I. Introduction

Lucian’s Lexiphanes constitutes a vitriolic attack against those who abuse language for the sake of impression.² The dialogue’s eponymous character boasts of having composed a literary work, a ‘Symposium’, in imitation/rivalry of Plato.³ When Lycinus, Lucian’s authorial double, invites him to recite a part of it, we soon find out that the promised text is desperately incoherent, mixing curious words and ideas to no clear end. Instead of the Platonic setting that one would have expected, as well as a clearly focused discussion on a philosophical subject, what we get are nauseating catalogues of food combined with loosely plotted scenes moving from the bath-house to the dinner table, and containing characters whose posture borders on the ludicrous and the obscene. So deep is Lycinus’ aversion towards what he has been unwittingly exposed to that he suddenly stops Lexiphanes from going any further, claiming that clearly he is in need of a doctor. When this doctor (Sopolis)⁴ materializes in the scene, the diagnosis (formulated first by Lycinus and then passed to the professional for proper treatment) is that Lexiphanes, literally a ‘word-flaunter’, suffers from melancholia. It is from this condition that he needs to be ‘purged’, puking out and evacuating all those troublesome words which, just like noxious fluids in excess, have thrown his body and mind in turmoil (Lex. 16):

ἅλις, ὦ Λεξίφανες, καὶ ποτοῦ καὶ ἀναγνώσεως. ἐγὼ γοῦν ἤδη μεθύω σοι καὶ ναυτιῶ καὶ ἢν μὴ τάχιστα ἐξεμέσω πάντα ταῦτα ὁπόσα διεξελήλυθας, εὖ ἴσθι, κορυβαντιάσειν μοι δοκῶ περιβομβούμενος ὑφ᾽ ὧν κατεσκέδασάς μου ὀνομάτων. καίτοι τὸ μὲν πρῶτον γελᾶν ἐπῄει μοι ἐπ᾽ αὐτοῖς, ἐπειδὴ δὲ πολλὰ καὶ πάντα ὅμοια ἦν, ἠλέουν σε τῆς κακοδαιμονίας ὁρῶν εἰς λαβύρινθον ἄφυκτον ἐμπεπτωκότα καὶ νοσοῦντα νόσον τὴν μεγίστην, μᾶλλον δὲ μελαγχολῶντα.

Enough, Lexiphanes, both of the drinking-party and of the reading. I am already half-seas-over and squeamish, and if I do not very soon jettison all this gallimaufry of yours, depend upon it, I expect to go raving crazy with the roaring in my ears from the words with which you have showered me. At first I was inclined to laugh at it all, but when it turned out to be such a quantity and all of a sort, I pitied you for your hard luck, seeing that you had fallen into a labyrinthine maze from which there was no escaping and were afflicted with the most serious of all illnesses—I mean, were as mad as a hatter.⁵

Lycinus confesses that he is genuinely puzzled by the spectacle he has been watching. At first sight, Lexiphanes’ ridiculous performance gives the impression of comedy (τὸ μὲν πρῶτον γελᾶν ἐπῄει μοι); on closer inspection, it turns out to be a tragedy (ἠλέουν σε). Integral to this tragic script is that Lexiphanes seems ‘lost in a labyrinthine maze’⁶ from which there is no hope of escaping–a self-delusional situation which contains all those symptoms usually associated with melancholia.⁷

Calling someone ‘melancholic’ is not uncommon in colloquial contexts of ridicule and comic abuse. Already in Aristophanes, it is employed as a slang way of saying that someone has ‘gone insane’/ is ‘out of his mind’, without necessarily implying that a medical condition is actually involved.⁸ The aim of this article is to explore a bit further Lucian’s passage quoted above. As I will argue, rather than constitute a passing, colloquial reference to the disease, the author’s mention of melancholy flags a sustained and informed engagement with its medical background.⁹ This medical background is activated throughout and helps to shape a considerable part of the dialogue in at least two significant ways: on the one hand, the pathology of melancholy (a condition that is ultimately traced down to a surplus of fluid in the body, a ‘hyperbole’¹⁰ of black bile) is manifest across the text by becoming closely intertwined with the notion of excess from which the hyper-Atticist Lexiphanes is suffering. More to the point, just like black bile is said to ‘cast its shadow’, literally and metaphorically, over the mind and to disrupt communication between the affected subject and the external environment,¹¹ so does hyper-Atticism, a figurative sickness of language, obscure meaning by turning Lexiphanes into a user of recondite words which are no different from the babbling and raving of the insane. On the other hand, and on a more general, socio-cultural level, melancholy presents for Lucian a fitting subject in order to explore issues of posture and deception in the profoundly antagonistic and exhibitionist world of the second Sophistic.¹² For Lucian’s world, imitation is a serious issue;¹³ an inspired way of turning an eye to the past and creating something original out of it. But imitation, by its very nature, can also be subject to distortion, exaggeration and misuse; it can be employed as a tool for presenting someone as something that he is not. Melancholy, as we shall have the opportunity to see, is one of those peculiar diseases that can be faked precisely to this effect. Given black bile’s long-established association with notions of creativity and superior intelligence ([Arist.] Problems 30.1),¹⁴ a melancholic posture – manifesting itself either with manic outbursts or long fits of dejection and thoughtful silence – could have easily provided the means to shape the persona of a troubled genius. Clothing and physical appearance, as has been amply demonstrated in scholarship, were integral to sophistic performance. As Lucian’s ‘Professor of Rhetoric’ shamelessly admits: ‘first of all, you must take care of your style and the attractiveness of your dress; then pick fifteen or (at the most) twenty Attic words, and practice them cautiously’.¹⁵ There is no reason to believe that this crafted fashioning of outward appearance was limited to dressing; it must surely have applied also to one’s physiognomy and ‘cultivated’ temperament. Lucian, as I will discuss, is aware of the ways in which mental illness is mimicked and turns into a show, with Lexiphanes presenting - among other things - an acerbic attack against posers and ‘melancholic fakes’ of this kind.

II. Meaning and nonsense

In a testimony transmitted by Diogenes Laertius (which repeats a claim originally made by Theophrastus), Heraclitus, the obscure philosopher par excellence, is said to have suffered from melancholy (Vitae Philosophorum 9.6):

Θεόφραστος δέ φησιν ὑπὸ μελαγχολίας τὰ μὲν ἡμιτελῆ, τὰ δ’ ἄλλοτε ἄλλως ἔχοντα γράψαι.

Theophrastus claims that it was because of Heraclitus’ melancholy that some parts of his work remained half-finished, while other parts are in contradiction with each other.

Diogenes’ reference to melancholy aims to explain the reason why some of Heraclitus’ work was left unfinished while what has survived thrives in contradictions. It is crucial to note that Diogenes does not speak at this point of a ‘void’ of meaning; its intention, in other words, is not to expose Heraclitus as a non-sensical philosopher (as especially the phrase τὰ δ’ ἄλλοτε ἄλλως appears to suggest). Quite on the contrary, it places fragmentation and the way in which language resists a straightforward interpretation at the centre of a brilliant, genius-like philosophy¹⁶ whose meaning is elusive and requires effort in order to be reconstructed. What we have in the case of Heraclitus – similar to the distinctive feature of a naturally melancholic constitution – is an excess of meaning manifesting itself in contradictions which imply polysemy and plurality, and which effectively balance the philosopher’s ‘half-finished’ words.

Lexiphanes’ ‘Symposium’ takes on meaning - or such at least seems to be its author’s intention - precisely because of its obscurity (φαίνω, shaping etymologically the eponymous character’s name, is not so much about ‘revealing’ as it is about ‘displaying’ and confusing). Obscurity in Lexiphanes’ case works its way into the text at two levels: first, by means of the excessive use of ‘weird’ and ‘twisted’ words, some of them made-up by the author and others retrieved from strange sources;¹⁷ second, but no less importantly, at the level of content: while Lycinus has been promised a ‘Symposium’ that would somehow rival/imitate that of Plato’s, it is not late before we find out that what we get is not a philosophical debate but, rather, a light-hearted and playful banquet whose characters import random, personal stories unrelated to each other. Whether Lexiphanes’ ‘Symposium’ was intended to culminate at some point into a serious philosophical discussion remains unknown. Disgusted by what he hears, Lycinus suddenly interrupts the aspiring writer/philosopher, saying that he clearly needs to see a doctor (Lexiphanes’ text thus combines obscurity with enforced fragmentation).

Lucian’s Lexiphanes, I submit, could be read as a sophisticated comment on the dual nature of melancholy which in the previous medical and philosophical tradition has come to acquire the double status of a pathological condition, on the one hand, and that of a disease which is closely associated with an inspired state of mind, on the other.¹⁸ The text takes as its starting point a character who is posing as a ‘genius’ but is soon revealed to descend into a state of pure insanity. Indeed, if some degree of coherence is to be found in Lexiphanes’ narrative, it is mainly by means of reading it as the raving of a patient whose repetitiveness, lack of clear scope, strange words and obscenities read as ‘symptoms’ of a mind in turmoil. What looks and sounds non-sensical in his case can be integrated, in other words, into a coherent clinical picture revolving around mental illness and black bile more specifically.

Lexiphanes’ most distinctive symptom is his delirious talk. This is how Lycinus introduces him to Sopolis, the doctor in the dialogue (Lex. 18):

ἀλλ᾽ εἰς καλὸν γὰρ τουτονὶ Σώπολιν ὁρῶ τὸν ἰατρὸν προσιόντα, φέρε τούτῳ ἐγχειρίσαντές σε καὶ διαλεχθέντες ὑπὲρ τῆς νόσου ἴασίν τινά σοι εὑρώμεθα: συνετὸς γὰρ ἁνὴρ καὶ πολλοὺς ἤδη παραλαβὼν ὥσπερ σὲ ἡμιμανεῖς καὶ κορυζῶντας ἀπήλλαξεν ἐγχέας φάρμακον. χαῖρε, Σώπολι, καὶ τουτονὶ Λεξιφάνην παραλαβὼν ἑταῖρον, ὡς οἶσθα, ἡμῖν ὄντα, λήρῳ δὲ νῦν καὶ ξένῃ περὶ τὴν φωνὴν νόσῳ ξυνόντα καὶ κινδυνεύοντα ἤδη τελέως ἀπολωλέναι σῶσον ἑνὶ γέ τῳ τρόπῳ.

But what luck! here I see Sopolis the physician drawing near. Come now, suppose we put you in his hands, have a consultation with him about your complaint, and find some cure for you. The man is clever, and often before now, taking charge of people like yourself, half crazed and full of drivel, he has relieved them with his doses of medicine. —Good-day to you, Sopolis. Do take charge of Lexiphanes here, who is my friend, as you know, and at present has on him a nonsensical, outlandish distemper affecting his speech which is likely to be the death of him outright. Do save him in one way or another.

Lexiphanes’ illness is simultaneously recognizable and strange. From what Lycinus tells Sopolis, it seems to approximate some sort of mild insanity (ἡμιμανεῖς) which is, however, life-threatening and needs to be taken care of immediately. At the same time, the fact that its symptomatology is specifically affecting the patient’s ‘language’ (ξένῃ περὶ τὴν φωνὴν νόσῳ) makes it look somewhat bizarre.¹⁹ As Lycinus explains later in the dialogue, Lexiphanes is carried away by fanciful verbs and nouns and uses them without even knowing what they mean. Rather than formulating his thoughts first and dressing them with an appropriate language, the patient opts instead for words which sound impressive, at the expense of a concrete meaning.²⁰ The result is a sort of diction where the link between signifier and signified has been violated and where content recedes to the background giving its place to what ultimately manifests itself as a series of inane sounds. This vocal aberration (λήρῳ) is no different from the incomprehensible, self-isolating language in which a madman talks.

