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***AUTHORS UNEDITED VERSION***
EXPECTED PUBLICATION DATE: FALL 2013
PLEASE DO NOT CITE WITHOUT EXPRESS PERMISSION OF THE
AUTHOR
THE PHILOSOPHICAL LIFE:
BIOGRAPHY AND THE CRAFTING OF INTELLECTUAL IDENTITY IN
LATE ANTIQUITY
Arthur P. Urbano
Providence College, Providence, RI
Introduction: Biography as Arena of Philosophical Competition
We who live and work in academia know that the exchange and debate of ideas does
not occur divorced from various contextsintellectual, cultural, political, and social. Our
participation in the production of knowledge occurs in various arenas of activity, including
classrooms, departments, educational institutions, and, of course, academic fields, each
defined by distinctive, yet interacting, rules of engagement. In many ways, the profession of
ancient philosopher was characterized by similar realities. Many of these ancient
philosophers understood their role as a comprehensive one that integrated philosophical
inquiry, a way of life, and the education of individuals, along with a diachronic
consciousness of their field. For example, the Platonists of late antiquity not only regarded
Plato as the source of specific doctrines, but they also contemplated these doctrines within a
tradition of teachers and interpreters, past and present, estimating how these had contributed
to (or inhibited) a fuller understanding of these doctrines. It was essential to perceive how
each piece fit together to construct a transhistorical dialogue.
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The current work is a study of developments in the philosophical field of late
antiquity. By the end of the third century C.E., ancient intellectuals, both Christian and non-
Christian, conceived of philosophia as ways of thinking and living (dogmata and politeia),
the harmonious mastery of which produced the perfect lifeone of union with and likeness
to the divine.1
As Pierre Hadot notes, while modern thinkers (and even some modern
philosophers themselves) might think of philosophy strictly as the domain of intellect,
Neoplatonists and Christians of antiquity regarded wisdom as a divinely revealed body of
doctrines and practices, either planted within the human creature by its creator or revealed in
some mythic past. This philosophy was entrusted to certain philosophers who transmitted it
to their students. For the intellectual of late antiquity (as for many of us today), it was just as
important to invoke an intellectual pedigree, to situate oneself within a tradition, as it was to
demonstrate ones own knowledge and practice in the pursuit of true knowledge. In this
study, I will focus on the role of ancient biographical literature, especially the bios, in
constructing the history of philosophy and tracing the lineages of the two major philosophical
movements of late antiquity: Christianity and what we now call Neoplatonism. I intend to
examine more broadly the application of the language and practices of kinship relations and
inheritance in biographical literature as operative in the formation of communities of
intellectuals and in establishing legitimating genealogies that sat at the core of narratives of
tradition and succession. Set against the backdrop of the concrete social, historical, and
cultural contexts in which philosophical debate occurred, the composition and consumption
of biographical literature will be regarded as typical practices of competing intellectual
factions.
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My intention is to offer a reading and analysis of biographical literature produced
between the third and fifth centuries C.E. that elucidates how the real social settings and
practices involved in the production and proliferation of these works created an arena for the
competition over philosophy among the Greek-speaking intellectual elite, particularly
between circles of Christians and Neoplatonists. While also considering questions of genre,
form, and imagery, I will explore more fully the impact of these literary productions upon
ancient constructions of philosophical history and pedigree, the negotiation of pedagogical
authority, and the implications for the shape of the philosophical field in late antiquity. The
literary representation of subjects such as Origen, Plotinus, and Antony of Egypt, as
exemplars, teachers, and transmitters of the philosophical life, embodied and gave historical
particularity to the debates and maneuverings within pedagogical settings. These literary
portraits were produced and competed with each other at a critical time in historyduring
the Christianization of the Roman Empire. At stake was philosophy itself: how knowledge
and ethics were related to the divine; who possessed pedagogic authority; and what
institutions would have the patronage and support to exercise this pedagogic authority. For
sympathetic audiences, biographical literature served as a sort of social charter that crafted a
series of relationships among subjects, authors and audiences, locating particular
communities of intellectuals within lineages of descent that were linked to narratives of the
origins and transmission of philosophy.
Several major questions drive this study, questions which first arose for me during a
graduate seminar on early Christian asceticism. I was intrigued that someone like Theodoret
of Cyrrhus could describe monastic practice as a life that teaches philosophy and the
monks of Syria as philosophers.2
Certainly his subjects did not fit the conventional
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understanding of a philosopher in the ancient world. And why go this route at any rate? Why
did so many of the major Christian thinkers of late antiquity not simply disengage from the
classical philosophical tradition? After all, many of them charged that it was a flawed, if not
a corrupt, mode of thought. Curiously, even when someone like Tertullian purports to
distance himself from the philosophical thought of the Greeks and Romans, he still could not
completely extricate himself from its web. Did he even recognize this?
Related questions concern the expounding of Christian doctrines in the technical
terminology of prior and contemporary Greek philosophy. This was not simply a
phenomenon of the second century and beyond, but is evident to various degrees even within
the earliest Christian writings, in the letters of Paul and in the prologue of the Gospel of John,
for example. Conceptual and linguistic expression are bound to the social contexts in which a
Christian intellectual culture took shape: what can we make of the culture of teachers, texts,
schools, and doctrines that emerged in Christian circles, and how do we make sense of the
dynamics of continuity and differentiation in relation to the social contexts of non-Christian
intellectuals?
These questions forced me to consider larger methodological issues. Two approaches
that have been abandoned in the field of late ancient studies are the spoliation model, on the
one hand, and the assumption of a great divide between Christians and pagans. In the latter
view, Christian-pagan interaction is uncritically regarded as a battle to the death of two
religious systems, a notion that has been hard to refine, as Susanna Elm has noted.3
It is
easy to fall back uncritically on what we might call the spoliation, or dependency,
model, according to which Christians borrowed and copied ideas, practices, and artistic styles
that really belonged to Romans, Greeks, and Jews. Here, Christians emerge as cultural
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scavengers, or pagans in disguise. In fact, this discourse of cultural differentiation appears
in the writings of several early Christian writers, who use the narrative of the spoliation of
Egypt from Exodus as the basis of their ancient cultural theory.4 As such, it appears that
they envisioned their engagement with Greek philosophical, literary, and artistic traditions as
stealing, a conscious adoption and adaptation of Greek learning to beautify and augment
the expression of Christianity, and thereby stripping away aesthetic forms from an idolatrous
essence. While this is true to a certain extent, we cannot accept this narrative uncritically
without considering what was already unconsciously inscribed in early Christian intellectuals
as native residents of a vast and varied Roman world. Immersed in the culture of intellectual
circles across the Roman empire, they were not cultural outsiders, as will be explored in
further detail in Chapter One.
