In a thesis (Essai sur la vie et la correspondance du sophiste Libanius) submitted to the University of Paris, L. Petit explains how he studied the life of Libanius: by letting Libanius tell us about himself.
The fourth century would seem, on more than one account, to merit and attract the attention of our century in particular. Eloquence, history, and philosophy are returning with great interest to that epoch, fertile in great struggles and useful lessons. A society in collapse; a religion on the rise; the height of civilization struggling against barbarism; paganism attempting a supreme and vain effort to revive itself; the agony of an immense empire whose last convulsions still show its grandeur; the seeds of salvation that Christianity is sowing, in the midst of these ruins, by the double action of eloquence and virtue: here is what the second half of the fourth century presents for the study of our generation. From such a vast picture to detach one single figure who occupies the second plane; to rediscover, in the autobiography and letters of Libanius, the traits of the quintessential Greek sophist; to study in him the private man, the public man, the professor, the man of letters; to extract from the midst of an immense correspondence everything that might characterize that celebrated rhetorician, the friend of Julian the Apostate, the master of St. John Chrysostom and St. Basil, the idol of the city of Antioch; to try to find, in short, in the role played by such a figure, certain traits of the history of his time: that is the object of this work.
But before attempting to make the sophist of Antioch live again, we must tell where and how we studied him. To get to know Libanius, we consulted Libanius talking about himself. He believed in the immortality of his greatness, and doubtless today he would be gravely disappointed to see how little celebrated that name is with which he filled his own age, and how little known his life, which he took care to narrate to his contemporaries and write down for posterity. It is true that this document, the most curious and complete of those that can introduce us to Libanius, has come down to us so altered and difficult to understand in many places that it is almost rash to undertake a translation of it. We had for this work the only two printed texts in existence. The text of Morel, and the Latin translation accompanying it, are often unintelligible; the text of Reiske, in spite of numerous corrections and explanatory notes, still contains a mob of passages that need to be corrected, completed, or punctuated differently to convey any meaning at all, let alone a satisfactory meaning. To these difficulties, without a doubt, we must attribute the errors into which the biographers of Libanius have fallen. If we have succeeded in penetrating these dim shadows with a little light, we are forced to admit that it was at the price of efforts all out of proportion to the results obtained. Meditating on the annotated text of Reiske, comparing it with the text and translation of Morel, illuminating this work with everything that could shed any light on it, and looking in the context for a meaning that the text hid from us, it was often necessary for us to push to the edge of audacity so as not to leave gaps in the translation of this singular document, whose last page alone completely defied our curiosity and our efforts.
That curiosity, however, was as lively as it was legitimate. Desiring to study the fourth century in the correspondence of the professor who held such a great place in it, the knowledge of his life, as narrated by himself, was the point of departure indicated for us; the biography must shed a great light on the letters, which must, in their turn, elucidate and complete the biography. Declaimed by the author before his countrymen in the first part, probably written at various times like a journal of his life in the second half, this prolix narration carries with it a character of authenticity not found in any of his other works to the same degree; but at the same time the person of the author shows itself with an indulgence and a persistence that can wear out the most benevolent attention; the innocence of his admiration for himself, the sincerity of the cult of his own glory, the emphasis with which he aggrandizes everything that concerns him, all these carry the signature of a vanity that must have been oppressive to his contemporaries. We understand why he had to defend himself before them against the reproach of arrogance and importunity, and the apology πρὸς τὸς αὑτὸν βαρὺν καλέσαντας seems very appropriately placed before this Discourse on His Own Fortune.
Under this title, which is a good summary of the subject, Libanius undertakes, by following the course of his life, to show everything he owes to good or ill fortune, and he does it with a monotony that becomes tiring, especially toward the end, where the tone of the beginning is no longer sustained. We even seem to discern in it, added end to end, different pieces completing the history of his life, with the refrain on fortune, a refrain brought along by the plan of a first discourse. We also seem to see in it, as if hidden and reserved for posterity, the vengeful passages that the rhetorician has sharpened against the enemies of his old age. The first part, read by him to his fellow citizens at the age of sixty, contains, within a somewhat more oratorical form, the period of his life that terminates with that age; the second part seems to carry up to his seventy-seventh year the narration of his life, which is prolonged beyond there, and recounts as deeds already well past the last events that afflict his old age. There shadows form around the text so dark that we cannot tell on which deed or on which thought this witness to his own existence stopped.
From this source we have drawn useful information on the life of Libanius; and we have been able, thanks to this autobiography, to follow him fairly closely, so as to peruse his vast correspondence more fruitfully. That correspondence, which does not go past his fortieth year, the point when he returned to establish himself permanently at Antioch, comprehends around two thousand letters, in the collection of Wolf. That collection, published in Amsterdam in 1738, by the learned professor of Hamburg, is the last and the most complete to have appeared, the only one we have consulted.1 The erudition, judgement, research, translation, and notes of the conscientious editor give his work its greatest value, and a real luxury of typography recommends it to the curiosity of the reader. We shall not enter into an examination of the various sources2 and of the partial editions that contributed to forming this collection, any more than we shall enter into the examination of the manuscripts, the research, and the labors and assistants whose participation Wolf was able to secure. These interesting details can be read in his preface, and in the history of Greek literature by Schœll; we shall speak only of our own impression and of our work on this edition of the letters of Libanius.
