What Are the Implications that Peter Taught in 'Anecdotes'?

[Secret Alias]

Like you're going to search for it. Here it is again

https://books.google.com/books?id=hCh9k ... as&f=false

[John2]

Like you're going to search for it. Here it is again

https://books.google.com/books?id=hCh9k ... as&f=false

I was absolutely going to look for it (and I didn't see your first link because I have you on ignore and am busy at work), because it has frequently been my experience that the sources you cite do not support what you say, and that appears to be the case here as well, since your link says that the citation that Eusebius gives is more faithful to Clement than the citation that Cassiodorus gives. In other words, Watson is saying that Eusebius is being honest here and Cassiodorus is the one who is glossing over Clement's statements.

And you wrote upthread:

I forget who it was but a scholar showed that Eusebius has a tendency to gloss over Clement's statements. I think it is Cassiodorus who cites a passage and then Eusebius gives his 'corrected' take on it. This is what you never get. The Church Fathers don't pass on information with disinterest. They are arranging traditions which said many things with the explicit purpose of saying they all agreed.

[Secret Alias]

Yes I was at work and remembered Watson's point incorrect. You've got me on that. But no it's possible or very unlikely that Eusebius is telling us the truth here. But why do you have to make the same point in two different threads? You seem to think that:

Eusebius is telling the truth about Irenaeus telling the truth about Papias telling us the truth about Mark.

I dispute this point. We're discussing this in another thread. I'd like to keep this about the point raised in the OP - namely that the referent in the second sentence cited above could be Mark. Could we keep your nonsense locked up in the other thread please?

So again let me ask Ben and Ken (sounds like a radio show) the following question:

Accordingly, it is gradually being accepted among scholars that πρὸς τὰς χρείας is not to be rendered “according to needs/necessities,”113 but as “in the form of chreiai.”114 In his The Gospel According to St. Mark (1952), Vincent Taylor suggested that parts of Mark's version of the passion (14:1–16:8) were examples of chreiai.115 Recent research has picked up this suggestion in a more detailed and balanced way. In the groundbreaking study The Anecdote in Mark, the Classical World and the Rabbis (2002), Marion C. Moeser investigates Mark 8:27–10:45 in the light of the chreia form, concluding that out of fourteen detachable stories, nine can be shown to be types of chreiai.116 David B. Gowler argues that elaborations of chreiai are found in Mark 5:25–34, 11:15–17pp, and 11:27–33 1:15–17pp, and 11:27–33pp.117 Byrskog makes Mark 1:29–39 an arrangement of a string of chreiai.118 Under Byrskog's supervision, Tobias Hägerland has undertaken the task, arguing that Mark 2:6–12 developed from a chreia proper in verse 5: “When (ἰδὼν) Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, 'Son, your sins are forgiven.

Chreiai seem very closely to logia. The translation some give of Papias is:

The Elder used to say: Mark, in his capacity as Peter’s interpreter, wrote down accurately as many things as he recalled from memory—though not in an ordered form—of the things either said or done by the Lord. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied him, but later, as I said, Peter, who used to give his teachings in the form of chreiai, but had no intention of providing an ordered arrangement of the logia of the Lord. Consequently Mark did nothing wrong when he wrote down some individual items just as he related them from memory. For he made it his one concern not to omit anything he had heard or to falsify anything.

Bauckham:

The phrase translated above as “in the form of chreiai”(pros tas chreias) used to be commonly translated as “according to needs.” Papias was understood to be saying that Peter “adapted his teachings as needed,”36 or “used to adapt his instructions to the needs [of the hearers].”37 Read in this way, Papias's words might be thought in surprising agreement with the approach to the study of the Gospels known as form criticism.38 This maintained that the Gospel traditions were transmitted orally in the contexts (Sitze im Leben) in the life of the church in which they were put to use and were shaped or even created to meet the needs of such contexts. The form critics themselves, however, were evidently too convinced of the worthlessness of Papias's account of the origins of Mark to notice this point of agreement. The translation of pros tas chreias as “according to needs” has now been largely abandoned in favor of the view that Papias uses chreia here as a technical rhetorical term to describe the form in which Peter delivered his teachings about Jesus. The argument was first made by R. O. P. Taylor in 1946. He pointed out that the chreia was a rhetorical form defined and described in the ancient handbooks of rhetoric that were guides to elementary education. He quoted the definition given the definition given by Aelius Theon: “A Chreia is a concise and pointed account of something said or done, attributed to some particular person” (Theon, Progymnasmata 3.2-3). Taylor also observed “that the definition exactly fits the detachable little stories of which so much of Mark consists — which are, indeed, characteristic of the first three Gospels.”

[Secret Alias]

In case anyone is interested:

The Hellenistic and early Imperial evidence of χρεία (chreia) in the sense of anecdote is summarized with the aim of completeness. The special rhetorical sense of this common Greek word is discussed, and a new explanation of the semantic derivation is offered: it is suggested that the sense of anecdote derives from the earlier sense of dealings rather than utility. The proposal that Metrocles or the Cynics invented the micro-genre of chreiai is strongly criticized. It is to the Socratics more generally we should look for its origins, if the genre must be supposed to have originated among philosophers, which is not certain.

Keywords: Anecdote; apothegm; chreia; Cynics; history of education; progymnasmata; rhetoric; Socratics
The common word χρεία (chreia), which had a rich semantic field already on its first appearances in archaic Greek, had dwindled by the late Middle Ages into an inglorious euphemism for ‘latrine’, only to disappear altogether in modern Greek. Yet, from early imperial times up to and throughout the Byzantine period, chreia continued to be used in the sense of ‘anecdote’ in the rhetorical handbooks known as progymnasmata, a sense that has received a fair amount of recent scholarly attention. A number of claims have been made for the chreia in this sense: that it is a Cynic invention, that it is a basic pericope of the synoptic gospels and thus shows Cynic influence, that it is rather a much older practice in fact deriving from the classical school of Isocrates, that the name may be explained in terms of usefulness. It is the contention of this article that the educational practices associated with chreia as anecdote do not precede the mid to late Hellenistic period; that this technical sense of the word was already a Hellenistic fossil by the time of the extant treatises known as progymnasmata, being only rarely found outside of the confines of the grammar school after the first century, excepting authors who cite titles of or quote from Hellenistic works; that it did not originate as a synonym for apothegm but had become one by late antiquity. I will propose a new explanation of its etymology, connecting it more to the sense of familiar usage and conversation than to the more commonly assumed sense of utility or usefulness. I will assemble whatever evidence I have found for this sense of chreia outside its use within rhetorical education. I will argue both against tracing the chreia to specifically Cynic origins and for more generally viewing it as a Socratic phenomenon, if, indeed, the usage had philosophical origins, which I do not regard as proven. Finally, I will suggest a basic time-frame for its usage. What I will not do at length is to discuss the chreia in the progymnasmata for reasons presently to be explained.1

1 By Way of Introduction
The context in which this article has arisen is my editorial work on the Gnomologium Vaticanum and related collections of apophthegmata.2 Although in that edition I will not deal with the contents of this article in any depth, I will deal more extensively with related topics, such as the terms ἀποµνηµόνευµα (apomnēmoneuma), γνώµη (gnōmē) and ἀπόφθεγµα (apophthegma) as well as the progymnasmata tradition, which this article will, for reasons of economy, only treat in reduced fashion (but see n. 8 and § 6 on apothegm). Many relevant scholarly works that could be but are not cited here may in all likelihood be found cited there. In that edition, ‘apothegm’ is my preferred translation for the type of saying known as chreia. Here, however, I render it as ‘anecdote’, not merely because this has become quite standard among English-speaking scholars,3 but also because it serves as a reminder that the rhetorical and literary effects of the ancient chreia may be profitably compared to those of the modern anecdote.4 Strictly speaking, anecdote better renders the apomnēmoneuma of which the chreia may be considered a sub-category and thus chreia as known from the grammarians is better described ‘concise anecdote’; as will be seen I regard apomnēmoneuma and chreia as probably synonyms in their earlier use. I will not dwell on the meanings of either gnōmē, apophthegma or apomnēmoneuma, admitting that clearcut boundaries cannot be easily defined at least for chreiai, apophthegmata and apomnēmoneumata. However, the distinction between chreiai or apophthegmata and gnōmai is quite consistent over time, though there may be occasional exceptions.5

It is at the outset important to note how little we know of the origins of chreia as anecdote, whether it was particularly associated with one philosophical school more than others, exactly when and where rhetorical exercises involving chreiai originated, or how much this exercise influenced the synoptic evangelists. In one way it is easy to define and discuss chreia as anecdote, since grammarians or rhetoricians of the imperial period have already done so for us in their handbooks of rhetorical instruction (progymnasmata or preliminary exercises). They inform us that the chreia is a concise anecdote (apomnēmoneuma) recalling words or actions or both, appositely (εὐστόχως) attributed to a specific person (πρόσωπον). A maxim (gnōmē) can be turned into a chreia simply by attributing it to some person. It is called chreia because it is χρειώδης (chreiōdēs), that is useful, or βιωφελής (biōphelēs), that is beneficial, for life, or at least for the most part chrēsimon (useful) for something (ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πλεῖστον χρησίµου τινὸς ἕνεκα, ps.-Hermogenes 3.1). A chreia found in several progymnasmata and medieval gnomologia is this: Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ τῶν Μακεδόνων βασιλεύς, ἐρωτηθεὶς ὑπό τινος ποῦ ἔχει τοὺς θησαυρούς, Ἐν τούτοις, ἔφη, δείξας τοὺς φίλους (‘Alexander the King of the Macedonians, asked by someone where he kept his treasures, said “In these”, pointing to his friends’).6 This may serve as an example typical for its length, form and content.

