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Mixis

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Émeline Marquis
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Alain Billault

Troisième partie. Focus sur un genre

9. Generic Play in Lucian’s Philopseudes

Ewen Bowie

Texte intégral

  • 1 Jacques Bompaire, Lucien écrivain. Imitation et création, Paris, de Boccard, 1958, p. 169-170 ; Bry (...)
  • 2 Karen Mheallaigh, Reading Fiction with Lucian. Fakes, Freaks and Hyperreality, Cambridge, Cambri (...)
  • 3 C. Desmond N. Costa, Lucian. Selected Dialogues. Translated with an Introduction and Notes, Oxford, (...)

1What is Lucian’s game in the Philopseudes ? This dialogue received remarkably little attention from Bompaire in 1958 or Reardon in 19711. But there has been much scholarship since then, especially in the last fifteen years, a high proportion focusing on Philopseudes’ handling of the supernatural, either on Lucian’s sources in literature and popular culture (e.g. Daniel Ogden in 2007) or on what is at stake when a writer claims to be vouching for ἄπιστα that are supernatural (as in Karen ní Mheallaigh’s great 2014 chapter, which of course also has much more)2. So is Lucian — as well as provoking many of the thoughts about the pleasures and dangers of reading fiction that Karen has suggested — ‘simply’ (a term always to be used only as a last resort in interpreting Lucian) using a dialogue frame to bookend a sequence of tales of the unexpected (as Costa in 2005) and in the process ‘having his cake and eating it’ (as suggested by Nesselrath in 2013)3? Is his concatenation of these tales of the unexpected either upgrading or sniping at (or both) such collections as that of Phlegon of Tralles, published only a few decades earlier, in his own brand of fancy dialogue packaging ?

  • 4 Ewen L. bowie, « Iamblichus’ Babyloniaca : Antonius Diogenes and a half ? », in The Thulean Zone : (...)
  • 5 Ewen L. Bowie, « Links between Antonius Diogenes and Petronius », in Ancient Narrative Suppl. 8. Th (...)

2I would like to suggest Lucian is doing a bit more. First, I suggest that he is reacting to the recent publication of Iamblichus’ Babyloniaca, a narrative rich in ἄπιστα, including magic, and that is he is also reacting to τὰ ὑπὲρ Θούλην ἄπιστα of Antonius Diogenes, which recently I argued was perhaps experiencing a readerly revival in the 160s AD4, though for all we know it might have been read in all generations since its publication in (as I had earlier argued) the 50s AD5.

  • 6 Jacques Schwartz, Biographie de Lucien de Samosate, Collection Latomus 83, Brussels, Latomus, 1965. (...)
  • 7 Jacques Schwartz, Lucien de Samosate. Philopseudès et De Morte Peregrini, Paris, 1st edition, Les B (...)
  • 8 E. L. Bowie, « Links between Antonius Diogenes and Petronius », p. 121-132.
  • 9 See the author’s claims about himself as reported by Photius, Cod. 94, 75b27-38 : Λέγει δὲ καὶ ἑαυτ (...)

3This proposal depends on placing the Philopseudes in or near AD 168, as did Jacques Schwarz in 19656. It is of course a precarious dating, and like almost all Schwartz’s chronology can be argued about, but I know of no evidence or argument that actually disproves it. As a scholar who edited and commented on the Philopseudes Schwartz undoubtedly knew the dialogue very well7. The date of Antonius Diogenes’ publication is even harder to pin down8, but that of Iamblichus’ Babyloniaca, given its writer’s claim to have prophesied the Roman victory against the Parthians of AD 165/166, is the most secure of all our known novels : it must have been written in the years immediately following that victory9.

Philopseudes’ evocation of the Babyloniaca

4The point at which Philopseudes seems most strongly to evoke the Babyloniaca is the story in which a Babylonian wonder-worker saves from death a vineyard slave Midas who had been bitten by a viper (Philops. 11) :

Ταῦτά τε οὖν ἀπηγγέλλετο καὶ τὸν Μίδαν ἑωρῶμεν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ σκίμποδος ὑπὸ τῶν ὁμοδούλων προσκομιζόμενον, ὅλον ᾠδηκότα, πελιδνόν, μυδῶντα ἐπιπολῆς, ὀλίγον ἔτι ἐμπνέοντα. Λελυπημένῳ δὴ τῷ πατρὶ τῶν ϕίλων τις παρών, ‘Θάρρει, ’ ἔϕη, ‘ἐγὼ γάρ σοι ἄνδρα Βαβυλώνιον τῶν Χαλδαίων, ὥς ϕασιν, αὐτίκα μέτειμι, ὃς ἰάσεται τὸν ἄνθρωπον.’ καὶ ἵνα μὴ διατρίβω λέγων, ἧκεν ὁ Βαβυλώνιος καὶ ἀνέστησε τὸν Μίδαν ἐπῳδῇ τινι ἐξελάσας τὸν ἰὸν ἐκ τοῦ σώματος, ἔτι καὶ προσαρτήσας τῷ ποδὶ νεκρᾶς παρθένου λίθον ἀπὸ τῆς στήλης ἐκκολάψας […]

