1 Watson 1988a, p. 208. This text is partly identical to Watson 1988b, p. 59-95, and Watson 1994. A similar view is expressed, earlier and more succinctly, in Pollitt 1974, p. 52-55.
2 This usually happens in summarizing statements, which are not unlike the quoted claim of Watson. Cf. Motta 2018, p. 327: “It is evident that in the late-antique period the term φαντασία came specifically to describe the highest mode of artistic creation, which is to say that inner process that transcends sense-perception and takes the form of a capacity for abstraction and creative representation”.
3 Miles 2018, p. 61. For a similar position, see Männlein-Robert 2003, p. 49-50, who notes that, in VA, both mimēsis and phantasia are “productive” (δημιουργοί) and that the presentation of mimēsis in VA 6.19 tends to be “pointedly aphoristic”. And cf. Squire 2013, p. 103-104.
4 On Denken in Anschauung, see Birmelin 1933, p. 161. And cf. Birmelin 1933, p. 401: “Es bleibt kein Grund, die philostratische φαντασία nicht für identisch zu halten mit der aristotelischen und somit auch der philostratischen Mimesis im weiteren Sinne von II 22.” Cf. also Schirren 2005, p. 275: “Obwohl zunächst also die Phantasia von der Mimesis unterschieden wird, ist klar, daß die bilderzeugende Mimesis von 2, 22 und die Phantasia in dasselbe Konzept produktiver Imagination gehören”.
5 Here I concur with Cornelli 2013, p. 58: “the similarity between Pythagoreans such as Philolaus, on the one hand, and Apollonius, on the other, cannot be explained in terms of either a common theoretical-doctrinal point of view or the historical relations between either of them with Pythagoras. The only plausible criterion of their identification with Pythagoreanism relies on their adherence to a lifestyle, a bios, which both, Philolaus and Apollonius, should recognize as Pythagorean.” I cannot deal here with the Roman perception of Pythagoreanism as a “native” philosophy, which would ground Apollonius in the empire’s center from which he would travel to its peripheries. On this and related issues, see Flinterman 1995.
6 I quote VA from Jones 2005, but often modify his translation, taking into account Conybeare 1912.
7 The narrative voice that seems to float in and out of the text is naturally important at the beginning and the end of VA. On this voice and its political context, see Kemezis 2014.
8 Frede 1997, p. 5. On Moeragenes’ criticism, see Raynor 1984.
9 The expression kunsttheoretische Diskurs als implizite Poetologie comes from Schirren 2005, p. 272-285.
10 The shrine described at 1.25.3 also contains four golden wrynecks (ἴυγγες): an obvious replica of the wrynecks of “a Siren-like persuasiveness” that hang at the temple of Delphian Apollo as described by Philostratus five books later, where they are part of the diverse statuary that includes the κολοσσοί of gods, humans, and animals (6.11.15). This confirms that every cultural or sacred space evoked in VA is a possible re-enactment of another cultural or sacred space.
11 For ἦθος τῆς γραφῆς as “lesson of the picture”, cf. Philostratus the Younger, Images 1.4.
12 Its size makes the temple reminiscent of the ancient temple of Athena at Acropolis, known as “the Hekatompedon”. On this filiation see Bernard 1996, p. 512. I cannot deal here with the likeness of Taxila to Greek cities: it is similarly fortified (2.20.2) and also “divided into orderly rows of houses like Athens” (2.23). On Apollonius in Taxila, see especially Stoneman 2019, p. 461-477.
13 Philostratus’ choice of the three painters is certainly motivated by a number of other texts including Pliny. On VA 2.20, see Birmelin 1933, p. 157-160, and more recently Bäbler, Nesselrath 2016, p. 23-26 (text and notes) and 101-108 (commentary on the historical context and artistic techniques from toreutics to painting).
14 Translating ὥσπερ αἱ κήριναι by “like made-up women”, Jones 2005 follows Birmelin 1933, p. 155, n. 5 (Geschminkte Frauen, with a reference to Philostratus, Epist. 2.236, 32 K). Conybeare 1912 has simply “like for dyed waxes”.
15 On γραφή and γραφική in this context, see Dubel 2006, p. 178-181; Dubel 2009, p. 320-321 (with a reminder that drawing and monochrome will be reintegrated into painting at 2.22.4); Bäbler, Nesselrath 2016, p. 101-103.
16 I borrow this translation from Jaś Elsner’s and Michael Squire’s forthcoming edition cum translation and commentary of the Images. I will not even attempt here to unravel the longer sentence, and the whole paragraph, of which this statement is a part.
