The School of Libanius in Late Antique Antioch

Introduction

THE SOPHIST LIBANIUS, who was an exponent of the revival of Greek literature that started with the Second Sophistic,1 taught in Antioch in Syria in the fourth century C.E. In Oration 55, he extolled to a student the advantages of a career as a teacher of rhetoric:


How great it is to rule over wellborn young men and see them improve in rhetoric and proceed to the various paths of life! And what about the honors one receives from them and their fathers, from citizens and foreigners? Teachers of rhetoric are respected by all governors, small and great, and even by emperors. (23)
There are many similar statements in Libanius, as well as fervent commendations of good students. There are an equal number of negative assessments of the condition of rhetoric--a despised and silent discipline--and condemnations of youths indifferent to its charms. In general, Libanius's letters present a different view than the orations. In attempting to understand the reasons for the discrepancy and to unravel other puzzles that the vast corpus of the rhetor's surviving writings presents, this book delves into the workings of the most prominent school of rhetoric in Antioch (the modern Antakya, in south Turkey), where Libanius taught as "official sophist of the city."2 The school served youths from all provinces of the Roman East. Its curriculum and teaching methods were common to other schools of the Roman Empire, so that the works of Libanius also provide a clear, welcome window on higher education in other times and places. We can apply to Libanius the words of the poet Meleager, who lived centuries before: "If I am a Syrian, what wonder? Stranger, we live in one country, the world."3

Libanius kept a vast correspondence to advertise the quality of his teaching and to maintain contacts with the families of his pupils, former students, and a few other teachers. I have included in an appendix translations of about 200 letters that concern his teaching activity.4 All of the surviving correspondence of Libanius, which is more than double that of Cicero's, belongs to two separate periods, his first ten years of teaching in Antioch and the last five years of his life.5 This study, in any case, is based not only on the texts I have translated, but also on all of his correspondence with relevance to education, as well as several of his speeches that pertain to pedagogical issues.

There is more than one Libanius, and this book does not pretend to interpret them all or to solve all the puzzles. The questions I am asking depend on my specific interests and are only tangential to other fundamental questions. By the beginning of the third century, Christianity had gained a hold over the intellectual elite, but Libanius, a major representative of Hellenism when it was starting to break down, was an exponent of paganism, since his fervent belief in classical culture brought with it a religious allegiance.6 Issues such as Libanius's relationship with the emperor Julian go beyond the teacher-student rapport that I explore; they have been asked before and will continue to be asked.7 I will only touch upon Libanius's relations with two of his well-renowned students, John Chrysostom and Basil the Great, who followed paths of life different from him but continued to draw on the rhetorical skills they had acquired.8 In the same way, I will not linger on his interactions with emperors and pivotal figures of the age, with whom he sometimes had tempestuous relationships, or on his influence on public affairs in Antioch, or on his concern (philanthro pia) for the lower classes and protests about social injustice and against an oppressive system.9 Libanius (probably rightly) boasted to have written "more than any man alive" and revealed much of himself; much of what the Middle Ages preserved still awaits interpretation.10

But even though I concentrate on Libanius as an educator, and the factual claims I make are based on a process of inquiry and the examination of a large body of material, I am aware that I cannot pretend to have captured him fully. Letters manipulate reality no less than do speeches self-consciously composed for public consumption or autobiography. While one should read them (when possible) in conjunction with other writings of an author, it is not always easy to find overall coherence, if that is what one seeks. The farther a reader is from a text, the less competent he is to interpret it,11 and this is particularly true with letters. Apart from the issue of influence from other texts and trends, letters need to be situated in context in order to reconstruct the meaning they had for their original readers (the recipients principally), the people to whom they showed them, the subsequent readers who had Libanius's collection at their disposal after his death, up to the present readers. A letter not only is a veritable dialogue between two parties, as ancient literary critics maintained, but it also significantly involves the persona of the carrier, who brought it and supplemented its content, and the subsequent audience, which eavesdrops on a distant conversation and enriches its significance. Through a method of historical reception, one is more equipped to reach the original meaning of an epistolary text, but attempts to reconstruct what has been called a "horizon of expectations" may be only partially successful.12 So, for example, while we can interpret and predict to some degree the impact of the literary and philosophical references of Libanius's letters, something still escapes us with regard to various allusions. Does an obscure expression reproduce an ancient proverb, a colloquial utterance, or a private joke between writer and recipient? We are sometimes inescapably severed from the text's meaning.13

