A (Now) Illustrated Himerius
Greek Sophistic Meets Modern Art in the Work of Albert Adabody
I am one of those philologists who like juxtaposition and illustration, the juxtaposition of illustrations to text. Maybe I’ve seen one too many illustrated medieval manuscripts. Some years ago, when I was working on a translation of a late ancient text, I attempted such a juxtaposition with the collaboration of an artist friend. In the end the translation appeared, but not the illustrations. I tell here the story of the incident and, thanks to In Medias Res, can finally share those illustrations with my fellow classicists.
In the early 2000s I was working on a translation of the orations of the Greek sophist Himerius, which, at the time, had never been put into any modern language. In the Roman imperial period, a sophist was a teacher of rhetoric, whose students were at the highest level of the standard literary-rhetorical education; and Himerius was an accomplished orator himself. Himerius taught in Athens and had a high reputation. I wished to make his often difficult texts accessible at a time when both imperial sophistic and late ancient studies were ready to engage with them.
In those years, I was, and still am, a good friend of Albert C. Adabody, an artist who worked mainly in the tradition of The New York School. James Brooks had been a mentor of his. Al and his wife Sue, also an artist and both graduates of Pratt Institute, had lived close to me before they moved to Florida in 1988. I had seen much of Al’s work, have some of it hanging on the walls of my apartment, and had often seen him paint on a beach at the East End of Long Island, the New York School’s home away from home, where he would lay his canvas directly on the sand. From Florida, Al was curious about this Himerius fellow I was working on. So I began sending him copies of the translations, and he in turn began spontaneously to illustrate orations that particularly appealed to him. By the time my translation was complete, he had produced, on a software graphics program, illustrations of six of them. I was taken by them. Why not publish these illustrations along with the translations: the graphic next to the textual, the artist next to the philologist? Not that illustrations were needed, as in an art-historical or archaeological book. These would be gratuitous illustrations, an irregularity in the ordinary world of classics publishing, yet one, I thought, that was in line with the humanity that I had always regarded as grounding Wissenschaft. The illustrations seemed to me to be curiously and boldly pictorial musings by a contemporary philological layman (the artist) on verbal musings 1,650 years old. I was not naïve about the cost of publishing them and was prepared to pay a subvention. I thought there was a chance that the publisher would respond positively.
How wrong I was — and perhaps naïve about the very idea, if not the cost! Well, how about using one of the illustrations on the dust jacket? No. Something more “serious” was needed. So what we got was another reprint of the Neumagen Relief from the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Trier, showing a teacher surrounded by three students, one carrying what looks like a lunch box. Or is it a laptop? The kindest comment I got from one of the “gate-keepers” was “I don’t like the Adabody illustrations, but de gustibus non est disputandum,” at least acknowledging that perhaps there was a bit of room for my gustus, even if not shared by all and even if not on the occasion in question.
But enough about the recent past. I turn now to the fourth century A.D. to provide a bit of background on Himerius and his works before presenting the six illustrations (interested students of the ancient world may wish to look at the end of the article for further reading).
Himerius, a native of Bithynia, born sometime between 300 and 320, had himself studied rhetoric at Athens in his youth. Athens was a distinguished “university town” in the fourth century, and Himerius’s holding a chair of rhetoric there is an indication of his professional prominence. Rivalries among the “sophists” or professors of rhetoric of the city, each with his own school, were intense; the pagan Himerius’s main rival at Athens was the Christian professor Prohaeresius. The students who studied under the renowned Athenian sophists were from elite families of the Roman East, a great many of whom would go on to join the ruling class of their cities, enter the Roman bureaucracy, or become lawyers. Himerius’s first period of teaching at Athens ended at the end of 361, when the pagan emperor Julian the Apostate summoned him to the East to be a member of his retinue; he presumably used his literary and rhetorical talents in the emperor’s service. A second period of teaching at Athens began after both the emperor Julian and Himerius’s rival Prohaeresius had died, in 363 and 366 respectively.
