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Posidonius*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Extract

Crescit occulto velut arbor aevo fama Marcelli: so it was with Posidonius from 1878 for forty years, with no voice raised to the contrary save by A. E. Housman in his caustic asides. Had we not found a figure lesser in dimensions than only Plato or Aristotle, the principal intellectual influence of two succeeding centuries, the fountainhead of Neoplatonism ? In retrospect the element of exaggeration is clear, and yet the quest must not be counted as labour in vain; for there came of it a great enlargement of the frontiers of scholarship. So in the familiar fable the sons did not find the buried treasure for which they dug, but their digging bore rich fruit.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Arthur Darby Nock 1959. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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Footnotes

*

An abridged form of these remarks was part of my Gifford Lectures at Aberdeen in May, 1946, and a fuller form was presented to the Joint Meeting at Cambridge in August, 1958. My warmest thanks are due to my hosts on both occasions, as also to H. Cherniss, G. S. Kirk, F. H. Sandbach, Z. Stewart, and F. R. Walton for generous aid.

References

1 In particular, Jones showed that certain ideas attributed to Posidonius were taken from Plato direct or belonged to what Festugière has called ‘philosophic koine’.

2 cf. Sandbach, F. H., Deutsche Literaturzeitung (= DLZ) LXXIX, 1958, 113 ffGoogle Scholar. To R.'s references for Fortleben, add H.-R. Schwyzer, P-W XXI, 577 ff.

3 cf. Sandbach, , JHS LXXI, 1951, 262 f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Edelstein, , AJPhilol. LXXII, 1951, 426 ff.Google Scholar; De Lacy, P., CL.Phil. XLVI, 1951, 260 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mette, H. J., Gnomon XXIV, 1952, 27 ff.Google Scholar, and W. Theiler, ib. 223 f.

4 For an eminently judicious survey, cf. Nilsson, M. P., Gesch. gr. Rel. II, 250 ffGoogle Scholar. References hereafter in the style F1, etc., are to Jacoby, Frag. gr. Hist., no. 87.

5 Plin., NH VII, 112.

6 Rep. III, 12.

7 What Diog. Bab. says on music, fr. 69 (Stoicorum Vet. Frag. III, p. 227), and its production of psychological states suggests that his view of the emotions was not simply intellectualist. To be sure, Chrysippus (ibid. no. 390) allows that a sufficiently strong impulse can cause the individual to reject the guidance of reason; cf. Pohlenz 1, 143 ff.

(The psychology of Panaetius is far less well attested than that of Posidonius, but cf. Pohlenz, P-W XVIII, iii, 433.)

8 It might be held that your style should match your topic (Norden, Kunstprosa 285), but with συνενθουσιᾷ cf. μηδὲ ὑπὲρ τὸν καιρὸν ἐνθουσιῶσα in Lucian, Quom. hist. 58 and Nock, , Coniectanea Neotestamentica, XI, 169 ffGoogle Scholar. Note also Seneca's comment (Ep. 90, 20) ‘incredibilest, mi Lucili, quam facile etiam magnos viros dulcedo orationis abducat vero. ecce Posidonius….’

9 De plac. Hippocr. et Plat. p. 362, Müller (V, 390K). For Galen geometrical proofs were the best: cf. Scr. min. II, 116 f. (XIX, 40K). The Stoic Dionysius of Cyrene had been celebrated as a geometer (V. Arnim, P-W V, 974).

10 Scr. min. II, 77 f. (IV, 819K); Plac. 653M (652K)—again with reference to P.'s geometrical training. For the principle cf. Galen VII, 825 f. K (he explains that he has given his own statement with proofs first, before setting forth what Hippocrates had said); Scr. min. II, 95 (XIX, 13K)—Hippocrateans, etc., as slaves; R. Walzer, Galen on Jews and Christians 41 f.

11 To Nicolaus of Damascus (90F, 132) the attraction of Aristotle was his breadth of education. Cf. in general K. O. Brink, P-W Supp. VII, 927, and ibid. 930, on Peripatetics in Rhodes.