When, on a first reading, we desire to enter into this correspondence, we are momentarily halted by a sense of the difficulty of the labor. What enigmas in these letters, whose addressees are unknown! What obscurities in the style, dotted with citations and allusions that are hard to grasp, in those puns, in those refinements of thought and expression! And (by the way) can the elegance and variety of form disguise or compensate for the monotony and the sterile uniformity of the background? What could we learn from so many compliments and recommendations, addressed to more than five hundred characters whose names for the most part are unknown, altered, or uncertain? It takes some effort of the will to get over this first impression. But if we persevere, we perceive certain interesting details of customs and character; the same names come up again, the characters and the facts form pictures; the style itself seems to become a little clearer, the interest is sustained and grows. We are charmed by the elegance, the variety, and the exquisite urbanity of so many letters where each one is, in its kind, a work finished with infinite care and art; we begin to admire the form of a note whose background is insignificant. Thus we have carried on to the end a first reading, noting, with one word, those among the letters which can help us get to know the author and his time. Out of two thousand letters, two hundred at most are worthy of our attention on that head, and we feel a little disappointed that we never see them raise themselves up and extend themselves outside that narrow circle of activity to which their author confines himself. Their great and unique utility is in allowing us to get to know Libanius, his correspondents, and their age. Thus we have thought that a second reading, and an effort made from this point of view, might be of some use.
Schœll, in his History of Greek Literature, says, speaking of the collection of Libanius’ letters published by Wolf, “His edition is excellent as far as criticism goes, but it could use, more even than the speeches, a philologist versed in history, who, after having done enough research on the five hundred correspondents of Libanius, would make them known to readers, and arrange the letters either in chronological order (insofar as that is possible) or by grouping the ones addressed to the same correspondent.” recognizing what we lack to be able to undertake the labor recommended by Schœll, we have nevertheless attempted it. We wished to clear and smooth the road for those who might like to come after us and delve into that correspondence to look for some light in it. We have made up for what we lacked in philological and historical knowledge with a conscientious study of all the documents that could shed any light on the letters of Libanius and their addressees. We have put the study of his life—for which he supplied us the elements—to good use, and the history of his era, which we have studied in contemporary authors. Ammianus Marcellinus and the Codex Theodosianus among the ancients, the history of Tillemont among the moderns, have been especially potent assistants in putting together, as well as we could, what these days is called the prosopography of the correspondents of Libanius. Many of them are completely unknown; many uncertain; but nevertheless many—historians, poets, rhetoricians, prefects, bishops, and important or famous characters of whatever sort—are partly known to us through his correspondence. To mention only one example, we have found in Libanius’ letters some new and precise information about the birthplace and family of Ammianus Marcellinus, as well as the date of first readings of his history in Rome.3
We have hoped, therefore, that, in spite of its imperfection, our labor will not be without some use; we have at least made an effort to make it useful. Unable to classify in chronological order letters that in general carry nothing that permits us to assign a date to them, we settled for the idea of arranging the correspondents of Libanius in alphabetical order, giving all the information or conjectures we have been able to gather about each one of them; and we have grouped all the letters written to the same correspondent so that they may shed light on one another. A summary of these letters, sometimes a partial or complete translation, some observations on their probable date or their doubtful authenticity, and finally some connections with the autobiography of Libanius, complete what we were able to do to give them a clearer and more precise meaning. In such a work, we cannot but have committed plenty of errors, and we have a lively sense of our insufficiency for such a task; we nevertheless do not hesitate to deliver to the public this collection of documents and notes, where others, later and better, may study Libanius and his age. A chronological table of the life of Libanius, according to his letters and his autobiography, and the list of authors we have consulted, complete the information we thought necessary to place at the head of this essay; we shall also add, as an appendix, the translation of the autobiography, to which we will sometimes refer the reader.
M. Egger has communicated to us, among various fragments taken from the Miscellanea of Münter, a letter addressed to Calliopus, which is not found in the collection of Wolf, and whose authenticity does not appear doubtful to us. To thank M. Egger for this communication will be, for us, to mark the least of the testimonies that we have received of his benevolence. ↩︎
The origin of the Latin letters alone presents a particular interest, because Zambicarius, professor of Greek and Latin at Perugia in the fifteenth century, was the first to have concerned himself with the letters of Libanius. He collected in Greece, where he lived for five years, the three hundred letters of which he made a Latin translation, with the aid of Argyropoulos. Only eighty out of those three hundred letters have been rediscovered and reproduced by Wolf in the Greek text. ↩︎
We believe we have also found, under the name of Ambrosius, Macrobius, the author of the Saturnalia and the Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, who was a pupil of Libanius. ↩︎