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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 July 2023
Lucian's Hippias or The Bath, traditionally considered to be a straight-faced encomium of a historical architect and real-life bath-house of the Antonine period, is now often judged to be a work of satire, though what exactly is being satirized has remained elusive. This article argues that the architect ‘Hippias’ is closely modelled on Plato's caricature of the sophist Hippias of Elis in the Hippias Minor, and that his bath-house is a comic extrapolation from the sophist's home-made oil-flask and strigil. Lucian's Hippias should be read as a parody of contemporary prose encomia of public buildings.
1 Although Clive James correctly identified Bill Tipple's crackup in barcelona as a masterpiece: James, C., Latest Readings (New Haven and London, 2015), 69–73Google Scholar.
2 On ekphrasis in Lucian, see Borg, B.E., ‘Bilder zum Hören – Bilder zum Sehen: Lukians Ekphraseis und die Rekonstruktion antiker Kunstwerke’, Millennium 1 (2004), 25–57Google Scholar; Cistaro, M., Sotto il velo di Pantea: Imagines e Pro imaginibus di Luciano (Messina, 2009), 20–55Google Scholar.
3 On the rhetorical structure of the Hippias, see Race, W.H., ‘The art and rhetoric of Lucian's Hippias’, Mnemosyne 70 (2017), 223–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar, noting close analogies with Pindar's praise-poetry (Pindar is quoted twice in the Hippias, 4 and 7).
4 Pernot, L., La rhétorique de l’éloge dans le monde gréco-romain (Paris, 1993), 1.200Google Scholar (‘éloge-visite’) and 1.202–8 (description of site); Cistaro (n. 2), 34. For logoi periêgêmatikoi, see Dubel, S., ‘Ekphrasis et enargeia: la description antique comme parcours’, in Lévy, C. and Pernot, L. (edd.), Dire l’évidence (philosophie et rhétorique antiques) (Paris and Montréal, 1997), 249–64Google Scholar. Lucian's ‘tour’ corresponds not to the sequence of bathing-acts but to the itinerary of the bather (who passes rapidly through the frigidarium on the way to the warmer rooms, before returning to it later: 6–7); Dubel, S., Lucien de Samosate: Portrait du sophiste en amateur d'art (Paris, 2014), 60Google Scholar.
5 Yegül, F.K., ‘The small city bath in classical antiquity and a reconstruction study of Lucian's “Baths of Hippias”’, Archaeologica Classica 31 (1979), 108–29Google Scholar; Thébert, Y., Thermes romains d'Afrique du Nord et leur context méditerranéen (Rome, 2003), 108–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thomas, E., Monumentality and the Roman Empire: Architecture in the Antonine Age (Oxford, 2007), 221–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hanoune, R., ‘L’Hippias ou Le bain de Lucien’, Topoi 18 (2013), 315–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 Men. Rhet. 365.18–22 Russell and Wilson; Pernot (n. 4), 1.82.
7 Philostr. V S 1.8.
8 Stat. Silv. 1.5 (with the acute reading of C.E. Newlands, Statius’ Silvae and the Poetics of Empire [Cambridge, 2002], 199–226) and Mart. 6.42; cf. also Mart. 9.75; Anth. Pal. 9.606–40. Both Statius and Martial, like Lucian, emphasize the use of decorative coloured marble (5–6) and the bright illumination of the baths (5–7; cf. also Plin. Ep. 1.3). S. Busch, Versus balnearum: Die antike Dichtung über Bäder und Baden im römischen Reich (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1999) is an exhaustive study of Greek and Latin bath-house verse.
9 Bompaire, J., Lucien écrivain, imitation et creation (Paris, 1958), 281–2Google Scholar, 727–8; Bompaire, J., Lucien: Œuvres, Tome I: Introduction générale, Opuscules 1–10 (Paris, 1993), 32–3Google Scholar; Pernot (n. 4), 1.240, 2.557–8; Swain, S., Hellenism and Empire (Oxford, 1996), 419CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. also Hanoune (n. 5), 318 (western empire); Pont, A.-V., Orner la cité: Enjeux culturels et politiques du paysage urbain dans l'Asie gréco-romaine (Bordeaux, 2010), 134–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar (Asia Minor).
10 Yegül (n. 5), 117 n. 22 (‘may or may not have been based on a single, real building’); cf. Yegül, F., Bathing in the Roman World (Cambridge, 2010), 74–9Google Scholar (‘probably re-creating an imaginary bath based on many examples’).
11 M. Cannatà Fera, ‘Comunicazione e umorismo. L’Ippia di Luciano’, in E.A. Arslan et al., La ‘Parola’ delle immagini e delle forme di scrittura (Messina, 1998), 229–42, especially 241–2; cf. Thomas (n. 5), 221–9.
12 Dubel (n. 4 [2014]), 58.
13 Race (n. 3).
14 Guast, W., ‘Lucian and declamation’, CPh 113 (2018), 189–205Google Scholar, at 197, 203.
15 Cannatà Fera (n. 11), 235–9, criticized by Race (n. 3), 232–3; Thomas (n. 5), 224–8, criticized by Hanoune (n. 5), 319–21.
