Urbano 1 Introduction

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***AUTHORS UNEDITED VERSION***

EXPECTED PUBLICATION DATE: FALL 2013

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AUTHOR

THE PHILOSOPHICAL LIFE:

BIOGRAPHY AND THE CRAFTING OF INTELLECTUAL IDENTITY IN

LATE ANTIQUITY

Arthur P. Urbano

Providence College, Providence, RI

Introduction: Biography as Arena of Philosophical Competition

We who live and work in academia know that the exchange and debate of ideas does

not occur divorced from various contextsintellectual, cultural, political, and social. Our

participation in the production of knowledge occurs in various arenas of activity, including

classrooms, departments, educational institutions, and, of course, academic fields, each

defined by distinctive, yet interacting, rules of engagement. In many ways, the profession of

ancient philosopher was characterized by similar realities. Many of these ancient

philosophers understood their role as a comprehensive one that integrated philosophical

inquiry, a way of life, and the education of individuals, along with a diachronic

consciousness of their field. For example, the Platonists of late antiquity not only regarded

Plato as the source of specific doctrines, but they also contemplated these doctrines within a

tradition of teachers and interpreters, past and present, estimating how these had contributed

to (or inhibited) a fuller understanding of these doctrines. It was essential to perceive how

each piece fit together to construct a transhistorical dialogue.


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The current work is a study of developments in the philosophical field of late

antiquity. By the end of the third century C.E., ancient intellectuals, both Christian and non-

Christian, conceived of philosophia as ways of thinking and living (dogmata and politeia),

the harmonious mastery of which produced the perfect lifeone of union with and likeness

to the divine.1

As Pierre Hadot notes, while modern thinkers (and even some modern

philosophers themselves) might think of philosophy strictly as the domain of intellect,

Neoplatonists and Christians of antiquity regarded wisdom as a divinely revealed body of

doctrines and practices, either planted within the human creature by its creator or revealed in

some mythic past. This philosophy was entrusted to certain philosophers who transmitted it

to their students. For the intellectual of late antiquity (as for many of us today), it was just as

important to invoke an intellectual pedigree, to situate oneself within a tradition, as it was to

demonstrate ones own knowledge and practice in the pursuit of true knowledge. In this

study, I will focus on the role of ancient biographical literature, especially the bios, in

constructing the history of philosophy and tracing the lineages of the two major philosophical

movements of late antiquity: Christianity and what we now call Neoplatonism. I intend to

examine more broadly the application of the language and practices of kinship relations and

inheritance in biographical literature as operative in the formation of communities of

intellectuals and in establishing legitimating genealogies that sat at the core of narratives of

tradition and succession. Set against the backdrop of the concrete social, historical, and

cultural contexts in which philosophical debate occurred, the composition and consumption

of biographical literature will be regarded as typical practices of competing intellectual

factions.


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My intention is to offer a reading and analysis of biographical literature produced

between the third and fifth centuries C.E. that elucidates how the real social settings and

practices involved in the production and proliferation of these works created an arena for the

competition over philosophy among the Greek-speaking intellectual elite, particularly

between circles of Christians and Neoplatonists. While also considering questions of genre,

form, and imagery, I will explore more fully the impact of these literary productions upon

ancient constructions of philosophical history and pedigree, the negotiation of pedagogical

authority, and the implications for the shape of the philosophical field in late antiquity. The

literary representation of subjects such as Origen, Plotinus, and Antony of Egypt, as

exemplars, teachers, and transmitters of the philosophical life, embodied and gave historical

particularity to the debates and maneuverings within pedagogical settings. These literary

portraits were produced and competed with each other at a critical time in historyduring

the Christianization of the Roman Empire. At stake was philosophy itself: how knowledge

and ethics were related to the divine; who possessed pedagogic authority; and what

institutions would have the patronage and support to exercise this pedagogic authority. For

sympathetic audiences, biographical literature served as a sort of social charter that crafted a

series of relationships among subjects, authors and audiences, locating particular

communities of intellectuals within lineages of descent that were linked to narratives of the

origins and transmission of philosophy.

Several major questions drive this study, questions which first arose for me during a

graduate seminar on early Christian asceticism. I was intrigued that someone like Theodoret

of Cyrrhus could describe monastic practice as a life that teaches philosophy and the

monks of Syria as philosophers.2

Certainly his subjects did not fit the conventional


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understanding of a philosopher in the ancient world. And why go this route at any rate? Why

did so many of the major Christian thinkers of late antiquity not simply disengage from the

classical philosophical tradition? After all, many of them charged that it was a flawed, if not

a corrupt, mode of thought. Curiously, even when someone like Tertullian purports to

distance himself from the philosophical thought of the Greeks and Romans, he still could not

completely extricate himself from its web. Did he even recognize this?

Related questions concern the expounding of Christian doctrines in the technical

terminology of prior and contemporary Greek philosophy. This was not simply a

phenomenon of the second century and beyond, but is evident to various degrees even within

the earliest Christian writings, in the letters of Paul and in the prologue of the Gospel of John,

for example. Conceptual and linguistic expression are bound to the social contexts in which a

Christian intellectual culture took shape: what can we make of the culture of teachers, texts,

schools, and doctrines that emerged in Christian circles, and how do we make sense of the

dynamics of continuity and differentiation in relation to the social contexts of non-Christian

intellectuals?

These questions forced me to consider larger methodological issues. Two approaches

that have been abandoned in the field of late ancient studies are the spoliation model, on the

one hand, and the assumption of a great divide between Christians and pagans. In the latter

view, Christian-pagan interaction is uncritically regarded as a battle to the death of two

religious systems, a notion that has been hard to refine, as Susanna Elm has noted.3

It is

easy to fall back uncritically on what we might call the spoliation, or dependency,

model, according to which Christians borrowed and copied ideas, practices, and artistic styles

that really belonged to Romans, Greeks, and Jews. Here, Christians emerge as cultural


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scavengers, or pagans in disguise. In fact, this discourse of cultural differentiation appears

in the writings of several early Christian writers, who use the narrative of the spoliation of

Egypt from Exodus as the basis of their ancient cultural theory.4 As such, it appears that

they envisioned their engagement with Greek philosophical, literary, and artistic traditions as

stealing, a conscious adoption and adaptation of Greek learning to beautify and augment

the expression of Christianity, and thereby stripping away aesthetic forms from an idolatrous

essence. While this is true to a certain extent, we cannot accept this narrative uncritically

without considering what was already unconsciously inscribed in early Christian intellectuals

as native residents of a vast and varied Roman world. Immersed in the culture of intellectual

circles across the Roman empire, they were not cultural outsiders, as will be explored in

further detail in Chapter One.

Thus, the interactions among Christian and non-Christian elite in the Greek-speaking

contexts of the late Roman empire are better understood as debates and exchanges among a

segment of society that was occupied with the negotiation of identity, specifically, what it

meant to be a Greek, or a Christian, and what the shifting landscapes of late antiquity

meant for the Greek intellectual and literary heritage. Christians, of course, did not identify

themselves as Hellenes, as such, yet those who shared in the proclaimed communality of

paideia, which Simon Goldhill describes as a shared system of reference and expectation

that linked the elite of Empire, had to confront it, as they confronted and interacted with

the self-proclaimed Hellenes.5

The goal of this study is to map out where theology,

philosophy, history, and literature intersected in the ancient contexts that brought about a

transformation of classical philosophical culture into a Christian philosophical culture. I

intend to adopt an analytical framework that is informed by and builds upon recent


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scholarship in the fields of classics and late ancient studies. Definitions of Greek ethnic

identity in the classical and Hellenistic eras, as explored by Jonathan Hall and in the

collection of essays edited by Irad Malkin (Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity [Harvard

University Press, 2001] and Paul Cartledge, Peter Garnsey, and Erich Gruen (Hellenistic

Constructs: Essays in Culture, History, and Historiography [University of California Press,

