Complex Inferiorities: The Poetics of the Weaker Voice in Latin Literature 0198814062, 9780198814061

Table of contents :
Title Pages
Frontispiece
Acknowledgements
Note on Abbreviations
List of Contributors
Introduction
Claiming Inferiority
How Do You Solve a Problem like Horace?
Blackface and Drag in the Palliata
Social Inferiority and Poetic Inferiority— Martial’s Revenge in his Epigrams
Drawing Blanks
The Creative Superiority of Self-Reproach
‘The Noise, and the People’
Loud and Proud
Hidden Voices
On Not Being Beautiful
From Adultery to Incest
The Aeneid as ‘Weaker Text’ and Fulgentius’ Radical Hermeneutics
Cowherds and Saints
References
General Index
Index Locorum

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Title Pages

Complex Inferiorities: The Poetics of the Weaker Voice in Latin Literature Sebastian Matzner and Stephen Harrison

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198814061 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198814061.001.0001

Title Pages Sebastian Matzner, Stephen Harrison

(p.i) Complex Inferiorities (p.iii) Complex Inferiorities (p.iv) Copyright Page

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Sebastian Matzner, Stephen Harrison, and OUP 2019 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2019

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Title Pages Impression: 1 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, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2018937428 ISBN 978–0–19–881406–1 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

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Frontispiece

Complex Inferiorities: The Poetics of the Weaker Voice in Latin Literature Sebastian Matzner and Stephen Harrison

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198814061 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198814061.001.0001

(p.ii) Frontispiece Sebastian Matzner, Stephen Harrison

Mosaic panel from the dining room of the House of Menander in Mytilene depicting a scene from Act 4 of Menander’s comedy Samia (‘Woman from Samos’). 3rd century AD (excavators) or later 4th century AD (S. Nervegna). Page 1 of 2

 

Frontispiece

© The Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports and the Ephorate of Antiquities of Lesvos.

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Acknowledgements

Complex Inferiorities: The Poetics of the Weaker Voice in Latin Literature Sebastian Matzner and Stephen Harrison

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198814061 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198814061.001.0001

(p.v) Acknowledgements Sebastian Matzner, Stephen Harrison

This volume would not have been possible without the enthusiasm, expertise, and responsiveness of its contributors: from the moment they accepted the invitation to the eponymous conference, held under the auspices of the Centre for the Study of Greek and Roman Antiquity at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, on 4 and 5 September 2014, each one of them engaged spiritedly, generously, and rigorously with the project as a whole. The fact that this volume is very much the book-shaped version of a conversation—which began with precirculated papers and incisive responses, continued with rich conference discussions and further reflective dialogue between contributors and editors, and now finds its final form in the pages that follow—is above all a testament to the contributors’ commitment, patience, and good humour. They have made this volume what it is. The original conference itself was fortunate enough to receive support from many different sources. Our gratitude goes to the John Fell Fund, the Craven Fund, and the Classical Association for their generous financial help as well as to the staff of Corpus Christi College for their wonderful hospitality. As the Complex Inferiorities project and this resulting volume are one of the fruits of a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship awarded to Sebastian Matzner and held at the Faculty of Classics in conjunction with the P. S. Allen Research Fellowship at Corpus Christi College, special thanks are due to both the Trust and the Fellows of Corpus. We would also like to thank Charlotte Loveridge, Georgina Leighton, and the superb team at Oxford University Press for their professionalism in all matters, great and small, and, last but not least, the two anonymous readers for the

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Acknowledgements Press, whose voices run ever so obliquely through this volume but did much to improve the final product. Sebastian Matzner Stephen Harrison London and Oxford December 2017 (p.vi)

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Note on Abbreviations

Complex Inferiorities: The Poetics of the Weaker Voice in Latin Literature Sebastian Matzner and Stephen Harrison

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198814061 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198814061.001.0001

(p.ix) Note on Abbreviations Sebastian Matzner, Stephen Harrison

Greek and Latin authors and works are abbreviated following the practice of the Liddell–Scott–Jones Greek–English Lexicon and the Oxford Latin Dictionary, respectively, and journals according to that of L’Année Philologique. (p.x)

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List of Contributors

Complex Inferiorities: The Poetics of the Weaker Voice in Latin Literature Sebastian Matzner and Stephen Harrison

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198814061 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198814061.001.0001

(p.xi) List of Contributors Sebastian Matzner, Stephen Harrison

Shadi Bartsch is Helen A. Regenstein Distinguished Service Professor of Classics at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on the literature and philosophy of the Neronian period, especially the authors Lucan, Seneca, and Persius. Her interpretations often draw from cultural history, and she is particularly interested in the meeting-point of poetic and philosophical genres. Her most recent books include Persius: A Study in Food, Philosophy, and the Figural (Chicago, 2015) and The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Nero (ed. with K. Freudenburg and C. Littlewood, Cambridge, 2017). William Fitzgerald is Professor of Latin Language and Literature at King’s College London. His main research interests centre on Latin poetry, but he has also worked on Latin prose (Pliny the Younger and Apuleius) as well as topics in comparative literature and classical reception. Among his monographs are Catullan Provocations: Lyric Poetry and the Drama of Position (Berkeley, 1995); Slavery and the Roman Literary Imagination (Cambridge, 2000); and Martial: The Epigrammatic World (Chicago, 2007). His latest book is Variety: The Life of a Roman Concept (Chicago, 2016). Tom Geue is British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of St Andrews where he will soon take up a lectureship in Latin. His research investigates literature’s complex engagements with (and disengagements from) the political, with a particular interest in the conditions of writing under the Roman Principate and the contested ground of the ‘self’ as a site for such literary-political Page 1 of 4

 

List of Contributors (dis-)engagements. He has recently published his doctoral thesis turned monograph, entitled Juvenal and the Poetics of Anonymity (Cambridge, 2017) and is now writing up his next book Author Unknown: Anonymity in Ancient Rome. Philip Hardie is a Senior Research Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, and Honorary Professor of Latin Literature in the University of Cambridge. His research covers a wide range of topics in Latin literature (especially epic poetry), the reception of Latin literature (especially in the Renaissance), and Neo-Latin poetry. Major (p.xii) monographs include Virgil’s Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium (Oxford, 1986); The Epic Successors of Virgil (Cambridge, 1993); Ovid’s Poetics of Illusion (Cambridge, 2002); Lucretian Receptions: History, The Sublime, Knowledge (Cambridge, 2009); Rumour and Renown: Representations of Fama in Western Literature (Cambridge, 2012); and The Last Trojan Hero: A Cultural History of Virgil’s Aeneid (London, 2014). He has co-edited (with P. Cheney) the volume on the Renaissance in the Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature (Oxford, 2015). He gave the 2016 Sather Lectures at Berkeley on ‘Classicism and Christianity in Late Antique Latin Poetry’. Stephen Harrison is Professor of Latin Literature at the University of Oxford and Fellow and Tutor in Latin at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. His main research and teaching interests are in Latin literature and its reception. He has written monographs on Vergil, Horace, and Apuleius, and has edited, co-edited, or co-authored more than twenty books on Vergil, Horace, the Roman novel, Classics and literary theory, and Latin literature in general, as well as on the reception of classical literature. His recent publications include Victorian Horace: Classics and Class (London, 2017) and a commentary on Horace Odes 2 (Cambridge, 2017). G. O. Hutchinson is Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford. He has written: Aeschylus, Septem contra Thebas, Edited with Introduction and Commentary (Oxford, 1985); Hellenistic Poetry (Oxford, 1988); Latin Literature from Seneca to Juvenal: A Critical Study (Oxford, 1993); Cicero’s Correspondence: A Literary Study (Oxford, 1998); Greek Lyric Poetry: A Commentary on Selected Larger Pieces (Oxford, 2001); Propertius: Elegies Book IV (Cambridge, 2006); Talking Books: Readings in Hellenistic and Roman Books of Poetry (Oxford, 2008); and Greek to Latin: Frameworks and Contexts for Intertextuality (Oxford, 2013). Jean-Claude Julhe Page 2 of 4

 

List of Contributors is Maître de Conférences at the Université de Paris-Sorbonne where his work focuses on Latin poetry of the Late Republic and the Principate, with a special interest in the history of elegy and the epigrammatic genre. He has explored the former in his monograph La critique littéraire chez Catulle et les Elégiaques augustéens: Genèse et jeunesse de l’élégie à Rome (Paris, 2004) and the latter in a range of articles, often engaging in particular with Martial. He has also edited a collection on Pratiques latines de la (p.xiii) dédicace: Permanence et mutations, de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance (Paris, 2014). Dunstan Lowe is Lecturer in Latin Literature at the University of Kent. His main area of research is Roman poetry, especially Vergil and Ovid, with further interests in the role of classical antiquity in modern culture, notably in video games and other entertainment media. He has published articles on various Roman authors and a book entitled Monsters and Monstrosity in Augustan Rome (Ann Arbor, 2015). His current major project is a study of ugliness as a social construct in ancient Rome. Sebastian Matzner is Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature at King’s College London. His research focuses on interactions between ancient and modern literature and thought, especially in the fields of poetics and rhetoric, literary and critical theory, history of sexualities, LGBTQ studies, and traditions of classicism. He has published several articles and book chapters in these fields and is the author of Rethinking Metonymy: Literary Theory and Poetic Practice from Pindar to Jakobson (Oxford, 2016) as well as co-editor of a forthcoming volume on Breaking and Entering: Metalepsis in Classical Literature (with G. Trimble). Ellen O’Gorman is Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Bristol. Her research on Latin poetry and prose, and its reception, is driven by a wide range of literary and theoretical interests. Her monograph Irony and Misreading in the Annals of Tacitus (Cambridge, 2000) and numerous articles examine the language of ideology in the works of Tacitus and promote a more sophisticated approach to the language of the ancient historians. Her interests in ideology and memory have also led to a number of publications on Augustan and post-Augustan poetry, especially in epic, while her theoretical interest in psychoanalysis and reading, which informs her analysis of how ideology is expressed, received, and critiqued, has resulted in the collection Classical Myth and Psychoanalysis: Ancient and Modern Stories of the Self (ed. with V. Zajko, Oxford, 2013). Page 3 of 4

 

List of Contributors Vassiliki Panoussi is Professor of Classical Studies at the College of William and Mary. Her research focuses on Roman literature of the late Republic, the age of Augustus, and the early Empire as informed through the study of intertextuality, cultural anthropology, and (p.xiv) sexuality and gender. She has published articles on Catullus, Cicero, Vergil, Seneca, Lucan, and Statius and is the author of the monograph Greek Tragedy in Vergil’s Aeneid: Ritual, Empire, and Intertext (Cambridge, 2009). She has recently completed a second book, entitled Brides, Mourners, Bacchae: Women’s Rituals in Roman Literature, and is the co-editor of a forthcoming volume, Emotional Trauma in Greece and Rome: Representations and Reactions. Amy Richlin is Distinguished Professor of Classics at UCLA. Her scholarship centres on outgroups and muted groups in ancient Rome—women, slaves, sexual minorities, indigenous peoples in the provinces—and confronts the problems inherent in writing the lives of people who left few records for themselves. She has published widely on issues related to gender in Rome from the Republic to late antiquity and is the author of Arguments with Silence: Writing the History of Roman Women (Ann Arbor, 2014). Her most recent book, Slave Theater in the Roman Republic (Cambridge, 2017), considers the rise of the palliata in the context of war and slavery in the 200s BCE. Victoria Rimell is Associate Professor of Latin at the University of Warwick. Her research spans many different authors and genres and engages critically with major themes in Roman literature and culture with a view to promoting dialogue between classical philology and modern philosophical and political thought. Her main focus is Latin literature from the first century BCE to the second century CE, and she has published books on Petronius and the Anatomy of Fiction (Cambridge, 2002); Ovid’s Lovers: Desire, Difference, and the Poetic Imagination (Cambridge, 2006); Martial’s Rome: Empire and the Ideology of Epigram (Cambridge, 2008); and, most recently, The Closure of Space in Roman Poetics: Empire’s Inward Turn (Cambridge, 2015). In her next project, she aims to reassess Senecan philosophical texts in the light of recent work in the emerging field of vulnerability studies.

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Introduction

Complex Inferiorities: The Poetics of the Weaker Voice in Latin Literature Sebastian Matzner and Stephen Harrison

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198814061 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198814061.001.0001

Introduction Latin Literature’s Complex Inferiorities Sebastian Matzner

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198814061.003.0001

Abstract and Keywords The Foreword provides an introduction to the background and rationale of this volume and gives an account of the phenomenon under discussion. In fleshing out what is meant by ‘complex inferiorities’ and the poetics of the ‘weaker voice’, the discussion also connects the issues at stake here, within the particular context of Latin studies, with concerns, intellectual developments, and conceptual frameworks of modern critical theory that variously underwrite the individual chapters and inform the cognitive interest of the volume as a whole. The Foreword then introduces the individual contributions and offers commentary on their multiple relations with each other. In setting out the main clusters of themes treated in the collection’s essays and teasing out the often overlapping dimensions that variously bind together individual chapters, it underscores in particular the relevance of intersectionality for the study of the strategic assumptions and manipulations of the weaker voice. Keywords:   Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, subalternity, inferiority, weakness, intersectionality, Latin literature, critical theory, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Rancière, Pierre Bourdieu

Many people want to claim subalternity. They are the least interesting and the most dangerous. I mean, just by being a discriminated-against minority on the university campus, they don’t need the word ‘subaltern’…They should see what the mechanics of the discrimination are. They’re within the hegemonic discourse, wanting a piece of the pie, and not being

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Introduction allowed, so let them speak, use the hegemonic discourse. They should not call themselves subaltern. Interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: New Nation Writers Conference in South Africa (1992) Politics and rhetorics that centre on the marginalized status of social groups— framed in terms of minority, inferiority, or subalternity, and vigorously contested, asserted, alleged, (re-)claimed, or rejected—constitute a significant feature of twenty-first-century current affairs, both at domestic and international level. The undoubted need to redress social injustices through critical debate and political action notwithstanding, the apparent efficacy of mobilizing a weaker voice to create and pursue possibilities for change seems to appeal not only in the context of such struggles, but also in circumstances where the political stakes are (relatively) less high, or even of a different kind altogether. Whatever one makes of Spivak’s injunction against ‘illegitimate’ claims to the status of subalternity, her vehement reaction draws attention to an important and widespread strategy which has (p.2) to date received little sustained discussion: the deliberate assumption of a weaker voice by speakers who, in fact, hold sufficient status not to be forced into this position. Latin literature offers ideal conditions for the study of this phenomenon, precisely because it is so overwhelmingly dominated by voices associated with and representative of elite speech and imperial hegemony. As Clarke succinctly notes, [t]he problem with textual analysis, as all scholars are quick to admit, is that elite men or men working for the elites wrote all the texts. In these texts we fail to hear the voices of the other 98% of Roman society: non-elite men (including the freeborn poor, slaves, former slaves, and foreigners) and women of all classes (with the possible exception of Sulpicia, who— even so—sounds like an elite man when she writes poetry).1 Except, we do hear their voices—just not, in most cases, coming from them. Instead, a broad range of phenomena immediately springs to mind where writers of (relatively) elite status adopt a markedly disempowered voice: topoi such as recusatio (professing a lack of ability to write in superior genres as appropriate to the writer’s high social standing) and rhetorical devices such as prosopopoeia (artfully and strategically adopting a persona with a view to garnering favour, even when this means temporarily forfeiting one’s higher status and discursive privileges); whole works, such as Ovid’s Heroides with its long-silenced female heroines; entire genres, such as satire with its irreverent take on the great and the good, generically framed as articulated ‘from below’; and even large-scale cultural self-positionings, such as expressions of Roman cultural inferiority vis-àvis classical Greece or the tensions that arise between meek and humble (yet Page 2 of 11

 

Introduction spiritually superior) Christian writers vis-à-vis their grand, canonical, classical (yet pagan) predecessors. Re-negotiating alleged weakness emerges as a central activity in Latin literature and one that plays a crucial role in establishing, perpetuating, and challenging hierarchies and values in a wide range of fields: from poetics and choices of genre to gender dynamics, social status, and intraand intercultural relations. As in twenty-first-century debates, here too it would seem that within certain contexts, inferiority is (or can be made to be) empowering (or at least enabling). (p.3) This volume is dedicated to the literary and cultural-political possibilities opened up by assuming and speaking in voices of weakness and inferiority. How does representing and modelling weakness relate to depictions of superiority? In what ways can writing inferiority be shown to (re-)constitute hierarchies? How does this strategy carve out spaces for experimentation, critique, and (re-)assertion? What roles do irony and humour play? How are socio-cultural hierarchies from different spheres—race, gender, class, centre/periphery, sexuality—present and functionalized in such negotiations, both literally and metaphorically? Are there recurring tropes, patterns, or argumentative strategies? The present collection of essays began its life at the international conference Complex Inferiorities: The Poetics of the Weaker Voice in Latin Literature, held under the auspices of the Centre for the Study of Greek and Roman Antiquity at Corpus Christi College, Oxford (4–5 September 2014). The event brought together scholars with expertise in different aspects of Latin literature to discuss, compare, and assess the phenomenon of the deliberate assumption of a markedly inferior voice in a broad range of texts and from a wide variety of angles. Pre-circulated papers, briefly introduced by the speakers, commented on by respondents, and extensively discussed at the event fostered dialogue and engagement across the individual contributions and a high degree of mutual responsiveness. As the contributors to the volume represent a wide range of research specialisms in Latin studies, covering a number of different authors, genres, periods, and working with different theoretical frameworks, the individual chapters speak to specific debates in a range of specialist sub-fields of Latin literary studies—including author criticism (notably Horace, Ovid, Martial, Tacitus, Juvenal), genre criticism (epigram, elegy, comedy, satire), and cultural criticism (subaltern studies, feminist criticism, sexuality studies, post-colonial criticism, and critical race studies). At the same time, the book as a whole takes forward in a focused and coherent way the study of a specific, widespread, yet still largely under-studied phenomenon that will be known and of interest to anyone working on Latin literature, especially those interested in its cultural politics, discursive dynamics, and socially competitive poetics.

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Introduction The volume’s core strength and innovative contribution to scholarship and critical debate lies in the consistent combination of two approaches to the study of Latin literature: on the one hand, it pushes further the critical analysis of the hierarchies operative in a range of (p.4) Roman discourses by examining not (only) how these hierarchies operated historically, but (also) how Roman writers themselves strategically mobilized, negotiated, and manipulated these hierarchies in their own writings. On the other hand, it demonstrates the interconnectedness and mutual implicatedness of a range of different sociocultural hierarchies in such acts of manipulation, and thereby shows the relevance of intersectionality for the analysis of Roman discourses pertaining to minority, subaltern, non-hegemonic, and marginalized groups—both real and imagined.2 It does so by confronting the complexities and issues that arise in studying the poetics of the weaker voice in a range of different conformations and contexts, including hierarchies of class, ethnicity, gender, erotic desire, citizenship status, imperial centre/periphery-status, literary genre, and cultural tradition.3 Specialist studies devoted to each one of these aspects have greatly enhanced our understanding of the workings of various Roman discourses4—but they have rarely (and never systematically) explored the (p.5) particular dynamics of the deliberate assumption of a weaker voice within their respective specific areas of interest, nor have they fully explored their dynamic interwovenness and interactive responsiveness when rhetorically mobilized for strategic manipulation.5 By addressing all of these different fields with one consistent and integrated approach, the volume as a whole and its individual contributions raise and confront methodological problems, whose relevance extends beyond the specific questions discussed in this book. By the same token, Latin literature—readily associated with hegemonic, imperial discourse and largely produced by upper-class, elite males who write and speak from positions of privilege—constitutes not only a particularly fruitful but in some ways almost paradigmatic field in which to study the poetics of the weaker voice, given the surprisingly large number and wide variety of instances where such a markedly disempowered voice is adopted there. But the phenomenon discussed and analyzed in this volume is anything but limited or specific to ancient Roman culture and literature. On the contrary, as the opening quotation from Spivak’s interview illustrates, the continued evocation of marginal(ized) or subaltern status in current political, social, and cultural debates means that several of this volume’s chapters have direct relevance to contemporary issues. Examining the ‘complex inferiorities’ of Latin literature and the poetics of the ‘weaker voice’ in Latin texts thus confronts intellectual, political, and methodological questions that surface with considerable urgency there but are of no smaller relevance for critical debate in other fields and indeed in the general public domain. Notwithstanding the book’s in-depth engagement with Latin literature in particular, a further aim of this volume is therefore to bring out, wherever possible, the strong resonance of the classical material under Page 4 of 11

 

Introduction discussion with contemporary critical concerns and political issues. Many of the contributors set out to achieve this by explicitly or implicitly connecting the issues at stake here, in the particular context of Latin studies, with broader concerns, intellectual developments, and conceptual frameworks of modern critical theory that variously underwrite individual chapters and inform the cognitive interest of the volume as a whole: from (p.6) Derridean notions of deconstruction as a strategy to re-write centres from the margin, Rancière’s reflections on intellectual emancipation and the power-laden discursive differentiation between voices and noises, Bhabha’s assessment of the structurally embedded power differential in colonial mimicry, to the debate, opened by Spivak, on whether or not the subaltern can speak, and Bourdieu’s analyses of the interconnected circulations and linguistic realizations of social, cultural, and academic capital as crucial facilitators for structures and performances of superiority and inferiority.6 The discussions both at the conference and during the preparation stage of this volume not only emphasized the significance of the topic, its relative neglect by scholars, and its relevance for debates within Classics, in neighbouring disciplines in the humanities, and in contemporary critical discourse at large; they also cast into relief the importance and necessity of taking a multiperspectival approach, drawing together instances of this phenomenon in different conformations and contexts in order to carve out structurally comparable dynamics, recurring rhetorical manoeuvres, and modes and techniques of authorial self-fashioning that collectively constitute the multifaceted poetics of the weaker voice. It soon become clear that this approach is indispensable for adequately capturing the important role of intersectionality, which emerged as crucial not only in analysing the dynamics of concrete oppression, but also in studying what happens in these playful and/or strategic manipulations of discursive hierarchies: the mutually modifying and interlinking (rather than merely cumulative) impact of always being implicated in several socio-cultural hierarchies at once, as described by intersectionality theory, proved highly pertinent to the poetics of the weaker voice examined here, since the deliberate assumption of weakness or inferiority, more often than not, ties in with complex lateral effects that trigger re-positionings in other hierarchically organized fields and spheres. These complexities and dimensions get lost when instances of the phenomenon of an assumed weaker voice are discussed, as is typically the case, in the context of studies tightly focused on individual authors, genres, or groups relegated to inferiority (slaves, women, barbarians, the plebs, same-sex lovers, etc.). It is precisely in order to promote greater communication within and across Latin literary studies as well as to take forward the (p.7) interdisciplinary study of this phenomenon by fostering greater dialogue between Latin literary studies and other humanities disciplines engaged with these issues that the format of an edited collection has been chosen to disseminate the results of our collaborative research on this project. Page 5 of 11

 

Introduction With the broader intellectual and critical context of the volume thus mapped out, the first chapter accomplishes the remaining introductory tasks of summarizing the scholarly debate to date and raising the central conceptual issues: in ‘Claiming Inferiority: Weakness into Strength’, William Fitzgerald’s survey of recent scholarship pinpoints engagements with this principle as a central preoccupation of Latin studies over the last thirty years and ponders the limitations of its conventional treatment and understanding by way of discussing a series of examples from Latin literature against the wider context of modern thought. Addressing central dimensions of the poetics of the weaker voice, which are studied in detail in other contributions to this volume (as indicated through cross-references in the footnotes)—notably: authorial self-fashioning, hierarchies of genres, and value judgements tied to positions within literary traditions— Fitzgerald proposes that, while there are many ways to stage a complex of inferiorities in any text, the central strategy most, if not all, of them rely upon is an upheaval of expectations. Formulating a theoretical position that informs and recurs in many of the subsequent chapters, Fitzgerald demonstrates how literary inferiority often almost paradoxically leads to an authorial voice of superiority as the ‘discourse of the low’ turns the tables on the ‘high’ and these texts marshal their own inferiority against the reader/audience, urging them to reconsider their judgement of superiority and inferiority. Continuing this opening section of broader methodological and theoretical considerations, Sebastian Matzner ponders in ‘How Do You Solve a Problem like Horace? On Roman Philhellenism and Post-Colonial Critique’ the parallels between accounts of Latin literary history vis-à-vis classical Greece and the conceptual frameworks of post-colonial criticism in order to formulate sharper critical perspectives on the complex inferiorities inherent in Roman philhellenism as a major paradigm of Latin literature. His discussion of Horace’s Letter to Augustus exemplifies the insights that can be generated from this perspective and highlights the important contributions Latin studies can make to contemporary discussions of the dynamics of intercultural inferiority discourses in modern literary (p.8) and cultural studies. Amy Richlin’s chapter on ‘Blackface and Drag in the Palliata’ continues both the mobilization of postcolonial perspectives and the interrogation of traditional accounts of the beginnings of Latin literature relative to Greece, as she discusses the ‘doubledrag’ of slave-women characters wearing blackface masks in Plautine comedy and reflects on the identity politics of the palliata as an assertion of a barbarian identity spoken by and to displaced and deracinated people. Questions of social status, ethnic background, and centre versus periphery are also at the heart of Jean-Claude Julhe’s essay ‘Social Inferiority and Poetic Inferiority—Martial’s Revenge in his Epigrams: A Commentary on Martial 5.13’ in which he traces how this poet marshals his popular success with Rome’s urban readership to confront his disadvantaged position with regards to socio-economic, ethnic, and generic hierarchies so as to fashion a positive poetic identity for himself. Page 6 of 11

 

Introduction Concerted efforts in almost the opposite direction are the topic of Tom Geue’s chapter ‘Drawing Blanks: The Pale Shades of “Phaedrus” and “Juvenal”’. Discussing in turn two exponents of satiric literature writing under the politically fraught conditions of the Roman Principate, he elaborates their shared yet distinctive strategies of authorial self-erasure. As his reflections show, these not only render key markers of Roman elite male identity—name, body, and autobiography—ineffective; in doing so, they also foreground and relish the particular potential of literature as the written word precisely in its supposed inferiority to author-bound speech. A strikingly complex and dynamic middle way that combines elements of self-effacement, as discussed by Geue, and elements of shoring up one’s status against an unfavourable position in various hierarchies, as discussed by Julhe, emerges from Victoria Rimell’s chapter on ‘The Creative Superiority of Self-Reproach: Horace’s Ars Poetica’. Her close reading teases out how this text negotiates a delicate tension and balance between Horace’s own inferior social status and superior status as older expert on the one hand, and the superior social status and inferior age/expertise of the young Pisones for whom he writes on the other. Her analysis makes visible how the text renders productive the challenges that result from these asymmetries by modelling and performing a mode of critical thinking centred on self-critique and self-reflection. Taking into account the dimension of class difference allows Rimell to offer a new understanding of both the Ars Poetica’s emphasis on coherence and consistence and its obsession with tragedy, by pointing to the (p. 9) challenges contained and represented in the political microcosm of the theatre where—just as in Horace’s pedagogical encounter with the Pisones— shifting power relations among an unwieldy mix of members from different classes, all jointly engaged in the performance of art and art criticism, need to be carefully negotiated. The potentially devastating effects of the clamor of the plebs in the theatre crowd, which loom large in the background of the Ars Poetica as a force to be reckoned with by the young aristocrats, receive further discussion and analysis in Ellen O’Gorman’s essay ‘“The Noise, and the People”: Popular clamor and Political Discourse in Latin Historiography’. Drawing on the work of Rancière and Kristeva, O’Gorman offers a reappraisal of how clamor signifies, both in terms of the modalities of its political presence and efficacy and in terms of its mimetic irruption within historiographic writing: popular clamor emerges as bodily sound rather than rational speech, as a distinctive political counterrhythm to the controlled, referential discourse of forensic oratory. Dunstan Lowe’s chapter, ‘Loud and Proud: The Voice of the praeco in Roman Love Elegy’, brings into view another non-elite voice that lingers in a different genre of Latin literature and is likewise typically overshadowed by elite oratory, that of the praeco (‘announcer’). Lowe’s discussion shows how, in keeping with love elegy’s favouring of counter-cultural idioms that subvert the social ideals and expectations of freeborn elite Roman males, the praeco as a low-status, informal Page 7 of 11

 

Introduction public speaker (details of whose speeches are lost to us) can be reconstructed as an important part of the playfully inferior self-stylization of the love elegists’ poetic persona. A further often-muted voice, this time in the terrain of sexual attraction, is the topic of Stephen Harrison’s chapter on ‘Hidden Voices: Homoerotic Colour in Horace’s Odes’. Taking his cue from re-assessments of homoerotic material in Latin literature in more recent scholarship, Harrison zooms in on a range of passages in the Odes where the poet-narrator implicitly or explicitly alludes to homoerotic desires, arguing that closer attention to focalization and perspective show that they convey conformations of desire far less unambiguously ‘heterosexual’ than is often assumed. The various dynamics, logics, and rhetorics of desire in the light of inferiority and superiority are subjected to closer scrutiny in Gregory Hutchinson’s essay ‘On Not Being Beautiful’. Drawing on symbolic logic, Hutchinson examines the relationship between assessing superiority or inferiority in beauty and choices in love in both Greek and Latin literature. His (p.10) discussion addresses the complex scenarios that unfold here (paying special attention to the various ways in which the hierarchies of love are set in relation to other hierarchies) as well as to the intriguing fact that such questions of relative inferiority and superiority in erotic matters seem to pervade Greek literature more extensively and differently than Latin. Vassiliki Panoussi’s chapter, ‘From Adultery to Incest: Messalina and Agrippina as Sexual Aggressors in Tacitus’ Annals’, returns to Latin historiography but continues the investigation of rhetorical manoeuvres clustering around social and erotic hierarchies in the fraught sphere of sexual agency, here in particular the trope of the sexually aggressive older female preying on a younger man. For Panoussi, it is the recognizable rhetoricity and artificiality in the deployment of this trope, here dramatized through rich intertextual echoes and connections (notably Vergil’s Aeneid and Euripides’ Bacchae), that undercuts an unambiguous condemnation of the superiority of female over male in these narratives, disrupts a simple re-assertion of traditional Roman gender hierarchies, and opens up the text to alternative interpretations beyond the reach of the narrator’s authority. The shadow of Vergil and the tensions of competing interpretations constitute the main concern of Shadi Bartsch’s contribution, ‘The Aeneid as “Weaker Text” and Fulgentius’ Radical Hermeneutics’. Bartsch first demonstrates that allegorical interpretation, although an established practice in both paganclassical and Jewish-Christian culture, initially features only as a valued and legitimate interpretative practice when used by each side for their own literature, but is used to discredit the other side in arguments that seek to establish the aesthetic, intellectual, or spiritual superiority of one side over the other—subsuming both their texts and their hermeneutics. She then goes on to show that Fulgentius’ Continentia Vergiliana marks the turning point at which a Page 8 of 11

 

Introduction first Christian allegorical reading of a pagan text is executed in the form of a fraught, fictive dialogue between ‘Vergil’ and ‘Fulgentius’, bridging the gap of mutual recriminations of inferiority. The volume’s final chapter also addresses the challenge of reconciling the grandeur of classical yet pagan writings, notably Vergil’s canonical epic, with the Christian commitment to the truth of the gospel and its values of simplicity and humility, but takes it up from the perspective of literary production rather than literary interpretation. Philip Hardie’s essay on ‘Cowherds and Saints: Paulinus of Nola Carmen 18’ draws on Auerbach’s arguments in his classic Mimesis (p.11) to analyse the roles of realism and laughter in this poem and to illuminate the dynamics between the multiple hierarchies of social, educational, and spiritual status that are negotiated by this text, encompassing the variously intersecting relationships between writer and readers, rustic protagonist and saintly patronus, Christian writing and Vergilian epic. The linear arrangement of the chapters in this order, which groups the contributions into overlapping segments whose respective emphasis of critical interest gradually shifts from one set to the next, showcases only one thread of connections that ties the contributions together. Given, however, the particular relevance of intersectionality in studying the strategic assumption and manipulation of the weaker voice, this volume resembles not so much a telescope that offers a chronological retrospective into the past, as a kaleidoscope that requires an active user, ready to move around the individual chapters and to read them in new juxtapositions in order to unfold the many further interconnections created through recurring themes, salient complexes, and emerging junctures that affect multiple spheres and hierarchies. To do so means to activate further clusters of closely related chapters which cut across their present linear arrangement, for instance: different modes of authorial selffashioning through strategic self-debasement, self-effacement, or erasure in the contributions by Geue, Fitzgerald, Julhe, Lowe, Matzner, and Rimell; fresh efforts to trace presences—both verbal and non-verbal—of the marginalized and the subaltern in the chapters by Harrison, Lowe, O’Gorman, and Richlin; the power asymmetries at play in ancient critical practice and aesthetic judgement as discussed by Bartsch, Hutchinson, Matzner, and Rimell; explorations of the role of gender and sexuality in presentations of abject, mute(d), modulated, and ventriloquized voices in Fitzgerald, Harrison, Panoussi, and Richlin; questions of intercultural inferiority—as inflected by ethnicity (Julhe, Richlin), imperialist centre-periphery dynamics (Julhe, Matzner), or competing literary traditions (Bartsch, Hardie, Matzner)—and of socio-economic inferiority (Geue, Hardie, Julhe, Lowe, O’Gorman, Richlin, Rimell). In addition to these major clusters of themes treated in this volume’s essays, there are many more and often overlapping dimensions that variously bind together individual chapters which the cross-references between the chapters invite the reader to explore.

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Introduction Each chapter on its own and the book as a whole revolve around the question: what are the dynamics, objectives, and potential of speaking in a weaker voice? Is it all about turning the tables? Escaping (p.12) normative constraints? Reaching equality of opportunity or working towards emancipation? Asserting one’s own distinctive voice? Re-evaluating the norms? Or just having fun by— temporarily and safely—forfeiting one’s privilege as the ultimate form of enjoying it? Whatever particular text and angle is chosen to ponder this question, the answer is, unsurprisingly, never straightforward. The following chapters richly illustrate that the complex inferiorities of Latin literature require complex treatment in turn. It is hoped that the essays here offered will stimulate further investigation into this intriguing phenomenon, which occurs in so many strands of Latin literary culture, by providing new perspectives and approaches for studying the rhetoric of inferiority and the poetics of the weaker voice. Notes:

(1) Clarke (2005: 272). (2) Intersectionality theory emphasizes and examines the fact that social identities and participation in systems that underwrite sociocultural categories such as gender, ethnicity, class, ability, sexuality, religion, age, etc. are not discrete and monolithic, but rather overlap or intersect, with the consequence that forms and expressions of oppression are likewise co-constituted by several (identity) categories at once, which mutually shape, inflect, and co-constitute each other. The term ‘intersectionality’ gained prominence through important interventions by Crenshaw (1989, 1991) but the conceptual framework and similar terms also find discussion and mobilization in Davis (1981); hooks (1984); Glenn (1985); Anzaldúa (1987, 1990); King (1988); Mohanty (1988); and Sandoval (1991). The complexities of intersectionality are lucidly discussed by McCall (2005; with further bibliography). (3) It is worth noting that intersectionality—in lived experience and in rhetorical mobilization—is arguably best conceived of in three-dimensional rather than two-dimensional terms. In addition to the simultaneous co-existence of intersecting ‘systems’ of identity and classification, notions of hierarchy, inferiority, superiority, and sub-alternity draw on conceptualizations of oppression based on a vertically stratified model of power, whereas notions of marginalization are based on concentric models of power. The rhetoric of suppression from above as opposed to the rhetoric of being marginalized from the centre are related, but not identical, strategies of self-fashioning that align their participants differently with those who wield power, and only a threedimensional model of intersectionality can duly account for the conceptual and rhetorical constellations, interrelation, and positionings that arise from this.

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Introduction (4) One thinks of, for instance, the important studies by Damon (1997) on power dynamics in Roman patronage; Farney (2007) on ethnic identity politics; Fitzgerald (2000) on citizenship status and social class; Hinds (1998) on chronological and normative aesthetic primacy vis-à-vis belatedness and inferiority in literary traditions; Millar (1998) on asymmetries between the popular collective and aristocratic individuals; Richlin (2014a) on the silent/ silenced voices of women; or Williams (2010) on deviant sexual behaviours and identities. (5) The closest one comes to such an enquiry in existing scholarship is arguably Habinek (2001), whose insightful study is, however, more limited in terms of generic scope, chronological breadth, and diversity of theoretical approaches, as well as not specifically concerned with hegemonic performances of nonhegemonic speech. (6) See Derrida (1967a, 1967c); Rancière (1991, 1995, 1998); Bhabha (1994); Spivak (1988); Bourdieu (1991, 2010), respectively.

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Claiming Inferiority

Complex Inferiorities: The Poetics of the Weaker Voice in Latin Literature Sebastian Matzner and Stephen Harrison

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198814061 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198814061.001.0001

Claiming Inferiority Weakness into Strength William Fitzgerald

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198814061.003.0002

Abstract and Keywords This chapter pinpoints engagements with alleged weakness as a central preoccupation of Latin studies over the last thirty years and ponders the limitations of its conventional treatment and understanding by discussing a series of examples from Latin literature against the wider context of modern thought. Addressing central dimensions of the poetics of the weaker voice studied in detail in subsequent chapters—notably: authorial self-fashioning, hierarchies of genres, value judgements tied to literary history—it argues that, while there are many ways to stage a complex of inferiorities in any text, the central strategy in most, if not all, of them relies upon an upheaval of expectations: literary inferiority often, almost paradoxically, leads to an authorial voice of superiority as the ‘discourse of the low’ turns the tables on the ‘high’, and these texts marshal their own inferiority against the reader/audience, urging them to reconsider their judgement of superiority and inferiority. Keywords:   silver Latin, Harold Bloom, passive aggression, dialectic, recusatio, genre, Catullus, Martial, Cicero, Pliny

The subject of complex inferiority is timely. In a world where politicians routinely claim to be outsiders, where passive aggression is one of the commonest of behavioural categories, and where the call to ‘check your privilege’ exerts a powerful argumentative force, it is hard not to think about complex inferiorities. In the field of Latin literary studies the obsession with the watchwords, manifestoes, and poetics of Callimacheanism over the last fifty years has made Page 1 of 16

 

Claiming Inferiority us sensitive to the strategic value of claiming to be lesser, smaller, thinner, weaker, or softer. This has been particularly the case with the Latin lyric and elegiac poets whose unashamed confessions of laziness, worthlessness, or servility (desidia, nequitia, and servilitas) have been aligned with ‘Callimachean’ claims to a system of aesthetic value that prioritized perfection over size.1 The love poet admits that he has become tenuis, wasted by love, but finds himself aesthetically improved by this reduction. At the end of Vergil’s Georgics (4.559– 66) great Caesar thunders in war by the deep Euphrates, while Vergil flourishes in the pursuits of an inglorious leisure; here Callimachean allusion (Aetia fr. 1.19–20) indicates that the contrasting words magnus and ignobilis (p.14) have been revalued once positioned in the aesthetic sphere. But it is not just the obsession of Latin poets (or their twentieth-century expositors) with Callimacheanism that fuels our interest in the claiming of inferiority. I have myself been little concerned with Roman Callimacheanism, but still very interested in the way that authors like Catullus, Martial, and Pliny the Younger claim minority status for their genre and writings, or adopt a persona of inferiority, and I have noted that Latin authors commonly use the figure of slavery to define the particular qualities of the literary.2 Our recent interest in complex inferiority stems from a conjunction between the ancient Roman and contemporary cultural environments. As far as the latter is concerned the dialectic of weakness and strength seems to have been in the air for some time. Even where modern literature has been seen as a struggle to the death between strong poets, as in Harold Bloom’s The Anxiety of Influence, that icon of the theoretical turn of the 1970s, one finds that the strategic claim to weakness figures prominently. Two of the strategies of Bloom’s latecomer poet are relevant here. In what he calls Kenosis ‘[t]he later poet, apparently emptying himself of his own afflatus…seems to humble himself as though he were ceasing to be a poet, but this ebbing is so performed in relation to a precursor poet’s poem-of-ebbing that the precursor is emptied out also’.3 Kenosis is a term taken from Christian theology which refers to Christ’s putting-off of his divinity, and here serves to name a strategy which produces the discontinuity by which the latecomer poet can become a strong poet. Similar to Kenosis is Askesis, where the poet, ‘by yielding up a part of his own endowment, curtails the precursor poet’s endowment’.4 Emptying out the self can have the effect of emptying out the other as well: ‘That’s all too lofty for me’ says the latecomer poet. We recognize the strategy of the passive aggressive, one of the most important psychological categories of contemporary psychology: in this case, an apparent confession of weakness foists pomposity, pretentiousness, or grandiosity on the addressee. We might compare Horace’s claim, in the Satires (1.4.39–44), that he wouldn’t really call himself a poet, since what he writes is ‘nearer to prose’ (sermoni propiora, 42), which comes with the remark that, in order to count as (p.15) a poet it’s not enough just to write verses, you also need genius, an almost divine intelligence and a mouth that can utter grand words Page 2 of 16

 

Claiming Inferiority (‘That’s all too lofty for me’). For that reason, Horace goes on, some have denied that the comic poets are really poets at all. Emily Gowers comments, à propos this satire, that Horace ‘dismantles his untouchable icon Ennius, in a tricksy demonstration of the pure “chattiness” and virtual “prosiness” of satire, which proves, despite appearances, that Horatian sermo pedestris is more finely wrought than archaic epic’.5 Pure passive aggression! So, one thing to be said about the striking fact that so many Roman authors make the claim to inferiority is that it is striking to us partly because we have become intensely aware of passive aggression and expert in analysing its strategies. But passive aggression is but the latest and least lofty manifestation of a concern with the dialectic of weakness and strength that goes back at least to the period in which the category of the aesthetic was born (the mid-eighteenth century). Let us consider another concept that has enjoyed a recent vogue, the sublime.6 Modern understandings of this concept tend to stress the dialectic of diminishment and expansion that is implicit in Longinus’ description of our experience of the sublime: the violence of the sublime overwhelms us (Longin. 1.4), but our powerlessness before it is balanced by the awareness that it is in our nature to be elevated by sublimity, which gives us the feeling that we have produced what we hear (Longin. 6.2). In Kant’s version of the sublime our incapacity to process imaginatively what confronts us as sublime makes us conscious of the power of our reason.7 The sublime overwhelms us, exposing a weakness which turns out to be the prerequisite for a self-consciousness in which we recover strength. Hegel harnessed his mythicized struggle between master and slave in the Phenomenology of Spirit to a similar drama of consciousness: the (p.16) slave’s very engagement, through his work, with the material world to which the master only relates as consumer, gives him a selfconsciousness unavailable to the master, who is ‘enslaved’ by his slave’s labour.8 But it is Nietzsche who gives the triumph of weakness its broadest historical significance when he diagnoses Christianity as a slave morality based on ressentiment. The recovery of strength from weakness in this case, unlike what we have seen in Hegel and Kant, is nothing to be celebrated. The moral thinking of Nietzsche’s Christian (as elaborated in his Genealogy of Morals) goes something like this: ‘I’ve been wronged; so the person who has wronged me is evil; so I’m good; because I’ve been wronged.’9 Nietzsche’s diagnosis of Christian morality takes me to my first Roman example, the poet who made a profession (in both senses) of being a victim, Catullus. One can see why an older scholarship found a proto-Christian Catullus in poem 76:10 Siqua recordanti benefacta priora voluptas     est homini, cum se cogitat esse pium, nec sanctam violasse fidem, nec foedere nullo     divum ad fallendos numine abusum homines, multa parata manent in longa aetate, Catulle, Page 3 of 16

 

Claiming Inferiority     ex hoc ingrato gaudia amore tibi. If a man has any pleasure in remembering the good done in the past,     in thinking himself dutiful, having broken no sacred trust, nor in any bond abused     the godhead to deceive humans, then many pleasures in a long life lie in store for you, Catullus,     from this thankless love of yours.11

To some, Catullus’ longa aetas has seemed to call for a Christian afterlife: if injustice has been inflicted on the victim in this life, there will be ample recompense in the next. If only Catullus had known that salvation was around the corner! Or, we might take a Nietzschean approach: Catullus’ paradoxical meditation is striking for its juxtaposition of ingrato with gaudia, lack of reciprocity with joy, as though (p.17) the satisfactions of self-righteousness proceed from the consciousness of having been wronged. But Catullus’ poem is framed in very familiar Roman terms. The breakdown of reciprocity between Lesbia and Catullus, cast in terms of the exchange of favours and obligations that governed the interactions of the Roman elite, is humiliating for the scorned poet. To restore the balance Catullus could, and elsewhere does, have recourse to invective against the one who has disrespected him. But that is not his response here. To understand Catullus’ thinking it is helpful to compare Cicero’s words to Pompey, complaining that the latter has ‘dissed’ him. Like any Roman grandee, Cicero was sensitive about anything that touched his dignitas.12 Signs of good will or respect that went unreciprocated were tantamount to insults. But here Cicero, like Catullus, professes himself happy to soak it up: Ad me autem litteras quas misisti, quamquam exiguam significationem tuae erga me voluntatis habebant, tamen mihi scito iucundas fuisse; nulla enim re tam laetari soleo quam meorum officiorum conscientia; quibus si quando non mutue respondetur, apud me plus officii residere facillime patior. Although the letters that you sent me contain little sign of your goodwill towards me, I want you to know that they were welcome; for nothing tends to give me such joy as the knowledge of my own services; and if they are on occasion not reciprocated I am happy to let the preponderance of service remain with me.13 Is Cicero’s facillime patior aggressive? Cicero suggests two different ways of recuperating Pompey’s lack of respect towards him. Officiorum conscientia (‘my awareness of my own good offices’) compares to Catullus’ cum se cogitat esse pium (‘when he reflects on his own dutifulness’), and locates the arena of action in Cicero’s mind, while apud me plus officii residere (‘that the preponderance of Page 4 of 16

 

Claiming Inferiority beneficence rests with me’) points towards the social force of the expectation of reciprocity. Not only is Cicero comforted by the thought that he has been dutiful if the other has not, but this passage makes it clear that officium unreciprocated can be ‘banked’, so to speak, and will place Pompey at a disadvantage (apud me residere). Even if reciprocity fails, (p.18) something accrues to the party whose officium has not been returned. In the case of Catullus, although nothing will come back from Lesbia (omnia…ingratae perierunt credita menti, 76.9), the force of reciprocity must find somewhere to go. Re-cordanti (76.1) stands in place of some form of re-ponere, with the prefix converting the missing reciprocity (re-ponere) into repetition, going back over in the mind (re-cordanti). Cicero’s residere performs an analogous operation, though he gives separate expression to the internal pleasures of a clear conscience and the social advantage of an imbalance in his favour. For Catullus, the process of mutual officium can be internalized and the time-scale of recompense expanded: what remains or waits (manent) does so in the longa aetas of his poetry’s survival. So, the Christianizing interpretation of Catullus 76 was not so far off the mark: there must be recompense for Catullus’ benefacta and love, even if that means changing the terms either of the coin in which Catullus will be repaid or of the time scale in which repayment will be made. Here Michèle Lowrie’s remarks on the Latin poet’s social performance are relevant: [We should ask] why, if the ability to control the aesthetic field is in fact empowering, the poets consistently depict themselves as disempowered. Just as poetic speech acts achieve their effects indirectly, so do poets create a limited social power for themselves through the rhetoric of inability. This rhetoric acknowledges the dominant ideology, which lends the full achievement of manhood only to those who control politics. Nevertheless, intervention in the social sphere through poetry allows for a more lasting domain of social power than the transient sphere of the forum —at least in the poet’s representation.14 Catullus’ amatory officium is unreturned, but Ovid’s Hero in Heroides 19 speaks of a love that cannot be requited.15 Replying to Leander’s letter, Hero confesses that while her love is equal to his, her strength is less—a woman’s mind is infirma, weak.16 But immediately Hero proceeds to give this weakness a contingent determination: men have a life that is full of varied pursuits, and so the extent to which (p.19) love takes up their being is diluted; a woman, by contrast, has nothing to do but love: Quod superest facio teque, o mea sola voluptas,     plus quoque quam reddi quod mihi possit amo. I do what is left to me and, my only delight,     I love you more even than can be returned to me.17

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Claiming Inferiority It is hard to say whether this statement is pathetic (‘I can’t expect you to love me as much as I love you’), or aggressive, insofar as it claims to give something for which there can be no return. Hero writes second in her exchange with Leander, and here, in her very weakness, she transcends the epistolary economy of reciprocal exchange: there can be no equal return for what she gives. We could take this as an emblem of poetry itself: the letter to which there will be no reply. One function of the dialectic of weakness and strength is to provide a means by which the distinctive capacity of the literary can be made to appear, and Ovid’s pathetic Hero reminds us that poetry is like love unreciprocated, whether we think of it as a letter sent out to those who will not reply or as a form of communication which turns in on itself and repeats rather than being answered (as in Catul. 76).18 Where weakness or inferiority is claimed the usual terms must be assumed to have changed in value, so the transformation of weakness into strength may be accomplished by a change of framework which revalues the terms. Catullus is a crucial figure in the story of complex inferiority in Latin literature, so let us consider another version of Catullus the victim, in this case confessing to a shocking failure of manhood. When, in poem 28, Catullus commiserates with Veranius and Fabullus for having received such lean pickings from their tour of duty with Piso, he turns to his own similar experience under Memmius in Bithynia. In poem 10 Memmius had been called an irrumator (p.20) (Catul. 10.12). Fair enough: Memmius ‘screwed him over’. But in poem 28 the scene becomes more graphic and we can no longer gloss over the sexual references as a dead metaphor: O Memmi, bene me ac diu supinum tota ista trabe lentus irrumasti. Memmius, you fucked me in the mouth well and truly, as I lay on my back, taking your own sweet time, with all that beam of yours.19

Memmius, Catullus acknowledges, is the one with the beam, but lentus (‘slow, leisurely’) introduces a different note—Memmius took his own sweet time with his irrumation and went all the way (tota). Catullus’ expression of outrage becomes synonymous not only with a confession that he has been unmanned, but also with a voicing of pleasure.20 What are we to make of the relish with which he describes his supine humiliation as fellator? How could this weakness become strength? One way to answer this question would be to compare other aristocratic assertions of the right to behave as if the normal rules don’t apply: Lucius Plancus dancing the role of the sea god Glaucus, for instance, naked except for blue body paint (Vell. 2.83.2), or Nero undergoing marriages as the bride, or playing female characters on stage (Suet. Nero 29; 21). Here, dwelling on his Page 6 of 16

 

Claiming Inferiority own humiliation, Catullus thrusts in our faces the fact that he can’t be touched by the contempt that would fall on anyone else in a similar position. David Wray has a slightly different take on Catullus’ habitual breaching of the proper gender roles. This very effeminacy is itself a kind of performative manhood, flaunting its ability to make the reader gasp.21 To paraphrase Blake: if the effeminate were to persist in his effeminacy he would become manly. I agree with Wray, but I think that his social explanation of the dialectic of weakness and strength here can be supplemented by an aesthetic interpretation, which is my own take on this passage. Catullus brings to our attention the fact that the aesthetic relation produces aberrant forms of positionality. To whom do the pleasure, (p.21) and the disgrace, of these lines belong? The aesthetic dimension is foregrounded as one which makes ambiguous the positionality on which proper gender relations depend. When you read a poem, for instance, it is a moot question who is doing whom, a fact that is dramatized by Catullus in poem 16 (Fitzgerald 1995: 49–55). In the case of these lines from poem 28, the pleasure that emerges from Catullus’ expression of humiliation both is and is not to be attributed to Catullus, though it serves his poetic purposes. As I have put it elsewhere: ‘Catullus’ humiliation turns into, or becomes indistinguishable from, the description of pleasure—a free-floating, textual pleasure that is hard to attribute definitively to Memmius or Catullus or even the reader who dwells on his words.’22 In other words, as the feature of a literary text this pleasure escapes the positional structures that would make it shameful. In the cases I have discussed so far, the poet’s ‘inferiority’ is a provocation to think about the puzzling or complex status and nature of poetry, or literature more broadly. Indeed in Roman love elegy the humiliation of the lover paradoxically allows the power of poetry to be brought to our attention. Kathleen McCarthy has described how the lover’s humiliation in elegy’s narrative sets off the power of the poetic medium as we switch our attention from one level of the text to another: ‘If we focus on the story of the love affair and let ourselves forget the medium through which we get access to this story, we will see the lover as silenced and humiliated, while the mistress revels in her power. If, on the other hand, we take a step back and consider the medium through which the story is transmitted to us, then we will realize that we have only the poet’s point of view, and the mistress comes to look like a beautiful mannequin.’23 Perhaps in Ovid’s Hero we can see a fusing of medium and story as the (female) lover comes to incorporate both the humiliation of unequal love and the power of the medium. The forms in which Roman authors claim inferiority are, of course, manifold, and some of these are more straightforwardly about literature itself than the examples I have given. The recusatio, with its attendant Callimachean gestures of incapacity, is well-trodden ground.24 (p.22) Statements of generic affiliation might also involve claims to inferiority. In fact, so many genres identify themselves as low in relation to epic (satire, elegy, epigram, pastoral, nugae) Page 7 of 16

 

Claiming Inferiority that instead of thinking of genres as arranged in a hierarchy, it might be appropriate to think of all poetic genres as ways of, and reasons for, not being epic. Genre itself is a dimension of inferiority, and we might compare the way that we use the term ‘genre painting’ to denote ‘minor’ painting that doesn’t engage historical topics or portray identifiable individuals. Epic is the unmarked term and authors working in other genres must (passive-aggressively) find different ways of not being capable of epic. Satire and epigram promote the bodily and the everyday as both the mark of their inferiority and the measure of epic’s irrelevance,25 adopting the strategy of Bloom’s Kenosis: emptying himself out, the poet of a minor genre also empties out the epic poet. A good example of this is Martial’s claim that in his little books of epigrams life (vita) can recognize its ways (mores), which could not be said of epic or tragedy, for all their bluster (8.3, discussed in more detail below).26 When poets attribute their choice of genre to their incapacity for epic we tend not to take them seriously. Perhaps this is an inevitable concomitant of the fact that the critic is also an advocate: no one wants to back a loser, and so interpretation becomes a matter of showing how weakness can be seen as strength. There are no inferior poets, or at any rate they will never be the poets that we are studying. It has not always been so, and there was a time when to write about silver Latin poetry was to demonstrate just how silver (i.e. ungolden) it was. The subject has been treated with characteristic wit and acuity by Stephen Hinds in his Allusion and Intertext, where he posits a series of stages in our attitude to silver Latin. In the beginning the term, and the concept, was a modern critical and historiographical tool: literature of the silver age marked a decline from golden Latin literature because of a number of aesthetic factors, which modern scholars could illustrate from the poetry. Then came Gordon Williams (1978), who pointed out that the writers of the silver age themselves saw literary decline all around them, and so we were not (p.23) imposing modern standards on ancient poetry in treating it as ‘silver’. Postmodernists replied that this was naive: ‘decline’ is a literary trope; just because a poet says that his work has declined that doesn’t mean that his work has declined. In fact, the use of the trope proves that he’s laudably self-conscious, or ironic. However, as Hinds adds in response to this new orthodoxy, which has emptied the trope of meaning, ‘just because a poet says that his work has declined that doesn’t mean his work hasn’t declined’ (Hinds 1998: 90). Should we then return to the critical programme of yesteryear, illustrating the baleful effects of rhetorical training and recitationes on silver poetry? No, says Hinds, we should rather feed the pathos of that acknowledged decline back into our readings: ‘As the long years wear on, Ovid does fall away from his peak as a poet. His exile books grow into their trope: “decline” becomes decline, and none of the newly appropriated virtuosity in Ovid’s framing of his suffering should be allowed to devalue the suffering thus framed’ (Hinds 1998: 90). Similarly with Lucan: ‘to deny to Lucan a pervasive sense of compromised artistic and moral integrity by reading it as a Page 8 of 16

 

Claiming Inferiority mere formalist gesture might in the end produce no less unfair a reading of De Bello Civili than the reading which failed to see the dysfunction as a trope in the first place’ (Hinds 1998: 90). The point I would want to make here is that there are moments when literature, confessing its own decline, points beyond itself. Perhaps Hinds’ choice of the metaphor of the frame is not quite right for the purpose (‘Ovid’s framing of his suffering through the trope of decline should not be allowed to devalue the suffering thus framed’). Literature declares that it gives out under the suffering to which it points in the very act of giving out. In this context, framing is, precisely, what it cannot do. But pointing at what cannot be framed is something that it does as literature. We recognize the mechanism of the sublime: Ovid’s incapacity to make good poetry of his exile, his failure to ‘frame’ it aesthetically, enhances the magnitude of his suffering as such. That literature might confess itself overridden by something more urgent or significant is apparent from one of the most famous, and indeed, Roman, passages of Latin literature: Excudent alii spirantia mollius aera (credo equidem), vivos ducent de marmore vultus, orabunt causas melius, caelique meatus describent radio et surgentia sidera dicent: tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento (p.24) (hae tibi erunt artes), pacique imponere morem, parcere subiectis et debellare superbos. Others will hammer bronzes of more lifelike softness (yes, it’s true), and will draw living visages from marble; they will plead causes better, and will trace the paths of constellations with a rod and predict the rising of the stars. You, Roman, remember to rule peoples under your command (these will be your arts), and to establish civilization through peace, to spare the defeated and beat down the proud in war.27

The Greeks know many things but the Romans one big thing, and it’s not literature. We forget sometimes how strange a statement this is, coming as it does in a work of literature that claims, or certainly was claimed (Prop. 2.34.65– 6), to rival the Greeks at their own game.28 But perhaps we are, precisely, intended to forget that these are the words of a character in a poem. Anchises speaks with an authority beyond poetry when he gives the Romans a mission whose value transcends that of culture. I want to end by looking at two analogous, but very different, cases of a Roman author pitting the value of literature against that of government, both of them ‘silver’ confessions of decline. But first, by way of contrast, let us see how Martial retools Anchises’ pronouncement to make a characteristic claim for his minor genre. In the opening sequence of his eighth book of epigrams Martial Page 9 of 16

 

Claiming Inferiority stages a conversation between himself and his Muse. Six or seven books of epigrams are enough, he says, and besides his reputation is by now secure.29 One of the Muses (the ninth) asks him in reply if he would rather write tragedy or epic, and earn the hatred of those teachers, and their pupils, hoarse with declaiming his work.30 Let others write that kind of stuff: (p.25) ‘Scribant ista graves nimium nimiumque severi,     quos media miseros nocte lucerna videt. at tu Romano lepidos sale tinge libellos:     agnoscat mores vita legatque suos. angusta cantare licet videaris avena,     dum tua multorum vincat avena tubas.’ ‘Let the all-too serious or sober write those kinds of works, the writers     whom the lamp burned in the middle of the night reveals in all their misery. But you, flavour your witty little books with Roman salt;     let Life recognize and read in them its own ways. Don’t worry that you appear to sing on a narrow pipe,     provided that your pipe beats the trumpets of the many.’31

Vergil’s identification of Romanness (tu…Romane, memento) with empire becomes Martial’s identification of Romanness with the ‘salt’ of his minor genre (tu…Romano…sale tinge libellos). ‘Roman salt’ here implies scurrilous wit, which together with the uncensored straightforwardness that constitutes ‘speaking Latin’ (cf. 1. praef. 12, Latine loqui), are the characteristic qualities of the epigrammatic genre in its difference from epic. So, in conceding epic to others, who may be graves and (nimium) severi, but are miseri too, Martial appropriates Vergil’s scene of Romanness for his own ‘narrow’ (angusta) genre. In Martial’s eleventh book even Augustus will be recruited for the cause of Romana simplicitas (11.20.10) when Martial quotes an obscene squib written by Vergil’s princeps to validate his own genre. If Vergil’s Anchises makes a concession that recuperates Roman superiority by shifting the ground to a sphere that transcends the literary, Martial brings Romanness back into the literary sphere, or on its edge, where it touches on life (vita, 11.20.7). Martial performs the familiar gambit of turning weakness into strength, but there are other ways in which Anchises’ prioritizing of government over art have played out in Roman literature, to which we might be reluctant to apply the dialectic of weakness and strength. When Pliny compares himself to Cicero as a letter-writer he excuses the fact that he writes only short letters by alluding to the difference between Cicero’s times and his own:

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Claiming Inferiority Neque eadem nostra condicio quae M. Tulli, ad cuius exemplum nos vocas. Illi enim et copiosissimum ingenium, et par ingenio qua varietas (p.26) rerum qua magnitudo largissime suppetebat. Nos quam angustis terminis claudamur etiam tacente me perspicis. Nor is my situation the same as that of Marcus Tullius, whose example you ask me to follow. For he had a most copious genius and, matching it, a generous supply of material, both various and significant. As for me, I don’t need to tell you how constrained my limits are.32 When Pliny does write a letter about high political matters, in the manner of Cicero, he acknowledges that there is now little opportunity for such communications: Habeant nostrae quoque litterae aliquid non humile neque sordidum, nec privatis rebus inclusum. Sunt quidem cuncta sub unius arbitrio, qui pro utilitate communi solus omnium curas laboresque suscepit; quidam tamen salubri temperamento ad nos quoque velut rivi ex illo benignissimo fonte decurrunt, quos et haurire ipsi et absentibus amicis ministrare epistulis possumus. Let our own letters too have something that is neither mean nor squalid, nor confined to private matters. It is true that everything now falls under the will of one person, who alone has undertaken all burdens and labours on behalf of the public welfare; but some streams, as it were, do make their way down to us too, with salutary moderation, from that generous source, on which we can ourselves draw and then distribute to our absent friends in letters.33 In an essay on Pliny’s Fons Clitumnus letter (Plin. Ep. 8.8), the great Wilamowitz (1913: 378), no fan of Pliny, borrows the stream imagery of that letter and of the passage I have just quoted, but to very different effect. He sums up Pliny as ‘a good fellow, but meagre of ambition and even more of achievement’ (ein braver Mensch, aber gering im Wollen und noch mehr im Vollbringen). But this makes him a good representative of the average man of his time, which is described as ‘the broad, flat, tranquil bed into which the proud roar and ambitious onrush (hochträumender Strom) of Roman culture had degenerated after a century of imperial peace’.34 Pliny leaves us little (p.27) room here to turn his concession (quidem) into a claim; what the emperor allows his elite subjects is (literally) both derived and tempered. We are reminded of Maternus’ speech in Tacitus’ Dialogus, in which the decline of oratory is attributed to precisely the long period of imperial peace that Wilamowitz decried. In Maternus’ account Augustus appears as the man who started the rot, for it was in the middle of his principate that the centumviral court, now the most prestigious locus of oratory,

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Claiming Inferiority though in the heyday of Republican oratory overshadowed by more important criminal trials, began to assume primary importance: postquam longa temporum quies et continuum populi otium et assidua senatus tranquillitas et maxime principis disciplina ipsam quoque eloquentiam sicut omnia depacaverat. After the long period of peace and the people’s continuous inactivity, and the senate’s calm, and particularly the princeps’ control had thoroughly pacified (depacaverat) oratory, like everything else.35 Depacaverat, a hapax, is the reading of MS B, rejected by most editors. Mayer 2001 accepts it (along with Syme 1958: 724 and Fröhlke 1979) as a nonce formation playing on debellare. If this is right, and it would certainly be the lectio difficilior, we have another interesting response to Anchises’ speech, bringing the oratory that Anchises had conceded to the Greeks within the sphere of what has been beaten, ‘pacified’ down by the Romans: even if the Romans have distinguished themselves in the endeavours that Anchises left to the Greeks, the imperial peace has put paid to what was, in effect, another form of violence, for, as Maternus stresses, great oratory is the fruit of turbulent times (Tac. Dial. 40.1–41.5). If we read depacaverat, and hear in it an allusion to Anchises’ debellare, that would be consonant with an ironic relation to imperial propaganda: cultural activity undergoes a kind of violence as peace becomes a form of suppression in which everything is indiscriminately (sicut omnia) quashed. It is hard, in view of Maternus’ earlier appearance in this dialogue in his capacity of subversive tragedian (Tac. Dial. 2.1–3.4), implicitly threatening the emperor with his forthcoming Cato, to read Maternus’ praise of Vespasian’s peace as anything other than ironic, or at the very least ‘doublespeak’. What could be more (p.28) passive aggressive than this ‘doublespeak’ as described by Shadi Bartsch? For characteristic of doublespeak is the appropriation of the ideological language of the court in such a way that, thanks to the peculiarities of the context in which it appears, allows its use to be understood as its opposite or at least as an uncomplimentary version of the original although this context does not irrefutably fix the content of what is said in one way or another for its audience.36 Doublespeak, in one form or other, has been a useful tool for solving some of the interpretive dilemmas raised by early imperial literature, but I don’t think that we can include it as an example of the dialectic of weakness and strength.37 Less equivocal than Tacitus’ doublespeak is Pliny’s acknowledgment of decline, which accepts without irony the claims of imperial propaganda and a political situation that offers writers a limited scope, within which they can never match the greats of the Republic. We seem to find it hard to accept such a confession of inferiority Page 12 of 16

 

Claiming Inferiority at face value, at least without condescension. But our approach to these texts might benefit from being discussed in the context of contemporary concerns other than those with which I started. A long period of peace, at least for the West, has coincided with a shift away from a culture in which the measure of aesthetic health is the great artist, producer of masterpieces, themselves preferably the fruit of suffering and struggle. The postmodern era has no one to put beside the great modernists such as Joyce, Picasso, and Stravinsky in terms of range and ambition. Although the postmodern jettisoning of master narratives, focused on great men, and of the ideal of the masterwork, has entailed a critique of greatness itself, postmodern art has been relaxed about its lack of ambition—indulging neither in passive aggression nor in the dialectic of weakness and strength. Perhaps we are in a good position to think afresh about cultural decline and to elaborate models of inferiority less dependent on the dialectic of weakness and strength to which we have grown attached. Notes:

(1) See Hunter (2006: 1–3) for a brief account, and critique, of this reduction, on the part of both Latin poetry and modern scholars, of Callimachean poetics. On forms of ostentatious self-debasement in Latin love elegy and strategic mobilizations of Callimachean aesthetics in established literary systems, see also in this volume Lowe and Matzner, respectively. (2) Fitzgerald (2000: 11, 65–8; 2007: 97–105). Conversely, on particular qualities of the palliata as slave literature, see Richlin in this volume. (3) Bloom (1973: 14–15). (4) Bloom (1973: 15). (5) Gowers (2012: 14). On Horace’s tactical displacement of Ennius, see also Matzner in this volume. (6) Lyotard (1994) and Žižek (2009) are two of the most prominent publications testifying to the sublime’s currency. In the field of classical studies Porter (2016) is the most recent and wide-ranging study. (7) Kant’s analysis of the sublime can be found in the second book of the first part of the Critique of Judgment, where he says, for instance (para. 28) ‘And so also the irresistibility of its might, while making us recognize our own [physical] impotence considered as beings of nature, discloses to us a faculty of judging independently of and a superiority over nature, on which is based a kind of selfpreservation entirely different from that which can be attacked and brought into danger by eternal nature.’ Kant (1951: 101); trans. Bernard. (8) Hegel (1977: 11–119); sections 178–96 of the Phenomenology of Spirit.

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Claiming Inferiority (9) Best summarized in section 13 of the first essay of Genealogy of Morals (Nietzsche 1996; trans. Smith), in which the lambs say: ‘These birds of prey are evil; and whoever is as little of a bird of prey as possible, a lamb—should he not be said to be good?’ (10) This strain of the critical tradition is discussed in Fitzgerald (1995: 125–7). (11) Catul. 76.1–6; all translations are my own except where otherwise indicated. (12) White (2010: 68) notes that Cicero heads this letter ultraformally, with all three parts of his name, a sign that he is ‘ruffling his feathers’. (13) Cic. Fam. 5.7.2. (14) Lowrie (2010: 289–90). (15) On power asymmetries in Ovid’s Heroides, see also Hutchinson in this volume. (16) Urimur igne pari, sed sum tibi viribus impar: | fortius ingenium suspicor esse viris. | ut corpus teneris ita mens infirma puellis. Ov. Ep. 19.5–7 (We burn with an equal fire, but I am no match for you in strength: | I suspect that men have a stronger mind. | Just as young girls’ bodies are weaker, so is their mind). (17) Ov. Ep. 19.17–18; a statement that has had a long afterlife in Byron’s version: ‘Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart | ’Tis Woman’s whole existence’, as Haidee writes in a letter to Juan (Don Juan, Canto 1, stanza 194). (18) Compare Spentzou (2003: 130): ‘Without underestimating their desperate desire for a happy ending uncircuitously expressed in all three letters, Helen, Hero and Cydippe appear more capable of handling the letter’s “pending” economy and its lack of immediate gratification. We could even suggest that they are themselves the agents of this literary as well as erotic holding back. It is as if there is a narrative time pertaining specifically to the letters, cherished by the women but completely unheeded by the men.’ (19) Catul. 28.9–10. (20) On the complexities involved in assessing the homoerotic dimensions of Latin poetry, see also Harrison in this volume. (21) ‘There is a Catullan manhood of delicacy as well…a stance of cosmopolitan and erudite elegance thrust performatively forward to the point of provocative effeminacy’ (Wray 2001: 134). One might include in the category of jawdropping poetic confessions of failed manhood Ovid’s outrageous account of his impotence in Am. 3.7, as the Press’s reader reminds me. (22) Fitzgerald (1995: 70). Page 14 of 16

 

Claiming Inferiority (23) McCarthy (1998: 177). (24) The modest refusals of Augustan poets imitated the strategies of the highest power in the land, as Freudenburg (2014) points out in a stimulating comparison between the emperor’s refusal of honours and the poet’s recusatio. He makes the point that refusing honours was for the emperor also a way of refusing the obligations that come with those honours (see his n. 28 for bibliography on the recusatio). Lyne (1995: 31–9) offers a good survey of the Augustan recusatio. (25) On the generic strategies of satire and epigram in (re-)negotiating their inferiority vis-à-vis epic, see also Geue and Julhe, respectively, in this volume. (26) Compare, for instance, Pers. prologue and 5.1–16; Mart. 9 Praef. 5–9. (27) Verg. A. 6.847–83. (28) On the extraordinariness of the way in which the Romans themselves framed their cultural relationship with Greece as one of acutely felt inferiority, see also Matzner in this volume. (29) On Martial’s strategies of playing off an entire set of (ethnic, economic, generic) inferiorities against the trump card of his success with readers, see Julhe in this volume. (30) Compare this with Horace’s take on the challenge of writing tragedy in Rome, the risks of a negative reaction from audience and critics, and the fraught dynamics of the teacher–pupil relationship as addressed in his Ars Poetica, on which see Rimell in this volume. (31) Mart. 8.3.17–22. (32) Plin. Ep. 9.2.2. (33) Plin. Ep. 3.20.12. On this letter, see Gibson and Morello (2012: 253–6), who draw our attention to ‘Pliny’s dexterity in expressing in so short a passage both nostalgia on the one hand for opportunities under the republic which are now lost and grateful relief on the other for the emperor’s provisions in this area’ (255). (34) For a more extended treatment of Pliny’s confessed ‘second-rateness’, in which this passage is discussed, see Fitzgerald (2016: 85–100). (35) Tac. Dial. 38. (36) Bartsch (1994: 115); Bartsch’s emphasis. (37) Gale (1997) takes a similar approach to the question of elegy’s attitude to Augustus, though she does not use the term ‘doublespeak’. Page 15 of 16

 

Claiming Inferiority

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How Do You Solve a Problem like Horace?

Complex Inferiorities: The Poetics of the Weaker Voice in Latin Literature Sebastian Matzner and Stephen Harrison

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198814061 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198814061.001.0001

How Do You Solve a Problem like Horace? On Roman Philhellenism and Post-Colonial Critique Sebastian Matzner

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198814061.003.0003

Abstract and Keywords Taking its cue from Horace’s paradoxical dictum that ‘Greece took captive its brutish conqueror and brought its arts to rustic Latium’ (Ep. 2.1.156–7), this chapter explores parallels between the history of Latin literature and theoretical models elaborated by scholars of post-colonial literature. Continuing the first chapter’s broader methodological considerations, it models a post-colonially inflected reading strategy to analyze more lucidly the inter- and intracultural dynamics and politics of Latin texts shaped by (and, in turn, shaping and sustaining) the fraught Greco-Roman cultural relationship: how, where, and to whose (dis-)advantage does Greece work—and is made to work—as a silent referent in Roman literary and literary-critical knowledge? Horace’s Letter to Augustus serves to illustrate the insights this approach can generate in the study of individual Latin texts, of Roman philhellenism as a cultural paradigm, and in current debates on the status of European literature within post-colonial frameworks of world literature. Keywords:   Horace, Augustus, Latin literature, literary history, philhellenism, post-colonial theory, methodology, world literature

In the category ‘single-most blindingly obvious truism in the study of Latin literature’, it is pretty hard to beat the fundamental importance and lasting influence of Greece on Rome. So blindingly obvious and all-pervasive is this influence that we have perhaps become blind to just how extraordinary it is that Greece should have exercised such an enormous, formative influence on Rome,1 Page 1 of 19

 

How Do You Solve a Problem like Horace? and even more, that it should have continued to do so even after it had been conquered by Rome—a remarkable paradox, perfectly captured in Horace’s famous dictum Graecia capta ferum uictorem cepit et artes | intulit agresti Latio (‘Greece took captive its brutish conqueror and brought its arts to rustic Latium’).2 Horace’s catchy two-liner and the historical development of Latin literature at large, which it rather aptly describes, pose a problem for the dominant contemporary framework for the study of intercultural encounters born out of military conquest: that of post-colonial criticism. Where post-colonial critics are typically concerned with the literature and culture of peoples as shaped and influenced by their imperial conquerors and colonizers, Latin literature develops under intense Hellenic influence without any actual occupation of (p.30) Rome by the Greeks, and even continues to do so at a more intensified pace after Rome has conquered Greece.3 This imperial hegemon’s literature shows ubiquitous signs of a persisting inferiority complex vis-à-vis the long defeated and politically marginalized Greeks. Taking the paradox of Horace’s dictum and the challenge it presents to some conventional assumptions of post-colonial criticism as its cue, this chapter undertakes an exercise in defamiliarization for the purpose of developing a methodology that might allow us to engage more productively with the complex inferiorities that arise from the formative dynamics of Roman philhellenism in Latin literature: first, by examining the development of Latin literature through the lens of stage-sequential models elaborated by post-colonial critics for the development of post-colonial literatures; and, second, by pondering the problems and potential of using post-colonial theory to study Latin texts shaped by the fraught Greco-Roman cultural relationship. Against this backdrop, I will propose a post-colonially inflected reading strategy that can help us tease out and analyze more lucidly the inter- and intracultural dynamics and politics of Latin texts shaped by (and, in turn, shaping and sustaining) Roman philhellenism. Horace’s Letter to Augustus (Hor. Ep. 2.1) will serve to illustrate the proposed approach and the potential insights it can generate, both in the study of individual Latin texts and with a view to the place of Latin literary studies more generally in the wider context of current debates on the status of European literature—classical and modern—within a global framework of world literature that is alert and alive to the realities of post-coloniality. The complex inferiority of Roman philhellenism raises questions of particular relevance for these debates: how can it be that, although Greece was no longer in a position to actively pursue an imperialist agenda as part of which it would assert its cultural supremacy, Roman philhellenism in its relationship to Greece nonetheless seems to bear all the signs of being shaped by and responding to exactly such an agenda? (p.31) In case this re-framing of philhellenism as a form of non-violent colonialism seems like one defamiliarizing step too far, pause for a moment and imagine that Rome had been conquered by Greece, rather than the other way Page 2 of 19

 

How Do You Solve a Problem like Horace? around; that Alexander the Great had turned westward and had made Carthage and Italy parts of his Hellenistic empire. This is not a new exercise in alternate or counterfactual history; in fact, the earliest example of this sort of intellectual experiment, in Livy’s history of Rome,4 imagines this very scenario—though Livy falls short of going the whole way as he swiftly asserts that Rome would, of course, have fought off an attack by Alexander’s forces. Toynbee picked up this line of thought in 1969 and imagined a victorious Alexander establishing a Hellenistic empire stretching from Spain to India and a peaceful world order lasting until the present day.5 The implications for the development of Roman literature under such circumstances have been sketched more recently by Hose (1999), who suggested that historical Greco-Roman cultural relations and the development of Latin literature correspond precisely to what post-colonial theory would lead us to expect had the Greeks occupied Rome. How so? The foundational act of establishing colonial power in cultural terms consists in the colonizers’ seizing control of the means of communication: the metropolitan centre’s language and symbolic system are imposed on the colonized. This entails an imposition of the colonizers’ overall perspective: their notion of history, value hierarchies, and sense of centre and periphery; it gives special importance to the translator, who both mediates between the cultures and facilitates and enforces these acts of cultural imposition; and it mutes independent native cultural traditions, practices, and forms in favour of those imported from the imperial centre, a process frequently accompanied by an explicit devaluation of native culture as ‘primitive’ or ‘barbaric’. In terms of cultural agency, this first stage sees cultural practitioners from the imperial centre active in the colony, replicating and asserting in situ the centre’s cultural system. Hose suggests that Rome in the fourth and third centuries BCE corresponds in its cultural relations with Greece to this stage of colonization. He points out that the first Roman historian, Fabius Pictor, wrote in Greek, followed Greek sources and models, and interpreted Rome’s historical (p.32) development by imposing on it the lens and terminology of Greek political theory.6 Likewise, several mythological strands, involving Heracles, Odysseus, and eventually Aeneas are drawn upon in this period to weave Rome into the fabric of Greek mythology.7 By the third century, the Aeneas legend becomes increasingly dominant as the aetiology of Roman culture, which fits the colonial pattern of incorporation into the imperial centre’s ideological geography by accepting a peripheral place within it.8 The influx of Greek teachers of grammar and rhetoric also plays a crucial part in securing Greek control over the means of communication: translation from Greek into Latin is only half-jokingly referred to by Plautus as barbare uertere (‘to render into Barbarian’),9 and the Romans themselves considered literary translation and adaptation from Greek into Latin to have been the founding acts of Latin literature. Livius Andronicus, from the Greek city of Tarentum, gives the Romans with his Odusia, a translation of Homer’s Odyssey, not only their first Latin epic poem; he also (re-)asserts Page 3 of 19

 

How Do You Solve a Problem like Horace? Homer’s status as the head of not only Greek but also Latin literature. His Latin plays, following Greek models, are likewise instrumental in establishing the cultural practice of ludi scaenici in Rome and Plautus’ comedies appear in this light as a form of colonial mimicry—almost the same as their Greek counterparts, but not quite.10 Rome’s successive conquests of Greek territories in the second century BCE, so Hose argues, then ushered in the stage of emancipation, characterized by increasing attempts of the culturally colonized Romans to assert an identity independent and different from that of the Greek colonizers. Hose points to the rise of a notion of ‘Romanness’ that seeks to fashion Roman ‘otherness’ on the basis of an idealized past from which ‘quintessentially’ Roman values such as pietas, uirtus, auctoritas, and fides are drawn and attributed to early Roman heroes (p.33) and the maiores in general. Against this self-conception, the Greeks can be reduced to frivolous, morally lax, effeminate graeculi (‘Greeklings’)—an emancipatory strategy that, ironically, itself draws on Greek models, echoing, as it does, fifth-century Greek self-fashioning in opposition to the Persians.11 Hose singles out Cato and Ennius as driving forces behind Roman cultural emancipation. He describes Cato as shaped by the intellectual influences of Greek education and thought but also as striving to overcome them by recuperating and re-asserting native traditions. In support of this claim, he cites Cato’s involvement in the dismissal of the embassy of Greek philosophers in 155 BCE, accused of corrupting the Roman youth; Cato’s insistence on addressing Greek dignitaries in Latin, even if this necessitated the use of an interpreter; his emphasis on Roman law and custom over Greek philosophy and rhetoric in his educational programme; and the Italo-centric focus of his historiographical work, the Origines. Cato’s efforts to bring the poet Ennius to Rome, who produced with the Annales Rome’s first ‘national’ epic, in open rivalry with Homer and, eventually, replacing Homer as a fundamental Roman school text, are also seen as part of this emancipatory development. Hose concludes, Cato and Ennius, therefore, established a post-colonial literature in Rome. Rome thus emancipated herself in the field of literature from Greece.… [T]here should now begin a new productive and creative momentum, the mixture, the hybrid in literature and culture.12 Pointing to Lucilius’ satires as the result of such hybridization, adopting Greek traditions but creating something entirely new, Hose locates in Varro’s literary, linguistic, and cultural-historical writings of the mid-first century efforts to overcome Greek hegemony in the realm of theory and criticism. By the time the entire Greek world has become part of the Roman empire, Hose argues,

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How Do You Solve a Problem like Horace? the ‘colonial’ people have become the masters over the former center. The focus of perspective can now be changed. The Romans usurp the literary discourse. Vergil wants to surpass Homer, Horace the Greek lyric poets. Earlier, Cicero had not only ‘naturalized philosophy in Rome,’ by doing so he also robbed the Greek language of the exclusive right to be the only voice in philosophical discourse.13 (p.34) Mission de-colonization accomplished. Intriguing as Hose’s re-reading of Rome’s literary history through a post-colonial lens is, it is not without significant problems. Hose’s assessment of Cato, for instance, is compromised by the fact that so little of our knowledge about him comes from his own writings, and so much from other, later writers, notably Cicero,14 Pliny,15 Aulus Gellius,16 and Plutarch,17 whose portrayals of Cato as a style icon of romanitas must be considered in the light of their own culturalpolitical positions and interests. Hose’s emancipatory perspective on Ennius is open to challenge by pointing out that it is Ennius who first introduces the hexameter, the definitive feature of Greek epic, into Latin poetry, thereby putting the nail in the coffin of the native Saturnian verse. Ennius’ proximity to Hellenistic historical epic provides further problems for Hose’s suggestive account, as does Ennius’ reported self-stylization as a re-incarnation of Homer’s soul in a lost passage of his Annals. This ‘emancipation’ looks suspiciously similar to emulation and assimilation.18 A further problem arises from the fact that, yes, Rome’s post-colonial story, as Hose tells it, is consistent with the way the Romans themselves told it—but, as Goldberg has argued, ‘the literary history of the Republic as we tell it today is largely a first-century story.’19 That is to say, we have every reason to assume that verbal art was practised in Rome before Andronicus’ introduction of Greek literary forms and material into Latin, and the notion of this particular moment as the point of departure for Latin literature is itself a cultural construct. Goldberg convincingly argues that the notion of a ‘Latin literature’ takes shape and gains force when members of the Roman upper classes in the late second and first century began to treat the scripts of third-century playwrights as books,20 and their engagement with Latin literary texts now began to generate, in Bourdieu’s terms, academic capital. This philological and critical processing of Latin texts, including canon formation, is, again, itself heavily shaped by Hellenistic philology and criticism,21 blurring once (p.35) more the lines between presumed different stages of cultural domination and emancipation. For my purposes here, Goldberg’s observations make visible the fact that Greek influence occurs on two levels: a primary level of direct responses to and engagements with Greek cultural presences, and a secondary level of cultural practices and discourses that are in various ways inflected by Greek models since they draw their conceptual structures and authoritativeness from them. These two are neither identical nor are they bound to coincide with each other on a shared temporal plane.

