Plato (and Others) in the Orations of Themistius
Themistius was a pagan philosopher and a teacher of philosophy.426 He was also a man of action who was admitted to the Constantinopolitan senate in 355, played an important role in recruiting new senators for the eastern capital, acted as a spokesman for Constantinople and its aristocracy, and held the office of urban prefect there in the middle 380s. He was prominent at the courts of emperors from Constantius II to Theodosius, though with an eclipse under Julian. Panegyrist of emperors, he was an “imperial propagandist” and “spin doctor.”427 Because of both his political activism and his belief that the riches of philosophy should be widely broadcast in society, rhetoric was an important tool for him, and in his orations he proves himself a master rhetorician. Philostratus would have called him a philosopher who had the reputation of a sophist, 
, a designation the chronicler of the Second Sophistic gave to Dio Chrysostom, who influenced Themistius—although Themistius himself would not have been happy with the term “sophist.”428
Themistius’ orations are brimming with his paideia, and one manifestation of that is his use in them of a wide range of canonical authors. Among those authors, Plato is a major presence, in both the public and the private orations.429 Plato’s only serious competitor for first place in Themistius’ orations is Homer.430 While a full and close study of all the Platonic material in the orations would be useful, my own goal here is much more modest. First, I want to differentiate, apparently for the first time, two different levels of use of Platonic material in the orations, what I call a category-one and a category-two use. Secondly, I want to observe how Plato is often presented in the orations in the company of other authorities, not all of them philosophical. This co-presence of authorities with Plato can be understood to reflect a broad paideia that Themistius shared with his father Eugenius, also a philosopher.
1. Plato
What I call a category-one use of Plato is found in Orations 8, 21, and 23. In his Oration 8, Themistius is celebrating the beginning of the emperor Valens’ fifth year of rule (March 28, 368). He lauds him by identifying him with the ideal ruler of Plato, Laws 4.709e-10c: the Athenian stranger there speaks of a tyrannos who would be νέος καὶ μνήμων καὶ εὐμαθὴς καὶ ἀνδρεῖος καὶ μεγαλοπρεπὴς φύσει, “young and with a good memory and quick to learn and courageous and magnanimous of nature.” Plato goes on to add the quality σωφροσύνη, “temperance,” and finally that such a ruler may be “fortunate” enough (εὐτυχής) to meet up with a good lawgiver. Themistius’ formulation is βασιλέα νέον, σώφρονα, μεγαλοπρεπῆ, μνήμονα, πρᾷον, ἀνδρεῖον, εὐμαθῆ (8.105b; cf. 8.119d, at the end of the oration, in a different order). Plato could use the term tyrannos for his ideal ruler; in Themistius’ day, this term had nothing but a negative meaning, so he replaces Plato’s tyrannos with basileus.431 Themistius’ formulation includes all of the Platonic qualities, minus the postscript “fortunate,” and it adds πρᾶον, “mild.” Themistius had already applied this description of the ideal ruler to Constantius, in full conformity with the Platonic terms, again minus the postscript (3.46a; 4.62a). And he would apply it twice to Theodosius, in somewhat altered forms, at 17.215c (νέον, σώφρονα, πρᾷον, ἥμερον, μεγαλοπρεπῆ, μεγαλóφρονα) and at 34 [XVI] (νέον, εὐμαθῆ, μεγαλοπρεπῆ, μεγαλóφρονα).
In Oration 8, the Platonic definition of the ideal ruler, differently than in the other orations that employ it, serves to give structure to the rest of the panegyric, from 105c to 120a. About 75 % of Oration 8 is structured around the adapted Platonic quotation. The quotation provides the heads of argument. The head “quick to learn” is elaborated from 105c through 109a. It is introduced with the words: ἐν τῷ νεανίᾳ τὸ φιλομαθές … καὶ εὐμαθές. This quality is also repeatedly referred to as τὸ εὐπειθές or εὐπείθεια (106c, etc.). It is τὸ εὐάγωγον (106c) and τὸ εὐήκοον (108d) as well. The quality “young” is naturally associated with “quick to learn” in the phrase ἐν τῷ νεανίᾳ τὸ φιλομαθές, but understandably not further commented on: the “young” Valens, after all, was close to forty years old when Oration 8 was delivered.432 Oration 8.109b-10c develops the head “with a good memory.” Themistius gives this quality a moral sense: the good ruler should remember those who treated him well and forget those who treated him badly—that is, he should avoid avenging himself on the latter when he comes to power. Next comes the added head “mildness” (110d-12a). Oration 8.112a-19b elaborates on the quality “magnanimous of nature”—τὸ μεγαλοπρεπές, to which Themistius adds τὸ ἐλευθέριον (“generous,” 112a). The emphasis here is on the benefits that have come to Valens’ subjects through his fiscal restraint, reduction of taxation, and high standards of administration. The last two Platonic heads, “courageous” and “temperate,” are handled very briefly (119a-20a), the former understood as courage in the face of Rome’s enemies. Although martial courage is ascribed to Valens, Oration 8 was not the ideal occasion for descanting on it—and Themistius does not do so—for the emperor appears already at the time of this oration to have been considering withdrawal from the war against the Goths and compromise with them.433 Finally, Valens’ temperance is simply said to be obvious (“what need is there of words when we see him subjecting his body with thirst, hunger,” etc.).
We turn now to Oration 21. In this piece, perhaps from the winter of 355–356, Themistius, who self-identified throughout his life first and foremost as a philosopher, claims that he does not deserve the title.434 He proves this by quoting and elaborating on a series of Platonic texts that define a philosopher. This oration, though, is clearly ironic, a λóγος ἐσχηματισμένος; Themistius, defending himself against attacks of enemies who regarded his effective orating to large audiences as sophistical rather than philosophic, actually wants his current auditors to come to the conclusion that he indeed is a philosopher and hopes to equip them with the ability to spot the truly counterfeit philosophers in their midst. Again about seventy-five percent of Oration 21—it may be missing its conclusion—consists of a laying out and elaboration of what Themistius calls the Platonic “touchstones” (248a, βασανιστήρια) that prove that an individual is a genuine philosopher. First, “let philosophers be the fruit of sacred marriages,” that is, “a union and joining of the best man with the best woman.” This criterion, derived from Plato, Republic 5.458e, 459d, is discussed from 21.248a to 250c. Next, from Republic 6.485a-b, “let it be agreed that the philosophical disposition must have knowledge—not all knowledge, but the kind that can reveal eternal being, being that is not set a-wandering by the process of generation and of decay,” Themistius discusses this criterion from 21.250c to 254b. From 254b to 257c the discussion centers around a Platonic criterion derived from Republic 6.486b: “you will observe whether a soul in its dealings with those who have a desire for learning is social and gentle or unsocial and savage.” Fourthly, from Republic 6.485c, Themistius elaborates on Plato’s insistence that the true philosopher is marked by “the absence of falsehood, the determination to hate what is false and never under any circumstances to embrace it, and love of the truth” (21.257c-259d). The next head of discussion, from Republic 3.390d (with 6.485d and 6.498b), is that “we certainly cannot admit [into the ranks of true philosophers] the man who takes bribes or the lover of gain and money, otherwise all the desires of his soul will be diverted from learning to profit, like a stream diverted downhill. Whatever men rightfully inherit … they must … safeguard, thereby acquiring the habit of serving philosophy.” This occupies Themistius from 21.259d to 262a. Then, from 262a to the end of the oration, the discussion centers around the assertion, derived from Plato’s Theaetetus 173d, that philosophers must not be meddlesome or slanderers, for “whether anyone in the city is of low birth or has some evil trait that has been inherited from his ancestors, male or female—these are matters of which the true philosopher has no more knowledge than he does of the proverbial number of gallons of water in the ocean.” In Oration 21 Themistius refers to Plato as a lawgiver (νομοθέτης), whom he quotes as do lawyers in court (250c, 257c). The metaphor underscores Plato’s normativeness and Themistius’ ironic self-indictment before the court of public opinion. Themistius uses it of Plato (and other philosophers) elsewhere.435
Oration 23, from the very end of the 350s, is very similar in theme and structure to 21.436 Themistius is again “on trial,” this time for being a sophist, that is, for addressing large audiences in ways and for purposes that do not befit philosophy— part of a larger discomfort about his being involved in public affairs.437 But rather than ironically rejecting a title, as in 21, in 23 he sincerely defends himself against those who would impose the title “sophist” on him. Plato again provides the heads of argument, this time his definitions of the sophist, derived from Sophist 223c-24d, 231d-e, 233b-41b, 268c-d (cf. Protagoras 313c-14b), which Themistius cites and elaborates on to show that he does not deserve the opprobrious title. Our text of Oration 23 is incomplete, breaking off at 299c. The Platonic heads (all listed at 288a-b) are as follows: the sophist is (1) a “mercenary hunter of rich young men”; (2) “a merchant who sells items of knowledge for the soul”; (3) “a retailer” of such knowledge; (4) a man who is “self-employed and does the actual selling himself”; (5) “a verbal competitor, skilled in eristic”; and (6) a person who “forms opinions about the non-existent, uses appearances to imitate reality, fashions phantasms of the truth, and is a verbal wonderworker.” Themistius discusses Plato’s first definition from 288c to 297b and Plato’s second, third, and fourth definitions from 297b to the end of what survives (299c). The discussion is not finished at 299c. Nothing of Themistius’ discussion of Plato’s fifth and sixth definitions survives. One can see, though, that, as in Oration 21, the Platonic heads dominated and gave structure to the whole of Oration 23.
In Orations 8, 21, and 23, then, Plato is present in a very pronounced and special way: in these orations Platonic texts defining the ideal ruler, the philosopher, and the sophist respectively are heads of argument that provide the basic structure for most of the discussion in them. In contrast to this category-one use of Plato, the remaining Themistian orations display a category-two use, by which I mean that a range of Platonic material is randomly scattered through them, though without providing any fundamental structure. We typically find short438 and loose quotations of, or allusions to, passages of the Platonic dialogues. It is often more precise to speak of paraphrases rather than of quotations, or even of phrases and sentences merely inspired by something in Plato. Often we find only isolated Platonic vocabulary and terminology. Sometimes the debt to Plato is a more general one. Usually material of Platonic origin is not explicitly identified as such. Themistius expected his audience, at least the more learned of them, to recognize the source. This expectation of the literary culture of Themistius’ day is expressed with unusual severity in a fragment of Eunapius’ History: having quoted a line of “the comic writer” (Adesp. 519 Kock), Eunapius comments that “whoever does not recognize the writer is unworthy to read this history” (fr. 72.1 Blockley). While use of material from the Platonic dialogues can genuinely aid Themistius’ argument, Platonic vocabulary or short phrases, often shorn from their original Platonic context, can also have a merely stylistic function in the orations, as Riccardo Maisano has noted, producing “una enfatizzazione del tono, e di conseguenza una sottolineatura del messaggio.”439 Themistius’ orations contain references to Plato the man as well as to passages of his dialogues. We may also consider references in the orations to Socrates as Platonic material when they cause us to think in the first instance of passages in the Platonic dialogues. Orations 8, 21, and 23 contain category-two as well as category-one uses of Platonic material. In these three orations the category-two uses of Platonic material assume a special function that they cannot have in the other orations: they keep reminding the audience of the Platonic heads of argument on which these three orations are based.
2. Plato and Aristotle
In what I have written so far, I have told the truth, but not the whole truth. I say this because Platonic material often appears in the Themistian orations in conjunction with other authorities, both philosophical and non-philosophical. These juxtapositions reflect Themistius’ openness to a range of philosophers and his general paideia. His description of his father Eugenius’ paideia in Oration 20, which is his funeral oration for his father, who died in the autumn of 355440—a paideia that is shared by Themistius himself 441—will help us in our examination of Platonic material associated with other authorities in the orations.
We begin with the association of Plato and Aristotle. The names of the two philosophical masters are often juxtaposed in the Orations, as if two parts of a unified whole. Themistius plucks flowers from the meadows of Plato and Aristotle (Ors. 4.54b; 15.185a).442 In Oration 32, the meadows of philosophy are precisely the precincts (τῶν περιβóλων) of Plato and Aristotle (357a). As a center of philosophical study, Constantinople is referred to as the hearth of the Muses of the two philosophers (6.84a). In giving some examples of works to be found in Constantius’ Constantinopolitan library, Themistius begins by mentioning those of Plato and Aristotle (4.60a). He repeatedly says that contemporary emperors and their sons follow these two philosophers, or he urges them to do so (7.93b; 9.126d; 11.153d; 18.225a; 19.232d). Addressing the young Valentinian, son of Valens, Themistius remarks that “the famous Plato and the divine Aristotle will teach you along with me, those two philosophers who also taught the great Alexander” (9.124a). Here the two classical philosophers are so closely tied that Plato can be said to have taught Alexander—that is, indirectly, through what Aristotle had learned from him (cf. 18.225a). The philosophical pair are elsewhere cited together as philosophers who wrote for the whole body politic (26.325c). When Themistius wants examples of things philosophical in Oration 21, he goes twice to the pair Plato and Aristotle (21.258a; 259c). And in Oration 31.354a–b the two are adduced (Plato with his successors) as examples of philosophers whose views are still valued. Themistius mentions the Academy and the Lyceum together for their dislike of sophists (23.287b– c) and contrasts “the ancestral and ancient song of the Academy and the Lyceum” with Neoplatonism (23.295b). Finally, in the oration On Virtue, surviving only in Syriac, in which he preaches a simple Cynic sermon on virtue, he remarks that his normal authorities are Plato and Aristotle.443
In addition to this juxtaposing of the names of Plato and Aristotle in his orations, Themistius sometimes juxtaposes references to their works. The most important exhibit here is Oration 2.31a–33b: explaining how philosophy and virtue must be expressed in action and discussing the philosopher-king, Themistius marshals “laws” (that is, texts) of “the great Plato and Aristotle, son of Nicomachus,” beginning, though, with Aristotle and then moving on to Plato. (Is the priority of place here given to Aristotle accidental or significant?444) Less importantly, in Oration 1.15c an anonymous reference to an Aristotelian distinction occurs in the vicinity of anonymous uses of Platonic phraseology. In defending the acceptance of honors in 2.26d–27c, Themistius names Aristotle and quotes his fr. 88 Rose, then refers to the famous Pythian response about Socrates’ unique wisdom, which inevitably evokes Plato Apology 21a. An anonymous reference to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics in Oration 21.259a is immediately followed by some words about Socrates that evoke the world of Plato’s dialogues. Such “soft” cases are worth noting, but my most important exhibits here—apart from the extended juxtaposition of Aristotelian and Platonic texts in 2.31a–33b—are the explicit juxtapositions of the names of Plato and Aristotle reviewed in the previous paragraph.
Themistius’ interest in Aristotle doubtless owed much to his father Eugenius. In Oration 20, Themistius refers to Aristotle as his father’s favorite (τὰ σὰ παιδικά). His father was Aristotle’s interpreter; and Aristotle, he tells his father’s soul, “now honors you [in the next world] and loves you more than he loves anyone else.” “The visage and image impressed [by Eugenius] upon the sacred mysteries [of philosophy],” writes Themistius, “were almost entirely (ὅλον μονονού) those of Aristotle. Nevertheless (ὁμῶς), my father helped to open up all the shrines of the sages.” “Nevertheless” means “despite his primary allegiance to Aristotle.” “[Eugenius] always displayed the works of the great Plato right at the door [of Aristotle’s ‘temple’] and in the very temple precinct.” When passing (μεταβαίνων) from the Lyceum to the Academy,445 Eugenius “would often first make a sacrifice (προθύσας) to Aristotle and [then] end by worshiping Plato” (Or. 20.234d; 235c–d). That is, he admired Plato, but did so from an Aristotelian base. The prefix pro- in προθύσας here hints at priority as much as at preliminarity. Inna Kupreeva, in the wake of Omer Ballériaux, both of them students of Themistius’ Aristotelian paraphrases, has recently called Eugenius “a Platonist, possibly of Iamblichaean persuasion.”446 This view has emerged in the context of the controversy among students of Themistius’ paraphrases about the nature and extent of Neoplatonic influence in them.447 But branding Eugenius a (Neo)platonist does not seem to me to be in accord with Themistius’ description of his father’s philosophical position in Oration 20.
As for Themistius himself, in Oration 2.26d, he calls Aristotle “the one whom I made my guide in life and in wisdom (ὃν προὐταξάμην τοῦ βίου τε καὶ τῆς σοφίας).” In Oration 32, on the doctrine of μετριοπάθεια, he is happy to be able to give special credit to Aristotle: “all philosophers,” he says, “admit the truth of what I say in practice”—namely, that the philosopher is affected by emotions but knows how to moderate them—“even though it is only adherents of the Lyceum who assent to it in theory” (358a). He goes on to say that “I admire many other things about Aristotle, but I especially admire and esteem the wisdom revealed in the fact that his teachings do not distance themselves from the creature”—he means human beings—“about which they are put forth” (358d–9a). Aristotle, that is, had a balanced view of human nature. In Oration 21.255d, Themistius imagines himself in his room studying the works of Aristotle and of his associate Theophrastus. Students come to him, he implies, to study Aristotle (23.293d). He insists (23.291a) that he will not claim that his own pupils are smarter than Aristotle’s; he also insists that they do not pretentiously carry on about συνώνυμα, ὁμώνυμα, and παρώνυμα, that is, technical terms from Aristotle’s Categories 1a1 f. (cf. 21.256a). He is fond of seeing his counseling and tutoring relationship with emperors and their sons as analogous to the role of Aristotle as tutor to Alexander (3.45d; 8.106d; 8.120a; 10.130b; 16.204c; 18.225a; 34 [VIII]). And, of course, he wrote commentaries—more properly paraphrases—not on Plato, but on Aristotle.448 If his father’s influence was important in shaping this primary philosophical allegiance of his, Aristotle would also have appealed to Themistius because of his emphasis on praxis, in line with Themistius’ own active adult life.449 None of this means, though, that we have to think of Themistius as a strict Peripatetic schoolman. Robert Todd, the student and translator of Themistian paraphrases, has felicitously called him “pro-Aristotelian.” Given his wealth and position in society, Themistius was “under no obligation to represent any particular viewpoint or to pursue his calling in response to social or institutional pressures.”450
Why, then, given a certainly “pro-Aristotelian” Themistius, is there so much more Plato than Aristotle in the Orations? The first answer I would give is that the Orations are aimed at a broad Hellenic audience, and Plato was a more fundamental and more widely recognized Hellenic authority than Aristotle. Furthermore, Themistius is in high register linguistically and literarily in the Orations,451 and Plato’s dialogues are far more appropriate in that register than Aristotle’s technical treatises would be.452 There is the further advantage that Plato’s dialogues bring in the world and the exemplum of Socrates, which was highly valued by Themistius and many other Greeks. Themistius could call himself a Socratic (Or. 25.310c, τοῖς ἀπὸ Σωκράτους) and could boast that Apollo had delivered the same judgment on him as the god had delivered on Socrates, namely, that there was no one wiser than Themistius (23.296a).453 Peter Heather and David Moncur suggest yet another point. They contend that one reason why the pagan Themistius was so attractive to a number of fourth-century Christian emperors was that he could use his philosophical status “to make the claim that Hellenic values and his emperors’ Christian religion were not fundamentally incompatible.” What advocates this compatibility is the fact that “Christian doctrine had evolved in a Mediterranean intellectual context where Platonising philosophical assumptions were generally accepted without question.”454 So constant adverting to Plato would have been a way of alluding to the common ground shared by Christianity and Hellenic values.
