Greek Ethnicity and the Second Sophistic 401in Gaul. He comes across, both in his own writings and those of others, as an irresistibly
outrageous figure. His anomalous ethnic situation was part of an entire persona built
on transgressing cultural norms, including those of gender and political behavior (Glea-
son 1995: 3–20). An example of his manner can be seen in his surviving speech to the
Corinthians ([Dio Chrysostom] 37), whom he rebukes for taking down a statue they
had given him. He is brazen in making a virtue of his non-Greek birth, and presents his
self-refashioning as the ultimate in devotion to Hellenic culture (25–6). He then reminds
his audience of how little they have to boast of. However old Corinth may claim to be,
the city on that site in his time was a Roman colony, founded by Julius Caesar. It had
in effect “re-assimilated” to a Greek public culture by Favorinus’ time, but according to
the standard practice of basing a city’s ethnic status on a foundation legend, Favorinus
could label the Corinthians Roman, as indeed could Pausanias (2.1.2; see König 2001).
Favorinus’ whole attraction as a performer seems to have been based on afrissonof trans-
gressivity, on making audiences wonder what rule he would break next, and whether they
were his accomplices in breaking them.
Favorinus is obviously not an entirely representative figure, but as an outlier he can tell
us much about where the boundaries of Greek ethnicity were located. Ethnic thought
was always present. Neither the Gaul Favorinus nor the Syrian Lucian nor anyone else
ever says “my ancestry is irrelevant, mypaideiamakes me a Greek just like all other
Greeks.” What they say is “my distinctive combination of ancestry andpaideiamakes
me a different (and conceivably better) sort of Greek from all other Greeks.” Favori-
nus’ tongue-in-cheek rebuke to the Corinthians suggests that everyone acknowledges
on some level that ancestry claims are a fiction, but they remain an important fiction
that those same people will, under other circumstances, treat as real. What surprises the
modern observer is how restricted those circumstances were, and the extent to which the
unifying elite myth ofpaideiacould accommodate and enable figures such as Favorinus
while still excluding the vast majority of what we could call ethnic Greeks (i.e., unedu-
cated non-elites) from most meaningful discourses of Greekness. The modern category
of ethnicity can be a useful tool for studying these dynamics, but it is greatly limited.
Whenever we try to extrapolate from existing evidence, and to imagine Greeks draw-
ing the same kinds of essentialist inferences about their identities that nineteenth- or
twentieth-century nationalists would have done, we are more likely to misunderstand
their worldview than to illuminate it.
REFERENCESAlcock, Susan E. 1993.Graecia Capta: The Landscapes of Roman Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Anderson, Graham. 1993.The Second Sophistic: A Cultural Phenomenon in the Roman Empire.
London and New York: Routledge
Andrade, Nathanael. 2013.Syrian Identity in the Greco-Roman World. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Boffo, Laura. 2001. “Sentirsi greco nel mondo romano.” In Biagio Virgilio, ed.,Studi ellenistici
13 , 275–98. Pisa: Fabrizio Serra Editore.