Λῆρος, λήρησις, ληρεῖν, παραλήρησις commonly appear in medical texts in order to describe ‘delirious’ talk, usually induced by fever or drunkenness. For instance, in [Hipp.] Epid. 1.13, Case 3, a patient by the name of Herophon is seized by a fit of acute fever and insomnia, displaying on the fifth day symptoms of temporary insanity (παρεφρόνησεν). Then, on the sixth day: ἐλήρει, ἐς νύκτα ἱδρώς, ψύξις, παράληρος παρέμενεν, ‘he started talking nonsense; he was sweaty during the night and was seized by shudders; delirious talk persisted’.²¹ Indeed, so close is the connection between ληρεῖν / φλυαρεῖν and madness, that ‘speaking nonsensically’ often alternates with μαίνεσθαι as a conceptual synonym. Take, for instance, the following prognosis ([Hipp.] De morbis 2.22): ‘If, looking up and speaking he is in his senses and does not speak/behave nonsensically (φθεγξάμενος παρ’ ἑωυτῷ γένηται καὶ μὴ φλυηρῇ), he will lie down drowsy this day, but on the next will become healthy. But if, standing up he vomits bile (χολὴν ἐμέῃ), he will rave (μαίνεται) and in five days die indeed, if he does not sleep’.²² Bile, vomit and the risk of the patient’s life all appear as details in the clinical picture which Lycinus is building for Lexiphanes.²³ Whether directly indebted to (earlier or contemporary) medical sources or indirectly drawing on a widespread, colloquial idiom of mental illness, Lucian’s intention remains that of presenting the hyper-Atticist at play on the verge of mental and biological collapse.

But what does ληρεῖν mean exactly? What kind of language qualifies as ‘non-sensical’? Although medical authors make heavy use of the term, we seem to lack instances of a clear-cut, detailed description of the actual content of λῆρος.²⁴ Several hypotheses have been put forward. Some have argued that λῆρος seems ‘to involve something akin to the babbling that takes place while a patient is asleep’.²⁵ Random phonemes combine with animal noises and snippets of actual speech of no discernible value. As Webster puts it in a discussion of the formula λόγοι πολλοί used for mentally affected patients in the Hippocratic Corpus, when the physicians ‘classify ‘words’ as a diagnostically valuable pathology, they functionally strip the patient’s voice of all linguistic content and instead reduce the emissions of the mouth to a raw material being excreted. Purged of any possible verbal meaning, the voice becomes a crude emission, a substance to be scrutinized and examined’.²⁶ Reducing speech to an evacuation of sounds which are devoid of meaning and materialize as fluids excreted from the body is crucial also for Lucian’s understanding of Lexiphanes’ condition (Lex. 21):

[Σώπολις] ἄρξαι δὴ ἐμεῖν. βαβαί. πρῶτον τουτὶ τὸ μῶν, εἶτα μετ᾽ αὐτὸ ἐξελήλυθεν τὸ κᾆτα, εἶτα ἐπ᾽ αὐτοῖς τὸ ἦ δ᾽ ὃς καὶ ἀμηγέπη καὶ λῷστε καὶ δήπουθεν καὶ συνεχὲς τὸ ἄττα. βίασαι δ᾽ ὅμως, καὶ κάθες εἰς τὴν φάρυγγα τοὺς δακτύλους. οὐδέπω τὸ ἴκταρ ἐμήμεκας οὐδὲ τὸ σκορδινᾶσθαι οὐδὲ τὸ τευτάζεσθαι οὐδὲ τὸ σκύλλεσθαι. πολλὰ ἔτι ὑποδέδυκε καὶ μεστή σοι αὐτῶν ἡ γαστήρ. ἄμεινον δέ, εἰ καὶ κάτω διαχωρήσειεν ἂν ἔνια: ἡ γοῦν σιληπορδία μέγαν τὸν ψόφον ἐργάσεται συνεκπεσοῦσα μετὰ τοῦ πνεύματος. ἀλλ᾽ ἤδη μὲν καθαρὸς οὑτοσὶ πλὴν εἴ τι μεμένηκεν ὑπόλοιπον ἐν τοῖς κάτω ἐντέροις. σὺ δὲ τὸ μετὰ τοῦτο παραλαβὼν αὐτόν, ὦ Λυκῖνε, μεταπαίδευε καὶ δίδασκε ἃ χρὴ λέγειν.

[Sopolis] Begin now to lighten yourself. Aha! First, this “prithee” then after it “eftsoons” has come up; then on their heels his “quoth he” and “ in some wise,” and “ fair sir,” and “ in sooth,” and his incessant “ sundry.” Make an effort, however; put your fingers down your throat. You have not yet given up “instanter” or “pandiculation” or “ divagation “ or “spoliation.” Many things still lurk in hiding and your inwards are full of them. It would be better if some should take the opposite course. Anyhow, “vilipendency” will make a great racket when it comes tumbling out on the wings of the wind. Well, this man is now purged, unless something has remained behind in his lower intestines. It is for you next, Lycinus, to take him on, mending his education and teaching him what to say.