The standard critical edition of Himerius by A. Colonna contains seventy-five orations and sixteen oratorical fragments. Some of the orations are fully preserved; but for many others we have only excerpts, some of them lacunose. So the state of preservation of the corpus is hardly a good one; but, despite the poor transmission, what we have is valuable rhetorically, literarily, and historically. The corpus includes a monody for Himerius’s son Rufinus and an epithalamium for his pupil or former pupil Severus, both important examples of their prose genres. Prominent sophists routinely delivered orations praising cities and officials, and Himerius’s corpus contains examples of them. We also find five Himerian declamations, the imaginary judicial or deliberative orations in which a sophist often impersonated a historical figure; these were examples for advanced students of rhetoric of how to argue and also high cultural entertainment for adult audiences. In one of these, for example “Demosthenes” speaks on behalf of “Aeschines”; another is a deliberative oration put in the mouth of Themistocles. Yet another imaginary piece mimics a classical Athenian polemarchic oration in honor of the war dead. Finally, a large group of orations shed light on the school and school life, as, more importantly, do Libanius’s works. Himerius, for example, speaks at the recommencement of studies and at the recruitment of new students. He honors a student’s birthday and celebrates a student’s recovery from illness. He addresses the problem of student conflicts and disorders. When Himerius leaves Athens, he gives a farewell talk to his students and speaks again before them when he returns. And the arrival or departure of a new student or group of students is also an occasion for an oration.
I have already noted that the state of preservation of the Himerian corpus is less than ideal: we often have to deal with mere excerpts, and there are lacunae. Himerius’s pronounced poetic tone can also be challenging. The student of ancient prose style Eduard Norden in his Die Antike Kunstprosa (p. 429) called Himerius’s orations “Poesie in scheinbarer Prosa,” “poetry in what appears to be prose.” He can be poetic in diction and is also given to metaphor and simile. His students are a chorus, a flock, his children, his friends. His teaching is “our rites” or initiation in mysteries. Eloquence is a drug, a painting or sculpture, a feast, and especially music and song, and sometimes even dance. The translator can provide help with this code by noting poetic diction and glossing metaphors. Himerius has a great interest specifically in the lyric poets Alcaeus, Alcman, Anacreon, Bacchylides, Ibycus, Pindar, Sappho, and Stesichorus. “The art of rhetoric,” he writes, “wrongs me in not having taught me to play the lyra or the barbitos [a stringed instrument], but only to dance this prose dance for the Muses” (48.5; all translations are from my translation). And again, “I would have gladly persuaded my words to become lyrical and poetic, so that I could say something about you that has a youthful verve to it, as Simonides or Pindar did about Dionysus and Apollo” (47.1).
Let us turn now to the Adabody illustrations.
“No matter when we live on planet earth,” Al wrote when he sent me this illustration, “we all have the same feelings.” He titled it “Lost Child of Eloquence.” It is meant to accompany Himerius’s Monody for his Son, Rufinus (Or. 8), which both laments and praises his deceased son, who was promising and precocious. Himerius was away from Athens when, one night, he received news that he had died there. Adabody brings the pair together, permitting an imaginary embrace, highlighted by the prominence of the three hands; in the Monody, Himerius deplores the fact that “you have been snatched away from me … without having embraced me for the last time” (1). The dark colors represent, not only the day after which he received the bad news, “darker than all others” (20), but also the dark night of the soul. Rufinus has become “the dark and gloomiest sorrow” of his father’s house (20). It is the poignant sorrow of a parent’s loss of a child: “Why did I not pass away first? Why did I, the father, not precede my son in death? … For what mourning have I been kept alive” (8)! Besides the hands of embrace, Adabody also makes prominent the tears, especially the one on Himerius’s right hand, that the evil spirit has let him have, he tells us, “instead of you” (21). Where Himerius himself was when Rufinus died at Athens, we do not know. But he poured libations there for his son by the local Melas River. “Melas” literally means “black,” and in the Monody Himerius remarks that the river “really did turn dark and black for me, more dismal than any a Cocytus or Acheron” of the Underworld (22; for fuller translation, commentary, and discussion of details, see Penella, Man and the Word 21–33).
