400 Adam M. Kemezis
late first centuryCE, reconciled to Roman political hegemony, which guaranteed their
own oligarchic dominance in their home cities. In the course of the second century,
more and more easterners became integrated into the Roman political system, both by
acquiring Roman citizenship and by taking administrative posts. Several literary figures
of the Second Sophistic were in fact senators and consulars (Arrian, Claudius Charax,
Herodes Atticus, Cassius Dio). On the level of political and legal status, Greekness and
Romanness were entirely compatible.
Nevertheless, there were certainly limits to that compatibility. The most obvious limit
was language. The Romans never attempted to impose their own language in the east, but
even so one is surprised at how little cognizance Greek authors take of Latin. Other than
in Roman historical works, Greek authors barely hint that Latin existed as a literary lan-
guage. This was a conscious choice: all of these authors and their peers had contacts with
Roman administration, and many had lived in Rome. Their reticence on the point says
more about their literary self-perception than their actual linguistic knowledge. Authors
who in everyday life had very complex cultural personae with significant Roman elements
nonetheless present themselves in writing as conforming to a very exclusive definition of
Hellenic identity, with Roman elements either absent or carefully compartmentalized (for
similar concerns in sculptural presentation, see Smith 1998; Gleason 2010).
On one reading, this is a form of cultural resistance. By promoting a version of Greek-
ness that privileges the culturally prestigious pre-Roman past while occluding Roman
elements, Greek authors are asserting an autonomous Greek pre-eminence in the field
of culture that matches Rome’s military–political primacy (Swain 1996; Vasunia 2003).
Greeks, on this reading, were thus able to take advantage of the material opportunities
presented by the Roman political system while offsetting the strain that those opportuni-
ties placed on their separate Greek identity. It is curious, however, that Roman hegemony
promoted rather than endangered this literary culture. Romans from the emperor on
down were consistently receptive to the Second Sophistic version of Greekness, both as
financial sponsors, tourist consumers, and in some cases literary participants. Latin lit-
erature makes it abundantly clear that Romans were just as inclined as second-century
Greeks to idealize Greece’s classical past, to privilege “old Greece” over Greater Hellas
(Ferrary 2011). Aulus Gellius’ Latin writings, titled theAttic Nights, portray Favorinus
and Herodes as the author’s literary idols within a mixed Greco-Roman literary milieu,
and it is hard to name a Latin author more fully and self-consciously immersed in Greek
culture than Apuleius. Some scholars have thus seen accommodation on the Greeks’
part rather than resistance (Bowersock 1969; Boffo 2001; Spawforth 2012). The Sec-
ond Sophistic for them represents the version of Greekness most acceptable to Romans.
In this reading, Greeks did not protect their cultural heritage from Roman power, but
rather refined it into the product most readily exchangeable for a share of that power.
Conclusion: The Limits of Paideia
The last figure we will look at is perhaps the most extreme, Favorinus of Arles. He attained
eminence in the Greek literary world despite being from the Latin west, specifically Arles