Scott J DiGiulio (Mississippi State University)
Of Philostratus’ works the collection of Letters has garnered relatively little critical attention, at least in part because of their rejection of epistolary conventions. They strain the limits of epistolography, and instead might better be described as prose poems that abandon epistolary pretense altogether; as Rosenmeyer has argued, they are best conceptualized as “sophistic exercise[s] in variatio” (cf. Goldhill). Moreover, the fragmented transmission of the corpus (Stefec) presents hurdles to any cohesive interpretation. Recent attempts to understand the letters have focused instead on inter- and intratextual connections to find a degree of unity in their heterogeneity, examining either thematically linked clusters of letters, or else looking to the kaleidoscopic nature of the collection itself as a hermeneutic avenue (Schmitz, Leonard, Gallé Cejudo).
If we accept the letters as variations on a theme, in this paper I argue that in Letters Philostratus takes as his theme the figures represented in contemporary rhetorical training manuals, namely Hermogenes’ On Forms. Philostratus is most interested in the Hermogenic style of sweetness, which the rhetorician claimed to be suited to erotic topics (Id. 333). Within the Letters themselves, several intratextually linked groups of epistles draw heavily from Hermogenes’ theories; to illustrate this point I examine one set of linked letters, those featuring roses at the outset of the collection. These letters offer in miniature an example of Philostratus’ techniques of variatio in action, which typify his corpus more broadly.
In discussing sweetness, Hermogenes enumerates several techniques and topoi—use of metaphor, mythic narratives, poetic allusions, apheleia—and exemplary authors that typify the style. These figures and authors are adopted by Philostratus in different configurations throughout the rose letters. Letter 1 opens with metaphorical descriptions of roses before introducing a mythological genealogy, prominently including Adonis, that moves through several of Hermogenes’ canonical authors. By contrast, Letter 2 sets aside lavish metaphorical language and privileges apheleia to invert the expectations of the first letter. Its Laconic nature informs Philostratus’ approach to Letter 3, which fuses Spartan exempla with numerous poetic examples, including Adonis, from Letter 1 while inverting the first epistle’s structure. The fourth letter builds upon the Homeric notes at the end of the third, as well as replying to Letter 2’s accusation of not sending roses. The desire for variatio leads to a lack of any consistent position across these letters, with Letters 4 explicitly rejecting the logic of Letters 1; and Philostratus employs a range of devices to achieve this variatio, keeping in mind the commonplaces of the idea-theorists.
Philostratus thus approaches the rhetorical exercise of letter-writing to demonstrate his mastery of the medium and of the strands of sophistic rhetoric prevalent in his own day. In so doing, he creates a sophistic take on the letter form and he treats his smaller thematic units as exercises in variatio, playfully interacting with idea-theory as epitomized by Hermogenes. The erotic epistles reveal Philostratus testing the limits of both epistolography as a rhetorical form and of Hermogenic theory, demonstrating his mastery of both.