This illustration is titled “Thessalonica Stopover.” It is inspired by Himerius’s Oration 39, The Discourse in Thessalonica. Himerius had been summoned to leave Athens and to join the emperor Julian in the East. He was invited to stop at Thessalonica, in northeastern Greece, where, in 362, he gave an address to the citizens, who can be seen in the background of Al’s picture. “Do you want me to interrupt my hurried course for a short while,” Himerius asks, “and give you a taste of my Attic (i.e., Athenian) pipe” (1)? The literal pipe that he is holding represents his eloquence. Describing the city’s lovely layout and its buildings, Himerius praises its virtue, its zeal for wisdom, and its Hellenic culture in an area that was not very Hellenized. Three members of the audience are foregrounded and singled out by Himerius (and by Adabody): Musonius, a former governor of the province of Achaea; Calliopius, governor of the province of Macedonia, in which Thessalonica was located; and a second Musonius, an ex-sophist and vicar of the diocese of Macedonia, which included the provinces of Achaea and Macedonia. Calliopius and the second Musonius had invited Himerius to stop at Thessalonica. Himerius praises them variously for their cultural and administrative skills. In Adabody’s rendition, they appear to be pleased with themselves (for more see Man and the Word 39–41, 48–54).
This illustration, one of my favorites, is titled “The Lyre and the Book.” It was made for Oration 9, “The Epithalamium for Severus.” In this oration, Himerius celebrates the wedding of Severus, his student or former student, and Severus’s unnamed bride. Severus went on to serve in the Roman imperial administration. The oration includes discussion of marriage and of the bridal chamber, praise of the spouses, and a description of the bride. The couple, “of the same birth and similar upbringing” (12), both came from “good” families, the bride’s from Thrace and the bridegroom’s from Asia Minor. “They have a remarkable similarity of soul … different only in the activities they are inclined to.” Her concerns are spinning and the shuttle; he “has reaped the fruit of Hermes’s charm [i.e., eloquence].” As Adabody shows, “she holds a lyre; he clings to a book” (15). Love “reddens [her] cheeks with modesty more than nature colors rosebuds,” and “[m]any curls appear on [her] head” (19). If the lines of the bride’s body were not literally visible through her garment, as they appear in the illustration, they were certainly seen by the eyes of the young man’s mind. The older woman to the right is the matchmaker, whom Himerius calls “the orchestrator of this marriage.” “My art and hers,” says Himerius, “have the same forefathers” (18); he is referring to the forefathers of eloquence, by which the matchmaker persuaded the couple to marry (for more see Man and the Word 141–55).
This untitled illustration, beneath the Athenian acropolis, shows Himerius addressing his students. He is standing on the speaker’s platform in an outdoor gathering, holding a lyre, which, like other musical allusions, is a metaphor for eloquence (Man and the Word 12). There are many Himerian orations addressed to students; it is not clear whether Adabody had a particular one in mind here or perhaps was thinking of them in general. The students hardly seem well disciplined or serious. One is chalking Himerius’s name on the back of the speaker’s platform! In his Oration 3, Libanius, the eminent Antiochene sophist of the fourth century, gives us, even if with some exaggeration, details about disciplinary problems in the classroom: he complains of students’ annoying their comrades, lack of attention, chattering, and horseplay (11–14). But the students in Adabody’s illustration may be behaving appropriately to the occasion, for Himerius sometimes gave celebratory rather than instructional talks, for example, on the occasion of a student’s birthday (Or. 44), on the arrival of new students (54), or on his return from an absence (30), when the expression of joy and excitement would have been tolerated. It was this illustration, when it was made clear to me that none would be included within the book, that I was hoping (in vain) to use on the dust jacket.
