Imagining Empire: Political Space in Hellenistic and Roman Literature 9783825367541, 3825367541

Table of contents :
Cover
Titel
Imprint
Table of Contents
Introduction: VICTORIA RIMELL: You Are Here: Encounters in Imperial Space
SUSAN STEPHENS: The Geopolitics of Imagining Ancient Alexandria
BENJAMIN ACOSTA-HUGHES: The Homeric Shore of Alexandria: A Narrative of a Culture in Motion
WILLIAM G. THALMANN: Space and the Imperial Imaginary in Apollonius’ "Argonautika"
MARKUS ASPER: Imagining Political Space: Some Patterns
INGO GILDENHARD: Space and Spin: Geopolitical Vistas in the 40s
THERESE FUHRER: ‘Leave the City, Catiline!’ – Sallust on Imperial Space and Outlawing
ULRICH SCHMITZER: Mapping Foundations: The Italian Network of City Foundations in the Poetic and Antiquarian Tradition
ELENA GIUSTI: Virgil’s Carthage: A Heterotopic Space of Empire
ALESSANDRO BARCHIESI: Colonial Readings in Virgilian Geopoetics: The Trojans at Buthrotum
ALEXANDER KIRICHENKO: "Beatus carcer / tristis harena": The Spaces of Statius’ "Silvae"
TOM GEUE: Free-Range, Organic, Locally-Sourced Satire: Juvenal Goes Global
Abbreviations
Bibliography Cited
Index locorum
Index rerum nominumque
Backcover

Citation preview

victoria rimell markus asper (Eds.)

isbn 978-3-8253-6754-1

Imagining Empire

his volume investigates space in Greek and Latin literature as a real and imaginary dimension in which social relations, identities, power and knowledge are materialized, represented and (re)performed. The twelve contributors focus on Hellenistic Alexandria and late Republican to early Imperial Rome, yet the essays range from Greece, Egypt, and Italy to the Black Sea, Asia, and North Africa, taking in Callimachus, Apollonius of Rhodes, Caesar, Sallust, Cicero, Virgil, Statius, and Juvenal along the way. As well as offering innovative interpretations of key texts from the third century BCE to the second century CE, the volume attempts to respond critically and imaginatively to the still-burgeoning body of work on space across the humanities in the wake of post-colonialist and post-structuralist thinking, and considers its potentially challenging implications for Classics as an evolving field of study.

rimell · asper (Eds.)

rimell · asper (Eds.) Imagining Empire

Imagining Empire

Political Space in Hellenistic and Roman Literature

b i b l i othe k de r k l assisc he n a lt e rt u msw isse nsc hafte n Herausgegeben von

j ürgen paul sc hwindt Neue Folge · 2. Reihe · Band 153

vict oria rimell markus as per (Eds.)

Imagining Empire Political Space in Hellenistic and Roman Literature

Universitätsverlag

w i nte r

Heidelberg

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar.

um s chlag bi l d Life on the Nile during the flood. Nilotic mosaic, floor of the artifical cave of Praeneste (Ausschnitt)

i s bn 978-3-8253-6754-1 Dieses Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. © 2o17 Universitätsverlag Winter GmbH Heidelberg Imprimé en Allemagne · Printed in Germany Umschlaggestaltung: Klaus Brecht GmbH, Heidelberg Druck: Memminger MedienCentrum, 87700 Memmingen Gedruckt auf umweltfreundlichem, chlorfrei gebleichtem und alterungsbeständigem Papier Den Verlag erreichen Sie im Internet unter: www.winter-verlag.de

Contents Acknowledgements

vii

List of Contributors

ix

Introduction VICTORIA RIMELL You Are Here: Encounters in Imperial Space

1

SUSAN STEPHENS The Geopolitics of Imagining Ancient Alexandria

11

BENJAMIN ACOSTA-HUGHES The Homeric Shore of Alexandria: A Narrative of a Culture in Motion

23

WILLIAM G. THALMANN Space and the Imperial Imaginary in Apollonius’ Argonautika

55

MARKUS ASPER Imagining Political Space: Some Patterns

63

INGO GILDENHARD Space and Spin: Geopolitical Vistas in the 40s

75

THERESE FUHRER ‘Leave the City, Catiline!’ – Sallust on Imperial Space and Outlawing

99

ULRICH SCHMITZER Mapping Foundations: The Italian Network of City Foundations in the Poetic and Antiquarian Tradition

111

ELENA GIUSTI Virgil’s Carthage: A Heterotopic Space of Empire

133

ALESSANDRO BARCHIESI Colonial Readings in Virgilian Geopoetics: The Trojans at Buthrotum

151

vi

Contents

ALEXANDER KIRICHENKO Beatus carcer / tristis harena: The Spaces of Statius’ Silvae

167

TOM GEUE Free-Range, Organic, Locally-Sourced Satire: Juvenal Goes Global

189

Abbreviations

217

Bibliography Cited

219

Index locorum

239

Index rerum nominumque

251

Acknowledgements This volume presents in revised form the papers delivered at a conference entitled ‘Imagining Spaces of Empire’ which took place at Humboldt-University at Berlin in May 2013. It was funded and organized by TOPOI II ‘Space and Knowledge in Ancient Civilisations’. Among the speakers was Ivana Petrovic who, to our regret, decided against publishing her paper with us; in addition to the speakers at the conference, Tom Geue was invited to contribute to the volume. The event was the second meeting on Greco-Latin poetry that was initiated by the Vienna Quartet (the first took place at Vienna University and its proceedings were published under the title “The Door Ajar” in 2013). We would like to extend sincere thanks to those people who helped organize and facilitate the conference, especially Dr. Arianna Zischow and Eva-Maria Mateo Decabo, and to all the speakers. Markus Asper has to thank TOPOI II for research leave in 2016 which greatly eased the emergence of this volume, and for funding our three brilliant research assistants, Janine Hoch, Markus Heim, and Jenny Teichmann who took great care in preparing the manuscript for print and did an especially great job with the indices. Many thanks also to the series editor at Universitätsverlag Winter, Jürgen Paul Schwindt, for accepting the volume and for his meticulous criticism. Victoria Rimell (Warwick) Markus Asper (Berlin)

List of Contributors Benjamin Acosta-Hughes is Professor and Chair of the Classics Department at the Ohio State University. He is author most recently of Arion’s Lyre: Archaic Lyric into Hellenistic Poetry (Princeton 2010) and (with Susan Stephens) Callimachus in Context: From Plato to the Augustan Poets (Cambridge 2015) as well as many articles, with a particular focus on Hellenistic poetry. Markus Asper is Professor of Greek at Humboldt University, Berlin. He has published on Hellenistic poetry, especially Callimachus, and the literatures of ancient Greek science. He is currently writing a book on narratives in science writing. Alessandro Barchiesi, Professor of Latin Literature at New York University, has published books and articles on Augustan poetry, Horace, Virgil and Ovid, on Imperial epic and on the ancient novel (a number of his papers are available chez academia.edu). He is the editor of a recently completed multi-author commentary on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and the author of Homeric Effects in Virgilian Narrative (Princeton 2014). Therese Fuhrer is Chair of Latin at the LMU Munich, and was previously Professor of Latin at the Universities of Trier, Zurich, Freiburg, and the Free University of Berlin. She is the author and editor of several books and has published on topics ranging from early and Hellenistic Greek poetry through Republican and Augustan poetry and prose to Augustine. She is currently engaged in a number of major research projects in the field of Neronian and Flavian literature, Roman rhetoric, and Late Antiquity. Tom Geue is a Research Fellow and Lecturer in Latin at the University of St Andrews. His work revolves around what it means to be an author under the Roman principate, and he is especially interested in anonymous and pseudonymous texts. He is currently polishing his doctoral thesis for publication (Satirist without Qualities: Juvenal and the Poetics of Anonymity), and working on a new monograph (The Muted Voice): both projects are interested in the special magic of the literary text as a technology of absence and anonymity. Ingo Gildenhard is Reader in Classics and the Classical Tradition at Cambridge University and a Fellow of King’s College Cambridge. He has published widely on Latin literature, Roman culture and the classical tradition, and is the author of The Classical Tradition: Art, Literature, Thought (with Michael Silk and Rosemary Barrow), Wiley-Blackwell 2014, Creative Eloquence: The Construction of

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Reality in Cicero’s Speeches, Oxford 2011, and Paideia Romana: Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, Cambridge 2007. Elena Giusti is Junior Research Fellow in Classics at St Johns College, Cambridge. She is currently working on a book on Carthage and the Punic Wars in Virgil’s Aeneid, and on historical and political ‘absent presences’ in the literature of the Augustan period. Alexander Kirichenko is a Heisenberg Fellow of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft at Humboldt University, Berlin. He has published two monographs (A Comedy of Storytelling: Theatricality and Narrative in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses and Lehrreiche Trugbilder: Senecas Tragödien und die Rhetorik des Sehens) together with a number of articles on Greek and Roman poetry, and co-edited (with Farouk Grewing and Benjamin Acosta-Hughes) The Door Ajar: False Closure in Greek and Roman Literature and Art. He is currently working on Callimachus and Theocritus. Victoria Rimell is Associate Professor of Latin at the University of Warwick. She has published books on Petronius, Ovid, Martial and the Ancient Novel, and is the author most recently of The Closure of Space in Roman Poetics: Empire’s Inward Turn (Cambridge, 2015). She is currently working on Senecan philosophy. Ulrich Schmitzer is Professor of Latin at Humboldt University, Berlin. He is author of Zeitgeschichte in Ovids Metamorphosen (Stuttgart: Teubner 1990), Velleius Paterculus und das Interesse an der Geschichte im Zeitalter des Tiberius (Heidelberg: Winter 2000) and Ovid. Eine Einführung (Hildesheim: Olms 22011). He has edited several books (among them Enzyklopädie der Philologie, Göttingen: Ruprecht 2013) and has been co-editor of Gymnasium. Zeitschrift für Kultur der Antike und Humanistische Bildung since 2002. He is currently completing a book on the perception of Roman topography in Latin poetry. Susan Stephens is Sara Hart Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Classics at Stanford University. Her work includes Ancient Greek Novels: The Fragments, co-authored with Jack Winkler (Princeton, 1995), Seeing Double: Intercultural Poetics in Ptolemaic Alexandria (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2003), Callimachus in Context. From Plato to Ovid (Cambridge, 2012) with Benjamin Acosta-Hughes, and Callimachus: The Hymns (Oxford, 2015). Her current project is a short book on the poets of Alexandria that incorporates the approaches of her earlier work. William Thalmann is Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. He has published on ancient drama, Greek epic poetry, class and ideology in ancient texts, and ancient slavery. His most recent book is Apollonius of Rhodes and the Spaces of Hellenism (Oxford University Press, 2011). He is currently working on a study of the poetry of Theocritus.

Introduction You Are Here: Encounters in Imperial Space Victoria Rimell As geographers Mike Crang and Nigel Thrift put it in a volume published back in 2000 (when the number of publications on space and spatiality across the humanities reached a millennial apex) “space is the everywhere of modern thought”.1 Since then, it has become somewhat of a cliché to refer at the start of such a volume to the later half of the twentieth century’s ‘spatial turn’ – the term used by Edward Soja in his 1989 book Postmodern Geographies to capture what Foucault had already perceived as a contemporary shift in cultural and intellectual focus from history (or time) to space, in the context of structuralism, postmodernism and late capitalism. Foucault’s official announcement of l’époque de l’espace in his 1967 lecture (belatedly published in 1984) has been much qualified and critiqued: as many have said, and as this volume also echoes, it makes no sense to talk about space as separate from time, or (as Soja and Lefebvre were among the first to emphasise) of ‘imagined’, ‘virtual’ or culturally constructed space as distinct from real, geographical space.2 Space has emerged as a central concern across the humanities precisely because we no longer construe it as a static, atemporal backdrop to the movement of human action, to cultural-political forces, to the flow of narrative, or to processes of self-fashioning. Rather, spaces of all kinds (geographical, geopolitical, architectural, urban, domestic, bodily, metaphorical, fantastic) are seen to be both complicit in and produced by those dynamic forces, which are more often varied, overlapping and rhizomatic than linear or two-dimensional. This understanding of space has brought together and fostered dialogue between geographers and philosophers, social scientists and philologists, historians and literary theorists.3 It has underpinned postcolonial studies of the ideological, social

1 2 3

Crang and Thrift 2000: 1. Foucault 1984, Soja 1989, Lefebvre 1991, cf. Bakhtin 1981: 84-258. For a useful and well-designed guide to the ways in which the work of 52 key thinkers from many different fields has contributed to the so-called ‘spatial turn’ in the social sciences and humanities, see Hubbard, Kitchin and Valentine 2004. See also Crampton and Elden 2007, and Warf and Arias 2008.

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and material structures of colonial power, and has framed all recent analysis of the imaginative geographies of empire on which colonial power relies.4 This volume situates itself broadly within the still burgeoning body of work across the humanities (and specifically in the context of the TOPOI research cluster based in Berlin) that investigates space as a real and imaginary dimension in which social relations, identities, power and knowledge are materialised, represented and (re)performed. Yet within that expansive frame, we also aim to make a small but distinctive contribution to the study of space within the field of classical philology, which thus far has tended either to focus specifically on narrative texts, with an emphasis on the critical tools and strategies of narratology (see especially Purves 2010, de Jong 2012, and Skempis-Ziogas 2014), or to focus on a single genre (see for example Paschalis and Frangoulidis 2002, Rehm 2002, Seaford 20125), or to zoom in exclusively on a single city (for example Edwards 1996 and Larmour-Spencer 2007 on Rome, after Nicolet 1991).6 This eclectic volume is concerned for the most part with literary texts, covering epic (Homer, Apollonius, Virgil), the epistle and oration (Cicero, Sallust), Roman satire (Juvenal), Hellenistic and Roman lyric, epigram and occasional poetry, plus historiography and drama, from archaic Greece to second century imperial Rome, but not primarily within a narratological frame. Many of the contributors (Acosta-Hughes, Barchiesi, Schmitzer, Stephens) are interested in material culture, in visual art and archaeological evidence, as well as in how texts of many different genres and registers function dynamically as political or geopolitical acts (see especially the papers by Gildenhard, Fuhrer, Giusti, Barchiesi and Kirichenko). They are all aware that to experience actual or imagined imperial space(s) as heterogeneous and metamorphic, malleable in the service of power, and as moving sets of relations with which all observers and commentators actively engage, is not to imply that such spaces are ‘empty’ cultural constructs. For classicists in particular, the contributors show, the topic of space in its postmodern configuration is an immensely fertile one in part because it facilitates discussion of what we (think we) know of the material and socio-political reality of the ancient world alongside detailed analysis of imaginative structures projected both by ancient texts and by the history of scholarship that has ensured those texts survival into the 21st century. As Edward

4

5

6

In Classics see especially the work of Barbara Goff (e.g. Goff 2005), Emily Greenwood (e.g. Greenwood 2010), Lorna Hardwick (e.g. Hardwick and Gillespie 2007) and Phiroze Vasunia (e.g. Vasunia 2013). Other recent work in Greek and Latin literature which is aware of and responds to debates on space (in the light of e.g. Bachelard 1957, Foucault 1977 and 1986, Said 1978 and 1993, Soja 1989 and 1996, Lefebvre 1991) includes Jaeger 1997, Barchiesi 2006, Bexley 2009, Lindheim 2010, Asper 2011, Jones 2011, Pogorzelski 2011, Thalmann 2011, Willis 2011, Gilhuly and Worman 2014, Keith 2014, Rimell 2015. For an astute overview of recent studies of space by classicists, from the point of view of a historian, see Scott 2012: 1-13.

Introduction

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Said put it in Culture and Imperialism, “Just as none of us is outside or beyond geography, none of us is completely free from the struggle over geography.”7 The interdisciplinary framework within which any new study of space in the ancient world must operate reminds us of the extent to which the literary imaginary interacts with, is shaped by and affects ‘real-world space’ and what might be identified as broader historical-political processes: such a project underscores that classical philologists can no longer justify isolating their endeavour from the ‘outside’ of material culture, of socio-political structures, or of the project of interpretation more generally. Likewise, historians and archaeologists must also be literary critics, and all classicists − as they attempt to analyse texts, objects, sites and themes through the multiple filters of cultural and political history and of classical scholarship itself − are always already doing ‘reception’. Indeed, the topic of imperial space in the ancient world brings to the fore a highly provocative nexus of issues in classics that are touched on throughout this volume. To begin with, classicists exploring the concept of imperial space are overtly entwined in (critiques of) the role classics has played in the Western tradition in perpetuating and celebrating imperial power, and are especially invested in the on-going project across disciplines to disentangle Western geography from colonialism and imperialism, and to handle the patent ironies of post-colonial discourse. Secondly, our field has caught up, and is perhaps still catching up, with a body of work that defines itself as or is fed into what we might call postmodern geography just at a time when Classics itself as a subject is undergoing a rapid metamorphosis which can be mapped spatially and is as we speak reconfiguring intellectual space. While ancient Greek is effectively no longer taught in high schools (the exception being Italian licei classici, select British private schools and a few German Humanistische Gymnasien), Latin is being squeezed out of the curriculum at an increasing pace in Europe; yet while all things Western, especially in US and increasingly in UK universities, are hurriedly being ousted by the more appealing label of ‘global’, the study of what is known as ‘Western Classics’ in China and in Asia generally is growing, and – alongside the continuing widening both of the classical canon and the reach of reception studies into areas such as South America and India8 – will undoubtedly revolutionise the way we think about the subject and our own sense of identification with it in coming years. Much of the ever-growing body of work on space and spatiality since the 1980s has highlighted its genesis in a response to contemporary globalisation or more generally – as May and Thrift put it – to our “increasingly complex and differentiated social world”,9 as well as to the ways in which post-Newtonian science, the social sciences, cultural studies and philosophy have articulated both the empirical

7 8 9

Said 1993: 7. Cf. Laird 2006 and Vasunia 2013. May and Thrift 2001: i.

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reality and our experiences of that world. The intellectual assumptions and trajectories of classicists are of course just as immersed as those of scholars in other fields in these rapidly evolving discourses, debates, models and actual geopolitical circumstances. But postmodern geography offers particular implications and stimulations for the study of the ancient world and for classical scholarship that remain underexplored. As well as contributing to developing a much wider and more detailed historical account of conceptions and representations of imperial space in the Western tradition (most studies of specifically imperial space have focused on European empire building between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries10), the contributors to this volume draw on postmodern thought to knock perspectives on ancient imperial space off their conventional axis. In plunging into the moving, three-dimensional complexity of ancient space (and of the process of approaching and mapping its multiple configurations), they veer away from more two-dimensional schemata which have tended to rely on a series of (ancient as well as modern) spatial dichotomies: centre and periphery, civilisation and wilderness, the familiar and unknown, East and West, citizen and exile.11 The volume begins with two papers (Stephens, Acosta-Hughes) which scrutinise the weight of many of these oppositions as they emerge in both Hellenistic culture and the classical tradition, asking what it is for us – as archaeologists, art historians, or philologists working on Greek texts – to know ancient Alexandria, a site which exemplifies the extent to which the ancient world is fragmented, submerged, faded or completely opaque to modern interpreters, and accessible only through stratum upon stratum of representation. Much of what was ancient Alexandria has long been underwater, and these papers dive deep in their attempt to revisit and critique Hellenocentric viewpoints on the city, and to re-examine (faint traces of) Hellenistic literature’s intense engagement with Egypt. As we move on through Hellenistic literature, William Thalmann and Markus Asper negotiate space as an intricate network of flows and of layered temporalities, even or especially in works (such as Apollonius’ Argonautica) which take us on a linear journey. The sense of space in literature as continually moving and involving manifold pathways as the reader or listening public actively engages with its narratives and designs emerges in many of the papers: to do philology in the light of postmodern geography is to approach ancient texts not as static artefacts offering themselves up to archaeological investigation but as live realms in which the coordinates of culture are being not just visualised and represented but mediated, shifted, warped or dreamt up anew. Thus for Therese Fuhrer and Ingo

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E.g. Said 1978, Edney 1990, Ogborn and Withers 2004, Butlin 2009. Cf. Skempis and Ziogas 2014: 6-7 on “the dichotomy between East and West”, the “polarity between center and periphery”, and “the contradistinctions between war and peace, village and city …, national identity and ethnic otherness … civilization and wilderness … and indoor and outside space” in Greek and Roman epic.

Introduction

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Gildenhard, Sallust and Cicero involve us in their textual mapping of political topographies which are energised – even activated – by incongruities, overlaps and insecurities, while for Tom Geue, satire’s own fleshy borders, at once rigid and flaccid, solid and porous, encompass and produce empire as a churning, corporeal flow that we cannot not go with (or be engulfed by) as we view, hear and speak this poetry. New understandings of space, approached differently by each of the contributors, prompt fresh perspectives on the relationship between content and form, text and world: the volume as a whole implicitly reframes the study and interpretation of ancient texts as the process of entering into a series of open-ended encounters or conversations which may impact on our experience of modern as well as ancient worlds. Examining (intervening) in such spatialities is an epistemological challenge in part because it makes us acutely aware of the extent to which the discourses both of imperial power and knowledge and of classical scholarship rely on loaded spatial metaphors. It reveals, too, the inadequacy of academic language as a tool to communicate the non-linear or multidimensional, as well as the impossibility of getting outside a critical idiom of margins, fields, borders, faultlines and thresholds that is endemic in academic discourse across the humanities: we necessarily project mappings of our own critical discourse in the process of analysing ancient representations and uses of space. As Ulrich Schmitzer argues in his paper, it is important to interrogate the often simplistic structures and perspectives that we project through this standard vocabulary. Schmitzer discusses how we tend uncritically to mirror key elite texts in polarising Rome-as-epicentre and ‘outside’ Rome – Italy, the provinces, empire’s outer borders. His aim is to shift our focus, to investigate how provincial towns like Patavium in the North of Italy had their own sophisticated stories of identity and foundation with which Rome engaged through the Republican and into the Augustan period, but was also motivated to suppress. Similarly, in his paper on Virgil’s Aeneid, which has many points of contact with Elena Giusti’s paper on Virgil’s oneiric Carthage, Alessandro Barchiesi suggests that we can read the ‘path’ of this intensively ‘mapped’ epic as east-bound as well as west-bound: in this re-reading, we are encouraged to adopt multiple, potentially conflicting spatiotemporal perspectives simultaneously, so that Trojan exile is reminiscent of future Roman colonisation, already tracing or ‘re-enacting’ first century geopolitics at points of nodal tension in Rome’s expanding empire. Rather than homing in directly on the epicentres of (the study of) the GrecoRoman world – Athens and Rome – contributors continually come back to these key sites from elsewhere: from Egypt (Stephens, Acosta-Hughes) and Republican Italy (Fuhrer, Gildenhard, Schmitzer), from Nicopolis (Barchiesi) and the Black Sea (Thalmann) but also from North Africa (Giusti, on Virgil), and Persia (Geue, on Juvenal). Through a range of tangled and by no means harmonious cultural strategies, imperial space(s) can be seen to shrink, expand, move and overlap within urban landscapes and within the virtual territories of literary texts: Augustus creates the illusion of an Alexandria imported into and transforming his new

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monumental Rome (Acosta-Hughes); Virgil’s Carthage is a site of intense spatiotemporal dislocation, both Rome’s oriental, feminine other and its mirror image (Giusti), and Domitian’s boundless empire in Statius’ Silvae can only be grasped and fully controlled when visualised in a series of microcosms which betray the fragility, as much as the strength, of totalising power (Kirichenko). Rather than reaffirming the extent to which Rome’s spatial dominion under the Principate is enacted and monumentalised in Augustan and imperial poetry, the essays in the second half of this volume pivot around points of crisis and instability where actual and virtual imperial space is taking shape, and being shaped, amid a swirl of contested memories, desires and myths. The papers fall into three sections and are arranged in a roughly chronological pattern, beginning with Hellenistic Alexandria, extending through Republican Rome, and culminating in Augustan and Imperial Rome. Susan Stephens’ paper discusses how a series of ever-evolving competing narratives, each with their own political or intellectual agenda, bring both ancient and modern Alexandria into being. She views Alexandria as a test-case of modern classicists’ Hellenocentrism (it has often been regarded as a Greek colony on the edge of Egypt, of interest largely for its role in the history of Greece and Rome), and also as a fascinating border-city where Western academic discourse meets both a lingering orientalising imaginary and the rapidly changing political exigencies of twenty-first century Egypt. The ways in which archaeologists and classical historians imagine ancient Alexandria, Stephens reminds us, are inseparable from the history of how the city has been represented, and cultural biases and objectives will inevitably colour any view, however grounded in scientific evidence. Yet in juxtaposing disparate narratives and worlds that are rarely considered together, and in reviewing key evidence on Alexandria’s foundations, its temples and its famous library, Stephens widens our view, and gives us tools to critique and connect radically different readings of this liminal ‘city of dreams’. Benjamin Acosta-Hughes’s contribution is also focused on Alexandria and on Egypt’s Mediterranean shore more generally, both as they are represented in archaic and Hellenistic poetry and in Greco-Roman culture from Homeric epic to Augustan Rome, and as they are conjured up as places of mystery and alterity through the Western tradition. Acosta-Hughes takes as his starting point the black granite statue of a Ptolemaic queen (thought by some to be Arsinoe-Aphrodite, from the temple of Zephyrium) recently discovered by archaeologists at a site now under water at the Canopic mouth of the Nile. The statue’s apparent blending of Greco-Roman and Ptolemaic features makes it an intriguing symbol, he suggests, of the liminal site itself, construed as a threshold and point of intense interaction between Europe and Africa. This paper takes us on a wide-ranging tour of Greek literature from the Odyssey, Iliad, Herodotus’ Histories and Euripides’ Helen, to Callimachus and Theocritus, tracing the divinities and myths that spin connections and contrasts between Greece and Egypt and contribute to a developing imaginary of a ‘Greek’ Alexandria. Finally, we are transported (via Julius Caesar’s sojourn

Introduction

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in Alexandria from 48-47 BCE, and Cleopatra VII’s stay in Rome in or from 46 BCE) into mid-first century BCE Rome, where we see the first clear architectural markers of Rome’s appropriation of – but also its multifaceted, creative exchange with – Egypt, a politically highly charged space throughout the late Republic and into the early Empire. By the time Augustus imports large obelisks and other monuments to Rome, alongside his building program in Egypt itself, an ‘Egyptianising’ politics functions not only as a spectacular assertion of Roman imperial power, but also as a means to bridge distances in the geographical imagination, and to evoke a sense of continuity, even fusion, between Egyptian Rome and Roman Egypt. William Thalmann analyses space and place in Apollonius’ Argonautica from a post-colonial perspective, and suggests that the text both reproduces and challenges colonial constructions of Greek imperial space. The presence of the Argonauts at a site, he notes, very often involves imagining (and implicitly legitimating or naturalising) future Greek colonisation: local history is buried, the colonised are represented as consenting to and benefiting from their new rulers, and Greek mastery of space is associated with civility and enlightenment. But Apollonius, Thalmann argues here, also explores the limits and precariousness of Greek conquest of space as the Argonauts wander into increasingly alien geography. We are transported into space in which the old binaries of Greek and barbarian, self and other, begin to lose their monumental power, and in which the colonised can be heard to speak their story. Markus Asper explores various visual models for understanding strategies of configuring imperial space in Homer’s Iliad, Aeschylus’ Agamemnon and Callimachus’ Aetia. While we cannot recover exactly how ancient readers of these texts may have visualised Greek geographical coordinates, modern diagrammatic representations of the relationships between such coordinates as they are laid out in poetic narratives reveal a number of fascinating patterns that suggest specific possibilities for ancient imaginary geographies. It is only through detailed, creative reading of these texts, Asper argues, that we are able to see geographical designs – circles, paths, webs – which potentially do important political and/or (to use Barchiesi’s useful term) geopoetic work. Callimachus comes to exemplify the extent to which Hellenistic poetry can be seen to be a privileged medium for generating and vivifying political, cultural and ethnic alliances or interactions. Ingo Gildenhard’s paper deals with Roman geographies of power in the 40s BCE in Caesar’s Bellum Civile and Cicero’s Letters, and specifically with how these texts perform and materialise in their very structure, rhythm and diction a series of geopolitical maps. In the Bellum Civile, Caesar’s movement through space (first Italy, then beyond) coincides with and traces his transforming political priorities and evolving identity from republican-conservative to (more or less explicitly) autocratic leader. BC 1 amounts to a master-class in political spin, manufacturing and asserting control over a virtual process whereby the violation of boundaries is airbrushed away and the exploded geo-political coordinates of the

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res publica are swiftly replaced by a new, reassuring, civilised order. The second part of the paper investigates how Cicero positions himself within Caesar’s world in, and by means of, the epistolary networks and mediations of his correspondence. The focus here is on how Cicero attempts to maintain a notional ‘republic of letters’ through epistolary exchanges with exiled republicans, with the aim of reviving a res publica in Rome itself. At the same time, the letters chronicle the gradual autocratic deformation of the civic culture and public sphere that accompanies Caesar’s rise to dictatorship and the emergence of a ‘court society’. The letter form itself catalyses the tracking and remaking of perspectives on an emerging, transformed political reality, shaping reorientations, negotiations, compromises and qualifications, as well as an uneasy movement (as letters are sent back and forth) between a chaotic present and a hoped for yet fading future. Therese Fuhrer focuses on Sallust’s first Catilinarian oration and on the polarising ‘moral topography’ envisaged in the wake of Catiline’s expulsion from Rome in 63 BCE. Sallust’s text, Fuhrer argues, offers a subtle political commentary on the complexity and inherent contradictions of Roman imperial space, and on the impossibility of reducing that space to a flat, reassuring map in which loyal members of the state and public enemies are clearly separated within a precisely demarcated terrain. While influential individuals and groups assert the power to remake geography in real and symbolic terms, the ‘counter-site’ of Sallust’s Rome (and of his text) also calls those claims into question, revealing the space of empire as constituted by multiple overlapping interests and viewpoints. The outlawing of Catiline, as a result, is destined to fail symbolically and to expose the fiction of absolute security. Ulrich Schmitzer’s investigation of what we know of foundation narratives developed in Italy outside of Rome from around the third century BCE onwards performs its own remapping of ancient Italian geography, and of modern scholarly constructions of Roman-Italian space. Focusing on the role of Aeneas’ companion Antenor in foundation narratives and on the construction of Hellenic-Trojan space, he reveals a complex cartography in which Italic communities and cities fed off, transformed and competed against each other’s aetiologies. Towns like Patavium (modern Padua) had their own historiography and complex stories of foundation, most of which have been lost: yet the project of uncovering and assembling their traces reveals the extent to which dominant Rome-centred narratives were also bolstered by the subtle or not so subtle erasure of competing towns’ claims to significance. Rome is to some extent a special case, but its apparent exclusivity is also misleading, concealing a dynamic network of interrelationships, alliances and points of conflict between towns jostling for unique prestige, in which mythic or ‘historical’ tales of origin fundamentally shape the experience of space and place. More generally, Schmitzer (alongside several other contributors) suggests that foundation myths need their own internal contradictions as well as doubles, antitheses and competitors, in order to constitute themselves as vibrant and reperformable.

Introduction

9

Alessandro Barchiesi’s reassessment of what he terms Virgilian ‘geopoetics’ takes us into the Augustan age and into Roman empire proper. This paper examines the Aeneid as a poem obsessed with location and engaged in drafting – through the Trojans’ itinerary – an intricate and ever-evolving map of the Roman world in the first century BCE. Focusing on the theme of colonisation, Barchiesi reads the Trojan colony at Buthrotum in book three as a test-case for a key phenomenon in the Odyssean half of the Aeneid whereby sites that resonate as ethically, culturally and politically complex for contemporary Rome become poetic laboratories for producing and contesting versions of (proto-)Roman identity. The coast of Epirus, paradigmatically (and, as this paper shows, archaeological evidence from the area can help us better appreciate the intense cultural interactions happening here in the second and first centuries BCE as they emerge transformed in Virgil’s narrative), comes to stand for the experiment of a Roman colony in Greece, and for the transformation of the Trojan exiles into settlers and colonisers. The result is not so much a reaffirmation of a ‘propagandistic’ Aeneid, as a rethinking of the extent to which this text explores the potential pressures that colonisation, or Rome’s reproduction of itself, put on the security and stability of the imperial project. Elena Giusti’s paper on Virgil’s and Foucault’s Carthage works in tandem with Barchiesi’s analysis of the Aeneid, and recalls Susan Stephens’ heterotopic Alexandria. Like Alexandria, Carthage is a coastal city that survives in Western literature and art as a template for the colonial imagination. Giusti takes up art historian Kay Dian Kruz’s suggestion that in his three ‘Carthaginian’ paintings William Turner portrays the city as a Foucaultian ‘heterotopia’, and proceeds to examine in detail how Foucault’s concept might illuminate our understanding of Virgil’s representation of Carthage in Aeneid 1 and 4. Curiously, Foucault was himself living in the town of Sidi Bou Saïd in the upper Gulf of Carthage when he wrote ‘Des espaces autres’, the essay in which he elaborates his definition of heterotopic spaces, while his partner Daniel Defert described the experience of writing there at the time as a ‘lived heterotopia’. Through Foucault, Giusti develops a close reading of Virgil’s Carthage episode that is fully alert to its numerous temporal and spatial contradictions, its almost unchartable layers of history, artifice and illusion, and to its complex and paradoxical relationship with (Virgilian and Augustan constructions of) Rome. Alexander Kirichenko transports us into the late first century, and into the intense domestic and urban enclosures of Statius’ Silvae: the parrot’s cage in Silvae 2.4, which as the bird chirps back its master’s words conjures the illusion of empire miniaturised and enclosed as well as the poet’s confinement within literary tradition; the Flavian amphitheatre in Silvae 2.5, a parallel microcosmic prison for a different sort of animal in which we see boundless imperial power distilled and honed, in disquieting contrast to the safe private domains depicted in 2.4, 2.2 and elsewhere; and the same arena in Silvae 1.6, when it becomes the site for an enormous Saturnalian feast given by Domitian, featuring exotic foods and entertainers

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from all over the empire. Kirichenko discusses in detail the tensions and insecurities that link Statius’ representation of private and public spaces in empire. Both ‘arenas’ engineer reassuring instantiations of an imperial power to demarcate and define, and at the same time operate as overly dense constructions whose very intensity and ambition renders them brittle, perhaps doomed to self-destruct. Tom Geue brings us up to the beginning of the second century and to the limen of this volume. He discusses how the poetics of Roman satire reproduce the imperial logic of urbs as orbis, and how Juvenal in particular, in the last two poems of each of his last two books, copes with cramming vast imperial space into its urban arena only to shrink back from it. The question, as Geue analyses in detail, is whether this reactionary localism can sustain satire’s trademark intensity, and whether indeed this idiosyncratic twist on the intensifying dynamic of imperial retreat is set up to inspire empire’s (and satire’s) monstrous revenge. That this volume’s final threshold takes the form of an open question reflects the experimental spirit and ambitious scope of the conference in Berlin where most of the essays collected here were first given as papers. The book as a whole traces a maze of paths through ancient imperial space that does not aim comprehensively to map a field of study, but rather to suggest new routes into understanding what are fast becoming familiar issues, tropes, vistas and dynamic structures.

The Geopolitics of Imagining Ancient Alexandria Susan Stephens Imagining ancient Alexandria presents an unusually difficult challenge, and not simply because so much of that ancient city has been destroyed. The greater obstacle is that unlike an Athens or a Rome, Alexandria lies outside of the intellectual world in which modern classical scholars have been formed, while for Egyptian scholars the city’s ancient Greek past has given way to an Arab/Muslim, and therefore much later, narrative. Moreover, Alexandria’s spatial and political dislocation from its Macedonian-Greek origins manifests itself as a recurring liminality: classical scholars only consider the city as it impacts the stories of Greece or Rome, and when they do look at Alexandria itself it is often regarded as not in Egypt, but merely ad Aegyptum – a Greek colony, like Cyrene, simply perched on the edge of an older and fundamentally alien culture, and ignoring that older culture as best it could.1 Modern Alexandria suffers a similar fate. It is often described as ʻcosmopolitanʼ – code for the very large non-Muslim populations of Greeks, Syrians, Turks, and Jews, who have been essential players in its history for millennia.2 For the West, modern Alexandria is the city of Constantine Cavafy and Laurence Durrell, a city of foreigners, outside of time, named a “city of memory” or a “city of dreams”.3 But this very liminality made it an ideal location for Hosni Mubarak to exhibit his pro-western credentials by building the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, a new Alexandrian library in 2001, in a location as close as (mainly western) archaeologists could determine to the site of the original. This new construction received qualified praise from presses in Western Europe and the United States at the same time that it was ignored by most Arab nations. Critics, even in the state-controlled Egyptian press, saw it as a waste of resources far better spent in alleviating the crippling poverty engulfing the Egyptian state.4

1 2 3 4

See e.g. Green 1996: 3-4. The evidence Green cites is Roman, not Ptolemaic. See Hala Halim’s trenchant commentary on Alexandrian cosmopolitanism as a product of “Eurocentric colonial discourse”, in Halim 2013: 3. E.g. Haag 2004 or Hughes’ TWC broadcast: Alexandria: City of Dreams. See also Green 1996: 1-5. Stephens 2010: 268.

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Thus how one imagines an ancient space depends, in the first instance, on what evidence is available, how that evidence is filtered, what subset of ancients is permitted to speak, and which moderns are doing the imagining. While in an ideal world objective scholarly inquiry should rise above cultural particularity, this ideal is by no means easy to achieve – scholars with a stake in imagining an ancient Alexandria will inevitably operate within a series of disciplinary boundaries and unexamined cultural biases. In what follows I examine how various modern scholarly constituencies themselves imagine an ancient Alexandria and how this plays out in selecting and interpreting evidence. I am not interested in adjudicating or reconciling these disparate narratives, so much as recording their existence, for they usually operate independently of each other, and within milieus that rarely intersect. The discussion is organized around three key elements of the ancient city – its origins, its temples, and its library, and limited to two groups – scholars of Greece and scholars of ancient Egypt – though it could easily include the Jews and the Romans and their representative scholarly communities as well (see, for example, note 10, below). Thanks to the efforts of maritime archaeologists, the last twenty years have produced an extraordinary amount of material from the harbor areas of Alexandria – from the vicinity of Pharos, excavated by Yves Empereur, and the palace quarters, excavated by Franck Goddio: statuary, inscribed blocks, and other objects that have lain within the harbor since at least the great earthquake that finally toppled the lighthouse in 1303 CE, and quite possibly even longer.5 An unexpected feature of these discoveries has been the extent to which the recovered material is Egyptian: these are large objects like sphinxes and colossal statues of pharaohs as well as inscriptions and smaller objects. Many are inscribed with names of earlier pharaohs, but other objects would seem to be post-pharaonic. The finds are sufficiently substantial and widely distributed that they cannot be accounted for as the result of shipwreck or of individuals tossing unwanted objects into the harbor. They must at some stage have made a visible impact on the landscape, and their existence prompts the questions: when were they brought there? By whom? Egyptians? The first Ptolemies? The later Ptolemies? The Romans? Unfortunately maritime archaeology cannot tell us how long these items have been submerged, so how the finds are interpreted depends, in large part, on how the questions raised above are answered. To see how this plays out in existing scholarship let us first consider narratives of the city’s origins. 1 The Origins of the City For Egyptologists Alexandria had a pre-Greek history. It was either a series of small villages or one large settlement, called Rhakotis, in origin either a military 5

See Nur 2010: 134-35.

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fortification to protect against incursions of Libyans to the west or raiders from the sea, or it was a trading port. About this region Alan Rowe, for example, in his 1953 survey of Dynastic sites wrote: [The area] was a strong frontier fort from at least the middle of the 18 th dynasty, around 1500 BC […] and in the reign of Ramesses II was still a great fort, a fort which remained with buildings until the arrival of Alexander the Great, when [it] became the western suburb of the new city.6

For Egyptologists, even if they debate the date of such a foundation, or its size – was it a military outpost, a series of small settlements, or a much larger town? – its Egyptian origin is not in question. Nor was its name: Re-kd (Ῥακῶτις in Greek transliteration), which dates to the Dynastic period and remained the official toponym for the Greek city in Demotic documents like the Satrap decree of 311 BCE or in the archive of Hor.7 Rhakotis then would seem to guarantee a pre-Alexandrian existence for the city. Although Hellenistic Greek writers do not use this name, Strabo (17.1.6), writing at the beginning of the Roman Empire, regarded Rhakotis as the name of the Egyptian quarter of Alexandria. As it happens, a good portion of the harbor finds – those near Pharos – lie close to the site where this quarter seems to have been located. Their discovery then would appear to support the thesis that a local Egyptian population was already present when Alexander arrived, and that it was of some size and material presence. In this scenario, these objects were either allowed to remain in situ (or at least above ground) to adorn the emerging Greek city, or they were dumped in the harbor area to build the Heptastadion – the quay that connected the mainland to the island of Pharos. Which alternative we choose is of some consequence for imagining the new city. The Greek narrative of Alexandria’s origins is a marked contrast. Alexander founded the city either as a result of a prophecy (Alexander Romance 1.33.2) or a dream (Plutarch, Life of Alexander, 26.4-9); he chose the empty site across from Pharos for his new city, and laid out its perimeter himself (Arrian 1.5.1, Curtius 4.8.1). Alexander founded it; Greek architects designed it; there is no mention of previously existing Egyptians, either people or monuments. Because he cites supposedly trustworthy sources like Ptolemy I, Arrian’s account is unquestioned by modern historians, yet he wrote at least five centuries later than the city’s foundation, and his sources were not necessarily without their own biases. (For example, Ptolemy I promoted the cult of Alexander, having diverted his corpse from its journey to the Siwah oasis to Memphis in Egypt; 8 it would have been in his best interests to promote Alexander as city founder in the Greek mode and to gloss over

6 7 8

Alan Rowe 1953: 137. Ray 1976, where throughout Alexandria is Re-kd. See the index, 184-85. See Erskine 2002: 163-79.

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prior settlement.) What historians do question is the importance and/or existence of the prior Egyptian settlement called Rhakotis.9 Recently the Demotist Mark DePauw has suggested that the root of the name Rhakotis could mean “under construction”; this philological observation was developed by M. Chauveau to argue that Egyptians had no previous stake in this location, but were brought there to work on the new city, which in their own language they simply called “construction site”, and the name stuck – perhaps even as a native joke or expression of contempt.10 Thus the city can be imagined as wholly Greek, and the native populations, to the extent that they existed, were never more than the itinerant workers necessary for its large scale building projects. Maritime archaeologists have not resolved this matter. Although they have discovered evidence for human occupation on the site for over a millennium and confirmed the presence of “ceramic sherds [and] lithic fragments from Middle and Upper Egypt”11, far from settling the question, they have introduced new elements, or rather continued to consider an older hypothesis: whether the main actors were Minoans, Greeks or Cretans.12 They write: Further exploratory work is now required to determine who these early settlers may have been, whether Egyptian, Greek, Minoan, or other, where they settled and the nature of their occupation.13

What does this mean for the harbor finds of Egyptian materials? If Rhakotis is no more than a “construction site”, or a Minoan, or even an earlier Greek site, then these objects could not have been there when Alexander arrived, but were later imported. Then the question becomes: who brought them, which leads to a consideration of the Ptolemies themselves. Did they acquire these Egyptian monuments, and if so how early? The dates matter – when Yves Empereur discovered a colossal statue of a Ptolemy as pharaoh, he identified it as Ptolemy II, and suggested in more than one place, that a set of colossi of Ptolemy II as Pharaoh and

9 10

11 12 13

See e.g. Fraser 1972, vol, 2: 8-9 (notes 20-22). Chauveau 1999: 4-5. However, John Baines (2003: 61-63) disputed their claim on the linguistic grounds that the word did not have the form of a newly coined toponym. Further arguments supporting Baines, on the basis of comparison with other Ptolemaic toponyms, may be found in Mueller 2006:11-15. The cultural stakes in this seemingly trivial argument about a name can also be seen in Giambetti 2009: 26-27; she finds it necessary to remove an earlier Egyptian presence in Alexandria in order to promote an early (fourth cent. BCE) date for the presence of Jews in the city (and in the area of Rhakotis). Stanley and Landau 2006: 49. See Fraser 1972 for the “Minoan hypothesis”. Cf. Stanley and Landau 2006. .

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another set of Arsinoe as Isis would have lined the Heptastadion.14 If he was correct, this would have made the early city very Egyptian looking indeed. But most classical scholars do not accept Empereur’s dating; both the male and female colossi have been reassigned to the second century BCE or later, on the basis of hair and clothing styles.15 There are analogous finds of pharaonica near the palace quarter, along the eastern harbor of the city. Much of this material has been relocated and repurposed from the Egyptian temple city of Heliopolis. Jean Yoyotte and Franck Goddio are agnostic about the dates at which the relocations occurred – they might have been early Ptolemaic; Paul Stanwick makes a case for late Ptolemaic and Roman.16 Thus it was the last Ptolemies, if not Cleopatra herself, and/or Egypt’s Roman conquerors who adorned their palace areas with sphinxes and other native arts. By this reckoning, it was part of the later Ptolemies’ ideological repositioning of themselves as Egyptian to curry favor with the natives.17 And so the imagined city remains Greek in its formative stages and only with the later and decadent Ptolemies or even the Romans do the Egyptian artifacts begin to creep into the landscape. 2 Temple Foundation Now let us turn to a consideration of the early city’s temples and its gods. Greek scholars consistently quote Arrian (3.1.5) and they unconsciously imagine a typical Greek city filled with temples to the Olympian deities: καὶ ἔδοξεν αὐτῷ ὁ χῶρος κάλλιστος κτίσαι ἐν αὐτῷ πόλιν καὶ γενέσθαι ἂν εὐδαίμονα τὴν πόλιν. πόθος οὖν λαμβάνει αὐτὸν τοῦ ἔργου, καὶ αὐτὸς τὰ σημεῖα τῇ πόλει ἔθηκεν, ἵνα τε ἀγορὰν ἐν αὐτῇ δείμασθαι ἔδει καὶ ἱερὰ ὅσα καὶ θεῶν ὧντινων, τῶν μὲν Ἑλληνικῶν,Ἴσιδος δὲ Αἰγυπτίας, καὶ τὸ τεῖχος ᾗ περιβεβλῆσθαι. He [Alexander] decided that the site was the fairest in which to found a city, and that the city would prosper. A longing for the task seized him, and he himself established the main points of the city – where the agora should be constructed, and how many temples there should be, and of which gods, those of the Greek gods and of Egyptian Isis – and what the course of the city walls should be.

But what does Arrian actually say? He is certain about Isis, but the language about the Greek gods is vague. He makes no effort to identify them when writing in the second century CE, and earlier writers, including Strabo, were not more informative; Strabo could only describe what he saw a few years after Augustus’ defeat of 14 15 16 17

See e.g. the interview on Nova quoted in Stephens 2010: 277. Stanwick 2002: 17-18. Goddio and Clauss 2006: 370-82; Stanwick 2002: 19. See Arnold 1999: 209-224 on temple construction under the last Ptolemies.

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Antony and Cleopatra, and apart from a passing mention of the Serapeum (17.1.10) and the temple of Arsinoe-Aphrodite at Cape Zephyrium (17.1.16), the few temples he describes are not early Ptolemaic. (The Timonium, for example, was built at the behest of Marc Antony.) The earliest information of what temples to Greek divinities may have stood in early Alexandria comes from Callimachus. If we take the scholium to his Hymn to Demeter as evidence that the mise en scène of that hymn was Alexandria18, then there must have been a Thesmophorion in his lifetime. Polybius (15.29.8) does indeed testify to this temple at the end of the third century, but Neil Hopkinson, in his commentary on the Demeter Hymn, has dismissed the possibility of an Alexandrian location.19 Although Peter Fraser, in his magisterial study of Ptolemaic Alexandria, asserts that “the history of Olympian deities in Alexandria began with an act of the Founder himself” (vol. 1, p. 193), quoting the passage of Arrian given above, by his own testimony the evidence to support such a history is not robust. These are direct quotes from Fraser’s subsequent narrative: “Zeus himself is not well represented in surviving dedications from Alexandria” (vol. 1, p. 194); “Zeus’s consort, Hera, has left very few traces in the capital” (vol. 1, p. 195); “Equally scanty are surviving references to Athena, and to Apollo and Artemis” (vol. 1, p. 195). When the Olympians do emerge they are identified with the Ptolemies: if a statue of Zeus Soter stood atop the Lighthouse, it was probably identified with Ptolemy I, who with his wife Berenice I was deified as the Savior Gods (Theoi Soteres).20 An early Ptolemaic temple to Aphrodite is attested at Cape Zephyrium, though all the Greek poets who mention it – Posidippus, Callimachus, probably Theocritus in Idyll 15, and Hedylus21 – indicate that it was really a temple to Arsinoe II, who had been associated with the goddess, as Arsinoe-Aphrodite.22 Arsinoe also had a mortuary temple, built by her brother-husband, Ptolemy II, and apparently mentioned, again by Callimachus, in his Apotheosis for Arsinoe (fr. 394 Pf.). The temple was well enough known in the Roman period that Pliny claims Ptolemy II had an obelisk imported from nearby Heliopolis to grace it.23 Another deity, though only half-

18 19 20 21 22

23

For the scholium see Pfeiffer 1949-53, vol. 2: 77. Hopkinson 1984: 32-39. See Fraser 1972, vol.1: 18-19 for the vexed question of to whom the Lighthouse was dedicated. Posidippus, epp. 39, 116, 119 A-B; Callimachus, ep. 5 Pf. = 14 G-P and Aetia, fr. 110 Pf., Hedylus 4 G-P. The recent find of a black granite torso of a queen/goddess in the harbor near this site generated the same disagreements about date: Yoyotte 2006: 173-75 argues for an identification with Arsinoe II-Aphrodite; Albersmeier in Robinson and Wilson 2006: 196198 thinks it represents a much later queen, possibly Cleopatra VII. McKenzie 2007: 51 provides the standard, and almost unbelievable, account of this mortuary temple to Arsinoe II. It supposedly had a magnetic roof and an iron statue to give the appearance of Arsinoe ascending.

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Olympian, Dionysus, is very prominent in the account of the Ptolemaia that is found in Athenaeus and attributed to Callisthenes, but there is no hint of a temple in that very long description.24 In fact, no temple is mentioned at all in Callisthenes’ account. There seems to have been a shrine to Thetis on Pharos – or at least that is one way of understanding a fragmentary passage of Callimachus’ Apotheosis of Arsinoe (fr. 228.15 Pf.). But the fact remains that – Alexander the Founder’s intentions notwithstanding – no Olympian patron deity is ever attested for the early city and no remains of temples to any of these gods have ever been identified.25 The Greek narrative about local Egyptian worship is best stated by Peter Fraser: “Although Alexandria had a large native population, this has left virtually no trace in the field of religion.”26 This despite Arrian’s remark that the Founder established a temple to Egyptian Isis – the only deity Arrian identifies by name – information that is also found in the much later opening of the Alexander Romance. If one of Alexander’s founding acts was the building of a temple to Isis, this surely presupposes a population for whom it was a cult center. And the implication within the Alexander Romance is that he built it for local Egyptians already resident, not a population that he anticipated would emigrate from the chora. A festival to Isis was certainly celebrated in the city in 256 BCE, because Ptolemy II’s chief financial officer, Apollonius, writes his estate manager as follows: “put as many of the thickest logs of dried wood as possible on a boat and send them immediately to Alexandria so that we may use them in the festival of Isis.”27 This brief letter not only indicates that Isis was worshipped in the early city, but that the crown took an interest in facilitating the event. In fact, much of the early third-century evidence Fraser cites for Greek divinities might be better deployed in service of an Egyptian narrative. For example, Fraser tells us that Athena was clearly identified with Neith (Martin Bernal’s ‘Black Athena’); her great temple at Sais (53 miles southeast of Alexandria) was supported with massive donations by Ptolemy II and commemorated in an important decree probably from the late 260s.28 The earliest dedication to Apollo, from the third century BCE, was found in the Alexandrian Serapeum, and in it the god has a unique and otherwise unattested cult title: Bladous. Daniel Selden has argued that Bladous is in fact a Greek rendering of an Egyptian phrase meaning ‘Eye of the Dawn’ and that the title referred to Horus, with whom Apollo was identified as early as Herodotus (2.144.2).29 Artemis, to the extent that she was

24

25 26 27 28 29

Athenaeus 197C-203B = FGrH 627 F2. For a discussion of that text, see Rice 1983. Her index has no entry for ʻtempleʼ, though under ʻAlexandriaʼ she does list an Arsinoeion, Berenikeion, a Homereion, and a Serapeum. Strabo mentions a Poseideion, but there is no mention of this temple in an earlier source. Fraser 1972, vol. 1: 189. P. Cairo Zenon 59154.1-4, and see Perpillou-Thomas 1993: 94. Quack 2008: 284-85. Selden 1998: 289-90. Horus was often represented as an eye, particularly in amulets.

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worshipped at all, seems to have been identified with Egyptian Bast, and in fact the discovery of an early Ptolemaic shrine to Bast near the Palace quarters was announced in the press shortly before Hosni Mubarak’s fall from power in 2010 – though nothing has been heard of it since then.30 Add to this the undisputed fact that the one temple that is known to have been built in early Alexandria is the Serapeum, whose cult figure, Serapis, was a hybrid Greek-Egyptian divinity. He was worshipped in human form in Alexandria but in his bovine form in Memphis.31 This temple had dedicatory gold plaques written in Greek and in hieroglyphics and a House of Life, a distinctive Egyptian type of scriptorium for copying texts and commenting upon them (discussed in the next section). In consideration of these facts it is possible to rephrase Fraser’s comment: “Although Alexandria had a large Greek population, this has left virtually no trace in the field of religion”, and the question of where (and precisely whom) the Greeks were worshiping remains moot. Now let us turn to an Egyptologist’s narrative of early Alexandrian temples. Sally-Ann Ashton begins her discussion of the subject by pointing to a large basalt statue base found in the Anfushi district of Pharos. The base is inscribed with a hieroglyphic cartouche of Ptolemy II, and on it Ptolemy and Arsinoe II are flanking the Egyptian divinity, Atum. Found nearby was a fragmentary crown of Atum. Could, she asks, an early temple to the Atum have existed there? Though Ashton does raise a cautionary note that these pieces may have been later brought to the site, she does regard the large and already resident Egyptian population of Rhakotis as the reason for Alexander building a temple of Isis and for the location of the Serapeum. It was to the west of the city near what has been identified as the Egyptian quarter, and probably near or on the site of an earlier temple to this same Serapis. Certainly the Diegesis to Callimachus’ first Iambus claims that the temple mentioned in that poem was Parmenio’s Serapeum.32 This appears to have been an older temple, probably the same as that mentioned in a papyrus letter of 257 BCE.33 Here is Ashton’s Egyptocentric narrative: The location of the site [sc. of the Serapeum], well away from the Greek polis, and the artistic and ideological concessions that were made to the god’s Egyptian origins, also serve to associate the rulers with the Egyptian tradition. The presence of Egyptian style statuary at the site raises serious questions about the interpretation of the god as a deity intended for the Greek immigrants. At both Alexandria and Memphis the early Ptolemaic rulers made dedications of Egyptian-style sculptures

30

31 32 33

Berenice’s Cat goddess temple discovered in Alexandria: www.independent.co.uk/lifestyle/history/queen-berenikes-cat-goddess-temple-discovered-in-alexandria-egypt1872527.html. Thompson 1988: 116. Pfeiffer 1949-53, vol. 2: 163, 3-4. P. Cairo Zenon 59355: 101-102.

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and buildings. Their motives are uncertain. If the sanctuaries were already established, then the Egyptian-style royal representations may have been an indication of the rulers’ commitment to the Pharaonic tradition and their desire to link themselves to earlier dynasties […] this pattern […] in Alexandria suggests that the city was not exclusively Hellenic, as has generally been supposed. That the rulers seem to target specific areas to promote their Egyptian personae would suggest that they were presenting themselves in Pharaonic guise in areas where there was either a strong native tradition or a large Egyptian community.34

In support of Ashton’s argument is the fact that the early Ptolemies contributed massive amounts of money to temple building in the Egyptian style outside of Alexandria. Dieter Arnold lists ten temples built or added to under Ptolemy I, fifteen under Ptolemy II, and another ten under Ptolemy III.35 And interestingly, a number of them were in the region of the Fayum, the area in which Ptolemy II established his Macedonian-Greek veterans. This region was the most ‘Greek’ part of Egypt outside of Alexandria. Yet all of these newly constructed temples were in the Egyptian style and to Egyptian gods – principally manifestations of the local patron deity, the crocodile god Sobek, the Horus falcon, the snake goddess Renenutet. In at least one area of the Fayum, apparently, the local Greek population even kept their portable shrine of Demeter within a local temple to Sobek.36 3 The Foundation of the Library I turn now to my final example of competing narratives: the origins of the Alexandrian library. I shall begin with the Hellenocentric narrative, though much of the evidence actually comes from a Jewish context, the second-century BCE Letter of Aristeas, which records the story of the seventy scholars who translated the Hebrew bible into Greek. According to the letter, the library was built in Alexandria during the reign of the second Ptolemy, at the urging of Demetrius of Phaleron. Demetrius had been the tyrant of Athens before he fled in exile to Alexandria around 297 BCE. He also had credentials as a philosopher in the School of Aristotle (the Lyceum). Demetrius was credited with setting in motion the creation of the library, in part because of his association with Aristotle, who possessed the largest personal library previously known in the West, and because of his association with Athens where there was a state archive that included standard texts for dramatic and dithyrhambic performances, although neither of these models had the scope or the centrality of what came to be in Alexandria. Early on the library seems to have become the epicenter for the acquisition and preservation of large

34 35 36

Ashton 2004: 24-25. Arnold 1999: 320-21. Thompson 1998: 699-708.

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numbers of Greek manuscripts; estimates of the numbers fluctuate wildly from fifty- to over five hundred thousand, though Roger Bagnall has provided compelling reasons for thinking that the lower number (fifty-thousand) will have been much closer to the truth.37 The crown seems to have populated the new foundation with scholars who dedicated themselves to cataloguing, editing, and commenting on this growing repository of previous Greek literary endeavors, scholars, whom consciously or otherwise, modern classicists imagine as their ancestors.38 But on the face of it building a library, especially one of such dimensions, was a distinctly unusual step for a city in the process of being built to have taken, and while Peripatetic influences may have been necessary, they may not have been sufficient. An Egyptocentric narrative introduces a different model. As important as Aristotle’s library may have been as a precursor, in fact libraries were not very familiar in the old Greek world. But libraries were routine features of palaces and temples in the Near East, and particularly in Egypt, which had a 2000-year tradition of writing within well-organized scribal communities.39 The larger Egyptian temples had places for book storage and a staff to maintain books. These were called Houses of Life (per ankh) or Houses of Books (per medjet). In these establishments the duties of priests and scholars included collecting, copying, and writing commentaries on religious works, medicine, geography, chronological and historical narratives, and even literary texts. Greek writers before Alexander seem to have been familiar with these temple libraries. When Greeks like Herodotus or Solon in Plato’s Timaeus claim to have consulted Egyptian priests, these are the institutions with which the priests would have been affiliated and which would have held the information that they conveyed. The Houses of Life also served as scribe schools and played a role in educating Egyptian elites.40 Ptolemy I began his rule in Memphis and actively solicited the support of these Egyptian priestly elites to consolidate his power, precisely the group who were trained as scribes and were familiar with libraries that stored and preserved books. Thus he would have had an Egyptian model ready at hand. It is also possible to point to an exact parallel for Egyptian temple libraries built under the Ptolemies. The Great Serapeum mentioned earlier – the temple to the Greco-Egyptian god Serapis in Alexandria, completed under Ptolemy III – possessed a temple library of Greek books, attested from at least the early Roman period, though probably part of the original structure. And the Serapeum in Memphis had a library of Egyptian texts, and in addition Greek texts are attested from at least the mid-second century BCE. 37 38

39 40

Bagnall 2002: 348-62. Monica Berti and Virgilio Costa 2009 provide an excellent example of the Hellenocentric narrative in: The Ancient Library of Alexandria. A Model for Classical Scholarship in the Age of Million Book Libraries, pp. 4-7. (This is an electronic ‘preprint’ of a publication destined for the proceedings of the International Symposium on the Scaife Digital Library.) www.perseus.tufts.edu/publications/Berti-Costa_Alexandria_Kentucky.pdf See e.g. Ryholt 2013: 23-37. Strouhal 1989: 235-42.

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As it happens this Egyptian narrative of the library’s origins has recently migrated from the cloistered world of scholarship into the political realm. When the Egyptian government under Hosni Mubarak formally opened the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in 2001, that event was marked by a number of conferences, one of which was specifically on the origins, significance, and demise of the earlier prototype. Western scholars did participate in this colloquium, but the majority of the papers were by Egyptians, who discussed the Egyptian precursors to the ancient library, self-consciously writing against the canonical Western view. Fayza Haikel, for example, gives a detailed analysis of the various types of dynastic Egyptian libraries and their organizational structures. She argues that Strabo’s description of the workings of the Mouseion, namely, that it provided common meals to men of learning, held funds in common, and had a priest in charge who was appointed by the king, exactly mirrored the temple organizations of the Houses of Life. 41 She also finds close Egyptian parallels for the royal tutors like Zenodotus and Apollonius who also served as librarians: The Library […] was presided over by a Librarian, a royal appointment associated from its inception with a very influential post, that of ‘tutor of the children of the royal house.’ Tzetzes says that there were two libraries, ‘the library outside the palace’ and ‘the library within the palace.’ The Royal Library must have been the equivalent of the per medjet per a’a or House of Books of the Royal Palace with its scribes. As for the one outside the palace and related to the Mouseion, that one too could be paralleled with the per medjet of Egyptian temples, particularly [in] that there is no clear indication that the Library at its inception was a public building similar to libraries today.42

Unfortunately, arguments like Haikel’s will have little or no impact on what western scholars choose to say in the future about the ancient library, 43 since the discourses proceed along two separate paths and Haikel’s work, given its place of origin, is unlikely even to be read, despite the fact that many western Egyptologists have made similar suggestions.44 But for Egyptians the arguments are cogent and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina has been deliberately designed to assert its ancient Egyptian origins. It is meant to resemble the sun disc emerging from the waves, a standard hieroglyphic writing of ‘awakening’. And positioned in front of the new library is a statue of a Ptolemy – but not Ptolemy who is the king of the Macedonians and Greeks, but the Ptolemy recovered by Yves Empereur, a Ptolemy who is an Egyptian pharaoh.45

41 42 43 44 45

Haikel 2008: 53. Haikel, 2008: 54. See, e.g. Berti and Costa 2009. See, e.g. Ryholt 2013. Stephens 2010: 279-81.

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Conclusions The scholars whose work I quote are operating in good faith, in accordance with their academic training, the bulk of previous scholarship within their disciplines, and in service of specific agendas. The competing narratives that they generate are constructed to serve distinct populations, and arguably are successful in their endeavor. Berti and Costa, for example (n. 36) write as part of the Perseus Project and the development of a digital library. This is an American and German project, thus it makes sense to claim, as they do, solely western origins for the Alexandrian library; Haikel writes in an Egyptian milieu where it makes sense to claim that the old Alexandrian library, like the new, was always already Egyptian. Perhaps, then the lesson to be learned is that reconstructing the ancient past can never be an artifice of fact, but only an artifice of the imagination.

The Homeric Shore of Alexandria: A Narrative of a Culture in Motion Benjamin Acosta-Hughes

For Évelyne Prioux, with whose eyes I first compared two statues of Aphrodite В Канопе жизнь привольная: съездим, мой друг, туда. Мы сядем в лодку легкую, доедем мы без труда. Life’s light and free in Canopus: There let us sail, sweet friend. The lightest skiff shall carry us and speed our journey’s end. (trans. Green/Shvabrin)1

In the spring of 1895 the young Russian poet Mikhail Kuzmin, in the company of his friend and lover known from his journals only as ‘Prince Georges’, made a journey to Egypt. Kuzmin destroyed his diary for the years 1894-95, so his collection of poems entitled his Александрийские Песни Alexandrian Songs, composed a decade later,2 are the major witness to a remembered idyll: the lover has died, the city in Egypt exists only in memory, the trip to Canopus is a recollection of a youth lived and of a now-vanished world. The poems evoke a city of many eras through a series of sensual images that go in and out of focus: like the figures of Adonis and Antinous, figures that for the homosexual poet are implicated with sadness, absence and longing, Alexandria too is something once enjoyed and now 1

2

The author wishes to express his gratitude to Ivan Samsonov and Dmitri Stepanov for introducing him to the poetry of Mikhail Kuzmin, and particularly to the ποικιλία of Kuzmin’s Alexandrian Songs. Malmstad/Bogomolov 1999: 30-34.

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lost. The opening lines of the ‘conclusion’ to the Alexandrian Songs emblematize Kuzmin’s relationship with this city, particularly in the Hellenistic period, one at once imagined and recalled, but always at a distance. Ах, покидаю я Александрию И долго видить ее не буду! Alas, I am forsaking Alexandria, and long shall I not see her.

Paradoxically, our own contemporary relationship with ancient Alexandria in many ways parallels that of the Silver Age Russian poet who composed the Alexandrian Songs over a century ago. Very differently from ancient Athens or ancient Rome, ancient Alexandria has left little in the way of physical ruins or other monuments: there is no Acropolis or Forum with which the modern viewer can easily engage. Much of what was the ancient shore-line is now under water3 or under the modern city. Our textual evidence is fairly thin: Hellenistic poetry offers little to help us recall a ‘lived’ city in the way Athenian comedy or Augustan poetry envision ancient Athens and ancient Rome.4 Strabo and Philo do offer some evidence, but not the sort that can make the city come to life (there is no Zola, e.g., among these authors);5 although Achilles Tatius gives an impression of first gazing upon the city, his is an image more striking in its emphasis than in its detail.6

3 4

5 6

See Fabre/Goddio 2010; Nur 2010; Goddio 2006: 38-65; and esp. maps in Tkaczow 1993. The Satrap Decree (generally dated to 311, now in the Cairo Museum, Cat. Gén. 22181) has Alexander IV, son of Alexander III and his Persian wife Roxane, as still king; Ptolemy is his Viceroy in Egypt. Ptolemy’s move of Egypt’s satrapal capital from Memphis to Alexandria is generally assumed, following on this stele, to have taken place in 31211. This would allow for a period of only about ca. 25 years before the earliest extant Hellenistic poetry that we think we can date (Callim. Hy. 1 and Theocr. Id. 24, both of which are thought to celebrate the co-regency of Ptolemy I and his son in 285 BCE). Passages such as the brief encomium of Egypt in Herodas Mim. 1 do not give any specifics of the city, nor does the journey of the two female friends in Theocr. Id. 15. One epigram of Posidippus (115 AB = 11 GP) is a brief ekphrasis of the Pharos lighthouse (constructed in 297-285), another (116 AB = 12 GP) a similar small ekphrasis of the temple of Arsinoe-Aphrodite at Zephyrium, of which more below in this paper. Callimachus fr. 228 on the death of Arsinoe II may have contained some more topographical detail(s), though it is hard to tell based on the remaining fragmentary lines. Strabo Geogr. 17.1; Philo In Flaccum, Leg. ad Gaium. Ach. Tat. 5.1: Τριῶν δὲ πλεύσαντες ἡμερῶν εἰς Ἀλεξάνδρειαν ἤλθομεν. ἀνιόντι δέ μοι κατὰ τὰς Ἡλίου καλουμένας πύλας συνηντᾶτο εὐθὺς τῆς πόλεως ἀστράπτον τὸ κάλλος καί μου τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς ἐγέμισεν ἡδονῆς.

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Egypt’s Mediterranean shore is a presence that consistently arises in ancient Greco-Roman culture, whose value can be of alterity, mystery, solace, power, imperial rule, knowledge, or decline.7 As in the Praeneste Nile Mosaic,8 for the Greco-Roman world Egypt’s Mediterranean shore functions as a limen separating the known and the unknown. Egypt’s Mediterranean shore exists in Homer’s Odyssey, and it exists in Augustan poetry; in each it is reflected, and alternatively it reflects – and recreates these other spaces. It is with a lost East Canopus, however, an area long under water, where this study begins. The original aition for this paper was seeing an extraordinary image at the Paris exhibition (Grand Palais 12/2006 – 3/2007) that was displayed among recent underwater archaeological discoveries by Frank Goddio and his team at the Canopic mouth of the Nile. This image is that of a veiled female nude statue in black granite of a Ptolemaic queen, thought by some scholars to be of ArsinoeAphrodite from the temple at Zephyrium (figure 1).9 Our knowledge of the temple comes from Strabo, where the reference is rather cryptic,10 and refers to the temple in which the statue is believed to have stood as a ναΐσκος, ‘a small temple’. The statue itself is a syncretic one, combining both Egyptian and Greek elements: the material, black granite, is typically Egyptian, the pose however is more typically Greek, with the veiling typical of Hellenistic statuary of Aphrodite created with the effect of wet drapery (so partly nude, partly veiled), and also of statues of Hellenistic queens (though without the standard clothing below the veiling). An Isis knot, the mark of a Ptolemaic queen, is bound above the figure’s right breast. A similar knot appears on another figure from the same expedition (figure 2), a black granite statue found by the same team in the area of Heracleion, and is typical of statues of Ptolemaic queens. Several features of this statue from East Canopus are, however, unusual:11 there is no back column, the body is sculpted as carefully in front as in back, and the image has a distinctly erotic appeal. The viewer’s attention is drawn particularly to the womb, as befits an image that is one of maternity/fecundity. The Canopus image stands 59.1 inches (150 cm) high.

7 8 9

10 11

On Alexandria as an image of loss in 20th cent. émigré writing, see Halim 2013: 273-4. For a recent discussion of the correct ‘view’ of the Nile Mosaic see Ferrari Pinney 2013. Goddio/Fabre 2006: 106; Goddio 2003: 136. Several years ago the image toured the United States in an exhibition devoted to Cleopatra VII, a coincidence quite relevant to this paper. See also Yoyotte 2006. Albersmeier 2004: 197 argues for a later date in the Ptolemaic period. Cited below in this paper. For a more detailed discussion see Albersmeier loc. cit.

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Fig. 1: Veiled female nude statue in black granite of a Ptolemaic queen, thought by some scholars to be of Arsinoe-Aphrodite from the temple at Zephyrium. Credit: Christoph Gerigk ©Franck Goddio/ Hilti Foundation.

The Homeric Shore of Alexandria: A Narrative of a Culture in Motion

Fig. 2: Another black granite statue found by the same team in the area of Heracleion. Credit: Christoph Gerigk ©Franck Goddio/ Hilti Foundation.

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Fig. 3: Map of Aboukir Bay. Credit: Franck Goddio ©ieasm.

The area of East Canopus, where the Zephyrium temple is thought to have stood, the nearby town of Heracleion with its celebrated temple of Heracles,12 and the city of Menouthis with its famous temple of Isis, are now under water to the East of the Aboukir peninsula (figure 3). This is indeed true of much of what Hellenistic and Roman antiquity knew as Alexandria’s Mediterranean shore: the impressive sight that stunned the narrator of Achilles Tatius 5.1 is now gone, something of an Egyptian Atlantis, for the most part a conjured memory rather than an archaeological reality. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries much of the land area around the Bay of Aboukir was in private ownership, a large part of this area owned by

12

Strab. Geogr. 17.1.18: Μετὰ δὲ τὸν Κάνωβον ἔστι τὸ Ἡράκλειον Ἡρακλέους ἔχον ἱερόν· εἶτα τὸ Κανωβικὸν στόμα καὶ ἡ ἀρχὴ τοῦ Δέλτα. τὰ δ’ ἐν δεξιᾷ τῆς Κανωβικῆς διώρυγος ὁ Μενελαΐτης ἐστὶ νομὸς ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ τοῦ πρώτου Πτολεμαίου καλούμενος, οὐ μὰ Δία ἀπὸ τοῦ ἥρωος, ὡς ἔνιοί φασιν ὧν καὶ Ἀρτεμίδωρος; see Herodot. 2.113.

