1. Introduction: Lucian and the end of carnivalism²

In a programmatic passage of his dialogue The Dead Come to Life, or The Fisherman (Revivescentes sive Piscator), the satirist Lucian of Samosata (2nd c. CE) explicitly makes one of his numerous fictitious characters express his view concerning the making and structure of the Lucianic corpus.³ Before commenting further on this Lucianic technique, however, I shall briefly offer a summary of The Fisherman’s plot. Within the scenery and topography of Classical Athens, the famous old philosophers come back to life again in order to seek vengeance from an authorial figure called Mr. Frankness (Παρρησιάδης < παρρησία, i.e. “outspokenness, frankness, freedom of speech”), a satirical voice or alias of Lucian’s.⁴ This is configured as a reply to the humorous attack against philosophers which has been conducted in another Lucianic work, the Philosophies for Sale (Vitarum Auctio), where ancient philosophers and their doctrines are ridiculed in a similar dialogical setting. In The Fisherman, the Cynic Diogenes of Sinope acts as the principal prosecutor against Parrhesiades, who thereby appears as the initial author of Philosophies for Sale. Although this is a statement uttered by a character within the imaginary world of satire, Diogenes’ words appear to serve a programmatic, quasi-authorial commentary on – and a description of – Lucian’s work as a whole. One of the most embittered charges of Diogenes’ fierce attack reads as follows (Pisc. 25–27):

{ΔΙΟΓΕΝΕΣ} μᾶλλον δὲ καὶ μισεῖσθαι πρὸς τῶν πολλῶν ἤδη πεποίηκεν αὐτούς τε ἡμᾶς καὶ σὲ τὴν Φιλοσοφίαν, φληνάφους καὶ λήρους ἀποκαλῶν τὰ σὰ καὶ τὰ σπουδαιότατα ὧν ἡμᾶς ἐπαίδευσας ἐπὶ χλευασμῷ διεξιών, ὥστε αὐτὸν μὲν κροτεῖσθαι καὶ ἐπαινεῖσθαι πρὸς τῶν θεατῶν, ἡμᾶς δὲ ὑβρίζεσθαι. φύσει γὰρ τοιοῦτόν ἐστιν ὁ πολὺς λεώς, χαίρουσι τοῖς ἀποσκώπτουσιν καὶ λοιδορουμένοις, καὶ μάλισθ’ ὅταν τὰ σεμνότατα εἶναι δοκοῦντα διασύρηται, ὥσπερ ἀμέλει καὶ πάλαι ἔχαιρον Ἀριστοφάνει καὶ Εὐπόλιδι Σωκράτη τουτονὶ ἐπὶ χλευασίᾳ παράγουσιν ἐπὶ τὴν σκηνὴν καὶ κωμῳδοῦσιν ἀλλοκότους τινὰς περὶ αὐτοῦ κωμῳδίας. Καίτοι ἐκεῖνοι μὲν καθ’ ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς ἐτόλμων τοιαῦτα, καὶ ἐν Διονυσίοις ἐφειμένον αὐτὸ ἔδρων, καὶ τὸ σκῶμμα ἐδόκει μέρος τι τῆς ἑορτῆς, καὶ ὁ θεὸς ἴσως ἔχαιρε φιλόγελώς τις ὤν. ὁ δὲ τοὺς ἀρίστους συγκαλῶν, ἐκ πολλοῦ φροντίσας καὶ παρασκευασάμενος καὶ βλασφημίας τινὰς εἰς παχὺ βιβλίον ἐγγράψας, μεγάλῃ τῇ φωνῇ ἀγορεύει κακῶς Πλάτωνα, Πυθαγόραν, Ἀριστοτέλη τοῦτον, Χρύσιππον ἐκεῖνον, ἐμὲ καὶ ὅλως ἅπαντας οὔτε ἑορτῆς ἐφιείσης οὔτε ἰδίᾳ τι πρὸς ἡμῶν παθών· εἶχε γὰρ ἄν τινα συγγνώμην αὐτῷ τὸ πρᾶγμα, εἰ ἀμυνόμενος, ἀλλὰ μὴ ἄρχων αὐτὸς ἔδρα. […] Ἀνθ’ ὧν ἁπάντων ἄξιόν ἐστιν ὑποσχεῖν αὐτὸν τὴν δίκην.⁵

Diogenes: More than that, he has at last made people actually hate you, Philosophy, as well as us by dubbing your doctrines stuff and nonsense and rehearsing in mockery all that is most serious in what you taught us, so as to get applause and praise from his audience for himself and contumely for us. The common sort are that way by nature; they delight in jesters and buffoons, and most of all when they criticise what is held in high reverence. Just so in days gone by they took delight in Aristophanes [cf. the Clouds] and Eupolis [cf. fr. 395 PCG], who brought Socrates on the stage to make fun of him and got up monstrous farces about him. The playwrights, however, showed their boldness against only one man, and at the Dionysia, when it was permissible to do so, and the joking was considered part of the holiday, and the god, who loves his joke, no doubt was pleased. But this man brings the best people together, after a long period of thinking and preparing and writing down slanders in a thick roll, and then loudly abuses Plato, Pythagoras, Aristotle here, Chrysippus there, myself, and in a word, one and all, without the sanction of a holiday and without having had anything done to him personally by us. He would have some excuse for the thing, of course, if he had acted in self-defence instead of starting the quarrel. […] For all this he ought to be punished…⁶