1997]), have contributed to the discussions of scholars of late antiquity who continue to study

notions of culture and ethnicity in the Roman imperial and late Roman periods, largely under

the influence of postcolonial theory. These studies have called attention to the role of myths

of origins, fictive kinship and descent, shared territory and history in defining Greek identity

before the fifth century B.C.E. Hall in particular notes how a shift from blood and kin

towards broader cultural criteria characterized the basis for Greek identity from the fifth

century onwards, primarily as a result of interaction with the Persian other.6

The work of

Simon Goldhill, Simon Swain and others, has drawn scholarly attention to reconfigurations

of Greekness in the context of Roman imperialism during the Second Sophistic.7

In

particular, Goldhill has noted the concern on the part of the educated elite of the period to be

able to demonstrate an affiliation to Greek culture through paideia and the varied strategies

of negotiation, competition, and projection, what he calls formulations of Greekness in

process.8 The essay in Goldhills volume by Rebecca Preston explores the intertwining of

cultural with political authority under the banner of a paideia, which drew upon a common

store of paradigmatic historical figures and events and a canon of classical models for

creative imitation.9

In the same vein, Simon Swain has called attention to the constructions

and negotiations of the past, and an interest in tradition, in the establishment of cultural

authority.10


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In the area of late ancient studies, several important contributions stand out. The

collection of essays edited by Dale Martin and Patricia Cox Miller, The Cultural Turn in Late

Ancient Studies: Gender, Asceticism, and Historiography (Duke University Press, 2005),

illustrates the important developments in textual and historical analysis that have given

particular attention to culture.11

As Susanna Elm notes in her essay, Hellenism and

Historiography: Gregory of Nazianzus and Julian in Dialogue, postcolonial theory has had a

notable impact on the study of ethnic and cultural identity in imperial Greece and Rome, and

this in turn has informed scholarship in the field of late antiquity.12 Jeremy Schotts recent

monograph exemplifies this well. In Christianity, Empire and the Making of Religion in Late

Antiquity (University of Pennsylvania, 2008), Schott considers the construction of Christian

and pagan identities within the contexts of imperial power and subjugation, and not apart

from the broader politics of ethnic and cultural identity engendered by Roman

imperialism.13

In a society where paideia was the pervasive culture of the educated elite, the

pepaideumenoi, regardless of religious allegiance, I contend with many others that it is no

longer accurate to use a model of a great divide between Christians and pagans. In this study,

I consider all of the authors under consideration to be culturally Greek, regardless of their

religious allegiance. That is to say, they were educated in Greek literature, rhetoric, and

philosophy through a curriculum of the poets, orators, and philosophers; they spoke Greek;

they produced texts according to Greek linguistic and literary standards; and promoted ideas

rooted in the metaphysical and ethical conceptual complex of pre-Christian Greek

philosophy. Yet at the same time, I do not believe we can discard the notion of divide

entirely. Instead, among the intellectual elite, one may still talk of a partitioning of which the


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players were conscious, a differentiation into various parties within the intellectual elite. This

partitioning, then, is an intracultural differentiation, rather than intercultural differentiation.

How ancient authors differentiated what was Greek and what was Christian, as it related

to philosophical culture and practice lies in many respects at the core of this project.

Of course, the boundaries between what was Greek and what was Christian were

not, and are not, always clear. These boundaries developed and shifted. Throughout I will

refrain as much as possible from using the terms pagan and paganism when referring to

the Neoplatonist philosophers. It is not a self-designation, but rather a Christian description

of the other, which developed in the western empire in the fourth century. In the context of

the present discussion, it would be confusing and inappropriate because it is an all-

encompassing term that included all non-Christians and non-Jews, with no distinction of

social or intellectual location. Carrying the original semantic connotation of the term

(peasant, rustic, unlearned), it was used to class both philosopher and peasant together

on the basis of religious allegiance. Instead, I have opted to call the non-Christian

philosophers Greeks (and Neoplatonists, when the context warrants more specificity).

This was a self-descriptive term, which was endowed with the same metaphysical

oecumenicity that Christianity claimed for itself by those who considered themselves as

such.14 Nevertheless, Greeks and Christians often characterized their struggles with each

other as a struggle between two separate systems, Christianity and Hellenism, thus

contributing to the notion of great divide noted by Elm above.

Of particular interest to me are the processes of distinction and self-definition within

the context of shared culture, and, more specifically, the culture and practices of the

intellectual elite, who were the producers and transmitters of knowledge and held


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pedagogical authority. Hence, my focus is upon a specific subgroup within the larger elite

classintellectualswhich, in the context of late antiquity, can be further subdivided into

two main factions, or parties, Christians and Greeks. While the questions raised by a

postcolonial lens are pertinent here, my point of departure is different. Instead of

investigating directly how the context of empire impacted the construction of ethnic and

cultural identities, my aim is to investigate primarily the role of literary and discursive

practices upon the formation of the identity of intellectuals, and the place of ethnic, cultural,

religious, and political categories as spokes on this hub.

The relative proximity of Christian and Greek intellectuals cannot be underestimated,

especially before the fourth century, when they were educated in the same circles, shared

teachers and classrooms, and lived in overlapping social worlds. Thus any notion of

borrowing or despoiling becomes moot. To imagine Christian intellectuals as a vastly

different group that collected and borrowed ideas and practices that were not their own is, in

the light of recent research, an untenable model. The notion of mimicry is helpful,

especially when considering it in relation to the ancient notion of mimesis in educational and

philosophical circles.15

However, I think the category can be problematic in the present

discussion. I would agree that the apologists were out to beat the philosophers at their own

game, but according to the model I am suggesting here, I would insist that it was just as

much the apologists game, as insiders, not as outsiders.16

Competition from within, rather than borrowing from without, seems to offer a better

model. Thus I will cast the exchanges, debates, and interactions between the Greek-speaking

Christian and Greek intellectuals of late antiquity as a real and multifaceted struggle to define

religious, intellectual, and political identities, beginning as early as the second century. Such


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a model, I believe, provides a perspective on the nuts and bolts of the intellectual

machinery and social networks of late antiquity within the broader cultural complex. Thus, in

this type of model, Christian intellectuals and Neoplatonists are thought of not simply as

religious factions (i.e., Christians and pagans) in opposition, but they are also classified

together as the class of educated, literate, philosophical thinkers who contributed to

philosophical and theological discourse as well as the production of cultural products,

literature in particular, which contributed to and participated in a struggle to define the

parameters of a universal philosophy.17 This competition can be thought of as one between a

dominant establishment the Greeks, who represent the status quo, and Christians, a

party of newcomers, who, as early as the mid-second century, challenged the status quo

and adopted strategies to subvert the prevailing philosophical orthodoxy.18 Competing within

structured spaces of accepted norms and practices with their own internal logic and power

relations, Christian and Greek intellectuals competed in overlapping fields of philosophy,

religion, and education.19

Nevertheless, both Greeks and Christians also participated in a

transformation of these spaces and structures, as a result of their competition, with Christians,

for example, transferring pedagogical activity into liturgical worship. These two subgroups

were not monolithic in and of themselves, and there was simultaneous internal competition

among Christians (e.g., Athanasius versus Arius) and Greeks (e.g., Porphyry versus his

colleague Amelius), as well as cross-temporal competitions (e.g., Theodoret versus Plotinus,

or Numenius versus the Academics). In both cases, the competition is about delineating

authoritative tradition as much as establishing practical authority.

What was the goal of this competition? Of primary importance was paideia, not

simply an education, but a comprehensive intellectual, moral, cultural, and social formation


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of young men (and young women to a limited extent).20

Paideia produced Greeks, men of

culture, prestige, and power. Literacy and rhetoric, familiarity with the literary and

philosophical traditions of Greece, the ownership and production of texts were sought after

and acquired by true Greeks.21

The embodiment of social conventions and the mastery of

proper social interaction identified one as a pepaideumenos. The devotion to study,

engagement in philosophical debate, and the adoption of ascetic practices raised him closer to

the heights of the divine world. Association with prestigious schools and teachers, and the

privilege of a noble intellectual pedigree ranked him with the greatest and most influential

thinkers and shapers of Greek culture.

Greeks and Christians were competing to own and define philosophy. This entailed

the negotiation and acquisition of cultural capital, or cultural knowledge, goods, and

honors.22

The importance of literacy, access to texts, exegetical and rhetorical skills, ascetic

practices, and intellectual lineage were important in this regard. The texts or authorities to

which value was attached were negotiated in the process of competition. A Christian and

Greek intellectual could agree, for example, that the possession and study of ancient texts, or

affiliation with a particular teacher, were of great value in the formation of souls, but they

would disagree over their precise identification: the Dialogues of Plato or the Letters of St.

Paul? The school of Plotinus or the school of Origen? Athens or Jerusalem? The formation of

an alternative Christian philosophical culture was neither isolated nor entirely divorced from

the larger intellectual and cultural world of late antiquity. For the Christian, the dichotomy

need not always be so severe. Why Plato or Paul, when one could be led by both, but with the

philosopher bowing to the Apostle? Christians who found a certain usefulness in the Greek

literary and philosophical traditions could find for them a secondary, preparatory position


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preceding the study of Christian Scripture and doctrines. Like the sterile daughter of Pharaoh

who adopted Moses, Greek learning could provide valuable necessities to a growing child,

but ultimately, the childs natural mother, the Church, would provide him with true

sustenance for growth.23

Even today, the study of philosophy is a primer for theological

studies in the Catholic tradition, a first step and preparation in the theological curriculumas

the saying goes, the handmaiden to theology.

Accumulation of these cultural goods produces symbolic power, or authority based

on honor and prestige. A figure like Origen, then, a Christian educated in the classical

philosophical tradition, who was able to participate in the philosophical field, acquired

recognition by both Christian and Greek members of the intellectual class, either in the form

of praise or criticism. Porphyry, for example, praised Origen for his aptitude and excellence,

but was compelled to refute his specific views, including specific attacks against Origen in

his anti-Christian writing. Such attacks were a standard practice in the philosophical field.

Thus, Origen could claim and was recognized to have an authoritative voice in the field (even

to the chagrin of Porphyry) and could successfully make an impact on the debate within the

field.

This was also a competition for pedagogic authority, which eventually became

concentrated on higher education, that is, the teaching of philosophy, but not to the

exclusion of literary and rhetorical education. Education, of course, is the means by which an

intellectual, cultural, and ethical heritage is conserved, inculcated, and consecrated, here

understood as the recognition and bestowal of legitimacy by authoritative agents through

ritual and social practices.24

Though the differences in philosophical and theological ideas

were often vast (and often not), all of the authors considered here operated within


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overlapping social and cultural worlds. They possessed writing and linguistic skills to engage

in dialogue directly and indirectly with competitors. Having been formed in paideia and

included among the small percentage of educated elite, men such as Porphyry, Eusebius,

Julian, and the Cappadocians, shared a privileged social position and common elite values

regarding education, literacy, and culture that influenced and guided their participation in the

competition as all of us who are academics know, there are certain rules we are expected

to play by. Paideia served as both a point of reference and a locus of competition in this

process. More than education and culture, it was a durable and molding complex of ideas and

practices that shaped the contours of the lives of the educated elite and afforded them a basis

for cultural authority, and, to varying degrees, social and political authority. 25

The locus of pedagogic activity, that is, the institutions vested with the authority to

educate, was also in flux at the level of philosophical education. Very little would change in

terms of literary and rhetorical education. The philosophical communities of the third and

fourth centuries have been characterized as an international, elite class of itinerant

intellectuals, organized loosely in circles of associates.26

Organized around a specific

teacher, these communities were often stratified into inner and outer circles of access to the

teacher, with the inner circle enjoying a common life that fostered a sense of community.

Such were the communities of the philosophers Plotinus and Iamblichus. Not official posts in

a government-funded or private academic institution, the vitality of these circles largely

depended on the charismatic authority of the teacher, which was enhanced by his expertise,

accumulation of cultural capital, and his affiliation with a prestigious intellectual pedigree. In

most cases, once the teacher died, the circle dispersed, and students often moved elsewhere


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to establish another circle. Upon Plotinus death, his students continued their philosophical

work in various parts of Italy and even in Syria.

The patronage of Constantine in the fourth century strengthened the expanding trend

of institutionalization that characterized the networks of churches around the Roman Empire.

A man who held the office of bishop could invest the fruits of his rhetorical and

philosophical education in the service of Christian philosophy, using his office both to

educate his flock and to participate in intellectual discourse. Unlike the philosophers

authority, episcopal authority was defined less in terms of the individual holding the office

than in terms of the institutional authority of the office itself. It was not a fleeting authority

that died with its holder, but an institutionalized succession that endured in the episcopal

ministry. The authority of consecration, both in theological and Bourdieuian terms, lay in the

Church itself as new bishops received confirmation of their position by other holders of the

office. Lists of apostolic succession chronicled the proper lines of transmission.27

Councils

and synods of bishops produced official decisions regarding doctrine and governance.

Bishops were the primary producers of Christian philosophical bioi. As consecrator, the

bishop inscribed members of the Church who were outside the institutional structures into the

ranks of philosophers and co-teachers.28 The so-called charismatic authoritiesfor example,

Antony and the monks of Syriaexhibited less the intellectual skills of the professional

philosopher and more the nonverbal physical acts of practical virtue. Yet, their status was

subordinated both textually and objectively to Christian intellectualsthe bishops. As

authors, bishops also inscribed themselves as recipients of tradition, as does Athanasius who

both receives Antonys cloak and writes his bios.


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The Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius of Caesarea, introduced as a historical

narrative of the successions of the holy apostles from the Savior to the present time,

provided an overarching narrative of the revelation of true wisdom in Wisdom incarnate. It

laid the foundations of a descriptive and mythic account of an institutional ecclesiastical

network, which spread the divine life and philosophy to Greeks and barbarians alike, and

which assumed pedagogical activities previously reserved for the schools and circles of

Greek experts.29 Later church historians, such as Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret, built

upon Eusebius work. Porphyry, the student of Plotinus, would also lay the groundwork for a

mythic narrative of succession for later Platonists. Yet, Porphyry never attempted an

overarching foundational narrative to include all Platonists or all philosophers. Perhaps this is

because there was no interacting philosophical network of communities, but rather small,

independent, and geographically scattered circles organized around independent teachers.

They had no continuous succession and no official means of electing leaders. Theirs seemed

more an interest in than in , in a school of thought rather than an

institutional school.30

Nevertheless, as we shall see, the bioi of the Platonists present evidence for trends

towards the construction, consolidation, and codification of a philosophical tradition, or a

routinization of instruments necessary for institutionalization.31 For example, there was a

degree of self-reflection on the position and profession of the philosopher. From the time of

Iamblichus onward, it became more common to refer to the leaders of philosophical circles

as divine (). In the absence of an official instrument of succession, the hierarchy of

inner and outer circles disciples conferred honor through access to and relationship with the

teacher. The Greek philosophical bioi also show signs of efforts to codify a corpus of


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writings for a curriculum. Porphyrys organization of the Enneads, to which the Life of

Plotinus served as a type of hermeneutical prologue, acted as a canon of Plotinian texts, a

new addition to a formative collection of authoritative literature, which included the

Chaldean Oracles, Homer, Hesiod, and the dialogues of Plato.32

The Anonymous

Prolegomena, a sixth-century manual for the study of Platonic philosophy, attributes to

Iamblichus a curriculum that outlines the number and titles of Platonic dialogues and the

order in which they should be studied.33 Iamblichus Compendium of Pythagorean Doctrine

was organized as a progressive curriculum for the study of Pythagorean philosophy, and On

the Pythagorean Life served as its introduction.34

From a canon (however loosely defined) of

texts, formal curricula, and public discourse, there issued a consensus of topics deemed

worthy of discussion and debate. Though we cannot speak of a Neoplatonist creed

comparable to Christian creedal formulae, there were certainly specific topics that shaped

and directed the burning philosophical and theological questions of the daythe nature of

God, the immortality of the soul, the practices leading to virtue.

Finally, the geographical itinerancy of philosophers in earlier centuries began to give

way to more geographic concentration in the late fourth and fifth centuries. Athens, in

particular, remained the most important symbolic center of intellectual life for Greek

intellectuals and also for many Christian intellectuals because of its associations with

Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the origins of the Greek philosophical and cultural heritage.

