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Testing the Boundaries of Ekphrasis: Lucian on the Hall

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

Zahra Newby
Zahra Newby*
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
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Extract

Picture yourself in a beautiful room, flooded with early morning light. It has a lofty ceiling, delicately gilded and glinting in the sunshine. The walls are adorned with paintings, in colour and detail as bright as Spring. What is one to do in the face of such beauty? Stand mute, gazing in wonder, or articulate the impact of the visual, rival it even, in words?

This is the question posed by Lucian's On the Hall, a rhetorical introduction or prolalia, probably written between 160 and 180 CE. The piece is framed as a debate about the merits of speaking in beautiful surroundings. While the first speaker confidently asserts that it is both desirable and beneficial to give oratorical displays within impressive surroundings, a second speaker, who only appears in chapter 14, suggests that such surroundings will instead overpower the speaker and distract his audience. Yet the debate does not only question whether beautiful surroundings help or hinder the epideictic orator. It also asks what the proper response of an educated man should be to visual beauty, and problematises the relationship between the visual and the verbal. While many of Lucian's other works give descriptions of works of art, or appeal to the reader's artistic knowledge, this essay puts the ekphrastic project itself in the spotlight, questioning whether words can ever truly compete with the impact of the visual.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 31 , supplement 1-2: The Verbal and the Visual: Cultures of Ekphrasis in Antiquity , 2002 , pp. 126 - 135
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 2002

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References

I would like to thank Jaś Elsner for many fruitful discussions of Lucian’s attitudes to art-works and for his comments on various versions of this paper. I am also grateful to Michael Trapp and those present at the Ekphrasis conference held at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, September 11-13 2002 for questions and comments which have helped me to refine my ideas.

1. On Lucian’s dates, see Jones (1986), 8 n.10 with appendix B: born between 115 and 125 CE with most of his works dating to 160-180. The references at Hall 13 and 32 to the forthcoming speech make it clear, in my opinion, that this piece originally served as an introduction: Bompaire (1958), 288 n.5. For a general discussion of Lucian’s prolaliae, see Nesselrath (1990), esp. 115 n.9 on whether On the Hall should be included. He excludes it as different to the other prolaliae.

2. For discussions of this piece, see Bompaire (1958), 713-18; Maffei (1994), xxxviii–xl; Boeder (1996), 117-37; Thomas (1994), 162-82; Goldhill (2001), 154-94. See also Eisner (forthcoming).

3. Descriptions of paintings appear in Slander 4-5, Herodotos or Aetion 5f, and Zeuxis or Antiochos 3-6. Appeals to the reader’s knowledge of famous artworks can be found in Lover of Lies 18 and, especially, Imagines. On Lucian’s approach to artworks, see Maffei (1994); on the Imagines, see Maffei (1986).

4. On the essay’s portrayal of the educated viewer, see Goldhill (2001), 160-67.

5. The didactic message links this work with the Imagines of the Elder Philostratus, which is explicitly announced as a work to teach the young to interpret painting (Imagines proem 5). Other references to the pepaideumenoi are littered throughout Lucian’s works; see Jones (1984), 149-59.

6. The rest of the work (15-32) is in this voice.

7. His speech will actually be the rhetorical display which originally followed this prolalia, as is made clear by the references at 13 and 32, but we can also see an allusion to the two different speeches given within the piece itself, especially since the second speaker is referred to as or (On the Hall, 14, 15).

8. Goldhill (2001), 161f.

9. Plat. Phdr. 251b.

10. Ach. Tat. Leucippe and Clitophon 1.9.4; Goldhill (2001), 169f.

11. The humanising of the room is well discussed by Thomas (1994), 166-68.

12. Ovid Met. 3.339-510, esp. 359-401.

13. On Echo as the aural mirror to Narcissus, doomed to reflect her beloved’s words as he is doomed to love his own (reflected) image, see Frontisi-Ducroux and Vemant (1997), 210-17.

14. In the accounts of the myth given by Callistr. Desc. 5.4 and Plotinus Enneads 1.6.8, Narcissus dies whilst trying to embrace or catch hold of his image. In others, e.g. Ovid, Met. 3.486-93, he simply wastes away with love. On Plotinus, see Mortley (1998).

15. A similar sense of rivalry between words and images is suggested in the prologue to Longus Daphnis and Chloe, where the author announces his intention (‘to write an account of the picture’).