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Prince Omar Toussoun (1872-1944).13 Prince Toussoun was devoted to archaeological exploration, both of the land area of his own vast estates and, as an early aviator, of the Bay of Aboukir. His gift of the antiquities he discovered formed the early nucleus of the Greco-Roman museum in Alexandria. His observations on the material now under the waters of the Bay of Aboukir have, a half century later and more, now been realized in the stunning underwater archaeological expeditions led by Frank Goddio and his team.14 The Canopic mouth of the Nile, the river’s westernmost mouth, lies between Alexandria and Rosetta. According to a myth preserved by the first-century BCE Greek mythographer Conon,15 Canopus was the helmsman of Menelaus, whose death (Con. Narr. 8) by snake-bite provides the aetiology of the town’s name. The narrative is clearly an evolution of the Odyssean tale and of others that follow it. These tell of a voyage by Helen and Menelaus in Egypt, and so begins a long tradition that celebrates the Alexandrian shore as a cultural limen between Europe and Africa,16 a place where cultural intercourse takes place. Ironically, from a different perspective, this same Mediterranean shoreline was to prove the limen, in the early days of aviation, between modern Egypt and an ancient Greco-Roman city partly under water: it was by flying low over the calm Mediterranean waters at the shore-line that the early aviator Prince Omar Toussoun first recognized the extent of the ruins and statuary below the sea.17

13

14 15

16

17

Prince Omar Toussoun, a member of the Egyptian royal family and direct descendent of Mohammed Ali, the early nineteenth-century Khedive often named the father of modern Egypt, and the founder of the dynasty that ruled Egypt until the revolution of 1952. For Toussoun’s own narrative of his archaeological discoveries see Toussoun 1934. Narr. 8 Ἡ η΄ διηγεῖται τὰ περὶ Πρωτέως τοῦ Αἰγυπτίου μάντεως, οὗ ἡ θυγάτηρ Θεονόη ἐρασθεῖσα Κανώβου (ἦν δ’ οὗτος κυβερνήτης Μενελᾶου τοῦ Τρῳκοῦ) ἀποτυγχάνει· καὶ ὡς ὁ Κάνωβος καλὸς καὶ νέος, ἀπαίροντος Μενελάου ἀπ’ Αἰγύπτου καὶ Ἐλένης, καὶ προσορμισαμένων τῇ γῇ, ὑπὸ ἐχίδνης δηχθεὶς καὶ σαπεὶς τὸ σκέλος μετ’ οὐ πολὺ θνῄσκει· καὶ Μενέλαος καὶ Ἐλένη θάπτουσιν αὐτὸν ἐπ’ Αἰγύπτου, οὗ νῦν ἐπώνυμος ᾤκισται πόλις. Καὶ τῶν τοῦ Νείλου στομάτων τὸ τελευταῖον ὁ Κάνωβος ἢ Κανωβικὸν ἐκ τοῦ κυβερνήτου τὴν ὀνομασίαν ἕλκει. ‘The eighth story tells of the seer Proteus, whose daughter Theonoe unhappily loved Canopus, the helmsman of Menelaus of Troy, and that Canopus was young and handsome. When Menelaus and Helen were setting out from Egypt, and were at anchor near the land, Canopus was bitten by a snake, his limb rotted, and he died not long afterwards. Menelaus and Helen buried him on the Egyptian shore, where the city that bears his name now stands. And the last of the mouths of the Nile, the Canopus or Canopic, takes its name from the helmsman’. See Brown 2002 ad loc. Cf. Pomp. Mela 2.7. Here the nearer images of the Praeneste Nile Mosaic are especially effective, the figures in Macedonian dress at the lower right representing the cultural limen for the viewer between a familiar world and one that becomes increasingly a terra incognita. On ways of viewing the Praeneste Nile Mosaic, see Ferrari Pinney 2013, esp. 132-3. Goddio 2006: 43.

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The syncretic image of the goddess and its provenance, the Canopic mouth of the Nile, draw together three distinct cultural moments: archaic Greek, Ptolemaic, and Roman; and three instantiations of Aphrodite: Helen in Egypt, Arsinoe-Aphrodite, and Venus Genetrix. A close examination of the site and statue can help us understand how rich and complex this syncretism is and something of the cultural agenda of the Ptolemaic rulers who created it. The Story of the Goddess: Helen and Archaic Greece I begin with the fourth book of the Odyssey. When Telemachus sets out from Ithaca to seek word of his father, his own Odyssey, as it were, he comes first to Pylos in Od. 3, to Nestor and the world of the Iliad. From there he comes with his newlyfound friend Peisistratus to Sparta and to the world of the Nostoi, to magic and its dangers, and to Egypt. When Helen first appears before the young men, she appears as a figure associated with Egyptian luxury.18 In the fourth book of Homer’s Odyssey, the Spartan king Menelaus narrates his visit to the island of Pharos. At this point the island is not yet accessible from the shore except by boat, for the construction of the Heptastadion lies far in the future (Hom. Od. 4.351-59): Αἰγύπτῳ μ’ ἔτι δεῦρο θεοὶ μεμαῶτα νέεσθαι ἔσχον, ἐπεὶ οὔ σφιν ἔρεξα τεληέσσας ἑκατόμβας· οἱ δ’ αἰεὶ βούλοντο θεοὶ μεμνῆσθαι ἐφετμέων. νῆσος ἔπειτά τις ἔστι πολυκλύστῳ ἐνὶ πόντῳ Αἰγύπτου προπάροιθε, Φάρον δέ ἑ κικλήσκουσι, τόσσον ἄνευθ’, ὅσσον τε πανημερίη γλαφυρὴ νηῦς ἤνυσεν, ᾗ λιγὺς οὖρος ἐπιπνείῃσιν ὄπισθεν. ἐν δὲ λιμὴν εὔορμος, ὅθεν τ’ ἀπὸ νῆας ἐΐσας ἐς πόντον βάλλουσιν, ἀφυσσάμενοι μέλαν ὕδωρ. At Egypt the gods held me, though I longed to voyage hither, as I had accomplished perfect hecatombs for them. For the gods always wish that men be mindful of their injunctions. There is an island in the much-surging sea before Egypt, they call it Pharos,19 about as far out as a hollow ship would sail in a day, with a thin breeze

18

19

Od. 4.120-27: ἐκ δ’ Ἑλένη θαλάμοιο θυώδεος ὑψορόφοιο | ἤλυθεν Ἀρτέμιδι χρυσηλακάτῳ ἐϊκυῖα. | τῇ δ’ ἄρ’ ἅμ’ Ἀδρήστη κλισίην εὔτυκτον ἔθηκεν, | Ἀλκίππη δὲ τάπητα φέρεν μαλακοῦ ἐρίοιο, | Φυλὼ δ’ ἀργύρεον τάλαρον φέρε, τόν οἱ ἔδωκεν | Ἀλκάνδρη, Πολύβοιο δάμαρ, ὃς ἔναι’ ἐνὶ Θήβῃς | Αἰγυπτίῃσ’, ὅθι πλεῖστα δόμοισ’ ἐν κτήματα κεῖται One wonders whether this passage is not what becomes, by synecdoche, the origin of the expression Alexandria ad Aegyptum which, in turn, was to cause so much misunderstanding of Greek-Egyptian intercultural relations in scholarship on Alexandria.

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blowing behind it. There is a harbor there that affords good mooring for ships, whence they set balanced ships out into the sea, drawing black water.

Thrown off-course on the return home from Troy, Menelaus obtains the necessary information for his return to Sparta from Proteus, a local sea-god. Helen, at the same time, obtains a certain amount of pharmaceutical training from Polydamna, the wife of the local king, whose name (significantly) is Thon.20 The name of the local Egyptian king is revealing. From the newly-found stele of Nectanebo I, we now know that Thonis is the Egyptian name for the port city of Heracleion,21 which flourished under the last Egyptian dynasties, and was a major point for the collection of maritime import/export duties.22 The newly found stele of Nectanebo I has the revealing lines ‘Pharaoh orders that this stele be raised at Thonis, in the city of the Sea of the Greeks’. In Odyssey 4, Thon’s wife’s name, Polydamna, ‘she who conquers/subdues all’, is clearly Greek, though she is identified here as an Egyptian woman (line 229). Particularly intriguing is the reference to Paieon at line 232: ἰητρὸς δὲ ἕκαστος ἐπιστάμενος περὶ πάντων ἀνθρώπων· ἦ γὰρ Παιήονός εἰσι γενέθλης. Every man is a doctor with knowledge beyond all men, for they are born from the Healing God.

Commentaries on these lines of Odyssey 4 generally focus on the ‘problem’ of associating the title Paion or Paieon with the god Apollo at this point in time,23 but the answer to this problem may lie in the Egyptian, rather than the Greek, mythology. Given that this is an Egyptian setting, it might be better to consider an Egyptian god known to Greeks, especially those Greeks residing in Egypt, whether around Memphis or in the port cities that lined the Mediterranean shore. One possibility here might be Nefertem, worshipped at Saqqara, the necropolis of ancient

20

21 22

23

Od. 4.227-232: τοῖα Διὸς θυγάτηρ ἔχε φάρμακα μητιόεντα, | ἐσθλά, τά οἱ Πολύδαμνα πόρεν, Θῶνος παράκοιτις, | Αἰγυπτίη, τῇ πλεῖστα φέρει ζείδωρος ἄρουρα | φάρμακα, πολλὰ μὲν ἐσθλὰ μεμιγμένα, πολλὰ δὲ λυγρά, | ἰητρὸς δὲ ἕκαστος ἐπιστάμενος περὶ πάντων | ἀνθρώπων· ἦ γὰρ Παιήονός εἰσι γενέθλης. Fabre 2006; Goddio 2003: 166-80. Just as the importance of Canopus in the same role is attested by the Naucratis Stele. This stele was published by G. Maspero in 1913 (EMAE 7.195-7), with the first reference in Egyptian to the city of Naucratis. The second stele was recovered from the Mediterranean only in the Goddio expedition, and refers to Thonis (Heracleion) and the Sea of the Greeks. On the Naucratis stele see Lichtheim 1980: v. 3.86-9. The figure appears twice in the Iliad at 5.401, 599, and at Hes. Fr. 307 (M – W), where Paieon is specifically differentiated from Apollo.

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Memphis, a figure that would have been known to – for example – the Hellenomemphites. With his father Ptah (sometimes equated with the Greek god Hephaestus) and his mother Sekmet (the lion-headed goddess associated with both Astarte and Aphrodite) Nefertem forms part of the Memphite triad. 24 Nefertem (figure 4) is often depicted as a young man wearing, on his head or forehead, his symbolic blue lotus representing both his association with medicine (the flower has narcotic properties) as well as perfume, and one of his roles in Egyptian mythology is easing the suffering of the aging god Ra with the blue lotus.25 The blue lotus appears elsewhere in the Odyssey: this is the flower of the Lotus-eaters that causes their guests/victims to forget their yearning for their return (Od. 9.96-98).26 This episode is thought by many to be situated in the Cyrenaica, which returns the reader to the North African shore.27 In Egyptian medicine the lotus can be used as a narcotic sedative:28 the narcotic alkaloids present in the bloom and the rhizome are soluble in wine, not in water, so Helen’s decision to cast her pharmakon into wine at Od. 4.220-1 is technically correct.29 While the image of North Africa to a Homeric audience might appear, especially as narrative tool, as ‘a mysterious and distant region where it is easy to place the adventures of heroes and gods’ (so Chamoux 1952),30 and while certainly the mirage égyptien is in some sense a reality of Homer’s poetic geography, at the same time the Odyssey’s references to Egypt seem to capture a present reality of access to Egypt, acquisition of Egyptian objects (Helen’s medicines, for instance), and a certain knowledge of and familiarity with Egypt’s Mediterranean Shore. Menelaus may be wrong on the distance of Pharos from the mainland (Od. 4.354-

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27 28 29

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On the Memphite triad see Quaegebur et al. 1985; Thompson 2012: 91, 132, 194. On Nefertem and the lotus see Morenz/Schubert 1954: 14-22; Piankoff 1933, esp. 99-101. οἱ δ’ αἶψ’ οἰχόμενοι μίγεν ἀνδράσι Λωτοφάγοισιν· | οὐδ’ ἄρα Λωτοφάγοι μήδονθ’ ἑτάροισιν ὄλεθρον | ἡμετέροισ’, ἀλλά σφι δόσαν λωτοῖο πάσασθαι. | τῶν δ’ ὅς τις λωτοῖο φάγοι μελιηδέα καρπόν, | οὐκέτ’ ἀπαγγεῖλαι πάλιν ἤθελεν οὐδὲ νέεσθαι, | ἀλλ’ αὐτοῦ βούλοντο μετ’ ἀνδράσι Λωτοφάγοισι | λωτὸν ἐρεπτόμενοι μενέμεν νόστου τε λαθέσθαι. Froidefond 1971: 18-20. Nunn 1996: 157-8. Od. 4.219-26: ἔνθ’ αὖτ’ ἄλλ’ ἐνόησ’ Ἑλένη Διὸς ἐκγεγαυῖα· | αὐτίκ’ ἄρ’ εἰς οἶνον βάλε φάρμακον, ἔνθεν ἔπινον, | νηπενθές τ’ ἄχολόν τε, κακῶν ἐπίληθον ἁπάντων. | ὃς τὸ καταβρόξειεν, ἐπὴν κρητῆρι μιγείη, | οὔ κεν ἐφημέριός γε βάλοι κατὰ δάκρυ παρειῶν, | οὐδ’ εἴ οἱ κατατεθναίη μήτηρ τε πατήρ τε,| οὐδ’ εἴ οἱ προπάροιθεν ἀδελφεὸν ἢ φίλον υἱὸν | χαλκῷ δηϊόῳεν, ὁ δ’ ὀφθαλμοῖσιν ὁρῷτο. On the narcotic properties of the blue lotus (nymphaea caerulea) see Nunn1996: 157; Emboden 1981: 56-61; Emboden 1978: 398-407. Chamoux 1952: 84, ‘L’Afrique tout comme le pays des Hyperboréens, apparaissait dans l’imagination des Héllènes comme une région mystérieuse et lointaine où l’on plaçait volontiers les aventures des héros et des dieux…’.

The Homeric Shore of Alexandria: A Narrative of a Culture in Motion

Fig. 4: The God Nefertem. Egypt, Earthenware. Inv.: E3502. Credit: Les frères Chuzeville/ Musée du Louvre, Paris, France.

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59), but this does not mean that the passage is informed solely by a passive cultural perception of Egypt.31 Rather these passages present an image of actual sea-faring and intercultural relations in a poem that is, after all, in large part a representation of these on both an actual and a fantastical level. In the second book of his Histories Herodotus offers a different version of Helen and Menelaus in Egypt, yet one that retains some of the same narrative features. The narrative itself is a long one (Hdt. 2.112-120), to which I cannot do justice here, and so focus only on a few points.32 In this narrative Proteus is not a marine deity but an Egyptian king,33 and his sanctuary is not upon Pharos but at the capital of Lower Egypt, at Memphis. There in Memphis Herodotus tells of a sanctuary of Proteus, in which there is a temple of a ‘foreign Aphrodite’, who, Herodotus proposes, is in fact Helen, daughter of Tyndareus (Hdt. Hist. 112.2): Ἔστι δὲ ἐν τῷ τεμένεϊ τοῦ Πρωτέος ἱρὸν τὸ καλέεται Ξείνης Ἀφροδίτης. Συμβάλλομαι δὲ τοῦτο τὸ ἱρὸν εἶναι Ἑλένης τῆς Τυνδάρεω, καὶ τὸν λόγον ἀκηκοὼς ὡς διαιτήθη Ἑλένη παρὰ Πρωτέϊ, καὶ δὴ καὶ ὅτι ξείνης Ἀφροδίτηs ἐπώνυμόν ἐστι· ὅσα γὰρ ἄλλα Ἀφροδίτης ἱρά ἐστι, οὐδαμῶς ξείνης ἐπικαλέεται. In the sanctuary of Proteus there is a shrine called ‘of the foreign Aphrodite’. I suggest that the shrine is of Helen daughter of Tyndareus, both on hearing the story of how Helen was placed with Proteus, and especially because of the name of the ‘foreign Aphrodite’. For of all the other shrines of Aphrodite, none are called ‘of the foreign’.

The shrine of Helen associated with Aphrodite intriguingly prefigures the concept of a co-templed god, a σύνναος θεός, which will be a factor in the treatment of Aphrodite in Hellenistic poetry. That this temple of Aphrodite is especially associated with the Tyrian settlers around it in Herodotus’ narrative may indicate something more of the syncretic nature of this god.34 Strabo’s account of this temple (17.1.31.20) varies from that of Herodotus in that Aphrodite is rather referred

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We find a not dissimilar situation with Odysseus’ second Cretan tale (Od. 14.191-359). At Hist. 2.112 Herodotus refers to the temple of Hephaestus (Ptah) at Memphis: Τούτου δὲ ἐκδέξασθαι τὴν βασιληίην ἔλεγον ἄνδρα Μεμφίτην, τῷ κατὰ τὴν [τῶν] Ἑλλήνων γλῶσσαν οὔνομα Πρωτέα εἶναι. Τοῦ νῦν τέμενος ἔστι ἐν Μέμφι κάρτα καλόν τε καὶ εὖ ἐσκευασμένον, τοῦ Ἡφαιστείου πρὸς νότον ἄνεμον κείμενον. Περιοικέουσι δὲ τὸ τέμενος τοῦτο Φοίνικες Τύριοι, καλέεται δὲ ὁ χῶρος οὗτος ὁ συνάπας Τυρίων Στρατόπεδον. On Syrian settlements in Lower Egypt see Thompson 2012: 74, 85, 9092. On the episode itself see Vasunia 2001:124-6; Asheri et al. 2007: 322-26. While Proteus is an Egyptian king, the name is Greek (although some scholars have tried to find Egyptian associations in the name); see Lloyd 1988: 111-112. Hdt. Hist. 112.2: περιοικέουσι δὲ τὸ τέμενος τοῦτο Φοίνικες Τύριοι, καλέεται δὲ ὁ χῶρος οὗτος ὁ συνάπας Τυρίων στρατόπεδον. On the temple, cf. Strab. 17.1.31.20 ἔστι δ’

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to as ‘Greek’ (Ἑλληνίδος). The ‘foreign Aphrodite’ is Astarte,35 associated with both Egyptian Sekmet and Greek Aphrodite, and the temple is referred to in Greek papyri as the Aphrodision. Herodotus then tells the following tale: upon taking Helen from his Spartan host Menelaus, Paris was blown off-course as he approached the Aegean Sea and was carried to the Canopic mouth of the Nile. There he and his followers came to the temple of Heracles at Heracleion, where his attendants denounced him to the priests and to the ‘guard of the Nile’, who happens to be named Thonis.36 Thonis then sends them to Memphis, to the king, Proteus. Herodotus then discusses the treatment of this narrative in Homer, and cites Od. 4.227-30 as support for Homer’s awareness of the Memphite narrative. In this narrative, Herodotus associates the temple of Heracles with Thonis (Thonis we know is the earlier name of Heracleion). Here Thonis has become something of an anthropomorphic version of the mouth of the Nile, and of the city, Thonis/Heracleion.37 Further (with the help of the narrative line and displacement of the principles) there is the association of Egypt’s Mediterranean shore and Memphis, capital of Lower Egypt of the New Kingdom and seat of the late pharaohs in the Greek dark ages and the Archaic period. Again, a narrative of earlier heroic figures appears to capture something of a reality of cross-cultural ties, and of Alexandria’s Mediterranean shore as limen between the Greek world and Egypt. Herodotus’ juxtaposition of the Aegean Sea and the Sea of Egypt is very telling.38 The Odyssey is not the only Homeric epic with implications for the connections between Archaic Greece and Egypt; two aspects of Helen’s characterization in

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ἐν Μέμφει καὶ Ἀφροδίτης ἱερόν, θεᾶς Ἑλληνίδος νομιζομένης· τινὲς δὲ Σελήνης ἱερὸν εἶναί φασιν. In papyri the temple is called the Aphrodision, in Egyptian the goddess is called ‘Astarte of Syria’. Asheri et al. 2007: 322 suggest that the popularity of Astarte in Memphis may be due to her frequent identification with Sekmet, consort of the god Ptah, and also the mother of the god Nefertem. Cf. Lyc. Alex. 831-3: καὶ τὸν θεᾷ κλαυσθέντα Γαύαντος τάφον | Σχοινῇδι μουσόφθαρτον Ἀρέντᾳ Ξένῃ, | κραντῆρι λευκῷ τόν ποτ’ ἔκτανε πτέλας. On Astarte in Egypt see Mercer 1935. Hdt. Hist. 2.113.4: κατηγόρεον δὲ ταῦτα πρός τε τοὺς ἱρέας καὶ τὸν στόματος τούτου φύλακον, τῷ οὔνομα ἦν Θῶνις. τὸ στόματος τούτου φύλακος is an intriguing phrase: Thonis is clearly a human agent in the next section (ἀκούσας δὲ τούτων ὁ Θῶνις πέμπει τὴν ταχίστην ἐς Μέμφιν παρὰ Πρωτέα ἀγγελίην λέγουσαν τάδε). On the actual Egyptian official (τὸν στόματος τούτου φύλακον), see Lloyd 1988: 49. Hdt. Hist. 2.113.1: ἔλεγον δέ μοι οἱ ἱρέες ἱστορέοντι τὰ περὶ Ἑλένην γενέσθαι ὧδε. Ἀλέξανδρον ἁρπάσαντα Ἑλένην ἐκ Σπάρτης ἀποπλέειν ἐς τὴν ἑωυτοῦ· καί μιν, ὡς ἐγένετο ἐν τῷ Αἰγαίῳ, ἐξῶσται ἄνεμοι ἐκβάλλουσι ἐς τὸ Αἰγύπτιον πέλαγος, ἐνθεῦτεν δέ, οὐ γὰρ ἀνιεῖ τὰ πνεύματα, ἀπικνέεται ἐς Αἴγυπτον καὶ Αἰγύπτου ἐς τὸ νῦν Κανωβικὸν καλεύμενον στόμα τοῦ Νείλου καὶ ἐς Ταριχείας.

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Homer’s Iliad are also relevant. These are Helen’s devotion to and longing for her brothers and her role as something of an avatar of Aphrodite. Both find emblematic representations in Iliad 3. At the conclusion of the Teichoscopia, after identifying several of the prominent Achaean leaders to the Trojan elders, Helen wonders at the absence of her two brothers from the field (Il. 3.23-42):39 νῦν δ’ ἄλλους μὲν πάντας ὁρῶ ἑλίκωπας Ἀχαιούς, οὕς κεν ἐῢ γνοίην καί τ’ οὔνομα μυθησαίμην· δοιὼ δ’ οὐ δύναμαι ἰδέειν κοσμήτορε λαῶν Κάστορά θ’ ἱππόδαμον καὶ πὺξ ἀγαθὸν Πολυδεύκεα αὐτοκασιγνήτω, τώ μοι μία γείνατο μήτηρ. ἢ οὐχ ἑσπέσθην Λακεδαίμονος ἐξ ἐρατεινῆς, ἢ δεύρω μὲν ἕποντο νέεσσ’ ἔνι ποντοπόροισι, νῦν αὖτ’ οὐκ ἐθέλουσι μάχην καταδύμεναι ἀνδρῶν αἴσχεα δειδιότες καὶ ὀνείδεα πόλλ’ ἅ μοί ἐστιν.

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Now I see all the other glancing-eyed Achaeans, whom I could well recognize and mention by name. But I am not able to see two leaders of the people, the horseman Castor and Polydeuces good at boxing, my very own brothers, whom with me one mother bore. Either they followed not from lovely Lacedaemon, or followed hither upon the sea-borne ships, and now are not willing to mingle in the battle of men, fearing the many words of shame and reproach that are my lot.

The particularly close fraternal/sororal bond (αὐτοκασιγνήτω, τώ μοι μία γείνατο μήτηρ), siblings as one birth and as one self, is a feature that will undergo expansive development in a later evolution of Helen in Egypt, where Helen and the Dioscuri and their close jointure come into confluence both with the loving brother/sister relationships of Zeus and Hera and of Isis and Osiris (the latter couple are also the issue of a single birth). A similar pre-figuring comes a bit later in Iliad 3: that of Helen as ‘avatar’ of Aphrodite (Il. 3.395-418). Here Helen recognizes Aphrodite in her true form, although the goddess is disguised as an elderly wool-worker to the surrounding Trojan women (lines 386-7). Helen alone recognizes the goddess’ truly remarkable beauty (lines 396-7), a striking parallel with the old men wondering at Helen’s beauty some lines earlier (154-8, where they praise her beauty as divine). The ensuing dialogue (lines 399-417) marks the particularly close relationship of Aphrodite and Helen, her favorite, who is also a child of Zeus (line 418).40 As Helen, now veiled, passes unnoticed among the Trojan woman (so replicating Aphrodite’s passage among them in disguise), it is the 39

40

As has long been observed of this book of the Iliad, both the old men on the wall (compared to cicadas at Il. 3.151-2) and Helen, as she weaves a great narrative of the Trojan heroes (Il. 3.125-28) and narrates the Argive heroes to the Trojan elders, implicate central features of later characterizations of poets. Helen indeed comes close to a pre-figuring of the poet as literary critic in some of the questions and comments she poses. In Homer’s Iliad Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus and Dione: cf. Il. 5.370-74.

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goddess who leads her. This commingled relationship will come to be reconfigured in Hellenistic Egypt in the identification of Helen and Aphrodite as cultural paradigms for the Ptolemaic queen and for their divine instantiation. The Homeric epics are not the only narratives that tie Archaic Greece and Egypt together. The legend of Argos, Io, Epaphus and then of Aegyptus and the Danaids from other Archaic narratives tie the two cultures together, and these come to have a reflection in the Hellenistic recollection of ancient ties between Egypt and Greece. Both of these narratives feature a primeval journey to Egypt followed by a return to Greece, a narrative that binds the two cultures in an ancient mytho-historical cycle. In the opening of his tenth Nemean Ode (lines 1-6), Pindar captures this cycle precisely in the first strophe:41 Δαναοῦ πόλιν ἀγλαοθρόνων τε πεντήκοντα κορᾶν, Χάριτες, Ἄργος Ἥρας δῶμα θεοπρεπὲς ὑμνεῖ τε· φλέγεται δ’ ἀρεταῖς μυρίαις ἔργων θρασέων ἕνεκεν. μακρὰ μὲν τὰ Περσέος ἀμφὶ Μεδοίσας Γοργόνος, πολλὰ δ’ Αἰγύπτῳ καταοίκισεν ἄστη ταῖς Ἐπάφου παλάμαις· οὐδ’ Ὑπερμήστρα παρεπλάγχθη, μονόψαφον ἐν κολ κατασχοῖσα ξίφος. Hymn, Graces, Argos, city of Danaus and of his fifty splendidly throned daughters, godly home of Hera. It is alight with myriad glories from bold deeds. Long are the tales of Perseus with the Gorgon Medusa; many are the cities established in Egypt through the struggles of Epaphos. Nor did Hypermnestra wander astray, when she alone kept her sword sheathed in its scabbard.

The legends of Argos and the Danaids (here represented by Hypermnestra at the stanza’s conclusion, the only one of the Danaids who spared her Egyptian husband, Lynceus), and of Perseus and Medusa’s head, spin an interconnective web across the Greek world (particularly Argos) and Egypt. Io’s long wandering journey ends in Egypt where she becomes Isis-Hathor, whose son, Epaphus, is particularly tied to the Egyptian city of Memphis (the capital of the late kingdom) and to the Apis bull. The daughters of Danaus flee to Argos to avoid marrying their Egyptian husbands, and Hypermnestra and Lynceus end up founding the Danaid dynasty of Argive rulers. Journey and foundation lead to journey and foundation – a cycle that encompasses multiple figures and multiple generations. In this cycle, the journey to and from Egypt serves as the catalyst for subsequent narratives and foundations. The ode concludes with an arrangement of philadelphic afterlife

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On these lines and their Argive mytho-history see Henry 2005 ad loc.; Cannatà Fera 2004; D’Alessio 2004.

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(lines 73-90): the immortal brother (Polydeuces) agrees to share in the death of his mortal brother (Castor), thus foregrounding an image of fraternal love in death. These themes of philadelphic love and immortality are continued in the conclusion of Euripides’ Helen (1658-69), when her deified brothers tell her that on her death she will become a divinity with them. Their association with Egypt is implicated in their role as guardian gods of navigation. πάλαι δ’ ἀδελφὴν κἂν πρὶν ἐξεσώσαμεν, ἐπείπερ ἡμᾶς Ζεὺς ἐποίησεν θεούς· ἀλλ’ ἥσσον’ ἦμεν τοῦ πεπρωμένου θ’ ἅμα καὶ τῶν θεῶν, οἷς ταῦτ’ ἔδοξεν ὧδ’ ἔχειν. σοὶ μὲν τάδ’ αὐδῶ, συγγόνωι δ’ ἐμῆι λέγω· πλεῖ ξὺν πόσει σῶι· πνεῦμα δ’ ἕξετ’ οὔριον· σωτῆρε δ’ ἡμεῖς σὼ κασιγνήτω διπλῶ πόντον παριππεύοντε πέμψομεν πάτραν. ὅταν δὲ κάμψηις καὶ τελευτήσηις βίον, θεὸς κεκλήσηι [καὶ Διοσκόρων μέτα σπονδῶν μεθέξεις] ξένιά τ’ ἀνθρώπων πάρα ἕξεις μεθ’ ἡμῶν· Ζεὺς γὰρ ὧδε βούλεται. We would long before have saved our sister, when Zeus made us gods. But we were less than what was fated together with the gods, who resolved that these things occurred as they did. To you I say these things, I mean my sister. Sail with your husband. The wind is favorable. We, your two savior brothers on horseback, riding alongside, will escort you back to your fatherland. And when you come to the last bend and finish your life, you will be called a goddess and will have the offerings of xenia from men with us. For such is the will of Zeus.

The journey ‘upward’ from Egypt works on multiple levels: the passage of the vessel itself, Helen’s gaze drawn up to the celestial figures of her brothers, and the prospect of her own future apotheosis.42 Euripides’ play traces out the early narrative, already found in Herodotus, of Helen’s stay in Egypt during the Trojan war, her protection under a local king (here Proteus) and her eventual return to Greece under the protection of her two brothers, whom she will join in the afterlife and partake of the same honors as they, apart from other mortals. Alexandria: Helen, Aphrodite, and Ptolemaic Queens For the early Ptolemies, constructing a new world of two predominant cultures (one much older, one a newer emanation of a Macedonian/Greek world) resulted in a tightening and enhancing of those earlier mytho-historical points that already brought Egypt and Greece into tangent. The opening of Callimachus’ Victory of 42

I have written more extensively on this passage in Acosta-Hughes 2012b.

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Berenice (Callim. fr. 54 Hard. = SH 254 + fr. 383 Pf.) offers an image of journeying from Egypt to Greece and Greece to Egypt that can serve as a partial reflection of the opening of Pindar’s tenth Nemean ode, considered earlier. Ζηνί τε καὶ Νεμέηι τι χαρίϲιον ἕδνον ὀφείλω, Νύμφα, κα[ϲιγνή]των ἱερὸν αἷμα θεῶν, ἡμ[ε]τερο . [. . . . . ] . εων ἐπινίκιον ἴππων. ἁρμοῖ γὰρ Δαναοῦ γῆϲ ἀπὸ βουγενέοϲ εἰϲ Ἑλένη[ϲ νηϲῖδ]α καὶ εἰϲ Παλληνέα μά[ντιν ποιμένα [φωκάων], χρύϲεον ἦλθεν ἔποϲ, To Zeus and Nemea I owe a gift in gratitude, bride, holy blood of the brother-sister gods, our (…) epinician of (your?) horses, for just now from the land of Danaus, the calf’s progeny, to Helen’s island and the Pallenean seer, shepherd (of seals), came the golden word…

The horses of the Egyptian queen Berenice II have garnered a victory in the PanHellenic games at Nemea,43 from which her fame has come to Egypt. The poet sets the queen on the same divine plane as Zeus and the nymph Nemea or the geographical setting Nemea:44 Callimachus, through characteristic slippage, identifies Nemea as likely the latter by transferring the title of νύμφη, ‘nymph’ or ‘girl/bride’, to Berenice in the next lines, the ‘holy blood of the brother-sister gods’.45 Danaus is here characterized as descended from the cow (i.e. Io) whose journey to Egypt resulted in his family, from whom he (with his daughters) fled to Argos. The ‘golden word’ of the Nemean victory now comes to Egypt, here marked as Helen’s island (i.e. Pharos, as in the Odyssey 4 narrative), and to the Pallenean seer (Proteus, again as figured in the Odyssey 4 narrative) thereby linking contemporary Egypt both to its mythical Argive and mythical Homeric pasts. χρύϲεον ἦλθεν ἔποϲ is enigmatically complex: this is both a Pindaric motif (the

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The new epigrams attributed to Posidippus (P. Mil. Vogl. VIII 39) include a selection of epigrams that celebrate equestrian victory (71-88 AB), several of which feature Berenice I Soter and apparently Berenice Syra, the sister of Ptolemy III and future wife of Antiochus II of Syria. As Dorothy Thompson has observed (2005) these poems offer strong evidence of the Ptolemies themselves traveling to Greece to attend the games. As more-than-mortal figures, they continue the circular journeys of the heroic past (Io, Danaus, etc.) in reappearing in Greece and then returning to Egypt. Their donations throughout the Greek world (e.g. in Athens, at Samothrace, on Mt. Athos) would have served as a constant reminder of Egypt as a place of distant power, wealth, and association with the divine. Cf. Harder ad loc. v.2 394-5. The θεοὶ ἀδελφοί are the divine emanation of Ptolemy II and his sister-wife Arsinoe II: the cult is associated with that of Alexander. See further Fraser 1974: 1.215-7, 2. 264 n. 208.

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song as bearer of the victory, coming from one place to another), a reference to the royal/divine stature of Berenice II, and, I would suggest, an allusion to the Helen/Menelaus episode of Odyssey 4. For there Menelaus narrates the episode of Proteus and the seals, and Helen enters the men’s chamber resplendent in gold and silver. Furthermore ἔποϲ can refer to a ‘line of poetry’, or, (though much more commonly in the plural ἔπη) to ‘an epic poem’.46 We are fortunate in now having a new fragment of this poem,47 one that draws the Argive and Egyptian bond even closer (Callim. fr. 54a H. [novum] 2-11): Ἰναχ[ίδα]ιϲ κει[ Δωδ[ε]κάκιϲ περὶ δίφρον ἐπήγαγεν ὄθματα †δίφρου† καὶ τ[. ]. Ἀμυμών[η κρή[ν]η̣ καλὰ νάουϲα κ[ δρωμ[ῶ]ϲιν· Δαναοῦ δε[ ἱππαϲτ]ῆρ’ ἅτε τοῦτο φε[ Αἴγυπτος γενεῆϲ αἶμα α[ δηθάκι [ι] μου τὸν Νεῖλο[ κεῖνος ὃϲ ἐν Προίτου ξ[

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Intermingled in these fragmentary lines are multiple characters and geographical features that connect Argos and Egypt: the Inachids (Argives, so named after the river Inachus), Amymone (one of the daughters of Danaus, who gave her name to one of the springs of Argos), Danaus, his brother Aegyptus, the Nile and Proteus, various bodies of water (Inachus, Amymone, Nile) and Egyptian-Argive mythohistorical figures (Danaus, Aegyptus, even Proteus)48 that create a flow of movement and of origin.49 As is the case of the opening strophe of Pindar’s tenth Nemean ode, there is here a dynamic relationship between Egypt and Argos, one that, both in time and space, comes to refer to each in terms of the other: we might think of each as being ‘mapped’ upon the other. In the early Ptolemaic period the figures of Helen and the Dioscuri, demi-gods with a particular bond of fraternal love, have a multi-dimensional role in the construction of Ptolemaic identity and indeed of Ptolemaic ruler cult. For one thing, their iconography is a mobile and fluid one. Already in Alcaeus the Dioscuri are

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Cf. e.g. Philodemus, On Poems fr. 61.16 Janko. On the fragment see Ozbek, D’Alessio, Massimilla and Bastianini 2005. On Proteus and Argos see Harder (2012a) ad. loc. 418. γενεῆϲ αἷμα at line 8 and ἱερὸν αἷμα θεῶν at fr. 54.2 can be understood as working in both a literal sense (blood of the Theoi Adelphoi, so descended in cult iconographic terms from Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II) and a more metaphorical one that captures the close ties of descent and relationship that bind Argos and Egypt (Aegyptus and Danaus are both descended from the river Inachus and the river Nile).

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gods associated particularly with ships and navigation,50 and for the Ptolemaic rulers, with their vast fleet harbored at Alexandria and in ports throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, the Dioscuri are an earlier sea-faring ritual presence that now bears a new and very widely spread relevance.51 Theocritus opens his hexameter hymn to the Dioscuri (Idyll 22) with an extended image of a storm and shipwreck (lines 10-18), that holds renewed significance for a young naval imperial power.52 Furthermore, the Dioscuri are cult figures that are easily mobile. Their devotion to one another and to their sister Helen serves as one mythological model for the theoi adelphoi.53 Another, related model is the marriage of Helen and Menelaus to one another, their ‘Homeric narrative’ of an association with Egypt’s Mediterranean shoreline, and the motif of Helen’s apotheosis. As F. T. Griffiths observed already in 1979, the ἡμίθεοι Helen, Polydeuces and Castor serve as a crucial step in the construction of Ptolemaic ruler cult for a Greek audience. These culturally familiar figures articulate, to a contemporary Hellenic audience, a parallel to the Egyptian imagining of the living pharaoh as god. One feature of the Helen-Menelaus model that is particularly apt for Ptolemy II and his sister/wife Arsinoe II is that the Homeric pair have no son. As Megapenthes, Menelaus’ son by a female slave, is celebrated (apparently) as successor to Menelaus

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Alc. fr. 35 V. See also the Homeric Hymn to the Dioscuri. On the Ptolemaic naval empire, see now Buraselis, Stephanou and Thompson 2013. On the extent of the Ptolemaic empire at this period see e.g. the first map (The Ptolemaic empire as a great power in the eastern Mediterranean basin) in Hölbl 2001. οἳ δέ σφεων κατὰ πρύμναν ἀείραντες μέγα κῦμα | ἠὲ καὶ ἐκ πρῴρηθεν ἢ ὅππῃ θυμὸς ἑκάστου | εἰς κοίλην ἔρριψαν, ἀνέρρηξαν δ’ ἄρα τοίχους | ἀμφοτέρους· κρέμαται δὲ σὺν ἱστίῳ ἄρμενα πάντα | εἰκῇ ἀποκλασθέντα· πολὺς δ’ ἐξ οὐρανοῦ ὄμβρος | νυκτὸς ἐφερπούσης· παταγεῖ δ’ εὐρεῖα θάλασσα | κοπτομένη πνοιαῖς τε καὶ ἀρρήκτοισι χαλάζαις. | ἀλλ’ ἔμπης ὑμεῖς γε καὶ ἐκ βυθοῦ ἕλκετε νῆας | αὐτοῖσιν ναύτῃσιν ὀιομένοις θανέεσθαι· ‘These [sc. squalls] raise a huge wave over the prow, or from ahead, or wherever each squall chooses, into the hold, and they crash through both of the ship’s sides. All the tackle hangs with the mast, broken at random. A great storm comes from heaven as night comes on, and the broad sea resounds, beaten with blasts and unbreakable hail. Yet do you from the depths drag ships and their sailors thinking they will perish’. There remain only a few traces of the cult of the Dioscuri at Alexandria, among them two dedications from the reigns of Ptolemy II and III in which the reigning king and the Dioscuri are synnaoi theoi, or co-templed gods. See Fraser 1974: 2.352 n. 144. The dedications are SEG xxiv, 1174 and Archiv. 5, p. 158, no. 2. A fragment of Satyrus (P. Oxy. 2465 fr. 12, col. II, line 5) refers to a temple of the Dioscuri or Dioskoureion. In his 1974 discussion of the Cult of the Dioscuri at Alexandria, P. Fraser makes the compelling argument that the cult of the Dioscuri at Alexandria may well have been associated with that of the Cabiri, the Samothracian gods to whom Arsinoe II, in her flight from her half-brother/husband Ptolemy Keraunos, turned for refuge, and where the famed Arsinoeion came to stand.

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at the opening of Od. 4 (lines 10-14), so Ptolemy III Euergetes, the son of Ptolemy II and his previous, then disgraced wife Arsinoe I, will one day succeed his father. Three of Theocritus’ Idylls come into play with this act of re-fashioning and cultural/geographical transfer of these Spartan ἡμίθεοι to Egypt’s Mediterranean shore: Idylls 15, 18 and 22. To these we should then add the figure of Heracles as well, from whom the Ptolemies considered themselves descended:54 Idylls 13, 17, 24 and the contested 25 feature Heracles, and are therefore also relevant here. Thus a rather large portion of the extant Theocritean poems, which for the most part do not treat Olympian gods, are implicated in the developing imaginary of a ‘Greek’ Alexandria, and to these we can add Theocr. fr. 3 on the deified Berenice I. I have written on several of these poems and their significance in terms of the incipient Ptolemaic ruler-cult imagery elsewhere, and so would like simply to highlight a few points here.55 Helen’s relationship to Aphrodite (‘avatar’ of Aphrodite probably is the right term here) serves as a model to the relationship of the Ptolemaic queen with the same goddess: the comparison of Arsinoe II to Helen in Idyll 15 pointedly implicates the four figures of Aphrodite, Helen, Berenice I, and Arsinoe II in one image of apotheosis.56 Arsinoe, the ‘Berenician daughter who is like

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Theocr. Id. 17. 13-25: Ἐκ πατέρων οἷος μὲν ἔην τελέσαι μέγα ἔργον | Λαγείδας Πτολεμαῖος, ὅτε φρεσὶν ἐγκατάθοιτο | βουλάν, ἃν οὐκ ἄλλος ἀνὴρ οἷός τε νοῆσαι. | τῆνον καὶ μακάρεσσι πατὴρ ὁμότιμον ἔθηκεν | ἀθανάτοις, καί οἱ χρύσεος θρόνος ἐν Διὸς οἴκῳ | δέδμηται· παρὰ δ’ αὐτὸν Ἀλέξανδρος φίλα εἰδώς | ἑδριάει, Πέρσαισι βαρὺς θεὸς αἰολομίτρας. | ἀντία δ’ Ἡρακλῆος ἕδρα κενταυροφόνοιο | ἵδρυται στερεοῖο τετυγμένα ἐξ ἀδάμαντος· | ἔνθα σὺν ἄλλοισιν θαλίας ἔχει Οὐρανίδῃσι, | χαίρων υἱωνῶν περιώσιον υἱωνοῖσιν, | ὅττι σφεων Κρονίδης μελέων ἐξείλετο γῆρας, | ἀθάνατοι δὲ καλεῦνται ἑοὶ νέποδες γεγαῶτες. | ἄμφω γὰρ πρόγονός σφιν ὁ καρτερὸς Ἡρακλείδας, | ἀμφότεροι δ’ ἀριθμεῦνται ἐς ἔσχατον Ἡρακλῆα. ‘He is from such forefathers as could accomplish great deeds: Ptolemy son of Lagus, who set such plans in his heart as no other man could consider. Him even among the blessed dead the father made equal in honor to the immortals, and for him a golden throne is fashioned in the house of Zeus. By him Alexander sits, kindly disposed, a god of variegated crown, a heavy weight for the Persians. And opposite is established the seat of Heracles, slayer of centaurs, made of hard adamant. With the other Olympians he holds his feasts, rejoicing very much in the sons of his sons. When the son of Cronus took old age from their limbs they were called immortal, rejoicing, his own children. For both is strong Heracles an ancestor, and both number their lines back to Heracles.’ On the passage see Acosta-Hughes 2012b: 245-9; on Heracles and the formation of Ptolemaic royal iconography see Stephens: 2003: 122-70, on this poem esp. 147-70. Cf. Acosta-Hughes 2010: 29-39: 2012a; 2012b; 2014. Theocr. Id. 15.105-111: Κύπρι Διωναία, τὺ μὲν ἀθανάταν ἀπὸ θνατᾶς, | ἀνθρώπων ὡς μῦθος, ἐποίησας Βερενίκαν, | ἀμβροσίαν ἐς στῆθος ἀποστάξασα γυναικός· | τὶν δὲ χαριζομένα, πολυώνυμε καὶ πολύναε, | ἁ Βερενικεία θυγάτηρ Ἑλένᾳ εἰκυῖα | Ἀρσινόα πάντεσσι καλοῖς ἀτιτάλλει Ἄδωνιν, ‘Cypris daughter of Dione, you made Berenice, so

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Helen’ (lines 110-11: ἁ Βερενικεία θυγάτηρ Ἑλένᾳ εἰκυῖα | Ἀρσινόα) is indeed ‘like Helen’ in that her rapport with her deified ‘mother’ is one that will assure her own ‘immortality’. As F. T. Griffiths so well observed in his 1979 study of Theocritus,57 the myth of Helen’s presence in Egypt and of her own apotheosis, becomes in turn a crucial component in the image of deified Ptolemaic queens and functions as a Greek parallel to the Egyptian cult iconography and belief in the divine nature of their rulers. In a poetic gesture that recalls Aphrodite’s preservation of her son Aineias in Iliad 5,58 Aphrodite at Id. 17.45-50 preserves her favorite from death, transferring the queen to her own temple, where, as a co-templed god (σύνναος θεός) Berenice will forever enjoy divine honors.59 The temple at line 50 is not one that we can easily identify;60 the situation, though, is very likely the same as that of the temple of Arsinoe-Aphrodite at Zephyrium, the small temple to which we will turn shortly. The conceptualization of Aphrodite (identified with a number of gods in the Egyptian pantheon, particularly Hathor, but also Isis) as the figure that preserves the Ptolemaic queen and so the royal family from generation to generation, is clearly at work here – and the role of Helen and the other ancestor-ἡμίθεοι and of their mythologies is central in this process. The structure of Idyll 17 is one that moves from Alexandria at the opening to Heaven, then back to Alexandria and finally at the conclusion back to Heaven again.61 The poem’s final movement is a comparison that deftly aligns Ptolemy

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the story goes, immortal from mortal, distilling ambrosia into her woman’s breast. Honoring you, god of many names and many temples, Berenice’s daughter who is like Helen, Arsinoe, favors Adonis with all good things’. F. T. Griffiths, Theocritus at Court. Griffith’s work was one of the early English-language studies to contextualize Alexandrian poetry of the early 3 rd cent. BCE in its Greco-Egyptian court setting. Hom. Il. 5.311 ff. κάλλει ἀριστεύουσα θεάων πότν’ Ἀφροδίτα, | σοὶ τήνα μεμέλητο· σέθεν δ’ ἕνεκεν Βερενίκα | εὐειδὴς Ἀχέροντα πολύστονον οὐκ ἐπέρασεν, | ἀλλά μιν ἁρπάξασα, πάροιθ’ ἐπὶ νῆα κατελθεῖν | κυανέαν καὶ στυγνὸν ἀεὶ πορθμῆα καμόντων, | ἐς ναὸν κατέθηκας, ἑᾶς δ’ ἀπεδάσσαο τιμᾶς. ‘Aphrodite, first among goddesses in beauty, she was your care. For because of you lovely Berenice did not traverse Acheron source of much lamentation, but taking her up before she came to the dark ship and the ferryman of the dead, you put her in your temple, and shared your honors with her’. See further on this line Gow ad loc. There was a shrine of Berenice I in Alexandria at the time of the ‘grand procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus’ (275/4, see Athen. 5.202d). The structure of this poem is a clever variation on the standard Homeric scene-transfers from earth to heaven and back (often done through a simile of a god’s descent/ascent to e.g. a halcyon vel. sim.): the first reference to mortals at line 3 (ἀνδρῶν δ’ αὖ) moves the audience to the singer’s setting among mortals, but the reference at lines 11-12 to the gods honoring the king (ἐπεὶ πάρα μυρία εἰπεῖν | οἷσι θεοὶ τὸν ἄριστον ἐτίμησαν βασιλήων) moves the scene to Olympus. The love of Aphrodite for Berenice I adroitly moves the scene back to Alexandria. At the poem’s conclusion the comparison of the

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and Arsinoe (the ‘brother-sister gods’) with the holy (and ancient) union of Zeus and Hera.62 Idyll 18 is an epithalamium (a poem sung at the bed-chamber door of a newly married bride and groom) that celebrates the marriage of Helen and Menelaus, a couple that as we have seen, have complicated Egyptian associations in third-century Alexandria. The poem is replete with allusions to Sappho, a poet well known for her composition in the genre of epithalamium, and in whose verses Helen also figures prominently. Idyll 17, I have argued, is not only a poem that celebrates the wedding of Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II, but seems likely to have been the poem that won the agon for this occasion.63 While any argument on the ordering of Theocritus’ Idylls is necessarily fallible,64 the similar structure of Idylls 17 and 18 (both open with the singer pointing to the song he is beginning as generically innovative, both poems conclude with a hymnic farewell) suggest a close parallelism. Both are epithalamia, with Idyll 17 centering on the groom and Idyll 18 on the bride. Helen’s more-than-mortal nature complements the more-thanmortal nature that Idyll 17 claims for Ptolemy II. Two of Callimachus’ fragmentary poems, fr. 227 Pf. and 228 Pf., again figure Helen and the Dioscuri, and the latter poem again contributes to the divine character of Arsinoe II. Fr. 227 (Pannychis) is, according to a prose diegesis that accompanies it, a paroinion (wine song) for the Dioscuri, in which the poet also hymns Helen.65 In fr. 228, titled by a later hand the ἐκθέωσις Ἀρσινόης or Deification of Arsinoe, the Dioscuri bear Arsinoe II heavenward upon her death and

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love of the brother-sister royals to the love of Zeus and Hera deftly shifts the scene back to Olympus. The poem’s conclusion is deliberately ambiguous, as is the relationship of Zeus to the future god-king Ptolemy I. See further Fantuzzi 2001; Hunter 2003: 8-24. Theocr. Id. 17.128-34: αὐτός τ’ ἰφθίμα τ’ ἄλοχος, τᾶς οὔτις ἀρείων | νυμφίον ἐν μεγάροισι γυνὰ περιβάλλετ’ ἀγοστῷ, | ἐκ θυμοῦ στέργοισα κασίγνητόν τε πόσιν τε. | ὧδε καὶ ἀθανάτων ἱερὸς γάμος ἐξετελέσθη | οὓς τέκετο κρείουσα Ῥέα βασιλῆας Ὀλύμπου· | ἓν δὲ λέχος στόρνυσιν ἰαύειν Ζηνὶ καὶ Ἥρῃ | χεῖρας φοιβήσασα μύροις ἔτι παρθένος Ἶρις. ‘He himself and his noble spouse, than whom no better wife embraces her bridegroom in their halls, from her heart loving both her brother and her husband. So was accomplished the holy marriage of the immortals whom Queen Rhea bore to be kings of Olympus. One bed lays Iris, still a virgin, for Zeus and Hera to lie upon, after cleansing her hands with perfume’. See Acosta-Hughes 2014: 55-58. On the ordering of Theocritus’ Idylls see esp. Gutzwiller 1996. Dieg. 10.6-9 (to Callim. Fr. 227). Ἔνεϲτ’ Ἀπόλλον τῷ χορῷ Παροίνιον εἰϲ τοὺϲ Διοσκούρουϲ· καὶ Ἑλένην ὑμνεῖ, καὶ παρακαλεῖ τὴν θύϲιαν δέξαϲθαι· καὶ προτροπὴ τοῖϲ συμπόταιϲ εἰϲ τὸ ἀγρυπνεῖν. ‘Apollo is in the chorus. Wine song for the Dioscuri. And he hymns Helen, and calls on her to receive the sacrifice, and there is an enjoinder to the symposiasts to stay awake’. On these poems in their context with one another, and in Callimachus’ oeuvre, see Acosta-Hughes 2003.

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subsequent apotheosis.66 The poem, which contained more than 75 stichic lines, is very fragmentary, but it is nonetheless a tantalizing image of ‘apotheosis at work’.67 The small part of this fragmentary poem that survives tells of the passage of Philotera,68 younger sister of Ptolemy and Arsinoe, already dead, now in Heaven and apparently co-templed with Demeter (Isis in the Egyptian pantheon) at the moment she realizes her sister Arsinoe has died. Philotera and her attendant Charis traverse a celestial path that encompasses a triangle of Sicily, Mt. Athos and Egypt, and that happens to encapsulate much of the Ptolemaic area of geo-political interest at the empire’s height.69 The already deified sister will welcome Arsinoe borne unto heaven by the Dioscuri, who can be understood, given Arsinoe’s frequent comparison with Helen in early Ptolemaic iconography, as her brothers. Indeed, the queen’s celestial ascension at their hands aligns Arsinoe directly with the mythological image of Helen’s own ascension as described by Castor at the conclusion of Euripides’ Helen.70 The image is at once familial, royal and expressive of the transition from mortal to divine. The mention of Proteus as prophetic figure/interpreter of truth at line 39 is intriguing;71 the implicit reference to Helen and Menelaus in Egypt,72 as well the role of the Dioscuri in the poem’s central action, ties together a series of ‘spatial’ transitions centered on Egypt’s Mediterranean shore that, in this era, can also showcase Ptolemaic images of power and mythohistory. Another Callimachean poem, a famous one, that captures the journey from earth to heaven and the transition from mortal to divine is the Lock of Berenice, which comes toward the end of Callimachus’ four-book elegiac Aetia. This poem, too, was composed for a specific occasion (the return of Ptolemy III from the third

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Dieg. 10.10-13 (to Callim. Fr. 228). Ἀγέτω θεόϲ, οὐ γὰρ ἐγὼ δίχα τῶνδ’ ἀείδειν Ἐκθέωϲιϲ Ἀρϲινόηϲ· φηϲὶν δὲ αὐτὴν ἀνηρπάϲθαι ὑπὸ τῶν Διοϲκούρων καὶ βωμὸν καὶ τέμενοϲ αὐτῆϲ καθιδρύϲθαι πρὸϲ τῷ Ἐμπορίῳ. ‘Let the god lead, for I will not sing apart from them. Deification of Arsinoe. He says she was carried up by the Dioscuri and an altar and sanctuary founded for her near the Emporion’. The poem is in a rarer lyric meter, the archebulean, which is essentially an enoplian with choriambic expansion: × ‒ ⏑ ⏑ | ‒ ⏑ ⏑ ‒ | ⏑ ⏑ ‒ ⏑ ‒ ‒. The extant fragment (P. Berol. 1347 Ar and Av) consists of 75 lines, but there is no way of knowing how much longer the poem continued. Note also Λιβύα at line 51: ἦρα τι μοι Λιβύα κα[κοῦται, ‘has my Libya in some way been done wrong?’ Eur. Hel. 1666-69: ὅταν δὲ κάμψηις καὶ τελευτήσηις βίον, | θεὸς κεκλήσηι [καὶ Διοσκόρων μέτα | σπονδῶν μεθέξεις] ξένιά τ’ ἀνθρώπων πάρα | ἕξεις μεθ’ ἡμῶν· Ζεὺς γὰρ ὧδε βούλεται. Callim. fr. 228.39: Πρωτῆϊ μὲν ὧδ’ ἐτύμοι κατάγο[ντο φᾶμαι. Cf. lines 4-6 of the Victory of Berenice (cited above). In both cases the ‘truth’ comes to Egypt as captured by both Ptolemaic and Homeric references. See D’Alessio 2007: 664 n 21.

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Syrian War), and serves to initiate the new queen, Berenice II, into the divine family of her bridegroom. The poem is best known to us through Catullus’ Roman adaptation; fortunately, however, the discovery of a part of the Greek poem on papyrus has given us some idea of the original.73 Berenice dedicated a lock of her hair for the safe return of her new husband; the day after the dedication, the lock had vanished, but the court astronomer observed that it was now a constellation in the night sky. Callimachus configures the lock’s journey from an altar in Alexandria to a small temple of the deified Arsinoe on the Canopic mouth of the Nile. I will return to this temple shortly, but here would like to address the surviving lines that feature the apotheosis itself (lines 51-58): ἄρτι [ν]εότμητόν με κόμαι ποθέεσκον ἀδε[λφεαί, καὶ πρόκατε γνωτὸς Μέμνονος Αἰθίοπος ἵετο κυκλώσας βαλιὰ πτερὰ θῆλυς ἀήτης, ἵππο[ς] ἰοζώνου Λοκρίδος Ἀρσινόης, . [. ]ασε δὲ πνοιῇ μ̣ε, δι’ ἠέρα δ’ ὑγρὸν ἐνείκας 55 Κύπρ]ιδος εἰς κόλπους ἔθηκε αὐτή μιν Ζεφυρῖτις ἐπὶ χρέο[ς . . . . Κ]ανωπίτου ναιέτις α[ἰγιαλοῦ. ὄφρα δὲ] μὴ νύμφης Μινωίδος ο[ . . . . . ]ος ἀνθρώποις μοῦνον ἐπι. [ , 60 φάεσ]ι̣ν ἐν πολέεσσιν ἀρίθμιος ἀλλ[ὰ φαείνω καὶ Βερ]ενίκειος καλὸς ἐγὼ πλόκαμ[ος, My sister hairs were longing for me, just now cut, and suddenly Ethiopian Memnon’s twin [sc. Zephyr] came rushing, circling his dappled wings, a fertile breeze, the Locrian horse of violet-girdled Arsinoe; with a breath he bore me, and carrying me through the wet aether he set me … in Aphrodite’s lap. Him for this purpose Zephyritis … who inhabits the Canopian shore. That not of Minos’ bride [sc. Ariadne]…alone for men…but that I be numbered among many [lights] I too the fair lock of Berenice

The lines capture the lock’s journey across the Mediterranean shore eastward from Alexandria to Canopus, where a temple of Arsinoe as Aphrodite stood. The twin gods Memnon and Zephyr take on the fraternal role here of the Dioscuri in the previous passage. The lock is set in the temple, indeed upon the lap of the temple figure, and at the same time upon the lap of the goddess in her celestial home (the role of the temple and its statue as representing the god in its celestial home is very significant here). The passage is imbued, as I observed elsewhere,74 with the vocabulary and coloring of the Archaic poet Sappho, as befits the ‘journey’ of a girl to marriage, and of a chevelure, or lock of hair, to its celestial home.

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PSI 1092. Acosta-Hughes 2010: 63-81. See also Vox 2000.

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Both of these Callimachean poems about divine apotheosis feature temples of Arsinoe: one in Alexandria itself, one at Eastern Canopus (a part of the area now submerged below the Bay of Aboukir). As the diegesis to fr. 228 notes, the poem told of the founding of a mortuary temple near the Emporion in Alexandria: φηϲὶν δὲ αὐτὴν ἀνηρπάϲθαι ὑπὸ τῶν Διοϲκούρων καὶ βωμὸν καὶ τέμενοϲ αὐτῆϲ καθιδρύϲθαι πρὸϲ τῷ Ἐμπορίῳ. The Emporion in Alexandria faced the Eastern Harbor, between the Heptastadion to the West and the Royal Quarter to the East. Ptolemy II began construction of the temple, and it is not entirely clear whether it was ever completed. As Pliny notes at NH 36.67 f., Ptolemy II had a large obelisk placed in front of the temple;75 Pliny’s description is, fittingly, partly dedicated to the Nilotic journey of the huge piece of stone to Alexandria. There may be a reference to this obelisk in another poem, again Callimachus’ Lock of Berenice (fr. 110 Pf. = ), which tells of another dedication, and of another journey, in this case of Berenice’s lock of hair for her husband’s (Ptolemy III) safe return from the third Syrian War: fr. 110.45 βουπόρος Ἀρσινόη̣ς μητρὸς σέο, καὶ διὰ μέ̣[σσου, ‘the oxpiercer of your mother’. The exact sense of βουπόρος Ἀρσινόης is contested (Catullus omits this reference in his rendition of the poem). Some scholars understand this to be a reference to Mt. Athos, while many others, following the scholion to this line, βούπορος ὁ ὀβελίσκος, believe it refers to an obelisk established in honor of Arsinoe II, very likely the one at her mortuary temple in Alexandria.76 One scholar has posited a date of ca. 250 for the establishment of this obelisk in Alexandria;77 assuming this may be correct, the dates of the two poems and the narratives of the two dedicatory journeys, might be quite close (250 and 246 BCE). The mortuary temple in Alexandria featured a statue of Arsinoe II, an image of the queen that was, in a visible recreation of her apotheosis, drawn up to the top of the temple, apparently by magnets. The two textual attestations of this phenomenon are somewhat unclear (and one is quite late),78 though this has not prevented

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Plin. NH 36.67.1-68.5 Alexandriae statuit unum Ptolemaeus Philadelphus octoginta cubitorum. exciderat eum Necthebis rex purum, maiusque opus in devehendo statuendove vtum est quam in excidendo. a Satyro architecto aliqui devectum tradunt rate, Callixenus a Phoenice, fossa perducto usque ad iacentem obeliscum Nilo, navesque duas in latitudinem patulas pedalibus ex eodem lapide ad rationem geminati per duplicem mensuram ponderis oneratas ita, ut subirent obeliscum pendentem extremitatibus suis in ripis utrimque; postea egestis laterculis adlevatas naves excepisse onus; statutum autem in sex talis e monte eodem, et artificem donatum talentis L. hic fuit in Arsinoeo positus a rege supra dicto munus amoris, coniuge eademque sorore Arsinoe. See discussion in Harder 2012: 814-17. The obelisk was later moved to the Forum: see McKenzie 2007: 51-2. Rice 1983: 154 n. 46. Pliny NH 34.148.5-149.1: Magnete lapide architectus Timochares Alexandriae Arsinoes templum concamarare incohaverat, ut in eo simulacrum e ferro pendere in aëre

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some intriguing and imaginative scholarly attempts to recreate this image of a celestial journey.79 What we can deduce from these descriptions, however, is the fascinating concept of an apotheosis re-configured as a visible spectacle: the queen’s apotheosis is not only a part of her mytho-history, but can in fact be experienced as a repeated visual phenomenon. The temple invoked in Callim. fr. 110 is that of Arsinoe-Aphrodite at the Canopic mouth of the Nile (now underwater, possibly the provenience of the granite statue with which this article began). There are several surviving epigrams of Callimachus and Posidippus that have this temple as their subject: the first (AB 116) is one of two epigrams preserved by the Firmin-Didot papyrus (the second is an epigram on the Pharos lighthouse, AB 115, both appear to have been taken from a sort of travelogue of Alexandria and its environs):80 μέσσον ἐγὼ Φαρίης ἀκτῆς στόματός τε Κανώπου ἐν περιφαινομένῳ κύματι χῶρον ἔχω, τήνδε πολυρρήνου Λιβύης ἀνεμώδεα χηλήν, τὴν ἀνατεινομένην εἰς Ἰταλὸν Ζέφυρον, ἔνθα με Καλλικράτης ἱδρύσατο καὶ βασιλίσσης ἱερὸν Ἀρσινόης Κύπριδος ὠνόμασεν. ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ τὴν Ζεφυρῖτιν ἀκουσομένην Ἀφροδίτην, Ἑλλήνων ἁγναί, βαίνετε, θυγατέρες, οἵ θ’ ἁλὸς ἐργάται ἄνδρες· ὁ γὰρ ναύαρχος ἔτευξεν τοῦθ’ ἱερὸν παντὸς κύματος εὐλίμενον.

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videretur. intercessit ipsius mors et Ptolemaei regis, qui id sorori suae iusserat fieri. ‘The architect Timochares began to vault a temple of Arsinoe at Alexandria with magnets, so that the statue would appear to hang in the air from iron. His own death intervened, and that of Ptolemy the king, who had ordered it made for his own sister.’ Ausonius Mos. 314-17: Conditor hic forsan fuerit Ptolemaïdos aulae Dinochares, quadrata cui (?) in fastigia cono surgit et ipsa suas consumit pyramis umbras, iussus ob incesti qui quondam foedus amoris Arsinoen Pharii suspendit in aëre templi. spirat enim tecti testudine totus (?) achates afflatamque trahit ferrato crine puellam. ‘Here also may have been the architect of Ptolemy’s palace, Dinochares, builder of the pyramid which rises (?), four-sided, to a cone and consumes its own shadows, he who, when ordered to commemorate Arsinoe, the incestuous bride, poised her image in mid-air beneath the roof of her Pharian temple. For from the vaulted roof a magnet breathes and draws the attracted young queen towards it by her iron-wrought hair’. Pfrommer 2002: 54-75 is a particularly creative and suggestive attempt to recreate something of a model of this temple, and he also offers a detailed discussion of the possible technology involved. The Serapeion in Alexandria featured a similar device: see McKenzie 2007: 198-203. P. Louvre 7172.

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Midway between the shore of Pharos and the mouth of Canopus in the waves seen from all round I have my place, the windy breakwater of Libya rich in sheep, facing the Italian Zephyr, where Callicrates set me and named me shrine of Arsinoe Cypris. So to her who will be named Zephyritis Aphrodite come, chaste daughters of the Greeks, and you who work upon the sea. For the captain built the shrine as a safe harbor from the waves.

The epigram establishes two phenomena, the goddess’ temple and cult. Here lines 5-6 and 7, the ending of the first period and the beginning of the second, function as a transition, both in the poem and in the time frame (foundation of temple and then the fame of the cult, as denoted with the future participle ἀκουσομένην). Arsinoe in these lines effectively becomes Aphrodite, with the four-syllable words βασιλίσσης at line 5 and Ἀφροδίτην at line 7 encompassing the transition from queen to god. In its loose geographical framework (Pharos, Canopic mouth of the Nile, i.e. Egypt, Italy, and Greece) the poem, like Callim. fr. 228 discussed earlier, spans corners of the Ptolemaic Mediterranean empire. The references to the Samian nauarch Callicrates81 at the conclusion of the poem’s two periods highlights both the power of the Ptolemaic navy and the association of the Ptolemaic empire with the sea. The temple finds a brief description in Strabo’s Geographica (17.1.16.17-28), from the author’s own travels in Egypt in 27 BCE: μετὰ δὲ τὴν διώρυγα τὴν ἐπὶ Σχεδίαν ἄγουσαν ὁ ἑξῆς ἐπὶ τὸν Κάνωβον πλοῦς ἐστι παράλληλος τῇ παραλίᾳ τῇ ἀπὸ Φάρου μέχρι τοῦ Κανωβικοῦ στόματος· στενὴ γάρ τις ταινία μεταξὺ διήκει τοῦ τε πελάγους καὶ τῆς διώρυγος, ἐν ᾗ ἔστιν ἥ τε μικρὰ Ταπόσειρις μετὰ τὴν Νικόπολιν καὶ τὸ Ζεφύριον, ἄκρα ναΐσκον ἔχουσα Ἀρσινόης Ἀφροδίτης· τὸ δὲ παλαιὸν καὶ Θῶνίν τινα πόλιν ἐνταῦθά φασιν, ἐπώνυμον τοῦ βασιλέως τοῦ δεξαμένου Μενέλαόν τε καὶ Ἑλένην ξενίᾳ. περὶ οὖν τῶν τῆς Ἑλένης φαρμάκων φησὶν οὕτως ὁ ποιητής ‘ἐσθλά, τά οἱ Πολύδαμνα πόρεν Θῶνος παράκοιτις’. After the canal leading to Schedia the sea-voyage to Canopos is parallel to that from Pharos to the Canopic mouth of the Nile. For a narrow band of ground lies between the sea and the canal, on which is the small Taposeiris, after Nicopolis and Zephyrium, and it has a small temple of Arsinoe Aphrodite. They say that long ago the city was called Thonis, eponymous with the king who hosted Menelaus and Helen. About Helen’s drugs the poet [sc. Homer] says ‘excellent are the drugs which Polydamna, wife of Thon, provided her’.

The city of Thonis was, as we now can more surely attest, the nearby city of Heracleion. Among Callimachus’ extant epigrams (5 PF. = 14 GP) is one that is, or pretends to be, an inscription on a votive offering of a nautilus shell. As in the case 81

On Callicrates, early Ptolemaic nauarch, see now Hauben (2013).

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with the previous epigram, this poem not only details the divine association of Aphrodite and Arsinoe, but also features two journeys: 1) that of the nautilus to the shores of Iulis (synecdoche for Ceus) and 2) that of Cleinias to the temple at Canopus, where he makes the dedication on behalf of his daughter. κόγχος ἐγώ, Ζεφυρῖτι, παλαίτερον, ἀλλὰ σὺ νῦν με, Κύπρι, Σεληναίης ἄνθεμα πρῶτον ἔχεις, ναυτίλος ὃς πελάγεσσιν ἐπέπλεον, εἰ μὲν ἀῆται, τείνας οἰκείων λαῖφος ἀπὸ προτόνων, εἰ δὲ γαληναίη, λιπαρὴ θεός, οὖλος ἐρέσσων ποσσὶν – ἴδ’ ὡς τὤργῳ τοὔνομα συμφέρεται – ἔστ’ ἔπεσον παρὰ θῖνας Ἰουλίδας, ὄφρα γένωμαι σοὶ τὸ περίσκεπτον παίγνιον, Ἀρσινόη, μηδέ μοι ἐν θαλάμῃσιν ἔθ’ ὡς πάρος – εἰμὶ γὰρ ἄπνους – τίκτηται νοτερῆς ὤεον ἁλκυόνος. Κλεινίου ἀλλὰ θυγατρὶ δίδου χάριν· οἶδε γὰρ ἐσθλά ῥέζειν καὶ Σμύρνης ἐστὶν ἀπ’ Αἰολίδος. I was once a Nautilus, Zephyritis, but now you have me, Cypris, the first votive of Selenaea, I who used to sail on the seas, if there was a breeze, stretching out my sail from my own forestays, but if a calm, shining goddess, I rowed rapidly with my feet – thus does my name fit the action – until I fell upon the shores of Iulis, that I might become, Arsinoe, your much admired plaything. Nor in my chambers as before – for I am dead – is the egg of the sea halcyon laid. But grant favor to the daughter of Cleinias. For she knows to do good things and is from Aeolian Smyrna.

The extraordinary achievement of establishing a cult of Arsinoe-Aphrodite (Arsinoe-Aphrodite-Eupoloia-Zephyritis)82 establishes a Greek equivalent of the pharaonic bond of Pharaoh’s wife and the goddess Hathor, the Egyptian parallel of Aphrodite. Callimachus’ Lock of Berenice, as Llewellyn-Jones and Winder have convincingly shown, recasts an Egyptian catasterism in Greek mythological terms, and sets up the figure of Arsinoe-Aphrodite as essentially Mother of the World, on whose lap, in Callimachus’ poem, the Lock comes to rest.83 The lock’s journey from its dedicatory site in Alexandria to the temple of Arsinoe-Aphrodite at Canopus emblematizes early Ptolemaic rule in Egypt. This is a journey over the Alexandrian shore, through a series of implicated images that draw together maritime rule and a powerful and very ancient kingdom, the fluid relationships of gods and kings, the close bond of maritime and astronomical mapping, and the role of a goddess, Aphrodite, with aspects that are Syrian, Egyptian, Greek, and also, by 82 83

See Pirenne-Delforge 1994: 433-7 on Arsinoe Euploia. Llewllyn-Jones/Winder 2004: esp. 254-264. Callim. fr. 110.56: Κύπρ]ιδος εἰς κόλ⌊πους ἔθηκε; Cat. 66.56: et Veneris casto collocat in gremio. West 1985: 63 prefers to understand εἰς κόλ⌊πους as the sea, but this may be an intended double-entendre, as κόλπος may have both senses.

