Private and Public Lies: The Discourse of Despotism and Deceit in the Graeco-Roman World (Impact of Empire, 2)

Private and Public Lies

Impact of Empire Editorial Board of the series Impact of Empire (= Management Team of the Impact of Empire)

Lukas de Blois, Angelos Chaniotis Ségolène Demougin, Olivier Hekster, Gerda de Kleijn Luuk de Ligt, Elio Lo Cascio, Michael Peachin John Rich, and Christian Witschel Executive Secretariat of the Series and the Network

Lukas de Blois, Olivier Hekster Gerda de Kleijn and John Rich Radboud University of Nijmegen, Erasmusplein 1, P.O. Box 9103, 6500 HD Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Academic Board of the International Network Impact of Empire

géza alföldy – stéphane benoist – anthony birley christer bruun – john drinkwater – werner eck – peter funke andrea giardina – johannes hahn – fik meijer – onno van nijf marie-thérèse raepsaet-charlier – john richardson bert van der spek – richard talbert – willem zwalve

VOLUME 11

Private and Public Lies The Discourse of Despotism and Deceit in the Graeco-Roman World

Edited by

Andrew J. Turner, James H. Kim On Chong-Gossard and Frederik Juliaan Vervaet

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2010

Cover illustration: The Roman emperor Augustus, ceremoniously dressed as pontifex maximus, a position he held from 12 bce onwards. The statue is now in the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Rome. Photo by J.H.K.O. Chong-Gossard. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Private and public lies : the discourse of despotism and deceit in the Graeco-Roman world / edited by Andrew J. Turner, James H. Kim On Chong-Gossard, and Frederik Juliaan Vervaet. p. cm. – (Impact of empire) Includes bibliographical references and indices. ISBN 978-90-04-18775-7 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Despotism–Greece–History–To 1500. 2. Despotism–Rome–History. 3. Deception–Political aspects–Greece–History to 1500. 4. Deception–Political aspects–Rome–History. I. Turner, Andrew J. II. Chong-Gossard, K. O. III. Vervaet, Frederik. IV. Title. V. Series. JC75.D4P75 2010 320.93701'4–dc22 2010018053

ISSN 1572-0500 ISBN 978 90 04 18775 7 Copyright 2010 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change.

This collection is dedicated to CHARLES ANTHONY TESORIERO (1973–2005) o saeuae nimium grauesque Parcae! o numquam data longa fata summis! cur plus, ardua, casibus patetis? cur saeua uice magna non senescent? (Statius Siluae ..–)

and to RONALD THOMAS RIDLEY “In my opinion, then, let the historian be this sort of man: fearless, unbribeable, free, a friend of free speech and the truth; intent (as the comic poet says) on calling a fig a fig and a trough a trough; neither through hatred nor friendship dealing out anything or sparing anything or showing pity or shame or timidity; an impartial judge, well-disposed to all persons up to the point of not giving one side more than its due; in his books a stranger and a man without a city, independent, subject to no sovereign; not reckoning what this or that man will think, but stating what has been done.” (Lucian How To Write History )

CONTENTS

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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the graeco-hellenistic world Autochthonous Autocrats: The tyranny of the Athenian democracy Jonathan Hall Phokian Desperation: Private and public in the outbreak of the rd Sacred War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Peter Londey

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Truth and falsehood in early Hellenistic propaganda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Brian Bosworth

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Tyrannizing Sicily: The despots who cried ‘Carthage!’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jonathan Prag

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republican rome Frigidus rumor: The creation of a (negative) public image in Rome Francisco Pina Polo

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Deceit and the struggle for Roman franchise in Italy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Christopher Dart

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Pouvoirs extraordinaires et tromperie. La tentation de la monarchie à la fin de la République romaine (– av. J.-C.) . . . 107 Frédéric Hurlet

augustan dissimulation Arrogating despotic power through deceit: the Pompeian model for Augustan dissimulatio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 Frederik Juliaan Vervaet

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Deception, lies, and economy with the truth: Augustus and the establishment of the principate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 John Rich

early imperial literature Lucan’s Cleopatra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 Andrew J. Turner Damn with great praise? The imperial encomia of Lucan and Silius 211 John Penwill What ‘lies’ behind Phaedrus’ fables? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231 Enrica Sciarrino Mendacia maiorum: tales of deceit in pre-Republican Rome . . . . . . . 249 Parshia Lee-Stecum Is there an antidote to Caesar? The despot as venenum and veneficus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271 Cristina Calhoon Who slept with whom in the Roman empire? Women, sex, and scandal in Suetonius’ Caesares . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 James H. Kim On Chong-Gossard

the later empire From priest to emperor to priest-emperor: The failed legitimation of Elagabalus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331 Martijn Icks Constantinus tyrannus: Das negative Konstantinsbild in der paganen Historiographie und seine Nuancen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343 Bruno Bleckmann Justinian, Procopius, and deception: Literary lies, imperial politics, and the archaeology of sixth-century Greece . . . . . . . . . . . . 355 Amelia Brown

the broader context Despotism and Deceit: Yes, but what happened before and after? . . 373 Ron Ridley

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Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425 Index Locorum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431

PREFACE

We are grateful to the editorial board of the international network Impact of Empire for allowing us to publish as part of their series this collection, which represents the proceedings of the conference ‘Private and Public Lies: The Discourse of Despotism and Deceit in the Ancient World’, held at The University of Melbourne from – July . As we explain below, the conference was originally conceived of as one dealing with mainly literary issues, but due to a series of events eventually came to include a substantial contribution from a group of ancient historians whose work intersects on many levels with the fundamental interests of the Impact of Empire network. We hope that the resultant mixture of papers published here, some purely literary in focus, and others historical, will complement each other, and provide an accurate reflection of the dynamics of the conference, which participants later described as a great success. The initial research for this collection was supported under the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Projects funding scheme, for a project entitled ‘Public and Private Lies: Retelling the clash of duty, power and sexual indulgence in the Roman imperial court’ (project number DP), awarded to James H. Kim On Chong-Gossard and Andrew Turner at The University of Melbourne (Turner was the recipient of an Australian Post Doctoral Fellowship under this grant), and Charles Tesoriero at The University of New England. The original plan was to look at the works of Tacitus, Juvenal, and Suetonius, whose accounts of the first-century Roman imperial court depicted the deleterious effect of private acts on public conduct, and to explore how these authors’ interests were characteristic of their own generation rather than those described by their texts. The project would examine the interrelationship of private acts and public conduct during the height of the Roman Empire, and how personal morality was perceived to affect capability to govern. As part of their application, the researchers planned to host an international conference in June or July  on the campus of The University of New England in rural New South Wales. But Fate, ever revolving, had different plans. Tragically, Charles Tesoriero died in August  at the age of . The conference proposal was then stalled until June , when Frederik Vervaet, of Ghent University

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in Belgium, travelled to Australia to interview for a position as Lecturer in the School of Historical Studies at The University of Melbourne. Vervaet was subsequently recruited by Chong-Gossard and Turner to assist in organizing the conference, and proved an invaluable replacement for Charles. He was a major figure in convincing so many prominent international scholars to attend, and contributed substantially to the final form of this volume by suggesting that political deceit should become a principal theme in the conference. With regard to the conference, we have many donors to thank, without whose support it could not have been such a success. The Classical Association of Victoria, the Ian Potter Foundation, and the Australasian Society for Classical Studies all provided funding which enabled our overseas visitors to attend, including subsidising airfares for our keynote speakers. Particular thanks go to Mr Peter Mountford and members of the Savage Club in Melbourne, for their generous subventions. Mr Ian Renard, then Chancellor of The University of Melbourne, who has always been a keen supporter of the Classics, officially opened the conference on behalf of the University. The provision of venues was facilitated by Professor Warren Bebbington, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of The University of Melbourne; our thanks are also due to the School of Botany, especially their building supervisor, for their hospitality whilst we utilized their space for our many lectures. We are greatly indebted to the School of Historical Studies at The University of Melbourne for providing material and secretarial support throughout, with thanks to Gabrielle Murphy, then the School’s Executive Officer. Particular gratitude goes to Kevin March, then the School’s Marketing Officer, who designed the conference programme. We also had substantial support from postgraduate volunteers throughout, including Sarah Davidson, Sarah Midford, James O’Maley, Miriam Riverlea, and Sonya Wurster. All chapters presented in this volume were developed from papers given at the conference, with the exception of that by Professor Bleckmann, who had planned to attend and was only forced to cancel his journey at a late juncture; we are most grateful that he nevertheless agreed to submit. Charles’ student from The University of New England, Thomas Atkinson, was able to assist us at many stages as a research assistant, and his contribution is gratefully acknowledged here. Michael Crennan of The University of Melbourne has also helped us greatly with reading over the papers and preparing material for the introduction, while Christopher Dart assisted us by providing biographical material. The editors for Brill, Caroline van Erp and Birgitta Poelmans, have also been of enor-

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mous help, and we would like to thank them here for guiding us through the various procedures and facilitating publication. The editorial board of the Impact of Empire network arranged for all chapters to be anonymously peer-reviewed by two assessors. This collection of proceedings has two dedicatees. The first is Charles Tesoriero, our original colleague in this project, who had already established a considerable reputation as a researcher into Lucan at the time of his death. Even before we joined forces with him, one of his more memorable achievements at The University of New England had been to organise an international conference on Ancient Magic entitled ‘Hecate at the Crossroads’ in . His will left bequests of almost one million dollars to The University of New England and The University of Sydney, and a Latin literature conference (‘Roman Byways’) was held in his honour in Sydney in December .  saw the publication of a major contribution to Lucan scholarship which Charles had envisaged and largely set in train, the edited collection of influential essays in Oxford Readings in Classical Scholarship: Lucan, published by Oxford University Press. Charles’ vivacious personality and passion for the passionate literature of antiquity will be sorely missed. The other dedicatee of this collection of proceedings is Professor Emeritus Ronald T. Ridley, who has been a teacher and supervisor at The University of Melbourne for over forty years. He is well known within Australia and abroad for the commitment and genuine care he has shown for the needs of his students over many years. Professor Ridley is one of the last true universalist scholars; his numerous articles and chapters span early Dynastic Egypt, classical Greece, the late Roman Republic, late antiquity, the history of archaeology, and historiography. This incredible breadth of knowledge is in evidence in his contribution to this volume. Major books to date include a translation and commentary of Zosimus’ New History (), Gibbon’s complement: Louis de Beaufort (), History of Rome: A documented analysis (), a study of archaeology in the Napoleonic era, The Eagle and the Spade (), and his work on the Res Gestae of the emperor Augustus, The Emperor’s Retrospect (). Forthcoming books include major works on travellers to Rome from the Renaissance to  and a new assessment of Akhenaten. Professor Ridley is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquities (London), Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (London), Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities, and Fellow of the Pontifical Academy of Roman Archaeology (Roma). A.J.T J.H.K.O.C-G F.J.V

ABBREVIATIONS Names of classical authors and their works cited in this volume have been abbreviated in accordance with abbreviations found in the Oxford Latin Dictionary, the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, and H.G. Liddell and R. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon. Other abbreviations used are as follows: BNP CAH CCSL CID FGrH IG ILS LCL OCD OLD PIR PO RAC RE RIC RRC

Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World: New Pauly. Leiden –. Cambridge Ancient History, nd edition (Vols. –). Cambridge –. Corpus christianorum. Series latina. Turnholt –. Corpus des inscriptions de Delphes, vol.  Les comptes du quatrième et du troisième siècle (ed. Jean Bousquet). École française d’Athènes: Paris: de Boccard. . F. Jacoby, Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. Leiden . Inscriptiones Graecae. Berlin –. H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae. Berlin: Weidmann. – . Loeb Classical Library The Oxford Classical Dictionary, rd edition revised. Eds. Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth. Oxford . Oxford Latin Dictionary. Ed. P.G.W. Glare. Oxford . Prosopographia imperii Romani. Saec. I. II. III. nd edition. BerlinLeipzig –. Patrologia orientalis. –. Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum. Stuttgart. –. A.F. Pauly, G. Wissowa, and W. Kroll. Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft. Munich –. C.H.V. Sutherland, The Roman Imperial Coinage. Vol. : From  bc to ad . nd edn. London: Spink and Son. . M.H. Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. .

CONTRIBUTORS

Bruno Bleckmann is Professor and Chair of Ancient History at Heinrich-Heine-Universität in Düsseldorf, Germany. His recent works include Fiktion als Geschichte. Neue Studien zum Autor der Hellenika Oxyrhynchia und zur Historiographie des vierten vorchristlichen Jahrhunderts (Göttingen, ), and (with Horst Schneider) Eusebius von Caesarea. De vita Constantini. Über das Leben Konstantins (Brepols, ). Brian Bosworth is Professor of Ancient Cultures in the Department of Ancient History at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He is the author of A Historical Commentary on Arrian’s History of Alexander (Oxford, Vol.  in , Vol.  in ), Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great (Cambridge, , now in its third reprint as a Canto edition, ), and The Legacy of Alexander: Politics, Warfare, and Propaganda under the Successors (Oxford, ). Amelia R. Brown is a Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. She is the author of ‘Hellenic Heritage & Christian Challenge: Conflict over Panhellenic Sanctuaries in Late Antiquity,’ in Violence in Late Antiquity: Perceptions & Practices, Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity  (Ashgate, ). Her Ph.D. thesis was entitled The City of Corinth and Urbanism in Late Antique Greece. Cristina G. Calhoon is an Instructor in the Department of Classics at the University of Oregon in the USA. She is the author of ‘Lucretia, savior, and scapegoat: the dynamics of sacrifice in Livy .–,’ in Helios  (), and a Ph.D. thesis entitled Livia the Poisoner: Genesis of an Historical Myth (University of California, Irvine, ). James H. Kim On Chong-Gossard is a Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Classics and Archaeology at The University of Melbourne in Australia. He is the author of Gender and Communication in Euripides’ Plays: Between Song and Silence (Brill, ), ‘Consolation in Euripides’ Hypsipyle,’ in The Play of Texts and Fragments: Essays in Honour of Martin Cropp (Brill, ), and ‘Mourning and Consolation in Greek Tragedy: the rejection of comfort,’ in Acts Of Consolation: Approaches to loss and sorrow from Sophocles to Shakespeare (Cambridge, forthcoming).

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Christopher J. Dart is a Fellow in Ancient History at The University of Melbourne in Australia, where in  he completed a Ph.D. thesis entitled Nationalism, Patriotism and National Identity in Italia under the Roman Republic. He is the author of ‘The “Italian Constitution” in the Social War: A Re-assessment ( to  bce),’ in Historia  (). Jonathan M. Hall is Phyllis Fay Horton Professor in the Humanities, Professor and Chair of Classics, and Professor of History at the University of Chicago. He is the author of the award-winning Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge, ), Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture (Chicago, ), The Blackwell History of the Archaic Greek World (Blackwell ), and Archaeology and the Ancient Historian: Investigating Graeco-Roman Antiquity Through Texts and Material Culture (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming) Frédéric Hurlet is Professeur des Universités (Histoire romaine) at the Université de Nantes in France, Dean of the Subfaculty of History, Art History and Archaeology, and Director of the Nantes-based ‘Equipe de Recherche sur les Échanges dans la Méditerranée antique et médiévale’. He is the author of La dictature de Sylla: monarchie ou magistrature républicaine? Essai d’histoire constitutionnelle (Bruxelles-Rome ), Les collègues du prince sous Auguste et Tibère. De la légalité républicaine à la légitimité dynastique (Rome ), and Le proconsul et le prince d’Auguste à Dioclétien  (Bordeaux ). Martijn Icks is Wissenschaftlicher Angestellter on the research project “Making and Unmaking the Emperor” at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. His publications include The Crimes of Elagabalus: the Life and Legacy of Rome’s Decadent Boy Emperor (I.B. Tauris, ), ‘Empire of the Sun? Civic responses to the rise and fall of Sol Elagabal in the Roman empire,’ in Ritual Dynamics and Religious Change in the Roman Empire (Vol.  of Impact of Empire; Brill, ), and ‘Heliogabalus, a Monster on the Roman Throne: the literary construction of a “bad” emperor,’ in Kakos: Badness and Anti-value in Classical Antiquity (Brill, ). Parshia Lee-Stecum is a Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Classics and Archaeology at The University of Melbourne in Australia. He is the author of Powerplay in Tibullus: Reading Elegies Book  (Cambridge, ), ‘Persona and Power in Horace’s First Book of Epistles,’ in Antichthon  (), and ‘Roman refugium: refugee narratives in Augustan versions of Roman pre-history,’ in Hermathena  ().

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Peter Londey is Associate Lecturer and Convenor of the Classics Program of the School of Language Studies at the Australian National University. He is the author of Other People’s Wars: a history of Australian peacekeeping (Allen & Urwin, ), and ‘A possession for ever: Charles Bean, the ancient Greeks, and military commemoration in Australia’, in The Australian Journal of Politics and History  (). He is also coeditor (with D. Horner and J. Bou) of Australian Peacekeeping: Sixty Years in the Field (Cambridge, ). John Penwill is an Honorary Associate in Humanities within the Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences at La Trobe University, Bendigo, in Australia. He is the author of Two Essays on Virgil: Intertextual Issues in Aeneid  and Georgics  (Studies in Western Traditions , ), and several articles on Roman poetry, including ‘On Choosing a Life: variations on an epic theme in Apuleius Met.  & ,’ in Ramus  (), ‘Lucretius and the First Triumvirate,’ in Writing Politics in Imperial Rome (Brill, ), and ‘The Double Visions of Pompey and Caesar,’ in Antichthon  (). Francisco Pina Polo is Profesor titular de Historia Antigua at the Universidad de Zaragoza in Spain. He is the author of a pioneering study on Rome’s informal popular assembly, the contio (Las contiones civiles y militares en Rome, Universidad de Zaragoza, ). His other publications include ‘Eminent corpses: Roman aristocracy’s passing from life to history,’ in Formae Mortis: el tránsito de la vida a la muerte en las sociedades antiguas (University of Barcelona, ), ‘Hispania of Caesar and Pompey. A conflict of clientelae?’ in Del Imperivm De Pompeyo A La Avctoritas De Augusto: Homenaje a Michael Grant (Instituto de Historia, Madrid, ), ‘Public speaking at Rome: a question of auctoritas,’ in The Oxford Handbook of Social Relations in the Roman World (Oxford, forthcoming), and Consulares, consuls and the ‘constitution’ of the Roman Republic (Cambridge, forthcoming). Jonathan Prag is Fellow and Lecturer in Ancient History at Oxford’s Merton College. His publications include ‘Republican Sicily at the start of the st Century: the rise of the optimists,’ in Pallas  (), ‘Auxilia and Gymnasia: A Sicilian Model of Roman Imperialism,’ in The Journal of Roman Studies  (), and ‘Cave Navem: Petronius, Satyricon .,’ in Classical Quarterly  (). He is also co-editor, with I.D. Repath, of A Handbook to Petronius (Blackwell, ).

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John W. Rich is Emeritus Professor of Roman History in the Department of Classics at the University of Nottingham, U.K. He is the author of Declaring War in the Roman Republic in the Period of Transmarine Expansion (Latomus, ), Cassius Dio: The Augustan Settlement (Aris & Phillips, ), A History of the Roman Republic (Blackwell, ), and War, Expansion and Society in Early Rome (forthcoming). Ron Ridley is Emeritus Professor in the School of Historical Studies at The University of Melbourne in Australia. He is the author of History of Rome: a documented analysis (Rome, ), The Infancy of Historiography (), and The Emperor’s Retrospect: Augustus’ Res Gestae in epigraphy, historiography and commentary (Peeters, ). Enrica Sciarrino is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Classics and Linguistics at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. Her publications include ‘The Elder Cato and Gaius Gracchus: Roman Oratory Before Cicero,’ in A Companion to Roman Rhetoric (Blackwell, ), ‘The Introduction of Epic in Rome: cultural theft and social contests,’ in Arethusa  (), and a new book, The Invention of Latin Prose: From Poetic Translations to Elite Transcripts. Andrew J. Turner was an Australian Research Council Post Doctoral Fellow at The University of Melbourne from –. He is co-author of Eadmer of Canterbury: Lives and Miracles of Saints Oda, Dunstan, and Oswald (Oxford, ), and co-editor of a digital edition of a manuscript of Terence, published by the Bodleian Library (Oxford, ). His other publications include ‘The Poet and the Praetor: Travel Narratives from Early Second-Century Italy,’ in Antichthon  (), and ‘Frontinus and Domitian: Laus principis in the Strategemata,’ in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology  (). Frederik J. Vervaet is a Lecturer in Ancient History in the School of Historical Studies at The University of Melbourne in Australia. He is the author of several substantial articles on Roman republican history, the most recent ones being ‘The Monopolisation of the summum imperium auspiciumque: From Cornelius Sulla Felix to Imperator Caesar Augustus’, in MEFRA  (), ‘The Secret History: The Official Position of Imperator Caesar Divi filius from  to  bce’, in Ancient Society  (), and ‘Pompeius’ Career from  to  bce: Constitutional, Political and Historical Considerations,’ in Klio  (). He is currently preparing a monograph on ‘The Principle of the summum imperium auspiciumque under the Roman Republic’.

INTRODUCTION

Andrew J. Turner, Michael Crennan, and K.O. Chong-Gossard The ancient Graeco-Roman world offers many parallels with highly developed modern societies with regard to the problems of boundaries between state powers and individual rights. Literary works, historiography, and even the reporting of rumours in both eras are couched as if they come in response to an insatiable desire by ordinary citizens to know everything about the lives of their leaders, and to hold them to account, at some level, for their abuse of constitutional powers for personal ends. The little man who bristles with indignation at the misdeeds of his political and social superiors is as much a part of the world of Juvenal as he is of social critics today. Greek and Roman writers had a deep fascination with how powerful individuals stepped over boundaries and affected their public responsibilities. The quasi-historical foundation stories of Athenian democracy and the Roman republic depict democracy being introduced in direct response to sexual misdeeds by despots or their families. A long series of ancient authors—historians like Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Livy, Tacitus, Appian, Dio Cassius, and Procopius; biographers like Plutarch, Suetonius, and the authors of the Historia Augusta; orators like Demosthenes and Cicero; and poets like Vergil, Lucan, Juvenal, Phaedrus, and Silius Italicus, to name only a few—drew enormous significance from the interplay of public duties and private aspirations. The portraits of legendary figures like Theseus and Romulus, or historical giants like Alexander the Great, Pompey, Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Augustus, Constantine and Justinian, or notorious Roman emperors like Tiberius, Caligula, Nero and Elagabalus, all reveal their authors’ understanding of what a ruler’s duty ideally should be, and how personal excesses came to wreak havoc on those around them. Ancient authors were equally fascinated with how these same individuals used deceit as a powerful tool to disguise private and public reality. Occasionally these very individuals have bequeathed their own self-representations to posterity in the form of official portraiture, coinage and inscriptions (most famously, Augustus’ monumental Res Gestae). Such carefully crafted public propaganda continues to puzzle modern audiences with regard to what private agenda lies concealed.

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As explained in the Preface, the following collection of chapters emerged from our conference, ‘Private and Public Lies: The Discourse of Despotism and Deceit in the Ancient World,’ held at The University of Melbourne from – July . This conference was the culmination of an Australian Research Council funded project that was originally limited to an examination of Tacitus, Juvenal and Suetonius. When organizing the event, we recognized the relevance of the classical Greek and Hellenistic worlds and their discourse of despotism and deceit, both as telling precursors to Roman practice and as interesting phenomena in themselves; and beyond our initial plans, we encouraged papers on republican, Julio-Claudian, Flavian, late imperial and Byzantine discourses of Roman power and deceit. Because we wanted a cross-disciplinary conversation, we invited scholars from a wide range of academic approaches—politicohistorical, philological, literary, gender-theory based—to join forces and shed new light on the dynamics of power in the Graeco-Roman world. Indeed, a major aim of the conference had always been to show the relevance of ancient world studies to modern social concerns, and to explore within an ancient world context the linkages between the private and public spheres of persons in power, the deception involved in presenting those spheres to an audience, and the potential for that audience to be represented (or represent themselves) as victims of autocrats. This collection of nineteen chapters is divided into six thematic sections, and the subject matter in the first five ranges from fifth-century bce Athens to the emperor Justinian in the sixth century ce. The first section, “The Graeco-Hellenistic World” focuses on how the excesses of tyrants and the processes of deceit are represented in the literature (poetry, oratory, political theory, and historiography) and epigraphic evidence from the Greek and Hellenistic periods, spanning classical Athens, the Hellenistic monarchies, and the poleis of Phokis and Sicily. Jonathan Hall’s chapter (originally delivered as the first keynote address at the conference) examines contemporary fifth-century evidence, and seeks to expose one of the essential dynamics of Athenian democracy—the tyrannical rule of the dêmos over the elites (and the Empire), as evidenced in taxation policy, building programmes, and the persistent practice of deception in public life. A number of the foundation myths of democracy are in fact borrowed from autocracy; the official nomenclature of democracy is closely examined. The deception embodied “an ambiguous tension similar to that which existed between the official Athenian repudiation of tyranny and the tyrannical mode in which the dêmos enacted its business.”

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Peter Londey examines how, in the case of the Third Sacred War, the citizens of Phokis were persuaded to go to war by the spurious foregrounding of a non-existent public interest, grounded in an appeal to national pride and reliance on overstated dangers. These (perennial) arguments served to conceal the true motives of private interest inspiring the promoters of war. As a result, the citizens suffered great losses, and the historical record itself was corrupted. Brian Bosworth explores the way in which the unqualified claims to total honesty made by Alexander the Great’s Successors, derived from the Iranian cult of kingship, laid the basis for complex layers of deceit. Alexander the Great, says Bosworth, “made a speciality of deceit”, yet asserted that “The king . . . should not do anything other than speak truth in his relations with his subjects, and none of his subjects should think that the king does anything other than speak the truth”. After Alexander’s claims came “Ptolemy’s assertion that the king must speak the truth or suffer ignominy . . . [thus] if a king were detected in deceit then it undermined the legitimacy of his regime”. Alexander’s successors engaged in elaborate deceit and counter-deceit to the extent that it could be advantageous to affect a belief in false representations so as to make the ignominy of the deceitful monarch, when disclosed, all the deeper. The claims for total trust made in succession by Darius, Alexander and his successors, far from establishing a praxis of truthfulness, candour and trustworthiness, constituted the enabling basis of “a web of deceit”. Jonathan Prag considers the development of hostile images of the Carthaginians in Sicily. These arose from conflict between them and the Greek cities of Sicily in the age of the tyrants, although the Romans were later able to use them in their own propaganda war. Prag assembles a very wide range of evidence to trace the development of a negative stereotype of the western Phoenicians (“on one view, a work of deceit, for the furtherance of personal power on the part of the Sicilian Despots”), later exploited by the Romans. This had developed partly in the context of the synchrony of the wars against the Persians in the East and the Western Phoenicians, as a putative expression of a pan-Hellenic common struggle against the barbarian. Francisco Pina Polo launches the second section, “Republican Rome,” with a study of rumour and deception, bringing the subject matter to the brink of the first principate. Frigidus Rumor examines the means by which false rumours and the like could be spread to a wide audience in Rome. Graffiti had its place in this, but was of limited circulation.

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The audiences in the comitia and the law courts were relatively small. Rumour was needed. Client relationships allowed the elites to spread rumours at the morning salutationes. Invective, rhetoric and rumour established and destroyed reputations, with consequences for the unravelling of the republic. Octavian, in particular, was adept at addressing the people directly in the contiones. “Pamphlets, libels, poems and letters” were significant. Pina Polo concludes that: “The plebs were not the decisive element in his final victory, but the combination of the oratory displayed in contiones and the rumours spread about the city contributed to Octavian’s goals being progressively attained, leading to the final and most important aim: him becoming princeps”. Christopher Dart examines the role of deception in manipulating a populace for the purpose of spreading Roman power. He argues that the extension of citizenship to non-Romans in the republican period was marked by deceit and contradictions on both sides. The Romans were more likely to award citizenship to quell the rebellious than to reward loyalty. Many non-citizens exploited loopholes in Roman law in order to become citizens, using a range of devices from crude fraud to more sophisticated schemes. For their part, the Roman ‘proponents’ of a wider franchise persistently reneged on their promises upon encountering opposition in the elites. Sulla’s conduct was particularly reprehensible. Dart notes that “despite the deceitful behaviour of many within the Roman elite, when such legislation was put to the assemblies, ordinary Romans endorsed the extension of the franchise”. Frédéric Hurlet’s study follows the first two chapters in the section appropriately by examining the connection between deception, constitutional power, and despotism in the period that culminates in the principate. Historians may long have come to suspect what the powerful say of their actions, but Hurlet points out the difficulties facing powerful men of the late republic in attempting to persuade the people at large of their policies or worth, in the absence of regulated or efficient communication. He takes a number of examples: Sulla, Pompey, and Caesar. Sulla did not aim at dominatio, still less regnum, and his purpose was to roll back the populist reforms. It was only the revival of large-scale proscriptions in  bce which augmented the depiction of Sulla as a cruel tyrant. But Pompey was a more ambivalent figure than Sulla and manoeuvred himself into positions of very considerable power while maintaining a façade of legality, while Caesar manipulated existing legal provisions regarding the dictatorship to establish his rule. Deception had by the time of Octavian become an integral part of

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the political process; thus even the optimates for their part “adoptèrent une stratégie politique qui n’était pas exempte elle aussi de dissimulation”. The third section is devoted to “Augustan dissimulation,” beginning with Frederik Vervaet, who argues that Pompey provides a precedent for the dissimulation practised by Augustus. Significant episodes in which dissimulation played its part in Augustus’ career are set out. Vervaet infers that many of the crises which eventually benefited Augustus were either fabricated or exploited by him or his confederates. Part of Augustus’ statecraft was to accept offices for a limited period, in the full expectation of having them extended in due course. Pompey had used similar forms of dissimulation, and, in some cases, he or his agents had fomented the very crises which provoked the grants of power. Like Augustus, but unlike Julius Caesar, Pompey attempted to avoid affronting the powerful institutions of Roman political life. Accordingly, Pompey “provided Augustus with a code of conduct, a behavioural method in power politics”. Vervaet’s chapter is followed by John Rich, whose chapter is based on the second keynote address from the conference. Rich notes, first, that the actions of Augustus in augmenting and confirming his power were not part of a master plan, but a series of brilliant opportunistic tactical moves, and, secondly, that Augustus was not so much a liar as economical with the truth. He concludes that Augustus “achiev[ed] a solution which kept the essentials of power in his hands but within a republican framework”. He emphasizes the importance of the dispositions of the provinces in understanding the true extent of Augustus’ power. The outcome of  bce was that no one doubted that Augustus was the ruler, with the caveat that “this rule should be expressed in a way which respected their traditions and sensibilities and gave the senate an honoured voice”. The section on “Early imperial literature” is the longest and consists of six chapters that approach the question of “public and private lies” from a predominantly literary perspective. Andrew Turner notes that the ancient sources before Lucan, Appian, and Plutarch say little about Caesar’s affair with Cleopatra. Lucan’s accounts provide a moral perspective which “is capable of distorting events and providing extraneous details to strengthen his arguments”. He can sometimes corroborate later writers. Two schools of thought about his writings are first, that his intention is to challenge the imperial dynasty in favour of traditional stoic republican virtues, and second, that he is nihilistic and merely plays “highly sophisticated but ultimately meaningless games with his

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audience.” Christine Walde’s middle ground is that Flavian audiences would recognize “a highly specific criticism of Nero’s regime, rather than . . . a doctrinaire statement of republican values”. Historical or literary parallels for Lucan’s Cleopatra are considered. Egyptian luxury may have had contemporary resonance for the Roman audience. Where there is corroboration from other sources, Lucan is reasonably accurate and may be relying on an earlier source. Calculated echoes of Vergil and contemporary corruption in Rome become relevant. John Penwill considers and rejects a number of readings of Lucan’s praise of Nero, amongst them that it is purely ironic, or that it denotes the impossibility of any other course for someone writing under Nero. Penwill’s conclusion is that there is a kind of collusion between Nero and Lucan: “Lucan fabricating the image, Nero living it, both complicit”. Lucan with “dazzling rhetoric” juxtaposes this lie to the other: “that civil war prefigures cosmic dissolution”. In considering Silius Italicus, Penwill notes the close but significantly altered Homeric templates in the later poem, which on close reading can only mean that the extravagant praise found in that poem is thoroughly subverted. Another example of the use of earlier templates is found in the fables of Phaedrus. Enrica Sciarrino accepts the identification of the author as “a Roman gentleman or aristocrat”, and notes that amongst the changes from the Aesopic model, we find that, whereas other writers working within this generic tradition draw didactic lessons from the fate of those who ignore prudence, Phaedrus locates the significance of the misfortunes chronicled in the social relations to which the victim is subject. Phaedrus aims to provide a way for this audience to reflect on “their collective and individual positioning in the face of the collapse of social relations brought about by autocracy”, while, at the same time quarantining himself from any imputation of seditious intent. Parshia Lee-Stecum considers the accounts of pre-Republican Rome by Roman historians writing in late republican or early imperial times, in order to determine whether acts of deceit or deception were imputed to the credit or discredit of the person concerned. Criteria included the relative status of deceiver and deceived, the extent to which the deceit served the interests of Rome rather than personal or factional interest, and the moral standing of the person involved. Subject to these questions, Lee-Stecum finds no absolute prohibition on deceit. The ancient writers that are considered (Cicero, Livy, Ovid, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Valerius Maximus and Plutarch) are taken as sources for attitudes to the permissibility of deceit in public life in their own period.

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Cristina Calhoon moves from a brutal aside of Caligula: (“Is there an antidote for Caesar?”) to a highly developed set of reflections on the clusters of meanings radiating out from the word venenum and cognate terms. This pattern of meanings and associations is very broad, and appear in a variety of authors (including Pliny the Elder, Juvenal, Tacitus, Suetonius and Dio Cassius). The many possible associations traced and located include magic, healing, dyeing, aphrodisiac powers, poisoning, the colour purple, mimesis, and transformation. One of the conclusions drawn is that “The deceptive quality of venena, which partook of the characteristics of art and overlapped to a certain extent with artistic ambiguity also made them appropriate metaphors for the ‘arts’ of deception and intrigue practiced by Caligula and Nero”. These qualities were not only pursued by certain of the emperors, but also served to define imperial rule generally. James H. Kim On Chong-Gossard considers Suetonius’ egregious tales of sexual scandal set in Julio-Claudian and Flavian times. He includes, as a kind of concordance, an unprecedented tabular listing of all the sexual liaisons found in the imperial biographies. He suggests a number of explanations, including that Suetonius emphasized the superior outcomes achieved by the second-century system of choosing emperors on merit rather than ancestry; and that he wrote in order to satisfy his readership’s desire for sexual gossip about imperial women, which was frustrated by the associations of philanthropy, self-effacement, subservience, partnership and chastity enveloping its own female grandees. Suetonius’ collection of sexual rumours was significantly produced for the same generation that was the target of Hadrian’s own propaganda, including coinage that advertised his own pudicitia and the concordia of his childless marriage on the one hand, and the public deification of his beloved Antinous on the other. Whatever the explanation, it is beyond doubt that “Suetonius’ Caesares spoke to a society that was still deeply concerned” with such matters, including the emperor’s “need to spin public lies about his own private life”. The penultimate section focuses on “The later empire” and ranges from the third to sixth centuries ce. Martijn Icks deals with the reign of Vaius Avitus Bassianus who, having been proclaimed emperor by the Legio Gallica III, took on the name and perquisites of the Syriac Sun God Elagabalus. Despite attempts by his followers to normalize and accommodate the new cult, his attempt to subvert the Roman pantheon was fatal. He outraged Roman piety, not least by marrying a Vestal. His reign was full of deceit: coins praised its stability, yet his Severan pretensions were false.

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Bruno Bleckmann deals with the vagaries of reputation accorded to a more successful revolutionary. Constantine’s achievement attracted panegyrics and a concomitant accretion of pious legend from Christian historians or chroniclers, and, conversely, bitter polemical attacks by Pagan writers sympathetic to the Julian reaction. The latter charged him with cruelty and the murder of family members, more generally making war as an aggressor, and breaking treaties, and ‘Luxusliebe und Effeminierung’, long a touchstone of un-Roman excess. He was identified by his hostile critics with the Hellenizing Nero and the solar pretender Elagabalus. Bleckmann analyses the degree of truth and falsity in these criticisms in the hagiography and damnatio surrounding Constantine. Amelia Brown’s subject is the notorious volte-face of the Secret History of Procopius. After offering an account of the reception of the work, Brown then turns to the problems of reconciling Procopius with other sources. She notes how comprehensively Procopius employs the various Greek expressions for deception. Procopius specifically charges that the public disagreements between Justinian and Theodora were feigned, and that the latter maintained her influence by sorcery. Brown turns to other sources to test Procopius’ veracity, including records of expenditure, inscriptions, and evidence of plagues. The final section, “The broader context,” is a single article by one of the dedicatees of our collection, Professor Ron Ridley. Its temporal limits extend well beyond those otherwise observed in the collection, but its value comes as a reflection on the applicability and relevance of one of the main themes discussed here, the use of deceit, to other ancient and modern European societies. Ridley considers a number of examples of the deceptive nature of autocratic regimes, ranging from the posthumous reputation of Akhenaton to the deception surrounding the massacre of the Polish officer class in the Katyn forest during the Second World War. Six regimes are impugned: Egyptian, Assyrian, Persian, Napoleonic, Italian Fascism, and Soviet Russia. His central thesis is that deception is most particularly an incident of the conduct and representation of public affairs by autocratic regimes, but, even more significantly, that the programme of deception is often aimed at the future: “If all the other parts of society are in the hands of one person or a party, why not history as well?” The consequent duty on historians is obvious.

THE GRAECO-HELLENISTIC WORLD

AUTOCHTHONOUS AUTOCRATS: THE TYRANNY OF THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY

Jonathan Hall It is now commonplace for politicians and public figures to hold up the example of democratic Athens as some sort of paradigmatic model for modern liberal democracy. During a visit to Athens, dogged by anti-American protests, in November , former President Clinton modified Percy Shelley’s famous aphorism by proclaiming “We are all Greeks—not because of monuments and memories, but because what began here two-and-a-half thousand years ago, has at last, after all the bloody struggles of the th century, been embraced all around the world.”1 It had not always been the case. Although Athens had been a guiding beacon for French revolutionaries of the late eighteenth century, ochlocratic Athens with its rule by the rabble was an example to be avoided by sober republics, let alone constitutional monarchies. It was not by accident that the American founding-fathers chose Roman rather than Greek names for their institutions and public buildings and, in the words of James Madison, “Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.”2 In Anglophone scholarship at any rate, the origins of the association between modern politics and the Athenian democracy were enshrined in the monumental History of Greece, written by the liberal banker George Grote in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, and this was hardly a disinterested political project.3 At first sight, Aristotle seems to offer some justification for regarding participation as a key element of the ancient polity: the Politics (.. [b]) begins with the assertion that “every polis is a sort of partnership (koinônia)” and we are later told (.. [a]) that the partnership in question is one of free men (cf. .. [b]). But this is Aristotle’s definition of any polis, regardless of its political constitution, and, in fact, although he recognizes that ‘freedom’ often serves as a banner for 1 2 3

See H. Smith, “Clinton charms Greek critics,” The Guardian, November , . In Kramnick (ed.)  no. ; cf. Samons  . Momigliano  –.

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champions of democracy, he expresses strong doubts that freedom is a monopoly of democracies alone. When we try to determine what it is that—for Aristotle at any rate—distinguishes a democracy from a tyranny or an oligarchy, we discover that the chief criterion concerns the party to whose advantage a political system is structured. “None of these systems,” says Aristotle, “governs to the profit of everybody in common.” Rather, “tyranny is monarchy, ruling to the advantage of the autocrat, oligarchy governs to the advantage of the rich, and democracy to the advantage of the poor” (Pol. .. [b]). This rather blunt statement is later qualified when Aristotle comes to distinguish between four different types of democracies (Pol. ..– [b–a]). Where property qualifications exist for the right to hold office, then one has a democracy based on true equality, where the poor have no more prominence than the rich. A similar situation arises where the rule of law is in force, whether or not property qualifications exist. But the fourth type of democracy is where the masses (plêthos) and not the laws govern “and this comes about when decrees of the assembly override the law” (Aristotle clearly has in mind the fifth-century democracy of Athens, prior to the end of the Peloponnesian War). “For when the laws are not sovereign, then demagogues arise, and the people (dêmos) becomes a single composite monarch, because the many are sovereigns not individually but collectively” (Pol. .. [a]). The purpose of this chapter is to explore why, in Aristotle’s eyes, the fifth-century democracy of Athens could have resembled a tyranny.

The Power of the People In a paper submitted to the “Princeton / Stanford Working Papers in Classics,” Josiah Ober has argued that the definition of democracy as ‘majority rule’ was a coinage of democracy’s critics in the late-fifth and fourth centuries and that it was therefore this pejorative meaning that was adopted by Aristotle.4 Drawing attention to the fact that the Greek term dêmokratia employs the -kratos suffix, whereas monarchia and oligarchia—the two regime-types with which democracy is usually contrasted—contain the -archê suffix, Ober claims that the archê suffix is used for terms that are concerned with number (monos [‘one’]; oligoi [‘few’]), whereas the

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Ober .

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term dêmos refers to a collective body that does not therefore answer the question “how many are empowered?” On this basis, Ober supposes that kratos originally meant something rather different from archê. More specifically, he argues that archê is concerned with a “monopoly of office” and that terms such as monarchia, oligarchia or even anarchia answer the question “how many rulers?” By contrast, kratos should mean ‘power to’ rather than ‘power over’ and originally referred to a political capacity, newly activated in the wake of what Ober terms the ‘Athenian Revolution’ of  bce.5 The problem is that Ober’s findings are flatly contradicted by our earliest theoretical reflection on political systems—the so-called ‘Constitutional Debate’ in the third book of Herodotus’ Histories (.–). Following the suppression of the conspiracy of the Magi c. bce, three Persian noblemen—Otanes, Megabyzus and the future king Darius—are supposed to have discussed the form of constitution that would best be suited to the Persians, with Otanes favouring democracy, Megabyzus oligarchy, and Darius monarchy. It has often been pointed out that the term dêmokratia is never actually used in the debate, but later in the narrative Herodotus tells how the Persian admiral Mardonius abolished tyrannies among the Greek cities of Asia Minor, replacing them with democratic regimes, and he offers this as a reply to those Greeks who found it difficult to believe that “Otanes had advised that the Persians should be governed democratically” (..). We are, then, entitled to read Otanes’ speech in the Constitutional Debate as a defence of democracy, even if synonyms are employed. In fact, the two terms that are used in the debate to signify government by the people are dêmos and plêthos (“multitude,” “majority”) and they appear to be employed interchangeably. Darius, for example, explicitly juxtaposes dêmos, oligarchiê and mounarchiê to indicate democracy, oligarchy and monarchy respectively and claims that it is impossible for wickedness not to arise when the dêmos is archôn, thus explicitly juxtaposing dêmos with the -archê suffix. Where, I believe, Ober has gone astray is in assuming that dêmos necessarily denotes the entire body politic, as one might expect from its regular citation in decrees of the Athenian assembly (e.g. “it seemed right to the council [boulê] and the dêmos . . . ”), but here we need to engage in some historical etymology. In the Linear B tablets of the Mycenaean palaces, dêmos appears to signify territory, but in poetry of the Archaic

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Ober ; reprinted in Ober  –.

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period its sense is that of the common people, excluding the elites. To avoid clouding the issue, let us stick to Athens and to the poetry of Athens’ early sixth-century lawgiver, Solon. When Solon warns (fr.  W) that the polis risks destruction because “the mind of the leaders of the dêmos is unjust,” it is initially tempting to interpret dêmos in its fully inclusive sense but other passages indicate that Solon actually distinguishes between the ‘leaders of the dêmos’ and the dêmos itself.6 So, in talking about his social and economic reforms (fr.  W), he complains that he has “given the dêmos such privileges as are sufficient, neither subtracting nor increasing their honour” in a context where it is clear that Solon sees himself as a mediator between two groups that he elsewhere (fr.  W) describes as ‘the nobles’ (esthloi) and ‘the worthless’ (kakoi). Similarly, in another fragment (fr.  W), he claims that the dêmos would best follow its leaders “if they are not given too much licence or overly oppressed.” Now, it could be argued that Solon’s decidedly aristocratic outlook does not allow us to infer that dêmos was anything more than an elite term for those excluded from full political office but there is evidence to suggest otherwise. Although the word dêmokratia is not attested until the later fifth century, a paraphrase is found in the form δμου κρατο σα χερ (“the ruling hand of the dêmos”) in Aeschylus’ Suppliant Maidens (), first performed in the later s just as Ephialtes was forcing the aristocratic council of the Areopagus to yield many of its powers and privileges to the people (Arist. [Ath. Pol.] ). It is, then, a reasonable assumption that dêmokratia was a catchword of contemporary salience.7 Contrary to Ober, then, I would like to suggest that when Herodotus has his Persian speakers talk about kratos and archê in the same breath, he is, in fact, thinking of a monopoly of office in the hands of non-elites.

The Ways of Tyrants In official discourse, the Athenian democracy of the fifth century construed itself as a rejection of tyranny—and, more specifically, as a reaction to the autocratic rule of the Pisistratid family which lasted from around the middle of the sixth century down to  bce. That official discourse required traditions that told of the tyranny to conform to a decided genre of ‘tyrannology’ in which autocrats are invested with modes of 6 7

Irwin  –. Raaflaub  . For Aeschylus’ democratic leanings, see Podlecki .

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behaviour that repeatedly transgress sociocultural norms.8 Yet, in comparison with the fabled greed of Polycrates of Samos or the sexual depravity of Periander of Corinth, the Athenian tyrants receive relatively light treatment from our literary sources: in fact, the Aristotelian Constitution of the Athenians (.–) tells us that Pisistratus enjoyed the reputation of administering everything “according to the laws” and that the regime was later looked back upon as a sort of ‘golden age’. That said, there are four standard tyrannical traits that our sources attribute to Pisistratus and his sons: firstly, the neutralization of potential rivals by means of exile and the taking of hostages (Hdt. .; Arist. [Ath. Pol.] .); secondly, the levying of an income tax (Thuc. ..; Arist. [Ath. Pol.] .); thirdly, an ambitious plan of urban monumentalization (Thuc. ..; Arist. Pol. .. [b]); and lastly—and most significantly for the theme of this volume—the practice of deception. So, for example, on his first attempt at the tyranny—probably in the s bce—Pisistratus sported a selfinflicted wound that he said had been the work of his enemies in order to secure a bodyguard for himself, with which he proceeded to capture the acropolis (Hdt. .; Arist. [Ath. Pol.] .).9 On his second attempt, he dressed up a local Attic woman as Athena in order to make it look as if the goddess herself were accompanying him back to the city—a ruse that Herodotus claims to find difficult to believe, given the noted (or self-professed?) intelligence of the Athenians (Hdt. .; Arist. [Ath. Pol.] .). And on his third, successful attempt, the author of the Aristotelian Constitution of the Athenians (.) reports that Pisistratus summoned an armed muster at the Sanctuary of Theseus, at which he deliberately made his address so inaudible that he persuaded the Athenians to accompany him to the acropolis after leaving their arms behind at the Theseion (where they were swiftly confiscated). Herodotus (.) recounts a different ruse whereby, after routing the Athenians on the battlefield, Pisistratus sent his sons on horseback after those who were fleeing, telling them not to be afraid but to each return to his own home—thus, avoiding the possibility of their regrouping in the city. To reinforce its antityrannical credentials, the radical Athenian democracy coined its own charter myth, which told how the tyranny had been ended by an act of violence when two aristocrats, Harmodius and Aristogiton, struck down and killed Pisistratus’ son Hipparchus in 8

See, for example, McGlew . For the problem of the chronology of Pisistratus’ tyrannies, see Lavelle  – ; Parker  –. 9

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 bce. By the early fifth century, a popular drinking-song ran: “I shall bear my sword in a branch of myrtle, like Harmodius and Aristogiton, when they killed the tyrant and made Athens a place of equality under law (isonomos)” (Ath. . [a]). At about the same time, the sculptor Antenor was commissioned to make bronze statues of the two tyrannicides, which were set up in the Athenian agora—the first time the likeness of any historical individual had been placed in so august a location. The statue group was carried off by Xerxes during his invasions of Athens in  and  bce, though a replacement—now known through Roman marble copies—was swiftly created by Kritios and Nesiotes. Furthermore, by the fourth century, if not much earlier, cultic honours were offered annually at Harmodius’ and Aristogiton’s grave and their descendants were granted the right in perpetuity to be entertained in the prutaneion (the public dining hall) and to be exempt from taxes (Arist. [Ath. Pol.] .; IG I3 ; Andoc. .; Isae. .). Two points are of interest here. Firstly, the material forms with which the tyrannicide myth was invested were anything but democratic. The tradition of cultic offerings and ritual meals besides the grave had a long history in Greece, stretching back to the eighth century, but had typically been reserved for elite chieftains who had been granted quasi-heroic status in death. Similarly, the aesthetic form of the male nude traces its direct descent back to the kouros—the type of statue that had formerly served as wealthy sanctuary dedications or funerary monuments over aristocratic graves.10 Secondly, the myth itself was, as both Herodotus (..) and Thucydides (..; .–) recognized, an exercise in self-delusion and deception. As the second son of Pisistratus, Hipparchus had not been tyrant of Athens and his assassination did not put an end to the tyranny since his older brother Hippias continued to reign for another four years. In the end, it was the Spartans who suppressed the tyranny at Athens by besieging Hippias and his family on the acropolis, though the Athenian family of the Alcmaeonidae turned what could easily have been a serious religious crime—bribery of the Pythian priestess at Delphi— to their advantage by claiming that it was they who had persuaded the Delphic Oracle to urge the Spartan king Cleomenes to liberate Athens (Hdt. .–). In fact, to the extent that we can establish any motives to Harmodius’ and Aristogiton’s act, the establishment of democracy is unlikely to have been one of them. Thucydides (., ) attributes the

10

Hall c –.

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assassination to homosexual jealousy and wounded family pride, but he elsewhere (..) implies that the couple had originally intended to murder Hippias, not Hipparchus, and since both belonged to the distinguished aristocratic clan of the Gephyraei, their true intention was probably to remove an obstacle to the political prominence of their own family—much as the Alcmaeonidae were to do a couple of years later during their unsuccessful attempt to capture Athens from their base at Leipsydrion on Mount Parnes (Thuc. .–; ..; Hdt. ..). This would certainly explain why the tyrannicide myth does not seem to have entered Athenian popular consciousness immediately after Hippias’ departure from the city: members of the Pisistratid family were, for example, still holding high office as late as the s bce.11 It was only in the s that the Pisistratids became the targets of ostracism and that monuments commemorating the family were destroyed (e.g. Lycurg. Leoc. ), and this was almost certainly a reaction to the fact that, when the Persians landed at Marathon in  bce, they were accompanied by Hippias, who hoped to be reinstalled as despot of Athens. Greg Anderson has recently argued that the distinction we tend to draw between tyrants and legitimate rulers is an invention of classical and postclassical sources. Resurveying the literary and material evidence, he argues instead that tyrants merely engaged in the same tactics of force, violence and persuasion as their aristocratic rivals and that their aim was to dominate, rather than subvert, the oligarchies that governed Archaic Greek city-states.12 Part of his point is that would-be and actual tyrants operated by necessity within the conventions and behavioural norms— and thought within the symbolic universe—of the aristocratic societies to which they all, with only a few possible exceptions, belonged.13 But should not the same hold true for the early democracy at Athens? Were the popular activists, whose support of Cleisthenes in  bce led to wide-ranging reforms, actually creating a new political paradigm or were they forced to draw on the same conceptual vocabulary that had been developed within non-democratic regimes? As we have seen, the drinking song in honour of Harmodius and Aristogiton attributed to the tyrannicides the establishment of isonomia, or equality under the law. Isonomia is also the term that is employed in the Constitutional Debate at Susa: “When the majority rules,” says Otanes, 11 12 13

See Lavelle  –. Anderson . For the aristocratic backgrounds of early Greek tyrants: de Libero .

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“first of all, the system has the fairest of names—isonomia” (Hdt. .). It is often assumed that isonomia is an early equivalent, or synonym, of dêmokratia and certainly it was, along with isêgoria (‘freedom of speech’), an essential ingredient of democratic ideology in the later fifth century. But the term itself does not define the precise extent of the circle within which members are to enjoy equality under the law and Kurt Raaflaub is almost certainly right to believe that it was originally coined among the elite class.14 This equality among elite peers was guaranteed by the principle of rotation of office among powerholders, which is why the earliest laws for which we possess epigraphical evidence are so obsessively concerned with defining the tenure limits of office. So, for example, a seventh-century law from Dreros on Crete (ML ) prohibits an individual from holding the chief magistracy of kosmos more than once in any ten-year period, while a sixth-century law from Cretan Gortyn (IC .) sets a series of terms that had to intervene between tenure of the same magistracy.15 Even within a restrictive oligarchical government, it seems that the Greeks were uncomfortably conscious of the fact that not every individual could rule absolutely all the time and therefore set about ensuring that the highest offices should be shared among the ruling class. That this principle was inherited by democratic regimes is suggested strongly by Aristotle’s affirmation (Pol. .. [a]) that ruling and being ruled in turn was one of the fundamental aspects of democratic freedom.

Theseus: The Democratic Tyrant? The autocratic pedigree of the Athenian democracy and the ambiguous tension that this generated are encapsulated in the mythical figure of Theseus. In the final decade of the sixth century bce, scenes depicting Theseus’ exploits on the road from Troezen to Athens become popular on red-figured vases. The normal interpretation for this is that Theseus was being promoted as an emblematic hero for the new democracy established by the reforms of Cleisthenes,16 as if the fledgling regime had nothing better to do than instruct Attic vase painters as to what they 14

Raaflaub  . For early laws and their relationship with the aristocracy: Eder ; Hölkeskamp ; Hall a –. 16 E.g. Brommer ; Neils ; Calame ; Anderson  –. 15

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should put on their pots. In fact, this is part of a broader and concerted effort in which (predominantly American) scholars have sought to dissociate major Athenian monuments and artistic programmes from the Pisistratid tyranny. The Archaic temple to Athena and the sanctuary of Artemis Brauronia on the acropolis, the temple of Artemis at Brauron, the sixth-century Telesterion at Eleusis and the City Eleusinion, all once confidently attributed to Pisistratus or his sons, have now been downdated so that their construction falls within the final eight years of the sixth century, after the expulsion of Hippias, leaving to the Pisistratids only the credit for initiating—though not completing—the Temple of Olympian Zeus at Athens.17 Quite apart from the fact that this is an implausibly narrow chronological ‘window’ for the planning, design and execution of major building projects, one is left wondering exactly what it was that the Pisistratids did during their thirty-seven years of uninterrupted rule—especially since Thucydides (..) explicitly says that they “beautified the city . . . and made the sacrifices in the temples.” Theseus is not absent from Athenian art before  bce. On the François Vase, dated to ca.  bce, he is portrayed instituting, on the island of Delos, the Geranos (or ‘crane dance’) to commemorate his victory over the Minotaur. A black-figure amphora, from around  bce, probably shows him fighting the Marathonian bull, while his abduction of the Amazon queen Antiope features on a red-figure cup ascribed to Euphronius.18 There are actually good reasons for supposing that it was Pisistratus and his sons, not the Cleisthenic regime, who first championed Theseus as a specifically Athenian hero. Firstly, Theseus’ ordeals on the road to Athens to assume his rightful throne could be thought to prefigure Pisistratus’ own difficult efforts to seize power. Secondly, Theseus’ famed friendship with Pirithous, king of the Thessalian Lapiths, could serve as a charter for Pisistratus’ alliance with the powerful Thessalian families that supported both him and Hippias (Arist. [Ath. Pol.] ., .). Thirdly, as the son of Poseidon, Theseus was genealogically linked to Neleus, the mythical king of Pylos from whom the Pisistratids claimed descent (Hdt. ..). Fourthly, Pisistratus is supposed to have purified the island of Delos—associated, as we have seen, with Theseus’ institution of the Geranos—and reorganized the festival of the Delia there (Hdt. ..; Thuc. ..). Fifthly, the area of Marathon, where Theseus had 17 For the revised datings, see Shapiro  ; Stewart  i –; Hayashi  –; Childs ; Miles . For a criticism: Hall a –; b –. 18 Neils  –.

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battled a ferocious bull, was a Pisistratid stronghold, which is presumably why Hippias led the Persians there in  bce (Plut. Thes. .).19 It is surely not coincidental that, across the Euripus straits from Marathon, on the island of Euboea, lay the city of Eretria, which served as a base of operations for Pisistratus immediately before his successful attempt at the tyranny and from where he is said to have taken a wife (Hdt. ..; Schol. Ar. Nub. ). Here, on the west pediment of the Late Archaic temple of Apollo, was portrayed Theseus’ abduction of Antiope.20 Sixthly, it was at the sanctuary of Theseus that Pisistratus is said to have tricked the Athenians into surrendering their arms (see above). Finally, Theseus was remembered chiefly for having unified Attica by persuading the inhabitants of rural towns and villages to abandon their local council chambers and town halls in favour of the centralized institutions of Athens (Thuc. ..). Similarly, the Pisisistratids are widely believed to have connected rural communities to the city of Athens by instituting travelling ‘circuit judges’, developing a network of thoroughfares radiating out from the city of Athens, and reorganizing peripheral sanctuaries such as Brauron and Eleusis.21 Although the Great Panathenaea, the festival that celebrated the unity of the Athenians, was probably instituted prior to the tyranny, Aristotle (fr.  Rose) seems to have associated its reorganization with Pisistratus while Plato ([Hipparch.] b) tells us that Hipparchus was responsible for instituting rhapsodic contests at the festival. On balance, then, the evidence suggests that the figure of Theseus was not a new creation of the more democratic regime established under Cleisthenes but, rather, an originally tyrannical emblem that was usurped by the Athenian democracy. This democratic usurpation of a mythical autocrat was monumentalized in the early fifth century on the Treasury of the Athenians at Delphi, where Theseus’ deeds are juxtaposed with those of Heracles but appear on the more visible southern metopes of the building.22 It reaches its fruition, however, in the carved friezes that stood above the pronaos and opisthodomos of the Temple of Hephaestus and Athena, overlooking the Athenian agora and dating to the mid fifth century. Both friezes narrate episodes from early Athenian history that involved Theseus (which is one of the reasons why this temple was originally identified, erroneously, as the Theseion), but what is most remark19 20 21 22

Hdt. .. implies that the Pisistratids had supporters in the Marathon region. For the pediment: Touloupa . See generally Hall b: –. For the problems in dating the treasury, see Bommelaer and Laroche  –.

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able about them is that Theseus is depicted in two different stances, each of which echoes precisely the two figures of the tyrannicide group commissioned by Kritios and Nesiotes.23

Dêmos turannos I take it as relatively uncontroversial that the Athenian democracy of the fifth century could be viewed—and, indeed, viewed itself—as a tyranny in terms of the hegemony it wielded over its erstwhile allies within the Delian League. In his final speech to the Athenian assembly, Pericles tells his fellows citizens “you rule your empire as if it were a tyranny; it may seem wrong to have taken it, but it is now dangerous to let it go” (Thuc. ..). A little later, Cleon is even more blunt: You are not considering that the empire you rule is a tyranny, and that you are dominant over unwilling subjects who continuously plot against you and who do not obey you because of any favours that you grant them at considerable risk to yourself but rather on account of your strength rather than their good will. (Thuc. ..)

Prior to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides (..) has the Athenians tell the Spartans that it was fear, honour and self-interest that impelled them to acquire their empire, but by the time of the Melian Dialogue in  bce any pretence to honour has evaporated. In their justification of why the Melians should suffer the severest punishment for not having joined the Athenian empire, the Athenians confess: We, for our part, will not provide a long and scarcely credible speech, adorned with noble terms, such as how it was just for us to rule, since we defeated the Persians, or that it was because of your injustice that we attacked you . . . You know perfectly well that, according to human logic, what is right is only an issue between two forces that are equally matched, whereas the strong do what they can and the weak must yield. (Thuc. .)

The Athenians go on to say that their only guiding concern in the decisions that they must make is one of self-preservation and it is difficult not to be reminded of Thucydides’ authorial observation, in the opening chapters of his History (.), that the early Greek tyrants looked only to their own personal self-interest and the glorification of their families, making security their principal aim. 23

Taylor .

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What is, perhaps, more surprising is that the motif of the tyrannical dêmos—dêmos turannos as it is sometimes termed in our sources— also seems to have been part of the rhetoric that circulated for internal, domestic consumption, where the dêmos, understood in the more restrictive, Archaic sense of the term, exercises hegemony over a now dispossessed elite. As Lisa Kallet puts it, Given the intimate connection that the Greek concept of freedom has to the right to rule, tyranny and democracy, like democracy and archê, fit neatly together, for the dêmos occupies a similar position to the tyrant: the people want absolute power and are unaccountable . . . the dêmos, in this definition, would hold absolute sway over its fellow, elite citizens.24

Interesting here is Thucydides’ digression on the Pisistratid tyranny on the occasion of violence that erupted in Athens shortly before the despatch of the doomed Sicilian Expedition in  bce. In one night, many of the statues of Hermes that adorned the city were vandalized—an act of sacrilege that was thought to be ominous for the expedition’s success. Among those implicated was Alcibiades, who was also charged with having staged mock celebrations of the Eleusinian Mysteries—an act of impiety that was punishable by death—though much of the supposed ‘proof ’ for his involvement was his “undemocratic lawlessness with regard to his practices” (Thuc. ..). Thucydides later explains that the Athenians pursued their investigations into the affair relentlessly and were particularly concerned because “the dêmos had heard how the tyranny of Pisistratus and his sons had ended up being harsh (chalepên) and, moreover, that it had been ended not by themselves and Harmodius but by the Spartans, and for this reason it was always fearful and took everything suspiciously” (..). It is at this point that Thucydides pauses to digress on the circumstances surrounding the end of the Pisistratid tyranny, reiterating that, after the assassination of Hipparchus, Hippias’ tyranny had become more harsh (chalepôtera). Yet chalepos is precisely the adjective that he also uses to describe the Athenian dêmos after it became aware of the charges of the profanation of the mysteries (Thuc. .., .). Put another way, in its almost compulsive fear of tyranny, the Athenian democracy reacted with the paranoia that typified tyrants.25 It is not so difficult to understand why, in the eyes of elite authors who thought that they merited more political clout, the Athenian dêmos could 24 25

Kallet  . Henderson : .

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be perceived as acting tyrannically.26 A case in point is the Old Oligarch— the name conventionally given to the author of a political treatise that was preserved among the works of Xenophon. The Old Oligarch begins by conceding that it is right that the poor masses should have more power than the noble elites because it is they who crew the ships on which the Athenian Empire’s strength is based (Xen. [Ath. pol.] .). “For,” he says later (.), “the dêmos does not want to be enslaved in a city governed by good laws but to be free and to rule” (i.e. over the elites)—again, the tenor is very clearly one of somebody who does not include himself in the dêmos. But there is, I believe, some evidence to suggest that the concept of the dêmos turannos was not restricted to the elites—namely the plays of Aristophanes. Admittedly, political comedy is a difficult genre to decode and many scholars have sought to see in Aristophanes’ plays criticism— both oblique and explicit—of radical democracy.27 On the other hand, Aristophanes’ principal aim was to secure the appreciative approbation of his audience, which must have been dominated by the less well-off.28 So, when in Knights (–), the chorus praises the personified Demos as exercising “a fine rule, because all men fear you like a tyrannical man,” or when, in Wasps, the aging democrat Philocleon claims that he “rules over all” () and asks if the authority of the juror “is not the greatest power (archê) of all, which mocks even the rich man” (), we should not, I think, assume that this is merely the frustrated sentiment of an opponent to democracy.29 There are three respects in which the Athenian democracy acted in ways that could be described as tyrannical. The first was the massive public building project which we associate today with the name of Pericles but which was designed, monitored and funded by the Athenian assembly.30 Plutarch gives us some taste of the elite opposition to the adornment of the city: Surely Greece is being dreadfully insulted and evidently subject to tyranny when it sees that, from the forced contributions it makes to the war, we are gilding and beautifying our city like a brazen whore, equipping it with precious stones and statues and temples worth thousands of talents. (Plut. Per. .) 26 Raaflaub  argues that the concept of the dêmos turannos is limited to the elite sphere. 27 E.g. de Ste Croix  –; contra Gomme . 28 MacDowell  –. 29 This is the opinion of Connor  and Kallet . 30 Kallet  .

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Kallet has argued that Plutarch is drawing on very real criticism that was voiced against the building project in the fifth century and even suggests that Pericles’ references, in the Funeral Oration (Thuc. .., ., .), to the aggrandizement of the city and its imperishable monuments, together with his exhortation to his fellow citizens to “gaze daily upon the strength of Athens and fall in love with it,” are a response to such criticism.31 The second was the levying of taxes. As we have seen, Pisistratus was said to have imposed income taxes on the Athenians and, although there was no universal tax on citizens under the radical democracy, an assessment named the eisphora was levied on wealthier Athenians— especially as civic funds became depleted due to the Peloponnesian War.32 In Xenophon’s Symposium (.), Charmides explains why he prefers his current poverty to his former life of opulence: “Now I am like a tyrant whereas before I was evidently a slave; for in those former days, I used to pay taxes to the dêmos whereas now the polis levies tribute to support me.”33 Similarly, the Old Oligarch comments on how the rich fund choruses, gymnasia and triremes while the dêmos has all these provided for it (Xen. [Ath. pol.] .). The third respect—and, again, the most significant for the theme of this volume—is the practice of deception. Here too we see an ambiguous tension similar to that which existed between the official Athenian repudiation of tyranny and the tyrannical mode in which the dêmos enacted its business. Deception was recognized as a fundamentally undemocratic trait in a free and open society and, in the Funeral Oration, Pericles contrasts the naturally spontaneous courage of the Athenians with the preparations and deceptions (apatai) of the Spartans (Thuc. ..).34 At the same time, however, one can detect a deep-seated anxiety among the Athenians that deception is simply one of the instruments of domination in any society—especially a society in which rhetorical skills, the ability but also necessity to persuade, counted for so much. So, for example, in the debate that takes place in the Athenian assembly to decide the fate of the rebellious citizens of Mytilene, Cleon accuses his fellow citizens of being easily led astray by the “decorous speech” of an orator and tells them that they are “very good at being deceived (apatasthai) by the 31 32 33 34

Kallet  –. Kallet  –. Kallet  . Hesk  .

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novelty of an argument” (Thuc. .., ), while his opponent, Diodotus, notes that “the speaker who wants to persuade the most terrible things must use deceit to bring the multitude (plêthos) over to him, just as he who says better things must lie in order to be believed,” and adds that “in this polis alone, on account of such sensitivity, it is impossible to do good service openly without practising deceit (..–).”35 Democratic deceit also features prominently in Xenophon’s account (Hell. ..) of the Arginousae affair in  bce, when six generals were charged with not having recovered the bodies of their comrades after a victorious naval battle against the Spartans and were summarily executed. In the wake of the affair, Xenophon tells us that the Athenians had a change of heart and “decreed that accusations should be made against those who had deceived the people.”36 In all these cases, the accusations of deception are laid at the feet of demagogues but in the radical Athenian democracy, the most prominent speakers were—de iure if not always de facto—equal in political status to each of their compatriots. Aristophanes is also a valuable source for the theme of democratic deception. In its address to Demos in the Knights (–), the chorus says: “Demos, you have a fine rule, because all men fear you like a tyrannical man. But you are easily led astray, you rejoice in being fawned upon and thoroughly deceived.” “Wrong,” replies Demos. “You have no mind under your long hair if you think that I’m stupid, for in these matters I play the fool willingly. I enjoy my daily suckle and I want to nourish a thief as my protector; then, when he’s full and I’ve raised him up, I trample upon him.”37 A similar theme can be found in the Acharnians (–), when the play’s protagonist, Dicaeopolis, claims to “know the way of rustics, who rejoice greatly if some crafty man eulogizes them and the polis, whether justly or unjustly.” It is, however, the start of the play that presents one of the most blatant acts of deceit on the Athenian stage. Dicaeopolis is attending a session of the assembly, at which Athenian ambassadors to the Great King of Persia request an increase in their daily allowance. To legitimate their request, they produce a decadently dressed man that they claim is the Persian king’s chief advisor. He addresses the assembly in pidgin Greek and the ambassadors provide their own translation, to the effect that the Athenians will receive in return great wealth from the King. But the 35 36 37

Hesk  –. Hesk  . Hesk  –.

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‘Persian advisor’ is, in reality, an Athenian in costume and the request for an increased stipend is nothing other than an act of deception on the part of the Athenian ambassadors against their peer citizens, even if Dicaeopolis is the only one who can see through the sham.

Autochthonous autocrats I wish, finally, to consider the Athenian myth of autochthony and how this might be implicated in the discourse of the polis turannos and the dêmos turannos. In one of his poems, Solon (fr.  W) refers to Attica as “the oldest land of Ionia,” indicating that, in the early sixth century at any rate, the Athenians wished to be viewed as a branch of the Ionians. Indeed, it may be this claimed affiliation to the Ionian ethnos that guaranteed the Athenians a seat on the Amphictyony that governed Apollo’s oracular sanctuary at Delphi.38 Various origins were attributed to the Ionians, but the tradition that Herodotus accepted (.; cf. Paus. ..–) told how they had fled from the coastal region of the northern Peloponnese to Athens, from where they had subsequently set out to colonize the central Aegean islands and the cities of Asia Minor. By the fifth century, however, the Athenians seemed anxious to dissociate themselves from the Ionians: according to Herodotus, again, they “avoid the name, not wishing to be called Ionian; in fact, I believe that many of them are ashamed of the name” (..). Instead, the Athenians came to think of themselves as autochthonous—that is, as having always inhabited the same territory. They are first explicitly described as such in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (), performed in  bce, though Pindar’s reference (I. .) to their descent from the earth-born Erechtheus may allow us to push the origins of this belief back to the s.39 It was not uncommon for tyrants to profess ethnic origins different from those of their subjects: the Pisistratids claimed descent from the mythical king Neleus of Messenian Pylos (Hdt. ..); Miltiades the Elder, who established a tyranny in the Thracian Chersonese, belonged to a family that traced its origins back to the Aeacids of Aegina (..); Cypselus, tyrant of Corinth, is said to have had a Lapith father (..); 38

Hall : –. Cf. Hdt. ..; Thuc. ..; ... See Montanari ; Rosivach ; Hall  –. Shapiro   notes that this is the period when scenes of the Athenian king Erichthonius being born from the soil become popular on Athenian vases. 39

autochthonous autocrats

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while Battus, the first ruler of Cyrene, was supposedly a Minyan by descent (..). One gets the impression that the claim to extraneous origins somehow circumvented the problem of justifying why one individual should exercise rule over fellow kinsmen. Athens seems to have adopted a similar strategy once it found itself at the head of a hegemonic league which consisted primarily of city-states that professed an Ionian heritage. By downplaying their own Ionian origins and promoting the belief in their autochthony, the Athenians could appear ethnically different from their subject allies and, by the time that Euripides’ Ion was performed, probably in the last decade of the fifth century, the Ionians came to be regarded as colonists, rather than kinsmen, of the Athenians.40 This, of course, is related to the image of the Athenians as tyrants over their tribute-paying allies but there is possibly another sense in which autochthony could bolster the Athenian dêmos’ hegemony over wealthy aristocrats. The legal correlate to the myth of autochthony was the Citizenship Law that was proposed by Pericles in  bce and that henceforth decreed that citizenship could only be inherited by the sons of two Athenian parents. Several scholars have followed the author of the Aristotelian Constitution of the Athenians () in attributing the motives behind the law to a desire to curb overpopulation at Athens,41 but at least part of the point must have been a proscription of the hitherto common elite practice of marrying into the families of aristocrats and even autocrats from other city-states.42 In most parts of the ancient Greek world, autochthony was not especially valued: in a society where the power of force was admired, the rights of the latest population to conquer a city or a region were normally championed over those of the indigenous inhabitants. But in democratic Athens, the ideology of autochthony bestowed an authenticity and a primordial nobility on the members of the dêmos in contradistinction to the extraneous status of elite families that might now be regarded as parvenus and, therefore, less authentically Athenian. The Archaic poet Archilochus (fr. ) wrote that he had no desire for tyranny and Solon (fr.  W) comments that he deliberately abstained from seizing the tyranny at Athens.43 A moment’s thought should suffice to show that tyranny was, in and of itself, a desirable thing to possess in 40 41 42 43

Dougherty ; Hall  –. See Hansen : . Gernet  ; Humphreys . Cf. Arist. [Ath. Pol.] ., ..



jonathan hall

the eyes of most people. The brute reality was that, for the ancient Greeks, tyranny was only to be hated if one had the misfortune to be the subject of a tyrant and, in the fifth century at any rate, when political theory had barely developed beyond a crude distinction that had long been drawn between rulers and ruled, it was obviously preferable to belong to the former category. Plus ça change?

PHOKIAN DESPERATION: PRIVATE AND PUBLIC IN THE OUTBREAK OF THE 3RD SACRED WAR

Peter Londey In  bc the Athenian orator Demosthenes described travelling though Phokis in central Greece, on his way to Delphoi. It was a harrowing scene: houses razed to the ground, walls stripped away [from cities]; a country emptied of young men; the pitiable inhabitants just a few women and young children, and old men. (D. .)

Demosthenes, of course, had reason to exaggerate the Phokian plight, for which he held his enemy Aischines responsible. Yet the scene is plausible enough. The rd Sacred War had ended three years before, in . The war had begun in , when the Phokians seized the sanctuary at Delphoi and proceeded, with the help of mercenaries paid for with looted Delphic treasures, to hold off their enemies—primarily Thebans, Thessalians, and Lokrians—for ten years. With the ridge of Mt Helikon providing a high road into Boiotia,1 the Phokians proved more or less unassailable until the eventual entry of Philip of Makedon tipped the scales decisively against them. Philip settled the war in , and thus successfully and permanently inserted himself into the affairs of southern Greece. The fate of Phokis was left to the members of the Delphic Amphiktyony, the religious league of Greek states which controlled the sanctuary at Delphoi. Aischines claimed that only his intervention as Athenian envoy had saved the Phokians from an Oitaian proposal that all the adult male population should be thrown off the cliffs at Delphoi (Aeschin. .). Whether or not such brutal punishment was seriously entertained, the Amphiktyonic judgement was still harsh. Diodoros tells us that the Amphiktyony decreed that the -odd cities of Phokis should be broken up into villages of not more than  houses, at least a stadion apart; that the Phokians should not be allowed to possess either horses or arms; and that as reparations to Apollo they should pay an indemnity of  talents a year (D.S. ..). From inscriptions we know that payment 1

Burn  –.

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of the reparations began in autumn , a little after Demosthenes’ visit, with half-yearly payments of  talents. The amount was in a few years reduced, but payments continued into Alexander’s reign (CID , –). Sixty talents will have been an enormous burden on the ruined Phokians: double the th century tribute to Athens paid by Aigina, four times that paid by Byzantion—but they were great trading states, with busy ports to tax. For the Phokians, years of poverty beckoned. The outline of the story is clear enough, but the question remains: Why did the Phokians seize the sanctuary in ? The orthodox view is summed up thus in a recent (and fine) general textbook: Behind the outbreak of the war was Thebes’ attempt to consolidate its hegemony in central Greece. Exploiting a favourable majority on the Amphiktyonic council of Delphi, Thebes arranged to have Phocis severely fined in  for cultivating land sacred to Apollo. Phocis’ response was unexpected. . . . the Phocians made a desperate effort to regain their independence. Instead of submitting to Theban blackmail, they seized control of Delphi and used the treasures of Apollo to recruit a powerful mercenary army.2

This outwardly reasonable set of statements is, I would argue, wrong in almost every respect. It falls into a common error in our thinking about international politics: the assumption that, where there are great powers involved, they are necessarily pulling the strings. In recent history, there is an excessive tendency to explain every event from the late s to the late s in terms of the Cold War. The same error is common in discussing antiquity, as much in ancient sources as in modern criticism. I have argued previously that although Philip was the ultimate beneficiary of the outbreak of the th Sacred War of  / , he actually had nothing whatsoever to do with the original conflict from which it sprang. That was a purely local conflict, mainly between groups of people in Delphoi and the Western Lokrian town of Amphissa.3 In this chapter I shall argue that the rd Sacred War, similarly, may have sprung from local rather than great power conflicts. John Buckler, in Philip II and the Sacred War, and most recently (with Hans Beck) in Central Greece and the politics of power, begins his account of the outbreak of the Sacred War with events of  bc at Delphoi.4 In that year, as we know from an Athenian inscription, the Amphiktyony 2 3 4

Pomeroy  . Londey . Buckler  –; Buckler and Beck  –; see also Buckler  –.

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exiled a group of eleven Delphians, led by a man called Astykrates (IG 2 ). It is a remarkable instance of the Amphiktyony intervening in the internal affairs of a member state, though of course Delphoi was not a normal member state. Since this event occurred more or less at the high point of Theban hegemony, it is natural to see some Theban involvement.5 That does not mean, necessarily, that the Thebans had a policy aim of a compliant Delphian polis. It is just as likely that they simply used their influence on the Amphiktyonic council to do a favour for their own friends among the Delphians—quite possibly the clan of the Thrakidai, who were later slaughtered by Philomelos (D.S. ..). One must assume that Astykrates’ faction had been powerful, perhaps dominant, within Delphoi, forcing its opponents to call in the outside help of the Amphiktyony to deal with them. It is impossible to say whether pro- or anti-Thebanism was an issue in Delphian politics, but it is probably safe to say that Astykrates’ faction did not have strong ties with Thebes. Certainly Buckler’s attempt to argue that Astykrates was not anti-Boiotian on the grounds that anti-Theban sentiment was not as widespread as our Athenian sources would suggest holds no water. And, given the nature of Greek politics, Buckler’s evident belief that Astykrates must have been punished for some genuine offence against both Delphoi and Amphiktyony, with a verdict which the Athenians “could not refute”, smacks of deliberate naivety.6 The connection between the expulsion of Astykrates in  and the Sacred War a few years later is that Astykrates’ group were, it would appear, able to return to Delphoi when it was under Phokian control. At any rate one of them, Hagesarchos, turns up at Delphoi as a wartime naopoios from  to .7 (The college of naopoioi, “temple builders”, were magistrates, drawn from various member states of the Amphiktyony, in charge of managing the building of the new temple of Apollo.) Delphian politics were, I would imagine, more complex than simply a matter of pro- and anti-Theban (or Phokian) positions. The Delphian naopoios in spring , Aristagoras, is pointedly absent from a meeting held in summer , between the regular spring and autumn meetings of the Amphiktyony; at that meeting he is replaced by a Nikomachos son of 5 Buckler (see references in n. ) does not see it that way, but the question is not critical here, since I am not arguing that the Thebans used their influence in this way as a way of attacking the Phokians. I hope to return to the whole question elsewhere. 6 Buckler and Beck  . 7 Equating He[ges]archos at IG 2 b. with the Delphian Hagesarchos at CID , ., , , , .

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Menekrates, who also appears in autumn . Neither Nikomachos nor his father were among the associates of Astykrates honoured at Athens in . This might suggest a different factional alignment for him and his family—perhaps as a “moderate” meant to give a gloss of respectability to Philomelos’ control of the sanctuary; or it might suggest that Nikomachos was a connection of Philomelos himself, while Hagesarchos who appears in  after a break in meetings of the naopoioi, was in some way associated with Philomelos’ successor, Onomarchos. When we turn to the seizure of the sanctuary in , we find a tendency for later sources—falling, I would suggest, into the “great power” error described above—to see the whole affair as primarily a conflict between the Phokians and the Thebans. Justin blames the Thebans for high-handed use of their hegemony to charge the Phokians in the Amphiktyony with laying waste Boiotia: the Phokians, forced in desperation to seize the temple, won more sympathy than the Thebans who had driven them to do it (Iust. ..–). Pausanias links the event in a general way either with Thessalian hostility or with war against Thebes (Paus. .., ..). But by far the fullest account is that in Diodoros, which merits close attention. According to Diodoros, the Phokians had been charged in the Amphiktyony with cultivating a large part of the sacred land called “Kirrhaian”.8 The tag “Kirrhaian” may simply be a later guess, influenced by events leading up to the th Sacred War. When the Phokians failed to pay the fine imposed, the hieromnemons (voting members of the Amphiktyonic Council) demanded that the council “dedicate the land of those cheating the god.”9 The council agreed, and the matter was referred to the member cities of the Amphiktyony for ratification.10 In desperation, according to Diodoros, Philomelos, a man of high reputation, addressed the Phokians and argued that they should not lie down and let this happen. He then put forward arguments to support the view that Delphoi was historically part of Phokis; and finally promised to lead a successful resistance to all this if the Phokians would elect him stratêgos autokratôr (sole commander) with full powers. Duly elected, he went off to Sparta, currently also upset with the Amphiktyony due to the renewal of demands of payment of the fine for seizing the Kadmeia. The

ας.

8

D.S. ..: περγασμενοι πολλν τς ερς χρας τς νομαζομνης Κιρρα-

9

D.S. ..: κα!ιερ"σαι τν χραν τ"ν #ποστερο$ντων τ&ν !ε'ν. On the process, see Londey  –.

10

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Spartan king Archidamos did not want to support Philomelos openly, but quietly provided money and mercenaries. Philomelos hired more mercenaries, recruited , Phokians, and seized the sanctuary. His first act was to slaughter a group called the Thrakidai and seize their possessions. Then, after a successful battle against the local Lokrians, he erased the decisions of the Amphiktyons, before announcing that he was looking after the sanctuary and would not plunder any of the treasures. It was a coup, in effect, in which the Phokians intervened to cancel some illegal acts of the Amphiktyony, and to reorder power in Delphoi itself (D.S. ..–.). To the Boiotians and Lokrians, of course, it was much more than a coup, and they managed to rouse up other members of the Amphiktyony—Thessalians and the dependent groups around Thessaly, the Dolopians and Ainianians of central Greece, and so on—and the Sacred War began in earnest. After Philomelos’ death in , Phokian command passed to Onomarchos, followed eventually by Onomarchos’ brother Phayllos and Phalaikos, son of either Phayllos or Onomarchos.11 A common feature across many of our sources is that they assign responsibility for the seizure of the sanctuary and later for its plundering not to the Phokians at large, but specifically to their leaders.12 Very often, indeed, the various Phokian leaders during the war are referred to as tyrannoi,13 a word which may carry a sense that that the Phokians under the sway of these leaders could not be blamed for what happened. This was an idea with currency at the time, it would appear. Aischines claimed that in  he told Philip that he should punish “those individuals who were originally responsible for the seizure of the shrine (το(ς α)τους τς ξ #ρχς καταλψεως το ερο ), . . . not their cities” (Aeschin. .). Now obviously this could be an exculpatory view put about by those favourable to the Phokians, and it may reflect the general tendency 11

D.S. .–. Phayllos as Onomarchos’ brother: Paus. .. (with the spelling Phaylos); Harpokration s. Φϋλλος. Phalaikos is son of Onomarchos at D.S. .., of Phayllos at Paus. ... 12 Examples: Paus. .. (a shield is stolen “by Philomelos”); Ephor. (= Ath. .e) (“Onomarchos, Phayllos and Phalaikos”); Plb. .. (“Onomarchos and Philomelos”); Ath. .d (shrine looted /π& τ0ν Φωκικ"ν τυρννων, though admittedly the shrine is seized /π& Φωκων at .c); Ath. . f.–d (Theopompos wrote a work on treasures plundered from Delphoi, with lists of items given by Philomelos, Onomarchos and Phayllos to various flute girls, dancing girls, and beautiful boys). 13 For Phalaikos alone, see e.g. Aeschin. ., .; for the Phokian leaders in general, Aeschin. ., .; Ath. .d; Harpokration s. Φϋλλος; Plu. Mor. e–f,  f.; Plb. ...

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to attach the names of individuals to more complex stories. Yet the consistency is striking, and it fits well with the detail of what our fullest source, Diodoros, tells us about the start of the war. Trusting Diodoros may be counterintuitive, but let us see where it gets us. When Diodoros has Philomelos exhort the Phokians to action, what he urges them to do is #μφισβητε3ν περ4 τς το μαντεου προστασας 5ς ο6σης πατρου το3ς Φωκε σιν (D.S. ..), which I would take to mean “to mount a claim to the presidency of the oracle, on the grounds that this had belonged to the Phokians of old”. There is nothing here about seizing the sanctuary by force. That part of the plan, I would suggest, Philomelos kept secret. He went off to Sparta and told king Archidamos. Then he recruited mercenaries, and a thousand chosen Phokians, no doubt his own close supporters. With these he seized the sanctuary (D.S. ..–). A somewhat similar account appears in Polyainos, who tells us that Philomelos recruited mercenaries on the pretext (prophasis) of a war against the Thebans and Thessalians, but then used them to seize the sanctuary and loot the treasures, thus turning his hegemonia into tyrannis (Polyaen. .). Once Thebes entered the war, Philomelos (according to Diodoros) chose the best (aristous) of the Phokians to fight, but kept hiring more mercenaries (D.S. ..). From these accounts it would appear that the seizure of the temple was a coup carried out by Philomelos behind the backs of his fellow Phokians. Let me say a little about motive, and method. Obviously the lure of becoming the tyrant of Delphoi may have been attractive enough. For a Phokian aristocrat from the town of Ledon—in Pausanias’ day an impoverished village,14 but perhaps something greater in the th century—to play Smaug sitting on the vast heap of treasures at Delphoi would be tempting, however dangerous the sacrilege involved. But perhaps Philomelos’ aims were less grandiose. There is a passage in Aristotle’s Politics, where Aristotle is giving examples of cases where great conflicts grew out of small factional conflicts (very much in keeping with the theme of this chapter). One example he gives is the Sacred War which, he claims, arose out of stasis between Onomarchos’ father Euthykrates and Mnaseas, father of Mnason, in a dispute over an ‘heiress’ (epiklêros) (Arist. Pol. a). Clearly the families were closely related (if they could both have claims over the same heiress), and possibly as time went on the dispute was forgotten, as in the late s Onomarchos’

14

Paus. ..–; naturally Philomelos’ asebeia is blamed.

phokian desperation



brother left Mnaseas as guardian over his young son or nephew, Phalaikos (D.S. ..–). I am not sure that anybody has satisfactorily accounted for Aristotle’s explanation; Georgios Zachos has recently suggested that Philomelos, seemingly a relative outsider in the Phokian aristocracy, took advantage of the fact that the leading families were distracted to seize power for himself.15 That is possible, but would leave Aristotle with a rather weak example for his theme. What makes Aristotle’s mysterious information all the more tantalising is that he got it, evidently, from the horse’s mouth: Mnaseas’ son Mnason was, it seems, a companion of Aristotle’s,16 and no doubt tried to explain to him some of the family history. I think we can take two things from Aristotle’s account, however mysterious the deeper interpretation. First (and taking the opposite tack to Zachos), although it was Philomelos who convinced the Phokians to elect him stratêgos autokratôr, Onomarchos was probably involved from the start: indeed, Diodoros refers to Onomarchos as Philomelos’ colleague as general (synarchôn stratêgos), who became commander once Philomelos was killed (D.S. ..). Onomarchos’ family seems absolutely central, given that they continued to command the Phokians until Phalaikos was deposed in  (D.S. ..). Perhaps Philomelos was an acceptable front-man, but my inference from Aristotle would be that Onomarchos was very possibly the power behind the scenes. But we should not go too far. If the Mnaseas is the Phokian general who was a friend of Phayllos and guardian of Phalaikos (and who was himself killed by the Boiotians; see D.S. ..–), then the stasis cannot have lasted long.17 Secondly, what Aristotle preserves for us is the fact that, in the view of some of the participants, factional struggle among and within aristocratic families was what it was all about. Perhaps it should come as no surprise, then, that the very first thing that Philomelos did after seizing Delphoi, even before erasing the decrees of the Amphiktyons, was to slaughter the Thrakidai (D.S. ..), presumably a faction based around a family opposed to the families of Philomelos and Onomarchos. It is reasonable to suppose that the Thrakidai had been among the beneficiaries of the expulsion of Astykrates and his faction; and they may well have been, above others, instrumental in raising the claims against the

15

Zachos  . Ath. .d. Aeschin. . provides contemporary evidence for Mnason’s prescence in Athens. 17 McInerney   assumes that the war “ended the contention” between the families. 16

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Phokians of cultivating sacred land. Though direct evidence is lacking, it seems plausible to conjecture that there were probably close ties, very likely formalised through intermarriage, between Phokian and Delphian aristocratic families; and potentially equally strong enmities. Indeed, the story that Phokians were cultivating sacred land implies that they could own land within Delphian territory. In the section from the Politics cited above, Aristotle also tells how the beginning of the later staseis at Delphoi was an incident at a wedding, where a bridegroom changed his mind and did not take away the bride; her relatives concocted charges of sacrilege against him and had him put to death.18 If he had this, too, from Mnaseas, then this may also be an event from the over-heated s or s. We can do no more than speculate, however, on what the connections may be. We may be on somewhat firmer ground if we ask, which Phokians were accused of cultivating sacred land. The answer, among others, is Onomarchos himself. Diodoros tells us that he had had many large fines imposed on him by the Amphiktyons, “like the others” (7μοως το3ς 8λλοις), and had failed to pay them (D.S. ..). Diodoros carefully explains that this meant that to Onomarchos himself it was more desirable to continue the war after Philomelos’ death than to seek the peace which the more moderate Phokians wanted. At this point, Diodoros suggests, there was a strong moderate group seeking peace. But the disreputable Onomarchos talked the Phokians into continuing the war, not out of interest in the common good but by putting private advantage first.19 If we are willing to follow the implications of this passage, it changes things a lot. First, it suggests that the fines imposed by the Amphiktyons were not against the Phokians as a group but against the individuals accused of cultivating sacred land. That land had, by definition, to be near Delphoi, and presumably was owned or leased by Phokians who lived nearby or otherwise had connections with Delphoi. Philomelos might have been one of them, though his city of Ledon was somewhere in the Kephisos valley, not exactly close to Delphoi.20 Where Onomarchos came from, we simply do not know. But it is not hard to imagine that wealthy men from any part of Phokis might have connections with Delphoi. If the Amphiktyonic fines were levied against some Phokians, not the whole koinon, what of the threatened punishment? The usual assumption 18 Arist. Pol. b–a. Plutarch gives a more detailed version of the story, at Mor. b. 19 D.S. ..: τ& 9διον λυσιτελ:ς προκρνας. 20 Discussion at McInerney  .

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

is that the Amphiktyony was going to dedicate the whole of Phokis to the god, a drastic punishment indeed, leaving the Phokians to starve, emigrate, or perhaps lease their own land back. In Justin’s words, “the Phokians stood to be deprived of their land, children and wives” (Iust. ..). The decision was made at Delphoi, but then referred back to the member states for ratification. It is very hard to imagine that a majority of member states would have been willing to agree to such a brutal decision affecting an entire ethnos. In fact, however, that is not what Diodoros tells us. He does refer to the land of the Phokians being about to be dedicated (D.S. ..), but that seems to be elliptical. A few lines earlier, as noted above, he has referred to the hieromnemons’ demand that the Amphiktyony “dedicate the land of those defrauding the god” (D.S. ..)—which surely means a threat simply to dedicate the estates of those individuals who had been accused by their enemies at Delphoi of cultivating sacred land. So, I would suggest, this was more or less a private quarrel between some Phokian aristocrats and the groups left in a position of dominance in Delphoi after the expulsion of Astykrates. In their pursuit of this quarrel, these aristocrats played very fast and loose with the interests of their fellow Phokians. And that is where the deception, which is the theme of this volume, came in. Philomelos’ task was to convince the Phokians to give him powers to take actions which were in his own interests, but could not possibly be in theirs. He did this partly, as I have said, by not telling them what his actual intentions were. He also did it by the classic advertiser’s trick of exaggerating the danger of the situation. There is a hint of this in Diodoros, when Philomelos argues that to give in to the Amphiktyons would bring with it with it the danger of upsetting the life or livelihood of them all, τ"ν ;πντων (D.S. ..). It is all too easy to imagine Philomelos’ slick oratory gliding from a threat to the estates of a small group of nobles to a threat to the Phokian people en masse.21 Given that he was speaking to farmers whose lands in the Kephisos valley were wide open to the threat of retaliatory invasions from Boiotia, this was quite a trick. So he resorted to what still works best today in these situations: the appeal to national pride. He told them how Delphoi had originally been Phokian, quoting Homer. Phokian ‘presidency’ (prostasia) at Delphoi 21 We do not need to follow Buckler and Beck’s literal reading of Philomelos’ oratory: “If the sacred property was clearly that important, it must have been quite extensive” (Buckler and Beck  ).



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was traditional, he claimed. We get a glimpse of the line of argument later when he claims that by erasing the decrees of the Amphiktyons he was merely upholding the patrioi nomoi of the Phokians (D.S. ..–; ..). When people start talking about patrioi nomoi, it is generally, I would think, a sign that they are not to be trusted. That is as true in antiquity as it is today. We probably do not have enough evidence to refute Philomelos’ claims; but nor should we take them at face value. The Phokians do appear to have had a period in the th century when Delphoi was part of the Phokian koinon.22 Further than that we cannot go, except through archaeology. In the early Iron Age, Delphoi seems to have been quite archaeologically distinct from Phokis north and east of Parnassos, as one might expect.23 As time went on, greater integration occurred; but cultural integration may have little to do with political unity. Whether there was ever a time before the mid-th century when Delphoi formed part of a politically unified Phokis, we have no way of saying. But, in any case, in  questions of historical or archaeological truth simply did not matter. All that mattered was what Philomelos could make his listeners believe, and what sort of emotions it roused in them. Of course, Phokian aristocrats were not the only ones appealing to imagined histories: at Delphoi, even more than elsewhere, the appeal to history was always a likely strategy. We may perhaps discern something of a campaign by belligerent Delphians to assert their rights over the “sacred land”. Noel Robertson’s view that the st Sacred War was a th century invention still has a lot going for it.24 Unattested before , it sounds like a convenient story on which to hang claims of Delphian independence. The outbreak of the rd Sacred War, like the th Sacred War after it, took place within a foggy world of mythology and unprovable assertion. Not everybody suffered. Mnaseas’ son Mnason turns up years later as tyrant of Elateia and owner of , slaves.25 The losers were the ordinary citizens of Phokis, who allowed themselves to have the wool pulled over their eyes in , and suffered ruin as a result.

22 23 24 25

The most obvious evidence is Th. ... See, in general, Morgan  –. Robertson . Timaios (= FGrH  Fa, Fb).

TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD IN EARLY HELLENISTIC PROPAGANDA

Brian Bosworth “The king, he said, should not do anything other than speak truth in his relations with his subjects, and none of his subjects should think that the king does anything other than speak the truth.”

The speaker is, of course, Alexander the Great, harshly reproving his men for their distrust of his motives when he discharged their accumulated debts.1 He insists on reciprocity between his troops and himself. As a king he must speak the truth, and his subjects must take his words at face value. At first sight this is a paradox. Alexander made a speciality of deceit, as Arrian states in his final eulogy (“No one was more reliable in keeping pacts or agreements, or more secure from being trapped by the fraudulent”).2 He uses language which deliberately evokes Thucydides’ commendation of Themistocles. The Athenian statesman was the subtlest judge of the political situation both present and future, and could improvise with amazing skill at short notice. Themistocles was a master of intrigue, and was seen as the chief agent of the Persian defeat.3 In Arrian’s eyes Alexander had the same qualities. He had a supreme ability to forestall the enemy, and took the offensive before they even realised that there was a threat. Arrian is clearly thinking of episodes like the attack on the Malli in the Punjab.4 On that occasion Alexander crossed the desert east of the river Chenab and launched an assault at daybreak. The Malli had no inkling that he was in the vicinity, and the agricultural population 1 Arr. An. ..–; cf. D.S. ..; Curt. ..–; (with Yardley and Atkinson . –); Just. ..–; Plu. Alex. .; Mor. b–c. 2 Arr. An. ... Here Alexander does not deliberately act in bad faith. Arrian stresses the opposite: Alexander cannot be deceived, and consequently he has a talent for deception. Justin (..) has a more conventional view. It is Philip who is the master of deceit, who considered that no means of gaining victory were dishonourable. Arrian by contrast depicts Alexander as the ideal battlefield tactician, cool-headed and foresighted. 3 See particularly Th. .., with Hdt. .., in which Themistocles is extolled as the wisest of man in all Greece. So too the encomium at Th. ..– with Bosworth b . 4 Arr. An. ..–. See further Bosworth  –.

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was beginning work in the fields. As a result Alexander was able to kill most of them without their attempting resistance. It was an impressive example of anticipation, but the attack did not involve open deception. That had been the story of an earlier engagement, when Alexander dealt with the Uxians of the Zagros mountains.5 On this occasion, according to Arrian, he made them think that he would give them the traditional gifts paid as passage money by Persian monarchs. He prescribed a rendezvous point “so that they could take the agreed payments from himself as well” (Arr. An. ..). The Uxians naively supposed that the agreement would be observed, and Alexander safely sacked their territory and massacred many of them in their beds. This was certainly-double dealing, but it was also the sort of imaginative generalship that minimised losses on one’s own side at the greatest cost to the enemy. The tactics were most vividly on display in the extermination of the Indian mercenaries at Massaga. The details vary with the sources, but there is general agreement that Alexander violated the terms of surrender. The Indians were cut down to a man. For Arrian the Indians themselves had disregarded the letter of the truce, and were attempting to desert rather than join Alexander’s army.6 That was taken as treaty breaking, giving the Macedonians the pretext they needed to wipe out a group of men that had been particularly tenacious in their defence of the city.7 In the military context few people past or present would have objected to Alexander’s use of the strategic lie. He would not have thrown away his men’s lives for the sake of his moral reputation. Admittedly Plutarch (Alex. .) terms the episode a blemish (κηλς) on his otherwise kingly record in warfare, but the Macedonians would hardly have objected to this flagrant example of bad faith. It removed Massaga’s most effective defenders and left the city practically defenceless. According to Arrian no more than  of his men died in the whole length of the siege.8 This 5

On this controversial episode see Bosworth  –; Briant  –;  –; cf. Speck  There is considerable doubt about the actions in the Zagros passes, but scholars are now in general agreement that Alexander staged an ambush and executed it meticulously. 6 Arr. An. ..–; cf. Bosworth  , . For other traditions see D.S. ..– ; Epit. Alex. – (a direct order to exterminate the mercenaries); so Plu. Alex. .–; Curt. .. (surrender of the city, but no reference to the mercenaries). 7 See Arr. An. .., where Alexander prides himself on saving the lives of brave men. The wording echoes a much earlier episode, at the capture of Miletus where Alexander saw that its mercenary garrison was prepared to fight to the last (An. ..), and concluded an armistice on condition that they joined his army. 8 Arr. An. ... There is an interesting parallel in the actions of Coenus over the

truth and falsehood in early hellenistic propaganda



may be an exaggeration, but it is clear that the losses were kept to a minimum, thanks in part to Alexander’s breach of faith. We can now move back to Alexander’s reproof to his troops. Here the emphasis on truth occurs in a civil context. It amounts to a social contract, the king speaking truth and his subjects accepting the veracity of his claims. It is, moreover, a guarantee to all his subjects, not merely his Macedonians. The recipients of his promise of truthful speech are termed /πκοοι and #ρχ'μενοι, in other words, everybody who falls under his sway.9 Nothing could be more explicit or more absolute. The location of the episode also needs emphasis. It took place at Susa during the spring of .10 Here Alexander was in one of the four great Achaemenid palaces, where the Great King had held court and imposed his will on the cities of Greece. There in Susa Alexander was to promulgate the Exiles’ Decree, perhaps the most dramatic example of his absolutism.11 It was a new King’s Peace, imposed by a new Great King. At Susa, then, Alexander was exposed to Iranian culture—more so than anywhere else, even in Persepolis. In  Persian aristocrats were dominant at Alexander’s court, as was dramatically displayed in the mass marriage of Susa. Over  Persian princesses were wedded to Macedonian generals in a spectacle of unconstrained magnificence.12 Their male relatives will have attended as guests at the feast and offered the requisite homage to the new master of the world. In similar vein young Iranian nobles were enlisted in the elite Macedonian cavalry guard (the agêma), and some , troops were recruited winter of  / , when the Macedonian losses were again  against  Saca cavalry (Arr. An. ..). At Massaga the victor was Alexander, and the number of the enemy casualties was exaggerated to his greater glory. Compare the figures for the siege of Sangala, one of the largest cities in the Punjab (Arr. An. ..): the Indians lost , dead against a little under a hundred under Alexander, and Arrian underlines the fact that the circumstances were unusual, resulting in a disproportionately large number of wounded. 9 Arr. An. ... Curt. ..–, D.S. .. and Plu. Alex. . confine the debt relief to the Macedonian troops. See also Yardley and Atkinson  . 10 Nearchus joined forces with Alexander around February , seven months after leaving Patala in the in the mouth of the Indus (Plin. Nat. . = FGrH  F ). The fleet began its voyage after the etesian winds eased (so Arr. Ind. .). Arrian, following Nearchus, placed the departure midway through the Attic month of Boedromion, around September . The bitter enemies, Nearchus and Onesicritus, did at least agree on chronology. 11 On the historiographical importance of the Exiles’ Decree (which J.G. Droysen regarded as a pillar of Alexander’s new world empire, based on benevolent imperialism) see Bosworth  – and Yardley and Atkinson  –. 12 Arr. An. ..; according to Chares (FGrH  F  = Ath. .b–c) Alexander arranged  bridal chambers for the newlyweds.

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brian bosworth

from the upper satrapies, all trained in Macedonian weaponry and tactics. They were intended to be replacements for the troops demobilised later in the year, and if necessary they could be used as a counterphalanx,13 as very nearly happened during the troubles at Opis. Alexander was in a virtual sea of things Iranian, and it would be hardly surprising if he delved into the records of the past and absorbed some of the regal ideology. For our purposes the most illuminating material is found in the great rock inscriptions of Darius the Great. It is well known that he represented himself as the servant of Ahura Mazda, who granted him the kingdom with its  satrapies.14 He depicted his enemies, the usurpers who contested the throne, as servants of the Lie, and the corollary was the pre-eminence of Truth. The King’s regime depended on its observance. In Darius’ case that was literally true; he came to power by eliminating a usurper who claimed to be Bardiya the younger son of Cyrus.15 Darius’ position was extremely precarious. Almost certainly he had come to power through a coup, and his rivals will have dismissed his claims as fictitious. Hence the obsessive mantra that he was the enemy of the lie. Darius secured the throne by assassination and repression. He also claimed moral justification. It is preserved on an important inscription from Naqs-i-Rustam, in which the King equates right and truth: “What is right, that is my desire. I am not a friend to the Lie-follower”.16 Somewhat later, after listing the physical skills that he owes to Ahura Mazda, he addresses his subjects at large: “O menial, vigorously make you known of what sort I am and of what sort my skilfulnesses, and of what sort my superiority. Let not that seem false to you, which has been heard by thy ears. That do you hear, which is communicated to you”.17 In the Bisitun inscription Darius makes a similar protestation. He claims repeatedly that he repressed all the rebellious provinces in a single year and calls upon his subjects to support him: “this is what I did; by the favour of Ahura Mazda, in one and the same year I did (it). You who shall hereafter read this inscription let that which has been done by me 13

D.S. .. explicitly speaks of an antitagma, on which see Briant  –; Bosworth a –. 14 See particularly the Naqsi Rustam inscription of Darius (DN, printed by Kent  –; Briant  –), with Briant  –. 15 CAH .–; Burn  –; Briant  –. 16 DNb § b. Briant   aptly states: “the Great King could claim that he himself was first of all a master of truth.” 17 DNb § a–b. This occurs in a long exposition of royal virtues; the nub of it is the King’s claim to dexterity as a horseman and archer. Physical excellence is listed side by side with moral probity.

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convince you; do not think it a lie.” This comes close to Arrian’s version of Alexander’s address to his troops. In both cases the monarch insists that it is the subject’s duty to believe in his veracity. Darius demands that his people accept his version of the troubled events of his accession, whereas Alexander makes an absolute claim: all his subjects must accept whatever he states as the truth. There is to be no questioning, no Macedonian parrhêsia. We now revert to the cancellation of debt. As for the source there can be no serious doubt. It must surely be Ptolemy’s History of Alexander. In the first place the passage is presented without qualification. On Arrian’s own methodology this restricts the field to his major sources, Aristobulus and Ptolemy, whose account he accepts as completely true, when they are in agreement.18 Next Arrian’s famous justification of his choice of sources echoes Alexander’s reproof to his troops at Susa, which Ptolemy must have heard. Arrian insists that that he has the weight of authority behind him. He was a king like Alexander, and so a lie was more disgraceful for him than for any one else.19 This statement has been treated with derision: it was totally naïve to accept that kingship was a guarantee of truth; a king had more reasons than most for mendacity. In that case Arrian is the author of the sentiment, honouring another king, his friend and master, the emperor Hadrian (who had every reason to cover up the circumstances of his own accession). But perhaps we should pause a minute. Arrian and Ptolemy were two of the most brilliant figures of their day, and they are unlikely to have made claims that they knew would make them a laughing stock. In any case we can exclude Arrian as the author of the observation on the veracity of kingship; it was in vogue long before he was born. The evidence is quite unequivocal. It comes from the so-called Letter of Aristeas, concerning a detailed but fictitious delegation of Jewish Sages, who were received by Ptolemy Philadelphus and worked in collaboration 18 “In my view Ptolemy and Aristobulus are more trustworthy in their narrative, since Aristobulus took part in Alexander’s expedition, and Ptolemy did the same; but as he himself was was also king it would have been more disgraceful for him to lie than for anyone else” (Arr. An. praef. ). The passage is echoed by Synesius, writing at the end of the fourth century ad in a very jocular mood. In his Calvitii enconium – he explains how the Macedonians took to fighting clean shaved and cites Ptolemy as his authority “who, since he was present at the scene, knew the facts and as he was a king when he wrote this work, he would not lie”. Synesius was clearly making fun of Arrian and adducing what had become a literary topos. 19 For the relationship between Arrian and Hadrian see particularly Bosworth  –; Birley  passim.

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to produce the canonical translation of the Septuagint.20 One of the highlights of the story was a royal banquet at which Philadelphus posed questions on kingship to the Jewish luminaries. One of the  questions concerned truth. The king asked how he was to maintain it, and received the answer: “by realising that falsehood brings great disgrace upon all men, far more so upon kings, for since they have the power to do what they wish, what reason should they have for lying? You should also bear in mind that God is a lover of truth.” Here we have a direct reflection of Arrian’s justification of his choice of sources. Kings have no reason for deceit because they can encompass their ends openly. Falsehood is unnecessary and for that reason all the more reprehensible. This little homily did not take place in actuality. Among many other incongruities it presupposes that Demetrius of Phaleron took a leading role as court librarian in the reign of Philadelphus, after Demetrius had done everything in his power to prevent his accession.21 However, there is little doubt that the Letter was concocted in the Hellenistic period, some time in the second century bc. It was clearly influenced by Ptolemy Soter, and it looks as though the sentiment had become common currency, to be used by the author of the Letter. Ptolemy had insisted on the veracity of monarchs. That insistence underpinned the truth of his account of Alexander’s achievements. He was a king and it was not in his interest to lie. That would undermine his credentials. We are faced with a progression of thought. Persian monarchs, Darius above all claimed to be the servant of truth, in perpetual opposition to the followers of the lie, and his subjects were instructed to take his protestations at face value. Alexander echoed the ideology, telling his men that they should not imagine that he ever lied (“Don’t even think about it!”). Next came Ptolemy’s assertion that the king must speak the truth or suffer ignominy. Almost certainly he was referring back to Alexander’s great declaration at Susa. Alexander had insisted on the primacy of truth, and maintained that veracity was an indispensable attribute of monarchy. An important consequence followed. If a king were detected in deceit then it undermined the legitimacy of his regime. Hence Ptolemy’s declaration in his History of Alexander. He was a king, and what he said was true—otherwise he was no king. That had been Alexander’s implicit message at Susa, issued in the full confidence that the principle would not be invoked against him. 20 21

There is now a huge bibliography, best consulted in Schürer : III –. D.L. . (= Hermippus F Wehrli). Cf. Fraser  i. .

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The dynasts who succeeded him were more vulnerable, more open to hostile propaganda. Consequently there was a constant interplay, all actors in the game taking moves to put their enemies in the wrong. There is a good example in the prelude to the campaign of Ipsus (– ), when the leaders of the two great coalitions intrigued against each other.22 They mounted what one can only describe as a scare campaign. Faced with the possibility of an attack by Antigonus, Cassander and Lysimachus tried to enlist the support of the other two monarchs— Seleucus and Ptolemy. They sent envoys attacking Antigonus’ supposed territorial ambitions against Macedonia. “claiming that, if Antigonus should gain control of Macedonia, he would take their kingdoms from the others also”. As a result Ptolemy and Seleucus believed that the statements were true (δ'ξαντες #λη! λγειν) and joined forces with the other two dynasts (D.S. ..). They clearly endorsed the principle that kings speak the truth and should be thought to do so. Ptolemy himself was involved in a particularly intricate piece of diplomacy—or chicanery. That took place in , shortly before Ipsus. At that time Ptolemy was engaged in a protracted siege of Sidon and he was approached by messengers who brought the false report (#παγγλλοντες ψευδ"ς) that his allies, Seleucus and Lysimachus, had been defeated and had withdrawn to their base at Heracleia Pontica. As a result Syria lay open to the vast Antigonid forces. Ptolemy, it is said, was deluded by the reports, which he was convinced were true.23 Accordingly he made a four month truce with the Sidonians and retreated into Egypt. The source used here by Diodorus was almost certainly the Antigonid statesman Hieronymus of Cardia who was a contemporary and will have participated in the battle at Ipsus.24 Though an Antigonid courtier he seems to have given Ptolemy a surprisingly good press, and one may trace an element of apology. It looks as though Ptolemy had resorted to trickery to gain control of Syria, which had been a primary object of expansion since Alexander’s death. Hieronymus, who was a diplomat as well as a soldier and a historian, must have had personal relations with 22

See Billows  –; Bosworth  –. See D.S. .. (παραλογισ!ε4ς ο<ν /π& το$των κα4 πεισ!ε4ς #λη! τν προσαγγελαν ε=ναι . . . ). 24 Hieronymus had fought at Gabiene in  and sustained a wound which was clearly serious (D.S. ..). He was still active in , when he unsuccessfully supervised the harvesting of the Nabataean bitumen. Old age notwithstanding, he continued his military activity down to , and he was capable in the field, even though he had a modest rate of success. He almost certainly participated in the decisive battle at Ipsus. 23

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Ptolemy and promoted his cause in his history.25 He was no Machiavellian plotter, as some would have had it, but acted in good faith. According to our texts of Diodorus (..–), Ptolemy was hoodwinked by the fake message. He believed in its veracity, and his response was to withdraw, leaving garrisons in the cities that he had captured in the course of the campaign. Now, the messengers who were responsible for the ‘disinformation’ must have purported to come from the camp of Seleucus and Lysimachus, and one reason why Ptolemy accepted that the message was true was their regal status. As kings they should not lie, and any message emanating from them must carry conviction. Consequently Ptolemy could claim to be justified in withdrawing his army in the face of vastly superior forces. In the propaganda war he had a definite advantage. Once the reports were unmasked as fictitious Seleucus and Lysimachus could be criticised for dabbling in deceit. This was very unkingly behaviour. It gave Ptolemy access to the moral high ground and enabled him to retain control of the cities of Coele Syria against the strong objections of Seleucus, who felt that he had been deserted by his ally in the recent campaign. A burning issue remained. Who was responsible for the false messages? Diodorus gives no names, and only mentions ‘certain men’. This is comfortable anonymity—for Ptolemy at least. He could make his informants disappear and so ensure that they would never be questioned. It was his word, and under the circumstances there was no gainsaying it. The tactics used by Ptolemy were certainly not original or unique to him. There was a very similar episode somewhat earlier, in the coalition war fought between Eumenes and Antigonus in the summer of . Again there was a false message, this time purportedly sent from a named informant, Orontes the Iranian satrap of Armenia, and to add verisimilitude the dispatch was framed in Aramaic (Συροις γεγραμμνη γρμμασιν).26 It was directed at the troops, who were ready to believe that there had been a regime change back in Macedonia, with Cassander, the main contender for royal status killed in battle, and the regent Polyperchon on his way to supplement Eumenes’ army. The forged letter had its effect, strengthening Eumenes’ position as royal general, and undermining his 25 It looks as though there were permanent diplomatic relations between the courts of the Successors, like the proxenoi of Classical Athens. Men such as Adeimantus of Lampsacus or Oxythemis of Larisa were second only to the king and could act as confidential agents at the highest level. See particularly Robert ; Habicht  –;  –. 26 D.S. ..–; Polyaen. ..; cf. Schäfer  –; Anson  –; Bosworth  .

