things old-fashioned and stale, and when/since they would not let me be in peace when I
to Rome itself, I did not dare to speak any word of my own ...' Here 'the others' me
'everybody other than the Romans' and 'when I got to Rome' refers to a later time.127
clear implication that sections 29ff. mark the culmination of Dio's exile wanderings har
fits the hypothesis that Dio was never exiled from Rome.
(2) In sections 30-1 Dio writes: 'Archelaus, king of the Macedonians ... summo
[Socrates] with the inducement of gifts and fees, that he might hear him speaking these words.
In the same way I too tried to speak to the Romans, when they summoned me and asked
to speak.' This analogy between Archelaus' 'summoning' of Socrates and the Romans' 'sum
moning' of himself can hardly apply to Domitianic Rome.
(3) Dio elsewhere, in contexts where duplicity is unlikely and would have been risky
damaging his credibility, or inviting ridicule, were his claims falsifiable), states, or impli
that, once exiled, he was absent from Rome for the rest of Domitian's reign and that his return
was secured by Domitian's death and Nerva's accession.128s
However, if sections 29ff. refer to Dio's post-exile philosophizing in Rome, three questi
arise: (i) how can Dio's exile narrative legitimately include allusion to his post-exilic ph
sophical activity in Rome? While it is easy to see that Dio might want to represent his ph
123 N. 21. 127 Translation: Cohoon (1939) 115; Swain (1996)

124 Cf., respectively, Moles (1990) 305-37; Jouan 212; pace Desideri (1978) 221; Verrengia (2000) 111;
(1977); (1993a); (1993b); Moles (1995b) 180; (2000a) aorist of yiyvotclt plus iv as 'arrive at' is Classical and
202-4. suitably Herodotean (p. 114): Hdt. 1.105, 189; 2.107;
125 However, I failed to persuade Readers and Editor Powell (1938) 69.
that the process is systematically 'keyed' by an elaborate 128 1.50, with Moles (1990) 329; 46.2-3, with Moles
series of ring-structures between beginning and end. (1984) 67-8; cf Philostr. VS 487-9.
126 P. 121 and n.99.
sophizing in Trajanic Rome as part of his whole philosophical project ever sinc
a philosopher, indeed as the culmination of his philosophical career,129 how can
the logic of this speech? (ii) How can Dio convey an allusion to his recall by N
to Rome under Trajan without explicitly alluding to them? (iii) How can he l
post-exile phases of his career so as to imply both difference and continuity?
Question (i) is fundamental, and questions (ii) and (iii) concern Dio's t
sections 29ff. represent Dio's philosophizing in Rome as the culmination of h
ings, then, since Socrates is a figure for Dio, it is easy to read Archelaus ('rule
who 'summoned' Socrates, as an analogue of either Nerva, who recalled Dio to
Trajan, for whom Dio performed the ag30ou0o; role that Archelaus had solicit
or indeed of both Nerva and Trajan, such 'allegory', whether simple or double,
Dionian, in the Kingships and elsewhere.131 The wording is suspiciously '
'knew many things and had associated with many of the wise' (like Nerv
[Socrates] with presents and fees, in order that he might hear him saying th
logoi', formally Socrates', can also be Dio's, 'now' or on similar occasions.1
ring-structure and contrast: between Rome at the beginning under the tyrann
Rome at the end under the 'good' 'ruler' of his people, Nerva and/or Trajan,
to bring Dio's philosophical teaching to the Romans at large. So 'the Romans
effectively implies: 'Nerva/Trajan gave me this huge philosophical commissio
Dio's return becomes a metaphor not only for Trajan's celebrated 'repatriatio
and intellectualsl34 but also for the return from exile of the entire Roman wor
Trajan, and Dio's exile a metaphor for the exile of the spirit imposed on all h
'evil 8aiCiov' Domitian, who frustrated his subjects' eii8otGovia (1, 24).135
As for (i), part of the answer lies in Dio's response to Apollo's oracle to go to
earth. In a way, he did: he penetrated deeply into Dacia, Scythia and the Blac
sumably his audience knew and as he himself described in other works.136 Suc
his moral authority: as the wanderer par excellence who has travelled to the en
has done, and seen, it all. As the ultimate Cynic 'scout' (KardOKonog),137 he
fied to apply his experience to the task of reforming Rome, the central t6ono;
But it is not only a question of Dio's response to the oracle: it is also a questi
meaning.
(b) Apollo's oracle to Dio, seemingly 'out of place', was 'not easy to put together' (oug-
a3cAXiv). Apollo told Dio to go to the last place on earth, as Teiresias told Odysseus to wander
until he 'met together with [ougp'di]] people who knew not the sea even by hearsay'.
129 Cf the First Kingship: 1.56-8 (the Arcadian Nerva)? (v) nothing in the passage suggests violent
prophetess). change; (vi) Dio is surely alluding to himself (p. 133) but
130 45.2-3 with Moles (1984) 67-8. hardly also to Trajan (or any other potential emperor):
131 Moles (1990), e.g. 328; (2000a) 206-7. this is a philosophical teacher. 'Establishment on the
132 For the nicely blurred focalization, cf 'this father' Acropolis' entails 'philosopher-ruler', but this is not
in the Charidemus (30.45): Moles (2000a) 205-6. 'Trajan as philosopher-king' but philosopher as philoso-
133 A referee objects that 32-3 (on the ideal teacher to
pher-&pov (= Dio as Trajan's court-philosopher),
be established on 'the Acropolis') alludes both to Dio and Trajan's &pxil having already been covered by 30
Trajan and that 'it hasn't happened yet', hence an earlier 'Apxxo;.
Nerva/Trajan allusion in 30-1 is excluded and the speech 134 Plin. Pan. 47.1-2.
is exilic. But: (i) other considerations make the speech 135 The First Kingship enacts the same philosophi-
post-exilic (p. 114; n. 11); (ii) 32-3 is future in relation to cal/political narrative of 'mass exile': 1.55, with Moles
31, where Dio is already in Rome, not (or not necessari- (1990) 321, 370 n.82.
ly) in relation to the delivery context; (iii) in Domitianic 136 12.10-20; 36.1; Philostr. VS 487-9.
Rome Dio could hardly be publicly arguing, however 137 Diog. Laert. 6.17-18; 6.43; Norden (1893) 373-
allusively, for Domitian's removal; (iv) how could Dio 85; Moles (1983b) 112; Schofield (2004) 453-5.
then know that Trajan would replace Domitian (and
126 JOHN MOLES
Now Or. 13, a text that relates wan

