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Some Characters of Athens, Rome, and England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

R. G. Ussher
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Characters, though not under that title, began like many other things with Homer. A δειλός is typified in Iliad xiii and the Catalogue of Ships has brief descriptions of the leaders of the various contingents. Ajax the Lesser, for example, ὀλίγος μὲν ἔην, λινοθώρηξ,/ ἐγχείῃ δ' ἐκέκαστο Пανέλληναςκαὶ'Αχαιούς. Or Nireus, ‘the best-looking man that went to Troy, excepting the blameless Achilles’: ἀλλ' ἀλαпαδνὸς ἔην, пαῦρος δέ οἱ εἳпετο λαός. Best known, and in contrast to Nireus the handsome, is Homer's portrayal of Thersites (αἴσχιστος δὲ ἀνὴρ ὑпό λιον ἦλθε) with full supporting details of his figure. The physical oddities of Pittakos the sage were emphasized in verses by Alkaios: Herodotos, through Otanes the Persian in Book iii, depicted the nature of a tyrant. This recalls ὁ τυραννικός of Plato Republic iv. 573 c as well as his political descriptions of men and constitutions in Book viii.7 Aristotle also pictured tyrants (Politics 1313b): as well as (for ethics) a χαῦνος, (for rhetoric) a young man and an old, and the germ of the later portrait Character is seen in Thucydides already (Themistocles, i. 138. 3). But the truest pre-Theophrastan Character is that of Philokleon in the Wasps—the lover of the courts, φιληλιαστής.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , April 1966 , pp. 64 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1966

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References

page 64 note 1 Lines 276–87. Cf. Anacreon fr. 144B; Theophr. Char. xxv.Google Scholar

page 64 note 2 Iliad ii. 529 f.Google Scholar

page 64 note 3 Ibid. 671 ff.

page 64 note 4 Ibid. 212 ff.

page 64 note 5 Diogenes Laertius i. 81.

page 64 note 6 iii. 80, 4ff.

page 64 note 7 In particular 548 d ff.; 553 a ff.; 559 d ff.; 571 a ff.

page 64 note 8 Nic. Eth. 1125a, 1123a.

page 64 note 9 Rhetoric 1389a3; 1389b13.

page 64 note 10 Aristophanes, , Wasps 88 ff.Google Scholar

page 64 note 11 Twenty-three in Casaubon's first edition (1592): he later published twenty-eight (1599, 1612). The last two (whose genuineness need not be doubted) were printed first in 1786 (Amaduzzi, Parma).

page 64 note 12 Boegehold, A. H., ‘The Date of Theophrastus' Characters’, TAPA xc (1959), 15 ff.Google Scholar, has argued persuasively for a terminus post quem in 317 B.c.Steinmetz, P., ‘Der Zweck der Charaktere Theophrasts’Google Scholar (Annales Universitatis Saraviensis, vol. viii, Fasc. iii, 1959), 238 dates the work to the last decade of the fourth century B.c.

page 64 note 13 e.g. Joseph Hall (see below).

page 65 note 1 260 ff., 407 ff.

page 65 note 2 Ft. 534, 11 (Edmonds, , FAC IIIb, p. 774)Google Scholar, Adespota fr. 341Google Scholar (ibid. IIIa, p. 412). Cf. Menander fr. 109 (ibid. IIIb, p. 592) with Char. x. 14.Google Scholar

page 66 note 1 Cf. Menander fr. 97 (FAC IIIb, p. 588)Google Scholar, fr. 10 (ibid. p. 550).

page 66 note 2 See Corbato, C.: Note sulla poetica MenandreaGoogle Scholar (Universita degli Studi di Trieste Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, Istituto di Filologia classica N. 6, 1959), 18 ff. Cf. Steinmetz, P.: ‘Menander und Theophrast: Folgerungen aus dem Dyskolos’, Rheinisches Museum, N.F. 103, ii (1960), 185 ff.Google Scholar: who does not, however, accept that the playwright was influenced by Theophrastus, (art. cit. n. 24, pp. 237 ff.).Google Scholar

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page 66 note 4 See below.

page 66 note 5 See above.

page 66 note 6 Athenaeus iv. 168c.

page 66 note 7 Lupus, Rutilius ii. 7.Google Scholar

page 66 note 8 пερί κακιῶν x.