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rival for command, Peucestas. It was a typical example of the elaborate trickery that marked Eumenes’ career. He was not a king in his own right, but used his position as royal general to concentrate power. He modelled himself on Alexander, as far as implying that he, like his king, was being poisoned by his colleagues;27 but while the son of Alexander remained in Macedonia, he could hardly entertain regal ambitions. However, he was not hampered by regal ideology, with its insistence on truth. He could go on his merry way like Odysseus, with a heaven high reputation for his wiles (Hom. Od. .–). So far we have been dealing primarily with relations between dynasts, at the highest political level. We should perhaps widen the focus and examine relations with the troops. Alexander’s outburst at Susa, we recall, arose from suspicion by the Macedonian soldiers. They felt that the discharge of debts was a stratagem to identify the more profligate of the army. That evoked the sermon on truth and trust, and Alexander actually went as far as to produce the money in hard cash—no doubt keeping the Susa mint at full stretch. When the money was paid out, Arrian claims, the troops were more satisfied by the fact that their identity was not known than by the debt relief. Arrian is quite emphatic: “and thus indeed they came to believe that Alexander was speaking the truth”.28 This is an extraordinary situation. Alexander offers to honour a vast collective debt, and his army suspected ulterior motives and refused to take advantage of the grand gesture, much to the king’s chagrin. What was behind this amazing refusal? In my opinion much of the responsibility lies with the so-called ‘company of the disorderly’ (#τκτων τγμα; D.S. ..), which had been formed after the murder of Parmenion, the senior marshal of the army, and comprised any soldiers who had displayed dissatisfaction at the crime. In addition a comprehensive censorship had been imposed. Letters sent home were examined; any adverse statements were isolated and their authors transferred to the punishment battalion. So far Diodorus. Other sources help us to enlarge. The censorship began before the murder of Parmenion. According to Polyaenus (..), whom we have no reason to disbelieve, the episode took place when Alexander was in Hyrcania, soon after Parmenion had been left in Ecbatana with the treasures of the Persian Empire

27

See D.S. ... The model was the famous banquet of Medeius. So Arr. ... Cf. Just. ..–; Plu. Alex. ., Mor. b–c; D.S. ..; Curt. ... See too Yardley and Atkinson  –. 28

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at his disposal.29 The troops who remained with Alexander had suffered a bitterly exhausting forced march across the Iranian salt desert in what must have seem to them the futile pursuit of Darius. There was little loot to be gained, rather renewed hard marching in pursuit of the assassins of the Great King, hardly appropriate behaviour for the hereditary king of the Macedonians. It is hardly surprising that there was surreptitious criticism of his leadership, and the troops might even have compared him unfavourably with Parmenion. He at least had the resources for largesse, and his men would certainly take the road back west to enjoy the fruits of their labours. It was at this juncture that Alexander became aware of his men’s disaffection and took steps to identify the ringleaders. He encouraged his men to write home and provided letter carriers to convey the correspondence. All this is plausible, as is Curtius’ statement (..) that the king had what amounted to a secret black list. He had singled out the men who might turn against him in a crisis, and he could move against Philotas with far more confidence. Once he and his father were executed in what can only be termed judicial murder Alexander could immediately turn against the troops he had identified as disaffected. They were separated from the rest of the army in a separate unit led by Leonidas, an erstwhile friend of Parmenion (Curt. ..), who would know that he was under suspicion and would be immediately killed if there were any trouble. And on the other hand his company was not large enough to make an attack on the king. That was clearly what Alexander feared (so Curtius states), and he imposed what was later a Roman field punishment,30 separating the ataktoi and forcing them to pitch camp outside the main army lines. Like their leader they were probably under constant surveillance. This episode shows Alexander at his most manipulative and deceitful. He had obtained the names of the disaffected troops by a flagrant breach of confidence, offering to deliver their correspondence and then opening it and reading the contents. This makes sense of the events at Susa. Ser29 See Arr. An. .. with Bosworth  –. There is no explicit reference to Parmenion in this passage, but he was clearly in Polyaenus’ mind. Alexander was involved in a thorough intelligence exercise to isolate the soldiers in his entourage who could be viewed as disaffected. It looks as though the camp fire conversations reflected badly on Alexander, and the pressure for him to return to the west was becoming hard to resist. There was every reason for Parmenion to put himself at the head of the movement and every reason for Alexander to have resorted to outright deceit to identify the malcontents who would object to Parmenion’s removal. 30 See, for instance, Liv. ..; Tac. Ann ...

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vice in the disciplinary company was clearly an unpleasant assignment.31 It was physically dangerous and a public disgrace, to be avoided at all costs. It had also been recruited by gross bad faith. It is not surprising that that the troops reacted badly to any suggestion that they should give their names to the royal chancellery, even if the object of the exercise was to relieve debt. The formation of the disciplinary company was an object lesson not to reveal personal details to the royal administration, and the Macedonians were prepared to forego the cancellation of their loans if it kept them out of the punishment battalion. Alexander, however, was not prepared to force the issue. He deferred to the Macedonians desire for anonymity. and proved his veracity, But there was a corollary. His subjects must have total faith in the royal virtue of truth, so whatever the king says they must accept and not think of questioning him. That is perhaps why Alexander reacted so ferociously at Opis, when his men made fun of his pretensions to be son of Zeus Ammon. They were exposing the fiction for what it was—pretentious lying. Furthermore the fiction involved rejection of his father Philip and the troops insisted that Alexander only had one real father. The divine filiation was an unscrupulous piece of propaganda. For the troops, particularly those enlisted in the punishment battalion, the bitter reality was that Alexander was prepared to do anything and everything to secure the throne. Systematic lying was at the centre of a web of deceit, and there was precious little veracity. His Successors might protest that mendacity was disgraceful in royalty, but they regularly resorted to it. As so often, Alexander was the model of kingship for good and ill.

31 There are survivors (very few!) who have been able to give eye witness testimony of service in the penal battalions of the Red Army during the Second World War. See, for instance, Rees  –. Practically every detail finds its parallel in the tradition of Alexander’s disciplinary company.

TYRANNIZING SICILY: THE DESPOTS WHO CRIED ‘CARTHAGE!’

Jonathan Prag The subject of the negative and stereotypical portrayal of Carthaginians, Punics, and Phoenicians1 in the ancient literary tradition is hardly a new one, although greater attention has been paid to their portrayal by the Romans than by the Greeks.2 The impact of the ancient literary tradition upon the modern reception of the same peoples has also been placed under the spotlight in recent years.3 This chapter focuses on one particular aspect of this broad field: the (negative) portrayal of the Carthaginians as barbarians in the western Greek tradition, down to the time of the Punic Wars. The primary source for this negative portrayal in the western tradition is the discourse generated by many of the Sicilian (and especially Syracusan) tyrants. As we shall see, there is no difficulty in demonstrating the emptiness or falsity of the negative portrayal of the Carthaginians and western Phoenicians in the Sicilian context, but 1 Terminology: ‘Punic’ is the modern term derived from the Latin poenus, usually, but not consistently, applied to all the originally Phoenician peoples in the western Mediterranean; ‘Phoenician’, from the Greek phoinix, is used to refer to the eastern Phoenicians and frequently also to the original Phoenician diaspora in the West prior to approximately the sixth century bc (the century in which Carthage first rose to power in the West); ‘Carthaginian’ properly only refers to those from the city-state of Carthage itself— Carthaginians are Punic, but not all those who are Punic (or western Phoenician) are Carthaginian. For clarity, in modern usage ‘eastern’ and ‘western Phoenician’ are increasingly the preferred terms, with ‘Punic’ best avoided except in the realm of linguistics. Note that Greek lacks an equivalent to poenus, using phoinix universally, while, vice versa, early Latin seems to have lacked the distinct term phoenix, using poenus universally. See further López Castro  ; Prag  –; Aubet  –; Bunnens . 2 Sources for the Classical period collected in Mazza, Ribichini and Xella . The bibliography on the portrayal of Phoenicians and Carthaginians, especially in the Roman literary sources, is substantial. For overviews, e.g. Prag  (also on epigraphic self-representation); Mazza ; Bunnens . Specifically on the Greek tradition, e.g.: Barceló ; Musti ; Bondì ; Schepens ; Ribichini . Krings  discusses sources on early Greco-Carthaginian interaction; Whittaker  – considers the western tradition in relation to Carthaginian imperialism. On the Roman tradition, e.g.: Camous ; Poinsotte ; Devallet ; Franko ; Bellen  –; Dubuisson ; Prandi ; Thiel  []. 3 See especially Bonnet and Krings ; Liverani ; Vella ; Bernal  cc. –.

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that is hardly the point: it is in the very nature of a stereotype that counter-examples do not disprove its existence, rather they only prove that it is indeed a stereotype. It is with this in mind that such a study belongs within the context of a volume on ‘despotism and deceit’: the prejudice generated against Carthage and the western Phoenicians in the western Greek literary tradition is, on one view, a work of deceit for the furtherance of personal power on the part of the Sicilian despots.4 Little, if anything, in the pages that follow has not been commented on before. Individual elements of the Sicilian tradition, in particular those surrounding Gelon and  bc, or Dionysius I, have been extensively discussed. Nonetheless, a diachronic overview (which is all that space permits) may be of value for several reasons. Firstly, the western Greek tradition and Carthage’s treatment within it is all too often ignored in broader studies of Greeks and Barbarians, or Hellenism and identity.5 The tradition may be fragmentary, but the material exists and is well studied.6 Secondly, treating the various surviving elements of the tradition in isolation tends to encourage a view that they are merely derivative of the eastern Greek (principally Athenian) tradition, and therefore subordinate to that tradition. It is undeniable that the initial manifes4 The underlying concepts at issue here—racism, (ethnic) prejudice, and stereotypes—have been repeatedly and very fully discussed elsewhere. In general, see Isaac  c. , esp. the various definitions offered at –: “The major difference between racism and ethnic and other prejudices is that such prejudices do not deny the possibility of change at an individual or collective level in principle. In these other forms of prejudice, the presumed group characteristics are not by definition held to be stable, unalterable, or imposed from the outside through physical factors: biology, climate, or geography.” And “[. . .] both racist attitudes and ethnic prejudice treat a whole nation or other group as a single individual with a single personality. The varied individuality of the members of such groups is ignored in both cases, but ethnic prejudice, as distinct from racism, maintains some flexibility towards the individual.” Furthermore (quoting Ackerman and Jahoda  –) “In its broad etymological sense, prejudice—prejudgment—is a term applied to categorical generalizations based on inadequate data and without sufficient regard for individual differences . . . The stereotype is distinguished from prejudgment only by a greater degree of rigidity. Prejudgment occurs where facts are not available. But stereotypy is a process which shows little concern for facts even when they are available.” On stereotypes, see in particular Hall  –, Brigham , and Bohak  (emphasizing the variety and individuality of stereotypes for different ethnic groups beyond basic dichotomies such as Greek / barbarian). On ethnicity e.g. Hall  c. . 5 E.g. almost wholly absent from the specific surveys of the Phoenician image in Isaac  c.  and Bohak  –; and more general studies such as Mitchell  (see ), Hall , Coleman  (NB  nn. –). Note, however, Antonaccio , Harrison , Malkin , Dench . 6 On the western Greek historiographical tradition see Vattuone  with earlier bibliography.

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tation of the western tradition seems to develop in clear dialogue with the concurrently developing ‘eastern’ tradition of the Persian Wars (see below); but to suggest, as for example Dench has done, that the later Roman negative portrayal of the Carthaginians was informed (directly?) by the fifth-century Athenian anti-Persian discourse would seem to collapse the distance of centuries (and seas) and be unnecessarily Athenocentric.7 Precisely because language and ideology can have a life of their own, I hope that an overview might encourage a sense of the broader historical context of such discourse.8 Although, by stopping at the Punic Wars, this study risks perpetuating the common practice of dividing off Greek from Roman, I shall conclude by suggesting that two themes which are observed as standard within the Roman tradition, namely the negative portrayal of the Carthaginian enemy and the claim to liberate the Greeks, are best understood within the pre-existing western (and particularly Sicilian) tradition.9 Thirdly, in a recent study Barceló has argued that the western tradition lacks a negative portrayal of the Carthaginians, at least before the time of Timaeus, and that, Timaeus aside, the negative tradition is entirely written “under the influence of malevolent Roman propaganda and prejudice.”10 It will be obvious that I wish to revise this view, but the argument serves also as a useful reminder of the importance of being clear about what exactly it is that we are looking for. Barceló is entirely right to insist upon the neutral or positive representation of Carthage as a polis, and indeed an exemplary one, in Aristotle’s Politics (and subsequently, one might add, in authors such as Eratosthenes and Polybius).11 It is indeed possible to catalogue a broad range of Greco-Carthaginian interactions which clearly undermine the negative presentation with which the rest of this chapter will be concerned. The 7

Dench  . Cf. Bohak  : “ethnic stereotypes in Classical literature are pervasive, repetitive, and often remarkably durable.” Dench  : “pre-existing stereotypes commonly inform the way in which an individual or group is perceived, and, in particular, the kind of features upon which attention is focused.” 9 For the Sicilian influence, note the brief comments of Hoyos  , and the succinct contextualization of Theoc.  in Hans  (see further below). Feeney  – (esp. ) is perhaps the fullest exploration of this theme, although still skipping from Gelon to Timaeus; Dench  – on similar lines. Malkin  – and  suggestively links the first Romano-Carthaginian treaty to the participation of Rome in the Greek thought-world already in the sixth century bc; see also Zevi  (esp. ) for fifth-century interaction. 10 Barceló  . 11 Arist. Pol. b–b; Eratosth. ap. Str. .. (= II C  Berger); Plb. .. Cf. Asheri  , linking much of this to a third-century Zeitgeist. 8

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Carthaginian general Hamilcar, who led the army at the battle of Himera in  bc, had, as Herodotus tells us, a Syracusan mother and relations of xenia with the tyrant of Himera (Hdt. .–); over  years later, the two Syracusans Epicydes and Hippocrates who led Hieronymus, the last king of Syracuse, astray, are described by Polybius as having served for some time under Hannibal, “having adopted Carthage as their country, since their grandfather had been exiled because he was thought to have assassinated Agatharchus, one of the sons of Agathocles” (Plb. ..). There are many examples in between, such as Synalus, the Carthaginian commander at Heraclea Minoa who assisted Dion, with whom he had relations of xenia and philia; or Agathocles’ father, Carcinus of Rhegium, who consulted the Delphic oracle through the agency of Carthaginian envoys.12 At a basic level, we can recall that Philistus of Acragas wrote a history in Greek from the Carthaginian perspective, or that Hannibal made a treaty with Philip V of Macedon and took refuge in the court of Antiochus the Great. From epigraphy we get further glimpses of a complex world of relationships: the well-known ivory tessera hospitalis from Lilybaeum, of the Hellenistic period, bears witness to the reality of such relations of xenia, recording one instance between Imulch Inibalos Chloron, son of Himilcho, and one Lyson, son of Diognetos; more generally, Punic names are relatively common in Sicilian epigraphy.13 Other examples beyond Sicily, such as the Boeotian grant of proxenia to one Nobas(?), son of Axioubas, of Carthage, or the fragmentary decree from Athens of  bc apparently recording negotiations with Carthage, show quite regular engagement with Carthage and Carthaginians.14 Greek funerary inscriptions from Motya, or a Carthaginian buried at Lipara, serve to confirm the occasional glimpses in the literary sources of a Greek community at Carthage or Motya, or of Phoenicians present in the other cities of Sicily.15 The point risks being banal, and examples could be multiplied many times. In contrast to the anti-barbarian, panhellenic message proclaimed by Dionysius I in  bc, some at least thought

12

Plu. Dion .– (see Sanders   n. –); D.S. ... IG . (Di Stefano  no.  and fig. ); for Punic onomastics, see De Simone . 14 Rhodes and Osborne  no. ; Meiggs and Lewis  no. . 15 Birgi necropolis inscriptions: Jeffery  , Griffo  –; note also a Greek abecedara from Motya, SEG .; Lipara: Bernabó-Brea, Cavalier and Campagna  no.  (if ethnic, not personal name) and cf. no. ; D.S. .., .., .. 13

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Carthage a preferable overlord.16 Carthage, or the western Phoenicians in general, presented as the barbarian other, and frequently stereotyped as such, is very far from the wider historical reality.17 Nevertheless, Carthage and the Carthaginians were negatively portrayed at various historical moments from at least the fifth century bc and that negative presentation is an important element in western Greek history. Leaving aside speculation on earlier contexts in which such a presentation might have developed (such as colonization attempts in Sicily in the seventh and sixth centuries, or the battle of Alalia c.  bc), the earliest identifiable thread has its origins in the battle of Himera in  bc.18 The earliest evidence for any such presentation is to be found in Pindar’s First Pythian Ode, written to commemorate a chariot victory of Hieron of Syracuse in  /  bc.19 Most obviously, Pindar links the Syracusan victories at Himera (against the “Phoenicians,”  bc) and Cumae (against the “Tyrsanoi,” Etruscans,  bc) with those of Salamis and Plataea, praising the action of the ruler of the Syracusans in “rescuing Hellas from oppressive slavery”.20 The general theme is developed throughout the poem as Pindar weaves a complex parallelism between Cumae and Himera, their respective geographically proximate (and recently active) volcanoes of Vesuvius and Etna, the savage and barbarous Tryphon underlying both volcanoes, Zeus who tamed him, and Hieron founder of Aetna and victor over the barbarians.21 Although the surviving inscription from Gelon’s dedication at Delphi after the battle of Himera is more neutral in tone (“Gelon, son of Deinomenes, the Syracusan, made the dedication to Apollo”), the scholiast to Pindar claims that Simonides composed an epigram to accompany the dedication, which 16

E.g. D.S. .., ... For Siculo-Carthaginian relations generally see e.g. Bondì , Hans , Anello . The point is frequently made (e.g. Bondì –, cf. Whittaker ) that Carthaginian ‘imperialism’ in Sicily lacks a meaningful historical reality much before the fourth century and is in part a creation of the historiographical tradition. 18 Detailed survey of sources on Alalia and Dorieus in Krings  – (note  and – on the absence of such a presentation in the case of the Alalia). On Himera and its central role in such development, Krings  –. 19 Commonly dated to  bc, although , the year of the battle of Cumae, cannot be ruled out; for a detailed summary of the problem of Pythian dating see Finglass  – (favours ) and Currie  – (neutral). 20 Pi. P. .–. On the broader theme of liberation, which in Sicily subsequently (s onwards) becomes focused around the tyrants themselves, see e.g. Raaflaub  (esp. ), Ostwald . 21 See esp. Carey  – for elucidation of these themes and arguing, inter alia, that Pi. P. .– also alludes to both the battles of Himera and Cumae. 17

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described it as “a tithe of the tithe of the booty they had of their victory over the barbarian ethnê, when they gave a great army to fight beside the Hellenes for freedom”; nothing further can be gleaned from Pausanias’ mention of a second dedication at Olympia.22 As Meiggs and Lewis observed: In the event, even if not in intention, [the dedication at Delphi—and at Olympia] formed a pendent to the golden tripod dedicated by the Spartans and their allies for their victory over the Persians, and Gelo [ . . . ] asserted that his victory over Carthage was as important to Apollo and to Greece as that victory.23

One might also compare Bacchylides’ Third Epinician Ode in praise of Hieron ( bc), which draws an analogy between Hieron’s dedications at Delphi (“finely wrought tripods that flank the Delphic temple’s entrance”—i.e. the tripods erected by Gelon after Himera and Hieron after Cumae) and Croesus’ generosity to Pythian Apollo, while describing Hieron as appointed by Zeus to rule over many Hellenes, and Croesus as preserved by Zeus after being conquered by the savage Persians.24 Gelon also seems to have erected temples to Athena at both Himera and Syracuse after the battle of Himera, as part of his commemoration of the victory.25 However, the Simonides epigram and the general action of dedication at Delphi aside, there is little direct evidence to suggest that Gelon himself constructed his success as an explicit victory for Hellenes against the barbarian, as opposed to a more general programme of self-legitimation through military victory. On the other hand, that his successor Hieron did so, not least in the wake of the battle of Cumae against the Etruscans in  bc, seems much more likely.26 In addition to the victory odes that he commissioned, Hieron had Aeschylus’ Persae performed at Aetna in  bc.27 The presenta22 Syll3. a = Meiggs and Lewis  no. ; Schol. ad Pi. P. ., cf. AP . (see Page  – no.  (sceptical); detailed discussion in Molyneux  –; for Simonides and Hieron see Molyneux  – and Podlecki ); Paus. ... 23 Meiggs and Lewis  . The attested dedications by Gelon and Hieron at Delphi and Olympia are collected in Syll3. –. 24 B. .– for the tripods. The dedications of Gelon and Hieron at Delphi are likewise linked with those of Gyges and Croesus in Athenaeus’ report of Theopompus on Hieron’s dedication (FGrH  F = Ath. .e–b). 25 Gras ; van Compernolle  –,  –, – (with the possibility of a third commemorative temple at Gela); Luraghi  –. 26 Luraghi  –. 27 TGF III T a (Eratosth. fr.  [Strecker]) and T .–,  (Aesch. vita –, ); Herington  (with all relevant texts); Guardì  – (non vidi).

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tion by Hieron of Gelon’s victory against Carthage at Himera as a battle for Hellas against the barbarians (the association of Himera / Gelon and Cumae / Hieron was made visible at Delphi through the adjacent tripods) serves an obvious function in legitimizing Hieron not only as successor to Gelon but also as defender of the Sikeliotes specifically and the Hellenes in general against the barbarian through his own victory at Cumae. Diodorus captures the value of Gelon’s victory for his successors, even if not explicitly their own exploitation of it, when he observes that “so strong was the goodwill which the citizens felt for him (Gelon) that the kingship was maintained for three members of his house” (D.S. ..). Such a presentation of their victories by the Syracusan tyrants (which is to be placed alongside their more general self-presentation as Hellenes at Delphi and Olympia28) provides the background for the subsequent appearance of the even more explicit (and inventive?) claims that first appear in the surviving sources in the account of Herodotus. In favour of the view that Gelon himself may have been the first to promote his actions against Carthage in this light is the speech attributed to him by Herodotus in which he accuses the mainland Greeks of failing to support him previously in his avenging of the failed Spartan colonist Dorieus, or in his war to liberate emporia in Sicily from the “barbarians” (Hdt. ..– ). However, the only other source to mention this earlier episode is the very confused, and much later, account of Justin, and the claim cannot be linked to any known event in the earlier part of Gelon’s rule.29 One other element that is attributed to Gelon, and which can be traced back as far as Theophrastus (reported in the scholiast to Pindar, repeated by Plutarch, and attributed instead to Darius by Justin and to Hadrian by Porphyry) is the story that, as part of the peace settlement after Himera, Gelon ordered the Carthaginians to cease human sacrifice.30 Here we perhaps see the first signs of a portrayal of the Carthaginians that goes beyond the basic ‘othering’ of the term barbarian, more than 28

For which see, e.g., Harrell , Antonaccio  . Iust. ..–. Positive analysis in Franco  – with bibliography; a more sceptical view in Luraghi  –; see esp. Gras  on the likely significance of emporia. 30 Theophr. ap. Schol. Pi. P. . (= Fortenbaugh and others  vol.  no. : “At least Theophrastus in his (work) On Etruscans says that on Gelon’s order they stopped performing human sacrifice”; the work On Etruscans is not otherwise known, Podlecki   n. ); Plu. Moralia A, A; cf. Iust. .., Porph. Abst. ... The tradition could go back, e.g., to Philistus (Zahrnt  ). Mafodda   discusses it within the context of a possible religious policy of Gelon. 29

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merely an external foe, an enemy which can be presented as morally inferior.31 Herodotus’ famous account of the appeal by the Hellenes to Gelon for help against Xerxes has been much discussed.32 The variations within the account that prompted Herodotus to seek out a Sicilian version relate only to Gelon’s justification for not helping the mainland Greeks; Herodotus is in no doubt it seems about the competitive claims to being the best of the Hellenes that were in circulation.33 For the purposes of this discussion, the interest lies not in the question of whether any particular version has any ‘truth’ to it—the point is rather that such claims and counter-claims were already in circulation at the latest within a generation of the events. The notorious synchronism of Himera and Salamis is explicitly attributed by Herodotus to the Sicilian version.34 As Asheri has emphasized, the point of a synchronism lies in its potential metahistorical message, not in the mere fact of the synchronism. Indeed, that point was made by Aristotle himself, when he denied the significance of this particular synchronism—although, interestingly, he appears to have accepted the basic fact of the synchronism (Arist. Poet. a– ). The synchronism of Himera with any of the major battles against Xerxes (in later versions Himera was also compared to Plataea and synchronized with Thermopylae) serves precisely the function of promoting the action of the Sicilian tyrants against the barbarian Carthaginians to the same level as that of the Athenians or Spartans against the barbarian Persians (just like Hieron’s staging of Aeschylus’ Persae).35 In similar vein, parallels are apparent already in the Herodotean account between the Carthaginian force and Xerxes’ expedition; by the time of Ephorus’ version, the Carthaginian expedition was explicitly co-ordinated with the

31

Brown  surveys the literary, epigraphic, and archaeological sources for this difficult subject, although she misses the Theophrastus text just quoted (cf.  –); recent overview in Xella  – and esp. the articles by Bonnet and Quinn (both forthcoming). For the posture of prohibition cf. Julius Caesar’s treatment of the western Phoenician inhabitants of Gades in the first century bc (Cic. Balb. ) and see generally Grottanelli . 32 Besides Gauthier  (with earlier bibliography), see, e.g. Brunt  []; Lo Cascio –; Asheri –; Luraghi ; Mafodda ; Krings  – . 33 Sicilian version: Hdt. .–; competitive Hellenism: ..–. 34 Hdt. .., on which see esp. Gauthier , Asheri – –, Feeney  –; cf. Harrell . 35 Ephor. ap. Schol. ad Pi. P. .b (= FGrH  F); D.S. .–; cf. Plb. ..b on Timaeus’ account (= FGrH  F).

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Persian invasion, with an embassy sent by Xerxes and the Phoenicians to Carthage to match that of the Hellenes to Gelon; and in Diodorus’ version, whether derived from Ephorus, Timaeus, or elsewhere, both of these aspects are expanded further.36 Ephorus’ version even goes so far as to claim that in defeating the Carthaginians the Syracusan tyrant freed not merely the Sikeliotes, but all the Hellenes (and the close parallel with Pindar’s “freeing Hellas” is what prompted the scholiast’s report of it in the first place).37 It should be made clear that few of these texts except the latest versions (principally in Diodorus) describe any of this in language that is more negative than the classic dichotomies of barbarians and Hellenes, freedom and slavery. The only real move towards a more strongly negative presentation lies in the report already mentioned of the treaty clause post-Himera outlawing human sacrifice; but since that last element can be traced back to Theophrastus and the end of the fourth century at the latest it is very definitely pre-Roman, and almost certainly preTimaean.38 Nonetheless, it appears undeniable that the struggle of  bc against the Carthaginians on the part of Gelon and the Syracusans was being actively presented as defending the freedom of the Hellenes from the barbarian before a decade had passed. Polybius’ strictures on Timaeus notwithstanding, it is also apparent that a more fully developed version of this had currency already in Herodotus’ day, and had developed even further by Ephorus’ time.39 The original exponent of that claim must surely have been Hieron, if not Gelon himself. Whether Gelon or Hieron is the source, it is clear that an appeal to the model of Gelon, specifically as conqueror of the barbarian Carthaginians, became a key part of the appeal of many of the later tyrants in Sicily.40 The fact that much of this tradition survives only in the later Diodorus should not be considered a serious obstacle—it can hardly be an invention of 36

See e.g. Brown  for discussion of Diodorus’ version and his sources; Vattuone  – on the expansion by Ephorus and Timaeus. 37 FGrH  F : “[Gelon] having fought freed not only the Sikeliotai, but all Hellas.” On Pindar’s line (P. .b), the scholiast further observes “Some understand Hellas as Sicily, some as Attica.” 38 The Pindar scholiast reports different elements of the same treaty from each of Theophrastus and Timaeus (FGrH  F). 39 Plb. .b.: “Timaeus, in commenting on all this, is so long-winded and so obviously anxious to manifest that Sicily was more important than all the rest of Greece [ . . . ].” 40 See the general observations on continuity in Sicilian tyranny in Lewis , esp. .

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Diodorus himself, and there are occasional glimpses of the use of Gelon in earlier sources.41 Diodorus records that Dionysius I’s appointment as stratêgos autokrator against the Carthaginians in  bc was justified on the model of Gelon at Himera;42 perhaps more tellingly, the antiDionysius speech attributed to the Syracusan Theodorus in  bc by Diodorus (D.S. .–) includes an extended rejection of the parallel: Surely no one would think of comparing Dionysius with Gelon of old. For Gelon, by reason of his own high character, together with the Syracusans and the rest of the Sicilian Greeks, set free the whole of Sicily, whereas this man, who found the cities free, has delivered all the rest of them over to the lordship of the enemy and has himself enslaved his native state [ . . . ].

The negative surely implies the existence of the positive, a point to which we shall return, and the argument employed revolves around the appropriation of the claim to liberation, turning it upon the tyrant himself, rather than allowing its use by the tyrant against an external enemy.43 Plutarch has Dion rebuke Dionysius I for ridiculing Gelon (Plu. Dion .–). [Plato]’s Seventh Epistle echoes both of these (or rather, as a source, precedes them), observing that: “it would be an easy task to enslave the Carthaginians far more than they had been enslaved in the time of Gelon, whereas now, on the contrary, his father [Dionysius I] had contracted to pay tribute to the barbarians.”44 When Timoleon had not only ejected tyrants from Sicily but also won a victory over the Carthaginians at the Crimisus, according to Plutarch, “It was at this time, they say, that the statue of Gelon, their ancient tyrant, was preserved by the Syracusans, although they condemned the rest, because they admired and honoured him for the victory which he had won over the Carthaginians at Himera.”45 Diodorus claims that Timoleon urged on 41

Detailed consideration of Timaeus’ portrayal of Gelon in Vattuone  –. D.S. ..–.; cf. Pl. Ep. .a–b on his appointment for the safeguarding of Sicily. For the use of Gelon by Dionysius I, Bearzot . 43 For the speech of Theodorus, note the comments of Vattuone  –, –  and Sanders  – esp. –; for a different reading of this passage, see Barceló  . Raaflaub  on the development of liberation ideology in the Greek world. 44 Ep. .a; cf. .d (“[. . .] those who crave to win back that tyranny—the men whose ancestors in those days performed the mightiest deed in saving the Greeks from the barbarians”). .a suggests that Dion would have made Sicily free from barbarians more easily than did Hieron I. On Epistles  and , and their apparent context of apologetic for a previously pro-Carthage Dion, see Sanders . 45 Plu. Tim. .; cf. Sordi   n.  on parallel implications in contemporary coinage. 42

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his troops at the Crimisus with the example of Gelon—a speech which Polybius condemns in Timaeus, but which at least takes us back to the early third century and a Sicilian author.46 It has been very plausibly argued by Coarelli that the  imagines Siciliae regum ac tyrannorum recorded by Cicero in the Temple of Athena at Syracuse constituted a deliberate attempt on the part of Agathocles to construct himself as the culmination of a line of anti-barbarian leaders of Sicily, beginning with perhaps Gelon himself.47 Hieron II chose the name Gelon for his son, probably not long after  bc, as part of a deliberate self-fashioning.48 Naturally, other routes to self-legitimation were available, and the Sicilian tyrants could appeal to other things, justify war on other grounds. Even in the case of war with Carthage, wealth alone stands as a perfectly acceptable motive, with no need for the language of barbarians at the gate. Thucydides is in any case more interested in conflict between Greeks than with external enemies and in his account, when Alcibiades suggests to the Athenians the conquest of Carthage after Sicily, it is quite simply on grounds of wealth and honour; his fellow generals subsequently appealed to Carthage for aid against Syracuse—a move contemplated also by the Syracusans themselves.49 But the claim of barbarism was made by many. Much the most obvious example of the appeal to what we might class as ethnic prejudice revolves around Dionysius I’s seizure of power, and in particular the campaign he waged in  /  bc, beginning with a ‘Sicilian vespers’ against the Carthaginians resident in Syracuse and elsewhere on the island, and concluding with the sacking of the Phoenician settlement of Motya and the crucifixion of their Greek supporters.50 It is of course true that the lurid account which we possess of these events is to be found in the rather later work of Diodorus, although this itself undoubtedly owes much to Timaeus.51 In his account of the Carthaginian 46

D.S. ..; Plb. .a (= FGrH  Fb); Vattuone  –. Cic. Ver. . with Coarelli  esp. . 48 Iust. .. (from Timaeus? see De Sensi Sestito  ) records the tradition that Hieron II claimed descent from the Deinomenids; De Sensi Sestito   ( n.  for the birth of Gelon between c. and c. bc); Domínguez Monedero  –. 49 Th. .., . (Alcibiades) and .., .. (appeals to Carthage); see Harrison  on the Thucydidean construction of identity in the Sicilian expedition, suggesting parallels with the war against Persia (likewise Antonaccio   n.  on Th. .–). 50 Principally D.S. .–; see e.g. Sordi  –. 51 On the Dionysian tradition in general see e.g. Sanders , Sordi  –. For a sophisticated and wide-ranging discussion of Diodorus’ account of this and associated episodes between  and  bc, focused on issues of representation rather than source criticism, see Cusumano forthcoming. 47

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sack of Gela, Diodorus cannot resist Timaeus’ rather far-fetched synchronizing claim that a colossal bronze of Apollo was liberated from Tyre by Alexander the Great (in  bc) on the same day, and at the same hour, as it had originally been seized by the Carthaginians from Gela in  bc. Such a synchronism of course implies parallels between the liberating and avenging actions of Alexander against the barbarians in the East and those campaigning in the West.52 But, [Plato]’s Epistles aside, we are not dependent upon Diodorus alone for the Dionysian position.53 In  bc the Syracusan-born orator Lysias openly attacked Dionysius I in his Olympic Oration, drawing a direct parallel between Artaxerxes II and Dionysius I for those engaged in the Panhellenic struggle against the barbarian.54 Since the speech was made at Olympia, when Dionysius was himself present at the games precisely to promote himself and his actions as a Hellene, like his Deinomenid predecessors, Lysias’ speech must have gained much of its force from the fact that it subverted Dionysius’ own claims. Only  years later, as the political pendulum swung the other way, another Athenian orator, Isocrates, could appeal to Dionysius to take up the mantle of Panhellenic defender.55 The strikingly similar Olympic episode in Plutarch involving Themistocles and Hieron a century earlier is usually seen as a doublet fashioned upon the LysiasDionysius episode, itself reflecting further the use of the Deinomenids on the part of Dionysius already referred to above.56 The progress throughout Dionysius’ career of such inversion (unsurprisingly, the majority of what comes down to us is the anti-Dionysian tradition) is set out explic52 D.S. ..– (= FGrH  F), cf. Curt. .. wrongly attributing the statue to Syracuse; also Plut. Alex. .– and D.S. .., . for the statue but without the Sicilian connection. On this synchronism see Asheri  – (esp. ), Vattuone  , Feeney  –. Arr. Anab. .., D.S. .., Iust. ..–, Curt. ..–  and .. all offer elements of a different parallelism, involving Carthaginian envoys at Tyre, possible offers of help, and the sending of Tyrian refugees to Carthage. Interestingly it was the Carthaginians in Sicily who adopted the famous Alexander / Heracles coin-type late in the fourth century (Jenkins  –). 53 Besides the passages noted previously, see e.g. Pl. Ep. .a and e for a notorious statement of the potential barbarization of Sicily (for the broader western context of which e.g. Fraschetti , Asheri , Dench ; cf. Vattuone  – for related considerations in the Sicilian tradition). 54 Especially Lys. ., with D.S. .. 55 Isoc. Ep.  (ad Dion.), esp. –: “But since I am preparing to offer advice about the security of all Greeks, to whom would I more justly speak than to the one who is the foremost of our race and who has the greatest power? [. . .] now, when our city would gladly offer itself to you as an ally if you would act on Greece’s behalf?” (trans. Papillon). 56 Plu. Them. . (attributed to Theophrastus by Plutarch); on all this see Coppola  –; contrast Barceló   and Sanders  –.

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itly in Diodorus, not least in the speech of Theodorus, noted above. Such a process is commonly identified as being behind the tale of the Himeran woman’s dream of Dionysius as the alastôr, the vengeful spirit, of Sicily and Italy, chained to the throne of Zeus. First alluded to by Aeschines— who claims that Demosthenes had likened him (negatively) to Dionysius and so recounts the dream—the most natural interpretation is that the tale’s origins lie in positive claims by Dionysius to be the alastôr of Carthage, on behalf of Sicily, a claim subsequently turned against him— as for example by Timaeus, whose version is recounted by the scholiast to Aeschines.57 The historical context is not difficult to imagine: already by the s bc the Italian Greeks had first formed their own league to resist Dionysius, and then themselves allied with the Carthaginians against him.58 The theme of the divine alastôr for Sicily appears to be revived with Timoleon, whose supporters, according to Plutarch, “anticipated that men would revere and protect Timoleon, looking upon him as a sacred personage, and one who had come, under divine guidance, to avenge the wrongs of Sicily” (Plu. Tim. .). In the case of Timoleon, in the aftermath no doubt of Plato, Dion, and Dionysius II, the rhetoric is principally that of freeing Sicily from tyrants, rather than barbarians; but with the Battle of the Crimisus (c. /  bc), if not before, the prior claim of liberation from the barbarian resurfaces.59 The surviving epigraphic dedication from Corinth merely records spoils “from the enemies”, but Plutarch claims Corinth was: . . . decked with barbarian spoils (barbarika skula), which set forth in fairest inscriptions the justice as well as the valour of the victors, declaring that Corinthians and Timoleon their general set the Greeks dwelling in Sicily free from Carthaginians, and thus dedicated thank-offerings to the gods.60

A fragmentary stone from Delphi may record a dedication of spoils to Apollo from the Carthaginians, which would be in line with the practice of earlier Sicilian victors over Carthage.61 Both Plutarch and Diodorus 57 Aeschin. .; Schol. ad Aeschin. . (= FGrH  F); V. Max. . ext. . See Vattuone  – with earlier bibliography; Lewis  . 58 Italiotes and Carthaginians against Dionysius: D.S. .., .; Coppola  and Sanders  on the complexities of the pro- and anti-barbarian positions entailed by Dionysius’ activities in southern Italy and the Adriatic; cf. McKechnie  –. 59 See e.g. Sordi  –, –, who draws connections with the contemporary panhellenic rhetoric against Persia, to be taken up by the Macedonian court. 60 Rhodes and Osborne  no. ; Plu. Tim. .. 61 Talbert  –.

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record the decree of the Syracusans at Timoleon’s death, honouring him “because he overthrew the tyrants, subdued the barbarians, repeopled the devastated cities and restored the laws to the Sikeliotai” (or in Diodorus’ very similar version, “became the author of freedom for the Sikeliotai”).62 Both get us onto safer ground perhaps than the speech of Timoleon, attributed to Timaeus by Polybius, mocking Carthaginian underwear. This probably tells us more about Timaeus (and Polybius), but it also reflects the more extreme versions and embellishments that such a tradition of course attracts, once one descends below the level of Panhellenic oratory, and the sort of prejudice and stereotyping which any discourse of this sort employs.63 As Plutarch puts it, Timoleon was “the only one to succeed in those achievements to which the sophists in their speeches at the national assemblies were ever exhorting the Greeks.”64 There are some grounds for thinking that the idea of the alastôr of Carthage, defending Sicily, was also employed by Agathocles and subsequently inverted against him (by his principal detractor in the tradition, Timaeus).65 It is probably due to Timaeus that the surviving accounts of Agathocles, even of his campaigns in north Africa, are strikingly lacking in the language of claims to liberation from the barbarian, even while repeating the associated negative stereotypes en passant, such as the occasion when Carthaginian ships cruelly treated the crews of a pair of Athenian merchantmen captured in Syracuse harbour.66 It is perhaps relevant that the most famous description of the practice of child sacrifice at Carthage relates to the resumption of the practice at the time of Agathocles’ invasion of North Africa; the strongly negative emphasis upon the practice from within the Western Greek tradition, as seemingly in  bc, is perhaps to be linked with Greek propaganda of the time.67 The language associated with the overthrow of tyrants had doubtless become even more dominant in the wake of Timoleon, quite apart from Timaeus’ obvious hostility to Agathocles. The clearest claim to liberation from the 62

Plu. Tim. .; D.S. ... Plb. .a (= FGrH  Fb); Vattuone  –; Sordi   on the anandria of the barbarians. 64 Plu. Tim. .; cf. Isoc. Ep. , cited above. 65 So Lewis  –, with reference to D.S. ..; in detail Vattuone  –  and c.  passim. 66 D.S. ..– (although see e.g. Vattuone  –, – on the relevance of the Agathoklea of Duris of Samos (FGrH  F–) for this part of Diodorus); Consolo Langher  – for the view that “Probabilmente . . . Timeo sosteneva la irrilevanza dei meriti antipunici di Agatocle.” 67 D.S. .. For discussion, see Quinn forthcoming. 63

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barbarian in this period comes from the city of Acragas, which attempted under Xenodicus to seize power in Sicily during Agathocles’ absence, in  bc: as reported by Diodorus, they believed that other cities “would gladly answer the summons through hatred for the barbarians”.68 If, in this case, the claim was not being put about by a tyrant, nonetheless, it strongly suggests the very active currency of the discourse within late fourth-century Sicily. In the case of Agathocles, it is only in the context of competing on the ‘world’ stage that the language of panhellenic achievements appears, specifically in Agathocles’ rivalry with the Macedonians and the other diadochoi. The most obvious parallels for the series of paintings depicting Agathocles in a cavalry battle, on the walls of the Temple of Athena in Syracuse, are those showing Alexander and his generals in such a setting; it is but a short step from that parallelism to the inference that Agathocles presented his campaigns in North Africa against Carthage in the by-now familiar language of Greeks against barbarians, echoing the eastward-looking panhellenic tradition.69 The twin themes of liberation from tyrants and eviction of the Carthaginians reappear in the appeals to Pyrrhus which our sources attribute to the Sicilians—interestingly to the Sicilians rather than Pyrrhus himself and the appeal itself, in our surviving sources, is never rendered directly in the language of the barbarian threat or the defence of the Hellenes (even if frequently recounted in just these terms in modern accounts). On the other hand, Plutarch’s subsequent account of events makes repeated reference to the barbarians, in the storming of Eryx, with reference to the Mamertines of Messana (see below), and in the demand made by Pyrrhus that the Carthaginians abandon Sicily, making “the Libyan Sea a boundary between themselves and the Hellenes”.70 However likely such an appeal may seem, not least in the light of the evidence cited so far for his predecessors, Pyrrhus’ relevance here is perhaps more as another 68

D.S. ., ..–. D.S. ..: “[ . . . ] the Sikeliotes wished not only to be regarded as victors over the Carthaginians and the barbarians of Italy, but also to show themselves in the Greek arena as more than a match for the Macedonians, whose spears had subjugated both Asia and Europe.” (cf. Consolo Langher  –). Coarelli  (esp. –) on Cic. Ver. . and the Syracusan paintings. 70 Plu. Pyrrh. – (at .– Pyrrhus’ attitude to Sicily and N. Africa is strikingly reminiscent of Thucydides’ Alcibiades (see above)); Iust. ..–; ..–..; D.H. .; Zonar. .; Paus. ..–.. Consolo Langher   notes Syracusan appeals to Pyrrhus as another Agathocles (D.S. ..), and similar echoes in the case of Hieron II. Zambon   (cf. , ) takes this to be “[. . .] another episode of the never-ending fight between the Greeks of Sicily and the punic barbaroi.” 69

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example of the east-west parallelism observed earlier. Such parallels increase in the wake of Alexander the Great, and not only in the case of Agathocles, but with comparisons implied between Alexander and those campaigning westwards such as Alexander the Molossian, Cleonymus of Sparta, and Pyrrhus himself, albeit principally in relation to the defence of Tarentum, rather than Sicily.71 Last, but not least, is the figure of Hieron II. Hieron seems to have come to power on the back of his participation in Pyrrhus’ campaign in Sicily, and it may partly have been with that in mind that Theocritus composed Idyll , probably in  /  bc, in a bid for Hieronian patronage.72 The Idyll (.–) confronts the theme head on: Even now beneath the setting sun the Phoenicians that dwell in the outmost skirts of Libya tremble for fear; even now Syracusans grip their spears by the middle and charge their arms with shields of wicker, while Hieron, in their midst, girds himself like the heroes of old with crest of horsehair shadowing his helm. (trans. Gow)

Furthermore, the poet encourages associations with Hieron’s Deinomenid predecessors through strong reminiscences of Pindar, and in particular Pythian .73 Theocritus may have misjudged, in the sense that Hieronian patronage was not forthcoming and Hieron did not in the end lead a campaign against the Carthaginians. But his choice of motif was clearly a very well-established one and, as we shall see in a moment, Hieron made considerable use of it, albeit with a slight shift in focus. Hieron’s self-promotion as a Hellene should not itself be in doubt, whether through the dedications at Olympia and Delphi by his family and by communities under his rule (echoing the activity of his predecessors), or his very active euergetism towards Rhodes after the earthquake of  bc, or his activities within his own kingdom. In particular, the dedication of his own arms at the sanctuary of Athena Lindia on Rhodes invites comparison both with his presumed Sicilian ancestor Deinomenes, and above all with Alexander the Great and Pyrrhus.74 71 For the theme of the barbarization of Magna Graecia in the fourth and third centuries, see above; Nenci  – (cf. Santagati Ruggeri  –) for observations on the relationship of Alexander’s ‘last plans’ (cf. D.S. ..–) to the actions of Pyrrhus and others. Alexander of Epirus, Iust. ..–; Cleonymus, D.S. .–. 72 On Hieron’s early career and likely link to Pyrrhus see Iust. .. (cf. Zonar. ., Plb. ..); Gow  : ; De Sensi Sestito  –. On Id.  see esp. Hans . 73 Hunter  –. 74 See Portale , Campagna , and Domínguez Monedero . Dedications at Olympia / Delphi: Paus. ..– (confused on other aspects), ..; Moretti, ISE I

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Polybius emphasizes his positive treatment of, and reception by, the Hellenes (Plb. ..). In the event, it was Hieron’s campaign against the Campanian Mamertines of Messana in the early s that was, at least in Polybius’ version, constructed as an attempt to drive the barbarians out of Sicily (compare Plutarch on Pyrrhus and the barbarous Mamertines, above). The flexibility of the discourse is laid bare with Hieron’s subsequent decision in  bc to ally with Carthage in order to drive the barbarian Mamertines (now aided by Rome) out of Sicily.75 It is unsurprising that, having been portrayed by Hieron as the barbarian invader, the Mamertines appealed for aid to both the old (Carthage) and the new (Rome) foreign powers in the vicinity, their fellow ‘barbarians’. Famously, the appeal to Rome was made partly on the grounds of homophylia, which must be a shared Italic identity.76 By accepting the appeal, the Romans allowed themselves to be placed squarely in the role of the barbarian invader of Greek Sicily, confronted by Hieron II and in due course the Carthaginians.77 With this shift of focus we come to the final part of this survey, in which I shall briefly consider the adoption of this discourse by the Roman invaders, within the Sicilian context. Since the (unsuccessful) attempt by Ernst Badian to argue that the ciuitas libera was born during Rome’s campaigns in Sicily in the First Punic War, it has become very much the accepted view that Rome’s use both of the status of ‘free city’ and of the ideological appeal to the ‘freedom of the Greeks’ belongs firmly in the context of the war against Macedon in the s bc. I certainly do not wish to argue that Rome developed the category of the ciuitas libera in third-century Sicily in the form in which it is found in second- and first-century Greece and

(), no. ; Portale  –, –. Rhodes: Plb. .. For the dedication to Athena Lindia, see Chron. Lind. (Blinkenberg  –; translation in Higbie ) C. – (Deinomenes), – (Alexander), – (Pyrrhus), – (Hieron) with Portale  –. 75 Plb. ..–, ..; cf. D.S. .. On the Mamertines see Tagliamonte  – , Crawford . On the events, e.g. Hoyos  –, –. Construction of the Campanians in Sicily as barbarians probably goes back to their arrival in the late fifth century bc (plenty of examples in Tagliamonte  –); note esp. D.S. . for a Carthaginian expressing the idea of the Greeks being hostile to Carthaginians and Campanians alike as non-Greeks, and see the discussion of Cusumano forthcoming at nn. –. 76 Plb. ... See now Russo forthcoming. 77 So e.g. Tagliamonte   with n. .

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elsewhere.78 But I do think that the potential employment by Rome of the ideological claim to free Greeks from the barbarian in the context of a war with the Carthaginians for control of Sicily in the mid-third century bc has been seriously undervalued.79 From the moment in  bc that Hieron II withdrew his opposition to Rome, and the conflict in Sicily became a struggle between Rome and Carthage, a crucial part of the Roman strategy, as in almost every attempt to win control in Sicily since the fifth century, involved trying to win over Sicilian, i.e. ‘Greek’, cities for the campaign against the Carthaginians.80 If the ‘barbarian’ Mamertines sought help from fellow Italians, subsequently at least two Sicilian communities appealed to putative kinship with Rome. Centuripae and Segesta both went over to Rome in the initial phase of the war ( /  bc), and by the time of Cicero were two of only five cities in Sicily with special immunity from taxation (alongside three others with treaties of alliance).81 We know from Cicero and other sources that Segesta, an Elymian city, appealed to Rome on the grounds of shared Trojan kinship. Cicero’s evidence may be the earliest surviving attestation for this overture to Rome ( bc), but Zonaras (after Dio) associates Segesta’s kinship appeal explicitly with the switch of allegiance in  /  bc and Segesta had already made claims of Trojan descent from at least as early as the fifth century bc in dialogue with Athens (Thuc. ..).82 It should no longer need to be argued that Roman association with the Trojan legend was well established by the third century bc.83 78

Badian  –; for more recent views on Sicily see esp. Ferrary  – and Pinzone ; for the ciuitas libera more generally, see esp. Ferrary  and . 79 For instance, Ferrary   argues that Rome could not be sensible to the potential of such propaganda claims at this date. 80 Eckstein  – for one detailed analysis of  bc; for Hieron’s transfer of allegiance, compare Eckstein  – and De Sensi  –. Hoyos  –  offers an attractive picture of escalation from a limited conflict in  bc principally directed against Syracuse to a war with Carthage for control of Sicily (cf. De Sanctis  –). 81 Segesta: Cic. Ver. ., ., .; Zonar. .; cf. D.S. .; Battistoni  –, – and forthcoming. Centuripae: Cic. Ver. . (cf. ., D.S. .); AE . / SEG . with Manganaro  and  (and cf. SEG . with Battistoni ). Later status, Cic. Ver. .. 82 Zevi  esp. – on Segesta and Athens in the fifth century (with bibliography). 83 Note esp. Gabba  – on the third-century exploitation of the theme (highlighting the Sicilian elements at ); Zevi  – for bibliography on Troy and Rome, also Erskine ; Martorana – esp. – for Trojan nostoi in Sicily; cf. Schettino  on Pyrrhus, and Coarelli  arguing for the early exploitation of kinship in the case of Saguntum in Spain.

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Centuripae, a Sikel city, seems rather to have based its appeal on kinship between Latins and Sikels, links which almost certainly had a much earlier foundation than the third century.84 If Rome was open to the label of barbarian, it was no less open to integration within the Hellenic world, and it is hard to imagine a more plausible moment in Romano-Segestan, or Romano-Centuripaean, relations when this appeal might have been made.85 The idea that the Romans can move from being barbarian Italians supporting barbarian Campanians to pro-Hellenic Trojans supporting the ‘Greek’ Sicilians against barbarian Carthage within a matter of a year or two should not be hard to accept—that is in the very nature of such claim and counter-claim. The later discourse of barbarian or pro-Hellenic Rome is very familiar.86 Fabius Pictor’s Greek history of Rome is direct testimony to the efforts to develop a positive presentation of Rome for a Hellenic audience: “He was trying, no doubt, to redress the balance against the pro-Carthaginian historians from Sicily and Magna Graecia, in an unprecedented attempt to influence Greek opinion.”87 Rawson’s assessment requires some qualification, lest we fall victim once again to the bias of the later Romano-centric tradition. In the light of what has been traced above, and the situation in the mid-/later third century bc, it cannot be right to place all the emphasis and contrast upon ‘proCarthaginian’ historians of the West; it is the pro-Greek, pro-Syracusan historians, no less anti-Carthaginian than they could be anti-Roman, who were surely the target of Fabius and others in this period, at least as much as any presumed pro-Carthaginians. We know that the Greeks portrayed the Romans as barbarians (see below). Furthermore, we know that the Sicilians themselves were reading Fabius, from the record of his work’s presence in a Hellenistic library in Taormina.88 The context for the

84

Zevi , esp. – arguing for a third-century bc renewal of the link, – ,  for Sikel and Latin kinship at least as early as Antiochus of Syracuse and the fifth century, and – for Rome and the Sikels in the late s bc. Briquel  esp.  for the suggestion that it was at this moment (c.  bc) that the Sikel connection was incorporated into the Aeneas legend. 85 Eckstein  – is unnecessarily sceptical; contrast e.g. De Sanctis   n. . Kienast  – considers Sicilian kinship claims in a First Punic War context. 86 See e.g. Erskine  and Champion  on the discourse of barbarian Rome within Polybius. 87 Rawson  ; cf. Dillery  esp. –, –, –. 88 Battistoni  with earlier bibliography.