Themistius doubtless agreed with his father Eugenius’ view of the relation of Plato and Aristotle, which he explains in colorfully metaphorical language in Oration 20.235c – d:
When passing from the Lyceum to the Academy, [Eugenius] did not change his clothes; he would often first make a sacrifice to Aristotle and then end by worshiping Plato. He always got angry at those who actually tried to build a dividing wall between the two [sacred] enclosures and to separate them. For he felt that Aristotle’s philosophy is an excellent preliminary rite to Plato’s frenzy and, at the same time, a defensive wall and safeguard for it … Aristotle provided fortifications for [Plato], fenced him in on all sides, and kept his teachings from being assailed by plots.
The “defensive wall” that Aristotle provided for Plato was his logic;455 Eugenius, from his Aristotelian base, propagated this idea among Platonists. This openness to Plato in Eugenius and Themistius, the primary loyalty of both of whom was to Aristotle, is a counterpart to the Neoplatonic openness to Aristotle.456 In noting the common focus of Plato and Aristotle on the good, Themistius is happy to exclaim, in Oration 34 [VI]: “This is Plato’s approach; is Aristotle’s any different?” George Karamanolis has commented recently on the reasons for the Peripatetic interest in Plato: Plato was “the starting point of the Peripatetic tradition,” and he was essential to the understanding of Aristotle’s thought. And like Platonists, Peripatetics often regard Plato and Aristotle as sharing a doctrine, “as forming one sound philosophical tradition, which they contrast with the other philosophical schools.”32
Themistius wrote (20.236a) that his father “never quarreled with the wise Plato, nor did he think that Aristotle ever did so lightly (ῥᾳδίως).” Oration 8, addressed to Valens, contains a case in which Themistius himself quarreled with Plato and improved on him through Aristotle. Plato, Themistius says there (107c–d), was “divine and to be revered in everything else” (τὰ ἄλλα πάντα θεῖος καὶ αἰδοῖος), but he taught a “simply risky doctrine” (ἀτεχνῶς ἀποκεκινδυνευμένως προήκατο λóγον) when he affirmed that all would be well when philosophers became kings or kings became philosophers (e. g., R. 5.473c–d). Time refuted this teaching (ἐλήλεγκται), which Aristotle corrected with a small change in Plato’s words (μικρὸν τὰ Πλάτωνος ῥήματα μεταθείς): all would be well, not when kings became philosophers, but when they listened to the advice of philosophers (Arist., fr. 647 Rose)—just as Roman emperors listened to Themistius. The only other explicit correction of Plato in the orations that I am aware of is in 1.13d. There he wants to emend Plato’s assertion at Phaedo 77e that “perhaps there is a child in us” to “there is a noble young man in us.” Like the Aristotle envisioned by Eugenius, then, the Themistius of the orations also did not correct Plato lightly.
3. Plato and Other Philosophers
Themistius’ Aristotelian father Eugenius was open not just to Plato. Eugenius had regarded Socrates, who, according to Themistius, was sitting near him in the next world along with Plato and Aristotle, as “one who exemplified all [the] qualities of the true philosopher.” In Oration 20 Themistius praises the life of Socrates and says that “my father showed the world actions of his own that were very similar to those of Socrates” (20.234c, 239a–d). In addition to his appreciation of Socrates (largely known, of course, from Plato), Eugenius was “fully initiated in the sacred knowledge that Pythagoras of Samos brought back to Greece from Egypt and in what Zeno of Citium later taught in the Painted Stoa” (20.235c).457 Eugenius “would often haul [even] Epicurus in” (20.235c) despite his ambivalence about him.458
The comment Themistius makes on the oneness of philosophy in his description of Eugenius’ philosophical interests is important:
This [hauling in of Epicurus] was not something to wonder at. For no philosophical school has settled far off from the others or keeps a great distance between itself and another school. The schools of philosophy are like side roads that, though they break away and deviate from a wide and long highway, nonetheless all reach the same point in the end, however much they wind about. (20.236a–b)
Themistius himself is affirming here that all philosophical rivers flow into the same ocean, as he does in On Virtue, where he again uses the roads metaphor.459 Had he wanted to keep some distance from the affirmation, he could have said “For my father believed that no philosophical school has settled far off from the others” etc. and still fulfilled his encomiastic goals. His orations have indications of an interest in and an appreciation of the whole of Greek philosophy similar to those of his father. A reference at Oration 23.285a to Pythagoras and “his descendants” (τοῖς ἀπ’ ἐκείνου ἐγγóνοις)—meaning all subsequent philosophers—suggests that the story of philosophy is, in some sense, the story of a single whole, although Themistius does also acknowledge that there are distinct schools with some one of which a philosopher normally associates himself (23.287a). His interest is in both philosophical teachings and philosophers as exempla. For him, as for his father, Epicurus was a special case: he could not approve of that philosopher’s maxim “live unnoticed” (26.324a) or of his positive view of bodily pleasure (34 [XXX]).