Permit me to introduce a thought experiment: if we did not know anything of the chreia from Imperial Age rhetoricians, what would we make of the books of chreiai attributed to various Hellenistic authors, titles along with excerpts of which we find in writers such as Diogenes Laertius, Athenaeus and Stobaeus? We would simply have to rely on our knowledge of the ordinary meanings of chreia and try to connect the dots. This will be my methodology here: I will try to avoid taking the progymnasmata as a starting point and will first look at the etymology of the word itself (§ 2), and then at the evidence for its specialized meaning outside of the progymnasmata (§§ 3-5). Only then will I return to the grammarians in § 6, albeit briefly, since the interested reader can find a number of valuable, recent studies on them elsewhere.7 My goal is to contribute to a broader contextualization of the chreia by summarizing all the evidence for its usage in a single paper. This will also lead me to deal with the alleged Cynic origins of the chreia in § 7, and to suggest a basic time-frame for its development in my concluding remarks.

2 The Etymology
Unlike ἀπόφθεγµα (‘utterance’), there is nothing in the core-senses of chreia that naturally connects it to anecdote or saying.8 The usage thus begs an explanation, and already the late antique grammarians came up with one that is generally repeated today: it somehow derives from ‘use’ or ‘usefulness’. I think we can do better than this.

As in the case of words like χάρις (‘favor, thanks’), there is an in-built reciprocity of meaning in χρεία that invests it with a complex array of meanings, apparent on its first occurrences in Theognis, Pindar, the tragedians, Hippocratic treatises, Thucydides, Xenophon and Plato.9 The ordinary senses of the noun can be classified under two headings: need (neediness, necessity, want, lack, demand, request, requirement) and use (utility, service, equipment, business). Both Hans-Rainer Hollerbach and François Trouillet regard ‘need’ (Latin egestas) as the dominant semantic value from which the sense of ‘use’ (usus) derived; this conclusion is based on a hypothetically reconstructed progression of concepts beginning with a state of indigence or lack.10 Χρεία is undoubtedly equivalent to ‘need’ (want, lack, necessity) in such phrases cited by LSJ as χρείας ὕπο, φαρµάκων χρεία, ἵν᾽ ἕσταµεν χρείας, χρείᾳ πολεµεῖν (A. Th. 287, Pr. 481; S. OT 1443, OC 191). Already in Aeschylus χρεία appears in the sense of request or requirement (Pr. 700, Ch. 481), a sense also found in Thucydides (1.33, 37). Yet the two earliest instances of χρεία are placed by LSJ under the sense of ‘use’ (advantage, service): χρείης εἵνεκα µηδεµιῆς (Thgn. 1.62), χρεῖαι δὲ παντοῖαι φίλων ἀνδρῶν (Pi. N. 8.42). Although I would argue that even here the meaning of ‘need’ is more in the forefront, there is room for doubt. The earliest instances in prose (Antipho, Thucydides, Plato, Xenophon) exemplify both senses (‘need’, ‘use’). First in Antipho we also find χρεία designating ‘familiarity’ (relationship, dealings, intercourse): τῆς χρείας τῆς ἐµῆς καὶ τῆς Λυκίνου (Herodes 5.63).11 Several times χρεία is combined with κτῆσις as though equivalent to ἀπόλαυσις (‘enjoyment, fruition’), e.g. in the phrase πρὸς φίλων κτῆσίν τε καὶ χρείαν in X. Mem. 2.4. Given the early appearance of the various nuances of the two principal meanings, a convincing argument, at least to my mind, is found in Georges Redard’s valuable study on χρή and χρῆσθαι. There he describes the core meaning of the verb as a seeking to use (recourse), and affirms that this core meaning explains the other ordinary senses.12 At least this accounts for what we experience as a semantic divergence in its earliest instances.

Given these basic senses, how did chreia develop the specialized meaning of ‘anecdote’? One possibility is that chreia comes from a phrase like χρεία τῶν λόγων (‘the employment of words’, cf. LSJ s.v. III 2 who cite Pl. Sph. 239d, Plt. 272d). However, this is not only too facile but also too general: we would still have to explain why ‘use of words’ came to signify this anecdotal form in particular.13 As noted above, later grammarians hold that it is called χρεία because it is χρειώδης (chreiōdēs), ‘needful, serviceable, useful’. Why the noun would have been chosen instead of an adjective to designate useful sayings is difficult to understand: why should the usage be called ‘usage par excellence’ (χρεία κατ᾽ἐξοχήν) because it is more ‘useful for many purposes than the other exercises’ (µᾶλλον τῶν ἄλλων πρὸς πολλὰ χρειώδης), the way Homer is called the ‘poet par excellence’ among many poets (καθάπερ καὶ Ὅµηρον πολλῶν ὄντων ποιητῶν κατ᾽ εξοχὴν τοῦτον µόνον καλεῖν εἰώθαµεν ποιητήν)?14 These writers were writing hundreds of years after the anecdotal sense of chreia originated and after the chreia itself had been domesticated for school use, but their etymology has more or less steered modern interpretations.15

Kurt von Fritz suggests that the sense of ‘useful saying’ was likely formed on the analogy of χρεῖαι ναυτικαί (‘ship tackle’, i.e. equipments).16 One problem with this is that the only example in Greek literature of χρεῖαι as equipment, as far as I can see, is the very one cited by LSJ from Ael. VH 2.10, an author himself writing hundreds of years after the first appearances of chreia as anecdotal saying. Following up on the reference to Aelian, Trouillet explains the etymology thus: once it rendered the concept of utility, χρεία came to designate the useful thing itself, and it is within this register that χρεία developed in the vocabulary of rhetoric, acquiring the specialized sense of “a saying or action endowed with utility”.17 So we are back to ‘usefulness’ as the etymological explanation. Not every scholar, however, has been satisfied with this. In his edi‑ tion of the fragments of Machon’s Chreiai, useful for knowledge of various sexual positions but perhaps not in the sense intended by the grammarians (cf. § 6 below), A.S.F. Gow does mention Aphthonius’ explanation that chreia is so-called because it is chreiōdēs, but still feels that the name chreia “seems very odd and a more convincing explanation would be welcome”.18 William G. Rutherford also held that “the derivation of the rhetoricians cannot be accepted” and made the attractive suggestion that it more probably comes from being a remark πρὸς τὴν χρείαν (ad hunc usum or just ad hoc), an apposite remark.19 Yet πρὸς τὴν χρείαν, the earliest examples of which I find in Aristotle, seems never to be used to describe remarks; usually the phrase means something like ‘as needed’.

I propose instead a derivation related to the sense of ‘intercourse’ and ‘familiar dealings’, attested already in the fifth century as noted above. Redard suggested that the core meaning of χρεία is a ‘seeking to use’, for which we may compare the English ‘recourse’. According to OED, ‘recourse’ is earliest defined as a turning to for help, which develops into ‘access to help’, ‘dealings, communication’, ‘source of help’, etc. English has no one word that covers both need and use, but we can understand that such a multivalent word could acquire the sense of interchange or dealings. In fact chreia often means simply ‘intercourse, dealings or meeting’ in non-specialized Greek, overlapping in sense with ὁµιλία (homilia). Although homilia developed from a word meaning ‘crowd’, a comparison of the entries for homilia and chreia in standard lexica reveals several overlappings in meaning: ‘intercourse’ (also of a sexual kind), ‘conversation’, ‘familiar usage’, even simply ‘usage’ (e.g. αἱ τῶν λέξεων ὁµιλίαι, ὁµιλίαι φωνῆς). The sense of conversation and familiar usage eventually acquires a narrower, rhetorical sense in both cases, ‘anecdote’ in the case of chreia, ‘sermon’ or ‘lecture’ in the case of homilia.20 It is the sense of ‘familiar dealings’ rather than that of ‘utility’ which, to my mind at least, best explains the origins of the chreia as anecdote and connects it with the art of conversation. Chreiai, then, originally denoted examples of mutual dealings, specifically verbal exchanges or intercourse, which by their nature often involve requests and responses. A progression from ‘dealings’ to verbal dealings, i.e. examples of brief conversations, would not be unnatural and could, moreover, cover both the moralizing chreiai in the progymnasmata and medieval gnomologia and Machon’s salacious ones in Athenaeus.

3 Chreia in Book-Titles
We proceed now to look at occurrences of chreia as anecdote apart from the progymnasmata, beginning with its use in titles, the earliest evidence we have for this sense of the word. Titles of written works became increasingly important in the Hellenistic Age, keeping pace with the development of libraries, as well as increasingly more inventive than previously.21 Authors began to give more thought to the titles of their works, and, we may confidently assume, librarians established certain titles which later became standard.22 Hellenistic titles similar to Chreiai are Ὑποµνήµατα (‘reminders’ or ‘commentaries’) and Διατριβαί (more ‘pastimes’ than ‘diatribes’): these are words beginning with a more general sense that became technical through subsequent centuries of use. I submit that my proposed etymology of ‘familiar dealings’ fits well within the general context of Hellenistic book-titles, but I cannot pursue this at greater length here.

Unlike gnōmai and apophthegmata, chreiai (with one odd exception) does not appear in titles after the Hellenistic period, despite the use of rhetorical handbooks featuring the chreia throughout the Imperial period and Middle Ages. In the following list of occurrences in titles, I have aimed at completeness:

Χρεία πρὸς Διονύσιον, ἄλλη ἐπὶ τῆς εἰκόνος, ἄλλη ἐπὶ τῆς Διονυσίου θυγατρός (D.L. 2.84, first list of Aristippus’ books; see below on the singular usage)
Χρειῶν τρία (D.L. 2.85, Sotion’s list of Aristippus’ books)23
Χρειῶν α´ (D.L. 5.81, list of works of Demetrius of Phalerum)24
Ἑκάτων ἐν ταῖς Χρείαις (D.L. 6.4, 6.32, 6.95, 7.26, 7.172)
Μετροκλῆς ἐν ταῖς Χρείαις (D.L. 6.33)
Σωτίων δ᾽ ἐν τῷ ἑβδόµῳ ταῦτα µόνα φησὶ Διογένους εἶναι ... Χρείας ... (D.L. 6.80)
Ζήνων δ᾽ ὁ Κιτιεὺς ἐν ταῖς Χρείαις (D.L. 6.91)
Χρειῶν δ´ (D.L. 7.36, works of Persaeus)
Χρειῶν ια´ (D.L. 7.163, works of Ariston of Chios)
Περὶ χρειῶν (D.L. 7.175, works of Cleanthes)
Μάχων δ᾽ ὁ κωµῳδιοποιὸς ἐν ταῖς ἐπιγραφοµέναις Χρείαις (Athenaeus 13.577d, etc, cf. below §4)
ἐκ τῶν Δίωνος Χρειῶν in Stobaeus (listed below)
ἐκ τῶν Ἀριστοτέλους Χρειῶν in Stobaeus (listed below)
Here the earliest author to whom books of chreiai are attributed is Aristippus, the pupil of Socrates; the latest, Dio Chrysostom according to Stobaeus, Hecaton according to Diogenes Laertius. When we read that three books of chreiai are attributed to Aristippus, we do not know whether Aristippus is being claimed as author of the books or subject; if the former, then Aristippus is the earliest writer to whom books of chreiai are attributed. The same ambiguity holds in other cases, for example, that of the Cynic Diogenes in D.L. 6.80.25 Here we need to exercise judgment: both Aristippus and Diogenes have a great number of anecdotes attributed to them, so the books of chreiai in their case are more probably chreiai about them rather than composed or compiled by them, though the singular usage in D.L. 2.84 points toward Aristippus as author (cf. § 7). Stoics are the best represented philosophers in the list: Zeno, Persaeus, Ariston, Cleanthes and Hecaton are all Stoics, although the title attributed to Cleanthes was surely not a collection of chreiai but a treatise about chreiai in one of the senses of the word. The surprising ‘Chreiai of Aristotle’ appears several times in Stobaeus.26 These chreiai are not sayings of Aristotle but of others, including some junior contemporaries of Aristotle. We may be dealing with a simple confusion of Aristotle for Ariston; the Aristotelian commentator Elias does refer a saying to Aristotle ἐν ἀποφθέγµασιν (CAG 18.1 In Porph. Isag., p. 21) that is elsewhere attributed to Gorgias but is also excerpted from the Homoeomata (Similes) of Ariston in Stobaeus (3.4.109).27 The Chreiai of Dio is the sole post-Hellenistic title, if indeed we are dealing with Dio Chrysostom, an exact contemporary of Plutarch (see below).

4 Excerpts from Collections of Chreiai
Leaving this survey of titles, we now proceed to what we can say about chreiai from the quotations of collections expressly entitled chreiai. When we examine Athenaeus’ extracts from the Chreiai of Machon (see no. xi in § 3), whose floruit may be placed around 250 BC,28 we find that they tend to be quite a bit longer than the chreiai in the progymnasmata and likewise longer than most of the ones in my medieval gnomologia: they are not concise, one-line anecdotes. Moreover, they are not moralizing sayings but may simply be classified as urbane anecdotes of varying length like Xenophon’s apomnēmoneumata (‘recollections’) of Socrates; many of them involve courtesans with a number of explicit sexual jokes, others involve parasites and musicians. After a series of ribald sayings involving a courtesan named Mania, Athenaeus remarks: καὶ ἄλλων δὲ ἑταιρῶν ἀποµνηµονεύµατα ὁ Μάχων συνήγαγεν (ʻMachon gathered recollections of other courtesans as well’, 13.579de). Athenaeus thus equated chreiai with apomnēmoneumata.29 To hazard a guess based on the fragments, Machon probably arranged his chreiai by main speaker (e.g. Mania, Stratonicus, Gnathaena), since Athenaeus tends to quote them in series. To save space, I will only offer one quite brief example involving a musician:

Ὁ κρουµατοποιὸς Δωρίων ποτ’ εἰς Μυλῶν ἐλθὼν κατάλυσιν οὐδαµοῦ µισθωσίµην δυνάµενος εὑρεῖν ἐν τεµένει καθίσας τινί, ὃ πρὸ τῶν πυλῶν ἦν κατὰ τύχην ἱδρυµένον, ἰδών τ’ ἐκεῖ θύοντα τὸν νεωκόρον, “πρὸς τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς καὶ θεῶν, τίνος, φράσον, ἐστὶν ὁ νεώς, βέλτιστε, φησίν, οὑτοσί;” ὁ δ’ εἶπεν αὐτῷ “Ζηνοποσειδῶνος, ξένε.” ὁ Δωρίων δὲ “πῶς ἂν οὖν ἐνταῦθ’, ἔφη, δύναιτο καταγωγεῖον ἐξευρεῖν τις, οὗ καὶ τοὺς θεοὺς φάσκουσιν οἰκεῖν σύνδυο;”30

The musician Dorion visited Mylae once and was unable to find a room for rent anywhere. He sat down in a sacred precinct that happened to be located before the gates, and when he saw the person in charge of the temple making a sacrifice there, he said: “By Athena and the other gods—tell me, sir: whose temple is this?” The man said to him: “It belongs to Zenoposeidon, stranger.” And Dorion said: “How could anyone find a place to stay here, where they say that even the gods share a house?”

Like many of Machon’s chreiai, this is a short conversation involving a question and answer, although not all the fragments exhibit such a form, so typical of many later chreiai; yet nearly all of them do offer snippets of conversation within a briefly described setting. None of them are obviously moralizing or involve instructions on how to live, so they cannot be called useful (chreiōdēs) at least in that sense, though they might be seen as useful for enlivening one’s conversation or providing a writer with raw materials. Of course, it is possible that Machon—a comic poet—meant the title chreiai ironically, that is, if the genre was already perceived as moralizing, but Machon must still be placed early in the tradition, being in fact a junior contemporary of Metrocles, its alleged inventor (see § 7), so the ironical reference seems unlikely. Machon’s chreiai are, at least, examples of witty conversation or ‘familiar dealings’.

Excerpts in the anthology of Stobaeus (ed. Wachsmuth and Hense) from explicitly so-called collections of chreiai come from either the Chreiai of Aristotle or the Chreiai of Dio (translations are my own):