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Roman adoption of the portrayal of the Carthaginian as the barbarian (the Romans had, after all, had good relations with the Carthaginians in earlier times) must be the need to persuade the Greek audience of Rome’s claim to be a (non-barbarian) liberator of Greek cities such as Syracuse from the Carthaginian barbarian; with Syracuse now as their principal ally, the Romans could have had no better teacher. All of this becomes still more comprehensible if we can see that such a discourse has a very long and active history over the preceding centuries within Sicily itself. It would be naïve to deny Roman knowledge and awareness of the Sicilians and Sicilian history: Campanians had been serving as mercenaries in Sicily since the fifth century and Italians had been going to the island for a long time, as had the Romans themselves for grain, at least according to the later historians; Hieron II was their close supporter from  bc onwards; M. Claudius Marcellus (cos.  bc) dedicated spoils to Athena Lindia on Rhodes not long after Hieron himself had done so (Plu. Marc. .–, cf. .); the paintings of Agathocles à la Alexander the Great at Syracuse are described by Cicero (with obvious tendentiousness) as the most famous things in Syracuse—until Verres stole them (Cic. Ver. .–); both Philistus and Timaeus were still being read by Cicero over two centuries later.89 The Roman claim to liberate Syracuse in  bc was likewise hardly an invention—there had been attempts to liberate Syracuse from tyrants since at least the s bc, and the transformation and inversion of claims made by tyrants to liberate Syracuse and Sicily into claims to liberate Sicily from the tyrants themselves had been witnessed in Sicily as recently as Pyrrhus, who was accused of becoming a tyrant rather than a liberator.90 Barely a decade later, according to Livy and Polybius, and before the Romans had yet proclaimed the freedom of the Greeks in the mainland, Greeks were in turn decrying the tyranny of

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Campanians, Tagliamonte ; early Roman interest see esp. Gallo ; Corsaro  and Torelli  for two specific examples of Italians in Sicily in the mid-third century bc. Philistus in Cicero: Cic. Q.fr. .., de Orat. ., Brut. ; Timaeus: Cic. Fam. .., , de Orat. , Brut. , , Att. .., Rep. ., Leg. ., N.D. .; also Duris of Samos (who wrote an Agathoclea), Att. ... On Timaeus’ reception by Cicero, Taiphikos . 90 Liv. .. (ut Syracusas oppressas ab Carthaginiensibus in libertatem eximerent— the cynical report of a Macedonian speaker); cf. Liv. .. for pro-Roman Syracusans presenting Rome’s siege as being to free Syracuse from cruel tyrants (repeated by a Roman speaker at Liv. ..). On themes of liberty in Livy’s presentation of the siege of Syracuse, Jaeger , cf. Gabba . On Pyrrhus as tyrant, Plu. Pyrrh. , D.H. . (contrast Plb. ..).

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the Romans in Sicily and southern Italy.91 The painting of the external foe as the barbarian is no less deep-rooted in the western tradition than in the East. The speed of the Roman adoption of this discourse in the East, most obviously in the conflicts with Philip V and Antiochus the Great in the s bc, likewise becomes far more comprehensible if we allow a greater importance in the process to the less visible and more fragmentary, but clearly no less complex discourse in the western Greek tradition.92 Seen in this light, elements usually overlooked, such as the Roman claim to have liberated the Greeks from the piratical Illyrians, as announced to various Greek communities and at the Isthmian games in  bc, are in no way surprising or unexpected (Plb. ..–). The strongly negative Roman portrayal of the Carthaginians likewise had deep foundations. It is surely naïve to think that the Romans were not fully engaged in this language of liberation, whether from tyrant or barbarian, already in the third century—the language had a long and rich history of use in the West, principally, but certainly not solely, between the Carthaginians and the Syracusan tyrants. As the Greeks were to discover, there was little reason to credit the Romans with any greater sincerity than the Sicilian tyrants whom they emulated: They say that Publius Scipio, who was the first to bring Carthage to her knees, when some one asked him whom he thought the greatest statesmen combining courage and wisdom, replied “Agathocles and Dionysius the Sicilians.” (Plb. ..)

Acknowledgements I am grateful to the editors for their kind invitation to participate, their warm hospitality, and their considerable patience; to Filippo Battistoni, Corinne Bonnet, Nicola Cusumano, Josephine Quinn, and Federico Russo for letting me see advance copies of forthcoming work; to Bruno Currie for advice on Pindarica; and to Josephine Quinn for typically sane and timely comments.

91 Liv. ., a Macedonian speaker in  bc (doubtless based upon Polybius, Briscoe  ); Plb. .. (speech of Philopoemen, taken by Walbank   to reflect views “actually put forward and debated in Achaea between  and ”). See Champion  esp. – and n. . 92 See e.g. Walsh  on Rome’s use of ‘freedom of the Greeks’ in the East (with excessive emphasis upon the ‘discovery’ of eleutheria by T. Quinctius Flamininus).

REPUBLICAN ROME

FRIGIDUS RUMOR: THE CREATION OF A (NEGATIVE) PUBLIC IMAGE IN ROME*

Francisco Pina Polo In a hierarchical and competitive society like republican Rome, public opinion about an individual had considerable relevance. Roman political jargon included several terms used to denote this concept, principally fama and existimatio, but also opinio or consensus hominum.1 To possess positive fama and existimatio was closely linked to having the dignitas and auctoritas required to hold a prominent position in Roman politics, and obviously to assume the highest magistracies, but it was also necessary in order to have some influence within the senate and, in general, on the community as a whole. Understandably, the opinions his equals had about him were most important to a Roman politician who was a member of the social elite, since these opinions were decisive in the elections which could grant him honours in the future. However, the concept of public opinion in republican Rome cannot be restricted to the aristocracy, since judgments about any public figure by the urban plebs could determine his future. Thus, it is not surprising that the Commentariolum petitionis mentions, as an important factor to take into consideration in the electoral campaign, the fama forensis or fama popularis, emanating from gossip and rumours (sermo is the word used by Quintus Cicero) transmitted by close friends, neighbours, clients, freedmen, and even slaves.2 The formation of public opinion about an individual was influenced by various factors. It was obviously possible to manufacture public opinion, both through written and oral media. Favourable or unfavourable written propaganda must have existed at all times to a greater or lesser extent, although we know of more instances in the late Republic, particularly

* This article has been produced within the framework of the project Cónsules, consulares y el gobierno de la República entre Sila y Augusto (HUM– / HIST), funded by the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, Gobierno de España. 1 Yavetz  , n. ; , –; –. 2 Q. Cic., Pet. . Cf. .

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around the civil war between Caesar and Pompey and in the ensuing period, when denigrating pamphlets were circulated against public persons as well as pamphlets in self-defence, and poems were written taking sides with one faction or another. Opinions voiced in such publications could eventually find their way to the plebs, but in general these forms of written propaganda were circulated amongst the elite and were intended to influence the prevailing opinion amid its members. The mob is unlikely to have known of the existence of these writings, and many of them would have been unable to read them even if they had had access to them. Simple messages written in the form of graffiti on walls and monuments of the city could reach the plebs more easily. According to Suetonius, during Caesar’s dictatorship someone wrote at the foot of the statue of Lucius Brutus, traditionally the first consul of Rome, the phrase Utinam viveres! (“Oh, that you were still alive!”; Suet., Iul. .). This simple utterance contained in itself a real political agenda. An appeal to the person who put an end to the regnum of Tarquinius and established the res publica libera was an obvious incitement to act against Caesar. Suetonius adds that at the foot of the statue of Caesar himself a sentence was also written comparing him unfavourably to Brutus, since the latter was a liberator from kings, whereas Caesar was finally to reinstate the monarchy (“First of all was Brutus consul, since he drove the kings from Rome; since this man [Caesar] drove out the consuls, he at last is made our king”; .). It is legitimate to suspect that the conspirators who eventually murdered Caesar were behind the authors of both texts, as part of a campaign to present the subsequent death of the dictator as “tyrannicide”.3 It seems clear that their intention was to create an atmosphere unfavourable towards Caesar, reflecting the unease existing amongst certain senators, although it is also obvious that this campaign did not succeed, as proved by the cold reception given by the plebs to praetors Cassius and Brutus when they tried to justify the murder of the dictator and, in contrast, by the warm popular reaction vindicating Caesar which resulted in him being granted divine honours and in the building of a temple in the Forum dedicated to divus Iulius.4 Leaving aside close aristocratic circles, where the written word could play a part in the creation of popular opinion, the main tool to influence the public was the oral medium. In this regard there were basically 3 4

Cf. Pina Polo . Cf. Weinstock .

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two institutional platforms where it was possible, through oratory, to circulate ideas and criticisms around Rome, or discredit certain facts or persons: on the one hand, the speeches given in contiones before the people,5 and on the other, the speeches both of the defence and of the prosecution lawyers in trials in the Forum open to whomever wished to attend.6 There are substantial differences that any orator needed to take into consideration when producing such speeches. Obviously, neither the language nor the rhetorical techniques to be used could be the same in both types of speech, and the orator had to take into account both the cultural and social homogeneity of the jury, on the one hand, and on the other the varied cultural and social backgrounds of those attending the contiones, mainly members of the urban plebs.7 In a contio the people were addressed directly, as the main target of the orator’s persuasive skills, whereas in trials the lawyer addressed the jury who was to judge whether the prosecuted person was guilty or not. But trials were also public and anybody could attend. In this manner, it was possible to influence public opinion indirectly via those attending the trial. Both in the contiones and in the iudicia publica the number of observers was small in proportion to the total number of inhabitants of the urbs, a mere few hundred people generally, or a few thousand should the orator in an assembly or the defendant in a trial raise great expectation. In order to spread some ideas around the city and create public opinion the story had to do the rounds by means of an essential instrument: rumour.8 Roman politicians knew how important a rumour spread around the city could be for them,9 and this is why they tried to be privy to the latest hearsay even when they were away from Rome. In his speech in favour of Milo, Cicero sets out the fragility of the candidate against rumours and false tales (rumor, fabula ficta) that during the campaign might 5 Pina Polo ; a; a; Hölkeskamp ; Laser ; Millar ; Mouritsen , –; Morstein-Marx . 6 Alexander ; David . 7 Jehne . 8 On the importance of rumours from a sociological point of view, see Turner and Killian ; Gluckman ; Paine . In particular on rumours in ancient Rome, Ries ; Laurence ; Pina Polo a –; Rosillo López . On the political role played by the so-called circuli and circulatores see O’Neill . 9 Cf. Cic. Mur.  (totam opinionem parva nonnumquam commutat aura rumoris; “frequently a little breeze of a rumour alters an entire public opinion”). Cicero, however, tries to diminish their importance claiming that he was much more interested in what history might say about him in future than in what rumours might say of him in his time (Att. ..).

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sway the intention of voters: “Especially, O judges, when the contest for the greatest distinction of the state, and the day of the comitia, were at hand. At which time . . . we are afraid of everything, not only of those things which can be openly found fault with, but even of whatever can be secretly thought; we shudder at every rumour, at every idle and empty story . . . For there is nothing so soft, so tender, so frail, so flexible, as the inclinations and feelings of our fellow-citizens towards us” (Cic. Mil. ). Thus, it is not coincidental that Quintus Cicero gives in his Commentariolum petitionis great importance to rumours as a means of consolidating the candidate’s personal reputation (Q. Cic. Pet. ). When Cicero reluctantly went to Cilicia in the year  to act as the governor of the province, he left M. Caelius Rufus in charge of informing him of anything happening in Rome during his absence, in particular of rumours that might circulate about the city.10 Caelius faithfully fulfilled Cicero’s request and in a long letter written in May  (Cic. Fam. .) he narrated omnes res urbanas (“everything that had happened in Rome”), paying special attention to the rumours that had spread in previous weeks both about Caesar and about Cicero himself. Regarding the former, it was said in Rome that his troops had suffered defeats in Gaul, another hoax that was intended at discrediting him, undoubtedly circulated by Caesar’s enemies in the months before the outbreak of the civil war. As regards Cicero, Caelius says that a rumour, blatantly false, had spread urbe ac foro (“around the city and the forum”) that he had been murdered on his trip to Cilicia by Q. Pompeius. The letter also provides valuable information about the way in which rumours were disseminated around the city. In the case of Caesar’s presumed defeats, Caelius states that the hoax had been spread by what he calls susurratores (“whisperers”), whereas he attributes the rumour of the death of Cicero to the subrostrani, that is, those who prowled around the orators’ tribune placed between the Comitium and the Forum.11 Both words occur here for the first time,12 although it seems unlikely that they could be neologisms created by Caelius, but rather were terms that were commonly used in the Ciceronian period.

10 The same task had been given by Cicero to Atticus in a letter sent on  May  from Venusia, on his way to Cilicia (Att. ..). 11 Cic. Fam. ... Cf. Cavarzere  . 12 Subrostrani occurs only here in extant Latin literature, although perhaps Plautus refers to the same type of people with his term subbasilicani (Capt. ). Susurrator is also extremely rare, only found otherwise in the Vulgata of the Bible (Vulg. [Sirach] .).

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The two words used by Caelius Rufus lead to the inference that rumours and gossip originated in the Forum around the orators’ tribune, from where they were disseminated about the city. Horace masterfully expressed the process of the circulation of rumours in one sentence which indirectly confirms what Caelius said: Frigidus a rostris manat per compita rumor (“Chilling rumour spreads out from the rostra by means of the cross-roads”; Hor. sat. ..). Susurratores and subrostrani were probably idle people or, in any event, people of low social status who spent part of their day loitering around the Forum, the great information point of the city of Rome.13 Rumours could arise spontaneously from what an orator had said at the orators’ tribune or in the context of a trial, but it may also be presumed that they were deliberately promoted and, in such cases, that susurratores and subrostrani served the interests of a certain individual or of a political group who had an interest in creating a certain general opinion. Their social background could facilitate their direct contact with other members of the urban plebs, thus increasing their efficiency in spreading rumours. Nevertheless, that does not mean that the dissemination of rumours was exclusive to the lower classes. In the aforementioned letter, Caelius states that Domitius had actively spread the hoax against Caesar cum manus ad os apposuit (“when he placed his hands over his mouth”; Cic. Fam. ..), a set phrase that could perhaps mean that he gave his acts an air of mystery, or else, on the contrary, that he used his hands to amplify his words. As Laurence pointed out,14 members of the Roman elite could also avail themselves of their client relationships as a tool to try to circulate a rumour, or to reassert or quell an existing one. The custom of the morning salutatio permitted brief but direct communication between patrons and some of their clients, which gave the patron a chance, from the auctoritas given by his superior position, to indoctrinate his clients, who could in return also inform the patron of any street gossip. It was obviously up to the clients then to transmit the ideas and information received to their own clients or to persons of the same social status. This may have been an important means of transmission of gossip and rumours, although it should be taken into account that

13 In his commentary on the Epistulae ad familiares, Manutius (Comm. ) defines the subrostrani as de hominibus infimi ordinis sub rostris versari solitis (“persons of humble origin who used to be below the Rostra”). Livy (..) specifically links the propagation of rumours in Rome to the plebs: Otium, ut solet, excitavit plebis rumores. 14 Laurence  –.

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a client relationship did not involve unquestioned obedience from the client to the patron—a client usually had more than one patron, as can be deduced from the Commentariolum petitionis (Q. Cic. Pet. ), so a varied patron-client relationship could result in receiving complementary or contradictory information. In any event, the general lack of education of the urban plebs in Rome must not make us assume that all the rumours that were circulated were readily accepted. Assumptions by the people about the reliability of the source of a report were unquestionably an important factor in establishing its credibility. It was not the same thing if a piece of news was backed by someone trusted by the plebs, or if it originated from somebody without any reputation amongst the people—the plebs were more reluctant to accept rumours that were harmful to politicians who were loved by them, and more willing to believe and disseminate rumours against politicians who were not to their liking. As well, it was important in order to achieve the intended goal that the version that was to prevail was easy to understand and assimilate, that it created in a large part of the population the idea that it was possibly true. This could practically turn a rumour into a slogan.15 As a palpable demonstration of the political importance of rumours, the author of Rhetorica ad Herennium, a rhetoric manual written in the s in the st century bc, dedicates a special section to them with the purpose of instructing his disciple on how to confront rumours through oratory. As a means of spreading a rumour, the author of the manual advises his pupil to say that a rumour never arises by accident and that, also, in the specific case of the rumour that is to be promoted, nobody would have had a good enough reason to make it up, therefore it is most probably true. In contrast, in order to defend oneself from an existing rumour, cases of some notoriously false rumours must be cited, arguing that they were invented by slanderous adversaries and that anybody could spread untrue degrading gossip against another person. The orator must mention a rumour, either false or true, regarding one of his rivals, while stating that he does not believe it to be true. Finally, the author of Rhetorica ad Herennium concludes that even if a rumour seems plausible, arguments against it can always be found (Rhet. Her. .).

15

Pina Polo a .

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

These pieces of advice indicate, on the one hand, that once a rumour or general opinion was created regarding something or, more generally, somebody, it could hardly be ignored by the affected person. On the other hand, despite those recommendations, it is clear that it was a complicated process to stop its dissemination because by opening it up in a public sphere and basing it on a current event, either real or fictitious, the rumour tended to become dynamic.16 Obviously, the most effective form of debunking it was to do it through the same medium from which it had been spread, in the case of a contio from the selfsame orators’ tribune. However, given the limitations imposed on individuals about having the right to speak, on many occasions this was impossible if the person under attack was not a magistrate or did not have an ally amongst those who held a magistracy that year.17 Thus, the efficiency of the rumour and its effects were increased, gaining in strength progressively as no adequate response to it was made before the people. In this regard, it was particularly effective to attack a politician who was away from Rome. Throughout the late republican period we know of the existence of rumours which decisively influenced Roman political life, particularly at times of upheaval in Roman society. The tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus was rich in all sorts of rumours—thus Plutarch reports that when a friend of Gracchus died suddenly, it was put about amongst the plebs that he had been poisoned by the political enemies of the tribune, and the alleged murder was used by the supporters of Gracchus to put on a public display of his strength. A crowd carried the coffin on their shoulders and took it to the Forum, clamouring for justice for his death whilst, probably, demanding the reforms suggested by the tribune of the plebs.18 On the opposing side, when Gracchus presented his candidacy to be re-elected as a tribune of the plebs for the year , his adversaries put about, according to Appian, the false rumour that he had deposed all the other tribunes from their posts, which seemed credible as none of them were seen in public, and that he had appointed himself as tribune of the plebs for the following year without the necessary election (App. BC .). The adversaries of Gracchus also spread the false rumour that the tribune had made a gesture demanding a crown as an obvious sign of his desire to establish a monarchy in Rome (Plut. TG .). 16 17 18

Ries  . Pina Polo a  ff. Plut. TG . Cf. Laurence  –; Sumi  –.



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These were only some of the probably abundant negative rumours about Gracchus with which his enemies tried to poison public opinion, with the purpose of presenting him as a dangerous revolutionary whose aim was to get hold of power and become a tyrant in Rome. The goal was to create conditions that could necessitate the death of Gracchus despite the sacrosanctitas attached to his position. For this reason, his subsequent murder was justified by the senatorial majority as a tyrannicide that returned concord to the civitas. It is obviously impossible to know to what extent rumours against Gracchus were spread amongst the people and how credible they were, but the fact is that the urban plebs, or at least a large part of them, never ceased to see Tiberius Gracchus, and later on his brother, as martyrs who had defended the interests of the plebs and had been murdered for it—thus they erected statues in their honour and sacralized the places where they had been killed.19 In the s of the st century bc, Clodius and Cicero were engaged in a competition to discredit each other—both used all the weapons available to them. Clodius was particularly strong on the streets of Rome due to the revival of the collegia that he had undertaken, which allowed him to mobilise a significant part of the plebs to demand social and political initiatives.20 Clodius did not base his political activity exclusively on the use of violence on the streets, as might be inferred from Cicero’s propaganda, but gained remarkable popularity thanks to the introduction of different reforms during his tribunate and, above all, by his frequent appearance as an orator before the people, not only in the year during which he was a tribune of the plebs, but also later on, despite the fact that he did not hold any public office.21 Clodius must have been an excellent orator, but unfortunately none of his speeches were preserved. His attacks against Cicero must have taken place mainly in contiones, before a much more receptive audience for his arguments than the hostile senate. The intensity of those attacks is indicated indirectly in Cicero’s letters, which reveal a growing fear of the possibility that the slander hurled at him by his opponent could eventually pervade Roman society.22 We also know indirectly that the main argument made by Clodius against Cicero was that during his consulship he had executed Roman citizens,

19

Plut. CG .. Cf. Marco Simón and Pina Polo a ; Pina Polo  . Benner ; Will ; Tatum . In particular on the collegia, see Flambard, ; . 21 Pina Polo b –. 22 Cic. Att. ..; .. Cf. Pina Polo b –. 20

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the Catilinarian conspirators, without prior trial. This led him to call the ex-consul, amongst other things, a “tyrant”, a particularly painful accusation for Cicero.23 There is no doubt that Clodius could turn public opinion against Cicero, both by forcing the exile of the Arpinate and by preventing some of the most prominent politicians of the time from daring to defend him in public for fear of losing their popularity. Once Cicero was exiled, Clodius persisted in disseminating a public image of him as a tyrant and had Cicero’s house in the Palatine demolished, ordering the construction of a shrine on that site dedicated to Libertas in an act full of symbolism and loaded with political significance.24 The long months that Cicero’s friends took to reverse the situation and have a law passed by which he was allowed to return to Rome, give us a sense of how deeply rooted the negative image of the ex-consul was amongst the population of the urbs. Clodius had succeeded in creating this by the combined use of oratory before the people, symbolic actions of religious content, and by mobilisation of his followers within the plebs. No doubt those whom Caelius Rufus referred to as subrostrani and susurratores must have played their part in the creation of that negative public image. Cicero’s intervention in contiones was much less frequent. Up until the year , when he was a praetor, he had never spoken before the people (Cic. Man. ), and after that he did it much less frequently than he did in trials and, of course, in the senate, places where he felt much more comfortable.25 It was precisely in the senate and in court, as well as through his correspondence with friends and relatives,26 that Cicero tried to counteract the negative image that Clodius was creating of him, and in turn to disparage his adversary.27 Only once did Cicero dare criticise Clodius before the people. He did it at the beginning of the speech of thanks that he delivered in a contio in September of , but he did not mention openly the name of Clodius, merely alluding in general to scelerati homines et audaces (“criminal and audacious men”) who had forced him into exile and endangered the res publica.28 On the other hand, Ciceronian speeches both in the senate and in court are full of insults and invectives against Clodius, particularly after 23 24 25 26 27 28

Cic. Att. ..; Sest. . Cf. Pina Polo  . Marco Simón and Pina Polo b. Cf. Bergemann  –. Pina Polo a –. Cf. Cic. Att. ..; ..; Q. fr. ..; ..; Fam. ... Pina Polo  –. Cic. Red. Pop. . Cf. Red. Pop. ; .



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Cicero’s return to Rome in the year . In his first speech in the Curia, Cicero called Clodius a sceleratus civis (“criminal citizen”), hostis domesticus (“public enemy”), latro archipirata (“bandit”), and an improbus (“wicked man”; Cic. Red. Sen. ; ; ). A few weeks later a session took place in the senate where the agenda was the return to Cicero of his house in the Palatine, and compensation to rebuild both the house and Cicero’s properties which had been damaged in his absence. In his speech, Cicero, using a set of political smears and above all personal insults, attacked Clodius, who attended the session and who also made a prolonged speech. Cicero accused Clodius of being a homo omnium facinorum et stuprorum (“the perpetrator of all sorts of crimes and illicit sexual intercourse”; Cic. Dom. ), of having incestuous intercourse with his sister (); he hinted that he had committed adultery with Pompeia, Caesar’s wife (), linked him to the crimes of Catiline (; ), called him a hostis otii et pacis (“enemy of the peace”; ), hostis communis (“enemy of the community”; ), demens and vesanus (“insane” and “demented”; ; ; ), facinorosus (“vicious”; ), fanaticus (“fanatic”; ), furiosus (“furious”; ),29 a labes nefanda et perniciosa civitatis (“nefarious and pernicious destroyer of the community”; ),30 impurus atque impius (“impure and impious”; ), funesta pestis (“baleful plague”; ),31 sceleratus (“criminal”; ; ; ), and scortum (“prostitute”; ). Cicero’s house in the Palatine was again the topic of a dispute some months later in a session of the senate. Here Cicero delivered his speech De haruspicum responsis, once more focusing his attacks on Clodius. He discredited him personally, accusing him repeatedly of having incestous intercourse with his sisters (Cic. Har. ; ; ; ; ); he linked him again to Catiline (; ), highlighted fury as being one of the main features of his personality (; ; ), and used some of the insults that he had hurled at him in his previous speech—demens (), stuprum (; ), labes (), pestis (), and sceleratus (; )—as well as others like plenus vini (“drunkard”; ) and gladiator (; ), together with accusations of transvestitism (). Cicero had created for Clodius a real catalogue of vice and faults that he did not hesitate to use again before a jury when he had the chance, above all in his speeches in defence of Sestius in the year  and of Milo in , after the murder of Clodius. Cicero perfected his repertoire even more by adding further rants that he had not used 29 30 31

Cf. also Cic. Dom. ;  (furor);  (furia). Cf. also Cic. Dom.  (labes ac flamma rei publicae); . Cf. also Cic. Dom.  (importuna pestis);  (portentosa pestis).

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

previously, such as belua (“monster”; Cic. Sest. ; Mil. ; ; ), despicatissimus (“most despicable being”; Sest. ), effeminatus (“effeminate”; Mil. ), infandus (“abominable”; Sest. ), parricida (“parricide”; Mil. ), ludius (“dancer”; Sest. ), nefarius (“impious”; Sest. ), perditus (“depraved”; Mil. ), and tyrannus (“tyrant”, Mil. ). Cicero used a full range of insults typical in the genre of invective against Clodius,32 just as he did against other political rivals such as Gabinius, Mark Antony, etc.33 Either before senators or before juries, Cicero strove through his speeches—with which he expected to attain immediate objectives, such as recovering his properties or having his clients acquitted—to convey to his equals the idea that Clodius was an immoral person who did not deserve political trust. Cicero’s greatest success in the long term was to create a very negative, and at least partly distorted, image of Clodius, the image of a violent demagogue who did not comply with Roman laws. But it is more debatable whether Cicero succeeded in his own time. Certainly Cicero increasingly managed to create an image of distrust around Clodius, although Clodius continued to maintain support in the senate and amongst the Roman aristocracy in general. In fact, he was elected aedile for the year  after having been a tribune of the plebs two years previously, and he was a leading candidate in the election for praetor in the year  when he was murdered by the men of Milo, the friend of Cicero. Up until his death Clodius never ceased to have political influence in Rome. But without doubt Cicero failed in his aim of creating unfavourable public opinion against Clodius amongst the urban plebs. What happened after the death of Clodius is proof of this. Cicero’s great adversary was murdered on the Appian way on  January . His corpse was taken to his house in Rome, where earlier that evening a great crowd gathered. The following day, the tribunes of the plebs T. Munatius Plancus and Q. Pompeius Rufus urged the mob of Clodius’ supporters to carry the corpse to the Forum. After a travesty of the pompa funebris the traditional laudatio took place. In this case it was not given by a relative as was the norm, but by the aforementioned tribunes. According to Asconius,34

32 Even nine years after the death of Clodius, in one of his Philippics, Cicero depicted once again his old rival as a depraved person: Ego P. Clodium arbitrabar perniciosum civem, sceleratum, libidinosum, impium, audacem, facinerosum . . . (Phil. .). 33 Pina Polo  –. 34 Asc. C.; C. Cf. Cic. Mil. .



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the scriba Sextus Clodius (or Cloelius)35 then encouraged the crowd to bear the corpse into the nearby Curia. The plebs piled up benches around the corpse and turned the meeting place of the senate into an improvised funeral pyre. Not only was the Curia burnt along with the body of Clodius, but also part of the neighbouring Basilica Porcia. Clodius’ funeral thus became a great subversive demonstration.36 In the weeks that followed the death of Clodius, Munatius Plancus and Q. Pompeius Rufus, along with their fellow tribune Sallustius Crispus (later on the famous historian), held contiones practically every day in which they launched a campaign intended at prosecuting Milo as the main culprit of the assassination. Very seldom must Rome have seen such an intense popular uprising, except those caused on several occasions by the scarcity of food, which is evidence for the extraordinary popularity of Clodius. In the turmoil and agitation that ensued in the urbs, Pompey was appointed consul sine collega and took it upon himself to restore order. His response was the enactment of a law against violence which resulted in the prosecution of many Clodians. But he was also forced to prosecute Milo for the assassination of Clodius as the only way of appeasing the people’s disquiet. Milo was exiled for the rest of his life to Massilia, despite Cicero’s fruitless efforts to defend him at the trial. Cicero had put all his efforts into creating the kind of image of Clodius that would suit his interests in the eyes of the Roman elite, but in contrast to Clodius, he did not seem to have the appropriate means to convey such an image to the plebs. It is probable that in the s gossip circulated amongst the population in Rome regarding the episode of the Bona Dea, when Clodius apparently fled disguised as a woman, along with rumours about his incestuous relationship with his sister, and perhaps others about lurid activities that his enemies attributed to him. But either most of the urban plebs did not believe such rumours because they did not give credit to the sources, or they simply ignored them and chose to remain loyal to a politician who had introduced measures of great social relevance, such as a corn law offering free provision of grain to a significant section of the urban plebs. This would explain why Clodius, while receiving strong opposition from the majority of the senate, had the support of the urban plebs who benefited from his policies.

35

On his name and character, Shackleton Bailey ; ; Flambard . See on this topic Sumi . Cf. Will  –; Lintott a, xiii–xv; Pina Polo  –. 36

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

After Caesar’s death,37 a period of struggle began in Rome which was acted out both in the political and military arenas. The fate of the Roman res publica was settled, to a large extent, on the battlefield, but control over public opinion in the urbs continued to be a relevant factor. Between September  and April , Cicero led a furious campaign against the absent Mark Antony, which is still extant in the fourteen Philippics. Two of these were given before the people in contiones, and the rest were delivered in the senate, apart for the second, which was a pamphlet circulated in writing. The language used by Cicero was similar in each of these scenarios, and included a fundamental attack on Mark Antony both on political and personal levels. He used many of the same insults that he had let fly against Clodius, Catiline and other adversaries years before, attributing to Mark Antony all sorts of private vices since his adolescence, such as homosexuality, male prostitution, and extortion (Cic. Phil. .–); he accused him of having committed crimes when he was a magistrate, of being nothing but a wretch, he repeatedly called him a public enemy and called on the Roman people to start a war against him to free themselves from his tyranny (Cic. Phil. .–, .– ; .; etc). Cicero achieved part of his objectives and was one of the great promoters of the civil war that broke out in the first months of the year . Yet in the end, despite all his invectives, he seems to have failed again in his aim of turning public opinion against Mark Antony. As had already happened with the Gracchus brothers, Clodius and Caesar, public opinion in Rome, seen as a measure of the state of mind of the population of the city as a whole and not only of the ruling classes, does not seem to have taken a significant turn against Mark Antony, despite the multiple uncertainties of this period. Indeed, the political agreement between the triumviri was to result not only in Cicero’s final political failure but also in his death. In this context Octavian appeared, an outsider at first, yet one who played his cards right and ended up getting hold of all power for himself. One of those cards was his presence in the city of Rome while his adversaries were away, but he also possessed skills at maintaining a rapport with the urban plebs and transmitting his messages to them. In the process that led him from semi-obscurity to becoming princeps, Octavian, from his very first appearance in public, resorted to an intelligent use of oratory before the people. In this sense, each of his speeches in 37 On the proliferation of rumours against Caesar which surely had an influence on the fact that his assassination was carried out, see Yavetz  –.



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a contio was an important step in his objective to gain popular support, initially to consolidate himself as an alternative to those in power, later on to disqualify his adversaries. At the time of the assassination of Caesar, Octavian was away from Rome, but he returned in May. Since he had not held any magistracies up until then and he was not a member of the senate, he could not have free access to the Curia to address the senators. Nevertheless, Octavian knew he must have a platform to broadcast his messages and be noticed by the population of Rome. For this reason, one of the first things he did was to speak in a contio summoned for him by the tribune of the plebs L. Antonius.38 At a time of confrontations between pro-Caesar and anti-Caesar factions, Octavian’s only political asset was to have become the adopted son of the dead dictator. The fact that his official name had become C. Iulius Caesar had a symbolic and propaganda relevance that he was not inclined to waste. His adoption also had a practical significance, since, as the heir to the dictator and trustee of all his goods, it was up to Octavian to fulfil the promises included in Caesar’s will, some of which involved substantial expenses in favour of the urban plebs. This is why, in the assembly presided over by tribune L. Antonius, Octavian presented himself as Caesar’s sole heir and claimed that he would honour Caesar’s will. The simple fact that he was allowed to speak before the people from the Rostra implicitly meant his acknowledgement as a member of the elite, despite his lack of previous merits. The message contained in his speech turned his adoption into a political action and placed Octavian in the race for power. A few months later, Octavian addressed the people again from the orators’ tribune in a contio summoned for him by the tribune Cannutius.39 This time his speech had a much more political nature. He openly criticised Mark Antony’s actions, while he proclaimed himself as Caesar’s political successor. He went on to state that he expected to reach the same position as his adoptive father and, in order to arouse his audience, he pointed to the nearby statue of the assassinated dictator. Some months later, his participation in the triumvirate made up of Mark Antony and Lepidus unquestionably positioned him as one of the candidates to gain control of the government of the Empire. In the following years a manifold struggle to attain power was unleashed, which, to a great extent, was a war of attrition between the contenders. Multiple 38 39

Cic. Att. ..; .; ... D.C. ..; .; ..; App. BC .–; Cic. Att. ...

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factors contributed to Octavian’s final success. No doubt, one of them was his skill at persuasion in gaining the support of the majority of the people. As in any civil confrontation, it was particularly important to bring the opponent into disrepute.40 At this time, more than ever, pamphlets, libels, poems and letters were circulated around the city in favour of one or the other. Tacitus mentions the existence of some “Antonii epistulae” which included attacks on Octavian.41 Other pamphlets accused Octavian of being a coward, adulterous and coming from a second rate family, etc. Of course, there were also libels against Mark Antony, especially regarding his fondness for drink.42 Yet taking part in a contio continued to be, beyond the written medium, the most direct form of circulating an idea amongst the population of Rome. In the year , when the Roman plebs were suffering shortages of supplies because of piracy in the Mediterranean, Octavian seized upon the chance to state in an assembly that Sextus Pompey was in fact responsible for those actions. In order to justify his accusation he maintained that he had captured some pirates who had confessed under torture that Pompey was their chief.43 Obviously, what really mattered was not whether the accusation was true, but that it was perceived as credible by the plebs. An obvious corollary from this accusation was that the end of Sextus Pompey would bring about the end of Rome’s food shortages. Octavian had managed to create a negative image of Pompey as an enemy of Rome and its people, and he had succeeded in establishing the idea that it was essential to start a war against him which was not a civil war between Romans, but a conflict between patriots and traitors. Pompey could not possibly defend himself from the accusations since he was away from Rome, thus being defenceless in the face of public opinion. War was declared and Sextus Pompey was defeated in Naulochos, so Octavian could triumphantly return to Rome to present himself before the people as their liberator and proclaim himself the guarantor of food supplies for Rome.44 40 41 42

Jal   ff. Tac. Ann. ... Syme  –; Jal  –; Scott ; ; Charlesworth  –

. 43

App. BC .. D.C. ... A version that is highly favourable to Augustus is included in Livy’s Periochae: Cum Sex. Pompeius rursus latrociniis mare infestum redderet nec pacem quam acceperat praestaret, Caesar necessario adversus eum bello suscepto duobus navalibus proeliis cum dubio eventu pugnavit (Liv. perioch. ). 44



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Mark Antony posed the final obstacle for Octavian. A military confrontation was inevitable, but once again the war had to be justified by bringing the adversary into disrepute. Octavian found the convenient argument when he got hold of Mark Antony’s will, which had been deposited in the temple of the Vestals in Rome. Firstly, he read its contents in the senate and later on, before the people in an assembly. The will apparently stipulated that Cleopatra’s children were Mark Antony’s legitimate heirs and it stated his wish to be buried in Alexandria.45 In this manner, the rumours that had circulated around Rome in the previous few months regarding Mark Antony’s attitude and his close relationship with the Queen of Egypt were fully confirmed. It seems obvious that the population of the urbs believed this will to be authentic and from that moment on several rumours started to circulate around Rome, no doubt prompted by Octavian and his supporters, according to which Mark Antony and Cleopatra planned to conquer the Occident and transfer the capital of the Roman Empire to Alexandria.46 Mark Antony, just as Sextus Pompey before him, was not in a position to counteract personally the propaganda against him since he was not in Rome, so widespread hostile public opinion towards him became prevalent. As a result, a great consensus was formed around the figure of Octavian and war against Mark Antony as an enemy of the Roman people was proclaimed, though it was officially declared against Cleopatra, which formally avoided its consideration as a civil war.47 The final victory in Actium made the-soon-to-become-Augustus the sole governor of the Roman Empire and opened up the path to the consolidation of a new political regime. Once again, Octavian’s presence in the urbs had eventually proved to be a basic form of influencing public opinion and winning the population’s political support, turning his personal enemies into enemies of the plebs and of the res publica, and himself into the only possible protector of Rome, Italy and the whole of the Occident. The plebs were not the decisive element in his final victory, but the combination of the oratory displayed in contiones and the rumours spread about the city contributed to Octavian’s goals being progressively attained, leading to the final and most important aim: him becoming princeps.

45 46 47

D.C. ... Cf. Eder  –. D.C. ... Meier , –; Eder  ; Syme  –.

DECEIT AND THE STRUGGLE FOR ROMAN FRANCHISE IN ITALY

Christopher Dart Italy under the Roman Republic was subject to complex systems for determining civic status, legal rights, and the use of the land. Civic status had direct implications for the individual in terms of legal rights and capacity to participate in Roman political life. So too access to land, either as the owner, the possessor, or simply the user, was directly linked to capacity to generate income, civic status, and political participation. This nexus was of principal interest to many of the powerful political figures of the second and first centuries bce. Many in Italy were desirous of reform, and Roman politicians recognised that sponsorship of popular reform could be an effective vehicle for political advancement. The initiatives of the Gracchii, Fulvius Flaccus, and Livius Drusus, together with the compromises following the Social War, have long been recognized as fundamental steps in the reorganization of Roman Italy, but they also formed part of wider political programmes centred in Rome itself. It is in this context that this chapter will investigate different examples of deceit associated with the Roman franchise in Italy. This chapter will in fact investigate examples of deceit on both sides; on the one hand, it will identify attempts to gain citizenship (or some of the privileges of citizenship) through deception by Italians and on the other deceitful acts by members of the Roman elite. There was often a great gap between what was promised and what was delivered on the issue of citizenship in Italy. Such outcomes could be interpreted as unfortunate if the parties involved genuinely intended to deliver upon their promises. It will be argued, however, that the elites in Italy, both Roman and nonRoman, frequently never intended to deliver upon their promises, and regarded deceit as an essential, if distasteful, political tool. In particular it will be argued here that Italians desirous of Roman citizenship were frequently misled or encouraged to hold unrealistic expectations for reform by members of the Roman elite in the second and first centuries bce, and that for this reason many of the so-called “reformers” of the late Republic in fact intentionally manipulated the non-citizen

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population of Italy by using their desire for enfranchisement.1 For those in Italy who did not possess a form of Roman conferred citizenship (be that full Roman citizenship, civitas sine suffragio or Latin rights) the promise of enfranchisement was frequently made by Roman politicians, but rarely was legislation even put forward to address the disparity of their civic status. This situation is perfectly illustrated by the example of the younger Livius Drusus who, despite numerous promises to his Italian supporters,2 never presented his citizenship bill for ratification by the assembly. Study of these deceptive practices with respect to awarding Roman citizenship during this period, with all the consequences it had for voting rights in the comitia in Rome, provides important background to the wider study of the role of deceit in subverting the constitutional and legal bases of the res publica in the late first century bce, which is treated at length elsewhere in this volume.3

Concealing Inequity Citizenship was not typically offered as a reward for loyalty; more often than not it was awarded as a check on disloyalty. In this sense, the Roman treatment of their allies was frequently inequitable. On the one hand, disloyal communities could be harshly punished (even physically dismantled) while on the other, they might be appeased through the award of citizenship. Resentment on the part of non-Roman Italians that they had contributed to the creation of the empire without having equitably shared in the benefits was a central issue in the lead-up to the Social War. For instance, shortly after the murders at Asculum in  bce and on the brink of open warfare between Rome and her allies, representatives of the Italians sent ambassadors to Rome. According to Appian they complained that, “although they had co-operated in all ways with the Romans in building up the empire, the latter had not been willing to admit their helpers to citizenship” (App. BC .). For the 1 Contra Keaveney , who argues that men from the Gracchii brothers to Sulla were motivated by a genuine desire to enacted reform and that their failings were “largely because of the resistence of their contemporaries” (p. ). 2 Drusus not only met with a prominent member of the Italian leadership (Plu. Cat. Mi. . and V. Max. ..) and enjoyed Italian support for his legislative program (Liv. perioch.  and Flor. ..–) but also received an oath of support from the Italians (D.S. .). On the authenticity of the oath, see Taylor  –. 3 See in particular the contributions of Hurlet, Vervaet, and Rich.

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Italians, several years of bloody warfare achieved what no amount of asking could, the extension of Roman citizenship. In the accounts of historiographers writing at the end of the republic and in the early principate, particularly Livy, these actions had long antecedents. In  bce the majority of the Latin peoples were given Roman citizenship in the aftermath of two years of conflict with Rome. The speech which Livy puts into the mouth of the consul of , L. Furius Camillus, argues that, reliqua consultatio est, quoniam rebellando saepius nos sollicitant, quonam modo perpetua pace quietos obtineamus and poses the question, uoltis exemplo maiorum augere rem Romanam uictos in ciuitatem accipiendo? Livy then asserts that this was intended to be a check on ongoing resistance.4 The Campanian cities, which on the contrary, had come to the aid of the Romans, were only given civitas sine suffragio.5 Far from being an act of generosity, these non-Latin cities were to be used as bulwarks against future incursions into, the now Roman region of Latium.6 In  bce a coalition of twelve Latin colonies sent word to Rome that they were no longer able to fulfil their obligation of providing men for military service.7 Shortly afterward representatives of the other eighteen Latin colonies, led by the representative for Fregellae, pledged that they would continue to supply men without fail and at whatever cost. Livy carefully named each of the thirty cities involved and was clearly impressed with the patriotism displayed by these Latin cities. The loyal communities were also among those named as having fought at Pydna. Despite their loyalty these communities only received full citizenship after the Social War.8 The people of Fregellae were butchered by the Praetor Opimius in  bce, while demanding citizenship. Opimius then subsequently added to his reputation the odium of having killed the supporters of Gaius Gracchus. In  bce the Campanians received some citizen rights despite the treason of some of their communities during the Second Punic War. This was in response to a request that their status be settled. Though both 4

Liv. ..–. Liv. ... For discussion of these arrangements, see Alföldi  –, Sherwin-White  –, Cornell   and Forsythe  –. 6 Salmon  –. 7 Liv. .. 8 For instance, Ariminum, Beneventum and Brundisium all eventually became citizen colonies, but after the Social War. See RE .–; .–, –; for Ariminium’s colonial status, Plin. Nat. . and .. 5

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traitors and dediticii their request was permitted.9 In the following year ( bce) the people of Arpinum, Formiae and Fundi, also received full citizenship.10 The bill was proposed without the support of the senate and four of the tribunes threatened to impose their veto. C. Valerius Tappo prevailed upon the other tribunes to desist and the cities were awarded full citizenship by vote of the tribal assembly.11 They were, however, enrolled across two separate tribes; a move which would limit their ability to vote as a block. In both the case of the Campani and that of Arpinum, Formiae and Fundi the peoples in question were already Roman citizens. The treatment of the communities with Latin rights was, on the whole, characterised in our later sources by reluctance to extend citizen rights to them. The majority were in fact only given Roman citizenship during the Social War. In  bce the Italian confederacy defeated several Roman armies and killed one of the consuls. It was in this climate that the resolve of the Etruscan and Latin communities began to waiver, despite centuries of loyalty, and in response they were hurriedly given citizenship under the threat of impending violence.

Acquisition of Roman Citizenship by Deceit and Draft Avoidance In the second century bce there are a number of examples of individuals and groups attempting to exploit participation in Roman colonial projects. This deception could take the form of attempting to gain citizenship when the individual had not previously possessed it and was not entitled to it, or by attempting to retain citizenship when the individual had renounced their civic rights in the process of having joined a colony. Civic status was principally determined by a person’s place of residence. It was commonplace for Roman citizens to renounce their citizen rights in order to participate in a Latin colony. By accepting a limited form of civic status they thereby became eligible for the gifts or assign9

Liv. . and . Sherwin-White  –, – and Scullard  . Sherwin-White  , . 11 Liv. ... Tappo had been on a board of three in  and . This board was established to lead out , new families to Placentia and Cremona (Liv. ..–), but in  the triumviri used , individuals for the founding of Bononia (..– ) instead. These colonists were given large allotments, with the cavalry men receiving  iugera to the other colonists  iugera. As demonstrated by Brunt   f., there were frequent difficulties with keeping colonists at communities such as Cremona and Placentia. 10

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ments of land associated with the colonial project. However, so long as at least one son remained within the new colony, the citizenship of the other men in the family was determined by the civic status of their place of permanent residence.12 The requirement that one son should always remain was intended to ensure that the new community never dropped below the initial male population at the time of settlement. In the years after the Second Punic War both peoples holding Latin rights and those of allied status made numerous attempts at acquisition of full Roman citizenship. Most of these initial efforts were by subterfuge, however, by  bce some began to pursue direct political means through the plebeian tribunate and finally in  bce (with these efforts having failed) initiated a war with Rome. These attempts attest that there existed a widespread desire amongst the non-citizen population of Italy to acquire full status as Romans. In  bce a three-man commission, consisting of M. Servilius Geminus, Q. Minucius Thermus and Ti. Sempronius Longus, was set up for enrolling  families per colony at Puteoli, Volturnum and Liternum, with similar settlements at Salernum and Buxentum.13 Latins from the city of Ferentinum attempted to claim full Roman citizenship after having been enrolled for three of the prospective colonies, Buxentum, Puteoli and Salernum. In  /  bce their enrolment was investigated and their claim to citizenship was eventually found to be illegitimate by the senate and rejected (Liv. ..–). However, given that their claim was questioned they must have been initially successful. The enrolment of Latins in a citizen colony was not the principle issue; these Latins had not defrauded the commission by being enrolled but rather by acting as through they were already citizens prior to settlement.14 While Livy is not specific, several likely offences can be suggested. 12

Liv. ... On the possible reasons and limitations see Sherwin-White  , . Liv. ..– and ..–. Broughton  i.. The commission (triumviri coloniis deducendis) was set up with a law passed by the tribune C. Atinius, with the triumvirs appointed for three years. Broughton  i., following Niccolini, suggests that C. Atinius was the same man as C. Atinius Labeo (trib. pl.  and pr. ) and that the lex was therefore passed at the end of the consular year. That is, between  December  (when Atinius entered office) and March . 14 It should be noted that it is often overlooked that Latini and people from nonRoman Italian communities could enrol in Roman colonial projects and thereby acquire the civic status of the colony. See Smith  and Salmon  –, n. . This incident was interpreted by Sherwin-White  – as an attempt on the part of Latins to join a citizen colony, ie. that non-Romans could not be enrolled in citizen colonies. Salmon  – argued that the senate investigated the issue at the insistence of those 13

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The right to cast a vote in the centuriate and tribal assemblies was the principle distinction in the rights of full citizens and Latins. Some of the Ferentinates may have attempted to vote. Alternatively they may have attempted to enlist as citizens within the army. Even if every member of the prospective colonies had been expatriates of Ferentinum, it would still only be about  individuals, and their impact would have been minimal. In  bce in response to a complaint by some Latin cities, , Latins were identified as having illegitimately been acting as citizens. These men had presented themselves before the censors and successfully convinced the officials that they held full citizen rights at the three censuses between  bce and  bce (Liv. ..–). Their home communities were most likely concerned that the reduction in population would put undue pressure to serve in the army on those who remained. These Latins were subsequently deported to their home communities. Yet, this problem persisted in the second and first centuries bce. There were numerous potential benefits to these men. By migrating to Rome and illegally claiming citizenship before the censors these men were avoiding being drafted as allied soldiers. Many more may have gone undetected, using this deception to join one of the numerous citizen colonies established in the s and s in the manner that the Ferentinates had done. In  embassies were sent to Rome by the Latin colonies and also by the Samnites and Paelignians concerning the depletion of their communities. The Latins complained that large numbers of their people were migrating to Rome in order to be counted as citizens (Liv. ..–), and Livy explains that citizens were evading the law by one of two methods, both of them fraudulent (genera autem fraudis duo mutandae viritim civitatis inducta erant; ..). First, by leaving a son behind in slavery to a Roman citizen the other men within the family could relocate to Rome and claim citizenship. Once they were citizens the enslaved son could be manumitted and thereby also acquire Roman citizenship without having left the colony. Second, by adopting someone else to remain in their place the entire family could leave the colony and take up citizen status. These were both a manipulation of the law which required that colonists should always leave one son within the colony. Ferentinates which had remained in their community. Smith , and subsequently Salmon , have demonstrated that the issue was with the Ferentinates acting as though they were citizens prematurely.

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In a similar fashion four thousand Samnite and Paelignian families had moved to Fregellae (Liv. ..). Simply by moving between communities of Latin or allied status gave people an avenue for avoiding military service. Each community was required to make available to the Romans a set number of men.15 By moving, these people had increased the population of Fregellae and thereby decreased the risk of being required to perform military service in any year. Conversely, their former communities had their populations reduced and thus those who remained were at increased risk of having to serve. The grievances of the non-Roman communities had been initially taken to the Roman censors and to previous consuls, before being addressed by the consuls of .16 The most recent census had been conducted by M. Aemilius Lepidus and M. Fulvius Nobilior in .17 The senate prohibited these practices and required those who had moved to return home. Similarly, in  bce it was discovered that large numbers of Italians had again been illegitimately enrolled as Roman citizens. In response, the lex Licinia Mucia attempted to cancel the enrolment of all Italians who were not legally entitled to citizenship.18 The implication of Asconius is that these men included principes Italianorum populorum, possibly including the future Italian leaders of the Social War. Asconius says that, “[the Roman consuls L. Licinius Crassus and Q. Mucius Scaevola] carried a law for returning the allies to their own states: for since the Italian peoples were possessed by a terrible desire for Roman citizenship and thus many of them were passing themselves off as Roman citizens, a law seemed required to return them all to their own states. By it, really, the leading Italians were so offended, however, that it was the main cause of the Italian war which broke out three years later.”19 (Asc. Corn. )

Via both subterfuge and, in the case of Fregellae, open resistance occasioning violence, the Italians had attempted to acquire Roman citizenship. The Roman elite were clearly aware of this desire, not simply because they took steps to prohibit illegitimate acquisition of citizenship, but also 15

See, for instance, Liv. ..–. Liv. ... 17 Liv. Perioch. . 18 The law was thought to have intentionally sought to expel all non-Roman residents of Rome from the city, but as Badian established, this was probably not the purpose of the lex (Badian  – and  [note R]). Badian called it an act which “grossly disappointed and insulted” the leading Italians. 19 Trans. Ridley  . 16

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because the prospect of enfranchisement was used as a tool for cynically exercising leverage with Latins and non-Romans. There is a major inconsistency in the policies of numerous tribunes of the plebs over more than half a century. The inclusion of citizenship bills was often promised as part of broader reform. Yet such bills had to be passed with the approval of the existing citizen body. Such bills cannot have been forwarded as a mechanism for inducing the support of Italian people with the plebeian assembly at the time of their proposal, as there was a long lead-time between enfranchisement, assessment by the censors and the first opportunity for a new citizen to vote.

Gaius Gracchus and Fulvius Flaccus A consequence of the original Gracchan land commission was that it threatened to evict legitimate Italian occupants from their land.20 In  bce, shortly after the death of Tiberius Gracchus the commissioners became bogged down in disputes with Italians who claimed either possessio or dominatio over portions of land affected by the redistributions (App. BC .). Many of these claimants had lost the documentation proving their right to the land. The outcome of these disputes for the Italians was invariably negative. Many of the rural Italians who approached the commission believed that they were dealt with unfairly by the triumvirs.21 As a result in  bce the Italians engaged Scipio Aemilianus to intervene on their behalf. The incident represented a new level of political participation on the part of the Italians. He is said to have been reluctant to become involved but felt obligated to assist the Italians. Appian says that because of the help that the Italians had provided to Scipio in the past he felt indebted to intercede for them (App. BC .). Scipio’s efforts to resolve the problem not only failed, he exacerbated it by transferring the judicial powers of the triumvirs to one of the consuls. Scipio’s sudden death seems to have once again left the affected Italians “out in the cold”. In  bce the tribune M. Iunius Pennus expelled all non-Romans from the city and attempted to prohibit their settlement in Roman com-

20 On the issue of whether Latins and Italian allies were eligible for grants of land by the commission see: Badian  –, Shochat  and Richardson . 21 The resumption of land by commission probably breached treaties with allied communities. See Gabba  .

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munities throughout Italy.22 His rationale for this decision would seem to have been to prevent Italians from supporting Fulvius Flaccus’ election as consul or illegitimately casting votes.23 This may have been unsuccessfully opposed by Gaius Gracchus.24 But Gracchus was chosen by lot to go to Sardinia with the consul of , L. Aurelius Orestes.25 The date of the consul’s departure is unknown, but Gracchus was also accused of having also been involved in the revolt of Fregellae in , while he was most definitely still overseas.26 Gracchus had already sent clear messages that he, like Flaccus, had pretensions to being an ‘Italian champion’.27 The nature of the support that the Italians would have provided to Flaccus is not explained. The expelled Italians may have been intending to influence the outcome through intimidation or by illegally casting votes in the assembly; both forms of action are attested in reference to other instances. Flaccus was successfully elected for  bce and subsequently proposed the extension of citizenship to the Italians and the ius provocationis to those who did not what to receive citizenship.28 It is likely that this proposal had been anticipated. Firstly, Flaccus had been a member of the board of three since  bce29 and as such would have been keenly aware of the difficulties that the Italians faced. Secondly, Flaccus and Gaius Gracchus were aware of the popularity of such a proposal among the allies and were seeking ongoing political support from them (App. BC .). Given conservative concerns over the presence of non-Romans during the consular elections it seems there was a genuine fear they might unduly affect the outcome of the election. This is incredible given that it was an election within the comitia centuriata, where all present must have been assessed by the censors in order to vote.30 Yet, concern over Italian interference in the elective and legislative activities of the Roman state became common. 22

Cic. Off. ., Brut. . On Pennus, Broughton  i.. See Lintott  . The law also again addressed the issue of non-citizen residence in citizen communities. 24 See: Broughton  i.– on Cic. Off. .; Brut. . 25 Plu. CG .. For the consulship of Orestes, see Broughton  i.. 26 He served with Orestes, who was in Sardinia from  to  (Liv. Perioch. , Fasti triumphales  [Degrassi  ]). Gracchus was cleared of any wrong doing (Plu. CG .–). 27 He then argued in  for the extension of citizenship (App. BC .). 28 App. BC . and V. Max. ... Suggested by Badian –, to have been for individuals not entire communities. See also Hands . 29 Broughton  i.. 30 In the comitia tributa, knowing the correct tribe in which a man’s vote should be cast was probably the only prerequisite. 23

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Appian presents two different sequences of events in the first months of Flaccus’ consulship. In the first instance, Appian claims that while both triumvir and consul (that is, between January and March  bce) Flaccus pursued his citizenship bill and, “exerted himself to the utmost to bring it about, but the senators were angry at the thought of making their subjects equal citizens with themselves. For this reason the attempt was abandoned.” (App. BC .)

