TOPPLING THE STATUES OF FAVORINUS AND DEMETRIUS OF PHALERUM

Abstract

The Corinthian Speech (Corinthiaca) in the corpus of Dio Chrysostom (Or. 31) is attributed to Favorinus (c.80–160) based on internal criteria of content and style. This article argues that a reference to an author of a Corinthian speech found in a collection of sayings in codex Vaticanus Graecus 1144 is a unique external reference to Favorinus as author of this speech.

This article argues that a single sentence prefaced to a single apophthegm in Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1144 represents unique external evidence for the attribution to Favorinus of the Corinthian speech transmitted among the works of Dio of Prusa (Dio Chrysostom).¹ This manuscript, which dates to the early fourteenth century, provides a collection of educational resources: handbooks in rhetoric, philosophy, mathematics, as well as various collections of anecdotes.² Most of the apophthegmata were edited by Sternbach, who entitled the section relevant here (fols. 228r–232v) Appendix Vaticana series II (AV2).³ Both this and the preceding Appendix Vaticana series I (AV1) are closely related to the more famous collection known as Gnomologium Vaticanum (GV), also edited by Sternbach.⁴

Sternbach omitted the first few apophthegms on fol. 228r in AV2,⁵ which according to his edition begins thus: Ἀριστείδης ὁ δίκαιος, ὀνειδιζόμενος ἐπὶ πενίᾳ, εἶπεν· ἐμοὶ μὲν ἡ πενία οὐδὲν συνιστορεῖ κακόν, σοὶ δ’ ὁ πλοῦτος πολλά (‘Aristides the Just, reproached once for his poverty, replied: “My poverty bears no witness to wrongdoing on my account, but your wealth bears plenty to yours”.’). With minor variants, this is the same as GV 47 and is also found in numerous other related manuscripts, including Par. Gr. 1168 and Oxford Bodl. Digby 6, the two main manuscripts of an important corpus of gnomologia known as the Corpus Parisinum (CP). AV2.1 is CP 3.364, which Amato uses as the source of Favorinus’ fr. F18 (= fr. 113 Barigazzi);⁶ we will return to this below, but it is important at the outset to point out that two long series of sayings in CP, namely what I term CP3 and CP6, derive to a significant extent from sources common to GV and AV.⁷

In the manuscript, but only noted in the critical apparatus of Sternbach's edition, we next read the surprising words: οὐκ Ἀθηναῖοι, ἀλλὰ Κορίνθιοι τὰς αὐτοῦ εἰκόνας κατέβαλ[λ]ον· πρὸς οὓς καὶ ὁ Κορινθιακὸς λόγος πεποίηται (‘Not the Athenians but the Corinthians took down his statues. His Corinthian speech is composed against them’). These words were probably a marginal note at some point incorporated into the main text; they have to do not with the preceding saying but with what follows (AV2.2): ὁ αὐτὸς ἀκούσας ὅτι τὰς εἰκόνας αὐτοῦ κατέβαλον, ἔφη· ἀλλ’ οὐ τὴν ἀρετήν, δι’ ἣν ἐκείνας ἀνέστησαν (‘He heard that they⁸ had removed his statues. “But”, he said, “not the merits for which they erected those statues”.’). This, too, is found in the same order in GV (n. 48) and in at least two other related manuscripts,⁹ though not this time in CP. Although Sternbach drew attention to the words introducing the saying in the apparatus critici of AV2 and GV (‘Vat., ubi tamquam peculiaris sententia apophthegmati nostro verba praemittuntur, quae manifesto deletae vocis …’), he understandably did not realize their implication.

Before establishing that this is probably a reference to Favorinus and his Corinthiaca, however, we must address the attribution to Aristides implicit in the ὁ αὐτὸς ‘the same man’. Anyone familiar with gnomologia and similar collections will recognize this as a recurrent problem: proper names being often not repeated in series of sayings or quotations from the same person but replaced with ‘the same man’, copyists frequently skip a name with the result that the sayings so prefaced seem to be attributed to a previously named person. This happens several times in AV2, as we can easily discover by comparing the related sources. For example, just a few sayings later the ὁ αὐτός of AV2.12 seems to belong to the Anaxarchus of AV2.11, but in both GV 66 and cod. Vindob. 149 n. 109 (see n. 9 below) it follows Arcesilaus; later in AV2 a whole series of apophthegms seems to be attributed to Thucydides that really belongs to Isocrates. Mix-ups like these were probably especially frequent when alphabetically arranged collections—such as GV and AV—were constructed from thematically or otherwise arranged collections.