The city was also more resistant to the incursion of Christianity, probably due to the presence

of a strong non-Christian aristocracy that sought to preserve the citys Greek identity. As a

result, the soil of this symbolic capital was ripe for the seeds of a budding Platonist

institution in the fifth century.


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Ultimately, this was a struggle for the souls of individuals and the shape of society.

According to Plutarch (following Plato), the virtuous life was one that was naturally

endowed, but nurtured and molded by a proper education. Left to his own design, without the

right guidance, even the man who possessed a philosophical nature would fall victim to the

perversion of his own weaknesses and his environment. The consequence: a great nature

turned bad.35

Thus, possessing a natural potential for virtue was not enough. Paideia was an

absolute necessity in the proper flourishing of the philosophical life.36 So it was, according to

Plato, that even the majority of those endowed with a great philosophical nature were

corrupted by goods, because they did not receive the best education.37

In the Moralia,

Plutarch regards paideia as the proper acting of reason, custom, and law on the taming of the

emotions of young mens irrational soul.38 Plutarch links deficient education and the failure

to control the passions, since it is education, not simply natural ability that steers the

emotions of the irrational soul to a virtuous course.39

Plato considered the role of society in

moral education functional only when that society was free from corruption.40

In this struggle, the Greeks, naturally, adopted a conservative strategy. Nevertheless,

paideia did not remain static, as the creative efforts of Neoplatonists like Porphyry and

Iamblichus demonstrate. Christians, on the other hand, employed various subversive

strategies to challenge the foundational narratives, texts, and institutions of the Greeks.

Competition also extended into the arenas of worship and political policy. There was indeed

much at stake, especially in the fourth century. As I see it, the key is to read the works of

these authors not simply as the writings of pagans and Christians squabbling over religion,

but as a discursive interchange of individuals educated in the most influential works of Greek

philosophy, competing to interpret and define the meaning of this heritage: it is at its heart a


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search for universal truth and an attempt to trace its history, to enumerate its representatives,

and to preserve and transmit it to future generations for the good of individuals and society.

In the third and fourth centuries, as Christian intellectuals began to participate in this

competition, the privileged past of Greece and its catalogue of authoritative representatives

was thrown into question, no longer a given, as the parameters of the debate shifted to other

pasts. Laura Nasrallah has remapped the location of figures such as Justin Martyr, his

student Tatian, and Lucian of Samosata as participants in a negotiation of authoritative

culture under conditions of empire.41 She identifies in these authors what she terms a

geographical thinking, or a mapping of the world, with paideia as compass. She notes a

simultaneous resistance and assimilation to paideia on the part of all three. Tatian, for

example, exhibits a negative valuation of Greek identity while he simultaneously performs

Greekness, that is, engages his rhetorical opponent through Greek literary forms and

references.42

Justin, meanwhile, appeals to the center of imperial power by aligning himself

to common paideutic values: as one of the provincial elites, speaking the common language

of Greek, of privileged philosophy, and of Roman subject-hood.43

In the fourth century, models of rejection begin to appear. Antony of Egypts famous

avoidance of primary and secondary education exposes his biographers overt disavowal of

the authority and value of that education.44 However, Athanasius would not have attained the

skills to write about Antony had he himself not benefited from the very education he

disavows. Similarly, Antonys dismissal of artful rhetoric and argumentation is itself

articulated in finely crafted rhetorical argumentation.45

Through a constructed representation

of Antony of Egypt, Athanasius misrecognizes, or disavows, the cultural and social value of

his own literary and rhetorical training. The alternative he proposes, however, is not


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completely divorced from the dominant system, paideia. Instead, it is simultaneously one that

is influenced by the dominant system and converts it. In this case, there is, on the one hand, a

conscious challenge to the influence and authority associated with Greek intellectual training

and pedagogical authority. Yet, on the other, the semantics and specialized discourse of

philosophy, the values and cultural norms inculcated through paideia, and the practices of the

educated elite, operated at an unconscious, internalized level, in one sense misrecognized, but

at the same time consciously modified (though not necessarily abandoned).

Biographical Literature as Philosophical Texts

In this study, I focus on biographical literature as an arena, or locus, of competition,

for the negotiation of the parameters, ownership, and transmission of philosophy. I

understand the very production and propagation of such literature and its consumption as

constitutive practices of the intellectual elite. Under the umbrella term of biographical

literature, I follow Simon Swain, who designates as biographical texts those that furnish

detailed accounts of individuals lives.46

Thus, included here are the bios, the philosophical

history, early forms of hagiography, and funeral orations. I exclude panegyrics of living

subjects (except for a brief consideration of Eusebius Praise of Constantine) because of the

importance of the dead as exemplars of the philosophical life and ancestors of communities.

Because of the increased production and proliferation of both Greek and Latin biographical

literature in the third through fifth centuries C.E., I have limited the scope of this project to

those examples written in Greek by bishops and heads of philosophical communities who

also had the positions, resources, and influence to play a significant role in the debate over

philosophy. Alongside treatises that delineated the dialectical aspects of philosophical debate,

the ancient bios was a literary vehicle that portrayed subjects as representations of the


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philosophical life. In turn, the textual life was intended to inspire and mold the moral

formation of the readers.47 Related to various forms of praise literature, such as the

panegyric and the encomium, the bioi and other biographical texts of this period display a

development of forms and conventions on a constantly evolving literary continuum that

extends back to classical Greece. It is perhaps no accident that the fifth century B.C.E.

produced the beginnings of Greek biographical literature precisely when broader cultural

criteria were invoked in understandings of what it meant to be Greek.48

Unfortunately, most of the examples of biography produced between the fifth and

third centuries B.C.E. have been lost. The subjects of those that have survived in fragmentary

condition tend to be mythical figures, the poets, kings, and generals. Collections of the

sayings of wise men and philosophers, such as Aesop, the Seven Sages and Pythagoras,

circulated well before the Hellenistic period, perhaps as early as the fifth century.49

Isocrates

Evagoras, written around 370 B.C.E., claimed to be the first prose encomium of a

contemporary person. Not long after, Xenophon, a follower of Socrates, composed the

Agesilaus, a work modeled on the Evagoras. Xenophons purpose in praising the king of

Sparta goes beyond the simple narration of important accomplishments, recounting the deeds

of an excellent king and general that attest to his character. The subject, therefore, is a worthy

model of imitation. Xenophon lauds Agesilaus for his ability to rule himself, an ideal king

who was able to lead his subjects (and also the readers of his bios) to virtue. 50

Competition among the intellectual circles of antiquity contributed significantly to the

development and evolution of biographical literature. The Hellenistic era witnessed

important evolutions in the formal development of a generic theory of the bios.51

The

Socratics, Peripatetics, and the later Platonists all utilized biographical literature to promote


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philosophical doctrines and praise their subjects as historically important and philosophically

paradigmatic.52 Momigliano attributes this to new trends in philosophy and rhetoric that

emphasized the importance of individual education, achievement, and virtue.53 For the

philosophers, the deeds of prominent figures of the past could serve as instruction in virtue,

and biographical literature a vehicle for promoting ideas. Though not biographical literature

in a strict sense, the Dialogues of Plato feature the words and deeds of Socrates, molding his

life, and especially his death, into a philosophical argument in a literary, and somewhat

biographical, form.54 In addition to his Agesilaus, Xenophons Memorabilia and Cyropaedia

represent important innovations and directions in biographical literature. Momigliano, who

regards Xenophon as a pioneer experimenter in biographical forms, expresses concisely the

Socratic contribution to biographical literature: The Socratics experimented in biography,

and the experiments were directed towards capturing the potentialities rather than the realities

of individual lives. Socrates, the main subject of their considerations (there were other

subjects, such as Cyrus), was not so much the real Socrates as the potential Socrates. He was

not a dead man whose life could be recounted. He was the guide to territories as yet

unexplored.55

The school of Aristotle exhibited a great interest in collecting and arranging the

biographical anecdotes and sayings of important individuals into epideictic and mimetic

literature that served as illustrations of virtue and vice.56 As such, biographical literature

could serve a more useful purpose than for mere curiosity or historical fact. Biographical

facts, like natural or historical facts, were better organized in order to answer big questions,

to provide an empirical basis for philosophical analysis. Aristotle himself wrote no

biographical works, but in those of the later Peripatetics, we see how a subjects deeds