Appian asserts that Flaccus voluntarily abandoned the citizenship proposal in the face of conservative resistance. Yet in a later passage Appian claims that, “when he [Flaccus] introduced this idea and strenuously persisted in it, the Senate, for that reason, sent him away to take command in a war.” (App. BC .)

The second passage can be easily discredited. Until  bce, it was standard procedure for the Senate to assign consular provinces after the consuls had taken up office. In addition, it was within the prerogative of the Senate to redefine these arrangements in the case of emergencies.31 Furthermore, had Flaccus determined to pursue his citizenship bill in the face of senatorial resistance, all that he needed to have done was to refuse the command or obtain the veto of one of the tribunes of  bce in order to remain within Italy. Rather it would seem that Flaccus had been elected making protestations of being in favour of extension of the franchise. When he encountered strong elite resistance he then determined it more expedient to accept a province, his command being prorogued for  and providing him with a triumph in  bce.32 This also meant that Flaccus’ army was outside the walls in  during at least the early part of Gaius Gracchus’ first year as tribune. Following Flaccus’ triumph, he was elected as tribune for  bce. In  bce the Latin city of Fregellae lobbied to receive ius provocationis; Flaccus’ suggested alternative to full enfranchisement. This was rejected and the community declared itself to be independent. The praetor Lucius Opimius was sent out and rapidly destroyed the community.33 This was particularly abysmal treatment in light of two centuries of loyalty which the community had shown to Rome. Fregellae was established 31

Vervaet . Fasti triumphales  (Degrassi  ). 33 Liv. Perioch. , Vell. .., Cic. Pis.  and Phil. .. Opimius requested, but was refused a triumph (V. Max. .. and Amm. ..). 32

deceit and the struggle for roman franchise in italy  as a Latin colony on the Liris River in  bce, and its placing on the Samnite side of the river acted as a catalyst for war with the Samnites (Liv. ..–, .–). The city was subsequently surrendered to the Samnites in  bce but was recaptured by the Romans in  /  bce (Liv. ..–, .–). It remained loyal throughout the Samnite Wars and the Hannibalic War despite having been in grave danger several times. Moreover, in  bce when twelve of the Latin colonies refused to supply additional men, Fregellae acted as the representative of the loyal cities (Liv. ..–.). Despite its centuries of staunch loyalty, Fregellae had not received citizenship whereas communities in Campania, which had betrayed the Romans during the Second Punic War, did receive citizenship (Liv. .). In , Gaius Gracchus (probably at the instigation of Flaccus) incited the Latins to demand full citizen rights and proposed extending the franchise to all allies (App. BC .). Again concerns over the potential for violence and electoral fraud led the senate to decree that only full citizens could remain within the city for the duration of voting on the laws.34 Despite the expulsion of non-citizens, it is clear that there was considerable unrest among the Italians. The elder Livius Drusus proposed a bill prohibiting the scourging of Latins.35 This was an unprecedented privilege, offered in the hope of dissolving Italian support for Gracchus and Flaccus, seemingly with little concern for what the potential long-term legal ramifications might be.

Livius Drusus and Poppaedius Silo The role of the Italian leader Q. Poppaedius Silo is often underestimated in reference to the Social War. Poppaedius not only engaged and lobbied Drusus to take up the issue of Italian enfranchisement (Plu. Cat. Mi. ); he also spurred other cities to revolt after the massacre at Asculum in

34

App. BC .. This was a stunt which had been successful for Flaccus in  / . Plu. CG .– cf. App. BC .. According to Plutarch, Drusus’ bill prohibited the beating of any Latin with rods, even during military service. He does not claim that the bill was ever passed by the People and Appian’s silence on the issue may further indicate that it was merely proposed. Sherwin-White  – suggests that this was a proposal to extend ius provocationis and argues on the basis of later examples that this right was not extended. But a blanket ban went far beyond ius provocationis and is indicative of the aggressive way in which Drusus attempted to break-up the Gracchan support base in . 35

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 bce.36 He then became the leading man of the Italian war effort until his death in  bce.37 Either in  bce or early in  bce Silo stayed as a guest in Drusus’ home upon an unknown pretext in the hope of soliciting support for Italian enfranchisement (Plu. Cat. Mi. . and Val. Max. ..). While there is no surviving source which describes their actual meeting, I have argued in a previous paper that an agreement between the two men explains both the presence of numerous Italian allies in Rome in  bce and their attempts at influencing the passage of Drusus’ legislation.38 Indeed, Appian likely refers to this agreement when he says that Livius Drusus promised the Italians, “at their urgent request, that he would bring forward a new law to give them citizenship” (App. BC .). Drusus clearly accepted Italian support for his other reforms on the promise that he would put forward a bill to enfranchise them. This can be inferred from the consistent references in the sources to Italian involvement in Drusus’ legislative activities in  bce. The summary of Livy claims that with Italian assistance he had his laws passed with force (per vim legibus . . . latis; Liv. Perioch. ), yet Drusus failed to put the citizenship bill to a vote. Vellius Paterculus claimed that Drusus intended to make concessions to the plebs so that they would allow the passage of his other reforms. When this proved to be unsuccessful he instead determined to exploit Italian support (Vell. ..–.). Diodorus Siculus claims that “when none of the promises made to the Italians were realised, war flared up between them and the Romans” (D.S. ..). The summary of Livy similarly asserts that “when these promises to the allies could not be effected, the Italians became enraged and agitated a revolt” (cum deinde promissa sociis civitas praestari non posset, irati Italici defectionem agitare coeperunt; Liv. Perioch. ). Certainly late in  bce Poppaedius Silo had become impatient with Drusus and marched on Rome with , of his armed supports with the intention of demanding citizenship (D.S. .). He was convinced to desist by a Roman friend which he encountered on the road.39 Within a few months, the massacre at Asculum triggered the Social War and 36

Flor. Epit. ..– and Vell. ... On his life see Dart . On Silo’s powers as a member of the Italian confederacy see Dart . 38 Dart . 39 Diodorus says Gaius Domitius; this probably refers to Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, tribune of , consul in  and censor with Licinius Crassus in . He had been responsible for populist legislation as tribune (Cic. Agr. .–). 37

deceit and the struggle for roman franchise in italy  Silo became the leading man in the Italian war effort. Drusus, like his predecessors, had made promises which he could not keep; he benefited from Italian support but, with deceitful opportunism, cut his non-Roman backers lose when he encountered strong elite resistance. The rhetoric of the literary sources is also strikingly consistent as to the injustice of the Italians’ position and the honesty with which their goals were pursued (despite the brutality of the war).40

Post-Social War Despite the nominal enfranchisement of most of Italy by the end of the Social War, it was not until  bce that the majority of new Romans were assessed by the census. The Italians had been led to believe they would be enfranchised; this was the principal condition for the cessation of hostilities and yet they were denied assessment for two decades. Between  /  and  /  there was ongoing agitation over the manner in which the new citizens were to be admitted to the tribes. This debate was something of a moot point so long as the census was suspended. A few brief examples will illustrate the deceptive behaviour which continued to interfere with the issue of enfranchisement. In  bce Sulpicius Rufus attempted to overturn the original proviso that the newly enfranchised Italians would be enrolled into ten additional tribes and that these tribes would be required to vote last. Such a proviso would have rendered the Italians’ right to vote meaningless. The lex Sulpicia was passed by the assembly of the Plebs prior to the Italians being enrolled. Later in , Sulla as consul annulled all of Sulpicius’ legislation on the pretext of annulling the transference of the eastern command. Marius and Cinna, who had acted with total disregard for popular sovereignty by appointing themselves consuls,41 had the census conducted in  bce amidst much turmoil and bloodshed but the result was faulty.42 In  bce, with Sulla’s return to Italy imminent, Cinna and Carbo hastily attempted to raise support among the local elites in Italy. According to Appian, they falsely claimed that it was in defence of the rights 40

Cf. Cic. Phil. ., D.S. ., or App. BC .. Cf. Liv. Perioch. : et citra ulla comitia consules in sequentem annum se ipsos renuntiaverunt. 42 The census was conducted by L. Marcius Philippus and M. Perpena (for whom, see V. Max. .. and Plin. Nat. .). They counted only , citizens (Hier. Chron. s.a.) despite the mass enfranchisement of most of Italy. 41

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of these new citizens that they were opposing Sulla. In response, Sulla asserted that he would take revenge upon the perpetrators, on behalf of both those who had been wronged and the city. He claimed that neither the existing citizen body nor the new citizens were threatened by him. In an act of self-determination many of Cinna’s soldiers deserted when they discovered they were being transferred to Illyria for use in a civil war (App. BC .–). Once in absolute control as dictator, Sulla actively denied some communities their citizenship rights. His suspension of the censorship, however, was a far more insidious and underhanded means of denying people the rights they had acquired in the Social War. Assessment by the censors was a prerequisite for being able to cast a vote in the assemblies.43 The lack of a census obstructed half a million new Romans from being assessed until the restoration of the censorship in  bce. Despite the death of Sulla it took the better part of a decade for the census to be restored. Its restoration finally allowed nearly half a million Italians to be assessed and assigned to a tribe and a property class. When the censorship was conducted in  bce,44 the first time in sixteen year, throngs of Italians came into the city to vote.45 The censors of  bce returned the more realistic result of , male citizens (Liv. Perioch. ). Estimates of the real population vary greatly; according to the estimates of Brunt, the number of adult males was probably approximately ,,.46 The implications of recent work by Lo Cascio would suggest an even larger population.47

Conclusions This chapter has attempted to identify examples of deceitful acts by both Roman citizens and non-Roman Italians alike. The interrelated issues of citizenship and access to land were vexed problems for Republican Italy, and it is thus little wonder that some resorted to acts of deceit in an attempt to either gain citizenship or present themselves as the advocates of those who sought it. Many of those who purported to 43 Staveley  –, Nicolet  – and Lintott b –. On the powers of the Censors see Liv. ..–, Cic. Leg. .., Plu. Cat. Ma. .–. 44 Cic. Clu. , Liv. Perioch.  and Plu. Pomp. .. 45 Taylor  . 46 Brunt  –. 47 Lo Cascio .

deceit and the struggle for roman franchise in italy  be advocates for enfranchisement consistently failed to deliver on their promises. Furthermore, many Romans made gestures of being in favour of enfranchisement without ever making a constructive contribution. To make matters worse, citizenship was often awarded sporadically and must have seemed at times quite arbitrary to non-Romans. The work of advocates such as Cicero demonstrates that even once citizenship was granted many had great difficulty in having their rights and the rights of their communities properly recognised. The self-proclaimed populist politicians of the second and first centuries bce were ineffective at extending political and legal equality to the Italians. Instead it was deception, violent protest, and more than two years of brutal warfare which proved effective. It is a great irony that, despite the deceitful behaviour of many within the Roman elite, when such legislation was put to the assemblies, ordinary Romans endorsed the extension of the franchise.

POUVOIRS EXTRAORDINAIRES ET TROMPERIE. LA TENTATION DE LA MONARCHIE À LA FIN DE LA RÉPUBLIQUE ROMAINE (82–44 AV. J.-C.)

Frédéric Hurlet S’agissant du pouvoir et des conditions de son exercice dans une société donnée, le soupçon n’est jamais loin, quelle que soit d’ailleurs la forme du régime concerné. Le pouvoir en place a été et est régulièrement accusé de ne pas toujours tout dire de façon à dissimuler aux gouvernés des réalités qui pourraient être gênantes. Les multiples expériences politiques contemporaines ont renforcé la méfiance instinctive des historiens à l’égard des affirmations émanant de toute forme de pouvoir, dans la mesure où ont été développées depuis le XIXe siècle des pratiques dont l’objet était de mettre en condition les masses populaires et qui pouvaient se transformer en autant d’entreprises de désinformation. Mais ce que nous appelons « propagande » n’existait pas dans le monde antique, du moins pas sous la forme qu’on lui connaît aujourd’hui. Il faut au contraire admettre qu’à l’inverse de notre vécu contemporain, les nombreux hommes de pouvoir qu’a connus l’Antiquité ne bénéficiaient ni d’un appareil d’État ni de structures de communication suffisamment perfectionnées pour prendre le contrôle de ce qu’on nomme de nos jours « l’opinion publique ».1 Il demeure que les hommes politiques, Grecs et Romains, pouvaient être amenés à mentir, parfois par omission, même lorsque les décisions faisaient l’objet d’un débat public. Il faut y ajouter le goût de l’aristocratie romaine pour l’obscuritas et sa propension à la dissimulatio que venait renforcer le contexte politique de la fin de la République.2 Un des objectifs de cet ouvrage collectif est précisément de s’interroger sur ce que les principaux dirigeants de l’Antiquité avaient à cacher, sur les modalités de cette pratique et sur le degré de bonne ou de mauvaise foi dans leurs discours. Une question centrale, complexe, est à ce titre celle de leur sincérité. 1 Sur l’inadéquation du concept contemporain de propagande pour l’Antiquité, cf. Weber and Zimmermann  et Veyne  –. 2 Sauron  –, – ; cf. aussi Sauron  –.

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Les éléments de réponse sont multiples. Ils dépendent en premier lieu de la nature même du régime politique concerné. Pour ce qui est du principat en place à Rome depuis Auguste, Tacite et Dion Cassius s’accordent à dire chacun à leur manière qu’une de ses caractéristiques était le secret qui entourait la prise des décisions impériales.3 Le régime antérieur, la République, se définit en sens inverse par la publicité qui était accordée aux mesures prises dans un cadre officiel par le Sénat et le peuple Romain,4 mais on sait bien que les décisions ne se prenaient pas toutes publiquement et que certaines d’entre elles étaient débattues plus en amont dans des cercles aristocratiques restreints selon des modalités qui nous échappent en grande partie. Un des lieux communs de notre culture (occidentale) est de prêter aux différents imperatores de la fin de la République—Marius, Sylla, Pompée et César—de sombres et d’obscurs desseins, à savoir abolir le régime républicain pour fonder un régime personnel qui leur donnerait la première place. Même si nous avons désormais appris à nous méfier d’une analyse linéaire qui ferait de la chute de la République une nécessité historique au nom d’un prétendu déterminisme rétrospectif, il faut admettre que le soupçon continue à peser sur leurs intentions profondes, à juste titre d’ailleurs quand on analyse la manière dont César exerça à Rome ses pouvoirs après sa victoire sur Pompée et les Pompéiens. Mais ce qui vaut pour César ne peut s’étendre aux autres grands généraux de la fin de la République sans examen approfondi de la documentation. L’enquête est complexe, car elle présuppose de connaître non seulement ce que ces personnages ont bien voulu dire publiquement et ce que les sources ont enregistré, mais aussi ce qu’ils n’ont pas pu ou pas voulu faire savoir. Or nul n’ignore à quel point il est difficile de sonder les intentions profondes d’individualités engagées dans la vie politique et disparues qui plus est il y a plus de   ans. Dans ces conditions, la seule méthode qui vaille pour enregistrer à ce sujet quelque progrès est institutionnelle : elle consiste à définir le statut au sein de la Res publica de chacun des imperatores de la fin de la 3

Sur la dissimulatio dans l’œuvre de Tacite, cf. en dernier lieu l’étude éclairante de Pani  – ; pour Dion Cassius, le témoignage capital est celui qui compare la publicité des mesures officielles adoptées par le Sénat et le peuple sous la République avec le secret qui entourait les décisions des empereurs (D.C. .. ; cf. toujours à ce sujet les remarques de Millar  –). 4 Millar est sans doute l’historien qui a le mieux mis en évidence l’importance de la « publicité », marquée par la volonté de l’État romain de faire connaître ses décisions à un public qui n’est autre que le populus romanus, même s’il a été conduit à exagérer le poids des comices dans la définition du système politique républicain (ses principaux articles ont été rassemblés dans Millar  – ; cf. aussi Millar ).

pouvoirs extraordinaires et tromperie

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République et à analyser les actions qu’ils ont réalisées en vertu (ou non) de ce statut. Plus que d’hypothétiques projets qui leur ont été prêtés à un moment ou un autre et dont nous ne savons pas au bout du compte s’ils étaient ou non destinés à être mis en œuvre, ce sont les faits qui peuvent nous éclairer sur les motivations réelles. C’est à ce stade de l’enquête qu’il faut faire intervenir la question des pouvoirs extraordinaires de la fin de la République et de leurs incidences sur la chute du régime républicain. La période qui va de  à Auguste se caractérise par une multiplication de pouvoirs que les Romains qualifiaient d’extraordinaires.5 Les principales étapes sont connues : la dictature de Sylla fit place aux différents imperia dont fut investi Pompée en ,  et  en qualité de priuatus cum imperio et auxquels succédèrent les dictatures de César et le triumvirat. Le terme de l’évolution est à situer avec la somme des compétences qui fut octroyée à Auguste et qui forma le cœur institutionnel du nouveau régime, le principat, de fait monarchique. Tous ces pouvoirs ont été analysés dès l’Antiquité comme autant de moyens déguisés pour s’emparer du pouvoir, et le conserver. Ils ont été ainsi présentés comme les éléments centraux d’une politique fondée sur la dissimulation, les intentions monarchiques d’Auguste étant projetées sur Sylla, Pompée et César en vertu d’une analyse rétrospective attribuant un caractère inéluctable et linéaire au processus qui a conduit à l’instauration d’un pouvoir personnel. Une telle interprétation a fait florès à propos des pouvoirs extraordinaires qui avaient été conférés à Pompée et dont on a pu dire qu’ils préfiguraient les pouvoirs militaires d’Auguste. Le mimétisme institutionnel entre Pompée et Auguste est une idée ancienne qui a été défendue par Eduard Meyer au début du XXe siècle6 et qui me semble en grande partie justifiée, le princeps s’appuyant sur un précédent républicain pour définir ses pouvoirs militaires.7 Mais si Pompée fut en partie imité par Auguste, il n’est pas pour autant assuré qu’il ait voulu fonder un principat, pour reprendre le titre de l’ouvrage de Meyer. La question essentielle est donc de déterminer comment la position exceptionnelle de Pompée fut ressentie dans les années  et  av. J.-C., au moment même où elle lui fut conférée. Il s’agit d’étudier les institutions comme une réalité vécue. Les interprétations possibles sur la perception créée par l’octroi d’imperia extraordinaires sont multiples si l’on se place aussi bien du point de vue de Pompée que de celui de ses contemporains. Pompée exploita-t-il ces 5 6 7

Sur la définition de l’imperium extraordinarium, cf. Girardet  –. Meyer . C’est une idée que j’ai défendue récemment dans Hurlet .

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frédéric hurlet

pouvoirs extraordinaires comme un moyen déguisé de prendre la première place dans l’Empire et de fonder à terme un nouveau régime ? Ou tira-t-il seulement profit des virtualités des institutions républicaines pour mettre fin aux différentes situations de crise liées aux actions des pirates et de Mithridate ou à la question du ravitaillement de Rome sans songer à se maintenir indûment à la tête de l’Empire une fois les conflits résolus ? Quant à ses contemporains, ressentirent-ils de leur côté les pouvoirs extraordinaires de Pompée comme une réelle menace pour la République ? Ou faut-il voir les critiques adressées à Pompée de son vivant sur le caractère exorbitant de ses pouvoirs comme une conséquence de la concurrence féroce que se livraient les principaux aristocrates au sein du système politique républicain et qui passait traditionnellement par l’accusation d’aspirer à la royauté (l’adfectatio regni) ? La réponse est loin d’aller de soi. Il faut soigneusement distinguer les intentions profondes de Pompée et les interprétations qui en ont été données après coup.8 Il est incontestable que la création du principat influa fortement sur l’analyse des pouvoirs extraordinaires de la fin de la République, plusieurs auteurs d’époque impériale les interprétant comme une forme de préfiguration du principat augustéen. Mais c’est là une explication ex eventu, avec ce que cela présuppose de déformation qui fait courir un risque d’anachronisme. Il ne faut donc pas accuser systématiquement tous les imperatores de la fin de la République d’avoir dissimulé leurs projets avant d’avoir procédé à une analyse des sources qui cherche à identifier toutes les motivations liées à la multiplication des pouvoirs extraordinaires et qui replace chacune de ces expériences institutionnelles dans leur contexte. C’est à ce tour d’horizon que cet article voudrait procéder.

Un cas d’école : la dictature de Sylla et l’abdication L’abdication de Sylla, quelle que soit la date précise de cet événement (,  ou  ?),9 est un acte politique significatif de la discordance qui pouvait s’établir entre un geste tel qu’il fut perçu par ses contemporains 8 Il s’agit là d’un principe d’ordre méthodologique qui a été récemment et à juste titre rappelé et illustré à propos de Sylla par Hinard  – et –. 9 Cette question de chronologie a donné lieu à de nombreuses études. Parmi les hypothèses qui ont été envisagées, on retiendra les quatre suivantes : er juin  (Hinard  et Hinard  : –) ; peu de temps avant la fin de l’année  (Keaveney ) ;  décembre  (bibliographie dans Hurlet b) ;  (Vervaet  –, revenant à une datation autrefois défendue).

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et le souvenir que les générations ultérieures en conservèrent. L’attitude consistant à déposer un pouvoir extraordinaire qui avait permis à un seul homme de s’emparer du pouvoir après une guerre civile donna vite lieu à des interrogations, signe de l’incompréhension que le geste de Sylla suscita. Moins de  années après cette abdication, César marqua son étonnement lorsqu’il fit savoir que « Sylla avait fait preuve d’ignorance quand il s’était dessaisi de la dictature. »10 Plus qu’un jugement objectif, il faut voir dans cette remarque une forme de cynisme de la part d’un homme politique dont on sait qu’il n’eut jamais l’intention de renoncer à la dictature exercée à partir de  et qui finit par être investi en février  d’une dictature à vie. Il n’est en outre pas sûr que cette remarque soit authentique : elle a très bien pu être forgée de toutes pièces par celui qui rapporte de tels propos, à savoir Titus Ampius, un adversaire de César, dont l’extrait a été repris par Suétone pour présenter César comme un tyran.11 Appien semble en revanche plus sincère lorsqu’il précise que « c’est pour moi un sujet d’étonnement qu’après avoir été le premier à détenir aussi longtemps une vaste puissance, Sylla l’ait abandonnée de luimême, non pas en faveur de ses enfants, ainsi que l’ont fait Ptolémée en Égypte, Ariobarzane en Cappadoce et Séleucos en Syrie, mais au bénéfice de ceux-là mêmes qu’il avait assujettis à sa domination » ; il ajoute que « c’était même une absurdité, pour lui qui n’était parvenu à la dictature qu’à force de batailles et de périls, de s’en démettre spontanément » (App. BC .). Cette analyse est influencée par des parallèles monarchiques que l’historien grec connaît bien : non seulement les précédents hellénistiques auxquels il fait directement référence, mais aussi le pouvoir impérial romain qui était le régime en vigueur dans l’Empire romain au moment où il vécut (au IIe siècle). La voie était ainsi tracée pour les interprétations contemporaines qui ont fait de Sylla un monarque avant l’heure et de la dictature un instrument institutionnel républicain pour instaurer par la voie légale ce qui était de facto une monarchie.12 L’interprétation qui fait de Sylla un aspirant à une forme ou une autre de monarchie pose problème : à partir du moment où l’on lui attribue un tel dessein et où l’on dissocie totalement la dictature syllanienne des

10 Suet. Jul. . (Sullam nescisse litteras, qui dictaturam deposuerit) ; Suétone attribue cette phrase à Titus Ampius. 11 Cf. à ce sujet le scepticisme de Syme  , de Jehne   n.  et  n.  et de Gascou  – sur l’authenticité de ce bon mot de César. 12 On songe bien entendu à la thèse de Carcopino , souvent citée, même si elle n’est plus défendue aujourd’hui.

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anciennes dictatures en vigueur du Ve au IIe siècle, l’abdication perd sa signification traditionnelle et devient proprement incompréhensible. Pour résoudre cette difficulté, Jérôme Carcopino a proposé une solution ingénieuse, à défaut d’être convaincante : Sylla aurait abdiqué la dictature parce que les temps n’étaient pas mûrs pour une monarchie militaire.13 Or plus personne ne défend aujourd’hui la thèse de la monarchie « manquée » et la communauté scientifique est unanime pour voir dans les lois de Sylla un train de mesures qui avaient pour objet de restaurer le régime républicain dans un sens oligarchique et d’annuler la plupart des initiatives « populaires » réalisées depuis les Gracques.14 Le dictateur n’était sans doute pas le dernier républicain, pour reprendre le titre de la biographie de Keaveney, mais il était un républicain sincère qui voulait réformer la République avec les moyens institutionnels que lui reconnaissait la tradition—le mos maiorum—en situation de crise. On comprend à quel point il faut faire preuve de la plus grande prudence lorsqu’il est question des intentions de Sylla et ne pas céder trop facilement à la théorie du complot, du mensonge et de la dissimulation. Tout indique au contraire que loin d’être le précurseur de César et d’Auguste, il n’a jamais aspiré de son vivant à la monarchie, ni non plus trompé ses contemporains sur un projet qui s’inscrivait dans le contexte des luttes entre factions et ne cachait rien de son affiliation au programme des optimates. C’est à titre posthume, sous la pression de la faction rivale des populares et d’un Jules César se présentant comme l’adversaire du syllanien Pompée, que l’image de Sylla se transforma progressivement, le dictateur étant rendu coupable d’avoir instauré une dominatio et soupçonné de prétendre au regnum conformément à un mode de dénigrement politique courant à la fin de la République. Le renouvellement des proscriptions en  et l’instauration du principat augustéen contribuèrent à ce que Sylla fût dépeint sous les traits traditionnels du tyran cruel, avide et débauché.15 Mais il s’agit non plus d’histoire, mais de mémoire.

13

Carcopino   et –. Cf., e.g., Gabba  – ; Badian  et Badian  ; Nicolet  – et Nicolet  – ; Keaveney  ; Hinard  ; Hurlet b ; Christ . 15 Hinard  et Hinard  –. 14

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Les imperia extraordinaires de Pompée16 Plus encore que la figure de Sylla, celle de Pompée était ambivalente de son vivant même.17 Il était un homme politique ambitieux qui disparut victime des contradictions de son époque sans avoir rien changé au système politique en place, mais aussi un général souvent victorieux qui établit avec les provinciaux des relations préfigurant celles d’Auguste avec ses administrés. Les multiples commandements militaires dont il fut investi en  et  contribuèrent à alimenter le débat sur ses intentions profondes, voire les fantasmes. Ils s’écartaient de manière significative des règles traditionnelles alors en vigueur en matière de conduite de campagnes militaires et méritent le qualificatif d’extraordinaire. Au contraire de la dictature syllanienne, les pouvoirs conférés à Pompée pour combattre les Pirates et Mithridate et assurer le ravitaillement de Rome n’étaient pas adossés à une magistrature, mais ils reposaient sur un imperium dont il avait été investi à un moment où il n’était qu’un simple particulier. À un statut de priuatus cum imperio qui justifiait déjà à lui seul le caractère exceptionnel des missions de Pompée s’ajouta la vaste étendue géographique des tâches qui lui furent successivement confiées : toute la Méditerranée lors de la guerre contre les Pirates, avec la possibilité intervenir dans toutes les provinces situées le long de la mer dans un rayon de cinquante milles à partir du littoral ; toutes les provinces d’Asie Mineure pour les besoins de la campagne contre Mithridate ; de nouveau toute la Méditerranée lorsque Pompée fut chargé de la cura annonae en . Il faut enfin prendre en compte les durées inhabituelles de toutes ces missions : le triennium qui avait été prescrit en  dans la perspective de la guerre contre les Pirates fut prolongé jusqu’en  pour les besoins de la guerre contre Mithridate ; quant à la cura annonae de , elle lui fut octroyée pour un quinquennium.18 L’investiture des missions extraordinaires confiées à Pompée dans les années  et  av. J.-C. suscita à Rome de vives oppositions pour des 16 Je m’intéresse dans ce chapitre essentiellement aux pouvoirs extraordinaires de Pompée des années . Pour ce qui concerne les pouvoirs qui lui furent conférés dans les années  et , je renvoie aux études de Girardet  – et de Vervaet , ainsi qu’à l’article de Vervaet publié dans ce volume pour ce qui concerne la recusatio prouinciae de . 17 Cf. Baltrusch . 18 Sur la définition de ces commandements exceptionnels et la nature—extraordinaire—de l’imperium de Pompée, cf. une mise au point utile par Girardet  ; cf. aussi Hurlet  –, –, –, – et Hurlet .

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raisons que les sources aident à mieux comprendre. Ce furent les lois de  et , la lex Gabinia et la lex Manilia, qui furent le plus violemment contestées par les optimates, la première étant en particulier votée par le peuple sans l’accord préalable du Sénat.19 Une question abordée par de nombreuses sources est celle des motivations de Pompée. Plutarque présente la loi de Gabinius comme un moyen de donner à Pompée « un pouvoir monarchique (μοναρχα) et une autorité sans contrôle sur le monde entier »,20 mais il faut se défier d’une analyse qui a toutes les chances d’être anachronique et inspirée par un mode d’analyse propre aux auteurs grecs. Les contemporains avaient une vision plus nuancée des pouvoirs extraordinaires attribués à Pompée. Si les populares—dont Jules César—appuyèrent le projet de loi de Gabinius (Plu. Pomp. .), les optimates dénoncèrent avec virulence une position qui assurerait à un rival une prééminence aussi nette à la tête de la Res publica, situation très embarrassante si l’on se place du point de vue d’un système politique fondé sur la concurrence entre aristocrates. Mais il est remarquable qu’à notre connaissance, aucune source contemporaine des événements de  ne prête à Pompée l’idée de renverser le régime républicain ni ne fait de son imperium conféré extra ordinem l’instrument institutionnel d’un tel dessein. Un témoignage précieux est le discours prononcé par Q. Lutatius Catulus, le consul de  qui était un des adversaires les plus résolus de Pompée, devant l’assemblée du peuple avant le vote de cette loi et rapporté par Dion Cassius. S’il faut faire la part du souci de recomposition littéraire chez l’historien grec, il y a à ce jour un accord général pour admettre que le discours de Catulus tel qu’il nous est parvenu repose sur des sources bien informées et reproduit la teneur des propos tels qu’ils furent prononcés sinon sur la forme, du moins sur le fond.21 Celui qui était alors 19

Cf. à ce sujet le récit qu’en donne Gelzer  –. Plu. Pomp. ., qui précise que « Gabinius, un des familiers de Pompée, proposa une loi qui donnait non seulement le commandement de la flotte, mais vraiment un pouvoir monarchique et une autorité sans contrôle sur tous les hommes ». 21 Cf. dans ce sens Hinard  . Sur les sources utilisées par Dion Cassius pour faire le récit de la crise de la république romaine et reconstruire en particulier le discours de Catulus, cf. en dernier lieu Lintott  – qui arrive à la conclusion que Dion ne tire pas son information d’un ou de deux auteurs, Tite-Live et Salluste en l’occurrence, mais qu’il travaille à partir d’un plus grand nombre de sources au sein desquelles il opère une sélection. Cette méthode rend ses propos sur la fin de la République d’autant plus personnels, et ainsi plus crédibles dans le sens où il ne dépend pas d’un seul auteur contemporain des événements—éventuellement mal ou bien intentionné à l’égard de Pompée. 20

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un des personnages les plus en vue des optimates et en même temps une figure respectée développa une argumentation qui soumit à une critique systématique le projet de loi de Gabinius et qui est d’autant plus intéressante qu’elle fut présentée devant l’assemblée du peuple acquise à la cause de Pompée. Il lui fallait à ce titre être persuasif et faire usage de tous ses talents rhétoriques pour dissuader les comices de voter cette loi sans s’en prendre directement à Pompée. Il s’agissait donc d’une analyse de fond plus qu’un discours polémique. Le premier argument avancé par Catulus était qu’il ne fallait pas confier à un seul homme un aussi vaste commandement militaire.22 À l’analyse, il ne faut pas en déduire que Catulus accusait implicitement Pompée de vouloir fonder une monarchie. Il rappelle plutôt que le système politique alors en vigueur était ainsi fait qu’il reposait sur une forme d’égalité oligarchique et ne pouvait accepter une situation de fait qui donnait à une forte personnalité politique de trop vastes pouvoirs.23 Le très grand danger dont il est question dans ce discours (cf. l’usage de σφαλερτατον ; D.C. ..) ne réside donc pas dans le risque de disparition de la République, régime toujours solide en  et auquel il n’existait pas encore d’alternative (j’y reviendrai), mais dans la crainte de voir les équilibres politiques traditionnels rompus en raison de l’ambition démesurée d’un aristocrate et de la place prééminente que celui-ci se réserverait en vertu de la lex Gabinia. Une autre critique récurrente formulée par Catulus dans son discours consistait à présenter le commandement militaire de Pompée comme un pouvoir nouveau, une καιν #ρχ ou une καιν ?γεμονα, voire comme « un commandement étrange et auquel on n’avait encore jamais eu recours », dont il ne fallait pas l’investir sous peine de commettre une illégalité.24 Il rappelle à cet effet que la tradition à Rome était de confier la direction de campagnes militaires aux magistrats en fonction pourvus de l’imperium, en l’occurrence les consuls et les préteurs (D.C. ..– ). Le caractère extraordinaire de l’imperium de Pompée y est ainsi dénoncé non pas pour une prétendue dérive monarchique, mais parce qu’il contrevenait au mode de fonctionnement coutumier des institutions républicaines. La preuve en est que Catulus n’hésita pas à préciser que s’il 22

D.C. .. ; cf. aussi .–. Sur le concept d’égalité oligarchique, cf. Meier b  qui parle de l’ « Erstarrung der oligarchischen Gleichheit » et Jehne  –. 24 Cf. D.C. .. où le pouvoir de Pompée est défini comme une καιν τις #ρχ ; . où il est question d’une καιν ?γεμονα ; . avec l’emploi de la périphrase ξνη δ τις κα4 μηπποτε γεγενημνη ?γεμονα. 23

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frédéric hurlet

y avait la moindre nécessité de recourir à une magistrature en plus des magistratures annuelles, il y avait ce qu’il appelle « un modèle ancien », à savoir la dictature, avec cette réserve que le dictateur était nommé pour une durée maximale de six mois sans avoir le droit d’intervenir en dehors de l’Italie conformément à la tradition.25 L’argument négatif qui consiste à signifier que Pompée ne peut être désigné à la seule magistrature extraordinaire autorisée par la tradition en raison de l’extension de ses pouvoirs à l’ensemble de la Méditerranée place la critique de l’imperium extraordinaire sur le terrain des institutions, mais il ne faut pas oublier que l’opposition de Catulus est d’abord d’ordre politique. Ce qui y est dénoncé est le caractère exorbitant et non traditionnel d’un pouvoir qui donnait à un seul homme un vaste commandement militaire et remettait ainsi en cause les structures de la République romaine. Le discours de Catulus apparaît comme une analyse équilibrée, même si elle est tout empreinte de rhétorique parce qu’elle se veut persuasive,26 qui reflète la teneur des débats soulevés par la proposition de loi de Gabinius et exprime le point de vue d’un certain nombre de sénateurs : derrière les propos policés de Catulus qui parlaient de Pompée avec un grand respect se dissimulaient jalousie et méfiance à l’égard de celui qui commençait à vouloir apparaître comme un primus inter pares.27 Les critiques émises en  à l’encontre des pouvoirs de Pompée n’eurent pas toutes la retenue ni la hauteur de vue que Catulus avait su montrer dans son discours, mais il ne faut pas les prendre toutes au pied de la lettre ni les placer sur le même plan. Dans certaines circonstances déterminées par l’âpreté des luttes politiques qui opposèrent optimates et populares en , les échanges pouvaient se faire plus vifs et les attaques personnelles plus directes, par exemple lorsqu’un des consuls en exercice de cette année, C. Calpurnius Piso, fit savoir à Pompée que « s’il voulait imiter Romulus, il n’éviterait pas d’avoir la même fin que lui » (Plu. Pomp. .). Mais cette accusation outrancière relevait plus de l’invective politique traditionnelle à la fin de la République que d’une argumentation raisonnée et ne doit pas être exploitée pour créditer Pompée de la volonté d’instaurer à terme une monarchie. Il ne faut pas voir des arcanes là où il ne pouvait y en avoir dans le contexte de l’époque. D.C. . ; Dion présente la dictature comme un παρδειγμα #ρχα3ον. Le discours de Catulus fit grande impression dès l’Antiquité si l’on en juge par le fait que Dion Cassius l’inséra dans son œuvre et si l’on en croit Velleius Paterculus : « il convient de rappeler à cette occasion le prestige et la modération de Q. Catulus » (Vell. ..). 27 Brunt  . 25 26

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Une année après le vote de la lex Gabinia, Cicéron présenta sa propre interprétation de la finalité des pouvoirs extraordinaires dans le discours qu’il prononça pour soutenir le projet de loi de Manilius visant à accorder à Pompée le commandement de la guerre contre Mithridate. Il est bien connu qu’il développa toutes les raisons qui allaient dans le sens du vote de cette loi. Il fut également amené à la fin du discours à faire écho dans le cadre d’une réfutation aux arguments que Catulus et Hortensius avaient opposés à Manilius et qui portaient aussi bien sur la lex Manilia que sur la lex Gabinia de l’année précédente. Il est remarquable qu’on y retrouve les mêmes reproches que ceux qui avaient été formulés une année plus tôt par Catulus dans le discours reproduit par Dion Cassius : en l’occurrence qu’il n’est pas opportun de confier à un seul homme des pouvoirs aussi étendus,28 d’autant plus que de tels pouvoirs dérogent aux usages et aux coutumes de nos ancêtres.29 Une telle concordance entre le discours de Catulus et celui de Cicéron, qui sont tous deux contemporains des événements des années –, est remarquable. Elle signifie que nous sommes en présence de la perception que les adversaires de Pompée avaient des pouvoirs extraordinaires de ce dernier au moment où ils furent conférés et de façon plus générale de son projet politique. Le comportement de Pompée après sa victoire sur Mithridate et à son retour en Italie en  achève de lever les doutes sur sa volonté de situer ses actions dans le cadre des règles républicaines, puisqu’il licencia ses troupes avant de célébrer son triomphe et de redevenir un simple particulier.30 À la différence des hommes politiques, les faits ne mentent pas ! Cet épilogue, heureux pour la République, dissipait certaines des craintes que l’on avait pu nourrir sur les intentions de Pompée et les potentialités de son imperium extraordinaire,31 mais il ne doit pas nous

28

Sur cet argument, cf. Cic. Man.  : ad unum tamen omnia deferri non oportere. Sur cet argument, cf. Cic. Man.  : at enim ne quid noui fiat contra exempla atque instituta maiorum. La suite de cet extrait montre que le principal reproche que Catulus adressa à Pompée était de combattre en tant que priuatus ou de triompher « en tant que chevalier romain ». 30 La volonté de Pompée de déposer ses pouvoirs aussi rapidement que possible, c’est-à-dire quand la mission pour laquelle il avait été désigné était accomplie, était proverbiale dès l’Antiquité (Plu. Mor. d). Dans la laudatio funebris que l’empereur Tibère prononça en  ap. J.-C. à la mort d’Auguste et qui est reproduite par Dion Cassius, le licenciement des troupes par Pompée en  fut louée et comparée à l’attitude d’Auguste en , lorsqu’il manifesta son intention de renoncer à ses pouvoirs—intention qui fut elle vite abandonnée (D.C. ..). 31 Plutarque fait écho à ces craintes lorsqu’il rappelle dans le contexte du retour de Pompée en Italie en  qu’ « il courait à Rome des bruits de toutes sortes sur Pompée, 29

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frédéric hurlet

conduire à défendre à l’inverse une vision angélique qui consisterait à lui dénier la moindre velléité de dissimulatio. Si Pompée ne trompa pas ses contemporains sur la réalité d’un projet monarchique qui n’existait pas en tant que tel, il agit en fin politicien qui sut user d’artifices pour arriver à ses fins, à savoir être investi de l’imperium contre les pirates. Le discours qu’il prononça devant l’assemblée du peuple en  au moment des débats sur le projet de loi de Gabinius et qui est reproduit par Dion Cassius est de ce point de vue remarquable en ce qu’il affirma refuser les vastes pouvoirs extraordinaires dont il savait qu’ils ne pouvaient en réalité pas lui échapper.32 C’est le thème de la recusatio imperii, rituel bien connu de l’époque impériale qui trouve ses origines dans la pensée politique grecque et des précédents républicains, dont celui de Pompée est à notre connaissance le seul connu.33 On distingue ce qu’Auguste emprunta au précédent pompéien et ce que son projet avait d’original : il doit à Pompée non pas l’idée d’un principat, irréalisable dans le contexte des années  et , mais la forme institutionnelle de son pouvoir militaire (le consulare imperium extraordinaire) et le principe selon lequel le pouvoir se reçoit plus qu’il ne se prend. Pompée était loin d’avoir le monopole de l’hypocrisie attachée à l’exercice du pouvoir. On rappellera en ce sens qu’au nombre des arguments avancés pour dissuader le peuple de voter la lex Gabinia, Catulus avait rappelé les risques encourus par la conduite de la guerre contre les pirates et n’avait pas hésité à demander quel chef remplacerait Pompée s’il lui arrivait quelque malheur. Question à laquelle le peuple Romain avait répondu non sans ironie en désignant Catulus : « toi, Catulus » !34 Connue sous la dénomination de cura annonae, la tâche étendue que constituait le ravitaillement de Rome fut confiée en  à Pompée également après une série de manœuvres en coulisses qui eurent en commun de justifier le recours à un tel pouvoir extraordinaire et de le rendre acceptable par le peuple et le Sénat. Je ne reviens pas ici sur les modalités de

et l’émotion y était grande : on craignait qu’il ne fît marcher immédiatement son armée contre la Ville et n’y établit solidement une monarchie » (Plu. Pomp. .). 32 D.C. .–. Sur le discours de Pompée de  et la comédie qu’il joua à cette occasion en affirmant ne pas vouloir d’un imperium extraordinaire pour combattre les pirates, il faut renvoyer pour plus de détails à l’article de Vervaet publié dans ce volume. 33 Cf. Huttner  – qui, citant une analyse de E. Meyer et la reprenant à son compte, rappelle que « Pompeius, Augustus und Tiberius bildeten somit eine Reihe der ersten Prinzipes, die sich alle nur unter drängenden Bitten bereitklärten, Macht zu übernehmen » ; cf. aussi pp. –. 34 Plu. Pomp. . ; Vell. .. ; Cic. Man.  et Val. Max. ...

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la dissimulatio dont Pompée fit preuve à cette occasion, parce que cette question a été étudiée de façon détaillée par Fr. Vervaet dans un article de ce volume auquel je renvoie. Les enjeux étaient sensibles : il en allait de la position de Pompée au sein de la Res publica et de sa popularité auprès du peuple de Rome.

Les bruits de dictature et le consulatus sine collega de Pompée (–) À partir de l’année , le bruit courut à Rome sur la nécessité d’instituer une dictature, la première depuis Sylla.35 Cicéron rapporte en effet dans une lettre à son frère Quintus datée de juin  qu’ « il y a quelque soupçon, mais vague lui aussi, de dictature. »36 D’autres témoignages ne laissent aucun doute sur l’identité de la personne pressentie pour faire fonction de dictateur : il s’agit de Pompée, qui avait envoyé ses propres légats en Espagne tout en restant lui-même à Rome—du moins à proximité (ad urbem).37 Une ère de suspicion s’ouvrait à nouveau à Rome en liaison avec l’usage qu’il pouvait faire de cette magistrature extraordinaire, renforcée d’un autre côté à partir de la fin des années  par les interrogations sur le comportement de César en Gaule et son projet de se porter candidat au consulat in absentia. Quelle que fût son origine, la rumeur qui circulait sur la volonté de Pompée de devenir dictateur dura pendant près de deux années, se ranimant de temps à autre en fonction des circonstances jusqu’à son élection comme consul sine collega au début de l’année . Elle suscita chez les optimates, Caton avant tout, des réactions de rejet d’autant plus compréhensibles que la dictature était une magistrature extraordinaire qui donnait à une seule personne un pouvoir supérieur à 35 Cf. à ce sujet de manière générale Borle . La dictature de Sylla avait laissé de mauvais souvenirs et il faut compter dans les années  et  avec la crainte diffuse à Rome qu’une telle magistrature extraordinaire réapparaisse dans un contexte de crise. Des rumeurs avaient déjà circulé en  sur la préparation d’un coup d’État qui aurait abouti à conférer la dictature à Crassus et la maîtrise de cavalerie à Jules César (Suet. Jul. .–) ; Pompée lui-même avait été qualifié publiquement par Caton de priuatus dictator en  (Cic. Q. fr. ..), mais cette appellation n’avait d’autre visée que polémique. 36 Cic. Q. fr. .. : erat aliqua suspicio dictaturae, ne ea quidem certa ; cf. aussi Cic. Att. .. : est nonnullus odor dictaturae, sermo quidem multus (fin octobre ) ; Cic. Ad Quint. fr. .. : rumor dictatoris (fin novembre ou début décembre ). 37 Sur la présence de Pompée ad Vrbem, cf. Caes. Gal. .. ; Cic. Q. fr. .. ; D.C. .. ; Plu. Pomp. . ; Plu. Cat. Mi. .. Sur l’envoi de légats en Espagne, cf. D.C. .. et Vell. ...

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frédéric hurlet

celui de tout autre magistrat et qui faisait débat dans les milieux politiques depuis le précédent syllanien exercé moins de trente années auparavant. Un tel projet, sans doute soutenu par Pompée en sous-main, alimentait à Rome ce que Cicéron appelle de la « crainte »,38 mais il faut faire la distinction entre les réactions irrationnelles qu’entraînait l’éventualité d’une dictature et le caractère plus limité des actions qui étaient envisagées en vertu de cette magistrature. Les sources indiquent en effet qu’il fut question d’instituer dans les années  non pas une dictatura rei gerundae causa en vigueur du Ve au IIIe siècle, ni non plus une dictature constituante comme celle de Sylla, mais une dictature dont le seul objet aurait été de faire élire les deux consuls.39 C’était ce que les sources appellent une dictatura comitiorum habendorum causa, qui est attestée par les sources à de multiples reprises à Rome depuis le milieu du IVe siècle () et qui se limitait à la présidence des comices consulaires. On peut également songer à une dictatura interregni causa. Ce type de dictature se justifiait parfaitement dans le contexte des années ,  et , marquées par une vacance du consulat pendant de nombreux mois. On se souvient en effet que la crainte de ne pas pouvoir tenir les comices pour élire les consuls de  se manifesta dès la première moitié de l’année  et n’était pas sans fondement, puisqu’il fallut attendre le mois de juillet  pour que fussent élus au consulat de cette année Cn. Domitius Calvinus et M. Valerius Messala. Cette situation se renouvela à la fin de l’année  et conduisit à une nouvelle vacance du consulat au début de l’année  et à une crise qui atteignit son paroxysme avec l’assassinat de Clodius en janvier et qui fut (temporairement) résolue avec l’élection de Pompée comme consul sine collega à la fin du mois de février. La solution retenue en  et en  fut la désignation de nombreux interrois, un tous les cinq jours, mais la nomination d’un dictator comitiorum habendorum causa ou interregni causa en la personne de Pompée était une autre possibilité institutionnelle conforme au mos maiorum qui avait été sérieusement envisagée avant d’être rejetée. Il n’y avait guère de risque que Pompée utilisât la dictature pour s’emparer durablement du pouvoir à Rome, puisque la règle voulait que le dictateur abdiquât sitôt ses fonctions accomplies—en l’occurrence l’élection du ou des consul(s). C’était sans compter avec les fâcheux sou38 Cic. Q. fr. .. : dictaturae etiam rumor plenus timoris ; cf. aussi Q. fr. .. : sed tota res et timetur et refrigescit. 39 Cf. Cic. Q. fr. .. qui ne laisse aucun doute sur la nature de la dictature qui aurait été conférée à Pompée en évoquant la possibilité que Messala puisse être élu au consulat soit à la suite d’un interrègne, soit à la suite d’une dictature. Cf. dans ce sens Fantham   n.  et Kunkel and Wittmann  .

pouvoirs extraordinaires et tromperie

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venirs qu’éveillait le terme de dictature aux Romains des années  et l’inquiétude qui pouvait poindre lorsqu’on songeait aux pouvoirs exorbitants attachés à cette magistrature extraordinaire. L’idée de voir Pompée dictateur fut définitivement écartée, mais ce serait une erreur de faire de la dictature l’instrument institutionnel d’un projet monarchique hypothétique et secret. L’analyse du contexte dans laquelle s’inscrivaient ces bruits de dictature a montré au contraire qu’il fallait se garder de donner à cette magistrature extraordinaire une finalité autre que circonstancielle, qui était la présidence des comices consulaires et la possibilité d’influer sur le choix des consuls. Pompée était motivé dans toute cette affaire non pas par la perspective de prendre durablement le pouvoir, mais par le besoin viscéral de n’être étranger à aucune des décisions importantes qui se prenaient à Rome. Que l’élection des consuls fasse incontestablement partie de ses priorités n’étonnera pas si l’on prend en considération la centralité de la place tenue par ces magistrats dans le gouvernement de la République romaine. On voit donc apparaître en filigrane la nature profonde de l’action de Pompée : non pas instaurer un pouvoir personnel, ni non plus de façon générale mettre en place un régime qui préfigurerait sous une forme ou une autre le principat d’Auguste, mais se réserver la première place dans un système politique fortement compétitif. La position institutionnelle à laquelle parvint Pompée dans le courant de l’année  achève de nous convaincre que la dictature n’était pas une fin en soi. Une fois résolues les difficultés liées à la vacance du pouvoir consulaire, cette magistrature n’avait plus de raison d’être réclamée. C’est ce qui arriva en . On sait en effet qu’après s’être heurté à une vive opposition notamment de la part d’un Caton qui n’entendait pas accepter l’institution d’une dictature, Pompée devint finalement consul sans collègue pendant quelques mois, le temps qu’il organise de nouvelles élections pour s’adjoindre un collègue en la personne de son beau-père Metellus Scipion.40 Cette solution ne laisse pas d’étonner à première vue, le consulat sans collègue apparaissant comme une initiative de loin plus novatrice qu’une dictature comitiorum habendorum causa, voire comme une monstruosité institutionnelle en ce qu’il rompait avec le principe de la collégialité du consulat. Mais le contexte avait entre-temps changé, les optimates acceptant au bout du compte que Pompée devînt consul sans collègue. C’est dire jusqu’à quel point la dictature n’était rien d’autre dans les années – qu’un des éléments du rapport de force qui se jouait alors à Rome. 40

Broughton  ii.–.

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frédéric hurlet

Dans cette affaire, Pompée se montra à l’aise dans l’art de la dissimulation en faisant diffuser des rumeurs41 ou en agissant en sous-main depuis l’endroit où il se trouvait, c’est-à-dire à la fois près de Rome et à l’extérieur de l’Vrbs. Les attestations de ce comportement sont multiples et les procédés variés. Appien rapporte que « Pompée faisait exprès de tout laisser aller pour qu’on éprouvât le besoin d’un dictateur » ; il ajoute un peu plus loin que « lui-même (= Pompée) désapprouvait en paroles cette attente (de magistrat unique), mais en réalité toute son action occulte la visait, et c’est volontairement qu’il laissait l’État sombrer dans la désorganisation, et de la désorganisation dans l’anarchie » (App. BC ., ). Plutarque précise dans un sens proche que « lorsque Pompée vit que les magistratures n’étaient pas décernées à son gré, parce qu’on achetait les votes des citoyens, il laissa l’anarchie s’installer dans la Ville » et ajoute qu’ « il fut aussitôt question de nommer un dictateur. »42 On ne sait pas avec certitude si ce furent là les projets réels de Pompée et si celui-ci était derrière un tel scénario. Cicéron est quant à lui plus prudent sur les intentions de Pompée. Il est vraisemblable que les analyses d’Appien et de Plutarque reflètent le point de vue de Caton et de ses partisans lorsqu’elles présentent Pompée comme le maître d’œuvre d’une politique du pire qui avait pour objet de le présenter en dernier recours comme l’homme providentiel.43 Que Pompée soit lui-même directement responsable d’une telle manœuvre est toutefois une possibilité qui n’est pas à exclure et qui reste à mon sens très vraisemblable. Quoi qu’il en soit, il obtint au bout du compte en , dans un contexte d’anarchie, d’être élu consul sans collègue. Il faut ranger au nombre des méthodes exploitées par Pompée le rituel de la recusatio imperii, auquel il eut déjà recours en  et qui fut réactivé à la fin de l’année . Cicéron n’est pas dupe et rappelle dans une lettre adressée à son frère qu’il s’agit là d’une comédie montée de toutes pièces : « Pompée déclare nettement qu’il ne veut pas de la dictature ; ce n’est pas ce qu’il me disait naguère. »44 Il fut amené à réitérer son refus de la dictature un peu plus tard lorsqu’un de ses proches, C. Lucilius Hirrus, alors tribun de la plèbe (), échoua dans sa tentative d’instituer une dic41 Il est significatif que dans sa correspondance, Cicéron utilise à propos des projets de dictature des années – le terme rumor à deux reprises (Q. fr. .. et ..). Il faut y voir les effets d’une politique fondée en partie sur la diffusion des rumeurs, que ceux-ci émanent de Pompée, de ses partisans, de ses adversaires, ou deux à la fois. 42 Plu. Pomp. .. Cf. aussi Plu. Caes. .–. 43 Sur une telle analyse inspirée des méthodes de la Quellenforschung, cf. Carsana  –. 44 Cic. Q. fr. .. : Pompeius plane se negat uelle ; antea mihi ipse non negabat.

pouvoirs extraordinaires et tromperie

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tature. Plutarque fait directement référence à l’attitude de Pompée à cette occasion lorsqu’il rappelle que face à l’opposition de Caton et devant la crainte que C. Lucilius Hirrus ne fût destitué du tribunat de la plèbe, il fit intervenir plusieurs de ses amis pour faire savoir qu’ « il ne demandait ni ne désirait ce pouvoir. »45 Dans ce cas de figure, la recusatio était un élément du jeu politique. Le scénario des années  à  n’est donc pas totalement identique à celui de l’année  et le résultat est différent, puisque le rapport de forces ne permit pas à Pompée d’obtenir le pouvoir extraordinaire dont il souhaitait être investi, mais il repose sur un ressort commun : une certaine forme d’hypocrisie dans l’exercice du pouvoir. Une telle attitude correspond parfaitement au jugement cruel que M. Caelius Rufus porta sur Pompée et qu’il formula dans une lettre à Cicéron datée de l’année  : « il a l’habitude de penser une chose et d’en dire une autre, sans toutefois être assez habile pour ne pas laisser transparaître ses désirs. »46 De leur côté, les adversaires de Pompée, qui étaient alors les optimates, adoptèrent une stratégie politique qui n’était pas exempte elle aussi de dissimulation, puisqu’ils mirent tout en œuvre pour faire échouer le projet d’une dictature qui était justifiée dans le contexte d’une vacance du consulat et parfaitement légale. D’après une interprétation vraisemblable proposée par M.H. Crawford, les deniers de Brutus représentant au droit et au revers les portraits de ses lointains ancêtres Brutus l’Ancien et Servilius Ahala, tous deux tyrannicides, doivent être interprétés comme des avertissements adressés à Pompée quant à ses projets de dictature.47 Sous la pression de Caton, les optimates préférèrent voir s’instaurer deux années de suite un long interrègne qui contribua à installer l’anarchie à Rome plutôt que de voir la dictature exercée par un seul homme, qui plus est par Pompée.48 Cette magistrature extraordinaire ne fut pas exercée à la fin des années , mais elle resta pendant deux années, de  à , au centre des enjeux politiques qui divisaient alors Rome et qui s’exprimaient par des stratégies de communication fondées sur la rumeur, le secret et une certaine forme d’hypocrisie.

