Existential contingency in the Characters

The most obvious source of contingency is existential, i.e. concerns threats to the physical integrity of the self in matters of life, death, or injury.¹⁷⁶ Generally speak-ing, these are present only on the margins of the Characters, conceivably because these contingencies are not acutely felt by the class of people depicted, because the Characters occludes them to preserve the humorous tone, or because the web of social observation and evaluation does not extend to the isolated individual and his existential fears. The funeral and corpses mentioned in passages assigned to the Obtuse Man (ἀναίσθητος) and the two occurrences of wounds, illness, and decay do attest a certain concern with physical integrity, but it is far from dom-inant and visible only in combination with social counter-strategies that protect

176 This form of contingency is what emerged from David Konstan’s survey of the astro-logical evidence (idem. “Conventional Values of the Hellenistic Greeks: The Evidence from Astrology”, in: Per Bilde, Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Lise Hannestad, and Jan Zahle (eds.). Conventional Values of the Hellenstic Greeks (=Studies in Hellenistic Civili-zation 8). Aarhus 1997, 159-176. He showed that the concerns addressed are funda-mentally related to what has here been treated as the distributed self, focusing largely on the household in its existential dimension.

the individual from these contingencies.¹⁷⁷ While the contingency that results from the death of others is countered by a verbal expression of grief (which the Obtuse Man naturally gets wrong), wounds and illness are countered by a com-munication of disregard and an attribution to inalterable ‘genetics’ respectively.

The most explicit reference to experiences of existential contingency is the case of the Coward (δειλὸς), who cares for his own life to the point of disregarding the patriotism and readiness to sacrifice oneself that are expected in such crisis situations as war. He trembles at the thought of any situation of high risk, fearing storms and pirate attacks at sea, death and injury in warfare.¹⁷⁸ The Coward seeks to counter these existential threats by resorting to complex social strategies. At sea, he not only runs up and asks the helmsman if they are already halfway to their destination but also appeals to the collective coping mechanism for existential contingency, namely religion: he refers his fears to a prophetic dream and wonders whether the entire vessel might not be endangered because any of the passengers have failed to be initiated (say at Samothrake).¹⁷⁹ In the case of war, he stays behind among the reserve troops, and when they too are called upon to fight, pretends he does not know whether the figures in the distance are friends or foe;

and then – oh! he realises he has forgotten to bring his sword – and naturally, the only blood he is covered with comes from the wounded mate he pretends to help.

His entire ingenuity is directed towards avoiding the fight yet making his demes-men and fellow tribesdemes-men believe that he is another Lysander.¹⁸⁰ Beyond these crafty machinations, the most interesting sketch in this regard is probably the Superstitious Man. As I have indicated, religion, from the point of view of system theory, is understood as a collective coping mechanism that seeks to minimise the threat of existential contingency by attributing it to divine will; though this is in

177 Theophr. Char. 13.9; 14.7, 13; 19.2; 27.10.

178 Theophr. Char. 25.2-4. It is interesting to note that the Rumour Monger’s tale of Polyperchon and Kassander (8.6-10) does not seem to effect existential contingency.

179 On religion as a mechanism of contingency control see Lübbe, Hermann. “Kontin-genzerfahrung und Kontingenzbewältigung”, in: Gerhart von Graevenitz and Odo Marquard (eds.). Kontingenz. Munich 1998, 35-47, esp. 40-47: “In religiöser Lebens-praxis verhalten wir uns zu derjenigen Kontingenz, die sich der Transformation in Handlungssinn prinzipiell widersetzt” (p. 41), meaning that religion addresses the unfathomable complexity of the human condition, rather than social and normative contingency, which are caused by individual action and defused by interaction expec-tation, i.e. by identity. The dream is an ideal vehicle for exploring the tension between the subjective and the collective, as it is by definition an individual experience that is culturally constructed as bearing collective significance, at least in some cases. See Weber, Gregor. “Herrscher und Traum in hellenistischer Zeit”, in: AKG 81 (1991), 1-33, esp. 28-30.

180 Theophr. Char. 25.6.

itself beyond ordinary human understanding, society has developed methods of divining and manipulating it and so reducing contingency.¹⁸¹ For the Superstitious Man, the world is so contingent that he focuses all his energies on interpreting and countering the innumerable potential threats to his own well-being and that of his family: the religious mode of existential contingency control monopolises his agency.¹⁸²

While domestic economic concerns, thoroughly investigated by Paul Millett, are probably the most prominent theme of the Characters, they do not generally appear to be existentially threatening in my sense.¹⁸³ Prices and loans, trade and investments, money and production appear in almost every sketch and indeed three of the behavioural types are devoted exclusively to such matters.¹⁸⁴ Al-though food and money are intrinsically linked in the Characters, this is mainly the case for meat derived from sacrifices.¹⁸⁵ The only mention of hunger and grain shortage is in relation to the Boastful Man’s faux generosity in countering it.¹⁸⁶ The chronic precariousness of the city’s grain supplies and its dependence on the Piraeus in the Diadoch period are not reflected by the interactions in the Chara-cters; the ‘individuals’ portrayed are either conceived as being too wealthy to be affected or the matter is occluded.¹⁸⁷ That said, the economic system – although

181 Eidinow 2011, esp. 16-18.

182 Theophr. Char. 16.

183 The economic concerns in the Characters have been studied by Millett 2007, 93-98 and in extenso idem. Lending and Borrowing. Cambridge 1991, esp. 139-159.

184 These are Theophr. Char. 10 (μικρολόγος); 22 (ἀνελεύθερος); 30 (αἰσχροκερδής). Prices:

3.3; 4.15; loans: 1.5; 4.14; 6.9; 9.2; 9.7; 10.2, 10, 13; 12.11; 14.8; 15.7; 17.9; 18.5, 7; 22.3, 9; 30.3, 13; trade: 2.6, 7, 9; 4.13, 15; 5.7-9; 9.4, 6, 8; 10.4, 7; 11.4, 7f.; 12.8; 14.9; 15.4;

18.2; 18.9; 22.4, 7, 10; 23.7f.; 30.5, 12; investments: 23.2; 30.15; money: 4.13; 5.7; 6.4;

10.6; 12.4; 14.2; 18.3; 21.5; 23.2, 5f., 8; 24.12; 28.4; 30.7, 9, 14; production: 2.12; 3.3;

3.6; 6.5.

185 Meat is implicitly valuable throughout, and is a relatively more common concern of these wealthy individuals (Theophr. Char. 9.3f.; 12.11; 18.2; 21.7; 22.4, 7; 30.4), by com-parison, e.g., with fish (4.15; 6.9). In Old and Middle Comedy, by comcom-parison, various kinds of fish are by far the most common food mentioned and also strongly associated with luxury and deviance (Davidson 1997, 3-20); the explanation for this discrepancy lies in the fact that meat is strongly bound to the social occasion of sacrifice, a prime setting of the Characters, though some puzzlement remains as to why Theophrastus’

text does not exploit the discourse outlined by Davidson. On meat and fish as foods see Wilkins, John H. and Hill, Shaun. Food in the Ancient World. Malden, MA and Oxford 2006, 142-160, esp. 158f.

186 Theophr. Char. 23.5.

187 Dem. 20.31-33. On the precariousness of the food supplies in early Hellenistic Athens and their great political relevance see Oliver 2007b, 48-64; cf. Lane Fox 1996, 134f.

On response strategies to shortage see Gallant, Thomas W. Risk and Survival in Ancient Greece. Reconstructing the Rural Domestic Economy. Cambridge 1991, 113-142, esp. 140f.

in principle, as an organized system, a means of reducing contingency – generates its own social and collective contingencies, which will be discussed below.

The third form of existential contingency that is just barely tangible in the Characters has already been touched on and straddles the gap between existential and normative contingency. The distributed nature of the self of the kyrios is itself a source of existential contingency, since it affects the coherence of the individual in a fundamental way – I argued that its extent is visible by inversion in the degree to which it is occluded in the Characters.¹⁸⁸ The normative demand that the household network be kept cohesive and under the sole control of the kyrios is revealed in the text only in the absence of domestic conflict between father and son, which was noted above.¹⁸⁹ Attacks upon the parts of the distributed self are harmful to the whole, but since this construction of the self is closely tied into its normative nature, this is largely a case of normative contingency, and will be discussed later.

It emerges that the Characters touch on existential contingency in various forms, but that it is not their core interest, conceivably because the social focus of the work necessarily marginalises existential threats. The few experiences that can be identified however are countered by the individual controlling the con-tingency by imposing their individual semanticisation on the contingent situation.

As a result, discussions of existential contingency in the Characters are always bound up with social and collective contingency, as we saw in the case of the Coward.