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cultic association, Ptolemaic. The Lock of Berenice was a poem that captured multiple aspects of both Arsinoe II and of her (considerable) Mediterranean presence. A Roman Epilogue: Venus Genetrix I would like to conclude with a later hypothesis, a different journey, and a different ‘imagined’ empire. Caesar’s sojourn in Alexandria in 48-7 BCE at the side of Cleopatra VII, the last of the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt, results in the birth of their son Caesarion in June of 47. Upon Caesar’s return to Rome (July 46) he establishes a temple to Venus, divine ancestor of the Julian gens, in his new Forum. There had been a change, however, in the conception of this temple. The original idea of a temple of Venus Victrix that Caesar vowed at the battle of Pharsalus came to be transformed into that of Venus Genetrix, a representation of maternal divine protection.84 It is indeed revealing to compare the image of Venus Genetrix with that of the new black granite goddess from Canopus, with which this paper began (see figure 5, p. 53).85 Both images are culturally syncretic; both are figures of maternal protection. Both in different ways represent Aphrodite/Venus as a figure of a divine fons et origo of the nation. Both embody, as it were, a mythology of beginning: Venus as mother of Aeneas, the first Trojan overlord of Rome, and Aphrodite as protector of Helen and so a symbol of the early Greek presence in Egypt. Cleopatra herself came to Rome in 46 BCE, though whether she remained in Rome until Caesar’s death in the spring of 44 is uncertain.86 There is a late tradition that a golden statue of Cleopatra VII was established in this temple:87 the sources

84 85

86 87

App. BC 2.68-9, 102; 3.28; Cass. Dio. 43.22.2. See Orlin 2011: 68-9. I owe this comparison to my colleague and friend Évelyne Prioux, with whom I first had the pleasure of viewing these two images in comparison with one another. For images of Venus Genetrix cf. LIMC. See discussion in Gruen 2003, but cf. Kleiner 2005. App. BC. 2.15.102.15: ἱππέων ἀγῶνα ἐλεφάντων τε μάχην εἴκοσι πρὸς εἴκοσι καὶ ναυμαχίαν ἐρετῶν τετρακισχιλίων, ἐπιβεβηκότων ἐς μάχην χιλίων ἑκατέρωθεν. ἀνέστησε καὶ τῇ Γενετείρᾳ τὸν νεών, ὥσπερ εὔξατο μέλλων ἐν Φαρσάλῳ μαχεῖσθαι· καὶ τέμενος τῷ νεῲ περιέθηκεν, ὃ Ῥωμαίοις ἔταξεν ἀγορὰν εἶναι, οὐ τῶν ὠνίων, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ πράξεσισυνιόντων ἐς ἀλλήλους, καθὰ καὶ Πέρσαις ἦν τις ἀγορὰ ζητοῦσιν ἢμανθάνουσι τὰ δίκαια. Κλεοπάτρας τε εἰκόνα καλὴν τῇ θεῷ παρεστήσατο, ἣ καὶ νῦν συνέστηκεν αὐτῇ; D.C. 51.22.3: συχνὰ γὰρ καὶ ἐς ἐκεῖνο ἀνετέθη, καὶ ἕτερα τῷ τε Διὶ τῷ Καπιτωλίῳ καὶ τῇ Ἥρᾳ τῇ τε Ἀθηνᾷ ἱερώθη, πάντων τῶν πρότερον ἐνταῦθα ἀνακεῖσθαι δοκούντων ἢ καὶ ἔτι κειμένων ἐκ δόγματος τότε καθαιρεθέντων ὡς καὶ μεμιαμμένων. καὶ οὕτως ἡ Κλεοπάτρα καίπερ καὶ ἡττηθεῖσα καὶ ἁλοῦσα ἐδοξάσθη, ὅτι τά τε κοσμήματα αὐτῆς ἐν τοῖς ἱεροῖς ἡμῶν ἀνάκειται καὶ αὐτὴ ἐν τῷ Ἀφροδισίῳ χρυσῆ ὁρᾶται.

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(Appian and Dio Cassius) are considerably later than the event they describe, and there remains some debate in the scholarship on whether this statue represents one of many Roman images of the conquest of Egypt, or whether this is an event that indeed occurred as part of the temple’s instantiation.88 If the latter, this can be understood as a cult instantiation in the manner of a synnaos theos. Caesar’s cooption of Egypt is framed here as an act of cultural syncretism, combining something of the Greek-Egypt association with features of the more traditional Roman practice (invocatio) of summoning gods from elsewhere to the Roman side. In this case the foundation of the temple, as well as the physical presence of Cleopatra for a period of time in Rome, may also be understood as an attempt to transfer Alexandria to Rome. This is a careful reworking of Egypt, Venus Genetrix and Aphrodite/Venus as the ‘mother’ figure of a national mythology. The later story of Augustus’ importation of large cultural monuments from Alexandria to Rome is a second, and differently framed version of the above. Here conquest rather than co-option is the major frame: the large-scale importation of Egyptian monuments to Rome puts Roman rule of Egypt on display. At the same time, though, this act of cultural transfer has the effect of again ‘imagining’ Egypt in Rome, recreating throughout the city the presence of another city, and another imagined imperial space – the same remembered space on the shore of the Mediterranean where this paper began.89

88

89

For the former see Gruen 2003, for the latter e.g. Kleiner 2005: 145-51. A key issue is the interpretation of the phrase in the passage from Dio Cassius ὅτι τά τε κοσμήματα αὐτῆς ἐν τοῖς ἱεροῖς ἡμῶν ἀνάκειται καὶ αὐτὴ ἐν τῷ Ἀφροδισίῳ χρυσῆ ὁρᾶται. I think Kleiner (2005:149) may be right that while Dio refers to the statue in the Venus Genetrix shrine as an object of interest in his own time, this does not preclude Julius Caesar from having established it there. I wish to express my gratitude to Carolina López-Ruiz, Laura Marshall and Victoria Rimell for their careful editing(s) of this article. Especial thanks to Laura Marshall for help in arranging the placement of the images. For her assistance with images 1-3 particular gratitude is owed to Sophie Lalbat of IEASM (European Institute for Underwater Archaeology/Institut Européen d’Archéologie Sous-Marine). Finally, I wish to acknowledge my great debt to Frank Goddio, whose stunning work and amazing new recoveries of a lost Hellenistic world provided the immediate inspiration for this study.

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Fig. 5: Copy of the Torso of Aphrodite. Roman. (1st century) Credit: Detroit Institute of Arts, USA. Founders Society Purchase with funds from Cristina and Henry Ford II /Bridgeman Ιmages.

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Space and the Imperial Imaginary in Apollonius’ Argonautika William G. Thalmann In Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, a military officer says to the people of Macondo who inquire about relatives seized at night and made to disappear in the wake of the great banana revolt, “You must have been dreaming….Nothing has happened in Macondo, nothing has ever happened, and nothing ever will happen. This is a happy town.”1 This statement is a brilliant mimicry of imperialist or colonialist discourse. It encapsulates the colonist’s or conqueror’s mentality, his attitude toward the people whose land is being appropriated: the imposing of pure exteriority on those people, the denial to them of any history or any future except the future chosen for them by those who are subjecting them. This attitude reduces human complexity to a vapid simplicity. That is how you need to see people in such situations if you are going to exploit them. The officer is working for the country’s central government, it is true, but that government has been collaborating with the American banana company in exploiting the town of Macondo and its inhabitants. And so the officer adopts the perspective of the foreign intruders. Of course, Macondo does have a history (if not much of a future), and a lot has happened there. The town and its people have had a vibrant life, doomed though they are to one hundred years of solitude – all of it effaced by the officer’s brutally reductive words. We know this because the narrative is told through their viewpoint. The novel is a vivid demonstration of the nature of place as socially constructed and as process, created and re-created, as Doreen Massey says, by the intersection of various people and their trajectories, and by varying configurations of social relations and of power.2 The banana company is only one episode in a rich if fraught history. In telling the story of the Argonauts’ journey and their various stops along the way, Apollonius depicts places from the newcomers’ point of view. In many ways, the narrative reflects the tendency of the officer in Macondo to see those places from an exterior, simplifying perspective; but often elements in the narrative complicate that tendency and at least hint that indigenous people might have a story and a point of view of their own. That is, the narrative as a whole to some extent 1 2

García Márquez 2006: 310. Massey 2005: 147-95.

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combines the interiority and exteriority, the perspectives of colonized and colonizer, that García Márquez opposes to one another. It reproduces colonialist discourse but simultaneously qualifies it. Some qualifications of my own are necessary here. About Apollonius and the ways he imagines spaces of empire, it has to be said right away that his poem ignores the entire area that had been conquered by Alexander relatively recently, except for some implied indirect connections of Colchis to Egypt made via allusions to Herodotus. So there is no direct relationship between anything in the poem and actual Greek imperialist activity in Egypt or Asia. Instead, the Argonauts’ voyage traces out a large area in the Black Sea, the Adriatic, and the western Mediterranean that has mainland Greece at its center. As I have argued in a previous publication, in following this traditional Greek view of space, which was so at odds with the actual geography of Hellenism in his time, Apollonius was offering an anchor, an imagined cultural center, to Greeks decentered in Egypt (and presumably to those in Asia as well).3 But this spatial construction also affirms the importance of Greece at the center over all those places on the periphery and may well have worked to reinforce notions about the rightness of Greek imperial domination. The episode that seems to have most to do with contemporary affairs is the one set at Cyrene, which was so important to the Ptolemies; but even here any links are entirely implicit. Secondly, rather than imperial conquest the Argonautika emphasizes colonization. These are distinct phenomena, but they can be related; in fact, either one can involve the other. And colonization can involve conflict and displacement of people, as is predicted for Corcyra in the poem (Arg. 4.1210-15). So colonization can stand in for empire. More generally, I would argue that the poem’s persistent interest in the colonial histories of so many places the Argonauts touch on must have spoken to the position of Greeks in newly dominated lands (foremost among them Egypt, of course), just as its probing of the relations between Greeks and others and its examination of Greek cultural identity did.

3

Cf. Thalmann 2011. For a recent discussion of space in the Argonautika, see Sistakou 2014. She explores the poem’s relation to fantasy fiction, travel adventure, and fairy tale, whereas I take a more historicizing approach, but our readings are not incompatible. She is interested in a kind of space that Henri Lefebvre calls the “space of representation” and David Harvey calls “relational space,” and so am I (along with Lefebvre’s “representation of space” as an instrument of power; for these terms, and references, see the end of this paper). I do think that Sistakou overstates the extent of Apollonius’ geographical accuracy (others have criticized him for what they consider some glaring inaccuracies), and I would not draw the sharp binary opposition between fantasy and reality (or history) in the poem that she does, despite her opening sentence. It is not just faraway places that lend themselves to “fantasy” or myth in Apollonius’ hands but also places well known to the Greeks, some of which I discuss here.

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Some examples will give a more detailed idea of how the Argonautika represents space in the poem, and the complex ways in which space and place are related to questions of Greek mastery. In the first of a series of interrelated episodes, at the beginning of Book 2 (2.1-163) the Argonauts, still in the Propontis, and having inadvertently left Herakles behind in Mysia, disembark in the land of the Bebrukes, whose king, the mighty and uncivilized Amykos, challenges his guests to a boxing match instead of giving them hospitality in the Greek way. He is defeated and killed by Polydeukes, and in the melee that follows the Argonauts scatter the rest of the Bebrukes and plunder their land. Later, after an interlude with Phineus, they pass through the Bosporos and enter the Black Sea, where the first place they land is the deserted island of Thynias. Here they see an epiphany: Apollo on his way to the Hyperboreans. They celebrate with a hymn, libations, and an oath “always to help each other in harmony of mind.” They then build a shrine to Homonoia, Social Harmony (Arg. 2.669-719). This is one of many examples in the poem in which a place is incorporated into the Greek spatial system and marked with a particular significance that adds to the values represented by that system as a whole – in this case the bonds that unite this hetaireia of young Greek males and that ideally unite the citizens of a Greek polis. The shrine gives this island, deserted until now, a Greek-inflected identity. It constructs Thynias as a place by signifying the narrative of the Argonauts’ landing and their experience of Apollo, who is, among his other functions, the god who oversees colonization.4 And it identifies as Greek the quality of Homonoia, which was an important concept in the Hellenistic period. This episode is a prelude to the major scene that follows at Cape Acherousia (Arg. 2.727-898), which was to be the site of the important Greek city Heraclea Pontica – a city that perhaps not incidentally was of interest to the Ptolemies in the third century BCE since it was a center of resistance to Seleucid power.5 The landscape that the Argonauts find is forbidding; Cape Acherousia is an outlet of the River Acheron, but Apollonius ends his suitably spooky description of the place with some auspicious information: that the Megarians named the river Soonautes – salvation of sailors – when they were about to settle the land of the Mariandynoi (the local population), for it saved them when they were driven ashore by galeforce winds (Arg. 2.746-51). In anticipation of that event, the Argonauts now enter the river and moor when the wind drops. Here we have an explicit reference to the colonization of this place, through which the narrative constructs a wonderfully complex temporal scheme. The colonial settlement is in the future in relation to the Argonauts’ experience of the place. But that settlement is implicitly depicted as commemorating their presence here, and, conversely, their presence legitimates the founding of a colony. In fact, the Argonauts’ actions here will somehow be 4 5

On the intimate connections between place and narrative, see de Certeau 1984: 115-30; Tilley 1994: 29-31; Massey 2005: 25, 71. Cf. Burstein 1976: 70; Archibald 2007: 253-71.

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archetypal for that act of colonization. All of this is in the past from the perspective of the poem’s readers, who read the aition of the river’s new name. Aitia in the Argonautika are often intimately involved with space. Places are constructed through narrative, and an aition confers a narrative on a place and so shapes that place’s significance. An aition such as this one performs two specific functions in the context of colonization. First, it naturalizes the presence of the Greek newcomers. The name Soonautes implies a providential narrative that connects the colonists with this place, since a feature of the landscape welcomed them and kept them alive – a river associated with death! It also naturalizes the colony by giving history, from the reader’s perspective, a teleological shape. The form Cape Acherousia assumes as the site of the colony is the culmination of a process consisting of three visits by Greeks: those of Herakles (about which we learn later in the narrative), of the Argonauts, and of the Megarians. The second function that the aition performs is to mark space with a Greek meaning and so claim it for Greek culture. Colonization essentially is imposing one’s own meaning on a place, and that is what happens here. It involves the partial or complete effacing of other meanings and the denial of a different history to the place and its indigenous people. That people, comprising the Mariandynoi and its king Lykos, gives the Argonauts hospitality because the Argonauts have dealt with their enemy the Bebrukes and king Amykos. In doing so, Lykos is acting virtually like a Greek. He thus represents one side of Greeks’ representations of others: assimilation to themselves. The monstrous Amykos represents the other side of these representations: the others as uncivilized embodiments of mere force. Lykos promises to reward Polydeukes for killing Amykos, “for this is the right way [θέμις] for weak men to behave when strong men help them first” (Arg. 2.800-801). So the native foreigner is depicted as civilized but weak, like the Greeks but inferior to them, in need of help and therefore able to benefit from being colonized by being protected from enemies. Note the rhetorical strategy here: the non-Greek is represented as confessing this about himself! Furthermore, Lykos tells of an episode when Herakles visited and took part in funeral games for Lykos’s brother, in which he defeated the strongest of the Mariandynoi in a boxing match. Having demonstrated their inferiority, Herakles then conquered territory for them to west and east – territory that the Bebrukes took away until the Argonauts disposed of them. Greeks benefit the Mariandynoi, and colonization is presented under the enchanted disguise of benevolence, the way the Greeks create order and justice in the world. Lykos promises to erect a shrine to the Dioskouroi overlooking the sea, “which all sailors far out at sea will look upon and revere” (Arg. 2.807-8). The function of the Dioskouroi as protectors of ships is strongly hinted at here; their cult is in fact founded in Book 4. This cult, which duplicates what is implied in the name Soonautes, shows the Greeks appropriating the protective function implied in the landscape, transmitting its benefits from themselves to all sailors. That is, again, they become rooted in this place, and their establishment here is to be for the good

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of all. That Lykos builds the shrine shows a local people’s reception of the newcomers’ culture and absorption in it. It also presents colonization as cooperation. This is in sharp contrast with what actually happened. When the Megarians arrived, they were welcomed by the Mariandynoi. But gradually the Mariandynoi became restive because of the appropriation of their land and were reduced to virtual slavery.6 The gap between representation and reality shows dramatically how far from neutral the construction of space can be. Thus the narrative connects these three places – the territory of the Bebrukes, the island of Thynias, and the future colony of Heraclea – as part of a larger spatial system defined by the Argo’s voyage, within which they form a complex that conveys an ideological message about colonization. In fact, Thynias was colonized from Heraclea, so that they were historically connected, but far more important is the relation Apollonius creates in the sphere of representation. A major element of Hellenistic Greek political ideology – social harmony, sanctified by the Argonauts’ experience of the sacred (Apollo’s epiphany, which may also validate the principle of Greek colonization) – is brought into alignment with the founding of a major Greek colony, which the Argonauts’ experience on the site anticipates in various ways. Internally, then, the Greek community on a colonized site is presented as unified and as reproducing the civic ideals of the Greek polis, and the indigenous population is shown as accepting the Greeks’ superiority, and hence domination as in harmony with what is right (θέμις), and is even represented as benefiting from it. Externally, the Greek colony, it is suggested, is founded on the principle of combating savagery and mere physical force, as personified by Amykos and the Bebrukes, and asserts the values of civility and enlightenment. Notions of the superiority of Greek to non-Greek cultures are not far in the background. The episode set at Cape Acherousia is one of the two most positive representations of colonization in the poem. The other is the Cyrene episode (Arg. 4.12251619), in which the Argonauts, confronted at first with a formless and disorienting desert, transform this wasteland into Greek space by carrying the Argo over it, following the track of a horse that miraculously appears from the sea. This path gives the region form and orientation so that it becomes culturally produced space. This paradigmatic production of space reflects the way colonists at first confront a space that seems alien and formless, that is often represented as a desert in need of cultivation as Carol Dougherty has shown7, and then appropriate it culturally. It is surely not without significance that this episode, with its strong colonialist coloring in other ways as well, takes place next door to Egypt8.

6 7 8

Burstein 1976: 28-30. Carol Dougherty 1993: 61-80. This episode has been much discussed, and I have preferred to concentrate on the less discussed episodes at Kyzikos and Heraclea. For fuller treatment with bibliography, see Thalmann 2011: 78-91.

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But the poem, while offering these enchanted pictures of colonization, seems also interested in exploring the limits of Greek mastery over space, and it does so in various ways. Even the confidence about colonial domination of the Cape Acherousia episode is qualified at the end, when the Argonauts lose two of their company, their first casualties in the poem. From one point of view, the two tombs of their comrades may connect the Argonauts to this place more firmly by giving them a lasting association with it and because the tombs mark this space in a Greek way. The tomb of Idmon stands in the agora of Heraclea, crowned by a ship’s roller that has put out branches and leaves, “a sign [σῆμα] for later generations to see” (Arg. 2.842). But the inhabitants worship the tomb’s occupant under the wrong name – not Idmon but Agamestor. The whole effectiveness of aitia – the ability of a landmark to call forth a narrative – is put in question, as is Greek spatial mastery. If the signs the Argonauts leave are vulnerable to the usual open-endedness of signification, they may not be able to impose their narrative on a place with complete success. The description of the second tomb similarly questions aitia through the narrator’s uncertainty as to whose tomb it is. He can suggest a name – Tiphys – only with recourse to the Apollonian narrator’s favorite device for avoiding responsibility for the story he is telling: φάτις [ἐστι], “it is said that….” The episode at Cape Acherousia is related by contrast to an earlier scene that also has marked colonialist overtones: the one set at the future site of Kyzikos at the foot of Mount Dindymon in the Propontis (Arg. 1.936-1152). There too the Argonauts receive hospitality in the Greek mode, but instead of benefiting their hosts they kill them by mistake. An extraordinary number of aitia are crammed into this episode. The landscape is marked by objects that together recall the complete narrative of the Argonauts’ visit in both its positive and its negative aspects. These objects not only tell the story of the Argonauts’ arrival, hospitable reception by the young king, and victory over the Earth-born Giants, which anticipates the victory over Amykos and the Bebrukes; they also give permanent voice to the losses suffered by the inhabitants and their grief. This space is shaped in a way that represents the perspectives of both the local people and the Greeks; it is not, then, simply appropriated to Greek colonial interests. The site of Heraclea is, as we have seen, the culmination of a spatial progression that begins at Kyzikos. It also marks a major turning point in the Argonautika’s configuration of space in the Black Sea. As the Argonauts proceed to the east of Cape Acherousia, they find themselves in more and more alien places where they have progressively less mastery of space, until they arrive in Colchis, where control is not even in question and they have to try to negotiate contact with a people, and especially with a king, whose nature is enigmatic. The Colchians combine alien traits – ferocity, superhuman strength, non-Greek burial customs – with characteristics the Greeks considered civilized. One of many symptoms of this gradual loss of mastery that is pertinent to our theme is the description of the Argonauts’ landing at the site of Sinope (Arg. 2.946-61), an important Greek col-

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ony that lay to the east of Heraclea and was founded from it. No mention whatsoever is made of the establishment of Sinope the colony. There are indeed Greeks already living here, companions of Herakles in his expedition against the Amazons who “wandered away” from him and settled here. The Argonauts take them aboard their ship, because “they no longer wished to remain permanently” (2.960). So instead of any thought of Greeks settling here, we get the reverse: they leave. On the return journey, when the Argonauts take inland rivers from the Black Sea to the Adriatic, and from there to the western Mediterranean, they are far away from the sea around which the Greeks traditionally oriented themselves, and there is no question of a Greek construction of space. The Argonauts simply pass through these regions, with few incidents and no contact with the local inhabitants, and in the Celtic lake they even get disoriented and almost end up in the stream of Ocean, only to be redirected by a well-timed shout by Hera. The same is true of the voyage from the east coast of Italy, past Sicily, to Corcyra, during which they are merely sightseers on the route of Odysseus’s future wanderings. So the narrative implicitly acknowledges limits on the Greek construction of space, the existence of large expanses of space that they cannot refer to themselves, and the existence of people going about their lives in complete independence of the Greeks. There is, finally, one incident that gets away from questions of mastery of space and seems to suggest another model of contact between the Argonauts and others, one based on reciprocity. Fittingly, it occurs in the Adriatic, which the Greeks considered a liminal space between the Greek and non-Greek worlds, a region where they could not dominate. Here, seeking a route to Drepane (the future Corcyra) they put to shore in the land of the Hylleans (Arg. 4.522-33). These people are named after Hyllos, the son of Herakles and the nymph Makris, who emigrated with them from Drepane. In keeping with the character of the Adriatic, their ethnicity – Greek or not Greek? – is ambiguous. Hyllos, of course, had impeccable Greek credentials, but his followers were “autochthonous” (4.548) to pre-colonial Drepane. The Hylleans give the Argonauts directions, and in turn Jason gives them one of the two tripods he received when he consulted Apollo at Delphi about the voyage. This exchange anticipates the one that occurs between the Argonaut Euphemos and the god Triton in the Cyrene episode (a clod of earth for the other tripod), which is again a reciprocal exchange. The land in which either of these tripods is buried will never be conquered, its people never forced to emigrate (the verb is ἀναστήσεσθαι). This means that the Hylleans can never be subject to colonization, and the gift of the tripod emphasizes that the Argonauts form with them a different kind of relationship from that of colonizer to colonized, one of equality based on reciprocal exchange. So, to sum up: On the one hand, we have a series of episodes set at the sites of future Greek colonies that represent these places from a Greek perspective. They thus appropriate these places, conceptually at least, for Greek culture, in several ways. They endow each place with landmarks that signify narratives of the Argonauts’ actions that are paradigmatic for later colonization. In so doing, they efface

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local history and absorb it into Greek history; or better, they endow each place with a history centered on Greeks, as if every place were only waiting for Greeks to colonize it in order to be completed and to enter history. This is not just a matter of the imagination. It might well have had real consequences in the ways the Argonautika’s readers thought about their own relation to Alexandria, let us say, or to Asia, and so in the ways they acted. As Henri Lefebvre9 and others have said, representations of space often serve power and hegemony. It is not, then, unreasonable – though of course there is no way of proving this – to see in the narrative of the Argonauts’ voyage a mythic analogue to Alexander’s conquests and the imperial ambitions of the early Ptolemies. But this is far from the complete story. There are many elements in the narrative that work against this confident assertion of Greek primacy, and I have mentioned some of them. Often the Argonauts’ relations with people they meet are more complex than those of superior Greek to inferior barbarian, and the places in which these encounters occur and that are shaped by them become relational space10, or in Lefebvre’s closely related concept, spaces of representation. Space becomes the medium for the experience of cultural difference and is in part produced by that experience. Colonization, from this point of view, contributes to the Argonautika’s more general concern to speak to the experience of dislocation of Greeks in Alexandria and elsewhere – an experience that complicated the old binaries of Greek and barbarian and destabilized distinctions between self and other.11

9 10

11

Cf. Lefebvre 1991. Relational space is the space that is produced by human social and political relations and that reciprocally helps to shape them. Unlike absolute and relative space, it is characterized by imaginative productions such as myths and poetry. On these three types of space, see David Harvey 2006: 270-93, and 2009: 134-41. I would like to thank Markus Asper, organizer of the Imagining Spaces of Empire conference, Topoi for its sponsorship, and the other participants in the conference for discussion. Special thanks to the editor, Victoria Rimell, for her patience with a dilatory author and for her wonderful ʻPostscriptʼ to the conference.

Imagining Political Space: Some Patterns Markus Asper As has become increasingly clear in the last decades, the space around us is not just a ‘given’ in human cultures, such as rain or typhoid fever. A mountain or a river exist and ‘are there’, independently of human perception and cultural construction. What these geographic structures actually mean, however, perhaps a border or the seat of the gods, whether they are perceived as part of human culture or outer space, is far from clear and definitely the result of culturally pre-formed perception. By using the river Rhine as the object of his study, Lucien Febvre made this point already in 1935.1 Landscapes and landmarks are culturally constructed, too, just like urban schooling, serial homicide and the child viewer of television.2 This much is agreed upon, although who constructs what and how and why, is open to debate. With political power and empires, however, things reach a different and more interesting level. Empires, conceived as the geographical space dominated by a family or a political body, imprint themselves onto the minds of the people, of whose world these empires are part. We cannot perceive political rule directly and thus, any given empire as such. Political power is the ability to do things within a community, to run administrations, impose codes, demand taxes, block intruders. We may sense power and we may know its structures and agents, but we cannot directly perceive it as part of space. That is why invariably symbolic representation comes in. Rulers and empires develop symbolic ways of demonstrating their power by visual means. One might even say that part of their power is the way they manage to impress certain established ways of how to imagine this same

*

1

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I would like to thank Jenny Strauss Clay for important input at an initial stage, Markus Heim for his assistance with talks, maps, and graphics, Victoria Rimell for her energy and her insights, Thomas Poiss for helping me get a perspective, and Sebastian Luft for providing meaning at the end. Febvre 1935/1995: e.g. 17-19. Cf. Cassirer 2009: 177 (published 1931): “Der Raum besitzt nicht eine schlechthin gegebene, ein für allemal feststehende Struktur; sondern er gewinnt diese Struktur erst kraft des allgemeinen Sinnzusammenhangs, innerhalb dessen sein Aufbau sich vollzieht.” I found these three in the list that introduces Hacking’s marvelous The Social Construction of What? (Hacking 1990: 1).

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power onto their addressees.3 The invention of the map might well be conceived of as related to one of these symbolic ways. Milestones, for example, besides carrying the factual information that they display, have a symbolic quality which is so basic that it tends to be overlooked: they stand in for the imperial power that established them as part of its infrastructure. Thus, the question of how imperial space is publicly imagined asks for a specific form of symbolic representation of space.4 For while the visualization of something one can only perceive indirectly is certainly a typical task of cultural construction, to understand the transformation of such perceptions into yet another media, namely literary texts, remains a challenge.5 Whenever it is concerned with political power, Greek and Roman literature forms a continuous tradition of meeting such challenges. It is from these realms of literature that I chose some examples to demonstrate ways to conceive political power in terms of space. The spatial imagination of political power is a case of what, for lack of a better term, I will call ‘loaded space’ in this paper.6 The ways in which cultures develop and handle physical space7 are loaded with all kinds of non-physical concepts: private versus public space, for instance, or ritual versus mundane space, or in terms of real-estate ‘prime location’ versus ‘in the middle of nowhere’. The result, within a certain group, is an agreed-upon concept of social space that goes far beyond both abstract physical space and individual psychological space.8 It is not

3 4 5

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Gebhardt, Reuber & Wolkersdorfer 2003: 17: “In den Geographien des Sozialen ist Macht kodiert.” Within the recent New Cultural Geography the notion of ʻgeographical imaginationʼ has raised some discussion: See Gebhardt, Reuber & Wolkersdorfer 2003: 5, 16. Interestingly, the recent volume edited by de Jong 2012 that focuses exclusively on the representation of space in Greek literature, does not touch upon the relation of ‘real space’ and culturally constructed forms of space. While others have used expressions such as ‘symbolic space’, ‘constructed space’, or ‘lived space’, I prefer ‘loaded space’ in order to indicate that the culturally relevant form of space is a compound of construction and the physically given. Apparently, the term has not been used in this context before. I only know of a brief article on interiors (Wheeler Wiens 2010) and the occasional real-estate advertisement (à la ʻcheck out this loaded spaceʼ), e.g. in Portland, Oregon, which, by meaning something as ‘fully furnished’, provides the terminological starting-point we need. However, de Jong 2012: 15 f. uses ‘loaded notion’ (scil. of space) and similar phrases. In this paper, ‘physical space’ means what has been called ‘geospace’, ‘first space’, ‘actual space’ or ‘factual geography’ by others (see Piatti et. al. 2009, 6; Sistakou 2014: 161). Piatti and her co-authors give an outline of how literary spaces could be mapped; much of what their paper covers could have implications for the texts in my paper, too: after all, the Iliad, the Agamemnon and the Aetia are literature and map out literary spaces. See Latané & Liu 1996: 28f. Ernst Cassirer, in his essay on space (published 1931), has described mythical space beautifully and in a way that invites us to draw parallels with politically loaded space (2009: 177-180).

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surprising that the same holds for ‘political’ versus ‘neutral’, that is, politically unmarked, space. To cut a potentially long story very short, the perception and representation of politically loaded space is probably a two-fold enterprise: in retrospective analysis and from the perspective of a distant observer, such as a scholar, the actors operate within space in which certain structures ‒ such as connections, divides, centers and peripheries, paths, areas and their borders ‒ are imposed onto a substrate or frame of ‘given’ geography or topography.9 For the imposed set of local associations the observer has to find some matrix that has nothing to do with the structures of space as such (if those even exist). Nonetheless, for the historical actors, material and immaterial structures of perceived space are probably inseparable. The first picture (discussed below in fig. 1) shows well what I mean by such a two-fold approach: the map represents what is given, that is, ‘real’ geography, landscapes, coastlines, landmarks, altitudes, forms of vegetation, etc. The colorful circles, their arrangement and the black lines, however, exhibit structures with which the given space is loaded, that is, structures of political affinity or adversity, of non-topographical connections or separations. These elements exist in communal imagination, that is, in shared spatial concepts; to the actors, however, they are no less real than landscape itself. In what follows I will present three rather basic examples in order to make my concept of ‘loaded’ space a little clearer. All of them illustrate to some extent how politically loaded space is perceived or, in other words, how empires are imagined (‘empires’ taken as pars pro toto for spaces of political power) by the way of applying certain principles of spatial perception. In mock-Euclidian fashion, these three examples are based on three principles of how to structure imagined space, namely, the circle and its center, the line, and the integrated area. I begin with the most obvious. 1 Periphery and Center: Empires as Circles (Iliad II 494-510) I borrow my first example from the Homeric catalogue of ships; to put it more accurately, from a project investigating the catalogue currently directed by Jenny Strauss Clay at the University of Virginia.10 Strauss Clay is interested in the different ways in which the Homeric catalogue of ships is organized geographically. One of her results relies on the distribution of places mentioned in the Boeotian

9 10

Compare the concept of ‘lived space’ that seems to completely separate experience of space from the materiality of space (Heirman & Klooster 2013: 5 f.). Strauss Clay presented some results of that project in a talk at TOPOI in Berlin (‘Mapping the Catalogue of Ships’) on Dec. 18th, 2012. See also Visser 1997: 238-363, esp. 331-340 and the brief remark of De Jonge 2012: 37 on the catalogue of ships.

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Fig. 1: Boeotia in the Catalogue of Ships I (picture by courtesy of Jenny Strauss Clay, adapted)

section of the Catalogue of Ships (II 494-510). The main point of Strauss Clay’s reading of this passage is the fact that the 25 names of settlements in the Boeotian plain that are presented in the Homeric text apparently without order, turn out to be arranged around an implied center. The center itself goes without mention, because it is, evidently, Thebes. Strauss Clay and her colleagues call this the ‘principle of teichoscopy’, named after the famous scene in the third book of the Iliad. The center is taken for granted by the narrator; it is the specific form of periphery that leads the recipient to reconstruct and discover the center. In order to make the catalogue’s naming practices meaningful, a structure of circle and center has to be imposed upon the map. Both the structure and the map are imaginary in terms of the primary audience, and are only imperfectly represented by modern, geographically accurate mapping procedures, which may yield something like fig. 1:11 The

11

The black lines on the map show established paths, the colors of the circles correspond to the position of the place-names in the catalogue. This is the text: Βοιωτῶν μὲν Πηνέλεως καὶ Λήϊτος ἦρχον / (495) Ἀρκεσίλαός τε Προθοήνωρ τε Κλονίος τε, / οἵ θ’ Ὑρίην ἐνέμοντο καὶ Αὐλίδα πετρήεσσαν / Σχοῖνόν τε Σκῶλόν τε πολύκνημόν τ’ Ἐτεωνόν, / Θέσπειαν Γραῖάν τε καὶ εὐρύχορον Μυκαλησσόν, / οἵ τ’ ἀμφ’ Ἅρμ’ ἐνέμοντο καὶ Εἰλέσιον καὶ Ἐρυθράς, / (500) οἵ τ’ Ἐλεῶν’ εἶχον ἠδ’ Ὕλην καὶ Πετεῶνα, / Ὠκαλέην Μεδεῶνά τ’ ἐϋκτίμενον πτολίεθρον, / Κώπας Εὔτρησίν τε πολυτρήρωνά τε Θίσβην, / οἵ τε Κορώνειαν καὶ ποιήενθ’ Ἁλίαρτον, / οἵ τε Πλάταιαν ἔχον ἠδ’ οἳ Γλισᾶντ’ ἐνέμοντο, / (505) οἵ θ’ Ὑποθήβας εἶχον ἐϋκτίμενον πτολίεθρον, / Ὀγχηστόν θ’ ἱερὸν Ποσιδήϊον ἀγλαὸν ἄλσος, / οἵ τε πολυστάφυλον Ἄρνην ἔχον, οἵ τε Μίδειαν / Νῖσάν τε ζαθέην Ἀνθηδόνα τ’ ἐσχατόωσαν· / τῶν μὲν πεντήκοντα νέες κίον, ἐν δὲ ἑκάστῃ / κοῦροι Βοιωτῶν ἑκατὸν καὶ εἴκοσι βαῖνον.

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Fig. 2: Boeotia in the Catalogue of Ships II

core of the ‘Empire of Thebes’ is clearly envisioned as a circular structure in which Thebes holds the center position. The model at play,12 however, emerges more clearly in a simplified mode of visualizing the given data (all relationships between the peripheral sites are excluded) as in fig. 2. The numbers indicate the sequence in which these places are mentioned in the Homeric text. The model of perception and presentation is the one of a center and a roughly circular periphery around it. The peripheral circle is created by the imaginary act of looking at many different points from the center, turning one’s head in many different directions. The well-known story, transmitted by Herodotus,13 of how Thales counsels the Ionians to establish a common political institution (βουλευτήριον) on the island of Teos because this island is supposedly located in the middle of Ionia (Τέων γὰρ μέσον εἶναι Ἰωνίης), presupposes such a model of center and periphery as an established way of perceiving political space.14 I would like to make a more general point: First, the way in which space is perceived as the relation of a center to various peripheral points implies a political 12

13 14

I hesitate to apply the term ‘mental model’ to these ways of representing political space. On ‘mental models’ see Gentner & Stevens 1983. In the words of Renn, Damerow & McLaughlin (2004: 45): “Mental models are knowledge representation structures which allow for drawing inferences from prior experiences about complex objects and processes even when only incomplete information on them is available.” Herodotus, Hist. I 170.3 (11 A 4 DK = Th 12 ed. Wöhrle), compare Diogenes Laertius I 22. Compare Vernant 1982: 127 f. who, however, does not seem to view the relationship of center and periphery as hierarchical.

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message, especially when the center is not even mentioned, because it is taken for granted; this message conveys the idea that the space in question is structured hierarchically. It is the view from the center that creates the surrounding space as its periphery, not the other way round. Second, the relation of center and periphery in space as such ̶ let alone the hierarchies that come with the model ̶ cannot be perceived as physically given. This is precisely what I meant by ‘loaded’ space. The model is therefore well adapted to visualizing political space, as the term ‘central’ and its many current derivatives, such as ‘centralization’, demonstrate. In other words: The notions of periphery and centrality are key to imagining empires and their spaces, and imply a hierarchical relation. 2 Lines and Vectors: Empires as Paths (Aeschylus, Agam. 281-310) My next model is based on the connection of two points, that is, the line. Since the connection is not necessarily the shortest and the line is therefore not necessarily straight, and since it is all about proceeding from somewhere in order to get somewhere, I have called this model the ‘path’. At the beginning of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, a message of victory is delivered from the site of Troy to Argos, where the play is set. In her famous narrative of beacons, Clytemnestra explains to the chorus how the message of Troy’s capture could cross time and space so quickly: through a continuous line of seven beacons which she eventually (314) describes metaphorically as relay runners in a torch race.15 Fig. 3 provides an approximation of how it would look like to a modern geographical imagination. The fire signal travels from Mt. Ida, close to Troy (0), over the so-called ‘Rock of Hermes’ on Lemnos (1), Mt. Athos (2), an unknown location called ‘Makistos’ (3; the dotted line indicates that some critics thought that the passage might be lacunose), Mt. Messapium (4), Mt. Cithaeron (5), again, an unknown location called ‘sheep-roamed mountain’ (6, perhaps on Aegina), to Mount Arachneum (7) and arrives at Argos (8). Some critics have understood Clytemnestra’s description as showing her demonic powers that make the destructive fire leap closer and closer to home. 16 This fire, however, is not a threatening, uncontrollable power, but a signal that brings the long-awaited, highly welcome message of victory. Therefore, I argue that the power displayed in this astonishing passage is less demonic than political, because in order to set up and maintain such a relay of signal fires, covering a path of approximately 350 miles and bridging the Aegean, one needs to be in perfect control of the whole area and the necessary infrastructure, including technology

15 16

Denniston 1957: 97. The passage is not discussed by Rehm 2012, who focuses on dramatic space. Brown 1983: 51.

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Fig. 3: Clytemnestra’s narrative of beacons

and considerable man-power. Thus, the royal house of Argos impresses us not only by its power, but also by its sophistication and forward-planning. It is quite evident that the spatial model that governs this description is the path, made up of straight lines with a well-defined starting and ending point, constituted by the technology adopted. The path connects Troy and Argos at a certain point in a quasi-mythical narrative. To the audience, however, the ground covered was real space, existing in their world, with power-relations inscribed in it. Many of the place names will have evoked some reaction among fifth-century Athenians. My suggestion is that these reactions might have been political in the broader sense, especially if they engaged the mental map that their Athenian audience in the early 450s BC had of the Athenian empire of that time. We know,17 among other sources from the Eumenides, that in 462/1 Athens had made new alliances with Argos and with Thessaly (Thuc. 1.102.4); that she was engaged in the Hellespont area and, of course, that she was fighting Aegina. Since basic geography and place-names are the same, discourse on heroic geography will have implied contemporary messages. The message stresses control of the space that the signals cover.

17

Sommerstein 1989: 26-30.

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Thus, the path of the beacons connects Homeric geography with Athenian empire: present and past coalesce in heroic geography via the dramatic text.18 This combination is almost emblematic for early tragedy, poised as it is between the heroic past and the audience’s present. The path in the heroic past covers some modern ground, which consists of politically important or contested areas and is ‘loaded’ in that respect. I wonder whether an Athenian audience would have seen that path as a narrative of appropriation or perhaps rather of control, perhaps in a functional parallel to the torch-races in Athens that showed off the ‘cityness’ of Athens to the spectators watching the torches move along their city (cf. Agam. 314).19 3 Vectors and Planes: Empires as Integrated Areas (Callimachus, Aetia I) My next and last model is that of, for lack of a better term, an ‘integrated area’, by which I mean an area that is perceived as the sum of its parts. Unlike the model of the circle, the integrated area’s precise shape is not important. What is important, however, is that which belongs to the area, the space that is included, or the heterogeneous spaces the area integrates. The model actually claims that several points and areas that appear to be without apparent connection belong to one and the same larger area. It does so mainly by jarring juxtaposition, by forcing geographical connections between places upon the recipient who had so far not looked at these landscapes, cities or domains as somehow adjacent. It is this model of spatial perception that, I believe, governs the presentation of cultural space in Callimachus’ Aetia (and this is how I became interested in the project of imagining empires in the first place).20 The reader of the Aetia and the Iambs faces many stories that are connected or, rather, separated geographically by transitions that are often abrupt, even in terms of narrative organization. For my purpose in the present paper, a survey of the geographical structure of Aetia I may suffice: Among the fragments, the narrator presents eight geographically identifiable stories. These are set on 1, Mt. Helicon (Boeotia); 2, Paros; 3, Corcyra; 4, Anaphe; 5, Rhodes; in 6, Aetolia; at 7, Argos; on 8, Leucas.21 An attempt at visualization yields a pattern that will, I hope, make instantly clear what I mean by ‘integrated area’ (fig. 4).

18

19 20 21

Since there are also some obvious parallels between paths and narrative, besides myth and contemporary politics, an Aeschylean project of implicit self-description might loom in the background: For paths and texts, compare Tilley 1994: 29f. See Denniston 1957 ad locum and, for the political implications of such torch-races at Athens, Asper 2005: 28 n. 96. I covered some of the Callimachean ground in Asper 2011. Asper 2011: 162, fig. 8.1. Harder 2012 follows a different interest in space.

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Fig. 4: ‘Greece’ in Callimachus, Aet. I: 1, Mt. Helicon (Boeotia); 2, Paros; 3, Corcyra; 4, Anaphe; 5, Rhodes; 6, Aetolia; 7, Argos; 8, Leucas.

I readily admit that Callimachus and his readers had a geographical concept of Greece that is inaccessible to us and does not necessarily match modern maps.22 The concept of the integrated area, however, delivers one undeniable result: Obviously, the arrangement of these stories has been chosen with respect to geography, driven by the desire to avoid geographically adjacent places and to develop the narrative as constantly zigzagging between places in the Northwest and the Southeast (to some extent, this is the geographical aspect of Callimachus’ desire to disrupt foreseeable plots in the Aetia). A reader who works her way through the first book of the Aetia has to, besides overcoming many other challenging obstacles, constantly mind-jump large gaps of geographical space. The diagram shows, of course in an anachronistically ‘realistic’ modern map, what one may call the reader’s ‘mind-travels’. Similar, but more complicated diagrams of Aetia III and IV and the Iambs exhibit the same pattern, including the West, possibly Cyrene, and Alexandria.23 My point is that Callimachus’ objective in arranging the poem’s plot in this way instead of narrating a geographically more coherent story (e.g. by arranging the places 1-8 on an East-West or West-East path), is to provide Ptolemaic pan-Hellenic claims with a suitable imaginary and thus, imperial, geography. While the desire for a jarring arrangement becomes especially clear in this case, the political impact of such an arrangement emerges as more convincing in those parts of the Aetia where Alexandria is in the picture. Let us say that this is the way 22 23

On the problems of mapping landscape and the prejudice that modern geography produces ‘objective’ results, see now Lock 2010. See Asper 2011: 165 and 168, fig. 8.2 and 8.3.

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a Ptolemaic empire is imagined by Callimachus and is thus offered to his audience. Something quite similar would emerge for Ptolemaic time, that is, for Callimachus’ construction of a pan-Hellenic past that suits an appropriative Alexandrian ideology.24 While it is certainly commonly accepted that “Places are constructed through narrative”25 and that this holds especially true for aetiological narrative, the cluster of aetiologies presented by Callimachus takes narrative construction to a higher level and arrives at an imaginary landscape that has obvious political significance. For the purpose of this, more general, paper, however, I am mainly interested in the representation of the covered area (‘Greece’) as my third model of how one can imagine empires. This model is clearly not that of a coherent path from one point in geographical space to another. Certainly, it is not that of circles, center and periphery, mapped upon a given region, either. What we see instead is a desire on the writer’s part to bring into contact with each other areas of Greek culture and tradition that have, in political terms, nothing much to do with one another. Suddenly, they become adjacent in this text and thus in the reader’s mind. The mind-travelling reader conjures a nexus of places in her imagination that seem to belong together, although culturally and geographically, they might not. In terms of my loose mathematical metaphors, what we have here vaguely resembles Archimedes’ technique of heuristically looking at areas as made up of lines 26 (and points). That is the reasoning behind the term ‘integrated area’. These spaces are ‘loaded’ by claims of integration and contiguity that are political, but not geographical. Real space as such is not what matters; the model constructs different places as belonging together in one imperial space. 4 Conclusion I have described three modes of how political power (‘empire’) was spatially conceptualized in Greek poetry and I have tried to view all three cases as symbolic representations of certain political programs.27 In an experimental way, Greek geometry – which emerged roughly in the same region and during sixth to third centuries BCE – has provided a convenient way for describing these modes. By this procedure, I do not want to claim that the cognition of geometrical space is somehow prior to the one of ‘real’ space, rather the opposite, since the imagination of

24 25 26 27

Harder 2003 provides the starting-point for such a reading. Thalmann in this volume (p. 58). In his Method to Eratosthenes. I wonder whether my assumption is adequate that there is a primacy of politics over spatial representation. See Massey 2003: 44-46.

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space is one among many cognitive operations regarding space, from which geometrical notions are derived by induction. It does not come as a surprise, therefore, that classical geometry provides means for a systematic approach to imagined space. Before I move on to two modest conclusions, I should admit that it is of course essentially problematic or even inadequate to separate physical space ‒ that is, the sum of the physical matter around us ‒ from the concepts by which we perceive and construct our environments.28 The circle, the path, the integrated area, and even imperial space per se are not elements of space that one could add to or take away from physical space in the perception of the actors; rather the two combined yield the social space individuals live in.29 To separate out physical space from ‘loaded’ space in the way suggested in my paper in order to then look at the structures of ‘loading’, is an operation that risks incurring various criticisms ranging from it being too ‘etic’, that is, too far from what the actors themselves would say they are doing, to the charge of over-abstraction.30 One conclusion is that the Greek imagination of political space seems to be, essentially, flat, that is, a bird’s eye view on landscapes and whole regions. A purely hodological concept of space,31 much criticized anyway, would perhaps lead to a path, but not to anything like the circle around Thebes or the integrated area of Callimachean mainland Greece. However, it remains puzzling that these images of political power remain two-dimensional, while at the same time and region (again, roughly) spheres have captured so much speculative attention, for example, the spherical concepts of Parmenides or Empedocles. Three-dimensional notions of political space are more present in, for instance, the dream-world of the

28

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For a brief survey of the discussion from the point of view of an archaeologist of prehistory, see Tilley 1994: 7-9. Interestingly, he arrives at a phenomenological approach, beginning from Martin Heidegger’s Building Dwelling Thinking (Bauen Denken Wohnen 1951) and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception (Phénoménologie de la perception 1945). Already in 1924 Edmund Husserl had made it abundantly clear that man perceives only entities that are functionally related to him, e.g.: “Die Umwelt des praktischen Menschen ist nie eine pure physis. Was ihn umgibt, sind entweder geistige, also strebende, zwecktätige Subjekte, Menschen und Tiere, oder Sachen, die aber immer und überall vergeistigte Sachen sind, wie Häuser, Felder, Gärten, Landstraßen, Kunstwerke, Bücher usw., also nach Zwecken gebildete Objekte und Geschehnisse, die irgend in Zweckfunktionen hineingehören.” (Die natürliche Entwicklung der Weltauffassungen. Weg zur teleologischen Weltauffassung; Nr. 15 in 2014: 206). To a certain extent, my method in this paper vaguely resembles the project described by Husserl 1952: 18-27 (written around 1912). For the distinction, see Skempis & Ziogas 2014: 4; for the hodological model see Gehrke 1998: 164 f.; for criticism and bird’s eye perspective see now Poiss 2014.

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Revelation of John, where various forms of vivid action take place between sky and earth and there is continuous interaction between high and low.32 The second conclusion to draw is that these quasi-geometrical conceptualizations of empires compete with more vivid ones, such as personification and even allegory. For example, the historian Duris of Samos reports that when Demetrius Poliorcetes ruled Athens, the proskēnion of the theater was decorated by a representation depicting him as using the oikoumenē as his carriage.33 Another example that comes readily to mind is the famously big procession of Ptolemy II which paraded personifications of pan-Hellenic space.34 Perhaps we can understand these two modes of imagining empires as positions on a spectrum of the political imaginary which remains an object of further study.

32

33 34

Latané & Liu 1996: 32 f. suggest six forms of geometry according to which their concept of social space is modeled, Euclidian geometry being the most primitive, apt for describing the social space of “technologically primitive people”. I wonder whether more complex forms of geometry might be used in order to describe political space, such as what Latané & Liu call “hierarchical geometry”. Duris 76 F 14 FGrHist Γινομένων δὲ τῶν Δημητρίων Ἀθήνησιν, ἐγράφετο ἐπὶ τοῦ προσκηνίου ἐπὶ τῆς οἰκουμένης ὀχούμενος. See Asper 2011: 173 and 176 n. 58.

Space and Spin: Geopolitical Vistas in the 40s Ingo Gildenhard Introduction In the popular imagination, the Romans are a people obsessed with (control of) space: busily surveying and dividing up territory, fixing boundaries and marking them out with deep-set boundary stones (watched over by the god Terminus), and endowing areas under their rule with proper infrastructure (such as roads) are just some of the things they are commonly thought to be good at – or have even, as Monty Python would put it, ‘done for us’.1 Within the cultural sciences, of course, such national characteristics are nowadays viewed as the historically contingent results of societal evolution.2 In ancient Rome (as elsewhere) conceptions of and engagement with space developed alongside, and as part of, a distinctive political culture. Thus the republican commonwealth was deeply invested in key demarcations, such as Rome’s ‘first territorial boundary’, the pomerium (and its expansion over time in line with the expansion of Roman power), the complementarity of domi (the sphere of civilian life) and militiae (the sphere of martial activity) or the distinction between Italia and prouinciae, marked in the North by the river Rubicon, which separated Italia proper from the province of Gallia Cisalpina – designed as much to place the Roman citizenry within its environment as to define and regulate the exercise of military power by magistrates endowed with imperium.3 These coordinates – and, more generally, the understanding of the world of

1 2

3

See most recently Kolb 2016. For the ‘spatial turn’ in cultural studies, sporadically anticipated also within Classics – see e.g. Nicolet 1991, Buxton 1994 or Burkert 1996 – see e.g. Döring and Thielmann 2008, or Warf and Arias 2008. On the pomerium as an ‘important aspect of the Roman myth of place’ see e.g. Beard, North and Price 1998: vol.1, 177-81 and most recently Carlà 2015 with extensive further bibliography; for the phrase domi militiaeque, Rüpke 1990, Welch 2006, Pina Polo 2011 (on the question of whether the differentiation between imperium domi and militiae was spatial or ‘depended on the tasks performed by consuls at each specific moment’ (6)), and Drogula 2015: 47-56; on imperium more generally (and its semantic evolution from ‘right to command’ to ‘empire’) Awerbuch 1981, Richardson 1991 and 2011, Beck 2011.

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which they were a part – came under significant pressure during the period of creative destruction that saw the fitful transformation of senatorial government into an autocratic regime.4 Imperial success and territorial expansion abroad, repeated outbreaks of politically motivated violence and large-scale civic bloodshed both in Rome and across the Mediterranean, and the cultural revolution that resulted from the intensified engagement with – and domestication of – Greek literature, art, and thought all enabled, indeed called for, a new ordering of space, both in discourse and in practice.5 This paper explores how two high-profile protagonists map out (and move within) this fluid socio-political environment. Our gateway into exploring the imbrication of space and power in late-republican Rome is Caesar’s Bellum Ciuile 1 – the text that programmatically chronicles the emergence of Caesar’s new world order. The second part looks at how Cicero, in his correspondence, positions himself and maneuvers within the imperial realities that came into being through civil war and Caesar’s rise to the dictatorship. Caesar’s Bellum Ciuile 1 BC 1 falls into two (unequal) halves, each featuring a distinctive geopolitical outlook.6 The first part (§§ 1-33) begins with Caesar outside Italy and his enemies causing chaos in Rome and ends with him re-establishing (some sort of) order in Rome and his enemies wreaking havoc outside Italy. The second part (§§ 34-87) records events in the wake of Caesar’s renewed departure from the capital as he pursues his adversaries around the Mediterranean, starting with a quick march through Southern France (via Massilia) and the showdown with the Pompeian forces in Spain (Ilerda). His version of the events that initiated the end of the senatorial tradition of republican government is anything but impartial: that Caesar combines the stance of an objective reporter with ingenious spin in his commentarii has been well established by the scholarly literature.7 Much of the ideological

4 5 6

7

The same is of course also true of time: Rüpke 1995, Feeney 2007. For Rome’s cultural revolution, see Moatti 1997/2015, esp. Chapter 6: ‘The construction of Roman universality’, Habinek and Schiesaro 1998, Wallace-Hadrill 2008. Caesar already practiced a germane rhetoric of space in the Bellum Gallicum: Riggsby 2006, esp. chs. 1 and 2, building on Rambaud 1974, who identifies three different conceptions of space in the commentarii, i.e. espace géographique, espace stratégique, and espace tactique. See also Krebs 2006 and Osgood 2009, on the territorial gesture that opens the work: Caesar conceives of Gaul as a unit and a unity (of course with subdivisions), rather than a patchwork of tribes and peoples, waiting to be conquered in its entirety. See e.g. Rambaud 1953 with Collins 1954, Barwick 1951, Collins 1972, Henderson 1998, Batstone and Damon 2006, Batstone 2009, Grillo 2012, Peer 2015. On the genre of the commentarius see Rüpke 1992; on Caesar’s style e.g. Eden 1962, Gotoff 1984,

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work that goes on behind the veneer of a seemingly factual blow-by-blow account is done by Caesar’s strategic deployment and manipulation of inconspicuous diction. His rhetoric of space is no exception. If he initially portrays himself as beholden to the spatial coordinates and the political culture of the republic, after his visit to Rome the outlook of the narrative undergoes a subtle autocratic shift. The two parts of this story, to be worked out in more detail below, add up to a composite whole, coinciding with a more general narrative trajectory in the course of which Caesar re-centers the Roman world and its political values and traditions in himself. Right from the outset, Caesar plunges his readers into Pompey-induced pandemonium. His snapshot of the capital in the early days of January 49 pictures the res publica in the process of coming apart: Pompey and his henchmen – profiled as feeble hypocrites or mean-minded and power-hungry megalomaniacs – generate an atmosphere of fear through verbal abuse, personal harassment, unconstitutional measures (such as extraordinary nocturnal meetings), and the threat of physical violence. Republican institutions (notably the senate), norms (such as the sacrosanctitas of the tribunes of the people), and procedures (in particular the tribunician veto) come undone – together with precisely those spatial coordinates that informed the geopolitical order of republican Rome. Consider BC 1.3.1-3:8 Misso ad uesperum senatu omnes, qui sunt eius ordinis, a Pompeio euocantur. laudat promptos Pompeius atque in posterum confirmat, segniores castigat atque incitat. multi undique ex ueteribus Pompei exercitibus spe praemiorum atque ordinum euocantur, multi ex duabus legionibus, quae sunt traditae a Caesare, arcessuntur. completur urbs et ipsum comitium tribunis, centurionibus, euocatis.9 When the senate was dismissed towards evening, all its members were summoned by Pompey. He praised those who were ready and encouraged them for the future, and reproached and urged on the more hesitant. Many men who had served in Pompey’s previous armies were called up in hope of reward or rank, and many were summoned from the two legions which Caesar had handed over. The city, even the Comitium itself, was full of officers, centurions, and re-enlisted men.

After the ablative absolute misso ... senatu, which captures the adjournment of the regular (if already tempestuous) senate meeting at nightfall (ad uesperum), the senate as a functioning body disintegrates: the institutional collective transforms into a collection of individuals (omnes, qui sunt eius ordinis) at Pompey’s bidding.

8 9

and the suggestive discussion by Kraus 2005; on Caesar’s persona as narrator Grillo 2011, Pelling 2013: 55 (“this is Caesar’s story in every sense, acted out by him, perceived by him, with extra details discovered by him, then finally told by him”) and the papers in Welch and Powell 1998. I give the translation of Carter 1991. The sentence, as transmitted, is corrupt. Ipsum is Hug’s conjecture for the nonsensical ius of the mss. See Damon 2015: 129-30 for discussion (she obelizes ius).

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His tyrannical whim does away with daytime deliberation and decision-making in the civic spaces of the city. Worse, Caesar’s sly repetition of euocare – first in the literal sense of ‘calling out of the city’, in implicit contrast to the standard phrase senatum (con)uocare, then in the technical sense of ‘calling up for military service’ – suggests that he considers the senators as conscripted soldiers under his command. Indeed, while the senators are forced to leave the city to meet up with Pompey, Pompey’s soldiers flood into the city (completur urbs ...). He thus presides over a chaotic inversion of traditional spheres and functions. The very site where the sovereign people of Rome congregate for collective political decisionmaking as behooves a free commonwealth has been taken over by an armed force – a point driven home by the third occurrence of euoco: euocati are veterans called upon to do military duty as volunteers. Caesar conjures a scenario in which senators who were supposed to govern within the sacred boundary of the pomerium are called out of the city like conscripted soldiers, whereas conscripted soldiers, ‘whose rightful place was outside the pomoerium had invaded the very heart of civil life.’10 The distinction between domi and militiae is obliterated, Rome’s ‘sacred topography’ goes up in smoke.11 In light of the ensuing turmoil and anti-Caesarian (and hence, from Caesar’s point of view, unconstitutional) measures, the representatives of the traditional order, the tribunes of the people, understandably flee from the city to Caesar – or rather go ‘Caesar’s way’ (1.5.5: profugiunt statim ex urbe tribuni plebis seseque ad Caesarem conferunt – Caesar does not specify just yet where precisely he and the tribunes meet up). His camp (for the time being still situated outside Italy) rather than the city of Rome thus becomes the location in which the political culture and the values of the res publica and the Roman people prosper. When Caesar notes that, in their eagerness for war, Pompey and his allies were mobilizing all of Italy (1.6.8: tota Italia dilectus habentur) and despoiled temples to fund their warefforts, his tag that ‘all the laws of god and man were overturned’ (omnia diuina humanaque iura permiscentur) captures more generally a fundamental disrespect for the sacred landscape of the Roman heartland.12

10

11 12

Carter 1991: 157. The repetition of ordo reinforces the sense of topsy-turvydom: the senatorial ordo comes apart, whereas the GIs in Pompey’s army hope to climb socially (spe ... ordinum) in return for supporting their tyrannical leader. For the concept see Cancik 1985-86. Caesar’s formulation here arguably echoes what Pompey kept saying about him (see Suet. Jul. 30: Gnaeus Pompeius ita dictitabat, quod neque opera consummare, quae instituerat, neque populi expectationem, quam de aduentu suo fecerat, priuatis opibus explere posset, turbare omnia ac permiscere uoluisse) – just as the base motives that his enemies ascribed to Caesar (as reported e.g. by Suet. Jul. 30) recur, suitably distorted, in Caesar’s character profiles of Cato, Lentulus, Scipio, and Pompey in BC 1.4.

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In Caesar’s account, chaos precedes rather than follows the outbreak of hostilities.13 His subsequent invasion of Italy thus becomes a peace-keeping mission aimed at restoring order. Two seemingly banal verbs encode his ideology of motion: proficisci, i.e. ‘to set out for – not necessarily with hostile intent’; and profugere, i.e. ‘to take flight – not necessarily after daring a fight’. Their strategic deployment enables him to portray (and differentiate between) his adversaries, to obfuscate the fact that he initiated civil warfare, to reaffirm a traditional Roman conception of space (centre, periphery, domi, militiae, Italia, prouinciae), and to set up the radically different sense of imperial geopolitics that comes into its own from BC 1.33 onwards. The first occurrence of proficisci coincides with one of the most notorious silences in all of ancient literature. In response to the affairs in Rome, Caesar, after addressing and canvassing his soldiers, decides to break camp and sets out for Ariminum, apparently to meet the tribunes of the people: cognita militum uoluntate, Ariminum cum ea legione proficiscitur ibique tribunos plebis, qui ad eum confugerant conuenit (1.8.1). The sentence offers a masterful illustration of how to enhance suppressio ueri through suggestio falsi: to reach Ariminum, Caesar of course had to cross the river Rubicon, which separated Gallia Cisalpina from Italia – an act of territorial transgression that triggered the hot phase of the civil war. In Caesar’s account, this boundary violation never happened – it vanishes behind a quasi-constitutional movement, i.e. his meeting up with the representatives of the Roman people who had come his way for support and protection.14 The combination of underhanded spin and apparent ‘blow by blow’ narration on display here sets the tone for the rest of Caesar’s ‘journey’ towards Rome. For even if Caesar wanted to fight, his adversaries initially offered him no opportunity to do so: Alles rennet, rettet, flüchtet. His account reads like a version of the scenario Carl Sandburg imagined in The People, Yes (1936): ‘Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come.’ Consider: 

The praetor Thermus, upon hearing of Curio’s arrival at Iguvium and distrusting the loyalty of the townspeople, withdraws his cohorts, turns tail and flees (1.12.2: cohortes ex urbe reducit et profugit); on his flight, he is abandoned by his soldiers who prefer to go home (1.12.2: milites in itinere ab eo discedunt ac domum reuertuntur).

13

Compare and contrast Cicero’s confusion and outrage at the news that Caesar initiated hostilities at Att. 7.11.1: quaeso, quid est hoc? aut quid agitur? mihi enim tenebrae sunt. ‘Cingulum’ inquit ‘nos tenemus, Anconem amisimus; Labienus discessit a Caesare.’ utrum de imperatore populi Romani an de Hannibale loquimur? Already in antiquity Caesar’s reticence about his breach of territorial sacrosanctity solicited protests, notably from Lucan: see Masters 1992: 1-10. The amount of scholarship on ‘Caesar at the Rubicon’ stands in inverse correlation to the amount of attention the moment receives in Caesar’s own narrative. Among recent studies see e.g. Tucker 1988, Jehne 2005, Rondholz 2009, Devillers 2010, and Beneker 2011.

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80 

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When Attius Varus learns from the members of the town council of Auximum that he cannot expect support for any attempt to keep such a deserving Roman statesman and imperator as Caesar from entering the town, he withdraws his troops, turns tail and flees (1.13.2: quorum oratione permotus Varus praesidium, quod introduxerat, ex oppido educit ac profugit). Caesar’s speedy advance through Northern Italy triggers a violent panic in Rome, in the course of which the consul Lentulus Crus, just after opening the public treasury to withdraw war-funds for Pompey’s cause, turns tail and flees from the city – destination unspecified (1.14.1: ... ex urbe profugeret). Caesar goes on to name the reason for this head-over-heels departure: a false rumour that his cavalry was at the gates and his own arrival imminent. Despite the fact that the rumour has turned out to be false, other magistrates (including the second consul Marcellus) follow suit (1.14.2: hunc Marcellus collega et plerique magistratus consecuti sunt). While the Pompeians abandon Rome, Caesar continues to advance through Northern Italy, encountering virtually no resistance: the locals welcome him with open arms, his enemies continue to flee and are being deserted by their troops in the process: (i) Lentulus Spinther flees at Asculum Picenum (1.15.3: Id oppidum Lentulus Spinther X cohortibus tenebat; qui Caesaris adventu cognito profugit ex oppido cohortesque secum abducere conatus magna parte militum deseritur); (ii) Lucilius Hirrus flees from Camerinum (1.15.5: ... Camerino fugientem Lucilium Hirrum ...); (iii) The senator Quintus Lucretius and the Paelignian Attius jump off the walls of Sulmo, when the town opened its gates to Caesar’s troops (1.18.3: Lucretius et Attius de muro se deiecerunt – not in a suicide attempt, mind you, but to escape; Attius gets caught but is then released unharmed by Caesar); (iv) Lucius Manlius flees at Alba and Rutilius Lupus at Tarracina (1.24.3: L. Manlius praetor Alba cum cohortibus sex profugit, Rutilius Lupus praetor Tarracina cum tribus. Procul equitatum Caesaris conspicatae, cui praeerat Vibius Curius, relicto praetore signa ad Curium transferunt atque ad eum transeunt). As a variation on the theme, Caesar dwells at some length on the events at Corfinium, where Domitius, after lying to his soldiers, plans to flee in secret, but is found out (1.19-23; the central theme of these paragraphs, drummed home through relentless lexical repetition, is Domitius’ plan to flee – consilium fugae: 19.2, 20.2, 20.4). Ultimately, a great number of Roman senators, military tribunes, and Roman knights surrender without fight, or indeed, as is the case with none other than Lentulus Spinther, abjectly begging for mercy. Towards the end of the opening section, Caesar also reports that Pompeians were fleeing not just from Italy, but also from the provinces located closest to Italy: when the townsmen of Caralis (on Sardinia) heard that Quintus Valerius was on his way, they decided to throw M. Cotta out of town, who turns tail and flees to Africa (1.30.3: ille perterritus, quod omnem prouinciam consentire intellegebat, ex Sardinia in Africam profugit – the same destination as

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Cato’s, who makes his escape from Sicily upon Curio’s arrival on the island, though not until after delivering a pitiful speech (1.30.5: haec in contione questus ex prouincia fugit). They join Varus who had already arrived after his flight from Auximum (1.31.2: … qui ad Auximum, ut supra demonstrauimus, amissis cohortibus protinus ex fuga in Africam peruenerat). A pattern emerges: Caesar’s adversaries make a futile effort to lead their troops against him (marked by a compositum of ducere: educere, reducere, abducere); the troops are unwilling to go along; the would-be leaders seek to save their hide in emphatic flight: fuga, fugere, and in particular profugere. The lack of meaningful resistance reinforces the impression that his blitz of Italy does not amount to a genuine war. How much actual fighting could have taken place given that everyone flees instantly at even the slightest prospect of combat – and the utter lack of support for Pompey and his men among the local population? Indeed, before the siege of Brundisium, recounted at BC 1.25-29, we only get a few skirmishes that conclude quickly.15 The first time he uses the word bellum is as part of a general reflection on the unpredictability of warfare: 1.21.1: ... quod saepe in bello paruis momentis magni casus intercederent ... This sets the stage for the use of bellum in the context of speculations about Pompey’s decision to remain in Brundisium (1.25.3). Caesar himself turns his thoughts to war (bellum) only after all attempts to broker a satisfactory agreement have failed: 1.26.6: ita saepius rem frustra temptatam Caesar aliquando dimittendam sibi iudicat et de bello agendum.16 Pompey is the one exception to this pattern of flight on sight. He is said to have departed from Rome the day before a mere rumour turned the consul Lentulus into the equivalent of a headless chicken – though Caesar adds, spitefully, that he did so to join the legions he had received from Caesar (1.14.3: Cn. Pompeius pridie eius diei ex urbe profectus iter ad legiones habebat, quas a Caesare acceptas in Apulia hibernorum causa disposuerat). Also the events at Corfinium do not entail a panicky response but an orderly retreat to Brundisium (1.24.1: Pompeius iis rebus cognitis, quae erant ad Corfinium gestae, Luceria proficiscitur Canusium atque inde Brundisium). In his ambience even the consuls regain a certain amount of motional dignity (1.25.2: repperit consules Dyrrachium profectos cum magna parte exercitus). His crossing to Greece is a departure as well (profectio: 1.27.3), not a flight (fuga), though the ordered retreat then enables Caesar to explore Pompey’s penchant for cruelty. After 1.33, Caesar changes his lexicon of flight: the compositum profugere, which he uses to contrast the tribunes of the people, who

15 16

See e.g. 1.16.3: ibi cum antecursoribus Caesaris proelio commisso celeriter Domitiani a ponte repulsi se in oppidum receperunt. Even then Caesar refuses to call a spade a spade: the phrase civil war (bellum ciuile) is virtually taboo throughout the work: it only occurs twice (2.29.3-4; 3.1.2-4), each time with a hedge – and is unlikely to have been the title of the work as a whole. See Brown 2003.

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flee to him, with the senators on the side of Pompey, who flee from him, occurs only twice in the rest of the work. Caesar’s deceptively simple exposition, which remains committed to (a version of) the facts but leaves so much unspoken, also characterizes his portrayal of his own movements. The inconspicuous verb proficisci, which he uses to (not) report his crossing from the periphery to the centre, from prouincia to Italia (1.8.1: Ariminum cum ea legione proficiscitur), continues to mark his trajectory through Italy to Rome, but with important variation in grammatical nuance. In 1.8 Caesar construes proficisci with an accusative of direction (Ariminum) rather than a prepositional phrase (ad Ariminum). Put differently, Caesar set out with the intent of entering the town (as opposed to arriving at its outskirts). Within Rome’s political culture the distinction between ‘arriving at’ and ‘entering into’ is not negligible: It is quite a different thing to say Romam venire to come to Rome, i.e. into the city, and ad Romam venire, which very often occurs, to come as far as, near Rome, to remain without the city. So Romam ire, proficisci, contendere, to go to Rome, so as to enter the city; but ad Roman ire, proficisci &c. to go towards Rome, though perhaps without the intention of entering the city. Every governor and general, who expected a triumph in Rome, might be said ire ad Romam, but not ire Romam; since he might not enter the city before the triumph, which was often granted after a long delay.17

In 1.12.3 (... Auximumque proficiscitur) and 1.15.3 (... Asculum Picenum proficiscitur) Caesar also uses a straight accusative to indicate his destination, and the same is true of those instances of proficisci in which Pompey or Pompeians are the agents (1.24.1: ... proficiscitur Canusium atque inde Brundisium; 1.25.2: repperit (sc. Caesar) consules Dyrrachium profectos...). Against this pattern, Caesar’s last use of proficisci in the opening section of BC 1 stands out in particularly sharp relief. It comes after the heavy fighting at Brundisium, where Caesar, finally thwarted by Pompey’s recalcitrance in his endeavours to achieve a reconciliatory embrace with his former friend and current adversary, turns his mind to war. Yet after five paragraphs of military action, which end in Pompey’s flight across the Adriatic, the rhetoric of peace forcefully resurfaces. Once the warmonger has left the shore of Italy behind, so Caesar seems to be implying, Italy itself can revert to its normal territorial status as a quasi-demilitarized zone. As is his wont, Caesar brings across this point literally en passant (1.32.1): His rebus confectis, Caesar, ut reliquum tempus a labore intermitteretur, milites in proxima municipia deducit; ipse ad urbem proficiscitur.

17

Scheller and Walker 1825: 80.

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These matters dealt with, Caesar dispersed his soldiers to the nearby towns to rest from their exertions; he himself made his way to Rome.

This is spin at its finest: there is the euphemism labor for bellum; there is the implied contrast between the fatigued soldiers and Caesar, gifted with restless energy; there is the image of the general concerned for the welfare of his army; there is the antithesis between milites and ipse designed to suggest that Caesar departs for Rome without even a body-guard, strolling up the Via Appia all by himself; and there is, finally, the use of proficisci with the preposition ad, which signals that Caesar had no intention of entering the city with hostile intent: he aims for the outskirts of Rome to enter into dialogue with the senate. Put differently, very much unlike Pompey and his soldateska, he carefully respects the traditional coordinates of Rome’s cultural imaginary: the centre remains untouched by violence, or even a constitutionally unsanctioned military presence. The initial phase of hostilities finds closure with Pompey’s departure for Greece and Caesar’s visit to Rome, where he holds a meeting of the senate. This meeting is in many ways the inverse of the senatorial meetings (official and unofficial) that Caesar recorded at the outset: the meeting of the senate in which his letter was read (1.1.1-3.1); the meeting of all senators that Pompey summoned privately right afterwards (1.3.1-4.1); the meeting of 7 January in which the senate passed a consultum ultimum against Caesar, which caused the tribunes to flee from Rome (1.5.3-5.5); the meeting on the subsequent day, in which the senate decreed a slate of military measures (levies, commands, finances). On all of these occasions, the activities of the ringleaders who bullied the senate into a hard line towards Caesar contrast sharply with Caesar’s own conduct of senatorial business upon his arrival at Rome (see tab.1, next page; cf. Batstone and Damon 2006: 72– 74).