A. Ἐκ τῶν Ἀριστοτέλους Χρειῶν

3.5.42 Γέλων ὁ Σικελίας τύραννος σαπρόστοµος ἦν. ὡς οὖν τῶν φίλων τις εἶπεν αὐτῷ, ὠργίζετο τῇ γυναικὶ ὅτι οὐκ ἐµήνυσεν αὐτῷ· ἡ δὲ ἔφη, “ᾤµην γὰρ καὶ τῶν λοιπῶν ὁµοίως ὄζειν τὸ στόµα.”
Gelon, the tyrant of Sicily, had mouth rot. When one of his friends told him so, he grew angry at his wife because she had not informed him. She, however, said “But, I thought every man’s breath smelled like that.”
3.7.29 Ἀνάξαρχος ὁ φυσικός, εἰπόντος αὐτῷ Ἀλεξάνδρου ὅτι “κρεµῶ σε”, “ἀπείλει τούτοις” ἔφη “τοῖς πολλοῖς· ἐµοὶ δὲ οὐδὲν διαφέρει ὑπὲρ γῆς ἢ κατὰ γῆς σήπεσθαι.”
When Alexander said to Anaxarchus the natural philosopher, “I shall hang you”, Anaxarchus replied, “Keep your threats for hoi polloi. As for me, I do not care whether I rot above ground or under it.”
3.7.30 Γοργὼ ἡ Λακεδαιµονία Λεωνίδου γυνή, τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτῆς ἐπὶ στρατείαν πορευοµένου, τὴν ἀσπίδα ἐπιδιδοῦσα εἶπεν “ἢ ταύταν ἢ ἐπὶ ταύτας”.
The Spartan woman Gorgo, Leonidas’ wife, handed the shield to her son who was going off to war and said to him, “With it or on it.”
3.29.70 Λᾶσος <ὁ> Ἑρµιονεὺς ἐρωτηθεὶς τί εἴη σοφώτατον, “πεῖρα” ἔφη.
Lasus from Hermione was asked, “What is the highest wisdom?” “Experience,” he said.
3.29.90 Δηµοσθένης ἐρωτηθεὶς “πῶς τῆς ῥητορικῆς περιεγένου;” “πλέον” ἔφη “ἔλαιον οἴνου δαπανήσας.”
Demosthenes was asked, “How did you reach the peak of your profession as an orator?” He said, “By spending more money on lamp oil than on wine.”
4.1.144 Δηµοσθένης ὁ ῥήτωρ ἔφη πόλεως εἶναι ψυχὴν τοὺς νόµους· “ὥσπερ γὰρ σῶµα στερηθὲν ψυχῆς πίπτει, οὕτω καὶ πόλις µὴ ὄντων νόµων καταλύεται.”
Demosthenes the orator said that laws are the soul of the city-state, for “Just as a body bereft of its soul collapses, so too perishes the city with no laws.”
4.15b.31 Ζήνων ὁ Στωϊκὸς φιλόσοφος ὁρῶν τινα τῶν γνωρίµων ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀγροῦ περισπώµενον εἶπεν “ἐὰν µὴ σὺ τοῦτον ἀπολέσῃς, οὗτός σε ἀπολέσει.”
Zeno the Stoic philosopher, seeing a disciple of his worrying about his land, said to him, “It will be the riddance of you, if you don’t get rid of your field.”
4.31c.91 Ἀνακρέων ὁ µελοποιὸς λαβὼν τάλαντον χρυσίου παρὰ Πολυκράτους τοῦ τυράννου, ἀπέδωκεν εἰπὼν “µισῶ δωρεάν, ἥ τις ἀναγκάζει ἀγρυπνεῖν.”
Anacreon the lyric poet received a talent of gold from Polycrates the tyrant, but he returned it to him, saying “I hate the kind of gift that keeps me up at night.”
4.50b.83 Ἄλεξις ὁ τῶν κωµῳδιῶν ποιητής, ἐπειδή τις αὐτὸν ὄντα πρεσβύτην ἑώρα µόλις πορευόµενον καὶ ἠρώτα “τί ποιεῖς”, ἔφη “κατὰ σχολὴν ἀποθνήσκω.”
Someone saw Alexis the comic poet making his way with great difficulty due to his advanced age and asked him, “What are you up to?” Alexis answered, “I’m dying at a leisurely pace.”
4.51.28 Γοργίας ὁ ῥήτωρ ἤδη γηραιὸς ὑπάρχων ἐρωτηθεὶς εἰ ἡδέως ἀποθνήσκοι, “ἥδιστα” εἶπεν “ὥσπερ δὲ ἐκ σαπροῦ καὶ ῥέοντος συνοικιδίου ἀσµένως ἀπαλλάττοµαι.”
Gorgias the orator, when he was already an old man, was asked if he would be content to die. “Quite content,” he said, “just as glad as I would be to move out of rotting and leaky tenement.”
B. Ἐκ τῶν Δίωνος Χρειῶν

2.31.89 Ἀθηναίοις ἐροµένοις, ὅπως λῷον <ἂν> αὐτοῖς γίγνοιτο, ἔχρησεν ἡ Πυθία· εἰ τὸ κάλλιστον εἰς τὸ δεξιὸν οὖς τῶν παίδων ἐντιθέναι βούλοιντο· οἱ δὲ τρήσαντες αὐτὸ χρυσίον ἐνέβαλλον, ἀγνοήσαντες, ὅτι τὸν φιλόσοφον λόγον ἐµήνυσε.
The reply of the Pythia to the Athenians’ question how they might improve their situation was: “Deposit your finest possession in the right ear of your children.” They pierced the children’s ears and put a piece of gold in it, not understanding that the priestess meant philosophical discourse.
3.7.28 Λάκαινα γυνὴ τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτῆς ἐν παρατάξει χωλωθέντος καὶ δυσφοροῦντος ἐπὶ τούτῳ “µὴ λυποῦ, τέκνον” εἶπεν “καθ’ ἕκαστον γὰρ βῆµα τῆς ἰδίας ἀρετῆς ὑποµνησθήσῃ.”
When her son came home lame from battle and upset about it, a Spartan woman said, “Do not be sad, my son, that your virtue is commemorated at every step.”
3.13.42 Τὴν ἐπιτίµησιν ὁ Διογένης ἀλλότριον ἀγαθὸν ἔλεγεν εἶναι.
Diogenes used to call censure a good belonging to another.
3.34.16 Τῶν συνόντων τις µειρακίων Διογένει, ἐρωτώµενος ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ ἐσιώπα· ὁ δὲ ἔφη “οὐκ οἴει τοῦ αὐτοῦ εἶναι εἰδέναι τε ἃ λεκτέον καὶ πότε, καὶ τίνα σιωπητέον, καὶ πρὸς τίνα;”
When one of the lads hanging around Diogenes, asked a question by him, remained silent, Diogenes said “Don’t you think it is the same thing to know what and when to speak and what and concerning what to be silent?”
Most of the ten selections from the ‘Chreiai of Aristotle’ have direct parallels in the progymnasmata or in medieval gnomologia, and all of them would fit in.31 Despite their alleged attribution to Aristotle, these chreiai, although mentioning a couple of philosophers, can only by a long stretch of the term be called philosophical chreiai. B.ii, iii and iv from the ‘Chreiai of Dio’ resemble anecdotes found elsewhere; B.i sticks out stylistically as an historical example of the misunderstanding of an oracle; it is coined on a passage in a genuine oration of Dio Chrysostom, which appears to confirm the attribution in Stobaeus and gainsays conjectures of any mistake for a ‘Chreiai of Diogenes’.32 That said, it does not confirm the authorship of Dio himself, for the title may simply refer to chreiai collected by someone else from the diatribai of Dio.

We have already seen the term chreia in book titles in Diogenes Laertius.33 With one exception the titles tell us nothing about the form or content. The exception really is an exception, for we find chreia in the singular with qualifying prepositional phrases in the first list of Aristippus’ works (D.L. 2.84): Χρεία πρὸς Διονύσιον, ἄλλη ἐπὶ τῆς εἰκόνος, ἄλλη ἐπὶ τῆς Διονυσίου θυγατρός.34 The sense of anecdote may be doubted here, and perhaps that of transaction or petition is intended. However, if chreia as ‘anecdote’ is intended, then it better fits my proposal that chreia originally represented a conversation rather than the concise anecdote of the progymnasmata, since the only thing these titles tell us is that these chreiai must have been long enough to stand alone, not unlike the longer apomnēmoneumata of Xenophon.35

In one of the three occurrences of chreia as anecdote apart from book titles, Diogenes tells us that Arcesilaus ‘used to bring up’ the chreiai of Aristippus (προεφέρετο τὰς Ἀριστίππου χρείας, D.L. 4.40). The verb προφέρω here can be taken to mean ‘cite’ (as one cites in excuse or defense of something), and we may assume that it refers to citing the numerous sayings elsewhere attributed to Aristippus rather than the chreiai attributed to him in the lists of works, unless these be in some sense equivalent.

Diogenes Laertius offers these extracts from chreiai collections expressly so called:

κρεῖττον ἔλεγε, καθά φησιν Ἑκάτων ἐν ταῖς Χρείαις, εἰς κόρακας ἢ εἰς κόλακας ἐµπεσεῖν· οἱ µὲν γὰρ νεκρούς, οἱ δὲ ζῶντας ἐσθίουσιν. (D.L. 6.4)“Better,” Antisthenes used to say, according to Hecaton in the Chreiai, “to fall to crows than to flatterers. The former consume dead men, the latter living ones.”
φωνήσας ποτέ, “ἰὼ ἄνθρωποι,” συνελθόντων, καθίκετο τῇ βακτηρίᾳ, εἰπών, “ἀνθρώπους ἐκάλεσα, οὐ καθάρµατα,” ὥς φησιν Ἑκάτων ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ τῶν Χρειῶν. (6.32)Once Diogenes cried out, “People!”, and when some people gathered, he hit them with his cane, saying “I called for people, not trash!”, as Hecaton states in the first book of (the) Chreiai.36
εἰσελθών ποτε ἡµιξύρητος εἰς νέων συµπόσιον, καθά φησι Μητροκλῆς ἐν ταῖς Χρείαις, πληγὰς ἔλαβε· µετὰ δὲ ἐγγράψας τὰ ὀνόµατα εἰς λεύκωµα τῶν πληξάντων περιῄει ἐξηµµένος ἕως αὐτοὺς ὕβρει περιέθηκε καταγινωσκοµένους καὶ ἐπιπληττοµένους. (6.33)Diogenes once went into a party of young people with his head half-shaved, as Metrocles relates in the Chreiai, and was beaten up. Afterwards he wrote the names of his attackers on a chalkboard that he hung about his neck, and then walked around until he brought insult on them by allowing them to be known and beaten up.
Ζήνων δ’ ὁ Κιτιεὺς ἐν ταῖς Χρείαις καὶ κῴδιον αὐτόν φησί ποτε προσράψαι τῷ τρίβωνι ἀνεπιστρεπτοῦντα. (6.91)In the Chreiai, Zeno of Citium relates that Crates once sewed a sheepskin on to his worn-out cloak without a care.
Οὗτος τὰ ἑαυτοῦ συγγράµµατα κατακαίων, ὥς φησιν Ἑκάτων ἐν πρώτῳ Χρειῶν, ἐπέλεγε τάδ’ ἔστ’ ὀνείρων νερτέρων φαντάσµατα. (6.95)As Hecaton relates in the Chreiai, Metrocles burned up his own books, saying as he did so: “They are phantoms of infernal dreams.”
φησὶ δὲ καὶ Ἑκάτων ἐν τῷ δευτέρῳ τῶν Χρειῶν ἀνίεσθαι αὐτὸν ἐν ταῖς τοιαύταις κοινωνίαις. (7.26)37In the second book of the Chreiai, Hecaton says that Zeno would allow himself to relax in such gatherings (drinking parties).
φησὶ δ’ ὁ Ἑκάτων ἐν ταῖς Χρείαις, εὐµόρφου µειρακίου εἰπόντος, “εἰ ὁ εἰς τὴν γαστέρα τύπτων γαστρίζει, καὶ ὁ εἰς τοὺς µηροὺς τύπτων µηρίζει,” ἔφη, “σὺ µὲν τοὺς διαµηρισµοὺς ἔχε, µειράκιον· αἱ δ’ ἀνάλογοι φωναὶ τὰ ἀνάλογα οὐ πάντως σηµαίνουσι πράγµατα.” (7.172)Hecaton relates in the Chreiai, that when a good-looking youth said, “If someone who slaps his stomach gastrizei, then someone who slaps his thigh mērizei”, Cleanthes answered: “Keep your thighs to yourself, boy! Analogous terms do not always signify analogous actions.”
Chreia i is in many medieval gnomologia;38 ii and v are without parallel but perhaps would not be out of place in the gnomologia or the progymnasmata; vii is a terminological joke that more resembles Machon than chreiai in the later sources. Even if their moral point can be understood, chreiai iv and vi are more difficult to classify and do not resemble later ones; the original context was probably more informative. Though iii has a moral point and would be classified as an action chreia according to later categories in the progymnasmata, it is less concise than their typical chreiai and may have been longer in the original context of the chreiai here apparently attributed to Metrocles (for more on this see § 7).

5 Other Occurrences of Chreia as Anecdote
These, then, are the principal examples of quotations from works expressly entitled chreiai. Apart from progymnasmata, there are surprisingly few instances of chreia as anecdote in extant Greek literature, including the medieval period, at least as far as I have seen. None of the surviving collections of apothegms, which might otherwise fit the bill, from Plutarch to our medieval gnomologia, are ever entitled chreiai, nor is the word chreia ever used in this sense in the medieval collections. The Suda states that Theocritus of Chios composed chreiai (θ 166), and that Myro, a female philosopher from Rhodes, compiled χρείας γυναικῶν βασιλίδων καὶ µύθους (µ 1465); we may assume she belongs to the Hellenistic period. Menander of Laodicea (Menander Rhetor) speaks of the usefulness of chreiai and other sayings in achieving a conversational style:

Xρησιµώτατοι δὲ πρὸς λαλιὰν καὶ οἱ Πλουτάρχειοι βίοι, ὥσπερ εἰς ἄλλην πολλὴν καὶ παντοδαπῆ παίδευσιν· καὶ γὰρ πλήρεις εἰσὶν ἱστοριῶν καὶ ἀποφθεγµάτων καὶ παροιµιῶν καὶ χρειῶν· ταῦτα γὰρ πάντα καταµιγνύναι ταῖς λαλιαῖς χρήσιµον, ἵνα πανταχόθεν τὴν ἡδονὴν θηρεύσωµεν.39

Plutarch’s Lives, too, are most useful for informal talks, as well as for all kinds of educational use. For they are full of stories, apothegms, proverbs and chreiai. It is useful to mix all these into one’s talk so that we may pursue what is pleasing everywhere.

There may be subtle allusions to both chreia and gnōmē in Plutarch’s dedicatory preface to Sayings of Kings and Commanders (Βασιλεῶν ἀποφθέγµατα καὶ στρατηγῶν), whether or not the preface is genuine:

Tοιαύτῃ δή τινι γνώµῃ κἀµοῦ λιτά σοι δῶρα καὶ ξένια καὶ κοινὰς ἀπαρχὰς προσφέροντος ἀπὸ φιλοσοφίας ἅµα τῇ προθυµίᾳ καὶ τὴν χρείαν ἀπόδεξαι τῶν ἀποµνηµονευµάτων, εἰ πρόσφορον ἔχει τι πρὸς κατανόησιν ἠθῶν καὶ προαιρέσεων ἡγεµονικῶν, ἐµφαινοµένων τοῖς λόγοις µᾶλλον ἢ ταῖς πράξεσιν αὐτῶν.40

And so, with some such thought (gnōmē) in mind, I likewise offer to you trifling gifts and tokens of friendship, the common offerings of the first-fruits that come from philosophy, and I beg that you will be good enough to accept, in conjunction with the author’s ready goodwill, the utility (chreia) which may be found in these brief notes (apomnēmoneumata), if so be that they contain something meet for the true understanding of the characters and predilections of men in high places, which are better reflected in their words than in their actions.41

More importantly, Plutarch’s Apophthegmata laconica 218A contains one of only three uses of the word chreia (as anecdote) within a chreia that I have seen:

Ἀρίστων, ἐπαινοῦντός τινος τὴν τοῦ Κλεοµένους χρείαν, ὅτι ἐρωτηθεὶς τί δεῖ τὸν ἀγαθὸν βασιλέα ποιεῖν εἶπε τοὺς µὲν φίλους εὐεργετεῖν τοὺς δ’ ἐχθροὺς κακῶς ποιεῖν· “καὶ πόσῳ κρεῖσσον” ἔφη, “ὦ λῷστε, τοὺς µὲν φίλους εὐεργετεῖν τοὺς δ’ ἐχθροὺς φίλους ποιεῖν;” αὕτη Σωκράτους ὁµολογουµένη πρὸς πάντων χρεία οὖσα καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν ἀναφέρεται.

When someone praised the chreia of Cleomenes who, when asked what a good king should do, said “benefit his friends, harm his enemies”, Aristo replied, “how much better, my good man, to benefit your friends and to make friends of your enemies”. This is generally agreed to be a chreia of Socrates and is attributed to him.

Here chreia occurs both in the anecdote itself and in the authorial or scribal note following it. There are two other such instances in Diogenes Laertius.42 One, almost never discussed, is Zeno’s citation of a chreia within a chreia in D.L. 7.19:

Πρὸς δὲ τὸν φάσκοντα ὡς τὰ πολλὰ αὐτῷ Ἀντισθένης οὐκ ἀρέσκοι, χρείαν Σοφοκλέους προενεγκάµενος ἠρώτησεν εἴ τινα καὶ καλὰ ἔχειν αὐτῷ δοκεῖ· τοῦ δ᾽ οὐκ εἰδέναι φήσαντος, “εἶτ᾽ οὐκ αἰσχύνῃ,” ἔφη, “εἰ µέν τι κακὸν ἦν εἰρηµένον ὑπ᾽ Ἀντισθένους, τοῦτ᾽ ἐκλεγόµενος καὶ µνηµονεύων, εἰ δέ τι καλόν, οὐδ᾽ ἐπιβαλλόµενος κατέχειν;”

To someone who was saying that he didn’t much like Antisthenes, Zeno cited (προφέρω) a chreia of Sophocles and asked if he thought it made any good points. When the other man said he didn’t know, Zeno asked, “Aren’t you ashamed to collect and remember anything bad said by Antisthenes without even attempting to recall anything good he may have said?”

Here we have a chreia quoted within a chreia of the founder of the Stoics to whom a collection of chreiai is attributed, yet no scholar argues for the Stoic origins of the genre. This stands in stark contrast to our second example found in the Life of Aristotle:

Διογένους ἰσχάδ’ αὐτῷ διδόντος νοήσας ὅτι, εἰ µὴ λάβοι, χρείαν εἴη µεµελετηκώς, λαβὼν ἔφη Διογένην µετὰ τῆς χρείας καὶ τὴν ἰσχάδα ἀπολωλεκέναι.43

Diogenes offered him (Aristotle) a fig. He (Aristotle) thought that, should he not take it, he (Diogenes) would have rehearsed a chreia (for the occasion). So Aristotle took it, saying that Diogenes had lost his fig along with his chreia.44

Scholars have seen this instance of chreia as support for the idea of the Cynic origins of the genre.45 There is a close parallel to this in the Life of Stilpo:

ἀλλὰ καὶ ἰσχάδα προτείναντος αὐτῷ ποτε καὶ ἐρώτηµα δεξάµενον καταφαγεῖν· τοῦ δέ, “ὦ Ἡράκλεις,” εἰπόντος, “ἀπολώλεκα τὴν ἰσχάδα·” “οὐ µόνον,” ἔφη, “ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ ἐρώτηµα, οὗ ἦν ἀρραβὼν ἡ ἰσχάς.”46

Crates offered him a fig once and a question. Stilpo took it and ate it up. “Heracles!” said Crates, “I lost my fig!” “Not only that”, said Stilpo, “but also the question for which the fig was a bribe.”