As Sopolis provides Lexiphanes with an emetic in order to help him puke out the archaic diction which is ailing him, the latter is suddenly heard to emit a series of phrases, nouns, adverbs and particles in no particular sequence. In the text cited above, which describes this process of lexical vomit, I highlighted some of Lexiphanes’ evacuated matter, words reduced into sounds, which lose substance as they have no meaningful connection with each other. Since the scene is reported by Sopolis, we have to imagine that the patient is literally gurgling out words and is producing the following sound: μῶν κᾆτα ἦ δ᾽ ὃς ἀμηγέπη λῷστε δήπουθεν ἄττα. Lycinus’ point seems to be that the ‘Symposium’ from which Lexiphanes has been reciting to him so far is not essentially different from the disgusting stuff which is now coming out from the latter’s mouth.²⁷ At the same time, the evacuation of words which are literally forced out from the patient’s stomach could function as a neat comment of what a delirious talk amounts to: namely, a series of sounds which are not cognitively shaped but become reduced to pure bodily matter, no different from vomit, shit, burps and farts.²⁸

Indeed there seems to be something inherently ‘disgusting’ in the way Lexiphanes talks. Before we reach the end of the dialogue, where Sopolis’ therapeutic intervention induces a vomit of words from the patient, Lycinus, as we have seen, has complained that Lexiphanes’ ‘nauseating’ Symposium makes him want to puke (ἐγὼ γοῦν ἤδη μεθύω σοι καὶ ναυτιῶ καὶ ἢν μὴ τάχιστα ἐξεμέσω πάντα ταῦτα ὁπόσα διεξελήλυθας, εὖ ἴσθι, κορυβαντιάσειν μοι δοκῶ). Expressing aversion in such strong terms towards someone else’s literary production can be a strong way of implying one’s superior position towards the object that causes disgust; the notion of distaste helps Lycinus, and by implication Lucian, present himself as a connoisseur who simply can’t stand the rubbish he has been listening to. This sort of disgust, as Kaster has brilliantly illustrated in his discussion of fastidium in Roman texts, is not activated instinctively and reflexively–it is not the physical aversion which we feel when we become suddenly exposed to a bad smell or taste. On the contrary, it implicates a series of values and judgments, revealing a ‘pattern of engagement that might be labeled “deliberative and ranking”’. This reaction is of the kind ‘that people experience when they have considered at some level of consciousness the relative value or status of two or more things (or people) – including, very often, their own value or status relative to some thing (or person) – and have decided to rank one of those things (or people) so low as to have an aversion to it (or him)’.²⁹

But what is it precisely that makes Lexiphanes’ way of writing so repulsive? We should start by noting that Lycinus’ aversion may be related to both style/ diction and subject-matter. Recondite words combine with distasteful details of content. Consider, for instance, the following, nauseating catalogue of foods which Lexiphanes lists one by one, thinking that the result should impress Lycinus (Lex. 6):

κἀπειδὴ καιρὸς ἦν, ἐπ᾽ ἀγκῶνος ἐδειπνοῦμεν ἔκειντο δὲ καὶ ὀκλαδίαι καὶ ἀσκάνται. τὸ μὲν δὴ δεῖπνον ἦν ἀπὸ συμφορῶν. παρεσκεύαστο δὲ πολλὰ καὶ ποικίλα, δίχηλα ὕεια καὶ σχελίδες καὶ ἠτριαία καὶ τοκάδος ὑὸς τὸ ἐμβρυοδόχον ἔντερον καὶ λοβὸς ἐκ ταγήνου καὶ μυττωτὸς καὶ ἀβυρτάκη καὶ τοιαῦταί τινες καρυκεῖαι καὶ θρυμματίδες καὶ θρῖα καὶ μελιτοῦτται: τῶν δὲ ὑποβρυχίων τὰ σελάχια πολλὰ καὶ ὅσα ὀστράκινα τὸ δέρμα καὶ τεμάχη Ποντικὰ τῶν ἐκ σαργάνης καὶ κωπαΐδες καὶ ὄρνις σύντροφος καὶ ἀλεκτρυὼν ἤδη ἀπῳδὸς καὶ ἰχθὺς ἦν παράσιτος: καὶ οἶν δὲ ὅλον ἰπνοκαῆ εἴχομεν καὶ βοὸς λειπογνώμονος κωλῆν. ἄρτοι μέντοι ἦσαν σιφαῖοι, οὐ φαῦλοι, καὶ ἄλλοι νουμήνιοι, ὑπερήμεροι τῆς ἑορτῆς, καὶ λάχανα τά τε ὑπόγεια καὶ τὰ ὑπερφυῆ: οἶνος δὲ ἦν οὐ γέρων, ἀλλὰ τῶν ἀπὸ βύρσης, ἤδη μὲν ἀγλευκής, ἄπεπτος δὲ ἔτι.

When the time was ripe, we dined on our elbows. Both faldstools and truckles were at hand. The dinner was picked up; many different viands had been made ready, pig’s trotters, spareribs, tripe, the caul of a sow that had littered, panned pluck, spoonmeat of cheese and honey, shallot-pickle and other such condiments, crumpets, stuffed fig-leaves, sweets. Of submarine victuals, too, there were many sorts of selacian, all the ostraceans, cuts of Pontic tunny in hanapers, Copaic lassies, vernacular fowl, muted chanticleers, and an odd fish—the parasite. Yes, and we had a whole sheep barbecued, and the hind- quarter of an edentulous ox. Besides, there was bread from Siphae, not bad, and novilunar buns, too late for the fair, as well as vegetables, both underground and over grown. And there was wine, not vetust, but out of a leathern bottle, dry by now but still crude.

There is something very ripe and rotten about some of the foods that Lexiphanes claims to be enjoying (note, especially, the reference to τοκάδος ὑὸς τὸ ἐμβρυοδόχον ἔντερον but see also: the ‘old cock’ that can sing no more, ἀλεκτρυὼν ἤδη ἀπῳδὸς, the fish called παράσιτος and the ‘hind-quarter of an ox that is missing its teeth’, βοὸς λειπογνώμονος κωλῆν).³⁰ His lack of taste in language is thus reflected in a lack of taste for good food. But apart from these disgusting details, what makes the content of Lexiphanes’ piece particularly unsettling is its incongruous material. For reasons of space, I will focus here on one specific aspect of the ‘Symposium’ that looks out of place, namely Lexiphanes’ unwarranted emphasis on death, in ways that reveal a frivolous handling of the subject and which in the end convey a really bad sense of taste on the author’s part.