his listeners) have been making. Alt
the end of the text, turns out to be
a bad sense. At the end, if Rome is
Scythian or Indian (32): she may ne
and theGymnosophists. Dio's real-lif
and Scythia. The end of the earth c
(Scythia as the location of Cynic pe
journeys: they are also metaphors
'Rome', she must become like one of
of view of Dio's moral journey, the
the end of the earth is a thoroughly
provocative inversion of categories
switch from being morally bad to m
It turns out, then, that Apollo was
sense of fulfilment in 29 'when I got
we must see that, after initial puzzl
If, as a result of Dio's teaching, the
be the vertical culmination of Dio
come to the last place on earth').141
apposite: the best form of education
useful. For its recipients to 'come to
true &pylj (both 'beginning' and 'ru
converge in the central r6ono; of th
philosophical trajectory: progression
This play with seemingly 'atopic' t
paralleled in the First Kingship, Oly
the Delphic oracle to justify Dio's p
by the Arcadian prophetess as a devi
What, at last, of the historicity of
wise unattested in Dio - based on th
encounter with the Arcadian prophe
invention of the consultation of De
such a fiction have been smilingly
Oracle experts and some Dionian sc
torical.145 Jones, however, suggests:
138 Fittingly, 141 The

therefore, combination
the of
negative allusion
at 36 ('all the possessions from
and vertical everywher
(ascent to the
gathered together tionship
into thisbetween the
one place two
...') (t
inv
miastic topos ter)
about is greatest
the paralleled in theesp
cities, Fi
(e.g. Plin. NH 3.39; 142
Dio A
32.36; Aristid.
referee notes 46.23
that
139 N.140. centre of the world, wh
140 Remarkably, piquancy of Dio's
Or. 13 parallels topogra
Luke, Act
sends the apostles 143
to the1.49, 55,
end of etc.;
the 12.1,
earth -
Dio on to (1990)
mission 322;
the end of (1995b)
the earth;181,
(ii
144 Because
instantiate these journeyings; of
(iii) inthe Plato
both, th
earth/text/ultimate 320; Trapp (1990)
missionary 143-4)
location tura
Rome (whether in prophecy.
Acts literally the end of the
ps.-Sol. 8.15, or - 145 Parke and Wormell (1956)
better -409;proleptically
Fontenrose (1978) s
have known Luke, 15 n.4;Acts
263; Moles (1978) (certainly
99; Desideri (1991) 3938-9. the earl
often conjectured to be Rome-oriented)?
recalled, it might ... seem that this oracle was made up after the event.'l46 Moreov
of the earth' is an exilic topos; Delphi told the Athenians in 481/80 to flee to th
earthl47 (hence Dio's Athenian audience might be tickled by such an invention);
plays a crucial role in Or. 13's spatial and moral architecture.
Yet such invention might, even for Dio, be an invention too far. The 'coincide
being 'at the end of the earth' when recalled is only excessive if the oracle's respo
me to keep doing the very thing on which I was148 engaged with all enthusiasm,
and useful activity, "until," he said, "you come to the end of the earth"') was to
'when will my exile end?'l49 Dio omits the question, but it is better understood as
I do in my exile?' He then found the response 'out of place' and 'not easy to
because it was not easy to see how wandering was a fine and useful activity, nor
end of the earth', nor to understand how attaining it was a solution to his problem
tively, Delphi provides the ultimate divine and philosophical grounding for the s
would be weakening, if that grounding were entirely groundless, especially, perha
very public association with Delphi of Plutarch and the rivalry between the
Greeks.o50 Rather, when the sentence of exile was passed, Dio immediately began
and his inventiveness comes into play, not with the consultation itself nor with
response (oracles, too, use t6r'ot),152 but with the many philosophical associ
thereby invokes and with the paradoxical twist that he gives to 'the end of the
Apollo's instruction as the basis for a rewriting of his whole career, a rewriting w
practical advantage of suppressing his pre-exile philosophizing and related aspect
reputable past, but which, more importantly, gives divine sanction to his post-exil
Nerva and Trajan and to his project of the conversion of Rome.
As to why Dio consulted Delphi, he may have been influenced by the motives th
(8), commonplace though they are,153 and, as a Stoic (mostly), he should have accep
but he must already have been conscious of the philosophical associations of his a
already have been stage-managing the drama of Dio Socraticus et Cynicus.
INTERPRETATION
There is much to consider: the speech's wit, irony and literary sophistication; its moral serious
ness; its philosophical content; its view ofpaideia; Dio's own dramatic role; the representation
of fifth-century Athenians, of contemporary Greeks other than the Athenians (11-15), and of t
Romans; the apparently dominant focus on Rome at the end; the teaching that Dio gives the
Romans; the relationship between internal audiences (especially the Romans) and extern
audience (Athenians).
I start with the last.
146 Jones (1978) 47 (quotation), 51, 176 n.57. 149 As Fontenrose (1978) 15 n.4.
147 Hdt. 7.140 (which perhaps influenced Dio 150inLamprias Catalogue 204, 227; Desideri (1978) 4-5.
another respect: n.120), and e.g. Ov. Tr. 1.2.85, 151
2.195,
Had Dio settled elsewhere, he would have lost his
3.3.3; Sen. Ep. 28.4. Bithynian properties: von Arnim (1898) 235-6.
148 'I am engaged' (Cohoon) could only be justified
152 Fontenrose (1978) 166ff.; Hammerstaedt (1993)
405. I am
were Dio saying: 'to do the very thing on which
[now] engaged' (post-96 Dio could still represent himself
153 Verrengia (2000) 87-8, 136.
as wandering: 12.16ff.); but 'the very thing' implies
154 Contrast his more Cynic voice in 1.56 and 10.17ff.
'more of the same', an implication reinforced by the
Odyssean analogy; tpd6crtEtv means 'to keep doing' (thus
also Cohoon); the present etipt is 'vivid'.
128 JOHN MOLES
Greeks and Romans