Thus, the interactions among Christian and non-Christian elite in the Greek-speaking
contexts of the late Roman empire are better understood as debates and exchanges among a
segment of society that was occupied with the negotiation of identity, specifically, what it
meant to be a Greek, or a Christian, and what the shifting landscapes of late antiquity
meant for the Greek intellectual and literary heritage. Christians, of course, did not identify
themselves as Hellenes, as such, yet those who shared in the proclaimed communality of
paideia, which Simon Goldhill describes as a shared system of reference and expectation
that linked the elite of Empire, had to confront it, as they confronted and interacted with
the self-proclaimed Hellenes.5
The goal of this study is to map out where theology,
philosophy, history, and literature intersected in the ancient contexts that brought about a
transformation of classical philosophical culture into a Christian philosophical culture. I
intend to adopt an analytical framework that is informed by and builds upon recent
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scholarship in the fields of classics and late ancient studies. Definitions of Greek ethnic
identity in the classical and Hellenistic eras, as explored by Jonathan Hall and in the
collection of essays edited by Irad Malkin (Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity [Harvard
University Press, 2001] and Paul Cartledge, Peter Garnsey, and Erich Gruen (Hellenistic
Constructs: Essays in Culture, History, and Historiography [University of California Press,
1997]), have contributed to the discussions of scholars of late antiquity who continue to study
notions of culture and ethnicity in the Roman imperial and late Roman periods, largely under
the influence of postcolonial theory. These studies have called attention to the role of myths
of origins, fictive kinship and descent, shared territory and history in defining Greek identity
before the fifth century B.C.E. Hall in particular notes how a shift from blood and kin
towards broader cultural criteria characterized the basis for Greek identity from the fifth
century onwards, primarily as a result of interaction with the Persian other.6
The work of
Simon Goldhill, Simon Swain and others, has drawn scholarly attention to reconfigurations
of Greekness in the context of Roman imperialism during the Second Sophistic.7
In
particular, Goldhill has noted the concern on the part of the educated elite of the period to be
able to demonstrate an affiliation to Greek culture through paideia and the varied strategies
of negotiation, competition, and projection, what he calls formulations of Greekness in
process.8 The essay in Goldhills volume by Rebecca Preston explores the intertwining of
cultural with political authority under the banner of a paideia, which drew upon a common
store of paradigmatic historical figures and events and a canon of classical models for
creative imitation.9
In the same vein, Simon Swain has called attention to the constructions
and negotiations of the past, and an interest in tradition, in the establishment of cultural
authority.10
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In the area of late ancient studies, several important contributions stand out. The
collection of essays edited by Dale Martin and Patricia Cox Miller, The Cultural Turn in Late
Ancient Studies: Gender, Asceticism, and Historiography (Duke University Press, 2005),
illustrates the important developments in textual and historical analysis that have given
particular attention to culture.11
As Susanna Elm notes in her essay, Hellenism and
Historiography: Gregory of Nazianzus and Julian in Dialogue, postcolonial theory has had a
notable impact on the study of ethnic and cultural identity in imperial Greece and Rome, and
this in turn has informed scholarship in the field of late antiquity.12 Jeremy Schotts recent
monograph exemplifies this well. In Christianity, Empire and the Making of Religion in Late
Antiquity (University of Pennsylvania, 2008), Schott considers the construction of Christian
and pagan identities within the contexts of imperial power and subjugation, and not apart
from the broader politics of ethnic and cultural identity engendered by Roman
imperialism.13
In a society where paideia was the pervasive culture of the educated elite, the
pepaideumenoi, regardless of religious allegiance, I contend with many others that it is no
longer accurate to use a model of a great divide between Christians and pagans. In this study,
I consider all of the authors under consideration to be culturally Greek, regardless of their
religious allegiance. That is to say, they were educated in Greek literature, rhetoric, and
philosophy through a curriculum of the poets, orators, and philosophers; they spoke Greek;
they produced texts according to Greek linguistic and literary standards; and promoted ideas
rooted in the metaphysical and ethical conceptual complex of pre-Christian Greek
philosophy. Yet at the same time, I do not believe we can discard the notion of divide
entirely. Instead, among the intellectual elite, one may still talk of a partitioning of which the
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players were conscious, a differentiation into various parties within the intellectual elite. This
partitioning, then, is an intracultural differentiation, rather than intercultural differentiation.
How ancient authors differentiated what was Greek and what was Christian, as it related
to philosophical culture and practice lies in many respects at the core of this project.
Of course, the boundaries between what was Greek and what was Christian were
not, and are not, always clear. These boundaries developed and shifted. Throughout I will
refrain as much as possible from using the terms pagan and paganism when referring to
the Neoplatonist philosophers. It is not a self-designation, but rather a Christian description
of the other, which developed in the western empire in the fourth century. In the context of
the present discussion, it would be confusing and inappropriate because it is an all-
encompassing term that included all non-Christians and non-Jews, with no distinction of
social or intellectual location. Carrying the original semantic connotation of the term
(peasant, rustic, unlearned), it was used to class both philosopher and peasant together
on the basis of religious allegiance. Instead, I have opted to call the non-Christian
philosophers Greeks (and Neoplatonists, when the context warrants more specificity).
This was a self-descriptive term, which was endowed with the same metaphysical
oecumenicity that Christianity claimed for itself by those who considered themselves as
such.14 Nevertheless, Greeks and Christians often characterized their struggles with each
other as a struggle between two separate systems, Christianity and Hellenism, thus
contributing to the notion of great divide noted by Elm above.
Of particular interest to me are the processes of distinction and self-definition within
the context of shared culture, and, more specifically, the culture and practices of the
intellectual elite, who were the producers and transmitters of knowledge and held
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pedagogical authority. Hence, my focus is upon a specific subgroup within the larger elite
classintellectualswhich, in the context of late antiquity, can be further subdivided into
two main factions, or parties, Christians and Greeks. While the questions raised by a
postcolonial lens are pertinent here, my point of departure is different. Instead of
investigating directly how the context of empire impacted the construction of ethnic and
cultural identities, my aim is to investigate primarily the role of literary and discursive
practices upon the formation of the identity of intellectuals, and the place of ethnic, cultural,
religious, and political categories as spokes on this hub.
The relative proximity of Christian and Greek intellectuals cannot be underestimated,
especially before the fourth century, when they were educated in the same circles, shared
teachers and classrooms, and lived in overlapping social worlds. Thus any notion of
borrowing or despoiling becomes moot. To imagine Christian intellectuals as a vastly
different group that collected and borrowed ideas and practices that were not their own is, in
the light of recent research, an untenable model. The notion of mimicry is helpful,
especially when considering it in relation to the ancient notion of mimesis in educational and
philosophical circles.15
However, I think the category can be problematic in the present
discussion. I would agree that the apologists were out to beat the philosophers at their own
game, but according to the model I am suggesting here, I would insist that it was just as
much the apologists game, as insiders, not as outsiders.16
Competition from within, rather than borrowing from without, seems to offer a better
model. Thus I will cast the exchanges, debates, and interactions between the Greek-speaking
Christian and Greek intellectuals of late antiquity as a real and multifaceted struggle to define
religious, intellectual, and political identities, beginning as early as the second century. Such
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a model, I believe, provides a perspective on the nuts and bolts of the intellectual
machinery and social networks of late antiquity within the broader cultural complex. Thus, in
this type of model, Christian intellectuals and Neoplatonists are thought of not simply as
religious factions (i.e., Christians and pagans) in opposition, but they are also classified
together as the class of educated, literate, philosophical thinkers who contributed to
philosophical and theological discourse as well as the production of cultural products,
literature in particular, which contributed to and participated in a struggle to define the
parameters of a universal philosophy.17 This competition can be thought of as one between a
dominant establishment the Greeks, who represent the status quo, and Christians, a
party of newcomers, who, as early as the mid-second century, challenged the status quo
and adopted strategies to subvert the prevailing philosophical orthodoxy.18 Competing within
structured spaces of accepted norms and practices with their own internal logic and power
relations, Christian and Greek intellectuals competed in overlapping fields of philosophy,
religion, and education.19
Nevertheless, both Greeks and Christians also participated in a
transformation of these spaces and structures, as a result of their competition, with Christians,
for example, transferring pedagogical activity into liturgical worship. These two subgroups
were not monolithic in and of themselves, and there was simultaneous internal competition
among Christians (e.g., Athanasius versus Arius) and Greeks (e.g., Porphyry versus his
colleague Amelius), as well as cross-temporal competitions (e.g., Theodoret versus Plotinus,
or Numenius versus the Academics). In both cases, the competition is about delineating
authoritative tradition as much as establishing practical authority.
What was the goal of this competition? Of primary importance was paideia, not
simply an education, but a comprehensive intellectual, moral, cultural, and social formation
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of young men (and young women to a limited extent).20
Paideia produced Greeks, men of
culture, prestige, and power. Literacy and rhetoric, familiarity with the literary and
philosophical traditions of Greece, the ownership and production of texts were sought after
and acquired by true Greeks.21
The embodiment of social conventions and the mastery of
proper social interaction identified one as a pepaideumenos. The devotion to study,
engagement in philosophical debate, and the adoption of ascetic practices raised him closer to
the heights of the divine world. Association with prestigious schools and teachers, and the
privilege of a noble intellectual pedigree ranked him with the greatest and most influential
thinkers and shapers of Greek culture.