17 The lineage of this connection is long: it starts at least with Plato and includes Latin authors as well (for instance Cicero’s statement, in Brutus 18.70, that the statues of Canachus do not succeed in conveying or imitating the “truth”, in other words the reality of their living models). In Plato, Republic 10 offers a rather forthright criticism of the arts (which still makes some subtler points concerning the respective status of poetry and painting), whereas the Sophist builds a more nuanced view of the power of artistic creation including the distinction between mimēsis eikastikē and mimēsis phantastikē (235d-236c), and the talk about the more enigmatic divine craftsmanship that produces not only things but images as well (264c-266c). The discussion of the Sophist is beyond the scope of this article, but its possible echoes in Philostratus would certainly deserve a closer attention.
18 We may also be reminded of Plato’s treatment of the sun in Republic 6, but the context is very different since Philostratus does not analogize the sun to the transcendent Good. Instead, in the context of VA, we must not forget the image of the sun as an anthropomorphic god, a real creator or at least co-originator of “natural” life.
19 In this respect, the heliotropic metonymy is akin to the heliotropic metaphor according to Derrida 1982, p. 250: “Heliotropic metaphors are always imperfect metaphors. They provide us with too little knowledge, because one of the terms directly or indirectly implied in the substitution (the sensory sun) cannot be known in what is proper to it. Which also means that the sensory sun is always im-properly known, and therefore im-properly named.” And also: “the sun is the sensory object par excellence. It is the paradigm of the sensory, and of metaphor: it regularly turns (itself) and hides (itself).”
20 See Aristotle, GC 2.10, 336b26-337a7 and Metaph. 9.8, 1050b28-30; in both texts, the sublunary elements “imitate” the perfect supralunary motion.
21 Cf. Miles 2009, p. 152, who points out that the same device frames the discussion of phantasia at 6.19.
22 For the painting’s capacity to capture intelligence, see already Xenophon, Memorabilia 3.10.3-5.
23 For the same step from VA 2.22.5 to this famous statue, see Schirren 2005, p. 274-275, with the mention of the verb ἐνθυμεῖσθαι that connects both passages.
24 The implied reference beyond VA 4.7 and the discussion in VA 6.19 is certainly Herodotus 2.50 and 2.53.
25 I side again with Birmelin 1933, p. 396 (for whom phantasia elaborates upon sense perception), against e.g. Watson 1994, p. 4792, or Miles 2009, p. 153.
26 I cannot compare here Philostratus’ take on Phidias’ Zeus with the way Dio Chrysostom, in his Oration 12, lets Phidias defend his statue against the charge of anthropomorphism. The two text differ in their dealing with mimēsis and its relation to the divine: in Dio, divine nature is, strictly speaking, inimitable and intractable, and the anthropomorphism is the best that we can do (Oration 12.73-74). One similarity is that Dio lets Phidias describe Zeus as the demiurge of the whole cosmos (12.83). On Phidias, see especially Lapatin 2001, p. 61-95, and Männlein-Robert 2003. On Homer and the Zeus of Phidias, cf. also Grand-Clément 2019; on Phidias’ Zeus and the second sophistic, see Platt 2011, p. 224-235.
27 Cf. the only surviving fragment of Apollonius himself, from his Peri thusiōn (Porphyry, De abstinentia 2.34 and Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 4.13), that recommends the sacrifice of pure thought as the only means of rightly addressing the purity of the highest divinity. But remember: in VA 1.1.2, Apollonius claims to have been visited by the known gods and also the gods unknown to humankind, so his situation is entirely unique.
28 I simplify a much complex issue, repeatedly discussed in e.g. Platt 2011, p. 293-332.
29 There would be a lot to say about the phrase τῶν ὅλων γένεσις τε καὶ οὐσία, which reminds us of the Platonic distinction between genesis and ousia, but embraces both being and becoming in a single demiurgic activity and avoids all technical ontology. The plural τῶν ὅλων seems to designate the large structural parts of the universe (like, for instance, in the Pseudo-Aristotelian De mundo; cf. already Plato, Timaeus 33a7-b1).
30 See VA 7.9, 8.7.47-48; cf. also 5.12 and, at the very end of VA, 8.31.3.
31 It is important to emphasize that I follow here this specific perspective since I cannot discuss the whole nexus of relations between the thematic treatment of mimēsis and phantasia in VA on the one hand, and Philostratus’ ecphrastic strategies in VA and also the Images on the other hand. These strategies impact the conceptual issues since Philostratus often elaborates his theoretical claims on the basis of particular objects (reliefs, statues, paintings) and, moreover, his ekphraseis tend to playfully confound the object-related and the textual demiurgy.
32 I quote Libanius from Gibson 2008, p. 479. I wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful and helpful comments. The work on this article was supported by the European Regional Development Fund-Project “Creativity and Adaptability as Conditions of the Success of Europe in an Interrelated World’ (no. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000734).