45

Plu. Pomp. .. Sur le refus de la dictature par Pompée, cf. aussi D.C. ... Cic. Fam. .. : solet enim aliud sentire et loqui neque tantum ualere ingenio ut non appareat quid cupiat. 47 RRC .. Outre Crawford, cf. aussi dans ce sens Girardet  – n. . 48 Christ  . 46

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frédéric hurlet Épilogue : les dictatures de César

La dictature redevint d’actualité pendant la guerre civile qui suivit le franchissement du Rubicon et fut, pour la première fois depuis Sylla, exercée à plusieurs reprises par César entre la fin de l’année  et le  mars . En un peu moins de cinq années, la fonction et la signification que les Romains attribuèrent à cette magistrature extraordinaire évoluèrent au rythme des étapes qui conduisirent César à prendre le pouvoir à Rome et dans l’ensemble de l’Empire. Il fut tout d’abord nommé dictator comitiorum habendorum causa en décembre  par le préteur Lépide,49 en vertu d’une loi comitiale et au terme d’une procédure sur la légalité de laquelle les contemporains de César s’interrogèrent (Cic. Att. ..) ; conformément au principe en vigueur dans le cadre de l’exercice d’une dictature romaine, il abdiqua au bout de onze jours aussitôt après avoir accompli la tâche pour laquelle il avait été désigné, en l’occurrence l’élection des consuls (Caes. Civ. ..). L’usage qu’il fit de la dictature était sans aucun doute identique à celui auquel Pompée avait été finalement contraint de renoncer entre  et , à savoir déterminer le choix des consuls pour l’année à venir, mais le contexte avait changé en quelques années. César avait besoin de devenir lui-même consul pour conduire les opérations militaires en Grèce contre ses adversaires en parfaite légalité. À partir du moment où les consuls en exercice en  qui lui étaient hostiles avaient quitté Rome et l’Italie pour poursuivre le combat, il fit en sorte d’être élu au consulat sans doute après avoir lui-même fait élire en sa qualité de dictateur un de ses partisans, P. Servilius Isauricus. La dictatura comitiorum habendorum causa fut ainsi conçue—et sans aucun doute perçue à cette époque—comme un instrument institutionnel qui permit à César à la fois d’éviter la vacance du consulat et de parvenir à ses fins. Une étape supplémentaire fut franchie en octobre  lorsqu’il fut nommé dictateur (sans doute rei gerundae causa) pour une année. Le principe d’une limite temporelle était respecté, mais cette durée annuelle pose tout de même problème dans le sens où elle allait au-delà du cadre des six mois fixé par la tradition. En avril , César fut nommé à la dictature pour dix années, en prenant soin de maintenir formellement un renouvellement annuel :

49 Sur les différentes dictatures de César et les sources y faisant référence, cf. Broughton  –, , , –, –, – ; Gelzer  , ,  et –  ; Jahn  ; Sordi  ; Jehne  ; Hurlet a – ; Kunkel and Wittmann  – ; Pucci Ben Zeev  ; Girardet  – ; Sordi  ; Linderski  .

pouvoirs extraordinaires et tromperie

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il apparaît à ce titre dans les sources comme dictator tertio entre avril  et avril , puis comme dictator quarto à partir d’avril . Enfin, au début de l’année , entre le  janvier et le  février, il abdiqua la dictature décennale pour devenir dictateur à vie. Après l’assassinat de César, Antoine fit voter une loi qui mit fin à la dictature en prescrivant que plus personne ne pourrait devenir dictateur à nouveau,50 rejet de la dictature qui fut confirmé par Auguste en .51 Les faits qui viennent d’être énumérés sont bien connus, même s’il existe encore des zones d’ombre et des questions ouvertes (les dictatures de César à partir de  étaient-elles rei gerundae causa ou rei publicae constituendae ?), mais leur interprétation politique reste complexe. Les allongements successifs de la durée attribuée aux dictatures de César— onze jours, un an, dix ans, à titre viager—constituent un indice significatif de l’évolution que cette magistrature a connue durant les années . Si l’on en revient à la question, centrale pour cette étude, de la perception que les contemporains de César se firent de la dictature, les interrogations furent nombreuses dès l’Antiquité et le sont encore de nos jours. La dictature suffisait-elle à César ou était-elle la partie visible et officielle d’une plus vaste entreprise de domination qui n’eut pas le temps de prendre forme et dont les contours précis nous échappent en grande partie en raison de l’assassinat des ides de mars ? César a été soupçonné de son vivant de vouloir fonder une monarchie. L’existence d’un tel (crypto-)projet politique a été souvent admise et a conduit de nombreux historiens à s’interroger sur le modèle qui aurait inspiré César dans sa prétendue volonté de devenir roi (la royauté romaine ? la basileia hellénistique ? les deux à la fois ?).52 Il faut toutefois se garder de partir de ce qui est une pure hypothèse—César voulut devenir roi—pour échafauder d’autres hypothèses. Je partage sur ce sujet le scepticisme de Ronald Syme : rien de ce qui se passa entre  et  ne permet de penser que César ne se satisferait pas de la dictature perpétuelle. A quoi bon d’ailleurs devenir officiellement roi ?53 La réalité est que les différentes dictatures des années  ne cachent rien de la volonté de César de prendre la première place à Rome et dans l’Empire à l’aide d’une magistrature auquel l’État romain avait déjà eu recours par le passé 50

Cic. Phil. . ; . ; Liv. perioch.  ; App. BC . ; D.C. ... R.Gest.div.Aug. . ; Suet. Aug.  ; Vell. .. ; D.C. .. et, de façon allusive, Tac. Ann. ... Cf. Alföldy . 52 Pour un utile état de la question historiographique sur César et le césarisme, cf. Yavetz  – et plus récemment Jehne . 53 Syme  – a bien vu que César ne savait pas moins qu’Auguste que le titre de rex n’était pas indispensable pour exercer un pouvoir monarchique. 51

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frédéric hurlet

et qui se définissait précisément par l’absence de collégialité. Elles apparaissent comme des pouvoirs extraordinaires utilisés par César comme moyen de lui permettre de mener à bien ses projets successifs : être tout d’abord élu au consulat de  ; être ensuite en possession d’un pouvoir militaire, en l’occurrence l’imperium du dictateur, pour combattre ceux de ses ennemis qui poursuivaient le combat après la bataille de Pharsale ; conserver enfin le pouvoir après s’être donné tant de mal à s’en emparer. Nul n’ignorait la brutalité de ses méthodes et ne manquait de s’interroger sur les fondements d’un tel pouvoir. Il n’est que de penser à la légalité douteuse d’une dictature décernée à vie, le caractère viager de ce pouvoir contrevenant au principe selon lequel la fixation d’un terme (absolu ou relatif) était consubstantielle au fonctionnement de la République romaine. Par l’utilisation qu’il fit de ses pouvoirs extraordinaires, César est le principal responsable d’un glissement de sens qui donna au terme de dictature la connotation péjorative que nous lui connaissons actuellement. C’est déjà beaucoup. Si César ne cacha pas sa volonté d’exercer un pouvoir de plus en plus absolu à travers les différentes dictatures dont il fut investi, il n’en va pas de même de la stratégie de communication adoptée par lui-même et / ou par ses ennemis politiques. La période la plus intéressante de ce point de vue est celle qui s’écoula entre le retour de César à Rome à la fin de l’année  et son assassinat le  mars .54 Le fait est que les rumeurs de toutes sortes circulèrent à Rome durant ces quelques mois et alimentèrent les suspicions sur les intentions monarchiques de César. C’est ainsi que le bruit courut qu’il voulait transférer la capitale de Rome à Alexandrie ou encore qu’il se ferait proclamer roi le  mars  avant de partir en campagne en Orient pour répondre à l’oracle prédisant que seul un roi pouvait vaincre les Parthes. Le comportement ambigu de César ne contribua pas à dissiper les doutes qui pouvaient naître. On prendra comme exemple l’épisode au cours duquel il fut salué à plusieurs reprises du titre de roi : il répliqua avec beaucoup d’à propos qu’il s’appelait Caesar et non pas rex, mais il n’en fit pas moins destituer les deux tribuns qui avaient fait arrêter le premier qui avait crié le nom maudit. Son attitude lors des Lupercales se prête à la même analyse : il repoussa à plusieurs reprises le symbole de la monarchie qu’on lui offrait sous la forme d’un diadème, mais la sincérité de ce geste n’est pas assurée et fait toujours débat parmi les historiens (on peut très bien imaginer qu’il s’agissait

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Cf. à ce sujet Jehne  et Zecchini  – et –.

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d’un coup monté). Nous ne saurons sans doute jamais qui est à l’origine des rumeurs qui avaient en commun de renforcer paradoxalement les soupçons même si César s’est toujours défendu d’aspirer à la royauté : César lui-même pour préparer le peuple de Rome (dira-t-on l’opinion publique ?) à l’idée qu’il devienne roi ou du moins connaître ses réactions à un tel projet ? Ses assassins pour justifier a posteriori la mort de César au nom de la liberté d’une Res publica opprimée par un tyran ? Les deux à la fois ? Il est sûr en revanche que l’orchestration de cette campagne fut fatale à César.

Conclusion Parler du pouvoir à Rome signifie parler de pouvoirs aussi bien acceptés que déguisés ou refusés. Ce principe, bien connu quand on s’intéresse à Auguste,55 vaut également pour la période de crise qui précéda la mise en place du principat, mais il a connu des applications différentes selon le contexte et, dans une mesure qui sera toujours difficile à déterminer, en fonction des projets et de la personnalité des imperatores de la fin de la République. Les pouvoirs extraordinaires octroyés à Sylla, Pompée et César font incontestablement partie des pouvoirs dont l’investiture a fait naître des soupçons et qui ont été présentés a posteriori comme autant de préfigurations du pouvoir personnel d’époque impériale. Il faut toutefois s’entendre sur ce qu’il était ou non nécessaire de cacher à ce sujet et dissocier pour ces trois personnages leurs réalisations effectives des prétendues intentions qui leur ont été prêtées par leurs adversaires politiques ou les générations ultérieures. Si l’on fait abstraction du cas particulier que représente la brève dictature perpétuelle de César, les autres pouvoirs extraordinaires de la fin de la République—la dictature de Sylla, les imperia extraordinaria et le consulat sans collègue de Pompée ainsi que les premières dictatures de César—ne furent perçus ni par leurs titulaires ni par les contemporains comme une première étape vers l’instauration d’un pouvoir monarchique, en dehors de propos ouvertement polémiques. Il s’agissait de pouvoirs qui étaient extraordinaires au sens d’inhabituels sans être pour autant illégaux.56 Ils entraient dans le cadre de ce que Christian Meier a appelé une « gewachsene Verfassung », c’est-à-dire une forme de constitution naturelle en ce qu’elle se formait peu à peu de 55 56

Eder   ; cf. aussi Eder . Gruen  –.

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manière empirique et avec la capacité de s’adapter aux évolutions.57 C’est cette réalité à laquelle Cicéron fait référence dans son discours en faveur de la lex Manilia lorsqu’il dit pour justifier l’imperium de Pompée qu’ « à des circonstances nouvelles nos ancêtres ont toujours adapté des expédients nouveaux. »58 Toute analyse qui fait des pouvoirs extraordinaires l’instrument d’un crypto-projet monarchique, voire un succédané de pouvoir personnel est anachronique. Elle est en particulier infirmée par la prise en compte d’un autre des résultats bien connu auquel était parvenu Meier : à savoir que la crise de la République était « une crise sans alternative » dans le sens où les Romains ne concevaient pas de vivre autrement que dans le cadre d’une Res publica et ne pouvaient accepter la moindre forme de monarchie, du moins déclarée.59 La « gewachsene Verfassung » de la Rome républicaine n’interdisait pas à un dictateur de dépasser la limite des six mois, ni à un général de combattre les ennemis de Rome sans être magistrat, ni encore à un consul d’exercer sa magistrature sans collègue pendant quelques mois. En revanche, elle prohibait à un seul homme de se maintenir au pouvoir après qu’il eut accompli la fonction pour laquelle il avait été nommé : un dictateur devait abdiquer sitôt sa mission remplie ; un général victorieux déposait son pouvoir en franchissant le pomerium à son retour à Rome (et le cas échéant à l’issue de son triomphe) ; un homme politique ne devait exercer le consulat ni indéfiniment ni toute une année sans s’adjoindre de collègue. C’est un tabou que César viola ouvertement en devenant dictateur perpétuel et qu’il paya de sa vie. On voit là la souplesse d’une « constitution romaine » qui donnait à un seul homme les moyens nécessaires pour remédier à une situation de crise, mais aussi le danger que cette souplesse créait en faisant dépendre la survie de la République romaine en partie des intentions, bonnes ou mauvaises, des titulaires des pouvoirs extraordinaires. De la tentation de la monarchie à la mise en place d’un pouvoir personnel il n’y avait qu’un pas, d’autant plus aisément franchi quand parvint à la tête de la Res publica à la suite d’une guerre civile un homme, César, dont les intentions étaient moins avouables que celles de Sylla et qui avait moins de scrupules 57 Sur la « gewachsene Verfassung », cf. Meier a – ; cf. aussi Meier  –. L’œuvre de Meier a été revisitée et réévaluée positivement récemment, notamment pour ce qui concerne la pertinence de la notion de « gewachsene Verfassung », par Hölkeskamp  –. 58 Cic. Man.  : non dicam hoc loco maiores nostros . . . semper ad nouos casus temporum nouorum consiliorum rationes accommodasse. 59 Sur la « Krise ohne Alternative », cf. Meier a.

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que Pompée pour ce qui est du respect des formes légales. C’est en ce sens que la puissance exorbitante d’hommes comme Pompée ou César posa à la « gewachsene Verfassung » un problème que Meier qualifie de « constitutionnel ».60 La dissimulatio dont Sylla, Pompée et César firent preuve est ailleurs que dans l’existence même des pouvoirs extraordinaires. Elle est à chercher dans la manière dont ils firent pression pour obtenir de tels pouvoirs ou s’y maintenir et de l’usage qu’ils firent de compétences à bien des égards exorbitantes. Elle est en ce sens inséparable de leur action politique, mais elle prit des formes différentes dans l’espace de temps—près de quatre décennies—qui sépare la dictature de Sylla et la dictature perpétuelle de César. Pompée apparaît comme un précurseur d’Auguste en ce qu’il eut à plus d’une reprise recours à la comédie du refus du pouvoir (notamment en  et en –). Il sut sans doute également exploiter la rumeur en particulier de  à  pour faire naître à Rome l’attente d’une dictature. Mais ce serait une erreur de perspective de laisser le monopole de la dissimulatio aux titulaires des pouvoirs extraordinaires. Les adversaires de Pompée en usèrent également pour le disqualifier, non sans succès d’ailleurs lorsqu’ils réussirent de  à  par des pressions de toutes sortes à faire échouer le projet de dictature. Ce dernier cas de figure montre que Pompée eut également à subir les effets d’une rumeur qui le soupçonna à plusieurs reprises de conserver les pouvoirs extraordinaires ou de s’en emparer pour ne plus les déposer. La même remarque vaut, mutatis mutandis, pour César. Bien qu’il ne refusât jamais le moindre pouvoir au contraire de Pompée ou de son futur fils adoptif Octavien / Auguste, il fit lui aussi usage de la rumeur d’une manière et à un degré qui restent difficiles à déterminer. Mais il en fut au bout du compte la victime, ses assassins ayant beau jeu de justifier leur acte au nom de la menace que la présence d’un tyran fait peser sur le fonctionnement de la Res publica, quelles que soient leurs véritables motivations. Cet épisode montre en tout cas que l’instauration d’une monarchie— ou la résolution de la crise sans alternative si l’on reprend la phraséologie de Meier—n’était pas possible à Rome sans dissimulation de la part d’un pouvoir qui ne devait pas dire ce qu’il était s’il voulait avoir quelque chance de survie. C’est ce qu’Octavien / Auguste a très bien et très vite compris. C’est ce que Tacite a parfaitement analysé à travers un récit qui fait à juste titre la part belle au secret (dissimulatio), à la ruse (dolus), au

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Cf. Meier  .

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mensonge (mendacium) et à la rumeur (rumor). Pour monarchique qu’il soit, le thème tacitéen des arcana imperii a lui aussi une histoire, ou plutôt une protohistoire qui englobe les pratiques politiques de la République romaine.

AUGUSTAN DISSIMULATION

ARROGATING DESPOTIC POWER THROUGH DECEIT: THE POMPEIAN MODEL FOR AUGUSTAN DISSIMULATIO

Frederik Juliaan Vervaet

Introduction It is fairly well-known that Imperator Caesar Divi filius, and his successor, Imperator Caesar Augustus, skilfully used dissimulatio as a political lubricant for acquiring novel or possibly offensive powers and privileges. This particularly applied to the deceptive ploy of disingenuous recusatio imperii as a form of dissimulation to facilitate the repeated extensions of these sweeping powers and privileges. History has shown the overwhelming success of his approach as well as its acceptance by the vast majority of senators, both before and after Actium. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the Augustan way of achieving something through cunning, guile and hypocrisy instead of brute authority or outright usurpation was notably imitated by some of his more seasoned and competent successors, whereas many emperors who failed to follow this model met with untimely deaths. The main contention of this chapter will be to show that it was par excellence Pompeius Magnus who had already set the historic precedent for these hallmark features of Augustan autocracy and the so-called Principate. There is no doubt that, ever since his return to Rome in  bce, Caesar Octavianus had ruthlessly worked to emulate his adoptive father and restore or complete the great dictator’s political program. Nonetheless, it can be argued that the political method Octavianus used to achieve his towering ambition was Pompeian rather than Caesarian, and that this was especially true after the conclusion of the civil wars in  /  bce.1 After discussing a series of powerful examples of Augustan dissimulation, the second part of this analysis will highlight some strikingly similar and

1 That Pompeius’ great commands provided a source of inspiration for some of the key foundations of the Augustan settlement is widely acknowledged: see, for example, Meyer , and most recently, Hurlet .

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equally telling parallels from Pompeius’ remarkable political career. This comparative case study should then make it quite clear that, after a particularly bloody and gruesome start, both men consciously decided to practice the fine art of dissimulation to get things their way, regardless of their different situation and ambitions.

Dissimulatio and recusatio imperii as an Augustan modus operandi Doubtlessly one of the most powerful acts of Augustan dissimulation in the sense discussed here was precisely that one which resulted in the Senate granting him the honorary nomen Augusti, namely Caesar Octavianus’ carefully stage-managed decision to step down as the Republic’s absolute leader in January , at the outset of his seventh consulship. The year before, as consul for the sixth time, he had already accelerated the return to political normality after almost  years of civil wars. First he reinstated the (rotation of the) consular fasces, so as to publicly affirm his wish to govern the Republic as consul with M. Agrippa from January / February . By this measure, Caesar Octavianus formally rehabilitated the consuls’ traditional role as the Republic’s leading magistrates. After having taken a whole range of measures aimed at re-establishing normality in Rome, he issued a quite sensational edict abolishing all illegal and unjust measures from the triumviral era, fixing his sixth consulship as the limit. John Rich and Jonathan Williams have cogently argued that it was precisely to commemorate this occasion that Caesar Octavianus had the magnificent aureus struck portraying him as sitting on a sella curulis, holding a scroll in his right hand, with a scrinium on the ground beside him and with the powerful inscription that he had now officially restored the “Laws and the Rights of the Roman People”: LEGES ET IVRA P(opuli) R(omani) RESTITVIT.2 This done, he and his counsels felt the time had finally come to complete the so-called ‘restitution of the Republic’ by laying down his sole triumvirate. Thanks to Ovid, we know 2 For the restoration of joint consular rule, see esp. D.C. ..–. For the edict reinstating the leges et iura Populi Romani, see D.C. ..; Tac. Ann. . and, especially, Rich and Williams  –. Amongst other things, Rich and Williams plausibly suggest that this formula derives from a decree of the Senate that reproduced a remarkable contemporaneous edict. For the suggestion that Caesar Octavianus only abdicated his triumuiratus rei publicae constituendae in January , after having held this magistracy continuously for some fifteen years, see Vervaet b.

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this key event took place on  January  bce in the Senate, at the outset of his seventh consulship.3 It is, however, Dio Cassius who has produced the fullest extant account. Rather than the momentous and sweeping settlement itself, it is Dio’s quite accurate description of the precise circumstances that carries our interest here. Right before his summary of Caesar Octavianus’ formal abdication address, Dio indicates that it was especially the abovementioned edict that earned him approbation and praise, and that he wished to exploit the momentum it created to make his pompous, yet empty, statement of resignation. Dio recounts that he “desired to exhibit another instance of magnanimity, that by such a policy he might be honoured all the more and might have his monarchy voluntarily confirmed by the People, so as to avoid the appearance of having forced them against their will.” “Therefore”, Dio goes on to explain, “having first primed his most intimate friends among the senators, he entered the Senate in his seventh consulship and read the following address”.4 The abdication speech of  January accounts for one of history’s most powerful examples of deceit and delusion. Caesar Octavianus repeatedly and emphatically declared to return control over the armies, the provinces, the treasury and the laws to the discretion of Senate and People. In addition, he repeatedly stressed his refusal to continue as sole ruler, claiming that his decision to lay down absolute power was the greatest exploit ever in Roman history. As for the Senate, they were vigorously urged to respect the established laws.5 Given the largely secretive way in which Caesar Octavianus had staged this coup de théâtre and the sheer magnitude of the sham, there is nothing surprising about the mixed reception of this oration, as these words threw not a few of them off their balance, leaving them perplexed as to his real intent. For the purpose of this chapter, it is useful to reproduce the words of Dio’s frank and unvarnished summary: “While Caesar was reading this address, varied feelings took possession of the senators. A few of them knew his real intention and consequently kept applauding him enthusiastically; of the rest, some were suspicious of his 3 Ov. Fast. .–: Redditaque est omnis populo prouincia nostro, et tuus Augusto nomine dictus auus. 4 D.C. ..– (translations of Dio here are adapted from the excellent edition by John Rich, Cassius Dio. The Augustan Settlement (Roman History –.) (Warminster ) –, modified where necessary). 5 D.C. .–. See my forthcoming article in Ancient Society  for a proper discussion of Dio’s (no doubt embellished and reworked) summary of what must have been a historical statement.

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frederik juliaan vervaet words, while others believed them, and therefore both classes marvelled equally, the one at his cunning and the other at his decision, and both were displeased, the former at his scheming and the latter at his change of mind. For already there were some who abhorred the democratic constitution as a breeder of strife, were pleased at the change of government, and took delight in Caesar. Consequently, though they were variously affected by his announcement, their views were the same. For, on the one hand, those who believed he had spoken the truth could not show their pleasure— those who wished to do so being restrained by their fear and the others by their hopes, and those, on the other hand, who did not believe it did not dare accuse him and expose his insincerity, some because they were afraid and others because they didn’t care to do so. Hence all the doubters either were compelled to believe him or else pretend that they did. As for praising him, some had not the courage and others were unwilling; on the contrary, both while he was reading and afterwards, they kept shouting out, begging for a monarchical government and urging every argument in its favour, until they forced him, as it was made to appear, to assume autocratic power.” (D.C. ..–)

There is no way of knowing how the individual senators really felt during and after listening to Octavianus’ speech. However, this proactive move did facilitate the conferral of multiple extraordinary powers and privileges in that it created a semblance of senatorial and popular control and collective decision-making by the customary authorities. As Dio duly points out, the Senate’s first decrees left no room for doubt as to the nature of the new regime. First, Octavianus secured a vote granting his bodyguard twice the regular pay. This was immediately followed by the sweeping decree that invested him with a privileged ten-year command in most of the Empire’s militarized provinces. Perfectly in keeping with his strategy of deceit and feigned reluctance to rule, he declared that this division of provinces was meant to shoulder him with the heaviest burden, promising to restore these supposedly restive provinces to the Senate before the expiry of his decennial tenure should he succeed in pacifying these sooner.6 The years  and  bce offer a second series of illuminating examples of Augustan dissimulation. One year before, in the summer of , various political considerations compelled Augustus to abdicate his th consulship, having held the office uninterruptedly since January  bce. 6 D.C. ..–.. For this so-called first settlement of January , see D.C. .– ; R.Gest.div.Aug. .–; Suet. Aug. .; Vell. .. For a refreshing and brilliant new take on the Augustan provincial settlement, see Rich . In my opinion, this study further demonstrates how (the need for) Augustan dissimulation could have tremendous historical consequences.

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In order to compensate him for the unavoidable and, for that matter, significant loss of prestige and prerogatives, the Senate and People of Rome (SPQR) immediately recompensed the now proconsul handsomely. First and foremost, Augustus received tribunicia potestas, the official power of the tribunes of the plebs. Sensationally enough, he was given this not just for ten years but for life, the strongest possible public indication of his desire never to abandon supreme power. With this powerful prerogative, Augustus could, amongst other things, convene Senate and People and veto all decisions taken by SPQR and the magistrates of the Roman People, including the consuls. Since his tribunicia potestas enabled him to control political life in Rome, Tacitus more than a century later aptly defined it as summi fastigii uocabulum. For good measure, Augustus was also given the ius primae relationis, the privilege of bringing before the Senate at each meeting any one matter at whatever time he liked, even if he was not consul at the time. In , his special ius habendi senatus would be further enhanced with the “right to convene the Senate as often as he pleased”, the so-called ius senatus consulendi potissimum.7 In order to enable him to exercise his imperium as proconsul in Rome and so allow him to continue commanding his praetorian cohorts, Augustus was, moreover, exempted in perpetuity from the rule that a proconsul automatically lost his imperium upon entering the pomerium. This second historic measure of mid- meant that only death or formal abdication could terminate Augustus’ consular imperium, regardless of the duration of his provincial command. Last but not least, Augustus’ consular imperium was also redefined as maius quam that of the regular proconsuls who administered the public provinces.8 As subsequent events suggest, Augustus’ arrogation of plainly un-republican powers9 and his 7 D.C. ... It should indeed not be doubted that this additional privilege concerned the so-called ius senatus consulendi potissimum, another traditional consular prerogative: see Varro in Gell. ... 8 D.C. ..–; for the tribunicia potestas, see also R.Gest.div.Aug. .; Tac. Ann. .. (id [i.e. tribuniciam potestatem] summi fastigii uocabulum Augustus repperit, ne regis aut dictatoris nomen adsumeret ac tamen appellatione aliqua cetera imperia praemineret); and Suet. Aug. . (tribuniciam potestatem perpetuam recepit, in qua semel atque iterum per singula lustra collegam sibi cooptauit). 9 As Tacitus clearly implies in Ann. .., the empowerments of  were a radical and more or less unprecedented break from established Republican principles. For the fact that even a strictly conditional consulare imperium maius quam was totally unacceptable to the Senate in  and , bce, see Cic. Att. .. (discussed infra) and Phil. ., . It is not out of place to suggest that after the despotic and ‘Sullan’ triumviral era (–  /  bce) and his ‘Pompeian’ principate (– bce), Augustus now reformatted his regime in a distinctly ‘Caesarian’ way, marked by the acquisition of life-long powers.

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hands off approach to the consulship prompted renewed opposition to his position and an alarming resurgence of electoral strife over the now fully available office.10 Rather unsurprisingly, Augustus and his confederates would move swiftly to crush any opposition, humble the Senate and further reinforce his autocracy.11 In  bce, Rome and Italy suffered a series of ominous setbacks. According to Dio, the Tiber again inundated Rome, thunderbolts struck the statues in the Pantheon, causing the spear to fall from Augustus’ hand, and pestilence ravaged Italy, which reportedly halted its agricultural production and triggered famine. Dio relates that the Romans believed that all of this happened solely because they did not have Augustus for consul at this time also. Consequently, Dio proceeds, they “wished to elect him dictator, and shutting the senators up in their meeting place, they forced them to vote this measure by threatening to burn down the building over their heads. Next they took the twenty-four rods and approached Augustus, begging him to consent both to being named dictator and to becoming commissioner of the grain supply, as Pompeius had once done.” Dio next explains that, whereas he felt compelled to assume the curatio annonae, he obstinately refused to accept the dictatorship. In a dramatic gesture, he even went so far as to rend his garments when he found himself unable to restrain the people. Dio knowingly remarks, however, that Augustus already outclassed the dictators in power and honour and that he simply wished to guard against the jealousy and hatred which the historically charged title would arouse.12 In his Res Gestae, Augustus insists that Rome faced an “extreme scarcity of grain” and goes on to boast that he subsequently managed “within a few days to free the whole state from its fear and immediate peril” by his own expense and effort.13 It is, there-

10

See D.C. . ( bce); . and .– ( /  bc); ..–. ( bce); and ..–  ( /  bce). It is not inconceivable that some senators felt that now Augustus no longer held the consulship the time had come for the consuls and the Senate to assume a more prominent role by exercising their traditional prerogatives, especially in Rome and Italy. 11 For the unflinching and ruthless oppression of some senatorial opposition in , see D.C. .. 12 D.C. ..–; for another record of this incident, see Suet. Aug.  (Dictaturam magna ui offerente populo genu nixus deiecta ab umeris toga nudo pectore deprecatus est). See also R.Gest.div.Aug. .– for Augustus’ refusal of the dictatorship and acceptance of the curatio annonae, and comp. Vell. .. (nam dictaturam quam pertinaciter ei deferebat populus, tam constanter repulit). 13 R.Gest.div.Aug. . (Non sum] depreca[tus] in s[umma f]rum[enti p]enuria curationem an[non]ae, [qu]am ita ad[min]ist[raui, ut intra] die[s] paucos metu et peric(u)lo [pr]aesenti ciuitatem uniu[ersam liberarem impensa et] cura mea).

arrogating despotic power through deceit

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fore, hard to suppress the dark suspicion that he and his agents might very well have exploited, or, perhaps, even aggravated, the food shortage that conveniently resulted in reinforcing his position in Rome. With regard to the circumstances of this allegedly grave crisis, it is worth indicating that as Dio recounts that “the pestilence raged throughout all Italy so that no one tilled the land” he yet speculates that “I suppose that the same was the case in foreign parts”.14 This strongly suggests that his source(s) mentioned disease and famine only in Italy and Rome and that he found no evidence of an empire-wide food crisis of the magnitude needed to create a really critical food shortage threatening the ciuitas uniuersa. Since populous Rome had long been dependent on overseas imports for its vital grain supplies, a temporary collapse of Italy’s production could hardly have posed the mortal threat claimed by Augustus. As Augustus himself boasts to have brought near-instant relief by generously buying up large quantities of grain from private providers at his own expense, there is every indication that even in Italy there was no real shortage of grain. All of this implies that the flood of  can only have caused a temporary disturbance in the flow of subsidized imports and, possibly, skyrocketing inflation of food prices, a crisis of (re)distribution and logistics Augustus could have easily manipulated and exploited. Since floods were part and parcel of Roman life at that time (D.C. ..), it simply strains belief that there would have been no contingency plan or, at the very least, some kind of working template to deal with their impact on grain provisioning.15 At all events, Augustus’ dramatic rescue earned him the immediate gratitude of the Romans, as he himself commemorates in his Res Gestae that he refused to honour a subsequent vote by SPQR offering him the consulatus annuus et perpetuus, the annual and perpetual consulship.16 14 D.C. ... That Dio is generally well-informed on supply crises, their precise nature and the consequent political impact, is clear from, e.g., .., where he records that when Agrippa constructed the Aqua Virgo at his own expense and named it Augusta, Augustus “was so pleased with the aqueduct that, once when there was a shortage of wine and people were complaining bitterly, he remarked that Agrippa had taken most effective measures to ensure that they should never die of thirst.” 15 Compare also Ridley  : “The crisis in  was, however, easily foreseeable in autumn , given the harvest, and Augustus had the resources of Egypt at his disposal: he boasts in fact that he settled the crisis in a few days. He nevertheless waited until the catastrophe struck, and he had to be asked. He was not far from the city watching developments (like Pompey in ). He allowed the proposal for his dictatorship, and the people’s assault on the senate.” 16 R.Gest.div.Aug. .. Dio fails to mention this offer of the consulatus annuus et perpetuus in his summary of the year  bce yet adds (in ..) that Augustus also declined the office of censor perpetuus, instead appointing Paulus Aemilius Lepidus



frederik juliaan vervaet

Late in the troubled year , after Augustus had departed on a journey that would take him as far as Syria, the Roman commons rioted over the consular elections. As they insisted on reserving one of the consulships for Augustus, M. Lollius alone assumed the office in . When it became clear that Augustus refused to accept his election, the rivalry for the vacant consulship between Q. Lepidus and L. Silvanus caused such chaos that a desperate Senate sent to summon him home. Augustus, however, would not return, sharply rebuked both candidates as they had traveled to him, and ordered the election being held during their absence. It was not until after renewed serious disturbances that Lepidus was at long last chosen.17 Hardly two years later, the consular elections for  caused similar difficulties. In January , after Augustus had again refused to accept his election as consul in , the consul C. Sentius Saturninus had to face the difficult task of electing a colleague. When factious rioting broke out and murders occurred, the Senate went as far as voting a guard for Sentius. As he did not dare use it, envoys were sent to Augustus who subsequently hastened back to Rome after having appointed one of these envoys, Q. Lucretius, to the consulship.18 According to Dio, Augustus’ mere presence inspired fear in Rome, triggering yet another series of extraordinary powers being voted on his behalf by

and Lucius Munatius Plancus to be censors. Since Augustus did refuse the sole and plenipotentiary magistracy of curator legum et morum in  bce (R.Gest.div.Aug. .), Dio may have confused both these unsuccessful grants. 17 D.C. ..–. Dio next (..–) relates that Augustus, fearing continued anarchy in Rome, decided to put Agrippa in charge of Rome and further strengthened his position and loyalty by marrying him to Julia. According to Dio, even Agrippa failed to quell riots over the election of a praefectus Urbi for the celebration of the Feriae Latinae and that Rome went through the year without this official. 18 D.C. ..–; Dio explains that Lucretius, Augustus’ appointee of , had previously been on the list of the proscribed. In this respect, it is interesting to note that in , after having received a string of privileges from SPQR, on his own authority he enrolled M. Valerius Messalla Corvinus (suff. ) among the augurs above the proper number, although he had previously proscribed him (D.C. ..). In , after he had accepted the cura annonae and the People also wanted to elect him censor perpetuus, he refused the office and instead had Paulus Aemilius Lepidus and L. Munatius Plancus appointed to the traditional censura. Since Dio subtly adds that this Plancus was the brother of the Plancus who had been condemned in the proscriptions, and Lepidus had been proscribed himself, it seems as if Augustus would typically make such showy gestures of reconciliation and clemency at times of special and possibly offensive honours and empowerments. Such timely demonstrations of moderation would sweeten the potentially bitter pill for the Senate. That it all was a sham is clear from the fact that, as Dio adds in ..–, they were the last ordinary senators to hold the censorship together, and “even this time, despite their appointment, Augustus dealt with many matters which were their responsibility.”

arrogating despotic power through deceit

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SPQR.19 First, he was offered the five-year position of sole and supreme curator legum et morum.20 As Augustus himself insists in his Res Gestae, he resolutely refused to accept this position as being incompatible with traditional practice (contra morem maiorum) and that he subsequently passed the measures deemed necessary by the Senate through his tribunician power.21 Dio also records that Augustus accepted “the authority of the consuls for life, and in consequence had the right to use the twelve rods always and everywhere and to sit in the curule chair between the two men who were at the time consuls”.22 In other words, Augustus was given all the prerogatives associated with the nomen consulis for the remainder of his unrestricted tenure of the consulare imperium he had been holding as proconsul ever since , regardless of the scope and duration of his vast provincial command.23 This means that he could henceforth exercise 19 See D.C. .. for many other honours voted to him on the occasion of his imminent return to Rome, none of which he would accept. 20 R.Gest.div.Aug. . (senatu populo]q[e Romano consentientibus,] ut cu[rator legum et morum summa potestate solus crearer, nullum magistratum contra morem maiorum delatum recepi.]) and D.C. .. (πιμελητς τε τ"ν τρ'πων ς πντε @τη παρακλη!ε4ς δ χειροτον!η: “he was elected supervisor of morals for five years (having been invited to stand, to be sure”). This unprecedented magistracy presumably involved sweeping legislative and censorial powers such as the right to issue edicts with the force of law and decide on the composition of the Senate: comp. R.Gest.div.Aug. . (Quae tum per me geri senatus] u[o]luit, per trib[un]ici[a]m p[otestatem perfeci); and Suet. Aug. ., where Suetonius wrongly asserts that Augustus actually assumed this office: recepit et morum legumque regimen aeque perpetuum, quo iure, quamquam sine censurae honore, censum tamen populi ter egit, primum ac tertium cum collega, medium solus—comp. Scheid  : “Suétone se trompe. Il ne voit pas que les trois cens ont été faits après collation d’une censoria potestas expresse, et parle globalement d’un morum legumque regimen perpetuum, qui rappelle fortement la censure perpétuelle de Domitien, et qui est un anachronisme évident.” In .., Dio records that in , Augustus was again chosen as curator morum for another five years. To my thinking, SPQR in  and  invested Augustus with the office through the required votes, at which point in time Augustus would ritually refuse to accept the office. Dio’s claim in .. that Augustus in  also “received the potestas censoria [τν ξουσαν τν μ:ν τ"ν τιμητ"ν] for the same period” probably concerns a pleonastic exaggeration, as the office of curator legum et morum doubtlessly comprised the censorial prerogatives. 21 R.Gest.div.Aug. : cf. supra n. . This remarkable claim is at best a half-truth, since the most important powers and privileges granted in  (tribunicia potestas and consulare imperium maius quam) and  (the right to exercise the consulare imperium he held as proconsul as if he were consul) ran completely counter to mos maiorum. 22 D.C. ..: κα4 τν ξουσαν . . . τν δ: τ"ν /πτων διA βου @λαβεν, Bστε κα4 τα3ς δδεκα Cβδοις #ε4 κα4 πανταχο χρσ!αι, κα4 ν μσDω τ"ν #ε4 /πατευ'ντων π4 το #ρχικο δφρου κα!ζεσ!αι. See D.C. .. for this privilege being exercised by Claudius in  ce. 23 See Liv. .. for the distinction between the consulum nomen imperiumque; comp. also D.C. ...



frederik juliaan vervaet

his consular imperium always and under all circumstances as if he were a consul. By virtue of this unprecedented masterpiece of legal draftsmanship, Augustus the proconsul could henceforth assume full control of Rome’s state machinery. From now he could, for example, legally preside over meetings of Senate and People and veto or obstruct (through obnuntiatio) the decisions of any other magistrate of the Roman People.24 De facto, Rome now mostly had three Roman consuls, the principal one usually carrying the title of proconsul.25 As if that was not enough, the notable privilege of continuous tenure of the fasces and sitting in between the consuls powerfully indicated that Augustus was now lawfully invested with the sole and permanent summum imperium auspiciumque in Rome and Italy, above the actual consuls. Amongst other things, this implied that Augustus now had the sole right of initiative (and thus the leadership) in state affairs whenever he resided in Rome.26 Since this privilege was distinct from his temporary provincial command, it has to be considered as the triumphant capstone of that law of  which had empowered him to exercise his imperium as proconsul within Rome.27 As regards the murderous electoral violence of early , Augustus and his supporters in Rome might very well have played a skilful hand in engineering the crisis, or, at the very least, manipulating its outcome. First, Augustus’ re-election to the consulship in late  is quite peculiar in that the Romans knew that he would not accept it given his angry refusal to do so in early . A second, more vicious, round of electoral riots in  had the additional advantage of demonstrating that Rome could no longer handle old-style libertas, and that the Republic sorely

24

That these measures indeed were no empty shells and this was the desired outcome is clear from Dio’s subsequent note in .. that, “having voted these powers, they asked him to set everything to rights and enact whatever laws he wished.” 25 Compare Dio’s general note on the position of Roman emperors in .., evidently written in the Severan context: “They very often become consuls and are always called proconsuls when they are outside the pomerium.” It is indeed most unlikely that Augustus or his immediate successors would have been called proconsuls when holding the consulship. 26 See my forthcoming monograph on ‘The Principle of the summum imperium auspiciumque under the Republic’. 27 In terms of (his empowerment to use) his consular imperium, his decision to forfeit the consulship was thus more than offset by the measures of  and . It is not exaggerated to conclude that the decrees and laws of  completed Augustus’ republican monarchy. Although he would receive further privileges and honours, the combined measures of – represent the constitutional foundations of the new imperial system as it would roughly last for some three centuries.

arrogating despotic power through deceit

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needed Augustus as its official and permanent head of state.28 Since the extraordinary privileges and powers of  and  were always decreed by the Senate and next ratified by the People, the consulars, the consuls and the tribunes of the plebs doubtlessly played an important role in their design. It is, therefore, quite possible that some of them acted on the secret wishes of their absent master. Furthermore, there surely must have been other ways to curb this kind of unrest once and for all. The consul Sentius’ unwillingness to use his guard is rather odd, and Augustus himself was already fully empowered to maintain law and order in Rome by virtue of his privileged proconsulship. In terms of his popular standing and official position, too, the cura annonae and the consular prerogatives nicely capped the measures of  (viz. the tribunicia potestas and the intra-urban extension of the consulare imperium he held pro consule). The grain commission and its spectacular success further boosted his position as the people’s absolute champion. His appointment to what de facto was a third, lifelong consulship and his prerogative to hold the fasces continuously firmly established him as the lawful and sole commanderin-chief of Rome’s institutional apparatus. Being now officially superior to (the regular) consuls and proconsuls alike, Augustus was back at last to where Caesar Octavianus had been as sole triumvir from  /  to  January .29 Hardly three years after he had magnanimously declined the consulatus annuus et perpetuus, he had won this coveted prize under a modified and significantly enhanced form.30 As he eventually secured the 28

Comp. D.C. ... In . Velleius goes out of his way to extol C. Sentius the consul as a man of action who amongst other things swore that he would refuse to proclaim M. Egnatius Rufus consul even if elected by the People. Sentius’ refusal to use force to quell the electoral violence of January  therefore is all the remarkable. 29 The triumvirs r.p.c. had been entitled to sit between the consuls as the Republic’s plenipotentiary summi imperatores and the rotation of the consular fasces was only reinstated by Caesar Octavianus in January / February  bce, when he shared the consulship with M. Vipsanius Agrippa; see n.  supra and especially Vervaet a. 30 In Aug. , Suetonius interestingly enough records that (Augustus) exegit etiam ut quotiens consulatus sibi daretur, binos pro singulis collegas haberet, nec optinuit, reclamantibus cunctis satis maiestatem eius imminui, quod honorem eum non solus sed cum altero gereret, whereas Velleius in ..– relates that consulatus tantummodo usque ad undecimum quin continuaret Caesar, cum saepe obnitens repugnasset, impetrare ‹non› potuit (“in the case of the consulship only, Caesar was not able to have his way, but was obliged to hold that office consecutively until the eleventh time in spite of his frequent efforts to prevent it”). Augustus must therefore have made his remarkable request to elect a third consul whenever he held the office before he abdicated his eleventh consulship, at the time he was still nominally sharing the summum imperium auspiciumque with his successive colleagues in the consulship—probably in all civil matters and excluded his command of the praetorian cohorts.



frederik juliaan vervaet

lifelong tribunicia potestas seven years after the privilege had first been voted to him in honour of the capture of Alexandria in  (D.C. ..), he had a proven capacity for saving certain irresistible yet possibly contentious spoils for a better, more convenient day. The fact that those measures of  /  enhancing his tribunician ius habendi senatus were rendered superfluous by the privileged consular empowerment of  certainly suggests that the developments of  had not been anticipated by Augustus or the Senate in the summer of . Nonetheless, it is quite possible that from perhaps as early as , when he was offered the annual and perpetual consulship, Augustus and his associates were contemplating ways officially to reinstate him to a position of undisputed supreme authority in Rome and Italy. At all events, this reappraisal of the empowerments of  and  should cast aside any remaining doubts as to his real intentions and aspirations: he wanted absolute control, and he wanted it for life.31 A third and last cluster of examples of Augustan dissimulation concerns the well-known series of recusationes imperii: Augustus’ disingenuous reluctance to renew his vast provincial and military command, the veritable cornerstone of his monarchical position.32 In another show of fake modesty, perhaps meant to appease the Senate after the unprecedented empowerments of , he first had his provincial command prolonged by a mere five years at the outset of . Not long afterward, however, a cumulative grant of a second quinquennium raised the total number to ten again (D.C. ..–). In  bce, shortly after his second decade had expired, Augustus accepted another decennial extension of his provincial command, “though”, as Dio cleverly remarks, “with a show of reluctance, in spite of his oft-expressed desire to lay it down” (D.C. ..). At the start of  ce, when his third decennium was completed, “he accepted the leadership for the fourth time, though ostensibly under compulsion.” According to Dio, “he had become milder through 31 Rather amazingly, Cotton and Yakobson  simply cannot accept the possibility that Augustus received consular power for life in  on the basis of the biased premise that this “sounds too openly autocratic and ‘un-Augustan’ ” (), or, “too blatantly untraditional, making a mockery of Augustus’ claim in the Res Gestae that he never took an office contra morem maiorem.” () Indeed, rather than causing needless offence by assuming some lifelong magistracy (my italics) in  or , the proconsul Augustus contented himself with grants of lifelong and enhanced tribunicia potestas and consular prerogatives in  and  successively, which makes this famous statement in R.Gest.div.Aug. . a prime example of his masterly economy with the truth. 32 For a recent discussion of (the historical significance of) Augustus’ recusationes, see Cotton and Yakobson  –.

arrogating despotic power through deceit

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age and more reluctant to incur the hatred of any of the senators, and hence now wished to offend none of them” (D.C. ..). Since Dio records that at the start of  ce, a little more than a year before his death, it was with seeming reluctance that he accepted a fifth ten-year term as ruler of the Roman world, it is clear that Augustus remained faithful to the same old hypocritical charade to the bitter end.33 To my thinking, the above analysis certainly adds an extra dimension to Augustus’ final words to his intimate friends as recorded in Suetonius Aug. .: Supremo die identidem exquirens, an iam de se tumultus foris esset, petito speculo capillum sibi comi ac malas labantas corrigi praecepit et admissos amicos percontatus, ‘ecquid iis uideretur mimum uitae commode transegisse’, adiecit et clausulam: ε) δ τι EΕχοι καλ"ς, τD" παιγνDω δ'τε κρ'τον Κα4 πντες ?μς μετA χαρς προπμψατε.

“Upon the day of his death, he now and then enquired, if there was any disturbance outside on his account; and calling for a mirror, he ordered his hair to be combed, and his falling jaw to be adjusted. Then asking his friends who were admitted into the room, ‘Do you think that I have acted my part on the stage of life well?’ He immediately subjoined the final clause, ‘If all be right, with joy your voices raise, In loud applauses to the actor’s praise.’ ”

33 See Vell. ..– (cited n. ) for the fact that Augustus put up a similar show of reluctance at every consular election until his abdication of his th consulship in . Apart from his consistent and sensible refusal to assume the dictatorship, one of the only other examples of sincere recusatio of office and prestige was his obstinate refusal to give in to pressure to snatch the office of Pontifex Maximus from Lepidus: see, e.g., App. BC .; D.C. ..; Suet. Aug. .. Although he could not resist bullying and humiliating Lepidus in his apparent frustration and hatred of the man (D.C. ..–), Augustus was nonetheless keen to be seen as respecting age-long traditions in this matter—comp. also Badian  : “Octavian not only spared his life (although he did not allow him to live in Italy), but even allowed him to retain his pontificate, which might well have been impeached as obtained by dubious means. He wanted to advertise his regard for law and custom, as a preliminary to formally announcing the end of the civil wars.” Again, his own R.Gest.div.Aug. (.) indicate that he was handsomely compensated for this selfless adherence to mos maiorum, as it proudly records his membership of all of Rome’s major or prestigious religious colleges. The fact that he immediately took the chief pontificate upon Lepidus’ death speaks volumes as to how annoying Lepidus’ unanticipated longevity must have been to Augustus. For an authoritative study on these issues, see Ridley .



frederik juliaan vervaet The Pompeian model

In my opinion, it can be shown that the ultimate historic precedent for the politics of institutionalized hypocrisy, mendacious spin and massdeception had been set by none other than Cn. Pompeius Magnus. This admittedly happened in very different circumstances and under different forms, but with equally remarkable success. For a telling start, there is Pompeius’ famous recusatio prouinciae of  bce. After having summarized his meteoric rise in Roman politics (Vell. .–.), Velleius Paterculus recounts that “as consul he made the laudable promise, which he also kept, that he would not go from that office to any province.”34 To my thinking, this boastful promise proved to be twice empty. First, Pompeius had already snatched his consular province from the Senate seven years before he was elected to his first consulship late in . In , the Senate itself had put Pompeius in charge of an army with the rank of propraetor and the task of suppressing the rebellion of the consul M. Aemilius Lepidus under the supreme command of the other consul, Q. Lutatius Catulus. In , as both consuls refused to go to Spain to join the proconsul Q. Caecilius Metellus Pius (cos. ) in the difficult war against Sertorius, Pompeius decided to exploit the situation and pursue his own interest rather ruthlessly. Eager to obtain a major command in Spain, he consistently refused to disband his army, defying a direct order from the proconsul Catulus to do so. In what should be considered Pompeius’ first major act of political dissimulation, he simply continued to make new excuses until, at long last, the Senate caved in by granting him the command on the motion of L. Marcius Philippus (cos. , censor ).35 Regardless of this blatant insubordination, Senate and People even invested Pompeius with a full proconsulship and the remarkable privilege to command in Spain on an equal footing with the proconsul Metellus Pius. Since Pompeius merely was an eques Romanus at the time, outranked by Metellus in every respect, this indeed was an unprecedented honour. Therefore, one could argue perfectly that Pompeius’ promise of  to forego his consular prerogative of obtaining a province in reward had already been utterly broken 34 Vell. . (Qui cum consul perquam laudabiliter iurasset se in nullam prouinciam ex eo magistratu iturum idque seruasset). 35 Plu. Pomp. .: πρ&ς τα τα Πομπιος @χων τν στρατιAν /φ’ HαυτD" διεπρττετο ΜετλλDω πεμφ!ναι βοη!'ςJ κα4 Κτλου κελε$οντος οK διλυεν, #λλ’ ν το3ς Lπλοις Mν περ4 τν π'λιν, #ε τινας ποιο$μενος προφσεις, Nως @δωκαν αKτD" τν #ρχν, Λευκου Φιλππου γνμην ε)π'ντος.

arrogating despotic power through deceit

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before it was made. However, not yet satisfied, Pompeius again refused to disband his powerful army in  until the Senate had allowed him to stand for the consulship by exempting him from the restrictive provisions of another Cornelian Law. To add insult to injury, Pompeius subsequently also ‘secured’ his second public triumph, which he intentionally celebrated whilst still being an eques Romanus on  December , the very day before he entered upon his usurped consulship.36 Hardly three years later, Pompeius’ next big move not only amounted to a second breach of promise, it also provides a demonstrative example of Pompeian dissimulation and mass-deception. By the early sixties bce, piracy in the Mediterranean had become a real threat to Italy and its massive overseas imports. After a botched attempt to deal with the problem from  to , the tribune of the plebs A. Gabinius boldly seized the initiative in . Gabinius promulgated a spectacular bill providing for the election of one consular supreme commander against piracy across the Mediterranean with a tenure of three consecutive years and assisted by a huge force as well as an unprecedented number of subordinate legati pro praetore. Although Gabinius’ bill did not mention Pompeius it was quite obvious to all that the commons would choose the favourite of the public. Whereas the commons immediately jumped at this proposal and turned to Pompeius, the Senate was so fiercely opposed to seeing him in such position of power that Gabinius was nearly killed in the Curia. In his turn, the consul C. Piso was arrested and barely escaped being lynched by an outraged mob. The optimates cowered and confined themselves to stage an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to have two of Gabinius’ colleagues block the vote of the bill in the comitia tributa plebis.37 As for the attitude of Pompeius himself, Dio Cassius relates that he “was very eager to command, and because of his own ambition and the zeal of the populace no longer now so much regarded this commission as an honour as the failure to win it a disgrace”, and adds that “when he saw the opposition of the optimates, desired to appear forced to accept.” Dio next explains that “he was always in the habit of pretending as far as possible not to desire the things he really wished, and on this occasion did so more than ever, because of the jealousy that

36 For a full discussion of these interesting and revealing episodes in Pompeius’ remarkable cursus honorum, see Vervaet a –. 37 For this basic outline of these events of early , see D.C. .–.; for the eventually unsuccessful command of M. Antonius Creticus (pr. ) against piracy, see Broughton  .–; ;  and .

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would follow, should he of his own accord lay claim to the leadership, and because of the glory, if he should be appointed against his will as the one most worthy to command” (D.C. ..–). In his own preliminary speech to the plebs, Pompeius put on a grandiloquent show of recusatio imperii. After politely insisting just how much pride he took in the People’s flattering wish to appoint him to this command, he advised them not always to turn to his services and explained how he felt that it was inappropriate for him to continually be in some position of command. He next indicated that he had already endured so much hardship in the field before entering the Senate as consul in , and that the Roman People had already shown its gratitude by appointing him to the command against Sertorius and allowing him to celebrate an unprecedented triumph. Pompeius then again emphasized that, despite his relative youth, he was worn out and wearied by the many anxieties and dangers he had already suffered, and that he could no longer endure the physical or psychological burdens of high command. This said, Pompeius implored the People to consider that failure would have him stand trial, whereas success would earn him the jealousy and hatred of his senatorial peers. Therefore the People, he concluded his speech, should better allow him to attend to his own business in all tranquility and elect some other, equally suitable commander (D.C. .–). In his own speech in favour of his bill, Gabinius praised Pompeius for not seeking the command, even when offered to him, yet implored the commons to choose him as being the ablest, most capable and seasoned man available (D.C. .– ). After tumultuous electoral proceedings, in which Gabinius, amongst other things, prevented his colleague Trebellius from speaking and even threatened to abrogate his tribuneship, Pompeius was duly elected to his second extraordinary proconsulship and legally invested with the most powerful command the Roman Republic had ever seen. By virtue of the Gabinian Law, Pompeius was empowered to fight piracy across the whole Mediterranean for three consecutive years on a footing of equality with the proconsuls in all provinces to a distance of  miles from the sea. In order to administer his truly gigantic prouincia, Pompeius was, amongst other things, given the right to appoint no less than  legati pro praetore, to raise enormous land and naval forces and to draw up to (the equivalent of)  Attic talents from the treasury.38 In , Pom38 For the geographical span of Pompeius’ prouincia, see Vell. ..; D.C. .a and .; App. Mith. ; Plu. Pomp. .; for his command being in triennium, see D.C. .., ., . and App. Mith. ; for his entitlement to appoint  praetorian

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peius as consul had solemnly pledged not to take up a consular province, obviously in a token gesture to placate a Senate he had repeatedly bullied and blackmailed. In , very much against the will of that same Senate, he secured a province that, by any conceivable standard, dwarfed whatever consular province the Senate had or might have decreed in  / . Again adding insult to injury, the Manilian Law in  put Pompeius in charge of the final stages of the incredibly lucrative war effort against Mithridates and Tigranes, putting him, amongst other things, in command of many more legions and the provinces of Bithynia and Cilicia.39 Some four years after his ostentatious third triumph of  September ,40 the star of Pompeius Magnus was undeniably on the wane. In , P. Clodius Pulcher, the patrician tribune, had conquered the hearts and minds of the urban plebs through an impressive and significant legislative program. At the same time, Caesar’s ruthless war of conquest in Gaul was rapidly boosting his political and financial clout. It was against this background that in , twenty years after he secured his first extraordinary proconsular command against Sertorius and ten years after his second one against piracy, Pompeius skilfully engineered a forceful return to the forefront of public life. As a food supply crisis pushed up prices and political heat, popular pressure to make some extraordinary appointment to secure Rome’s grain provisioning rapidly mounted. Cicero, who claimed to have been approached by the boni to find a solution, quickly passed the ball to Pompeius (Cic. Dom. ). Thanks to his contemporary correspondence we are well-informed about the precise circumstances that led to Pompeius’ appointment to yet another extraordinary proconsular commission.41 In Att. .. (Rome, mid-September ), Cicero tells us that he gave a speech of thanks on  September, the day after his return to Rome from exile, and that he again addressed the Senate on  September. He explains that the price of grain had risen so sharply (annonae summa caritas) that an angry crowd had flocked first to the theatre and then

legati pro praetore, see D.C. .. and Plu. Pomp. . (comp. also Plut. Pomp. . and App. Mithr. ); for some sources on his colossal ornatio prouinciae, see D.C. ..; Plu. Pomp. . and, esp., App. Mith. . For a discussion of the scope of Pompeius’ imperium vis-à-vis that of the other proconsuls, see also Vervaet a. 39 See, for example, Vell. ..–; Cic. Man. , , ,  and  and Dom. ; D.C. ..; App. Mith. ; and Plu. Pomp. .. 40 For an excellent discussion of Pompeius’ third triumph and its historical significance, see Beard  –. 41 For a bibliography on the previous history and the political context of Pompeius’ curatio annonae of , see Girardet   n. .

