Clio's Cosmetics: Three Studies in Greco-Roman Literature 0847662063, 9780847662067

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CLIO'S COSMETICS THREE

STUDIES

IN GRECO-ROMAN

LITERATURE T.P.WISEMAN Professor of Classics, University of Exeter

LEICESTER UNIVERSITY

PRESS

ROWMAN AND LITTLEFIELD 1979

First published in 1979 by Leicester University Press Distributed in North America by Rowman and Littlefield, Totowa, N.J. ISBN 0-8476-6206-3 Copyright© Leicester University Press 1979 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Leicester University Press. Designed by Douglas Martin Phototypeset in V.I.P. Sabon by Western Printing Services Ltd, Bristol Printed in Great Britain by Unwin Brothers Limited, The Gresham Press, Old Woking, Surrey Bound by Redwood Burn Ltd, London and Esher

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Wiseman, Timothy Peter Clio's cosmetics. 1. Historiography - Rome - History I. Title 907'.2'037 D13.5.R65 ISBN O 7185 1165 4

COLLEGIS

DISCIPULISQUE XAPI~THPION

RATENSIBUS

CONTENTS

Preface PART

PART

I

11

Clio' s Cosmetics 1 'Fucatio'

3

2 Annals and History

9

3 History and Rhetoric

27

4 Unhistorical Thinking

41

The Legends of the Patrician Claudii

5 Attus Clausus and the Two Traditions

57

6 Claudian Arrogance and Claudian Wisdom

77

7 The Date of Composition 8 Authors and Motives PART

III

IX

104 113

Catullus and Cornelius Nepos

9 ·Poetry and History

143

10 The Intellectual Background

154

11 The Dedication Poem

167

12 The Collection

175

Bibliography

183

Index

195

PREFACE

Like its two predecessors, Catullan Questions (1969) and Cinna the Poet and other Roman Essays (1974), this book has grown out of an interest in the society and literature of the mid-first century B.c., and in particular the world of the poet Catullus and his mistress Clodia. In this case, however, the emphasis is on laterepublican historiography: to find a satisfactory reason why Clodia's family was notorious for arrogance in the early history of Rome, and why Catullus should have dedicated his book of poems to an historian, it is necessary to understand how history was written in Rome in the age of Lucceius, Varro and Alexandros 'Polyhistor'. Part I is an attempt to bring out the full consequences of two features of the ancient world which are well enough understood in themselves, but not sufficiently allowed for in their effects on historiography - and thus on our information about the ancient world itself. In the first place, the rhetorical nature of secondary education meant that all educated Greeks and Romans had been trained in the art of persuasion, where plausibility mattered much more than evidence; secondly, with the partial exception of Thucydides, the Greco-Roman historiographical tradition did not even approach the standards of investigation which have become, normal since the coming together of history and antiquarianism in the eighteenth century. These facts become particularly important for Roman history when 'annals' in the proper sense begin to be written. I argue that Piso was the first to write history with an entry for every year, exploiting recently reconstructed consular and triumphal lists; this type of annalistic historiography carried with it the temptation of filling in the 'empty' years, for which nothing was recorded, with appropriate material which the historians' training in oratorical narratio amply qualified them to provide. Part II discusses a particular example of the phenomenon: the invention, as part of the pseudo-history of the early Republic, of superbia Claudiana as a characteristic applying to every generation

X

Preface

of patrician Claudii, and of a rival interpretation, less obvious but equally schematic, which portrayed them as responsible conservatives. The argument is that Valerius Antias was responsible for the first, and Aelius Tubero for the second. If it is cogent, then I hope that the superbia theme, along with the 'Sabine' Leitmotiv recently identified by Professor Musti, may make possible a better understanding of Valerius Antias and his work. That is something long overdue, in that Antias is not only the source of so much misinformation about Roman history, but also, in a sense, an important figure in the development of imaginative fiction. Part III deals with another feature of the Greek and Roman view of the past which is not always given its full weight. Myth and history were not distinguished in any sense approximating to our own; the subject matter of history therefore had much more in common than is usually recognized with that of poetry. In the first century B.c., when Hellenistic literary culture was adjusting to the fact that Rome was now its main centre, and Roman traditions therefore had to be absorbed into its world-picture, Cornelius Nepos' Chronica represent most clearly the mythology, geography and aetiological ethnography which formed the common material of historians and 'learned poets' alike. Nepos had more than we think in common with Catullus, whose dedication of his collected poems is therefore neither paradoxical nor ironical. My last two chapters digress a little from the historiographical theme to argue about the dedication poem itself and the nature of the collection which it introduces; on this last point, the suggestions put forward in Catullan Questions are amended, and (I hope) improved. Part II began life as a Graduate Seminar paper given at University College, Toronto, in 1971; chapters 9 and 10 were read to a Colloquium in Cambridge in 1976. I have benefited greatly from the comments and criticisms of those present on both occasions; also from those (particularly Duncan Cloud, John Pinsent and Elizabeth Rawson) who saw Part II in its earlier written form, and from Tony Woodman, who very kindly read the whole book in typescript and improved it in countless details. I am very grateful to all these helpers; the book's remaining shortcomings no doubt coincide with the places where I have not followed their suggestions. Finally, a word about the Bibliography. It is no more than a list of the modern works referred to in the course of the argument: in only one minor area (work since 1950 on Catullus' first poem) have I

