Patrick Callahan, UCLA
Dio Chrysostom may write his own jokes, but his routine is not entirely original. This paper demonstrates the influence of Plato's discourses on laughter – in particular, those which appear in the Philebus and the Symposium – on the works of this Second Century CE orator. Anthony Long (2010) and other scholars have already documented a general connection between Plato (or, Plato’s Socrates) and Dio; thus, Barbara Zehnpfenig (2012: 199) refers to Plato as the philosopher den Dion verehrt (“whom Dio reveres”), while Ari Bryen (2019: 138) notes Dio’s “lifelong concern with the career of his hero, Socrates.” I pull on one specific strand of this connection, showing how the frequent presence of scenes of laughter within the Orations reveals an indebtedness to theories of laughter that are expressed within these Platonic texts.
I begin my paper by reviewing some well-known scenes of laughter in Plato, especially Philebus 50, in which Socrates suggests that laughing at our friends involves κεραννύντας ἡδονὴν αὖ φθόνῳ, λύπῃ τὴν ἡδονὴν (“mixing pleasure again with malice, and pleasure with pain”); and Symposium 189, in which Aristophanes pronounces his fear οὔ τι μὴ γελοῖα εἴπω…ἀλλὰ μὴ καταγέλαστα (“not that I might say silly things…but that I might say ridiculous things”). With the help of Sotera Fornaro (2009) and Mary McCabe (2019), I argue that these scenes establish the attitude towards humor which Dio adopts in his own writings. Next, I analyze scenes of laughter in a variety of Dio’s speeches, some of which are more rhetorical in nature (Orations 32 and 54), some more philosophical (Orations 13 and 36), and one which is mostly narrative before it transforms into a mix of philosophy and rhetoric (Oration 7). This last oration serves as my case study for Dio’s reception of Plato, and I end my paper by interpreting the instances of laughter within it.
For example, Aristophanes’s word-play with γελοῖα (“silly things”) and καταγέλαστα (“ridiculous things”) recurs throughout Dio’s own literary corpus. Michael Trapp (2019: 153) notices it in Dio’s address to the Alexandrians (Oration 32), arguing that “it is in fact this cluster of kata- words…that carries the main lexical weight” in that address. However, the word-play also appears in Oration 7, when a hunter elicits “laughter” from an assembly (ἐγέλασεν, 7.29), for which the assembly speaker accuses him of “ridiculing” him (καταγελᾶι, 7.30). Elsewhere, in Oration 36, the narrator “laughs” at the “simplicity” of his elder interlocutor (γελάσας…τῇ ἁπλότητι τοῦ πρεσβύτου, 36.28), yet the old man does not take offense. I respond to Balbina Bäbler (2022) by highlighting the differences in status and relationship between this old man and the narrator, and in so doing, I rely on points made in the Philebus.
For textual editions of Dio, I refer to Russell (1992) for Orations 7 and 36, and to Cohoon (1939, 1940) and Crosby (1946) for Orations 13, 32, and 54. For Plato, I refer to Burnet (1904) for the Philebus and to Dover (1980) for the Symposium.