chria).^23 Interestingly, he concludes by pointing out that Latin rhetoricians
do not match up to their Greek counterparts: ‘‘Cetera maioris operis et
spiritus Latini rhetores reliquendo necessaria grammaticis fecerunt: Graeci
magis operum suorum et onera et modum norunt,’’ ‘‘Roman rhetoricians by
leaving out the remaining work of greater weight and seriousness have
made a compulsory burden for the teachers: the Greek rhetoricians better
understand the weight and manner of their own works’’ (1.9.6). I am not
sure I understand the full thrust of Quintilian’s complaint here, but when
Roman writers note their debt to Greek, or, as here, their insufficiency
in comparison with the Greeks, such explication is often a sign of unease.
Thesynkrisisof Greek and Latin rhetoric/oratory, at a theoretical and
practical level, articulates a self-aware cultural difference as well as patterns
of inheritance, imitation, and similarity.
The word in Latin rhetorical writing that goes to the heart of the nexus
of ideas mapped by the Greek wordschreia,paradoxa, and quotation, is
exemplum. Rebecca Langlands has recently expressed with great clarity
and insight the role of theexemplumin Latin thinking aboutpudicitiaand,
in particular, the continuing role of the exemplum from rhetorical
theory through to the historians and the poets of the Augustan and
post-Augustan periods.^24 Valerius Maximus provides a thematically or-
ganized collection ofexempla, each of which is available either as a theme
fordeclamatio(like achria) or for use as a proof or example in adeclama-
tio. Theexemplumis an institutionalized, packaged narrative form, which
is used and reused as an element of Roman discourse. It is close to what
I will be calling an anecdote in the Greek tradition, though the anecdote is
less formally recognized and therefore circulates knowledge in a different
manner. The difference between Greek and Roman forms of organizing
and circulating knowledge is another area where further research is
needed—but cannot here be pursued.
With that much framing we are ready to turn to look at what I am
calling the anecdote in Second Sophistic culture. I will begin once again
with Philostratus’sLives of the Sophists. TheLives of the Sophistsis two
moderately short books, which collect together in a similar manner to a
modern biographical dictionary the figures Philostratus thinks worthy of
- See SenecaEp. 33.7: Ideo pueris et sententias ediscendas damus et has quas Graeci
chrias vocant, quia complecti illas puerilis animus potest, qui plus adhuc non capit.
A schoolboy catechism from Oxyrhynchus reads as follows:
What is the chreia?
A concise reminiscence associated with some character.
Why is the chreia a reminiscence?
Because it is remembered so that it may be recited...
Why is it called ‘‘chreia’’?
Because of its being useful.... - Langlands 2006.
The Anecdote 105