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How Do You Solve a Problem like Horace? It is, then, the commitment to a unified, linear chronology that bedevils Hose’s post-colonial approach: it proves virtually impossible to neatly ascertain a clearly pre- or post-colonial period of Latin literature, since at any stage hybridity and engagement with Greece are a constant factor, and efforts to maintain a homogenizing and streamlining narrative are constantly undermined by contravening literary contributions and interventions. Goldberg rightly emphasizes that ‘the literary history of the Republic is…best seen not as a purely linear progression but as a series of fits and starts and significant backward glances.’22 Hose himself acknowledges that, for instance, the cultural work done on defining ‘Romanness’, contrasting Roman rustic simplicity and virtuousness with Greek effete decadence, ‘remained in effect well into the imperial period’.23 He names Juvenal as its last prominent literary spokesman, which leaves this poet—in rigid chronological terms—an anachronistic de-colonizing voice in a post-colonial landscape. Conversely, even if we view Augustan literature as situated in a context where the tables have turned and it is now Latin writers who write from the imperial centre, in the literary sphere Greece still sets the standard.24 By way of comparison, we only need to think of American literature vis-à-vis British literature to realize that the rise to imperial power in political terms does not do away with colonial legacies in the literary and cultural field.25 Yet all this is not to say that a post-colonial approach to the study of philhellenism as a cultural paradigm is altogether misguided. (p.36) Even if we complicate Hose’s re-reading of Rome’s literary history with Goldberg’s insights into the dynamics of Roman literary-historical self-fashioning, the striking fact remains that writers should cast their literary tradition, practice, and criticism in terms that fix them in a position of inferiority and belatedness—and that they should continue to cultivate this ‘colonial’ literary attitude even when the political realities of the day present the exact opposite power balance. Moreover, the very issues which seem to render a post-colonially inflected analysis of Roman philhellenism questionable, namely the simultaneity of the nonsimultaneous and the problems surrounding linear narrative, also profoundly trouble post-colonial criticism itself. Spivak and Chakrabarty, for instance, critique the hidden master narrative which frequently underpins colonial studies and hinges upon the teleological chronology implicit in the ‘post-’ of postcolonialism. They consider the implications of stage-sequential arguments associated with the notions of pre-colonial, colonial, post-colonial to be ultimately derivative of the European metanarrative of the nation state and of linear historical progress. As Spivak puts it: ‘Time graphed as Law manipulates history seen as timing in the interest of cultural political explanations.’26 Thinking about the post-colonial condition in these terms, so Chakrabarty argues, inevitably means that ‘“Europe” remains the sovereign theoretical subject’,27 leaving post-colonial thought, even on the level of emancipatory reflection, locked in a mimetic relationship with the former imperial centre.28 In this sense, drawing on post-colonial theory to reflect on Roman philhellenism Page 6 of 19

 

How Do You Solve a Problem like Horace? promises to be an insightful exercise for post-colonial studies, since in this context we are looking at phenomena prior to the emergence of modern European nationalism and its associated conceptual paradigms.29 Comparing the mechanics of domination and marginalization inherent in philhellenism with those of post-colonialism can, I would argue, productively complement Spivak’s goal to ‘undo the often unexamined opposition between colonizer and colonized implicit in so much colonial study’,30 which she seeks to achieve by showing that there (p.37) can be a ‘structural complicity of dominant texts of two different cultural inscriptions’31—and this structural complicity brings me to Horace and his letter to Augustus. So how do you solve a problem like Horace? That is to say: how do you solve a problem like Horace, who presents us with the challenge of how best to make sense of the ‘post-colonial’ dynamics of Roman philhellenism that so clearly and deeply shape his writing; and how do you solve a problem like Horace, that is, in the manner of Horace, who in his own work confronts and wrestles with precisely these dynamics? My answer consists in the proposition to conduct symptomatic, post-colonial-style readings of philhellenic writings. The objective of such readings is not to force individual writers and writings into a homogenized overarching historical narrative or to (re-)discover individual stages of this metanarrative represented in them.32 Rather, mobilizing a colonial lens offers a critical reading practice that can help us tease out the discursive features which constitute philhellenism as a formation with structural resemblances to post-colonial scenarios in the first place. This allows us to suspend any commitment to a linear chronology, with its fraught tendency towards streamlining reductionism and metanarrative investments. Instead, we can refract philhellenic texts through a focus on particularly salient complexes of the post-colonial condition, and thereby seek to establish the silent referents and covert structuring principles operative in these texts.33 Thus, where Chakrabarty observes that for historiography ‘Europe (p.38) works as a silent referent in historical knowledge itself’,34 the scholar of Latin literature must ponder: how, where, and to whose (dis-)advantage does Greece work—and is made to work—as a silent referent in Roman literary and literary-critical knowledge? One such complex, with particular resonance in the context of Greco-Roman cultural relations, centres on what we might call ‘chrono-ideologies’. By this I mean cultural-epistemological configurations of time that structure and underwrite one or more discourses, can travel between discourses and cultures, are open to manipulation yet also exercise normative force, and thereby acquire an important role in both inter- and intra-cultural power politics.35 At the heart of one highly influential chrono-ideology that has extensively, repeatedly, and variously shaped literary-critical and literary-historical discourse(s) in the European tradition stands Homer. The problem posed by Homer to philhellenes of all ages is that in him the beginning of the Greek literary tradition and its Page 7 of 19

 

How Do You Solve a Problem like Horace? highest level of canonicity and authority coincide, with significant consequences. In abstract terms, one point of similarity between post-colonialism and philhellenism is that both are tied to past events whose structuring force persists even when independent agency has been gained. To concretize the analogy: one might say that just as Europe bequeathed to its former colonies a model for and mode of historical thinking that continues to govern post-colonial self-perception, so Greece’s Homer bequeathed to philhellenic cultures a model for thinking about literary history that proved hard to relinquish. Horace engages with this Homeric ‘head first’ problem in his letter to Augustus. Where post-colonial critics have pointed to the fraught legacy of an imperialist philosophy of history, in this text, I would argue, we can see the poet wrestling with a similarly problematic philosophy of literary history as he grapples with the chrono-ideology attached to Homer’s prominent place in the Greek cultural cosmos—a conceptual formation that influences the literary historical discourse of his own culture and time. For Horace, the point of contention is the archaism prevalent among Roman readers and critics of his own day and age, who spurn contemporary poetry in favour of early Latin works and whom Horace caricatures as venerating texts undistinguished in literary-aesthetic (p.39) terms, such as the Law of the Twelve Tables, simply because they are so very ancient: sic fautor ueterum, ut tabulas peccare uetantes |…dictitet Albano Musas in monte locutas (‘Such enthusiasm do they show for things of the past that they insist that the Tables forbidding criminal acts…were spoken by the Muses on the Alban Mount’).36 Horace’s obvious agenda here is, of course, that he wants his work to be read and judged on its own merits. As Rudd rightly stresses, it would be misleading to approach Horace as a ‘“classical poet”…happily in tune with the reading public. … In his day Horace was a modern poet and had in large part to create his own audience.’37 Horace’s efforts at audience creation, however, involve not only aesthetic but also intercultural re-evaluations. Rome’s literary archaism is not attributed to a supposed general conservative streak of Roman culture. Instead, Horace offers these two explanations: on the one hand, those who currently hold cultural authority in Rome are portrayed as seeking to assert and defend it by entrenching their own expertise and training, setting it as absolute, and refusing to let it be challenged: uel quia nil rectum nisi quod placuit sibi ducunt, uel quia turpe putant parere minoribus, et quae imberbes didicere senes perdenda fateri. [I]t’s either that they think nothing right which doesn’t meet their approval or else they consider it shameful to heed the younger generation and to acknowledge that what they learned when their chins lacked beards should be destroyed now they’re old men.38

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How Do You Solve a Problem like Horace? On the other hand, this archaism is portrayed as the result of adopting a Greek perspective when looking at Latin literature, whereby the oldest Latin texts are, by analogy, endowed with the greatest canonical respect: si quia Graiorum sunt antiquissima quaeque scripta uel optima, Romani pensantur eadem scriptores trutina, non est quod multa loquamur. If, because all the earliest writings of the Greeks are quite the best, Roman writers are weighed in the same balance there is no reason why we should say much.39

(p.40) Goldberg’s assessment of the rise of literary criticism in Rome sheds light on the intercultural dynamics that gave rise to the perspective on Latin literature Horace bemoans in these lines: A Greek precedent may have played a part. Homer had long been the archetypical poet of the Greek world, and epic was the genre of first reference in Hellenistic culture. Crates’ lectures at Rome doubtless centred on Homeric exegesis, and they may well have inspired men like Vargunteius to search for equivalent Latin texts on which to perform comparable exercises. A Latin literature would require a Latin Homer, which meant locating poems that could bear the burden of national identity while withstanding the scrutiny of grammarians and poets. Lampadio and then Vargunteius found such texts in the Bellum Punicum and Annales.40 Horace’s comment both makes this connection explicit and turns the Greek precedent against the detractors of contemporary Latin writers: the seemingly arch-Roman traditionalists are shown to be governed in their thinking by a Greek paradigm, which is deemed inappropriate for approaching Latin literature. His move is strikingly similar to that of post-colonial theorists who pointed out that early emancipatory strategies for decolonization, intended to bring the former colonies to an even footing with the former imperial centre(s), were themselves inadvertently heavily indebted to key concepts of European imperialism, notably notions of historical progress and the concept of the nation state. The significance of time as a structuring principle in particular suggests a post-colonial point of contact: Horace rejects here, in effect, the seemingly emancipated assumption of the coequal and coeval status of Greek and Latin literature, insofar as the resulting unified chronology also entails the selective privileging that is structurally embedded in the Greek perspective of literary history. The phrase ‘denial of coevalness’—or ‘allochronism’—was coined by Fabian in his study of the critical frameworks of Western anthropology, in which he critiqued the discipline’s systemic failure to recognize that all human societies are of the same age. He suggested that anthropology has been guilty of a pervasive translation of geographical distance into chronological (p.41) distance whereby spatial remoteness from the imperial centre is equated with a Page 9 of 19

 

How Do You Solve a Problem like Horace? corresponding remoteness in terms of cultural development. The centre’s own history is thereby set absolute as History (with a capital H) and imposed on other cultures. These are thereby incorporated into the centre’s own narrative, but also fixed in a position of not-yet.41 In Horace’s literary-critical manoeuvre, however, a similar strategy is mobilized to serve a very different agenda: the ‘not-yet’ of Latin literature is here used to pave the way for the Augustan era’s own emerging classical writers. Aesthetics and chrono-ideology go hand in hand in achieving this. In terms of aesthetics, Horace is less outspoken than Propertius, who presents himself explicitly as the Roman Callimachus (Prop. 4.1.64), but both share the same Callimachean ideals and Horace’s letter to Augustus is rife with buzz words that pitch the qualitative principles of polished refinement against the criterion of venerable age, as in this key passage: non equidem insector delendaque carmina Liui esse reor,…                                         …sed emendata uideri pulchraque et exactis minimum distantia miror; …indignor quicquam reprehendi, non quia crasse compositum illepideue putetur sed quia nuper, nec ueniam antiquis sed honorem et praemia posci. For myself, I’m not attacking Livius’ poems and don’t think destruction should fall on his lines…but that they should be thought faultless and beautiful, and all but perfect, I find astonishing;…It annoys me that anything is criticized, not because people think it is coarse or inelegant in style but because it is modern, and that instead of indulgence honour and prizes are claimed for early writers.42

(p.42) This strategic opening up of a space for contemporary writing to compete at the highest level, however, comes in tandem with the introduction of a new parallel history with Greece, which is introduced almost through the back door. Greece’s cultural and literary flourishing is markedly situated in the postwar period after the Persian Wars, in which light-hearted playfulness gives rise to a peak in outstanding cultural production: ut primis positis nugari Graecia bellis coepit et in uitium fortuna labier aequa, nunc athletarum studiis, nunc arsit equorum, marmoris aut eboris fabros aur aeris amauit, suspendit picta uultum mentemque tabella, nunc tibicinibus, nunc est gauisa tragoedis; sub nutrice puella uelut luderet infans, quod cupide petiit mature plena reliquit. quid placet aut odio est quod non mutabile credas? hoc paces habuere bonae uentique secundi. From the time that Greece abandoned her wars and began to engage in idle amusement, drifting into frivolous pursuits as Fortune showed Page 10 of 19

 

How Do You Solve a Problem like Horace? her favour, she burned with enthusiasm, now for athletes, now for horses, and fell in love with sculptors who worked in marble, ivory, or bronze, she stared with enraptured eyes and soul at painters’ panels and took delight now in flute-players, now in tragic actors; like a baby girl playing under her nurse’s watchful eye, what she eagerly desired she soon abandoned when bored with it. What likes and dislikes are there that you wouldn’t suppose could be easily changed? This was the effect of happy days of peace and prosperous winds.43

Likewise, Rome’s first dabbling in higher cultural pursuits—under Greek influence—is markedly set in the period of calm following the Punic Wars: Graecia capta ferum uictorem cepit et artes intulit agrestio Latio. Sic horridus ille defluxit numerus Saturnius, et graue uirus munditiae pepulere; sed in longum tamen aeuum manserunt hodieque manent uestigia ruris. serus enim Graecis admouit acumina chartis, et post Punica bella quietus quaerere coepit, (p.43) quid Sophocles et Thespis et Aeschylus utile ferrent. temptauit quoque rem, si digne uertere posset, et placuit sibi, natura sublimis et acer. Conquered Greece took captive her rough conqueror and introduced the arts to rustic Latium. So it was that the stream of that turbulent Saturnian metre ran dry, and cleanness drove out the foul smelling liquid; but for many a long year traces of the country lived on and even yet remain. For it was at a late stage that he applied his shrewd mind to the writings of the Greeks, indeed, it was when he found peace after the Punic wars that he began to ask what benefit Sophocles brought, what Thespis and Aeschylus. He also attempted to try his hand at adapting the plays in a worthy fashion, and took satisfaction in the exercise, as he naturally possessed vigour and grandeur.44

Yet the achievements of exactly this period—the works of Ennius, Naevius, Pacuvius, Accius, Plautus, and Terence—are those to whom Horace pays respect but whose lack of polish and refinement makes them targets of his aesthetic criticism.45 It is by way of chronological implication that Horace points to the actual post-war age of classical literature that he envisages for Rome: his own. The letter ends, as it started, with a praise of Augustus’ achievements (albeit in the guise of a recusatio), which notably includes the closing of the gates of Rome’s temple of Janus and the establishment of peace after centuries of external and internal warfare:                                                 …tuisque auspiciis totum confecta duella per orbem, claustrataque custodem pacis cohibentia Ianum Page 11 of 19

 

How Do You Solve a Problem like Horace? et formidatam Parthis te principe Romam. …wars ended all over the world under your auspices, bars that enclose Janus the guardian of peace, and Rome striking fear into the Parthians with you as our emperor.46

Tellingly, Rome’s current post-war cultural climate is described by Horace in terms that closely resemble the child-like experimentalism (p.44) ascribed to fifth-century Athens when in Horace’s first-century Rome everyone is said to be caught up in a light-hearted frenzy for poetry: mutauit mentem populus leuis et calet uno scribendi studio; pueri patresque seueri fronde comas uincti cenant et carmina dictant. … scribimus indocti doctique poemata passim. hic error tamen et leuis haec insania quantas uirtutes habeat sic collige: uatis auarus non temere est animus; uersus amat, hoc studet unum; The fickle people have changed their minds and are on fire with a single passion—writing; sons and strict fathers take dinner with their hair wreathed in leaves, dictating lines of verse.…We write poems indiscriminately, whether we have poetic training or not. And yet this aberration, this mild lunacy, has its merits; consider how great these are: a bard is rarely tainted with avarice, verses are what he loves, this is his one passion.47

Horace’s epistle to Augustus thus introduces an alternative Greco-Roman chronological parallelism—one that entails a crucial move away from a static chronology, with absolute age as the evaluative criterion, to a relative chronology, with aesthetic accomplishment as the evaluative criterion. The epistle’s philosophy of literary history, as it were, is that post-war childishness and playfulness creates a dynamism and novelty so rich that its products will become classical. In this framework, the precedent of the Greeks becomes a model of nouitas: quod si tam Graecis nouitas inuisa fuisset quam nobis, quid nunc esset uetus, aut quid haberet quod legeret tereretque uiritim publicus usus? But if the Greeks had found novelty as offensive as we do, what would nowadays be old? Or what would the public have as its property to read and thumb, each man to suit himself?48

Rather than supporting a backward-looking, static principle of literary value that permanently disadvantages contemporary writers, the Greeks’ chronological priority is now associated with the tag of originality and innovation, which strategically recalibrates the Greek model of literary history to work not against Page 12 of 19

 

How Do You Solve a Problem like Horace? but in favour of (p.45) contemporary Latin writers (and notably not just the contemporary writers of any given moment, but specifically those of this postwar generation), including not least Horace himself. What we see in Horace’s letter to Augustus is a snapshot of a moment when a literature and a writer that we now perceive as major, canonical, classical, or dominant wrestled with the dynamics of marginalization and relegation to a status of relative inferiority—and the persisting presence of the Greeks and their models played a significant role in how this marginalization was discursively construed and negotiated. The above spotlight on Horace is, of course, only the briefest of sketches, but it nonetheless illustrates how the comparatism inherent in philhellenism triggers dynamics that resemble the discursive structures that characterize post-colonial literature and thought. Pursuing the implications of these resemblances also offers opportunities to think more deeply about the relationship between Classics and post-colonial criticism in the age and context of global literature, and to respond productively to the intellectual and political challenge of post-colonial criticism to historically eurocentric disciplines, such as Classics and Comparative Literature. Kilito, for instance, has contrasted the Western critic’s choice to study different literatures comparatively, often motivated by a liberal desire for intercultural communication, with the enforced comparative framework within which Arabic literature is read, even by Arab readers.49 Young summarizes Kilito’s argument as follows: [T]o read without comparison is not an option for the Arab reader. Arabic literature is ‘subject to a double chronology’: while classical Arabic literature always existed in its own time, Arabic literature since the nineteenth century has moved to Christian time and found itself ‘in another age and against a different horizon’. Arabic literature from the nineteenth century onward is always read in comparison with European literature, and not by choice. Kilito’s main complaint is not that this is how Europeans read but that Arab readers too have internalized these views…. This is similar to Frantz Fanon’s complaint that colonized subjects internalize the racist colonial view of their inferiority: as Stuart Hall puts it, the colonial regimes ‘had power to make us see and experience ourselves as “Other”’.… Kilito is challenging the phenomenon that Benedict Anderson has characterized as ‘the spectre of comparisons’: the compulsion in the nonWestern world to see its own cultural creations (p.46) through the lens of comparison with Europe. Not only did Europe colonize the world, it imposed its cultural tastes, aesthetic preferences, and criteria for judgment on the colonized. For centuries Europe had operated as the third, abstract mediating term in the three-part model of Western comparatism that imperial culture inflicted on the world. The ‘universal’ terms of comparative [literature], or of Weltliteratur, continue today as a way of

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How Do You Solve a Problem like Horace? enforcing the ideology and practices of Western globalization in the literary world.50 Different though the external circumstances undoubtedly are, the double chronology inflicted on Arabic literature and its readers in the framework of post-colonialism and the double chronology of philhellenism we saw in Horace, including the literary-critical frameworks that attach to such chronologies, are so strikingly similar that it seems impossible to support Young’s claim that ‘Postcolonial literature is inherently comparative, intrinsically more comparative than other literature because it is defined by its comparatism.’51 Rather, one might say just as well—by way of paraphrasing and amending Young (as indicated below)—that literature written under the influence of philhellenism as a governing cultural paradigm is, just like post-colonial literature, inherently comparative, intrinsically more comparative than other literature because it is defined by its comparatism: peau noire, masques blancs. Postcolonial Philhellenic authors have always written comparative literature—a literature that did not have to wait for the frame of comparative literature to be in dialogue with another literatures.… Postcolonial Philhellenic literature therefore cannot be anything but comparative, since it is written from the position of always having been put in comparison with another literatures.…Postcolonial Philhellenic literature is the first literature that is comparative literature rather than literature comparée.…[H]aunted by its own comparatism…[and] tormented by another literatures to which it does not belong, [it] seeks to uncompare the comparative situation to which it has been assigned and simultaneously to recompare the terms and the position of the invidious, hierarchical comparison according to which the postcolonial its own literature and thought is always translated into the universal terms of the West Greeks.52 The concrete human suffering caused by colonialism, is, of course, irreducible, incommensurable, and incomparable. It remains a material (p.47) fact, which scholars sometimes tie to the hyphen in ‘post-colonial’ as a symbolic reminder and injunction against the fetishization of theory itself.53 Nevertheless, paracolonial scenarios (no hyphen here), such as the ones discussed in this chapter, do pose important questions and challenges both to post-colonial theory and to the discipline of Classics, now itself challenged by post-colonial theory and critique in the context of the (latest re-)turn to world literature. Classics shares this challenge with Comparative Literature, which has arguably been a more direct target, most famously in Spivak’s (2003) pronouncement of The Death of a Discipline. In this context, any engagement with ‘classical European literature’—ancient or modern—runs the risk of being branded reactionary.54 Scholars such as Bassnett, Culler, and Sorenson have, in turn,55 taken issue with post-colonial literary criticism, accusing it in particular of politicized, instrumental readings, that are (a) blind to the specifically literary dimension of Page 14 of 19

 

How Do You Solve a Problem like Horace? literature, (b) reductive in viewing literature as representations of social and political realities, and (c) circular in the sense that the readings produced are presented as validating the political-theoretical perspective which generated them. Faced with this impasse, Berman is surely right to argue that we need to pose ‘the colonial question in a boldly comparative framework…without debilitating historicist and geographical constraints’.56 In a recent contribution to this debate, Albrecht noted that fresh work on hitherto ‘missing pieces’ of colonialism and imperialism, such as work on Islamic imperialism, promises to challenge some of the less productive doxa of post-colonial studies.57 Scholars of classical literature, too, have an important role to play in this enterprise, and the perspectives on (p.48) Roman philhellenism advanced in this chapter can, it is hoped, contribute to furthering critical approaches to the study of classical literature, in which literary sensitivity and political alertness combine to create a greater awareness for the distinctively subtle politics of literary and aesthetic discourses. Historically eurocentric disciplines, like Classics and Comparative Literature, are surely right to respond to the demands and challenges of postcolonial criticism, but they are also ideally placed to remind us that decolonization includes and perhaps should start at home—and an important part of it may well consist in de-classicizing (the) Classics, by probing deeper into the cultural politics and intercultural dynamics of classicism itself. Notes:

(1) Feeney (2016) offers a striking exploration of just how extraordinary, unpredictable, and unprecedented a process the historical development of Latin literature really is. (2) Hor. Ep. 2.1.156–7. (3) While the influence of the burgeoning Hellenistic kingdoms on Rome and her leading political and cultural players might still fit the conventional paradigms of the influence of imperial centres on their surrounding cultures, the second stage of Greek influence after the Roman conquest of Greece jars with notions of a neat correlation of political and cultural power and domination that underwrite much post-colonial criticism. (4) Liv. 9.17–19. (5) Toynbee (1969). (6) Hose mentions in particular κτίσις, βουλή, and πόλις (respectively pertaining to the foundation, governance, and political entity of the city-state) as three Greek concepts that inform and shape Roman thought in this area; see Hose (1999: 313). (7) Hose (1999: 310–11).

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How Do You Solve a Problem like Horace? (8) On the making of Rome’s Trojan legend, see Gruen (2011: 243–9), though some caution seems advisable regarding his (exceedingly?) conciliatory views, which risk occluding significant tensions that persist in the realm of literary and cultural geopolitics. (9) Pl. As. 11; cf. Hose (1999: 318). (10) Bhabha (1994: 85–92). For more detailed reflections on Plautine comedy informed by post-colonial perspectives, see Richlin in this volume. (11) See Hall (1989) and (1993). (12) Hose (1999: 325). (13) Hose (1999: 326). (14) Cf. e.g. Cic. Tusc. 4.3. (15) Cf. Plin. Nat. 29.14ff. (16) Cf. e.g. Gel. 6.3.15, 43; 10.3.14ff.; 23.25.15. (17) Cf. Plut. Cat. Ma.; Aem. 6.8–10. (18) As Goldberg notes, ‘resentment of Ennius’ Hellenizing efforts in diction and meter may linger in the claim that after Naevius’ death the Romans forgot how to speak Latin.’ Goldberg (2005: 28); the reference is to the Naevian epitaph at Gel. 1.12. (19) Goldberg (2005: 8). (20) Goldberg (2005: 60–2, 75, 81). (21) See p. 40 n. 40. (22) Goldberg (2005: 211). (23) Hose (1999: 18). (24) Cf. Hor. Ars 268–9: uos exemplaria Graeca | nocturna uersate manu, uersate diurna (‘have Greek models in your hands at night, and in your hands each day’). On the place of these reflections on Greco-Roman cultural relations within the broader framework of Horace’s Ars Poetica, see Rimell in this volume. (25) Cf. Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin (2002: 15, 161). (26) Spivak (1999: 43). (27) Chakrabarty (1992: 1). Page 16 of 19

 

How Do You Solve a Problem like Horace? (28) Chakrabarty (1992: 18). (29) Cf. mutatis mutandis Schwindt’s comments on the relevance and value of engaging with the early fragments of Roman literary history for contemporary critics who seek to practise or theorize literary history from a (critically selfreflexive) post-modern perspective; see Schwindt (2000: 221). (30) Spivak (1999: 46). (31) Spivak (1991: 99). (32) This also connects with a criticism of (and dissatisfaction) with post-colonial readings articulated by comparatists like Albrecht, who takes issue with ‘the sweeping generalizations one frequently finds in the field [of post-colonial studies] and…a mode of quod erat demonstrandum post-colonial critique that takes for granted that which it claims to explore—a critique that brought a large body of literary criticism which is not only highly predictable in its results but also, as a result of blocking out everything that is not within the scope of certain core beliefs, remarkably superficial in its literary analyses.’ Albrecht (2013: 52). Reading and writing the large-scale narrative of literary history is liable to be affected by the same problems as the type of post-colonial readings Albrecht objects to: literary history, too, can, but should not, be forced into a pre-scripted, self-fulfilling narrative (cf. p. 36, n. 29). (33) ‘From a post-colonial perspective such unspoken subjects may well become the crucial announcements of the text. Reading strategies which have produced such analyses of specific texts and authors have also wider implications for postcolonialism as a general discursive practice. Some contemporary critics have suggested that post-colonialism is more than a body of texts produced within post-colonial societies, and that it is best conceived of as a reading practice. They argue that the post-coloniality of a text resides in its discursive features.’ Ashcroft et al. (2002: 191); see also Slemon (1987). (34) Chakrabarty (1992: 2). (35) On the role of time in literary-critical discourse more broadly, see Kennedy (2013). (36) Hor. Ep. 2.1.23–7; trans. Davie. (37) Rudd (1989: 4). (38) Hor. Ep. 2.1.83–5; trans. Davie. (39) Hor. Ep. 2.1.28–30; trans. Davie.

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How Do You Solve a Problem like Horace? (40) Goldberg (2005: 27). Crates of Mallos, founder of the Pergamon school of grammar and one time head of the library of Pergamon, visited Rome as ambassador of either Eumenes, in 168 BCE, or Attalus, in 159 BCE. He stayed in Rome for some time and his lectures arguably gave the first impulse to the study of grammar and criticism among the Romans. (41) Drawing on Fabian’s important critical intervention, Chakrabarty thus writes about Western historiography: ‘Historicism—and even the modern, European idea of history—one might say, came to Non-European peoples in the nineteenth century as somebody’s way of saying “not yet” to somebody else.’ Chakrabarty (2000: 8). Cf. also Apter’s (2013: 57–69) important critique of ‘Eurochronology and Periodicity’. (42) Hor. Ep. 2.1.69–72, 76–8; trans. Davie. Further passages that signal allegiance to key principles of Callimachean poetics, notably the emphasis on λεπτότης (‘refinement’) and τέχνη (‘skill’), as advanced at Call. Aet. 1.1–9, 17– 24; Ap. 2.105–12; fr. gram. 465 Pf., include: cum lamentamur non apparere labores | nostros et tenui deducta poemata filo (‘when we complain that the effort spent on our poems and the fine thread with which they are spun pass unnoticed.’ Hor. Ep. 2.1.224–5; trans. Davie) and neque paruum | carmen maiestas recepit tua, nec meus audit | rem temptare pudor quam uires ferre recusant (‘but neither does your majesty admit of a little song nor does my sense of shame dare to attempt a task beyond my strength to bear’. Hor. Ep. 2.1.257–9; trans. Davie). (43) Hor. Ep. 2.1.93–102; trans. Davie. (44) Hor. Ep. 2.1.156–65; trans. Davie. The Callimachean echoes in the image of the refuse-filled stream for the old epic metre is again apparent, discreetly weaving this aesthetic dimension into the chrono-ideological manoeuvring. (45) As Rudd notes, these authors ‘were cited again and again by Cicero in the previous generation; the aged and influential Varro, to whom such authors were not “archaic”, was only fifteen years dead; no doubt in conservative circles they were still admired.’ Rudd (1989: 5). (46) Hor. Ep. 2.1.253–6; trans. Davie. (47) Hor. Ep. 2.1.108–10, 117–20; trans. Davie. (48) Hor. Ep. 2.1.90–3; trans. Davie. (49) Kilito (2008). (50) Young (2013: 687). Cf. Kilito (2008); Hall (1990); and Anderson (1998). (51) Young (2013: 688). Page 18 of 19

 

How Do You Solve a Problem like Horace? (52) Young (2013: 688). (53) See Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin (2002: 197–8); Appiah (1992); and Shohat and Stam (1994). (54) ‘Spivak positions the dominant cultures and the emergent cultures in a value order that none too subtly reverses the hierarchy on which colonial rules were based.’ Albrecht (2013: 51). (55) Bassnett (2006); Culler (2006); Sorensen (2010). (56) Berman (2011: 72). (57) ‘A genuinely comparative discussion that would include the “missing pieces”…of colonialism and imperialism…would unhinge several tacit postcolonial agreements beginning with the misguided assumption that a “colonial mentality” is a trait of exclusively Western provenance or that there is an “untranscendable horizon governing” exclusively Western “thought” that inevitably reproduces colonial conditions. Insofar as it is virtually the ultimate goal of large parts of postcolonial studies and literary criticism to prove (or rather, confirm) in a kind of circular reasoning exactly this presupposition, contextualizing colonialism as called for by Russell Berman and others would indeed productively challenge and transform postcolonial studies in a way that amounts to a paradigm shift in the field.’ Albrecht (2013: 56).

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Blackface and Drag in the Palliata

Complex Inferiorities: The Poetics of the Weaker Voice in Latin Literature Sebastian Matzner and Stephen Harrison

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198814061 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198814061.001.0001

Blackface and Drag in the Palliata Amy Richlin

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198814061.003.0004

Abstract and Keywords This chapter continues the preceding chapter’s mobilization of post-colonial perspectives and interrogation of traditional accounts of beginnings of Latin literature relative to Greece by studying the ‘double-drag’ of slave-women characters wearing blackface masks in Plautine comedy. It begins from the premise that some palliata texts, often taken to be foundational in Roman selffashioning vis-à-vis Greece, are not strictly Roman at all, but that they do deliberately adopt an inferior position—indeed, multiple inferior positions: at the time the palliata was developed and performed, it belonged to acting troupes of lower-class and slave men, none Roman by birth, who traveled around central Italy, making the palliata out of bits and pieces of comedy in current circulation. Focusing in particular on Plautus’ Poenulus, this chapter offers reflections on the identity politics of the palliata as assertions of a barbarian identity, spoken by and to displaced and deracinated people. Keywords:   Plautus, Poenulus, mask, blackface, slaves, displacement, comedy, drag, gender, identity

This volume examines ‘the literary and cultural-political possibilities opened up by assuming and speaking in voices of weakness and inferiority’ among Latin writers.1 Before there were writers in Rome—producers of literature—there were Latin-speaking performers. Their performances are lost, but luckily we have performance transcripts. Although the texts we have are then just snapshots of the material at a given point (indeed, some are more like scrapbooks), they make visible a substantial amount of material that was in oral circulation for more than half a century. I refer here to the extant remains of the

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Blackface and Drag in the Palliata early palliata, attributed to Livius Andronicus, Naevius, and Plautus, whose floruit Gellius places during the Second Punic War (Gel. 17.21.46–7).2 As I have argued elsewhere, this popular dramatic form evolved over the course of the 200s BCE, intersecting with the historical record for the first time after the First Punic War (240 BCE) but probably starting out in the early decades of the century.3 In this century the peninsula was continually engulfed in war, and Rome and other cities had armies in the field almost every year. All these wars involved mass enslavements, so that the slave and freed slave population in the cities (p.50) of Italy expanded; the urban audiences of the palliata included people of mixed status, for there is nothing to suggest, even in Rome, that slaves were excluded or even that the audience was separated by rank before the mid-190s.4 In line with this demographic shift, what is distinctive about Latinspeaking theatre companies is that in this period, as best we can tell, the actors, managers, and writers were all lower-class, and at least some of the actors and musicians were slaves. The extant texts show signs of improvisation by the troupe, so that what we have here is, in Gayatri Spivak’s terms, subaltern, in some respects: most of the few performers who made it into the record were not from Latium, some had to have been speaking Latin as a second language, and they only got into the record when hired by Roman state officials.5 The palliata, then, is multi-authored rather than single-authored. Judging from jokes in the plays, it is also Latin and not only Roman, and could have been staged not only in Latium but in Latin-speaking areas, for example Rome’s numerous colonies, both old and new. In putting on comedies in which the starring role often belongs to a slave or a poor man (the parasitus), these troupes were doing what the mixed-race Jamaican writer Michelle Cliff speaks of herself as doing: ‘claiming an identity they taught me to despise’ (1985a). And (p.51) they were doing it for an audience that was in the same boat. Or off the same boat. The actors were already of low status; if, as seems likely, they were all male, they routinely abjected themselves further by playing women; what is a mystery is why, in one rarely discussed play, they abjected themselves still more by playing Carthaginians (even Carthaginian slave-women) in a play where the happy ending means everybody got to go back to Carthage. How was that possible, at any time between the First Punic War and the death of Plautus (the story goes, in 184 BCE), and what did it mean? Unlike the writers who later made what we think of as ‘Latin literature’, these men were really outsiders; why go further out?

Punic Wars Plautus’s Poenulus concerns a young man, Agorastocles, kidnapped as a child from Carthage, sold as a slave in Calydon, and freed and adopted by his owner (64–77). He is thus a freed slave, although nothing is made of this in the play and in fact he spars with a group of freedmen who jeer at him for being one of the rich men, the upper class (dives de summo loco, 516): ‘we seem to you to be Page 2 of 23

 

Blackface and Drag in the Palliata plebeians and poor men’, they reprove him (nos videmur tibi plebeii et pauperes, 515). He is in love with one of two prostitutes owned by a pimp; as it will turn out, they are his cousins, likewise kidnapped (‘by a Sicilian thug’) as children from Carthage, along with their slave nanny, Giddenis, then all three sold in Anactorium to this pimp, who brings them to Calydon (84–95, 896–900). Act V opens with the spectacular entrance of the girls’ father, Hanno, accompanied by slave luggage-carriers, all of them in full Carthaginian gear; Hanno at once launches into a prayer in Punic. Then he explains to the audience that he is searching for his lost daughters; next Agorastocles and his slave Milphio enter, and the Carthaginian father, listening in on what they say, tells the audience he will start out by speaking to them in Punic (982–4). There follows a scene in which Milphio speaks to Hanno in Latin and Hanno responds in Punic, with joke translations by Milphio (985–1029). At last, Hanno reveals himself, explains his mission again, finds that Agorastocles (not his birth name) is his (p.52) longlost nephew, and reclaims his daughters; the pimp is foiled, and the happy reunited family prepares to go home to Carthage. John Henderson makes the attractive suggestion that the emphasis in the play on the Aphrodisia festival taking place in Calydon gestures towards the movement of the cult of Venus Erycina to Rome; the temple was dedicated in 215 BCE, that is, during the Second Punic War.6 Yet at one point in the play, the chorus of freedmen remark that it is not right to start a riot ‘in a peaceful people’s republic and with the enemy killed’ (in re populi placida atque interfectis hostibus, 524), and this, along with the whole premise of the play, has been taken to mean that the play was produced well after the Second Punic War (so, no earlier than 200). But an altar and even a whole shrine to Venus feature in other plays, unsurprisingly in connection with prostitutes (Curculio, Rudens); and there was never really a time in the 200s, or indeed in Plautus’ lifetime, when Rome was at peace.7 A similar line about peacetime appears at Truculentus 75. The material in this play, as in all the rest, is portable; the extant version of Poenulus preserves two different endings (1338–71, 1372–1422). The question to ask is, ‘What would it have meant if a version of this was staged at Rome/at Praeneste/at Cales in 240? 214? 198? 190?’—years each of which involved some major pertinent event. Although the prologue announces that the play is called Καρχηδόνιος (53), Menander’s Καρχηδόνιος, and any other Greek plays by that name, meant quite different things in Attica, or in revival in Ionia, or in Sicily, a fortiori in Latium, in Latin; in Menander’s play, the Carthaginian is the grandson of the general Hamilcar, cutting an exotic figure in the eastern Mediterranean, and the main issue is his eligibility to register in an Attic deme, which could never be in play in the palliata.8 The plotline of Poenulus might make sense in relation to hybrid identities created by fifty years of mutual enslavement. Apart from the relatively small presence of Carthaginian merchants and their (p.53) households in trading enclaves from Etruria to Sicily,9 there would have been North African slaves in Page 3 of 23

 

Blackface and Drag in the Palliata central Italy at least from the time of the First Punic War, for example as a byproduct of the siege of Aspis, south of Carthage, in 256 BCE, where a Roman force plundered the area and ‘carried off more than 20,000 slaves onto their ships’ (σώματα δὲ πλείω τῶν δισμυρίων ἐπὶ τὰς ναῦς ἀνήγαγον, Plb. 1.29.7).10 Where there were female slaves, there were children of mixed ethnicity; the rape of newly enslaved women and girls in the aftermath of a city sacking is strongly attested throughout the Mediterranean, as demonstrated by Kathy Gaca (2010–11). Many accounts express fear for boys as well. After the Second Punic War, there was a new rise in the number of Carthaginian slaves in central Italy, attested by the uprisings of Carthaginian slaves in towns near Rome in 198 (Liv. 32.26; he specifies the subdivision of the rebels into upper-class Carthaginian hostages, their slaves, and Carthaginians purchased by local townspeople). Even during the Second Punic War, there were pro-Carthage factions in many cities in Italy (see p. 62 for the results in Capua), and Matthew Leigh shows the points in common between Plautine trickster slaves and what might be called the legend of Hannibal (2004: 35, 45, 47–52, 55). He rightly depicts this as ‘a compulsive reperformance of traumatic shared disaster’ (55–6); I would add, from multiple perspectives. By an accident of history, we know the name of one contemporary Carthaginian in Italy: Philippus Poenus, in the north with his lover, the consul Flamininus, in 193. The elder Cato apparently called him ‘an expensive and celebrated whore’ in a speech dating to 184 (Liv. 39.42.6 = Cato 87 Malcovati).11 Conversely, the presence of an occupying army of Carthaginian officers and their mixed-ethnicity soldiers in Italy from 217 to 203 would have resulted in mixed-ethnicity babies, whose status would in turn have depended on their mother’s status and means; illegitimate mixed-ethnicity babies were presumably extra-liable to abandonment and enslavement. Michelle Cliff cites the famous post-colonial graffito, ‘WE ARE HERE BECAUSE YOU WERE THERE’ (1985b: 65), and this concisely describes the centripetal displacement from colonized (p.54) places toward the metropole, but the Second Punic War was multidirectional. We have only one side of the story. Jonathan Prag has shown that, in extant epigraphic sources, the Carthaginians and other speakers of West Semitic languages identified themselves strictly by city; Poeni, which Latin-speakers used to denote the whole group ‘people of Phoenician origin’, often with negative overtones, is not their term (2006, 2014). So the title character is disparaged in the Poenulus prologue: ‘He knows all languages, but he pretends otherwise, | knowing he knows: he’s obviously Punic’ (et is omnis linguas scit, sed dissimulat sciens | se scire: Poenus plane est, 112–13). To claim an identity as a Carthaginian, as the characters in Poenulus do, then claims not only a despised identity, but an identity constructed to be despised. The claim to ‘barbarian’ identity in the palliata can be understood as a defiant assertion of the worth of a form and language over and against high-end Greek cultural identity

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Blackface and Drag in the Palliata and language, an assertion made by a deracinated people; a fortiori, Punic identity.12

Civil Status, Gender, and Colour The plays deal not only with slavery but with the effects of slavery on gender identity, and, much more rarely, with ethnic hierarchies among enslaved people in terms of skin colour. The lexicon of slave ethnonyms and ethnic insults onstage, from Aristophanes through Terence, is well understood.13 Here I want to ask a harder question about visual humour in the palliata: if the actors wore masks, and if slaves wore ethnically identifiable masks, then what was the effect of African masks onstage? As will be seen, the dark faces of African characters are the focus of jokes. Is this a form of blackface? (p.55) North American blackface has been used by Kathleen McCarthy, following the work of Eric Lott, as an analogy for the palliata: what Lott calls ‘love and theft’, the appropriation of black slave cultural forms by working-class male actors, usually white (Lott 1993; McCarthy 2000: 208–13). Black slavery in blackface is an act and a caricature, and McCarthy sees the palliata as the same sort of thing—an enactment of slavery to make slave-owners laugh, to ease the ‘burden of mastery’. I have argued (2014b) that it makes a fundamental difference that the actors in the palliata were commonly slaves themselves, and that the plays are full of jokes and scenes in which slave and freed characters appeal to experience shared with some in the audience—surely a good many people, considering the proportion of the extant texts taken up with this kind of comedy. However, I want to complicate that here with two basic principles: (1) The audience cannot know for sure who is under the mask—maybe some well-known actors, but not everyone in the cast. Although all know that actors are male, there is a basic indeterminacy of civil status and ethnicity. This stems from the encasement of the actor in costume and mask. If—and this is a big if— the costumes used in the palliata resembled those seen on South Italian terracotta figurines from the early 200s, then nothing would be visible of the actor but his ears and hands. His body would be covered by a long-sleeved tunic and leggings, if not by voluminous draperies over padding (including big breasts and buttocks for some female characters); his whole head would be covered in a mask with attached hair. This provided actors in the 200s with enormous ‘cultural-political possibilities’, including the opportunity for public political critique from below, otherwise highly risky.14 It also meant that everyone onstage—as in most ancient drama—was wearing a costume that advertised its own artifice, as Nancy Rabinowitz has argued with respect to male actors playing women in Attic drama (1998). In comedy at least, all the roles are in inverted commas: ‘wife’, ‘rich man’, ‘poor man’, ‘male slave’, ‘slave-woman’, ‘slave-boy’, ‘nanny’, ‘soldier’, ‘pimp’, (p.56) ‘banker’, ‘torturer’, as are the props (‘money’, ‘chains’).15 So too, famously, with ‘Greek’; but also with ‘Carthaginian’ and ‘Syrian’, putting the actor’s own ethnicity under wraps. Page 5 of 23

 

Blackface and Drag in the Palliata Amplified like the props, the bit parts and non-speaking roles of slave-women and slave-boys onstage, seen as eye candy by Fraenkel himself, must have been highlighted by sexy costumes and masks; likewise, exotic costumes are sought to deck out the pseudo-Persian and his pseudo-Arabian pseudo-captive in Persa (158–60), and must have marked the non-speaking ‘Asian’ music girls in Stichus as well as some of the exotic characters discussed below.16 This artificiality is underscored by what I have called ‘deictic receptions’ in the plays; marked though the masks and costumes already are, all kinds of characters are routinely heralded by lines like ‘But look! Here comes Toxilus’s slave-boy Paegnium!’ (sed Toxili puerum Paegnium eccum; Pl. Per. 271). C. W. Marshall comments (2006: 140) on the detailed lists of features given onstage by characters describing a character offstage: ‘In a visual medium such as theatre, such description is not strictly necessary, since the audience can see the character.’ (These speeches are usually jokes appealing to the audience’s knowledge, like Lucille Ball’s red hair in I Love Lucy, a giveaway even in black and white.) However, in a temporary theatre without a rake, as when the palliata was produced in a forum, with bench seating, not everyone can see; moreover, many deictic receptions tell the audience how to read the encased actor who has just appeared (so the old man on the entrance of the Sycophanta, who is dressed up to look foreign: ‘The guy looks like an Illyrian, he’s arriving in that kind of costume’, Hilurica facies videtur hominis, eo ornatu advenit, Pl. Trin. 852, cf. 765–7). Female characters like Erotium are built up at their first entrance by being hailed as gorgeous: ‘Look, she’s coming (p.57) out! Oh! Can you see how the sun | is darkened next to the brilliance of that body?’ (eapse eccam exit. oh! solem vides | satin ut occaecatust prae huius corporis candoribus? Pl. Men. 179– 81). Dorota Dutsch suggests (2015: 20) that Erotium’s brilliant body plays off the whiteness of the prostitute’s mask and perhaps body makeup, which itself plays the ‘lead-white cerussa’ of ancient makeup, which itself plays the ideal colour of a woman. Such lines, I think, also point to an understanding of female characters as male actors in drag, and to the possibility that, at least sometimes, the body type of the actor conflicted with the body-type of the character, a situation that is explicitly staged within the play in the final scene of Casina. That is, sometimes you had RuPaul (glamorous drag queen supermodel), sometimes Terry Jones (as he played, for example, the cleaning lady in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life): different jokes. This in turn complicates the deictic reception of female characters in dark masks. Invisible under the mask: playing the white-faced beauty meant, for some actors, not just a drag act but a whiteface act. (2) Historians of drag and historians of blackface all insist that the meaning of these forms is historically and locally variable.17 Michael Pickering, writing on blackface in England, says that ‘[t]here is nothing fixed in the theatrical semantics of impersonation precisely because of the inevitable movement of intrigue between disguise and its performative functions for those complicit in, Page 6 of 23

 

Blackface and Drag in the Palliata and receptive to, the act of disguise’ (2008: 96). In considering the meaning of dark masks onstage in central Italy in the 200s BCE, we must bear in mind that enslavement and colour, or place of origin, were not coextensive terms in that place and time. Moreover, at the intersection of colour with gender, we have to take into account what enslavement did to gender identity in antiquity. Rabinowitz observes of the citizen actor of Attic drama, ‘he experienced what it was to become female’ (1998: 12), but slave actors in third-century Italy knew this already, whether or not they had been raped after a siege or on the market; the plays are full of jokes about the sexual use of slave-boys by owners. So all the eye candy onstage—male and female—is sexually available, and under the costumes and in the audience are people who know that from (p.58) experience. Some of them were also marked, like some characters onstage, by a different skin colour. Was Philippus Poenus there, with his boyfriend the consul? Of the very use of masks in the palliata there is only a strong probability plus a few suggestive lines in the plays; there are no certain contemporary representations of actors from central Italy. I am taking the use of masks here as a given, and following Marshall’s dictum that ‘just as the script has been freely adapted into Latin, so is there a parallel transposition of the Greek masking tradition’ (2006: 127). Furthermore, if the masks of New Comedy were naturalistic as opposed to the grotesque masks of Old Comedy, this does not seem to have been the case with slave characters; Martin Revermann comments, ‘the grotesque body of fifth-century comedy is a shared body. It is only when young and respectable men and women lose the hallmarks of comic ugliness during the second half of the fourth century that ugliness starts to function as a social differentiator, with grotesque corporality beginning to be the preserve of the socially inferior’ (2006: 152). Kelly Wrenhaven, in an analysis of material representations of slave characters, points out that grotesque costumes belong in comic performance to ‘liminal characters’ like slaves, old men, and old women, as seen, for example, in terracotta figurines, some from southern Italy c. 300 BCE (2013: 127, 138–40). Slaves onstage, then, and particularly low slaves like nannies, are made doubly abject: first by their status, then by their looks. Yet the physical descriptions within the plays and in particular an insult in Curculio warrant the understanding that even the masks of pretty women in the palliata were funny-looking. The slave Palinurus insults his owner’s prostitute beloved: ‘You with your owl eyes, you even have the nerve to call me “disgusting thing”? | You drunken little masky, you rubbish’ (tun etiam cum noctuinis oculis ‘odium’ me vocas? | ebriola persolla, nugae; Pl. Cur. 191–2). How might colour have inflected this system of meaning? The evidence for dark masks exterior to the plays is extremely tenuous. There are some terracotta masks and figurines from the great trove found at Lipari off the coast of Sicily, dating to the fourth century and the first half of the third century BCE, with faces that are arguably African in appearance. Surprisingly, however, although some of the Lipari figurines have traces of paint on the face, Page 7 of 23

 

Blackface and Drag in the Palliata and the masks have even more, the main colour scheme is bright brick-red (p. 59) for men, white for women—which includes one mask of a ‘donna negra’; her tightly crimped hair is ‘un rosso-bruno carico’ (‘an intense red-brown’).18 That is, gender as a colour code trumps colour-coded ethnicity even where characters are differentiated ethnically by facial features and the portrayal of hair. A portrayal, however, in clay; these were not real masks, but representations of real masks; and these masks are Sicilian, participating in a Greek mode of colour-coded gender most familiar from vase painting. The detailed descriptions of facial colouring for some Plautine characters are nothing like these monochrome masks; of course it is impossible to say to what extent the verbal descriptions match what appeared onstage, since, as we have seen, some characters are described as radiantly beautiful although only notionally so. But just as ‘radiantly beautiful’ was conveyed by mask type, hair style, costume, and props like ‘jewelry’, so in general characters must have had some visual markers corresponding to the verbal descriptions, which act like cues to help the audience tell who’s who. This leaves us to conjecture the colour of the masks of characters described as ‘dark’ onstage in central Italy.19 Marshall cites the clearly dark-masked figure labelled mageiros (‘cook’) from the Samia panel in the House of Menander in Mytilene (2006: 130); this mosaic (see frontispiece in this volume), although it dates to the late third century CE, is thought by some to represent a pictorial tradition dating back to the time of Menander. Alan Sommerstein (2013: 189) (p.60) describes this figure as darkfaced, ‘with features that could well be intended as African’, and hair in ‘what would now be called dreadlocks’; like others, he connects this mask with the ‘Tettix’ (‘Cicada’) mask described by Pollux (Men. Sam. 4.149–50), concluding that the cook in Samia was a ‘black African’.20 The connection to Pollux, however, seems unnecessary and overly specific.21 There are other dark-masked figures in this and similar mosaics, including one labelled ‘Syros’ and another labelled ‘Parmenon’ in the House of Menander, along with another probable Parmenon at Daphne and a probable Sosias at Antioch—all slaves.22 The colours range from a dark brown to a purplish blue; there is a connection between colour and status, but the palette and meanings are complex, with shifting local/ temporal/aesthetic significances now lost to us. Nor were red, white, and dark the only colours onstage; the Menandrian character corresponding to the lena in Cistellaria is represented, not only in Mytilene but in a late Republican mosaic in Pompeii, as ‘distinctly yellow and wrinkled’ (Gutzwiller and Çelik 2012: 600). As will be seen, darkness onstage is connected with a short list of ethnicities, not all African, nor are all Africans onstage treated as the same. ‘Black’ in twentiethcentury America collapsed colour into genealogy and the history of the Middle Passage; in the palliata, darkness marks a certain kind of exoticism, usually unattractive. At the least, comparing the Greek material evidence with the Latin text, it seems probable that colour contrast was available as a trope for re-use.

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Blackface and Drag in the Palliata (p.61) Blackface in the Forum Romanum What follows, then, is in the nature of a thought experiment. What would it have meant in third-century Latium to have had a mix of colours in the faces onstage? We have a few hints that this was the case.23 Almost all relate to ethnicity, although there is a suggestion (Pl. Vid. 35–6) that farmers, who sometimes do feature in the early palliata as characters, were brown from outdoor work, opposed to pale-faced city-dwellers. (1) Syrians

A holdover from Attic comedy, Syrians play a minor but marked role in the palliata—self-consciously so, when a slave boasts of his superiority to any Syrus or Parmeno (Pl. Bac. 649). That Syrian slaves could have reached the Italian slave market from early in the 200s I have argued elsewhere (2016: 79–82). Marshall, analyzing a possible joke about the name ‘Syrus’ when assumed by the red-haired Pseudolus, suggests that Syrian slaves onstage were played as darkfaced and dark-haired (2006: 147–9). What is clear is that Syrians in the palliata are at the bottom of the heap, in ethnic terms, among slaves. So the old man explains in Mercator that he will buy for his wife, instead of the beautiful Pasicompsa (Pl. Mer. 414–16), ancillam viraginem aliquam non malam, forma mala, ut matrem addecet familias, aut Syram aut Aegyptiam: ea molet, coquet, conficiet pensum, pinsetur flagro. some strapping slave-woman—not a bad one, but one with an ill shape, as befits a materfamilias, either a Syrian or an Egyptian: she’ll grind grain, cook, finish her wool quota, get beaten by the whip. (p.62)

This stereotype is repeated by the slave Stasimus in Trinummus, telling a tall tale about the tainted nature of his owner’s one remaining field (Pl. Trin. 542–4): tum autem Surorum, genu’ quod patientissumumst hominum, nemo exstat qui ibi sex menses vixerit: ita cuncti solstitiali morbo decidunt. Then even Syrians, the kind most able to take it of all people —there’s none of them left who’s lived there more than six months, the way they’ve all died of the midsummer fever.

His interlocutor, the old man Philto, picks up on patientissumumst to make a joke in passing on the effeminacy (patientia) of Campanians: ‘But the Campanian kind | now much outdoes the Syrian kind in taking it’ (sed Campans genus | multo Surorum iam antidit patientia; Pl. Trin. 545–6): a boomerang joke that arcs back to mark the sexual use of slaves as well. The joke is overdetermined, and, like other ethnic jokes, would resonate differently at different times: Capua was a Page 9 of 23

 

Blackface and Drag in the Palliata byword for effete luxury (Pl. Ps. 146, Rud. 631), but (so Livy says) after the Romans took the city in 210 BCE, anti-Roman Capuans were condemned to be sold, with their families, at Rome (libera corpora quae venum dari placuerat Romam mitti ac Romae venire, Liv. 26.34.11). They would learn what ‘taking it’ meant. All these are jokes about Syrians; other Syrians appear onstage, in circumstances suggestive of sight gags. John Starks (2010) has shown how the old slave-woman Syra in Mercator embodies the abjection of the Syrian slave. She enters bowed down under a load of luggage, and instead of the old Aristophanic fart joke makes a meta-comment on what weighs her down: servitus, sudor, sitis (674): ‘slavery, sweat, thirst’. Comic old women all want a drink, but Syra portrays her (conventional) thirst as the effect of status and labour. Just as the earlier speaker in Mercator has suggested is proper, this Syrian woman is a drudge for a matrona, and Syra plays the part, but also protests her lot; it is, then, a great surprise when she delivers a monologue on married women’s rights (Pl. Mer. 817–29). Other Syrian women play even more lowly roles: the tonstrix who is restrained and interrogated onstage with her fellow slave-woman (Pl. Truc. 771–839); the two non-speaking captives, ‘both queens at home’, who are brought onstage by the soldier in Truculentus as a gift from his loot (Pl. Truc. 530–2). His beloved, a free prostitute, accepts them only grudgingly (esp. 541, abduce hasce hinc e conspectu (p.63) Suras, ‘get these Syrian women out of my sight’). Finally, it is possible that the unnamed lena in Cistellaria was named Syra; if so, and she wore a Syrian mask of some kind, then her daughter Gymnasium might have worn one as well; or a mestiza mask.24 Notably, several of these abject characters speak out on issues of social equity.25 (2) Africans

As a very tentative possibility, let me mention Phoenicium in Pseudolus, whom the pimp threatens: ‘tomorrow, Phoenicium, you’ll pay a visit to the cheap whorehouse with a Phoenician hide’ (cras Phoenicium poeniceo corio invises pergulam; Pl. Ps. 229)—that is, purple from flogging. The term Poenus conflates the Phoenician east and the Carthaginian west, so that the visual conception of a Syrian in the palliata may not be so different from that of a Carthaginian. Although Φοινίκιον is attested as a personal name, hence not necessarily ethnic (Prag 2006: 12 n. 47), the grand-finale display of Phoenicium in the parade of prostitutes (Pl. Ps. 225–9) would accord well with some feature that made her stand out. As will be seen, the joke association between flogging and ethnicity comes up repeatedly (pinsetur flagro), as does the association between flogging and the skin as corium—animal hide. In this joke system, the social death of the slave is expressed by the equation slave = outsider = subhuman. Ballio is not a sympathetic character, but a comic villain; his threat here displays the wrongness of the way he thinks; but slave characters themselves, onstage, often speak of their own corium as about to be flogged, claiming their own Page 10 of 23

 

Blackface and Drag in the Palliata objectification.26 Sometimes literally: Trachalio in Rudens, boasting of his unscarred back, claims that a flask-maker would say it was the best and cleanest corium for the job (Pl. Rud. 756–7). Ballio draws an analogy between the slave’s (p.64) back (tergum) and the rawhide whip (terginum) he plans to use on it (Pl. Ps. 154), just as a riddle in Asinaria describes the mill as the place ‘where dead oxen strike living men’ (Pl. As. 35). In the Amphitruo prologue (Pl. Am. 85), it is actors whose ornamenta et corium are to take a beating: solidarity. The slave who is callidus is toughened, hardened, like an animal’s tough skin (callum). A prostitute is a scortum (‘tanned hide’). The slave’s skin is always the mark of the slave’s status (Krebs 2017). If Phoenicium wore a Punic mask, her skin, like that of others, would have been doubly darkened by a beating. Finally, the certainties: not only in Poenulus, but in a whole play set in Africa, Rudens. In Poenulus, six speaking characters plus a group of nonspeaking baggage carriers are identified as Carthaginian, most obviously the title character, who is foreshadowed in the prologue, as seen above, but does not appear until line 930. His entrance is famously marked by a speech in Punic, and according to the later comments by Agorastocles and his slave Milphio, his appearance, along with that of his baggage carriers, was markedly exotic (Pl. Poen. 975–81): MI. sed quae illaec avis est quae huc cum tunicis advenit?         numnam in balineis circumductust pallio?

AG. facies quidem edepol Punicast. guggast homo.

MI. servos quidem edepol veteres antiquosque habet.

AG. qui scis?

MI. viden omnis sarcinatos consequi?         atque ut opinor digitos in manibus non habent.

AG. quid iam?

MI. quia incedunt cum anulatis auribus.

MI. But what kind of bird is this who’s showing up here in his underwear? Page 11 of 23

 

Blackface and Drag in the Palliata         I don’t suppose he was robbed of his clothes in the baths?

AG. Sure, by god, his appearance is Punic. The guy’s a gugga.

MI. He sure by god has slaves that are old and ancient.

AG. How do you know?

MI. You see how they’re all following him loaded with luggage [patch jobs]? And it looks to me like they don’t have fingers on their hands.

AG. What, now?

MI. Because they go around with rings in their ears.

Line 977 points to Hanno’s looks; the mysterious guggast homo is, formally, a common sort of Plautine punchline; if Punica means both ‘Punic’ and ‘purplered’, then the point of similarity is colour, perhaps (p.65) that of the mask.27 That colour is in play here is indicated by Hanno’s line earlier as he eavesdrops: ‘Indeed, the speech of those men is chalk. | How it has wiped off all my dirty darkitude!’ (cretast * profecto horum hominum oratio. | ut mi apsterserunt omnem sorditudinem!; Pl. Poen. 969–70): the same kind of joke.28 Hanno is, then, not only in mourning for his lost children (clad in sordes), but in need of whitening; the creta invoked here appears elsewhere as prostitutes’ body makeup, seen particularly as full-body dye when the slave Truculentus insults the prostitute’s ancilla Astaphium: ‘You’ve dyed your cheeks with rouge and your whole body with chalk’ (buccas rubrica, creta omne corpus intinxti tibi; Pl. Truc. 294. Cf. ‘neither white lead nor Malta clay nor any other kind of paint’, neque cerussam neque Melinum neque aliam ullam offuciam; Pl. Mos. 264). This is part of a running metatheatrical joke onstage that plays on the overlap between women’s makeup and actors’ makeup (see Dutsch 2015: 21–3). Henderson remarks (1999b: 36) that Hanno’s role is ‘a strip-tease of social identities’, in that he is alien/uncle/father/old man (the ‘primary butt of comedy’), but this man in a dress-like tunic is also veiled in colour. His bearers, like him, are exotic: Milphio, in a pair of riddling groaners, hails them (deictically) as aged (based on the double meaning of sarcinatos ‘carrying luggage’/‘patched, mended’), and marks them as foreign by their (prop) earrings, a joke that echoes down the centuries to Juvenal (who associates earrings with Syrian slaves, Juv. 1.104–5). As a sight gag, the bearers work like the Syrian queens in Truculentus; contrast the joke in Animal Crackers (1930), where Groucho Marx as the African explorer enters in a litter borne by four black men, one of whom speaks a line of mockPage 12 of 23

 

Blackface and Drag in the Palliata African. In Poenulus, the bearers and their owner are, ethnically, the same, or close. Agorastocles and Milphio go on to argue about who should take on the job of trying to communicate with Hanno, giving him a shock as he continues to eavesdrop (Pl. Poen. 985–9): MI. quid ais tu? ecquid commeministi Punice?

AG. nihil edepol. nam qui scire potui, dic mihi,         qui illim sexennis perierim Carthagine?

(p.66) HA. pro di inmortales! plurumei ad illunc modum         periere pueri liberi Carthagine.

MI. What do you say? Do you remember how to speak Punic at all?

AG. God, no. Say, how could I know, tell me,         when I disappeared from Carthage there at the age of six?

HA. Oh, immortal gods! Very many free boys         disappeared from Carthage in that way.

Hanno speaks these lines to the audience, appealing to common knowledge. He shares his name with several famous Carthaginian leaders, but, unless this play was the equivalent of the ironic Springtime for Hitler, this Hanno is a sympathetic character (widely so regarded today), and he is speaking to audiences who know all about human trafficking out of Carthage—as indeed the actor under the mask may know himself. The Punic language in this scene, and the mistranslations of Hanno’s lines by Milphio, would be funnier to the bilingual. Wolfgang de Melo, in the most recent and thorough discussion of the Punic in Poenulus, gives as his opinion that ‘few people in the audience will have understood these Punic passages’, apart from ‘some sailors and merchants’ (2012: 173–4). But this cannot be true; at the least, if, as de Melo argues, the Punic is real Punic, the actors understood enough to copy it. Were they like the black men who blacked up in blackface—the obscure Charlie Case, the great Bert Williams—whose sadness made it into the historical record?29 Or was this an outright claim to cultural worth?

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Blackface and Drag in the Palliata That Hanno’s colour caused comment onstage is made more likely by Milphio’s description of the old slave nanny Giddenis to her former owner (Pl. Poen. 1111– 14): HA. sed earum nutrix qua sit facie mi expedi.

MI. statura hau magna, corpore aquilo.

HA. ipsa east.

MI. specie venusta, ore atque oculis pernigris.

HA. formam quidem hercle verbis depinxti probe.

(p.67) HA. But their nanny—tell me what she looks like.

MI. Not very tall, dark body.

HA. She’s the very one.

MI. Lovely to look at, her face and her eyes totally black.

HA. You’ve sure by god painted her shape just right.

Milphio brings them together, pointing out Hanno to Giddenis as ‘that guy in his underwear’ (illunc tunicatum hominem; Pl. Poen. 1121); then suddenly, in the midst of their reunion, she is hailed in Punic by one of Hanno’s bearers, and replies with her own flood of Punic (1141–2). He is her long-lost son, and this is the only scene in the palliata in which a slave mother finds her son, much less has a conversation in their native language; the only scene in which an unnamed bearer speaks at all. Giddenis’ cries are treated as a joke by Milphio and Hanno (1143–6), just as it is dubious that Milphio actually thinks Giddenis is venusta, since old women are never objects of desire onstage (see Dutsch 2004). Another sight gag: Terry Jones in burnt cork, not RuPaul as Mary Poppins. As Ellen O’Gorman pointed out in her conference response to the arguments I present here, ‘[t]he violence and abjection experienced by the weaker is reperformed with a vengeance on the weaker still…the dark-skinned woman who is denied Page 14 of 23

 

Blackface and Drag in the Palliata even the limited and contaminated capital of desirability.’ Yet some are desirable: a joke? If so, what kind? If not, what kind of desire? After the family reunion, a soldier comes in (1280) looking for one of the prostitutes, Anterastilis, whom he had planned to rent from the pimp (498), and his threats against her explicitly connect dark skin with being beaten (Pl. Poen. 1288–91): sed mea amica nunc mihi irato obviam veniat velim: iam pol ego illam pugnis totam faciam uti sit merulea, ita replebo atritate, atritior multo ut siet quam Aegyptini, qui cortinam ludis per circum ferunt. But I’d like my girlfriend to run into me now when I’m angry: now, by God, I’ll turn her into a blackbird all over with my fists, I’ll fill her so with darkness that she’ll be much darker than the Ethiopians who carry the bucket around at the circus, during the games.

She is onstage as he rants, although he has not yet noticed her, so the colourwords here, if her mask is dark, are a sight gag, just as Ballio’s threat against Phoenicium, if she is already dark, makes her darker: here, the colour of Ethiopians, who are the colour of a (p.68) black eye.30 The soldier goes on to insult Hanno, again based on his clothing, as a working man in a long tunic—an inn’s boy or a porter (puer cauponius, 1298; baiiolum, 1301)—or an effeminate man: ‘womanish’, ‘African hussy’, ‘woman’ (mulierosum, amatricem Africam, mulier, 1303–5). He then launches into a ranting comparison of Hanno to a list of smelly things, including ‘Roman rowers’ (1313–14), some of whom, after the sack of New Carthage in 210, were Carthaginian slaves. Anterastilis is standing in a group—herself, her sister, Hanno, and Agorastocles—all of whom have at this point been fully hailed as Carthaginian. Was onstage blackness relative? Are their masks all the same colour? Was Giddenis the same colour as the Ethiopians, carrying a skin bucket (cortinam) with hide (corium) inside? It is well established in the play that Anterastilis and her sister are pretty, and in the long specularization of them in Act I, colour is never mentioned—they are not exotically pretty. On the other hand, possibly that they were played by strapping actors—‘What big girls!’ says Hanno (Pl. Poen. 1167)—so perhaps they were grotesque, with the actors’ physical type played off against the role. RuPaul or Terry Jones? Who wore the gowns and the dark masks? The same problem affects the one character in Rudens who is described as both dark-skinned and beautiful. This play, set on the coast of Cyrene (modern Libya), involves two shipwrecked prostitutes, one of whom (Palaestra) had been kidnapped and trafficked there from Athens as a child, the other of whom (Ampelisca) is of unknown provenance (750), but belongs to the same pimp. In Ampelisca’s second scene in Act II, she is greeted by the slave Sceparnio with a Page 15 of 23

 

Blackface and Drag in the Palliata deictic reception that cues the audience to read her as pretty: ‘Hey! What good thing is this? By God, a woman, and what a charming appearance!’ (hem! quid hoc boni est? eu edepol specie lepida mulierem!; Pl. Rud. 415). Sceparnio, a local farmhand, might also have worn a dark mask; his interactive description of Ampelisca tells the audience that her body is like Giddenis’ (corpore aquilo; Pl. Poen. 1112), though his actions show that he indeed finds her pretty (Pl. Rud. 419–24): SC. sed quid ais, mea lepida, hilara?

AM. aha! nimium familiariter me attrectas.

(p.69) SC. pro di inmortales! Veneris effigia haec quidem est.         ut in ocellis hilaritudo est, heia, corpus quoiusmodi,         subvolturium—illud quidem, ‘subaquilum’ volui dicere—,         vel papillae quoiusmodi, tum quae indoles in saviost!

AM. non ego sum pollucta pago. potin ut me apstineas manum?

SC. But what do you say, my charmer, you mischievous girl?

AM. Uh-uh! You’re handling me         like you know me too well.

SC. Oh, immortal gods! This is sure the image of Venus.         What a mischieviosity is in her eyes, wow, what a body, kind of unluckyducky—sure, I meant to say, ‘kind of a dusky ducky’—,         but what tits! Then what talent there is in her kiss!

AM. I’m not public property. Can’t you take your hands off me?

Unlike Milphio, Sceparnio follows up on his description by grabbing Ampelisca. The play on words in subvolturium/subaquilum depends on aquila ‘eagle’ / aquilus ‘dark-coloured’ (explained by Paulus 20L as fuscus et subniger, ‘dusky and blackish’, with a fanciful derivation from aqua and the shifting colours of the sea) and vulturius ‘vulture’, an unlucky throw of the dice. This is not complimentary, but Sceparnio himself is a low character, no polished orator.31

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Blackface and Drag in the Palliata Any of the other local characters could have been played with a dark mask, particularly the chorus of poor fishermen who open Act II (290–305) and the two torturers who work for the leading old man (said to look like statues of Hercules, 822–3). The strongest possibility is the fisherman Gripus, slave to the same old man who owns Sceparnio and the torturers. In the central scene in the play, Gripus hauls up a suitcase (vidulus) in his net, which he hopes contains enough gold to pay for his manumission. He sings a song about this, but is then challenged by the slave Trachalio, and they quarrel over the suitcase. Gripus claims that what he pulls out of the sea is his by right, making a legal argument that closely parallels juristic theories about slaves taken in war; in this speech, fish stand in for slaves.32 That equivalency lends an extra charge to Gripus’ words as the argument continues; Trachalio tells him, ‘You’ve got to show me (p.70) how a fish could be a suitcase’ (te mihi monstrare oportet piscis qui sit vidulus; Pl. Rud. 991), and he answers (997–8): quo colore est, hoc colore capiuntur pauxilluli; sunt alii puniceo corio, magni item; atque atri. The colour it is, that’s the colour when they’re caught teeny-weeny; there are other ones with a Punic/purplish hide, big ones, too; and there are dark ones.

Trachalio replies (999–1000): tu hercle, opino, in vidulum te bis convortes, nisi caves: fiet tibi puniceum corium, postea atrum denuo. By god, I’m thinking, you’ll turn yourself into a suitcase twice, if you don’t watch out; your hide will turn Punic/purple, and then dark again.

The meaning hinges here on the sense of denuo, which would have been determined by the colour of Gripus’ mask. Does it mean ‘back again’, the usual sense? If so, then Gripus will first be beaten purple, then return to his normal colour, atrum. Or does it mean ‘in turn’? If so, Trachalio is saying that Gripus will be beaten first purple (like Phoenicium) and then dark (like the soldier’s girlfriend). In either case, the equation ‘suitcase = fish’, in the context of Gripus’ argument, implies, by the transitive property, ‘suitcase = slave’: some are caught young and are the colour a suitcase is, the colour of hide; some are Punic/purple; some are dark.

Visual Effects In our thought experiment, then, we can imagine the effect in Poenulus as Agorastocles first enters, the usual young man in love, only with a dark mask—a surprise, like the opening of Persa, where the lover is a slave; then the added effect as the two girls sashay in after their bath and sing a long song about primping and beauty, followed by yet more primping and bragging about their Page 17 of 23

 

Blackface and Drag in the Palliata beauty, while wearing dark masks. They do not return again until after Hanno appears in Act V, so for much of the play Agorastocles’ would be the sole dark mask onstage. Once Hanno arrives, however, all non-Carthaginians are outnumbered by the family onstage, their presence at times augmented by Carthaginian slaves. (p.71) In Rudens, if Ampelisca’s mask was dark and Palaestra’s light, the contrast already in play between the heroine and her best friend—demure vs. broad—would have been marked by the colour contrast, from their opening reunion to their encounters with a priestess of Venus (local) and their pimp (origin unknown), and finally in the big recognition scene, from which Ampelisca exits permanently reduced to second fiddle (Pl. Rud. 1183). They are different in kind. A chorus of fishermen in dark masks would have made a spectacular effect like the arrival of Hanno and bearers in the last act of Poenulus. Gripus’ claims to freedom would have been spoken through a dark mask. The play floats like a net on the sea of war and meaning, the wine-dark sea, and the actors wear the mask of the fisherman. A choice, by those who had few.

Flaubert’s Sadness Walter Benjamin, in the seventh thesis on the philosophy of history, wrote of ‘the heaviness of heart…which despairs of mastering the genuine historical picture, which so fleetingly passes by…Flaubert, who was acquainted with it, wrote, “Peu de gens devineront combien il a fallu être triste pour resusciter Carthage.”’ Flaubert wrote Salammbô in disgust with his own present time, recalling to life a war—the Mercenary War (241–237)—in which Carthage was the subject, not the object. As for the nameless actors who made the palliata, their descendants could only speak by moving out of subalternity: perhaps the mime-writer Publilius Syrus, whom Orlando Patterson admired; perhaps the fabulist Phaedrus.33 But the Carthaginians turned into what John Henderson called ‘Carthaginoiserie’, like the decorative art John Clarke pointed out in Pompeii; St Augustine, growing up in Carthage, wept for Dido, as he was taught in school. As both Jonathan Prag and David Lewis have argued, the Carthaginians have been paradoxically invisible in some historical accounts, particularly in the history of slavery. Prag suggests that, in the twentieth century, scholarship was inflected by an anti-Semitism expedited by the usual overtones of Poenus. Claude Pansiéri, exiled from Tunis that once was Carthage, (p.72) saw in Poenulus a critique of Roman racism, a ‘provocation à l’égard de la xénophobie antipunique de la foule romaine’.34 The colours of the masks represent ethnicity and gender in a system that belongs to its own time and place, where people in the audience and onstage had living, complicated relationships to Carthage and to Syria—to everywhere the traders sailed and the armies marched. In Poenulus, the players put a Carthaginian family on the Roman stage. The actors embodied in their own persons, each with its own history, the history that had put them on the stage, and wore that history on their faces as they played their parts. For themselves and their multicoloured, multilingual, multi-gendered audiences, Page 18 of 23

 

Blackface and Drag in the Palliata they made the weaker voice heard and opened up the possibility of going home. Fade to black. Notes:

(1) See above, p. 3. Many thanks to Stephen Harrison and Sebastian Matzner for their kind invitation to participate in the Complex Inferiorities conference in 2014, and to my fellow participants, especially William Fitzgerald and Ellen O’Gorman, for their comments. (2) On the significance of Plautus’ ‘post-war’ date in the context of Latin literary history as sketched by Horace in his Letter to Augustus, see Matzner in this volume. (3) Richlin (2014b, 2016, 2017a, 2017b, 2018). The text of Plautus used here is Lindsay’s OCT (fragments as in de Melo 2013); translations throughout are my own. (4) Those who wish to believe Livy’s account of the institution of separate seating for senators at the ludi in 194 BCE (Liv. 34.44, 34.54) must also believe the comment that this was a radical change: antea in promiscuo spectarant (Liv. 34.44.5), indignantly expanded in a speech at Liv. 34.54.3–8. Indeed, Asconius (ad Cic. Pro Cornelio, 69C–70C), who attributes the report to Antias, points out how Cicero changed the story when it suited him: whether Scipio regretted the change or not, and the occasion (ludi Romani, ludi Megalenses) varied according to whether he spoke in a causa popularis or before the senate. Asconius also recounts a third version, of which the attribution is lost, in which the change was first implemented at votive games; see notes in Lewis (2006: 277). In all accounts, however, the change is a first in 194 BCE. (5) For the use of improvisation in the plays, I follow the arguments in Marshall (2006: 268–79); see Petrides (2014) for the range of opinion on this point. For Spivak on the subaltern, see her classic essay, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ (1988), and her clarification in de Kock (1992: 45–7), where she distinguishes the subalternist historians’ definition of ‘subaltern’ from ‘just the oppressed’, covering among other groups ‘the upwardly mobile indigenes’. This definition in fact better matches the history of writers like Livius Andronicus, Ennius, and Terence, since the nameless actors of the palliata—even Naevius and Plautus—seem not to have succeeded in inserting themselves ‘into the circuit of hegemony’, which is what Spivak says their goal should be. In some readings of the early palliata, however, this is just what they did do, as in William Fitzgerald’s argument that ‘nothing that could be called a slave literature survives from antiquity’ (2000: 2); see further below. I agree that it was not ‘literature’, as that term is usually understood. (6) Henderson (1999b: 8); cf. Fantham (2011: 183) on the rites celebrated outside the Colline Gate. Page 19 of 23

 

Blackface and Drag in the Palliata (7) See Woytek (2004) for a hundred years of arguments over the relative chronology of the plays; Woytek argues that Poenulus must come after Pseudolus, dated to 191 by the didascalia. Starks (2000: 182–5) sketches out the political atmosphere for a performance in 191 or 190. (8) Arnott (2004), however, was certain that Poenulus was a close translation of the Καρχηδόνιος of Alexis, now almost entirely lost. (9) See Fentress (2013). (10) For slave-taking in the First Punic War, see Welwei (2000: 65–81), with discussion of Aspis at 76. (11) For discussion and bibliography, see Richlin (2017a, ch. 7); Williams (2010: 46–9, 328–9). (12) As John Starks points out in a nuanced reading of the play (2000: 166–7), the Carthaginian characters never self-identify as Poeni; this term is applied to them only by others (1125, 1410). See Leigh 2004: 29–37 on the stereotyping of Carthaginians in Poenulus as deceitful in connection with bilingualism. (13) See, on Old and New Comedy, Tordoff (2013: 23–7), building on Vlassopoulos (2010); on the palliata, Starks (2000, 2010). (14) See p. 3. For female dress as enabling public protest from below, see Davis (1975: 147–50) on the use of popular ‘women on top’ characters and costume by male protest groups in seventeenth- to nineteenth-century England, France, and Ireland, as well as Williams (1955) for details on the Rebecca Riots in Wales. (15) Rabinowitz (1998: 4–5): ‘[T]he cross-dressed actor signals the conventionality of the form and underlines the unnaturalness of the sign’; the audience, being aware of the sex of the actor (5), would ‘sense the man in the woman’ (14). Cf. Henderson on Poenulus (1999: 29): ‘The Farce insists it is farce, exactly that. Actors spout their lines to the people…pouting in drag or swathed in “Bedouin” sheets…[c]lutching pretend-money.’ For drag and encasement, see Richlin (2017a: ch. 5). (16) Fraenkel (2007: 100) says the non-speaking prostitutes in Ballio’s parade in Pseudolus ‘would have appealed to the eyes of the Roman audience, as they were young and attractively decked out’; he seems to have been thinking in terms of actual mute women onstage. Cf. Klein (2015) on this scene, and on the ability of extras to affect the meaning of onstage action. (17) See Richlin (2015: 50–4) on anthropological and historical studies of American drag queens and Chinese opera; Senelick (1992) on drag in vaudeville.

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Blackface and Drag in the Palliata On ‘acting the wench’ in the nineteenth-century minstrel show, see Lott (1993: 159–68); also Bean (1996). (18) Bernabò Brea (1981: 56, C8), ‘maschera di donna negra con forte accentuazione delle caratteristiche razziali’, with figs 48 (C8a), 49 (C8c), 50 (C8d), 51 (C8e); 57, fig. 52 (C8c). Note that three figures of male slaves appear at 88–9, E52–3, figs 122 (E52b), 123 (E52a), and 124 (E53a): ‘schiavi negri’, also with traces of white glaze and red-brown hair, plus further ‘caratteri razziali negroidi’. The ‘donna negra’ appears again in Bernabò Brea 2001, this time fancifully identified as one of the hags in Ekklesiazousai (fig. 47, p. 57; with ‘replicas’ in figs 62, 63A, 63B, 64, pp. 69–70, and brief discussion at 285). Cf. J. Paul Getty Museum 96.AD.164, slave seated on altar. See also Wiles (1988: 61), arguing that the red facial colour on one type of slave mask may be a ‘racial indicator’. Many thanks to Shelby Brown for discussion. (19) We must wonder how a red mask would have worked onstage in a culture that painted the face of the cult statue of Jupiter red with minium (cinnabar), and the body of the triumphator to match; for the dubious historicity of this practice, see Beard (2007: 226, 231–3), critiquing the first extant attestation by the elder Pliny (Nat. 33.111–12, also 35.157, where the original statue is said to have been painted with cinnabar because made of terracotta). Pliny, however, attributes the collection of stories of this ancient practice to Verrius Flaccus (first century BCE), and, if extinct even in Verrius’ time, it might still have existed in the 200s BCE; if so, and if senes onstage were red-faced, that would have given an extra touch to the paratragic elements in Amphitruo, on which see Jeppesen (2016: 137). (20) The connection is not as arbitrary as it often seems, since Pollux describes the Tettix mask as cross-eyed as well as dark-skinned, and the mageiros is likewise cross-eyed. (21) Pollux describes the Tettix mask as μέλας (4.150), but he also describes the kolax and parasitos masks as μέλανες (4.148). (22) For the House of Menander mosaics as representative of Hellenistic tradition, see Csapo (1999) and Nervegna (2014); Gutzwiller and Çelik (2012), however, speak of ‘new forms of masks and costumes’, and suggest that imagery varied along with a continued performance practice (614). For the mageiros and Syros in Mytilene, see Csapo (1999: figs 11, 12); for these and other figures, see Gutzwiller and Çelik (2012: 587 with fig. 13: Sosias at Antioch, face ‘an intense red and orange highlighted with yellow’ with ‘fairly dark skin’ on neck and hands; 608 with fig. 31: Parmenon at Mytilene, ‘wearing a dark-skinned slave mask’; 610 with fig. 32: Parmenon at Daphne, ‘his face is dark’). Ironically (see p. 61), these last mosaics are in Syria, long under Roman rule by the time the mosaics were made. Page 21 of 23

 

Blackface and Drag in the Palliata (23) Marshall (2006: 148–9) picks up on Frank Snowden’s mention of the idea that Cic. Caec. 27 implies that the character Phormio in Terence’s play was black (though unremarked as such in the play); the word niger in Caec. 27, however, is usually taken to mean ‘wicked’, and it clearly has that sense at Hor. S. 1.4.85, on which see Gowers (2012: 172). Niger in Plautus describes only eye colour, although subniger (physical aspect unspecified) describes Pseudolus’ appearance at Pl. Ps. 1218. It is fascinating to speculate that more dark masks were onstage, unremarked, but Cic. Caec. 27 is unlikely to be evidence of it. For remarks on the representation of race onstage in the mid-Republic, see Snowden (1970: 161–3, with notes on 314). (24) This was a conjecture of Studemund’s; see Duckworth (1938: 276–7) for a refutation. Stockert in his commentary passes the idea over in silence (‘eine bei Plautus allem Anschein nach anonyme Kupplerin’, 2012: 30). (25) See Richlin (2015). (26) So Halisca at Pl. Cist. 703; Epidicus at Pl. Epid. 65, 91, 625–6; Phaniscus at Pl. Mos. 868; Syncerastus at Pl. Poen. 855; so Theopropides threatens his slave Tranio at Mos. 1067 (cf. a similar threat, frg. inc. 127). Contrast Pl. Bac. 434, where the slave tutor Lydus recalls what he did to the corium of unruly pupils in the good old days. (27) On gugga as a joking analogy to the purple heron (playing off avis), see Gratwick (1972: 231–3). Another solution is offered by de Melo (2012: 122–3 n. 53): a Punic word, conjecturally meaning ‘trader’. If so, it is unclear how this is a joke. (28) On this line, see Henderson (1999b: 34), following Gratwick, who sees in sorditudinem a pun on surditia ‘deafness’, so that the speech has cleaned Hanno’s ears (1972: 230). Surely the situation suggests mourning, rather than the purple clothing Gratwick understands from facies…Punicast (977). (29) The blackface vaudeville comedian Charlie Case worked on the Loew circuit (Variety xli, no. 6, 7 January 1916, p. 9), where he would have played four to six shows a day to working-class audiences (Stewart 2005: 153). Case shot himself in 1916 at the Palace Hotel in New York; Variety reported the shooting as an accident (xlv, no. 1, 1 December 1916, p. 13), but the musicologist Sydney Spaeth (1926: 242–3), anthologizing Case’s songs ten years afterward, calls it a suicide, cryptically attributed to ‘mixed blood’. Cf. Variety, ‘His mother was an albino and his father of Irish stock.’ See Cullen (2007: 203–4) for further variants on Case’s racial identity and death. On the much more famous Williams, see Chude-Sokei (2006) and the novel about Williams by Caryl Phillips (2005).

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Blackface and Drag in the Palliata (30) The translation of Aegyptini here as ‘Ethiopians’ goes back to a very brief entry in Paulus Diaconus (26L); perhaps only a gloss even in Verrius Flaccus. For Egyptians classed with Syrians, see on Mer. 415 above. See Starks (2000: 177– 81) on this scene. (31) Compare Lowe in this volume on the combination of low character, unpolished oratory, and amatory interest in the figure of the praeco in Latin love elegy and beyond. (32) See Richlin (2017a: ch. 7). (33) On Phaedrus and the complexities surrounding this fabulist’s authorial voice and persona, see Geue in this volume. (34) Benjamin (1968: 256); Flaubert, letter to Ernest Feydeau of 30 November 1859, in Bonaccorso (2001: 926); Patterson (1982: 78); Henderson (1999b: 6); Clarke (2007: 87–107); Augustine Conf. 1.20–1; Prag (2006: 2–3), with some staggering examples (see Leigh 2004: 29 n. 26 for another); Lewis (in progress); Pansiéri (1997: 515–16). For Pansiéri’s life, see Richlin (2017a: ch. 1). On what the elder Cato did with ‘Carthage the undead city’, see O’Gorman (2004). See Jeppesen (2016) on the mixture of triumph with sympathy for the vanquished, in connection with a mixed audience of ‘victors and vanquished’, in early Roman drama.

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Social Inferiority and Poetic Inferiority—Martial’s Revenge in his Epigrams

Complex Inferiorities: The Poetics of the Weaker Voice in Latin Literature Sebastian Matzner and Stephen Harrison

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198814061 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198814061.001.0001

Social Inferiority and Poetic Inferiority— Martial’s Revenge in his Epigrams A Commentary on Martial 5.13 Jean-Claude Julhe

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198814061.003.0005

Abstract and Keywords In Epigrams 5.13, Martial addresses his self-portrait to a certain Callistratus, a freed slave of Greek origin who shamelessly flaunts his wealth. The initial stark contrast with the poet’s poverty in economic terms, however, is gradually overcome through a demonstration of the superiority of poetic fame over material possessions. This chapter charts how this poem negotiates a string of interrelated questions regarding social status, ethnic background, and centre versus periphery dynamics, and traces how Martial marshals his popular success with Rome’s urban readership to confront his own disadvantaged position within socio-economic, ethnic, and generic hierarchies so as to fashion a positive poetic identity for himself. Martial’s riposte to Callistratus, involving all of these inferiorities, takes its full significance in the defence of the epigram, a genre traditionally considered as a ‘weaker voice’ in and of itself. Keywords:   Martial, epigram, genre, Spain, class, Rome, provinciality, wealth, fame, readership

In the prefatory sequence of epigrams to his fifth book—published towards the end of 89 AD at the age of about 50—Martial sketches out his self-portrait, that of a Roman knight and a poet famous in his lifetime.1 He addresses it to a certain Callistratus, of whom we do not quite know whether he is a real or fictitious character (the latter being the more likely option), but who can be seen

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Social Inferiority and Poetic Inferiority—Martial’s Revenge in his Epigrams as a representative of such freed slaves of Greek origins as the famous Trimalchio:2 Sum, fateor, semperque fui, Callistrate, pauper,     sed non obscurus nec male notus eques, sed toto legor orbe frequens et dicitur ‘hic est’,     quodque cinis paucis, hoc mihi vita dedit. at tua centenis incumbunt tecta columnis,     et libertinas arca flagellat opes, magnaque Niliacae servit tibi gleba Syenes,     tondet et innumeros Gallica Parma greges. hoc ego tuque sumus: sed quod sum, non potes esse:     tu quod es, e populo quilibet esse potest. (p.74) I am a poor man, Callistratus, I admit it, and always was, but I am a knight, neither obscure nor of ill repute. Furthermore, I am much read all the world over and people say ‘It’s he’; what the grave has given to few, life has given to me. But your roof rests on a hundred columns, and your strongbox whips up freedman’s wealth, and broad acres of Nile’s Syene are at your service, and Gallic Parma shears your countless flocks. Such am I and such are you. But what I am, you cannot be; what you are, any man in the street can be.3

Isn’t this an irrefutable demonstration of the superiority of fame over wealth? The first four lines depict the situation of the poet, in the following four Martial asserts his exceptional qualities, whereas Callistratus’ success remains within anybody’s reach.4 In the commentary to his edition, Alberto Canobbio stressed both the social and patriotic dimensions of those lines, showing that they denounce the injustice of the accumulation of vast riches by Greeks of slavish origins, compared to the economic difficulties which renowned Roman citizens are faced with.5 I would like to expatiate on this twofold polemical dimension but from the point of view of literary creation and poetic fame, which Martial considers as the elements of his superiority over Callistratus.6 I shall tackle several issues which I feel bear on ‘complex inferiorities’ and which may also (p.75) suggest an ‘inferiority complex’. What kind of inferiorities does the epigram to Callistratus reveal in the persona of the poet? What echoes of these inferiorities can be found in other books by Martial? What strategies does the poet employ to respond to the disdain his detractors show towards him? And finally, what part does this process of vindication play in the defence of the epigrammatic genre, a genre considered in itself as a ‘weaker voice’?