References in the orations to Socrates may be to nothing more than the Platonic Socrates. Plato is what Themistius has in mind at Oration 21.246c in the words “Socrates’ and Plato’s remarks” and at 26.321c in the words “pronouncements of Socrates and Plato.” When at 26.318b he writes “as [Socrates] himself says somewhere,” he means Plato at Euthyphro 3d. But, although inextricably connected to Plato, Socrates is also a distinct figure in the history of Greek philosophy. Thus Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato are cited by Themistius as three distinct figures who could lay claim to wisdom (21.256a). Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are all representatives of the common philosophical experience of being envied and discredited (23.285b–c); compare 23.286b, where the list is Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Theophrastus. At 17.214d Plato and Pythagoras are mentioned together as supporters of the idea of the philosopher-king; compare 23.293b, where it is said that Plato and Pythagoras wrote on the tablet [of philosophy]. Themistius praises a teaching of Pythagoras on how to become an image of God (15.192b). He tells us that the people of the city of Rome wanted him to teach Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle there (23.298d). At 17.215b–c he mentions, among others, the Socratic Xenophon, Socrates himself, Plato, and the Pythagorean Archytas among advocates of bringing philosophy into the world of action; at 34 [X] the examples are Xenophon, Socrates, and Parmenides. Anaxagoras, the Academic Xenocrates, and the Cynic Diogenes are cited at 2.30c–d along with Plato as examples of tested virtue. In his oration On Virtue, Themistius preaches on the subject in Cynic style. The Cynic view is easier and more direct than that of Plato and Aristotle; and philosophy, like medicine, does not apply one remedy to all.460 Themistius goes to Heraclitus as a source of wisdom (5.69b). And at 34 [XXVIII] the Skeptical Academic Carneades and the Peripatetic Critolaus are mentioned approvingly along with Plato and Aristotle as examples of philosophers who got involved in public life. For Themistius, the Stoics Chrysippus, Zeno, and Cleanthes as well as “all the choruses of the Lyceum and the Academy” are part of ancient wisdom (4.60c; cf. 2.27c).461 He elsewhere approvingly cites Zeno (8.108c, 13.171d) and names him, along with Aristotle and Socrates, in defense of the acceptance of honors (2.26d–27c). At 21.252a–b he mentions him as an admirable exemplum along with Xenocrates, Socrates, and Theophrastus. At 27.337b – c Zeno is said to evoke as much admiration as Plato and Aristotle. And Themistius, regarding the early Seven Wise Men as philosophers, follows the example of “Socrates and Aristotle and their predecessors the celebrated Seven Wise Men” in pursuing “a kind of philosophy” that is action-oriented (31.352c; cf. 34 [III–IV]).
Themistius’ orations contain two short surveys of the history of Greek philosophy, one at Oration 26.315d–20a and the other at 34 [I–VI]. Each has a rhetorical purpose in its own context. In 26, Themistius argues that he is not innovating in pushing eloquence out into the public arena; but even if he were innovating, this would not be inherently bad because sequential innovations have characterized the history of the arts and of philosophy. In 34, he wants to exalt the ethico-political and practical strand in Greek philosophy. Both of these short surveys show an appreciation of the trans-sectarian forward movement of the whole of philosophy. Philosophy can mean a school of philosophy; but it can also mean the whole of philosophy, in the course of which various schools contribute to desirable developments.
