PHILOSTRATUS IMAGINES. CALLISTRATUS DESCRIPTIONSES

With an English Translation. By Arthur Fairbanks '86. The Loeb Classical Library, London. Heinemann: New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1931. xxxii+429 pages.

The editors of the Loeb Library were wise in their selection of Professor Fairbanks as editor of this volume, a work which demanded much more than would be required for an ordinary classical text and translation; for the editing of the sketches by the elder and the younger Philostratus and by Callistratus called for a wide acquaintance with Greek mythology and Greek and Roman art. Professor Fairbanks' publications in both these fields are well known, and in the notes and illustrations of this volume he has drawn generously upon his wide knowledge of Greek vase painting—a field in which he is an acknowledged master. The translation is admirable in clearness and simplicity, well adapted to the style of his authors.

We are told of four literary members of the Lemnain family who bore the name Philostratus. The author of the first series of Imagines in our volume is supposed to be Philostratus son of Nervianus, born about A.D. 190. Another series of similar sketches is by his grandson, Philostratus the Younger, who wrote about A.D. 300. Callistratus, whose fourteen short sketches close the volume, wrote somewhat later than the other two, whose work he evidently had in his hands.

Professor Fairbanks' introductory paragraph gives a clear statement of the work of the "Sophists" of this period. These men are not altogether like the "sophists" of Plato's time, for while these wandering teachers and lecturers, like their predecessors, professed cyclopedic culture, they had become chiefly devoted to rhetoric and the art of fine writing. "It was characteristic of the men and of their age that lecturers and hearers alike laid the emphasis on the form of the discourse, and that subject-matter was completely subordinated to the mode of presentation."

The elder Philostratus conceived the plan of writing a description of a series of wallpaintings, picturing scenes from Greek poetry, mythology, and history. The Pompeian frescoes give us an idea of such paintings, which Philostratus may well have seen in Italy, but it is likely that he is describing an entirely imaginary series. His introduction is worth quoting: "The occasion of these discourses of mine was as follows: It was the time of the public games at Naples, a city in Italy settled by men of the Greek race and people of culture, and therefore Greek in their enthusiasm for discussion. And as I did not wish to deliver my addresses in public, the young men kept coming to the house of my host and importuning me. I was lodging outside the walls in a suburb facing the sea, where there was a portico built on four, I think, or possibly five terraces, open to the west wind, and looking out on the Tyrrhenian sea. It was resplendent with all the marbles favoured by luxury, but it was particularly splendid by reason of the panel paintings set in the walls, paintings which I thought had been collected with real judgment, for they exhibited the skill of very many painters. The idea had already occurred to me that I ought to speak in praise of the paintings, when the son of my host, quite a young boy, only ten years old but already an ardent listener and eager to learn, kept watching me as I went from one to another and asking me to interpret them. So in order that he might not think me illbred, 'Very well,' I said, 'we will make them the subject of a discourse as soon as the young men come.' And when they came, I said, 'Let me put the boy in front and address to him my effort at interpretation; and do you follow, not only listening but also asking questions if anything I say is not clear'. "

Of this work Professor Fairbanks says: "Certainly Philostratus seems to try to outdo the painter whose work he is describing, and often passes beyond the limits of pictorial art without stopping to note what the picture itself gives and what he adds to make his account of the theme more attractive. . . . The scene or scenes are described for the story they tell, or for the sentiment they express in this story. The excellence of the picture for him lies in its effective delineation of character, in the pathos of the situation, or in the play of emotion it represents. Its technical excellence is rarely mentioned, and then only as a means for successful representation—In a word the whole discussion centers on literary problems rather than on problems of painting." Of the literary style of Philostratus the editor says: "Heevidently seeks the simplicity which is suitable to the audience he proposes; none the less a simplicity more studied or more often interrupted by grandiloquent and complicated passages would be difficult to imagine."

Philostratus is fond of referring to the classical writers. "Words or phrases are quoted from Homer more than a hundred times, from Euripides more than forty times, from Pindar twenty-five times; and in all some twenty authors furnish recognized quotations. Such is the acquaintance with the classics which was demanded both of the sophist and his hearers."

We have sixty-five of these descriptions by Philostratus the elder, but only seventeen by his grandson. Of Philostratus the younger Professor Fairbanks says that "he is following in the steps of his grandfather, though we find nothing like slavish imitation of that work." He freely borrows both themes and phrases from the elder. "The most striking difference from his predecessor lies in the fact that the later writer makes far less effort for rhetorical effect. ... In general the description is much more definite, as though he wished to make clear the particular picture he is describing." Professor Fairbanks is inclined to the view that these pictures, like those of the other series, existed only in the imagination of the writer, but he says that "none the less it may be said of him, as of his predecessor, that his paintings are so genuinely conceived in the spirit of the age that they may be treated as sound data for the student of late Greek painting."

Callistratus' "descriptions" are of statues: but the editor says that "in general his descriptions have so little to say of the statues described that the name of the work seems inexact; his aim is rather to praise, and the description is quite subordinate to his rhetorical encomium of the sculptor's marvellous success in his work. ... It was the aim of Callistratus to glorify the success of the sculptor in making bronze or marble all but alive in the figures he created. . . . The numerous allusions to classical literature and the constant use of phrases from the poets are no longer found." The editor thinks that "probably we should assume that he writes about what he had himself seen, either in originals or copies."

While the narrow space limits of the little Loeb volume allow the editor room for only brief notes, Professor Fairbanks gives enough of this material to enable the general reader to understand the numerous literary and mythological allusions in the text, and he often refers the scholar to the technical literature. A great merit of the volume is the abundance of pictorial illustrations from ancient art, both full-page reproductions and numerous inserts of little drawings. It is pleasing to see how many of these illustrations are taken from the collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, of which the editor was so long the distinguished head. He may well be proud of the frontispiece, an imaginary and fine reproduction by his daughter of the Lyre of Amphion as described by the elder Philostratus.

Professor James Mackaye is the author of an article "Evidence for the Existence of the Ether" reprinted from the April, 1932, issue of the Journal of the Franklin Institute.