According to Diogenes in this Lucianic passage, the foremost playwrights of Old Comedy, among them Eupolis and Aristophanes, had the right to denigrate and poke fun only against a particular person, such as the philosopher Socrates, and only within the boundaries of the festive occasion of the Great Dionysia, the Athenian festival in honour of the god Dionysus. During the Dionysia, Athens—as far we can at least perceive from the comedies which survive—was bustling in an exceptional atmosphere. This atmosphere one might better understand with reference to Mikhail Bakhtin’s four categories of the carnivalesque sense of the world, as they have been studied anthropologically⁷ as follows:

-free interaction between people of all backgrounds and the breaking-down of social barriers and boundaries to create a collective subjectivity (“free and familiar contact among people”);

-a general acceptance of a behaviour free from social constraints and without the fear of consequences or sanctions by the dominant community (“eccentricity”);

-a format that allows for particular spheres to be reunited, which are separated in daily life (“carnivalistic mésalliances”);

-sacrilegious acts or events are allowed to occur without resulting punishment: otherwise strict rules of ‘the sacred’ can be profanated during carnival, giving way to mockery, blasphemy, obscenity (cf. the conception of αἰσχρολογία within the Greek iambic tradition), debasements, grotesque corporeality, etc. (“profanation”).

To summarise the carnivalesque in Bakhtin’s words: “Because carnivalistic life is life drawn out of its usual rut, it is to some extent “life turned inside out,” “the reverse side of the world” (“monde à l’envers”).”⁸ The dramatic production of the comic poets, and on our evidence especially those by Aristophanes, bear an impressive testimony of such a topsy-turvy carnivalistic world within the Greek literary tradition.⁹

In Lucian’s dialogue The Fisherman the second (“eccentricity”) and the fourth (“profanation”) categories, the permission or authorization to perform sacrilegious acts, are subverted in particular. Here the newborn philosophers suggest various types of severe retaliation for all the injuries they have suffered in the course of Parrhesiades’ satirical scolding of the philosophical life! According to them, ‘the author᾽ Parrhesiades has crossed a delicate line, and now they attribute to themselves the right to punish him for his ‘sacrilegious behavior.’ This is further illustrated by the philosophers’ fierce attacks on Parrhesiades right at the beginning of the dialogue, which opens in the midst of action (Pisc. 1):

{ΣΩΚΡΑΤΗΣ} Βάλλε βάλλε τὸν κατάρατον ἀφθόνοις τοῖς λίθοις· ἐπίβαλλε τῶν βώλων· προσεπίβαλλε καὶ τῶν ὀστράκων· παῖε τοῖς ξύλοις τὸν ἀλιτήριον· ὅρα μὴ διαφύγῃ· καὶ σὺ βάλλε, ὦ Πλάτων· καὶ σύ, ὦ Χρύσιππε, καὶ σὺ δέ, καὶ πάντες ἅμα […]. κοινὸς γὰρ πολέμιος, καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν ἡμῶν ὅντινα οὐχ ὕβρικε. σὺ δέ, ὦ Διόγενες, εἴ ποτε καὶ ἄλλοτε, χρῶ τῷ ξύλῳ· μηδὲ ἀνῆτε· διδότω τὴν ἀξίαν βλάσφημος ὤν.

socrates: Pelt, pelt the scoundrel with plenty of stones! Heap him with clods! Pile him up with broken dishes, too! Beat the blackguard with your sticks! Look out he doesn’t get away! Throw, Plato; you too, Chrysippus; you too; everybody at once! […] [F]or he is our joint enemy, and there is not a man of us whom he has not outraged. Diogenes, ply your stick, if ever you did before; let none of you weaken; let him pay the penalty for his ribaldry.

Socrates’ last sentence is revealing here: Parrhesiades shall “pay the penalty for his ribaldry” (διδότω τὴν ἀξίαν βλάσφημος ὤν). What Diogenes finds primarily reproachable about Parrhesiades, this Lucian-like authorial figure,¹⁰ is that he mocks philosophers not within the confines of the carnivalesque festival, just as Old Comedy used to do, but rather in writings published throughout the entire year.¹¹ Analogously to this, Lucian’s satirical communication generally relies on an aesthetics of perpetual transgression: by detaching critique against moral misbehavior, double standards and vices from a singular occasion, and so depriving it of its former status of festive exceptionality, Lucian’s character Diogenes paves the way to a new poetics of book satire. In turn, the innovative way how Lucian constructs an authorial coherence becomes palpable throughout the corpus. As the resurrected philosopher Diogenes puts it in the passage quoted above (Pisc. 26), Parrhesiades, “after a long period of thinking and preparing and writing down slanders in a thick roll […] then loudly abuses […] one and all, without the sanction of a holiday and without having had anything done to him personally by us.” The production of thick book- rolls (εἰς παχὺ βιβλίον ἐγγράψας) reveals Parrhesiades (and, indirectly, Lucian himself) as an assiduous publicist of satirical writings which are constantly handed over to a public readership. At the same time, which makes the statement still more relevant, the ‘book’ (βιβλίον) is a reference to Lucian’s Philosophies for Sale (Vitarum Auctio). Within the sequential order of Lucian’s writing in the Medieval codex Γ (the Vaticanus Graecus 90, which contains 78 writings and dates from the 10th c.), the eponymous manuscript for the text tradition γ,¹² Vitarum auctor and Piscator are in fact set in juxtaposition and represented as libelli 27 and 28. Hence, the reference within the texts (Pisc. 25–27) correlates with the serial order of the texts in the manuscript tradition. This strongly suggests that they were set in concatenation by the author himself or by the editors of the corpus, which allowed for a sequential reading of the two writings coherently.

The Fisherman, as will soon become clear, belongs to a group of texts which also show clear cross-references to other writings within Lucian’s corpus (such as Essays in Portraiture Defended, Apology, or The Runaways). By this sequential order of reading, it thereby offers an overall degree of authorial coherence, based on the satirical principle of ongoing (and thereby unexceptional) transgression. I shall discuss these references which criss- cross Lucian’s texts in the following section.

2. Hidden biobibliography, or The making of the Corpus Lucianeum

Apart from the reference in The Fisherman (lib. 28), which can be read as a sequel of the earlier Philosophies for Sale (lib. 27), we come across three other passages in Lucian’s work in which apparently quite different writings are yoked together through explicit references. I shall briefly mention and discuss each of them, before going on to generally refer my observations to an important writerly principle of the Corpus Lucianeum as a whole.

Apology for “Salaried Posts in Great Houses” (Apologia pro Mercede Conductis)

In this short speech,¹³ the narrating first-person voice, who is a sophisticated writer, defends himself against a critical reader named Sabinus who has read Lucian’s On Salaried Posts (De Mercede Conductis).¹⁴ The critic now accuses the author for not living up to the expectations he has created in his own texts. For whereas he scolded the materialistic interests of pseudo-intellectuals and false philosophers seeking employment in rich Roman houses in the earlier work, Sabinus now objects to his lucrative rhetorical activity within the Roman administration. The Apology starts as follows (Apol. 1):

Πάλαι σκοπῶ πρὸς ἐμαυτόν, ὦ καλὲ Σαβῖνε, ἅτινά σοι εἰκὸς ἐπελθεῖν εἰπεῖν ἀναγνόντι ἡμῶν τὸ περὶ τῶν ἐπὶ μισθῷ συνόντων βιβλίον· ὅτι μὲν γὰρ οὐκ ἀγελαστὶ διεξῄεις αὐτὸ καὶ πάνυ μοι πρόδηλον. ἃ δὲ μεταξὺ καὶ ἐπὶ πᾶσιν ὑπὸ σοῦ ἐλέγετο, ταῦτα νῦν ἐφαρμόττειν ζητῶ τοῖς ἀνεγνωσμένοις.

I have long been wondering, my dear Sabinus, what it probably occurred to you to say now that you have read my essay on “Salaried Posts in Great Houses.” It is quite certain that you had a good laugh when you read it; but I am trying now to fit the detailed and general comments you made to the text. (transl. K. Kilburn)

Lucian’s Apology thus appears as a continuation, as it were, of the On Salaried Posts whose title is referred to in the opening passage. We, the readers, are invited to follow the steps of the model reader Sabinus and read that text before advancing with the Apology, which takes the former work as a starting point for the satirical defence of its own author-figure, the first-person voice of the text.

The manuscript tradition, however, has not combined this pair of writings, since On Salaried Posts occupies position 36 within Γ, and the Apology appears as number 65. There might have been two main reasons for this clear separation between the two texts. First, it could be argued that the reference to Merc. Cond. in Apol. 1 (τὸ περὶ τῶν ἐπὶ μισθῷ συνόντων βιβλίον) already served as a crystal clear mnemonic reminder of the former libellus to the reader. Secondly, the Apology itself is again situated within a group of formally and/or thematically related texts:¹⁵ within this group of writings, we come across the Apology’s remarkable similarities to other rhetorical set-pieces (cf. lib. 53 and 54) and texts in which the speakers choose as a theme the relationship between themselves and their audience/readership (cf. lib. 60, 62, 63, 66, 67, 68, the so-called προλαλιαί, i.e. “rhetorical prefaces,” “introductory remarks”). On the other hand, lib. 64 and 66, the texts which are placed either side of the Apology, thematically treat the efforts made to gain sufficient support by a patron. Lib. 64 and 67 also display an apologetic attitude, which is to say: the author(s) or editor(s) of codex Γ, following structural and thematical aspects, grouped their texts in this order in such a way as that they would be read as a linear, coherent cycle. Evidently, the author or his later revisers considered particular structural elements and motifs as a signature of this part of the œuvre.

Essays on Portraiture Defended (Pro Imaginibus)

In accordance with the self-reference to Merc.Cond. at the start of Apol., another combination of two texts displays a remarkable sequentiality and linearity, even though they are divided from each other and placed at different positions in Lucian’s work. This is the case of the diptych between the dialogues Essays of Portraiture (Imagines, lib. 43) and Essays on Portraiture Defended (Pro Imaginibus, lib. 50), in which the latter, comparably to the Apology, at first glance appears to be a palinode of a preceding text.¹⁶ In the Imagines, the character Lycinus is found ecstatically describing a beautiful woman to his dialogue partner Polystratus, of whom he had caught sight while she passed by him with her royal entourage. Lycinus makes use of reference to various great masterpieces of art in order to describe the woman’s portrait and to vividly bring it to ‘life’ again. Polystratus, for his part, completes the—in his view—incomplete portrait with positive ethical traits. Then he utters towards the end of the dialogue (Im. 23):

{ΠΟΛΥΣΤΡΑΤΟΣ} Ἀληθῆ φής, ὦ Λυκῖνε· ὥστε εἰ δοκεῖ, ἀναμίξαντες ἤδη τὰς εἰκόνας, ἥν τε σὺ ἀνέπλασας τὴν τοῦ σώματος καὶ ἃς ἐγὼ τῆς ψυχῆς ἐγραψάμην, μίαν ἐξ ἁπασῶν συνθέντες εἰς βιβλίον καταθέμενοι παρέχωμεν ἅπασι θαυμάζειν τοῖς τε νῦν οὖσι καὶ τοῖς ἐν ὑστέρῳ ἐσομένοις. μονιμωτέρα γοῦν τῶν Ἀπελλοῦ καὶ Παρρασίου καὶ Πολυγνώτου γένοιτ’ ἄν, καὶ αὐτῇ ἐκεινῇ παρὰ πολὺ τῶν τοιούτων κεχαρισμένη, ὅσῳ μὴ ξύλου καὶ κηροῦ καὶ χρωμάτων πεποίηται, ἀλλὰ ταῖς παρὰ Μουσῶν ἐπιπνοίαις [Jacobs : ἐπινοίαις MSS] εἴκασται, ἥπερ ἀκριβεστάτη εἰκὼν γένοιτ’ ἂν σώματος κάλλος καὶ ψυχῆς ἀρετὴν ἅμα ἐμφανίζουσα.

Polystratus: You are right, Lycinus. So, if you are willing, let us put our portraits together, the statue that you modelled of her body and the pictures that I painted of her soul; let us blend them all into one, put it down in a book, and give it to all mankind to admire, not only to those now alive, but to those that shall live hereafter. It would at least prove more enduring than the works of Apelles and Parrhasius and Polygnotus, and far more pleasing to the lady herself than anything of that kind, inasmuch as it is not made of wood and wax and colours but portrayed with inspirations from the Muses; and this will be found the most accurate kind of portrait, since it simultaneously discloses beauty and nobility of soul.

The book (βιβλίον) mentioned here by Polystratus is, of course, the libellus Lucianeus itself, the Essays on Portraiture, whose future (at least from the dialogue partners’ perspective) metamorphosis into a material book and subsequent circulation among an audience is anticipated in the text by the same word βιβλίον, which is used instead of, e.g., λόγος. The same noun appears in Apology 1 and The Fisherman 26 to designate the previous texts On Salaried Posts and Philosophies for Sale respectively.¹⁷ Compared to the statues of Apelles and other famous painters and thanks to the Muses, the material book according to Polystratus will—to elaborate the Thucydidean pledge of κτῆμα ἐς αἰεὶ—¹⁸ be able to freely circulate and reach many more admirers than the immobile (and immovable) works of art. The temporal extension of Lucianic literature, which is underscored by Diogenes in The Fisherman, corresponds in the Imagines with the local or geographical extension of Lucian’s popularity among his readers.

In the corresponding text, Pro Imaginibus, however, Polystratus acts as a messenger of the beautiful woman, conveying her reply to his friend Lycinus (which constitutes, as in the Apology, another internal response by a critical reader),¹⁹ in which she criticizes Lycinus and accuses him of open and excessive flattery. Through her spokesman Polystratus, she gives Lycinus— again the fictitious representative of the satirical author—the following advice (Pr.Im. 14):

ἀλλὰ μηδὲ ἐκεῖνο αἰσχυνθῇς, εἰ μεταρρυθμιεῖς τὸν λόγον ἤδη διαδεδομένον·

Do not be ashamed, either, to reshape the essay after it has been put into circulation.