Poverty of the Poet and Literary Vocation The inferiority mentioned in Epigram 5.13 is first and foremost economic: it is the inferiority of a citizen of the equestrian order (Sum…pauper…eques, 5.13.1– 2), whose situation has nothing to do with that of a rich freed slave, et libertinas Page 2 of 17

 

Social Inferiority and Poetic Inferiority—Martial’s Revenge in his Epigrams arca flagellat opes (5.13.6). The paradoxical social status of poets—poor in economic terms, yet wealthy in terms of immaterial riches—lies here in all its complexity, and although Martial often denounces its injustice,7 he consciously accepts it, in as much as he presents it as the consequence of his vocation. Martial makes a few concessions to the social order from which his opponent derives substantial profits, but it seems as though it is for him a way of preparing his ‘prompt reply’.8 The interpolation of the verb fateor makes the line sound like an ongoing dialogue with Callistratus and seems to tell him that poverty is a fate that must be embraced. Nevertheless, the repetition of the adversative conjunction, sed…sed, which shows fame as offering some compensation for this economic inferiority, and the pointed witticism which finally turns the argument of Callistratus against himself, tu quod es, e populo quilibet esse potest, are a sharp reaction to the inferiority which the material success of the freed slave causes the poet to feel—or rather, to the feeling of inferiority imparted to him by those who conform to materialistic values. As a matter of fact, it is apparent that, for Martial, (p.76) poetic glory remains the highest value and that economic inferiority is only the statement of a fact, not the cause of any ‘complex’ whatsoever. He may introduce himself, first, as an eques Romanus (5.13.2) prior to being a recognized poet (5.13.3–4),9 but is this initial foregrounding of his equestrian status not in itself a way of reminding Callistratus of his own literary success? Martial’s entry into the equestrian census (i.e. 400,000 HS) was made possible when he obtained the tribunatus semestris, a mere honorary military function, with which Titus probably presented him as a reward for the Liber de spectaculis and which was renewed by Domitian.10 Callistratus the freed slave cannot but take the hint! One must not take at face value the adjective pauper, even if it is given pride of place at the end of the first line, nor the other many references Martial makes elsewhere in his books to his paupertas.11 Such declarations are known to be part of the beggar’s pose (‘mendicant façade’),12 as well as of the novelistic and satiric tradition of which Petronius and Juvenal are the best-known examples.13 This so-called ‘poverty’, however, is to be seen not in absolute but in relative terms, and therefore constitutes, strictly speaking, a state of inferiority.14 Indeed, the noun paupertas stands half-way between abundantia and luxuria on the one hand, and egestas, penuria, and inopia on the other, and the poet calls himself a pauper eques (5.13.1–2) as opposed to Callistratus, whose wealth he describes in hyperbolic terms (5.13.5–8).15 Epigram 5.13 is akin to all those in which Martial expresses his outrage (p.77) at the lot of the ‘intellectuals’ in a materialistic society: people of inferior, if not servile origins are getting richer and richer everywhere, like flute or cithara players, (citharoedi, choraules; 3.4, 5.56), cobblers (sutores; 3.16, 3.59, 9.73), architects, (architecti; 5.56), auctioneers (praecones; 5.56, 6.8),16 and the charioteers Scorpus et Incitatus (10.74, 10.76, 11.1), whereas lawyers (causidici) cannot afford their rents and the Ovids and Vergils (Nasones Vergiliique) shiver in their worn-out coats Page 3 of 17

 

Social Inferiority and Poetic Inferiority—Martial’s Revenge in his Epigrams (3.38.1–10).17 Yet Martial’s indignation at the relative inferiority of his economic situation cannot be separated from the strength of his literary vocation. This is particularly clear in the epigrams which, without necessarily being inspired by any autobiographical facts, are to be seen as reflections on what education and the choice of a career entail. The poet may express some ironic compassion for the naivety of his parents who urged him to study with a grammarian or a rhetorician, me litterulas stulti docuere parentes, and he may claim to forsake literary creation,…scinde, Thalia, libellos, but it is only to give the full measure of his bitterness at the outrageous success of a cobbler who has become the owner of a princely domain in Praeneste, Praenestina…regna.18 For Martial, his poetic career is truly the result of a deliberate choice, the consequences of which he is ready to face in a society in which the scarcity of patrons condemns the poet to a degree of poverty. In this context, the character of the barrister, akin to the poet in as much as they both differ radically from the rich freed slaves, functions as an (p.78) intermediate point of reference, since he has a better paid career than the poet’s,19 yet one that is incompatible with the leisure required for literary creation.20 This is apparent in the answer to Quintilian, who may have told Martial to try his luck on the forum—an offer the poet politely turned down:21 Quintiliane, vagae moderator summe iuventae,     gloria Romanae, Quintiliane, togae, vivere quod propero pauper nec inutilis annis,     da veniam: properat vivere nemo satis…. Quintilian, supreme guide of wayward youth, Quintilian, glory of the Roman gown, forgive me that I, a poor man and not crippled with years, am in haste to live. No man is enough in haste to live.…22

As in Epigram 5.13, Martial first sounds apologetic, da veniam, but what he really does is praise a life devoted solely to the pleasure of living, vivere quod propero. The poet, however, knows well that this leads to financial insecurity (pauper) and that at his age he could still earn a living by legal pleading, nec inutilis annis. Undoubtedly, the ideal life pointed to here, full of rustic pleasures, simple joys, and away from trials, may not be exactly a litteratum otium, but it is its prerequisite.23 Whether the obligations of the client-poet to his patrons allow its full realization is another question. So the riposte to Callistratus is part of a wider reflection on poets’ poverty compared to the flashy wealth of some freed slaves. True, Martial avows his paupertas and at first seems to embrace this social situation, but then he fully voices his indignation at the salary scale which is inversely proportional to true merit. Outraged though he might be, he fully accepts his economic inferiority as the consequence of his choice, a choice to pursue a poetic career. And even in the field (p.79) of literary creation, it will fall to Martial to reply to those who have settled in the world’s capital and who look down on the peripheral position Page 4 of 17

 

Social Inferiority and Poetic Inferiority—Martial’s Revenge in his Epigrams of that poet who has come to Rome from the depths of Spain. Indeed, we shall see that a sense of inferiority linked to his geographic origins only adds to his feeling of economic inferiority.

Roman Urbanity and Spanish Rusticity As other commentators have already noted,24 the fact that the freedman addressed by Martial bears a Greek name makes Epigram 5.13 a kind of social critique of patriotic inspiration, something Juvenal will treat as a moralist by criticizing the fact that little Greeks (graeculi) are often better treated than Roman citizens.25 I shall here broach only the purely literary aspects of this Roman patriotism in order to show that, for Martial, it includes defending both the urbanity of the city of Rome to which he belongs and the rusticity of Spain of which he is a native.26 On the whole, Martial agrees that the best poetry is written in Rome, not only because the city is a source of inspiration superior to all others, but also because it is the only place where ‘a unique quality of language’, vernaculus sapor,27 can be acquired. This belief in the cultural supremacy of Rome can be seen clearly at the beginning of the two books that Martial composed precisely outside the capital: Book 3, which was written while he was in Cisalpine Gaul (in 87 AD), and Book 12, a part of which at least was written after he returned to Bilbilis for good (in 98 AD). In the epigrammatic preface to Book 3, he toys with the elsewhere well-attested idea that what is urbanus is always superior to what is provincial28 and pretends to believe that this new book is bound to be less successful than the previous one since it comes from Gallia togata, toga-clad Gaul: plus sane placeat domina qui natus in urbe est; | debet enim Gallum vincere verna liber. The superiority of the book written at home verna liber, i.e. written in the ‘sovereign city’, domina…in urbe, can here be seen in the (p.80) personification of the book as the son or the slave of its author, which the use of the adverb sane underlines.29 In the dedicatory epistle of Book 12, the tone becomes more serious as Martial pines for the exceptional conditions the city offers to literary creators.30 Therefore he wishes to submit his new epigrams to the unbiased judgement of Terentius Priscus,…ne Romam…non Hispaniensem librum mittamus, sed Hispanum: the clausula plays on the subtle nuances between two words: Hispaniensis, for a book which was simply written ‘in Spain’ by a Roman citizen, and Hispanus, for a book the style or the content of which is tainted by ‘Spanish provincialism’.31 It seems to me that this fear of not being able to write in good Latin any longer is concerned with the ‘complex of the provincial’ which can be traced in other writers of Spanish origins.32 It is striking that both Quintilian and Seneca, when they occasionally speak of (p.81) themselves, are reluctant to be identified as Spanish but prefer to give evidence of their perfect integration into urbane Roman culture, not to mention Lucan in his epic, a genre that hardly lends itself to autobiographical confidence. As a matter of fact, in poetry as in rhetoric the Page 5 of 17

 

Social Inferiority and Poetic Inferiority—Martial’s Revenge in his Epigrams Spaniards seem to have been the victims of prejudices when it comes to the requirements of urbanitas: Cicero, writing about the poets born in Cordoba, deemed their accent to be ‘heavy and exotic’, pingue quiddam sonantes atque peregrinum (Cic. Arch. 10.26), and Valerius Messalla annihilated with the stroke of a pen the great orator Porcius Latro ‘eloquent in his own language’, sua lingua disertus (Sen. Con. 2.4.8). Obviously it is not easy for us moderns to spot the signs of this Spanish provincialism which could come from pronunciation, vocabulary, or syntax.33 Still, it is true that the replies of Martial to the purists expose a contrario the reality of the accusations they levelled at him and the contempt in which he felt they held him. But he did not really set great store by their criticism, too erudite for his taste. That is why while admitting that his Gallic book, liber Gallus, is bound to meet with a mixed reception, he trusts that the mere name of Faustinus, the dedicatee, will be enough to shelter him from the criticism of Probus, the illustrious grammarian of his time: Illo vindice nec Probum timeto.34 The most amusing example, however, could well be this reply to the reader in the previous book: Si qua videbuntur chartis tibi, lector, in istis     sive obscura nimis sive Latina parum, non meus est error: nocuit librarius illis     dum properat versus annumerare tibi. If some things in these pages, reader, strike you as too obscure or doubtful Latin, the error is not mine. The copyist did the damage in his hurry to tell out the number of verses for you.35

(p.82) The antithesis pleasantly emphasizes the awkward style, even the grammatical mistakes an overscrupulous reader could detect in the work, while the easy explanation, i.e. the reference to a slapdash copyist, sounds like a blunt dismissal uttered offhandedly for those who relish petty scrutiny.36 Indeed even if a part of the Roman elite might take issue with a poet’s provincialism and consider it to be marring the quality of his works, Martial turns the tables: he proudly proclaims his Spanish origins and makes this the stamp of his individuality as a Latin poet.37 Other critics have pointed out that he is the only one among his compatriots to recall his native soil willingly—either by composing poems that evoke its idealized landscape or by underlining the Spanish traits of his physiognomy—38 but Martial does so within a specifically Latin tradition. As far as literary creation is concerned, I shall take two examples which seem to me to be quite characteristic. First, in epigram 1.61, Martial lists prestigious writers whose glory, achieved in Rome, has reflected on the more humble towns where they were born:39 Catullus (from Verona), Vergil (from Mantua), Livy (from Padua), Ovid (from Sulmona), the two Senecas and Lucan (from Cordoba); following their examples, Martial, along with his friend Licinianus, will be one day the pride and joy of Bilbilis as he will have become a famous Latin poet:40 te, Liciniane, gloriabitur nostra | nec me tacebit Bilbilis.41 Page 6 of 17

 

Social Inferiority and Poetic Inferiority—Martial’s Revenge in his Epigrams Secondly, in Epigram 4.55, probably to the very same Licinianus, Martial rejects the names of Greek cities as inspiration (4.55.1–7) and prefers to sing those of the towns, rivers, and lakes of their common homeland (4.55.11–26).42 Pomponius Mela had already noted how difficult the pronunciation of Cantabrian names (p.83) was for Romans43 and Martial likewise stresses the harshness of Celtiberian names, nomina…duriora, nomina…rustica.44 Hence using them in both sweet and graceful verse (grato versu) is not only an act of provocation, non pudeat referre, towards the ‘delicate’ reader who despises those harshsounding names (delicate lector, rides?) but also a real poetic tour de force which contributes to the enrichment of the Latin tongue.45 The patriotic tones of the address to Callistratus are therefore not devoid of literary resonance. It was said, of course, that Martial found the ancient Roman virtue of rusticitas in his native Spain,46 but it seems to me he also knows how to make his Hispanicity the mark of his poetic individuality and of the Latin nature of his inspiration at the same time. Thus he turns to his advantage the prejudices which a part of the Roman elite could show against his provincial origins, while he accepts his economic inferiority in a society where intellectuals earn less money than some freed slaves. It remains to be seen how this double shift is realized within the epigrammatic genre, a genre itself widely considered to be minor.

Literary Immortality and the ‘Weaker Voice’ of the Epigram Pliny the Younger did not think Martial’s epigrams would be immortal although their author had composed them to be so: At non erunt aeterna quae scripsit; non erunt fortasse, ille tamen scripsit tamquam essent futura.47 This judgement amounts to more than a questioning (p.84) of Martial’s poetic talent and more than scorn towards a provincial who has recently become a member of the equestrian order; it reflects the prejudice of an era which considers the epigram as an inferior form of poetry. In the Apophoreta, Mario Citroni has detected what he calls ‘un certo complesso di inferiorita’ towards great poetry.48 Later, when the poet starts publishing his miscellaneous epigrams, he seems to have come to terms with the criticism directed against the genre he has chosen: he admits that he does not write anything great (aliquid magnum) nor anything lasting (victurae per saecula curae), and takes as an excuse the absence of patrons willing to offer him the same free time as Horace or Vergil enjoyed.49 Already in Book 4, however, and even more so from Book 8 onwards, the growing success of his works with the public becomes the guarantee of their literary value as well as the best argument to thwart any criticism. Are epigrams just trifles and plays, lusus et ioci? That remains to be seen. Those who really play with trifles are the authors of mythological epics and tragedies, works admired by everyone but hardly read by anyone: illa laudant omnes, sed ista legunt.50 The riposte to Callistratus seems to me to take on its full significance in Martial’s defence of

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Social Inferiority and Poetic Inferiority—Martial’s Revenge in his Epigrams the epigrammatic genre: its success with readers is, for the poet, a kind of wealth superior to all others, for it alone is truly lasting.51 By saying straight to Callistratus’ face that he enjoys in his lifetime a glory that few authors know after their death, quodque cinis paucis, (p.85) hoc mihi vita dedit (5.13.4), Martial takes up a theme already treated by Ovid but to which he gives particular significance in Book 5.52 Indeed, in this book the poet requests that his works be placed in the imperial library, the curator of which seems to have been the rhetor Sextus Iulius Gabibianus, Sextus, Palatinae cultor facundus Minervae (5.5.1).53 It is unclear whether the expression refers to Domitian’s personal library, located in his palace, or the one Augustus had set up under the portico of the temple of Apollo Palatine.54 In any case, the entrance of little books, libelli, into such an important building amounts to a genuine consecration, tantamount to the promise of literary immortality. That is how I interpret lines 5–8 which, in a way, inscribe Martial within the lineage of authors of epigrams—Catullus, for the Republican period, Albinovanus Pedo and Domitius Marsus for the Augustan period—whose works he classifies among those inferior to the Aeneid and the Bellum Capitolinum, but nonetheless worthy of remembrance.55 There is nothing surprising in the fact that those authors of epigrams are all Latin, for the library is bound to be divided into two sections: the Greek section and the Latin one—with Martial, of course, hoping to be placed in the latter.56 Such a prospective location, however, cannot but flatter the man who, as a native of Spain, would thus find a place for himself among poets born in Italy and recognized as classical writers. It seems to me to be a new sign of the Roman patriotism whose social aspect is mentioned in Epigram 5.13, and which can be seen here in its literary dimension. There is no point in insisting on Martial’s reluctance to confess what he owes to his Greek models, nor on the pleasure he derives from naming a great number of Latin authors.57 (p.86) It is, therefore, his immortality as heir to the Latin epigrammatic tradition that Martial pitches against the riches of Callistratus. From this point of view, Epigram 5.13 is the first in a series of pieces which compose a sort of homage to the readers who are gradually presented by the poet as his supreme wealth. I should like to quote here only a few of them. First, Epigrams 5.15 and 5.16 in which Martial puts forward the relations the author entertains with his public, relations, which he stresses (somewhat ambiguously), are disinterested.58 Thus, the first epigram addressed to Domitian, purposely hailed as Augustus, ascribes to him the idea that great authors should get some financial support;59 likewise the second, addressed to the lector amicus, hints that the poet could forsake literature and turn to law if he does not receive any financial compensation for his poetry.60 In both cases, however, the poet underlines his unselfishness: first, he claims that the satisfaction provided by poetry is the only thing that matters (5.15.6: non prosint sane, me tamen ista iuvant), then he mentions his future professional retraining with more bitter irony than real intention (5.16.14: facies me, puto, causidicum). Martial makes Page 8 of 17

 

Social Inferiority and Poetic Inferiority—Martial’s Revenge in his Epigrams clear that epigrammatic writing is a choice made out of pleasure, but also out of loyalty and indeed a sense of duty to a public of fervent readers (5.16.1–2: Seria cum possim, quod delectantia malo | scribere, tu causa es, lector amice, mihi). Should he have a gift for ‘great’ poems or ‘austere’ pleadings, he would not want to disappoint the expectations of all those—and how numerous they are!—who prefer to read his ‘pleasant’ epigrams. This disinterested (and unremunerated) manner of writing finds its final recompense in the reader’s favourable reception of the epigrams (p.87) and in the literary immortality that is the poet’s fair reward. This can be seen clearly in Epigrams 8.3 and 10.2 which place the two books to which they are the respective prefaces within the Augustan tradition of Horace and Ovid.61 In them, Martial celebrates the pre-eminence of poetry, which is able to erect a more lasting monumentum than the most illustrious tombs, a monumentum that perpetuates the memory of men for longer than stone or marble.62 Beside the monuments to Messalla, the friend of Augustus, and to Crispus, the consul of 44 AD, we find that of the freedman Licinus: altaque cum Licini marmora pulvis erunt, | me tamen ora legent (8.3.6–7).63 First, the mention of that Gallic slave freed by Caesar and appointed governor of Gaul by Augustus who thus made his fortune, expresses the idea that death casts richer men into the same oblivion, whatever their origins may be. It is also, following the scathing reply to Callistratus, a solemn way of reasserting the superiority of poetic fame over material possessions, however ostentatiously flaunted they might be. In the face of the riches of the freed slave, libertinae opes (5.13.6), which could never equal poetic glory, here is now the genuine wealth, the only one that can provide immortality: lector, opes nostrae (10.2.5).64 Far from being a cheap allusion to the profits he has made from his books, it seems to me that this expression is above all a token of gratitude towards the anonymous reader. Just as Martial reminded Domitian that his verse could bestow undying fame on those whose names he celebrated (5.15.3), he now pays homage to the mediator of this poetic (p.88) immortality since it is through the reader that, from century to century, the epigrams will be allowed to go on living.65

Conclusion Epigram 5.13 is an illustration of Martial’s polemical attitude towards those who show contempt for his relative poverty, his Spanish provincial origins, or his choice to write in the epigrammatic genre. These are the three types of inferiority which we perceive indirectly through the feelings they arouse in the poet: an economic inferiority, a geographic inferiority, and a literary inferiority. It is to be noted that these feelings are part and parcel of a complex system of (self-)defence: the poet may seem on occasion to assimilate to the prevailing values he is confronted with; nevertheless, he soon turns the situation around and asserts his superiority by daringly claiming as his the characteristics which critics had put forward as proof of his inferiority. Of course, Martial has chosen neither to be poor nor to be Spanish, but he faces up to his economic situation, Page 9 of 17

 

Social Inferiority and Poetic Inferiority—Martial’s Revenge in his Epigrams accepting it as the shocking consequence of a calling he has embraced, and claims his Hispanicity as the noble mark of his literary individuality. Above all, in his response to Callistratus, he stresses that he has gained fame in the so-called minor genre of the epigram, a fame that is superior to the material riches the freed slave of Greek origins proudly accumulated. Martial’s readers have conferred upon him universal and immortal glory, the source of true endless riches. Therefore he pays them homage as, owing to them, all the vulgar upstarts have become the victims of his resounding revenge.66 Notes:

(1) For the chronology of the Epigrams, the study of reference remains Friedlaender (1961: 50–67). (2) Callistratus reappears in Mart. 9.95b, 12.35, 12.42, 12.80. For suggestions regarding the etymology of his name, see Vallat (2008: 533, 581). These are, however, considered as ‘non…molto convincenti’ by Canobbio (2011: 184). (3) Mart. 5.13. All quotations from Martial (including their translations) are taken from Shackleton Bailey’s Loeb edition. (4) These lines may bring Epigram 3.95 to mind, in which Martial jests about the following situation: his works were rewarded and praised by Titus and Domitian, and given immortal fame by the public, and yet Naevolus, a mere male prostitute (3.95.13: Sed pedicaris, sed pulchre, Naevole, ceves, ‘But you are sodomized, Naevolus, and agitate your bottom to admiration’), ends up richer and more esteemed than he, Martial, is. For a comparison between the two texts, see Fusi (2006: 539). (5) Canobbio (2011: 182–92). (6) In my opinion, this point of view is justified by the fact that Epigram 5.13 appears in a sequence of poems, within the second decade of the book, which contain reflections on poetry and the condition of the poet (Mart. 5.10, 5.13, 5.15–16, 5.19), after those of the first decade solemnly consecrated the work to Domitian (Mart. 5.1–3, 5.5–8): see Canobbio (2011: 14–15). As Dorothee Gall pointed out to me, there is a difference between Martial and his predecessor Horace: while most of the topics of social criticism and self-definition used by Martial can be found in Horace, the latter’s focus is not on his poetry, but on morals (Hor. Epod. 4, S. 1.6). Only in Hor. Carm. 1.1 does he insist on the higher claim of his own poetic vocation, compared with other professions and skills respected by the Romans, but even there he clearly states his dependence on the Muses (Hor. Carm. 1.1.29–36). Perhaps the reason for this difference has mainly to do with the genre, insofar as the satirist should be a man of high moral standards, who is expected to teach his readers mores, while the epigrammatist

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Social Inferiority and Poetic Inferiority—Martial’s Revenge in his Epigrams is not assessed according to his morals, but according to his poetic skills and wit. (7) Cf. Mart. 1.76, 3.38.7–10, 5.15–16, 6.82, 9.49, 11.3. (8) Translated from Laurens (1989: 365), who analyses Epigram 5.13 as an illustration of what he calls a ‘prompte réplique’. (9) See Canobbio (2011: 183). (10) Cf. Mart. 3.95.5–10, 4.27.3–4, 8.31, 9.66, 9.97.5–6. For the institution of the honorary militia and Martial’s accession to the equestrian order, see in particular Demougin (1988: 293–8). (11) Cf. Mart. 2.90.3, 4.77.3, 5.18.10, 5.19.8, 7.46.6, 10.10.11, 12.57.4. Martial’s economic situation has been well analysed, in particular by Hardie (1983: 50–7); Sullivan (1991: 26–30); Tennant (2000); Nauta (2002: 51–8); Fitzgerald (2007: 7– 13). Moreover, we know that at the end of the Republic and at the beginning of the Principate most poets possessed the equestrian census: see White (1978: 88) who quotes Nicolet (1966: 441–56) and Taylor (1968), whose study he follows up for the period of the beginning of the Principate (among the equites, he mentions Persius, Martial, Statius, and Juvenal). (12) Hardie (1983: 51). (13) See in particular, in Petronius, the portrait of Eumolpus the poet (Petr. 83 sqq.) and, in Juvenal, the seventh satire on the ill repute of ‘intellectuals’. (14) For the relative terms of what we would today call the ‘poverty line’, see Tennant (2000: 140–2). (15) The fortune of this character is not known otherwise, but that of Licinus (C. Julius Licinus), whom Martial mentions (see p. 87, on Mart. 8.3.6), can give us a clue: Tennant (2000: 141, n. 11) states that he had reputedly accumulated some 200 or 300 million, i.e. more than five hundred times the equestrian census. (16) For a detailed discussion of praecones, see Lowe in this volume. (17) Cf. Mart. 1.76, with the commentary by Citroni (1975: 240–1). Many people of servile origins who have become rich and famous escape Martial’s criticism when they enjoy public sympathy or the prince’s favour, whereas, when they do not, they arouse in the poet his strong class feeling that makes him hostile to any social promotion: see Garrido-Hory (1981: 175–6). (18) Mart. 9.73: Dentibus antiquas solitus producere pelles | et mordere luto putre vetusque solum, | Praenestina tenes decepti regna patroni, | in quibus indignor si tibi cella fuit; | rumpis et ardenti madidus crystalla Falerno | et pruris Page 11 of 17

 

Social Inferiority and Poetic Inferiority—Martial’s Revenge in his Epigrams domini cum Ganymede tui. | at me litterulas stulti docuere parentes: | quid cum grammaticis rhetoribusque mihi? | frange leves calamos et scinde, Thalia, libellos, | si dare sutori calceus ista potest, ‘You used to stretch ancient hides with your teeth and bite an old shoe sole rotten with mud: now you possess the Praenestine realm of your patron, gone before his time. It makes me indignant if you ever had a cubbyhole therein. And in your liquor you burst crystal with hot Falernian and lust with your master’s Ganymede. But my foolish parents taught me my ABC. What use to me are grammarians and rhetors? Break your puny pens and tear up your little books, Thalia, if a shoe can give all that to a cobbler.’ For commentary, see Henriksén (2013: 87–91). Cf. Parroni (1979). (19) Cf. Mart. 1.17, 1.76.5–13, 2.30.5. For the attitude and the social status of barristers compared with that of the poet, see Notter (2013). (20) Cf. Mart. 1.49, 2.90, 5.16. (21) For commentary, see Williams (2004: 269–74). (22) Mart. 2.90.1–4. (23) Mart. 2.90.5–10: differat hoc patrios optat qui vincere census | atriaque immodicis artat imaginibus. | me focus et nigros non indignantia fumos | tecta iuvant et fons vivus et herba rudis. | sit mihi verna satur, sit non doctissima coniunx, | sit nox cum somno, sit sine lite dies, ‘Let him put it off who prays to surpass his father’s riches and crowds his hall with excess of portraits. My pleasure is a hearth, and a roof that does not resent black smoke, and a running stream, and fresh grass. Let me have a well-fed, home-bred slave, a wife not over-educated, the night with sleep, the day without a quarrel.’ For the litteratum otium in Martial, see in particular Gómez Pallarès (1996: 407–9). (24) Canobbio (2011: 183). (25) Cf. Juv. 1.101–11, 3.81 sqq. (26) For a wider reflection on the relation between literary creation and Rome’s representation in Martial, but in a metapoetic perspective which is not ours here, see Rimell (2008). (27) For the notion of vernaculus sapor, see Bonjour (1975: 256–9). (28) Cf. Ramage (1973). (29) Mart. 3.1: Hoc tibi, quidquid id est, longinquis mittit ab oris | Gallia Romanae nomine dicta togae. | hunc legis et laudas librum fortasse priorem: | illa vel haec mea sunt, quae meliora putas. | plus sane placeat domina qui natus in urbe est; | debet enim Gallum vincere verna liber, ‘This, whatever it amounts to, Gaul called by the name of the Roman gown sends you from distant lands. You Page 12 of 17

 

Social Inferiority and Poetic Inferiority—Martial’s Revenge in his Epigrams read it and perhaps praise its predecessor. That one or this is mine, whichever you think the better. To be sure, let the one that was born in the imperial city please more: a home-bred book should best a Gaul.’ For commentary, see Fusi (2006: 105–12). (30) Mart. Epist. 12.7 sqq.: accipe ergo rationem. in qua hoc maximum et primum est, quod civitatis aures quibus assueveram quaero, et videor mihi in alieno foro litigare; si quid est enim quod in libellis meis placeat, dictavit auditor: illam iudiciorum subtilitatem, illud materiarum ingenium, bibliothecas, theatra, convictus, in quibus studere se voluptates non sentiunt, ad summam omnia illa quae delicati reliquimus desideramus quasi destituti: ‘So let me give you my reasons. The first and most important point is that I miss the ears of the community to which I had grown accustomed. It is like pleading a case in a strange court. For if there is anything to please in my little books, the audience dictated it. The subtlety of judgments, the inspiration of the themes, the libraries, the theatres, the gatherings where pleasure is a student without realizing it, to sum it all up, all those things which in my fastidiousness I forsook, I now regret as though they had deserted me.’ (31) Mart. Epist. 12.28 sqq.: et, quod tibi difficillimum est, de nugis nostris iudices candore seposito, ne Romam, si ita decreveris, non Hispaniensem librum mittamus, sed Hispanum: ‘and, what is very difficult for you, to judge my trifles without favourable bias, lest I send to Rome (if you so decree) a book that is not only from Spain but Spanish.’ For the difference between the two ethnical adjectives used here by Martial, see Charisius in Grammatici Latini 1.106.7–9, edited by Heinrich Keil (Leipzig: Teubner, 1857): cum dicimus Hispanos, nomen nationis ostendimus; cum autem Hispanienses, cognomen eorum qui provinciam Hispanam incolunt, etsi non sunt Hispani. For commentary on these lines, see in particular Dolç (1953: 33–4); Parroni (1984: 128–32); Craca (2008: 86–7); Notter (2011: 178–9). (32) This kind of inferiority complex may be the negative aspect of the affection that writers of Spanish origins, especially Martial, experience for their ‘little native country’, an affection which is analysed by Bonjour (1975: 210–18). Cf. also, for the complex relations which Martial establishes with Spain, the very substantial discussion by Citroni (2002). (33) Cf. Citroni (2002: 284–7). (34) Mart. 3.2: Cuius vis fieri, libelle, munus?…| Faustini fugis in sinum? sapisti. | cedro nunc licet ambules perunctus | et frontis gemino decens honore | pictis luxurieris umbilicis, | et te purpura delicata velet, | et cocco rubeat superbus index. | illo vindice nec Probum timeto: ‘Whose present do you wish to be, little book?…Do you fly to Faustinus’ bosom? You are wise. Now you may walk oiled with cedar, your twin brows handsomely adorned, luxuriating in your painted Page 13 of 17

 

Social Inferiority and Poetic Inferiority—Martial’s Revenge in his Epigrams bosses, clothed in dainty purple, your proud title blushing scarlet. With him to protect you, have no fear of Probus himself.’ For commentary, see Fusi (2006: 113–28). (35) Mart. 2.8.1–4. (36) See the commentary by Williams (2004: 49–52). Elsewhere Martial points to how, occasionally, he has to correct the copies of his works in his own hand (cf. Mart. 7.11, 7.17.6–8). (37) See the conclusions in Bonjour (1975: 274). (38) For Martial’s Spanish regionalism, see Bonjour (1975: 254–6). Cf. Notter (2011: 187–90). (39) For the commentary, see Citroni (1975: 200–5). Cf. Notter (2011: 182–3). (40) The same idea will be taken up in Mart. 10.103.3–6: ecquid laeta iuvat vestri vos gloria vatis? | nam decus et nomen famaque vestra sumus, | nec sua plus debet tenui Verona Catullo | meque velit dici non minus illa suum: ‘Do you rejoice in the flourishing fame of your poet? For I am your ornament and renown and glory, nor does his Verona owe more to spare Catullus, or would wish me less to be called hers.’ (41) Mart. 1.61.11–12: ‘you, Licinianus, shall our Bilbilis vaunt, nor of me be silent.’ (42) For commentary, see Moreno-Soldevila (2006: 389–99). Cf. Notter (2011: 185–7). (43) Mela 3.15: Cantabrorum aliquot populi amnesque sunt sed quorum nomina nostro ore concipi nequeant: ‘there are some Cantabrian rivers and tribes whose names cannot be expressed in our language.’ (44) Mart. 4.55.8 sqq.: nos Celtis genitos et ex Hiberis | nostrae nomina duriora terrae | grato non pudeat referre versu |…haec tam rustica, delicate lector, | rides nomina? rideas licebit, | haec tam rustica malo quam Butuntos: ‘let us, born from Celts and Iberians, be not ashamed to recall in grateful verse the harsher names of our country… Do you smile, fastidious reader, at such provincial names? Smile as you may, I prefer these provincial names to Butunti.’ Cf. Mart. 12.18.11–12: Celtiberis | haec sunt nomina crassiora terris: ‘these are the rather lumpish names for our Celtiberian lands’. (45) For the innovations Martial brought to poetic language, see Sullivan (1991: 230–1). (46) See Bonjour (1975: 255). Page 14 of 17

 

Social Inferiority and Poetic Inferiority—Martial’s Revenge in his Epigrams (47) Plin. Ep. 3.21.6: ‘You may object that his verses will not be immortal; perhaps not, but he wrote them with that intention’, trans. Radice. For this famous judgement by Pliny, see in particular the analysis, old but relevant, in Guillemin (1929: 25–6). See also Cova (1966: 108 sqq.); Pitcher (1999). (48) Citroni (1968: 273). (49) Mart. 1.107.1–6: Saepe mihi dicis, Luci carissime Iuli, | ‘scribe aliquid magnum: desidiosus homo es.’ | otia da nobis, sed qualia fecerat olim | Maecenas Flacco Vergilioque suo: | condere victuras temptem per saecula curas | et nomen flammis eripuisse meum: ‘You often say to me, dearest Lucius Julius: “Write something big. You are a lazybones.” Give me leisure, I mean such leisure as Maecenas once made for his Flaccus and his Vergil. Then I would try to write works that would live through the centuries and snatch my name from the funeral fires.’ (50) Mart. 4.49: Nescit, crede mihi, quid sint epigrammata, Flacce, | qui tantum lusus illa iocosque vocat. | ille magis ludit qui scribit prandia saevi | Tereos…‘illa tamen laudant omnes, mirantur, adorant.’ | confiteor: laudant illa, sed ista legunt: ‘Anybody who calls them just frivolities and jests, Flaccus, doesn’t know what epigrams are, believe me. More frivolous is the poet who writes about the meal of savage Tereus…“And yet all the world praises such things and admires and marvels.” I admit it: that they praise, but this they read.’ The analyses presented here follow Citroni (1968: 273–86). See also Perruccio (2007). (51) See Julhe (2012). (52) Canobbio (2011: 186). (53) This is the identification favoured by Canobbio (2011: 108–9). (54) See Canobbio (2011: 109). (55) Mart. 5.5.5–8: [Sexte, Palatinae cultor facunde Minervae,…] sit locus et nostris aliqua tibi parte libellis, | qua Pedo, qua Marsus quaque Catullus erit. | ad Capitolini caelestia carmina belli | grande cothurnati pone Maronis opus: ‘[Sextus, eloquent votary of Palatine Minerva,…] find a place somewhere for my little books, in the neighborhood of Pedo and Marsus and Catullus. Beside the celestial lay of the Capitoline war place the great work of buskined Maro.’ For commentary, see Canobbio (2011: 111–16). (56) See Fedeli (1989: 41). (57) The influence of the Greek epigram upon Martial is well known, just as is the fact that he quotes exclusively Latin authors as his models: see Sullivan (1991: 78–114). See also Laurens (1965).

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Social Inferiority and Poetic Inferiority—Martial’s Revenge in his Epigrams (58) For the commentary, see Canobbio (2011: 201–24). (59) Mart. 5.15: Quintus nostrorum liber est, Auguste, iocorum | et queritur laesus carmine nemo meo, |…‘quid tamen haec prosunt quamvis venerantia multos?’ | non prosint sane, me tamen ista iuvant: ‘This is the fifth volume of my jests, Augustus, and no one complains because my verse has hurt him,…“But where is the profit in these productions, even though they pay compliments to many?” Suppose there is none; I like doing them all the same.’ (60) Mart. 5.16: Seria cum possim, quod delectantia malo | scribere, tu causa es, lector amice, mihi, | qui legis et tota cantas mea carmina Roma: | sed nescis quanti stet mihi talis amor. | …‘belle’ inquis ‘dixti: iuvat et laudabimus usque.’ | dissimulas? facies me, puto, causidicum: ‘If I prefer to write what gives pleasure, though I could be a serious poet, you, friendly reader, are my reason, you that read and recite my verses all over Rome. But you don’t know how much such affection costs me…“Prettily said”, you say. “We like it and will continue to praise.” You pretend not to understand? Methinks you’ll make a barrister of me yet.’ (61) For the Augustan dimension of the epigrams in Book 8, see Canobbio (2005). For commentary, see Schöffel (2002: 98–119); Damschen and Heil (2004: 41–4). (62) Mart. 8.3.3–8: ‘iam plus nihil addere nobis | fama potest: teritur noster ubique liber; | et cum rupta situ Messalae saxa iacebunt | altaque cum Licini marmora pulvis erunt, | me tamen ora legent et secum plurimus hospes | ad patrias sedes carmina nostra feret’: ‘“Fame can confer nothing more on me now. My books are thumbed everywhere; and when Messalla’s stones lie broken by decay and the tall marbles of Licinus are dust, I shall still be read and many a stranger shall carry my poems with him to the land of his ancestors”’; Mart. 10.2.5–12: lector, opes nostrae: quem cum mihi Roma dedisset, | ‘nil tibi quod demus maius habemus’ ait. | ‘pigra per hunc fugies ingratae flumina Lethes | et meliore tui parte superstes eris. | marmora Messallae findit caprificus et audax | dimidios Crispi mulio ridet equos: | at chartis nec furta nocent et saecula prosunt, | solaque non norunt haec monumenta mori’: ‘Reader, who are my riches. When Rome gave you to me, she said: “I have nothing greater to give you. Through him you will escape ungrateful Lethe’s idle waters and survive in the better part of yourself. The fig tree splits Messalla’s marble, the bold muleteer laughs at Crispus’ halved horses. But thefts do not harm paper and the centuries do it good. These are the only memorials that cannot die.”’ (63) See Schöffel (2002: 103–5). (64) See Buongiovanni (2009: 519, 523). (65) See Fitzgerald (2007: 154–62).

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Social Inferiority and Poetic Inferiority—Martial’s Revenge in his Epigrams (66) I am most grateful to Stephen Harrison and Sebastian Matzner for their kind invitation to the thrilling conference at Corpus Christi College, to Dorothee Gall who was my respondent, and to Rodolphe Fonty, who translated my paper into English.

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Drawing Blanks

Complex Inferiorities: The Poetics of the Weaker Voice in Latin Literature Sebastian Matzner and Stephen Harrison

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198814061 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198814061.001.0001

Drawing Blanks The Pale Shades of ‘Phaedrus’ and ‘Juvenal’ Tom Geue

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198814061.003.0006

Abstract and Keywords This chapter examines two exponents of satiric literature written under the politically fraught conditions of the Roman Principate, Phaedrus and Juvenal. It is unclear who (or what) both were; their names, shorthands for de-authored texts rather than stand-ins for historical individuals. The literal self-effacement at work here creates a paradoxical authority: the words on the page, loosened from a definite first-person speaker identity, slip and slide easily from person to person, yet the concealment wreaks havoc with the readerly desire to know the source behind the words, generating an energetic ‘erotics’ of the weaker voice. This chapter analyses their shared yet distinctive strategies of authorial selferasure, arguing that both not only render key markers of Roman elite male identity—name, body, and autobiography—ineffective, but that, in doing so, they also foreground and relish the particular potential of literature as the written word in its supposed inferiority to author-bound speech. Keywords:   Phaedrus, Juvenal, satire, Roman Principate, Imperial literature, self-effacement, anonymity, author, identity, reader

One of the load-bearing assumptions of this volume is that many of the inferiorities in our sights are indeed complex ones. In step with good modern critical habits of calling foul on rhetorical claptrap, spotting ideological fudging a mile off, seeing through the subtleties of self-presentation, we are right to be suspicious of any claim to simple inferiority in our elite authors, and well-poised to pick through it as so much complex strategy. Complexity nowadays is not so Page 1 of 17

 

Drawing Blanks much a critical desideratum as a sine qua non: the very guarantee of our value as scholars, the thing that makes us necessary. And many of us (including myself) ply our trade by pivoting against the naively po-faced, happily unsophisticated, resolutely un-complex findings of our own distant predecessors —especially when it comes to setting the record right on authors we think Tradition (with a capital ‘T’) has sold down the river and condemned to inferiority in perpetuity.1 So for us, when the largely fame-hungry authors of ‘minor’ Latin poetry play themselves down, it’s a safe bet that other forces are in operation—and it’s a useful critical task to go exposing what they may be.2 Set against (p.90) such good complex work, my reading style in this chapter might, I fear, look a little dense. Rather than unmasking the self-assertion lurking beneath the self-effacement, I’m going to try to take the self-effacement seriously. That’s my disappointing first offering: a bare-faced inferiority simplex. My second offering is equally flat, and only marginally redeemed by its pertinence to the title of this book (i.e. cheating its way to profundity). The weaker (or stronger) post-colonic strand of the volume leans on the metaphor of ‘voice’: a vivid evocation of our strained relationship with antiquity’s hollowed present-absence, as if our authors were whispering, panting, stuttering out their death-bed groans into our distant ears, the communication sabotaged even further by the trickling bandwidth of time’s dial-up modem. In some sense, the fact that these classical authors’ ‘voices’ are now nothing but transcripts automatically renders them ‘weak’; and I would like this chapter to show just how essential textuality is to this dynamics of attenuation. If we operate with the old Platonic binary of speech versus writing,3 we might have to say that all texts are weak by definition (but some, i.e. those coming up next, are weaker than others?). And yet I’ll also try to show that these programmatically lost voices exploit their dumbing down in extremely powerful ways; indeed, it is precisely their separation from a ‘proper’ authorial voice, and their implied invasion of other bodies in subsequent reading, which lends them a mysterious resonance. If texts become the unamplified, disembodied, transmigrating voices of their authors, they are enabled by the handicap; they are potent because they are faint. Phaedrus and Juvenal will help me in being so simple and so un(i)vocal. These authors provide rich pickings for those in quest of the weaker voice. Generically speaking, fable and satire run a race to the bottom: they pride themselves on occupying the lowest rung of the generic ladder, their street-level mud-spattered abjection barely making (p.91) the cut as literature.4 Or so they say, as we would say. Phaedrus and Juvenal are natural companions in retailing such suspicious modesty: both cultivate the inbuilt marginality of their own genres to convince us somehow, through unseen shuffling of the deck, that their genre is the only genre in town. This would be an obvious place to start tracking complex inferiorities. But as I said above, I would like to keep it simpler. I’d like to freeze instead on another common (yet distinct) approach binding these two Page 2 of 17

 

Drawing Blanks consummate poets of the Principate in a society of blank ciphers. I’ll tackle a key strategy that renders them complex figures: that is, their studied bleaching of themselves from their texts. What I mean by this (admittedly vague and umbrella) concept of literal selfeffacement might become a bit clearer in the practice of the chapter. My simple starting point—and the committed reader-response critics may feel licensed to yawn right about now—is that we have very little idea who both of these shady figures, retrospectively concretized under the names of Phaedrus and Juvenal, were. Phaedrus gives us some shtick about being a Thracian slave brought to Rome under Augustus, but not many scholars take him seriously5—and one has even stared so hard through the mask that he has come up with an elite Roman lawyer underneath.6 Juvenal is even stingier with the ‘autobiographical’ nuggets —indeed, this is one of the striking pockmarks of his bodiless verse—and it is by no means certain that there ever was a historical satirist called Juvenal pulling the strings behind the swollen corpus of Satires.7 Both authors are relentlessly oblique and anti-referential; ‘secure’ dating is an ever-receding goal, and when their precise publication dates fall within a long spectral range is anyone’s guess.8 I’d venture that the texts’ resistance (p.92) to being nailed to a specific time and place is related to their resistance to being pinned to particular poets; and that these are interlinked, complementary, and spectacularly obscure effects produced by the texts themselves. And that’s as daring as I’ll get. But before I dive heedlessly in, a short breakdown on the relevant brand of selfeffacement might be in order. I’ll follow the self-whitewashing process as it bears on a privileged marker of elite male identity at Rome: namely, the name. The first part of the chapter will chart how Phaedrus uses self-naming as a decoy, baiting the reader into thinking they know him, only to rip the dangled carrot away (3 prologue–3.1); and how Phaedrus marks the possibility of a pseudonym in his key fables on branding (5 prologue–5.1). The second part will fret over the absence of a planted authorial name in Juvenal’s Satires, and check how this ties in with the anxiety of identification for an endangered (critical) poet in a hostile world. In both cases, I hope to show that the authorial absenteeism of text per se lends these pale shades their fire. I’ll try to mint Phaedrus’ pseudonymity and Juvenal’s anonymity as two sides of the same unusable coin. Tails or tails—never find a head, and you always lose.

Gaming the Name Names are usually filled in first, especially at Rome: in this name-bound, namedriven, name-conscious society, these special signifiers act as the convenient shorthand of identity and linchpin of continuity, the magnet of fame for every Roman worthy of the…name.9 Poetry is no exception: authorial self-naming has a grand lineage in the first-person heavy genres of Roman poetry, and a form of sphragis often made sure to seal the poet in the sticky preservative of her own eternal medium.10 We’ve come to expect a namedropped self from many of our Page 3 of 17

 

Drawing Blanks upwardly mobile poetae: Catullus, Horace, Ovid, Martial, to name a few. The problem/possibility is that readers tend to invest authorial names with a very special smoke of magic: they give us an overwhelming illusion of access to the human source behind the anonymous driftwood of words on a page. But they can be (p.93) fictionalized and/or suppressed as breezily as they can be dropped. So let’s take a look at how these processes of pseudonymity and anonymity can help project a weaker voice. In Phaedrus’ case, you wouldn’t think the genre of fable particularly hospitable to an ambitious new name on the block. Its currency of commonsensical and generic anecdote seems geared for oral migration, swapping mouths swiftly: a lowest common denominator of public property ‘storytelling’. We might cite the ultimate author here as Tradition. But in another sense, by Phaedrus’ day, fable has one of the most over-determined authorial names cleaving to it. Aesop, that hardened survivor, does what he does best and sticks around like a bad smell; put pen to fable, and he is looking over your shoulder straightaway. Phaedrus acknowledges this Ur-name countless times throughout the corpus, and at the outset even attributes the whole creative substance of the fables to him and him alone.11 Scholars have done some good work on calling Phaedrus’ bluff in this respect, or at least showing how the balance of deference to and independence from the ultimate Aesopic name changes over the five books plus messy appendix: our cowed little Aesop apographer seems to become increasingly plucky, confident in his own fable-abilities, even ‘making up’ stories that could never have been in Aesop.12 The apex of this briskly ascended molehill is arguably the famous(ish) prologue to Book 3, where Phaedrus starts talking in the terms of name, fame, and immortality as if he were a paid-up canonical like Horace or Ovid.13 He signs his name first thing, in the motion of ripping off the classic motifs of faux-arrogant-modesty embedded in the Roman greats: Phaedri libellos legere si desideras, uaces oportet, Eutyche, a negotiis, ut liber animus sentiat uim carminis. If you’re burning to read books of Phaedrus, you need to take time off work, Eutychus, so your mind is free to appreciate the power of the verse.14 (p.94)

‘Phaedrus’ is there from the get-go, proudly giftwrapping a prestige book with his own customized nametag.15 A few lines later, he tells us a bit more about himself in the stylized first-personage of any high-brow poet before him: ego, quem Pierio mater enixa est iugo, in quo Tonanti sancta Mnemosyne Ioui, fecunda nouies, artium peperit chorum, quamuis in ipsa paene natus sim schola, curamque habendi penitus corde eraserim, Page 4 of 17

 

Drawing Blanks nec Pallade hanc inuita in uitam incubuerim, fastidiose tamen in coetum recipior. I, whom my mother bore on the Pierian ridge, where sacred Mnemosyne the nine-time fertile bore for thundering Jupiter the chorus of the Arts, although I was almost born in a school itself, and even though I’ve uprooted greed for possession from the very bottom of my heart, and haven’t settled into this life against Athena’s will, yet still I’m received into the poets’ club grudgingly.16

So we have a name and some respectable origins in quick succession; we would be forgiven for feeling we have this poet pegged, at least qua poet’s poet. The rest of this prologue puffs out the ignoble beginnings of fable in the figured speech of the slave, who could not afford to speak openly and directly if he was to speak upwards at all (33–7). We then shoulder the bombshell that inadvertently ‘proves’ Phaedrus’ impact on the contemporary scene: he hints that no lesser figure than Sejanus himself, Tiberius’ right-hand man, had persecuted him for his provocative suite of animals who sounded, we infer, a bit too much like certain recognizable humans.17 Phaedrus insinuates that he has suffered for speaking truth to power, and thus enlists power’s attention to advertise how worth reading he really is—a bit like Ovid, minus the genuine exile.18 With the inventory of a clear (p.95) name, an origin tale, a recent dramatic event in the author’s life, all these items at our disposal, we now think we know Phaedrus. The next fable straightaway shoots down the superior knowingness of the smug clued-up reader. Phaedrus gives us a short sharp fable which conspicuously lacks the authorial key we need to get it: anus iacere uidit epotam amphoram, adhuc Falerna faece e testa nobili odorem quae iucundum late spargeret. Hunc postquam totis auida traxit naribus: ‘O suauis anima, quale in te dicam bonum antehac fuisse, tales cum sint reliquiae!’ hoc quo pertineat dicet qui me nouerit. Old woman saw an emptied wine jar lying there, but from the dregs of Falernian in its brand-name shell, it was putting all about a lovely aroma. After she’d greedily drunk it in with both nostrils flared: ‘O sweet fume, how good I’ll have to say you were before, if your leftovers are like this!’ The reader who knows me will say what this is about.19

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Drawing Blanks Of course, we might make an educated stab at this riddle with no better autobiographical leads to go on than the fact that Phaedrus has already published two books of fables: so perhaps he is well on in years, claiming a slowdown in retirement, yet producing dregs which are still top quality—so imagine what the stuff of his youth was like—if you think this is good, you’ll love the prequels! Then again, this clashes with the story of peak Phaedrus, ready to shed his Aesopic constraints and take on the world, the one we picked up in the prologue. Hermeneutic ‘solutions’ aside, what I want to point out here is that our fabulist cruelly teases the biographizing reader’s tendency to revert to the author to interpret the text, to get at meaning through reference to the person ‘behind’ it.20 For all the scraps Phaedrus laid at our feet in 3 prologue, we realize by 3.1 that we are still essentially, thrillingly, in the dark. And we are made to read this cryptic privacy as a knock-on reaction to eyes snooping from right inside the imperial court. We are (p.96) denied the privilege of ‘knowing’ our source, because s/he doesn’t want to be known; a bold name scored into the cover gets us nowhere. I drifted away from the pure name in sampling some other kinds of authorial identity, but now I’d like to get back to Phaedrus’ nominal lessons for real. A similar pairing of prologue followed by topical illustrative fable comes at the beginning of Book 5. Here we start with a neat paratextual name-game which will morph seamlessly into the ‘name says it all’ message of 5.1. First, Phaedrus tells us precisely what use he’s making of his Aesop, nothing short of writing his name in vain: Aesopi nomen sicubi interposuero, cui reddidi iam pridem quicquid debui, auctoritatis esse scito gratia; ut quidam artifices nostro faciunt saeculo, qui pretium operibus maius inueniunt nouis si marmori adscripserunt Praxitelen suo, detrito Myn argento, tabulae Zeuxidem. adeo fucatae plus uetustati fauet inuidia mordax quam bonis praesentibus. Sed iam ad fabellam talis exempli feror. Just know that wherever I introduced the name ‘Aesop’ (to whom I repaid whatever I owed a while ago), it was for the sake of authority; just as certain craftsmen of our generation do, those who fetch a better price for new works if they scribble ‘Praxiteles’ onto their own marble, or ‘Mys’ onto their polished silver, or ‘Zeuxis’ on their paintings. So much more does snapping envy go in for sepia-ed old-age, than for brand-spanking-new goods. But now it’s time for a story to illustrate such an instance.21

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Drawing Blanks The analogy from sculpture—inscribing the name of a famed artist and passing your substandard chippings off as their work—takes the Aesop–Phaedrus relationship to another level. This is no longer the dutiful transcription of Aesopic prose into verse Latin, with no real change in between; nor is it the expansion of Aesop’s small footpath to a multi-lane highway (Phaed. 3 Prol. 38); rather, this is Phaedrus attempting a kind of pseudepigraphic enterprise, making up his own material and branding it with the name Aesop for added authority (p.97) (and commercial clout).22 I hinted above that Phaedrus’ mode of nominal being was the pseudonymous, and I think this is the moment where a wire is truly tripped. For if it’s good Phaedrian practice to make (up) a name for his fables by borrowing Aesop’s, why couldn’t he be doing the same with ‘Phaedrus’—that programmatically unheard-of name? Once you open the can of plumes that is the pen-name, it is difficult to see where those feathers begin and/ or end. The power of the name to govern, direct, even revolutionize reader reception arrives promptly with the next story. The fable, explicitly loaded with the cargo of the prologue, is that of Demetrius the tyrant and Menander the poet: Demetrius rex, qui Phalereus dictus est, Athenas occupauit imperio improbo. ut mos est uulgi, passim et certatim ruit; ‘feliciter!’ succlamant. ipsi principes illam osculantur qua sunt oppressi manum, tacite gementes tristem fortunae uicem. quin etiam resides et sequentes otium, ne defuisse noceat, repunt ultimi; in quis Menander, nobilis comoediis, quas ipsum ignorans legerat Demetrius et admiratus fuerat ingenium uiri, unguento delibutus, uestitu fluens, ueniebat gressu delicato et languido. hunc ubi tyrannus uidit extremo agmine: ‘quisnam cinaedus ille in conspectu meo audet ceuere?’ responderunt proximi: ‘hic est Menander scriptor.’ mutatus statim ‘homo’ inquit ‘fieri non potest formosior.’ King Demetrius (the one called ‘of Phalerum’) occupied Athens with illegitimate power. As is the mob’s way, there was rushing and rivalrous jostling this way and that: ‘Woohoo!’ they shout. Even the top men kiss the hand by which they were oppressed, silently grumbling at the terrible twist of fortune. What’s more, even retirees and men at leisure tag along last, lest it cause trouble to have not been there.

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Drawing Blanks (p.98) Among them was Menander, made a star through his comedies, which Demetrius had read; even though he didn’t know him personally, he’d admired the man’s talents. Menander came along bedaubed with perfume, his garments flowing, his gait dainty and dandyish. When the tyrant saw him at the end of the crowd: ‘Who’s that fag who dares to shake his arse in my line of sight?’ Those around him replied: ‘That’s him, that’s Menander the playwright!’ At once he changed his tune: ‘There could be no finer specimen!’23

What initially appears square in Demetrius’ vision as a raging cinaedus suddenly looks completely different in the light of the body’s new signature: this is Menander, famous poet, ergo, naturally, nothing could be finer. I gloss this as a powerful statement on the potential of a famed name to dupe the exegete.24 Demetrius, stand-in perhaps for the big Roman at the top, looks at a piece of human art, applies the laws of bodily scrutiny, and understandably concludes cinaedus; but then when those around him change the brand and sign that human with the blindingly impressive headliner ‘Menander’, his opinion is reversed. I’m minded to ask here: was this really Menander, or are these proximi performing some Phaedrian cheek, and slapping a nondescript cinaedus’s bum with the unmistakeable sign of ‘Menander’, just as Phaedrus does with Aesop (and ‘Phaedrus’), just as hack sculptors do with their Zeuxises and Praxiteleses? Perhaps this is Phaedrus marking his own provocatively wiggling fables as offensive matter, but matter salvaged by the name of Aesop, who already said it all before. These fables are above board, their nutritional content certified by Dr Aesop PhD, and nothing could be finer. Of course, if our real author walked in front of the king of Rome, he wouldn’t be recognized at all. And yet…another complex of names haunts this especially complex fable: Demetrius. Two eponyms bounce off this appellation, and there is a proud history of confusing them:25 Demetrius of Phalerum,26 big-cheese orator and ruler of Athens 317–307 BCE, and Demetrius Poliorcetes the Macedonian, Demetrius No. 1’s Antigonid (p.99) displacer. No coincidence that we zero in on this famous case of regime-without-name-change here. At first Phaedrus seems hell-bent on historical accuracy and specificity: this is definitely Demetrius of Phalerum: qui Phalereus dictus est. And that would gel for many reasons: this Demetrius was the one who compiled and fixed the only edition of Aesop’s fables before Phaedrus,27 indeed would count as a proto-Phaedrus paving the way for the cheeky freedman of the future to do his own round of Aesop. But the second line—Athenas occupauit imperio improbo? That smacks of Demetrius Poliorcetes, the interloping usurper.28 If one melts into the other here, common knowledge about the latter makes for a much more sinister Page 8 of 17

 

Drawing Blanks subtext than my misleading metaphor of name ‘games’ might let on. Demetrius Poliorcetes nudged his namesake into exile;29 and Menander had already almost been found guilty by association in a previous trial of Demetrius Phalereus.30 That act of naming on the part of the proximi, then, could double as an act of informing (cf. hic est, p. 104), a pre-purge labelling of the ‘Demetrius-Phalerean’ faction in Athens;31 and Demetrius’ (Poliorcetes’) final U-turn towards gushing praise of Menander really a self-satisfied smirk that he has his object of surveillance pinned, now that his trusty minions have come through with the information. The whole complex folds in on itself when we bear in mind that Phaedrus, too, has a namesake staked32 in these distant Athenian affairs: Phaedrus of Sphettos, ‘moderate conservative’ and ‘mining magnate’, who was instrumental in brokering a deal with, and phasing out, Demetrius Poliorcetes during the Athenian revolution of 287!33 Phaedruses will get their Demetriuses in the end? But that Athenian Phaedrus is small-fry compared to the ‘original’—and it is here, I venture, that our fabulist’s plot with the written form (p.100) really starts to sizzle.34 As above, the mystifying alchemy of the Fables depends on us only ‘knowing’ Phaedrus through his texts; in other words, it needs the mechanisms of textuality to work. But this authorial absence is precisely what Socrates criticizes as a big problem in his discourse on pale alphabetic imitation: at the business end of the eponymous Phaedrus, he tells his own Phaedrus about the complex inferiority that is writing itself, the handicap form that can’t answer back, can’t quicken with the living momentum of dialectical confabulation (real speech), and always needs its big daddy to act as guarantor.35 Aesopic fable was supposed to slip neatly into this celebrated Socratic worship of orality. Indeed, the man who only spoke and never wrote a thing gave it the biggest possible vote of confidence: Socrates himself became an embryonic Phaedrus (fabulist) on his deathbed, repackaging Aesop into verse at the final hurdle (Pl. Phd. 61b).36 But our fabulist’s version of the same move is a spectacular, counterPlatonic gesture to the capacity of silent, unauthorized writing. This new Phaedrus relishes the fact that ‘he’ isn’t there to guarantee anything whatsoever; for ‘he’ is nothing but a fake name, advertising emptily that his body will never show up for the final cross-examination no matter how insistently it is called. In fact, he couldn’t have chosen a better name to convey his status as text rather than author: for after Plato, ‘Phaedrus’ will always mean ‘the Phaedrus’. This author is a title. I wonder whether these nominal manoeuvres—whether author-title mashing, or pseudonymity more generally—might help us with a moment in Phaedrus’ reception non-history; we can certainly get help from it.37 Martial writes his own ode to the inaccessible author in Mart. 3.20. He asks the Muse up front what his author-friend Canius Rufus could be doing. The remainder of the poem is full of

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Drawing Blanks conjectures about precisely that, and it makes an interesting stab at what Rufus might be writing: dic, Musa, quid agat Canius meus Rufus: utrumne chartis tradit ille uicturis legenda temporum acta Claudianorum? (p.101) an quae Neroni falsus astruit scriptor, an aemulatur improbi λόγους Phaedri? Tell me, Muse, what my Canius Rufus is up to: is he putting down on imperishable paper the deeds of the Claudian period, for later readers? Is he gunning for what the pseudo-author assigned to Nero, or the words of naughty Phaedrus?38

This is the only direct mention of the name Phaedrus in literature for a good while39—and conveniently enough, he comes in train with a falsus scriptor. Such a tag of course trips the alarm for pseudonymity. The accusation of falsification— or of being a hidden author—might lie behind that improbus too:40 naughty, dodgy, playing hard to get. To rival Phaedrus, then, would be to play that slippery author. But the main focus is the cheeky codeswitch to λόγους, a word much more at home in Plato’s Phaedrus than Phaedrus.41 λόγος is the word of the whole Phaedrus, its reason for being, its internal logic. Martial thus toys with the orality of Phaedrus (‘speeches’?) and the textuality of Phaedrus (‘tales’?); but most importantly, he shunts them together via the automatic conduit of homonymy. I have suggested that Phaedrus opts for a titular pseudonym as signature to frame his bogus autobiography. What’s more, the poetics of forgery are marked in text, paratext, and hypertext: by Phaedrus’ cynical inscription of the brand Aesop, by a muddled multiplication of referents circling around later incarnations of Aesop himself (Demetrius, Socrates…et al.?), as well as a cluedup flash of reception in Martial. But these poetics are also, crucially, enabled by the very medium of text: where Menander the famed playwright fatally doubles as performer, jiggling his bottom in full view of power (hic est),42 (p.102) Phaedrus takes cover under the cloaking effects of textuality. That bright, beaming (φαιδρός)43 façade only masks what lies beneath: the bottomless rabbithole of the vanishing author.44

Shooting Blanks Time now to whisk in a pinch of Juvenal. If Phaedrus goes for the pseudonymous, Juvenal, writing more than a half-century later, neck-deep in the accumulated wake of terror and paranoia aplenty, wraps himself in a film even more opaque: full-scale anonymity. My priority here is not to fold these two very different poets together in tight ligatures of verbal-echo-type intertextuality. I would argue that cramping them in the same space without such links to lean on is not as Page 10 of 17

 

Drawing Blanks arbitrary or unjustified as it sounds. While Phaedrus self-affiliates first and foremost as a fabulist, he also drinks deeply of Roman satire,45 especially in the fundamental probing of the limits of spoken libertas under the Principate. In this section, then, I’ll claim that Juvenal runs on a similar low-power mode, i.e. the de-authored text; and that his round of the routine is a more extreme experiment in evasion, performed this time through outright erasure of the name in place of invention and multiplication. ‘Juvenal’ is itself a contested name worth its scare-quotes, and it doesn’t help that this ‘Juvenal’ never uses that name to bind the strange cacophony of monologues we know as the Satires. The absence of self-naming46 is part of a larger strategy of becoming a satirist manqué: Juvenal breaks rank with the heavily autobiographical tradition of Roman satire by leaking no solid information about himself.47 But (p.103) the name is an especially privileged missing piece of the puzzle. Halfway through Juvenal’s applauded first satire, we find the following mission statement on what keeps his poetry ticking: si natura negat, facit indignatio uersum qualemcumque potest, quales ego uel Cluuienus. If talent blocks it, indignation writes verse, whatever sort of thing it can, the type of stuff that I or Cluuienus might.48

Many have read this as the moment where Juvenal wears his rage on his sleeve, betrays anger as the single most potent motivating force behind his early satires49—and of course it is that. But for our purposes, it also makes the grade as a statement of complex inferiority, outsourcing agency from the talent of the poet to his unadulterated, commonplace emotion, and disparaging his own verse with the indifferent qualemcumque. Rather than seizing on either anger or faux self-deprecation here, I would see this as an announcement of Juvenal’s claim to a new kind of anonymous satire. This is poetry floating free of any clear signature; stuff that could belong to anyone, whether it be an unnamed ‘ego’ or an equally unknown Cluuienus.50 There is good reason for this thrilling exercise in expunging authorship. As James Uden’s brilliant new account has shown, Satire 1 drips with the anxiety of namedropping as informing;51 the calling card, that is, of the dreaded delator, that ghoul of the old regime hanging over Juvenal’s satire because (not in spite) of its post-Domitianic pose. At the end of the poem, our underconvincingly overconfident satirista plucks up the bravura to name names—but his cautious interlocutor reins him in with a short tract on the pitfalls of speaking in such specificities: …cuius non audeo dicere nomen? quid refert dictis ignoscat Mucius an non? Page 11 of 17

 

Drawing Blanks ‘pone Tigillinum, taeda lucebis in illa qua stantes ardent qui fixo gutture fumant… et latum media sulcum deducit harena.’ qui dedit ergo tribus patruis aconita, vehatur (p.104) pensilibus plumis atque illinc despiciat nos? ‘cum veniet contra, digito compesce labellum: accusator erit qui verbum dixerit “hic est.”’ …Whose name don’t I dare utter? What’s it to me whether Mucius forgives my words or not? ‘Insert Tigillinus, and you’ll glow on that same torch where those people burn, standing there, those who smoke with their throat pinned fast,… and it draws a broad furrow in the thick of the arena.’ So the guy who poisoned his three uncles, should he be carried on plush cushions and look down on us from there? ‘When he comes past, button your lip with your finger: the man who says “that’s him” will count as an informer.’52

In this climate of witch-hunting delatores, the slightest act of identification is suspicious; even pronouns (hic est) say too much about your trigger-happy ways. The imperative not to target is highly strung in this exchange: interlocutor tells Juvenal that, even if he names an old-hat Neronian bogeyman such as Tigillinus, he’ll himself ‘trace a furrow in the sand’ (a perverse form of writing one’s name through execution?);53 and Juvenal internalizes the wisdom straightaway by sticking to a slippery periphrasis of a relative clause in the response (qui, that guy who…). But the point to make here is that this coyness with the names of others also applies to the satirist’s self; in fact, the most important answer to cuius non audeo dicere nomen? is ‘Juvenal’. This no-name won’t be caught dead saying hic est, but nor will he risk having it said of him.54 Most importantly, as with Phaedrus, the bark and bite are muzzled into text. Juvenal’s cautious interlocutor gives it to him straight: when the potential target floats by on that litter, above all make sure you shut up, digito compesce labellum (Juv. 1.160). That suppression of immediate response, the self-censoring check against speaking out in the heat of the moment, is not only an under-read key to Juvenalian satire, but also an ode to the strength of the weaker voice. For that enforced suffering in silence postpones the satiric moment to the very (p. 105) act of writing; ushers the interaction away from face-to-face presence, and towards that hidden author mediated by impenetrable layers of time and text. As the interlocutor goes on to say, you can talk through literature, by pitting Aeneas against Turnus (or the ‘Rutulian’; even here, the careful partner in crime is loath to name an enemy name): securus licet Aenean Rutulumque ferocem

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Drawing Blanks committas. You’re free to pit Aeneas against that mad Rutulian without a worry.55

But real violent interface, the kind of back-and-forth swashbuckling honed by the fearless first satirist Lucilius, has to be avoided at all costs (Juv. 1.165–70). The new satire is silent now and quiet a long time after, writing up its findings when the author is no longer ‘there’ to back them. For Juvenal, giving up the name also entails surrendering the voice. So the silence of the text again works to the rhythm of a complex inferiority. Phaedrus had reached for the pen name to dazzling results, but Juvenal the noname goes one better and strikes through that as well: his untitled verse scrawls ‘anon.’ right in our bemused faces. The Juvenalian ‘ego’ becomes a pronoun unmoored from a proper noun: a pronominal anonym leading nowhere but the fast track up the garden path. Or into us, when we read him back to ourselves; when we inevitably forget that invaluable advice to put a cork in it, and pipe up at the top of our stronger voice.

Developing a Complex That completes this whistle-stop of the authorial non-entity. Perhaps the most I can hope to have added is the spotting of a few more oblique moments where these poets sneak in their programmatic infirmities. I’ve tried to individuate, at the least, some subtle processes of suppression or thinning of poetic ‘identity’, which undergird the more obvious forms of weakening beloved of these bottomfeeder genres. As I’ve hinted (but not dared to formulate too explicitly (p.106) until now), I take these snatches of wilful inferiority to say something quite chilling about elite tactics of self-reduction under the Principate. Both poets flag the danger of critical satiric writing in such a climate, and I read their evanescence into pale shades as a coping mechanism, ingenious as any bit of doublespeak you care to name but not name; one that feeds off, and helps regenerate, the paranoid batteries of absolute power. Not just that, but that among other things. If we want to leave my simplistic politics out of it, we could also see the removal of the author functioning at a ‘purely literary’ level: our constant, dare I say natural, asking of the question ‘who speaks?’, our constant yearning to know the source of the words,56 and our constant frustration that we can never quite get there, keeps us readers hanging, hooked, salivating at the other end; in which case, the inferiority would be all ours (and the vanquished politics would be back). That relationship between author and reader, brokered so inadequately by the maddening text, is perhaps the most important undeveloped complex of this chapter. Absent authors send us chasing hopelessly after them; and we crack our knuckles to catch them if and however we can.

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Drawing Blanks Notes:

(1) On such habits and rhetorics in criticism, see also Fitzgerald in this volume (p. 22–3). (2) For this critical somersault performed on Phaedrus, see the sharp Jennings (2009). Cf. also Glauthier (2009) on Phaedrus’ complex anti-Callimacheanism and ‘mixture of artistic self-confidence and satiric self-sabotage’ (269). Both these articles shrewdly pick through the classic Phaedrian poses of abjection and failure; and see also now Mattiaci (2014). (3) See p. 100–1 on Plato Phaedrus. Derrida famously deconstructed the binary in his ’67 trio (1967a, b, c)—yet Gallop (2011: 22) interestingly points out how the critique comes unstuck when Derrida starts grappling with his own phonocentrism, desiring the speech of his recently deceased author-friends. My approach in this paper probably harks back too nostalgically to a very Barthesian impossibility of knowing ‘who speaks’ in literature (see the disproportionately influential pamphlet Barthes 1968); but I would say that the impasse is particularly jarring and consciously ramped up in Phaedrus and Juvenal. (4) Although both parasite heavily on ‘real’ high poetry in the process: for which on Phaedrus, see Henderson (2001: 57–92). (5) For the possibility of Phaedrus’ concerted ‘self-masking’, see Jennings (2009: 231). The ‘real Phaedrus’ (in an Echtheit sense) is also unrecoverable from piles of textual mess: ‘Fedro perduto’ (Cardini 2014; see also Henderson 1999a). (6) Champlin (2005: 115–7). I assume, with Champlin, that Phaedrus’ fabulous autobiography is all bunk, and that this is a giant part of what makes him interesting; but I can’t endorse the aim of Champlin’s all-out detective work, to get to the man behind the mask. In my book, authorial inaccessibility is the point. In Henderson’s (2004: 3) words: ‘We know of him only what little he decides to tell us. He is the ring-master of the Fables, no more, no less.’ (7) On this general phenomenon of the disappearing satirist, see Uden (2015) and Geue (2017). (8) Henderson (2001: 11–12); cf. 69. Champlin (2005: 101–2) dates Phaedrus to Claudian or Neronian times. (9) See Henderson (1997: 14–24). (10) On self-naming, see Peirano (2014). (11) Prologue 1.1–2: Aesopus auctor quam materiam repperit, | hanc ego poliui versibus senariis. See Henderson (2004: x) on Phaedrus’ ‘double-edged’ (duplex)

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Drawing Blanks game, which also extends to the name (poliui = buffing a rough Aesop into a shining (φαιδρός) Phaedrus). (12) Libby (2010: 546, 550–1); Henderson (2001: 60); Champlin (2005: 108). (13) Henderson (2001: 61). (14) Phaed. 3 Prol. 1–3; all translations are my own. (15) As Henderson (2001: 62) stresses, the single act of self-naming in the corpus. (16) Phaed. 3 Prol. 17–23. (17) Phaed. 3 Prol. 41–4. The hinting and inference are the nub here: Phaedrus mentions a vague personal calamitas (40), but the encounter with Sejanus is framed in terms of a woolly conditional—another case of Phaedrus parasiting on/ off a big name (see on Aesop, pp. 96–7)? (18) See Jennings (2009: 237–40); assuming that Ovid’s exile was genuine (see Fitton Brown 1985 for other ideas). (19) Phaed. 3.1. (20) Cf. Jennings (2009: 238): ‘We have been excluded from understanding.’ Cf. also Henderson (2004: 102) on the teaser withholding of autobiography here. Although this playing coy is complicated by the fact that the first-person storyteller character in Phaedrus is remarkably present, even downright obtrusive: see Henderson (2004: 5). (21) Phaed. 5 Prol. (22) Cf. Glauthier (2009: 274) on Phaedrus as ‘Aesopic plagiarist’ here. (23) Phaed. 5.1. (24) Though as Libby (2010: 552) shows, Demetrius’ hermeneutic abilities don’t measure up to those of the Roman rulers in the Fables. (25) See Sollenberger (2000: 312); Henderson (2001: 153). Collecting/collapsing namesakes seems to have been a biographic habit: Sollenberger (2000: 328). (26) See Tracy (2000). (27) D.L. 5.80; see Matelli (2000: 413–47); Henderson (2001: 154); Perry (1962). Demetrius was also a precursor to Alexandrian Homeric criticism (see Montanari 2000), which gives another angle on ‘authorship’ here.

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Drawing Blanks (28) The point might be (as often in fable) that power relations are fixed and proper names interchangeable, masters are masters are masters: cf. Henderson (2001: 154). (29) Tracy (2000: 334); Green (1990: 48). (30) D.L. 5.79. (31) The regime change brought ‘the usual round of prosecutions’ against the previous gang (Green 1990: 49). (32) Henderson (2001: 154). (33) Henderson (2001: 154); on Phaedrus and 287, see Green (1990: 128). (34) For the connection between Phaedrus and Phaedrus, see Gärtner (2015: 29– 30); Henderson (2001: 74); Fritsch (2002: 149). (35) Pl. Phdr. 275d–e. (36) Cf. Gärtner (2015: 29–30); Henderson (2001: 79). (37) I’m eternally grateful to Jean-Claude Julhe for bringing this passage to my blind eyes in his conference response. (38) Mart. 3.20.1–5. (39) See Travis (1940). On the erasure of Phaedrus’ name in the sweep of the medieval tradition, see Henderson (2001: 4). (40) A longstanding question: see Travis (1940); improbus is one of Phaedrus’ favourite words (582–3), so this may also be a case of troping an author in their own language. (41) I opt for Heraeus’ λόγος (printed in Shackleton-Bailey) over MS iocos/locos. See Fusi (2006) ad loc. for the issue here: as he points out, λόγος is a technical term for fables (though usually prose). (42) Cf. on Juv. 1.161 below. For hic est as a marker of literary celebrity/ identification, cf. Pers. 1.28 and, as Julhe’s response helpfully pointed out, Mart. 5.13.3. We might also compare the anecdote about Demosthenes’ delight when a waterbearing woman recognized him (hic est ille Demosthenes—Cic. Tusc. 5.103, cf. Plin. Ep. 9.23—thanks to the anonymous reader for reminding me). (43) On the name speaking this way, cf. Henderson (2001: 69); Gärtner (2015: 30) is agnostic on whether this could signal a ‘made-up’ name. (44) Cf. Champlin (2005: 108); but acknowledging the rabbit-hole doesn’t necessarily preclude one from falling down it. Page 16 of 17

 

Drawing Blanks (45) Cf. Henderson (2001: 72–4, 82); Champlin (2005: 109–10); Glauthier (2009: 271–3). (46) Bar a possible pun at Juv. 1.25 and 10.226 in quo tondente grauis iuueni mihi barba sonabat, on which see Geue (2017: 92). (47) On autobiography and satire, see Keane (2001) and Geue (2017: 19–20). (48) Juv. 1.79–80. (49) See for example Braund (1988: 7). (50) Several theories on Cluuienus have done the rounds: For the ‘cover-name’ proposal, see Highet (1954: 290–1); Baldwin (1967: 305, 309) is the reply. Uden (2015: 51, n. 4) neatly suggests an antiphrastic pun (Cluuienus > clueo, to be well known). (51) See Uden (2015: 24–50). (52) Juv. 1.153–61. (53) A lacuna here means the point must go speculative; I’m relying (too much?) on Housman’s restoration of an intervening line: quorum informe unco trahitur post fata cadauer (‘156A’). (54) Cf. Geue (2017: 43). (55) Juv. 1.162–3. (56) Cf. the desire for the author in Barthes (1973), on which see Gallop (2011: 37–8, 52).

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The Creative Superiority of Self-Reproach

Complex Inferiorities: The Poetics of the Weaker Voice in Latin Literature Sebastian Matzner and Stephen Harrison

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198814061 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198814061.001.0001

The Creative Superiority of Self-Reproach Horace’s Ars Poetica Victoria Rimell

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198814061.003.0007

Abstract and Keywords This chapter’s new reading of Horace’s AP teases out how this text negotiates a delicate tension and balance between Horace’s own inferior social status and superior status as older expert, and the superior social status and inferior age/ expertise of the young Pisones for whom he writes. It traces how the text renders productive the challenges that result from these asymmetries by modelling and performing a mode of critical thinking centred on self-critique and self-reflection. Taking into account the dimension of class difference enables a new understanding of the AP’s emphasis on coherence and its obsession with tragedy, by pointing to the challenges contained and represented in the political microcosm of the theatre where—just as in Horace’s pedagogical encounter with the Pisones—shifting power relations among an unwieldy mix of members from different classes, all jointly engaged in the performance of art and art criticism, need to be carefully negotiated. Keywords:   Horace, Ars Poetica, Pisones, theatre, class, pedagogy, social status, literary criticism, selfcritique, expertise

carmen reprehendite quod non multa dies et multa litura coercuit

(Hor. Ars 292–3) turpem putat…metuitque lituram

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The Creative Superiority of Self-Reproach (Hor. Ep. 2.1.167) [Premise: delete as appropriate. In this reading, I consider how the speaker of the Ars Poetica constantly keeps in tension a potentially explosive balance between Horace’s own inferior social status and superior status as older, quasipaternal expert who reinforces or threatens to usurp father Piso’s authority, and between the superior social status and inferior age/expertise of the young Pisones, as both parties (poet and readers-critics) interact in this ‘uneven’,1 ‘unstable’,2 and self-transforming3 poem. I attempt to harness and draw out what Ellen Oliensis calls the ‘extremely volatile blend of authority and deference’4 which makes the Ars flicker with risk, (p.108) daring, and with the live energy of power relations in practice as they undergo multiple potential permutations. At several points, Horace offers his readers the image or threat (already familiar from the Satires) of ridiculing laughter bursting out of notquite-regulated bodies (5 risum, 105 aut ridebo, 113 cachinnum, 356 ridetur, 358 risu, 381 risum, 452 derisum) and my aim here is to convey in as much detail as curtailed space permits what it is to read a poem that relies on, or baits, decorous readers to keep its latent wildness under control. I therefore aim to expand Oliensis’ construal of the Ars in terms of Foucaultian self-fashioning,5 drawing on late twentieth-century responses to Austin, Foucault, and Bourdieu, especially in the work of Judith Butler on censorship.6 Key here are three interrelated notions, developed in Butler (1997, 1998): (a) that (self-)censorship is not simply an oppressive prohibition exerted upon uttered speech, but is a necessary way of producing meaningful speech, and is a pre-condition both of any text’s intelligibility and of the agency of those considered to be civic subjects —while at the same time also marking the limits of that agency, and giving the lie to the ideal of the sovereign speaking subject who has absolute power over his own speech; (b) that censorship necessarily propagates the very language it seeks to forbid: in order to declare that something lies outside the boundaries of admissible speech, that something must be cited, a truth we encounter in the first lines of the Ars; and (c) that censoring a text is always to varying extents incomplete, because the censor can never perfectly anticipate or harness all the possible ways a text can signify: Butler calls this the ‘excessive dimension’ of speech, and it is the challenge of this dimension, I argue, that Horace’s poem on what is and is not acceptable artistic expression pushes us to debate. To make any kind of critical claim about this provocative work is to have one’s abilities, politics, and manners laid bare for inspection and to perform (self-)censorship under the imagined eye of an exposed censor: my critique is acutely aware of the spread of vulnerabilities thus revealed and of the ways in which the one spelt-out lesson of the Ars—strive for perfection and canny self-reproach in poetic-associal, political, and bodily performance—must take effect and be wrestled (p. 109) with in the very process of reading or editing this sermo-like text. The intensely politicizing Ars traps or seduces its audience into enacting ‘becoming a poet-critic’ as arduous, real-life negotium.]7 Page 2 of 19

 

The Creative Superiority of Self-Reproach The Cultured Cringe Horace’s Ars, more than likely composed around 10 BCE and addressed to Lucius Calpurnius Piso the Pontifex (48 BCE–32 CE) and his adolescent sons, is an intimidatingly smart and iambically sharp poem about power, tradition, and change over time.8 At several points (especially 263–74, 285–94, 323–32) it praises Greek artistic achievement and disparages Roman poetry and critics as technically poor, overindulged, derivative, and facile. Materialistic, pragmatic Roman culture is described as pathetically unconducive to the development of artistic sensibilities, and Rome is renowned for its military prowess (relatively speaking?) only because it is so lacking in literary accomplishments. The Pisones should spend night and day poring over Greek models (269), which are where the real artistry and inspiration lies. Roman poets (and their critics) have tried hard, experimented like teenagers with almost every style (285), and done a little better when they’ve been steered towards domestica facta, but the Pisones’ own forefathers were frankly idiots (stulte mirati; 272) to think Plautus a model of metrical brilliance and wit. Young men of real ambition need to learn the virtues of the litura (‘erasure’ or ‘smearing’ 293, cf. atrum signum; 446–7), taking themselves to task, giving ornament the chop (447–8), and condemning any carmen which has not gone through at least ten painful edits and passed the test of the well-trimmed nail (praesectum…ad unguem; 294).9 The basic message in the un cooperative10 body of this poem, then, is that you’ll only write top-notch poetry if you’re your own (p.110) best critic.11 And perhaps that’s especially true—Horace hints—of the high-born, entitled, rich and intellectual young Pisones, who have got it coming perhaps need polishing up if they want to activate their full potential as future masters of the Roman universe in politics and the arts. This core, satiric paradox (beat yourself up if you think you’re worth it) enriches the didactic premise of the Ars, or as Péter Hadju argues, ‘renders it unstable’.12 Teacher must therefore also perform exacting and illustrative self-critique in order to assert his superior expertise, but we may decide to rate this highly as an effective educational strategy. Horace creates a dynamic arena in which the relative power/class status of non-equals can be paraded, tested, challenged, and turned on its head, in which the derisor or ‘mocker’ is your hard-to-find best friend (432–3), the greatest honor arises from ordinariness (243),13 and Rome’s pathetic cultural inferiority in the arts is posited as a catalyst for imperialistic, perfectionistic ambition. From the start, then, we are to imagine the Pisones standing up to old-fogey Professor’s high-minded ‘conservatism’, intervening in lines 9–10 with talk of (their) potestas, a word applied here to artistic freedom but loaded with political power (specifically, the sons’ imagined future public office).14 Their ‘semper fuit aequa potestas’ (‘there’s always been an equal right’, 1015)—irreverence backed up by a snooty-sounding appeal to tradition—exudes naivety, arrogance, and a ton of privilege. The Pisones, naturally, take their libertas for granted and people like them have always done so, forever. The much older man and appointed Page 3 of 19

 

The Creative Superiority of Self-Reproach authority on the subject, who when he was a lad (libertino patre natum; Hor. S. 1.6.6) took no such thing as read, first replies in the first person plural (scimus, 11: ‘we know’ as in ‘we know’ or ‘we know’ as in I know, take your pick), conceding that they are not wrong, before reining them in: what you rather (p. 111) pompously call potestas I shall rename venia (‘indulgence’), upon which of course we must set reasonable limits (11, cf. 264, 267, 355). The reassuringly inclusive scimus (we can confirm, if we’re in the mood to match rather than contrast) returns at line 273, clarified by ego et vos, though coming just after Horace’s mockery of the family forefathers (vestri proavi; 270). Author and (especially younger) addressees are potentially now a team, both parties a cut above. A second first person plural seals it (scimus…callemus; 273–4), yet in exemplary fashion this follow-up verb displays its shared cleverness as a witty hint at self-deprecation, matching or balancing out the gentle mockery of entitlement in lines 9–10, and 270–1: ‘We know how to distinguish coarseness from smooth charm, and we are well practised [callemus] in recognizing the lawful rhythm with fingers and ear’ (273–4). Yet the archaic callemus can literally mean ‘we have grown thick-skinned in…’ (see below): for artist-critics of distinction, a little unfiled callosity (as well as an appreciation of how words evolve) is essential. Ironically, Horace’s recommended callida iunctura at lines 47–8 (where he also plays a Lucretian atomological game: with the right joining, the notum verbum becomes novum)16 is often translated as ‘smooth joining’. But the subtle wordplay at lines 273–4 hints at a larger didactic point for wouldbe wordsmiths: the kinds of ‘joinings’ on display in the Ars are—as many have noted—not so smooth (as the Oxford Latin Dictionary notes, callidus = calleo + idus; calleo literally means ‘to grow hard’, ‘become calloused’). Yet that unobvious, indeed skilled roughness, or Horace’s confident performance of imperfection, allows his students just enough licence to practise their hardening skills—on this very worksheet. Nevertheless, they’ll have the good breeding to pardon his faults (cleverly designed for their benefit), and lo and behold, this very line (sunt delicta tamen quibus ignovisse velimus, ‘There are offences which we might like to overlook’; 347) spotlights one such flaw, discussed by Quintilian.17 By nudging us to see, in this poem about what is and is not acceptable poetry, how censorship is the condition of possibility not only of (p. 112) ‘good poetry’ but of reading/writing (or agency) in general, Horace can reframe his excessive disciplining of the Pisones as positively enabling.18 After all, dodging criticism means you’ll get no kudos, either (vitavi denique19 culpam, | non laudem merui, ‘At last, I’ve avoided blame, but I have not deserved any praise’; 267–8). If this Professor of Creative Writing, Literary Criticism, and Philology is aiming to foster a first-class inferiority complex in his addressees, he has—surely—their best interests at heart. They’ll never raise their game otherwise, and becoming excellent poets is possibly the only thing in life that won’t come easy to them (though this self-made poet makes it look easy: those who attempt the same will Page 4 of 19

 

The Creative Superiority of Self-Reproach sweat in vain, 240–2). Nothing passive aggressive about that at all. Neither is there much mileage in the theory that a poet at the end of his career (if we assume the later dating), gazing back wistfully to his first publications (as commentators note, the beginning and end of the Ars subtly remakes the beginning and end of Satire 1.1)20 knows that seniority comes with having cashed in all ‘future potential’, and is taking the opportunity vicariously (i.e. enviously) to enjoy the excitement of sculpting young talent.21 Actually, raw poetic talent is a great social leveller (it’s the one thing class can’t buy, and that experts can’t teach), but we are assuming that the Pisones have all that in spades. Otherwise… What they don’t have—yet—is the critical acumen, the ars or calliditas, without which natura amounts to not much (408–11). This is one of the dozens of natural pairs Horace invites us to stick together in this poem as a post-Aristotelian exercise in consistency and uniformity (cf. ut nec pes nec et caput uni | reddatur formae, ‘so that neither head nor foot can be reduced to a single shape’; 8–9; denique sit quodvis, simplex dumtaxat et unum, ‘Ultimately, let it be what you will, but at least make it one homogenous whole’; 23). Already, in these opening lines, Horace seems to put on display the censor’s selfexposure: he is bound to cite and (p.113) illustrate the very thing he wants to emphasize as illicit.22 The Ars is both a guide to critical judgement and at the same time a master(ful)-class in practical criticism. Horace teaches critical thinking only at the highest level, making no concessions to the boys who have everything (bar this—though they may choose to take difficulty as a compliment). Those who think the poem seems ‘unsystematic’, or reckon (other) critics ‘sometimes exaggerate its difficulties’23 perhaps haven’t grasped the challenge. They should keep at it, give themselves nine years and—no guarantee, mind—they may improve (386–90).