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Ingo Gildenhard Senate meeting(s) BC 1.1–6

Senate meeting BC 1.32–33

High magistrates

Abuse of fellow-senators who (initially) beg to differ

Caesar is the perfect gentleman in his interaction with the senate (even though the senate doesn’t reciprocate)

Outside the senate house

An army of soldiers loyal to Pompey striking fear and terror into the senators

No military presence – Caesar had given his soldiers a couple of days off before proceeding to Rome (see 1.32.1)

Intervention of ‘nonconstitutional’ groupings

The ‘friends of Pompey’ bully others into supporting the course of action their patron favours

There aren’t any ‘friends of Caesar’ around to manipulate proceedings: Caesar is on his own

Emotional disposition of the majority of senators

Fear of Pompey and his supporters

Fear of Pompey and his supporters

Actions taken by the majority of cowed senators

Voting for a motion against their will out of fear = enforced action

Refusing to engage in public business out of fear = voluntary retirement

Attitude of Pompey and his ringleaders

Threatening (1.2.5: Marcellus perterritus conuiciis; 1.2.6: terrore praesentis exercitus)

Not present, but previously described as panicky (1.14.1: quibus rebus Romam nuntiatis, tantus repente terror inuasit, ut ...)

Manner of conducting business

Disorderly, in haste, with much confusion (1.5.1: aguntur omnia raptim atque turbate)

Orderly, with proper consideration of procedure – even if it means tolerating Pompeian sympathizers trying to derail meaningful senatorial action by wasting time or vetoing measures

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Manner of speaking by magistrates/ speakers

Threatening and abusive (1.2.4: conuicio L. Lentuli consulis; 1.2.5: Marcellus perterritus conuiciis), bitter and barbaric (1.2.8: ut quisque acerbissime crudelissimeque dixit, ita ....)

Measured, respectful, encouraging: commemorat – docet – proponit – docet – praedicat – commemorat – hortatur ac postulat ut rem publicam suscipiant atque una secum administrent

Measures taken/ under consideration

Partisan, at variance with custom, tradition, and constitutional arrangements, designed to strengthen the antiCaesarian faction; see for instance the allotment of provinces, not least 1.6.5: Philippus et Cotta priuato consilio praetereuntur, neque eorum sortes deiciuntur. > Aimed at war

Embassy to Pompey

> Aimed at peace

Overall impression

Revolutionary chaos

Traditional order that is malfunctioning because of the absent Pompeians

After the senate meeting

1.6.6: senatorial measures are put into action without first receiving popular approval; 1.6.7: disregard for religious protocol; individuals without the legitimacy of public office (priuati) act like they are publicly elected magistrates – contra omnia uetustatis exempla; 1.6.8: in the process of raising funds for conscripting soldiers, the Pompeians do not even respect the property of the gods > omnia diuina humanaque iura permiscentur

Caesar leaves the city again, having accomplished nothing

Tab. 1: Meetings of the senate

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The series of senate meetings frame the stark inversion of geopolitical realities mentioned above: if Caesar was initially outside Italy and his adversaries were in control of Rome, this narrative unit concludes with him in control of Rome and his main adversaries outside Italy – for the overall benefit of the res publica, its traditions, and its core values. Caesar’s renewed departure from the capital for campaigns in Spain (via Southern France) marks a new departure also in terms of political diction and the rhetoric of space. §§ 1-33 are awash in terms – such as senatus, populus, res publica, dignitas, libertas (and cognates), inimicus/inimicitia and Italia – that encapsulate key aspects of the political culture of republican Rome. After 1.33, this particular idiom virtually disappears from the text, with other themes rising to prominence. Overall, the lexical economy of the first thirtythree paragraphs differs in striking ways from that of the rest of the book as the following table illustrates: Number of occurrences in §§ 1–33:

Number of occurrences in §§ 34–87:

senatus

28

0

populus (Romanus)

9

1

res publica

17

0

dignitas

7

0

libertas, liber, libere

8

3

inimicus/inimicitia

14

0

Italia

11

3

amicus/ amicitia

6

6

beneficium

5

6

noster, nostri

2

28

fides, confidere

2

8

officium

1

6

Tab. 2: Political diction in BC 1

The striking shift in diction is part of a transformation in Caesar’s outlook on Roman politics: if §§ 1-33 feature a republican Dr. Jekyll, whose principal aim is to

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restore civic life at Rome, from § 34 onwards an autocratic Mr. Hyde comes increasingly to the fore, who has moved on from the project of restoration in the implicit pursuit of omnipotence. The shift in diction is particularly striking if one compares the three speeches Caesar delivers in the course of the narrative to justify his actions. Those at BC 1.7 (addressed to his troops before the outbreak of hostilities) and 1.32 (delivered to the senate) operate with the traditional lexicon of the republic, in particular inimicitia, dignitas, populus Romanus (when speaking to the soldiers) and res publica. None of these terms recurs in 1.85 where Caesar rehearses his case one more time in front of the armies at Ilerda. In essence, after 1.33, he is done with domestic politics. Positions within – and movements through – space are again crucial in this agenda. Having secured the centre, he now represents the Roman res publica and Italy and its allies more generally (cf. his frequent use of nostri) within the wider context of international diplomacy and warfare. The theatres of operation are now situated at the outskirts of the Roman empire – Southern France, Spain, Africa, Greece, Egypt – and Pompey and other republican leaders (though not their soldiers) assume, at least in geographical terms, the status and characteristics of external enemies. At the same time, Caesar acknowledges that the inevitable messiness of Rome’s civil conflict also affects non-Roman communities – and broadcasts his conciliatory attitude towards those keen to avoid armed confrontation. Thus in his programmatic negotiations with the Massiliots, the first non-Roman community drawn into the conflict, he urges them to side with him (and hence follow the lead of the whole of Italy, which he now represents), rather than humour the wishes of a single individual.18 At the same time, he acknowledges that for those third parties drawn into the conflict, distinguishing between the two Roman sides is exceedingly difficult, not least because they are tied into conflicting obligations that arise from services rendered in the past. The Massiliots, so he reports, considered it beyond both their strength and their powers of judgment to decide which party had the juster cause.19 The leaders of both parties were patrons (patroni) of their own state (ciuitas), each granting about equal benefits. For Caesar, this means that they ought to help neither one against the other nor receive either in the city or its harbours. As with his domestic adversaries, he shows himself satisfied with neutrality. The displacement of domestic politics in favour of international diplomacy also manifests itself in the semantics of amicitia. In §§ 1-33 Caesar uses amicitia in the sense of political friendship between aristocratic peers, and shows how this 18

19

Caes. BC 1.35.1: euocat ad se Caesar Massilia XV primos; cum iis agit, ne initium inferendi belli a Massiliensibus oriatur: debere eos Italiae totius auctoritatem sequi potius quam unius hominis uoluntati obtemperare. 1.35.3: utra pars iustiorem habet causam. This admission of incompetence comes of course shortly after Caesar’s assertion in 1.32.9 that he seeks to outshine his opponents in terms of justice and equity (se .... iustitia et aequitate uelle superare): clearly those barbarians are thick.

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value gets perverted by the Pompeians. In 1.1.3, Caesar features the consul L. Lentulus absurdly bullying the senate that he would decide for himself what to do and would not obey its authority to the point of taking refuge in Caesar’s favour and friendship (habere se quoque ad Caesaris gratiam atque amicitiam receptum) if they refused to toe his anti-Caesarian line. As Batstone and Damon point out: “... the consul threatens to turn his back on the republic and admits that he could become a false friend to Caesar. But there is a fundamental lack of logic as well. If the senators agree with Caesar, Lentulus says, then he will disobey the Senate – but how can his favoring of Caesar (however duplicitous) be disobedient to a Caesar-favoring Senate? Impossible.”20 None other than one of the reigning consuls thus does away with the res publica as a sphere of political action above individual interests and reduces politics to a choice between two factions led by powerful individuals who exercise control through ‘friendship’ networks built on an exchange of services. In 1.22.3, another Lentulus, Publius Lentulus Spinther (cos. 57) shows an equally perverse understanding of amicitia: captured by Caesar, he starts begging him for mercy on account of their friendship and the considerable favours that Caesar granted him in the past: ueteremque amicitiam commemorat Caesarisque in se beneficia exponit quae erant maxima. The propagandistic returns here are twofold: on the one hand, Lentulus is presented as making a mockery of the principle of reciprocity that underwrote Roman political amicitia (despite past beneficia, he chose to oppose Caesar and now has to ask for more, even though he treated his former amicus like an inimicus or even hostis); on the other, it underscores Caesar’s boundless generosity. Given this utterly cynical approach to amicitia that prevails among the supporters of Pompey, it comes hardly as a surprise that ‘genuine’ friendship ties disintegrate within his sphere of influence. Specifically, Caesar laments that Pompey broke off friendly relations with him (1.4.44: Pompeius ... totum se ab eius amicitia auerterat). In BC 1.1-33, then, amicitia comes into play when Caesar comments on (the breakdown of) relationships within Rome’s ruling elite – in combination with his heavy use of inimicus and inimicitia. After the narrative watershed, this sense (and inimicus/ inimicitia) disappears: in BC 1.34-87, Caesar uses amicitia in the context of international diplomacy, to refer to the relations between outstanding Romans and non-Roman communities.21 This shift in the semantics of amicitia is part of a 20 21

Batstone and Damon 2006: 44. BC 1.48.4: neque ciuitates, quae ad Caesaris amicitiam accesserant, frumentum supportare ... poterant; 1.52.4: Caesar iis ciuitatibus, quae ad eius amicitiam accesserant, quod minor erat frumenti copia, pecus imperabat; 1.60.5: magnis quinque ciuitatibus ad amicitiam adiunctis, expedita re frumentaria, extinctis rumoribus de auxiliis legionum, quae cum Pompeio per Mauritaniam uenire dicebantur, multae longinquiores ciuitates ab Afranio desciscunt et Caesaris amicitiam sequuntur; 1.61.3: huic consilio suffragabatur etiam illa res, quod ex duobus contrariis generibus, quae superiore bello cum Sertorio steterant ciuitates, uictae nomen atque imperium absentis Pompei timebant, quae in amicitia manserant, magnis adfectae beneficiis eum diligebant.

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larger geopolitical reorientation after Caesar’s visit to Rome. Once he has secured the centre and successfully pushed the hostilities out of Italy, Caesar invests in a new set of identities. If in BC 1.1-33, his main objective was the restoration of Rome’s political culture, constitutional principles, and domestic values, in the rest of the book this concern morphs into a more general reassertion of Roman civilization against enemies (both domestic and external) abroad. A policy of partially ‘othering’ his adversaries manifests itself in the repeated use of nostri, which feeds an obvious binary: Caesar (‘nostri’)

His opponents (‘the others’)

Centre (Italia)

Periphery

Civilization

Barbarity

Civilized/ human values:

Barbaric/ sub- or in-human

clementia, misericordia

savagery: crudelitas

Order

Chaos Tab. 3: Caesar and the others

Caesar does not ‘other’ his Roman enemies entirely (in line with his conciliatory stance).22 But their penchant for cruelty, flagged up at structurally important moments throughout BC 1, signals their disregard for civilized values – an ethnic hallmark of ‘barbaria’.23 To reinforce this association, he programmatically labels some of Pompey’s auxiliary troops as barbari, while noting that his own fame among the barbarians was rather less pronounced.24 In essence, he aligns the Bellum Ciuile with his project in the Bellum Gallicum, which consisted in reordering the world by expanding Rome’s imperial reach and thereby extending the reach of Roman civilization (humanitas). “In the Civil War ... Pompey and his followers

22 23

24

Recently emphasized by Peer 2015. See BC 1.2.8: dicuntur sententiae graues; ut quisque acerbissime crudelissimeque dixit, ita quam maxime ab inimicis Caesaris collaudatur; 1.32.6: Iniuriam in eripiendis legionibus praedicat, crudelitatem et insolentiam in circumscribendis tribunis plebis; 1.76.5 (on how the Pompeian generals Afranius and Petreius treat their soldiers to enforce obedience): crudelitas in supplicio; 1.85.3 (on Afranius and Petreius slaughtering unarmed Caesarian soldiers whom they captured in their camp during an armistice): ... homines imparatos et per colloquium deceptos crudelissime interfecisse. Contrast BC 1.38.3, 1.44.2, and 1.75.2, with 1.61.3: Caesaris autem erat in barbaris nomen obscurius. See further Grillo 2012.

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display the weaknesses of Caesar’s opponents in Gaul: like the Gauls in general (BG 4.5) they are quick to believe rumors that turn out to be untrue (BC 1.53.1). Like Ariovistus (BG 1.36), Pompey misjudges his strength, both at the beginning (BC 1.6.1-2) and at the end (BC 3.86.1). Caesar mentions Gallic cruelty four times in the Gallic War: it characterizes Ariovistus, Litaviccus, Critognatus. In the Bellum Civile cruelty is associated only with the Pompeians.”25 Overall, then, the rhetoric of space of BC 1 advertises Caesar’s restoration of political culture at Rome and of civilized Roman values across the globe. Caesar shows himself willing to pursue this agenda with the help of the senate – but senatorial support is not a requirement: if the remaining members of Rome’s traditional ruling elite happen to be too scared of Pompey and his henchmen to lend their support (or, indeed, actively try to thwart his efforts), he will take care of public business himself.26 His geopolitical vision is that of a traditional (and benign) autocrat beholden to the principles and values of an imperial res publica. Living in Caesar’s World: Views from Cicero’s Correspondence In his late œuvre, Cicero creatively engages with – and tries to counter – the unpalatable realities that emerged in the wake of Caesar’s triumphant assault on the traditional senatorial commonwealth. Of particular interest for our concerns is his far-flung correspondence, in which he combines three roles in one: those of observer, participant, and commentator. His letters are simultaneously a historical source for Caesar’s world, acts of intervention in the reconfigured Roman field of power, and a subtle medium for a distinctive brand of (applied) theorizing on civic ethics. The following loosely connected soundings are designed to illustrate how Cicero uses letters to think about space and politics in the 40s. Like Caesar, Cicero saw the advantages of operating from the centre. He therefore was from the start an outspoken critic of Pompey’s decision to cede Rome and Italy. This policy of retreat, he argued in the first letter to Atticus after the crossing of the Rubicon, ignored the salient fact that the res publica was rooted in the religious topography of the city (Att. 7.11.3 = 134 SB):27

25 26

27

Batstone 2010: 199. See BC 1.32.7 (Caesar speaking): sin timore defugiant, illis se oneri non defuturum et per se rem publicam administraturum; and 1.33.4 (in reaction to the tribune Metellus’ attempt to derail his efforts to arrange an embassy to Pompey on a peace-keeping mission): cuius cognito consilio, Caesar, frustra diebus aliquot consumptis, ne reliquum tempus dimittat, infectis iis quae agere destinauerat, ab urbe proficiscitur atque in ulteriorem Galliam peruenit. For Cicero’s letters, I cite the translations by Shackleton Bailey.

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redeamus ad nostrum. per fortunas, quale tibi consilium Pompei uidetur? hoc quaero, quid urbem reliquerit; ego enim ἀπορῶ. tum nihil absurdius. urbem tu relinquas? ergo idem, si Galli uenirent. ‘non est’ inquit ‘in parietibus res publica.’ at in aris et focis. ‘fecit Themistocles.’ fluctum enim totius barbariae ferre urbs una non poterat. at idem Pericles non fecit anno fere post quinquagesimo, cum praeter moenia nihil teneret; nostri olim urbe reliqua capta arcem tamen retinuerunt. To come back to our friend. What do you think, for heaven’s sake, of Pompey’s line – I mean, why has he abandoned Rome? I don’t know what to make of it. At the time it looked the most senseless thing. Abandon Rome? I suppose you would have done the same if the Gauls were coming? ‘House walls’ he might answer ‘don’t make the Republic.’ But altars and hearthstones do. ‘Themistocles did it.’ Yes, because one city could not stand against the tide of the whole barbarian world. But Pericles did not half a century later, though he held nothing except the town walls. Our own forebears still held the citadel after the rest of Rome was in enemy hands.

The position Cicero here adopts is diametrically opposed to the one he found himself forced to favour during his years in exile, namely that the res publica was distinct from the urban topography and had left Italy with him. But a special connection to Rome is otherwise a constant in Cicero’s outlook throughout his career, finding emblematic articulation in his role as dux togatus who held the city against Catiline and his conspirators, thus preserving the world’s centre and obviating cosmic cataclysm, in emulation of Pompey’s military achievements at the periphery. The bargain he struck with his fellow consul Antonius – support against Catiline at home in exchange for the attractive provincial command in Macedonia – will not have cost him much. His attachment to Rome informs his initial oscillation on whether or not to follow Pompey to Greece, which he eventually did, as well as his momentous decision to return to Italy after Pharsalus. Caesar kept him waiting at Brundisium for some time, but then welcomed Cicero back also to the capital – one of the earliest and most high-profile beneficiaries (or victims) of his policy of mercy. A letter to M. Marius from mid April (?) 46 BC (Fam. 7.3 = 183 SB) offers (self-) critical reflections on the controversial nature of his decision to become part of Caesar’s world, in particular while other republicans were still engaged in armed resistance. He here retraces the harrowing choices he had to make from the point in time when Caesar crossed the Rubicon. The letter begins by recalling a meeting with his addressee in which they debated the pros and cons on whether Cicero ought to join Pompey and the republican forces or stay behind and become a chicken in Caesar’s salad. On the side of manere in Italia Cicero locates personal safety (salus); on the side of proficisci ad bellum obligation and a sense of duty (officium), a sense of shame (pudor), and his reputation (fama). After much hesitation he opted for the latter course of action, only to regret it almost instantly (2).

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He then proceeds to survey the choices left after Pharsalus and the flight and death of Pompey (3): hunc ego mihi belli finem feci nec putaui, cum integri pares non fuissemus, fractos superiores fore. discessi ab eo bello in quo aut in acie cadendum fuit aut in aliquas insidias incidendum aut deueniendum in uictoris manus aut ad Iubam confugiendum aut capiendus tamquam exsilio locus aut consciscenda mors uoluntaria. certe nihil fuit praeterea, si te uictori nolles aut non auderes committere. ex omnibus autem iis quae dixi incommodis nihil tolerabilius exsilio, praesertim innocenti, ubi nulla adiuncta est turpitudo; addo etiam, cum ea urbe careas in qua nihil sit quod uidere possis sine dolore. For me that was the end of the war. Our full strength had proved no match for the enemy. I saw no prospect of getting the upper hand after a shattering reverse. I withdrew from the conflict. What were the choices? - To die on the battlefield - Or to fall into some trap - Or to come into the hands of the victor - Or to take refuge with Juba - Or to select a place of virtual exile - Or to commit suicide Nothing else surely, if one would not, or dared not, trust oneself to the victor. Of all the aforesaid evils exile is as tolerable as any – especially an innocent exile, with no stain of discredit, and (let me add) exile from a country that holds nothing one can look upon without distress.

Cicero ultimately decided just to go home (4): ego cum meis et, si quicquam nunc cuiusquam est, etiam in meis esse malui. quae acciderunt omnia dixi futura. ueni domum, non quo optima uidendi condicio esset, sed tamen, si esset aliqua forma rei publicae, tamquam in patria ut essem, si nulla, tamquam in exsilio. mortem mihi cur consciscerem causa non uisa est, cur optarem multae causae. For my part, I preferred to be with my own people, and my own belongings too – if anything belongs to anybody nowadays. All that has happened I foretold. I came home, not that the life there offered was particularly attractive, but still, if there was to be some shape or form of free constitution, I wanted to feel as though I was living in my country; and if not, it would serve as a place of exile. I saw no reason to take my life, though many reasons to pray for its ending.

The phrasing Cicero uses to recall his decision to return to Caesar-occupied Italy, and to take up a position, however marginal, in his universe reeks of apology. He foregrounds first private then public motivations, before invoking the existence of a form, a semblance, of a res publica even under conditions of tyranny. And he

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moots the possibility of being in exile in Rome, in one’s patria. His counterintuitive redefinition of exile divorced from geographical parameters prefigures the ‘innere Exil’ of those who faced a similar choice under the totalitarian regimes of the last century. In what seems to be an oblique allusion to Cato the Younger, who killed himself shortly before this letter was penned (if the dating to mid-April 46 is correct), Cicero also stresses that he sees no reason to commit suicide, though dismisses any notion that he cowardly clings to life: he would not mind dying; he just does not want to cause his own death. This position requires further explanation, which he offers in the next paragraph (5), where he again stresses his disapproval of Caesar, justifies his choice to cease fighting, moots the possibility that there may be a ciuitas even under Caesar, and invokes his status as an exile in Rome.28 This rhetoric is designed to validate a position of accommodation that stands in implicit contrast to those who wanted nothing to do with Caesar and continued to fight and ended up either dead or in real exile, banned by dictatorial edict from re-entering Italy. Cicero concludes the letter by acknowledging that many of the republicans refuse to recognize his choice as a legitimate one: they wish Cicero dead – as dead as Cato.29 Cicero does not mention the hero of Utica. But the spectre of Cato arguably defines the apologetic discourse of this letter and certainly looms large over Cicero’s correspondence from these years more generally. Cato’s decision to withdraw from the clutches of Caesar’s clemency defines the imaginary space in which Cicero found himself forced to operate: a genuine republican does not take part in Caesar’s world. And at the point at which Caesar’s world has become universal, when it extends across the entire orbis, when there is no space left outside it, the logical next step is a step into the beyond. Unlike Cicero, Cato believed that a situation in which resistance has become futile and no further retreat is possible, calls for another, ultimate departure. He thereby reaffirmed Caesar’s elimination of the territorial distinction between himself and his adversaries by transforming it into a distinction between life and death beyond the grasp, the all-encompassing embrace of even Caesar and his clemency. As Cicero’s letter shows, this act of ultimate resistance through terminal withdrawal also meant that anyone unwilling to do likewise was by definition compromised, tainted by the brush of Caesar’s power, guilty of collaborating with a tyrant, despite the fact that unconditional resistance through suicide remained a permanent option. And this was doubly the

28 29

5: nunc autem, si haec ciuitas est, ciuem esse me, si non, exsulem esse non incommodiore loco quam si Rhodum aut Mytilenas contulissem. 6: sunt enim qui, cum meus interitus nihil fuerit rei publicae profuturus, criminis loco putent esse quod uiuam; quibus ego certo scio non uideri satis multos perisse. But he is unrepentant: qui si me audissent, quamuis iniqua pace, honeste tamen uiuerent. armis enim inferiores, non causa, fuissent.

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case for those who like Cicero did not languish in exile on the periphery but returned, or were allowed to return, to Caesar’s Rome. And it was Caesar’s Rome. In the wake of his victory, the polycentric ruling elite of the republic underwent a hierarchical reconfiguration, with a seemingly omnipotent dictator (or, as Cicero would have it, tyrant) on top, surrounded by a substantial group of close associates, who had the ruler’s ear, regulated access to him, and influenced his policy decisions.30 All other social groups and individuals had to reorient themselves around this new centre of power, both in discourse and in practice. The nature of the relationship to the dictator – from close ally to former, yet pardoned enemy, to recalcitrant exile – determined one’s position in social (and often also physical) space and the degree of political leverage one could exert. Access to Caesar became the primary political resource, paradoxically very precious and profoundly painful – precious because it was the only way to get things done (such as the recall of an exiled friend) and painful because the chance to speak to the dictator face-to-face as a former adversary required submission to humiliating indignities – to say nothing of the servile behaviour that shaped the actual occasion, such as kneeling at the feet of the tyrant.31 Moreover, since time at the centre of power was in short supply, a personal appointment was often difficult to come by – and it therefore helped to be on good terms with those who saw the dictator as a matter of course and on a regular basis, that is, his closest associates. And Cicero stresses over and again in his letters to exiled republican friends that he is constantly lobbying both Caesar and those of his familiares with whom he is himself on familiar terms – while stressing at the same time that his proximity to those in power does not derive from any dishonourable opportunism.32 Rather, as luck or chance would have it, quite a few of the most influential Caesarians were tied to him through prior services rendered. Overall, then, what the letters show is the emergence of political realities, behavioural patterns, and modes of communication typical of court societies, with one centre of power and different levels of access to it, proximity to the potentate as a principal source of political influence, the importance of intermediaries who for some reason or another have the ear of the ruler, and rituals of self-humiliation in

30 31

32

For Caesar’s Herrschaftsorganisation see Malitz 1987. See e.g. Fam. 6.14.2 = 228 SB (to Ligarius, end of November 46): ego idem tamen, cum ... rogatu fratrum tuorum uenissem mane ad Caesarem atque omnem adeundi et conueniendi illius indignitatem et molestiam pertulissem, cum fratres et propinqui tui iacerent ad pedes et ego essem locutus quae causa, quae tuum tempus postulabat... [But I tell you this: ... at your brothers’ request, I paid Caesar a morning visit. I had to put up with all the humiliating and wearisome preliminaries of obtaining admission and interview. Your brothers and relations knelt at his feet, while I spoke in terms appropriate to your case and circumstances...]. See e.g. Fam. 6.10a.2 = 223 SB (to Trebianus, September (?) 46) and Fam. 6.12.12 = 226 SB (to Ampius Balbus, beginning of October (?) 46).

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the dictator’s presence by those who need his favour and goodwill – but also the continuing existence of republican norms that potentially compromise all those who operate in the proximity of the tyrant.33 Access to Caesar turned Cicero into a liminal, Janus-faced figure who mediated between the tyrannical centre and the republican periphery. In his letters, Cicero casts himself as an interpres, a divining hermeneut, someone who solicited signs from Caesar as if from an oracle or a divinity and decoded and disseminated them in his letters for the benefit of his exiled friends.34 In one sense the fact that Cicero used letters to correspond with exiled acquaintances is of course banal: letters played an important, if by and large invisible, role in the political culture of the Roman republic more generally, not least after Rome’s imperial expansion took off. Communications between members of the ruling elite (and the senate as a whole) and a general in the field (or members of his staff) were frequent and intense – as we can still gather from the correspondence between Cicero and his brother Quintus, when the latter was off on campaign with Caesar in Gaul.35 Together with official reports, letters also served absent generals as a means of shaping opinion at Rome, especially when they tried to turn military success in the field into symbolic capital and political influence at home.36 And letters of course also kept those who were forced to absent themselves from the capital – as Cicero did during his years of exile in 58/57 or during his appointment as proconsul in Cilicia in 51/50 – in touch with their supporters and affairs at Rome. But the correspondence of Cicero with exiled familiares during Caesar’s dictatorship allows us to observe, uniquely, how letters, together with other modes of communication, could also be employed to configure a notional community in a time of crisis and transition. Indeed, a principal raison d’être of Cicero’s correspondence in the 40s is to construct a triangular relationship between himself, Caesar, and the exiled republicans, with him functioning as dynamic mediator and prospective catalyst of reconciliation. This triangular relationship was set up by Cicero in such a way that it was supposed to grow gradually smaller and in the end collapse altogether: the ideal scenario towards which Cicero was working was the recall of all exiles and the abdication of the dictator, which would be tantamount to a restoration of the republic – in essence the vision that also informs his speech pro Marcello.37 Within this agenda, the letters complement his practical interventions in Rome: they keep those in exile virtual company, inform them of developments in the capital, and try to assuage their grief. But they can also form the medium of normative bullying when Cicero feels that it is time to convince a recalcitrant republican to re-enter

33 34 35 36 37

For the emergence of a court-milieu under Caesar see Rillinger 1997. For Cicero’s hermeneutics of omnipotence see e.g. Fam. 6.6.7 = 234 SB (to A. Caecina, October (?) 46) with Gildenhard 2008. See Henderson (2007). Osgood (2009). Gildenhard (2011) 225-33.

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Caesar’s world. Depending on what was required, Cicero invests centre and periphery with diametrically opposed significance. Fam. 6.1 = 242 SB (to A. Torquatus, Rome, ca. end of 46) illustrates Cicero’s standard approach towards consoling those of his addressees unable to be in Rome. (Torquatus fought on the side of Pompey, then withdrew from the hostilities and received permission to return to Italy early on, before Caesar’s victory was final; yet he decided to linger in Athens, fearing repression from both sides.) Cicero’s letter begins by suspending the significance of geographical distinctions by means of two universalizing gestures: with the phrase ea perturbatio omnium rerum (‘in the present state of universal upheaval’) Cicero suggests that chaos and contingency are ubiquitous; and he follows up this appraisal of the socio-political environment by invoking how each individual will assess his own position within this unfortunate, chaotic state of affairs: all think their own lot the hardest. As a result, the world has become a place where everyone is mentally on the move, driven by wretchedness: each one believes that, wherever he will go from where he is at the moment, it must be better. Against this backdrop of undifferentiated mental and geographical chaos, Cicero proceeds to re-establish distinctions, by means of four concessive arguments (marked by etsi ... tamen). First, he introduces degrees of grief according to ethical and geographical criteria: inverting Roman common sense, he posits that any good man (uir bonus) in Rome is currently worse off than anyone else. In the second sequence, Cicero tries to render this counterintuitive assertion plausible: the etsiclause reiterates a universalizing perspective: universal ruin causes universal grief; but autopsy magnifies the pain: in Rome, a good man suffers from constant visual exposure to the epicentre of political perversion and can therefore find no respite from his troubles. Cicero, after these reflections of a general nature, then narrows down the focus on his addressee: even though (etsi) he of course shares in the universal bitterness, the fact that he is not in Rome ought to be a source of relief. And finally, he gives Torquatus the reassurance that his worries for his kin and possessions are unfounded: his presence in Rome would not alter anything. After this sequence of paraenetic consolation, Cicero returns to the theme that he started out with, lexically marked through the repetition of fortuna: given universal suffering, Torquatus ought not to consider his a special case or ask for privileged treatment – not least, so Cicero implies, since he is better off than many, specifically all those good men who are in Rome (like himself). Mutatis mutandis, this scheme recurs in many letters to exiled friends or addressees who are absent from Rome for one reason or another. Yet it is turned on its head when Cicero wants an exile back in Rome – such as Marcellus after he was pardoned in 46. In his correspondence with one of Caesar’s most inveterate enemies who was reluctant to accept the pardon Cicero stresses participation in the res publica or whatever little was left of it as the topmost priority. And participation in the res publica means presence in Rome. Even on the premise that there is no res publica left – which is tantamount to worldwide exile, the loss of a home

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anywhere – Rome, so Cicero insists, is still the best place to be. Why? He gives a positive and a negative reason. Given that Caesar’s power is of global reach, there is no good reason to try to evade his reign: it is impossible. Geographical withdrawal into voluntary exile is an act of self-delusion. Conversely, one ought not to regard seeing bad things as worse than hearing bad news; in fact, the latter is likely to be worse since bad news tend to get exaggerated through hearsay. Put differently, all considered, Rome is after all the most pleasant and politically advantageous place to be in Caesar’s world. Inverting his orthodox geography of grief, he urges Marcellus to re-enter public life as soon as possible, in whatever form possible, to re-energize a moribund commonwealth.38 To conclude: space in Cicero’s letters comes in many forms: they trace his own movement across Italy and the Eastern Mediterranean; they document Caesar’s reconfiguration of Rome’s field of power and perversion of republican civic space; they diagnose and appraise the position of individuals and groups within Caesarian space, with its changed modes of access to political resources; they bear evidence on how Cicero conceptualized, justified and validated his own position, not least in how he tried to intervene on behalf of his friends; and they show how he used the medium of the letter to try to sustain a virtual republican community flung across the Mediterranean. This republic of letters was of course short-lived, though not because of the outcome Cicero himself had in mind.

38

See in particular Fam. 4.8.2 = 229 SB, Fam. 4.7.4 = 230 SB, and Fam. 4.9.1 = 231 SB. For an excellent discussion of Cicero’s rhetoric of exile see Cohen 2007, which I came across only at proof-stage.

‘Leave the City, Catiline!’ – Sallust on Imperial Space and Outlawing Therese Fuhrer 1 Cicero, Catilinarian 1: Creating a Moral Topography The scene of Cicero’s first Catilinarian oration has been so fixed in our imagination by Cesare Maccari’s fresco in the Palazzo Madama in Rome, the seat of the modern Italian senate, that we can no longer escape its influence. The knowledgeable viewer will at once be irritated by many of the details, such as the rows of seating, which are certainly not appropriate to the temple of Jupiter Stator where the senate met on that fateful 7 or 8 November 63 BCE, but it must be admitted that the painter has at least conveyed the impression that Cicero’s speech intended to evoke: Catiline, himself a Roman senator, is isolated from his colleagues, and the distance in space makes concrete their personal and political distancing of themselves from him. The consul’s demand that Catiline leave the city is thus supported not only by the senators’ famously eloquent silence (cum tacent, clamant, Catil. 1.21) but also by body language. A threatening scenario is thus set up, in which a citizen behaving in a non-conformist way is to be excluded from the community. This exclusion is not to be carried out by a formal act, which would have been both possible and not without precedent, but instead by the physical removal of the person from the meeting of the senate and from the city. Only then, when the person is no longer present, so runs Cicero’s message in the First Catilinarian, will the danger to the city and to the whole res publica be averted.1 This is the voice of a Roman magistrate who is staking his claim to leadership not only by constructing a public enemy but also by excluding this figure from the community. The community is defined by the concrete space in which and over which the politician, at the head of the state, exercises or asserts power, in this case over the space in which the senate meets and over the city surrounded by its

1

On Cicero’s aim of isolating Catiline from the other senators both physically and morally cf. Dyck 2008: 60f.; Konstan 1993 (on “Cicero’s moral geography”); Knopf 2013 (on socio-spatial stigmatisation). On the strategy of ‘eloquent silence’ (Cic. Catil. 1.21) cf. Schauer 2011.

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walls. It is this space that Catiline must leave, as Cicero repeatedly demands, calling on him several times to go into exile voluntarily. 2 Cicero declares at the very start of the speech that it is a scandal that Catiline is still alive; if Cicero were to follow the example of his predecessors in office, he should really have killed him long before.3 Cicero thus excludes Catiline from the community of the living altogether and thus, even before the formal declaration of hostis status, has merely by the act of speaking turned him into a dead man walking, an outlaw.4 As is well known, Catiline did indeed leave the city the night after the speech, as Cicero himself reports in the Second Catilinarian.5 Whether this was a response to the effect of Cicero’s rhetoric is debatable, as are the questions of whether the published speeches are identical with the ones delivered6 or were later reformulated for publication,7 and whether Cicero wished to conceal the fact that Catiline had been planning to leave the city anyway. According to Sallust’s account, Catiline apparently wished to leave the city after killing the consul and then to travel to Manlius in Etruria and to the troops he had recruited; it is not stated that he decided to abandon this plan after the attempt to kill Cicero had failed. The consul could not send him into exile without a decree of the senate, and there was evidently no chance of gaining a majority for such a decree,8 so Catiline would be doing his opponent a favour by leaving the city and joining the army at Faesulae, or modern Fiesole. That step would make manifest his complicity with Manlius and his conspiratorial intentions, as Cicero wanted. So did Cicero later rewrite his speech in such a way that Catiline’s departure from Rome would appear to be a consequence of his own speech in the senate?9 On that interpretation, the speech actually delivered was a failure,10 or, at best, it served retrospectively, in 60 BCE,

2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9

10

Cf. n. 28 below. On the repeated allusions to the city walls cf. Vasaly 1993: 52f. Cic. Catil. 1.2: ad mortem te, Catilina, duci iussu consulis iam pridem oportebat. The senate declared Catiline and Manlius hostes (public enemies) not before mid-November (cf. Sall. Catil. 36.2f.). On this point, Dyck 2008: 61 is misleading (“Catiline is a public enemy” is not true for the First and Second Catilinarians). Cic. Catil. 2.1: tandem aliquando, Quirites, L. Catilinam … ex urbe vel eiecimus vel emisimus vel ipsum egredientem verbis prosecuti sumus. Cf. 3.16. Thus Stroh 2000: the transmitted speeches are the ones delivered. Thus von Ungern-Sternberg 1971. On the question of possible revisions of the Catilinarians after the actual performance cf. Dyck 2008: 10-12 and 61. On this, cf. Dyck 2008: 97 (ad Cic. Catil. 1.9-11) and 103f. (ad 1.20.4-7 and 21.1-3). The issue is not discussed by Kelly 2006 (cf. e.g.: 17-19). On the question of the actual impact of Cicero’s Catilinarians 1 and 3 (i.e. the performance versions) see Vasaly 1993: 40-87; on the political impact of Cicero’s speeches in general cf. Vasaly 2013: passim, on the Catilinarians: 157. Thus Price 1996.

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as a way to legitimise the consul’s actions in 63 BCE, to demonstrate the power of his authority at that time, and as a model of consular ethos.11 2 Sallust on Spaces of Empire In this paper I do not wish to engage specifically with these debates in Ciceronian research, nor will my investigation focus on Cicero’s Catilinarians. My interest is to pursue the question of how an acute observer of political events of the late 60s BCE and the far more eventful years that followed, namely Sallust, depicted the episode of ‘Catiline’s conspiracy’ and how he directly or indirectly comments upon it. Sallust wrote his monograph on the topic, De coniuratione Catilinae (or Bellum Catilinae/Catilinarium), at a distance of about 20 years, and thus against the background of the escalating conflict between different interests in late republican Rome, of civil war, dictatorship and finally the assassination of Caesar. He writes not just as a spectator but also as a participant, in fact as a rather unsuccessful officer in Caesar’s army.12 Here I am not concerned with the question of whether a pro- or anti-Caesarean tendency, or any tendency at all, can be detected in Sallust’s account. Instead, beginning from the (probably uncontroversial) position that Sallust’s Coniuratio is a carefully composed and highly reflexive text, I aim to investigate how the category of ‘spaces of empire’, or of government, functions in this text. This is not to argue that the empirical author Sallust recognised any such category and consciously applied it. Nonetheless, an analysis of Sallust’s text that begins from this category, by asking which figures are depicted acting in which concrete or ideal spaces, has the potential to open up new opportunities for interpretation. It is well known that Sallust picks up the discourses marked out by Cicero in the (published) speeches and builds on them.13 Yet, as I aim to show, his text leaves open the question of which individuals and groups could rightly claim power over the spaces in which the action takes place; furthermore, it can be demonstrated that these claims are also constantly being contested.

11

12 13

Thus Batstone 1994: esp. 260, who is one of the few to take a critical view of Cicero’s authoritarian gesture towards Catiline: “It is striking that in the contemporary world his demand for a branded citizenry has not been marked with the stigma of tyrannical aspirations, or noted as an image of an enslaved citizenry, and perhaps this oversight is a lingering mark of Cicero’s rhetorical success”. On Sallust’s political career, his service under Caesar and the date of composition of the Coniuratio (or Bellum) Catilinae cf. the synopsis of Ramsey 22007: 2-6. Cf. Ramsey 22007: 8f.; Dyck 2008: 13.

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2.1 Setting the Stage: Inside and Outside Rome Sallust’s narrative of the ‘conspiracy’ of 63 BCE, into which Cicero steps as a protagonist, sets the scene of action in an almost schematic way and also strictly marks each change of scene. Repeated defeat in the elections of 63 BCE prompted Catiline to decide “to wage war” (constituit bellum facere, 26.5). Chapter 27 begins with a verbalised geographical ‘map’ on which are marked the locations outside Rome where Catiline has stationed his men; the most important external position, Faesulae in Etruria, is mentioned together with the principal external protagonist, C. Manlius.14 With interea Romae (27.2) the view returns to the sequence of actions in the capital and is then soon brought back to Etruria, which is characterised as a hotbed of troublemakers and the refuge for all malcontents (interea Manlius in Etruria, 28.4). This procedure of setting simultaneous chains of events in parallel is maintained throughout the remaining narrative.15 This dichotomy in the scenes of action16 serves not least as a (chronologically displaced) justification of the emergency measures which the consul achieved in the senate. Cicero’s successful passing of the s.c.u. on 21 October (29) is justified by the external threat, which, according to Sallust, was felt ever more strongly after a letter was read out in the senate concerning Manlius’ readiness for war (30.1), and because of rumours of prodigies, meetings, collections of armaments, and slave revolts in Capua and Apulia.17 The urban space thus functions rather like a magnifying glass capable of starting a fire;18 in it, not only the internal danger but also the events occurring in external areas appear ‘intensified’. This effect of doubling the spaces of action is increased further by the fact that two magistrates who were waiting outside the city as imperatores with their armies have been sent to Faesulae and Apulia (30.3-5). The magistrates, Q. Marcius Rex and Q. Metellus Creticus, had been denied a triumph “due to the quibbling obstruction of a few people who were in the habit of selling all things honourable

14 15

16 17

18

For the second time, after 24.2. Cf. Sall. Catil. 32.3; 36.1f.; 39.6; 42.1; 43.1; 56.1. In addition, Sallust makes Catiline himself repeatedly refer to actions outside the city, in Etruria, as in the brief account of the meeting in the house of Laeca on 6 November (docet se Manlium praemisisse ... item alios in alia loca, 27.4). Konstan 1993: 15 speaks of “loci of good and evil”. On the question of the legitimacy of this emergency measure and the criteria of ‘crisis’ cf. Drummond 1995: 79-95, who argues against there being any juristic essence to the s.c.u., and most recently Golden 2013: 125-133, and 148: “Basically the senatus consultum ultimum was a public statement by the senate that an emergency existed”. On Carl Schmitt’s and Giorgio Agamben’s discussion of its constitutionality cf. Lundgreen 2009. The Catilinarians’ threat of burning Rome is actually a topic which is prominent throughout the narrative of the events in 63 BCE (cf. Catil. 24.4; 27.2; 32.2; 43.2).

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and dishonourable” (calumnia paucorum quibus omnia honesta atque inhonesta vendere mos erat, 30.4).19 Evidently, according to Sallust’s account, this is very opportune for the senate, which sends Marcius Rex away to the second main theatre of action in Etruria.20 2.2 Rome – A Heterotopia? Let us take another look at the ‘magnifying glass’ of Rome. After reporting various further measures taken by the senate,21 Sallust draws a picture of a city (urbis facies, 31.1) whose inhabitants are suddenly tipped by these actions from a state of relaxed happiness into panic, because they are no longer used to dealing with external threats. As is well known, Sallust is here using elements drawn from dramatic historical writing to describe the mood of the populace after the conquest of a city: terrified women beat their breasts, raise their arms in prayer and bewail the fate of their little children (31.2f.). The cause of the commotion, however, is in this case not an actual war but only the fear of one. This produces mutual suspicion on all sides (neque loco neque homini quoiquam satis credere, 31.2; sibi patriaeque diffidere, 31.3) but also leads to the women’s “abandonment of their pride and revelries” (superbia atque deliciis omissis, 31.3). The image is that of a city unaccustomed to the fear of war and, as a result, terrified and weakened. The city is the object of extensive protective measures by the senate and of the personal concern of the consul Cicero (quod neque urbem ab insidiis privato consilio longius tueri poterat, 29.1), who is now granted special powers for its protection. Yet the object of this concern is merely a gathering of frightened men and spoilt, hysterical women. The Roman people is not prepared to fight driven by the metus hostilis, which, according to Sallust, had a positive impact in earlier times (10.1),22 but rather slips into panic even at the reports of protective measures, just as the letter to the senate reporting that Manlius had taken up arms had provoked a response of wild rumours (30.1f.). The city that is being protected, further, is one in which “a few people” spin their intrigues and can deny others their triumphal

19 20 21

22

I.e. Pompey and his supporters; cf. Ramsey 22007: 143. Sallust allows him another appearance at Catil. 34.1; cf. n. 37 below. I.e. a recruitment drive by two praetors in Capua and the Picenum, a call for potential informers (si quis indicavisset de coniuratione, i.e. ‘repentants’ or – to use modern Italian terms from the legal action against the mafia – pentiti who did not abide by the rule of omertà), the distribution of gladiators to Capua and other municipia, and the stationing of guards in Rome (30.5-7). Also in Iug. 41.2 and hist. 1.11f. On Sallust’s use of the metus hostilis-motif cf. Chlup 2012: 210-212.

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processions (30.4).23 Through this, Rome is depicted as a kind of urban heterotopia: the centre of political and military power in the Roman empire, the stronghold of education and home of the mos maiorum, becomes a metropolis of decadence, in which the system of ethical and social norms is disintegrating and where personal fears of loss and mistrust of all others have entirely displaced concern for the community’s well-being.24 The measures undertaken to protect this community have the result, if we follow the sequence of events in Sallust’s narrative, of making its dysfunctionality all the more obvious.25 This means that Catiline is to be excluded from a society which is itself no longer functioning properly. The psychological diagnosis and moralistic vignette with which Sallust characterises the city of Rome and its residents (31f.) casts doubt on the unambiguous assigning of the attributes ‘good’ and ‘bad’ to the people acting in it. The question is raised not only of whether these people are worth protecting but also to what extent, or whether, those against whom they are to be protected are any different. When we are told, as the narrative continues, that Catiline proceeded with his activities undaunted (at Catilina ... eadem illa movebat, 31.4), it becomes clear that neither the s.c.u. nor the other measures have had any effect. The ineffectiveness of the emergency measure is given even more emphasis by the fact that the relevant decree of 21 October (29.2f.) is slipped in between the account of the assassination attempt on Cicero on 7 November (28.1-3) and the speech by Cicero that followed it in the senate, the First Catilinarian on 7 or 8 November (31.5f.). In Sallust’s chronology of events,26 Catiline’s appearance in this now famous meeting of the senate must have seemed like a demonstration of contempt for the special consular powers and proof of either the inefficacy of the protective measures or the powerlessness of the organs of state carrying them out, the Roman magistrates. Catiline’s appearance in the senate is brazen not only in relation to the consul, who has just escaped an assassination attempt set in motion by Catiline himself, but also in relation to the Roman state and its legal system, which are evidently not able to manage the crisis.

23 24

25

26

On the identity of the pauci cf. n. 19 above. Cf. Foucault 1986, 24: heterotopias are “real places – places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society – which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality.” On Rome as a heterotopia in Ammianus Marcellinus cf. Stenger 2012. Also cf. Giusti in this volume. Cf. Ingo Gildenhard’s analysis of Cicero’s ‘speech acts’ in Catil. 1 (Gildenhard 2011: 276): “Cicero portrays Catiline not just as an outlaw, but also as a ‘participant in a perverted and parasitic religious system’” (quoting Habinek 1998: 82). On Sallust’s manipulation of the chronological order of events cf. Schmal 2001: 45f.

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2.3 Catiline Leaves Rome for the ‘Bandit Camp’ – Writing Farewell Letters27 Catiline does then leave the city and goes to Etruria, but according to Sallust’s account this is not a consequence of Cicero’s speech act (“leave the city!”), 28 but has been motivated, rather, by his own reflections (multa ipse secum volvens, 32.1). He instructs the followers he has left behind in Rome to continue to act in the city and to carry out the plans that he had failed to put into practice;29 he himself will attack Rome with the rebel army (cum magno exercitu ad urbem accessurum, 32.2). The only thing driving the leaders of the conspiracy out of the city has achieved, then, is to allow Catiline to plot a military attack on the city that he has just left. The danger for Rome has thus by no means been averted by excluding Catiline from the community in Rome. On the contrary: Catiline is still able to exercise power within the area of the city and, although from the perspective of Cicero’s First and Second Catilinarian this seems paradoxical, the threat to Rome has grown alongside Catiline’s presence with the army outside the city walls. The political system of the late Roman republic provided for the following measures in situations like this: a Roman citizen who becomes a threat to the state or who for other reasons is to be excluded from the civic community can be sent into exile, or declared a public enemy and be killed.30 He is thereby formally declared an outlaw who must be physically removed from the space protected by the laws. This is what Cicero proposes in the First Catilinarian as the best solution, viz. to kill or exile Catiline, but he then discards this plan, as he would evidently not have succeeded in gaining a majority of the senate in support of it. It can therefore also be said that Cicero’s demand to Catiline that he leave the city necessarily remains ineffective, because, counting on his connections within the senate, Catiline can continue to work within Roman legal and political structures and to operate on the basis of them. Sallust follows the report of Catiline’s departure from the city with an episode that reads like a commentary on Cicero’s failure. While Catiline is travelling (ex itinere, 34.2)31 he writes a series of letters of identical content, evidently a kind of

27 28

29 30

31

Cf. Cic. Catil. 3.17: hunc ego hominem … nisi ex domesticis insidiis in castrense latrocinium compulissem … On the significance of ‘banditry’ cf. Habinek 1998: 69-87. Cf. e.g. Cic. Catil. 1.10: egredere … proficiscere; 13: exire ex urbe iubet consul hostem; 18 (speech by the Patria): discede; 20 (speech by the Patria): egredere ex urbe, Catilina, … in exsilium proficiscere; 23: perge in exsilium … egredere … secerne te a bonis. Cf. also Konstan 1993: 15f. Sall. Catil. 32.2 is in effect a recapitulation of the plans formulated in 27.2-4 and 28.1. On the historical and legal issues concerning exsilium, its connection with the older practice of the aqua et igni interdictio, and the hostis-declaration cf. Kelly 2006: 2545; Stini 2011: 31-42. Evidently to the Manliana castra, cf. Sall. Catil. 32.1.

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open letter (even a mailing list) addressed to selected members of the senate. 32 They bear the following message from Catiline: he has been unjustly accused, but now feels forced by the machinations of his enemies (factioni inimicorum) to concede (“to cede to destiny”, fortunae cedere) and to go into exile in Massilia. By this letter Catiline lets it be known that he is ready to capitulate, to allow the state to “be at peace” and to spare the community further unrest (uti res publica quieta foret, 34.2). Through the letter the writer formally declares himself ready to go voluntarily into exile, to leave the territory of Roman law and hence to facilitate precisely what is intended by exile: to restore peace and order. He thus implicitly grants Cicero victory and carries out what the consul had demanded of him in the First Catilinarian. In another letter, however, he immediately scotches this idea, or so Sallust’s narrative suggests. In the senate, Q. Lutatius Catulus reads out a letter that had been given to him “in Catiline’s name” (34.3), the “copy” (exemplum) of which is then quoted in direct speech (35):33 (1) ‘L. Catilina Q. Catulo. Egregia tua fides, re cognita, grata mihi magnis in meis periculis, fiduciam commendationi meae tribuit. (2) quam ob rem defensionem in novo consilio non statui parare: satisfactionem ex nulla conscientia de culpa proponere decrevi, quam me dius fidius veram licet cognoscas. (3) iniuriis contumeliisque concitatus, quod fructu laboris industriaeque meae privatus statum dignitatis non obtinebam, publicam miserorum causam pro mea consuetudine suscepi, non quin aes alienum meis nominibus ex possessionibus solvere possem – et alienis nominibus liberalitas Orestillae suis filiaeque copiis persolveret – sed quod non dignos homines honore honestatos videbam meque falsa suspicione alienatum esse sentiebam. (4) hoc nomine satis honestas pro meo casu spes relicuae dignitatis conservandae sum secutus. (5) plura quom scribere vellem, nuntiatum est vim mihi parari. (6) nunc Orestillam commendo tuaeque fidei trado; eam ab iniuria defendas, per liberos tuos rogatus. haveto.’

32 33

To consulars and optimates (plerisque consularibus, praeterea optumo quoique litteras mittit, 34.2). The Latin text is from L.R.D. Reynolds’1991 OCT, and I print William W. Batstone’s ‘Oxford World’s Classics’ translation, 2010. It is not apparent from Sallust’s text whether it was the writer’s intention that Catulus read the letter out in the senate, or whether Catulus wanted to document his distance from Catiline by doing so. In the present context it is not possible to discuss the question of the authenticity of the document (exemplum): there have been attempts to establish this on the basis of linguistic features (cf. Vretska 1976: 2,412; Ramsey 22007: 155; on this question, cf. Grethlein 2013: 283f.). In my view, the letter is too well composed, too well ‘orchestrated’ to fit the situation, for us to be able to assume that it is a genuine document. In this point I disagree with the conclusion of Grethlein 2013: 287 that there is a “gap between Catiline’s and Sallust’s claims” which “unveils the former’s clever self-stylization”.

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(1) L. Catiline to Q. Catulus. Your loyalty is extraordinary, I know this by experience, and in my many great difficulties I have been grateful for it. It gives me confidence in my commission to you. (2) For this reason, I have decided not to defend my new course of action, but offer instead an explanation, and not from any sense of guilt, but one that I swear you can recognize as true. (3) I have been provoked by injustice and insult, deprived of the benefits of my labour and efforts; I have not attained the dignified status I deserve, and so in accordance with my inclination I have publicly taken up the cause of the poor. It is not because I didn’t have enough to pay off my own debts from my own possessions – Orestilla would have generously used hers and her daughter’s resources to pay even the debts countersigned by others – but because I kept seeing men of no worth honoured with honourable offices and was aware that I was myself rejected by false suspicions. (4) On this account, I have pursued hopes of preserving what is left of my dignity. And those hopes are honourable enough given my circumstances. (5) Though I would like to write much more, I have heard that violence against me is under way. (6) Now, I commend Orestilla to you and your loyalty. Defend her from injury, I ask in the name of your children. Take care.

Catiline speaks of a novum consilium (35.2), which evidently does not mean exile.34 Instead he wants to present a justification (satisfactio) of his actions, but not of his guilt (ex nulla conscientia de culpa): when the consulate had been denied to him and passed over to “men unworthy of it” (such as Cicero), he had taken up “the common cause of those suffering, according to his habit” (publicam miserorum causam pro mea consuetudine suscepi, 35.3). He thus represents himself as a fighter for social justice who feels not just rejected but also disgusted by the cabal of power brokers and puppet-masters; he joins the side of the miseri for the sake of the publica causa, not in order to pursue private interests but to restore ‘from the outside’ the social order based on dignitas and honores, i.e. the regular mechanisms for passing on power.35 The letter ends dramatically: the writer is threatened by approaching forces, is prevented by them from continuing his letter (plura quom scribere vellem, nuntiatum est vim mihi parari, 35.5), and closes by asking the addressee to take care of his wife Orestilla. Through this, the process of exclusion gets physical, so to speak; now that Catiline has been “forcefully” (by vis) driven from Rome, he has no choice but to say farewell (haveto). By sending the letter to the elder statesman Catulus and by the emotional gesture of committing Orestilla to his protection,36 Catiline can let it be known that he still feels a tie to the political elite, and by doing this he reminds them of their 34 35 36

The expression novum consilium can possibly be understood as a pretence that he was going into exile; cf. Ramsey 22007: 156. He stresses that he is not acting from self-interest, as he would be able to pay his debts from his own resources and those of his wife Orestilla and her daughter (35.3). The reader will have the earlier authorial comment in mind that “no good man praised anything about her except her figure” (quoius praeter formam nihil umquam bonus laudavit, 15.2) – this makes Orestilla appear as rather unpleasant (potential) protégé.

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common background and interests. At the end the letter itself stages the fate meted out by the senate to Catiline and so to the Roman state: separation from a wife stands as if symbolically for the violence and injustice of the act of excluding Catiline from ‘his’ social group (alienatus, 35.5), against which he now reacts by waging war. 2.4 Sallust on the Ineffectiveness of Outlawing – or of Roman Politics? The narrative continues with the information that the senate has declared Catiline and Manlius37 to be public enemies and that it is raising an army which will advance against Catiline, led by the consul C. Antonius (36.2f.). In Sallust’s dramaturgy, this appears to be a reaction to the information in the letter to Catulus, according to which Catiline will not in fact go into exile but aims to continue his revolutionary struggle. Contrary to what had been announced in the open but apparently misleading (first) letter, Catiline does not plan to remove himself from the system and so he must be declared an enemy ‘within’, a non-Roman who is to be fought and whom it is permissible to kill.38 According to Sallust’s narrative Catiline himself, as if deliberately, provokes this formal exclusion from the community of Roman citizens by the senate. Catiline was indeed killed, not in Rome, like the other Catilinarians, but on a ‘stage’ outside the city walls, at the battle of Pistoria, outlawed and isolated amidst his former fellow-citizens. With the depiction of the battlefield strewn with corpses and viewed not just by the soldiers of the senate’s army but also by the text’s audience or readers (confecto proelio tum vero cerneres, 61.1), Sallust’s

37

38

For his part, Manlius had addressed a letter to Marcius Rex, who was sent to Faesulae by the senate, and had pled for protection for the miseri cives (33); Marcius Rex demanded in return that the rebels lay down their arms (34.1). It is not explicitly stated in Sallust’s text whether this action by Manlius is to be understood as a reaction to Catiline’s setbacks in Rome and so as an attempt to capitulate and an act of disloyalty to Catiline; however, the sequencing of events in Sallust’s narrative does at least suggest this possibility. It is also not stated that Manlius declined Marcius’ offer, but this is suggested by the dramaturgy, in which Catiline is now on the way to Etruria (34.2: at Catilina ex itinere). Sallust follows this information with the excursus on morals (36.4-39.5). This can be understood as creating a parallel with the depiction of the decadent populace of Rome which slips into panic in response to the s.c.u. and the rumours from Etruria. Here, too, the group that is supposed to be protected by defining the exclusion of one of their members through the hostis-declaration is itself discredited. The so-called ‘archaeology’ in chapters 6-13 has already provided a preliminary model for this questioning of friend-foe definitions; however, the transition in tanta tamque corrupta civitate (14.1) is meant to give the impression that this explains the origin of the conspiracy.

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monograph comes to an end, but not before his narrative has adorned the figure of Catiline with a series of positive characteristics, mentioning his exemplary rhetorical address to the troops (59) and his heroic behaviour in battle (60). Among the opposing military leaders of the senate’s legitimate army, the consul Antonius was lame in the foot and the ‘old warrior’ Petreius who represented him only spoke briefly to each soldier from his horse; in contrast, the outlaw Catiline fits the model of the Roman hero much more closely. The members of the ‘in-group’ emerge as victors, but the view of the battlefield reveals that among the “enemy corpses” (hostilia cadavera, 61.8) many friends, guests or relations, or at most “personal enemies” (inimici, 61.8) are identified. That is to say, the dividing line asserted by the senate’s decrees between loyal members of the Roman state and public enemies cannot be drawn in an unambiguous way.39 Sallust’s depiction of the bellum Catilinarium repeatedly makes clear that the fronts created by measures such as the s.c.u. or speech-acts like the hostis-declaration cannot be clearly defined. The Roman space of empire is crisscrossed by different lines of interest. In the narrative sequence after the Allobroges episode, figures such as Caesar, Crassus and Catulus are in turn placed on Catiline’s side, though Catulus was an opponent of Caesar.40 Casting out an individual and his supporters from the city and community did not protect the space ‘Rome’. There are too many force fields at work in it. It cannot be dominated by unambiguous gestures such as expulsion or the hostis-declaration alone. Not least, Sallust’s depiction, interspersed with moral judgements, makes clear that this community is itself no longer worthy or capable of protection. Sallust’s focus on the twin protagonists Caesar and Cato in the famous senate debate of 5 December also makes a point about the ambiguity inherent in the concept of danger and safety.41 On the one hand, Cato, with his demand for the death penalty, puts forward a black-and-white perspective, which is made visible also in the consul’s (Cicero’s) enforcement of this sentence: he personally led Lentulus –

39

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41

The ambiguity of the victory against Catiline is expressed in the monograph’s very last sentence: ita varie per omnem exercitum laetitia maeror, luctus atque gaudia agitabantur (61.9). The impression, created by the tightly constructed narrative, that the senatorial elite was involved in the conspiracy can be supported by historical facts. Cicero himself had supported Catiline only a few months before the consular elections of 64 BCE against his own later colleague in the consulate, C. Antonius. On Catiline’s different supporters cf. Ramsey 22007: 15f. This point has been made by Batstone 1988; Levene 2000; and recently Kapust 2011: 74-80 (cf. ibid.: 27-52 on Thomas Hobbes’ reading of Sallust as an “ambiguous republican”). Drummond 1995: 104 reads Sallust’s account as “an entertaining (and perhaps in origin not entirely serious) reworking of the events of 63 B.C., but with some indication of how that episode might properly have been handled if a less headstrong and more prudent consul … had been in charge.”

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as, after the disclosure of the plot with the help of the Allobrogian ambassadors, he had led him into the Senate, holding his hand (46.5) – into the dungeon to his execution (55.1f.). On the other hand, the stabilisation of the legal power of the Roman senate is merely apparent, rather than real: from the perspective of the contemporary reader of Sallust’s work, around twenty years after the events depicted, both Cato and Cicero were among the losers, whereas the loser of the senate debate, Caesar, went on to win the civil war but, in the end, in the tyrannicide, was himself executed.42 The diagnosis offered in Sallust’s text about the space of ‘Rome’ has, as I hope to have shown, a considerable diagnostic potential and is not specific only to the city of Rome.43 The text focuses on episodes in which legal measures to stabilise power relations, such as the emergency law of the s.c.u. and outlawing, which I have here termed ‘unambiguous gestures’, were ineffective and sooner or later failed, because the dividing line between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ citizens is not identical with the concrete boundaries of the city walls. I read the text as a commentary on all attempts to stabilise the balance of power by dichotomising imperial spaces and by outlawing and excluding people from it.44

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On the date of composition and publication of Catil. cf. Ramsey 22007: 6. Cicero’s political career began to decline almost immediately after his consulship and ended with his being outlawed and executed in December 43 BCE; Cato admitted defeat by committing suicide in 46 BCE. The reference to Cato and Caesar in the past tense in 53.6 points to a date after the Ides of March of 44 BCE as a terminus post quem, and it is commonly assumed that the work was (written and) published after Cicero’s death. Quite like Levene 1992 who calls the Iugurtha an “historical fragment” as it invites the reader to direct the attention “towards the putative unwritten whole” (p. 53), I am interested in the text’s strategies of disconcerting the reader by its open and implicit ways of describing historical episodes, i.e. to what degree the process of conveying ‘factual knowledge’ can produce uncertainty and disconcertion. I am grateful to Orla Mulholland for translating this article from German.

Mapping Foundations: The Italian Network of City Foundations in the Poetic and Antiquarian Tradition1 Ulrich Schmitzer In illo tempore Priamus Helenam rapuit. Troianum bellum decenale surrexit causa mali, quod trium mulierum de pulchritudinem certantium praemium fuit, una earum Helena pastore iudice pollicente. Memnon, Amazones Priamo tolere subsidium. Exinde origo Francorum fuit. Priamo primo regi habuerunt; postea per historiarum libros scriptum est, qualiter habuerunt regi Friga. Postea partiti sunt in duabus partibus. At that time Priam (sic!) abducted Helen. The ten-year-long Trojan War arose from an apple which was the prize for three women competing in beauty; one of them promised Helen to the shepherd who acted as referee.2 Memnon and the Amazons brought help to Priam. From there came the origin of the Franks. They had Priam as their first king; later it is written in the books of history how they had a Phrygian king. Later they were divided in two parts.

So we are told in Fredegar’s Chronicle3 from the early eighth century CE.4 More detail is provided by the anonymous liber historiae Francorum, which was written in 727 and based on Gregory of Tours, right at its beginning:5 Principium regum Francorum eorumque origine vel gentium illarum ac gesta proferamus. Est autem in Asia oppidum Troianorum, ubi est civitas, quae Illium dicitur, ubi regnavit Aeneas […] Surrexerunt autem reges Grecorum adversus Aeneam cum multo exercitu pugnaveruntque contra eum cede magna, corruitque illic multum populus Troianorum. Fugiit itaque Aeneas et reclusit se in civitate Illium, 1

2 3 4 5

An earlier (German) version with a focus on Rome and Italy is to be found in Schmitzer 2014: 137-156. – I have to thank Markus Heim for checking the citations and Ulrike C. A. Stephan for the English translation of my paper. The translation uses the corrected text Helena(m) pastori iudici: Blänsdorf 1996: 85110. MGH SS rer. Merov. vol. 2, II, 4; Collins 1996; 2007. Cf. Blänsdorf 1996: 108f; Hommel 1956: 323-341. MGH SS ref. Merov. vol. 2, A,1. H. Wolfram & H. Haupt 1982. Quellen zur Geschichte des 7. und 8. Jahrhunderts. Liber historiae Francorum, Das Buch von der Geschichte der Franken. Unter der Leitung von H. W. neu übertragen von H. Haupt, Darmstadt (Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters IVa): 329-331.

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Ulrich Schmitzer pugnaveruntque adversus hanc civitatem annis decim. Ipsa enim civitate subacta, fugiit Aeneas tyrannus in Italia locare gentes ad pugnandum. Alii quoque ex principibus, Priamus videlicet et Antenor, cum reliquo exercitu Troianorum duodecim milia intrantes in navibus, abscesserunt et venerunt usque ripas Tanais fluminis [...] We will present the beginning of the Kings of the Franks and their origin, or that of those peoples, and their deeds. Now there is in Asia the city of the Trojans, where there is a community called Illium, where Aeneas reigned […] Then the kings of the Greeks stood up against Aeneas with a large army and fought against him with much bloodshed, and heavily the Trojan people fell there. Therefore Aeneas fled and locked himself in the city of Illium, and they fought against this city for ten years. When even the city had been conquered, the ruler Aeneas fled to Italy to find peoples there to fight with. Other princes, too, namely Priam and Antenor, together with the remaining army of the Trojans, which were twelve thousand, entered the ships, sailed away and came to the banks of the River Don […]

The Franks are descended from the Trojans:6 while Aeneas arrived in Italy, other Trojan refugees took different paths by which they ended up at the estuary of the River Don. In historically and geographically intricate ways these Franks came into contact with the Romans, who were their relatives from the beginning, proved their loyalty, and settled finally in the historical territories near the Lower Rhine and in modern France. This fundamental mythological-geographical connection consequently leads to the Franks’ claim (later to be echoed by the House of Habsburg) to be the rightful successors of the imperium Romanum. This text and more than a few others from the Middle Ages, in which the history of the Franks is thus, by reference to Troy, ennobled and closely connected with the Romans, stand in a strong ancient tradition: one or a few founding persons emigrate to another country, in a prehistorical period and due to a specific event (not driven by structural, e.g. economic reasons), and bring their customs and names with them. Thereby they generate a collectively binding foundation myth. In particular, however, they implant in the region of the new settlement a new significance that it would otherwise not possess. The empty space acquires – though only in retrospect – a meaningful history. In historical times the ties of kinship to the old homeland inscribed in the myth are made instrumental for political alliances. In Italy, other than in the Hellenic sphere, autochthony is not a desirable part of founding narratives. This also explains why almost all such narratives are linked to migration myths.7 These myths do not simply juxtapose peoples or ethnic communities in haphazard ways. While local traditions may sometimes be present in the background, they are altogether constituents of a mythical map, by which the currently inhabited space is charged with special significance obtained from the 6 7

Anton 2000: 1-30 (with further bibliography). See the comprehensive overview in Bourdin 2012: 73f.

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past, which can be situated either in mythical or historical time. It makes little or no difference whether such past events are documented by evidence or completely constructed. The coordinates of this Italic map are determined by two mythological compounds which follow each other chronologically in mythological history: the journeys of Hercules, which lead him, among other places, into the Western Mediterranean; and, one mythical generation later, the Greeks and Trojans who after the fall of Troy are scattered about the Mediterranean. In analogy to the early commentary and exegesis of the Homeric and Cyclic epics, which are thus given a geographical backbone, as it were, the mythological narration the place of which was unspecified in the original text, is translated into a local, aetiologically charged and mythically enhanced topography. As far as we can determine, given the conditions of transmission, the founding narratives show considerable uniformity. They were not seen by the Romans and Italians as an alien imposition, or as retrospective cultural colonisation by the Greeks, but were apparently readily accepted or developed further by tapping into existing myths. Ultimately, such appropriations even result in Italy’s outdoing of Greece. Ovid at least suggests as much in his Fasti, where he describes the Italic-Roman holiday calendar (Ov. Fast. 4.63f., English translation following the 1931 Loeb edition):8 nec tibi sit mirum Graeco rem nomine dici; Itala nam tellus Graecia maior erat. Nor need you wonder that a thing was called by its Greek name, for the Italian land was Greater Greece.

The specific Italic situation now is constituted by the fact that on the one hand we have, as in the Hellenic sphere, a number of cities, nations and communities in juxtaposition which are competing with one another and which conduct their competition not least in the area of collective genealogies. On the other hand Rome is, at least from the late third century BCE onward, the dominating central power. 9 She converted her political supremacy, among other aspects, into a prerogative to interpret and reinterpret the constructions of history, and was supported in this claim by the fact that the literary transmission does not start until this process had already become irreversible. Thus, we would not expect any parallel designs or competing concepts. Nevertheless there are traces of such competing genealogies,

8

9

Cf. Fantham 1998, ad loc. This is quite a different focus from the attempt by Dionysius of Halicarnassus to render the Romans a genuinely Hellenic people (see Gabba 1991: 11-13). Instead, Ovid tries to underline the Italic peoples’ superiority over the Greeks they had left behind in more than one way. Cancik 2004: 307-323 is important for the concept of city foundation and the various ethnic components gathered therein.

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and of a remarkable number under the circumstances, which may make it necessary to re-evaluate the position of Rome. The aim of the present paper is to assemble and interpret these traces. For this purpose we shall engage with two exemplary mythological compounds, the role of Aeneas’ companion Antenor, and the construction of HellenicTrojan topography, as it is set out especially by Ovid in his Fasti. Padua10, the ancient Patavium built by Antenor, was, from a legal perspective, located outside Italy until 42 BCE, namely in Gallia Cisalpina.11 Nonetheless Livy, who had been born and raised there and later became the historian of the Roman Republic (though he could never quite cast off the label of patavinitas: Quint. Inst. 1.5.56 and 8.1.3, quoting Asinius Pollio), saw Padua on a par with Rome. The first words of his historical account in ab urbe condita are as follows (Livy 1.1.1-3, English translation from the 1919 Loeb edition):12 Iam primum omnium satis constat Troia capta in ceteros saevitum esse Troianos; duobus, Aeneae Antenorique, et vetusti iure hospitii et quia pacis reddendaeque Helenae semper auctores fuerant, omne ius belli Achivos abstinuisse; casibus deinde variis Antenorem cum multitudine Enetum, qui seditione ex Paphlagonia pulsi et sedes et ducem rege Pylaemene ad Troiam amisso quaerebant, venisse in intimum maris Hadriatici sinum, Euganeisque, qui inter mare Alpesque incolebant, pulsis Enetos Troianosque eas tenuisse terras. First of all, then, it is generally agreed that when Troy was taken vengeance was wreaked upon the other Trojans, but that two, Aeneas and Antenor, were spared all the penalties of war by the Achivi, owing to long-standing claims of hospitality, and because they had always advocated peace and the giving back of Helen. They then experienced various vicissitudes. Antenor, with a company of Eneti who had been expelled from Paphlagonia in a revolution and were looking for a home and a leader – for they had lost their king, Pylaemenes, at Troy – came to the inmost bay of the Adriatic. There, driving out the Euganei, who dwelt between the sea and the Alps, the Eneti and Trojans took possession of those lands.

By placing Antenor13 next to Aeneas at the beginning of his historical account, Livy establishes a link between his own hometown and Rome. And even though Antenor remains in Padua and is thus eliminated from the path of history connected to Aeneas’ journey (Antenor’s tomb has been shown in Padua since the

10 11 12 13

Cf. Bourdin 2012: 102-104. Kienast 2009: 479f. Zelzer 1987: 117-124. Braccesi 1984: 47-65; on the close connection between Aeneas/Aineias and Antenor already in the Iliad see Espermann 1980: 101-107. For the iconographic tradition see Cisotto Nalon 1990: 197-213.

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Middle Ages), 14 Padua is thereby still connected to Rome, not only by the history of the military conquest of Northern Italy but causally and from the very beginning. Padua is Rome’s legitimate younger sibling, and many other such siblings were located throughout Italy.15 This is all the more remarkable given that the tale of Antenor was not used in historical times as an aetiology for an existing alliance – although the relationship between Padua and Rome was close and friendly – but was apparently created as a competing foundation narrative.16 Antenor is a Homeric character and can be found in ancient Greek literature in many places.17 On the one hand, he is regarded as a brave warrior at Troy and a loyal companion of Aeneas; on the other, there is quite early a charge of treason against him, which is developed from his mediating position already mentioned in the Iliad and his commitment to Helen’s return. The path from the Hellenic tradition, where Pindar (for example) positions him as a settler in Cyrene, comes via Sophocles. It was Sophocles (and as far as we can see, he was the first) who made Antenor take a westbound route, to Italy.18 This fits in a general way with the interest shown by Sophocles in the mytho-historical foundation of Northern Italy (e.g. in the Antenoridae), which is possibly based on Athens’ expansionistic endeavours into this area under Cimon.19 The ancient geographical literature took up the point20 and transformed the fiction into a realistic account of historical events (Strabo 13.1.53, English translation from the 1960 Loeb edition): Σοφοκλῆς γοῦν ἐν τῇ ἁλώσει τοῦ Ἰλίου παρδαλέαν φησὶ πρὸ τῆς θύρας τοῦ Ἀντήνορος προτεθῆναι σύμβολον τοῦ ἀπόρθητον ἐαθῆναι τὴν οἰκίαν. τὸν μὲν οὖν Ἀντήνορα καὶ τοὺς παῖδας μετὰ τῶν περιγενομένων Ἐνετῶν εἰς τὴν Θρᾴκην περαιωθῆναι κἀκεῖθεν διαπεσεῖν εἰς τὴν λεγομένην κατὰ τὸν Ἀδρίαν Ἐνετικήν, At any rate, Sophocles says that at the capture of Troy a leopard’s skin was put before the doors of Antenor as a sign that his house was to be left unpillaged; and Antenor and his children safely escaped to Thrace with the survivors of the Heneti, and from there got across to the Adriatic Heneticê, as it is called […].

