Inwood, 'Transformations of Circe: The History of an Enchantress', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9512
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-9512-inwood-transformations
@@@@95.12.8, Goeransson, Albinus, Alcinous, Arius Didymus
Tryggve Goeransson, Albinus, Alcinous, Arius Didymus.
Goeteborg: Ekblad & Co., Vaestervik, 1995. Pp. 257. ISBN
91-7346-282-9.
Reviewed by Brad Inwood -- University of Toronto
inwood@epas.utoronto.ca
It was not so long ago that doxography was, in the eyes of most
classicists, a moderately stable field. Certain broad facts about
the ancient tradition of recording the philosophical and scientific
opinions of earlier authors were largely unquestioned, and those
not directly engaged in the business could comfortably rely on the
theories produced by Hermann Diels and other (usually German)
authorities of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Very
little was certain, of course, but few doubted that the results of
early doxographical research had produced the best results possible
given the available evidence. We all knew about the contributions
of Theophrastus, Aetius, and Arius Didymus.
That has changed in recent years. One result of the explosion of
interest in philosophical texts from the Hellenistic and Imperial
periods has been a critical reexamination of many cherished views,
and there is now relatively little that can be taken for granted by
the researcher. On many topics, scholarly respectability now
requires that one critically re-examine the results of earlier
research before building on them. To some extent Theophrastus'
Opinions of the Natural Philosophers is still special: its
character as a funnel through which a high proportion of our
information about the Presocratics passed down to the world of
later antiquity makes Diels' theories about the Presocratics more
secure (or at least less exposed to reasonable challenge). But for
much of the rest of ancient philosophy outside the fourth century
B.C., a revolution in our understanding of the surviving sources is
under way.
Tryggve Goeransson has produced a trenchant, often dryly witty
book which forces a reexamination of several traditional
source-critical and doxographical theories touching on middle
Platonism and on the doxographical accounts found in book 2 of
Stobaeus' Anthology. Writing with the kind of radical
scepticism demanded by the field and with a keen eye for the
logical structure of historical argumentation, G. returns to the
year 1879, when two important works appeared. Jacob Freudenthal
published Der Platoniker Albinos und der falsche Alkinoos
and Diels' Doxographic Graeci established a new standard for
and orthodoxy in doxographical studies.
G. traces the evolution of the "school of Gaius" theory from
Freudenthal's claim that the Didaskalikos was actually
written by the known Albinus (a student of the known Platonist
Gaius) rather than by the otherwise unknown Alcinous to whom it is
attributed by the manuscripts. The arguments of Giusta and
Whittaker against Freudenthal's identification are now accepted
almost universally, and G. builds on that conservative foundation
in his re-examination of many middle Platonic texts and doctrines.
One key feature of the traditional view had been the further belief
that the Didaskalikos, whoever wrote it, was crucially
dependent on the work of Arius Didymus, the doxographer and friend
of Augustus. G.'s critique of the development of middle Platonic
school doctrine also casts this proposition into doubt. This leads
him to a more general reconsideration of the traditional portrait
of Arius Didymus as a doxographer and to much more radical
arguments which (if successful) will force a serious reassessment
of the date and character of the major doxographies of Stoic and
Peripatetic ethics preserved in book 2 of Stobaeus. The traditional
portrait of Arius Didymus has not yet lost its standing as a "fact"
about the history of ancient philosophy, and had recently been
assumed uncritically by the present reviewer in the article "Arius
Didyme" in R. Goulet's Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques
vol. 1 (1989) and defended at length by David Hahm in "The Ethical
Doxography of Arius Didmyus", ANRW II.36.4 (1990).
There are, thus, two main lines of argument in G.'s book: the
critical re-examination of middle Platonism, which is the logical
result of carefully thinking through the results of Whittaker's
conclusions about Alcinous, and the radical reassessment of Arius
Didymus. In addition to methodological care, G.'s book is also
distinguished by a number of common-sensical assumptions about the
history of philosophy. For instance, G. declines to believe that
Platonist teachers and philosophers could be so substantially
dependent on doxographical sources for their knowledge of Plato's
doctrines--whose works were, after all, widely available (see p.
22). Moreover, G. puts us on more solid ground with his sensible
assumption of pluralism in middle Platonism, the contrary
preference for Einzelquellen having been a product of
source-critical methodology (see pp. 183-4).
A short review cannot do justice to this tight and closely
reasoned book. The reader will perhaps be best served by a rapid
summary of the results claimed for the understanding of middle
Platonism and a quick sketch of the argument about Arius Didymus.
The former claims seem destined to achieve a significant measure of
agreement; the latter argument is more contentious but will have to
be confronted by anyone working on Stoic and later Peripatetic
ethics.