12 cf. Arrian, Tact. 1; it is commonly thought that the tactical writer Asclepiodotus was a philosophic pupil of his cited by Sen., NQ passim.

13 cf. E. R. Dodds, Greeks and the Irrational 267. On experimentation and on the place of science in ancient society see above all Edelstein, L., J. Hist. Ideas XIII, 1952, 573 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on the ‘limits of Greek science’, S. Sambursky, The Physical World of the Greeks 222 ff.

14 Cic., ND II, 88.

15 Sen., NQ I, 5, 10; Norden, Die germanische Urgeschichte 108 f. (on Vitruv. VI, 1, 8). For a possible survival of his (or Athenodorus' ?) views on tides cf. Čyževśkyj, , ZeitschrslavPhil XXIV, 19551956, 6, 74Google Scholar.

16 Hellenistic Civilisation (ed. 3 with G. T. Griffith) 304, 350.

17 Note his contemptuous treatment (XI, 792 ff. K) of the work of the grammarian Pamphilus on herbs— with its magic invocations, its quotations from the Egyptian Hermes, and (796) ‘Pamphilus who had never even in a dream seen the plants whose shapes he sets about describing’ (cf. XII, 31K, and Festugière, A. J., Révélation I, 139, 197Google Scholar; Wendel, P-W XVIII, iii, 344 f.).

18 cf. Pohlenz I, 215; II, 107.

19 Leeman, A. D., Gnomon XXIV, 1952, 280Google Scholar. The fact that Posidonius (D.L. VII, 138) described the universe as a ‘system composed of heaven and earth and the natures in them or again as a system composed of gods and men and all that is created for their sake’ does not tell against this, since systema was used to describe a living organism.

20 SVF II, 950.

21 [D.Hal.] Ars rhet. XI, 2.

22 Über Sprache u. Stil des Diod. v. Siz. (Lund, 1955) 140, n. 1.

23 Zur Beurteilung der Prooemien in Diodors historcher Bibliothek (Diss. Zürich, 1935) 101. Cf. XXI, 17, 4, about Callias of Syracuse, ‘having been taken into favour by Agathocles and having for great gifts sold history, the prophetess of truth’.

24 cf. Pack, R., Trans. Am. Phil. Ass. LXXXVI, 1955, 283 fGoogle Scholar.

25 cf. Polyb. XXXVIII, 6, 1, for a defence of these.

26 For this alternative cf. Jacoby on 264F, 6 (Komm. 47), and E. Honigmann, P-W IVA 108 f.

27 cf. Schroeder, A., De ethnographiae antiquae locis quibusdam communibus observationes (Diss. Halle, 1921), 2 ffGoogle Scholar.

28 Ant. rer. div. p. 19, ed. Agahd, (Fleck. Jahrb. Supp. XXIV)Google Scholar. Varro, moreover, knew the name Iao (Lyd, J.. Mens. IV, 53, p. 110 fGoogle Scholar. Wünsch: ὁ δὲ Ῥωμαῖος Βάρρων περὶ αὐτοῦ (the god of the Hebrews) διαλαβών φησι παρὰ χαλδαίοις ἐν τοῖς μυστικοῖς αὐτὸν λέγεσθαι Ἰάω ἀντὶ τοῦ φῶς νοητὸν τῇ Φοινίκων γλώσσῃ, ὥς φησιν Ἑρέννιος. Has not something dropped out, e.g. ὅ ἐστιν? On the reference to Philo Byblius cf. H. Lewy, Chaldaean Oracles [Rech. arch. phil. hist., Inst. fr. arch. orient. XIII], 409, n. 32). Presumably Varro is using the term ‘Chaldaeans’ loosely and referring to the Jews: cf. Norden, Festgabe Harnack 299. (A fragment in Funaioli, , Gramm. rom. frag. I, 183Google Scholar, no. 1, shows his interest in the names of the letters of the ‘Chaldaean’ alphabet). Diod. Sic. 1, 94, 2, speaks of Iao as the god to whom Moses ascribed his laws: the context is like our passage, and gives Zathraustes and Zalmoxis as analogues, but leaves it an open question whether such men believed that an idea which would benefit humanity was wondrous and wholly divine or alternatively acted from prudential considerations. Jacoby IIIC, 665; Anh. 119, p. 244, prints much of the Egyptian material in this and the following chapter as ‘( = Poseidonios ?)’.