14 15

16 17 18 19 20

Beneš 2011: 39-62; on the so-called “tomb” of Antenor see also Zampieri 1990:197213. Even though, to the best of my knowledge, this family metaphor is not attested in antiquity, the prodigy of the sow and her thirty piglets witnessed by Aeneas points towards the thirty Albanian colonies (Lyk. Alex. 1250-1260) as originating from a common mother (Varro R.R. 2.4.18). For the archaeology and the population of Padova see the papers in Zamperi 1990, especially Capozza: 151-164). See the evidence in Braccesi 1984, passim. Cf. Strabo 5.1.4. Cf. Leigh 1998: 82-100, esp. 87f.; Cerrato 1985: 167-174. Cf. Leigh 1998.

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The first Latin author to adopt this view was probably the Umbrian Accius in the second century BCE, for whom a fragmentary tragedy is attested under the title Antenoridae; but the surviving pieces of this tragedy do not give any hint as to whether and how Italic geography has been integrated. From about the same time as Accius we have a parallel testimony in Cato’s Origines21(frg. 2,12 Beck/Walter22): Venetos Troiana stirpe ortos auctor est Cato. That the Veneti originate from the Trojan tribe is attested by Cato.

This develops into a communis opinio which, at least in Augustan times, connects Antenor firmly with Patavium.23 Thus a tradition is established which stretches into late antiquity, for example in the Origo gentis Romanae by Ps.-Aurelius Victor, 1.5, with clear reference to Livy:24 Cum procul dubio constet ante Aeneam priorem Antenorem in Italiam esse pervectum eumque non in ora litori proxima, sed in interioribus locis, id est Illyrico, urbem Patavium condidisse, ut quidem idem supradictus Vergilius illis versibus ex persona Veneris apud Iovem de aerumnis Aeneae sui conquerentis: Antenor potuit mediis elapsus Achivis Illyricos penetrare sinus atque intima tutus cet. Quare autem addiderit tutus, suo loco plenissime annotavimus in commentatione, quam hoc scribere coepimus, cognita ex libro, qui inscriptus est De Origine Patavina. As it is certain beyond all doubt that Antenor arrived earlier in Italy and before Aeneas, and that he did not found the city of Patavium in a region near the coast but in the interior of the country, that is in Illyria, as indeed Vergil himself mentioned above in those verses in which Venus complains to Jove about Aeneas’ labours: “Antenor could escape from amidst the Achaeans and arrive at the Illyrian shores, and he is safe there in the interior” etc. As to why he added “safe”, however, we have remarked upon most fully in the appropriate place in the commentary, which we have begun to write on this and which we have learned from the book with the title On the origins of Patavium.

21

22 23 24

Cf. also Dion. Hal. ant. 1.11.1 (= Cato frg. 1,4 Beck/Walter), according to whom Cato and other Roman historians wrote down the foundation and origin histories of the Italic townships in extensive records. Die Frühen Römischen Historiker, Vol. 1 and 2, hg., übersetzt und kommentiert von Hans Beck und Uwe Walter, Darmstadt 2004 (vol. 1) and 22005 (vol. 2). Cf. Verg. Aen. 1.247f. [Antenor] hic tamen ille urbem Patavi sedesque locavit / Teucrorum. Origo Gentis Romanae. Die Ursprünge des römischen Volkes. Herausgegeben, übersetzt und kommentiert von Markus Sehlmeyer, Darmstadt 2004, with commentary ad loc.

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This last sentence is quite a sensational finding in the history of transmission, as it shows that Patavium had its own local historiography of which the last traces stretch up into late antiquity – although neither date nor author can be specified in any way. (However, that this author is the author of the Origo itself, as is often assumed, is far from certain). Such local traditions, whether they are transmitted in historiographical or aetiological or even historio-epic form, were evidently wide-spread. To us they are completely lost; the fact that interest in antiquity has focused almost exclusively on Rome, combined with the scarcity of libraries and archives in these provincial towns, have conspired to allow them to pass into oblivion. So only few traces of the former knowledge were transmitted. For instance, Tacitus (Ann. 16.21.1) depicts the boldness of Paetus Thrasea towards the tyrant Nero by mentioning that Thrasea regarded the local festivals of his hometown as superior to the new festivities organised in the Emperor’s honour:25 Trucidatis tot insignibus viris ad postremum Nero virtutem ipsam exscindere concupivit interfecto Thrasea Paeto et Barea Sorano, olim utrisque infensus, et accedentibus causis in Thraseam, quod senatu egressus est, cum de Agrippina ferretur, ut memoravi, quodque Iuvenalium ludicro parum [et] spectabilem operam praebuerat; eaque offensio altius penetrabat, quia idem Thrasea Patavi, unde ortus erat, ludis cetastis a Troiano Antenore institutis habitu tragico cecinerat. After so many magnificent men had been slaughtered, Nero finally sought to erase virtue itself by murdering Paetus Thrasea and Soranus Barea, as he had long been hostile to both of them, and more reasons came in addition against Thrasea: because he had left the senate when the report about Agrippina was given, as I have mentioned, and because he had devoted too little spectacular effort to the Iuvenalian Games. And this offence cut all the deeper as this very Thrasea had at Patavium, where he was born, sung at the ludi cetasti, which had been established by the Trojan Antenor, in a tragic garment.

Irrespective of the difficult question of what the ludi cetasti26 may be, the remarkable point of the passage is that even under the Empire local traditions were maintained performatively and publicly, not only as literary reminiscences; they commemorated the foundation myth of the city and evidently had such a prestige that even senators participated in the corresponding games. The behaviour of Paetus

25 26

Cf. Braccesi 1984: 109f. on the conflict between Nero and Paetus Thrasea as a conflict between centre and periphery. Braccesi 1984: 109-111.

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Thrasea reveals, beyond the offence against the Emperor, a local pride in Patavium27 and the sense that the city would not defer to Rome. Similarly, Seneca (in a praeteritio) puts both cities and their ancestors on a level (Sen. Dial. 12.7.6):28 quid interest enumerare Antenorem Patavi conditorem et Euandrum in ripa Tiberis regna Arcadum collocantem? Why should I count Antenor, the founder of Patavium, and Evander, who on the banks of the Tiber built the kingdom of the Arcadians?

This local pride is perceptible in spite of the dramatic loss of local historical records outside Rome, as the focus on the capital gave rise to a kind of colonial amnesia. Padua seems to have boasted a fairly elaborate foundation history, as is implied by three passages in late antique commentaries on Vergil’s Aeneid, which are inserted at the relevant positions in the text (Serv. auct. Aen. 1.242):29 ANTENOR POTVIT capto Ilio Menelaus memor se et Ulixen beneficio Antenoris servatos, cum repetentes Helenam ab eo essent suscepti ac paene a Paride aliisque iuvenibus interempti essent, parem gratiam reddens inviolatum dimisit. qui cum uxore Theano et filiis Helicaone et Polydamante ceterisque sociis in Illyricum pervenit, et bello exceptus ab Euganeis et rege Veleso victor urbem Patavium condidit; id enim responsi acceperat eo loco condere civitatem quo sagittis avem petisset; ideo ex avis petitae auspicio Patavium nominatum […]

ANTENOR COULD: After the conquest of Troy, Menelaus remembered that he and Ulysses had been saved through Antenor’s deed, when they, in the attempt to regain Helen, had been welcomed by him and almost been killed by Paris and other young men; granting to Antenor equal mercy, Menelaus dismissed him. He came with his wife Theano and his sons Helicaon and Polydamas and the other companions to Illyricum, was received there with war by the Euganeans, and having emerged victorious over King Velesus he founded the city of Patavium. For he had obtained as an oracle that he would in that place found a city where he had shot a bird with arrows; therefore, due to the auspices gained from a shot bird, the city was named Patavium […]

The explanation follows a few verses later (Serv. auct. Aen. 1.247):30

27 28 29 30

Cf. Sil. 8.602-603: tum Troiana manus tellure antiquitus orti / Euganea profugique sacris Antenoris oris. Cf. also Claudian’s little poem on a fountain near Padova (Carm. 26,1f.; Braccesi 1984: 25-30): Fons, Antenoreae vitam qui porrigis urbi / fataque vicinis noxia pellis aquis ... The texts also in Leigh 1998: 90f.; cf. Leon 1964: 33-34; Dyer 1996: 403. For a contemporary view see Pellegrini 1990: 165-172.

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VRBEM PATAVI hoc est Patavium. Patavium autem dictum vel a Padi vicinitate,

quasi Padavium, vel ἀπὸ τοῦ πέτασθαι, quod captato augurio dicitur condita, vel quod avem telo petisse dicitur et eo loco condidisse civitatem. THE CITY OF PATAVUS: this is Padua. Padua now is named either after its vicinity to the River Po, quasi Podium, or from πέτασθαι, the Greek term for flying, because it is said to have been founded after the taking of an augury, or because he (i.e. Antenor) is said to have shot a bird with an arrow and to have founded the city in that place.

Both texts mention an act of foundation based on a bird augury. This is confirmed by another testimony from the Scholia Veronensia on Aeneid 1.247, which also mentions birds, indeed a whole flock of birds. This, too, seems to point to either a competing or a complementary relationship to Rome, because for Rome, too, a bird plays an important role (alongside the she-wolf). Mars’ bird, the woodpecker (cf. also Fabius Pictor frg. 7f. Beck/Walter: et simul videbant picum Martium) also brought food to the twin boys Romulus and Remus (according to the report in Plutarch, Romulus 4.2, English translation from the 1914 Loeb edition): ἐνταῦθα δὴ τοῖς βρέφεσι κειμένοις τήν τε λύκαιναν ἱστοροῦσι θηλαζομένην καὶ δρυοκολάπτην τινὰ παρεῖναι συνεκτρέφοντα καὶ φυλάττοντα. Here then, the babies lay, and the she-wolf of myth suckled them here, and a woodpecker came to help in feeding them and to watch over them.

Moreover, the actual foundation of Rome by Romulus was connected to a bird augury, or rather a double bird augury, the two auguria of Remus and of Romulus, which found its destination in the augurium augustum of Romulus (Ennius annales 154 Skutsch): Augusto augurio postquam incluta condita Roma est […] When after the illustrious augury the noble Rome had been founded […]

The remarkably frequent mentions of Padua relative to the town’s actual significance are not only prompted by geographical interest or by a pursuit of mythographical completeness, but seem rather to constitute a systematic self-conception complementary to Rome and its foundation story. The region of the terra Patavina, actually located in Gallia Cisalpina, gains mythical significance which stretches far into the historical era and is able to maintain its position even under the Principate, against the centralising claims of Rome and its rulers. Antenor becomes the dominating figure in the Upper Italic sphere and leaves his imprint on the entire region between the river Po and the Alps (Lucan 7.192195, English translation from the 1928 Loeb edition):

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Ulrich Schmitzer Euganeo, si uera fides memorantibus, augur colle sedens, Aponus terris ubi fumifer exit atque Antenorei dispergitur unda Timaui, […] dixit: […] If those who tell the tale may be believed, an augur sat that day on the Eugenean hills, where the smoking spring of Aponus issues from the ground and the Timavus, river of Antenor, splits into channels; and he cried: […]

In the same vein Silius Italicus writes (8.602-604, English translation from the 1927 Loeb edition): tum Troiana manus, tellure antiquitus orti Euganea profugique sacris Antenoris oris. necnon cum Venetis Aquileia †superfluit armis. There was also a band of Trojans, coming from the Euganean country in ancient times and driven forth from the sacred soil of Antenor. Aquileia too together with the Veneti was full to overflowing with troops.

The aspect of an ‘anti-Rome’ or ‘alternative Rome’ is further underlined by the emphasis on the inhabitants’ Trojan roots. This aspect had already become visible in Vergil’s Aeneid, when Venus complains to Jove about Aeneas’ fate and highlights Antenor as a paramount example of a successful settler (this is the passage to which the cited explanations refer: Verg. Aen. 1.242-249, English translation from the 1916 Loeb edition): 31 Antenor potuit mediis elapsus Achiuis Illyricos penetrare sinus atque intima tutus regna Liburnorum et fontem superare Timaui, unde per ora nouem uasto cum murmure montis it mare proruptum et pelago premit arua sonanti. hic tamen ille urbem Pataui sedesque locauit Teucrorum et genti nomen dedit armaque fixit Troia, nunc placida compostus pace quiescit: Antenor could escape the Achaean host, safely penetrate the Illyrian gulfs and inmost realms of the Liburnians, and pass the springs of Timavus, from where through nine mouths, with a mountain’s mighty roar, there comes a bursting flood that buries the fields under its resounding sea. Yet here he founded Padua’s town, a home for his Teucrians, gave a name to the race, and hung up the arms of Troy; now, settled in tranquil peace, he is at rest.

31

Cf. Pianezzolla 1990: 173-178.

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Furthermore, Livy cites the pagus Troianus (Livy 1.1.3) as a term for the surroundings of Padua even in the Augustan present (nomen est), despite the fact that the eponymous town Troia – an echo of the original Troy – may have vanished in historical times from Upper Italy:32 Padua and its surroundings thus become a reconstruction of Troy and of the Aeneads’ origins. As a result, while we must be cautious given the conditions of the extant texts, Padua may nevertheless be seen to precede as well as to complement the city of Rome – and this is in some respect also true in terms of its geographical location. When other Italic towns are taken into account, the exclusive role of Rome is thus diminished – the urbs becomes just a prima inter pares. Other Italic peoples were evidently just as successful in charging their territory with special meaning by setting it within the Trojan tradition. It may well be that the Romans found it not at all inconvenient when a Troy in Upper Italy was destroyed just in time, thus eliminating a potential competitor in the contest for prestige. Indeed, if Otto Skutsch (see n. 32 above) is right, this was even interpreted by Ennius in the Annals – in perfect unison with Roman intentions – as the execution of Juno’s wrath (the ira Iunonis, as it appears at the beginning of the Aeneid) at Troy’s ongoing existence, and thus ideologically contrasted with Rome’s fate. These observations on Antenor and his role in the Italic discourse of foundation can, in spite of the highly fragmented material, be extended even further and thus furnished with general significance, as the following examples show. The comparison with Etruscan towns proves instructive: apparently these towns did not inscribe their genesis33 into the same foundation networks,34 although the total loss of Etruscan historical literature makes a detailed analysis difficult.35 The town of Arezzo, for instance, enters the historical stage in a rather unspectacular way, as an ally of the Latins against Tarquinius Priscus (Dion. Hal. Ant. 3.51.4, English translation from the 1961 Loeb edition): […] οὐχ ἅπαντες ἐπὶ τῆς αὐτῆς γενόμενοι γνώμης, ἀλλὰ πέντε πόλεις μόναι Κλουσῖνοί τε καὶ Ἀρρητῖνοι καὶ Οὐολατερρανοὶ Ῥουσιλανοί τε καὶ ἔτι πρὸς τούτοις Οὐετυλωνιᾶται.

32

33 34

35

Cf. Enn. Ann. frg. 445 Skutsch (book 8, frg. 18) with Skutsch’s commentary ad loc., who suspects that the town of Troia was destroyed during the Second Punic War in the course of a military expedition to Illyria in 221 BCE. Bourdin 2012: 105-112. For the “barbarization” of Etruscans – following the Greek historiographical literature – and their exclusion from the Mediterranean common host of foundation narratives see e.g. di Fazio 2013: 48-69. A scarse remainder is preserved in Serv. auct. Aen. 10.179 (Cato frg. 2,15 Beck/Walter): Cato Originum qui Pisas tenuerint ante adventum Etruscorum negat sibi compertum […].

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Ulrich Schmitzer […] though not all were of the same mind, but only five cities, namely, Clusium, Arretium, Volaterrae, Rusellae, and, in addition to these, Vetulonia.

We can therefore restrict ourselves for the remainder of our investigation to a particular group of cities in Italy36 that constructed their foundation-myths in a way similar to the one of Padua: those cities which, at least according to their selfimage, had been founded in the era before the Greek colonisation and which nevertheless thought of themselves as belonging to the Hellenic sphere because their origin was associated with a fundamental event in Greek history and common Greek self-conception, namely the Trojan War. These cities were interconnected, as I will show, by the common core of their foundation myths, and thus formed what might be called a ‘mythoctisic’ network in Italy. It would be rewarding to investigate more closely their relationship to the foundations by Heracles/Hercules37, whose heroic deeds took place one mythic generation before the Trojan War – but such a study is beyond the scope of the present paper. Initially a rival of Aeneas and Antenor was the Greek Diomedes, who had even wounded the goddess Venus, Aeneas’ divine mother, in the battle at Troy. But upon arrival in Italy Diomedes refused to continue to wage war in alliance with the Italic people, and instead called for reconciliation, according to the corresponding reports in Vergil and Ovid. The tradition credits him with a whole series of foundation acts (Serv. auct. Aen. 11.246):38 ARGYRIPAM Diomedes fuit de civitate quae Argos Hippion dicitur, de qua Homerus Ἄργεος ἱπποβότοιο, Horatius aptum dicet equis Argos. hic in Apulia condidit civitatem, quam patriae suae nomine appellavit et Argos Hippion dixit: quod nomen postea vetustate corruptum est, et factum [[est]] ut civitas Argyrippa diceretur: quod rursus corruptum Arpos fecit. [[sane Diomedes multas condidisse per Apuliam dicitur civitates, ut Venusiam, quam in satisfactionem Veneris, quod eius ira sedes patrias invenire non poterat, condidit, quae Aphrodisias dicta est. item Canusium Cynegeticon, quod in eo loco venari solitus erat: nam et Garganum a Phrygiae monte Gargara vocavit. et Beneventum et Venafrum ab eo condita esse dicuntur]]. ARGYRIPAM: Diomedes was from the city named Argos Hippion, which Homer calls “Argeos Hippobotoio”, and Horace, appropriately, “suited for horses”. He founded a town in Apulia, which he named after his hometown and called Argos Hippion; this name was later corrupted due to old age, and the town happened to be 36 37

38

See Bourdin 2012 with ample references. Cf. already Fabius Pictor frg. 1 (Beck/Walter): [Κοί]ντος Φάβιος ὁ Πι-|[κτω]ρῖνος ἐπικαλού-|[μεν]ος, Ῥωμαῖος, Γαίου | [υἱό]ς· | [ὃς] ἱστόρηκεν τὴν | [Ἡρ]ακλέους ἄφιξιν | [εἰς] Ἰταλίαν καὶ δ’ ἔτι | [νοσ]τον Λανοΐου συμ-|[μάχ]ου τε Αἰνεία καὶ | [Ἀσκα]νίου· πολὶ ὕστε-|[ρον] ἐγένετο Ῥωμύλος | [καὶ Ῥ]έμος καὶ Ῥώμης | [κτίσις ὑ]πὸ Ῥωμύλου, [ὃς] | [πρῶτ]ος βεβασί[λευκεν]. Verg. Aen. 11.246f. ille urbem Argyripam patriae cognomine gentis / uictor Gargani condebat Iapygis agris.

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called Argyrippa; this was again corrupted to Arpos. In fact, Diomedes is said to have founded many towns across Apulia, such as Venusia, which he founded as a way of placating Venus, since he had been unable to find the dwellings of his fathers due to her wrath, and which is called Aphrodisias. Also Canusium Cynegeticon, because he used to hunt in this place: for he also named Mount Garganus after the Phrygian mountain Gargara. Beneventum and Venafrum are said to have been founded by him, too.

Diomedes also found his way from fictional poetry into historical prose. Strabo, for example (5.1.9; 6.3.9), after taking into account his mythic aspects, sees him as a serious and important Italic foundation figure. An even more detailed account of Diomedes’ motives is given by Servius in the commentary to Aeneid 8.9:39 MITTITVR ET MAGNI VENVLVS DIOMEDIS AD VRBEM Diomedes postquam repperit ira Veneris a se vulneratae uxorem apud Argos turpiter vivere, noluit reverti: sed tenuit partes Apuliae, et edomita omni montis Gargani multitudine in eodem tractu civitates plurimas condidit. nam et Beneventum et Equumtuticum ipse condidit, et Arpos, quae et Argyrippa dicitur […]

AND VENULUS IS SENT TO THE CITY OF THE GREAT DIOMEDES: After Diomedes had found out that, due to the wrath of Venus who had been wounded by him, his wife was living in disgrace near Argos, he did not want to return: but he occupied parts of Apulia, and after he had conquered the entire population of Mount Garganus, he founded a number of towns in the same region. For he himself founded Beneventum and Equumtuticum, and Arpos, too, which is also called Argyrippa […]

Diomedes turns out to be a key figure in mythical city foundations in Southern and Central Italy, a counterpart to Upper Italian Antenor as well as an exemplary case of the integration of various fields of origin. For on Italian soil it ultimately proves irrelevant on which side the heroes have fought in the Trojan war. Diomedes even explicitly seeks an agreement with Aeneas and refuses to ally himself with the Italic people: the newcomers are united in solidarity by their common fate – which in each case is a kind of exile – and together they shape a new map of Italy. How this post-Trojan historical conciliation functions even within the same discourse, is shown in the proem to the fourth book of Ovid’s Fasti. In order to explain how Greek and Italic elements were combined to a new whole, the poet mentions the city founders who had come from abroad, first Evander and Hercules, before widening the view beyond Rome to include Italy as a whole. The destroyer of Troy, Ulysses, can follow next in line without causing any animosity (Ov. Fast. 4.69-72, English translation from the 1931 Loeb edition):40

39 40

For Servius’ toponomastic see also Santini 2009: 563-77. Bömer 1957-1958, ad loc.; Fantham 1998, ad loc.

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Ulrich Schmitzer dux quoque Neritius; testes Laestrygones exstant et quod adhuc Circes nomina litus habet; et iam Telegoni, iam moenia Tiburis udi stabant, Argolicae quod posuere manus. The Neritian chief also came: witness the Laestrygones and the shore which still bears the name of Circe. Already the walls of Telegonus were standing, and the walls of moist Tibur, built by Argive hands.

By mentioning Ulysses, Ovid moves away from Rome into the adjacent Italic regions, to the South (Mons Circeus), Southeast (Tusculum, as founded by Telegonus), and East of Latium (Tibur). For according to a non-Homeric tradition, Ulysses could not quite withstand the charms of Circe as they are described in the Odyssey but fathered a son with her, Telegonus41, “he who is born afar”. From this perspective, Circe is not a problem despite her destructive magical powers, since evidently a higher value was found in the dignity her myth could confer on the origins of a people. This is confirmed by the fact that even Medea could be integrated into the foundation legends: the Marsi derived their ancestry from a son of Circe and worshipped her niece Medea as the goddess Angitia.42 For Telegonus’ role as foundation hero of Tusculum, there is further evidence beside Ovid; as Porphyrio explains in his commentary on Hor. carm. 3.29.7: ET TELEGONI IUGA PARRICIDAE: Tusculum significat, quod dicitur Telegonus Circes filius condidisse, qui per ignorantiam patrem suum Vlixen occidit. AND THE RIDGES OF THE PATRICIDE TELEGONUS: this denotes Tusculum, which Telegonus, the son of Circe, is said to have founded, who by ignorance killed his father Ulysses.

Similar information is given in the etymological dictionary by Festus (116.7) which is based on the work of the Augustan scholar Verrius Flaccus:

41

42

Cf. Hygin, fab. 127: Telegonus Vlyssis et Circes filius missus a matre ut genitorem quaereret, tempestate in Ithacam est delatus, ibique fame coactus agro depopulari coepit; cum quo Vlysses et Telemachus ignari arma contulerunt. Vlysses a Telegono filio est interfectus, quod ei responsum fuerat ut a filio caueret mortem. quem postquam cognouit qui esset, iussu Mineruae cum Telemacho et Penelope in patriam redierunt, in insulam Aeaeam; ad Circen Vlyssem mortuum deportarunt ibique sepulturae tradiderunt. eiusdem Mineruae monitu Telegonus Penelopen, Telemachus Circen duxerunt uxores. Circe et Telemacho natus est Latinus, qui ex suo nomine Latinae linguae nomen imposuit; ex Penelope et Telegono natus est Italus, qui Italiam ex suo nomine denominauit. Mastrocinque 1993: 178.

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Mamiliorum familia progenita sit a Mamilia Telegoni filia, quam Tusculi procreavit, quando id oppidum ipse condidisset. The family of the Mamilians be descended from Mamilia, the daughter of Telegonus, whom he fathered in Tusculum, as he had himself founded this city.

Another strand of the tradition claims Telegonus for Praeneste, which was situated not far from Tusculum (Plut. parallela minora 316, English translation by Marietta Horster, New Jacoby): ΤΗΛΕΓΟΝΟΣ Ὀδυσσέως καὶ Κίρκης ἐπ’ ἀναζήτησιν τοῦ πατρὸς πεμφθεὶς ἔμαθε πόλιν κτίσαι, ἔνθα ἂν ἴδῃ γεωργοὺς ἐστεφανωμένους καὶ χορεύοντας. γενόμενος δὲ κατά τινα τόπον τῆς Ἰταλίας καὶ θεασάμενος ἀγροίκους πρινίνοις κλάδοις ἐστεφανωμένους καὶ ὀρχήσει προσευκαιροῦντας, ἔκτισε πόλιν, ἀπὸ τοῦ συγκυρήματος Πρίνιστον ὀνομάσας, ἣν Ῥωμαῖοι παραγώγως Πραίνεστον καλοῦσιν· ὡς ἱστορεῖ Ἀριστοκλῆς ἐν τρίτῳ Ἰταλικῶν. Telegonos, the son of Odysseus and Circe, who was sent to search for his father, was instructed to found a city at a place where he should see farmers wearing wreaths and dancing. When he came to a certain place in Italy and saw people wearing wreaths of oaken (prininoi) twigs and leisurely engaged with dancing, he founded a city. Because of these circumstances he named the city Prinistum, which the Romans, having altered its name, call Praeneste. So Aristokles relates in the third book of his Italian History.

In this last testimony we can also find some indication of the lost literature on regional history and culture, which must have contained information about this area, among many other topics. The extent to which it is based on older traditions, or just external attributions, is impossible to determine in view of the fragmentary transmission. The literary tradition was also supported by material evidence. Strabo, for instance, reports with only mild skepticism (φασιν), that at Mount Kirkaio, that is Monte Circeo, relics of Ulysses are shown (5.3.3): δείκνυσθαι δὲ καὶ φιάλην τινά φασιν Ὀδυσσέως. The foundation of Tibur, also mentioned by Ovid, was already known to Cato. It was founded – according to the logic of a pre-Roman legend – from Arcadia, a site as primordial as that of Rome (Solin. 2.7): Tibur, sicut Cato facit testimonium, a Catillo Arcade praefecto classis Euandri (scil. conditum). Tibur, as Cato testifies, was founded by the Arcadian Catillus, the fleet commander of Evander.

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This explanation was met with general consensus in antiquity, although we do find disagreement on Catillus’ exact region of origin (he is sometimes also associated with Argos). The fact that the Sabines hailed from Sparta and that their national character could be thus explained seems to have been common knowledge in Roman Republican historiography (Serv. auct. Aen. 8.638):43 AUT ‘SEVERIS’ DISCIPLINA: aut rem hoc verbo reconditam dixit, quia Sabini a Lacedaemoniis originem ducunt, ut Hyginus ait de origine urbium Italicarum, a Sabo, qui de Perside Lacedaemonios transiens ad Italiam venit et expulsis Siculis tenuit loca quae Sabini habent […] Cato autem et Gellius a Sabo Lacedaemonio trahere eos originem referunt. porro Lacedaemonios durissimos fuisse omnis lectio docet. Sabinorum etiam mores populum Romanum secutum idem Cato dicit: merito ergo ‘severis’, qui et a duris parentibus orti sunt, et quorum disciplinam victores Romani in multis secuti sunt.

[…] he says the thing hidden in this word, because the Sabini claim their origin from the Lacedaemonians, as Hyginus says on the origin of the Italic cities; their name derives from Sabus, who, coming from Persia through the land of the Lacedaemonians, arrived in Italy and, driven from Sicily, took possession of the region which the Sabines have now […] however Cato and Gellius report that they derive their origin from the Lacedaemonian Sabus. Furthermore, every reading teaches us that the Lacedaemonians were the toughest people. The same Cato writes that the customs of the Sabini were followed by the Roman people: therefore the word ‘severis’ is rightly used here, both because they descend from tough ancestors and because the victorious Romans followed their discipline in many ways.

In his catalogue of founders, Ovid then proceeds by association from Ulysses and his son to the Trojans who had fled from the destroyed city (Ov. Fast. 4.73-78, English translation from the 1931 Loeb edition):44 venerat Atridae fatis agitatus Halesus, a quo se dictam terra Falisca putat. adice Troianae suasorem Antenora pacis, et generum Oeniden, Apule Daune, tuum. serus ab Iliacis, et post Antenora, flammis attulit Aeneas in loca nostra deos. Driven from home by the tragic doom of Atrides, Halesus had come, after whom the Faliscan land deems that it takes its name. Add to these Antenor, who advised the Trojans to make peace, and (Diomedes) the Oenid, son-in-law to Apulian

43 44

Cf. Strabo 5.3.1: οἱ Σαβῖνοι … αὐτόχθονες. Fantham 1998, ad loc. points out that in the series of external founders Aeneas is the only one to import alien gods to Italy.

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Daunus. Aeneas from the flames of Ilium brought his gods into our land, arriving late and after Antenor.

In this catalogue of Trojan and Greek city founders, who are not in conflict but rather complement one another, the civilisation of Italy becomes a product of the Trojan War and its aftermath. The map of Italy gains a historio-mythical superstructure which connects small and large, insignificant and important places and even incorporates Ovid’s hometown45 (Ov. Fast. 4.79-81, English translation from the 1931 Loeb edition): huius erat Solymus Phrygia comes unus ab Ida, a quo Sulmonis moenia nomen habent, Sulmonis gelidi, patriae, Germanice, nostrae. He had a comrade Solymus, who came from Phrygian Ida; from him the walls of Sulmo take their name – cool Sulmo, my native town, Germanicus.

Ovid combines personal fortune, local tradition, and “big” Italic history. Whether this is an ad-hoc aetiology inspired by local patriotism is impossible to determine from the extant sources46. It was, however, apparently accepted without argument in antiquity, as the mention in Silius Italicus’ Punica (the epic on the war of the Romans and Italics against Hannibal, much influenced by Livy) shows: (Sil. 9.7076, English translation from the 1934 Loeb edition): huic domus et gemini fuerant Sulmone relicti matris in uberibus nati, Mancinus et una nomine Rhoeteo Solimus. nam Dardana origo et Phrygio genus a proauo, qui sceptra secutus Aeneae claram muris fundauerat urbem ex sese dictam Solimon. celebrata colonis mox Italis paulatim attrito nomine Sulmo. This man was a native of Sulmo and left two boys there at their mother’s breast – Mancinus and one who bore the Trojan name of Solimus; for their remote ancestor was a Trojan who had followed Aeneas as his sovereign and built the famous city which he called by his own name, Solimus; but, when many Italian colonists resorted thither, the name was gradually shortened into Sulmo.

45 46

See Carpineto 1976: 201-202 on the importance of the Paelignians and their origins for Ovid. Cf. Bourdin 2012: 126f.

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Solimus47 can also serve as an exemplar of how such a genealogical construction works: the nation of the Solymoi is known from the Iliad (6.184 and 204); it derived its ancestry from Solymus, son of Zeus (e.g. Stephan. Byz. p. 524 s.v. Pisidia: οἱ Πισίδαι πρότερον Σόλυμοι, ἀπὸ Σολύμου τοῦ Διὸς καὶ Χαλδήνης). In the Hellenistic era this origin was extended into a proper foundation cult and displayed, for example, on coins; cf. Strabo 13.4.16: Τερμησσέων ἄκρας ὁ ὑπερκείμενος λόφος καλεῖται Σόλυμος, καὶ αὐτοὶ δὲ οἱ Τερμησσεῖς Σόλυμοι καλοῦνται. This fact could also have been known in the Roman West, as a remark made by Pliny the Elder in the context of Cilicia attests: Insident verticem Pisidae, quondam appellati Solymi, quorum colonia Caesarea, eadem Antiochia (Plin. Nat. 5.94.1). Furthermore, the town was easily confused with Hierosolyma, the city of Jerusalem, which had been rich and famous at least since Pompey’s conquest of Judea (e.g. Mart. 7.55.7 sed quae de Solymis venit perustis eqs.; cf. Juv. 6.544). If Ovid did invent the etymology of Sulmo,48 – and there is significant evidence for such a creatio ex nihilo – he may have played a highly sophisticated and enigmatic joke. The only passage in which he mentions Solimus, the otherwise unattested companion of Aeneas, was almost certainly composed in exile – or in other words in the Hellenic Eastern sphere of the Imperium Romanum – because Germanicus is named as the direct addressee (as in the revised proem of the first book of the Fasti).49 If my speculation is correct, it means that Ovid has operated on the grounds of the geographical association and phonetic similarity of Sulmo and Solymoi: the perished nation of the Solymi (Plin. nat. 5.127.1 ex Asia interisse gentes tradit Eratosthenes Solymorum eqs.) is substituted by the Sulmonenses, while the eponymous hero is sent on a westbound journey, just like Aeneas, and is established in Italy by a translatio nominum (if not imperii). Whether the cult of Jove in Sulmo (on his temple was built the church Santa Maria della Tomba, according to tradition50) can be compared to that of Termessus for Zeus Solymus, may remain undiscussed for now. If, then, this speculation holds true, this would additionally serve as evidence of ancient authors’ awareness of and intervention in these etymologising foundation narratives, whose suggestive power not only convinced Silius Italicus and prompted his narrative elaboration, but also characterises the self-conception of

47 48 49 50

Also see Türk 1927: 990f. s.v. Solymos 1) and 3) on the overlap of Greek and Latin ethnography discussed below; Dupraz 2009: 319-339. See in general Schur 1932: 728f. (s.v. Sulmo 1), who also assumes an invention by Ovid. Cf. Mattiocco 1997. Fantham 1998, ad loc. also ponders whether “the entire sequence of colonizers” may be “a late addition”. Mattiocco 1997: 63f.

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Sulmo, or Sulmona, even today.51 Ovid has been very successful in giving the territory of his hometown special significance and thus saved it from anonymity. 52 Ovid could have done this without any intellectual risk, since no one could have kept track of all foundation figures claimed by larger and smaller Italic cities and towns with more or less sophisticated justifications. This series of mythical founders, which by its sheer mass suggestively visualises the Greek-Trojan primordial influence, can be found up to late antiquity in several encyclopaedic surveys and historiographical catalogues53, as in Servius’ commentary on the Aeneid quoted above, or in the large encyclopaedia by Martianus Capella, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, 6.642:54 Hoc loco possem etiam urbium percurrere conditores, ut a Iano Ianiculum, a Saturno Latium, a Danae Ardeam, ab Hercule Pompeios, cum boum pompam duceret Hiberorum […] Iapygas Iapyx, Daedali filius, condidit, Coram Dardanus, Agyllinam Pelasgi, Tibur Catillus, praefectus classis Euandriae. Parthenope dicta ab Sirenis sepulchro hoc nomine vocitatae, quae nunc Neapolis appellatur. Praeneste ab Ulixis nepote Praeneste, licet alii velint Caeculum conditorem […] Arpos et Beneventum Diomedes, Patavium Antenor, Pylii Metapontum condidere. At this point I could also run through a number of founders of cities, such as Ianiculum by Ianus, Latium by Saturnus, Ardea by Danae, Pompei by Hercules, when he led the train of the Iberian oxen […] Iapyx, son of Daedalus, founded Iapygae, Dardanus Cora, the Pelasgi Agyllina, Catillus, Evander’s fleet commander, Tibur. Parthenope is named after the tomb of the siren by this very name, and is now called Neapolis. Praeneste by the grandson of Ulysses, Praenestis, even though others like to regard Caeculus as its founder […] Diomedes founded Arpos and Beneventum, Antenor Patavium, the Pylii Metapontum.

Catalogues like this one convey a comprehensive Italic perspective, and draw from the pool of potential foundation figures. The knowledge in local foundation narratives is either derived from this pool or formed by analogy to existing traditions.

51

52

53 54

Cf. e.g. http://www.fes.hd.bw.schule.de/index.php?id=160. “According to ancient tradition, ‘Sulmo’, an Italic ‘oppidum’ and Roman ‘municipium’ was founded by Solimo Frigio, friend of Aeneas.” An etymologising joke is made by Ovid when he attributes gelidis uberrimus undis to Sulmo, as the name of the place may be derived from Indoeuropean suel meaning “abounding in water” (currently the only source is http://sulmonadiadbc.blogspot.de/ 2010/03/il-nostro-dialetto-parte-prima.html). – Ovid is also in competition there with the other Italic place named Sulmo (cf. Philipp 1932: 729f. s.v. Sulmo 2), which derives its foundation from the Rutulian Sulmo (Verg. Aen. 9.412), that is, an indigenous figure. Ovid’s Sulmo is thus privileged in comparison by the connection to Aeneas. Cf. also Vell. 1.1-3; Schmitzer 2000: 43-60. See also the even longer catalogue in Solinus 2.4.4-18; Grebe 1999: 335.

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Conclusions It is this concept of a decidedly personal and genealogical relationship which is most evident in foundation narratives, and this is where the ancient view differs most from the modern perspective, which mostly envisages colonisation as motivated by economic or political reasons. Another remarkable point is that this common characteristic of the foundation myths renders Rome a special case of a comprehensive phenomenon, so that the teleological narration of the Aeneid is opened up to alternative viewpoints. The Augustan and already Ciceronian construction of a tota Italia55 often prevents us from seeing the polymorphic and polyphonic narratives structuring Italic identities beyond the city of Rome:56 Italic towns by no means always locate their origin in the Roman genesis, but employ parallel and contrasting inventions (a total detachment had become impossible after the rise of Rome as Italy’s dominant power) in order to construct multi-faceted relationships with the urbs. As a result of such erudite genealogical constructions stretching over centuries, Italy can be visualised in terms of a mythical map which uses coordinates of the Trojan War, especially the nostoi narratives and the escape from Troy, to structure contemporary Italic geography: there are no postcolonial attempts at emancipation from these concepts to be found. By means of aetiology – the procedure of scholarly-narrative argumentation available lege artis – a foundation history of names, nations, and national characters in Italy is written. In this foundation history Rome is prima inter pares: the city is not a singular case but merely the most prominent and best documented instance of an external foundation by a founding figure that has a name and who belongs to that period between myth and history which already in antiquity was difficult to categorise. However, Rome stands out from other foundation narratives available to us by virtue of the complexity of its foundation narrative, which unites all possible variations: Hercules, Greeks (Evander), Trojans (Aeneas) and Italics (Latinus) are not amalgamated but, with their individual functions intact, are juxtaposed in a synthesis which eventually leads to Romulus (who carries all these traditions on his mother’s side, but whose father is the god of war, Mars). Evidently a number of regional traditions sought to establish parallel and competing constructions to the tradition of Aeneas. Again, the extent to which the citizen population or aristocratic families competed against or even complemented one another here is difficult to assess in view of the heavily fragmented transmission.

55 56

Syme 1939, Meisner 2011: 117-151. Cf. e.g. Chevallier 1974: 181-204; Briquel 1998: 41-50 on the Italian ‘map’, derived from Horace’s poems.

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It is just as difficult to estimate whether and to what extent this association with Greece is directly connected to historical events, for example an early settlement or early trade contacts. This appears, however, unlikely in view of the structure of ancient knowledge. A more attractive assumption is that early cultural contacts led to a kind of interpretatio Italica,57 just as Aeneas and Anchises had found an iconographical path into Italy as early as the sixth or fifth century BCE, and just as Aeneas was venerated in the fourth century BCE as Aeneas Indiges in a tomb near Lavinium. Only in this way could the foreigner become a native and be incorporated into the Italic world of heroes58(this manipulation of mythical narrative did, however, never fall completely into oblivion). Among foundation narratives of this structure, Rome is a special case – a special case, however, which gained the appearance of exclusivity in the course of history and in the wake of Rome’s rise to dominance in Italy. The prestige which the urbs gained from the foundation narratives of Aeneas and Romulus was not only employed to justify its own existence. It also gave legitimacy to the expansion of Rome’s dominion into the whole of the Mediterranean. Other Italian cities were naturally unable to follow Rome down this path. One point remains, however: Rome, like a number of other cities and towns in Italy, received its identity in historical times not from a narrative of autochthony but from an association with and a claim on existing narratives situated in the culturally advanced Greek sphere. All these towns thereby gain a share in the territorial, myth-based significance comprised in these narratives, and establish their role in a comprehensive Mediterranean network of migration-based foundation narratives.

57 58

Mastrocinque 1993: 126f. Cf. most recently Schauer 2007: 66.

Virgil’s Carthage: A Heterotopic Space of Empire Elena Giusti Carthage has long been a city fraught with literary and historical imagination. In William Turner’s three Carthaginian paintings Dido and Aeneas (1814), Dido Building Carthage (1815) and The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire (1817), we encounter a symbolic foundation, which blends poetic imagery with elements of Roman/European colonial history. In particular, the representation of the city in Dido and Aeneas distorts both spatial and temporal coordinates: its lush vegetation contrasts strikingly with the arid climate of today’s Tunisia, and the presence in the background of an incomplete pier and the remains of a bridge is incompatible with the portrait of a new city that has just begun to rise. Art historian Kay Dian Kriz convincingly links these two elements with Foucault’s rather vague category of heterotopia, whose relevance for a better understanding of the inconsistencies in Virgil’s portrait of Carthage in the Aeneid is the focus of this essay. According to Dian Kriz, Turner’s portrayal of Carthage as a colonisable and penetrable ‘oriental’ place in the Western imagination – notwithstanding its actual location South of Britain1 – together with the presence of ruins in Dido’s newly founded city,2 make emphatic Carthage’s status as a heterotopia, or in other words as “a physical site in which diverse, discontinuous, and ambiguous slices of time and space can be accommodated”.3 This definition, which explicitly refers only to the third and fourth principles outlined in Foucault’s definition of the heterotopia in Des Espaces Autres, is also equally applicable to Virgil’s ‘colonial’ Carthage and its discontinuous spatio-temporal “slices” (découpages du temps), but there is actually far more to be gained by reading Aeneid 1 and 4 alongside the Foucauldian concept of heterotopia. Michel Foucault presented his concept of heterotopia on three different occasions in the years 1966 and 1967: first, with reference to textual spaces, in the

1 2

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Dian Kriz 1995: 118. Nicholson 1990: 103 and 234 interpreted the ruins as harbingers of future tragedy and as puzzling signs that this newly founded city is already aged in its infancy (see also p. 260 n. 35). Dian Kriz 1995: 131 n. 38 connects the suggestion to the notion of heterotopia. Dian Kriz 1995: 118.

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preface to Les Mots et les Choses (The Order of Things, 1966),4 then in a radio broadcast as part of a series on utopia and literature (1966), and finally in a lecture delivered to a group of architects in Paris on the 14th of March 1967. The text of this lecture, unreviewed by the author, was published in October 1984, shortly before Foucault’s death, under the title Des Espaces Autres. It appeared in the French journal Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité, in conjunction with an exhibition on show in Berlin in 1984, and was translated into English as Of Other Spaces or Different Spaces.5 The definition of heterotopia put forward in this text has often been found to be incomplete and puzzling,6 and the ambiguity and openendedness of the concept has not only given rise to many different scholarly interpretations but also made it possible to apply the term heterotopia to a wide variety of very different spaces.7 I will not be concerned here to analyse and critique Foucault’s shifting conceptualization of heterotopia;8 my purpose is rather to summarise the diverse and at times incoherent notions presented in his lecture, to highlight the six principles of heterotopias and more specifically to show how productively each of these can be applied to the representation of Carthage in Virgil’s Aeneid. Foucault’s Other Spaces (Des Espaces Autres) Foucault’s definition of heterotopia in Des Espaces Autres begins by setting out what heterotopias are not. They are not, he says, part of that “internal space” (espace du dedans), loaded with perceptions and qualities and “perhaps also haunted by fantasy”9 (qui aussi peut être hanté de fantasme), discussed by Gaston

4

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6 7 8 9

I will not deal here with the notion of heterotopia given in Les Mots et les Choses, in which heterotopia illustrates the textual space where our thought encounters objects or patterns that it can neither locate nor order. On the differences between heterotopia in Les Mots et les Choses and in Des Espaces Autres see Genocchio 1995; Sohn 2010; Topinka 2010. Laterza 2014 applies aspects of the accounts given in both in Les Mots et les Choses and in Des Espaces Autres to the heterotopic space of the Underworld in Aeneid 6. Foucault 1984, translated as Of Other Spaces by J. Miskowiec in Foucault and Miskowiec 1986 and by M. Dehaene and L. de Cauter in Dehaene and de Cauter 2008: 1330. It is translated as Different Spaces by R. Hurley in Foucault 1998: 147-69. I follow Miskowiec’s translation except where otherwise indicated. See Soja 1996: 162: “frustratingly incomplete, inconsistent, incoherent”. On the reception of heterotopias, see Defert 1997; Boyer 2008. Cf. Johnson 2013: 790: “The list of heterotopias becomes almost mischievous in its variety”. For this, see Johnson 2006. Translated literally. Cf. Foucault and Miskowiec 1986: 23: “perhaps thoroughly fantasmatic as well”.

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Bachelard in his La poétique de l’espace.10 On the contrary, Foucault is concerned with “external space” (l’espace du dehors), with “the space in which we live, which draws us out of ourselves, in which the erosion of our lives, our time and our history occurs, the space that claws and gnaws at us”.11 This space, like Bachelard’s space, “is also, in itself, a heterogeneous space,” since “we live inside a set of relations that delineate12 sites (emplacements) which are irreducible to one another and absolutely not superimposable on one another”.13 And yet, within this “external space” (espace), there are some “sites” (emplacements) that “have the curious property of being in relation with all the other sites, but in such a way as to suspect, neutralize, or invert the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror, or reflect”.14 Such sites fall into two categories: utopias and heterotopias. Utopias are, as the etymology of the word suggests (Greek οὐ + τόπος, non-place), placeless places, “sites with no real place” (les emplacements sans lieu réel) and they “have a general relation of direct or inverted analogy with the real space of Society. It is15 society itself in a perfected form, or else society turned upside down”. For Foucault, the most important aspect of these spaces is that they are “fundamentally, essentially, unreal”16 (des espaces qui sont fondamentalement essentiellement irréels). By contrast, heterotopias are not: There are also, probably in every culture, in every civilization, real places – places that do exist (des lieux réels, des lieux effectifs) and that are drawn17 in the very founding of society – which are something like counter-sites (contre-emplacements), a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested and inverted (à la fois représentés, contestés et inversés). Places of this kind are outside of all places (de lieux qui sont hors de tous les lieux), even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality (ils soient effectivement localisables). Because these places (lieux)18 are absolutely different from all the sites that they

10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18

Bachelard 1957. Foucault and Miskowiec 1986: 23. Translated literally. Miskowiec has “delineates”. The French term emplacement, translated as “site” or “emplacement,” is technical: it delineates a “‘discrete space,’ an instance of one of the possible positions that exist within a set of positions” (Dehaene and de Cauter 2008: 24 n. 6). See also Johnson 2006: 77. Foucault and Miskowiec 1986: 24. Translated literally. Miskowiec translates “they present”. Translated literally. Miskowiec does not include the word “essentially”. Translated literally from dessinés. Miskowiec has “formed”. Heterotopias are here defined as lieux rather than emplacements, perhaps to emphasise their role in interrupting and confusing the network of emplacements as positions within a certain set. Elsewhere, however, when highlighting that they “exist as ‘real spaces’ in

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Therefore, in contrast to Bachelard’s places, heterotopias are part of the “external space,” but within this external space they are particular in so far as they allow superimposition or equation between different sites (see the third principle below), which can be “simultaneously represented, contested or inverted” in them. They are similar to utopias (“a kind of effectively enacted utopia”) in so far as they can present an ideal or reversed form of society, but in contrast to utopias they are, emphatically, “real,” “effective”. Somewhere in between utopias and heterotopias there lies the experience of the mirror. The mirror is a utopia, since it is (and reflects) a “placeless place” (un lieu sans lieu), but it is also a heterotopia: […] it is also a heterotopia in so far as the mirror does exist in reality (existe réellement), where it exerts a sort of counteraction on the place (place)20 that I occupy. From the standpoint of the mirror I discover my absence from the place (place) where I am since I see myself over there. Starting from this gaze that is, as it were, directed toward me, from the ground of this virtual space (espace) that is on the other side of the glass, I come back toward myself … the mirror … makes this place (place) that I occupy at the moment when I look at myself in the glass at once absolutely real (à la fois absolument réelle), connected with all the space (espace) that surrounds it, and absolutely unreal (et absolument irréelle), since in order to be perceived it has to pass through this virtual point which is over there.21

Heterotopias are “different” from utopias, therefore, but they are also “different” from real spaces: they are, Foucault writes, “different spaces” (espaces différents), or “other places” (autres lieux), “a sort of simultaneously mythic and real contestation (une espèce de contestation à la fois mythique et réelle) of the space in which we live”.22 Here the definition of heterotopia ends, and Foucault drags us abruptly into the first of six principles: 1.

19 20 21 22

Heterotopias are present in all cultures and can first be classified into two major types: “heterotopias of crisis” (hétérotopies de crise) and “heterotopias of deviation” (hétérotopies de déviation). Both these types develop Foucault’s concept of heterotopias as spaces of contestation: in both cases, they mark out

the positional logic of the network space,” Foucault refers to them as emplacements (Dehaene and de Cauter 2008: 25, n. 13). Foucault and Miskowiec 1986: 24. Miskowiec’s translation here (“position”) does not render the opposition between “place” and “space” clearly highlighted in the passage. Foucault and Miskowiec 1986: 24. Foucault and Miskowiec 1986: 24.

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2.

3.

4.

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a space for those individuals who do not fit the normative order of society. “Heterotopias of crisis”, to be found in “so-called primitive” societies, are places in which those individuals who are “in a state of crisis” (that is, in a liminal state that marks a temporary absence of a recognised social identity23), such as adolescents, menstruating women, or pregnant women, can momentarily retire from society. While sites of so-called rites de passages exemplified these heterotopias in the ancient world, modern examples can be found in the boarding school, the delivery room, the barracks in which young men do military service, or the “honeymoon hotel”. While heterotopias of crisis are disappearing today, Foucault notes, they are being replaced by “heterotopias of deviation”, sites “in which individuals whose behaviour is deviant in relation to the required mean or norm are placed”, such as rest homes, psychiatric hospitals, prisons and retirement homes.24 The function of heterotopias may alter with time. A clear example of this is the cemetery, which has undergone important changes in Western culture: a central part of the city during the Middle Ages, it was slowly displaced to the periphery and acquired very different functions and connotations with the emergence of an atheist culture. Heterotopias can juxtapose “in a single real place (en un seul lieu réel) several spaces (plusieurs espaces), several sites (plusieurs emplacements) that are in themselves incompatible”.25 This is one of the most well-known principles of heterotopias, and is exemplified by Dian Kriz’s interpretation of Carthage as a place which includes Southern and Eastern elements at the same time. The examples Foucault gives here are theatres, cinemas and gardens, especially Persian gardens (and Persian carpets mapping the garden of paradise), sacred places which were supposed to bring together in a rectangular plot the four constituent parts of the world. Heterotopias are linked to “slices in time (découpages du temps), which is to say that they open onto what might be termed, for the sake of symmetry, heterochronies (hétérochronies). The heterotopia begins to function at full capacity when men arrive at a sort of absolute break (rupture absolue) with their traditional time”.26 This is the second definition of heterotopia that we encountered in Dian Kriz’s interpretation of the juxtaposition of times in Turner’s Carthage. Time in heterotopias does not work in a linear way: again cemeteries, with their rupture of familiar time and intimation of eternity, are perhaps the most apt example of this. There are also heterotopias that ‘break’ time by aspiring to accumulate and store it, such as museums and libraries.

Cenzatti 2008: 76. Foucault and Miskowiec 1986: 24-25. Foucault and Miskowiec 1986: 25. Foucault and Miskowiec 1986: 26.

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Others, on the contrary, are not “oriented towards the eternal” (éternaires27), but are rather “absolutely temporal” (absolument chroniques) and link us to time in its “most flowing, transitory, precarious aspect”: an example of this is the festival (le mode de la fête).28 Modern vacation villages (and specifically the Polynesian villages mentioned by Foucault, which offer three weeks of “primitive and eternal nudity”) mediate between heterotopias that are oriented towards the eternal and those that are temporal: on the one hand, they seem to offer the possibility of suspending or abolishing time; yet on the other – like open air museums – they allow holiday makers to experience the sense of rediscovering time. “Heterotopias always presuppose a system of opening and closing that both isolates them and makes them penetrable … to get in one must have a certain permission and make certain gestures”.29 Such is the case when entering a barracks or a prison; similarly, certain rites of purification may be involved, as in the case of the Islamic hammam, or Scandinavian saunas. The openness of these heterotopias is in fact deceptive, since we are excluded by the very fact of entering them: this is especially true of American motel rooms, Foucault notes, where illicit sex is both openly catered to and kept hidden. Heterotopias have a function in relation to all the space that remains. According to this function, they can either be “heterotopias of illusion” (hétérotopies d’illusion) or “heterotopias of compensation” (hétérotopies de compensation). Heterotopias of illusion “create a space of illusion that exposes every real space… as still more illusory”.30 Such is the case with brothels (maisons closes), which might be interpreted as a proper space of contestation that denounces bourgeois reality by unmasking it as the real illusion. Alternatively, heterotopias of compensation create another real space which is “as perfect, as meticulous, as well arranged” as the real space of society is disordered and jumbled: this is the case with certain European colonies, such as the Puritan societies founded by the English in America in the seventeenth century, where the aim was to achieve a perfect “other place”.

The list of six principles ends with the images of brothel and colony as examples of two extreme types of heterotopia. Foucault closes his lecture by leaving us “in

27 28

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Foucault’s own coinage. Dehaene and de Cauter 2008: 27 n. 30 call these two heterotopias “heterotopias of permanence” and “heterotopias of festivity”. They distinguish between three axes in the text: an anthropological axis (which creates heterotopias of crisis and deviation), a temporal axis (heterotopias of permanence and festivity) and an imaginary one (heterotopias of illusion and compensation). Foucault and Miskowiec 1986: 26. Foucault and Miskowiec 1986: 27.

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a limbo”31 with the image of the ship as “the heterotopia par excellence”, and the “greatest reserve of the imagination”, the vessel that travels from port to port, brothel to brothel, and from colony to colony. This “floating piece of space” (un morceau flottant d’espace) is, like the mirror, “a placeless place” (un lieu sans lieu), that “exists by itself … closed in on itself and at the same time … given over to the infinity of the sea”.32 Virgil’s Carthage as an “Other Space” This brief summary of Des Espaces Autres will have perhaps already given away some of my forthcoming arguments with regard to Virgil’s Carthage, and I am sure that, notwithstanding their prevalently modern settings, several of the listed examples of heterotopias will have already evoked aspects of Carthage in one way or another. In particular, Foucault’s third and fourth principles are the most clearly relevant to our analysis, since even more than Turner’s Carthage, the city presented by Virgil through a thick layer of mythical and historical allusion does indeed showcase a blending together of incompatible geographic sites and patent “heterochronies”. Introduced to its readers as the Roman equivalent of Homer’s Scheria in Book 1 of the Aeneid 33 and as a tragic double for Pentheus’ Thebes in Book 4,34 Dido’s city has long been thought to bear significant traces of both Mid-Republican and Late Republican/Augustan history, mingling the memory of the Punic Wars and of Carthage’s destruction with that of the more recent historical events of the civil/foreign war against Antony and Cleopatra35 and of the refoundation of Carthage as the Augustan Colonia Iulia Concordia Carthago.36 As such, Carthage is already a paradoxical place of displacement, a literary locus packed with contradictions. It represents both a Punic and a Roman foundation; it is “always already” falling while still under construction;37 it hosts both the Barcids’ and Cleopatra’s

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34

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Dehaene and de Cauter 2008: 28 n. 32. Foucault and Miskowiec 1986: 27. The episode of Odysseus at Scheria is the primary model for Aeneas’ visit to Carthage. See Knauer 1964: 148-222. On the joint model of Phaeacians and Cyclopes at Aeneas’ arrival in the land, see Clay 1988 and Giusti 2014a. Dido is compared to a maddened Maenad at Aen. 4.300-303 and dreams of being Pentheus at Aen. 4.469-70. On Dido as a Maenad, see especially Krummen 2004. On Aeneid 4 as a tragedy, see Harrison 1972-73 and 1989; Wlosok 1976; Muecke 1983; Pobjoy 1998. On Dido and Cleopatra see especially Bertman 2000; Syed 2005: 184-93; Hardie 2006 and 2014: 55-57. See Cassola 1984; Harrison 1984; Morwood 1991: 219; Hardie 2013: 109. An idea developed in Chomse 2015.

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palaces, and is home to the enlightened and hospitable Phaeacians as well as to the barbarous Cyclopes and maddened Maenads. As a place of historical relevance that has been transferred, by Virgil or more likely Naevius before him,38 into the realm of distant myth, Virgil’s fictional construction invites us to unpack its complexity: Carthage is introduced to us in a completed past (Aen. 1.12 Vrbs antiqua fuit), yet in Book 4 we are made to visualise the city’s future destruction (Aen. 4.669-71). Just as the visits to the Underworld in Book 6 and to the site of Pallanteum in Book 8 can both be considered tours of Rome’s future history, Aeneas’ visit to Carthage carries him, in orderly chronological fashion, through the future history of the three Punic Wars. The visit starts precisely at the opening site of the first war (the waters around Sicily, at Aen. 1.34-35 uix e conspectu Siculae telluris in altum / uela dabant laeti et spumas salis aere ruebant),39 with a possible reference, at Aen. 1.109, to the so-called treaty of Philinus40 and a probable historical and literary allusion to the temple of the sacked city of Agrigentum in the temple

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It is uncertain whether the meeting between Aeneas and Dido was included in Naevius’ Bellum Punicum: the Cambridge and Oxford commentators (Conway 1935: xiii-xiv and Austin 1971: xi-xii) strongly emphasised the role of Virgilian innovation in the episode, as did DeGraff 1950, in response to J. Vahlen’s Dido… tota Naeuiana est (Vahlen 1854: CL) and, more recently, Wigodsky 1972: 22-34. However, since both Dido and Anna were mentioned in Naevius (DServ. ad Aen. 4.9 = fr. 6 Morel) and the episode was certainly known before Virgil by Varro (DServ. ad Aen. 4.682) and Ateius Philologus (Testimonia, 9, GRF, 137), I believe that there is little doubt that it was included in the Bellum Punicum, whether or not one takes Dido as the subject of percontat in fr. 23 Morel: see Mariotti 1955: 37-9; M. Barchiesi 1962: 551 fr. 16 and 447-82; Strzelecki 1964: xxvi-xxviii; Horsfall 1995: 134 n. 64. It is sensible to imagine that this mythical aition for the outbreak of the wars “most probably first assumed shape in the time of the Punic Wars” (Sellar 1889: 59) rather “than in the age of Virgil when the power of Carthage was only a distant memory” (Luck 1983: 271). The aition would also provide the most logical explanation for the insertion of the so called “Archaeology” in the body of Naevius’ otherwise historical poem (see Rowell 1957). It is also possible, as Alessandro Barchiesi has suggested to me, that Naevius’ poem featured the encounter but not the love story, and that Virgil alluded to Naevius’ original version of the aition in Ilioneus’ mention of the Tyrians repelling the Trojans from their shores at Aen. 1.53941. The location has been seen as evidence of Virgil’s engagement with both the First Punic War and Naevius’ Bellum Punicum by Leigh 2010 and Goldschmidt 2013: 109-15. Confirmation of this view may be seen in Virgil’s patent anachronism in providing these ships with bronze rostra (aere, Aen. 1.35), an historical naval weapon, as noted by Sandbach 1965-6: 26 and Austin 1971: 40. A similar anachronism is taken up, and noted by DServius, in a reference to these ships as biremes (Aen. 1.182), making them resemble the warships of the Punic Wars more than the ancient ships of the Odyssey; see Giusti 2014b. See Giusti 2014b.

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of Juno in Book 1.41 Dido’s curse in Book 4 then clearly evokes the Hannibalic War (Aen. 4.621-9).42 Just as in Turner’s Dido and Aeneas, Carthage is represented in Book 4 as finished and at the same time unfinished, when Dido guides Aeneas through a city which is, emphatically, “ready” (Aen. 4.75 urbem… paratam), even though no more than ten lines later its towers no longer rise (Aen. 4.86 non coeptae adsurgunt turres). The “Future in the Past” encoded in this passage tells us both of the Hannibalic military power “ready for war” and of the tragic outcome of those conflicts, encapsulated in the urbs capta simile which seals the whole episode with a foreboding of Carthage’s destruction at the end of the Third Punic War (Aen. 4.669-71), linking Dido with Hasdrubal’s wife as the first and last women of the Punic city.43 The funeral games in Book 5 will also proleptically reenact many episodes of the wars,44 hinting – anachronistically – at the triumphal ludi in celebration of Carthage’s conquest. 45

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43 44

45

It is possible that Naevius’ so-called “Fragment of the Giants” (fr. 19 Morel) referred to an ekphrasis of the massive temple of Olympian Zeus at Agrigentum, which included a Gigantomachy and a capture of Troy (see Diod. 13.82.4). The ekphrasis may have been included as a digression from the description of the siege of Agrigentum at the start of the First Punic War. This reconstruction was first suggested by Bergk in 1842 (in a review of J.K. Köne, Über die Sprache der römischen Epiker, in: Zeitsch. f. d. Altertumswiss. 9 (1842), pp. 183ff.), who not only identified the fragment with the temple of Agrigentum, but also added the scholia of DServius ad Aen. 2.797 and 3.19 (fr. 5 and 4 Morel) as part of the ekphrasis of that very same temple. The same suggestion was made famous by Strzelecki 1964 who, apparently with no knowledge of Bergk, was inspired by H. Fraenkel 1935. See Rowell 1947 (esp. 32-9) and E. Fraenkel 1954. If this reconstruction of the Bellum Punicum is correct, it seems likely that Virgil’s Carthaginian temple, which displays pictures of the capture of Troy, is related to Naevius’ episode; see Hardie 2013: 110 n. 8. The reference to Hannibal in Dido’s curse (Aen. 4.625 exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor) is oblique but appeared certain to commentators at least since Servius (ad 4.625 “et ostendit Hannibalem”). For further possible echoes of the Second Punic War in Aeneid 4, see Giusti (forthcoming). On Dido’s death and the wife of Hasdrubal, see especially Edgeworth 1976-77; more generally on Dido as Carthage see Hall Sternberg 2006. Such episodes include the destruction of the Roman fleet at Drepanum in 249 (hinted at by the triste augurium of Aen. 5.7 which takes concrete form in the burning of the ships at 5.659-84), the various calamities of Segesta (founded by Aeneas at 5.746-58; the future siege of this town in the first war may be alluded to by the omen of the flaming arrow at 5.522-8), and the siege of Eryx in the boxing match; the battleship prefigures the naumachiae of both the first and second wars, and Aeneas’ foundation of the temple of Venus Erycina (5.759-61) alludes to the dedication of a temple to the same goddess by Q. Fabius Maximus in 215 BCE; see Goldschmidt 2013: 115-27 with further bibliography. For the argument that the Carthaginian episode forms an allegory of the three Punic Wars sealed by the triumphal ludi in Book 5, see Giusti (forthcoming).

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Within this historical allegory, Carthage becomes a privileged site for celebrating both the old and new Roman empires, creating an illusion of continuity between mid-Republican and Augustan history while implicitly whitewashing the civil wars that stood between them. Yet this artificial picture also shows clear signs of its own fictionality. Indeed, Virgil’s ‘plastic’ Carthage is as unreal in its historicity as it is in its blurred spatial and temporal narratives. The Carthaginian land appears displaced from its very first description, when its coast boasts, on an explicitly theatrical stage,46 a fertile and luxurious vegetation (siluis scaena coruscis / desuper horrentique atrum nemus imminet umbra, Aen. 1.164-5) which one would not really expect on the shores of Tunisia, with trees “so vivid that they might be painted in”.47 On this coast, the first sign of life spotted by Aeneas are deer (Aen. 1.184), an animal hardly associable with the region.48 In addition, a self-quotation from the description of Proteus’ harbour in the fourth Book of the Georgics (cf. Aen. 1.159-61 and Georg. 4.418-22) connects the place rather with Cyrenaica, already dislocating the land towards Egypt (the country that Dido’s palace will later evoke more explicitly). The temporal coordinates of this story are also clearly lost in the fictional meeting between Dido and Aeneas: no learned reader could fail to notice that, since Troy fell in 1184 BCE and Carthage was founded in 814 BCE, this encounter is, as Macrobius famously claims, no more than a fabula, quam falsam nouit uniuersitas (Macr. Sat. 5.17.5).49 Given that the episode itself is constructed around a temporal dislocation – that of the 370 year gap between the destruction of Troy and Dido’s foundation – it may not be too far-fetched to suggest that the towers of the city visualised at Aen. 4.86 are not only “not rising” (non adsurgunt) but have not even begun to be built (non coeptae). Virgil further draws attention to the unreality of this story by inserting what we might read as a deliberate and masterful inconsistency, in keeping with the anachronistic character of the episode as a whole: just as Aeneas does not proceed in space between setting out from Sicily

46

47

48

49

For the argument that scaena here, together with fronte (1.166) and sedilia (1.167) serves as a key-word for introducing readers to the Carthaginian tragedy of Book 4, see Harrison 1972-73 and Pobjoy 1998: 43. But cf. already Austin 1971: 73. Austin 1971: 73. For a reconstruction of the potential vegetation of northern Tunisia, see Van Zeist, Bottema and Van der Veen 2011: 42-50. It seems that the most likely vegetation that Aeneas could have encountered on the shores of Tunisia would be maquis (low shrub vegetation) or salt-marsh plants, but cork oak forests could in fact also have been found. See Servius ad Aen. 1.184 ‘sed cerui non sunt in prouincia proconsulari, ad quam uenit Aeneas. aut fictum ergo est secundum poeticum morem, aut ob dictum, quia heroicis temporibus ubique omnia nascebantur per se…’ See Hexter 1992: 338: “those who brought the two together…were clearly recognized to be writing fiction, not history”. On Fama mixing facta atque infecta (Aen. 4.190) as signposting the fictionality of the story, see Hardie 2012: 109-12.

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in Aeneid 1 and landing in Sicily in Aeneid 5, time too does not seem to advance from the seventh summer of his wanderings (specified by Dido at 1.755-6: nam te iam septima portat… aestas), to the seventh summer since the destruction of Troy (indicated by Iris at Aen. 5.626: septima post Troiae excidium iam uertitur aestas). The four books of the epic which passed between these two moments now seem not to have contained actual episodes of the hero’s journey, but rather to be made up of flashbacks into myth (Books 2-3) and flashforwards into history (Books 14), which were nonetheless so dense as to appear to last a whole year, since we know that at the start of Book 5 one year has passed since Anchises’ death (5.468), and we have also been informed that Aeneas has spent a winter with the Carthaginian queen (4.193). This famous “riddle of the septima aestas”,50 if taken as a deliberate inconsistency rather than an inaccuracy of the poet,51 casts Aeneas’ stay at Carthage as a dreamlike experience, and emphasises the obvious “heterochronies” between Dido’s myth and those “slices” of history that are such an essential part of the whole Carthaginian episode. Thus the city we are presented with, which no longer exists even before we are told of its foundation, is a kind of ghostlike realm, not yet and no longer there when Aeneas lands on its coasts. If anything, the city whose construction Aeneas witnesses at Aen. 1.418-38, with its “paved streets” (1.422 strata uiarum), “theatres” (1.427 theatris)52 and even a “sacred senate” (1.426 sanctum… senatum),53 is a clear double for a Rome that has yet to be founded, just as Dido and her story of exile are a famously recognisable double for Aeneas and his wanderings.54 Virgil’s artificial Carthage can therefore be read as a warped mirror image of Rome,

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The “riddle of the septima aestas” was interpreted by Servius (ad Aen. 5.626) as “one of those insoluble problems that Virgil would have no doubt emended” had he perfected the poem (Cf. Williams 1960: xxx). Potter 1926 (endorsed by Conway 1931) tried to solve the problem by supposing that Aeneas’ stay at Carthage must have been no longer than two or three months: Anchises died at the close of the sixth summer, and the Trojans must have stayed in Sicily until the beginning of the seventh summer, when they were drawn by the storm to Carthage, and lingered there for a few months, before returning to Sicily for the anniversary of Anchises’ death, namely the end of the seventh summer. However, Potter’s reconstruction is hindered by more than one reference to the winter season in the course of Aeneid 4 (Aen. 4.51-3, 193 and 309-11, see Clark 1932: 497-504). For other interpretations see Mandra 1934: 90-1; Quinn 1967; Dyson 1996. Cf. O’Hara 2007, who discusses inconsistencies in the poem as a product of the poet’s artistry rather than a sign of the poem’s incompletion. theatris is the lectio printed by Mynors 1969; Conte 2009 prefers theatri. The presence of a “sacred Senate” in Carthage appeared so striking to Heyne and Ribbeck that they even deleted v. 426 as spurious. On the mirroring between Carthage and Rome, Dido and Aeneas in the Aeneid see especially Hardie 2006, Van Nortwick 1992: 89-124 and Reed 2007: 73-100.

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in which historic and narrative times are concertinaed and space-time coordinates lost or blurred. Like a mirror, Carthage is and is not a real place. It is, to borrow Foucault’s definition of the mirror, “a placeless place” (un lieu sans lieu). It is not simply, or not only, a site of and for the Roman imagination: it exists in reality as far as geography is concerned, yet in the Virgilian imaginary it becomes a near unmappable nexus of times, spaces and literary-historical memories. The blurring of spatio-temporal coordinates and the blending of reality and fantasy in Virgil’s Carthage are thus the first indications of the city’s heterotopic status. Like Foucault’s heterotopias, it is “no figment of our imagination”:55 it belongs to external space, in which it exists as a real city. And yet, within that external space, it seems only to exist as a “counter-space” for the city of Rome, invaded by the very space it contests.56 In this respect, Foucault’s differentiation between utopias and heterotopias is especially enlightening, since Virgil’s Carthage seems to highlight from the outset its relation of similarity to and difference from the Homeric utopia of Scheria. Like Scheria, Carthage is first presented as a perfect(ed), enlightened and hospitable society, and the description of its foundation is characterised by an atmosphere of wonder which is perhaps most apparent in the bee simile at Aen. 1.430-6 and signals from the start the connection with its key literary counterpart, the city of Alcinous (cf. the repetition of miratur at Aen. 1.421 and 422 and Odysseus’ wonder at Scheria, Od. 7.43 θαύμαζεν and 45 θαῦμα ἰδέσθαι). However, unlike Scheria, Carthage is of course no “placeless” utopia: it is, emphatically, a real city whose actual historicity will surface again and again in the course of the epic. Just as heterotopias share certain characteristics with utopias, so Carthage evokes the two utopias of the Odyssey, belonging to the Phaeacians and the Cyclopes. Yet whereas these sites stand respectively, in Foucauldian terms, for “society… perfected” and “society turned upside down” in contrast to Ithaca,57 Carthage is represented as mediating between these two poles: to an extent it seems to offer an idealised, quasi-Phaeacian vision of a future Rome, yet that vision is tainted by the threat of a Cyclopian savagery and violence.58

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Faubion 2008: 33. See Defert 1997: 275: “these counter-spaces are impenetrated by all the other spaces which they contest”. In contrast to Scheria, Ithaca represents, according to Segal 1962: 17, “the every-day, the logically predictable and rationally explicable”. See also Vidal-Naquet 1981. On the Cyclopes as the negative image of society, the incarnation of the non-human, see Heubeck 1983: 191-92. On Virgil’s Carthage as an unknown land in which Aeneas “is caught between the possibility of Phaeacian civilization or [Cyclopic] savagery”, see Clay 1988: 198. On the Cyclopic connotations of the Carthaginian episode, see Moskalew 1988 and Giusti 2014a.

