The anecdote differs from thechreia, however, in that it is not com-
mitted in the same way to the single witticism, nor is it quite so precisely
linked to the construction of the subject who knows, at least in the sense
that the anecdote, unlike thechreia, need not be not such a vivid demon-
stration of the power or persona of the speaker. That the anecdote as a
form is part of a construction of a view of the world, however, will be a
central claim of my argument shortly.
The third collection of material that seems an interesting frame for
understanding the anecdote is paradoxography.^19 This is a genre particu-
larly associated with Empire literature—the collection of surprising facts
about nature. So Aelian’s bookOn the Nature of Animalsbegins, ‘‘That a
human being is wise and just and takes particular care of his children and
shows fitting consideration for his parents, seeks sustenance for himself,
protects himself against plots, and has all the other gifts nature has
endowed him with, is perhaps no paradox—ouden paradoxon.’’ This of
course is a priamel to the ‘‘remarkable fact’’ that animals, thealogoi,do
have similar qualities. And the book is structured as a series of usually
short paragraphs capturing in each case a remarkable fact about the
animal world, such as the remarkable information that if a horse steps
on the footprint of a wolf it will go numb, and if you were to throw the
vertebra of a wolf under a four-horse chariot team in full flight, it will
come to a complete standstill as if frozen, because the horses have stepped
on the vertebra (1.36).
We see how this sort of material might become part of the discourse of
thepepaideumenoiof Empire in Achilles Tatius’s novel Leucippe and
Cleitophon. The lovers are traveling together in Egypt and observing the
hippopotamus (4.4). A general, one Charmides, has fallen in love with
Leucippe, and as they watch the hippopotamus, he tells them of the
Indian Elephant, which he says has a manner of birth which is really a
paradoxos, a remarkable and strange thing. This leads to the story that an
elephant’s breath is a cure for a headache. ‘‘Now the elephant knows of its
restorative powers and does not open its mouth without a fee: like a quack
doctor, it demands its payment first. If you pay up, it agrees and fulfils its
side of the bargain, unfurling its jaws, opening wide, and admitting the
human as far as is desired. It knows it has sold its odour.’’ Platonic scholars
will not be surprised that a figure called Charmides should come up with
a headache story, because Plato’s pretty-boy Charmides has a headache
in the beginning of the dialogue of the same name, which leads to
Socrates’ erotic encounter with him. Here another hopeful but des-
tined-to-fail erotic encounter with a Charmides turns to headache cures.
But the use of theparadoxosis paradigmatic. Wise guys, involved in
chatting up a girl, and in competition with each other, roll out a well-
turned image of a paradox of nature to enthrall and seduce the mind of
- Rommel 1923 is a starting point.
102 Situating Literacies