A History of Autobiography in Antiquity by Georg Misch;

Author:Georg Misch;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 1950-01-10T16:00:00+00:00

NOTE

* See Introduction, pp. 17 sqq.

* We have only nine complete works, and not all of them are autobiographies in the strict sense; mostly we have only small fragments or mere reports that something existed, sometimes with no certainty that it was an autobiography.

The extant works of autobiographical nature are, in chronological order: that of Cicero in Brutus (46 B.C.); Nicolaus Damascenus “On his own Life and Education” (about A.D. 10); Ovid, Tristia, IV, 10 (A.D. 10); the Res Gestae Divi Augusti (before A.D. 14); Josephus, “Life” (about A.D. 90); Lucian’s “Dream” or “Career” (about A.D. 165); the book “To Himself” of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (before A.D. 180); the “Sacred Discourses” of Aelius Aristides (about A.D. 190); Gregorius Thaumaturgus in his address returning thanks to Origenes (A.D. 239).

For other elements of tradition and the extant self-portrayals that may throw light on development, see the relevant chapters in this book.

Possibly autobiographical: P. Valerius Cato (about 70 B.C.), of whose work Indignatio (Sueton. de gram. 11) we know nothing, not even whether it was in prose or verse. Also Thrasyllus, court philosopher to Tiberius (see below, chapter III).

The fragments of Greek autobiography, so far as they belong to historical literature, have now been collected in the comprehensive work published in 1929 and 1930 by Felix Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, Part 2, “Zeitgeschichte”, nos. 227–38, “Autobiographien, Memoiren, Memoirenhaftes”.

* See Introduction, p. 6.

† In Aelius Aristides or. sacr. V, 63 (ed. Keil, II, 466) we find: τοὺς μὲν νϵὼς τοῖς θϵοῖς προσήκϵι καθιϵροῦν, τοὺς δέ άνδρας τοὺς ἐλλογίμους τῆ τῶν βιβλίων άναθὲσϵι τιμᾶν, … ὡς δή τοὺς μἑν ἀνδριάντας καὶ τὰ ἀγάματα τῶν σωμάτων ὄντα ὺπομνήματα, τὰ δἑ βιβλία τῶν λόγων. (“Just as men dedicate temples to the gods, so it is fitting that eminent men should be honoured by the ceremonial setting up in public of their books, … for the books are hypomnemata of the mind, as statues and pictures are hypomnemata of the body.”) Cicero describes as a hypomnema one of his volumes of memoirs, in which he was concerned with demonstrating his rhetorical art (see below, chap. I, where there are other examples).

‡ Philostratus, in his “Lives of the Sophists”, Book II, 9, on the Sacred Discourses of Aelius Aristides; see below, chap. III, IV.

* See below, p. 211.

† A relatively early example showing that monumental self-glorification was common in the Hellenistic world not only among the kings with their quasi-divinity but also among ordinary mortals, has been discovered in Thera, the southernmost island of the Sporades. In that island a certain Artemidorus, who had come from Egypt and had rendered such services to the city’s peace that he was rewarded with its freedom, set up a strange sanctuary in which he was priest (about 250 B.C.). It was hewn out of a cliff, and contained a number of altars with sacramental inscriptions and reliefs, including a portrait in relief of Artemidorus, crowned with laurel. In the inscriptions he makes several mentions of his civic services and his titles.

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