Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-ttngx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-05T13:24:20.989Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Herodes Atticus: An Essay on Education in the Antonine Age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

A. J. Papalas
A. J. Papalas*
Affiliation:
East Carolina University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Herodes Atticus (A.D. 101–176), the Athenian millionaire, Roman consul, celebrated sophist and friend and teacher of Roman Emperors was one of the best known figures of the Antonine Period. Philostratus, the author of the Lives of the Sophists, written ca. A.D. 230, gives Herodes considerably more space than any other sophist; he is the subject of Graindor's solid though dated biography, of Rutledge's admirable doctoral thesis, and is one of the major figures in Bowersock's brilliant work on the Greek sophists in the Roman Empire. Herodes' education and teaching career, however, have never been adequately studied. It is the aim of this essay to do that.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , Summer 1981 , pp. 171 - 188
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 by History of Education Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abbreviations

Philostratus VS Vitae SophistarumGoogle Scholar
Philostratus VA Vita ApolloniGoogle Scholar
Quintilian Institutio OratoriaGoogle Scholar
Aulus Gellius Noctes AtticaeGoogle Scholar
1. Graindor, P., Un milliardaire antique: Hérode Atticus et sa famille (Cairo, 1930); Rutledge, H., Herodes Atticus (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1960); Bowersock, G., Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1969), Münscher, K., Real-Encyclopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft 8 A (1913), “Herodes,” No. 13, 941, is still useful.Google Scholar
2. Papalas, A., “Hipparchus the Tyrant,” Ellenika 28 (1975): 49 ff.Google Scholar
3. Philostratus VS 2.1. 548, and discussion of Papalas, “Hipparchus,” 57. Atticus' approximate birthdate is derived from Hammond's, M., The Antonine Monarchy (New York, 1959), p. 291, observation that men generally reached the consulship in their mid-forties, and only in exceptional cases did they obtain one at the minimum age of thirty-three.Google Scholar
4. Mary Smallwood, E., “Atticus, Legate of Judaea under Trajan,” Journal of Roman Studies 52 (1962): 131–134.Google Scholar
5. Juvenal Satires 12.1. For the property at Canusium see Philostratus VS 2. 1. 551; Graindor, , Hérode, pp. 68–69; Day, J., An Economic History of Athens under Roman Domination (New York, 1942), p. 244, n. 378.Google Scholar
6. Booth, Alan, “The Appearance of the schola grammatici,” Hermes 106 (1978): 177 ff., discusses the development of the grammatistes. The Scriptores Historiae Augustiae Marci 2.2 preserves the names of Marcus Aurelius' first teachers, though Birley, A. R., “Some teachers of Marcus Aurelius,” Bonner Historia-Augusta-Colloquium 1966/67 (1968): 39 ff., thinks the names are fabrications.Google Scholar
7. For Alcimedon, see Philostratus VS 1.2. 560–61. Navarre, O., “Paedagogium,” Daremberg, Ch. and Saglio, E., Dictionnaire des antiquités grecqués et romaines d'après les textes et les monuments (Paris, 1877–1919). 4, I, p. 27 lb. On the southwest slope of the Palatine archeologists have unearthered a paedagogium where the emperors apparently trained their slaves, see Vaananen, V., Graffiti del Palatino, I, Paedagogium, Acta Institute Romani Finlandiae, 3 I (Helsinki, 1961). Barrow, R. H., Slavery in the Roman Empire (London, 1927), p. 51, notes how carefully some masters trained their slaves. Rich men like Atticus must have had hundreds. Petronius (Satyricon, 53) commented with obvious hyperbole that on one day thirty boys and forty girls were born on Trimalchio's estates. Apuleius (Apologia 93. 5) mentioned the four hundred slaves of Pudentilla.Google Scholar
