Constructing Literature in the Roman Republic: Poetry and Its Reception

CONSTRUCTING LITERATURE IN THE ROMAN REPUBLIC

How the Romans came to have a literature, how that literature reflected native and foreign impulses, and how it formed a legacy for subsequent generations have become central questions in the cultural history of the Republic. Constructing Literature in the Roman Republic examines the problem of Rome’s literary development by shifting attention from Rome’s writers to its readers. The literature we traditionally call “early” is seen to be a product less of the mid-Republic, when poetic texts began to circulate, than of the late Republic, when they were systematically collected, canonized, and put to new social and artistic uses. Imposing on texts the name and function of literature was thus often a retrospective activity. This book explores the development of this literary sensibility from the Romans’ early interest in epic and drama, through the invention of satire and the eventual enshrining of books in the public collections that became so important to Horace and Ovid. Sander M. Goldberg is Professor of Classics at the University of California, Los Angeles. The author of The Making of Menander’s Comedy, Understanding Terence, and Epic in Republican Rome, he has held fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Fulbright-Hays Commission. He is a past editor of the Transactions of the American Philological Association.

Constructing Literature in the Roman Republic POETRY AND ITS RECEPTION

SANDER M. GOLDBERG University of California, Los Angeles

cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, S˜ao Paulo Cambridge University Press 40 West 20th Street, New York, ny 10011-4211, usa www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521854610
C Cambridge University Press 2005

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2005 Printed in the United States of America A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Goldberg, Sander M. Constructing literature in the Roman Republic : poetry and its reception / Sander M. Goldberg. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. isbn 0-521-85461-x (hardcover) 1. Latin poetry – History and criticism. 2. Rome – History – Republic, 510–265 b.c. 3. Nationalism and literature – Rome. 4. Poetry – Appreciation – Rome. 5. Authors and readers – Rome. 6. Books and reading – Rome. 7. Rome – In literature. I. Title. pa6047.g65 2005 871 .0109358 – dc22 2005013006 isbn-13 978-0-521-85461-0 hardback isbn-10 0-521-85461-x hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Erich Gruen amico collegae magistroque semper

CONTENTS

Preface

page ix

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1. The Muse Arrives . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 2. Constructing Literature . . . . . . . . . 52 3. Comedy at Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 4. Dido’s Furies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 5. Enter Satire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 6. Roman Helicon . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 Retrospective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204 Bibliography

213

Index of Passages Discussed

241

General Index

244

vii

PREFACE

this study developed from the nagging sense, increasingly common among students of the Roman world, that the traditional story told of Roman literature’s origin and early development is deeply unsatisfactory. Challenges to the old verities have become too numerous, too insistent, and too convincing to keep the old story in place, but many of the alternatives now being proposed seem to me to be grounded too deeply in modern ideology and not deeply enough in ancient evidence. Like most New Historicists, I want to speak with the dead, but I am more eager to hear what they have to say than to tell them what I think it means. The following pages therefore set the primary evidence above the debates being waged over it. Scholarly opinions come and go (and sometimes come again), but the evidence endures. My presentation reflects that priority, quoting and discussing Roman sources in the text and being as clear as possible about why I read them as I do, but relegating the majority of my scholarly debts, disagreements, and suggestions to the notes. Yet this is not a strictly empirical study. It owes much to theorists, in particular to Stanley Fish for its definition of literature and to Pierre Bourdieu for its understanding of literature’s role in society, and its way of reading Latin poetry is inevitably influenced by the work of Giorgio Pasquali and his successors. Though I am obviously not one to unpack and interrogate when I can analyze and ask, this inquiry remains in all significant respects, by choice and not just by necessity, a product of its time. Its approach to literary history is nevertheless a little unconventional, and its findings occasionally run counter to one or another commonly held view. A new perspective may compel even familiar landmarks to reveal unfamiliar aspects. I shall be arguing here that Romans of the late Republic had both the concept of and a word for “literature,” but that ix

Preface

imposing this name and function on certain works was often a retrospective activity. The Republican literature we traditionally call “early” could be as much a product of the late Republic, when texts were first systematically collected and put to new social and artistic uses, as of the mid-Republic, when works were first composed with writing in mind. The literary history that follows therefore pays rather more attention to readers than is often the case. Cicero, the most fully documented of Roman readers, will loom especially large. Horace will acquire his greatest significance as a reader of earlier poetry, and what remains in purpose and in essence a study of Republican literature will nevertheless draw its final argument from the most notorious of Augustan exiles, who found all too much time to reflect from a distance on the literary life of Rome. One other oddity deserves mention. The process of reading and reception in antiquity was of course continuous, but the evidence left of those activities is only intermittent. The following chapters focus on what survives, centering on those points in the process that prove most congenial to investigation. One consequence of this decision is a privileging of poetry over prose. Cicero’s sense of litterae no doubt embraced prose as well as verse, and even Cato’s Origines, a pioneering prose work of the 150s, was keenly aware of it own cultural significance. Yet the debts of later Romans to early poetry are, with a few notable exceptions, much easier to trace than their debts to early prose, and the reception of poetry thus claims priority here. The nature of the evidence also explains why, though I have stressed continuities from one chapter to the next, there are obvious disjunctions as well. I can only build with the material at hand. A continuous argument, vaguely chronological despite its avowed distrust of chronology, runs through these chapters, but the need for backreference and recollection allows them to be read separately. Since the argument can be complex, a little repetition and an occasional appeal to the familiar seem a small price to pay for clarity. Ancient authors are generally cited from their Oxford editions, the significant exceptions being Horace and Ovid, who are quoted from the most recent Teubner texts of Shackleton Bailey (1985) and Hall (1995) respectively, and Cicero’s correspondence, cited from the Loeb editions of D. R. Shackleton Bailey, though I have maintained the traditional numbering. The sources for fragmentary texts are indicated in the notes. Translations are my own. As inevitable with a project of this scale, my debts to individuals and institutions are considerable, and they are a pleasure to recall. The investigation began in 1998 during a term of relative calm as a visitor to the x

Preface

School of Classics at the University of Leeds, which provided a congenial base for what became an extensive operation. Aspects of its argument have over the years excited – the verb is deliberately ambiguous – audiences from St. Andrews and Exeter to Dunedin and Hobart, Freiburg and Pisa to Charlottesville and Seattle, and I have learned a great deal, though perhaps not always enough, from the resulting exchanges. It is equally pleasant to acknowledge the fellowship support of the University of California’s Office of the President, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities for providing leave for writing, and UCLA’s own Council on Research for a timely series of research grants. Finally, there are the many debts to individuals whose advice and encouragement, suggestions and objections, have not just made this study possible, but even made it fun. The two readers for Cambridge University Press will recognize my debt to them, as will Beatrice Rehl, as demanding and yet supportive an editor as any author could wish. I also owe much to John Barsby, Elaine Fantham, Rolando Ferri, Bob Kaster, J¨org R¨upke, and especially Erich Gruen, whose support over the years has meant far more than a mere dedication can adequately express. Sander M. Goldberg Los Angeles January 2005

xi

INTRODUCTION

An English schoolmaster is shipwrecked on the West African coast. Carried inland by slave traders, he makes himself useful to the most powerful chief of Ife. There his old skills as scholar and teacher come to the fore, and, almost by accident, he launches one of the world’s great literatures when he translates Paradise Lost into Yoruba and adapts the plays of Dryden for a local festival. ho can imagine such a thing? prospero did not recast his W books in Caliban’s language or subject them to Caliban’s service. Yet the Romans believed that something nearly this surprising actually happened in Italy in the third century B.C. when an educated Greek named Andronicus came to Rome as a slave, was taken in by the powerful family of the Livii Salinatores, and gave the Romans a literature by translating the Odyssey into Saturnian verse and staging the first Latin versions of Greek plays at the ludi Romani of 240.1 This account has been so often repeated, and the conscious use of Greek models is so characteristic a feature of subsequent Latin literature, that even now the full oddity of the story rarely attracts the attention it deserves. Was the Romans’ first literature really poetry of such foreign origin, the gift of freedmen like Andronicus and then Terence and of ambitious provincials 1

Cic. Brut. 72, Tusc. 1.3, Sen. 50. Cf. Liv. 7.2.3–13, V. Max. 2.4.4. Brut. 73 acknowledges some controversy over these matters, but Cicero’s version of Andronicus’ contribution has prevailed. See Gruen 1990: 80–82, Baier 1997: 116–20 (contra Mattingly 1993), and for early Republican attempts at literary history, Fantham 1996: 42–47, Schwindt 2000: 52–121. Andronicus’ Odusia had become a school text by Horace’s time (Ep. 2.1.69–72), but there is no evidence for the oft-repeated claim (e.g., von Albrecht 1999: 41–44) that this was his aim in writing it. Whether the epic preceded or followed the plays is unknown. Mariotti 1986: 16–19 provides excellent discussion of these issues.

1

Constructing Literature in the Roman Republic

like Naevius, Plautus, and Ennius? And, questions of historicity aside, why would Romans be willing to accept and to transmit so peculiar a story of their cultural heritage? Alternatives should have been possible. The story that seized the Romans’ attention emphasizes differences at the expense of equally compelling similarities, and if other choices had been made by the tellers, a somewhat different story might well have developed in its place. In privileging the world of poetry over the world of prose, for example, the traditional account sets the mercenary work of Rome’s lower classes apart from the personally engaged products of its elite. The social gap between these two worlds of endeavor was considerable. Though Andronicus may have been a client of the Livii and the beneficiary of senatorial largesse, the first Roman to write a history in prose was himself a Fabius and a senator, and the first to write one in Latin, Cato, was a consul and censor and a public figure for half a century.2 Nor was history the only prose genre to gain prominence among the elite. The oratory of senate and assembly was increasingly preserved in writing and thus available for that range of uses that, as we shall see, began turning texts into “literature” in the second century. Cicero’s Brutus itself makes a powerful argument for the literary status of oratory and is thus increasingly appreciated by modern scholars as a serious work of literary history.3 Still more significant is the fact that prose and poetry were not as discrete in their practices and in their achievements as an emphasis on social distinctions might suggest and not only because poets and aristocrats sometimes met as patrons and clients. Prose, like poetry, could also be inspired and informed by Greek examples, and its development was closely intertwined with the poets’ achievements. The prologues of Terence, to cite one of our less problematic cases, exploit not just the stance but the very language of contemporary oratory, and the complexity of Terence’s style in turn prefigures the growing capabilities of Latin prose. Cato’s Origines, to take a more ideologically charged example, appears to embrace in the 150s an approach to Roman history that 2

3

Q. Fabius Pictor, the Senate’s emissary to Delphi after the defeat at Cannae in 216, was apparently fluent in Greek and used it for his history (Liv. 22.57.4–5, 23.11.1–6; Plut. Fab. 18.3; Appian Hann. 27), though his motives for doing so are much debated. See Gruen 1984: 253–55, Momigliano 1990: 88–108, Dillery 2002, with extensive bibliography in Suerbaum 2002: 359–66. Thus in different ways and for somewhat different purposes, Goldberg 1995: 5–9, Hinds 1998: 63–69, Schwindt 2000: 96–121.

2

Introduction

can be traced back to Ennius’ Annales.4 The traditional story, however convenient, clearly comes at the expense of significant nuance and detail. Then again, nobody was ever fully at ease with it. Even Cicero, whose excursions into literary history did most to popularize the traditional account, knew perfectly well that the beginning of the evidence was not necessarily the beginning of the story. Greek poets, as he notes at Brutus 71, existed before Homer. The Roman situation was surely no different. There must have been poetry before Andronicus, too, and Cicero’s regret over its loss has become important testimony for the fact of its prior existence. Atque utinam exstarent illa carmina, quae multis saeculis ante suam aetatem in epulis esse cantitata a singulis convivis de clarorum virorum laudibus in Originibus scriptum reliquit Cato! If only those songs survived in which, according to Cato in his Origines, banqueters many generations before his own time sang in turn the praises of famous men! (Brut. 75)

A reference in the Tusculan Disputations to the same report implies that Cicero understood these archaic songs to have employed traditional melodies rather than to have been improvised anew for each occasion.5 Gravissimus auctor in Originibus dixit Cato morem apud maiores hunc epularum fuisse, ut deinceps qui accubarent canerent ad tibiam clarorum virorum laudes atque virtutes: ex quo perspicuum est et cantus tum fuisse discriptos vocum sonis et carmina. That highly esteemed authority Cato said in his Origines that it had been the custom among our ancestors for those gathered around the table to sing in turn to the pipe the praises and deeds of famous men. It is thus clear that there were then tunes assigned for the sounds of voices as well as lyrics. 4

5

For Terence, Goldberg 1986: 31–60, 170–202, and for Cato’s debt to Ennius, Goldberg 2006 and Sciarrino 2006, important even if we do not accept the argument of Cardinali 1988 that Cato’s work began with a hexameter echo. Cic. Tusc. 4.3. Discriptos is an emendation for descriptos in the MSS. (retained by Peruzzi 1998: 139–40). The general point is unaffected, though descriptos ‘recorded’ would make it even clearer. Cf. V. Max. 2.1.10: “maiores natu in conviviis ad tibias egregia superiorum opera carmine comprehensa pangebant . . . ” There is, however, no independent support for Cicero’s statement. It may simply be an inference from his belief that the archaic carmina were epic predecessors.

3

Constructing Literature in the Roman Republic

Varro, probably also drawing on Cato’s testimony, imagines a formal tradition of praise poetry that was performed in the context of banquets.6 < sic aderant etiam> in conviviis pueri modesti ut cantarent carmina antiqua, in quibus laudes erant maiorum, et assa voce et cum tibicine. Respectable boys < were present> at banquets to sing both unaccompanied and to the pipe ancient songs containing the praises of our ancestors.

These songs, evidently too antique a practice for even Cato’s direct experience, are the so-called carmina convivalia on which, in the early nineteenth century, the historian B. G. Niebuhr based his famous theory of heroic lays. Niebuhr found in this testimony hints of a lost tradition of ballads, which passed from citizen to citizen, generation to generation as “the common property of the nation” and could help explain the survival of archaic legends in the Roman historical tradition. The carmina as he understood them therefore represented a valuable element of popular tradition in a record otherwise dominated by patrician annals.7 Niebuhr’s theory, controversial from the outset, today finds few supporters. Greek parallels suggest a lyric rather than narrative character for the kind of banquet song Cato recalls, and historians have found more satisfactory ways to explain the survival of Rome’s earliest traditions.8 Yet the carmina convivalia remain of interest. Their mere existence has never 6

7

8

Var. ap. Non. 107–8 (De vita pop. Rom. fr. 84 Riposati). Peruzzi 1998: 145–46 claims, I think unconvincingly, that pueri modesti means specifically “musikalische Knaben.” The testimony of Cicero and Varro is now generally read as complementary rather than contradictory. See Riposati 1939: 187–92 and Zorzetti 1990b: 292–93. The context of Cato’s remark is unknown. It is commonly assigned to book 7, but his preface is a likely inference from the verbal echo at Cic. Planc. 66: “Etenim M. Catonis illud quod in principio scripsit Originum suarum semper magnificum et praeclarum putavi, clarorum hominum atque magnorum non minus otii quam negotii rationem exstare oportere.” See Cugusi 1994 for further arguments along this line. Niebuhr 1828: 209–10: “Die G¨aste selbst sangen der Reihe nach; also ward erwartet dass die Lieder, als Gemeingut der Nation, keinem freyen B¨urger unbekannt w¨aren.” A century later, Schanz-Hosius was still fixing Niebuhr’s idea in Roman literary history: “Ueber den Inhalt der Lieder sind uns keine genaueren Mitteilungen u¨ berliefert. Aber die r¨omische Geschichte bietet uns eine Reihe der schonsten Sagen dar; diese m¨ussen ¨ doch einmal von Dichtern geschaffen worden sein. Wir werden nicht irren, wenn wir annehmen, daß sie mit den Tischliedern zusammenh¨angen” (1927: 23). For the theory’s appeal to students of German Heldensage, see von See 1971: 61–95. Decisive refutation from the historiographic side came from Momigliano 1957. Cf. Cornell 2003 on the origins of the Coriolanus legend, one of Niebuhr’s own examples. The lyric quality of the carmina is acknowledged by Zorzetti 1990b: 298–301.

4

Introduction

been questioned: that poetry preceded history as a record of res gestae and that dinner parties provide congenial occasions for poetic performance have been commonplace assumptions since antiquity.9 The focus of attention, however, has been shifting. An expanding knowledge of early Italy’s material culture has returned the carmina to prominence by changing the complexion of what was once largely a philological debate over their place in literary history. Some of the evidence being used is incontrovertible. A wine trade, for example, is now well attested for Latium in the seventh century, and imported drinking vessels dated to the later eighth century have been discovered in domestic contexts in Etruria.10 The significance of this information, however, is not equally clear. Whether such facts mean that early Romans had a specifically “sympotic” culture and that the lost carmina were performed at symposia organized in the Greek style remain problematic inferences. Archaeological evidence also seems to confirm that Italians did not initially recline on couches and did not segregate the sexes in the Greek manner.11 Nor are the social connotations of the Greek symposium entirely clear even in Greek contexts. To claim both that Italians had that same institution and that it meant the same thing to them as it did to the Greeks requires a bolder argument than everyone is prepared to accept.12 A significant level of literacy is nevertheless traceable to at least the sixth century B.C., and linguistic evidence has gradually strengthened the case for an oral poetics in archaic times that could have shaped important 9

10

11

12

Thus Tac. Ger. 2: “Celebrant [Germani] carminibus antiquis, quod unum apud illos memoriae et annalium genus est . . . ” Cf. Serv. ad Aen. 1.641, 7.206. Momigliano 1957: 109–11 thought the carmina mentioned by Cato may have survived into the fourth century. Gras 1985: 367–70, Rathje 1990, and more broadly Cornell 1986: 64–68, Horsfall 1993a: 791–8, and Zorzetti 1991: 312–15. Zaccaria Ruggiu 2003, clearly an important study, appeared too late for consideration here. Rathje 1990: 284–85, confirming the testimony of Ov. Fast. 6.305–6, V. Max. 2.1.2, and Var. de vit. p. r. 29–30 (Riposati). Cf. the skepticism of Holloway 1994: 191– 92. The picture is further complicated by testimony of early Roman actions to curb drinking by women: V. Max. 2.1.5b, 6.3.9, Plin. Nat. 14.89.90, Gell. 10.23.3, with Gras 1985: 386–90. So, in response to Zorzetti 1991, Phillips 1991: 386: “We know comparatively little about symposia and mousike even in Athens and Sparta, while there is even less evidence for those activities in other cities.” Contrast the caution of Petersmann on the carmina convivalia in Suerbaum 2002: 41–42 with Suerbaum himself on early Rome’s “lyrische Kultur” (2002: 49–51). Fisher 2000: 356–69 and Wilkins 2000: 202–11 question the exclusively aristocratic connotations of the Greek symposium. For the benefits and pitfalls of comparing archaic Greek and Roman cultures, see Raaflaub 1986: 29–37.

5

Constructing Literature in the Roman Republic

elements of what eventually became the Roman literary heritage.13 Add to this the unambiguous ancient testimony for hymns and dances in ritual contexts, and it becomes clear that verbal art, along with opportunities to perform it and means to preserve it, was deeply rooted in Roman culture for generations before Livius Andronicus.14 Nevio Zorzetti must be right in claiming that “the old idea of the typical Roman character, practical and unpoetic, is simply inadequate, besides being unhistorical” (1990b: 295). In truth, though, that “old idea” was never so widely held. Niebuhr, lecturing on Roman literature in the mid-1820s, had already made something much like Zorzetti’s claim:15 Let no one imagine that the Romans were barbarians, before they adopted the civilisation of the Greeks: their works of art and their buildings prove the contrary. That people . . . must assuredly have attained to a high degree of intellectual culture, and cannot be conceived to have been without some kind of literature, though, of course, different from that of the Greeks.

What did change profoundly in the generations between Niebuhr and Zorzetti were the attitude toward Greek culture’s influence on the Romans and the direction of the scholarly gaze. For Niebuhr, deeply influenced by J.G. Herder, the earliest Roman traditions had of necessity to be Italic. Beneath that confident “of course” in the last sentence of Niebuhr’s declaration lies Herder’s insistence that a viable literature was rooted in the experience of the people. Anything else was necessarily insubstantial (Luftblase).16 To endure, even an aristocratic literature could 13

14

15

16

On literacy: Cornell 1991: 24–32, Poucet 1989, and more generally Horsfall 1994. For the contributions of historical linguistics to the Romans’ literary prehistory, see Costa 2000: 66–79. So Cic. Tusc. 4.3, de Or. 3.197, Lg. 2.22, though Zorzetti 1991: 312–18 goes too far in adducing “a unified culture of carmina” from such evidence and identifying it with Greek influence. The conclusion at de Or. 3.197, “maxime autem a Graecia vetere celebrata” implies a significant difference at least of degree between Greek and Roman practice. Niebuhr 1870: 14. These lectures, delivered from 1826–29, were published posthumously from students’ notes. The English edition of Schmitz quoted here is an independent, fuller witness, not a translation of the Vortr¨age u¨ ber r¨omische Geschichte published by M. Isler in 1848. ¨ So, e.g., Herder’s essay of 1777, “Von Ahnlichkeit der mittlern englischen und deutschen Dichtkunst”: “Doch bleibt’s immer und ewig, daß, wenn wir kein Volk haben, wir kein Publikum, keine Nation, keine Sprache und Dichtkunst haben . . . ”

6

Introduction

neither precede nor ignore popular tradition. This was why Niebuhr would go on in his lectures to praise Theocritus – the idylls “grew out of popular song, and hence his poems have a genuineness, truth, and nationality” – while disparaging the Eclogues for creating “something which could not prosper in a Roman soil.”17 This is now, to say the least, a very old-fashioned style of argument. Roman literary achievements are no longer thought to stand or fall on their perceived independence from Greek models. Modern scholarship is so much more appreciative of Vergil, not to mention of Plautus and Terence, in part because it is willing to posit a deeper and earlier penetration of Greek culture into Italy than Niebuhr ever envisioned and to accept, even to admire, the consequences of its influence. Scholarship is also more ready to focus on the actions of Rome’s elite and to treat literary activity as an aristocratic phenomenon. Thus the convivial poetry that Niebuhr saw as a manifestation of popular tradition and the “Gemeingut der Nation” becomes for Zorzetti “the direct expression of aristocratic wisdom.”18 The possibility that Roman aristocrats had a rich cultural life from quite early times and were so receptive to Greek influences in the crucial third century because they had long been receptive to them is today neither an improbable nor an undesirable idea to contemplate. Whatever Andronicus actually did for the Senate and the Roman people in 240 B.C., it was surely not to create a literature out of nothing. What really happened in the third century is not, however, the focus of this book, nor will it add to the stock of conjecture about Rome’s preliterary culture. Ancient truths may yet be recovered as new archaeological evidence and new theoretical perspectives join with philological rigor in pursuit of that distant past, but their progress is not likely to be quick. Consider Livy’s famous digression on the origin of the ludi scaenici, which may stand as a sobering example of the difficulties such

17

18

(Herder 1982: 286). For the concepts of Volk and Nation in Herder, see Barnard 1965: 73–76. Niebuhr 1870: 661. Cf. Lessing 1962 (1766) 96–97, contrasting the artificiality of Aeneas’ shield (“ein fremdes B¨achlein”) and the naturalness of Achilles’ (“Zuwachs des eigenen fruchtbaren Bodens”). Then again, Horace too had some hesitation about the Eclogues or at least about the preciosity they might encourage. See Zetzel 2002. Zorzetti 1990b: 294. Habinek 1998: 54 reads early Roman literature as “an agent of aristocratic acculturation.” For Niebuhr’s view of the carmina as the voice of the plebs, see Momigliano 1957: 107–9.

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Constructing Literature in the Roman Republic

inquiries face. Livy’s account undoubtedly contains important evidence for the history of Roman drama, but it has defied a century and more of intense scrutiny.19 Nothing about the passage is clear. Its association of the early ludi with an outbreak of plague in 364 B.C. is unusual, perhaps unhistorical, and almost certainly colored by Livy’s own antitheatrical bias.20 The central role he assigns the Roman iuventus for motivating change is vague and problematic, while the story of Andronicus miming cantica when his voice failed is scarcely credible.21 New finds from Etruria or Latium may someday cast light on the Etruscan ludiones at the center of these developments, and a better understanding of what Livy called musical medleys (“impletae modis saturae”) may yet help us explain how Andronicus could find actors in third-century Rome equal to the task of performing his new Latin scripts, but good luck and great effort will be needed to produce what may even then be only a small gain in knowledge. More yielding to immediate inquiry, and equally relevant to the problem of Rome’s literary origins, is the reception of archaic traditions by the later Romans who first constructed a literary history – and indeed, defined a literature – out of the earlier remains. Because the literary history of the Republic as we tell it today is largely a first-century story, it is worth paying more attention than is customary to how and why firstcentury Romans told it as they did. This means understanding Romans of the late Republic as both users and shapers of their literary heritage. That is itself a complex task since the textual evidence of early times inevitably comes wrapped in the arguments of later ones, and not every source of later distortion is as easily recognized as Livy’s bias against the ludi (“ab sano initio . . . in hanc vix opulentis regnis tolerabilem insaniam”). We work with secondhand and synthetic evidence and must constantly be aware that the more we build upon it, the more likely we are to magnify

19

20

21

Liv. 7.2.3–13. Important recent discussions include Bernstein 1998: 119–29, Feldherr 1998: 178–87, and Oakley 1998: 40–58, with extensive bibliography provided by Suerbaum 2002: 51–57. Liv. 7.2.3 says only “dicuntur,” followed a little later by “dicitur.” Feldherr 1998: 183–85 notes the inefficacy of the ludi as a response to plague. Livy’s source is widely, though not universally, thought to be Varro, an uncertainty that makes his integration of the antiquarian excursus and historical narrative especially problematic. Jory 1981: 152–55 suspects, not without reason, the influence of pantomime in fostering this idea. The tradition that Andronicus was himself an actor is much less incredible. Leo 1913: 56–57 remains basic. For the problematic iuventus of Livy’s story, see Morel 1969.

8

Introduction

its inherent distortions.22 The resulting dilemma is well known to sociologists, as Pierre Bourdieu observes (1990b: 102): However far one goes back in a scholarly tradition, there is nothing that can be treated as a pure document for ethnology . . . It’s well known that the corpus which the ethnologist constitutes, merely by virtue of the fact that it is systematically recorded, totalized and synchronized . . . is already, in itself, an artefact: no native masters as such the complete system of relations that the interpreter has to constitute for the purposes of decipherment. But that is even truer of the recording carried out by the story told in a literate culture, not to mention those sociologically monstrous corpora that are constituted by drawing on works from altogether different periods. The temporal gap is not the only thing at stake: indeed, one may have to deal, in one and the same work, with semantic strata from different ages and levels, which the text synchronizes even though they correspond to different generations and different usages of the original material.

The carmina convivalia become precisely such a “sociologically monstrous corpus” when their reconstruction fails to distinguish sufficiently between the content and the context of the testimony used and to consider how the context influences its content. The methodological issue is important and worth a closer look, since no evidence of Rome’s early cultural heritage comes to us independent of later filters. A famous scrap of testimony illustrates the point quite well. It comes, as so often in matters of early literary history, from Cicero. First-century Romans accepted as a matter of fact that the Greeks’ literary achievement had long outstripped their own. That concession followed comfortably, as Cicero says in his introduction to the Tusculan Disputations, from the belief that early Romans, with so many other achievements to their credit, had never tried to rival the Greeks in this area.23 There was therefore no serious poetry at Rome until the time of 22

23

Contrast the quality of the evidence available to Zorzetti 1990b with what is available to Ford 2002: 24–45 in discussing the Greek symposium and its cultural impact. A Roman equivalent to Ford’s kind of analysis thus seems beyond our capabilities. Cic. Tusc. 1.3: “Doctrina Graecia nos et omni litterarum genere superabat, in quo erat facile vincere non repugnantes.” The catalogue includes an ample range of endeavors in which Roman efforts more than equaled the Greeks. Cf. the famously enigmatic injunction of Aen. 6.847–53, from which any litterarum genus is conspicuously absent. The idea that literary culture came late to the Romans is attested first for Porcius Licinus (Courtney 1993: 82–86), echoed famously by Hor. Ep. 2.1.156–9, as well as Liv. 7.2.3 and eventually Suet. Gram. 1.1.

9

Constructing Literature in the Roman Republic

Andronicus, and even then it was not valued highly, as Cato is once more called upon to witness: Sero igitur a nostris poetae vel cogniti vel recepti. quamquam est in Originibus solitos esse in epulis canere convivas ad tibicinem de clarorum hominum virtutibus, honorem tamen huic generi non fuisse declarat oratio Catonis, in qua obiecit ut probrum M. Nobiliori, quod is in provinciam poetas duxisset; duxerat autem consul ille in Aetoliam, ut scimus, Ennium. quo minus igitur honoris erat poetis, eo minora studia fuerunt, nec tamen, si qui magnis ingeniis in eo genere exstiterunt, non satis Graecorum gloriae responderunt. Poets thus received late recognition or welcome from our countrymen. Although we find in the Origines that guests around the table were accustomed to sing to the pipe about the deeds of famous men, Cato’s speech in which he criticized M. Nobilior for taking poets to his province (the consul had in fact, as we know, taken Ennius to Aetolia) nevertheless declares that there was no honor in this sort of activity. And so the less poets were honored, the less attention was paid to them, although those whose great talent enabled them to stand out in that activity nevertheless matched the glory of the Greeks. (Tusc. 1.3)

Although ostensibly straightforward, Cicero’s argument here – and it is an argument, not an exposition – actually conflates and distorts three distinct levels of witness. There is the state of poetry in early Rome, what Cato in the second century said in his Origines about banquet songs and what he said in a speech attacking Fulvius Nobilior, and finally there is Cicero’s combination of Cato’s statements for his own purpose a century and more after their original articulation. Though some of the words in the passage are certainly Cato’s, the association of ideas is Cicero’s, which means that these relics of second-century polemic are preserved in a matrix of first-century argument. They are all too well integrated into that argument, which means that as evidence of earlier times, Cicero’s account is seriously jumbled and unhistorical. This becomes obvious as soon as we begin separating its levels of testimony. Cicero himself certainly has Ennius’ Annales in mind when thinking here about poetry: the activity in question seems to embrace both the archaic carmina and the epic. It was a natural association for Cicero.24 The 24

And perhaps for Cato. J. E. G. Zetzel points out to me that Tusc. 1.3 could be taken to mean that Cato found no honor in performing the archaic carmina either. His approval of them, though widely assumed in modern scholarship, is not explicitly attested in any ancient source.

10

Introduction

more detailed version on this argument about literary progress at Brutus 71–76, for example, explicitly evokes the archaic carmina of Cato’s Origines as the first step in epic’s rise, and Cicero knew perfectly well that Annales 15 celebrated Nobilior’s Aetolian campaign and climaxed the first edition of the poem with his restoration of the Aedes Herculis Musarum using Ambracian spoils. It was therefore logical for him to assume that Cato, whose hostility to Fulvius was well known, objected on these grounds to his patronage of Ennius. The problem with this line of association is that the encomiastic tendencies of Annales 15 were probably not at issue in Cato’s speech attacking Fulvius Nobilior. Cato did not scruple there to recall the contested Aetolian triumph of 187, but his immediate target was Fulvius’ censorship of 179.25 The speech is therefore dated to 178. The Annales project probably began about 184, after the poet’s return from Ambracia, but it was never the sole claim to his attention. Ennius continued to write plays and satires into the 170s, as well as a hexameter poem about fish (the Hedyphagetica). He also had to research some five hundred years of Roman history and develop a technique for creating viable epic hexameters in Latin. If, as seems likely, Ennius wrote his epic in chronological sequence, with a significant break after Book 6, Book 15, which marked the end of the sequence, probably did not circulate until the late 170s. If this is right, the action that aroused Cato’s disdain in 178 was not the writing of an epic poem glorifying Fulvius Nobilior.26 The provocation more likely came from the production of a play, Ennius’ praetexta drama Ambracia, which was staged either in conjunction with Fulvius’ triumph or at the votive games he held the following year. The Scipio in honor of Africanus had already presented an unsettling precedent for Latin encomiastic verse, and early books of the Annales may have further raised Ennius’ profile and stoked the fires of Cato’s indignation, but the play would have attracted his particular attention because of its conspicuous public role in the controversy of 187.27 He would have 25

26

27

So Malcovati 1953: 57 and now widely accepted, though the possibility of an earlier speech attacking the consulship and/or triumph of Fulvius cannot be excluded. See Astin 1978: 110 n. 22, Sblendorio Cugusi 1982: 294–96. The dating of Annales 1–15 is problematic, with dates of composition well into the 170s most commonly favored, since it is difficult to imagine fifteen hexameter books researched, written, and circulated in little more than five years. Gell. 17.21.43 reports that Ennius wrote Book 12 in his sixty-seventh year (i.e., 173), but the information is not necessarily reliable. See Suerbaum 1968: 114–20 and Skutsch 1985: 2–5. Flower 1995: 184–86, Manuwald 2001: 163–66, and for the oddity of the play in this context, Zorzetti 1980: 78–81 and Gildenhard 2003: 109–11. The laudatory Scipio is

11

Constructing Literature in the Roman Republic

thought it a particularly outrageous and unprecedented display of partisanship, an artistic intervention in what was still in the 170s one of the most notoriously contested triumphs of the age. “Who has seen anyone granted a victor’s crown,” he asked in that same speech against Fulvius, “when a city had not been captured or an enemy camp not burned?”28 The suborning of Ennius to tip the balance of public opinion in Nobilior’s favor, the kind of ploy better suited to a Hellenistic dynast than a Roman consul, must have been particularly galling since Ennius probably succeeded in this effort: when Cicero eventually hailed the dedication of the Aedes Herculis Musarum with the remark that Nobilior “did not hesitate to dedicate Mars’ spoils to the Muses” he may be echoing not just the sentiment but even the words of Ennius’ Ambracia.29 Whatever Cato’s motives, however, a partisan debate of the 170s will not provide reliable evidence for literary history. Though Cicero’s conflation of epic and play, speech and history may be an unreliable guide to second-century attitudes, its implicit contrast between the songs of banqueters and the works of poets may nevertheless go back to Cato, though not to his statement in the Origines. Other references to that passage make clear that Cato had understood the carmina to be a custom of the distant past, not a fact of his own second-century culture.30 More explicit testimony about the status of poets in the second century has been culled from another work, where he declared in language quite similar to what Cicero reports that the poets’ art originally received no honor and its practitioners were dismissed as flatterers. Both

˘

˘

30

12

˘

29

˘

28

almost certainly later than 187 but predates the Annales. See the judicious discussion by Courtney 1993: 26–30. Cato 148M: “iam principio quis vidit corona dari quemquam, cum oppidum captum non esset aut castra hostium non incensa essent?” The story of the triumph and its resentments is told at Liv. 38.43–44, 39.4–6. Cic. Arch. 27: “iam vero ille qui cum Aetolis Ennio comite bellavit Fulvius non dubitavit Martis manubias Musis consecrare.” For the possible echo here of Ennius’ play (scansion precludes an epic origin), see Manuwald 2001: 162–63. Cato would not have considered what Fulvius took from Ambracia legitimate “Martis manubias.” Gildenhard 2003: 110 notes the Hellenistic precedent for Fulvius’ use of Ennius. Cic. Brut. 75 (“multis saeculis ante suam aetatem”) is explicit, confirmed by “apud maiores” at Tusc. 4.3. The teleological argument at Brutus 75 required this more meticulous chronology. Plut. Cat. 25.4 (
          
 
) suggests that Cato reintroduced the custom to his own banquets, but that may simply be a misinterpretation of evidence like Tusc. 1.3. Rupke 2001: ¨ 49–58 gets around this problem by suggesting that historical epic was also written for recitation at banquets in the second century, but the evidence for that otherwise appealing suggestion is not strong.

Introduction

the text and the context of that statement remain problematic, although it is reasonably clear that Cato did not have heroic verse in mind. The immediate source for it is Aulus Gellius, who illustrates the meaning of elegans by quoting from a work he calls Cato’s Carmen de moribus. He then continues in his rambling way with some further, seemingly random excerpts from that book (11.2.5-6): Praeterea ex eodem libro Catonis haec etiam sparsim et intercise commeminimus: “Vestiri” inquit “in foro honeste mos erat, domi quod satis erat. equos carius quam coquos emebant. poeticae artis honos non erat. siquis in ea re studebat aut sese ad convivia adplicabat, ‘grassator’ vocabatur.” I recall these other sayings random and piecemeal from the same book by Cato: “It used to be the custom,” he says, “to dress becomingly in public, modestly at home. They paid more for horses than for cooks. Poetic art was not respected. Anyone who applied himself to that activity or attached himself to parties was called a ‘grassator’.”

Grassator, ‘vagabond’ or ‘bandit’ in common usage, is often given a more specific sense here with the help of Festus, who glosses grassari, the verb behind the noun, as ‘to flatter.’ This would suggest that in Cato’s view poetry was at some point in Rome’s past considered little better than flattery and poets therefore little more than fawners or parasites.31 How should we understand such a remark, and what may have been its basis in fact? Context may, despite appearances, provide a clue. The Carmen de moribus, known only from this one chapter in Gellius, was probably not an original work at all but a collection of dicta drawn from other sources, a carmen in the sense of a ‘prescription’ or a ‘refrain’.32 This particular set 31

32

Fest. 86L: “grassari antiqui ponebant pro adulari. grassari autem dicuntur latrones vias obsidentes; gradi siquidem ambulare est, unde tractum grassari, videlicet ab impetu gradiendi.” Thus R¨upke 2001: 57, “nicht als ‘Wegelagerer,’ sondern als ‘Schmeichler.’ ” Peruzzi 1998: 159–60 prefers a specific sense, “(poeta) itinerante,” which seems like special pleading. Festus’ autem clearly acknowledges the more usual meaning, but ‘mugger’ (so Habinek 1998: 37–38) makes little sense in Cato’s context and would not motivate Festus’ comment, though Habinek, following Zorzetti 1990b: 294, is probably right to equate Cato’s “poetica ars” with Greek techne. Gruen 1992: 71–72 suggests, less probably, that Cato’s distinction is between types of poetry. So Liv. 3.64.10 rogationis carmen ‘electoral rule,’ Cic. de Or. 1.2.45: magistri carmen ‘a schoolmaster’s refrain.’ The model would have been the so-called carmen of Appius Claudius Caecus (Cic. Tusc. 4.4, cf. Val. Max. 7.2.1). Scholarship has been silent on this obvious possibility. See Astin 1978: 185–86 for the standard view. Gellius’ quotations

13

Constructing Literature in the Roman Republic

of dicta presents three subjects (dress, food, entertainment) united by a common theme: archaic austerity is implicitly compared with something else, no doubt with modern extravagance. The moral values and the style of presentation are familiar from Cato’s many speeches and pronouncements concerning the conspicuous consumption of his contemporaries. He was an active participant in the sumptuary debates of the day, famous for complaining, among other things, that it was hard to save a city where a fish cost more than an ox (ap. Plut. Cat. mai. 8.2). That sort of complaint was hardly new. Demea made it in Terence’s Adelphoe, and the calls to convivia in Plautine comedy often suggest invitations to license and immorality.33 The causes of Cato’s particular annoyance are recorded by Polybius in a moralizing passage of his own concerning the extravagant banqueting customs that came into vogue among Roman aristocrats after Pydna. The young Scipio, he says, found it relatively easy to win a reputation for moderation ( ) because there were so few rivals among his peers. Of these,34 some gave themselves up to affairs with boys, others to hetairai, and many to musical entertainments, drinking parties and the extravagance they involve (ε    
     
!ε ), since they had quickly become infected in the course of the war with Perseus with Greek license in these things. In fact the incontinence that had broken out among the young men grew so great that many paid a talent for a favored boy and many paid three hundred drachmas for a jar of preserved fish from Pontus. Marcus Cato became so indignant at this that he said in a public speech that he recognized in these matter the surest sign of decline in the state when pretty boys sold for more than fields and jars of preserved fish for more than plowmen.35

33

34

35

preclude the a priori assumption of (most recently) Zorzetti 1991: 313–15 that carmen in archaic contexts must refer to poetry. Ter. Ad. 60–63. Plaut. Most. 933–4 alludes to this sort of party, while Stich. 707 suggests singing in Greek. Polyb. 31.25.5, with another version at D.S. 37.3.5–6. Cf. Cato’s attack on M. Lepidus (fr. 96M) for erecting statues to two Greek cooks (worth four talents each, according to Diodorus) and his own claim to modest living in the speech De sumptu suo (fr. 174M). For his role in the sumptuary debates of the day, see Astin 1978: 91–97 and Gruen 1992: 69–72. The dubious morality associated with aristocratic banquets lingers in Livy’s description of Sex. Tarquinius’ ill-fated dinner party at 1.57.6–9. This was not strictly true. A plowmen in second-century Italy cost more than three hundred drachmas (denarii?): the Roman slaves manumitted in honor of Flamininus in 195 were ransomed for five minae each, i.e., five hundred dr. (Plut. Flam. 13.4–5). Rhetoric of course transcends economics.

14

Introduction

Such comparisons eventually become a commonplace of Roman moral discourse: Sallust’s Marius will sound much the same note – no doubt by design – when he proudly acknowledges that his dinner parties were austere and his cook less expensive than his bailiff.36 The obvious inference to be drawn from the moral litany Gellius quotes is that in Cato’s present the suppressed counter to each statement was true. Poetry, we must conclude, was receiving respect and poets were not called flatterers. Cato may have liked that state of affairs no more than he liked the price of fish from Pontus, but the confirmation of Cicero’s argument that poetry came late to the maiores also confirms its status in Cato’s time. Thus Ennius won the respect and benefited from the approval of a very wide range of prominent Romans, as Cicero himself had acknowledged when defending Archias nearly twenty years before:37 Omnes denique illi Maximi, Marcelli, Fulvii non sine communi omnium nostrum laude decorantur. ergo illum qui haec fecerat, Rudinum hominem, maiores nostri in civitatem receperunt. And so all those Maximi, Marcelli, and Fulvii were honored with a praise that encompassed us all. Therefore our ancestors bestowed citizenship on him who did those things, the man from Rudiae.

We must conclude that neither poetry in general nor Ennius in particular was the target of Cato’s speech of 178. The attack was on Fulvius’ wealth, the praise his wealth could secure, and the image he sought to cultivate. It was good politics to be sure but therefore a dubious witness to contemporary attitudes and an even less reliable source for the cultural practices of still earlier generations. This brief excursion into source criticism confirms an inconvenient but inescapable fact. Ancient sources sometimes say more than they actually know and have a strong tendency to tailor whatever they say to their particular requirements.38 What Cato and then Cicero after him knew, 36

37

38

Sall. Iurg. 85.39: “sordidum me et incultis moribus aiunt, quia parum scite convivium exorno neque histrionem illum neque pluris preti coquom quam vilicum habeo.” Cic. Arch. 22. Brut. 79 claims that Ennius received Roman citizenship in 184 through the sponsorship of Nobilior’s son, Quintus, but the chronology is problematic (Badian 1972: 183–85). Ennius’ attested association with various Cornelii, Fulvii, Sulpicii, and Caecilii in any case transcends the partisan politics of the early second century. See Badian 1972 and Gruen 1990: 106–16. The tendentious nature of late Roman sources is noted by Cole 1991: 377–78 and Gabba 1984, who emphasizes their persistent “idealisation of the past as an avenue to the interpretation of the present” (86).

15

Constructing Literature in the Roman Republic

thought he knew, or is now thought to have known about the archaic carmina convivalia are not necessarily all the same thing. Their testimony may not be coherent, nor can the philological analysis that advances understanding of our informants and their world overcome the limits of their own knowledge. The archaic phenomenon may easily have involved more, less, or simply something different from what the sources preserve, and until we are able to add to those sources, the historical reality behind the banquet songs is likely to remain, like the details of Livy’s “dramatic satura,” at a distance. We must in any case resist the temptation to read our limited sources synoptically, as if they all understood the same phenomenon the same way and all had the same purpose in recalling it. Before constructing one of Bourdieu’s “monstrous corpora,” we need to take the evidence to pieces and evaluate its constituent parts separately. Only then can we assess their cumulative value for reconstructing archaic practice.39 Happily for the present inquiry, however, the secondary and tertiary sources that provide such problematic evidence for archaic practice are themselves primary evidence for the first-century attitudes toward early Roman literature and its reception that are the subject of this book. That does not necessarily mean that they are any more straightforward. Cicero’s fixation on the Annales, for example, when calling up the memory of Cato’s remarks on poetry recalls an important fact of literary history. The epic poem dominates Cicero’s thinking as if the play Ambracia did not exist, and in an important sense this was probably the case. Not that the genre was unimportant. Plays on Roman themes, the so-called fabulae praetextae, were said to be Naevius’ invention, and in the course of the second century, great moments of history, legend, and cult were reenacted on the stage at the regular ludi scaenici, as well as at individual temple dedications and triumphs. About a dozen such Republican plays are known. There may have been dozens more. Naevius, Ennius, Pacuvius, and Accius all wrote praetextae, and such pageants may have played a significant role in disseminating the facts of Roman history, developing the Romans’ sense of community, and enlivening the political discourse 39

This synoptic flaw is particularly marked in Zorzetti 1991: 312–18 on the Romans’ “ancient music” and Peruzzi 1998: 139–47 on the “evolution” of banquet songs from amateur to quasi-professional performances. The alternative procedure is not what Zorzetti disparages as “hypercritical philology” but simply controlling for context when evaluating secondary sources. Thus, for example, Cic. de Or. 3.197, where Cicero’s point is not, pace Zorzetti, “the music of Numa,” but the practical effect of rhythm on audiences. Details in Goldberg 2006.

16

Introduction

of the time. As late as the Floralia of 57, a revival of Accius’ Brutus, a play ostensibly about the last Tarquin, caused a major commotion when the actor Aesopus gave the line “Tullius, who secured the citizens’ liberty” a contemporary spin in Cicero’s direction.40 The genre actually outlived the Republic.41 Plays on Roman themes continued to be written under the emperors – our one complete example, the Octavia, survives in the Senecan corpus – but Republican praetextae are known only from very meager fragments that are preserved almost entirely in grammatical rather than literary contexts. Only once does Cicero, generally so fond of illustrating literary or philosophical points with quotations from tragedy or epic, cite a praetexta for its content.42 More typical in their path to survival are our four lines of Ambracia, each cited for a lexical oddity by the fourth-century antiquarian Nonius Marcellus. As a topical exercise without the cachet of a Greek pedigree, the fabula praetexta evidently lacked the status of other genres and was less likely to figure in later literary discussions. Thus, when Cicero thinks about Ennius, his memory of the praetexta easily becomes a casualty of the Annales’ greater prominence and the prestige that poem eventually bestowed on the epic genre. This eclipse of the play introduces a final point of significance, which is the definition of “literature.” In emphasizing what authors do in producing texts, traditional accounts of Roman literary history pay considerably less attention to the fact that literature requires readers as well as writers. It is not just the creation and collection of certain texts but an attitude toward those texts that mark them as literature. One of the safer inferences from our all-too-problematic story about Livius Andronicus is that something 40

41

42

Cic. Sest. 123: “Tullius, qui libertatem civibus stabiliverat.” For the definition of the praetexta, see Ussani 1968 and Manuwald 2001: 14–52, and for its putative role in disseminating Roman traditions, Zorzetti 1980: 53–73, Wiseman 1994: 1–22, and 1998: 1–16. Flower 1995 and Kragelund 2002: 17–27 review the occasions for its performance in the Republic. The continuity of the genre is well argued by Kragelund 2002, though Accius may have introduced a significant turn toward tragedy that eventually made the imperial praetextae significantly different from their Republican predecessors. See Zorzetti 1980: 93–107. That one clear exception is Accius’ Brutus, a play with some vogue in the late Republic, quoted for its dream narrative at Cic. Div. 1.43–45 and the political twist reported at Sest. 123. The only other plays cited by a Republican author are Naevius’ Clastidium and Romulus, both quoted by Varro. The pattern of citation is clear from the chart at Kragelund 2002: 12. If Cic. Arch. 27 conceals an echo of Ambracia, it is more likely a reflection of Cicero’s research into Ennius’ career than an explicit allusion.

17

Constructing Literature in the Roman Republic

happened in connection with the ludi Romani in or about the year 240 that both defined what later generations would call their literature and diminished their interest in whatever had preceded it. Seen this way, the focus of literary history starts to shift from matters of who wrote what and when and under whose influence to points of connection between authors and audiences: how and when did the Romans come to value what Andronicus and his successors created, so that scripts for secondcentury actors became part of greater Rome’s cultural heritage? Why would one genre – epic is the most obvious example – quickly become a cultural benchmark while another, for example, praetexta drama, would eventually hold only the grammarians’ interest? I shall be arguing here that when Cicero refers to litterae, he often means “literature” in something very like the modern sense of texts marked with a certain social status, whose “literary” quality denotes not simply an inherent aesthetic value but a value accorded them and the work they do by the society that receives them.43 Literature is thus the result not just of creation, but of reception. Distinguishing the creation of literature from the creation of texts, valuing the work of readers along with the work of writers, has important advantages. It becomes much easier to understand how the traditional “history” of early Roman literature took shape through a process of hindsight and back projection as men like Varro and Cicero sought among third- and second-century texts what they required to meet their own first-century needs. By reading the story they created for Roman literature from the inside out rather than forward from its putative beginning in the conventional chronological sequence, the inevitable first-century distortions become part of the story rather than obstacles to its telling. The changing role of drama on the cultural scene becomes more apparent and a little easier to understand, as does the range of influences drama exerted on later literary and social discourse. So too does the impetus to create the new genre of satire. And above all, it becomes possible to see more clearly how Romans, writers and readers alike, came to use literary texts as they did, and why they found it advantageous to do so. What follows here is therefore not a traditional literary history, though it is certainly an exercise in the history of literature. It begins with epic as the genre that first aroused literary sensibilities at Rome but puts less 43

So “omni litterarum genere” at Tusc. 1.3 and litterae at S. Rosc. 46, Att. 4.10.1, Fin. 1.4. The references to litterae and deficiencies of education at Div. Caec. 39 and 2 Verr. 1.47 are similar. The point is developed in Chapter 3.

18

Introduction

emphasis on what early authors intended than on what later ones made of their intentions. How the genre was read changed with time, as did the company it kept in the Romans’ bookcases. Drama comes second in this account because it became “literature” only in retrospect, and Chapters 2–4 will examine how scripts written for the early dramatic festivals were eventually reclaimed for the emerging high culture of the later Republic and what work those scripts came to perform in that new role. The emphasis must of necessity be on comedy (and to a lesser degree on Plautus over Terence) because that is where the preponderance of the evidence lies, but tragedy too will play a part in the discussion. Though the work they eventually did was significant, however, the generic conventions of both epic and drama limited their ability to explore social issues, and we will then have to consider how that limitation combined with the growing appreciation of poetry’s power to stimulate formation of a new genre that was capable of more direct social criticism. The result is the subject of Chapter 5, centering on the distinctly aristocratic genre we know as “satire,” which did much to solidify poetry’s place in the Roman cultural landscape. Chapter 6 will consider how in the late first century poetry achieved, both literally and figuratively, monumental proportions at Rome just as the Republic was becoming history. A brief restrospective then reviews the justification and considers the methodological implications of understanding Republican literary history in this way.

19

chapter one

THE MUSE ARRIVES

certain fabius, who affected the imposing cognomen A Ululitremulus (‘Owl-quaker’), ran a cleaning establishment at Pompeii just off the street we know as the Via dell’ Abbondanza. He must have made some claim to education and experience. On the right doorpost of his shop was a large picture of a meticulously patrician Aeneas in high-laced boots and cuirass leading Anchises and Ascanius out from Troy, and opposite it was a similarly dressed Romulus, with the first spolia opima on his left shoulder. These paintings were not original creations: they recall the statues of Aeneas and Romulus that faced each other from two large exedrae in the Forum of Augustus at Rome. As such, the paintings are a nice example of Augustan iconography and of its enduring appeal even beyond the city.1 Yet Fabius’ grandeur also set him up for a tease. Among the graffiti scrawled beneath the pictures is a hexameter verse, “Fullones ululamque cano, non arma virumque” (‘I sing of cleaners and owls, not arms and the man’).2 That joke at the expense of Fabius’ pretensions is an equally nice reminder of how deeply the Aeneid rooted itself in the Roman consciousness and became inseparable in the Roman 1

2

The fullonica of Fabius is Reg. IX ins. 13.5. The pictures are reproduced as Fig. 156 in Zanker 1988: 202, who implies a connection with the Forum Augusti. This must be right. The Pompeian figures, somewhat illogically, faced away from each other, but these poses in the Forum, where the two heroes were reversed, would have them both looking toward the Temple of Mars. See also Galinsky 1996: 204–6 on the iconography. A parody of the Aeneas pose – the figures are monkeys – was also found at Pompeii. See Fuchs 1973: 57 and Galinsky 1969: 30–32. The text (CIL 4.9131=CLE 1936) is no. 60 in Courtney 1995. The association of fullers and owls is well documented, though badly understood. Good discussion by Courtney, 280–81. The parodist might have mistaken Romulus for another Aeneas, bearing the arms of the defeated Turnus. The faces in the two pictures are very similar.

20

The Muse Arrives

mind from Augustus’ renovation of the Roman material and literary heritage.3 Vergil’s success, however, should not obscure another fact of literary history, which is the surprise his poem first generated among his peers. Roman poets of the 20s had learned to keep epic at a distance. Some earlier epic projects were stillborn. Others, like the poems on Caesar’s Gallic campaigns by Varro of Atax and Furius Bibaculus had brought Republican epic to the brink of panegyric. The common responses to the resulting crisis in taste were either to withdraw, like Catullus and Cinna, to the library or to make the very refusal to write epic a literary topos.4 The discovery that Vergil, the model poet who had himself once gracefully declined to write of kings and battles, was at work on an epic therefore caused a considerable stir.5 Propertius bears witness to the shock (2.34.61–66): Actia Vergilium custodis litora Phoebi, Caesaris et fortis dicere posse ratis, qui nunc Aeneae Troiani suscitat arma iactaque Lavinis moenia litoribus. cedite Romani scriptores, cedite Grai! nescio quid maius nascitur Iliade. The Actian shore in Phoebus’ charge and Caesar’s brave fleet – Vergil can tell of these, who now calls up the arms of Trojan Aeneas and the walls he built on the Lavinian shore. Give way, Roman writers! Give way, Greeks! A thing greater than the Iliad is being born.

The Vergilian echoes in Troiani, arma, and Lavinis litoribus suggest that Propertius has heard at least the opening of the emerging poem, but he 3

4

5

So at Oxyrhynchus by the late first century a scribe practiced his letter forms by copying over lines of the Aeneid: see Cockle 1979. The text is now P. Oxy. 50.3554. For Vergil’s rapid dissemination throughout the Roman world, see Horsfall 1995: 249–55. On the so-called recusatio, see Williams 1968: 102–3, Nisbet and Hubbard 1970: 81– 83 and 1978: 179–83, and Lyne 1995: 31–39. Cic. Q. fr. 3.7.6 mentions an epic ad Caesarem that was never released (Allen 1955); Att. 1.16.15 reports his (waning) hopes for a poem by Archias. Vergil always had detractors – Marcus Agrippa may have been one of them (Suet. Vita. Verg. 44) – but Vell. 2.36.3 had ample reason to call him princeps carminum. Atticus’ learned freedman Caecilius Epirota was teaching Vergil’s bucolics to his privileged charges by the early 20s. See Suet. Gram. 16.3, with Kaster 1995: 188–89.

21

Constructing Literature in the Roman Republic

has of course gotten quite a lot wrong. The Aeneid will have little to say about Actium or, at least directly, about any contemporary event.6 Propertius reveals less about the poem Vergil was writing than about what he himself expected a contemporary epic to contain. And with reason. The success of Ennius’ Annales had so codified and canonized the early history of Rome and established history as the subject of Latin epic that later poets could imagine little more than a continuation of its story. By seizing upon the relatively obscure story of Aeneas in Italy, Vergil was able to solve one of the great literary problems of the day. His combination of mythological and historical tendencies proved both artistically valid and ideologically respectable and thus restored epic to a prominence it would not again soon lose.7 Yet even when the practice of epic was at its lowest ebb, the idea of epic never lost its status. It was always the most prestigious, however underachieving, poetic genre of Roman antiquity and by a kind of scholarly metonymy became the very symbol of literature itself. Some writers even worked from the assumption that Rome did not have a literature at all until it had epic. The earliest surviving fragment of a Roman literary history, remnants of a didactic poem in trochaic septenarii by an aristocrat named Porcius Licinus, makes precisely that claim:8 Poenico bello secundo Musa pinnato gradu intulit se bellicosam in Romuli gentem feram. 6

7

8

For the Battle of Actium on Aeneas’ shield (Aen. 8.671–713), see Gurval 1995: 230–40, and for the association of the heroic parade that ends Aeneid 6 with the images of the Forum Augusti, see Degrassi 1945 and Zanker 1988: 210–15. Servius thus had good reason to think that Vergil’s intention was “to praise Augustus through his ancestors,” though he was not necessarily right in thinking so. How much of the poem Propertius heard and his thoughts on hearing it remain matters of debate. See Tr¨ankle 1971 and the rejoinder of Stahl 1985: 350–52, and for Vergil’s recitation of his work in progress, see Horsfall 1995: 19. He was said to have been a very effective reader: the poet Julius Montanus envied his voice and delivery (Vit. Verg. 29 = Suet. Rhet. fr. 3). So Horsfall 1995: 249: “The Aeneas-legend . . . was, prior to Virgil, a political plaything of the Iulii Caesares. It was the Aeneid which transformed it into a truly national story.” For the development of that story, see Gruen 1992: 6–51 and for Aeneas’ eventual prominence in Augustan art, see Zanker 1988: 201–10. Thomas 2001: 34–54 traces the (posthumous) development of this “Augustan” Vergil. On Aeneas in earlier Roman epic, see also Goldberg 1995: 54–55 (Naevius), 95–101 (Ennius). Thus Serv. ad Aen. 1.273: “Naevius et Ennius Aeneae ex filia nepotem Romulum conditorem urbis tradunt.” Licinus ap. Gell. 17.21.44. The poem probably dates to the later second century, but precision is impossible. See Leo 1912: 66–69, Courtney 1993: 82–86, Schwindt 2002: 64–70, and for the poet’s identity, Badian 1972: 163–64.

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At the time of the Second Punic War, the Muse with winged step introduced her warlike self to Romulus’ savage race.

The Muse that reveals herself to be bellicosa must be the epic Muse: Licinus is thus associating the beginning of Latin poetry with the rise of epic. His point of inception, the Second Punic War, was the time of Naevius, and so the probability is that he identified the introduction of epic specifically with the appearance of Naevius’ Bellum Punicum.9 Lucretius reveals a similar sense of epic’s importance, though by his reckoning it was not Naevius but Ennius, “who first brought the evergreen crown from pleasant Helicon” (‘qui primus amoeno/detulit ex Helicone perenni fronde coronam’, 1.117–18). Horace, perhaps echoing Porcius Licinus, famously agreed (Ep. 2.1.156–59): Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes intulit agresti Latio. sic horridus ille defluxit numerus Saturnius, et grave virus munditiae pepulere. Captive Greece captured the savage victor and brought the arts to rude Latium. Thus that crude Saturnian verse drained away, and refinement drove off the fetid smell.

As hexameter poets themselves, Lucretius and Horace naturally see Ennius’ metrical innovation as the decisive step in the history of Latin verse: the new, flexible hexameter not just enhanced the technical and aesthetic possibilities of Latin epic but helped it escape the echoes of ritual and superstition that inevitably clung to the old Saturnian cadence.10 The sentiments and the very language of their claim nevertheless look back to Porcius Licinus.11 9

10

11

Licinus’ “Poenico bello” may play on the title. The epic dealt with the First Punic War (264–241 B.C.), in which Naevius had himself served (Varr. ap. Gell. 17.21.45), but as a work of his old age (Cic. Sen. 50), it is dated to the last years of the century. Schwindt 2002: 67–69 revives the old idea that Licinus’ reference is to Ennius, who came to Rome in 204, but his epic was then some twenty years in the future. Courtney 1993: 84–85 makes a more convincing case for Naevius (and for the agreement of Licinus’ bellicosam with se). Cf. Cic. Div. 1.114, quoting Ennius’ famous line about the meter of “Faunei vatesque.” Not that the Saturnian was entirely forgotten. Catullus’ deliberate recollection of Saturnian cola in his hymn to Diana (c. 34) suggests the abiding potency and ritual connotation of its rhythms even in the mid-first century. Horace later dates the coming of tragedy “post Punica bella” (616–18), also a likely echo of Licinus. Similar language appears in Liv. 7.2.3, who calls the ludi scaenici

23

Constructing Literature in the Roman Republic

Even Cicero, whose famous digression in the Brutus reflects the antiquarians’ tendency to trace Roman literary history back to the thirdcentury ludi scaenici, reveals a similar emphasis. The passage from which we extract that chronology does not itself begin chronologically with Andronicus’ production in 240 B.C. but in medias res by paraphrasing – and praising – Ennius’ claim to preeminence in poetry. Just as Homer eclipsed the work of his predecessors, says Cicero, so Ennius left all rivals far behind:12 “nec doctis dictis studiosus quisquam erat ante hunc” ait ipse de se nec mentitur in gloriando: sic enim sese res habet. “Nor was anyone careful over educated speech before him” He says that about himself, nor does he lie in his pride: that is how it was.

The emphasis is significant. By beginning his discussion with Ennius, Cicero not just avoids a purely chronological approach to literary history but obscures that history’s origin in the ludi scaenici, which is what a strict chronology would emphasize. The Ennius of this passage is specifically the poet of the Annales, not the tragic dramatist, and the argument soon makes clear that Cicero’s measure of the Roman achievement in poetry is its accomplishment in epic. Consular years and the staging of ludi scaenici provide dates for poetic careers and gave his friends Atticus and Varro ample grist for their antiquarian mills,13 but the poems Cicero values most here in the Brutus are Naevius’ Bellum Punicum and the Annales. Their prominence seems natural, even self-evident, but things could have turned out otherwise. Porcius Licinus, Lucretius, Cicero, and Horace had these texts to think about not because they were in continuous circulation from their first appearance on the cultural scene on into the Augustan age, but because the first Romans to take the editing and

12

13

(an Etruscan import) a “res nova bellicoso populo.” A century later, Suet. Gram. 1.1 represents literary study as something brought to a “rudis scilicet ac bellicosa etiamtum civitas.” Cic. Brut. 71, cf. Or. 171. From this testimony Skutsch 1985: 373 restores exempli gratia, “nec dicti studiosus fuit Romanus homo ante hunc” (209). For the cultural significance of the phrase “dicti studiosus” (= philologos), see Skutsch 1968: 6–7 and Barchiesi 1993: 119–20. Cic. Brut. 60 and 73 make clear that the researches of Varro and Atticus included veteres commentarii that integrated literary events into the framework of consular dating, but none of these sources was sufficiently official to settle problems of chronology. Thus the famous conflict with Accius. As Brut. 72 observes, “est enim inter scriptores de numero annorum controversia.” The authority of these commentarii remains a matter of debate. See M¨unzer 1905: 55–61 and Suerbaum 1968: 299–300.

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dissemination of poetry seriously also looked first to epic. When Suetonius, over two centuries after the fact, surveyed the history of literary exegesis at Rome, he located the first signs of professional activity – the legacy, however indirect, of a famous visit by the great Pergamene scholar Crates of Mallos around 167 – in the treatment of epic texts. According to Suetonius, the poems of Naevius and Ennius were falling increasingly into obscurity until they were rescued for a new generation of readers by a combination of popularization and education. C. Octavius Lampadio, whose efforts made him famous, read and explicated the Bellum Punicum and even gave the poem a new look by dividing it into books.14 A little later, Q. Vargunteius performed a similar service for the Annales through attention that included readings before large, appreciative audiences. What these men found as obscure works (“carmina parum adhuc divulgata”) they thus set on their way to becoming the classics of Horace’s generation, eventually earning for themselves the authority he would so famously lament (“adeo sanctum est omne vetus poema,” Ep. 2.1.54). The limited circulation of Naevius’ epic by the later second century surprises nobody – Ennius may himself have hastened its decline – but it is harder to grasp the implications of Suetonius’ report that the greatest poem of the Republic also had to be rescued from relative obscurity by a grammatically minded dilettante. Reception of the Annales is not generally thought so problematic. It surely enjoyed an immediate success. Ennius praised the great men of Rome and earned their praise in turn (Cic. Arch. 22), and the three books he added to the original poem in old age surely responded to the demands of contemporary acclaim. The confidence with which Ennius assumed Homer’s mantle and replaced the Saturnian cadence with the Muses’ foot aroused an admiration in later generations that is easily read back not just into his 14

Suet. Gram. 2.2 with Kaster 1995: 61–67, Christes 1979: 7–8. Book division has an Alexandrian ring (cf. Heiden 1998), but the eighteen books of Ennius’ Annales would have provided Lampadio with a model closer to home. For the book divisions of that poem (original to Ennius), see Skutsch 1985: 5–6, and for early scholarly interest in it, 8–10. Gell. 18.5.11 tells how the rhetor Antonius Julianus went to considerable trouble and expense to consult a text of Ennius with Lampadio’s autograph emendations, but that “liber summae atque reverendae vetustatis” was probably a forgery. So Zetzel 1973: 239–41. Whether Lampadio edited Ennius as well as Naevius (cf. Fronto ad M. Caes. 1.7.4) remains uncertain. Livius Andronicus’ Odusia must have undergone a similar process, though no source deigns to take it seriously (“tamquam opus aliquod Daedali,” Cic. Brut. 71). It was nevertheless available for the distinguished teacher Orbilius to pound into his students: Hor. Ep. 2.1.69–71, Suet. Gram. 9. See Brink 1982: 118–20, Kaster 1995: 128–34.