On one level, Dio and his audience are Greeks and the Romans are Romans (despite Dio's own
Roman citizenship and high imperial connections and the certainty of there being Roman
citizens in Dio's audience). Dio consults Delphi 'in accordance with the ancient custom of the
Greeks' (9), addresses the Romans as 'you' and talks of 'your city', alludes to the Roman empire
as something external to himself (34ff.),155 and distinguishes straightforwardly between Greeks,
Romans, Scythians and Indians (32). The latter half of the speech focuses on Roman vices, and
the ending leaves the Romans entirely without paideia in the normal sense, their 'learning' con-
fined to the military arts, not themselves commended,156 while the Greeks seem to belong to the
'ruled' (33), which, given the 'succession-of-empires' motif (23-5, 34), effectively makes them
the Romans' 'slaves'.
Is Dio, then, merely trying to convince his Athenian audience that he said appropriately
critical and admonitory things to the Romans, thereby deflecting the charge that he was a mere
flatterer of the Greeks' imperial masters?l57 True, self-justification is rarely absent from Dio's
works; Or. 13 is at least self-justifying in its treatments of his relationship with Sabinus and of
his philosophical career;ls8 and Dio often had to deflect this charge.159 But this reading leaves
large tracts of the speech unexplained.
Might one, then, broaden the reading out and suggest that Or. 13 promotes Greek intellectual
and philosophical identity as a bulwark against Roman power, at its most brutal under the
Domitianic tyranny (1) but corrupted generally by materialism and luxury (31-7)? This reading
seems to swab up a great deal of the speech, and one might compare Dio's Olympicus, a cele-
bration of Greek religious culture that represents the Romans as militarists and the Greeks as
their slaves.160
Superficially, there is much that appears to be intended to compliment the Athenians on their
paideia. There are literary allusions a-plenty, nice literary turns, much skilful interweaving of
different philosophical strands, and juicy interpretative challenges. There might also seem to be
an appeal to Athenians' sense of moral superiority, as they listen to Dio's attacks on Roman deca-
dence;161 amusing disparagement of Rome as 'the end of the earth'; and consolation in the
thoughts that Roman power, apparently so strong, is fragilel62 and that the philosophical
'solution' is Greek.163
Yet any 'anti-Roman' reading fails in the face of the simple fact that the portrayal of the
Romans is not finally negative. When Dio alludes to the Roman empire as something external
to himself, he is appealing to the Romans' self-interest; the characterization of the Romans as
'learned' in military matters (only) is made to the Romans themselves as well as to the Athenians
and has protreptic force; and the fact that Dio ends up as philosophical 'ambassador' of Nerva
and Trajan to the Romans and propounds a substantial philosophical programme indicates moral
concern for them. Thus, in so far as the Romans are represented as different from the Greeks,
155 Contrast 3.34, 50; 41.9 (see n.213) and 79.5. 161 Thus, e.g., Fuchs (1938) 18 n.65; Jones (1978)
129 and 195 n.26, comparing Lucian's Nigrinus, also set
156 37 - 32 - 24 (the Persians); also (?) - Virg. Aen.
6.847ff. (n.59). in Athens and seemingly critical of Roman morals; con-
157 Swain (1996) 213. tra Desideri (1978) 253-4 n.10; sophisticated analysis in
158 Pp. 120 and 121. Whitmarsh (2001) 265-79 (though I do not agree that
159 E.g. 3.12-25; Or. 57. Nigrinus offers no moral locus).
160 Moles (1995b) 183-4; Swain (1996) 200-3; 162 34 'but as for now [Rome's] greatness arouses
Klaucke and Bdibler (2000) 158-9; pace Billaut (1999) suspicion and is not at all secure': thus rightly Swain
218-19; Greeks slaves of Rome: 31.125; 34.39, 51; (1996) 212, pace Cohoon and Verrengia; cf Dio's bril-
Moles (1995b) 178 n.5; Veyne (1999); pace Salmeriliant reworking (36) of ll. 23.161-77.
(2000) 86; Roman militarism: also 30.35 with Moles 163 Cf. the Olympicus, in which 'it is Greek poets,
(2000a) 209. artists, and philosophers ... who have most perfectly rep-
resented the divine, and ... contemporary Greece is suf-
fering from Roman misrule' (Moles (1995b) 184).
they are, paradoxically, both uneducated and easily educable, and the latter no
the intrinsic 'easiness' of the Antisthenic/Cynic education, but because the R
expertise has already demonstrated their capacity for learning and because th
between Roman virtus and Cynic virtue. The practicability of that virtue is fur
the transition from Domitianic to Nervan and Trajanic Rome.164
Moreover, the content of Dio's teaching of the Romans is important. Desp
ticism,165 his claim (29ff.) to have publicly exhorted the Romans to virtue i
Or. 79,166 which attacks the city's materialism and argues that she will follow
into oblivion, if she does not reform (cf. Or. 13); by Or. 72,167 which wryly
larity of philosophers' preachiness (9); and by the Euboicus (Or. 7), which tac
of suitable work for the urban poor, which was delivered, among other plac
which, like Or. 13, has a certain Cynic underpinning.l68 Further, Or. 13 allu
sophical relationships with Nerva and Trajan, and it has repeated conceptual
First Kingship.169 Thus Orations 1-4 (the Kingships), 7, 13, and 79 (and, in l
contribute to a post-exilic project for the moral reform of Rome, with the Kin
the new emperor, the others on the Romans en masse.
This suggests another context for Or. 13. Although most of Dio's works are
delivery and many are occasional, some of the occasional pieces were recycled
texts;170 Dio emphasizes the paideutic value of reading; and some of his
reading works.171 Hence, besides the primary audiences of speeches deliv
Athens, Dio may also have envisaged a 'reading audience',172 which could con
13 alongside Orations 1-4, 7 and 79 and construct intertextual relationships.
readings 'work'. One might hold that Or. 13's subtleties make private reading
tion context anyway. The moral teaching of 29ff. could have been directly ava
as well as to Athenians and other Greeks.
But, if on any view Dio's moral teaching of the Romans is substantial, he is also saying pro-
foundly uncomfortable things to his primary audience. Any cosy feelings of Greek superiority
(cultural or other) are undermined on a number of levels. Athenian military successes of the fifth
and early fourth centuries BC are summarily dismissed by Socrates (25-6)173 - and the emphasis
matters, because of the parallel dismissal by Dio of Roman power (32, 34). Greeks who yearned
for the glory days174 are granted no indulgence. Even more challengingly dismissed are the main
constituents of traditional Athenian (and general Greek) paideia: music, athletics, the highest
literary achievements. This dismissal cannot be sanitized as 'inert' repetition of 'historical'
philosophical positions: in the Second Sophistic era, when Greece was, from one perspective,
under Roman rule (as this speech stresses), these were things that the Greek elite vigorously
celebrated.
Dio in fact uses various devices to suggest the collapsing of time between Socrates and
himself. One is to imply parallels between then and now (the triviality and impermanence of
164 Cf Tac. Agr. 3.1, etc. 171 Or. 18 is a reading-list for a politician and Or. 2 a
165 Swain (1996) 213; Whitmarsh (2001) 164, 215. reading-list for Trajan: Moles (1990) 346; Or. 3.3
166 Schmid (1903) 857; Moles (1983c) 130-1; contra approves Trajan's reading of 'the ancients' (including
Sheppard (1982) (exilic delivery in Tarsus) and DesideriDio's own Kingships); and Or. 52 starts from Dio's read-
(1978) 232-4 (exilic). ing of tragedy.
167 Von Arnim (1898) 276 (add 72.13-16 - 12.6-8); 172 Intriguingly, Whitmarsh (2001) 162: 'the sophisti-
Crosby (1951) 174-5; Russell (1992) 166; Desideri's
cated reader'. Note also 15, where Dio's playful
exilic dating ((1978) 235; 259 n.68) is untenable.
Thucydidean stress on the difficulty of recalling
168 Moles (1995b) 177-9 (naturally not the only philo-Socrates' X6yot gains piquancy from his own reliance on
sophical underpinning). a written text.
169 N.i1. 173 Similar in tone to Charidemus 30.35, with Moles
170 Cf 3.12; 4.73; Or. 5; Or. 7 (with Moles (1995b) (2000a) 209.
177); 11.6; Or. 57. 174 Bowie (1970); (1974); Plut. Praec. pol. 814a-c.
130 JOHN MOLES
fifth-century Athenian military s