These two versions, both involving Cynics, may conceal a reference to an otherwise unknown game of offering a fruit.47 The Stilpo version strikes me as being earlier, both because it seems to refer to a popular custom in which only a correct answer gives the right to consume the fruit and because it does not contain the word chreia. I suspect this word to be a substitution in a later retelling, once the teaching of chreiai had become more established, rendering the anecdote more intelligible to a later reader.48 The change of names would also help later readers grasp the point. Given that Diogenes figured widely in the chreiai used in the schools, the anecdote in D.L. 5.18 shows us Aristotle beating Diogenes at his own game, but it does not prove that the chreia tradition itself originated with Diogenes; it only indicates that it was regarded as a speciality of his.

6 Back to the Progymnasmata
The sources for all the instances of chreia in §§ 3-5 are authors of the Imperial Age, though they are referring to or quoting from Hellenistic writers. As far as I know, there are no occurrences of the word chreia as anecdote in early papyri, and, in fact, in only one later papyrus, a fragment of a rhetorical treatise.49 The exiguity of the evidence has made our interpretation of chreia as anecdote heavily dependent on the information supplied in the progymnasmata.50

The three most important extant ancient or late antique handbooks are attributed to Theon, pseudo-Hermogenes (a.k.a. pseudo-Libanius), and Aphthonius.51 In addition to these, there are a number of relevant fragments or allusions in various extant authors, none earlier than the first century of our era, as well as medieval progymnasmata.52 Ronald F. Hock and Edward N. O’Neil published three valuable volumes on the chreia in ancient rhetoric: Hock and O’Neil 1986 collects the discussions of chreia in the four Greek treatises as well as in three Latin;53 Hock and O’Neil 2002 collects the evidence for exercises of copying, declining and elaborating chreiai in the papyri as well as in mostly Byzantine authors; Hock 2012 deals with the commentaries and scholia on Aphthonius concerning the use of chreiai. Michel Patillon, George Kennedy, Malcolm Heath and several other recent scholars have made important contributions to the study of ancient rhetoric that are also relevant to the chreia tradition.54 The progymnasmata reveal a settled educational practice in which teachers, tending toward pedantry, define the chreia as a brief recollection (apomnēmoneuma), make reference to its usefulness, and offer various classifications of different types of chreiai (cf. § 1).

Setting aside the Hellenistic works cited by Imperial Age authors, our earliest, securely datable mentions of chreia as anecdote are in Plutarch, Seneca and Quintilian.55 In addition to my quotations from the collections of apothegms going under the name of Plutarch in § 5, we also have his disparaging words in De profectibus in virtute (Mor. 78F): ἔνιοι δὲ χρείας καὶ ἱστορίας ἀναλεγόµενοι περιίασιν, some people ʻgo about collecting anecdotes and stories about philosophers’ but lack philosophical perception. Seneca offers similar thoughts in Ep. 33.7: ideo pueris et sententias ediscendas damus et has quas Graeci chrias vocant, ‘this is why we make boys learn both maxims and those the Greeks call chreiai’ because their young age does not yet have the capacity of deeper philosophical insight.56 Seneca goes on to criticize the men who immaturely keep quoting the sayings of others with no originality: aliquid et de tuo profer (‘offer some thought of your own as well’)! Both Plutarch and Seneca here associate chreiai (as well as maxims and other stories) with first steps in moral philosophy rather than rhetoric or grammar, and their criticism is similar: these beginners learn how to quote but not to think on their own.

Quintilian is our earliest author to offer a brief description of chreiai in the context of elementary literary instruction (Inst. 1.9.3-6), mentioning their typical classifications (i.e. as simple statements, as replies or reactions, as describing actions) as well as the custom of declining them. Like Seneca, Quintilian uses the Greek word in transcription, but he equates chreia with narratiuncula.57 He places the chreia exercise under the supervision of the grammaticus before the boys are placed under a rhetor (priusquam rhetori tradantur). Quintilian does not speak of the chreia being so called because of its usefulness, but he does give us a different sense of chreiōdēs (χρειώδης) when he mentions a third type: et aliud paene par ei, quod tamen eodem nomine appellare non audent, sed dicunt χρειῶδες. Hock and O’Neil correctly translate this as: ‘And there is another type almost its equivalent, which they nevertheless do not venture to call by the same name but instead call ‘chreia-like’.’58 The example given by Quintilian is: ‘Milo used to carry the bull which he had grown accustomed to carry as a calf’ (Milo quem vitulum adsueverat ferre, taurum ferebat). This is not dissimilar to chreiai iv and vi (D.L. 6.91, 7.26) in § 4 above, yet this kind of chreia is not found in the Greek progymnasmata where the few examples of ‘actions-chreiai’ show an action in response to a question or to another action and not, as here, a simple assertion of someone’s action.59

In De rhetoribus, Suetonius does not mention chreiai but he may have had them in mind when he places the supervision of exercises involving dicta praeclare under the rhetor, although this may simply refer to exercises involving maxims (Rhet. 25.8-9).60 If dicta praeclare do cover chreiai, then Suetonius coincides with the educational scheme of Aelius Theon who also places the chreiai first. Theon is regarded by the majority of scholars as the earliest of the Greek authors of progymnasmata, more or less contemporary with Quintilian and Suetonius. Malcolm Heath has however argued at length for dating Theon to the fourth or fifth rather than the first century; if Heath’s arguments have been refuted with equal force and rigor, it has not yet come to my attention.61 The controversy of dating, whatever its eventual resolution, underlines how little we actually know about Theon or the other authors of the progymnasmata that are so central to our understanding of the chreia tradition.

By giving pride of place to the chreia and omitting the exercise involving maxims or at least never referring to it, Aelius Theon is an outlier among the extant progymnasmata. He devotes far more space to division and subdivision of the varieties of chreia than the others and is the only one to insist on having students inflect the chreiai in the grammatical cases and numbers (including the dual).62 Both ps.-Hermogenes and Aphthonius are far briefer in their exposition and also far more interested in training the students in the elaboration (ἐργασία) of chreiai. The priority given to chreiai by Theon is extraordinary as is his omission of maxims (gnōmai), not only because the other writers deal with maxims prior to chreiai but especially because γνωµολογία (the use of maxims in speaking) was a recognized feature of rhetorical instruction already in classical times and received a chapter of its own in Aristotle’s Rhetoric (2.21). The only explanation for Theon’s method that occurs to me is that he regarded the exercise of maxim as subsumed under that of chreia, since, like the other writers, he admits that a maxim may be turned into a chreia by mere attribution to a person. This admission, however, immediately involves Theon in a direct contradiction, for, alone among the writers of progymnasmata, he points out that one way in which the chreia differs from the maxim is in being witty and not necessarily edifying (τῷ χαριεντίζεσθαι τὴν χρείαν ἐνίοτε µηδὲν ἔχουσαν βιωφελές) whereas the maxim is always useful for life (τὴν δὲ γνώµην ἀεὶ περὶ τῶν ἐν τῷ βιῷ χρησίµων εἶναι). He states this, mind you, after having acknowledged that the chreia is more useful for many purposes in life than other rhetorical exercises (µᾶλλον τῶν ἄλλων πρὸς πολλὰ χρειώδης ἐστὶ τῷ βιῷ). Furthermore, in the preface outlining his educational programme, Theon stresses the moral usefulness of the chreia in these words: ἡ διὰ τῆς χρείας γυµνασία οὐ µόνον τινὰ δύναµιν λόγων ἐργάζεται, ἀλλὰ καὶ χρηστόν τι ἦθος ἐγγυµναζοµένων ἡµῶν τοῖς τῶν σοφῶν ἀποφθέγµασιν (‘the exercise with the chreia not only produces a certain verbal facility but also good moral character in that we are exercising with the apothegms of the wise’, 60.16-19).

Wittiness may seem to us an obvious, even essential characteristic of the chreia, but it is only once described as such in the above, notably inconsistent passage in Theon. Otherwise the writers of the progymnasmata agree that the core characteristics of the chreia are brevity, personal attribution and usefulness. Theon, ps.-Hermogenes and Aphthonius all use the adjective σύντοµος (concise or brief) in defining the chreia: χρεία ἐστὶ σύντοµος ἀπόφασις ἢ πρᾶξις (Theon 96.18-19), χρεία ἐστὶ ἀποµνηµόνευµα λόγου τινὸς ἢ πράξεως ἢ συναµφοτέρου σύντοµον ἔχον δήλωσιν (ps.-Hermogenes 3.1),63 χρεία ἐστὶ ἀποµνηµόνευµα σύντοµον (Aphthonius 3.1).64 Well-aimed attribution to some person is stated explicitly in the definition by Theon ibidem (µετ᾽ εὐστοχίας ἀναφεροµένη εἴς τι ὡρισµένον πρόσωπον ἢ ἀναλογοῦν προσώπῳ) and Aphthonius ibidem (εὐστόχως ἐπί τι πρόσωπον ἀναφέρουσα). It is indirectly affirmed by ps.-Hermogenes ibidem in that he, like Aphthonius, defines it as an apomnēmoneuma and says that it differs from a maxim in that the chreia refers to a person that has spoken or done something (τῷ τὴν µὲν χρείαν τὸ πεποιηκὸς πρόσωπον ἔχειν ἢ εἰρηκός). The usefulness of the chreia is put in qualified terms by ps.-Hermogenes ibidem: the chreia functions in general for the sake of something useful (ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πλεῖστον χρησίµου τινὸς ἕνεκα). Aphthonius ibidem says simply that the chreia is so called because it is useful (χρειώδης δὲ οὖσα προσαγορεύεται χρεία). Despite the self-contradiction mentioned above, Aelius Theon is the author who insists the most on the moral usefulness of the chreia. He does so in the passage cited above in § 3 (which comes at the end of his preliminary remarks and before the classification of chreiai), in the prologue just quoted, and in his explanation of what makes the chreia similar to an apomnēmoneuma: like the chreia, the apomnēmoneuma recalls a deed or saying beneficial for life (καὶ τὸ ἀποµνηµόνευµα δὲ πρᾶξίς ἐστιν ἢ λόγος βιωφελής). The chreia is thus not only seen as closely related to the apomnēmoneuma but is even defined in terms of it.