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() revealed character ().57 The term bios first appears at this time.58 Dicaearchus

of Messine, a student of Aristotle, penned a Life of Greece and a piece entitled ,

perhaps a work of collective biography, which included biographical sketches of

philosophers, such as Pythagoras and Plato. Diogenes Laertius (ca. third century C.E.) used

Dicaearchus as a source for his Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers.59 Satyrus (ca.

third century B.C.E.), one of the Peripatetics cited by Jerome as a literary predecessor in the

dedication of his De viris illustribus, composed a Life of the poet Euripides in dialogue

form.60 Aristoxenus of Tarentum (fourth century B.C.E.) was perhaps the most important of

the Peripatetics in the production of biographical literature. Formerly a student of the

Pythagorean school, Aristoxenus wrote a Life of Pythagoras, which praised the sage for his

contributions to philosophy. Aristoxenus also wrote Lives to malign philosophical rivals. For

example, his Lives of Plato and Socrates lambaste the plagiarism and licentiousness of their

subjects, as a hostile polemic against the contemporary Academy.61

The Parallel Lives of Plutarch (ca. 50 C.E.-120), perhaps the best known of the

philosopher-biographers of antiquity, provided later biographers with both a theory and

model of the genre. Timothy E. Duffs monograph on Plutarch explores the moralizing

purpose of the Lives. The chief objective was to reveal the subjects character through an

examination of his family background, education, and major accomplishments, exposing

virtue or vice to give the reader an opportunity to judge the moral qualities of the subject and

to regard the subject as a model for imitation (in the case of the virtuous) for his or her own

improvement.62

In the famous prologue of the parallel Lives of Alexander and Caesar,

Plutarch distinguishes his task from that of the historian. As an author of lives (),

instead of histories (), his task was to portray his subjects character through the


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signs of the soul ( ). Histories, as mere collections of great deeds

(), did not necessarily provide a moral directive ( ).63 The

composition of a bios was analogous to the work of painters who represented the character of

their subject through a careful representation of the face and eyes. The portrait or the statue

demonstrated in a static but eternal moment the ethical composition of the subject. It was a

portrait of the soul. Likewise, the biographer painted a portrait of the soul in words. This

analogy of biographical text and sculpted image was already present in previous works.64

In

Biography in Late Antiquity, Patricia Cox characterized the biographies of late antiquity as

caricatures of the holy man, whose aim was to evoke and thus to reveal the interior

geography of the heros lifethat hero being the philosopher who stood at the intersection

of the human and the divine.65

Biographical Literature and Philosophical History

The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers of Diogenes Laertius had a much

different purpose than Plutarchs Parallel Lives. More the doxographer than the philosopher,

Diogenes traced the origins and divisions of the major schools of philosophy through

biographical anecdotes, apophthegmata, and bibliographies of the principal representatives of

the schools. Diogenes does not make his own philosophical leanings explicit, leading us to

believe that the intent of his work was more historical than apologetic. As an example of

collective biography, the work categorizes the lives of founders and heads of schools in a

series of individual bioi. Strung together according to their chronological succession, the

work as a whole could be regarded as a work of philosophical history. His work is not

included in this study as it was not intended as an apology for one school of philosophy over


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others. He displays an interest in the interrelation of schools and treats the coexistence of

different schools as acceptable. Other important examples would follow, including

Porphyrys fragmentary Philosophical History and Theodoret of Cyrrhus Religious History,

two works of collective biography called history by their authors. This designation raises

some interesting questions. In what way should we understand the authors designation of

these works as histories? And to what extent could we regard both collective and

individual bioi as a sort of ancient historiographical enterprise?

Biographical literature came into being at approximately the same time as

historiographical literature in Greece.66

Much of the scholarly discussion has revolved around

the relationship of the bios to other literary and performative genres, such as the encomium,

panegyric, and, especially, the history.67 Until recently, scholarship on biographical literature

has posed very historical questions, including the origins of the genres and their value for

historical reconstruction. Some German scholars saw the bios as an inroad to the ancient

Greeks conception of the individual.68

Others, like Friedrich Leo, concentrated on literary

forms and established the categories of classification that would direct the study of ancient

biographies for many years.69

He named two types of biographies: the Plutarchan type,

which was organized chronologically, and the Suetonian type, arranged thematically. More

recent scholarship has deemed these classifications problematic.70

Shifting the discourse a bit, but still entrenched in questions of genre and form,

Arnaldo Momigliano treated the literary relationship between biography and historiography

in his influential series of essays, The Development of Greek Biography (1971). Since

antiquity, ancient authors had been reluctant to relate the two genres. In the famous passage

from the prologue of the Life of Alexander, Plutarch posited a stark distinction between the


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life and the history, the former having a distinct moral purpose. But Momigliano boldly

asserted that nobody nowadays is likely to doubt that biography is some kind of history,

and wondered why the Greeks never recognized that biography is history.71 Yet he

distinguishes biography from history on the basis of their intended facticity: The

historian was supposed to tell the truth. When he was forced to report unchecked rumors, he

was supposed to say so. This was the rule established by Herodotus and Thucydides.72

The

biographer, on the other hand, apparently approached factual accuracy differently: Even

historians like Xenophon with a philosophic education forgot about truth when they came to

write encomia and idealized biography.73

Recent studies on the origins and literary characteristics of the bios have focused

attention on its social contexts and functions.Moving away from the types of classification

proposed by Leo and others, Charles Talbert suggested a classification on the basis of the

texts function in its social-intellectual-spiritual milieu, as didactic (propagandistic) or

nondidactic (not propagandistic).74

To this end, he situated bioi within the Sitz im Leben of

the communities that produced them. Drawing connections between the place of bioi in

philosophical schools and the gospels in early Christian communities, Talbert explored the

interrelationship among cultic activity, myth, and the construction of tradition in the

development of biographical literature. In What Are the Gospels? A Comparison with Greco-

Roman Biography (2004), Richard A. Burridge analyzed ancient biographies with a view to

understanding the genre of the gospels. His examination proceeds according to external

elements (literary features, structure, form) and internal elements (topics, style, social

setting), concluding that bioi were a flexible but recognizable genre in antiquity and that the


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gospels would have been recognized as part of this genre.75

In the bios, history and myth

merge, generating a sort of myth of origins.

Gentili and Cerri considered again the question of biography and history in History

and Biography in Ancient Thought (1988). Largely following the approach of Momigliano,

the authors argue that biographies and histories, as literary genres that appear to have

originated and evolved around the same time, should not be opposed absolutely, despite the

sharp distinction made by the ancients between the two genres. Instead, they suggest

considering their interrelation.76 In response to this, and considering Momiglianos question

regarding the relationship between biography and history, I suggest we regard biographical

literature as some kind of ancient historiography. Seen within its social-historical contexts,

as a textual practice of tradition-building and history-writing, it cannot be denied that authors

participated in an historiographic task, inventing and reinventing the history and

representatives of the inheritance of philosophy. Works such as Porphyrys Philosophos

historia, Eunapius Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists, and Theodorets Religious

History narrated the history of philosophical traditions through biographical accounts of

philosophical representations from the past. As contributions to a process of tradition

building, philosophical bioi,77 individually and collectively, constructed histories of

philosophy.

The Bios as Arena of Cultural Competition

An understanding of the literary conventions and innovations of biographical

literature, their theological and philosophical interests, and the social contexts in which they

were produced and read, permits us to regard biographical literature as an arena, or locus


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of debate and negotiation, in a competition among parties of the Greek-speaking educated

elite, the pepaideumenoi. The production, circulation, and consumption of biographical

literature constituted one strategy in this competition. The bios, then, served in its

conventional literary and rhetorical aspects as a practical, competitive tool in the competition.

Biography could be used to define, delimit, and promote the characteristics of the

philosophical life. As a pedagogical tool, biographies presented models for imitation.