military supremacy). Another is si
a universalizing 'always', hence D
has come not only to the Athenian
now'. 75 Another is to suggest a di
whose oldness has genuinely vali
instances the ability to play Lampr
political competence and defeat of t
(19; 23). These arguments were used
(Ar. Nub. 967, 985-6). But to his A
'the old logos' (14, 29) - a represe
Delphi (30) and the latter's associat
standards of 'ancient Socrates' deco
audience and of Dio's.
Thus Dio's Athenian listeners are given every incentive to see that Dio's account of Socrates'
haranguings of fifth-century Athenians is a text that applies to them too, and that they are also in
the same boat as the morally uninstructed Greeks whom Dio addressed during his wanderings
(11-15): they must not take the fact that Dio is saying 'things which happen to have been said
many years before' as an excuse for 'applying their minds the less' (15).
Hence the apparently dominant, and apparently problematic, focus on Rome at the end is on
one level deceptive: the speech has quite as much to say to, and about, the external, contemporary
Athenians. While it seems that the speech finally 'homes in' on Rome, this is not because Rome
is its final concern, but rather because the physical place of Rome as it now is provides the best
context for the promotion of the moral reform of both Romans and Athenians, both of whom are
invited to redefine their moral place/space. For, if temporal boundaries are dissolved, so also are
spatial (cf 26).
Indeed, by the very end (37), the needs of both Roman and Athenian audiences paradoxically
converge. The Athenians have lost their military power forever. Their vaunted paideia did not
produce that evanescent military power, nor should it be a source of pride to them now in their
subordination to Rome. The Romans never had any paideia in the Greek sense but had military
paideia and still have empire, but that empire is fragile. Despite their apparent differences of
status, then, the solution for both audiences is precisely the same: moral regeneration through
Cynic paideia or 'self-sufficiency', though it is a solution to two rather different problems - for
the Romans, the problem of materialism and luxury, for the Athenians, that of devotion to a
culture which contributes nothing to moral virtue.176
Strikingly, in a speech addressed to cultured Athenians, the (alleged) fact that the Romans
have no conventional culture has no moral significance and their military superiority proves their
suitability for Cynic paideia. Here, as elsewhere, notably in Or. 18, the Borystheniticus and the
Kingships,'77 the highly 6TaotSceuitvog Dio shows admirable flexibility in varying the dose
of conventional paideia to suit particular moral needs. And as in the Charidemus and Borys-
theniticus,178 Dio disconcertingly plays internal and external audiences off against each other.
This paradoxical convergence of need is pointed by structural patterning: just as Socrates
ended his appeal to the Athenians by engaging with their national myth (the epitaphios), so Dio
ends his appeal to the Romans by engaging with theirs (Romans do power, not culture); and the
175 Clearly Dio's own intervention: Desideri (1978) 177 Moles (1995b) 185.
221. 178 Russell (1992) 23; Moles (1995b) 184-92;
Nesselrath, Bibler, Forschner and de Jong (2003) appear
176 Of course, attacks on Roman luxury must also
impact on wealthy Athenians. uninterested in these interpretative aspects of the
Borystheniticus.
Romans' moral problems, to which the Cynic educational programme is a