Two scenes are of particular interest. In the first of them, found at the very start of Lexiphanes’ ‘Symposium’, the speaker describes himself being invited by a certain Callicles to the bathhouse. Lexiphanes responds that he will gladly join him; it’s been ages since he had his last bath–yet another ‘filthy’ detail contributing to the text’s distasteful tempo (Lex. 2):

σὺ δὲ τί καὶ πράξεις, ὦ Λεξίφανες, ἥξεις ἢ ἐλινύσεις ἔτι αὐτόθι;’ ‘κἀγώ,’ ἦν δὲ ἐγώ, ‘τρίπαλαι λουτιῶ: οὐκ εὐπόρως τε γὰρ ἔχω καὶ τὰ ἀμφὶ τὴν τράμιν μαλακίζομαι ἐπ᾽ ἀστράβης ὀχηθείς. ὁ γὰρ ἀστραβηλάτης ἐπέσπερχεν καίτοι ἀσκωλιάζων αὐτός. ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐν αὐτῷ οὐκ ἀκμὴς ἦν τῷ ἀγρῷ κατέλαβον γὰρ τοὺς ἐργάτας λιγυρίζοντας τὴν θερινὴν ᾠδήν, τοὺς δὲ τάφον τῷ ἐμῷ πατρὶ κατασκευάζοντας. συντυμβωρυχήσας οὖν αὐτοῖς καὶ τοῖς ἀναχοῦσιν τὰ ἄνδηρα καὶ αὐτὸς ὀλίγα συγχειροπονήσας ἐκείνους μὲν διαφῆκα τοῦ τε κρύους ἕνεκα καὶ ὅτι καύματα ἦν οἶσθα δ᾽ ὡς ἐν κρύει σφοδρῷ γίνεται τὰ καύματα. ἐγὼ δὲ περιελθὼν τὰ ἀρώματα σκόροδά τε εὗρον ἐν αὐτοῖς πεφυκότα καὶ γηπαττάλους τινὰς ἀνορύξας καὶ τῶν σκανδίκων καὶ βρακάνων λαχανευσάμενος, ἔτι δὲ κάχρυς πριάμενος — οὔπω δ᾽ οἱ λειμῶνες ἀνθοσμίαι ἦσαν, ὡς αὐτοποδητὶ βαδίζειν — ἀνατεθεὶς ἐπὶ τὴν ἀστράβην ἐδάρην τὸν ὄρρον καὶ νῦν βαδίζω τε ὀδυνηρῶς καὶ ἰδίω θαμὰ καὶ μαλακιῶ τὸ σῶμα καὶ δέομαι διανεῦσαι ἐν τῷ ὕδατι ἐπὶ πλεῖστον: χαίρω δὲ μετὰ κάματον ἀπολούμενος.

[Callicles] “Shall you come, or tarry yet a while hereabouts ?” [Lexiphanes] “I too,” said I, “am yearning to ablute these ages past, for I am ill-conditioned, susceptible behind from riding pillion on a mule. The muleteer kept me going, though he himself was jigging it hot-foot. But even in the country I was not unassiduous, for I found the yokels caroling the harvest-home; some of them, too, were preparing a grave for my father. After I had assisted them in the engraving and for a brief space shared the handiwork of the dikers, I dispersed them on account of the cold and because they were getting burned (in severe cold, you know, burning ensues). For myself, I got about the simples, found prickmadam growing among them, exhumed sundry radishes, garnered chervils and potherbs, and bought groats. But the meads were not yet redolent enough for travelling by shank’s mare ; so I mounted the pillion and had my rump excoriated. Now I walk excruciatingly, I perspire amain, my flesh is very weak, and I want to play about in the water no end. I delight in the prospect of dissolution after toil.

The pink elephant in the passage is the grave of Lexiphanes’ father. Lexiphanes mentions it as a passing, insignificant detail,³¹ squeezed between his emphatic complaint for his irritated buttocks and his care-free roaming through the countryside in search for culinary herbs. Death is uncomfortably intruding into the narrative, and the effect is further accentuated by Lexiphanes’ careless use of language: the participle employed to describe the building of the tomb, συντυμβωρυχήσας, is the standard word applied to grave-digging (a slip of the tongue, which the speaker seems not to be noticing in his attempt to accumulate long, multisyllabic words). Equally intriguing as regards death’s insidious presence in the text is Lexiphanes’ statement that he is looking forward to ‘having a bath’: χαίρω δὲ μετὰ κάματον ἀπολούμενος. The Attic contraction of ἀπολουόμενος to ἀπολούμενος produces identity of form with the future of ἀπόλλυμαι. The prospect of bathing (and then of dining) turns unwittingly into an anticipation of dying.

This blurring of boundaries between a life-celebrating event - such as a symposium was principally meant to be - and death may have something to do with the tradition of the ‘funeral banquet’, περίδειπνον, with which Lucian is clearly toying elsewhere in his work. But as with everything else, Lexiphanes gets it all wrong. A funeral banquet was an occasion during which eulogies were delivered by those present for the deceased and songs were performed in his honour. According to Artemidorus (Oneirocritica 5.82.7), the assumption was that the deceased was still among the dinner-participants and that he was accepted in Hades only after the dinner was completed.³² The solemnity of this formal event is downgraded and defused in Lexiphanes’ ‘Symposium’. Death makes its presence felt, but only to the effect of bringing out the characters’ indecency and lowness. As Lexiphanes keeps reciting from his work, we hear of a certain Eudemus who joins the dinner late. When Lexiphanes asks the reason for his late arrival, Eudemus informs the company that an acquaintance of his attempted suicide and he had to save him, hence the delay. This produces a nasty reaction on Lexiphanes’ part (Lex. 11-12):