8. Plutarch, , Demosthenes 2.2. did not claim to be fluent in Latin. Jones, Plutarch, pp. 8 ff., suggests that Plutarch used bilingual research assistants. Stadter, P. A., “Reviews of Jones' Plutarch and Rome,” American Classical Review, 2, no. 6 (1972): 256–257, and Russell, D. A., Plutarch (New York, 1973), p. 54, disagree. Some Greeks did not feel the need to learn Latin since members of the Roman upper-classes in some cases learned Greek as their first language, for it was customary for Romans of this class to employ Greek nurses to teach their sons Greek, see Clarke, M. L., Higher Education in the Ancient World (Albuquerque, 1971), pp. 14, 153, n. 20. Greek may have been used on occasion in the senate, see Suetonius Claudius 42. 1. Both Tacitus (Histories 2. 88. 3), and Pliny (Naturalis Historia 4. 44) complained that the Greeks were only interested in their own culture. For a comment on these passages, Syme, R., Tacitus (Oxford, 1963), II, 512–513.Google Scholar
9. Marcus, to Fronto, , p. 37, 5–7 Van den Hout. This is the only reference to Herodes' studies in Italy. Graindor, , Hérode, p. 52, and Rutledge, , Herodes, pp. 18–19, suggest that the sojourn in Calvisius' home covered a phase in Herodes' elementary education. A few years earlier the grandfather of Septimius Severus was taken from Africa to Rome and placed in the school of Quintilian. He learned to talk, dress and think like a native Italian, see Statius, Silvae 4. praef. 45–46.Google Scholar
10. Quintilian 1.1. 15–20. See Kennedy, G., Quintilian (New York, 1969), pp. 11–30. Pliny (Epistles 2. 14. 10; 5. 6. 3), who served in the senate with Atticus, was proud that he had been a student of Quintilian.Google Scholar
11. Kennedy, G., The Art of Persuasion in Greece (Princeton, 1963), pp. 52–61, and Guthrie, W. K. C., The Sophists (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 178–180.Google Scholar
12. Marrou, H., Histoire de l'éducation dans l'antiquité (Paris, 1965), pp. 136 ff; Navarre, O., Essai sur la rhétorique grecque avant Aristote (Paris, 1900), pp. 187–203. The best discussion on Isocrates' general educational program is Grube, G. M. A., The Greek and Roman Critics (Toronto, 1965), pp. 38–45.Google Scholar
13. Grube, , Critics, pp. 46 ff; Marrou, , Education, pp. 288 ff., notes the struggle between the two schools. In the time of Herodes there was an effort to repair the breach by well-known rhetors who claimed that if Plato was not one of their own he at least was sympathetic to their art, see Penella, Robert J., “Philostratus' Letter to Julia Domna,” Hermes 107 (1979); 161 ff.Google Scholar
14. von Arnim, , Real-Encyclopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschqft 2 A (1895), “Arkesilaos,” No. 19, 1164; von Arnim, ibid, 10 B(1919) “Karneades,” No. 1, 1964 ff.Google Scholar
15. For Amonius, see Jones, C. P., Plutarch and Rome ( Oxford, 1971), pp. 13–19, and Jones, C. P., “The Teachers of Plutarch,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 71 (1966); 205–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
16. Philostratus VS 1. 21. 521.Google Scholar
17. Herodes as amicus: Dittenberger, W., Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecorum3 , 863. For the role of amici Caesari, see Millar, F., The Emperor in the Roman World: 31 B.C. to A.D. 337 (Ithaca, 1977), pp. 110–112. Libanius (Oration 42, 23) reported that Sopater swayed Constantine as if he were a volatile crowd. According to Philostatus (VS. 21. 520), Scopelian persuaded Domitian to rescind the ban on the cultivation of vines in Asia Minor.Google Scholar
18. Bornecque, H., Les Déclamations et les déclamateurs d'après Sénèque le Père (Paris, 1902), passim . Caplan, Harry, “The Decay of Eloquence at Rome in the First Century,” Studies in Speech and Drama in Honor of A. M. Drumond (Ithaca, 1977), pp. 295–325, argues, however, that the loss of political liberty made the suasiorae empty exercises.Google Scholar
19. Clark, D. L., “Some Values of Roman Declamation: the Controversiae as a School Exercise in Rhetoric,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 35 (1949): 279–83, demonstrates that fine legal oratory as well as a sense of justice developed despite the preposterous themes which prevailed in rhetorical schools.Google Scholar
20. For the Second Sophistic, see Bowersock, , Sophists, passim. Isaeus: Pliny, , Epistles 2.3; Juvenal, , Satires 3. 74; Favorinus: Philostratus VS 1. 8 488–92; Dio of Prusa: Stein, E., Prosopographia Imperii Romani 2 D 93.Google Scholar