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own time but continuously thereafter. The Annales’ path to fame, however, was probably not so direct because there were also inherent limits to its appeal. Its innovations were certainly resisted in some quarters. The Bellum Punicum continued to attract readers into Horace’s lifetime, and resentment of Ennius’ Hellenizing efforts in diction and meter may linger in the claim that after Naevius’ death the Romans forgot how to speak Latin.15 Enough reactionary bravado endured into the post-Ennian world to produce the so-called Carmen Priami, which appealed not to Ennius’ Muses but to the “veteres Casmenas” in what purports to be Saturnian verse.16 In the 130s, Decimus Brutus Callaicus dedicated a grand new temple to Mars, which featured a monumental statue by Scopas and a dedicatory inscription by the famous Accius – in Saturnians. Trochaic rather than dactylic rhythms remained common in didactic poetry.17 Countertendencies like these suggest that Ennius’ replacement of the old aesthetic was neither complete nor immediate among readers with a literary turn. Less technically committed readers would also have had a quite practical reason to lose interest in the poem: its content was quickly overtaken by events. Memory of the Hannibalic war dimmed with the years and with the fading reputation of the Scipios.18 The poem’s conclusion was even less appealing. The chastisement of Aetolians and Istrians, which the Annales celebrated so earnestly, soon paled before Aemilius Paullus’ victory in Maecedonia, which opened a new chapter in the political and cultural life of Rome by securing Roman dominance in the east, while vastly increasing the westward flow of Greek material and literary culture. The developments that Ennius in the 170s saw as the pinnacle of Roman achievement thus turned out to be little more than its prelude. Glorification of what so quickly became old news could easily have meant 15

16

17

18

So Norden 1915: 145, citing the Naevian epitaph of Gell. 1.24, “obliti sunt Romae loquier lingua Latina.” Cf. Hor. Ep. 2.1.53–54: “Naevius in manibus non est et mentibus haeret/ paene recens?” Its single surviving line is quoted by Var. L. 7.28: “veteres Casmenas cascam rem volo profarei.” The false archaism of Casmena and the lack of word boundary after the fifth syllable (the so-called caesura Korschiana) indicate a late imitation of the old epic style. See Cole 1969: 19–21, Timpanaro 1978. Porcius Licinus’ literary history and Accius’ Pragmatica were trochaic poems. So was Ennius’ own Scipio, though it probably predates the Annales. For Brutus’ temple, Plin. Nat. 36.26, Cic. Arch. 27 with Schol. Bob. (Stangl 1912: 179), Val. Max. 8.14.2. Ennius’ Scipio no doubt enhanced Africanus’ original reputation, but the Scipionic legend that eventually restored his fame after the trials of the 180s was the work of Polybius’ generation. See Walbank 1967.

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oblivion for the Annales. It certainly helps explain why Q. Vargunteius would have found the poem “parum divulgatum.” Why, then, did he take it up? A Greek precedent may have played a part. Homer had long been the archetypical poet of the Greek world, and epic was the genre of first reference in Hellenistic culture. Crates’ lectures at Rome doubtless centered on Homeric exegesis, and they may well have inspired men like Vargunteius to search for equivalent Latin texts on which to perform comparable exercises.19 A Latin literature would require a Latin Homer, which meant locating poems that could bear the burden of national identity while withstanding the scrutiny of grammarians and poets. Lampadio and then Vargunteius found such texts in the Bellum Punicum and Annales.20 These particular epics had the further attraction of conveying a strong sense of personal authorship: both Naevius and Ennius expressly wrote themselves into their poems. Ennius even proclaimed himself to be Homer reborn.21 Vargunteius’ newly found literature thus acquired at a stroke both poems and poets. Why, though, were audiences attracted to his readings?22 Epic might by its very nature appeal to the people of education and privilege most reachable by scholarly efforts, but it is worth asking what this new audience heard in Ennius’ poem that their fathers apparently did not hear. Some of the new appeal may have been simply the result of Roman taste and experience catching up with Ennian innovation: the sound play, metrical tricks, neologisms, and Homeric echoes so characteristic of the Annales would have been particularly amenable to Crates’ style of criticism and to the literary interests it would have aroused.23 There was 19

20

21 22

23

Cf. Aristot. Poet. 1448b27-49a15 and Aeschylus’ characterization of his plays (ap. Athen. 8.347e) as “slices from the great banquet of Homer.” For Homer’s prestige in the Hellenistic world, see Brink 1972: 548–56, Cameron 1995: 273–77, and for Crates’ Homeric scholarship, Pfeiffer 1968: 234–46, Garbarino 1973: 2.356–62, Nagy 1998: 215–28. The fragments are now gathered and edited with commentary by Broggiato 2001: 13–77 and 140–239. For epic at Rome as the “highest” genre and thus Ennius as summus poeta, see Dahlmann 1963: 17–19. Keith 2000: 8–18 notes the special prominence of epic in Roman education. Naev. BP fr. 44 (Gell. 17.21.45), Enn. Ann. fr. iii–x, with Skutsch’s notes. Suet. Gram. 2.2 is explicit about Vargunteius’ (popular) public readings: “quos [Annales Enni] certis diebus in magna frequentia pronuntiabat.” The reemergence of Philodemus’ polemic monograph On Poems has vastly increased our knowledge of Crates’ doctrines and their possible influence on the Romans. See Asmis 1992, Janko 2000: 120–34, Broggiato 2001: xxvii–xli.

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also an ideological factor. The poem could easily be read inclusively as the record not of factional achievements but of what the Ennian epitaph would proudly call “the great deeds of your fathers” (‘maxima facta patrum’). This is the impetus that made the otherwise unknown Caecilii so prominent in Ennius’ story of the Istrian War, where the courage of military tribunes contrasted with the venality of their commanders, and it lingered on in his attention to the censorship of Aemilius Lepidus and Fulvius Nobilior, which not only reconciled notoriously bitter inimici but advanced the rights of the people over the arrogant exercise of aristocratic privilege.24 That is precisely the orientation of Cato in the 150s, who established the claims of the “populi Romani gesta” as the subject of his Origines over the “clarorum virorum virtutes” and went on to prove the point by immortalizing another obscure tribune, who may have been called Q. Caedicius.25 The combined result by the end of the second century was an interest in epic texts and a sense of their authorship that transcended contemporary politics and positioned epic to have a lasting effect on both the writing and the reading of Latin poetry. I

The intrinsic merit of these early poems combined with the consciousness of their achievement to ensure that Latin epic would have a future mindful of its past. Even a self-consciously innovative poet like Furius of Antium, whose taste for neologism in the late second century would furrow the brows of later grammarians, still echoes Ennian sound-play and colon-structure in a line like, “increscunt animi, virescit volnere virtus” (‘their spirits rise, valor valorizes with wounding’).26 Composition like this indicates a process of reading and calculated imitation 24

25

26

Both events were recorded in Book 16. For the historic background, see Liv. 41.1– 6.3, 7.4–10, 10.1-5, 11.1 (Istrian War) and 40.51 (the censorship). Full discussion in Goldberg 2006. The epitaph is quoted by Cic. Tusc. 1.34. Ennius’ role in the factional disputes of the second century continues to be debated. See Gruen 1990: 106–22. Gell. 3.7 = fr. 83P. Gellius provides the name, but Cato was not necessarily his source for it, since Cato’s refusal to name commanders in his history was notorious (Nep. Cato 3.4, Plin. Nat. 8.11, cf. Gotter 2003: 117–19). For Cato’s emphasis on communal glory in the preface to his work, see Cugusi 1994, who rightly restores to it the remark about the archaic carmina. Thus Cugusi and Sblendorio Cugusi 2001: 2.291–92. A. Furius was the familiaris of Q. Lutatius Catulus, consul in 102 (Cic. Brut. 132). The subject of his epic is unknown. See Courtney 1993: 97–98, and for the poets of the post-Ennian Republic, Goldberg 1995: 135–36. Comparable Ennian lines include Ann. 177, 249, 392, 620.

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whose inevitable results were both a characteristic epic style for the benefit of poets and a literary memory that gave words connotations as well as meanings to enrich the experience of readers. Thus, when Lucretius calls upon Venus, effice ut interea fera moenera militiai per maria ac terras omnis sopita quiescant. nam tu sola potes tranquilla pace iuvare mortalis, quoniam belli fera moenera Mavors armipotens regit, in gremium qui saepe tuum se reicit aeterno devictus vulnere amoris Arrange for the soldiers’ savage duties meanwhile to lie still in repose through all the seas and lands, for you alone can please mortals with restful peace, since Mars, exulting in arms, who rules the savage duties of war, often reclines in your lap, conquered by the eternal wound of love, (DRN 1.29-34)

the history behind words like Mavors, armipotens, and mortalis (= homines) and of the archaic genitive in -ai combine with the dactylic rhythm to recall the world of epic, and since in Rome of the late Republic that was still largely a martial world, the very language and meter of Lucretius’ prayer enrich his explicit contrast between the gentleness of Venus and the hardness of Mars. Repetition of the phrase fera moenera, altered just enough to change its metrical position without changing its meaning (militiai = belli ), also recalls Ennius, for whom repetition and paraphrase were both an organizing principle and a stylistic ornament. They are at work, for example, in the famous description of Romulus’ augury. In Murco Remus auspicio sedet atque secundam solus avem servat. at Romulus pulcer in alto quaerit Aventino, servat genus altivolantum. On the Murcus Remus sits for the auspices and alone awaits a favorable bird. But fine Romulus inquires on the high Aventine. He awaits the high-flying race. (74–76)

The repetition of servat . . . servat and the hint of avem in Aventino unite the brothers in their task just as the garland around Iphianassa’s hair (“infula virgineos circumdata comptus”) in Lucretius’ famous description of the 29

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sacrifice at Aulis recalls in the victim the goddess to whose altar she is brought (“Triviai virginis aram,” cf. the corresponding genitive of “Iphianassai sanguine,” 1.80–101). This similarity is not just the result of limited vocabulary and formulaic expression, nor is it a simple matter of evoking the solemnity of happenings by copying epic mannerisms. Lucretius can indeed parody epic style with devastating effect (e.g, 1.462–82) – one more advantage of having a recognizable epic style at hand to furnish the target – but the effect of epic coloring can also be quite subtle. One example is his well-known habit of repeating words and images with striking shifts in the values they represent: so within the poem itself the very meaning of “Venus” is diminished and the goddess’ powers are reallocated before our eyes.27 Repeated words and phrases also integrate disparate elements of his complex argument into the larger poetic context. Even a seemingly prosaic explanation thus becomes poetry. Here, for example, is Lucretius’ famous complaint about the poverty of the Latin language. It follows immediately from his praise and criticism of Ennius at 1.117–26 but actually recalls all that comes before:28 Nec me animi fallit Graiorum obscura reperta difficile inlustrare Latinis versibus esse, multa novis verbis praesertim cum sit agendum propter egestatem linguae et rerum novitatem; sed tua me virtus tamen et sperata voluptas suavis amicitiae quemvis effere laborem suadet et inducit noctes vigilare serenas quaerentem dictis quibus et quo carmine demum clara tuae possim praepandere lumina menti, res quibus occultas penitus convisere possis.

140

145

Nor am I unaware that the Greeks’ murky discoveries are difficult to make clear in Latin verses, especially since much has to be done in new words given the poverty of language and newness of subject. 27

28

Gale 1994: 211–14, Jenkyns 1998: 214–29, and for repetition as stylistic device, Maguinness 1965: 73–75, Conte and Barchiesi 1993: 105–8. The complaint, which reappears at 1.830–3 and in very similar form at 3.258–61, may be somewhat disingenuous (cf. 5.336–37) but not entirely untruthful. Though Cicero pronounced himself generally satisfied with the richness of Latin vocabulary (“non modo non inopem . . . sed locupletiorem etiam esse quam Graecam,” Fin. 1.10), the dearth of technical terms was a recurring problem, e.g., Fin. 3.3–4 and N.D. 1.8 with the long note in Pease 1955: 143–45.

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Yet your merit and the expected good will of your sweet friendship nevertheless persuade me to bear any labor and urge me to spend tranquil nights awake seeking the expressions and right song to set out at last a clear light to your mind so that you may thoroughly examine matters hidden from view.

The problem as expressed in line 137 recalls the poet’s original appeal to Venus, “te sociam studeo scribendis versibus esse” (‘I strive to make you an ally in my writing of verses’, 24), and there are echoes throughout of preceding passages: the hymn to Venus recalled by voluptas, suavis, and lumina (cf. 1, 5, 7–8, 39); the sacrifice of Iphianassa by suadet (101); the invocation of Ennius by quo carmine (‘Ennius . . . cecinit,’ 117), dictis . . . praepandere (‘expandere dictis’, 126), vigilare (‘nobis vigilantibus’, 132). But echoes of Ennius within De rerum natura are not exclusively general or purely self-referential. By the end of the Republic, Latin poets were making their habit of back-reference and imitation not just a mannerism but a tool. Once Roman poetry acquired a history, it became possible to use that history to add nuance and to establish meaning through a conscious process of echo and recollection. This is the technique that led Giorgio Pasquali, in a justly famous essay, to distinguish between imitation and allusion: imitation may pass unnoticed, but allusion cannot produce the desired effect unless it is recognized.29 Thus Ovid would in time openly admit not only to borrowing from Vergil but to wanting his borrowings to be recognized (“non subripiendi causa sed palam mutuandi, hoc animo ut vellet agnosci,” Sen. Suas. 3.7). What emerges from this type of allusion is a more complex relationship between texts and between poet and reader. When Anchises in the Underworld sees the Fabian gens on parade and addresses the spirit of Fabius Maximus Cunctator, the first hero of the Hannibalic War, quo fessum rapitis, Fabii? tu Maximus ille es, unus qui nobis cunctando restituis rem 29

Pasquali 1951: 11–13. Fowler 1997 is a good introduction to the theoretical issues involved. See also Conte and Barchiesi 1993, Hinds 1998: 1–10, von Albrecht 1999: 13–21 (with special reference to epic). For the reader’s construction of the necessary “grammar of allusion,” see Wills 1996: 24–33. Allusion has been firmly established as a fact of Roman reading and writing, not merely a critic’s fancy, but its motives and effects remain matters of contention. Contrast, inter alios, Thomas 1982, Zetzel 1983a, Hinds 1998: 21–25 on allusivity in Catullus.

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Where do you hasten my weary self, Fabians? You are that famous Maximus, who alone saves the day for us by delaying. (Aen. 6.845–46)

Vergil is not simply having him imitate a phrase in Ennius, “unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem” (and signaling that debt with more-thanEnnian spondees), but he is trusting in his readers’ ability to recognize the allusion. The full sense of the moment depends on their recollection of the Annales. As Michael Wigodsky observes, “It is not because of what Fabius did, but because what is said of him is said in Ennius’ words, that he becomes a symbolic figure, summing up the Roman character and so leading to the contrast between the Romans’ achievements and those of the Greeks.”30 Allusive poetry of this kind recalls Alexandrian practice, but the technique did not come to Rome in Vergil’s generation, nor was it unique to Catullus and the poets of his circle a generation before. The double appeal of the Annales, poetic and ideological, quickly made it an obvious point of reference and made Ennius himself a natural source of poetic authority. Thus Lucretius, learned to be sure but not doctus in the manner of Catullus, found it neither possible nor desirable to write a hexameter poem on an epic scale without recalling Ennius and putting that memory to use in the construction of meaning.31 Some borrowing is direct and simple, as when he adopts almost verbatim Ennius’ words for the death of Ancus Marcius, the fourth king of Rome: “postquam lumina sis oculis bonus Ancus reliquit” (‘after good Ancus closed his eyes to the light,’ An. 137) becomes “lumina sis oculis etiam bonus Ancus reliquit” (‘even good Ancus closed his eyes to the light’, 3.1025). Lucretius is clearly drawn to 30

31

Wigodsky 1972: 72, who goes on to observe that “the Ennian echoes give an added significance to the omission of poetry from Vergil’s list of fields in which Greek superiority must be admitted” (73). Vergil’s change in grammatical structure deliberately alters the rhythm by the addition of qui. Ennius’ lines on Fabius (363–65) were already well known to Cicero: testimonia in Skutsch 1985: 529–30. Zetzel 1983a: 264 notes a comparable use of Ennius in Catullus 64: ‘In order to anchor the myths of Greece in the Roman tradition, Catullus uses Ennius as a point of reference, as a source of archaic diction, as a conveyer of traditional ideas of heroism, and as a Roman,’ though the Ennian referent in this case is not the Annales but the tragedy Medea exul. Though Lucretius was clearly a doctus poeta, his doctrine looked in a different direction and with a different end in view than Catullus. See Kenney 1970, Williams 1983: 224– 28. The generic boundary between epic and didactic verse in antiquity was not firm: see Gale 1994: 99–106, Conte 1994a: 3–8, and for Lucretius’ integration of epic themes, Hardie 1986: 193–219.

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the authority of the old poet for the old story – and to the archaic color of Ennius’ sis (= suis). Allusion, however, may also be much more subtle and complex, more in the manner we associate with Catullus and then Vergil. And from the very beginning of the poem. Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divumque voluptas, alma Venus, caeli subter labentia signa quae mare navigerum, quae terras frugiferentis concelebras . . . Parent of Aeneas’ race, delight of men and gods, bountiful Venus, who beneath the gliding signs of heaven fills the shipbearing sea and the fruit-bearing land . . . (DRN 1.1–4)

The introductory formula “hominum divumque” and the compound adjectives “navigerum” and “frugiferens” again suggest Ennian diction.32 Lucretius explicitly sets his poem in the world of epic verse.33 There is more to this association, however, than a shared vocabulary. For Lucretius, the Ennian legacy is not just a matter of language but of attitudes and images that he found impossible to ignore, even in a didactic poem anxious to disengage itself from traditional patterns of Roman thought.34 In 32

33

34

Ennius thus renders a common Homeric formula: “divomque hominumque pater, rex” (591), “patrem divomque hominumque” (592). For the origins and ramifications of repeated -que and its variants, see Wills 1996: 372–76. Compound adjectives, especially those terminating with a participial form (e.g., “terrai frugiferai,” 510: Lucretius’ “frugiferentis” is a metrical variant), are common in early epic and drama, increasingly rare in the later first century. See Jocelyn 1967, 216 on “velivolans.” Thus, for example, frugifer at Cic. N.D. 2.161, a passage describing the bounty of land and sea, is deliberately poetic (cf. Tusc. 2.13). For Lucretius’ use of compounds, and his debt to Ennius, see Bailey 1947.1: 132–34. Sedley 1998: 21–34 argues that this diction also recalls Empedocles and that “the proem of DRN is, and is meant to be recognized as, an imitation of the proem to Empedocles’ physical poem” (22). There must be truth in this (cf. Hardie 1986: 18–20, Jenkyns 1998: 232–36). The problem is that while some of Lucretius’ Roman readers – Marcus and Quintus Cicero, for example – might well hear such an allusion, all of them would hear Ennius (cf. Harrison 2002: 1–4). There is thus too much Roman static to ensure a clear Empedoclean message. The issue demands close discrimination between indications of authorial intention and readerly response. For the theoretical issue involved, see Hinds 1998: 47–50 (allusion v. intertextualism), Fowler 1997: 24–27. The comparison of Ennius and Lucretius, from the word lists of Merrill 1918 to the analysis of Gigon 1978, too often takes a narrowly lexical approach. For the complexity

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this case, it is not just Ennius in general but a particular story from the Annales that is being recalled, the story of Ilia. According to the early poets – Livy would later change the canonical story by following an alternative tradition – Ilia was the daughter of Aeneas and the mother of Romulus and Remus. Like Livy’s Rhea Silvia, she is made pregnant by Mars. After the twins’ birth, the angry Aemulius consigns her to the Tiber. In Ennius, she then makes a poignant appeal to Venus, who hears her lament and “rescues” her through marriage to the river Anio.35 The beginning of Ilia’s call to Venus is preserved in garbled form by Nonius (=An. 58–59): Te †saneneta precor, Venus, te genetrix patris nostri, ut me de caelo visas, cognata, parumper

“Genetrix” alone is perhaps insufficient to catch a Lucretian reader’s attention, but there was more. Otto Skutsch, in a characteristically perceptive emendation, recognized in the impossible “saneneta” a Greek cult title of Aphrodite that Ennius very likely encountered on his trip to Aetolia with the consul Fulvius Nobilior in 189. Skutsch therefore credibly restores,36 Ted, Aeneia, precor, Venus, te genetrix patris nostri, ut me de caelo visas, cognata, parumper

Lucretius’ “Aeneadum genetrix” thus recalls within the general context of prayer and epic language Ilia’s specific address to Venus as “Aeneia” and “genetrix,” and lest we think this still too recondite, if not improbable, an exercise in the arte allusiva, it helps to recall Ovid’s own striking association of these texts in Tristia 2.37 Even Rome’s literary landmarks,

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and ambivalence of Lucretius’ attitude toward Ennius, see Gale 1994: 106–11, Hardie 1986: 17–18 and 79–83, and Kenney 1970: 373–80. Fragments and testimony in Skutsch 1985: 206–14. Discussion in Keith 2000: 42–46 and 104–7, Goldberg 1995: 95–101, and Krevans 1993: 257–66. Skutsch 1985: 209–10 with full discussion in Skutsch 1968: 86–88. Evidence for the temple of Aphrodite Aineias at Actium is in D.H. Ant. 1.50.4. The cult title is unrelated to the hero Aeneas. Bailey 1947: 591, reading “sale nata” with Vahlen (an emendation Skutsch 1968: 87 called “a stylistic blunder and an absurdity”), thought Lucretius “probably had in mind” these lines, a notion Skutsch 1985: 210 found “a little far-fetched,” but Skutsch reckoned without his own restoration of “Aeneia” in the same line, without the similar context and diction in the invocation to Venus, and without consideration of Ov. Tr. 2.259–62. This confluence of factors seems decisive, and I am grateful to Eric A. Kyllo

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he says there, will challenge the moral sensibilities of the most virtuous matron: sumpserit Annales – nihil est hirsutius illis – facta sit unde parens Ilia, nempe leget. sumpserit Aeneadum genetrix ubi prima, requiret, Aeneadum genetrix unde sit alma Venus. Let her take up the Annals (nothing is hoarier that that), she will of course read how Ilia came to be a mother. Let her take up ‘Parent of Aeneas’ race’ where she’ll soon ask how bountiful Venus got to be parent of Aeneas’ race. (Tr. 2.259–62)

Ovid’s matron could, at least theoretically, have picked up the even hoarier Bellum Punicum of Naevius with its sad tale of Dido and Anna or, presumably, found other equally shocking tales in the Annales, but the association of Ilia with the “Aeneadum genetrix” is too close and too convenient for his argument for Ovid to ignore.38 But why did Lucretius himself make this association? The hymn to Venus that opens De Rerum natura is as famously odd as it is beautiful and moving. The beneficent goddess, described here without the edgy language of power and domination found in the ostensibly comparable opening to the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, will nevertheless change her essence, though not her name, as the poem moves from the processes of creation to the agents of ruin that she also represents.39 Ennius’ Ilia experiences both these aspects of divine power. Caught between the ambitions of men and the demands of gods, she wakes in terror from a dream of rape and dislocation to face the realities

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for alerting me to their significance. When and how to recognize allusion, however, remain legitimate matters for debate. See the remarks of Zetzel 1999: 105–11. A different association of Lucretius and Ennius may lie in the identification by Kleve 1989, 1990 of their two poems among the Latin books in the Epicurean library of the Villa dei papiri at Herculaneum. For Dido and Anna in Naevius’ poem, see Wigodsky 1972: 29–34. For Horace, Ep. 2.1.53 Naevius was still “in manibus,” but conditions may easily have changed for Ovid’s generation. He naturally chose an episode from Ennius that fit his argument: Prop. 3.3.7–12 uses other stories to suit his own, different purpose. Gale 1994: 209–10 (Greek models), 211–14 (shifting images of Venus), and with more attention to the philosophical aspects of the shift, Clay 1983: 93–95. Schrijvers 1970: 174–91 stresses the logical progression of the proem’s argument.

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that come of its prophesy.40 As the first sacrifice to the coming Roman greatness, poignant and almost tragic in her helplessness, she prefigures two themes central to Lucretius’ proemium, the terror of religio and the problematic testimony of dreams. After her rape, the image of Aeneas consoles her with the promise of rewards to come from her suffering: “o gnata, tibi sunt ante gerendae/ aerumnae, post ex fluvio fortuna resistet” (‘Child, you must bear sorrows first, then fortuna from the river will restore you,’ 44–45). Lucretius will endorse this psychology of consolation even as he rails against dreams as a source of knowledge. The agents of superstition, he says, use dream-interpretation to exploit our fears and distract us from seeking a rational truth: et merito. nam si certam finem esse viderent aerumnarum homines, aliqua ratione valerent religionibus atque minis obsistere vatum. And rightly. For if men saw there was a sure end to their troubles, they would be able somehow to resist the superstitions and threats of the seers. (DRN 1.107–9)

Surrounding this claim are the story of Iphianassa’s sacrifice, recalled in the diction and manner of the Annales (80–101), and then the image of Ennius himself, invoked to demonstrate in a single stroke – even a single sentence – that the epic tradition, however glorious its past and ubiquitous its present, is inadequate to the current task (112–26).41 Ennius may have plucked the crown from Helicon and created deathless verses, but the 40

41

Striking echoes of Ilia’s dream narrative (34–50) are discernible in even the meager fragments of its sequel, e.g., prognata (37), gnata (44), germana (46) with cognate (59), aerumnae (45) with aerumnas (60), ad caeli caerula templa (48) with in caerula caeli templa (54–55). The revelation of the dream is thus confirmed in the following narrative. DRN 1.112–26, with the discussion of Kenney 1970: 373–80. The Homeric form of lphigeneia’s name in the sacrifice passage (82–101) often leads critics to overemphasize its Homeric echoes, forgetting, among other things, that Homer’s lphianassa remained alive and well in Argos. Lucretius’ language, including verbal repetitions, archaic genitives (e.g., “Triviai virginis aram” and “Iphianassai sanguine”), and perhaps even its pointed moral (“tantum religio potuit suadere malorum” recalling the clausula “Suadaique medulla,” 308) are Ennian. To say that Lucretius here is “replacing the Iliad as a source of knowledge and Achilles as a model with a philosophically sound epic and Epicurus as a model” (Minyard 1985: 38), misreads the direction of the poet’s gaze. Even Conte 1994a: 1–3, comparing Il. 17.160-8 and DRN 1.62-71, neglects to consider an Ennian mediation in the elevation of Epicurus to heroic status. Keith 2000: 107–11 is more sensitive to the relationship here between Lucretius and Ennius.

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emergence of Homer himself from the Acherusia templa did not provide him with reliable knowledge, nor did Ennius fashion a poetic language adequate for Lucretius’ new purpose. Lucretius’ poetic journey therefore begins with a backward glance as he defines his position in respect to his illustrious predecessor. That retrospective impulse was itself traditional. Roman poets from the very beginning of the written record entered into and freely acknowledged complex negotiations first with the creators of their Greek models and then increasingly with their Roman compatriots. Even Livius Andronicus’ Odusia, which Cicero thought merely quaint (“opus aliquod Daedali,” Brut. 71), was not unsophisticated in such matters. Its very beginning, “virum mihi, Camena, insece versutum,” simultaneously allied itself with and distinguished itself from its model by elaborate echoes of Homer’s famous opening in an Italic meter inspired by an Italic divinity. Plautus was equally bold: he could announce the title and author of his Greek original in a prologue and in the very next breath reveal extraordinary liberties taken with its characters and plot. Early epigram too, whether it was by Ennius praising Scipio or Valerius Aedituus praising Pamphila, made unblushing use of Greek models.42 The explosion of poetic activity in Latin after the Second Punic War created possibilities for ever more complex patterns of reference. When Ennius replaced the Camenae of Andronicus (and Naevius) with the Olympian Muses and moved the epic enterprise from Saturnian to hexameter cadences, he was well aware of closing down one experiment in epic style while opening a new one, and his very success in developing a high style for Latin verse soon subjected his own work to echo and parody in turn, as when Terence’s Chaerea, within the notionally Greek setting of a fabula palliata, invokes the example of Jupiter with an Ennian tag, “qui templa caeli summa sonitus concutuit.”43 The joke depends on recognizing if 42

43

Enn. Var. 21–24V recalls an epigram of Alcaeus of Messene (AP 5.518) on Philip V of Macedon; Valerius recalls Sappho fr. 31; Lutatius Catulus adapts Call. Epigr. 41. See Courtney 1993 ad loc. Van Sickle 1988 finds Hellenistic influences in even the Scipionic elogia; Courtney 1995: 216–29 makes more modest claims for them. Contrast Plaut. Cas. 31–34 and 60–66, what Anderson 1994 calls “barbarian play.” For Andronicus’ calques on Homer, Goldberg 1995: 64–65, von Albrecht 1999: 33–36. Ter. Eun. 590. “Parodia de Ennio . . . tragice,” says Donatus, but the language is equally appropriate to the Annales, e.g., 48, 54–55 (versions of “templa caeli”), 263 “summo sonitu quatit.” The guarded dismissal of Saturnian epic at An. 206–7, “scripsere alii rem/vorsibus quos olim Faunei vatesque canebant,” reflects Ennius’ pride rather more than his contempt. See Goldberg 1995: 90–92, and for experimentation in epic conventions among the early poets, Hinds 1998: 56–63. Self-conscious reference like

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not an actual quotation, at least a grand manner suitably incongruous in the context of comedy. Lucretius’ recollection of Ilia is of course more than this. Not only does it demand a specific memory of a specific context, but by associating Ilia’s pathetic glory with Iphianassa’s futile sacrifice, it urges readers to reconsider and revalue that epic memory. The new poet thus simultaneously creates his own meaning with the help of Ennius’ text and intervenes in his readers’ experience of that earlier text by challenging the beliefs it has helped shape for them. To accomplish this, Lucretius must know the reading habits of his audience. II

The complexity of the exercise for writer and reader alike demands a trained response and a literary consciousness that presuppose close knowledge of the books available for reference. None of this is difficult to imagine within the small world of intellectual life in the late Republic, when libraries were few and “publication” meant not large-scale release of a work to the world at large but circulation of a relatively few copies in gradually widening circles of acquaintances.44 That Lucretius’ own poetry circulated in this way is clear from a comment of Cicero, writing to his brother Quintus in February 54 (Q. fr. 2.10.3). Lucreti poemata ut scribis ita sunt, multis luminibus ingeni, multae tamen artis. sed cum veneris. virum te putabo si Sallusti Empedoclea legeris; hominem non putabo. Lucretius’ poetry is, as you say, sparkling with natural genius but with plenty of technical skill. More when you come. I’ll think you a real man if you read Sallustius’ Empedoclea; I won’t think you human.

The two Ciceros have probably not been reading De rerum natura in full. An excerpt, perhaps a draft offered them for comment, is more likely, for poemata does not generally denote a complete poem.45 It has clearly

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this is not limited to epic: Ter. And. 18–21 makes explicit appeal to his predecessors’ example. Quinn 1982: 88–93 discusses the scale of book production and its implications. See also Marshall 1976, Starr 1987, Murphy 1998. The smallness of this world is well illustrated by the story at Fin. 3.7–8: Cicero visits Lucullus’ villa to consult a volume in its extensive library and finds Cato there surrounded by Stoic books. This is the clear implication of Lucil. 401–10W, Var. Men. 398. Sandbach 1940: 75– 77, making this point about poemata, observes, “There is no reason why one or more

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been a sufficient excerpt, however, to evoke discussion and pleasure as they consider its content and style, compare it to another work of similar intent, and voice their delight at its combination of talent and skill. As the translator of Aratus’ astronomical poem Phaenomena, the elder Cicero would be particularly well positioned to appreciate the difficulty of Lucretius’ task and to admire his success – especially in comparison with the evidently stultifying work of Sallustius.46 Readers of such background and inclination would also be well primed to appreciate the arte allusiva. Their discussion, employing as it does common vocabulary, shared expectations, and a basic agreement on aesthetic matters, sounds much like the activity of what Stanley Fish called “an interpretive community,” but with one interesting difference. For Fish, whose version of reader-response theory made readers the effective creators of the texts they read, a sense of community among like-minded readers provides a necessary curb on hermeneutic anarchy: it is a way to balance the rival claims of text and reader to interpretive authority. A community like that, however, is at heart a critical construct, “not so much a group of individuals who shared a point of view, but a point of view or way of organizing experience that shared individuals.”47 Neither the literary competence that informs such a group, however, nor the consensus that emerges from its judgments can be precisely

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passages of De rerum natura should not have been handed around in literary circles before Lucretius’ death.” He suggests the proem as one of these, “which above all others might have enjoyed a separate existence.” The passages adduced by Pizzani 1959: 38–40 to support the idea that poemata means the complete poem are not convincing, nor is Cicero necessarily comparing two entire poems. Lucretius’ recollection of Empedocles is not explicit until 1.716–33, but for Empodoclean echoes in the proem, see Sedley 1998: 21–34, Jenkyns 1998: 232–36. The distinction between ars and ingenium is of course conventional, cf. Ov. Trist. 2.424: “Ennius ingenio maximus, arte rudis” and D’Anna 1998: 58–64. Shackleton Bailey ad loc. identifies this man as Cicero’s loyal friend Cn. Sallustius (PW 6), mentioned in a literary context at Q. fr. 3.5, but this is uncertain. Cf. Schanz-Hosius 1927: 110. Nothing is known of the work. Sedley 1998: 1–2 rightly stresses the close association of the two poems in Cicero’s mind, but his elimination of the full stop after veneris is unnecessary. Cicero’s opinion of Quintus’ hardiness as a reader depends on his completion of Sallustius’ poem, not on his arrival in Rome. It is discussion of Lucreti poemata that awaits Quintus’ arrival. Fish 1989: 141, cf. Fish 1980: 170–73. The theory has of course evoked lively debate. See, inter alios, Culler 1981: 119–31 and Guillory 1993: 26–28, and for the background in reader-response theory, see DeMaria 1978 and Suleiman 1980: 3–45. Classicists will recall the insistence of Hinds 1998: 47–50 and Fowler 1997: 24 that meaning is generated at the point of reception.

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defined, for the readers who form them are inevitably more abstract than real. This is one place where the modern theory seems better suited to ancient phenomena than to the modern ones from which it sprang: Cicero’s interpretive community was no such abstraction. It was small enough to be real. A Roman author not only knew who his readers were but could, at least for a time, choose them. They were, literally, his friends.48 Older texts too circulated in only limited numbers in limited circles. They were generally passed among friends, were occasionally made available in private libraries, and only rarely were to be found through commercial booksellers. The economy of texts posited by theorists of the arte allusiva and the cooperation of readers and writers in the Roman literary system, however abstract in outline, are entirely congruent with the realities of first-century literary life.49 Under these conditions, it is easy to see how and why Lucretius, so energetic in his attack on conventional attitudes, would nevertheless exploit with equal energy the conventions of literary discourse. However isolated and idiosyncratic his philosophical ideas, his literary standards were very much of his time.50 Nor, of course, was Lucretius the only writer of the late Republic willing and able to entrust his meaning to his readers’ recollection of Ennius. A similar sense of authority and thrill of recognition run through many recollections of Ennius noster in Republican contexts, and not just among poets. His auctoritas also encouraged Cicero, for example, to emphasize the eloquence of the orator M. Cornelius Cethegus by recalling Ennius’ tribute to Cethegus’ skill through an extended quotation of the passage in the Annales that, as we have seen, would also seize Vergil’s 48

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Murphy 1998: 488–501, Starr 1987: 213–15, and for Republican book culture more generally, Harris 1989: 222–29. This practice suggests that Lucretius himself put his poetry in Cicero’s hands, and Jerome’s claim of Lucretian poetry “quos postea Cicero emendavit” is at least consistent with, though not necessitated by this fact. Compare the intriguing suggestion of D’Anna 1998: 65–67 that the Cicero of Jerome’s testimony was Quintus, not Marcus. Lucretius in turn seems to have drawn technical help from Cicero’s translation of Aratus. See the sensible comments of Bailey 19471: 30. For the circulation of noncurrent texts, Starr 1987: 216–18; for the role of libraries, Marshall 1976, Quinn 1982: 125–28, Rawson 1985: 39–44, Casson 2001: 68–77; on the book trade, Starr 1987: 219–23. Conte and Barchiesi 1993: 84–88 outline the “economicit`a dell’ arte allusiva.” Sedley 1998: 62–93 argues for “Lucretius the fundamentalist” in philosophical matters. For his broader background in literary matters, see Leonard 1942: 16–21.

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attention.51 Similarly, Ennius’ age and prestige made him one of Varro’s favored sources for illustrations of correct Latin usage, as when Varro insists upon a regular declension for the noun nihil by citing the form nihilum in the Annales: “quae dedit ipsa capit neque dispendi facit hilum.”52 The intensity and variety of attention paid to Ennius’ epic in the first century by poets and prose authors alike indicate not just the poem’s own special status but the need among subsequent authors for a benchmark text to perform this service. That attention and that status are what elevate written works to the rank of “literature,” though both the word and the concept are not generally attributed to the Romans. Michel Foucault popularized the idea that these are modern constructions: “. . . there has of course existed in the Western world, since Dante, since Homer, a form of language that we now call ‘literature.’ But the word is of recent date, as is also, in our culture, the isolation of a particular language whose peculiar mode of being is ‘literary.’” As a word of shifting (and increasingly contested) connotations, “literature” certainly has a distinct modern history, but the Romans too were capable of marking certain texts, raising their status, putting them to work in a special set of ways, and thus giving to what they then called litterae something very like Foucault’s “peculiar mode of being.”53 Doing so, however, was not a purely aesthetic act. There was also a social dimension to the choice that is of major, though problematic, importance. J¨org R¨upke has rightly called attention to the role of audiences in the literary equation, arguing that it was in the available “spaces of literary communication” that the Romans’ literature acquired its meaning and its social significance. In the case of drama, for example, the political significance of the occasion owed more to what happened among the 51

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Cic. Brut. 57–59, quoting what we know as An. 304–8. The lines were famous, also cited at Sen. 50, Quint. 2.15.4 and 11.3.3 1, Gell. 12.2.3, Serv. Dan. ad Aen. 8.500. Lucr. 1.945 (=4.20) applies Ennius’ suaviloquens to Memmius. Var. L. 9.54 = An. 7: “what [Earth] gave she takes back and loses nothing.” The line was one of Varro’s stock exempla, reappearing at 5.60 and 5.111. The noun hilum ‘a trifle’ regularly appears, as Varro goes on to note, with ne as a metrical equivalent of nec quicquam. Varro infers the existence of the nominative form from the neuter accusative here. Its one appearance as an actual nominative is at Lucr. 3.220. Foucault 1970: 299–300. Goldhill 1999 accepts this premise without considering the Romans’ reception of texts in the period discussed here. For the evolving sense of “literature” in the modern world, see Williams 1985: 183–88, as well as Wellek 1978, and Ross 1998: 293–301. Chapter 3 takes up the sense of litterae in Roman literary contexts.

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different social groups gathered for the performance and to their responses to what happened on the stage than to what the dramatist wrote into his script. Though most obviously applicable to the politically charged theater of Cicero’s day, when new meanings were deliberately foisted on old plays, this emphasis on the audience puts a refreshing new spin on the old debates over topicality that still surface now and again in the study of Roman comedy, and it suggests a new approach to the equally vexing (and rather more substantive) problem of what Roman aristocrats hoped to gain from their sponsorship of ludi and munera.54 It is not sufficient, however, simply to acknowledge that significance comes to works from without as well as from within. “Literary communication” for R¨upke demands texts (R¨upke 2000: 31–32), which requires us to consider not only how or when authors move from oral to written forms of communication but the reasons particular works rise to prominence in their society. A notoriously blunt explanation of that problem comes again from Stanley Fish, though it is not unique to him:55 Literature, I argue, is a conventional category. What will, at any time, be recognized as literature is a function of a communal decision as to what will count as literature. All texts have the potential of so counting, in that it is possible to regard any stretch of language in such a way that it will display those properties presently understood to be literary. In other words, it is not that literature exhibits certain formal properties that compel a certain kind of attention; rather, paying a certain kind of attention (as defined by what literature is understood to be) results in the emergence into noticeability of the properties we know in advance to be literary.

Classicists may well hesitate at this. Though our literary histories conventionally count all ancient texts among their subject, that inclusive tendency does not mean either that we pay the same kind of attention to 54

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R¨upke 2000: 32–33 (“R¨aume literarischer Kommunikation”), 40–42 (“Drama”). Braun 2000 on Plautus’ Trinummus and Gruen 1992: 188–90 on the sponsorship of games illustrate more traditional lines of argument on matters of drama’s topicality. R¨upke’s insight can, however, be difficult to apply to other attested realities of the third and second centuries. Thus R¨upke 2001: 49–53 is rather less successful in tracing the “soziale Ort” of Roman epic. Fish 1980: 10–11. Cf. Eagleton (hardly an ideological soulmate) 1983: 202: “Shakespeare was not great literature lying conveniently to hand, which the literary institution happily discovered: he is great literature because the institution constitutes him as such.” For the abiding utility of “literature” and “the literary” as critical constructs despite such criticism, see Guillory 1993: 63–71.

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Catullus that we do to Columella or that it is only some aesthetic caprice that leads us to treat Vergil as a major talent and Valerius Flaccus as a lesser one. Opinions about the merits of individual authors can change, sometimes amusingly, with time – Byron disparaged Shakespeare much as Horace belittled Plautus56 – but the consensus that emerges over time is, though ever subject to revision, likely to endure. An important truth nevertheless stands behind Fish’s position. We need not grant the utter contingency of the literary designation to recognize both the role of choice generally in the definition of “literature” and specifically that the kind of attention to be paid to texts was still a matter for negotiation in Republican Rome. Ennius’ Annales was among the earliest poetic works to attract Fish’s kind of attention, that is, the renewed attention of Vargunteius after the original attention of Fulvius’ generation had run its course. This is again no surprise because epic was written for and eventually even written by the Roman elite whose education best equipped them to reap literature’s rewards. Epic’s claim to literary status is what we expect of it. More surprising is the company epic starts to keep in the Roman cultural storehouse, which brings us back to Varro and his stock of grammatical examples. His analysis of nihil and nihilum concludes with a second oblique form, a genitive nihili. But not from Ennius. Varro quotes Plautus, “video te nihili prendere prae Philolacho omnis homines,” and in fact, Plautus frequently provides illustrations for the grammatical and morphological observations of De lingua latina. The comedies also furnish a useful store of cultural landmarks: the Menaechmus twins become one of Varro’s favorite illustrations of likeness.57 Drawing on Plautus as well as Ennius for examples of Latin usage seems, on first glance, logical enough. Both of them were sufficiently old and prolific to have acquired a certain auctoritas. They, along with Naevius, Caecilius, and Terence, represent a seminal period in the development of the literary language, doing things in and to Latin that had never been done before. There were good Greek precedents, too, for canonizing dramatists and preserving their plays. Yet however normal the practice now seems, equating Plautus and Ennius as authorities and having them both to hand for scholarly citation is 56

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Byron in a letter of 1814 (Marchand 1975: 84–85) and Horace in his letter to Augustus (Ep. 2.1.170–76). Var. L. 9.54, citing Plaut. Most. 245: “I see that you value all men at nothing next to Philolaches.” The normal second-declension genitive again presupposes a nominative nihilum. Reference to the two Menaechmi appears at 8.42 and 10.38. Plautus is the second most cited Latin author in Varro’s treatise. Ennius is first.

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actually not so obvious a development. The plays of Plautus were not products of the same world – not written in the same way or for the same audience or with the same end in view – as the Annales. Plautus’ scripts were not written to be books at all. They clearly and naturally represented a significant mass of language that would be of great interest to an antiquarian like Varro, but their assimilation as books into the literary world of first-century readers raises important questions about the acquisition of literary status in the late Republic and the organization of Roman literary history. Significant differences of conception and reception distinguish the texts created for stage performance in the rough-and-tumble world of the ludi scaenici from the book culture developing among Roman nobiles by the end of the Second Punic War. The Romans themselves knew this well. Though verbal art in antiquity never entirely lost a performative element, the appreciation of basic distinctions between the aural and written experience of works is widespread in the ancient sources.58 Initially, that difference surfaced in treatments of style: texts written for oral delivery had to be structured and ornamented differently from those composed for private reading (Ar. Rhet. 1413b). By the first century, Romans were well aware that reading and listening created different relationships between a text and its audience. Horace reflects that awareness in his letter to Augustus when he distinguishes between writing for readers and for spectators: verum age, et his qui se lectori credere malunt quam spectatoris fastidia ferre superbi Now consider those who prefer to entrust themselves to a reader rather than to the scorn of an arrogant spectator (Hor. Ep. 2.1.214–15)

Quintilian is specific about what this distinction entails: The advantages conferred by reading and listening are not the same. The speaker stimulates us by the animation of his delivery and kindles the imagination not by presenting us with an elaborate picture but by bringing us into actual touch with the things themselves. . . . Reading, however, is free and does not hurry past us with the speed of oral 58

For general discussion of differences between the oral and written, see Harris 1989: 35–36 with further references there, and for the longstanding debate over ancient reading practices, Sharrock 1994: 101–5, Johnson 2000: 594–600.

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delivery. We can read a passage again and again if we are in doubt about it or wish to fix it in memory.59

Among modern critics, Oliver Taplin puts the point particularly well when comparing the collaborative nature of live performance and the comparative isolation of reading (Taplin 1992: 2–3): Listening to poetry, performed live, is a co-operative undertaking, involving at least two people: reading is normally a solitary business, self-contained, self-absorbed. The text seems to be a mere passive given for the reader to handle at will, choosing when, how, where, and in what order to activate it. . . . The audience [at a performance] agrees to receive the work within forms imposed by the performers, including the sequential order of their work and its divisions. The performers also control, to a large extent, pace, tone, extent and degree of impersonation, musical accompaniment, and so forth.

Not even the habit of reading aloud, or of hearing an inner voice when reading silently, or the practice of reciting texts before small groups of friends compromises the basic distinction. Nor does it matter very much for the difference between reading and performance that educated Romans carried so much literature in their heads that their tendency was to quote from memory rather than to consult a book. Though what Plautus created for the ludi Megalenses of 191 eventually became the book Pseudolus at home on the shelf beside De rerum natura, the Plautine text was nevertheless created for quite a different experience than the poemata that Lucretius sent to Marcus and Quintus Cicero in the early weeks of 54. In time, the two experiences of poetry grew closer, but that took some doing. However secular in outlook and execution, Roman drama continued to be performed within the broadly ritual context of ludi and munera, while other poetic displays were specifically liturgical. Thus when Cicero wants to illustrate the power of song over ordinary people, he draws his 59

Quint. Inst. 10.1.16–19: “Alia vero audientis, alia legentis magis adiuvant. Excitat qui dicit spiritu ipso, nec imagine †ambitu† rerum sed rebus incendit. Vivunt omnia enim et moventur, excipimusque nova illa velut nascentia cum favore ac sollicitudine. . . . Lectio libera est nec < ut> actionis impetus transcurrit, sed repetere saepius licet, sive dubites sive memoriae penitus adfigere velis.” Cf. Quinn 1982: 88 on the “new intimacy of relationship with his audience which a written text allowed a writer like Catullus to assume.”

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examples from the religious life of the city.60 Secular poetry was not so thoroughly public. The verse elogia of L. Cornelius Scipio (cos. 259) and his father Scipio Barbatus (cos. 298) may echo sentiments expressed publicly in their actual funeral laudationes, but to know these little poems required a visit to the family tomb beyond the Porta Capena.61 We are told that Andronicus and Ennius gave exemplary readings of their own compositions, but even if those readings included nondramatic works, the activity was private. Their recitations came in the course of grammatical instruction before very limited audiences, while Suetonius’ first unequivocal report of public reading – Vargunteius’ recitals of Ennius’ epic to large crowds (‘in magna frequentia’) – is explicitly connected to the emergence of a book culture in the later second century.62 The epitaph for Ennius that Cicero preserves at Tusculans 1.34, Aspicite, o cives, senis Enni imaginis formam: Hic vestrum panxit maxuma facta patrum. Gaze, fellow citizens, on aged Ennius’ form and face: He set to verse your fathers’ greatest deeds.

does not in itself imply public recital or even widespread experience of the Annales.63 Not until the early Augustan period, when Asinius Pollio opened the world of recitation to the public, did the two styles of literary 60

61

62 63

Cic. de Orat. 3.197, citing ritual banquets and the Carmen Saliare. Roman daily life, as Horsfall 2003: 31–47 so vigorously reminds us, was hardly unmusical, but the poetry of books was not part of that musical life. The evidence is gathered by Wille 1967: 105–57. Religious texts do not seem to have been “literary,” even when composed by poets. So, e.g., the hymn to Juno commissioned from Livius Andronicus in 207 did not circulate widely as a text, though Livy seems to have found an archive copy of it (Liv. 27.37.13, 31.12.10, and for the circumstances Gruen 1990: 85–88). Horace’s Carmen Saeculare is the exception that proves the rule, though it too can be hard to treat seriously (Barchiesi 2002). The epitaphs probably date from the late third century. For details of their date and display, see Courtney 1995: 216–20. Claims that the elogia were themselves recited publicly rest only on very literal reading of their very traditional language (“hic fuet apud vos”; “quei fuit apud vos”) and rather too much imagination. So La Regina 1968: 175: ‘nulla vieta infatti di pensare . . . ’ followed in varying degrees by Zevi 1970, Coarelli 1972, Wachter 1987: 322 n. 761 (“ist zwar durchaus ansprechend”), Wiseman 1995: 141. No firm evidence supports this admittedly attractive hypothesis. Suet. Gram. 1.2, 2.2 with Kaster 1995: 54 and 66. Cicero implies Ennian authorship. Courtney 1993: 42 thinks the epigram may derive from Varro’s De poetis. Goldberg 1995: 16–18 reviews the recurring efforts to associate the lines with a portrait bust in the tomb of the Scipios. The kind of private performance hypothesized for the Annales by R¨ukpe 2001: 49–53 remains unattested.

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The Muse Arrives

experience start to merge. Within a few years, Vergil’s Eclogues would be set to music and performed in the theater,64 but all that was in the future. Authors of plays for the Republican ludi met their public in a different way and thought differently about their texts from the conditions known to later authors. The difference comes clear through two contrasting stories of outside interference in an author’s work. In the early summer of 45, Cicero learned that a preliminary draft of De finibus in Atticus’ possession had been sought out and part of it copied by Cornelius Balbus and then a second time by a woman acquaintance named Caerellia. Cicero was very annoyed. “Tell me,” he demands of Atticus, “in the first place, do you approve of publishing without my approval?” (‘dic mihi, placetne tibi primum edere iniussu meo?’ Att. 13.21). He eventually grows calmer and starts to sound more like a mature man of letters than the durus pater of a comedy, but Cicero had real reasons to be unhappy over what amounted to premature circulation of his work. Existence of even one unauthorized copy of a draft made any finishing touches difficult to apply, since there was no way for later copyists to distinguish a pirated draft from an authorized product. Premature circulation also compromised the value of the work as a gift to its dedicatee, in this case Brutus, who by rights should have been its first reader. By allowing private access to the draft, Atticus opened too quickly and without adequate safeguards a circle of readers that the author himself expects to select and to control for his own philosophical, social, and political ends.65 For Cicero, his work is a text whose distribution as a book was 64

65

Pollio, presumably after his virtual retirement from the political scene in 39, furthered his ambitio in studiis by reciting his own work beyond his immediate circle of friends: “primus enim omnium Romanorum advocatis hominibus sua scripta recitavit,” Sen. Con. 4 Pr. 2. For the meaning of advocatis hominibus, see Dalzell 1955: 26–28 and on recitation more generally, see Quinn 1982: 158–65. Stage performance of the Eclogues is attested by Serv. ad Ec. 6.11, Suet. Vita Ver. 102–3, Tac. Dial. 13. Cf. Hor. Ep. 1.19.41–42. Vergil’s private recitation of drafts and the contribution of that exercise to the creative process may well reflect longstanding Republican practice, but the aim was still production of a book, not a discrete performance. Cf. the stories at Serv. ad Aen. 6.861 and Vita Verg. 132–39, though the historicity of all these “facts” of Vergil’s career is now cast in doubt by Horsfall 1995: 1–25. The conciliatory sequel appears at Att. 13.22. Cornelius Balbus, Caesar’s praefectus fabrum, was a frequent conduit for communication with the dictator and thus a man whose good will Cicero doubtless wished to preserve. He sounds somewhat more skeptical of Caerellia’s motives: “mirifice studio videlicet philosophiae flagrans.” Cicero calls her necessaria at Fam. 13.72.1; their correspondence was known in antiquity. For these social relationships and their significance, see Murphy 1998: 501–3.

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to be carefully controlled and whose initial value depended in large part on the exercise of that control. Professional dramatists addressed their work to the many: success, even their very livelihood, depended on reaching the widest possible audience. For them a play was a performance, not a book. The priority of the performed text over the written one is clear from Terence’s unpleasant experience in the late 160s when his rival, the playwright Luscius Lanuvinus, heard of his most recent project and demanded an advance look at Eunuchus. The dramatist, full of indignation, tells what happened (Eun. 20–24): postquam aediles emerunt, perfecit sibi ut inspiciundi esset copia: magistratus quom ibi adesset occeptast agi. exclamat furem, non poetam fabulam dedisse et nil dedisse verborum tamen After the aediles bought it, he contrived to get an opportunity to check it out. A performance began in the magistrate’s presence. He shouted out that a thief, not a poet had produced the play but that he had fooled nobody.

Luscius’ specific complaint was that Terence had added the scenes of a soldier and parasite in his Eunuchus from earlier Colax-plays by Naevius and Plautus. He was therefore guilty of theft (furtum) from his predecessors as well as misrepresentation, since he had sold the aediles a play that was not entirely original. Terence proceeds to counter this charge by saying that he did not know the Colax material had already been used: his mistake, if any, was entirely inadvertent (“si id est peccatum, peccatum imprudentiast”, 27). His soldier and parasite may sound Naevian or Plautine, but they actually came straight from Menander’s Kolax (30–34). And that similarity should not surprise anyone. What else can be expected in a tradition based on Greek models and employing stock characters and situations, so that nothing is said that has not been said before (35–41)? The relative truth of claim and counterclaim here remains a notorious crux of Terentian scholarship; what rules governed the source material of palliata writers generally and what effect this specific interpolation had upon the structure and originality of Terence’s Eunuchus continue to excite 48

The Muse Arrives

debate.66 A second, largely unobserved implication of the controversy, however, also demands attention. Luscius’ charge was not in itself new. When the famous Caecilius a generation earlier pointed out, “as if he had uncovered some great theft,” that Menander in his Deisidaimon had appropriated Antiphanes’ Oionistes from beginning to end, he was probably not just acknowledging a problem of attribution among his Greek predecessors but defending himself against precisely the sort of accusation Luscius would make so notorious.67 Caecilius’ statement must have come in a prologue – it is otherwise hard to imagine how it entered the secondary tradition – and suggests that he, like Terence, faced charges of furtum made by professional colleagues.68 But were such accusations reasonable? Luscius implies that the scripts of Latin plays were readily available for Terence to consult, to copy, and to adapt. Was this true? Professionals obviously had access to Greek texts in sufficient numbers to provide Plautus and Caecilius with dozens of models.69 Plays were probably also available for readers willing to face the technical demands of Greek dramatic texts: whole plays, abridgements, and anthologies were all so clearly part of Hellenistic book culture by the second century that it is hard to imagine even Rome without them.70 But Latin scripts? Their accessibility is not

67

68

69

70

Barsby 1999: 85–88 explains the problem of Terence’s appropriation of earlier material. For its effect on matters of structure and originality, see inter alios Ludwig 1973 and Lowe 1983. Porph. ap. Eus. Praep. Ev. 465d: < "  > #, $  !
  %, & #' ( )  ! * , + ,,  -   + .! #  + /#  . For the problem among Greek authors, see Meineke 1839: 31–32, Arnott 1996: 25–26. Ter. Hec. 14–27, Turpio speaking in propria persona, refers to Caecilius’ difficulties. The source of his problem is unspecified, but Wright 1974: 87–126 showed that excessive hellenizing, the reason most often adduced by modern critics (e.g., Guard`ı 1974: 14–16), did not in fact characterize Caecilius’ work. About forty titles (not counting possible doublets) survive for Caecilius (Guard`ı 1974: 16–17). How many of the 130-plus plays that eventually circulated under Plautus’ name actually date to this period is unknown, but “dozens” is probably a conservative estimate. Then again, Terence died in the course of importing Menandrean plays from Greece (V. Ter. 90–96 Rostagni), and Luscius’ complaint about “spoiling” plays (e.g., And. 15–16) may suggest a limited supply of fresh models by the 160s. D. Chr. 18.6 nevertheless advises professional help for even native Greek-speakers reading Euripides and Menander. P. Sorb. 72, 2272, 2273, a book roll of Menander’s Sikyonios dated to the third century B.C., well illustrates the interpretative problems ancient dramatic texts posed (plate in Turner 1987: 74–75). Anthologies such as P. Hibeh 25, a third-century collection of Euripides, may have offered a welcome ˘

66

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so obvious. Terence implies that they were not easily found, which is why he did not know the Colax plays of his two illustrious predecessors. For the claim to be credible, as presumably it was since he saved his contract and the show went on, there can have been no repository of Latin texts, no archive or library for him to consult.71 Access to scripts would instead have been erratic and uncertain, as Luscius’ own conduct confirms. He too enjoyed something less than unimpeded access to Latin texts. He did not present his suspicions to the aediles, as a modern author (or attorney) would, by bringing forward the relevant scripts with the incriminating passages marked. Cato in his own house might inspect the written record of his own speeches, but to inspect a play in the 160s – at least somebody else’s play – meant having it performed.72 Luscius did not appear before the aediles with a basket of books. His intervention came instead through a cast reading, if not an actual staging, before one of the aediles (‘occeptast agi’, 22). Having learned via the professional grapevine that Terence’s new play took a soldier and parasite from an old Colax, he contrived to hear the parts, to confirm his suspicions, and then to shout out his objection at the appropriate moment. As with Balbus and Caerellia, his unexpected intervention threatens to compromise the work, but the author’s fear in this case is of a smaller, not a wider audience. Terence’s idea of “publication” and the system available to him for securing it are thus almost exactly opposite to Cicero’s idea. Nor is the kind of control over Terence’s play that Luscius hoped to exercise before a magistrate anything like the power that Varro in his study eventually commands when he takes old dramatic scripts out of the theatrical context and mines them for details of linguistic and cultural interest. Varro’s bookcase thus represents a significant landmark in the history of Latin literature. It is natural enough to find Ennius’ Annales there serving

71

72

alternative for the casual reader. For Romans’ ability to face such challenges, see Gruen 1984: 251–60. Deufert 2002: 44–57 thus argues from Terence’s experience that no “edition” of Plautus’ plays was circulating in the 160s. Pace Questa and Raffaelli 1990: 142 (“un confronto di questo genere presuppone di necessit`a l’uso di testi scritti”), Terence’s narrative suggests just the opposite. The “inspiciundi copia” is the performance before the aedile. Luscius’ suspicions need not have been aroused by inspection of a script and were certainly not put to rest by a written text. Contrast the famous paraleipsis of Cato’s speech De sumptu suo, 173M: “iussi caudicem proferri, ubi mea oratio scripta erat . . . ” Caudex suggests a personal archive rather than a formal book (liber). Malcovati 1953: 70 dates the speech to 164.

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The Muse Arrives

his needs as, in other ways, it served the different needs of Cicero and of Lucretius. Nothing said in this chapter about poetic imitation and allusion in the epic context or about the dynamics of first-century book culture is either new or surprising precisely because epic looms so large in our thinking, too. It helped establish what have become the familiar parameters of Roman literary discourse. Plautus’ presence in that same bookcase is not so easily explained. However natural it may seem in retrospect to find him and other second-century dramatists on the shelf beside Ennius, their elevation to comparable status as authorities and cultural icons was not so obvious and inevitable a development. Ancient observers like Porcius Licinus had good reason to think Calliope was the first Muse to reach Italy. Yet if plays were not written to be “literature” as epic was, how they acquired literary status, how and why they began doing the same cultural work that epic did, become questions of some importance for understanding both what literature came to mean to the Romans and how we should understand the history of that literature. A narrowly chronological approach to literary history becomes increasingly inadequate and inherently deceptive if the story of Livius Andronicus’ commission to provide plays for the ludi Romani of 240 is as much the projection of first-century needs and aspirations as the record of third-century events. I shall argue in the following chapters that plays only came to be treated as literature significantly after the time of their composition, when old scripts were gathered up, studied, canonized, and applied to the quite different tasks that the late Republic asked of its poetry. This process was facilitated, perhaps even necessitated, by the Romans’ keen interest in establishing canons of texts, of valuing those texts for their content and style, and employing them as models for further artistic expression and for marking the social distinctions so important to their self-image. As the product of an attitude toward texts, some very famous Republican literature is thus essentially the creation of hindsight, the gift to posterity of that last generation to know the Republic. What their retrospective creation meant for the writers and readers of Roman poetry will soon emerge.

51

chapter two

CONSTRUCTING LITERATURE

111 b.c. a fire broke out on the palatine and did extensive Iof ndamage to the temple of the Magna Mater on the southwest side the hill. Repairs were some ten years in the making and brought significant changes to both the temple and its precinct.1 The original building, dedicated in 191, had a distinctive, high podium ascended by two tiers of steps rising about nine meters from a paved plaza below. That plaza was only a cramped, L-shaped space defined by the temple of Victory ten meters to the east and the steep cliff of the hill itself falling away on the south and west, but it nevertheless accommodated the ludi Megalenses held each April in the goddess’ honor. The multifarious entertainments of that festival all crowded into this narrow area, with vendors, performers, and spectators alike jostling for space. Plays were part of the mix, too, which is why the Megalensia figures prominently in the history of Roman drama. Plautus’ Pseudolus was performed at the temple’s dedication in 191, and four of Terence’s six plays were contracted for this festival in the 160s. The conditions of performance, however, could not have been easy. A small stage erected near the cliff perhaps accommodated the actors comfortably enough, but their audiences must have gathered on the temple steps themselves or looked across from the Victory temple. There was no space for anything more elaborate, which 1

The fire: Obseq. 39, Val. Max. 1.8.11, Tac. An. 4.64. (The temple burned again in A.D. 3 and was restored by Augustus: Anc. 19, Ov. Fast. 4.347–48.) Ov. Fast. 4.348 associates the Republican restoration with a Metellus, perhaps C. Caecilius Metellus Caprarius, censor in 102. Completion of the project in 102 or 101 is likely. See Morgan 1973: 231–45. The temple and surrounding area have been extensively excavated by teams from the University of Rome under the direction of Patrizio Pensabene. See his summary in Steinby 1996: 206–8 with further references there.