Greeks and Christians were competing to own and define philosophy. This entailed
the negotiation and acquisition of cultural capital, or cultural knowledge, goods, and
honors.22
The importance of literacy, access to texts, exegetical and rhetorical skills, ascetic
practices, and intellectual lineage were important in this regard. The texts or authorities to
which value was attached were negotiated in the process of competition. A Christian and
Greek intellectual could agree, for example, that the possession and study of ancient texts, or
affiliation with a particular teacher, were of great value in the formation of souls, but they
would disagree over their precise identification: the Dialogues of Plato or the Letters of St.
Paul? The school of Plotinus or the school of Origen? Athens or Jerusalem? The formation of
an alternative Christian philosophical culture was neither isolated nor entirely divorced from
the larger intellectual and cultural world of late antiquity. For the Christian, the dichotomy
need not always be so severe. Why Plato or Paul, when one could be led by both, but with the
philosopher bowing to the Apostle? Christians who found a certain usefulness in the Greek
literary and philosophical traditions could find for them a secondary, preparatory position
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preceding the study of Christian Scripture and doctrines. Like the sterile daughter of Pharaoh
who adopted Moses, Greek learning could provide valuable necessities to a growing child,
but ultimately, the childs natural mother, the Church, would provide him with true
sustenance for growth.23
Even today, the study of philosophy is a primer for theological
studies in the Catholic tradition, a first step and preparation in the theological curriculumas
the saying goes, the handmaiden to theology.
Accumulation of these cultural goods produces symbolic power, or authority based
on honor and prestige. A figure like Origen, then, a Christian educated in the classical
philosophical tradition, who was able to participate in the philosophical field, acquired
recognition by both Christian and Greek members of the intellectual class, either in the form
of praise or criticism. Porphyry, for example, praised Origen for his aptitude and excellence,
but was compelled to refute his specific views, including specific attacks against Origen in
his anti-Christian writing. Such attacks were a standard practice in the philosophical field.
Thus, Origen could claim and was recognized to have an authoritative voice in the field (even
to the chagrin of Porphyry) and could successfully make an impact on the debate within the
field.
This was also a competition for pedagogic authority, which eventually became
concentrated on higher education, that is, the teaching of philosophy, but not to the
exclusion of literary and rhetorical education. Education, of course, is the means by which an
intellectual, cultural, and ethical heritage is conserved, inculcated, and consecrated, here
understood as the recognition and bestowal of legitimacy by authoritative agents through
ritual and social practices.24
Though the differences in philosophical and theological ideas
were often vast (and often not), all of the authors considered here operated within
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overlapping social and cultural worlds. They possessed writing and linguistic skills to engage
in dialogue directly and indirectly with competitors. Having been formed in paideia and
included among the small percentage of educated elite, men such as Porphyry, Eusebius,
Julian, and the Cappadocians, shared a privileged social position and common elite values
regarding education, literacy, and culture that influenced and guided their participation in the
competition as all of us who are academics know, there are certain rules we are expected
to play by. Paideia served as both a point of reference and a locus of competition in this
process. More than education and culture, it was a durable and molding complex of ideas and
practices that shaped the contours of the lives of the educated elite and afforded them a basis
for cultural authority, and, to varying degrees, social and political authority. 25
The locus of pedagogic activity, that is, the institutions vested with the authority to
educate, was also in flux at the level of philosophical education. Very little would change in
terms of literary and rhetorical education. The philosophical communities of the third and
fourth centuries have been characterized as an international, elite class of itinerant
intellectuals, organized loosely in circles of associates.26
Organized around a specific
teacher, these communities were often stratified into inner and outer circles of access to the
teacher, with the inner circle enjoying a common life that fostered a sense of community.
Such were the communities of the philosophers Plotinus and Iamblichus. Not official posts in
a government-funded or private academic institution, the vitality of these circles largely
depended on the charismatic authority of the teacher, which was enhanced by his expertise,
accumulation of cultural capital, and his affiliation with a prestigious intellectual pedigree. In
most cases, once the teacher died, the circle dispersed, and students often moved elsewhere
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to establish another circle. Upon Plotinus death, his students continued their philosophical
work in various parts of Italy and even in Syria.
The patronage of Constantine in the fourth century strengthened the expanding trend
of institutionalization that characterized the networks of churches around the Roman Empire.
A man who held the office of bishop could invest the fruits of his rhetorical and
philosophical education in the service of Christian philosophy, using his office both to
educate his flock and to participate in intellectual discourse. Unlike the philosophers
authority, episcopal authority was defined less in terms of the individual holding the office
than in terms of the institutional authority of the office itself. It was not a fleeting authority
that died with its holder, but an institutionalized succession that endured in the episcopal
ministry. The authority of consecration, both in theological and Bourdieuian terms, lay in the
Church itself as new bishops received confirmation of their position by other holders of the
office. Lists of apostolic succession chronicled the proper lines of transmission.27
Councils
and synods of bishops produced official decisions regarding doctrine and governance.
Bishops were the primary producers of Christian philosophical bioi. As consecrator, the
bishop inscribed members of the Church who were outside the institutional structures into the
ranks of philosophers and co-teachers.28 The so-called charismatic authoritiesfor example,
Antony and the monks of Syriaexhibited less the intellectual skills of the professional
philosopher and more the nonverbal physical acts of practical virtue. Yet, their status was
subordinated both textually and objectively to Christian intellectualsthe bishops. As
authors, bishops also inscribed themselves as recipients of tradition, as does Athanasius who
both receives Antonys cloak and writes his bios.
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The Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius of Caesarea, introduced as a historical
narrative of the successions of the holy apostles from the Savior to the present time,
provided an overarching narrative of the revelation of true wisdom in Wisdom incarnate. It
laid the foundations of a descriptive and mythic account of an institutional ecclesiastical
network, which spread the divine life and philosophy to Greeks and barbarians alike, and
which assumed pedagogical activities previously reserved for the schools and circles of
Greek experts.29 Later church historians, such as Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret, built
upon Eusebius work. Porphyry, the student of Plotinus, would also lay the groundwork for a
mythic narrative of succession for later Platonists. Yet, Porphyry never attempted an
overarching foundational narrative to include all Platonists or all philosophers. Perhaps this is
because there was no interacting philosophical network of communities, but rather small,
independent, and geographically scattered circles organized around independent teachers.
They had no continuous succession and no official means of electing leaders. Theirs seemed
more an interest in than in , in a school of thought rather than an
institutional school.30
Nevertheless, as we shall see, the bioi of the Platonists present evidence for trends
towards the construction, consolidation, and codification of a philosophical tradition, or a
routinization of instruments necessary for institutionalization.31 For example, there was a
degree of self-reflection on the position and profession of the philosopher. From the time of
Iamblichus onward, it became more common to refer to the leaders of philosophical circles
as divine (). In the absence of an official instrument of succession, the hierarchy of
inner and outer circles disciples conferred honor through access to and relationship with the
teacher. The Greek philosophical bioi also show signs of efforts to codify a corpus of
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writings for a curriculum. Porphyrys organization of the Enneads, to which the Life of
Plotinus served as a type of hermeneutical prologue, acted as a canon of Plotinian texts, a
new addition to a formative collection of authoritative literature, which included the
Chaldean Oracles, Homer, Hesiod, and the dialogues of Plato.32
The Anonymous
Prolegomena, a sixth-century manual for the study of Platonic philosophy, attributes to
Iamblichus a curriculum that outlines the number and titles of Platonic dialogues and the
order in which they should be studied.33 Iamblichus Compendium of Pythagorean Doctrine
was organized as a progressive curriculum for the study of Pythagorean philosophy, and On
the Pythagorean Life served as its introduction.34
From a canon (however loosely defined) of
texts, formal curricula, and public discourse, there issued a consensus of topics deemed
worthy of discussion and debate. Though we cannot speak of a Neoplatonist creed
comparable to Christian creedal formulae, there were certainly specific topics that shaped
and directed the burning philosophical and theological questions of the daythe nature of
God, the immortality of the soul, the practices leading to virtue.
Finally, the geographical itinerancy of philosophers in earlier centuries began to give
way to more geographic concentration in the late fourth and fifth centuries. Athens, in
particular, remained the most important symbolic center of intellectual life for Greek
intellectuals and also for many Christian intellectuals because of its associations with
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the origins of the Greek philosophical and cultural heritage.