Authors enlisted noble figures of the recent and distant past, praising them as founders,

exemplars, and transmitters of knowledge and virtue. Biographical productions also

addressed sociopolitical and cultural concerns, particularly between Christians and

Greeks.78

As Talbert points out, biographies often served as weapons in debates over

succession and transmission among the rival Hellenistic schools of philosophy.79

Conceptions of the origins of knowledge were bound up with implications for the stream of

its pure transmission within the structures of educational and religious institutions. To this

end, authors often employed the language of kinship and inheritance, giving expression to a

relationship between transmitters and recipients. In some ways, the complex of myth of

origins, descent, shared history, and claims to land that characterized expressions of Hellenic

ethnicity in ancient Greece seem to have adapted to claims of Greek cultural identity,

particularly among groups of intellectual elites.80 Even intellectual dynasties required a

pedigree and shared history to claim, guard, and bequeath an inheritance, in this case, not

only the inheritance of a precious philosophical tradition, but also the skills, expertise, and

authority to correctly teach and transmit it.81

Teachers not only imparted knowledge to their

students, but they were also fathers, who adopted their students into the lineages of the


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great traditions by what Libanius considered a kinship of words.82

The language of

inheritance represented philosophy as a complete body of knowledgetexts and traditions of

interpretation and practices. Together, lineage and inheritance, which determined identity,

ownership, authority, and social relations in so many ways in the Mediterranean world,

applied also to the intangible inheritance of ideas and doctrines, establishing fictive

bloodlines, philosophical DNA, in nascent institutions. A clear and stable succession

(), from father to son, from one generation to the next, demarcated family trees

and intellectual dynasties. If we can talk of the Christian notion of apostolic succession, a

reading of Eunapius alone reminds us that the Greeks had a similar conception of what we

might call philosophic succession, a concept examined in great detail by Robert Penella

(Greek Philosophers and Sophists in the Fourth Century: Studies in Eunapius of Sardis

[1990]) as it relates to Eunapius Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists.

We can see in the interplay between the literary features of biographical literature and

the social contexts of their production and circulation how lineage and succession were

reinforced. Possessing a special affinity to the divine, which afforded an aura of sanctity,

subjects were also portrayed as ancestors, founders, and teachers who exemplified the

philosophical life in their teaching and ascetic practice. Creating and reinforcing bonds

among subject, author, and audience, these texts formed a type of social charter for Christian

and Neoplatonist communities in narratives of the origins of philosophy (e.g., The Life of

Pythagoras, The Life of Moses), the foundation of communities (e.g., The Life of Antony,

The Life of Macrina), and critical moments in the history of the transmission of philosophy

(e.g., The Life of Plotinus, The Life of Proclus). In the production of the bioi themselves,

authors established a series of relationships that served as polemical, apologetic, and


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formational discourses within the larger cultural competition. The following outline adapts

the discussion in Hgg and Rousseau by considering relationships around the text, that is,

inside the communities where biographical texts circulated and contributed to self-

understanding, alongside relationships at the level of the text:83

1. subject-author: The author, qua author, claimed privileged knowledge of thesubject, whether through personal acquaintance or study, and presented himself

as a recipient or heir of the subjects teaching.

2. author-audience: By virtue of his intermediary role, the author played a pivotalrole in the transmission of the philosophical inheritance from the subject to the

audience, and acted as an important link in the chain of intellectual descent.

3. subject-audience: Like the Roman imagines maiorum, textual portraits of theexemplary dead served as ancestral figures for the intended audience, as well as

expressions and models of an ideal of the virtuous life. Their philosophical

heritage was both the means by which descent was reckoned and the ancestral

inheritance that was passed on.

It should not be surprising, then, that the primary social setting of the production and

consumption of biographical literature was within structures claiming pedagogic authority

schools, churches, even small, informal circles of intellectuals.84 The authors to be examined

here were among the most powerful and influential players in the competition. They were the

educated elite, men formed by paideia, bound togetheramicably and sometimes

inimicallyin a social and cultural world that governed the upper echelons of Roman

society.85

They are almost exclusively Greek-speakers, heads of schools and bishops, with

distinctly philosophical interests. The numerous homilies and commentaries by Christian


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teachers and bishops often read like the philosophical discourses of the Neoplatonists on the

texts of Plato or Homer. But whereas the Neoplatonists promoted a conservative (but still

newly developed) curriculum founded upon the traditional Greek canon, as a means of

preserving and reproducing a culture of Hellenism, many Christian intellectuals fostered the

development of a Christian education that challenged and subverted Greek curricula, models,

lineages, and histories. The intention was not always to destroy Greek paideia, but to

transform it into a Christian paideia and to replace and reprioritize the teachers and

institutions that consecrated, transmitted, and reproduced cultural orthodoxy.86

A Philosophical Economy

It seems even the ancients were aware of the symbolic economy of philosophy that

provided the immaterial and material goods necessary for virtuous living, intellectual

formation, and participation in competition. Philosophy is sometimes conceived of as an

immaterial wealth, acquired through a range of intellectual, bodily, and social practices.87

Acquisition of wisdom occurs through a combination of natural ability, formation through

human institutions and guidance, and encounter with the divine. The proliferation and

consumption of bioi were important parts of the processes of philosophical formation and

incorporation into communities. Thus they had an individual and collective scope.

It may be useful at this point to consider from this vantage point the evangelization of

philosophy, and the intended reach of the production of biographical literature, philosophical

histories, and pedagogical lineages. Here Bourdieu provides a useful analytical model.88

In

the production and circulation of cultural goods, he identifies a field of restricted

production in which these goods are produced primarily for other producers. According to

this strategy, producers tend to produce for their competitors and for others within their field,


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marginalizing themselves from the larger public of nonproducers. In terms of the production

of philosophical biographies, we might think of intended readership, including the

accessibility of its themes, argument, and language. For example, Porphyrys Live of

Plotinus and Iamblichus On the Pythagorean Life, both introductions to philosophical

curricula, fall into this category. These were produced specifically for consumption by other

intellectuals, Greek or Christian. In the field of large-scale production, producers produce

for a broader public, both for other producers and for nonproducers outside their field.

Theodorets Religious History clearly had a larger audience of nonspecialists in mind, not

limited to intellectuals, or to aspiring monks, but not excluding them either. Christians, more

often than the Greeks, aimed for a large-scale production of bioi, proffering philosophy to

a larger audience. One did not need to be literate or have access to a library in order to know

the stories of the lives of Antony of Egypt, or Macrina, or the monks of Syria. Calendars

organized time around the feast days of the saints, whose lives were read and commented

upon as part of the churches liturgical life.

Athanasius considered the church the school of Christ, and Christian intellectuals,

like Origen, Basil of Caesarea, and other bishops, transformed the church into centers of

education, school-like settings, which extended the content of philosophy and the narrative of

its transmission to a much wider public.89 The Greeks did not do this, but restricted their

activities, including the circulation of bioi, to elite circles. Neither Eunapius nor Marinus

took their laudatory accounts of their teachers to the masses. By the end of the fourth century,

it would have been politically dangerous to do so. Maintaining a conservative line under

extreme pressure, they also continued to offer restrictive models, which aimed to preserve an

untainted notion of Greekness based on education, culture, status, and gender. Their approach


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to philosophy and education remained essentially conservativea defense of the traditional

structures founded upon a Platonic intellectual tradition that advocated a Greek canon, Greek

cults, and an aristocratic monopoly on any form of philosophy. Where Christians were trying

to cut the bonds between Greek identity and philosophy, the Greeks, naturally, tried to

strengthen those bonds, eventually becoming the guardians of Greek religion when their cults

were under attack. Christian bishops, the primary producers of Christian philosophical bioi,

often belonged to the same class of wealthy intellectuals, but did not exclusively offer

bishops as representatives and transmitters of philosophy. Instead, Christian philosophical

models issued from all classes and stations in society: Origen the intellectual; Constantine the

emperor; Macrina the ascetic leader of a community; the monks of Egyptpoor and rich

alike who, like Antony, abandoned the urban context for a life of solitude and ascetic

practice.