As this was being reported, we saw Midas himself being brought up on a litter by his fellow-slaves, all swollen and livid, with a clammy skin and but little breath left in him. Naturally my father was distressed, but a friend who was there said to him : ‘Don’t worry : I will go at once and get you a Babylonian, one of the so-called Chaldaeans, who will cure the man.’ Not to make a long story of it, the Babylonian came and brought Midas back to life, driving the poison out of his body by a spell, and also binding upon his foot a fragment which he broke from the tombstone of a dead maiden. (Transl. Loeb Classical Library, adapted)

5Plural Βαβυλώνιοι are not rare in Lucian, but alongside the Homer of Verae Historiae 2.20 this is his only case of an individual who is termed Βαβυλώνιος, though he introduces a similar Chaldaean who is also supposed to be Βαβυλώνιος at Menippus 6 :

Ἐλθὼν δὲ (sc. to Babylon) συγγίγνομαί τινι τῶν Χαλδαίων σοϕῷ ἀνδρὶ καὶ θεσπεσίῳ τὴν τέχνην, πολιῷ μὲν τὴν κόμην, γένειον δὲ μάλα σεμνὸν καθειμένῳ, τοὔνομα δὲ ἦν αὐτῷ Μιθροβαρζάνης.

And when I went (i.e. to Babylon) I encountered one of the Chaldaeans, a wise man with marvellous skills, grey hair and a long, very imposing beard. His name was Mithrobarzanes. (My translation)

6The character in Philopseudes, whom is perhaps significant that Lucian does not name, recalls two episodes in Iamblichus’ Babyloniaca. One is that where Tigris’ mother resorts to magic to make her dead son a hero, an episode that generates a digression on a wide range of magic in which the author reveals, or claims, his own Babylonian origin and offers the key evidence already cited in footnote 9 for the work’s date, Photius, Cod. 94, 75b17-26 :

Ἐν δὲ τῇ προειρημένῃ νησῖδι ῥόδον ἐντραγὼν ὁ Τίγρις τελευτᾷ· κανθαρὶς γὰρ τοῖς τοῦ ῥόδου ϕύλλοις ἔτι συνεπτυγμένοις οὖσιν ὑπεκάθητο. καὶ ἡ τοῦ παιδὸς μήτηρ ἥρωα πείθεται γενέσθαι τὸν υἱὸν ἐκμαγεύσασα. καὶ διεξέρχεται ὁ Ἰάμβλιχος μαγικῆς εἴδη, μάγον ἀκρίδων καὶ μάγον λεόντων καὶ μάγον μυῶν· ἐξ οὗ καλεῖσθαι καὶ τὰ μυστήρια ἀπὸ τῶν μυῶν (πρώτην γὰρ εἶναι τὴν τῶν μυῶν μαγικήν). καὶ μάγον δὲ λέγει χαλάζης καὶ μάγον ὄϕεων, καὶ νεκυομαντείας καὶ ἐγγαστρίμυθον, ὃν καί ϕησιν ὡς Ἕλληνες μὲν Εὐρυκλέα λέγουσι Βαβυλώνιοι δὲ Σάκχουραν ἀποκαλοῦσι. λέγει δὲ […] (for what follows see above n. 9)

In the aforementioned island Tigris ate a rose and died : for a beetle was lurking in the rose’s petals which were still closely folded. And the boy’s mother believed her son became a hero as a result of her magic. And Iamblichus enumerates the forms of magic, grass-hopper wizards and lion wizards and mouse magic wizards – on the basis of which mysteries are so called, from mice [myes] (for mouse magic was the first magic). And he says there are hail wizards and snake wizards, and consultations of the dead, and a ventriloquist, whom he also says the Greeks call Eurycles and the Babylonians refer to as Sagcuras. And he says… (My translation)

  • 10 Noticed by D. Ogden, In Search of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice…, p. 75 with n. 30 on p. 96 (also offer (...)

