THE GEOGRAPHY OF CULTURE IN PHILOSTRATUS' <em>LIFE OF APOLLONIUS OF TYANA</em>

Abstract

While the travel narrative in Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana has been the subject of much scholarly commentary, little has been said about the geography created by those travels. This paper examines the representation of Paraca, Greece, and Rome to demonstrate how Philostratus reverses the traditional Greek view of center and periphery. In his figuration, the extreme geographic periphery of Paraca becomes the center of civilization, whereas the traditional center of Rome is reconceptualized as a dangerous periphery. This reversal supports Philostratus’ larger commentary on the loss of self-knowledge in the Greek world and its consequences. hilostratus’ The Life of Apollonius of Tyana (hereafter VA) is one of the most important texts for scholars interested in the discourse of travel in late antiquity. 1 The biography, a largely fictionalized account of the firstcentury sage, depicts the protagonist’s journey through and beyond the Mediterranean oikoumenē. Earlier scholarship on VA focused on questions of historicity, genre, and reliability, and much of this work took the fantastic nature of Apollonius’ travels as indicative of the author “perpetrating a work of fiction.”2 Recent work has given us a better understanding of travel as a literary motif that ∗ I would like to thank Jaś Elsner and David Frankfurter for their comments and suggestions, and Ryan Platte for help elucidating some of the terser passages of Philostratus’ Greek. Additional thanks go to Laurel Fulkerson and the two anonymous reviewers. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2011 Society for Biblical Literature annual conference. Translations provided are my own, except where noted. Citations for VA follow Jones’ Loeb edition. 1 Recent scholarship has largely been focused on the Realien of ancient travel. In a useful review article, Jaś Elsner (2009) refers to “the perennial obsession of ancient historians with enticing a world of actuality out of the fragmentary materials before them, in resistance to (an overly?) imaginative reconstruction of mentalities” (75). 2 Bowie (1978) 1653. The most recent example of this approach is Jones (2001), who takes Philostratus’ geographic errors beyond Arabia as indicative of the work as “a romance of travel, with homage to Herodotus as well as lost authors such as Ctesias” (198–9). P This content downloaded from 157.55.39.165 on Thu, 14 Jul 2016 04:13:49 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms