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II. The Intellectual as Good Citizen
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Plato's Serious Expression: Contemplation as a Civic Virtue?

Thus far we have dealt only with retrospective portraits and must now ask, how did contemporary intellectuals in fourth-century Athens have themselves portrayed? What was the relation between their own self-image and the way they presented themselves? Certainly Plato and Isocrates were no more lacking in self-assurance than the Sophists. By about 420–410 B.C. , Gorgias had dedicated a gilded statue of himself in Delphi, prominently displayed on a tall column (Pliny HN 33.83; Paus. 10.18.7).[40] Both the separation of the intellectual from society at large and at the same time the claim to a position of leadership in the state had, if anything, increased since the days of the Sophists. The formation of large circles of disciples in the rhetorical schools and around the philosophers, as well as the partial withdrawal of these schools from public life, their rivalries and their vigorous criticism of the status quo, had in the course of the fourth century led to a situation in which both teachers and pupils attracted the attention of the public even more than in the time of Aristophanes. The great interest that the comic poets took in contemporary philosophers attests to their vivid presence in the public consciousness.[41]

By coincidence, we hear in our sources of two impressive funerary monuments in the decade 350–340, in both of which the intellectual activity of the deceased was explicitly commemorated. One was a


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monument for Theodectes, the poet from Phaselis, with statues of the most famous poets of the past, starting with Homer. The other was the family tomb monument of Isocrates, which had portraits in relief of his teachers, including Gorgias instructing the young Isocrates at an astronomical globe—a motif known to us from later works. Thus the great orator continued even in death to broadcast his plea for a universal paideia . Did these men's contemporaries perceive such tombs as being at odds with the social ideal of equality? Is it just accidental that both tombs are private monuments for men with well-known royalist sympathies? Isocrates was said to have congratulated Philip of Macedon on his victory at Chaeronea, and Theodectes seems to have been a favorite of Alexander's.[42]

In these circumstances, we might have expected that the portraiture of such self-assured individuals would make direct reference to their intellectual claims and abilities, whether in dress and pose or facial expression, beard, or hairstyle. Unfortunately the pitiful state of our evidence does not permit any definite answers, especially with regard to body types. While we have a whole series of head types, we have not one body that can be identified as belonging to a portrait of a contemporary intellectual of the fourth century. We may, however, suppose that their bodies looked little different from those of the retrospective portraits of the famous poets or of Socrates or, for that matter, of the male citizen on the gravestones. This is, at least, what we would expect from what we know of their heads. This brings us back to the difficult question of how to interpret Plato's expression in his famous portrait type (figs. 24, 38).[43]

A small bronze bust, only fifteen centimeters high, that recently appeared on the art market has considerably enriched our understanding of the original Plato portrait (fig. 39a, b).[44] This version has an aquiline nose, erect head, and the mantle falling over the nape of the neck and the shoulders. Plato is portrayed as a mature man, but not elderly. His hair does not fall in long strands, like that of Euripides, but rather is trimmed into even, fairly short locks. His beard is long and carefully tended, similar to Miltiades' (see fig. 36). The only clear signs of age are the sharp creases radiating from the nose and the loose, fleshy


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Fig. 38
Portrait of Plato, as in fig. 24. Munich, Glyptothek.

cheeks. Both style and characterization suggest that the portrait could well have been created during Plato's own lifetime and not, as usually assumed, after his death in 348/7.[45] Perhaps the original is to be identified with a statue set up in the Academy by one Mithridates, presumably a pupil of Plato's, whose inscription is recorded by Diogenes Laertius: "The Persian Mithridates, son of Rhodobatos, dedicates this likeness of Plato to the Muses. It is a work of Silanion" (3.25). It was,


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Fig. 39 a–b
Small bronze bust of Plato, from the same original as fig. 38. Kassel,
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen (from a cast).

then, a votive to the Muses, like the portrait of Aristotle (D. L. 5.51), and would have stood in the shrine of the Muses in the Academy, though it is not clear whether this shrine was the one in the public gymnasium of that name or in Plato's gardens nearby.

The serious expression of the face is created primarily by the two horizontal lines across the brow and the drawing together of the eyebrows, forming two short vertical lines above the ridge of the nose. This network of wrinkles, however, which is only hinted at in some copies, as in Munich, but more deeply engraved in others, is a widespread formula. It occurs in most intellectual portraits of the fourth


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Fig. 40
Portrait of Sophocles. Detail
of the statue in fig. 25.