climactically characterized as a form of 'unchastened licentiousness', just as D
the slow process of his own Cynic education by 'chastening himself' (10). And
poXko; of everybody he meets in the speech, he is necessarily also - because
between internal audiences and external audience - the oa'ouok of the Ath
This explains another level of the speech. Analysis so far has proceeded
Greeks and Romans being different, but this difference is sometimes ignored
'the man who was not base' and to 'those who were then fortunate and ruling'
'they were Romans, we are not'. Similarly, the Scythian analogy (1) suggests
of the same race/nation as everyone else (that is, as members of the Roman
role as philosophical agent of Nerva and Trajan stresses his closeness to
emperors, not his separateness from Rome. For ultimately in this speech, as in
greatest works, the Olympicus and the Borystheniticus, Dio's moral concern is
than the whole world, because essentially the same moral prescription fits a
though with necessary adjustments for local circumstances.179 The Dio of the
the differences between Greek and Roman, but then subordinates them to t
virtue. Through Dio's 'redefinition' of 'Romanness', as implicit in the claim tha
follow his moral programme, they will become 'stronger' (34), the Athenians a
become 'more roman', but this does not at all mean that they should become
both groups, the apparent redefinition of 'ethnicity' functions as an encourage
sition of virtue. True, that virtue is conceived and exemplified by Greeks (D
Plato, Antisthenes, Dio), but it is not distinctively Greek: very few Greeks hav
Indians might have it, and in the Cynic tradition, to which Or. 13 broadly belo
did have it; even Romans might have it; and it is open to everyone. In these
issues a profound challenge to Greeks' self-consciousness as Greeks, not becau
tion of Greekness is problematic, but because Greekness is not synonymous w
Philosophical simplicity
The speech issues an even more uncomfortable challenge to that most characte
sophisticated intellectuals (Greek and Roman, ancient and modern): that the
philosophy, the better it is. But, for all its philosophical allusions, Or. 13's m
essentially simple, as Dio insists,181 and it culminates in the exposition, direct
implicitly to the Athenians, of a modified version of Antisthenes' 'double ed
explicitly 'easy'. That the physical end of the speech which articulates that d
end of the speech (in the sense of its ultimate meaning) is conveyed by num
cumulative sense that Dio's 'wanderings' point towards 'the truth'; the status
Apollo-inspired final destination of those wanderings; the status of the text it
the sense of Dio as Nerva and Trajan's 'ambassador' to the Romans and as the
3pouog of the speech; and the sense that the Antisthenic 'double education' is
speech's quest for true education.
interested
179 Here the Charidemus is different: in the 'construction' of virtue; he take
Moles (2000a)
209. 'Romanness' and 'Greekness' (and 'Indianness' and
'Scythianness')
180 Hence another parallel with the subtly destabiliz-as givens. Nor is his double typology -
Greeks
ing Borystheniticus: Russell (1992) 23; Moles and Romans different, Greeks and Romans th
(1995b)
190-2. Whitmarsh's claims ((2001) 20, same
31) that "'Greek"
(as fellow members of the Roman empire) - prob
and "Roman" ... [are] constructed self-positions,
lematic. Ofideal-
course, one can decide which to emphasiz
ized reifications rather than self-evident
in a subjectivities'
given context, but that is not 'construction'.
181 P. constituted
and that 'identity is not expressed through but 123.
by social discourse' seem to me overwrought: Dio is
132 JOHN MOLES
Irony
How, then, does Dio's elaborate irony play within this ultimately simple moral scenario? Irony's
many effects undoubtedly include complicit pleasure between sophisticated audiences/readers
and sophisticated speakers/writers. 'For a sophisticated reader, the thirteenth oration's con-
spicuous focus upon [Dio's] ... random discovery of philosophy must be offset against his
knowing evocation of a deeply established narrative paradigm.'l82 But there is also philosophi-
cal irony, both Socratic and Cynic.
A main function of such irony is to challenge audiences' ability to discern underlying
seriousness. Dio's 'random discovery of philosophy' is notfinally random: apparent chance is
divine chance.183 The 'modesty' of his disclaimer of the title of philosopher is short-lived: such
terminology was avoided by Socrates himself (28). A more involved example is Dio's charac-
terization both of Socrates' logos and of himself as 'old' (14/29).184 There is much irony: the
allusion to 'a certain Socrates' (14),s85 the characterization of Socratic doctrine as 'old' and
'stale' (29), the very notion (especially in this highly sophisticated speech) of Dio himself as old-
fashioned and unlearned. Still, it is 'not hard' to see that the 'old' (dcXpXtiog) logos of 'old'
Socrates and 'old' Dio (who in 101 was even literally 'old' and looked it)186 unites such appar-
ently varied themes as the superiority of old wisdom to new; the inversion of beginning and end;
the associations between ancient wisdom, beginnings, endings and ruling (apjlj), and ruling as
self-rule, ruling others, and having good or bad rulers;187 the association between all these things
and 'good' and 'bad' fortune and 'good' and 'bad' 'chance';188 and the idea that Dio himself is
the mediator between past and present and between Greek and Roman and the instantiation of
the 'old', 'beginning', 'ruling' logos which potentially solves all moral problems. Dio constructs
a similar overriding architectural and thematic role for himself in other speeches, notably in the
First and Fourth Kingships, Euboicus, Olympicus, Borystheniticus and Charidemus.189
The move from formally depreciatory to positively assertive is underscored by several factors.
The characterization 'old and stale' (29) is elegantly 'pre-cut' by 15:
I requested them ... not to pay any the less attention just because I was saying the things which hap-
pened to have been said many years before, 'For,' I asserted, 'perhaps you will be helped most in this
way. For it is not at all likely that the words of old have evaporated like drugs and lost their power.'
The apparent equivocations about Socrates' logos are supplanted by the statements (30) that he
was admired by all the Greeks for his wisdom and esteemed wisest by Apollo. The always
implausible picture of Dio as an unoriginal and reluctant(!) performer (29) is undermined by the
allusions to his relations with Nerva and Trajan (analogous to Socrates' with Archelaus) and to
the Delphic oracle (another ring-structure), which reinforce the parallels between Socrates and
Dio and the validation of 'ancient wisdom'. Existing admirers of Dio (who certainly got the
invitations) will already know that appeal to such wisdom is one of his commonest moves.190
So much for irony as challenge to audiences' discernment of underlying seriousness.
182 Whitmarsh (2001) 162-3. pXoooc~u. This extended punning on apXrl-roots

