Chrysippus, "The Knife That Cuts Through the Academics' Knots"

It is in the portrait of the Stoic philosopher Chrysippus that the notion of thinking as hard work found its most extraordinary expression. The seated statue (fig. 54a, b) is preserved in one good copy of the body and many of the head and was probably put up immediately after the death of Chrysippus (ca. 281–208 B.C. ).^[8] An elderly man, his back bent over with age, he sits on a simple stone block, that is, in a public place, the Agora or one of the gymnasia. Like an old man, he has drawn up his feeble legs and is trying to pull the garment tighter around his bare shoulders against the cold. Even in old age, the hardened Stoic, wanting nothing, refuses any comforts, such as a backed chair or an undergarment. But inside this frail, almost pitiful body—notice especially the sunken chest—resides an invincible, feisty spirit. The artist's intention is to show how the power of the spirit triumphs over the weaknesses of the body.

Fig. 54 a–b
Chrysippus (ca. 281–204). Reconstruction of a
statue presumably set up after his death. Munich,
Museum für Abgüsse Klassischer Bildwerke.

The philosopher's projecting head collides with an imaginary opponent (fig. 56). The left hand, under the mantle, is clenched in a fist, while the right is extended in argument, the fingers perhaps ticking off in order his winning points. In a manner characteristic of most Early Hellenistic art, the viewer is drawn into the pictorial space and becomes, as it were, the philosopher's interlocutor.^[9] The gesture of the outstretched right hand, to which Cicero specifically refers, accompanying the energetic thrust of the head, seems to be an individual characteristic of Chrysippus. More than just an aggressive speaking style, it represents a particular form of thinking, that is, argumentation and logical deduction. It was in this sphere that Chrysippus, the great dialectician, was considered superior to all his contemporaries. An epigram composed by his nephew Aristokreon celebrates him as the knife that cuts through the Academics' knots." The epigram was

carved beneath one of the several statues of Chrysippus in Athens that are attested in our sources (Plut. Mor. 1033E).^[10]

This is not a rhetorical gesture of the master teacher, but rather the effort of direct confrontation with an interlocutor who has to be won over. Only the arguments count, and the old man must expend his last

Fig. 55
Bust of Chrysippus. Naples, Museo Nazionale.

ounce of strength to put his winning point across. In contrast to the generalized formula for thinking expressed in Zeno's mighty brow, the face of Chrysippus reflects the immediacy of a momentary mental effort. Like the whole body, the muscles of the brow are shown in a powerful and spontaneous motion (fig. 55). We are meant to see how ideas and arguments are brought forth by the old man's strenuous efforts. When we come to compare the detached portraits of the Epicureans (fig. 62), it will become even clearer that for the contemporary viewer who frequented more than one philosophical school this Stoic image must have embodied a highly polemical stance toward the rival schools.^[11]

The statue of Chrysippus was also most likely a public honorary monument, and, like Zeno, he was honored with a public burial (Paus.

Fig. 56
Bust of Chrysippus. London, British Museum.

1.29.15). He had, after all, given instruction tirelessly in public for decades. No fewer than three statues are attested in Athens, two of them in or near the Agora. Pausanias mentions one "in the Gymnasium of Ptolemy at the Agora" (1.17.2), and Cicero saw the other, a seated statue, "in Ceramico . . . porrecta manu" (Fin. 1.39), probably at the northern entrance to the Agora, which was thick with honorific monuments. Diogenes Laertius (7.182) knew the same statue, which, based on the descriptions, is probably the one preserved in the copies.

The statue, like the honorary decree for Zeno, thus celebrates Chrysippus as a teacher, as a man from whom one could learn to think and to argue. At the same time, the statue's ethical claims, the message concerning attitudes toward the body, also has a didactic intent. The statue called to mind a man who, into old age, was still active in the Agora and the gymnasia. "He was the first who had the courage to

hold his lectures in open air in the Lyceum" (D. L. 7.185). In so doing, he made his arguments not only in words, but with the example of his own way of life, especially his toughness and freedom from bodily necessities. He had turned his own body into a paradigm, to paraphrase the text of the decree for Zeno. Naturally the average young Athenian could no longer see in such a figure an actual role model, but only those who became his disciples and devoted themselves to philosophy. We are presented here with a leading thinker, a powerful mind and a strong conscience, but no longer a model citizen upholding the norms of the democratic state, as had been the case with the mantle-clad poets and philosophers of the fourth century.