The city was also more resistant to the incursion of Christianity, probably due to the presence
of a strong non-Christian aristocracy that sought to preserve the citys Greek identity. As a
result, the soil of this symbolic capital was ripe for the seeds of a budding Platonist
institution in the fifth century.
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Ultimately, this was a struggle for the souls of individuals and the shape of society.
According to Plutarch (following Plato), the virtuous life was one that was naturally
endowed, but nurtured and molded by a proper education. Left to his own design, without the
right guidance, even the man who possessed a philosophical nature would fall victim to the
perversion of his own weaknesses and his environment. The consequence: a great nature
turned bad.35
Thus, possessing a natural potential for virtue was not enough. Paideia was an
absolute necessity in the proper flourishing of the philosophical life.36 So it was, according to
Plato, that even the majority of those endowed with a great philosophical nature were
corrupted by goods, because they did not receive the best education.37
In the Moralia,
Plutarch regards paideia as the proper acting of reason, custom, and law on the taming of the
emotions of young mens irrational soul.38 Plutarch links deficient education and the failure
to control the passions, since it is education, not simply natural ability that steers the
emotions of the irrational soul to a virtuous course.39
Plato considered the role of society in
moral education functional only when that society was free from corruption.40
In this struggle, the Greeks, naturally, adopted a conservative strategy. Nevertheless,
paideia did not remain static, as the creative efforts of Neoplatonists like Porphyry and
Iamblichus demonstrate. Christians, on the other hand, employed various subversive
strategies to challenge the foundational narratives, texts, and institutions of the Greeks.
Competition also extended into the arenas of worship and political policy. There was indeed
much at stake, especially in the fourth century. As I see it, the key is to read the works of
these authors not simply as the writings of pagans and Christians squabbling over religion,
but as a discursive interchange of individuals educated in the most influential works of Greek
philosophy, competing to interpret and define the meaning of this heritage: it is at its heart a
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search for universal truth and an attempt to trace its history, to enumerate its representatives,
and to preserve and transmit it to future generations for the good of individuals and society.
In the third and fourth centuries, as Christian intellectuals began to participate in this
competition, the privileged past of Greece and its catalogue of authoritative representatives
was thrown into question, no longer a given, as the parameters of the debate shifted to other
pasts. Laura Nasrallah has remapped the location of figures such as Justin Martyr, his
student Tatian, and Lucian of Samosata as participants in a negotiation of authoritative
culture under conditions of empire.41 She identifies in these authors what she terms a
geographical thinking, or a mapping of the world, with paideia as compass. She notes a
simultaneous resistance and assimilation to paideia on the part of all three. Tatian, for
example, exhibits a negative valuation of Greek identity while he simultaneously performs
Greekness, that is, engages his rhetorical opponent through Greek literary forms and
references.42
Justin, meanwhile, appeals to the center of imperial power by aligning himself
to common paideutic values: as one of the provincial elites, speaking the common language
of Greek, of privileged philosophy, and of Roman subject-hood.43
In the fourth century, models of rejection begin to appear. Antony of Egypts famous
avoidance of primary and secondary education exposes his biographers overt disavowal of
the authority and value of that education.44 However, Athanasius would not have attained the
skills to write about Antony had he himself not benefited from the very education he
disavows. Similarly, Antonys dismissal of artful rhetoric and argumentation is itself
articulated in finely crafted rhetorical argumentation.45
Through a constructed representation
of Antony of Egypt, Athanasius misrecognizes, or disavows, the cultural and social value of
his own literary and rhetorical training. The alternative he proposes, however, is not
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completely divorced from the dominant system, paideia. Instead, it is simultaneously one that
is influenced by the dominant system and converts it. In this case, there is, on the one hand, a
conscious challenge to the influence and authority associated with Greek intellectual training
and pedagogical authority. Yet, on the other, the semantics and specialized discourse of
philosophy, the values and cultural norms inculcated through paideia, and the practices of the
educated elite, operated at an unconscious, internalized level, in one sense misrecognized, but
at the same time consciously modified (though not necessarily abandoned).
Biographical Literature as Philosophical Texts
In this study, I focus on biographical literature as an arena, or locus, of competition,
for the negotiation of the parameters, ownership, and transmission of philosophy. I
understand the very production and propagation of such literature and its consumption as
constitutive practices of the intellectual elite. Under the umbrella term of biographical
literature, I follow Simon Swain, who designates as biographical texts those that furnish
detailed accounts of individuals lives.46
Thus, included here are the bios, the philosophical
history, early forms of hagiography, and funeral orations. I exclude panegyrics of living
subjects (except for a brief consideration of Eusebius Praise of Constantine) because of the
importance of the dead as exemplars of the philosophical life and ancestors of communities.
Because of the increased production and proliferation of both Greek and Latin biographical
literature in the third through fifth centuries C.E., I have limited the scope of this project to
those examples written in Greek by bishops and heads of philosophical communities who
also had the positions, resources, and influence to play a significant role in the debate over
philosophy. Alongside treatises that delineated the dialectical aspects of philosophical debate,
the ancient bios was a literary vehicle that portrayed subjects as representations of the
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philosophical life. In turn, the textual life was intended to inspire and mold the moral
formation of the readers.47 Related to various forms of praise literature, such as the
panegyric and the encomium, the bioi and other biographical texts of this period display a
development of forms and conventions on a constantly evolving literary continuum that
extends back to classical Greece. It is perhaps no accident that the fifth century B.C.E.
produced the beginnings of Greek biographical literature precisely when broader cultural
criteria were invoked in understandings of what it meant to be Greek.48
Unfortunately, most of the examples of biography produced between the fifth and
third centuries B.C.E. have been lost. The subjects of those that have survived in fragmentary
condition tend to be mythical figures, the poets, kings, and generals. Collections of the
sayings of wise men and philosophers, such as Aesop, the Seven Sages and Pythagoras,
circulated well before the Hellenistic period, perhaps as early as the fifth century.49
Isocrates
Evagoras, written around 370 B.C.E., claimed to be the first prose encomium of a
contemporary person. Not long after, Xenophon, a follower of Socrates, composed the
Agesilaus, a work modeled on the Evagoras. Xenophons purpose in praising the king of
Sparta goes beyond the simple narration of important accomplishments, recounting the deeds
of an excellent king and general that attest to his character. The subject, therefore, is a worthy
model of imitation. Xenophon lauds Agesilaus for his ability to rule himself, an ideal king
who was able to lead his subjects (and also the readers of his bios) to virtue. 50
Competition among the intellectual circles of antiquity contributed significantly to the
development and evolution of biographical literature. The Hellenistic era witnessed
important evolutions in the formal development of a generic theory of the bios.51
The
Socratics, Peripatetics, and the later Platonists all utilized biographical literature to promote
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philosophical doctrines and praise their subjects as historically important and philosophically
paradigmatic.52 Momigliano attributes this to new trends in philosophy and rhetoric that
emphasized the importance of individual education, achievement, and virtue.53 For the
philosophers, the deeds of prominent figures of the past could serve as instruction in virtue,
and biographical literature a vehicle for promoting ideas. Though not biographical literature
in a strict sense, the Dialogues of Plato feature the words and deeds of Socrates, molding his
life, and especially his death, into a philosophical argument in a literary, and somewhat
biographical, form.54 In addition to his Agesilaus, Xenophons Memorabilia and Cyropaedia
represent important innovations and directions in biographical literature. Momigliano, who
regards Xenophon as a pioneer experimenter in biographical forms, expresses concisely the
Socratic contribution to biographical literature: The Socratics experimented in biography,
and the experiments were directed towards capturing the potentialities rather than the realities
of individual lives. Socrates, the main subject of their considerations (there were other
subjects, such as Cyrus), was not so much the real Socrates as the potential Socrates. He was
not a dead man whose life could be recounted. He was the guide to territories as yet
unexplored.55
The school of Aristotle exhibited a great interest in collecting and arranging the
biographical anecdotes and sayings of important individuals into epideictic and mimetic
literature that served as illustrations of virtue and vice.56 As such, biographical literature
could serve a more useful purpose than for mere curiosity or historical fact. Biographical
facts, like natural or historical facts, were better organized in order to answer big questions,
to provide an empirical basis for philosophical analysis. Aristotle himself wrote no
biographical works, but in those of the later Peripatetics, we see how a subjects deeds
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() revealed character ().57 The term bios first appears at this time.58 Dicaearchus
of Messine, a student of Aristotle, penned a Life of Greece and a piece entitled ,
perhaps a work of collective biography, which included biographical sketches of
philosophers, such as Pythagoras and Plato. Diogenes Laertius (ca. third century C.E.) used
Dicaearchus as a source for his Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers.59 Satyrus (ca.
