Aetius the Syrian

Aetius was born in Antioch on the Orontes circa 313.^[14] His colorful career represents a classic study in upward social mobility in the later Roman Empire.^[15] His opponent Gregory of Nyssa asserted, maliciously but not without some plausibility, that Aetius' involvement in dogmatic controversy derived from his need to earn a living.^[16] Indeed, talent, ambition, and opportunity together elevated this son of humble parents to prominent ecclesiastical roles in the company of imperial princes.^[17]

Aetius' career was made possible by his possession of the gift of basic literacy.^[18] As a boy, he acquired sufficient rudimentary skills to conduct business and to draft contracts in his native city.^[19] By 326, his

[13] On the significant connections between the categorization of persons/actions and the maintenance of the social order, see L. Jayyusi, Categorization and the Moral Order (Boston/London, 1984).

[14] See G. Bardy, "L'héritage littéraire d'Aétius," RHE 24 (1928): 809-27; M. Jugie, in Dictionnaire de Théologie Chrétienne , 667-79, s.v. "Aétius 3."

[15] See the helpful account in Kopecek, History of Neo-Arianism , 1:61-75.

[17] See Philostorgius, Hist. eccl . 3.15. Kopecek argues that Aetius' father belonged to the poorer and humbler curiales of Antioch on the basis of Philostorgius' witness that he worked in the office of the provincial governor; History of Neo-Arianism , 1:62-63.

[18] See H. C. Youtie, "AG PAMMATOS : an Aspect of Greek Society in Egypt," HSCP 75 (1971): 161-76. On literacy among Christians in Egypt, see E. Wipszycka, "Le degré d'alphabétisation gÉypte byzantine," REAug 30 (1984): 279-96, esp. 288-91.

[19] On the importance of such a mediating role in a society characterized by low literacy, see H. C. Youtie, "AG PAMMATOS : The Social Impact of Illiteracy in Graeco-Roman Egypt," ZPE 17 (1975): 201-21. If such indeed was Aetius' background, he continued in his later career to operate in the capacity of a mediator of knowledge to others: see discussion of his Syntagmation below.

natural aptitude for learning had turned him from his trade to the study of logical argumentation under the bishop Paulinus of Antioch.^[20] After his mother's death had freed him from having to work as a craftsman to support the family (his father died when he was very young), Aetius devoted himself wholeheartedly to the 'logical studies" in which he soon came to excel.^[21]

The young Aetius distinguished himself in public contests of words (), successfully becoming the darling of the masses while a stripling of thirteen years.^[22] The Suidas tells us that these public debates were conducted on specific questions or zeteseis and that Aetius performed so well that he won the general audience () to his side.^[23] Kopecek interprets the zeteseis as exegetical questions about scriptures based on the entry in Lampe's Patristic Greek Lexicon .^[24] However, the word zetesis enjoyed a much broader semantic range in antiquity, including proposed questions and dialectical premisses (whether based on scriptures or not) in public disputations.^[25] The latter interpretation accords much better with the train of Philostorgius' narrative, which by this point has already established Aetius' facility with logic, but has yet to mention him engaging in scriptural studies.

Aetius' youthful triumphs were so resounding and achieved so rapidly that he aroused the jealousy or phthonos of others. According to the Suidas, the resentment of his competitors was amplified by the fact that they were beaten by a young lad () and erstwhile craftsman ().^[26] Philostorgius repeatedly employs a topos depicting Aetius as pursued by phthonos wherever he went—itself a gentle echo of Philostratus' dictum that phthonos ever assailed a wise man^[27] —and for all its glibness such a characterization is consistent with Aetius' likely impact on others. The implacable Aetius was not one to spare others' feelings

[21] Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eun . 1.37-46.

[22] This is not an impossibly young age for an accomplished prodigy; see the examples collected by M. Kleijwegt, in Ancient Youth: The Ambiguity of Youth and the Absence of Adolescence in Greco-Roman Society (Amsterdam, 1991): 118-31.

[23] Philostorgius, Hist. eccl . 3.15b.

[24] Kopecek, History of Neo-Arianism , 1:65.

[25] See, e.g., H. Tarrant, Scepticism or Platonism?: The Philosophy of the Fourth Academy (Cambridge, 1985), 69-71.

[26] Philostorgius, Hist. eccl . 3.15b (Bidez and Winkelmann, eds., 46).

[27] Philostratus, Vita Apollonii 1.34. See A. Louth, "Envy as the Chief Sin in Athanasius and Gregory of Nyssa," SP 15 (1984): 458-60.

even as an adult; as a brash young man, he could easily have made numerous enemies.

Aetius' position remained secure so long as his patron and teacher Paulinus offered him protection. After Paulinus died, Aetius' enemies prevailed on the new bishop Eulalius to expel his predecessor's protégé. In the words of Philostorgius, "Jealousy () moves Eulalius to drive Aetius from Antioch."^[28] Compelled to leave his native home in 327, Aetius traveled up to the city of Anazarbus in Cilicia Secunda to seek his fortunes.

