‘‘What about your speech?’’ asked Herodes. ‘‘How were you educated, and
by whom? For you do not seem to me to be one of the uneducated.’’ ‘‘The
interior of Attica,’’ Agathion replied, ‘‘a good schooling for a man who
wants to converse. For the Athenians in the town take in youths, flooding
in to work from Thrace and Pontus and other barbarian races, and their own
speech is corrupted by them, more than they can encourage them towards
proper speech. The interior is pure no barbarians; their speech is healthy
and their language has the twang of perfect Attic.’’Although Heracles/Agathion is a rustic fellow, he speaks well: he has
clearly been educated, become cultured,epaideutheˆs, and is indeed not
uneducated/uncultured,apaideutos. The answer is that he speaks the very
best Attic Greek because he comes from the very interior of Attica, the
best teacher there is. The Athenians have allowed all sorts of other Greeks
and barbarians to come into the city to work for money, with the result
that their own speech has been corrupted (paraphtheirontai), when you
might have expected the barbarians to move toward proper speech
(eugloˆttian) by contact with Athenian language. The interior, however,
isamiktos, ‘‘pure,’’ ‘‘untouched by barbarians’’; it is healthy,hugiainei, and
consequently the voice and tongue ‘‘twang the best of Attic’’ (apopsallei—
a difficult word here to translate).^25 Hercules combines Second Sophistic
obsessions: he is a living paradox about the purity of Attic Greek, with a
chreiaon his lips.
There are several things to say about this charming passage. First of all,
notice that Herodes Atticus, thepepaideumenosofpepaideumenoi, the
man to know, is given a lesson on how to speak Greek. Knowing as we
do the privileged status of good Attic speech and the scrutiny and care
with which language use was policed, it is a neat irony that the most
sophisticated member of the elite is impressed by the Greek of a rustic
man of the country: Dio of Prusa’sEuboicusplays plenty of games with
the delights of rural innocence in contrast with urban dissatisfactions, but
even in that speech ‘‘pure Attic’’ is not one of the blessings of the bucolic
haven. If you want to be able to converse,dialegesthai, this story suggests
that it is not the elegant symposium or gymnasium or festival, those
traditional sites for dialogue, that will prepare you, but a life untouched
by the city—something none of Philostratus’s readers can have. The game
with the values of beingasteiosversusagroikosis neatly turned. Heracles
goes on to laugh at drama festivals and at athletics in a way that Herodes
recognizes as ‘‘philosophical’’ (553–4), thus further separating himself
from the world of the leisured classes. He inhabits a world that the readers
of Philostratus cannot share. ‘‘Best Attic,’’ ‘‘pure Attic,’’ with all the
moral valuing of health and purity, is set beyond the purchase of the
- It is used at Lycophron 407 apparently to refer to the springing of a trap, hence
my translation ‘‘twang’’ to get the sense both of the mousetrap springing and the lyre
sounding out.
The Anecdote 107