21. Aulus Gellius 19. 12. 1. On Taurus see Praechter, K., “Taurus,” Real-Encyclopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschqft 5A (1934), 56–68. Wife: Philostratus VS 2. 1. 555; Antoninus Pius: Philostratus VS 2. 1. 549; Graindor, , Hérode, p. 59. Quarrel with Athenians: Philostratus VS 2. 1. 549. Sophists: Philostratus VS 2. 8. 578, and Papalas, A., “Philagrus and the Wrath of Herodes Atticus,” Rivista di Cultura Classica e Medioevale, 21/22 (1979/80), 94ff. Relationship between Herodes and Taurus: Baldwin, Barry, Studies in Aulus Gellius (Kansas, 1975), p. 39.Google Scholar
22. Philostratus VS 2. 2. 566. Mazzarino, S., “Prima Cathedra,” Mélanges d'archéologie et d'histoire offerts à André Piganiol (Paris, 1966), pp. 1660–1661.Google Scholar
23. Gerth, Karl, “Zeite Sophistic,” Real-Encyclopädie der Klassischen Altertumswissenschqft, Suppl 8 (1956), 719–782. Reardon, B. P., “The Second Sophistic and the Novel,” Aspects of the Second Sophistic (Penna. 1974), p. 25, argues that Asia Minor was not as badly damaged as Greece during the Roman Civil Wars.Google Scholar
24. For the Claudii of Melite, see Oliver, J. H., The Athenian Expounders of the Sacred and Ancestral Laws (Baltimore, 1950), p. 77, and Wolloch, M., “Four Leading Families in Roman Athens,” Historia 19 (1969): 503–512. Oliver, J. H., “Two Athenian Poets,” Hesperia, Supp. 8 (1949): 248, on the basis of inscriptional evidence, demonstrates that the great-granddaughter of Isaeus married into the family of the philosopher Callaeschrus who was a class-mate of Sospis, the nephew of Demostratus, the leader of the Claudii of Melite, see Philostratus VS 1. 26. 544–545.Google Scholar
25. Philostratus VS 1. 26. 544–545.Google Scholar
26. Philostratus VS 1. 26. 544–545; Perry, B. E., Secundus the Silent Philosopher (American Philological Association Monographs, 1968), pp. 1–9; Bowersock, , Sophists, pp. 118–119.Google Scholar
27. Pelekides, C., Histoire de l'Éphébie attique des orgines à 31 avant J. C. (Paris, 1962), pp. 266 ff. Philostratus VS 2. 1. 550.Google Scholar
28. Graindor, , Hérode, pp. 47–48. Reinmuth, W. W., “Ephebate and Citizenship in Athens,” Transactions of the American Philological Association, 79(1948): 211, demonstrates that at the end of the second century B.C. the age of admission to the ephebeia was lowered. Apparently this was the usual practice. An ambassador from the youth of Pergamum congratulated Hadrian on his accession, see Inscriptiones Graecae ad res Romanas pertinentes 4, 349.Google Scholar
29. Rutledge, , Herodes, p. 30.Google Scholar
30. Latro: Seneca Contr. 9, praef. 3; Quintilian 10. 5. 18. Demosthenes: Philostratus VS 2. 1. 565. In a lost book Aulus Gellius 8 discusses how Theophrastus botched a speech and referred to Demosthenes' failure. Baldwin, , Aulus, p. 93, suggests that Aulus was defending Herodes. Heracleides: Philostratus VS 2. 26. 614.Google Scholar
31. Graindor, , Hérode, p. 47, suggests that Hadrian, while archon, stayed in the home of Atticus. Hadrian could have served as archon, however, without residing in the city.Google Scholar
32. Pseudo-Plutarch, , De liberis educandis 13. An anonymous orator in A.D. 331 (Panagyric 8 [5] 9, 3) addressing Constantine, enumerated the various pressures on a speaker standing before an emperor.Google Scholar
33. Graindor, , Hérode, p. 48. Rutledge, , Herodes, p. 30, does not connect the stoning incident with Pannonia, but rather thinks it reflects Atticus' great admiration for Scopelian.Google Scholar
34. Philostratus VS 1. 21. 521. According to Lucian Dialogi Meretricii 6. 1, a woman and her daughter lived in Roman Athens seven months on two minas, two hundred drachmas. Thirty talents represents one hundred and eighty thousand drachmas. Polemo received that sum from Trajan, see Philostratus VS 1. 25. 537. Apparently, Herodes wished to be as generous as the emperor.Google Scholar
35. Philostratus VS 1. 8. 490.Google Scholar
36. Philostratus VS 2. 1. 564; 1. 25. 538.Google Scholar
37. Graindor, P., Athènes sous Auguste (Cairo 1927), pp. 40–44; Graindor, P., Athènes sous Hadrien (Cairo 1934), pp. 97–111; Delz, J. Lukans Kenntnis der athenischen Antiquitäten (Freiburg 1950), pp. 41, 156–184, Geagan, D., The Athenian Constitution After Sulla, Hesperia, Supp. 12 (1967): 33–34, 81–91.Google Scholar
38. Graindor, , Hérode, pp. 55–68. Philostratus VS 2. 3. 567 noted that Aristocles studies extempore rhetoric with Herodes in Rome. Herodes, notwithstanding his services in the imperial bureaucracy, had time to make public lectures, and continue his teaching activities.Google Scholar
39. Scriptores Historiae Augustae Marci 2. 5; Philostratus VS 1. 25. 539; 2. 1. 562.Google Scholar
40. Quintilian 12. 1. 1, and the commentary of Winterbottom, M., “Quintilian and the Vir Bonus,” Journal of Roman Studies 54 (1964): 90–95. Delacy, P., “Plato and Intellectual Life in the Second Sophistic,” Aspects of the Second Sophistic (Penna. 1974), p. 7, sees Fronto, however, as essentially a rhetor uninfluenced by philosophical doctrines.Google Scholar
41. Philostratus VS 1. 25. 538. Herodes may have been travelling with some of his students as well, see Philostratus VS 2. 3. 567–8. Graindor, , Hérode, p. 68, misreads this passage.Google Scholar
42. Graindor, , Hérode, pp. 61–63. Gellius 19. 12 has preserved in Latin Herodes' diatribe against Stoic teaching. A symbouleutic speech based on a harangue of Thrasymachus, of contested authorship, is attributed to Herodes. Reardon, , “The Second Sophistic and the Novel,” p. 24, reminds us that Philostratus' Vitae are not literary histories, and if they were, less notice would have been given to Herodes.Google Scholar
43. Papalas, A., “Lucius Verus and the Hospitality of Herodes Atticus,” Athenaeum 56 (1978): 182–184.Google Scholar
44. Hadrian's birth: Jones, C. P., “Two Enemies of Lucian,” Greek Rome and Byzantine Studies 13 (1972), 480. Aristides' birth: Behr, C. A., Aelius Aristides (Amsterdam, 1968), pp. 1–22.Google Scholar
45. Cicero Ad Atticum 14. 16. 3; 15. 16a; Horace Epistles 2. 2. 43–46. Perret, J., Horace (New York, 1969), p. 15, makes the perceptive point that until Asinius Pollio and Augustus built libraries in Rome, Greek culture was inaccessible to young men of modest means. For a student like Horace, without wealth and connections, it was more convenient to study in Athens than Rome.Google Scholar
46. Daly, W., “Romans Study Abroad,” American Journal of Philology (1950): 40–58, argues that in the late republic it was socially as well as academically proper for a Roman to study abroad, a practice which came to an end in the Julio-Claudian period. Pohlenz, M., Die Stoa (Göttingen, 1959), I, 280, maintains that in the first century A.D. the center for philosophical studies shifted from Athens to Rome.Google Scholar
47. Walden, J., The Universities of Ancient Greece (Cambridge, 1909), pp. 62–73. While Walden's title is misleading, the book is still useful.Google Scholar
48. Graindor, , Hadrien, pp. 226 ff.Google Scholar
49. On the history of the chairs, see Avotnis, I., “Chairs of Rhetoric at Athens,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology (1975): 313–315.Google Scholar
50. Travlos, J., “Odeion of Herodes Atticus,” “Stadium,” Pictorial Dictionary of Athens (Berlin, 1970), pp. 378, 498.Google Scholar
51. Herodes' library: Gellius, Aulus, Praef. 4. 10; Baldwin, , Aulus, p. 9. Herodes' estate was similar to those described by Vitruvius (De architectura 6.52) as being typical of a Roman magistrate's—groves, strolling-places, libraries, and picture galleries. Allison, F., Lucian Satirist and Artist (Boston, 1926), pp. 18–20.Google Scholar
52. Chrestus: Philostratus VS 2. 11. 591; Libanius Oration I. 37; Epistle 405. 4. 6. Petit, P., Les Étudiants de Libanius: Un Professeur de Faculté et ses Élèves au Bas Empire (Paris, 1956), ch. 3, shows how necessary it was for teachers to develop friendships with influential people in order to attract students who could pay.Google Scholar
53. Seneca, , Controversial 9. 2. 23.Google Scholar
54. Philostratus VS 2. 1. 565.Google Scholar
55. Philostratus VS 2. 8. 578. The best positions went to the purists. Phrynichus (Ecloga, p. 379 Lobeck) praised Cornelianus, Marcus Aurelius' ab epistulis Graecis, for the purity of his Attic Greek. This ability seems to have given Cornelianus great power in dealing with Greek embassies.Google Scholar
