Carneades' Quip

Orality, Philosophy, Wit, and the Poetics of Impromptu Quotation

Bibliographic Data

ID9334258
AuthorsM D Usher (0000-0003-4627-8457, corresponding author)
Year2006
Volume21
Issue1
Pages190-209
Publication date2006-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueOral tradition (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0883-5365 • E-ISSN: 1542-4308
PublisherCenter for Studies in Oral Tradition (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/ort.2006.0022
OpenAlexW2148383368
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited22

Carneades' Quip:Orality, Philosophy, Wit, and the Poetics of Impromptu Quotation M. D. Usher In spite of a long and influential philosophical career, when Carneades of Cyrene (214-129 BC), head of the Academy in its skeptical phase, died at age eighty-five, he left behind no written works. There were, we are told, some letters extant in Diogenes Laertius' time addressed to Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, but Carneades' philosophical opinions were conveyed orally and transmitted to posterity in written form only by his students (D.L. 4.65).1 In this respect Carneades resembles not only Pythagoras and Socrates before him and Epictetus later, but also his Skeptic predecessors Pyrrho and Arcesilaus, whose refusal to commit their ideas to writing was a conscious protest against philosophical dogmatism.2 And yet, while not a writer, Carneades' devotion to the word was total and complete: he let his hair and fingernails grow weirdly long, Diogenes Laertius reports, because he was so engrossed in philosophical debate (; D.L. 4.62), and his skills as a dialectician, conversationalist, and orator were by all accounts astounding. Indeed, Carneades' mastery of forms of oral expression became the stuff of legend: his booming voice brought him humorously into conflict with the local gymnasiarch (D.L. 4.63). Professional orators, it is said, would cancel their own classes in order to attend his lectures (D.L. 4.62). He became [End Page 190] something of a celebrity in 155, when, as one of three philosopher-envoys the Athenians sent to Rome in order to appeal a large fine, Carneades gave a stunning pair of lectures before the Senate on successive days, one in defense of justice and one against. His rhetorical tour de force on that famous occasion not only fired the imaginations of a whole generation of young Roman intellectuals (much to the chagrin of Cato the Censor), but it somehow managed to succeed in reducing the fine as well.3 Another verbal art form at which Carneades seems to have been adept is the spontaneous quotation of poetry, and this paper explores aspects of orality, philosophy, and wit in the Hellenistic age using Carneades' quotations as a lens. Our specific topic is a short series of one-liners from Homer and Sophocles—a short cento, in fact4—that was exchanged between the philosopher and one of his pupils (an episode preserved in Diogenes Laertius' life of Carneades: D.L. 4.63-4). This passage, at one level so typical of the anecdotes one finds in Diogenes, has attracted practically no attention,5 yet it is a case study in miniature that provides an illuminating glimpse into the reception and reworking of oral and orally-derived poetry and myth in the Hellenistic age. Of particular interest are traces of the kind of associative thinking that characterizes oral poetic composition.6 But Carneades' cento also suggests that the aesthetics and communicative power of "traditional referentiality"—Foley's shorthand term for the way oral poetic structures (and thus the orally-derived texts that were read by ancient readers) convey meaning differently than literary ones—did not die out completely with the establishment of literacy, but were operative even in the [End Page 191] most learned circles of the Hellenistic period (a stereotypically "bookish" age that saw the proliferation of libraries and the editing of classical texts on an unprecedented scale) and could be invoked, as we shall see, to score humorous and rather sophisticated philosophical points.7 Before we proceed to an analysis of this passage, it bears saying something at the outset about the relationship of Carneades' rhetoric (including his use of quotation) to his philosophy. It is now generally agreed among modern scholars of ancient philosophy that Carneades' use of antilogy and argument throughout his career was no mere sophistical display of arguing both sides of an issue or of making the weaker argument the stronger, but was philosophically motivated:8 to persuade someone of the truth and simultaneous untruth of two opposing sides of any argument only served to underscore the problems inherent in a person's ability to accurately interpret the "impressions," or phantasiai, that present themselves to the senses and buttressed the

Art · Impromptu · Legend · Literature · Orality · Order (exchange · Poetics · Poetry · Skepticism · Sociology · SOCRATES · Theology · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Historical and Literary Studies · Philosophy

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