While there is no evidence anywhere that Aristides ever witnessed the toppling of his statues, there is good evidence that Demetrius of Phalerum did and, moreover, that this particular apophthegm concerns him. First, this anecdote recurs almost verbatim in Diog. Laert. Life of Demetrius (5.82): οὗτος ἀκούσας ὅτι τὰς εἰκόνας αὐτοῦ κατέστρεψαν Ἀθηναῖοι, ἀλλ’ οὐ τὴν ἀρετήν, ἔφη, δι’ ἣν ἐκείνας ἀνέστησαν. Apart from the explicit mention of the Athenians—which all the other manuscripts have but which AV2 omits precisely because of the words under discussion—the only verbal difference here is κατέστρεψαν for κατέβαλον. This κατέστρεψαν (‘overturned’) is apt in the context; there is even archaeological evidence for the literal overturning of the statues of Demetrius.¹⁰ The gnomological tradition took this anecdote either from Diogenes Laertius—perhaps indirectly from a series of excerpts from Laertius—or from a source common to both Laertius and the GV-related tradition. There is, accordingly, strong evidence that Demetrius of Phalerum was the intended author. But what does he have to do with Favorinus?

Let us begin with the evidence of Favorinus in the Byzantine gnomologia.¹¹ In their respective editions of the fragments of Favorinus, both Amato and Barigazzi included two series of apophthegms in gnomological collections: eight anecdotes in cod. Barocc. 50 (tenth century) under the heading Φαβωρίνου ἐνθυμήματα φιλοσόφων καὶ ἐρωτήματα,¹² and twenty anecdotes in the above-mentioned CP under the heading Φαβωρίνου.¹³ (The two series do not overlap.) The last nine sayings in CP all have obvious parallels in Diogenes Laertius, even following the order of his chapters. These parallels do not include the anecdote about the statues of Demetrius (which does not occur at all in CP), but they do include a saying attributed to Demetrius in the same chapter of Laertius (CP 3.377 = Diog. Laert. 5.82 = Favorinus F134, in fragmenta incertae sedis) and, of course, the saying of Aristides in AV2.1. The anecdotes under the name of Favorinus in CP are anecdotes not about Favorinus but about others.

Favorinus is a frequently cited source for Diogenes Laertius, including in his Life of Demetrius.¹⁴ The Ἀπομνημονεύματα (Memorabilia) of Favorinus is cited early in this Life (5.76). The Παντοδαπὴ ἱστορία (Omnigena historia) is cited in the next chapter, precisely where we find the very first mention of the toppling of the statues (5.77, transl. Hicks, Loeb):

σφόδρα δὲ λαμπρὸς ὢν παρὰ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις, ὅμως ἐπεσκοτήθη καὶ αὐτὸς ὑπὸ τοῦ τὰ πάντα διεσθίοντος φθόνου. ἐπιβουλευθεὶς γὰρ ὑπό τινων δίκην θανάτου οὐ παρὼν ὦφλεν. οὐ μὴν ἐκυρίευσαν τοῦ σώματος αὐτοῦ, ἀλλὰ τὸν ἰὸν ἀπήρυγον εἰς τὸν χαλκόν, κατασπάσαντες αὐτοῦ τὰς εἰκόνας καὶ τὰς μὲν ἀποδόμενοι, τὰς δὲ βυθίσαντες, τὰς δὲ κατακόψαντες εἰς ἀμίδας (λέγεται γὰρ καὶ τοῦτο). μία δὲ μόνη σῴζεται ἐν ἀκροπόλει. Φαβωρῖνος δέ φησιν ἐν Παντοδαπῇ ἱστορίᾳ τοῦτο ποιῆσαι τοὺς Ἀθηναίους Δημητρίου κελεύσαντος τοῦ βασιλέως. ἀλλὰ καὶ τῷ ἔτει τῆς ἀρχῆς αὐτοῦ ἐπέγραψαν ἀνομίας, ὡς Φαβωρῖνος.

For all his popularity with the Athenians he nevertheless suffered eclipse through all-devouring envy. Having been indicted by some persons on a capital charge, he let judgement go by default; and, when his accusers could not get hold of his person, they disgorged their venom on the bronze of his statues. These they tore down from their pedestals; some were sold, some cast into the sea, and others were even, it is said, broken up to make bedroom-utensils. Only one is preserved in the Acropolis. In his Miscellaneous History, Favorinus tells us that the Athenians did this at the bidding of King Demetrius [Poliorcetes]. And in the official list the year in which he was archon was styled ‘the year of lawlessness’, according to this same Favorinus.

The same episode in the life of Demetrius is referenced in Corinthiaca §41 (Δημητρίου τοῦ Φαληρέως πεντακοσίους ἀνδριάντας καὶ χιλίους ὑπὸ Ἀθηναίων μιᾷ καὶ τῇ αὐτῇ ἡμέρᾳ πάντας καθῃρημένους).