7The second episode in the Babyloniaca is that in which an aged Chaldaean reveals an apparently dead girl to be alive, Photius, Cod. 94,74b43-75a4 :10

Kαὶ ϕεύγουσι πάλιν ἐκεῖθεν, καὶ καταλαμβάνουσι κόρην ἐπὶ ταϕὴν ἀγομένην, καὶ συρρέουσιν ἐπὶ τὴν θέαν καὶ Χαλδαῖος γέρων ἐπιστὰς κωλύει τὴν ταϕήν, ἔμπνουν εἶνα τὴν κόρην ἔτι λέγων· καὶ ἐδείχθη οὕτω. Χρησμῳδεῖ δὲ καὶ τῷ Ῥοδάνει ὡς βασιλεύσοι […]

And they flee back again from there, and they encounter a young girl being taken to her burial, and they rush to see what is happening and an old Chaldaean come forward and stops the burial, saying that the girl is still breathing, and so she was shown to be. And he also foretells to Rodanes that he will be king. (My translation)

Philopseudes’ evocation of τὰ ὑπὲρ Θούλην ἄπιστα of Antonius Diogenes

  • 11 See above nn. 4 and 5.

8There are several details in the Philopseudes which seem to evoke Antonius Diogenes’ τὰ ὑπὲρ Θούλην ἄπιστα ‘The incredible things beyond Thule’, a twenty-four book novel in which the chief narrator, an Arcadian Deinias, travels north to the sources of the river Tanais, then East to where the sun rises, then round the outer sea to Thule. There he is joined by and falls in love with a Tyrian Dercyllis, whose own travels, which she narrated to him on Thule, were initially undertaken with her brother Mantias and took place in the Mediterranean area and adjacent countries. Then they had taken her north via Thrace and the Getae or Massagetae to Thule. From Thule all three, Deinias, Mantias and Dercyllis are magically transported back to Tyre. We know this novel chiefly from Photius and from a few papyri — few, but enough to show it acquired a readership by the late second or early third century. I have argued that although first published in the later 50s AD it was being read by Iamblichus (and presumably others) in the 160s11.

9The evocations are as follows :

  • 12 On the alternative title see D. Ogden, In Search of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice…, p. 3 ; K. Mheall (...)

101. The dialogue’s alternative title, Ἀπιστῶν, ‘Unbeliever’ (which in an unaccented script could not be distinguished from the genitive plural ἀπίστων)12.

112. The incident of the unnamed Hyperborean, Philopseudes 13 :

‘ᾬμην γὰρ οὐδενὶ λόγῳ δυνατὸν γίγνεσθαι ἂν αὐτὰ — ὅμως ὅτε τὸ πρῶτον εἶδον πετόμενον τὸν ξένον τὸν βάρβαρον — ἐξ Ὑπερβορέων δὲ ἦν, ὡς ἔϕασκεν — ἐπίστευσα καὶ ἐνικήθην ἐπὶ πολὺ ἀντισχών. Τί γὰρ ἔδει ποιεῖν αὐτὸν ὁρῶντα διὰ τοῦ ἀέρος ϕερόμενον ἡμέρας οὔσης καὶ ἐϕ’ ὕδατος βαδίζοντα καὶ διὰ πυρὸς διεξιόντα σχολῇ καὶ βάδην;’

‘Σὺ ταῦτα εἶδες, ’ ἦν δ’ ἐγώ, ‘τὸν Ὑπερβόρεον ἄνδρα πετόμενον ἢ ἐπὶ τοῦ ὕδατος βεβηκότα;’

‘For I thought it in no way possible that they could happen ; yet when first I saw the foreign stranger fly — he came from the land of the Hyperboreans, he said —, I believed and was conquered after long resistance. What should I have done when I saw him soar through the air in broad daylight and walk on the water and go through fire slowly on foot ?’

‘Did you see that ?’ I said — ‘the Hyperborean flying, or walking on the water ?’

(Transl. Loeb Classical Library, adapted)

  • 13 Hermotimus 27 ; Navigium 24 ; Phalaris 2.
  • 14 The story at Philopseudes 14 is as follows : Ἄρτι γὰρ ὁ Γλαυκίας τοῦ πατρὸς ἀποθανόντος παραλαβὼν τ (...)

12There are other plural Hyperboreans in Lucian13. But only here do we read of an individual Hyperborean, and it may be relevant that he appears in connection with a story of sexual desire, the defining theme of the prose fiction genre of which the ἄπιστα ὑπὲρ Θούλην seems to be an outlying member14. Much of the wandering of Antonius Diogenes’characters takes place in a region in the far north where other writers locate Hyperboreans, though it must be admitted that this term is not preserved by Photius’ summary as having been used in Antonius Diogenes’ text.