29 cf. Harv. Theol. Rev. XXXIII, 1940, 313 f.

30 cf. Jacoby IIIA, on 273 (Komm. 248 ff., 257). The historical writings of Berossus and Manetho are known to us almost entirely through Jewish and Christian authors.

31 cf. Wolfgang Schmid, Ethica Epicurea 66.

32 The phrase is indeed used by Clem. Al., Strom. II, 21, 129, p. 183 St. for a view distinguished from that of Posidonius.

33 cf. Plat., Rep. 391E, Critias 121A, Phileb. 16C, Leg. 948B: Dicaearch. ap. Porph., Abst. IV, 2: Cic., Leg. II, 27; TD 1, 26. For references, as also for help on the Seneca passage, I am indebted to Z. Stewart.

34 cf. W. Jaeger, Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers ch. X; E. A. Havelock, Liberal Temper in Greek Politics 438, s.v. Religion. Man's kinship with the divine in Plat., Prot. 322A is a very attenuated relationship; after all, in Pind., Nem. VI, 1 ff. the fact that gods and men share one mother brings anything but closeness.

35 Note 60, the denial that it would have been better if there had never been images, which is almost like an answer to criticism such as that of the Moses excursus (to which Dio approximated in 27, where he speaks of the original inborn idea of divinity as being ‘without a mortal teacher and the deceit of a mystagogos’). In 40 he speaks of some poets and lawgivers as expounding things rightly and in harmony with truth and the (innate) concepts, and others as going astray on certain points.

For a drastic statement cf. the gnomic sentiment discussed by J. and L. Robert, Bull. épigr. 240 in Rev. ét. gr. LXIV, 1951, 210, with its blunt rejection of all representations.

36 cf. F 33, p. 243, on the wealth in the sanctuary at Tolosa. Philo Bybl. ap. Eus. Pr. Ev. 1, 9, 26 states that Sanchuniathon cleared away the myth and allegory which forerunners had introduced and that later priests undid his work: I note the analogy, without suggesting any literary relationship.

37 Le culte des Muses 209 ff. (E. Schwartz, P-W 1, 2874, had suggested that the source was Apollodorus writing in a manner very close to Aristotle's observations). On the other side, be it remembered that Wilamowitz, , Glaube II, 416Google Scholar, n. 1, warmly approved Reinhardt's attribution on stylistic grounds.

R. Philippson, P-W XIX, 2457 f. suggested that there is criticism of Posidonius in Philod., Mus.; but cf. A. J. Neubecker, Die Bewertung d. Musik bei Stoikern u. Epikureern (D. Akad. Berlin, Inst. gr.-röm, Alt., Arbeitsgruppe f. hellenistisch-römische Philosophie V, 1956), 88. Philodemus seems wholly or almost wholly ignorant of Posidonius (cf. n. 70); if he were attacking this fierce enemy of his school (cf. D. L. X, 4) would he not name him ?

38 Strabonis Geographica IV, 191 ff.; I cite p. 207. (I owe this, as other references, to H. Cherniss.) Aly is right in saying (p. 196) that the definition of God is not that of Posidonius (but cf. n. 47 below on God's substance), but is related to that which is ascribed to the Jews by Hecataeus of Abdera (itself perhaps due to the Jewish habit of using Heaven as a substitute for the name of God): yet it was a definition acceptable to many thoughtful Greeks. As for Decaeneus in the list of prophets, ‘in our time’ strongly suggests that Strabo added his name; cf. the fuller treatment, VII, 3, 5, p. 298.