Here’s The Rub At lines 304–6 of his poem, Horace offers a metaphor which at once attempts to dodge, and at the same time invites, criticism of the Ars qua poem. He shall not be judged as a poet, right now, while you are being judged on your critical abilities, because he’s not actually even writing at all (nil scribens ipse; 306), and is more of a blunt whetstone for young blades to rub against and sharpen their swords on (ergo fungar vice cotis; 304). This image might read as a lure to elite readers to step right up and do their worst: in this module, Horace provides not just a graduate-level critical laboratory but the chance to test out the blades he is all the while rendering lethal. What kind of spectacle will this strategy elicit? Will they/we dare, will sparks fly, and who will giggle first?24 By engineering a less than perfect, perhaps even flawed identity, by masochistically offering his own body to be pieced together and worn down by students’ increasingly acute ferrum, and by performing what he bans you from ever putting in your posh (p.114) poetry (1–5), dutiful Professor baits you to react, and teaches you to censor teach yourself.

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The Creative Superiority of Self-Reproach Rome’s superlative poet-critic instructs by fostering empowerment within classroom limits while also modelling humility and (cocky) self-critique. By the time we get to the final, shocking ‘mad poet’ scene, where boys are merciless in teasing some frenzied writer with a God complex, we have (hopefully) already been tempted to practise this on Teacher (author of non usitata nec tenui ferar | penna, ‘on no common or flimsy wing shall I be borne aloft’,25 no less), who is nevertheless not so much victim as rejuvenated collaborator. As Horace puts it to his students at the end, referring to the crazy poet who fell into a pit or well while looking at the heavens, ‘how do you know he didn’t throw himself in on purpose, and doesn’t wish to be saved?’ (462–3). But get carried away and pursue this bear-like creature too hard or in too puerile a manner and he’ll catch you and read you to death (tenet occiditque legendo; 475), sucking out all that blue blood just as surely as Maecenas ‘killed’ Horace with his nagging in Epode 14, back in the day (candide Maecenas, occidis saepe rogando, ‘Honest Maecenas, you kill me by asking repeatedly’; 14.5). If, with Oliensis, we entertain identifying The Leech with Horace, this aggressive yet familiar closural apology (‘I really am a terrible pest!’)26 also doubles up as elegantly veiled, self-mocking promotion for Horace as the heir-to-Maecenas, senior Patron of Patrons, high on power and rapidly losing sight of his official didactic objectives (indoctum or doctum, who cares?; 476).27 By extension, perhaps nostalgic Teacher can be seen to see himself in his young pupils—a vision they might read as flattering empathy or as demotion. The Ars’s disciplinary coda perfectly captures and sustains the ultra-stimulating, self-exposing dynamic I have begun to describe in the poem as a whole. The leech (hirudo, the poem’s final word, 476, a mischievously mutated humano, 1)28 is not just a monstrous practical joke played by a ‘with it’ instructor who undertakes annual purges himself just as the season of renewal kicks in, as if to fend off regression to angry young manhood (o ego laevus, | qui purgor bilem (p.115) sub verni temporis horam! ‘O fool that I am, to purge myself of bile at the start of Spring!’; 301–2). More precisely, it turns healthy, hot-blooded pueri, who thought they were hounding a madman, into patients in need of medical attention or a Maecenas-style taking-in-hand. Didactic Doctor (a sick poet himself, perhaps, or a healer prudently pretending to be ill) is being cruel to be kind, and using your laughter as a natural anaesthetic. Lucretius’ honey-laced potion has nothing on this.29 Yet the image also enacts the point that after all that rubbing along together in the classroom, teacher and pupils, recitator and listeners, are conjoined. Patient and leech (a real life Lamia of line 340 not just sucking but perhaps even devouring a vivum puerum?) appear as a closural perversion of Aristotelian unity, or even of Socratic intimacy. The right kind of clinging, incidentally, was advised back in line 195 (haereat apte, ‘may it blend in properly’). Despite the fact that an outsized leech may bleed you dry, suck up your privilege, and feed off your hot-blooded youth (even claiming to do you some good in the process), the downside, for someone, is that while your death Page 6 of 19

 

The Creative Superiority of Self-Reproach is a metaphor (after Epode 14), the leech is far more likely to actually die in the process. As Pliny remarked, leeches sometimes need to be cut off with scissors (Plin. Nat. 32.123–4) so that they don’t leave their heads in the patient’s flesh and cause an incurable, even fatal wound, turning remedy into poison (in veneni virus remedio verso). It is time, in other words, to get out your ferrum (sharpened as you read) and show what you are made of, before this lesson becomes even more painful. ‘CUT!!’ screams implies our experienced Director, inviting us to clamp down on this gaping, abject mouth while reminding us that there is always something about the text being censored that exceeds the reach of the censor (which might be good and bad for libertas).30 But snip off this reciting human leech whole, before it can join you long-term to its hanging caput (→ Ars 1, what a picture!), before in other words it can murder you while selfsacrificing, and you will also have ruined what we must now admit is the potentially intricate, textbook unity of this carmen, framed by (p.116) grotesque human and animal heads.31 When you kill ‘Horace’ by reading (legendo 475), you may have also ‘failed’. Or on second thoughts, you have learnt how impossible it is to make that litura, but go ahead and do it anyway. Having completed this bloody controlled experiment, you are now ready to try your hand at a tragedy. If you have the strength.32

Start as You Mean to Drone On We should emphasize that it takes hard graft not to be deceived by appearances (line 25), which tend to deliver us the Ars as over-long, over-complicated, unclear instruction that shows its joins and seems to be constantly turning into something else, much like the work of art described in the pottery metaphor of lines 21–2, or worse, like the chimaera pieced together by the modern painter in lines 1–4. I’ve already hinted at more ways in which the Ars’s own startling pes is in fact beautifully and horrifically joined to the body and head of this poem. Indeed, read again through the first 37 lines and—with some vigorous filing—all those juddering gear shifts from one mixed metaphor to another can be smoothed out quite professionally, if we’re prepared to knuckle under down. For example, after inceptis gravibus at line 14 (have we just read one of those ‘noble beginnings’?), we veer off on a tangent about purple passages and whizz from overly innovative painting to fabric stitching (adsuitur pannus; 16), back to (trite, realistic) painting (19–21), and on to pots on wheels (21–2). But it all comes down to coepit versus exit (21–2), or in other words caput versus pes. And the metaphor hidden within the pot metaphor, if we are inclined to look beneath surfaces (the wine jug becomes a water pitcher, evoking familiar figures for contrasting kinds of poetry identified with water and wine, and getting us to focus already not just (p.117) on heads and feet but on body or contents) just goes to show that the very methodology or ars of the Ars will consist in hinting at multiple, ongoing connections between apparently contrasting pairs. Line 24 seems, again, to be done with lesson number 1: we’re on to the difficulty of not lapsing into faults even when you know what to aim for. But we’re still on the Page 7 of 19

 

The Creative Superiority of Self-Reproach topic of the monstrous combinations of things which should not go together, the adverb prodigialiter in line 29 matching turpiter in line 3. True to form, Horace is continuing, consistently, to harp on about mismatched or misplaced animals (snakes with birds and lambs with tigers in 13, dolphins in forests and a boar in the waves here in line 30), and is conjuring up his own human hybrids to vary the horse neck plus human head of line 1. Take for instance the poet who plays it safe, and ‘creeps along the ground’ (serpit humi) like a snake (28).33 In line 32 we skip on again, to another art form—sculpture. But the theme continues. It’s no good specializing in bits of bodies, like this lowly craftsman ‘at the bottom of the row’ (imus, cf. ad imum 126; imum 152; ad imum 378) who in bronze (aere, 33, picking up and recasting the aere dato of line 21)34 fashions nails and hair but not a whole figure. It’s not glaringly obvious (that would be patronizing), but we’ve understood that hair is on the caput and nails also come on toes (pedes): the idea is that it’s not enough to match head to foot if you don’t consider what comes in between (but if you had picked up on the subtext of the pot metaphor, to do with differing, contrasting contents, you would have had a heads-up on that). At which point we are rewarded, potentially, with a joke: Horace adds a simile to his sculpture metaphor, putting his own live body into the dead bits of statue: ‘If I cared to compose something (componere in line 35 fusing serving double duty as ‘to craft’ and ‘to write’), I would no more wish to be like him than to live with a wonky nose despite being admired for my black eyes and black hair’ (36–7). Teacher fails cannily and invites censorship here, because his analogy isn’t about the totum, just the caput (nose plus hair, a disembodied head). And now we come to think of it, that phrase nigris oculis nigroque capillo might show off (p.118) sameness, but looks—if we’re being critical—a tad banal.35 On the other hand, we have gone logically from pondering the ‘bad dream’ of a painted caput humanum on the wrong neck (1), to looking at the mismatched head of the author-speaker of this poem (spectandum; 37; cf. spectatum; 5). Lines 38ff. are onto a different topic (sumite materiam vestris), and we must think hard about what kind of theme our shoulders will bear (quid valeant umeri; 40). But again, we have to have our heads screwed on right, lose the arrogance, and pick the right place to start (caput),36 the right weight of lofty material to be borne up by our bodies as texts, just the way Horace’s head example (above) has shown. Have we got the potential to make this ‘poem of parts’37 work, to turn potestas (10) into the power to avoid overestimating our abilities (38–40)?38 The adverb potenter at line 40 is a red rag case in point: Horace brilliantly leaves it to the scholiasts and philologists to drain privilege and arrogance from this word, which now signifies not ‘powerfully’ but ‘within his capabilities’ (and they may turn out to (p.119) be modest!) or ‘effectively’.39 The Ars is a two-in-one poem, an ‘amalgam’ in many different ways:40 it instructs and entertains, presenting itself as a handbook and a live experiment, a cure and a poison, a carrot and a stick; it walks a fine line between performing slickness and showing Page 8 of 19

 

The Creative Superiority of Self-Reproach the joins in a clever illusion of near-amateurism. It is complicatedly inferior in order to rally (and bite back at) its reader-critics as they make the final edit.

Grow Up, and Act Your Age Recent criticism is avowing the Ars’s new timeliness,41 but the poem’s spiny, self-flagellating doubleness is inherently time-specific and time-sensitive. Debates on dating the Ars focus on the age of Piso’s (which Piso?) sons. It’s tricky, as many have argued, to read iuvenes (24), qualified by et voce paterna | fingeris ad rectum et per te sapis (‘although you were moulded to correct judgement by the paternal voice and are wise yourself’; 366–7) as referring to anyone older than boys who have recently assumed the toga virilis and find themselves in what Armstrong calls that ‘dangerous age for Roman youth’, as malleable as the language and art they aim to shape (fingentur 8; fingere 50; finge 119; fingi 331; fingere 382).42 The alternative scenario on the table, that the Ars might be addressed to the (at least, attested) sons of a very different Cn. Calpurnius Piso, who would have been in their twenties even if we date the poem ten years or so earlier, is as a result rather less convincing.43 But the speaker-poet’s own age—if we go with the first dating, a senior author of around 55, with as fate would have it only a couple of years or so left—is equally significant, as is the accompanying distance from poems like Satire 1.6, to which the Ars often seems to allude. At least, Horace’s own Aristotelian instruction on paying attention to the age of actors (a ‘mature man’ or a ‘one still in the flower and fervour of youth’; 115–16), and to the (p.120) mores of each age group when writing dialogue for the stage (153–78) is a good deal more interesting if we imagine Poet satirizing himself (rather than, or as well as Piso senior)44 as the not very sagacious miser senex of lines 169–74—sluggish, difficult, surly, given to rose-tinted nostalgia about his own boyhood, as well as (this is presumably the punchline) to castigating and censoring the young: castigator censorque minorum (174). This is—potentially—a gift for the Pisones, a free laugh not just at pater, who is subtly sidelined as an addressee for the bulk of the poem, but at the self-castigating Praeceptor’s expense. But run with ironic self-reflection and they will also be pressed into seeing themselves in the changeable puer (160), or in the imberbis iuvenis (‘unbearded youth’) freed at last from his tutor (161): suggestible, wax-soft, and a little asper with his counsellors (163: show some vim, lads, I’ve sanctioned it!). They may or may not connect sublimis (165) with sublimis (457)45 and infer some ‘pride comes before a fall’ lesson from their acute close reading. In short, castigator censorque promotes self-censoring. In lines 173–4 ([senex] laudator temporis acti | se puero, ‘[the old man] praises the time he spent as a boy’) Teacher also cleverly reveals lets slip his own perverse investment in those minors he likes to knock down because they can take a punch, as if all the time reminiscing on (or sending up his nostalgia for) his own superior boyhood. Are we now recalling those conservative old bores who are too proud to yield to their juniors but won’t admit that what they learnt as imberbes should now be destroyed in the name of Page 9 of 19

 

The Creative Superiority of Self-Reproach modernity, at Hor. Ep. 2.1.83–5? Heaven forbid we get confused over who is playing the senex and who the iuvenis, inadvertently producing another of those top-tail misfits (176–8). We must also add cultural inferiority to this hard-to-untangle blend of authoritative reproach counsel and boyish sport. In the passage at lines 323–32, Romans are boys (pueri, 325) doing plodding arithmetic in the cultural classroom next to well-established Greek artists, who have always successfully combined ingenium with ars. On the one hand, Horace appeals to the young Pisones’ snobbery here: ‘they are not the kind of Roman boys who were educated this way’.46 (p.121) On the other, he implies that Roman literary culture is, relatively speaking, in its infancy.47 Later on, would-be Roman poets are like egotistical children, who boast in mock-heroic fashion of their ‘awesome poems’ one minute (‘ego mira poemata pango’, ‘“I compose such marvellous poems”’; 416),48 before going back to playing tag the next (occupet extremum scabies, ‘the last one’s got the plague!’; 417), an iambic curse also visualizable (ut pictura poesis) as the unfortunate desire to match healthy head to diseased rear—a grotesque partnership recreated in Ars’s own end scene of kids chasing a scabies-infected poet (453) and getting caught themselves. When a reciting human leech smells blood at the Ars’s finale (the possibly derisory o Pompilius sanguis, no less, line 292, cf. pauperum | sanguis parentum, Hor. Carm. 2.20.5–6), the author of this poem seems to latch onto, mimic, or appropriate the kind of humour and transformability he associates with the puer of lines 158–60, and the pueri of 456 (after the pueri of line 325, poised to rebel against teacher’s humiliating sarcasm—‘poteras dixisse’, ‘“You could’ve told me by now”’; line 328).49 In the name of ‘one shape’ unity, the late-middle-aged poet, old enough to oust be the Pisones’ father, risks/enjoys comes close in the end to joining himself to his amici/pueri/iuvenes, so that the line between young and old, novices and old-hand, pupils and teacher, blue-bloods and freedman’s son slightly socially disadvantaged expert could almost blur. Indeed, it will take a certain amount of self-control and maturity to not link the ‘curse’ of the deluded verse-mongerer/inspired Empedoclean didactic poet with the perverse joining that is incest (nec satis apparet, cur versus factitet, utrum | minxerit in patrios cineres, an triste bidental | moverit incestus, ‘Nor is it really clear why he keeps on versifying: perhaps he has pissed on the ancestral ashes, or been lewd and disturbed a sacred (p.122) plot’; 470–2). Rudd passes this test with flying colours, noting ‘incestus: in + castus, hence “unholy”…one might translate “thus committing sacrilege”’.50 Likewise Brink, in a wonderfully Horatian display of the hypocrisy or inefficacy of censorship, reassures that although ‘the metaphor of the leech is known from the Greek’, Theoc. 2.55–6 (in which Ἔρως is the leech clinging onto and draining the lover) ‘have a different connotation’.51

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The Creative Superiority of Self-Reproach More generally, the Ars enacts youthful Roman mutability in its very form. It performs endless change (though it does so consistently—a staged, controlled puerility?), and as a result has bewildered critics who react to feeling they are on that potter’s wheel at line 22. Unstoppable changeability is the poem’s highly political and time-specific message, boosted further by the idea of catering to its youthful addressees. It is exactly the inferior immaturity of Roman literary culture that sets off Rome’s immense potential (embodied in the younger Pisones) to transform and reinvent ‘tradition’. Boyish fickleness will explain, if not excuse pissing on your forefathers’ graves (pueri will be pueri), as the speaker of the poem already did, more or less, at line 272 (compare the crazy poet at line 471). So when Horace writes that the Pisones should study Greek models by night and by day (vos exemplaria Graeca | nocturna versate manu, versate diurna, 268–9), he has on one hand shown, at line 39, that versate means ‘focus on’, ‘debate’, ‘study’, ‘think long and hard about’, but on the other hand offers us the playful, empowering possibility of understanding the verb as ‘change’, ‘twist’, ‘remould’, ‘adapt [words and attitudes]’.52 The Pisones might, in other words, swap cultural inferiority for a culturally specific creativity. Be studious, yet audacious, Horace suggests (265–9); for the excellent updating of old words (note again the miraculous Lucretian shifting of letters in this stillevolving microcosmos: notum → novum), see above (Ars 47–8). Just as Roman poets are praised when they have dared (ausi; 287) to leave the Greeks behind, a nod towards the Pisones’ own reference to daring in line 10 (as well as to the ineffectual daring of line 242, ausus) so the boys should study Greek models, but also hazard their (p.123) own ‘clever collocation’ (callida…iunctura; 47–8), reading transformation into Teacher’s example-setting. The Pisones are subtly, consistently, urged to be the playful, vibrant fresh blood they are, and not to attempt to appear older and wiser beyond their years. The experienced speaker manages to communicate this by staying just enough in role as sombre father figure while also appealing to the young aristocrat’s quandary of how to reconcile his stake in tradition with the desire to be at the cool cutting edge. Hence respecting mores turns out to be about being agespecific and respecting the path of time (156ff.). The thing about tradition is that it’s always changing, and this is entirely natural, as meant-to-be as trees losing their leaves in autumn and re-growing them in spring. In lines 58–63, Horace takes the boys’ arrogant use of semper in line 10 and tames it, inserting their ‘forever’ into nature’s cycle and making it express a slightly more acceptable entitlement disguised as rerum natura assertion of creative licence: it will always (semper) be permitted to invent new words (58–9), and to understand words differently (269). Here, then, we might see conservatism and ebullient youth working together: a purer kind of joining for a new, improved Establishment, and a status quo which can (be made to) construe Roman social mobility as attractively ‘modern’ and inspiring for the artistically ambitious upper classes. These pueri/iuvenes Page 11 of 19

 

The Creative Superiority of Self-Reproach Romani are in the flower of youth, just the candidates to take this poem and use it to find all kinds of potestas in the stereotypes of Rome’s cultural backwardness. Indeed, Horace intimates at lines 63–9, the Roman empire is itself going through adolescent (and entirely natural) change. At least, his examples (a new port making the sea as safe as land; sterile marshland turned into arable land; a river which like the reformed student has ‘learnt a better path’) may be vague, but we may be tempted to think of specifics: harbours like the portus Iulius (cf. Verg. G. 2.161–4), drainage works like that projected by Julius Caesar for the Pomptine marshes, the diversion of a river like that projected by Julius Caesar for the Tiber (cf. Suet. Jul. 44.3). It turns out that Roman engineering, far from exemplifying Rome’s cultural inferiority relative to Greece, can now stand for verbal inventiveness, for Rome’s youthful power to alter the literary, as well as geographical and geopolitical landscape. Under Roman governance, sea and land can come together (an imperial pairing that would once have seemed monstrous and mythical—Neptune embraced by the land, 63–4—but, hold the stylus, not any more!), and even rivers can be tamed into self-improvement, (p.124) becoming learned (poetic?) paths. Who said Roman practicality and poetic erudition couldn’t go together? Horace is putting all his faith in self censoring playful youth to make that happen.

Down from Your High Horse The Pisones have got a lot to be excited about, it transpires. Equally, they have a lot to prove. Horace’s tough love shows them how to keep their wits about them. He reins them in, allowing just the right amount of slack and lending them (masochistically at times) large doses of his own inventiveness. He also threatens—wickedly—to get too close (the boy who grew up a winner feared his master, extimuitque magistrum, he notes at line 415), knowing that they must acquire the virtus to cut him loose, the wit both to distinguish between things which look similar but are radically different, and to make connections between apparently disparate elements—arguably the first lesson of all critical inquiry. My discussion so far, then, has been leading up to a brief investigation of why the Ars is so focused on tragic drama and satyr plays.53 As Michèle Lowrie argues, the answer must lie in part in the fact that the theatre is clearly a political arena, a site for envisioning the body politic (populus = audience, but also political entity), while tragedy offers a model for (covert) political engagement in the shadow of the princeps.54 But the theatre as a social and political space also presents itself as a metaphor for visualizing the power-play implicit in this agonizing carefully crafted learning exercise. First of all, the theatre allows Horace to perform the Ars’s strategy of placing teacher and students in the same enclosure, and is itself a figure for the performance of selfcensorship as a productive force that shapes not only admissible expression but also the speaking subject himself. Within this theatre, author can swap places with addressees and imagine himself in their audience (laughing at them, or nodding off; 105). The theatre of poetry is itself (ideally) a mirror, he notes, in Page 12 of 19

 

The Creative Superiority of Self-Reproach which the poet/actors cause the audience to reflect their emotions back to them: ‘If you want me to weep’ Horace writes at lines 102–3, ‘you must first feel grief yourself’. Audience and expert (p.125) actors/writers are as one here, enacting the single forma advocated in the proem (lines 8–9) and deformed in the final leech-patient joining at lines 474–5. The exemplary scene of faces smiling on those who smile, and weeping on those who weep (102–3) rewrites and corrects the jagged non-matching of serpentes avibus…tigribus agni (13, cf. 30), as well as restarting the poem by replacing humano capiti (1) with humani voltus (102), no equine neck attached. Yet the theatre is both precisely organized and rather indiscriminate in bringing everyone together in the same (potentially satiric) space.55 It is here, too, that we find the culmination of Horace’s head-feet (mis-)matching: all Romans, upper and lower classes alike (equites peditesque), all in the same locus, have a good, loud cackle (tollent cachinnum) at inappropriate lines (113). An eques is so called because originally he had the means to buy a horse, and became, as it were (in one of Horace’s many unobvious, off-stage jokes), part horse. Indeed, at line 248, equus is used to mean not horse but knight. Nothing like the human head joined to a horse’s neck in that offensive bit of modern art glimpsed at lines 1 5. There are many distinctions to be made, but so far Horace stresses only those between actors (intererit multum…114–18). On the theatre benches, meanwhile, ever since imperial expansion ensured venues were packed, simple country folk got mixed up with the city people, the ‘foul’ with the well-bred (rusticus urbano confusus, turpis honesto 213). The point is that if they take on tragic drama, the Pisones are going to have to descendere in campum, risk being laughed at, and take the rough with the smooth, the vulgar with the like-minded —despite the fact that their kind is obviously all about distinction, from which Horace himself, natus libertino patre, has surely benefited. As he wrote to Maecenas at Satires 1.6.62–3: ‘I count it a great honour that I pleased you, who discern between wretched and honest (turpi secernis honestum), not by a father’s fame, but by purity of life and heart.’ Horace could have been judged turpis by elite patrons but scraped by the post and is now in a position to ‘patronize’ the young. The Pisones on the other hand, if they head down this path (and bear in mind that Horace himself steered clear of tragedy) will not only have to deal with the complexity of modernity (it all started when the flute was bound with brass and became a kind of hybrid trumpet, no longer tenuis simplexque at line (p.126) 203, taking us back to those famous last words, denique sit quod vis, simplex dumtaxat et unum; 23) but also with a populus that will react immediately—and perhaps cruelly—to their versifying. Roman theatre audiences are cast in the Ars as democratic miscellanies containing many daring, provocative juxtapositions. The populus is cackling satura itself, with legs. Writing successful tragic drama is, Horace warns, about pleasing this moving, hybrid, reactive body (which includes Teacher, still one of them at line

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The Creative Superiority of Self-Reproach 153: ego et populus mecum, ‘I, and the public with me’, rather than ego et vos, 272). Yet although everyone in the audience will probably laugh together at a bad script (113), other errors—such as overly vulgar jokes coming out of the mouths of those goat-men satyrs (247–8)—are likely to offend some men of substance (equus et pater et res, ‘the knight and the father and the well-off gent’; 248), who often disapprove of the kind of material beloved of the lower classes, the sort who consume the cheap fried theatre snacks that stand for a more plebeian poetic diet (249, cf. Hor. S. 1.6.115). The question is, then: can these discriminating iuvenes manage to please both equites and pedites, and have them react as one, unified creative corpus, just as Horace himself (from a very different point of origin) performed a ‘fine balancing act’56 between his own rusticity and urbanity—a challenge to which this entire poem has them rise? Is that even possible? Will their superior class help them in an environment in which the posh might want not to give (their) coronae to the hoi polloi (249–50) but in which coronae can also mean ‘rings of [any old] spectators’ (381), empowered to laugh at you, o maior iuvenum? Wouldn’t it be better to ditch this fatuous talk of becoming great tragedians before they laugh you off stage, now the politics of this kind of poetry are clear?57

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose (To Conclude…) The Ars ensures that there can be no way to rise safely above the poet-critic, or in other words to dissociate (his, your) superiority, whether (p.127) innate or earned, from (his, Rome’s, your) inferiority; likewise, there seems to be no cleancut way to split the punitive force or excess of (self-)censorship from its ‘neutral’ productive and enabling power, implicit in every instance of writing and of reading. In what is possibly his most mature work, Horace’s long-running ‘double game of differentiation and identification’58 will prove infectious, and provide endless stimuli for the Pisones as they contemplate their incomplete libertas. Like the leech, or the scabies-infected poet, Horace-as-teacher sticks his ‘inferior’ status on his students, impressing upon them the notion that as Romans they cannot deny its broad cultural analogies, and that they will amount to nothing without the skill to put themselves down in the name of A-list ambition. As he does so, he builds a rapport, an interdependency, that is figured in the microcosm of the theatre, where Rome’s social classes are both divided and all in it together, and where the right to boo and cheer or to wield a critical ferrum is not allocated on the basis of class. In the theatre of Ars, Horace gives it to them ‘straight’. This makes him a great teacher and critic, the best they could possibly wish for. And also, undeniably, a son of a xxxxx libertus. (p.128) Notes:

(1) Hardie (2014: 48). (2) Hajdu (2014: 85). Page 14 of 19

 

The Creative Superiority of Self-Reproach (3) Hardie (2014: 54). (4) Oliensis (1998: 198). However, Oliensis curtails discussion on the first page by concluding to begin with that the Ars is ultimately a performance of Horace’s superiority as a poet (‘What Horace teaches the Piso brothers is finally not what to do or not to do but what he can do and they cannot’; 198). My point is that we may well arrive at this valid conclusion, but only after much labor, which itself, potentially, has a range of (didactic) functions. (5) Oliensis (1998: 5, 13–14), with reference to Greenblatt’s Foucauldian notion of self-fashioning: see Greenblatt (1980). (6) Austin (1975); Foucault (e.g. 1980: 78–108); Bourdieu (1991); Butler (1997, 1998). (7) Cf. Lowrie (2014) on ‘a new kind of participation in a new public sphere’, whereby the by now extinct figure of the Censor, the prestigious magistracy charged with keeping public morals, is replaced by the poet-as-censor, fastidious critic and moral judge of his own and others’ work (141, 136–7). (8) On the date of the poem, see below, pp.119–20. (9) See Rudd (1989) ad loc. and D’Angour (1999) on this metaphor. (10) Laird (2007: 135). (11) The method of putting words ‘under erasure’ here and in what follows owes much of course to Heidegger and Derrida, but whereas they use erasure to mark commonly accepted ideas, images, or terms as contestable, inadequate, or paradoxical, I want to explicitly indicate thoughts and judgements that, I argue, the Ars potentially prompts yet at the same time censures (or encourages readers to censure as part of a process of developing critical skills) or renders deeply problematic or unacceptable in the light of instruction on maintaining decorum—instruction that is reinforced and reproduced by much of modern criticism on this poem. (12) Hadju (2014: 85–6). (13) Cf. Arist. Rh. 3.2.1404b18ff. (14) Cf. Lowrie (2014: 130). (15) Translations here and throughout are my own. (16) A similar trick is on show at lines 335–6: ‘whatever you teach (quidquid praecipies), be brief, so that minds can grasp (percipiant) what is said

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The Creative Superiority of Self-Reproach quickly’ (i.e. the Lucretian reader understands that praecepta are received by the eyes and that visual reordering = understanding). (17) Quint. Inst. 9.4.41 videndum…ne syllaba verbi prioris ultima et prima sequentis consonet, ‘one should…take care that the last syllable of the preceding word and the first of the following do not sound the same.’ Noted by Brink ad loc. (18) Cf. Butler (1998). (19) That denique is deliciously cruel, especially when it echoes and remakes the denique of line 23. (20) E.g. Hardie (2014). Horace has become his own father, who at Hor. S. 1.4.105–43 is remembered for how he gave his son advice and examples of virtue and vice. (21) Horace was always a man of the youth: see also Odes 3.1.4 (virginibus puerisque canto, ‘I am singing for girls and boys’); and Rudd (1989: 4). (22) Cf. Butler (1997, 1998), e.g. (1997: 250): ‘Censorship is exposed to a certain vulnerability precisely through becoming explicit.’ (23) Armstrong (1993: 185). (24) Cf. the use of the whetstone by Cupid at Hor. Carm. 2.8.15–16, with Nisbet and Hubbard (1978) ad loc. Will sword-sharpening for lit. crit. be all in earnest, or is there room for sparks and mischievous boy-Cupids here? These illicit thoughts are in part responding to Geue (2014), who wants to see the poet of Ars as diplomatic tamer and neutralizer; I have edited back in the inseparable opposing voice of the (reckless, or masterful?) goader and provocateur, who potentially takes the same lesson to a higher level (they/we may still pass, yet only if censorship comes from within). (25) Hor. Carm. 2.20.1–2, cf. 3.30. (26) Cf. Oliensis (1998: 219). (27) Cf. scribimus indocti doctique poemata passim, Hor. Ep. 2.1.117. For a detailed discussion of strategic mobilization of this alleged playful frenzy for poetry writing in Horace’s Letter to Augustus, see Matzner in this volume. (28) Oliensis (1998: 215). (29) Indeed honey spoils some things and makes them offensive: poppy seeds for instance (Ars 375).

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The Creative Superiority of Self-Reproach (30) Cf. Butler (1997, 1998). For an exploration of forms and modes of authorial (self-)censorship under the conditions of constrained libertas in Juvenal and Phaedrus, see Geue in this volume. (31) The leech, in other words, is in various ways a pharmakon, both a poison and a cure (a cure which offers various possibilities for the student to ‘heal’ the Ars Poetica, or to make it a unified whole). Another healing option involves linking the fish end (piscem, 4) of the poem’s beginning to the leech ending: Pliny also pairs fish with leeches, because while the leech (sanguisuga) sucks out blood, fish were thought to produce blood in the body when eaten (cf. Plin. Nat. 32.121: sanguinem fieri piscium cibo putant). See also p. 118 n. 36. (32) On models for leech-like behaviour in Horace’s satires, see Oliensis (1998: 218). (33) Citroni (2009) shows what we miss, if, as he argues, Horace keeps ‘the marvellous’ in tight check. (34) What is aere perennius (Hor. Carm. 3.30.1)? Not the meaning of the word aes, which is always changing. aes = money, again, at line 164 (the iuvenis is prodigus aeris) and line 345. (35) Compare Hor. Carm. 1.32.10–12 (canebat, | et Lycum nigris oculis nigroque | crine decorum), with its entertaining variatio on niger (now with a long, now with a short first syllable), not replicated in the Ars (where both syllables are long). (36) OLD s.v. caput 16a. The beginning, the first part (of a speech, action etc.). b. the beginning (of a word or sentence): initial letter. (37) Geue (2014: 144), with further bibliography. (38) The head-foot, high/low partnership or mismatch continues, always transforming: e.g. tumido…ore (94) versus sermone PEDEStri (95); aut impellit ad iram (109), aut ad humum…deducit (110); the theatre’s equites (recalling the equine neck of line 1) plus pedites (113). Lines 151–2 tease that you’ll either be at rock bottom or soar to the top as a poet; cf. 220ff., on avoiding having a god or hero shift inappropriately from high speech/dress to obscuras humili sermone tabernas (229), or worse, dum vitat humum, nubes et inania captet (230). At 244ff., the iamb is a perfect blend of long and short, top and bottom, its beat primus ad extremum similis, 254, cf. coepit…exit, 21–2, and in contrast to line 4 (desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne). Skilled critics spot good rhythm with ears and fingers/toes, in a whole body experience, at lines 274. Mad and pretentious poets neglect both beard (head) and (toe?)nails at line 297. At 430, the insincere friend/critic of your poetry will fake head-to-toe bodily consistency (ex oculis rorem, saliet, tundet pede terram; 430). And finally, the crazy poet Page 17 of 19

 

The Creative Superiority of Self-Reproach looks up (sublimis), no doubt thinking he belongs in higher realms, only to fall to the bottom of a pit or well. Or perhaps not finally, given that leeches were often applied to relieve pain in the feet caused by gout (podagra, cf. Plin. Nat. 32.123), a picture that, if imagined, adds a slimy tail to a human pes, offering an ugly male-female hybrid to pair the beautiful woman whose legs are a fish tail at the ‘head’ of the poem, line 4 (cf. Oliensis 1998: 217). (39) See Brink (1971) and Rudd (1989) ad loc.: ‘The word needs explanation’ (Brink). (40) Cf. Oliensis (1998: 3) on Horace throughout his career: ‘gestures of pure deference and pure authority are much rarer…than mixtures of the two.’ Cf. Gowers (2012: 5) on ‘composite’ Horace. (41) See Ferenczi’s introduction to Ferenczi and Hardie (2014). (42) Armstrong (1993: 199). (43) See Geue’s bold experiment with this option (2014). (44) As Geue (2014) argues. (45) Brink (1971, ad loc.) nails it when he comments ‘The thought then is Aristotelian but the power of catching in a single word the characteristically mixed state of youthful idealism and conceit is Horatian’. (46) Armstrong (1993: 209). (47) Yet there is a hint here perhaps of a neo-Callimachean childishness, i.e. one reminiscent of Callimachus’ self-fashioning as a playful, curious, and slightly rebellious ‘boy’ of a poet, most famously in the Aetia prologue (fr. 1.5–6 Pf, with Cozzoli 2011). (48) Is Horace poking fun at Lucretian pretensions here? (cf. DRN 1.933–4: deinde quod obscura de re tam lucida pango | carmina, musaeo contingens cuncta lepore, ‘next because the subject is so dark and the lines I write so clear, as I touch all with the Muses’ grace’). (49) There is plenty of scope for reading a ‘grow up’ tone into this increasing talk of pueri rather than iuvenes, though equally the Pisones are perhaps just old enough to rise above, patronizing the ‘little boys’ together with speaker-teacher, rather than feeling patronized by him. (50) Rudd (1989) ad loc. with OLD s.v. incestus. (51) Brink (1971) ad loc., with Butler (1997, 1998).

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The Creative Superiority of Self-Reproach (52) OLD s.v. verso 7a and b. For the playful, humorous tone of this line, see Brink (1971) ad loc. who notes the parallel with Epist. 1.19.11 (nocturno certare mero, putere diurno) yet concludes there can be no overt allusion since ‘such an allusion would be out of keeping with the desired effect’—somewhat of a circular argument. (53) On satyr plays in Augustan Rome, see Wiseman (1988). (54) Lowrie (2014). (55) For a discussion of the tension between (self-)positioning and anonymity in the genre of satire itself, see Geue in this volume. (56) Gowers (2012: 215) on Hor. S. 1.6. (57) As Oliensis puts it (2009: 463): ‘It is by no means obvious that poetry is a socially acceptable career for well-born boys such as these.’ Cf. Hadju (2014: 95– 6). (58) Habinek (2005) 185.

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‘The Noise, and the People’

Complex Inferiorities: The Poetics of the Weaker Voice in Latin Literature Sebastian Matzner and Stephen Harrison

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198814061 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198814061.001.0001

‘The Noise, and the People’ Popular clamor and Political Discourse in Latin Historiography Ellen O’Gorman

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198814061.003.0008

Abstract and Keywords The potentially devastating effects of the clamor of the plebs in the theatre crowd, which looms in the background of Horace’s Ars Poetica as a force to be reckoned with by the young aristocrats (discussed in the previous chapter), receives further discussion and detailed analysis in this chapter, which draws on the work of Rancière and Kristeva in order to offers a reappraisal of how clamor signifies, both in terms of the modalities of its political presence and efficacy and in terms of its mimetic irruption within historiographic writing. Livy’s account of the emergence of the popular voice provides a site of reflecting on the complex inter-relations of plebeian body and senatorial speech from which popular clamor emerges as bodily sound rather than rational speech, as a distinctive political counter-rhythm to the controlled, referential discourse of forensic oratory. Keywords:   Latin historiography, crowds, clamor, plebs, Livy, Rancière, Kristeva, the semiotic, sound, political discourse

…this account of an utterance requires a reorientation of our postures of attention and our grammatical mode of analysis. Our appreciation of an other’s speech requires the subjunctive.1 The supremely elite genre of Roman historiography, with its senatorial and imperialist narratives, might seem the least accommodating to any weaker voice, were it not that, in treating res gestae, the historian trains his focus on the res

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‘The Noise, and the People’ populi Romani. The people, however, often remain the voiceless object of historiographical discourse, spoken of just as in oratory they are spoken for. Sallust observed that ‘the influence of the plebs, diluted and dissipated across the multitude, was less potent’2—plebis vis soluta atque dispersa in multitudine minus poterat (Sal. Jug. 41.6)—a political inefficacy perhaps linked to the absence of a singular voice. Nevertheless, the noise of the multitude punctuates state business, and its preservation in the historical record is not merely for vivid effect. The Roman historians enfold the noise of the crowd into their narratives in such a way as to (p.130) preserve its disruptive political effect. This is especially the case for the early books of Livy, which are particularly concerned with the emergence of the popular political voice, and with the question of how plebs and patres might effectively partake of the commonwealth. But rather than considering representative speeches by singular spokesmen, I want to maintain focus on the multitudinous, popular voice at the moment of its apparent political delegitimation—the moment where it emerges as clamor or noise. Such focus presents an interpretative problem: what sort of account can one make of noise which allows its political status but does not assimilate it simply to discourse? I would like to begin such an account by bringing clamor closer to discourse in the way that it raises issues about representation and quotation in historiography. This is a familiar question for anyone who considers the speeches of individuals as rendered by the historians, and usually engages with Thucydides’ account of how he renders logoi in his narrative (Th. 1.22.1). Readers now tend to recognize such logoi as part of the historian’s representational strategy, while acknowledging the mimetic power of the speech, which creates the ‘impression of hearing the precise words of an original speaker’.3 Thus readers respond to the speech—even reported speech— as if it were quotation. I propose to adopt the same approach to the noise of the crowd in historiography, which bears the same elusive relation to words spoken by living bodies. When the historian evokes both the content and sound-effect of collective clamor, it provides us with an opportunity to read this as representation, and as if quotation. Such reading, moreover, draws attention to the borderline status of clamor between speech and noise, utterance and event.4 To approach this question, I turn to perspectives offered by Jacques Rancière and Julia Kristeva. Rancière’s concept of how the political is inaugurated in the division between speech and noise is a starting point, but Kristeva’s formulation of the semiotic enables a more detailed exploration of noise’s affect and valency. Kristeva provides a (much debated) model for how noise subtends the rationalizing narrative of the status quo. Meanwhile, Rancière’s presentation of ‘the account’ of speech offers a way of thinking about both political and narrative representation. It seems to me (p.131) that both of these theories of

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‘The Noise, and the People’ how and where language intersects with the political open up a space for the expression and exploration of popular clamor. Dissonance is the quality which ties the aural effect of noise to its supposed lack of political purchase. An early example from Tacitus’ Histories illustrates this very well: Vniversa iam plebs Palatium implebat, mixtis servitiis et dissono clamore caedem Othonis et coniuratorum exitium poscentium ut si in circo aut theatro ludicrum aliquod postularent: neque illis iudicium aut veritas, quippe eodem die diversa pari certamine postulaturis, sed tradito more quemcumque principem adulandi licentia adclamationum et studiis inanibus. Now the whole plebeian body filled the Palatine, intermingled with servile elements, and with the dissonant clamour of those demanding the slaughter of Otho and death to conspirators, as if they were requesting some game or other at the circus or theatre: and in these shouts there was no judgement or sincerity, since in the one day they were going to request opposite things with equal fervour, but it was the tradition of those clamouring in support of whichever princeps, marked by licence of flattery and meaningless enthusiasms.5 The dissonus clamor reflects not only the mixture of plebeians and slaves in the crowd, but also the variety of their cries, some calling out CAED’MTHONIS and others CONIURATOR’MEXITIUM—the elisions pointing up the confusion of these overlapping slogans.6 Tacitus continues to dismiss any political validity to the clamor by likening it in both sound and content to the demands which the same crowd would present at the races and the shows, locations which are similarly contested as political or non-political sites. Finally, the lack of political judgement or consistency in the crowd is deduced from their change to a new chant later in the same day.7 The dissonance at this point in time is amplified by the diversa of a later time; but this increasingly confused sound is at once highly resonant—as the clamor of the moment joins in with a generalized practice of acclamatio—and yet (p.132) lacking in substance or meaning, expressing only the studia inania of the imperial sordida plebs.8 In complex ways, then, the clamor of the plebs is here presented as pure noise, which, although it is denied political validity, retains political effect, and leaves its traces in the historical narrative. Tacitus draws on traditions of representing popular clamor here: a phenomenon at the borders of the political in every sense. Sometimes denied inclusion, it nevertheless serves to delineate the political, as I will go on to examine. Scholars such as Fergus Millar, Robert Morstein-Marx, and Henrik Mouritsen have articulated the ways in which the plebs or the populus Romanus could express themselves in the political arena of Page 3 of 19

 

‘The Noise, and the People’ the contio.9 Morstein-Marx, in his insightful analysis of the voice of the people, identifies how the political nature of that voice was a matter of contestation, when he remarks that ‘[o]n one interpretation…any contio will have represented nothing less than the Voice of the Roman People; on another, however, it produced nothing more significant than the noisy squawking of the most questionable elements of the urban mob.’10 Precisely this issue of noisy squawking and its non-significance is central to how Jacques Rancière conceptualizes the delineation of the political, as he indicates in Disagreement: ‘Politics exists because the logos is never simply speech, because it is always indissolubly the account that is made of this speech: the account by which a sonorous emission is understood as speech, capable of enunciating what is just, whereas some other emission is merely perceived as a noise signalling pleasure or pain, consent or revolt.’11 For Rancière, then, it is not a question of identifying whether clamor has political force or not; the very account which polices the difference between speech and noise is in itself political. The noise that signals pleasure or pain introduces another element of these accounts which helps to police these differences: while speech or logos is of the rational mind, noise is of the sensual body. It is no surprise that popular noise in Roman historiography (p.133) often emerges in response to food shortages, or threats to shelter posed by fire. The irruption of bodily needs into the political sphere receives its most sustained treatment in Livy’s account of the earliest years of the Republic, particularly in Book 2, where political representation—the institution of plebeian tribunes— arises out of popular concerns about loss of land and property, debt, and physical abuse suffered at the hands of creditors. As if in response to this politicizing of bodily needs, the senator Menenius Agrippa presents a justification of the senate’s primacy in the state by recounting the well-known parable of the primordial body in rebellion, and thereby he identifies precisely the political issue at stake. It is worth looking in some detail at the tradition of this episode, not only because of what it has to say about political speech and bodily noise, but also because Livy’s account of the parable—and of the plebeian secession—plays an important role in the formulation of Rancière’s philosophy: So it pleased the senate to send a speaker to the plebs: Menenius Agrippa, an eloquent man and, because he originated from that class, dear to the plebs (facundum virum et quod inde oriundus erat plebi carum). This man, sent to their camp, is said to have told them nothing but this story, in that primitive and rough kind of speech (prisco illo dicendi et horrido modo): Once upon a time the human body was not like now, with all the parts feeling the same together, but each individual part had its own counsel, its own speech (suum cuique consilium, suus sermo). And the other parts of the body were aggrieved that the belly’s demands were met by their responsibility, effort and tasks, while the belly remained inactive in the middle doing nothing but enjoying the pleasures they gave. So they Page 4 of 19

 

‘The Noise, and the People’ conspired for the hands not to bring food to the mouth, for the mouth not to accept what was given, and the teeth not to chew. While they wanted in their anger to tame the belly by hunger, instead the very limbs and the whole body almost wasted away. Then it became apparent that the task of the belly was not useless, that it fed as much as it was fed, returning to all parts of the body in equal measure that element by which we live and flourish, spreading through the veins enriched by the intake of food—the blood. By comparing the internal sedition of the body as similar to the anger of the plebs against the senate, he changed the minds of people (Comparando hinc quam intestina corporis seditio similis esset irae plebis in patres, flexisse mentes hominum).12 (p.134) The image of the body politic here is one which organizes its members in relations of production—a point made more explicitly in Dionysius of Halicarnassus (D.H. 6.86.4). The belly appears only to consume, but the punchline of Livy’s version holds back until the final word, sanguis, the recognition that it really produces the lifeblood of the body.13 The choice of belly rather than head as ruling body part appears to reverse the hierarchy of rationality over sensuality,14 but it is well chosen as a rebuttal to the plebeian charge that the senate enjoys all the gains and suffers none of the pains of civic duty. Instead, it compels the plebeians to recognize what the senate does for them, and so in turn to resume their bodily toils in service of the state. Rancière’s analyses of this passage take a different tack by focusing, not on the content of the parable, but on the circumstance of Menenius’ address to the plebs. He argues that the very act of address already concedes a political place for the plebs in a way that cuts across the ostensible message of the parable: Behind that fable’s moral, which illustrated the inequality of functions in the social body, lay quite a different moral, one inherent in the very act of composing a fable. This act of composition was based on the assumption that it was necessary to speak and that this speaking would be heard; the assumption of a pre-existing equality between a wish to speak and a wish to hear…The moral of the very act of fabulation was thus the equality of intelligences.15 The political philosopher Martin Breaugh, who traces Rancière’s reception of Livy’s story through a specifically plebeian tradition, illuminates how this new politicizing could also proceed by proclaiming the dominance of reason over body: ‘Agrippa was thus the one responsible for having created a space for egalitarian exchange, because he believed the plebs capable of understanding the meaning of his story and of transcending the imperatives of the biological order.’16 Thus, instead of following the parable and taking the biological order as symbolic of the social order, Rancière and Breaugh concentrate on the

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‘The Noise, and the People’ political connotations of the speech act itself, which is organized around the distinction between what is and is not recognized as speech. (p.135) Indeed, the parable also resonates with the possibility and impossibility of speech, since it proceeds, in the way of parables, by assigning the power of expression (sermo Liv. 2.32.9, φωνή D.H. 6.86.2) to all human body parts or members.17 In one sense this capacity for speech is dramatically necessary for the members to quarrel and be reconciled. Indeed, in both Dionysius’ and Plutarch’s versions the members do no more than talk about their rebellion, and Dionysius’ Menenius drives home the parallel by exhorting the plebs to leave off their hostile words against the senate: ἐπιφθόνους φωνὰς (6.86.5).18 In another sense the impossible and necessary speech of the members already transcends the imperatives of the biological order. By locating the senate in the belly the parable denaturalizes the association of patrician dominance with the faculties of reason and speech; and this is more evident in Dionysius, where the members begin their rebellion by declaring their special contribution to the bodily whole. The mouth states ‘that it speaks’ (τὸ δὲ στόμα, ὅτι φθέγγεται; D.H. 6.86.2), while the belly alone is silent in the face of its accusers. In Plutarch, the belly does speak back, and also laughs in mockery. Livy’s account places the rebellion in the realm of action,19 and this throws into sharper relief the comment that each bodily member possesses suum consilium, suus sermo: the power of speech is described but not instantiated. Within the world of the parable, then, we might also postulate a new egalitarianism, in that speech seems to be equally impossible and necessary for each body part. Again, a resonance is set up with Menenius’ address to the plebs, which emanates ostensibly from the senate, for whom he serves as mouthpiece, while Menenius himself emerges from the belly of the plebs: a facundus vir and quod inde oriundus erat plebi carus.20 The homophony of orator and oriundus points up that Menenius’ speech and Menenius’ body traverse the gulf between patrician and plebeian. Rancière refers to him as a ‘class traitor’21 —but which class does he betray? (p.136) The paradox of Menenius’ speech is extended as on this occasion he speaks prisco illo dicendi et horrido modo, whether by virtue of his plebeian origin, or of the primitive nature of speech at that time.22 Or perhaps he suspends his senatorial eloquence in order to speak in a way which appeals to the plebs, evoking the concordia his parable seeks to effect, by adopting the sermo appropriate to the body parts he addresses.23 In either case, Menenius performs a sort of ventriloquism, as his speech emerges from a place he never quite occupies, creating a space where there was none before. Menenius’ intervention counts as disruptive in Rancière’s terms, because of his ‘production…of a body and a capacity for enunciation not previously identifiable

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‘The Noise, and the People’ within a given field of experience, whose identification is thus part of the reconfiguration of the field of experience’.24 Rancière’s analysis draws our attention away from the content or circumstance of popular clamor, towards its qualities as noise before it is made to make sense. Like Rancière, Davide Panagia concentrates on the disruptive and interruptive effects of noise within discourses of and about the political. He traces, through Bakhtin’s study of ‘speech genres’, a way of rethinking utterance in terms of duration of noise rather than semantic units, so that interruption is figured as ‘a condition of responsiveness’25 rather than as an intervention only legitimated after the event and in a reconfigured field of experience. This is a point I want to return to later, though here it reflects upon Dionysius’ extensive account of the embassy to the plebs, where each speech is framed and punctuated by βοή and θροῦς.26 But, once they have established a different way of thinking about noise, Rancière and Panagia each turn to explore new spatial formations of the political. This represents a recurrent problem in thinking about noise in ways (p.137) which resist both the hermeneutic imperative and the simple deictic gesture; that is, how does one trace the political work done by noise without either translating it into logos or simply attesting to it as phonē? Through reading Livy, later, we will see how the political effect of noise is read through a transformation of space which enables new forms of representation. But, before exploring how Livy stages this effect, I want to turn to Kristeva’s concept of the semiotic, and its consonance with lalangue and glossolalia, as a way back to the noise of popular clamor, and the possibility for tracing this through historiography. Particularly in Revolution in Poetic Language, Kristeva provides an account of a pre-Oedipal relation to what will become language, grounding it in the body before subjectivity, and positing its later violent repression as an effect of the dominant symbolic order. This is the order of the semiotic, located in the paradoxical maternal space of the chora. As she states ‘the chora precedes and underlies figuration…and is analogous only to vocal or kinetic rhythm.’27 In such rhythms, Kristeva suggests, the semiotic articulates connections not only between the zones of the fragmented body before subjectivity (the sphincters), but between the pre-subject and what will later be designated external objects (such as parental figures). ‘Articulation’ is glossed by Kristeva as ‘in the largest sense of the word’;28 I believe this is to emphasize the bodily experience of vocal articulation.29 The plot of Kristeva’s account is structured on the familiar psychoanalytic model of infantile development; indeed, she goes on to narrate the irruption of the symbolic order with explicit reference to Freud’s myth of the primal horde. But her sense of what happens to the semiotic in language is my main interest here. While Kristeva concentrates on high art, and particularly on modernist poetry, as the site into which the semiotic will violently irrupt, some of her most distinctive Page 7 of 19

 

‘The Noise, and the People’ formulations also provide a way to conceive of popular clamor as well. First, she draws attention to the semantic excess of poetry, the way in which it offers a pleasurable surplus of meaning: (p.138) this challenges the symbolic order’s claim to sufficiency, drawing attention to the semiotic dimension with its multiple articulations. The noise of the people is also given the quality of excess, but in a different way; it appears as excess because it is perceived to have a deficit of meaning often at the same time as it affords a surplus of pleasure: we note the reference to studia inania in the Tacitus passage with which I began. From the perspective which valorizes the economics of language exchange, this appears as ‘the nonproductive expenditure of noise’30 just as poetry can seem to be a ‘harmless bonus’31 to a socially useful discourse. Secondly, Kristeva draws attention to the bodily experience of rhythm and, later, of phonic repetition as the baseline of the semiotic chora, and as phenomena which are discernible not only in poetry but in a wide variety of speech acts both individual and collective. Kristeva’s initial focus on rhythm and sound as the vehicle for instinctual drives, in the opening to the second (untranslated) half of La révolution du langage poétique, is given further resonance by the echo of pulsation in the French term for ‘instinct’ or ‘drive’—pulsion.32 Rhythm and intonation as non-semantic components provide an apparatus for the instinctual drives. Kristeva sees this apparatus as emerging from music, into the melodically accented languages of antiquity, only to be transposed into vernacular speech as syllabic rhythm marked by alliteration and homophony. It is telling that she sees this transposition also as a return to the modes of popular oral poetry.33 The effect that Kristeva posits for this rhythmic dimension is a network of sound-sense which exceeds the semantic register of the utterance and approaches the semiotic chora: ‘à travers les bases pulsionnelles de la phonation, les traits distinctifs du système phonémique…articulent un réseau de sens constitué de différentielles phoniques et signifiantes.’34 (‘Across the instinctual ground of phonation [the production of phonē], the distinctive characteristics of the soundsense system [sc. displacements, condensations, transpositions and repetitions] articulate a network of sense constituted by the differentials between (p.139) phonic and signifying elements.’) The mode of reading which Kristeva enjoins, therefore, does not either tune out the semiotic element, or forsake the symbolic functioning of language. It does not require us to translate phonē into logos, or to abandon interpretation for the deictic gesture. The focus on ‘signifying differentials’ instead draws our attention to the interplay between the semiotic and symbolic dimensions. A reminder of the sensory appeal of rhythm and repetition, for both speakers and listeners,35 may well alert us to the effects of particular recurring syllables in texts, which could be read as attempts to capture the murmur populi (and it is no coincidence that both these words are essentially syllabic repetitions). We can imagine a crowd seizing upon particular slogans which exploit syllabic repetition—one thinks of Suetonius’ crowd chanting ‘into the Tiber with Page 8 of 19

 

‘The Noise, and the People’ Tiberius’: Tiberium in Tiberim (Suet. Tib. 75.1), or of Horace’s ‘crowded people spurring the slackers on to war, TO WAR’: populus frequens | ad arma cessantis, ad arma | concitet (Hor. Carm. 1.35.14–16).36 Equally, repetition emerges as an effect of multiple speakers, who repeat and thereby transmit words across the crowd—a practice adopted in Occupy Wall Street as ‘The People’s Mic’.37 Finally, we can extend our engagement with crowd noise as it is ‘quoted’ in the historians by speculating on the echo effect of any large group attempting to articulate the same words.38 That is to say, the plebs may very well fill the Palatine with their cries of caed’mthonis, but even the most well-organized crowd will, in an open space, drift apart from each other, creating what we might now call a sort of sonic Mexican wave: caed-caede-caed’mocaed’mothonis-is-nis-onis. The overlapping syllables form new relations, releasing wordlike combinations (here I detect a decae and a sonis, for instance); collectively, the crowd produces a sort of glossolalia, speech that is like a language. As Michel (p.140) de Certeau observes, ‘What utopia is to social space, glossolalia is to oral communication; it encloses in a linguistic simulacrum all that is not language and comes from the speaking voice.’39 Here the rhythm of clamor not only reproduces the bodily articulation of the chora, it also appears as an effect of the political space: the echoing forum itself helps to create the linguistic simulacrum.40 To consider this phenomenon more extensively, let us return to the originary scene of plebeian politics, the second book of Livy, and the episode of the debt slaves (nexi) in chapters 23–4. Discussed at length by social theorists from Machiavelli to David Graeber, this episode provides a detailed elaboration of how, in Rancière’s terms, a new space is designated as political. And this proceeds through outbursts of vocal and kinetic movement/energy of symbolic and semiotic power. It begins with the confused sound of the nexi—fremebant (23.2)—seething at the inequity of their civic duty to fight for Rome, when they are the prey of fellow-citizens in the economic sphere. The collective utterance is then exemplified by a solitary speaker, a veteran; here a new space is opened up ‘much as though it were an assembly’—prope in contionis modum (23.5). This is the effect of the veteran’s initial physical movements: ‘he rushed into the forum’ and ‘displayed his scars’—in forum proiecit (23.3) and cicatrices ostentabat (23.4)—as well as of the vocal movement of the vulgus or turba ‘asking the cause of his dress, of his injuries’—sciscitantibus unde ille habitus, unde deformitas (23.5). The veteran’s speech concludes with another physical movement: ‘he displayed his back’—ostentare tergum (23.7), which sets off the clamor of the crowd and transforms the political space yet again: ‘a mighty uproar arose. The disturbance was no longer confined to the Forum, but spread in all directions through the entire City’—clamor ingens oritur. Non iam foro se tumultus continet sed passim totam urbem pervadit (23.7). The sound gathers both nexi and allies, and brings them back to the central space: ‘with shouting there is a rush into the forum’—cum clamore in forum curritur, or ‘shouting INTO THE Page 9 of 19

 

‘The Noise, and the People’ FORUM, they rushed there’ (23.8).41 (p.141) Both throughout the city and back in the forum, the nexi imitate the veteran in gesture and sound: ‘The debt slaves broke out into the streets from every side, and implored the Quirites to protect them’; ‘they displayed their chains and other signs of abuse, saying this was their reward…’—nexi…se undique in publicum proripiunt, implorant Quiritium fidem (23.8); multitudo…ostentare vincula sua deformitatemque aliam. Haec se meritos dicere … (23.10–11). News of a Volscian attack does not unite the Romans against a common enemy; instead the plebs declare their absolute refusal to obey the levy. In response, the consul Servilius, whose temperament, we are told, inclined towards the people—magis populare erat (24.3)—addresses the plebs in a contio, and concludes with an edict which formally declares as unjust and unlawful the inequities which were the substance of the opening complaint: edixit ne quis … (24.6). From the grumble of fremebant to the declarative edixit we see how articulation moves from delegitimized noise to political logos, through the transformation of space.42 The status of the vocal as one form of bodily articulation is crucial here, as evinced by the display of cicatrices, vestigia, and deformitas,43 which spreads through the crowd, keeping pace with the crowd’s own movement through space, and the movement of clamor. The vocal dimension does not merely lend sound to these gestures: vocal articulation appears on a continuum with other movements of the body. Here I want to focus on the sound-effect of the collective utterances, beginning with the object of fremebant.

se foris pro libertatet imperio dimicantes

struggling abroad for liberty and empire

domi a civibus captos et oppressos esse.

at home captured and oppressed by citizens

tutior’min bello qu’min pace

safer in war than in peace

et inter hostis qu’minter civis

among enemies than among citizens

libertatem plebis esse

is plebeian freedom44

(p.142) Of all the examples here, this is the one with the longest and most elaborated phrases—four phrases for twenty-nine words—while the interdependence of the phrases makes it difficult to isolate a conjectural slogan. The semantic emphasis on libertas, at the start and the end of the speech, receives its counterpoint in the syllabic repetitions recombining l, b/p, and r: LIBERtatet imPERIo…BELLo…LIBERtatem PLEBIs. The repetitions of the final collective utterance are far easier to spot, while the phrases are much shorter, and metrically more varied. While it seems less

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‘The Noise, and the People’ effective as a speech viewed in traditional terms,45 it evokes more strongly the sense of discrete phrases taken up by a mob.

ultores superbiae patr’madesse [dicere] deos

gods avenge patrician arrogance

[alius alium confirmare] ne nomina darent

do not give names

c’momnibus potius quam solos perituros

to die with all rather than alone

patres militarent

let patricians go to war

patres arma caperent

let patricians take arms

ut penes eosdem pericula belli

to them accrue the dangers of war

penes quos praemiassent

to whom accrue the rewards.46

There are more possibilities for reconstructing slogans here: the murmur of ne nomina darent replicates the way in which this injunction passes from one speaker to another, in an early version of the People’s Mic. Also, the rhyming doublet patres militarent | patres arma caperent has sensory appeal in itself,47 as well as contributing to the dominant phonic rhythm spread across the dense layer of syllables formed by p, b, t, r/l: suPERBIae PATRum…POTIus… PERITURos PATREs miliTARENT PATREs arma caPERENT…PENEs eosdem PERIcula BElli PENEs quos PRAEMIassent. As Kristeva indicates, the network of sense emerges from the differential between phonic and semantic effects of the text. Both of these collective utterances have at their semantic base a negotiation of civic rights around the crisis point of war, responsibility for war, and the gains and losses of war.48 In the first utterance, the question is (p.143) the relation between libertas and bellum; in the second, by way of response, bellum is figured as the responsibility and punishment of the patres.49 Conversely, the phonic effect of bellum is more fully integrated into the rhythm of libertas-plebs than that of patres-peri-perepraemi, etc. For Kristeva, as for de Certeau, glossolalia and lalangue operate as ‘borderline discourses’,50 spoken by patients in analysis, avant-garde poets, or those possessed by the Holy Spirit. While these language effects have consequences for language as a whole in its psychological, social, and political aspects, the primary interest for Kristeva in particular is to ground the political subject in the desiring body: ‘La contrainte majeure de ce nouveau dispositif sémiotique—de cette nouvelle rythmique—devient l’expérience unique du sujet dans le procès signifiant, et sa base pulsionelle.’51 (‘The main constraint of this new semiotic system—this new rhythm—becomes the unique experience of the subject in the signifying process, and its instinctual basis.’) Hence, her insistence on the Page 11 of 19

 

‘The Noise, and the People’ psychoanalytic dimension of the political maintains her focus on personal subjectivity.52 Since her formulation of the semiotic situates it before subjectivity, however, her account of how the semiotic irrupts within the symbolic—creating what she calls the ‘subject in process/on trial’53—does not depend absolutely on the idea of the individual, and retains the potential to be considered with regard to the collective. Unlike the texts studied by Kristeva, the voice of the crowd in historiography is elusive. In the reading of Livy above I have proceeded as if the words on the page were exact records of the words of the crowd, quotations rather than representations. I want to suggest, however, that, whether the words have survived or not, (p.144) their particular sonic effect, and its psychological and political force, can be conjectured.54 This is the issue raised by Panagia in the quotation with which this chapter began: turning to the subjunctive, we could argue that historiography attempts to capture the noise of the crowd through echoes or responses to the sonic effects of multiple voices. The repeated syllables I have highlighted, heightened by alliteration, homoioteleuton, and extensive elision, suspend the clamor of the people between quotation and representation. Such effects are not, of course, exclusive to plebeian clamor: one only has to read ahead to Liv. 2.28–9 to see these effects in both contio and senate. In elite speech, too, clamor is associated with a departure from rationality all the more deplorable in those whose education equips them for senatorial deliberation. Both Tacitus and Pliny, for instance, speak of the dissonant sounds produced when senators en masse give way to unreasoning pity (Tac. Ann. 14.45; Plin. Ep. 2.11.6–7). But we can also see the sonic effects of clamor consciously adopted as rhetorical artifice for the purpose of persuasion. Here I have in mind Robert Morstein-Marx’s perceptive analysis of Cicero’s demagoguery in his Fourth Philippic,55 as well as the highly provocative remarks of Joy Connolly on a fragment of Cato the Elder: The speech is evidence that Cato’s message lies not only in his argument but also in the way it draws attention to the quality of the words as they roll off his tongue: the grain of their timbre, their intimate connection to Cato’s physical being. Its sensual assonance and granulated crackles exert the power of the body beyond the limits of the body to demand assent…the result is intensified, transsomatized message—the essence of the ‘hyperclarity’ of the traditional expression of authority.56 Connolly suggests that sound as the vehicle of authority extends the boundaries of the body. As she argues here and elsewhere, the elite orator’s appeal to the populus reconstitutes the parameters of the political space so as to compel assent to the apparatus of political representation: the senate, the lawcourts, the orator himself. At the same time, however, the ‘transsomatized message’ Page 12 of 19

 

‘The Noise, and the People’ Connolly identifies can be understood as a reminiscence of experience before the break of the symbolic, where no distinction is felt between what will later (p.145) become one’s own body parts and the bodies of others. As we have seen, Kristeva’s account of that experience in the semiotic chora is mediated through vocal and kinetic movement, where again no distinction is felt between the movement of the voice and that of any other body part. Cato’s voice works upon the crowd as a reminiscence of such experience, in a space where the crowd qua crowd is already generating similar sensory reminiscences through the partial surrender of individual mentality to that of the group. We are reminded that orators speak of their success in ‘moving the audience’. This has consequences for the construction and maintenance of singular, elite authority over the multiple, heterogeneous crowd, particularly in relation to knowledge. The sounds which recall the semiotic chora require no expertise in their production, yet their emergence in historiography and rhetoric attests to the individual author’s knowledge and skill in mimesis, analysis, and persuasion. We seem to capitulate once more to the distinction between speech and noise, and to accord greater authority to the former, unless we posit clamor as the expression, not of shared irrationality, but of an equality of intelligence—what was presumed by Menenius Agrippa when he spoke to the plebs. To consider this further, I want to turn to Cicero’s remarks which are very frequently cited in support of the idea that rhythm is a phenomenon universally understood by humans, regardless of learning.57 What is particularly interesting about Cicero’s overlapping comments in Orator (168, 173) and De oratore (3.195, 196, 198) is how clamor is seen to attest to the movements of listening and understanding in ways suggested by Panagia when he formulates ‘interruption [as] a condition of responsiveness’. In designating these as movements rather than actions, I want to suggest that they too partake of the semiotic. Yet in these scenes, the vocal-kinetic energies of the crowd— exclaiming and listening in a synaesthetic continuum58—are used as a benchmark for the orator to measure his performance in that most technical branch of his skill. The semiotic thus feeds back to the symbolic, and underwrites its authority. The opposition Cicero plays with here is between ars/ratio and natura, but he emphasizes throughout that nature has bestowed an (p.146) extraordinary capacity for the unlearned to exercise judgement on the art of rhythmic speech: ‘For everyone can discern by some sensibility, without any skill or reasoning, what is correct or incorrect in the practice of skill and reasoning’—Omnes enim tacito quodam sensu sine ulla arte aut ratione quae sint in artibus ac rationibus recta ac prava diiudicant (Cic. De orat. 3.195). This judgement is firmly grounded in the body: throughout both expositions Cicero emphasizes the sensory aspect of both the orator’s sentences and the audience’s natural apprehension of rhythm. Here the idea that somebody may not feel rhythm leads Page 13 of 19

 

‘The Noise, and the People’ him to imagine a human without human attributes, but particularly without human ears: ‘those who cannot perceive, I wonder what ears they have, or what they have that is like a human’—qui non sentiunt, quas auris habeant aut quid in his hominis simile sit nescio (Cic. Or. 168). The ears become the central body part for his discourse: ‘nature has grounded the capacity to judge speech in our ears’—vocum iudicium ipsa natura in auribus nostris conlocavit (Cic. Or. 173). The continuity between the movements of listening, seeing, and calling out, delineated by Cicero’s continual slippage between the visual and the aural, evokes the pre-subjective chora. Cicero is able to see the vocal response of the audience—exclamare vidi—just as he imagines their ears on the lookout for rhythmic clausulae—exspectant aures (Cic. Or. 168). Human understanding of sound and language is strongest, Crassus claims in De oratore, ‘because it is ingrained in our common senses’—quod ea sunt in communibus infixa sensibus (Cic. De orat. 3.195). And this phrase communibus sensibus evokes the idea of senses common to humanity, as well as senses shared in the experience of crowd-as-body:59 the senses which work together in the visible and responsive moment of clamor. Crucially, the audience response here operates either as a corrective to faulty rhythm, or an affirmation of its success: the assemblies shout out, when phrases are well-turned (Cic. Or. 168); the theatre shouts if a verse is too short or too long (Cic. Or. 173) or if a syllable is given the wrong quantity (Cic. De orat. 3.196). Clamor thus arrives at the status of ‘the account’, policing the distinction between proper and improper speech, while it resists becoming logos. (p.147) We know from political narratives that clamor populi is a borderline discourse; sometimes no more than mere noise, at other times accorded the status of a message, bearing the Will of the Roman People.60 It is also, as I hope to have shown, a borderline discourse in its linguistic and sonic effects, underlying the discourses of rhetoric, and providing their counterpoint. In the narratives of historiography, I have suggested, historians artfully or unconsciously capture effects which are analogous to the effects of crowd noise. Conversely, the reader can, in speculative mode, dwell on the individual syllables of an imagined crowd slogan, drawing them out in a series of repetitions within which an echo of clamor can be felt. But the task is not merely to replicate clamor, which would maintain the illusion that it is possible to return to an archaic state before the irruption of the symbolic.61 Rather, the ways in which clamor makes us consider language and discourse can provide other ways of hearing the dominant voice of historiography, the explanatory narrative which combines the modes of mimesis and metadiscourse.62 The latter purports to be, in Rancière’s words with which we began, ‘the account by which a sonorous emission is understood as speech’, yet, as we have just seen, the sound of the audience has the potential to take on this discursive role, and this enables us to think of noise as not merely disruptive Page 14 of 19

 

‘The Noise, and the People’ of logos. The semiotic undertow of the very language in which the account is formulated both compromises and reinforces its authority; even as it partitions speech and noise, its own noise constitutes its persuasiveness. The opening sentence of Sallust’s Bellum Catilinae provides an appropriate articulation of this dynamic. Omnes homines qui sese student praestare ceteris animalibus summa ope niti decet ne vitam silentio transeant, veluti pecora quae natura prona atque ventri oboedientia finxit. All humans who desire to stand out from the animal world ought to strive to the best of their ability, not to pass through their lives in silence, like the beasts which nature has made on all fours, obedient to the belly.63 (p.148) Sallust begins his analysis from first principles with the distinction between humans and beasts, conceived as an opposition not between speech and noise, but between sound and silence. Much later, sound will receive its content, and be sublimated into the written text (Sal. Cat. 3.1). The silent beast is downward looking and navel-gazing by nature, while the human is or ought to be striving upwards—praestare…summa ope. Yet already in this opening sentence Sallust is both thinking and feeling through his concepts, as is evident also from the abundant alliterations of the preface. The beasts may go through their whole lives in silence, but the long o of silentio evokes their lowing, which in Sallust’s view does not even merit recognition as noise. And that repressed sound is most evident in the onomatopoeic opening words omnes homines, the mugitus of the human collective. At the very moment where Sallust inaugurates his historical narrative as an analytical discourse of universal relevance— logos writ large—the semiotic pulsation of his words draws its power from the everpresent, underlying murmur of the clamor populi. Notes:

(1) Panagia (2009: 60). I would like to thank the editors, Sebastian Matzner and Stephen Harrison, as well as Hannah-Marie Chidwick, Alexander Dressler, Ahuvia Kahane, Duncan Kennedy, and Miriam Leonard for talking through this paper with me, and Brad Potter for reading through the final draft. (2) All translations, unless otherwise indicated, are my own. (3) Laird (1999: 137). (4) On utterance as event, Laird (1999: 150–2). (5) Tac. Hist. 1.32.1–2. (6) For elision in prose, cf. Riggsby (1991).

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‘The Noise, and the People’ (7) As Tacitus will narrate at Hist. 1.45.1–2: ‘they abused Galba, praised the judgement of the soldiers…kept demanding punishment for the consul designate’—increpare Galbam, laudare militum iudicium…Marium Celsum, consulem designatum…ad supplicium expostulabat. This later crowd is a mixture of senate and people. (8) ‘The filthy plebs, accustomed to circus and theatre’—plebs sordida et circo et theatris sueta (Tac. Hist. 1.4.3). Cf. Aldrete (1999: 102) on the shifting of imperial political topography towards places of ceremony and entertainment. On the soundscape of the circus, Nelis-Clément (2008). (9) Millar 1998; Morstein-Marx 2004; Mouritsen 2001. (10) Morstein-Marx (2004: 128). On the limited voice of the people, North (1990); Connolly (2006). (11) Rancière (1998: 22–3). (12) Liv. 2.32.8–11. (13) Ogilvie 1965 ad loc. (14) Contrast the symbolism of the human head at the end of Livy Book 1. (15) Rancière (1995: 82); cf. Rancière (1998: 25). (16) Breaugh (2013: 94; my emphases). (17) Dionysius further allows the members the capacity to hypothesize, while Plutarch casts the bodily exchange in the modes of accusation and mockery (Coriolanus 6.3). (18) Dio’s version of the parable carries out the process from speech to action by having the members vote on their rebellion against the belly (D.C. 4.17.11). (19) Also Florus 1.17.23.2. (20) Livy is alone in claiming plebeian origin for Menenius. Dionysius introduces him as a mature and moderate senator (D.H. 6.49.2), and has his supporters regard him as ἀνδρῶν ἀριστοκρατικῶν τὸν ἐπιφανέστατον (D.H. 6.57.1). (21) Rancière (1998: 24). (22) Ogilvie (1965: 313) implies both: ‘Menenius is a plebeian and is supposed to speak prisco illo et horrido modo. To represent such archaic uncouthness directly would offend…’; Smith (2010: 267–8) on this speech as part of the historiographical tradition.

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‘The Noise, and the People’ (23) On Menenius as embodiment of concordia, Connolly (2007: 45). Cf. Momigliano (1942). (24) Rancière (1998: 35). I would add that this disruption is registered and recorded by the historiographical narrative’s continued incorporation, accommodation, and marking of the parable as parable. (25) Panagia (2009: 61). (26) Compare the Alexandrians’ punctuation of Germanicus’ speech in P.Oxy 2435 recto. (27) Kristeva (1984: 26). (28) Kristeva (1984: 28). (29) At the same time, bodily experience is not restricted to the body as we understand it in a post-infantile sense. We find an echo of this undifferentiated experience in the ancient texts which declare a continuum between popular noise and the natural world, often in the service of denying it political validity. The locus classicus is Pl. R. 492b–c, but we might also consider the similes at Hom. Il. 2.142–52 and Verg. A. 1.148–54 (cf. Morwood 1998), or, in a different tenor, Hor. Carm. 1.20. (30) Panagia (2009: 54). (31) Kristeva (1984: 16). (32) This is also the term insisted upon by Laplanche and Pontalis, as observed by their translator (1973, 216 n. β). (33) ‘Transposition’ is, of course, Kristeva’s preferred term to describe the passage from one sign system to another, after what she perceived as the ideological hijacking and banalization of her initial coinage, ‘intertextuality’; Kristeva (1984: 59–60). (34) Kristeva (1974: 213; her emphasis). (35) Cf. Butler (2015: 59–68). (36) Some editors propose fremens for frequens in Horace’s text. On arma and ad arma as recurrent popular expressions, cf. Nisbet and Hubbard on Hor. Carm. 1.35.15; Oakley on Liv. 6.28.3; Ogilvie (1965) on Liv. 3.15.5; Servius ad A. 11.453 calls this the militaris vox. (37) Dean (2016: 3). For more formal strategies in the Roman circus, NelisClément (2008: 452).

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‘The Noise, and the People’ (38) Aldrete, on the other hand, observes that syllabic repetition performs a function in enabling the crowd to pick up new slogans and to maintain unison in their chanting. His example from Dio of an extraordinary degree of unison, however, is clearly marked as exceptional by the historian (Dio 76.4.3, 5). Aldrete (1999: 125–6). (39) De Certeau (1996: 31). (40) The echo effect will be amplified by the structures and surfaces of the imperial city. Augustus’ well-known claim to have found Rome a city of brick and left it in marble (a more acoustically lively substance) would have transformed the civic soundscape. Cf. the acoustic analysis of the circus space by NelisClément (2008). (41) The association of clamor with currere is very common in historical narratives of group excitement: cf. the ‘rhythmic crowd’, Canetti (1962: 31–4). (42) Fantham’s passing comment on this—‘a scene surely worthy of Monty Python’ (2005: 214)—internalizes the elite dismissal of plebeian speech as mere noise/nonsense. In a more serious vein, Vasaly (2014: 102) de-authorizes the plebs by identifying their actions as incoherent and inarticulate. (43) Cf. Leigh (1995), reading these as a mode of expression which merits political status. (44) Liv. 2.23.2. (45) Ogilvie (1965: 300): ‘little originality…hackneyed…commonplace.’ (46) Liv. 2.24.2. (47) This corresponds to what Aldrete (1999: 139) categorizes as the ‘equationtype’ acclamation. (48) Sallust outlines the same fundamental inequality in narrative mode: ‘To the oligarchs accrued treasury, provinces, magistracies, glories, triumphs; the people were hard pressed by military service and poverty.’—penes eosdem [paucos] aerarium proviniciae magistratus gloriae triumphique erant; populus militia atque inopia urgebatur (Sal. Jug. 41.7). The elisions in the last four words articulate the connection between civic duty and unequal wealth in plebeian experience. (49) Cf. Leigh (1995: 205) on this trope in the speech of Licinius Macer (Sal. Hist. 3.48.17f.). (50) Kristeva (1983: 40–4); cf. Barzilai (1991: 295): ‘this is a border, not a beyond, of language.’ Page 18 of 19

 

‘The Noise, and the People’ (51) Kristeva (1974: 218). Noland (2005: 121–2) and Smith (1996: 102–5) from different perspectives express disappointment in Kristeva’s emphasis, and in the conclusions of her semiotic reading of Mallarmé. (52) On Kristeva’s Maoist engagement here, cf. Brandt (2005: 29–32); Sjöholm (2005: 13–16). (53) Kristeva (1984: 102). (54) Analogous to this is the issue raised by Kristeva (1983: 40) about intonation as ‘an archaic component of syntax’ previously neglected in psycho-linguistics; cf. Noland (2005). (55) Morstein-Marx (2004: 139–43). (56) Connolly (2007: 51). (57) Wilkinson (1970: 154–5); Connolly (2007: 225–7); Valiavitcharska (2013: 1– 2); Arena (2013: 200). (58) For synaesthetic responses to different art forms, see Porter (2013) and, more generally, Butler and Purves (2013). (59) Mankin (2011: 286) likens communibus sensibus to the communi mente of Cic. De orat. 3.115, which he glosses as an ‘almost Freudian expression’ (204); cf. Connolly (2007: 226) on a ‘collective political awareness’. (60) Morstein-Marx (2004: 119–28). (61) On the necessary reciprocity of glossolalia and interpretation, cf. de Certeau (1996: 36–7). (62) Cf. Kahane (2007). (63) Sal. Cat. 1.1.

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Loud and Proud

Complex Inferiorities: The Poetics of the Weaker Voice in Latin Literature Sebastian Matzner and Stephen Harrison

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198814061 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198814061.001.0001

Loud and Proud The Voice of the praeco in Roman Love Elegy Dunstan Lowe

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198814061.003.0009

Abstract and Keywords This chapter brings into view another non-elite voice, one that lingers in the genre of Latin love elegy, and is typically overshadowed by elite oratory: that of the praeco (‘announcer’). The term encompassed various kinds of informal public speaker, from hucksters to heralds, but usually the ‘vigorous and none-tooscrupulous salesman’. Its practitioners had a significant role in Augustan Rome, and some became very rich and influential. This chapter discusses how, in keeping with love elegy’s favouring of counter-cultural idioms that subvert the social ideals and expectations of freeborn elite Roman males, the praeco as a low-status, informal public speaker (details of whose speeches are lost to us) can be reconstructed as an important part of the playfully inferior self-stylization of the love elegists’ poetic persona: the stereotype of a cunning yet charismatic persuader adding charm to his wares. Keywords:   praeco, oratory, rhetoric, Latin love elegy, Catullus, Horace, Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid, trope

Freeborn elite Roman males confirmed their status through acts of speaking, both formal and informal, and the love-poet constructs a new status partly by subverting those speech-acts, switching registers almost as readily as the satirist. Taking a broad view, one might assume that the elegiac amator is a thinly disguised forensic orator, since so much of his energy is spent on persuasive speech, which we habitually think of as formal rhetoric.1 Indeed, speech can be at least as ornamented in elegy as in Roman epic.2 However, in Page 1 of 20

 

Loud and Proud this chapter I propose a different view, by drawing attention to an alternative model: the praeco, a figure that encompassed various kinds of public speakers from employees of the state to deceptive salesmen. Praecones had a significant presence in Augustan society and some became very rich and influential.3 A stereotype of a cunning yet charismatic self-promoter emerged. We can only guess at the performance styles and tropes used by this perhaps embarrassing, yet just as distinctively (p.150) Roman, relative of the formal orator. However, I suggest that there are rewards in seeking traces of praeconium in the tropes of the love elegists. First I shall describe the role of praecones in Roman social history, then turn to the concept of praeconium and its uses in Roman love elegy. Next I shall argue that Horace contributed to the development of the poet as praeco, and outline a form of praeconium prominent in both Horace and the elegists: the advertising of the female body.

Praecones in Roman Life and History The praeco, whose name some ancient sources derived from the verb praedicare, ‘recite in people’s presence’,4 is adept at getting people’s attention by being always loud and often persuasive. Loudness and persuasiveness both contributed to his distasteful reputation and deserve consideration here, but as we shall see, the latter has much broader implications in Augustan poetry. His activities span the spectrum of social dignity (political assemblies, the comitia, funerals, theatrical performances, auction-halls, the open streets), and our evidence does not permit an exclusive division between the civic and the private praeco.5 He is a combination of announcer and microphone, who can make a single word cut through the noise of a crowd, or even a traffic jam.6 Since assertive speech was characteristic of masculine auctoritas, it belies the loudhailer’s low social status in interesting ways. For example, parsing the differences between the praeco and the praefica, both paid for public utterances at wealthy people’s funerals, reveals much about how speech-acts and gender roles defined one another at Rome. The praefica was a professional female mourner who modelled lament for the female slaves, which included a musically accompanied chant (p.151) (nenia). At least in Republican times the praefica praised the deceased, but female lament-speech in Roman textual sources is highly artificial (and never attributed to a praefica), so we cannot be sure how articulate these vocalizations were, in the Augustan period or any other.7 By contrast, the male praeco’s role was to communicate prepared words during the funerary procession itself (pompa), somewhat like the male relative who (in elite families) delivered a formal eulogy, though both performances may of course have been emotive. During the Republic, funeral processions even took place in the Circus Maximus, where the games themselves were inaugurated by a solemn parade of a different kind (the pompa circensis).8 Despite his low social status the praeco was therefore an instrument of authority even at funerals, potentially addressing large assemblies, just as the state-employed praeco did.

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Loud and Proud Our knowledge of what the historical praeco sounded like is limited. We know the short script for proclaiming high-status funerals (funera indictiva).9 We do not know how he sounded when choosing his own words, but the closest thing available may be the epitaph of a late Republican professional named Aulus Granius:10 Rogat ut resistas, hospes, te hic tacitus lapis, dum ostendit quod mandavit quoius umbram tegit. Pudentis hominis frugi cum magna fide, praeconis Oli Grani sunt ossa heic sita. Tantum est. hoc voluit nescius ne esses. Vale. A. Granius M. l. Stabilio praeco This mute stone asks you to stop by, stranger. He has something to show you, as commissioned by the man whose shade he covers. Here lie the bones of Olus Granius the praeco: modest, discreet, and honourable. That is all: he wanted you to have the information. Have a good day. Aulus Granius Stabilio, freedman of Marcus, the praeco. (p.152)

Even in the formulaic language of an epitaph, a certain urbanitas may be detected.11 It is not surprising that Rome’s wealthy elite, who disliked the city’s noise (and smell), scorned those who made a living through loud or coaxing voices.12 Written sources emphasize the harshness of those voices, activating the stereotype that plebeians and rustics had obnoxious manners, and perhaps also protesting resistance to their charms. Cicero makes the low status of praecones very clear, and his charges against the execrable Piso include being the grandson of such a man.13 Cicero jokes that when Piso hears the cockcrow, he thinks his raucous grandfather has come back to life.14 Petronius’ Habinnas has a slave who recites Vergil in the harshest voice Encolpius has ever heard; this resulted from the unorthodox apprenticeship of listening not to conventional educators (grammatici and rhetores) but to street-pedlars (circulatores), a group not sharply distinguishable from auction-crier praecones.15 This may be a jibe at Nero, who showed off his voice in the theatre by performing and even announcing himself the winner, which Cicero says not even an official praeco would normally do.16 We hear of praecones (p.153) prospering from the second century BCE into the early empire, and they may have profited as a group from the political turmoil of late Republican and early Augustan Rome, when auctions were used to liquidate large estates. One or two were celebrated wits, though in the judgement of the elite, somewhat extrovert and lacking in taste or decorum.17 The same elite prejudices operate in a separate Roman stereotype of annoying prolixity: the barber (tonsor). Whereas the wealthy were groomed privately at home by slaves, who could not speak freely, people loitered and Page 3 of 20

 

Loud and Proud gossiped in barbershops: Volteius Mena, the praeco whom Horace describes in the Epistles (discussed below), is first seen idly cleaning his own nails with a knife under a barber’s awning even though he is already shaven.18 Barbers themselves were thought talkative, if not necessarily loud; their other praeco-like traits include plying an ignoble trade outside in the street (even some of those with their own premises worked outside), and in some instances becoming very wealthy, which did nothing to erode elite scorn at the profession.19 However, the praeco appears in Augustan poetry far more frequently than the tonsor, as if his attention-grabbing voice and personality intruded more forcefully into the imaginations of contemporary authors. Loudness, in all its senses, is what defines praecones as well as those who imitate them. The scornful attitude behind the negative stereotype of the praeco might derive in part from anxiety that low-status skilful speaking might infect an elite society unified by oratory. The Greeks and Romans considered salesmanship and smalltime trading vulgar, mainly because it involved deception.20 It is therefore logical that the late Republican conservative elite considered political campaigning a distasteful type (p.154) of begging.21 The ‘touting’ of the Roman love elegists is not exactly comparable to the respectable political activity of petitio, but a certain Lucius Aelius might make us think otherwise. He was a praeco’s son, posthumously known as ‘Praeconinus’, who not only taught Varro and Cicero but wrote speeches for members of the elite.22 According to Pliny, the praeco father—clearly a state employee—had taken to wearing the broad-stripe toga, normally the uniform of senators.23 It is tempting to see in Aelius ‘Praeconinus’ the prototype used-car salesman transforming into the prototype spin-doctor. There is dispute over why the Julian law of 45–44 BCE disbarred praecones from several municipal offices; it is unlikely to have reflected mere distaste for their activities.24 But the public functions of the praeco did little or nothing to legitimize the private ones, which probably drew more income and certainly more attention from the elite. The first indications of an emerging stereotype appear in the late Republic.25 In the mainstream opinion of conservative Romans, for which Cicero is our best source, professional praeconium is a tawdry business that reduces everything to a sale, not least a man’s own voice.26 This is how Cicero blackens the name of Sextus Naevius, when suing him on behalf of his ex-partner: C. Quinctius fuit P. Quincti huius frater, sane ceterarum rerum pater familias et prudens et attentus, una in re paulo minus consideratus, qui societatem cum Sex. Naevio fecerit, viro bono, verum tamen non ita instituto ut iura societatis et officia certi patris familias nosse posset; non quo ei deesset ingenium; nam neque parum facetus scurra Sex. Naevius neque inhumanus praeco umquam est existimatus. Quid ergo est? Cum ei Page 4 of 20

 

Loud and Proud natura (p.155) nihil melius quam vocem dedisset, pater nihil praeter libertatem reliquisset, vocem in quaestum contulit, libertate usus est quo impunius dicax esset. Gaius Quinctius was the brother of this Publius Quinctius, generally a wise and attentive head of the family. He was less shrewd in one thing only: that he entered into business with Sextus Naevius, a good man, but not well versed in the rules of fair dealing and the duties of a good head of the family. This is not to say that he was unintelligent: Sextus Naevius has never been thought a less-than-witty parasite or an uncultured barker (praeco). What is he, then? Since nature gave him nothing better than a voice, and his father left nothing to him besides free birth, he turned his voice to profit, and used his freedom to crack wise without getting into trouble.27 The self-promotion that defined the stereotypical praeco has a natural affinity with the speaking voice of the elegiac amator. Indeed, the connection between literal and metaphorical self-marketing had already been recognized by Catullus in a humorous epigram that transforms a desire-object from ‘goods’ into customer: Cum puero bello praeconem qui videt esse     quid credat nisi se vendere discupere? When a man sees an auction-crier with a pretty boy,     He can only think that the crier is desperately advertising himself.28

The stereotypical praeco is a cunning yet charismatic persuader adding charm to his wares—the embarrassing cousin, as it were, of the forensic orator—whose less mannered and more playful style offered a more appealing model for the love elegist’s persuasive skill.