Chapters 2 to 5 deal with Gaius and Albinus. The modest results
are:
--Albinus was active in the Greek east (we know he once lectured
in Smyrna) in the middle of the second century B.C., Gaius some
years earlier (possibly based in Pergamum or Athens).
--Albinus' Prologos is probably a part of a now lost set
of notes by Albinus based on introductory lectures by Gaius on
Plato, the whole work having been called Hupotuposeis.
--As to commentaries on Platonic dialogues, there is "no clear
evidence" for any by Gaius, while Albinus probably did publish
commentaries on Phaedo and Timaeus.
--Negative conclusions include the rejection of Lucian's
character Nigrinus as a pseudonym for Albinus and the denial
that Albinus' lost book on incorporeals with the pseudo-Galenic
De Qualitatibus Incorporeis.
--Chapter 5 deals with Albinus' classification of the Platonic
dialogues and its relation to that found in Diogenes Laertius.
This is slippery ground, but the proposals G. presents are both
ingeniously simple and plausible.
Chapters 6 to 8 analyse Alcinous' Didaskalikos and another
work once claimed for the capacious "school of Gaius", the De
Platone of Apuleius. Of course, with Alcinous distinguished
from Albinus there was no longer a case for treating the De
Platone as a product of the "school". But this still leaves
open the question of the relationship between Alcinous' and
Apuleius' texts. Both works turn out to rely on a variety of
sources, one of which was indeed common: a summary of Platonic
ethics. But there turns out to be no particular reason to identify
this source with the first-century B.C. Platonist Eudorus. G.
modestly and wisely offers no candidate for the identity of the
common source. Only a prosopographical horror vacui could
drive us to guesswork; an Anonymus Ignotus suffices. But G.
does point out that once Alcinous is distinguished from Albinus,
there is no longer any external evidence for Alcinous' date. The
possible range established by internal criteria is from the first
century B.C. to the rise of Neoplatonism (p. 133).
One result of this loosening of the chronological range for
Alcinous is to make possible a more realistic assessment of the
relationship between Arius Didymus fragment 1 (preserved first by
Eusebius) and chapter 12 of the Didaskalikos. The traditional view
is that the *Didaskalikos* here adapts the text of Arius Didymus (a
claim on which much of the speculation about the school of Gaius
was ultimately based). But as G. shows in a careful comparison of
the two texts, it is not very convincing that the influence ran in
that direction; the main reason for accepting that view was a set
of prior beliefs about their relative chronology. But if Alcinous
could in principle be earlier than has been thought, and if Arius
Didymus is not necessarily to be identified with the Augustan
philosopher (as G. goes on to argue--see below), then it becomes
possible to accept that Alcinous or his source for ch. 12 was a
source for Arius Didymus. No definite chronological conclusions
follow from this, but it is a striking illustration of how much one
needs to reconsider once one begins to examine the history of
middle Platonism in a more critical manner.
The figure of Arius Didymus used to do a lot of work in accounts
of middle Platonism, and if G. is right his utility there is
effectively eliminated. Just as the school of Gaius has been broken
up by a more critical assessment, we turn out to have more sources,
many of them unknown. This is undoubtedly a more realistic picture
of the development of Platonism in the early Imperial period. But
chapters 9 to 11 cut even more deeply and produce results which, if
accepted, might force changes in our picture of the history of
Stoicism and Aristotelianism as well.
The nub of the issue is the material preserved by Stobaeus in
book 2, chapter 7 of his massive anthology. Prima facie
there are three relevant blocks of material here, conveniently
labelled by Hahm (1990, 2945) as Doxography A (37.18-57.12),
Doxography B (57.13-116.18), and Doxography C (116.19-152.25). B
and C are attributed to the Stoics and Peripatetics respectively,
and each is evidently an internal unity. A is less obviously a
unity and lacks an explicit source-attribution in our manuscripts
of Stobaeus. Because a paragraph from C is quoted elsewhere in
Stobaeus (4.39.28) as being from the Epitome of Didymus, it is
reasonable to assume that all of C, the Peripatetic ethical
doxography, derives from the Epitome of Didymus. But the
similarities between B and C are such that it is reasonable (though
far from certain) to assume that B came from the same source. Hahm
(1990, 2979-3012) argues that A, B, and C are all from the
same source; but even a sympathetic reader must concede that the
argument for similarity to C is considerably weaker for A than for
B.
G. accepts Didymus' authorship of C (p. 220), though he is more
tentative about assigning B to the same author (pp. 220-1). When it
comes to A, however, his argument is sharp and sound; his
conclusion is negative (pp. 221-226). A is so unlike B and C,
despite the serpentine arguments of Hahm, that the common
authorship of A and C must be rejected even if one still
inclines to accept the common authorship of B and C.