This untitled illustration goes with Himerius, Oration 48, “To Hermogenes, The Proconsul [i.e., Governor] of Greece [Achaea].” Here Adabody turns to a surreal style. Himerius is the tall standing figure on the right. In a note to me of April 29, 2004, the artist wrote that “I placed Himerius ‘standing’ on the water, a tongue-in-cheek idea to show his talent as a speaker.” Hermogenes, the next tallest figure, is standing on the ship’s prow. “I scanned one of the copies you sent of a Roman governor,” Adabody wrote, “and retouched it to create Hermogenes. I felt having Hermogenes as a statue gave him a quality of governmental importance.” Hermogenes has been away from Greece and is now returning; Himerius is celebrating his arrival with the panegyrical Oration 48. If panegyrist Himerius is in the largest scale and his subject Hermogenes in the next largest, Hellenic cultural treasures are in a smaller scale: Apollo at the stern and Odysseus bound to the mast, with his comrades’ ears plugged with wax, to protect him and them from the allures of the Sirens. The Hellenic past meant as much to Hermogenes as to Himerius, and the rope links Homeric Sirens, Himerius, and Hermogenes together. Apollo as a cultural patron befits both Himerius and Hermogenes. And in Oration 48.10–11, Himerius compares Apollo’s temporary absence from Delphi to that of Himerius from Athens. In his note to me, Adabody remarks that “I have made the land of Greece maybe more green than it really is. I did this to use the green as a symbol of land in relation to the blue as a symbol of the sea.”
Finally, I include this untitled illustration, even though it is not clear to me to what Himerian oration or passage Adabody intended it to refer. It is another example of how the surreal style can be used to illustrate a text. On the right-hand side, there is an allusion to a sea battle. The artist imports well-known figures of Athena and Poseidon. According to mythology, after a contest over who would control Athens, the two gods were brought together in neighboring shrines (See Orations 5.30, 6.7 in Man and the Word 190, 195). Adabody comments, in an undated note to me, that “Himerius holds a warrior mask. Poseidon and Athena help the Greeks win the sea battle.” Himerius is smiling, as he often is in Adabody’s illustrations. His eloquence would make him smile. So would his inheritance of a glorious Hellenic cultural legacy.
[For more information on Himerius, try the following resources: 1) Robert J. Penella (trans.), Man and the Word: The Orations of Himerius (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), from which come the quotations in this piece and where documentation of my background discussion and more information on Himerius and his orations can easily be found. A German translation anticipated mine by four years: H. Völker (trans.), Himerios, Reden und Fragmente: Einführung, Übersetzung und Kommentar (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2003). The standard critical edition is A. Colonna (ed.), Himerii Declamationes et orationes cum deperditarum fragmentis (Romae: Typis publicae officinae polygraphicae, 1951). In Italy, Onofrio Vox is overseeing a series of translations of and commentaries on individual Himerian orations, beginning with M. Andreassi and M. Lazzeri (eds.), Quattro discorsi agli allievi (Imerio, Or. 11, 30, 65, 69) (Lecce: Pensa Multimedia, 2012), and M. Lazzeri (ed.), Imerio, Orazioni 44 e 54 Colonna (Lecce: Pensa Multimedia, 2019). A new Budé edition is in preparation. See also M. Raimondi, Imerio e il suo tempo (Roma: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2012), and O.Vox, Studi imeriani (Lecce: Pensa Multimedia, 2019).
For more information about the best-known Greek school of rhetoric in the fourth century, see R. Cribiore, The School of Libanius in Late Antique Antioch (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). And for the standard literary-rhetorical curriculum of the Roman Empire, see the same author’s Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).]
Robert J. Penella is professor emeritus of Classics at Fordham University. His translation of Himerius may be found here. One of his major interests is Imperial Greek rhetoric and oratory. Albert C. Adabody is an artist, still painting and drawing in retirement in South Carolina.