39 Certainly F 69 is not evidence to the contrary; Joseph., , Contra Ap. II, 79Google Scholar, is just mentioning two names quoted by Apion, who might conceivably have been thinking of the remarks attributed to counsellors of Antiochus VII (F 109). Timagenes ap. Jos., AJ XIII, 319, speaks with favour of what Aristobulus did in Ituraea; this tells against his being Strabo's source.

40 ap. Orig., CCels. III, 5; IV, 31. Celsus was concerned to represent the Jews as apostates from Egyptian religion, just as he represented the Christians as apostates from Jewish religion.

On the expulsion story, cf. Finkelstein, L., Harv. Theol. Rev. XXXVI, 1943, 24 ffGoogle Scholar. Julius Africanus ap. Eus., Pr. Ev. X, 10, 16, quotes Apion (616F2 Jacoby) as speaking of the revolt (ἀποστῆναι) of the Jews. The reference to Herodotus which follows does not encourage confidence in this statement; in any event cf. Jos., Contra Ap. II, 8 (J. says that he has refuted the story of the expulsion and that he comes to what Apion has added; 20 ‘the number of those expelled’; 15, 23, the familiar reference to supposed physical defects). Tatian, Ad Gr. 38, says that Ptolemy of Mendes (611F1) spoke of the journey of the Jews to what lands they wanted: but no one will take Tatian's word too seriously.

41 cf. Tcherikover, V., Harv. Theol. Rev. LI, 1958, 59 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. on the Letter of Aristeas as directed to Jews and intended to promote intelligent conformity.

42 cf. Schürer, E., Gesch. jüd. V. III, 477 ff.Google Scholar; Th. Hopfner, Fontes hist. rel. Aeg. 851 s.v. Joseph.

43 cf. Finkelstein, l.c. XXXV, 1942, 292 ff.

44 cf. H. Lewy, ib. XXXI, 1938, 205 ff.

45 cf. W. Jaeger, Diokles v. Karystos 134 ff.; Dirlmeier, Fr., DLZ. LIX, 1938, 1834Google Scholar; Nock, , Harv. Theol. Rev. XXXVII, 1944, 174Google Scholar. There remains the question of how the writer of De sublimitate came to quote Genesis with such sympathy; cf. Norden, AbhBerlin 1954, 1.

46 cf. G. S. Kirk-J. E. Raven, Presocratic Philosophers 209.

47 Combining Diels, Dox. 302 f. and Comm. Bern. in Lucan. IX, 578, p. 305, Usener. For Posidonius, as for Zeno and Chrysippus, the substance of God is the whole world and the heaven (D. L. VII, 148).

48 Div. I, 64, as just cited; D. L. VII, 138 (n. 19 above).

49 Lucan II, 9 f.

50 Diels, Dox. 324, with Reinhardt, P-W 644. Contrast the traditional Stoic view of their identity (D. L. VII, 135).

51 For the meaning of ἐξηγούμενος cf. Sext., Adv Math. I, 93, τὰ ἀσαφῶς λεγόμενα ἐξηγοῦνται (cf. Galen below); 319 διὰ τὸ μὴ δεῖσθαι ἐξηγήσεως σαφὲς ὄν; Adv Phys. 11, 219 (‘Epicurus as Demetrius Laco interprets him’, with a definition given in P. Hypoth. III, 137, in the form, ‘Epicurus, as Demetrius Laco says.’ Cf. V. De Falco, L'epicureo Demetrio Lacone 18; there is no indication that Demetrius wrote anything like a commentary on any work of Epicurus, but clearly he expounded his terminology); Galen VII, 825 K ἡ ἐξήγησις … ἀσαφοῦς ἑρμηνείας ἐξάπλωσις (in what follows he repeatedly discusses the word usage of Hippocrates); VII, 894K (exegetes must keep the text, solving difficulties by small additions or changes); H. O. Schröder, Corp.med.gr.Supp. I (Galen on Timaeus), vii f.; Plut. 1012B τὴν Πλάτωνος ἐξηγούμενος δόξαν ἥν εἶχεν ὑπὲρ ψυχῆς (strictly speaking, a different use of ἐξ: but it comes to the same thing); Artemidor. 1, 1, p. 2.4 f. (writers have made copies of one another or have interpreted ill what had been said well by the ancients). Cleanthes wrote Exegesis (in four books) on Heraclitus (Kirk, G. S., AJPhilol. LXX, 1949, 386)Google Scholar, and many others essayed interpretations of that author (D. L. IX, 15). On exegeseis as a grammatical term cf. W. G. Rutherford, Chapter in the History of Annotation 203, 316; any student of philosophy had been through the grammarian's discipline. Praechter, K., Hermes LVII, 1922, 510Google Scholar, argues that the Athenodorus who commented on Aristotle was the Stoic, i.e. the pupil of Posidonius.