The attentive reader will have also noted the appearance of another term for saying, the apophthegma, in the quotation from Theon’s prologue. This is one of only two occurrences in the progymnasmata of this otherwise common term for saying, a far more common term than chreia.65 The noun apophthegma is first attested in Xenophon’s description of the unlucky Theramenes’ last words and actions in HG 2.3.56.66 This first attested use is noteworthy in that it combines action, reaction and words, just like many later apothegms or chreiai. Though it is not a frequent word in Aristotle’s extant writings, his usage gives the impression that apophthegma had already become a common enough term. In Metaph. 1009b26, he uses it when citing certain words of Anaxagoras to some of his companions (πρὸς τῶν ἑταίρων τινάς) as being remembered or recorded (µνηµονεύεται): τοιαῦτ’ αὐτοῖς ἔσται τὰ ὄντα οἷα ἂν ὑπολάβωσιν (ʻreality will be for them such as they suppose it to be’). In Oec. 1345a12, he cites apothegms of ‘the Persian’ and of ‘the Libyan’ to prove his point that no one takes the same care of another’s property as of his own. These apothegms display both the question and answer form and the attribution to characters identified only by ethnicity, both of which features are typical of many later apothegms or, if you will, chreiai. In the Rhetoric, Aristotle mentions Laconic and ‘riddling’ as well as witty or urbane (ἀστεῖα) apothegms (see Rh. 1394b35-1395a1, 1412a22). In all these instances, an apothegm is some person’s pointed utterance, often, but not necessarily, in response to a question, normally expressed in a concise, self-contained manner just like the chreiai described by the later grammarians. Apophthegmata as a title of collections containing items exactly fitting the grammarians’ definitions of chreia appears from (at least) Hellenistic times and throughout the ancient and medieval ages with no break in the tradition. Yet this obvious synonym for chreia is, except for the two asides in Theon, entirely missing from the progymnasmata.

7 Cynic Origins?
Basing himself on D.L. 6.33 (καθά φησι Μητροκλῆς ἐν ταῖς Χρείαις, see § 4 above), Kurt von Fritz claimed that Metrocles invented the genre of chreiai.67 This claim has been repeated many times since, perhaps due to the wish of scholars to situate the origins of the genre within the Cynic tradition, given the numerous chreiai associated with Diogenes. I submit, however, that von Fritz’ claim has flimsy support and should not be so blithely repeated.68 The evidence of D.L. 6.33 for Metrocles as the first author of chreiai appears to be contradicted by D.L. 2.84-85 in which we find books of chreiai attributed to Aristippus (see § 4). Though I find von Fritz’ claim too bold, in its support one might argue that, if it does refer to a book compiled by Metrocles, and the books of chreiai attributed to Aristippus (D.L. 2.85) were someone else’s collection of Aristippus’ sayings,69 then Metrocles would be the earliest explicit collector of chreiai, followed perhaps a generation later by Machon. The quotation in D.L. 6.33 would then also be interesting for another reason: it would be Diogenes Laertius’ only explicit quotation from a non-Stoic work entitled chreiai. One of those ʻStoic’ quotations, the frequently cited Chreiai of Hecaton, informs us according to D.L. 6.95 (see § 4 above) that Metrocles burned his own books. Evidently the Chreiai of Metrocles survived that incendiary, unless the Chreiai in this passage are a reference not to a book by Metrocles but simply to the Chreiai of Hecaton, an excerpt of which occurs right before the citation of Metrocles (see § 4 above). Could this be a statement about Diogenes attributed to Metrocles in Hecaton’s Chreiai?

Here I am not questioning the Cynic penchant for chreiai or the fact of their wide use of chreiai or the appropriateness of the chreia as a vehicle of Cynic self-expression. I am only sceptical to the idea that the chreia and the collecting of chreiai were Cynic inventions and particularly that Metrocles was the sole inventor of the genre. Stoics and Peripatetics are cited as collectors of chreiai far more frequently than any Cynic.70 The comic poet Machon was writing chreiai within a generation of Metrocles. Furthermore, chreiai are found among the works attributed to an earlier philosopher, Aristippus, who was not a Cynic though he was a Socratic. It was, of course, Socrates who caused the major shift in philosophical discourse a century before the dawn of the so-called Hellenistic Age, and, if we must assume a philosophic origin of the genre, it is to the Socratics more generally we should look for its origins. Chreia is defined by the later rhetoricians as a kind of recollection (apomnēmoneuma), and surely Xenophon, author of Socratic apomnēmoneumata, provides us with some of our very first examples of what would come to be called chreiai. If Xenophon could compose apomnēmoneumata, what reason do we have for doubting that Aristippus may have done likewise with chreiai? We should at least be more careful about attributing the invention of the genre to Metrocles because of a single, in my view questionable, citation in Diogenes Laertius or because of the many extant chreiai attributed to the Cynics. There are also many extant chreiai attributed to non-Cynic philosophers and to non-philosophers.71

Conclusion
This article grew out of my study of the tradition(s) of apothegms in medieval collections that show a strong but independent relationship with the apothegms in Diogenes Laertius. Three things puzzled me: the absence of the term apophthegma in the surviving treatments of chreia, the dissatisfying etymology of chreia as chreiōdēs, and the discrepancy between the chreiai of Machon and the examples in the progymnasmata as well as in my medieval collections which, though not labelled chreiai, fit the definition of the grammarians. Here one might also add the detail of the three chreiai (to Dionysius, on the statue, on the daughter of Dionysius) attributed to Aristippus in Diogenes Laertius’ first list of his books. A closer examination of the semantics of the word chreia led to my conviction that the sense of ‘concise anecdote’ was more likely to have derived from the sense of ‘familiar dealings’ and ‘usage’ than from that of ‘utility’. The chreiai of Machon supply us with our by far most extensive fragments from the early stages of development, and they are not concise anecdotes. Nor are they, of course, full-blown comic dialogues but, rather, a string of short, comic episodes arranged around certain characters and featuring witty exchanges of varying length. We can form no idea of Aristippus’ three chreiai but can merely assume that they were long enough to stand on their own; they may have been short dialogues similar to the ones we find in Xenophon’s Memorabilia (apomnēmoneumata). Some of the extant fragments from books of chreiai (see § 4)—including the one from Metrocles’ Chreiai—are not the self-contained, concise anecdotes we expect from the later definitions; most, however, do fit the description. Yet we do not know what else these excerpted Hellenistic books contained or how they were arranged: the quotations from them come from much later authors who were on the look-out for chreiai as we normally define them.

The model I propose is as follows. During the fourth century the word chreia underwent a development in one of its semantic fields, that of ‘familiar usage’. If we can trust the ascription of chreiai to Aristippus, the word may already then have begun in some contexts to mean ‘conversation’ or ‘verbal exchange’, similar to apomnēmoneuma in terms of which it is consistently defined in later sources. I speculate that chreia as an example of verbal exchange became more cemented during Machon’s lifetime in the third century. There were, of course, many other literary developments during this century, one of them being an increasing production of biographies that included apothegms which, as I point out in § 6, have the same features as the chreia as later defined by the schoolmasters. From the next century comes our first surviving work of Greek grammar, that of Dionysius Thrax, who aimed not only at teaching what we call grammar but also what we call literature.72 The case-system of Greek receives its first extant description in his work; we may assume that the technicalities were worked out between Aristotle and Dionysius Thrax. It is in this period that I suggest the methods that evolved into what we see in the later progymnasmata first came about; certainly any exercises involving the inflection of chreiai cannot be earlier. It is on this Hellenistic system of the second and first centuries BC that Romans of the first century AD based their own educational programmes. It is during this mid to late Hellenistic period that I suggest a kind of genre shift occurred: after having been a genre of short dialogues and anecdotes featuring selected characters, the chreia gets put to systematic use in language instruction. Its technical meaning becomes fixed along with other micro-genres such as the apomnēmoneuma of which it becomes the short version; so the chreia goes from being an exchange of varying length to being defined as a concise apomnēmoneuma. When this happens, however, the chreia simply becomes equivalent to the apophthegma as far as school use is concerned; for that reason the latter term is avoided in the writing exercises. In popular usage, however, apophthegma—with its narrow semantic sense of utterance—is the natural choice for describing the anecdotal sayings that the schoolmasters place under the category of chreia, the latter being an ill-fated denomination due to the very broad semantic field of chreia. Teachers being what they are, the school materials and hence the terminology used therein are maintained through continuous recycling. While collections of apophthegmata continue to be made and people continue to refer naturally to apothegms of the wise and famous, the term chreia drops out of use in titles and makes ever more rare appearances as “anecdote” in extant literature. The chreia as anecdote survives only as a fossil of Hellenistic fashion within the narrow confines of the school.