183 N.188; the same play in the First Kingship: 1.9, 52 (whether inspired by Thucydides (1.1.1, 23.4-6),
'I chanced to find the right road', etc.; Moles (1990) 320, Herodotus (1.5.1, 3) or Hesiod (Theog. 1, 36)) is paral-
323. leled in the Charidemus: Moles (2000a) 206-7.
184 Quoted on pp. 119-20. 188 1 E&GaU6vcOv dX 6vxo3v, 2 uogtxo;, 3
185 Whitmarsh (2001) 163.
186 The First Kingship similarly uses Dio's 'oldness'
toO saliovio0, 11 v-tuyxyvovrEg, 12 uXo6v, 20
as visual validation: 1.53, 75 with Moles (1990) 321, dozXltapra ... 6torotXErt6tp, 24 Kaoo8at46vo;,
Saigovyov, 31 e i8aiove~, 33 e e8aiglove; ... Ki apX-
328; cf also p. 135. ovteg.
187 1 'pX6vrov, 6 adpylv, 14 X6yov d&pXatov, 29 189 Cf Moles (1990) 309, 314, 316, 319, 323-5, 328-
33, 336, 349; (1995b) 180-1, 183-92; (2000a) 202-9.
&dpXaoa ... 9pyxti"rol , 30 'Apxk~aog, 33 &pxovrreF...
abscutv ... Kai c v v A&vOp'tov, 34 1i t6-t; ... 190 N.85.
Other functions of philosophical irony are more rhetorical. Ironic self-dep

soften otherwise uncompromising moral prescriptions.191 Dio is adept at th
disclaiming the title of 'philosopher' (11-12), he contrasts himself with 'the m
called philosophers [who] proclaim themselves such, just as do heralds at Oly
only with heralds, but also with Dio himself in the recent past.192 Again, the protr
(21) of the Greeks' stoning of Palamedes after he had taught them literacy an
military and regal skills has conflicting implications, but one of these is to re
after his unsuccessful attempt to educate the Athenians and slyly to suggest
messenger on this occasion'.193 This 'softening' effect is also secured by the
typically Cynic combination of comic exaggeration, self-depreciation and self-
trated by Dio's elaborate proposal (32-3) that the Romans should find true ph
ers and instal him (Dio shifts neatly from plural to singular) on 'the Acropolis
for all the young men and even the older men to associate with him and learn
This proposal, a sort of rhetorical blow-up both of Socrates' claim to free m
cityl95 and of edicts honouring philosophers for associating with the young,
both obviously not such a man and - equally obviously - exactly such a m
assumes the man's voice).196 And the proposal itself, like its Socratic original,
exaggerated and serious.
Paideia
If Dio's supple and flexible irony does not threaten the simplicity of his moral teaching but on
the contrary emphasizes it, what of the speech's literary sophistication?
Of course, that literary sophistication, too, is to some extent pleasurable in its own right. Not
only, however, do the literary allusions become progressively more sparing,197 but there is a gath-
ering sense of literature's inadequacy as a moral guide. Exiled from his glittering Roman world,
Dio turns to epic and tragedy, Classical Greece's highest literary forms, but they counsel only
despair (4-6). Later, Dio notes that 'no one has propounded a tragedy about anyone simply
because he is poor' (20), pointedly underlining tragedy's incapacity as a vehicle for the Cynic
philosophical solution propounded by the speech itself. Better the 'tragic performance' of
Socrates (14) - or the tragic metabasis of Dio, returned from exile to Rome but as a chastened
Cynic. Dio's is the 'true', Cynic, tragedy - the one that works, both for himself and as a
paradigm for others.198 Not conventional paideia, then, but the paideia of Cynicism, which
rejects conventional paideia and replaces it with a simple moral programme. If, at the begin-
ning, the apparent simplicity of the speech is (on one level) deconstructed by its literary sophis-
tication and complexity, by the end (metaphorically, literally and literarily), that complexity itself
is unwinding.
It is course an acute paradox that a speech that rejects conventional paideia should itself con-
tain such paideia and in such large quantities. But such paradox is not 'play' for its own sake.
Cynic rhetoric is again relevant. Paradox itself challenges audiences to think about essentials.199
Cynics' use of sophisticated philosophical devices (for example, Diogenes' Politeia and syllo-
gisms)200 preempts intellectual contempt for the simplicity of Cynic moral teaching. His learned
and deft mobilization of different philosophical sources should prevent patronizing disparage-
191 Cf., e.g., Demetr. Eloc. 261; Diog. Laert. 6.38 194 Cf., e.g., Diog. Laert. 6.35, 38.
(Diogenes' self-description); Epict. 3.22.90; Dio 72.13. 195 P1. Ap. 36d.
192 12.12, 27-8, 47-8 (also 70.8), with Moles (1995b) 196 On this clever passage cf also n.133.
182 and n.21; I adhere to 97 as the Olympicus' date (also 197 Illustrative material in nn. 19-24.
Sheppard (1984) 159); 101 (Jones (1978) 53, 176 n.69) 198 Thus the implicit 'tragedy of Diogenes', arche-
might also allow Olympicus' priority; only 105 (far tootypal poor philosopher (2-5; n.21), is proleptic of the
late, I believe) would exclude it. 'correct tragic solution'.
193 The Palamedes being one of Gorgias' most cele- 199 Discussion in Moles (1993) 259-62; (1996) 105-7.
brated works, 21 also conveys anti-sophistic polemic. 200 Moles (1995a) 129-43 and (2000b) 423-32.
134 JOHN MOLES
ment of Dio-philosophus.201o Again