The woman, whose beauty was discussed in the earlier Imagines, thus recommends a new edition or revision (cf. μεταρρυθμιεῖς) of a text that is already in circulation (ὁ λόγος ἤδη διαδεδομένος), i.e. a new edition of the Imagines.²⁰ In accordance with the passages quoted above, the more ore less explicit intratextual references again invite the readers to connect a Lucianic writing to a subsequent text. On the other hand, the μεταρρύθμισις of this already published λόγος points to the Essays on Portraiture Defended themselves, which thus appears to be an altered or revised version of its precursor text. Here it is again a fictitious character within Lucian’s satirical world, the highly praised woman, who through her mouthpiece Polystratus makes comments on the work itself.

Finally, and to speak more generally, we have in all three cases observed that fictitious trial scenarios, comprising both the prosecuting and the defence speeches are typical markers of intratextual (and to this extent authorial) coherence in Lucian’s corpus. Of these, the latter group (of defence speeches) include an apology delivered by an author-like satirical figure, such as in Pisc., Apol., and Pr.Im.

A short excursus on the art of Lucian’s apologetics

Lucian’s apologetics bears witness to the innovative character of his new form of satirical writing, which has developed out of diverse literary traditions. He introduces author-like figures who are willing to defend themselfes in fictitious trials against critics of their literary productions. In each apologetic, however, the satirical voice refutes the opponents’ allegations in an eloquent way, and each time the reproaches raised against this fictitious author-protagonist enable the latter to elaborate his own viewpoint in a virtuoso manner;²¹ for instance, the speaker in the Apology, just as in The Fisherman and the Essays in Portraiture Defended, does not feel obliged to defend his moral integrity. Contrary to the plausible expectation that the speaker will request a pardon in the form of a remorseful palinode,²² the viewpoint under attack is in each case underpinned and further highlighted. Particularly in the Apology, the speaker not only mocks serious and repentant apologies, but also points out their rhetorical lack of originality (Apol. 8–10).²³ Hence, the apologetic speeches rather serve to expand the satirical potential of their previous texts²⁴ and to ascribe further prestige to the authorial persona, who takes full advantage of the accusations, and thereby converts the alleged scandal into a manifestation of his own literary- rhetorical expertise.²⁵ At the same time, the impression becomes inavoidable that the speeches in defence (ἀπολογίαι) turn out to be basically exercises in epideixis (display-speeches).²⁶ The controversies between prosecution and defence, a recurring structural setting in Lucian’s texts, demonstrate that our writer applied a refined rhetorical machinery to his texts: namely, antilogy, one of the finest instruments in the sophists’ toolbox. By speaking in utramque partem (pro and contra), authors such as Lucian throughout antiquity displayed their rhetorical abilities.²⁷

Zeus takes mercy on Lucian’s readers: the opening of the Runaways (Fugiviti)

Yet there is another work in the Lucianic corpus which bears clear references to a precursory text. Lucian’s Runaways (Fugitivi, lib. 56), in which impostor philosophers—the central figures of the dialogue—are accused of seeking to seem rather than to be wise, begins straightaway with a reference to the death of the charlatan and “wonderworker” (θαυματοποιός, as Apollo calls him ironically) Peregrinus, who has thrown himself into a burning rogue and thus has come to a wretched end at the Olympic Games (Fug. 1):

{ΑΠΟΛΛΩΝ} Ἀληθῆ ταῦτά φασιν, πάτερ, ὡς ἐμβάλοι τις φέρων αὑτὸν εἰς τὸ πῦρ κατέναντι Ὀλυμπίων, ἤδη πρεσβύτης ἄνθρωπος, οὐκ ἀγεννὴς θαυματοποιὸς τὰ τοιαῦτα; ἡ Σελήνη γὰρ ἡμῖν διηγεῖτο, αὐτὴ ἑωρακέναι καιόμενον λέγουσα. {ΖΕΥΣ} Καὶ πάνυ ἀληθῆ, ὦ Ἄπολλον· ὡς μή ποτε γενέσθαι ὤφελεν. {ΑΠΟΛΛΩΝ} Οὕτω χρηστὸς ὁ γέρων ἦν καὶ ἀνάξιος ἐν πυρὶ ἀπολωλέναι; {ΖΕΥΣ} Καὶ τοῦτο μὲν ἴσως· ἀλλ’ ἐγὼ πολλὴν τὴν ἀηδίαν μέμνημαι ἀνασχόμενος τότε ὑπὸ κνίσης πονηρᾶς, οἵαν εἰκὸς ἀποφέρεσθαι ὀπτωμένων ἀνθρωπείων σωμάτων. εἰ γοῦν μὴ εἰς τὴν Ἀραβίαν ὡς εἶχον εὐθὺς ἀπιὼν ᾠχόμην, ἀπολώλειν ἄν, εὖ ἴσθι, ἀτοπίᾳ τοῦ καπνοῦ· καὶ ὅμως ἐν τοσαύτῃ εὐωδίᾳ καὶ ἀφθονίᾳ τῶν ἀρωμάτων καὶ ἐν λιβανωτῷ παμπόλλῳ μόλις αἱ ῥῖνες ἐπιλαθέσθαι μοι καὶ ἀπομαθεῖν ἤθελον τὴν κηλῖδα ἐκείνην τῆς ὀσμῆς, ἀλλὰ καὶ νῦν ὀλίγου δέω ναυτιᾶν ὑπομνησθεὶς αὐτῆς. {ΑΠΟΛΛΩΝ} Τί δὲ βουλόμενος, ὦ Ζεῦ, τοιαῦτα εἴργασται ἑαυτόν; ἢ τί τὸ ἀγαθόν, ἀπανθρακωθῆναι ἐμπεσόντα εἰς τὴν πυράν; {ΖΕΥΣ} Τοῦτο μὲν οὐκ ἄν, ὦ παῖ, φθάνοις καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλεῖ πρὸ αὐτοῦ ἐγκαλῶν, ὃς ἐς τοὺς κρατῆρας ἥλατο καὶ αὐτὸς ἐν Σικελίᾳ.

{ΑΠΟΛΛΩΝ} Μελαγχολίαν τινὰ δεινὴν λέγεις. ἀτὰρ οὗτός γε τίνα ποτὲ ἄρα τὴν αἰτίαν ἔσχε τῆς ἐπιθυμίας; {ΖΕΥΣ} Αὐτοῦ σοι λόγον ἐρῶ ὃν ἔλεξε πρὸς τὴν πανήγυριν, ἀπολογούμενος πρὸς αὐτοὺς ὑπὲρ τῆς τελευτῆς. ἔφη γάρ, εἴ γε μέμνημαι – ἀλλὰ τίς αὕτη σπουδῇ πρόσεισι τεταραγμένη καὶ δακρύουσα, πάνυ ἀδικουμένῃ ἐοικυῖα; μᾶλλον δὲ Φιλοσοφία ἐστίν, καὶ τοὔνομά γε τοὐμὸν ἐπιβοᾶται σχετλιάζουσα. τί, ὦ θύγατερ, δακρύεις;

aPollo: Is the report true, father, that someone threw himself bodily into the fire, in the very face of the Olympic festivities, quite an elderly man, not a bad hand at such hocus-pocus? Selene told me, saying that she herself had seen him burning.—Zeus: yes, quite true, Apollo. If only it had never happened!—aPollo: Was the old man so good? Was he not worthy of a death by fire?—Zeus: Yes, that he was, very likely. But my point is that I remember having had to put up with a great deal of annoyance at the time on account of a horrid stench such as you might expect to arise from roasting human bodies. In fact, if I had not at once gone straight to Araby, I should have come to a sad end, you may depend on it, from the awfulness of the reek. Even as it was, amid all that fragrance and abundance of sweet scents, with frankincense in a profusion, my nostrils consented to forget and unlearn the taint of that odour; why, even now I almost retch at the memory of it!—aPollo: What was his idea, Zeus, in doing that to himself, or what was the good of his getting incinerated by jumping into the blazing fire?—Zeus: Well, that criticism, my boy, you had better address first to Empedocles, who himself sprung into that crater in Sicily.—aPollo: A terrible case of melancholia, that!²⁸ But this man—what reason in the world did he have for wanting to do it?—Zeus: I will repeat for you a speech of his own, which he delivered to the assembled pilgrims, defending himself before them for putting an end to himself. He said, if my memory serves me—But who is this woman coming up in haste, excited and tearful, like someone suffering great wrongs? Stay, it is Philosophy, and she is calling upon me by name, in bitterness of spirit. Why the tears, my daughter?

As is made clear in this frame dialogue between Apollo and Zeus, the two extremely different personalities, the arch-villain Peregrinus and the famous Presocratic philosopher Empedocles of Acragas are said to have shared at least the same manner of dying by throwing themselves into fire and having been burned alive.²⁹ The whole episode surrounding Peregrinus is, of course, a reference to Lucian’s Death of Peregrinus (lib. 55), to which the beginning of the Runaways seems to form a sort of sequel. Not only the awful stench (κνίση πονερά) rising from the rogue or the contrast to Empedocles’ noble end, but also the Selene episode is a reminder of Peregrinus (Peregr. 36), where the goddess of the moon is forced to watch the miserably engineered torchlight procession of Peregrinus and his followers.³⁰ It is amusing, however, that Zeus, who is about to repeat for Apollo the final speech for defence which Peregrinus delivered to the assembly in Olympia (Αὐτοῦ σοι λόγον ἐρῶ ὃν ἔλεξε πρὸς τὴν πανήγυριν, ἀπολογούμενος πρὸς αὐτοὺς ὑπὲρ τῆς τελευτῆς) and to recount it (ἔφη γάρ, εἴ γε μέμνημαι), is interrupted by the sudden appearance of personified Philosophy, who approaches the two gods in haste (ἀλλὰ τίς αὕτη σπουδῇ πρόσεισι κτλ.). At this point, we gain the impression that Zeus (or the author Lucian) wanted to spare us, the readers, namely a wearisome and disgusting second reading of the death of Peregrinus, which has already been exuberantly narrated in the previous Peregrinus!

