Phlegon of Tralles was a Greek writer from the time of Hadrian (reigned a.d. 117–38). Standard accounts make him a freedman of the philhellenic Emperor, with Publius Aelius Phlegon as his official name, but nothing else about him is known for certain.Footnote 2 In On Marvels Phlegon claims that he encountered a sex-changer called Aetete/Aetetus in Syria in 116, when Hadrian was governor, and this suggests that he has been part of Hadrian's entourage prior to his accession.Footnote 3 There is a good likelihood that Phlegon maintained a life-long connection with Hadrian's court and, in Yourcenar's words, served as an ‘indispensable ever-attendant’ in the imperial itinerary.Footnote 4 Phlegon is credited by Byzantine lexicographers with a number of works, and has in recent decades received considerable scholarly discussion.Footnote 5 The Olympiads is a chronological work, an opus magnum recounting the entire history of the Olympic Games from its institutionalization in 776 b.c. down to the 229th Olympiad (a.d. 137–40), when Hadrian died: this also offers an approximate terminus post quem for Phlegon's activity.Footnote 6 In the discussion that follows, I explore the textual, literary, and historical contexts of the work (in section 1). I then apply a Goffmanian frame analysis to Phlegon's account of the Delphic oracle as what scholars call ‘communicating text’ in the course of policy deliberation (in section 2). I argue that frame analysis may bring to light new aspects of the Lycurgan institution of the Olympic Games: first, that warfare and plague initiate the process of framing and frame change from ‘competition’ to ‘festival’; secondly, that within the ‘festival’ frame, divine anger is keyed to the needs of modulating the monotonous tone of the Delphic oracle in the progress of policymaking. As such, frame analysis will ignite further research and enhance our understanding of ancient sources.
1. A PHILOLOGICAL-CUM-HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF THE OLYMPIADS
First, the physical presence and ancient testimonia of the Olympiads need surveying. The late ninth-century manuscript, Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, Cod. Pal. graec. 398 (fols. 234v–236r), preserves the beginning either of the sixteen-book Olympiads, or of its eight-book excerption, or of its epitomized version in two books, all of which are listed in the Suda. I follow McInerney in arguing that the Olympiads is a conflation of the Olympic Victory Lists in eight books and the Historical Chronicles in the remaining eight books, and that the ‘eight books’ referred to by the Suda compilers belong to the first half.Footnote 7 It comes as a surprise that the chronographical work occurs in this single manuscript between the paradoxographical writings of Phlegon (fols. 216r–234v) and those of other authors (fols. 236v–261v) that deal with variously marvellous phenomena, and scholars tend to identify the exemplar of the ‘Phlegon’ portion with a preceding collection of his works.Footnote 8 Among the testimonies of the Olympiads at our disposal, Photius alone mentions that it is dedicated to a certain Alcibiades, freedman and chamberlain (cubicularius) of Hadrian.Footnote 9