third century B.C.E.), one of the Peripatetics cited by Jerome as a literary predecessor in the
dedication of his De viris illustribus, composed a Life of the poet Euripides in dialogue
form.60 Aristoxenus of Tarentum (fourth century B.C.E.) was perhaps the most important of
the Peripatetics in the production of biographical literature. Formerly a student of the
Pythagorean school, Aristoxenus wrote a Life of Pythagoras, which praised the sage for his
contributions to philosophy. Aristoxenus also wrote Lives to malign philosophical rivals. For
example, his Lives of Plato and Socrates lambaste the plagiarism and licentiousness of their
subjects, as a hostile polemic against the contemporary Academy.61
The Parallel Lives of Plutarch (ca. 50 C.E.-120), perhaps the best known of the
philosopher-biographers of antiquity, provided later biographers with both a theory and
model of the genre. Timothy E. Duffs monograph on Plutarch explores the moralizing
purpose of the Lives. The chief objective was to reveal the subjects character through an
examination of his family background, education, and major accomplishments, exposing
virtue or vice to give the reader an opportunity to judge the moral qualities of the subject and
to regard the subject as a model for imitation (in the case of the virtuous) for his or her own
improvement.62
In the famous prologue of the parallel Lives of Alexander and Caesar,
Plutarch distinguishes his task from that of the historian. As an author of lives (),
instead of histories (), his task was to portray his subjects character through the
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signs of the soul ( ). Histories, as mere collections of great deeds
(), did not necessarily provide a moral directive ( ).63 The
composition of a bios was analogous to the work of painters who represented the character of
their subject through a careful representation of the face and eyes. The portrait or the statue
demonstrated in a static but eternal moment the ethical composition of the subject. It was a
portrait of the soul. Likewise, the biographer painted a portrait of the soul in words. This
analogy of biographical text and sculpted image was already present in previous works.64
In
Biography in Late Antiquity, Patricia Cox characterized the biographies of late antiquity as
caricatures of the holy man, whose aim was to evoke and thus to reveal the interior
geography of the heros lifethat hero being the philosopher who stood at the intersection
of the human and the divine.65
Biographical Literature and Philosophical History
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers of Diogenes Laertius had a much
different purpose than Plutarchs Parallel Lives. More the doxographer than the philosopher,
Diogenes traced the origins and divisions of the major schools of philosophy through
biographical anecdotes, apophthegmata, and bibliographies of the principal representatives of
the schools. Diogenes does not make his own philosophical leanings explicit, leading us to
believe that the intent of his work was more historical than apologetic. As an example of
collective biography, the work categorizes the lives of founders and heads of schools in a
series of individual bioi. Strung together according to their chronological succession, the
work as a whole could be regarded as a work of philosophical history. His work is not
included in this study as it was not intended as an apology for one school of philosophy over
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others. He displays an interest in the interrelation of schools and treats the coexistence of
different schools as acceptable. Other important examples would follow, including
Porphyrys fragmentary Philosophical History and Theodoret of Cyrrhus Religious History,
two works of collective biography called history by their authors. This designation raises
some interesting questions. In what way should we understand the authors designation of
these works as histories? And to what extent could we regard both collective and
individual bioi as a sort of ancient historiographical enterprise?
Biographical literature came into being at approximately the same time as
historiographical literature in Greece.66
Much of the scholarly discussion has revolved around
the relationship of the bios to other literary and performative genres, such as the encomium,
panegyric, and, especially, the history.67 Until recently, scholarship on biographical literature
has posed very historical questions, including the origins of the genres and their value for
historical reconstruction. Some German scholars saw the bios as an inroad to the ancient
Greeks conception of the individual.68
Others, like Friedrich Leo, concentrated on literary
forms and established the categories of classification that would direct the study of ancient
biographies for many years.69
He named two types of biographies: the Plutarchan type,
which was organized chronologically, and the Suetonian type, arranged thematically. More
recent scholarship has deemed these classifications problematic.70
Shifting the discourse a bit, but still entrenched in questions of genre and form,
Arnaldo Momigliano treated the literary relationship between biography and historiography
in his influential series of essays, The Development of Greek Biography (1971). Since
antiquity, ancient authors had been reluctant to relate the two genres. In the famous passage
from the prologue of the Life of Alexander, Plutarch posited a stark distinction between the
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life and the history, the former having a distinct moral purpose. But Momigliano boldly
asserted that nobody nowadays is likely to doubt that biography is some kind of history,
and wondered why the Greeks never recognized that biography is history.71 Yet he
distinguishes biography from history on the basis of their intended facticity: The
historian was supposed to tell the truth. When he was forced to report unchecked rumors, he
was supposed to say so. This was the rule established by Herodotus and Thucydides.72
The
biographer, on the other hand, apparently approached factual accuracy differently: Even
historians like Xenophon with a philosophic education forgot about truth when they came to
write encomia and idealized biography.73
Recent studies on the origins and literary characteristics of the bios have focused
attention on its social contexts and functions.Moving away from the types of classification
proposed by Leo and others, Charles Talbert suggested a classification on the basis of the
texts function in its social-intellectual-spiritual milieu, as didactic (propagandistic) or
nondidactic (not propagandistic).74
To this end, he situated bioi within the Sitz im Leben of
the communities that produced them. Drawing connections between the place of bioi in
philosophical schools and the gospels in early Christian communities, Talbert explored the
interrelationship among cultic activity, myth, and the construction of tradition in the
development of biographical literature. In What Are the Gospels? A Comparison with Greco-
Roman Biography (2004), Richard A. Burridge analyzed ancient biographies with a view to
understanding the genre of the gospels. His examination proceeds according to external
elements (literary features, structure, form) and internal elements (topics, style, social
setting), concluding that bioi were a flexible but recognizable genre in antiquity and that the
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gospels would have been recognized as part of this genre.75
In the bios, history and myth
merge, generating a sort of myth of origins.
Gentili and Cerri considered again the question of biography and history in History
and Biography in Ancient Thought (1988). Largely following the approach of Momigliano,
the authors argue that biographies and histories, as literary genres that appear to have
originated and evolved around the same time, should not be opposed absolutely, despite the
sharp distinction made by the ancients between the two genres. Instead, they suggest
considering their interrelation.76 In response to this, and considering Momiglianos question
regarding the relationship between biography and history, I suggest we regard biographical
literature as some kind of ancient historiography. Seen within its social-historical contexts,
as a textual practice of tradition-building and history-writing, it cannot be denied that authors
participated in an historiographic task, inventing and reinventing the history and
representatives of the inheritance of philosophy. Works such as Porphyrys Philosophos
historia, Eunapius Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists, and Theodorets Religious
History narrated the history of philosophical traditions through biographical accounts of
philosophical representations from the past. As contributions to a process of tradition
building, philosophical bioi,77 individually and collectively, constructed histories of
philosophy.
The Bios as Arena of Cultural Competition
An understanding of the literary conventions and innovations of biographical
literature, their theological and philosophical interests, and the social contexts in which they
were produced and read, permits us to regard biographical literature as an arena, or locus
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of debate and negotiation, in a competition among parties of the Greek-speaking educated
elite, the pepaideumenoi. The production, circulation, and consumption of biographical
literature constituted one strategy in this competition. The bios, then, served in its
conventional literary and rhetorical aspects as a practical, competitive tool in the competition.
Biography could be used to define, delimit, and promote the characteristics of the
philosophical life. As a pedagogical tool, biographies presented models for imitation.
