“Honor flits away as though it were a dream”: Statues, Honor, and Favorinus’ Corinthian Oration

Abstract

This article examines Favorinus’ Corinthian Oration, which functions as the orator’s defense of an honorific statue that had been set up in Corinth and subsequently taken down by the Corinthians. Favorinus defends his statue as a stand-in for his authority and honor. Favorinus presents himself as a true model of Hellenic transformation mediated by Greek paideia, but the oration also performs a countermovement in which traditional forms of honor and patronage, embodied in the physical object of an honorific statue, are rendered transient and vulnerable and contrasted with the honor of speech and performance, which can never be desecrated.

Topics & Concepts