Separating the Wheat from the Chaff in Ancient "Wisdom" Literature

Sitting uncomfortably with the horrorific aspects of our supposed heroes

I wouldn’t say I’ve thought too critically about this, but it would seem that one of the unfortunate legacies of the traditions around Jesus Christ is this need to see one’s heroes only in a positive light, to be unwilling to let them be complex, flawed, problematic. I feel like we struggle with this in American culture, anyway. If you support the leader of a political party, then you must love everything about them. That’s obviously not true, and I’m not say everyone is like that, but when you look at the current president’s supporters there seems to be a cult-like fanaticism around him. And if you’re critical of him, they might point out to some flaw of Biden’s or Obama’s as if we’re supposed to think they were perfect. And that’s just one example. Again, obviously not everyone thinks that way, but I do believe there’s a strong tradition of that, and I would imagine it goes back to traditions around Christ and the saints.

I dont’ think this tendency had its origins in Christianity, though. To the extent that there is “an” origin for something like this, I would say that it probably goes back to Greek philosophy. Philosophers often made they claim that they were the only people who lived in accordance with their values. They used such rehatoric to demonize sophists, whom they liked to label hypocrites, and to belittle the hoi polloi. There were very few philosophers who were seen as living up even to the philosophical ideal and this list varied by philosophical school. Socrates, Pythagoras, Diogenes, and Epicurus come quickly to mind. Romans liked to add Cato the Younger. Later, Plotinus might make the cut. But not even people like Plato, Aristotle, or Chrysippus were seen as living saints (so to speak). Most significantly, and I’ll write more about this when I get to The Meditations, Marcus Aurelius was not seen in such glowing terms, even though he was considered to be one of the best and most virtuous of Roman emperors. Today, though, many modern Stoics paint him in glowing terms, not allowing much room for consideration of his flaws.

What do we do, though, when we turn to ancient wisdom text, looking perhaps for some inspiration or guidance that might still be relevant today, and find it filled with something we find objectionable or even horrific. For example, I recently started the life of Zeno of Citium in Diogenes Laertius, someone who was honored by the Athenians and who is often today spoken of with great respect, which is to be expected for the founder of the Stoic school. I quickly got to a passage, though, where it says that he would only occasionally “use” (i.e., have sex with) little boy slaves and would sometimes “use” a little girl slave, so that people didn’t think he was a misogynist. Yikes! Surely, that’s not something we want anyone to emulate. I’ll have more to say that when I write about his life, and after I’ve had a chance to a deeper dive on the Greek vocabulary in that passage.

It brings me to the text I’ll be writing about today, though, which is Secundus the Silent Philosopher, which is included in Anthology of Ancient Greek Popular Literature. William Hansen, the editor of this collection, introduces it as “an anyonymous piece of wisdom literature written for unsophisiticated readers and dating to around the second century” CE. The works consists of a story explaining why Secundus maintained a vow of silence and then his answers to 20 questions posed to him by the emperor Hadrian. Hansen describes the opening story as a “reflex of an international story that is attested from Europe to India to China,” which is to say that it’s a motif in folk tales all over the world (and is thus something we can just dismiss?). I’m jumping the gun a bit to describe Hansen’s description of a story I haven’t shared, but, well, that’s what I’m doing. Hansen explains that it the text does not seem to have been popular when it was written, but “went on to beocme an international folkbook and may have influenced such well-known Oriental folkbooks as the Book of Sindbad and the Arabian Nights. Its misogynism posed no obstacle to its diffusion, and indeed this attitude may have facilitated its warm acceptance among adherents of the three monotheistic religions.” That’s quite the sentence! I don’t think Hansen is wrong, sadly, but it begs a number of questions. Why did Hansen select this text? Is ancient misogyny part of why these texts are so popular among certain menn today (for more on that, see Donna Zuckerberg’s Not All Dead White Men)? Can misogyny be ignored when it’s part of a folk motif and not some aspect of “high literature,” or something like that? Hansens says it was written for unsophisticated readers - is that to say that we can ignore its misogyny, because more educated people didn’t share those values?