There Aetius studied briefly with a local Christian grammarian, who took him in and taught him basic literary skills in exchange for domestic help.^[29] When Aetius refuted () and rebuked his patron in public () for what he perceived to be a fallacious interpretation of scriptures, the grammarian threw him out. Fortunately for Aetius, who in one stroke was expelled ()^[30] from classroom and home, the local Arian bishop Athanasius, a student of Lucian of Antioch, saw fit to take him in and even taught him how to read the gospels.^[31] Aetius' subsequent study with two other Lucianist teachers—Antoninus in Tarsus and Leontius in Antioch—completed his training in biblical studies.^[32] In emphasizing the scriptural focus of Aetius' education, the partisan Philostorgius was probably responding indirectly to the charges advanced by critics such as Socrates, who accused Aetius of being unschooled in scriptural learning () and expert solely in the art of refutative argumentation ().^[33]

According to Philostorgius, Aetius, once again the target of jealousy, was forced to leave Antioch a second time. He again undertook a journey to Cilicia, and there met a purported member of the gnostic Borboriani sect, who engaged him in a (presumably public) contest of words. Philostorgius described the dramatic humbling of his hero with but a

[28] Philostorgius, Hist. eccl . 3.15 (Bidez and Winkelmann, eds., 45).

[29] Philostorgius, Hist. eccl . 3.15; on this episode, see Kaster, Guardians of Language , 3-7.

[30] Kopecek, History of Neo-Arianism , 1:68, wrongly translates this participle as "without being observed."

[31] Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eun . 1.37 (Jaeger, ed., 1:35). Kopecek argues that Athanasius of Anazarbus also taught Aetius the exegesis of scriptures using syllogisms; History of Neo-Arianism , 1:69-70.

[32] See Philostorgius, Hist. eccl . 3.15 (Bidez and Winkelmann, eds., 46). On the Lucianists, see Philostorgius, Hist. eccl . 2.14 (Bidez and Winkelmann, eds., 25); G. Bardy, Recherches sur saint Lucien d'Antioche et son école (Paris, 1936).

[33] Socrates, Hist. eccl . 2.35.

few words: "A certain member of the Borboriani, having agreed on debates with him in defense of his own opinion, brought about an ultimate defeat."^[34] Aetius the proud Christian dialectician-philosopher was soundly beaten by his gnostic opponent and, unaccustomed to such reversals of fortune, fell into a mood of deep despair () over what he considered the victory of falsehood over truth.

Not long after his upset, Aetius received word from Alexandria that Aphthonius, a Manichaean leader, was acquiring a formidable reputation in that city by his debating skill. The Syrian resolved to secure a contest with the Manichaean to reestablish his own adequacy. "Drawn by his [Aphthonius'] fame," Aetius descended on Alexandria, challenged the Manichaean to a debate,^[35] and definitively refuted his opponent by reducing him to virtual speechlessness (see ch. 3).

Late Roman Alexandria was a teeming cosmopolis of competing religious and philosophical groups.^[36] Its cultural diversity gave rise to struggles for place, and its abundant stores of intellectual resources offered the tools for responding to such competitive situations.^[37] Aetius' own career path intersected with those of Christian, gnostic, and pagan intellectuals, as had the paths of Origen and Plotinus before him. Inhabiting the interstices between these competing groups, he articulated a set of Christian beliefs that could hold its own against anticipated challenges from religious and philosophical rivals.^[38]

Both Philostorgius and Gregory of Nyssa identified Aetius as a student of medicine who learned the traditional specialty of Alexandria from a certain Sopolis, a physician.^[39] Aetius himself was known to Sozomen as a physician.^[40] Aetius' studies in Alexandria probably did in-

[35] Philostorgius, Hist. eccl . 3.15.

[36] On Alexandrian Jewish and pagan communities, see C. J. Haas, "Late Roman Alexandria: Social Structure and Intercommunal Conflict in the Entrepôt of the East" (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1988), chs. 4, 5.

[38] See R. A. Mortley, From Word to Silence (Bonn, 1986), 2:131-32, on Aetius' need to defend himself against Neoplatonist philosophers. On the possible impact of a similar concern on Arius, see R. Lyman, "Arians and Manichees on Christ," JTS n.s. 40 (1989): 493-503, at 503: "Arius was not responding to abstract exegetical or philosophical problems alone, but rather . . . to the competitive teachers in the agora . . ."

[39] Philostorgius, Hist. eccl . 3.15; Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eun . 1.42-46 (Jaeger, ed., 1: 36-38).