page 66 note 9 Sat. i. 9.Google Scholar

page 66 note 10 xlv. 9.

page 66 note 11 xcv. 65.

page 66 note 12 Inst. Orat. vi. 2. 17.Google Scholar

page 66 note 13 iv. 50. 63.

page 66 note 14 See above.

page 67 note 1 Blount's Dedication: To the Reader.

page 67 note 2 De Vitiis, Book vii ed. Bassi, D., Herculanensium voluminum quae supersunt, Collectio tertia (Milan, 1914).Google Scholar

page 67 note 3 Char. iii. 5.Google Scholar

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page 67 note 6 Ibid. 100 f.

page 67 note 7 The New Year (Sketches by Boz, Oxford Illustrated Edition), 227.Google Scholar Cf. ibid. 364, where Mr. Flamwell is a compound of the κόλαξ and ἀλαών. For the former see also MrMincin, (p. 510)Google Scholar, for the latter ‘The “Throwing-Off” Young Gentleman’ (P. 538). For the ὀψιμαθής see p. 670. ‘The Couple who Coddle Themselves’ recall Butler's ‘Medicine-Taker’: cf. Blaize Shotterel in Old St. Paul's.

page 68 note 1 Epigrams ix. 98.Google Scholar

page 68 note 2 Ibid. ix. 59; Char. xxiii. 8.Google Scholar

page 68 note 3 Char. xxii. 8.Google Scholar

page 68 note 4 Char. v. 6.Google Scholar

page 68 note 5 Epigrams v. 79.Google Scholar This is a ‘typical’ feature of the Englishman (Wilson, , op. cit., p. 71, 179).Google Scholar

page 68 note 6 Epigrams ii. 11Google Scholar; 14; 27 (cf. 69, 6), ibid. iii. 63.

page 68 note 7 Seneca, Epistles xlv. 9Google Scholar; Horace, Epode ii.Google Scholar

page 68 note 8 Claudian, : Carminum Minorum Corpusculum xxGoogle Scholar (Kock, , p. 223).Google ScholarPope, Ode on Solitude.Google Scholar

page 68 note 9 Epigrams x. 47.Google Scholar Surrey's poem is readily accessible in Silver Poets of the 16th Century, ed. Bullet, Gerald (Everyman's Library), 139.Google Scholar

page 69 note 1 Sat. viii. 79 ff.Google Scholar ‘esto bonus miles…’ (Boswell, 's HebridesGoogle Scholar, Nelson, , p. 323).Google Scholar The Character-form, incidentally, appears to have had some fascination for the Doctor: on the same expedition ‘he drew the character of a rapacious Highland chief with the strength of Theophrastus or La Bruyere’ (ibid., p. 338), and this was seventy years after the vogue for Characters had passed away. Cf. the sketches in the Rambler (1753)Google Scholar and the Idler (1761).Google Scholar

page 69 note 2 Perhaps after Thucydides (see above). Comparison of Sallust and Thucydides is commonplace (Quintilian, Inst. Orat. x. i. 101).Google Scholar

page 69 note 3 Annals iv.Google Scholar 1.4; Catiline 5; Livy, xxi. 3. 2.Google Scholar

page 69 note 4 Mostly only when important for the action (as Annals iv. 57, 3).Google Scholar For physical description in the English Character (natural in a context of biography) see, for example, Walton, 's Life of Dr. Robert SandersonGoogle Scholar (Lives, World's Classics, 397): ‘I hope I shall not disoblige my Reader if I here inlarge into a further Character of his person and temper. As first That he was moderately tall…’ Walton quotes Overbury's ‘Fair and Happy Milk-maid’ in The Complete Angler (Everyman's Library), 30.Google Scholar

page 69 note 5 As Annals xiv. 47.Google Scholar i. See Daitz, S. G.; ‘Tacitus’ Technique of Character Portrayal’ AJP Ixxxi (1960), 30–52.Google Scholar For similar characterization upon death cf. (for example) Clarendon's Charles I or his Character of the Earle of Lindsey, History of the Rebellion, Books xi, vi.Google Scholar

page 69 note 6 Annals xiv. 22. 2.Google Scholar

page 69 note 7 Catiline 25.Google Scholar

page 69 note 8 Tac. Annals xiii. 45.Google Scholar

page 69 note 9 Epigrams iii. 93.Google Scholar

page 70 note 1 31 ff.