De nominibus non curat sapiens, which, if so, does not make me very wise in my insistence on the name chreia rather than the thing itself. I would, nevertheless, point out that the thing itself—the concise anecdote resembling the chreiai in the progymnasmata—is not frequently found in classical literature prior to Xenophon and Aristotle. Yet concise anecdotes (explicitly called apophthegmata or chreiai) do appear with increasing frequency in Hellenistic and later Greek literature. An indication of the Hellenistic nature of this tradition is simply that a great many of the names appearing in the chreiai in the progymnasmata as well as in my medieval gnomologia belong to persons from the Hellenistic Age.73 I may be wrong in my proposed model as well as in my etymological explanation, but I have at least tried to connect the few dots available.

[Secret Alias]

For me at least the new understanding of chreiai has the following effect:

1. chreiai are interchangeable or compatible with logia
2. Peter's teaching in chreiai have something to do with the logia of the Lord.
3. it is once and for all settled that the logia of the Lord cannot be a reference to canonical Matthew. Perhaps Mark is made up of chreiai and Matthew logia. But the logia of the Lord are clearly building blocks compatible with Peter's teaching as chreiai.

For he had neither heard the Lord nor followed him, though later on, as I said, [he had followed] Peter, who gave teachings in the form of chreiai (πρὸς τὰς χρείας), but not making, as it were, an arrangement of the Lord's oracles (λογίων κυριακῶν)

As far as I can see Paul does not teach using chreiai. Papias says then that Simon Peter conveyed the λογίων κυριακῶν in the πρὸς τὰς χρείας. The implication seems to be quite incredible. It also seems to be related to the curious variant of the title of Jesus - χρηστός. χρηστήριον is an oracle.

Thoughts?

[Secret Alias]

Here is what Bauckham says:

According to Papias, Peter related his chreiai about Jesus individually and haphazardly. He did not compile them in an ordered arrangement (syntaxis). Consequently, when Mark translated them and wrote them down, presumably in the course of several sessions with Peter, he transcribed them accurately, but not in order (taxis). Since he was no more than a translator, he did not add to his material by investing it with artistic arrangement. Papias thinks Mark was entirely justified in this because the value of his work is precisely that it reproduced Peter's teachings just as Peter gave them orally. But Papias evidently also thinks this lack of order would be a very serious deficiency if the Gospel were to be regarded as historiography. Compare what he says of Mark here with what he said about his own work earlier in the Prologue: I will not hesitate to put into properly ordered form (synkatataxai tais hermēneiais) for you everything I learned carefully in the past from the elders and noted down (emn3moneusa) well, for the truth of which I vouch. According to this interpretation, Papias is describing the stages of producing a historical work precisely as Lucian, in his book on how to write history, describes them (immediately after the passage just quoted from him):

When he has collected all or most of the facts let him first make them into a series of notes (Ëp ́omnhma), a body (sˆwma) of material as yet with no beauty or continuity. Then, after arranging them into order (t ́axiv), let him give it beauty and of material as yet with no beauty or continuity. Then, after arranging them into order (t ́axiv), let him give it beauty and let him give it beauty and enhance it with the charms of expression, figure, and rhythm.

My only thing to add - simply because I think differently - is that Lucian is certainly one of the people that Celsus references as giving the impetus to the creation of the fourfold gospel:

After this he [Celsus] says, that certain of the Christian believers, like persons who in a fit of drunkenness lay violent hands upon themselves, have corrupted the original text of the Gospel (τῆς πρώτης γραφῆς τὸ εὐαγγέλιον), to a threefold (τριχῇ), and fourfold (τετραχῇ), and many-fold degree (πολλαχῇ), and have remodeled it (μεταπλάττειν), so that they might be able to answer objections (ἵν' ἔχοιεν πρὸς τοὺς ἐλέγχους ἀρνεῖσθαι)." [Origen, Contra Celsum 2:27]

In other words, because of our lack of information about the creation of the fourfold gospel we desperately cling to Papias's account. But when you look at the parallels with what Lucian - the great pagan critic of Christianity - says about 'proper historiography' the manner in which Papias reconstructs the writing of the gospel of Matthew seems a little too good to be true.

Does anyone really believe that there is no relationship between what Lucian says is 'proper methodology' and what Papias pretends was the actual methodology of Matthew? Of course not! Especially when Celsus another pagan critic writing a few years later says explicitly that the fourfold gospel developed from Matthew was established because of the writings of men like Lucian if not Lucian himself. This is why Clement's testimony in To Theodore is so important. Clement says that the 'things' some people are saying about the composition of Mark is full of shit. He says Mark took the notes of Peter and his own notes and composed the secret gospel of Mark. The shortcomings of Mark clearly is that it was not beautiful. It was not finished. It was not polished. But clearly this other gospel found in Alexandria was. It had all of these qualities. The question I have then is - was the canonical gospel of Mark deliberately manufactured as a rough, unpolished gospel in order to justify subordinating the text to another - Matthew? The assumption here would be that it wasn't as if Secret Mark was unknown (a 'secret gospel' like Mark is known to the Prescription Against Heresies). But rather, as Celsus explicitly states, the fourfold gospel (anchored from Matthew) was established to answer pagan objections. In other words, Papias doesn't deny Markan primacy. He just creates a scenario where Matthew is more polished or conforms to better historiography.

[Secret Alias]

My point is does anyone really believe that (a) Peter spoke in chreiai and (b) all the evangelists were historiographers? Come on. This is the ideal of the educated elite. As the Pastorals demonstrate there was an equal but opposite tendency in contemporary Christian communities for mythopoesis. I am not saying that the gospel or gospels were all necessarily 'myths.' But clearly they were intended as serious historiography either. The subject matter is ridiculous. How can anyone write a strict history of a man who either was a god or was born from a virgin as a god, who performed miracles that clearly never happened and then has a miraculous death? The reason why Papias portrays Matthew as the best kind of historiographer, one who followed the exact methodology of Christianity's chief critic is because he - or whomever wrote this account - was trying to "remodeled it (i.e. the gospel account), so that he might be able to answer objections." I have no doubt about that. The idea again that Matthew and Luke's opening and now Papias were literate historians is so obviously stupid that it requires little in the way of explanation or argumentation. This was only created to allow for the gospel to be taken seriously by educated citizens of the Empire.

[Secret Alias]

You see what I don't trust about these translations of Papias is that they leave the Greek word untranslated - chreiai. This tells me they haven't quite figured out what it means or that any theory is so contentious and controversial that it would be distracting to their main argument. I wonder what would be the right word or phrase in English which translates what Papias is driving at about Peter's teaching using chreiai?

[Secret Alias]

Brian Small writes:

Chreia Some of the techniques deal with speech. According to Theon, a chreia (crei,a) “is a brief saying or action making a point, attributed to some specified person or something corresponding to a person.”226 He distinguishes it from a maxim (gnw,mh) and a reminiscence (avpomnhmo,neuma). Chreiai differ from maxims in four ways:227

1) Chreiai are always attributed to a person; maxims are not always.
2) Chreiai can state a universal or a particular; maxims are always universal.
3) Chreiai are sometimes not useful for life; maxims are always useful for life.
4) Chreiai are actions and/or sayings; maxims are only sayings.

Chreiai differ from reminiscences in two ways:229

1. Chreiai are brief; reminiscences are sometimes extended.
2. Chreiai are attributed to particular persons; reminiscences are remembered for their own sake.

Theon says that chreiai can be verbal or an action, or a combination of both.229 In
addition, chreiai can be divided into declarative, in which the statements are volunteered
by the speaker, and responsive which are four types:

1) Response to a question – agreement or disagreement; yes or no
2) Response to an inquiry – longer answer
3) Giving the cause for the answer to a question
4) Apocritical – response to a statement

Chreiai can be double, when two persons speak. Actional chreiai can be active or passive. While chreiai are short, they nevertheless can reveal character. Chreiai can demonstrate that a person is witty, wise, virtuous, or any other such traits. The chreiai can reveal the values of the speaker. This becomes clear in Hermogenes’ discussion. Hermogenes says that one could elaborate on a chreia by attaching a brief encomium of the speaker, for example, “Isocrates was wise.”231 Theon also remarks that chreiai are useful for creating character (h=qoj) “while we are being exercised in the moral sayings of the wise.”232 Theon concludes his discussion of chreia: “one should here also use whatever amplification and digression and characterization is possible.”2

[Secret Alias]

The idea I get for translating chreiai is anecdote. Maybe useful (χρεία means "use") anecdote:

The common word χρεία (chreia), which had a rich semantic field already on its first appearances in archaic Greek, had dwindled by the late Middle Ages into an inglorious euphemism for ‘latrine’, only to disappear altogether in modern Greek. Yet, from early imperial times up to and throughout the Byzantine period, chreia continued to be used in the sense of ‘anecdote’ in the rhetorical handbooks known as progymnasmata, a sense that has received a fair amount of recent scholarly attention. https://brill.com/view/journals/mnem/72 ... anguage=en