Praeconium in Roman Love Elegy The elegiac amator is in the persuasion business.29 Sweet-talk, blanditiae, is a tool of his trade, as much as it is for the pimp and prostitute (leno and meretrix), whom I shall claim to be closely related stereotypes.30 (p.156) This arguably makes blanditiae a subaltern analogue of formal rhetoric, employed by people of both sexes who exert influence by offering not force but pleasure, whether it is physical and sensory, or intellectual and emotive in the form of pride and selfworth.31 The pseudo-Vergilian Copa, in describing a hostess and her venue, performs a sample of the sweet-talk that is her specialism.32 In love elegy, one of the amator’s most important tactics is to publicize the value of the puella both to herself and to others, thus promoting himself as both lover and poet. Such publicity occupies the significant, even pivotal, middle ground between the male who desires and competes, and the author who describes and composes. This Page 5 of 20

 

Loud and Proud might be expressed using the Girardian concept of mimetic or triangular desire, with authorial persona and desire-object at two corners, and at the third, the reader as mediator.33 The elegiac amator, vying with individual rivals for the beloved, assumes that he is gradually communicating his desire to readers, making them into additional rivals. In fact, all of his utterances presume that the reader shares his viewpoint: indeed, armed with generic expectations, the reader already sees the beloved as desirable. Ostentatiously imitating this desire, through promoting self to beloved and beloved to reader, is what fashions the amator persona. Ovid calls this elegiac activity of publicizing praeconia (the singular praeconium is always pluralized for metrical reasons) in three key passages, one from the Amores and two from the Ars amatoria. In my view his repeated use of the word is quite understandable, since it reveals the salesman as a distinct ingredient of the elegist persona. The following passage is especially striking: Fallimur, an nostris innotuit illa libellis?     sic erit—ingenio prostitit illa meo. (p.157) et merito! quid enim formae praeconia feci?     vendibilis culpa facta puella mea est. Am I deceived, or was she made famous by my books?     So be it—my genius is what sold her. As I deserved! After all, I did advertize her looks (formae praeconia feci).     It is my fault that the girl has become marketable.34

In this expression of the rivalry that, according to Girard, often arises out of mimetic desire, Ovid uses the language of the sex trade (innotuit…prostitit… vendibilis), and in the next line even berates himself for playing Corinna’s pimp (me lenone placet).35 He goes on to argue that poets are all too adept at convincing the reader even with supernatural myths, which are attractive but fantastical, and declares that he has unthinkingly convinced his readers of Corinna’s genuine charms. This gives the pimp-language ironic resonance, not only for love elegy but potentially for almost all poetry featuring myth, which is reimagined as worthless goods from sweet-talking salesmen. Amores 3.17 is about selling poetry books, which metonymize both the ‘goods’ (the puella) and the poet’s voice—both of the things that the praeco is so notoriously talented at selling. In two further passages from the Ars Amatoria, a text that introduces even more mercantilism into the elegiac scenario, Ovid praises the object of his desire as a way to further his own ends: to the puella herself in the first case and to his readers in the second. The identical phrase reappears in both cases: Nec faciem, nec te pigeat laudare capillos     Et teretes digitos exiguumque pedem: Page 6 of 20

 

Loud and Proud Delectant etiam castas praeconia formae;     Virginibus curae grataque forma sua est Don’t balk at praising her looks, her hair,     Her smooth fingers and slender foot. Even modest women like having their good looks publicized (praeconia     formae);     Even inexperienced girls care about, and like, their looks.36 (p.158) Nos facimus placitae late praeconia formae:     Nomen habet Nemesis, Cynthia nomen habet: Vesper et Eoae novere Lycorida terrae:     Et multi, quae sit nostra Corinna, rogant. We [poets] give wide publicity to the good looks we like (praeconia formae):     Nemesis is a famous name, and so is Cynthia. Both West and Eastern lands know about Lycoris,     and many ask who my Corinna is.37

If we set the term praeconium in its social and cultural context, and especially in its limited pattern of usage in Roman poetry, we can see that Ovid’s adoption of this phrase is a very logical development for the specific cultural moment of Augustus’ later reign. Although we do not hear the strident political voice of a Catullus or Lucilius, poets reflect on self-promotion using stereotypes of the praeco and related figures, whose stridency came with inbuilt ironies.

Praeconium in Other Contexts The term praeconium (‘proclamation’, ‘touting’, ‘barking’, etc.) has a very restricted distribution pattern in classical Latin, which reflects the accidents of history and can only be used speculatively, but can shed further light on its relevance to love elegy.38 It is rare in prose, and poetic attestations are also somewhat limited: Propertius uses it once, Ovid then uses it repeatedly, and it recurs a few times in post-Ovidian epic.39 As mentioned above, the term praeco denoted a state employee at public assemblies, and authors mention this perfectly legitimate civic function. Indeed, praeco was the Latin equivalent for (p.159) the Greek word ‘herald’ (κῆρυξ), which could include the charismatic crowd-managing performer as well as the mouthpiece of dignitaries, and when used in that sense it lacked negative overtones.40 But by the time of Augustus, the ‘huckster’ stereotype had emerged, meaning that when Propertius and Ovid first begin to mention praeconium in verse one might already suspect a subversive effect, which Ovid merely extends further by applying it to the elegist’s own activities. Propertius employs it in differentiating civic from elegiac values. Calliope tells him not to go off to war, but be a poet instead: nil tibi sit rauco praeconia classica cornu

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Loud and Proud     flare, nec Aonium tingere Marte nemus May it not be your business to sound the charge     on the harsh bugle, or stain Helicon’s grove with war.41

Sounding ‘the charge’, more literally ‘the battle-signal declaration’ (praeconia classica), is an act of aural violence implicitly contrasted with the more pleasing sounds of love-poetry. Propertius is indeed supposed to haunt the grove of Helicon, but only in a poetic, not a military sense, and the same applies to making proclamations. When made with the voice and not the bugle, praeconium meant public praise or encomium, for example the panegyric of Messalla in a poem ascribed to Tibullus.42 Ovid, too, uses praeconium in this more literal and traditional sense.43 But Ovid, as we have seen, also created a new usage for the term praeconium to refer to the skill of the love-poet. This development, which reflects his habitual testing of what is politically acceptable, casts an ambiguous light on his three new exilic definitions of the word—all of which occur in pairs that link the (p.160) Tristia with the Letters from Pontus. In the first pair, he applies it to the reputation he has created for his wife in the Tristia (as he did for Corinna in the Amores), which she must now live up to.44 In the second pair, he applies it to his poetic accounts of his downfall.45 This is one of many signs that his exile-poetry is an extended inversion of elegiac tropes: he remains in the business of self-promotion and sweet-talking, despite the change of stakes and emotional merchandise. Third but not least, Ovid applies it to his own poetic praises of his imperial patrons Augustus and Germanicus.46 At this point there is room for doubt whether praeconium is honest proclamation, or the less reliable ‘touting’ of the salesman-poet, as Ovid defined it in his love-poetry. If it is the latter, then Ovid’s adoption of the praeconium concept in the exilic poetry fits other, more explicit avowals of humility—which the Augustan trope of recusatio (poets refusing to attempt grand epic, declaring themselves suited to a different genre) primes us to second-guess as covert bragging.47 This is a weighty narrative to rest on so few selected instances of a word, and may combine what Silk has called ‘patent’ and ‘latent’ effects;48 but it makes sense of the term’s comparative frequency in Augustan elegiac metre, and coheres with Ovid’s more programmatic uses of the term as discussed above.

Horace Reading Augustan literary culture through the figure of the praeco takes us beyond love elegy to Horace, the other great first-person poet of the Augustan period. The love elegists struggle with the abased-abasing pimp (the female lena and sometimes male leno), who is (p.161) usually an enemy but sometimes an ally or even a second self.49 Horace has an equally rich and conflicted relationship with his own abased-abasing comic stereotype, the urban buffoonparasite (scurra).50 Despite their very diverse functions, both pimp and parasite share common ground with the crier: all three survive by catching the ear of

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Loud and Proud their wealthy social superiors, and all three were thought eager to profit through deception. Recent work on Horace has shown that he casts himself, however ironically, in the role of scurra to his wealthy patron Maecenas.51 But we might well see an overlap between the stereotypes of the scurra and the praeco, because both were outspoken jokers. The differences were that praecones profited by winning a plurality of ears rather than just one; were not so directly constrained by economic and social dependency; and could openly acknowledge their mercantile motives.52 Otherwise, the two figures had much in common. In fact, that of the pimp (leno) discussed above might be seen as bridging the other two, through the transition from public advertisement to discreet and private communication once the client is attracted.53 One wealthy praeco, Quintus Granius (perhaps a kinsman of Aulus Granius?), was a friend of Cicero remembered both for witty banter and for aiming clever quips at powerful politicians; Cicero laments that by the middle of the first century, not even Roman knights had that kind of freedom.54 A fragment of Lucilius reports that at least one of Granius’ dicta served as content for his own verses; according to Cicero, Lucilius said much about Granius.55 Horace, a lowlier form of knight than Lucilius was, has to negotiate a sensitive political landscape, mounting a much more diplomatic mode of satiric attack that does (p.162) not confront real targets. I suggest that praeconium is the underlying model for the Lucilian satiric voice, which Horace—in life not just a friend, but a self-proclaimed son of a praeco—commutes into the contiguous but less strident tones of the scurra. Lucilius’ high social rank is undoubtedly what granted him the freedom to make potentially offensive remarks, yet his subject-matter reflects the decidedly lowstatus milieu of the iambic poets, Old Comedy, and especially Menippean satire. In a post-internecine Rome where the facetious banter of a Lucilius or Granius was impossible, least of all for Horace, the witty repartee and low-status milieu of verse satire was still safe. Horace simply finds indirect and ironic ways to do it, trading stridency for a more self-effacing mode of persuasiveness. The praeco occupies a significant portion of Horace’s scurra complex, emerging both through his own family background and as a series of background characters. Horace calls his father a praeco, which probably means ‘auctioneer’, as well as a coactor or ‘auction broker’,56 in defiant tones that imply that these trades would, and did, attract the sneers of his enemies. Gowers rightly emphasizes that Horace’s education and career is not the result of his own pushiness, but that of his praeco father.57 He thereby casts himself as a benign embodiment of his father’s skill in marketing a product and creating added value. Like Lucilius and Cicero before him, Horace criticizes the extravagance of the millionaire auctioneer Gallonius;58 in the Ars Poetica, once again echoing Lucilius, he compares a wealthy poet attracting flatterers to an auction-crier attracting potential buyers.59 In Epistles 1.7, the role of the praeco is profoundly implicated in Horace’s own poetic persona. He declares that Maecenas knows Page 9 of 20

 

Loud and Proud the value of the gifts he has bestowed, unlike the man who presses a guest (p. 163) to take pears before mentioning that they will be pig-feed otherwise.60 In a second parable, a skinny fox sneaks into a grain-bin and cannot escape once full; Horace says that he is all too grateful to stay fat, and has lavished words of praise on Maecenas, who calls him modest.61 In other words, the subtext of the poem is that gifts are not always as valuable as they seem, yet Maecenas and Horace have successfully sold clientship and patronship to one another. Horace then tells the story of a praeco called Volteius Mena to illustrate once again the problems that gifts from patrons can cause: this town-mouse gains a wealthy patron and the means to live in the country, but finds that his urban lifestyle suited him better after all (Hor. Ep. 1.7.46–98). In the final poem of a collection in which self-promotion is a recurrent theme, Horace turns to the promotion of his own poetry in a striking way. He bids farewell to his poetry-book in the tones of a pimp or slave-dealer: Epistles 1 will exhibit itself before the crowds, depilated with pumice and despising the modesty of keys and seals, only to regret its decisions when it gets hurt, and be left on the shelf when its satisfied ‘lover’ gets tired.62 As I have argued in connection with love elegy, the praeco and the pimp or prostitute are conceptually similar not only because of their mercantilism, but because of their inviting yet wheedling voices. In his communications to patron and readership, Horace reflects on the public performance embodied by the praeco, the individual attention embodied by the scurra, and the leno who transitions from one to the other. In aligning his poetic persona with such inferior figures Horace empowered himself, very like his elegist contemporaries and successors. The praeco and leno were already features of humorous writing in Latin, including Lucilian verse satire; for Horace, self-described son of a freedman auctioneer, they proved attractive models for the author’s low social status combined with the talent to amuse and flatter (whether directly, or through third parties such as Gallonius or Volteius Mena). The figure of the scurra in particular enabled Horace to promote his client-patron friendship (p.164) (amicitia) with Maecenas in an ironized, selfeffacing manner. The elegists obtain similar empowerment when casting their persuasiveness as praeconium: love-as-salesmanship, like love-as-slavery, claims a subaltern position that is paradoxically assertive, in that it makes desire explicit. The difference is that slavishness is passive and plaintive, but praeconium is active and boastful.

Itemized Praise of the Female Body In the context of erotic verse, the concept of marketing a product coincides with the misogynistic treatment of women as goods or livestock by itemizing their physical features.63 Importantly, the elegiac amator often seeks to banish materialism from the erotic relationship, since it turns puella into meretrix.64 Sharon L. James has shown how his offers of allegiance in deeds and (especially) words replace tangible goods.65 But measuring value by turning sight into words, despite its often dehumanizing and commodifying effect, is an obvious Page 10 of 20

 

Loud and Proud procedure for assessing any aesthetic object whether in praise or blame.66 In Roman love-poetry a girl’s physical charms may be assessed independently of her personhood,67 a treatment that no right-minded man would invite upon himself.68 There are several elegiac examples, especially in Ovid, most obviously Amores 1.5.69 (p.165) Horace’s second satire has been convincingly read as an antidote to the squeamishness of such idealizing portraits which, in Gowers’s words, ‘homes in directly on the medium corpus’.70 Horace argues that a woman or boy of low social status is as good as any when it comes to sex, and rejoices that women on sale (i.e. prostitutes) can be judged for a bad leg or an ugly foot and measured by eye. Regibus hic mos est, ubi equos mercantur: opertos inspiciunt, ne si facies, ut saepe, decora molli fulta pede est, emptorem inducat hiantem, quod pulcrae clunes, breve quod caput, ardua cervix. Hoc illi recte: ne corporis optima Lyncei contemplere oculis, Hypsaea caecior illa, quae mala sunt, spectes. ‘o crus, o bracchia’. Verum depugis, nasuta, brevi latere ac pede longo est. This is how kings go about buying horses: they inspect them covered, in case (as often happens) an attractive front, supported by a weak foot, takes in the mesmerized buyer, because the haunch is fine, the head short and the neck steep. They are right to do this: you shouldn’t examine the best parts of the body with the eyes of Lynceus, but the bad parts as if you were blinder than Hypsaea. ‘What legs!’ ‘What arms!’ In fact she is arseless, big-nosed, with a stout middle and big feet.71

Itemizing by body-part is how men evaluated livestock (of either gender), as shown in the following portrait of the ideal ox, as quoted by Columella: Parandi sunt boves novelli, quadrati, grandibus membris, cornibus proceris ac nigrantibus et robustis, fronte lata et crispa, hirtis auribus, oculis et labris nigris, naribus resimis patulisque, cervice longa et torosa, palearibus amplis et paene ad genua promissis, pectore magno, armis vastis, capaci et tamquam inplente utero, lateribus porrectis, lumbis latis…. The oxen you should buy are young and square-set, with large limbs and tall, blackish, sturdy horns. The brow is broad and curly, the ears shaggy, the eyes and lips black, the nostrils snub and wide, the neck long (p.166) and muscular, the dewlaps full and hanging almost to the knees. The breast is large, the shoulders massive, the belly large and pregnant-looking, the flanks long, the loins broad….72

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Loud and Proud Just as the poets of archaic Greece sometimes applied horse imagery to hetairai, Horace intentionally and explicitly moves the description of women’s bodies into the territory of commerce.73 It is tempting to suppose that in antiquity, as now, praecones performed an especially energetic auction chant or ‘cattle rattle’ at livestock auctions. In Apuleius’ Metamorphoses (8.24–5), a praeco tries to sell Lucius in a lively performance filled with jokes and falsehoods. We might also think of the bride-auctions described by Greek ethnographers, which reflect a much wider commodification of female bodies.74 Elegy provides at least one case in which the lover, criticizing cosmetic artifice just as vehemently as Horace, addresses the puella herself and inverts the argument to reject the mercantile approach to sex. All the same, the praise of female beauty is still an attempt to elicit bodily display, and the male viewer is both admonishing and objectifying the object of his desire.75 The merchandizing of female beauty is implicit in praeconium as a trope in elegy where, as in Horace, it is mainly about promoting one’s own interests.

Conclusion Many contributions to this volume draw attention to the paradox that, within context, inferiority is empowering.76 Ovid’s explicit uses of the term praeconium should be counted among his habitual exposures of elegiac tropes. The amator as praeco occupies a socially inferior (p.167) position from which to speak, crossing a boundary of decorum involving both class and genre. Poetic adoptions (or co-options) of praeco status arguably reflect an Augustan Zeitgeist. They depend on an emergent stereotype of the late Republic that is based in turn on a real historical phenomenon of prosperous praecones. They might also be seen as a means of tactful self-assertion in times of ongoing political uncertainty. Horatian satire and Roman love elegy were born together in the thirties BCE; linking them with the stereotype of the praeco seems to reveal new common ground between them, and may help us to contradistinguish Roman love elegy against the undeniably formative work of Catullus. Roman poets occupied a position of privilege in at least three obvious ways: in a heavily stratified society, they were freeborn adult males with social connections in the empire’s capital; they were beneficiaries of an expensive private education (like all their readers); and they enjoyed the patronage of wealthy and powerful individuals. These preconditions of authorship underscore all the subaltern poses adopted in self-dramatizing genres such as lyric and satire. In love elegy, the two most obvious poses are the constrained slave and the suffering soldier, though one might also see a feminine pose in the rejection of certain masculine norms: the amator’s impassioned and conflicted outbursts can resemble the soliloquies of dramatic heroines. It is notable that all such poses involve lower rather than higher status, reducing the risk of giving offence, just as Horace does in his various strategies of self-humbling. However, such tropes are not to be read as truly subaltern, any more than Ovid’s Amores 3.7 is to be read as a true admission of erectile dysfunction. Their inherent appeal is that Page 12 of 20

 

Loud and Proud they are playful, however transgressive, and the possibilities of disavowing decorum in various ways are deliberately explored. The elegiac adoption of the praeco persona generally, and the praeconium trope specifically, should be seen in this context. It may have had special relevance in Augustan Rome owing to the prominence of individual praecones, and of the loud and boastful yet witty and persuasive stereotype. It facilitated a mode of self-assertion for the amator that was both frank and disarming, especially by contrast with formal oratory, and brought out the embeddedness of self-promotion—to the desire-object and to the reader—at the core of the elegiac genre. (p.168) Notes:

(1) For a detailed study of persuasion as a genre-defining feature of love elegy, see Stroh (1971). (2) Suetonius’ Vergil gave one forensic speech in his youth (egit et causam apud iudices unam omnino nec amplius quam semel; Vita Servii Donati 8); Ovid’s Ovid was trained in rhetoric, although his brother had the aptitude, and died (Ov. Tr. 4.10.15–40). (3) Bond (2011: 211–21) lists epigraphic evidence for twenty-seven historical praecones, many of whom held posts in voluntary associations, though perhaps ex-praecones who achieved higher status avoided mentioning their earlier career. (4) Ut praeco praedicat (Pl. Bac. 810); de quo homine praeconis vox praedicat (Cic. Quinct. 50); praeco iussu tuo praedicasset (Ver. 2.3.40); Nikolaev (2012: 559–62). Maltby (1991) only cites Priscian, who derives the word from canere (a valde canendo, 3.50.111). (5) On the definition and diverse functions of the praeco, see Schneider (1953); Saumagne (1965: 31–6); Hinard (1976); Rauh (1989); Morcillo (2005: 137–56); Bond (2011: 28–85). Saumagne, followed by Rauh and Bond, argues that there were mutually exclusive privati and publici, but there is no record of such a distinction, and Hinard argues that none existed. (6) Crowds: Lucr. 4.563–4; traffic: Hor. S. 1.6.42–4. (7) Pl. Truc. 495–6, Var. Ling. 7.70, Lucil. fr. 995–6 = Nonius Marcellus 62 M, Lindsay 92. On the praefica’s role, see Dutsch (2008). (8) Humphrey (1986: 1); Beacham (1999: 11–13, 21–3). (9) The hired praeco assembled mourners by calling out a traditional formula: see Suet. Jul. 84, Fest. s.v. Quirites.

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Loud and Proud (10) CIL I2, 1210 = CIL VI, 32311= CLE 53 = ILS 1932 = ILLRP 808 = AE (1998) 189b; cf. Massaro (1998); Bond (2011: 28–9). We might compare the patter of the slave-dealer at Hor. Ep. 2.2.1–19. All translations, unless otherwise indicated, are my own. (11) On urbanitas and the stereotype of the praeco, see Barbieri (1987). (12) On Rome’s street noise, see Juv. 3, esp. 235–46. Martial implies that a dimwit can become wealthy if he trains to be a praeco (si duri puer ingeni videtur, | praeconem facias vel architectum: Mart. 5.56.7–8). (13) Cic. Pis. 62 and fr. 11 = Asconius 4. Cicero is outraged that a king should be put into the hands of a public crier (praeconi publico subiceretur: Sest. 57), Martial that a rich praeco should be thought a more eligible bachelor than praetors, tribunes, lawyers, and poets (Mart. 6.8); Juvenal considers theirs a disgraceful activity (Juv. 3.33, 7.5–6). There are unpleasant praecones in Apul. Met. 2.21–3 and 8.24–5 (in which an attempted livestock sale involves mocking and duping the crowd). (14) Ubi galli cantum audivit, avum suum revixisse putat; mensam tolli iubet (Cic. Pis. 68). (15) Nullus sonus umquam acidior percussit aures meas…‘ego ad circulatores eum mittendo erudibam. Itaque parem non habet, sive muliones volet sive circulatores imitari’ (Petr. 68). The muleteer, or rather mule-dealer (cf. Suet. Vesp. 4), implicitly used an equally strident voice in plying his own humble trade. Cicero implies that the activities of praecones and circulatores were not fully distinct. He calls a praeco a ‘street-pedlar of auctions’ (circulatorem quendam auctionum, Cic. Fam. 10.32); conversely, he refers to Calvus Licinius’ poem attacking Tigellius, which began with a pretend pedlar’s cry of ‘Stinking Sardinian Tigellius for sale!’, as a ‘Hipponax-style praeconium’ (Hipponacteo praeconio, Cic. Fam. 7.24; Sardi Tigelli putidum caput venit, Porph. Hor. S. 1.3.1). Calvus was an orator as well as a poet. Horace’s Volteius Mena, a praeco by profession, sells cheap trinkets (vilia…scruta, Hor. Ep. 1.7.65), making him also a scrutarius. (16) Victorem autem se ipse pronuntiabat; qua de causa et praeconio ubique contendit (Suet. Nero 24); cf. Cic. Fam. 5.12.8 (praecones ludorum gymnicorum, qui, cum ceteris coronas imposuerint victoribus eorumque nomina magna voce pronuntiarint, cum ipsi ante ludorum missionem corona donentur, alium praeconem adhibeant, ne sua voce se ipsi victores esse praedicent). (17) Goldberg (2005: 144–6). See Wiseman (1971: 72); MacMullen (1974: 72, 140). (18) Hor. Ep. 1.7.49–51. Page 14 of 20

 

Loud and Proud (19) On Roman barbers, barbershops, and the source material, see Toner (2015). Some barbers offered hygiene services such as depilation and hangnail trimming which, though not the same as working at funerals and hence near dead bodies, was equally abhorrent to the dignity of the Roman nobility. (20) ‘To dream that one’s forehead is made of brass, iron, or stone is auspicious only for tax collectors, retail dealers, and others whose lives involve shamelessness. For, to others, it indicates hatred.’ (Artem. 1.23, trans. White). Cicero implies that auction-criers hide the faults and exaggerate the value of the goods on sale (Quid autem tam absurdum quam si domini iussu ita praeco praedicet: ‘domum pestilentem vendo?’, Cic. Off. 3.55). (21) Tatum (2007). (22) Orationes nobilissimo cuique scribere solebat (Suet. Gram. 3.2). (23) Quamquam et hoc sero, vulgoque purpura latiore tunicae usos invenimus etiam praecones, sicut patrem L. Aelii Stilonis Praeconini ob id cognominati (Plin. Nat. 33.29). An inscription that is probably Augustan in date mentions a Cornelius Surus who was both a praeco and magister scribarum poetarum, clearly enjoying relatively high social status (More 1975, Panciera 1986). (24) Tab. Heracl. 54 = CIL 1.206, with Cic. Fam. 6.18. Since the stipulations apply collectively to masters of funeral ceremonies, undertakers, and praecones, it probably reflects their involvement in the funeral trade, though other explanations include their status as civil contractors (with the risk of conflict of interest) and their implication in the financial ruin of elite citizens: see Lo Cascio (1975–6); Damon (1997: 197); David (2003); and Bond (2011: 33–4, with citations). (25) For a ‘sociotextual’ portrait of this period drawing attention to many relevant topics, including social status, erotic relationships, and self-promotion, see Stroup (2010). (26) Vocem in quaestum contulit (Cic. Quinct. 11); vox in praeconio quaestu prostitit (Cic. Quinct. 95). (27) Cic. Quinct. 11. (28) Catul. 106. The epigram has often been misunderstood: on the idiom se vendere, ‘ingratiate oneself’, see Bushala (1981). (29) Stroh (1971) demonstrates the centrality of persuasion and promotion to the genre.

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Loud and Proud (30) Keith (1994: 32) draws the connection between lovers’ talk and elegiac verse as blanditiae. The elegiac amator engages in blandiri and blanditiae at Prop. 1.16.16; Ov. Am. 1.6.16 (tibi blandior uni); 8.103 (lingua iuvet mentemque tegat: blandire noceque); 2.1.21 (blanditias elegosque leves, mea tela, resumpsi); 3.1.46 (haec est blanditiis ianua laxa meis); Ov. Ars 2.527; Ov. Rem. 35, 507; cf. Ov. Met. 14.18–19, 707. For blanditiae as an instrument of prostitutes see e.g. Pl. Cas. 585–6, Phaed. 29.1, Sen. Con. 1.2.5, Apul. Apol. 98. If we take Ov. Tr. 2.303–4 literally we might imagine ourselves reading the Ars Amatoria alongside actual ancient Roman prostitutes, since Ovid claims he wrote it— presumably meaning Book 3—‘for working girls only’ (solis meretricibus), whatever they might be. (31) The flattering praeco and leno confer status on others by offering intellectual pleasure in the form of an advantageous purchase; the forensic orator may flatter, but is generally more authoritative and claims status for himself, by wielding intellectual force in the form of arguments and character-portraits. (32) See Henderson (2002). (33) Girard (1965: 1–17). (34) Ov. Am. 3.12.7–10. (35) The perceived connection between Ovid’s playful authorial persona and his comparatively explicit treatment of sexual themes may explain late antique reports that his works were declaimed in the theatre by women (Fielding 2014). (36) Ov. Ars 1.621–4. (37) Ov. Ars 3.535–8. (38) The following discussion is necessarily limited by the size of the sample and our uncertainty over the literalism or ‘liveness’ of the praeco metaphor in any given instance: Silk (1974: 33–56) provides a full framework for such analyses. (39) ‘praeconium is rare in prose (Cic. Or. 2x, Rhet. 1x, Ep. 5x; not in Caes., Liv., Tac.) and absent from the Republican and the other Augustan poets apart from Prop. 3.3.41 (also [Tib.] 3.7.177). In Silver Latin poetry it occurs only at Luc. 1.472, 4.813, Stat. Theb. 2.176, Sil. 2.336. Ovid himself employs praeconium comparatively often, particularly in his exile poetry: 1x Am., Met.; 2x Ars, Ep.; 3x Pont.; 4x Tr. For metrical reasons, praeconium occurs in Republican, Augustan, and Silver Latin poetry only in the nominative and accusative plural (TLL s.v. 504.17)’ (Gärtner 2005: 123 ad Ov. Pont. 1.1.55). (40) e.g. atque is tamen, cum in Sigeo ad Achillis tumulum astitisset: ‘o fortunate,’ inquit, ‘adulescens, qui tuae virtutis Homerum praeconem inveneris!’ Cic. Arch. 24, cf. Fam. 5.12.7). Livy (38.20) explains that it is customary in Page 16 of 20

 

Loud and Proud Greece for a crier to introduce tragic performances ritually. The praeco’s crowdmanagement for Roman comedies was apparently playful (Gilula 1993, Marshall 2006: 30–1), and Apuleius calls the praeco at a magistrate’s assembly ‘talkative’ (praeconis vox garrula, Flor. 9); a praeco might even have charmed and cajoled the crowd at funerals, where the impersonator of the deceased sometimes played the role for laughs (see Sumi 2002). The Greek word κῆρυξ also denoted the disreputable auction-crier (κηρύττειν, Thphr. Char. 6.10) and irritating street-crier (D.Chr. 7.123, 34.31). (41) Prop. 3.3.41–2. (42) Non ego sum satis ad tantae praeconia laudis ([Tib.] 4.1.177 Luck). (43) Ov. Met. 12.573–4 (Nestor of Hercules). In the doubtful Heroides it is used slightly differently, to describe the effects of rumor (16.141) and fama (17.207; cf. famae…opus, Ov. Pont. 3.1.46). (44) Quantumcumque tamen praeconia nostra valebunt, | carminibus vives tempus in omne meis (‘Yet as far as my praeconia have power, you shall live for all time in my poems’; Ov. Tr. 1.6.35–6); Magna tibi inposita est nostris persona libellis: | coniugis exemplum diceris esse bonae. | Hanc cave degeneres, ut sint praeconia nostra | vera; vide Famae quod tuearis opus (Ov. Pont. 3.1.43–6). (45) Subiti perago praeconia casus (Ov. Tr. 5.1.9–10). Likewise, the gods are said to enjoy Ovid’s lamentations because it proves their power (talia caelestes fieri praeconia gaudent, Ov. Pont. 1.1.55–6). (46) Ov. Tr. 2.1.63–6 (Augustus); Pont. 4.8.45–6 (Germanicus). (47) On the rhetoric of recusatio in elegiac and other contexts as a reaction to (and against) the demands of epic poetry, compare also Fitzgerald in this volume. (48) Silk (1974: 63–4). (49) ‘[T]he role of lena is taken over by Propertius (4.5) and Ovid himself in Amores 1.8.40’ (Fantham 1993: 32); cf. Myers (1996). (50) The standard study of this figure is Corbett (1986). (51) For a recent discussion of Horace as scurra, see Habinek (2005). (52) Cicero’s Sextus Naevius is called both a praeco and a scurra (Cic. Quinct. 11); in a fragment of Lucilius, the scurra Coelius socializes with the praeco Gallonius, both playing games with him and ‘playing games with him’ (Coelius conlusor Galloni scurra, trigonum | cum ludet scius ludet et eludet, Lucil. 211–12

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Loud and Proud Warmington). On the two roles in Horace as contiguous, see Oliensis (1998: 164). (53) I thank Sebastian Matzner for this triangulation. (54) Ego memini T. Tincam Placentinum hominem facetissimum cum familiari nostro Q. Granio praecone dicacitate certare (Cic. Brut. 172); ille L. Crassi, ille M. Antoni voluntatem asperioribus facetiis saepe perstrinxit impune (Cic. Planc. 33). (55) Conicere in versus dictum praeconis volebam | Grani (Lucil. fr. 11.411 Marx); [Granius] de quo multa (Cic. Brut. 172). (56) Nec timuit, sibi ne vitio quis verteret, olim | si praeco parvas aut, ut fuit ipse, coactor | mercedes sequerer; neque ego essem questus (Hor. S. 1.6.85–7), with Gowers (2012: 239) ad loc. (57) ‘H. makes his father responsible for his upward mobility and any pushiness in the operation’ (Gowers 2012: 239 on Hor. S. 1.6.86). (58) Hor. S. 2.2.46–8. See Damon (1997: 203–4), with references. It is tempting to see ‘Gallonius’ as a soubriquet alluding to the raucous cockerel (gallus), as in Cicero’s joke at Cic. Pis. 68. (59) Hor. Ars 419–21. Marx notes the similarity when commenting on Lucil. fr. 1282, in which a trinket-seller (scrutarius) deceitfully touts worthless junk. For a new reading of the complex and fluid dynamics of aesthetic and socio-economic inferiority and superiority in the Ars Poetica at large, of which this particular moment forms a small part, see Rimell in this volume. (60) This joke is very similar to two in Martial (1.85, 6.66) involving praecones who go too far in their efforts to sell, ruining the sale. (61) Saepe verecundum laudasti, rexque paterque | audisti coram nec verbo parcius absens (Hor. Ep. 1.7.37–8). (62) Hor. Ep. 1.20.1–8, esp. 7–8 (‘quid volui?’ dices, ubi quis te laeserit, et scis | in breve te cogi, cum plenus languet amator). The phrase in breve cogi means both ‘be rolled up’ (of a scroll) and ‘suffer financial hardship’. The classic treatment of Horace’s book/boy (liber) is Fraenkel (1957: 356–63). (63) Female beauty as a form of currency, e.g. dowry substitute, was a widely used trope in ancient Roman literature; see Olson (2008: 107). (64) On gift-giving in Roman elegy, see Coffee (2013); Konstan (2013). Importantly, the disgrace of a male citizen’s attraction to a meretrix is founded

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Loud and Proud more on material than moral values; as comic plots indicate, gaining her yet keeping money validates the connection. (65) ‘Elegiac tears are a coin of the genre’, James (2003a: 107); ‘Obsequium…is the coin for the pauper lover’, James (2003b: 201). (66) For a detailed discussion of aesthetic judgements in amatory contexts, see Hutchinson in this volume. (67) Horace, declaring he is objectively able to appreciate the charms of a slavegirl, lists them in brief (bracchia et vultum teretesque suras | integer laudo; Carm. 2.4.21–2). (68) Barrus, who wants girls to examine his face, calves, feet, teeth, and hair, is ‘sick’ (ut siqui aegrotet quo morbo Barrus, haberi | et cupiat formosus, eat quacumque, puellis | iniciat curam quaerendi singula, quali | sit facie, sura, quali pede, dente, capillo; Hor. S. 1.6.30–3). (69) For commodifications of the female body in Ovid, see Ov. Am. 3.3.6–10, Ars 3.771–88, Met. 1.500–2; cf. Ars 1.252; cf. Sharrock (1991). Ovid of course also uses lists of bodily features as a way to narrate metamorphosis, e.g. Met. 5.429– 37 (Cyane becomes water); 5.546–8 (Ascalaphus becomes a bubo); 11.793–4 (Aesacus becomes a bird). Cf. Hor. Carm. 2.20.9–12 (poet becomes swan). (70) Gowers (2012: 86). See Baldwin (1970); also Clark (1983), with further references. (71) Hor. S. 1.2.86–93. The comparison with women is explicit: ne crure malo, ne sit pede turpi | metiri possis oculo latus (102–3). (72) Col. 6.1.3 = Silanus, versio Latina Magonis fr. 41 Speranza. (73) On comparisons of hetairai to livestock, see Kurke (1997). For itemized descriptions of the perfect horse, see Var. Rust. 2.7.4–6, Col. 6.29.2, Verg. G. 3.75–88, Geoponica 16.1. (74) Herodotus ascribes bride-auctions to the Babylonians (1.196), a tale that reflects Greek rather than Babylonian values: see McNeal (1988). Aristobulus (reported at Str. 15.1.62) ascribes them to the people of Taxila in modern Pakistan, perhaps misinterpreting the etiquette of marriage contracts through a reading of Herodotus. (75) Prop. 1.2; the very different attack on cosmetics as damaging to beauty in Ov. Am. 1.14 nonetheless contains praise of the puella’s beauty in terms of display.

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Loud and Proud (76) See in particular the contributions by Fitzgerald, Geue, Hardie, Julhe, Matzner, and Richlin in this volume.

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Hidden Voices

Complex Inferiorities: The Poetics of the Weaker Voice in Latin Literature Sebastian Matzner and Stephen Harrison

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198814061 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198814061.001.0001

Hidden Voices Homoerotic Colour in Horace’s Odes Stephen Harrison

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198814061.003.0010

Abstract and Keywords Another often-muted voice, here in the terrain of sexual attraction, is the topic of this chapter, which sets out to bring out the hidden voices of homoerotic in desire in Horace’s Odes. Expressions of male-male desire in these poems have traditionally been played down by their interpreters, often treated as ‘merely’ a Hellenistic literary topos or a vehicle for the poet-speaker’s nostalgia. Taking its cue from re-assessments of homoerotic material in Latin literature in more recent scholarship, the discussion zooms in on a range of passages in the Odes where the poet-narrator implicitly or explicitly alludes to homoerotic desires, arguing that closer attention to focalization and perspective show that they convey conformations of desire far less unambiguously ‘heterosexual’ than is often assumed. Keywords:   homoerotic, homosexuality, desire, Horace, Odes, lyric poetry, Ligurinus, sexuality, gender, focalization

Introduction Expressions of male-male desire in the Odes of Horace have until recently been played down by their interpreters. The longing address to the boy Ligurinus (4.1, see the analysis p. 179–82) was treated as a Hellenistic literary topos and a symbolic vehicle for the poet-speaker’s nostalgia by Fraenkel,1 while Nisbet and Hubbard in their introduction to the Odes suggested that its erotic poems about young men ‘should not be over-literally interpreted’.2 Such scholarly opinions need to be framed within their own ideological and cultural context; in the 1950s Page 1 of 14

 

Hidden Voices and even the late 1960s such issues were either marginalized or unmentionable,3 but in the freer discourse of scholarship on sexual topics of more recent decades, responding to changing social values, and in a climate where modern scholars rightly welcome investigation of the Roman roots of modern homosexual identities,4 the situation is different.5 I aim here to bring out the previously (p.170) underplayed theme of male-male desire in the erotic world of the Odes,6 and to argue that its prominence there suits both the homoerotic tradition of Greek lyric poetry with which these poems engage and the poet’s consistent self-characterization as ‘bisexual’ in his other work. I have deliberately avoided the term ‘pederasty’, but what I want to pinpoint here is what that label usually describes: desire by an older male (usually the poet-narrator) for a young and attractive male, potentially exchangeable from a male perspective in Greco-Roman sexuality with a young and attractive female. Within this framework, adolescent males are deemed to be attractive as long as they are analogous to females in having smooth cheeks and complexions; the advent of facial and bodily hair and masculine maturity normally marks the end of this period of desirability (see e.g. Hor. Carm. 4.10 below).7 Modern scholarship makes it clear that this type of homoerotic desire amongst males was not limited to Greece but was a regular practice in Rome, even if traditional Roman moralism sometimes expressed its disapproval.8 Scholars should therefore be prepared to treat Roman poetic expressions of homoerotic desire on the same level as their heterosexual equivalents.

Literary Tradition That the poetry of male-male erotic longing came to Rome via the imitation of Greek Hellenistic models seems undeniable. The comparative pleasures of sex for males with girls and boys are already a theme in the work of Plautus and Lucilius,9 but elaborate and emotional male-male expressions of desire seem to occur first in Latin literature in the set of four early erotic epigrams famously cited by Gellius (19.9.10) from the end of the second century and beginning of the first century BCE. Two of these address male objects, that of Valerius Aedituus to Phileros (fr. 2 Courtney) and that of Lutatius (p.171) Catulus to Theotimos (fr. 1 Courtney), both drawing on Hellenistic sources.10 Catullus’ love poems to the boy Juventius a generation or two later parallel those to Lesbia (cf. especially the kiss-poems 48 and 99, echoing 5 and 7 to Lesbia), and have a clear basis in Hellenistic epigram,11 where their easy bisexuality is also matched (cf. e.g. Call. Epigr. 25 Pf = AP 5.6, where a male lover switches easily from girl to boy as object).12 Likewise, homo- and heteroerotic longing sit alongside each other in Vergil’s Eclogues (the homoerotic monologue of 2, where Corydon is vainly in love with the boy Alexis, is balanced by the two heteroerotic monologues of longing in 8) and Tibullus’ first book, where the young male Marathus is the object of two erotic poems (1.4 and 1.8) alongside a larger number of poems to the female Delia; even Propertius, generally focused on female objects, envisages a world of lovers where some like girls, some boys Page 2 of 14

 

Hidden Voices (2.4.17–18). Thus by the time of Horace’s Odes such homoerotic colour was common in Roman poetry, and youthful male and female objects of longing could be treated more or less interchangeably. This is the background against which Horace’s treatment of homoerotic desire should be set. Within Horace’s own earlier poetic output, the Satires make it clear that the satiric poet belongs to a Lucilian universe in which either male or female young bodies will suffice for sex according to convenience (1.2.116–18), and that he can be teased by his slave Damasippus for being partial to either sex with a ‘thousand passions for girls, a thousand passions for boys’ (2.3.325 mille puellarum, puerorum mille furores). In the Epodes, likewise, the poet’s voice can claim to be suffering from lack of libido in contrast to his usual burning desire for either boy or girl (11.4); this seems to belong to the world of Horatian iambus rather than its Archilochean model, where there is no evidence of homoeroticism.13 The change may owe something to Callimachus’ Iambi, where the poet-speaker can present himself as having such interests (e.g. Iambus 9), as well as to the poet’s proclaimed ‘bisexual’ inclinations. For the particular literary genre of the Odes, the history of Greek lyric presents a strong homoerotic tradition. Horace’s own description of the (p.172) themes of the lyric poet Alcaeus, clearly his most important Greek model,14 famously includes a prominent allusion to homoerotic desire: Liberum et Musas Veneremque et illi semper haerentem puerum canebat et Lycum nigris oculis nigroque       crine decorum. Bacchus, and the Muses, and Venus, and the boy Always clinging to her were his constant song, And Lycus, so handsome with his dark eyes And his dark hair.15

Lycus is not securely mentioned in the fragments of Alcaeus, but regardless of his individual identity, this clearly suggests that homoerotic desire was a theme in Alcaeus, as prominently attested by Cicero not long before Horace (N.D. 1.79, Tusc. 4.71) as well as in the remains of Alcaeus’ own poetry (e.g. fr. 366 and 368 L/P). Horace is also naturally aware in the Odes of the homoerotic nature of the poetry of Sappho, his other main model in the Lesbian lyric proclaimed as the principal origin for the Odes in the opening and programmatic poem (1.1.34 Lesboum…barbiton);16 the celebrated homoeroticism of Sappho is explicitly referred to at Hor. Carm. 2.13.24–5 (querentem | Sappho puellis de popularibus). In Greek lyric more generally, Anacreon, another significant model for the Odes,17 was also famous for his homoerotic passions (e.g. fr. 360 L/P), and indeed of the nine lyric poets who constituted the normal Greek canon (Pindar, Bacchylides, Simonides, Anacreon, Stesichorus, Ibycus, Alcaeus, Sappho, Page 3 of 14

 

Hidden Voices Alcman: listed at AP 9.184, 9.571), all except Bacchylides and Alcman are known to have composed homoerotic verse.18

Horatian Homoeroticism in Odes 1–3 Given the explicit ‘bisexuality’ of the poet of the Satires and Epodes, and given the prominence of the homoerotic voice in Greek lyric (p.173) and especially in Lesbian lyric, we might expect regular appearances of the homoerotic poetic voice in Odes 1–3. The initial sequence of ‘parade’ odes (1–9) offer a relatively small harvest here. Odes 1.4 ends with the implication that its addressee, Sestius, usually identified as the suffect consul of 23 BCE,19 admires the beautiful boy Lycidas: nec tenerum Lycidan mirabere, quo calet iuuentus     nunc omnis et mox uirgines tepebunt. Nor [in death] will you be able to admire soft Lycidas, for whom     All the youth is hot, and in due course the girls will be warm.20

Here we might think of the poet himself as being included in the collective omnis iuventus, though elsewhere in Odes 1 he sees himself as having passed the lifestage of iuventas (Hor. Carm. 1.16.22–8), but this is not particularly stressed. In Odes 1.8, the poet mentions the athletic body of the young Sybaris, but suggests that it is being misapplied in heteroerotic love rather than lingering on it from his own desiring perspective; here there might be a suggestion that Sybaris is avoiding the homosocial world of male sport and training, a common context for homoerotic liaisons,21 but there is nothing firmer than that. Odes 1.9, with its sympotic setting and the poet’s apparent tête-à-tête with a servant/slave Thaliarchus, might look a likely candidate for homoerotic discourse,22 but there the reader’s attention is directed not to the poet’s desire for Thaliarchus but to Thaliarchus’ own heteroerotic interests; the poem ends with a famous evocation of boy-girl erotic hide-and-seek in an urban environment (Hor. Carm. 1.9.18–24) rather than the kind of final homoerotic vignette we find in some later odes (see below). But there are a number of potential moments of homoerotic perspective in Odes 1–3. Most often these moments can be argued to appear when the poet is conveying a female’s desiring view of a young and attractive male, a view which could also reflect his own erotic interest given his proclaimed ‘bisexuality’. From a narratological perspective, this is multiple focalization, the presentation of material from more than one point of view, including both characters (p.174) and narrators in a text.23 In 1.13 the poet expresses to Lydia his feelings at her repeated praise of Telephus’ attractions:24       Cum tu, Lydia, Telephi ceruicem roseam, cerea Telephi       laudas bracchia, uae, meum

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Hidden Voices feruens difficili bile tumet iecur.       Tunc nec mens mihi nec color certa sede manet, umor et in genas       furtim labitur, arguens quam lentis penitus macerer ignibus.       Vror, seu tibi candidos turparunt umeros inmodicae mero       rixae, siue puer furens inpressit memorem dente labris notam.       When you, Lydia, praise Telephus’ Rosy neck, Telephus’ pale arms,       Oh, my liver swells and seethes With bile difficult to swallow.       Then my consciousness, my colour Cannot stay in its place, and moisture       Drips furtively down my cheeks, telling How slow-roasting the fires of my cooking are.       I am on fire, whether it is wild brawls That have stained your shining shoulders with wine,       Or whether it is the boy mad with desire Who has left the mindful mark of his teeth on your lip.25

As commentators have noted, this poem evidently draws on the symptoms of a male speaker’s jealousy of another male as expressed in Catullus 51,26 but it is worth suggesting that the jealousy of the poet could also be seen from another perspective: at least initially, the voice of the poem could be reacting receptively to Telephus’ physical attractions and feeling anger towards Lydia for her competing and more successful erotic interest in the beautiful boy. The rosy neck and soft arms of Telephus could be as attractive to the poet as to Lydia (p. 175) herself: roseus is used of a boy’s complexion as desirable to an older man,27 while ‘waxy’ effeminate arms are similarly a point of male homoerotic attraction, something hinted at too in the pale colour of cerea.28 This homoerotic element in Odes 1.13 is perhaps made more likely by the fact that the catalogue of symptoms in lines 5–8 comes ultimately from a famous poem of Sappho (fr. 31), an expression of female-female desire:29 the signs could be just as well those of jealousy as of erotic attraction. A similar ambiguity could be argued for at 3.19, in the same Fourth Asclepiad metre, where the poet professes passion for Glycera but lingers longingly over the similar attractions of another young man called Telephus:     Spissa te nitidum coma, puro te similem, Telephe, Vespero     tempestiva petit Rhode: Page 5 of 14

 

Hidden Voices me lentus Glycerae torret amor meae.     You, shining with your thick hair, Telephus, Like the clear evening star     Are the target of Rhode ready for action: I am roasted by the slow fire of love for my Glycera.30

The poet’s description of Telephus here might be taken to focalize the feelings of Rhode, but it is hard wholly to exclude the potential view of the male poet/ narrator: even if the poet is occupied with Glycera, his ‘bisexual’ potential means that this can be combined with an interest in the beautiful Telephus. An analogous perspective is found in the very next ode, 3.20, where the poet warns Pyrrhus against trying to take the beautiful boy Nearchus away from an unnamed possessive older woman, figured as an angry lioness: Interim, dum tu celeris sagittas promis, haec dentes acuit timendos, arbiter pugnae posuisse nudo      sub pede palmam (p.176) fertur, et leni recreare uento sparsum odoratis umerum capillis, qualis aut Nireus fuit aut aquosa      raptus ab Ida. Meanwhile, while you bring out your swift arrows And she whets her fearsome teeth The judge of the battle (they say) has placed his palm      Beneath his bare foot, And is giving to the gentle wind’s refreshment His shoulder scattered with fragrant locks, Just as Nireus was, or the boy who was snatched      From watery Ida.31

The description of the boy provides an evocative parallel with Nireus, the most attractive young Greek warrior at Troy (Hom. Il. 2.671–5), or Ganymede himself, Jupiter’s mythological Trojan cup-bearer and catamite. Again, there are three perspectives here, none of which can be eliminated, those of each of the two lovers competing for the boy’s favours, and that of the poet-observer himself. The last is especially suggested by the focus on the (bare?) shoulder, picking up a favourite erotic body-part for the poet-narrator of the Odes, whether the object is female (see Lydia in Hor. Carm. 1.13, above) or male (see Hebrus in Hor. Carm. 3.12, below).

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Hidden Voices Another poem in which a similar kind of ambiguity can be detected is 3.12, where the poet observes the passion of the young Neobule for the equally young and attractive Hebrus: Tibi qualum Cythereae puer ales, tibi telas operosaeque Minervae studium aufert, Neobule, Liparaei nitor Hebri, simul unctos Tiberinis umeros lavit in undis, eques ipso melior Bellerophonte, neque pugno     neque segni pede victus, catus idem per apertum fugientis agitato grege cervos iaculari et celer arto latitantem     fruticeto excipere aprum. Venus’ winged boy has stolen your basket; your loom-shuttle, Neobule, And your zest for the labours of Minerva are stolen by the shining beauty     Of Hebrus from Lipari, (p.177) As soon as he dips his oiled shoulders in the waves of Tiber, A better horseman than Bellerophon, unconquered in boxing     Or the swift foot-race, Skilled too to spear deer as they run in the open in a panicking herd, And to receive the charge of the boar that lies in wait     In the dense thicket.32

Here again we have a catalogue of the athletic Hebrus’ attractions for Neobule, including the swimming that clearly plays on his name;33 but there might also be qualities which are attractive to the poet himself, especially the oiled shoulders which suggest the homosocial and often homoerotic world of the baths and gymnasium.34 Occasionally in Odes 1–3 we find a moment of unambiguous homoerotic colour, as for example in Odes 1.38, the equal shortest of all the Odes and the conclusion to Book 1. Here the poet addresses an anonymous slave servant at the symposium: Persicos odi, puer, apparatus, displicent nexae philyra coronae, mitte sectari, rosa quo locorum     sera moretur. Simplici myrto nihil adlabores sedulus curo: neque te ministrum dedecet myrtus neque me sub arta

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Hidden Voices     uite bibentem. Persian paraphernalia, my boy, I disapprove; No pleasure to me are bast-fastened garlands; Don’t bother to pursue the select places where     The late rose lingers. My mandate: take care to add no elaboration To simple myrtle—for you as server Myrtle is fully fitting, and for me too, as I drink     Under dense-woven vines.35

The address to the wine-pourer is of course standard in archaic sympotic poetry (e.g. Alcaeus fr. 76.16 L/P, Anacreon fr. 11a, 15, 51 PMG), as well as in Horace himself (cf. Thaliarchus in Hor. Carm. 1.9, above, 3.14.17, 3.19.10). What is unusual here is the concern for the (p.178) wine-pourer’s headgear and looks: as David West has advocated, the specifying of myrtle, the plant of Venus, could symbolize an erotic element here,36 and suggest that the unnamed wine-pourer might also be offering sexual services at the symposium, like the hetairai Tyndaris in Hor. Carm. 1.17 and Phyllis in 4.11. The close of Odes 2.5 also presents a homoerotic perspective, again within a ‘bisexual’ context. The unidentified addressee is assured by the poet that the young Lalage will in time match his greatest past loves of either sex: dilecta, quantum non Pholoe fugax, non Chloris albo sic umero nitens     ut pura nocturno renidet        luna mari Cnidiusue Gyges, quem si puellarum insereres choro, mire sagacis falleret hospites     discrimen obscurum solutis        crinibus ambiguoque uoltu. Loved even more than fleeing Pholoe, More than Chloris, her white shoulders shining     As the clear moon gleams        Over the sea at night, or Gyges from Cnidos: if you placed him in a group of girls, the difficult gender-assessment might elude     even extraordinarily keen-scented guests,        through his loose hair and his face of uncertain sex.37

Here the last stanza clearly evokes the young Achilles disguised as a girl on Scyros and discovered by Odysseus, a mythological episode alluded to again at Odes 1.8, where the appropriately named Sybaris38 is said to have been feminized by Lydia’s passion for him, so that he resembles a cross-dressing Page 8 of 14

 

Hidden Voices Achilles keeping away from manly activities (Hor. Carm. 1.8.13–16). The close of 1.13 clearly invites the reader to linger on Gyges’ attractions, especially the long hair which is similarly admired in the Telephus of 3.19 (above). In sum, the first three books of Odes present a number of occasions where a homoerotic perspective can be fruitfully suggested for the (p.179) poetnarrator. This often emerges from passages which can be interpreted as having multiple focalizers, of whom the poet can be one; the admiring gaze of a female character on young male beauty can be shared by the controlling male narrator of the poem. Particular features for admiration seem to emerge, such as white shoulders and hair. Such homoerotic elements emerge regularly at the ends of poems, in concluding vignettes, which leave a powerful impression for the reader via lingering final images (Hor. Carm. 1.19, 2.5, 3.19, 3.20).39 The perspective of male-male desire undoubtedly enriches the interpretation of a number of poems in the collection.

Ligurinus in Odes 4 Where Odes 1–3 had been something of a slow starter on the homoerotic front, in Odes 4 the book begins immediately with Horace’s passion for Ligurinus. Or rather, it begins with a return to love which is only at the end of the poem specified as homoerotic. The poem’s opening seems more general, though for the second-time reader who knows the poem’s ending the adjective mollibus may already specifically suggest the soft skin of the beautiful boy as well as the mollitia of love in general:40     Intermissa, Venus, diu rursus bella moues? Parce, precor, precor.     Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cinarae. Desine, dulcium     mater saeua Cupidinum, circa lustra decem flectere mollibus     iam durum imperiis: abi, quo blandae iuuenum te reuocant preces.     Are you declaring war again, Venus, After a long intermission? Spare me, spare me, I pray.     I am not the man I was under the sway Of the goodly Cinara. Cease, fierce mother     Of the sweet Cupids, To steer one who after five decades is already hardened (p.180)     By your soft commands: be off, To where the winning prayers of young men call your aid.41

The poet is returning in his fifties to lyric with its erotic content, at a later and less vigorous time of life; Venus’ force is diverted to the first of a group of leading young men in the book, Paullus Fabius Maximus, soon to be married to a relative of Augustus,42 and the poet claims that he is now done with erotic Page 9 of 14

 

Hidden Voices passion (4.1.29–32). But, reprising a move already executed in Odes 3.26, this renuntiatio amoris is immediately reversed with the introduction of Ligurinus at the end of the poem:     Sed cur heu, Ligurine, cur manat rara meas lacrima per genas?     Cur facunda parum decoro inter uerba cadit lingua silentio?     Nocturnis ego somniis iam captum teneo, iam uolucrem sequor     te per gramina Martii campi, te per aquas, dure, uolubilis.     But why, alas, Ligurinus, why Does a scant tear flow down my cheeks?     Why does my eloquent tongue Fall into shameful silence while speaking?     In my dreams at night I hold you prisoner, I follow you flying,     Through the grass of the Campus Martius, Through the flowing waters, you hard of heart.43

Ligurinus is evidently the successor of the beautiful athletic boys already admired by the poet in Odes 1–3, and the poem ends in the kind of lingering vignette of longing that we have already identified as a common conclusion in such cases, but the interesting issue is why this homoerotic material is so prominent at the start of the new book. It seems clear that the return to love in some sense marks the return to lyric in Odes 4 after a the gap of a decade, especially as the beginning of Epistles 1, Horace’s previous poetry-book, presented a movement in the other direction:44 perhaps the homoerotic element is there as a reminder of the homoerotic colour of much Greek lyric (p.181) (see the above section ‘Literary Tradition’), especially since the erotic symptoms of the poet here recall the famous list given by Sappho fr. 31 L/P, already echoed in Odes 1.13 (see the above section on ‘Horatian Homoeroticism in Odes 1–3’).45 The poet has become a wistful observer and dreamer about erotic fulfilment rather than an active player in the game of love, and it is indeed striking how little erotic material there is in the book: apart from 4.10, the pendant poem to Ligurinus, we find only the sympotic poem to Maecenas, 4.11, which in its addressee and other aspects is a throwback to Odes 1–3 and announces that the hetaira Phyllis is Horace’s last love (Hor. Carm. 4.11.31–4 meorum | finis amorum —| non enim posthac alia calebo | femina), and 4.13 to Lyce, which again reprises a theme from the first collection of the attractive and proud woman grown old (cf. 1.25), and seems to invert 3.10, where another Lyce rejects the poet’s advances;46 in 4.13 Lyce’s ageing parallels the ageing of the poet himself —both are now too old for the game of love. Perhaps dreams of glamorous and

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Hidden Voices unattainable boys are a particularly poignant expression for the ‘bisexual’ poet of his move from erotic participant to erotic observer as age advances. The pendant poem to Ligurinus is found at 4.10: O crudelis adhuc et Veneris muneribus potens, insperata tuae cum ueniet pluma superbiae et, quae nunc umeris inuolitant, deciderint comae, nunc et qui color est puniceae flore prior rosae mutatus, Ligurine, in fruticem uerterit hispidam,47 dices, heu, quotiens te speculo uideris alterum: ‘Quae mens est hodie, cur eadem non puero fuit, uel cur his animis incolumes non redeunt genae?’ You who are still cruel and potent in the gifts of Venus, When the unlooked-for fluff comes to end your arrogance, And the hair which now flutters on your shoulders falls like leaves, And when that complexion which is now finer than that of the crimson rose Will change and turn, Ligurinus, into a hairy bush, You will say, alas, whenever you see yourself so other in the mirror: (p.182) ‘The mind I have now, why did I not have that as a boy, And why do perfect cheeks not return to these feelings of mine?’

Here as in 4.13 the theme is the transformation of the beloved over time from desirable to undesirable (in this case from smooth-cheeked to stubbly face, and from long-haired boy to close-barbered man).48 Once again we can see the poet’s interest in the key erotic features of the boy; his rosy complexion (cf. Telephus in 1.13, see above section on ‘Horatian Homoeroticism in Odes 1–3’) and his hair and shoulders (cf. Telephus in 3.19, Hebrus in 3.12 and the anonymous boy of 3.20, see above again). The poem is naturally focalized from the poet-narrator’s point of view, and contains an implicit argument for yielding now before age intervenes as in Odes 1.25; the opening crudelis, like dure at 4.1.40, implies that the boy is currently intransigent, but adhuc implies some hope that this can be reversed in the future. This poem thus reiterates the homoerotic longing of 4.1, rather than simply meditating on the effect exercised by passing time.

Conclusion The disappearance in modern classical scholarship of needless reticence on sexual issues allows us to re-evaluate the importance of the homoerotic element in Horace’s Odes. This homoerotic discourse fits this volume’s label of ‘complex inferiority’ in two ways. First, as we have seen, in Horatian lyric the voice of male-male desire is often complicated and played down by multiple focalization, by which erotic descriptions of males can be attributed not only to the (male) overall poet-narrator but also to (male or female) characters in the poems; this move by the poet-narrator suggests a muting of the theme which recognizes its subversive nature in terms of traditional Roman heteronormative values, Page 11 of 14

 

Hidden Voices prominently reasserted in the age of Augustus. Second, as noted at the beginning, the homoerotic voice in these poems has traditionally been marginalized in scholarly interpretation, in effect treated as an inferior form of erotic desire which is to be either ignored or minimized. This chapter has sought to restore the (p.183) balance. First, it has shown the prominence of homoerotic discourse in some relevant antecedent traditions of literary history, especially in archaic Greek lyric and its Lesbian variety, and in explicit firstperson statements of the poet-narrator in Horace’s other works. Second, it has brought out the muted but important nature of homoerotic perspectives in the texture of Horace’s lyric poetry, and their significant symbolic and ideological value. In the twenty-first century, when for a generation we have been fully alive to the culturally constructed nature of homosexuality and the different ethos of sex and desire in general in the Roman period,49 it is time to reassert the significance of Horatian male desire for males in the Odes, and to see it not just as a hollow echo of Hellenistic topoi but as a discourse of desire equal in emotional value, literary weight, and cultural interest to heteroerotic passion. (p.184) Notes:

(1) Fraenkel (1957: 414–15). (2) Nisbet and Hubbard (1970: xvi). (3) One thinks of the excision of homoerotic poems in Fordyce (1961); see Henderson (2006: 70–110). (4) See especially Ingleheart (2015). (5) See e.g. Williams (2010), who discusses Horatian poems regularly if briefly in his key treatment of the place of homosexuality in Roman culture, which I rely on heavily in these introductory sections; or Ancona (2002), Oliensis (2007), and Nadeau (2008), which rightly treat homoeroticism in the Odes in parallel with its heterosexual equivalent. (6) The text of Horace cited here is Wickham and Garrod (1912) unless otherwise noted; all translations are my own. (7) See Williams (2010: 78–80, 139–42); for the theme in literature see further Dewar (1991: 190–1). (8) See Williams (2010: 67–102). (9) See Williams (2010: 21–5). (10) See Courtney (1993: 70–8). (11) See Gutzwiller (2011: 82). Page 12 of 14

 

Hidden Voices (12) For further ‘bisexuality’ in Hellenistic amatory epigrams expressed in the voice of the poet, see Asclepiades Ep. 10 and 12 Sens (= AP 5.150 and 5.145) and Gutzwiller (2011: 82–3) on Meleager. (13) Percy (1996: 43). (14) See e.g. Feeney (1993); Strauss Clay (2010). (15) Hor. Carm. 1.32.9–12. (16) See e.g. Woodman (2002); Thévenaz (2010). (17) See Nisbet and Hubbard (1970: xiii). (18) See Percy (1996: 135–8 on Pindar, 170 on Bacchylides, 168–70 on Simonides, 157–60 on Anacreon, 168 on Stesichorus, 155–7 on Ibycus, 145–6 on Alcaeus, 147–8 on Sappho, 91 on Alcman). (19) Perhaps in the future at the time of the ode: for the issue of its exact date see Hutchinson (2008: 138–9). (20) Hor. Carm. 1.4.19–20. (21) See Williams (2010: 68–78). (22) Argued for in this poem by Nadeau (2008: 39–48). (23) See e.g. Bal (1997: 100–6). (24) See also the discussion of this poem by Hutchinson in this volume (pp. 202– 23). (25) Hor. Carm. 1.13.1–12. (26) See e.g. Nisbet and Hubbard (1970: 169). (27) See e.g. Mart. 7.80.9, 11.56.12, 12.64.1, Stat. Theb. 9.703. (28) See Sen. Oed. 404 (the mollia…bracchia of the effeminate Bacchus) with Boyle (2011: 210). For pale skin and the mixture of red and white tints as attractive in young men and women cf. e.g. Tarrant (2012: 107). (29) See Nisbet and Hubbard (1970: 169–70). (30) Hor. Carm. 3.19.25–8. (31) Hor. Carm. 3.20.9–16. (32) Hor. Carm. 3.12.4–12.

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Hidden Voices (33) That of a famous river: see Nisbet and Rudd (2004: 169). (34) See n. 21 above. (35) Hor. Carm. 1.38. (36) West (1995: 190–3); Mayer (2012: 227) is sceptical. (37) Hor. Carm. 2.5.17–24. (38) Named after the famously luxurious city; see e.g. West (1995: 39). (39) On the technique of closural vignettes in the Odes, see Esser (1976: 199– 228). (40) For mollis of love-poetry, see Ingleheart (2010: 262); and for mollis in homoerotic contexts, see Williams (2013, 2014). (41) Hor. Carm. 4.1.1–8. (42) See Bradshaw (1970); Habinek (1986). (43) Hor. Carm. 4.1.33–40. (44) See e.g. Harrison (2010: 48–9, 52–3). (45) See e.g. Putnam (1986: 40–1); Thomas (2011: 101). (46) See Thomas (2011: 238). (47) Here I adopt Nisbet’s Ligurine for the transmitted Ligurinum (see Nisbet 1995: 269; we need a direct addressee) and Thomas’s fruticem for the problematic faciem (see Thomas 2011: 216). (48) See n. 7. On the status and relevance of time as a factor in shifting relations of inferiority and superiority within erotic contexts, see Hutchinson in this volume. (49) See e.g. Foucault (1987, 1990); Halperin, Winkler, and Zeitlin (1990); Ingleheart (2015).

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On Not Being Beautiful

Complex Inferiorities: The Poetics of the Weaker Voice in Latin Literature Sebastian Matzner and Stephen Harrison

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198814061 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198814061.001.0001

On Not Being Beautiful G. O. Hutchinson

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198814061.003.0011

Abstract and Keywords ‘x is more beautiful than y’ sounds a standard thing to say in Greek and Latin literature; but it raises intricate and interesting issues, not least from the standpoint of y. This chapter draws on symbolic logic to compare the relation between assessing superiority or inferiority in beauty and making choices in love in both Greek and Latin literature. The various dynamics, logics, and rhetorics of desire in the light of inferiority and superiority are subjected to close scrutiny, paving the way for a discussion that addresses not only the complex scenarios that unfold here (paying special attention to the various ways in which the amorous hierarchy is set in relation to other hierarchies) but also the intriguing fact that such questions of relative inferiority and superiority in erotic matters seem to pervade Greek literature more extensively and differently than Latin. Keywords:   beauty, ugliness, comparison, aesthetic judgement, age, desire, desirability, love poetry, Greek literature, Latin literature

This chapter may seem to deal with an inferior kind of inferiority, less momentous than political and social structures and their inequalities.1 It has more to do with personal relationships and consciousness, and with the questions of self-esteem later involved in modern psychological notions of an ‘inferiority complex’. One could certainly relate this area to power, either through metaphorical extension to politics or through emphasis on the elements of power within relationships. My prime concern here, however, is to disentangle some of the thought which seems to be involved in ancient treatments of relative beauty in people, and to see something of how literature operates with these thoughts and with the imbroglio of hierarchies used by poetry on love Page 1 of 18

 

On Not Being Beautiful (hierarchies of age, gender, etc.). Deeper cultural questions are only touched on. Not even touched on are the moral problems raised by the evaluation of people’s beauty. The ancient texts do not suggest enlightenment; but they do not simply show people reduced to objects: of the essence are conflicts between wills, and issues of the mind.2 (p.186) Catullus 86 introduces us straight away to some of the complications that will concern us. Quintia formosa est multis; mihi candida, longa,     recta est. haec ego sic singula confiteor; totum illud ‘formosa’ nego: nam nulla uenustas,     nulla in tam magno est corpore mica salis. Lesbia formosa est, quae cum pulcherrima tota est,     tum omnibus una omnes surripuit Veneres. Quintia is beautiful, in the view of many; in mine, she is whiteskinned, tall, straight. I hereby allow these individual features; but the complete ‘beautiful’ I deny. There is no grace, no grain of wit in all that extensive body. Lesbia is beautiful: she has bodily loveliness all over, and she has stolen all the Graces from everyone singlehanded.3

Quintia formosa est seems a simple beginning, but there follows multis; mihi. One question is what should be meant by being formosus, and another is who assesses it. It is with the second question that we shall concern ourselves here. It is not simply that different people might have different views on which of two buildings was more beautiful, as opposed to, say, which cost more; in the case of human loveliness, there is a problematic relationship with love or desire. Catullus’ voice seems to move from that of a judicious expert to that of an enthusiast or a worshipper; the surrounding poems 85 and 87—if surrounding they are—show his hopeless infatuation. The question remains whether, as the poem suggests on the surface, a discerning approach leads to the passion, or whether, as in much ancient comment on love, the passion distorts the assessment of beauty.4 (p.187) From now on a tiny bit of formal logic may help us to see our way around some of the issues more clearly. The aim is merely to capture some of the processes of thought involved in ancient literature, as will be seen in the instances below. The aim is not to assert that only one principle (such as r below) ever operates in ancient writing; rather, by taking a specific relation between propositions as our starting point, we can see what is happening in particular texts with more precision. Let us first label a couple of propositions: p: x chooses y to love over any available alternative q: x thinks y more beautiful than any available alternative Page 2 of 18

 

On Not Being Beautiful These can be loosely used below with x and y applied to the relevant people in a given situation. A possible general principle would be: r: ∀x∀y[p → q], i.e. (roughly) for all instances of x and y, p entails q; if p is the case, then q is the case, i.e. if x chooses y to love over any available alternative, then it is the case that x thinks y more beautiful than any available alternative. It follows from r that ∀x∀y[¬q → ¬p], i.e. for all instances of x and y, if q is not the case, p is not the case (¬ is the negation sign): if x does not think y more beautiful than any available alternative, x does not choose y to love over any available alternative. r will be more useful for our discussion than the tempting ∀x∀y[q → p]: that would imply that the opinion of superior beauty was a sufficient condition for a choice to love, and might risk suggesting a causal sequence, and a single one (i.e. that the opinion of beauty causes the choice to love and not the reverse). Such comparisons of people often polarize into absolute rather than relative assertions and denials of beauty (cf. e.g. Catul. 43.6 ten prouincia narrat esse bellam? ‘does the province say that you are pretty?’); so we could also bear in mind: s: x loves y t: x thinks that y is beautiful u: ∀x∀y[s → t], i.e. for all cases of x and y, if x loves y, x thinks that y is beautiful. u → [∀x∀y[¬t → ¬s]]: u entails that if x does not think y beautiful, x does not love y. We can return from the jungle of symbols, and look at some Latin and Greek literature, to see how love relates to opinion on beauty; after (p.188) that, the discussion will consider further aspects of inferiority in beauty. At first, Greek and Latin will be synoptically mixed together; but then some broad comparison will be suggested between Greek and Latin on this matter, and some particular passages in Latin will be viewed. In Propertius 1.4 Bassus is seeking to make the narrator reject Cynthia by praising other girls. The narrator’s rejoinder that no one now could possibly be more beautiful than Cynthia implies that Bassus is thinking r, so that [¬q → ¬p]: if the narrator thinks an available girl more beautiful he will not love Cynthia. The narrator adds that Cynthia’s beauty is only at the edge of his passion (11 haec sed forma mei pars est extrema furoris); this threatens r, but it is not actually asserted that he could love Cynthia if he thought her less beautiful than the alternatives. Cynthia’s own viewpoint, it may be added, throws light on her Page 3 of 18

 

On Not Being Beautiful state of mind, and will connect with our later discussion on one’s own beauty. To Cynthia, should the narrator not choose her, it would be primarily ¬q that mattered, the unfavourable verdict delivered on her rank in beauty. non ullo gravius temptatur Cynthia damno     quam sibi cum rapto cessat amore decus [decus Kraffert: deus Ω], praecipue nostro. maneat sic semper, adoro,…. No loss assails Cynthia more grievously than the ending of glory when someone’s love is snatched from her—my love especially. I pray she may always remain so….