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is doubtless one reason Terence would come to complain of tightrope walkers and boxers distracting his audience there.2 The Roman architects in 111 took the opportunity to improve these conditions. They rebuilt the temple on the original foundation but raised the plaza out over the cliff to the south through a series of vaults and leveled it to the north by paving over the lower tier of the temple’s steps and an adjacent lustral basin. This new, distinctly grander space implies a significant change in the scale of the Megalensia but also required new arrangements for the staging of its plays. Loss of the temple steps meant that audiences had to be seated either on temporary grandstands erected in the newly enlarged plaza or in a separate wooden theater constructed for the occasion at the base of the Palatine directly below, in the area known as the Lupercal.3 We do not know which solution was adopted, but one thing is clear: the days of rough seating for small crowds in a makeshift venue were over. Such a change at such a time is not without irony, at least from the standpoint of literary history. Formal drama at Rome enjoyed popular support from its beginning. The aristocracy of course had got things going: scripted plays were probably introduced at the ludi Romani of 240 because the Senate wished to bring their native celebration the prestige of a Greek festival.4 The audiences that welcomed this development, however, were not primarily aristocratic. Romans across the social spectrum 2

3

4

Ter. Hec. 4–5, 33–34. The games were instituted in 194: Liv. 34.54.3, 36.36.3–5. See Bernstein 1998: 186–206, Hanson 1959: 13–16, and for the temple as a performance space, Goldberg 1998. There was certainly not room in the second century for the formal cavea and scaena usually imagined for Roman drama. Cic. Har. 25, speaking of the Megalenses of 56, refers to two scaenae, but whether this means two theaters, one above and one below (so Wiseman 1974: 168–69), or two performances in the same place (so Lenaghan 1969: 125, Goldberg 1998: 9 n. 25) remains uncertain. It is difficult to reconcile a site below the crest of the hill in the Lupercal with Cicero’s explicit claim that the games were held “in Palatio . . . ante templum” (Har. 24), but it is no easier to imagine a late Republican crowd confined to the original space. Gruen 1990: 84 calls the elevated ludi of 240 “a cultural event that announced Rome’s participation in the intellectual world of the Greeks.” The impulse was itself hellenistic. Festivals in the Greek world underwent similar expansions in the third and second centuries. See Tarn and Griffith 1952: 113–15 and for the growth of plays and the professional troupes hired to perform them, Pickard-Cambridge 1968: 279–87, and Sifakis 1967: 137–39. Hieron of Syracuse certainly got the Romans’ message: he came to see the games in 239, bringing a substantial gift of grain (Eutrop. 3.1) and doubtless adding legitimacy to the new enterprise by his presence.

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were developing a taste for stage entertainment and an interest in its artistic possibilities, the legacy at least in part of wartime service abroad and of increasing contact with their Greek neighbors. The initial contacts were perhaps modest: Roman garrisons in Tarentum and Sicily once Pyrrhus left Italy in 275; a growing trade with Magna Graecia. Within a generation, however, the Punic wars began bringing Romans by the tens of thousands into ever-closer contact with the cultural life of the Greek west, where plays were always something of a passion.5 These Roman soldiers, merchants, camp followers, and all the rest clearly caught the bug – and brought it home with them. By the end of the Hannibalic War, Rome had become the Italian city for theater: Plautus was in his prime and a Latin acting tradition was well established.6 Dramatists still lacked the physical amenities to be found in Syracuse and Tarentum, which is why conditions on the Palatine are worth recalling, but the Roman religious calendar, supplemented by the growing habit of votive and funeral games, triumphs, and instaurationes, gave them numerous opportunities to demonstrate their talents.7 Yet in the course of the second century, even as the ludi scaenici grew in popularity, the plays that later Romans would call “literature” began to occupy a diminishing place in the program. This tendency is clear from text and testimony alike and played a significant role in the emerging definition of Roman literature. I

Though the Romans maintained a steady respect for tragedy and the genre enjoyed a continuous stage history, it never claimed a particularly 5

6 7

The Syracusan fondness for Euripides in the late fifth century became the stuff of legend (Plut. Nic. 29.2, Satyros in POxy 1176, fr. 39 col. xix); the reproduction of Athenian plays in fourth-century Magna Graecia is fact (Taplin 1993: 89–99). On the extent of Roman military service abroad in the third century, see the representative figures at Polyb. 2.24 (with Walbank 1957: 196–203) and 3.75.4, and for the cultural ramifications of this duty, Bernstein 1998: 234–51, Horsfall 2003: 48–63. Chalmers 1965, Moore 1998: 8–23. Taylor 1937, Gruen 1992: 185–88, Bernstein 1998: 245–51. Ludi were normally held in the forum or immediately before the temple of the god being honored, a religious scruple that perhaps contributed to the Romans’ notorious reluctance to build a permanent theater anywhere in the city. See Bernstein 1998: 291–98 and Goldberg 1998: 9–13. Among possible venues, the site of the Megalensia is the most fully known, but others would doubtless repay further investigation. The Republican temple of Apollo, rebuilt by C. Sosius in 34 B.C. and the original site of the ludi Apollinares, is a prime candidate. See Hanson 1959: 18–24 and Viscogliosi in Steinby 1993: 49–54.

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large following. After the initial, third-century experiments of Andronicus and Naevius, there was never more than one tragic poet of note in each generation from Ennius (d. 169) through Accius (d. ca. 86).8 The situation was rather different for comedy, especially palliata comedy, which became the benchmark genre for later Romans interested in stage history.9 After a burst of extraordinary productivity, however, it too went through a process of gradual contraction. The period that began with Naevius and Plautus and, through the 170s and 160s, saw the long career of Caecilius and the foreshortened one of Terence, came in retrospect to look like a golden age.10 There were then revivals and revisions to be sure, but new poets who wrote palliata comedies did so with declining vitality. The last of the professional line, Turpilius, a very old man at his death in 103, still wrote in the style perfected a century before.11 This artistic stagnation helps explain the curious and even surprising fact that productions of palliata comedies become increasingly hard to document at theatrical shows in the late Republic. Cicero, who clearly, even notoriously, enjoyed drama and quotes it often and with pleasure, is our best source for such things, and he mentions not a single palliata performance among the dramatic programs of the 50s and 40s. At the ludi Apollinares in these decades, he records tragedy performed in 59 (Att. 2.19.3), tragedy and the domestic comedy called togata in 57 (Sest. 118, 120–22, 123), tragedy and mime in 54 (Att. 4.15.6), and tragedy in 44 (Phil. 1.36, Att. 16.2.3). The gala inauguration of Pompey’s theater in 55 included Latin tragedies, mimes, and Atellan farces but no comedies worth mentioning (Fam. 7.1.1–3). Mimes 8

9

10

11

Roman tradition stressed the continuity (and lack of competition) among writers of tragedy by reporting that Pacuvius was Ennius’ nephew (Var. Sat. 356, Plin. Nat. 35.19, Jer. ad Euseb. Chr. a. 1863 [154 B.C.]) and that Accius was distinctly junior to Pacuvius (Cic. Brut. 229, Gell. 13.2.2). Cf. Mercury’s famous joke at Pl. Amph. 52–53: “quid? contraxistis frontem quia tragoediam/dixi futuram hanc?” (‘What’s that? You’re frowning because I said this would be a tragedy?’) When later Romans considered the origins of drama, they tended to jumble the details of comedy and tragedy, with comic features taking priority in their thinking, e.g., Verg. G. 2.380–96, Hor. Ep. 2.1.139–55. See Brink 1963: 189–91. This was the age a reviver of Plautus’ Casina called the flos poetarum (18). The early poets Caecilius, Plautus, and Naevius also dominate the so-called canon of Volcacius Sedigitus (ap. Gell. 15.24). Senex admodum, said Jer. ad Euseb. chr. a. 1914. Turpilius’ career probably overlapped that of Terence (d. 159), and though all thirteen of his surviving titles are Greek, his style is clearly much closer to the traditional style of Plautus than to the hellenizing experiments of Terence. See Wright 1974: 153–81, and for the diminishing appeal of the genre over time, see Goldberg 1986: 203–20.

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were performed at the ludi Victoriae Caesaris of 46 (Fam. 12.18.2), and there was at least the recollection of tragedies at Caesar’s funeral games (Suet. Iul. 84.2). Varro, Cicero’s contemporary, also occasionally refers to comic performances in his writing, but these references too are almost invariably to mime, while mime (not comedy or tragedy) became the emblem Lucretius chose for the stage’s mesmerizing power.12 Small wonder, then, that tragic actors known to have performed at Rome in the first century outnumber comic actors two to one, and both are eclipsed by performers identified specifically as mimoi.13 The famous career of Q. Roscius Gallus does not contradict this impression. He certainly played classic roles of the Roman comic stage: when Cicero likened the shifty look of the plaintiff Fannius to Roscius’ appearance as Ballio, he was depending on the jurors’ vivid memory of Pseudolus in performance.14 Roscius also grew rich, but it does not follow from this that he grew rich playing palliata roles. He also acted in tragedies and mimes.15 Even more significant because more lucrative, he taught acting skills to others. His tutelage added vastly to the market value of the slave Panurgus and helped raise the actor Eros to the top of his profession. Yet the performance of palliata comedies was not a comoedus’ only source of income. There were also togata roles, and by Cicero’s day, 12

13

14

15

Varro’s presumption of mime is most explicit at L. 10.27 (nouns feminine in form can be masculine in gender): “potest enim muliebrem [tunicam] vir, virilem mulier habere, ut in scaena ab actoribus haberi videmus.” RR 2.11.11 may allude to stage performance of Terence’s Heauton Timorumenos, but – pace Parker 1996: 588 – this is not certain. Lucretius’ “scaenai varios decores” involve dance and the cithara (4.973–83). For the modern underestimation of mime’s influence, see McKeown 1979, Fantham 1989, and Wiseman 2002: 279–83, and for the continuing, albeit altered appeal of tragedy, Goldberg 1996 and chapter 4 below. I draw the proportions from the register in Garton 1972: 236–65. Since the evidence is so fragmentary, the numbers are only suggestive, but so is Cic. Fam. 9.22.1, quoting one example from the comic stage followed by three from tragedy. Cic. Rosc. Com. 20–21. Cicero’s only other explicit reference to the stage performance of comedy is to Roscius singing a canticum in Turpilius’ Demiurgus (Cic. Fam. 9.22.1). The reference to Ambivius Turpio’s acting at Sen. 48 may also reflect Cicero’s observation of Roscius, though written evidence of Turpio’s acting style apparently survived (cf. Don. ad Ph. 315). The more general references to Roscius’ style at Arch. 17 and de Or. 2.242 lack context. See Wright 1931: 16–20 and Garton 1972: 158–88. The quotation at de Or. 3.102 puts Roscius in tragic parts (cf. Or. 109:“comoedum in tragoediis . . . placere vidimus”), while 3.221 (performance without a mask) suggests mime. Roscius received the equestrian’s gold ring from Sulla in 81 B.C., and though scholarship naturally concentrates on his professional activity, the dictator’s patronage may have had at least as much to do with Roscius’ subsequent wealth: Plut. Sulla 36.1–2, Macr. Sat. 3.14.13, with Lebek 1996: 36–41.

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aristocrats were engaging comoedoi for demonstrations, private readings, and tutorials. Roscius himself instructed aspiring orators, most famously Cicero, and this activity probably also explains his intimacy with Lutatius Catulus (cos. 102 B.C.) and Licinius Crassus (cos. 95 B.C.).16 Though Cicero’s testimony may inflate (or obscure) Roscius’ true standing, his career was clearly varied and in some ways extraordinary. Stage comedy of course endured through all this, but the silence that surrounds its production in the late Republic suggests at the very least the palliata’s declining presence at the public games. Evidence from the next generation confirms this trend. Octavian endured the same kind of barbs from the stage that were familiar to Cicero and his contemporaries – Antony saw to that – and as Augustus, he took steps to limit the practice, even when the comments flattered him. The genre in question, however, was mime.17 Augustus also improved the legal status of actors even as he sought to curb their licentia: he publicly chastised the togata actor Stephanio for an outrageous adultery and the pantomimists Hylas and Pylades for comparable offenses (Suet. Aug. 45.4). No stories of any kind, however, mention palliata plays: Suetonius’ sole reference to a more literary taste in comedy involves Greek.18 By the time Augustus was on his deathbed in A.D. 14, mime had so thoroughly supplanted comedy on the stage and in the imagination that it was quite 16

17

18

For Roscius as a teacher of acting, de Or. 1.129–33 and the evidence of Cic. Rosc. Com. 27–31: the slave Panurgus, histrio and comoedus (27–31); Eros comoedus, who “ad primos pervenit comoedos” (30). Fantham 1984: 304 notes that the term comoedus “applied to what seem free-lance drama-coaches employed in the training of young orators, to individual private slaves valued as recitalists, and to troupes of boyish performers who may be assumed to have given performances in private houses.” For Roscius’ own connection to oratory, see the story at Macr. Sat. 3.14.11–13 and Winniczuk 1961: 218–21, Fantham 2002: 364–67. Catulus wrote an epigram praising Roscius (Cic. Nat. 1.79); Crassus notes their intimacy at de Or. 1.129, 132. Cicero probably undertook the defense of Roscius’ brother-in-law Quinctius in partial repayment for his earlier tutelage. Suet. Aug. 68 (clearly an event of the 30s) and 53.1 (probably to be dated after 17 B.C.). Suet. Aug. 89.1: “Delectabatur [Augustus] etiam comoedia veteri et saepe eam exhibuit spectaculis publicis.” Pace Fraenkel 1957: 396n.1 (“This can only refer to the fabula palliata . . .”) the context is the Princeps’ knowledge of Greek. Vetus for the Romans may denote, as for us, the comedy of Aristophanes (cf. Cic. Lg. 2.37: prisca and antiqua were also used) but not necessarily. That Augustus, whose fluency in Greek was weak by contemporary standards and who read to cull “praecepta et exempla salubria” would sponsor – and could understand – Greek performances of Aristophanes or his peers is, at the least, unexpected. For the possibility that vetus here refers instead to what we call new comedy, see Chapter 5 below, n. 49.

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naturally the mime – not the comedy – of life that was to his way of thinking drawing to a close.19 The absence of palliata plays from such testimony demands reconsideration of the most explicit evidence to the contrary, a remark in Horace’s letter to Augustus that is often taken to mean that Romans of his day crowded into their theaters to watch masterpieces by Plautus, Caecilius, and Terence. “Hos arto stipata theatro spectat” sounds unequivocal, but the passage needs to be considered in full (Ep. 2.1.50–62):20 Ennius, et sapiens et fortis et alter Homerus, ut critici dicunt, †leviter† curare videtur quo promissa cadant et somnia Pythagorea. Naevius in manibus non est et mentibus haeret paene recens? adeo sanctum est vetus omne poema. ambigitur quotiens, uter utro sit prior, aufert Pacuvius docti famam senis, Accius alti, dicitur Afrani toga convenisse Menandro, Plautus ad exemplar Siculi properare Epicharmi, vincere Caecilius gravitate, Terentius arte. hos ediscit et hos arto stipata theatro spectat Roma potens; habet hos numeratque poetas ad nostrum tempus Livi scriptoris ab aevo. Ennius, learned and bold and another Homer, as the learned say, seems to take lightly what comes of his promises and his Pythagorean dream. Isn’t Naevius in our hands and sticking in our heads, nearly new? So revered is every old poem. There’s often debate over who tops whom: old Pacuvius carries off the prize for learning, Accius for grandeur, Afranius’ toga is said to befit Menander, Plautus hastens after Sicilian Epicharmus’ style, Caecilius wins for gravity, Terence for polish. These mighty Rome studies and these it watches, crammed in a poky theater. These it counts and reckons poets into our time from back in the writer Livius’ age. 19

20

Suet. Aug. 99: “et admissos amicos percontatus ecquid iis videretur mimum vitae commode transegisse . . . ” Cf. Sen. Ep. 80: “hic humanae vitae mimus.” Horace is quoted from the Teubner edition of Bailey 1985, who adds the obelus in 51. The translation follows Brink 1982: 98–99, but see also Bailey 1982: 76–78 and White 1987 for alternative views.

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Horace’s deliberately disjointed style allows and even encourages us to read our own expectations and prejudices into his words; yet, the presentation of this argument should give us pause. For one thing, the context is not exclusively comic or even dramatic. Though Ennius and Naevius were indeed dramatists of note, they are recalled here not as dramatists at all but as epic poets (“alter Homerus,” “in manibus”), and the line of thought that brings Horace from them to what follows in lines 55–62 is the reception of authors as texts. This is why the canon of dramatists that begins at 55 evokes memories not of the stage but of the schoolroom, with its passion for ranking poets (‘uter utro sit prior’), identifying their characteristic virtues (‘gravitas,’ ‘ars’, etc.), and poring over their texts (‘ediscit’, ‘numerat’).21 Genre by genre, the virtues defined are of style, the characteristics most readily apparent to readers. Production values are entirely absent from the discussion and will not appear until later in the letter, where the first example will allude to Terence’s fiasco at the ludi Megalenses of 165 (184–86, cf. Ter. Hec. 33–42). A second, contemporary example is then drawn from tragedy (187–93). Finally, Horace also stretches some literary facts. Vergil’s use of material from Naevius’ Bellum Punicum for the Aeneid may have renewed interest in that old poem, but it can hardly have seemed nearly contemporary (‘paene recens’) to anyone. As we have seen, the literary Saturnian had been out of fashion for generations.22 Given such proclivities, “hos arto stipata theatro spectat” is probably no more a fact of literary history than the claim that Augustans found Naevius’ epic “paene recens”. The Theater of Balbus was not large, but “artum” hardly describes the lavish Theater of Pompey or the new Theater of Marcellus, which was even larger.23 Nor is it clear – indeed, it is decidedly and deliberately unclear – whether “hos” means all the poets in the catalogue or only some of them and how the very different activities 21

22 23

In scholis says Porphyrio. Cf. Cic. Tusc. 3.3: “poetae . . . audiuntur, leguntur, ediscuntur et inhaerescunt . . . in mentibus.” For such “canons” see Courtney 1993: 92–96, Brink 1982: 105–8. “Critici” recalls the tradition of Crates, who claimed the title  in the context of, as here, epic exegesis. See Pfeiffer 1968: 238–41, Brink 1982: 414–19. For Vergil’s debt to Naevius, see Barchiesi 1962: 477–82, Wigodsky 1972: 22–39. The Theater of Marcellus is estimated to have held ca. 13,000 spectators. The Theater of Balbus, dedicated in 13 B.C., i.e., not long before the presumed date of Horace’s poem, perhaps held no more than 7,000. The “temporary” theaters of the later Republic were not small: Curio’s, built in 53 and still standing in 51, was famously large and lavish (Plin. Nat. 36.117–20, Cic. Fam. 8.2.1).

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denoted by ediscit and spectat are meant to apply to them. Horace’s language thus hardly refutes the conclusion that the comic genre made famous by Naevius, Plautus, Caecilius, and Terence in the second century was passing from public view by the first. The affable Fundanius of the satires, if Fundanius was indeed a writer of palliatae, is not only unique among living men (unus vivorum), but what Horace says he gave his public were not plays but books (libelli).24 Comedy claims Horace’s attention as a phenomenon of literary history, not as a contemporary art, for the circumstances of its reception were by his time quite different from the circumstances of its creation.25 Yet its diminished presence on the Roman stage hardly ended the Romans’ longstanding affection for the comoedia palliata. Their experience of it, though, came increasingly from books, reflecting a change in attitudes as well as opportunities. The roots of this change reached back into the later second century, when, as Suetonius reports, the sporadic and unsystematic efforts to restore an interest in epic by men like Octavius Lampadio were replaced by the more methodical work of Aelius Stilo and his son-in-law Ser. Clodius. Aelius was a serious collector and discusser of books, who attracted influential friends and distinguished students.26 He organized and explicated texts and inquired into archaic practices. Though much of his teaching was probably oral and reached later generations largely through the writings of his student Varro, Aelius’ formidable learning and extensive interests secured for him an enduring 24

25

26

Hor. Sat. 1.10.40–42. Horace’s reference in this passage to Chremes and Daos suggests the palliata, but the fiasco that this same Fundanius describes in Sat. 2.8 sounds much more like mime, which was rapidly replacing comedy on the Roman stage. So Ov. Tr. 2.497–514, with the observations of Wiseman 2002, McKeown 1979: 80, Fantham 1996: 145–47. So Williams 1968: 73, “These are the reasons Horace talks so much about drama, and not, as so many commentators have insisted, because drama was an important literary activity in Augustan Rome or because Horace visualised the possibility of a great revival for it.” Nevertheless, the Princeps’ own interest in public art may also have influenced Horace’s decision, as Feeney 2002: 183–84 fairly observes. Suet. Gram. 2–3 with Kaster 1995: 68–72, Zetzel 1981: 10–26, Questa and Raffaelli 1990: 139–60. A thorough bibliographic review is now provided by Suerbaum 2002: 552–57. Reynolds and Wilson 1991: 19–23 offer a perceptive survey of these developments. Aelius’ career is dated to ca. 110–85: for his learning, see Cic. Brut. 205, de Or. 1.193, and esp. Varro, who ranked him “in primo in litteris Latinis exercitati” (L. 7.2). When Clodius died early in 60 B.C., his library passed to Cicero, who was anxious to secure it (Att. 1.20.7, 2.1.12). Bonner 1960: 359 suggests that the value of those particular books may have been enhanced by Clodius’ critical annotation. What we know of Clodius’ critical activity is entirely concerned with comedy.

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influence on both the transmission of Latin texts and on how they were studied.27 His methods reflect considerable familiarity with Greek language, Greek precedent, and Greek scholarly procedures. Some of his applications were relatively straightforward. Thus Aelius explained the archaic title “Dius Fidius” as ‘son of Diovis’ and associated it with Hercules by appealing to the example of Castor, known as /.28 Other lines of argument were considerably more recondite. Restoring sense, for example, to what was already the obscure text of the Carmen Saliare led him down a much less familiar path. He glossed the incomprehensible word pescia that he found there as ‘lambskin tunics’ by reference to the neuter noun
! ‘a sheepskin’.29 That association was hardly obvious. Aelius may have inferred from the grammatical context in the hymn that pescia was neuter plural and from the general sense that it referred to tunics, but deriving it from
! took him to a word of startling rarity. He must have worked hard to find it, though Varro would later note that his teacher’s etymological methods sometimes showed more industria in their appeal to Greek than ingenium.30 Even more important for our purposes were Aelius’ editorial methods, which also looked back to Greek precedent. He was apparently the first Roman to annotate Latin texts using the system of critical signs, and thus presumably the critical concepts behind them, that were a hallmark of Alexandrian scholarship. The evidence for this advance comes from an anonymous treatise on these scholarly notae.31 27

28

29

30

31

Varro’s marked tendency to introduce his teacher’s comments with phrases like “Aelius dicebat” (e.g., fr. 9, 12, 46, and esp. “dicere solitum” at 51 Fun.) suggests the recollection of oral discourse (“ut Aelius scribit” only twice, fr. 32, 39 Fun.). Aelius ap. Varr. L. 5.66 (fr. 9 Fun.). The context of Aelius’ analysis is unknown. His etymologizing tendencies probably reflect the Stoic approach to language traceable back through Panaetius to the Pergamene school of Crates. So Traglia 1984: 26–27, citing Cicero’s remark, “Aelius Stoicus esse voluit” (Brut. 206). Fest. 230L (fr. 3 Fun.): “pescia” in Saliari carmine Aelius Stilo ait capitia ex pellibus agninis facta, quod Graeci pelles vocent
! neutro genere pluraliter. Varro ap. Gell. 1.18.2 (fr. 130 Fun.), cf. Quint. 1.6.36. 0! appears in extant Greek literature only at Nic. Ther. 549, referring to the (chewed) rind of a plant, though it is, as Nicander’s scholiast observes,   + #! 1
2. That claim may itself be only a deduction from
!, Aeol.
! (= 3
 ‘raw wool’), but whether Aelius reasoned independently along similar lines or found the word in Nicander (and his scholia?) remains unclear. This sentence of the so-called Anecdoton Parisinum (GLK 7.533–36, reprinted by Funaioli as Aelius Test. 21), is famously corrupt. I follow Bonner 1960, both for

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His solis [sc. notis] in adnotationibus Ennii Lucilii et historicorum usi sunt Varro Servius Aelius aeque et postremo Probus, qui illas in Vergilio et Horatio et Lucretio apposuit, ut Homero Aristarchus. Varro, Servius, and Aelius all used this system of marks in their annotations of Ennius, Lucilius, and the playwrights. So later did Probus, who applied them to Vergil and Horace and Lucretius, as Aristarchus did to Homer.

This suggests, in the narrow sense, that Aelius and his disciples concerned themselves with the authenticity of lines, with questions of transposition and interpolation, and with oddities of language, all of which were, as we will see, plentiful in the Plautine scripts they collected. Even more important, however, is the implication of such activity that with Aelius the Romans began paying the same kind of attention to Plautus that their Greek predecessors had paid to Homer. The “Plautus” that Varro knew and the literary lore he in turn passed on to later generations must have been in large part the legacy of Aelius and Servius Clodius, whose interest in texts insured comedy’s place in Roman literary history in a way that even a great actor like Roscius could not rival. As such, their work provides our most striking example of the Romans’ retrospective creation of literature. The epic poems saved from obscurity by men like Vargunteius and Lampadio had always been books, and their new status was gained by bringing those books from small circles of readers to larger ones (Suet. Gram. 2.2). Comedy had to change both its form and its function to acquire an equivalent status. For it, becoming literature entailed delivering the commercial property of professional acting companies into the hands of scholars and antiquaries, who gave it a different kind of appeal to rather different audiences from those attracted to Pseudolus as performed on the Palatine in 191. To understand the implications of this process, we need to consider the nature of the texts from which this new literature was formed. II

The theater scripts of Plautus would have presented a significant puzzle to anyone interested in gathering them up for a Roman readership. What confronted and confounded early critics was not simply the sheer number restoration of the names (“Aelius” is not in question) and for understanding “historicorum” as ‘playwrights’.

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of plays to be found under Plautus’ name. The very ideas of authorship and authenticity that informed the labor of Aelius and Clodius were at odds with the more casual treatment of scripts by the acting troupes whose property they had originally been. This is inevitable in a transition from script to book, for the nature of play making works against the interests of later editors. Because a stage play is a collective and collaborative effort, the integrity of a performance text and even its authorship quickly become problematic. The resulting confusion is familiar to students of English Renaissance theater, where scripts long remained the property of the acting companies that commissioned them and everyone from producer to prompter to actor might contribute to what eventually appeared on the printed page.32 We might well suspect similar forces at work in third-century Rome: Plautus’ involvement in the business of theater (“in operis artificum scaenicorum,” Gell. 3.3.14) remains one of the few credible “facts” of the Plautine biography, and the role of acting troupes in the history of the Roman stage is beyond dispute. But guesswork is unnecessary. As is the case with Shakespeare, the exigencies of theatrical life have left indelible marks on the surviving texts. Poenulus 917–29, for example, is an exit monologue by the slave Milphio, who has important news for his master, Agorastocles. The continuous text looks like this: di inmortales meum erum servatum volunt et hunc disperditum lenonem: tantum eum instat exiti. satine priusquam unumst iniectum telum, iam instat alterum? ibo intro haec ut meo ero memorem. nam huc si ante aedis evocem, quae audivistis modo, nunc si eadem hic iterum iterem, inscitiast. ero uni potius intus odio quam hic sim vobis omnibus. di inmortales, quanta clades, quanta adventat calamitas hodie ad hunc lenonem! sed ego nunc est quom me commoror. ita negotium institutumst, non datur cessatio; nam et hoc docte consulendum quod modo concreditumst et illud autem inserviendumst consilium vernaculum. remora si sit, qui malam rem mihi det merito fecerit. nunc intro ibo: dum erus adveniat a foro, opperiar domi. 32

920

925

Masten 1994: 363–66 offers an excellent overview of the problem. The forces working against textual integrity in the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries are analyzed by Bentley 1971: 235–63, Loewenstein 1988, Erne 2002. A practical example of the consequences (immediately familiar to students of Roman comedy) may be found in Braunmuller 1997: 259–63 on revisions in the Folio text of Macbeth.

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The immortal gods want my master rescued and this pimp ruined: what a disaster awaits him! Before the first shot is fired, another is ready for him! I’ll go inside and report this to my master, for if I call him out here 920 and tell him again what you’ve just heard, it would be tiresome. It’s better to bore one master inside than all of you out here. Immortal gods! What a massacre, what a disaster awaits this pimp today! But now here I am just dawdling. With this business under way, there’s no time for delay. 925 What has just come to light has to be carefully handled, while that home-grown scheme also has to be seen through. If there’s a delay, anyone would be right to tan my hide. Now I’ll go in: I’ll wait at home until my master returns from the forum.

Modern scholarship has long recognized in this passage the conflation of two versions of the same speech, 917–22 (with the exit line “ibo intro haec ut meo ero memorem”) and 923–29 (with the exit line “nunc intro ibo”).33 Poenulus also has a similarly conflated prologue and an alternative ending, while the text of Cistellaria includes material that probably derives either from alternative scenes or from alternative ways of playing the same scene.34 Whether such variants are the work of the original author, of a contemporary, of a post-Plautine reviser, or of some combination of the three is uncertain. All these possibilities find support at one point or another. Roman plays were certainly staged more than once. Pseudolus 1275–78 may suggest only a curtain call, but Stasimus’ congratulation of Lysiteles for bringing his scheme to a successful conclusion (Trin. 705–6), non enim possum quin exclamem: eugae, eugae, Lysiteles,
! facile palmam habes: hic victust, vicit tua comoedia. 33

34

It also notes the inferiority of 923–29: simpler language (e.g., consilium for telum), avoidance of the metatheatrical joke at 922, and an internal inconsistency since Agorastocles is not at the forum but was seen returning home at 808. (He will reenter from the house with Milphio at 961.) See Zwierlein 1990: 198–99. Weise 1866: 166 was first to call attention to the contradiction and to conclude, “Ohne allen Zweifel ist der ganze Zusatz Vers 101–7 [i.e., 923–29 of the continuous text] sp¨ateren Ursprungs.” Editors since Leo usually bracket the lines. For Weise’s role in modern Plautine Echtheitskritik, see Goldberg 1985: 69–72. For the double ending of Poen., see Zwierlein 1990: 56–100 (better in the explication than the solution), and for Cist. 120ff. and 703ff., Goldberg 2004: 387–91.

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I really have to shout, “Well done, well done, Lysiteles! Encore!” You’ve easily grabbed the prize: He’s done. Your comedy has won.

explicitly evokes the enthusiasm of an appreciative audience and its hope of a repeat performance. Chrysalus’ well-known joke at Bacchides 214–15, etiam Epidicum, quam ego fabulam aeque ac me ipsum amo, nullam aeque invitus specto, si agit Pellio even Epidicus, a play I love as dearly as I love myself – there’s none I enjoy watching less if Pellio is playing in it

also indicates that scripts were reproduced and at least claims that some productions were beyond the original playwright’s control.35 Those other performances, however, were not necessarily at Rome. Lily Ross Taylor, in a famous article, calculated that Plautus and Terence had more official opportunities to present plays than fifth-century Athenians had known, but her corollary is equally significant:36 But although the regular and special ludi probably offered enough opportunity for the presentation of plays to encourage the dramatist to write, it is doubtful whether the market at Rome would in itself have justified the formation of companies of professional actors. In order to secure a steady livelihood even for small companies, the managers who bought the plays from the dramatists would have required more engagements than the schedule of the Roman drama provided. There was an obvious means of supplementing the earnings at Rome. The managers could take their companies out on the road.

Though performances at the great urban ludi would have paid significant dividends in cash and in reputation, plays had to go into repertory to pay the bills, and some of our textual doublets probably reflect the exigencies of the traveling shows that encouraged, perhaps even demanded, variations in how a play was performed.37 35

36 37

Pellio, according to the didascalia, also produced Stichus at the Plebeian Games of 200 B.C. Mattingly 1960: 251–52 and Zwierlein 1992: 205–12 consider these lines a later interpolation and adduce them as proof of post-Plautine revival in the 140s. Deufert 2002: 20–25, following Zwierlein, doubts the contemporary reproduction of Plautus’ plays, but evidence is lacking. Pl. Ps. 1334 implies another production by the same company on the following day; Terence’s Eunuchus was definitely performed twice on the same day (Vit. Ter.). Taylor 1937: 303. See now Bernstein 1998: 245–51. The doublet at Cist. 703ff., for example, suggests simplification of the maid Halisca’s role. Concrete evidence for the economic standing of Roman acting companies tends

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Other alterations are certainly post-Plautine. The prologues of Casina, Menaechmi, and Poenulus as we have them include passages that were clearly written for revivals later in the second century, and the evident pride that prologue speakers take in bringing their audiences Plautinae fabulae testifies to the continuing commercial value attached to that name.38 For professionals of the second century, authorship was primarily an assertion of value, not origin, which is why Terence, writing in the 160s, could claim Plautus as one of his auctores yet deny knowledge of his Colax (And. 15–21, Eun. 30–34). All that Terence would have known were the production scripts of active repertory companies with every reason to multiply the number of plays, to conceal their origins, to alter them as conditions required, and to do so with or without the assistance of their nominal author.39 What could a later editor do with scripts developed under such circumstances? Not even autograph manuscripts, had such things existed, really have resolved their most basic difficulties. What John Wright has so aptly called the “stylistic unity” of the genre always worked against textual arguments for authenticity. As he observes, “the style of Roman comedy was so unified, so tied to tradition, that any attempt to separate the productions of its various practitioners was, in the absence of any reliable external evidence, doomed to almost certain failure.”40 The resulting consistency not just made style – the ancient critics’ favorite litmus test – a treacherous criterion for judging the authenticity of plays, but, if pushed far enough, that consistency problematizes the very idea of authenticity. Adrian Gratwick put the resulting dilemma well: “‘he’

38

39

40

to be much later, but their commercial nature is beyond doubt. See Leppin 1992: 84–90, Lebek 1996: 29–35, and Brown 2002. Cas. 12, Men. 3. Cas. 5–20 are an explicit addition written within a generation of Plautus’ death. The case of Poen. is less clear: Jocelyn 1969 sees signs of two successive rewrites of its prologue. Ps. 1–2 is sometimes presumed to come from a revival, but there is no evidence one way or the other. For discussion of Plautine retractatio, see Coulter 1911: 8–15, Duckworth 1952: 65–68, and Parker 1996: 587–90. The claims in Zwierlein 1990 and subsequent volumes of massive interpolation by such retractores have not won converts. Cf. Gratwick 1993b. Deufert 2002: 18–43 therefore dates the first “edition” of Plautus to the time of Accius and Lucilius. Proprietary considerations may well have limited Terence’s access to the plays of other Roman dramatists. Wright 1974: 84, commenting on the fragment of Boeotia preserved by Gell. 3.3.5, a play Varro thought authentic, though it lacked the critical consensus needed to include it in his canon. Jocelyn 1969: 98 notes the unlikelihood of a Plautine autograph being either found or recognized as such. The difficulties, both practical and conceptual, that confronted ancient Echtheitskritik are well discussed by Reichel 2000: 388–95.

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[Plautus] might dissolve into an undefinable plurality, the collective effort of a cottage industry. In particular, if there never was one real ‘Plautus,’ then in what sense could some plays be said to be authentic, others not?”41 What could “Plautus” mean in such a context? One convenient answer was to establish Plautus’ individuality by constructing a biography for him, even if that biography, however colorful – it gave us Plautus the stagehand, the merchant, and the mill-slave – was only a fiction.42 Yet that identity did not in itself solve the editors’ fundamental problem, which was lack of any firm criteria for judging the scripts they could find. An agreed upon set of plays might therefore be another, better way to define “Plautus,” but even experienced men of the theater such as Terence and Accius disagreed on matters of attribution, and though Accius may have had the resources of the poets’ guild at his disposal, there was evidently no official archive of production notices or scripts available to clinch an argument.43 Though Serv. Clodius could declare, at least to his own satisfaction, “hic versus Plauti non est, hic est” (ap. Cic. Fam. 9.16.4) and Aelius identified twenty-five plays as genuine, Varro could find universal consensus on only twenty-one.44 And even that did not settle the matter at once: by the late second century A.D. 41

42

43

44

Gratwick 1993b: 4. Cf. Orgel 1991: 84 on editing Renaissance plays: “if it is a performing text we are dealing with, it is a mistake to think that in our editorial work what we are doing is getting back to the author’s original manuscript: the very notion of ‘the author’s original manuscript’ is in such cases a figment.” For the organization of the professional companies that first owned the Roman scripts, see Jory 1970 and Bl¨ansdorf 1978: 116–25, and for the aesthetic effect of their organization, Garton 1972: 57–66. Gell. 3.3.14 citing Varro. For the nature and source of these biographical fictions, see Leo 1912: 73–76. Thus Ter. Ad. 7, “eam Commorientis Plautus fecit fabulam”, but Accius ap. Varro ap. Gell. 3.3.9: “ . . . neque adeo Agroecus neque Commorientes Macci Titi” in a list including Boeotia, of which Varro and Gellius had no doubt. Accius’ position in the collegium poetarum is attested by Val. Max. 3.7.11. Its role in preserving scripts and their attendant records has long been a matter of speculation. See, inter alios, Jory 1970, Wright 1974: 183–85, Horsfall 1976, Quinn 1982: 173–76, and for possible sources of scripts, Questa and Raffaelli 1990: 144–46 (archives) and Casson 2001: 64–65 (acting companies). Aelius’ twenty-five included the Boeotia, for which Varro could not find the necessary consensus. Clodius’ style of criticism was still in vogue three centuries later: when Gellius read some Plautus aloud, his teacher Favorinus declared, “vel unus hercle hic versus Plauti esse hanc fabulam satis potest fidei fecisse” (Gell. 3.3.6). For the hellenophone Favorinus as a judge of res romana, see Holford-Strevens 1988: 83–89 and Beall 2001: 92–95. Eventually, only Varro’s twenty-one plays survived in a manuscript tradition. Its oldest representative, the so-called Ambrosian palimpsest, dates to the

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some 130 plays still circulated “sub Plauti nomine” (Gell. 3.3.11). Small wonder Gellius would think Plautus himself partly responsible for the confusion by revising the work of others, thus putting his own stamp upon them (3.3.13), or that Varro thought a second dramatist named Plautius had contaminated the canon through an inadequacy of Latin morphology. Whatever the truth, one thing is very clear: Varro, his teachers, and his heirs were arguing over something conceptually different from what “Plautus” had written. Uncertainty and confusion of this magnitude might of course be expected in a dramatic corpus that reached posterity under the name Droopy Dick McClown.45 “Plautus” may in some sense, or in some cases, be only a fiction. Publius Terentius Afer, however, was real enough, though some ancient authorities maintained – like the Earl of Oxford’s champions, and for similar reasons – that his plays were actually the work of the younger Scipio or his friend Laelius.46 External circumstances might also have facilitated the transition of his plays from scripts to books. There were only six of them, and his name never achieved the kind of commercial cachet that motivated producers to manufacture, modify, or reattribute scripts. Only Andria shows any overt sign of later revision.47 Terence’s argumentative prologues and the gossip they engendered also gave him an individuality that the Plautine corpus lacked, and the purus sermo for which he became famous was unique to him. His support by anonymous “homines nobilis” might even suggest a motive and an instrument for preserving the integrity of the Terentian corpus, especially if, as sometimes claimed, the plays represented a Scipionic “program” of hellenization.48 Posthumous “Terence” could thus easily, quickly, and quietly

45

46

47

48

third or possibly fourth century A.D., i.e., just a century or so after Gellius. See Leo 1912: 1–62, Pasquali 1952: 33–54, and Questa and Raffaelli 1990: 175–215. For the significance of “Titus Maccius Plautus,” see Gratwick 1973. Gratwick renders Plautus “flatfoot” or “mime-actor” (= planipes), but cf. Cas. 34 “Plautus cum latranti nomine” and Paul. Fest. 259L: “Plauti appellantur canes, quorum aures languidae sunt ac flaccidae et latius videntur patere.” Ter. Ad. 15–21 acknowledges aristocratic support but denies the accusations of ghostwriting reported from Porcius Licinus to Cic. Att. 7.3.10, Quint. 10.1.99 and beyond. See Courtney 1993: 87–90 and for the ancient vita, which is our primary source for these rumors, Beare 1942. For the alternative ending of Andria, still the work of the second century, see Zwierlein 1990: 49–55. Parker 1996, however, rightly warns against underestimating Terence’s appeal to Roman audiences. The old view of Terence as representing aristocratic interests, minimized by Goldberg 1985: 8–15 and Gruen 1992: 197–202, is now resurrected in different ways by Habinek 1998: 55–59 and Leigh 2004: 158–91.

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have passed from acting scripts in the hands of his producers to book rolls in the private libraries of aristocratic readers.49 Yet that is not what happened. The Terentian corpus may have been easier to manage for these reasons, but the plays nevertheless remained in the hands of producers until they too, like the Plautine scripts, later made the transition to book status. The evidence for this is different from the Plautine evidence but still unmistakable. Production notes, called, in the Greek fashion, didascaliae, accompanied the eventual books of Terence, entered the manuscript tradition along with the texts, and now appear at the front of modern editions. These notes are consistent in structure and content. Here, for example, is the didascalia for Phormio as printed in the Oxford text of Terence. INCIPIT TERENTI PHORMIO: ACTA LUDIS ROMANIS L. POSTVMIO ALBINO L. CORNELIO MERVLA AEDILIBUS CVRVLIBVS : EGERE L. AMBIVIVS TVRPIO L. HATILIVS PRAENESTINVS : MODOS FECIT FLACCVS CLAVDI TIBIIS INPARIBVS TOTA : GRAECA APOLLODORV EPIDICAZOMENOS : FACTA IIII C. FANIO M. VALERIO COS.

Here begins Terence’s Phormio. Performed at the Roman Games when L. Postumius Albinus and L. Cornelius Merula were curule aediles. L. Ambivius Turpio and L. Atilius from Praeneste starred. Claudius’ slave Flaccus provided the music for unequal pipes. The Greek original was Apollodorus’ Epidicazomenos. Written fourth. C. Fannius and M. Valerius were consuls.

The pattern in these notices is so regular that the missing didascalia of Andria is confidently reconstructed from the very similar information preserved in Donatus’ commentary, and Friedrich Ritschl was able to restore along similar lines the truncated didascalia preserved with Plautus’ Stichus.50 Presented this way, the didascaliae look official and authoritative, but what is the actual source of their authority? The notice for Phormio makes reasonable sense as printed and is consistent with other information we possess. The year of the performance 49

50

So Klose 1966: 40: “Sp¨atestens nach dem Tod des Dichters aber werden seine jungen Freunde daf¨ur gesorgt haben, dass die wertvollen Manuscripte sicher verwahrt wurden. Die Privatbibliotek der Scipionen, zur damaligen Zeit zweifellos die gr¨osste und wichtigste in Rom, bot sich dazu an.” Neither the young friends, however, nor the family library is attested. Don. And. Praef. 1.6; Ritschl 1845: 261–68. Dziatzko 1865/1866 on the didascaliae remains basic. Good summary in Jachmann 1934: 601–4, to which add Klose 1966: 5–41.

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would be 161: C. Fannius and M. Valerius are well attested as consuls for that year. The Greek original is surely right, too, and a story in Donatus (ad 315) confirms that the actor-manager Ambivius Turpio played the title role. Though Postumius Albinus and Cornelius Merula are not otherwise known as magistrates for 161, there is no particular reason why they would be known at this time, and though curule aediles did not preside over the ludi Romani, they are such a fixture of the other didascaliae – they did preside over the ludi Megalenses – that their inclusion here could simply be pro forma. But who is Atilius of Praeneste? Mention of a second actor-manager for a single production is odd, while mention of a second player would be even odder. And as it happens, another version of this didascalic note survives in our oldest manuscript, the Bembine codex of the fourth or fifth century A.D., and it further complicates the picture. The notice looks like this:51 INCIPT TERENTI PHORMIO ACTA LVDIS MEGALENSIB(VS) Q. CASPIONE GN SERVILIO COS GRAECA APOLLODORV EPIDICAZOMENOS FACTA IIII

Here begins Terence’s Phormio performed at the ludi Megalenses when Q. Caspio Gn. Servilius were consuls. The Greek was Apollodorus’ Epidicazomenos. Written fourth.

This seemingly contradictory notice cannot be easily dismissed as fiction or error: Donatus, too, assigns production of Phormio to the Megalenses, which might better explain the aediles’ appearance in the record. Was the production of Phormio, then, at the ludi Megalenses or Romani? In what year? A’s formula “Q. Caspione Gn. Servilio cos” makes no sense in itself but probably disguises the name Cn. Servilius Caepio (Caepio is a cognomen in the Servilian gens) and the praenomen of his consular colleague, Q. Pompeius. Yet they were consuls in 141, nearly a generation after Terence’s death. Is this alternative information, which editors consign to the apparatus, therefore simply the result of confusion, or does it record something other than the first production of Phormio? Whatever 51

The manuscript, called “A” by modern editors, is reproduced and transcribed by Coury 1982 with convenient bibliography. Added above A’s didascalia is the production information of the Calliopian manuscripts transcribed in the hand of the so-called Bembine scholia. Klose 1966: 7–9 collates the two manuscript versions of all the didascaliae and the testimony of Donatus.

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we decide, the authoritative look of our published didascaliae is surely deceptive. Contrast what we know of the ostensible model for these production notes. The term “didaskalia” goes back to Aristotle, who gave that title to a volume on Athenian theater history that was based directly on his research among the archons’ official records. Aristotle in turn became the source for the chronological studies of Alexandrian scholars lacking his access to the primary material. What survives of their work can now be checked, sometimes in detail, against the inscriptional evidence recording plays and productions that has since been found among the public buildings and private monuments of Athens.52 The “official” quality of the Greek didascalic record is therefore no illusion. Athenian drama developed in a competitive environment where citizens vied for the praise of their fellow citizens in festivals celebrating, among other things, the institutional success of the polis itself. But more was at stake than simply civic honor. The subsequent scrutiny of the archon’s expenditures, the burdens of liturgy, and the need to make satisfactory decisions year after year required an effective institutional memory. Thus the very complexity of the Athenian festivals demanded and ensured the meticulous public recording of the poets, choregoi, and actors who won the annual prizes at the Greater Dionysia and Lenaia.53 No comparable archive is attested at Rome, nor do any inscriptions preserve the record of Roman dramatic activities. Quite the reverse: when Romans chose to decorate a building with theatrical records, it was Athenian didascaliae they reproduced, not any achievements of their own.54 This is hardly surprising. There were no contest results to report, no choregic achievements to celebrate, and thus little essential data to 52

53

54

Discussion of the Greek didaskaliae in Pickard-Cambridge 1968: 70–74 and Pfeiffer 1968: 81, 132–34. For Aristotle’s research see Higbie 1999: 71–73, and for the role of Callimachus’ Pinakes, Fraser 1972: 655 n. 49 and 50. Documents and testimonia in Pickard-Cambridge, 101–25 and, more fully, TrGF, vol. 1. Details of the competition in Pickard-Cambridge 1968: 84–101, and for the selection of contestants, Wilson 2000: 61–70. Sickinger 1999: 41–47 discusses the utility of the didascalic record. The civic ideology reflected in these contests, a matter of much recent scholarship, is examined from different perspectives by Goldhill 1990: 97–115, Griffin 1998, and Wilson 2000: 144–97. Fragments of Athenian didascaliae (IG xiv.1097–1098a), originally one substantial inscription, were found in the Campus Martius. See Moretti 1968: 184–98, nos. 215– 30. The date, original location, and function of the stones are unknown. The theaters of Pompey and Balbus, both with elaborate porticoes suitable for the size and content of the inscription, were located in the general area of the find, as was the library of

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record. The entertainments at ludi scaenici were the result of commercial transactions between state officials and independent agents of much lower social status. Roman plays did not represent or recall the obligations and honors that citizens bestowed on citizens, nor was there a public mechanism for preserving details of their productions. The magisterial archives often invoked as a putative source of the surviving didascalic record are largely a scholarly invention. Financial accounts (rationes) were sometimes claimed to be documents of public record, but whatever daybooks (commentarii) the aediles kept would have remained their personal property.55 To consult them, an antiquarian like Aelius Stilo or Varro after him would have had to seek out the families in question, secure permission to rummage through their tabulina . . . and be lucky. What, we may well wonder, would the Cornelii Merulae have preserved of their ancestor Lucius, who as aedile in 161 commissioned Terence’s Phormio and Eunuchus before vanishing from history? Even Merula’s more successful colleague, L. Postumius Albinus, who eventually achieved a notoriously inglorious consulship, might have left little behind of his earliest magistracy.56 Nor is it reasonable to assume that aediles and praetors would have paid attention to the minutiae of dramatic contracts reflected in the manuscripts of Terence.57 What would have mattered to the curule aediles

55

56

57

the Porticus Octaviae, but lime kilns were later common in the area, including one in the apse of the Crypta Balbi itself. The scandal over the status of Scipio Asiaticus’ accounts in 187 is suggestive (Liv. 38.50–60, cf. Gell. 4.18.7–12, V. Max. 3.7.1e). Only much later did a lex Iulia require governors to deposit a copy of their rationes in the aerarium (Cic. Att. 6.7.2, Fam. 5.20.2). For the private nature of commentarii, see Culham 1989: 104–5. Thus Plin. Nat. 35.7 writes of “tabulina codicibus implebantur et monimentis rerum in magistratu gestarum” in the great houses of Rome. Postumius, consul in 154, died en route to his province, perhaps poisoned by his wife (V. Max. 6.3.8, Obseq. 17). No further office is recorded for Merula. Culham 1989: 112–14 describes the difficulty of consulting even public documents. Ritschl 1845: 319–23 saw the problem, recognizing that such details would have been at best incidental to the primary purpose of commentarii magistruum. Schmidt 1989: 87, 100 nevertheless assumes the existence of aediles’ Amtsb¨ucher recording such detail on the authority of Klingelh¨ofer 1925, who merely reasoned as follows: “Neque enim theatra ab aedilibus multa cum magnificentia et magna cum luxuria . . . exordinata esse variisque instrumentis velut calamistro in actionibus scaenicis opus fuisse in artis scaenicae historia silentio praeterire licuit” (333–34). Questa and Raffaelli 1990: 144–46 is equally short on particulars. These hypothetical commentarii should be distinguished from the veteres (antiqui) commentarii consulted by Atticus and Varro when dating the milestones of Roman literary history (Cic. Brut. 60, 72–73). See Drexler 1932: 361–63 and Suerbaum 1968: 299–300.

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of, say, 163 was that they paid the libertus Ambivius Turpio to produce a comedy for the Megalensia in their charge. Perhaps they cared that Turpio’s company performed a play by Terence on this occasion, but even that is uncertain. The playwright Luscius’ complaint of plagiarism in Eunuchus (Eun. 20–25) implies that aediles were not overly scrupulous or inquisitive about their purchases. A famous story told about Terence has a similar moral. When he first tried to sell a play to the aediles, says the ancient vita, he was instructed to recite the script to Caecilius. Modern critics like to focus on the sequel: the impoverished Terence came upon Caecilius at dinner, was relegated to the foot of the couch, and, after reciting a few verses, found himself invited up to share the meal.58 The real lesson is something else. The aediles contracted for plays and certainly had every reason to make good purchases, but they left the actual choice of plays to professionals, in this case to Caecilius. And Caecilius himself, to carry the process back another generation, owed his success not to the good taste or literary pretensions of any junior magistrate but to the perseverance of the impresario Ambivius Turpio, who hawked his wares (Ter. Hec. 14–22). Dramatists and aristocrats did not normally mix. Terence’s own eventual support by certain homines nobilis is unusual, paralleled only by Ennius’ position on the fringes of aristocracy.59 For junior magistrates to know and to care, and so take the trouble to record, that the music for Ambivius’ show at the Megalensia of 163 was the responsibility of a slave named Flaccus and that Flaccus performed that music on unequal pipes seems most unlikely. This information would matter only to Turpio, who actually paid for Flaccus’ services and perhaps to the dramatist whose work was in his hands, and that is the key point. The Terentian didascaliae consistently reflect the knowledge and concerns of the professionals involved in these productions, not of the aristocrats who contracted for their services.60 58

59

60

Vita Ter. 29–35 Rostagni. A similar story was told about Accius, who “seni iam Pacuvio Tarenti sua scripta recitavit” (Rostagni 1944: 50). Rostagni (33) finds the Terence story historically probable, but his assumption that Caecilius stood “a capo del collegium scribarum histrionumque” lacks support. Ter. Ad. 15–21; Cic. Tusc. 1.3. Cf. Goldberg 1995: 112–15. By century’s end, Julius Caesar Strabo, though a tragedian of some note, was still deemed an intrusive participant in the deliberations of the collegium poetarum: Accius refused to rise upon his entrance (V. Max. 3.7.11). Klose 1966: 38–41 was too rigid in claiming that the order of composition (“facta iiii”, etc.) had to originate with Terence himself, but he was right to ask who would know and care about the information preserved in the didascaliae. He also mistakenly ascribed Greek standards of scholarship to the Romans of Terence’s own time. That

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Nor were those offering the contracts necessarily magistrates working in an official capacity, for dramatic performances were not limited to official state occasions. Terence’s Hecyra and Adelphoe were performed at funeral games, whose general program might well have been preserved in the records of the sponsoring family, but the details of the surviving notices again suggest the actors’ own record of their contracts.61 One clear error in this testimony – both didascaliae of Hecyra misdate the funeral games of Aemilius Paullus – probably reflects confusion caused by that play’s two aborted productions, a confusion that again suggests reliance on professional memory rather than family sources. The appearance of “Atilius” in the didascalic records for Andria, Heauton Timorumenos, Eunuchus, and Adelphoe is further indication of a professional rather than official origin for these notes. Though Atilius could conceivably have been Ambivius Turpio’s deuteragonist or some kind of business partner, reports for Eunuchus and Adelphoe add a third name to this list, L. Minucius Prothymus, and A’s didascalia for Hecyra may disguise a fourth in the otherwise unparalleled notation ‘Luc. Ambivius Luc. Sergius Turpio.’ Given three certain names in a tradition inclined to record only the impresario, the possibility grows that Atilius and Minucius (and Sergius?) were not Turpio’s contemporary partners or supporting actors in his company but independent producers, and when we also observe that the didascaliae of Eunuchus and Heauton Timorumenos preserve the names of additional magistrates who held office in the 140s, it becomes very hard to doubt that what we are seeing in this didascalic record is a jumble of names and occasions associated with the production of Terence’s plays up to twenty years after his death. The Greek look of these production notices therefore provides no reliable indication of their source or of their authority. The Latin didascaliae in the Terentian manuscripts derive not from an official record of first productions but represent a conflation of performance notes accrued over time by the acting companies themselves, information found with the scripts and then put in coherent form, perhaps quite consciously on

61

was a later development: see Kaster 1995: 58–63. Gruen 1992: 193–97 argues for the relative insignificance of theatrical performances in furthering magisterial careers. Detailed records of funeral games certainly existed and are reflected in Liv. 23.30, 31.50.4, 39.46.2; V. Max. 2.4.7. Polybius’ account of the munera for Paullus (31.28-15, cf. Liv. Per. 46) presumably drew on family sources. Perhaps significantly, neither mentions the performance of comedies, though Hecyra and Adelphoe were both performed on this occasion.

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the model of Greek didascaliae, by later editors.62 Some, if not all, of Terence’s plays must therefore have remained in the active repertoire for at least another generation before taking on a new life as texts.63 As with Plautus’ scripts, their reemergence as books, becoming ‘literature’ for a new generation of readers, postdates their creation for the stage. III

The start of the process that set the plays of Plautus and Terence on their way to literary status is now impossible to date precisely, but 140, when the production data preserved in the manuscripts cease, provides a credible terminus post quem. Accius, we are told, made a trip to Pergamum in the late 130s, and his interest in the authenticity of Plautine plays suggests the influence of Pergamene scholarship.64 This retrospective tendency was soon after in full swing as Romans of bookish inclination like Aelius and Clodius began collecting scripts, compiling headnotes for them, annotating their oddities, and making the resulting books available to others. This was not, however, just a matter of preparing texts and setting them on a convenient shelf. The editorial activities of the later second century not only launched the debate over the authenticity of Plautine scripts, but altered forever the conversation about books that would establish the parameters of Roman literary history. Inevitably so. The value judgments inherent in the management of texts often have a way of shaping, at least to some degree, the terms of their reception. 62 63

64

Ritschl 1845: 322 and now most fully Klose 1966: 23–30. Jachmann 1934: 607 rightly deduced revivals of Terence’s plays in the 140s from the didascaliae: the alternative ending preserved for Andria may well date to this period. The argument of Lindsay 1928, however, that a play of Terence was revived at the funeral games of Scipio Aemilianus lacks foundation. The internal inconsistencies of the didascalic record led Mattingly 1959 and 1963 to dismiss its evidence for dating Terence’s career. He constructed instead a more coherent narrative from a literal reading of the Terentian prologues that put Terence’s entire career a decade later, but he has convinced few. See Forehand 1985: 8–12. Accius lived from ca. 170–86, a famously long life. See Dangel 1995: 9–26. Gell. 3.3.1 mentions a Plautine index among his scholarly works; for the trip to Pergamum and its influence, Gell. 13.2.2 with Degli’Innocenti Pierini 1980: 29–31 and Dangel 1990a: 50–53. The Didascalica (Lessons) and Pragmatica (Practices), which treated literary history continuously from Greek to Roman times, were probably works of his old age. Both are problematic in form and content. Different views in Dangel 1995: 382–89, Courtney 1993: 60–64, and Schwindt 2000: 52–58. Since he did not explicate texts, he does not figure in Suetonius’ account of Roman grammarians.

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The process commonly begins with the creation of catalogues. Whether the challenge is posed by cuneiform tablets, Hebrew scripture, or the half-million book rolls collected in Ptolemaic Alexandria, archivists and editors inevitably try to make sense of their holdings by producing lists.65 These may be quite innocuous in their formation, but, as modern scholarship has come increasingly to appreciate, they are never entirely neutral documents. Lists have their own logic and inevitably reflect the interests and preoccupations of those who make them. The list relies on discontinuity rather than continuity; it depends on physical placement, on location . . . it has a clear-cut beginning and a precise end, that is, a boundary, an edge, like a piece of cloth. Most importantly it encourages the ordering of the items, by number, by initial sound, by category, etc. And the existence of boundaries, external and internal, brings greater visibility to categories, at the same time as making them more abstract. (Goody 1977: 81)

List making thus invites compilers to create categories and rankings, and the result is not always entirely straightforward. Here, for example, is Cicero offering in the Alexandrian mode a list of Greek historians:66 quid enim aut Herodoto dulcius aut Thucydide gravius, < aut Xenophonte copiosus> aut Philisto brevius, aut Theopompo acrius aut Ephoro mitius inveniri potest? What can be found that is sweeter than Herodotus, more dignified than Thucydides, more fluent than Xenophon, more concise than Philistus, more pointed than Theopompus, or more gentle than Ephorus?

The sequence is notionally chronological. By making his grammatical subject quid rather than quis, however, Cicero emphasizes the adjectives at the expense of the names. Strictly speaking, the list is therefore less a catalogue of historians who are characterized by their styles than of 65

66

Hallo 1991 and Goody 1977: 74–111 (Mesopotamia), Davies 1998: 8–12 (Hebrew scripture), and Fraser 1972: 325–29 (Alexandria). The Alexandrian example may in turn have influenced the treatment of Jewish book rolls (Sarna 1971: 410–11). For Greek list making more generally, see Regenbogen 1950: 1455–62 and Pfeiffer 1968: 203–8. Quint. 1.4.3, 10.1.54, a famous preserver of lists, shows himself to be well aware of these Greek antecedents – as was Volcacius Sedigitus two centuries earlier (Schwindt 2000: 61–62). Cic. Hortensius fr. 15, dating from 45. See O’Sullivan 1997: 35–39, and for the Roman use of Alexandrian author lists, Zetzel 1983b. The (lost) Hortensius was an exhortation to philosophy: Augustine thought it changed his life (Conf. 3.4.7).

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styles that are illustrated by individual historians. The apparent reversal of Theopompus (d. ca. 320) and Ephorus (d. 330) in the sequence thus suggests not chronological sloppiness but Cicero’s relative weighting of the acre and the mite as stylistic traits. Still more importantly, the list therefore reflects rhetorical rather than historiographical preoccupations, and it was in fact a rhetorical interest that preserved it: we owe this fragment of the lost Hortensius to the grammarian Nonius’ glossing of its adjectives.67 A fragment of Varro reveals a similar pattern of thought applied to Roman material. Varro divides comedy into its component elements and recommends an exemplar of each: “in quibus partibus in argumentis Caecilius poscit palmam, in ethesin Terentius, in sermonibus Plautus” (‘In these matters, Caecilius takes the palm in plot, in character Terence, in language Plautus’, Sat. 399). By again emphasizing traits over individuals, the list reflects less a fact of literature, that is, the relative merits of Caecilius, Terence, and Plautus as dramatists, than a use of literature, that is, particular models for each of the features under discussion.68 On its face, the most famous of these Roman lists, the ranking of comic poets that Gellius quotes from a work called de Poetis by Volcacius Sedigitus, appears to be similar:69 multos incertos certare hanc rem vidimus, palmam poetae comico cui deferant. eum meo iudicio errorem dissolvam tibi, ut contra siquis sentiat nil sentiat. Caecilio palmam Statio do †comico†, 67

68

69

5

The fragment is actually recomposed from multiple lemmata in Nonius, but the order of Cicero’s list is certain. See the apparatus in Grilli 1962: 23. For its emphasis on style over individuals, contrast the parallel structure of the famous comment on Cato at Brut. 65: “quis illo gravior in laudando, acerbior in vituperando, in sententiis argutior, in docendo edisserendoque subtilior?” Brink 1963a: 176–79 discusses the rhetorical origins of these stylistic labels. A comparable emphasis, with comparable groups of three, appears in fr. 40 Funaioli (from De sermone latino ad Marcellum): “ethe . . . nullis aliis servare convenit quam Titinio Terentio Attae, pathe vero Trabea Atilius Caecilius facile moverunt.” Gell. 15.24. (I abbreviate Courtney’s apparatus for the vexed comico of line 5.) The work of Volcacius, inlustris in poetica according to Plin. Nat. 11.244, became a source for Suetonius’ vita Terenti. His dates are unknown. The list at Gell. 3.3.1 (“non indicibus Aelii nec Sedigiti nec Claudii nec Aurelii nec Accii nec Manilii . . . crediturum”), if roughly chronological, suggests that Sedigitus was active in the late second century. See Courtney 1993: 93–96.

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Plautus secundus facile exuperat ceteros, dein Naevius, qui fervet, pretio in tertiost. si erit quod quarto detur, dabitur Licinio, post insequi Licinium facio Atilium. in sexto consequetur hos Terentius, Turpilius septimum, Trabea octavum optinet, nono loco esse facile facio Luscium. antiquitatis causa decimum addo Ennium.

10

5 do comico vel dominico codd.: do mimico Gronovius: do mimicam Bothe: do comicam sprevit Leo, recepit Mariotti: do comicum (gen. pl.) Rocca We’ve seen many in doubt debating this matter, to which comic poet they should give the prize. I’ll solve this problem for you with my judgment, so that anyone thinking otherwise thinks wrong. I give the prize for comedy (?) to Caecilius Statius, Plautus easily beats the rest to second place. Then Naevius, so boisterous, in third position. If a fourth place should be given, it will go to Licinius, after Licinius I make Atilius follow. Let Terentius come after these in sixth position, Turpilius seventh, Trabea holds the eighth, in ninth place I readily put Luscius. I add Ennius tenth for old-time’s sake.

5

10

This list, written in iambic senarii, is a striking combination of poetic and scholarly traditions, recalling the palliata in its personal voice and wordplay, Terentian prologues in its argumentative posture, and critical convention in its pithiness.70 Even the reluctance to venture beyond a third name comes with the territory. Varro, as we saw, categorized in threes, and Horace shows a similar tendency in his own famous grouping of comic dramatists, Eupolis atque Cratinus Aristophanesque poetae atque alii quorum comoedia prisca virorum est . . . 70

For “incertos certare”, Courtney 1993: 93 well recalls Plaut. Merc. 345–47, though the poet does not necessarily have these lines in mind: the figura etymologica is too common a device, even with error recurring in 347. For “facile facere,” cf. Plaut. Am. 139, As. 739, Merc. 855, Poen. 307, 1218, and for “siquis sentiat nil sentiat,” Ter. And. 17: “faciuntne intellegendo ut nil intellegant?” Schwindt 2000: 61 compares the tone to Lucilius, but the stylistic parallels are certainly comic. For verse lists generally, see Regenbogen 1950: 1475–76.