ἐμὲ δέ,’ ἦ δ᾽ ὃς, ὁ Εὔδημος, ‘ ὑπὸ τὸ ἀκροκνεφὲς μετεστείλατο Δαμασίας ὁ πάλαι μὲν ἀθλητὴς καὶ πολυνίκης, νῦν δὲ ἤδη ὑπὸ γήρως ἔξαθλος ὤν: οἶσθα τὸν χαλκοῦν τὸν ἑστῶτα ἐν τῇ ἀγορᾷ. καὶ τὰ μὲν πιττῶν τὰ δὲ εὕων διετέλεσεν, ἐξοικιεῖν γὰρ ἔμελλε τήμερον εἰς ἀνδρὸς τὴν θυγατέρα καὶ ἤδη ἐκάλλυνεν αὐτήν. εἶτα Τερμέριόν τι κακὸν ἐμπεσὸν διέκοψε τὴν ἑορτήν: ὁ γὰρ υἱὸς αὐτοῦ ὁ Δίων, οὐκ οἶδ᾽ ἐφ᾽ ὅτῳ λυπηθείς, μᾶλλον δὲ θεοσεχθρίᾳ σχεθείς, ἀπῆγξεν ἑαυτόν, καὶ εὖ ἴστε, ἀπωλώλει ἄν, εἰ μὴ ἐγὼ ἐπιστὰς ἀπηγχόνισά τε αὐτὸν καὶ παρέλυσα τῆς ἐμβροχῆς, ἐπὶ πολύ τε ὀκλὰξ παρακαθήμενος ἐπένυσσον τὸν ἄνθρωπον, βαυκαλῶν καὶ διακωδωνίζων, μή πη ἔτι συνεχὴς εἴη τὴν φάρυγγα. τὸ δὲ μάλιστα ὀνῆσαν ἐκεῖνο ἦν, ὅτι ἀμφοτέραις κατασχὼν αὐτοῦ τὰ ἄκρα διεπίεσα.’ μῶν ἐκεῖνον,’ ἦν δ᾽ ἐγώ, ‘φὴς Δίωνα τὸν καταπύγονα καὶ λακκοσχέαν, τὸν μύρτωνα καὶ σχινοτρώκταν νεανίσκον, ἀναφλῶντα καὶ βλιμάζοντα, ἤν τινα πεώδη καὶ πόσθωνα αἴσθηται; μίνθων ἐκεῖνός γε καὶ λαικαλέος.’

“I,” quoth Eudemus, “ was summoned as it grew crepuscular by Damasias the quondam athlete and champion, now out of the lists for eld—the brazen image, you know, in the square. He was hard at it a-plucking and a-singeing, for he intended to marry off his daughter today and was busking her. Then a Termerian misadventure befell that cut short the gala day. Distraught over I know not what, or more likely overtaken by divine detestation, his son Dion hung himself, and, depend upon it, he would have been undone if I had not been there to slip the noose and relieve him of his coil. Squatting on hunkers beside him for a long time, I jobbed him, titillating and sounding him lest perchance his windpipe still hang together. But what helped most was that I confined his extremes with both hands and applied pressure.” “ Prithee,” quoth I, “ dost mean that notable Dion, the slack-pursed libertine, the toothpickchewing aesthete, who strouts and gropes if ever he sees anyone that is well hung? He is a scapegrace and a rutter.”

‘Lucian’s laughter’, as Bakhtin famously observes, ‘is always abstract, ironical, devoid of true gaiety’.³³ Life-affirming as it might be in the end, Lucian’s mocking of death normally requires a persona who lacks empathy and can be derisive in aggressive and insulting ways. Lexiphanes’ unexpected response to the news of Dion’s misfortune could be appropriately set in this context. However, this doesn’t make it any less incongruous, especially if we take into account the fact that his homophobic tirade is voiced in the course of what has been advertised at the beginning of the text as a Platonic, sympotic narrative– which makes us readers expect for a completely different attitude towards homoeroticism.³⁴ Lexiphanes’ accumulation of insults (…τὸν καταπύγονα καὶ λακκοσχέαν, τὸν μύρτωνα καὶ σχινοτρώκταν νεανίσκον, ἀναφλῶντα καὶ βλιμάζοντα) combines his desire for the use of complicated words with what ultimately amounts to a foul-mouthed and unsettling language. I would venture the hypothesis that the obscene tone of the text at this point may have something to do with Lycinus’ subsequent remark concerning Lexiphanes’ frail state of mind. In medical texts, the use of foul language is typically a symptom of mentally affected patients. In one occasion, [Hipp.] Epid. 4.15, a delirious young man displays a pathologically aggressive behavior, fighting, jumping and voicing all sorts of profanities (αἰσχρομυθέειν ἰσχυρῶς). In a related clinical instance, [Hipp.] Epid. 3.17, Case 11, a young woman – who among else suffers from fits of fear and sadness (φόβοι, δυσθυμίαι), probably a reference to melancholia – lapses into outbreaks of delirium and ‘speaks incontinently and indecently’ (λόγοι πολλοί … παρέλεγεν, ᾐσχρομύθει).³⁵ What the latter of these medical passages reveals is an intrinsic link between ‘talking too much’ and losing one’s sense of control over what is socially and culturally appropriate and acceptable. When Lycinus suddenly stops Lexiphanes from continuing with his non-sensical speech, declaring him ‘insane’ and asking for a doctor’s help, what he actually sees is a verbal incontinence which is pathologized precisely along these terms, both metaphorically (as a bloated speech in need of a cure)³⁶ and literally, as a symptom of an affected mind.

III. Lexiphanes’ melancholic twist

But why does Lycinus speak specifically of melancholia? Do we deal here with just another colloquial term for insanity, introduced in the text for the sake of exaggerating Lycinus’ aversion towards Lexiphanes’ hyper-Attic mumbo- jumbo? Far from it. Lucian’s use of the term, as I will proceed to argue in this section, is deliberate and focused; it aims at poking fun at the long-established notion (going back to [Arist.] Problems 30.1) of the presumable link between genius and melancholy, which in the world of the Second Sophistic seems to have been rather popular. The following passage by Aulus Gellius will help to provide us with a lead (Noctes Atticae 18.7.1-4):³⁷

