Dio Chrysostom’s Philosophical Prophetess in the First Kingship Oration

Dio Chrysostom devotes the bulk of his First Kingship Oration (Or. 1), notionally delivered before the emperor Trajan, to a retelling of Heracles’ choice between Kingship and Tyranny, a story which the speaker claims to have heard from an old woman. In this paper, I will argue that Dio portrays this character as a philosophical prophetess and thereby combines the wisdom of philosophy with the authority of religion. Previous scholarship has either ignored the woman’s philosophical character (e.g. von Arnim 1898: 331 and Desideri 1978: 310) or only hinted at it (e.g. Tzanetas 1972: 134, Moles 1990: 321, Trapp 1990: 143, and Whitmarsh 2001: 199) without fully developing the connections between her “self-control,” Cynic Heracles, and
Dio’s protreptic on kingship.

First of all, “self-control” is a key motif in the First Kingship. The prophetess prophesies with “great self-control and moderation” (πάνυ ἐγκρατῶς καὶ σωφρόνως), unlike most of those “said to be divinely inspired” (οἱ πολλοὶ τῶν λεγομένων ἐνθέων), who “pant and toss their heads and try to look frightening” (ἀσθμαίνουσα καὶ περιδινοῦσα τὴν κεφαλὴν καὶ πειρωμένη δεινὸν ἐμβλέπειν) (1.56). The true king also is “self-controlled” (ἐγκρατής, 14) and a “controller” of his subjects (18). Typical prophetic frenzy, by contrast, does not exhibit these virtues (see critiques at, e.g., Plut. De def. or. 417C, 432E–F, 438B; Luc. Iupp. trag. 30): a prophetess who cannot control her body even while under divine possession (cf. Or. 1.58) would not be able to convey truth to the good, self-controlled king. Dio’s interest in self-control derives in part from Xenophon’s Memorabilia, in which Socrates extols self-control to Aristippus the ethical hedonist (2.1.1, 3, 7) before retelling Prodicus’ story of Heracles’ choice between Virtue and Vice (2.1.21–34); yet, while following in Socrates’ footsteps by using Heracles to make a philosophical argument about self-control, Dio has innovated by making a religious figure rather than an intellectual one the authority for his Heracles myth (though he owes a debt to Plato’s Diotima). Moreover, the prophetess thinks it necessary to rationalize the traditional stories about Heracles (1.58–65), which implies that rationalization is perfectly consistent with piety (see Hawes 2014). By the end of the speech, Heracles has become the savior of humankind, punishing tyrants and guarding kings, and the prophetess’ voice has faded imperceptibly into Dio’s, who closes with a promise to Trajan that Heracles will be his “guard” (84).

In short, I contend that Dio’s philosophical prophetess constitutes an attempt to have his cake and eat it too: he desires the authority of traditional religion, especially when addressing the divine personage of an emperor, but as a philosopher he must reject the trappings of traditional
religion when they conflict with philosophical virtues, especially the Heraclean and Cynic virtues of self-control. Thus the philosophical prophetess enables him to claim that the good king, like Heracles, derives his authority from Zeus, but that he nevertheless must pursue, also like Heracles, the virtuous life through strenuous labor.