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The poets Eupolis and Cratinus and Aristophanes and the other masters of the old comedy . . . (Sat. 1.4.1–2)

Yet one anomaly in Volcacius’ list suggests quite different criteria of judgment from what we saw in Varro. Though Terence might derive some small satisfaction from his position two places ahead of Luscius, the “old poet” of his prologues, his own rank (sixth) is at least moderately surprising. Not even Volcacius’ immediate posterity shared this opinion: Terence was emerging as a valued model of Latinity just as Licinius and Atilius, his betters by Volcacius’ reckoning, were fading into obscurity.71 That is suggestive. Theodor Ladewig, the first modern scholar to look seriously at this “canon,” used it to launch an extended discussion of originality in Roman comedy,72 but Volcacius’ own proclivities were actually toward the conventional. The central thing that Caecilius, Plautus, and Naevius shared was a similar sense of the palliata tradition and its possibilities; they were the greatest exemplars of its stock language, characters, and situations.73 Volcacius’ list looks back to these traditional stage qualities, while Terence’s stock began to rise as his plays became increasingly valued for their qualities as texts. It was as a stylist that he won the praise of Caesar and Cicero and gained an authority that not even Caecilius could rival. The famous epigrams of Caesar and Cicero in the Suetonian vita are explicitly and exclusively judgments of diction: what Caesar called his comica virtus was a matter of stylistic range.74 Similarly, what Cicero means by “pure diction” (lectus 71

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Discussion of these two in Wright 1974: 70–75. Atilius is poeta durissimus to Cicero (Att. 14.20.3), ferreus scriptor to Porcius Licinus (ap. Cic. Fin. 1.5, though the context is tragedy). Both sound like judgments of style, not theatricality. Ladewig 2001: 35–38, an essay originally published in 1842. Volcacius’ praise for Caecilius is echoed by Cic. Opt. gen. 2: “licet dicere et Ennium summum epicum poetam . . . et Caecilium fortasse comicum.” The scholarly tendency to cast Caecilius as a transitional figure between the coarseness [sic] of Plautus and Terence’s hellenized refinement was dispelled by Wright 1974: 87–126. Note the surprise of Gell. 2.23.7 when confronting Caecilius with his Menandrean original, though we must allow for Gellius’ own altered expectations. See Vogt-Spira 2000. For Naevius’ place in the canon, see Wright 1974: 33–59, with updated bibliography in Suerbaum 2000. In introducing the epigrams, Suetonius notes their limited interest (“hactenus laudat,” vita T. 7, and for “hactenus” = ‘nihil amplius quam’, Kaster 1995: 61). Both epigrams may derive from a grammatical exercise. See Courtney 1993: 154–55 and further references there. The vis (Gk. dynamis) that Caesar misses in Terence (“unum hoc maceror ac doleo tibi desse”) is purely a stylistic deficiency. See Post 1931: 214–22.

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sermo) is clear from a letter to Atticus, where Cicero defends both his morphology and his preposition in the phrase “in Piraeum” with an appeal to Terence rather than Caecilius.75 Atticus’ bookish question finds an equally bookish answer in the comic text. In putting the values of the stage before those of the library, Volcacius reflects the criteria of an older generation, but ranking poets as he does only makes explicit something common to all these lists. Their critical priorities and aesthetic values create what we now, somewhat loosely, call “canons” of texts. This too is an inevitable consequence of scholarly list making: “copying and archiving are the very stuff of canonizing.”76 For us, the process and the very name carry an emotional charge. The canon as a favored list, which extols works selected at the expense of works excluded, has in recent years aroused heated debate. The prescriptive power of the list – and the consequent power of the list maker – has become all too obvious.77 The controversy, however, should not obscure the sheer utility of the list. Codifying texts not only defines and preserves works but creates what Henry Louis Gates Jr. has called “the commonplace book of our shared culture.”78 Who enters what in such a book and on what authority may not always be clear, but the result is inevitably as useful as it is powerful a tool for defining a culture. Thus canon formation

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For Terence’s stylistic innovation, see Wright 1974: 127–51 and Goldberg 1985: 170–202. Cic. Att. 7.3.10, dismissing Caecilius as “malus enim auctor Latinitatis”, though in fact the dramatists agree in their usage. Cf. Brut. 258: “Caecilium et Pacuvium male locutos videmus.” Cicero quotes Eun. 539 from memory (Terence actually wrote “in Piraeo”, correctly quoted for a different purpose by Varr. fr. 39 Fun.), but whether Cicero (or an assistant) was rumaging physically or mentally through the plays of Terence, the bookishness of the exercise is plain. Davies 1998: 8, cf. Curtius 1953: 256–60. Pfeiffer 1968: 207 fairly observes that “canon” in the sense of a ranked list is a modern coinage, but ancient lists do not therefore lack rationale and are not necessarily without aesthetic judgments behind them. Schmidt 1987 provides a good review of the problem. Thus Most 1990: 54 observes, “Those who father canons want to train those who accept the canons to accept the rulers as well . . . ” Representative examples of the debate over canons are McKeon 1975 and Adams 1988, with a good critical survey of the ideological issues in Guillory 1993: 3–14. Gates 1990: 92. For the problematic nature of the commonplace book, see Thomas 1994. Macrobius, too, conceived of the literary canon as an inclusive construction strengthening the “societas ac rerum communio” (Sat. 6.1.4). See Kaster 1980: 233, and for the canon as an educational construct Curtius 1953: 247–51 and Guillory 1993: 28–38. The potency of canons is of course why they are a center of controversy: the struggle is not to eliminate but to control them.

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figures prominently not only in pedagogical debates but in recent studies of how national literatures arise.79 The process of collecting and ordering Latin texts that began in secondcentury Rome was an essential step in the creation of Roman literature, too. The introduction of scripted drama by Livius Andronicus was not in itself decisive, for those scripts could easily have remained within the rough-and-tumble professional world of the ludi scaenici.80 They were not literature by design. The crucial step in drama’s elevation came not in the third century when playwrights began providing scripts for the ludi scaenici but when the Roman upper classes began treating those scripts as books a century and more later. Imposing the name and function of literature on comic texts was a retrospective activity, a matter less of writing things down than of sorting through what had been written generations before and deciding what of it to value. Put that way, the oddity lies not so much in why this process was so late but why it began at all. The epics of Naevius and Ennius, with their tales of noble virtue and national glory, were well-positioned from the start to become treasured possessions of the Roman aristocracy. The appeal of Roman comedy, self-consciously loud and unruly, an entertainment by and for ordinary people, is not so easily explained. At least not purely on its own merits. Its acquisition of literary status, which bestowed cultural authority on the Pseudolus and Eunuchus as well as the Bellum Punicum and Annales, represents a process of inclusion all the more remarkable because it was not immediate. The timing, however, was no coincidence. Second-century Rome was a society in flux, and its eventual line of cultural development, however consistent and logical in hindsight, was not necessarily inevitable. Literary life, for example, could certainly have cultivated a different voice. When aristocrats wrote for aristocrats, their initial tendency was to do so in Greek. Fabius Pictor, a veteran of the Hannibalic War, was the first but hardly the only aristocrat to write 79

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So, inter alios, Ross 1998 (early modern England), Crawford 1992 (Scotland) and Lecker 1993 (Canada). Cf. Curtius 1953: 264–72 on vernacular literatures in Renaissance Europe. Pace Habinek 1998: 36–37, for whom Andronicus’ work represents a combination of professionalism and patronage reflecting both aristocratic taste and aristocratic control over the creation of literature. As we have seen, that control was originally only nominal. While I agree that “the transition from literature as performance to literature as text is at Rome less an evolution . . . than an imposition” (182 n. 11), the aristocratic intervention that mattered came over a century later, and its most noteworthy agent was Aelius Stilo.

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Roman history in Greek: his successors included L. Cincius Alimentus, C. Acilius, P. Cornelius Scipio (the son of Africanus), Cn. Aufidius, and finally A. Postumius Albinus, ridiculed by Polybius (39.1.4) and Cato (ap. Gell. 11.8.2–3) less for writing in Greek than for apologizing for doing so. Hellenic models were a natural choice for such men – there was no alternative Latin model – and Greek language was a natural consequence of that choice.81 And why not? Latin was widely regarded as a dialect of Greek, and literary and rhetorical education at Rome was long conducted in Greek by Greeks. Neither Crates in the 160s nor the philosopher Carneades in the 150s lacked for audiences able to follow and to admire the complexity of their (Greek) discourses, and as late as 45, Cicero was still acknowledging the impulse to write philosophy in Greek and feeling a need to defend his use of Latin for that purpose (Acad. 1.4–12, Fin. 1.4–8). Even the elder Cato, whose personal commitment to Hellenism was hardly unequivocal, saw the need for a Greek tutor in his household.82 A Greek-based discourse was thus at least conceivable for Roman men of letters. The turn in a different direction first became noticeable when Cato not only wrote a significant history in Latin but quoted in it his own senatorial speeches. By embedding these products of the political arena in this new narrative context, Cato simultaneously put a Roman stamp on the historical enterprise and gave the language of politics a new status.83 Latin prose became respectable, and speechmaking 81

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Testimony and fragments for these historians in Jacoby, FGH 3C no. 809–14; discussion and bibliography in Timpe 1973, Kaimio 1979: 224–36 and Verbrugghe 1982. Fabius’ motives for writing are much debated. See most recently Dillery 2002 with further bibliography there. Greek poetry written by Romans also existed but is less well attested: the pastoral epigram attributed to a Scaevola (AP 9.217) dates from either the 80s or 50s; the Tullius Laurea of AP 7.17, 294 and 12.24 was a freedman of Cicero. (Both Scaevola and Laurea also wrote Latin verse: Cic. Leg. 1.1.1, Plin. Nat. 31.7, respectively.) See Kaimio 1979: 218–24. Fantham 1996: 23–31 discusses the social ramifications of the Romans’ bilingual education, Jenkyns 1998: 131–3 discusses the early appeal of Greek over Latin, and Adams 2003: 18–29 and Jocelyn 1999: 177–94 discuss the parameters of such “code-switching.” Latin as a Greek dialect: D.H. 1.90.1 and Varro, fr. 295 Fun., citing Cato for the belief that Romulus spoke Aeolic. So, too, Varro’s etymologies seek Aeolic analogues, e.g., L. 5.25, 101–2. Cato’s Origines adopted the tradition that the Sabines were descended from the Spartan Sabus (fr. 51P, cf. D.H. 2.49, Plut. Numa 1.1). Gruen 1992: 16–21 discusses the Roman embrace of such traditions. Carneades’ lectures: Cic. Rep. 3.9, Plin. Nat. 7.112, Plut. Cato 22.1–5. For Cato’s hellenism, see Gruen 1992: 52–83 with extensive bibliography; the tutor Chilon is mentioned by Plut. Cato 20.3. Gellius found Cato’s Pro Rodiensibus of 167 in Origines 5 (Gell. 6.3.7) and a speech of 149 against Ser. Galba in Origines 7 (Gell. 13.25.15). Cic. Sen. 38 suggests that Cato edited his

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acquired an air of permanence. After Cato, speeches came increasingly to survive not merely as antiquarian curiosities and moral exempla but as cultural and political documents of broadening appeal.84 Latin established itself as the language of choice for artistic as well as political purposes. Mingling literary and civic discourse as Cato did, however, forced both political and social implications on linguistic developments. The situation grew especially acute in the later second century, as a growing body of Latin texts became inaccessible without philological help and a burgeoning empire filled the very streets of Rome with new accents, new words, and new usages. What were educated Romans to make of these changes and of the gap they revealed between Latin’s past and its present? The stakes were high, and in time, language itself became a political weapon as well as a literary tool. How a man spoke became as important as what he said. The changing sounds and structures of Latin thus became matters of interest and concern in part for themselves but even more as measures of the social changes that caused them. The anxiety these changes produced is not just discernible beneath the pedantry of Varro’s De lingua latina but informs such famous first-century controversies as the rival explanations of analogists and anomalists (essentially a debate over whether grammatical rules could be taught), the fuss over pronunciation and usage that gave words like urbanitas and consuetudo a political charge, and the relative merits of artful and (comparatively) natural speech that underlie the stylistic alternatives labeled Atticist and Asianist.85 How were the elite to understand – and could they hope to control – the changes that surrounded them? Official action was tried and found useless. The scowls of 92, when the censors wagged a finger at the rhetores latini for violating the mos maiorum by teaching a purely Latin rhetoric, proved as ineffectual as the senatus consultum of 161 that had ostensibly banned

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speeches for publication, perhaps independently of the Origines: “causarum illustrium quascumque defendi nunc cum maxime conficio orationes.” Cicero, however, may simply be reading his own practice back into Cato’s. For the publication of Cato’s speeches, see Astin 1978: 134–37, 233–36. In surveying the history of oratory, Cic. Brut. 61 finds nothing of significance before Cato except a speech by Appius Claudius Caecus (clearly unusual in its antiquity) and a decidedly mixed collection of mortuorum laudationes. The extant record of early oratory, barely a dozen pages before Cato in Malcovati 1953 but well over two hundred between Cato and M. Antonius, bears witness to Cicero’s claim. Helpful access to these debates is provided by, respectively, Rawson 1985: 125–31, Sinclair 1995: 92–96, Ramage 1973: 52–76, and Douglas 1973: 119–31. Broader discussion in Fantham 1996: 47–54.

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philosophers and rhetoricians from the city.86 More potent responses, however unofficial and piecemeal, developed from the private world of books. Aelius Stilo’s combination of linguistic and antiquarian knowledge to explicate the Carmen Saliare reflects the social as well as the scholarly challenge posed by the hymn’s very obscurity. His exegesis was part of what, at least in retrospect, appears to be a concerted effort to codify cultural authority by establishing canons and curricula and the methods for studying them that could simultaneously define knowledge and restrict access to it.87 The result over time was the kind of book culture we call “literary,” a culture created not simply, or even primarily, through the efforts of writers but through the work of scholars and teachers able to define the Latin legacy by enshrining it in books. As we have seen, the backward glance that first focused on early Latin texts as “literature” was directed toward epic as Octavius Lampadio and then Q. Vargunteius expanded the audience for the poems of Naevius and Ennius and so established them as cultural landmarks. In turning to comedy, Aelius and his son-in-law were not just expanding the scope of Roman literature further by co-opting the scripted entertainments of the old ludi but were doing so by imposing on them ideas of authorship and standards of explication that were first developed in the context of epic.88 The process by which certain scripts were acquired, reduced to a manageable corpus by the application of stylistic criteria, and provided with a recognizable author – the “Plautus” of literary history – was required to turn plays

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Cic. de Or. 3.93, Suet. Gram. 25.1-2, Gell. 15.11.2, Tac. Dial. 35.1. Schmidt 1975, Narducci 1993: 546–53, and Gruen 1990: 171–91 offer different interpretations of these initiatives but agree on their futility. So Hopkins 1991: 143: “Literary culture was differentiating, in that it provided a single set of criteria by which people’s performance, and therefore their membership in different social strata, could be judged.” Cf. Reiss 1992: 77–85 on the tendency in Europe of the late sixteenth century to view “the improvement of language and the stabilizing of civil society as a single question.” Codification, whether of texts, laws, or other cultural manifestations, is a familiar conservative response to crisis: cf. Eder 1986: 272–86 on legal codes and more generally Bourdieu 1990a: 136–37 on social distinction as a way to protect the value of “symbolic capital.” The eventual falling out between Aelius and his son-in-law Servius Clodius over the appropriation of an unfinished book (“librum nondum editum”) may suggest a failed collaboration with quasi-Oedipal overtones (Clodius left Rome and subsequently suffered from a diseased foot). It certainly indicates their own keen sense of authorship as bestowing a right of possession. See Suet. Gram. 3.3.

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into suitable companions for their peers in the emerging canon.89 Comedy thus became a possession of the elite only some generations after its creation, as the players’ scripts became the aristocrats’ books. Aelius himself emerges as an almost archetypal figure in this time of transition. An eques by birth, he was nevertheless the son of a praeco and put his literary talent to work writing speeches for the use of senators: Suetonius would call him “the aristocrats’ promoter” (optimatium fautor).90 He thus represents both the upward mobility that the new Latin education facilitated and the aristocratic values at work in shaping and controlling the new curriculum. By making an author out of “Plautus,” that is, a poet with a name, a biography, and a body of work to his credit, he legitimized the study of comedy and set the terms of its reception. As we have seen, this took some doing, but treating “Plautus” this way marked his plays culturally just as epic was marked. Such is the inevitable result of what Michel Foucault called the author-function: “[it] shows that this discourse is not ordinary everyday speech that merely comes and goes, not something that is immediately consumable. On the contrary, it is a speech that must be received in a certain mode and that, in a given culture, must receive a certain status” (Foucault 1979: 147). Aelius gave Plautus that certain status, after which it became respectable for gentlemen scholars like his student Varro to base linguistic study on the Plautine vocabulary and to claim a broad range of texts for the Roman cultural legacy. In becoming literature, the popular entertainments of Plautus combined with those of Caecilius and Terence to join that store of cultural capital needed to facilitate the intellectual advances of the late Republic. Or so this model of literary culture would suggest. Was palliata comedy, with its archaic prosody, artificial conventions, and dubious morals, really of much use to Cicero, a man with a formidably ambitious cultural 89

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Authenticity becomes an important issue in canon formation when the potential corpus is so large and unruly. This is why an early form of Echtheitskritik figures so prominently in the work of Accius and Porcius Licinus as well as Aelius. See Schwindt 2000: 58–66 and more generally, Most 1990: 49–51. Suet. Gram. 3.2 with Kaster’s notes, 73–76. Aelius’ two cognomina, Praeconinus and Stilo (neither used in his lifetime), record his social origin and his occupation. His famous remark about the “Good Companion” of Enn. An. 268–86 (“L. Aelium Stilonem dicere solitum ferunt Q. Ennium de semet ipso haec scripsisse picturamque istam morum et ingenii ipsius Q. Enni factam esse,” Gell. 12.4) may tell us more about Aelius than Ennius. Cic. Brut. 169, 205–7 implies that the ghostwriting was initially discreet. It was not unique: the rhetor L. Plotius Gallus apparently wrote the speech that Atratinus delivered against Caelius (Suet. Gram. 26.2).

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agenda, much less to those aggressive experimenters with Greek aesthetics he called neoteroi? Canonical texts achieve that status not simply through the authority of the canonizers but because there is work for those texts to do, ideologically and aesthetically, in the society that so honors them. If Plautus and writers of his sort were indeed canonical, their shadow should be plainly visible on the cultural and literary landscape of the late Republic. Is that in fact the case? The question demands further consideration.

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chapter three

COMEDY AT WORK

he patrician p. cornelius lentulus spinther was a man of T principle. As consul in 57 B.C., he engineered Cicero’s triumphant return from exile and the restoration of his confiscated property. By the winter of 54, however, Lentulus found himself wondering about Cicero’s own principles. The orator was now defending P. Vatinius, a man charged with bribing his way to the praetorship of 55. This Vatinius was everybody’s butt, the sort of man people loved to hate. Catullus made the phrase odium Vatinianum sound almost proverbial (14.3), and Cicero had roundly abused Vatinius only two years earlier in the course of defending the tribune Sestius. How could he now champion such a person? Cicero explains his motives in a long letter to Lentulus dated to December 54. There were two reasons, he says. First, Caesar had asked him to undertake this defense, and in 54, a request from Caesar was not to be refused. But there was also something else:1 Sed tamen defendendi Vatini fuit etiam ille stimulus, de quo in iudicio, quom illum defenderem, dixi me facere quiddam, quod in Eunucho parasitus suaderet militi: Ubi nominabit Phaedriam, tu Pamphilam continuo; si quando illa dicet: “Phaedriam 1

Cic. Fam. 1.9.19. cf. Q. fr. 2.16, where Cicero calls this defense res facilis. Vatinius had been a target of Cicero’s invective in the speech In Vatinium, and his bad reputation survived to Seneca’s day: “Vatinium hominem natum et ad risum et ad odium” (Dial. 2.17.3). He nevertheless bore both bodily afflictions and personal abuse with grace and good humor, traits manifest in his later correspondence with Cicero (Fam. 5.9–10), and he was an accomplished soldier (B. Alex. 43–47). See Pocock 1926: 29–45, Corbeill 1996: 46–55, and for his role in the prosecution of Sestius, Alexander 2002: 206–17.

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intromittamus comissatum,” Pamphilam cantatum provocemus; si laudabit haec illius formam, tu huius contra; denique par pro pari referto, quod eam mordeat. Sic petivi a iudicibus ut, quoniam quidam nobiles homines et de me optime meriti nimis amarent inimicum meum meque inspectante saepe eum in senatu modo severe seducerent, modo familiariter atque hilare amplexarentur, quoniamque illi haberent suum Publium [sc. Clodium], darent mihi ipsi alium Publium [sc. Vatinium], in quo possem illorum animos mediocriter lacessitus leviter repugnere . . . I had another incentive to defend Vatinius, to which I referred in my speech at the trial. I said I was doing what the parasite in the Eunuch recommends to the soldier [440 ff.]: When she says “Phaedria,” you immediately say “Pamphila.” If she says, “Let’s have Phaedria join the party,” we’ll ask Pamphila to sing. If she commends his good looks, you praise the girl’s. In short, Give tit for tat. That will prick her. So I drew the parallel. Certain high-born men, to whom I owed a debt of gratitude, were over-fond of an enemy of mine. In the Senate they would sometimes take him aside for a serious talk, sometimes salute him in a hearty, all too friendly way; this before my eyes. Well then, since they had their Publius [i.e., Clodius], I hoped the gentlemen of the jury would allow me another Publius [i.e., Vatinius], with whom to sting those people just a little in return for the mild provocation I had received!

These lines from Terence’s Eunuchus raise interesting questions. The quotation may have been prompted by nothing more substantial than the alliteration of “Pamphila / Phaedria,” “Publius / “Publius,” and its implications should certainly not be pressed. Cicero would hardly wish to represent himself to Lentulus as another foolish Thraso. So why does he quote comedy at so un-comic a moment? How would Lentulus respond to the analogy? And how would he have known Terence’s play? If, as we saw in the last chapter, the Roman experience of palliata comedy was shifting in the first century from the stage to the study, Cicero’s memory of Eunuchus probably owed less to a performance than to a 88

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book.2 Did that shift matter to how Romans used their experience of comedy? Beneath these specific questions lie two larger issues. The first and more general of these is comedy’s place in literate discourse, what comic references contributed to the shaping of opinion among educated Romans, whether in private as here in the letter to Lentulus Spinther, or in public, as when Cicero uses the memory of comedy as an instrument of persuasion before Roman juries. The second, narrower issue is comedy’s contribution to the developing tradition of Latin poetry, that is, what comic verse forms, comic style, and comic situations had to teach poets of the first century. “Not much,” is the usual answer. The history of Roman drama is generally accorded a discrete and circumscribed chapter in the greater history of Roman poetry. Yet if the Roman experience of comedy ran deep enough for Cicero to exploit in public and private and that experience owed more to books and teachers than to the entertainments of ludi scaenici, we might well suspect a lingering influence on the poets educated with such books. That possibility at least requires further consideration, but the route to this private, literary use of comedy lies through the public one. And as so often in the late Republic, the best window on public opinion looks out into court. In 80 B.C., in the case that would make him famous, Cicero defended another Roscius, the hapless farmer Sextus Roscius from the town of Ameria, on a charge of parricide. This prosecution apparently grew from an attempt to cover-up the theft of Roscius’ patrimony in the aftermath of the Social War by blaming him for his father’s death and using a judicial murder to remove him from the scene. Its mastermind was Sulla’s notorious freedman Chrysogonus, but the nominal prosecutor was a certain Erucius, himself a freedman and thus an easy target for Cicero’s condescension and for taunts about his missing pedigree.3 Erucius had apparently emphasized, for example, that the elder Roscius kept young Sextus in the country while taking another son with him to Rome. This was proof, said Erucius, that his father distrusted Sextus Roscius, and it was an obvious source of a keen resentment that became the motive for parricide. Not at all, replied Cicero. Sextus was entrusted with the family farm, not marooned in rustic exile. Erucius has misunderstood the kind 2

3

A distinctly bookish quality pervades the quotations of this play by later authors. Lef e` vre 2003: 15–22 presents the evidence. Such is the case as argued (and presumably won) by Cicero, but its truth – and young Roscius’ innocence – are questioned by Alexander 2002: 149–72 and Dyck 2003.

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intentions of Roscius’ father, no doubt because he himself lacked the experience of a father’s love, a sly allusion both to the bad reputation of Erucius’ mother and to the fact that a freedmen had no legal father.4 He has had to compensate for this deficiency, continues Cicero, through his natural humanitas. And something more: eo accessit studium doctrinae, ut ne a litteris quidem alienus esses. ecquid tandem tibi videtur, ut ad fabulas veniamus, senex ille Caecilianus minoris facere Eutychum, filium rusticum, quam illum alterum, Chaerestratum? – nam, ut opinor, hoc nomine est – alterum in urbe secum honoris causa habere, alterum rus supplicii causa relegasse? To this is added an interest in learning, so that you are not a stranger even to literature. To take an example from plays, does that old man of Caecilius seem to you to think less of Eutychus, his country son, than of his other son (wasn’t his name Chaerestratus?) because he keeps the one with him in the city as a favor but has sent the other to the country as a punishment?

The contrast between city life and country life that must have figured in Caecilius’ play was a favorite comic topos, familiar to us from Terence’s Adelphoe and Heauton Timorumenos, but strictly speaking, this allusion is not an evocation of the stage. The attack prefigures Cicero’s jibe ten years later against another libertinus, Q. Caecilius, whose provincial education would be held against him.5 Here the allusion is more specific, but the context is clearly learning (doctrina), a quality not much in evidence in Roman theaters,6 and a subset of the same litterae, which for Cicero often means “the world of books” or even “literature.”7 Erucius’ deficiency 4

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Cic. S. Rosc. 46–47. Commentators quote Ulp. fr. 4.2: “qui matre quidem (certa), patre autem incerto nati sunt, spurii appellantur.” For the rustic topos at work throughout this part of the speech (42–53), see Vasaly 1993: 157–61, Riggsby 1999: 59–61, and for the political dimensions of the trial, Gruen 1968: 265–70. The twenty-six-year-old Cicero, though relatively new to courtroom pleading, affects a consistently didactic tone toward his socially inferior opponent, e.g., 72–73, 83, 89. Cic. Div. Caec. 39: “si litteras Graecas Athenis non Lilybaei, Latinas Romae non in Sicilia didicisses . . . ” Ps.-Ascon. records Caecilius’ social status in the “argumentum” (Stangl 1912: 185). The low standing of theater audiences is recalled in Cicero’s lost Pro Gallio, mocking a poorly educated writer of mime: “multos enim condiscipulos habet in theatro, qui simul litteras non didicerunt.” For context and date, now reckoned as 64, see Crawford 1994: 145–58. Similarly at Fin. 1.4, where the context is clearly reading (Latina scripta, fabellas Latinas legant), Latinas litteras means, at the least, “books in Latin” and could even mean “Latin literature.” (Cf. Att. 4.10.1: “sic litteris sustentor et recreo.”) At Phil. 2.20 and 116

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is in his acquired knowledge, not his common experience. Cicero is recalling a play not as acted but as read, invoking a moral exemplum that Erucius fails to appreciate because he lacks the training to do so. The point is not that Erucius has seen a play that everyone has seen, but that he has not read and does not understand a book that the jury has read and does understand. Cicero’s feigned ignorance reveals the extent of his opponent’s genuine ignorance.8 Invoking comedy this way appeals to knowledge shared (or not shared) between the speaker and his audience or target, an ironic appeal here since Erucius is revealed by his obtuseness to lack both humanitas and doctrina.9 To round the matter off, Cicero closes this passage with one further topos: “Etenim haec conficta arbitror esse a poetis ut effictos nostros mores in alienis personis expressamque imaginem vitae cotidianae videremus” (‘Indeed, I think these situations are invented by poets so that we see our manners imagined in the characters of others and a semblance of everyday life represented’, S. Rosc. 47). Erucius fails to take comedy seriously – he is said to dismiss the invocation of Caecilius as ineptiae – because he has not learned that it is a mirror of life, but how could he know that? Comedy as an imago vitae is another bookish conceit. Its history went back at least to Alexandrian times, and by Cicero’s day it was a clich´e and a fiction. Late in life Cicero could still write of old age as the last act of a play that nature composes with care, but that was in a philosophical context and the metaphor was purely Greek.10 Greek

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litterae means the knowledge of books (“letters”) we associate with “literature” and “the literary.” Litterae as “learning” or even “culture” is found as early as Cato, who advises his son “illorum [Graecorum] litteras inspicere, non perdiscere” (Fil. 1 = Plin. Nat. 29.14). For Cicero’s care in masking his own erudition, cf. Phil. 2.65, Phil. 13.49, Sest. 118, and Zillinger 1911: 70–71. The play cited here, Caecilius’ Hypobolimaeus (apparently based on an original by Menander), was a mainstay of the ancient curriculum, cited by Varro, RR. 2.11.11, Quint. 1.10.18 (with a nod to Menander), and Gell. 15.9.1, with frequent citations in Festus and Nonius. Testimonia and text in Ribbeck 1898: 54–57. Similarly, Cicero provokes a knowing chuckle with the invocation of Terence’s Phormio at Caec. 27 (a witticism admired by Quint. 6.3.56) and a broader response with reference to Antony’s disreputable hangers-on at Phil. 2.15. The other common use of comedy, equally bookish, is to illustrate technical points, e.g., Inv. 1.27, 1.33, 1.95 (cf. Rhet. Her. 1.14). The concentration on text is why, as Bl¨ansdorf 1974: 150–52 observes, Cicero appeals much less to plot and action when recalling comedy than to character types and sententiae. Cic. Sen. 5, with development of the idea at 64, 70, 85. Cf. Q. fr. 1.1.46, Rep. 4.11, and Donatus’ report, “comoediam esse Cicero ait imitationem vitae, speculum

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comedies, not Roman ones, were divided into acts, and Roman finales have a notoriously improvised quality. If Romans of the late Republic ever thought of “Life” in terms of a stage play, it was not the comoedia palliata that normally came to mind. Mime was supplanting comedy on the stages of the late Republic, so that by the time Augustus was on his deathbed in A.D. 14, it was quite naturally the mime – not the comedy – of life that he told his friends was drawing to a close.11 Cicero himself continued to exploit the different expectations of palliata comedy and mime when it suited him to do so. A quarter century after Roscius’ defense, for example, dramatic references again proved their worth in turning a prosecution’s case on its ear. Cicero’s defense of M. Caelius in April 56 is famously dramatic. The trial took place in the forum even as the ludi Megalenses were being celebrated over the crest of the Palatine, and Cicero goes out of his way to thank his jurors for their attention to duty. Not that we should read too much into the fact of the concurrent games. Everyday life at Rome did not come to a halt for ludi scaenici, nor did all of Rome flock to their shows. In that particular April, for example, the three most powerful men in the state, Crassus, Caesar, and Pompey (and their retinues), were all out of town, and those who did attend the Megalensia had a rough time of it: the shows were disrupted by armed gangs hired by P. Clodius, who as curule aedile was the games’ ostensible sponsor.12 But Cicero certainly does make repeated use of dramatic memories. Now in his prime and confident in his ability to manipulate a jury, he is more overtly histrionic than he had dared to

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consuetudinis, imaginem veritatis” (XXVI Koster) attributed to either Rep. or Hortensius (fr. 10 Grilli). Also Hor. Ep. 2.1.169–70, Manil. 5.477. Dodds 1965: 8–12 traces the topos back to Pl. Laws 804b, 644d–e. It is famously invoked by Aristoph. of Byzantium ap. Syrian in regard to Menander (Test. 32 K¨orte). See Pfeiffer 1968: 190–91. Suet. Aug. 99: “et admissos amicos percontatus ecquid iis videretur mimum vitae commode transegisse . . . ” Cf. Sen. Ep. 80: “hic humanae vitae mimus.” For the importance of mime, see Fantham 1989. The iners poeta of Cic. Sen. 5, who neglects to plan his finale, sounds like a mime writer. Cf. Cael. 65: “mimi ergo iam exitus, non fabulae; in quo cum clausula non invenitur . . . ” Though the famous proemium of Pro Caelio plays on the contrast between games and trial, it does not follow that Caelius’ jury would otherwise have been at the shows. See Wiseman 1974: 162–63. Nor did festivals necessarily preclude prosecutions de vi. In 52, for example, Milo’s trial for the murder of Clodius also took place during the Megalenses (Greenidge 1901: 457). Cicero’s challenge was winning the goodwill of a jury thinking less of the neighboring Megalensia than growing impatient on the second day of an increasingly complex, rambling trial. Wiseman 1985: 77–78 is particularly sensitive to the advocate’s problem.

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be in 80 as his virtuoso performance appropriates attitudes rooted in a range of Roman theatrical entertainments.13 The first dramatic reference comes early in the speech (Cael. 18). Caelius had left his father’s house to take up his own residence in Rome’s high-rent district, the Palatine. I wish it had been otherwise, says Cicero ominously, and he emphasizes his misgivings with five words: “Utinam ne in nemore Pelio . . . ” (‘Would that not in the grove of Pelion’ . . . ). He does not and need not finish the sentence (“the fir timber, struck by axes, had fallen to earth”) because he knows that his audience can do it for him. This is the opening line of Ennius’ tragedy Medea exul (the timber in question will build the Argo), which had become a school text by Cicero’s youth and something of a cultural landmark. It is quoted by rhetoricians, antiquarians, and by Cicero himself in his various capacities as orator, philosopher, and correspondent.14 Here he expects the line not just to be completed by his jurors but to be recognized. To be sure, however, he promptly quotes two more lines of Ennius that bring him explicitly to Jason’s Medea and, building maliciously on the mythical parallel, to the Palatina Medea he will make the target of his speech, Clodia. A second theatrical reference comes later in a famous, extended exercise in prosopopoeia, the personification of absent authorities.15 Cicero first attacks Clodia by summoning from below (ab inferis) her ancestor Appius Claudius Caecus (33–34) and then imagines her own dissolute but pragmatic brother Clodius, who finds a different kind of fault with her (36). Though Cicero doubtless played these roles in contrasting manners, the stage is at this point still merely latent in his role playing.16 Only when 13

14

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Geffcken 1973 has much of value but associates the comedy of Pro Caelio too narrowly with palliata comedy and with stage performance. As will become clear, other genres and other modes of experience figure prominently in the speech. The Ennian speech is quoted at length at Rhet. Her. 2.34 and Cic. Inv. 1.91 (sure marks of its place in the curriculum, cf. de Or. 1.154) and recalled by Cicero at Fat. 35, Top. 61, Fin. 1.5, ND 3.75, Tusc. 1.45. Varro too quotes the play (L. 6.81). So did Crassus in his own speech in Caelius’ defense, though in another context. The prosecution had itself created this opportunity when Atratinus called Caelius a “pulchellulum Jasonem.” See Austin 1960: 68–69, Alexander 2002: 226–29. Cael. 33–38, structurally a single unit. Strictly speaking, prosopopoeia embraces personification (e.g., the address of cuncta Italia at Cat. 1.27) or the conjuring of dead or absent people (as here), but it easily slips into dramatic fiction (sermocinatio). See Rhet. Her. 4.65, Quint. 9.2.29–37, and the wariness of Cic. Or. 81–86. Wiseman 1985: 84 overtranslates “personam induxi” (of Caecus, 35) as “brought on stage a character.” Though “personam inducere” is indeed stage language, it is not exclusively stage language, nor are any of Cicero’s other words for what he is doing with these figures theatrical (excitandus, 33; removebo, 36; sumam, 36; suspicio, 37). He

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he turns his attention from Clodia to Caelius and requires an appropriate father figure to scold the young man, too, does the theatricality of his stance become explicit. Cicero then balances the severe Caecus and the indulgent Clodius of the first section with matching figures from comedy for the second, a set of severe fathers from Caecilius and the lenient Micio of Terence’s Adephoe (37–38). It is much like the trick he used in the speech for Sextus Roscius and for a similar reason. Just as Erucius had suggested that a moral rift lay behind Roscius’ physical separation from his father, so Caelius’ prosecutors apparently interpreted the son’s independent establishment on the Palatine and the father’s aversion to public display as evidence of paternal disapproval.17 Now, however, Cicero is prepared to move from the kind of passing reference that mocked Erucius to an extended and spirited evocation of comedy.18 He has already had his “Clodius” hint that Caelius chafed under the control of a parsimonious father (“filium familias patre parco ac tenaci”, 36). That characterization might itself suggest the comic senex, and Cicero now responds to that implication by recalling genuine stage figures. These fathers, however, lack the authority of Caecus and Clodius. Unlike Clodia, kept silent as she is condemned by her ancestor and her brother, Caelius is provided with answers to the figures who assail him. To the grim and blunt Caecilian fathers, clearly surrogates for the elder Caelius as evoked by the prosecution, the young man can reply that he has never strayed from the path of virtue. And lest we think this answer can be accepted only with indulgence, we are promptly assured that even that

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himself of course knew where he was headed, but his audience does not yet know. Though Quint. 11.1.39 observes that Cicero spoke here in appropriate character, there remained a significant difference between the delivery of actors and orators (e.g., de Or. 1.251 on gesture, 2.242 on voice), and Cicero was said to have debated with Roscius the relative merits of their different approaches to character portrayal (ap. Macr. Sat. 3.14.12). Cicero’s rival Hortensius was sometimes faulted for being too much like an actor in bearing and gesture (Gell. 1.5.3). For the dramatic effect of the prosopopoeia on the audience, see Geffcken 1973: 17–23, Wiseman 1985: 83–86, and for orators v. actors, Aldrete 1999: 67–73. Videos of Cael. 33–34 as performed at varying histrionic levels are posted at http://cicero.humnet.ucla.edu. Cael. 3–4 (his father’s habits), 18 (his independent household). Cael. 36 implies that the younger Caelius was not in fact financially independent. For Cicero’s characterization of the elder Caelius, fitted to the values of the equestrian jury, see Berry 2003: 231–32. Contrast the way Cicero signals his direct quotation at 37–38 with the inobtrusive incorporation of what may also be a comic verse in the speech of “Clodius” at 36 (“quid clamorem exorsa verbis parvam rem magnam facis?,” which scans as a trochaic septenarius). The precise limits of embedded quotations are often problematic. See Austin 1960: 98–99.

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most lenient of fathers, Terence’s Micio, would find nothing in Caelius’ conduct that even requires forgiveness. The juxtaposed positions are as clear as the corresponding appeals of Caecus and Clodius, but we might yet wonder why Cicero has, so to speak, reached outside the family for this second set of speakers when Terence’s Adelphoe itself could have provided famous examples of both types of father. The answer must be that Cicero wants to evoke moral attitudes, not dramatic situations. To bring forward both Micio and his crusty brother Demea would inevitably encourage identification of Caelius with their son Aeschinus, whose irresponsible conduct does not escape even Micio’s reproach (e.g., Ad. 683–95). That would hardly serve the orator’s purpose. By stripping these fathers of context, however, Cicero also deprives them of authority. Strictly speaking, neither comic type, not the vehemens atque durus father nor the lenis et clemens, turns out to be relevant to the situation. Their moral postures are introduced only to be dismissed as inapplicable to the realities of contemporary life. Comedy in the Pro Caelio does not provide a mirror of life. The old men represent no more appropriate a standard for judging Caelius than are those archaic moral exempla like the Camillii and Curii, whose severitas is at best the stuff of books. “Indeed,” Cicero goes on to say, “their types of virtue are scarcely to be found in books, let alone in our own characters.”19 For all Cicero’s playacting, his comic fathers remain stiff, artificial, and maybe even a little ridiculous. They have their irrelevant say and are then returned to the shelf like a pair of terra-cotta grotesques. Live performance in the Pro Caelio, the invitation to imagine figures in motion rather than musty paradigms of moral instruction, comes only later, when Cicero takes us to the baths of Senius. The genre played out there, however, is not a palliata comedy (61–66). The story Cicero tells of Licinius entering the bathhouse with his box of poison and being suddenly surrounded by hostile witnesses is an argument disguised as a narrative: the very vividness of the account is meant to provide its own refutation. The furtive action alleged, the hidden witnesses, and the undignified flight hardly make sense in so exposed a place as a public bath, nor is there any logical conclusion to the story. We have only a mime, “in which, when an ending isn’t to be found, the hero slips through 19

Cael 40: “verum haec genera virtutum non solum in moribus nostris sed vix iam in libris reperiuntur. chartae quoque quae illam pristinam severitatem continebant obsoleverunt.” Cicero is careful to distinguish the moral authority of Appius Claudius Caecus from haec genera virtutum.

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their fingers, the clapper sounds, and the curtain drops.”20 By bringing the scene to life, Cicero seeks to show the inherent implausibility, if not actual absurdity, of what the prosecution’s story requires us to believe.21 The representation of tragedy, comedy, and mime as, respectively, exemplum, clich´e, and absurdity reflects the variety of theatrical experience in the late Republic, and that reflection of common experience rather than the details of any particular example lies at the heart of Cicero’s dramatic allusions in Pro Caelio. It also brings us back to Cicero and Lentulus Spinther. The most striking thing about Cicero’s quotation from Terence in that letter is neither its content nor its dramatic context. Whether Lentulus really knew or could remember who said what to whom in Terence’s Eunuchus is immaterial: Cicero signals his meaning so clearly that the allusion in effect glosses itself. To be thought to know the play is what matters. Cicero flatters Lentulus’ knowledge not by recalling a specific literary situation but by reminding his correspondent of the aristocratic education that was responsible for that recollection in the first place. Quoting Eunuchus is less a stylistic ornament or graceful pleasantry than an exercise in class solidarity. Cicero allies himself with Lentulus through the idea of a knowledge shared just as he separated himself from the prosecutor Erucius by reminding Roscius’ judges of a knowledge not shared and hoped to win the goodwill of Caelius’ judges by casting key points of the defense in terms of their own experience and prejudices. Drama can fulfill these functions not because of its omnipresence in the theaters but because its role in the school curriculum had made it part of what Pierrre Bourdieu has so famously called “academic capital,” that store of knowledge and experience with which educated Romans distinguished themselves from their less-privileged countrymen.22 20

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Cael 65: “Mimi ergo iam exitus, non fabulae, in quo cum clausula non invenitur, fugit aliquis e manibus, dein scabilla concrepant, aulaeum tollitur.” For the special relevance of mime to the Megalensia, see Salzman 1982: 302–3. Cicero alludes to mime again with his reference to “that famous tub” (‘alveus ille’) at 67. So Wiseman 1985: 28–29. The tragic quotation detected there by Hollis 1998 is at best distorted by parody. The scene as described is thus too appealingly ludicrous and the laughter it produces too raucous to encourage the kind of rational response that might lead an observer to notice the inherent inadequacy of Cicero’s refutation of what the prosecution has alleged. See Alexander 2002: 241–42. Bourdieu 1984: 18–24 treats the “academic capital” created by schooling as part of the more general “cultural capital” inherited from family. For the metaphor, see Bourdieu 1990a: 124, “Just as economic wealth cannot function as capital except in relation to an economic field, so cultural competence in all its forms is not constituted as cultural capital until it is inserted in the objective relations set up between the system

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This power to define a social group through a shared knowledge and education is a key function of literature, a fact Cicero knew as well as any modern theorist. In dedicating his Academica to Varro, for example, he observes: “for as we were wandering perplexed like strangers in our own city, your books as it were led us home, so that we were able at last to recognize who and where we were.”23 A veritable catalogue of Varro’s writings follows, but this dedication is much more than a tribute to polymathia. Cicero is well aware that Varro’s researches not just preserved the record of the Roman past but gave the Romans their identity by giving them that past: the books themselves establish the very sense of what Cicero can then call nos and nostra. The antiquarian research that produced, among so much else, a history of the Roman stage and a canon of surviving authors, ensured their importance for Roman education and thus for that process of uniting and separating that determines and empowers the constituent parts of a society. It is no coincidence that the Roman canon established by Aelius and Varro, with its heavy emphasis on drama, is the very set of authors that so frustrated Horace a generation and more later.24 Canons are not quick to change. The plays of this first canon, however, were not just instruments of self-definition for the struggling and occasionally insecure elite of the late Republic. Comedy was also poetry – perhaps, given its new role as text, it was more poetry than ever before – and so its potency as a literary form also demands consideration. What kind of resource was it and how valuable for poets of the late Republic? Such questions are not easily answered, for comedy’s very integration into the Roman literary sensibility can make its influence difficult to identify with precision. Comic topoi, for example, clearly inform the diatribe against love that closes Lucretius’ fourth book: the physical illness, reckless conduct, and eventual self-reproach he describes as the lover’s fate are readily paralleled

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of enonomic production and the system producing the producers (which is itself constituted by the relationship between the educational system and the family).” Cic. Acad. 1.9: “nam nos in nostra urbe peregrinantis errantisque tamquam hospites tui libri quasi domum deduxerunt, ut possemus aliquando qui et ubi essemus agnoscere.” See Nisbet 1995: 440, Baier 1997: 28–29, and for the occasionally uneasy friendship between Cicero and Varro, Leach 1999: 165–68. For the sentiment, cf. McFadden 1978: 56, “literature is a canon which consists of those works in language by which a community defines itself through the course of its history.” Hor. Ep. 2.1.50–89. For this later development, see Zetzel 1983 and Chapter 6. Though the Augustans made significant changes, they neither invented nor imported the idea or the function of a literary canon. For the Greek antecedents, see Pfeiffer 1968: 203–9, and for Republican attitudes, Fantham 1996: 31–34.

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in the palliata.25 The identification of such topoi, however, has interesting limits as an interpretive tool. Consider the specific plight of the excluded lover, weeping outside the door while his mistress fumigates herself within: at lacrimans exclusus amator limina saepe floribus et sertis operit postisque superbos unguit amaracino et foribus miser oscula figit But the lover, weeping, shut out, often buries the threshhold with flowers and garlands and anoints the haughty frame with marjoram and in anguish pins kisses to the doors (DRN 4.1177–79)

Modern readers of the passage may at once think of Augustan elegies like Tibullus 2.1 and Propertius 1.16, and commentary on the passage generally looks forward to these later paraclausithyra and straight back to hellenistic epigram, knowing but largely ignoring the fact that the earliest surviving Roman example of the excluded lover appears not in erotic verse but in Plautus’ Curculio.26 What can be gained by closer attention to this comic analogue? Lucretius’ fascination (and disgust) with odors finds a precedent in Plautus’ play, although the smell in this case comes not from medical procedures but from the wine used to coax a ianitrix into opening the door. Phaedromus enters with his slave Palinurus and a significant entourage bearing, among other things, an immense bowl of wine. They sprinkle its contents liberally around the threshold of Phaedromus’ lover’s house and then sing while waiting for the old woman Leaena to appear. nam omnium unguentum odor prae tuo nautea est, tu mihi stacta, tu cinnamum, tu rosa, tu crocinum et casia es, tu telinum the scent of all perfume is bilge compared to you: you are my myrrh, my cinnamon, my rosewater, you are my saffron and casia, my fenugreek (Curc. 99–102) 25 26

Rosivach 1980, Brown 1987: 135–36. Pl. Curc. 1–157. Exclusion is a common source of complaint in comedy (Preston 1916: 25–26). Brown 1987: 135 and 297–301 nevertheless looks primarily to epigram when explicating the Lucretian passage. Copley 1956: 44–47 thought Lucretius’ models lay in contemporary literature and life, though these models do not survive.

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As Palinurus then observes, while watching Leaena emerge and sniff like a bloodhound around the door, “she has a keen nose.”27 Still more striking is a similarity of tone between the two examples. Lucretius’ tone is unparalleled in lyric and epigram: “[his] treatment is unique in its satirical detail and dry censoriousness” (Brown 1987: 298). Comic versions of the motif, however, regularly provide not just the obligatory lover and door but a witness to the excess and absurdity of the proceedings.28 Here in Plautus, Palinurus matches his master’s every step, and every posture of the besotted Phaedromus is parodied by the slave’s own words and actions. Our experience of the scene, not to mention our opinion of Phaedromus, is thus shaped by the slave’s satiric comments and wry participation in his master’s ministrations. Palinurus, the comic outsider, is the very personification of “satirical detail and dry censoriousness.” The slave judges the lover’s conduct just as Lucretius will come to judge it. Yet this ostensible similarity only heightens awareness of a striking ideological mismatch. There is little hint of moral seriousness in Curculio and precious little humor in what Conte calls the “missionary enthusiasm” of Lucretius (1994a: 19). Even worse, the social and dramatic roles are wrong. Comedy by its very nature rewards the inept and immoral while largely restricting the voice of moral criticism to the impotent and the servile. What kind of model is that for a didactic poet? Lucretius no more wants to adopt the pose of censorious attendant (a futile and often ridiculous role in comedy) than Cicero, in quoting Terence to Lentulus Spinther, meant to cast himself as a comic parasite. Though the comic analogue is real enough and helps explain the presence of certain motifs and attitudes, the comic model does not take us very deep into the sense of such a passage. As we shall see in Chapter 5, comedy’s limited moral vision severely restricted its utility for authors with a moral purpose. Yet the gap between the comic dramatists of the second century and poets of the first was nevertheless a good deal narrower than is often supposed, 27

28

Curc 110b: “canem esse hanc quidem magis par fuit: sagax nasum habet.” Arnott 1995: 186–91 discusses the stage business. Plautus probably found a similar scene in his Greek model but embellished it with details that come to characterize the Roman paraclausithyron. See Fraenkel 1960: 98–100, and Copley 1956: 28–32, 35–40. Brown 1987: 296–97, 301 discusses the odors (apparently medicinal) of Lucr. 4.1175–76 and 1180. Among Greek comic prototypes, the lovers’ duet at Aristoph. Eccl. 952–75 is framed by the old woman’s comments; Getas of Menander’s Misoumenos witnesses and comments upon his master’s vain pacing outside the door (Arnott 1996: 256–72).

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though it is not always easy to know how to understand the connections observable between them. Catullus 8, for example, is a poem whose debt to comedy is announced at once and with a flourish. Miser Catulle, desinas ineptire, et quod vides perisse perditum ducas. Wretched Catullus, quit playing the fool, and what you see has been lost reckon as lost. (8.1–2)

“Miser” of course becomes a familiar state for Roman elegiac lovers,29 but before Catullus introduced this conceit to erotic verse, miseria of this kind was most commonly found among the adulescentes of comedy. It was defined by Plautus’ Calidorus as the painful state of being long on love and short on cash (Ps. 300: ‘ita miser et amore pereo et inopia argentaria’). Comic diction then continues through the poem: ineptus is the condition of Terence’s Phaedria (Eun. 225–27), and the best evidence that Catullus’ memorable phrase “quod perisse perditum ducere” is proverbial comes from a similar context in Plautus, where the slave Stasimus asks, “quin tu quod periit periisse ducis?” (Tri. 1026). The full list of comic recollections is a long one,30 but it is not just the language that recalls comedy. Soliloquies of exclusion and renunciation are themselves familiar from comedy. Phaedria’s complaint at the beginning of Eunuchus is the most famous example of the type – it was no doubt a school text by the late Republic – but it is hardly unique.31 29

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A host of examples from Catullus and his successors in Pichon 1902: 202–3. Lucretius too refers to lovers as miseri, e.g., 4.1076, 1159, 1179 (the exclusus amator discussed above). The word does not appear in earlier Latin epigram, though the erotic fire imagery of Valerius Aedituus and Porcius Licinus (ap. Gell. 19.9) is certainly known to comedy (e.g., Ter. Eun. 72, 85, cf. the allusion of Pl. Curc. 53–4). See Fantham 1972: 83–84. Selden 1992: 467–71. Nevertheless, the most detailed discussed of Catullus’ language in this poem, Gugel 1967, virtually ignores comic echoes, though Syndikus 1984: 104–11 is more acceptive of them. Ter. Eun. 46–56, cited by Cic. ND 3.72, Hor. S. 2.3.259–71, Quint. 9.2.11, 9.3.16, 9.4.141, 11.3.182. (Pers. 5.161–75 apparently looks back to the Menandrean Eunouchos.) Morris 1909, the first to make Catullus’ comic connection explicit, also adduces Pl. As. 127–52, Bacch. 500–25, Truc. 759–69. See Skinner 1971: 300–302. The precedents are of course not entirely comic and not entirely Roman. For Greek examples, see Williams 1968: 461–63.

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In addition, though a soliloquy will always be in some sense dramatic, Catullus’ comic precedent is not limited to the formal or the lexical. The gamut of emotions he depicts is itself also typical of comedy. The catalogue of love’s vitia detailed by Plautus’ Charinus, from cura to malivolentia to desidia, is a good description of the range of Catullus’ torment (Pl. Merc. 18–31). Familiar too is the poem’s internal dynamic. The speaker’s vacillation between weakness and resolve in poem 8 is brought about through a sequence of memories. Though the tenses are future in this famous passage, the thought springs from the past. scelesta, vae te, quae tibi manet vita? quis nunc te adibit? cui videberis bella? quem nunc amabis? cuius esse diceris? quem basiabis? cui labella mordebis? at tu, Catulle, destinatus obdura. Woe to you, wretch! What life remains for you? Who’ll approach you now? Who’ll call you beautiful? Whom now will you love? Whose will you be called? Whom will you kiss? Whose lips will you nibble? But you, Catullus, being resolved, be firm. (15–19)

Scelesta projects the speaker’s own misery onto the girl (cf. Pl. As. 149), and the parallel questions of 16–18, each one a blow to his equanimity, become increasingly explicit and emphatic as Catullus creates lines of almost identical grammatical and metrical shape. The power of these words to fan the flame of love recalls the psychology at work in Pseudolus, where Phoenicium’s letter arouses Calidorus to paroxysms of despair through detailed reminiscence of a particularly and deliberately provocative kind: teneris labellis molles morsiunculae, nostr[or]um orgiorum ∗ –iunculae papillarum horridularum oppressiunculae our gentle little bites with tender lips, the little [somethings] of our parties, the gentle little presses of ripe little breasts (Ps. 67–69)

Catullus has internalized this process so that the speaker’s resolve is weakened by his own rhetoric and yields to a different kind of linguistic play, but the psychological weapon being wielded in each case is the same. 101

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The injunction not to be wretched (“nec miser vive,” 10) is so clearly painful because it is so clearly necessary, and the call to firmness must be repeated precisely because it is not easily obeyed (1–2, 9–11, 19). Whether this “Catullus” will be any more successful in his resolve than comedy’s Phaedria or Calidorus may well be an open question. It is not, however, the kind of question that Catullan scholarship likes to entertain. Though the language, form, and thought of this poem may have comic analogues, scholars are reluctant to accept its comic roots. A poem that Macaulay could not read without tears should not, by one line of thought, have a comic undertone.32 The impulse to read it against other poems, either within the Catullan corpus (most notably poem 76 on a similar theme) or beyond it to Horace and Propertius, also tends to elide its specifically comic affinities.33 At heart, this resistance is less to the influence of comedy in general than to that of Roman comedy in particular. So for Wheeler, “Catullus here utilizes his knowledge of Greek literature,” even though the examples he quotes are Latin, and the most recent treatment of the problem adduces a comic model for Catullus drawn not from Plautus or Terence but directly from Menander, even though the speaker in that case (the old man Demeas of Samia) is angry rather than despairing and unwavering in his resolve to exclude, not to be excluded by, his mistress.34 This Greek focus is the legacy of Friedrich Leo, who was a great lover of Plautus but nevertheless thought only a “falsche Methode” would attribute the affinities of comedy and later love poetry to anything more than similarities of subject and a common grounding in Greek precedents.35 Here, however, Catullus seems deliberately to invite comparison with a state most familiar from Plautus, and whether we read the result as comic or ironic, it cannot easily be set aside.36 32

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35

36

Macaulay’s response, recalled by Morris 1909: 147, was brought to prominence by Fordyce 1961: 110 and is defended by Thomson 1997: 226–27. So Morris 1909: 145–50 read the poem in the context of Prop. 2.5, 4.25 and Hor. Carm. 1.5, 1.13, Epod. 15 without pointing out that there was no such “type” in love poetry until Catullus created it. The contrast with poem 76 is especially well treated by Fitzgerald 1995: 121–27. Wheeler 1934: 227–30. Thomas 1984 claims Sa. 325–56 as Catullus’ specific model and notes potentially significant verbal parallels. Leo 1912: 140–57, but the material gathered by Fantham 1972: 82–91 might give one pause. Readers thus need to engage explicitly with Skinner’s astute observation of the “quasiPlautine speaker” of poem 8 (1971: 305). Differences between Plautus and Terence in depicting the lover’s mentality justify her specifically Plautine characterization. For

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His comic recollection, however, draws less on stage memory than on reading, in particular on the kind of reading that was done in boyhood and on the kind of contribution that such early experience makes to literate adult discourse. Education had made the Plautine situation a Roman commonplace. Catullus’ effect thus builds on common rather than erudite knowledge, which is probably why it so often goes unobserved. Yet comedy’s unmistakable presence alerts us to the possibility of its influence beneath the surface of various techniques and aesthetic values at work in the writing of Republican verse. Here the demands and consequences of metrical form deserve special attention, though the scholarly tendency has again been otherwise. Not entirely without reason. The conversational tone of Catullus 8, for example, is widely recognized as a function of its meter as well as its diction: the scazon’s characteristic “limp” at the end ( ˘ – – –) produces a rhythm that we interpret as conversational immediacy. Yet the debt in this case is not to drama. Choliambic verse has a distinct, nondramatic history that inevitably recalls its Greek origin. It was a relatively late import to Rome, and scholarship thus rightly connects Catullus’ choliambics directly to hellenistic inspirations.37 The situation is rather different, however, with the scazon’s notoriously anarchic cousin, the iambic senarius. Cicero observed that the senarius was so like ordinary speech that it could be difficult to recognize as verse, and the reason why is no mystery. Of its twelve elements, only the last two must create an iambic shape. The others can accept heavy or light syllables in what easily produces a bewildering array of substitutions and resolutions: × – × – × – × – × – ˘ -.38 The regularity that gives the iambic (and trochaic) ˘ meters of drama the feel of verse and not merely what Adrian Gratwick

37

38

those differences, see Flury 1968: 55–85. Gamel 1998: 83–85 raises the possibility of analogous comic tropes at work in poem 50. Latin choliambics are first attested for Cn. Matius sometime before Varro, who quotes him. See Courtney 1993: 99–106. Originally associated with Hipponax in the late sixth century, the meter was revived in the fourth by Callimachus and Herondas (West 1982: 160–61). Gratwick 1993b: “It comes to this, that within lines, every other verse-place must not be short, but the rest are free to be realized unpredictably either way as long or short.” The result is what Cic. Or. 184 observes: “at comicorum senarii propter similitudinem sermonis sic saepe sunt abiecti, ut nonnumquam vix in eis numerus et versus intellegi posset” (cf. Ar. Rhet. 3.8 on the trimeter). This is why orators must take care not to fall unwittingly into verse patterns (Cic. Or. 189). Cicero himself adopted a much stricter scansion for his own senarii, as shown by Soubiran 1984. Trochaic verse is equally flexible, so that the second half of the trochaic septenarius

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calls “awkwardly hobbled prose” comes not from scansion alone but from two other factors, an interplay of metrical and grammatical boundaries that effectively limits the range of accepted rhythms and an often striking repetition of sounds, words, and ideas. The use of such devices means, as Maurizio Bettini demonstrated in a brilliant and richly suggestive article, that features of archaic verse such as homoioteleuton that we tend to regard as ornamental actually operate on the structural and even generative level.39 Phoenicium’s enticingly repeated diminutives have that effect (Ps. 67– 69), but the structural work of such repetitions need not be so flamboyant. The same principle is at work, for example, in Hegio’s reproach of Tyndarus (Pl. Capt. 670–74): quia me meamque rem, quod in te uno fuit, tuis scelestis, falsidicis fallaciis delacerauisti deartuauistique opes. confecisti omnis res ac rationes meas: ita mi exemisti Philocratem fallaciis. Since me and my affairs, entrusted to you alone, by your schemes and falsified follies you shredded and tore my arrangements limb from limb. You’ve ruined all my affairs and my calculations: Thus you’ve kept Philocrates from me by your follies.

The substance of the reproach is quite simple: “confecisti omnis rationes meas.” What extends that basic thought over five senarii is not just a repetition of words (e.g., fallaciis/fallaciis, rem/res) but a repetition of ideas, whose parallel syntax in turn generates the repeated sounds of ablative plurals in 671 and second person perfects in 672–73. The whole passage is built of doublets (e.g., me meamque rem, rem . . . opes, scelestis . . . fallaciis, delacerauisti deartuauistique, res ac rationes) that carry the speech along, phrase piled on phrase as Hegio warms to his task, but the repetitions of words and sounds also hold it together by giving the utterance a clear shape. The language imposes order on the meter.

39

is metrically indistinguishable from the second half of the senarius. Gratwick 1993b: 40–63 provides the best modern introduction to Latin dramatic verse. Bettini 1985. Thus the scruples over so-called broken anapests (Ritschl’s and Hermann’s “laws”) and the avoidance of double iambs at line end (Luchs’ “law”). See Questa 1967: 125–29, 129–35, 188–94, respectively, and for some specific permutations in Plautine senarii, Gratwick 1993b: 257–60.

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The resulting pyrotechnics may strike us as distinctly Plautine,40 but behind this welter of sound lies a structural device widespread in the comic tradition. Even Terence, who so notoriously keeps his distance from the traditional exuberance, employs a variant of it. Here is Thais upbraiding Chaerea for an analogous betrayal (Eun. 867–71): neque edepol quid nunc consili capiam scio de virgine istac: ita conturbasti mihi rationes omnis, ut eam non possim suis ita ut aequom fuerat atque ut studui tradere, ut solidum parerem hoc mi beneficium, Chaerea. God, I don’t know what plan to adopt concerning this girl. You’ve so ruined all my plans that I can’t return her to her family just as she was and as I had expected to do, to make this a sound protection for me, Chaerea.

The tone is very different. Thais is more anxious than abusive, and her language therefore lacks Hegio’s emphasis. The rhythm is more varied and the syntax more complex, and there is little repetition of sound: “consili capiam scio” is as close as Terence comes to a Plautine alliteration. Indeed, the change of grammatical subject in the expression ut fuerat atque ut studui seems almost calculated to avoid the homoioteleuton Plautus favors. Nevertheless, it remains a repetition of words, here the pairs ita . . . ut, ita ut . . . ut, ut, that holds the passage together as Thais develops her thought. Adverbs and conjunctions, working hard and in various ways, do the job for Terence that nouns and verbs do for Plautus, but the work itself is at heart the same: a sequence of phrases impelled and organized by repetition and parallelism. Sound and sense impose a structure more rigid than prosody alone might require. This use of repetitions and parallelisms to hold verses together across metrical boundaries is not unique to drama: even the epic Saturnian employed sound for metrical effect.41 What becomes most significant 40

41

We would not be alone. The single verse describing old women as “scrattae, scrupedae, strittivillae sordidae” (precise meaning of the first three adjectives is unknown) convinced his teacher Favorinus to declare the play Gellius was reading him (the Nervularia) to be genuine Plautus (Gell. 3.3.4). Cf. Naev. Bel. Pun. 8: “res divas edicit, praedicit castus.” See Goldberg 1995: 92– 94. This mannerisms allowed Catullus to recall without actually writing Saturnian cola in his hymn to Diana, e.g., “saltuumque reconditorum/animumque sonantum” (34.11–12).

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about this technique for the history of Latin poetry is less its value for shaping comic (or epic) style per se than the fact that its aesthetic effect lingered even after the metrical need for it had gone. Bettini, for example, observed that the persistence of these archaic features in the new metrical scheme of Ennius’ Annales is what made those pioneering hexameters sound hirsutus to his successors.42 Even more striking by the next generation is the survival of these old techniques in the notionally urbane form of the elegiac couplet. Because the natural shape of Latin words encourages caesura after the fifth element in dactylic verse, the hemiepes that forms the elegaic pentameter (– ˘ ˘ – ˘ ˘ –) easily dominates the colon structure of the entire couplet.43 So it does in one of the earliest surviving Latin epigrams (midsecond century B.C.?), by the otherwise unknown Valerius Aedituus.44 dicere cum conor curam tibi, Pamphila, cordis, quid mi abs te quaeram, verba labris abeunt, per pectus manat subito < subido> mihi sudor; sic tacitus, subidus, dum pudeo, pereo. When I try to speak, Pamphila, of my heart’s care for you, what I seek from you, words fail my lips, sweat spreads suddenly across my yearning breast; Thus silent, yearning, even as I blush, I die.

The assonance, alliteration, and wordplay typical of archaic verse are often noted in these couplets, but more significant is the fact that they fulfill 42

43

44

Bettini 1985: 38–39. The survival of archaic technique in Ennius’ new metrical environment is especially striking since it is so much less necessary: Bettini (18) calculates that all possible substitutions produce a total of 354,299 different configurations for the senarius but only sixty-four for the hexameter. Skutsch 1985: 46–47 reports this penthemimeral caesura, alone or in combination, in over 80% of Ennius’ surviving verses, a figure roughly applicable to Lucretius and Vergil as well. The corresponding figure for Homer is under 45%. The Greek preference is after the next element (75% of Homeric verse), a position found in barely 11% of Latin hexameters. For Homeric practice, see Kirk 1985: 18–24. Gell. 19.9.10, our only source, calls him vetus poeta and thus presumably older than Porcius Licinus and Q. Lutatius Catulus (cos. 102), whose epigrams follow in the passage. Ross 1969: 139–47 therefore dates the poem as early as 150, but Cameron 1993: 51–56 argues instead for a flurry of poetic activity by all three of Gellius’ poets as the Romans discovered Meleager ca. 100 B.C. Courtney 1993: 72 is noncommittal: “nothing is known about this man.” For Ennius’ epigrams, at least a generation earlier, see Courtney, 39–43.