(Note, indeed, ἃ δὴ καὶ ἐξηγούμενος in Porph., Abst. IV, 2, of what Dicaearchus said in his Life of Hellas about Hes., Op. 117 ff.)

Reinhardt, Poseidonios über Ursprung u. Entartung 47, n. 1, is probably right in assigning Sext., Adv Math. I, 303, also to Posidonius.

52 Ap. Galen, Plac. 448 f. M. (469K); Pohlenz, , Fleck. Jahrb. Supp. XXIV, 625Google Scholar. On εὐδαίμων cf. H. J. Rose on Aesch., Agam. 336 (Verh. Nederl. Akad. LXIV, ii, 1958). Is not the adjective, like the noun δαίμων, fluid, and now more than εὐτυχής, now identical ? So in Archyt, . ap. Stob. III, 1, 107Google Scholar, P. 57. 17, the εὐδαίμων can be deprived of his εὐδαιμοσύνα.

53 Stoa u. Stoiker 367. (In Nachr. Göttingen II, 9, 1938, 205, Pohlenz had accepted the formulation as Chrysippean.)

54 cf. also what Galen quotes just before the passage adduced above: ‘For I think that the consideration of goods and evils and that of ends and that of virtue depend on the right understanding of emotion.’

55 One can never be sure how far Seneca is following a source (his explicit references to authorities sometimes seem to be inserted as a device of style): yet in § 13 the body is not the prison but the sheath of the soul.

56 cf. Cleomed. II, 1, 87, p. 158, Ziegler (Rudberg's view that this is drawn from Posidonius seems to me in substance probable. He did not mince words: cf. the picture of Athenion in F 36).

57 cf. Walzer, R., CQ XLIII, 1949, 82 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. (inference from Galen).

58 Plac. 445M. (466 K); Scr. min. II, 78 (IV, 820K); Pohlenz, , Fleck. Jahrb. Supp. XXIV, 620 ffGoogle Scholar.

59 cf. praise, Galen's (Stoicorum Vet. Frag. III, 457)Google Scholar.

60 Plac. 459M (478K).

61 cf. Dörrie, H., Hermes LXXXV, 1957, 421 fGoogle Scholar.

62 E. Maass, Comm. in Arat. p. 41.

63 Jones, attacked this view strongly, Cl.Phil. XXVII, 1932, 113 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for it cf. Pohlenz 1, 229 f.; II, 115 f.; Reinhardt, P-W 780 f.

64 Reinhardt, P-W 692 ff.

65 On D. L. VII, 151, cf. Kirk, G. S., AJPhilol. LXX, 1949, 384 ffGoogle Scholar. and Kirk-Raven, o.c., 209 ff. (on possible Stoic developments of Heraclit. fr. 24; Kirk has suggested to me that Cleanthes might be responsible for them).

66 On daimon and deus internus cf. JRS XXXVII, 1947, 109 ff., adding (for Plat., Leg. 729E) Verdenius, W. J., Entretiens Hardt I, 280Google Scholar, (for the later Stoa) H. Erbse, Festschr. Zucker 129 ff., (for Posidonius) G. Verbeke, L'évolution de la doctrine du pneuma 112 f.; and in general, Festugière, , Réveĺ. IV, 212 ffGoogle Scholar. and Haussleiter, J., Reall. Ant. Chr. III, 794 ffGoogle Scholar.