Domitio, homini docto celebrique in urbe Roma grammatico, cui cognomentum “Insano” factum est, quoniam erat natura intractabilior et morosior, ei Domitio Favorinus noster cum forte apud fanum Carmentis obviam venisset atque ego cum Favorino essem, “quaeso” inquit “te, magister, dicas mihi, num erravi, quod, cum vellem demegorias Latine dicere, “contiones” dixi? dubito quippe et requiro, an veterum eorum, qui electius locuti sunt, pro verbis et oratione dixerit quis “contionem”. Tum Domitius voce atque vultu atrociore “nulla” inquit “prorsus bonae salutis spes reliqua est, cum vos quoque, philosophorum inlustrissimi, nihil iam aliud quam verba auctoritatesque verborum cordi habetis. Mittam autem librum tibi, in quo id reperias, quod quaeris … Cumque digressi essemus, ‘non tempestiue’ inquit Fauorinus ‘hunc hominem accessimus. Videtur enim mihi ἐπισημαίνεσθαι. Scitote’ inquit ‘tamen intemperiem istam, quae μελαγχολία dicitur, non paruis nec abiectis ingeniis accidere, ἀλλὰ εἶναι σχεδόν τι τὸ πάθος τοῦτο ἡρωικόν et ueritates plerumque fortiter dicere, sed respectum non habere μήτε καιροῦ μήτε μέτρου.

Favorinus’ only mistake in the passage cited above is to ask Domitio, a brilliant yet very difficult grammarian, whether contio is a good word for ‘public speech’ in Latin. Domitio becomes infuriated, disappointed as he is by the degree of Favorinus’ pedantry: what has the world come to if even philosophers care about the meaning of individual, petty words? But before abandoning Favorinus, as one would have expected from his initial response, Domitio promises to provide him with an answer–only not now, since the matter is complicated so he will have to send him a book in which a detailed explanation of the word’s semantics can be found. After leaving the scene, Favorinus explains Domitio’s behavior by saying that the grammarian surely must suffer from melancholy, not a random disease (pathos) but one which only affects ‘great spirits’ (non parvis ingeniis). This type of people, as he adds, have the tendency to speak the truth boldly, although it needs to be said that they have no sense of measure and appropriate timing (sed respectum non habere μήτε καιροῦ μήτε μέτρου).

Favorinus clearly alludes here to the ps.-Aristotelian, Problem 30.1 in which it is stated that people of superior intelligence – be it in philosophy, poetry, politics and the arts – have a ‘melancholic constitution’, a surplus of black bile which, when appropriately conditioned by a balance of hot and cold, allows them to reach the state of a genius.³⁸ But behind his apparently deferential attitude towards Domitio, we can also detect a great deal of irony. On the one hand, Domitio criticizes Favorinus for spending too much energy on ‘obscure’ words (glossaria namque colligitis et lexidia) rather than inquiring, as a philosopher should do, into broader and more crucial issues, whereas he, Domitius, proves to be the real philosopher, addressing all those questions which Favorinus neglects: ego enim grammaticus uitae iam atque morum disciplinas quaero. As Keulen aptly observes, ‘the reader is’ thus ‘invited to refute Domitius’ own claims to authority, and to unmask him as just as boastful a grammaticus as his other colleagues in the Noctes who mock Gellius’ philological inquiries’.³⁹ More importantly, when Domitio sends the book eventually (18.7.5ff.) we find out that it thrives in strange words: the grammarian who got so angry over Favorinus’ simple inquiry about contio turns out to be himself susceptible to the sort of exhibitionist vocabulary which obscures clarity for the sake of impression and which effectively undercuts any of his claims to moral superiority.⁴⁰

It is only when Domitius’ true character is revealed that we can appropriately set Favorinus’ reference to melancholy in context. Instead of taking it at face value – namely accept that Favorinus actually believes that genius can be biologically reduced to a surplus of humour in the body - we should start thinking whether his diagnosis is thrown in as an ironic comment for those who assume an angry ‘melancholic’ posture on the assumption that this fits the profile of a genius. In doing so, we should not fail to notice that Favorinus’ (deceptively) respectful claim that melancholy is characteristic of ‘great spirits’ (μελαγχολία … non paruis nec abiectis ingeniis accedere) has something in common with Lycinus’ reference to the same disease, when diagnosing Lexiphanes:… νοσοῦντα νόσον τὴν μεγίστην, μᾶλλον δὲ μελαγχολῶντα. The superlative form μεγίστη can either be translated as ‘the most serious of pathological conditions’ or be seen, alternatively, as an ironic nod to the assumption that this is reputedly the ‘greatest’ and most ‘magnificent’ of all diseases–the only one from which the boastful Lexiphanes could be suffering.

This would not have been the only place where Lucian pokes fun at the notion of melancholic genius and the ways in which such a genius could in theory be impersonated. One need only remember the case of Peregrinus, perhaps the most infamous impostor and self-proclaimed intellectual in Lucian’s entire work. This is what we read at the very opening of De morte Peregrini:

ὁ κακοδαίμων Περεγρῖνος, ἢ ὡς αὐτὸς ἔχαιρεν ὀνομάζων ἑαυτόν, Πρωτεύς, αὐτὸ δὴ ἐκεῖνο τὸ τοῦ Ὁμηρικοῦ Πρωτέως ἔπαθεν: ἅπαντα γὰρ δόξης ἕνεκα γενόμενος καὶ μυρίας τροπὰς τραπόμενος, τὰ τελευταῖα ταῦτα καὶ πῦρ ἐγένετο: τοσούτῳ ἄρα τῷ ἔρωτι τῆς δόξης εἴχετο. καὶ νῦν ἐκεῖνος ἀπηνθράκωταί σοι ὁ βέλτιστος κατὰ τὸν Ἐμπεδοκλέα, παρ᾽ ὅσον ὁ μὲν κἂν διαλαθεῖν ἐπειράθη ἐμβαλὼν ἑαυτὸν εἰς τοὺς κρατῆρας, ὁ δὲ γεννάδας οὗτος, τὴν πολυανθρωποτάτην τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν πανηγύρεων τηρήσας, πυρὰν ὅτι μεγίστην νήσας ἐνεπήδησεν ἐπὶ τοσούτων μαρτύρων, καὶ λόγους τινὰς ὑπὲρ τούτου εἰπὼν πρὸς τοὺς Ἕλληνας οὐ πρὸ πολλῶν ἡμερῶν τοῦ τολμήματος. πολλὰ τοίνυν δοκῶ μοι ὁρᾶν σε γελῶντα ἐπὶ τῇ κορύζῃ τοῦ γέροντος, μᾶλλον δὲ καὶ ἀκούω βοῶντος οἷά σε εἰκὸς βοᾶν, ‘ὢ τῆς ἀβελτερίας, ὢ τῆς δοξοκοπίας, ὢ —’ τῶν ἄλλων ἃ λέγειν εἰώθαμεν περὶ αὐτῶν.