In 25–6 the emphasis is on her glory, but 27 offers a wishful last-minute attempt to reassert the importance to Cynthia of ¬p, Propertius’ not choosing her to love: praecipue nostro unusually and awkwardly overruns the couplet which had seemed complete.5 Opinions on her own beauty are not presented as concerning the virtuous Octavia, when in Plutarch Antony decides to divorce Octavia and has her removed from his house in Rome (Plu. Ant. 57.4). Her distress, the reader infers, is at the loss of Antony’s love (¬p), and of status and domestic security, as well as at the consequences for Antony’s children and for Rome. Despite the pathos of (p.189) the account, Plutarch goes on paradoxically to make the Romans pity not Octavia but Antony, especially those who have seen that Cleopatra does not excel Octavia in beauty or youth (57.5, οὔτε κάλλει…οὔθ᾿ ὥραι). Evidently there is something strange about Antony’s choice. Either r is maintained, but he deludedly thinks Cleopatra more beautiful (cf. 27.3), or he is an unusual case that proves r false: he chooses Cleopatra to love, but does not think her more beautiful (¬[p → q]). In Odyssey 5, Calypso states that she is not inferior in beauty to Penelope, whom Odysseus longs for, and implies she is superior (211–13 οὐ…κείνηϲ γε χερείων… οὐ δέμαϲ οὐδὲ φυήν…, ‘I am not worse than her…in body or in stature’). She is not so much urging him to reconsider his decision as indicating the insult which his decision entails (by r, p → q, with Penelope as y, so Odysseus thinks Penelope more beautiful than the alternative). Calypso’s hierarchical superiority as a goddess makes the insult worse, the choice odder. Odysseus in effect states that his decision does not entail q: he acknowledges that Penelope is inferior in beauty; but he does not quite state p, that he is choosing Penelope to love—he wishes rather to go home. Ovid (Ars 2.121–6) turns the situation in a different direction, by denying u through Ulysses. Ulysses was not formosus, ‘beautiful’, but he won the love of two goddesses; facundia, ‘skill with words’, sufficed. Belief in beauty is not, as might be thought, always present if love is; this instance concerns the love of females for adult males. On that of adult males for females cf. the end of Lucretius 4. It might be thought love for a plain woman (deteriore…forma muliercula, ‘a little woman with inferior beauty’) had to be Page 4 of 18

 

On Not Being Beautiful explained by divine intervention (which would cause the false belief of lovers? cf. Venerisque sagittis, ‘through the arrows of Venus’, and 1155–8); but other factors mean that love can exist without such belief (so ¬u). In Catul. 61.86–9, the narrator tells Aurunculeia, addressing her by name, that there is no risk that a more beautiful woman (femina pulchrior) sees the dawn; the form of praise seen in Ibyc. S166.23–86 is here used to quiet the bride’s weeping. Even the narrator could hardly imagine that she was weeping because she was not the most beautiful woman on the planet. Rather, with obvious male or adult incomprehension, he supposes she is worried that if someone more (p. 190) beautiful is available the bridegroom will not love her (cf. [¬q → ¬p]). What follows offers further reassurance (97–105): Torquatus is not obsessed with an adultera, and will be wound into Aurunculeia’s embrace (complexum, 104: the first spondaic base in the poem).7 Later the narrator stresses to the bridegroom the flower-like beauty of the virgin bride (alba parthenice uelut, 187, ‘like the white maiden-flower [species uncertain]’; vegetable imagery, as we might call it, is one of the two important areas of imagery we will meet). The bridegroom is then told he is no less beautiful than the bride (189–92; nihilo minus | pulcher). This too in the context suggests encouragement to the act of love-making, but much more briefly and without imagery, such as is used to and about the bride. (Here the inferiority supposedly feared would be not between the bridegroom and a rival but within the pair itself.) The interest of inferiority in beauty increases when we think of the less beautiful person’s assessment of his or her own looks. Here, together with the range of possible opinions on beauty, we have the hopes and pride of the person thinking about themselves. Cicero (N.D.1.78–9), while discussing the beauty of the human form, implies that his own love for himself means that he thinks himself goodlooking, though not as good-looking as Europa’s bull (quamuis amem ipse me, tamen non audeo dicere pulchriorem esse me quam ille fuerit taurus qui uexit Europam, ‘however much I love myself, I don’t dare to say that I am more beautiful than the bull which carried Europa’). We could bring in Aristotle’s word φίλαυτοϲ ‘self-loving’ (cf. esp. Rh. 1 1371b18–25; ἀνάγκη πάνταϲ φιλαύτουϲ εἶναι, ἢ μᾶλλον ἢ ἧττον, ‘everyone must be self-loving, whether more or less’); but amare has a touch of the amatory, cf. the catty Cic. Q. fr 3.6.4 o di, quam ineptus, quam se ipse amans sine riuali!, ‘Great God, what an idiot! How he loves himself, and without any rivals in that particular passion!’ Thus the element that could affect the judgement of the unloved person on themselves has affinities with the element that could affect the judgement of the lover on the beloved. But pessimism and lack of confidence can also enter in.8 (p.191) A further interest in this kind of inferiority is that in the hierarchy of beauty the same person can pass from one category to another: partly because a rival thought more beautiful may come on to the scene in love’s endless drama, but also because beauty is so dependent on age (cf. Plutarch above). Horace’s Page 5 of 18

 

On Not Being Beautiful narrator can say to a woman he once loved quid habes illius, illius | quae spirabat amores, | quae me surpuerat mihi…?, ‘what do you retain of that woman, that woman who used to breathe love, who had stolen me from myself…?’ (Hor. Carm. 4.13.18–20). She is no longer the same person. (His change at the time into a different person—quae me surpuerat mihi—was a mental and reversible change.) Ligurinus, who now spurns love, will when he grows older see a different person in the mirror (te…alterum, Hor. Carm. 4.10.6); he will be thwarted by the separation of his mind as it is then from his body as it is now. Horace writes of his own handsome looks, which formed part of his life of love (Hor. Ep. 1.7.25–8): they are not an external object, which can be restored to him, but part of his past self, which cannot. The sense of loss in this area is intimate and intriguing.9 The final area of interest to us will be illustrated presently: the intersection of many different hierarchical oppositions in love. The hierarchies are not just of beauty and attractiveness, but of gender, of age, of status, of power in love (already present when the woman or boy can refuse the man). Inferiority in the hierarchy of beauty, especially an inferiority which comes as a change, displays the complex situations which literary love creates and investigates. Now, however, that this sort of inferiority has been talked up, its inferiority in another respect must be admitted. This respect concerns the relative prominence of the area in Greek and in Latin; the difference, though, is itself of some interest. Greek literature, on the one (p.192) hand, seems saturated with comparisons of beauty. So in the first book of the Iliad we have Agamemnon saying he prefers Chryseis to Clytemnestra, since she is not worse (the logic demands ‘better’) οὐ δέμαϲ οὐδὲ φυήν, οὔτ᾿ ἂρ φρέναϲ οὔτέ τι ἔργα, ‘in body or stature, in her mind or in what she does [weaving particularly]’ (Hom. Il. 1. 114– 15; the same language from Calypso until the last pair of nouns, Hom. Od. 5.211–12). In the earliest personal poetry, Archilochus’ narrator prefers Neobule’s sister to Neobule, partly because Neobule’s ἄν]θοϲ…ἀπερρύηκε παρθενήϊον, ‘maidenly bloom…has flowed away’ (fr. 196A.27 West; note again the imagery of flowers). In the earliest lyric, the chorus politely decline to compare Agido to their chorus-leader Hagesichora: Hagesichora forbids them to praise or blame her (Alcm. PMGF 1.43–5). Both are given supremacy of beauty in their own separate images, of a stallion among cattle, or of a top race-horse far ahead of its nearest rival. Hagesichora’s supremacy is linked with the chorus’ choosing her as their object of love (73–7; by r, they choose her, so q). As part of this interest in comparing beauty, we find plenty of speech from the less beautiful. In lyric Anacreon (PMG 358) describes the lack of amorous interest in his white-haired self on the part of a Lesbian girl, who gapes at another girl. Her preference for the alternative object of love is explicitly connected to her view of Anacreon’s inferior looks, expressed with language of aggressive utterance (τὴν μὲν ἐμὴν κόμην, | λευκὴ γάρ, καταμέμφεται, 6–7, Page 6 of 18

 

On Not Being Beautiful ‘finds fault with my hair, which is white’). Her reaction to him is the opposite of his reaction to her: her colourful glamour (decorated sandals) is superior to his white hair. In comedy we have, for example, the Ecclesiazusae. The laws of the state have been altered to give old and other ugly people the priority in love, and despite [r → [¬q → ¬p]] the young man is obliged to make love with an old woman (or two) before the young woman whom he thinks more beautiful and loves: personal wishes must yield to state legislation. Before he arrives, an old woman and a young one sing in rivalry. The young woman portrays the beautiful bodies of the young, their μηροῖϲ and μήλοιϲ, ‘thighs’ and ‘the apples of their breasts’ (Ar. Ec. 901–4); the old woman, while not claiming to superior beauty, alleges that pleasure in love-making only comes from the ripe (αἱ πέπειροι), who alone have skill, τὸ ϲοφόν (Ar. Ec. 894–5): a different attraction is asserted as more important than beauty (this suggests ¬r). But the legislation is going to help. (p.193) A little more pathos belongs to Theocritus’ Cyclops; he is inferior in beauty to the nymph he adores. In Theocritus 11.30–3, addressing the χαρίεϲϲα κόρα, ‘graceful girl’, he describes his own gigantic ugliness in graphic terms: mostly the eye, but also the wide nostrils; this is the reason she is fleeing from him. He has compensatory attractions, which would make up for the lack of beauty (hence ¬r): cheese, music (comparison with other Cyclopes), some pet fawns. He recovers himself eventually: he will find another Galatea, perhaps even more beautiful. In poem 6 he is more permanently free from love; he does not share the popular opinion on his own ugly appearance. So for two reasons he does not need the consolation (18–19) that to those in love the unbeautiful often seems beautiful (he does not want Galatea’s love; he is beautiful). Tragedy is concerned with this area too; so Sophocles’ Deianeira, who recognizes Iole’s beauty (S. Tr. 465), poignantly observes that Iole’s ἥβη, ‘youth’, is advancing, her own in decline: ὁρῶ γὰρ ἥβην τὴν μὲν ἕρπουϲαν πρόϲω, τὴν δὲ φθίνουϲαν· †ὧν† ἀφαρπάζειν φιλεῖ ὀφθαλμὸϲ ἄνθοϲ, †τῶν δ᾿† ὑπεκτρέπει πόδα. I see that some people’s youth advances, others’ perishes; a man’s eye is prone to snatch the bloom from the one (?), and turns his foot away from the other (?).10

Eye, flower, and foot convey the instinctive male reaction to such a contrast; from it Deianeira fears that Heracles will no longer choose her to love (r → [¬q → ¬p]), and that the formal domestic arrangements will remain the same but only in appearance.11 We have already seen that Latin literature interests itself in this whole region of comparing beauty; but it does so less pervasively than Greek. Any reader will easily be led by the examples in the instances three paragraphs ago to think of Page 7 of 18

 

On Not Being Beautiful others in Greek; cases abound in competitive language and concrete assessment. So the early scene in the earliest extant narrative poetry could take to us to an early scene in the earliest exant narrative prose, and Candaules insisting Gyges (p.194) has ocular proof that the queen is ‘the most beautiful of all women’ (Hdt. 1.8.2–4); or to Agamemnon selecting women at the fall of Lesbos who κάλλει ἐνίκων φῦλα γυναικῶν, ‘defeated the races of women in beauty’ (Hom. Il. 9.128–30, 270–2), and bidding Achilles choose whichever twenty Trojan women are most beautiful ‘after’ Helen (140–1, 281–2), and choose one of his daughters—only for Achilles to say he would not marry one οὐδ᾿ εἰ χρυϲείηι Ἀφροδίτηι κάλλοϲ ἐρίζοι, ‘not even if she competed with golden Aphrodite in beauty’ (389). That remark in turn could take us to Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigenia, the most beautiful thing born that year, on whom at E. IT 23 Calchas figuratively bestows the beauty prize, τὸ καλλιϲτεῖον; or to the Judgement of Paris, so popular a theme (e.g. Cratin. Dionysal. i KA, E. Andr. 274– 92, Tr. 919–37, 969–90, Call. H. 5.17–28),12 and Aphrodite κάλλει ἀριϲτεύουϲα θεάων, ‘winner among the goddesses in beauty’ (Theoc. 17.45); or to Cassiopeia, who would pay a great price for equalling herself (Arat. 658 ἰϲώϲαϲθαι) in beauty to the Nereids (cf. e.g. Σ Arat. 179 p. 171 Martin, 657 p. 354). One could continue indefinitely. The theme possesses a large, vivid, agonistic presence across the literature that Latin cannot match. We shall see some instances of the disparity in a moment; but let us first consider how, if at all, one might explain it. Logically obvious possibilities might be (a) that Latin culture or literature is less concerned with physical beauty than Greek is; (b) that Latin culture or literature is less competitive; (c) that Latin culture or literature is less concerned with applying comparison and competition to beauty. All might have something to be said for them, provided one stresses that ‘less’ is only in relation to Greek culture or literature; (c) runs the risk of seeming somewhat tautologous, that is of merely repeating what it should be explaining. Some random examples for (a), (b), and (c): (a and implicitly c) it is hard to imagine a Roman equivalent to the widespread kalos-names on Attic vases, or (a and c) to Lesbian beauty-competitions, or to the comparison of the beauty of boys and women in the debate at the end of Achilles Tatius Book 2;13 (b): literary competitions, athletic competitions, etc., are only gradually introduced into (p.195) Roman culture during the Empire—very strongly under Greek influence—while they had been ubiquitous in Hellenistic culture and before; but even under Nero or Domitian there is no Roman equivalent to the domination of fifth-century Athenian poetic culture by the Dionysian competitions. If there were anything to these points, they would not of course be to the discredit of Latin literature; indeed, (a) and (c) would fit the ethos of many Latin writers who lay claim to seriousness and moral weight. But the points might reasonably be felt to be too general, at least as entire explanations: the internal territories of particular Roman genres would need to be considered too. This at first sounds promising, and again there may be Page 8 of 18

 

On Not Being Beautiful something in it. ‘Acontius and Cydippe’ from Callimachus’ Aetia is used as a significant precedent by Ovid (Rem. 381–2). Callimachus’ main narrative starts (fr. 67.5–22, frr. 68–9) by elaborately showing the two lovers as matching in their supreme beauty, within the separate leagues of their genders and islands (καλοὶ νηϲάων ἀϲτέρεϲ ἀμφότεροι, ‘both the fair stars of their islands’ fr. 67.7; the heavenly bodies give the other of the two important areas of imagery mentioned above: plants show how the same individuals change with time, heavenly bodies tend to accentuate supremacy with less stress on transience). Roman elegiacs about love, taken as a whole, give a much less prominent place to competitive depictions of this sort. But the type of poetry is largely focalized by the male narrators. Their beauty or otherwise is not part of their ‘degree of personification’: the presentation of the narrators is very much lacking in physical specifics. Beauty may also be less central to the figure of a man in the world of love than to that of a woman, especially when the man is the subject rather than the object of desire (male beauty is dwelt on in Latin literature elsewhere, e.g. in Sen. Phaed. 761–83 or Marc. 22.2). Yet even when the focus is on rival women, as in Propertius 3.15, the opportunities for comparing beauty are not exploited. (In a brief moment at Prop. 3.23.13, an imagined female voice asks ‘an tibi nescio quae uisa est formosior?’, with the implication the narrator has abandoned her: r → [¬q → ¬p]).14 (p.196) In Ovid’s own version of Acontius and Cydippe a rival to Acontius is introduced; but even so there is little stress on comparative beauty. Instead of the stars as an image for these humans excelling other humans (Call. fr. 67.8), we have just Cydippe excelling the stars (20.55–6, oculique tui, quibus ignea cedunt | sidera, ‘your eyes, to which the stars’ fires must yield’; we do have the uninhibited Acontius assuring Cydippe that he assumes the parts of her he cannot see are as good as those he can, 61–2).15 In general the Heroides would seem to offer prime opportunities for the female speakers to compare their beauty with that of others; but the area receives little attention, even when the rival of Oenone is the most beautiful woman in the world (we get more from a brief mention in the double Heroides: Ov. Ep. 16.97–100). Hypsipyle asserts that Medea does not catch Jason’s fancy facie meritisque, ‘by her appearance and her valuable deeds’, but rather by witchcraft (6.83–4; an inversion of Tib. 1.5.43–4); comparison is not directly stated. There is one significant exception in the Heroides, to which we will return; its authorship is disputed, and its date is uncertain. So explanations on the basis of genre look unlikely to be the whole answer, and in this case may actually seem less promising than more general considerations. However that may be, there are rewarding Latin treatments of inferiority in beauty; they show a wide range among themselves, and develop complicated situations and issues. For reasons of space, we must concentrate on poetry (Psyche’s sisters are particularly regretted absentees). In one passage, it is Ovid who gives ample airing to the voice of such an inferior in beauty. Not that Page 9 of 18

 

On Not Being Beautiful Polyphemus thinks of himself in this way. Theocritus separates the voice of the Cyclops in love (most of poem 11) and the voice of the Cyclops returned to selfsatisfaction (second song in poem 6; end of poem 11); but in Ovid’s version, love of Galatea and self-love are fused. Polyphemus’ praise of his own beauty has amorous overtones (placuitque mihi mea forma uidenti, ‘my shape caught my fancy as I looked’, Ov. Met. 13.841; for the sight of his reflection, developed from Theocr. 6.35–8, cf. Narcissus, Ov. Met. 3.448 et placet et uideo, ‘I both fancy him and see him’, and note ego me noui, ‘I know myself’, 13.840, cf. 3.348).16 While Galatea’s beauty at the start of the song excels features of the (p.197) rustic world, the points of comparison for himself are Jupiter and (more obliquely) the sun. (Galatea does exceed Jupiter in the effects of her anger, 857–8.) An archaic aesthetic of size and shagginess underlies the Cyclops’ self-appraisal. Its earnestness is apparent when he sets the name of his own race proudly against that of his rival—for a rival has been added to Theocritus’ story-line: sed cur Cyclope repulso | Acin amas praefersque meis complexibus Acin?, ‘but why do you reject a Cyclops and love Acis, and to my embraces prefer—Acis?’ (cf. Cic. Verr. 3.7 odistis hominum nouorum industriam…Verrem amatis! ‘you great aristocrats hate us hard-working new men…you love Verres!’).17 ille tamen placeatque sibi…, ‘let him like the look of himself’ (862), plainly sets Acis’ selfassessment of his beauty against Polyphemus’ self-assessment of his (placuitque mihi mea forma, ‘my shape took my fancy’, 841). Galatea, Polyphemus recognizes, may side with Acis’ view, despite his arguments (862–3); but the aesthetic contest will be made superfluous by Polyphemus’ violence. (His physical power involves a different hierarchy, but one that for him is connected.) Ovid’s own relation to his Greek original is two-sided. On the one hand, he has outdone Theocritus with his gigantic extreme of inferiority in beauty, defiant and unaware; on the other, there are multiple levels of comic self-subversion, poetic aesthetics not excluded. Callimachus and Theocritus’ Lycidas could find fault with Ovid’s Cyclops and his song. The massive scene between the Nurse and Deianira ([Sen.] Her. O. 233–582) includes a greatly expanded version of Deianeira’s lines in Sophocles on Iole’s youthful beauty and her own decline (Her. O. 380–406; the motif is less apparent at Ov. or [Ov.] Ep. 9.121–34). The speech is given its impulse from the Nurse’s question famulamne et hostis praeferet gnatam tibi?, ‘will Hercules prefer to you one who is a slave and the daughter of an enemy?’ (379). Iole’s inferior position in other hierarchies will be less important, Deianira fears, than Iole’s superiority in the hierarchy of beauty (her fear is [¬q → ¬p], where y is herself). For Sophocles’ passing image of the ἄνθοϲ, [Seneca] substitutes a more imposing and extended image of trees (cf. Hor. Ars 60–1). Vt laeta siluas forma uernantes habet, quas nemore nudo primus inuestit tepor, (p.198) at cum solutos expulit Boreas Notos et saeua totas bruma decussit comas, Page 10 of 18

 

On Not Being Beautiful deforme solis aspicis truncis nemus: sic nostra longum forma percurrens iter deperdit aliquid semper et fulget minus, nec illa uenus est: quidquid in nobis fuit olim petitum cecidit et periit labans, aetas citato senior eripuit gradu…. As flourishing beauty possesses the trees in spring, dressed by the first warmth of the year when the wood has been bare, but when the North Wind has driven out the relaxed winds of the South, and winter has savagely shaken all the hair of their foliage from them, you see a wood that is ugly, with nothing but trunks—even so my beauty as it runs through its long course is always losing something and shining less, nor is my charm what it was. Whatever was once sought after in me has now fallen, slipped away, and been lost; older age has snatched it away in its rapid stride.…18

The simile confronts spring and winter in two contrasting snapshots, but the application of the image (385–90) mingles sudden loss and gradual fading. The ability of continuing time to change Deianira’s beauty is set against the inability of one disastrous event to change Iole’s: uides ut altum famula non perdat decus?, ‘do you see how the slave-girl does not lose her noble beauty?’ (391); fulget, ‘shines’ (393), contrast fulget minus, ‘shines less’ (386), cf. 237–9, where the connection with heavenly bodies is made explicit. Other viewpoints and hierarchies enter in. The poet is certainly conveying in the lines on Iole (391–5) a physical version of spiritual imperviousness to fortune. And this whole speech recalls a different alignment in Iole’s own lament: Pro, saeue decor formaque mortem | paritura mihi, tibi cuncta domus | concidit uni, ‘Ah! brutal beauty, loveliness that will bring forth death for me, to you alone my whole family has fallen’ (219–21). There saeuus, ‘brutal, savage’, is applied not to bruma, ‘winter’ (383, above), but to decor, ‘beauty’; forma, ‘loveliness’, does not perish (385–6, above) but will itself bring death. The inferior in fortune has her claim to sympathy in the play: Deianira has no monopoly. In Deianira’s own voice, the touch of admiration for Iole is subsumed into her own fear. famula, ‘slave-girl’, in 391 replies to famulamne in the Nurse’s question; nihilque ab illa casus et fatum graue | nisi regna traxit, (p.199) ‘her fall and her grievous fate have removed from her nothing but her kingdom’ (394–5), abruptly turns with a demonstrative into her own fear: hic meum pectus timor…lacessit, ‘this is the fear that tortures my breast’. Deianira’s desire for revenge against Iole and any unborn child of hers has found extreme expression at 345–50 (which outdo Ov. Met. 9.149–51). Deianira implies that her own misfortune in losing Hercules (through putative divorce and remarriage) is worse than Iole’s in losing regna (toris caruisse regnantis leue est, ‘to lose the bed of a ruler is a light thing’, for herself, 406–7, contrast graue, ‘heavy, grievous’, 394; alte illa cecidit quae uiro caret Hercule, ‘it is the woman that has lost Hercules that has fallen far’, 407, cf. Page 11 of 18

 

On Not Being Beautiful casus, ‘fall’, 394). Much as she loves Hercules, the emphasis here is on loss of standing: once all married women envied her (398–9). The grandiose pathos and the mixed attitude to Iole in this speech form part of an enormous scene and a complex mass of emotions and of viewer’s (or reader’s) responses. In Heroides 15 Sappho, like Polyphemus, is directly addressing the beloved; like Deianira, she largely acknowledges her own lack of beauty (31–2 si mihi difficilis formam natura negauit, | ingenio formae damna repende meo, ‘if Nature has been grudging and denied me beauty, make up for my loss of beauty through my talent’, cf. P. Oxy. XV 1800 fr. 1 col. i. 19–21 [of Sappho] τὴν δὲ μορφὴν | [εὐ]καταφρόνητοϲ δοκεῖ γε|[γον]έ̣ν̣α[ι κα]ὶ̣ δυϲειδεϲτάτη, ‘she seems to have been worthy of scorn in her appearance, and extremely ugly’). She certainly thinks herself inferior to the beloved, Phaon (39–40), and he evidently prefers some Sicilian women (51–6) (and so, by r, where y is them, does not now think her so beautiful as they are).19 Her arguments to persuade Phaon to choose her present a mixture again. Some (cf. 31–4) urge Phaon to focus on her artistic abilities (and thus imply ¬r: choice of Sappho need not imply that Phaon thinks her the most beautiful person available). Other arguments (cf. 35–8) maintain not, like Polyphemus’ speech, that her physical features are actually beautiful, but that these qualities have been thought beautiful by a lover, or are at any rate compatible with being loved. The arguments, though, can push a little further: sim breuis, ‘short I may be’, is followed by the more expansive statement (p. 200) that she is as large as her world-wide fame, at nomen quod terras impleat omnes | est mihi; mensuram nominis ipsa fero, ‘but I have a fame to fill the whole earth; in my own person I carry the measure of my fame’. The literal quality is transfigured by the artistic.20 Sappho says Phaon used to think she was beautiful not only in the artistic moment of performance (41–4) but also in the bodily moment of intercourse (45– 50). More is claimed for his opinion of her looks than that her enthusiastic actions and her wanton words compensated for the absence of beauty. But that less flattering possibility is present for the reader. Martial develops the thought schematically and graphically in 11.60. He begins: Sit Phlogis an Chione Veneri magis apta requiris? | pulchrior est Chione; sed Phlogis ulcus habet, | ulcus habet Priami quod tendere possit alutam…, ‘Do you ask if Phlogis [girl of flame] is more suitable for love-making than Chione [girl of snow]? Chione is more beautiful, but Phlogis has got a sore, a sore that could stretch tight the floppy leather of old Priam…’. In appeal the greater beauty of Chione (white, cold, cf. 3.34) is matched by the greater passion of Phlogis; pulchrior is matched by the ugly and physical ulcus.21 The epigram is a provocative challenge to r: Phlogis is no less likely to be chosen, and if she were, it would not always be the case that p → q, that choice implies an opinion of superior beauty. It would be good if the gods could sort the paradox out (9–12).

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On Not Being Beautiful There is obvious pathos in the positions of Sappho and Deianira, once loved and now, they fear, rejected; there is pathos even in the position of the Cyclops, rejected and never loved. Less pathos attaches to Horace in the Odes. He is getting on, and contending with more beautiful young men for the affection of women; but he seems happy enough, and not deprived of amatory comforts. More ambiguous are the poems on women who are losing or have lost their beauty, but attempt to continue the life of love. There are contrasts through imagery with the beauty of other women at Hor. Carm. 3.15.4–6 desine…inter ludere uirgines | et stellis nebulam spargere candidis, ‘stop…playing among the girls, and casting a cloud on the shining stars’ (heavenly bodies), and probably in Hor. Carm. 1.25.16–20: non sine questu, | laeta quod pubes hedera uirenti | gaudeat pulla magis atque myrto, | aridas frondes hiemis sodali | dedicet Euro, ‘not without (p.201) lamenting that young men delight rather in green ivy and dark myrtle, and consign dried-up leaves to winter’s companion the East Wind’ (vegetable imagery).22 In this second passage, though, one might also see a generalization which includes Lydia’s own past beauty. Such a contrast with the previous self is made clearly in 4.13, where the Lyce of the past is treated as if a different person (as we have seen). There is also a contrast there between the present Lyce and the past Cinara: Cinara died young, without a decline into crow-like age and ugliness (21–8).23 There is no sympathy for the ageing woman in the narrator’s voice, any more than there is in Epode 12 (cf. 8); and yet there the woman’s own voice brings pathos in directly.24 In 4.13, the narrator exults in Lyce’s ageing, which is the revenge he has prayed for—until he thinks with regret of his own lost past (17–20 quo fugit uenus, heu, quoue color, decens | quo motus? quid habes illius etc., ‘where, ah where has that charm of yours fled to, the tone of your skin, your attractive way of moving? What have you got left of that woman’ etc.). In 1.25 too there is the notion of a pay-back (9–10). The women have been superior in the hierarchy of amorous power, and have been cruel or capricious to the men. Their position has parallels with the narrator’s own, as he ages and continues with love, and the narrator’s tone is unusually raucous in the second part of 1.25 and the first part of 4.13; these features might incline the reader to explore the women’s own viewpoint.25 So 1.25.6–8 (lovers’ pleas) audis minus et minus iam, ‘you now hear less and less often’, evokes the possibility of pathos even if it is subsumed into mockery. Horace’s time of life runs through the books of Odes; the attractive and sporting young men are a frequent presence (most especially in (p.202) Books 1 and 3). Contrasts in beauty between him and them can often be presupposed (as in gracilis…puer, ‘slender boy’, 1.5.1, or as in 1.17.24–8, which so recalls 1.13); but two poems, in the same metre, particularly explore this theme. In 1.13 the narrator is not merely continuing as usual and trying to seem beautiful, as Lyce will do in 4.13: like other inferiors in beauty, he suggests that different attractions can make up for that one (so ¬r). He neatly exploits the violent quarrels which Lydia has with Telephus, often a puer furens, ‘boy in a Page 13 of 18

 

On Not Being Beautiful frenzy’ (11); he recommends the appeal of maturity, where love is not malis | diuulsus querimoniis, ‘torn apart by unpleasant quarrels’ (18–19). The absence of quarrels is absorbed into a vision of permanence which seems to trump the temporary intoxication of kissing Telephus (13–16): temporary because he is so quarrelsome, and also because his brutally sensuous youth will not last for ever. The narrator’s implied offer of permanence is at the least unverifiable, and Pyrrha (1.5) and Leuconoe (1.11) already make it seem implausible. He also cunningly juxtaposes with Telephus’ beauty Lydia’s own, which is made ugly by Telephus’ violence (seu tibi candidos | turparunt umeros…rixae, ‘whether fights have made your white shoulders ugly’, 8–11). The narrator begins in the role of Sappho (fr. 31 Voigt); but he does not end in passive near-death or resignation: he is resourceful and persuasive. Even at the start, the specifics of Telephus’ beautiful body, as expressed in the maddening remarks of Lydia, are not set against the narrator’s own less glamorous features, but against the narrator’s bodily tumult in love. His tears show, for Lydia from outside, the intensity of his inner experience—and thus the seriousness of his involvement: arguens | quam lentis penitus macerer ignibus, ‘showing how slow-burning are the fires that torment me deep within’ (7–8). Odes 3.9 should probably be seen in a Sapphic context too; in this case the image of Sappho is of the haughty beauty. The poem culminates in a tentative proposition from Horace (let us so call him for simplicity); Lydia accepts it, with some good-humoured abuse of Horace. The exchange should put the reader in mind of the dialogue of stanzas between Alcaeus and Sappho, in which he bashfully approaches making a proposition to her, and she abusively rejects his attempt. (The spurious sequence appears already in Arist. Rh. 1 1367a7–14; still earlier, the scene is probably depicted by the Brygos Painter on the red-figure kalathos Munich 2416 (500–450 BCE; ARV2 385.288, Beazley Archive 204129); there was probably more such (p.203) spurious poetry, cf. [Alc.] fr. 384 Voigt, despite Voigt, and Hermesianax below.) The pair here are at a quite different stage; they have already been lovers. Lydia is not portrayed as a poet, though Horace is (7–8); but her replacement Chloe was dulcis docta modos et citharae sciens, ‘schooled in sweet melodies and skilled on the cithara’ (10). Also relevant perhaps is Alcaeus’ rival Anacreon (Hermesianax fr. 7.47–55; note Τήϊον ἀλγύνων ἄνδρα, ‘giving pain to the man of Teos’, 50). Sappho rejected him, because of his white hair, for another woman (thus some ancient scholars on Anacr. 358, Chamaeleon fr. 28 Martano2);26 in a (spurious) poem she does evince respect for the ‘old man’ (fr. 250). At the end of 3.9, Anacreon would be brought to mind by the implicit contrast of beauty with the rival (21: if we may assume Horace is not more beautiful than someone more beautiful than a star); but the upshot is surprisingly reversed. ‘quamquam sidere pulchrior     ille est, tu leuior cortice et inprobo iracundior Hadria, Page 14 of 18

 

On Not Being Beautiful     tecum uiuere amem, tecum obeam libens.’ [Lydia:] ‘Although he is lovelier than a star, and you are lighter than a cork and more prone to rage than the ungovernable Adriatic, with you I would love to live, with you I would gladly die.’27

Rather than the inferior mentioning good qualities which offset his looks, the object of his renascent love both implies his inferiority in beauty and also attributes to him just the vices which he claimed to lack in 1.13: fickleness and swiftness to anger (22–3; inconstantior, ‘more inconstant’, Nisbet). But in spite of this, she would happily live and die with him. She delightfully seizes control of the rhetoric and the arguments, and she is the winner, even more than in the preceding pair of stanzas: she is in the position of choice and so of power (whatever the text in 20), she is more ardent in love and adventurous in language, she lays claim to constancy, and she benignly scores points against the man with whom she had fallen out. But Horace the author wins on another level, by allowing the poem to happen: he is at ease, and the humour against his supposed self attracts the reader. The Latin treatments of inferiority in beauty may be fewer than the Greek; and the area could have been seen as one especially cultivated (p.204) by Greeks, if one may judge from the close relationship of these major treatments to Greek passages and poets. But the Latin writers exploit the arguments and the issues with zest. They produce scenes and poems of widely divergent impact. We certainly encounter pathos in the case of some who are lacking in beauty and lose love; but not pathos alone. The inferior are often energetic and ingenious, as inferiors need to be, and address their situation through the medium of words and thoughts (more directly accessible to the reader than the looks). There can be humour in their audacious and determined efforts; and ugliness is itself a prime fount of comedy (cf. Aristotle on τὸ αἰϲχρόν, ‘the ugly’, and comic masks, Arist. Po. 1449a32–7, τοῦ αἰϲχροῦ ἐϲτὶ τὸ γελοῖον μόριον…τὸ γελοῖον πρόϲωπον αἰϲχρόν τι, ‘it is of the ugly that the ridiculous is part…the funny mask is something ugly’). Yet we are not dealing with something self-explanatory: complications surround the whole notion of inferiority in beauty. There is a tricky relation between passion and thoughts on beauty; both love and self-love distort the judgement. The same person moves with time into different categories; the same person can regard their own decline contentedly, other people’s acerbically. Attitudes to the superior in beauty can mingle admiration and resentment. Manifold hierarchies interweave themselves in these intricate amorous situations, some particular to love (such as hierarchies in attractiveness, devotion, desire, and power of choice), and many with external aspects (such as hierarchies in age, gender, and even skill in poetry and music). Both love and the self generate in the poetry complexity, diversity, and invention. But this inferiority will now withdraw itself, blushing. Page 15 of 18

 

On Not Being Beautiful Notes:

(1) I am very grateful to Philip Hardie for his response at the conference, and to other participants for their comments. (2) Ideas of an ‘inferiority complex’ are especially associated with Adler: for his developed views cf. Adler (1922: 10–25; 1930: 21–4). He speaks rather, however, of the neurotic’s ‘Minderwertigkeitsgefühl’, ‘feeling that one is of less value’, which begins in childhood and leads to a struggle for a sense of (fictitious) superiority. This theory could be linked to some of what follows; but the picture in ancient literature is much more varied, and, even from the viewpoint of the supposedly inferior, other people’s opinions often have primary importance. On beauty in ancient thought, see recently Konstan (2015), esp. chs 2 and 3; on the moral problems of evaluation, e.g. Salzman-Mitchell (2005, esp. ch. 2). For hierarchy cf. Hutchinson (2016), on symposiastic poetry. Hutchinson (2011) explores a case (Aristophanes) where public and private clearly interact metaphorically; for power in relationships amid other sorts of power, see LeeStecum (1998). (3) All translations are my own. (4) Cf. e.g. Lucr. 4.1153–70 (false qualities attributed by men blind through desire); Theoc. 10.24–9; Ov. Ep. 4.73–4 (idiosyncratic judgements from the infatuated). Idiosyncratic in a more compelling way is Catullus’ reorganization of categories: it seems that one must have both pulchritudo and uenustas to be formosus, and that pulchritudo and uenustas both involve the body (cf. 86.4). Divisions of physical excellence are found already in Homer’s οὐ δέμαϲ οὐδὲ φυήν, (not worse) ‘in body or in stature’ at Il. 1.115, Od. 5.212, δέμαϲ καὶ εἶδοϲ, (competing) ‘in body and form’ at Od. 5.213. For an analysis of the treatment of desire in Catullus’ poetry, arranged according to the subject of desire, see Hutchinson (2012). (5) Compare the converse at Ariosto, Orlando Furioso 38.24.4–25.2, where it seems at the end of the stanza that God is retracting the whole of his punishment out of pity; but the unusual prolongation of the sentence beyond the stanza reveals his more pragmatic and military motivation. (6) Cf. Wilkinson (2013: 111–13). (7) Spondaic bases mark out more sexual or less discreet moments in the poem: 120, 122, 126, 127, 129, 135, 169, 175, 198, 201, 202, 209. (8) Note in Cic. N.D. 1.78 the elements about himself that matter more to Cicero than species and figura: ingenium and speeches (cf. e.g. Cic. Att. 14.20.30). An intriguing passage in Beigbeder (2009: 96) brings estimates of the self and the beloved together in a different way: ‘De ces rejets si nombreux, de toutes ces joues tournées, de ces jalousies enfantines et ces frustrations adolescentes date Page 16 of 18

 

On Not Being Beautiful mon addiction aux lèvres de femmes. Quand on a tant essuyé de refus et tant espéré sans oser, comment ne pas passer le restant de sa vie à considérer chaque baiser comme une victoire? Je ne parviendrai jamais à me défaire de l’idée que toute femme qui veut bien de moi est la plus belle du monde.’ (‘From such numerous rejections, all those cheeks turned away, those jealousies as a child and frustrations as a teenager, dates my addiction to women’s lips. When you have endured so many refusals and hoped so much without daring to act, how can you not spend the rest of your life viewing every kiss as a triumph? I will never manage to rid myself of the idea that every woman who cares for me is the most beautiful in the world.’) (9) On the topic of the ageing Horatian lover, see also Harrison in this volume. (10) S. Tr. 547–9. (11) The general point will remain, whatever the text. Lloyd-Jones and Wilson print in 548–9 Zippmann’s ὧν …τῶνδ᾿; but a point about familiarity—cf. Lloyd-Jones and Wilson (1990: 162)—seems less pertinent, or else anticlimactic, when age has been mentioned. Nauck’s τῆϲ μὲν ἁρπάζειν…τῆϲ δ᾿, without his other changes, would have attractions (or perhaps τῶν μὲν ἁρπάζειν…τῶν δ’, with φιλεῖ supporting the generalization). (12) On the Judgement of Paris, especially in Euripides, see Stinton (1990: 17– 75). (13) Highly interesting are the arguments for the superiority and inferiority of women’s longer-lasting beauty, 2.36–37.1. CIL 4.1830 (cf. pp. 212 and 464) on the disadvantages of depilation does not reach the same aesthetic level. Beautycontests: Hutchinson (2001: 193, 213). (14) Not even Hor. Carm. 3.15.5–6 (see below, p. 200) depicts the stars as due to fade: stars are rather opposed to cloud. Similarly, [Sen.] Her. O. 237–9 (see below, p. 198; contrast 385–6, where the celestial comparison is less overt). Of course, the phenomena themselves allowed other possibilities, as in Shakespeare, Sonnet 7, which links the sun’s daily decline to humans’ declining beauty (cf. on the poem Lyne (2016: 93)). (15) At 18.71–3 moon and stars are used to depict Hero’s supremacy. (16) ‘The narcissistic Cyclops’, Hardie (2002: 170 n. 55). Note Plut. Sept. 150a for a verdict on one’s own reflection which misses self-knowledge. (17) The scorn is compatible with the jealous mimesis of Galatea’s obsession through repetition, cf. Hor. Carm. 1.13.1–3, rightly compared by Hardie (2015: 354). (18) [Sen.] Her. O. 380–90. Page 17 of 18

 

On Not Being Beautiful (19) In Leopardi’s ‘L’ultimo canto di Saffo’, ‘Sappho’s last song’, the woman without beauty feels a contrast with the beauty of Nature, and so a distance from the world; the Latin exploration does not reach so deep. (20) ‘Ridiculous’, in the view of Knox (1995: 286). On Heroides 15, see now Thorsen (2014); attacks on its authenticity are surveyed with scepticism at 96– 122. (21) Note ἕλκοϲ, ‘wound’, at Plut. Curios. 522c. (22) For pullus as positive cf. Epod. 16.46. (23) If Fedeli and Ciccarelli (2008: 555–7) are right, post, ‘after’, indicates Lyce’s inferiority to Cinara even in Cinara’s lifetime; but Thomas’s point on felix, ‘fortunate’, makes post more likely temporal (2011: 242–3)—not that the narrator’s progression from Cinara need necessarily be ascribed to her death. (24) Or at least its possibility, if we are as hostile as the commentators. The poem comes very close to our territory: there is even a preferred rival Inachia; the reader infers that the narrator thinks Inachia more beautiful than the older woman, though the comparison of beauty is not made explicit. 11.5–6 suggests he loved Inachia at the time of poem 12 (set earlier than 11), as he did not love the older woman; r would imply he thought Inachia more beautiful. (25) Cf. the discussion in Thomas (2011: 237–8); he does not separate the narrator’s tone in 4.13 from the total scope of the poem. (26) I.e. in Martano, Matelli, and Mirhady (2012: 229–30). (27) Hor. Carm. 3.9.21–4.

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From Adultery to Incest

Complex Inferiorities: The Poetics of the Weaker Voice in Latin Literature Sebastian Matzner and Stephen Harrison

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198814061 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198814061.001.0001

From Adultery to Incest Messalina and Agrippina as Sexual Aggressors in Tacitus’ Annals Vassiliki Panoussi

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198814061.003.0012

Abstract and Keywords This chapter continues the investigation of rhetorical maneuvers clustering around social and amorous hierarchies in the fraught sphere of sexual agency by studying the trope of the sexually aggressive older female preying on a younger man in Tacitus’ Annals. On the basis of a detailed examination of the portrayal of Messalina and Agrippina, it argues that it is precisely the recognizable rhetoricity and artificiality in the deployment of this trope, here dramatized through rich intertextual echoes and connections (notably Vergil’s Aeneid and Euripides’ Bacchae), which narratively undercuts any unambiguous condemnation of female superiority over male inferiority, disrupts any simple reassertion of traditional Roman gender hierarchies, and opens up the text to alternative interpretations beyond the reach of the narrator’s authority. Keywords:   Messalina, Agrippina, Tacitus, Annals, gender, sexuality, Julio-Claudian dynasty, Latin historiography, intertextuality, Vergil

In Roman texts, independent women, such as courtesans, rich matronae, or widows, often pursue younger men. From Roman comedy to Republican oratory, and from elegy and the novel to imperial historiography, we often see powerful women reversing traditional gender hierarchies by placing men in a subordinate position. In this essay, I examine the portraits of Messalina and Agrippina in Tacitus’ Annals, which match other representations of an elite, sexually aggressive woman preying on a younger man. Further, I argue that in Tacitus’ narratives there is a larger literary and rhetorical trope at work, which I believe Page 1 of 19

 

From Adultery to Incest can be traced back to Cicero and Livy. I propose that the narratives employing this trope increasingly emphasize female sexual aggression and confer greater power on the woman, a process culminating in Tacitus’ memorable portrayals of the adulterous Messalina and the incestuous Agrippina the Younger. Tacitus’ depiction of the empresses’ sexuality as particularly aggressive, even monstrous, reverses the norms of female sexuality and agency that Roman ideology had established in famous exempla of wives and mothers, such as Lucretia, Cornelia, or Arria.1 In turn, the men’s inferiority is rendered especially problematic, as it affects (p.206) the emperor’s ability to manage his domus, and, by extension, his empire. As scholars have argued, the pathology of the royal domus is emblematic of the pathology of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, which contrasts favourably with the new regime under whose patronage Tacitus writes.2 At the same time, however, Tacitus incorporates elements that give voice to other ideological propositions, including those of the monstrous women in his history. This inversion of hierarchies and inferiorities offers a window on to the ideological workings of the Annals.3 I would like to add to this discussion by identifying the trope of the sexually aggressive woman as operative in the Annals. I argue that it does not serve simply as a means through which Tacitus can add drama and excitement to his narrative or participate in an intertextual dialogue with his predecessors; more than that, this trope, once recognized as such, allows readers, ancient or modern, to consider Tacitus’ historiographical account as a complicated amalgam consisting of both literary artefact and historical truth.4 Feminist criticism has done much to show that men’s opinions on women should not be taken at face value. Scholars have long identified stereotypes, such as the ‘wicked wife’, or the ‘tart with a heart’, which populate the writings of ancient authors. Historiography, rhetoric, and poetry—among other genres—provide ample evidence of similarly negative paradigms and attitudes.5 In particular, the stereotype of the sexually aggressive older woman seems to come to life6 with Cicero’s portrait of Clodia.7 She is perhaps the best known (p.207) ‘cougar’ of the Roman world, a rich wife, a matrona, who has no moral qualms about committing adultery or incest:8 Sin ista muliere remota nec crimen ullum nec opes ad oppugnandum M. Caelium illis relinquuntur, quid est aliud quod nos patroni facere debeamus, nisi ut eos qui insectantur, repellamus? Quod quidem facerem vehementius, nisi intercederent mihi inimicitiae cum istius mulieris viro— fratrem volui dicere; semper hic erro.…Nec enim muliebres umquam inimicitias mihi gerendas putavi, praesertim cum ea quam omnes semper amicam omnium potius quam cuiusquam inimicam putaverunt.

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From Adultery to Incest But if, with this woman removed from the case, no charge nor means to attack Caelius is left to our opponents, what else ought we, his lawyers, to do but refute those who attack him? This indeed I would do all the more vigorously, were it not for my personal enmity to that woman’s husband—I meant to say brother; I always make this mistake.…For indeed I never thought that I would have to engage in quarrels with women, especially with one whom everyone has always thought to be everyone’s friend rather than anyone’s enemy.9 Cicero paints Clodia’s adultery as infamous and, in case the point was not adequately made, he repeatedly calls her a prostitute: he uses the word meretrix and its cognates to refer to Clodia nine times. Moreover, he contrasts Clodia’s sexual voraciousness with Caelius’ youthful inexperience. In a famous passage, Cicero brings back from the dead Clodia’s ancestor, Appius Claudius Caecus, who scolds his degenerate offspring: ‘Mulier, quid tibi cum Caelio, quid cum homine adulescentulo, quid cum alieno? Cur aut tam familiaris huic fuisti ut aurum commodares, aut tam inimica ut venenum timeres?’ ‘Woman, what business do you have with Caelius? What business do you have with a very young man? What business do you have with someone who is not from your family circle? Why have you been such friends with him as to lend him gold, or such enemies as to fear his poison?’10 (p.208) Cicero uses the word adulescens and its derivatives thirty-nine times in the Pro Caelio, thus making it plain that Caelius was at a disadvantage not only because he had no money but also because of his age. Borrowing from Roman comedy, Cicero depicts Caelius as having a strict father (17); Clodia therefore provides him with the means to live comfortably and have a little fun—with strings attached. Cicero’s rhetorical strategies were so brilliant that scholars had taken his word as fact.11 Feminist analysis eventually noted Cicero’s use of comedic motifs and stock characters to ridicule and discredit Clodia and successfully refuted the historicity of Cicero’s portrait.12 More recently, scholarly attention has focused on Cicero’s depiction of Clodia as a destroyer of homes and reputations,13 herself the head of a corrupt household, or domus, exploiting her privileged status as wife (matrona) not for the interest of the state (as other famous wives before her) but to pursue her sexual desires (libidines).14 Cicero’s Clodia is the type that preys on younger men of inferior social status and makes them submit to her sexual passions. Historians agree that Cicero’s focusing his speech on Clodia has very little to do with the issues at hand, which included a very serious charge of vis, or violence against the state, and which had more to do with Roman relations with Egypt than with a December–May affair.15

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From Adultery to Incest By contrast, in Livy’s narrative of the scandal of the Bacchanalia (39.8–19), the wealthy ex-prostitute Faecenia Hispala, who neatly falls into the stereotype of the ‘tart with a heart’, has an affair with a young man, Aebutius. His corrupt stepfather and mother plan his demise by arranging his initiation into the Bacchic mysteries in hopes that Aebutius will either be murdered or engage in such illicit activities that he can be easily blackmailed. Hispala, who happens to have (p.209) inside knowledge of these mysteries, reveals the conspiracy to the authorities and saves not only Aebutius but all Roman youths from sexual and moral corruption and/or death. Her service to the state is rewarded by permission to marry her young lover. Livy’s introduction to Hispala illustrates the positive side of the same characteristics that were used by Cicero to denigrate Clodia: Scortum nobile libertina Hispala Faecenia, non digna quaestu cui ancillula adsuerat, etiam postquam manumissa erat, eodem se genere tuebatur. Huic consuetudo iuxta vicinitatem cum Aebutio fuit, minime adulescentis aut rei aut famae damnosa; ultro enim amatus adpetitusque erat, et maligne omnia praebentibus suis meretriculae munificentia sustinebatur. Quin eo processerat consuetudine capta ut post patroni mortem, quia in nullius manu erat, tutore ab tribunis et praetore petito, cum testamentum faceret unum Aebutium institueret heredem. There was a well-known courtesan, a freed woman, Hispala Faecenia, not worthy of the occupation to which she applied herself when she was just a slave, and even after she had been manumitted, she supported herself in the same way. Since they were neighbours, a love affair developed between her and Aebutius, not at all detrimental either to the young man’s fortune or to his reputation; for he had been loved and sought out by her, and, since his own family provided little for him, he was maintained by the generosity of the courtesan. Moreover, their relationship had progressed to such a degree that, after the death of her patron, since she was under no one’s legal control and petitioned the tribunes and the praetor for a guardian, when she made her will, she designated Aebutius as her sole heir.16 Despite her low social status, Hispala possesses such moral integrity that she helps put an end to the moral corruption of the entire Roman state. In the quoted passage, we are told that Hispala has assumed some of Aebutius’ expenses (since his family did not provide him with adequate funds). When the young man tells her about his plan to attend the mysteries, she warns him against the dangers of Bacchic initiation. Both actions mark her as the mother that Aebutius obviously lacks. She also acts as a wife, providing sexual companionship and legally offering her fortune to him after her death (39.9.7).17 Unlike Clodia, who uses her money to control Caelius and whose bad morals and sexual lust put in jeopardy not only Caelius but also the whole of Roman society, Page 4 of 19

 

From Adultery to Incest Hispala acts like other famous matronae (p.210) from history in that she ensures the safety of other male citizens and therefore contributes to the welfare of the entire Roman state. This trope of the powerful, sexually aggressive female shifts yet again in Tacitus’ imperial historiography, as it is now applied to the portraits of the Julio-Claudian empresses, especially Messalina and Agrippina the Younger. In the case of Messalina, her power and independence allow her to defy the rules of marriage (with her affair and wedding to Gaius Silius), while Agrippina’s aggression turns incestuous as it is directed to her son, Nero. The motif then develops from a reversal of gender and social hierarchies to the utter destruction of familial relations. Turning to Messalina and Agrippina the Younger, historians and literary critics have identified their portraits as misogynistic,18 although some historians, even quite recently, still consider their alleged sexual exploits as fact.19 Their prominent role in the historiographical accounts devoted to the reign of the Julio-Claudian emperors reflects an age of transition, with imperial women closer to the sources of power than their Republican predecessors. Fischler (1994) identifies a conflict between approved roles for women which excluded them from power and the possibility of their involvement in public affairs given their importance in the imperial household. Messalina, therefore, is an example of the fears roused by excessive female proximity to the sources of governance. Corbier (1995), on the other hand, argues that the focus on the imperial spouses in Tacitus is a result of the significance of women in the Julio-Claudian line of succession, given the problems of inheritance faced by Augustus and the subsequent Julio-Claudian emperors. Making use of feminist literary and historical analysis, scholars such as Joshel focus on Messalina’s insatiable sexual desire and argue that it reflects the royal domus’s encroachment upon the authority of other classes, the senatorial one in particular. Women’s vice is part of a larger discourse on empire and helps the historian make a distinction between the ‘bad’ empire of the past and the ‘good’ empire of his present.20 O’Gorman’s study of Messalina and Agrippina exposes the (p.211) fissures in Tacitus’ ideological narrative that include possible versions of events privileging the characters’ point of view and thus complicating any easy dichotomies between the Julio-Claudian past and Tacitus’ present.21 Building on this research, I would like to offer an analysis of the trope or stereotype of the ‘sexually aggressive older or independent female preying on a younger male’ as available to Tacitus for manipulation to make specific points about the Julio-Claudian domus. The narrative presents the empresses in the role of the ‘older woman’ making advances to younger men in order to demonstrate the distortion of the institution of marriage (through Messalina’s wedding with Page 5 of 19

 

From Adultery to Incest Silius) and the annihilation of woman’s role as mother (through the portrayal of Agrippina’s incestuous advances toward her son). Congruent with a narrative strategy that shows the progressive decay of the Julio-Claudian domus, the portraits of these empresses devolve from sexual desire for other men to incestuous desire for the son. Tacitus’ deployment of the trope through the use of various intertexts—comedic, religious, tragic, and epic—points to its artificiality and therefore undermines his narrative’s stigmatization of the empresses as ‘bad women’. As a result, my analysis helps identify alternative (familial, social, political, ideological) hierarchies to those purportedly presented by the text. In what follows, I analyse Tacitus’ text and his selective emphasis on male youth and female maturity, or male inferiority and female superiority; I proceed with an examination of the intertexts through which Messalina’s destruction of the royal domus is dramatized; and I demonstrate how Messalina’s and Agrippina’s behaviour is couched in similar terms with the aim of castigating the latter’s destruction of motherhood. In both cases, the traditional inferiority of women in the Roman domus is shattered by the empresses’ egregious sexual transgression.22 Instead of confirming traditional Roman hierarchies, Tacitus’ text enables us to recognize the deployment of the trope (p.212) and thus casts doubt on the narrator’s authority since it permits alternative interpretations of the events he presents and evaluates.

Messalina Messalina is presented by Tacitus as a nymphomaniac, actively seeking sexual relations with men, regardless of class, rank, or function.23 This portrayal is congruent with Juvenal’s scathing description (6.114–32), where she is named Lycisca, a Roman prostitute name.24 Sexually experienced, and powerful as the emperor’s wife, she ‘was flowing out to untried lusts’ (ad incognitas libidines profluebat, 11.26.1)25 by falling in love with Silius, who is described as a young man of high status (iuvenem nobilem, 11.28.1)26 and most handsome of Rome’s youths (iuventutis Romanae pulcherrimum, 11.12.2). The stress on Silius’ youth is curious given that he is consul designate and therefore at least 30 years old, and married.27 As a result, he was probably about the same age as Messalina,28 if not older, since Roman men normally married at a much later age than Roman women.29 Messalina’s implied superiority in age is analogous to her superiority in rank and power.30 Moreover, Silius’ youth (p.213) contrasts with Claudius’ greater age (quippe non eo ventum ut senectam principis operiretur, ‘it had not certainly come to this, that they would await the emperor’s old age’, 11.26.2),31 whose passivity also points to the role of comedy’s senex, duped by his adulterous wife and outwitted by his clever slave.32 Throughout the Annals, Tacitus mentions several of his sources and often evaluates them critically. But his debts are not always disclosed or obvious. Sallust’s portrait of Sempronia, for instance, has been identified as instrumental Page 6 of 19

 

From Adultery to Incest in Tacitus’ depiction of the morally corrupt Poppaea Sabina.33 Messalina’s wedding with Silius and her violent ending contains many dramatic elements,34 as well as intertextual contact with Vergil’s Dido and Amata. Dido’s love for Aeneas is famously cast as a type of furore; in the Annals, the text stresses Messalina’s mad love for Silius (novo et furori proximo amore distinebatur, 11.12.1). Messalina, like another Dido, burns with desire (exarserat, 11.12.2). Like Dido, who performs sacrifices seeking to determine the auspices for a wedding with Aeneas (p.214) (Verg. A. 4.56–64), Messalina, too, seeks auspices (auspicum verba, 11.27) and performs sacrifices (sacrificasse apud deos, 11.27). Yet in following closely the wedding protocol (cuncta nuptiarum sollemnia celebrat, ‘she performs all the solemn rites of marriage’, 11.26.3), Messalina aims to destroy Claudius’ status as imperial husband, a purpose that the narrator openly acknowledges as a predictable conclusion to her long history of adulterous disregard for her status as wife (nomen tamen matrimonii concupivit ob magnitudinem infamiae, cuius apud prodigos novissima voluptas est, ‘nevertheless she desired the name of wife so as to obtain the greatest infamy, which is the last source of pleasure for the debauched’, 11.26.3). The point is stressed even further: according to the narrator, it was one thing for Messalina to sleep with an actor, another to have an actual wedding ceremony in the palace (dum histrio cubiculum principis insultaverit, dedecus quidem inlatum, sed excidium procul afuisse, ‘while an actor dishonoured the princeps’ bedroom, humiliation might have been inflicted, but destruction had still been far in the distance’, 11.28.1).35 Silius was going to replace Claudius without the courtesy of a divorce (nec enim occultum quid post tale matrimonium superesset, ‘for what would follow after such a wedding was no secret’, 11.28.1). The public, official nature of the ceremony is further underscored in the reports to Claudius, who is now deprived of the status of husband (ni propere agis, tenet urbem maritus, ‘unless you act quickly, the husband holds the city’, 11.30.2).36 Messalina’s contempt for her status as wife cannot be expressed through simple adultery (as was the case with other women, such as Cicero’s Clodia or Catullus’ Lesbia).37 She distorts the very institution of marriage as a contractual bond between spouses by erasing (p.215) Claudius’ role as a husband and substituting him with Silius. Her success is evident in Claudius’ reaction, asking whether he is still emperor (satis constat eo pavore offusum Claudium ut identidem interrogaret an ipse imperii potens, an Silius privatus esset, ‘it is quite agreed that Claudius was so overwhelmed by fear that he was asking again and again whether he was still emperor, whether Silius was still a private citizen’, 11.31.1). The royal domus is determined by Messalina’s status as imperial wife, who is free to exchange one husband for another. Messalina’s destruction of her own domus is followed by a Bacchic celebration.38 In Greek and Roman literary texts, Bacchic frenzy is depicted as negating or destroying the household. For Romans, wine-drinking and unchastity go hand in hand, so legislation since the time of Romulus had prohibited drinking for Page 7 of 19

 

From Adultery to Incest Roman wives.39 As a result, what in literature is a symbolic enactment of female encroachment upon the male social or political arena is here rendered in literal terms as a fake celebration of vindemia: At Messalina non alias solutior luxu, adulto autumno simulacrum vindemiae per domum celebrabat. urgeri prela, fluere lacus; et feminae pellibus accinctae adsultabant ut sacrificantes vel insanientes Bacchae; ipsa crine fluxo thyrsum quatiens, iuxtaque Silius hedera vinctus, gerere cothurnos, iacere caput, strepente circum procaci choro. ferunt Vettium Valentem lascivia in praealtam arborem conisum, interrogantibus quid aspiceret, respondisse tempestatem ab Ostia atrocem, sive coeperat ea species, seu forte lapsa vox in praesagium vertit. But Messalina was indulging in lust more than any other woman; at the height of autumn, she was celebrating a mock vintage all over her house. Wine-presses were being stomped and vats flowed; and women, dressed in animal skins, were leaping like Bacchants either sacrificing or in ecstasy; Messalina herself was brandishing a thyrsus with flowing hair, next to her, Silius, crowned in ivy, wearing buskins and tossing his head, while all around a lustful chorus was making a ruckus. They say that Vettius Valens had climbed a tall tree as a joke and to those inquiring (p.216) what he saw, he responded ‘a terrible storm from Ostia’, whether that sight was beginning to appear or his accidental utterance turned into prophecy.40 Messalina’s simulacrum vindemiae shares much with Amata’s fake Bacchic revel in the Aeneid (7.373–405), which aims at destroying the impending wedding of Lavinia to Aeneas.41 The Latin queen’s Bacchic revel results in the death of a young man, Turnus, and brings about her own demise. In addition, Amata’s desire for Turnus as a son-in-law has made some scholars posit that her feelings may have sexual roots.42 In this light, Messalina’s kinship with the Vergilian queen perhaps emerges as less surprising. Within this context, several other Vergilian elements become apparent: the women are described as dancing about dressed in animal skins like Bacchants in sacrifice or in ecstasy (feminae pellibus accinctae adsultabant ut sacrificantes vel insanientes Bacchae, 11.31.2) as are the Latin women in Verg. A. 7.396 (incinctae pellibus, ‘dressed in fawnskins’).43 Just like Amata (ipsa inter medias flagrantem fervida pinum | sustinet, ‘in the middle, (sc. Amata) herself in a frenzy holds a flaming pine torch’, Verg. A. 7.397–8), Messalina is the leader of the Bacchic dance, shaking the thyrsus (ipsa crine fluxo thyrsum quatiens, 11.31.2).44 Turning to the description of Silius, Tacitus mobilizes another intertext, that of the tragic stage, by presenting him as wearing the big platform shoes that the actors wore on stage (gerere cothurnos, 11.31.2). Dancing also plays a prominent role (feminae…adsultabant, (p.217) 11.31.2); Silius tosses his head in ecstasy (iacere caput, 11.31.2);45 and a noisy chorus is also present (strepente Page 8 of 19

 

From Adultery to Incest circum procaci choro, 11.31.2).46 Moreover, connections specific to Euripides’ Bacchae are evident in the description of Vettius Valens’ climbing of a tree, on the model of Pentheus (in praealtam arborem conisum, 11.31.3),47 and uttering a prophecy (praesagium) of impending destruction. Accordingly, we can see a progression in the depiction of Silius: he initially assumes an active role by proposing marriage to Messalina (11.26)48 and colludes with her both out of necessity and due to his moral corruption (11.12.2). At the wedding party, however, he has a more feminine role, as we have seen, tossing his head like a maenad.49 His status as a Roman vir may be seen as eventually restored in the scene of his death, where he does not attempt to resist death or protect Messalina but asks for death to be quick (11.35.2). Irony, however, attends this display of Stoic constantia, given Silius’ conduct which is far from the ideal of the Roman vir.50 His moral disgrace becomes poignantly obvious in Tacitus’ reference to the display in Silius’ home of his father’s effigies (image), which had been banned by decree of the senate and could be thus used as evidence of Silius’ potential to be a traitor himself.51 Intertextual contact with the Aeneid persists, with rumor making an appearance at the beginning of the next chapter (non rumor (p.218) interea, se undique nuntii incedunt, ‘meanwhile not only rumor but also messengers arrive from all around’, 11.32.1),52 as is the case after Dido’s supernatural wedding ceremony to Aeneas (Verg. A. 4.173–90) and Amata’s fake Bacchic ceremony (Verg. A. 7.392–6).53 In the first instance, rumor or fama destroys Dido; in the second, it triggers the war between the Latins and the Trojans.54 Accordingly, Claudius now assumes the same silence displayed by King Latinus in the Aeneid (mirum inter haec silentium Claudii, 11.35.1) along with his feminine seclusion and passivity (domum regressus, 11.37.2).55 Wine also works as a sexual stimulant on men, thus providing a means through which Messalina can exercise undue influence on Claudius. The narrator states that when inebriated, the emperor’s sympathies toward her return: Nam Claudius domum regressus et tempestivis epulis delenitus, ubi vino incaluit, iri iubet nuntiarique miserae (hoc enim verbo usum ferunt) dicendam ad causam postera die adesset. Quod ubi auditum et languescere ira, redire amor ac, si cunctarentur, propinqua nox et uxorii cubiculi memoria timebantur. For Claudius had returned home and was soothed by an early dinner; when he grew warm with wine, he ordered someone to go and announce to the poor woman (for they say he used that word) that she should be present the next day to plead her cause. Hearing this, and seeing that his anger was beginning to cool, his love returning, they feared, in case they delayed, the approaching night and the memories of the marriage bed.56 Page 9 of 19

 

From Adultery to Incest Claudius’ memory of his marriage to Messalina (with its attendant sexuality)57 is so powerful that it almost erases the knowledge of its destruction, shown by Claudius’ reference to her as misera. Messalina’s subsequent pleading with Claudius also points to intertextual contact (p.219) with Dido’s famous speeches to Aeneas, where she dwells on her potential role as mother (Verg. A. 4.327–30).58 The empress reminds Claudius of their children, Octavia and Britannicus. Indeed, Claudius is moved by Messalina’s evocation of motherhood (see also 11.34.3 and Joshel 1997: 243), the sole social and familial role that she has not yet destroyed. The scene of Messalina’s death alludes to Dido’s suicide, sharply contrasting her cowardly attitude towards impending death with Dido’s brave determination. Messalina’s mother (a woman advisor, like Dido’s sister Anna) unsuccessfully tries to persuade her to commit suicide. Eventually, Messalina tries the sword, like Dido (ferrumque accepit, ‘she took the sword’, 11.38.1) but her fear renders her ineffective (frustra iugulo aut pectori per trepidationem admovens, ‘applying it without success to her throat and breast because of her fear’, 11.38.1) and a tribune steps in to finish the job (ictu tribuni transfigitur, ‘she is run through by a blow from the tribune’, 11.38.1).59 Tacitus’ famous comment that the story may verge on the mythical (fabulosum, 11.27.1) can thus be shown to apply to the entire narrative arc of Messalina’s actions and reveals a consciousness of his account’s rich literary pedigree.60 Tacitus’ heavily intertexualized version of events demonstrates the intimate and complex interplay between historiography and other forms of learned discourse, such as literature.61

(p.220) Agrippina Agrippina is depicted as going even further than Messalina, dismantling Roman ideas regarding motherhood. In Tacitus’ view, she displays the same rapacious female sexuality as Messalina, not because she is a nymphomaniac, but out of a desire to attain power. In the process, she effects a further devolution of the ‘bad wife’ trope, because she directs her sexual aggression not towards other younger men but towards her son, Nero. Tacitus’ description of Agrippina’s sexual aggression towards her son deploys elements similar with Messalina’s sexual advances to Claudius: Tradit Cluvius ardore retinendae Agrippinam potentiae62 eo usque provectam, ut medio diei, cum id temporis Nero per vinum et epulas incalesceret, offerret se saepius temulento comptam et incesto paratam. Cluvius reports that Agrippina’s ardour to retain her power had come to such a point, that in the middle of the day, when at that time Nero had grown warm with wine and feasting, she would often present herself to him being tipsy all decked out and ready for incest.63

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From Adultery to Incest Both women use their sexual powers to control men. Like Claudius (11.35), Nero, too, is said to be susceptible to sexual advances while tipsy (temulento) and having feasted (per vinum et epulas). The heat of the day (medio diei) also contributes to his eagerness for sex while the same verb (incalesco) is used to describe both Claudius’ (11.37.2, quoted above) and Nero’s sexual arousal. The passage constitutes the first mention of Agrippina’s incestuous behaviour toward her son, although the narrator hastens to add that it was not the first time it had occurred. Quite the contrary, it was so well known to the emperor’s inner circle (adnotantibus proximis, 14.2.1) and to the army (pervulgatum esse incestum… nec toleraturos milites profani principis imperium, ‘that the incestuous relationship was commonly known…and that the soldiers were not going to tolerate the rule of a corrupt emperor’, 14.2.1), that Seneca tried to divert Nero’s desire toward other women (contra muliebres inlecebras subsidium a femina petivisse, ‘against feminine temptations he sought help from a woman’, 14.2.1). (p.221) According to the narrator, unlike the ‘nymphomaniac’ Messalina, Agrippina’s motives are not sexual. She only desires power and she will stop at nothing to retain it (ardore retinendae potentiae, 14.2.1). Indeed, her past behaviour serves to justify the narrator’s claim, since she first committed adultery as a young girl with Lepidus (puellaribus annis stuprum cum Lepido spe dominationis admiserat, 14.2.2),64 had had sex with a freedman (pari cupidine usque ad libita Pallantis provoluta, 14.2.2) and then married her uncle (et exercita ad omne flagitium patrui nuptiis, 14.2.2). The term flagitium is used both in the case of Nero and Claudius, thus branding both liaisons as incest.65 Agrippina’s incestuous actions are yet another sign of her dissolute state and her hunger for power. As in the case of Messalina’s wedding with Silius, so in that of Agrippina’s incest, Tacitus displays a certain uneasiness vis-à-vis his sources. In 14.2.2 he discusses at length the information available to him, much like he did after Messalina’s wedding rites. He states that, according to Cluvius, it was Agrippina who made incestuous advances, while Fabius Rusticus credits Nero with the initiative. Tacitus eventually sides with Cluvius, adding that other authors, and fama, concur (et fama huc inclinat).66 He further bolsters this claim by arguing, as we have seen, that Agrippina’s tactics evolved from general sexual promiscuity to incest.67 Joshel notes that in the case of Messalina, Tacitus resorts to evidence that elsewhere he had evaluated differently.68 I argue that the passage on Agrippina points to the same tactic. The death of Agrippina presents some striking differences from that of Messalina. Tacitus’ historical account employs masterful suspense, when Nero’s efforts to kill his mother repeatedly prove unsuccessful. Messalina’s demise is swift, displaying Narcissus’ effective leadership and the empress’s cowardice. By contrast, Agrippina rises (p.222) to action and epigram. Having been wounded, Page 11 of 19

 

From Adultery to Incest she displays her womb, symbolically exposing the full significance of Nero’s actions.69 Her final words, ventrem feri (14.8.5) have all the force of a sententia, as the emphasis is on ventrem while the imperative follows, unlike normal usage.70 Agrippina’s final moments perhaps display the moral difficulties involved in matricide as well as the extent of her resourcefulness. As in Messalina’s final moments, here too, the narrative becomes highly stylized. In a narrative that dramatizes the decline of empire, the women of the court also decline. Agrippina is a more corrupt version of Messalina. The former, by marrying while married, creates a distorted paradigm for the institution of marriage; the latter, by engaging in sexual relations with her son, negates normative ideas on motherhood. Tacitus has made a point of the value of Agrippina’s role as mother earlier in the narrative of Nero’s accession to the throne. When asked by the tribune of the guard for a password, Nero’s answer was optima mater (13.2.3), an indication of the importance of Agrippina for his reign.71 Even when subject to debate, Agrippina’s agency in the case of incest is key to the potency of Tacitus’ larger argument that the Julio-Claudian empresses reflect the decay of the emperor’s domus. Messalina’s advances to younger men are taken up by her successor Agrippina but fall to a new low, so that the woman now preys not on Roman youths of the upper classes but on the emperor himself, even though he is her son. In conclusion, the manipulation of the trope of the sexually aggressive woman in the portraits of Messalina and Agrippina in Tacitus’ Annals not only serves specific narrative strategies but also seeks to reinforce established hierarchies (gender, familial, social, and political). At the same time, however, the reader’s ability to discern these historical characters as part of a trope spanning various types of literary and public discourse creates a deeply nuanced text that invites multiple levels of reading. When they behave like other famous (p.223) literary heroines before them, Messalina and Agrippina become literary creations subject to further interpretation, manipulation, or even redemption. Tacitus’ narrative then presents one possible version of events out of many, while definitive interpretation remains elusive. As a result, the inferiorities that Tacitus’ history so carefully deploys are exposed as a construction, a narrative strategy. In this light, Messalina and Agrippina’s portraits further reveal the deep complexity of the ideological processes recorded and explicated in the Annals. (p.224) Notes:

(1) Lucretia: Liv. 1.57–8; Cornelia: Plut. CG 4.3–4, TG 1.4–5, V. Max. 4.4 praef; Arria: Plin. Ep. 3.16. (2) See e.g. O’Gorman (2000); Ginsburg (2006: 106–32); Joshel (1997). (3) See e.g. O’Gorman (2000). Page 12 of 19

 

From Adultery to Incest (4) On this topic, see also O’Gorman (2015); Damon (2010); Woodman (1988: 106–25). (5) See e.g. Gray-Fow (1988) on the wicked stepmother, Richlin (1992: 81–104) on invective, and Ginsburg (2006: 106–32) on Agrippina the Younger and literary and rhetorical stereotypes. On invective against old women in particular, see Richlin (1992: 109–16). To be sure, our literary and other sources demonstrate that Roman matronae exercised a great deal of influence, but their agency was subject to an ‘ideological system that was always ready to belittle them, and that approved of them only insofar as they ratified the social assessment of themselves as the property of individual men for the production of children, and that saw them as always prone to lapses into unchastity’ (Richlin 2014a: 222). (6) Roman comedy displays a number of independent women but no older women preying on younger men successfully. See Rosivach (1998: 107–39) for a typology of the role of independent women in Roman comedy. (7) On Cicero’s Clodia and the use of stereotypes, see e.g. Geffcken (1973); Skinner (1983); Richlin (1992: 84–6). (8) Catullus also manipulates the same motifs in the depiction of Lesbia (probably to be identified with Cicero’s Clodia) as sexually voracious or downright monstrous: see especially poems 11, 58. On the identification, see Skinner (1983). (9) Cic. Cael. 32. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. (10) Cic. Cael. 33. (11) E.g. Rankin (1969). (12) On the former, see Geffcken (1973); on the latter, Skinner (1983). The first full biography of Clodia with a critical assessment of all sources is Skinner (2011). Salzman (1982) demonstrated the importance of the Ludi Megalenses in Cicero’s argumentation that draws parallels between Clodia’s liaison with Caelius and the myth of Cybele and the young Attis (302). (13) Leen (2000–1: 150–1) argues that Appius Claudius Caecus’ rebuke to Clodia in (33) points to the difference in status between her noble families, the Claudii and the Metelli, and the equestrian Caelius. (14) See Leen (2000–1: 151–4) for a comparison between Clodia and Lucretia. Leen (157) points out that Clodia’s house is described as libidinosa (55) and links it to other references in the speech of her libido. (15) See Wiseman (1985: 54–91).

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From Adultery to Incest (16) Liv. 39.9.5–7. (17) On Hispala in this role, see Panoussi forthcoming. (18) See e.g. Joshel (1997); Corbier (1995); and Fischler (1994); as well as Kaplan (1979); Santoro L’Hoir (1994); and O’Gorman (2000). (19) E.g. Bauman (1992: 166–205); see also Joshel’s (1997: 227–8) criticism of Levick (1990). (20) Joshel (1997: 223): ‘Tacitus’s Messalina is a representation that enables the historian to draw a difficult distinction between present and past, good empire and bad. As such, Messalina functions as a sign in a discourse of imperial power that simultaneously informs, if not determines, her image.’ (21) See O’Gorman (2000: 106–21 on Messalina, and 122–43 on Agrippina). (22) To be sure, as Gregory Hutchinson reminds me, imperial women had an important public persona, attested by coins, sculpture, etc. On Agrippina, see Ginsburg (2006: 55–105). For example, both Messalina and Agrippina had privileges in the use of a carpentum, a carriage (D.C. 60.22.2, Suet. Cl. 17.3, Tac. Ann. 12.42.2). (23) Tacitus mentions senators, equestrians, a freedman, and Mnester the actor; see Joshel (1997: 231). Messalina’s adultery has been identified as a means to blackmail senators; see Bauman (1992: 168). Messalina demanded they be present while their wives engaged in sex with other men (D.C. 60.18.1–2). As complicit in their wives’ adultery, the senators would be punishable by Augustan law. In addition, her relationship with Mnester, the actor, has been interpreted as a means through which her memory can be obliterated; see O’Gorman (2000: 120–1). (24) On Juvenal’s passage, see Joshel (1997: 248). (25) As translated by Joshel (1997: 230); see also her discussion on Messalina’s desire (230–5). (26) On Tacitus’ use of the term nobilis and Silius’ nobility, see Malloch 2013: ad loc. (414–15). (27) Hutchinson rightly pointed out in his conference response that Silius’ age fits with his father’s consulship in 13 CE (PIR2 S 718, cf. 714) and that Caelius is also in his 30s at the time of the Pro Caelio. (28) Messalina’s age is disputed, her birth date ranging from 3 to 26 CE. On the question, see Bauman (1992: 167–8).

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From Adultery to Incest (29) See Treggiari 1991. Note also that Messalina’s base character is opposed to Silius’ ‘good’ wife, Silana (nobilem feminam, 11.12.2). (30) Messalina’s attraction to young men is also evident in the case of Traulus Montanus (is, modesta iuventa, sed corpore insigni, accitus ultro noctemque intra unam a Messalina proturbatus erat, ‘that one, a modest but extraordinarily handsome young man, had been summoned unasked and dismissed by Messalina within one night’, 11.36.3). (31) Malloch 2013: ad loc. (402) points out that Claudius was 57 and suggests that senecta here means ‘death’. Malloch also notes that the use of the word principis to describe Claudius reveals the political aspect of Silius’ argument, since he does not mention Claudius in a private capacity. (32) See Joshel (1997: 228). (33) Fischler (1994: 118–20). Similarities to mythical stories are also included in imperial historiography; for instance, in Suetonius’ Nero, Messalina is said to have tried to assassinate him as a baby by planting snakes in his crib, just like Hera did with Heracles. Tacitus also mentions this story (vulgabaturque adfuisse infantiae eius dracones in modum custodum, ‘it was commonly told that when he was a baby two snakes had watched over him as guardians’, 11.11.3) but gives it no credit (fabulosa et externis miraculis adsimilata, ‘a fable made to resemble foreign miracles’, 11.11.3). (34) Hutchinson, in his conference response, suggests that the entire arc of Books 11–14 in the Annals is ‘a squalid Oresteia’, with Agrippina killing her husband like Clytemnestra (e.g. Antipho 1.17, Juv. 6.656–61) and her son killing her, like Orestes (e.g. Suet. Nero 39.2, Juv. 8.211–21, Dio 62.16.22 (Xiph)). On the Oresteia in Tacitus’ Annales and especially 1.3–11, see Santoro L’Hoir (2006: 15– 70). Another element that points to the dramatic nature of the Messalina narrative is that the beginning of her ‘bad behaviour’, the seizing of the gardens of Asiaticus (11.1), also constitutes the setting for her end (11.36). See Joshel (1997: 228). Asiaticus’ gardens are also mentioned by Dio as the scenery of Messalina’s death and the cause of her fall 61.31.5 (Xiph., Zon.). Similarly, gardens seem to be a larger symbol for desire and death: Nero sends Agrippina to the Tusculan gardens in order for her to rest (14.3.1), all the while planning her demise. (35) As pointed out by Hutchinson (in his conference response), citing [Sen.] Oct. 269, lapsam domum of Messalina’s family and Rodighiero (2013), excidium refers to the metaphorical fall of Claudius’ domus. With the reading offered here, I propose that Messalina’s destruction of her marriage signals the overthrow of Claudius and his domus from imperial power.

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From Adultery to Incest (36) Malloch (2013) ad loc. (428) states: ‘a sharp end to the speech, demonstrates that Messalina’s remarriage was a challenge simultaneously to Claudius as princeps and husband.’ The magnitude of the attack on Claudius’ domus is rendered more vivid through its personification: the house of the emperor shudders (domus principis inhorruerat, 11.28.1, Joshel 1997: 225). (37) Tacitus’ historical narratives are full of virtuous wives who contrast with the Julio-Claudian women and reflect the morality of the current imperial order (see Joshel 1997: 239–42). (38) On the Bacchic element in the Aeneid, see Panoussi (2009: 115–44); in Roman literature more generally, see Panoussi (forthcoming). (39) Also noted by Joshel (1997: 243). On the antiquity of such laws dating from Romulus’ time, see FIRA2, vol. 1, p. 3 and Lefkowitz and Fant (2005: 94). See also Verg. A. 1.737 with Servius’ comment. On Vergil’s passage, see Panoussi (2009: 99). On women and wine in Roman society more generally, see, e.g., Bettini (1995a, 1995b) and Russell (2003). (40) Tac. Ann. 11.31.2–3. (41) See Panoussi (2009: 128–31). It is notable that D.C. 61.31.4 (Xiph., Zon.) reports this celebration but does not enter into detail other than describe it as a κῶμος: συμπόσιόν τέ τι περιβόητον συνεκρότησε καὶ κῶμον ἀσελγέστατον ἐκώμασεν, ‘she put together a legendary banquet and celebrated an extremely lewd revel’. For a comparison between Dio’s and Tacitus’ accounts of this event and Tacitus’ reworking of Euripides, see Santoro L’Hoir (2006: 235–7). (42) Many have also noted an underlying theme of incestuous love and similarities with Euripides’ Phaedra and Oedipus’ Jocasta, especially in the scene of Amata’s suicide in Verg. A. 12.595–603. See Panoussi (2009: 125–7, with bibliography). (43) Henrichs (1978: 157–9) lists the literary intertexts of Tacitus’ passage and posits that the festival celebrated by Messalina and Silius was an artificial recreation of a rural vindemia with Dionysian myth playfully reenacted. Even so, Henrichs still assumes that the Bacchic celebration occurred, as is evident from his statement that ‘Valeria Messalina will have inherited her flair for Bacchic ostentation from her great-grandfather Mark Antony’ (159). (44) Henrichs (1978: 157 n. 113) also cites Catul. 64.254. (45) Silius also bears an ivy crown on his head (hederae vinctus, 11.31.2). MacGóráin suggests to me that the scene re-enacts the sacred marriage of Basilinna, wife of King Archon at Athens, with the god Dionysus. Tacitus then

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From Adultery to Incest inverts a positive rite that promotes fertility and prosperity in Athenian civic life. In this scenario, then, Silius could be read as a Bacchus figure. (46) Malloch (2013) ad loc. (436) notes: ‘[T]he rhythm of this statement is appropriately imitative of a tragic chorus; at the same time the chorus parodies Claudius’ consilium: strepente circum looks back to the circumstrepunt of Claudius’ own chorus of councillors (11.31.1).’ (47) Henrichs (1978: 159 n. 118) notes the similarity with E. Ba. 1061: ὄχθων δ᾽ ἔπ’ἰ ἀμβὰς ἐς ἐλάτην ὑψαύχενα, ‘but having climbed that tall-necked fir tree overhanging the banks’. (48) Joshel (1997: 225). (49) Silius’ ecstatic dancing and actor-like attire diminish his status as a Roman vir. This is not to ignore that Bacchic rites included a strong male presence; however, in Roman thought male participation in Bacchic rites is a sign of effeminacy, as seen in numerous literary representations of such rites, with Livy’s Bacchanalian narrative being a classic example. See Panoussi forthcoming. (50) On the difficulties surrounding Silius’ constantia and that of other executed Roman equites (11.35.3), see Malloch (2013) ad loc. (453–4). (51) See Malloch (2013) ad loc. (450–1). (52) Compare also 11.34.1: crebra posthac fama fuit, inter diversas principis voces, cum modo incusaret flagitia uxoris… (‘there was a recurring rumour later that among the contradictory comments of the emperor, who at one moment complained about the scandals of his wife…’). On the function of rumor as a literary device in Tacitus more generally, see Autin (2015). (53) See Panoussi (2009: 131–2). (54) On Fama in the Aeneid, see Hardie (2012: 78–112). (55) On Latinus’ silence and retirement to his domus (Verg. A. 7.599–600) as marks of his feminization, see Panoussi (2009: 132). (56) Tac. Ann. 11.37.2. (57) On the power of Messalina’s sexuality, see also Joshel (1997: 233). (58) Admittedly, she mentions the child as alleviating the pain of Aeneas’ departure. Yet it is plausible that the image she paints of her ‘little Aeneas’ evokes her image as a mother and acts as an incentive for Aeneas to stay.

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From Adultery to Incest (59) Tacitus presentation of Messalina as a failed version of Dido is also underscored by the role Narcissus plays in her demise. See Malloch (2013: 392– 8). (60) Fiachra MacGóráin draws my attention to the fact that Tacitus’ account portrays imperial courtly life as theatrical, as if life were imitating art. fabulosus in 11.11, however, as we have seen, refers to an incredible or fictitious account. (61) Gender is not the only hierarchy reversed in the episode. Earlier in Book 11 Messalina is shown to plot with the palace’s freedmen to bring down her enemies by prosecuting them on false or fabricated charges (11.1–4). Dio’s epitomized account supports this: Messalina and the freedmen are almost always mentioned together (e.g. αἴτιοι δὲ τούτου οἵ τε Καισάρειοι καὶ ἡ Μεσσαλῖνα ἐγένοντο, ‘the imperial freedmen and Messalina were behind this’, D.C. 60.14.1; see also 60.15.5 Narcissus only; 60.16.2, 17.5, 17.8; 61.30.6 (Zon); 61.31.2 (Xiph.)). Messalina is alone, however, during her sexual exploits (60.18.1). (62) Potentia in Tacitus has a negative connotation. On Messalina and potentia, see Joshel (1997: 233). See also Syme (1958: 413); Benario (1964: 100–1). (63) Tac. Ann. 14.2.1. (64) Stuprum means not only adultery but also illicit sexual acts. Adams (1982: 201) and Williams (2010: 67) note that it encompasses all disgraceful sexual behaviour, including but not limited to homoerotic sex. (65) Compare praenuntiatas flagitii blanditias, 14.2.1 (Nero) with exercita ad omne flagitium patrui nuptiis, 14.2.2 (Claudius). (66) On a discussion on fama and Agrippina’s use of it as a means to control imperial ideology, see O’Gorman (2000: 124–32). (67) On Agrippina, incest, and the problems it presents to the Roman state, see also Ginsburg (2006: 119–21). (68) Joshel (1997: 229). (69) In this, Agrippina resembles Aeschylus’ Clytemnestra, who displays her breast to Orestes (Ch. 896–8), although the gesture is part of her efforts to avoid death. The irony cannot be lost on the audience, who have met a true maternal figure in Orestes’ nurse earlier in the play (A. Ch. 734–65). (70) I am grateful to Gregory Hutchinson for these observations.

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From Adultery to Incest (71) See Bauman (1992: 167). O’Gorman (2000: 132–3) sees Agrippina’s relationship with her son as complicated. Once able to make Nero emperor, she remains capable of making someone else emperor.

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The Aeneid as ‘Weaker Text’ and Fulgentius’ Radical Hermeneutics

Complex Inferiorities: The Poetics of the Weaker Voice in Latin Literature Sebastian Matzner and Stephen Harrison

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198814061 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198814061.001.0001

The Aeneid as ‘Weaker Text’ and Fulgentius’ Radical Hermeneutics Shadi Bartsch

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198814061.003.0013

Abstract and Keywords The shadow of Vergil and the tensions of competing interpretations constitute the main concern of this chapter. It first demonstrates that allegorical interpretation, although an established practice in both pagan-classical and Jewish-Christian culture, initially features only as a valued and legitimate interpretative practice when used by each side for their own literature, but is used to discredit the other side in arguments that seek to establish the aesthetic, intellectual, or spiritual superiority of one side over the other—subsuming both their texts and their hermeneutics. It then goes on to show that Fulgentius’ Continentia Vergiliana marks the turning point at which a first Christian allegorical reading of a pagan text is executed in the form of a fraught, fictive dialogue between ‘Vergil’ and ‘Fulgentius’, bridging the gap of mutual recriminations of inferiority. Keywords:   Fulgentius, Vergil, Aeneid, Continentia Vergiliana, allegory, etymology, hermeneutics, interpretation, Christian literature, literary criticism

To characterize Vergil—and his Aeneid in particular—as a ‘weaker voice’ in Latin literature must surely seem a strange move to those of us lodged firmly in the classical tradition.1 Yet for several centuries after the birth of Christ, Vergil and other pagan authors occupied a precarious and contradictory place in the Roman empire: on the one hand, they remained the staples of an elite education; on the other, many of the Church fathers viewed pagan literature, especially poetry, as potentially harmful to the formation of pious souls. Such stories were at best unedifying, at worst lascivious or otherwise immoral. Although isolated Page 1 of 18

 

The Aeneid as ‘Weaker Text’ and Fulgentius’ Radical Hermeneutics snippets could be selected from such texts for repetition and divulgation,2 for the first four centuries CE Christian interpreters chose neither to find these works valuable for ethical formation, nor to re-appropriate them into their own teachings by ‘cleansing’ them through some form of non-literal reading, a process (i.e. cleansing via non-literal reading) which I will term ‘allegorical interpretation’ for the purpose of this chapter.3 In their view, the fact (p.226) that the original authors had no knowledge of Christ meant that a Christian meaning could not be retrieved from the pagan swill without a complicated apologetics such as the salvaging of ‘Egyptian gold’.4 Indeed, Augustine’s account of his own reading of the Dido episode of Verg. A. 4 is probably the most famous iteration of the danger posed by pagan texts5—lured by the false tales he read as a schoolchild, he wept over Dido’s (unreal) suffering instead of the (real) death of his own soul (Conf. 1.33).6 Jerome too warns of the dangerous loveliness (eloquii venustatem et membrorum pulchritudinem) of such texts (Ep. 70.5, metaphorically), and even after the famous dream in which the heavenly judge lashes him for being ‘a Ciceronian, not a Christian’ (Ep. 22.30), in his later writings he continued to read and cite these forbidden fruits.7 He is even willing to denounce pagan poetry as the ‘food of demons’, in Letter 21, where he lumps together the charms of poetic song, secular wisdom, and rhetorical language. In this essay, I will be making a bold, if speculative, claim about the late antique moment in which Vergil’s Aeneid ceased to represent a text that could teach grammar but not morals. The reception (p.227) of Vergil’s text was radically transformed by its interpretation at the hands of one Fulgentius, usually identified with Fulgentius (c.467–532), Bishop of Ruspe in North Africa. It was at least partly thanks to this scholar’s bizarre interpretation of the Aeneid in his Expositio continentiae Virgilianae, or Explanation of the Whole of Vergil’s Content, that the tides of opinion against the pagan Vergil’s writings shifted from negative to positive in the early 6th century CE, thus laying the groundwork for the assimilation of the Aeneid into mainstream Christian literature. But before I can claim that Fulgentius’ interpretation of the epic rescued it from a previously precarious situation as a ‘weaker voice’, we must dive into a more detailed explanation of the historical context of Christian and pagan exegesis, and their shared concern with the ethical content of their own master-texts. The question of how to clean up morally inappropriate texts to make them pedagogically appropriate already had a long history by the first century CE. The Greeks had early on developed ways of reading to explain away the improprieties to be found in their authoritative texts, especially Homer. The Stoics in particular were known for reading the Olympian gods as personifications of air, ether, fire, etc., relying heavily on etymology in their explications; other forms of allegorizing were used by the author of the Derveni papyrus and the later Crates of Mallos.8 Centuries later Plutarch, in How a Young Man Should Read Poetry, was still offering guidance for what to do with Page 2 of 18

 

The Aeneid as ‘Weaker Text’ and Fulgentius’ Radical Hermeneutics parts of a poem that seem unethical (passim) as did Heraclitus in his Homeric Problems, both using a variety of exegetical practices (physical, moral, historical-rationalizing, etc.) to render poetry suitable for young ears. But the Christians chose not to use these available techniques on pagan texts. In reserving allegorizing procedures for scripture, they thus rendered a massive body of writing unsuitable for full appropriation into Christian culture.9 Ironically enough, Christian scholars, like the Greeks, had to use ‘reading otherwise’ on their own canonical texts. Faced with the challenges of the Old Testament—what to do with the Jewish kosher (p.228) laws and male circumcision, tales of God’s wrath, the story of Abraham, polygamy, Israel’s slaughter of the Canaanites, the cursing of enemies in some Psalms, and so forth —they borrowed from Jewish and Hellenistic hermeneutic practices already in place and took refuge in interpreting them typologically or allegorically as pointing forward to the truths of Christianity.10 Turnabout is fair play: the Christians were mocked by the pagans, who derided their attempt to make silk purses out of their own sows’ ears. One of the fragments of Porphyry’s Against the Christians comments with relish on the purported cannibalism of the Gospel of John, asserting that the sentiment ‘Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you’ (John 6:53) was a call to cannibalism, but that the Christians covered this up by ‘investing this abhorrent meaning with a mystic and appropriate sense’.11 In short, both sides used hermeneutical practices that cleaned up their own canonical texts but denied the other side the right to any such exegetical techniques. By the end of the second century CE, these reading practices had spurred a war of hermeneutics over which texts could be ‘read otherwise’. We can eavesdrop on the argument in Origen’s (184/5–253/4) Against Celsus. Since Origen quotes the anti-Christian criticism of the pagan Celsus before rebutting him at each turn, the similar methodology of both exegetes is clearly demarcated. When Celsus derides the creation story and characterizes Adam as an inflated bag into whom God blew air, Origen responds that this must be understood τροπικῶς (figuratively) and as needing διήγησις (explanation): that is, God has imparted his spirit to man (4.37). When Celsus claims that the more modest of Jewish and Christian writers give all these things an allegorical meaning because they are ashamed, Origen responds that in the Greek stories, gods who are sons castrate the gods who are their fathers, and gods who are parents devour their own children, and a goddess-mother gives to the father of gods and men a stone to swallow instead of his own son, and a father has intercourse with his daughter (4.48). As Wim Den Boer (p.229) points out, these discussions between pagan and Christian authors show no consistency when the other side’s methods are being critiqued. ‘The one party repeatedly applies the method which it refutes when used by the opponent, and conversely.’12

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The Aeneid as ‘Weaker Text’ and Fulgentius’ Radical Hermeneutics Were there no pagan texts that the Christians allegorized? Vergil’s Fourth Eclogue might seem a sticking-point here, but the existence of Christian allegorizing readings of this poem has been given too much credibility.13 The third-century church father Lactantius is the earliest Christian author who supposedly gives a Messianic interpretation to the Eclogue 4. But a close reading shows that he did not believe that Vergil had some sort of prophetic insight. Instead, when he refers to the Eclogue 4 in his Divine Institutes 7.24, he suggests that Vergil is literally quoting something said by the Sibyl without knowing anything about what his source meant. Much the same reading, crediting the Sibyl and not Vergil, who is merely writing down her song, is to be found in Augustine’s Letter 104.3.11, 137.12, 258.3, and in City of God 10.27, while Jerome explicitly denounces such readings as nonsense, 53.7.14 But the real point to be emphasized is that such readings are not even allegorical: to say a marvellous child will be born who will usher in a golden age is a prediction, and the Christians read it as such, not as an allegory. The marvelous child does not stand for something else, such as the arrival of modern technology or (more topically) a particularly effective Pope.15 Fulgentius’ Expositio continentiae Virgilianae, the first text to offer a sustained allegorical interpretation of any pagan body of writing by a Christian, provides a pivotal moment in this impasse.16 For one, it is the first text to offer a sustained and not piecemeal allegorical (p.230) interpretation of pagan literature; second, it is the first full pagan text to be allegorized by a Christian. This short work, which depicts a discussion between Vergil and Fulgentius (as a character in his own dialogue) about the actual meaning of the Aeneid, introduces Vergil as a figure who rereads his own text as an ethical allegory about the life of man from childhood to maturity.17 Several features demand notice immediately: first, we are asked to accept the fiction that it is the pagan author himself who is doing this work, so that we do not have to confront a Christian suddenly attributing moral meaning to a pagan text. Second, the allegory that ‘Vergil’ produces here is the first narrative in antiquity to treat the Aeneid as an account of man from birth to adulthood in moral terms. It is, in other words, a sustained reading that innovates on earlier gestures towards allegorical-moral readings around individual names and words such as found in the Greco-Roman tradition and in Servius, but goes further in creating a sustained story around an individual man which is then treated (by Fulgentius) as a source for further interpretation (—a gesture towards Christian hagiography?). Most importantly, Fulgentius’ depiction of Vergil’s views and his own in this dialogue, together with his dramatization of changes in the character of the Fulgentius-persona (from here on Fulgentius-p, to separate him from Fulgentius-a, the author of the text, who also frames it by writing an introductory letter to it for an unknown Church deacon) provided for the first time an illustration of how a Christian might legitimately interpret pagan texts to meaningful and useful ends.18 Significantly, this sea-change in approach appears to have reverberated after Page 4 of 18

 

The Aeneid as ‘Weaker Text’ and Fulgentius’ Radical Hermeneutics Fulgentius, producing a slew of allegorical readings by Christians of Vergil, Ovid, and others that would continue into the late Middle Ages. The Explanation of the Whole of Vergil’s Content is not a commonly read text; in style and content it challenges attempts to take it seriously and has suggested to some interpreters that Fulgentius (p.231) himself—whether the Bishop of Ruspe or some other writer—had lost his mind altogether.19 But there is method in his madness. For one, Fulgentius knew of the Vergil commentaries by Servius, Donatus, and Macrobius, and the technique of Vergil (as a commentator, of sorts) in this dialogue, however much it exaggerates them, is recognizable as the usual pagan approach.20 Moreover, the Expositio, as a dialogue, picks up the content of Macrobius’ Saturnalia 3–6, also a dialogue, whose interlocutors praise Vergil as the source of all knowledge (astrological, philosophical, historical, ritual, rhetorical) and also discuss his debt to Homer and his borrowings from earlier Latin poets.21 Likewise, Servius too treats Vergil as supremely authoritative in his commentary (e.g. at ad Aen 6. praef.). Second, Macrobius’ characters in the Saturnalia will occasionally venture into what we might call allegorical interpretations, as does Servius in his commentary.22 These mostly involve isolated incidents such as Servius’ interpretation of the Golden Bough as the Pythagorean Y, representing the choice of virtue or wickedness as one’s path (ad Aen. 6.136), or his interpretation of Tityos as libido (ad Aen. 6.595)—pagan interpretations of pagan lines, both of which are taken up by Fulgentius’ Vergil figure. But this Vergil also borrows some more general allegorizing by these commentators; when he tells Fulgentius that there are three stages in human life: nature, learning, and success (90.3), we hear the echo of Donatus arguing that Vergil’s three works stood for the three stages of human development, agricultural, pastoral, and warfare (Thilo vol 2. p. 8 line 28),23 and the echo, too, of Servius ad Aen. 6.114 (p.232) describing each of the four stages of life (childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age) and their qualities (play, love, ambition, leisure).24 These similarities and echoes are strong enough that Vergil, as an interpreter of his own text, is clearly identifiable as a pagan commentator on the Aeneid, albeit in this case its very author. But Fulgentius’ text also takes pains to distinguish itself from these predecessors in the commentary tradition. The Expositio is not a line-by-line commentary focusing mostly on points of grammar, like Servius’. The dialogue in the Expositio, unlike that in Macrobius, is not between a group of made-up characters, but between Vergil himself and Fulgentius-p qua character. The interpretation, as I have already mentioned, innovates in not being piecemeal but by providing a continuous narrative of the life of everyman; and the allegorizing on Vergil’s part is not occasional, but throughout. And finally, there is the presence of Fulgentius-a, the framer, and Fulgentius-p, the interlocutor with Vergil. The unique measure of introducing these two figures into the text is the pivot on which the Fulgentius hors du texte can pirouette

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The Aeneid as ‘Weaker Text’ and Fulgentius’ Radical Hermeneutics from forbidden allegorical readings of pagan texts to the reappropriation of Vergil to Christian ends.25 Fulgentius-a opens the Expositio with a preliminary note to an unknown Church deacon. His concern is to emphasize that what he is doing in his reading of Vergil is not in fact dangerous (suggesting, of course, that it might be seen as precisely that): ‘I have touched upon the natural secrets of Vergil’s content, avoiding those matters which summon danger more than praise’ (Virgilianae continentiae secreta phisica tetigi uitans illa quae plus periculi possent praerogare quam laudis; Exp. 83.6–8).26 It is on this account, he says, that he has not offered any exposition of the Eclogues or Georgics: their lore is ‘mystic’ and contains the secret of every art (83.10–13). Macrobius gives us an idea of what Fulgentius is thinking here in Saturnalia 3, where the speakers often invoke both the Eclogues and the Georgics to illustrate (p.233) arcane Roman religious ritual and the niceties of sacrifice. And indeed, Fulgentius-a more or less says so himself: on his reading, Eclogue 4 is about divination, Eclogue 5 has to do with Roman ritual, Eclogue 8 treats magic; meanwhile, the Georgics have to do, inter alia, with such forbidden topics as astrology, omens, and augury (83.13–84.16). What is interesting about Fulgentius’ apparent qualms is that Macrobius is happy to use the Aeneid to the same ends as he uses the other two poems, namely to explicate Roman religion and other dangerous ‘mysteries’: but Fulgentius has other plans for the Aeneid, it would seem, and no taint of the forbidden should cling to it. These opening comments set the scene for a series of interpretive actions in which the question of interpreting dangerously—or well—is always in the background. And now the dialogue between Vergil and Fulgentius begins in earnest. Vergil has to be summoned from the underworld (with a poetic invocation to the Muses that quotes Vergil himself—more on this later) to answer Fulgentius-p’s questions about the Aeneid, so that Fulgentius-a can ‘lead Vergil’s fugitive obscurities’ (fugitivos…amfractus, 85.11–12) into the light for his reader. It is important that Fulgentius-a does not simply turn to the text of the Aeneid and begin a reading, by himself, that is designed to bring Vergil’s meaning into the light; instead, he wishes to hear what the author of the poem has to say about the poem’s meaning. The conceit is therefore that neither Fulgentius-a nor Fulgentius-p has anything to do with interpreting the text of the Aeneid: Vergil alone does the work. This Vergil cuts quite a figure when he appears on the scene in response to Fulgentius-p’s invocation, a bard (vates) who has drunk from the Hippocrene (Ascrei fontis bractamento saturio, 85.13), an apparition from the underworld carrying pagan truths, a haughty figure who insults Fulgentius-p as an ignoramus hardly worthy of his, Vergil’s, time.27 We start the interpretation with Vergil as an exalted figure, and Fulgentius-p initially humble before the ancient poet. Fulgentius is the first to speak. Addressing Vergil as the ‘most famous of Page 6 of 18

 

The Aeneid as ‘Weaker Text’ and Fulgentius’ Radical Hermeneutics Ausonian bards’ (Ausonum vatum clarissime, 85.17), he asks him (p.234) politely to stop scowling and specifies that he is not going to ask about ancient lore (harmonic numbers, Platonic forms, Aristotelian entelechies, etc.) but only about the simple things grammarians teach their pupils. The supercilious Vergil agrees that this is an appropriate request, since Fulgentius is a ‘little fellow’ (homunculi, 86.8) and ‘more stupid than a clod of earth’ (telluris glabro solidior adipatum, 86.10). Fulgentius’ Vergil is not unlike Macrobius’ in having esoteric wisdom of almost every sort, but Fulgentius emphasizes that he does not want those pagan secrets: Vergil should save them for his Romans, for whom they are both laudable and harmless (quibus haec nosse laudabile competit et inpune succedit, 86.12–13). Likewise, Vergil has no intention of sharing such truths with a benighted Christian. Instead, Vergil agrees to fill up a little urn from the raging torrent of his genius to provide to Fulgentius—just enough not to overwhelm him and make him sick. What is in Vergil’s little urn? Now we get to the heart of the matter. From this urn he pulls out his interpretation of the Aeneid, and in the process of hearing this interpretation, Fulgentius-p interrupts a number of times. These interruptions will show us how Fulgentius qua author was able to create an allegory from a pagan text without risking a critique of his faith. Naturally, Vergil starts with arms and the man, as he subjects the first verse of the Aeneid to a treatment that strains allegory to its limit: ‘By “arms” I refer to virtue, by “man” to wisdom; for every perfection lies in the virtue of the body and the wisdom of the mind,’ 87.5–6).28 Fulgentius-p makes a brief interjection here that I will return to. But Vergil rushes on in a great flood with a further discussion of virtue and wisdom, including an explicit reference to the fact that he is here interpreting his own work according to the rules of (pagan) epideictic rhetoric:29 Quia laudis est adsumpta materia, ante meritum uiri quam ipsum uirum ediximus, quo sic ad personam ueniretur iam recognita meriti qualitate. Because I have taken up the subject-matter of praise, I proclaimed on the merit of the man before the man himself, so that we would come to his person with his praiseworthy qualities already recognized.30 (p.235) The cue here points to a feature I have already mentioned as linking the Expositio to the pagan tradition: Vergil comments on himself in the same way that previous commentators did. Like the Servian commentary, Vergil points out parallels between his own verse and lines in Plato and Homer; like Donatus, he treats the epic as a genus laudativum that (in Donatus’ view) advanced the praise of Aeneas/Augustus. Now Fulgentius-p interrupts again (89.4–9). Let us return to the first interruption, when Vergil had mentioned ‘arms and the man’ as referring to virtue and wisdom. Not content to let this go unremarked, Fulgentius-p interjected here: Ideo etiam diuina lex nostrum mundi redemptorem Christum uirtutem et sapientiam cecinit, quod perfectum hominis Page 7 of 18

 

The Aeneid as ‘Weaker Text’ and Fulgentius’ Radical Hermeneutics diuinitas adsumpsisse uideretur statum (‘This is why the divine law praises Christ our redeemer of the world, as [being] virtue and wisdom in the form of a man’).31 That is, Fulgentius-p managed to find a scriptural parallel to Vergil’s interpretation: the divine law too claims that perfection lies in the virtue of the body and the wisdom of the mind. But this interruption also echoes prior texts— not Vergilian commentaries, but Scripture. In his interpretation of Vergil’s interpretation, Fulgentius-p draws on and echoes 1 Cor. 23–4, and as such, he speaks not so much in his own voice as in that of Scripture, re-interpreting an already-moralized allegory of an original pagan epic and bringing that moral allegory into line with biblical truth. If layer ‘A’ is Vergil’s text and layer ‘B’ is Vergil’s pagan-allegorical interpretation of its meaning, layer ‘C’ is the scriptural echo of that allegorical interpretation that Fulgentius-p can seize upon to show that allegory can be reinterpreted to match Scripture. As such, Fulgentius does not criticize Vergil’s interpretation of Aeneid 1.1; what he does instead is reinterpret the interpretation, making it possible to say something very Christian about Fulgentius’ reading of Vergil without addressing the actual text of the poem, that risky material. As a pagan sine Christo, however, Vergil refuses to acknowledge that he himself did see, or presently can see, the light of Christianity: ‘Look to what true majesty has taught you; I must pronounce what seems true to me’ (‘Videris ipse quid te uera maiestas docuerit; nobis interim quid uisum sit edicamus’).32 And the next interaction between the two will follow the same pattern. Vergil moves on to (p. 236) discuss the conventions of praise, explaining that the quality being praised should precede the subject of praise. Fulgentius interrupts for the second time, noting that this is correct, for ‘divine wisdom, wiser than your understanding, takes up such a beginning: Blessed, he said, is the man who does not go into the councils of the wicked’ (Et diuina enim sapientia uestris supereminentior sensibus tale sumpsit principium dicens: ‘Beatus, inquit, uir qui non abiit in consilio impiorum’, 89.4–7). Vergil thanks the ‘little fellow’ (mi omunucle, 89.10) for his supporting statements and is pleased that he, Vergil, has hit upon this meaning by luck.33 But Fulgentius-p’s interruption has not been a matter of luck; his comments are directed at a topic beyond the rules of epideictic. In quoting Psalms 1:1 and the prophet David, he once again aligns Vergil’s comments with the teachings of the Christian God, leaving the question of epideictic behind to introduce instead a Christian teaching. Once again, Fulgentius-p’s comments transform the allegory that Vergil has produced into Scripture, seeing in Vergil’s moralizing, as it were, a typological hint of things to come.34 We are now primed for the rest of the Expositio, which turns to the allegorical interpretation of the action of the poem as the plan of a human life. We start with the shipwreck, Aeneas’ landfall in Carthage and his failure to recognize Venus: these symbolize birth and infancy, because infants too do not recognize their mother (91.7–92.12).35 Aeneas feasts his eyes on the temple frieze but does not understand it because infants have no understanding (and like him, they cry, Page 8 of 18

 

The Aeneid as ‘Weaker Text’ and Fulgentius’ Radical Hermeneutics 93.3–5). Books 2 and 3 cover storytelling and diversion (the Cyclops only has one eye because youth is not rational, and his name is Polyphemus because it is an amalgam of Greek ἀπολοῦντα φήμην (ἀπολείπω + φήμη) meaning ‘loss of reputation’—youths generally not caring about their reputation (94.2–9)). Vergil’s etymologies are sprinkled all over his analysis, and are generally just as fantastical as this one; as Barry Baldwin points out, many of his learned citations and etymologies are simply inventions.36 Indeed, we might say that (p.237) with his made-up hapax legomena for etymologies, ‘Vergil’ is representing pagan hermeneutics rather than doing it. Now Aeneas buries his father—this is a rejection of paternal authority (94.11– 13). Then he yields to lust with Dido (teenagers!), but Mercury (reason) finally helps him leave this behind. Next Aeneas comes to the Temple of Apollo,37 which symbolizes learning (95.15–17), and Palinurus obligingly falls overboard, removing any risk of planonorus (πλάνη and ὁράω), ‘wandering vision’, or amorous glances (95.17–19). Having buried Misenus, Aeneas is able to descend to the underworld, which stands for ‘the hidden and secret mysteries of knowledge’ (sapientiae obscura secretaque misteria, 96.3). Misenus himself, according to Vergil, refers to spite and praise: for ‘unless you bury the trappings of vain praise, you will never penetrate the secrets of wisdom; for the appetite for vain praise never seeks the truth, but counts the attributes fawningly heaped on him as if they belonged to him’ (nisi uanae laudis pompam obrueris, numquam secreta sapientiae penetrabis; uanae enim laudis appetitus numquam ueritatem inquirit, sed falsa in se adulanter ingesta uelut propria reputat, 96.5– 8). Here Fulgentius-p interrupts again (96.15–18): he approves of what Vergil has said, since divine teaching says that ‘God does not despise a humble and contrite heart’ (Psalms 51 [50]:19).