The emperor Julian, Themistius’ contemporary, puts forth in his Oration 9 [6].184c–188c Rochefort of the year 362, directed at “the uneducated Cynics,” a view of philosophy identical to that asserted by Themistius and ascribed to his father in Oration 20.236a–b.462 Julian advises against dividing philosophy up into parts, because it is one. He uses the same metaphor that Themistius does in Oration 20: philosophers, at least those of the highest rank, travel towards a single endpoint (186a, ἑνóς τινος ἐφιέμενοι), but by different roads. In his letter written around January of 363463 to a pagan priest (Epp. 89b.300d – 301c Bidez), Julian specifies that the philosophers he has in mind are only those who have believed in the gods, in their concern with this world, and in their goodness. Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and the school of Chrysippus and Zeno are good; Epicurus and the Skeptic Pyrrho are bad. In the letter to the uneducated Cynics, Heraclitus, Pythagoras “and his school down to Theophrastus,” as well as Aristotle are mentioned with approval; so, too, the old Cynics Antisthenes, Diogenes, and Crates as well as Plato, Pythagoras, Socrates, the Peripatetics, and Zeno. One might compare the philosophical breadth of the fourth-century proconsul of Greece Hermogenes, extolled by Himerius in his Oration 48.22–4 Colonna: Hermogenes mastered logic and argument (presumably through Aristotle), gave a special place to Plato and Aristotle, knew the Stoics, the “views held in common” by Epicurus and Democritus, all the Academies, and the Cyrenaic school. He even gave some limited attention to Pyrrho. Finally, Themistius’ openness to the various schools of philosophy may be compared to his openness to the various religions of the Empire, at least as it appears in Oration 5.68d–69a, delivered on January 1, 364, in which he encourages the Christian emperor Jovian’s religious toleration:464
It is as if all the competitors in a race are hastening towards the same Judge but not all on the same course … thus you realize that, while there exists only one Judge, mighty and true, there is no one road leading to him … All, however, tend alike towards that one goal and our competition and our zealousness arise from no other reason than that we do not all travel by the same route. If you allow only one path, closing off the rest, you will fence off the broad field of competition.465
4. Plato and the Literary Canon
In Oration 20.236b–d Themistius remarks, not only on his father’s interest in philosophers, but also on his interest in the non-philosophical literary canon. Not surprisingly, Homer is mentioned first. Next, “the ancient stage” and “the theater.” Themistius mentions specifically Eugenius’ attraction to Menander, Euripides, and Sophocles. His father also valued Sappho and Pindar. These literary interests broadened Eugenius out. “He was not,” says Themistius, “a man of only one tongue. He was not made just for an audience of philosophers and unintelligible to rhetors or schoolteachers.” Engagement with the literary canon—which does not necessarily mean first-hand or deep knowledge of every canonical text alluded to—is something we would expect of any ancient writer who was a πεπαιδευμένος; and we do indeed find many references to the canonical authors in Themistius’ orations. I am interested here, though, not in all such references, but only in those that are closely juxtaposed to Platonic material. When poetic texts are made directly to support Plato in Themistius, he is in line with Plutarch, who, in his treatise on how to study poetry, advocated the “conjoining and reconciling [of] … [poetic] sentiments with the doctrines of philosophers”; “our faith gains an added strength and dignity,” Plutarch remarked, “whenever the doctrines of Pythagoras and of Plato are in agreement with what is spoken on the stage or sung to the lyre or studied at school” (Mor. 35 f, 36d, trans. F. C. Babbitt).
It is the juxtaposition of Homeric and Platonic material that is by far the most common in Themistius’ orations. Explicit evaluative statements about Homer set the tone. In Oration 33.366c, Themistius represents himself as “keeping company with the divine Plato, … consorting with Aristotle, … [and] being stubbornly bound to my Homer (
).” Homer is “most wise,” σοφώτατος (6.77d). Themistius tells us at Oration 27.334d that he prefers Homer to the Athenian poets (or to the Athenian writers in general).466 He would want to read Homer at any cost, he says. Elsewhere (15.189a), after quoting Homer, Odyssey 19.109; 111–14, on the God-fearing king, he surmises that Plato is likely to have learned from Homer that resemblance to the divine derives from justice (Pl., Tht. 176b; cf. R. 6.501b). In a similar representation of Homer as source or at least as reinforcement, Themistius asserts at 34 [V] that Socrates praised Homer above everyone else because, in effect, Homer prioritized ethics (Od. 4.392), just as Socrates did. These affirmations in the orations remind us of the assertion about his father in Oration 20.236b: that the latter believed Homer to be the origin and source (προπάτορα καὶ ἀρχέγονον) of Plato’s and Aristotle’s teachings. And in fact at 6.79c Themistius calls the Odyssey “the philosophical poem” (
). Porphyry, too, thought of Homer as a philosopher.467 And the Ps.-Plutarchan On Homer, written no earlier than the end of the second century A.D.,468 derives Platonic and Aristotelian doctrines from Homer, along with much else. A less friendly description of Plato’s dependence on Homer, whom Plato criticized, may be found in Heraclitus’ Homeric Problems 17–18, perhaps from the late first or early second century:469 here it is said that Plato stole ideas from Homer (17, νοσφισάμενος). If Themistius, like his father, believed Homer to be the source of Plato’s and Aristotle’s teachings, then the juxtaposition of Homer to Plato in the orations is of a different order from that of the juxtaposition of other canonical writers to Plato.