Ill-starred Peregrinus or as he liked to call himself Proteus, has suffered exactly the same fate as the Homeric Proteus. After turning himself into all things for the sake of notoriety and adopting umpteen changes of shape, he has at long last turned into fire: such, it seems, was his passion for fame. And now your fine friend has been burned to a cinder, like Empedocles; except that the latter tried to avoid notice when he threw himself into the crater, whereas this noble fellow waited for the most crowded of the Greek festivals, piled up a most enormous pyre, and jumped into it in front of all those witnesses. He even made a speech about it to the Greeks a few days before his escapade. I seem to picture you convulsed with laughter at the driveling old fool–or rather, I can hear you crying out, as you well might: ‘Oh, the stupidity! Oh, the thirst for renown! Oh–’, all the other things we tend to say about them.⁴¹

The resemblance between Peregrinus’ suicide by fire and Empedocles’ fatal jump into the crater of Aetna⁴² is by no means incidental. When Menippus comes across Empedocles in the Underworld (D. Mort. 6.4), the philosopher explains that he jumped into Aetna ‘in a fit of melancholia’: [Μένιππος] Ὦ χαλκόπου βέλτιστε, τί παθὼν σεαυτὸν εἰς τοὺς κρατῆρας ἐνέβαλες; [Ἐμπεδοκλῆς] Μελαγχολία τις, ὦ Μένιππε.⁴³ Menippus responds aggressively, saying that it was nothing of the sort. Rather, it all appears to have happened in a fit of vanity (κενοδοξία), delusion (τῦφος) and driveling (κόρυζα),⁴⁴ and that he deserved to be burned to ashes. What is the reason for Menippus’ outburst? After all, he seems to agree with Empedocles that the death was the result of insanity. The point here is a delicate one and has not received adequate attention. Considering that in the ps.-Aristotelian Problem 30.1 Empedocles is mentioned among the great melancholic geniuses of the past,⁴⁵ the philosopher’s self- diagnosis in Lucian’s text is ultimately a vain and egocentric concession, a sly way of confessing to a form of insanity peculiar to exceptional spirits. The evidence provided by the text suffices to show that in the idiom of Lucian’s time melancholia could be abused for the sake of impression: rather than indicate a simple form of illness, it could be exaggerated and even impersonated as long as the underlying assumption was that it came with the package of a troubled yet gifted mind.

IV.Conclusion

Lucian’s aversion towards what may be termed a ‘melancholic posture’, I submit, can also be traced in Lycinus’ mention of melancholy as regards Lexiphanes’ condition. Lycinus’ intention is not simply to insult Lexiphanes by means of using the colloquial language of insanity but, more specifically, to expose his attitude as that of a pseudo-intellectual who pretends to be something that he is not; in this he succeeds by employing a specialized term, μελαγχολῶντα, associated as much with insanity as with the notion of pretense and disguise. One of the remarkable innovations in [Arist.] Problem 30.1 pertains to the clear-cut distinction between melancholic temperament and melancholic disease: having a natural excess of black bile makes one susceptible to illness but it is conceived, first and foremost, as part of one’s nature, a constituent element that can exist independently of any pathological associations (954a12; 954a39-40). Black bile is not simply a pathological cause; it has primarily ‘character-affecting’ qualities, indicated by the author with the use of the word ēthopoion (discussed in detail at 955a29-35). Ēthopoiia, essentially the capacity to assume a mask that is not one’s own, lies at the cultural core of the Second Sophistic when it comes to issues of imaginative and imitative invention. I would argue that it is precisely black bile’s conception as a humour out of which a ‘character’ is made as well as the melancholic’s innate ability to assume multiple identities (954a30: τά ἤθη γίνονται παντοδαποί),⁴⁶ that account for the employment of this particular disease as a trope for role-playing. In Lucian’s time, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that certain types of mental illness form part of the cultural capital through which one’s public image is shaped and debated. Galen’s story about Diodorus the grammarian who has epileptic seizures when his mind gets overworked or, before him, Rufus of Ephesus’ claim that too much study and abstract thinking can lead to melancholy⁴⁷ show that disease can occasionally acquire ‘positive connotations’. Passing as ill could therefore become a way of establishing one’s authority

In Consonants at Law, another of Lucian’s ironic accounts of excessive linguistic purism during the second century CE., sigma protests that rho had struck him on the face, ‘owing to melancholy’ but was forgiven because of his ‘illness’: καὶ παίσαντί μέ ποτε ὑπὸ μελαγχολίας ἐπὶ κόρρης (Jud. Voc. 9). Κόρρη, ‘temple’, is the ‘correct’ Attic form with two rho’s and is used here on purpose instead of κόρση. As with Lexiphanes’ language, hyper-Atticism (in the form of fixating on the reproduction of two similar consonants side by side) raises here the suspicion of melancholy. If anything, this shows that Lycinus’ diagnosis for the aspiring Atticist is neither incidental nor without its significance: it is aimed to stress the abuse of words and sounds at the expense of content and, effectively, to expose Lexiphanes’ ‘melancholic’ insanity as a façade that obscures the speaker’s real intentions in the same way that his language is meant to be confusing.

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Notes

Notas de autor