[40] Sozomen, Hist. eccl . 3.15 (Bidez, ed., 126).

clude both medicine and Aristotelian learning, for the two branches of knowledge were commonly combined.^[41] Certainly his familiarity with the use of Aristotelian dialectic and syllogisms was later a common charge against him. He may even have visited with the city's various Aristotelian didaskaloi , though the tradition is divided on this point.^[42] This association was perhaps a natural one for ancient authors to make because the city maintained throughout late antiquity a reputation for logical training and dialectical disputation.^[43]

Ancient physicians were known to have broad intellectual interests. Gregory of Nyssa reported that, in the mid-fourth century, the medical schools of Alexandria served as hotbeds of philosophical and theological discussion, often involving dialectic.^[44] When Aetius posed his astounding thesis of the "dissimilarity" of divine ousiai , he exploited the love of innovation among members of the Alexandrian medical scholai .^[45] In a similar vein, Epiphanius noted that Aetius practiced daily the dialectical skill with which he discoursed about God.^[46]

The art of posing philosophical questions was a powerful and useful tool for establishing someone's reputation in the city's preeminent medical circles.^[47] Magnus of Nisibis, a student of the iatrosophist Zeno of Cyprus, established a school of instruction () in Alexan-

[41] On the iatrosophists in Alexandria, see Eunapius, VS 494-500. On earlier dialectical medicine in the same city, see the interesting description of the physician Thessalus of Tralles (first century), in H.-V. Friedrich, Thessalos von Tralles (Meisenheim am Glan, 1968). He was probably also Thessalus the "magician"; see J. Z. Smith, "The Temple and the Magician," in J. Z. Smith, ed., Map is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions (Leiden, 1978); G. Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind (Cambridge, 1986), 161-65.

[43] For the city's intellectual circles, see also F. Schemmel, "Die Hochschule von Alexandria im IV. und V. Jahrhundert p. Ch. n.," Neue Jahrbücher für das klassische Altertum 24 (1909): 438-57, esp. 439.

[44] Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eun . 1.45-46 (Jaeger, ed., 1:37); see also Philostorgius, Hist. eccl . 3.15. Sozomen, Hist. eccl . 3.15 (Bidez, ed., 127), described Aetius as visiting the schools in Alexandria where Aristotle's works were taught, thus contradicting Socrates' statement (Hist. eccl . 2.35) that Aetius learned his Aristotle by reading the Categories without help from an Academic preceptor.

[45] Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eun . 1.45-47 (Jaeger, ed., 37-38).

[47] See Ammianus, Res gestae 22.16.18; V. Nutton, "Ammianus and Alexandria," Clio Medica 7 (1972): 165-76.

dria.^[48] When he held discussions with physicians who excelled at healing the sick, he turned to his philosophical knowledge to gain a competitive edge:

In order to lend force to his words (), he dragged in Aristotle in connexion with the nature of bodies . . . and so compelled the doctors to keep silent in the matter of rhetoric, but he was thought to be less able in healing than in speaking ().^[49]

Elsewhere, Magnus was described as "a physician in regards to words, yet an inexperienced practitioner in regards to deeds."^[50] By introducing what Aristotle would have considered false figures from a general to a specific field,^[51] he managed to maintain professional credibility, even to acquire a considerable reputation, despite his supposed deficiency in therapeutic praxis. By carefully emphasizing his Aristotelian learning, he "still got the better of the doctors in the matter of talking and putting questions (),"^[52] and became a celebrated figure enjoying sufficient prominence to be mentioned years later by Libanius, Eunapius, and Philostorgius.^[53] Such a deliberate professional strategy could only succeed if the other physicians conceded a greater value to the art of posing questions than to the craft of healing. This concession may be explained by the longstanding intimate relationship between ancient medicine and dialectic; medical training had long been transmitted through a dialectical procedure of questions and answers.^[54]

After his Alexandrian sojourn, Aetius returned to his native Antioch, where he began to teach circa 350. He made an immediate and decisive impact on that city:

Straightaway he began to shock those whom he met with the strangeness of his expressions ().

[48] Eunapius, VS 497-98. See discussion in Penella, Greek Philosophers and Sophists , 111-12, 115-16.

[49] Eunapius, VS 497-98 (Wright, ed., 530-31). I have adapted Wright's translation. See Penella, Greek Philosophers and Sophists , 115-16.

[50] Theophilus Protospatharius, De urinis preface (Ideler, ed., 261); quoted in Penella, Greek Philosophers and Sophists , 111-12.

[51] See Aristotle, De sophisticis elenchis 11.172a (Forster and Furley, eds., 64-65).

[52] Eunapius, VS 497-98.

[53] Libanius, Ep . 843, 1208; Philostorgius, Hist. eccl . 8.10.

[54] On the use of dialectical argumentation and question-and-answer dialogues for ancient medical instruction, see Kudlien, "Dialektik und Medizin," 187-200; Kollesch, Untersuchungen zu den ps.galenischen Definitiones Medicae (Berlin, 1973). See also Westerink, "Philosophy and Medicine," 169-77.

And this he did trusting in the Aristotelian categories; indeed Aristotle had a book written on the subject. Aetius was engaged in disputation by drawing upon the categories () and did not realize that he was fashioning sophistic reasoning for himself. Nor did he learn the skopos of Aristotle['s ideas] from wise men.^[55]

I shall explore such characterizations of the Syrian's dialectical genius later. By this time Aetius had already established himself as a valuable player in the intricate game of ecclesiastical politics favored by eastern prelates. He became a valued client of the Cappadocian George, the forceful and ill-starred bishop of Alexandria, who appointed him a deacon circa 348 in that city.^[56] It was there that Eunomius, Aetius' famous disciple, came to join him.