tatives such as Diogenes and Cra
through in unorthodox insights suc
but by the Persians202 and that, e
hated and fragile203 (contrast the
Confronted with Cynics at their for
of clever people who say simple thi
of direct attack and direct moral e
Or. 13. But direct attack becomes w
Cynic (n;oatoy'Xotov.204
More fundamentally, however, the
paideia. Dio's Athenian audience need
systematically demonstrated to it,
sive retreat, and the blithe conclud
cation has no moral significance w
PERFORMANCE CONTEXT AND MORAL DEMAND
Ever since Philostratus and Synesius,205 critical discussion both of Dio's varied corpus and of
ambiguous career has revolved around the debate whether he should be classified as a philo
sopher or as a sophist, with such concomitant polarities as 'serious/playful', 'weighty/trivial'
'sincere/insincere'. The post-exile Dio wrote some sophistic works and sometimes performe
a sophist and had pupils who became sophists.206 He also wrote unequivocally philosoph
works. And some of his works actively resist such pigeonholing.207 'Sophistic' is part of 'p
formance culture', but 'philosophy' can be too. Cynics were necessarily public performers,
though some also wrote. Dio himself was one of the biggest public performers of his age.
it is also a philosophical technique (going back to Socrates and Plato) to 'out-sophist sophist
as a preliminary, or adjunct, to the proper business of philosophizing, or as a reducti
absurdum.209 Of course, the polarities 'philosopher/sophist', 'serious/playful', etc. are
sharp, particularly as applied to this period of Greek literature. Nevertheless, it may still
worth establishing the dominant propensity of a particular work, because that propensity m
itself be part of the meaning of the work (and of other similar works, though not necessaril
the oeuvre). Where, then, within these competing but overlapping landscapes, should we lo
Or. 13, performed in Athens (though arguably also a reading text)? Does it belong within '
highly charged, highly agonistic space of sophistic performance' and demonstrate that 'litera
can be sophisticated, ludic, self-ironizing, and/or irresponsible' and that 'literary texts do
provide a clear window into the souls of their authors'?210
Dio's 'sincerity' does not ultimately matter, although in one respect he is being insincere,2
and wedges between texts and authors can be excessively great (it would, for example
highly counter-intuitive to deny that Dio had a colossal ego, apparent throughout Or. 13).
it is the text that counts, and between the polarity of 'ludic' and 'sincere' lies the crucial tert
201 From this perspective, the classic Brunt206 Moles (1978).

(1973)
reads rather datedly now. 207 Cf Said (2000) 180 on the Troicus: 'there is no
reason
202 Cf Olmstead (1948) 371: 'Persia had won thetosec-
think that these readings are mutually exclusive
ond great war with the European Greeks.' ... In a way this is "play", but really "serious play".'
203 Starr (1982) 3: 'the Roman Empire ... was 208 Branham
an (1996).
impossibility'. 209 E.g. Dio 4.79-81; Moles (1978) 81; Said (2000)
204 Kindstrand (1976) 47-8; spoudaiogeloion in Dio: 171; Schofield (2000) 198-9.
Or. 72.13 (important); Moles (1983a) 274-5; Said (2000) 210 Whitmarsh (2001) 215.
171, 180. 211 P. 121.
205 Philostr. VS 487-8; Synes. Dion.
quid of 'serious'. This speech makes an argument, and, while that argument is ulti
ple, it is also serious, because practically everything in the speech contributes to i
'ludic' qualities positively reinforce its moral teaching, which is both overtly philos
we discount Dio's tissue-thin equivocations) and implicitly anti-sophistic.212 N
'contradictions' with other Dionian speeches explicable only in terms of 'the highl
highly agonistic space of sophistic performance'.213 Rather, the speech takes its pla
concerned with the Romans' moral status, though it simultaneously targets the Ath
it is actually its performance context (whether that in Athens or that which we as reader
reconstruct) that provides the last proof of its radically philosophical claims.
Dio says that, as part of his 'self-chastening' in response to the Delphic oracle, h
'humble dress' (10 orohiv ... tonetvilv). In context, this dress is Cynic and Dio's
it symbolises proleptically his conversion to Cynicism.214 Such Cynic dress is as 'u
may be (short of 'Gymnosophy' or 'Cynogamy'). When the Cynicized Socrates appe
described as shouting 'altogether manlily and un-dressed-up-ly' ((16) d&vonooa