Authors enlisted noble figures of the recent and distant past, praising them as founders,
exemplars, and transmitters of knowledge and virtue. Biographical productions also
addressed sociopolitical and cultural concerns, particularly between Christians and
Greeks.78
As Talbert points out, biographies often served as weapons in debates over
succession and transmission among the rival Hellenistic schools of philosophy.79
Conceptions of the origins of knowledge were bound up with implications for the stream of
its pure transmission within the structures of educational and religious institutions. To this
end, authors often employed the language of kinship and inheritance, giving expression to a
relationship between transmitters and recipients. In some ways, the complex of myth of
origins, descent, shared history, and claims to land that characterized expressions of Hellenic
ethnicity in ancient Greece seem to have adapted to claims of Greek cultural identity,
particularly among groups of intellectual elites.80 Even intellectual dynasties required a
pedigree and shared history to claim, guard, and bequeath an inheritance, in this case, not
only the inheritance of a precious philosophical tradition, but also the skills, expertise, and
authority to correctly teach and transmit it.81
Teachers not only imparted knowledge to their
students, but they were also fathers, who adopted their students into the lineages of the
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great traditions by what Libanius considered a kinship of words.82
The language of
inheritance represented philosophy as a complete body of knowledgetexts and traditions of
interpretation and practices. Together, lineage and inheritance, which determined identity,
ownership, authority, and social relations in so many ways in the Mediterranean world,
applied also to the intangible inheritance of ideas and doctrines, establishing fictive
bloodlines, philosophical DNA, in nascent institutions. A clear and stable succession
(), from father to son, from one generation to the next, demarcated family trees
and intellectual dynasties. If we can talk of the Christian notion of apostolic succession, a
reading of Eunapius alone reminds us that the Greeks had a similar conception of what we
might call philosophic succession, a concept examined in great detail by Robert Penella
(Greek Philosophers and Sophists in the Fourth Century: Studies in Eunapius of Sardis
[1990]) as it relates to Eunapius Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists.
We can see in the interplay between the literary features of biographical literature and
the social contexts of their production and circulation how lineage and succession were
reinforced. Possessing a special affinity to the divine, which afforded an aura of sanctity,
subjects were also portrayed as ancestors, founders, and teachers who exemplified the
philosophical life in their teaching and ascetic practice. Creating and reinforcing bonds
among subject, author, and audience, these texts formed a type of social charter for Christian
and Neoplatonist communities in narratives of the origins of philosophy (e.g., The Life of
Pythagoras, The Life of Moses), the foundation of communities (e.g., The Life of Antony,
The Life of Macrina), and critical moments in the history of the transmission of philosophy
(e.g., The Life of Plotinus, The Life of Proclus). In the production of the bioi themselves,
authors established a series of relationships that served as polemical, apologetic, and
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formational discourses within the larger cultural competition. The following outline adapts
the discussion in Hgg and Rousseau by considering relationships around the text, that is,
inside the communities where biographical texts circulated and contributed to self-
understanding, alongside relationships at the level of the text:83
1. subject-author: The author, qua author, claimed privileged knowledge of thesubject, whether through personal acquaintance or study, and presented himself
as a recipient or heir of the subjects teaching.
2. author-audience: By virtue of his intermediary role, the author played a pivotalrole in the transmission of the philosophical inheritance from the subject to the
audience, and acted as an important link in the chain of intellectual descent.
3. subject-audience: Like the Roman imagines maiorum, textual portraits of theexemplary dead served as ancestral figures for the intended audience, as well as
expressions and models of an ideal of the virtuous life. Their philosophical
heritage was both the means by which descent was reckoned and the ancestral
inheritance that was passed on.
It should not be surprising, then, that the primary social setting of the production and
consumption of biographical literature was within structures claiming pedagogic authority
schools, churches, even small, informal circles of intellectuals.84 The authors to be examined
here were among the most powerful and influential players in the competition. They were the
educated elite, men formed by paideia, bound togetheramicably and sometimes
inimicallyin a social and cultural world that governed the upper echelons of Roman
society.85
They are almost exclusively Greek-speakers, heads of schools and bishops, with
distinctly philosophical interests. The numerous homilies and commentaries by Christian
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teachers and bishops often read like the philosophical discourses of the Neoplatonists on the
texts of Plato or Homer. But whereas the Neoplatonists promoted a conservative (but still
newly developed) curriculum founded upon the traditional Greek canon, as a means of
preserving and reproducing a culture of Hellenism, many Christian intellectuals fostered the
development of a Christian education that challenged and subverted Greek curricula, models,
lineages, and histories. The intention was not always to destroy Greek paideia, but to
transform it into a Christian paideia and to replace and reprioritize the teachers and
institutions that consecrated, transmitted, and reproduced cultural orthodoxy.86
A Philosophical Economy
It seems even the ancients were aware of the symbolic economy of philosophy that
provided the immaterial and material goods necessary for virtuous living, intellectual
formation, and participation in competition. Philosophy is sometimes conceived of as an
immaterial wealth, acquired through a range of intellectual, bodily, and social practices.87
Acquisition of wisdom occurs through a combination of natural ability, formation through
human institutions and guidance, and encounter with the divine. The proliferation and
consumption of bioi were important parts of the processes of philosophical formation and
incorporation into communities. Thus they had an individual and collective scope.
It may be useful at this point to consider from this vantage point the evangelization of
philosophy, and the intended reach of the production of biographical literature, philosophical
histories, and pedagogical lineages. Here Bourdieu provides a useful analytical model.88
In
the production and circulation of cultural goods, he identifies a field of restricted
production in which these goods are produced primarily for other producers. According to
this strategy, producers tend to produce for their competitors and for others within their field,
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marginalizing themselves from the larger public of nonproducers. In terms of the production
of philosophical biographies, we might think of intended readership, including the
accessibility of its themes, argument, and language. For example, Porphyrys Live of
Plotinus and Iamblichus On the Pythagorean Life, both introductions to philosophical
curricula, fall into this category. These were produced specifically for consumption by other
intellectuals, Greek or Christian. In the field of large-scale production, producers produce
for a broader public, both for other producers and for nonproducers outside their field.
Theodorets Religious History clearly had a larger audience of nonspecialists in mind, not
limited to intellectuals, or to aspiring monks, but not excluding them either. Christians, more
often than the Greeks, aimed for a large-scale production of bioi, proffering philosophy to
a larger audience. One did not need to be literate or have access to a library in order to know
the stories of the lives of Antony of Egypt, or Macrina, or the monks of Syria. Calendars
organized time around the feast days of the saints, whose lives were read and commented
upon as part of the churches liturgical life.
Athanasius considered the church the school of Christ, and Christian intellectuals,
like Origen, Basil of Caesarea, and other bishops, transformed the church into centers of
education, school-like settings, which extended the content of philosophy and the narrative of
its transmission to a much wider public.89 The Greeks did not do this, but restricted their
activities, including the circulation of bioi, to elite circles. Neither Eunapius nor Marinus
took their laudatory accounts of their teachers to the masses. By the end of the fourth century,
it would have been politically dangerous to do so. Maintaining a conservative line under
extreme pressure, they also continued to offer restrictive models, which aimed to preserve an
untainted notion of Greekness based on education, culture, status, and gender. Their approach
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to philosophy and education remained essentially conservativea defense of the traditional
structures founded upon a Platonic intellectual tradition that advocated a Greek canon, Greek
cults, and an aristocratic monopoly on any form of philosophy. Where Christians were trying
to cut the bonds between Greek identity and philosophy, the Greeks, naturally, tried to
strengthen those bonds, eventually becoming the guardians of Greek religion when their cults
were under attack. Christian bishops, the primary producers of Christian philosophical bioi,
often belonged to the same class of wealthy intellectuals, but did not exclusively offer
bishops as representatives and transmitters of philosophy. Instead, Christian philosophical
models issued from all classes and stations in society: Origen the intellectual; Constantine the
emperor; Macrina the ascetic leader of a community; the monks of Egyptpoor and rich
alike who, like Antony, abandoned the urban context for a life of solitude and ascetic
practice.