  • 15 The Greek texts with translations and notes can be found in Susan A. Stephens and John J. Winkler, (...)
  • 16 For possible sources for Lucian’s name Arignotus in his classical reading cf. Ar., Equites 1278, Ae (...)

133. The text of the ἄπιστα ὑπὲρ Θούλην did, however, clearly give considerable prominence to Pythagoras’pupils and to Pythagorean ideas. At Photius, Cod. 94 109b14, Astraeus gives an account of Pythagoras and his father Mnesarchus, an account that was paraphrased and excerpted by Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras 10-17, 32-45 and 44-55 and John the Lydian, On months 4.4215. Antonius Diogenes’interest in Pythagoras might be recalled by the Pythagorean Arignotus who figures in Philopseudes 29-3116.

  • 17 Cf. PSI 1177, S. A. Stephens and J. J. Winkler, Ancient Greek Novels…, p. 148-153.

144. Antonius Diogenes’ heroine Dercyllis in some sense sees the underworld, perhaps only indirectly via an account given by her revenant slave Myrto, Photius, Cod. 166, 109a38-b317. Compare Eucrates’ sight of the underworld at Philopseudes 24.

155. Egyptian magic has a key role in the ἄπιστα ὑπὲρ Θούλην, represented by the evil wizard Paapis, as it does in Philopseudes 34-37, exercised by the man claimed by Arignotus as his teacher, Pancrates.

Lucian’s literary objectives

16So what is Lucian doing ? I do not think that we should read as satire or mockery his evocation of the ἄπιστα ὑπὲρ Θούλην of Antonius Diogenes, one of whose two programmatic letters made clear the status of its content as plasmata, or of the Βαβυλωνιακά of Iamblichus, whose pseudo-documentary packaging made it equally manifest that he too did not expect to be taken as claiming to tell a true story. In Philopseudes the prose writers who are pilloried are those who claimed to be telling the truth, Herodotus and Ctesias (Philopseudes 2) but who in Lucian’s view were purveying falsehoods. Rather, I suggest, Lucian is directing our attention to Antonius Diogenes and Iamblichus so that we can compare and contrast their literary exploitation of magic with his own, very different solution, i.e. incorporation of ἄπιστα relating to magic in a dialogue whose narrator-figure raises questions about their credibility and catalyses readers’ reflection on meta-fictionality. If there is a satirical target, it is rather Phlegon or other writers who had put together thaumasia in a format that goes little beyond compilation. Lucian demonstrates how much more artistic is his own adaptation of one of his favourite genres, the dialogue, to the assembly of such stories.

17That the added-value of the dialogue frame is important may, I suggest, be hinted at by his narrator Tychiades’comparison of his own condition after hearing the tales to that of people whose stomachs are swollen because they have drunk must, γλεῦκος, so that they need an emetic to cure them (Philopseudes 39) :

Τοιαῦτά σοι, ὦ Φιλόκλεις, παρὰ Εὐκράτει ἀκούσας περίειμι νὴ τὸν Δία ὥσπερ οἱ τοῦ γλεύκους πιόντες ἐμπεϕυσημένος τὴν γαστέρα ἐμέτου δεόμενος.

After hearing these things at Eucrates’ house I am going around like people who have drunk must – with my belly swollen and in need of an emetic. (My translation)

  • 18 K. Mheallaigh, Reading Fiction…, p. 86.

18Contrary to Karen18, I think that γλεῦκος is not simply ‘strong wine’. γλεῦκος is grape juice that is just beginning the process of fermentation, in Latin mustum, and is no more than on the way to becoming wine that can be drunk safely and with pleasure. The distinction is clear in Longus’ cameo scene of the vintage, Daphnis and Chloe 2.1.2-3 :

Ἔμελέ τινι δρεπάνης μικρᾶς ἐς βότρυος τομὴν καὶ ἑτέρῳ λίθου θλῖψαι τὰ ἔνοινα τῶν βοτρύων δυναμένου καὶ ἄλλῳ λύγου ξηρᾶς πληγαῖς κατεξασμένης, ὡς ἂν ὑπὸ ϕωτὶ νύκτωρ τὸ γλεῦκος ϕέροιτο. Ἀμελήσαντες οὖν καὶ ὁ Δάϕνις καὶ ἡ Χλόη τῶν αἰγῶν καὶ τῶν προβάτων, χειρὸς ὠϕέλειαν ἄλλοις μετεδίδοσαν. Ὁ μὲν ἐβάσταζεν ἐν ἀρρίχοις βότρυς καὶ ἐπάτει ταῖς ληνοῖς ἐμβαλὼν καὶ εἰς τοὺς πίθους ἔϕερε τὸν οἶνον· ἡ δὲ τροϕὴν παρεσκεύαζε τοῖς τρυγῶσι καὶ ἐνέχει ποτὸν αὐτοῖς πρεσβύτερον οἶνον.

One person saw to a small sickle for cutting bunches of grapes, a second to a stone able to crush the juice from the bunches, another to a dry willow twig, pounded into shreds, by whose light the must could be carried after dark. So Daphnis and Chloe stopped tending their goats and sheep and lent others a helping hand : he hoisted bunches of grapes in baskets, dumped them into the presses and trod them, and carried the wine to the jars, while she made food for the vintners and poured them a drink of more mature wine.
(Translation Loeb Classical Library, adapted)

19What Lucian’s character Tychiades has been exposed to, then, is the raw material of developed and refined narrative — the material that went into the works of Antonius Diogenes and Iamblichus, and was then transformed by them into consumable literature, just as Lucian himself, by presenting that material in the old barrel of a dialogue, is — he claims — making it suitable for literary consumption. Lucian offers us a work of literary art that invites us to compare itself with — inter alia — novels, and he is asking us to see that it is both similar and different.

The Philopseudes and Plato

  • 19 E.g. by Martin Ebner, « Einleitung », in Lukian : Die Lügenfreunde oder Der Unglaubige, ed. M. Ebne (...)

20To close I turn briefly to a different aspect of Lucian’s mixis, the implications of the fact that Philopseudes draws on both Plato’s Phaedo and Plato’s Symposium, a fact that has has been often noticed19, though I think that sometimes his evocations of the Symposium have been underplayed. Whereas Tychiades’ visit to the sick Eucrates and sitting on his couch (ἐπὶ τῆς κλίνης, Philopseudes 6) recalls the Phaedo, the successive interventions by different characters recall the Symposium, and that recollection may be bolstered by some other details. In Philopseudes 2, in Philocles’ question to the narrator Tychiades, the attraction of telling falsehoods is described as an eros :

Ἦ που κατανενόηκας ἤδη τινὰς τοιούτους, οἷς ἔμϕυτος ὁ ἔρως οὗτός ἐστι πρὸς τὸ ψεῦδος;

Have you really ever observed people like this, in whom there is this engrained desire to lie ? (My translation)

21Very soon after we hear about real, or rather mythological, eros, in a reference to stories about Zeus’ eros driving him to metamorphoses :

Καὶ ὡς δι’ ἔρωτα ὁ Ζεὺς ταῦρος ἢ κύκνος ἐγένετο καὶ ὡς ἐκ γυναικός τις εἰς ὄρνεον ἢ εἰς ἄρκτον μετέπεσεν.

and how because of desire Zeus became a bull or a swan, and how someone was turned from a woman into a bird or a bear.
(My translation)

22The foregrounding of eros, first metaphorical and then literal, seems to me to join other indications to readers that they should be alert to connections with Plato’s Symposium. The other clue that might be meant to prompt the reader to think of that Symposium is that Philopseudes shares two characters with Lucian’s own Symposium : Cleodemus, in Lucian’s Symposium, as he is in the Philopseudes, a Peripatetic — who in Symposium seduces the wife of his pupil Sostratus, and Ion, as in Philopseudes a Platonist, who turns up in Symposium as the teacher of the bridegroom Chaereas — a suspiciously novelistic name for a bridegroom, though its capacity to point to Chariton’s novel may be weakened by the appearance of a Chaereas in Dial. meretr. 7 and in Lexiphanes.

  • 20 Christopher P. Jones, Culture and Society in Lucian, Cambridge (Mass.) & London, Harvard University (...)

23If Jones’ enumeration of the stories in Philopseudes as seven were correct20, another factor nudging readers of to think of Plato’s Symposium would the number of tall tales — like the seven speeches in Plato’s Symposium —, though that number might in the case of each work hint at a now lost classical work Banquet of the seven sages. But that ‘seven’ is a pseudarithmos : depending on whether one admits the brief description of the Syro-Palestinian exorcist’s activity at Philopseudes 16 as a ‘tale’, we have either nine or ten stories.

  • 21 Above n. 13.