Scholars agree that the Κορινθιακὸς λόγος, transmitted as oration 31 in the corpus of Dio Chrysostom, is a speech written by Favorinus and occasioned by the removal of his statue(s) in that city.¹⁵ However, since Emperius first argued this in 1832,¹⁶ the criteria for it have been strictly internal, based on content and style; for example, the orator boasts of being a Roman who has adopted Greek ways in §25, true of Favorinus, hardly of Dio of Prusa. As I now argue that the words before AV2.2 in Vaticanus Graecus 1144 are a direct reference to Favorinus as the author of the speech, the burden of proof is on me, especially given that ‘dans les biblothèques de Byzance, Favorinos est parmi les grands absents de la littérature ancienne, puisque aucun ouvrage de lui n'a été conservé par tradition directe’ (Amato [n. 1 (2005)], 1.214).

First, while none of his discourses appears to have been known in Byzantium under his own name, Favorinus was known to Byzantine scholars, among whom both Diogenes Laertius and gnomologia were popular. The entry under Favorinus in the Suda (Φ 4) concludes οὗτος ἔγραψε καὶ γνωμολογικά, and, as already noted, the name of Favorinus occurs as a source for the sayings of others in Byzantine collections of apophthegms and anecdotes.

Second, the contents of these collections were not written in the Middle Ages, but were rather compiled from previous collections going back to late antique and imperial sources. This is the case for the GV-related gnomologia in which post-Hellenistic names either do not occur or are an obvious interpolation from some Christian source; they do not occur in GV or in AV2. The specific words we are concerned with (οὐκ Ἀθηναῖοι, ἀλλὰ Κορίνθιοι τὰς αὐτοῦ εἰκόνας κατέβαλ[λ]ον· πρὸς οὓς καὶ ὁ Κορινθιακὸς λόγος πεποίηται) were most likely a marginal note in a collection of anecdotes from Favorinus compiled in Late Antiquity, or perhaps even earlier, when the speeches of Favorinus were still well known to educated scribes.¹⁷ In CP, GV and AV, we may even be dealing with borrowings from the Ἀπομνημονεύματα.¹⁸

Third, the opening of AV2 will be a remnant of a selection of anecdotes taken from works of Favorinus from which the heading (Φαβωρίνου or ἐκ τοῦ Φαβωρίνου or similar) has disappeared in the transmission—recall that AV2.1 occurs under the heading Φαβωρίνου in CP (= F18 Amato). The Aristides saying corresponding to our saying (AV2.2) in GV bears the lemma Ἀλέξιδος, which indicates confusion in the lemmata of their sources.¹⁹ Likewise, on turning to CP, we find the heading Φαβωρίνου before CP 3.361 (= F122 Amato), followed by τοῦ αὐτοῦ ἀποφθέγματα at 3.362, a saying of Cleobulus (F123 Amato; cf. GV 370, AV2.55, Diog. Laert. 1.91), then a saying of Diogenes (F112; cf. GV 178, Diog. Laert. 6.62), then the Aristides saying (F18; GV 47, AV2.1), but then a sudden confusion with an anonymous saying introduced only by ἐρωτηθείς (F16; attributed to Aristides only in florilegia dependent on CP). This indicates prior confusion in the sources of AV, GV and CP.

Fourth, although AV2.2 concerns Demetrius of Phalerum, since Athenians are specifically mentioned in all the parallels, the anecdote may have been transmitted in its source without an explicit subject—for example the οὗτος we have in Diogenes Laertius or the ὁ αὐτός in our text—so that the scribe who wrote the note about the Corinthians understood it as referring to the author in the heading (Φαβωρίνου or similar).

Fifth, the Κορινθιακὸς λόγος of the note must be the speech in the corpus of Dio. What else could it be? There is only one known Κορινθιακὸς λόγος dealing with the removal of statues. Therefore, the author referred to must be either Dio or Favorinus. It seems certain that the speech was written by Favorinus and thus must long have been known to be his. If the note was written early enough, then it refers to Favorinus. If the note belongs to the Middle Ages, then it probably refers to Dio Chrysostom. But how would Dio enter the discussion here? One possibility would simply be to assume a selection of anecdotes going under the heading Δίωνος, as I have assumed for Favorinus. There is in fact a precedent for this, and that is the heading ἐκ τῶν Δίωνος Χρειῶν occurring four times in Stobaeus (2.31.89, 3.7.28, 3.13.42, 3.34.16), of which the first actually does resemble a passage in a speech of Dio (Or. 32.3). Outside of Stobaeus, however, I have not come across anecdotes like this under the heading Δίωνος in the gnomologia, but there are a number of such under the heading Φαβωρίνου. Once again it must be emphasized that AV2.1 as found in CP is one such example. That AV2.2 itself is not found in CP does not mean that the anecdote about Demetrius was not among anecdotes going under the name of Favorinus in the source of AV or GV: both AV1 and AV2 contain numerous items not found in CP. That the story about Demetrius and his statues was elsewhere cited by Favorinus speaks in favour of my argument that we are dealing with a missing heading indicating Favorinus in the source common to AV2 and GV.

If these words do indeed show an awareness of Favorinus as the author of the Corinthiaca, then this is our sole external testimony to that fact, and they add moreover to the evidence for the dating of the GV-related gnomologia to the Imperial period.