This study aims to bring together an array of ancient and modern discussions of
biographical literature: giving close attention to levels of dialogue which ancient biographical
productions reflect and directed as arenas of competition, while engaging previous scholarly
treatments of biographical literature. In each chapter, examples of Christian and Greek
biography are paired together in order to highlight particular areas of debate and negotiation
that characterized the struggle for philosophy. The biographical literature is in turn situated
within the larger corpora of their authors to call attention to programmatic trends in their
work. In so doing, I wish to demonstrate how biography contributed to the construction of
identity among intellectuals of late antiquity. In casting the production and consumption of
this literature as a dialogue, I am not presuming that Christians necessarily read the Greeks
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literature and vice versa (though that is not to be excluded in every case), but rather that
biography reflects the terms of debate and competition in the broader cultural context, where
interaction often did occur.
Strategies of subversion and transformation were characterized by an ambiguity that
made cultural competition possible and necessary. Christians did not enter from without, but
from within. Our authors were themselves the products of the very paideia they sought to
transform. Chapter One explores the roots that remained as Christian intellectuals entered the
arena of philosophical competition. Here I provide a sketch of the state of the philosophical
world in late antiquity, which locates Christian intellectuals within the social and cultural
contexts, networks and trends of that world, and suggest that the Christian entrance into what
was already a competitive field presented another legitimate and viable option that could
continue to engage other developing Platonisms. Chapter Two examines the role of
biography in describing traditions of philosophical origins. Moses and Pythagoras are the
figures who dominate this discussion. Related questions, which arise in such works, are the
relation of barbarian wisdom to the origins of Greek philosophy and, in the case of
Christian texts, the nature of the interrelationship between Greek and Christian philosophy at
their origins. In Chapter Three, the focus turns to the biographical productions of Eusebius
and Porphyry as attempts to write their respective heroes, Origen and Plotinus, into
developing narratives of philosophical history. The themes of decline and renewal direct this
narrative, as their subjects represent a reform and rediscovery of the origins of philosophy. At
the same time, both biographers aim to take their place as authoritative heir and
representative of these traditions. In Chapter Four, the focus turns to the philosopher ruler in
a side-by-side reading of Eusebius Life of Constantine and Libanius Epitaphios on Julian.
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Here the relationship between political philosophy and programs of religious and cultural
reform are examined through the lens of biography. Chapter Five considers the displacement
and recasting of the philosopher in Athanasius Life of Antony, perhaps the most influential
of all the works examined here. I have paired this text with Eunapius Lives of the
Philosophers and Sophists in order to highlight the continuities and differentiations in
conceptions of teachers of wisdom in the late fourth century, a contrast between philosophers
in unlikely places and philosophers in likely places. Chapter Six continues the discussion of
finding philosophers in unlikely places in the biographical accounts of Christian and Greek
women, namely Macrina and Sosipatra (who receives one of the longest treatments in the
work of Eunapius). Of particular interest are the places women inhabit in the predominately
male lineages of philosophical transmission (Christian and Greek) and the significance of
female images of the philosopher in estimating paideia and loci of pedagogy. Finally, in
Chapter Seven, the dramatic shifts that had occurred in the philosophical field by the fifth
century are viewed through the lenses of Theodorets Religious History and Marinus Life of
Proclus. The former reflects the dominance of a Christian intellectual elite, which regarded
the monastic life as the fulfillment of both Christian and Greek visions of virtue; while the
latter represents an intellectual minority under pressure and its attempts to reestablish an
authoritative Platonic institution in the city of Athens.
I have chosen to omit from this study the biographical works of Philostratushis
Lives of the Sophists and the Life of Apolloniusfor several reasons. A member of the
cultural elite of the third century with close ties to the court of the empress Julia Domna,
Philostratus aim was to promote the cultural movement, which he coined the Second
Sophistic, and a Hellenism which [was] defined primarily through a combination of
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religion and philosophy, namely Pythagorean philosophy.90
While I maintain that there are
important ties between the developments of the Second Sophistic and the emergence of a
Christian philosophical culture, the aim of this study is to focus on those works of
biographical literature that promote particular expressions of philosophical history and
lineage. We might see the Life of Apollonius as a precursor to the philosophical bioi that
would appear in Neoplatonist and Christian circles, but it differs from them in scope and
purpose. Not a Pythagorean himself, Philostratus composed the bios as a defense of
Apollonius the man and the way of life he represented, but not in support of a particular
community of Neopythagorean philosophers. Nevertheless, this biography would prove to be
extremely influential for both Neopythagoreans and Neoplatonists, and even Eusebius of
Caesarea targeted the work in his tract Against Hierocles. Finally, a plethora of scholarship
on this subject has raised the work to a level of scrutiny and attention that overshadows other
important biographical texts in conversation with Christianity.91
The struggle to define and direct the course of philosophical thinking and education
in late antiquity manifested itself in various arenas, with a host of participants, over the
course of several centuries. From within the schools and overlapping social networks of both
Greek and Christian intellectuals, an abundance of biographical literature began to emerge
from the late third century forward. As a literary arena of this competition, the bios identified
historical figures of both recent and distant memory as embodiments, revealers, and
transmitters of philosophical truth. The authors of bioi claimed for themselves some share in
the philosophical heritage of their ancestors. As members of lineages that could be traced
back to the first teachers and revealers of divine wisdom (Plato, Pythagoras, Jesus Christ, the
Apostles, even directly to God), their inheritance was a family treasure to be faithfully
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guarded and passed on through successive generations, from father to son (and sometimes to
daughter).
Now we turn to the beginnings of the struggle, and examine both the circumstances
under which Christian intellectuals participated in competition with Greeks and the Christian
responses to developing Greek philosophical traditions.
1For a description of ancient philosophy as a way of life intimately linked to philosophical
discourse, see Pierre Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy, translated by Michael Chase
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).
2 Theodoret, Phil. hist. pro. 3 (SC 234, 130); trans. Price, 4.
3 Susanna Elm, Hellenism and Historiography: Gregory of Nazianzus and Julian in
Dialogue, in The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies: Gender, Asceticism, and
Historiography, edited by D. Martin and P. Cox Miller (Durham: Duke University Press,
2005), 260-61
4 See, for example, Origen, Letter to Gregory 2-3; Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Moses 115; and
Augustine, On Christian Doctrine 2.42.
5 Simon Goldhill, Introduction. Setting and Agenda: Everything is Greece to the Wise, in
Being Greek Under Rome: Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic and the Development of
Empire, edited by S. Goldhill, 13 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
6Jonathan M. Hall, Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press), 7; and see also Chapter Five.
7See, for example, Goldhill, Being Greek Under Rome; Simon Swain, Hellenism and
Empire: Language, Classicism, and Power in the Greek World, AD 50250 (Oxford: Oxford
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University Press, 1996); and Tim Whitmarsh, Greek Literature and the Roman Empire: The
Politics of Imitation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
8 Goldhill, Introduction, 13-20.
9Rebecca Preston, Roman Questions, Greek Answers: Plutarch and the Construction of
Identity, in Goldhill, Being Greek Under Rome, 90.
10Swain, Hellenism and Empire, 65.
11See the Introduction by Dale Martin in Cultural Turn, 1-24.
12Elm, Hellenism and Historiography, 260, and, especially, footnote 3.
13 Jeremy M. Schott, Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 4.
14 Polymnia Athanassiadi and Michael Frede, eds., Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 6. For a discussion of the use of the terms pagan,
heathen, and Hellene in the study of pagan and Christian monotheism, see pp. 1-8.
15On mimicry, see Homi K. Bhabha, Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial
Discourse, in idem, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994), 121-31. For its
application to the present material, see Jeremy M. Schott, Porphyry on Christians and
Others: Barbarian Wisdom, Identity Politics, and Anti-Christian Polemics on the Eve of the
Great Persecution, Journal of Early Christian Studies 13, no.3 (2005), 280.
16 Cf. Schott, Christianity, Empire and the Making of Religion, 28-29.
17On cultural production, see Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on
Art and Literature, edited and introduced by R. Johnson (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1993), 42. For an early application of Bourdieus theory to late antique materials, see
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Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian
Discourse (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), esp. Chapters One and Four.
18 Here I am adapting categories found in Bourdieus work on cultural competition to the
contexts of late antiquity. See Bourdieu, Cultural Production, 82-83.
19Bourdieu, Cultural Production, 6.
20On the education of women, see Raffaella Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek
Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001),
Chapter Three.
