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Theocritus of Chios' Epigram against Aristotle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

David T. Runia
David T. Runia
Affiliation:
Free University, Amsterdam
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Extract

In the Vita Aristotelis of Diogenes Laertius and elsewhere we come across an epigram of Theocritus of Chios directed against Aristotle. I cite the poem in the form in which it has most recently been published by D. L. Page:

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , December 1986 , pp. 531 - 534
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1986

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References

1 Diog. Laert. 5.11, Didymus, , in Demosth. comm. 6.45–9Google Scholar, Aristocles ap. Eusebius, PE 15.2.12Google Scholar, Plutarch, , Mor. 603eGoogle Scholar.

2 Epigrammata Graeca (Oxford, 1975), 56Google Scholar.

3 Various aspects are discussed by Owen, G. E. L., ‘Philosophical Invective’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 1 (1983), 1–25, esp. 8ffGoogle Scholar.

4 It might seem foolhardy to persist in entertaining the possibility that Hermias actually was a eunuch. As Owen (art. cit. 15–16) emphatically points out, the charge of sexual deviancy was a stock-in-trade of the orators, from whom it passed to philosophical invective. Yet ultimately it is our modern sense of plausibility that must decide in the concrete case, and here too prejudices can play a role. Maybe we assume too quickly that the noble philosophers Plato and Aristotle could not be on friendly terms with someone who was sexually maimed (κολοβός, thus ⋯τελ⋯ς), in the way that it used to be assumed that a cricketer was a gentleman and would not be dishonest. At any rate, whether Hermias was or was not a eunuch does not affect the point I am making in this article.

5 Albeit indirectly; cf. Ep. 6.322e6, Wormell, D. E. L., Yale Classical Studies 5 (1935), 59Google Scholar.

6 Cf. Diog. Laert. 5.6–7.

7 Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition (Göteborg, 1957), 277Google Scholar.

8 If Diogenes' remark (5.3), ‘Ερμ⋯αν τòν εủνο⋯χον…ὃν οἱ μ⋯ν ɸασι παιδικ⋯ γ⋯νεσθαι αủτο⋯, is based on Theocritus' epigram, as Düring, op. cit. 280 maintains, there is evidence that ancient readers understood it in this way.

9 Düring, op. cit. 277.

10 Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of his Development (Eng. trans. Oxford, 1948 2), 112 n. 2Google Scholar. Mutatis mutandis the observation made in n. 8 above applies here as well.

11 Düring, op. cit. 276, supported by Owen, art. cit. 16.

12 The place in Plato's works where one would expect this coupling to be worked out in detail is the description of the third part of the soul at Tim. 70d ff., but the requirements of the story dictate otherwise (sex comes into the picture when woman is created, 91a-d). But cf. the description of the same part of the soul at Rep. 439d6–8, τò δ⋯ ᾧ ⋯ρᾷ τε κα⋯ πεινῇ κα⋯ διΨῇ κα⋯ περ⋯ τ⋯ς ἄλλας ⋯πιθυμ⋯ας ⋯πτόηται ⋯λόγιστόν τε κα⋯ ⋯πιθυμητικόν, πληρώσεών τινων κα⋯ ⋯δον⋯ν ⋯ταῖρον (note also Aristotle, , N.E. VII 4 1147b25–7Google Scholar).

13 Laqueur, R., RE ii 5 (1934), 2025–6Google Scholar.

14 προχο⋯ in the plural generally refers to the mouth of a river; cf. LSJ ad loc.

15 The reader has no opportunity of checking, because Plutach quotes only the end of the poem. We may assume, I think, that he knew the whole of it.

16 Düring, op. cit. 381; RE 3.1 (1897), 720Google Scholar.