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the same structural function as they did for the playwrights. Sounds define and unite both grammatical and metrical units. This is most noticeable in the last line, where homoioteleuton marks both the subject and predicate of the sentence and the two metrical cola, but there are similar effects throughout the epigram. The fact that elegiacs do not require this organizational help is beside the point: the poet is still working within an aesthetic that assigns structural value to features that in time come to be heard as essentially ornamental.45 Whether Valerius absorbed this technique directly from drama, and if so, whether from books or the stage, is of course impossible to determine, but the recurrence of dramatic techniques as well as themes in Catullus, whose experience of palliata comedy must have been largely the product of reading, raises further questions about the link between early Latin poetry and its coming “golden age.” The Phalaecian hendecasyllable is in this respect a particularly interesting and problematic case. After a long and varied history in Greek from archaic to hellenistic times, it appears in Latin first among the metrical experiments of Laevius, then in Varro’s satires, and soon after becomes a favorite of Catullus. Its sequence of elements is straightforward: × × – ˘ ˘ – ˘ – ˘ – –. As an iambic verse built of cola but not feet, however, its analysis has continually baffled ancient and modern metricians alike.46 Most problematic about the developing Latin hendecasyllable is not just that it is isosyllabic but that its colon boundaries are not fixed, a fact too often obscured by the metricians’ preoccupation with word position at the expense of other phenomena. In Catullus, a caesura comes generally after either the fifth or sixth element. On the face of it, his practice divides almost equally between the two, but the exact figures (55 times

45

46

Given these tendencies, the relationship of syntax to meter in Catulus’ famous Theotimus epigram is a minor tour-de-force, different from both Valerius a generation earlier and from its Callimachean model: “aufugit mi animus; credo, ut solet, ad Theotimum/ devenit. sic est; perfugium illud habet,” etc. Comic debts here may be not just lexical (cf. Pl. Bacch. 318: “Mnesilochus . . . devenit ad Theotimum”) but involve tone as well. Laevius, fr. 32 Courtney; Var. Sat. 565–68. Laevius seems to look back less to hellenistic Greek verse than to Anacreon and other archaic lyric, but his metrical experiments represent a new wave of interest in Greek poetic traditions, even if his influence on Catullus and the neoterics was slight. See Leo 1914: 180–88, Ross 1969: 156–58, Hinds 1998: 78–80, and for the history of the verse in Greek, Mantke 1965: 311–13, Loomis 1972: 34–40, with a pr´ecis of ancient analyses of the meter at 35 n. 2.

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after 5, 41 times after 6) are distorted by an overwhelming preference for fifth-syllable caesura in poem 42.47 Here is the poem: adeste, hendecasyllabi, quot estis omnes undique, quotquot estis omnes. iocum me putat esse moecha turpis, et negat mihi nostra reddituram pugillaria, si pati potestis. persequamur eam et reflagitemus. quae sit, quaeritis? illa, quam videtis turpe incedere, mimice ac moleste ridentem catuli ore Gallicani. circumsistite eam, et reflagitate, “moecha putida, redde codicillos, redde, putida moecha, codicillos!” non assis facis? o lutum, lupanar, aut si perditius potes quid esse. sed non est tamen hoc satis putandum. quod si non aliud potest, ruborem ferreo canis exprimamus ore. conclamate iterum altiore voce “moecha putida, redde codicillos, redde, putida moecha, codicillos!” sed nil proficimus, nihil movetur. mutanda est ratio modusque vobis, siquid proficere amplius potestis: “pudica et proba, redde codicillos.” Come, hendecasyllables, all of you there are, from everywhere, all of you there are. A vile adulteress thinks to make a joke of me and says she won’t return our notebooks to us, if you can believe that. Let’s pursue her and demand them back. Who is she, you ask? The one you see 47

5

10

15

20

5

The figures are from Loomis 1972: 44. The common hellenistic break after the seventh syllable is extremely rare in Catullus (three examples). There is no break after the eighth syllable and thus no inherent reason to analyze the line, as is often done, as a glyconic (× × – ˘ ˘ – ˘ –) plus bacchiac ( ˘ – –), a mnemonic description lacking explanatory power. Loomis does not consider the role of context and tone in these metrical decisions. I print and translate Mynors’ Oxford text, but facit (13) and potest (14) are plausible emendations. See Harrison’s analysis in Harrison and Heyworth 1998: 94–95.

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on vile parade, mime-like and affected, laughing with the mouth of a French hound. Stand around her and demand them back. “Rotten adulteress, return the tablets, Return, rotten adulteress, the tablets!” You don’t care a penny? Slime, whore, or whatever is worse than that. But not even this can be thought enough. If nothing else works, at least let’s try to put a blush on the brazen bitch’s cheeks. Again, shout together with a louder voice, “Rotten adulteress, return the tablets, Return, rotten adulteress, the tablets!” We’re getting nowhere. She’s not moved. Time to change strategy and style if you can manage to do it better: “Modest and moderate woman, return the tablets.”

10

15

20

Twenty (counting the first) of its twenty-four lines put a caesura after the fifth syllable. Why is that? The answer must be to define ithyphallic cola (– ˘ – ˘ – –) throughout the poem, a rhythm appropriately aggressive for the subject and, in a general sense, dramatic in mood.48 Indeed, repetitions shape these lines as much as they do the verses of Plautus, and the use of sound again encourages a similar correspondence of syntactic and metrical units. Lines 2, 5, 8, and 13 are especially good examples of this phenomenon. It is not just a matter of positioning word boundaries to create metrical phrases but of using the old stylistic mannerisms to create metrical cola that are also significant grammatical units: sound, rhythm, and sense not just work together but work together in a familiar Plautine way (“si pati potestis,” “mime ac moleste,” “o lutum, lupanar”). The chiastic symmetry of “omnes undique, quotquot estis omnes” is thus formed by different means and creates quite a different effect from the elegant balance Catullus could achieve in his neoteric mode. The comic overtones invite simple, balanced, and exact repetitions (sameness rather than difference), not the learned and rather sly chiasmus of a dactylic line like “Phasidos ad fluctus et fines Aeetaeos” (64.3).49 48

49

The ithyphallic rhythm, which has obvious affinities to catalectic iambic verse, occurs with some frequency in Plautine cantica. See the index to Questa 1995, esp. 445, 447. Whether its association with satyric song is also a factor here may depend on the degree of Roman fascination with satyrs, a controversial subject. See Wiseman 1988. For the mannered conflation of Apollonius and Euripides in 64.3, see Thomas 1982: 155–56. Note too that Catullus turns Apollonius’ 4  (Arg. 2.1279) into an adjective

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A style and rhythm suggesting the stage are hardly surprising in a poem on this subject. Catullus is, after all, giving us a flagitatio, that ritual of shaming abuse best known from a very famous scene in Plautus’ Pseudolus (357ff.).50 When the pimp Ballio refuses to honor his contract to sell the girl Philocomasium as promised, Calidorus and Pseudolus take positions on either side of him and pepper Ballio with insults: “Pseudole, adsiste altrim secus atque onera hunc maledictis” (357). The problem for Calidorus is that Ballio at first simply absorbs the abuse, CA. sociofraude. BA. sunt mea istaec. PS. parricida. BA. perge tu. CA. Sociopath. BA. That’s me. PS. Parricide. BA. Get on.

(362)

and then actually seems to gain strength from it. CA. fur. BA. babae! PS. fugitive. BA. bombax! CA. fraus populi. BA. planissume. PS. fraudulente. CA. inpure. PS. leno. CA. caenum. BA. cantores probos! CA. Thief. BA. Ba! PS. Renegade. BA. Bosh! CA. Swindler. BA. Indubitably. PS. Fraud. CA. Dirt. PS. Pimp. CA. Filth. BA. Honest publicists! (365–66)

In 362, Ballio picks up Calidorus’ initial “s” and Pseudolus’ “p”; in 365, as the pace accelerates, “fur . . . fugitive . . . fraus populi” are answered by “babae! . . . bombax!,” with “planissume” hurling back Calidorus’ “p-p-l” with evident self-satisfaction, until at last, when “leno” is the worst abuse Pseudolus can manage, Ballio gets in the last (echoing) words. Since the shameless cannot be shamed into submission, the flagitatio then dies of exhaustion: BA. numquid aliud etiam voltis dicere? CA. ecquid te pudet? BA. Anything else you wanted to say? CA. Does nothing shame you? (370)

Ballio proves to be immune to insult. So too is the “moecha turpis” of Catullus’ poem, “moecha” presumably because she has taken on another lover and (no doubt the still greater

50

to create an asymmetrical parallelism. For Catullus’ manipulation of the hendecasyllable for stylistic effect, see Thomson 1997: 287. Augello 1991: 728–30, Williams 1968: 196–99, and Syndikus 1984: 226–30 with further bibliography there. The other well-known comic flagitatio, with a more submissive victim, is at Merc. 977–1006, for which see Scafuro 1997: 185–86.

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offense) refused to return the poems he had showered on her. The action of poem 42 is precisely Plautus’ action in Pseudolus (“persequamur eam et reflagitemus,” 6; “circumsistite eam et reflagitate,” 10), similar insults fly, and the result is identical: “sed nil proficimus, nihil movetur” (21). Catullus marks the progress of its “action” with linguistic and metrical repetition in the Plautine style (lines 6 and 10 are in both senses virtually identical). Such echoes of comedy and the comic style establish a mockingly rough tone – not nearly as rough as Catullus’ most ferocious iambics – well calculated to suggest comic banter, and the exuberant theatricality of the poem may even recall Peter Wiseman’s wish to identify Catullus with the Republican mime writer of that name.51 Yet in key ways, Catullus corrects and transcends these images of the comic world. As a literary conceit, comedy is now ripe for being outdone. Most obvious of his advances is the ironic reversal of Plautus’ ending. Having again, like Calidorus, been frustrated by a villain immune to insult, the poet gets the idea that Calidorus never had, that a creature who thrives on insults may be moved – or effectively insulted – by compliments.52 He signals the change of tactics with a shortening of the final colon, sed nil proficimus, nihil movetur. mutanda est ratio modusque vobis, (21–22)

and then lets go: siquid proficere amplius potestis: “pudica et proba, redde codicillos.” (23–24)

But comic values as well as comic strategies are being replaced here. For Plautus, the written word is either a target of fun or an object of suspicion. Pseudolus, for example, opens with an extended joke about the 51

52

Wiseman 1985: 189–98. The suggestion is widely resisted, though no solid arguments have been made against it. Among notable comic echoes in c. 42: the dog’s bite (9, 17) = Capt. 485–86; o lutum, lupar (13) = oh, lutum lenonium (Per. 406); redde codicillos etc. (11–12, 19–20) = redde faenus, faenus reddite (Most. 603–5). For the difference in tone between Catullan iambics and hendecasyllables, see Thomson 1997: 296–97, and for his iambic trimeters, see Loomis 1972: 87–101. Fraenkel 1961: 49–51, who appreciated the drama of the poem and its comic affinities, nevertheless missed the irony of this reversal, hearing only “the voice of humble supplication” and not how Catullus contrives to go Plautus one better.

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letter (tabellae) from Phoenicium that Calidorus is clutching to his breast, a letter absurd to see (“hen-scratching,” says Pseudolus) and in the end even more absurd to hear (Ps. 41–74). Alternatively, tabellae and codicilli are the instruments of intrigue and deception. Nothing lies and cheats as effectively as a letter with a proper seal on it: “stultior stulto fuisti, qui is tabellis crederes,” complains the victim of such an intrigue (‘You were dumber than dumb to believe a letter,’ Cur. 551).53 For Catullus, here as elsewhere, the codicilli are, by metonymy for the verses they contain, an object of value and an instrument of persuasion. That is why they were given to the girl in the first place and why the poet now demands their return. His respect for these objects is just the reverse of what we find in Plautus. The raucous comedy of poem 42 is in this sense not so very far from the elegant facetiae of poem 50, the letter to Licinius Calvus, which employs a similar conceit. Just as the story about Calvus becomes the letter to Calvus, so in our poem the verses summoned to help the poet in the first lines not just arrive but become the flagitatio that is the new poem itself.54 Nor, looking further down the path, are we very far from the doctae tabellae whose loss will in time trouble Propertius for much the same reason.55 That link too is of interest. David Ross, building on the observations of Leo, claimed that early Latin verse had only a negligible impact on the later Republican poets: the first attempts by Accius and Laevius to establish a Greek classicism at Rome were largely superseded by the later neoteric initiative. More recent scholarship maintains at least a tacit distinction between the colloquial Catullus and the poeta doctus, and the attention occasionally paid to his appropriation of comic vocabulary – so notable in poem 8 (“Miser, Catulle”) and perhaps also at work in poem 50 (“Histerno, Licini”) – treats comedy as a store of ornamental topoi, not a generating force for poetic development. There is real reluctance to bridge the gap perceived in subject, genre, and style between Latin poets of the third and second centuries and the new movements of the 53

54

55

Slater 2004: 169–76 discusses writing as a medium of deception and subversion in Plautus. New verses are being summoned to rescue the old ones: thus, pace Fraenkel 1961: 46–47, the Renaissance emendation of V’s vestra to nostra in line 4 must be right. See Williams 1968: 197–98, Syndikus 1984: 227. Prop. 3.23. Williams 1968: 492 notes the link with Catullus 42. Cf. Cat. 35, personifying the papyrus that is the letter, and for other associations within the Catullan corpus, Stoessl 1977: 122–24. On verses as letters, see in general Wiseman 1985: 124–29.

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first. “Whether or not Catullus felt indebted to them as precursors,” runs the accepted view, “they could not have provided him with models for the kinds of poetry that he and the other neoterics were interested in writing.”56 A Plautine model is nevertheless precisely what we have for poem 42: its metrics and its tropes point straight to the old comic style. Why that model is ignored – even Eduard Fraenkel undervalued it – in turn highlights a significant limitation in current approaches to the roots and the legacy of Republican poetry. Constructing a coherent history for Roman drama from the Republican ludi of Livius Andronicus through the baroque extravagances of the late Principate (and often beyond) has had the paradoxical effect of isolating Republican plays, comedies in particular, from other literary phenomena. Coherence has been imposed on the record by stressing such perceived continuities as Roman disdain for the acting profession and the dramatists’ dependence on Greek models over significant bends and breaks in drama’s history caused by, among other things, growing distinctions between popular and aristocratic taste, a consequent dichotomy between texts and performances, and replacement of the second-century demand for scripts with a first-century demand for “literature.” The assumption that comedy was experienced primarily as a performed art and looked to a popular rather than cultured aesthetic – the niche into which Horace tried all too successfully to confine it – has diminished sensitivity to the range of cultural and poetic influences discussed here. Modern criticism is thus a little too quick to set drama to one side and to transact the main business of Latin literary study elsewhere. This is unwise. The full record suggests that dramatic verse should not be assigned a history separate from the rest of Latin poetry. If, as the preceding chapters have argued, the very idea of comedy was shifting away from performance and toward the experience of books by the early first century B.C. and that comedy’s reemergence as “literature” was well under way by Catullus’ time, there was ample reason and ample opportunity for poets of the late Republic to absorb and respond to what they found in dramatic texts. Palliata comedy then not only became literature itself but assisted in the making of new literature as 56

Martin 1992: 14, reflecting Ross 1969: 156–58, who contrasts Laevius with his successors and cites Leo 1914: 183–87 (the context there is epic). Cf. Augello 1991: 724–25.

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well. Without it, Lucretius’ attack on love would have sounded a little different, and Catullus’ flagitatio might not have sounded at all. But this kind of influence was not restricted to palliata comedy. As the sequence of allusions in Cicero’s Pro Caelio suggests, the influence of comedy should not be isolated from the other theatrical entertainments with which it shared billing. Among scripted drama, that means above all tragedy, and so the work that tragedy did in the first century now demands our attention.

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chapter four

DIDO’ S FURIES

ido’s mounting distress in aeneid 4 drives her to progresD sively wilder actions, and Vergil marks the escalation of her torment with similes of increasing violence. She grows from the pained bewilderment of a wounded animal early in the book, uritur infelix Dido totaque vagatur urbe furens, qualis coniecta cerva sagitta . . . Unfortunate Dido burns and wanders senseless throughout the city, like a doe struck by an arrow . . . (68ff.)

to the rage of a madwoman: saevit inops animi totamque incensa per urbem bacchatur, qualis commotis excita sacris Thyias . . . She raged uncontrollably and raved throughout the city, inflamed like a Bacchant aroused by the mad rites . . . (300ff.)

Eventually, not even sleep offers respite from her suffering. The narrative at that point takes us inside her mind to reveal even greater horrors in her dreams: agit ipse furentem in somnis ferus Aeneas, semperque relinqui sola sibi, semper longam incomitata videtur ire viam et Tyrios deserta quaerere terra, Eumenidum veluti demens videt agmina Pentheus 115

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et solem geminum et duplices se ostendere Thebas, aut Agamemnonius scaenis agitatus Orestes, armatam facibus matrem et serpentibus atris cum fugit ultricesque sedent in limine Dirae. Fierce Aeneas himself besets her senseless in her dreams, and always left to herself alone, always abandoned she imagines herself following a long road and seeking her Tyrians in a deserted landscape, just as mad Pentheus sees the band of Furies, and twin suns and a double Thebes reveal themselves, or as Agamemnon’s son Orestes is hounded on the stage, when he flees his mother, armed with torches and black snakes, and the avenging Dirae cluster on the doorstep. (465–73)

This last simile is qualitatively different from what has preceded. The generalized referents of the earlier images – a doe and then a bacchant in the world at large – yield to specific figures of legend and to the specific melodrama of the stage. “Scaenis agitatus” is in fact the Aeneid’s one explicit reference to the theater,1 and as such it provides an especially good point of entry not just to the challenge of reading Vergil but to understanding tragedy’s role in the Roman perception of literature. What Vergil meant or what his readers would understand by this evocation of the stage is itself problematic. For many commentators since antiquity, the “tragedy” recalled in these similes is the tragedy of fifth-century Athens. That is the association, for example, behind R. G. Austin’s note on the passage: “Dido in her distraught state is compared to the familiar figures of Greek drama in the Bacchae or in the Eumenides . . . ” (Austin 1963: 139). This identification is natural and almost self-evident for us, since these plays by Euripides and Aeschylus define the characters of Pentheus and Orestes for modern students of antiquity. Recollection of Bacchae at this moment may even claim some internal support, since Pentheus’ vision of a double sun and a double Thebes is a very close echo of Bacchae 918–19 (   3'  #  5  #1,/#6 1

Harrison 1989: 4–5 finds a second theatrical reference in the phrase “fronte sub adversa” (‘under the cliff ahead,’ 1.166) in Vergil’s description of the anchorage at Carthage, which he reads as an allusion to the scaenae frons. What greets Aeneas is indeed a scaena (164), but the allusion is to the landscapes of contemporary wall painting generally, not specifically to theatrical backdrops, though the one may certainly incorporate elements of the other. See Austin 1971: 73–74, and for theatrical motifs appearing in wall painting, Beacham 1992: 69–84.

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# 72 ). Vergil’s use of Greek tragedy was widely acknowledged even in antiquity – Macrobius quotes a series of what he considered specific debts – and when Servius says that Vergil copied Euripides here, it is quite easy to agree with him.2 Appeals to the tragic canon, however, have some limits. Austin almost certainly went too far when he also claimed an allusion to Bacchae in the simile back at 301–2, where “Thyias” is glossed by the verb “bacchatur.”3 Thyias as a synonym for a maenad is not Euripidean. It is in origin a technical term for the Bacchic worshippers of Delphi, as Pausanias and Plutarch report, and it entered the literary language not through tragedy but through epic. Vergil would have found it in Apollonius, describing the Lemnian women as they rush in their frenzy to see the Argo enter port (7 82 9 ) and in Catullus describing Dionysus’ entourage in poem 64.4 saepe vagus Liber Parnasi vertice summo Thyiadas effusis evantis crinibus egit Roving Liber often drives from the steep top of Parnassus his Thyiades with their hair flying, crying “Euan!”

The origin of the term provides a useful reminder that tragedy was not the only genre to inform Vergil’s story of Dido.5 Epic, to an extent we will measure a little later, is never far in the background. 2

3

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5

Serv. ad 470: “tragice dixit, imitatus Euripidem.” Serv. auc. observes ad 471, “scaenis autem agitatus famosus, celebratus tragoediis, qualiter a Graecis in scaena inducitur.” See in addition to Austin on this, Conington-Nettleship 1884: 299 and Mackail 1930: 152. Pease 1935: 383, Wigodsky 1972: 83–84, and Zorzetti 1990a: 246 are more cautious. For Vergil’s learning, cf. Macr. Sat. 5.18.21, “est enim ingens ei cum Graecarum tragoediarum scriptoribus familiaritas,” and the examples that follow at 19.1–24. Austin 1963: 97: “Virgil has deliberately chosen words that would suggest the atmosphere of Euripides’ Bacchae (cf. 469f.).” Heinze detected the influence of Bacchae in the description of Amata’s frenzy at 7.385–405, but also felt compelled to add that “admittedly most of these expressions will recur in more or less the same form in any description of maenads” (1993: 183 n. 11). A.R. 1.636, Cat. 64.390–91. “Thyiades” for the bacchants of Delphi is attested at Paus. 10.32.7, Plu. Mor. 249e (cf. A. Th. 497–98). The image, though not the language, also occurs in earlier epic: Il. 22.460 (of Andromache), h.Cer. 386 (of Demeter). Foley rightly notes, in a comment as appropriate to Dido as to Demeter, “The comparison to a maenad . . . is suggestive of the removal of women from their proper role and sphere” (Foley 1994: 57). So Nelis 2001: 166, “In presenting Dido as tragic heroine and elegiac lover, Vergil is therefore reacting primarily to Apollonius.” The true origin of “Thyias” in Aen 4. appears in his table on p. 464.

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Other lines of analysis take Vergil’s simile less specifically and more literally. With scaenis agitatus, we are told, Vergil “visualizes Dido’s tragedy in terms of an actual theatrical performance” (Harrison 1989: 5). This approach has the merit of shifting attention, at least by implication, away from fifth-century Athens since “an actual theatrical performance” in Rome of the 20s B.C. would not have been the kind familiar to Aeschylus and Euripides. The Furies’ torches, for example, were apparently a postclassical refinement. Fifth-century descriptions of the Furies mention snakes and blood and perhaps a fiery breath, but stress darkness rather than light: the famous torchlight procession that ends Aeschylus’ Oresteia marks a significant change in their character.6 The textual record then becomes quite fragmentary, of course, but the evidence of art suggests that only in the fourth century did Furies begin to appear holding torches, an attribute that becomes standard for them by Roman times.7 Similarly, whether or not the ability to divide Dido’s story into five significant stages means that Vergil himself deliberately created a five-act structure for it, analysis of that kind calls useful attention to the kind of plot construction both Vergil and his readers would have known and expected.8 Still broader in its idea of tragedy is the line of inquiry focused on the artistic sensibility that makes Dido’s morally charged and problematic progress toward destruction what we call “tragic” and that enabled Vergil to take his epic beyond the panegyric pieties of his Republican predecessors.9 All these approaches are valuable, but behind them lies another set of questions that remains largely undervalued: what was the Roman experience of 6

7

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9

A. Eu. 1002ff., and on the torches there Taplin 1977: 413–14. Cf. the descriptions at Eu. 46–59, E. IT 285–94 (fiery breath at 288), Or. 260–79 with Brown 1984. The earliest example adduced by LIMC (3.2 n. 45) is an Attic pellike of Orestes at the omphalos dated no earlier than 380 B.C. Later examples are numerous. Cic. Sex. Rosc. 67 treats the Furies’ torches as a commonplace. Commentators agree that this Clytemnaestra, “armata facibus et serpentibus atris,” is herself being described as a Fury (e.g., Austin 1963: 140). Wlosok 1976. The claim of Harrison 1989: 5–8 that Venus’ appearance in hunting attire at Aen. 1.314ff. marks her as a prologue figure because tragic actors, like hunters, also wore high boots is less compelling. The methodological problem posed by such identification of necessary (but insufficient?) features is the same one raised by attempts to recognize dramatic plots behind famous historical narratives, e.g., Wiseman 1998: 43–51. So Muecke 1983: 134, “The story of Dido is tragic in two senses of the word, tragic in that her life ends in pathos, in untimely destruction, and tragic because her story is told as a tragedy.” Also Moles 1984 and, still very good in his own way, Austin 1963: ix–ixvii. Both Hardie 1997 and Galinsky 2003 see Vergil’s incorporation of tragic elements and sensibilities as central to his reinvention of epic.

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tragedy to which Vergil could moor his story of Dido? How specific is his debt to tragedy and to what kind of tragedy? Macrobius’ confidence in Vergil’s ingens familiaritas with the Greek tragic poets is not in fact very well supported by his long discussion of that topic in the Saturnalia. All Macrobius really demonstrates is that certain details in Vergil’s poem, like Iris taking a lock of Dido’s hair at the end of Aeneid 4, can be paralleled in fifth-century tragedy (Eur. Alc. 74ff.). That is hardly the same thing as establishing the latter as a source for the former. As for the description of Dido’s dream, some details match the ostensible Greek “models” that have been advanced less precisely than we might wish. Euripides’ Pentheus did indeed see double, but he did not see any Furies. How did they enter Vergil’s simile? They are not Euripidean, as far as we know, nor does ancient art give us a Pentheus beset by Furies.10 They may be an extension of a detail earlier in this book, where Dido herself threatens to become a Fury to haunt Aeneas after she is dead,11 or they could simply be a doublet of Orestes’ Furies. Vergil does sometimes create tension between a simile and its narrative context, and he may be building such a tension here, but that literary tendency only takes us further from the world of Euripides.12 What other kind of tragedy was there for the Romans to know? The Bacchae and Eumenides may be our benchmarks, but they were not the only and probably not the first representations of these stories known to firstcentury Romans. Later Greek tragedies on these themes may have been performed at Rome,13 but other kinds of performance were still more common. Some were not perhaps what we would call literary. Romans of the 20s B.C. were increasingly able to see myths come alive through that combination of choral song and solo dance known as pantomime. The dancer Pylades of Cilicia is often said to have “invented” pantomime 10

11

12

13

The death of Pentheus as depicted in the House of the Vettii at Pompeii is sometimes invoked in this context: two figures with goads and torches in the upper corners have been called Furies. So Mackail 1930: 152 and Austin 1963: 139, but there are normally three Furies, and these two look more like Maenads. See Clarke 1991: 227 and pl. 15, and for the number of Furies, W¨ust 1956: 122–23. Aen. 4.384: “Sequar atris ignibus absens.” Note how at 472 the simile gives Clytemnestra the accoutrements of the Dirae. For Vergil’s jarring similes, see West 1969. Nelis 2001: 195–96 likens the implied association of Aeneas with Orestes not to tragedy but to conditions of pollution in the Argonautica. Plays were performed in Greek, for example, at the inauguration of Pompey’s theater in 55 (Cic. Fam. 7.1.3) and at the ludi saeculares of 17 (CIL 32323). Cf. Suet. Aug. 45. See Kaimio 1979: 215–17.

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in 22 B.C., which would make it an unlikely point of reference for Aeneid 4, but that story is largely the product of Pylades’ own vainglory and later scholarship’s passion for identifying unique inventors.14 The genre he refined and brought to prominence was not created at once and from nothing. In the early 20s, Livy was already referring to pantomime, or something very like it, in his description of the old Etruscan ludiones. Plautus had built musical dumb shows into his plays nearly two hundred years before, and Greek antecedents for the so-called Roman dance go back even further.15 Since the stories of Pentheus and Orestes are both well attested subjects for Roman pantomime,16 even Vergil’s first readers certainly might, or might soon, have seen these stories performed that way. Yet before there was pantomime in Latin there was tragedy in Latin, and that tragedy had a long vogue. Orestes and Pentheus were also familiar figures on this tragic stage – indeed, two of the most familiar such figures. All the Roman tragedians dealt with their stories. This is probably why Pacuvius, the author of a Latin Pentheus and creator of a very memorable Orestes, actually dominates Servius’ comments on the similes of Aeneid 4.17 Unlike his modern heirs, the Roman critic naturally thinks first of Roman models for Vergil’s creation. 14

15

16 17

Pylades wrote a treatise on dance (Athen. 1.20e), which is probably Macrobius’ source for the story at Sat. 2.7.18–19 in which Pylades claims for himself the invention of pantomime as the Romans knew it. His vanity is well attested by the introductory anecdotes there. For the art of pantomime, see Kokolakis 1959: 33–43 and Beacham 1992: 140–45. Liv. 7.2.4: “sine carmine ullo, sine imitandorum carminum actu ludiones ex Etruria acciti . . . ” Jory 1981: 152–55 discusses the implications of this passage for the history of pantomime; Zimmermann 1995 notes credible “pantomimische Elemente” at Pl. Mil. 200–15 and Pers. 757–76. The dance of the shepherd Cyclops at Hor. S. 1.5.63 may also be relevant. For pantomime’s Greek antecedents, e.g., the union of Ariadne and Dionysus described at Xen. Symp. 9.2, see W¨ust 1949: 840–43, Kokolakis 1959: 30–32, Gilula 2002: 211–13. W¨ust 1949: 847–49, Kokolakis 1959: 51–52, and Kaimio 1979: 215–17. Serv. ad 469, “Pentheum autem furvisse traditur secundum Pacuvii tragoediam,” the only testimony for a Pentheus play by Pacuvius. Serv. ad 473: “a Pacuvio Orestes inducitur Pylades admonitu propter vitandas furias ingressus Apollinis templum.” Macr. Sat. 6.1.55–61 also catalogued Vergilian debts to Roman tragedy. See the survey in Wigodsky 1972: 76–79 (Ennius), 80–97 (Pacuvius and Accius), with due attention to the methodological problem posed by the possibility of direct debts to their Greek predecessors. For the popularity of Pentheus and Orestes on the Roman tragic stage, see, respectively, Flower 2000: 28–31 and Petaccia 2000: 88–93.

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Servius may have been mistaken in some or even all of these details. Scholars of the fourth and fifth centuries did not have much direct knowledge of Republican literature, nor were they well versed in its contemporary reception.18 Claims made by successive generations of commentators were thus easy to confuse and difficult to confirm, and the process of scholarly annotation was further complicated by the original authors themselves, who tended to refer imprecisely and indiscriminately to actual Greek models and to Latin adaptations of them.19 In this case, although posterity acknowledged Pacuvius as the consummately doctus tragedian and therefore the poet most prominent in Servius’ thinking,20 Ennius’ Orestes was the figure who came to personify madness for most first-century Romans, and Accius’ Bacchae is more securely attested than Pacuvius’ play on the Pentheus story.21 How much of this legacy Servius knew is uncertain, but that hardly matters. There is no need to decide whether Vergil is really echoing Pacuvius rather than Euripides on the twin suns and double Thebes or even whether he meant specifically to recall Pacuvius (or Accius or Ennius) rather than Euripides and Aeschylus at this moment in his story. Though some first-century Romans found it an affectation to read Euripides when Pacuvius was at hand,22 Vergil was not one of them, and the very breadth of his knowledge makes a choice between Greek and Latin texts undesirable and unnecessary. Multiple reference, the technique 18

19

20

21

22

Jocelyn 1964 and 1965. For an example of Servius’ working method (less authoritative than it first appears), see Kaster 1988: 193–94. So Pl. Poen. 1 evokes Aristarchus’ Achilles when the play quoted is by Ennius. On the confusion of Greek and Roman sources, see Wigodsky 1972: 90–91 and Zorzetti 1990a: 245. For doctus Pacuvius, Hor. Ep. 2.1.56 and Quint. Inst. 10.1.97, and for his grand style, Cic. Or. 36 and Varr. ap. Gell. 6.14.6. See Brink 1982: 105–6, Fantham 2003: 99–103, and Manuwald 2003: 120–27, and for Pacuvius more generally, Beare 1964: 79–84. His Orestes was a favorite of the rhetoricians: Rhet. Her. 2.36, Cic. Or. 155. Cic. S. Rosc. 67 and Pis. 46, Lg. 1.40 all evidently refer to Ennius’ Eumenides. See Jocelyn 1967: 284. The allusion to Orestes at Mil. 8 is not an explicit stage reference. The trial and acquittal of Orestes were also subjects of Accius’ Erigona. See Dangel 1995: 326–28. Accius’ Bacchae seems to have followed Euripides (e.g, 235-6R ∼ Bacch. 32–37), but as Dangel notes, “on n’exclura cependant pas une contamination complexe . . . ” (1995: 340). Pentheus’ Furies may be the product of such a contamination. Cic. Fin. 1.4: “Quis enim tam inimicus paene nomini Romano est, qui Enni Medeam aut Antiopam Pacuvi spernat aut reiciat, quod se isdem Euripidi fabulis delectari dicat, Latinas litteras oderit?”

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of evoking more than one predecessor at a single stroke, was an established practice by Vergil’s day, and the very artificiality of the allusion here – the legendary Dido compared to other figures of legend – itself urges readers to consider the broadest possible range of referents.23 Recent scholarship on Vergil and tragedy thus has some reason to give the genre’s Roman instantiation only brief, occasionally grudging mention.24 An authorcentered inquiry needs simply to acknowledge that, though Pacuvius alone would not have dominated Vergil’s thoughts, neither could he be absent from them. A reader-centered inquiry, however, must reverse the emphasis and acknowledge first of all that figures like Pentheus and Orestes cannot be recalled without the mediation of Roman tragic precedents. The Latin plays on these subjects, though largely invisible to us, remained a major force on the cultural scene of the first century. What, then, was the Roman response to tragedy of that kind? The stage history of tragedy at Rome is a curious combination of success and excess. Tragedy and comedy were introduced more or less simultaneously at the ludi Romani,25 but they were never entirely equal partners in the development of Roman drama. Though the comoedia palliata was immensely popular from the time of its introduction by Livius Andronicus, its flos poetarum was surprisingly brief. By the end of the second century, the very time when palliata comedy was becoming the benchmark genre for scholars and antiquaries researching the history of Roman theater, it was all but dead as stage entertainment.26 No new practitioners of note succeeded Turpilius on his retirement in the later 23

24

25

26

Catullus was the pioneer in this technique, at least among surviving Latin poets. See Thomas 1982: 160–61, and for Vergil’s mixing of tragic exempla, see Holford-Strevens 1999: 232–35. So Hardie 1997: 323–25 (certainly brief ) and Galinsky 2003: 291–92 (brief, and surely a little grudging). Cassiod. Chron. p. 609M s.v. C. Manlius et Q. Valerius (cos. 239 B.C.): “his coss. ludis Romanis primum tragoedia et comoedia a L. Livio ad scaenam data.” Gell. 17.21.42 dates this event to 240, but his reference to the deaths of Sophocles and Euripides and Menander implies a similar belief that Andronicus presented both a tragedy and a comedy on that occasion. Certainty is nevertheless impossible. See Suerbaum 1968: 297–99 and Gruen 1990: 80–84, and for the growing popularity of ludi scaenici, Gruen 1992: 185–88 and Bernstein 1998: 245–51. The tendency to privilege comedy when recalling the history of the Roman stage, manifest in the activities of Aelius and Varro, persists through Verg. G. 2.380–96 and Hor. Ep. 2.1.139–55. See Brink 1963a: 189–91. Accius may have dealt with theater history in his Pragmatica (less probably in his Didascalica), but his approach to the subject is unknown. See Degl’Innocenti Pierini 1980: 58–73.

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second century, and as we have already seen, performances of the old plays increasingly gave way to performances of mime. Tragedy’s situation was quite different. Though the initial experiments of Andronicus and Naevius in the third century did not win posterity’s praise,27 the genre nevertheless developed a following, and Roman audiences eventually saw enough tragedy to develop a vivid memory of its diction, its mannerisms, and its type scenes. A Plautine actor could then easily bring his audience to amused attention by striking a tragic pose. Menaechmus’ scene of feigned madness, for example, is so funny in part because it parodies the kind of language and action found in the mad scenes of tragedies like Ennius’ Alcmeo and Alexander.28 Rome supported no more than one tragedian at a time in the generations from Ennius through Accius, but unlike comedy, tragedy managed to flourish until the very end of the Republic, and it left behind surprisingly rich and varied evidence of its presence in the cultural landscape. Accius, not Turpilius, came to dominate meetings of the Collegium poetarum, and tragedy never required the kind of scholarly intervention that Suetonius reports for comedy and epic. Performances of tragedy have also left a much clearer mark on the record than performances of palliata comedy. The most famous such examples from the late Republic are admittedly no monuments to artistic integrity. At the ludi Apollinares of 59, lines spoken by the tragic actor Diphilus were contrived to work so effectively against Pompey that, says Cicero, it was as if they were written for the occasion by one of his enemies.29 Even more notorious were events at the Floralia of 57. Not only did the entire cast of Afranius’ togata comedy Simulans attack Clodius from the stage, but the tragic actor Aesopus, starring in Accius’ Eurysaces, turned the play to Cicero’s advantage by distorting his delivery to create contemporary echoes at suitable moments 27

28

29

Cicero found Andronicus’ plays not worth a second look (“Livianiae fabulae non satis dignae quae iterum legantur,” Brut. 71), evidently a common view: no Republican author quotes them. (Varr. L. 7.3 is only a passing reference.) Naevius is quoted for both tragedy and comedy but not with the frequency or enthusiasm accorded the citation of Ennius, Pacuvius, and Accius. Pl. Amp. 51–63, Poen. 1–4, for which see, respectively, Moore 1998: 112–19 and Jocelyn 1967: 164–67. Menaechmus’ antics at Men. 835–75 recall the language and action of Ennius 22–30J, 32–33J and 41–42J. The effect at Ter. Eun. 590, where Donatus says, “parodia de Ennio . . . tragice, sed de industria, non errore,” is a more literary kind of play. Cic. Att. 2.19.3: “nam et eius modi sunt ii versus ut in tempus ab inimico Pompei scripti esse videantur.” He quotes two examples. Play and playwright are unknown.

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and distorting the text itself by adding lines of his own composition and others imported for the occasion from Ennius’ Andromacha.30 Such manipulation was not unique. Brutus, as praetor urbanus in 44, apparently hoped to curry popular support in a similar way by scheduling a performance of Accius’ Brutus at the ludi Apollinares that year: he had to settle for the Tereus instead when he was forced to leave Rome and responsibility for the games fell instead to C. Antonius.31 The sheer theatricality of late Republican revivals also attracted notice. At the dedication of Pompey’s grand new theater in 55, productions of Accius’ Clytemnestra and Naevius’ Equus Troianus featured immense processions and lavish props. The stage platform in that structure was nearly four hundred feet across, and the producers filled that daunting space by harnessing a long team of mules for Agamemnon’s entrance in Clytemnestra and offering a vast array of Trojan booty. Cicero was famously disgusted by a display of such breathtaking, if not tasteful, proportions.32 Yet Republican tragedy had more to offer than Clytemnestra’s mules. It could also deliver the Roman version of a genuinely moving tragic experience.33 Cicero recalls for readers of his Tusculans how the ghost of Deiphilus in Pacuvius’ Iliona, calling plaintively to his mother, moved audiences to tears.34 Mater, te appello, tu, quae curam somno suspensam levas, neque te mei miseret, surge et sepeli natum – 30

31

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34

Cic. Sest. 118–23, also reporting similar manipulations in Accius’ Brutus. On the possible contaminatio of Accius and Ennius, contrast Jocelyn 1967: 238–41 and Questa and Raffaelli 1990: 169–72. The politicization of these occasions is often discussed. See inter alios Winniczuk 1961: 216–18, Nicolet 1980: 363–73 and Beacham 1992: 154–63, and Beacham 1999: 58–61. App. BC 3.23, cf. Cic. Att. 16.2.3, 16.5.1, Phil. 1.36, 10.8. Further references in Broughton, MRR 2.319. C. Antonius, the younger brother of the future triumvir, was executed by Brutus in 42. Cic. Fam. 7.1. Further examples of this trend toward spectacle in Goldberg 1996: 265– 68, Beacham 1992: 67–84, and Beacham 1999: 32–35, and for the new conditions at Pompey’s theater, Beacham 1999: 61–72. Cic. Har. 22–25 probably exaggerates the religious solemnity of the ludi for his own (political) purpose, but religious feeling on such occasions was always a noteworthy part of the Roman character (Polyb. 6.56). So was a taste for what Horace, describing tragedy, would call “the elevated and powerful” (‘sublimis et acer,’ Ep. 2.1.165). Cic. Tusc. 1.106. The other plays he quotes in this passage, Ennius’ Andromacha and Thyestes and an unidentified tragedy of Accius do not so explicitly recall stage performance. Pacuvius’ scene, so fatal to the reputation of the actor Fufius, was still famous for Hor. S. 2.3.60.

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Haec cum pressis et flebilibus modis, qui totis theatris maestitiam inferant, concinuntur, difficile est non eos qui inhumati sint, miseros iudicare. Mother, I call on you, who ease your anxious care with sleep and does not pity me: Rise up and bury your son – These words, sung to the measured and plaintive rhythms that bring grief to whole audiences, make it difficult to believe that the unburied are not wretched.

So too when Pacuvius’ Orestes and Pylades each vies for the chance to die for the other, audiences thrilled to their unselfish nobility: “as often as this scene is acted, is it ever to less than the greatest applause?”35 Actors like Rupilius, Diphilus, and Aesopus became famous for their performances in particular roles and, in the process, established themselves as cultural icons.36 These tendencies toward pageantry and melodrama should not be surprising, for they are not unique to the Romans. Between Euripides and Accius lay not just the difference between Greek and Latin, polis and res publica, but nearly three hundred years of continuous theater history. Tragedy came to Rome not as an Attic genre but as a hellenistic genre, a very different style of play that valued great acting, powerful emotions, and memorable moments over earlier standards of intellectual coherence and artistic proportion. Even the experience of fifth-century classics was necessarily colored in later centuries by the developments in acting, staging, and audience expectation that characterized, and doubtless facilitated, the spread of drama far beyond the bounds of Attica.37 The emotions aroused among Romans by the ghost scene of Iliona find their counterpart in the excitement Plutarch reports when Merope raises her ax in a late revival of Euripides’ Kresphontes (Mor. 998e). Even so, theatrical thrills of this kind were not the only way that first-century Romans came to know and then to use the genre. 35

36

37

Cic. Fin. 5.63: “quotiens hoc agitur, ecquandone nisi admirationibus maximis?” (A similar reference at Amic. 24.) The play was Dulorestes (or possibly Chryses). Cf. an analogous appeal to Pacuvius’ Teucer at de Or. 2.193. Cf. the allusion to individual actors, where the references depend on recognition of their particular acting styles, at Rhet. Her. 3.34, Cic. Att. 2.129.3 and Off. 1.114. This point, well made by Tarrant 1978, is too easily forgotten. For postclassical Greek tragedy, see Easterling 1997: 211–27 and Green 1994: 89–141, and for tragedy in Magna Graecia in particular, Taplin 1993: 12–29 and Horsfall 2003: 48–63. Examples of the new conditions in Csapo and Slater 1995: 186–206.

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Educated Romans might also take a technical, even professional interest in the tragic stage. At the end of de Oratore, for example, Cicero illustrates his discussion of voice control with examples of articulation drawn from Roman tragedy, that is, by recalling tragedy as a performed art (3.216–19). The gamut of emotions and depth of feeling that he calls upon the orator to evoke demonstrate the truth of his famous claim that oratory required the vocal range of tragic acting: the passage thus explains his regret that contemporary orators were leaving the effective use of eyes, voice, and gesture to actors alone (de Or. 1.128, 3.214). The presentation also represents, of course, the eventual justification in a theoretical discussion for what Cicero had already established in practice. As is well known, he admired the tragic actor Aesopus and discussed matters of delivery with Roscius.38 Latin tragedy, however, also exerted an influence independent of performance. Some of Cicero’s most striking tragic references appear to be drawn not from specific memories of the stage but from his reading. This may sometimes be inferred from the circumstances of quotation. For example, the citation in De divinatione of Cassandra appealing for rescue to the citizens of Troy (“cives ferte opem et restinguite,” 42J) seems to place the play, Ennius’ Alexander, in the city, but Cicero later quotes from the same scene as if it were set on Mt. Ida or by the sea. The discrepancy is easier to explain as the imprecision of a book reference, recalled from a text without scene locations or stage directions, than as a poor memory for something he had seen performed.39 The extended string of quotations from Andromacha at Tusculans 3.44–45 also sounds much more like the product of a literary than a stage memory: Cicero praises Andromache’s song (carmen) for its content, diction, and rhythm – no mention of its choreography or setting, though her anapestic dimeters would have made a memorable scene – and then measures Ennius himself ( poeta 38

39

So Macr. Sat. 3.14.12, Plut. Cic. 5.3–4. In this Cicero could claim the precedent of Demosthenes, who was coached by the actors Satyros (Plut. Dem. 7.1–2) and/or Andronicus (Quint. 11.3.6), but there were risks: Hortensius, whose delivery Cicero thought a little too mannered (Brut. 303), was eventually condemned as too much the actor and not enough the man. See Gell. 1.5.2 and the discussion by Corbeill 1996: 167–68. Cic. Div. 1.114: “multos nemora silvaeque, multos amnes aut maria commovent.” See Jocelyn 1967: 204–6. At Div. 1.66 Alexander is called poema, not fabula. As noted by Jocelyn 359–60, the reference to “manibus gypsatissimis” at Fam. 7.6.1, quoting Medea exul, is to the appearance of foreign women rather than to actors’ makeup, since Cicero is again quoting with a text, not a stage performance in mind. On distinctions between book and performance references in Cicero, see Eigler 2000: 627–36.

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egregius) against Euphorion’s claque (cantores Euphorionis), book poets to a man. Ennius thus becomes a combatant in that contemporary battle between old styles of poetry and new, which was essentially a debate over books and reading and education. Some of his plays – Andromacha and Medea exul are clear examples – were widely circulated texts. Since they were part of the educated Roman’s basic cultural experience, Cicero can quote them easily and in a variety of contexts. When, in the middle of a tragic quotation, he tells his readers “you know what follows,” he knew he could rely on their memory.40 This dual experience of tragedy can make it useful to distinguish between stage recollection and book recollection in our sources, but the difference is sometimes difficult to recognize. In 44, for example, Accius’ Atreus was certainly fresh in Cicero’s memory. He refers to it in the first Philippic with what sounds like allusion to a performance (“videmus in fabula . . . ” Phil. 1.34) and again in the Tusculans with specific reference to Aesopus’ acting: “do you think that Aesopus ever played the part while enraged or that Accius wrote it while enraged?”41 We might easily put the references together and infer from their combination that a performance by Aesopus was the talk of the day.42 We would be wrong. Aesopus, as we have seen, gave a memorable performance at the Floralia of 57, but he retired soon after that extraordinary event. Cicero’s “stage recollection” must therefore be over a decade old and is general, not specific: thus videmus rather than vidimus, umquam rather than nuper.43 The circulation of books was what kept such memories alive. By the end of the Republic, tragic texts stood beside comic texts as valued commodities in that store of knowledge and experience from which educated Romans distinguished themselves from their less-privileged countrymen. 40

41

42

43

Tusc. 3.44: “scitis quae sequantur,” 4.77: “nosti quae sequuntur.” Cf. his interrupted quotation from Medea at Cael. 18, though his predecessor Crassus had already quoted the play. Varro also cites Andromacha with some frequency. Rhet. Her. 4.7 treats the excerpting of plays by Ennius and Pacuvius as an educational commonplace, perhaps reflected in Cicero’s use of tragic quotations to illustrate a morphological argument at Or. 155–56. Cic. Tusc. 4.55: “num aut egisse umquam iratum Aesopum aut scripsisse existimas iratum Accium?” Cf. Tusc. 4.77, “audi Thyestem” introducing another quotation. So Eigler 2000: 619 n. 1, an important beginning to an important discussion. Cf. Wright 1931: 33, “one may set down as a general principle that references to a play in the oratory of Cicero are . . . strongly presumptive of recent dramatic performance.” Aesopus’ emergence from retirement to perform at the opening of Pompey’s theater in 55 was short lived and clearly a mistake: “eius modi fuit ut ei desinere per omnes homines liceret” (Cic. Fam. 7.1.2). The play performed on that occasion was not Atreus. Rhet. Her. 3.34 implies that Aesopus was already famous by the early 80s.

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The distinction between the experience of tragedy as something seen and something read helps explain the varied functions of tragic reference in Roman sources. Performance unifies. It creates a shared experience, an experience in and of the theater that transcends boundaries even for an audience segregated by class, as Roman audiences came increasingly to be. Laughter and tears do not know social distinction. References to performance are therefore inclusive, and so Cicero recalls actual performances either to emphasize the extent of a public figure’s popular support in public contexts (e.g., Sest. 115–26, Phil. 1.36) or to illustrate the universality of human experience in private ones (e.g., Fin 5.63, Tusc. 1.106). Book knowledge was not so common and therefore had the potential to divide those few who possessed it from the many who did not. Cicero’s taste in literary quotation therefore runs not to the obscure and erudite but to school texts and cultural commonplaces. His learning is calculated less to display a unique knowledge, which would put distance between himself as author and even educated readers, or for the pleasure of a purely decorative illustration, but to recall or define a common ground between him and them.44 An innocent, amusing example of the resulting camaraderie appears in a letter to the jurist C. Trebatius Testa, who found himself on Caesar’s staff in Gaul in 54. Cicero consoles Testa for his loss of city comforts (“desideria urbis et urbanitatis”) with lines drawn from Ennius’ Medea exul: “so we your friends will forgive you this as they forgave Medea . . . ”45 The urbane, cultured example is itself part of the wryly comforting message. The extensive quotations at De divinatione 1.66-67 illustrating the process of divine possession with the example of Ennius’ Cassandra and the citation of Alcmeo at Academica 2.88–89 are similar appeals to a confirming knowledge drawn from the reader’s experience. Tusculans 3.44–6, quoting Andromacha’s lament, raises the stakes. There Cicero contrasts the tragedian’s ability to comprehend emotion with the Epicureans’ limitation in this sphere, thus making the quotation a substantive part of the philosophical argument it advances. 44

45

Quint. 1.8.11: “nam praecipue quidem apud Ciceronem . . . videmus Enni Acci Pacuvi Lucili Terenti Caecili et aliorum inseri versus, summa non eruditionis modo gratia sed etiam iucunditatis, cum poeticis voluptatibus aures a forensi asperitate respirant.” Quintilian’s immediate context is oratory, where Cicero is careful to avoid the suggestion of erudition, e.g., Sex. Rosc. 46, Phil. 2.65, Phil. 13.49, Sest. 118. See Zillinger 1911: 70–71. The dramatic base of Quintilian’s implied canon is itself significant. Cic. Fam. 7.6, with discussion of the quotation at Jocelyn 1967: 358–63. Contrast Fam 7.7, a similar consolation lacking the literary allusion.

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Cicero’s striking preference for tragic over comic examples in these situations seems to be deliberate. Conscious choice lies behind the proof at De officiis 1.114, which argues for the need to know one’s own talents and limitations. Cicero illustrates the point by recalling the self-knowledge of actors: suum quisque igitur noscat ingenium acremque se et bonorum et vitiorum suorum iudicem praebeat, ne scaenici plus quam nos videantur habere prudentiae. Illi enim non optumas, sed sibi accomodatissimas fabulas eligunt; qui voce freti sunt, Epigonos Medumque, qui gestu Melanippam, Clytemnestram, semper Rupilius, quem ego memini, Antiopam, non saepe Aesopus Aiacem. Ergo histrio hoc videbit in scaena, non videbit sapiens vir in vita? Let each one, then, know his own talent and show himself to be a keen judge of his own strengths and weaknesses, so that actors will not seem to have more sense than we. They select not the best plays but those most suited to their own talents. Those who rely on voice choose Epigoni and Medus, those relying on gesture choose Melanippe or Clytemnestra. Rupilius, whom I remember, always chose Antiope. Aesopus hardly ever acted Ajax. Shall the educated man not show in life what the actor shows on the stage?

Though the issue is a moral one, Cicero’s education and training lead him to frame his demonstration in the terms of rhetorical theory: vox and gestus are primary categories in the rhetoricians’ analysis of actio.46 Yet the demands of acting being what they are and the relationship between actors and orators being what it is, there was no particular reason why the practice of comic actors could not equally well have illustrated the matter. Cicero in other contexts recalls Roscius’ tendency in old age to adjust the tempo of his songs to his diminished dexterity.47 That example would have served equally well here. Indeed, when Quintilian, thinking again of oratory, expands on the idea of knowing one’s limitations, he will appeal to the contemporary example of the comic actors Demetrius 46

47

Cicero’s development of this idea at Or. 54–60 and de Or. 3.216–21 also looks to tragedy: all his examples are tragic, although iracundia, vis, and voluptas could equally (and appropriately) be illustrated by lines from comedy. The Roman examples in Off. 1.107–21 suggest at least significant rethinking of Cicero’s philosophical source (Panaetius), if not completely original composition. The integration of tragic exempla is thus particularly striking. See in general Dyck 1996: 282–87. Cic. de Or. 1.254. The context is delivery, with Cicero introducing the example (“solet Roscius dicere”) in language recalling the tradition that he discussed acting and oratory with Roscius (Macr. Sat. 3.14.11–13). The example is repeated at Lg. 1.11.

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and Stratocles.48 Cicero’s sense of decorum naturally turns his thoughts to tragedy. Not every tragic allusion is either so effectively or so explicitly signaled. Some of those suspected may even be nugatory. Consider Cicero’s famous demand that Catiline leave Rome: “perge quo coepisti; egredere aliquando ex urbe; patent portae; proficiscere . . . exire ex urbe iubet consul hostem” (Cat. 1.10–13). An echo is sometimes heard here of a line from Accius’ Phoenissae, “Egredere exi ecfer te, elimina urbe!”49 Context may give us pause – would Cicero really recall the fratricide and futility of the Theban struggle at such a time? – but he often quotes lines from drama without regard to their original context. The linguistic norms and stylistic conventions underlying any Latin utterance, however, present a serious challenge to this kind of identification. Cicero’s alliteration and emphatic repetition of the e(x) prefix is so typical of dramatic verse, tragic and comic alike, and so much a part of the language itself that a direct, allusive link to Accius is difficult to maintain with confidence. We might just as readily think of Plautus’ Grumio and Tranio as they open Mostellaria with similarly emphatic alliteration that is created by precisely the same morphological parallelism: GR. exi e culina sis foras, mastigia. ∗ ∗ ∗ TR. apscede ab aedibus abi rus, abi directe, apscede ab ianua. GR. Out of the kitchen, if you please, Jailbait. ∗ ∗ ∗ TR. Get away from the house. Go to the country. Go to hell. Get away from the door.

There is of course nothing tragic or paratragic in this exchange, nothing political, and nothing intertextual, only one more author drawing, like Accius and Cicero, from a common stock of stylistic mannerisms.50 48 49

50

Quint. 11.3.178–80. See Fantham 1982: 249–51. Acc. Phoen. 592. Thus Beare 1964: 121, “Accius might make us fancy that we see Cicero driving Catiline from Rome.” Cf. Mariotti 1965: 214–15 and, much more emphatically, Bili´nski 1957: 43–44. Pl. Most. 1–8. The verbal play is characteristically Latin, and La Penna 1979: 8688 rightly recognizes the methodological problem created by “questo colore generale della poesia arcaica latina.” Accius’ Greek original, Eur. Phoen. 593, has a very different feel:   : 1# ; <(  = )!, >   ?@ . The idea persists (<( ), 614; <( ;  )% , 636), but not with the same repetitive emphasis.

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Nevertheless, the ubiquity of tragic references across the range of Cicero’s public and private discourse, confirmatory exempla rather than erudite displays, implies broad familiarity with tragedy among educated Romans, the kind of familiarity that we might expect to leave traces in contemporary poetry as well. And this is precisely what we find. Poetry in the late Republic often drew upon the memory of tragedy, although recognizing tragic references and tragic allusions for what they are can again be difficult. Not always. When Lucretius writes, crudeles gaudent in tristi funere fratris et consanguineum mensas odere timentque Cruel men rejoice in a brother’s wretched death and hate and fear the banquets of their kin

it takes no special feat of erudition to spot the general reference to Thyestes’ notorious meal and a more specific allusion to the language of the tragic stage. Lucretius’ juxtaposition of hate and fear appeared in Ennius, “quem metuunt oderunt; quem quisque odit perisse expetit” (‘Whom they fear, they hate; whom one hates, he hopes to see dead,’ 348J) and became famous through the rejoinder of Accius’ Atreus: “oderint dum metuant” (‘Let them hate so long as they fear’).51 Both Lucretius’ intent and his technique are clear.52 Tragic echoes present a greater interpretive challenge in the famous passage from his proemium describing the sacrifice of Iphigeneia at Aulis. Religion, he argues, is not a source of virtue: quod contra saepius illa religio peperit scelerosa atque impia facta. 51

52

Lucr. 3.72–73, echoing Atreus 203. The fragment of Accius is known precisely because it was so often cited: Cic. Sest. 102, Phil. 1.34, Off. 1.97, Sen. Clem. 1.12.4, 2.2.2, Ira 1.20.4, Suet. Tib. 59, and Gai. 30. The play was familiar, as Cicero’s quotations at ND 3.68, Planc. 59, and Tusc. 2.13 make clear. Cf. Hor. Ars 91, Epod. 5.86. The Ennian line is quoted at Cic. Off. 2.23 and often ascribed to his Thyestes, a play Cicero also knew well, though the attribution is uncertain. Whether Accius borrowed from or improved upon Ennius – or whether Cicero misidentified his source – is unknown. The two lines could conceivably come from the same scene. Cf. the verbal sparring, also in trochaic septenarii, at Pl. Amph. 366–69. Similarly, Lucr. 5.1289 “belli fluctus” may echo Accius 608. See Degl’ Innocenti Pierini 1980: 11–12. Lucretius’ saucia amore at 4.1048, echoing Ennius’ Medea (“animo aegro amore saevo saucia,” 254) also gains from recollection of its origin. See Brown 1987: 191.

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Aulide quo pacto Triviai virginis aram Iphianassai turparunt sanguine foede ductores Danaum delecti, prima virorum. cui simul infula virgineos circumdata comptus ex utraque pari malarum parte profusast, et maestum simul ante aras adstare parentem sensit et hunc propter ferrum celare ministros aspectuque suo lacrimas effundere civis, muta metu terram genibus summissa petebat. nec miserae prodesse in tali tempore quibat, quod patrio princeps donarat nomine regem: nam sublata virum manibus tremibundaque ad aras deductast, non ut sollemni more sacrorum perfecto posset claro comitari Hymenaeo, sed casta inceste nubendi tempore in ipso, hostia concideret mactatu maesta parentis, exitus ut classi felix faustusque daretur. tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.

85

90

95

100

Just the reverse. Often such religion has engendered wicked and impious deeds. At Aulis, for example, they foully stained the altar of the virgin Trivia with the blood of Iphianassa, 85 those chosen Danaan chiefs, the pick of men. As soon as the filet encircled her virgin tresses and streamed equally down both her cheeks, she sensed her grieving father standing beside the altar and near him his agents hiding the knife, 90 and her countrymen shedding tears on seeing her, mute with fear she collapsed, seeking the ground with her knees. It could do the poor girl no good at such a time, that she first had given the king the name of father: for lifted trembling by men’s hands she was brought 95 to the altar, not so that with solemn rites fulfilled she could be escorted with clear cries of “Hymen!,” but so that at the very time of marriage she fell, a sacrifical victim, struck by a grieving father, so that an escape and happy start be granted to the fleet. 100 Such evils is religion able to incite.

Our first thoughts are naturally of epic: “Iphianassa” is a Homeric form (A   B #    ; C   , Il. 9.145), while the two 132

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genitives in -ai, the verbal repetitions, and the marked alliterations throughout the passage recall Ennius’ Annales. This familiar alignment of Lucretius’ hexameters with epic tradition, however, only touches the surface of the passage. Thinking of Ennius or even of Homer at this moment does not advance Lucretius’ meaning and may even blunt the story’s emphasis. The impressive Homeric echo is, on reflection, oddly and even jarringly unhelpful: Homer’s Iphianassa was alive and well in Argos.53 Why, then, should Lucretius recall a contradicting detail in Greek epic tradition? As for the Roman echo, neither the biting irony nor the Greek subject of the passage corresponds to the content or tone of the Annales, nor is Ennius’ Ilia, that other Aeneadum genetrix, victim of a comparable vanity and superstition. Lucretius’ epic language thus creates the requisite grandeur in general but does not recall any specific moment in Greek or Roman epic tradition. What else might inform his strikingly vivid picture of Iphigeneia? As with Dido’s Furies, critics sometimes look to art. Cyril Bailey, who felt the power of the scene quite keenly, recalled a painting of the sacrifice at Aulis by Parrhasios’ rival, Timanthes of Cythnos (fl. ca. 400 B.C.). This painting was famous at Rome by the first century and became something of a rhetorician’s topos. Its most striking feature was its representation of different manifestations of grief on the faces of all the Achaean leaders except Agamemnon, whose head was instead covered.54 Lucretius could be thinking of this painting. The arresting quality of Timanthes’ melodramatic, veiled Agamemnon might be reflected in his emphasis on the “maestus ad aras parens.” The language, however, also suggests the influence of tragedy, and that association creates a resonance more complex than the largely formal recollection of epic style. 53

54

Aristonicus ad loc. thus concluded &   D# 
6 E ! 

, but this does not necessarily follow (so, rightly, Hainsworth 1993: 77). Cypria fr. 15 tries to solve the problem by making Iphianassa and Iphigeneia two separate people. Soph. El. 157–58 may imply the same. The discrepancy clearly did not trouble Lucretius. Bailey 1947: 614. According to Plin. Nat. 35.73–74, Timanthes’ painting was “oratorum laudibus celebrata.” There are references to it at Cic. Or. 74 and Quint. 2.13.13, as well as more general references to the sacrifice at Cic. Off. 3.95, Tusc. 1.116. For art history put at the service of rhetoric, see Douglas 1973: 108–15 and Vogt-Spira 1998. The possible relevance of this painting, with its emphasis on grief, horror, and reluctance, to Lucretius’ version of the scene might tell against the erotically charged “gaze” attributed to Lucretius’ Danaans by Keith 2000: 107–11.

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The memorable phrase “ductores Danaum delecti, prima virorum” (86) would live on in epic through Catullus (64.4) and Vergil (Aen. 2.14, 18; 8.518–19), but it springs from a phrase of Ennian tragedy describing the crew of the Argo: “Argivi in ea delecti viri” (212J). Even more arresting and pointed in its reference is Lucretius’ blood-stained altar (84–85), Triviai virginis aram Iphianassai turparunt sanguine foede,

which recalls the destruction of Troy at Andromache 92–94J: haec omnia vidi inflammari, Priamo vi vitam evitari, Iovis aram sanguine turpari I saw all this in flames, life driven by force from Priam, Jupiter’s altar fouled with blood.

This Ennian echo suggests deliberate allusion rather than mere verbal borrowing. Lucretius justifies his moral outrage at the sacrifice that launched the war on Troy by associating it with the impious murder of Priam that capped the city’s eventual destruction. So, too, the poignancy of line 94, “quod patrio princeps donarat nomine regem,” which led Bailey to quote Euripides (
%  ; 
!   :
E# ; !, IA 1220), again suggests a tragic source, but as we saw with Vergil’s Pentheus, the likeness may owe less to Euripides directly than to a mediating Latin tragedy on the events at Aulis. Ennius’ Iphigeneia, the only Latin play known on this theme, is of course the obvious candidate.55 Public shows of all kinds clearly fascinated Lucretius, and even as seemingly bookish an allusion as this one may yet be inspired by a theatrical experience.56 Other tragic debts in first-century literature, however, clearly and firmly reflect a knowledge based on reading. Among the most striking of these is the complex set of echoes and allusions evoked by the 55

56

See Jocelyn 1967: 318–24, and for the likelihood of Lucretius’ debt, Goldberg 2000: 55–57 and Harrison 2002: 4–6, 13. Other possible tragic echoes in the passage are less compelling, e.g., the epithet Trivia, which Varro LL 7.16 quotes from Ennian tragedy (Inc. 363J). For Agamemnon as “maestus parens,” cf. Eur. IA 1550: #,
 F
!

  (also a possible inspiration for Timanthes). The reference at Her. 3.34 to the actors Aesopus and Cimber dressing for their parts suggests that Ennius’ Iphigeneia was still being performed in the early first century. So, famously, the theater awnings of Lucr. 4.75–80. See Wiseman 1974: 15–18.

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famous “dilemma” of Gaius Gracchus in a speech clearly delivered toward the end of his life (fr. 61M): quo me miser conferam? quo vortam? in Capitoliumne? at fratris sanguine redundat. an domum? matremne ut miseram lamentatem videam et abiectam? Where shall I go in my misery? Where shall I turn? To the Capitol? It reeks with my brother’s blood. To my home? So that I see my mother wretched, in tears, and prostrate?

The picture here of Gracchus facing down a mob intent on his destruction has important literary as well as historical ramifications. Cicero at de Or. 3.214 makes clear that C. Gracchus impressed contemporaries with his emotional, dynamic delivery, and Quintilian eventually cites this passage among the few whose pathetic, emotional tone justified a gesture with both hands.57 It long served as an effective reminder that the delivery of oratory at Rome was expected to be energetic and capable of leaving both advocate and audience exhausted (cf. Quint. Inst. 11.3.144–49). Yet the device employed here is hardly spontaneous. Oratory was also an educated art, and this passage has not just a strong rhetorical appeal but a literary pedigree. Gracchus seems to recall the dilemma of Ennius’ tragic Medea: quo nunc me vortam? quod iter incipiam ingredi? domum paternamne? anne ad Peliae filias? Where shall I turn now? What road shall I begin to travel? To my father’s house? To the daughters of Pelias? (217–18J)

His echo is not likely to be the chance result of a theatrical memory. It is hard to imagine Gracchus deliberately calling Medea to mind, given the cause of her troubles. The echo is much more likely to have originated in 57

Quint. Inst. 11.3.115–16: “plus enim adfectus in his iunctae exhibent manus.” Echoes at Cic. Mur. 88, Sal. Iurg. 14.17, and Ps.-Sal. Inv. 1 make clear that the speech was itself studied. Neither its exact date nor occasion is known, though the death of Tiberius in 133 provides an obvious terminus post quem. Malcovati’s suggestion of 121 (“extremis vitae diebus . . . orationem hanc habuisse Gaius videtur,” 1953: 196) may be right but remains speculation. Gracchus’ quandary is not, strictly speaking, the figure later rhetoricians called a dilemma. See Craig 1993: 24–25, and Vasaly 1993: 18–19.

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a book, since by the late second century, Ennius’ play was a benchmark text with a secure place in the rhetorical curriculum. This is clear not only because the nurse’s speech with which it opened was often quoted but because both the Rhetorica ad Herennium and Cicero in de Inventione use that speech in precisely the same way, as an example of overly elaborate explication. The formality of the two citations shows every sign of their common origin in a well-worn, well-remembered lesson that has much more to do with style than with content.58 A similar lesson probably secured Trebatius’ memory of the play in Gaul (Fam. 7.6). By the early 40s, it evidently enjoyed canonical status in the emerging corpus of Latin classics (“Latinas litteras”, Fin. 1.4) and the echo by Gracchus suggests that its elevation was already in process by the middle of the previous century, that is, within a generation of its creation. In later generations, when Gracchus had himself become a figure of literary history, he and his Ennian model probably echoed together in Accius’ ear as an anguished Thyestes wondered, egone Argivuum imperium attingam aut Pelopia digner domo? quo me ostendam? quod templum adeam? quem ore funesto alloquar? Could I even touch the rule of Argos or be worthy of Pelops’ house? Where shall I show myself ? What temple shall I approach? Whom shall I address with mournful mouth?

The specific sequence quo + quod + a person addressed suggests something more than the coincidence of a structural commonplace. The debt is certainly beyond doubt when Catullus’ Ariadne, abandoned by Theseus, voices a similar despair in poem 64.59 nam quo me referam? quali spe perdita nitor? Idaeosne petam montes? at gurgite lato discernens ponti truculentum dividit aequor. an patris auxilium sperem? quemne ipsa reliqui respersum iuvenem fraterna caeda secuta? . . . 58

59

Her. 2.34 and Cic. Inv. 1.91. Cicero’s prose example that follows in this passage is a detailed genealogy of the Gracchi, as if the two figures, Medea and Gracchus, were linked in his mind. Cat. 64.177ff., echoing Ennius 217–18J, Acc. Atreus 231–32R. (The Ennian passage as cited by Cic. de Or. 3.217 may be abridged. See Jocelyn 1967: 356–57. That passage supports MSS. quo in Accius’ version, not Lipsius’ quoi as printed by Ribbeck.) For Gracchus’ putative use of Ennius, doubted by Norden 1915: Nachtr¨age 13–14, see Jocelyn 1967: 357 and Fowler 1987: 5–7. Zetzel 1983: 257–65 links Ennius, Gracchus, and Catullus but does not mention Accius.

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Where shall I turn? With what hope shall I endure, ruined? Shall I seek the Idaean peaks? The ocean intervenes, interposing the seas’ billows with a great gulf. Shall I seek my father’s help? Whom I myself left, following a youth spattered with my brother’s blood? . . .

This is, in context, actually a return to Ennius’ play, for Catullus 64 announces its debt to Ennian tragedy at the outset: Peliaco quondam prognatae vertice pinus dicuntur liquidas Neptuni nasse per undas Phasidos ad fluctus et fines Aeeteos, cum lecti iuvenes, Argivae robora pubis, auratam optantes Colchis avertere pellem . . . Pines once nurtured on the Pelian height are said to have swum across Neptune’s fluid billows to the eddies of Phasis and Aeetian borders, when hand-picked young men, the flower of Argive youth, seeking to appropriate the golden pelt of Colchis . . . (64.1–5)

The phrases “Peliaco vertice,” “lecti iuvenes, Argivae robora pubis,” and “auratam pellem” recall the famous opening of Medea exul: utinam ne in nemore Pelio securibus caesa accidisset abiegna ad terram trabes, neve inde navis inchoandi exordium cepisset, quae nunc nominatur nomine Argo, quia Argivi in ea delecti viri vecti petebant pellem inauratam arietis Colchis . . . Would that fir timber in the Pelian grove, though struck by axes had not fallen to earth nor then undertaken the beginning of a ship which now is known by the name Argo, since on it the chosen Argive men are carried in quest of the golden pelt of the ram of Colchis . . . (208–16J)

Catullus thus deliberately brings his readers to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis via tragedy, and tragic allusion returns, with more thematic than 137

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narrative relevance, when Ariadne echoes in the imbedded tale of her experience on Naxos the tragic opening of the frame narrative. Iuppiter omnipotens, utinam ne tempore primo Cnosia Cecropiae tetigissent litora puppes, Omnipotent Jupiter, would that in early times the Cecropian sterns had not touched the Knossian shores (171–72)

Only then does the rejected Ariadne speak, as we have seen, in the voice of Ennius’ rejected Medea. In this way, the relentless recollection of tragic Ennius turns the Catullan hexameters away from echoes of epic Ennius.60 Catullus’ ready assimilation of tragedy into his formally epic context was facilitated by the dual nature of tragedy’s reception at Rome. One line informs the literary, essentially text-based experience responsible for the tragic phrases and images that echo through first-century poetry, producing the effective color of Lucretius’ Iphigeneia and the genre play so richly displayed in Catullus 64. This is the quality that led Cicero to call Ennius egregius poeta when quoting his tragedies (Tusc. 3.45) and to hail his Alexander as a poem, not a play (“poema tenerum et moratum atque molle,” Div. 1.66). It is also the kind of experience that encouraged and empowered him to illustrate philosophical points with tragic examples, perhaps drawing on an insight gained from the theater but clearly doing the work of citation in the study.61 That process of text-based reference as distinct from the visual memories invoked by his quotations from the Iliona and Dulorestes brings us back to the problem of Dido’s dream and its Furies. The context for Vergil’s tragic evocation is, as it was for Catullus’ recollection of Medea in poem 64, epic to the core. Vergil’s model for the passage comes not from a play but from a book: it is Ilia’s dream in the first book of Ennius’ Annales. That debt was recognized long ago, though it tends to slip from the reckoning when critics are distracted 60

61

Catullus’ use of tragic language in the poem’s opening is analyzed in detail by Arkins 1982: 125–30 and esp. Thomas 1982: 146–60. Auhagen 2000, arguing by analogy from Ennius’ Andromacha, claims a tragic model for Ariadne’s style of “internal” monologue. Cf. Clare 1996: 74–76. So at Ac. 2.88–89, Cicero illustrates the nature of dreams and visions with a series of quotations from Ennius’ Alcmeo, Pacuvius’ Iliona, Eurpides’ Heacles, and an unidentified Ajax.

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by Vergil’s tragic similes.62 Yet the pathos and horror of Dido’s dream depend for their effect on a poignant contrast with its epic predecessor. The vestal virgin Ilia was, according to Ennius, Aeneas’ daughter. Raped by Mars, she will bear the twins Romulus and Remus before being cast into the Tiber, rescued by divine intervention, and eventually married to the river-god Anio.63 Ennius presents the story of her rape as if it were a dream. She awakes and tells her sister, Eurydice, how, after her encounter, she appeared to be left wandering in a daze until comforted by her father’s voice and promised recompense for her suffering: ita sola postilla, germana soror, errare videbar tardaque vestigare et quaerere te neque posse corde capessere: semita nulla pedem stabilibat. exim compellare pater me voce videtur his verbis: “o gnata, tibi sunt ante gerendae aerumnae, post ex fluvio fortuna resistet.” haec ecfatus pater, germana, repente recessit . . . Afterward, alone I seemed to wander, sister, and to stagger slowly and to seek you and to be unable to fulfill this wish: no path would guide my foot. Then my father appeared to call me with his voice in these words: “What troubles, daughter, you must bear before good fortune from the river saves you.” Having said this, our father, sister, suddenly withdrew . . . (An. 39–42)

Vergil’s implicit contrast between the ferus Aeneas who torments Dido by driving her down a lonely road and this beneficent predecessor, who rescues Ilia from loneliness, is certainly meant to shock.64 Dido’s Aeneas 62

63

64

The debt was duly noted, e.g., by Leo 1913: 179–80 n. 2 and Steiner 1952: 50–1, but its significance went unexplored until Krevans 1993: 266–71. Skutsch 1985: 193–213 (discussing fragments xxix–xxxix) and Goldberg 1995: 95–101. Chronological shifts in the annalistic tradition later gave this role to Rhea Silvia, as at Liv. 1.4. So, rightly, Krevans 1993: 270: “For Augustan readers who knew their Ennius, there must have been a chilling irony in visiting Dido with a dream representing the conception of Romulus after Aeneas deserts her.” The Ennian passage was certainly well known: Cic. Div. 1.40 implies it is famous. A generation later, it was still in Ovid’s mind when describing Alcyone’s dream at Met. 11.674–738.

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brings destruction instead of comfort. Dido loses a legacy rather than gains one and will find little peace, and even less vindication, in death. The tragic similes that add visual power to Vergil’s description are not part of the dream itself. The narrator first describes what Dido experiences (466–68) and then makes her appearance on that empty road vivid by commenting on her mental state and behavior from outside the narrative, using famous literary examples to explain what it means to be demens and agitatus.65 In this way, Vergil isolates and limits the tragic associations of the dream: when he resumes the narrative with a return to Dido’s intentions, he will return to the Ennian model by having Dido confess to her own sister, Anna, a sublimated form of her destructive intention (474 ff.). The dream as it unfolds certainly moves from epic to tragedy, but then it moves back again. And it clings throughout to the world of books, where tragic examples commonly share the page with epic ones.66 Even the Furies themselves, who connect Vergil’s similes to the tragic tradition, also connect them to the commonplaces of educated discourse.67 The transition from the one frame of reference to the other is already observable in Cicero. His early evocation of the Furies when defending Sextus Roscius sounds like a genuine stage memory, Nolite enim putare, quem ad modum in fabulis saepenumero videtis, eos qui aliquid impie scelerateque commiserint agitari et perterreri Furiarum taedis ardentibus. sua quemque fraus et suus terror maxime vexat . . . Do not think that those who have committed some impious and criminal act are hounded and terrified by the blazing torches of the Furies, as you so often see in plays. Their own crime and their own terror beset them . . . (Sex. Rosc. 67) 65

66

67

This technique of announcing a dream and taking the reader in and out of its description through a series of similes is especially well handled at Prop. 2.26A. So, for example, at Ac. 2.88–89 Cicero illustrates dreams with citations from Ennius’ proem to the Annales, followed by his Alcmeo, Pacuvius’ Iliona, and Euripides’ Heracles. The dreams at Div. 1.40–45 include, besides Ilia, passages from Ennius’ Alexander and Accius’ Brutus. It helped, of course, that Ennius was both a tragic and an epic poet of distinction. Roman authors do not seem to have made any consistent distinction among the terms Erinyes, Eumenides, Furiae, and Dirae, though Roman Furies in general seem to have lost the old Greek association with blood guilt. See Brown 1984: 266–67 and Jocelyn 1967: 218–19.

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When we meet these same Furies again, however, described in almost exactly the same way twenty-five years later in the attack on Piso, Nolite enim ita putare, patres conscripti, ut in scaena videtis, homines consceleratos impulsu deorum terreri furialibus taedis ardentibus. sua quemque fraus, suum facinus, suum scelus, sua audacia de sanitate ac mente deturbat; hae sunt impiorum furiae, hae flammae, hae faces. Do not think, conscript fathers, that evil men, incited by the gods, are terrified by the Furies’ blazing torches as you see on the stage. Their own crime, their own wickedness, their own evil, their own recklessness deprives them of sanity and sense; these are the Furies of the impious, these are their flames, their torches. (Pis. 46)

and yet again, torches still blazing, in the first book of De legibus, we begin to recognize not a reference to tragedy itself but an example of tragedy’s contribution to the common images of the day.68 Finally, the enduring power of tragedy’s images requires one last look at its other distinguishing feature, the power of its language. Later authors clearly found in tragedy a way of using language that was particularly vivid, powerful, and memorable – “rhetorical” in the Romans’ best sense of the word. When Cicero makes an example of Philoctetes, “whose groaning we must excuse,” e viperino morsu venae viscerum veneno inbutae taetros cruciatus cient my vitals’ veins from the viper’s bite with venom filled excite terrible torments

we note not just the alliteration and wordplay so characteristic of Roman dramatic style at its most committed but Accius’ ability to create a figure so powerful that Cicero made him the very symbol of physical suffering.69 Yet there is also something missing from this evocation. There is no 68

69

Cic. Lg. 1.40: “ . . . set ut eos agitent insectenturque furiae non ardentibus taedis, sicut in fabulis, sed angore conscientiae fraudisque cruciatu.” S. Rosc. is dated to 80 B.C., Pis. to 55, Lg. probably to the late 50s. Cf. the similar reference at Har. 39 (56 B.C.). Cic. Tusc. 2.19, quoting Acc. Philocteta 552-3R. Cf. Tusc. 2.33, Fin. 2.94, 5.52. According to D.Chr. 52, all three Athenian Philoctetes plays depicted the hero’s suffering, but only Euripides had rival delegations of Greeks and Trojans come to Lemnos: the Latin Philoctetes’ address to Paris as reported by Quint. 5.10.83 (561R) therefore suggests a Euripidean influence, though Dangel 1995: 309 may well be right to say that Accius “a contamin´e plusieurs sources.” Euripides was doubtless among the most overtly rhetorical ones available to him.

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indication in this appeal or in any other tragic recollection, for example, Cassandra’s madness, Deiphilus’ lament or Orestes’ sacrifice, that Roman tragedy regularly challenged audiences with the moral complexity and intellectual tension we regard as emblematic of its Athenian antecedent. Though heroic legend invites reinterpretation and revaluation and thus facilitates tragedy’s crossing of cultural boundaries, the Roman reinterpretations of Greek legend do not seem to have emphasized those conflicts between knowledge and ignorance, family and city, mortality and immortality that gave Athenian tragedy its intellectual power. A culture disinclined to doubt its own traditional values may have felt no need to question the conduct of its imported heroes.70 The “tragic spirit” that Horace ascribed to the early dramatists was a virtue of their diction, not their content.71 nam spirat tragicum satis et feliciter audet, sed turpem putat inscite metuitque lituram They had the tragic spirit, all right, and their risks paid off, but they had the unschooled writer’s shame and fear of revision

Roman tragedy was always a great mover of emotions but apparently not an interrogator or explainer or definer of Roman values. What modern readers recognize as so unquestionably tragic in Vergil’s Dido and can best explain with reference to Attic examples is testimony less to a Roman tragic spirit like the Greek or to the influence of the Roman tragic stage than to one more Vergilian innovation in a decidedly untraditional Latin poem. By that standard, Republican tragedy would seem to offer later poets little more than a noteworthy style, a diction particularly convenient since it was congruent with epic style and appropriate to epic themes. Catullus certainly mined tragedy in this way, and though scenes from the tragic stage or as found in tragic books stoked the fire of Lucretius’ imagination as well as his indignation, the bitterness 70

71

So MacKay 1975: 156, “Even the acts of public heroism performed by the great heroes of the Republic . . . seem in an odd way almost matter-of-fact – one hesitates to say stodgy – perhaps one ought not to hesitate; Fabricius or Cincinnatus or Fabius Cunctator might have accepted the word as a term of praise.” See also Goldberg 1995: 144–47. Hor. Ep. 2.1.166–67. La Penna 1979: 56–58 well observes the openness of tragedy to adaptation and reinterpretation, but his effort to find “lo spirito del grande tragico greco” in Latin fragments (71–78) is much less successful than his demonstration of their pathos (78–92).

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of his tone and the goal of his argument move far from dramatic fictions. Tragedy employed in such ways, however, seems to do little more than nip at the heels of epic, which raises one last question: Roman poetry became most effectively tragic by putting the stage behind it. If Republican tragedy, impressive though it could be, was not a particularly effective interrogator or explainer or definer of Roman values, what was?

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chapter five

ENTER SATIRE

aius quinctius raised livestock in gaul. when he died in G 83 B.C., his interest in the ranch passed to his brother Publius. So, unfortunately, did his debts and a somewhat problematic relationship with his partner, a man named Sextus Naevius. To make matters worse, Publius Quinctius had no great head for business. He failed to settle the debts he had inherited and then, when the partners proved unable either to maintain or to liquidate the partnership fairly, he and Naevius resorted to a series of legal moves and countermoves, actions and procrastinations, appeals and counterappeals. The situation eventually grew so unsatisfactory that Naevius went to the urban praetor, a certain Burrienus, and won authority to seize the disputed property outright. He did so, leaving the suddenly deprived Quinctius to challenge his action. That proved to be difficult. By 81 there was a new praetor, Cn. Cornelius Dolabella, who refused to reconsider the circumstances of his predecessor’s judgment or the legality of his edict. Dolabella instead defined the outstanding issue between the partners in terms both narrow and negative: to claim redress, Quinctius would have to show that his goods had not been seized in accordance with Burrienus’ original edict.1 The hearing that followed was Cicero’s first surviving case, and the record preserves all the marks of a losing proposition. The young advocate – he was then only twenty-six – faced serious obstacles. He was joining a complex affair in medias res: Quinctius’ original representative 1

Cic. Quinct. 30: “si bona sua ex edicto P. Burrieni praetoris dies xxx possessa non essent”. The case was assigned to a iudex, G. Aquilius Gallus (5), and a panel of three assessors, P. Quinctilius Varus, M. Claudius Marcellus, and L. Lucilius Balbus (34). Details in Alexander 1990: no. 126. Roby 1902: ii, 346–53 describes the procedure followed. Though Cicero’s speech was delivered in 81 (Gell. 15.28.3), the initial dispute went back to 83. For the praetor Dolabella, see Gruen 1966: 394–95.

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had abandoned the case (3, 34). Dolabella’s edict forced Quinctius, though defending his property and reputation, to go to law as plaintiff and thus compelled Cicero, as he would indignantly protest, to speak first and against the unknown and the unanswerable.2 His task was further impeded by the fact, evident despite a narratio carefully weighted in his client’s favor (11–34), that Quinctius was at best a dilatory blunderer, while the defendant Naevius, rich and well connected, had used those connections to secure as his defenders L. Marcius Philippus, a former consul, and the greatest advocate of the day, Q. Hortensius Hortalus.3 What could an aspiring orator do under such circumstances? What would make his four iudices most attentive and receptive? The handbook advice was to attack the opponent’s character: goodwill can be won by arousing hatred, distaste, and contempt for an adversary.4 This is just what Cicero set out to do, and he drew the elements of his attack – once again following the standard advice – from Naevius’ own family background (natura) and manner of life (victus).5 non quo ei deesset ingenium, nam neque parum facetus scurra Sex. Naevius neque inhumanus praeco est umquam existimatus. quid ergo est? cum ei natura nihil melius quam vocem dedisset, pater nihil praeter libertatem reliquisset, vocem in quaestum contulit, libertate usus est, quo impunius dicax esset. Not that he lacked talent, for Sextus Naevius was never regarded as a witless dandy or a ruthless auctioneer. So what then? Since nature had given him nothing better than a voice and his father had left him 2

3

4

5

Quinct. 8–9. Analysis of the legal case in Roby 1902: ii, 453–85, Bannon 2000, and of Cicero’s rhetoric on this occasion in Kennedy 1972: 138–48. Philippus, consul in 91, also had a formidable reputation as an orator (Cic. de Or. 3.1.4, Hor. Ep. 1.7.46). Cicero faces the challenges this presents to him at Quinct. 72. See Kinsey 1970. Rhet Her. 1.8: “ab adversariorum persona benivolentia captabitur si eos in odium, in invidiam, in contemptionem adducemus”. Cf. Cic. Inv. 1.22 and May 1988: 14–21. Cic. Inv. 1.35. The theme is developed at Quinct. 55–56. The resulting attack is so conventional and almost obligatory that none of its details is trustworthy. Kinsey 1971: 64–65 issues the appropriate warning. Cf. Nisbet 1961: 192–97 on this type of oratorical invective, and for the social prejudice recalled – an upper-class phenomenon – Treggiari 1969: 230–32 and Bannon 2000: 86–89. The sneer prefigures Cicero’s demolition of the freedman prosecutor Erucius in the defense of Roscius Amerinus and the attack on the prosecution’s Sardinian witnesses at the trial of Aemilius Scaurus in 54 (Scaur. 14–20, 38–45). It is often the mark of a weak defense. Cf. Cic. Att. 4.17.9 (“in hoc iudicio valde laborabit”), V. Max. 8.1.10.

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nothing except his freedom, he made his voice a source of gain and used his free status to exercise his wit with impunity. (Quinct. 11)

The embellishment here is quite striking, for Naevius’ original profession was not as universally disreputable as Cicero pretends. A praeco, the man who arranged for a sale of goods and conducted the resulting auction, might well be loud and flamboyant, but he was unlikely to be a buffoon or a fool. This was an occupation that encouraged and empowered the upwardly mobile. With wit, a head for figures, and good business sense a praeco, however far down the social ladder he began, was well poised to make a significant ascent. The second-century praeco Granius, for example, became famous as a wit, mixed easily with aristocrats, and even entertained the great orator Licinius Crassus at his table. Varro’s teacher Aelius Stilo, who wore an eques’ ring, was the son of a praeco. A late Republican senator, L. Valerius Praeconinus, probably had a similar background.6 Yet the social upheavals of the early first century – an infamous time of proscription, debt, and displacement – that gave praecones especially noteworthy opportunities for advancement also made them highly visible targets of resentment as middlemen who profited from the misery of others. “Praeco” quickly became a potent term of abuse, and not just for the provincial rancher Sextus Naevius. Twenty-five years later, a bolder, more confident Cicero would defame the ex-consul L. Calpurnius Piso by tracing his moral failings to his grandfather, “an auctioneer from Milan.”7 6

7

For Granius, Cic. Brut. 160 and de Or. 2.244, 281–82 with Rauh 1989: 455–56; for L. Aelius Stilo Praeconinus, Suet. Rhet. 3.2 with Badian 1972: 181–82 and Kaster 1995: 74–75; for the senator Valerius, Wiseman 1971, no. 456. Naevius’ career evidently followed a similar pattern. The implication of Quinct. 12 is that he used the capital he acquired as an auctioneer to reestablish himself as a landowner in Gaul, where he married Quinctius’ cousin (16) and raised Quinctius’ friend and agent, Alfenus. Cf. the portrait of the benign rural praeco Volteius Mena at Hor. Ep. 1.7.55–59. Horace’s own father, a respectable man of some substance, also worked in the auction business, though as a coactor, not praeco. For the distinction, see Fraenkel 1957: 4–5 and Wiseman 1971: 71–73. As Treggiari 1969: 100 notes, “the profession of auctioneering, then as now, was compatible with a wide range of social status.” Cic. Pis. 62, fr. ix. (“Mediolanensis praeco”). Rauh 1989: 459–61 analyzes the reasons for the Romans’ dislike of praecones. Damon 1997: 196–97 observes that prejudice at work. Cicero alludes to the anguish of forced sales at Quinct. 49–50 and returns to the shame of Naevius’ former occupation in his peroration, when he refers to the mortification of being bested by a man “whose voice was prostituted in the auctioneers’ trade” (‘cuius vox in praeconio quaestu prostitit,’ Quinct. 95), as if the very sound of it was polluting.

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Labeling Naevius a scurra carried even more powerful a charge, for this was a statement not of profession but of character. A scurra was a man who lived by his wit in a culture naturally suspicious of facetiae: originally a man-about-town and then a dandy, idler, or fop.8 As old Megaronides said in Plautus’ Trinummus (199–202): Nihil est profecto stultius neque stolidius neque mendaciloquius neque [adeo] argutum magis, neque confidentiloquius neque peiiurius quam urbani adsidui cives quos scurras vocant. There is absolutely no more foolish or more obtuse or more deceitful a gabber or more chatty by far, or more assertive a gabber or more untrustworthy than those incessant city-slickers they call scurrae.

Though a scurra could acquire wealth, respectability was beyond his reach. The saying was, Cicero reminds the tribunal, that a scurra could more easily become rich than head a household.9 By the end of the speech, he has so thoroughly turned the virtues of Naevius’ wit into flaws that Quinctius’ corresponding flaws start to sound like virtues: Fatetur [Quinctius] se non belle dicere, non ad voluntatem loqui posse, non ab afflicta amicitia transfugere atque ad florentem aliam devolare. Quinctius admits that he does not talk smartly, cannot fit his speech to the occasion, does not desert a friendship in distress to fall upon another on the rise. (Quinct. 93)

Defined this way, Naevius, the non-Quinctius, becomes not just a scurra but that other smooth talker of transient loyalties, a parasite. And, given Naevius’ particular array of talents, one especially famous parasite might well come to mind. Naevius, we know, was hardly an idler. He rose from praeco to landowner, kinsman of the Quinctii, and possessor of their property by more than amusing chatter and flattery. According to Cicero, he suborned the legal system itself, constantly manipulating its rules to his advantage. 8

9

Damon 1997: 109–12. Neoteric sophisticates attempted to revalue the vocabulary of wit, but the old ideas lingered for Cicero to play upon here. See Krostenko 2001: 59–64, 168–72. Quinct. 55: “Memini; vetus est, ‘de scurra multo facilius divitem quam patrem familias fieri posse’.” The “saying” could of course be Cicero’s invention, but the sentiment is meant to carry conviction.

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Cicero complains that he was lax and informal when he should have been strict and correspondingly formal when he should have been indulgent: he did not insist on a full accounting when Gaius Quinctius died and the partnership passed to Publius (38), but he rushed to the praetor Burrienus for a judgment in their eventual dispute when he should first have sought a private settlement (48). And matters reached this rancorous state because, when the two quarreling partners entered into a formal vadimonium, he did not treat Quinctius’ failure to appear before the praetor at the appointed time with the indulgence a kinsman deserves (22, 53–56). Naevius accomplished all this, Cicero implies, because he knew that the hapless Quinctius would stand confused and defenseless before his machinations. In telling the story this way, Cicero might easily have recalled one of the greatest legal manipulators of Roman fiction, the parasite Phormio. Terence’s Phormio is in fact an extraordinary parasite. Though fully capable of playing on the traditional fears of a parasite’s appetite (Ph. 330– 36, 1050–55), his distinguishing passion is not for food but for the cut and thrust of legal argument. He is a plotter, a leader rather than a follower. He dominates the action of the play named after him because, like Cicero’s Naevius, his wit enables him to turn the law to his advantage. In this case, he uses the Athenian law of the epikleros to make a fraudulent claim that the girl young Antipho loves is a relation whose interests Antipho is legally required to protect through marriage,10 and he arranges for the young man to stand mutely by as an unwitting and inarticulate opponent when the judgment requiring this marriage is rendered (281–84). Then Phormio stymies the inevitable protests of Antipho’s far more articulate father, Demipho, by turning Demipho’s threat of a countersuit into an elegantly conceived plan of extortion (629–78). Phormio thus emerges as the most spectacularly legalistic of all the Roman stage parasites: “he is an expert advocate in a play which abounds in legalistic maneuvers, legal language both straightforward and metaphorical, and which culminates in a transformation of the entire stage into a courtroom.”11 Legal procedures and legal expectations are at the center of his fictions, and he uses them much as Naevius does and with similar effect. 10

11

Ter. Ph. 125–26: “lex est ut orbae, qui sint genere proxumi, /is nubant, et illos ducere eadem haec lex iubet.” For the challenge this distinctly Athenian mechanism posed for Terence’s adaptation of his model, a play by Apollodorus of Carystos, see Lef e` vre 1978: 20–24. Segal and Moulton 1978: 278, cf. 280–85 on the play’s legalism; for the oddities of Phormio’s characterization, see Arnott 1970 and Damon 1997: 89–98.

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Cicero of course knew Phormio well and appreciated his unique qualities. In 69 B.C. he would ridicule the banker Sex. Clodius, unluckily surnamed Phormio, for being no less dishonest and impudent than his comic namesake.12 In the second Philippic, Terence’s Phormio reappears as confidence man to form an unsavory trio with the parasite Gnatho and the leno Ballio (Phil. 2.15). Oratory readily made such connections. Roman comedy’s predilection for character types offered helpful models, implicit and explicit, for the orator’s delineations of character, often accomplished by reference to physical appearance and mannerisms of speech and gesture, what the handbooks called notatio.13 Appeal to a comic example would have been especially natural here in the defense of Quinctius because Quinctius’ brother-in-law was Roscius, and the great actor was conspicuously present in the front row as Cicero delivered his speech. Cicero, we learn, had undertaken the case at Roscius’ earnest request, and the actor had himself advised the journeyman advocate on its merit (Quinct. 77–80). What then could have been more natural than to blacken the character of the legal trickster Naevius further by casting him as another Phormio, a role Roscius doubtless played on the stage? Yet Cicero does no such thing. Though Roscius is present in this speech, comedy is not, and its absence is not without significance. Oratory’s readiness to learn from comic techniques of character portrayal and to assume appropriate comic postures was not accompanied by any corresponding readiness to evoke comic actions or comic plots. Speeches might recall certain characters or the moral sentiments associated with them, but not anything they actually did.14 There was a good reason for this. Comedy too often rewards the “wrong” actions. The virtues of real life become liabilities on the stage, while the more outrageous a character behaves, the greater his reward. Terence’s Demipho is angry less because Antipho has lost a lawsuit than because he failed to defend himself as a citizen should: “To know the truth and to hand the 12

13

14

Caec. 27: “nec minus niger nec minus confidens quam ille Terentianus est Phormio” ∼ “est parasitus quidam Phormio/ homo confidens,” Ter. Ph. 122–23. Rhet. Her. 4.63–65. Cf. the association of Fannius with Roscius’ Ballio at Q. Rosc. 20, 50. Cicero’s discussion of character in narratio at Inv. 1.27 is aptly illustrated by quotation of Ter. Ad. 60–64. Bl¨ansdorf 1974: 150–52 and May 1988: 1–12. Thus Cicero will recall Ballio the pimp or Micio the lenient father, but not the plot of Pseudolus or Adelphoe. So too in the characterization of Naevius, recollections of the comic parasite are deliberately general and indirect (Damon 1997: 201–3).

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case over to your opponents by silence, does the law demand that, too?”15 Yet Antipho is represented as failing in this duty – it is an arranged failure, of course, but that is the point – because his own modesty stood in his way. functus adulescentulist officium liberalis. postquam ad iudices ventumst, non potuit cogitata proloqui: ita eum tum timidum ibi obstupefecit pudor. He did what a proper young man should do. When the matter came to court, he could not speak what he had planned; Modesty made him timid and silenced him on the spot. (281–84)

The plot of Phormio eventually rewards Antipho for the kind of legal helplessness that is Quinctius’ real-life ruin. Even worse is the example of Phormio himself, trickster, swindler, parasite, confidens et edax, whose skills not just earn him a meal or flatter a fool but subvert the power of the two old fathers Demipho and Chremes and empower Chremes’ wife, Nausistrata, in one of the most complete comic inversions of the Roman stage (985–1055). To identify Naevius, the real life contortor legum, with the fictitious Phormio would thus have run the risk of recalling a rogue’s victory just when the advocate hoped to precipitate a rogue’s defeat. That inverted world, where “bad” morals were rewarded and “wrong” actions prevail, clearly made comedy too treacherous a model for the orator. And not just for the orator. Despite its claim of holding a mirror to life and its habit of spinning plots from the frailties, inconsistencies, and inequities of its society,16 Roman comedy was not a very effective vehicle for social criticism. For one thing, it was not kind to moralizers. Plautus deliberately undercuts the authority of his moralizing characters, and the ostensibly 15

16

Ter. Ph. 237–38: “verum scientem, tacitum causam tradere advorsariis, /etiamne id lex coegit?” Roman civil law depended on the willingness of both parties in a dispute to accept the demands of its procedures; a refusal to play frustrates the game. Thus Cicero’s particular problem in defending Quinctius’ failure to appear before the praetor as their vadimonium required. See Kelly 1966: 1–30. This is not to deny the possibility of the kinds of social exploration claimed for Plautine comedy most recently by McCarthy 2000 and Leigh 2004: it is simply that the ancient evidence of comedy’s reception suggests that Romans either found that possibility too disconcerting to address or were laughing too hard to notice it at work.

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more serious Terence is not very different. When the stern Demea of Adelphoe offers his own variant on the mirror topos, a sentiment no less true for being a clich´e, he is promptly parodied by the slave Syrus, who is about to instruct the slaves in the kitchen on preparing a meal: postremo, tamquam in speculam, in patinas, Demea, inspicere iubeo et moneo quid facto usum sit. Above all, Demea, I order them to look into the pots as into a mirror, and I advise about what is to be done. (Ad. 428–29, cf. 414–19)

His mockery becomes far more memorable a stage moment than the old man’s truth.17 When comedy does acknowledge the foibles of contemporary life, its jokes are strikingly general. That tendency is particularly marked in its treatment of soldiers and their exploits, perennial targets of fun but never identified with any particular people or events. The recollection of military postures is always relevant and always funny because it is never personal. Sosia, for example, describes his master Amphitruo’s exploits in familiar terms. victores victis hostibus legions reveniunt domum, duello exstincto maxumo atque internecatis hostibus The victorious legions return home with the enemy conquered, a great war brought to an end and the enemy slaughtered

The language recalls any number of almost equally pompous inscriptions.18 Later generations might be tempted to see the great Scipio in a Naevian soldier dragged from his mistress’ house by an angry father, and 17

18

Demea in turn eventually demonstrates the weakness of his brother Micio’s moral position, too (Ad. 985–88), and the inability of modern readers to agree on the effect of that ending reveals the fragility of the play’s moral vision. “Terence at his worst,” says Gratwick 1987: 260. For other views, see Goldberg 1986: 23–28. Moore 1998: 67 rightly observes that “whenever Plautus implicitly or explicitly draws a connection between theater and moralizing, his message is the same: theater, especially comedy, is inadequate as a purveyor of moral truths, and audiences should expect from it not edification but pleasure.” Pl. Amph. 188–89. Cf. Therapontigonus’ exploits at Curc. 442–48, and for real-life analogues, Courtney 1995 no. 3 (Mummius’ triumph over Corinth), Liv. 40.52.5–7 (Aemilius’ Lepidus dedication after Myonessus), or the similar fragments culled by Caesius Bassus (GLK 6.265 = Courtney 1995 no. 5). Efforts to identify a specific target of Plautus’ parody have failed to convince. See Harvey 1981: 484–89.

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the frequent senatorial wrangles over triumphs claimed and denied in the third and second centuries may well have provoked wry amusement in all but the highest social circles (which might not have been so amused), but the Roman stage kept itself singularly free of specific contemporary references and explicitly topical banter.19 So Alcumena, hugely pregnant and at once pathetic and absurd, will sing the merits of virtus: virtus praemium est optumum; virtus omnibus rebus anteit profector: libertas, salus, vita, res et parentes, patria et prognati tutantur, servantur: virtus omnia in sese habet, omnia adsunt bona quem penest virtus. valor is the greatest prize; valor surpasses all things by far: liberty, health, life, possessions and parents, country and children are protected, preserved: valor has everything in itself, all good things are present for the one who possesses valor.

It is, to say the least, a strange disquisition on this most aristocratic of values, but Plautus’ parody of elite postures and military prowess develops in the context of myth and epic, not of politics.20 Every prominent Roman of the day was a potential gloriosus, but to feel threatened by comic parodies of military vainglory would have meant confessing to the vice being parodied. This embrace of the general over the specific and the indirect over the explicit no doubt encouraged what became one of comedy’s most striking characteristics, namely the breadth of its contemporary appeal. The Roman audience was never monolithic. Men and women, slaves and free, rich and poor, the respectable and the socially dubious all joined the crowds that gathered to watch plays.21 What they heard from the stage 19

20

21

The Scipio association is reported by Gell. 7.8.5 (“verone an falso incertum”). Stratophanes of Truc. is sometimes thought to parody Minucius Thermus and the debate in which Cato addressed the Senate De falsis pugnis, but that theory is rightly dismissed by Enk 1953: i, 28–30 and ii, 117–19. See in general Hanson 1965 and Gruen 1990: 124–57. Pl. Amph. 648–53, cf. Lysiteles’ appeal to virtus at Tri. 641–54. See Earl 1967: 25–26, Phillips 1985, Saylor 1998: 11–15, and further references therein. Pl. Poen. 1–35 gives a particularly vivid picture of the second–century Roman audience. Further testimony in Csapo and Slater 1995: 306–12. By the 190s, senators

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and what they thought of what they heard would have varied widely with who did the hearing and the thinking. Yet the very diversity that encouraged the expansion of comedy’s range also creates a perennial stumbling block for political readings of this or that particular play: for every spectator capable of recognizing Cato’s attitudes among the moral postures of Plautus’ Trinummus, there were probably two or three other spectators much less capable of knowing in any but a general way even who Cato was.22 What audiences as a group certainly did know was the comic genre itself, for they came to plays with clear expectations. The impromptu performance spaces of the early ludi encouraged the easy relationship between actors and audiences that is so palpable in the surviving texts and was integral to the conservatism of the comoedia palliata, a genre that measured success not by how well a dramatist escaped its conventions but how imaginatively he embraced them. Roman audiences, boisterous, demanding, and diverse, were participating partners in the phenomena that was Roman drama.23 This was not the sort of crowd likely to know or to care that Ennius’ soul once resided in a peacock. Epic’s literary conceits played to an audience that was smaller, more coherent, and more bookish, a group that would have comprised only a small part of the public that was drawn to ludi scaenici.24 It was also necessarily more aristocratic. Any chance to develop an epic tradition reflecting popular traditions or employing native forms vanished completely when Ennius aligned himself with Homer and based his finest effects on the recognition of Homeric models. His innovations, for all they expanded the artistic capabilities of the genre in Latin, also narrowed its range.25 By expecting its audience to know

22

23

24

25

required separate seating to protect their dignity (Liv. 33.44.5 and 54.4); within a century, the equites had secured a comparable privilege (Cic. Mur. 40, Vell. Pat. 2.32.2, Plut. Cic. 13.2). See Flaig 1995: 106–9 and R¨upke 2000: 40–42. Braun 2000 discusses the problem posed by political readings of comedy with special reference to Trinummus. What Plautus himself may have known or intended is of course still another problem. Analogous claims have long been made for Adelphoe, e.g., by Lana 1947. See the discussion of Leigh 2004: 158–66. Thus Wright 1974: 191 observes, “Like a modern opera audience, they were conservative and knew what they wanted (as Terence found out to his cost), and their expectations would have been a major force in shaping the Roman comic tradition.” For the informality of the Republican theater space, see Goldberg 1998. For the metempsychosis from Homer to Ennius via the peacock that so exercised later poets (e.g., Lucr. 1.112–26, Hor. Ep. 2.1.50–52, Prop. 3.3.1–16), see Skutsch 1985: 147–67. For Ennius’ poem as an end to earlier epic experiments, see Hinds 1998: 56–63. Many Romans may have known the Homeric stories, but the very existence of Andronicus’

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other texts and the literary conventions of another culture, the Annales identified epic poetry ever more closely with the aristocrats whose interests, experiences, and perspectives were increasingly reflected in the poems. One curious result of this identification was epic’s style of social comment, which may on first sight seem more pointed than comedy’s criticism of public practice. The genre with a license to praise explicitly could also blame explicitly: Naevius apparently had harsh words in his Bellum Punicum for the arrogant consul Claudius Pulcher, who so notoriously treated his own soldiers with disdain (“superbiter contemtim conterit legiones,” fr. 37), and Ennius’ disapproval of the ransom offered to Pyrrhus after the battle of Heraclea became famous (An. 183–90). Yet much of the harshness in such condemnations is illusory, for these were no longer topical references. Claudius’ antics in 249 B.C. were two generations in the past when Naevius wrote about them, and for Ennius the war with Pyrrhus was even more distant. Not just the events recalled but the color given those events had already become an established part of the Roman story: the moral lessons epic draws are thus largely conventional.26 The rewards for poets working in such a system may have been great, but the price paid was, as we have seen, even greater. Epic poets came increasingly to be bound not just by the conventions of their genre but by the need for access to the social elite who comprised their primary audience. Cato’s complaint about the alliance forged between Ennius and Fulvius Nobilior, however true or false to the cultural facts of the early second century, certainly foreshadowed the complaints – had another Cato been there to make them – that could with justice have been made of a Hostius or Furius or a Varro Atacinus. An independent moral voice for poetry would require a different source and would have to take a different form from either epic or comedy. And indeed, the sharp, critical voice of Gaius Lucilius that comes ringing down from the later second century is quite different from either of these.

26

Odusia suggests that they welcomed help with the actual poems. Ru¨ pke 2001: 49–58 discusses the aristocratic orientation of early Roman epic. Roman comedy was of course also based on Greek models, but its Greek origin was part of its Roman joke and played off popular rather than learned attitudes, as Ennius’ epic did. For Roman attitudes toward Drepanum and Heraclea, see the references in, respectively, Broughton MRR i: 214 and Skutsch 1985: 347–49. Ennius’ praise of the equestrian Caecilii in Annales 16 may be a more veiled, implicit criticism of senatorial leadership in the Istrian War.

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II

Neither comedy as it developed among the Romans nor epic offered its practitioners much opportunity to cultivate so personal a tone. The combative “poeta” of the Terentian prologues speaks through another, and while ancient critics found some grist for their biographical mill among the epicists – Naevius apparently acknowledged his service in the First Punic War, and Ennius claimed descent from the legendary king Messapus – the conventions of epic tended to regularize the quirks of individual poets.27 There was only one Lucilius, and neither he nor his creation is easily labeled. Subsequent generations would think of his poems as “satires” and regard him as the founder of a genre, but the fragments refer simply to “playful chats,” “jottings,” and “improvisations.”28 They did not all employ the dactylic hexameter. Only after extensive experiments with iambic and trochaic rhythms did Lucilius finally settle on the meter that eventually became the norm for verse satire, and his technical mastery of it later became a matter of opinion.29 Horace, as is well known, found in the vigor and exuberance of his writing a basis for complaint.

27

28

29

For Naevius, Varro ap. Gell. 17.21.45, with Suerbaum 1968: 13–14. The testimony of Serv. ad Aen. 7.691 and Gell 17.17.1 suggests some basis in the Annales for the details of Ennius’ biography at Sil. 12.393–97. See Suerbaum 1968: 137–42 and Skutsch 1985: 676–77. Aelius’ claim ap. Gell. 12.4 of an Ennian self-portrait in the “good companion” of An. 268–86 is a different kind of testimony, as is Lucretius’ allusion to Ennius’ dream at 1.120–26. Ludus ac sermones, 1039; chartae, 1014; schedia, 1131. See Scholz 2000: 222–25. The Greek terms are colloquial. Satura “medley” appears at 47, but not in reference to poems. The term has a famously complex and problematic history. See Coffey 1976: 11–23 and Van Rooy 1965: 50–55. There is no fully satisfactory edition of Lucilius, and each editor reorders the fragments. Marx 1904, though seriously outdated in many respects, remains the standard, but Warmington 1967 is in all senses more accessible. His is the edition cited here: a concordance to Marx will be found at the end of this chapter (Table 1). The difficulties of editing Lucilius are reviewed by Coffey 1976: 38–40 and White 1973. The earliest poems began circulating in the books now known as 26–30 ca. 123 B.C. and were followed, perhaps at relatively short intervals, by poems in elegiacs and hexameters. When the complete works were collected and reissued after Lucilius’ death in 102/1, the editors’ hierarchy of meters put the hexameter poems, written last, at the front. The result was a collection in reverse chronological order: 1–21 in hexameters, 22–25 mostly in elegiacs, and 26–30 (the original collection) mostly iambo-trochaic. See Coffey 1976: 38–45 and Gratwick 1982: 168. This arrangement, implicit in Var. L. 5.17, was perhaps due to Lucilius’ familiares Laelius Archelaus and Vettius Philocomus (Suet. Gram. 2.2 with Kaster 1995: 66–67).

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cum flueret lutulentus, erat quod tollere velles, garrulus atque piger scribendi ferre laborem, scribendi recte; nam ut multum, nil moror. There are things you’d want to remove from his muddy stream: He was wordy and reluctant to accept the burden of writing – of writing properly, I mean. I don’t count quantity. (S 1.4.11–13, cf. 1.10.50–51)

What he meant can be glimpsed in several fragments, such as this one on the business of the forum: Nunc vero a mani ad noctem festo atque profesto totus item pariterque die populusque patresque iactare indu foro se omnes, decedere nusquam; uni se atque eidem studio omnes dedere et arti – verba dare ut caute possint, pugnare dolose, blanditia certare, bonum simulare virum se, insidias facere ut si hostes sint omnibus omnes. Now in fact from morning to night, weekend and weekday, the whole population and likewise senators, too, all bustle about in the forum and never leave; they all devote themselves to one and the same endeavor and trade – to cheat if they can get away with it, to fight dirty, to vie in flattery, to pretend to be a gentleman, to hatch plots as if everyone were everyone’s enemy. (1145–51)

The odd mixture of colloquial redundancy (“item pariterque,” “uni atque eidem”), archaism (“indu”), and high style (“populusque patresque”); the occasionally peculiar word order (“festo atque profesto. . . die”); and the blithe reworking of the same basic idea in different ways (“verba dare”/ “pugna dolose,” “blanditia certare”/ “bonum simulare”) might well strike a poet of the next century as verbose and undisciplined. It does not follow from this, however, that satire and epic developed entirely separate registers. Horace certainly purports to give that impression. his, ego quae nunc, olim quae scripsit Lucilius, eripias si tempora certa modosque, et quod prius ordine verbum est posterius facias, praeponens ultima primis, non, ut si solvas “postquam Discordia taetra 156

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Belli ferratos postis portasque refregit,” invenias etiam disiecti membra poetae. If you take from what I write now and what Lucilius once wrote the steady beat and rhythm and you put the first word last and the last ones first, it’s not like breaking up “After foul Discord shattered the iron gates and portals of War”: you wouldn’t find the limbs of a dismembered poet. (S. 1.4.56–62)

He is not being entirely honest: the metaphor, not the word order, makes high poetry out of Ennius’ line, as Vergil’s eventual echo of it confirms.30 Yet despite what Horace leads us to expect, the Aeneid could also borrow from Lucilius without compromising its dignity. Servius reports that a line in Aeneid 9 describing Ascanius’ gathering of the Trojan leaders, “consilium summis regni de rebus habebant” (‘They were holding council concerning the greatest affairs of the kingdom,’ 225), was taken almost verbatim from Lucilius.31 Even more striking is his claim that the divine council in Aeneid 10 was modeled on a poem in which Lucilius depicted the gods gathered in an assembly to pass judgment on a certain Lupus. That observation has met significant resistance: Vergil’s council clearly follows Homeric conventions, and both Vergil and Lucilius may be responding to an Ennian precedent.32 Nor does the quality of Servius’ knowledge inspire confidence in his authority. Flavians were still reading Lucilius, but direct experience with Republican poetry thereafter 30

31

32

Aen. 7.622: “Belli ferratos rumpit Saturnia postis”. Skutsch 1985: 402–5 lays out the realities behind Ennius’ metaphor. The misdirection in Horace’s argument is rightly noted by Freudenburg 1993: 145–50 and Oberhelman and Armstrong 1995: 242–44. Serv. ad Aen. 9.227, quoting the original: “consilium summis hominum de rebus habebant.” Similarly, the wayside mishap of Hor. S. 1.5.71–74 may lie behind the burning Troy of Aen. 2.310–12. So Austin 1964: 141. Serv. ad Aen. 10.104: “totus hic locus de primo Lucilii translatus est, ubi introducuntur dii habere concilium, et agere primo de interitu Lupi cuisdam ducis in re publica. . . ” Cf. the corresponding (and clearly overstated) claim ad Aen. 4, “inde [A.R. 3] totus hic liber translatus est”. The council that decided the fate of Ilia in the first book of Ennius’ Annales (fr. xxx–xliv) may be behind both scenes, but certainty is impossible. See Wigodsky 1972: 105–7 and Timpanaro 1994: 206–18. Lucilius’ divine council seems to have followed the procedures of the Roman Senate. At Q. fr. 3.1.24, Cicero imagines a parody of the parody.

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grew increasingly rare, so that for Servius in the fourth century, such knowledge was almost certainly secondhand.33 Happily, however, Servius is not our only source for Lucilius’ memorable ridicule of Lupus. Horace too bears witness to the severity of his treatment at the satirist’s hands.34 Quid? cum est Lucilius ausus primus in hunc operis componere carmina morem detrahere et pellem, nitidus qua quisque per ora cederet, introrsum turpis, num Laelius aut qui duxit ab oppressa meritum Carthagine nomen ingenio offensi aut laeso doluere Metello famosisve Lupo cooperto versibus? atqui primores populi arripuit populumque tributim, scilicet uni aequus Virtuti atque eius amicis. Well, when Lucilius first dared to compose poems of this kind and pulled off the pelt in which each man strutted shining in public though foul within, was Laelius or he who rightly took his name from defeated Carthage offended by his wit or hurt by Metellus’ drubbing or by Lupus swamped by notorious verses? Yet he assailed the leaders of the state and the people tribe by tribe and was gentle only with Virtue and her friends.

As so often with Lucilius, direct knowledge of this portrayal is much more limited. Only a few disjointed lines survive of what must have been an elaborate lampoon, but the fragments at least confirm the directness of Lucilius’ attack: quae facies, qui vultus viro? (36) How does the man look? What is his expression? vultus item ut facies, mors, icterius morbus, venenum. (37) His look is like his expression: death, jaundice, poison. 33

34

Lucilius is mentioned by Q. Inst. 10.1.93, Tac. Dial. 23.2. For his presence in Juvenal, see Freudenburg 2001: 242–48. It is characteristic of Servius that, though noting the debt to Lucilius at Aen. 9.227, he misses the echo of Lucr. 1.86 in line 225. See Lloyd 1961: 323–27 and Kaster 1995: 256–59. Hor. S. 2.1.62–70. Cf. the similar characterization, with the same examples, at Pers. 1.114–15, and for Persius’ use of Lucilius, Freudenburg 2001: 151–54.

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occidunt, Lupe, saperdae te et iura siluri! (46) Suckers are doing you in, Lupus, and catfish chowder!35

The key thing about this satire, however, is not the quality of its abuse but the quality of its target. L. Cornelius Lentulus Lupus was consul in 156. He was convicted of extortion soon after (ca. 154), but he made such a rapid recovery from the resulting scandal that his return to eminence became something of a moral exemplum.36 Elected censor in 147, Lupus became princeps senatus in 131, a position he held until his death in either 126 or 125. That was the event that, at least according to Lucilius, precipitated the council at which the gods passed their judgment on him, but the satirist did not need to wait until the man was safely dead to exercise his wit at Lupus’ expense. Earlier ridicule of Lupus is even more striking because it seems largely gratuitous. A poem in Book 28 described the assault on a house by the narrator, his friends, and some slaves. The choice of iambic rhythms recalls drama, the quarrel that leads to the expedition is apparently over a woman, and the assault itself is described in comic terms, full of excited exhortations and quasi-military language (793–813). In reading the fragments, it is hard not to think of the famous attack on Thais’ house in Terence’s Eunuchus (771–816). Yet Lucilius did not allow the scene to float in the world of comic fantasy. The narrator is a Roman, and the setting is Rome, where an assault of this kind could be a capital offense.37 A legal action is therefore threatened, an action that would surely go hard on the offenders because the magistrate judging the case will be Lupus: Hoc cum feceris, cum ceteris reus una tradetur Lupo. Non aderit; ) E hominem et stoechiis simul privabit, igni cum et aqua interdixerit. 35

36 37

The saperda was a worthless fish, now unidentified. The line puns both on lupus the cognomen and lupus ‘a bass’, and on the two kinds of iura, ‘soup’ and ‘laws’. There may also have been play on vultus, for the word vulturius ‘vulture’ is also attested for this first book (38). Ahl 1985: 95–99 finds further wordplay of this kind in Lucilius. So V. Max. 6.9.10, Festus 360. For his career, see Broughton MRR, 501 n. 1. The threat is explicit in 804 (783M): “minitari aperte capitis dicturum diem” (‘to threaten openly to indict on a capital charge’). Marx cites Dig. 48.6.11 in confirmation. The three modern editors of Lucilius, Marx, Warmington, and Krenkel, all reconstruct the poems of Book 28 differently. I follow Warmington, but the points of difference do not affect the role of Lupus in the proceedings.

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Duo habet stoechia, adfuerit anima et corpore (? corpus, anima est
G ); posterioribus stoechiis si id maluerit privabit tamen. When you’ve done this, the defendant will be referred with the others to Lupus. He doesn’t show? He’ll deprive the man of beginnings and of the elements, too, when he’s deprived him of fire and water. He has two elements left, if he does appear, in soul and body (earth is body, soul is air); Lupus will take away those last elements, if he wishes to, nevertheless. (805–11)

The primary joke here may be on the defendant’s philosophic pretensions – Greek physics is being routed by Roman jurisprudence – but that joke depends on the flinty notoriety of Lupus. He was evidently a hanging judge, and the later puns on his predatory, greedy nature (iura and vulturius) when arraigned before the gods may recall the face he showed litigants before him as judge as well as his financial peccadilloes. This is probably why Lucilius also set Lupus into the company of L. Hostilius Tubulus, a notoriously corrupt praetor of 142, and C. Papirius Carbo, the consul of 120, whose career also ended in disgrace.38 The pelt Lucilius so delighted in pulling back belonged more than once to Lupus.39 The other target Horace recalls (“laeso Metello,” S. 2.1.67) was equally distinguished. This was Q. Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus, who as censor in 131 made a famous speech to the Senate extolling the virtues of fruitful marriage. Lucilius’ parody of it became equally famous.40 This was hardly all. His second book lampooned a notorious trial of 119, in which Q. Mucius Scaevola, the praetorian governor of Asia, defended himself against a charge de repetundis pursued by a certain T. Albucius. Scurrilous accusations flew, and Scaevola in turn ridiculed 38

39

40

The lines setting all three “de sacrilegis. . . impiis periurisque” (1138–41) are not easily recovered from Cic. Nat. 1.63, though the sense is clear enough. See Pease 1955: 358–60. The implicit pun on lupus ‘wolf ’ at Hor. S. 2.1.64 (“detrahere pellem”) might itself go back to Lucilius. For more on Lucilius and Lupus, see Zucchelli 1977: 105–7 and Gruen 1992: 284–85. Liv. Per. 59 attests the fame of Metellus’ speech, as does Suet. Aug. 89, Gell. 1.6. For Lucilius’ parody, see Cichorius 1908: 133–34, Heldmann 1979 and Gruen 1992: 285–87. Metellus was at least no hypocrite: he had four sons, who all climbed high on the Roman cursus.

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Albucius in what became a famous jibe at the prosecutor’s excessive philhellenism:41 Graecum te, Albuci, quam Romanum atque Sabinum, municipem Ponti, Tritani centurionum, praeclarorum hominum ac primorum signiferumque, maluisti dici. Graece ergo praetor Athenis, id quod maluisti te, cum ad me accedis, saluto: “chaere” inquam “Tite.” Lictores, turma omnis chorusque: “chaere Tite.” Hinc hostis mi Albucius, hinc inimicus! A Greek, Albucius, rather than a Roman or Sabine, a countryman of the centurions Pontius and Tritanus, distinguished, important men and standard-bearers, is what you’ve preferred to be called. That’s why, as praetor at Athens I greet you in Greek, as you’ve preferred, when you approach me: “Chaere, Titus,” I say. My lictors, the whole entourage and chorus, say, “Chaere, Titus.” That’s why Albucius is my enemy, my foe!

Albucius must have been an easy target. The trial itself was a fiasco for the prosecution, which could not even use apparent irregularities in Scaevola’s own ledgers against him effectively. Albucius’ subsequent career was no more successful, culminating in a late praetorship, another embarrassing trial, and then the humiliation of exile.42 Such mediocrity no doubt invited ridicule. Scaevola, however, was a much more significant and successful figure. The son-in-law of Laelius, he went on to the consulship in 117 and continued to make his presence felt in public and private affairs into the 80s. Cicero portrays him as a man of dignity and learning, especially distinguished in matters of philosophy and law.43 Lucilius’ lampoon nevertheless ranged freely through the scandalous accusations heaped on him by Albucius, which included everything from plunder (57–60) to pederasty (61–63) to gluttony (67–70) and worse. Rank and connections 41

42

43

Luc. 87–93, cited by Cic. Fin. 1.8 to disparage Greek affectations. Adams 2003: 353 notes that it is the public quality of the occasion that gives the mockery its sting. For Lucilius and the trial, see Gruen 1992: 290–1 and Bauman 1983: 321–29. Albucius was tried, condemned, and exiled ca. 105 for celebrating an unauthorized triumph while propraetor in Sardinia after a futile request for that honor at Rome: Cic. Prov. 15, Scaur. 40, Pis. 92, Tusc. 5.108, with Gruen 1964: 100–102. Test. at ORF 220–21, Sumner 1973: 77–78. This is Scaevola “the Augur”, a discussant in de Oratore 1, whom Cicero also recalls with great respect to Atticus (Att. 4.16.3). See ORF 199–201, Sumner 1973: 55–56, and for Scaevola’s political career, Gruen 1968: 112–17.

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clearly did not shield him from the satirist’s attention: Cicero would later have to assume that the jibes rankled (de Or. 1.72). And Lupus, Metellus, Scaevola, and Albucius were hardly alone. A striking assortment of noteworthy figures has been identified, for good or ill, among the fragments.44 Lucilius played no favorites and, as Horace says, showed kindness only to Virtue and her friends. The specificity of these references inevitably catches the eye, and the frequent harshness of their tone lingers in the ear. The phenomenon is not easily accounted for. What set Latin poetry on the attack in this way? Verse invective was common enough at Rome after Lucilius, and authors writing in that vein were quick to claim him as a predecessor. Pompey’s freedman Pompeius Lenaeus, who defended his patron’s reputation in a bitter poem directed against the historian Sallust, proudly declared his knowledge of Lucilius. When Gaius Trebonius vented his iracundia toward Antony in a fistful of bluntly critical verses, he justified his libertas to Cicero with a specific appeal to Lucilius’ example.45 Yet the collections of miscellaneous poems published before Lucilius – the kind of medley that Ennius circulated – were much tamer affairs. They moralized or told fables, and even when they appropriated the comic idiom, the tone seems good-natured and benign. The later grammatical tradition therefore carefully distinguished them from the overtly censorious poems of first Lucilius, and then of Horace and Persius.46 Horace himself had to look outside the Roman world to find a precedent for Lucilius: Eupolis atque Cratinus Aristophanesque poetae atque alii, quorum comoedia prisca virorum est, 44 45

46

Testimony in Marx 1904: cxxviii–ix. For Lenaeus, Suet. Gram. 2.2 and 15 with Kaster 1995: 179–80 and Courtney 1993: 145. Trebonius ap. Cic. Fam. 12.16.3: “Deinde qui magis hoc Luciliuo licuerit adsumere libertatis quam nobis?” (Trebonius was the conspirator who detained Antony outside the Curia on the Ides of March.) DuQuesnay 1984: 29–31 notes the likely appropriation of Lucilius by later Pompeians. The circulating barbs of earlier times, e.g., the exchange of Naevius and the Metelli, were quantitatively different, while the so-called Fescennini of weddings and triumphs maintained an association with ritual. Ruffell 2003: 44–61 surveys the popular traditions of invective as known to Horace. Thus Diom. GLK 485–86: “maledicum et ad carpenda hominum vitia”. A similar distinction probably underlies Quintilian’s famous discussion at Inst. 10.1.93-95. For Ennius’ saturae, see Van Rooy 1965: 30–49, Waszink 1972 and Courtney 1993: 7–21. The survey by Petersmann 1999: 290–96 suggests a comparatively refined style. The learned freedman Servius Nicanor seems to have written a satura of this more benign type in the early first century: Suet. Gram. 5 with Kaster 1995: 107–10 and Courtney 1993: 144.

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siquis erat dignus describi, quod malus ac fur, quod moechus foret aut sicarius aut alioqui famosus, multa cum libertate notabant. hinc omnis pendet Lucilius, hosce secutus, mutatis tantum pedibus numerisque. . . The poets Eupolis and Cratinus and Aristophanes and the other men who wrote old comedy would indicate with remarkable license if someone deserved notice as a rogue and thief, as an adulterer or assassin or was otherwise notorious. From all these Lucilius derives. He followed them, changing only the rhythms and meters. (S. 1.4.1–7)

Once he popularized this association of Lucilian satire with Old Comedy, the idea of a comic pedigree was poised to enter the ancient scholarly tradition, but it is very hard to document its basis in fact.47 What experience either Horace in the late first century or Lucilius a hundred years earlier actually had of the genre is difficult to determine.48 The theatrical tradition that kept Old Comedy alive in Magnia Graecia in the early fourth century died out long before Lucilius’ day: when later Greek sources refer to “old” (
 ) plays in production, they generally mean the fourth-century plays of Menander and his contemporaries, which they distinguished from their own, contemporary ( ) comic performances.49 The memory of fifth-century comedy of course endured 47

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So, rightly, Van Rooy 1965: 147–50, Williams 1968: 443–47 and Coffey 1976: 54–56. The valuable discussion of comic echoes at Freudenburg 1993: 27–51 thus has little to say specifically about Old Comedy. As noted at Freudenburg 2001: 18, “The lines [S. 1.4.1–7] are fraught with misinformation that caricatures not only the poets of Greek Old Comedy, but Lucilius as well.” The association of Lucilius with Old Comedy in later grammarians like Evanthius and Diomedes probably derives ultimately from Horace himself. Analogous efforts to trace Lucilius’ roots to the outspoken iambics of Archilochus are no better founded. See Mankin 1987 and Zimmermann 2001: 193–94. The implication of S. 1.10.16–19 is that the comoedia prisca was not being read by Horace’s contemporaries, though he himself claims knowledge of its stylistic variety. Cucchiarelli 2001: 25–33 argues with arresting plausibility that S. 1.5 owes a direct debt to Aristophanes’ Frogs, but this does not demonstrate that the comic material was already in his Lucilian model (47–51). An analogous echo of Ra. 117–36 might be heard in the dialogue with Trebatius at S. 2.1.4–23. The old comic reference of Pers. 1.123–25 probably echoes Horace. Csapo and Slater 1995: 188, Nesselrath 1990: 80–81. The issue is further confused by a tripartite division of comic styles that may actually predate Menander: so

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through the world of books. Eupolis, Cratinus, and Aristophanes were the canonical trio of its practitioners, but the one thing repeatedly said of them, that they could be extraordinarily outspoken and abusive, may ultimately reflect greater knowledge about than from their texts. Ancient annotators made Old Comedy’s  its defining characteristic, and its taste for slander (F  @#E) was presumed to be a major factor in its eclipse.50 The Greek learning that flooded Italy in the early second century very likely heightened awareness of Old Comedy among the Romans, but with greater emphasis on its clich´es than its texts. How much even as serious a student of Greek as Cicero actually knew of Old Comedy is uncertain: the distinction he made in de Officiis between vulgar, obscene performances and witty, urbane ones, which takes ‘Plautus noster et Atticorum antiqua comoedia’ as examples of the latter, is hard to accept as grounded in any extensive knowledge of Aristophanes.51 Similarly, Horace’s quotation of Cratinus in an epistle to Maecenas, however explicit, may be only indirect, since the claim that no water drinker can produce anything clever had by his day become proverbial.52 Old Comedy certainly had only a limited appeal at Rome, for its license was alien to Roman experience and Roman sensibilities. The chastisement

50

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Janko 1984: 244–50. Given all this, the comoedia vetus of Suet. Aug. 89.1 is almost certainly what we would call New Comedy. The context clearly requires something Greek, but Augustus’ limited linguistic competence and his fondness for extracting maxims from Greek sources suit the performance of Menander well but not Aristophanes. Good discussion in Cucchiarelli 2001: 53–55. There is ample evidence for performances of Menander under the empire. See Fantham 1984. Among commentators, see, e.g., Platonios, who begins Koster’s collection (Koster 1975: 3, with Nesselrath 1990: 30–34 and Freudenburg 1993: 84–86). Plut. Mor. 854c comments on the harshness of Aristophanes’ wit. For ancient speculations on the genre’s demise, see Nesselrath 2000: 234–38, and for its survival in the postclassical world, see Storey 1993: 373–81. Cic Off. 1.104. Cicero is apparently distinguishing comedy from mime, though his language is more commonly used to distinguish New Comedy from Old, e.g., Plut. Mor. 853: H+ ,  ,     +   2  $  * , .#@ #;  # 1. Cicero’s “antiqua comoedia” might in this context better suit Plautus’ Greek models, though Dyck 1996: 265–66 thinks the reference originates in Panaetius. Cicero’s allusions to Frogs as adduced by Cucchiarelli 2001: 29 n. 52 fail to convince. H. Ep. 1.19.1–3, echoing Cratinus, fr. 203: I# #
  # J !  . Cratinus’ line – was it original to him? – was taken up by Nicaenetus at AP 13.29, who, like Horace, names Cratinus as his authority, with a variant on the conceit by Antipater of Thessalonica at AP 11.20. See the discussion by Kassel-Austin at PCG 4.226–27.

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of public figures, as Cicero says with obvious distaste, is more appropriate to censors than to poets. He could scarcely imagine a Plautus or Naevius attacking Scipio from the stage as Athenian poets had attacked Cleon, and he welcomed the difference. Public defamation was actionable at Rome, and while there was no guarantee that such an action would succeed, there was little incentive to test the limits of speech.53 Lucilius’ freedom to make the sort of attack characteristic of Old Comedy is therefore extraordinary, and not even Horace gets either it or its putative precedent quite right. His own libertas as a satirist was necessarily more restrained than that of either Lucilius or Aristophanes, neither of whom attacked his most famous targets simply as “malus ac fur aut sicarius.” Similarly, when Horace actually sets himself beside the prominent and the powerful, as on the famous journey to Brundisium, the very substance of the poem establishes his disengagement from Maecenas and thus by implication from affairs of state.54 Time and again he prefers to repeat but not to press satire’s similarity to Old Comedy.55 Nor does Horace emphasize, despite or perhaps because of its importance, the social position from which Lucilius’ attacks were launched, although rank was central both to the nature of his immediate 53

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Thus the warning of Trebatius at Hor. S. 2.1.82–83. Brunt 1988: 314–17 surveys freedom of speech in the Republic. Cic. Rep. 4.12 (Scipio speaking), cites the Twelve Tables as authorizing death, “si quis occentavisset sive carmen condidisset, quod infamiam faceret flagitiumve alteri.” Rhet. Her. 2.19 records two relevant suits for defamation: Lucilius sued a mime actor and failed; a similar action by Accius succeeded. Naevius’ trouble with the Metelli, whatever its source, did not originate on the stage. See Manfredini 1979: 129–47, and for the influx of Greek learning in the second century, see Gruen 1984: 255–59. Hor. S. 1.5, most noticeably thanks to the sore eyes of 27–31 and 48–49. For the significance of the satirist’s lippitudo, see Oliensis 1998: 27–28, Freudenburg 2001: 52–54, and esp. Cucchiarelli 2001: 66–70. DuQuesnay 1984: 39–43 notes the political overtones of Horace’s studied indirection. His Lucilian model, the Book 3 poem describing a trip in the opposite direction (so Porph. ad S. 1.5.1), does not appear to be political. Fraenkel 1957: 105–12 emphasizes points of contact between the two poems. The detailed comparison by Fiske 1920: 306–16 is more conjectural than it acknowledges. Thus at S. 1.4.45–56 the comedy in question is Terentian, not Aristophanic. Ruffell 2003: 35–44 and Freudenburg 2001: 44–51 note Horace’s more limited sense of libertas. The difference between libertas and licentia is implicit in the material collected by V. Max. 6.2 (“libere dicta aut facta”). Other similarities between Old Comedy and satire, e.g., interests in literary criticism and popular taste, could be but are not adduced. For these, see La Penna 1979: 116–19 and Zimmermann 2001: 190–93. They have also been used to align Lucilius with tendencies observable in Roman comedy, e.g., by Auhagen 2001.

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achievement and to its enduring influence on the subsequent development of Latin poetry. Lucilius observed Roman society from within. Earlier poets, as we have already seen, came as outsiders to the society whose literature they created. Both Livius Andronicus, from Tarentum, and the North African Terence probably reached Rome as slaves. Plautus, Naevius, and Ennius came from the Italian provinces. Caecilius was in origin an Insubrian Gaul. A combination of talent and connections made all of them upwardly mobile. Andronicus received senatorial commissions. Terence’s daughter was able to marry an eques. Naevius and Ennius served in the wars of expansion that their poetry glorified, and Ennius eventually enjoyed access to the highest levels of the aristocracy. Yet poets remained, in essence, only witnesses to the achievements of their social superiors. Even Lucilius’ contemporary Accius, who so famously refused to rise when the aristocratic amateur Caesar Strabo entered a meeting of the poets’ guild, was the son of liberti. Lucilius was the first poet to come from the very ranks of the aristocracy.56 His family owned property in the region around Suessa Aurunca on the border of Latium and Campania. His brother was probably the senator Lucilius Hirrus, whose daughter Lucilia married Pompeius Strabo and became the mother of Pompey the Great. Lucilius himself served in the entourage of Scipio Aemilianus at Numantia in 134/3. Though a public career was clearly open to him, he nevertheless settled for the private life of an equestrian landowner, most likely as an absentee since he owned a house in Rome and wrote poetry that in subject and sound was urban to the core.57 The famous, though problematic “virtus” fragment offers indirect support for this conjecture about Lucilius’ background and orientation. Virtus, Albine, est pretium persolvere verum quis in versamur quis vivimus rebus potesse. virtus est homini scire id quod quaeque habeat res. 56

57

For the story of Accius and Strabo, see V. Max. 3.7.11. It is best to distinguish aristocrats like Strabo, Lutatius Catulus and the others whose verses are quoted by Gell. 19.9, men who occasionally dabbled in poetry, from the first aristocrat to define himself as a poet. Lucilius’ poetic career is securely dated to the last third of the second century, though Horace’s “senex” (S. 2.1.32–34) does not imply what we would call ‘old age’ (Christes 1998: 71–74). Precise dates are less secure, though 180–102/1 are often suggested. See Cichorius 1908: 14–22, Coffey 1976: 35–38 and Gruen 1992: 274–80. The testimonia is in Marx 1904: cxxv–cxxxiv.

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Virtus, Albinus, is being able to pay a fair price in full for whatever things we encounter in life. Virtus is for a man to know that which anything entails.

The aristocratic ideal of “virtus,” claimed with pride in the epitaphs of the Scipios, cultivated in the dedication of temples, and brought to such prominence that it became, as we have seen, a motif ripe for comic parody, is developed here – at considerable length – in the language of commerce. Even its reference to the public good takes a metaphor from business (“commoda patriai”, 1207).58 This is an odd choice. War, not commerce, provided the traditional vocabulary of virtus, and Ennius’ Pyrrhus famously ridiculed those who confused the two spheres of activity. Nec mi aurum posco nec mi pretium dederitis: non cauponantes bellum sed belligerantes ferro, non auro vitam cernamus utrique. vosne velit an me regnare era quidve ferat Fors virtute experiamur, et hoc simul accipe dictum: quorum virtuti belli fortuna pepercit eorundem me libertati parcere certum est. dono ducite doque volentibus cum magnis dis. Neither do I ask for gold nor offer me a ransom: not touting war but waging it with steel, not gold let us run our risks. Whether you shall reign or I – whatever Fortune wills – we shall test by virtus, and take this as a fact: those whose virtus the chance of war has spared, their liberty it is certain that I spare. I release them – take them – I give them up as the great gods’ will (An. 183–90)

The seriousness of Lucilius’ contrasting speech is impossible to determine. The poet may be speaking in the voice of another, or speaking ironically. The Albinus addressed is unknown. No context survives, and the possibility must remain that we are hearing not the satirist’s own voice 58

The passage continues in this vein for ten more lines (1196–1208), leading Marx 1905: 425–27, thinking of Horace, to complaine of its “elocutionem garrulitatis plenum et inertiae.” Mariotti 1960: 7–10 rightly notes, however, that its garrulity is at the least a studied effect. For the aristocratic connotations of virtus, see Earl 1967: 20–36.

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but that of a moralizing tradesman talking Albinus into the ground or perhaps aping the postures of his social superiors.59 One way or another, however, it is clear that Lucilius was well versed in the language and values of the forum and that he develops them in this moral disquisition. Yet however problematic the stance of the various fragments, Roman readers saw behind all these poems the figure of the satirist, who both created an appropriate literary face for himself and called attention to its creation.60 Cicero’s report that “Lucilius, a very educated and sophisticated man, used to say that he did not wish to be read by either the uneducated nor the most educated” strongly implies that he found programmatic statements in the poems and believed they carried the author’s personal authority.61 That the voice heard as Lucilius’ belonged to a landowner is itself apparent from the fragments: “mihi quidem non persuadetur publiceis mutem meos” (‘I at any rate won’t be persuaded to swap my own realm for a public one,’ 647). The speaker was an equestrian, and even bore the poet’s name: publicanus vero ut Asiae fiam, ut scripturarius pro Lucilio, id ego nolo, et uno hoc non muto omnia That I become a taxman in Asia or an assessor instead of Lucilius, that I refuse and wouldn’t trade the world for this (650–51)

These were the kind of remarks that led Horace to say that the old satirist drew from his own experience and put his life on view, as if on a painted tablet (S. 2.1.28–34). Yet, as Horace’s own example shows all too well, even the most familiar faces are not necessarily good likenesses. Poets are hard to separate from their poems, and fragmentary poets can be especially elusive.62 Two more 59

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An Albinus also appears at 931–33, but he is not necessarily the same person. For the problem, see Raschke 1990: 365–68, who rightly resists attempts to identify Lucilius’ virtus with Stoic arete. For ‘face’ rather than ‘persona’ to denote the figure discernible in the poet’s text, see Oliensis 1998: 1–5. The distinction is especially important in dealing with fragmentary poems, where first person speakers are commonly found but rarely identifiable. Cic. de Or. 2.25: “C. Lucilius, homo doctus et perurbanus, dicere solebat neque se ad indoctissimis neque a doctissimis legi velle.” A similar statement is embedded in Fin. 1.7, though it is difficult to extract. See Cichorius 1908: 106–9 and La Penna 1979: 113–15. Not even Horace’s freedman origin, the lynchpin of the Horatian biography, is an entirely unambiguous fact, as Williams 1995 so effectively shows. For his wealth and social position, see White 1993: 12–13 and Lyne 1995: 1–8. The Terentian model

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lines that have been heard to preserve Lucilius’ own voice are especially problematic. at libertinus tricorius Syrus ipse ac mastigias quicum versipellis fio et quicum conmuto omnia but a triple-skinned freedman, a very Syrus, a whipping-post with whom I switch skins and with whom I trade everything (652–53)

This may be the poet assuming the role of gadfly, but the speaker is actually impossible to identify. The comic language itself (libertinus, Syrus, mastigias, versipellis, and probably tricorius) may give us pause, as should a notorious fragment from Naevius’ Tarentilla (72-74R), quae ego in theatro hic meis probavi plausibus, ea non audere quemquam regem rumpere, quanto libertatem hanc hic superat servitus. What I in the theater here approve with my plaudits those things no grandee dares to contravene: that’s how much this servility surpasses that freedom.

These lines were long ascribed to the play’s prologue and heard by biographically minded critics as a bold declaration of free speech: the rex in question was even identified as Naevius’ bˆete-noir, Q. Caecilius Metellus. The language, however, is only the stock boast of a comic slave making the sort of metatheatrical joke familiar from Plautus. The fragment cannot claim programmatic significance, and the feisty Naevius, who mocked the Metelli from the stage and paid dearly for his independence, is – as we increasingly accept – largely a fiction of literary history.63 The fragments of satire present comparable problems. In addition to the set pieces with their various speakers, such as the divine council that

63

adduced for Horace’s “pater optimus” by Leach 1971 is thus all the more credible. Cf. Schlegel 2000 and Keane 2002: 217–21, and for the traditional view, cf. Anderson 1982: 51–60. So Gratwick 1982: 165, rightly, of Lucilius: “we meet a persona, as in Pliny’s or Seneca’s letters, not a person, as in Cicero’s.” Publicanus and scripturarius reveal the social status of the speaker, as Cichorius 1908: 72–73 demonstrates. La Penna 1979: 108–12 is also of value on Lucilius’ social status. The old view of the fragment by, inter alios, Leo 1913: 77–78, Marmorale 1953: 43–44 and Warmington 1936: 98, was questioned by Suerbaum 1968: 29–31 and exploded by Wright 1972, and with it went the old, outspoken Naevius. So, rightly, Gruen 1990: 94–98. Gratwick 1982: 166 nevertheless makes a comparable mistake in his otherwise excellent discussion of the fragments of Lucilius.

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judged Lupus and the trial that pitted Scaevola against Albinus, Lucilius also had a habit of observing life through the eyes of others and then making theirs the voice of record. The famous Q. Granius, a praeco from Puteoli, was one of these surrogates. Unlike the praeco Naevius, who attracted Cicero’s sneers in the suit involving Quinctius, Granius was well connected and well placed and became a figure of some renown in Roman society. He dined as a social equal with Licinius Crassus and had at least a nodding acquaintance with other great men. Yet not even consuls were safe from his barbs. As Lucilius recalls, “Granius did not undervalue himself and hated arrogant grandees.”64 He figured prominently in various satires, and Cicero, who became a great admirer of Granius’ wit, no doubt encountered it primarily in that way.65 Characters like Granius thus joined Lucilius the man, the poetic face, and (eventually) the Horatian foil among the figures so closely interwoven, if not hopelessly confused, in the record. Distinguishing among them, however desirable in theory, is now impossible to accomplish in practice. The sum of them constituted the “Lucilius” whose undeniable importance to the history of Latin poetry is clear from the nature of his reception, which was itself rooted in his unique position and extraordinary freedom. That freedom was both social and artistic, categories that for Lucilius are inseparable. In one way or another, earlier poets were bound by the conventions of their genre and required the support of aristocratic patrons to reach their audiences. Lucilius was the first poet to be bound by neither requirement. As an aristocrat, he had no need to cultivate access to an audience as, each in his own way, Plautus and Ennius had to do. Lucilius needed only to circulate his poems among his friends. Nor, as a pioneer in a new style of writing, did he have to concern himself with the expectations of that audience or with any complex of generic conventions: subjects, meters, tone, diction could be of his own choosing, as their variety makes clear. Lucilius’ social status thus vastly enhanced his creative license.66 It in time became common for Roman poets – Horace, 64

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Lucil. 609–10, ap. Cic. Att. 6.3.7, 2.8.12 (a favorite saying of Atticus): “Granius autem/non contemnere se et reges odisse superbos.” Test. in Marx 1905: 153–54. Cic. de Or. 2.244 (“Granio quidem nemo dicacior”), Brut. 172. Cf. Lucil. 448–9: “Conicere in versus dictum praeconis volebam/Grani.” His witticisms at the expense of the great are recalled at Planc. 33, de Or. 2.254, 281–82. The old tendency to portray Lucilius as the spokesman for one or another political faction, the portrait systematically demolished by Gruen 1992: 272–317, was in essence an effort to fit him to the mold of earlier poets, though Scipio was obviously not Lucilius’ “patron” in the common sense. It is hard to imagine Ennius chasing Fulvius

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for example, takes equestrian status as the norm for contemporary poetasters – but Lucilius was unique in his own time, and the consequence of that uniqueness is reflected in the way he is eventually cited.67 Cicero’s practice is quite striking in this regard. When he argues in de Officiis that wars for supremacy should be conducted more circumspectly than struggles for survival (“ea bella quibus imperii proposita gloria est minus acerbe gerenda sunt”), he illustrates the point with Pyrrhus’ famous decision after the battle of Heraclea to return his Roman prisoners without ransom. He quotes the lines on war and commerce that we were looking at just before (“Nec mi aurum posco. . . ”) and ends with the admiring comment, “Regalis sane et digna Aeacidarum genere sententia!” (‘What a truly regal sentiment and worthy of a descendant of Aeacus!’)68 The passage is very well chosen – “vosne velit an me regnare” is precisely what Cicero means by a war de imperio, and Pyrrhus in his magnificence could hardly speak minus acerbe – but Cicero’s quotation ignores the fact that the actual words quoted belong not to Pyrrhus at Heraclea in 280 but to Ennius, who created these hexameters for the king a century later and set them in his Annales. This can be so because the point of the example rests on the content of the speech, not on either the elegance of its expression or the creator of that elegance. As Cicero admits when recalling Hecuba’s dream as Ennius described it in the tragedy Alexander, “Although this is a poet’s invention, it is nevertheless not unlike the manner of dreams.”69 The authority is in the sentiment, not the source. Contrast the beginning of de Oratore, where Crassus introduces the idea that good oratory requires wide learning. He is addressing Scaevola.70 Sed, ut solebat C. Lucilius saepe dicere, homo tibi subiratus, mihi propter eam ipsam causam minus quam volebat familiaris, sed tamen

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around the dinner table with a rolled–up napkin, as Lucilius was said to have chased Scipio (Schol. ad Hor. S. 2.1.73, cf. Cic. de Or. 2.22). Hor. AP 382–84. White 1993: 5–14 examines the social position and income needed to support a poetic career by the late second century. Cic. Off. 1.38, quoting An. 183–90. For Cicero’s argument about the iustae causae bellorum, see Dyck 1996: 146–50. Fr¨ankel 1935: 66–72 discusses the moral tone of the passage. Cic. Div. 1.42: “haec etiamsi ficta sunt a poeta non absunt tamen a consuetudine somniorum.” The quotation that follows is fragment XVIII in Jocelyn 1967: 77–78. Comic quotations in oratory are similar: the point is in the character types invoked at, e.g., S. Rosc. 46–47, Cael. 37–38, not the author behind them, even when the author is identified. Cic. de Orat. 1.72. “Tibi subiratus” probably alludes to Lucilius’ mocking version of Scaevola’s trial de repetundis in his second book.

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et doctus et perurbanus, sic sentio neminem esse in oratorum numero habendum, qui non sit omnibus eis artibus, quae sunt libero dignae, perpolitus. . . But as C. Lucilius, a man with a grudge against you and for just that reason less close to me than he wished, but nevertheless both learned and refined, was often accustomed to say, so I too think that nobody should be reckoned among the orators who is not accomplished in all those arts that befit a gentleman.

In citing Pyrrhus, Cicero offered the words without the poet. Here he conjures up the poet without the actual words because the poet is in himself an appropriate authority. This is very striking. On what will become a central principle of the dialogue, L. Licinius Crassus, consul in 95, censor in 92, and one of the great orators of his time, not just cites the poet Lucilius for his authority but praises his character (“et doctus et perurbanus”) and seems, if anything, to regret that they were not closer. That Crassus, at least in Cicero’s view, also tolerated Lucilius’ criticism is clear from a second arresting citation. Toward the end of de Oratore, Crassus illustrates one of his technical points with an image and a warning:71 Conlocationis est componere et struere verba sic, ut neve asper eorum concursus neve hiulcus sit, sed quodam modo coagmentatus et levis; in quo lepide soceri mei persona lusit is, qui elegantissime id facere potuit, Lucilius: quam lepide !( compostae! ut tesserulae omnes arte pavimento atque emblemate vermiculato. Quae cum dixisset in Albucium inludens, ne a me quidem abstinuit: Crassum habeo generum, ne rhetoricotericus tu sis. Quid ergo? Iste Crassus, quoniam eius abuteris nomine, quid efficit? Illud quidem; scilicet, ut ille vult et ego vellem, melius aliquanto quam Albucius: verum in me quidem lusit ille, ut solet. Arrangement includes balancing and structuring words in such a way that their junctures are neither harsh nor gaping but well fitted and 71

Cic. de Orat. 3.171. The lines (84–86) also seem to come from the trial of Book 2. Lucilius is cited three other times in the dialogue (2.25, 253; 3.86), and on other occasions is the likely source of various sayings and anecdotes (e.g., 2.268, 281–84). The lines about Albucius are also quoted at Or. 149 and recalled at Brut. 274.

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smooth. Lucilius, who could do this so elegantly, joked about this quite cleverly in the voice of my father-in-law: How cleverly he’s arranged ses mots! Like all the tiles in a mosaic floor with intricate inlays. When he had joked in that way about Albucius, he didn’t leave me alone either: I have Crassus as a son-in-law, so don’t be too much the orateur! Well then, that Crassus, since you drag in the name, what does he accomplish? Exactly this, as he wishes and I, too, though a bit better than Albucius: Lucilius was just laughing a bit at me, as he likes to do.

The joke at Crassus’ expense can be repeated and accepted with good grace because it comes from a social equal. Also, of course, because it is clever and to the point, Cicero cannot resist relieving his technical discussion with a witty example that is also much to his personal taste. That preference may already be a little old fashioned. In praising the social graces of his old friend Papirius Paetus, for example, Cicero observed not just that talking with Paetus was like talking with another Granius or Lucilius, but that Paetus’ style of wit (“Romani veteres atque urbani sales”) was so welcome because it had become so rare. Its directness was being supplanted by new, effete fashions from Greece and from Gaul.72 This is in itself only a passing remark, but Cicero casts the compliment in terms of the larger concern, so characteristic of Republican responses to hellenism, that foreign elements not just temper but can corrupt native practice. This too was a favorite theme of Lucilius, and it raises one final point about the complexity of his reception. The satirist’s ridicule of Greek affectation embraced much more than the pretensions of a philhellene like Titus Albucius. He also mocked the widespread Roman passion for Greek goods and Greek values: Porro clinopodas lychnosque ut diximus semnos anti pedes lecti atque lucernas. Further, the way we say “clinopods” and “lustres” so grandiosely instead of ‘couch-feet’ and ‘lamps.’ (15–16) 72

Cic. Fam. 9.15.2: “itaque te cum video, omnis mihi Granios, omnis Lucilios, vere ut dicam, Crassos quoque et Laelios videre videor.” Cicero’s disregard of the social gap between Granius and Crassus is striking. As an example of his own wit, note both the quickness of his repartee with Clodius and the enthusiasm with which he recalls it at Att. 1.16.10.

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Yet Lucilius’ own idiom itself remained unashamedly full of Greek. Some of it entered from the technical language of grammar and philosophy developing in Rome of the later second century (389–92), while the growing familiarity with Greek literature that was equally characteristic of the time influenced Lucilius’ choice of tag lines and allusions (e.g., 461–62, 491–92, 959–60). The fragments also preserve many signs of the Romans’ increasingly broad contact with their Greek neighbors. Horace would complain that his language used more Greek than was good for it (S. 1.10.20–30), but Lucilius is often simply reflecting the fact that a large wine jar was throughout the Mediterranean world called an oenophorum ( , 132) and that Latin slang for sexual arousal was -
G  (332).73 The satirist’s diction reflected everyday usage and thus both continued and commented upon the Romans’ ongoing negotiation with Greek culture. By the time Horace began his renovation of satire in the 30s, the terms of that negotiation had changed enough that the complexity and nuance of Lucilius’ stylistic position would hold no special interest for him. He does not read Lucilius to recall the social tensions of the previous century. The extended conversation about Lucilius’ merits that Horace conducts with himself in Satires 1.4 and 1.10 instead confronts more immediate and more significant concerns.74 The first of these is the difficulty of seeing the achievements of the past clearly in the sometimes dazzling light of the present. Lucilius’ basic virtues survive this scrutiny. Horace recognizes the wit and the urbanity that Cicero admired, but he also acknowledges

73

74

Presumably Greek slang as well: the word is otherwise unattested in literature (Marx 1905: 114, but see Adams 2003: 361–62). Cf. the crossing of limbs, again in an erotic context, “et cruribus crura diallaxon” (334), where either the context or the admixture of Greek orthography would have made clear whether Lucilius intended a future participle (# () or aorist imperative (# (). Whether the adverb semnos (1) in 15 was colloquial or ironic is uncertain. It is not always possible to know whether the “code switching” in Lucilius is his own or the target of his ridicule, as Adams 2003: 19–20, 326–27 duly notes. For Lucilius’ Greek, see also Mariotti 1960: 50–81, Petersmann 1999: 298–301, Baier 2001, and for Greek elements in colloquial Latin more generally, Horsfall 2003: 48–52 and the summary discussion of Adams, 762–66. Zetzel 1980: 63–64 rightly maintains that the “critics” of 1.10 are largely Horace’s own invention and that the conversation is with himself. The more literal reading of this debate, e.g., Rudd 1966: 118–24 and Freudenburg 1993: 163–73, is less convincing. DuQuesnay 1984: 27–32 treats the political implications of Horace’s embrace of Lucilius.

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the more problematic fact that what was “comis et urbanus” to an earlier generation may be something less than that by contemporary standards. The defense of Lucilius’ achievement in Satire 1.10 therefore assumes that a modern Lucilius would have better pruned and polished his verse (64–71). He should not be faulted – though he should not be imitated – for not knowing that revision is necessary to create something of value (“Saepe stilum vertas, iterum quae digna legi sint/scripturus”, 72–73). As Cicero said with regard to the elder Cato, allowance must be made for the capabilities of the past. Horace’s language in fact recalls the standard to which Cicero held even the earliest poets, and he both confronts the same problem and falls back on the same solution developed by Cicero in Brutus for appreciating Cato’s oratorical achievement without denying his stylistic shortcomings.75 The compromise reached there accepted a relative standard: the fact of achievement endures even if its details are superseded. Horace, it need hardly be said, is himself committed to modernity. He will not, cannot write in a style already a century old. He knows perfectly well that the vocabulary of praise applied by Cicero to friends like Papirius Paetus (and to poets like Lucilius) was subsequently claimed for a new kind of poetry, and his insistence on revision, on quality over quantity, and on small audiences over large ones reflects his acceptance of poetry’s transformation by the Republic’s end.76 He took care to detach his own poetic language from the casual colloquialism of Lucilius as well as from the rougher invective of the street.77 But at what cost? It may no longer be acceptable to build a poetic diction out of colloquial speech as Lucilius did, but it is no less a fault to abandon Roman traditions completely. The most serious problem of literary history that Horace confronts in this satire is therefore not

75

76

77

On Cato, Cic. Brut. 293–94, curbing the excessive enthusiasm of 68. Cf. his comment on Andronicus: “Livianae fabulae non satis dignae quae iterum legantur” (71), though “spectentur” might better reflect the dramatist’s own standard of success. So, e.g., S. 1.10.72–91. Cic. Fam. 9.15.2 writes unreservedly of Paetus’ iucunditas, sal, facetiae, and lepores, all catchwords of the Catullan revolution. For that vocabulary, see Krostenko 2001: 246–57 and Lyne 1995: 100–101. The easy bilingualism of Lucilius, the kind of educated speech familiar from Cicero’s letters, does not inform the diction of the new poetry. Thus, to take a famous example, Horace translates at the end of S. 1.9 the Homeric tag of his Lucilian model (267–68). For the corresponding segregation of satire from popular traditions of invective, see Ruffell 2003: 61–64.

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his relationship to the past but the role of the past in creating the poetry of the future. The intellectual narrowness of men like Hermogenes and the “ape” too learned to rattle off anything except Calvus and Catullus is certainly absurd,78 but so is modern poetry’s flirtation with Greek at the expense of its own Roman antecedents. This second part of the complaint comes rather slyly in a form all too familiar to contemporary poetry, though Horace draws it from an unexpected quarter. atque ego cum Graecos facerem, natus mare citra, versiculos, vetuit me tali voce Quirinus, post mediam noctem visus, cum somnia vera: “in silvam non ligna feras insanius ac si magnas Graecorum malis implere catervas.” When I, though born on this side of the sea, set out to write Greek verses, Quirinus stopped me with this remark, appearing in the middle of the night, when dreams are true: “You would be as foolish to carry timber to the woods as to wish to swell the vast crowd of the Greeks.” (S. 1.10.31–35)

Quirinus naturally enough speaks in the portentous rhythms of Ennius rather than with the clipped elegance of Vergil’s Apollo, and in turning the Alexandrian mannerism against itself, Horace simultaneously acknowledges its effectiveness and demands some abiding place for the older poetic tradition.79 This is admittedly a much larger issue than the kind of literary polemic attested for Lucilius, who we know addressed conventions of spelling in his ninth book and literary style in his tenth. Horace is claiming Lucilius’ freedom to criticize Accius and to mock Ennius’ less successful experiments not simply to justify his own forays into literary criticism, but to build on Lucilius’ success in immersing 78

79

Hor. S. 1.10.17-19, with Fraenkel 1957: 129–30 and Ruffell 2003: 42–44. The complaint recalls Cicero’s jibe at the “cantores Euphorionis” in his defense of Ennius (Tusc. 3.45). So Zetzel 2002: 38–40, noting the polemical allusion to Ecl. 6.3–5. “Magnas. . . catervas” may recall neoteric word order, though Ennius has “sulpureas posuit spiramina Naris ad undas” (222) and “optima cum pulcris animis Romana iuventus” (563). The diminutive versiculos and the shift from the use of Greek vocabulary to the writing of Greek poetry probably also allude to contemporary affectations.

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poetry directly and explicitly in the cultural life of its time.80 This was another way in which the old satirist put his stamp on Republican poetry, and it was this introspective capacity, poetry’s newly won power to comment on itself, that Horace would eventually employ again to even greater effect before his career was done. Concordance of Passages Cited

80

Warmington

Marx

Warmington

Marx

15–16 36 37 38 46 47 57 58–59 60 61 62 63 67–69 70 84–86 87–93 132 331–32 334

15–16 43 44 46 54 48 66 67–68 71 73 72 74 78–80 75 84–86 88–94 139 303–4 306

389–92 448–49 461–62 491–92 609–10 647 650–51 652–52 793–813 804 805–11 931–33 959–60 1014 1039–40 1131 1138–41 1145–51 1196–1208

377–80 411–12 435–36 462–63 1181–81 675 671–72 669–70 771–92 783 784–90 848–50 832–33 1084 1039–40 1279 1312–13 1228–34 1326–38

So, e.g., Hor. S. 1.10.53–55 on Accius and Ennius. For Lucilius’ literary polemics, see Ronconi 1963: 523–25, Degli’ Innocenti Pierini 1980: 9–11. He was clearly an admirer of Ennius, though many of the echoes detected by Marx 1904: 100 are probably nugatory (Skutsch 1985: 11–12).

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ROMAN HELICON

orace kept a long spoon for dining with augustus and H might even refuse an invitation now and then, but a request he received toward the end of 13 B.C. could not be refused or evaded. While reading Horace’s verse epistles, says Suetonius, the Princeps came to feel excluded from the emerging conversation, and so he grabbed his pen. “I want you to know,” he wrote the poet, “that I am cross with you because in all those writing of that kind you particularly avoid talking with me. Are you afraid that your reputation will suffer with posterity if you appear to be my friend?”1 Horace replied with the “Letter to Augustus” (Ep. 2.1) that we have already had reason to consider. So memorable, if not necessarily accurate, a medley of facts and opinions about Latin poetry is impossible for any exercise in Roman literary history to ignore. Horace’s views of earlier writers, his narrative of Rome’s literary development, and his complaints about the reception of modern poetry inevitably color our thinking on these subjects. Yet the letter is also deliberately and exuberantly incoherent. Its readers must cope, as Gordon Williams observed, with “all the easy movement of real conversation and a consequent difficulty in establishing precise logical relationships” 1

Suet. Vit. Hor. (= Malcovati 1948: 23): “Irasci me tibi scito, quod non in plerisque eius modi scriptis mecum potissimum loquaris; an vereris ne apud posteros infame tibi sit, quod videaris familiaris nobis esse?” Horace prided himself on his circumspection in dealing with those who supported his career. See Griffin 1984: 195–206, White 1993: 112–18, and for a somewhat different view, Thomas 2001: 65–73. The date of 13–12 B.C. for Augustus’ request and the resulting letter is more probable than sure. See Brink 1982: 552–54. Similar exchanges in a similar tone are recorded for Augustus and Vergil, as noted by Horsfall 1995: 18–20. Their irony is a common strategy in epistolary requests and recommendations, which put the dignity of both sender and recipient at risk (Hall 1998: 309–12).

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(1968: 72). The letter thus avoids consistent argument and resists adequate summary. It also refuses to anchor its pronouncements in the bedrock of fact. Despite the richness of its sources and the immediacy of the issues it raises, the very exercise of its imagination forfeits any special claim to reliability.2 Yet Horace’s insistence that the old Roman poetry was overvalued in his day while contemporary poets struggled to be heard continues to win credence, and with some reason. Horace chafes memorably at critics with archaizing tastes and prejudices. indignor quidquam reprehendi, non quia crasse compositum illepideve putetur, sed quia nuper, nec veniam antiquis, sed honorem et praemia posci. It annoys me that something is faulted not because it is obtusely or inelegantly wrought but because it is recent, while not indulgence but praise and prizes are sought for old things. (Ep. 2.1.76–78)

He wants poetry to be judged by modern standards – crasse and illepide recall the aesthetic catchwords of Catullus’ generation – and not by reason of age.3 This sounds serious, as if those admirers of Lucilius with whom he had argued so extensively in his first books of satires not only existed but continued to set the poetic standard of the time. “Horace is engaged,” says Eduard Fraenkel, “in an embittered struggle for his own and his friends’ artistic ideals.”4 The battle now being staged for Augustus’ benefit ostensibly pits that old poetry against the new, youth against age, and the public experience of literature against the private one. Horace objects to the privileging of old plays and to the stultifying reverence for even the hoary obscurity of Numa’s Salian hymn. 2

3

4

Thus, for example, the conclusion of Jocelyn 1995: 246–47: “I hope I have at least succeeded in undermining any confidence that may exist in the possibility of establishing on the basis of the epistle to Augustus a firm outline of the history of Roman literary taste in the first century B.C.” Quite different analyses of the letter are offered by, inter alios, Williams 1968: 71–72, Brink 1982: 488–95, and Rudd 1989: 4–11. For the nuance of these and related terms, see Ross 1969: 104–12 and Newman 1990: 7–12 (lepidus), 18–24 (doctus). This recalls “the language of social performance” defined by Krostenko 2001: 34–75 as characteristic of the late Republic but already old fashioned for the Augustans (304–8), perhaps another mark of Horatian irony. For Livy, too, venia – but not much more – was antiquity’s due (Praef. 7). Fraenkel 1957: 392. Cf. 388: “In this epistle, it is Horace’s primary object to outline the character and scope of that new poetry and to allot to it its proper place in the body politic.”

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This is the very complaint Nietzsche would eventually make against what he called “antiquarian” history, where “everything old and past that enters one’s field of vision at all is in the end blandly taken to be equally worthy of reverence, while everything that does not approach this antiquity with reverence, that is to say everything new and evolving, is rejected and persecuted.” Nietzsche, like Horace before him, was deeply suspicious of the historical sensibility that “no longer continues life but mummifies it,” and modern theorists are no less aware of the obstacles that historicism can put in the way of new artistic endeavors.5 Our sympathy for Horace’s position, however, should not blind us to a significant problem with his attack on antiquarianism: its picture of an embattled modernity is manifestly, even spectacularly inexact. It is of course true that the men eventually hailed as Rome’s first poets were (or were also) playwrights, but drama did not dominate the theaters of first-century Rome to anything like the extent they dominate Horace’s thoughts, either here or in his letter to the Pisones, the socalled “Ars Poetica.” Romans, as we saw in Chapter 2, did not crowd into little theaters to watch plays of Plautus and Accius so very often, and Horace’s own references to comedy in his poetry have a distinctly bookish quality. Thus the very invocation of comedy in Satire 1.4, as well as the critical measures applied to it (“acer spiritus ac vis,” 46; “puris verbis,” 54) smack not of the stage but of the study and recall the rhetorical labels attached to Terence in the famous epigrams of Caesar (“puri sermonis amator,” “lenibus scriptis,” “vis”) and Cicero (“lecto sermone,” “sedatis motibus”).6 Mime and pantomime, not tragedies and comedies modeled on Greek originals, were the common theatrical entertainment of late Republican and Augustan Rome, and they were the Princeps’ particular favorites.7 Horace’s preoccupation with drama as a literary benchmark 5

6

7

Nietzsche 1983: 74–75. Simpson 1999 discusses this problem in the context of literary history. Suet. Vita. Ter. 7. The “pater ardens” of this satire (48–50), not to mention the “pater optimus” of 110–15, could be not only the father of Horace’s Pomponius but the Simo of Andria or Demipho of Phormio. Horatian scholarship tends to miss the specificity of the comic allusions in this early part of the satire, though it is well attuned to the later ones, e.g., Leach 1971 and Freudenburg 1993: 33–9. Suet. Aug. 43–45. The stage success of Varius’ Thyestes in the early 20s is something of an anomaly. The circumstances of its production are uncertain: both the Actian games of 29 and the restored ludi Apollinares of 28 are possible occasions. See Cova 1989: 9–27. Revivals of it are not attested: Quintilian, who thought it equaled the best of the Greeks (10.1.98), probably knew it as a text.

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here owes more to scholarly convention and to the tastes of his addressee than to contemporary reality.8 Nor did that reality resist new poetry or the new poets. Indeed, as Horace himself soon goes on to complain, the problem most commonly faced by serious artists was not that there was too little poetry being written but too much. Romans have lost their old reticence and decorum. mutavit mentem populus levis et calet uno scribendi studio; pueri patresque severi fronde comas vincti cenant et carmina dictant. The fickle populace changed its mind and glows with a single-minded urge to write: sons and stern fathers alike bind their hair with wreaths and toss off poems at dinner. (108–10)

Everyone is writing, whether or not they know what writing ought to entail: “scribimus indocti doctique poemata passim” (117). It is as if the senes severiores of Catullus have joined the fun, sharing in the pastimes of Catullus and Licinius.9 Nevertheless, Horace’s poetic world was not simply dominated by poetasters. The vibrant poetic ambience of the late Republic that gave Catullus Volusius to condemn as well as Cinna to admire and put a draft of Lucretius’ poemata into the hands of Marcus and Quintus Cicero continued unabated into the next generation. We have already seen hints of a similar ferment in Propertius after he heard bits of Vergil’s nascent epic (2.34.61–66). The middle-aged Ovid, looking back from exile on conditions at Rome in the 20s, records a similarly charged world of recitations and poetic exchanges that is hardly the domain of amateurs and nonentities. saepe suas volucres legit mihi grandior aevo, quaeque nocet serpens, quae iuvat herba, Macer. saepe suos solitus recitare Propertius ignes, iure sodalicii qui mihi iunctus erat. 8

9

Horace’s history of drama appears to draw most on Varro, though the prominence he gives drama ultimately reflects the Aristotelian legacy. See Brink 1963b: 203–9, Baier 1997: 103–20, and Oakley 1998: 43–49. Cf. Cat. 5, 50. Horace of course wryly includes himself in their number (111–13). His complaint brings to mind Juvenal’s famous diatribe against recitations (1.1.1–14), but we might also recall Ovid’s claim that writing without recitation is like dancing in the dark (Pont. 4.2.33–38). See McKeown 1987: 63–73.

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Ponticus heroo, Bassus quoque clarus iambis dulcia convictus membra fuere mei. et tenuit nostras numerosus Horatius aures, dum ferit Ausonia carmina culta lyra. Vergilium vidi tantum, nec avara Tibullo tempus amicitiae fata dedere meae. successor fuit hic tibi, Galle, Propertius illi; quartus ab his serie temporis ipse fui. Often Macer, already old, read to me of his birds and harmful snakes and healing plants. Often Propertius would recite his burning verse, bound by that fellowship joining him to me. Ponticus, known for epic, and Bassus, for iambics were pleasant members of my circle. And Horace, metrically deft, captured our ears as he struck his polished songs on the Ausonian lyre. Vergil I only saw, and a greedy fate allowed me no time for friendship with Tibullus. He was your successor, Gallus, and Propertius his: I myself was fourth in this sequence. (Ov. Tr. 4.10.43–54)

Elegy looms especially large in this world, of course, but the experiences that shaped the poetic education Ovid recalls from his youth embrace a full range of genres, including didactic, epic, iambic, and lyric verse.10 This was the same world that gathered to hear Vergil recite drafts of his new epic and helped make Horace himself the public voice of Rome when Augustus staged Secular Games in 17 B.C.11 Modern poets hardly lacked a readership – and a distinguished one at that. 10

11

Aemilius Macer (d. 16 B.C.) wrote an Ornithogonia and Theriaca: Quint. Inst. 12.11.27 pairs him with Lucretius. See Courtney 1993: 292–305. Ponticus and Bassus are otherwise known only from Propertius 1.7 and 9 addressed to Ponticus, and 1.4 addressed to Bassus. Elegy was especially well rooted in Augustan society (Syme 1978: 177–81, cf. the sense of literary solidarity at Tr. 2.445–70), but Ovid’s youthful convictus is strikingly broad. For Vergil’s recitations, Horsfall 1995: 17–20, and more generally Bell 1999: 263– 68. Note Augustus’ personal support of the ingenia saeculi, which suggests not just imperial patronage but the existence of a literary community to profit from it (Suet. Aug. 89.3). For the context of the Secular Games, see Zanker 1988: 167–72 and for Horace’s Carmen Saeculare as performance poetry, White 1993: 123–27, Putnam 2000: 1–7, and Barchiesi 2002.

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Equally independent of contemporary reality is Horace’s warning that the Princeps avoid bad poets (229–34). His argument is historical. Even the great Alexander, Horace says, who knew to favor Apelles and Lysippus in art, yielded to the temptation of flattery and allowed himself to be praised by Choerilus, a poet as bad as he was mercenary. Gratus Alexandro, regi magno, fuit ille Choerilus, incultis qui versibus et male natis rettulit acceptos, regale nomisma, Philippos. Dear to Alexander, a great king, was the notorious Choerilus, who took his golden staters, a royal coinage, and repaid him with verses uncouth and ill-conceived. (232–34)

This attack on Choerilus can claim a little more justice than the earlier, rather similar complaint about Plautus’ mercenary tendency (175–76), but why does Horace recall Alexander’s unhappy experience with poetry at all? In 13 B.C. his addressee hardly required this warning. There may well have been a problem in the making. A generation later, Ovid would claim license to address the Princeps directly because “Caesar is public property.”12 ipse pater patriae – quid enim est civilius illo? – sustinet in nostro carmine nempe legi; nec prohibere potest, quia res est publica Caesar, et de communi pars quoque nostra bono est. The Father of Our Country himself – what is more unassuming than this? – endures, to be sure, being read in my poetry; nor can he prevent it, since Caesar is public property, and my share too is part of the common good. 14 nempe Hall: saepe codd.

Yet, in fact, as Suetonius reports, Augustus took significant steps to avoid the occupational hazard posed by men of Choerilus’ talent: “He did not like having anything written about him except in earnest and by the very 12

Ov. Tr. 4.4(a).13–16. Luck 1977: 231 tentatively dates Tristia 4 to A.D. 11. The ironic double entendres of the passage do not negate its literal meaning, which appears unambiguously at Plin. Nat. 35.101: “ingenia hominum rem publicam fecit” (of Pollio). For the problem see Davis 1999a: 11–13; cf. Barchiesi 1997: 80–83 on pater patriae in Fasti 2.119–48.

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best authors, and he instructed the praetors not to allow his name to be worn out in honorific speeches.”13 Horace surely knew this perfectly well. That he makes the point anyway suggests less a concern with the realities of the contemporary scene than pride in its advances. This is why he illustrates the point not just with a historical example but with an example that itself has a history. The recollection of Alexander as patron of arts is calculated to recall a passage in Cicero’s famous letter urging Lucius Lucceius to write the history of his consulship. In that artfully framed request, Cicero sought to flatter Lucceius (and by implication himself) by inviting the historian to consider the great fourth-century artists Apelles and Lysippus: “The famous Alexander did not wish to be painted by Apelles in particular and sculpted by Lysippus for pleasure’s sake but because he thought that their art would be a source of glory not just for them but especially for himself.”14 Horace will soon echo this claim to a mutual benefit for artist and subject (246), but he also corrects Cicero by restoring the negative example of Alexander’s taste that Cicero himself had tactfully suppressed, the author Choerilus. The point then becomes not simply that Alexander made a mistake that Augustus avoids. Augustus is superior to Alexander because he supports not a Roman Choerilus but the two best Latin poets: ‘dilecti tibi Vergilius Variusque poetae’ (247). Patronage under Augustus is better directed than it was under Alexander. The poetry is better, too. Horace demonstrates the technical and ideological superiority of modern verse by another nod to Cicero as he makes his own excuses for avoiding epic themes (250–57): nec sermones ego mallem repentis per humum quam res componere gestas 13

14

Suet. Aug. 89.3: “componi tamen aliquid de se nisi et serio et a praestantissimis offendebatur, admonebatque praetores ne paterentur nomen suum commissionibus obsolefieri.” Choerilus of Iasus figures prominently among the famously bad poets of Alexander’s exploits (Cameron 1995: 278–80). Alexander’s reputation was eventually salvaged by the remark that he would have preferred to be Homer’s Thersites than Choerilus’ Achilles. Test. at SH 333; FGH 153 F 10. Choerilus is emblematic of bad poets at Ars 357–58, on which see Brink 1971: 365–67. Cic. Fam. 5.12.7: “neque enim Alexander ille gratiae causa ab Apelle potissumum pingi et a Lysippo fingi volebat, sed quod illorum artem cum ipsis tum etiam sibi gloriae fore putabat.” The letter must have been well known: Cicero was proud of it and encouraged its circulation (Att. 4.6.4). For the social context in which it should be read, see White 1993: 64–78 and Hall 1998. Horace’s allusions to this letter are effectively treated by Lowrie 2002.

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terrarumque situs et flumina dicere et arces montibus impositas et barbara regna tuisque auspiciis totum confecta duella per orbem claustraque custodem pacis cohibentia Ianum et formidatam Parthis te principe Romam, si quantum cuperem possem quoque. Nor would I prefer little talks that creep across the ground to recording deeds of arms, describing the lay of lands and rivers and fortresses set on mountains and barbarian kingdoms and wars throughout the world concluded under your auspices and the gates enclosing Janus, guardian of peace, and Rome under your leadership terrifying Parthia, if I were as able as I am willing.

As he did a generation earlier in his satires, those “little talks that creep across the ground,” Horace slips his hexameters around the fringes of epic. He may even be echoing his own famously unepic tale of the journey to Brundisium, which took readers within hail of the infamous Caudine forks but gave them only the bantering duel of the buffoons Sarmentus and Cicirrus.15 Here, in the letter, Horace’s breathless list, growing grander and more specific with each successive example, recalls in a general way the diction and themes of Republican epic before culminating with a striking and specific allusion to a famous line from one of the last poems in that tradition, Cicero’s ill-fated account of his consulship: “O fortunatam natam me consule Romam” (‘Fortunate Rome, reborn in my consulship’).16 The sudden clarity of the echo seizes our attention, but what is it we are meant to notice? Because Cicero’s line has come to us in a cloud of invective and embarrassment, its echo here is often taken as an indication or, perhaps, a 15

16

Hor. S. 1.5.51–69, with other obvious epic allusions at 7–8 and 9–10. Gowers 1993: 56–57 makes the connection between satire and letter, Freudenburg 2001: 55–56 between the alternative struggles at Caudium. The travelers “creep” along their way at 25 (repimus) and 79 (erepsemus). The line (fr. 8 Courtney) is quoted by [Sall.] In Cic. 5, [Cic.] In Sal. 7, Q. Inst. 9.4.41, 11.1.24, Juv. 10.122, Diom. 465–66. Horace’s list of achievements at 251–56 recalls the style of honorific inscriptions that found its way into Naevius’ Bellum Punicum (Goldberg 1995: 76–82). Mention of Janus’ doors may recall the passage in Enn. Annales 7, x–xiii that Horace himself quoted at Sat. 1.4.60-61. Trisyllabic duella at 254 is probably Ennian: Clausen 1971.

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warning that praise poetry inevitably culminates in bathos,17 but the matter is hardly straightforward. In 12 B.C., Cicero’s poem was not yet regarded as the quintessentially bad poem it certainly came to be, and Horace deftly removes from his echo what were, for his generation, its characteristic inconcinnities.18 One of these is technical: he eliminates the old-fashioned jingle of fortunatam natam while preserving the grammatical shape and essential alliteration of the original. Accomplishing this change was ostensibly a simple matter of replacing the initial adjective and its construction, but the change from fortunatam natam . . . Romam to formidatam Parthis . . . Romam brought larger, ideological changes, too. Horace’s trembling Parthians refer to Augustus’ success in overcoming the most conspicuous military humiliation of the late Republic, Crassus’ defeat at Carrhae and its aftermath.19 Similarly, the inevitable substitution of principe for consule implies in this context of refashioned Republican forms and Republican achievements that the political change from consul to princeps is equally positive.20 All of this brings Horace very close to panegyric: the res gestae of his catalogue are not very far from the long list of foreign accomplishments that Augustus would eventually claim for himself (Anc. 26–33). As so often, a strong element of praise vies with polemic in the Augustan recusatio.21 Horace disarms criticism of himself, however, with a characteristic combination of technical bravado and self-effacement. In addition to the metrical dexterity of his modernized Cicero, he has unexpectedly moved trisyllabic duella from its customary position at the end of a hexameter, 17

18

19

20

21

So, e.g., Lowrie 2002: 167, “He [Horace] implies that, were he to write such poetry, it would sound like Cicero – a reason not to.” Cf. Barchiesi 2001: 83–85. Goldberg 1995: 151–53, 166–69. Cicero made the mistake of writing an Ennian poem in the age of Cinna. He probably wrote te in this line, me (like linguae replacing laudi in “cedant arma togae . . . ”) being the work of a vengeful parodist. See Allen 1956: 144–46, but also Lowrie 2002: 241 n. 46. At the time of his death, Caesar was planning a campaign against Parthia to retrieve the lost standards (D.C. 43.51.1–2). Augustus’ eventual success was diplomatic rather than military, but he made the most of it at Anc. 32: “ad me supplices confugerunt reges Parthorum . . . ” Cf. Syme 1960: 301–2. Allusion to Cicero’s te consule is especially apt and prophetic since it echoes the standard formula for dating by consular year: Augustus was born in 63, the year of Cicero’s consulship. So, rightly, Cameron 1995: 456–71. Brink 1982: 258–59 notes that “maiestas tua” of 258 flirts with meaning ‘your majesty’. See Bauman 1967: 228–29 and more generally Mackie 1992: 88–91. Any address to Augustus, however playfully cast, cannot escape political overtones in even literary themes. See Barchiesi 2001: 81–83 and Fowler 1995: 251–54.

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and he closes his sentence with the deliberately inelegant thud of possem quoque, thus ending his excursion into epic themes with a distinctly satiric rhythm. The meter thus confirms the content of its clause, ending the passage as it began, with recollection of those earthbound conversations at which Horace excelled.22 Finally, there is irony. Horace ends the letter by confessing that he would not wish to undergo the kind of attention that Augustus, like Alexander before him, attracts from artists and poets: ac neque ficto in peius vultu proponi cereus usquam nec prave factis decorari versibus opto . . . I never want to be exhibited in wax with a distorted face nor to be honored in hideous verses . . . (264–66)

It would bring him quickly to a pauper’s end. deferar in vicum vendentem tus et odores et piper et quidquid chartis amicitur ineptis. I’d be borne down the alley selling incense and perfume and pepper and whatever is cloaked in wasted pages. (269–70)

One of the things “cloaked in wasted pages” is, as his readers would surely remember, “fish.” Horace is saying that he does not want to suffer the fate that Catullus wished on the Annals of Volusius: at Volusi annales Paduam morientur ad ipsam et laxas scombris saepe dabunt tunicas. Volusius’ Annals will die at the Padua itself and often provide loose tunics for mackerel. (Cat. 95.7–8) 22

A trisyllabic word is more common before bucolic caesura, and quoque here is particularly anticlimactic. Horace otherwise employs du¨ello at line end (Ep. 1.2.7, 2.2.98, cf. En. An. 573), though as Clausen notes, “Horace does not merely imitate Ennius . . . he imitates him in his own way” (1971: 71). Self-effacing metrical tricks, artistic devices employed to deny artistry, are common in Horace’s Satires. Cf. Anderson 1982: 24–25 on S. 1.4.39.

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But he also fears neoteric seriousness. The incense and unguents being hawked in that alley alongside the fish recall Cinna’s Zmyrna (i.e., “myrrh”), the learned epyllion that Catullus had praised so lavishly at Volusius’ expense. Horace wants no part of that style either.23 He knows his strengths and will stick to them. Any hexameters he writes will have to avoid the failures of both Volusius and Cinna. This ironic, yet confident conclusion demands reconciliation with the poem’s didactic and almost querulous beginning. The shift is certainly one more reason to suppose that the bitterly polemic Horace described by Eduard Fraenkel is more a pose than a reality: “bitterness” in this letter tends to ebb and flow with the twists of its argument. Horace is providing less a defense of modern poetry than a demonstration of its power, of its ability to steer a middle course between the archaic and the outr´e. Yet if poetry’s status was not, as so often thought, really in question, why does Horace begin by writing as if it were? He knows that Augustus’ time is not to be wasted (1–4). In what meaningful sense is the status of poetry in question? What is there, besides the shrugging off of archaizing tastes and captious critics, to justify a claim to the Princeps’ attention? The point of genuine interest and concern in the letter becomes clear just as its addressee becomes clear. Though the letter began with a formal address to Augustus (1–4), most of its argument is appropriate to a larger, more general audience. This is no surprise. A certain slippage between the notional addressee of a letter and another, broader one is common in the Epistles. A larger audience is inherent in the fact of publication and an important element in turning these “letters” into poems. This is especially so when the addressee is a public figure. Epistle 1.13, for example, addressing a certain Vinnius, who is ostensibly carrying a collection of poems to Augustus, is really a letter not to Vinnius about carrying books – he is presumably en route and beyond reach of Horace’s injunction – but to Augustus himself about receiving them, and, looking beyond the Princeps, announcing to the literary world at large that Augustus is poised

23

Barchiesi 2001: 85 notes the allusion. Horace remains mindful of Quirinus’ injunction at S. 1.10.34–35. His blithe transition here in the letter from being the author of bad verse to being its subject recalls the satire’s shift from using Greek in verse to writing verse in Greek. A distinction should probably be made between Horace’s response to the dangers of neoteric tendencies generally and to the achievements of individual practitioners. McDermott 1981: 1654–57 surveys the problem.

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to accept Horace’s poetic gift.24 Invoking the Princeps is a way to get the world’s attention. Our letter could claim a similar indirection: Augustus’ name lends auctoritas to the substance of Horace’s theme, which claims to be a subject of general interest. But then the discussion abruptly takes a distinctly personal turn. verum age, et his qui se lectori credere malunt quam spectatoris fastidia ferre superbi curam redde brevem, si munus Apolline dignum vis complere libris et vatibus addere calcar, ut studio maiore petant Helicona virentem. Come now, give some thought to those preferring to entrust themselves to a reader than to endure an insolent spectator’s disdain, if you wish to fill that gift worthy of Apollo with books and to provide a spur to poets, so they seek verdant Helicon with still greater zeal. (Ep. 2.1.214–18)

The munus in question is no abstraction. It is a specific allusion to the library that Augustus established on the Palatine in conjunction with the great temple of Apollo there.25 The subject of “verum age” and “curam redde” suddenly becomes explicitly and directly Augustus. Nobody else has such a power. To this point, Horace has been talking around Augustus’ role as reader and as Princeps. Now the reference to the library, just as the poem itself moves from the red herring of performance to the genuine question of reading, makes a direct appeal to Augustus as a patron of literature.26 Why Horace should care so specifically about the library and the books it houses, why he would make that institution the turning 24

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Williams 1968: 13–14, Kilpatrick 1986: 14–18, and Fraenkel 1957: 350–56 (perhaps too literal a reading). Despite his famous reluctance to receive poems (Suet. Aug. 89.3, cf. Clarke 1972: 159), a work like this may well have made Augustus wonder why Horace did not address him directly. The carmina Vinnius carried were probably the first three books of Odes. See Mayer 1994: 3–4. Basic description by Gros in Steinby 1993: 54–57 s.v. Apollo Palatinus. For the cultural significance of the temple complex, see Zanker 1988: 65–71, Gurval 1995: 123–31, and Galinsky 1996: 213–24. Augustus’ role thus emerges only gradually. See Fraenkel 1957: 394–95, Barchiesi 2001: 81–83. Contrast Ov. Tr. 2, which seeks from the outset to educate Augustus as a reader, though Ovid doubtless hoped for more than this single reader. See Nugent 1990: 251–54, Davis 1999b.

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point of his poem, is particularly relevant to our inquiry as a striking and powerful indication of literature’s status by the time of the Principate. The temple of Palatine Apollo, Rome’s second sanctuary to that god, was dedicated in 28 B.C., fulfilling a vow Octavian had made before his victory over Sextus Pompey off Naulochus eight years before (Vell. 2.81.3). By 25 B.C., this temple was the centerpiece of a significant complex of structures. A ramp connected it with Augustus’ own house to the west, thus making a material connection between the Princeps and his divine patron. On the south and east, an elaborate portico decorated with sculptures of Danaus’ daughters and their Egyptian pursuers connected the temple to two parallel reading rooms, one for Greek books and one for Latin ones.27 This elaborate building was not Rome’s first public library, however. Though Caesar’s plans for such an institution were halted by his death in 44, the idea was revived and brought to fulfillment a few years later by Asinius Pollio. Both the patron and the circumstances of that development are worth recalling. Asinius Pollio is probably best known to literary history for his famous remark about Livy’s Patavinitas, but as soldier and author as well as critic he exerted great influence on the political and cultural life of the later first century.28 While consul in 40, he figured prominently in the reconciliation of Antony and Octavian at Brundisium, and in 39, he became proconsul in Macedonia. Victorious there over the Illyrian Parthini, he celebrated a triumph and then withdrew from public life to pursue his cultural and literary interests. With the spoils of his victory, Pollio rebuilt the Atrium Libertatis, incorporating into it a public library and his own distinguished collection of Greek art.29 Both the timing and the location of this project must be significant, though that significance is hard to 27

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Suet. Aug. 29.3, Prop. 2.31.3–4, and Ov. Trist. 3.1.61 recall the Danaid portico. Testimony on the library is conveniently gathered by Lugli 1960: 109–13. For its ideological significance, Horsfall 1993b. The roles were not discrete. Pollio evidently played a significant role in the confiscations of land after Philippi (Broughton, MRR 2.377) and earned Vergil’s praise in the Eclogues (Syme 1960: 216–20, Horsfall 1995: 28–29), though whether he was himself instrumental in the return of Vergil’s property is uncertain. Pollio lived from 76 B.C. to A.D. 4, leaving his mark from Republic to Principate. Full testimonia in PIR2 1: 251–53 (no. 1241). Quint. Inst. 1.5.56 reports Pollio’s remark about Livy. For his literary significance, see Mendell 1928 and Morgan 2000. For Pollio’s campaign and triumph, see Broughton, MRR 2.387–88; for the building project, see Suet. Aug. 29.5, Plin. Nat. 35.10, Isid. Org. 6.3; and for the art collection, see Plin. Nat. 36.33-34. Discussion by Strocka 1981: 307–10, Quinn 1982: 125–28, and Rawson 1985: 39–44.

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assess. The attention to Libertas was not in itself likely to have implied criticism of the triumvirate. Pollio had stood with Caesar at the Rubicon, was a loyal friend of Antony, and kept Octavian’s respect. He was no champion of the old Republic, and while the definition of libertas certainly became problematic – at least in some circles – in the course of the Principate, those issues were only nascent in the early 30s.30 A clearer sign of his intentions may rest in the site he chose for the library and its history. Some of the relevant evidence is unequivocal. The Atrium Libertatis was the censors’ traditional administrative center, housing their archive and the offices of their staff, and it was sufficiently large and versatile to accommodate a variety of more occasional functions.31 By the 30s, however, it was a structure ripe for redevelopment. The censorship itself was by then in irretrievable decline. Under the triumvirate, the office that had been the pinnacle of the Republican cursus honorum could no longer attract men of talent or give its incumbents opportunities for distinction.32 Yet the Atrium remained a prominent landmark, rising high on the edge of the Forum Romanum.33 Its precise location is today uncertain, though the so-called Tabularium at the west end of the Forum may preserve its lower stories and, if so, gives some sense of its monumental proportions.34 30

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Pollio’s Republican sympathies are too often exaggerated. See Raaflaub and Samons 1990: 436–39. On libertas and the triumvirate, see Galinsky 1996: 54–57, and for its putative significance in Pollio’s patronage of the library, see Mendell 1928: 202–3 and Barchiesi 1997: 87–89. Pollio refused to take sides in 31, famously offering himself as the praeda victoris (Vell. 2.86.3), and he went on to enjoy great prestige in the Senate (cf. Suet. Aug. 43.2). During the Second Punic War, the Atrium housed hostages from Magna Graecia (Liv. 25.7.12). In 52, Clodius’ slaves were interrogated there before the trial of Milo (Cic. Mil. 59). The testimony for its uses is assembled by Purcell 1993: 142–45. So, for example, the censors of 42, C. Antonius and P. Sulpicius Rufus, were well connected but politically undistinguished. Details in Broughton MRR 2.358–59 and Suolahti 1963: 489–95, who calls the office “a barren seat of conservatism amidst the new circumstances.” The Princeps increasingly subsumed the censors’ functions and so ensured their eventual eclipse. See Suolahti 1963: 497–505 and Barchiesi 1997: 89–92. The last recorded renovation of the building before Pollio was in 194 (Liv. 34.44.5). This is the obvious inference from Liv. 43.16.13 (“censores extemplo in atrium Libertatis escenderunt . . . ”, cf. 45.15.5) and Cic. Att. 4.16.8 (“ut forum laxaremus et usque ad atrium Libertatis explicaremus”). So Purcell 1993, whose discussion of the topographical evidence regarding the Atrium is especially important (125–35). These remains clearly supported a significant structure rising, like the modern Palazzo Senatorio, to the old saddle of the Capitoline. Amici 1995–6 proposes, less probably given the necessary size of the building and the physical constraints of the area, a site off the clivus Argentarius. The old assumption that the

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Wherever it was, it is clear that Pollio’s intervention did not so much restore a Republican institution as give it a new direction. What had been simply a repository for official documents and a headquarters for the people who created them became a cultural attraction, a major venue for literary discussion and recitation as well as for reading and research. The new foundation thus put Pollio at the center of Rome’s literary activity and pioneered a new relationship between the creators and supporters of literature as the new, post-Republican order began to emerge.35 In establishing a second library on the Palatine, Octavian was appropriating the cultural function pioneered at Rome by Asinius Pollio and giving it semiofficial status, further enhancing the prestige of his temple project while giving Romans with bookish tastes a reason for making the long climb up the hill and abandoning their old haunts, so full of Republican associations, overlooking the Forum.36 Whether the two libraries stood as partners or rivals remains unknown. Both held Greek and Latin collections and were embellished with distinguished works of art. As attraction and counterattraction, their creation may recall the legendary aemulatio circa bibliothecas between Ptolemies and Attalids. Certainly the Palatine library found some material precedent at Pergamum, whose library was also built on a hill (the acropolis) in conjunction with a temple (of Athena).37 Yet despite so many palpable similarities – even the Roman word for “library” was Greek38 – there remained one significant conceptual

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Atrium was located on the far side of the Forum Iulium and eventually destroyed in construction of the Basilica Ulpia (e.g., Coarelli in Steinby 1993: 133–35) is not supported by the textual evidence. For Pollio’s literary foundation as reflecting “a new cultural stance” under the triumvirate, Morgan 2000: 65–68, and for recitations and related activities in the new Atrium, Dalzell 1955: 26–28, Zanker 1988: 69–70, Purcell 1993: 145. Wiseman 1987b: 252–56 surveys their Republican precedents. Favro 1996: 203–6 notes how the Augustan development of the Palatine gave it civil functions that came to rival those of the Forum and the Capitol. The Atrium as identified by Purcell 1993 could claim a similar precedent on the Capitol. Plin. Nat. 13.70 ascribes the Egyptian ban on papyrus exports (and the resulting “invention” of parchment) to the aemulatio between the two dynasties. For the physical arrangements of the Palatine library, see Casson 2001: 80–83, and for Pergamum, see Callmer 1944: 148–53 and Casson 2001: 49–53. The relocation of the Sibylline Books from the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitol to Apollo’s new temple on the Palatine may also have enhanced the “official” status of the adjacent library (Suet. Aug. 31.1, Serv. ad Aen. 6.72). Bibliotheca(e): singular and plural appear interchangeable, e.g., Plut. Luc. 42 (22 ) and Cic. Fin. 3.2.7 both referring to the collection at Lucullus’ villa.

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difference between the Roman institutions and the great Hellenistic ones on which they were, in some sense, modeled. Greek libraries sought completeness. Ptolemaic bibliomania, which extended to a search for books aboard every ship entering the port of Alexandria, eventually accumulated over five hundred thousand rolls for their library. At Pergamum, Eumenes II was equally acquisitive: how Aristotle’s library escaped his clutches became the stuff of legend.39 The preoccupation with canons that developed in the Hellenistic world – the ten Attic orators, the ten lyric poets, and so on – reflects a mentality rooted in the alphabetical lists by author and genre with which librarians sought to bring order to the resulting mass of material.40 Roman libraries were much smaller, in part because they were the result of selection. Archives – the kind of institution with which Pollio initially allied his library – are by nature inclusive and often unique in their holdings. That is their virtue, but in Roman times it was also their liability. Roman archives were notoriously confused and difficult of access. The standard method for making documents available in the Roman world was therefore not to file them away in special buildings but to post them in public places.41 Roman libraries were conceptually different, more orderly places in part because they all began with choices. The one thing certainly known about Caesar’s plan for a library was that he asked Varro to assemble and arrange Greek and Latin collections for it, that is, to choose the titles for inclusion.42 Octavian also sought advice.

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Latin librarium meant simply ‘a bookcase’. Boyd 1915, though outdated in particulars, provides a valuable collection of ancient evidence for Roman libraries. Pfeiffer 1968: 98–103 and Fraser 1972: 323–30 describe the Alexandrian policies. For Pergamum, see Casson 2001: 48–49 and the famous story at Str. 13.609, with discussion by Nagy 1998: 200–206. The library at Pergamon seems to have had room for about two hundred thousand book rolls (Callmer 1944: 152–53). Most famously, of course, by Callimachus at Alexandria, whose Pinakes arranging all Greek literature in tables reflected the cataloguing principles of the library. See Pfeiffer 1968: 127–33, Fraser 1972: 452–54, Schmidt 1987: 249–51, and for corresponding developments at Pergamum, see Pfeiffer 1968: 235–37. As discussed in Chapter 2, such list making inevitably suggested rankings and preferences. Culham 1989: 105–9, Purcell 1993: 140–42. The discussion of Roman archival practice in Posner 1972: 165–85, though useful, is anachronistic. For the difficulties of archiving more generally, see Jenkinson 1984 and Pugh 1984: 66–69. Suet. Iul. 44.2: “data Marco Varroni cura comparandarum ac digerendarum”. The fact that Varro’s statue was the only representation of a living Roman in Pollio’s library suggests the link between that institution and Caesar’s original idea (Plin. Nat. 7.115). Public patronage of the arts at Rome probably originated with Caesar (Rawson 1985: 110–14).

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He regularly consulted Atticus on literary matters, and the Pomponius Macer who was given formal responsibility for establishing the Palatine collection may have been Atticus’ freedman. C. Melissus, who performed a similar function for the last Augustan library, established in the Porticus Octaviae after the death of Marcellus, was certainly a freedman.43 How did they make their selections? Some choices would, for a Roman, be easy: the Palatine library became famous for its holdings in law and oratory.44 Literary choices were more problematic because they were more subjective. Inclusion in a library collection is not easily separated from approval by the librarians. Thus an ancient vita of Apollonius of Rhodes reports that his work “was found worthy of inclusion in the library of the Museum,” although the library’s collection policy made no such explicit value judgments. Whatever the facts of such policies, an official collection inevitably suggests the power of imprimatur.45 As Gregory Nagy has observed, “the classical model of the library is tied to the power, wealth, and prestige of its patrons” (Nagy 1998: 198). At Rome, the choices that have left a record tend to be negative: Augustus intervened to keep Caesar’s youthful opuscula off the public shelves, and Ovid’s relegation was extended to at least some of his books.46 Yet the new vogue for libraries clearly brought with it a desire for inclusion and encouraged the creation of a de facto canon.47 43

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On Melissus, Suet. Gram. 21.3, Kaster 1995: 219–20, Christes 1979: 74–76. The identity of Macer, “cui ordinandas bibliothecas delegaverat [Augustus]” (Suet. Iul. 56.7), is uncertain. See White 1992: 113–15, and for Atticus’ role as literary advisor, Nep. Att. 20.1–2. Augustus’ famous freedman Hyginus eventually became the Palatine librarian: Suet. Gram. 20.2, Christes 1979: 74–76, Kaster 1995: 219–20. Law: Juv. 1.128–31 with schol. ad 128 (no. 356–57 Lugli). Oratory: Fronto Ep. 4.5 (no. 355 Lugli). A. R. Vita B:   221 G .  (? . For the meaning of the phrase, see Pfeiffer 1968: 284–85. So today the U.S. Library of Congress receives over thirty-one thousand new candidates for inclusion every business day, but only about seven thousand are eventually placed in the working collection (http://www. loc.gov/rr/collects.html). Suet. Iul. 56.7 (“vetuit Augustus publicari”). They may have been in some kind of storage, since Suetonius is able to report their titles. The fate of Ovid’s books as implied by Tr. 3.1 is discussed later in this chapter. Casson 2001: 98–102 comments on the process of selection. E.g., Hor. C. 1.1.35: “si me lyricis vatibus inseres”, where inseres =   ‘to include in the canon’ (Pfeiffer 1968: 206–7). Ponere (Hor. C. 4.3.13–14, Prop. 2.34.94) and miscere (Ov. Ars 3.339) also appear. Cf. Horsfall 1993b: 64–65, writing of the Palatine: “the more one looks at that half-empty library, the more it explains in concrete terms a number of Augustan ways of talking about literary ambitions, and the more it seems

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The symbolic value of the Palatine library’s imprimatur is manifest in an early Epistle of Horace, which is addressed to Julius Florus. The date is probably late in 21 B.C., when the library was still just establishing itself. Florus has joined Tiberius’ entourage on a mission to the East, and Horace asks after the literary men in his company. The inquiry itself becomes an implicit lesson in how to read and how to use reading as a foundation for writing: its recollections of Catullus and Vergil and its Pindaric mannerisms all show what can be done along these lines.48 But the new capabilities also present new dangers. Horace wonders in particular about Albinovanus Celsus, a poet all too much like the jackdaw of the fable, a man in need of watching and warning.49 quid mihi Celsus agit, monitus multumque monendus privatas ut quaerat opes et tangere vitet scripta Palatinus quaecumque recepit Apollo, ne, si forte suas repetitum venerit olim grex avium plumas, moveat cornicula risum furtivis nudata coloribus? What’s Celsus up to? He needs constant reminding to stick to his own resources and keep his hands off whatever writings Palatine Apollo receives, or else, should the flock of birds return some day to claim their plumage, our little crow will be a laughingstock, stripped of his borrowed colors. (Ep. 1.3.15–20)

Unlike Terence and Luscius a century and a half earlier, when a charge of plagiarism demanded recitation as well as reading, Horace writes explicitly of books. There is no question, however, of Celsus, notebook in hand, furtively poring over literary riches on the Palatine. Not there and not then. The poetry collection was only nascent in 21: Horace could

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that this building was itself, as Horace says, a great calcar to contemporary authors.” Fantham 1996: 87–89 discusses possible use of the temple for poetry contests. West 1967: 30–39 (Vergil, with some reservations), Feeney 2002: 176 (Catullus), and Hubbard 1995 (Pindar). Horace alludes to the borrowed plumage of Babrius 72 and Phaedrus 1.3. Celsus also figures in Ep. 1.8 but is otherwise unknown. He apparently became Tiberius’ scriba, which necessitated another warning: “praeceptum auriculis hoc instillare memento:/ ut tu fortunam, sic nos te, Celse, feremus.” (‘Remember to slip this bit of warning in his ear: / As you bear your success, Celsus, so we will bear you.’), Ep. 1.8.16–17.

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still call the temple “vacuam Romanis vatibus” in 19.50 And although his third-century commentator Pomponius Porphyrio seems to think otherwise, the plagiarist is actually nowhere near the Palatine.51 He is on the road to Armenia with Tiberius. “Quaecumque recepit Apollo” has already come to mean simply a body of work in high regard and thus a convenient target for Celsus’ theft. Thirty years later, the symbolic value of Rome’s official collections was, if anything, even more apparent, and even to a stranger from the Black Sea. When Ovid’s third book of Tristia arrived in Rome, it had the power to speak for itself but was somewhat the worse for wear: unpolished, tear-stained, with hints of a barbaric stammer (Tr. 3.1.9–18).52 It stood bewildered and forlorn, like so many other newcomers to the big city, until a passing stranger consents to be its guide (19–26). They set out, probably along the Argiletum, passing the famous sights in and around the forum (27–30).53 Then they turn to climb the Palatine. They walk up the clivus Palatinus, which would have taken them past many great houses, until at last one house in particular seizes the book’s attention. singula dum miror, video fulgentibus armis conspicuos postes tectaque digna deo. “et Iovis haec” dixi “domus est?” quod ut esse putarem, augurium menti querna corona dabat. cuius ut accepi dominum, “non fallimur,” inquam, “et magni verum est hanc Iovis esse domum.” 50

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Hor. Ep. 2.2.94. The construction, however, is ambiguous, referring either to the library with empty shelves (vacuam = ‘with space for’) or as a center of literary activity (‘available for’). See Brink 1982: 321–22, and for the date, 552. Tiberius left for Armenia toward the end of 21 (Dio 54.9.4–6, Tac. An. 2.3.4). Porph. ad Ep. 1.3.15 (Lugli 1960: 111): “He was accustomed to make extracts from the books in Apollo’s library and recite the poetry of others as his own.” The comment is simply an inference from the passage, though Lugli seems to take it literally. Luscius Lanuvinus’ accusation against Terence at Eun. 20–28 is discussed in Chapter 1 above. The talking book is a variant on the more common devices of address to the book (e.g., Tr. 1.1, 2) and to the reader about the book (Tr. 4.1, 5.1, Pont. 1.1; Cat. 1, 14b; Hor. Ep. 1.19.33–34). The physical condition of the book as representing the quality of the verse is another trope (Williams 1992), belied here by, among other things, Ovid’s relentlessly clever puns on pes (12, 26, 56, 70). Nor is there any indication of rough edges in his technical command of the verse (Luck 1961). The self-denigrating pose of the collection is treated especially well by Hinds 1985: 14–16 and Casali 1997: 89–92. For the tour, Lugli 1959, Neumeister 1991: 109–18, Newlands 1997: 63–73, and Miller 2002. The Argiletum, connecting the Subura with the Forum, had numerous bookshops (Mart. 1.3.1–2, 1.117.9–17, with Neumeister 1991: 106–8).

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As I gape at each sight in turn, I see a striking doorway with shimmering arms and a rooftop befitting a god. “Is this Jupiter’s house?” I asked. So I might have thought: an oak wreath put that inkling in my head. When I learned who its owner was, “I was right,” I said. “This really is the house of great Jupiter.” (33–38)

It is in fact the house of Augustus, always more readily distinguished by the trophy of arms and the civic garland at its door than by its physical grandeur.54 These honors are then described and explained until mention of the crown, awarded for the saving of citizens, momentarily shatters Ovid’s carefully constructed fiction (39–48). The poet suddenly speaks, not his book, and he speaks not to his guide or to the house but directly to its occupant. adice servatis unum, pater optime, civem, qui procul extremo pulsus in orbe iacet, in quo poenarum, quas se meruisse fatetur, non facinus causam, sed suus error habet. Best of fathers, add to those saved another citizen, who lies far off, driven to the earth’s end, for whose punishments, which he confesses he deserved, no crime was responsible, but his own mistake. (49–52)

The obsequious surface of this appeal, coming as it does on the heels of the admiring description, has not been congenial to modern taste. A naive reading of the passage may recall Cato’s dismissal of poets as flatterers (grassatores), while an ironic one makes the poem seem counterproductive, if not overly clever. The compliment, or whatever we call it, is particularly difficult to read because it comes steeped not just in the poet’s art but in his books. 54

Once the house of the orator Hortensius, it kept its Republican simplicity. Suet. Aug. 72.1 calls it “neque laxitate neque cultu conspicuis”, though its interior decoration was, as we know now, of exceptional quality. See Wiseman 1987a: 397–406 and Galinsky 1996: 187–92, and for Ovid’s representations of the house, Boyle 2003: 226–8. Although our sources do not suggest that the structure rebuilt after the fire of A.D. 2 was significantly grander than its predecessor (Dio 55.12.3–4, Suet. Aug. 57.2, pace Newlands 1997: 67), Augustus was clearly proud of the laurels and the civic crown that, by the senatorial decree of 27 B.C., decorated its door (Anc. 34).

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The entire passage describing Augustus’ house alludes to the famous episode in Aeneid 8, when Evander walks with Aeneas through the landscape that will become the site of Rome (Aen. 8.306–69). Their excursion, like that of Ovid’s book, takes them to the Palatine, where Evander offers his guest the hospitality of his own home.55 ut ventum ad sedes, “haec” inquit “limina victor Alcides subiit, haec illum regia cepit. aude, hospes, contemnere opes et te quoque dignum finge deo, rebusque veni non asper egenis.” As they reached the house, “This threshold,” he said, “victorious Hercules entered. This palace received him. Be willing, my guest, to spurn wealth and make yourself also worthy of immortality. Enter. Do not disdain poverty.” (Aen. 8.362–65)

Aeneas is being asked to follow Hercules’ example in accepting Evander’s hospitality, and how can he refuse? The request is too artfully made to permit refusal. Evander may be poor (360), his roof narrow (366), and his furniture upholstered with leaves (367–68), but his invitation comes wrapped in the urbane, self-effacing irony in which Vergil’s contemporaries regularly masked their requests to one another. Evander knows how to flatter a guest at his own expense, however we understand the terms, not in themselves inconsequential, he uses to describe his house: tecta, sedes, regia.56 In recalling this moment, Ovid not only identifies Augustus’ house with Evander’s, but by transferring the epithet to the house, he makes the quality that Vergil had attributed to the guest (te dignum) describe its owner. It is a deft, intricate compliment. Aeneas, Ovid implies, did prove himself worthy of immortality by accepting 55

56

Ovid’s use of Vergil was noted by Fowler 1918: 74–77 and Bishop 1956: 189–90 (wrong, however, on the location of Augustus’ house). For Vergil’s description in the light of Roman topography, see Gransden 1976: 14–20, and for its sense of the past, see Edwards 1996: 31–35. The Vergilian recollection may well have come to Ovid via Horace’s wish for the adjacent library to be “Apolline dignum” (Ep. 2.1.216), another layer of allusion that would have been pleasing to Augustus. Perhaps also fastigia (366). Serv. ad 363 misses the irony: “domus enim, in qua pontifex habitat, regia dicitur . . . ” Evander’s self-effacement recalls Augustus’ request for Maecenas to send Horace “ab ista parasitica mensa ad hanc regiam” (Malcovati 1948: 21), though the language there was comic rather than political, i.e., ‘from that parasites’ table of yours to this patron’s table here.’ See Fraenkel 1957: 17–18 and Damon 1997: 127–28. The ironic banter so prevalent in Augustus’ correspondence is characteristic of his time and class.

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Evander’s invitation, and now his descendant must be worthy of a similar distinction since his very house is recognizably digna deo.57 Some thirty years after the original, Ovid has completed – and made explicit – Vergil’s sequence of thought. The very fact of the model adds one further dimension to the compliment. Ovid’s recourse to Vergil tacitly acknowledges the authority of Augustus’ favorite poem in shaping perceptions of Rome and its institutions. Ovid, as recent discussions rightly emphasize, was deeply responsive to the challenge that the Aeneid posed to his personal style of poetry. In his own verse letter addressed specifically to Augustus, for example, he had sought to bridge the traditional divide between epic and elegy by integrating epic language (and thus by implication epic themes) into elegiac rhythms: et tamen ille tuae felix Aeneidos auctor contulit in Tyrios arma virumque toros, nec legitur pars ulla magis de corpore toto quam non legitimo foedere iunctus amor. All the same, that blessed author of your Aeneid brought his arms and man against Tyrian beds, nor is any part of that entire work read more often than that where love is joined in illicit union. (Tr. 2. 533–36)

As both subject and (alternate) title of Vergil’s poem (cf. Tr. 2.261: ‘sumpserit Aeneadum genetrix’, i.e., Lucretius’ poem), “arma virumque” in 534 stands surprisingly at ease in the elegiac couplet’s defining colon.58 Now in Tristia 3 the elegiac medium finishes epic’s work by praising 57

58

On the meaning of deus here, cf. Serv. ad 364: “in similitudinem numinis,” to which Serv. Dan. adds, “sane quidam ‘deo’ pro immortalitate dictum volunt.” (“Dignus deo” might apply equally well to Hercules and to Caesar, both mortal men who achieved divine status after death.) At line 78, Augustus is himself addressed directly as “maxime dive.” Modern critics generally take a more cynical view of the passage, e.g., Edwards 1996: 120, “Ovid’s ironic reading of Virgil problematises what might otherwise be read as deferential homage to Augustus,” though Mckeown 1984: 239 n. 31 fairly observes that Augustus “was as competent as any of his contemporaries to assess the true tone of Ovid’s poetry.” Pont. 1.1.33–36 will again, though more explicitly, use a Vergilian reference to associate Augustus with Aeneas. For Ovid’s reading of Vergil in this passage, see Barchiesi 1997: 27–30 and 2001: 92–94, and for the “official” reception of the epic in the later Principate, Thomas 2001: 74–78. Casali 1995 discusses an analogous engagement with Vergilian epic in the Metamorphoses.

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Aeneas’ descendant, though it will not achieve the desired result. The “pater optimus” who won the civic crown for saving citizens is evidently still not prepared to save the citizen author of this book. Yet the book knows its place. Though seeking shelter (19–20), it does not ask to be taken in here or at any of the private houses it has passed. Book and guide instead leave the house of Augustus for the adjacent temple of Apollo, a much more clearly monumental edifice with its Danaid portico (“Belides,” 59–64) and its library (63–66). Lonely and weary from its trip, the book seeks shelter there in the company of its fellows. The creator of this book, however, proves hardly better a father to his creation than Danaus was to his fifty daughters.59 The book knows better than to expect to find its amatory siblings in the library (65–66), but it is disheartened to discover that their very existence has made its own admission impossible. The attempt to enter leads only to the first of what becomes a series of failures. quaerentem frustra custos me sedibus illis praepositus sancto iussit abire loco. altera templa peto, vicino iuncta theatro: haec quoque erant pedibus non adeunda meis. nec me, quae doctis patuerunt prima libellis, atria Libertas tangere passa sua est. in genus auctoris miseri fortuna redundat, et ferimus nati, quam tulit ille, fugam. I sought [them] in vain. The guard in charge of that place ordered me to leave the sacred spot. I sought another temple, by the neighboring theater. Here too my feet were denied entry. Nor did Liberty, who first received learned books, allow me to reach her halls. The fate of our wretched author overwhelms his offspring, and we children bear the exile, which he has borne. (67–74)

The successive references are to the three public libraries we have been considering. Rebuffed at the Palatine, the book has moved west, descending via the clivus Victoriae, through the Lupercal to the library in the 59

For the problem of Ovid as pater, though not optimus, of his books and the association with Danaus, see Hinds 1985: 17–20 and Newlands 1997: 68–70. The phrase as applied to Augustus (49) may also recall that paragon of moral instruction, the pater optimus of Hor. S. 1.4.105–6.

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Porticus Octaviae, and then on to Pollio’s original foundation in the Atrium Libertatis.60 Ovid’s grammar here gives Libertas a striking prominence, making her the active agent in the book’s last exclusion as she denies it the sanctuary afforded earlier libelli. It has long been tempting to read this passage as Ovid’s protest at a loss of free speech, the poet silenced by an oppressive regime and his books forced into hiding.61 This particular book eventually finds refuge in a private house (“privato liceat delituisse loco,” 80), and when the first book of the Letters from Pontus arrives in Rome a little later, it will not even attempt anything more. non tamen accedunt, sed, ut aspicis ipse, latere sub Lare privato tutius esse putant. They did not approach, but, as you see yourself, thought it safer to hide in a private sanctuary. (Pont. 1.1.9–10)

The verbs delitesco and lateo suggest something furtive, but the books exaggerate. Though the distinction between public and private repositories is real enough, and thus the difference between high profiles and low, what we in the modern world call free speech was not the issue for Ovid. Even among the elite, who had more of it than anyone else, libertas never meant unrestricted freedom. Its unsettling tendency to become licentia was too well known, and the perennial unease it inspired at Rome ensured that there was never an equivalent there for what Athenians called parrhasia. Romans of all periods were accustomed to limits on where, what, and how they spoke.62 60

61

62

Wiseman 1987a: 402 notes that the route via Lupercal and clivus Victoriae was the traditional public approach to the Palatine, but it does not necessarily follow from the book’s inverted route that Augustus had reoriented the area toward the Forum entrance (404–5). His buildings on the Palatine, however, certainly did make the hill a civic space to rival the Forum and the Capitol (Favro 1996: 203–6). Thus for Newlands 1997: 72, the experience of Tristia 3 demonstrates “the closing of state-sponsored institutions to free and open intellectual discussion.” Even the “free” Republic, however, had a long history of intermittent curbs on “intellectual discussion,” e.g., by the banning of Latin rhetors in 92, of rhetors and philosophers in 161, and by the public burning of “Numa’s books” in 181, though the efficacy of these measure was perhaps another matter. See Gruen 1990: 158–92. As Feeney 1992: 10 rightly observes, “At no period of Roman history was it possible simply to say what you liked, when you liked.” For Republican libertas, see Nicolet 1980: 317–41 and Brunt 1988: 281–350, and for its evolution under the Principate, see Wirszubski 1950: 97–123, Syme 1960: 516–20, and Galinsky 1996: 54–57. V. Max.

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Under the Principate, as libertas came increasingly to be associated with a respect for constitutional forms, the limits of free expression were a subject of ongoing negotiation, with even the princeps occasionally feeling constraints on his frankness and the harshest treatment reserved for anonymous pamphlets and lampoons.63 Options certainly narrowed over time as age took its toll on Augustus’ tolerance, but even the Ars Amatoria, which no doubt annoyed him, attracted no special attention for years after its appearance. The “auctoris miseri fortuna”, that is, the relegation to Tomis, with which the book of Tristia 3 comes to identify had little to do with free speech and much more to do with the domestic politics of the imperial family. Ovid, the political insider, paid dearly for an intimacy that apparently put him in precisely the wrong place at precisely the wrong time. The resulting exile was thus more personal and political than artistic, and his books, with the one notable exception of the Ars, remained much more free than their author.64 Ovid clearly puns on that freedom in Tristia 1.1 (Hinds 1985: 14), but if a similar pun is still to be heard in “libellis/ Libertas” at 3.1.71–72, the trope is being directed not to his work but to the books that continue to enjoy the library’s protection. What, then, was the value of that protection? A poet of Ovid’s stature clearly did not require a public library to ensure his literary survival. His poetry continued to be read, despite Libertas’ cold shoulder and whatever expressions of official hostility were directed toward the Ars Amatoria. Ovidian tags would find their way onto Roman walls, Ovidian sententiae would stick in Roman minds, and Ovidian diction endured to shape the poetry of the later empire.65 Nor were libraries established to preserve the full range of Roman cultural achievements or to further what we would

63 64

65

praef. 6.2 notes that libertas is “inter virtutem vitiumque posita”. Cf. Cic. Rep. 1.68 and its echo at Tac. Dial. 40.2. Oratio libera (i.e., frankness) as a rhetorical figure is regularly called licentia, e.g., Her. 4.48, Quint. 9.2.27. Feeney 1992: 7–9, White 1993: 147–52. Pace Barchiesi 1997: 87–89, a discussion that might be tempered by the specifically Roman connotations of libertas. See White 1993: 152–54 on the “odd disproportion between the treatment of the author and the treatment of his books.” For Ovid as Augustan insider, see Millar 1993: 6–9, and for his offense, see Syme 1978: 215–29. Tr. 3.14.1–12 suggests that everything except the Ars was available at Rome, though even it remained safely ensconced in Ovid’s bookcase at home there (Tr. 1.1.111–12). Lines from all of Ovid except the Ibis appear in the index of CLE: Tr. 1.11.11–12 is actually quoted in an inscription with a better reading than our manuscripts preserve (CLE 89, with Housman 1903: llx). Some Romans, like the declaimer Alfius Flavus, came to know Ovid’s poetry all too well (Sen. Contr. 3.7, one reason Quint. 10.1.88 probably found the poet “nimium amator ingenii sui”).

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call a free exchange of creative ideas. They might become cultural centers, following the example of Pollio’s recitations in the Atrium Libertatis, but the public libraries of Rome all had gatekeepers from their inception. They were established through the exercise of choices, that is, by a process of exclusion as well as inclusion. When Pollio decided to stock his library with the portraits as well as the works of his favored authors, he was creating both a collection and a canon (Plin. Nat. 35.10). Public libraries institutionalized the idea of literature and gave new, public stature to the texts chosen to represent that idea. The issue for Ovid at Tomis, then, must have been not survival but status, and his regret at having his book turned away thus makes manifest the full enormity of his exile. It also confirms the fulfillment of Horace’s hope in the letter to Augustus that Apollo’s library would become a stimulus for poets and the Palatine itself another Helicon (Ep. 2.1.216–18). Horace got his wish. To Ovid’s cost.

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The beginning of Augustus’ own retrospective is famous. Annos undeviginti natus exercitum privato consilio et privata impensa comparavi, per quem rem publicam a dominatione factionis oppressam in libertatem vindicavi. At the age of nineteen, I raised an army at my own initiative and at my own expense, with which I restored liberty to the state, then being crushed by the tyranny of a faction. (Aug. Anc. 1.1)

It is hard not to admire, at least from an artistic point of view, the insouciance with which the old autocrat here passes off the constitutional authority of his youth as a faction and its subjugation to his will as an exercise in liberation. It is very good rhetoric, but it was never entirely his own. Caesar, we know, had said much the same thing half a century before. At Corfinium in 49, he had told Lentulus Spinther that his goal in taking up arms was to restore both his liberty and that of the Roman people, which was then being crushed by an aristocratic faction (“ut se et populum Romanum factione paucorum oppressum in libertatem vindicaret”). Though the key phrase, like libertas itself, had become something of a clich´e among writers of the late Republic, the particular “factions” recalled in these two passages were much the same, and the similar collocation of words in so short a space – factio, oppressum, libertatem vindicare – may well indicate a deliberate association of Augustus’ cause with his uncle’s.1 There is at least good reason to suspect that by the time 1

Caes. Civ. 1.22.5, 2.21.1, but cf. Cic. Fam. 2.5.2, Sal. Jug. 42.1 (of the Gracchi) and the many less formal allusions to the idea (e.g., Cic. Agr. 2.4: “non tabellam vindicem tacitae libertatis”). Behind the clich´e stands the legal procedure for freeing those wrongfully enslaved called vindicatio in libertatem, for which see Watson 1967: 218–25.

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of the Principate, the allusivity so characteristic of Roman literary life had moved comfortably beyond the handful of authors who dominate our thinking about such matters. It was not just as a writer, however, than Augustus reveals a certain ease with the mannerisms of contemporary literary discourse. The princeps was an equally astute reader, whose outspoken wit often found literary targets. We know he could rag Maecenas mercilessly for the preciosity of his poetic style.2 A passage Suetonius culled from a letter to Horace provides an even more striking and more subtle instance of this readiness to comment on literary matters. Pertulit ad me Onysius libellum tuum, quem ego ut excusantem, quantuluscumque est, boni consulo. vereri autem mihi videris ne maiores libelli tui sint, quam ipse es. sed tibi statura deest, corpusculum non deest: itaque licebit in sextariolo scribas, quo circuitus voluminis tui sit F#! , sicut est ventriculi tui. Onysius brought me your little book, which I have enjoyed, despite its small size. You seem to me to be afraid your books will be bigger than you are yourself. You lack height, but you do not lack girth: you could write on a pint beaker so that the expanse of your volume would be as swollen as your stomach.

The passage was cited – and is still often quoted – as evidence for Horace’s physical size and shape, but equally revealing is Augustus’ joke about the size of Horace’s book. He is playing at the expense of the poet’s appearance on the persistently mannered talk of libelli and versiculi characteristic of Catullus and his successors.3 In the resulting poke at such clich´ed book talk, Augustus demonstrates his ability to employ diminutives with the best of them, and even to pun on the affected language of contemporary criticism: F#!  ‘swollen’ in the literal sense was also a technical term, used by Aristotle to describe epic verse (‘most weighty’) and

2

3

The problem of identifying allusion as something distinct from commonplace, clich´e, and coincidence is very well treated, though hardly resolved, by Hinds 1998: 34–47. Thus the letter quoted at Macr. 2.4.12 = Malcovati 1948: 20–21. A poem Maecenas addressed to Horace may be a target of these jibes, but the identification is uncertain (Courtney 1993: 276–77). White 1993: 112–18 provides judicious discussion of Augustus’ literary inclinations. Suet. Vit. Hor. 47 = Malcovati 1948: 23–24. Fraenkel 1957: 20–21 thoroughly discusses the literal sense of the passage. There is no good reason to associate this particular book or this messenger with the Vinnius of Ep. 1.13, but the ironic tone of the two passages is certainly similar. Latin poets’ self-deprecation, famously illustrated by Cat. 1.8–9, hardly requires documentation.

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ultimately by Philodemus to mean ‘bombastic’.4 Augustus’ tastes may have been a little old-fashioned, but not his critical vocabulary. This glimpse of the princeps at his desk makes a fitting conclusion to a study that has throughout been less concerned with how Roman culture came to produce poets like Horace than with how it produced readers like Augustus. I have been arguing here that the process that turned poetic texts into cultural capital for Romans to collect and to spend is no less crucial to Roman literary history than the poets’ responses to that valuation of their work. Considering the role of readers in the creation of “literature” naturally took us to the insights of Pierre Bourdieu and Stanley Fish, but it is also worth remembering that the contribution of readers to the literary process is no less important to modern reception theory. As Hans Robert Jauss put it: “In the triangle of author, work, and public the last is no passive part, no chain of mere reactions, but rather itself an energy formative of history. The historical life of a literary work is unthinkable without the active participation of its addressees” ( Jauss 1982: 19). That “active participation,” however, can be extremely difficult for literary historians to document, and as this study comes to an end, it may be helpful to review – and to acknowledge – the methodological twists and turns that its pursuit of a Roman readership has entailed. On the positive side, the task has turned out to be less problematic than might be supposed. Reception-oriented literary history is often compelled to deduce, and has been faulted for deducing, the expectations and responses of readers from the texts themselves. Even Jauss, whose invocation of readers in his famous “Challenge” first brought this style of inquiry to prominence, did not entirely escape the resulting circularity. Jauss used the moral uproar surrounding publication of Madame Bovary to illustrate the altered “horizon of expectation” demanded by Flaubert’s new subjective style, but the trial documents to which he refers illustrate not the response of contemporary readers generally but only of two particular readers, one of whom (the avocat imp´erial ) was a singularly obtuse and hardly dispassionate reader of fiction.5 Thanks in no small part to the historical sensibility so prominent in the philologist’s toolbox, reconstructions of Roman literary culture may claim some success in 4

5

Arist. Po. 1459b35, Phld. Po. 5.5. The phrase F%#  2 ‘weighty syllables’ appears at Phld. Po. 1.21.6 and 181.12–13 ( Janko). Jauss 1982: 27–28, 42–44. The court speeches to which he refers may be found in the Pl´eiade edition of Flaubert, vol. 1: 615–83. Perkins 1992: 24–27 reviews the problems inherent in Jauss’ style of literary history.

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avoiding the hermeneutic circle that threatens reception theory.6 Ample evidence can be found to anchor our impressions of Roman attitudes toward literature and Roman styles of reading it. Much of that evidence still comes from texts, but Latin texts regularly situate themselves in a history of reception. The self-referential and allusive qualities so typical of Latin poetry suggest not just how individual poets used their predecessors, what Lucretius made of Ennius or Horace made of Lucilius, but what they could expect their own readers to make of those borrowings. Allusive effects demand – and reveal – a knowledgeable readership. Similarly, the Romans’ own efforts at literary history and literary polemic, however confused or self-serving they sometimes are, inevitably suggest how texts were read or might be thought to be read. Though the historicity of Horace’s Lucilius remains problematic, for example, the mock polemic aimed at his illustrious predecessor only makes sense if those who read Lucilius in the 30s heard for themselves at least some of the stridency Horace attributes to him. Less often adduced for this purpose but no less helpful are Cicero’s indications of what he expected from audiences, whether in the informal social setting of correspondence, in the charged atmosphere of the courts, or in those more private moments of leisure when a Roman might turn his thoughts to political theory, philosophy, or letters. The very size and scope of this record provide a useful curb on wishful or willful use of its testimony. Thus the efficacy of Cicero’s jibe at the educational deficiencies of Erucius may be confirmed by its return some ten years later against Q. Caecilius and by Cicero’s confidence, even at a delicate political moment, that a man like Lentulus Spinther would want to be thought familiar with Terence’ Eunuchus.7 Such references have helped us see how poetic texts became part of the Romans’ social equipment and came to inform their view of the world. No less interesting, though more problematic, have been the silences that appear from time to time in the record. There was, for example, the absence of comic characterization from Cicero’s mugging of the litigious partner Naevius in the Pro Quinctio that helped us appreciate the limits of comedy as a vehicle for social critique at Rome and, by extension, 6

7

Familiar examples in English include Kenney in Kenney and Clausen 1982: 3–32, Rawson 1985, and Fantham 1996. Morgan 1998 examines the educational principles and practices that created the adult readers who concern us here. Note by way of example the success, despite its almost exclusive reliance on poems, of the section titled ‘Catullus and the Reader’ in Fitzgerald 1995: 34–58. Cic. S. Rosc. 46–47, Div. Caec. 39, Fam. 1.9.19.

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the impetus for that new kind of critical writing pioneered by Lucilius. Even more striking was the marked tendency in late Republican sources to ignore palliata comedies in their accounts of contemporary theatrical entertainments, which demanded adjustment to the widespread assumption of the genre’s continuous popularity. Arguments based on silence will always be precarious, but it is equally true that silences like these can neither be ignored nor expunged from the record. We must make them part of our thinking. Testimony of this sort is admittedly oblique. Even when a reader like Augustus is heard speaking for himself or an audience’s response to a work can be glimpsed between the lines of Donatus or Servius, the effect readers had on the creators of texts and on the experience of subsequent readers is difficult to measure. Knowing that Vergil’s recitation of Aeneid 6 reduced Octavia to tears does not tell us whether the poet revised his book as a result of that response, or came to write later books a little differently after this demonstration of their power, or how much Vergil’s eventual position on Helicon owed to Octavia’s grief.8 Anecdotal evidence, however suggestive, is by nature limited and disjointed, and the arguments it encourages by extrapolation and analogy never entirely lose their wobble. What we are explicitly told by later writers or can reasonably infer from oratorical gambits, epistolary exchanges, and the like are nevertheless useful keys to Roman attitudes. Their appearance here may recall the New Historicists’ taste for what Stephen Greenblatt calls, somewhat redundantly, “exemplary fables,” but the Roman material can at least add the justification that it is specific to the people who were themselves the creators and the users of Roman literature.9 “Literature” itself may nevertheless remain a problematic term, if not so much because the word and the concept are anachronistic – Romans, as I have argued, could use litterae much as we use its cognates – than because its specific application here excludes a good deal of what traditional literary histories claim as their domain. The problem of what to count and what to exclude is, however, largely a problem of our own making. The interpretive community, to use Stanley Fish’s term, that defined the Roman literature discussed here was the Romans’ own community, and 8 9

Serv. ad Aen. 6.861, with Horsfall 1995: 17–20 on the reliability of such evidence. For the role of anecdotes in New Historicism, see Fineman 1989 and, for criticism of the practice, see Prendergast 1999: 100–103. The tendency of anecdotal evidence to cluster around Latin poetic texts probably reflects the emphasis on poetry over prose in ancient education noted by Morgan 1998: 94–100. That tendency has been another encouragement to center the present inquiry on poetry.

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it was a fairly coherent, homogenous group that left clear marks in the record. Its very historicity enabled our investigation to move from the suggestions of literary theory to particulars of literary practice, and to replace a formal or aesthetic idea of “literature” with a functional one. This led in turn to problems of list making and canon formation and to the privileging of some texts over others. And why not? Conventional literary histories have not escaped ideological difficulties simply by claiming the vast bulk of writing in Latin as their domain and refusing to make explicit judgments about it. The teleological traps and nationalist preoccupations that beset nineteenth-century literary histories may be behind us, but the difficulty of thinking about literature historically and distinguishing “literary history” from “literary criticism” continues to haunt the enterprise and to challenge its legitimacy as a discipline.10 Literary history is a story to be told, and storytelling is never ideologically neutral. Latin literary history, however it is written, is a history of contingencies, the most prominent of which is survival. Much of what the Romans wrote is lost, and even when mindful of those losses, the inevitable emphasis on what survives tends not just to hide the silence of lost works but to obscure the reasons they went missing. Literary history, like so much other history, becomes the history of winners, and is thus necessarily incomplete. That incompleteness has consequences. If, to take an obvious example, the epics of Naevius and Ennius and the tragedies of Accius survived intact, we would surely be saying different things about the Aeneid. That does not mean we should stop saying what we now say, but it does mean that what we say probably does not mean all that we think it means.11 When admiring the beads on history’s string, we must remember the process that chose them while consigning so many others to oblivion. We should also be aware that the string is, to press the metaphor a little further, never completely free of kinks. Literary phenomena defy easy or authoritative arrangement. Important figures like Cato and Augustus may challenge periodization by living, and exerting influence, beyond 10

11

Modern discussions of this problem are extensive, e.g., Wellek and Warren 1956: 252– 69, Jauss 1982: 3–18, Patterson 1990, Perkins 1992, and Simpson 1999, and from the classicist’s perspective, Schwindt 2000: 9–46. Levene 2004: 157–61 provides a cogent summary of the problem. Ebbeler 2003 on the fate of Caesar’s letters provides another example of distortion created by loss. Hinds 1998: 52–74 is particularly good on the problem of winners and losers in literary history.

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otherwise convenient chronological boundaries. Genres refuse to stay in their boxes. Change is erratic and rarely linear. The organizational principles historians adopt in the face of such complexity are never entirely neutral. When Gian Biagio Conte, pursuing the logic of genre, pairs Persius and Juvenal in his history under the heading “Satire under the Principate” and follows that discussion with “Epic in the Flavian Period,” he tacitly invites the unwary to think of Juvenal in Flavian terms and – a potentially serious interpretive mistake – to read the reality of Statius’ Domitian into Juvenal’s. J. C. Bramble, working on a different principle, pairs Martial and Juvenal after Flavian epic, but associates them so closely that it is easy to forget that Martial’s career was ending as Juvenal’s began – and that Juvenal continued writing satires until well into the time of Hadrian.12 Neither history finds a place for poetry in what Conte calls “the Age of the Adoptive Emperors.” Organizational decisions like these do not lack reasons, but neither do they lack consequences. Yet a stricter adherence to chronology may not be any more satisfactory. Beginning the story of Roman literature with drama because of what Livius Andronicus did at the ludi Romani of 240 B.C. is to begin with a dead end, since drama had lost so much of its creative impulse by the late second century along with much of its stage appeal. Varius’ Thyestes was the kind of exception that proves the rule, a special commission for a special occasion from a poet whose reputation was earned in other endeavors.13 Nor did drama play a major part in the technical history of Latin verse: when first-century poets rediscovered lyric, their innovations owed little or nothing to the polymetric experiments that were among early drama’s greatest achievements. Finally, we should not magnify the importance of drama as a cultural phenomenon of the middle Republic. The literary significance of the ludi scaenici was not as great as their political significance, in part because tragedy and comedy were only a small part of their ever-expanding programs. As we have seen, plays did not attain literary status until Rome’s greatest playwrights were dead. The aristocratic appropriation of drama as “literature” was a 12

13

Conte 1994b: 467–80. Correct dates are provided in the text and the chronological appendix (760–61), but the implication of the metanarrative is strong. Bramble writes in Kenney and Clausen 1982: 597–623, under the rubric “Early Principate.” The occasion was probably Octavian’s triple triumph of 29, but much remains controversial. See Jocelyn 1980 (play) and Gurval 1995: 25–36 (triumph). The play enjoyed a considerable literary reputation: Quint. 10.1.98, Tac. Dial. 12.6. Varius’ contemporary reputation, however, was as an epicist (e.g. Hor. S. 1.10.43–44, C. 1.6.1–4); he prepared the Aeneid for publication after Vergil’s death (Horsfall 1995: 22–23).

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Retrospective

development of the late Republic.14 The literary history of the Republic is therefore best seen not as a purely linear progression but as a series of fits and starts and significant backward glances. The sweep of time has nevertheless been much in evidence here. We have moved from the vague recollection of archaic banquets to the mercenary bustle of ludi scaenici to a range of poetic activities that culminated with the laments of an Augustan exile. It may seem an odd or improbable set of points to connect. What Ovid thought he was doing in writing elegies at Tomis in A.D. 10 was surely quite different from what Livius Andronicus had in mind when producing plays at public festivals two hundred and fifty years before or from Lucilius’ delight in ridiculing a grandee like Lentulus Lupus, and the interpretive problems such activities pose are clearly different from the questions of how Romans of the mid-Republic understood the lessons of Crates and why Romans of the late Republic came to date the beginning of literary activity to Andronicus’ innovations. Yet each separate problem contributes in its own way to understanding one significant feature of Republican literary history, which is less the familiar one of how Latin books came to fill the libraries of Rome, than of how Roman readers found reasons to bring those texts into their lives, to value them, and in the course of their valuation both made them into literature and gave that literature a history. The awakening of a certain sensibility, not the writing of certain texts, thus marks the true beginning of Latin literary history. This is why I prefer to say that literature is not so much invented as constructed over time, and that its history at Rome needs to tell the story of its texts’ reception with as much enthusiasm as the more familiar one of their creation. 14

My disagreement with Habinek 1998: 36–37 on this point, as on much else, is therefore less over what happened in Roman literary culture than over when and why it happened. What he considers to be second-century developments more often seem to me to be the back projections of first-century concerns. Though much was no doubt communicated at the ludi and munera of third- and second-century Rome, the activity did not center on texts and was thus not what R¨upke 2000: 31–36 would call literary communication.

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240

INDEX OF PASSAGES DISCUSSED

Accius Atreus, 231–32R: 136 Philocteta 552–3R: 141 Anecdoton Parisinum: 62 Augustus Res Gestae 1.1: 204 Letters, 34M: 178 Letters, 40M: 205 Cato Carmen de moribus (ap. Gell. 11.2.5–6): 13 Origines, fr. 83P: 28 Orationes, fr. 148M: 12 Catullus 8.1–2: 100 8.15–19: 101 42: 108–09 64.1–5: 137 64.171–72: 138 64.177–81: 136–37 64.3: 109 95.7–8: 187 Cicero Academica 1.9: 97 ad Atticum: 13.2: 47 ad Familiares 1.9.19: 87–88 ad Familiares 5.12.7: 184

ad Q. fratrem 2.10.3: 38 Brutus 57–59: 40 Brutus 71: 3, 24, 37 Brutus 75: 3 Brutus 71–76: 11 de Officiis 1.104: 164 de Officiis 1.114: 129 de Oratore 1.72: 171–72 de Oratore 2.25: 168 de Oratore 3.171: 172–73 Hortensius, fr. 15: 76 In Pisonem 46: 141 Pro Archia 22: 15, 25 Pro Archia 27: 12 Pro Caelio 18: 93 Pro Caelio 33–34: 93 Pro Caelio 36: 93–94 Pro Caelio: 61–66: 95–96 Pro Quinctio 11: 145–46 Pro Quinctio: 93: 147 Pro S. Roscio Amerino 46–47: 90–91 Pro S. Roscio Amerino 67: 140 Tusculan Disputations 1.3: 9–10 Tusculan Disputations 1.34: 46 Tusculan Disputations 4.3: 3–4 Ennius Annales fr. iii-x: 27 Annales 39–42: 139 Annales 44–45: 36 Annales 58–59: 34 Annales 74–76: 29 Annales 80–101: 36

241

Index of Passa ges Discussed

Annales 137: 32 Annales 183–90: 154, 167, 171 Annales 206–07: 37 Annales 591–2: 33 Andromache 92–94J: 134 Mede exul 208–16J: 137 Medea exul 217–18J: 135 C. Gracchus fr. 61M: 135 Horace Epistle 1.3.15–20: 195 Epistle 2.1.50–62: 58 Epistle 2.1.54: 25 Epistle 2.1.76–78: 179 Epistle 2.1.108–10: 181 Epistle 2.1.156–9: 23 Epistle 2.1.166–67: 142 Epistle 2.1.186–93: 59 Epistle 2.1.214–15: 44 Epistle 2.1.214–18: 189 Epistle 2.1.250–57: 184 Epistle 2.1.264–66: 187 Epistle 2.1.269–70: 187 Satire 1.4.1–2: 78, 79 Satire 1.4.1–7: 162, 163 Satire 1.4.11–13: 155–56 Satire 1.4.56–62: 156–57 Satire 1.10.31–35: 176 Satire 2.1.28–34: 168 Satire 2.1.62–70: 158 Livius Andronicus

1.117–18: 23 1.308: 36 3.72–73: 131 3.1025: 32 4.1177–79: 98 Lucilius 15–16: 173 36–37: 158–59 87–93: 161 609–10: 170 647: 168 650–51: 168 652–53: 169 793–813: 159, 160 1145–51: 156 1196–1208: 166–67 Lutatius Catulus (ap. Gell. 19.9.14): 107 Naevius Bellum Punicum, fr. 44: 27 Tarentilla (72–4R): 169 Ovid ex Ponto: 1.1.9–10: 201 Tristia 2.229–62: 35 Tristia 2.533–36: 199 Tristia 3.1.33–38: 196–97 Tristia 3.1.49–52: 197 Tristia 3.1.67–74: 200 Tristia 4.4(a).13–16: 183 Tristia 4.10.43–54: 182

Odusia, fr. 1: 37 Pacuvius Livy 7.2.3–13: 7–8

Iliona (ap. Cic. Tusc. 1.106): 124, (ap. Cic. Fin. 5.63), 125

Lucretius

Plautus

1.1–4: 33 1.29–34: 29 1.80–101: 30 1.82–101: 131–32 1.107–9: 36 1.112–16: 36

Amphitruo 188–89: 151 Amphitruo 648–53: 152 Bacchides 214–15: 65 Captivi 670–74: 104 Curculio 99–102: 98 Mostellaria 1 ff.: 130

242

Index of Passa ges Discussed

Poenulus 917–29: 63–64 Pseudolus 67–69: 101 Pseudolus 362–74: 110 Trinummus 199–202: 147 Trinummus 705–06: 64–65 Polybius 31.25.5: 14 Porcius Licinus (ap. Gell. 17.21.44–6): 22–23 Propertius 2.34.61–66: 21 Quintilian 10.1.16–19: 44–45

Eunuchus 20–24: 48 Eunuchus 27: 48 Eunuchus 30–34: 48 Eunuchus 35–41: 48 Eunuchus 590: 37 Eunuchus 867–71: 105 Hecyra 14–27: 49 Phormio (didascaliae) 69, 70 Phormio 237–38: 149 Phormio 281–84: 150 Valerius Aedituus (ap. Gell. 19.9.10): 106 Varro de Vita pop. Rom. fr. 84: 4 de Lingua Latina 9.54: 41 Satires 399: 77

Seneca Suasoria 3.7: 31 Suetonius de Grammaticis et rhetoribus 2.2: 62 Augustus 89.1: 57, 164 Augustus 99: 92 Terence Adelphoe 428–29: 151

Vergil Aeneid 1.1 (parody): 31–32 Aeneid 4.68–69: 115 Aeneid 4. 300–03: 115 Aeneid 4. 465–73: 115 Aeneid 6.845–6: 31–32 Aeneid 8. 362–65: 198 Volcacius Sedigitus (ap. Gell. 15.24), 77–78

243

GENERAL INDEX

Accius, and praetexta, 16 as scholar, 75 as tragedian, 121, 130, 166 Atreus, 127, 131, 136 Clytemnestra, 124 Actium, battle of, 22 Aedes Herculis Musarum, 12 aediles, and ludi, 48, 72, 73, 92 Aelius Stilo, L., scholarly methods of, 60, 62, 75, 84, 97 social standing of, 85, 146 Aemilius Lepidus, M., in Ennius, 28 Aemilius Paullus, L., 26, 74 Aesopus (actor), 123, 125, 127 Albinovanus Celsus, 195 Albucius, T., 160–61 allusivity, in Latin literature, 31, 33, 34, 39, 130, 205, 207 Ambivius Turpio, 70, 73 Andronicus, Livius, 1, 7, 8, 18, 51, 123, 166 use of Greek models by, 37 Antiphanes, Oionistes, 49 Apollonius of Rhodes, 117, 194 archives, at Athens, 71 at Rome, 50, 71–72, 193 aristocracy, and literature, 7, 11–12, 15, 43 Aristophanes, see Old Comedy Aristotle, 44, 193, 205 Asinius, Pollio, C., 46, 190–92, 203 Atrium Libertatis, 190, 192 Atticus (T. Pomponius), 24, 47, 80, 194

audience, as constructors of ‘literature’ (see also Reception), 18, 41, 43 in theater, 54, 152–53 Augustus, addressed by poets, 183, 188, 197, 199–200 and actors, 57–58 and poets, 183–84, 188 as critic, 205, 206 house of (see also Evander), 197 literary taste of, 164, 180 aural performance v. private reading, 44–46 authorship, commercial value of, 66 construction of, 63, 84–85, 168–69 ballads, see carmina convivalia books, circulation of, 38, 47–48, 84 Bourdieu, Pierre, 9, 96, 206 Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus, Q., 160, 169 Caecilius Statius, 90, 166 and ‘furtum,’ 49 and Terence, 73 Caedicius, Q., 28 Caesar, C. Iulius, 56, 79, 87, 190, 193, 204 Caesar Strabo, C. Iulius, 166 Calpurnius Piso, L., 146 Camenae, 37 canon-formation (see also libraries, list-making), 42–43, 80, 84–86, 97, 193, 209 carmen, definition of, 13 Carmen Priami, 26

244

General Index

Carmen Saliare. 61, 84 carmina convivalia, 4–5, 16 problems of reconstruction, 9, 12 Cato, and Ennius’ Annales, 2 attitude toward poetry, 12–13, 15 Aulus Gellius on, 13 works, Carmen de moribus, 13–14 Origines, 2, 28, 82 Cicero on, 10–11 Catullus, on Vatinius, 87 response to epic, 21, 181, 187 scholarly responses to, 102, 112–13 use of comedy, 100–02, 107 use of tragedy, 137–38, 142 value of books for, 112, 205 censorship (magistracy), 83, 191 Choerilus of Iasus, 183–84 Cicero, as epic poet, 185–86 as literary historian, 2–3, 9, 17, 76–77, 175 as reader, 38–39, 40, 79, 88, 168 as translator, 39 as user of literature, 87, 89, 90–91, 94–95, 149, 184 attitude toward drama, 55–56, 124, 129–30 literary quotation in, 128, 162, 171–72, 207 quotations from tragedy by, 126–27, 130 (putative) Pro Caelio, 92–96 Pro Quinctio, 144–49, 207 Cinna, C. Helvius, 21, 188 Claudius Caecus, App., 93 Clodia Metelli, 93 Clodius, P., 88, 92, 93 Clodius, Serv., 60, 63, 67, 75 comedy, as imago vitae, 91, 95 comoedia palliata (see also drama), as ‘literature,’ 62, 75, 113 as moral paradigm, 149, 150–51, 153 as social criticism, 99–100, 150 characters recalled, 88, 90, 94–95, 97 decline of, 55, 57, 208 echoes of language of, 100–02, 107 (Catullus), 169 (Lucilius) multiple performances of, 64 literary status of, 81, 96, 97, 102

popularity of, 55, 60, 122–23 stage qualities of, 79, 92 convivia, extravagance of, 14 Cornelius Lentulus Lupus, L., 157, 159–60 Cornelius Lentulus Spinther, P., 87, 89, 96, 99, 207 Crates of Mallos, 25, 27, 82, 211 Cratinus, 164 critical signs ‘notae’ (see also Aelius Stilo), 61 dactylic hexameter, as Latin innovation, 23, 25–26, 37 for satire, 155 style of, 106 defamation, laws at Rome (see also invective, satire), 165 didascaliae, Athenian, 71 authority of, 74–75 of Terence, 69–70, 73, 74 patterns in, 69 drama (see also specific genres), history of, 113 status of, 17, 19, 51, 180, 210 political significance of, 41–42, 123–24 ritual context of, 45 scripts of, as texts, 64, 69 education, and class, 83, 96, 127, 210 elegiac couplet, 106 elogia, of Scipios, 46 Ennius, Q., chronology of, 11, 166 as dramatist, 11, 121, 123 as satirist, 162 epitaph of, 37, 46 Cicero on, 10–11, 16, 40, 171 Lucretius’ use of, 38, 134 status among contemporaries, 15, 40–41 individual works, Ambracia, 17 Annales, as epic model, 22–24, 133 Cicero on, 24 Homeric echoes in, 27, 33, 37 Horace on, 23 reception of, 25–28, 46 style of, 33, 106 Alexander, 126, 171 Andromache, 134 Iphigeneia, 134 Medea exul, 93, 136–38

245

General Index

epic genre, audience for, 43, 153–54 criticism of, 36 prestige of, 18, 21–22, 25, 27, 84 social comment in, 154 epigram, Greek models for, 98 Roman, 106 Erucius (prosecutor), 89, 96, 207 Euripides, and Vergil, 116, 119, 121 Evander, house of, 198–99 Fabius Maximus Cunctator, Q., 31–32 Fabius Pictor, Q., 2, 81 Fabius Ululitremulus, 20 fabula togata, 56, 57, 123 fabula praetexta, status of, 16, 17 invention of, 16 Ambracia (Ennius), 17 Brutus (Accius), 17, 124 Octavia (Seneca), 17 Fish, Stanley, 39, 40, 42, 206 flagitatio, in Catullus, 110–12 in Plautus, 110 Floralia, 17, 123, 127 Foucault, Michel, 41, 85 Fulvius Nobilior, M., Cato on, 10–12, 154 and Ennius’ Annales, 11, 28, 34, 43 Fundanius (in Horace), 60 Furies, in Cicero, 140–41 in Vergil, 118 Furius of Antium, 28 Furius Bibaculus (epic poet), 21, 154 Granius ( praeco), 146, 170, 173 grassator, 13, 197 Greek influence on Rome, 7, 26, 54, 173 on Roman literature, 27, 37, 48, 82, 102, 119 of scholarship on Romans (also see Crates of Mallos), 61–62 texts, access to, 49, 192 hendecasyllable, 107 Herder, J. G., 6 history, Roman, written in Greek, 82 written in Latin, 82–83 Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, 35 Horace, as literary historian, 58–60, 178–89 as panegyrist, 186–87

as public poet, 182 as satirist, 165, 174–77, 180, 185 Epistle 1.3, 195 Epistle 1.13, 188 Epistle 2.1, 58–60, 178–89 on Palatine library, 189–203 on modernity, 175–76, 179, 181–82, 184, 186 on neoteric poets, 176, 179, 188 on public performance, 44, 58–60, 183 relationship with Augustus, 178, 205–206 Hortensius Hortalus, Q., 145 126n38 iambic senarius, 103–04 Ilia, in Ennius, 34–36, 133 in Lucretius, 38 and Vergil, 138–39 “Interpretative Community,” at Rome (also see Fish), 40, 208 invective at Rome (see also libertas, satire), 57, 87, 162 Iphianassa, in Lucretius, 31, 132–33 ithyphallic cola (in Catullus), 109 Jauss, Hans Robert, 206–07 Laevius, 107 Latin language, Greek influence on, 82, 174 social change and, 43, 83, 176 libertas, in satire, 165 under Principate, 191, 201–02, 204 libraries, 38, 50, 69, 76 Greek idea of, 192–93 Roman idea of, 193–94 role in canon-formation, 194, 196, 203 at Rome in Atrium Libertatis, 190–92, 201 in Porticus Octaviae, 194, 201 on Palatine, 189–90, 192 Licinius Calvus, C., 112 Licinius Crassus, L., 146, 170, 71, 173 list-making (see also canon-formation), 76–81, 209 literacy, Roman, 5 literary communication, 38, 42, 211

246

General Index

literary history, problems of, chronology, 18–19, 24, 51, 210 ideology, 208–09 periodization, 209–11 reception, 206–07 silence, 207–08 survival, 209 teleology, 11, 209 literary history (Roman), construction of, 8, 16, 18, 112–13 sources for, 8, 15, 16, 22–23, 207 literature (general), function of, 97 literature (Roman), definition of, 17–18, 41–43, 90–91, 208–09 foreign influences in, 1, 7, 37, 48 origins of, 1–2, 7, 84, 210 social criticism in, 19, 41–42 litterae ‘literature,’ 90–91, 136, 208 Livy, 7, 34 Lucilius, C., Horace on, 155–58, 168, 174–76 meters of, 155, 159 on Greek influence at Rome, 173–74 persona of, 168 social criticism in, 159–62, 170, 176 social status of, 165, 168, 170–71 style of, 156, 169, 173–74 Lucretius, and Cicero, 38–39 comic echoes in, 98 and Ennius, 23, 32–37 epic echoes in, 133 epic elements in, 29–31 on Latin language, 30 learning of, 32–37 tragic allusions in, 131, 133–34 ludi Apollinares, 55, 123 ludi Megalenses, 45, 52, 59, 70, 92 ludi Romani, 1, 18, 51, 53, 70, 122 ludi scaenici, aristocratic sponsorship of, 42, 53, 72, 81 cultural significance of, 210 origins of, 7, 24 Livy’s bias against, 8 performances at, 16, 44–45, 54, 153 ludiones, Etruscan, 8, 120 Luscius Lanuvinus, and Terence, 48, 50, 73

Magna Mater, Temple of, 52–53 Marius, G., austerity of, 15 Menander, Deisidaimon, 49 Kolax, 48 Samia, 102 mime, popularity of, 55–56, 57, 92, 123, 180 in Pro Caelio, 95 Mucius Scaevola, Q., 160–61, 171 munera, sponsorship of, 42 drama at, 45, 74 Naevius, Gn., 123, 124, 166, 169 and fabula praetexta, 16 Bellum Punicum, 23, 26, 154 Naevius, Sextus, 144, 147–48, 150 neoterics (see also Catullus, Horace), 32, 109, 112, 127, 175–76, 188, 205 Niebuhr, B. G., 4, 6–7 Nietzsche, F. W., 180 Octavius Lampadio, C., 25, 27, 60 Old Comedy (see also satire), 164 oral poetry, at Rome, 5, 6, 42 oratory, and acting, 57, 126, 129 Ovid, allusion to Vergil, 31, 199 exclusion from libraries, 200, 201, 202 on literary scene, 181–82 relegation of, 194, 201–02 reputation of, 202 Pacuvius, and praetexta, 16 and tragedy, 120, 121, 124–25 painting, Aeneas in, 20 Furies in, 118 Iphigeneia in, 133 Pentheus in, 119 Palatine, Aeneas’ visit to, 198 as site of ludi Megalenses, 52 Ovid’s visit to, 196–201 Temple of Apollo on, 190 pantomime, 119–20, 180 paraclausithyron, 98 parasite, 147 Pasquali, Giorgio, 31 performance, public v. private reading, 45–47, 128 Pergamum (see also Crates of Mallos), 75, 192, 193

247

General Index

philhellenism, 161, 173, 174 Philodemus, 206 plagiarism, 48–49, 195–96 Plautus, attitude toward writing, 111–12 biography of, 63, 66–68, 85, 166 on Greek sources, 37 Horace on, 43 in performance, 52, 56, 62 plays as ‘literature,’ 44, 62 revivals of, 66 style of, 104 tragic parody in, 123 individual plays Curculio, 98–99 Poenulus, 63 Pseudolus, 45, 101, as book text, 110 poetry (Roman), characteristic features, 106, 109 features shared with prose, 2–3 in liturgical contexts, 45 in private contexts, 46 status at Rome, 19 poets, social status of, 166 and personae, 168–69, 171 Polybius, 14, 82 Pomponius Macer, 194 Pomponius Melissus, C., 194 Porcius Licinus, 22–23, 51 praecones, 146, 170 production notes, see didascaliae Propertius, 98, 112 on Aeneid, 21–22, 181 prosopopoeia, 93 ‘publication’ in antiquity (see also books), 47, 48 performance as, 50 Pylades of Cilicia, see pantomime Pyrrhus, 167, 171 Quinctius, P., 144, 150 Quintilian, on aural perception, 44 on delivery, 129, 135 readership, author and, 47–48, 122, 206 reception, role in constructing literature, 16–17, 41, 206 reception theory, 206–07 recitation (see also Asinius Pollio), 21, 46, 182, 192, 208

recusatio, 21 Roscius Gallus, Q., 56–57, 62, 126, 129, 149 Roscius, Sextus (Amerinus), 89 Sallustius (on Empedocles), 39 satire (see also Horace, Lucilius), formation of, 19, 155 and epic, 156–57 and Old Comedy, 163–64 ‘dramatic’ satura, 8, 16 Saturnian verse, 23, 26, 37 scazon, 103 Scipio Aemilianus, P. Cornelius, 14, 68, 166 scurra, 147 scripts (dramatic), access to, 49–50 authenticity of, 66–67, 68 Sempronius Gracchus, C., 135, 136 Servius, on Aeneid 4 (and Euripides), 120–21 on Aeneid 9, 10 (and Lucilius), 157–58 soldiers, in comedy, 151–52 sumptuary debates, 13–14 symposium (see also carmina convivalia), 5 ‘Tabularium,’ 191 Terence, parody of Ennius, 37 ‘furtum’ by, 48 prologues of, 2, 48 revival performances of, 68, 74–75 status of, 73, 79 style of, 105 survival of plays, 68–69, 75 individual plays Adelphoe, 94–95 Eunuchus, 37, 88, 96, 159, 207 Phormio, 148–50 theater buildings at Rome, temporary, 53 of Balbus, 59 of Marcellus, 59 of Pompey, 55, 59, 124 Thyestes’ banquet, 131 Tibullus, 98 Timanthes of Cynthos, 133 tragedy, actors in, 125, 126, 127 emotion in, 124–25 Hellenistic character of, 125 influence on poetry, 131–34

248

General Index

language of, 141–42 parody of, 123 performance at Rome, 122–24 political allusions in, 123 reception at Rome, 54–55, 119–20, 123, 131, 138 texts as books, 126–27, 135–36, 138 theatricality of, 124–25 values of, 142 Vergil’s use of, 116–17 Trebatius Testa, C., 128, 136 trochaic septenarius, for didactic verse, 22, 26 Valerius Aedituus, 37, 106 Vargunteius, Q., 25, 27 Varius, Thyestes, 210 Varro of Atax (epic poet), 21, 154 Varro, M. Terentius, 24, 43, 97, 107, 193 and status of drama, 50–51, 56, 77 on early poetry, 4, 41, 43 and Plautus, 43, 67–68

Vatinius, P., 87 Venus, in Lucretius, 29, 35 Vergil, Greek learning of, 119, 121–22 Aeneid, innovation in, 22 allusions to Annales in, 32–34, 138–40 allusion to stage in, 116, 118 debt to Lucilius, 157 debt to Naevius, 59 multiple reference in, 121 recitation of, 21, 182, 208 tragedy in, 116–18, 140 Eclogues, set to music, 47 virtus, 152, 166–67 Volcacius Sedigitus, 77–79 Volusius, 187 wit, Cicero on, 173 Zorzetti, N., 7

249