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Foucault’s “utopia of the mirror” is also relevant to our understanding of how this society is portrayed, once we realise it is not entirely compatible with the label “utopia”. Indeed, Carthage is singled out as a mirror image of Rome from the very beginning of the poem, when its status as an anti-Rome is hinted at in the description of its coastline, which is said to lie “opposite” the coast of Italy (Aen. 1.13-14 Karthago, Italiam contra Tiberinaque longe / ostia).59 There are many other elements that hint at the specular rapport between Rome and Carthage: Aeneas is almost literally offered a looking glass in which to inspect his evolving identity in the temple’s friezes in Book 1 (see especially his portrait at Aen. 1.488),60 while the destinies of Dido and Aeneas are carefully constructed so as to mirror one another, to the point that the two heroes almost become, in the main narrative and even more so on the level of simile, identical twins.61 In a passage famous for its description of the lover’s longing, Dido seems to experience both herself and the now absent Aeneas as existing solely as intangible mirror images: “herself absent, she [Dido] hears and sees him absent” (Aen. 4.83 illum absens absentem auditque uidetque), reminding us of Foucault’s articulation of mirror gazing as the experience of discovering “my absence from the place where I am”.62 Like Foucault’s heterotopias, Virgil’s Carthage proves to be a “simultaneously mythic and real contestation of the space in which we [Romans] live”. 63 It is not simply an idealised Rome, or Rome turned upside down, but performs both functions simultaneously. Already an intricate space of contestation, Dido’s city gains many more layers of meaning when viewed through the lens of Foucault’s other four principles. First, we might note that Carthage appears as a “heterotopia of crisis” (First Principle), both in relation to its mother-city Tyre and to the yet-to-be-founded Rome. When Dido left Tyre she was indeed an individual in a state of crisis within her society, as a widowed woman apparently no longer useful to the city once her husband Sychaeus had been killed by her brother Pygmalion (Aen. 1.340-68). The

59

60 61

62 63

See DServius ad loc.: ‘aut certe ideo ‘Italiam contra’, quasi de aemula dictum accipiamus, ut non tantum situ quantum et animis contra’; but see Korenjak 2004 for the Romans’ conviction that Carthage actually faced Rome geographically. On dislocation as the medical meaning of heterotopia, referring to a particular tissue that develops in an unusual place, see Sohn 2008. This passage has been explored in terms of a Lacanian mirror stage by Nolan 1990: 2022 and Schiesaro 2012. It has long been observed that the similes of Dido-Diana (Aen 1.498-504) and AeneasApollo (4.143-50) must be read together: already DServius thought that they invited the readers to register the two characters as siblings, emphasising the impossibility of their marriage; see especially Hardie 2006. Foucault and Miskowiec 1986: 24. Foucault and Miskowiec 1986: 24.

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companions who accompany her on her voyage can also be recognised as marginalised individuals, whose departure was guided by hatred and fear of the newly appointed tyrant (conueniunt quibus aut odium crudele tyranni / aut metus acer erat, Aen. 1.361-62), and Dido will eventually dream of being estranged even from them once she has had an affair with Aeneas (semperque relinqui / sola sibi, semper longam incomitata uidetur / ire uiam et Tyrios deserta quaerere terra, Aen. 4.466-68). The new colony of Carthage, even though it does not function in the epic as a place of passage from which these people will one day re-enter the society of their city of origin, is therefore always already born as a heterotopia of crisis, and it is interesting that ancient colonies famously were, among other things, places where the unwanted individuals of a given society were sent. On the other hand, Carthage is also seen – according to long-standing stereotypes – to harbour the feminine and the oriental, in direct contrast to the normativity of Roman life.64 As Philip Hardie observed in his 1990 article on Ovid Metamorphoses 3,65 Virgil’s Carthage can be perceived as an anti-Rome much in the same way as Froma Zeitlin read the Thebes of Athenian drama as an anti-Athens: it is Rome’s oriental, feminine ‘other’, and a reversed and obverse mirror image of Rome.66 Secondly, Carthage is a heterotopia insofar as its function changes over time according to its relationship with other cities (Second Principle), and the Aeneid makes emphatic such changes of status by juxtaposing them in the timeless fiction of Dido’s myth. As a colony of Tyre, Carthage is, as we have seen, the home of marginalised Phoenicians and an apparently welcoming land from the point of view of the Trojan refugees, but it is also mid-Republican Rome’s greatest enemy – originally a colony, but a proper polis of the West,67 and a powerful one. It is, as I have emphasised, both a double of and a necessary evil for Rome, a sibling but inimical city in terms of both myth and history. At the same time, however, it is also presented as the city doomed to fall, whose function is to warn Rome of the precariousness of empires: Scipio Aemilianus was famously moved to tears by the thought that the destiny which had met both Carthage and Troy may be awaiting Rome as well.68 Scipio’s tears are arguably evoked in Aeneas’ own tears as he stands before the images of Troy’s fall in the Carthaginian temple (Aen. 4.459 lacrimans, 465 multa gemens, largoque umectat flumine uultum),69 but the Aeneid also seems to offer a way to escape this destiny by presenting the Augustan refoundation of the city as implicit invalidation of the curse with which Scipio had doomed the Carthaginian soil and which had so far haunted any possible plan of reconstruction.70 In this sense, too, Virgil’s Carthage plays two opposing roles at 64 65 66 67 68 69 70

On Carthaginian stereotypes, see especially Gruen 2011: 115-40. Hardie 1990. See Zeitlin 1985 and 1986. Arist. Pol. 1272b-73b, Eratosth. ap. Strab. 1.4.9, Pol. 6.51. Pol. 38.21. See A. Barchiesi 1999. See Cassola 1984 and Harrison 1984.

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the same time, and we are encouraged to appreciate a “heterotopic” change of function from its destruction in 146 BCE up to its reconstruction under Augustus: while the city’s ruins serve as a reminder of the transience of empires, its reconstruction appears as concrete proof of the notion that from Augustus onwards Rome will indeed be an “empire without end” (imperium sine fine, Aen. 1.279). Equally, we may be reminded of Foucault’s fifth principle when we observe that Carthage is made accessible by a literary system of opening and closing. We might observe that the Carthage episode is framed by two storms, at the beginning of Books 1 and 5 respectively − points of narratological and symbolic transition that mark the episode as “different” in terms of both time and space from Aeneas’ otherwise linear journey and story. The idea that atmospheric phenomena are often the vehicle by which literary characters are separated from reality and projected into fantasy worlds and wonderlands is common in modern fantasy fiction,71 but is also a literary device as ancient as the Odyssey: at Odyssey 9.67-73, we find a nine-day storm which, from the Cicones’ land (“a perfectly real Thracian people”72), “verschlägt den Helden ins Fabelland”,73 and Odysseus’ arrival at Scheria, a kingdom which lies on the border between the every-day reality of Ithaca and the fantastic lands of the stories, is similarly marked by a storm (5.291-332) which famously provides the Homeric model for Aeneid 1’s tempest. Carthage is, like some of Foucault’s heterotopias, only deceptively accessible. It is, as Ilioneus complains to Dido in Book 1 (Aen. 1.439-42), a place of difficult access, which Aeneas must approach shrouded by Venus in a cloud of mist. The banquet at Dido’s palace can further be regarded as a kind of ritual of initiation into this Eastern land that, imbued with the memory of Antony’s and Cleopatra’s future, appears hospitable and hostile at the very same time. Eventually, Aeneas ends up deluded into thinking that the city is more open than it really is: he is only able to stay in Carthage at the expense of being excluded from his own history, a risk he runs by the very fact of entering the city.74 Finally, and perhaps most significantly, Carthage is a heterotopia of compensation and illusion. Of compensation, clearly, through its status as a colony, behind which it presents, in the imagery of industrious bees (Aen. 1.430-6), a sort of Roman utopia, a place “as perfect, as meticulous, as well arranged as ours [i.e. the actual space of post-civil war Rome] is messy, ill-constructed and jumbled”.75 But the most interesting aspect is Carthage’s status as a heterotopia of illusion insofar

71 72 73 74

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E.g. in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, or Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. Vidal-Naquet 1981: 83. P. Von der Mühll: Art. ‘Odyssee’, in: RE Suppl. 7, col. 720 (1940), my emphasis. Cf. Foucault and Miskowiec 1986: 26: “Everyone can enter into these heterotopic sites, but in fact that is only an illusion: we think we enter where we are, by the very fact that we enter, excluded”. Foucault and Miskowiec 1986: 27.

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as it unmasks the illusory nature of the space which it contests. I have suggested that Foucault interprets the brothel as a heterotopia of illusion because it eventually unmasks the illusory nature of bourgeois life; similarly, Virgil’s Carthage ultimately unmasks the illusory nature of Augustan Rome – the illusion, that is, of a city founded in the wake of foreign rather than civil wars. Virgil presents the people of Dido’s city as Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Cyrenaeans, Egyptians, at times even as Persians or Parthians,76 but ultimately they most resemble future Romans. When Carthage merges into Rome, its illusory (heterotopic, heterochronic) nature exposes the constructedness of Augustan Rome as it is presented in the Aeneid. When the Carthaginians begin to look like Romans instead of foreign enemies, memories of the recent civil wars are brought to the surface, and the ghost of Cleopatra – to the obvious detriment of Hannibal – comes to haunt Virgil’s representation of Dido. Perhaps paradoxically, the heterotopia of Virgil’s Carthage as a Mid-Republican space of Empire in the Augustan imagination prompts us to question the parallel artificiality of Augustus’ Rome, a city born from the ashes of the Roman Republic through multiple assertions of individual power and after decades of brutal bloodshed. Conclusion I hope to have shown here how all six principles of heterotopias can illustrate aspects of Virgil’s Augustan creation of Carthage in the Aeneid which are rarely analysed in unison. We might add that within ‘heterotopic’ Carthage, there are also many individual spaces that Foucault recognised as heterotopias, not least a theatre (Aen. 1.427), a ‘cemetery’ (if we can recognise this in Sychaeus’ altar, Aen. 1.457-65), a marble chamber (Aen. 4.392 marmoreo… talamo) acting simultaneously as a thalamus, a prison and a tomb,77 and the cave in Book 4 (160-72), which functions perversely as a kind of “honeymoon hotel” for Dido and Aeneas, a ‘nowhere’ in which this illicit union can be sanctioned, and also a heterochronic site in which Dido apparently fulfills her desire to stop Roman time (and derail the teleological drive of the Aeneid), even to regress to a ‘primitive’ era.78 Instead of Foucault’s brothels and motel rooms, we find in Dido’s palace a place of lust where time is suspended in the here and now of fiction (programmatically, in the fictional words of Fama: nunc hiemem inter se luxu, quam longa, fouere / regnorum immemores turpique cupidine captos, Aen. 4.193-94); and Aeneas’ ship, the “heterotopia par excellence”79 wanders from the start in waters imbued with the future memory of the First Punic War history. 76 77 78 79

See Giusti 2016. See Hall Sternberg 2006: 284-5. Of living more ferae (Aen. 4.551), “like a wild creature”; see Schiesaro 2005. Foucault and Miskowiec 1986: 27.

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This framing of Carthage as a heterotopia in the first book of the Aeneid might be seen to set the stage for the entire narrative of a poem that, like Fama in Aeneid 4, mixes up facta atque infecta and both contributes to and unveils the illusory nature of Augustus’ restoration of the Roman Republic and its (mythical) history. The juxtaposition of incompatible spatial and temporal coordinates in the Carthage episode has the effect of highlighting the self-reflexivity of Virgil’s aetiologising, ktistic and historicising narrative, and stimulates interrogation of the legitimacy of those stories and messages encoded in this narrative. From this perspective, it is perhaps easier to understand why Virgil chose to begin his poem with Carthage, and why or how this episode serves to introduce his innovative experiment in writing Roman history in epic. As Rome’s historical enemy, and as the key theme of many of the epic poems that preceded the Aeneid, Carthage becomes the obvious site to rebuild before Republican Rome and its literature can themselves be ‘rebuilt’ in an Augustan guise. Indeed, Carthage becomes the most important imaginary site in Virgil’s articulation of empire, the mirror in which Augustus must shape the contours of his new, restored Rome. It is true that Foucault’s definition of heterotopia is so ambiguous and openended that one might argue that many literary places – not least within the Aeneid – qualify as heterotopias in one sense or another, and I would never argue that Carthage is the only heterotopia of the Aeneid. Yet I believe that Dido’s city holds a privileged vantage point in the poem from which to observe other literary spaces: for example, in line with the often noted parallels between Aeneas’ tour of Carthage and his visit to Evander in Aeneid 8, the heterochronies present in the site of Pallanteum acquire a stronger heterotopic status if read together with my analysis of Carthage as precisely a distorted mirror of past, present and future Rome. Additionally, Carthage is peculiar among the heterotopias of the Aeneid in so far as it fits all of Foucault’s principles: the Underworld of Aeneid 6 – which is, after all, Dido’s subsequent dwelling – is certainly a literary locus packed with discontinuous spatio-temporal “slices,” but it is not, as it were, a real place as the site of Carthage is.80 Finally, what must be more than a curious coincidence is that Foucault was himself in Carthage, teaching at the University of Tunis and living in the town of Sidi Bou Saïd (the upper Gulf of Carthage) between September 1966 and summer 1968 – precisely the period in which he developed his concept of heterotopia, which he was never to revise after his Tunisian experience.81 Whether not just postcolonial Tunisia but the actual site of Carthage left its mark on the development of Foucault’s ideas we can never know for sure, but it is nevertheless telling that his partner Daniel Defert describes the experience of writing in peace in the

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See Laterza 2014 for a reading of the Underworld in Aeneid 6 as a heterotopia. See Faubion 2008: 31-32.

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“light-drenched serenity of Sidi Bou Saïd” as “a lived heterotopia”.82 Foucault wrote Des Espaces Autres in an “other space” which had long been imbued with myth and history, and which had long been portrayed as a heterotopia in the European imagination, in those three Carthaginian paintings by William Turner and, many centuries before, in the texture of Virgil’s Aeneid.83

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Defert 1997: 276. I am grateful to the editors for allowing me to publish a different essay from the one originally presented. Victoria Rimell is responsible for its readability, and for saving it from many theoretical and formal inconsistencies. Philip Hardie, John Henderson and Giovanna Laterza gave me invaluable comments and support.

Colonial Readings in Virgilian Geopoetics: The Trojans at Buthrotum Alessandro Barchiesi I Geopoetics and Colonization With a plot that spans three continents and embraces the majority of the ethnic groups and nations around the Mediterranean, the Aeneid is the most international among ancient epic poems (“internationale Epik”, cf. Norden 1999 [1901]: 149). There is of course a strong precedent in Greek epic of travel and proto-colonization, the tradition of Odysseys and Argonauticas: but the peculiarity of the Latin text is that, if we view it in its historical context, all the lands and peoples represented in the plot and the storyworld are destined to be part of the present-day Roman empire. Every time Aeneas reaches a new location, the magic of this poem appropriates that site to future Roman geography. As the epic narrative moves forward,1 space is turning into place.2 The specific intersection between poetics and space in the poem is future history, which is often accessible or hinted at through prophecy and omen. The marginal position that the migrant Aeneas is chasing in his exile (Rome) is destined to become the center of a renewed Mediterranean world, while Aeneas’ itinerary unites and binds significant spots on the map of the future Roman empire: this is 1

2

Forward in two senses, cf. 3.692-708 where, as the ship of Aeneas glides forward, we also move ‘forward’ in time: the periplus, itself a rather modern and un-homeric approach to epic space, lists cities that cannot have existed in Aeneas’ lifetime, and in fact Virgil must be looking to recent models such as Callimachus’ Aitia (although see Goldschmidt 2013, 111 and n. 32, with her references). Significantly, Aeneas as a narrator owes his informations to a Greek expatriate and renegade, Achaemenides, who is navigating backwards after making the same route with Odysseus, and interprets the coastline (3.690-1, where relegens errata retrorsus suggests a labyrinth; at 6.27-30 the Greek artist Daedalus has recreated the Cretan labyrinth in the proto-colonial foundation of Cumae, and the labyrinth is a telling response to the Greek experience of errores in the Mediterranean). Two complementary tropes emerge in this Roman appropriation of space: on the one side expansion (what Hardie calls “images of expansion… almost tinged by panic”, Hardie 1986: 253) and on the other compression and asphyxia (eloquently explored in Rimell 2015).

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particularly decisive (see infra) for places that represent a clash of destinies and are sites of future division or confrontation. One important related feature, again without full precedent in the epic tradition, is that there are almost no points on the poem’s ‘map’ where we are not given some kind of geographical reference. Very few landscapes or theaters of action are without specific location, whether explicit or implicit, and the few exceptions, if we had time to rehearse them, are left unnamed precisely for their anomalous status, and their ‘marked’ anonymity is motivated by a special effect. In short, the Aeneid is territorially grounded as no other epic poem before it. Even the gods are often imagined in a space regulated by geographical coordinates. This passion for location endows the story, situated as it is at the threshold between myth and history, with a great deal of historical and even geographical responsibility. The reader is a witness to the situation, the status, of ancient lands (cf. Aen. 7.37 quis Latio antiquo fuerit status), but also to the ‘making’ of the future Roman world. Here, again, the precedent of Greek epic is important, although partial:3 in Apollonius, the Argonauts provoke through their passage the stabilization of the Clashing Rocks, so that the transition between the Greek sea and the Black Sea receives its permanent state and shape; they cause the birth of the island of Thera, which is in turn cause of the future Greek colony of Cyrene in Africa. The expectation of forthcoming Greek-speaking empires or colonies is of course important in this poem, but Apollonius and his readers are not conditioned by an underlying, unified, imperial geopoetics. In this paper on Virgil, I use the term ‘geopoetics’ to describe the dynamics formed by the representation of the world, in particular its geopolitics, when it encounters the active participation of the poetic text in the making, aetiology, and transformation of this world. This is a wide subject, but I will restrict my attention to the theme of colonization, a topic of great importance in this Augustan epic.4 To a certain extent, it only seems natural that a story about early voyages, migrations and settlements ends up confronting the theme of colonial networks. In particular, it is easy to see that the odyssey of the Trojan Aeneas is not only a response to Homer’s Odyssey, but also a Trojan extension of the Nostoi, the traditional epic about the Greek heroes’ homecomings and displacements after the fall of Ilion. But here comes a significant difference: One thing we seem to know (in spite of the fragmentary tradition) about Nostoi-related epic texts is that they are not interested at all in aetiology and ktisis. This limitation – a paradoxical one, considering that in later tradition the

3 4

Thalmann 2011 offers a full discussion of this approach for the text of Apollonius. Cf. the seminal work of Horsfall 1989: his breakthrough has been to valorize the culture of Greek colonization and ktisis for the interpretation of the Aeneid. The shortcomings of his approach (as I argue briefly in this paper) are his lack of attention to Roman-style colonization, and limited interest in Hellenistic poetry (especially Lycophron) as an access to Greek ideas of colonization and human mobility.

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wanderings of Greek and Trojan heroes are perceived as ‘protocolonial’ narratives5 – is noted e.g. by West 2013, 245: “There is no evidence that any of the returning heroes founded new towns, as in many of the legends that proliferated later” (cf. Danek in Fantuzzi-Tsagalis 2015, 377: the Nostoi “avoided treating the heroes who permanently settled somewhere else”). This is not the world, and the generic approach, of Virgil, nor of Lycophron before him. 6 For Virgil, and already for Lycophron, the stories of return and exile focus precisely on this aspect: city foundation and colonization. The epic space pulsates with nodal points which are inceptions of cities and often mark areas of friction and conflict. This emphasis on the making of a new world is precisely the situation that allows the narrator of the Aeneid to propel the idea of geopoetics. In what follows I will offer a test case, based on the Trojan experiences at Buthrotum in Epirus. Buthrotum is not the only or even the most visible example of colonization in the poem: the macroscopic cases should include Segesta, Cumae, Carthage (the object of Elena Giusti’s contribution to this volume), the Trojan camp at (future) Ostia, the invasion of Apulia by Diomedes, and the Greek colony on the site of Rome. With its limited scope and territory my western Greek episode is more compatible with the dimensions of a paper, though it is representative of a larger project.

5

6

The work of Irad Malkin (e.g. Malkin 1998) makes a good case for the relevance of epic to the rise of Greek colonial expansion; it also reminds us that Greek-speaking colonization is quite different from Roman, a bee-hive pattern instead of tache-d’-huile military expansion, a polycentric network instead of opposition between center/periphery, a constellation of middle grounds instead of a pivotal apparatus. The Alexandra is a text entirely centered on colonization and diaspora, with a focus provided by Trojan, Greek, and Graeco-Trojan post-Iliadic settlements, and an explicit foreboding of Roman imperial rule: as such, it is surprising that it has entered discussions of the Aeneid only recently. On the rewards of keeping Lycophron in mind, see the fundamental insights provided by McNelis-Sens 2011 (on the importance of Trojan glory and survival in the Alexandra; to be followed by other studies by the same authors, and by a major reappraisal of Lycophron by S. Hornblower); as Hornblower 2015: 58 comments: “[in the Alexandra] Nostoi-settlers are regularly said to do just that, settle or inhabit”; id., 57 “Western foundation legends…form so rich and lengthy a component of the enormous nostoi section”. On colonization in the Aeneid, the classic study is Horsfall 1989 (important on Virgil and Greek colonial culture, and on the significance of prose sources). However we need to pay more attention to the different approach to colonization in Roman society and culture, cf. infra.

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II Actium and Buthrotum In a substantial episode at 3.274-520, the Trojans on their way to Hesperia make their only extended visit to the Greek mainland (on the geography of the whole episode see the fundamental discussion by Casali 2004). First, they stop by in a small coastal town that looks like a predecessor of Actium and also of Nicopolis (3.276-80; on the merging or incorporation of different sites in this narrative cf. Casali 2004, Stahl 1998; Miller 2009: 95-6), where they celebrate ‘Ilian games on the shores of Actium’ (280-83). They then approach the Chaonian7 city of Buthrotum, north of Actium (3.292-520), where a touching surprise is in store for them. This is the incredibilis fama of 3.294, so emotionally loaded for the band of survivors roaming the Mediterranean: Helenus and Andromache have established a sort of autonomous polis or kingdom in the land of the Greeks. Incredibilis expresses the thrill of the narrator Aeneas, and also footnotes the subtle authorial manipulation of the Aeneas legend, whose tradition knew about a Trojan stopover at Dodona but not at Buthrotum (cf. Barchiesi 2015: 2 and n.4). The city of Buthrotum is in fact a Trojan colony, a small enclave settled by Helenus and Andromache; for the Trojans this turns out to be a place of memory and recuperation of the past, as well as of prophecy about their future in Italy. After receiving directions and advice about Italy from the Trojan seer Helenus, they spend their last night on Greek land, immediately before crossing the Adriatic in view of the Ceraunian mountains, the nodal point of the Greek coast where notoriously ‘the crossing and the trip to Italy are shortest’ (3.505). The Actium-Buthrotum episode turns out to be in many ways about negotiating ethnic identity. At the beginning we see the Trojans, unusually, performing Greek-style agonistic games; we are told that those are Trojan games (Iliacis…ludis…patrias palaestras, 3.280-1) but the fact that they wrestle and run naked, anointed with olive oil (ibid.), does in fact suggest Greek cultural identity to any Roman reader, as does the technical use of palaestra. What interests me here is that in Actium the Trojans seem to be featured at their most Greek: they are notoriously wavering between various models – the soft Easterner, the almost Hellenic, the proto-Roman – but here, wrestling naked, dripping with oil, turning the shore into a gymnasium (and the name of the place is the Greek for litus, a shore), they look overtly Greek-ish. One almost thinks about Alexander running naked around the tomb of Achilles (Plut. Alex. 15.7-8), except that Aeneas does not mention his participation: no ‘naked democracy’ for the Trojans. But in fact Nicopolis at Actium was, rather paradoxically, a Greek city – a Greek city artificially created by Augustus – and the Actian Games were pure

7

The Chaones are known to be one of the three major ethnē of Epirus, the ones who will form the military league under the command of the Molossian king Pyrrhus in his III century invasion of Italy.

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Greek, held in a stadion. The Roman element in Nicopolis was the idea of victory (victoria) but the idea was of course expressed as nike, through a regular Greek idiom. “Pour s’helléniser”, writes Louis Robert about the hellenisation of Cappadocia,8 “il faut vivre à la grecque. Pour vivre à la grecque, il faut etre elevé à la grecque, aller à l’école, se réunir au gymnase pour les exercises physique et la culture intellectuelle”; indeed, this is what “le gymnase avait d’indispensable et de symbolique pour la diffusion de l’hellenisme”. According to a first survey (Bergemann 1998: 119), Nicopolis had a regular Greek stadion and was created by relocating Greek communities. This signals programmatic innovation if one considers the geopolitics of the Adriatic seaboard and of new Augustan colonies in Greece:9 the victory monument itself commands an impressively geopolitical vista of the seaboard. However, by the end of their stay in Buthrotum, the migrants led by Aeneas learn that they will have to perform sacrifice with covered heads, and this is what they do immediately after completing their crossing to Italy (3.403-9, cf. 545-7). The function of the detail is well contextualized by Kris Fletcher, who remarks: “the directions Aeneas receives to Italy are inseparable from issues of identity in the Aeneid” (Fletcher 2014: 134). Equally important is the mapping of religious practice onto the Trojans’ itinerary. This process has important consequences insofar as it imposes a cultural meaning onto geography (this again must have significant precedent in Apollonius and Callimachus): the moment when the Trojans become aware of the distinctive importance of the capite velato sacrifice (the clearest mark of difference between Greek practice and future Roman/Italic practice) is synchronized with their leave-taking from Buthrotum.10 They learn about what makes a Roman/Italic sacrifice different from the ‘Greek way’ of sacrifice in a specific time and place, and the chronotope is precisely in the nodal area between Greece and Italy. (Compare Dido in Carthage, who improvises a combination of black magic, suicide, sacrifice and funeral ritual precisely at the point at which the 8 9

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Robert 1963: 490. Alcock 1993: 41: “Contemplating the location of Corinth, Patrai and Nikopolis, and of the hinterlands, helps us to divine some specific concerns behind direct Roman intervention in the provincial landscape … All share a westward position or orientation, indicating a greater emphasis upon communication and contact with Italy, the new core zone of the Mediterranean…these areas had represented long-standing antagonism to Rome…these territories could therefore be perceived as potential centers for future resistance. With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to disregard the likelihood of Roman anxiety on this score…”. Cf. also Lange 2009. The religious leadership of the travelling group of Trojans resides with Anchises and Aeneas, while the settler Helenus acts as a specialist in religion (as well as seer and community leader) in Buthrotum; on the distribution of religious competence and authority in the poem, in connection with ideas of mobility and displacement, see Barchiesi 2006.

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Trojans separate themselves from the Punic world: the event, in its programmatic otherness, is perhaps meant to emphasize the growing separation of two cultures after they had begun to merge in the narrative.) The entire sequence of colonial encounters in Western Greece illustrates a certain range of possibilities within Trojan culture as represented in this Roman text. The Trojans can easily blend into, as well as (according to the occasion) assert their difference from, Greeks, Etruscans, Romans, and Carthaginians; in response to various contexts, their identity can be inflected or recognized as more or less Asiatic, Greek or Roman. As Momigliano famously pointed out, referring to Roman culture in general (1989: 56) “when the Romans decided that they were ultimately Trojans, they were in fact saying that they were neither Greeks nor Etruscans”, but we should add the proviso (at least for Virgil’s ethnopoetics) ‘they were also saying that they were not incompatible with Greeks and Etruscans’. In the sojourn at Actium, the Trojans perform Trojan-style – that is, Greekstyle. At Buthrotum, they learn how to behave differently from the Greeks – that is, Roman-style. Can we see a logic in this shift, a localized meaning related to the different locations in their trip? Perhaps we should. It is relatively simple to start from the Actium location. In this area, few people would deny that we can discern a high-powered and multi-level intervention by Octavian. In the period between the battle at Actium and the composition of the Aeneid, those ‘geopoetic’ changes include the remaking of the cult and temple of Aktian (and Leucadian) Apollo, the tropaion or victory monument of Nikopolis, and the creation of Nikopolis itself as a new city: the many coordinated activities include landscaping, building a seafront, city-foundation, synoecism, the displacement of communities and the establishing of religion and games. In the light of Trojan activity in the epic, we should consider with particular attention the Games or Aktia (Suet. Aug. 18.2, probably from 27 BCE onwards); just like their Trojan prelude, these were ‘nude’ events, gymnikoi agōnes. They immediately accrued the distinction of being ‘isolympian’ – included in the circuit of the great Panhellenic games – while providing a nontraditional link with Rome. The Trojan situation at Actium is reminiscent of, but also very different from, that of the Argonauts; like the Trojans, those Greek heroes do practice some athletics in the interludes of the journey (Ap.Rh. 4.1765-62), and, like Virgil, Apollonius does make a connection with a present-day festival (for example the aition of the ‘Hydrophoria’ at Aegina; cf. Call. Ia. 8; Pind. Pyth. 4.253 has another athletic contest in a similar, closural position in the travel narrative). Yet in Apollonius the point is that “athletic contests were so central to Greek identity that the small episode truly marks the return of the Argonauts to a familiar world” (Hunter 2015: 317). For the Trojan expatriates, identity is in constant transition and transformation, and the Actian Games − instead of celebrating the recuperation of a traditional identity − mark the most unstable and dangerous frontier. Aeneas celebrates this stop with his only recorded work of poetry, a one-liner inscribed on a Greek shield (3.288 AENEAS HAEC DE DANAIS VICTORIBUS

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ARMA).11 The line, in fact a mini-Aeneid, with Aeneas and arma matching arma uirumque, and the uir himself writing on arma, seems to memorialize how Trojan defeat becomes victory over the Greeks. The idea of a Latin inscription on a votive shield in such a location is neatly paralleled by the fact that the inscription in the Nicopolis monument was in Latin, without a Greek version.12 In fact the reader of the second half of the Aeneid will, against all odds, see Actium again,13 and it will be on a shield − the shield of Aeneas (8.671-7). The shield in Actium is now balanced by Actium on a shield: haec inter tumidi late maris ibat imago aurea, sed fluctu spumabant caerula cano, et circum argento clari delphines in orbem aequora verrebant caudis aestumque secabant. in medio classis aeratas, Actia bella, cernere erat, totumque instructo Marte videres fervere Leucaten auroque effulgere fluctus.14 Mid-shield, The pictured sea flowed surging, all of gold, As whitecaps foamed on the blue waves, and dolphins Shining in silver round and round the scene Propelled themselves with flukes and cut through billows. Vivid in the center were the bronze-beaked Ships and the fight at sea off Actium. Here you could see Leucata all alive With ships maneuvering, sea glowing gold15

The central position of Actium on the shield is impressive. The shield of Aeneas is a cosmic icon, but it is also centered on Rome, the urbs at the center of the orbis. When we reach the mention of the sea, we imagine on the basis of analogy with the shield of Achilles that this will constitute the periphery of the entire orbis. The position of the Ocean in Homer is clear: “on the outer rim of the shield, he placed the great strength of the Ocean river” (Il.18.607-8). The ambiguous wording of line 673, with circum…in orbem, for a moment confirms this suggestio falsi. For Homer, since the water surrounds the human world, it is logical to have it all around the images of human and civic life on the shield. But in Virgil, with the surprise start of in medio … at 8.675, it becomes clear that the sea at Actium will 11 12 13

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For more on the episode in the context of Roman conquest of Greece see Rebeggiani 2013. This is repeatedly stressed by Lange 2009: 114-20. Not easy to predict, since the second half of the poem is firmly set in Italy. I return at the end of this paper to the issue of ‘long-distance’ reproductions of sites and monuments. Vergil: Aeneid, 8.671-77. Trans. R.Fitzgerald 1981 (et passim).

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be the core of this visual project. Shifting the sea from edge to center “is a way of acknowledging that Actium alone, in its importance for the poet’s new cosmos, deserves the preeminence that Homer accords to all human endeavors” (Putnam 1998: 136-37). For Virgil’s readers, who are reading the ecphrasis of an imaginary artefact, it becomes difficult to separate Actium from its monumental recreations: are the bronze rostra made of bronze in reality, or on the shield? Or in the victory monuments decorated with rostra, such as the one at Actium (Zachos 2003)? Or on a coin perhaps? Similarly, the dolphins at lines 873-4 evoke the natural life of the sea, while being dependent on a Greek poetic tradition of ecphrasis (the shield at Ps. Hes. Scut. 317 ff. has dolphins ‘in the middle’ of a safe harbor). More relevant, however, is the fact that they are iconic of Actium and of Apollo, and so of Octavian and Agrippa, in the visual arts (cf. e.g. Zachos 2003: 79 on the dolphin simas found in the Nicopolis excavations). The delivery of the armour to Aeneas by Venus is a powerful answer to the propaganda supporting the Greek invasion of Italy under Pyrrhus: the king, claiming descent from Achilles, had minted coins where Thetis offers the arms to Achilles, since like Achilles he was going to attack the city of the Trojans (Franke 1989: 465). Now Aeneas receives a shield that functions as a super-coin, featuring at the center a victory over the Greek world in the waters of Pyrrhus’ kingdom. Actium itself, as a battle site but also in its suggestive geography, is promoted to a central point of the imperial orbis. This complex reference intensifies the treatment of geography in this episode. In terms of future politics of conquest, the clashing area is clearly the Greek coastline facing Italy, loaded with memories of conflict. Acroceraunia, more or less the halfway point in Trojan errores,16 is enhanced as a frontier place: prouehimur pelago uicina Ceraunia iuxta, unde iter Italiam cursusque breuissimus undis. sol ruit interea et montes umbrantur opaci; sternimur optatae gremio telluris ad undam sortiti remos passimque in litore sicco corpora curamus, fessos sopor inrigat artus. necdum orbem medium Nox Horis acta subibat: haud segnis strato surgit Palinurus et omnis explorat uentos atque auribus aera captat; sidera cuncta notat tacito labentia caelo, Arcturum pluuiasque Hyadas geminosque Triones, armatumque auro circumspicit Oriona. postquam cuncta uidet caelo constare sereno, dat clarum e puppi signum; nos castra mouemus temptamusque uiam et uelorum pandimus alas.17 16

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Acroceraunia also mark a major division in land geography, at least in Pliny’s vision of Europe: they are mentioned at the very start of book IV as the beginning of the tertius sinus of Europe (4.1) and as the beginning of Epirus (a Cerauniis incipit montibus, 4.2). Vergil: Aeneid, 3.506-20.

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We set sail for Ceraunia nearby To cross from there, the short sea-route to Italy. The sun went west, the hills grew dark. Then down We threw ourselves upon the welcome land, Assigned the oars for next day, scattered all Along the dry beach to take food and rest, And sleep came soft as dew on tired men. Now Night drawn by the Hours had not yet reached The midpoint of her course when Palinurus Turned out briskly. Studying the winds, He cupped his ears to catch movements of air; Observed the slowly wheeling constellations In the still heaven: bright Arcturus, rainy Hyades, Great Bear and Little Bear, Orion in his belt of gold. All clear In cloudless air he made them out to be, Then gave a trumpet signal from the stern. So we broke camp, put out to sea unfurled Our wings of sails.

As Connors puts it, “For the ancients, geography was not laid out on the grid of latitude and longitude and indeed visible from space” (Connors 1997, 85), so that itineraries and motion, together with observation of the night sky, had central importance in anchoring a perception of space and place. The total vision of the sky and stars here is unique in the poem,18 and completes the sense of crossing between two lands, across the boundary that historically divides Greece from Italy and, later, Octavian from Antony. The importance of the moment is reinforced by the sense of specialized knowledge, and astronomy is mobilized precisely at the hinge between the Greek world and the new land of Italy. III At Buthrotum: Exile, Diaspora, Colony There is a strange, emotional moment when Aeneas takes leave from the Trojan settlers in Buthrotum: the hero is usually a model of clarity, but here the diction is twisted and made problematic by anacoluthon: what seems to emerge is that one day Italy and Epirus will be one and the same thing in spirit, which is Troy:

18

The sheer frequency of pointers to nature and cosmos in this short passage is striking even by Virgilian standards: note the emphasis on cuncta at 515 and 518; the style is meant to recall the opening cosmic description on the shield of Achilles, cf. Il. 18.4839 (note here the totalizing sequence “earth…sky…sea…sun…moon…all the stars… sky”, and the emphasis on Orion).

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Alessandro Barchiesi ‘...et quae fuerit minus obvia Grais. si quando Thybrim vicinaque Thybridis arva intraro gentique meae data moenia cernam, cognatas urbes olim populosque propinquos Epiro Hesperiam (quibus idem Dardanus auctor atque idem casus), unam faciemus utramque Troiam animis: maneat nostros ea cura nepotes.’19 ‘Here before your eyes Are replicas of Xanthus and of Troy Your own hands built – with better auspices, I pray, and less a challenge to the Greeks. If one day I shall enter Tiber stream And Tiber fields and see the walls my people Have in store for them, then of these kindred Cities, neighboring nations, in Epirus And in Hesperia, both looking back To Dardanus as founder, both to one Sad history, we shall make a single Troy In spirit: may this task await our heirs.’

Now on one level there must be irony here.20 Epirus and Hesperia, two Greek words, Continent and Land of the West, are indeed so close to each other that one day Epirus will be the springboard for the principal Greek invasion of Roman land. Right now Helenus is ruling over the kingdom of someone named Pyrrhus and surrounded by threatening Greek people (cf. 3.296); this geopolitical reference makes the recurrence of ‘Grecian’ lines and bilingual puns (e.g. 295, 328) in this episode more than a feature of learned style. So for example the first designation of the area, (Actia … litora) comes to signify this international tension, the epithet Aktios in Greek being in fact derived from akte ‘shore’.21 In other words, the geographic setting activates dissonance between Greek and Latin forms of expression. If we had a complete text of Ennius’ Annales, we would be able to say much more about this kind of culture war, considering that Western Greece must have been a crucial area for the geopoetics of that Republican epic poem. For my purposes, it is enough to consider the territorial connection established by Pausanias, when he mentions Pyrrhus’ invasion, the crossing of the sea, and the renewal of a Trojan war:22

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Vergil: Aeneid, 3.499-505. On two levels, if we consider the Greek viewpoint: the Roman treatment of Epirus was particularly brutal, cf. e.g. Waterfield 2014: 198 („virtual ethnic cleansing“). Cf. e.g. Harder 2012: 198. Erskine 2001: 159-61 claims, according to the overall thesis of his important mono-

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Thus Pyrrhus was the first to cross the Ionian Sea from Greece to attack the Romans. And even he crossed on the invitation of the Tarentines. For they were already involved in a war with the Romans, but were no match for them unaided… When the envoys urged these considerations, Pyrrhus remembered the capture of Troy, which he took to be an omen of his success in the war, as he was a descendant of Achilles making war upon a colony of Trojans.23

So what kind of Trojan future is Aeneas envisioning for Buthrotum? His Buthrotum was certainly the purest example of a paradox, a Trojan provincial life: procedo et parvam Troiam simulataque magnis Pergama et arentem Xanthi cognomine rivum agnosco, Sceaeque amplector limina portae24 Walking along with him I saw before me Troy in miniature, A slender copy of our famous tower, A dry brooklet named Xanthus… and I pressed My body against a Scaean Gate.

The little Troy, the fake Pergamon, the dried up brook … In a fine metaliterary reading of the episode, Ralph Hexter points out that this site models bad literature as bricolage, or (here) as a slavish imitation of Greek models: “They have simply renamed a Greek landscape and its features and built their citadel on Greek foundations … Working with the material left over from Greeks already belated, what Helenus and Andromache create with their literally servile imaginations can hardly thrive or satisfy” (Hexter 1999: 77). But notice how a similar language has been employed by scholars of material culture working on real Nicopolis (Zachos 2003: 77): “The blocks re-used in the monument may have derived from one or more monumental buildings of a nearby town, whose inhabitants were displaced and forced to settle in Nicopolis”. The habit of “working with material left over from Greeks” could also be a fitting description of the activities going on at Buthrotum in Virgil’s lifetime. Again I quote from scholarship on material and visual culture: “The imposition of a Roman colony onto this thriving Hellenistic city brought about a systematic displacement of the native inhabitants of Buthrotum, a

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graph, that Pyrrhus was mostly interested in capitalizing on local traditions of the Epirotic league in terms of a constructive fusion between Greek and Trojan legacy, but the fragments of Ennius’ Annales tell a different story; on Ennius reading Pyrrhus in Southern Italy as ‘Aeacid’ and Achillean cf. Elliott 2013: 222-4. Of course my discussion only turns around later Roman memory and reconstructions of the war, and does not concern the Epirotic context of Pyrrhus’ royal ideology. Pausanias 1.12. Vergil: Aeneid, 3.349-51.

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development that can be considered in the framework of the sometimes brutal political and cultural change that characterized Augustus’ imposition of imperial rule in western Greece ... The ... statue at Buthrotum ... exemplified a visual ideology that was formulated in Early Imperial Italy through the appropriation of Greek cultural forms, and that was exported back into Greece within this Roman colony” (Trimble 2000: 64). The interim report from the Butrint excavations (Bergemann 1998: 56, 49) describes the breaking away from local-Hellenistic theater architecture as an indication of culture wars in Buthrotum, and adds that “the changes in administration and civic life could hardly have been more incisive”. In fact, Buthrotum symbolizes a reversal of history: it stands for the experiment of a Roman colony in Greece – the inversion of so many Greek colonies in Italy. During the Caesarian colony foundation, Cicero even mentions rumors about the local population’s violent resistance (Att. 15.29; 16.4), a situation not frequently mentioned by Roman sources about late Republican colonies. When we think about the language traditionally used by literary critics about this episode25 – nostalgia of Troy, toy Troy, Troytown, mock Troy, Disneyland Troy, theme park, exile, Andromaque je pense à vous and so on – we should also picture Italic and Roman settlers at this programmatic beachhead, and imagine their nostalgia26 as they construct a fake Italy with recycled Greek material on the margins of Greece and look back to Italy and Rome. This begins to suggest that the direction of the text can be read as eastbound, as well as westbound. Read it westwards, and it registers as exile, or immigration; read it eastwards, and it is a story of colonization. This is in fact my approach to Virgilian geopoetics: the epic journey becomes a narrative trope of the first century diaspora throughout the Mediterranean. Colonial and provincial readings of the Aeneid have often been limited to localized allusions à clé – the new Caesarian interest in Carthage and Troy, Augustus in the Bay of Naples, the veterans in Sicily – and the unavoidable conclusion has been a propaganda-based approach to the poem. Yet what interests me is not that localized episodes, tinged with ad hoc propaganda and panegyric, allude to a Roman vested interest in specific areas, but rather the idea of a general reference to the emotions and experiences of provincial life. The dusty river that mimics the Scamander is a prophecy of many mini-Tibers; the Trojan theme-park is also a Rome-town, like in China-town; the nostos as a prophecy or a precursor of Greek colonisation is now converted into a post-factum prophecy of Roman and Italic colonisation. When Virgil is composing the poem, the new colony is already

25

26

Some of the results are very valuable, esp. Bettini 1997 on the Roman background to the situation of Helenus and Andromache via the notion of leviratus. See Quint 1982 on memory and repetition. This kind of sentiment is also part of Greek colonial traditions, cf. e.g. Hornblower 2015, Index s.v. nostalgia, colonia.

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graced with statues of patroni such as Atticus and Agrippa.27 The absent mothercity of Troy and its precarious cultural baggage offer a poignant analogy for the cultural insecurities of Roman colonisation, as does the anxiety of Phoenician settlers with their oversized and brand new city of temples and theaters in an exotic setting28 and their invocation of Troy, rather than Tyre, as a token of cultural identity. The way Troy is lost and absent and yet intensively talked about in opposing corners of the Mediterranean – whether in the spirit of nostalgia, repetition compulsion or hearsay that binds people together (Dido, Latinus and Evander all know stories about Troy), or through objects from Troy now being distributed across the Mediterranean – suggests a strikingly distorted but significant image of how Rome is supposed to function within the formation of the Imperial community. The absence of Troy, which is irretrievable, and of Rome, which does not yet exist, creates a sense of anxiety and precarity which forms an interesting counterpart to the specific poetics of Roman colonisation: the linear pattern of one-on-one correspondence and interaction between metropolis and colony in the Greek model of bee-hive expansion is disturbed in the Aeneid, and the Roman approach exists only as prophecy. But this is precisely an area where the Romans could highlight a crucial element of their distinctive cultural identity: the systematic approach to colonization as a series of multiple copies of an exemplary city. IV Towards a Colonial Approach to the Aeneid The language used by Aeneas about the brand new Buthrotum − the small Troy, the simulata Pergama − is consistent with the famous Gellian definition of what a colonia (as opposed to a municipium) is in Roman terms: an effigies paruae simulacraque quaedam of Roman maiestas. Gellius writes: sed coloniarum alia necessitudo est; non enim ueniunt extrinsecus in ciuitatem nec suis radicibus nituntur, sed ex ciuitate quasi propagatae sunt et iura institutaque omnia populi Romani, non sui arbitrii, habent. quae tamen condicio, cum sit magis obnoxia et minus libera, potior tamen et praestabilior existimatur propter amplitudinem maiestatemque populi Romani, cuius istae coloniae quasi effigies paruae simulacraque esse quaedam uidentur, et simul quia obscura oblitterataque sunt municipiorum iura, quibus uti iam per ignotitiam non queunt.29

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Hansen 2011 offers an updated overview and takes Virgil into account. Woolf 1998: 125-6 has an unforgettable discussion of the emotions of rising urbanism in Augustan Gaul, where he uses the text of Virgil as an analogy, comparing Dido and the Poeni in the brand new colony of Carthage to the Gallo-Romans in Autun. Gellius 16.13.8-9.

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Alessandro Barchiesi But the relationship of the “colonies” is a different one; for they do not come into citizenship from without, nor grow from roots of their own, but they are as it were transplanted from the State and have all the laws and institutions of the Roman people, not those of their own choice. This condition, although it is more exposed to control and less free, is nevertheless thought preferable and superior because of the greatness and majesty of the Roman people, of which those colonies seem to be miniatures, as it were, and in a way copies; and at the same time because the rights of the municipal towns become obscure and invalid, and from ignorance of their existence the townsmen are no longer able to make use of them.30

Now, as we all realize, Gellius was illustrating a stereotype, not reality on the ground. But some amount of generalization seems unavoidable, as in the following modern definition of Roman colonies in contrast to Greek apoikiai: “It is only from the perspective of the super-city that the long-lasting tradition of Roman urban policy can be understood. Other ancient cities produced offshoot communities, which were essentially new cities. Rome alone deployed its population resources, citizen or Latin, in planned locations, maintaining a superior position in terms of status, and a continuing political and governmental relationship which went far beyond any Greek or Carthaginian metropolis-apoikia.”31

Purcell’s approach might also draw our attention to the significance of long-distance connections in our epic − connections across space and time, with material reproductions of artifacts and monuments (the victory monument at Nicopolis, the victory monuments of Rome, the shield of Aeneas), and anniversaries and public occasions keyed to a calendar shared between colony and mother-city.32 This cultural mesh has little precedent in Homeric epic, where the long-distance connections are made through different means and media, such as memory, fame, giftgiving and trade. The fusion or confusion of places in the Actium episode is a poetic equivalent of Octavian’s intervention in the territory, which involved new foundations, synoecism, removals and dislocations, and the ambiguous revival or reinvention of Greek cultural markers. The ambiguity at Buthrotum between exile and colonization telescopes reversals in the history of this boundary area,33 which

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Trans. J. C. Rolfe 1927. Purcell 1996: 1572. See e.g. Barchiesi 2005: 298-300 on long-distance replicas and mobile replicas as a characteristic of the period; Barchiesi 2006 on the links through anniversaries and calendars (for example at Trojan Buthrotum, in Sicily, and in the Greek city at the site of Rome). This approach to time and location is more integral and different from the simple models of aetiology, where typically just one or maybe two master events are inscribed in a certain place and become local markers.

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acted as a springboard for Greek invasions of Italy, and as a bridgehead of a new wave of Roman and Italic colonisations. A final analogy shows the Roman relevance of those Trojan foundations in the epic narrative. The stereotype of the Greek colony typically has something to do with the notion of a ‘surplus’ population, or sometimes with outcasts who need to migrate and build their lives elsewhere.34 Yet the Trojans with Aeneas and Antenor and the Greeks with Diomedes have one distinctive feature of their own: they are weary survivors of the war, searching for peace, and they are not just migrants or refugees, but more specifically, veterans.35

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Horace, Epode 16 is a famous example of where a contemporary Roman agenda reactivates this traditional Greek model. For the impact and the amount of planning involved in veteran colonies under Octavian cf. e.g. F. Millar 2004: 305.

Beatus carcer /tristis harena: The Spaces of Statius’ Silvae Alexander Kirichenko Squeezing the charcoal in which all has converged, And with a greedy hand seeking only a resemblance — Trying to find only the resemblance’s hinge — I’ll crumble up the coal, pursuing his appearance. I learn from him, not learning for myself. I learn from him to show myself no mercy. And if unhappiness conceals the plan’s great wealth, I will discover it amid chaos and cursing. Let me remain as yet unworthy to have friends, Let me remain unfilled with tears and with resentment; I still keep seeing him in a greatcoat, as he stands In an enchanted square, with eyes full of contentment. From Osip Mandelstam’s Ode to Stalin (tr. Ilya Bernstein)

Introduction The fact that Statius placed his two poems on the deaths of animals (Silvae 2.4 on the death of Atedius Melior’s parrot at his private home and Silvae 2.5 on the death of a tame lion at the Flavian amphitheatre before the eyes of Domitian) not only next to each other, but also almost in the very middle of what may have been the first three-book instalment of the Silvae1 prompts readers to perceive them as a pair linked by significant analogies and contrasts. Regarded by some as merely 1

The idea that the first three books of the Silvae were published as a unit was first proposed in Vollmer’s commentary (Vollmer 1898: 11-12). See also Newmyer 1979: 4649, Coleman 1988: xvi-xx, Gibson 2006: xxviii-xxx. If we consider the eighteen poems of Silvae 1-3 (6+7+5) as a unit, it may indeed strike us as significant that Silvae 2.4 – on the untimely death of a small bird – is the first in the nine-poem-long second half of the collection, structurally corresponding to, and on numerous levels contrasted with, the first poem of the first half – Silvae 1.1 on the colossal statue of Domitian erected on the Forum for all eternity.

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facetious or even parodic of Statius’ epicedia to humans,2 these two short poems can in fact be read as animal fables3 that, as animal fables always do, reveal a rather serious human meaning. The goal of this paper is precisely to show that, despite their seeming triviality, these poems are in fact suggestive of much weightier concerns – the juxtaposition of two enclosures, the parrot’s cage and the imperial arena, serving as a vivid emblem of the way in which Statius constructs the spaces of Domitian’s empire in the Silvae in general. I Melior’s parrot in Silvae 2.4 is cast as an unmistakably imperial bird – an exotic royal (dux volucrum 2.4.1, plagae viridis regnator Eoae, 2.4.25) kept in the “happy prison” of a cage (beatus carcer, 2.4.14-15) built out of ivory and silver and gleaming with a red cupola.4 Unsurprisingly, the most salient aspect of the bird’s captivity is its status as an imitator of human speech.5 Like the luxurious beatus carcer, the parroting of human speech not only imposes limitations but also offers protection. Tellingly, the parrot is said to surpass in appearance an array of other exotic birds (peacock, pheasant, and guinea fowl)6 that elsewhere function as symbols of the moral decay caused by imperial expansion.7 But it is obviously

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On Statius’ epicedia in general, see e.g. Hardie 1983: 103-118; Markus 2004; Nauta 2008: 157-161; Hulls 2011. On Silvae 2.4 and 2.5 as parodic or even burlesque, see Cawsey 1983; Nauta 2002: 257-259; Rühl 2006: 195-210. On the affinity between Silvae 2.4 and 2.5 and animal fables, see Newlands 2005. On the two poems as complementary, see also Cancik 1965: 19 (regarding 2.3, 4, and 5 as a unit); Newmyer 1979: 72-74; Taisne 1994: 336-339. Statius, Silv. 2.4.11-12 at tibi quanta domus rutila testudine fulgens / conexusque ebori virgarum argenteus ordo. Cf. van Dam 1984: 349-350. domini facunda voluptas / humanae sollers imitator, Psittace, linguae (Statius, Silv. 2.4.1-2); afflatus etiam meditataque verba / reddideras, 7-8; monstrataque verba / reddere tam facilis, 31-32. quem non gemmata volucris Iunonia cauda / vinceret aspectu, gelidi non Phasidis ales, / nec quas umenti Numidae rapuere sub Austro (Statius, Silv. 2.4.26-28). Cf. Van Dam 1984: 359-361; Newlands 2011: 188-189. Cf. Hor. Epod. 2.53: non Afra avis descendat in ventrem meum; Serm. 2.2.22-27; Petr. Sat. 55: tuo palato clausus pavo pascitur, etc. (cf. Rimell 2002: 193): ales Phasiacis petita Colchis / atque Afrae volucres placent palato, Sat. 93; and especially Sat. 119.33ff., where the consumption of exotic food (among other things, the pheasant from the Phasis river) is among the primary causes of the self-destructive civil war: ingeniosa gula est. Siculo scarus aequore mersus / ad mensam vivus perducitur, atque Lucrinis / eruta litoribus vendunt conchylia cenas, / ut renovent per damna famem. iam Phasidos unda / orbata est avibus, mutoque in litore tantum / solae desertis adspirant frondibus aurae. More generally, on imported foods as a cause of moral and political decline, see

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not because of its exceptional beauty, but because of its ability to repeat its owner’s words that, unlike all those other birds, the parrot could enjoy the luxury of dying of an unknown natural cause – as a cherished dinner companion rather than a decadent meal.8 What is more, the speaking parrot also emblematizes the comfortable confinement of Melior’s own private space.9 The bird is, crucially, not only a domesticated synecdoche of empire, but also a verbal image of Melior himself – faithfully echoing its owner’s changing moods and creating a semblance of human companionship.10 What emerges when Melior hears his own words repeated by this imperial symbol is thus the illusion of empire miniaturized and enclosed – an imaginary private empire that, while mimicking empire writ large, enfolds Melior’s inner world with the soothing familiarity of mimesis. The impossibility of separating this private space from the world of empire around it becomes apparent not only because the parrot is an imperial symbol par excellence but also because the emperor himself is so fully internalized as to be virtually ubiquitous: even the parrot’s cage is vaguely reminiscent of the emperor’s palace,11 while the only expression of the parrot that Statius chooses to single out is, predictably, the emperor’s name

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e.g. Sallust, Cat. 13. Cf. Edwards 1993: 176-206; Stein-Hölkeskamp 2005: 175-203 (esp. 185-190 on exotic fowl) and 2014; Wallace-Hadrill 2008: 315-355. dapes moriturus inisti / nobiscum (Stat. Silv. 2.4.4-5). Elsewhere in the Silvae, exotic birds are mentioned as delicacies – distributed by the emperor during the Saturnalia (1.6.75-78) or rejected in favour of the purity of cultural refinement at Novius Vindex’s banquet (4.6.8-11). Cf. Dietrich 2002: 103-104, who refers to Apicius’ recipe (232), in which roasted flamingo can be replaced with a parrot. Cf. Rühl 2006: 204-208. queruli quondam vice functus amici, / nunc conviva levis monstrataque reddere verba / tam facilis, quo tu, Melior dilecte, recluso / numquam solus eras (Statius, Silv. 2.4.3033). augusti … tecti (Stat. Silv. 2.4.15); Statius uses this expression again in a later poem (4.2.18), where tectum augustum refers to Domitian’s palace, alluding to Virgil’s description of Latinus’ palace in Aen. 7.170 – with its obvious august / “Augustan” overtones. Courtney and Shackleton Bailey follow Håkanson (1969: 72) in adopting the old conjecture angusti for the manuscript reading augusti. See Newlands 2011, ad loc. But even if one were to adopt this conjecture, the minimal difference between Statius’ and Virgil’s phrases would still cast the parrot’s cage as a miniature version of a royal palace (which it obviously is in any case). Moreover, the substitution of angustus for Virgil’s augustus would evoke the ‘Roman Callimachean’ rejection of the grand epic style and heroic / ‘imperial’ themes in favour of the privacy of small poetic forms (cf. Prop. 2.1.40 intonet angusto pectore Callimachus; cf. Myers 2002: 196), which in fact presents private life as completely subsumed by imperial concerns. On the tension between augustus and angustus as an expression of “the imperial dialectic between expansion and enclosure” in Augustan poetry, see Rimell 2015: 29-30. On allusions to epic in the Silvae in general, see Gibson 2006 and van Dam 2006.

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(nomenque locutus / Caesareum, 2.4.29-30).12 Just as the parrot imitates Melior, so Melior imitates the emperor and makes sure that his parrot does the same. As a result, the security of private spaces turns out to be crucially dependent on flattering mimicry – on their being reduced to human (or avian) scale in such a way as to remain recognizably imperial. Similarly, the text of Statius’ Silvae 2.4, too, can be seen as an icon of Melior’s private realm – the folds of poetic allusion mimicking its imitative enclosure. Conspicuously enough, Statius creates his poetic beatus carcer by recycling Ovid’s dirge for Corinna’s parrot in Amores 2.6, itself a reworking of Catullus’ poem on Lesbia’s dead sparrow. While Ovid turns the unprepossessing little bird whose plain chirping (pipiabat, Cat. 3.10) offsets the artfully constructed immediacy of Catullus’ tumultuous relationship with Lesbia,13 into a flashy symbol of the unbridled erotics of poetic imitation (compared to Catullus, Ovid is indeed as garrulus and loquax as his parrot),14 Statius’ parrot becomes a symbol not only of Melior’s autoerotic entrapment in his own speech, but also of the poet’s confinement within poetic tradition.15 It is symptomatic that, unlike Ovid’s self-indulgently talkative bird, both Melior and his parrot express themselves in a highly controlled (rehearsed, premeditated) manner (2.4.7-8 meditataque verba / reddideras). The bitter irony of this transformation is further increased by the fact that the expression meditata verba is an instance of Statius ‘parroting’ his own phrasing in Silv. 2.1.74, where, quite tellingly, he contrasts the unparalleled naturalness of Atedius Melior’s deceased puer delicatus with the compositosque sales meditataque verba uttered by a child slave who ingratiates himself with a potential buyer.16 Thus it hardly comes as a surprise that in the intertextual fabric of Silvae 2.4, too, the process of transforming transient reality into an enduring literary text effectively becomes synonymous with constraints – both painful and immortalizing – imposed by bodily metamorphoses. To begin with, the “stifling” of the parrot’s imitative voice (quis tua tam subito praeclusit murmura fato? 2.4.3) emulates Cycnus’ transformation into a swan in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.17 The birds that

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Cf. Plin. NH 10.117 (imperatores salutat et quae accipit verba pronuntiat) and Martial 14.73 (psittacus a vobis aliorum nomina discam: / hoc didici per me dicere: Caesar have). On ave Caesar as an expression routinely taught to birds, see Newlands 2005: 161-162 and 2011, ad loc., with further references. Cf. Fitzgerald 1995: 28-29; Wray 2001: 68; Holzberg 2002: 61-67. Ov. Am. 2.6.26 and 37. Cf. Boyd 1987; Myers 1990; Houghton 2000. Cf. Dietrich 2002; Myers 2002 On similarities and differences between Atedius Melior’s toy boy and his parrot, see Asso 2010: 674-675. Stat. Silv. 2.4.9-10 (cedat Phaetontia vulgi / fabula: non soli celebrant sua funera cycni). Cf. Ov. Met. 2.367-380. On the Ovidian associations of the parrot’s stifled voice, see Dietrich 2002: 101-103, Myers 2002: 198, and Newlands 2011, ad loc. See also

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Statius, following Ovid’s Amores 2.6 (1-16), assembles for the parrot’s funeral are also both imitative and metamorphic: on the one hand, their ability to mimic human speech is said to be a result of training (doctae aves, 2.4.16) and a gift of nature (quis nobile fandi ius Natura dedit, 2.4.16-17), but on the other, almost all of them derive from Ovid’s Metamorphoses – an imperial poem par excellence – where their imitative avian form and/or their curtailed power of verbal expression function as punishments for their various transgressions.18 The fact that they are now to repeat verbatim the dirge taught to them by Statius, in which echoes of Ovid’s parrot poem are even more pronounced than elsewhere in the poem,19 seems to indicate that they have all learnt the lesson quite well. And finally, the last image of the poem, in which the dead parrot is presented as resembling another Ovidian creature – a happier version of the phoenix (phoenix felicior, 2.4.37)20 – forever transforms Melior’s imitative bird into an image of poetic immortality. 21 The conspicuous analogies between the parrot’s existential dependence on being able to reproduce human speech, the status of Melior’s private world as an imitation of the conceptual space of empire, and the poet’s entrapment both in the poetic tradition and in the system of patronage confirm the crucial role of mimicry as a means of survival in the imperial world. But within this system of analogies, there is one thing that only the poet can do:22 Statius’ mimicry serves not only to flatter his social superior, but also to transform a finite individual life (not only the parrot’s but ultimately also Melior’s) into a richly intertextual artefact – a piece of imperial culture miniaturized into a potentially eternal poetic image.

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Newlands 2005: 163 on the parrot enacting “the life of a courtier, rewarded for its ‘safe’, rehearsed speech with a life of comfort and pleasure.” Stat. Silv. 2.4.17-21 Phoebeius ales […] Aonio versae certamine picae, / quique refert iungens iterata vocabula perdix, / et quae Bistonio queritur soror orba cubili. Cf. Ov. Met. 2.544-563 (the raven ), 5.669-678 (the Pierides transformed into magpies), 8.236259 (the partridge), 6.667-673 (Philomela transformed into a nightingale). Cf. Colton 1963; Dietrich 2002: 101-102. On a talking starling (2.4.21 sturnus), see Plin. NH 10.120. Cf. Stat. Silv. 2.4.24-25 occidit aeriae celeberrima Gloria gentis / psittacus, ille plagae viridis regnator Eoae and Ov. Am. 2.6.1-2 Psittacus, Eois imitatrix ales ab Indis, / occidit. For further Ovidian parallels, see van Dam 1984, 358-367; Newlands 2011: 188192. Ov. Met. 15.391-407. Cf. Ov. Am. 2.6.54, where Corinna’s parrot meets the phoenix in the underworld. Newlands 2011: 192: “The metamorphosis moreover gives the parrot and his poem immortality.” The contrast between Statius’ self-understanding and Persius’ image of the parrot (among other speaking birds) as a metaphor for a hungry poet thoughtlessly repeating what his patron wants to hear is quite revealing. Cf. Persius, prol. 8ff. quis expedivit psittaco suum ‘chaere’ / picamque docuit nostra verba conari? / magister artis ingenique largitor / venter, negatas artifex sequi voces, etc.

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Private spaces in Statius’ Silvae are generally conceptualized along similar lines. Enclosures of private homes and estates described by Statius are not only emphatically commensurate with their inhabitants’ limited lifespans, but are also sometimes explicitly presented in terms of voluntary slavery, connoted as the only conceivable means of gaining self-control and happiness. For instance, Flavius Ursus’ prematurely deceased puer delicatus is praised in Silvae 2.6 for his willing acceptance of a “sweet servitude” (cui dulce volenti / servitium, 15-16), which results in the state of being “imperious to himself” (sibique / imperiosus, 16-17).23 Similarly, the artificial landscape of a private estate – in notable contrast to the traditional protestations against the inherent perversion of such transformations of nature24 – is portrayed in Silvae 2.2 as ecstatic (52ff., esp. 58: gaudet humus) about being enslaved by its owner (cf. nobile … servitium, 108-109).25 Furthermore, such happily enclosed spaces are persistently declared to be realms of untroubled tranquillity sharply contrasted with the turbulent world of nature outside their boundaries.26 In addition, Statius’ private spaces are understood as semantically rich – and profoundly intertextual – constructs that function as dense blended images, which, despite (or rather because of) their spatial and temporal limitations, can trigger innumerable associations.27 The acculturation of nature in Statius’ villas results in

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Newlands 2011, ad loc. comments on “Statius’ Stoicizing discourse on slavery.” Cf. Hardie 1983: 104-110; Rühl 2006: 186-188. Cf. e.g. Hor. c. 2.18 and 3.1; Sen. maior con. 2.1.13. See van Dam 1984: 227-228; Edwards 1993: 137-172; Myers 2000: 111-113. It is of utmost importance in this connection that the terms that Statius uses to describe Pollius’ subjugation of nature evoke the language of imperial conquest and colonization (52 victa, 56 domuit, 57 expugnantem, etc.). See Myers 2000: 113-114; Newlands 2002 179-182. See also Stat. Silv. 3.1.167-169, where Hercules – a conqueror of the world himself – praises Pollius Felix for imitating his own creative subjugation of crude nature: qui rigidas rupes infecundaeque pudenda / naturae deserta domas et vertis in usum / lustra habitata feris. Cf. Newlands 2002: 293-294, esp. note 36; Myers 2005: 106-107; Rühl 2006: 305-306. E.g. Stat. Silv. 1.3.20-22 ipse Anien (miranda fides!) infraque superque / saxeus, hic tumidam rabiem spumosaque ponit / murmura. Newlands 2002: 305-306. On paradoxographical qualities of Statius’ landscapes that become apparent in such descriptions, see Myers 2000. Cf. Statius, Silv. 4.6.37-38, on the miniature statue of Hercules: parvusque videri / sentirique ingens, with Coleman 1988, ad loc. On the “super-dense,” or “replete” symbols of images, as opposed to the “differentiated symbolic system” of language, see Mitchell 1986: 66-69.

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blending the changeable seasons into a perennially temperate climate,28 as well as in condensed geographical catalogues granting virtual access to a variety of landscapes and remote locales:29 in keeping with a widespread imperial commonplace,30 even the exotic building materials evoke cultural memories and transform the circumscribed villa spaces into miniature images of the geographically vast empire.31 In addition, these private dwellings are not only oversaturated with images of imperial culture (the most famous marvels of Greek art as well as portraits of generals, poets, and philosophers are indeed everywhere to be seen)32 but are also cast as imaginary mythical spaces materialized in such a way as to surpass the represented originals by freezing them into images of untroubled perfection: in the pool of the baths of Claudius Etruscus in Silvae 1.5, for instance, Narcissus would have recognized himself more clearly and probably stayed alive, while Diana would have wanted to continue bathing even after being seen by Actaeon (5556);33 Hercules in Silvae 3.1 declares that he has not yet seen a better place to dwell than the temple whose construction he himself inspired on Pollius Felix’ estate;34 and Lysippus’ miniature statue of Hercules in Silvae 4.6 is said to prefer Novius Vindex’ convivial table to all other surroundings it has previously known

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Stat. Silv. 1.2.154-157: excludunt radios silvis demissa vetustis / frigora, perspicui vivunt in marmore fontes, / nec servat natura vices: hic Sirius alget, / bruma tepet, versumque domus sibi temperat annum; 1.3.7-8: talis hiems tectis, frangunt sic improba solem / frigora, Pisaeumque domus non aestuat annum; 2.2.26-29: mira quies pelagi: ponunt his lassa furorem / aequora et insani spirant clementius austri; / hic praeceps minus audet hiems, nulloque tumultu / stagna modesta iacent dominique imitantia mores. See Newlands 2002: 100-101, 128-129, and 169; Zeiner 2005: 77-82; Rühl 2006: 301. Stat. Silv. 2.2.45-51 and esp. 73-84: sua cuique voluptas / atque omni proprium thalamo mare, etc. Newlands 2002, 164-174. Stat. Silv. 1.2.148-153, 1.5.36-39. Newlands 2002: 94-95 and 209-210; Zeiner 2005: 84-90. For a possible historical pedigree of this commonplace, see Petrovic 2014. For a comparison between Statius’ villa descriptions and traditional laudes Italiae, see Myers 2000: 119. Cf. e.g. Stat. Silv. 1.3.90-106 and Virg. Geo. 2.136-176; Propertius 3.22.17-18. E.g. Stat. Silv. 1.3.47-48 vidi artes veterumque manus variisque metalla / viva modis; 2.2.63ff., esp. 69-70 ora ducum ac vatum sapientumque ora priorum / quos tibi cura sequi. Newlands 2002: 131 and 183-185; Zeiner 2005: 94-97. Cf. Newlands 2002: 207- 208; Zeiner 2005: 150-160. On Statius’ (and Martial’s in 6.42) description of Claudius Etruscus’ bathhouse as “a concentrated and personalized expression of imperial glamour,” see Rimell 2015: 198-214. Stat. Silv. 3.1.182-183 nec mihi plus Nemee priscumque habitabitur Argos / nec Tiburna domus solisque cubilia Gades. Cf. Hardie 1983: 125-128.

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– for it is only here that it has finally found a “happy repose” (4.6.96 laeta quies), where the heroism of epic battles has given way to the plenitude of culture.35 In a similar manner, the human inhabitants of these worlds are, like Melior’s parrot, presented as mythological blends that outshine their numerous prototypes in literature. In Silvae 1.2, for instance, Violentilla’s beauty is declared to be so superior to that of the most beautiful mythical heroines that, had she lived back in mythical times, none of the familiar myths involving those heroines would have ever taken place (Apollo wouldn’t have chased Daphne and Bacchus would have run away from Ariadne).36 Glaucias, Atedius Melior’s puer delicatus in Silvae 2.1, is said to have been so much better than the mythological children he resembles that, had he been one of them, Procne would not have torn him to pieces, Medea would have spared him, even if he had been Creusa’s son, and even Ulysses would have presumably prevented him from being thrown down from the Trojan city wall.37 As in the parrot poem, these dense intertextual images turn private lives into counterfactual realms in which imperial culture is used to construct voluntary confinements protected both from the vastness of space and from the vicissitudes of time – the certainty of death functioning as an analogy to spatial boundaries.38 And as in the parrot poem, these intertextual enclosures are presented as material projections of their owners’ inner worlds.39 The indescribable plenitude of material wealth (calcabam necopinus opes, 1.3.53; quae turba rerum! 2.2.44) suffused with

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Stat. Silv. 4.6.96-98: fortissime divum / Alcide, nec bella vides pugnasque feroces / sed chelyn et vittas et amantes carmina laurus. See Newlands 2002: 73-87; Rühl 2006, 241246. Cf. Mart. 9.43 on the same statue. On the “praise of quiet” in the Silvae in general, see Myers 2000: 122-125; Nauta 2002: 308-323. Stat. Silv. 1.2.130-133. Cf. Zeiner 2005: 138-150. Silv. 2.1.140-145. On Statius’ Glaucias, see Bernstein 2005 and Asso 2010. On Martial’s Glaucias poems (6.28 and 29), see Grewing 1997, ad loc. Flavius Ursus’ puer delicatus is described in Silvae 2.6.25-35 in similar terms. On such “competitive comparisons”, or “Überbietungen” in the Silvae in general, see Damon 2002. Cf. Stat. Silv. 2.2.127-129: dubio quem non in turbine rerum / deprendet suprema dies, sed abire paratum / ac plenum vita. In fact, the enclosed spaces of Statius’ villas seem to serve as material manifestations of Seneca’s motif of life as dying every day: Sen. Ep. 1.2: quem mihi dabis qui aliquod pretium tempori ponat, quo diem aestimet, qui intellegat se cotidie mori? And 24.20: cotidie morimur; cotidie enim demitur aliqua pars vitae, et tunc quoque cum crescimus vita decrescit. Cf. Schönegg 1999: 95-98. On enclosed spaces (including the textual spaces of single letters) as icons of a finite human life in Seneca’s Epistles, see Rimell 2015: 113-147, esp. 120-121. Cf. Stat. Silv. 2.2.29: stagna modesta iacent dominique imitantia mores: Newlands 2002: 127-138; Myers 2005.