16. E.g. Herod. Hist. 1.194 (the greatest wonder in Babylon, the boats), 3.113 (sheep in Arabia), 3.148 (Maendrias’ silver and gold cups), 4.199 (Cyrene’s three harvesting seasons)—i.e. both natural and artistic phenomena. Art works such as the bowl dedicated by Alyattes at Delphi, can also be described as ‘worth seeing’ (1.25).

17. E.g. Paus. 1.23.4 (statue pierced with arrows), 1.35.7 (huge bones), 4.35.11 (springs at Astra). On travel and thaumata in Philostr. VA, see Eisner (1997), esp. 28f. and n.37. On travel literature’s delight in wonders, see Romm (1992), esp. 172-214 on fictional travelogues.

18. See also Plat. Theaet. 155d. I am grateful to Simon Goldhill for drawing my attention to this.

19. E.g. Philostr. Imagines 2.17.5. For a more detailed discussion of Philostratus’ attitudes towards wonder, see Newby (forthcoming).

20. On the complex relationships between wonder, knowledge and inquiry, see Hepburn (1984), esp. 137 where he outlines the choice between ‘self-indulgent or apathetic wonder’ and a concern over truth and understanding comparable to the difference between wonder in Lucian and Aristotle.

21. E.g. Philostr. Imagines 1.6.1, 1.9.3, 1.14.3. See Newby (forthcoming).

22. Note that this second speaker is also said to be amazed (), but at the first speaker’s words rather than at an image.

23. This is an almost direct quotation of Herod. Hist. 1.8.3, with one word omitted. Another version of the same quotation appears in Lucian How to Write History 29, in the mouth of a contemporary historian.

24. The reference to the Sirens picks up on the first speaker’s use of them to support his own argument in 13.

25. Note that this links in with Plato’s attacks on mimetic art in Rep. 10.598c and Soph. 234b, on the grounds that as well as being a pale imitation of reality, it deceives uneducated children and foolish men into thinking that it represents the real things. The idea of deception (, Rep. 598c) rather than seduction, as here in Lucian, emerges more clearly in Philostratus’ work. In the Second Sophistic, however, rhetoric rather than philosophy is presented as the means to subdue the lures of art.

26. As discussed above, both speakers subvert their own arguments in this work, the first by mixing his metaphors and comparing the visual beauty of the hall to the aural effect of the Sirens, and the second by the account he gives of the paintings. This seems to be a deliberate ploy by Lucian to preserve the balance between the arguments, undermining them both and leaving the question ultimately up to the reader. We might compare this with Anacharsis where again no convincing refutation of Anarchasis’ attacks on athletics is really given. See Branham (1989), 82-104. Thomas (1994), 162-82, suggests that the second speaker uses the painted images to argue against the distractions of the architecture.

27. The prevalence of such guided tours of images is also suggested in the proem of Philostratus’ Imagines and satirised in Eumolpus’ poetic responses to artworks in Petronius’ Satyricon 88f., discussed by Eisner (1993). See also Slater (1987).

28. In Slander 4f., Herodotos or Aetion 5f., and Zeuxis or Antiochos 3-6 respectively. Note that the latter two descriptions are also found in prolaliae (Nesselrath [1990], 117-22, 129-32. On Lucian’s ekphraseis see Bompaire (1958), 707-35; Palm (1965-66), 158-64; Maffei (1994). Note, however, that even in these ekphraseis Lucian may be playing games, altering details of the original paintings or re-interpreting them with second-century eyes: Maffei (1994), lvi–lxvi.

29. He says that the (‘model’) comes from Euripides or Sophocles, who have both (‘painted a similar picture’). The visual vocabulary of moulding and painting is thus appropriated for literature.

30. Note also the observation by Thomas (1994), 179f., that the reactions of the viewers within the image, some stunned, others responding with words (shouting), parallels that of the viewers of the room itself.

31. Note that Bompaire (1958), 713, and Thompson (1961), 60, argue that Lucian ignores the connections between images, not grouping them by theme, but to me this undermines his ambitions in the passage. The following ideas are explored in more detail in Newby (2002), 118-124.

32. Newby (2002).

33. See Boeder (1996), 118.

34. See Goldhill (2001), 184-93 on this text and especially 186 on the erotic connotations of the verb neTtrryevcu—‘to be turned hard/into stone’.

35. See Eisner (forthcoming).

36. See Newby (2002).