Given the close connection with the other explicit coupling of lib. 27 and 28, The Sales of Philosophies and The Fisherman (see above), the Peregrinus and the Runaways are— not surprisingly—presented as concatenated writings as well. They serve as two sequential texts within the manuscript tradition of γ (the libelli 55 and 56).

Dead-end intratextuality: the closure of the True Stories (Verae Historiae 2.47)

In contrast to the above mentioned couplings, in Lucian’s famous True Stories we are left with the mere announcement of a future sequel. The end of this novel-like tale about fantastic wanderings into a whale, into outer space and back to earth again, reads as follows (Ver. Hist. 2.47):

Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν τὰ μέχρι τῆς ἑτέρας γῆς συνενεχθέντα μοι ἐν τῇ θαλάττῃ καὶ παρὰ τὸν πλοῦν ἐν ταῖς νήσοις καὶ ἐν τῷ ἀέρι καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα ἐν τῷ κήτει καὶ ἐπεὶ ἐξήλθομεν, παρά τε τοῖς ἥρωσι καὶ τοῖς ὀνείροις καὶ τὰ τελευταῖα παρὰ τοῖς Βουκεφάλοις καὶ ταῖς Ὀνοσκελέαις, τὰ δὲ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἐν ταῖς ἑξῆς βίβλοις διηγήσομαι.

Thus far I have told you what happened to me until I reached the other world, first at sea, then during my voyage among the islands and in the air, then in the whale, and after we left it, among the heroes and the dreams, and finally among the Bullheads and the Asslegs. What happened in the other world I shall tell you in the succeeding books.

In the last lines of the True Stories, the primary narrator inserts a proleptic reference to a tale which he will narrate in “subsequent books” (ἐν ταῖς ἑξῆς βίβλοις διηγήσομαι).³¹ The formula “I shall tell” reminds the readers of countless announcements made in the previous two books of the True Stories, by which the storyteller promises to move from one topic to the next, such as

1.22 μεῖζον δὲ τούτου ἄλλο διηγήσομαι.

1.22 μεῖζον δὲ τούτου ἄλλο διηγήσομαι.

But I will tell you something else, still more wonderful.

2.22 τὰ μὲν οὖν ἄλλα μακρὸν ἂν εἴη λέγειν· τὰ δὲ κεφάλαια τῶν πραχθέντων διηγήσομαι.

The full details would make a long story, but I shall tell the principal things that they did.

At the end of the True Stories, however, no other books are going to redeem the deceptive narrator’s pledge about his future tales. This (intentionally) open and fragmentary end³² or, in other words, this “dead-end” intratextuality is best explained as a playful game with the experienced reader, who is already acquainted with the announcements by Lucianic characters that a given text could be read as a prequel or sequel, as we have observed in the examples discussed above.³³

Lucian’s hidden biobibliography – conclusions and further considerations

Lucian’s serial continuations and his yoking together of apparently quite disparate texts across the corpus might seem a characteristic of the author’s writing itself. At the same time, the couplings transcend the single texts individually: rather, the technique enables Lucian—through his fictitious characters—to comment on his diverse writings and to ensure their readability within a corpus marked by coherence and unity. By interlinking, or better intra- linking what are otherwise more or less scattered texts together in order to form linear sequences, the Corpus Lucianeum—in the virtual absence of a consistent authorial figure—becomes the only relevant authoritative frame that we have.

By establishing his own distinctive modes of intratextuality, Lucian thus historicizes—and canonizes—his œuvre. The cross-references which we have analyzed may best be considered to function as markers of integration within the confines of the same œuvre. Francesca Martelli’s observations concerning the processes of revision, to which the Roman poet Ovid subjects many of his writings, in my view carries weight for Lucian’s writings as well:

In forging connections between the disparate texts that constitute his œuvre, revision makes them point collectively to a single author and thereby produce an authorial referent that transcends the individual works that bear his name. Revision thus reinforces the identity of the author ‘Ovid’ [we may put ‘Lucian’ here] by integrating the various works transmitted in this name. And yet, paradoxically, the revisions that characterise these texts function just as importantly as a mark of their author’s disappearance.³⁴

The various self-references found in the Corpus Lucianeum,³⁵ whilst pointing ultimately to its unity, also offer the readers a glimpse of the dynamic genesis and the authorial making of the œuvre itself. By interlinking the Philosophies for Sale (lib. 27) with The Fisherman (lib. 28), On Salaried Posts (lib. 36) with Apology for Salaried Posts (lib. 65), Essays on Portraiture (lib. 43) with Essays on Portraiture Defended (lib. 50),³⁶ and the Death of Peregrinus (lib. 55) with Runaways (lib. 56), Lucian has his characters comment on those concatenations and adumbrate his own (auto)biobibliography, as it were, in statu nascendi, by which one should include the biography of all writings from the corpus which were attributed to and transmitted under the name of the author Lucian. Whereas, in other words, the identity of the satirical voice in the text constantly changes, the œuvre itself, which we perceive mainly in the course of a dynamic reading process, resists any form of transformation. Lucian’s texts are set within a sequential—not static, yet stable—narrative, thus rendering the portrait of a literary trajectory which diachronically crystallizes out of its diverse writings.³⁷