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culture,40 which marks the distinction between the private homes of Statius’ patrons and the outside world, is cast not as a Roman moralist’s symbol of slothful inactivity,41 but serves to construct the only conceivable kind of space in which one can truly remain oneself. In these emphatically Epicurean spaces,42 possession of wealth is synonymous not only with the ability to surround oneself with the costly materiality of art and architecture and to enjoy leisure made meaningful by learning (docta otia, 1.3.108-109), but also with philosophical self-possession – the state of being at one with oneself (compositus semperque tuus, 2.2.72).43 These private spaces are thus understood as materialized realms of the mind (celsa … mentis ab arce, 2.2.131) that showcase their owners’ turn away from the uncertainties of imperial politics and towards the self-control granted by poetry and philosophy.44 It is apparently only here that one can experience as belonging to oneself a life that is always already intertextual – nothing but a mosaic consisting of overlapping variations on familiar paradigms of imperial culture –, effectively putting into practice Seneca’s injunction to “imitate the bees” (apes debemus imitari, Ep. 84.4): the idea is not just to copy received wisdom but to use its eclectic fragments in order to construct a meaningful life of one’s own.45 And finally, like the parrot poem, Statius’ other private poems construct (inter-)textual spaces that encapsulate and immortalize his addressees’ lives. On the surface, one of these poems’ most conspicuous conceits is the standard Bescheidenheitstopos presenting the poet as merely a passive observer so overwhelmed by the incredible material and cultural riches he confronts at his patrons’ estates that he can only hope to produce pale reflections of their limitless perfection.46 At the same time, this clichéd rhetorical move is counterbalanced by Statius’ emphasis on the importance of creating poetic images that, in keeping with

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On material wealth in the Silvae and the poetic language Statius adopts to conceptualize it, see Zeiner 2005: 75-134. See e.g. Seneca’s Ep. 55 on Vatia’s villa: Henderson 2004: 62-92. Cf. Myers 2000: 108; Newlands 2002: 121-127; Rimell 2015: 127. In Silvae 1.3.91-94, for instance, Statius claims that Epicurus would have gladly exchanged his Athenian garden for Manilius Vopiscus’ estate at Tibur. See Hardie 1983: 176-179; Newlands 2002: 131-132; Myers 2005: 108-111. For a comparison between Statius’ “Epicurean” villas and the Villa dei Papiri, see Myers 2000: 110, with bibliography. Cf. Cancik 1968: 72. See Myers 2000: 109, on the Roman villa as “a locus for the statement of intellectual and social ideals,” and 120-125, on the “politics of otium” in the Silvae, with further references. See also Myers 2005: 109-111. Schönegg 1999: 69-72; Kirichenko 2013a: 220-221; Rimell 2015: 143 and 188. Stat. Silv. 1.3.48ff.: labor est auri memorare figuras, etc.; 2.2.36-44: non, mihi si cunctos Helicon indulgeat amnes / et superet Piplea sitim largeque volantis / ungula se det equi reseretque arcane pudicos / Phemonoe fontes vel quos meus auspice Phoebo /

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the commonplace familiar from Pindar, Horace, and Ovid,47 not only mimic the memorializing function of public monuments, but are also more durable than any element of the material world.48 What is more, since Statius presents his patrons’ estates and houses as materializations of Greco-Roman culture, his descriptions serve to distil the fragile materiality of these spaces into their conceptual essences. In so doing, he preserves them forever as poetry, which, in the poems’ fiction, they already intrinsically embody.49 II The poems in which Statius conceptualizes public spaces controlled by Domitian rely on similar rhetorical mechanisms – representing observable reality as superior to myth and striving to create timeless icons which capture its unprecedented perfection. But when these mechanisms are applied to the boundless expanses of empire ruled over by, and notionally conterminous with, the already deified emperor,50 rather than to private enclosures commensurate with their owners’ human lives, they inevitably produce a radically different effect. In Silvae 2.5, Statius creates a poetic image of one of the most paradigmatic imperial spaces of Domitian’s Rome – the Flavian amphitheatre. His depiction of the death of a tame lion at the arena displays a number of notable similarities with his portrayal of the death of Melior’s parrot: as an exotic animal forced to obey human will, the lion is also an imperial symbol;51 its death, too, arouses the on-

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altius immersa turbavit Pollius urna, / innumeras valeam species cultusque locorum / Pieriis aequare modis. See Myers 2000: 125-138; Newlands 2002: 131. Pi. P. 6.10-14, Hor. C. 3.30.1-5, and Ov. Met. 15.871-872. At the beginning of Silvae 5.1, Statius evokes the standard topos by emphasizing the “mortality” of material images (sed mortalis honos, agilis quem dextra laborat, 10) in contrast to the eternity of poetry (longa nec obscurum finem latura perenni / temptamus dare iusta lyra, 12-13). Cf. Myers 2000: 106. Note that even the creation of artificial landscapes is sometimes compared in Statius to the transformation of nature by poetry in myth. E.g. Stat. Silv. 2.2.60-62: iam Methymnaei vatis manus et chelys una / Thebais et Getici cedat tibi Gloria plectra; / et tu saxa moves et te nemora alta sequuntur. Cf. Newlands 2002: 156. For Domitian as dominus et deus, see Suet. Dom. 13. On Domitian’s divinity, see Sauter 1934; Scott 1936; Gering 2012. The poem opens with the paradox of the lion submitting to the power of a weaker master (imperiumque pati et domino parere minori, 2.5.3); like the parrot, the lion is paralleled (and favourably contrasted) with a series of other exotic – imperial – animals (inter tot Scythicas Libycasque et litore Rheni / et Pharia de gente feras, 2.5.28-29). Cf. Nauta

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lookers’ sympathy; and even its cage (infelix cavea, 2.5.12), like the parrot’s, appears to lament the death of its inhabitant.52 But these obvious parallels make the differences between the spaces constructed in these two poems all the more revealing. Unlike Melior’s home, the amphitheatre is an image of empire that is not domesticated by personalized references to imperial culture, but is, like empire itself, entirely dominated by the emperor – a space where the slaughter of countless animals and humans serves not only to entertain, but also to make the spectators grasp the absolute boundlessness of his power.53 At the amphitheatre, it is not so much the imaginative projection of the cultural past as the physical presence of the emperor that serves as the main factor endowing observable reality with meaning.54 In keeping with these conceptual characteristics of the arena, what redeems the lion’s death in Statius’s poem is not its transformation into a symbol of poetic immortality, but ultimately the emperor’s fleeting – and notably subdued – emotional reaction (magni quod Caesaris ora … unius amissi tetigit iactura leonis, 2.5.27-30). The composition of the poem itself is similarly vindicated not so much by the desire to inscribe a trivial event in the intertextual interstices of GrecoRoman culture as by the fact that it was presented to the “most sacred” emperor on the spur of the moment (leo mansuetus, quem in amphitheatro prostratum frigidum erat sacratissimo imperatori ni statim tradere, praef. 2.17ff.).55 In the space of the amphitheatre, neither the lion’s death nor the living poet’s activity thus seems to make much sense without being validated by the emperor. This is of course not to say that in this poem Statius refrains from imposing intertextual matrices on portrayed events. Interestingly enough, however, Statius’ interpretation of the lion’s death in literary terms also turns out to be predicated upon the emperor’s supremacy. When Statius emphasizes that the patently unscripted – and rather shameful – death of the lion, killed by a fleeing animal he

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2002: 403; Augoustakis 2007: 219. For a comparison between the lion’s submissiveness and the “recalcitrance of the German tribe of the Chatti” subjugated by Domitian, see Augoustakis 2007: 208-213. To heighten the pathos, this lament is echoed by the lion’s fellow sufferers: tum cunctis cecidere iubae puduitque relatum / aspicere et totas duxere in lumina frontes, Silv. 2.5.14-15. Cf. Newlands 2005:165-173; Augoustakis 2007: 208. Weeber 1994: 145-155; Coleman 2006: lxxii-lxxv; Krasser 2006: 273-276. On the amphitheatre as an icon of bounded boundlessness, see Rimell 2013. The best evidence for the emperor as the ultimate source of meaning at the arena is Martial’s liber spectaculorum. See e.g. Mart. Spect. 5.3-4: nec se miretur, Caesar, longaeva vetustas: / quidquid fama canit, praestat harena tibi; 30.7-8: numen habet Caesar: sacra est haec, sacra potestas, / credite: mentiri non didicere ferae, with Coleman 2006. Cf. Krasser 2006: 281-284. Augoustakis 2007: 207-208; Nauta 2008: 148.

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was originally supposed to hunt,56 in fact resembles the glorious death of a soldier who, despite being mortally wounded, continues to attack his enemy,57 he effectively inverts the standard Homeric simile comparing fighting heroes to lions.58 It is, however, the presence of Domitian the living god (cf. Suet. Dom. 13: dominus et deus) that ultimately allows Statius to transform this accident into a notional reenactment of a typical epic scene – with the emperor almost posing as Homeric Zeus watching the fighting from up high and the lion dying like an epic hero.59 And it is only once the lion’s death at the amphitheatre has been understood in terms of a god witnessing the death of a hero that another cultural reference can be discerned as well: the comparison of the lion to a famous gladiator dying “on the grim sand” (ceu notus caderes tristi gladiator harena, 2.5.26) makes this incident appear like a scene from Seneca’s theatrum mundi, in which the image of a gladiator’s fight serves as a metaphor for a wise man’s fight against Fortuna before the eyes of god.60 In the context of the arena, Statius’ portrayal of the lion’s unscripted death as a re-enactment of a literary paradigm can additionally be understood as a retrospective interpretation of the venatio as a kind of a “fatal charade” – a staged execution in which sentenced criminals died while impersonating mythological characters.61 It is noteworthy that the chillingly vivid manner in which such mythological enactments figured the inscrutable mechanisms of imperial justice62 is often presented in literature as crucially dependent upon the representational paradox inherent in the convergence and/or divergence between myth and its materialization at the arena – the seeming fusion betraying a tension between the physical

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Stat. Silv. 2.5.11: sed victus fugiente fera. Cf.Cancik 1971: 76; van Dam 1984: 379380. Stat. Silv. 2.5.19-23: sicut sibi conscius alti / vulneris adversum moriens it miles in hostem / attollitque manum et ferro labente minatur, / sic piger ille gradu solitoque exutus honore / firmat hians oculos animumque hostemque requirit. E.g. Hom. Il. 3.21-30, 5.136-143, 5.555-560, 11.112-130, 11.172-178, 12.40-48, 16.752-761, etc. Cf. Van Dam 1984: 383-385. For a comparison between the lion’s ‘heroism’ and the representation of heroic valour in Statius’ Thebaid, see Augoustakis 2007: 215-219. E.g. Sen. Prov. 2.7-9. Cf. Kirichenko 2013a: 240-241. On Statius’ lion as a Stoic, see Pavlovskis 1973: 191. On such executions in general, see Coleman 1990. Cf. Coleman 1990: 72: “In this context the emperor was seen to be the person who enabled the ultimate processes of the law to take their course, and at the same time provided thrilling and novel entertainment for his people. [...] Yet the roles are reciprocal: the spectators by their presence endorse the workings of justice, and by their participation they help fulfil its aims.”

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reality of the dying ‘actor’ and the fictionality of the impersonated character. 63 Statius’ lion poem – in marked contrast to his private poems – also seems to echo this representational incongruity in that it fails to cast a protective literary veil over reality by conjuring up the illusion of identity between the two, but rather indicates the extent to which the events portrayed and the intertextual matrices we are encouraged to apply to them do not in fact coincide. What is most revealing is that it is not the lion but the emperor who lays bare the discrepancy between the reality of the arena and the literary re-enactment notionally staged in Statius’ poem. While the lion at first strikes the audience as a credible representation of an epic hero or heroic gladiator,64 there is a poignant mismatch between Domitian’s observable behaviour and the cultural paradigms that the poem makes available for its conceptualization: instead of the Homeric gods’ profound emotional involvement in the suffering of epic heroes,65 or instead of the Stoic god’s joy at the gladiator defeating Fortuna,66 all we get is a slight change in the emperor’s facial expression (magni Caesaris ora … unius amissi tetigit iactura leonis, 2.5.27-30) caused by the all too human concern of the owner for the loss of his cherished possession – explicitly contrasted here with other exotic animals “whose loss is cheap” (quas perdere vile est, 2.5.29).67 The emperor’s presence, which makes it possible to see the lion’s death as a re-enactment of a literary motif in the first place, simultaneously reveals it as just that – a mere show in which the lion impersonating a human hero obviously remains a lion and a man impersonating a god all too obviously remains a man. Crucially, the poem presents the emperor’s subdued emotional reaction, sharply contrasted with the unrestrained groans of the rest of the audience (maesti populusque patresque, […] ingemuere, 2.5.25-27), as an almost paradoxical event that lends significance to the lion’s otherwise senseless death – as if they were

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Cf. e.g. Mart. Spect. 9.11-12: vicerat antiquae sceleratus crimina famae, / in quo, quae fuerat fabula, poena fuit and 24, esp. 5-8 adfuit inmixtum pecori genus omne ferarum / et supra vatem multa pependit avis, / ipse sed ingrato iacuit laceratus ab urso. / Haec tantum res est facta παρ᾿ ἱστορίαν. See also Mart. Spect. 8. Cf. Coleman 1990: 62-63 and 2006: 174-175; Kirichenko 2010: 45-68. Cf. Stat. Silv. 2.5.25-27: quod te maesti populusque patresque / […] / ingemuere mori. For the Homeric gods getting emotionally involved in human affairs, see e.g. Hom. Il. 8.30-37, 8.245-246; 8.462-468, 13.15-16, 17.648-650, 19.340-341, 24.23-24. See especially Hom. Il. 16.459-461, where Zeus cries blood because he cannot save Sarpedon, who, like many other Homeric heroes, is compared to a lion: 12.292-293 Σαρπήδονα …. λέονθ’ ὣς βουσὶν ἕλιξιν. Cf.. Sen. Prov. 7ff., esp. 9: non video, inquam, quid habeat in terris Iuppiter pulchrius, si convertere animum velit, quam ut spectet Catonem iam partibus non semel fractis stantem nihilo minus inter ruinas publicas rectum. Pace Krasser 2006: 286-287, who interprets Domitian’s reaction as an expression of misericordia.

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witnessing the miracle of a moving (or crying?) statue rather than a natural human reaction.68 It seems, in other words, as though the material presence of the emperor in the space of the arena acquired the role of the ultimate super-signifier – the role played in the private poems by the Greco-Roman cultural tradition. Needless to say, this substitution produces a disquieting cognitive effect that results in a thorough destabilization of the system that on the surface appears to be indestructibly monolithic. While in the private poems the projection of a shared cultural past leads to the construction of a semantically rich, comforting image of a circumscribed individual existence, the lion poem portrays a defamiliarized world whose meaning is entirely determined by a rather precarious signifier – a mortal posing as a (statue of a) god. The space that emerges as a result forms a stark contrast to the comfortable familiarity of the beatus carcer of a private home: it is a gaping void engulfing everything and everyone – the innumerable exotic animals quas perdere vile est, the lion, whose submission to another’s will is obviously of no avail (quid tibi constrata mansuescere profuit ira? 2.5.1), the spectators groaning at the lion’s fate, and the poet creating a poetic image of that void. Other poems in the Silvae which deal with Domitian’s imperial spaces enact in similar ways the inherent fragility of a world conceptualized exclusively by means of such a totalitarian signifier, a world whose materiality aims to eclipse, or to replace, images enshrined in cultural tradition. The only other poem set at the Flavian amphitheatre – Silvae 1.6 – is an ecstatic encomium of a Saturnalian feast given by Domitian,69 which celebrates the boundlessness of empire – various dainties, birds, and entertainers flocking into the arena from all of the imperial world.70 But conspicuously, the poem fails to conceal the instability of the conceptual system that it purports to promote. On the one hand, the favourable contrast between the material presence of the deified Domitian (nostri Iovis,1.6.27) and the perennial absence of all other gods,71 as well as the

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On the possibility that Domitian is portrayed in this poem as crying, see Krasser 2006; Augoustakis 2007. Contra Newlands 2005: 168-169. Cancik 1965: 100-108; Newlands 2002: 227-259; Newlands 2003; Rühl 2006: 329-334. Stat. Silv. 1.6.12-16: quidquid nobile Ponticis nucetis / fecundis cadi aut iugis Idumes / quod ramis pia germinat Damascos / et quod percoquit Ebosea Caunos / largis gratuitum cadit rapinis; 55-56: credas ad Tanain ferumque Phasin / Thermodontiacas calere turmas; 70-72: hoc plaudunt grege Lydiae tumentes, / illic cymbala tinnulaeque Gades; 75-78: inter quae subito cadunt volatu / immensae volucrum per astra nubes, / quas Nilus sacer horridusque Phasis, / quas udo Numidae legunt sub austro. Cf. Newlands 2002: 241-245. Stat. Silv. 1.6.46-48: et tu quin etiam (quis hoc vocare, / quis promittere possit hoc deorum?) / nobiscum socias dapes inisti.

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statement that the Golden Age enacted in Domitian’s Saturnalia makes the mythical Golden Age of Saturn pale by comparison, 72 reproduce the logic of other Flavian panegyrics – most notably, of Martial’s Liber spectaculorum, where imperial shows are generally described as a series of myths come alive.73 But on the other hand, the effect produced by literalising the myth of the Golden Age in the context of the Saturnalia is particularly bizarre – especially by comparison with earlier imperial panegyrics. Augustan poetry, where the idea of the emperor’s rule as the return of the Golden Age is first explicitly developed in literature, is extremely careful to avoid the unwelcome confusion between the newly established eternal prosperity and peace of empire and the carnivalesque lawlessness of the – temporally limited – Saturnalian festival.74 In Neronian literature, the uncomfortable notion of the new emperor’s Golden Age as a never-ending carnival appears, on the contrary, to have been thoroughly thought through: for the author of the second Carmen Einsiedlense, the Saturnalian contentment of the imperial Golden Age is a source of depression (satias mea gaudia vexat, CE 2.9),75 while in the subversively carnivalesque atmosphere of Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis the beginning of the Neronian Golden Age coincides with the end of the perennial Saturnalia under Claudius – which paradoxically blurs the distinction between the two and makes the very notion of the eternally blissful rule of a divinized emperor sound like a Saturnalian joke.76 The effect produced by Statius’ literally equating the emperor’s

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Stat. Silv. 1.6.39-42: i nunc, saecula compara, Vetustas, / antiqui Iovis auremque tempus: / non sic libera vina tunc fluebant / nec tardum seges occupabat annum. Cf. Mart. Spect. 5, 9, 14, 17, 19, 24, 25, 28, 29, 30, 32, 34, cf.Coleman 2006. See Versnel 1993: 137-205, esp. 191: “One can focus either on the beneficent or on the disquieting aspects of the alternative world and the choice for either one is basically dependent upon one’s representation of the alternatives. The happy vision of the Saturnia regna isolates blissful aspects and closes its eyes to the precarious side of the picture.” On the return of the Golden Age Augustan poetry, see also Kubusch 1986: 128133, Zanker 1987: 177-188; Galinsky 1996: 106-121. Note, however, Denis Feeney’s remarks on Augustan texts that make the return of the Golden Age appear like a significantly more “differentiated concept” (esp. Horace’s Epode 16): Feeney 2007: 131-134, with further references. Cf. Kirichenko 2014: 36. The relief that Claudius’ never-ending Saturnalia are finally over (Sen. Ap. 8: si mehercules a Saturno petisset hoc beneficium, cuius mensem toto anno celebravit Saturnalicius princeps, non tulisset; 12: iurisconsulti e tenebris procedebant, pallidi, graciles, vix animam habentes, tamquam qui tum maxime reviviscerent. ex his unus, cum vidisset capita conferentes et fortunas suas deplorantes causidicos, accedit et ait: „dicebam vobis: non semper Saturnalia erunt“) is emphatically juxtaposed in the Apocolocyntosis with the praise of the new Neronian Golden Age (Sen. Ap. 4). To complicate matters, the Roman people celebrating this joint event (Claudius’ death and the beginning of Nero’s reign) are said to behave in a manner appropriate to the temporary license of the Saturnalia – “walking around as if they were free” (Sen. Ap. 12 populus

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Saturnalia with a new Golden Age is quite different: far from questioning Domitian’s divinity, he effectively reduces the postulated eternity of his rule to the bawdy materiality of an amphitheatrical show – with dates and cakes forever falling from the sky and the fighting dwarves and the prostitutes forever entertaining the enthusiastic populace.77 Whether or not one is willing to regard this “carnivalization” of panegyric as merely humorous, one cannot help but notice that, by substituting the lofty prophetic notion of the return of the utopian Golden Age with the Saturnalian literalness of Domitian’s euergetism,78 Statius’ poem, while purporting to create an eternal poetic icon of the conceptual system of the imperial rule, makes the system itself appear as ephemeral as the material goods distributed by the emperor at the arena.79 The notional substitution of the materiality of Domitian’s presence for the imaginary presences of culture is revealed as a source of inherent fragility of the conceptual system of empire in a number of other poems as well. In his by far most extravagant poem – Silvae 3.4, on the dedication to Asclepius of a lock of hair by the imperial eunuch Earinus –, Statius seems to draw an analogy between the symbolic timelessness embodied by its addressee (the perennially vernal Earinus)80 and Domitian’s hoped-for longevity, to which the city of Rome itself aspires.81 This self-evidently utopian view of Domitian’s projected eternity lays bare not only the precariousness of any mortal ruler’s aspirations to physical immortality but also the inability of imperial ideology to account for the prospect of this

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Romanus ambulabat tamquam liber). Cf. Nauta 1987; Versnel 1993: 205-227; Kirichenko 2014: 35. Stat. Silv. 1.6.9-27 (exotic food falling from the sky), 51-64 (fighting women and dwarves), 65-74 (prostitutes). Quite tellingly, Statius concludes his poem by effectively wishing that this day would last forever: quos ibit procul hic dies per annos? / quam nullo sacer exolescet aevo, / dum montes Latii paterque Thybris, / dum stabit tua Roman dumque terris / quod reddis Capitolium manebit! (1.6.98-102). Cf. Newlands 2002: 247-248; Newlands 2003; Krasser 2006: 281. On Statius’ (and Martial’s) Domitian poems as interpreting the emperor’s euergetism, see Nauta 2002: 387-412; Leberl 2004: 181-199. Cf. Veyne 1990: 320-419. Cf. Feeney 2007: 134-137, on the grotesque literalisation of the Golden-Age motif in post-Virgilian literature in general. On Earinus, see Henriksén 1997. On Statius’ Earinus poem, see Cancik 1965: 56-62; Hardie 1983: 121-124; Garthwaite 1984; Leberl 2004: 229-241; Rühl 2006: 342-347. In addition to the fact that, as a eunuch, Earinus can never reach manhood (cf. 3.4.7881), his longed-for timelessness is also stressed by the fact that his offering includes a quasi-photographic mirror intended to preserve his image forever (tu modo fige aciem et vultus hic usque relinque.’ / sic ait et speculum seclusit imagine rapta, 3.4.97-98). Stat. Silv. 3.4.103-105: eat, oro, per annos / Iliacos Pyliosque simul, propriosque penates / gaudeat et secum Tarpeia senescere templa. Cf. 4.3.158-163.

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particular – childless – emperor’s death without jeopardizing the stability of empire itself.82 In a similar way, the poem celebrating the beginning of Domitian’s seventeenth consulship – Silvae 4.1 – casts its addressee as the first emperor in history who can literally conquer the entire totality of space and time – not only the geographical expanses of empire but also the eternity of the Roman calendar, which become virtually synonymous with the mortal ruler.83 The disquieting consequences of Domitian’s presence notionally replacing the cultural imaginary are further displayed in Silvae 4.2 – a poem on a banquet that the emperor gave at his newly built palace on the Palatine.84 The fact that the palace is presented as a unique place where myth comes alive (with both the architecture of the palace itself and the opulence of the feast unequivocally superior to their forerunners in epic85 and the emperor himself comparable only to Jupiter feasting with the Ethiopians)86 turns Domitian’s materiality into a divine epiphany: his statuesque image ousts all representational images of Greco-Roman culture, virtually reducing the poet’s existence to insignificance, and eclipsing immaterial constructs of poetry that are bound to lose their relevance now that myth has become reality. 87 And

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Cf. Newlands 2002: 317-319, on Domitian’s childlessness making his longevity the only hope for empire’s stability. Janus admits Domitian’s sovereignty over time in general (Stat. Silv. 4.1.17-21), urges for its officially sanctioned application to the entire calendar (nondum omnis honorem / annus habet, cupiuntque decem tua nomina menses, 4.1.42-43, with Coleman 1988, ad loc.), favourably contrasts Domitian’s seventeen consulships with Augustus’ mere thirteen (4.1.28-34), and confidently predicts that Domitian will conquer the entire world – all the way to China (4.1.39-42). On Domitian effectively “replacing history” in Silvae 4.1, see Hull 2010. Cf. Hardie 1983: 192-194; Leberl 2004: 215-229; Rühl 2006: 310-314. Cancik 1965: 65-89; Coleman 1988: 82-84; Newlands 2002: 260-283; Zeiner 2005: 7273; Rühl 2006: 335-341; Nauta 2008: 149-150. Stat. Silv. 4.2.1-4 (Dido’s and Alcinous’ feasts); cf. Stat. Silv. 4.2.18, where Domitian’s palace is presented as a superior version of Latinus’ palace in Virg. Aen. 7.170. See Newlands 2002: 270-279; Malamud 2007:224-237, with additional references to Statius’ Thebaid. Stat. Silv. 4.2.53-56. Cf. Newlands 2002: 271-282; Malamud 2007: 242-243. Pace Newlands 2002: 263 and 270, who compares Statius’ stance in this poem to Pindar’s self-aggrandizing tone in Olympian 6.1-4. There is a crucial difference between Pindar constructing a metaphorical palace designed to immortalize the honorand’s deeds (cf. Kirichenko 2016) and Statius’ self-deprecating description of Domitian’s real palace. On the conspicuous absence of representational images in Domitian’s palace, see Malamud 2007: 233-234. Cf. Frederick 2003: 218-220. It is also symptomatic that Statius declares that the day he was invited to Domitian’s feast was in fact the beginning of his life, effectively annulling his previous existence: steriles transmisimus annos; / haec aevi mihi prima dies, hic limina vitae (4.2.12-13). Cf. Leberl 2004: 167-181.

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finally, in Silvae 4.3 – a poem on the completion of the new via Domitiana – Domitian is seemingly portrayed in almost the same terms as Statius’ villa owners: he enslaves both nature and humans in such a way as to make them embrace their submission with unbridled enthusiasm.88 The main difference between the emperor and his subjects, however, is that the emperor’s domain is not a comfortably enclosed plot of land contrasted with the uncultivated nature outside its boundaries and commensurate with its owner’s limited lifespan, but the entire universe to be governed forever. As a consequence of this totalizing vision, Domitian emerges as a disruptive force irrevocably changing the entire familiar structure of the world. That the enthusiasm caused by this transformation is inevitably tinged with anxiety is poignantly revealed in Statius’ allusive language that makes yet another version of the Virgilian Golden Age89 appear barely distinguishable from piled up adynata produced by an Ovidian cosmic catastrophe90 or from Lucan’s sombre view of empire, whose limitless expansion automatically leads to self-destruction.91

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The river Vulturnus is grateful to Domitian for its enslavement (sed grates ago servitusque tanti est / quod sub te duce, te iubente, cessi, / quod tu maximus arbiter meaeque / victor perpetuus legere ripae, Stat. Silv. 4.3.81-84), while the future oriental prisoners of war are described as eager to be speedily transported to Rome in a triumphal procession along the newly constructed road (ergo omnes, age, quae sub axe primo / Romani colitis fidem parentis / promo limite commeate gentes, / Eoae, citius venite laurus: / nil obstat cupidis, nihil moratur, 4.3.107-111). Cf. Myers 2000: 114; Newlands 2002: 291303. On the via Domitiana in general, see Coleman 1988: 102-105. The Sibyl’s speech in Stat. Silv. 4.3.124-164 is replete with echoes of Virgilian passages prophesying the advent of the Golden Age, esp. 128-133: en hic deus, hunc iubet beatis / pro se Iuppiter imperare terris, / quo non dignior has subit habenas / ex quo me duce praescios Averni / Aeneas avide futura quaerens / lucos et penetravit et reliquit (cf. Virg. Aen. 6.791-793: hic vir, hic est, tibi quem promitti saepius audis, / Augustus Caesar, divi genus, aurea condet / saecula) and 147 magnus te manet ordo saeculorum (cf. Virg. Ecl. 4.4-5: ultima Cumaeis venit iam carminis aetas; / magnus ab integro saeculorum nascitur ordo). See Cancik 1965: 108-115; Newlands 2002: 309-323; Leberl 2004: 199-215; Rühl 2006: 321-328. Cf. Stat. Silv. 4.3.135-138: hic si flammigeros teneret axes / Natura melior potentiorque, / largis, India, nubibus maderes, / undaret Libye, teperet Haemus and Ovid’s descriptions of the flood and the conflagration (Met. 1.253-312 and 2.171-271 tum primum radiis gelidi caluere Triones, etc., with Haemus mentioned at 2.219). On the links between Statius’ portrayal of Domitian and Ovid’s Phaethon, as well as Lucan’s Nero compared to Phaethon in the prologue to De bello civili (1.48-50), see Newlands 2002: 314-316. Cf. Stat. Silv. 4.3.155-157: ibis qua vagus Hercules et Euhan / ultra sidera flammeumque solem / et Nili caput et nives Atlantis. Needless to say, this prophecy is highly conventional (cf. Coleman 1988, ad loc.). But the mention of the future expansion of

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In the very first poem of the Silvae, this imperial anxiety, which makes the materiality of the autocratic signifier appear to embody the fragility of empire itself, comes to the fore with particular urgency. Silvae 1.1 describes the physical and conceptual transformation of the Roman Forum by the construction of Domitian’s colossal equestrian statue.92 By engulfing the Forum (Latium complexa forum, 1.1.2), the statue effectively turns this public space, replete with innumerable historical and cultural memories, into a purely Domitianic space.93 Conspicuously enough, the standard rhetorical commonplace of the Silvae and other Flavian panegyrics that posits contemporary reality as superior to cultural memories 94 is motivated here primarily by a comparison between visually perceptible material images – Domitian’s statue and other monuments around it95 –, while the new imperial palace under construction on the Palatine further reinforces the sense of Domitian’s visible supremacy.96 It is in other words the overwhelming monumentality of Domitian’s sculptural and architectural monuments that leads to the conclusion that the emperor himself surpasses mythical heroes and earlier rulers of Rome.97 The tangible materiality of Domitian’s Forum as a substitute for the conceptual constructs of poetry becomes even more apparent when Manlius Curtius,

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Domitian’s empire to the sources of the Nile evokes disquieting associations with Lucan’s De bello civili, where the impossibility of reaching the sources of the Nile is implicitly paralleled with the impossibility to put an end to the civil war: sed, cum tanta meo uiuat sub pectore uirtus, / tantus amor ueri, nihil est quod noscere malim / quam fluuii causas per saecula tanta latentis / ignotumque caput: spes sit mihi certa uidendi / Niliacos fontes, bellum ciuile relinquam (BC 10.188-192). See also the emphasis on the inevitable collapse of a boundlessly expanding empire in BC 1.82 (in se magna ruunt). Cf. Rossi 2005; Manolaraki 2011:153-182; Ferrari Pinney 2013: 134-137; Kirichenko 2014: 37-38; Rimell 2013 and 2015: 240-252. Cancik 1965;89-100; Ahl 1984: 91-102; Hardie 1983: 189-191; Geyssen 1996: 1-16; Newlands 2002:51-73; Leberl 2004: 143-167; Rühl 2006: 316-321. Ahl 1984: 91-92; Frederick 2003: 219. E.g. Stat. Silv. 1.1.8-21 nunc age fama prior notum per saecula nomen / Dardanii miretur equi, etc.: Geyssen 1996: 35-63; Newlands 2002: 55-59. Cf. Stat. Silv. 1.27-28 and 52-55. Stat. Silv. 1.1.22-31 par operi sedes (followed by a description of the temple of Julius Caesar, who admits Domitian’s superiority); 33 templa superfulges (followed by a reference to the temple of Vesta), etc. Cf. Vessey 1986: 2762-2764; Geyssen 1996: 87-91; Henderson 2003: 238-239; Dewar 2008. Stat. Silv. 1.1.33-34: et prospectare videris, / an nova contemptis surgant Palatia flammis / pulchrius. See esp. Stat. Silv. 84-90: cedat equus Latiae qui contra templa Diones / Caesarei stat sede Fori […] / quis rudis usque adeo qui non, ut viderit ambos, / tantum dicat equos quantum distare regentes? Cf. Ahl 1984: 99-101; Geyssen 1996: 66-81.

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roused by the din of the construction work on the statue,98 emerges from his lake to confirm Domitian’s unquestionable superiority by echoing the Heldenschau in Book 6 of Virgil’s Aeneid.99 But while Virgil’s prophetic vision of Rome’s future glory is likely to have inspired the arrangement of the statues at the Forum of Augustus,100 the relation between poetry and monumental art is completely reversed in Statius: this time, the imaginary visitor from the past is literally surrounded by the Forum’s material images and the auditum longe numen he addresses is Domitian’s colossal statue.101 Finally, the precariousness of a mortal ruler’s aspirations to eternal rule becomes most emphatically apparent from two allusions to the conclusion of Ovid’s Metamorphoses that frame Statius’ poem. Statius’ description of Julius Caesar as “the first to show our divinities the way to the sky by the gift of his adopted son” (adscitae munere prolis / primus iter nostris ostendit in aethera divis, 1.1.23-24) clearly evokes Ovid’s presentation of deification as an instance of self-evident fictionality comparable to the mythical stories of bodily transformations.102 This parallel reveals the colossal statue of divine Domitian as nothing but an imposing materialization of just such a dynastic fiction.103 But while Ovid redeems Caesar’s and Augustus’ divinity by evoking at the end of his epic the traditional notion that only poetry, not monumental art, can grant immortality, 104 Statius applies the

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Stat. Silv. 1.1.68-70: innumeros aeris sonitus et verbere crudo / ut sensit mugire Forum, movet horrida sancto / ora situ meritaque caput venerabile quercu. On the identity of Curtius, see Geyssen 1996: 104-105. The culmination of Aeneas’ vision is of course the image of Augustus himself (Virg. Aen. 6.791-792 hic vir, hic est, tibi quem promitti saepius audis) echoed in Domitian’s auditum longe numen mihi (Stat. Silv. 1.1.75). Galinsky 1996: 197–213, esp 206: “Virgil is likely to have been one of the inspirations behind the Augustan idea for an equivalent in his forum.” See also Zanker 1990: 211– 17; Geiger 2008: 53–115; Kirichenko 2013b: 77-78. Cf. Newlands 2002: 60-65. Caesar’s greatest deed singled out by Ovid is famously the fact that he “had fathered such a man” (Ov. Met. 15.758 tantum genuisse virum) – a legal fiction made explicit by Statius’ adscitae prolis –, and Augustus, along with Venus, is named in the Metamorphoses as the ultimate cause of Caesar’s divinity (Ov. Met. 15.760-761 ne foret hic igitur mortali semine cretus, / ille deus faciendus erat and 818-819 ut deus accedat caelo templisque colatur / tu facies natusque suus). See Feldherr 2010, 60-122. This dynastic fiction is further emphasized by the fact that at the end of the poem Domitian (i.e. his statue) is surrounded by his previously deified relatives (Stat. Silv. 1.1.95-98 tua turba relicto / labetur caelo miscebitque oscula iuxta. / ibit in amplexus natus fraterque paterque / et soror; una locum cervix dabit omnibus astris). Cf. Newlands 2002, 66-69. Ov. Met. 15.871-872 Iamque opus exegi, quod nec Iovis ira nec ignis / nec poterit ferrum nec edax abolere vetustas. Cf. Hor. c. 3.30.1-9; Pi. P. 6.10-14; Feldherr 2010, 7883.

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terms of Ovid’s epilogue (and Horace’s C. 3.30) to Domitian’s statue itself: in notable contrast with the standard motif, it is not so much the poem as the material monument described in it that is predicted to equal Rome and the world in eternity, withstanding the onslaught of time and natural elements. 105 By applying qualities normally associated with the immortalizing function of poetry to the brittle materiality of an imperial monument, Statius apparently purports to conjure up an image of the eternal stability of empire itself.106 But what he reveals instead is the intrinsic fragility of autocratic ideology and its monumental fictions: the postulated quasi-poetic eternity of Domitian’s material world is vitiated not only by the passages in the private poems, in which Statius aligns himself with Pindar, Horace, and Ovid in drawing a clear distinction between relatively short-lived material images and his own potentially eternal poetic images (cf. Stat. Silv. 5.1-13), but also, and more crucially, by the manner in which Statius portrays the dynamic and rather unpredictable mutability of monumental art in Silvae 1.1 itself: the old imperial palace burns down and is replaced by a new one, while the astonished neck of Lysippus’ statue of Alexander the Great suddenly discovers itself supporting the head of Julius Caesar.107 Conclusion The conceptualization of private and public spaces in Statius’ Silvae thus appears to be characterized by an equally intense, although differently motivated, sense of anxiety. Rather than providing a definitive answer to the old question of whether Statius intended to express “enthusiastic endorsement” or “safe criticism” of Domitian’s rule,108 this realization makes the question itself seem rather beside the point. For all intents and purposes, Statius is likely to have intended as much una-

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Stat. Silv. 1.1.91-94 non hoc imbriferas hiemes opus aut Iovis ignem / tergeminum, Aeolii non agmina carceris horret / annorumve moras: stabit, dum terra polusque, / dum Romana dies. Cf. Hor. c. 3.30.3-9 (imber edax, annorum series, etc.) and Ov. Met. 15.871-879 (nec Iovis ira nec ignis, etc.). Cf. Newlands 2002, 69; Nauta 2008, 144146. Quite tellingly, in other poems Statius applies similar terms not to Domitian’s statue but to Domitian himself: Stat. Silv. 1.6.98-102, 3.4.103-105, 4.3.158-163. Stat. Silv. 1.1.84-87 cedat equus Latiae qui contra templa Diones / Caesarei stat sede Fori, quem traderis ausus / Pellaeo, Lysippe, duci (mox Caesaris ora / mirata cervice tulit). Ahl 1984: 99-100; Newlands 2002: 65-66. For the view that Statius’ poems faithfully mirror imperial ideology, see e.g. Vessey 1986: 2798-2801; Geyssen 1996; Cordes 2014. For Statius practicing in the Silvae the art of ‘safe criticism’, see Ahl 1984: 85-102. Cf. Nauta 2002: 412-440; Rühl 2006: 357358.

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dulterated praise in his Domitian poems as in the poems addressed to private patrons. The source of anxiety suffusing these texts is not to be located in “authorial intention”. Nor is this anxiety simply a function of the general polysemy of poetic language.109 Rather, it appears to be an inevitable consequence of the conceptual properties of the spaces that Statius (re-)creates in the Silvae. The illusory security of Statius’ private spaces is largely predicated on their status as microcosms of empire: his private patrons use their (of necessity imperial) wealth to surround themselves with personally meaningful images of the shared – diffuse, self-perpetuating, and of necessity imperial – cultural tradition. By doing so, they construct anxiously shielded confinements of private existence conterminous with the limited span of their human lives. Conversely, the spaces of Domitian’s empire writ large are governed by the logic of autocracy, which ascribes to the material existence of the mortal ruler the role of a sole super-signifier endowing these spaces with meaning – notionally conterminous with empire’s postulated eternity and boundlessness and effectively replacing the cultural imaginary. What Statius does in the Silvae is to base the construction of the (inter-)textual spaces of his poems on an iconic analogy with their content. In the private poems, he re-enacts the protective function of imperial culture by reducing the materiality of personal lives to their inherent intertextual core and by presenting his own texts as immortalizing images of this immaterial essence. By contrast, in the imperial poems he does everything in his power to promote the notion of the perpetual stability of the material world of empire: by projecting onto the physical presence of the emperor an eternity traditionally reserved for poetry alone, he doubtless strives to emphasize the status of the mortal emperor as the ultimate source of meaning within the conceptual system of autocracy, yet it is precisely by doing so that he inevitably reveals the self-deconstructing fragility of the system itself.

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See Newlands 2002, passim, on poetic ‘faultlines’ by means of which Statius supposedly aims to point to alternative narratives that undermine, or even cancel out, his ostensible rhetoric of praise.

Free-Range, Organic, Locally-Sourced Satire: Juvenal Goes Global Tom Geue The swelling of the Roman satiric corpus is coextensive – perhaps I should say coexpansive – with the spread of the Roman empire. In some ways, the one enables the other. Our pitched camp defending ‘Romanitas’ takes root, no coincidence, when Hellenisation is well under way (Ennius with Cato and Scipio), runs through the kickback against the influx of slaves taking our jobs (Lucilius with the Gracchi), and comes of age as the great spoils of a tributary empire come home to Rome ever thicker and faster (Horace and the rise of all-conquering Octavian, Persius under Graeculus Princeps No. 1 Nero, Juvenal under Graeculus Princeps No. 2 Hadrian). Roman satire may be famous for its self-consciously doomed attempts to police an obsolescent, ‘pure’ space for the Roman self (tota nostra, as usual),1 and it does tend to stick determinedly to the Urbs – but it is precisely this avowed solipsism which makes it interesting for the complex tale of imagining imperial space. For by Juvenal’s time, that expanse of empire presses, encroaches, consumes, penetrates, interpolates, interpellates – and makes it difficult (not) to write satire at all. Most satire is deeply invested in producing space in some way, shape, or form. It thrives on articulating relative position: insides, outsides, boundaries, connection, separation, overlap. It often works to erect garden fences between the identity compartments of self and other, but just as often rubs the boundary line away, trampling on the very viability of landscaping such tidy sides into a disconcertingly networked world. The bumps, grinds, and flow of satiric form are a good way to capture the disobedient hyper-connectedness of empire, from hectic comings and goings (discursus Juvenal 1.86) to messy mash (farrago 1.86). And yet boundaries must be made first to be broken later. Juvenal leaps out as a particularly capacious case study when it comes to the sometime retracing, sometime cancellation, of bounded spaces.2 He produced his 1 2

Quintilian 10.1.93 (and it wouldn’t be a piece on Roman satire without this universal paragraph 1 fixture would it?). On the bumpy space and boundary-haunting of Juvenalian satire, see particularly Larmour 2007; for a wide-ranging study of Juvenalian spatial poetics, see Umurhan 2008. While many of his insights about dynamics of expansion and containment feed into this paper, I hope to push them further, and into less charted territory (his thesis clusters

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later satires at a time when ‘Rome’ was well and truly floated on the global market. The empire was at its height, and Greco-Roman cultural capital was in wide circulation; Hadrian, grand philhellene and ‘restless emperor’, was pinballing back and forth over the Roman territories like a right cosmopolitan executive. 3 As James Uden has recently shown, the satires internalise this telescopic logic of ‘Rome is the world and the world is Rome’ (if only to spew it back up again).4 With the free-flowing movement of goods and peoples now humming along at unprecedented levels, the inscription of an impermeable pomerium around Rome became increasingly unworkable – but that didn’t mean you couldn’t have a good time trying/an even better time failing.5 In this chapter, I shall contend that Juvenal mimics the economic elasticity of imperial space by shrinking the perimeter of the ‘domestic’ until, at the end of his corpus, it dissolves into a meaningless concept. I’ll measure in particular the strange movements of the last two poems of the last two books (Satires 11/12, and 15/16), which have taken place largely outside the mainstream critical frame.6 The first of these responsive closural pairs is fully dedicated to the shoring up of the domestic, private, individual, and parochial amid the overwhelming tide of ‘imperial’ space flooding the market.7 In Satire 11, The Persian One (Persicus) is invited over to Juvenal’s for a locally-sourced organic banquet that does its darndest to keep empire-wide goods out of the picture; in Satire 12, Juvenal spruces up his own house again by discarding the expensive imports of his merchant friend Catullus, and flushing out the worst domestic contaminants of all, the legacy hunters.

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heavily around the opening books, whereas this article will keep obstinately to the closing ones). Birley 1997 makes travel Hadrian’s hallmark: ‘The Restless Emperor’. Cf. Birley 1997: 173, and Vita Hadriani 17.8. Uden 2015: 203-15. See Uden 2015: 208 on this intensification of separation discourse; cf. König and Whitmarsh 2007: 12 ‘The concept of the local only becomes operative when globalisation is already at work’. For Hadrian’s reinscription of the pomerium, see Birley 1997: 112; and on the vexed question of how the pomerium relates to a vision of Rome’s imperial boundaries, see Umurhan 2008: 17. The relationship of imperial expansion to small-scale enclosure is a big theme of Rimell 2015 (e.g. 31) – I owe this brilliant book and its author’s keen editorial eye big time, even if she might cringe at the resulting displacement of her ideas. Work on these later satires is now becoming a gentle avalanche, thanks to Keane 2007, 2015 and Uden 2015. Cf. Larmour 2007: 210 on the attempt of 11 and 12 to secure a ‘fixed and comforting space’. On satire’s general tendency to flee indoors, see Rimell 2015: 4. Cf. also Rimell 2015: 84 on empire’s knack for generating fantasies of retirement (in Horace, with whom Juvenal 11 and 12 have traditionally been lumped).

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At the same time, both satires display a parallel anxiety about grooming bodily space:8 integrity and fixity is offset by partitioning and fluidity. In the diptych of 11 and 12, Juvenal’s polished facade tries to post up a studied indifference to the outside world. But the second closural pair (15 and 16) shows just how futile this attempt at full lock-out can look within the supple connective tissue of empire. Satire 15 gives us a domestic feud turned cannibalistic fiesta at the periphery, the implications of which have to be owned by the self-centre: that is, the satirist follows the law of cannibalism to such an extent that inside and outside space are forced to cohabit.9 As the emerging markets are consolidated into empire, there is truly nowhere left to run. Satire 16 spells the consequences of that congestion out for us: what happens in Egypt no longer stays in Egypt, but travels back to Rome, which is now the site for the smash-up and lock-out of regular civilians at the fisted hands of that greatest of body corporates, the Roman army. Interestingly, this satire draws curtains on the careful construction of Juvenal’s private estate in 11 and 12, both of which poems it dispatches in quick succession: the neighbour takes Juvenal’s modest patch (last seen in Satire 11), and the soldier-son renegotiates the terms of inheritance by paradoxically turning his father into a legacy hunter (last seen in Satire 12). If Satire 15 destroys the Roman city by swamping it in an incorrigible empire, Satire 16 destroys the Roman home by miring it in the firing line of that empire’s faceless engine (the army). Either way, the domestic self of book 4 dissipates into a bustling cosmopolis that no longer brooks segregation.10 And so satire takes the redundancy package at its peak, in its purest form: when there are no walls left to man. We are one – and it is horrible. Permit me one last bit on how this argument plays out at a theoretical level. The story told and conclusions made herein might sound (predictably) deconstructive: boundaries are set up to be knocked down, and a teleology of the Juvenalian career is harnessed to make these boundaries look ultimately illusory, provisional, and unsustainable. That line takes its cue from the tradition of self-directed/selfinclusive satire criticism, which holds that there can be no space between satirist and world, that satirist’s voice is part of the vice, and that satire works precisely through the spectacle of audience catching the performer red-handed.11 But I

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Many of my reflexes about open/closed bodies in Juvenal can be traced to Braund and Gold’s groundbreaker (1998), within which see especially Gold 1998. Umurhan 2008 is sharp on the flow between bodily and territorial space (see especially Chapter 3, 91157); cf. also Larmour 2007. The gendering of open/closed bodies is well-worn territory here: see for example Miller 1998 and Reckford 1998. For good theoretical unpacking of cannibalism, see Kilgour 1990. It keeps coming up in satire: Clark 1991: 132-8. On the inter-bleeding of private and imperial space, see Kirichenko in this volume pp. 167-171. Classic examples: Anderson 1982, Braund 1988.

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would stake out my own critical position to lie both inside and outside this tradition. While I clap the revolution that was persona criticism, I am also cautious of the corners it backs us into, especially when dealing with late Juvenal. The reception of Satire 11 is a nice example of applying an influential paradigm, only to see the poem stutter by standards it never really asked for in the first place. The ‘Horatian’ texture of Satire 11 has led some to squeeze hard for a kind of bumbling moralist figure; certain critics have wanted, oh, how they have wanted, to catch Juvenal out in the same way that Kirk Freudenburg might have nabbed Horace back in ‘93.12 In my view, however, this satire operates just as much by dragging us into the usual act of scrutinising the satirist, while at the same time denying us any real way to turn up dirt on him. The satire jabs at the puffed-up detective of a reader (smug scholar like you and me) who thinks there are always holes to dig, and tunnels between satiric self and target to root out. I suspect the unconvincing results generated by foisting a persona-directed approach on 11, not to mention other late Juvenal, has a part to play in the fact of these poems still struggling ‘outside’ the critical Rehabilitation Centre. Juvenal is usually more than ‘takes one to know one’ – and he deserves better. So while this paper eventually comes down on the side of ‘self-inclusive’ satire, I don’t want this to be taken as a prescriptive statement about how satire ‘must’ (always) work – or a dogma that good satire is necessarily self-inclusive. My reading of the arc of late Juvenal implies that it is difficult for imperial satire to act otherwise, due to the overpowering syntax of integrated space; and that Juvenal draws attention to empire as a force railroading satire in a certain direction. But that is a claim designed not to crowd out other satiric modes along the way. If satirists often try to make difference, but fail under the vigilant close reading of critics hell-bent on breaking that difference, I would like us to remember that this isn’t the only pattern possible (and if it were, satire would be a vapid affair indeed). Sometimes our attempts to burst the boundaries of inside and outside bring us into the fray, and bite us in the backside, just when we thought we had it all worked out. Painting the Picket Fence White I: Satire 11 Juvenal’s fourth book opens with a long philosophical gaze poring over the globe (omnibus in terris, 10.1). Our satirist here combs through a ton of exempla from many different corners of space and time.13 And then, come Satire 11, the scope suddenly narrows. Juvenal writes up his house for us via a dinner invitation to the

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Freudenburg 1993. For underwhelming attempts to read Satire 11 as tripped up discourse of a self-deflating moraliser, see Walker 2006: 81-95 (and cf. Weisinger 1972, Plaza 2006: 242). Uden 2015, 146.

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dodgily-named Persicus,14 but the inventory of furniture is very spare indeed. The Latin invitation poem sometimes liked to whet the invitee’s appetite only to leave him salivating, by focussing on what he would not be served that evening.15 But Juvenal takes this dummy step to the next level. The poem spends precious little time setting out the actual menu and entertainment, and much more detailing the items which will be denied entry. This is a monumental effort of tight-lipped domestic control, and the stretches and strains towards sumptuary regulation make fascinating patterns when combined with key themes of this chapter: space, movement, the body, and the oscillations between the outside and the inside, the global and the local. The poem gets going with a roundabout injunction to good fiscal discipline. Self-knowledge is converted into a working knowledge of your bank balance (noscenda est mensura 35). Lines 1-55 give us very little warning that Juvenal will be making an example of himself and Persicus via a long invitation in the rest of the poem.16 But this prologue usefully earmarks some of the spatial concerns of the invitation letter itself. The satire’s brow is furrowed over the membrane that separates public from private: how and when that membrane is breached, and how it might be reinforced and conserved against the odds. Talk of the poor wastrel Rutilus’ spending habits spills out across the gossipy spaces of Rome as soon as he’s mentioned: Omnis conuictus, thermae, stationes, omne theatrum de Rutilo. (11.3-5) Rutilus is the talk of every dinner party, every bathhouse, every piazza, every theatre.17

The town is always full of talk re: (guys like) Rutilus, because these gourmet types are framed by the leaky houses and bodies which (fail to) store them. They spill money, they swallow down food; but they also let the light in so we can see them at it, and they talk out so we can hear what they’re up to. Their porous shells let everything (including information) in and out. Note the remarkable stress on entrance, exit, and exposure in this opening section:

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‘The Persian One’ sets off alarm bells in a satire devoted to resisting foreign imports. On the simultaneous disgust and relish over what shouldn’t be invited to dinner, morally speaking, cf. Gowers 1993: 255. Satire 11 both does and doesn’t belong to the dinnerinvitation genre ‘proper’: see Adamietz 1972: 118-21, 159, Edmunds 1982: 185; Facchini-Tosi 1979: 180-88 is also good on the poem’s genre play. This structural problem has been a traditional sticking point for critics: see Adamietz 1972: 122, Jones 1990: 163, Facchini Tosi 1979: 189, Weisinger 1972: 228-9, Elwitschger 1992: 23. Translations are from Braund 2004.

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Tom Geue multos porro uides, quos saepe elusus ad ipsum creditor introitum solet expectare macelli, et quibus in solo uiuendi causa palato est. egregius cenat meliusque miserrimus horum et cito casurus iam perlucente ruina. (9-13) You can see many like him, of course. Their only reason for living lies in gourmandise. Their creditors, to whom they’ve often given the slip, always lie in wait for them at the entrance to the meat market. The one with the choicest and richest dinner is the most doomed, facing imminent disaster, with the cracks in his façade already letting in the light.

The moneylender lurks in wait for our Rutilus figure at the door of the meat market, and that macellus will come back shortly as the emblem of ‘unnatural’, commercial distribution networks in Rome enmeshing the domus too deeply in the comings and goings of empire. But equally striking is the fusion of market, body, and house through the common image of the orifice: the introitus becomes the palatum, the roof of the mouth, the gourmand’s sole reason for living, which then becomes a kind of hole-ridden building letting the light through the cracks (perlucente ruina). The bodies and buildings tied to these luxury types lose their integrity through the merciless eroding power of transactive traffic flow, in and out, back and forth. Two versions of bodily/domestic space – what we might call bounded and unbounded – keep popping up in various forms throughout the preface (and then the invitation proper). Juvenal tells you, his unnamed addressee, to lodge the divine directive γνῶθι σεαυτόν safe within your preserving breast (memori … pectore 28); make sure you know your limits, call yourself as you are, a serious orator or the puffed-up cheeks (buccae) of a Curtius or a Matho (33-4); watch out for the end awaiting you, with your ever-increasing appetite (gula) and stomach (ventrem) gulping down all your property (38-40). The fates of good man versus gourmand are written into the respective stability/instability, or closure/openness, of their bodies. The binary is drawn particularly sharply when the indebted bon viveur is finally chased out of Rome: talibus a dominis post cuncta nouissimus exit anulus, et digito mendicat Pollio nudo. non praematuri cineres nec funus acerbum luxuriae sed morte magis metuenda senectus. hi plerumque gradus: conducta pecunia Romae et coram dominis consumitur; inde, ubi paulum nescio quid superest et pallet fenoris auctor, qui uertere solum, Baias et ad ostrea currunt. cedere namque foro iam non est deterius quam Esquilias a feruenti migrare Subura. ille dolor solus patriam fugientibus, illa

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maestitia est, caruisse anno circensibus uno. sanguinis in facie non haeret gutta, morantur pauci ridiculum et fugientem ex urbe pudorem. (42-55) In the case of lords like these, the last thing to go is the little ring – and Pollio goes begging with his finger bare. It is not a premature demise or an early funeral that should strike dread into the extravagant – worse than death is old age. The usual stages are these. Money is borrowed at Rome and squandered right in front of the lenders. Then, when some tiny amount is left, they’re racing off to Baiae and its oysters. These days, you know, it’s no worse to be declared bankrupt than to move to the Esquiline from the seething Subura. The only grief, the only regret these fugitives experience is missing the Circus races for a year. Not a drop of blood lingers in their faces: Shame is mocked and, as she rushes out of Rome, there are few who detain her.

Here the perimeters all seem to fade. The equestrian ring, symbol of boundedness and solidity, drops off, leaving Pollio with an exposed finger; money is swallowed up at Rome, and when all is lost, the debtors rush off to Baiae and its posh shells, a movement beyond Rome explicitly compared to a movement within it; all they miss as they flee is the bounded space of the Circus (cf. below); and as they go, the blood drains from their face, just as Shame herself is drained from Rome. The accounts, body, and household of the bankrupt are riddled with holes: entrances and exits which lubricate and liberalise the flash-trading transactions of imperial Rome. These doors (floodgates) are swung wide open. Yet when Juvenal shockingly gives us a peep inside his own doors,18 we (don’t) see an interior kept in pristine order. The food is exclusively local, untainted by the commerce of the meatmarket (fercula…nullis ornata macellis 64).19 Juvenal’s robust little kid will come from his nearby Tiburtine farm – its ‘local’ label is authenticated by the fact that it’s too young even to roam the grass yet (668). The asparagus has zero food miles as well, picked by the bailiff’s wife when she’s done with her spinning (68-9). Eggs, grapes, pears, apples arrive by the basketload, all of them crisp, fresh, nursed nicely in their organic packages (70-76). In fact, if we pay attention to the geometric colour of this section, we see a predominance of soft round shapes: ovals, spheres, and circles, pictograms of wholeness and boundedness the likes of which our bankrupts could only warp, deform, 18 19

For the first and only time in the corpus – a big moment, for which we are nicely underprepared. For the market motif, cf. Martial Ep. 5.78, and Gowers 1993: 250. Rimell per litteras sagely counsels we shouldn’t take the label at face value (so warn Martial Ep. 7.31, 10.37, 10.94). But Sat. 11 teases the suspicious reader (nec metuenda tibi!) by waving her the great epistemological bind: we have no way of ‘checking’ the source/truth of these claims, as Juvenal promises Persicus a verification of his words in his deeds only when he comes to dinner (56-59) – and that is never going to happen. The poem gets us by deferring the certification and undermining of the free-range label – forever!

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and puncture. Indeed, the link between ring-fenced, local produce and circular spaces is particularly potent throughout the satire (cf. below). When Juvenal sets off early Roman satisfaction against boundless modern appetite, he sets a tortoiseshell (another arched shape!) bedpost, drawn from Ocean’s waves and bound for the ‘Trojan-born’ aristocracy (93-5), against a more balanced form of decoration: sed nudo latere et paruis frons aerea lectis uile coronati caput ostendebat aselli, ad quod lasciui ludebant ruris alumni. (96-8) Instead, their couches were modest with undecorated sides, the bronze front displaying a donkey’s head garlanded with a vine – and around this the naughty country children would play.

That bronze front piece depicts a donkey’s head wrapped in a garland, and the image seems to unleash a host of enclosures and vessels. Plundered Greek goblets are broken up and re-melted into helmets, spherical containers for the head (100103). Once upon a time, rustic Romans served cereal from Tuscan bowls (109). Table timber used to come from a local nut tree that happened to collapse (117-9) – a tree, that is, whose fruit wraps up a hard nugget of self-sufficiency at its core. Juvenal’s wait-staff slave only knows how to steal tiny meatballs (144) – perhaps of similar dimensions to his prepubescent testicles (156-7). This young fella is local too, just like the wine which he pours – bottled in the very same mountains from which he came (159-60). And remember: the drink will be served in normal cups purchased for a few tiny metallic circles (assibus 145). With these plentiful snippets of well-roundedness, compare what happens when the circles get too big: at nunc diuitibus cenandi nulla uoluptas, nil rhombus, nil damma sapit, putere uidentur unguenta atque rosae, latos nisi sustinet orbis grande ebur et magno sublimis pardus hiatu dentibus ex illis quos mittit porta Syenes et Mauri celeres et Mauro obscurior Indus, et quos deposuit Nabataeo belua saltu iam nimios capitique graues. hinc surgit orexis, hinc stomacho uires; nam pes argenteus illis, anulus in digito quod ferreus. (120-9) But these days, the rich get no pleasure from dining, the turbot and venison have no taste, the fragrances and roses seem rotten, unless the enormous round tabletop rests on a massive piece of ivory, a rampant snarling leopard made from tusks imported from the gate of Syene and the speedy Moors and from the Indian who is darker still, the tusks dropped by the beast in the Nabataean grove when they’ve become too large and heavy for its head. This is the source of rising appetite, this gives the

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stomach strength. To these people, a table leg made of silver is the equivalent of an iron ring on their finger.

The rhombus in Satire 4 (re-served here) famously failed to fit on its first circular dish (patina 4.72),20 so Montanus proposed a much bigger dish to accommodate its wide arc (orbem 4.132).21 Now the round world of a tabletop is the focal point of the rich man’s meal, carved from the extreme fruit of empire (ivory, cf. below), too big for the elephant’s head. And so the stomach gets bigger, and the ring (this time a more modest one) falls off again. The huge circles and spheres of the imperial economy distend the inflatable stomach, and the concentric ripples of flatulence never end. This space of the expanding orbis/orexis broadens into the section on the dinner party entertainment. As mentioned above, the body of Juvenal’s slave is a rare picture of wholeness in a corpus full of distortion;22 the body keeps its appendages and fluids under wraps, just as the local wine stays firmly in its place. This whole young virgin is all ripe for Persicus’ plucking. Juvenal next tells us he’ll have no Spanish (another import) dancing girls, because they elicit an explosion of the male body’s off-putting stock of bottled-up liquids: inritamentum ueneris languentis et acres diuitis urticae [maior tamen ista uoluptas alterius sexus]; magis ille extenditur, et mox auribus atque oculis concepta urina mouetur. (167-70) It provokes jaded desire and sharply goads the swollen cock vein. [yet greater is that pleasure experienced by the other sex] Its tension rises more and more and the next thing is that the sights and sounds make the pent-up liquid flow.

Such ejaculate directly responds to the table slave’s ingenuous genitals, which, we remember, are incapable of blasting off such a surprise (155-6). Equivalent to this spurt is the jet of wine, which spills from the vulgar diner’s mouth onto the imported marble floor: audiat ille testarum crepitus cum uerbis, nudum olido stans fornice mancipium quibus abstinet, ille fruatur uocibus obscenis omnique libidinis arte, qui Lacedaemonium pytismate lubricat orbem; (171-5)

20 21

22

See Umurhan 2008: 118-19 for the global fallout of this spillage. For the pun on orbis = world here, see Umurhan 2008: 134-5, and Ferguson ad loc. Cf. the orbis weighing on the praetor’s neck in 10.40, another similar pun (see Uden 2015: 163), and the other cases below. See also Umurhan 2008: 49. Perhaps the closest thing we get to an ideal male body in Juvenal (Gold 1998: 371-2) – and it’s really saying something that such a body is palmed off onto a slave.

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Tom Geue The cracking sound of castanets along with words too obscene for the naked slave standing for sale in the stinking brothel, enjoyment of disgusting language and all the pornographic arts – they are for the man who lubricates his patterned floor of Spartan marble with his spat wine.

Another orbis which is too big for its own good alongside another body which can’t hold its own boundaries. By contrast, the ethereal stuff emerging from the mouth at Juvenal’s party will be straight down the line, and above the belt: selections from Homer and Virgil, the conservative classics of the Greco-Roman tradition uttered in who cares what voice (180-2). The sensory element of poetic performance is stripped back to the text itself (versus): pure, original, authentic, consistent. Juvenal expels the dodgy elements from his domestic space (non capit…domus 171), disinfects all rooms and mouths in the area. No liquids leave the body through the urethra or the lips; no obscenity enters the ears. Instead, Juvenal shuts up shop with only the driest words of the driest poets in the droniest of tones. So Juvenal runs a tight ship of hardcore self-sufficiency. I could, should, will, and have been accused of straight reading here: sucked in, you stooge! Don’t you know you can never take a satirist at his word? Satire 101, duh! Such suspicion is native to us who live in the slipstream of persona, and I am doing my best – against the grain – to resist it. The point I want to make instead is that Juvenal flags how difficult it is to get him on this traditional front. By removing the clue of authorial presence, i.e. giving us no voice, no tone, no body to hold on to, no stage directions, no ‘telling the truth with a smile’, Juvenal rips the rug we rely on to ground our ‘ironic’ readings right out from underneath us. Quid refert, tales versus qua voce legantur? (182). Well, it matters a lot; you might say it’s everything. And we have no idea what that crucial tone would sound like to give away the game. The satirist is protected in the silence of the text; he denies us the tools of his unmaking, and we go insane at feeling pushed into – please, no, Oh god, anything but this! – taking him at face value. One chink in the armour buffering Juvenal from the critic and the world could be this: that as soon as you write the invitation, you open the door to a foreign element. And this Persian one is not to be trusted. His house, as Juvenal betrays at the end,23 is very much the kind of dripping vessel from which the satirist has spent the poem sealing himself off: non fenoris ulla mentio nec, prima si luce egressa reuerti nocte solet, tacito bilem tibi contrahat uxor umida suspectis referens multicia rugis uexatasque comas et uoltum auremque calentem. protinus ante meum quidquid dolet exue limen, pone domum et seruos et quidquid frangitur illis aut perit, ingratos ante omnia pone sodalis. (185-92) 23

On the spilling of ‘private’ information about Persicus here, cf. Jones 1990.

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There’ll be no mention of interest due, and don’t let your wife intensify your silent rage if she makes a habit of going out at dawn and coming back at night with her gauze dress damp and suspiciously wrinkled, her hair disheveled, and her face and ears flushed. Strip off anything that annoys you right in front of my doorstep. Leave behind your household and your slaves and whatever they’ve broken or lost.

Persicus’ place spews complete disorder: his wife goes out all day and returns with her see-through dress all damp and ruffled, her hair messed up, her face flushed – a scandalous domestic crack over which Juvenal tells Persicus not to ‘bring up bile’. Instead, Persicus should take his filthy shoes off at the doorstep. This final push to quarantine (and humiliate) Persicus is complemented by a remarkable ‘opting out’ on Juvenal’s part at the end of the poem. Rocking in his armchair, shotgun in hand, he spurns the roars of the Circus, which contains everyone in Rome but him; a gigantic circle fencing in everything (capit 197) which he has thrust out of his own domus (non capit 171).24 When we finally get a rare glimpse of the Juvenalian body that inhabits this fortified space, it is fitting that it is only the skin that we see, the membrane clearly demarcating the self from the world.25 It is wrinkled (contracta 203), but also compressed, restricted, restrained, locked up (contrast bilem…contrahat of Persicus, 187). While Juvenal stays at home and sunbathes sans toga, Persicus is allowed to head to the baths early without a crease of a worry (salva / fronte 204-5). Anything more than that, and people will start talking; and those baths will soon be full of idle chatter de Persico, from which gossip, we presume, Juvenal will eventually get his incriminating evidence.26 This last scene, then, is a nice microcosm of the spatial separation in which one branch of satire flourishes: while the satirist digs in his heels, puts fences and moats around the house, his targets leave themselves open to attack, for they are always going out, always being seen in public. Their houses let foreign bodies in and out through revolving doors; their bodies ejaculate, spit, and sweat it all into the open. They shed property, fluids, and the information that they’re doing just that. But our satirist stays safely inside the impenetrable nugget of his unknown self: always and ever, only (just a little) skin deep.

24 25 26

Keane 2015: 160 claims that Juvenal is still connected to the Circus through eavesdropping on it: one last inclusive performance of exclusion? Plaza 2006: 242 reads this flash of skin as Horatian self-exposure – but there are no real clues to irony here. For this last act of indulgence as coded flaying of Persicus, cf. Jones 1983: 106.

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Painting the Picket Fence White II: Satire 12 If Satire 11 goes off-grid in a hyper-connected empire, Satire 12 continues to board up the doors – but it also gives an interesting sideways glance at the lines of production and consumption wiring the capital to its provinces. Here again we have an attempt to establish a home built on opposition to the forces of mercantile exchange knock-knock-knocking away, and Juvenal’s domestic sanitation is again nothing short of asphyxiating. But this time the DIY kit home is balanced with a grand scale nostos (in a minor key): we see a merchant ‘friend’ surviving a shipwreck and safely docking in Ostia, a ktistic act aligned with Aeneas’ first step ashore (30-82).27 The pictures of the fixed and closed home (Juvenal’s spruced pad, Aeneas’ ‘foundation’) are then offset by the negative version of the household: monied, open to commercial traversing of imperial space, and so porous that any old legacy hunter can gain admission with a sizeable entrance fee. So the contrast is projected yet again onto two different versions of the house (and the body, as we shall see): solid, static, impenetrable vs. fluid, mobile, open. Witness Juvenal continue to rock in his armchair, brandish his shotgun, and stay put. The poem starts by itemising the thanksgiving sacrifices Juvenal will perform for the safe return of his friend Catullus, who has just escaped death at sea. As with the dinner party in 11, so with the ritual here: not only are the deities emphatically local (you couldn’t get closer or more ‘Roman’ than the Capitoline triad),28 the victims themselves also come from just down the road. niueam reginae ducimus agnam, par uellus dabitur pugnanti Gorgone Maura; sed procul extensum petulans quatit hostia funem Tarpeio seruata Ioui frontemque coruscat, quippe ferox uitulus templis maturus et arae spargendusque mero, quem iam pudet ubera matris ducere, qui uexat nascenti robora cornu. si res ampla domi similisque adfectibus esset, pinguior Hispulla traheretur taurus et ipsa mole piger, nec finitima nutritus in herba, laeta sed ostendens Clitumni pascua sanguis et grandi ceruix iret ferienda ministro ob reditum trepidantis adhuc horrendaque passi nuper et incolumem sese mirantis amici. (12.3-16) 27

28

On the poem’s interesting love affair with the Aeneid see Adkin 2008: 131-5; and with Augustan poetry (Horace in particular) as reflex of Hadrian’s Augustanising ‘renewal’, see Uden 2015: 176-202. More generally, see Rimell’s (2015: 32) sharp remarks on the Roman obsession with ‘foundation’ betraying an abiding anxiety about displacement and insecurity. Though local could be made global: cf. Ferguson ad loc.: ‘similar temples were found all over the empire’.

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For the queen of the gods we are bringing a snow-white lamb. An identical fleece will be offered to the goddess who fights armed with her Moroccan Gorgon. But the victim reserved for Tarpeian Jupiter is playfully tugging and shaking the lengthy rope and tossing his head. He’s a spirited calf, you see, the right age for temple and altar, ready for sprinkling with unmixed wine. He’s now embarrassed to pull at his mother’s teats and he butts the oak trees with his budding horns. If my personal resources were ample, as ample as my feelings, a bull fatter than Hispulla would be dragged along, his very bulk making him slow, not one raised on local pastures, but with his blood attesting the fertile fields of Clitumnus, and his neck would advance for the blow from the tall attendant. This is for the return of my friend, still shaking from his recent ordeal and amazed that he survived.

In this satire on the mechanisms of trade and exchange, we might pay good notice to the origins of things. Jupiter comes from around the corner (Tarpeio; cf. nostrum Iovem 89 below), while the uitulus pledged to him has no doubt grown up in the same place. Even when Juvenal expresses a desire for something fancier, his eye only creeps as far as neighbouring Clitumnus (finitima…herba) for the plumpest bull he can drum up. This is the way to pay for divine services rendered: local products to local gods, unlike those painters who earn their keep by selling shipwreck paintings eventually offered to weird Egyptian deities (pictores quis nescit ab Iside pasci? 28). When the storm takes over the poem’s steering, and Catullus is forced to perform his own perverse kind of sacrifice by emptying his goods into the sea, we see a very different spatial scope at play. Catullus decides to make like a beaver and swap his family jewels for his safety. Ironically, castor oil from the edges of empire would have been exactly the type of product a merchant would trade in;29 such a conversion of miner into mined resource through simile is typical of the poem’s unnerving poetics of exchange and substitution. The objects Catullus ‘pours out’30 produce a neat cross-section of a luxury consumer empire: “fundite quae mea sunt” dicebat “cuncta” Catullus praecipitare uolens etiam pulcherrima, uestem purpuream teneris quoque Maecenatibus aptam, atque alias quarum generosi graminis ipsum infecit natura pecus, sed et egregius fons uiribus occultis et Baeticus adiuuat aer. ille nec argentum dubitabat mittere, lances Parthenio factas, urnae cratera capacem et dignum sitiente Pholo uel coniuge Fusci; adde et bascaudas et mille escaria, multum 29 30

See the brilliant Devecka 2013. Fundite (37) dovetails nicely with Sat. 11’s images of ejaculation and outpouring, as well as the all-important beaver simile: are ejaculation and self-castration two sides of the same genitalia?

