Augustine and the Cure of Souls: Revising a Classical Ideal

Chapter 2: Hellenistic Refinements

Chapter Two Hellenistic Refinements The cures of the soul have been discovered by the ancients, but it is our task to learn the method and the time of treatment. —Seneca, Ep. 64.8–9 Cures for the Roman Soul The influence of the Platonic dialogues continued to be felt well into the second sophistic.1 An epitaph attested in the Hellenistic world refers to how Plato “healed human minds by letters. As the god’s son Asclepius is a healer of the body, so is Plato of the immortal soul.”2 The exceptional popularity and influence of the Phaedrus has been well documented. Michael Trapp aptly observes, “As a treatise on rhetoric and dialectic, the Phaedrus was of obvious interest both to philosophers and rhetoricians; all the more so as, unlike its companion piece the Gorgias, it explicitly allowed for the possibility of a genuine science of rhetoric and offered prescriptions for its realization.”3 Much of Plato’s recasting of rhetoric as psychagogy was taken up by later philosophers. Aristotle’s own treatise on rhetoric is one example of what would become an ongoing movement to examine more thoroughly themes raised by Plato and to introduce more specific terminology toward that end.4 Henri Marrou has described how, 41 even though the rivalry between philosophy and rhetoric continued into the Hellenistic period, there was also “an inextricable interweaving, knitting the classical tradition into an ever-closer unity.”5 In spite of a profusion of schools and ideas,“philosophy in the Hellenistic age and under the Empire” was recognizable as “an entity and philosophers were a class falling under a specific rubric.”6 There was a degree of consensus such that, as A.D. Nock has observed, “any philosophy of the time” sought conversion of its practitioner’s way of life by setting up “a standard of values” different from the “common ethic and values” of the “world outside.”7 To be sure, the dogmatic commitments of any particular school of philosophy defined its identity, and such constitutive elements should not be set to one side in favor of purely formal considerations. Nevertheless, when the Hellenistic materials are reviewed with Plato’s psychagogy in mind, his conception of a rhetorically embellished philosophy proves to be an ideal so remarkably flexible that its formal features could flourish even in communities rejecting most of Plato’s doctrinal commitments. Representatives of the various schools of philosophy repeatedly employed similar metaphors and themes to describe the tasks and aims of philosophy as well as to specify its appropriate pedagogy.This is so much the case that Ilsetraut Hadot concludes,“The dogmatic foundations for overcoming fear of death as well as other fears and passions may vary greatly, but the methods employed by the spiritual guide to achieve this end are almost always the same.”8 It is not surprising, therefore, that a Platonic handbook from the early centuries of the Common Era would paraphrase the psychagogy of the Phaedrus by commending that the philosopher acquire “an accurate perception of the faculties of the soul and the differences among people, and the types of discourse which are fitted to this or that soul, and when one perceives with precision which sort of person can be persuaded by what arguments and of what sort those are, such an individual, if he also picks the right opportunity for using the particular argument will be a complete orator.”9 Less expected, however, are the extant Epicurean writings which, despite the fact that they are far removed from Platonism philosophically , indicate that formal principles of psychagogy were employed in their communities. These writings testify to the wide dissemination of psychagogic traditions in the Hellenistic era. In a work known as De libertate dicendi (On Frank Speech), the Epicurean philosopher, Philodemus, preserved the substance of lectures delivered in Athens during the first 42 A Classical Ideal century BCE by the head of the Epicurean school at the time, Zeno of Sidon.10 Philodemus’ lecture notes amount to a handbook offering “hypothetical questions and answers on aspects of psychagogic theory as well as reflections on psychagogic practice.”11 Epicurus himself had described his philosophy as a therapy for the soul: “Vain is the word of the philosopher by which no human suffering is healed. Just as medicine confers no benefit if it does not cast out bodily disease, neither is there from...