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ANOTHER PERI TECHNES LITERATURE: INQUIRIES ABOUT ONE'S CRAFT AT DODONA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 September 2018

Emily Hulme Kozey
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Elite, Athenian, male – all three adjectives usually apply to our sources on the ancient world, and the study of ancient ethics (including even so-called ‘popular morality’) is no different in this respect. There are, however, a few exceptional sources that provide a window into a more diverse population and their hopes, desires, values, and insecurities. In the following, I wish to highlight one of these – the corpus of oracular lamellae from Dodona – and demonstrate how this body of evidence can shed new light on an old question. Specifically, I will consider what we can learn about techne (art, craft, profession) from these tablets; but in addition I hope readers with an interest in ancient ethics will see how promising this source is for further study on other topics. As I will show, alongside the better known peri technes literature – a group of texts from the fifth and fourth centuries bce that discuss medicine and other crafts from a theoretical standpoint – there is a small corpus of texts from Dodona that uses this same phrase and discusses the crafts from a far more practical perspective. The object of this article will be to show how these two corpora are mutually enlightening.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 65 , Issue 2 , October 2018 , pp. 205 - 217
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Copyright © The Classical Association 2018 

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References

1 See Dover, K. J., Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (Oxford, 1974), 2–4Google Scholar.

2 Readers of Greece & Rome will be particularly familiar with the tablets from Parker, R., ‘Seeking Advice from Zeus at Dodona’, G&R 63 (2016), 69–90Google Scholar, who studies ‘how clients used, and were allowed to use, the oracle’ (72). A major impetus for study of these tablets has been the publication of thousands of them in Dakaris, S., Vokotopoulou, J. and Christidis, A. P., Τα Χρηστήρια Ἐλάσματα της Δωδώνης των νασκαφών Δ. Ευαγγελίδη, 2 vols. (Athens, 2013)Google Scholar, referred to hereafter as DVC. An older publication of 167 of the tablets (Lhôte, E., Les Lamelles oraculaires de Dodone [Geneva, 2006]Google Scholar) remains essential. Eidinow, E., Oracles, Curses, and Risk Among the Ancient Greeks (Oxford, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, interprets and translates many of the tablets published before that point (including all the tablets from Lhôte relevant to this study). A current project, Dodona Online, is beginning to publish some of the tablets from DVC with translations in French and English, as well as commentary. For the history of the oracle, see Parke, H., The Oracles of Zeus (Oxford, 1967), 1–163CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Dakaris, S., Dodona (Athens, 2000), 11Google Scholar; Parker (n. 2), 70.

4 The tablets exhibit wide variation in dialect and handwriting, which has led scholars to suppose they were written by the men and women consulting the oracle themselves, rather than a professional scribe. How the tablets were actually used at Dodona (were they handed to the priestess? did they complement a question asked orally, or supplant that task?) is a matter of great controversy. See especially Johnston, S. I., Ancient Greek Divination (Malden, MA, 2007), 60–72Google Scholar, esp. 68–71; and, Piccinini, J., ‘Beyond Prophecy: Oracular Tablets of Dodona as Memories of Consulation’, IncidAntico 11 (2013), 63–76Google Scholar, who reviews the evidence for the tablets being written by the questioners themselves in the course of advancing her argument that the tablets were not actually used at the site but were mementoes of a journey and consultation.

5 We do not know how far many questioners travelled, since we do not know where they were coming from; but a few data points will show the scope of individuals’ travel to this site. Using modern roads, Dodona is roughly 400 km from Athens; using ORBIS, which models the Roman road and sea transportation network, a journey from Athens to Nicopolis (the closest point on their model to Dodona) would take four days by sea or fourteen by road. A man named Diognetus would have made this journey from Athens (Lhôte 23). Many questioners were coming from a substantially shorter distance, as, for instance, the contingent of Corcyreans asking about harmony in their city in Lhôte 1–4; others made more arduous journeys, as, for example, Epilytos (DVC 2367, discussed below in section II.B) and a group from Tarentum (Lhôte 5), both travelling from Magna Graecia, and the author of DVC 2554B, who came from Thouria in Messenia.

6 Deinocrates does not give us his city of origin and his name is too common to know with precision where he is from – there are forty-five men with this name in LGPN. But, the closest attestations are from Illyrian Apollonia and Phocis, each over 200 km from Dodona by modern roads.

7 Parker (n. 2), 74. Both Parker and Eidinow (n. 2) construct categories of question types. For instance, Eidinow groups questions about travel, marriage, children, work, etc. (72–124).