67 τὸ ζῆν θεωροῦντα τὴν τῶν ὅλων ἀλήθειαν καὶ τάξιν καὶ συγκατασκευάζοντα αὐτὴν κατὰ τὸ δυνατόν, κατὰ μηδὲν ἀγόμενον ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀλόγου μέρους τῆς ψυχῆς. Pohlenz 11, 121, agrees with Wilamowitz, , Glaube II, 407Google Scholar, n. 2, in thinking ‘without being … soul’ to be an addition of Clement, but himself regards it as an explanation by Posidonius of his statement as to man's Highest Good. Pohlenz, in defending αὐτὴν, has been followed by subsequent writers. Sylburg's emendation, αὑτὸν, would agree with ‘Chrysippus’, but αὐτήν makes a possible and striking sense. For a remote analogy cf. a phrase put by a Rabbi in God's mouth, ‘Whenever I seek to do you good, you enfeeble the supernal power,’ meaning ‘Sin thwarts God's purpose of grace’ (Moore, G. F, Judaism I, 472)Google Scholar.

68 Riv Fil LXXXII, 1954, 133 ff. Cf. Reinhardt, P-W 819 and my remarks, Gnomon XV, 1939, 363 ff. (the reference to a horoscope in the Saite text there quoted was a mistranslation, a fact which I owe to the kindness of Prof. O. Neugebauer).

69 Elsewhere he shows sympathy with ‘mysticisme astral’ (Cumont, Bull. acad. Belg. 1909, 281 f.; Festugière, , Révél II, 555 ff.Google Scholar).

70 cf. Zuntz, G., Proc. Brit. Acad. XLII, 1956, 224Google Scholar (apropos of the famous fragment of the Hypobolimaios) ‘That kind of speech does not come from transcribing a philosopher's tenets: it comes from the heart. But the heart may well be awakened to these wonders by a philosopher's writings. It would be preposterous to assume that Menander had not read the exoteric works of Aristotle’. Menander was a friend of Demetrius of Phaleron, and by tradition of Theophrastus also. But the ideas reached his audience also and were comprehensible; we have always the evidence of Aristophanes for the circulation of new thinking at Athens. We can postulate something of the sort for the intelligentsia at Rome.

One fact might indeed be adduced against the view that Posidonius exercised the pervasive influence here claimed for him: it is the apparent absence of any clear allusion in Philodemus who continued to live for some time after his death and who had a close contact with Roman society. For one possible explicit allusion cf. W. Crönert, Kolotes u. Menedemos 177; the suggestion of Oldfather in the Loeb edition of Aeneas Tacticus, etc., p. 230, n. 1, that there is an allusion to his Tactica, in Concerning the good king by Homeric standards p. 33 is unconvincing.

In doxography he is the latest Stoic cited—and often.

71 Die röm. Literatur (ed. H. Fuchs), 60.

72 Lacy, De, TAPA LXXIV, 1943, 169 ff.Google Scholar, argues forcibly that the author was an Epicurean. Yet he is not outspokenly Epicurean; the miraculous deliverance of the pious brothers (604 ff.) does not fit the beliefs of the Garden. ‘ipse procul tantos miratur Iuppiter ignes’ (203) could be dismissed as poetic phraseology, but 367 ff., against the vulgar idea that the volcano is tired and resting to gather strength, seems to me definitely strange on the hypothesis. ‘exhaustos cessare sinus’ is like what Lucr. 11, 1150 f. maintains; cf. indeed Sen., Ep. 90, 44, but certainly ‘non est divinis tarn sordida rebus egestas’ (371) would fit a Stoic better.

73 cf. W. Kroll, Stud. z. Verständnis d. röm. Literatur 280 ff.

74 Die Stoa I, 361.

75 Charakterköpfe I, 99′.