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to the Senate and blamed him for the shortage at the instigation of his enemy Clodius. Cicero also clarifies that the Senate was meeting during those days to consider the grain situation and there by now was general demand on the part of the commons as well as the boni that Pompeius be asked to take charge of supplies. Pompeius himself, Cicero relates, was eager for the commission and the crowd outside called on him by name to propose it. Cicero recounts that he did so in a full-dress speech, and that “in the absence of all the consulars except Messalla and Afranius, because, as they alleged, it was not safe for them to speak, the Senate passed a decree as proposed by me, to the effect that Pompeius should be asked to undertake the matter and appropriate legislation be introduced”. Cicero then addressed the people who received the news with enthusiastic applause. The following day, however, as the stakes had been raised considerably, there was a full meeting of the Senate, all the consulars now present. Cicero points out that Pompeius was given everything he asked, including no less than  senatorial legati to assist him, and had promptly named himself as his first preferable appointment.42 Cicero further records that, Legem consules conscripserunt qua Pompeio per quinquennium omnis potestas rei frumentariae toto orbe terrarum daretur; alteram Messius, qui omnis pecuniae dat potestatem et adiungit classem et exercitum et maius imperium in prouinciis quam sit eorum qui eas obtineant. Illa nostra lex consularis nunc modesta uidetur, haec Messi non ferenda. Pompeius illam uelle se dicit, familiares hanc. Consulares duce Fauonio fremunt (Cic. Att. ..) “The consuls drafted a law giving Pompeius control over all grain supplies throughout the world for a period of five years. [The tribune of the plebs] Messius proposed an alternative bill which gives him control over all moneys and in addition a fleet, an army, and authority in the provinces superior to that of their governors. Our consular law now looks quite modest; Messius’ [bill] is felt to be intolerable. According to himself Pompeius favours the former, according to his friends the latter. The consulars, headed by Favonius, groaned.”

In other words, in order to get the seemingly unacceptable, viz. total control of all grain supplies in the Roman Empire, one of Pompeius’ associates cleverly asked for the wholly intolerable, whilst Pompeius himself stuck to his usual appearance of modesty.43 42 In addition to Cicero, Pompeius also appointed his brother Quintus to his staff of legati: cf. Cic. Fam. ... 43 In De Domo Sua, Cicero produces a similar summary of events. In Dom. , Cicero

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In his remarkably similar account of events, Dio Cassius, for his part, reveals that the infuriated mob actually threatened to slaughter the senators and set the entire Capitol ablaze, and that it was in this rather unfriendly context that Cicero could ‘persuade’ them to have Pompeius elected curator annonae as proconsul for five years in Italy as well as the provinces.44 In his generally well-informed Life of Pompeius, Plutarch, too, adds a few really interesting pieces of information. Plutarch confirms that it was Cicero who, by virtue of his advocacy of the corn law, “in a manner once more made Pompeius master of all the land and sea in Roman possession. For under his direction were placed harbours, trading-places, distributions of crops—in a word, navigation and agriculture.” Interestingly enough, Plutarch next claims that “Clodius alleged that the law had not been proposed on account of the scarcity of grain, but the scarcity of grain had arisen in order that the law might be proposed whereby the power of Pompeius, which was withering away, as it were, in consequence of his failing spirits, might be rekindled again and recovered in a new office.”45 Although Pompeius and Clodius were on

relates that on the day of the decisive meeting of the Senate an uproarious crowd had gathered in front of the Capitol, propter metum atque inopiam rei frumentariae. According to Cicero, the consuls themselves subsequently summoned him to the Senate. In Dom. – Cicero passionately defends what he emphatically defines as his motion on behalf of Pompeius: quoniam princeps ego sum eius atque auctor (). The main thread of his argument was that all of this had to be done rei publicae causa and especially for the sake of the people, and that Pompeius’ moral qualities (fides, uirtus, auctoritas and felicitas) made him the most suitable man for this delicate task. As for Cicero’s rationale, it is quite obvious that his advocacy of a new extraordinary commission for Pompeius was instant repayment for services rendered in the arduous effort to get him recalled from exile. Cicero therefore had every interest in blowing his own trumpet with regard to his role in Pompeius’ appointment, and every reason to gloss over the unsavoury and manipulative aspects of the deal. 44 D.C. ..: @πεισ σφας πιμελητν το στου τ&ν Πομπιον προχειρσασ!αι κα4 διA το το κα4 #ρχν αKτD" #ν!υπτου κα4 ν τP QΙταλSα κα4 @ξω π4 πντε @τη δο ναι. With a certain sense of exaggeration, Dio cannot resist drawing a parallel with Pompeius’ command of : “so now in the case of the grain supply, as previously in the case of the pirates, he was once more to hold sway over the entire world then under Roman power” (κα4 7 μν, Bσπερ π4 το3ς καταποντιστα3ς πρ'τερον οTτω κα4 τ'τε π4 τD" στDω πσης α
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hostile terms at the time, the latter was well-positioned to suspect nefarious interference in Rome’s food supply.46 As the author of a sweeping lex frumentaria he himself knew something about the critical issue of feeding Rome’s populous proletariat;47 and, as one of Pompeius’ most formidable competitors for popularity with the urban plebs, he controlled his own network of agents and informers.48 Appian, finally, rounds out our knowledge about the food crisis of . After noting that Pompeius was appointed the sole commander of the grain supply, he adds that “Rome was very soon provided with abundant supplies, by which means Pompeius again gained great reputation and power.”49 The combined evidence makes it hard not to believe that Pompeius and his associates shamelessly exploited the supply crisis of  by making a bad situation worse in order to gain political advantage. Indeed, Cicero’s own insistence in De Domo Sua that his motion “was, in the first place, the opinion which popular discussion had for long past embedded in our minds” strongly suggests that Pompeius’ agents must already have been working the streets of Rome for weeks.50 The fact he had a detailed wish list ready by the Senate’s meeting of  September and that he set to work immediately and methodically after his appointment around  Octo-

46

See also Cic. Dom.  and  for the fact that Clodius had mounted a stinging public attack against Pompeius’ extra ordinem appointment to the curatio annonae. 47 See Cic. Dom.  and Ruffing   and n. – for the lex Clodia frumentaria which charged one Sex. Clodius / Cloelius with the frumentatio and the cura annonae and empowered him to exercise his authority in all prouinciae frumentariae vis-à-vis all mancipes and in all horrea. 48 In Pomp. . Plutarch also records a different tradition, according to which Pompeius’ promotion was the work of the consul P. Cornelius Lentulus Spinther, who wanted some office to tie down Pompeius so he could secure a command to assist Ptolemaeus XII Auletes of Egypt. Plutarch, however, goes on to relate that the Senate around the same time rejected a bill framed by the tribune of the plebs Canidius to the extent that Pompeius should go to Egypt without an army and just two lictors to mediate between the king and the Alexandrians, as they feared for Pompeius’ safety. Plutarch also adds that Pompeius was thought to regard the bill with no disfavour, and that writings were found scattered about the Forum and near the Curia stating that it was Ptolemaeus’ wish to have Pompeius given to him as commander instead of Spinther. In my opinion, this seriously undercuts the hypothesis that Spinther was the main force behind Pompeius’ appointment to the curatio annonae. Besides, as Pompeius’ remarkable track record of the fifties bce indicates, he could have perfectly combined the cura annonae with a diplomatic mission to Egypt. 49 App. BC .. See also Plu. Pomp. . for Pompeius’ remarkable success in providing Rome with an abundance of grain. 50 Cic. Dom.  (At quam sententiam dixi? Primum eam, quam populi sermo in animis nostris iam ante defixerat).

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ber , dispatching his legates to Rome’s various grain provinces,51 also hints at a carefully prepared scenario for a glorious and powerful political comeback. This analysis therefore further corroborates the main results of Ruffing’s excellent study on the food crisis of . On the basis of the conclusion that “die Schwankungen der Getreidepreise in eigenartiger Weise mit den politischen Ereignissen korrelieren”, Ruffing convincingly demonstrates how “manipulative Eingriffe in den Getreidemarkt” were “eine erstklassige politische Waffe”. Although it is, admittedly, impossible to prove collusion between Pompeius and the grain dealers who controlled the public and private supplies, there is no doubt that Pompeius emerged from this crisis as its primary beneficiary, and that grain prices came down right after his appointment. As the outcome perfectly suited Pompeius’ political interests, Ruffing deems it highly probable that he and his associates were responsible for the shortage of .52 Ironically enough, it was a consular law that charged a proconsul with the exclusive supreme command in all matters pertaining to Roman food provisioning across the Roman world. In an equally sensational move, this proconsul also received the right to enter the City if need be.53 Therefore the consular senators had every reason to be deeply concerned about what was taking shape in September . In this respect, it is well worth remembering that in  bce, roughly a year after the assassination of dictator perpetuus C. Iulius Caesar and against the background of the ruthless power struggle between Caesar Octavianus and Marcus Antonius, a desperate Senate decreed “to abolish all the privileges the granting

51

For Pompeius’ swift and efficient action, see Att. .. (Cicero appointed one of Pompeius’ legati by the beginning of October ); App. BC . and, esp. Plu. Pomp. .; comp. also Cic. Q. fr. . and Fam. ... See Cic. Dom.  for Pompeius being appointed nominatim by the constitutive law. 52 Ruffing  –. Most interestingly, Ruffing also points out that both the vote of the Gabinian Law in  and the vote on Augustus’ curatio annonae of  triggered immediate, sharp decreases in the grain prices. 53 For the fact that the lex Caecilia Cornelia de Cn. Pompeio extra ordinem rei frumentariae praeficiendo (comp. Cic. Dom. ) must have empowered Pompeius to discharge his duties in Rome (intra pomerium) as proconsul without losing his imperium, see, e.g., Fam. ..; Q. fr. .. and ..—probably with the proviso that the proconsul would be granted ad hoc authorization by the Senate whenever such action was deemed necessary (comp. Q. fr. ..). That he desisted from entering the City as from January  can be deduced from Asc. Sc.  and D.C. ... Whereas he still held the extraordinary privilege to do so (ex s.c.) in October  (Q. fr. ..), he obviously lost it as he abandoned its raison d’être, viz. the curatio annonae, around October  (cf. infra). In my opinion, Pompeius decided to stay out of the City altogether after  as he now also held a powerful provincial command.

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of which hitherto to any individuals contrary to established custom had paved the way to supreme power . . . in the first place, they forbade anyone to hold office for a longer period than a year, and, secondly, they provided that no one man should be chosen superintendent of the corn supply or commissioner of food.”54 Before the turn of the year, the notorious Titian Law would invest Antonius, Lepidus and Octavianus with the quinquennial and plenipotentiary magistracy of triumuir rei publicae constituendae. Some twenty years later, the cura annonae would become one of the cornerstones of Augustan autocracy. The years  and  bce offer a fourth and final example of successful Pompeian dissimulatio. As a result of a particularly turbulent, scandalous and violent year , the year  began without consuls or praetors. In the ensuing chaos, Clodius, still the darling of the urban plebs, was notoriously killed on the Via Appia on  January  in a brawl with his mortal enemy Milo and his retinue. After a frenzied crowd used the Curia as Clodius’ funeral pyre and subsequently laid siege to Milo’s heavily defended house, the Senate decided to appoint an interrex and passed a decree ordaining the interrex, the tribunes of the plebs and the proconsul Pompeius to guard Rome and see that the Republic should suffer no harm. Since the murderous street violence continued unabated, the Senate authorized Pompeius to make fresh levies. As the Senate and Pompeius tried to regain control of the situation, Rome buzzed with rumours about what magistrates should rule it. Dio explains that some suggested that Pompeius should be chosen dictator and others that Caesar should be consul. Dio records that it was the senior consular M. Calpurnius Bibulus (cos. ) who broke the deadlock by securing a motion that Pompeius be elected consul sine conlega. Dio rightly insists that this was a wholly unprecedented decision and that it was intended as some sort of pre-emptive strike meant to kill three birds with one stone. On the one hand, this solution would prevent Pompeius being named dictator, an office that was in bad repute since Sulla’s reign of terror. On the other hand, the optimates so precluded the intolerable possibility of a joint consulship for Pompeius and Caesar. Lastly, by this ploy to win over the former to their cause, Caesar’s enemies hoped to drive a wedge between Rome’s most powerful men (D.C. .–). Dio adds that the Senate’s crafty decree caught Pompeius by surprise and that his D.C. ..–: πν!’ Lσα ν τD" πρ4ν δυναστεας τισ4ν @ξω τ"ν πατρων δο!ντα παρεσκευκει προκατλυσαν . . . το το μ:ν γAρ #πε3πον μηδνα π4 πλεω χρ'νον νιαυτο 8ρχειν, το το δ: #πηγ'ρευσαν μτε τινA στου πιμελητν μτε τροφ"ν πισττην Nνα αρε3σ!αι. 54

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delight at the novelty and the unexpectedness of the honour made him seek a rapprochement with the Senate (D.C. ..). Nonetheless, there is strong indication that reality was otherwise and that Pompeius had already been premeditating another major role for himself from some time late in . At the outset of his second consulship in , the bitterly contested lex Trebonia de prouinciis consularibus invested Pompeius with a privileged five-year command over both the Spanish provinces. Amongst other extraordinary empowerments, he was given the unprecedented right to administrate his provinces in absentia, while remaining in Italy and through legati pro praetore.55 As Caesar and Dio record, this most remarkable arrangement was officially made rei publicae causa, in order to allow Pompeius to continue his curatio annonae.56 From January , Pompeius thus continued to linger ad urbem, regardless of the fact that he laid down his prouincia frumentaria in the fall of .57 According to Plutarch, his strategy to counterbalance Caesar’s rapidly growing power now chiefly consisted of controlling (the assignment of) the urban 55

See Broughton  .. For Pompeius’ extraordinary empowerment to govern both Spains through legates, see esp. D.C. .. and Vell. .. (quoted in the following note). 56 Caes. Gal. . ( bce: Gnaeo Pompeio proconsule . . . ipse ad urbem cum imperio rei publicae causa remaneret) and D.C. .., where Dio records that, as opposed to his colleague Crassus, Pompeius remained in Rome “on the plea that he was prevented from leaving the City . . . on account of his superintendence of the grain supply”. Vell. .. plainly asserts that during the years following his second consulship, Pompeius governed the Spains through legates while he presided over the affairs of the City: Hispanias . . . per triennium absens ipse ac praesidens urbi per Afranium et Petreium, consularem ac praetorium, legatos suos, administrabat. 57 That Pompeius decided to put aside his curatio annonae around October , some two years before the expiry of his five-year term in this position, is clear from Fam. .. (Rome,  or ), where Cicero in a letter to the governor of Macedonia asks for a favour on behalf of his good friend C. Avianus Flaccus: A te idem illud peto, ut de loco quo deportet frumentum et de tempore Avianio commodes, quorum utrumque per eundem me obtinuit triennium, dum Pompeius isti negotio praefuit. That Cicero was still a legatus of Pompeius in his capacity of curator annonae in April  is clear from Fam. ... In my opinion, Pompeius appointed Cicero to the legateship referred to in Q. fr. .. (Arpinum, September ) and Att. .. (Rome, end of November ) by virtue of his special empowerment under the Trebonian Law. The use of the pejorative isti in Fam. .. certainly indicates that, like the other consulars at the time, Cicero himself had had serious reservations about Pompeius’ curatio annonae. This suggests that his vigorous backing of Pompeius’ plan in September  was a Ciceronian act of dissimulation, gratitudinis gratia. As Pompeius was chiefly dependent on the Senate for his ornatio prouinciae (see Q. fr. .., where Cicero records that the Senate on  April  allocated ,, HS in rem frumentariam), his decision not to ride out his tenure as overseer of the grain supply might, perhaps, have resulted from a lack of further funding.

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magistracies.58 When he saw that the magistracies were not bestowed according to his wishes because of rampant bribery, Pompeius allowed the City to slide into anarchy.59 This crisis resulted in the perplexingly long interregnum of , when the consuls entered office only in July.60 When during the interregnum the tribune of the plebs C. Lucilius Hirrus bluntly said what many were whispering by advising the People to elect Pompeius dictator, a fierce personal attack by Cato almost cost him his tribunate. Only at this critical juncture did many of Pompeius’ friends come forth in his defense, declaring that he neither asked nor desired that office. Interestingly, Plutarch subsequently notes that “when Cato applauded Pompeius and urged him to devote himself to the cause of law and order, for the time being he did so, out of shame, and Domitius and Messala were installed in the consulship” (Plu. Pomp. .). As Plutarch next recounts how soon after a renewed anarchy in Rome caused the ghost of a Pompeian dictatorship to reappear (infra), these words strongly suggests that none other than Pompeius himself was the driving force behind the tribune’s campaign to have him appointed to the dictatorship, and that Cato’s vigorous and relentless opposition eventually forced him to back down for the moment and allow the election of consuls in the summer of . This reconstruction of events is further corroborated by Appian, Dio Cassius and Cicero, each of whom provides insightful additional perspectives. Appian records that two factors caused electoral proceedings to spiral out of control in  / . First, many prominent nobles desisted from running altogether as special laws in  had put Pompeius, Crassus and Caesar in control of the better part of the provinces for five consecutive years, barring them from significant military commands. Second, rampant bribery, corruption and intense competition amongst a series of second-tier contenders made a bad situation worse. Pompeius, for his part, allowed for a protracted interregnum in  in order that there might be need of a dictator. The crisis was such that many now publicly pondered the necessity of putting affairs into the hands of one man, and 58 In .. Dio also recounts that from , Pompeius’ plan was to let his legates administrate affairs in the Spanish provinces, while he would take care of the public business at Rome and in the rest of Italy. 59 Plutarch’s use of the verb περιορω, “look over, overlook, i.e. look on without regarding, allow, suffer” (Liddell and Scott   [s.v. περιορ-ατον]) in Pomp. . (περιε3δε) indicates that Pompeius deliberately steered the City towards anarchy by loosening his grip on public affairs. 60 Broughton  ..

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how Pompeius would make for a perfect appointment as a moderate, a commander of huge forces and a popular and leading senator. As for Pompeius’ attitude, Appian goes on to explain that “the expectation of a dictatorship he discountenanced in words, but in fact he did everything secretly to promote it, and went out of his way to overlook the prevailing disorder and the anarchy consequent upon the chaos.” Interestingly, Appian then indicates how Milo, a candidate for the consulship, fell out with Pompeius precisely because he eventually took offense at the former’s continued obstruction of the consular elections (App. BC .). In his account on the chaotic interregnum of , Dio indicates that the tribunes of the plebs were largely responsible for blocking the efforts on the part of successive interreges to organize consular elections. Dio also records that the Senate had commissioned Pompeius to proceed against them and that his attempts at doing so were rather half-hearted, if only because, as it just happened, he did not remain ad urbem (D.C. .), all of which confirming the suspicion that he deliberately allowed Rome to slide into chaos. After the tribunes had been offering various objections, including a failed proposal to elect consular tribunes, they declared that in any case Pompeius had to be chosen dictator. Dio goes on to explain that, “by this pretext they secured a very long delay; for he was out of town, and of those on the spot there was no one who would venture to vote for the demand, since in remembrance of Sulla’s cruelty they all hated that institution, nor yet would venture to refuse to choose Pompeius, on account of their fear of him. At last, very late, he came himself, refused the dictatorship offered to him, and took measures to have the consuls elected.”61 Cicero for his part records that as early as the beginning of June  there had been “some hope of elections, but doubtful; some suspicion of a dictatorship, but that too not definite”.62 In a letter written around the end of October , Cicero indicates that “the situation is drifting towards an interregnum, and there is some whiff of a dictatorship in the air, much talk anyhow”.63 Another letter from  October more frankly mentions “the terrifying rumour of a dictatorship”,64 whereas the outlook definitely 61 D.C. ..–.. In Fam. .. (Rome,  August ), Cicero discloses the identity of one of Hirrus’ most vocal tribunician supporters: M. Coelius Vinicianus. 62 Q. fr. .. (erat non nulla spes comitiorum sed incerta, erat aliqua suspicio dictaturae, ne ea quidem certa). Translations of Cicero here are adapted from the LCL editions of Shackleton Bailey  and , with some amendments. 63 Att. .. (res f‹l›uit ad interregnum et est non nullus odor dictaturae, sermo quidem multus). 64 Q. fr. .. (dictaturae etiam rumor plenus timoris fuisset).

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gets even grimmer in a letter from the end of November . Since Cicero here unambiguously indicates that Pompeius quietly wanted the job, it is well worth quoting his words in full: Res prolatae, ad interregnum comitia adducta. rumor dictatoris iniucundus bonis, mihi etiam magis quae loquuntur. Sed tota res et timetur et refrigescit. Pompeius plane se negat uelle; antea mihi ipse non negabat. Hirrus auctor fore uidetur (o di, quam ineptus, quam se ipse amans sine riuali!). Crassum Iunianum, hominem mihi deditum, per me deterruit. Velit nolit scire difficile est; Hirro tamen agente nolle se non probabit. Aliud hoc tempore de re publica nihil loquebantur; agebatur quidem certe nihil (Cic. Q. fr. ..). “Business has been adjourned and the elections brought to an interregnum. There is talk of a dictator, disagreeable to the honest men; what they are saying is to me still less agreeable. But the whole idea is viewed with alarm, and at the same time it’s falling flat. Pompeius categorically denies any desire for it. Talking to me himself earlier on he did not use to deny it. It looks as though Hirrus will make the proposal. (Gods, what an ass he is! How he loves himself—in which regard he has no competitor!) He got me to frighten off Crassus Iunianus, who is at my service. Does he want it or doesn’t he? Hard to tell, but if Hirrus is the mover, he will never persuade the world that he doesn’t. At present they are all talking of nothing else in the way of politics; certainly nothing is a-doing.”

As Cicero notes in a letter from December , the possibility of a Pompeian dictatorship had at that time diminished without being off the charts altogether: Video Messallam nostrum consulem, si per interregnum, sine iudicio; si per dictatorem, tamen sine periculo . . . ν παρργDω: de dictatore tamen actum adhuc nihil est. Pompeius abest, Appius miscet, Hirrus parat, multi intercessores numerantur, populus non curat, principes nolunt, ego quiesco (Cic. Q. fr. ..). “I expect to see our friend Messalla consul; if by an interrex he will not be on trial, if by a dictator he will still be in no danger . . .. En passant, nothing has so far been done about a dictator after all. Pompeius is away, Appius is stirring the pot, Hirrus making ready, many veto casters are being counted, the public is indifferent, the leaders are opposed, I lie low.”

According to Plutarch, the violent interregnum of early  then caused more people to agitate for a dictatorship more boldly. It was in this particularly threatening ambience that Cato and Bibulus, both hostile to Pompeius, felt compelled to allow him some kind of traditional supremacy in order to avoid the absolute tyranny of a dictatorship. Plutarch also adds that it was Bibulus who first proposed in the Senate that Pompeius be chosen sole consul, and that Cato next threw in his full support, arguing

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this solution to be in the best interest of the Republic (Plu. Pomp. .–). In his Life of Caesar, Plutarch likewise recounts that many were publicly advocating a dictatorship for Pompeius, and adds that “when even Pompeius, although in words he affected to decline the honour, in fact did more than any one else to effect his appointment as dictator, Cato saw through his design and persuaded the Senate to appoint him sole consul, solacing him with a more legal monarchy that he might not force his way to the dictatorship.”65 Appian recounts that, faced with the violent aftermath of Clodius’ death, “The Senate assembled in consternation and looked to Pompeius, intending to make him dictator at once, for they considered this necessary as a remedy for the present evils; but at the suggestion of Cato they appointed him consul without a colleague, so that by ruling alone he might have the power of a dictator with the responsibility of a consul” (BC .). Therefore, it is quite possible that even in the Senate some of Pompeius’ friends may have advocated a dictatorship for him in the deliberations resulting in his appointment as sole consul. In light of the above, there is every indication that Pompeius himself had been the driving force behind the campaign to invest him with the dictatorship,66 and that the decision to have him elected sole consul was a stopgap. At any rate, the energetic, autocratic and high-handed way he discharged his third consulship suggests that Pompeius had been considering carefully how to rule Rome once he had secured the required authority to do so.67 In every respect, he acted as some sort of consul rei publicae constituendae et legibus scribundis: he deployed troops in Rome, presided over the courts in the style of a military commander and pushed through an impressive and in many respects historic legislative program.68 Plutarch records that the Senate had actually decreed that, should he deem this appropriate, Pompeius might choose whom he thought fit after two full months of his sole consulship had expired (Plu. Pomp. .). Although Pompeius entered upon the consulship V a.d. Kal. 65 Plu. Caes. .. For a similar account of Bibulus’ and Cato’s move to defuse the situation and avoid a Pompeian dictatorship by offering him a sole third consulship, see Plu. Cat. Mi. . In Cat. Mi. , Plutarch relates how Pompeius then fell over his feet thanking Cato for his vigorous support of Bibulus’ motion. 66 Compare also Hurlet who in the preceding chapter observes that “un tel projet” was “sans doute soutenu par Pompée en sous-main”. 67 For an excellent summary of Pompeius’ quasi-principate of , see D.C. .–. 68 See esp. D.C. .. and .; Plu. Pomp. . and Cic.  for the use of troops in the courtroom and Pompeius’ lording it all over the judicial proceedings. It is no exaggeration to define Pompeius’ sole consular regime in  as a modified and bloodless version of Sulla’s dictatorial rule of –.

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Mart. in the intercalary month, he only had a colleague elected for the five final months of the year.69 Furthermore, he secured the election of a man who would not put the slightest obstacle in his way, viz. the vainglorious but rather inept Q. Caecilus Metellus Pius Scipio Nasica. Apart from the fact that Pompeius had married Scipio’s daughter Cornelia shortly after assuming his consulship, he had also shamelessly used his influence to win Scipio’s acquittal from a bribery charge.70 It should, therefore, come as no surprise that even after the appointment of a colleague, Pompeius remained his iron grip on Roman business.71 As for the nature of the dictatorship Pompeius himself had in mind, the above suggests a Sullan dictatura rei publicae constituendae et legibus scribundis, or, perhaps, a Fabian dictatura interregni causa.72 In contradistinction to the operationally limited dictatura comitiorum habendorum causa, both former options would have allowed him to preside over the consular elections as well as to carry through the sort of sweeping political program he achieved in .73 With regard to his underlying motives and objectives, Hurlet rightly stresses that “ce serait une erreur de faire de la dictature l’instrument institutionnel d’un project monarchique hypothétique et secret”. There indeed is no indication whatsoever that Pompeius ever intended to use the dictatorship as a vehicle 69

See Broughton  .. For this particularly unsavoury episode, see esp. Plu. Pomp. .. D.C. .. attests that, unlike Plautius Hypsaeus and Milo, Scipio had actually been indicted of bribery by two persons. 71 Dio explicitly records in .. that Scipio did not enact any new laws and limited himself to abolishing Clodius’ law concerning the censorial powers. 72 For Sulla’s unprecedented dictatorship, see Vervaet  –; for Fabius Maximus’ equally unique dictatura interregni causa of  bce, see Heartfield  – and Vervaet  – (esp. –). 73 In his contribution to this volume Hurlet argues that “Les sources indiquent en effet qu’il fut question d’instituer dans les années  non pas une dictatura rei gerundae causa en vigeur du Ve au IIIe siècle, ni non plus une dictature constituante comme celle de Sylla, mais une dictature dont le seul object aurait été de faire élire les deux consuls.” According to Hurlet, who casts aside contemporary fears about the prospect of a Pompeian dictatorship as “reactions irrationelles”, Q. fr. .. (Rome, December ) “ne laisse aucun doute sur la nature de la dictature qui aurait été conféréé à Pompée en évoquant la possibilité que Messala puisse être élu au consulat soit à la suite d’un interrègne, soit à la suite d’une dictature.” In my opinion, Cicero’s repeated references to a possible dictatorship certainly indicate that he and many others believed that the organisation of the consular elections would be one of that dictator’s most urgent tasks. Nonetheless, his unambiguous allusions to the climate of fear and insecurity caused by these rumours and similar echoes in the other sources as well as the optimates’ rabid resistance strongly suggest that contemporaries expected a Pompeian dictatorship to be about much more than simply the election of a new pair of consuls. 70

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for establishing enduring autocracy. Hurlet, however, goes on to assert that all he really wanted was to have a hand in every important decision, and that his strong interest in the consular elections can be explained on account of the central role of that magistracy in Roman government. According to Hurlet, “On voit donc apparaître en filigrane la nature profonde de l’action de Pompée: non pas instaurer un pouvoir personnel, ni non plus de façon générale mettre en place un régime qui préfigurerait sous une forme ou une autre le principat d’Auguste, mais se réserver la première place dans un système politique fortement compétitif.” In my opinion, this final assessment is overly positive, as there certainly is evidence suggesting that Pompeius wanted to dominate or at least control Roman political life as a sort of Republican Prince, through a diverse and variable range of formal and informal instruments, and intolerant of any serious competition.74 First and foremost, Senate and People prolonged his privileged command in the Spains, set to expire around  April , in quinquennium while he was still sole consul. This meant that his powerful position as provincial commander in absentia in charge of an enormous army was now secure until the early spring of .75 Second, in a letter from  February , Cicero bitterly complained that, Dominatio quaesita ab utroque est, non id actum, beata et honesta ciuitas ut esset. Nec uero ille urbem reliquit quod eam tueri non posset nec Italiam quod ea pelleretur, sed hoc a primo cogitauit, omnis terras, omnia maria mouere, reges barbaros incitare, gentis feras in Italiam armatas adducere, exercitus conficere maximos. Genus illud Sullani regni iam 74 For some stinging criticism of Pompeius’ towering ambition and his inability to accept an equal, see Vell. ..: Nam neque Pompeius, ut primum ad rem publicam adgressus est, quemquam omnino parem tulit, et in quibus rebus primus esse debebat, solus esse cupiebat (neque eo uiro quisquam aut alia omnia minus aut gloriam magis concupiit, in adpetendis honoribus immodicus, in gerendis uerecundissimus, ut qui eos ut libentissime iniret, ita finiret aequo animo, et quod cupisset, arbitrio suo sumeret, alieno deponeret)—comp. also Luc. .–: nec quemquam iam ferre potest Caesarue priorem Pompeiusue parem. In this otherwise critical assessment, Velleius does, however, rightly indicate that—in sharp contradistinction to Caesar in the forties bce—Pompeius would pragmatically change the official instruments of his supremacy and not cling onto positions deemed intolerable by his noble peers. That Velleius in many other respects greatly admired Pompeius is clear from, e.g., ... 75 As the latter’s second quinquennium in the Gauls and Illyricum was bound to lapse on the first of March , this would soon become a thorn in Caesar’s flesh. On Pompeius’ imperium being prolonged for another five years, see Broughton  .. A discussion on the nature and temporal extent of the commands of Pompeius and Caesar is beyond the scope of this inquiry. For the fact that by the summer of  bce, Pompeius through his legates commanded seven legions as well as an enormous auxiliary force of eighty cohorts and five thousand horse, see Caes. Gal. .–.

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frederik juliaan vervaet pridem appetitur, multis qui una sunt cupientibus. An censes nihil inter eos conuenire, nullam pactionem fieri potuisse? Hodie potest. Sed neutri σκοπ&ς est ille, ut nos beati simus; uterque regnare uult (Cic. Att. ..). “Both of the pair [i.e., Pompeius and Caesar] have aimed at personal domination, not the happiness and fair fame of the community. Pompeius did not abandon Rome because he could not have defended her, nor Italy because he was driven from her shores. His plan from the first has been to ransack every land and sea, to stir up foreign kings, to bring savage races in arms to Italy, to raise enormous armies. He has been hankering for a long while after despotism on the Sullan model, and many of his companions are eager for it. Or would you maintain that no agreement or settlement between them was possible? It is possible today. But neither sees our happiness as his mark. Both want to reign.”

A couple of weeks later, on  March, Cicero plainly asserted that, Mirandum enim in modum Gnaeus noster Sullani regni similitudinem concupiuit. ε)δς σοι λγω; nihil ille umquam minus obscure tulit . . . primum consilium est suffocare urbem et Italian fame, deinde agros uastare, urere, pecuniis locupletum ‹non› abstinere. “For our Gnaeus is marvellously covetous of despotism on Sullan lines. Experto crede: he has been as open about it as he ever was about anything . . . The plan is first to strangle Rome and Italy with hunger, then to carry fire and sword through the countryside and dip into the pockets of the rich.”76

Regardless of whether Cicero really was the man to criticize the merits of Pompeius’ military strategy, his outpourings about the latter’s intentions leave nothing to the imagination. In sum, Pompeius’ two-faced and elusive attitude, the prominent and pro-active role of his friends and the energetic and self-centered discharge of his sole consulship make it likely that in  / , he eventually reverted to his tested strategy of : a relentless and concerted campaign for what the senatorial power brokers deemed intolerable, viz. a special Pompeian dictatorship, in order to secure an otherwise inconceivable though comparatively less objectionable prize, viz. the unprecedented consulatus sine conlega.77 That Pompeius probably abandoned his 76 Att. ..–. For the fact that, at least in the opinion of Cicero, the Italian municipalities and communities much feared Pompeius over Caesar, see, e.g., Att. . (Formia,  March ) and .. (Formia,  March ). 77 In Pomp. .–, Plutarch relates that Pompeius drew stringent criticism for the timing of his marriage to Cornelia: “Those, too, who were more critical, considered that Pompeius was neglectful of the unhappy condition of the City, which had chosen him

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initial plan to become dictator in favour of a scheme to secure a sole consulship especially during the chaos of the early weeks of  can, perhaps, also be inferred from Dio. Dio here explains that Pompeius did not wish to hold the office alone [i.e., for all of his tenure], “for now that he had the glory that lay in the passing of such a vote, he wished to avoid the envy attaching to it.”78 Since Pompeius continued to hold his powerful and privileged Spanish command, Appian rightly explains that “he was the first of consuls who had two of the greatest provinces, and an army, and the public money, and autocratic power in the City by virtue of being sole consul” (App. BC .). Three years earlier, Pompeius had already been the first to combine the consulship with a formidable provincial command in absentia as well as the overall curatio annonae.79

Conclusion Ever since Eduard Meyer in  published his magnum opus on Caesars Monarchie und das Principat des Pompeius it has been widely acknowledged that Pompeius’ political track record inspired the so-called Augustan Principate, whereas Caesar had opted for a more radical and direct as her physician and put herself in his sole charge; whereas he was decking himself with garlands and celebrating nuptials, though he ought to have regarded his very consulship as a calamity, since it would not have been given him in such an illegal manner had his country been prosperous.” In his contribution to this volume, Hurlet brands the consulship sine collega “comme une initiative de loin plus novatrice qu’une dictature comitiorum habendorum causa, voir comme une monstruosité institutionelle en ce qu’il rompait avec le principe de la collégialité du consulat. Mais le context avait entre-temps changé, les optimates acceptant au bout du compte que Pompée devînt consul sans collègue.” Although Hurlet aptly assesses the sole consulship as an unprecedented and highly questionable solution, he represents the arrangement as a big win for Pompeius vis-à-vis his alleged initial preference for dictatura comitiorum habendorum causa. To my thinking, the consulship sine collega was a compromise struck between the optimates and Pompeius, primarily meant to avert (the risks of) a special, plenipotentiary Pompeian dictatorship. 78 D.C. ... These words may well summarize an official statement made by Pompeius explaining his decision to designate a colleague in the summer of . To my thinking Dio’s suspicion that Pompeius also wanted to have a colleague out of fear that the vacant place might be given to Caesar by the enthusiasm of his own troops and the populace alike runs counter to his subsequent statement in .. that Pompeius arranged through the tribunes that Caesar should be permitted to stand for the office, even in absentia, when the lawful time had come. 79 Only in  bce would Augustus match this combination as he then held a gigantic provincial command, the cura annonae and the sole consular supreme command in Rome and Italy: see Vervaet a.

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road to absolute power. Just as Pompeius eventually took a pragmatic stance by contenting himself with the seemingly traditional guise of a sole consulship in , Augustus always consciously steered clear from being appointed dictator. Caesar, conversely, had never been shy of violating time-consuming constitutional procedures or embracing the naked reality of power. In the aftermath of Pharsalia, for example, Senate and People voted that Caesar should hold the consulship for five consecutive years and authorized the consul P. Servilius Isauricus to name Caesar dictator in annum for . Caesar, however, entered upon the dictatorship at once, and, contrary to age-old custom, outside of Italy.80 Late in April , amongst other extravagant honours, he flatly accepted being appointed dictator for ten consecutive years (D.C. ..–). After the battle of Munda, Caesar was elected consul for ten years and in October  he shocked public opinion by celebrating the first triumph ever over Roman citizens.81 At the outset of , Cicero the augur bitterly complained that Caesar the dictator had used the auspices he had taken for a quaestorian election to preside over the election of a suffect consul by the comitia centuriata.82 On  February , precisely one month before he was assassinated, he impudently assumed the dictatura perpetua (D.C. ..). Caesar had ultimately not hesitated to sacrifice both cornerstones of the Republican constitution, collegiality and limitation of tenure of office, on the altar of his unbridled

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D.C. .. and . Plut. Caes. . records that Caesar returned to Rome “at the close of the year for which he had a second time been chosen dictator, though that office had never before been for a whole year.” Apparently, it was the intent that Caesar would assume his second dictatorship on  January  in Rome, and not already in  outside of Italy. As Dio explicitly records that the augurs decreed that Caesar was to be named dictator for one year, it is clear that both time and place of Caesar’s accession to office were unanticipated initiatives on the part of the victorious consul. The explicit statement in Plutarch, loc. cit., that Caesar was to hold the office for the duration of one year, and not for six months (at the most), shows that it was the intent of Caesar and his partisans to transform the dictatorship into a regular, annual magistracy alongside the consulship and the praetorship. Since dictators rei gerendae causa were always appointed to conduct a specific task, after the completion of which they were to abdicate (normally before the expiration of the maximum term of six months), Caesar’s second dictatorship can hardly have been r.g.c. Caesar clearly opted for a dictatorship tout court to assume overall control of state affairs. In the Fasti Consulares, Caesar is at any rate simply on the record as d[ictator], without any further specification. 81 D.C. .. (consulatus in decem annuos continuos) and  (his fifth triumph). 82 Cic. Fam. ... See also Att. .. (idque factum esse numquam) and .., where Cicero in March  insists that Caesar’s plan to have an election of consuls under a praetor was unprecedented and unlawful.

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ambition.83 Although Augustus would eventually abandon the second foundational principle in  and , he would always maintain a distorted though powerful semblance of the first.84 Whereas this comparative effort has so far chiefly concentrated on, for example, the remarkable similarities and continuities in the careers of Pompeius and Augustus, their legislative programs and domestic and foreign policies,85 the above analysis indicates that Pompeius also provided Augustus with a code of conduct, a behavioural method in power politics. In May , on the eve of the Republic’s destruction, M. Caelius Rufus characterized Pompeius as someone “apt to say one thing and think another”, while adding that he was “usually not clever enough to keep his real aims out of view.”86 Crushing as it is, this verdict nonetheless applies perfectly to his political strategy in the fifties bce. In , envoys sent by the defeated Sextus Pompeius tried to win over M. Antonius by stating that “he prefers a candid and magnanimous man to a deceitful, treacherous and artful one.”87 It was, however, especially after his victorious return to Rome in , when he “assembled the People according to custom outside the pomerium” to deliver an account of his achievements in the war against Sextus Pompeius, that Imperator Caesar Divi filius markedly departed from his adoptive father’s policies in one key respect. At that turning point, he indeed made the conscious and pragmatic decision to pursue his equally autocratic aspirations under a deceitful guise of selfprofessed traditionalism and hypocritical respect for the mos maiorum.88 Just like Pompeius before him, he would consistently present himself as 83 For another striking précis of how Caesar’s supremacy was marked by his complete disregard of law and precedent, see Suet. Diu. Iul. ; for his rather stunning lack of respect for the nobility’s sense of self-esteem and senatorial etiquette, see Livy Per. . 84 See, for example, R.Gest.div.Aug. .; . and esp. .: Post id tem[pus a]uctoritate [omnibus praestiti, potest]atis au[tem n]ihilo ampliu[s habu]i quam cet[eri, qui m]ihi quoque in ma[gis]tra[t]u conlegae f[uerunt]. 85 For an excellent recent example of this scholarly tradition, see Hurlet . Augustus’ Armenian settlement, where he boasted to have acted in accordance with maiorum nostrorum exemplo (R.Gest.div.Aug. .), too, was entirely Pompeian. 86 Cic. Fam. .. (solet enim aliud sentire et loqui neque tantum ualere ingenio ut non appareat quid cupiat). 87 App. B.C. . (αρο$μενος 8νδρα 8κακον κα4 μεγαλ'φρονα #ντ4 /πο$λου τε κα4 δολερο κα4 φιλοτχνου). 88 D.C. ..–. Millar  conclusively shows that it was especially during the years – that Caesar’s adoptive son either induced or completed a multifaceted range of measures to restore and aggrandize the traditional Res Publica of the Roman People, the monumental and literary dignity of their shaken City and the glory of their age-long religious institutions, so creating a powerful semblance of genuine cultural, religious and constitutional revival.

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frederik juliaan vervaet

the saviour of the Republic89 and cunningly exploit real or artificial crises to strengthen his position by seizing novel or extraordinary powers. In such a strategy, chiefly devised to spare the feelings of the senatorial aristocracy and reduce the danger of envy, ostentatious displays of false modesty, dissimulation and recusatio imperii quickly grew into institutionalized rituals of the new Augustan monarchy. The historic significance of this deliberate strategy can hardly be underestimated. Apart from saving Augustus (and his regime) from the fate of (that of) his adoptive father, his imperial etiquette and its mock-rituals set a powerful precedent for all emperors to come. As is clear from the reigns and fates of, for example, Gaius, Nero, Domitianus, or Commodus, not all Roman Princes found it easy to accept the straitjacket of Augustan dissimulation or, at the very least, live up to senatorial expectations of showy, yet hollow, respect for its long-obsolete perks and prerogatives.90 Regardless of the realities of power, the senatorial aristocracy, with its deeply ingrained sense of honour and shame, much preferred a deceitful semblance and hypocrisy over a public acknowledgement of the naked and unvarnished truth.

89 Dio records that in his speech to the commons preceding the vote on the Gabinian Law, Pompeius claimed that nobody “was either willing or able” to undertake the Spanish command back in  (D.C. ..). In reality, he and his senatorial backers had left the Senate no choice but to appoint him to an extraordinary proconsulship: see Vervaet a –. 90 To my thinking, Tiberius was a special case in that, on the one hand, he initially seems to have overdone the Augustan recusatio imperii while, on the other hand, he might have been quite sincere about reviving some of the Senate’s traditional prerogatives (comp., e.g., Tac. Ann. .– with Suet. Tib.  and  f. and D.C. .–). It was precisely this blend of Augustan dissimulation and reactionary authenticity that might have confused and put off so many senators, and, for that matter, Roman historians.

DECEPTION, LIES, AND ECONOMY WITH THE TRUTH: AUGUSTUS AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE PRINCIPATE

John Rich

Introduction: Augustus and Deceit No individual from the ancient world seems a more appropriate subject for this volume’s theme of despotism and deceit than the first Roman emperor, Augustus. It is generally accepted that he deployed a ruthless mastery of the Machiavellian arts in his rise to power, and, having attained supremacy, made his rule acceptable to a formerly free people by cloaking it in under fair names, as leadership by the first citizen in a republic which had been set to rights. The sublest modern presentation of Augustus’ ruthlessness and guile is to be found in Syme’s The Roman Revolution, a work conceived in an age of dictators (Syme ).1 However, perhaps the pithiest statement had been provided long before by Gibbon: The tender respect of Augustus for a free constitution which he had destroyed, can only be explained by an attentive consideration of the character of that subtle tyrant. A cool head, an unfeeling heart, and a cowardly disposition, prompted him, at the age of nineteen, to assume the mask of hypocrisy, which he never afterwards laid aside . . . His virtues, and even his vices, were artificial; and according to the various dictates of his interest, he was at first the enemy, and at last the father, of the Roman world. When he framed the artful system of the Imperial authority, his moderation was inspired by his fears. He wished to deceive the people by an image of civil liberty, and the armies by an image of civil government.2

In this chapter I shall be examining the part played by duplicity and hypocrisy at various key points in Augustus’ career. It is not my intention 1 Note also the lapidary assessment at Syme a : “duplicity marked his career as a revolutionary leader, and duplicity seals his success as a statesman”. Syme’s view of Augustus mellowed somewhat in his later work, in the judgement of Alföldy . 2 Gibbon  vol. I. c. iii (= Gibbon  .).

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to challenge the usual conception of his cunning and unscrupulousness or to attempt any sort of apologia. I do, however, want to enter some qualifications and apply some nuance, beginning with the following preliminary observations. Firstly, Octavian / Augustus was throughout a brilliant pragmatist, responding to the situation as he found it and usually succeeding in exploiting it to the full to his own advantage.3 We should be wary of supposing that from the outset he had set his sights clearly on sole domination: the road which took him to supremacy was tortuous, and he could not have achieved it without some remarkable strokes of luck. Similarly, we should not suppose that his conception of his regime was fully formed as soon as he attained sole power. In fact, his dispositions were much modified over the  years of his sole rule, and, even when initial arrangements in fact bedded down and became permanent, he may not have anticipated this from the outset. Secondly, we should note how much others colluded in his strategies of deception. During his rise to power, other protagonists, such as Cicero, Antony and Lepidus, at various points collaborated in his claims to be first saving the republic and then setting it to rights. Once established in power, he did not in fact deceive the Roman senate and people by the image of civil liberty and government, as Gibbon’s formulation suggests. Few, if any, can have been under any illusion about the realities of power. The masses would have been happy enough with overt autocracy such as Caesar had offered, but the subtle disguises of Augustus’ principate were necessary to secure its acceptance by the Roman elite. We also need to consider the varieties of hypocrisy and deceit.4 At one end of the spectrum are outright and deliberate falsehoods—lies. Augustus doubtless did not disdain this expedient when occasion required, but one may doubt whether he often felt it necessary to resort to blatant mendacity. Much more frequently, he will have found it sufficient to deploy the slanting and distortion which has nowadays come to be known as ‘spin’. Subtlest of these devices is ‘economy with the truth’. This useful

3 Following the assassination of his great-uncle, the dictator, the young C. Octavius assumed the name Caesar as by adoption. In this chapter I follow the usual modern practice of referring to him as Octavian (a name he would not have acknowledged) from  to  and thereafter as Augustus, the name he acquired in that year. On the complexities of his nomenclature see Syme b; Simpson . 4 See now Runciman  for a subtle discussion of hypocrisy, its diversity and its inevitability in political life.

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phrase goes back as far as Burke, who in  observed that “falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatsoever: but, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an economy of truth”. It became notorious in  when, giving evidence on behalf of the British Government’s attempt to prevent the publication in Australia of Spycatcher, the memoirs of the former MI agent Peter Wright, the Cabinet Secretary Sir Robert (now Lord) Armstrong, resorted to defending a government document on the grounds that “it contains a misleading impression, not a lie: it was being economical with the truth”.5 As we shall see, there can never have been a more brilliant or audacious exponent of economy with the truth than Augustus.

Ancient Accounts Let us begin by considering how our theme is reflected in some of the chief ancient accounts of Augustus. Tacitus’ Annals starts with Augustus’ death, and the initial chapters (Tac. Ann. .–) include a rapid sketch of his acquisition of power and subsequent reign.6 Little is said there about Augustus’ duplicity, perhaps because Tacitus wants to lay stress on other deceivers: by hints and reported allegations, it is made to appear that it was through the guile and plotting of Augustus’ wife Livia that the succession was secured for her son Tiberius, and we are introduced to the dissimulation and concealment which was to be such a central feature of Tiberius’ character as portrayed by Tacitus.7 Before passing to Tiberius’ accession Tacitus interrupts his narrative with assessments of the career of Octavian / Augustus (.–). These, however, are not presented in his own voice, but merely as reports of views held by contemporaries. In particular, two contrasting views are reported as held among the prudentes, the ‘men of sense’. The first view (..–) is favourable, the second (.) hostile and reported by Tacitus at much greater length. Each version opens with Octavian’s initial resort to arms. The favourable view claims that “he had been driven to civil war through piety to his parent and the necessity of the state, in which there had then been no place for laws” (pietate erga parentem et necessitudine

5 6 7

Burke, Armstrong: cited Knowles  , . On Tacitus’ treatment of Augustus see now Devillers , with earlier bibliography. Livia: Tac. Ann. ..–, ., .–. Tiberius: Ann. ..–.

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rei publicae, in qua nullus tunc legibus locus, ad arma ciuilia actum; ..). To this the hostile view responds that “piety to his parent and the times in the state had been taken up as a screen; rather, it was from the desire for domination that the veterans had been mustered by largesse, an army procured by a youth in his private capacity, a consul’s legions bribed, and support for the Pompeian party pretended” (pietatem erga parentem et tempora reipublicae obtentui sumpta; ceterum cupidine dominandi concitos per largitionem ueteranos, paratum ab adulescente priuato exercitum, corruptas consulis legiones, simulatam Pompeianarum gratiam partium; ..). The favourable assessment continues by insisting that, to punish his father’s murderers, Octavian had been obliged to concede much to Antony and Lepidus and, when they had lapsed respectively into senility and vice, “there had been no other remedy for the discords of the fatherland than that it should be ruled by one man” (non aliud discordantis patriae remedium fuisse quam ut ab uno regeretur; ..). Praises follow for his conduct of his sole rule, qualified only by the concession that “on a few occasions force had been used, to ensure quiet for the rest”. The hostile view retorts with a lengthy indictment both of Octavian’s rise to power, when, besides earlier frauds, Sextus Pompeius, Lepidus and Antony are all said to have been undone by his deceits, and of his sole rule, “a peace without doubt, but a bloody one” (..). By placing the hostile view last and giving it so much more space, Tacitus effectively debunks the official line. However, he carefully evades giving it his endorsement. Its allegations are indeed of varying cogency, and in particular the charges levelled against Augustus as sole ruler are an unconvincing miscellany. Nor is the loyalist view to be wholly dismissed.8 Tacitus has distilled what could be, and had been, said on both sides of the question, and we are surely meant to conclude that neither of the reported views will do as they stand. Nevertheless, as to the true nature of Augustus’ government, Tacitus’ earlier statements make his own view clear. The reported favourable view insists that “it was not as a kingdom or dictatorship, but under the name of princeps that the state was ordered” (non regno tamen neque dictatura, sed principis nomine constitutam rem publicam; Ann. ..). However, at the outset of his work, Tacitus had succinctly marked the contrast between the form of leadership by the first citizen and the reality of power: “with the name of

8 Cf. Syme a : “The favourable treatment of Tacitus . . . is not perfidious or grudging. It is monumental.”

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princeps Augustus accepted everything, exhausted by civil dissensions, under his rule” (cuncta discordiis ciuilibus fessa nomine principis sub imperium accepit; ..). This statement is amplified in the next chapter (Ann. .), where Tacitus provides a subtle analysis of the pervasive growth of Augustus’ power, and a little later he tells us that in Augustus’ later years “with equality cast aside, all looked to the orders of the princeps” (omnes exuta aequalitate iussa principis aspectare; ..). Duplicity plays little part in the portrait of Augustus given by Suetonius in his biography, but it bulks large in the history of Cassius Dio, which, although composed two centuries after his death, is the fullest surviving narrative of his career. Dio’s work was a year-by-year history of the Roman people from the foundation in the traditional manner of which Livy had been the supreme exemplar, but it was written in Greek, with Thucydides as the principal model for style and thought. Like Thucydides, Dio frequently insists on the contrast between appearances and reality. His realist stance leads him to portray the protagonists from Pompey and Caesar on as aiming throughout at monarchy, and he consistently interprets Augustus’ conduct in those terms. This did not imply disapproval: Dio repeatedly asserts that, for a state as large as Rome had become, monarchy was both the best and the only viable constitution. His concluding assessment of Augustus (D.C. .–) also reports what are said to be contemporary opinions, but, unlike Tacitus, he reports only favourable views and explicitly states his agreement. Thus in Dio we have an ancient account in which Augustus emerges as a thoroughgoing exponent of deceit, but in a worthy cause. However, this is to a considerable extent the historian’s own interpretation, and he sometimes imposes it on the events.9 Augustus left his own accounts of his career. The fullest was his book autobiography, which took the story down to  bc, but survives only in meagre fragments.10 He had his say posthumously in what is now known as the Res Gestae Divi Augusti. This document was composed, at least in its final form, at the end of Augustus’ life, read in the senate at its first meeting following his death, and, in accordance with his

9 On Dio’s treatment of Augustus see Rich ; Reinhold and Swan . Most scholars attribute the correspondences between Dio’s retrospect and the opening chapters of Tacitus’ Annals to the use of a common source, disputing over which writer stayed closer to the source (see Swan  –, with bibliography). Alternatively, they may be explained by direct use, with reshaping, of Tacitus by Dio (so Rich  –). 10 On Augustus’ autobiography see now Powell and Smith .

