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A Platonist Ars Amatoria1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

John Dillon
John Dillon
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Dublin
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Extract

The concept of an ‘art of love’ has been popularised for all time by the naughty masterpiece of Ovid. A good deal of critical attention has been devoted to this work in recent times, including some to his possible sources, but under this latter rubric attention has chiefly been directed rather to his parody of more serious types of handbook, such as an ars medica, an ars grammatica, or an ars rhetorica, than to the possibility of his having predecessors in the actual ‘art’ of love.

Type
Articles
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , December 1994 , pp. 387 - 392
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1994

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References

2 See e.g. Hollis, A. S., Ovid, Ars Amatoria, Book I, ed. with introduction and commentary (Oxford, 1974)Google Scholar and, more recently, Molly, Myerowitz, Ovid's Games of Love (Wayne State U.P., Detroit, 1985).Google Scholar

3 There is a useful article by Knut, Kleve, ‘NASO MAGISTER ERAT – sed quis Nasonis magister?’, Symbolae Osloenses 58 (1983), 89–109Google Scholar, where a good many analogies between Ovid and previous sources are discussed, but he addresses himself only minimally to the particular subject of this paper. The older work of Bürger, R., De Ovidi carminum amatoriorum inventione et arte (Wolfenbüttel, 1901)Google Scholar, is of no relevance to the present enquiry either.

4 ‘Discerning whom one should love’ seems to refer to Socrates' opening speech as a whole, while ‘not speaking until the critical moment’ refers in particular to Socrates' mention at 103a of the δαιμνιν τι ναντωμα which has hitherto held him back from addressing Alcibiades. ‘Taking in hand and teaching’ really covers the remainder of the dialogue.

5 Widely known as Albinus, ever since the monograph of Freudenthal, , Der Platoniker Albinos und der falsche Alkinoos (Berlin, 1879)Google Scholar, but I am now persuaded by the arguments of John Whittaker (in a series of articles, but see now his Budé edition [Paris, 1989], Intro, pp. vii–xiii) that the identification rests on very shaky palaeographic foundations.

6 Cf. ‘The Individual as Object of Love in Plato’, in Platonic Studies (Princeton U.P., 1973) 3–42.Google Scholar

7 We do not find any clues as to the views of Plato's immediate successors, Speusippus and Xenocrates, on the correct indulgence in, or use of, love, but a straw in the wind, I think, is provided by a rather obscure dictum of Polemon, last head of the Old Academy, reported by Plutarch (in his essay To an Uneducated Ruler 780d), to the effect that “Love is the service of the gods for the care and preservation of the young” (θεν ὑπηρεσα εἰς νων πιμλειαν κα σωτηραν). This at first sight rather baffling remark might seem to gain some significance if it is regarded as a summation by Polemon of the “doctrine” of the Alcibiades. Socrates' kind of loving can be seen as a service of the gods in the form of conferring benefits on the youth. If so, we have here the bare bones of the later Stoic/Platonist art of love, and our appreciation of Polemon's contribution to Hellenistic philosophy may move up another notch.

8 There were also, it must be said, Epicurean treatments of the theme (e.g. a treatise by Epicurus himself On Love, DL 10.118), but Platonists are hardly likely to have borrowed much from that source.

9 Of Zeno's other followers, Ariston is credited with Discourses on Love (ρωτικα διατριβα, DL 7.163), and Sphaerus with Dialogues on Love (διλογοι ρωτικο, DL 7.178), but we are no better informed about their contents.

10 The point of this latter term, if pressed, might be discerned as being the stimulation of reciprocal affection (ντρως) in the beloved, which would constitute a further close connection with later Platonist theory – and, of course, Socratic practice.

11 ap. Stob. Ecl. 2.65, 15ff. Wachs. = SVF 3.717; and cf. Cicero, TD 4.72.

12 Reading π τ〈 ζ〉ν with Meineke, for the π τν of the MSS.

13 Harold, Tarrant, Scepticism or Platonism? The Philosophy of the Fourth Academy (Cambridge, 1985)Google Scholar, wishes to attribute this work to the Platonist Eudorus, and thus to the late first century b.c., which is an attractive suggestion, but unfortunately not quite provable.

14 Not so modern authorities, however. A perusal of two substantial French works on the subject, Ludovic, Dugas, L'amitié antique (Paris 1894; repr. New York, 1978)Google Scholar, and Jean-Claude, Fraisse, Philia, la notion d'amitié dans la philosophie antique (Paris, 2nd ed., 1984)Google Scholar reveals no substantial attention paid to the Alcibiades, and the same is true for the recent English work of Price, A. W., Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle (Oxford, 1989).Google Scholar

15 The possibility has been put to me by Mary Whitlock Blundell of some influence filtering through from other treatments of the Socrates–Alcibiades relationship, such as in particular that of Aeschines of Sphettus in his dialogue Alcibiades, or perhaps in a dialogue where Aspasia took on a role analogous to that of Diotima in the Symposium. I would regard this as an attractive, but not a necessary, supposition. The Platonic Alcibiades provides, I think, an adequate explanation of the phenomena. Further, in Aeschines' Alcibiades (Fr. 11 Dittmar), Socrates seems to attribute any power he has to improve Alcibiades to ‘divine dispensation’ (θεα μοῖρα), rather than τχνη, which would militate against the possibility that this is a source.