This study aims to bring together an array of ancient and modern discussions of

biographical literature: giving close attention to levels of dialogue which ancient biographical

productions reflect and directed as arenas of competition, while engaging previous scholarly

treatments of biographical literature. In each chapter, examples of Christian and Greek

biography are paired together in order to highlight particular areas of debate and negotiation

that characterized the struggle for philosophy. The biographical literature is in turn situated

within the larger corpora of their authors to call attention to programmatic trends in their

work. In so doing, I wish to demonstrate how biography contributed to the construction of

identity among intellectuals of late antiquity. In casting the production and consumption of

this literature as a dialogue, I am not presuming that Christians necessarily read the Greeks


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literature and vice versa (though that is not to be excluded in every case), but rather that

biography reflects the terms of debate and competition in the broader cultural context, where

interaction often did occur.

Strategies of subversion and transformation were characterized by an ambiguity that

made cultural competition possible and necessary. Christians did not enter from without, but

from within. Our authors were themselves the products of the very paideia they sought to

transform. Chapter One explores the roots that remained as Christian intellectuals entered the

arena of philosophical competition. Here I provide a sketch of the state of the philosophical

world in late antiquity, which locates Christian intellectuals within the social and cultural

contexts, networks and trends of that world, and suggest that the Christian entrance into what

was already a competitive field presented another legitimate and viable option that could

continue to engage other developing Platonisms. Chapter Two examines the role of

biography in describing traditions of philosophical origins. Moses and Pythagoras are the

figures who dominate this discussion. Related questions, which arise in such works, are the

relation of barbarian wisdom to the origins of Greek philosophy and, in the case of

Christian texts, the nature of the interrelationship between Greek and Christian philosophy at

their origins. In Chapter Three, the focus turns to the biographical productions of Eusebius

and Porphyry as attempts to write their respective heroes, Origen and Plotinus, into

developing narratives of philosophical history. The themes of decline and renewal direct this

narrative, as their subjects represent a reform and rediscovery of the origins of philosophy. At

the same time, both biographers aim to take their place as authoritative heir and

representative of these traditions. In Chapter Four, the focus turns to the philosopher ruler in

a side-by-side reading of Eusebius Life of Constantine and Libanius Epitaphios on Julian.


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Here the relationship between political philosophy and programs of religious and cultural

reform are examined through the lens of biography. Chapter Five considers the displacement

and recasting of the philosopher in Athanasius Life of Antony, perhaps the most influential

of all the works examined here. I have paired this text with Eunapius Lives of the

Philosophers and Sophists in order to highlight the continuities and differentiations in

conceptions of teachers of wisdom in the late fourth century, a contrast between philosophers

in unlikely places and philosophers in likely places. Chapter Six continues the discussion of

finding philosophers in unlikely places in the biographical accounts of Christian and Greek

women, namely Macrina and Sosipatra (who receives one of the longest treatments in the

work of Eunapius). Of particular interest are the places women inhabit in the predominately

male lineages of philosophical transmission (Christian and Greek) and the significance of

female images of the philosopher in estimating paideia and loci of pedagogy. Finally, in

Chapter Seven, the dramatic shifts that had occurred in the philosophical field by the fifth

century are viewed through the lenses of Theodorets Religious History and Marinus Life of

Proclus. The former reflects the dominance of a Christian intellectual elite, which regarded

the monastic life as the fulfillment of both Christian and Greek visions of virtue; while the

latter represents an intellectual minority under pressure and its attempts to reestablish an

authoritative Platonic institution in the city of Athens.

I have chosen to omit from this study the biographical works of Philostratushis

Lives of the Sophists and the Life of Apolloniusfor several reasons. A member of the

cultural elite of the third century with close ties to the court of the empress Julia Domna,

Philostratus aim was to promote the cultural movement, which he coined the Second

Sophistic, and a Hellenism which [was] defined primarily through a combination of


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religion and philosophy, namely Pythagorean philosophy.90

While I maintain that there are

important ties between the developments of the Second Sophistic and the emergence of a

Christian philosophical culture, the aim of this study is to focus on those works of

biographical literature that promote particular expressions of philosophical history and

lineage. We might see the Life of Apollonius as a precursor to the philosophical bioi that

would appear in Neoplatonist and Christian circles, but it differs from them in scope and

purpose. Not a Pythagorean himself, Philostratus composed the bios as a defense of

Apollonius the man and the way of life he represented, but not in support of a particular

community of Neopythagorean philosophers. Nevertheless, this biography would prove to be

extremely influential for both Neopythagoreans and Neoplatonists, and even Eusebius of

Caesarea targeted the work in his tract Against Hierocles. Finally, a plethora of scholarship

on this subject has raised the work to a level of scrutiny and attention that overshadows other

important biographical texts in conversation with Christianity.91

The struggle to define and direct the course of philosophical thinking and education

in late antiquity manifested itself in various arenas, with a host of participants, over the

course of several centuries. From within the schools and overlapping social networks of both

Greek and Christian intellectuals, an abundance of biographical literature began to emerge

from the late third century forward. As a literary arena of this competition, the bios identified

historical figures of both recent and distant memory as embodiments, revealers, and

transmitters of philosophical truth. The authors of bioi claimed for themselves some share in

the philosophical heritage of their ancestors. As members of lineages that could be traced

back to the first teachers and revealers of divine wisdom (Plato, Pythagoras, Jesus Christ, the

Apostles, even directly to God), their inheritance was a family treasure to be faithfully


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guarded and passed on through successive generations, from father to son (and sometimes to

daughter).

Now we turn to the beginnings of the struggle, and examine both the circumstances

under which Christian intellectuals participated in competition with Greeks and the Christian

responses to developing Greek philosophical traditions.

1For a description of ancient philosophy as a way of life intimately linked to philosophical

discourse, see Pierre Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy, translated by Michael Chase

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).

2 Theodoret, Phil. hist. pro. 3 (SC 234, 130); trans. Price, 4.

3 Susanna Elm, Hellenism and Historiography: Gregory of Nazianzus and Julian in

Dialogue, in The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies: Gender, Asceticism, and

Historiography, edited by D. Martin and P. Cox Miller (Durham: Duke University Press,

2005), 260-61

4 See, for example, Origen, Letter to Gregory 2-3; Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Moses 115; and

Augustine, On Christian Doctrine 2.42.

5 Simon Goldhill, Introduction. Setting and Agenda: Everything is Greece to the Wise, in

Being Greek Under Rome: Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic and the Development of

Empire, edited by S. Goldhill, 13 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

6Jonathan M. Hall, Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press), 7; and see also Chapter Five.

7See, for example, Goldhill, Being Greek Under Rome; Simon Swain, Hellenism and

Empire: Language, Classicism, and Power in the Greek World, AD 50250 (Oxford: Oxford


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University Press, 1996); and Tim Whitmarsh, Greek Literature and the Roman Empire: The

Politics of Imitation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

8 Goldhill, Introduction, 13-20.

9Rebecca Preston, Roman Questions, Greek Answers: Plutarch and the Construction of

Identity, in Goldhill, Being Greek Under Rome, 90.

10Swain, Hellenism and Empire, 65.

11See the Introduction by Dale Martin in Cultural Turn, 1-24.

12Elm, Hellenism and Historiography, 260, and, especially, footnote 3.

13 Jeremy M. Schott, Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity

(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 4.

14 Polymnia Athanassiadi and Michael Frede, eds., Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 6. For a discussion of the use of the terms pagan,

heathen, and Hellene in the study of pagan and Christian monotheism, see pp. 1-8.

15On mimicry, see Homi K. Bhabha, Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial

Discourse, in idem, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994), 121-31. For its

application to the present material, see Jeremy M. Schott, Porphyry on Christians and

Others: Barbarian Wisdom, Identity Politics, and Anti-Christian Polemics on the Eve of the

Great Persecution, Journal of Early Christian Studies 13, no.3 (2005), 280.

16 Cf. Schott, Christianity, Empire and the Making of Religion, 28-29.

17On cultural production, see Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on

Art and Literature, edited and introduced by R. Johnson (New York: Columbia University

Press, 1993), 42. For an early application of Bourdieus theory to late antique materials, see


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Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian

Discourse (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), esp. Chapters One and Four.

18 Here I am adapting categories found in Bourdieus work on cultural competition to the

contexts of late antiquity. See Bourdieu, Cultural Production, 82-83.

19Bourdieu, Cultural Production, 6.

20On the education of women, see Raffaella Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek

Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001),

Chapter Three.

