Pushing Forty
The Platonic Significance of References to Age in Lucian's Double Indictment and Hermotimus
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9665804 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Anna Peterson (0000-0002-9058-2897, Pennsylvania State University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 68 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 621-633 |
| Publication date | 2018-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Classical Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0009-8388 • E-ISSN: 1471-6844 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0009838818000587 |
| OpenAlex | W2910153315 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 24 |
Opening on Olympus and concluding with two trials involving ‘the Syrian’ (an obvious Lucianic persona), Lucian's Double Indictment (= Bis Acc. ) presents a fantastical scenario that draws on Old Comic, Platonic and biographical models. In the first of the Syrian's two trials, a personified Rhetoric accuses the Syrian of abandoning her, his legitimate wife, for his lover, Dialogue. Dialogue, in turn, accuses the Syrian of hubris , asserting that the Syrian rendered him a generic freak when he forced him to accept ‘jokes, iambos , cynicism, and Eupolis and Aristophanes’ (ὁ σκῶμμα καὶ τὸν ἴαμβον καὶ κυνισμὸν καὶ τὸν Εὔπολιν καὶ τὸν Ἀριστοφάνη, Bis Acc. 33). Amidst this literary fantasy, Lucian seemingly adds an element of realism when the Syrian specifies that he was ‘almost forty’ (τετταράκοντα ἔτη σχεδὸν γεγονότι, Bis Acc. 32) at the time he left Rhetoric for Dialogue. This is notably not the only instance in which we find this age attributed to a Lucianic alter-ego: Lycinus in the Hermotimus (= Hermot. ) is likewise described as being ‘almost forty’ at the time of the dialogue. This is strikingly also the same age at which the dialogue's eponymous interlocutor—he is sixty at the time of the dialogue—began his own philosophical education (αὐτὸς κατὰ σὲ γεγονὼς ἠρξάμην φιλοσοφεῖν τετταρακοντούτης σχεδόν, Hermot. 13)
Art · Comics · Exaggeration · Fantasy · Griffin · Hubris · Humanities · Literature · Persona · Psychoanalysis · Realism · Rhetoric · Theology · Augustinian Studies and Theology · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classics · Organic Chemistry Synthesis Methods · Philosophy · Psychology
Narrative Discourse
Plato Avant la Lettre
Plato and the Traditions of Ancient Literature
Plato's Seventh Letter
Philosophical Life in Cicero's Letters
Metalepsis in Ancient Greek Literature
“Letting It All Hang Out”
Narrative and Epistolarity in the ‘Platonic’ Epistles
Beyond the Second Sophistic
Aristophanes the Democrat
Culture and Society in Lucian
Fact and Legend in the Biography of Plato
A History of Greek Philosophy
Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy
Revenge of the Hetairistria
Laughter on the fringes the reception of old comedy in the imperial Greek world
Hellenism and Empire
Three Instances of Greek Autobiographical Writing from the Fourth Century BCE
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,2 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2021 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |