Heracles in Dio Chrysostom, Lucian, and Philostratus

This dissertation investigates the functions of Heracles as a literary device in selected works of three imperial Greek authors: Dio Chrysostom, Lucian, and Philostratus (Life of Apollonius of Tyana).

My first chapter addresses three works by Dio Chrysostom: the First Kingship Oration, the Diogenes, and the Nessus. It begins with a discussion of Prodicus’ myth of Heracles’ choice (X. Mem. 2.1.1–34) in order to establish the context in which Xenophon’s Socrates retells Prodicus’ myth—Socrates’ protreptic conversation with the hedonist Aristippus on Heraclean themes of ponos and enkrateia—and to demonstrate its relevance for Dio’s Heracles in the First Kingship. I also compare the levels of narration in Xenophon to those in the First Kingship, showing that Dio’s Choice of Heracles narrative imitates Xenophon’s embedded placement of Prodicus’ myth. Ultimately, Dio’s Heracles in the First Kingship hews closely to Xenophon’s Prodicus: as Prodicus’ Heracles chose between Virtue and Vice, Dio’s Heracles must choose between Kingship and Tyranny. And just as Socrates uses Prodicus’ Heracles as a model for Aristippus, so Dio’s narrator uses Heracles as a model for Trajan. In the Diogenes and Nessus, Dio presents two different versions of Heracles: in the Diogenes, the title character uses Heracles as a positive model of (Cynic) virtue, while in the Nessus, an unnamed narrator uses an alternative Heracles who lives a dissipated life of pleasure as a negative model. Ultimately, Dio’s Heracles is exceptionally flexible but always connected to virtuous behavior, even if in the Nessus he fails to live up to Heraclean ideals.

My second chapter examines four works by Lucian: the Somnium, the Rhetorum Praeceptor, the Menippus, and the Heracles. Both the Somnium and Rhetorum Praeceptor, like Dio’s First Kingship, feature a reworked Choice of Heracles. But in these two Lucianic works, the (suppressed) narrator offers reasons to doubt that the apparently obvious choice—Paideia over Sculpture in the Somnium, the easy road to rhetoric over the hard road in the Rhetorum Praeceptor—is correct. I highlight the narratological complexity of each work and its relationship with various hypotexts. In the Menippus, I connect the title character’s use of quotations from Euripides’ Heracles and Hecuba to those plays’ interest in dramatic reversal, showing that Lucian uses the tragic hypotexts to reflect on the genre of tragedy and on the human condition more broadly. Finally, in the Heracles, Lucian uses the Celtic divinity Ogmios via the interpretatio Graeca as a Heracles equivalent to reflect on the relationship between Greeks and barbarians and on the art of rhetoric.

My third chapter is a study of Heracles in Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana, showing that Heracles serves both as a structural device for the work and as a model, first negative, then positive, for the title character. As a structural device, Heracles appears at key junctures, particularly at the middle and end. As a model, Heracles is first introduced in his failure to take the Indian sages’ citadel by force, while Apollonius succeeds by coming in peace. But in Book 4 and afterwards, Heracles becomes a positive model for Apollonius. In fact, Philostratus departs from Dio and Lucian by giving Heracles a personal relationship with Apollonius, who apparently can receive direct communications from the divinity and considers him his helper. And while Philostratus, like Dio and Lucian, imitates Prodicus’ Choice of Heracles, he again departs from them by giving Apollonius a choice not between two options only but between Pythagoreanism and all other philosophies. Ultimately, I treat Heracles as the allusive linchpin that unifies the intertextuality of Philostratus’ work.

From my investigation, three major functions of Heracles emerge: Heracles as site of allusions, Heracles as structural device, and Heracles as foil. Dio, Lucian, and Philostratus use Heracles for alluding to various hypotexts, especially Xenophon’s Memorabilia, but also Euripidean tragedy and others. They use him to delineate the structure of their works, a function which is most fully developed in Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius. And they use him as a usually positive, sometimes negative model for their characters; in Philostratus, he is both.