24But if the reader of Philopseudes does reflect on its relation to the Symposium of Plato,(s) he will of course find more in it that is different than that is similar. Lucian’s doctor Antigonus corresponds to the doctor Eryximachus in the Symposium of Plato, and up to a point the late-arrival Pythagorean Arignotus is a comic inversion of the youthful Alcibiades. But among the other speakers in Plato the only philosopher is Socrates, whereas in Philopseudes all speakers except Eucrates, and all those in Lucian’s Symposium, are philosophers. In Plato the topic of the nature of eros is what holds the dialogue together, while Lucian admits only one story of eros — the desire of Glaucias for Chrysis the wife of Demeas and its satisfaction by the magic of the Hyperborean, Cleodemus’ story, 13-1421 — whereas all his stories deal with magic and the supernatural.

25So is Lucian’s blending of mimesis of the Phaedo and the Symposium merely an elegant literary game with no interpretative implications ? Or does the presence of the Symposium and the occasional genuflection to eros encourage a reader to think that reflection on ἄπιστα might involve not only reflection on the novelistic form — a sprawling 24 books — that Antonius Diogenes pioneered and that Iamblichus — with something like 36 books — carried further, but also on the differences of that sub-genre from the more frequently adopted form of prose fiction, smaller in scale, that had eros as its mainspring ? To me that is a very tempting inference.

Notes

1 Jacques Bompaire, Lucien écrivain. Imitation et création, Paris, de Boccard, 1958, p. 169-170 ; Bryan P. Reardon, Courants littéraires grecs des iie et iiie siècles après J.-C., Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1971, p. 695-696.

2 Karen Mheallaigh, Reading Fiction with Lucian. Fakes, Freaks and Hyperreality, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014, p. 72-107 ; Daniel Ogden, In Search of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The Traditional Tales of Lucian’s Lover of Lies, Swansea, The Classical Press of Wales, 2007.

3 C. Desmond N. Costa, Lucian. Selected Dialogues. Translated with an Introduction and Notes, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005 ; Heinz-Günther Nesselrath, « Wundergeschichte in der Perspective eines paganen satirischen Skeptikers », in Credible, Incredible : The Miraculous in the Ancient Mediterranean, ed. T. Nicklas and J. E. Spittler, Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 2013, p. 37-55 (at p. 42-47).

4 Ewen L. bowie, « Iamblichus’ Babyloniaca : Antonius Diogenes and a half ? », in The Thulean Zone : New Frontiers in Fiction with Antonius Diogenes, ed. Karen ní Mheallaigh, forthcoming.

5 Ewen L. Bowie, « Links between Antonius Diogenes and Petronius », in Ancient Narrative Suppl. 8. The Greek and the Roman Novel : Parallel Readings, ed. M. Paschalis, S. Frangoulidis, S. J. Harrison, M. Zimmerman, Groningen, Barkhuis, 2007, p. 121-132.

6 Jacques Schwartz, Biographie de Lucien de Samosate, Collection Latomus 83, Brussels, Latomus, 1965. D. Ogden, In Search of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice…, p. 3-4, seems tentatively to accept the consensus allocating the Philopseudes to the late 160s.

7 Jacques Schwartz, Lucien de Samosate. Philopseudès et De Morte Peregrini, Paris, 1st edition, Les Belles Lettres, 1951, 2nd edition, Ophrys, 1963.

8 E. L. Bowie, « Links between Antonius Diogenes and Petronius », p. 121-132.

9 See the author’s claims about himself as reported by Photius, Cod. 94, 75b27-38 : Λέγει δὲ καὶ ἑαυτὸν Βαβυλώνιον εἶναι ὁ συγγραφεύς, καὶ μαθεῖν τὴν μαγικήν, μαθεῖν δὲ καὶ τὴν Ἑλληνικὴν παιδείαν, καὶ ἀκμάζειν ἐπὶ Σοαίμου τοῦ Ἀχαιμενίδου τοῦ Ἀρσακίδου, ὃς βασιλεὺς ἦν ἐκ πατέρων βασιλέων, γέγονε δὲ ὅμως καὶ τῆς συγκλήτου βουλῆς τῆς ἐν Ῥώμῃ, καὶ ὕπατος δέ, εἶτα καὶ βασιλεὺς πάλιν τῆς μεγάλης Ἀρμενίας. Ἐπὶ τούτου γοῦν ἀκμάσαι φησὶν ἑαυτόν. Ῥωμαίων δὲ διαλαμβάνει βασιλεύειν Ἀντωνῖνον, καὶ ὅτε Ἀντωνῖνός, φησιν, Οὐῆρον τὸν αὐτοκράτορα καὶ ἀδελφὸν καὶ κηδεστὴν ἔπεμψε Βολογαίσῳ τῷ Παρθυαίῳ πολεμήσοντα, ὡς αὐτός τε προείποι καὶ τὸν πόλεμον, ὅτι γενήσεται, καὶ ὅποι τελευτήσοι. (The author says that he is a Babylonian, that he learned magic, and that he also acquired a Greek education ; that he was in his prime at the time of Sohaemus, son of Achaemenides the Arsacid, who was a king descended from kings, but also became a member of the Roman Senate, and consul, and then again king of Armenia Maior. It is in his time that he says he himself was in his prime. And he picks out as ruling over the Romans Antoninus (i.e. Marcus Aurelius), and says that when Antoninus sent his brother and son-in-law, the emperor Verus, to fight a war against the Parthian Vologeses, he himself predicted both that the war would take place and how it would end. My translation).