Now for the contents and literary parallels of the Olympiads. Regrettably, only the proem of the work has come to us, and even this fragment does not seem to survive intact.Footnote 10 But it is easy to grasp the structural outline of the extant eleven sections of this chronographical work. The text as transmitted relates in §1 the pre-Lycurgan festivals at Olympia that were held intermittently by mythical, if not shadowy, figures such as Pisus, Pelops and Heracles; in §§1–8 Lycurgus’ attempts to end a civic strife (stasis) by re-establishing the Olympic Games in 776; and in §§9–11 king Iphitus of Elis’ aid to Sparta until the seventh Olympiad in 752. There is reason to believe that Phlegon aspires to give a thorough and authoritative account of the Olympic Games, inasmuch as Photius states that ‘Phlegon begins his collection from the first Olympiad, because earlier periods, as nearly everyone else agrees, have not been recorded with any detail and reliability’.Footnote 11 Indeed, we see an amalgam of literary commonplaces and historical information reminiscent of Phlegon's paradoxographical writings that reconcile different styles and sources.Footnote 12 The major part of §1 concerns the prehistory of the Olympic Games. Its earliest extant parallels are found in Pindar's Olympian Odes 2.3–4 and 10.24–85, which record Heracles’ founding of the Olympic Games, but this seems a trivial matter in the proem.Footnote 13 §§1–8 comprise narratives of war and peace (στάσις, ὁμόνοια, εἰρήνη, τὰ ἀρχαῖα νόμιμα, ἐκεχειρία, πόλεμος, φιλία) and of plague and famine (λοιμός, φθορὰ καρπῶν, λιμός), which are attested in Strabo 8.3.33 (πολεμεῖν, εἰρήνη), Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus 1.1, 23.2 (ἐκεχειρία, εἰρήνη), Pausanias, 5.4.5–6, 5.8.5, 5.20.1 (στάσις, νόσος, λοιμώδης, τὰ κακά, πολέμιος, τῶν ἀρχαίων λήθη, ἐκεχειρία), Eusebius’ Olympic victory list in the Chronica, lines 20–44 (πόλεμος, ἀπαλλαγὴ τῶν κατεχόντων πολέμων, ἐκεχειρία, χεῖρας ἀλλήλους οὐκέτι ἐπιφέρειν), and some other predecessors including Heraclides Lembus’ Excerpta politiarum 10 (ἀνομία, ἐκεχειρία, τὸ κοινὸν ἀγαθόν) and a scholiast to Plato's Republic 465d (ὁμόνοια). §§9–11 give further details about the performances of the Olympic Games and find echoes in Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ Roman Antiquities 1.71.5 and Eusebius’ list, lines 20–44, but intertextual connections can hardly be established among them.
According to ancient tradition, the historic motive that impels Lycurgus (and Iphitus and Cleosthenes) to restore the Olympic Games is a stasis threatening the Peloponnesians. Table 1 below, along with the aforementioned literary parallels, indicates that the antitheses of war and peace and the Delphic oracle are recurrent themes in ancient sources. The only omission in Phlegon is the metonymic expression ‘misfortune’ (τὰ κακά), as we read in Pausanias 5.4.6, but this does not rule out the possibility that Phlegon might have reworked part of the tradition represented by Pausanias, for two reasons.Footnote 14 On the one hand, although the expression ‘pestilential disease’ (νόσος λοιμώδης) is stronger than Phlegon's ‘plague’ (λοιμός), by combining stasis and ‘plague’ in a single phrase (ὑπὸ ἐμφυλίων στάσεων καὶ ὑπὸ νόσου λοιμώδους), Pausanias seems to provide a rather compact version, in which the oracular consultation is performed by Iphitus alone for ‘relief from these misfortunes’ (λύσιν τῶν κακῶν).Footnote 15 On the other hand, Phlegon mentions Iphitus’ aid to institutionalizing the Olympic Games, but what is noticeable in his version is that Lycurgus runs into a difficulty when there is an obstinate refusal among the Peloponnesians to end the war, and emphasis is put on Lycurgus’ three visits to Delphi (§§3–7). The oracular consultation is presented by Phlegon as a matter of the public interest of Sparta, but the expression ‘a baneful famine and a pestilence’ (κακὴ λιμὸς καὶ λοιμός, §6) still reminds us of Pausanias’ ‘misfortune’ (τὰ κακά). It is likely that Phlegon brings together a wide range of pre-existing themes in one passage and adds further details about Lycurgus’ consultations of the Delphic oracle. More significantly, in the second oracular response (§6), the Olympiads carries a solitary reference to the divine anger: that is, Zeus's μῆνις and θυμός.
Table 1: Themes in Phlegon of Tralles’ Olympiads and Other Literary Sources
The Olympiads, vivid a work though it is, has to be handled with caution. So concerned was Hadrian with his personal reputation that, according to the Historia Augusta, he published an autobiography under the name of Phlegon, and even Phlegon's books are said to have been written by him. But this statement seems to have relied heavily on scandal and imagination, and it would be groundless to treat ‘Phlegon’, which means ‘inflaming’ in Greek, as a pen name of the emperor.Footnote 16 To what extent, then, does Phlegon's account reveal the historical truth behind the legend? It would be justified to cite Plutarch here, who makes it clear at the beginning of his Life of Lycurgus that nothing can be said without dispute about the lawgiver.Footnote 17 Nevertheless, it is plausible to place the Lycurgan establishment of the Olympic Games in the wider context of archaic Peloponnesian history. Heraclides Lembus, for instance, reports that Charillus (also named Charilaus, the nephew of Lycurgus) was ruling tyrannically in those days.Footnote 18 More importantly, Phlegon mentions (§4) a discus inscribed for the Hellenic judges (Hellanodicae), which commanded them to conduct the Olympic Games. This true relic at Olympia or its copy is to be identified with the one witnessed by Aristotle, who, just as Pausanias would later do, recorded that on it there is an inscription carrying the name of Lycurgus. In juxtaposing Lycurgus with Iphitus, there is a tendency among ancient authors to emphasize the determining role of Iphitus. Phlegon refers (§9) to the fact that the Eleans ‘took care of the Olympics’, but this seems a less significant matter in the proem. The ‘Sparta’ theme features, and the central prominence of Lycurgus prima facie reflects his cult in the Roman period––a point to which I will return in section 3 below.Footnote 19
Relevant to the matters of authenticity and historicity are the oracular quotations that recur in Phlegon.Footnote 20 Photius remarks that Phlegon is preoccupied with oracles of all kinds.Footnote 21 This style is marked by a combination of prose and verse, or what scholars would nowadays call oracular prosimetrum.Footnote 22 Different suggestions have been evoked for the composition, operation and transmission of the Delphic oracle, and for the sake of brevity, I propose that oracular utterances preserved in hexameter are quasi-historical; in other words, by quoting or composing them in verse, Phlegon (or an enquirer like Lycurgus) seeks to underscore authority and authenticity.Footnote 23 Furthermore, these quotations are denoted by diplê-like signs on the margins of the manuscript (fols. 235v–236r), and this suggests that the ancients have attached importance to them.Footnote 24 Similar to the close connection of Lycurgus’ founding of the eunomia with oracular confirmation, the proem of the Olympiads and the oracular quotations lay stress on Sparta's link to Delphi, and therefore should be approached as good examples illustrating the Lycurgan, and even Greek, way of agenda-setting and communication.Footnote 25
2. TOWARDS A GOFFMANIAN EXPLORATION OF THE OLYMPIADS
In recent scholarship on ancient divination, the prevailing characterization of the approach to political communication is that of functionalism. This perspective seeks socio-political dimensions inherent in divination practices while overlooking religious experiences such as beliefs and anxieties in everyday life.Footnote 26 One might well wonder how frame analysis will offer a new reading of Phlegon's accounts of the Delphic oracle, especially his reference to divine anger. To answer this question, we take as a premise that the process of framing, or ‘schemata of interpretation’, is a unique and ubiquitous form of human communication.Footnote 27 In a classicist's explanation, for instance, a playful signal such as a nip or slap in Aristophanes’ Frogs (1095–8) may initiate a ‘play’ frame, which will in turn lead to a ‘joke-making’ frame as distinguished from an actual aggression (say, Meidias’ public slap on Demosthenes in Against Meidias, 74).Footnote 28 Yet different signals would initiate a variety of frames in different historical and cultural backgrounds. The Olympic Games were for a contemporary Chinese an instrument for rejuvenating a postcolonial nation state through international sports, while to the Greek mind they meant a competition among warrior-like athletes as well as a festal assembly in honour of Zeus. Strabo, for example, argues that after the oracle of the Olympian Zeus failed to respond, the reputation of the sanctuary persisted ‘on account both of the festival and of the competition’ (διά τε τὴν πανήγυριν καὶ τὸν ἀγῶνα τὸν Ὀλυμπιακόν, 8.3.30).Footnote 29 As regards the Delphic oracle, it may be argued that the oracle functioned as an information centre and provides ‘sense-making mechanism’ in political deliberations and policy decisions.Footnote 30 It becomes a persuasion strategy, as in the Themistoclean/Herodotean exploration and interpretation of ‘wooden wall’ and ‘blessed Salamis’ during the second Persian invasion of Greece.Footnote 31 Each pair of oracular consultation and response, therefore, constitute a ‘communicating text’ that could be applied to frame analysis.Footnote 32 Phlegon reworks literary materials, but the narratives adorned by various responses from the Delphic oracle indicate that the Olympiads is not a product of hasty compilation. Scholars have collected a group of oracular responses to the ‘Lycurgus–Iphitus’ Olympic Games.Footnote 33 These sources can, in accordance with the perceived realities in Greek thought, be placed within two frames: one the ‘competition’ frame, the other the ‘festival’ frame, as suggested by such expressions as τὴν πανήγυριν καὶ τὸν ἀγῶνα τὸν Ὀλυμπίασιν (§1), τήν τε πανήγυριν τὴν Ὀλυμπικὴν … καὶ ἀγῶνα γυμνικόν (§2) and ἔροτιν καὶ ἀγῶνα (§6). The two homogenous but competing frames are embedded in the proem of the Olympiads, and, forged in the style of oracular prosimetrum, become manifest in the communicating text. Phlegon's account of the Olympic Games offers a case study that may, in Goffman's terms, contribute to an explicit understanding of the primary frame and the frame transformations. The ancient literary sources represent a particularly fruitful area of frame analysis.Footnote 34
The first oracular consultation is performed to ask for an end to the stasis among the Peloponnesians (στάσις ἐνέστη κατὰ τὴν Πελοπόννησον, §1) and for restoring peace and harmony (εἰς ὁμόνοιαν καὶ εἰρήνην, §2). The response to Lycurgus (and other political elites) is confirmatory to ‘the decision to restore the Olympic festival according to ancient customs and to hold an athletic competition’ (τήν τε πανήγυριν τὴν Ὀλυμπικὴν ἔγνωσαν ἀνάγειν εἰς τὰ ἀρχαῖα νόμιμα καὶ ἀγῶνα γυμνικὸν ἐπιτελέσαι, §2). Thus, ‘the god said that it would be better if they did these things. He commanded them to declare a truce in the cities wishing to take part in the competition’ (ὁ δὲ θεὸς ἄμεινον ἔφη ἔσεσθαι ποιοῦσιν. καὶ προσέταξεν ἐκεχειρίαν ἀγγεῖλαι ταῖς πόλεσιν ταῖς βουλομέναις μετέχειν τοῦ ἀγῶνος, §3). This may have helped initiate a primary ‘competition’ frame, as the recurring Greek word for ‘competition’ implies. Within this frame, the listeners would select certain aspects of a perceived reality, such as the heroic competitions in the Homeric epics, notably the funeral games for Patroclus in the Iliad.Footnote 35 Be that as it may, the frame concentrates on the civic enthusiasm for competition, which bears a resemblance to the ancient customs established by mythical figures (τὰ ἀρχαῖα νόμιμα, §2), but which has no essential difference from the human relationship in warfare. Deference to the elite opinion does not come automatically, and it is likely that Lycurgus intends to muddle through by repeating a confirmative response from the Delphic oracle to the decision made beforehand by the political elites. The Peloponnesians strongly resist his idea, or framing, of ‘competition’ (οὐκ ἄγαν δὲ προσιεμένων τὸν ἀγῶνα, §5), and the second consultation is performed soon after a disaster strikes. In this phase Lycurgus is sent to ask for an end to a pestilence (τοῦ λοιμοῦ παῦλαν καὶ ἴασίν τινα, §5), not to the stasis. The Pythia delivers the second response in hexameters (§6):
O you who dwell on the Pelopian acropolis, famous throughout the entire earth, and best ambassadors of all mortal kind, take heed of this godly prophecy from me, which I deliver. Zeus has wrath against you regarding the rite, which he has nursed, because you dishonour the Olympics of omnipotent Zeus—which first Pisus founded and placed in honour; and after him Pelops, when he came to the land of Hellas, then established a festival and prizes for the dead Oenomaus; and third after them Heracles the son of Amphitryon performed a festival and competition for his deceased maternal uncle, the Tantalid Pelops, but now you entirely neglect this competition and rite. So he grows angry in his heart, and has stirred up a baneful famine and a pestilence against you, and to stop it, you must reinstate the festival for him once again.