56. Rutledge, , Herodes, p. 84. Philostratus (VS 2. 10. 587) refers to the curriculum of the sophist as a dromos. Herodes, if he were to supervise the entire dromos, doubtless needed assistants.Google Scholar
57. Aulus Gellius 7. 13. 1.Google Scholar
58. Philostratus VS 2. 1. 565; 2. 13. 594;; 2. 12. 585; 2. 5. 573.Google Scholar
59. Philostratus VS 2. 1. 555–556. Graindor, , Hérode, pp. 81–82. Settis, S., “De Ninfeo di Erode Attico a Olimpia e Problema della Compozione della Periegesi di Pausania,” Annali della scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa 37 (1968): 8–9, demonstrates that Regilla could have died as early as A.D. 161.Google Scholar
60. Philostratus VS 2. 1. 555. For Appius Annius Atilius Bradua, see Prosopographia Imperii Romani 2, A 720. Fronto to Marcus, pp. 37–38 Van den Hout was prepared to resort to the customary practice of attacking his opponent's character. Marcus pleaded with Fronto not to malign Herodes. The standard procedure is reflected in Apuleius, , Apologia pp 74 ff.Google Scholar
61. Nepos, Cornelius, De Viris Illustribus, Praef.Google Scholar
62. Pomperoy, Sarah B., Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity (New York, 1975), pp. 126–131, demonstrates that the education of women improved in Hellenistic and Roman times. In the first century A.D. Diogenes Laertius dedicated his work on the philosophers to a lady Platonist.Google Scholar
63. On Bradua see Woloch, M., Roman Citizenship and the Athenian Elite A.D. 96–161: Two Prosopographical Catalogues (Amsterdam, 1973), p. 158. Rutledge, , Herodes, p. 111, suggests that Bradua perhaps rebelled against learning the alphabet.Google Scholar
64. Hoogerstraat, Wayne, “Memory: The Lost Canon?” Quarterly Journal of Speech 46 (1960): 141–147, discusses memory as one of the divisions of rhetoric.Google Scholar
65. Plutarch De liberis educandis 2–9. Marcus Med. 1.17 probably was referring to ethical instruction when he thanked the gods that he had found good teachers for his children.Google Scholar
66. On Hadrian's personal life, see Jones, C. P., “Two Enemies of Lucian,” Greek Rome and Byzantine Studies 13 (1972): 82–83. For Verus, see Papalas, , “Lucius Verus,” 182 ff. Quintilian 1.2. 6–8, suggested that this type of behavior was typical within the Greco-Roman aristocracy.Google Scholar
67. Herodes adopted L. Vibulis Claudius Herodes, see Inscriptiones Graecae II–III 2 3979. If Bradua was as bad as the charges the Athenians should not have been surprised. Dover, K. J., “Classical Greek Attitudes to Sexual Behavior,” Arethousa 6 (1973): pp. 63–64, noted that gluttony, drunkenness, and the pursuit of sexual relations were considered standard vices. Furthermore, it was a disgrace to devour one's inheritance.Google Scholar
68. Codex Iustinianus III, 28, 19, 23 stipulated disinheritance for sons associating with undesirables. Apuleius, , Apologia 91–99, noted that Pudentilla wanted to disinherit her son, Pudens, for rejecting his studies for worldly pleasures. Quintilian, Declamationes Minores, 356, 330, commented on how boys were trained to defend themselves against charges that they were voluptuaries squandering their patrimony. Cicero, Ad Familiares 16. 21. 1–6, had problems with his son who was studying in Athens. He asked Leonidas and Herodes, ancestors of our Herodes, to report to him on the boy's behavior. There was a reconciliation between father and son when the boy renounced his dissipated ways and took to his studies seriously; see Ad Atticum, 14. 16. 3; 15. 16a. Plutarch (Cicero 24.6) saw letters Cicero wrote to Herodes' ancestors. It is possible that Herodes' father showed these to the biographer.Google Scholar
69. Daly, , “Romans Study Abroad,” 51, notes the huge allowances of these students, and the attitude of “keeping up with the Jones”' Apparently, it was common for students to have slaves; see Philostratus VS 2. 10. 588.Google Scholar
70. MacMullen, R., Roman Government's Response to Crisis, AD. 235–337 (Yale, 1976), pp. 57 ff., cites cases where tax collectors in the following centuries could not add, and decurions could not write.Google Scholar