10 Noticed by D. Ogden, In Search of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice…, p. 75 with n. 30 on p. 96 (also offering some other similar cases).

11 See above nn. 4 and 5.

12 On the alternative title see D. Ogden, In Search of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice…, p. 3 ; K. Mheallaigh, Reading Fiction…, p. 72 with n.1.

13 Hermotimus 27 ; Navigium 24 ; Phalaris 2.

14 The story at Philopseudes 14 is as follows : Ἄρτι γὰρ ὁ Γλαυκίας τοῦ πατρὸς ἀποθανόντος παραλαβὼν τὴν οὐσίαν ἠράσθη Χρυσίδος τῆς Δημέου γυναικός. Ἐμοὶ δὲ διδασκάλῳ ἐχρῆτο πρὸς τοὺς λόγους, καὶ εἴ γε μὴ ὁ ἔρως ἐκεῖνος ἀπησχόλησεν αὐτόν, ἅπαντα ἂν ἤδη τὰ τοῦ Περιπάτου ἠπίστατο, ὃς καὶ ὀκτωκαιδεκαέτης ὢν ἀνέλυε καὶ τὴν φυσικὴν ἀκρόασιν μετεληλύθει εἰς τέλος. Ἀμηχανῶν δὲ ὅμως τῷ ἔρωτι μηνύει μοι τὸ πᾶν, ἐγὼ δὲ ὥσπερ εἰκὸς ἦν, διδάσκαλον ὄντα, τὸν Ὑπερβόρεον ἐκεῖνον μάγον ἄγω παρ’αὐτὸν ἐπὶ μναῖς τέτταρσι μὲν τὸ παραυτίκα — ἔδει γὰρ προτελέσαι τι εἰς τὰς θυσίας — ἑκκαίδεκα δέ, εἰ τύχοι τῆς Χρυσίδος. Ὁ δὲ αὐξομένην τηρήσας τὴν σελήνην — τότε γὰρ ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολὺ τὰ τοιαῦτα τελεσιουργεῖται — βόθρον τε ὀρυξάμενος ἐν ὑπαίθρῳ τινὶ τῆς οἰκίας περὶ μέσας νύκτας ἀνεκάλεσεν ἡμῖν πρῶτον μὲν τὸν Ἀλεξικλέα τὸν πατέρα τοῦ Γλαυκίου πρὸ ἑπτὰ μηνῶν τεθνεῶτα· ἠγανάκτει δὲ ὁ γέρων ἐπὶ τῷ ἔρωτι καὶ ὠργίζετο, τὰ τελευταῖα δὲ ὅμως ἐφῆκεν αὐτῷ ἐρᾶν. Μετὰ δὲ τὴν Ἑκάτην τε ἀνήγαγεν ἐπαγομένην τὸν Κέρβερον καὶ τὴν Σελήνην κατέσπασεν, πολύμορφόν τι θέαμα καὶ ἄλλοτε ἀλλοῖόν τι φανταζόμενον· τὸ μὲν γὰρ πρῶτον γυναικείαν μορφὴν ἐπεδείκνυτο, εἶτα βοῦς ἐγίγνετο πάγκαλος, εἶτα σκύλαξ ἐφαίνετο. Tέλος δ’ οὖν ὁ Ὑπερβόρεος ἐκ πηλοῦ ἐρώτιόν τι ἀναπλάσας, Ἄπιθι, ἔφη, καὶ ἄγε Χρυσίδα. καὶ ὁ μὲν πηλὸς ἐξέπτατο, μετὰ μικρὸν δὲ ἐπέστη κόπτουσα τὴν θύραν ἐκείνη καὶ εἰσελθοῦσα περιβάλλει τὸν Γλαυκίαν ὡς ἂν ἐκμανέστατα ἐρῶσα καὶ συνῆν ἄχρι δὴ ἀλεκτρυόνων ἠκούσαμεν ᾀδόντων. Tότε δὴ ἥ τε Σελήνη ἀνέπτατο εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ ἡ Ἑκάτη ἔδυ κατὰ τῆς γῆς καὶ τὰ ἄλλα φάσματα ἠφανίσθη καὶ τὴν Χρυσίδα ἐξεπέμψαμεν περὶ αὐτό που σχεδὸν τὸ λυκαυγές (Immediately after Glaucias’ father died and he acquired the property, he fell in love with Chrysis, the wife of Demeas. He had me as his tutor in philosophy, and if that love-affair had not kept him so busy, he would have known all the teachings of the Peripatetic school, for even at eighteen he was solving fallacies and had completed a course of lectures on natural philosophy. At his wit’s end, however, with his love-affair, he told me the whole story ; and as was natural, since I was his tutor, I brought him that Hyperborean magician at a fee of four minas as an advance payment (it was necessary to pay something in advance towards the cost of the victims) and sixteen if he should obtain Chrysis. The man waited for the moon to wax, as it is then, for the most part, that such rites are performed ; and after digging a pit in an open court of the house, at about midnight he first summoned up for us Alexicles, Glaucias’ father, who had died seven months before. The old gentleman was indignant about the love-affair and flew into a passion, but at length he permitted him to go on with it. Next he brought up Hecate, who fetched Cerberus with her, and he drew down the moon, a many-shaped spectacle, appearing differently at different times ; for at first she exhibited the form of a woman, then she turned into a handsome bull, and then she looked like a puppy. Finally, the Hyperborean made a little Cupid out of clay and said : ‘Go and fetch Chrysis.’ The clay took wing, and before long Chrysis stood on the threshold knocking at the door, came in and embraced Glaucias as if she loved him furiously, and remained with him until we heard the cocks crowing. Then the moon flew up to the sky, Hecate plunged beneath the earth, the other phantoms disappeared, and we sent Chrysis home at just about dawn. Transl. Loeb Classical Library, adapted).