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The Aeneid as ‘Weaker Text’ and Fulgentius’ Radical Hermeneutics Vergil continues, discussing in turn the golden bough, the idea of a golden tongue and the golden apples, and ending up with the sentiment that ‘virtue snatches the golden ornament of study’ (Hinc ergo ornatum aureum studii uirtus rapit, 97.16–17). Again Fulgentius-p agrees (97.18–98.2): most learned Vergil speaks truly, for Scripture reminds us that the golden tongue of eloquence was taken away from the Gentiles (Josiah 7:21).38 Keeping Aeneas company as Charon ferries him across Acheron, we too swim through a painful channel of further interpretations and etymologies concerning the overcoming of lust, pride being defeated by wisdom, or valour conquering sloth. Finally we reach the Elysian fields where Aeneas receives his father’s teaching (Verg. A. 6.724–5) about the ‘spirit’ who gave life to the heavens and earth. Vergil views this part of his poem as referring to a creator-God and the secret mysteries of nature, and in particular the doctrine of (p.238) metempsychosis. But this is too much for Fulgentius-p, who abandons his prior politeness and interrupts with great indignation: O uatum Latialis autenta, itane tuum clarissimum ingenium tam stultae defensionis fuscare debuisti caligine? Tune ille qui dudum in bucolicis mystice persecutus dixeras:     ‘Iam redit et uirgo, redeunt Saturnia regna;     iam noua progenies caelo promittitur alto.’ O Latin chief of bards, is this how you ought to have obfuscated such a noble intellect with a fog of such stupid testimony? You are he who once treated the matter mystically in the Eclogues, when you wrote:     ‘Now the virgin too returns, the Saturnian kingdom returns;     now a new offspring is promised from high heaven.’39

How could Vergil sink so low? Fulgentius-p accuses him of ‘snoring’ and mixing his nonsense about the transmigration of souls with what he once said ‘mystically’ and truthfully.40 But Vergil laughs off the critique—how could he have known, after all, what his words meant to Christians (103.4–6)? If he had, he would not be a pagan. He is also slightly indignant that Fulgentius-a would expect anything else: ‘This was not the agreement that we made when I was hired as narrator in your books, that I should discuss what I ought to know rather than clarify those things I did know’ (Neque enim hoc pacto in tuis libris conductus narrator accessi, ut id quod sentire me oportuerat, disputarem et non ea potius quae senseram lucidarem, 103.10–12). This is the last exchange between the two interlocutors, and Vergil finishes up his story without further interruption. Having made it out of the underworld, Aeneas seeks to marry Lavinia, which Vergil equates with choosing the road of labour, and to befriend Evander, who teaches him about how to kill Cacus—‘evil’, of course (105.4). From here it is quick work to the end: the fight led by Turnus in Book 9, the death of Mezentius the blasphemer, Juturna’s attempt to save her brother. There is no mention of the fight between Turnus and Aeneas; the last Page 10 of 18

 

The Aeneid as ‘Weaker Text’ and Fulgentius’ Radical Hermeneutics image is one of the wheel of time and fortune. As we end the story, however, the exegesis-spouting Vergil disappears without warning into the voice of Fulgentius-a, who bids his patron goodbye and asks him to read these ‘thorns of the heart’ (tribulos (p.239) pectoris, 107.6) carefully. Why are they thorns? The answers may lie precisely in the nature of this undertaking: a Christian allegorization of a pagan text.41 We are left with an important rereading of pagan allegorical interpretations of the Aeneid. Fulgentius’ responses to Vergil’s interpretive comments have a sort of retroactive force, showing that—coincidentally—what Vergil makes of his own poem (but not the poem itself) is in line with the sentiments in Scripture. Just as the Old Testament can be read as prefiguring the truths of the New Testament because its content is inspired by God, so too it would seem that Vergil’s moralizing interpretation of the Aeneid—though without its author saying otherwise or knowing any better—can be read in harmony with Scripture because it repeats or anticipates its sentiments. Yet this is not a simple operation, nor does it eradicate the difficulty around reading a pagan text. It is worth emphasizing once again that Fulgentius-p is not allegorizing a text, the Aeneid. He is allegorizing (and juxtaposing with Scripture) the original author’s own moral allegory of the poem.42 When Vergil offers him the actual content of the poem (as with Anchises’ comments on the transmigration of souls in Book 6), it is sharply rejected. Fulgentius-a is thereby doubly distanced from the actual, dangerous contents of the epic—love scenes, furore, underworld, and all. In this dialogue, classical legend and Christian Scripture co-exist in a tension in which neither Vergil’s literal text (a nonsense fable), nor Vergil himself (going straight to hell—in fact he is already there), can be salvaged. Instead, it is the dialogue between Vergil and Fulgentius-p that produces a safe Christianized account of the pagan poem, at the cost perhaps of destroying the original and its author. In the process, the Aeneid becomes not one but three Bildungsromane: it is the original story of Aeneas’ foundation of Rome; it is the story of a man’s life from birth to adulthood; and it is the ‘maturation’ of the Aeneid itself, now grown up, out of the classroom, and baptized. Only this last narrative is the one with which (it seems) Fulgentius would like us to leave the Expositio. Unlike Plato’s fatherless text of the Phaedrus, here the author Vergil himself has turned up to tell us what his text really means—to fix it, that is, in such a way that Fulgentius (p.240) can then save it for Christianity and he, Vergil, can simply evaporate by the end of the text. This change goes hand-in-hand with several hints that Fulgentius is ‘graduating’ from his respect for Vergil in other ways as well. The discussion is framed as a stand-in for traditional schoolroom pedagogic exchanges between teacher and student, with Vergil (originally) as the strict pagan grammarian and Fulgentius-p as the student—at first, a very obedient one. After Fulgentius asks him to offer up the teachings of a grammaticus and Vergil sneers that he will be using a Page 11 of 18

 

The Aeneid as ‘Weaker Text’ and Fulgentius’ Radical Hermeneutics really tiny urn of his wisdom, Vergil demands that Fulgentius-p summarize the content of Book 1, just to show he has read it—a common school exercise which Fulgentius-p promptly carries out (90.19–91.6).43 As Étienne Wolff comments, ‘Vergil thus becomes his own grammaticus and even calls himself a “conductus narrator”, that is to say, an exegete on wages.’44 Meanwhile, Fulgentius addresses him respectfully as ‘most esteemed bard’, vates clarissime. The haughty Vergil (whose modesty is stressed by every other commentator) goes on to interpret the Elysian fields as standing for ‘the life of freedom after the fear of classroom discipline’ (id est feriatam vitam post magistrianum timorem, 101.19) and the burial of Caieta as the necessity of entering adulthood, ‘with the weighty fear of the teacher cast aside’ (id est magistriani timoris proiecta gravidine, 103.13–14). That is, Vergil’s own reading of the Aeneid suggests that we must leave Vergil qua grammaticus, together with the schoolroom and its fears, behind—thus letting us, the readers, know that the pagan-centred classroom is not the place where we will learn real truths or grow up. As Seth Lerer puts it, our experience reading Fulgentius is in this regard a repetition of the Aeneid; ‘Fulgentius unifies the progress of his hero, the development of his student, and the education of his reader.’45 If Vergil is the teacher, what happens to his pupil, Fulgentius-p, in this dialogue? To put it briefly, he ‘activates’ his reading by escaping from the pagan classroom and leaving behind its lies.46 Not only does he lose his awe for Vergil and Vergil’s views, chastizing him freely in (p.241) his last comment, he also moves away from the flawed initial Fulgentius-p whom we met at the beginning. When Fulgentius-p first called upon Vergil to appear,47 he appealed in good classical style to the muses and even added the phrase Maius opus moveo (‘I embark upon a greater work’, 85.7), quoting Vergil’s own words from Verg. A. 7.44. He then remarks at Vergil’s appearance, ‘Ecce!! Here he comes, having drunk a bractamento (< Gk βρέχειν) from the Ascrean fountain.’48 As Andrew Laird notes, ‘ecce’ heralds the appearance of Palinurus, whose shade is the first one Aeneas encounters in his katabasis.49 Even before Vergil’s appearance, in fact, Fulgentius quotes him on pagan ritual just as Fulgentius is saying he will not engage in pagan rituals (84.4–6, repeating Verg. A. 6.245–6, in which the Sibyl is cutting the hairs of heifers and invoking Hecate): that is, he tells his readers how to conduct pagan rituals just as he abjures it.50 And this is after Fulgentius-a has told his addressee he will be steering clear of such topics lest he end up with a broken head (83.6–8)! Fulgentius-p is not doing very well at leaving Vergil behind—for now. The striking opening that summons Vergil from hell also recalls at least two important pagan texts: the Homeric nekuia and Vergil’s own description of the katabasis of Aeneas to meet with Anchises in Book 6, where, after due ritual, the dead Anchises tells the living Aeneas all he knows.51 Fulgentius-p’s summoning of Vergil from the underworld can therefore be read as an imitative act based on Fulgentius’ having read Vergil’s depiction of how the son consults the father in Page 12 of 18

 

The Aeneid as ‘Weaker Text’ and Fulgentius’ Radical Hermeneutics Elysium and asks him for the meaning of what he sees (tsk!), with Fulgentius here in the role of the obedient son and Vergil as the all-knowing Anchises (of course Anchises never calls Aeneas a blockhead). But if Vergil starts out in the position of authority enjoyed by Anchises, Fulgentius-a reverses that fact by the end of the dialogue. No longer kowtowing to the bard, he scolds him and asserts the superiority of Scripture over false pagan belief (especially the transmigration of souls). (p.242) Moreover, as the dialogue ends, our ghostly Vergil ceases to exist, having disappeared into Fulgentius-a’s own authorial voice.52 If bringing the author into a commentary to say what he meant is unique in the ancient commentary tradition, we see now that Fulgentius innovated in this way in order to make that author transform his own text into material for Christian exegesis—and then vanish. In closing, an interesting foil to all this is provided by a Christian woman by the name of Faltonia Proba, who anticipated Fulgentius’ project of making the Aeneid suitable for Christians by two hundred years; her failure (in contrast to his success) is informative. Proba rearranged Vergil’s verses into a 694-line cento retelling episodes from both the Old Testament and the New Testament.53 Having read her new ‘Vergilian’ concoction, Jerome was not amused: he severely criticized this work, claiming that an ‘old chatterbox’ (garrula anus) wanted ‘to teach Scriptures before understanding them’ (docent antequam discant), and that she had made the dreadful error of treating ‘the Christless Maro’ (Maronem sine Christo) as if he were a Christian (Letters 53.7). A century later Pope Gelasius I (492–6) declared Proba’s De laudibus Christi apocryphal and forbade its public reading. The lesson? Vergil could not be turned to better use by simply being transformed into the praise of Christ in his own words. Did Fulgentius’ text allow for the ultimate triumph of a weaker voice, that of Vergil’s Aeneid in the first centuries of Christianity? We have seen that the operations carried out in the Expositio, while they allow the Aeneid to be read, also seem to move away from any kind of validation of the pagan author or his original text. But Vergil may have had the last laugh. The measure of Fulgentius’ success in rehabilitating the pagan bard may ultimately be seen in the popularity (p.243) of Vergil’s text among later allegorists of the Aeneid. If the poets of antiquity were originally unfit for serious Christian reading, it is notable that in the centuries after Fulgentius’ death not only Vergil, but even more dubious figures such as Ovid, were seen as ripe material for allegorical reappropriation. Yet it is Vergil in particular who emerges from the Middle Ages with an entire retinue of allegorizers: Bernard Silvestris (or Bernard of Chartres), John of Salisbury, Cristoforo Landino, Alexander Neckham, and Robert Holkot, to name the principal figures. What is more, far from reading the poem in order to make parallels to Scripture, these interpreters stayed closer to what ‘Vergil’ had to say in the Expositio than what Fulgentius had made of him. The story they chose to adopt and modify was that of a man’s growth and moral improvement that Fulgentius’ Vergil had so strangely spun out of the Aeneid—Bernard, for Page 13 of 18

 

The Aeneid as ‘Weaker Text’ and Fulgentius’ Radical Hermeneutics example, choosing to read the Aeneid as an allegory of the experience of the soul in the human body.54 And let us not forget: in perhaps the greatest compliment of all, the medieval Vergil’s sentence was commuted from hell to purgatory by Dante in the Divina Commedia. The man who was hailed there as de li altri poeti onore e lume almost certainly owes this presence to Fulgentius and his Expositio. Perhaps it is time to reward Fulgentius by bringing him, too, out of the shadows of the weaker voice. (p.244) Notes:

(1) Many thanks to the two editors, Sebastian Matzner and Stephen Harrison, for their comments and assistance throughout. (2) Plato in particular was used on these grounds. On taking what is good from pagan texts: cf. Jerome Ep. 21.13.6; Augustine On Christian Doctrine 2.40.60; Paulinus of Nola Ep. 16.11; Basilius Address to Young Men on the Right Use of Greek Literature, 4; Clement of Alexandria, Str. 1.14.66; Origen, Epistle to Gregory Thaumaturgus (ANF IX, pp 295–6). St Ambrose quotes from pagan authors on these same grounds, as does Minucius Felix in his Octavius. (3) By ‘allegory’, I mean here any act of exegesis that transforms a text into a moral narrative for human instruction and improvement by such means as typology, moralizing, personification, etymologizing, anagogical readings, cosmological readings, and so forth. This general use of the term has precedent. Jones (1959: 217–18) identifies notes that what the ancients called ‘speaking otherwise’ includes references to historical figures, equation of gods with forces of nature, moral readings, and euhemeristic rationalizations, all of which one could cast as different forms of interpretation. Dante later identified four modes of ‘allegory’ in Scripture alone, viz. the ‘literal’ sense, the ‘allegorical’, the ‘moral’, and the ‘anagogical’ and added: ‘they can all be called allegorical’ (Letter to Can Grande, 7). There are useful discussions in Damon (1990); McVeigh (1964); and Rollinson (1981). (4) See Aug. De Doctrina Christiana 1.60 and below. This salvaging was by extraction, not by allegory, as Augustine makes clear. Augustine did endorse some allegorizing in his early works (De ordine 1.8.24) but lived to regret it, calling pagan texts ‘food for swine’: cf. Contra Acad. 3.5.6 and Retract. 1.3.2. See Westra (1990) 22–3. (5) A striking exception is Justin Martyr (100–165 CE) who not only emphasized the truths to be found in Plato but consistently used Greek philosophy to explain Christian doctrine. His early date is significant: at this point Christianity is not widespread and is defending itself precisely by pointing out its similarity to pagan writings. Justin’s theory of the logos spermatikos effectively means that anyone who relies on reason, even if prior to Christ’s coming, is connected to Christ-as-logos and is thus a Christian before the fact. Page 14 of 18

 

The Aeneid as ‘Weaker Text’ and Fulgentius’ Radical Hermeneutics (6) See the treatment in MacCormack (1998, ch. 3). Augustine’s view of the value of the hermeneutic act itself, as laid out in De Doctrina Christiana 2.6.8, was not applicable to pagan literature. (7) The sexual undercurrents here run across Christian commentaries; cf. Origen Homilies on Leviticus 7.6, where the pagan text is like a captured slave-woman. For a general treatment of Jerome on pagan literature, see McDermott (1982). (8) I realize I seem to do violence to such pleas as those articulated in Long’s (1990) piece ‘Allegory in Philo and Etymology in Stoicism: A Plea for Drawing Distinctions’. I fully acknowledge the distinctions, but point out that they were also treated under an umbrella even in antiquity. (9) See the rhetoric of e.g. Apostolic Constitutions (compiled c.390 CE); Tertullian, Writings 3.87. (10) Neither Clement nor Origen makes a distinction between typology and allegory. On reading unacceptable content figuratively, see Aug. OCD 3.10.4; Orig. On First Principles Book 4. Many interpreters also believed in the historical truth of the OT, but of course those actions were not committed by Christians. On the (limited) influence of Jewish hermeneutics, see e.g. Longenecker (1999). (11) Fr. 5, ed. Hoffman (1994). On the mutual recrimination, Kahlos (2012). (12) Den Boer (1947: 151). Further on this issue of hermeneutical authority: Kahlos (2012), who cites Arnobius Ag. Pagans 1.57.1–3. (13) On Christian readings of the Fourth Eclogue, see Courcelle (1957); Benko (1980); MacCormack (1998: 25–7). (14) On all of these passages, see Benko (1980). Eusebius of Caesarea (a Christian polemicist) attributes to Constantine an Oration to the Holy Assembly 18.4 in which he says that Vergil knew of the mystery of Christ and but shrouded his language with allegory to avoid offending the emperor. Juvencus seems to have written a poetic version of the Gospel of John in which he borrowed some of Vergil’s language. But even if Vergil was a proto-Christian in the eyes of some, he is not, as we will see, a proto-Christian for Fulgentius, which makes his work all the more interesting. (15) Clement’s Stromata 4.52.1 and 6.123.2 do not seem to me to show applications of Messianic typology to pagan literature. (16) I have used the edition of Wolff (2009). But see also the useful recent translation (and rough text) in Ziolkowski and Putnam 2008.

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The Aeneid as ‘Weaker Text’ and Fulgentius’ Radical Hermeneutics (17) As Sebastian Matzner points out to me, this arrangement is anticipated in Lucian’s VH 2.20, which features a dialogue between the narrator and Homer in which Homer responds to certain unresolved points of Homer criticism. No allegoresis takes place here and the tone is humorous, but it is not impossible that this piece provided Fulgentius with a model for the use of the dialogue form and the fictive self-interpretation of/by the author himself. (18) See, e.g. Coffin (1921: 33), who recognizes Fulgentius’ unique contribution as the first Christian allegorizer of the Aeneid. Fulgentius also produced other allegorizations of pagan works in his Mythologiae (e.g. of the Cupid and Psyche story, 3.6). (19) Most famously so, Comparetti (1966: 112). But Comparetti and other detractors tend to conflate Vergil and Fulgentius. Trendier interpreters have suggested that Fulgentius is deliberately exploding his text so as to deconstruct language’s capacity to signify; see, for example, Edwards (1976). On Fulgentius’ identity, see the bibliography in Hays (2003). (20) On this debt, see e.g. Pennisi (1963: 141–2); Hardison (1976). (21) On Vergil’s development from literary figure to magus, see Coffin (1921: 35). For a comparison of Vergil and Macrobius, see Rodríguez Beltrán (2013). As he points out, in Macrobius Vergil is modesty itself, in contrast to the figure Fulgentius shows us. For a study of Fulgentius’ influence on Bernardus Silvestris, see Bertini (1983/4) and Edwards (1990). (22) Was Macrobius a Christian? There is no consensus. But if he was, there is a reason why his praise of Vergil is put into the mouths of speakers other than himself. I must also point out that his commentary on the Dream of Scipio is not an allegory; Lactantius comments similarly on Vergil at Div. Inst. 7.24. Cf. also Damon (1990: 116–17). (23) For his influence on Fulgentius, see Gardner (1970: 229). (24) As Jones (1959) points out, Fulgentius may have been influenced by this precedent as well. (25) Damon (1990: 120) speculates on what might have led Fulgentius to take this ‘reasonably momentous step’. He suggests that Fulgentius chose to distance himself from Vergil not because of the safety provided by ascribing the first layer of invention to the poet, but because of a tradition of interpretation of poetry that saw the poets as rhetoricians pleading a biased argument. (26) All translations are my own unless otherwise noted.

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The Aeneid as ‘Weaker Text’ and Fulgentius’ Radical Hermeneutics (27) The actual appearance of an author in a commentary on his text is unique up to this point in the commentary tradition (though as noted above, Lucian makes use of the same conceit). As Irvine (1994: 120) notes, ‘The term auctor in the grammatical tradition ordinarily refers to a text, not to a person or human subject that stands behind the text as an authenticating origin.’ (28) In armis uirtutem, in uiro sapientiam demonstrantes; omnis enim perfectio in uirtute constat corporis et sapientia ingenii. On these lines, see esp. Gardner (1970: 230–2). (29) On praising Augustus through Aeneas, see Baswell (1995: 60). (30) Fulg. Exp. 87.17–29. (31) Fulg. Exp. 87.8–11. (32) Fulg. Exp. 87.11–12. (33) As Damon (1990: 118) notes, Vergil praises Fulgentius-p’s efforts but refuses to employ them himself. (34) On Fulgentius-p as practising typology on Vergil’s interpretation: so too Damon (1990: 118). (35) On Fulgentius’ treatment of Verg. A. 1 in particular, see Burkard (2006). (36) Baldwin (1988). (37) For a discussion of the Temple of Apollo as a kind of integumentum, see Edwards (1990). (38) See Agozzino (1972: 626–7); Ferguson (2001); Hays (2007: 490). (39) Fulg. Exp. 102.19–103.7; the reference is to Verg. Ecl. 4.6–7. (40) ‘Mistice’ seems to mean ‘having to do with pagan lore’; see Fulgentius’ preceding comments on the Georgics and Eclogues. It is not to be translated as ‘allegorically.’ (41) So too Coffin (1921: 34–5) and Wolff (2008: 68): the contents are dangerous. (42) Of course Fulgentius-a is the real allegorizer, but he wishes to distance himself from this fact. (43) On Verg. A. 1–6 in the classroom, see Albu (2009: 28). (44) On Vergil as magister, Jones (1964) and Wolff (2008: 60–4). (45) Lerer (2014: 65). Page 17 of 18

 

The Aeneid as ‘Weaker Text’ and Fulgentius’ Radical Hermeneutics (46) Compare and contrast the various tensions and shifts within the asymmetrical power dynamics between Vergil and Fulgentius-p in this classroom with those in the classroom of Horace and the young Pisones, see Rimell in this volume. (47) It is difficult at this point to say if we are dealing with Fulgentius-p or Fulgentius-a. I take the transition as happening after Fulgentius’ comments to his addressee. (48) Laird (2001: 65–6) points out all these references to Vergil. (49) Laird (2001: 55). (50) Contrast Fulg. Mit. 1.7.5–1.8.5 where Fulgentius calls on the Muses but belittles them as ‘storehouses empty of treasure’; cf. Relihan (1984: 88). (51) For an excellent discussion of Vergil and the underworld in Fulgentius, see Laird (2001). (52) The process starts already when ‘Vergil’ cites something Fulgentius-a has written, but in the first person. As Albu (2009: 25–6) points out, when Vergil says of Cerberus ‘I have already explained it’, he is ‘citing’ Mitologiae 16. As Lerer nicely remarks of the end of the poem (2014: 69), Fulgentius ‘confounds the opposition of his dedicatees: his mind does reveal its learning, and a real, if somewhat shaky, synthesis of ancient and modern takes shape.’ However, I am less convinced that the dialogue is a parody of the prior literary and grammatical traditions so much as a demonstration of their Christian irrelevance. Taking it seriously are Agozzino (1972); Irvine (1994: 160). (53) Of her re-use of Vergil’s verses, Proba says ‘I will show that Vergil sang of the holy gifts of Christ.’ I concur with the scepticism of McGill (2007: 176); Proba’s meaning is probably more ‘I will show you how I can make Vergil sing of the holy gifts of Christ.’ On Jerome’s reaction, see McGill (2007: 177–9). (54) On this topic, see Ziolkowski and Putnam (2008), with convenient English translations of many texts; also e.g. Courcelle (1984); Baswell (1995); Comparetti (1966); Freund (2000).

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Cowherds and Saints

Complex Inferiorities: The Poetics of the Weaker Voice in Latin Literature Sebastian Matzner and Stephen Harrison

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198814061 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198814061.001.0001

Cowherds and Saints Paulinus of Nola Carmen 18 Philip Hardie

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198814061.003.0014

Abstract and Keywords The volume’s final chapter follows the one that precedes it in continuing to address the challenge of reconciling the grandeur of classical yet pagan writings, notably Vergil’s canonical epic, and the Christian commitment to the truth of the gospel and its values of simplicity and humility—but takes it up from the perspective of literary production rather than literary interpretation. Drawing on Auerbach’s arguments in his classic Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, it analyses the roles of realism and laughter in this poem and sets out to illuminate the dynamics between the multiple hierarchies of social, educational, and spiritual status that are negotiated by this text, encompassing the variously intersecting relationships between writer and readers, rustic protagonist and saintly patronus, Christian writing and Vergilian epic. Keywords:   Paulinus of Nola, Saint Felix, Vergil, Auerbach, realism, laughter, saints, Christian literature, late antique literature, modesty

In his essay ‘Fortunata’, the second chapter of Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, Erich Auerbach offers a diagnosis of the limits of antique realism and of antique historical consciousness, through readings of one of the Petronian freedmen’s gossipy account of Fortunata and her husband Trimalchio, and of Tacitus’ account of the Pannonian revolt (Tac. Ann. 1.16f.).1 Auerbach’s point is twofold: firstly, that there is an ‘antique stylistic rule according to which realistic imitation, the description of random everyday life, Page 1 of 18

 

Cowherds and Saints could only be comic’ (44); and secondly, that such description never engages with deep historical forces, any more than does Tacitus’ rhetorically and aesthetically elevated account of the grievances of the common soldiers, voiced by Percennius, the leader of the mutiny, and dismissed in advance by the narrator as opportunistic mob licence. Auerbach contrasts a biblical text, Mark’s version of the story of Peter’s denial: this is a realistic narrative with low-class characters that yet has the most serious and tragic consequences and which is filled with the sense of a world-revolutionary event. The ethics and aesthetics of the gospel narrative are presented by Auerbach as quite alien to the norms and expectations of classical antiquity. In this essay I examine a text by a Christian writer, but one which operates through a sovereign command of the conventions of (p.246) classical Latin poetry, at the same time as it critiques some of the expectations of a classically conditioned readership and raises questions, from the point of view of a Christian ideology, about what is involved in the polarity of ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’. But first I shall make an approach to Paulinus of Nola’s Christian narrative through some further consideration of pre-Christian ancient texts. The freedmen’s speeches in the Satyricon may be the most realistic representation of non-elite speech to survive in classical Latin literature,2 but Auerbach’s exclusive focus on Petronius’ comic novel overlooks some examples of low-class realism in ancient narrative texts which are not merely comic. In Greek, Callimachus’ Hekale exhibits what Graham Zanker claims is ‘a realism unprecedented in Greek literature both in its nature and its extent’.3 This is a realism that is framed through a contrast with the elevated heroism of Hekale’s guest, Theseus. The hospitality theme, for which the Hekale is famous, serves both to draw together the great hero and the impoverished old woman and to intensify the contrast between their social classes, a contrast which is itself somewhat lessened by Hekale’s revelation that she was not originally of a poor family. In Ovid’s reworking of the Hekale in the story of Philemon and Baucis in Metamorphoses 8 the contrast between superior and inferior is heightened by the fact that the guests of the humble old couple (of whose earlier origins nothing is said) are the supreme god Jupiter and his son Mercury. The chief characteristics of Philemon and Baucis are their pietas (631 pia Baucis) and paupertas (633). The tone of the narrative is at once sympathetic and humorous: the sympathy is part of the narrative strategy of the internal narrator, the wise Lelex, who tells the story to put down the spretor deorum (‘despiser of the gods’) Pirithous with a demonstration both of the ‘boundless power’ (618 immensa… potentia) of the gods, and of their use of that power to reward the pious. Before the final metamorphosis of Philemon and Baucis into sacred trees, their humble cottage is transformed into a temple of costly gold and marble, an architectural magnification and glorification whose luxury does not put in question the couple’s moral (p.247) worth, since the human habitation has turned not into a Page 2 of 18

 

Cowherds and Saints private palace but a house of the gods, whose priests Philemon and Baucis will be until their own transformation. For Ovid’s own, Augustan Roman, readers there is further allusion to the divinely ordained transformation of Rome from humble shepherds’ cottages to the shining temples of the Capitoline and Palatine hills, a lengthy historical process that is telescoped in the overlapping temporal perspectives of Book 8 of the Aeneid. Ovid’s Philemon and Baucis, and possibly Callimachus’ Hekale itself, are among the models for Simulus exigui cultor…rusticus agri (‘Simulus the rustic cultivator of a tiny farm’), the ‘hero’ of the pseudo-Vergilian Moretum, of which Richard Heinze said: ‘The poem is unique of its kind. Nowhere else in ancient literature, prose or verse, have we so circumstantial a description of a fragment of everyday life, nowhere else in ancient poetry, Greek or Latin, have we a narrative poem which takes its material from the life of the working class.’4 E. J. Kenney has it that ‘[w]hereas Virgil’s rustics are projections of himself…the poet of the Moretum has distanced himself from his creation and presents him objectively and without idealization.’5 But to ‘distance’ is already to establish a relationship—one of distance—between the subjectivity of the poet and his readers and the subject of the narrative; furthermore the mock-epic and mockheroic qualities of the Moretum, fully documented by Kenney, are incompatible with an ‘objective’, value-free representation of the character. This epic framing can work in two ways: for Kenney, ‘[t]he mock-heroic presentation…enhances [the message] by investing Simulus’ life with real dignity.’6 Alternatively, the mock-epic touches serve to highlight the enormous gap between the life of the hero and the life of the peasant. The complexities of distancing, humour, and (p. 248) sympathy in the Moretum, and the possibilities for reading the connections between an epicizing narrative and the reality of Simulus’ life, are subtly teased out by William Fitzgerald.7 One challenger to the Moretum’s claim to be unique of its kind in taking its material from the life of the working class is the second part of Paulinus of Nola’s Carmen 18, composed in AD 400 as one of the ‘birthday poems’, Natalicia, written each year by Paulinus for St Felix, whose tomb at Cimitile, near Nola, Paulinus adorned with a new basilica and a monastic community.8 Unlike the free-standing Moretum, but like Ovid’s Philemon and Baucis, Paulinus’ narrative about a cowherd is told to make a point, as an example of the miracles wrought at the tomb of St Felix and as a demonstration of the rewards won by a simple pietas. The story is also presented as the humble offering of the poor poet, who compares his poem in this respect to the two mites offered by the poor widow (Luke 21:1–4, Mark 12:41–4). Paulinus establishes a network of relationships within which the simple rustic is placed: with his patronus, the saint; with other people at the sanctuary of the saint—the churchwardens (330 aeditui) and the crowds of the faithful who witness the miracle; with his animals, the two oxen; with Paulinus, poet and servant of St Felix; and with the readers of Paulinus’ poem. The result is a complex network of inferiority and equality, of distance and Page 3 of 18

 

Cowherds and Saints closeness, of absence and presence, loss and restoration, disempowerment and empowerment. The whole is inflected by Paulinus’ own pious Christianity and his devotion to St Felix. How much of a difference does that make, when compared with the pagan authors previously considered? The ‘hero’ of the story is introduced with heavy emphasis on his lowly status and on the fact that he is a working man: quidam homo tenuis, plebeius origine, cultu rusticus, e geminis angustam bubus alebat pauperiem9 mercede iugi, nunc subdere plaustris (p.249) suetus eos oneri pacta regione uehendo, nunc operae pretium sub aratra aliena locatis paupertatis habens reditum. There was a man of slender means, plebeian by birth and of rustic manners, who used to relieve his oppressive poverty by the payment he got from his two oxen. At one time he would hitch them to a cart to carry some load on an agreed journey, and at another he would get a meagre return as payment for their work by hiring them to others for ploughing.10

The rusticus, as I shall call him, is not even given the dignity of a name. The word rusticus not only defines him as a country-dweller, but also marks him as unsophisticated, ‘boorish’, and sets him apart from the sophistication of Paulinus and his readers, for all Paulinus’ affected protestations of modesty.11 The storyline is simple. One night while he sleeps his two oxen are stolen from him. Distraught, the rusticus goes to the shrine of St Felix, and prostrating himself at the doors delivers fifty-nine lines of prayer mingled with complaint and rebuke to the saint. His prayer is heard in heaven by Felix. Forced at last by the churchwardens to leave the church, he returns to his lowly hut (333 tuguri).12 In the depth of the night he hears a knocking at the door. Terrified that these are more robbers, the rusticus finally (p.250) realizes that it is his oxen, which have miraculously returned, and are butting the door with their horns. Joyfully reunited with his beasts, he leads them to the church in triumphal procession. The story concludes with a second mini-miracle: giving thanks to the saint for the return of the oxen, the rusticus complains that he has almost been blinded by his tears of first grief and then joy, and asks for the restitution of his sight, as previously of his oxen. Again his prayer is granted by Felix. This is a realism played for comedy, but going well beyond the ‘merely’ comic. The outspoken demands made to the saint for the return of his oxen are certainly comic, and the comedy is appreciated in heaven, in a remarkable scene of the saint laughing in the company of his Lord:13 talia uoce quidem querula sed mente fideli plorantem totoque die sine fine precantem Page 4 of 18

 

Cowherds and Saints audiuit laetus non blando supplice martyr et sua cum domino ludens14 conuicia risit; poscentisque fide, non libertate dolentis motus opem properat. As he made these entreaties with plaintive voice but with the mind of faith, praying all day without cease, the martyr listened and was pleased with his unflattering suppliant. In company with the Lord he joked and laughed at the rebukes he received. Stirred by the faith of the suppliant rather than by the outspokenness of his resentment, he hastened to lend aid.15

His Christian faith ensures that the amused superiority with which Paulinus’ upper-class human readers may respond to the lengthy (p.251) complaints of the rusticus is met with sympathy, as well as laughter, on the part of the most superior of audiences. There is laughter again at the very end of the tale, when the crowds of people present at the scene, who have previously reacted with wonder and applause to the rusticus’s ‘triumphal’ return with his oxen, laugh at his complaint that he is blinded by tears; but there is a more sympathetic audience in the form of the absent saint: talia praesentes populi risere querentem. sed procul admotae secreti martyris aures suscepere pias ab inepto supplice uoces. The folk who were there smiled at this complaint of his. But the martyr in his distant place cocked his ears and heard these devout words from his tactless suppliant.16

The sympathetic comedy of the second part of Carmen 18 (211–468) is in strong contrast to the first part of the poem. Carmen 18 is the sixth of Paulinus’ annual Natalicia commemorating the date of St Felix’s death, in other words his ‘birth’ into heaven. The previous five Natalicia had dealt with Paulinus’ own journey to Nola and with the history of Felix in this life. Carmen 18 continues with Felix’s posthumous career, the flight of his soul to heaven, and the burial in the shrine at Cimitile of his bones, from which emanate an undying light and a life-giving fragrance, signs of the saint’s living power on earth. The miracles begin, and for his first example to narrate at length Paulinus chooses the tale of the humble rusticus as one out of numberless others, but surely as a considered and deliberate selection. The poem starts out in the mode of the sublime, with celebration of Felix’s success in ascending the narrow path to the celestial heights, 6–7 quod per iter durum, qua fert uia peruia paucis, | alta per arta petens superas penetrauit ad arces (‘for he sought the heights through the narrows and along the hard path where few can make their way, and so he reached the citadel of heaven’). This is a skilful combination of Vergilian and biblical intertexts, tied together through Page 5 of 18

 

Cowherds and Saints the assonance of the epic-heroic alta and the arta of the gospel arta uia ‘strait way’.17 The natural world rejoices (16 laetitiam mundi), as evidenced (p.252) by the shining white mantle of snow that covers the earth, a brightness in contrast to the shadows of the nocturnes that predominate in the story of the rusticus. As Felix ascends to heaven he is received by choirs of angels in a triumphal aduentus, and brought into the presence of the divine king, to be honoured with two crowns, one snow-white and one purple (138–53).

Rusticus and Saint But the sublime Felix and the comic rusticus are twinned by a variety of devices. Despite their confident belief that Felix has gone to heaven, the people of Nola are afflicted by grief at his loss to earth. Their love for the absent saint consoles itself in the only way it can, by crowding round his body and touching and kissing his limbs:             quodque unum in funere sancto inter et exequias restat solamen amoris, postquam depositum tumulandi in sede feretrum, certatim populus pietatis circumfusus undique denseto coetu sita membra coronat, religiosa pie pugna exercetur amantum. quisque alium praestans propior consistere certat reliquiis corpusque manu contingere gaudet. nec satis est uidisse semel, iuuat usque morari18 luminaque expositis et qua datur oscula membris figere. (p.253) They seized the sole consolation of their love remaining to them in the presence of the saint’s corpse and his last remains, once the funeral bier had been laid on its burial site; the people were possessed with devotion, and in dense crowds vied in garlanding the limbs set there. A holy battle of devotion was fought amongst those who cherished him. He who got the better of his neighbour struggled to approach nearer the remains, and took pleasure in touching the body with his hand. A single glimpse was not enough; they delighted in lingering on, and implanting their eyes, and where possible their kisses, on the laid-out corpse.19

The desire to touch and kiss what is left of the absent beloved anticipates the rusticus’s desperate clinging to the places and traces of his stolen oxen when he returns home from the church (330–54), in scenes that go far beyond the Homeric Polyphemus’ affection for his ram (Hom. Od. 9.444–61), or the Vergilian Mezentius’ affection for his horse (Verg. A. 10.858–68). Paulinus explores the poignancy of the rusticus’s return to the hut, now empty of the presence of the animals, dwelling on his acute awareness of the absence of the sound of the cowbells as they chew the cud, his attempt to find solace in throwing himself down in the places where they used to stable, feeling the places where they left Page 6 of 18

 

Cowherds and Saints their last hoof-prints, and consoled by the only presence left, that of the smell of the animals, 345–7: nec situs horret | sordentis stabuli, quia notum reddit odorem | dilecti pecoris, nec fetor fetet amanti, ‘The filth of the foul stall did not appal him, because it brought the familiar smell of his beloved animals; the stench was no stench to a lover.’ This is the pathos of the Lucretian cow searching for her lost calf at De rerum natura 2.355–6: at mater uiridis saltus orbata peragrans | quaerit [Bailey] humi pedibus uestigia pressa bisulcis, ‘But the mother bereft wanders over the green glades and seeks on the ground for the footprints marked by those cloven hoofs’, trans. Bailey; or of Alcyone trying to conjure up the presence of her husband Ceyx in the places where last she saw him (Ov. Met. 11.471–3: ut nec uela uidet, uacuum petit anxia lectum | seque toro ponit: renouat lectusque locusque | Alcyonae lacrimas et quae pars admonet absit, ‘when she no longer saw the sails, careworn she went to the empty bed and lay down on the mattress: the bed and the place renewed Alcyone’s tears, and reminded her of the part of her life that was not there’; 710–14: mane erat: egreditur tectis ad litus (p.254) et illum | maesta locum repetit, de quo spectarat euntem. | dumque moratur ibi dumque ‘hic retinacula soluit, | hoc mihi discedens dedit oscula litore’ dicit | dumque notata locis reminiscitur acta…, ‘It was morning: she left the house for the shore and sadly went back to the place from which she had watched him depart. While she lingered there, and while she said “This is where he loosed the mooring-ropes, on this shore he kissed me as he left”, and while she calls to mind the actions imprinted on the place…’). What is distinctive about the passage in Paulinus, and perhaps unclassical in its disregard for decorum, is the embrace both by his character and by the poet of the filth and stench of the stable, disgust cancelled by love. The physicality of contact with the corpse of the recently deceased saint will be continued in the physicality of contact with the tomb, relics, and other material objects that have come into contact with the tomb or bones of the saint. This sacred closeness is comically mirrored in the rusticus’s delight in the slobber and rough tongue of his restored oxen: oblatumque sibi mox ipso in limine regem cognoscunt hilares laetum lambuntque uicissim mulcentem labrisque manus palpantis inudant atque habitum totum spumosa per oscula foedant, dum complectentis domini iuga cara benignum molliter obnixi blanda uice pectus adulant. illum dilecti pecoris nec cornua laedunt et conlata quasi molles ad pectora frontes admouet, et manibus non aspera lingua uidetur,

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Cowherds and Saints quae lambens etiam siluestria pabula radit. Then they joyfully recognized their delighted lord before them on the threshold. They licked him as he in turn stroked them, and with their lips they moistened the hands which patted them, with foam-specked kisses they stained all his garments. As their master embraced his dear pair of oxen, they gently nuzzled their kindly lord and fawningly caressed his breast in turn. The horns of his beloved cattle did him no injury; he drew their heads as though they were soft to his proffered breast. To his hands the tongues which by licking scraped the fodder even of wild plants did not feel rough.20

Motifs of absent presence punctuate the poem, culminating in the instant intervention of the hand of the far distant saint to restore the (p.255) rusticus’s eyesight at the end (462–5). The Christian cult of saints breaks down the traditional boundary between heaven and earth, and allows the absent dead to be present in a more powerful and lasting way than they could ever be in the pagan world: these are topics that Peter Brown has eloquently developed in The Cult of the Saints.21 The loss and return of the rusticus’s oxen mirrors the loss and return of Felix, lost in his mortal self, but returned as the saint present and powerful in his shrine. The return to the rusticus of his oxen is a proof of the presence and power of Felix. Felix’s triumphal ascent to heaven in the first half of the poem is itself mirrored in the triumphal progress in the second half of the rusticus with his oxen to the saint’s shrine:22 with 138–44 (sidereo uolucrem laeti uexere triumpho, ‘[angels] joyfully bore him as he sped on his heavenly triumph’) compare 432–40: 434–6 quos miser hesterno amissos deflerat, eosdem | praesentes hodie ducit sanctique triumphum | martyris ostentat populis, ‘the beasts he had bewailed the previous day as lost he now led forward, and revealed to the crowd the triumph of his holy martyr.’ A host of angels accompanies the aduentus of Felix (139–40 laeta piorum | turba, 141 angelicique chori), a crowd of believers watches the rusticus’s triumphal procession (432 densas…cateruas, 433 cunctis mirantibus, 438–9 dat euntibus ingens | turba locum). The common image of martyrdom as triumph is transferred to a different kind of triumph, in which the faithful rusticus vicariously leads the saint’s ‘spoils’ in procession. This triumph is the conclusion to a series of epic allusions in the story of the rusticus that establishes a further, generic, link between saint and rusticus. It is sometimes claimed that the Natalicia are Paulinus’ least classicizing poems, and that they readily employ the diction of the Christian sermo humilis.23 It would be truer to say that a poem like the present one combines passages that avoid elevated poetic diction with others that embrace it.24 Furthermore Carmen (p. 256) 18 is full of allusion to classical poetry, in particular to Vergil. I have already pointed to some of the echoes of the Aeneid in the first part of the poem. More specifically the tale of the rusticus alludes to a Vergilian narrative of cattle Page 8 of 18

 

Cowherds and Saints stolen and recovered, the Hercules and Cacus episode in Aeneid 8, an episode which within Aeneid 8 as a whole is a typological foreshadowing of Octavian/ Augustus’ victory over Antony at Actium, followed by the triple triumph of 29 BCE.25 That connection may have contributed to Paulinus’ own combination of a cattle-rustling story with a triumphal ending. The Vergilian model offers contrasts and connections between an epic heroism with celestial aspirations and a bucolic humility. The greatest Greek hero, Hercules, comes on stage as a cowherd, and is not ashamed to take shelter in the humble cottage of the Arcadian king Evander. The whole of the episode of Aeneas’ visit to the site of Rome is constructed round a contrast between a primitive poverty and lowliness and a present-day sky-reaching grandeur, the two connected by the course of Roman history over the centuries. The connections that Paulinus establishes between Felix’s elevation to the glorious court of the heavenly king and the humble rusticus and his cottage are of different kinds, but no less momentous in their historical implications. The miracle of the rusticus and his oxen bears witness to the revolution in history brought about by the incarnation and resurrection of Christ. To that extent the tale of the rusticus (p.257) shares in the profound seriousness that Auerbach identified in the lowly cast of the gospel story of Peter’s denial, if not in its tragic quality. That the rusticus is rather the hero of a divine comedy reflects the ending of the gospel story, in which defeat is turned into triumph, death into life. Margit Kamptner points to a fundamental difference between the Vergilian Hercules and Cacus narrative and Paulinus’ tale, in the fact that in the former the victim of the theft and the restorer of the cattle are one and the same, Hercules, whereas in Paulinus they are two persons. But this may be a pointed difference, if one sees in this intertextual sharing yet another token of the bond between the sublime saint and the lowly rusticus, each of whom plays a Herculean role. Kamptner also points out that in Paulinus the criminals are not punished. Here too we might see Kontrastimitation, a Christian forgiveness to set against the angry vengefulness of the pagan Hercules. Rather unexpectedly the ‘contract’ made by the rusticus with Felix is not, for example, of offerings at the shrine in return for the recovery of the oxen, but the restoration to himself of the utilitas of his possessions in return for allowing Felix to exercise his clementia in not punishing the culprits (299–307, 303–5: indemnis stet mea per te | utilitas iuxtaque tuas clementia partes | uindicet, ‘Let my interest remain unchanged through your help, and likewise mercy can claim your share, so that your judgement can balance the scales equally’). Paulinus will have known that clementia is an imperial virtue; his Felix is in this respect more imperial than the Vergilian Hercules, a type for Augustus in Aeneid 8.

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Cowherds and Saints The Poet and the Rusticus In this section I turn from the relationship between the rusticus and the saint to the features that serve to forge a bond between the rusticus and the poet Paulinus. In his article on the Moretum William Fitzgerald develops a reading of Simulus’ making of the moretum as an allegory for the making of the poem; the processes of manual labour materialize the process of writing itself.26 If Paulinus’ rusticus (p.258) converges at points with his sublime patronus St Felix, he has even more in common with the sophisticated poet of Carmen 18, who offers his poem and himself as a humble ‘sacrifice’ to the saint on his natalis dies. Paulinus introduces himself as the humble servant in the first two lines of the poem, 1–2 hunc celebrare quotannis | eloquio famulante diem, ‘celebrate this day every year by putting my eloquence to your service’, and the rusticus will use famulus of himself in relation to Felix at 307.27 In a modesty-topos worked through a lengthy alii/ego priamel28 at 29–61 Paulinus contrasts the costly gifts of others with his own poverty-stricken gift of poetry, 46 ego munere linguae, | nudus opum, famulor de me mea debita soluens, ‘I, stripped of wealth, pay my debt from my own resources, and offer service with the gift of my tongue’, and using the language of self-sacrificial offering, 48 meque ipsum pro me, uilis licet hostia, pendo, ‘Though I am a worthless victim, I bestow my own person on my own behalf.’29 Paulinus reworks the classical topos of the poor poet30 with reference to the biblical story of the widow and her two mites (Luke 21:1–4; Mark 12:41–4), received with joy and praise by Christ, who, looking into the heart of the giver, not at the size of the gift, awarded the widow the palm, symbol of both pagan triumphator (to whom both Felix and the rusticus will later be compared) and Christian martyr (Felix is awarded the purple of the martyr on his reception in heaven, although he is not strictly speaking a martyr, but a ‘confessor’, 146–51, quasi martyris ostrum | qui confessor obit).31 The widow is characterized as 61 munere pauper anus, sed prodiga corde (p.259) fideli (‘That old woman’s gift showed poverty, but her faithful heart generosity’), as the faith of the rusticus will also be emphasized; but the immediate application of the story of the widow is to the poet’s poor offering, 65–7 despicienda quidem, tamen et miranda profabor, | despicienda meo ingenio, miranda beati | Felicis merito, ‘My tale will be worthy both of contempt and of wonder—of contempt for my intelligence, but of wonder because of the merits of blessed Felix.’ Paulinus returns to the example of the widow in the formal introduction to the story of the rusticus at 211–13 pandite corda, precor, breuis est iniuria uobis, | dum paucis magnum exiguisque opus eloquor orsis | et memores uiduae primo sermone relatae, ‘Show generous hearts, I beg you. The harm I inflict on you is slight in my recounting a great deed in a few inconsiderable verses. Remember the widow whom I mentioned in the first part of my discourse’; 216–18 me quoque ferte leui dicentem magna relatu. | et mea namque illis sunt aemula uerba minutis, | quis pretium pietas et uilibus aurea fecit, ‘So too you must bear with me, for my theme is great though the telling is mean. Indeed, my words vie Page 10 of 18

 

Cowherds and Saints with the widow’s mites, which though cheap became valuable through her golden devotion.’ At the end of the story the rusticus pays his debt to Felix with fulsome expressions of gratitude and love, which are willingly accepted by the saint. The language echoes both that used of the widow and her mites, and that applied by Paulinus to his own poor offerings of poetry:                                     modo debita sancto uota refert, non aere graui nec munere surdo, munere sed uiuo linguae mentisque profusus, uoce pia largum testatur pauper amorem debitor et Christo satis isto pignore soluit, immaculata suae cui sufficit hostia laudis. He fulfilled the vow he owed to the saint, not with oppressive coin or insensible gift, but with the spontaneous, living present of tongue and mind. With filial words the poor man bore witness to his abundant love, and as Christ’s debtor made sufficient payment with this pledge, for Christ was satisfied with the spotless sacrifice of his praise.32 (p.260)

Shared Poverty The linguistic poverty paraded by Paulinus figuratively serves to link him to the poor rusticus, but the sympathy is also forged through the material poverty (albeit relative) which the senatorial Paulinus famously imposed on himself through his renunciation of the splendor of wealth. Paulinus and his wife moved from Aquitaine first to Spain, and then to the sanctuary of St Felix at Nola, where they lived in cramped cells in the monastery in close contact with the poor in the hostel-portico below.33 Tugurium, the word used for the rusticus’s humble hut at line 334, is applied by Paulinus to his own accommodation in the monastery at Cimitile (Ep. 29.13, describing the reception at Cimitile of the wealthy Melania and her entourage).34 At Carmen 21.474–87 Paulinus speaks of his and his friends’ renunciation of wealth and palaces in order to share the house of St Felix, living in narrow cells next to the martyr’s shrine, as a part of the imitatio Christi, 485– 7 Christus enim iuxta est modicis, auertitur altis, | pauperis et tuguri magis arta tegilla frequentat | quam praecelsa superbarum fastigia rerum, ‘For Christ attends on modest dwellings and turns away from lofty ones. He prefers to visit the tiny roof of an impoverished hut rather than the high pinnacles of proud estates.’ The sacredness of the lowly dwelling is conveyed in the oxymoron in the account of the rusticus’s return to his hut at Carm. 18.334 ingrediens tuguri penetralia: penetralia is normally used of palaces or temples.35 The juxtaposition is humorous, but it also prepares the reader for the wonder of the miracle that will shortly manifest itself in the place.36 In Carmen 21 Paulinus engineers a (p. 261) parallelism between his own career and that of Felix, 21.530 homo Page 11 of 18

 

Cowherds and Saints quondam ex diuite pauper, ‘once rich but subsequently poor’, and who ended up cultivating a rented garden (21.534 conducto…horto), occupying the same humble world of hiring and renting as the rusticus with his two-oxen small business. Commenting on the convergence of Paulinus’ ascetic virtues with those ascribed to Felix, Dennis Trout, in his biographical study of Paulinus, notes that ‘biography slides almost imperceptibly into autobiography’.37 Saint and poet share in their imitation of Christ.38 Felix is in the business of turning other people into likenesses of himself, 21.535–6 propterea similes tibi niteris efficere omnes | paupertate pia, quos suscipis hospite tecto; | dissimilis nec enim tibi posset forma coire, ‘Hence you strive to make all whom you receive under your hospitable roof to be like yourself in holy poverty; for someone unlike in their form of life could not be united with you.’39

Conclusions It is such likenesses that Carmen 18 effects through the connections that are built up over the course of the poem between the saint, the rusticus, the biblical widow and the poet. The widow and the rusticus are examples of a pia paupertas that is their response to a poverty over which they have no control, like Ovid’s Philemon and Baucis, while Felix and Paulinus impose on themselves a paupertas that is an (p.262) expression of their pietas. More generally, the textual interconnectedness of Carmen 18 is an expression of St Paul’s notion of the unity and connectedness of the Christian community, all related through caritas Christi.40 Paulinus aspires to a concordia ordinum that transcends the Ciceronian political ideal of the unity of the classes.41 But there are limits to Paulinus’ social realism, and hence to his textual project of constructing a real community of equals in Christ. For example, the exclusive focus on the rusticus himself, in his relationship with his animals, eases the implicit comparisons with Felix and Paulinus. However at the beginning of the story it is implied that he does have a family, since we are told that the oxen are dearer to him than are his children (225–32), but we hear no more of his family as the story continues. The apparent isolation of the rusticus as a one-man entrepreneur is also unrealistic, if it is true, as ancient historians claim, that such social isolation would be unusual for rural workers in Italy.42 Finally, the continuation to the end of Carmen 18 of a humorous treatment of the rusticus may not alienate the reader’s sympathies, but it surely leaves us with a comfortable feeling of superiority. To return finally to the terms of Auerbach’s discussion of the limits of realism in classical antiquity, the story of Paulinus’s cowherd is certainly realist in its pretensions to narrate the experiences and responses of a humble working man (of its historicity it is hard to judge: it is set in an indefinite past, and Paulinus does not imply that his own audience could have been witnesses to it). It makes a serious point, from a Christian perspective, about the power of Christ and his saints, and, equally, is serious in its claim that even those at the bottom of the social scale are included in God’s love and concern for mankind. At the same time the elements of humour and condescension in Paulinus’ narrative mean that Page 12 of 18

 

Cowherds and Saints it falls short of the full paradoxical inversion of superior and inferior that was one of the revolutionary features of the Christian message. Notes:

(1) Auerbach (1953). (2) At least in terms of ‘literature’ and ‘realist representation’ as conventionally understood (and even this can be challenged, as the below discussion seeks to demonstrate); more broadly conceived, the picture becomes significantly richer, as the efforts to retrace and reconstruct other forms of non-elite speech in Latin literature by Lowe, O’Gorman, and Richlin in this volume show. (3) Zanker (1987: 209). (4) Heinze (1960: 407; trans. E. J. Kenney). (5) Kenney (1984: lvi; summing up Heinze 1960: 412). Claudian, a poet contemporary with Paulinus of Nola but one who writes almost entirely within a classicizing tradition, continues the line of idealizing portraits of simple and contented country folk in carmina minora 20: De sene Veronensi qui Suburbium numquam egressus est (‘On the old man of Verona who never left his home outside the city’), beginning Felix qui propriis aeuum transegit in aruis, ‘Happy the man who has spent his life in his own fields’; 14 metiturque suo rusticus orbe diem, ‘the countryman measures the day within his own world.’ Translations are my own, except for passages of Paulinus of Nola, where I follow Walsh 1975 (with some adaptations), and as and where otherwise indicated. (6) Kenney (1984: lvii). (7) Fitzgerald (1996). The Introduction in Perutelli (1983) is good on models and affiliations in ancient poetry on farming and humble rustic folk. (8) On Carmen 18 there is an excellent commentary by Kamptner (2005); see also Argenio (1970); Witke (1971: ch. 2 ‘Paulinus of Nola: The Poet at Work’); Iannicelli (1993); Eveneopoel (1995). (9) The echo of Hor. Carm. 3.2.1 angustam amice pauperiem pati, ‘endure pinching poverty willingly’, serves to highlight the distance between Horace’s romantic fantasy of early Roman peasant soldiers and the realities of the life of Paulinus’ rusticus. (10) Paulin. Carm. 18.219–24; trans. Walsh, adapted. (11) See Fitzgerald (1996: 408–9) for the implications of Corydon’s self-styling as rusticus at Verg. Ecl. 2.56, and on the pity felt across the gap between sophisticated reader and unsophisticated countryman. rusticus is used again by the narrator Paulinus of his ‘hero’ at 426–7 (fidelis rusticus), and the rusticus Page 13 of 18

 

Cowherds and Saints applies the word to himself at 281–4, aut ubi quando | inueniam tales aut unde parabo repertos, | qui solos habui contentae rusticus illos | paupertatis opes, ‘Where and when will I find the likes of them, or how will I buy such replacements if I find them, when my oxen were the sole wealth of my contented poverty?’, here mouthing the cliché, common in Augustan poetry, of the idyllic image of a contented and self-sufficient poverty (see Fitzgerald 1996: 392). At Carm. 27.547–8 Paulinus uses the noun rusticitas to categorize the class of pilgrims visiting the shrine for whom he has provided the paintings of biblical scenes at Nola, sed turba frequentior hic est | rusticitas non cassa fide neque docta legendi, ‘Now the greater number among the crowds here are countryfolk not without belief but unskilled in reading.’ On the question of audience and readership for Paulinus’ poems there has been debate between those who think of them as sermons for uneducated folk and those who think of them as written for a select audience of educated followers: for bibliography on both sides see Kamptner (2005: 8 n. 8). The degree of allusive and compositional sophistication on which my own readings are predicated is evidence that what one might call the primary intended audience, at least, is one of the educated and sophisticated, not rustici. (12) Cf. Verg. Ecl. 1.68 pauperis et tuguri congestum caespite culmen, ‘and the roof of my poor hut heaped up with turf.’ (13) On Christianity and laughter, see Gilhus (1997: ch. 4 ‘Early Christianity: Laughter between Body and Spirit’); Halliwell (2008: ch. 10 ‘Laughter Denied, Laughter Deferred: The Antigelastic Tendencies of Early Christianity’); Conybeare (2013); on the issue of whether Jesus ever laughed, see Beard (2014: 34). (14) The reading is uncertain; Kamptner (2005) ad loc. supports ludens with reference to Martial 7.8.7 festa coronatus ludet conuicia miles, ‘the garlanded soldier will sport in festal abuse’, in an epigram on the joyful and playful response to the triumphal return of Domitian that has several resonances with our poem, 1–2 Nunc hilares, si quando, mihi, nunc ludite, Musae: | uictor ab Odrysio redditur orbe deus, ‘Now my cheerful Muses sport for me, if ever: the victorious god returns from the land of Thrace’; 5 felix sorte tua!, ‘Happy in your lot’; 9–10 fas audire iocos leuioraque carmina, Caesar, | et tibi, si lusus ipse triumphus amat, ‘it is right for you too, Caesar, to listen to jokes and lighter songs, if it is true that the triumph itself welcomes playfulness.’ (15) Paulin. Carm. 18.313–18. (16) Paulin. Carm. 18.462–4. (17) Cf. Verg. A. 6.687–8 tuaque expectata parenti | uicit iter durum pietas, ‘as I expected, your piety has conquered the hard journey and brought you to your father’; 6.129–31 pauci, quos aequus amauit | Iuppiter aut ardens euexit ad Page 14 of 18

 

Cowherds and Saints aethera uirtus, | dis geniti potuere, ‘a few born of the gods have been able to achieve this, those whom just Jupiter loved or whose burning virtue carried them up to the upper air’ (including Hercules); Matth. 7:13–14 intrate per angustam portam, quia lata porta et spatiosa uia quae ducit ad perditionem, et multi sunt qui intrant per eam. quam angusta porta et arta uia quae ducit ad uitam, et pauci sunt qui inueniunt eam, ‘Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat. How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it!’ (Authorized version). (18) Cf. Verg. A. 6.486–8 (souls of Trojan warriors eager to prolong the presence of Aeneas in the underworld): circumstant animae dextra laeuaque frequentes, | nec uidisse semel satis est; iuuat usque morari | et conferre gradum et ueniendi discere causas, ‘the souls stand round in crowds on the right and the left, and are not satisfied with a single look; they take pleasure in lingering and matching his steps and learning of the reasons for his coming.’ (19) Paulin. Carm. 18.119–29. (20) Paulin. Carm. 18.416–25. (21) Brown (1981). See esp. ch. 4 ‘The Very Special Dead’, ch. 5 ‘Praesentia’, ch. 6 ‘Potentia’. (22) See Kamptner (2005) on 432–40. (23) See Green (1973). (24) Kamptner (2005) on 50–61 notes that the perikope of the story of the widow’s mites avoids the stylistic devices of biblical paraphrase as practised by Paulinus at the beginning of his career as a Christian poet (Carm. 6–9), but that may be because at this point Paulinus wishes only to give a brief summary, rather than a full paraphrase, of the story. The rusticus’s complaint to Felix certainly contains some blunt and low language, but also much classical allusion: with 260 Felix sancte meos semper miserate labores, ‘Saint Felix who has always had pity on my hardships’, cf. Verg. A. 6.56 Phoebe, grauis Troiae semper miserate labores, ‘Apollo, who has always taken pity on the painful toils of Troy’ (also adapted in the first line of Prudentius’ Psychomachia); with 298 redde igitur mihi, redde boues et corripe furem, ‘Therefore, restore to me my oxen. Restore them, and lay hands on the thief’, cf. Hor. Carm. 1.10.9–12 (hymn to Mercury) te, boues olim nisi reddidisses | per dolum amotas, puerum minaci | uoce dum terret, uiduus pharetra | risit Apollo, ‘Apollo, even while he tried to frighten you once upon a time when you were a boy, deprived of his quiver, with threatening words if you didn’t return the cattle that you had removed through trickery, laughed at you.’ The opening lines of the rusticus’s complaint, 254–9,

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Cowherds and Saints interweave classical allusion with floscules from the Psalms: see Kamptner (2005) ad loc. (25) See Kamptner (2005) on 234–53, although she unjustifiably downplays the importance of the Hercules and Cacus model for Carm. 18. Kamptner also points to parallels with Livian and Ovidian versions: with 235 somno grauiore sepultus, ‘buried in unusually heavy slumber’, cf. Liv. 1.7.5 cibo uinoque grauatus, ‘weighed down with food and wine’; with 236 taciti furto praedonis, ‘by the theft of a stealthy robber’, cf. Ov. Fast. 1.549 nulla uidet quaerens taciti uestigia furti, ‘in his search he saw no traces of the silent theft’; 237 rusticus rises in morning: cf. Liv. 1.7.6, Ov. Fast. 1.547–9. rusticus as Hercules triumphans: 449 uictor ago: cf. Verg. A. 8.203 taurosque hac uictor agebat, ‘this is where he led his bulls victoriously.’ (26) Fitzgerald (1996: 411–14, ‘Poet and Laborer’). For a metapoetical reading of the Moretum of a different kind, see Gowers (1993: 46–8). (27) Cf. Carm. 16.10–11 famulae…munera linguae | Felici libare meo, ‘to dedicate to my Felix the gift of my serving tongue’. (28) On which see Bréguet (1962). (29) On the modesty topos, see Curtius (1948: 94ff. ‘Affektierte Bescheidenheit’, ‘Exordialtopik’). On ‘Dichtung als Opfer’, see Thraede (1965: 28–46). The whole passage is possibly modelled on Ambrose ‘Prologus galeatus’, i.e. Prologus in libro regum, AD 393, with its use of the topos ‘each man gives what he can’: see Kamptner (2005: 72–3). (30) Cf. Prop. 2.10.23–4: sic nos nunc, inopes laudis conscendere culmen, | pauperibus sacris uilia tura damus, ‘so now we, unable to ascend the summit of glory, offer cheap incense in a poor man’s rite.’ (31) Paulinus’ closing commentary (58–61) on the story of the widow’s mites, looking forward to the Last Judgement, is indebted to Cyprian De opere et eleemosynis 15 on the story of the widow, multum beata mulier et gloriosa quae etiam ante diem iudicii meruit iudicis uoce laudari, ‘a woman most blessed and glorious, who even before the day of judgement deserved the praise of the judge’s voice’. Cf. the incorporation of Ambrose’s commentary on Psalm 1 in Carm. 7. (32) Paulin. Carm. 18. 442–7. With debita sancto uota refert cf. 47 de me mea debita soluens, ‘paying my debt from my own resources’; with aere graui cf. 41 quis grauis aere sinus releuatur egente replete, ‘whose pockets laden with money are emptied to give the poor their fill’ (not the poet); with hostia laudis cf. 48 meque ipsum pro me, uilis licet hostia, pendo, ‘Though I am a worthless victim, I bestow my own person on my own poor behalf’; with munere…uiuo Page 16 of 18

 

Cowherds and Saints linguae mentisque profusus cf. 46–7 ego munere linguae, | nullus opum, famulor, ‘stripped of wealth, I offer service with the gift of my tongue.’ For the dense interconnections between biblical widow, poet, and rusticus, see Kamptner (2005) on 442–7. (33) See recently Brown (2012: ch. 13). See also Trout (1999: 121–32); Mratschek (2002: 550–2). (34) Tugurium is found in Paulinus also at Carm. 20.344 (of a humble cottage in another animal miracle); 26.406 (a cottage to which Felix diverts a fire threatening the monastery, mentioned also at 28.67 where the fire is regarded as a providential way of getting rid of an unsightly construction next to the basilica, whose occupants thoughtlessly refused to move: does the mask slip here?). (35) See Kamptner (2005) ad loc. (36) Does praesepia…nuda boum, ‘the manger bare of the oxen’, at 335–6 put us in mind of another manger that witnessed the miracle of the Virgin birth (Luke 2:7)? (37) Trout (1999: 168). (38) 21.528–30 illam…formam | quam tu sub domini perfectus imagine Christi | gessisti in terris, homo quondam ex diuite pauper, ‘that form of life which you lived on earth after the pattern of Christ the Lord, once rich but subsequently poor’. See Skeb (1997). (39) This passage continues with another paraphrase of Matth. 7:13 on the broad and narrow paths, and on the need to embrace paupertas (546–50) propterea famulum sectatoremque beati | martyris adstringi decet exutumque molestis | compedibus tenuem de paupertate salubri | atque leuem fieri, ut portam penetrare per artam | possit et excelsum domini conscendere montem, ‘Therefore it befits the servant and follower of the blessed martyr to confine himself, to strip himself of his burdensome chains, and to become spare and light through healthy poverty, so that he can pass through the narrow gate and climb the lofty mountain of the Lord,’ taking us back to the beginning of Carm. 18, 6–7 quod per iter durum, qua fert uia peruia paucis, | alta per arta petens superas penetrauit ad arces, ‘for he sought the heights through the narrows and along the hard path where few can make their way, and so he reached the citadel of heaven’ (see above, p. 251). (40) See Conybeare (2000: ch. 3 ‘Amicitia and caritas Christi: Friendship and the Love of Christ’).

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Cowherds and Saints (41) Cf. Carm. 21.795–7 (addressing the community of Abella) nunc tuus iste labor, quo te Felicis adegit | spiritus, ut tota tibi plebe uel ordine concors | aggredereris opus magno sudore parandum, ‘Now you have a task urged on you by Felix’s inspiration, and common folk and upper class alike must harmoniously attack and perform it with great sweat’ (the work of bringing water to Nola). (42) See Freu (2007: 384).

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References

Complex Inferiorities: The Poetics of the Weaker Voice in Latin Literature Sebastian Matzner and Stephen Harrison

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198814061 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198814061.001.0001

(p.263) References Sebastian Matzner, Stephen Harrison

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References Young, R. J. C. (2013) ‘The Postcolonial Comparative’, Publications of the Modern Language Association 128.3, 683–9. Zanker, G. (1987) Realism in Alexandrian Poetry: A Literature and Its Audience. London: Croom Helm. Ziolkowski, J. M. and M. C. J. Putnam (eds) (2008) The Virgilian Tradition: The First Fifteen Hundred Years. London; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Žižek, S. (2009) The Sublime Object of Ideology, 2nd edn. New York, NY; London: Verso.