Fig. 41
Portrait of Aristotle (384–322). Roman
copy of a statue of the late fourth century
B.C. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum.

century, more or less pronounced, whether for Aristotle (fig. 41) or Thucydides (fig. 42). Theophrastus (fig. 43), the tragedians dedicated by Lycurgus, or Socrates. One could even think back to the mid-fifth-century portrait of Pindar. At that time, however, it had been standard practice, at least in Athens, not to include any indications of effort or emotion in citizen portraits, as we saw attested in the images of Anacreon and Pericles. The serious expression of Plato is therefore an innovation of the fourth century, a departure from, or rather a relaxation of, the earlier convention.

Nevertheless, for the contemporary observer, this trait cannot have been a specific and exclusive indicator of intellectual activity, for the expressions of mature male citizens on Attic grave stelai often have a similar character, and it is hardly possible in each individual case to


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Fig. 42
Portrait of the historian Thucydides
(ca. 460–400). Roman copy of a statue of
the mid-fourth century B.C. Holkham Hall.

Fig. 43
Portrait herm of Theophrastus
(ca. 372–288). Roman copy of a statue
ca. 300 B.C. Rome, Villa Albani.

be certain if it is really meant to convey an air of introspection (fig. 44a–d).[46]

As Giuliani has shown, such a serious expression, with the brows drawn together, could have been understood at this time as signifying intelligence and thoughtfulness. In our sources, even a young man is counseled to appear in public with such a countenance.[47] But this particular quality is never mentioned in isolation by contemporary authors, rather always in the context of other traditional expressions of the well-bred Athenian citizen, such as a measured gait, modest demeanor in public, and modulated voice. And these are the very standards of behavior, as we have seen, by which the morally correct citizen, the kaloskagathos, was measured. In other words, the canon of citizen virtues, already well attested in the time of Pericles, was


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Fig. 44 a–d
Four portraits of mature Athenian citizens from grave stelai of the later fourth
century B.C. : a, Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek; b, Athens, National Museum;
c and d, Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek.


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enhanced in the course of the fourth century with an additional intellectual quality embodied in the new facial expression.

We may well imagine that some well-known intellectuals in Athens, and even more likely their pupils, did indeed cultivate such a serious demeanor in their public appearances, for which they were ridiculed by the comic poets.[48] But this did not stop the admirers of the great masters from having them portrayed with an introspective look, even if, as in Plato's case, so subtly that the basic citizen image is barely altered. We must once again remind ourselves that we tend to see these portraits too close up. No contemporary viewer would have perceived the facial expression in the disconnected fashion we do, when we stare at a photograph and look for the wrinkles. He always saw the face as but one element of the whole statue. As writers of the time attest, the serious expression was not the primary component, rather an extra touch in the traditional citizen image.

Unfortunately, no copy of the body belonging to the statue of Plato has yet come to light, though we may assume that it was somewhat similar to that of Socrates (see fig. 33). Since Plato is not portrayed as an old man, the gravestones would lead us to think that he could hardly have been shown seated in the manner that, as we shall see, first appears with the most authoritative Hellenistic thinkers. Like that of Aristotle and other philosophers of the Classical period, Plato's teaching style involved much physical movement (D. L. 3.27). The dialogue was more than just a literary genre.[49]

But the most interesting aspect of this whole issue is the way in which the serious expression of the philosophers is transferred to the nonspecific citizen image. That this could occur at all presumes that, in spite of the mocking of the comic poets, the new visual formula carried basically positive associations. The fact, however, that the lined forehead and drawn-together brows occur on the grave stelai primarily for elderly and even older men makes the formula even less specific. That is, even if this trait was originally intended for the portraits of intellectuals as the mark of the thinker, this cannot apply equally to all the faces of older citizens that now display it. For them, it inevitably becomes a vague and ambiguous formula, which can express strain as well as introspection, perhaps sometimes even grief or pain. For the


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ancient viewer whose eye was accustomed to these images, Plato's expression would lose any specific significance and could hardly convey "a considerable degree of specialized mental activity as the general characteristic of the intellectual."[50]