15 The Greek texts with translations and notes can be found in Susan A. Stephens and John J. Winkler, Ancient Greek Novels : The Fragments, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1995, p. 130-147.

16 For possible sources for Lucian’s name Arignotus in his classical reading cf. Ar., Equites 1278, Aes., in Timarchum 102 (Ἀρίγνωτος, ὃς ἔτι καὶ νῦν ἔστι, πρεσβύτης διεφθαρμένος τοὺς ὀφθαλμούς), 104 (he is Timarchus’ uncle), and Aeschines Socraticus, quoted by Ath. 5.220b — a citharode Arignotus, brother of Anaxagoras’ pupil Ariphrades.

17 Cf. PSI 1177, S. A. Stephens and J. J. Winkler, Ancient Greek Novels…, p. 148-153.

18 K. Mheallaigh, Reading Fiction…, p. 86.

19 E.g. by Martin Ebner, « Einleitung », in Lukian : Die Lügenfreunde oder Der Unglaubige, ed. M. Ebner, H. Gzella, H.-G. Nesselrath, E. Ribbat, Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2001, p. 57-59 ; Philipp Wälchli, Studien zu den literarischen Beziehungen zwischen Plutarch und Lukian, München & Leipzig, Sauer, 2003, also arguing convincingly for the influence on Philopseudes of Plutarch’s On the daimonion of Socrates ; K. Mheallaigh, Reading Fiction…, p. 74.

20 Christopher P. Jones, Culture and Society in Lucian, Cambridge (Mass.) & London, Harvard University Press, 1986, p. 47.

21 Above n. 13.

Auteur

A été Praelector in Classics à Corpus Christi College, Oxford, de 1965 à 2007, et successivement, University Lecturer, Reader et professeur de langues et littératures classiques à l’université d’Oxford. Il est maintenant Emeritus Fellow de Corpus Christi College. Il a publié de nombreux articles sur la poésie élégiaque, iambique et lyrique de la Grèce archaïque, sur Aristophane, sur la poésie hellénistique et sur divers aspects de la littérature et de la culture grecques du ier au iiie siècle de notre ère, concernant notamment Plutarque et le roman grec. Il a récemment édité (en collaboration avec Jaś Elsner) un recueil d’articles consacrés à Philostrate (Cambridge, 2009) et (en collaboration avec Lucia Athanassaki) un recueil d’articles intitulé Archaic and Classical Choral Song (Berlin, 2011) ; il achève actuellement un commentaire de Daphnis et Chloé de Longus.

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