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Dio Chrysostom the Moral Philosopher

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

Edmund Berry
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Extract

When we think of the philosophers of the first and second centuries of the Christian era the names that occur to our minds are almost certainly those of Stoics - Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. It would not occur to many to include Plutarch and Dio Chrysostom. Plutarch is generally regarded primarily as the author of Lives, while Dio Chrysostom is more often thought of as an orator. But these two have a philosophic approach also, which tends to be overlooked because it cannot be labelled as belonging to any one philosophical school. Both are eclectic and adhere to no single philosophical line; both adopt reasonableness and common sense as their guides. Their aim is to give useful, practical advice to men and communities on how to survive in the present world and to maintain moral principles. They are first and foremost moralists.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , April 1983 , pp. 70 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1983

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References

Notes

1. The Greek text of Dio with the only available English translation is that of Cohoon, J. W. and Crosby, H. L. in the LCL, 5 vols., 1932–1951Google Scholar. von Arnim, H. edited the complete text in two volumes, 1893–1896 (reprinted Berlin, 1962)Google Scholar; he also published Leben und Werke des Dio von Prusa (Berlin, 1898)Google Scholar, a work now largely superseded by Desideri, Paolo, Dione di Prusa: Un Intellettuale Greco nell’ Impero Romano (Messina-Firenze, 1978)Google Scholar which relates Dio to the political and social milieu of his time and discusses his political thought; the book has an excellent bibliography. Jones, C. P., The Roman World of Dio Chrysostom (Cambridge, Mass., 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar is the first full-length account in English; briefer than Desideri, this work stresses the political and historical facts which lie behind Dio's career and writings; Jones too has an excellent bibliography. See also Bowersock, G. W., Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1969)Google Scholar and Kennedy, George, The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World (Princeton, 1972), pp. 566–82Google Scholar.

2. Vol. 5 of the LCL edition, p. 375. There has recently been some study of Dio's supposed ‘conversion’ from sophist to philosopher, a conversion which is associated with the period of his exile. Desideri describes the story as an invention of Synesius (c. A. d. 400), pp. 3, 132, 187, 199. So too Jones, p. 49. Moles, J. L., ‘The Career and Conversion of Dio Chrysostom’, JHS 98 (1978), 79–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar examines the story thoroughly and concludes that Dio himself invented it, modelling it on the ‘conversions’ of Socrates, Diogenes, and Zeno; ‘the conversion of Dio Chrysostom is a fraud’ (p. 100).

3. Lesky, A., A History of Greek Literature (London, 1966), p. 835 n. 1Google Scholar.