Preface

Xl

made any attempt at completeness. In this, the bibliography reflects the book. Clio's Cosmetics is not the systematic account of Hellenistic and early Roman historiography which has long been needed (though I hope it may help a little towards the achievement of it); it is an enquiry rather than an exposition, and represents, as I am uncomfortably aware, one man's incomplete mastery of a ramifying succession of subjects. Exeter, March 1978

PART I

Clio's Cosmetics

0 reverend guardian of antique things, you, golden Clio, taught well to report Time's fugitive courses and the deeds of kings, attend my thought.

You let no act that's great to fade away, you save the notable thing from death and store in books the monuments of a former day fresh evermore. You wipe all rouge of rhetoric from your pages, and you alone. Whatever is truth's decision you utter clear through all the coming ages with plain precision . ... PHOCAS

(trans. Jack Lindsay)

Chapter 1

'FUCATIO'

Phocas was a grammarian, who at some time in the fifth or early sixth century A.O. wrote a life of Virgil in hexameter verse. It is purely derivative, and in itself of much less interest than the Sapphic address to the Muse of History with which he introduced it, and of which I have used the first three stanzas as an epigraph. 1 After hailing Clio as the guardian of the great deeds of the past, Phocas goes on in the third stanza to praise her for her simple language, reporting the bare truth with no artificial colour in her style: so/a fucatis variare dictis paginas nescis, set aperta quicquid veritas prodit, recinis per aevum simplice lingua.

The idea of stylistic adornment as cosmetic colouring went back nearly a thousand years, and is, as I hope this book will show, of some importance for the understanding of ancient historiography. In reality, Clio was not always as free from rouge as Phocas' eulogy implies. The invention of the 'colour' image may, perhaps, be attributed to the first theorists of Greek music. Their basic unit of analysis was the tetrachord, of which the upper and lower notes were fixed; three ways of classifying the 'movable' notes between them were identified, as the enharmonic, the diatonic, and the chromatic. 2 This idea of colour (chroma) in music was first applied, so far as we know, to Agathon and Philoxenus in the late fifth century B.c., and may even have been invented in order to describe the effects these innovators produced. 3 It was at that very time that Damon and his 1. Anthologia Latina (Riese) I 671, Poetae Latini Minores (Baehrens) V 49, p. 85; chosen by Garrod as the last piece in the Oxford Book of Latin Verse (no. 384). Translation: Jack Lindsay, Song of a Falling World (1948), 57, quoted with the author's permission. 2. See (e.g.) Henderson 1957, 344f. 3. Plut, Mor. 645E on Agathon as the first user of the chromatic genus; Antiphanes ap. Athen. XIV 643d on the 1.po'.iparaof Philoxenus' music.

4

CLIO'S

COSMETICS

successors were arguing the case later put forward by Plato and Aristotle, that different types of music imitated different characteristics in the soul, and could bring about corresponding virtues and vices in the hearer. 4 We happen to know from a late fifth- or early fourth-century opponent of this idea that the 'chromatic' genus was thought to make men cowardly - an attitude consistent with the way Aristophanes mocks the effeminacy both of Agathon's musical style and of his person. 5 Since the use of cosmetics was considered a sure sign of effeminacy and lack of the manly virtues, 6 'colour' as used of music could easily be associated with 'colour' as used of make-up, two corresponding indications of the same characteristic in the musician. It was precisely 'the colours of music' that Plato objected to in poetry, and the verb he uses of the poet employing his stylistic devices is epichromatizein. 1 Similarly Thucydides (in disapproval) and Isocrates (in envy) refer to the 'adornments' (K6aµ01) of poetry, an idea closely related to, if not identical with, that of cosmetics. 11 The metaphor was equally apt for artistic prose: Isocrates used the phrase r