Let me explain the story and share some quotes from it and then I’ll figure out what I want to say about these things. Sometimes writing is an exercise in thinking through something, which is what makes the use of AI such a problem (sorry - my brain is all over the place today!).

The story explaining why Secundus refused to speak goes as follows: He was sent off to be educated while still a young boy. His father died while he was away. When he returned home, he had taken on the appearance of a Cynic philosopher, “carrying a stick and leathern wallet about with himk letting the hair on his head grow long, and cultivating a beard.” If I ever get around to writing that book on the philosophical field of cultural production in antiquity, this description of a philosopher is going to be very important. How you dressed, how you kept your hair - these seem like superficial things, but they were an important aspect of philosophical identity. Anyway, Secundus wasn’t recognized by anyone when he returned home, not even his mother.

Secundus decided to test the old adage he had heard, “Every woman can be bought; the chaste one is only she who has escaped notice.” Secundus bribed one of the female slaves to arrange a tryst between him and her mistress, Secundus’s mother. She did so and his mother came to him at night expecting to sleep with him. They did nothing sexual, but slept through the night. Understandably confused, she confronted him in the morning. “Did you do this only in order to convict me?” Secundus denies that and reveals his true identity. She is so ashamed that she hung herself. Since his talking is what had ultimately led to her death, Secundus decided to never speak again.

While we could interpret this story in ways that are more favorable toward the women, in antiquity the judgment would have been that both the slave and the mother were wrong to do what they had one. Both were greedy and willing to do something immoral for some fast coin. The mother was even worse, because as a free woman she should preserve her chastity unless she were to remarry. That this negative view of the women is the “right” way to interpret it is evidenced by what comes later. Hadrian asks Secundus a number of questions to which Secundus writes his answers. One of his questions is, “What is Woman?” to which Secundus answers, “A man’s desire, a wild beast that shares one’s board, the worry with which one rises in the morning, intertwining lustfulness, a lioness sharing one’s bed, a viper in clothes, a battle voluntarily chosen, incontinence in the form of bed-partner, a daily loss, a sotrm in the house, a hindrance to serenity, the wreck of an incontinent man, the stock-in-trade of adulterers, the sacking of one’s estate, an expensive war, an evil creature, too much of a burden, a nine-wind tempest, a venomous asp, a service rendered in the procreation of men, a necessary evil.” YIKES!!!

For a book that doesn’t have much to say about ethics and that really isn’t all that interesting a piece of literature, it sure goes hard on the misogyny. I’d be curious to know why Hansen included it. I’ve never come across this text anywhere else. And while I’d love for all ancient literature to be more accessible, if I were putting together such a collection, this is not a text I would have included, at least not with a feminist critical introduction and commentary. If anything, I suppose it helps us realize how rare and special were people like Musonius Rufus who believed that women were equal to men and should be educated just like men were.

I’m not going to say much more about this text. The questions from Hadrian range from “What is the Universe?” to “What is Old Age?” and “What is Poverty?” It’s worth noting, however, that the text here concludes with a comment from some unnamed monk (?) who copied it at some point: “For him who wrote this with his fingers, for the possessor of this book and for him who reads it with piety—may the thrice-blessed Trinity preserve all three.” Whoever that Christian was, he doesn’t seem to have been too troubled about the misogyny.

I’m not really sure what else I want to say about this text. It’s boring, the answers aren’t interesting, and the misogyny leaves such a bad taste in my mouth that I don’t want to read it again and can’t imagine using it in a class, unless it were a graduate-level class specifically on the topic of Greek misogyny, but I would never teach that class. I considered not writing about it here, but I think this ethical dilemma when it comes to reading ancient literature is worth thinking and writing about. I love Greek philosophy and have gained a lot from reading ancient texts, but I don’t put it on such a pedestal that I don’t find much of it problematic, no matter who the author is. I wish more people were as ready to acknowledge the faults of those they esteem so highly.

While watching this, I watched the final two episodes of Squid Game, which is a great reminder that anything that survives is bound to be complicated, imperfect, and often disturbing, because that’s what people are.