9 Among ancient Lives, Apollonios’ status as a pagan sage, invites comparisons initially with other Greco-Roman biographical works that focus on pagan philosopher-figures. The realisation that historical accuracy is not a primary interest of ancient biographical writing makes manifest the difficulty of isolating a group of pseudo-biographical texts at the exclusion of others. Not all notices function as ‘biographies’ strictly spea (.)ĤA decision about which wise-men tales to include in our survey is not an easy one, and is bound to stumble on ultimately insoluble questions regarding the degree of historicity of each tale. 9 See De Pourcq and Roskam (2016, 163).Again using sōphrosynē as a tool of comparison, the next chapter will look at connections between the VA and the other important cluster of texts, which is related to Apollonios’ biography, namely the romantic novels.
The narratives in question possess an extremely varied literary, philosophical and religious motivation, but this chapter will suggest that they all employ sōphrosynē as an ideological and rhetorical strategy, which in the end signposts the versatile category of stories labeled as ‘wise-men biographies’. Having established the importance of this virtue for the story and the character of Apollonios, I now ask how it was treated by other authors of philosophical lives, and whether it may be used to reinforce assumptions of textual affinities. 8 It is my aim here to explore sōphrosynē as one of those motifs. These texts, which differ in substantial ways, share a number of common formal elements that allow us to treat them together: they all concentrate on special men who are supposed to have rare philosophical and/or spiritual gifts and a connection to the divine they all have a footing in history they aim to praise, idealise and make an example of their subjects and they use a number of common thematic motifs in order to achieve their purpose.
letters, mythical and proverbial stories), and they present heroes of exceptional spiritual gifts, who are called to face powerful opponents, over whom they duly prevail. 4 These narratives have a number of distinct common features: they narrate lives, they are structured in episodes (some of which are thought more or less independent), they employ various forms of storytelling (e.g. Aside from the ‘novel’, the VA’s literary context includes the tradition of stories about holy men and wonder-workers (such as we find in pagan philosophical biographies 2 and in the apocryphal Christian literature), of fictitious biography more generally (including popular narratives, such as the lives of Aisop and Alexander, 3 who both display wise-men features), and even of a ‘gospel genre’, associated with ‘spreading the word’ about the life and works of a holy man, chiefly as a form of religious propaganda. These features are shared between the VA and pseudo-biogra (.)ġAs mentioned in the Introduction, the VA belongs to a complex narrative tradition that may be defined and described in varied terms and ways. 4 See Tiede (1982) Talbert (1978, 1646) on philosophers revered as gods (he mentions the Tyanean and (.).3 On the affinities between these two works, see Jouanno (2002, 208-209).2 See Schirren (2005, 12) for examples and references (and ibid., 69-211 for the philosophos bios as (.).