In this passage, ‘rite’ (τελετή × 2) and the act of performing rites (τελεῖν) add an extra element to the ‘ancient customs’ (τὰ ἀρχαῖα νόμιμα) in the first oracular consultation, and things divine are much more involved. The oracle is placed within what counts as a ‘festival’ frame, and, contrary to the ‘competition’ frame, associates the Olympic Games with the human–divine relationship to substitute for the previous oracular utterance that purports to resolve human disputes. Regarding the second oracular consultation and response, Fontenrose argues that they occur as a result of neglecting the first response, which incurs the wrath of Zeus. Rather, plague and famine trigger a frame change, and it is for this reason that, after Lycurgus has inquired of the god in more detail about the prophecies in his third visit to Delphi (§7), the Peloponnesians receive this oracle (§8) within the new ‘festival’ frame.Footnote 36 Elsewhere in the fragments attributable to Phlegon, we find an allegation that a festival would, as a cure, bring plagues, pestilences and diseases to an end.Footnote 37 To validate this point, one is tempted to mention a legendary version that associates the festival of City Dionysia with the worship of the god. The story goes that (perhaps) in the time of Pisistratus a disease struck the males in their privy parts as a punishment for showing a lack of respect for Dionysus, and after consulting a certain oracle, the Athenians honoured the god and held a phallic procession to commemorate their misfortune. Only by performing these rites, it seems, the god-sent disease could be cured.Footnote 38
The divine anger deserves our close attention, since very rarely does μῆνις occur in the oracular corpus from Delphi.Footnote 39 Scholars have long neglected this emotional display, in part because the first two lines of the oracular utterance seem to have forced μῆνις out of a cardinal position.Footnote 40 These opening lines should be treated as a dramatic proclamation that brings the audience to the act of listening.Footnote 41 We should instead explore the precise way in which the divine anger is experienced among the Greeks; that is, how they respond to its destructive power depending on the perceived realities and belief systems. The ‘epic anger’, μῆνις, is easily distinguished from ὀργή, θυμός and their cognates. For not only has the wrathful Achilles been at the fore of European literature, but so too has the anger of affronted deities that inflicts agonies (plague, famine, etc.) on human beings throughout the Homeric epics and their successors.Footnote 42 In the Olympiads, therefore, μῆνις provides a kind of motivating force, and is the keyword of the oracular utterance to strike a chord in the hearts of the listeners.Footnote 43 Τhe divine anger, as it were, inspires fear and hits the nerve, especially in times of terror, so as to influence thinking and suggest remedies among the Peloponnesians. For our purposes, the use of μῆνις functions to change the tone of a dialogue in the process of framing and calls to mind ‘key and keying’ in Goffman's theory. This metaphorical, if not perplexing, concept is defined as follows:
I refer here to the set of conventions by which a given activity, one already meaningful in terms of some primary framework, is transformed into something patterned on this activity but seen by the participants to be something quite else. The process of transcription can be called keying. A rough musical analogy is intended.Footnote 44
By alluding to the divine anger, Lycurgus/Phlegon promotes a particular problem definition and commends a solution to it: the Peloponnesians are keyed up to understand the Olympic Games within a rearranged, transformed, ‘festival’ frame, and eventually hold the festival to conciliate divine powers.Footnote 45 Two points require further notice. First, in a typically Greek way, the honour-words, ἀτιμάζειν and τιμή (§6), are linked with the ‘anger’ theme to highlight the violation of what Goffman may call the ‘sacred self’.Footnote 46 In the Aristophanes scholia, too, the cause of a disease is interpreted in like manner: Dionysus cherished wrath (μηνίσαντος) and brought evil upon the Athenians because he was not received with due honour (μετὰ τιμῆς). Second, the reference to θυμός is a surprise, inasmuch as in the oracular corpus from Delphi this word usually connotes a firm and confident spirit that encourages the enquirers to take actions.Footnote 47 More arresting still is that Phlegon himself uses it elsewhere to describe young girls with ‘fresh-budding minds’.Footnote 48 The expression κατὰ θυμόν may raise the question of the inauthenticity of the oracular utterance, but it can be understood strategically rather than literally. Since θυμός is universally recognized as ‘associating psychological activity with air and breath’, Lycurgus/Phlegon makes the emotional display of Zeus more evocative.Footnote 49 Assuming its final shape of a divine intervention, the μῆνις-sentence acquires in the divinatory dialogue the meaning ‘Now, I am really serious about this’, as an example illustrated by Goffman of (re)keying the flow of words: that is, maintaining the existing patterns between ‘notes’ (elements of speech) but signalling a change in the tone or significance of the dialogue.Footnote 50