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Tom Geue caelati, biberat quo callidus emptor Olynthi. sed quis nunc alius, qua mundi parte quis audet argento praeferre caput rebusque salutem? (37-49) “Ditch my things,” Catullus kept saying, “the whole lot!” He was willing to throw overboard even his finest possessions: purple clothes fit even for delicate Maecenases, and other fabrics from flocks actually dyed by the nature of superior grass, with additional assistance from the excellent water with its hidden properties and from the climate of Baetica. He had no hesitation about jettisoning silver plate, dishes made for Parthenius, a three-gallon mixing bowl big enough for thirsty Pholus or even Fuscus’ wife, plus baskets and a thousand plates and many engraved goblets from which the canny purchaser of Olynthus had drunk. Who else is there, anywhere in the world, who would have the nerve to prefer his life to his money, his survival to his property?

The flocks concerned here come from much further away than Clitumnus, and some of the finery has even touched the lips of a previous conquerer-throughmercenariness (Philip II, emptor Olynthi). When Juvenal dispatches with the fabrics, note how he seizes on the size and number of the vessels, which hold consumables as the ship’s hold holds them (barely). Indeed, if we took our cue from the anthropomorphosis of the ship,31 and the metaphorical cargo which ships in poetry often carry,32 we could draw a strong connection between the oversize vessels of the rich, their bloated bodies, the ship so full it’s about to sink, and the Roman empire (ship of state), terminally swollen to bursting point with its traffic in luxury commodities. When the ship’s mast is cut (a kind of shaft-castration parallel to the beaver’s self-sacrifice),33 Juvenal makes a point of the expansive/contractive tension: mox cum reticulis et pane et uentre lagonae accipe sumendas in tempestate secures. (60-1) Just remember in future that along with your nets of bread and round-bellied flagons you’ll need axes – for use in a storm.

So while you should bring along sustenance for the voyage (note the container/stomach pun again in uentre), you should also beware that safety can lie with cutting and reduction (secures puns on securi, 82). As much as this story is about a desperate merchant slashing his stock at the end of his tether, it is also an allegory about cutting empire down to size so that Rome can stay afloat.34 31 32 33 34

Noted by Uden 2015: 189. Horace Odes 1.14 is the locus classicus: allegorising readings of which were raging even/especially in antiquity (Quintilian 8.6.44). Cf. Larmour 2005: 155. Cf. Larmour 2005: 141, who also catalogues the ‘ship-of-state’ load here.

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When the ship catches sight of the shore, the inglorious homecoming is conflated with the very first arrival/homecoming/import in Roman history: the Trojans landing in Latium. The desire to reset the clock is thus expressed literally: we return to a time when there was no such thing as a capital of empire on this spot, but only a white sow suckling her young, and an audience of amazed refugees (72-4). Yet the difference between now and then could barely be starker: tandem intrat positas inclusa per aequora moles Tyrrhenamque pharon porrectaque bracchia rursum quae pelago occurrunt medio longeque relincunt Italiam; non sic igitur mirabere portus quos natura dedit. sed trunca puppe magister interiora petit Baianae peruia cumbae tuti stagna sinus, gaudent ubi uertice raso garrula securi narrare pericula nautae. (75-82) Finally it enters the breakwaters built out through the water they enclose, and passes the Tuscan lighthouse and the arms which stretch back out and meet in mid-sea, leaving Italy far behind. You’ll not be so impressed by ancient harbours created by nature. To resume, with his crippled ship the captain heads for the inner basin in the sheltered bay, which a Baian boat could cross, where the sailors, with their heads shaved, enjoy telling in safety the long-winded stories of their dangers.

The landscape itself has been augmented by imperial construction, to the point that the ship arrives into the arms of empire. Here we have yet another embracing space which, I think, clues us towards the logic of incorporation we shall see hardening into the unarguable come Satires 15 and 16. For this safe harbour, which almost replicates the luxury conditions of a Baiae pleasure cruise, is an ominous hug back into the fold of an empire which – so say its long arms, its infinite reach – cannot be avoided. Even if you throw the container commodities overboard, shrink the ship itself, dress it up in rags (uestibus extentis 68), you will still be accepted into imperial space with open arms, for it is now much bigger than the ship synecdoche into which it was once so easily jammed. That is precisely the point of imagining and constructing empire as space in the first place: that way, there is no way to wriggle out of the clasping bosom.35 Sit back, relax, and enjoy the claustrophobia. That doesn’t stop Juvenal (bloody-minded to the end) from trying to extricate himself. At exactly the moment when the ship docks and order is restored, he himself promises to come home and polish off the rest of the ceremony. Again, we scrutinise his house only to find a remarkably closed shop:

35

Cf. Umurhan 2008:141 on Rome becoming Domitian’s personal piscina/vivarium in Sat. 4.

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Tom Geue ite igitur, pueri, linguis animisque fauentes sertaque delubris et farra inponite cultris ac mollis ornate focos glebamque uirentem. iam sequar et sacro, quod praestat, rite peracto inde domum repetam, graciles ubi parua coronas accipiunt fragili simulacra nitentia cera. hic nostrum placabo Iouem Laribusque paternis tura dabo atque omnis uiolae iactabo colores. cuncta nitent, longos erexit ianua ramos et matutinis operatur festa lucernis. (83-92) Off you go then, boys! With tongues and minds well-behaved, put garlands on the shrines and grain on the knives, and decorate the soft hearths and green turf. I’ll be right behind you, and once I’ve performed the major rite properly I’ll come back home. There the little images, gleaming with fragile wax, are receiving their slender crowns. Here I shall propitiate my own Jupiter, offering incense to my paternal house gods and scattering the multi-coloured pansies. Everything is gleaming. The door has put up its long branches and joins in the festive celebration with its morning lamps.

Juvenal tells his slaves to control their tongues and minds (and slave tongues were the organs of household leaks in Satire 9.115-21). Again we have an upswing in fixed and bounded space: garlands on the shrines, crowns on the little statues. The house has no foreign elements introduced. Just as the sacrifice is completed with salt of the earth (farra, glebam etc.), so Juvenal’s place is basically autochthonous: local flowers are scattered, and the door (portal to the outside noticeably shut, of course) almost grows its own branches, boarded up for extra reinforcement round its roots. Our satirist dedicates to gods which are emphatically his, stationed deep within the house: nostrum Iovem, and the Lares have importantly belonged here for generations (contrast the Lares of the legacy-hunting victims below). That paternis carries a huge amount of weight in a poem so concerned with masculinity, fertility, continuity (and their opposites).36 It allows Juvenal to circumscribe his space not only spatially (horizontally) but also temporally (vertically). This downto-earth hearth has a perfect ring around its lineage, as well as a robust door letting nothing and nobody through. The satire’s coda has let down many a scholar’s structure fetish,37 but if we read the poem as a meditation on how difficult it is to maintain a pure house in an

36

37

For the many repeated forms of beaver castration throughout the poem, and its significance for thinking Roman masculinity, see Larmour 2005. On the poem’s forms of sterility, see Larmour 2005: 165. As with Sat. 11, a traditional problem: see Smith 1989, Helmbold 1956, Adamietz 1983, Henke 2000. Uden 2015: 176 lights on the problem, and castrates it nicely.

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empire on the move, the stress on captatio might make even more sense.38 For legacy-hunting is nothing less than the successful penetration and contamination of the household. The message might be formulated thus: if you allow the wealth of empire in the door, it’s sure to flow out through another window. Commerce ports about loss as well as gain. After Juvenal deflects the charge of legacy-hunting from his own sacrifice to Catullus (93-95), he gives a flip-side account of the depths those captatores will plumb to secure a maximum return. First they will do the impossible, and tap Caesar’s private farm of noble elephants; the ivory from far-flung places is back from 11, but this time it is used as an investment for an even bigger return, and not frittered on a tabletop. This sterile39 ivory falls before the Lares of Gallita: a rich woman whose name, punning on the castrated Galli (remember that beaver), reminds us that these household gods are emphatically not paterni. After the elephants, the legacy hunter Pacuvius Hister would even sacrifice his slaves, or an Iphigeneia of marriageable age if he happened to have one at home (domi 119). Perhaps this Iphigeneia means his daughter; but it could also be his treasured household prostitute, his ironically named ‘strong-born’ girl whom he would give up at the drop of a hat to be written into that will. At any rate, she is the last person/thing in the satire to be named by a spatial substitution, defined after her place of origin: ergo uides quam grande operae pretium faciat iugulata Mycenis. (126-7) So you see how very worthwhile it was to murder that girl from Mycenae.

So this luxury human product, stripped from her own household, shipped over from prestige Mycenae, will be thrown into the fire so that Pacuvius can get his paycheck from his poor prey, himself now shut in the prison of a trap (yet another image of enclosure to close). Human trafficking works at empire and household level such that, no matter which way you look, the security of the domus is compromised. That is the cost of commerce; that is the transaction fee. We have seen how loud is the buzz of imperial connectivity in Satire 12: even when you tap out of the economy by throwing the luxury goods overboard, you will still have to dock in its sweet embrace of a sheltered harbour. And if you embrace it with open arms – as do our legacy hunters – you don’t even need to go very far anymore: the elephants are in the emperor’s backyard. With the world

38

39

The sudden jolt in subject at 93 has been the big challenge: as above, Uden 2015: 176 is the most recent to smooth it over via the governing refrain of ‘sacrifice’ (cf. Ronnick 1993: 10). My thematic unity, insofar as I want to flog it, might lie rather in the idea of ‘the household’. nec Latio aut usquam sub nostro sidere talis / belua concipitur (103-4), yet another twist on the satire’s obsession with sterility.

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whizzing around him, dissolving houses, reducing ships, castrating bodies, Juvenal puts up a spirited defence. The blinds and shutters are down, and ‘everything shines’ (cuncta nitent 91). But in the end, the space of empire will swallow him, too. Batten down the hatches all you want: the corrupting sea will get in, every which way. Send In the Bulldozers I: Satire 15 We saw book 4’s global economy whirling along with at least one tough nut holding out against its enticements. Satires 11 and 12 let off an indefatigable steam of separation: on the one hand people, places, houses, bodies, goods are constantly colliding, but on the other hand we run into the satirist, solitary, self-sufficient, locked down, holed up in his immaculate house, an impermeable membrane tucked away from the all-embracing Circus, or Trajan’s harbouring arms. This is the last thin line of defence dividing self from other. But come book 5, the barbarians are at the gate (15), and they have invaded not only Rome, but Juvenal’s estate too (16). If a dividing line within satire can be drawn in terms of exclusive (‘objectoriented’, self vs. other) and inclusive (self-and-object oriented, or self as part of other),40 nowhere do we get a clearer view on which wins out in the end. Empire precludes exclusive reclusivity: it is the consummate all-included cruise package. Of course, the deconstructive paradox will immediately spring back to haunt me:41 satire cannot exist without the outside, without the other kept inside as endlessly renewable fuel. We might say Satires 11 and 12 are kept going precisely by what they strive to keep at bay. So perhaps we could redraw the dividing line: we might claim that the difference lies in the balance of energy dedicated to preserving ‘self-sufficiency’ (however futile that enterprise may be), and energy earmarked for embracing the implosion of that self-sufficiency. I would wager that those two forces – always in tension, one sometimes predominating over the other – switch roles when we move from 11/12 to 15/16. And it is empire tipping (smashing) the balance. This section will return to the same keywords of closed/open space (body, house, empire) which we have already treated in depth, and we shall see how the hands banging on the door in Satires 11 and 12 eventually prise their way in over the course of 15 and 16. But let’s open with a couple of remarks on Satire 14 to frame the debate and set the rhythm. I have no space to probe it properly, but this

40 41

Cf. Plaza 2006’s threefold division between ‘object-oriented humour’, ‘humour directed at the persona’, and ‘non-aligned humour’. For a powerful statement of that case qua space, see Rimell 2015’s introduction (and on the idea of all enclosed spaces being flooded by what they seek to keep out – the deconstructive shorthand for Sat. 11 – see Rimell 2015: 9).

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poem looks like a neat bridging move from the domestic space of book 4 to the crumpling of that space in book 5. The theme is father-son corruption, and how avarice in particular slips seamlessly between the generations. The poem could be seen as a complement to 11 and 12, in that it moves from Juvenal’s house to the average Roman domus, in a plea to fathers to keep the space clean so the kids won’t pick up bad habits.42 It reprises the same notes of infinitely expanding greed for territory we saw in Satires 11 and 12: villas and estates are swallowed up (e.g. 86-95, 135-88), everyone takes to the sea trying to make some quick cash (275303), and we even have another shipwreck (295-7). The difference here is that the hermetic ethical seal is transferred from Juvenal’s place to the average house of the greedy father. Juvenal washed his hands of other houses in 11 and 12 (Persicus’ and Gallitta’s were both out of bounds), but he could at least magically ‘access’ them;43 in this poem he shouts directly at the house, only to find it completely closed to his satiric overtures.44 Fuscinus (the dark one) is a perfect addressee for a poem that definitively shuts the satirist out: unlike Persicus, he disappears indoors as quickly as he’s invoked. There is no way to control the satiric object in Satire 14, for both father and son form a closed universe impervious to outside influences (yet inviting monetary income to come right in). Ultimately, Juvenal has to backpedal: he asks if he has ‘shut you in’ (cludere 322) with examples that regulate too harshly, and he must slide back up the salary scale to find an acceptable level of wealth for his unresponsive addressee to sign off on (322-31). Our uncompromising satirist is bent by the world he had withdrawn from; he has come outside, and immediately the space has crushed him beyond all recognition into one of them. This dual symbolic movement – first being shut outside, then ‘expanding’ to fill the space – leads us directly to Satire 15. This titanic satiric swansong nicely ties up our themes in its flagship move of ‘incorporation’. Once loosed from the earplugged Roman home of 14, the voice of 15 booms out into the wilderness at the furthest reaches of the empire. For the first time in his corpus, Juvenal takes on a ‘foreigner’ based outside Rome as the central target, and he doesn’t beat about the bush: he makes straight for a squalid brawl between Ombi and Tentyra in upper Egypt, which flares into a repulsive act of communal cannibalism. The body of an unlucky Tentyran (though it could have gone the other way) is chopped into mince meat and gobbled up raw by the Ombite team on the spot (78-81). Juvenal predictably rails against the unconscionable act, and puts it in a class of its own, separate from any comparable case you could cite from the annals of myth-history. But the devastating thing about this satire is that, as soon as we sense we have a confident voice of civilisation sounding off its own superiority, Juvenal shifts the

42 43 44

Moral cleanliness vs. superficial cleanliness: 14.59-69. Cf. Braund and Raschke 2009: 506-7: seeing into private space is a satiric prerogative. See Geue forthcoming.

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blame to the whole human race (homini 165, after humano generi 132). The ingestive fusion of self and other, figured beautifully in the metaphor of cannibalism,45 effaces all meaningful difference, sacks all the forts of identity.46 This satire follows the law of Hadrianic imperial space to the letter: now that inside and outside are no more, everyone must own the crime of everyone else. The satirist’s opening question rings out across the empire to Bithynicus, and the triangle this sets up between ‘acceptable empire’ (us, we Romans, including Volusius Bithynicus – in Bithynia?) and unacceptable empire (rough Egyptians) is a clean version of a relationship covered in soot by the poem’s end. As mentioned, the example which shows Egypt’s demented religious customs is a drunken fight between the peoples of two small settlements, Ombi and Tentyra. Juvenal’s eye is quick to slice the communities in two, even though he also strives to show the perverse etymological ‘togetherness’ in the word used to describe their rivalry: simultas (33). The level of detail in this sordid little epic is impressive: while it is difficult to chart precisely who is doing what to whom (and that is part of the point),47 at another level Juvenal can pare his factions down to the very last body part: after the man is devoured down to his bones (80), the climactic image is of an Ombite running his finger through the dirt to lick up the leftover blood (89-92). But Juvenal can see further than the tiniest detail in furthest Egypt. He can also pick through the space and time of imperial history. To contextualise the Egyptian cannibalism, he brings up the case of the besieged Vascones (93-109, more palatable according to him), and Zacynthos; he compares the altar at Maeotis favourably (115-6 – there’s our Iphigeneia again); and he swears that the worst of the worst/ furthest of the furthest, namely those barbarous Cimbrians, Britons, Sauromatians and Agathyrsians, never perpetrated anything as bad as this soft and useless lot (inbelle et inutile volgus 124). But this ability to speak for all, this territorial mapping of empire through accumulation and redistribution of its component peoples, is a sign of something more dangerous. As Juvenal himself packages in an apparently innocent aside, the whole world is now, for better or worse, ‘Greco-Roman’: (nunc totus Graias nostrasque habet orbis Athenas, Gallia causidicos docuit facunda Britannos, de conducendo loquitur iam rhetore Thyle.) (110-12) (Nowadays the whole world has its Greek and Roman Athens. Eloquent Gaul has been teaching the lawyers of Britain. Thule is already talking about hiring a professor of rhetoric.)

45 46 47

For suggestive, comparable ingestions: go for Rimell 2002: 159-75 on the phenomenon in Petronius. Cf. Keane 2006: 68-71 (putting to good use Bogel 2001 on ‘making difference’); see also Uden 2015: 203-15; cf. Umurhan 2008: 86. Well-acknowledged: Singleton 1983: 203-4, Tennant 1995: 125, Vincent 2004: 86.

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And since the orbis48 has expanded to include everyone and everything, it is understandable that attempts to rule out dead-zones and amputate limbs may run into trouble. And this is exactly what happens to Egypt: like a tender human being disappearing down another one’s gullet, outside is brought in, self becomes other/other becomes self, and the space between is outed as no more than wishful thinking. A key to this incorporative logic arrives in the part which has made readers the most queasy.49 Lines 131-57 seem suddenly to abandon the satire’s abject pessimism for a rosier story: love and sympathy are the hallmarks of the human race; that’s what separates us from the animals; look how we evolved into civilised communities through altruistic collaboration! The passage may grate and gurgle in the reader’s stomach as the recent cannibalism bubbles away. But in fact, it can be read as a preface to that cannibalism, and a prehistory that foreshadows and explains the inevitable terminus of anthropophagy: mundi principio indulsit communis conditor illis tantum animas, nobis animum quoque, mutuus ut nos adfectus petere auxilium et praestare iuberet, dispersos trahere in populum, migrare uetusto de nemore et proauis habitatas linquere siluas, aedificare domos, laribus coniungere nostris tectum aliud, tutos uicino limine somnos ut conlata daret fiducia, protegere armis lapsum aut ingenti nutantem uolnere ciuem, communi dare signa tuba, defendier isdem turribus atque una portarum claue teneri. (147-58) To them, at the beginning of the world, our common creator granted only the breath of life. To us he gave souls as well. His intention? So our mutual feeling would urge us to seek and offer help, to draw together scattered individuals into communities, to migrate from the ancient woodland and leave the forests inhabited by our ancestors, to construct homes, with another house adjacent to our own hearths, so that combined confidence would make our sleep secure, thanks to a neighbour’s threshold, to protect with our weapons a fellow citizen who has fallen or who is reeling from a mighty wound, to give the signals on the community’s bugle, to be defended by the same towers, and to be contained by the single key of the gates.

Here we see the history of civilisation as a progressive expansion of enclosed space, as individuals lump into gangs, build houses (the domus again), join these houses with other household gods (nostris Laribus; cf. the Lares in 12 above),

48 49

Yet another orbis to add to the collection; the last and biggest yet. Cf. Powell 1979: 189.

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collaborate with their neighbours, protect their fellow citizens, and enjoy as one the safe embrace of the walls, the impenetrable fortress whose gates are locked (and there is only one key). But the wound of the citizen reminds us that these clusters are not in fact self-contained:50 they form merely a single circle within other hostile circles. What this little Lucretian masterpiece tells us is that, for all the fantasy of shutting the outside out, it will always somehow make its way in; always somehow pierce the body you are fooling yourself into fancying whole. This is a microcosmic inflection of a Roman empire trumpeting a wider-than-ever perimeter, but at the same time trying to pitch down and defend itself from outsiders. The anxiety, and the truth, is that there will always be a breach in the defences: whether that be the body’s shell, the house walls, the early village’s fortifications, Rome’s pomerium, the Servian boundary, Hadrian’s villa, Hadrian’s wall. The bigger those walls are, the harder it is to people them – and so, the harder they fall. Satire 15’s final question to Pythagoras encapsulates this bind superbly. As the consummate traveller in time and space (he was famous for espousing reincarnation as well as bilocation),51 he is the best witness to this horror-fest, because he is used to being everywhere at once. Juvenal’s despairing question runs: quid diceret ergo uel quo non fugeret, si nunc haec monstra uideret Pythagoras, cunctis animalibus abstinuit qui tamquam homine et uentri indulsit non omne legumen? (171-4) What, then, would Pythagoras say? Wouldn’t he run off, anywhere, if he now saw these horrors? Pythagoras was the one who abstained from eating all living things as if they were human and who didn’t treat his belly to every kind of bean.

To which we could well retort: but where could he flee?52 Now that the cannibalism of some marginal towns leads to an infection and condemnation of all mankind, thanks largely to the connectedness of imperial space, we could safely say that there is nowhere left to take shelter. The man who routinely tramples on boundaries of time and space will just have to stomach that empire has destroyed them better than he ever could.

50 51 52

Cf. Geue forthcoming. Pythagoras’ bilocation: Diels-Kranz 14.7. We might compare the earlier motion of Sat. 2: speaker wishes to get outside the hotbed of corruption at Rome, but there is no ‘outside’ left, for Rome imports innocent young provincials and sends them back all corrupted (163-70); cf. Umbricius’ naïve desire to get outside in Sat. 3. On the connection between the sanctuary urges of 3 and 15, see Richlin 2009: 326. Pythagoras is an interesting stand-in for the satirist here: cf. Singleton 1983: 206, Adamietz 1972: 42.

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Send In the Bulldozers II: Satire 16 So we have duly salivated at the results when a cannibalistic empire turns inside out, and vice versa. But the consequences for the ‘Roman’ self, and that self as embodied in the micro-level of the satiric speaker, really come home in Satire 16.53 This fragment of a poem turns the frontline hands of empire, the Roman army, against defenceless Roman citizens, beating them into a bloody pulp that could only find rivals on the outskirts of upper Egypt. These soldiers are enhanced cyborgs, locked up in their own enclosing armour and impossible to penetrate. Unlike the gourmands, the merchants, and the legacy hunters, their bodies are closed spaces, perfectly incorporated into one large unit. There is no way to get through to these targets, for they let nothing out. What’s more, the space of the individual self, so dutifully defended in 11 and 12, comes crashing down at the first sign of real military pressure. Thus Juvenalian satire commits its spectacular suicide. The jackboot is on the other foot from the very beginning. As in 14, Juvenal is now emphatically on the outside. It is as if Rome had been captured while he was dithering in Egypt, and he is hard pressed to get back in: Quis numerare queat felicis praemia, Galli, militiae? nam si subeuntur prospera castra *** me pauidum excipiat tironem porta secundo sidere. plus etenim fati ualet hora benigni quam si nos Veneris commendet epistula Marti et Samia genetrix quae delectatur harena. (16.1-6)

2a 5

Gallius, who can count the rewards of a successful military life? After all, if you join a top company I’d like to enter the camp gate as a nervous recruit, with the stars smiling. A moment of generous fate is more powerful, after all, than a letter of recommendation to Mars from Venus or from his mother, who loves the sands of Samos.

The soldiers turn out to be the ideal cooperative unit, the likes of which we only glimpsed in the small communities of Satire 15. But their members are invincible. Some advantages they enjoy in common (commoda…communia 7): they beat up a citizen and get off scot-free, for they have their own law, which keeps them inside the rampart at all times (7-17). If the citizen appeals, he meets a terrifying union of bodies and minds, an engorged monster of multi-limbed movement:

53

Cf. Keane 2006: 71. Gowers 1993: 199 shows the cannibalistic violence of 15 turned against the Roman civilian in 16 via a juicy ‘dumpling’ (offam).

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Tom Geue tota cohors tamen est inimica, omnesque manipli consensu magno efficiunt curabilis ut sit uindicta et grauior quam iniuria. (20-22) But the entire cohort is hostile, and all the units act with one mind to ensure that your redress needs medical attention and that it’s worse than your original injury.

Good luck finding a faithful friend to venture so far from Rome, beyond its pitiful natural defences (molem aggeris ultra 26). The soldiers can beat you up on your home turf, but you have no way of getting into theirs, for they retreat into their hobnailed boots (14, 24-5) and hide behind their palisades. It is now fellow Romans making sorties over the pomerium, no more than a dotted line – and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. The exposed space of Rome importantly leaves the satirist himself with nowhere to go, and this is articulated in a remarkable moment of self-reference. Throughout the Satires, Juvenal has never come forward himself as a victim of the crimes he checks off so thoroughly.54 But all of a sudden, a mere matter of lines before the end of his corpus, he is suddenly on the receiving end of theft and fraud alike: conuallem ruris auiti improbus aut campum mihi si uicinus ademit et sacrum effodit medio de limite saxum, quod mea cum patulo coluit puls annua libo, debitor aut sumptos pergit non reddere nummos uana superuacui dicens chirographa ligni, expectandus erit qui lites incohet annus totius populi. (36-43)

Suppose some scoundrel of a neighbour has taken from me a glen or a field from my ancestral estate, digging up from the middle of the boundary a sacred stone that I have honoured with my yearly offering of polenta and the flat sacrificial cake. Or suppose a debtor persists in not paying back the money he’s received, declaring the signature false and the entire document worthless. I’ll have to wait for the time of year which sees the start of lawsuits brought by the entire populace.

He is no longer a man apart, but must tarry in the legal waiting room like the rest of us dejected comrades (totius populi). The guarantor of the self in Satire 11, the small parcel of nearby property which furnished his plain banquet, is suddenly threatened by a neighbour55 – and shrunk by digging up and fiddling with the

54 55

Apart from the famous moment of piping up in the recitation room (1.1-18), Juvenal rarely puts himself squarely in the victim’s shoes. Juvenal perhaps plays out scenes only hinted in his predecessors’ neighbourly encoun-

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boundary stone (worshipped with cake at the Terminalia no less!).56 We are a long way from the collaborative world of early civilisation in 15, where uicini protect each other. Here Juvenal’s uicinus makes a land-grab as soon as he’s not looking; it is as if the loose cohesion within the Egyptian towns has fragmented even further, so that we are reduced to all out turf wars between individual neighbours. And Juvenal’s land is not the only thing contracting: his bank balance is looking unhealthy too, as the debtor refuses to return what he owes. Has our satirist dived so far that he has become one of those despicable creditors hanging at the entrance of the market in 11? The outside comes in, and eats into his farm; and the inside goes out, in terms of funds flying and never coming back. What the hell has happened here?! The difference is written on the body, as by now we might expect. Assume Juvenal ciues does get a date in court.57 He’ll then have to put up with delay after delay. His lawyers open their bodies up by taking off their cloak and pissing respectively; and as soon as they get going, they wind up the day: totiens subsellia tantum sternuntur, iam facundo ponente lacernas Caedicio et Fusco iam micturiente parati digredimur, lentaque fori pugnamus harena. (44-7) Often, the benches are just being set out and eloquent Caedicius is now taking off his cloak and Fuscus is now taking a leak – and though we are all ready, we disperse. That’s how we battle it out in the sticky arena of the forum.

These open bodies come together only for a brief moment, and then, immediately they part ways (digredimur). Juvenal’s legal representatives expose themselves in public; and the satirist himself is bound up in the random motion of the forum, the very kind of open space he avoided in 11 and 12. The soldiers, by contrast, have their bodies heavily armoured, and that way they keep everything intact: ast illis quos arma tegunt et balteus ambit quod placitum est ipsis praestatur tempus agendi, nec res atteritur longo sufflamine litis. (48-50)

56

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ters: the greedy man’s lust for his neighbour’s corner in Horace Sat. 2.6.8-9, and Persius’ indifference to his wealthier neighbour’s corner in Sat. 6.14-5 (on both of which, see Rimell 2015: 102-4). The lord of boundaries is a perfect totem for the satirist, and a good one to invoke just before the end of his own extant corpus: coincidence? Hadrian upped the punishment for moving boundary stones (see Courtney ad loc.); the King of Lines thus even sought to fix space at the micro-level. Keane 2007b: 49-50 sees a sympathy shortage between satirist and citizen here – but these first-person pronouns militate against that claim.

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Tom Geue But the men protected by armour and circled by a sword belt have the times of cases set at their own convenience. Their resources are not frittered away by the long drag of a lawsuit.

Nothing is rubbed away from their property; their res stays put, pristine and protected, just like their fortified bodies. Civilians (Juvenal himself now included), on the other hand, can’t help haemorrhaging property, cash, and piss. It is only fitting that 16 ends with another prising open of domestic space, both that of the house and that of the body. When Juvenal moves right along to discuss the freakish peculium castrense, the state of financial independence awarded to soldiers,58 the legacy hunting theme of 12 returns in concert with the father-son plot of 14: solis praeterea testandi militibus ius uiuo patre datur. nam quae sunt parta labore militiae placuit non esse in corpore census, omne tenet cuius regimen pater. ergo Coranum signorum comitem castrorumque aera merentem quamuis iam tremulus captat pater; hunc fauor aequus prouehit et pulchro reddit sua dona labori. ipsius certe ducis hoc referre uidetur ut, qui fortis erit, sit felicissimus idem, ut laeti phaleris omnes et torquibus, omnes… (51-60) Besides, it’s only soldiers who have the right to make a will while their fathers are still alive. You see, it’s been decreed that wealth acquired in military service should not form part of the assets controlled entirely by the father. And so while Coranus follows the standards and earns a soldier’s pay, he is courted by his own father, though he’s already doddering. The son is promoted by the advancement which is his due and gets the rewards for his fine efforts. Without a doubt, it seems to be important to the general that a man who is brave should be the most successful, that all those who delight in medals and decorations…

The passage manages to undo and outdo both its Juvenalian parents. While the threat of captatio came from the outside in 12, here it comes from within (as in 14, but from the wrong direction – father hunts son!). We also see that the laws of generational continuity – immutable as gravity in 14 – here finally break down. It is no longer a case of keeping the outside at arm’s length: this time, the son himself leaks out the door. The father has absolute control no more. His body of wealth (NB corpus) sheds its most vital component, the son. And when stripped of that, there is nothing left but a doddering old man. What’s more, the wedge between father and son, the final crack in the traditional core of the Roman domus, is the emperor himself. The son is now on the ultimate pater’s payroll, which means he 58

On Hadrian’s enactments here, see Stramaglia 2008 ad 51.

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can wriggle out of his biological father’s pocket. We sense that at this rate – hanging on a tottering column, its key assets crumbling away – this domus, any domus, won’t be standing much longer. Empire means bulldozers, with the emperor himself behind the wheel. Open house: everybody out! And take your satire with you. Home Is Where the Heart Isn’t Juvenal’s later satires have proved rich cultures for thinking the grand tale of fusion and encroachment that is imperial space. Penned at a time when Rome’s figurehead was largely absent from the capital, and when the borders of empire were becoming nightmarish to police even as the effort of policing was seriously stepped up, these poems are constantly put to work in defence and surrender of their own flimsy boundaries. We saw in 11 and 12 how the lockdown of the self, house and garden, was still possible against a backdrop of giddy circuitry. The overpowering connective forces threading through the empire got in and out of every house but Juvenal’s; yet it was only a matter of time before the speaker’s home was wrecked as well. Satire 15 sends the shockwaves of a disgusting crime on the edge of empire right back to Rome, such that Roman and Egyptian are now all subsumed under a universally bankrupt humanity (we are what we eat, and we sure do love Egyptian grain). Satire 16 shows how the violence rebounds in Rome. But this time Juvenal himself is caught in a neighbour’s greedy maw and paws, and there is nothing he can do about it. He looks on as funds and lands, the small house that satire built, dribble away; and the father of the kind of house the satirist was excluded from in 14, watches blankly as the son walks right out on his watch. No matter how many times Hadrian inks up the pomerium, empire (and satire) will cross the line indifferently – and there could be no better way to show this than the satirist’s own hallowed walls falling down around him. Satire is a genre full of space. Rhetorical topoi jostle for slots in directionless pieces, which always plot questions such as: how much is enough? What are the limits? Who and what are outside? Who and what are inside? Juvenal’s late satire is an ideal test case for tracking two different forms of satire, which are divided, we might say, according to their investment in division itself.59 Juvenal parades the victory of one over the other: a satire which flags under the mania of selfexclusion, capitulates to one which relishes self-inclusion in the extreme. Empire means the dexterous mental geography to make position irrelevant: everyone touches everyone else, I contaminate you rubbing off on me. We’re going down, and we’re doing it together.

59

The issue of self-other proximity is bottomless in satire criticism: see for example Bogel 2001: 41-83, Garber 1984.

Abbreviations AJA AJPh ANRW CB CCJ CJ CIL ClAnt CLE CPh CQ CW EMC G&R GRF ICS JHS JRA JRS LIMC LSJ

MD OCD OCT PSI PVS RE RhM SIFC TLL ZPE

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Index locorum ACHILLEUS TATIOS 5.1 24, 28 AESCHYLUS Agam. 281-310 68 314 68, 70

ARISTOTELES Pol. 1272b-73b 146 ARRIAN 1.5.1 13 3.1.5 15

ALCAEUS fr. 35 V 41

ATEIUS PHILOLOGUS Test. 9 140

ALEXANDER ROMANCE 1.33.2 13

ATHENAEUS 197C-203B 17 5.202d 43

APOLLONIUS RHODIUS 1.936-1152 60 2.1-163 57 2.669-719 57 2.727-898 57 2.746-51 57 2.800-801 58 2.807-8 58 2.842 60 2.946-61 60 4.522-33 61 4.548 61 4.1210-15 56 4.1225-1619 59 4.1765-62 156 APPIAN BC 2.68-9 51 2.102 51 3.28 51

PS.-AURELIUS VICTOR Origo gentis Romanae 1.5 116 CAESAR Civ. 1.1.1-3.1 83 1.1.3 88 1.1-6 84 1.1-33 76, 88, 89 1.2.4 85 1.2.5 84, 85 1.2.6 84 1.2.8 85, 89 1.3.1-3 77 1.3.1-4.1 83 1.4.44 88 1.5.3-5.5 83 1.5.5 78 1.6.1-2 90 1.6.5 85

240

Index locorum 1.6.6 85 1.6.7 85 1.6.8 78, 85 1.7 87 1.8.1 79, 82 1.12.2 79 1.12.3 82 1.13.2 80 1.14.1 80 1.14.2 80 1.14.3 81 1.15.3 80, 82 1.15.5 80 1.16.3 81 1.18.3 80 1.19.2 80 1.19-23 80 1.20.2 80 1.20.4 80 1.21.1 81 1.22.3 88 1.24.1 82 1.24.3 80 1.25.2 81, 82 1.25.3 81 1.25-29 81 1.26.6 81 1.27.3 81 1.30.3 81 1.30.5 81 1.31.2 81 1.32.1 82, 84 1.32.6 89 1.32.7 90 1.32.9 87 1.32-33 84 1.33 79, 81, 86 1.33.4 90 1.34-87 76, 86, 88

1.35.1 87 1.35.3 87 1.38.3 89 1.44.2 89 1.48.4 88 1.52.4 88 1.53.1 90 1.60.5 88 1.61.3 88, 89 1.75.2 89 1.76.5 89 1.85 87 1.85.3 89 2.29.3-4 81 3.1.2-4 81 3.86.1 90 Gall. 1.36 90 4.5 90 CALLIMACHUS Aet. (ed. Harder) fr. 110 16, 47, 48 fr. 110.45 47 fr. 110.56 50 fr. 54 39 fr. 54.2 40 fr. 54a 40 I 71 III 71 IV 71 Ep. & eleg. min. (ed. Pfeiffer) fr. 383 39 fr. 394 16 Ep. (ed. Pfeiffer) 5 16 Hymn. Schol. Hymn. Dem. 16 Mele (ed. Pfeiffer) Dieg. 10 44

241

Index locorum Dieg. 10.10-13 45 fr. 227 44 fr. 228 45, 47, 49 fr. 228.15 17 fr. 228.39 45 CASSIUS DIO 43.22.2 51 51.22.3 51 CATO orig. fr. 2.12 116 CATULLUS 3.10 170 66.56 50 CICERO Ad Att. 7.11.1 79 7.11.3 90 15.29 162 16.4 162 Ad fam. 4.7.4 97 4.8.2 97 4.9.1 97 6.1 96 6.6.7 95 6.10a.2 94 6.12.12 94 6.14.2 94 7.3 91 7.3.4 92 Catil. 1 99, 100 1.9-11 100 1.10 105 1.13 105 1.18 105 1.2 100

1.20 105 1.20.4-7 100 1.21 99 1.21.1-3 100 1.23 105 2.1 100 3 100 3.17 105 CLAUDIUS CLAUDIANUS Carm. 26.1f. 118 CONON Narr. 8 29 DIODORUS SICULUS 13.82.4 141 DIOGENES LArRTIUS 1.22 67 DIONYSIOS OF HALICARNASSUS Ant. 1.11.1 116 3.51.4 121 DURIS OF SAMOS 76 F 14 FgrHist 74 ENNIUS Ann. (ed. Skutsch) fr. 154 119 fr. 445 121 ERATOSTHENES ap. Plin. nat. 5.127.1 128 ap. Strab. 1.4.9 146 EURIPIDES Hel. 1658-69 38 1666-69 45 FESTUS 116.7 124 GELLIUS 16.13.8-9 163

242 HEDYLUS 4 G-P 16 HERODAS Mim. 1 24 HERODOTUS 1.170.3 67 2.112-120 34 2.113 28 2.113.1 35 2.144.2 17 HESIOD fr. 307 M – W 31 PS.-HESIOD Scut. 317 ff. 158 HISTORIA AUGUSTA Hadr. 17.8 190 HOMER Il. 2.494-510 65 3.21-30 178 3.23-42 36 3.125-28 36 3.151-2 36 3.154-8 36 3.386-7 36 3.395-418 36 3.396-7 36 3.399-417 36 3.418 36 5.136-143 178 5.311 ff. 43 5.370-74 36 5.401 31 5.555-560 178 5.599 31 6.184 128 6.204 128

Index locorum 8.30-37 179 8.245-246 179 8.462-468 179 11.112-130 178 11.172-178 178 12.40-48 178 12.292-293 179 13.15-16 179 16.459-461 179 16.752-761 178 17.648-650 179 18.483-9 159 18.607-8 157 19.340-341 179 24.23-24 179 Od. 4.10-14 42 4.120-27 30 4.219-26 32 4.220-1 32 4.227-232 31 4.227-30 35 4.229 31 4.232 31 4.351-59 30 4.354-59 34 5.291-332 147 7.43 144 7.45 144 9.67-73 147 9.96-98 32 HORACE C. 1.14 202 3.30.1-5 176 3.30.1-9 186 3.30.3-9 187 Ep. 2.53 168

243

Index locorum 16 165, 181 Sat. 2.2.22-27 168 2.6.8-9 213 6.14-5 213 HYGINUS MYTHOGRAPHUS Fab. 127 124 INSCRIPTIONS Archiv. 5, p. 158, no. 2 41 Satrap Decree (Cairo Museum, Cat. Gén. 22181) 24 SEG 24, 1174 41 JUVENAL 1.1-18 212 1.86 189 4.72 197 4.132 197 6.544 128 9.115-21 204 10.1 192 10.40 197 11.1-55 193 11.3-5 193 11.9-13 194 11.28 194 11.33-4 194 11.35 193 11.38-40 194 11.42-55 195 11.56-59 195 11.64 195 11.66-8 195 11.68-9 195 11.70-76 195 11.93-5 196 11.96-8 196 11.100-103 196 11.109 196 11.114 196

11.117-9 196 11.120-9 196 11.145 196 11.155-6 197 11.156-7 196 11.159-60 196 11.167-70 197 11.171 198, 199 11.171-5 197 11.180-2 198 11.182 198 11.185-92 198 11.187 199 11.197 199 11.203 199 11.204-5 199 12.3-16 200 12.28 201 12.30-82 200 12.37-49 202 12.60-12 202 12.68 203 12.72-4 203 12.75-82 203 12.82 202 12.83-92 204 12.89 201 12.91 206 12.93 205 12.93-95 205 12.103-4 205 12.119 205 12.126-7 205 14.59-69 207 14.86-95 207 14.135-88 207 14.275-303 207 14.295-7 207 14.322 207

244 14.322-31 207 15.15 206 15.16 206 15.33 208 15.78-81 207 15.80 208 15.89-92 208 15.93-109 208 15.110-12 208 15.115-6 208 15.124 208 15.131-57 209 15.132 208 15.147-58 209 15.165 208 15.171-4 210 16.1-6 211 16.7-17 211 16.20-22 212 16.26 212 16.36-43 212 16.44-7 213 16.48-50 213 16.51-60 214 LIVY 1.1.1-3 114 1.1.3 121 LUCAN 1.48-50 184 1.82 185 7.192-195 119 10.188-192 185 LYCOPHRON Alex. 831-3 35 1250-1260 115

Index locorum MACROBIUS Sat. 5.17.5 142 MARTIAL Ep. 5.78 195 6.28-29 174 6.42 173 7.31 195 7.55.7 128 9.43 174 10.37 195 10.94 195 14.73 170 Spect. 5 181 5.3-4 177 8 179 9 181 9.11-12 179 14 181 17 181 19 181 24 181 24.5-8 179 25 181 28 181 29 181 30 181 30.7-8 177 32 181 34 181 MARTIANUS CAPELLA 6.642 129 OVID Am. 2.6 170 2.6.1-2 171

Index locorum 2.6.1-16 171 2.6.26 170 2.6.37 170 2.6.54 171 Fast. 4.63-4 113 4.69-72 123 4.73-78 126 4.79-81 127 Met. 1.253-312 184 2.544-563 171 2.171-271 184 2.219 184 2.367-380 170 5.669-678 171 6.667-673 171 8.236-259 171 15.391-407 171 15.758 186 15.760-1 186 15.818-9 186 15.871-2 186 15.871-9 187 PAPYRI P. Cairo Zenon 59154.1-4 17 59355.101-102 18 P. Oxy. 2465 fr. 12 41 PSI 1092, 51-58 46 PAUSANIAS 1.12 161 PERSIUS Prol. 8ff. 171 PETRONIUS 55 168 93 168 119.3ff. 168

PHILODEMUS On Poems (ed. Janko) 40 PINDAR N. 10.1-6 37 10.73-90 38 O. 6.1-4 183 P. 4.253 156 6.10-14 176, 186 PLINY THE ELDER NH 4.1-2 158 5.94.1 128 5.127.1 128 10.117 170 10.120 171 34.148.5-149.1 47 36.67.1-68.5 47 PLUTARCH Life of Alexander 15.7-8 154 26.4-9 13 Life of Romulus 4.2 119 Parall. min. (New Jacoby) 316 125 POLYBIUS 6.51 146 15.29.8 16 38.21 146 POMPONIUS MELA 2.7 29 POMPONIUS PORPHYRIO Hor. c. 3.29.7 124

245

246 POSIDIPPUS Epigr. (edd. Austin & Bastianini) 39 16 71-88 39 115 24, 48 116 16, 24, 48 119 A-B 16 QUINTILIAN Inst. 1.5.56 114 8.1.3 114 8.6.44 202 10.1.93 189 QUINTUS CURTIUS RUFUS 4.8.1 13 QUINTUS FABIUS PICTOR frg. 1 122 frg. 7f. 119 SALLUST Cat. 1 104 6-13 108 10.1 103 13 169 14.1 108 15.2 107 24.2 102 24.4 102 26.5 102 27.2 102 27.2-4 105 27.4 102 28.1 105 28.1-3 104 28.4 102 29.1 103 29.2f. 104 30.1 102

Index locorum 30.3-5 102 30.4 103 30.5-7 103 31f. 104 31.1 103 31.2 103 31.3 103 31.4 104 31.5f. 104 32.1 105 32.2 102, 105 32.3 102 33 108 34.1 103, 108 34.2 106, 108 34.3 106 35 106 35.2 107 35.3 107 35.5 107 36.1f. 102 36.2f. 100, 108 36.4-39.5 108 39.6 102 42.1 102 43.1 102 43.2 102 46.5 110 53.6 110 55.1f. 110 56.1 102 59 109 60 109 61.1 108 61.8 109 61.9 109 Hist. frg. 1.11f. 103

247

Index locorum Iug. 41.2 103 SENECA Apocol. 12 181 4 181 8 181 Dial. 12.7.6 118 Ep. 1.2 174 24.20 174 55 175 84.4 175 Prov. 2.7-9 178 7ff. 179 SERVIUS AUCTUS Aen. 1.242 118 1.247 118 4.9 140 4.682 140 8.9 123 8.638 126 10.179 121 11.246 122 SILIUS ITALICUS 8.602-603 118 8.602-604 120 9.70-76 127 SOLINUS 2.4.1-18 129 STATIUS Silv. 1.1 185 1.1.2 185 1.1.8-21 185

1.1.22-31 185 1.1.23-24 186 1.1.27-28 185 1.1.33-34 185 1.1.52-55 185 1.1.68-70 186 1.1.75 186 1.1.84-87 187 1.1.84-90 185 1.1.91-94 187 1.1.95-98 186 1.2.130-133 174 1.2.148-153 173 1.2.154-157 173 1.3.7-8 173 1.3.20-22 172 1.3.47-48 173 1.3.48ff. 175 1.3.53 174 1.3.90-106 173 1.3.91-94 175 1.3.108-109 175 1.5.36-39 173 1.5.55-56 173 1.6.9-27 182 1.6.12-16 180 1.6.51-64 182 1.6.55-56 180 1.6.65-74 182 1.6.70-72 180 1.6.75-78 169, 180 1.6.98-102 182 2 praef. 17ff. 177 2.1.74 170 2.1.140-145 174 2.2.26-29 173 2.2.29 174 2.2.36-44 175 2.2.44 174

248

Index locorum 2.2.45-51 173 2.2.52 172 2.2.52ff. 172 2.2.56-58 172 2.2.60-62 176 2.2.63ff. 173 2.2.69-70 173 2.2.73-84 173 2.2.108-109 172 2.2.127-129 174 2.2.131 175 2.3 168 2.4.1-2 168 2.4.4-5 169 2.4.7-8 168 2.4.9-10 170 2.4.11-12 168 2.4.14-15 168 2.4.15 169 2.4.16 171 2.4.16-17 171 2.4.17-21 171 2.4.21 171 2.4.24-25 171 2.4.25 168 2.4.26-28 168 2.4.31-32 168 2.4.37 171 2.5 168 2.5.1 180 2.5.3 176 2.5.11 178 2.5.12 177 2.5.14-15 177 2.5.19-23 178 2.5.25-27 179 2.5.26 178 2.5.27-30 179 2.5.28-29 176

2.5.29 179 2.6.15-16 172 2.6.16-17 172 2.6.25-35 174 3.1.167-169 172 3.1.182-183 173 3.4.78-81 182 3.4.97-98 182 3.4.103-105 182, 187 4.1.17-12 183 4.1.28-34 183 4.1.39-42 183 4.1.42-43 183 4.2.1-4 183 4.2.12-13 183 4.2.18 169, 183 4.2.53-56 183 4.3.81-84 184 4.3.107-111 184 4.3.124-164 184 4.3.135-138 184 4.3.155-157 184 4.3.158-163 182, 187 4.6.8-11 169 4.6.37-38 172 4.6.96-98 174 5.1-13 187 5.1.10 176 5.1.12-13 176 STEPHANOS BYZANTIOS s.v. Pisidia p. 524 128 STRABO Geogr. 5.1.4 115 5.1.9 123 5.3.1 126 5.3.3 125 6.3.9 123 13.1.53 115

Index locorum 13.4.16 128 17.1 24 17.1.6 13 17.1.10 16 17.1.16 16 17.1.16.17-28 49 17.1.18 28 17.1.31.20 34 SUETONIUS Aug. 18.2 156 Dom. 13 176, 178 TACITUS Ann. 16.21.1 117 THALES 11 A 4 DK = Th 12 ed. Wöhrle 67 THEOCRITUS Eid. 15.105-111 42 17.3 43 17.11-12 43 17.45-50 43 17.128-34 44 18 44 22.10 41 fr. 3 42 THUCYDIDES 1.102.4 69 VARRO R.R. 2.4.18 115 VELLEIUS PATERCULUS 1.1-3 129

VIRGIL Aen. 1.12 140 1.13-14 145 1.34-35 140 1.109 140 1.159-61 142 1.164-5 142 1.182 140 1.184 142 1.242-249 120 1.247f. 116 1.279 147 1.340-68 145 1.361-62 146 1.418-38 143 1.421 144 1.427 148 1.430-6 147 1.439-42 147 1.457-65 148 1.488 145 1.498-504 145 1.539-41 140 1.755-6 143 2.797 141 3.19 141 3.274-520 154 3.276-80 154 3.280-81 154 3.280-83 154 3.288 156 3.292-520 154 3.295 160 3.296 160 3.328 160 3.403-9 155 3.499-505 160 3.505 154

249

250

Index locorum 3.506-20 158 3.545-7 155 3.690-1 151 3.692-708 151 4.51-3 143 4.75 141 4.83 145 4.86 141, 142 4.143-50 145 4.160-72 148 4.190 142 4.193 143 4.193-94 148 4.300-303 139 4.309-11 143 4.392 148 4.459 146 4.465 146 4.466-68 146 4.469-70 139 4.551 148 4.621-9 141 4.625 141 4.669-71 140, 141

5.7 141 5.522-8 141 5.626 143 5.659-84 141 5.746-58 141 5.759-61 141 6.27-30 151 6.791-792 186 6.791-793 184 7.37 152 7.170 169, 183 8.671-7 157 8.673 157 8.675 157 8.873-4 158 9.412 129 11.246f. 122 Ecl. 4.4-5 184 Georg. 2.136-176 173 4.148-22 142 Scholia Veronensia Aen. 1.247 119

Index rerum nominumque acculturation (of nature) 172

Alba 80

Achilles 161 descent from 158 shield of 157 tomb of 154

Alexander the Great 20, 56, 62 at the tomb of Achilles 154 founder of Alexandria 13–18 statue of 187

Acroceraunia 158

ad (preposition) 83

Alexandria 4, 11–22, 23–53, 71 library 11, 19–21 origins 12–15 temples 15–19 transfered to Rome 52

Adriatic 56, 61, 82, 114, 115, 154

Alps, the 114, 119

Aegean 35, 68

Amazons 61, 111

Aegina 68, 156

amicitia (in Caesar) 87

Aeneas 51, 200 and Anchises 131 and Antenor 114 and Diomedes 122 and Solimus 128 and the Franks 112 at Buthrotum 153–65 foundation narrative of 131 in Carthage 139–48

amphitheater 176–82, see also theater

Actaeon 173 Actium 153–59

aetiology 29, 72, 115, 130, 152, 164, see also aition; origins ad-hoc 127 Aetolia 70

Amycus (king of the Bebrukes) 57–60 Anaphe 70 Anchises 131 Andromache 154, 161 Anfushi (district) 18 Antenor 111–31, 165 Antony 159 Aphrodisias 123 Aphrodision 35

Agrippa 158, 163

Apollo 16, 17, 31, 61, 174 Actian 156 as overseer of colonization 57 epiphany of 57

Agyllina 129

Apollonius 21, 152, 156

aition 60 of festivals 156 of the river Soonautes 58

Aponus, spring of 120

Agathyrsians 208 Agrigentum 140

Aktia (games) 156

apotheosis, see also deification of Arsinoe 16 of Arsinoe II 45–48

252

Index rerum nominumque

of Helen 38, 41, 43 Apulia 81, 102, 122, 126, 153 Aquileia 120 Arachneum, mt. 68

and Nicopolis 154 and the restauration of Rome 149 divinity of 186 Forum of 186 rule in Western Greece 162

Arcadia 118, 125

autochthony 61, 112, 131, 204

Ardea 129

autocracy 77

area, integrated 70–72

Auximum 80, 82

Arezzo 121

Bachelard, Gaston 135

Argonauts 156

barbarians 62, 89, 206

Argos 68–70, 71 and Catillus 126 and Diomedes 122 and Egypt 37, 40

Bast 18

Argos Hippion 122

beacons, narrative of 70

Argyrippa 123

Bebrukes 57–60

Ariminum 79, 82

Beneventum 123, 129

Aristeas, letter of 19

Berenice I 16, 42

Arpos 123, 129

Berenice II 39, 40, 46

Arsinoe II 16, 41–51

Berenice, lock of 45, 50

Arsinoe-Aphrodite 16, 26, 43, 48, 50

Bescheidenheitstopos 175

Artemis 16, 17

bird’s eye view 73

artificiality 143, 148, 154, 172

birds, exotic 168

Astarte 32, 35

Bithynia 208

astronomy 159

Black Sea 56, 57, 60, 152

Athena 16–17

Boeotia 65–68

Athens 19, 24, 96 ‘anti-’ 146 and tragedy 70 expansion into Northern Italy 115 Athos, mt. 39, 47, 68 Atticus 163 Atum 18 augury 119 Augustus 52, 147, 162

boundaries 75, 110, 172, 174, 191, 198, 210, see also limen between Greece and Italy 159 violation of 79

baths 173 Bay of Naples 162

boundary area 164 boundary stones 75, 213 boundlessness of empire 180, 188 of power 177

Index rerum nominumque Britain 133, 208 Britons 208

Greece as 56 Rome as 157

Brundisium 81–82, 91

Ceraunian mountains 154

Buthrotum 153–65

Ceus 50

Caeculus 129

Cicero and Caesar 90–97 and Catiline 99–110

Caesar, Gaius Iulius 75–97, 101, 109 in Alexandria 51 temple of 185

Cicones 147

cage 168–76

Cimbrians 208

calendar 164

Circe 124

Callicrates 49

circles 65–68, 72

cannibalism 207

Cithaeron, mt. 68

Canopus 23–29, 46–51

Clashing Rocks 152

Canusium Cynegeticon 123

Claudius 181

Cape Acherousia 57–60 Cappadocia 155

Cleopatra VII 15, 147 and Dido 139 in Rome 51–53 palace of 139

Capua 102

Clitumnus 201

Carthage 9, 139–48, 153, 155, 162

Clytemnestra 68–70

catalogue geographical 173 historiographical 129 of founders 126 of ships 65–68

Colchis 60, 168 and Egypt 56

Cape Zephyrium 16, 25–28, 43, 49

catasterism 50 Catiline 91, 99–110 Catillus 126, 129 Cato the Younger 93, 109 Catullus 170 cave (of Dido and Aeneas) 148 cemetery 137, 148 center 89–96 and periphery 65–68, 72, 89

colonialism 3, 55, 59 colonisation 152 cultural 113 Greek 122, 162 modern perspective of 130 proto- 151 Roman 162 colony Alexandria as 11 ancient c.s 146 and mother-city 164 as heterotopia 138 Augustan c.s in Greece 155

253

254

Index rerum nominumque

Caesarian c.s 162 Carthage as 146, 147 Cyrene as 152 European c.s 138 founding of 57 Greek 59, 61, 152, 153, 165 Greek vs. Roman c.s 164 Heraclea Pontica as 59 Republican (Roman) c.s 162 Roman c.s in Greece 162 Rome as Trojan c. 161 Sinope as 61 Trojan 154

Cyrenaeans (in Carthage) 148 Cyrenaica 32, 142 Cyrene 11, 56, 59, 61, 71, 115, 152 Danae 129 Danaids 37 Dardanus 129, 160 deification 16, 43, 44, 176, 180, 186, see also apotheosis deities, local 200 Demeter 19, 45 Demetrius of Phaleron 19

commerce 195, 205

Demetrius Poliorcetes 74

community 63, 95, 99 Egyptian 19 exclusion from 105, 108 Greek 59 imperial 163 republican 97

Diana 173

confinements, voluntary 174

Dionysus 17

connections across space and time 164 between Archaic Greece and Egypt 35 between Colchis and Egypt 56 geographical 70 territorial 160

Dioscuri 40, 44–46, 58

Domitian 176–87

Cora 129

Don (river) 112

Corcyra 56, 61, 70 Corfinium 80, 81

donations 39 by Ptolemy II 17

cosmopolis 11, 191

Drepane 61

culture war, Greek-Roman 160

Drepanum 141

Cumae 153

East Canopus see Canopus

Cyclopes 140, 144

ecphrasis (of a shield) 158

Cycnus 170

Egypt and Carthage 142

dichotomies, spatial 4 Dido 139–48, 155, 163 Dindymon, mt. 60 Diomedes 122, 126, 129, 153, 165

disorder 199 Dodona 154 dolphins 158 domi/militiae 75, 78

Index rerum nominumque and Greece 30–51 Caesar’s conception of 52 Upper 14, 207, 211 Egyptians (in Carthage) 148 Egyptocentrism 18, 20 empire Athenian 70 conceptual system of 182 fragility of 185 mapping of 208 microcosms of 188 Ptolemaic 72 Roman 189 stability of 183 enclosures 168 enemy 58, 91, 109, 146, 149, 178 public 99, 105 Ennius 121, 160, 189

255

ethnic identity 154 ethnopoetics 156 Etruria 100, 102, 105 Etruscans 121, 156 euergetism 182 Euganeans 118, 120 Evander 118, 123, 125, 129, 149, 163 exile ‘in Rome’ 93 and colonization 164 and correspondence 95, 96 and return 153 of Aeneas 151, 159–63 of Catiline 105, 107 of Cicero 91, 95 of Demetrius of Phaleron 19 of Dido 143 of Ovid 128 of Roman republicans 95 of Trojans 159–63 of Trojans/Greeks 123 voluntary 97, 106

epic Augustan 152 Greek 151 heroism of 174 Homeric 35, 113, 164 international 151 Nostoi-related 152 on the Punic wars 127 Republican 160 Roman history in 149

expansion 75, 115, 131, 163, 168, 184, 209

epic hero 178

Febvre, Lucien 63

epicedia 168

Fiesole see Faesulae

Epicur 175

food, local 190

Epirus 153, 159

eternity 182, 187

Forum 213 of Augustus 186 of Caesar 51 of Domitian 185 Romanum 185

Ethiopians 183

Foucault, Michel 1, 104, 136, 145, 149

Equumtuticum 123 Eryx 141

exteriority 55 fables, animal 168 Faesulae 100, 102, 108

256

Index rerum nominumque

foundation and journey 37 Greek 161 in Italy 111–31 of Alexandria 12–15 of Carthage 139–48 of Nicopolis 156 of the Alexandrian library 19–21 re- 139, 146 stories of 153 symbolic 133 temple 15–19, 49, 52 Trojan 165

halcyon (bird) 50

France 112

Hannibal 127, 141

Franks, the 112

harmony, social 57

fugere (verb) 81

Hasdrubal 141

Gallia Cisalpina 75, 79, 114, 119

Hathor 37, 43, 50

Garganus, mt. 123

Heidegger, Martin 73

Gargara, mt. 123

Heldenschau 186

Gaul 90, 208 Augustan 163 Caesar in 95

Helen 111, 114, 118 in Egypt 30–53

geography see also space and astronomy 159 and cultural meaning 155 Heroic 69 Homeric 32, 70 imperial 71 Italic 116, 130 mental 215 of Hellenism 56 poetic 32 postmodern 3 real 65 Roman 151 suggestive 158 geometry 72

geopoetics 9, 151–53, 156, 162 globalisation, contemporary 3 Golden Age 181 Greece see also Egypt and G. as center 56 in Callimachus 71 mainland 56, 73, 154 Pompey crossing to 81 scholars of 12 western 156, 160, 162 Gregory of Tours 111

Helenus 154, 160 Helicon, mt. 70 hellenocentrism 4, 6, 19, 20 Hellespont 69 Heneti 115 Heptastadion 13, 15, 30, 47 Heraclea Pontica 57–61 Heracles 58, 173 and the Argonauts 57 and the Ptolemies 42 as city-founder 122 expedition against the Amazons 61 journeys of 113 temple of 28

Index rerum nominumque Heracleion (near Alexandria) 25–28, 31 and Thonis 35, 49

Ilerda 76

Hesperia 154, 160

imitation 161, 171

heterochrony 137, 139, 143, 148

imperial anxiety 185

heterotopia of crisis 145 principles of 136 Rome as 103

imperial culture 173

historiography local 117 Roman Republican 126

Ionia 67

hodological 73

Isis 15–18

homonoia, see harmony, social

Italy 49, 75–97, 111–31, 203 ‘fake’ 162 Aeneas in 112 and Carthage 145 and Epirus 159 Antenor in 116 Caesar outside of 76 Caesar’s invasion of 79 Caesar-occupied 92 central 123 Diomedes in 122 east coast of 61 Greek colonies in 162 Greek invasion of 158 Northern 80, 115 outside of 114 Southern 123 upper 121

Horus 17, 19 House of Life 18 Husserl, Edmund 73 Hydrophoria (festival) 156 Hyllus 61 Hyperboreans 32, 57 Ianiculum 129 Ianus 129 Iapygae 129 Ida, mt. 68, 127 identity 208 evolving 145 Greek 156 Greek cultural 56, 154 illusion of 179 Italic 130 new 89 of Rome 131 Ptolemaic 40 social 137 Idmon, tomb of 60 Iguvium 79

Illyria 116, 120

in-group 109 interpretatio Italica 131 Ionian Sea 161 Iphigeneia 205, 208

Ithaca 30, 144, 147 Iulis 50 Jerusalem 128 Jews 11, 12, 14 ktisis 152, see also foundation Kuzmin, Mikhail 23

257

258

Index rerum nominumque

Kyzikos 60

Lefebvre, Henri 1, 2, 56, 62

map ‘verbalised’ 102 invention of 64 mental 69 modern 71 mythical 112

legacy-hunting 205

Mariandynoi 57–59

Lemnos 68

Martial 181

Lentulus Spinther 80

Massilia, Massiliots 87, 106

letters of Catiline 105 of Cicero 90–97, see also exile and correspondence

mastery (of space) 60

Leucas 70

Menelaus 118 in Egypt see Helen in Egypt

lacus Curtius 186 Lares 204, 209 Latium 129, 203

library of Alexandria 19–21 of Aristoteles 19 limen see also boundaries between Greece/non- 61 Egypt as 25, 29, 35 liminality 11 lion 176–87 localism 10 lock of Berenice 45, 50 lotus, blue 32 Lucan 79, 184 ludi cetasti 117 Lycophron 153 Lysippus 173 Maccari, Cesare 99 Maenads 140 Maeotis 208 Makistos 68 Manlius Curtius 185

Medea 124, 174 Memphis 13, 18, 20, 31–35, 37

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 73 Messapium, mt. 68 metamorphoses 146, 170, 186 Metapontum 129 metropolis 104, 163 migration 112, 152 milestones 64 mind-travel 71 Mons Circeus 124 monuments, public 176 moral decay 168 Mt. Athos see Athos, mt. Mubarak, Hosni 11, 18, 21 Mycenae 205 Mysia 57 myth 23–53, 143, 173 and foundation 111–31 and heterotopia 136 and history 152 enactment of 178

Index rerum nominumque of the Golden Age 181 quasi-m. 69 mythoktisis 122 Naevius 140 Narcissus 173 nautilus shell 49 Neapolis 129 Nectanebo I 31 Nefertem 31, 33 neighbours 213 Neith 17 Nemea 39 Nero 117, 189 Golden Age of 181 Nicopolis (at Actium) 154, 161 excavations of 158 monument of 157, 164 Nicopolis (near Alexandria) 49

of Patavium/Padua 116 of the Aeneads 121 of the Alexandrian library 19 Western 22 Ostia 153 othering (of adversaries) 89 outlaw 99–110 outside world 191 Ovid 146, 170, 186 Padua 114–21 Paetus Thrasea 117 pagus Troianus 121 Paion 31 palace at Alexandria 15, 18, 21 of Cleopatra 140 of Dido 147 of Domitian 169, 183, 187 p.s of the Near East 20

Nile 40 ‘guard of’ 35 Canopic mouth of 25, 29, 35, 46, 49 N. mosaic of Praeneste 25 sources of 185

Palatine 183, 185

nostalgia 162

pan-Hellenism, Ptolemaic 71

nostoi 152

Paros 70

nostri (in Caesar) 89

parrot 168–76

Octavian 156, 158, 159, 164, 189

Parthenope 129

oikoumenē 74

Parthians (in Carthage) 148

Ombi 207

Patavium see Padua

orientalism, Roman 146

path 68–70

origins 201, see also aetiology; aition and mythology 124 Egyptian 18, 21 of Alexandria 12–15

patroni 87, 163

Palazzo Madama 99 Pallanteum 140, 149 panegyric 162, 181, 182, 185

peacock 168 Pelasgi 129

259

260

Index rerum nominumque

Persians (in Carthage) 148 Phaeacians 140, 144 pharaonica 15 Pharos 12, 13, 17, 18, 30–34, 49 ‘Helen’s island’ 39 lighthouse 24, 48 Pharsalus, battle of 51, 91 pheasant 168

eroding 194 geographies of 7 images of 45, 73 imperial 64 legal 110 military 75, 104, 141 of verbal expression 171 political 63, 65 suggestive 128

Philinus, treaty of 140

Praeneste 25, 29, 125, 129

Philotera 45

presence (of the emperor) 182

Phoenicians (in Carthage) 146, 148, 163

prison 137, 148, 168

phoenix 171 Pindar 37, 39, 115, 176, 187

profugere (verb) 79, see also fugere (verb)

Pistoria, battle of 108

protocolonial narratives 153

Po (river) 119

provinces, Roman 80, 85, 200

polis 18, 57, 59, 146, 154

provincial life 162

Polydamna 49

Ptolemies 12–22, 72 and Cyrene 56 and Heracles 42 early 38

pomerium 75, 78, 212 Pompei (city) 129 Pompey (Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus) 75–92 P.s conquest of Judea 128

proficisci (verb) 79, 82

Ptolemy I 13, 20, 24 Ptolemy II 14–19, 39, 41–47, 74

post-colonialism 3

Ptolemy III 19, 20, 42, 45

postmodernism 2

Punic Wars 139, 148

power 62 and space 76, 101 as part of space 63 balance of 110 Caesar’s 97 Catiline’s 105 center of 94 colonial 2 demonic 68 demonstration of 63

Pylii 129 Pyrrhus (king) 158, 160 Pythagoras 210 reciprocity 61 reconciliation 95, 122 post-Trojan 123 re-enactment 178 Revelation of John 74 Rhakotis 12–14, 18

Index rerum nominumque Rhine (river) 63, 112

Saturnalia 181

Rhodes 70

Saturnus 129

Rock of Hermes 68

Sauromatians 208

Roman citizen 105 empire 210 moralism 175 non-R. 87, 108 sacrifice 155 senate 99

Scaean Gate 161

Rome 2, 24, 111–31, 153 ‘Caesar’s’ 94 alternative 120 and Aeneas 151 and Caesar 75–97 and Carthage 139–48 and Egypt 51–53 and Padua 121 anti- 120, 145 as center of the world 157 as central power 113 control of 86 in Juvenal 215 in Sallust 102–10 link with 156 republican 86 under Domitian 176–87 Romulus 119, 130 Rubicon (river) 75, 79 Caesar’s crossing of 90

261

Scamander (river) 162 Schedia 49 Scheria 139, 144, 147 Scipio Aemilianus 146 sea, the 49, 58, 59, 114, 207 ‘of the Greeks’ 31 at Actium 157 crossing of 160 infinity of 139 natural life of 158 Segesta 141, 153 Sekmet 32, 35 self-inclusion (of satire) 192 self-sufficiency 206 senate, Roman 83–88, 99–110, 117, 143 Serapeum 16, 17, 20 Serapis 18, 20 shield of Aeneas 157 ship 30, 36, 41, 112, 157, 202, see also catalogue of ships as heterotopia 139, 148 shipwreck 12, 41, 200, 207

ruler cult, Ptolemaic 40

Sicily 45, 61, 81, 126, 140, 142, 143, 162, 164

Sabines 126

Sinope 60

sacrifice 155, 200, 204

Sobek 19

Said, Edward 3

Soja, Edward 1

Sais 17

Solymoi 128

Sappho 44, 46

Soonautes (river) 57–59

262

Index rerum nominumque

space ‘loaded’ 64 ‘producing’ of 189 bodily 191 circular 196 civic 78, 97 control of 75 cultural 70 culturally produced 59 domestic 168–76, 190 Domitianic 185 empty 112 epic 153 Epicurean 175 expansion of 209 external 135 Greek construction of 61 Greek view of 56 heterogeneous 70, 135 imperial 64, 110, 176, 190, 208, 210 kinds of 1 liminal 61 lived 64, 65 mastery of 60 mythical 173 public 176–87 rhetoric of 77, 86, 90 Roman conception of 79 social 64, 74 symbolic representation of 64 urban 102 Sparta 30, 126, 198 spatial turn 1, 75 spheres 73 statue at Buthrotum 162 little s.s 204

moving 180 of a Ptolemy as pharaoh 14 of Alexander the Great 187 of Arsinoe II 47 of Arsinoe-Aphrodite 23–30 of Cleopatra VII 51 of Domitian 185 of Hercules 173 of the God Nefertem 33 of Zeus Soter 16 Ptolemaic 18, 21 s.s at the Forum of Augustus 186 s.s of patroni 163 s.s of pharaos 12 Sulmo 80, 127–29 super-signifier 180, 188 swan 170 syncretism 30, 52 Taposeiris 49 Tarentines 161 Tarquinius Priscus 121 Tarracina 80 teichoscopy, principle of 66 Telegonus 124 temple 163, 173, 201 at Agrigentum 140 at Alexandria 15–19 at Carthage 140, 146 friezes of 145 of Aktian Apollo 156 of Arsinoe-Aphrodite 23–53 of Demeter 45 of Heracles 28 of Jove in Sulmo 128 of Juno 140 of Jupiter Sator 99 of Venus Victrix 51

Index rerum nominumque spoiling of t.s 78 Tentyra 207 Teos 67 thalamus 148 Thales 67 theater 74, 137, 143, 162, 163, see also amphitheater

torch race 68–70 traditions 125, 129 local 112, 117 Roman 77, 86 transgression 79, 171 triangular relationship 95 triumph 82, 102, 141

theatrum mundi 178

Troia (in upper Italy) 121

Thebes 65–68, 139 of Athenian drama 146

Trojans 114, 126, 130 and the Franks 112 at Buthrotum 153–65 landing in Latium 203

theoi adelphoi 41 Thera (island) 152 Thessaly 69

tropaion 156

Tiber 118, 160, 162

Troy 31, 68–70, 159–63 ‘in miniature’ 161 absence of 163 and Carthage 142, 146 and city foundations 111–24 and the Franks 112 capture of 115, 161 fall of 113 nostalgia of 162

Tibur 124, 125, 129

Tunisia 133, 142, 149

ties between Egypt and Greece 37 cross-cultural 35 of friendship 88 of kinship 112

Turner, William 133

Timavus (river) 120

utopia 135, 144, 182

time, Ptolemaic 72

Vascones 208

Tiphys, tomb of 60

Venafrum 123

topography Hellenic-Trojan 114 moral 99 mythical 113 sacred 78, 90

Veneti 116, 120

Thetis 17, 158 Thon 49 Thonis see Heracleion Thrace 115, 147 three-dimensionality 73 Thynias (island) 57, 59

Tusculum 124 Tyre 145, 163 Ulysses 124, 126, 129, 174

Venus 116, 120, 122 V. Genetrix 51–53 V. Victrix 51 Venusia 123

263

264

Index rerum nominumque

via Domitiana 184 via Massilia 76 wholeness 197 world, the whole 208 Xanthus (river) 160, 161 Zacynthus 208 Zeitlin, Froma 146 Zenodotus 21 Zephyrium see Cape Zephyrium Zeus 36–39 and Hera 36, 44 child of 36, 128 Homeric 178 Z. Solymus 128 Z. Soter 16 zigzagging, mental 71

victoria rimell markus asper (Eds.)

isbn 978-3-8253-6754-1

Imagining Empire

his volume investigates space in Greek and Latin literature as a real and imaginary dimension in which social relations, identities, power and knowledge are materialized, represented and (re)performed. The twelve contributors focus on Hellenistic Alexandria and late Republican to early Imperial Rome, yet the essays range from Greece, Egypt, and Italy to the Black Sea, Asia, and North Africa, taking in Callimachus, Apollonius of Rhodes, Caesar, Sallust, Cicero, Virgil, Statius, and Juvenal along the way. As well as offering innovative interpretations of key texts from the third century BCE to the second century CE, the volume attempts to respond critically and imaginatively to the still-burgeoning body of work on space across the humanities in the wake of post-colonialist and post-structuralist thinking, and considers its potentially challenging implications for Classics as an evolving field of study.

rimell · asper (Eds.)

rimell · asper (Eds.) Imagining Empire

Imagining Empire

Political Space in Hellenistic and Roman Literature