simple case will show how they can overlap. The sophist Favorinus, since
Maud Gleason’s Making Men, has become a familiar figure on the
Second Sophistic circuit. The most celebrated story of Favorinus comes
from Philostratus’sLives of the Sophists(1.8). ‘‘He used to say in the
ambiguous style of an oracle, that there were in his life story three
paradoxes: A Gaul, he had become Greek; a eunuch, he had been tried
for adultery; he had argued with the emperor and lived.’’ This is a
quotation, attributed to Favorinus himself. It is noted for its style as
well as its content. It consists of three paradoxes, and the word Philos-
tratus uses here is precisely paradoxa. And the remark is achreia,a
witticism, a one-liner, that captures in exemplary form an attitude to
the world: a worldview that loves paradox, as befits the sophist, revels in
rhetorical flair, self-presentation with panache, and a self-consciously
oblique stance to the norms of society.
We should not, then, imagine that the quotation, thechreia, and the
paradox are easily separable genres. I have separated them for heuristic
purposes (as well as taking account of the fact that this follows current
scholarship and some ancient organizations of knowledge). Each will
prove helpful in understanding the anecdote as a form and the way that
the anecdote performs as a circulation of knowledge.
The boundaries between Greek and Roman forms of discourse in this
period are now a topic of considerable and sophisticated discussion in the
contemporary academy, and need particular care here. Greek writers
often fail to indicate any knowledge of Latin or Latin literature. When
they do so, it is often with a disclaimer, itself often disingenuous.^21
Roman writers use knowledge of Greek as a sign of sophistication—and
also use knowledge of Greek as a sign of lack of good Roman values. It is
interesting to note, therefore, how hard it is to renderchreiaorparadoxa
into Latin. Both words are usually transliterated or left in Greek, and
often glossed, especially in Stoic texts, to indicate their Greek origin.
Cicero, when he uses the termparadoxon, does so only to explain how
he has translated this Greek term, in its technical Stoic usage, into Latin as
‘‘mirabilia’’ or ‘‘admirabilia.’’ The Latin word ‘‘(ad)mirabilia,’’ with its
sense of wonder or amazement, adds a quite different note to the Greek
term and shows a discomfort with the Greek notion, even or especially
as Greek philosophy becomes Latin thinking.
22
Quintilian points out
(de inst. orat.1.9.3) that achria(transliterated) is basic to rhetorical
training: achria, a brief moralistic sentence, acts as a ‘‘theme’’ for the
budding orator. Hence, some call such ‘‘themes’’chreiodes(in Greek
letters), ‘‘useful’’ (a pun designed to show the normative thrust of the
21.Locus classicusis Plutarch on his own poor Latinity, which is often rather naively read
by critics:Life of Demosthenes1 2, with Jones 1971, 80 7. General background in Swain
1996 and Goldhill 2001.
- See CiceroFin. 4.27.74,Acad. 2.44.136,Paradoxa Stoicorum, proem4.
104 Situating Literacies