8 These are: 183A, 290B, 372A, 426A, 450A, 488A, 558B, 567B, 851B, 1026A, 1082A, 1215B, 1239A, 1248A, 1394 (= Lhôte 83, = Eidinow, Work 6), 1782B, 2077B, 2102, 2114A, 2169A, 2246A, 2271A, 2367, 2421A, 2489B, 2954A, 3147B, 3267B, 3453B, 3697A, 3817B, 3895A, 4048A. DVC, in their commentary on 183A, list forty-five tablets, including all of these and a few others which do not actually use the word techne but are firmly on this theme (for instance, 953A, which is simply the word kerameu[s], ‘potter’). Lhôte has an additional four tablets which use the term techne: 84 (= Eidinow, Work 5), 87 (= Eidinow, Work 8), 88 (= Eidinow, Work 7), 89 (= Eidinow, Work 9); DVC 1394, which I count among the thirty-three, was previously published as Lhôte 83.

9 E.g. Lhôte 86.

10 See especially Nussbaum, M., ‘The Protagoras: A Science of Practical Reasoning’, in The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge, 1986), 89–121Google Scholar, esp. 94–9; Roochnik, D., Of Art and Wisdom. Plato's Understanding of Techne (University Park, PA, 1996)Google Scholar; Schiefsky, M., Hippocrates. On Ancient Medicine (Leiden, 2005), 5–18Google Scholar; Mann, J., Hippocrates. On the Art of Medicine (Leiden, 2012), 1–7Google Scholar.

11 Roochnik (n. 10), Schiefsky (n. 10), and Mann (n. 10), among others, have focused broadly on these same features. I explain Nussbaum's concept because she is especially clear and concise, and because it has been very influential.

12 Nussbaum (n. 10), 95–6.

13 See also the Gorgias, esp. the critique of rhetoric as not a techne but a mere empeiria at 463a–465a (and reprised at 500a–501c).

14 See Rihll, T. E. and Tucker, J. V., ‘Practice Makes Perfect: Knowledge of Materials in Classical Athens’, in Tupline, C. and Rihll, T. E. (eds.), Science and Mathematics in Ancient Greek Culture (Oxford, 2002), 287Google Scholar. Technical treatises in general probably date from earlier: we hear of Chersiphron and Metagenes, architects of the temple of Hera at Samos, and Theodorus and Rhoecus, architects of the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, writing treatises about architecture, which would date from the sixth century. See Pollitt, J. J., The Ancient View of Greek Art (New Haven, CT, 1974), 12Google Scholar; Hahn, R., Anaximander and the Architects (Albany, NY, 2001)Google Scholar, 251 n. 43.

15 LM = Laks, André and Most, Glenn (eds.), Early Greek Philosophy (Cambridge, MA, 2016)Google Scholar.

16 See Segal, C. P., ‘Gorgias and the Psychology of the Logos’, HSPh 66 (1962), 116–17Google Scholar.

17 Precision does not play an important role in the Peri Technes; it does play an important role in Peri Archaies Iatrikes (On Ancient Medicine). See On Ancient Medicine, chapters 9 and 12, in Jones, W. H. S. (ed. and trans.), Hippocrates. Volume II. (Cambridge, MA, 1923)Google Scholar, (Peri Technes is included in vol. i).

18 This description of techne is meant to bring out the central characteristics of the trades most commonly described as technai (in other words, to bring out its focal meaning and to suggest what trades are prototypes for the concept techne), and thus (by design) it does not encompass equally well the marginal cases of technai. The most important marginal cases, on this description, are farming and elite practices such as generalship. Why do I take it that these are marginal cases of technai? Because they are frequently contrasted with the term techne or examples of mainstream technai such as weaving, bronzeworking, and pottery (compare, for instance, bronzeworking, which is never contrasted with techne). See, for instance, Hdt. 2.166–7, which contrasts those who have learned a techne with warriors (cf. Isoc. Bus. 15); Pl. Leg. 7.806d–e, which contrasts farming and military practices with the technai (cf. Pl. Criti. 110c); Isoc. Panath. 46, which describes how the Lacedaemonians neglected both agriculture and the technai; Dem. 25.51, which describes how the defendant ‘does not practice a techne, nor agriculture, nor any other work’ (οὐ τέχνης, οὐ γεωργίας, οὐκ ἄλλης ἐργασίας οὐδεμιᾶς ἐπιμελεῖται); and Xen. Cyr. 4.3.12, which says that some men make farming their business while others pursue their techne. Nevertheless, it should be emphasized that farming and military practices are sometimes assimilated to the conventional technai, and themselves called technai. See, for instance, Pl. Plt. 289e, describing merchants as the men who carry around ‘the products of farming and the other technai’ (τά τε γεωργίας καὶ τὰ τῶν ἄλλων τεχνῶν ἔργα); and Euthyd. 291e, which asks about the techne of agriculture. On the polemike techne, see Thuc. 1.142 and 2.87; and Xen. Mem. 2.1.28 (but note that in his treatise On the Cavalry Commander, Xenophon never describes the commander's expertise as techne, favouring the term phronesis, and the adjective phronimos, instead).

