Lucian’s Epistolary Symposiast
(Symposion or The Lapiths, 22-7)

Athanassios Vergados (University of Virginia)

Lucian’s Symposion forms part of a long literary tradition. Scholars have pointed out similarities with earlier Symposia, especially Plato’s (see Martin, passim; Branham, 110-20; Männlein, 247-8). Characteristically, Lucian combines various inherited sympotic motifs with elements from other genres. In this paper I shall examine Hetoimocles’ letter in ch. 22-7, a nice case of genre-bending since Hetoimocles’ concern for a dinner invitation gives Lucian the opportunity to cast him as a multi-layered comic character while embedding into the main narrative a text that challenges the expectations of both the internal and the external audiences.

In a gathering of intellectuals one expects a series of speeches on a mutually agreed-upon topic; yet in the Symposion the only real speech is vicariously delivered by an uninvited character, Hetoimocles, a quasi  ἄκλητος, and is masked as a letter. The reading of a letter at a banquet is not an invention of Lucian’s. Plutarch had used this motif in his Symposion (151^b7ff.; see Martin, 104, 206), where Amasis’ letter to Bias—dealing with a well-known ἀδύνατον, to drink the sea—was read aloud. Hetoimocles begins with a typical letter opening but immediately abandons all epistolary conventions; he includes neither a closing formula nor a final request or any other epistolary trope. Instead, he launches into a speech that begins by exploiting the "λόγον βίου theme”, common in apologies (cf. 24 ἀπολελόγημαι, and exhibits other rhetorical devices appropriate to that genre.

Hetoimocles’ letter also resembles the speech of a character from Comedy. In 23 he behaves like an ἀλαζών boastfully claiming professional superiority over his colleagues who are unaware of such things as e.g. the difference between σχέσις and ἕξις. Hetoimocles’ application of philosophical terms (e.g. καθῆκον, 22) to such lowly matters as a free dinner and his reference to emotions that are unbecoming a Stoic (e.g. ἀνιῶμαι; ἀγανακτῆσαι, 22) are reminiscent of the pompous and inconsistent philosophers often satirized in Comedy as well as the parasite in Alexis’ Kybernetes fr. 121 K.-A. who teaches on stage (v.14 διδάσκω) about the types (γένη) of parasites. Hetoimocles’ attempt to obtain an invitation to dinner by approaching the host twice during the day (24) resembles the parasite’s strategy set out in Eupolis’ Kolakes, fr. 172.7ff. K.-A. The assertion in 24 that only the good (καλόν) is noble (ἀγαθόν) recalls the parasite of Diodorus’ Epikleros, fr. 2.42 K.-A., who laments that the honorable and good (τὸ τίμιον καὶ τὸ καλόν) is now considered shameful (αἰσχρόν). The same parasite claims Zeus as the founder of his art, just as Hetoimocles, in a rather inept reference to the story of the Calydonian Boar, compares his situation to the neglect of Artemis. In addition, his third poetic quotation, from Sophocles’ Meleagros, fr. 401 Radt (25), prominently displays the Leitmotif of the letter, a wild boar that Hetoimocles hopes to get for dinner (cf. 22 and 27). Lastly, Hetoimocles’ very name (=Willing to Accept an Invitation) points to a parasite figure (cf. Alciphron, Epist. 3.19 from Αὐτόκλητος to Ἑτοιμάριστος, and Männlein 253).

These comic features accord with the overall structure of the text that resembles a comedy, where the philosophers appear as actors, the other symposiasts as the audience (note the laughter esp. in 28, 34, 35, 42), while Lycinus, the observer, functions as the playwright. Finally, in keeping with Lucian’s hostility towards would-be intellectuals (cf. Timon 54-5) the philosophers’ humiliation is an old comic topos, whose use in the Symposion constitutes another example of Lucian’s Gattungsmischung (cf. Bis Acc. 33-4).

Works cited:

Branham R. B. Unruly Eloquence. Lucian and the comedy of Traditions (Cambridge, MA 1989).

Männlein I. “What Can Go Wrong at a Dinner-party: the Unmasking of false Philosophers in Lucian’s Symposium or The Lapiths.” In: K. Pollmann (ed.), Double Standards in the Ancient and Medieval World (Göttingen 2000) 247-62.

Martin J. Symposion. Die Geschichte einer literarischen Form (Paderborn 1931).