A literary letter, which is simultaneously the product of both real life and literature, is a text that is far from transparent. As readers, we have to rediscover the subtle balance between letters as functional documents and letters as works of art, a balance that was operative when the writer composed his message, but that has insensibly changed upon reaching us. Libanius's letters lay between private and public and were intended to have a literary and lasting value, as indicated by the reactions of his recipients, who often publicized them or claimed inability to respond with similar art. Libanius kept duplicates of his letters, but it is unclear whether he published a limited collection during his lifetime.14 We may view a letter as an outpouring more spontaneous than an unquestionably literary text (his orations, for example), but in his correspondence, Libanius constructed a personal view of reality and of himself, just as he did in his other works.

Much distinguishes Libanius's letters from the straightforward correspondence of more-or-less educated people that survives from Roman Egypt and, to some degree, from many other sophisticated epistolary texts.15 Since they originate from a copybook, introductory and final expressions are not included. It is likely that Libanius dictated most of his letters to his secretary and did not pen them himself. A generally unnoticed remark from a contemporary writer, the Roman rhetor Julius Victor, is enlightening: "As a rule, the ancients wrote in their own hands to those closest to them, or at least frequently appended a subscription."16 In attributing to the veteres (Cicero, for example) the habit of penning their own correspondence to intimate people, Julius Victor appears to note a difference from contemporary writing habits and seems to refer to some change in epistolary etiquette.17 Libanius continued to subscribe his letters to friends, but it is not certain whether he did the same with all correspondents.18 His letters plunge in medias res, describing a unique moment, a request, a mood, and often include an elegantly crafted and clever ending. Some traditional epistolary topics are transformed in his correspondence. So the customary wish for health is there only when there are realistic questions about the recipient's condition, and this often mutates into an excursus on Libanius's own welfare. In the same way, the common complaint about not receiving news often includes a reference to an addressee's reluctance to write lest his rhetorical skills not measure up to Libanius's stringent standards, and the lament about lost correspondence (a reality with ancient mail delivery) becomes a colorful description of a letter's vicissitudes.19

The letters that pertain to education present some uniformity as a group insofar as they throw into relief Libanius's persona as teacher, illuminate some pedagogic issues, and disclose a world of people connected with his profession. Yet one should not attempt to forcefully pigeonhole them into a well-defined epistolary category. Most often, letters do not serve only a single communicative function, but rather discharge a multiplicity of clear (or hidden) roles.20 Many voices can be heard in them, in contrast to Byzantine letters, which revolve entirely around the relationship between writer and recipient.21 Most often, Libanius discusses a certain young man with a member of his family, but this trio of voices can be expanded by the mention of other relatives or friends who know the student or by a brief excursus on the letter carrier.

The letters, orations, and pedagogical works of Libanius reveal both continuity and change in education. I refer frequently (both in the main text and in the notes) to education in other periods and societies and to my previous work on this subject, but I did not think it necessary to write a separate account of the distinctiveness of Libanius's school vis-a`-vis others.22 Libanius himself emphasizes continuity in teaching methods and in the curriculum, but we will see that only a few of his students were able to follow his ideal, taxing program. He was not inclined to acknowledge discontinuity and modifications of a proven system, yet the short attendance and defections of many of his students must have forced him to make some adjustments. It is also possible that, like all great teachers, he introduced some innovations, which are now hidden among the traditional features of his rhetoric. There is a continuous interplay between his role as a representative of the art of rhetoric and his function as a teacher devoted to instilling the same principles in others. Fidelity to tradition gives a recognizable density to his words, so that his work as rhetor and sophist may appear to be only the result of sedimentation of things practiced, taught, and learned from the distant past. Yet the issues of his own times, his creativity, and everyday intercourse with his students must have had some impact on his production that we are not able to detect. Though one is tempted to find an uninterrupted discourse that links him to contemporary exponents of Attic oratory, to the Second Sophistic, and in turn to Hermogenes, Aristides, and Demosthenes (among many others), the differences and limitations in the functions of fourth-century rhetoric inevitably shaped his work.