12 - Paragone? Xenophon, Sokrates, and Quintilian on Greek Painting and Sculpture

Summary

For François, Judy, and Tonio

And in memoriam J. K. Anderson

Comparison, interaction, and rivalry among the arts, a Western cultural trope since the paragone debates of the Renaissance, rejuvenated by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing two and a half centuries ago, and the main theme of this volume, have strong roots in ancient literary discourse. The earliest extant example, in Xenophon's Memorabilia of Sokrates (3.10–11), records four conversations between the philosopher and the painter Parrhasios, the sculptor Kleitōn, the armorer Pistias, and the courtesan Theodotē that inter alia seem to rank their respective specialties in exactly that descending order. Five centuries later, Quintilian (Inst. Or. 12.10.3–9), while referencing this passage, claims the opposite (armor and seduction excluded). The following pages explore this discrepancy in the light of the two critics’ differing dates, perspectives, and critical agendas.

Now, in a classic essay from the early 1970s, the great art historian E. H. Gombrich fl oated the proposal (borrowed from the literary critic E. D. Hirsch) that “the intended meaning of a work can only be established once we have decided what category or genre … the work in question was intended to belong to.” Yet these two comparative discussions of Greek painting and sculpture, the most important in ancient literature, and enormously infl uential even though they confl ict in key respects, are seldom dicussed from this perspective. Most art historians and archaeologists seem unused to considering them in this way; most philosophers and philologists seem uninterested in the visual arts; and each party seldom cites the others.

XENOPHON

Xenophon (c. 430–after 355 BC) may have completed his Memorabilia after 371 BC, since one passage (3.5) has been thought to assume the military situation after the Spartan defeat at the Battle of Leuktra in that year. (Moreover, as will appear, 3.10.1 may show knowledge of Plato's Republic, published around 380 BC.) By then, he had left Athens for Asia in 401 BC; saved the Ten Thousand from death or enslavement in Persia in 399 BC; fought for the Spartans upon his return; been exiled from Athens for treason in 394 BC; and eventually retired to an estate near Olympia.