Memory, Materiality, and Provenance in Dio Chrysostom's “Rhodian Oration”

Abstract

In the late first century CE, probably under the rule of the Roman Emperor Titus, the Greek Bithynian Sophist Dio Chrysostom traveled to the city of Rhodes to scold its citizens for their treatment of statues. These were not religious statues, nor were they exemplary works of art. They were certainly not the marble statues commissioned by wealthy individuals for private display. In what would be known as his “Rhodian Oration,” Dio interceded on behalf of honorific portrait statues, erected by the city to honor those who had provided public gifts or services. This exchange of gift and honor is now referred to as euergetism (good works) or benefactions—a system of finance and governance whereby individuals subsidized public functions (such as religious festivals) and the construction of public facilities (such as the baths) or provided other gifts and services to the city. According to Dio, Rhodes was reusing honorific portrait statues—authorizing artisans to chisel out the names of those previously honored and reinscribe the statues' bases with the names of new honorees. As Dio argues, the city was, effectively, plundering its own statues.