The great impression made by the publicly known intellectuals of the fourth century on their fellow Athenians can perhaps be inferred from yet another remarkable phenomenon. Among the portraits of anonymous older men on the grave stelai can be found a number of faces that are strikingly similar to those of famous intellectuals. A portrait of an old man in Copenhagen, for example, once part of a grave stele, recalls the portrait of Plato so closely that one could almost ask if this were the philosopher's own tomb monument (fig. 44d).[51] But this is unlikely on typological grounds alone, since older men like this one with the same expression are usually subsidiary figures in the background. Furthermore, this is not a unique instance. Other heads on gravestones recall the portraits of Aristotle (fig. 44b), Theophrastus, and Demosthenes, while at the same time the unsurpassed artistic dimension of these portraits, compared with the grave reliefs, with their new means of expressing personality, is obvious.[52] Such similarities between the portraits of intellectuals and those of ordinary Athenians suggest that not only their meditative expressions but also certain individual physiognomic features of the famous philosophers and rhetoricians were so familiar and widely admired that some of their contemporaries affected similar styles of hair, dress, and bearing. We hear in the literary sources, for example, that Plato's followers were made fun of for imitating his hunched stance, and in the Lyceum some of Aristotle's distinguished students adopted the master's lisp (Plut. Mor. 26B, 53C). Theophrastus is a good example of just how popular an intellectual figure could become in Athens: people came in droves to his lectures, and half the city took part in his funeral (D. L. 5.37, 41).

If what I have been suggesting is true, it would imply that Classical portraits, while adhering closely to a standard typology, do nevertheless occasionally reproduce actual features of the subject's physiognomy—in Plato's case, the broad forehead and the straight line of the brow, in Aristotle's; the small eyes (which are also mentioned in the


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literary sources). Athenian citizens will have similarly imitated even more eagerly the faces of influential statesmen and other well-known and well-liked personalities. The fact, however, that such assimilation is attested only in the portraiture of intellectuals is probably to be explained by the choices made by the proprietors of Roman villas for their collections of portrait busts (cf. pp. 203ff). Viewed as a whole, Athenian portraiture of the fourth century experienced a continual and pervasive process of differentiation in facial types. The driving force behind this may well have been the urge to assimilate to the likeness of famous individuals.


We may, then, reaffirm that Plato was depicted not as a philosopher, but simply as a good Athenian citizen (in the sense of an exemplary embodiment of the norms), and this is true of all other intellectuals of fourth-century Athens for whom we have preserved portraits. Nor was Plato's expression likely to have been read by his contemporaries as a reference to particular intellectual abilities.

Furthermore, Plato's beard was, at the time, not yet the "philosopher's beard," but the normal style worn by all citizen men. It was only by the Romans that it was first interpreted as a philosopher's beard, a point seldom recognized in archaeological scholarship (cf. pp. 108ff.). Nevertheless, the length of Plato's beard has rightly caused some puzzlement.[53] On the gravestones, it is primarily the old men who wear such a long beard, while those who, like Plato, have not yet reached old age tend to wear it trimmed shorter.[54] Given the extraordinarily high degree of conformity in Athenian society, such deviations could certainly be meaningful. The key may be contained in an often-adduced fragment of the comic poet Ephippus, a contemporary of Plato's, who makes fun of one of Plato's more pompous pupils, whom he describes as hpoplatonikos (frag. 14 = Ath. 9.509B).[55] His chief characteristics include an elegant posture, expensive clothing, sandals with fancy laces, carefully trimmed hair, and a beard grown "to its natural length." Even this, however, does not imply a specifically self-styled philosopher, but rather a noticeably elegant and soigné appearance characteristic of some of Plato's pupils. As would later be true of the Peripatetics, the members of the Academy evidently valued a


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distinguished, not to say "aristocratic," appearance. The portrait of Plato makes the same statement, when one considers especially how carefully cut and arranged the hair is across the forehead, as well as the beard, which is, strictly speaking, too long for a man of his age. if, then, there is anything about the portrait of Plato that suggests a subtle differentiation from the norm, it would be in the realm of aristocratic distinction.

The search for the portraiture of intellectuals in fourth-century Athens leads finally to a kind of dead end. We find an extraordinary situation, in which both Athenian citizens and outsiders, quite independently of their profession or social status, and even including critics of the state and its institutions such as Plato and his pupils, identified with a highly conformist citizen image. This identification was entirely voluntary and is equally applicable to publicly and privately displayed monuments. There must have existed a general consensus on the moral standards embodied in this citizen image. The phenomenon may be likened to that of the standard houses of uniform size that we find in newly planned Greek cities.[56] In both instances, aesthetic symbols express a notion of the proper social order that has been fully internalized, independently of the current political situation at any given time. Even for the famous teachers of rhetoric and philosophy, with their high opinions of their own worth, the message "I am a good citizen" was evidently more important than any reference to their abilities or self-perception as intellectuals. In fact, as the votive and funerary reliefs attest, they were no different in this respect from the craftsmen and other fellow citizens who followed a specific profession or enjoyed a particular status.[57]


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II. The Intellectual as Good Citizen
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