In advising on war, peace, and the treatment of barbarians in Oration 10.131a–32c, Themistius begins by drawing on Plato’s Laws and then turns to the Iliad to continue to develop his argument. In 13.173b he tells Gratian that “all that I say I do not say only on my own. You see that I say my words are those of Socrates, of Plato, of Homer; and when you listen to me, you listen to them.” Oration 21, we have seen, is structured around Platonic heads of argument. But in the course of it, Themistius frequently uses Homeric texts to help him develop his argument and discourse.470 The intermittent turn to Homer in this oration is, as it were, hinted at just before the introduction of the first Platonic head of argument, when Themistius urges “us all … [to] ask the wise Plato … to disperse the mist from our eyes” (τὴν ἀχλὺν ἀποσκεδάσαι ἡμῖν τῶν ὀμμάτων, 21.247d). Dispersing mist from a person’s eyes is a Homeric metaphor.471 Themistius calls directly on Plato here while obliquely alerting his audience through the Homeric metaphor to the upcoming Homeric undertones. And one can find other places in the orations where Platonic and Homeric quotes and allusions are juxtaposed, sometimes with their authors named, sometimes anonymously.472
We may move now beyond Homer. Themistius opens Oration 30, a short encomium of farming, by appealing to Hesiod and calling himself a follower of Hesiod and the Muses (30.348c, ἡμᾶς Ἡσιóδῳ καὶ Μούσαις ἀκολουθοῦντας), Hesiod being the poet of peace and agriculture. Hesiod and Plato are quoted together at 4.62a. In 13.168c–70b and 28.341c–d, Themistius draws on Homer, Hesiod, and Plato together. In 30.351a, the three authors are brought together in a different way. Here Themistius says that Homer and Hesiod attest to how the gods favor the agricultural labors of good men, alluding to Odyssey 19.109–14 and to Works and Days 225 – 37. Many in his audience will have recognized the link to Plato, who discusses the two passages in Republic 2.363b–c. Themistius quotes Aeschylus after referring to Plato and quoting Homer (4.51b–52b). In a short section of 6 (namely, 77d–78b) there are allusions to Plato with a reference to Homer, a quotation of Pindar, and a negative example, the sons of Oedipus, drawn from tragedy (ἐν ταῖς τραγῳδίαις). In 13.162c–65b quotations of Euripides and Homer are preceded and followed by Platonic quotations and allusions; and further down, at 13.170d–71a, a reference to an affirmation of the Platonic Socrates is followed by references to Sappho and Anacreon. Themistius tells us in 21.246b that “Hesiod, Pindar, and [the Platonic] Socrates tell the truth”; and in the same oration the elaboration of the Platonic heads of argument is aided by Theognis and Aristophanes (248d), by “the poets” (258c–d, in an epic quotation from an unknown writer), and by Aesop and Menander (262b–c). The opening of 22 draws on Homer and Theognis, accompanying a reference to the Platonic Socrates (264c–65c). Oration 24.307a–309c draws on the wisdom of Plato and the Platonic Socrates, Sophocles, Phocylides, Euripides, and Homer. In advice given to Theodosius and Gratian in 15.197d–199b, Themistius appeals to Homer, Tyrtaeus, and “philosophy” (15.198a, 199a), a term that would surely bring Plato to mind. At the beginning of 15 (184b– 85b), addressed to the emperor Theodosius, Themistius acknowledges Homer and Thucydides as archetypal narrators of war and Hesiod as an archetypal writer on peaceful activities. He nonetheless feels that he can successfully rival all of them with the enrichment provided by Plato and Aristotle. He speaks here of “the meadows of Plato and Aristotle” as consisting of “virgin blooms which no blade has touched,” alluding to Euripides, Hippolytus 73, to describe those meadows. He concludes by complimenting the emperor through the use of a quotation from Archilochus. In 4.49a–50b, Themistius uses material from Herodotus along with allusions to Homer and Plato. He can even transcend the Hellenic canon and conjoin a passage from the Old Testament with Platonic and Homeric material (11.147c – 49a; cf. 7.89c–90a), reminding us of the plural religious paths he acknowledges in 5.68d – 69a.
In discussing the Constantinopolitan library built up by Constantius (4.60a–c), Themistius first mentions, as examples of its holdings, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Isocrates, and Thucydides. He then gives a second sample of its holdings: commentators on Homer and Hesiod and also the works of Chrysippus, Zeno, Cleanthes, and “the full choruses” of the Lyceum and the Academy. One notes in both lists the juxtaposition of philosophical and non-philosophical authorities. After giving his two sample lists of the holdings of the library, Themistius names all these riches as, “in a word, an uncountable array of ancient wisdom” (ἐν βραχεῖ 
). The word is sophia, broader than philosophia sensu stricto. 
is a good way to describe a broad, open-ended canon, which included sub-canons,473 and the commentaries and other aids that were of assistance in the reading of canonical texts. Canonical texts can reinforce one another; but they are not always in agreement, nor were they regarded as inerrant.474 Plato is a special case: he can be thought of as belonging to a philosophical canon, like the one approved by his father, but also, because of his extraordinary linguistic and stylistic credentials, to a literary canon. So in my examples above, the philosophical Plato juxtaposed to literary figures may also be thought of as the literary Plato amongst his own.
To conclude: if we regard Themistius’ orations as a series of buildings, three of them (8, 21, and 23) have Platonic beams that provide the basic supports for their structures. All of them have Platonic fixtures that can be found randomly attached to any of the buildings’ surfaces. The Platonic material is sometimes clustered with other philosophical or literary authorities. We can find patterns in this clustering that reflect the broad paideia Themistius shared with his father.
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