21 Cribiore, Gymnastics, 9.

22 David Swartz, Culture & Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu (Chicago: University

of Chicago Press, 1997), 76.

23Jean Danilou, La Vie de Mose, ou Trait de la perfection en matire de vertu, Sources

chrtiennes 1 (Paris: Cerf, 1968), xxiv.24

See, for example, Pierre Bourdieu and Jean Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education,

Society and Culture, translated by Richard Nice (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1970);

Bourdieu, Field of Cultural Production, 51; and Swartz, Culture & Power, 189-91.

25 Referring to the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu, Thomas Schmitz has identified paideia as

the habitus of Greco-Roman antiquity. See Bildung und Macht: Zur sozialen und politischen

Funktion der zweiten Sophistik in der griechischen Welt der Kaiserzeit. Zetemata:

Monographien zur klassischen Altertumswissenschaft 97 (Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1997),

29. Similarly, Tim Whitmarsh builds on a Bourdieuian cultural anthropology, as applied to

the Second Sophistic by Thomas Schmitz, which regards paideia as a locus for a series of

competitions and debates concerning the proper way in which life should be lived, rather


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than a single, doctrinally coherent system. See Whitmarsh, Greek Literature, 5 and

Schmitz, Bildung und Macht, esp. 2631. For discussion of Bourdieus concept of habitus,

see his Outline of a Theory of Practice, translated by Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1977), esp. Chapter Two; and idem, Cultural Production, 5. Criticisms have

been leveled against Bourdieus habitus for its apparent determinism and emphasis on social

conditioning that limits conscious agency. See Chapter Five of Swartzs Culture & Power.

For a recent attempt to reconcile the weaknesses in Bourdieu with Margaret Archers

understanding of reflexive deliberation to create an emergentist theory of action that

considers both cultural conditioning and conscious deliberation, see David Elder-Vass,

Reconciling Archer and Bourdieu in an Emergentist Theory of Action, in Sociological

Theory 25, no.4 (December 2007): 325-46.

26Garth Fowden, Pagan Philosophers in Late Antique Society with Special Reference to

Iamblichus and his Followers (Ph.D. Thesis, Oxford, 1979), 160

27See, for example, Irenaeus, Haer. 3.3.

28 See Bourdieu, Cultural Production, 50-52.

29Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 4.7.13 (SC 31, 169).

30 For a discussion of the uses of terms such as , , and in the contexts

of Late Antique philosophy, see John Glucker, Antiochus and the Late Academy (Gttingen:

Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1978), 159-74.

31Bourdieu and Passeron, Reproduction, 190.

32John M. Dillon, Iamblichus of Chalchis (c. 240-325 A.D.), ANRW 36.2:879.

33 Anonymous Prolegomena, 26.13.

34Dillon, Iamblichus of Chalcis, 872.


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35Tim Duff, Plutarchs Lives: Exploring Virtue and Vice (New York: Oxford University

Press, 1999), 53.

36 Plato, Resp. 492a.

37Plato, Resp. 491e.

38Plutarch, Moralia 452c-d.

39Duff, Plutarchs Lives, 75-77.

40See Plato Resp. 491d-492d; and Dominic J. OMeara, Platonopolis: Platonic Political

Philosophy in Late Antiquity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 50.

41 Laura S. Nasrallah, Mapping the World: Justin, Tatian, Lucian, and the Second

Sophistic, Harvard Theological Review 98, no.3 (July 2005): 283314.

42 Nasrallah, Mapping the World, 299.

43Nasrallah, Mapping the World, 307.

44 Athanasius of Alexandria, Vit. Ant. 1.2.

45See Athanasius, Vit. Ant. 78.2-3 and discussion in Chapter Five.

46 Simon Swain, Biography and Biographic in the Literature of the Roman Empire, in

Portraits: Biographical Representation in the Greek and Latin Literature of the Roman

Empire, edited by M.J. Edwards and S. Swain (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997),

1-2.

47 Duff, Plutarchs Lives, 17.

48On the origins of Greek biographical literature, see Arnaldo Momigliano, The

Development of Greek Biography, expanded edition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University

Press, 1993), 8. Momigliano looks for the roots of the bios in encomia, prose literature about

heroes and mythical figures, but admits that the existence of fully developed biographies is


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conjectural (p, 28). The earliest surviving examples of Greek biography are known to us in

fragments. These include fragments of the lives of Euripides, Aeschylus, and Sophocles by

the third century B.C.E. Peripatetic Satyrus, preserved in P Oxy. 1176. The earliest surviving

work of Latin biography is the fragmentary De viris illustribus by Cornelius Nepos (first

century B.C.E.), which is thought to have contained some 400 biographical accounts. King

Herods court historian, Nicolaus of Damascus, a Peripatetic, wrote a Life of Augustus and

an autobiography (Momigliano, Development, 9). On the shift towards cultural criteria in the

definition of Greekness, see Hall, Hellenicity, 189.

49 For a more detailed discussion of biography and autobiography in the fifth and fourth

centuries B.C.E., see Momigliano, Development, 23-64.

50 Xeonophon, Agesilaus 10.

51Momigliano, Development, 12; Patricia Cox, Biography in Late Antiquity: A Quest for the

Holy Man (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 6

52Tomas Hgg and Philip Rousseau, eds., Greek Biography and Panegyric in Late Antiquity

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 4. The Peripatetics, in particular,

contributed to the development of the biographical genre. Among the Peripatetics who

continued this tradition, Jerome (Vir. ill. 2.821) names several, including Hermippus,

Satyrus, Antigonus, and Sotion. Most, if not all, of these seem to have written works of

collective biography. Sotion composed a work titled The Succession of Philosophers. See

Momigliano, Development, 6576.

53Momigliano, Development, 45.


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54Momigliano, Development, 53. For additional examples of Socratic biographical literature,

see Xenophons Memorabilia and Cyropaedia. The Pythagorean-turned-Aristotelian

Aristoxenus composed Lives of Socrates, Plato, Pythagoras, and Archytas.

55Momigliano, Development, 46-47.


57Cox, Biography, xi.

58Momigliano, Development, 12, and Cox, Biography, 6.

59See Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers 3.5 (Plato), and 8.21

(Pythagoras).

60 Jerome, Vir. ill. 2.821.

61 Cox, Biography, 10-11.

62Duff, Plutarchs Lives, 5-6.

63 Plutarch, Alexander 1 (Lindskog and Ziegler, 175), my translation.

64Isocrates (Evagoras, 73) expressed his preference for written likenesses of deeds and of

the character to statues.

65Cox, Biography, xi. Coxs work on biography should be read in the context of scholarship

on the ancient divine man and holy man. She is in conversation with Ludwig Bieler,

whose classic 1935-36 work, , was an attempt to outline the construction of

the religious personality of the divine man in ancient literature as a demonstration of

Platonic theological and anthropological ideas. Also important are Peter Browns The Rise

and Function of the Holy Man in late antiquity, Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1971): 80-

101; and Garth Fowdens The Pagan Holy Man in Late Antique Society, Journal of

Hellenic Studies 102 (1982): 33-59.


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67 In addition to the works of Momigliano, Cox, Swain, and Hgg and Rousseau already

cited, see also Charles H. Talbert, Biographies of Philosophers and Rulers as Instruments of

Religious Propaganda in Mediterranean Antiquity, ANRW 16.2: 1619-51; and Bruno

Gentili and Giovanni Cerri, eds., History and Biography in Ancient Thought (Amsterdam:

J.C. Gieben, 1988).

68For example, Ivo Bruns, Das literarische Portrt der Griechen im fnften und vierten

Jahrhundert vor Christi Geburt (1896) and Die Persnlichkeit in der Geschichtsschreibung

der Alten (Berlin: W. Hertz, 1898). Albrecht Dihle took up the question of literary origins

and the concept of the individual in Studien sur griechischen Biographie, Abhandlungen

der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Gttingen, Phil.-hist. Klasse 3, 2. Auflage (Gttingen:

Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1956), by arguing that the figure of Socrates inspired the

invention of biography in Socratic circles. But as Momigliano pointed out (Development, 16-

17), Dihle seems to overlook the fact that biographical literature existed some one hundred

years before Socrat

Documents

Urbano 1 Introduction