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A Tarsian Peculiarity (Dio Prus. Or. 33) with an Unnoticed Fragment of Porphyry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2011

Campbell Bonner
Campbell Bonner
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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Extract

The appearance of a new volume of Dio Chrysostom in the Loeb Classical Library seems to be an appropriate occasion to discuss a curious problem in the first oration addressed to the people of Tarsus. It has puzzled the translator, Professor H. Lamar Crosby, and there was little to help him in the work done by earlier students of Dio. The passages that bear most directly upon the point are not to be found in the books and articles that deal with the orator, and it is only because the demands of other studies have led me to explore a number of patristic texts that I am able to go somewhat beyond previous writers in explaining an odd and unrefreshing phenomenon of ancient manners.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , January 1942 , pp. 1 - 11
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1942

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References

1 Dio Chrysostom: with an English translation by J. W. Cohoon and H. Lamar Crosby. Volume III, 1940. See particularly Crosby's introduction to Or. 33 (p. 273).

2 Ueber den Werth des Dion Chrysostom für die Kenntnis seiner Zeit. Neues schweizerisches Museum, IV, 1864, p. 119. This work is not accessible to me, and I report the author's opinion on the authority of Lemarchand (next note).

3 Lemarchand, L., Dion de Pruse: Les œuvres d'avant l'exil (Paris, 1926), pp. 125–126Google Scholar.

4 In his Cultes, Mythes et Religions, I, 105–110.

5 See Miss Mowcher's ironical sally when she has to mount upon a table: “If either of you saw my ankles, say so, and I'll go home and destroy myself” (Dickens, David Copperfield, Ch. 22).

6 Digitus infamis; see, for example, Schol. Ar. Nub. 653, Pers. 2. 33, Juv. 10. 53, and Sittl, Gebärden der Griechen und Römer, 101, 123.

7 Oxyrhynchus Papyri VI, no. 903, 19–22. σαμβάθῳ, for σαββάτῳ, is Schubart's correction; the editors had printed Σαμβαθώ as if it were a place name.

8 Dial. 101. 3. The manuscript reading is διερινοῦντες.— In the notes on pp. 87–88 of his Gebärden, Sittl gathers together a number of passages illustrating the expression of anger and contempt by the nose. One curious example (p. 88, n. 6) should be noted in connection with the Tarsian snorting. A note of Remigius on Sedulius (p. 359, 14 Huemer) reads: Sanna est obscenus sonitus narium, unde et pro irrisione ponitur.

9 Cited here (with orthographical corrections) from the edition of Mai, Spicilegium Romanum, Tom. III, 319–321; the text is also printed in Migne, PG LXXXVII, 3, 3521.

10 See Eduard Schwartz's edition of Tatian (in TU IV), p. 96, s.v. ῥιναυλεῖν; F. Marx, Stud. Luciliana, p. 2 and more fully in his edition of Lucilius, II, 106–107 (on 7. 284); “agitur de homine amore perdito qui ἀσθμαίνει in re venerea.”

11 De abstinentia 2. 42–43.

12 Flatulence caused by demons invading the body; de philosophia ex oraculis haurienda, in Euseb. Praep. Evang. 4. 22 (p. 174d–175a).

13 Some Arabs inhale audibly as they drink, by way of showing their enjoyment; and in the Thousand and One Nights the sixth brother of the barber of Baghdad shows his appreciation of the imaginary feast by clicking his tongue against his palate. Chinese of the higher class have been known to indicate their satisfaction after a meal in the other manner mentioned above.

14 In connection with a sacrifice to Heracles at Lindus in Rhodes; the sources, as well as interesting parallels, are cited by Frazer in his translation of Apollodorus in the Loeb Library (Apollod. 2. 118 Wagner; Vol. I, 226, n. 3, Frazer). At a sacrifice to Apollo on the island of Anaphe the women and men indulged in mutual raillery (Apoll. Rhod. 4. 1727 ff.); other more or less similar customs are mentioned by Mooney in his note on the passage.