The crucial question, then, is about the date and authorship of
B and C, the Stoic and Aristotelian doxographies of ethics. If the
Didymus who wrote C (and probably B) is the Arius Didymus of Diels,
then we know just who compiled the doxographies and when he did so.
For Diels' Arius Didymus is the friend and court philosopher of
Augustus. But in chapter 10 G. examines the history of this
hypothesis and the surviving evidence which might support it.
There are three important stages in the history of this
identification. (1) Meineke proposes it in 1860; (2) Diels claims
to prove it (1879); (3) Hahm claims to prove it again (1990). The
evidence cannot be reviewed here, but G. establishes that both
Diels and Hahm effectively beg the question which they purport to
prove. That is to say, they show that one can consistently
believe that the doxographer Arius Didymus is the Augustan
philosopher, but they do not show that one must. G., unlike
Diels and Hahm, is scrupulous about the distinction between an
argument which permits a certain belief and one which compels it.
G. is quite right to conclude (p. 218) "that there have never been
put forward any reasons for regarding Arius Didymus the doxographer
as the same person as Arius, Augustus' court philosopher". And once
that identification is doubted, the range of dates possible for the
common author of B and C is now very wide indeed, anywhere "between
the middle of the first century B.C. and the end of the second
century A.D., perhaps as late as the third century A.D." (p.216).
Should we then abandon the identification of the doxographer with
the friend of Augustus? Not necessarily. For all that G. has
established is that the hypothesis of Meineke and Diels is just
that, a mere hypothesis. Diels and Hahm have argued for the
possibility of the hypothesis while mistakenly thinking that they
were arguing for its necessity or its probability. But it still
remains a possibility, does it not?
G. seems to think not, arguing (pp. 217-8) that "there are
considerable reasons telling against such an identification". But
what are these reasons? G. purports to offer two. The first is the
"double-name argument" of Heine (see pp. 211-2), that there is a
consistent pattern of reference: Augustus' friend is always called
"Arius" and the doxographer is always called "Didymus" or "Arius
Didymus". But G. concedes (p. 217) that Diels and Hahm have
answered this objection to the identification. The second, then, is
the only positive argument against identification. It consists
simply in the belief that since Augustus' friend was a Stoic, he
could not have had, qua Stoic, any interest in compiling
non-polemical doxographicalaccounts of other schools' doctrines.
Here G.'s customary sagacity deserts him with a breathtaking
suddenness. For how can one know this about a Stoic of the period?
By the same process of common-sensical guesswork as drove Diels?
Nothing else is available. But worse yet, G. has forgotten the
evidence which he adduced just a few pages earlier (pp. 209-211).
As G. puts it, "in none of the passages referring to Arius'
relations to Augustus is it mentioned to which philosophical school
he belonged". The claim that Arius was a Stoic rests on a
speculative identification with a name found in an index of
philosophers treated in Diogenes Laertius book 7; this speculation
is supported by arguments which (like those of Diels and Hahm) are
no more than permissive (p. 210), certainly not compelling. G.
follows this suggestion with a rather lame discussion of two
passages of Tertullian which actually distinguish the Stoic view on
the fate of souls after death from that of a certain Arius,
passages which Diels not unreasonably took to count in favour of
his identification of the doxographer with Augustus' friend.
G. is ruthless in discounting Diels' and Hahm's hypothesis and
in distinguishing merely permissive arguments in support of it from
considerations which might offer it positive support or which could
count as proof. It is a shame that the same standards are not
applied to his own argument. When they are so applied, then one
must conclude that the hypothesis of Meineke still has much to be
said for it. Diels and Hahm do not go as far as one would like in
supporting it; in fact, there is little to support it except the
conventional doxographers' liking for economy--why posit two
philosophers with the same name when one will do?
For students of Stoicism and the Peripatetic tradition
doxographies B and C are of central importance. It matters most of
all that they should be taken to be reliable reporters of school
doctrine down to the first century B.C. This assumption is of
course easier to make if they are datable to the Augustan period
than if they were written 150 years later. G. has shown that this
dating is insecure to a degree that few scholars and philosophers
in the last hundred years have appreciated; he has not, however,
offered any positive reason to reject it.
Fortunately, for both texts there are other good reasons for
treating these doxographies as reliable, beyond the hypothetical
identification of Arius Didymus with Arius the friend of Augustus.
The content itself and its relationship to other accounts of the
doctrines in question remains important. But in the aftermath of
G.'s sceptical reconsideration of the evidence considerably more
caution will be called for. In this respect this book bears
comparison with Sandbach's Aristotle and the Stoics.
Albinus, Alcinous, Arius Didymus is written in a clear and
economical English style, only occasionally unidiomatic. It
includes an Index Locorum and separate Bibliographies of Editions
and of Works Cited.