16 The building praised in The Hall—also surely Lucian's own invention—is likewise unlocated (Thomas [n. 5], 229). Lucian is perfectly capable of being specific about artworks’ locations, such as Aetion's painting of the wedding of Roxane and Alexander (Her. 4–6, cf. Imag. 7) and the copy of Zeuxis’ centaur-painting (Zeux. 3–7), although M. Pretzler, ‘Form over substance? Deconstructing ecphrasis in Lucian's Zeuxis and Eikones’, in A. Bartley (ed.), A Lucian for our Times (Newcastle, 2009), 157–72 has argued that the latter is Lucian's own invention.
17 Courrént, M., ‘Du sublime en architecture: le De architectura de Vitruve lu et commenté par Lucien de Samosate dans Hippias ou les bains’, Cahiers des études anciennes 56 (2019), 91–107Google Scholar.
18 Race (n. 3), 234.
19 The name Hippias was fairly widespread in the Roman Imperial period: 32 of the 170 instances of the name in LGPN I–V.C date to the first three centuries a.d.
20 κατὰ δὲ τὸν γεωμετρικὸν λόγον ἐπὶ τῆς δοθείσης, φασίν, εὐθείας τὸ τρίγωνον ἀκριβῶς συνισταμένου. ‘To construct an equilateral triangle on a given finite straight line’ is the first proposition in Euclid's Elements (1.1). The point of the metaphor here is rather obscure (Cannatà Fera [n. 11], 233–4). I wonder if the emphasis should lie firmly on the word δοθείσης (as the position of φασίν implies): Hippias shows his skill not through the posing and solving of original problems but in the context of routine commissions (‘given’ projects) which leave little space for innovation.
21 Vitr. De arch. 1.1.3–14; Yegül (n. 5), 118 n. 23 (‘simply echoes Vitruvius’). Courrént (n. 17) sees the entire Hippias as a ‘ironic exegesis’ of Vitruvius’ picture of the ideal architect, and suggests that Lucian's ‘Hippias’ should be identified with Vitruvius himself.
22 Pl. Hp. mi. 366c–368e, especially 368b–d. A similar list in Hp. mai. 285b–d (astronomy, geometry, arithmetic, syntax, letters, rhythm, harmony). On Plato's characterization of Hippias, see R. Blondell, The Play of Character in Plato's Dialogues (Cambridge, 2002), 128–64 (especially 140–3 on Hippias’ polymathy); F.V. Trivigno, ‘The moral and literary character of Hippias in Plato's Hippias Major’, in V. Caxton (ed.), Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy Volume L (Oxford, 2016), 31–64. On the historical Hippias, see M. Węcowski, ‘Hippias of Elis’, BNJ 6.
23 Cic. De or. 3.127; Philostr. V S 1.11 (495); Dio Chrys. Or. 71.2, with Fornaro's discussion in H.-G. Nesselrath (ed.), Dion von Prusa: Der Philosoph und sein Bild (Tübingen, 2009), 14–17, 142–4.
24 Jones, C.P., Culture and Society in Lucian (Cambridge, MA, 1996), 155Google Scholar; similarly Swain (n. 9), 419–20 and apparently Thomas (n. 5), 224 (while also emphasizing the satirical tone of the Hippias as a whole).
25 Cannatà Fera (n. 11), 239; Race (n. 3), 235–6. Dubel (n. 4 [2014]), 58 agrees that Lucian's Hippias is a fictional calque on Plato's Hippias, but leaves the significance of the link open.
26 See Harrison, S.J., Apuleius: A Latin Sophist (Oxford, 2000), 105–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lee, B.T., Apuleius’ Florida: A Commentary (Berlin and New York, 2005), 96–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for the date of Honorinus’ proconsulship, Chetoui, M. and Hugoniot, C., ‘Les proconsuls d'Afrique sous le règne de Marc Aurèle (161–180): étude chronologique’, in Aounallah, S. and Mastino, A. (edd.), L'epigrafia del Nord Africa: Novità, riletture, nuove sintesi (Faenza, 2020), 223–36Google Scholar, at 230.
27 The two culminating examples are introduced in strikingly similar language: enim non pigebit me commemorare quod illum non puditum est ostentare (Flor. 9.22); ἃ δὲ ἔναγχος ἰδὼν αὐτοῦ τῶν ἔργων κατεπλάγην, οὐκ ὀκνήσω εἰπεῖν (Hippias 4). The link is noted by Hanoune (n. 5), 315 n. 5, without drawing the consequences suggested here.
28 In the Nigrinus, Lucian criticizes wealthy individuals’ behaviour in bath-houses (13, 34), but—pace Cannatà Fera (n. 11), 241—not the institution of public bathing itself.
29 Hyperbole: note the ten superlatives in sections 4–6 (Cannatà Fera [n. 11], 240). The pile-up of superlatives in the opening chapter of Lucian's The Hall has a similar effect.
30 κοινός: Thomas (n. 5), 224; cf. Pernot (n. 4), 2.686.