‘… erat unica custos,

Afra genus, tota patriam testante figura…’

page 70 note 2 Satire vi.Google Scholar

page 70 note 3 Annals iii. 33. 3.Google Scholar The words are attributed to Severus Caecina.

page 70 note 4 Moral Essays ii.Google Scholar Pope's use of Characters has been studied in detail by Boyce, B.: The Character Sketches in Pope's Poems (Duke University Press, 1962).Google Scholar Eustace Budgell's translation of the Theophrastan Characters (1714) was ridiculed by Pope, , The Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. Ault, and Butt, , vol. vi (London and New Haven, 1954), 123.Google Scholar

page 70 note 5 The great and obvious exceptions, of course, are in the Canterbury Tales (and possibly some of Pliny's Letters, for example, vii. 24). Jonson's Characters include Fallace (in Every Man Out of his Humour), ‘Deliro's wife and idol; a proud, mincingpeat…’: and still more concise, Saviolina: ‘A court-lady, whose weightiest praise is a light wit, admired by herself, and one more, her servant Brisk.’ A very different description is Evelyn, John's ‘imperfect character of my dear child’ (Diary, 10 03 1685).Google Scholar

page 71 note 1 The original ethical intention is a probable deduction from the opening of Rutilius' version (see next note).

page 71 note 2 Rutilius Lupus ii. 7.

page 71 note 3 De Elia et leiunio xviGoogle Scholar (Migne, , Patrologia Latina, xiv. 717 ff.).Google Scholar

page 71 note 4 SirWilson, Thomas: The Arte of Rhetorique (Oxford, 1909), 187.Google Scholar A fine medieval portrait is that of Abbot Samson in The Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond, ed. Butler, H. E. (London, 1951), 39.Google Scholar

page 71 note 5 Cf. e.g. Morris, R., Old English Homilies (Early English Text Society, 1868), 52Google Scholar, (slanderers and harlots), id. An Old English Miscellany (EETS, 1872), 186 ff.Google Scholar, ‘A lutel soth Sermon’. It contains a comprehensive list, ranging from back-biters to bakers and brewers who give short measure (cf. Char. xxx).Google Scholar Braggarts, misers, and upstarts (for example) are depicted in The Times' Whistle, ed. Cowper, J. M. (EETS, 1871), 25 ff.Google Scholar On the whole subject of native and Theophrastan influence on Characters see Lichtenberg, K.: Der Einfluss des Theophrast auf die englischen Characterwriters des 17. Jahrhunderts (Berlin 1921).Google Scholar

page 71 note 6 Ancrene Riwle: tr. Salu, M. B. (London, 1955), 36–39.Google Scholar ‘Back-biters and flaunderers’ are also mentioned in Wilson, (op. cit. 117).Google Scholar With his ‘Covetous Man’ (n. 4) cf. that in the Ancrene Rhole (ed. cit. 95).Google Scholar

page 71 note 7 The Shyp of Folys of the Worlde. Barclay's version of Sebastian Brant's Das Narrenschyff was based on Latin, French, and Dutch translations. It led to a curious literature dealing exclusively with vagabonds and thieves (for example Harman, Thomas's A Caveat or Warening for Common Cursetors, 1567).Google Scholar

page 71 note 8 The Works of Thomas Adams: being the sum of his sermons, meditations and other divine and moral discourses, ed. Smith, T., 3 vols. (Edinburgh, 1861–1862).Google Scholar See in particular i. 18, ‘Mystical Bedlam’.

page 72 note 1 Adversus Jovinianum i. 47Google Scholar (Migne, , Patrologia Latina xxiii. 176).Google Scholar

page 72 note 2 The Wife of Bath's Prologue, 669 ff.Google Scholar, The Merchant's Tale, 1310.Google Scholar

page 73 note 1 From his Proem.

page 73 note 2 Jonson also shows the influence of Libanius: Baldwin, E. C., ‘Ben Jonson's Indebtedness to the Greek Character-Sketch’, Modern Language Notes xvi (1901), 385–96.Google Scholar For the Theophrastan influence on Marston see Peter, John: Complaint and Satire in Early English Literature (Oxford, 1956), 249 ff.Google Scholar

page 73 note 3 The Fawn is most readily accessible in The Plays of John Marston, ed. Wood, H. Harvey (Edinburgh and London, 1934).Google Scholar

page 73 note 4 Boyce, B.: The Theophrastan Character in England to 1642 (Harvard, 1947), 177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 73 note 5 Volpone iii.Google Scholar… ‘Echo my-Lord, and lick away a moth…’ (cf. Char. ii. 3. 3)Google Scholar, iv: A rat had gnawn my spur-leathers… I threw three beans over the threshold’ (cf. Char. xvi. 3, 6).Google Scholar Cf. also Shift in Every Man Out of his Humour with Char, xxiii. 3.Google Scholar

page 73 note 6 Cf. Char. v. 6.Google Scholar

page 74 note 1 Cf. Char. xii. 13Google Scholar; xiii. 5.

page 74 note 2 Amorphus (Cynthia's Revels ii. 3. 85).Google Scholar ‘The second act of Cynthia's Revels might well be called the first English character-book’ (A. C. Judson, New York, 1912, 78).

page 74 note 3 Bartholomew Fair. Cf. The Magnetic Lady i. 2.Google ScholarThe New Inn (1631)Google Scholar is prefaced by ‘the Persons of the Play, with some short Characterisme of the chiefe Actors’. These however, are different in kind from the Characters in the other plays referred to.

page 74 note 4 1667–9. First published 1759, complete printed edition 1908.

page 75 note 1 ‘Were yesterday Polemon's Natales kept

That so his threshold is all freshly stept

With new-shed bloud? could hee not sacrifice

Some sorry morkin that unbidden dies:

Or meager heifer, or some rotten Ewe:

But he must needes his Posts with blood embrew,

And on his way-doore fix the horned head,

With flowers, and with rib-bands garnished?’

(iii. 4; Char. xxii. 7)Google Scholar

Cf. v. 2, 123–4, Char. x. 3Google Scholar; vi. 11, 44; ii. 3. See The Collected Poems of Joseph Hall, ed. Davenport, A. (Liverpool, 1949).Google Scholar

page 75 note 2 Sat. iv. 17 ff.Google Scholar

page 75 note 3 Sat. ii. 39 ff.Google Scholar

page 75 note 4 Notes and Queries (07, 1961), 253.Google Scholar

page 76 note 1 Cf. Overbury: ‘A Puritane’, ‘A Precisian’ , Earle: ‘A shee Precise Hypocrite’.

page 76 note 2 Marvell's Poems and Letters, ed. Margoliouth, H. M. (2nd edition, Oxford, 1952), i. 95.Google Scholar The reference to Butler's ‘Holland’ I take from Miss DeArmond (see next note). The Dutchman is ‘typical’ of drunkenness in Wilson, (op. cit., p. 71).Google Scholar

page 76 note 3 Harleian Miscellany X, pp. 500–15.Google Scholar See the informative article by MissDeArmond, A. J., ‘Some Aspects of Character-writing in the Period of the Restoration’, Delaware Notes (Sixteenth Series, 1943), 55–89.Google Scholar

page 76 note 4 Essays and Characters of a Prisoner and Prisoners (1618).Google Scholar Cf. John Earle on the same subject.

page 76 note 5 London and the Country Carbonadoed and Quartered into Several Characters (1632).Google Scholar

page 77 note 1 The Coffee House or News-Mongers Hall (1672)Google Scholar, The Character of a Coffee-House, With the Symptoms of a Town-Wit (1673).Google Scholar

page 77 note 2 A Character of London-Village. By a Countrey-Poet (1684).Google Scholar

page 77 note 3 Fantastickes (1616).Google Scholar Cf., for example, Spenser, , The Pageant of the Seasons and the MonthsGoogle Scholar (The Faerie Queene vii. 7, 28).Google Scholar

page 77 note 4 Ibid.

page 77 note 5 Characters upon Essays, Moral and Divine (1615).Google Scholar

page 77 note 6 A Strange Metamorphosis of Man, transformed into a Wilderness, Deciphered in Characters (1634).Google Scholar

page 77 note 7 The Times Anatomized, in several Characters (1646).Google Scholar

page 78 note 1 Davie, Donald: The Heyday of Sir Walter Scott, 107, 149 ff.Google Scholar