At the end of the True Stories (2.47), as we have observed, such intratextuality leads to a referential dead-end, although even this constitutes a playful ironization of Lucian’s textual continuations and a literary game for his experienced reader, who is already used to follow the links which criss-cross the œuvre. Once more we could refer to Zeus in The Runaways 1 (lib. 56), who breaks off to retell the events which were already narrated in the Death of Peregrinus (lib. 55).

Lucian’s own self-conscious engagement with his literary achievement is an integral aspect of his corpus as a whole. The endeavour to protect and to sign, as it were, his authorship resulted in a manifold system of intratextuality. On the other hand, the coherence of the œuvre and the ever-recurring elements of his satirical voice—both formal, such as dialogicity and colloquialism, or thematic, such as the mocking of pseudo-intellectuals—proved a decisive factor in influencing the perception of Lucian’s style in later times. Indeed it was strongly due to recurrent formal and thematical elements that the texts could be judged as Lucianic by contemporary and later audiences. On the other hand, this satirical voice could have compelled later authors to look to adapt this style themselves and, though highly unlikely, to enter the corpus. Although in Imperial Times the processes of text production, distribution, circulation, and transmission changed from the rising book trade and may have become much more common and widespread than in earlier times, there never existed any solid institutions to ultimately protect literary authorship as a kind of “intellectual property”. Furthermore, readers used to identify texts by and with particular authors whom they revered and canonized, and later writers sought to emulate their style and even hoped to join their work.³⁸ Through work-related intratextuality and the establishment of a system of cross-references, Lucian might have aimed at securing authority and authorship by attempting to protect his work against the addition of such pseudepigraphical fan fiction.

That is to say that, a long time before the introduction of the first copyright legislation, controversies about the author of a literary text seemed to be an everyday occurrence. Lucian’s contemporary Galen, for example, laments that literary fakes circulated under his own name.³⁹ Galen repeatedly mentions the danger of uncontrolled circulation of writings, since in this process the authorship of a text could easily be doubted.⁴⁰ Therefore, Lucian’s intratextual references could serve to reinforce the author’s identity by preventing others from writing in his name and forestalling questions of authenticity or spuriousness. The coupling of several writings could thus aim at securing authorship (and ownership) against uncontrolled circulation. From this perspective, the construction of single authorship can be considered as an— ultimately futile—attempt to resist the widespread practices of collaborative authorship and fan fiction: by supplementing his own writings with other texts, Lucian himself acted as his first subsequent revisor and thus anticipated a role which later authors were willing to play. The pseudepigraphical writers, far from being plagiarists or thieves of Lucian’s intellectual creation (which was at least the ancient perception concerning imitation and emulation),⁴¹ rather created an authorial fiction of becoming Lucian themselves and of producing inspiring aesthetic experiments under their revered master-author’s name (primary pseudepigraphy). Other works were in due course considered as Lucianic or at least worth of Lucian (secondary pseudepigraphy), being exquisite products of literary emulation.⁴²

From a later perspective on Lucian’s work, one cannot, however, doubt the fact that the addition of the pseudepigraphic texts itself was—paradoxically—a reliable guarantee that there indeed was a perception of an existing, somewhat coherent Corpus Lucianeum, to which later authors sought their texts to be attributed. The mere employment of a satirical voice, or the recurrent use of typical and recurrent patterns within the genuine texts, by contrast, did not sufficiently ensure Lucian’s authorship, since it obviously prompted other writers to try their luck at the same collaborative experiment of literary emulation.

3. Epilogue

In recent studies, Lucian has been dubbed a metaleptic author, who manifests himself within the fictional texture of his own works, disguised only by pseudonyms which, at the same time, mark non-identity (such as ‘Parrhesiades’, ‘Tychiades’, ‘Lycinus’, the anonymous Syrian, etc.).⁴³ Contrary to the many masks which the author Lucian adopts, in order thereby to become himself a part of the fictional textual universe, the pervasively self-referential intratextuality that we have examined serves, I have argued, a more practical purpose: to secure Lucian’s authorship over the œuvre and to anticipate the latter’s distribution and reception among a wider audience. This applies even though it is constructed by Lucianic characters from the inside of the textual universe. A much stronger claim of authorship might have been the author’s name itself,⁴⁴ which only rarely appears within and more often outside of the texts themselves, and yet which functions as a connecting principle throughout the author’s œuvre.⁴⁵ His intratextual (auto)biobibliography, however, became an important metapoetic frame of reference which ensured the works’ readability as an organic and coherent literary corpus: well-publicized, not bound to single occasions, and thereby far away from carnivalesque exceptionality.

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Notes

Notas de autor