now becomes a metaphor for style or type of performance,215 and the contrast is
simplest and the most elaborate types of dress, the latter of which conceals.216 Both
the dramatic Dio of 10ff. are 'undressy' Cynic performers,217 and there is the further im
that style and moral content must match. Nothing suggests that the dramatic Dio c
when he reached Rome (29ff.), and Or. 72 confirms that he at least sometimes 'dr
when performing as a philosopher in Rome, as elsewhere.218 Dio's self-representat
speech would fail if he were wearing something different before his Athenian audi
just as Dio's 'oldness' (metaphorical and literal) instantiates and validates the s
logos', so also his Cynic dress instantiates and privileges the Cynic narrative and m
(which is only another form of 'the old logos'). Style, content, man and appearanc
Although the speech itself is 'dressed up' in all sorts of sophisticated ways, in order
it rightly we have, as it were, to 'undress' it to its Cynic 'underwear', itself of cours
Cynic act, at least potentially.
But 'potentially' is itself another point. Or. 13 is a protreptic: its ultimate success
does not lie with Dio the speaker/writer, or with his audience's/readers' ability to decode
ings, but rather with whether, inspired by Dio's rhetoric, impressive as it is, and fo
practical example, which has at least some moral substance, they accept their own m
sibility and begin the process of enacting those meanings in their own lives. Hence t
forward-looking exhortations to the Romans (35, 37) and the implicitly forward-look
tions to the Athenians and any other audiences/readers, all of whom are invited to 'w
moral story' in the future than the dismal stories of their respective pasts and presents.2
212 N.193. 215 Douglas (1966) 201; Fantham (1972) 171-2 (I

213 Whitmarsh (2001) 215-16 takes the 'contradiction'
thank Jaap Wisse for advice).
between Dio's 'anti-Roman' attack on Roman decadence 216 LSJ s.v.
in Or. 13 and his apparent 'pro-Roman' pride in his 217 The First Kingship also plays with pLbogo
Roman citizenship in 41.6 as deriving from 'shifts in'dress': 1.49, with Moles (1990) 319; Whitmarsh (2001)
rhetorical self-presentation ... [between the roles of] oppo-197; and the Arcadian prophetess' 'country dress' (1.53)
sitionalist (the pose he adopts in his writings on exile) oremblematizes that speech's rugged Cynic strand.
... adviser (the pose he adopts in the Kingships)'. But: (i) 218 Cf 1.50; 12.9, 85 (with Moles (1995b) 183);
Dio's attack on Roman decadence in Or. 13 is not 'anti- 33.14-15; 34.2; 70.8.
Roman'; (ii) Or. 41 is a political speech delivered to a 219 Similarly, in the Olympicus, the visibly old,
Roman colony; (iii) in Or. 13 Dio begins as 'oppositional-unkempt, 'owlish', suffering 'Cynic' Dio instantiates
ist' but ends as 'adviser' (both of Romans and Athenians).Greece herself: Moles (1995b) 183.
Here 'sophistic' is being made to explain too much. 220 Similar 'write-your-own-life' challenges in the
214 This conversion motif: Kindstrand (1976) 163-4;First Kingship (esp. 1.49); the Fourth Kingship; the
the old debate whether/to what extent Dio 'really'Euboicus; the Borystheniticus and the Charidemus:
became Cynic does not matter here: the representation isMoles (1990) 335-6; 348-50; 372 n.119; (1995b) 178-9;
serious in context. 190-2; (2000a), esp. 194-9, 207-9.
136 JOHN MOLES
Imaginatively conceived and perfe

many pleasures. It also makes dema
its final demands are moral and th
appreciate the enormous resource a
attention. But perhaps even today
Dio' have not entirely lost their pow
JOHN MOLE
University of Ne
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The Thirteenth Oration of Dio Chrysostom: Complexity and Simplicity, Rhetoric and

Moralism, Literature and Life

THE THIRTEENTH ORATION OF DIO CHRYSOSTOM: COMPLEXITY

The structure of the speech can be variously analysed.

* Versions were given at the Newcastle Mike

CONTEXT AND DATE

6 7.66: [before the exile] I knew the homes and

genuine good fortune and secure rul

e6aigtJove; Ki 9ipxovre; of 1 should

exilic status.24 The toukaxoyootov ('serio-comic') tradition is also relevant.25

Dio's consultation of Delphi reflects Chaerephon's consultation on behalf of Socrates.

(1 - description of Socrates) 'shouting a

(2 - description of Socrates) 'like a god fr

(3 - description of Socrates) 'censuring' (1

24 1 Thuc. 5.26. 31 E.g. 2-5 - Diog. Laert. 6.38; 33 - Diog. Laert.

(4 - Socrates starts speaking)

(5) 'Do you not know

(6) 'But is it by 'But seeing

36 Textual problems in 16 and 17 (Verrengia (2000) 39 Slings (1999) 94.

is better explained as sophisticated imitation of Platonic anachronisms in the

Fourth Kingship.49 The parallels add

Indians;65 the implicit cosmopolitanism;66 the advocacy of philosophical 'strength

(29) ... so to all the others I used to s

This irony requires further consid

80 s oiXa (Capps) is certain: cf. Or. 12.12

97 P. 123. 106 Moles (1978), esp. 96-100.

(c) The search for a competent philosophical counsellor. T6 pooUieaeYoat is an

And not only do Dio's experiences

becomes the o4ig3oo; of everybod

SPECIFIC INTERPRETATIVE PROBLEMS

There are two: (a) sections 29ff.; (b) section 9.

123 N. 21. 127 Translation: Cohoon (1939) 115; Swain (1996)

Now Or. 13, a text that relates wan

138 Fittingly, 141 The

Greeks and Romans

fifth-century Athenian military s

Romans' moral problems, to which the Cynic educational programme is a

182 Whitmarsh (2001) 162-3. pXoooc~u. This extended punning on apXrl-roots

Other functions of philosophical irony are more rhetorical. Ironic self-dep

ment of Dio-philosophus.201o Again

PERFORMANCE CONTEXT AND MORAL DEMAND

201 From this perspective, the classic Brunt206 Moles (1978).

described as shouting 'altogether manlily and un-dressed-up-ly' ((16) d&vonooa

212 N.193. 215 Douglas (1966) 201; Fantham (1972) 171-2 (I

Imaginatively conceived and perfe

Fantham, E. (1972) Comparative Studies in Republican Latin Imagery (Toronto)

- (2000b) 'The Cynics', in C. Rowe and M

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