Pseudo Aristides: On political style and On simple style. Attribution and the nature of treaties

Abstract

The main problem analysed in the article is the authorship of two treatises from the 2^nd century AD: On political style and On simple style. The treatises have been preserved in Parisinus gr. 1741, a famous Byzantine manuscript from the 10^th century kept at the National Library in Paris, as works of Aelius Aristides, one of the most eminent representatives of the Second Sophistic. Aristides lived in the years 117-180 and was the author of over 50 preserved speeches. After explaining the main reasons why contemporary scholars refuse to accept Aristides as the author of the treatises, the article presents more extensively M. Patillon’s attempt to find real authors of the treatises, made by the scholar in the latest academic edition of the treatises published within „Belles Lettres” series in 2002. His findings have been a direct inspiration for the author of this article to analyze again the testimonies of Byzantine commentators: Syrianus (5^th century) and John of Sicily (10^th century) in historical and literary context. In the light of this analysis it turns out that there is no basis for the division of the treatise On political style, adopted by M. Patillon, into part covering the explanation of the first seven “ideas” (& 2-128), treated as Basilikos’ (a 2^nd/3^rd-century sophist’s) work De ideis, and the second part including a brief theoretical explanation of the remaining five “forms” of style, treated as the work of Dionysius of Miletus, a little-known sophist. On the basis of Syrianus’ testimony there is a certain possibility that Basilikos was the author of the entire lecture on the “forms” of political style (& 2-140). But, in this case it should be explained first how the treatise De ideis, which was known to Syrianus in the 5^th century and was included in the Suda in the 10^th century, easily lost its author, became an anonymous work and in the very 10^th century was copied in Byzantium under a different title as Aristides’ work. Similar difficulties are connected with the attribution of the treatise On simple style to Aelius Harpokration which was proposed by M. Patillon. Aelius Harpokration was a famous sophist whose rhetorical works, including On forms of style, functioned in Byzantine culture under his own name. Even if we question Byzantine attribution of these treatises to Aristides, we must continue to treat them as works of an anonymous author attributed to Aristides by tradition.