19 Not all technai were of uniform low status. For instance, there appear to be certain ‘gentleman’ doctors, like Eryximachus in Plato's Symposium, and famous sculptors such as Phidias and Polyclitus who earned some degree of respect. On the latter, see especially Schultz, P., ‘Style and Agency in an Age of Transition’, in Osborne, R. (ed.), Debating the Athenian Cultural Revolution (Cambridge, 2007), 163–87Google Scholar. These cases are exceptions to the rule and, even as exceptions, they should be qualified. On medicine, see, for instance, the discussion in the Gorgias that assumes that Socrates and Callicles would look down upon doctors (512d) just as they look down upon engineers (mechanopoioi) and pilots (kubernetai); on sculpture, see the especially pungent remark in Plutarch that, although they may love the works of a sculptor like Phidias or Polyclitus, no well-born young man ever wished to be a sculptor himself (Per. 2.1). On the overall low social status of visual artists, see Tanner, J., ‘Culture, Social Structure and the Status of Visual Artists in Classical Greece’, CCJ 45 (2000), 137–47Google Scholar. On medicine, see further n. 25 below.

20 See Acton, P., Poiesis (Oxford, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for detailed estimates of the average workshop size of various industries in classical Athens.

21 In this tablet and subsequent ones, I translate λώϊον καὶ ἄμεινον as ‘better’, a stock phrase in the tablets. See Eidinow (n. 2), 74.

22 Translation from Murray, A. T. (transl.), Homer. Odyssey, Volume II. Books 13–24, rev. Dimock, G. E. (Cambridge, MA, 1919), 183Google Scholar. For those who did not practise a trade, travel was negatively associated with begging, profiteering, and piracy, and even for those who did practise a trade, the mere fact that they travelled could lead to suspicion. See Garland, R., Wandering Greeks (Princeton, NJ, 2014), 15–33Google Scholar and 173–4; Montiglio, S., Wandering in Ancient Greek Culture (Chicago, IL, 2005), 108–15Google Scholar. Professional travel could also be dangerous: see Garland (this note), 168–9.

23 Burford, A., Craftsmen in Greek and Roman Society (Ithaca, NY, 1972), 66–7Google Scholar, discusses the travels of several well-known artists and sculptors. For instance, she notes that Myron the sculptor worked in Athens, Olympia, Samos, Ephesos, Aegina, Orchomenos, and Akragas. Nutton, V., Ancient Medicine, second edition (London, 2012), 87CrossRefGoogle Scholar, with 349 n. 3, notes evidence for the peripatetic lifestyle of the Hippocratic writers.

24 On economic migrants in antiquity in general, and craftsmen as a subclass of these migrants in particular, see Garland (n. 22), 150–66, esp. 150–1 and 165–6.

25 This was probably as true for doctors as for other demiourgoi. See Nutton (n. 23), 87–8; Horstmanhoff, H. F. J., ‘The Ancient Physician: Craftsman or Scientist?’, JHM 45 (1990), 187–96Google Scholar; see also Pleket, H. W., ‘The Social Status of Physicians in the Graeco-Roman World’, in van der Eijk, P. J., Horstmanshoff, H. F. J., and Schrijvers, P. H. (eds.), Ancient Medicine in Its Socio-Cultural Context (Amsterdam, 1995), 27–34Google Scholar. It is true that doctors – especially public doctors – were recognized as a valued part of the community more than many demiourgoi, as is suggested by the many extant honorary inscriptions for doctors and additional rights granted to them, but this seems to be in addition to payment for services. See Samama, É., Les Médecins dans le monde grec (Geneva, 2003), 45–58Google Scholar.

26 In this section, I focus particularly on individuals who changed from one techne to another, but there are certainly also cases where someone changed from a given techne to a way of making a living that did not involve a techne at all: for instance, they could become a manual labourer, a merchant, or a farmer (here following the idea that farming can be contrasted with the technai, as described above in n. 18). See esp. DVC 3147B, which (possibly) asks whether one will be more successful pursuing a techne or working as a seafaring merchant; and the Works and Days, which neatly describes many of the ways of making money (viz. kinds of erga): within Hesiod's family, there is seafaring (618–34), farming (639–40 et passim), and poetry (1–10 and 656–62; cf. 26), and he also describes others performing manual labour (602) and crafts such as bronzeworking (493–7).

27 Parker (n. 2), 77. See also ibid., 77 n. 25, on the change from first to third person.

28 The authors of DVC connect Epilytos with southern Italy.

29 See Burford (n. 23), 82–7, and below n. 31.

30 See Hasaki, E., ‘Craft Apprenticeship in Ancient Greece: Reaching beyond the Masters’, in Wendrich, W. (ed.), Archaeology and Apprenticeship. Body Knowledge, Identity, and Communities of Practice (Tucson, ASZ, 2012), 186–7Google Scholar. See further Westermann, W. L., ‘Apprentice Contracts and the Apprentice System in Roman Egypt’, CPh 9 (1914), 295–315Google Scholar; and Bergamasco, M., ‘Le διδασκαλικαί nella ricerca attuale’, Aegyptus 75 (1995), 95–167Google Scholar, esp. the ‘Prospetto dei Documenti’ (162–7), which lists the lengths of courses and payment methods recorded in these contracts.

31 These are: (with little or no restoration): 1394, 2102, 3147B; (with extensive restoration): 567B, 1215B, 1239A, 2077B, 2114A, 3454B, 4048A. Strikingly, this kind of phrase is very rare in literature of the classical period – there are more uses of it in the tablets from the fifth and fourth centuries bce than all literary works from this same period combined. The literary citations are as follows: Hdt. 6.60; Soph. El. 1500 (the relevant craft there being prophecy, with which cf. DVC 1082A); Pl. Leg. 3.695a; Dicaearchus fr. 57A Wehrli; and Aristoxenus fr. 51 Wehrli (which mentions Socrates’ patroia techne, sculpting). This brings our total to five uses of this phrase among literary works from this period, versus the ten uses among the tablets (this number goes down to three when the restored tablets are removed, although it is still quite high for a collection of a few thousand tablets versus all ancient Greek literary texts of the period). This is not to say that it was uncommon for trades to be passed down from father to son; on the contrary, this seems to have been the standard model. See especially Burford (n. 23), 82–7, for evidence of this in trades such as weaving, ship-building, painting, and sculpture; for the evidence of it in the mantike techne, see Flower, M., ‘Who is a Seer?’, in The Seer in Ancient Greece (Berkeley, CA, 2008), 37–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Sobak, R., ‘Sokrates among the Shoemakers’, Hesperia 84 (2015), 669–712CrossRefGoogle Scholar, discusses the social connections developed by demiourgoi in the Athenian Agora.

33 See Simon, E., Festivals of Attica. An Archaeological Commentary (Madison, WI, 1983), 38–9Google Scholar; see also Parker, R., Polytheism and Society at Athens (Oxford, 2005), 464–5Google Scholar.

34 See Harrison, E., ‘Alkamenes’ Sculptures for the Hephaisteion: Part III, Iconography and Style’, AJA 81 (1977), 425–6Google Scholar.

35 See further discussion of the epitaphs for craftsmen in Burford (n. 23), 176–83. I am grateful to Elliot Wilson for reminding me of this point.

36 Doyle, J., ‘Socrates and Gorgias’, Phronesis 55 (2010), 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, introduces the idea of ‘ethically charged’ professions, like rhetoric or philosophy. The notion is that some technai speak to who a person ‘fundamentally is’ and their ‘way of life’. I find his idea quite attractive, albeit too narrowly defined; he thinks that shoe-making, for instance, need not be ‘ethically charged’ because the craft uses ‘non-ethical practical knowledge’ (5 n. 7). I suggest that the practical craftsmen who travelled to Dodona may have thought of their craft as more substantially who they ‘fundamentally’ were than Doyle indicates, on the lines argued above: they identified their trade as part of their ancestral heritage; their social world was moulded by the craft they participated in; and they enacted rituals and worshiped gods in accordance with their role as a certain kind of craftsmen. Perhaps the picture we should have, then, is of a gradient, rather than a simple binary: there are not just two categories, ethically charged and not ethically charged, but a range of crafts that relate more or less tightly to their practitioner's fundamental identity.

37 See e.g. DVC 1395B.

38 See e.g. DVC 1411.

39 See e.g. DVC 3276B.