![]() A maxim ( gnōmē) can be turned into a chreia simply by attributing it to some person. 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). 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). 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. However, the distinction between chreiai or apophthegmata and gnōmai is quite consistent over time, though there may be occasional exceptions. 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. 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. 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. In that edition, ‘apothegm’ is my preferred translation for the type of saying known as chreia. Many relevant scholarly works that could be but are not cited here may in all likelihood be found cited there. 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. The context in which this article has arisen is my editorial work on the Gnomologium Vaticanum and related collections of apophthegmata. ![]() What I will not do at length is to discuss the chreia in the progymnasmata for reasons presently to be explained. Finally, I will suggest a basic time-frame for its usage. 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. I will assemble whatever evidence I have found for this sense of chreia outside its use within rhetorical education. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. ![]() Keywords: Anecdote apothegm chreia Cynics history of education progymnasmata rhetoric Socratics
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