21 Cribiore, Gymnastics, 9.
22 David Swartz, Culture & Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1997), 76.
23Jean Danilou, La Vie de Mose, ou Trait de la perfection en matire de vertu, Sources
chrtiennes 1 (Paris: Cerf, 1968), xxiv.24
See, for example, Pierre Bourdieu and Jean Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education,
Society and Culture, translated by Richard Nice (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1970);
Bourdieu, Field of Cultural Production, 51; and Swartz, Culture & Power, 189-91.
25 Referring to the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu, Thomas Schmitz has identified paideia as
the habitus of Greco-Roman antiquity. See Bildung und Macht: Zur sozialen und politischen
Funktion der zweiten Sophistik in der griechischen Welt der Kaiserzeit. Zetemata:
Monographien zur klassischen Altertumswissenschaft 97 (Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1997),
29. Similarly, Tim Whitmarsh builds on a Bourdieuian cultural anthropology, as applied to
the Second Sophistic by Thomas Schmitz, which regards paideia as a locus for a series of
competitions and debates concerning the proper way in which life should be lived, rather
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39
than a single, doctrinally coherent system. See Whitmarsh, Greek Literature, 5 and
Schmitz, Bildung und Macht, esp. 2631. For discussion of Bourdieus concept of habitus,
see his Outline of a Theory of Practice, translated by Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1977), esp. Chapter Two; and idem, Cultural Production, 5. Criticisms have
been leveled against Bourdieus habitus for its apparent determinism and emphasis on social
conditioning that limits conscious agency. See Chapter Five of Swartzs Culture & Power.
For a recent attempt to reconcile the weaknesses in Bourdieu with Margaret Archers
understanding of reflexive deliberation to create an emergentist theory of action that
considers both cultural conditioning and conscious deliberation, see David Elder-Vass,
Reconciling Archer and Bourdieu in an Emergentist Theory of Action, in Sociological
Theory 25, no.4 (December 2007): 325-46.
26Garth Fowden, Pagan Philosophers in Late Antique Society with Special Reference to
Iamblichus and his Followers (Ph.D. Thesis, Oxford, 1979), 160
27See, for example, Irenaeus, Haer. 3.3.
28 See Bourdieu, Cultural Production, 50-52.
29Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 4.7.13 (SC 31, 169).
30 For a discussion of the uses of terms such as , , and in the contexts
of Late Antique philosophy, see John Glucker, Antiochus and the Late Academy (Gttingen:
Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1978), 159-74.
31Bourdieu and Passeron, Reproduction, 190.
32John M. Dillon, Iamblichus of Chalchis (c. 240-325 A.D.), ANRW 36.2:879.
33 Anonymous Prolegomena, 26.13.
34Dillon, Iamblichus of Chalcis, 872.
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40
35Tim Duff, Plutarchs Lives: Exploring Virtue and Vice (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1999), 53.
36 Plato, Resp. 492a.
37Plato, Resp. 491e.
38Plutarch, Moralia 452c-d.
39Duff, Plutarchs Lives, 75-77.
40See Plato Resp. 491d-492d; and Dominic J. OMeara, Platonopolis: Platonic Political
Philosophy in Late Antiquity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 50.
41 Laura S. Nasrallah, Mapping the World: Justin, Tatian, Lucian, and the Second
Sophistic, Harvard Theological Review 98, no.3 (July 2005): 283314.
42 Nasrallah, Mapping the World, 299.
43Nasrallah, Mapping the World, 307.
44 Athanasius of Alexandria, Vit. Ant. 1.2.
45See Athanasius, Vit. Ant. 78.2-3 and discussion in Chapter Five.
46 Simon Swain, Biography and Biographic in the Literature of the Roman Empire, in
Portraits: Biographical Representation in the Greek and Latin Literature of the Roman
Empire, edited by M.J. Edwards and S. Swain (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997),
1-2.
47 Duff, Plutarchs Lives, 17.
48On the origins of Greek biographical literature, see Arnaldo Momigliano, The
Development of Greek Biography, expanded edition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1993), 8. Momigliano looks for the roots of the bios in encomia, prose literature about
heroes and mythical figures, but admits that the existence of fully developed biographies is
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conjectural (p, 28). The earliest surviving examples of Greek biography are known to us in
fragments. These include fragments of the lives of Euripides, Aeschylus, and Sophocles by
the third century B.C.E. Peripatetic Satyrus, preserved in P Oxy. 1176. The earliest surviving
work of Latin biography is the fragmentary De viris illustribus by Cornelius Nepos (first
century B.C.E.), which is thought to have contained some 400 biographical accounts. King
Herods court historian, Nicolaus of Damascus, a Peripatetic, wrote a Life of Augustus and
an autobiography (Momigliano, Development, 9). On the shift towards cultural criteria in the
definition of Greekness, see Hall, Hellenicity, 189.
49 For a more detailed discussion of biography and autobiography in the fifth and fourth
centuries B.C.E., see Momigliano, Development, 23-64.
50 Xeonophon, Agesilaus 10.
51Momigliano, Development, 12; Patricia Cox, Biography in Late Antiquity: A Quest for the
Holy Man (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 6
52Tomas Hgg and Philip Rousseau, eds., Greek Biography and Panegyric in Late Antiquity
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 4. The Peripatetics, in particular,
contributed to the development of the biographical genre. Among the Peripatetics who
continued this tradition, Jerome (Vir. ill. 2.821) names several, including Hermippus,
Satyrus, Antigonus, and Sotion. Most, if not all, of these seem to have written works of
collective biography. Sotion composed a work titled The Succession of Philosophers. See
Momigliano, Development, 6576.
53Momigliano, Development, 45.
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54Momigliano, Development, 53. For additional examples of Socratic biographical literature,
see Xenophons Memorabilia and Cyropaedia. The Pythagorean-turned-Aristotelian
Aristoxenus composed Lives of Socrates, Plato, Pythagoras, and Archytas.
55Momigliano, Development, 46-47.
56Momigliano, Development, 65-76.
57Cox, Biography, xi.
58Momigliano, Development, 12, and Cox, Biography, 6.
59See Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers 3.5 (Plato), and 8.21
(Pythagoras).
60 Jerome, Vir. ill. 2.821.
61 Cox, Biography, 10-11.
62Duff, Plutarchs Lives, 5-6.
63 Plutarch, Alexander 1 (Lindskog and Ziegler, 175), my translation.
64Isocrates (Evagoras, 73) expressed his preference for written likenesses of deeds and of
the character to statues.
65Cox, Biography, xi. Coxs work on biography should be read in the context of scholarship
on the ancient divine man and holy man. She is in conversation with Ludwig Bieler,
whose classic 1935-36 work, , was an attempt to outline the construction of
the religious personality of the divine man in ancient literature as a demonstration of
Platonic theological and anthropological ideas. Also important are Peter Browns The Rise
and Function of the Holy Man in late antiquity, Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1971): 80-
101; and Garth Fowdens The Pagan Holy Man in Late Antique Society, Journal of
Hellenic Studies 102 (1982): 33-59.
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66Momigliano, Development, 12-13.
67 In addition to the works of Momigliano, Cox, Swain, and Hgg and Rousseau already
cited, see also Charles H. Talbert, Biographies of Philosophers and Rulers as Instruments of
Religious Propaganda in Mediterranean Antiquity, ANRW 16.2: 1619-51; and Bruno
Gentili and Giovanni Cerri, eds., History and Biography in Ancient Thought (Amsterdam:
J.C. Gieben, 1988).
68For example, Ivo Bruns, Das literarische Portrt der Griechen im fnften und vierten
Jahrhundert vor Christi Geburt (1896) and Die Persnlichkeit in der Geschichtsschreibung
der Alten (Berlin: W. Hertz, 1898). Albrecht Dihle took up the question of literary origins
and the concept of the individual in Studien sur griechischen Biographie, Abhandlungen
der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Gttingen, Phil.-hist. Klasse 3, 2. Auflage (Gttingen:
Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1956), by arguing that the figure of Socrates inspired the
invention of biography in Socratic circles. But as Momigliano pointed out (Development, 16-
17), Dihle seems to overlook the fact that biographical literature existed some one hundred
years before Socrat