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General Index

Complex Inferiorities: The Poetics of the Weaker Voice in Latin Literature Sebastian Matzner and Stephen Harrison

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198814061 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198814061.001.0001

(p.289) General Index This index includes key words, topics, concepts, critical terms, characters (historical and literary), and modern writers and critics. It also references ancient writers and texts where these are mentioned and/or discussed discursively in the volume; for a list of specific individual text passages from Greek and Latin authors as well as from the Old and New Testament discussed in this volume, please see the Index Locorum. Page numbers followed by ‘n.’ indicate discussion in footnotes. abjection, abject 11, 51, 58, 62–3, 67, 89 n. 2, 90–1, 115 absence, absentee, absent absent presence, present absence 90, 248, 251–5 of author 92, 100, 106 of beauty 200 see also beauty, beautiful; decline: of beauty; judgement: of aesthetic value of conflict 26–8, 42–3, 52, 202 see also war of friends 26 of name 92, 102 see also anonymity, anonymous; name, nameless, naming of patrons 84 see also patron, patronage, patronus of a singular, unified voice 129 see also clamor (as noise of a crowd); noise Accius 43 Achilles (in Homer) 178, 194 Achilles Tatius 194 Acis (in Ovid) 197 Acontius (in Callimachus) 195–6 actor see performer Aebutius (in Livy) 208–9 Aeneas 32, 234 n. 29, 235 in Fulgentius on Vergil 236–9, 241 in Juvenal 105 in Vergil 213–14, 216, 218–19, 252 n. 18, 256 Page 1 of 26

 

General Index Aeschylus 42–3 Aesop, Aesopic 93, 95–101 Africa, African 53–4, 58–60, 63–70, 227 Agamemnon (in Homer) 192, 194 age, ageing 4 n. 2, 8, 78, 185, 191, 204, 206 nn. 5–6, 231–2 in Anacreon 192, 203 in Aristophanes 192 in Callimachus 246 in Cicero 207–8 in Horace 39, 107, 109–14, 119–23, 125, 181–2, 191, 200–2 in Ovid 246–7 in Paulinus of Nola 258–9 in Phaedrus 95 in Plautus 58, 64–7 in Plutarch 189–9 in Sappho 203 in Seneca (the Younger) 197–9 in Sophocles 193, 197 in Tacitus 211–13 of texts (within literary histories) 22–3, 38–45, 96–7 see also decline: of beauty; decline: of Latin literature; senex (old man); youth; youthfulness Agido (in Archilochus) 192 Agorastocles (in Plautus) 51–2, 64–6, 68, 70 Agrippina (the Younger) 205, 210–11, 213 n. 34, 220–3 Albinovanus Pedo 85 Albrecht, Monika 37 n. 32, 47 Alcaeus 172, 177, 202–3 Alcman 172 Alcyone (in Ovid) 253–4 Alexander the Great 31 Alexis author of Καρχηδόνιος 52 n. 8 in Vergil 171 allegoresis, allegorical interpretation, allegory 10, 225–43, 257 Amata (in Vergil) 213, 216, 218 Ambrose, St 225 n. 2, 258 nn. 29, 31 Ampelisca (in Plautus) 68–9, 71 Anacreon 172, 177, 192, 203 (p.290) Anchises in Fulgentius on Vergil 239, 241 in Vergil 24, 25, 27 announcer (praeco) 9, 77, 149–67 anonymity, anonymous v, 63 n. 24, 87, 89–106, 177, 182 see also name, nameless, naming Anterastilis (in Plautus) 67–8 Antias 50 n. 4 Antony, Mark 188–9, 216 n. 43, 256 Aphrodisia (festival) 52 Aphrodite 194 see also Aphrodisia, Venus Page 2 of 26

 

General Index Apollo 255–6 n. 24 see also temple: of Apollo Arab, Arabian 56 Arabic literature 45–6 archaic, archaism 15, 38–9, 43 n. 45, 111, 136 n. 22, 144 n. 54, 147, 166, 177, 183, 197 Archilochus 171, 192 Ariosto Orlando Furioso 188 n. 5 Aristobulus 166 n. 74 Aristophanes, Aristophanic 54, 62, 185–6 n. 2 Ecclesiazusae 59 n. 18 Aristotle, Aristotelian 112, 115, 119, 120 n. 45, 190, 204, 234 Arria (in Pliny) 205 Asconius (on Cicero, Pro Cornelio) 50 n. 4, 152 n. 13 askesis (Harold Bloom) 14 Astaphium (in Plautus) 65 asymmetry, asymmetrical 4 n. 4, 8, 11, 18 n. 15, 120–4, 191–5, 203–4, 240 n. 46 see also centre, central; hierarchy, hierarchical; periphery, peripheral auction, auctioneer 77, 150, 152–3, 155, 159 n. 40, 162–3, 166 Auerbach, Erich 245–6, 257, 262 Augustine, St 229 on allegorical interpretation 226 nn. 4, 6 on reading the Dido episode (Verg. A. 4) 71, 226 Augustus 85, 87, 91, 140 n. 40, 158–60, 180, 182, 210, 234 n. 29, 235, 256, 258 Horace’s Letter to Augustus 7, 38–45 in love elegy 28 n. 37 in Martial 25, 87 n. 61 in Ovid 160 in Tacitus 27 Aurunculeia (in Catullus) 189–90 Austin, John L. 108 author, authorial, authorship 3, 6–8, 14–15, 21–2, 37 n. 33, 38–9, 46, 50, 71 n. 33, 79– 80, 84–6, 89–106, 111, 118–19, 121, 124, 145, 153, 156, 157 n. 35, 163, 167, 203–4, 225–6, 229–30, 232–4, 239, 242 authorial self see self authorial self-censoring see censorship, (self-)censoring, (self-)censuring authorial self-erasure see self: -effacement, -erasure authorial self-fashioning see self: -fashioning see also absence, absentee, absent: of author authority 10, 24, 35, 96–8, 107, 110, 120, 141 n. 42, 144–5, 147, 151, 208–12, 227, 229 n. 12, 231, 237, 241 Bacchanalia 208–9 Bacchus, Bacchic 172, 175 n. 28, 215–18 see also Bacchanalia; Dionysus, Dionysian Bacchylides 172 Ball, Lucille (in I Love Lucy) 56 Ballio (in Plautus) 56 n. 16, 63–4, 67 barbarian see empire; ethnicity; imperialism, imperialist, imperial; periphery, peripheral; post-colonialism, post-colonial; province, provincial, provincialism barber, barber-shop 153 barrister 77–8, 86 n. 60 see also lawyer Page 3 of 26

 

General Index Barrus (in Horace) 164 n. 68 Barthes, Roland 90 n. 3, 106 n. 56 Bassnett, Susan 47 Bassus (in Propertius) 188 beating (of slaves) see flogging (of slaves) beauty, beautiful 9–10, 70, 116, 164, 166, 185–204 ideals of 57, 59, 170, 174–5, 182 in females 21, 56–8, 61, 67–70, 118 n. 38, 164, 170, 181, 186, 188–90, 192–203 (p.291) in males 155, 170, 173–7, 179–82, 190–1, 194–5, 201–3, 212 see also body, bodily; Callimachus, Callimachean, Callimacheanism; complexion; decline: of beauty; hair; judgement: of aesthetic value; makeup; skin; ugliness, ugly belatedness see time: belatedness Benjamin, Walter 71 Berman, Russell A. 47 Bernabò Brea, Luigi 59 n. 18 Bernardus Silvestris (sc. Bernard of Chartres) 231 n. 22, 243 Bhabha, Homi K. 6, 32 Bible see Scripture bisexuality 57, 165, 170–5, 178 blackface 8, 54–5, 57–70 blackmail 208, 212 n. 23 blanditiae (sweet-talk) 155–7, 160 see also flattery Bloom, Harold 14, 22 see also askesis (Harold Bloom); kenosis (Harold Bloom) body, bodily 22, 57–8, 59 n. 19, 107–9, 116–18, 132–3, 234–5, 243, 252–3 and identity 8, 97–8, 100, 113 and speech 9, 90–1, 130, 137–46 dead 117, 153 n. 19, 254–5 female 18 n. 16, 150, 171, 176, 186–204 commodification of the 164–6 male 8, 170–6, 186–204 parts 133–5, 144–5 arm 165, 174–5 belly 133–5, 147 ear 55, 64, 65 n. 28, 80 n. 30, 111, 118 n. 38, 146, 161, 251 eye 58, 61 n. 23, 66–7, 69, 111 n. 16, 117, 165–6, 172, 193, 196, 236 hand 60 n. 22, 252–3 head 55, 112, 116–18, 121, 125, 134, 165, 216–17, 241 neck 60 n. 22, 117–18, 125, 165–6, 174–5 shoulder 175–6 see also hair; skin politic 124–6, 131, 133–6, 146 primordial (in rebellion) 133–4 see also beauty, beautiful; costume, comic Boer, Wim Den 228–9 borderline discourses see glossolalia; lalangue Bourdieu, Pierre 6, 34, 108 see also capital: academic (Pierre Bourdieu) Breaugh, Martin 134 Brink, Charles O. 120 n. 45, 122 Brown, Peter 255 Brygos Painter 202 burial see funeral, funerary Page 4 of 26

 

General Index Butler, Judith 108, 112 n. 18, 113 n. 22, 115 n. 30, 122 n. 51 Cacus (in Vergil and Fulgentius on Vergil) 238, 256–7 Caelius Rufus, M. (in Cicero) 207–9, 212 n. 27 Caieta (in Fulgentius on Vergil) 240 Calchas (in Euripides) 194 Callimachus, Callimachean, Callimacheanism 13–14, 21, 41, 43 n. 44, 121 n. 47, 171, 195, 197, 246–7 Calliope (in Propertius) 159 Callistratus (in Martial) 73–6, 78, 83–8 Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, L. (in Cicero) 152 Calpurnius Piso, Cn. (in Horace) 119 Calpurnius Piso, L. (in Horace) 109 see also Pisones (in Horace) Calypso (in Homer) 189, 192 Candaules (in Herodotus) 193–4 Canius Rufus 100–1 Canobbio, Alberto 73 n. 2, 74, 76 n. 9, 79 n. 24, 85 nn. 52–5, 86 n. 58, 87 n. 61 canon, canonical, canonicity 2, 10, 34, 38–48, 85, 93, 172, 227–8 see also tradition: literary capital academic (Pierre Bourdieu) 6, 34 city 79, 167 desirability as 67, 164 n. 63, 185–204 see also economy, economic; money; centre, central; urban, urbane, urbanity, urbanitas career see profession Carthage, Carthaginian 31, 51–4, 56, 63–72, 236 Mercenary War 71 (p.292) Punic Wars 40, 42–3, 49, 51–4 see also Phoenicia, Phoenician Case, Charlie 66 Cassiopeia (in Aratus) 194 Cato (the Elder) 33–4, 53, 72 n. 34, 144–5 Cato (the Younger) 27 cattle 166, 192, 254, 256–7 see also oxen Catullus 14, 16–17, 19–21, 82, 85, 92, 155, 158, 167, 171, 186, 189–90, 214 Celsus (in Origen) 228 censorship, (self-)censoring, (self-)censuring 108, 109 n. 7, 110 n. 11 censor (magistrate) 109 n. 7 in Horace 108, 111–15, 117, 120, 122, 124, 127 in Juvenal 104 uncensored 25 see also self: -censoring centre, central 3–4, 8, 11, 30 n. 3, 31–48, 53–4 see also capital: city; empire; imperialism, imperialist, imperial; urban, urbane, urbanity, urbanitas Ceyx (in Ovid) 253–4 Chakrabarty, Dipesh 36–8, 41 n. 41 Champlin, Edward J. 91 n. 6 Charon (in Fulgentius on Vergil) 237 child, childhood, child-like 43–4, 51, 53, 65, 68, 121, 137, 185 n. 2, 188, 190–1 n. 8, 199, 206 n. 5, 213 n. 33, 219, 226, 228–30, 231–2, 236, 262 Chione (in Martial) 200 Chloe (in Horace) 203 Page 5 of 26

 

General Index chora (Julia Kristeva) 137–8, 140, 145–6 Christ 225–6, 231 n. 19, 235, 242, 256, 258–62 Christian, Christianity 10–11, 14, 16, 18, 45–6 vis-à-vis pagan literature 2, 225–43, 245–62 see also allegoresis, allegorical interpretation, allegory; gospel; Old Testament; Scripture chronology see time: chronology Chryseis (in Homer) 192 Cicero 17–18, 25–6, 33–4, 43 n. 45, 50 n. 4, 81, 144–6, 152, 153 n. 20, 154, 161, 172, 190, 205–9, 226, 262 see also Asconius (on Cicero, Pro Cornelio) Cinara (in Horace) 179–80, 201 Citroni, Mario 77 n. 17, 80–1 n. 32, 82 n. 39, 84 n. 50, 117 n. 33 clamor (as noise of a crowd) 9, 129–48, 150, 152 Clarke, J. R. 2, 71, 72 n. 34 class (social status) 1–12, 58, 65, 73–9, 107, 110, 112, 121, 123–7, 129–36, 154 nn. 23– 5, 161, 165–6, 210–12, 222, 246, 262 class privilege 5, 12–13, 92, 110, 115, 118, 167, 208, 211 n. 22 elite 2, 5, 8–9, 17, 26–7, 82–3, 89, 91–2, 105–6, 113, 125, 129, 141 n. 42, 144–5, 149, 151–4 lower-class (inferior social status) 9, 50, 125–6, 150–1, 163, 165–7, 208–9, 245–6, 262 upper-class (superior social status) 2, 5, 34, 51, 53, 123, 125–6, 161–2, 205, 222, 225, 250–1 working-class 55, 66 n. 29, 247–8 see also economy, economic; equites (equestrian order, knights); freed slave (freedman, freedwoman); intersectionality; plebs, plebeian; senator, senatorial; slave, slavery, enslavement Claudian Claudianus 247 n. 5 Claudius (emperor) 213–15, 217 n. 46, 218–21 Claudius Caecus, Appius 207, 208 n. 13 Cleopatra (in Plutarch) 189 Cliff, Michelle 50, 53 Clodia (in Cicero) 206–9, 214 Cluuienus (in Juvenal) 103 Cluvius (in Tacitus) 220–1 Clytemnestra  in Aeschylus 222 n. 69 in Antipho 213 n. 34 in Homer 192 in Juvenal 213 n. 34 Coelius (in Lucilius) 161 n. 52 colonialism, colonial, colony 6, 29–32, 36, 38, 40, 45–7, 50, 53–4 see also centre, central; empire; imperialism, imperialist, (p.293) imperial; nation, nationalism, national; periphery, peripheral; post-colonialism, post-colonial Columella 165–6 comedy, comedic, comic ii, 8, 15, 32, 49–72, 97–8, 159 n. 40, 161–2, 164 n. 64, 192, 197, 203–5, 206 n. 6, 208, 211, 213, 245–6, 250–2, 254, 257 see also costume, comic; humour, humorous; joke; laughter; Menander; Menippean satire; New Comedy; Old Comedy; palliata; Plautus; satire; satyr play comparatism 45–7 comparison of beauty see beauty, beautiful; judgement: of aesthetic value Page 6 of 26

 

General Index of genres see genre: hierarchy of of Greeks and Romans see philhellenism, philhellenic of literary value see judgement: of aesthetic value of social standing see class (social status) of wealth see economy, economic; money see also asymmetry, asymmetrical; decline; hierarchy, hierarchical; judgement complexion 170, 175, 181–2 see also beauty, beautiful; makeup; skin Connolly, Joy 132 n. 10, 136 n. 23, 144–5, 146 n. 59 Corbier, Mireille 210 Corinna (in Ovid) 157–8, 160 Cornelia (in Plutarch) 205 Cornelius Surus 154 n. 23 Corydon (in Vergil) 171, 249 n. 11 cosmetics see makeup costume, comic 55–9, 60 n. 22 see also mask cow see cattle; oxen cowherd 248–62 see also cattle; rusticus; oxen Crates of Mallos 40, 227 Crenshaw, Kimberlé 4 see also intersectionality critique feminist see feminism, feminist critique Critique of Judgement see Kant, Immanuel post-colonial see post-colonialism, post-colonial self- see self: -critique cross-dressing see drag Culler, Jonathan 47 Cyclops see Polyphemus Cydippe  in Callimachus 195 in Ovid 19 n. 18, 195–6 Cynthia (in Propertius) 158, 188 Cyprian 258 n. 31 Damasippus (in Horace) 171 Damon, Philip 232 n. 25, 236 n. 33 Dante Alighieri 226 n. 3, 243 De Certeau, Michel 139–40, 143, 147 n. 61 De Melo, Wolfgang 66 decline cultural 28 of beauty 181–2, 191, 193, 195 n. 14, 197, 201, 204 see also age, ageing; beauty, beautiful of empire 222, see also decline: of the Julio-Claudian dynasty of the Julio-Claudian dynasty 206, 210–23 of Latin literature 22–4, 28 of oratory 27 Deianeira 200 in Seneca 197–9 in Sophocles 193, 197 deixis, deictic  Page 7 of 26

 

General Index ‘deictic receptions’ (in Roman comedy) 56–7, 65, 68 deictic gestures (as interpretative impasse) 136–7, 139 Delia (in Tibullus) 171 demagoguery 144 Demetrius of Phalerum (in Phaedrus) 97–9 Demetrius Poliorcetes (in Phaedrus) 97–9 Derrida, Jacques 5–6, 90 n. 3, 110 n. 11 Dido in Fulgentius on Vergil 237 in Vergil 70, 213–14, 218–19, 226 Dio Cassius 135 n. 18, 139 n. 38, 213 n. 34 (p.294) Dionysius of Halicarnassus 134–6 Dionysus, Dionysian 195, 216 n. 43, 217 n. 45 see also Bacchus, Bacchic discourses, borderline see glossolalia; lalangue dissonance (aural effect) 131–2, 144 distance, distancing  in age 119–20 in anthropology 40–1 in literary criticism and literary traditions 79 n. 26, 89–90, 232 n. 25, 239, 247–8 see also age, ageing; periphery, peripheral; time Domitian (emperor) 74 nn. 4, 6, 76, 85–7, 103, 195, 250 n. 14 Domitius Marsus 85 domus (as metonym for family, ruling dynasty, empire) 198, 205–6, 208, 210–31 Donatus 231, 235 double, doubling 58, 64, 65, 83, 93 n. 11, 99, 101–2, 114, 117, 119, 127, 239 double chronology 40–6 double-drag 8, 49–72 doublespeak 27–8, 106 drag 8, 49–72, 178 echo (aural effect) 138–40, 144, 147 economy, economic 8, 11, 73–9, 83–8, 140, 161 of language exchange 138 of reciprocal exchange 17–19 see also capital; class (social status); money; patron, patronage, patronus Egypt, Egyptian 61, 67–8, 208, 226 elision (aural effect) 131, 141–4 empire 141, 210, 222 Alexander the Great’s 31 Roman 25, 33, 123, 152–3, 167, 194–5, 205–6, 210, 222, 225 see also centre, central; colonialism, colonial, colony; decline: of empire; decline: of the JulioClaudian dynasty; imperialism, imperialist, imperial; nation, nationalism, national; periphery, peripheral; post-colonialism, post-colonial Ennius 15, 33–4, 43, 50 n. 5 epic 10–11, 15, 22, 24–5, 32–4, 40, 43 n. 44, 81, 84, 149, 160, 211, 235, 247–8, 251, 255–6 see also Ennius; Homer; Lucan; Lucretius, Lucretian; Naevius; Ovid, Ovidian; Vergil, Vergilian epideictic see rhetoric: epideitic epigram 8, 22, 24–5, 73–88, 155, 170–1, 200, 221–2, 250 n. 14 see also Catullus; Martial epitaph Page 8 of 26

 

General Index of Aulus Granius 151–2 of Naevius 34 n. 18 equites (equestrian order, knights) 73–6, 84, 118 n. 38, 125–6, 161, 208 n. 13, 212 n. 23 erasure 8, 101 n. 39, 102, 107, 109, 110 n. 11, 116, 218 see also censorship, (self-)censoring, (self-)censuring; self: -effacement, -erasure ethnicity 3–4, 8, 11, 45–6, 53–72, 79–83 and blackface 8, 54–5, 57–70 and whiteface 55, 57, 59 see also Africa, African; Arab, Arabian; Egypt, Egyptian; Gaul; Greece, Greek; Illyricum, Illyrian; intersectionality; Persia, Persian; romanitas (Romanness); Spain, Spanish; Syria, Syrian; Persia, Persian; Phoenicia, Phoenician Euripides 10, 194 n. 12, 216 n. 41–2, 217 eurocentrism, eurocentric 45, 48 Europe, European 30, 36–8, 40, 41 n. 41, 45–7 Eusebius of Caesarea 229 n. 14 Evander in Fulgentius on Vergil 238 in Vergil 256 exile Claude Pansiéri’s 71–2 Demetrius of Phalerum’s 99 Ovid’s 23, 94, 158 n. 39, 159–60 Fabian, Johannes 40–1 Fabius Maximus, Paullus 180 Fabius Pictor 31–2 Fabius Rusticus (in Tacitus) 221 fable 90–102, 133–4, 213 n. 33, 239 see also Aesop, Aesopic; Phaedrus (p.295) fame 66, 73–5, 77 n. 17, 82, 87–9, 92–3, 96, 98, 101, 135, 156–8, 199–200 see also literary immortality Fanon, Frantz 45 Faustinus 81 Felix, St 248–62 feminism, feminist critique 3, 205–23 see also body, bodily: female: commodification of the; misogyny Fischler, Susan 210 fish (imagery) see image, imagery: fish fisherman 69, 71 Flamininus (consul) 53 flattery 85, 114, 131, 156 n. 31, 162–3 Flaubert, Gustave 71–2 flogging (of slaves) 61, 63–4, 67–8, 70 flower (imagery) see image, imagery: plant focalization, focalizer 9, 173–5, 179, 182, 195 forgiveness (Christian) 257 Fortunata (in Tacitus) 245 Foucault, Michel 108, 183 n. 49 Fraenkel, Eduard 56, 163 n. 62, 169 freedman see freed slave

Page 9 of 26

 

General Index freed slaves 49–52, 55, 73–9, 83, 87–8, 99, 121, 151, 163, 209, 212 n. 23, 219 n. 61, 221, 245–6 freedwoman see freed slave Fulgentius 10, 225–43 funeral, funerary 84 n. 50, 150–1, 153 n. 19, 154 n. 24, 159 n. 40, 237, 240, 251–3 Galatea in Ovid 196–7 in Theocritus 193 Gallia see Gaul Gallonius in Horace 162 in Lucilius 161 n. 52 Ganymede 77 n. 18, 176 garden 213 n. 34, 261 Gaul 79–80, 87 Gelasius I (pope) 242 Gellius, Aulus 34, 49, 170 gender see beauty, beautiful: ideals of; beauty, beautiful in females; beauty, beautiful: in males; body, bodily: and identity; body, bodily: female; body, bodily: male; feminism, feminist critique; hierarchy, hierarchical: of gender; intersectionality; misogyny see also sex, sexuality, sexual genre 195–6 hierarchy of 2, 7–8, 14, 22, 24–5, 40, 74 n. 6, 75, 83–8, 91–2, 105, 160, 166–7 see also comedy, comedic, comic; epic; epigram; fable; historiography, historiographical; love elegy, Latin; oratory; recusatio; satire, satirical geography see centre, central; empire; ethnicity; periphery, peripheral Germanicus 136 n. 26, 160 Giddenis (in Plautus) 51, 66–8 Girard, René 156–7 Glaucus 20 glossolalia 137–40, 144, 147 n. 61 Glycera (in Horace) 175 God (Christian) 16–17, 188 n. 5, 189, 227–8, 236–7, 239, 262 see also Christ; Christian, Christianity; gospel gods (pagan) 118 n. 38, 142, 160 n. 45, 200, 225–6 n. 3, 227–8, 246–7 see also Aphrodite; Apollo; Bacchus, Bacchic; Dionysus, Dionysian; Glaucus; Janus; temple; Venus Goldberg, Sander M. 34–6, 40 Golden Bough 231, 237 gospel 10–11, 228, 229 n. 14, 239, 242, 245–6, 251, 256–7 see also Scripture Gowers, Emily 15, 56, 61 n. 23, 119 n. 40, 162, 165, 257 n. 26 graffito 53 grammar 226, 232 grammarian 32, 40, 77, 80 n. 31, 81, 234, 240 Granius, Aulus 151, 161 Granius, Q. 161 Greece, Greek 2, 7–10, 23–4, 27, 29–48, 54, 56, 58–60, 73–4, 79, 82, 85, 88, 109, 120, 122–3, 153, 159 n. 40, 166, 170–3, 176, 180–3, 187–204, 215, 225 n. 2, 226 n. 5, 227–8, 246–7, 256 see also philhellenism, philhellenic Page 10 of 26

 

General Index (p.296) Gripus (in Plautus) 69–71 Gyges  in Herodotus 193–4 in Horace 178 gymnasium 177 Gymnasium (in Plautus) 63 Habinek, Thomas N. 5 n. 5 Hadju, Péter 110, 126 n. 57 Hagesichora (in Archilochus) 192 hair 56 and age 192, 198, 203 and ethnicity 59–61 and homoeroticism 170, 172, 175, 178–9, 181–2 in Anacreon 192 in Horace 44, 117, 164 n. 68, 170, 172, 175, 178–9, 181–2 in Ovid 157 in Tacitus 215–16 see also costume, comic; mask Hall, Stuart 45–6 Hanno (in Plautus) 51–2, 64–8, 70–1 Hebrus (in Horace) 176–7, 182 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 15–16 Heinze, Richard 247 hellenism, Hellenistic 30 n. 3, 31, 34, 40, 60 n. 22, 169–71, 183, 194–5, 228 see also Callimachus, Callimachean, Callimacheanism; philhellenism, philhellenic Henderson, John 52, 56 n. 15, 65, 71, 72 n. 34, 91 nn. 4–5, 8, 92 n. 9, 93 nn. 11–13, 94 n. 15, 95 n. 20, 98 n. 25, 99 nn. 27–8, 32–3, 100 nn. 34, 36, 101 n. 39, 102 nn. 43, 45, 156 n. 32, 169 n. 3 Heracles 32, 213 n. 33 in Sophocles 193 see also Hercules Heraclitus (grammarian) Homeric Problems 227 herald 158–9 see also praeco (announcer) Hercules 69, 251 n. 17 in Vergil 256–7 in Ovid 159 n. 43 in [Seneca] 197, 199 see also Heracles Hermesianax 203 Hero (in Ovid) 18–19, 21, 196 n. 15 hero, heroism, heroic 2, 32–3, 118 n. 38, 121, 156, 246–7, 251 Herodotus 166 n. 74 heteroeroticism 9, 170–1, 173, 182–3 hexameter see metre: hexameter hierarchy, hierarchical 2–11, 31, 46, 47 n. 54, 134, 142–3 n. 48, 185–204 of ethnicities 54 see also ethnicity of gender 205–23 of genres see genre: hierarchy of of rationality over sensuality 134 of social standing see class (social status) see also asymmetry, asymmetrical; centre, central; periphery, peripheral Page 11 of 26

 

General Index Hinds, Stephen 4 n. 4, 22–3 Hispala, Faecenia (in Livy) 208–10 Hispania see Spain, Spanish historiography, historiographical 9–10, 22, 33, 37–8, 41 n. 41, 129–48, 205–23 see also Dio Cassius; Dionysius of Halicarnassus; Fabius Pictor; Herodotus; Livy; Sallust; Suetonius; Tacitus; Thucydides Holkot, Robert 243 Homer, Homeric 32–4, 38, 40, 99 n. 27, 159 n. 40, 186 n. 4, 227, 230 n. 17, 231, 235, 241, 253 homoeroticism 6, 9, 20–1, 62, 155, 169–83, 221 n. 64 Horace, Horatian 7–9, 14–15, 29–30, 33, 37–46, 74 n. 6, 84, 87, 92–3, 107–27, 139, 150, 160–7, 169–83 horse (imagery) see image, imagery: horse Hose, Martin 31–6 House of Menander ii, 59–60 Hubbard, Margaret E. 169 humbleness, humility 2, 10, 14, 82, 114, 160, 167, 233–4, 237, 246–8, 251, 256, 258, 260–2 see also askesis (Harold Bloom); kenosis (Harald Bloom) humiliation 17, 20–1, 121, 208, 214 see also abjection, abject; mock, mockery humour, humorous 3, 54, 121, 122 n. 52, 155, 163, 202–4, 230 n. 17, 246–8, 260, 262 (p.297) see also comedy, comedic, comic; joke; laughter Hypsipyle (in Ovid) 196 Ibycus 172, 189 identity authorial see author, authorial, authorship ethnic see ethnicity gender see gender Roman see romanitas (Romanness) sexual see bisexuality; heteroeroticism; homoeroticism; sex, sexuality, sexual social see class (social status) see also intersectionality; name, nameless, naming; post-colonialism, post-colonial; self Illyricum, Illyrian 56 image, imagery auctioneer see auction, auctioneer fish 69–70, 116 n. 31, 118 n. 38 fruit see image, imagery: plant flower see image, imagery: plant garden 213 n. 34 horse 42, 87 n. 62, 117, 118 n. 38, 125, 165–6, 192, 253 leech 114–16, 118 n. 38, 121–2, 125, 127 painting 96, 116 plant 123, 178, 190, 192–3, 195, 197–8, 201 pottery 116–17, 122 river see image, imagery: stream sculpture 69, 96–7, 117 seasons 114–15, 123, 197–8, 200–1 slave see slave, slavery, enslavement: figuratively used star 175, 195–6, 200, 203 stream 26–7, 42–3, 78 n. 23, 123 Page 12 of 26

 

General Index sun 56–7, 196 sword(-sharpening) 113, 115 tree see image, imagery: plant urn 234, 240 wheel (of time and fortune) 238 wine 116–17, 177–8, 215–20 see also body, bodily: parts immortality see literary immortality see also fame imperialism, imperialist, imperial 2, 4–5, 11, 23–32, 35–6, 38, 40–1, 45–7, 85, 95, 110, 123–5, 129, 131–2, 140 n. 40, 160, 205–23, 257 see also centre, central; colonialism, colonial, colony; decline: of empire; decline: of the Julio-Claudian dynasty; nation, nationalism, national; periphery, peripheral; post-colonialism, post-colonial; province, provincial, provincialism Inachia (in Horace) 201 n. 24 incest 10, 121–2, 205, 207, 210–11, 216 n. 42, 220–2 infancy, infant, infantile see child, childhood, child-like inferiority  aesthetic see decline: of beauty; judgment: of aesthetic value; ugliness, ugly cultural (of Romans vis-à-vis Greeks) see philhellenism, philhellenic economic see economy, economic; money geographic see colonialism, colonial, colony; periphery, peripheral; province, provincial, provincialism inferiority complex 30, 74–5, 80–1 n. 32, 112, 185 definition of 185 n. 2 of genres see genre: hierarchy of social see class (social status) influence see askesis (Harold Bloom); kenosis (Harold Bloom); philhellenism, philhellenic interruption 136, 145, 234–8 intersectionality 4, 6, 11, 57, 191 intonation 138, 144 n. 54 Iole (in Sophocles) 193, 197–9 Iphigenia (in Euripides) 194 Janus 43 Jason (in Ovid) 196 Jerome 225 n. 2, 226, 229, 242 John, Gospel of 228, 229 n. 14 John of Salisbury 243 joke 32, 50–1, 54–7, 61–5, 67, 114, 117, 125–6, 152, 161, 162 n. 58, 163 n. 60, 166, 215, 250 see also Aristophanes, Aristophanic; comedy, comedic, comic; humour; laughter; Menander; mock, mockery; Plautus, Plautine; satire, satirical (p.298) Jones, Julian W. Jr 226 n. 3, 232 n. 24 Jones, Terry 57, 67–8 Joshel, Sandra R. 210, 212 nn. 23–5, 213 nn. 32, 34, 214 nn. 36–7, 215 n. 39, 217 n. 48, 218 n. 57, 219, 220 n. 62, 221 judgement Critique of Judgement see Kant, Immanuel Final (Christian) 226, 258 n. 31

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General Index of aesthetic value 7, 11, 39, 41, 43, 45–6, 79–84, 109–14, 126, 185–204 see also body, bodily: female: commodification of the; Callimachus, Callimachean, Callimacheanism of the crowd 126, 131–2, 145–6 of Paris 194 see also comparison Julian law see law: Roman: Augustan/Julian Julio-Claudian dynasty 206, 210–11, 214 n. 37, 222 see also Agrippina (the Younger), Augustus, Claudius (emperor), Messalina, Nero Justin Martyr 226 n. 5 Juturna (in Fulgentius on Vergil) 238 Juvenal 8, 35, 65, 76, 79, 90–2, 102–6, 152 n. 13, 212 Juvencus 229 n. 14 Kamptner, Margit 248 n. 8, 249 n. 11, 250 n. 13, 255 n. 22, 255–6 n. 24, 256 n. 25, 257, 258–60 n. 29, 260 n. 35 Kant, Immanuel 15–16 kenosis (Harold Bloom) 14, 22 Kilito, Abdelfattah 45–6 knight see equites Kristeva, Julia 9, 130–1, 137–9, 142–5 see also chora (Julia Kristeva) Lactantius 229, 231 n. 22 Laird, Andrew 109 n. 10, 130 nn. 3–4, 241 Lalage (in Horace) 178 lalangue 137, 143 Lampadio 40 Landino, Cristoforo 243 Latinus (king) (in Vergil) 218 laughter 10–11, 55, 87 n. 62, 108, 115, 120, 124–6, 135, 159 n. 40, 238, 250–1, 255–6 n. 24 see also Aristophanes, Aristophanic; comedy, comedic, comic; humour, humorous; joke; Menander; Plautus, Plautine Lavinia (in Fulgentius on Vergil)216, 238 law 36, 86, 192 Jewish-Christian 227–8, 235 Roman 33, 141, 215 Augustan/Julian 154, 212 n. 23 of the Twelve Tables 39 lawyer 77, 86, 91, 152 n. 13, 207 see also barrister leech (imagery) see image, imagery: leech Leen, Anne 208 nn. 13–14 Leigh, Matthew 53, 72 n. 34, 141 n. 43, 143 n. 49 Lelex (in Ovid) 246 lena, leno (pimp) 51–2, 55–6, 67–8, 71, 155, 157, 160–1, 163 see also prostitute, prostitution Leopardi, Giacomo 199 n. 19 Lepidus (in Tacitus) 221 Lerer, Seth 240, 242 n. 52 Lesbia (in Catullus) 17–18, 171, 186, 207 n. 8, 214 Licinianus 82 Licinius Calvus 152 n. 15 Licinius Macer 143 n. 49 Page 14 of 26

 

General Index Licinus, C. Julius (freedman) 76 n. 15, 87 Ligurinus (in Horace) 169, 179–82, 191 literary criticism (in Rome) 33–6, 40–1, 44, 80, 83–4, 107–27, 227–9, 235 see also distance, distancing: in literary criticism and literary traditions literary culture (in Rome) 21–6, 29–32, 38–41, 44, 49–51, 80–5, 92, 102, 121–2, 124–6, 167, 191–6, 203–4, 215, 245–8 literary history 7, 14–15, 22–3, 27–51, 82, 85, 89–90, 109, 120–2, 183 literary immortality 74 n. 4, 83–8, 93, 233 see also fame literary tradition see distance, distancing: in literary criticism and literary traditions; tradition: literary litura see erasure (p.299) Livius Andronicus 32, 34, 41, 49, 50 n. 5 Odusia 32 Livy 31, 50 n. 4, 62, 82, 130–44, 159 n. 40, 205, 208–9, 217 n. 49 logos and the political 132, 137, 139, 141, 146–8 in Phaedrus and Plato 100–1 spermatikos (Justin Martyr) 226 n. 5 Longinus 15 Lott, Eric 55, 57 n. 17 love elegy, Latin 9, 13–14, 21–2, 28 n. 37, 149–67, 195, 205 see also Catullus; Ovid; Propertius; Tibullus Lowrie, Michèle 18, 109 n. 7, 110 n. 14, 124 Lucan 23, 81–2 Lucian 230 n. 17, 233 n. 27 Lucilius 33, 105, 158, 161–3, 170–1 Lucius Aelius 154 Lucius (in Apuleius) 166 Lucretia (in Livy) 205, 208 n. 14 Lucretius, Lucretian 111, 115, 121 n. 48, 122, 189, 253 ludi (dramatic performances) Megalenses 50 n. 4, 208 n. 12 Romani 50 n. 4 scaenici 32 Lutatius Catulus 170–1 Lyce (in Horace) 181, 201–2 Lycus (in Alcaeus) 172 Lydia (in Horace) 174, 176, 178, 201–3 Macrobius Saturnalia 231–4 McCarthy, Kathleen 21, 55 Maecenas  in Horace 114–15, 125, 161–4, 181 in Martial 84 n. 49 makeup 57, 65, 166, 185 n. 2 Malloch, Simon 212 n. 26, 213 n. 31, 214 n. 36, 217 nn. 46, 50–1, 219 n. 59 Marathus (in Tibullus) 171 margin, marginal, marginalization 1, 4–6, 11, 29–48, 91 as different from suppression and oppression 4 n. 3 Page 15 of 26

 

General Index of literary genres see genre: hierarchy of of Greece by Rome (in political terms) 29–30, 36, 45 of homoerotic voices and readings 169–83 see also asymmetry, asymmetrical; hierarchy, hierarchical; periphery, peripheral; subalternity, subaltern marriage 20, 166, 189–90, 199, 210–11, 213–14, 216–18, 221–2 Marshall, C. W. 50 n. 5, 56, 58–9, 61, 159 n. 40 Martial 8, 14, 22, 24–5, 73–88, 92, 100–1, 152 nn. 12–13, 163 n. 60, 200 martyr, martyrdom 250–1, 255, 258, 260, 261 n. 39 see also Justin Martyr; saints, Christian Marx, Groucho (in Animal Crackers) 65 mask 8, 54–72, 90–1, 102, 204 match, matching, mis-matching 18 n. 16, 25–6, 28, 111, 117–18, 121, 125, 178, 194–5, 200, 235, 252 n. 18 see also comparison Maternus (in Tacitus) 27 Medea (in Ovid) 196 Memmius (in Catullus) 19–21 Menander Καρχηδόνιος 52 in Phaedrus 97–9, 101 Samia ii, 59–60, 60 Menenius Agrippa 133–6, 145 Menippean satire 162 Mercenary War 71 Mercury  in Fulgentius on Vergil 237 in Horace 255–6 n. 24 in Ovid 246 Messalina (in Tacitus) 10, 205, 210–23 Messalla 81, 87, 159 metempsychosis 34, 237–9, 241 metre elegiac metre 160 fourth asclepiad metre 175 hexameter 34 Saturnian metre 42–3 Mezentius in Fulgentius on Vergil 238 in Vergil 253 Millar, Fergus 4 n. 4, 132 Milphio (in Plautus) 51, 64–7 Minucius Felix 225 n. 2 miracle 213 n. 33, 248–51, 256, 260 (p.300) Misenus (in Fulgentius on Vergil) 237 misogyny 164–6, 210 see also feminism, feminist critique; gender Mnester 212 n. 23 mock, mockery 65, 110–11, 114, 121, 135, 152 n. 13, 201, 215, 228, 247 modesty 21–2 n. 24, 91, 93, 118–19, 151, 157, 163, 212–13 n. 30, 228, 231 n. 21, 240, 249, 258, 260 see also humbleness, humility money 18, 56, 69, 83, 117 n. 34, 164 n. 64, 207–9, 259 see also economy, economic Page 16 of 26

 

General Index morality, moralizing, morals, moral 16, 23, 33, 74 n. 6, 79, 109 n. 7, 134, 164 n. 64, 170, 185, 195, 207, 209, 213, 214 n. 37, 217, 222, 225–7, 230, 235–6, 239, 243, 246–7 Morstein-Marx, Robert 132, 144, 147 n. 60 mother, motherhood, motherly 53, 66 n. 29, 67, 94, 179, 205–11, 219–23, 228, 236, 253 Naevius 34 n. 18, 43, 49, 50 n. 5 Naevolus (in Martial) 74 n. 4 name, nameless, naming 8, 17 n. 12, 51, 53, 61, 63, 66–7, 71, 73 n. 2, 79, 81–3, 84 n. 49, 87, 91–106, 142, 150, 154, 158, 175, 177–8, 189, 194, 197, 212, 214, 230, 236, 249 see also anonymity, anonymous Narcissus  in Ovid 196 Tiberius Claudius Narcissus, freedman (in Tacitus) 219 nn. 59, 61, 221 nation, national, nationalism 33, 36, 40 see also colonialism, colonial, colony; empire; ethnicity; imperialism, imperialist, imperial; post-colonialism, post-colonial Nearchus (in Horace) 175–6 Neckham, Alexander 243 Neobule in Archilochus 192 in Horace 176–7 Nero 152, 195 in Martial 100–1 in Suetonius 20, 152 n. 16, 213 nn. 33–4 in Tacitus 210, 213 n. 34, 220–2 New Comedy 54 n. 13, 58 see also comedy, comedic, comic; humour, humorous; joke; laughter; Menander; Plautus; Terence New Testament see gospel Nietzsche, Friedrich 16 Nireus in Homer 176 in Horace 176 noise (opp. speech, opp. utterance) 6, 9, 129–48, 150, 152 see also clamor (as noise of a crowd) nostalgia 26 n. 33, 90 n. 3, 114, 120, 169 novelty 39–45, 83 n. 45, 116 nurse  in Aeschylus 222 n. 69 in Horace 42 in Seneca 197–9 Octavia  Claudia Octavia (in Tacitus) 219 Octavia Minor (in Plutarch) 188–9 Oenone (in Ovid) 196 offence, offend, offensiveness 44, 98, 111, 115 n. 29, 125–6, 136 n. 22, 162, 167, 229 n. 14 Ogilvie, Robert M. 134 n. 13, 136 n. 22, 139 n. 36, 142 n. 45 Old Comedy 54 n. 13, 58, 162 see also Aristophanes, Aristophanic; comedy, comedic, comic; humour, humorous; joke; laughter Old Testament 227–8, 239, 242 Oliensis, Ellen 107–8, 114, 116 n. 32, 118 n. 38, 119 n. 40, 126 n. 57, 161 n. 52, 169 n. 5 Page 17 of 26

 

General Index orality, oral see transcript (oral into written) orator 69, 81, 98, 135, 144–6, 149–50, 152 n. 15, 155, 156 n. 31 oratory 9, 27, 69 n. 31, 129, 153, 167, 205 Orestes  in Aeschylus 222 n. 69 in Dio Cassius 213 n. 34 in Juvenal 213 n. 34 in Suetonius 213 n. 34 Origen 225 n. 2, 226 n. 7, 228 Ovid, Ovidian 2, 18–19, 21, 23, 77, 82, 85, 87, 92–4, 149 n. 2, 156–60, 161 n. 49, 164, 166–7, 189, 195–7, 230, 243, 246–8, 256 n. 25, 261 (p.301) oxen  in Columella 165–6 in the Gospel of Luke 260 n. 36 in Lucretius 253 in Paulinus of Nola 248–51, 253–7, 260 n. 36, 261–2 in Plautus 64 Palaestra (in Plautus) 68, 71 Palinurus  in Fulgentius on Vergil 237, 241 in Plautus 58 palliata 8, 49–72 see also comedy, comedic, comic; humour, humorous; joke; laughter; ludi; Plautus; Terence Panagia, Davide 129, 136, 138, 144–5 Pansiéri, Claude 71–2 parable of the fox in the grain-bin (in Horace) 163 of the primordial body in rebellion (in Dio, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Livy, and Rancière) 133–6 of the widow’s mites (in the gospels of Luke and Mark and Paulinus of Nola) 248, 255 n. 24, 258–9, 261 parasite (scurra) 154–5, 161–4 Pasicompsa (in Plautus) 61 passive aggression 13–15, 22, 27–8, 112 pathos 23, 188–9, 193, 199–201, 204, 253 patriotism, patriotic 74, 79–83, 85 see also empire; ethnicity; nation, national, nationalism; imperialism, imperialist, imperial patron, patronage, patronus 4 n. 4, 11, 77–8, 84, 114, 125, 160–1, 163–4, 167, 206–7, 209, 238–9, 248, 257–8 see also Maecenas Patterson, Orlando 71 Paulinus of Nola 10–11, 225 n. 2, 246–62 Paulus Diaconus 68 n. 30, 69 pederasty 170 Penelope (in Homer) 189 performer (actor, etc) 49–51, 54–8, 64–6, 68, 71–2, 101–2, 119–20, 124–5, 158–9, 212 n. 23, 214, 216–17 periphery, peripheral 3–4, 8, 11, 31–2, 79–83, 88 see also margin, marginal, marginalization; province, provincial, provincialism Persia, Persian 33, 56, 70, 177 Page 18 of 26

 

General Index Persian Wars 42 Peter (in Scripture) 245, 257 Petronius, Petronian 76, 152, 245–6 Phaedrus (fabulist) 8, 71, 89–102, 104–5 Phaedrus (in Plato) 100–2, 239–40 Phaedrus of Sphettos 99 Phaon (in Ovid) 199–200 Phileros 170–1 philhellenism, philhellenic 7–8, 23–4, 27, 29–48, 54, 82, 85, 109, 120, 122–3, 170, 172, 194–5 see also Greece, Greek Philippus Poenus 53, 58 philosophy, philosophical 33, 38, 44, 71, 133–4, 226 n. 5, 231 see also Aristotle, Aristotelian; Plato, Platonic; Socrates, Socratic; Stoic, stoicism Philto (in Plautus) 62 Phlogis (in Martial) 200 Phoenicia, Phoenician 54, 63 see also Carthage, Carthaginian Phoenicium (in Plautus) 63–4, 67–8, 70 Phormio (in Terence) 61 n. 23 Phyllis (in Horace) 178, 181 Pickering, Michael 57 pietas 32, 246, 248, 251 n. 17, 259, 261–2 pimp (lena, leno) 51–2, 55–6, 67–8, 71, 155, 157, 160–1, 163 see also prostitute, prostitution Pirithous (in Ovid) 246 Pisones (in Horace) 107–27 see also Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, L. (in Cicero); Calpurnius Piso, Cn. (in Horace); Calpurnius Piso, L. (in Horace) Plancus, L. 20 plant (imagery) see image, imagery: plant Plato, Platonic 90, 100–1, 225 n. 2, 226 n. 5, 234–5, 239 Plautus, Plautine 8, 32, 43, 49–72, 109, 170 plebs, plebeian 6, 9, 51, 126, 129–48, 152, 248–9, 262 n. 41 Pliny (the Elder) 59 n. 19, 115, 116 n. 31, 154 (p.302) Pliny (the Younger) 14, 25–8, 34, 83–4, 144 Plutarch 34, 135, 188–9, 191, 227 Poenus see Carthage, Carthaginian; Phoenicia, Phoenician Pollux (in Menander) 60 Polyphemus 199 in Fulgentius on Vergil 236 in Homer 253 in Ovid 196–7 in Theocritus 193, 196–7 Pomponius Mela 82–3 Poppaea Sabina (in Tacitus) 213 Porcius Latro 81 Porphyry Against the Christians 228 post-colonialism, post-colonial 3, 7–8, 29–72 see also centre, central; empire; imperialism, imperialist, imperial; nation, nationalism, national; periphery, peripheral; colonialism, colonial, colony Page 19 of 26

 

General Index postmodernism, postmodern 23, 28, 36 n. 29 see also Bhabha, Homi, Bourdieu, Pierre; Butler, Judith; Chakrabarty, Dipesh; Derrida, Jacques; Foucault, Michel; Kristeva, Julia; Rancière, Jacques; Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty potestas (power) 110–11, 118, 123 poverty in Paulinus of Nola 248–9, 257–62 in Propertius 258 n. 30 in Vergil 249 n. 11, 256 of the people in Sallust 142–3 n. 48 of the poet in Horace 248 n. 9 in Martial 73–9, 86–8 in Paulinus of Nola 248, 258–61 see also capital; economy, economic; money praeco (announcer) 9, 77, 149–67 Prag, Jonathan 54, 63, 71, 72 n. 34 Proba, Faltonia 242 profession see announcer (praeco); auction, auctioneer; barber; barrister; cowherd; fisherman; grammarian; herald; lawyer; nurse; orator; pimp (lena, leno); prostitute, prostitution; rhetor, rhetorician; salesman; slave, slavery, enslavement: -dealer Propertius 24, 41, 158–9, 171, 188, 195 prosopopoeia 2 prostitute, prostitution 51–2, 56–8, 62–5, 67–8, 74 n. 4, 155, 157, 163, 165, 207–9, 212 see also pimp (lena, leno) province, provincial, provincialism 79–84, 88, 142–3 n. 48, 187 see also Africa, African; Arab, Arabian; colonialism, colonial, colony; Egypt, Egyptian; empire; Gaul; Greece, Greek; Illyricum, Illyrian; imperialism, imperialist, imperial; periphery, peripheral; Spain, Spanish; Syria, Syrian; Persia, Persian; Phoenicia, Phoenician Prudentius 256 n. 24 Pseudo-Vergil see Vergil: Pseudo-Vergil Pseudolus (in Plautus) 61 Publilius Syrus 71 Punic see Carthage, Carthaginian; Phoenicia, Phoenician Pyrrhus (in Horace) 175–6 Quinctius, C. 154–5 Quinctius, P. 154–5 Quintia (in Catullus) 186 Quintilian 78, 80–1, 111 Rabinowitz, Nancy 55–7 race see ethnicity racism 45, 72 Rancière, Jacques 6, 9, 130–6, 140, 147 rape 53, 57 realism, realist, realistic 10–11, 116, 245–7, 250, 262 recusatio 2, 21–2, 43, 160 see also epic; genre: hierarchy of; rhetoric: of inability repetition 18–19, 62–3, 75, 114, 138–9, 142, 144, 147, 156, 174, 197 n. 17, 207, 225, 229, 239–40 Revermann, Martin 58 Page 20 of 26

 

General Index rhetor, rhetorician 23, 32, 77, 85, 152, 232 n. 25 see also orator; oratory (p.303) rhetoric 32–3, 81, 145, 147, 149, 156, 206, 226, 231, 234, 236 of inferiority (outline and patterns) 1–12 of inability 18, 160 n. 47 see also recusatio rhetorical training see rhetor, rhetorician see also orator; oratory rhetoricity 10, 144, 151, 211 rhythm (in speech and verse) 9, 105, 111, 118 n. 38, 137–43, 145–6, 217 n. 46 ritual 159 n. 40, 231–3, 241 see also Bacchanalia romanitas (Romanness) 25, 32–5, 39–40, 79–83, 120–4, 205, 217 Rudd, Niall 39, 43 n. 45, 109 n. 9, 112 n. 21, 119 n. 39, 122, 177 n. 33 rusticitas (rusticity), rustic 29, 35, 42–3, 78–83, 125–6, 152, 196–7, 247, 249 n. 11 rusticus 152 in Horace 125 in Paulinus of Nola 11, 248–62 in Pseudo-Vergil 247–8 saints, Christian cult of 255, 262 see also Ambrose, St; Augustine, St; Felix, St salesman 149, 152–4, 156–7, 160, 163 n. 60, 164 circulator (street peddler) 152 see also praeco (announcer) Sallust 129, 142–3 n. 48, 147–8, 213 Sappho 172, 175, 181, 199, 202–3 in Ovid 199–200 satire, satirical 2–3, 8, 14–15, 22, 33, 74 n. 6, 76, 89–106, 108, 110, 112, 116 n. 32, 119– 20, 125, 149, 161–3, 165, 167, 171–2 see also Horace, Horatian; Juvenal; Menippean satire Saturnian verse 34, 42–3 satyr play 124 Saumagne, Charles 150 n. 5 Sceparnio (in Plautus) 68–9 Scripture 225–6 n. 3, 235–7, 239, 241–3, 245, 255–6 n. 24, 258 n. 31 see also gospel, Old Testament scurra (parasite) 154–5, 161–4 Sejanus 94 self 14, 92, 104, 160–1, 190–1 n. 8, 191–2, 201, 203–4, 255 -affiliation 102 -appraisal 197 -assertion 89–90, 167 -censoring 104, 108, 115 n. 30, 120, 124, 127 see also censorship, (self-)censoring, (self-)censuring -conception 33 -confidence 89 n. 2 -control 121 -consciousness 15–16, 23, 61 -critique 8–9, 110, 114, 119–20 -debasement 11, 13 n. 1 see also abjection, abject; humiliation -defence 88, 226 n. 5 -definition 74 n. 6 -deprecation 103, 111 see also humbleness, humility -dramatizing 167 -effacement, -erasure 8, 11, 90–2, 162–4 see also anonymity, anonymous; erasure Page 21 of 26

 

General Index -esteem 185 -exposure 112–14 -fashioning 4 n. 3, 6–7, 11, 33, 36, 108, 121 n. 47 -fulfilling 37 n. 32 -humbling 167 see also humbleness, humility; humiliation -identification 54 n. 12, 162 -improvement 123–4 -interpretation 230 n. 17 -knowledge 196 n. 16 -love 190, 196, 204 -made 112 -masking 91 n. 5 see also mask -mocking 114 see also mock, mockery -naming 92, 94 n. 15, 102 see also name, nameless, naming -perception 38 -portrait 73, 170 -presentation 89, 163, 171 -preservation 15 n. 7 -promotion 149, 154 n. 25, 155–6, 158, 160, 163, 167 -positioning 2 (p.304) -reduction 105–6 -reflection 8–9, 36 n. 29, 120 -reproach 8–9, 107–27 -righteousness 17 -sabotage 89 n. 2 -sacrifice 115, 258 -satisfaction 99, 196 -stylization 9, 34, 249 n. 11 -subversion 197 -sufficient 249 n. 11 -transformation 107 -worth 156 semiotic (Julia Kristeva) 130, 137–40, 143–8 Sempronia (in Sallust) 213 senate 27, 50 n. 4, 131 n. 7, 133–5, 144, 217 senator, senatorial 50 n. 4, 129, 133, 135–6, 145, 154, 210, 212 n. 23, 216 Seneca (the Elder) 82 Seneca (the Younger) 80–2, 197–8, 220 senex (old man) 56, 58, 61–2, 65, 69, 120, 213, 247 n. 5 see also age, ageing serious, seriousness 22, 25, 80, 86 n. 60, 90–1, 195, 202, 208, 230–1, 242 n. 52, 243, 245, 256–7, 262 Servius 139 n. 36, 215 n. 39, 230–2 sex, sexuality, sexual 3, 4 nn. 2, 4, 9–11, 59, 157 n. 35, 165–6, 169–83, 190 n. 7, 226 n. 7 sexual aggression 20–1, 205–23 sexualised slave-actors 56–8 sex with slaves 57–8, 62 sex trade see pimp (lena, leno); prostitute, prostitution see also bisexuality; gender; heteroeroticism; homoeroticism; incest; rape Sextus Iulius Gabibianus 85 Page 22 of 26

 

General Index Sextus Naevius 154–5, 161 n. 52 Sibyl (in Vergil) 229, 241 Silius, C. (in Tacitus) 210–17 Silk, Michael 158 n. 38, 160 Silver Latin poetry 22–4, 158 n. 39 Simulus (in Pseudo-Vergil) 247–8, 257 skin 179, 201 animal 63–4, 70, 77 n. 18, 215–16 colour 54–60, 63–70, 71, 175 n. 28, 178–9, 186, 200 see also blackface; complexion; ethnicity; makeup slave, slavery, enslavement 2, 6, 15–16, 78 n. 23, 131, 150–3, 164 n. 67, 171, 173, 177, 197–8, 209, 212–13, 226 n. 7 and the palliata 8, 49–72 -dealer 151 n. 10, 163 figuratively used 14, 79–80, 94, 164, 167 slave literature 50 n. 5 through debt 140–1 through war 49–50, 52–3, 57, 69 see also freed slaves slogan 131, 139, 142, 147 see also utterance (opp. noise, opp. speech) social status see class (social status) Socrates, Socratic 100–1, 115 see also Phaedrus (in Plato); Plato, Platonic Sommerstein, Alan 59–60 Sophocles 42–3, 193, 197–8 space, political  of crowd in open assembly 134, 136–7, 139–41, 144–5 theatre as 124–5 Spain, Spanish 31, 79–83, 85, 88, 260 speech (opp. writing, written word) see orality, oral; orator; oratory; rhetor, rhetorician; rhetoric; transcript (oral into written) Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty 1, 5–6, 36–7, 47, 50 Starks, John H., Jr. 52 n. 7, 54 nn. 12–13, 62, 68 n. 30 star (imagery) see image, imagery: star Stasimus (in Plautus’ Trin.) 62 status see class (social status) Stoic, stoicism 217, 227 stream (imagery) see image, imagery: stream subalternity, subaltern 1–6, 11, 50, 71, 156, 164, 167 see also Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty sublime 15, 23, 251–2, 257–8 Suetonius 139, 149 n. 2, 213 n. 33 sun (imagery) see image, imagery: sun sword (imagery) see image, imagery: sword(-sharpening) Sybaris (in Horace) 173, 178 (p.305) symbol, symbolism see allegoresis, allegorical interpretation, allegory; image, imagery Syria, Syrian 56, 60 n. 22, 61–3, 65, 68 n. 30, 72 Syra (in Plautus) 62–3 Syrus (in comedy) 61 see also Publilius Syrus Tacitus 10, 27–8, 131–2, 138, 144, 205–6, 210–23, 245 Page 23 of 26

 

General Index Telephus (in Horace) 174–5, 178, 182, 202 temple 246–7, 260 of Apollo 85, 237 of Janus 43 of Juno 236 Terence 43, 50 n. 5, 54, 61 n. 23 see also New Comedy; palliata Terentius Priscus 80 Thaliarchus (in Horace) 173, 177 Theocritus 122, 193, 196–7 Theotimos 171 Theseus (in Callimachus) 246 Thucydides 130 Tibullus 159, 171 Tigillinus 103–4 time belatedness 4 n. 4, 14, 22–3, 25–8, 36, 42–3 chrono-ideology 38, 41–5 chronology  as tied to value hierarchies (chronological and/as aesthetic primacy) 4 n. 4, 38–45 double (of intercultural literary histories) 39–46 postcolonial critique of homogenised, linear, stage-sequential 35–7, 40–1 passing of see age, ageing; decline; youth, youthfulness timeliness 13, 119, 122–3 see also age, ageing; decline; literary history; youth, youthfulness Torquatus (in Catullus) 190 Toynbee, Arnold J. 31 Trachalio (in Plautus) 63, 69–70 tradition  cultural 4, 31, 33, 170, 182, 205, 211–12 literary 4 n. 4, 7–8, 11, 29–48, 76, 82, 86–7, 89, 93, 101 n. 39, 102, 109–10, 122–3, 170–2, 183, 230, 232, 233 n. 27, 235, 242, 247 n. 5, 255 of homoeroticism in Greek lyric poetry 170–2, 180–3 see also homoeroticism of representing and interpreting popular clamor (as noise of a crowd) 131–4, 136 n. 22, 142 see also clamor (as noise of a crowd) of visually representing ‘dark’ comic characters 58–6 see also blackface; ethnicity; mask; skin: colour see also distance, distancing: in literary criticism and literary traditions; literary culture (in Rome) tragedy, tragic 8–9, 22, 24, 27, 42, 59 n. 19, 84, 116, 124–6, 159 n. 40, 193, 211, 216–17, 245, 256–7 see also performer (actor, etc); Aeschylus; Euripides; ludi (dramatic performances); Seneca; Sophocles transcript (oral into written) 34, 49, 90, 93, 96, 100–1, 129–48 transmigration of souls see metempsychosis Traulus Montanus 212 n. 30 Trimalchio 73, 245 triumph 72 n. 34, 142–3 n. 48, 250 n. 14 in Paulinus of Nola 250–2, 255–8 triple (of Octavian/Augustus after victory at Actium) 256 triumphator 59 n. 19, 258 Page 24 of 26

 

General Index Trout, Dennis 261 Truculentus (in Plautus) 65 Turnus (in Juvenal) 105, (in Vergil) 216, (in Vergil/Fulgentius) 238 Tyndaris (in Horace) 178 Uden, James 91 n. 7, 103 ugliness, ugly 58, 60, 67, 118 n. 38, 165, 185–204 see also decline: of beauty urban, urbane, urbanity, urbanitas 8, 50, 61, 79–83, 125–6, 132, 140–1, 152, 161, 163, 173 utterance (opp. noise, opp. speech) 15, 129–30, 136, 138, 141–3, 150 (p.306) Valerius Aedituus 170–1 Vargunteius 40 Varro 33, 43 n. 45, 154 Venus  Erycina, cult of 52 in Fulgentius on Vergil 236 in Horace 172, 176–82 in Lucretius 189 in Plautus 52, 69, 71 see also Aphrodite Vergil, Vergilian 10–11, 33, 77, 82, 84, 149 n. 2, 152, 225–43 Aeneid 10, 25, 85, 213–14, 216–19, 225–43, 247, 251, 253, 255–7 Eclogues 171, 229, 232–3, 238 Georgics 13, 232–3 238 n. 40 in Martial 77, 82, 84 n. 49, 85 n. 55 Pseudo-Vergil Copa 156 Moretum 247–8, 257 see also Faustina, Proba; Fulgentius Verrius Flaccus 59 n. 19, 68 n. 30 Vettius Valens (in Tacitus) 215–17 violence, violent 15, 23–4, 27, 31, 67, 105, 137, 141, 159, 197, 202, 208, 213 see also flogging (of slaves); war virtue 83, 109, 112 n. 20, 231, 234–5, 237, 251–2 n. 17, 257, 261 Volteius Mena (in Horace) 152 n. 15, 153, 163 war 13, 23–4, 29, 31, 42–5, 69, 71, 85 n. 55, 139, 141–3, 159, 179–80, 218, 231 see also Carthage, Carthaginian: Mercenary War; Carthage, Carthaginian: Punic Wars; Persia, Persian: Persian Wars wedding see marriage West, David 178 widow 205, 248, 255 n. 24, 258–9, 261 Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich v. 26–7 Williams, Bert 66 Williams, Craig A. 4 n. 4, 53 n. 11, 78 n. 21, 82 n. 36, 169 n. 5, 170 nn. 7–9, 173 n. 21, 179 n. 40, 221 n. 64 Williams, Gordon 22–3 wine 116, 174, 177–8, 215, 218, 220 see also Bacchanalia; Bacchus, Bacchic; Dionysus, Dionysian wisdom 104, 119, 154–5, 226, 234–7, 240 Wolff, Étienne 229 n. 16, 239 n. 41, 240 Page 25 of 26

 

General Index Wray, David 20 Wrenhaven, Kelly 58 writing, written word (opp. speech) 8, 90, 100–1, 104–5, 111–12, 127, 229, 257 see also logos; Phaedrus (in Plato); transcript (oral into written) Young, Robert J. C. 45–6 youth, youthfulness 8–10, 33, 39, 58, 70, 78, 149 n. 2, 205–23, 227, 236 in Aristophanes 192 in Cicero 207–8 in Horace 39, 107, 109–15, 119–25, 169–71, 173, 175–80, 200–2 in Livy 208–9 in Ovid 18 n. 16 in Plautus 51, 56 n. 16, 70 in Plutarch 188–9 in Sophocles 193, 197 in Tacitus 211–13, 221 of texts (within literary histories) 38–45 see also age, ageing; child, childhood, child-like Zanker, Graham 246

Page 26 of 26

 

Index Locorum

Complex Inferiorities: The Poetics of the Weaker Voice in Latin Literature Sebastian Matzner and Stephen Harrison

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198814061 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198814061.001.0001

(p.307) Index Locorum This index lists all passages from Greek and Latin authors, including Christian writers, as well as from the Old and New Testament that receive treatment in the chapters of this volume. Entries in square brackets indicate questioned authorship; page numbers followed by ?n.? point to footnotes. For references to further passages in the volume where ancient writers and texts are mentioned or discussed more discursively (i.e. beyond direct engagement with specific text passages), please see the General Index. (1) GREEK AUTHORS ACHILLES TATIUS 2.36–37.1: 194 n. 13 AESCHYLUS Choephori 734–65: 222 n. 69 896–8: 222 n. 69 ALCAEUS fr. 76.16: 177 fr. 366: 172 fr. 368: 172 [fr. 384]: 203 ALCMAN fr. 1.43–5: 192 fr. 1.73–7: 192 ANACREON fr. 11a: 177 fr. 15: 177 fr. 51: 177 fr. 358: 192, 203 fr. 360: 172 ANTHOLOGIA PALATINA Page 1 of 28

 

Index Locorum 5.6: 171 5.145: 171 n. 12 5.150: 171 n. 12 9.184: 172 9.571: 172 ANTIPHO 1.17: 213 n. 34 ARATUS 179: 194 658: 194 ARCHILOCHUS fr. 196A.27: 192 ARISTOPHANES Ecclesiazusae 894–5: 192 901–4: 192 ARISTOTLE Poetica 1449a32–7: 204 Rhetorica 1367a7–14: 202 1371b18–25: 190 1404b18ff.: 110 n. 13 ARTEMIDORUS 1.23: 153 n. 20 BASILIUS Ad Adolescentes 4: 225 n. 2 CALLIMACHUS Aetia fr. 1.1–9: 41 n. 42 fr. 1.5–6: 121 n. 47 fr. 1.17–24: 41 n. 42 fr. 1.19–20: 13 fr. 67.5: 195 fr. 67.5–22: 195 fr. 67.7: 195 fr. 67.8: 196 frr. 68–9: 195 Epigrammata 25 (=AP 5.6): 171 Hymnus in Minervam 17–28: 194 Hymnus in Apollinem 105–12: 41 n. 42 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA Stromata 1.14.66: 225 n. 2 (p.308) 4.52.1: 229 n. 15 Page 2 of 28

 

Index Locorum 6.123.2: 229 n. 15 CONSTANTINE Oration ad Coetum Sanctorum 18.4: 229 n. 14 DIO CASSIUS 4.17.11: 135 n. 18 60.14.1: 219 n. 61 60.15.5: 219 n. 61 60.18.1: 219 n. 61 60.18.1–2: 212 n. 23 60.22.2: 211 n. 22 61.31.4: 216 n. 41 61.31.5: 213 n. 34 62.16.2: 213 n. 34 DIO CHRYSOSTOM Orationes 7.123: 159 n. 40 34.31: 159 n. 40 DIOGENES LAERTIUS 5.79: 99 n. 30 5.80: 99 n. 27 DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS Antiquitates Romanae 6.49.2: 135 n. 20 6.57.1: 135 n. 20 6.86.2: 135 6.86.4: 134 6.86.5: 135 EURIPIDES Andromache 274–92: 194 Bacchae 1061: 217 n. 47 Iphigenia Taurica 23: 194 Troades 919–37: 194 969–91: 194 HERMESIANAX fr. 7.47–55: 203 HERODOTUS 1.8.2–4: 193–4 1.196: 166 n. 74 HOMER Iliad 1.114–15: 192 1.115: 186 n. 4 2.142–52: 137 n. 29 2.671–5: 176 Page 3 of 28

 

Index Locorum 9.128–30: 194 9.140–1: 194 9.270–2: 194 9.281–2: 194 9.389: 194 Odyssey 5.211–12: 192 5.211–13: 189 5.212: 186 n. 4 5.213: 186 n. 4 9.444–61: 253 IBYCUS S166.23–8: 189 LONGINUS 1.4: 15 6.2: 15 LUCIAN Verae Historiae 2.20: 230 n. 17 MENANDER Samia 4.148: 60 n. 21 4.149–50: 60 ORIGEN Contra Celsum 4.37: 228 4.48: 228 Homiliae in Leviticum 7.6: 226 n. 7 OXYRHYNCHUS PAPYRI 2435 recto: 136 n. 26 XV 1800 fr. 1 col. i.19–21: 199 PLATO Phaedo 61b: 100 Phaedrus 275d–e: 100 Respublica 492b–c: 137 n. 29 PLUTARCH Aemilius Paulus 6.8–10: 34 n. 17 Antonius 27.3: 189 57.4: 188 57.5: 189 (p.309) Caius Gracchus 4.3–4: 205 n. 1 Coriolanus Page 4 of 28

 

Index Locorum 6.3: 135 n. 17 De Curiositate 522c: 200 n. 21 Septem Sapientium Convivium 150a: 196 n. 16 Tiberius Gracchus 1.4–5: 205 n. 1 POLYBIUS 1.29.7: 53 SAPPHO fr. 31: 175, 181, 202 SOPHOCLES Trachiniae 465: 193 547–9: 193, 197 STRABO 15.13.62: 166 n. 74 THEOCRITUS 2.55–6: 122 6.18–19: 193 6.35–8: 196 10.24–9: 186 n. 4 11.30–3: 193 17.45: 194 THEOPHRASTUS Characteres 6.10: 159 n. 40 THUCYDIDES 1.22.1: 130

(2) LATIN AUTHORS APULEIUS Apologia 98: 156 n. 30 Florida 9: 159 n. 40 Metamorphoses 2.21–3: 152 n. 13 8.24–5: 152 n. 13, 166 AUGUSTINE Confessiones 1.20–1: 71–2 1.33: 226 Contra Academicos 3.5.6: 226 n. 4 De Civitate Dei 10.27: 229 De Doctrina Christiana 1.60: 226 n. 4 Page 5 of 28

 

Index Locorum 2.6.8: 226 n. 6 2.40.60: 225 n. 2 De Ordine 1.8.24: 226 n. 4 Epistulae 104.3.11: 229 137.12: 229 258.3: 229 Retractiones 1.3.2: 226 n. 4 CATULLUS 5: 171 7: 171 10.12: 19–20 11: 207 n. 8 16: 21 28.9–10: 19–21 43.6: 187 48: 171 51: 174 58: 207 n. 8 61.86–9: 189–90 61.97–105: 190 61.187: 190 61.189–92: 190 64.254: 216 n. 44 76.1–6: 16–19 76.9: 16–19 85: 186 86: 186 87: 186 99: 171 106: 155 CICERO Brutus 172: 161 nn. 54–5 De Natura Deorum 1.78–9: 190 1.79: 172 De Officiis 3.55: 153 n. 20 De Oratore 3.115: 146 n. 59 3.195: 145–6 3.196: 145–6 3.198: 145 Epistulae ad Atticum 14.20.30: 190 n. 8 (p.310) Epistulae ad Familiares Page 6 of 28

 

Index Locorum 5.7.2: 17–18 5.12.7: 159 n. 40 5.12.8: 152–3 n. 16 6.18: 154 n. 24 7.24: 152 n. 15 10.32: 152 n. 15 Epistulae ad Quintum fratrem 3.6.4: 190 In Pisonem fr. 11 (= Asconius 4): 152 62: 152 68: 152, 162 n. 58 In Verrem 2.3.40: 150 n. 4 3.7: 197 Orator 168: 145–6 173: 145–6 Pro Archia 10.26: 81 24: 159 n. 40 Pro Caecina 27: 61 n. 23 Pro Caelio 17: 208 32: 207 33: 207, 208 n. 13 55: 208 n. 14 Pro Plancio 33: 161 n. 54 Pro Quinctio 11: 154–5, 161 n. 52 50: 150 n. 4 95: 154 n. 26 Pro Sestio 68: 152 n. 13 Tusculanae Disputationes 4.3: 34 n. 14 4.71: 172 5.103: 101–2 n. 42 CLAUDIAN Carmina Minora 14: 247 n. 5 20: 247 n. 5 COLUMELLA 6.1.3: 165–6 CYPRIAN De Opere et Eleemosynis 15: 258 n. 31 Page 7 of 28

 

Index Locorum FULGENTIUS Expositio Continentiae Virgilianae 83.6–8: 232, 241 83.10–13: 232 83.13–84.16: 233 84.4–6: 241 85.7: 241 85.11–12: 233 85.13: 233 85.17: 233 86.8: 234 86.10: 234 86.12–13: 234 87.5–6: 234 87.8–11: 235 87.11–12: 235 87.17–19: 234–5 89.4–7: 236 89.4–9: 235 89.10: 236 90.3: 231 90.19–91.6: 240 91.7–92.12: 236 93.3–5: 236 94.2–9: 236 94.11–13: 237 95.15–17: 237 95.17–19: 237 96.3: 237 96.5–8: 237 96.15–18: 237 97.16–17: 237 97.18–98.2: 237 101.19: 240 102.19–103.7: 238 103.4–6: 238 103.10–12: 238 103.13–14: 240 105.4: 238 107.6: 238–9 Mythologiae 1.7.5–1.8.5: 241 n. 50 3.6: 230 n. 18 GELLIUS, AULUS 1.12: 34 n. 18 6.3.15: 34 n. 16 6.3.43: 34 n. 16 10.3.14ff.: 34 n. 16 17.21.46–7: 49 Page 8 of 28

 

Index Locorum (p.311) 19.9.10: 170 23.25.15: 34 n. 16 HORACE Ars Poetica 1: 114–15, 117–18, 125 1–4: 116 1–5: 114, 125 3: 117 4: 116 n. 31, 118 n. 38 5: 108, 118 8: 119 8–9: 112, 125 9–10: 110–11 10: 110, 118, 122–3 11: 110–11 13: 117, 125 14: 116 16: 116 19–21: 116 21: 117 21–2: 116, 118 n. 38 22: 122 23: 112, 126 24: 117, 119 25: 116 28: 117 29: 117 30: 117 32: 117 33: 117 35: 117 36–7: 117 37: 118 38ff. 118 38–40: 118 39: 122 40: 118 47–8: 111, 122–3 50: 119 58–9: 123 58–63: 123 60–1: 197–8 63–4: 123 63–9: 123 94: 118 n. 38 95: 118 n. 38 102: 125 102–3: 124–5 105: 108, 124 Page 9 of 28

 

Index Locorum 109: 118 n. 38 110: 118 n. 38 113: 108, 118 n. 38, 125, 126 114–18: 125 115–16: 119 119: 119 126: 117 151–2: 118 n. 38 152: 117 153: 126 153–78: 120 156ff.: 123 158–60: 121 160: 120 161: 120 163: 120 165: 120 164: 117 n. 34 169–74: 120 173–4: 120 174: 120 176–8: 120 195: 115 203: 125–6 213: 125 220ff.: 118 n. 38 229: 118 n. 38 230: 118 n. 38 240–2: 112 242: 122 243: 110 244ff: 118 n. 38 247–8: 126 248: 125–6 249: 126 249–50: 126 254: 118 n. 38 263–74: 109 264: 111 265–9: 122 267: 111 267–8: 112 268–9: 35 n. 24, 122 269: 109, 123 270: 111 270–1: 111 272: 109, 122, 126 273: 111 273–4: 111 Page 10 of 28

 

Index Locorum 274: 118 n. 38 285–94: 109 287: 122 292: 121 292–3: 107 293: 109 (p.312) 294: 109 297: 118 n. 38 301–2: 114–15 304: 113 304–6: 113 306: 113 323–32: 109, 120 325: 120, 121 328: 121 331: 119 335–6: 111 n. 16 340: 115 345: 117 n. 34 347: 111 355: 111 356: 108 358: 108 366–7: 119 375: 115 n. 29 378: 117 381: 108, 126 382: 119 386–90: 113 408–11: 112 415: 124 416: 121 417: 121 419–21: 162 430: 118 n. 38 432–3: 110 446–7: 109 447–8: 109 452: 108 453: 121 456: 121 457: 120 462–3: 114 470–2: 121–2 471: 122 474–5: 125 475: 114, 116 476: 114 Carmina Page 11 of 28

 

Index Locorum 1.1.29–36: 74 n. 6 1.1.34: 172 1.4.19–20: 173 1.5: 202 1.5.1: 202 1.8: 173, 178 1.8.13–16: 178 1.9: 173, 177 1.9.18–24: 173 1.10.9–12: 256 n. 24 1.13: 174–6, 178, 181–2, 202–3 1.13.1–3: 197 n. 17 1.13.1–12: 174–5 1.13.5–8: 175 1.13.7–8: 202 1.13.8–11: 202 1.13.11: 202 1.13.13–16: 202 1.13.18–19: 202 1.16.22–8: 173 1.17: 178 1.17.24–8: 202 1.19: 179 1.20: 137 n. 29 1.25: 181–2, 201 1.25.6–8: 201 1.25.9–10: 201 1.25.16–20: 200–1 1.25.21–8: 201 1.32.9–12: 172 1.32.10–12: 118 n. 35 1.35.14–16: 139 1.38: 177–8 2.4.21–2: 164 n. 67 2.5: 178–9 2.5.17–24: 178 2.8.15–16: 113 n. 24 2.13.24–5: 172 2.20.1–2: 114 2.20.5–6: 121 2.20.9–12: 164–5 n. 69 3.1.4: 112 n. 21 3.2.1: 248 n. 9 3.9: 202–3 3.9.7–8: 203 3.9.10: 203 3.9.20: 203 3.9.21: 203 3.9.21–4: 203 Page 12 of 28

 

Index Locorum 3.9.22–3: 203 3.10: 181 3.12: 176–7, 182 3.12.4–12: 176–7 3.14.17: 177 3.15.4–6: 200 3.15.5–6: 195 n. 14 3.19: 175, 178–9, 182 3.19.10: 177 3.19.25–8: 175 (p.313) 3.20: 175, 179, 182 3.20.9–16: 175–6 3.26: 180 3.30: 114 n. 25 3.30.1: 117 n. 34 4.1: 169, 182 4.1.1–8: 179–80 4.1.29–32: 180 4.1.33–40: 180–1 4.1.40: 182 4.10: 170, 181–2 4.10.6: 191 4.11: 178, 181 4.11.31–4: 181 4.13: 181–2, 201 4.13.17–20: 201 4.13.18–20: 191 4.13.21–28: 201 11.5–6: 201 n. 24 Epistulae 1.7: 162–3 1.7.25–8: 191 1.7.37–8: 163 n. 61 1.7.46–98: 163 1.7.49–51: 153 1.7.65: 152 n. 15 1.19.11: 122 n. 52 1.20.1–8: 163 n. 62 2.1: 30, 37–45 2.1.23–7: 39 2.1.28–30: 39–41 2.1.69–72: 41 2.1.76–8: 41 2.1.83–5: 39, 120 2.1.90–3: 44–5 2.1.93–102: 42 2.1.108–10: 43–4 2.1.117: 114 n. 27 2.1.117–20: 44–5 Page 13 of 28

 

Index Locorum 2.1.156–7: 29 2.1.156–65: 42–3 2.1.167: 107 2.1.224–5: 41 n. 42 2.1.253–6: 43 2.1.257–9: 41–2 n. 42 2.2.1–19: 151 n. 10 Epodi 4: 74 n. 6 11.4: 171 12: 201 14.5: 114 16.46: 201 n. 22 Sermones 1.1: 112 1.2.86–93: 165 1.2.102–3: 165 n. 71 1.2.116–18: 171 1.4.39–44: 14–15 1.4.42: 14 1.4.85: 61 n. 23 1.4.105–43: 112 n. 20 1.6: 74 n. 6, 119, 126 n. 56 1.6.6: 110 1.6.30–3: 164 n. 68 1.6.42–4: 150 n. 6 1.6.62–3: 125 1.6.85–7: 162 n. 56 1.6.86: 162 n. 57 1.6.115: 126 2.2.46–8: 162 n. 58 2.3.325: 171 JEROME Epistulae 21: 226 21.13.6: 225 n. 2 22.30: 226 53.7: 229, 242 70.5: 226 JUVENAL 1.25: 102 n. 46 1.79–80: 103 1.101–11: 79 n. 25 1.104–5: 65 1.153–61: 104 1.160: 104 1.161: 101 n. 42 1.162–3: 105 1.165–70: 105 Page 14 of 28

 

Index Locorum 3.235–46: 152 n. 12 3.33: 152 n. 13 3.81ff.: 79 n. 25 6.114–32: 212 6.656–61: 213 n. 34 7.5–6: 152 n. 13 8.211–21: 213 n. 34 10.226: 102 n. 46 LACTANTIUS Institutiones Divinae 7.24: 229, 231 n. 22 LIVY 1.7.5: 256 n. 25 1.7.6: 256 n. 25 1.57–8: 205 n. 1 (p.314) 2.23.2: 140–3 2.23.3: 140 2.23.4: 140 2.23.5: 140 2.23.7: 140 2.23.8: 140–1 2.23.10–11: 141 2.24.2: 142–3 2.24.3: 141 2.24.6: 141 2.28–9: 144 2.32.8–11: 133–6 2.32.9: 135 3.15.1: 139 n. 36 6.28.3: 139 n. 36 9.17–19: 31 26.34.11: 62 32.26: 53 34.44: 50 n. 4 34.44.5: 50 n. 4 34.54: 50 n. 4 34.54.3–8: 50 n. 4 38.20: 159 n. 40 39.42.6: 53 39.8–19: 208–9 39.9.5–7: 209–10 LUCAN 1.472: 158 n. 39 4.813: 158 n. 39 LUCILIUS fr. 11.411: 161 n. 55 fr. 211–12: 161 n. 52 fr. 995–6: 151 n. 7 fr. 1282: 162 n. 59 Page 15 of 28

 

Index Locorum LUCRETIUS 1.933–4: 121 n. 48 2.355–6: 253 2.1155–8: 189 4.563–4: 150 n. 6 4.1153–70: 186 n. 4 MACROBIUS Saturnalia 3: 232–3 3–6: 231 MARTIAL 1 praef. 12: 25 1.17: 78 n. 19 1.49: 78 n. 20 1.61: 82 1.61.11–12: 82 1.76: 75 n. 7, 77 n. 17 1.76.5–13: 78 n. 19 1.85: 163 n. 60 1.107.1–6: 84 2.8.1–4: 81–2 2.30.5: 78 n. 19 2.90: 78 n. 20 2.90.1–4: 78 2.90.3: 76 n. 11 2.90.5–10: 78 n. 23 3.1: 80 n. 29 3.2: 81 n. 34 3.2.12: 81 3.4: 77 3.16: 77 3.20.1–5: 100–1 3.34: 200 3.38.1–10: 77 3.38.7–10: 75 n. 7 3.59: 77 3.95: 74 n. 3 3.95.5–10: 76 n. 10 3.95.13: 74 4.27.3–4: 76 n. 10 4.49: 84 4.55.1–7: 82 4.55.8: 83 4.55.11–26: 82 4.77.3: 76 n. 11 5.1–3: 74 n. 6 5.5–8: 74 n. 6 5.5.1: 85 5.5.5–8: 85 Page 16 of 28

 

Index Locorum 5.10: 74 n. 6 5.13.1–2: 75–6 5.13.2: 76 5.13.3: 101 n. 42 5.13.3–4: 76 5.13.4: 84–5 5.13.5–8: 76 5.13.6: 75, 87 5.15: 86 5.15.3: 87 5.15.6: 86 5.15–16: 74 n. 6, 75 n. 7 5.16: 78 n. 20, 86 5.16.1–2: 86 5.16.14: 86 5.18.10: 76 n. 11 5.19: 74 n. 6 5.19.8: 76 n. 11 (p.315) 5.56: 77 5.56.7–8: 152 n. 12 6.8: 77, 152 n. 13 6.66: 163 n. 60 6.82: 75 n. 7 7.8.1–2: 250 n. 14 7.8.5: 250 n. 14 7.8.7: 250 n. 14 7.8.9–10: 250 n. 14 7.11: 82 n. 36 7.17.6–8: 82 n. 36 7.46.6: 76 n. 11 7.80.9: 175 n. 27 8.3: 22, 87 8.3.3–8: 87 n. 62 8.3.6: 76–7 n. 15 8.3.6–7: 87 8.3.17–22: 24–5 8.31: 76 n. 10 9 praef. 5–9: 22 n. 26 9.49: 75 n. 7 9.66: 76 n. 10 9.73: 77 9.95b: 73 n. 2 9.97.5–6: 76 n. 10 10.2: 87 10.2.5: 87 10.2.5–12: 87 n. 62 10.10.11: 76 n. 11 10.74: 77 10.76: 77 Page 17 of 28

 

Index Locorum 10.103.3–6: 82 n. 40 11.1: 77 11.3: 75 n. 7 11.20.7: 25 11.20.10: 25 11.56.12: 175 n. 27 11.60: 200 11.60.9–12: 200 12 praef. 7: 80 n. 30 12 praef. 28ff.: 80 n. 31 12.18.11–12: 83 n. 44 12.35: 73 n. 2 12.42: 73 n. 2 12.57.4: 76 n. 11 12.64.1: 175 n. 27 12.80: 73 n. 2 MELA, POMPONIUS 3.15: 82–3 OVID Amores 1.6.16: 155 n. 30 1.8.40: 161 n. 49 1.8.103: 155–6 n. 30 1.14: 166 n. 75 2.1.21: 155–6 n. 30 3.1.46: 155–6 n. 30 3.12.7–10: 156–7 3.3.6–10: 164 n. 69 Ars Amatoria 1.252: 164 n. 69 1.621–4: 157–8 2.121–6: 189 2.527: 155–6 n. 30 3.535–8 158 3.771–88: 164 n. 69 Epistulae (Heroides) 4.73–4: 186 n. 4 6.83–34: 196 9.121–34: 197 15.31–2: 199 15.31–4: 199 15.35–8: 199 15.39–40: 199 15.41–4: 200 15.45–50: 200 15.51–6: 199 16.97–100: 196 16.141: 159 n. 43 17.207: 159 n. 43 Page 18 of 28

 

Index Locorum 18.71–3: 196 n. 15 19.5–7: 18 n. 16 19.17–18: 19 n. 17 20.55–6: 196 20.61–2: 196 Epistulae ex Ponto 1.1.55: 158 n. 39 1.1.55–6: 160 n. 45 3.1.43–6: 160 n. 44 3.1.46: 159 n. 43 4.8.45–6: 160 n. 46 Fasti 1.547–9: 256 n. 25 1.549: 256 n. 25 Metamorphoses 1.500–2: 164 n. 69 3.348: 196 3.448: 196 3.841: 197 3.857–8: 197 3.862: 197 3.862–3: 197 5.429–37: 164–5 n. 69 5.546–8: 164–5 n. 69 8.618: 246 (p.316) 8.631: 246 8.633: 246 9.149–51: 199 11.471–3: 253 11.710–14: 253–4 11.793–4: 164–5 n. 69 12.573–4: 159 n. 43 13.840: 196 13.841: 196 14.18–19: 155–6 n. 30 14.707: 155–6 n. 30 Remedia Amoris 35: 155–6 n. 30 381–2: 195 507: 155–6 n. 30 Tristia 1.6.35–6: 160 n. 44 2.1.63–6: 160 n. 46 2.203–4: 156 n. 30 4.10.15–40: 149 n. 2 5.1.9–10: 160 n. 45 PAULINUS OF NOLA Carmina 7: 258 n. 31 Page 19 of 28

 

Index Locorum 16.10–11: 258 n. 27 18.1–2: 258 18.6–7: 251, 261 n. 39 18.16: 250–1 18.29–61: 258 18.41: 259 n. 32 18.46: 258 18.46–7: 259 n. 32 18.47: 259 n. 32 18.48: 258, 259 n. 32 18.58–61: 258 n. 31 18.61: 258–9 18.65–7: 259 18.119–29: 252–3 18.138–44: 255 18.138–53: 252 18.139–40: 255 18.141: 255 18.146–51: 258 18.211–13: 259 18.216–18: 259 18.219–24: 248–9 18.225–32: 262 18.234–53: 256 n. 25 18.235: 256 n. 25 18.236: 256 n. 25 18.237: 256 n. 25 18.254–9: 255–6 n. 24 18.260: 255–6 n. 24 18.281–4: 249 n. 11 18.298: 255–6 n. 24 18.299–307: 257 18.303–5: 257 18.307: 258 18.313–18: 250–1 18.330: 248 18.330–54: 253 18.333: 249 18.334: 260 18.335–6: 260 n. 36 18.345–7: 253 18.416–25: 254 18.426–7: 249 n. 11 18.432: 255 18.432–40: 255 18.433: 255 18.434–6: 255 18.438–9: 255 18.442–7: 259 n. 32 Page 20 of 28

 

Index Locorum 18.449: 256 n. 25 18.462–4: 251 18.462–5: 254–5 20.344: 260 n. 34 21.474–87: 260 21.485–7: 260 21.528–30: 261 n. 38 21.530: 261 21.534: 261 21.535–6: 261 21.546–50: 261 n. 39 21.795–7: 262 n. 41 26.406: 260 n. 34 27.547–8: 249 n. 11 28.67: 260 n. 34 Epistulae 16.11: 225 n. 2 29.13: 260 PERSIUS Prol.: 22 n. 26 1.28: 101 n. 42 5.1–16: 22 n. 26 PETRONIUS 68: 152 83ff.: 76 n. 13 PHAEDRUS 1 prol. 1–2: 93 3 prol. 1–3: 93–4 3 prol. 17–23: 94 3 prol. 33–7: 94 3 prol. 38: 96 (p.317) 3 prol. 41–4: 94 n. 17 3 prol.–3.1: 92 3.1: 95–6 5 prol. 96–7 5 prol.–5.1: 92 5.1: 97–102 29.1: 156 n. 30 PLAUTUS Amphitruo 85: 64 Asinaria 11: 32 n. 9 35: 64 Bacchides 434: 63 n. 26 649: 61 810: 150 n. 4 Casina Page 21 of 28

 

Index Locorum 585–6: 156 n. 30 Cistellaria 703: 63 n. 26 Curculio 191–2: 58 Epidicus 65: 63 n. 26 91: 63 n. 26 625–6: 63 n. 26 Menaechmi 179–81: 56–7 Mercator 414–16: 61 415: 68 n. 30 674: 62 817–29: 62 Mostellaria 264: 65 868: 63 n. 26 1067: 63 n. 26 [127]: 63 n. 26 Persa 158–60: 56 271: 56 Poenulus 53: 52 64–77: 51 84–95: 51 112–13: 54 498: 67 515: 51 516: 51 524: 52 855: 63 n. 26 896–900: 51 969–70: 65 975–81: 64–5 982–4: 51 985–1029: 51 985–9: 65–6 1111–14: 66–7 1112: 68 1125: 54 n. 12 1121: 67 1141–2: 67 1143–6: 67 1167: 68 1280: 67 1288–91: 67 Page 22 of 28

 

Index Locorum 1298: 68 1301: 68 1303–5: 68 1313–14: 68 1338–1371: 52 1372–1422: 52 1410: 54 n. 12 Pseudolus 146: 62 154: 63–4 225–9: 63 229: 63 1218: 61 n. 23 Rudens 290–305: 69 415: 68 419–24: 68–9 631: 62 750: 68 756–7: 63 822–3: 69 991: 70 997–8: 70 999–1000: 70 1183: 71 Trinummus 542–4: 62 545–6: 62 765–7: 56 852: 56 Truculentus 75: 52 294: 65 495–6: 151 n. 7 530–2: 62 541: 62–3 771–839: 62 (p.318) Vidularia 35–6: 61 PLINY (THE ELDER) Naturalis Historia 29.14ff. 34 n. 15 32.121: 116 n. 31 32.123: 118 n. 38 32.123–4: 115 33.29: 154 n. 23 33.111–12: 59 n. 19 35.157: 59 n. 19 PLINY (THE YOUNGER) Page 23 of 28

 

Index Locorum Epistulae 2.11.6–7: 144 3.16: 205 n. 1 3.20.12: 26–7 3.21.6: 83 8.8: 26 9.2.2: 25–6 9.23: 101–2 n. 42 PRISCIAN 3.50.111: 150 n. 4 PROPERTIUS 1.2: 166 n. 75 1.4: 188 1.16.16: 155 n. 30 2.4.17–18: 171 2.10.23–4: 258 n. 30 2.34.65–6: 24 3.3.41: 158 n. 39 3.3.41–2: 159 3.15: 195 3.23.13: 195 4.1.64: 41 4.5: 161 n. 49 PRUDENTIUS Psychomachia 1: 255–6 n. 24 QUINTILIAN Institutio Oratoria 9.4.41: 111 n. 17 SALLUST Catilina 1.1: 147–8 3.1: 148 Historiae 3.48.17f.: 143 n. 49 Iugurtha 41.6: 129 41.7: 142–3 n. 48 SENECA (THE ELDER) Controversiae 1.2.5: 155–6 n. 30 2.4.8: 81 SENECA (THE YOUNGER) Ad Marciam, 22.2: 195 [Hercules Oetaeus] 219–21: 198 233–582: 197–9 237–9: 195 n. 14, 198 345–50: 199 Page 24 of 28

 

Index Locorum 379: 197 380–90: 197–8 380–406: 197–9 383: 198 385–6: 195 n. 14, 198 385–90: 198 386: 198 391: 198 391–5: 198 393: 198 394: 199 394–5: 198–9 398–9: 199 406–7: 199 [Octavia] 269: 214 n. 35 Oedipus 404: 175 n. 28 Phaedra 761–83: 195 SERVIUS Ad Aeneidam 1.737: 215 n. 39 6 praef.: 231 6.114: 231–2 6.136: 232 6.595: 231 6.616: 231 11.453: 139 n. 36 SILIUS ITALICUS 2.336: 158 n. 39 STATIUS Thebaid 2.176: 158 n. 39 9.703: 175 n. 27 SUETONIUS De Grammaticis 3.2: 154 n. 22 Claudius 17.3: 211 n. 22 (p.319) Iulius 44.3: 123 84: 151 n. 9 Vespasianus 4: 152 n. 15 Nero 21: 20 24: 152 n. 16 29: 20 Page 25 of 28

 

Index Locorum 39.2: 213 n. 34 Tiberius 75.1: 139 Vita Servii Donati 8: 149 n. 2 TACITUS Annales 1.3–11: 213 n. 34 1.16f.: 245 11.1: 213 n. 34 11.1–4: 219 n. 61 11.11: 219 n. 60 11.11.3: 213 n. 33 11.12.1: 213 11.12.2: 212–13, 217 11.26: 217 11.26.1: 212 11.26.2: 213 11.26.3: 214 11.27: 214 11.27.1: 219 11.28.1: 212, 214 11.30.2: 214 11.31.1: 215, 217 n. 46 11.31.2–3: 215–17 11.32.1: 217–18 11.34.1: 218 n. 52 11.34.3: 219 11.35: 220 11.35.1: 218 11.35.2: 217 11.35.3: 217 n. 50 11.36: 213 n. 34 11.36.3: 212–13 n. 30 11.37.2: 218, 220 11.38.1: 219 12.42.2: 211 n. 22 13.2.3: 222 14.2.1: 220–1 14.2.2: 220–1 14.3.1: 213 n. 34 14.8.5: 222 14.45: 144 Dialogus de Oratoribus 2.1–3.4: 27 38: 27 40.1–41.5: 27 Historiae 1.4.3: 132 n. 8 Page 26 of 28

 

Index Locorum 1.32.1–2: 131–2 1.45.1–2: 131 n. 7 TIBULLUS 1.4: 171 1.5.43–4: 196 1.8: 171 [3.7.177]: 158 n. 39 [4.1.177]: 159 n. 42 VALERIUS MAXIMUS 4 praef. 4: 205 n. 1 VARRO De Lingua Latina 7.70: 151 n. 7 Res Rusticae 2.7.4–6: 166 n. 73 VELLEIUS PATERCULUS 2.83.2: 20 VERGIL Aeneid 1.148–54: 137 n. 29 1.737: 215 n. 39 4.56–64: 213–14 4.173–90: 218 4.327–30: 219 6.56: 255–6 n. 24 6.129–31: 250–1 n. 17 6.245–6: 241 6.486–8: 252 n. 18 6.687–8: 251 n. 17 6.724–5: 237 6.847–83: 23–4 7.44: 241 7.373–405: 216 7.392–6: 218 7.396: 216 7.397–8: 216 7.599–600: 218 n. 55 8.203: 256 n. 25 10.858–68: 253 12.595–603: 216 n. 42 Eclogues 1.68: 249 n. 12 2.56: 249 n. 11 4.6–7: 238 n. 39 Georgics 2.161–4: 123 (p.320) 3.75–88: 166 n. 73 4.559–66: 13

(3) BIBLICAL PASSAGES Page 27 of 28

 

Index Locorum 1 CORINTHIAN 23–4: 235 JOHN 6.53: 228 JOSIAH 7.21: 237 LUKE 2.7: 260 n. 36 21.1–4: 248, 258 MARK 12.41–4: 248, 258 MATTHEW 7.13: 261 n. 39 7.13–14: 251–2 n. 17 PSALMS 1.1: 236 51 [50].19: 237

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