3. FRAME CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY
It is no accident that, Phlegon writes, after Lycurgus’ third visit to Delphi, the Peloponnesians ‘entrusted to the Eleans the establishment of the competition at Olympia and the announcement of a truce to the cities’ (ἐπέτρεψαν τοῖς ̓Ηλείοις ἀγῶνα τιθέναι τῶν ̓Ολυμπίων καὶ ἐκεχειρίαν ἀγγέλλειν ταῖς πόλεσιν, §8). By ring composition, Phlegon stretches back intelligently to the opening section and keeps pace with the literary tradition of privileging Iphitus and the Eleans in the re-establishment of the Olympic Games. The closing sections of the proem are adorned with pairs of oracular consultations and responses, and Iphitus is said to have paid two visits to Delphi to confirm, respectively, the Elean supervision of the Olympic Games (§9) and putting wreaths on the Olympic victors (§10).Footnote 51 These seem immaterial to the specific focus of frame analysis, but the word ‘competition’ (ἀγών) marks a transition from the process of framing to the ultimate performances, or institutionalization, of the Olympic Games. The ‘Elis’ theme serves as a supplement to the ‘Sparta’ theme and indicates that frame and framing play a significant role in socio-political behaviours and even affect institutions. It is after the institutionalization of the Olympic Games that the overlap between warfare and sport becomes a cultural phenomenon in Sparta.Footnote 52 This may have led some scholars to suppose that the Olympic stadion race ‘originated as a run to the altar of Zeus’, and others to describe it analogously as a training for ‘run up and stab’.Footnote 53 The overlap exists not just in early Greek thought, but also in the minds of the Athenians down to the Classical period. For example, despite the egalitarianism in democratic Athens, ordinary people were inclined to support elite athletes as if they were warriors.Footnote 54 It is justified to cite here Vernant, an exponent of the polis-religion model, to show the impact of framing on policy deliberation and its potential for the wider studies in structuralism and institutionalism.
War in classical Greece is an agôn. It takes the form of an organized competition that rules out both the fight to the death to annihilate the enemy as a social and religious being, and conquest designed to absorb him totally. It is related to the great Panhellenic Games in which rivalries are played out peacefully in a framework of rules that are in many respects similar. Those who take part in the Games confront each other in the name of the same city-states as those that go to war against each other. The fact that the protagonists are the same, as is the structure of these two institutions, makes warfare and the Games as it were the two opposite sides of one and the same social phenomenon. All military operations had to be suspended for the duration of the Games.Footnote 55
I turn finally to frame (dis)continuity in the context of being Greek under Rome. It has been argued in section 2 of this article that the perceived realities––warfare and plague––initiate the process of framing and frame change. Goffman refers to the development of New Comedy (and its Latin counterparts) under the Roman domination as an example of ‘frame change through time’. He points out that many artists pandered so much to the low tastes of the Romans as to present sexual displays and real executions on the stage. Luckily though, Goffman seems to imply, this change has been ‘sufficiently slow and separate’.Footnote 56 While some scholars note that Phlegon gives more space to recent events throughout the Olympiads, the central prominence of Lycurgus in the proem has from the very beginning shown a historical perspective.Footnote 57 The cultural memory and worship of Lycurgus loomed large in the Roman period, and literary sources and visual evidence indicate that he was, back then in Sparta, second to none after Heracles.Footnote 58 It is also worth asking whether the oracular passages may have not met Hadrian's literary taste, particularly his interest in poetry and composing oracle (for example, to deify Antinous after his premature death).Footnote 59 Be that as it may, a close examination of the Olympiads casts light on the two sides of the same coin. Phlegon, one may argue, is completely obsessed with Greek elements. In the oracular quotations, φιλία (§9) reflects a community-oriented aspect of ‘civic friendship’; ὁμόνοια, meaning ‘political reconciliation’, can be traced to the narrative tradition of the Trojan War (Isoc. 10.67); and μῆνις exhibits a tendency to Homerize.Footnote 60 ‘From where Homer was born, and whose son was he?’ (Πόθεν Ὅμηρος καὶ τίνος;), Hadrian once asked the Pythia.Footnote 61 It is hard not to consider the philhellenic emperor's enquiry as a fair representation of frame (dis)continuity under a multicultural background. The same may be said of Phlegon, perhaps an attendant at the Roman court, but certainly an important Greek writer in the Empire of Letters.Footnote 62