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john rich

instructions, inscribed on two bronze columns outside his Mausoleum. The work has been preserved for us through copies inscribed in Galatia of the Latin original and a Greek translation: most of the Latin can thus be restored and the sense of almost all the document is certain. Its principal themes are Augustus’ offices and honours, his expenditures, and his achievements both at home and in war and diplomacy. These are framed by two opening and two closing chapters recording special services to the republic and consequent honours, and we shall be focusing particularly on these in what follows.11 The Res Gestae is, as Syme put it ( ), “no less instructive for what it omits than for what it says”. A stimulating recent monograph by Ridley gives a comprehensive discussion of its omissions and distortions. Ridley also takes issue with the usual view that Augustus refrained from outright falsehoods in the Res Gestae, giving a lengthy list of what he regards as clear lies (Ridley  –). However, although at numerous points Augustus undoubtedly creates what Lord Armstrong might term a misleading impression, he generally contrives to avoid assertions which had no basis whatever in fact. Many of his claims are slanted, some outrageously so, but almost always there is some factual foundation to which he could have pointed which would have saved them from being downright untruths. The Res Gestae presents a masterclass in the deployment of economy with the truth.12 Good illustration of Augustus’ techniques is afforded by some of his claims in R.Gest.div.Aug. – for the achievements of his forces on land and sea. Chapter  opens with the assertion that “I pacified the sea from pirates” (mare pacaui a praedonibus), and the following sentence reports that in this war he returned , runaway slaves to their masters for punishment. Here Augustus, who never in the Res Gestae mentions his opponents by name, is referring to his war with Sextus Pompeius, and, as in his later description of it as a “slave war” (.), he grossly misrepresents its character. The conflict was in fact a civil war, and Sextus’ supporters included aristocrats who regarded him as

11 For the Res Gestae see now the excellent editions of Scheid  and Cooley , reviewed at Rich a. On the work’s composition see Scheid  xxii–xxvi; Cooley  –. As Cooley shows, there is no reason to disregard the internal evidence showing that, in its present form, the work was composed in the last months of Augustus’ life; however, this may well have involved the reworking of earlier drafts. 12 Cf. Scheid  : “les Res Gestae . . . interprètent, certes, les faits, mais elles ne les inventent pas”.

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the last hope of the republican cause.13 As for slaves, Octavian himself accepted large numbers from their owners as rowers in his fleet, many by requisitioning. However, his statements were not without some basis: Sextus undoubtedly enrolled many runaways; his attacks on shipping and raids on the Italian coast laid him open to charges of brigandage and piracy from his enemies; and some pirates had probably been included in his motley fleet.14 In the next chapter Augustus records that he (that is, forces under his supreme command) had “pacified the Gallic and Spanish provinces, and also Germany, an area enclosed by the Ocean from Cadiz to the mouth of the River Elbe” (Gallias et Hispanias prouincias, i[tem Germaniam, qua inclu]dit Oceanus a Gadibus ad ostium Albis flumin[is, pacaui]; .). This statement was true, not only of Gaul and Spain but also of Germany. In  bc Tiberius had induced all the German peoples up to the Elbe to make the acts of submission which in Roman eyes were the essential requirement for pacification, and in ad – he had reasserted Roman authority there following rebellions. Moreover, archaeological discoveries increasingly confirm that the Roman presence east of the Rhine was real enough.15 However, in ad  Roman control of Germany had been lost in the great disaster of Varus, and thus, when Augustus wrote or at least finally revised this sentence, Germany was no longer pacified. However, this did not make Augustus’ claim literally false: Germany had been pacified. Later in the chapter Augustus proudly reports his forces’ expeditions to remote regions: his fleet had sailed to the land of the Cimbri (that is, to Jutland), and his armies had penetrated to Nabata in Ethiopia and Mariba in Arabia (.–). These claims blithely disregard the fact that nothing of substance had been achieved by these exploits and the Arabian expedition in particular had been an embarrassing failure.

13

See further Welch . Partisan charges of brigandage and piracy against Sextus: Hor. Ep. .; Man. .– ; Liv. Perioch. ; Vell. ..; Luc. .–; Flor. ..–; Oros. Hist. ... Pirates in Sextus’ fleet: Str. .. (); D.C. ..; cf. App. BC .. When the Misenum agreement broke down, Octavian sought to blame Sextus for the recurrence of piracy (App. BC ., ). For critiques of the interpretation of Sextus’ activity as piratical, see De Souza  –; Watson ; Ridley  –. 15 Schnurbein ; Eck . 14

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john rich Octavian’s Debut16

The first chapter of the Res Gestae recounts what Augustus presents as his first great service for the republic and the honours which were then accorded to him, first by the senate and then by the people: (.) annos undeuiginti natus exercitum priuato consilio et priuata impensa comparaui, per quem rem publicam a dominatione factionis oppressam in libertatem uindicaui. (.) eo [nomi]ne senatus decretis honorif[i]cis in ordinem suum m[e adlegit G(aio) Pansa et A(ulo) Hirti]o consulibus, con[sula]rem locum s[ententiae dicendae simu]l [dans, et i]mperium mihi dedit. (.) res publica n[e quid detrimenti caperet,] me pro praetore simul cum consulibus pro[uidere iussit.] (.) [P]opulus autem eodem anno me consulem, cum [consul uterqu]e in bel[lo ceci]disset, et triumuirum rei publicae constituend[ae creauit]. (.) At the age of nineteen I raised an army at private initiative and private expense, through which I liberated the republic when it was oppressed by the domination of a faction. (.) On that account the senate, in the consulship of Gaius Pansa and Aulus Hirtius, by honorific decrees enrolled me in its order, giving me at the same time the right to express my opinion among the ex-consuls, and gave me imperium. (.) It ordered me as propraetor along with the consuls to see to it that the republic should suffer no harm. (.) The people, moreover, in the same year appointed me consul, when both consuls had fallen in battle, and triumvir to setle the republic.

The chapter is an arresting, even provocative opening, in two respects. Firstly, Augustus has begun the document (as Tacitus was later to begin the paired assessments of Ann. .–) with one of his most controversial actions, namely his staging of a coup against the elected consul Antony, raising an army at his own initiative and expense when a private citizen and aged a mere nineteen. Secondly, he has passed over a complete volteface in his alliances: the senate’s honours listed in .– were granted early in  bc, at Cicero’s instance, to legitimate Octavian’s participation in their struggle with Antony; the people’s honours recorded in ., namely the consulship and triumvirate, were conferred in the following August and November, under military compulsion and when Octavian had broken with the senate and was siding with Antony, and the most prominent victim of the ensuing proscriptions was his former ally Cicero.

16 Surveys of the period from Caesar’s death to the establishment of the triumvirate include Syme  –; Rawson ; Gotter ; Kienast  –; Osgood  –.

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Octavian had played a difficult hand with consummate skill. Accepting his inheritance, he put himself forward as the upholder of his adoptive father’s cause. Filial piety was thus his justification for political action and the basis on which he could claim support, but we need not doubt that it was also sincerely felt. Antony as consul and the most senior Caesarian was the leading figure in the months after Caesar’s death, and at first saw Caesar’s youthful heir as a mere irritant. But Antony was soon making enemies on all sides: his attempt to shore up his own position aroused senatorial hostility and the soldiers resented the pardoning of Caesar’s killers. This was Octavian’s opportunity. When, in October , Antony left for Brundisium to meet the legions which had been sent over to him from Macedonia, Octavian went to Caesar’s veteran colonies in Campania and called on the veterans to provide him with a bodyguard. Some three thousand rallied to him, impelled by loyalty to Caesar’s memory, and by a promise of  denarii and down-payment of . Soon afterwards, he won over two of Antony’s legions. At the end of November, Antony went north with his remaining troops to the province of Cisalpine Gaul (i.e. northern Italy) and called on its governor, Decimus Brutus (one of Caesar’s killers), to hand it over to him in accordance with a disputed law Antony had carried in June. Cicero, whose initial reaction to Octavian’s veteran levy had been cautious, now encouraged Brutus to refuse Antony. Brutus did so, and prepared to withstand a siege in Mutina (modern Modena). Cicero now took the lead in urging all-out war against Antony, in orations delivered to the senate and people on  December and in early January (Philippics –), followed by more in the same vein up to April (Philippics –).17 Octavian, although a private citizen and hardly more than a boy, was, Cicero argued, justified in resorting to arms, and he, his troops and Decimus Brutus were justified in defying the consul, because Antony’s actions had proved him no true consul, but a public enemy making war on the republic; they were the defenders of the senate’s authority and the people’s liberty; and, if they had not acted, the citizenry would have been enslaved under Antony’s domination. Ample honours should thus be conferred on them all in recognition of these great services. As for Octavian, Cicero claimed to “know the young man’s mind inside out” (omnis habeo cognitos sensus adulescentis) and gave the senate his personal guarantee that they had nothing to fear from him: 17 For these speeches see now the excellent edition and commentary of Manuwald , and the essays in Stevenson and Wilson .

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seeking only true glory, he was unmoved by any “desire for domination” (cupiditas dominandi) and had given up his personal enmities for the good of the republic (Phil. .–). By June Cicero was obliged to acknowledge that he could not keep this pledge (Brut. ..–). “From this scourge by his private initiative—for there was no other way—Caesar has freed the republic” (qua peste priuato consilio rem publicam—neque enim fieri potuit aliter—Caesar liberauit).18 In these words, delivered to the senate on  December , Cicero supplied the first formulation of the justification for Octavian’s action in raising an army as a private citizen which he was himself to deploy at the end of his life in his Res Gestae, in his opening claim to have liberated the republic when it was oppressed by the domination of a faction. Augustus doubtless defended his conduct in the same terms in his autobiography, and loyalist historians will have followed suit.19 As a justification for resorting to armed force in political conflict, the argument was far from novel. A Greek source tells us that, when Sulla in  was asked why he was marching on his country, he replied “to free her from tyrants”. After initiating the civil war in , Caesar declared (in language strikingly similar to that later used by Augustus) that he had done so “to free himself and the Roman people when they were oppressed by the faction of a few” (ut se et populum Romanum factione paucorum oppressum in libertatem uindicaret).20 Tacitus uses his report of Augustus’ critics to subvert his claim: they insisted, he tells us, that in raising his private army and siding with Antony’s opponents he had in reality acted “from the desire for domination” (cupidine dominandi).21 So it might seem with hindsight, and it 18

Cic. Phil. .. For Cicero’s defence of Octavian’s actions see Phil. .–, .–, .–

. 19

So Vell. .., and no doubt other lost writers. Velleius’ statement need not draw directly on R.Gest.div.Aug. ., as is often supposed. 20 Sulla: App. BC .; Caesar: Caes. Civ. ... Similarly, Cato is reported to have said that, when Pompey raised an army in support of Sulla in , he “liberated Italy and the city of Rome which had been almost utterly oppressed and destroyed” (B. Afr. .). On this argument and its deployment in the Late Republic and under the Empire, and on the claim that private citizens were entitled to resort to force in the defence of liberty, see e.g. Syme  –; Wirszubski  –; Wickert  –; Walser ; Welwei ; Galinsky  –; Ridley  –; Cooley  –. I am not convinced by the attempt of Braunert  to show that Augustus intended res publica in R.Gest.div.Aug. . to be understood in a restricted sense, or by the suggestion of Lehmann  that his language echoes an unattested monument to Pompey. 21 Tac. Ann. .., cited above; cf. Hist. ..: Cerealis, speaking against the Germans and in defence of Roman rule over the Gauls, asserts that “liberty and specious names

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was indeed reported to a shocked Cicero in November  that in a public meeting at Rome Octavian had sworn an oath that “he might be permitted to achieve his father’s honours”.22 Nonetheless, his position was not yet strong enough in late  to aspire to domination. He was then rather, in Syme’s apt term, an adventurer, out to make the most of his opportunities to advance his cause.23 The two honours reported in R.Gest.div.Aug. . were decreed to Octavian by the senate on  or  January , on the motion of Cicero and others. Octavian’s command of his army was legitimated by the grant of propraetorian imperium; he accordingly assumed the fasces, the insignia of imperium, on  January , and, as it turned out, he was to hold them without interruption for the rest of his long life. The senate also enrolled him into its membership (an unprecedented honour), with the highest rank, that of an ex-consul. Two further honours were conferred on him at the same time. One was a gilt equestrian statue, set up on the Rostra: this featured on the coinage, but in the Res Gestae Augustus passed over mere statues in his honour, except to parade his moderation and piety in having some melted down to fund gifts for Apollo (.). The other was the right to stand for the consulship ten years early: naturally he made no mention in the Res Gestae of this honour, which showed the true extent of the senate’s gratitude; if he had abided by it, his first consulship would have been delayed by twelve years.24 To Cicero’s disgust, the senate did not immediately opt for war with Antony. However, diplomacy failed and hostilities, with the senatorial forces commanded by the consuls of , Hirtius and Pansa, supported by Octavian.25 In April Antony was defeated in two battles, at Forum Gallorum and Mutina. However, the fighting claimed the lives of both are pretexts; no one who desires to enslave and dominate others fails to resort to such language”. Here and elsewhere in Ann. .– Tacitus may allude to the Res Gestae (so Haverfield  –; Urban ; Davis  –; Cooley  –), but, since the shared motifs will have been widely current, direct reference is not certain. 22 Cic. Att. .., well discussed by Sumi  –. 23 ‘Adventurer’: Syme  , . 24 The honours: Cic. Phil. .–, ., Brut. ..; Liv. Perioch. ; Vell. ..; Suet. Aug. .; App. BC .; D.C. ... The fasces assumed: Degrassi  . The statue on the coinage: RRC ,  / , and perhaps RRC  / , RIC2 ; Sehlmeyer  –. 25 The senatorial decree reported at R.Gest.div.Aug. . instructing the consuls and Octavian to see that the republic should suffer no harm (the standard wording of the senatus consultum ultimum) is otherwise unattested. It may have been carried on  February when a tumultus was declared, but doubts have been raised about whether it was passed in precisely this wording: see Manuwald  , –.

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consuls, Hirtius killed in battle and Pansa dying from his wounds, and Antony was then able to escape across the Alps. Rumours circulated that Octavian had a hand in the consuls’ deaths.26 Such tales were groundless, but they accurately reflected the huge advantage that he derived from this fortuitous turn of events. If the consuls had survived and Antony had been crushed, Cicero’s gamble would have paid off: the Caesarian cause would have been lost, and Octavian would have had to be content with such advancement as was permitted by the victorious senate. The senate’s hopes now rapidly crumbled. Over the summer the commanders in the western provinces came over to Antony along with their armies, first Lepidus, and then Plancus and Pollio. Meanwhile, the senate foolishly sought to sideline Octavian, thus enabling him to use their apparent ingratitude to him and his troops as pretext for shifting his allegiance. He was, it was said, particularly irked by Cicero’s reported remark that “the young man must get praise, honours—and the push”, and commented that he “had no intention of letting himself get the push”.27 Soon he let it be known that, despite his extreme youth, he desired one of the vacant consulships. In August he and his army advanced to Rome, where the Roman people was obliged to elect him consul, along with his relative Q. Pedius. In October Octavian’s reconciliation with Antony and Lepidus was sealed at a meeting near Bononia. The three then went to Rome, where on  November , by a law passed by the tribune Titius, they were appointed triumvirs, with wide-ranging powers including the division of the provinces between them and the right to name the magistrates. Their first act was to institute proscriptions, claiming as justification for such severity that Caesar’s clemency had been betrayed by his murder. Thus, after his brief flirtation with their opponents, Octavian had reverted to his natural alliance with the other leaders of the Caesarian cause, and, barely a year after taking up arms allegedly to free the republic from domination by Antony, he had joined with him and Lepidus in imposing domination. However, his motivation is more plausibly to be interpreted as opportunistic than as the unswerving pursuit of dominance. Moreover, in his autobiography, as by implication in the Res Gestae, he doubtless maintained that his conduct was justified throughout: 26

Suet. Aug. ; Tac. Ann. ..; D.C. ... Cic. Fam. .. (from D. Brutus): . . . diceret te dixisse laudandum adulescentem, ornandum, tollendum; se non esse commissurum ut tolli posset (trans. Shackleton Bailey). Cf. Vell. ..; Suet. Aug. . 27

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the triumvirate and the proscriptions were, he will have insisted, necessary evils to which he had been constrained by the needs of the republic and the obligation to avenge his adoptive father; but sole domination by Antony would have been a disaster, and in  / , as later, he had done the republic great service by averting this peril. The triumvirate28 The government of the triumvirs was arbitrary and ruthless. Augustus himself did not deny it. Here, however, our concern is chiefly with their pretexts and self-justifications. The triumviral office was instituted for a limited term, five years, and a justificatory claim was spelt out in its title: the holders were IIIviri rei publicae constituendae, a three-man board “to settle the republic”. Here, as with the proscriptions, the triumvirs were modelling themselves on Sulla, whose dictatorship appears to have had the same designated function.29 Sulla’s remit had been to settle the republic after civil war, but the triumvirs first had to fight their civil war, against Brutus and Cassius, who had by now amassed substantial forces in the East. Thus the triumviral assignment (to use Carsten Lange’s apt designation) comprised, in its initial form, the ending of the civil war and the carrying out of the ensuing settlement, as is confirmed by Appian’s testimony.30 The second chapter of the Res Gestae proclaims Augustus’ accomplishment of his filial duty: “Those who killed my father I drove into exile, avenging their crime by legal judgements, and afterwards, when they made war upon the republic, I defeated them twice in battle” (qui parentem meum [interfecer]un[t, eo]s in exilium expuli iudiciis legitimis ultus eorum [fa]cin[us, e]t postea bellum inferentis rei publicae uici b[is a]cie).31 28

For surveys of the triumviral period see e.g. Syme , –; Pelling ; Kienast  –; Osgood  –. In this section I am much indebted to Lange . 29 App. BC . (Sulla appointed dictator “to enact laws . . . and to settle the state”). The formal titulature of Sulla’s dictatorship is disputed: see now Vervaet  ; Baroni ; Hinard  –. 30 App. BC . (the triumvirate described as “a new office for the resolution of the civil wars”), . (the campaign against Brutus and Cassius identified in the proscription edict as their outstanding task); Lange  –. 31 Lacunae in the inscribed Latin and Greek texts mean that the verb used in the relative clause (often restored as trucidaverunt, “butchered”) remains uncertain, as Cooley  , notes.

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The references are to the tribunal established after Octavian and Pedius had been appointed consuls in August , which condemned Caesar’s killers in absence, and to the two battles of Philippi in October  at which Brutus and Cassius were defeated and took their own lives (Cassius in the first battle and Brutus in the second). Brutus and Cassius regarded themselves as fighting for liberty, but Augustus represents them as making war on the republic. His claim to the sole responsibility for their defeat is particularly brazen. In fact, he had shared the command with Antony, and in the first battle, his role had been inglorious: he had been incapacitated by sickness, and Brutus had put his force to flight and captured the camp. However, Augustus’ claim is not strictly false: he was in command and has merely omitted to mention that he had a colleague.32 After Philippi, Antony remained in the East and Octavian returned to Italy to complete the settlement there, and in particular the contentious matter of rewarding veterans with confiscated land. In this he faced opposition from Antony’s brother Lucius, who argued in justification that, with the civil war over, the triumvirs had lost their legitimacy and should resign.33 Following L. Antonius’ defeat at Perusia, Antony and Octavian met at Brundisium in September , and, after tense negotiations, opted to continue their collaboration, to be cemented by Antony’s marriage to Octavian’s sister Octavia. The division of the provinces was revised, with Antony retaining the eastern and Octavian the western provinces, while the insignificant Lepidus continued in Africa. A necessary part of the agreement was the extension of the triumviral assignment by the addition of new tasks. As Appian (BC .) reports, “Octavian was to make war against (Sextus) Pompeius unless they should come to some arrangement, and Antony was to make war against the Parthians to avenge their treachery towards Crassus”. Dealing with Sextus, who had now established himself as a formidable power in Sicily and at sea, was a natural extension of the original assignment, but the war against the Parthians, although urgent in the light of their recent invasion of Syria and Asia, marked a significant extension of the triumviral remit beyond civil war. The new tasks would take time, and so in due course the triumvirs took a second five-year term, though not until the summer of , after the original term had expired.34 32 33 34

So rightly Scheid  ; contra, Ridley  –, Cooley  –. App. BC ., , , . App. BC .; D.C. ... See Lange  –.

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Octavian’s assignment was completed by late  bc, when Sextus Pompeius was crushed by his admiral Agrippa in a naval battle off Naulochus. Shortly afterwards, he stripped Lepidus of his position. On his return to Rome, Octavian announced that the civil wars had been ended; accepted, among other honours, a rostral column proclaiming the restoration of peace on land and sea; and promised that on Antony’s return from Parthia they would give up their extraordinary powers.35 Antony, however, was not able to carry out his part of the extended triumviral assignment: in winter  / , his Parthian expedition ended in costly and ignominious withdrawal. We should not assume that the breakdown of Octavian’s association with Antony was inevitable. If it had not been for Antony’s entanglement with Cleopatra, his marriage to Octavia and with it the alliance with her brother might well have endured. In that case, they would have had to face together the problem of what should follow the triumvirate and would presumably have devised a solution which could have been represented as returning power to the senate and people. In the event, however, relations between Antony and Octavian broke down by , and each partner then prepared for war. The extended diplomatic preliminaries included attempts by each to claim credit for planning to resign their extraordinary powers and restore power to the senate and people and to represent their opponent as obstructing this outcome.36 When and how the triumvirate ended remains controversial. Despite the late renewal, the second term was probably deemed to have started on  January  and so to expire on the last day of the year .37 As to the triumvirs’ status after , the most likely solution is that the office had been instituted in such a way that it did not lapse when the term expired, but only when resigned by its holders.38 Antony continued to use the title of triumvir, but from  Octavian ceased to do so.39 From  he held the consulship in successive years. The continued use of the triumviral title would have been an embarrassment for him, and he preferred to 35 App. BC .–. The column features on the coinage: RIC2 Augustus ; Sehlmeyer  –. 36 D.C. .., ..–; Liv. Perioch. ; Suet. Aug. .. 37 This is the implication both of Augustus’ claim to have held the office “for ten continuous years” and of the listing of the triumvirs in the Capitoline Fasti for  bc; App. Ill.  is then in error. 38 So now Vervaet b, b; Lange  –; Rich b. 39 Vervaet b, b argues that Octavian continued to make occasional use of the title.

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evade the question of his constitutional status at this time, as in the Res Gestae where he acknowledged that, once the civil wars were over, he had absolute power, but ascribed it to universal consent (.). Octavian and his supporters represented the war against Cleopatra and Antony as both a foreign and a civil war: a foreign queen, they claimed, had made war on the fatherland, but she had been abetted by citizen traitors.40 They could thus proclaim the ending of the civil wars as finally achieved by the victories at Actium and Alexandria in  and  bc. Once again, the establishment of peace “on land and sea” was celebrated, both at Octavian’s Victory Monument at Nicopolis and at Rome, through the closure of the shrine of Janus, decreed by the senate “when peace had been achieved by victories on land and sea throughout the empire of the Roman people”.41 Octavian had thus at last completed the original triumviral assignment: the civil wars were finally over. Octavian was also hailed once again, as in  / , as having saved the republic from a great peril and so defended its liberty. When it learnt of the capture of Alexandria and Antony’s death, the senate awarded him a grass crown, the corona obsidionalis, normally granted to a soldier who saved a whole army, but now celebrating him as saviour of the whole community, and declared  August, the day Alexandria fell, a festival because on that day Octavian “freed the republic from very grave danger” (rem publicam tristissimo periculo liberauit). An inscription of  from a monument in the Forum, probably his arch, gives as the reason for its erection “the republic having been preserved” (re publica conseruata). Cistophori issued at an Asian mint in  celebrate Peace on the reverse and on the obverse style Octavian, in language closely similar to that of the opening sentence of the Res Gestae, as libertatis p(opuli) r(omani) vindex (“champion of the liberty of the Roman people”).42 Octavian had been victor in five civil wars. In the Res Gestae he claims to have shown clemency in these wars: “I spared all citizens who sought pardon” (omnibus u[eniam petentib]us ciuibus peperci; .).43 As ever, his words are chosen with extreme care, and in this form his claim was probably defensible. The proscriptions were not in question 40 Lange  –, refutes the common view that the Augustan regime represented the conflict as merely a foreign war. 41 The Nicopolis monument and its inscription: Murray and Petsas ; Zachos ; Lange  –. Janus: R.Gest.div.Aug. ; cf. Liv. .., Suet. Aug. .. 42 Rich and Williams  –, –, with further bibliography. Crown: Plin. Nat. .; D.C. ... Festival: Degrassi , . Inscription: ILS . Coin: RIC2 . 43 The supplement seems certain: Scheid  .

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here, since they took place outside of war, and the murderers of Caesar were held to have forfeited their citizen rights by judicial condemnation. Our sources report some other executions of citizens after civil war victories by Octavian’s order, but the circumstances are naturally beyond establishing.44 Octavian’s victory over Antony and Cleopatra made him sole ruler of the Roman world. Tired of civil war, its inhabitants acquiesced in and many welcomed this outcome, and Octavian himself, having achieved such power, had no intention of giving it up.45 He did, nonetheless, need to devise a way of retaining control while at the same time purporting to carry out the promises to give up their exceptional powers which both he and Antony had repeatedly made. The only other way of continuing in power would have been by Caesar’s route, overt autocracy, and Caesar’s assassination had shown the dangers of such an open provocation to the sensibilities of the Roman elite. We must now examine how he contrived to refashion his primacy in republican guise.

Making the emergency permanent: the establishment of the principate46 Augustus opens the penultimate chapter of the Res Gestae with his claimed transfer of power: “In my sixth and seventh consulships [i.e.  and  bc], after I had extinguished the civil wars, being in possession of 44 Cf. Syme  –, ; Reinhold  ; Ridley  –. Velleius loyally makes the same claim as Augustus for the Actium and Alexandrian wars (..– , .–); the citizens (other than Caesar’s killers) known to have been executed then comprise Q. Canidius, Scribonius Curio, and Q. Ovinius, a senator but manager of Cleopatra’s textile factories (Vell. ..; D.C. ..; Oros. ..). Favonius, executed after Philippi, was in open defiance (Suet. Aug. .; D.C. ..). Hostile allegations are transmitted by Suet. Aug. , D.C. ..–. Octavian’s conduct is variously reported as clement or severe after the siege of Perusia (App. BC .; D.C. ..–; Suet. Aug. ) and defeat of Sex. Pompeius (App. BC .; D.C. ..). The town councillors of Perusia were certainly executed, but the statement at R.Gest.div.Aug. . may have been deemed not to apply to them (and Ovinius) as non-combatants. Later writers often draw a contrast between Augustus’ cruelty in his rise to power and clemency as sole ruler (e.g. Sen. Cl. .., .). 45 There can have been no substance in the tale that he considered giving up power, reported by Suetonius (Aug. .) and used by Dio as his pretext for the fictional debate between Agrippa and Maecenas (.–). 46 For this section see further Rich and Williams , Rich , b, with bibliography. In general on political developments during Augustus’ sole rule see e.g. Crook ; Kienast  –; Eck  –.

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john rich

everything by the consent of all, I transferred the republic from my power to the control of the Roman senate and people” (in consulatu sexto et septimo, postqua[m b]el[la ciuil]ia exstinxeram, per consensum uniuersorum [po]tens re[ru]m om[n]ium rem publicam ex mea potestate in senat[us populi]que R[om]ani [a]rbitrium transtuli; .).47 He then (.) reports the honours conferred by the senate “for this service”, which calendar evidence shows to have been granted on – January : namely, an oak-leaf crown “for saving citizens” above and laurels before his housedoor, a gold shield commemorating his virtues in the senate-house, and the name Augustus. Next, he characterizes his subsequent position in the state: “After that time I excelled all in authority, but I had no more power than the others who were my colleagues in each magistracy” (post id tem[pus a]uctoritate [omnibus praestiti, potest]atis au[tem n]ihilo ampliu[s habu]i quam cet[eri, qui m]ihi quoque in ma[gis]tra[t]u conlegae f[uerunt]; .). The work then closes () with his culminating honour, the grant of the title of Father of the Fatherland (pater patriae) in  bc. Thus, as noted above, the closing two chapters, like the first two, record exceptional services to the republic by Augustus and exceptional consequent honours. The honours are described in careful detail, but the statements on the political settlement are terse and evasive. In . Augustus sidesteps the issue by what right he was ruling before the transfer and omits to state what dispositions the senate and people made for the res publica, that is their common property or commonwealth, after it was transferred to their control. His claim at . that his subsequent primacy was only in auctoritas is one of the most misleading statements in the whole work. Auctoritas was the quality which had traditionally been possessed by the leading men of the state, the principes ciuitatis: their possession of this quality meant that their views were held in most respect and carried most weight with the senate and people. Augustus let out that he wished to be known as princeps, first citizen, the chief among the leading men. As such, it would naturally be his views which would deserve the greatest respect and carry the most weight.48 However, although Augustus’ vast prestige and respect were an important element in his position, they were by no means the only aspect even of his informal power. Most problematic, 47

The reading potens is supplied by a recently discovered fragment of the Antioch

copy. 48 On auctoritas see especially Galinsky  –. For the title princeps see e.g. Wickert ; Cooley  –.

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though, is his claim to have held no more potestas, official power, than his fellow magistrates. The reference can only be to the consulship, since he held no other magistracy.49 However, after resigning the consulship in  he held the office only twice more, in  and  bc, and each time only for brief periods His primacy was in fact founded not just on auctoritas but also on a range of powers, which were cumulatively much greater than anyone else’s, and included continuous tenure of imperium and the control of the provinces in which most of the armies were based. Further examination of the initial settlement and subsequent developments may suggest an explanation for his choice of so problematic a formulation. Octavian celebrated his triple triumph on his return to Rome in August  and remained there until the summer of . During this stay he took various measures to make it appear that the state had been brought back to the old republican ways, for example holding a census, revising the senate’s membership and having the temples cleaned, and in  and January  he carried through the settlement which he represented as the transfer of the res publica. The account of the settlement given by Cassius Dio (.–) is much the fullest available, but is in some respects distorted by Dio’s eagerness to point up the contrast between appearance and reality. A recently discovered aureus of  bc provides important corrective evidence.50 Over the year  Octavian carried out a range of measures relating to domestic administration, which together returned a significant degree of control to the republican organs of government. As a sign of respect for collegial parity, he revived the practice whereby the consuls took turns to be accompanied by the lictors carrying the fasces for a month at a time (D.C. ..). At some point in the year, he issued an edict annulling such of his ordinances as were illegal and unjust (Tac. Ann. ..; D.C. ..), and this edict is alluded to on the reverse of the aureus, which shows Octavian seated on a curule chair holding out a scroll, and carries the legend leges et iura p r restituit, commemorating his restoration of the laws to, for or of the Roman people (the interpretation is disputed).51 49 See Ridley  –, rightly rejecting the view that Agrippa and Tiberius are also meant: they were his colleagues in the tribunician power, but that was not a magistracy. 50 For the interpretation which follows see Rich and Williams  –; Rich b. 51 p r may be completed as dative, p(opulo) r(omano) (so Rich and Williams ), or genitive, p(opuli) r(omani) (so Mantovani ). The question is best left open (Rich b).

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john rich

Octavian confirmed that he had observed the laws during this year by taking the consuls’ traditional oath at the year end (D.C. ..). It was almost certainly during this year that free elections were resumed for the magistracies. Various measures relating to the treasury enacted in  (D.C. .., ) were probably envisaged as constituting its return to senatorial control. What remained was the armies and the provinces, but these were crucial. If at this juncture, with the civil wars so recently over, he had allowed all the provinces to revert to the Roman people and their governors to be selected by the lot in the traditional way, he would have risked losing the reality of power, and renewed civil war might have been the outcome. If, on the other hand, he had kept all the provinces and armies, he would have remained an overt autocrat. Octavian found an elegant solution for this dilemma, whose essentials are explained by Dio (..– ., .). In a doubtless carefully stage-managed session of the senate on  January  he announced that he was handing back the armies and provinces, so completing the process of returning the res publica to the control of the senate and people begun the previous year. The senators erupted in protest, and, either on the same day or at the next meeting, a compromise was agreed (no doubt planned by Octavian from the outset) under which the provinces would be divided between him and the Roman people. For the people’s provinces the governors would be proconsuls selected in the old way by the lot. In his provinces the governors would serve as his deputies or legati, appointed at his pleasure. For his share he took Gaul, Spain, Syria and Egypt, and with them all but six of the legions. In addition he may (although this is controversial) have accepted an informal general oversight of the republic—what Dio calls “the overall care and leadership of the public business as needing some attention”.52 This solution was declared to be a temporary measure, to last for no more than ten years, and for a specific task. It thus formed a continuation of the triumviral arrangements: those were justified as an emergency measure to put the state to rights, and this new arrangement was presented as a further limited-term expedient of the same kind.

52 D.C. ..; cf. Str. .. (). For this view see Liebeschuetz ; Rich and Williams  –; Rich b (responding to the criticisms of Ferrary  – ).

deception, lies and economy with the truth

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The specific assignment also arose out of the triumviral business. It had been the triumvirs’ task to end the civil wars and so establish peace. The achievement of this assignment had been symbolized by the closing of the doors of the temple of Janus. Now the pacification process was to be extended to Rome’s external enemies. Augustus undertook to pacify all those provinces which were disturbed or had dangerous enemies on their borders—and naturally those were the provinces which held most of the legions. So Augustus had squared the circle, achieving a solution which kept the essentials of power in his hands but within a republican framework. Few, if any, will have supposed that he had ceased to rule, nor will this have been his intention. As Millar has shown, a wealth of evidence attests that at Rome and throughout the empire men recognized Augustus as their ruler.53 But, at least for the elite at Rome, it was important that this rule should be expressed in a way which respected their traditions and sensibilities and gave the senate an honoured voice. We should not assume that he planned from the outset to continue the division of the provinces indefinitely. He may have thought that another solution might in time present itself which would permit him to retain the reality of monarchy while continuing to claim observance of republican forms, perhaps even that he might one day feel strong enough to rely on informal authority alone. However, in the event, the initial ten years were followed by renewals of five or ten years, accepted usually with feigned reluctance.54 This continued until his death, and under his successors the arrangement became permanent. The fact that the division of the provinces became permanent has made us neglect the significance of its being originally presented as a temporary arrangement for the specific purpose of pacification. In fact, the temporary character of this initial settlement and the pacification project which formed its justification are crucial for the understanding both of Augustus’ external policies and of his constitutional arrangements. Augustus’ external policies have usually been interpreted as a grand design—according to some, to give the empire defensible frontiers, according to others, to conquer the world. Neither interpretation adequately accounts both for Augustus’ vast conquests in central Europe and for his decision, contrary to popular expectation, to avoid war with

53 54

Millar , . D.C. ..; ..–; .., .; .., ..

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john rich

Parthia. In fact, external policies and internal politics cannot be divorced: Augustus needed to satisfy the popular expectation of great conquests, and to provide princes of the imperial house with opportunities for glory. Above all, he needed to show the achievements in pacification which would justify the division of the provinces.55 His external policies in fact match the renewals of power. In the first ten-year period he or his commanders achieved the long-overdue completion of the conquest of Spain by bringing its mountainous northwest under control; established control of the new province of Egypt and conducted operations beyond its borders; and above all resolved the Parthian problem by a diplomatic solution, securing the return of captured Roman prisoners and standards. The powers were then renewed for a five-year period, – bc, during which the Alps were brought under control. Thus in fifteen years, all four of Augustus’ provinces had been pacified, and it was appropriate that his return to Rome in  was commemorated by the establishment of the Altar of Augustan Peace. Conveniently, however, German incursions and Balkan uprisings had provided new directions for pacification, and the ensuing five years saw the great advance into central Europe. By  bc general submissions had been obtained across the whole region up to the Elbe and the Danube. However, these vast conquests could hardly be deemed secure, and a further extension of Augustus’ powers could thus be presented as necessary. This was perhaps the point at which the claim that the division of the provinces was temporary lost its meaning. The security requirements of the huge new territories would continue indefinitely, and, although the renewals continued to the end of the reign, it was by now clear that the division of the provinces had become part of the permanent architecture of Roman government. In  bc all that Augustus accepted for life were the civic crown and laurels adorning his house, the gold shield in the senate-house and his new name, honours which rewarded him for saving the fatherland from the menace of Cleopatra and Antony and restoring the res publica to the control of the senate and people, and served also as symbolic markers of the unique authority which he would hold in the state for the rest of his days. In taking his share of the provinces just for ten years and

55 For this interpretation of Augustus’ external policies and their implementation see further Rich , b. For other views see e.g. Brunt  –, –; Gruen b, ; Eck  –.

deception, lies and economy with the truth

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for a specific task, Augustus left open the prospect that, when the task of pacification was accomplished, his position would rest simply on informal authority. For the time being, he had agreed to continue to hold exceptional, unrepublican powers, but simply as a limited-term arrangement, to meet what was represented as an emergency need. At first Augustus also continued to accept annual re-election to the consulship, but this was both manifestly unrepublican and an unacceptable restriction on others’ access to the consulship, and so could not be continued indefinitely. In summer , he resigned the consulship, and received adjustments to his powers in compensation. He did now accept a lifelong power, that of the tribunes, but this did not include imperium. Since he was now proconsul, Augustus retained his imperium, to which various adjustments were made: it was made greater than that of the provincial governors, and he was allowed to retain it within the city of Rome, and, by a further modification in , to exercise it there. However, it remained liable for renewal along with his provinces.56 The intense scholarly attention devoted to these modifications to Augustus’ powers has led to a neglect of the importance of the periodic renewals of the division of the provinces. Yet it was those renewals which fundamentally changed the character of the settlement, enabling Augustus to hold an unrepublican accumulation of powers, including imperium and a huge provincial command, in perpetuity. The emergency justifying these powers, originally presented as short-term, had in effect become permanent. It may be that Augustus had always intended the division of the provinces to be permanent, and so that the renewals and accompanying professions of reluctance were merely a hypocritical charade. However, in other areas of government Augustus showed notable flexibility and willingness to try alternative solutions, and it seems to me more likely that he did not initially discount the possibility that a different basis for securing his control might in due course be found. However, by  bc he had abandoned any such thoughts. Recent developments within his court, such as the deaths of Agrippa and Drusus and his eagerness to advance his adopted sons Gaius and Lucius, may have contributed to this outcome. 56 These modifications are reported by D.C. ..–, ... The best treatment of this much discussed topic is now Ferrary , who rightly stresses that, although Augustus was permitted to retain his imperium when crossing the pomerium, it still had to be renewed with his provinces.

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john rich

These conclusions may help to shed light on his claim in the Res Gestae (.) that ‘after that time I excelled everyone in auctoritas, but had no more potestas than the others who were my colleagues in each magistracy’. At the end of his life, when he composed the work as we now have it, that claim was remote from the political realities, and his claim about potestas could be deemed true only in the very narrow sense that, on the rare occasions when he held the consulship, his relationship with his fellow-consul respected collegiality. So inapposite a claim is unlikely to have originated in that context. It would have been a very appropriate formulation in  bc, not so much for the immediate situation, but rather for the position in the state which he would hold when the work of pacification could be declared complete and his provinces returned. We may conjecture that it was first formulated then and often repeated, for example in Augustus’ autobiography. He will then have turned to it again in the Res Gestae, blithely disregarding its disjunction from the realities because there was no other way he could represent himself as having fulfilled his claim to have saved the res publica and returned it to the control of the senate and people.

Conclusion In the Res Gestae Augustus claimed to have begun his career by liberating the republic from domination, and later, when he had extinguished civil wars, to have transferred it to the control of the senate and people and thereafter to have been supreme only in auctoritas. In reality, he had, throughout almost his whole career, subjected the republic to domination, first in conjunction with Antony and Lepidus and, once he had ousted them, as its sole ruler, and deception and duplicity had been among his principal weapons in acquiring and retaining this power. However, he should not be interpreted as constantly engaged in the single-minded pursuit of sole domination, but rather as a brilliant extemporiser responding to circumstances and other protagonists’ moves, and others, both collaborators and subjects, made their contribution to the construction of his justificatory pretences and subterfuges. Prominent among those subterfuges, under the triumvirate and again in , was the presentation of exceptional powers as temporary expedients. Moreover, it can be well understood that many, perhaps most, of his subjects felt, like those whose favourable view Tacitus reports, that Augustus’ rule was the best available outcome. Despite the fraudulence of his claims,

deception, lies and economy with the truth

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he gave them peace, prosperity and a model for imperial government in which the ruler was expected to comport himself like a citizen, as a ciuilis princeps.57

57

On the ideal of the ciuilis princeps see Wallace-Hadrill .

EARLY IMPERIAL LITERATURE

LUCAN’S CLEOPATRA

Andrew J. Turner The ways in which public duties and private relationships intersected within the imperial household of the Julio-Claudians were a central theme for the writers of the early second-century ce. Time and again writers such as Tacitus, in his endeavour to expose the underlying causes of the defining historical event of the previous century in Rome—the concentration of real political and military power in the hands of one extended (and dysfunctional) family, or Suetonius, writing biographies of the principes which systematically allocated as much space to rumours about their sexual preferences as to the consulships of their ancestors or to their minor literary achievements, reflect upon the ways in which these personal relationships and associated vendettas undermined and subverted traditional Roman ideals, such as res publica, mos maiorum, pudicitia, and pietas. In chronological terms, one of the first of these key relationships, and perhaps the most spectacular, was that of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra. Major aberrations from the original story in modern films such as the  Cleopatra directed by Joseph Mankiewicz can undoubtedly be ascribed to the desire to use their medium (wide screen technicolour) to its full capacity, as well as sensational rewriting of elements of the story in order to play on modern moral views and prejudices, but the fascination which informs this film with the ways in which public and private collided and intermingled can still be traced back directly to the accounts of the three ancient sources cited in the credits; Plutarch, Appian, and Suetonius. Nor is modern historiography immune from confusions caused ultimately by the problematic nature of the primary source material. Matthias Gelzer, perhaps the leading historian of Caesar’s career in the early twentieth century, exhibited direct insights into his own reactions to this story when he wrote: The nine months of the Egyptian intermezzo present the student of Caesar’s life with more than one puzzle . . . most remarkable of all remains the role of Cleopatra, this romantic novel which almost brought the unique career of the hero to a disreputable end. Much of it can be explained in political terms. Yet the actual course of the Egyptian adventure leaves no



andrew j. turner room for doubt that more attracted him to this demonic woman than the rank and glitter of the last successor dynasty.1

One of the fundamental problems with dealing with Caesar and Cleopatra is that even the primary material is removed in time from the events it describes. Virgil, Horace, and Propertius, those great Augustan poets with whom we most closely associate the processes of demonization of Cleopatra and everything she supposedly represented—sexual domination of elite Roman males, hybrid Hellenistic and Egyptian culture, and hereditary monarchy itself—dealt exclusively with the civil war against M. Antonius.2 Cicero’s correspondence certainly shows that he was aware of Cleopatra’s presence in Rome in the period just after Caesar’s assassination, while Augustus’ Greek biographer Nicolaos of Damascus does cite a rumour that Caesar wanted to establish a kingdom in Egypt since he had had a son, Caesarion, by Cleopatra (although he then states that Caesar explicitly denied paternity in his will).3 But apart from these references and a few other scraps of information from contemporary sources which may be relevant,4 it is not until we come to Lucan, writing more than a century after Pharsalus and Julius Caesar’s Alexandrian campaign of  bce, and then Plutarch, Appian, and Suetonius writing in the nd century, that we have any detailed references to her relationship with Caesar. The omissions in works where we could expect a reference of some sort, however sanitized, are noteworthy. Caesar’s own account in the Bellum ciuile ends with the outbreak of the Alexandrian war, and only mentions the civil war between Cleopatra and her brother, Ptolemy XIII, in the context of Roman interests, while in the extended account of this war in the Bellum Alexandrinum, probably written by Caesar’s faithful general A. Hirtius shortly before his death in  bce, she is only mentioned as an ally who is appropriately rewarded for her loyalty, and the impression is

1 Gelzer  . The emotive terms used here by Gelzer’s translator to describe Cleopatra reflect accurately the terms used in the original German (e.g. ‘dieser Liebesroman’, ‘dem dämonischen Weib’); see Gelzer  . A fundamental contradiction in the attitude of Gelzer towards the relationship of Caesar and Cleopatra, viewing it on the one hand as political pragmatism, and on the other as an inexplicable ‘Liebesroman’, is noted by Christ  . 2 Cf. Verg. A. –; Hor. Carm. .; Prop. ..–, ..–. 3 See Cic. Att. .., ., .., ., .–, .; Nic. Dam. Vit. Caes.  (FGrH .). 4 For the comic playwright Laberius (cited in Aulus Gellius ..), see Becher  –. For discussion of surviving portraiture from Rome, see Kleiner  –.

lucan’s cleopatra



given of Caesar’s complete disinterest in local affairs and his intense focus on military duties.5 Nor do the periochae to the missing books –  of Livy, which cover – bce, mention Cleopatra, other than to state that Caesar restored her to the throne (Liv. Perioch. ), whereas those to Books – describe Antonius’ affair with her in detail, noting how he was revelling with Cleopatra and how he abandoned his campaign in Armenia because he was captivated by love of the queen.6 Livy almost certainly described Caesar’s Egyptian campaign in some detail, as two references in the scholia to Lucan Book  strongly suggest,7 but precisely what he knew and said about Cleopatra and Caesar is unknown. Velleius Paterculus does not mention Cleopatra at all in his summary description of the Alexandrian War, although like the periochae he dwells on M. Antonius’ infatuation for the queen, and the extent to which this compromised his military responsibilities (Vell. .., ., ). The absence of any reference to the relationship in earlier extant writers calls for comment. With regard to Caesar and Hirtius, it could perhaps be argued that they were to some extent limited by genre, since the Caesarian commentarius is a form focussing on military actions carried out on behalf of the res publica, and that a personal affair, however contrary to traditional republican moral values it may have been, simply fell outside of its scope.8 Nevertheless, the negative effects on res publica of Caesar’s infatuated response to Cleopatra are a constant theme in later sources; thus Plutarch mentions that some commentators (he does not specify which) blamed Caesar for starting a war in Egypt, which was unnecessary and indeed inglorious and dangerous, by his passion for Cleopatra,9 while Suetonius says that his army rebelled and forced him to turn back from a pleasure cruise along the Nile: dilexit et reginas . . . maxime Cleopatram, cum qua et conuiuia in primam lucam saepe protraxit et eadem naue thalamego paene Aethiopia tenus Aegyptum penetrauit, nisi exercitus sequi recusasset (Suet. Caes. .) 5

For references to Cleopatra, see Caes. Civ. .; B. Alex. . For authorship of the latter work by Hirtius, see C.B.R. Pelling in OCD ; J. Rüpke in BNP .. 6 Liv. Perioch.  (cum Cleopatra luxuriatur),  (captus amore). 7 See Adnot. Lucan. . (Liv. frg. , describing the murder of an ambassador sent by Ptolemy on Caesar’s instigation) and . (Liv. frg. , describing Arsinoe’s murder of Achillas, her appointment of the eunuch Ganymede as general, and his eventual appearance in Caesar’s triumph). 8 For discussion of the generic affiliations of Caesar’s work, see Rüpke . 9 Plut. Caes. . (Τ&ν δ’ αKτ'!ι π'λεμον ο μ:ν οKκ #ναγκα3ον, #λλ’ @ρωτι Κλεοπτρας 8δοξον αKτD" κα4 κινδυνδη γενσ!αι λγουσιν).



andrew j. turner he also was devoted to queens . . . above all to Cleopatra, with whom he held drinking parties which frequently carried on to first light, and with whom he travelled right through Egypt in a special ship equipped with a bridal chamber; he would almost have reached the borders of Ethiopia, but his army refused to follow him.

The silence under Augustus and Tiberius may perhaps be explained in part because of the prevailing ideology of the imperial domus. When examining the evidence for Livy’s lost account, Otto Zwierlein concluded that he must have been sufficiently influenced by Augustus’ development of a cult for his adoptive father to suppress potentially damaging stories about his adulterous behaviour.10 Livy’s supposed role as a mouthpiece for Augustan politics has been questioned recently,11 but certainly such sensational stories would have been out of place in the direct eulogies of Caesar’s adopted son and grandson, Augustus and Tiberius, by Livy’s contemporaries, Nicolaos of Damascus and Velleius Paterculus.12 Turning now to our first extensive source for these events, what does Lucan actually say about Cleopatra? In Book  he describes the flight of Pompey from Pharsalus to Egypt, where he is treacherously murdered at Pelusium by the brother of Cleopatra, Ptolemy XIII, on the advice of the evil eunuch Pothinus. We know from other sources that Ptolemy was at Pelusium fighting the army of Cleopatra, who had jointly inherited the kingdom with him, but who had subsequently been expelled from Alexandria;13 however, Lucan does not mention Cleopatra’s war with her brother here, other than to allude to her as his defeated rival in the speech of Pothinus (Luc. .). When Caesar arrives in Alexandria at the end of Book  in pursuit of Pompey, and is presented with his severed head as a gift, he remarks to Ptolemy’s envoy that if the king didn’t hate his sister so much, he would have presented him with her head as a present in return (.–). At this stage, then, Cleopatra is simply a political figure in Caesar’s eyes, who is useful only because she keeps her brother’s kingdom in check. Then in Book  Cleopatra makes a dramatic entrance into Alexandria. Sailing across the harbour and entering the Royal Palace in secret, she meets Caesar, seduces him, then corruptly wins him over to her 10

Zwierlein  –. E.g. in the discussion of Sailor . 12 For the connections of Nicolaus to Augustus, see OCD –, BNP .–; for the relationship of Velleius Paterculus to Tiberius and the high esteem in which he held him because of his military achievements, see Christ . 13 App. B.C. .; Plut. Pomp. . 11

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side in her dispute with her brother (.–). Cleopatra is depicted throughout this account as incesta,14 and portrayed as a woman contemptuous of morality and female modesty, while Caesar, completely under her spell, abandons all sense of duty, both that owed to his family (particularly to the memory of his daughter Iulia, who had been married to Pompey before the civil war erupted),15 and that to his own political cause. Cleopatra’s actions are characterized as consistently devious and calculating—she moderates her appearance in order to manipulate Caesar both through his pity, as well as his lust: quem formae confisa suae Cleopatra sine ullis tristis adit lacrimis, simulatum compta dolorem qua decuit, ueluti laceros dispersa capillos

(.–)

Trusting in her beauty, Cleopatra approaches him, sad without any tears, having dressed herself in a pretense of grief, by which she gained grace, her hair scattered around as if it was torn.

Having achieved her initial aim, she then invites Caesar to a magnificent feast in the palace, where he is dazzled by the barbaric wealth of the Ptolemies (.–). At the feast Caesar is introduced to the priest Acoreus, perhaps the one decent Egyptian who appears in the poem, an elderly priest who had been the sole member of Ptolemy’s council to argue against Pompey’s murder, and who now presents Caesar, at his request, with a lengthy description of the Nile (.–). Following the feast, Lucan focuses on the development of the war in Alexandria. Cleopatra no longer appears as a character, although the dangers posed by her relationship with Caesar are cited by the eunuch Pothinus as a powerful reason why the Egyptians should rebel (.–). What is the value of Lucan’s text as a direct source for these events? This question gained particular relevance recently with the study of Luciano Canfora, who integrated some details from Lucan’s version of the Alexandrian campaign into his own narrative. With regard to the account of Caesar’s suppressed joy when he sees the head of Pompey, Canfora stated: “[Lucan] is to be taken very seriously because he reflects a ‘republican’inspired historiographical tradition that might have had its starting point in the historical work of Seneca the Elder on the civil wars. Here, as 14 Cf. Luc. .– (dedecus Aegypti . . . Romano non casta malo),  (incestam . . . Ptolemaida),  (facies . . . incesta). See also Berti   for discussion of the meaning of this word with regard to Cleopatra; he equated it with impudica. 15 Cf. Luc. .–: pro pudor, oblitus Magni tibi, Iulia, fratres obscaena de matre dedit (“for shame! Forgetting Magnus, he gave you, Julia, brothers from a shameless mother”).

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elsewhere, the Pharsalia is historiography in verse, not mere poetic invention”.16 Yet there are clear instances throughout Lucan’s account where the moral element informs his characters and their actions. Compare, for instance, the account of Cleopatra’s first interview with Caesar cited above with that of the early second-century epitomator Florus: Cleopatra, regis soror, adfusa Caesaris genibus partem regni reposcebat. aderat puellae forma, et quae duplicaretur ex illo quod talis passa uidebatur iniuriam, odium ipsius regis (Flor. Epit. ..) Cleopatra, the sister of the king, fell down at Caesar’s knees and begged him to give her back her part of the kingdom. The girl possessed beauty, and this acquired double force because she was such a person who seemed to have suffered unjustly the hatred of this same king.

Like Lucan, Florus describes Cleopatra in terms which emphasize both her beauty and her sorrow, but his portrait has none of the deliberate calculation of Lucan’s Cleopatra—the only slightly critical note comes with the term uidebatur, ‘she seemed’. In scouring Lucan for details which conform with or augment the other ancient sources, we must therefore be aware that this moral perspective is capable of distorting events, and providing extraneous details to strengthen his arguments. There are in fact details in Lucan which match very closely with the accounts of the second-century writers—particularly striking is the description of Cleopatra crossing the harbour in a small boat and secretly entering the royal palace, which is also found in Plutarch.17 Other elements in Lucan which seem to corroborate the historical record have in fact been overlooked as a source by modern historians. Thus both Suetonius and Appian record a major expedition along the Nile made by Caesar and Cleopatra after the war had concluded, with slightly different focus regarding the purpose of the voyage; Suetonius focuses on its erotic aspects and the subsequent rebellion of the army, while Appian (whose Egyptian History is unfortunately lost) on its size and splendour.18 But 16

Canfora  . Cf. Luc. .–: se parua Cleopatra biremi . . . intulit Emathiis ignaro Caesare tectis (“she travelled in a small ship, while Caesar was unaware, to the Macedonian palace”) and Plut. Caes. .: Κ#κενη . . . ε)ς #κτιον μικρ&ν μβσα, το3ς μ:ν βασιλεοις προσσχεν Xδη συσκοτζοντος (“and this woman embarked in a tiny ship and crossed to the royal palace as it was growing dark”). 18 Suet. Iul. .: eadem naue thalamego paene Aethiopia tenus Aegyptum penetrauit, nisi exercitus sequi recusasset (“he travelled right through Egypt in a special ship equipped with a bridal chamber; he would almost have reached the borders of Ethiopia, but his army refused to follow him”); App. B.C. .: κα τ&ν Νε3λον π4 τετρακοσων νε"ν, τν 17

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this trip along the Nile is noticeably absent from the account in the Bellum Alexandrinum, and it is also not mentioned by Dio. The attitudes of modern historians to this whole episode vary: Adrian Goldsworthy, for instance, provided a straightforward synthesis of the source material, slotting the account of the cruise into other narrative, and speculating at length about Caesar’s motives,19 while Gelzer also seems to have accepted the fact of the voyage in his discussion of the chronology of Caesar’s stay in Egypt, although he did distance himself slightly from Suetonius and Appian when he stated: “We hear that he went on a splendid Nile cruise with Cleopatra to the southern boundary of the kingdom”.20 Canfora, however, did not mention the river-cruise at any stage, and in his chronology of the period jumped straight from the Battle of the Nile on  March  to Caesar’s departure for Syria on  June.21 Yet Lucan himself appears to corroborate the evidence from the later writers, since at the conclusion of Caesar’s speech to Acoreus at the feast, he states a wish that his desire to see the sources of the Nile might be fulfilled once the civil wars have concluded: spes sit mihi certa uidendi Niliacos fontes, bellum ciuile relinquam

(.–)

“may my hope of seeing the springs of the Nile be realized, may I leave behind the conflict with my fellow citizens.”22

Some other details in Lucan which are not corroborated by other extant sources are more problematic. When Lucan’s Cleopatra first appears, he tells us that she entered Alexandria in a small boat, corrupto custode Phari laxare catenas (.), “having corrupted the guards at Pharus [or of Pharus] to loosen the chains”. The island of Pharus, which was joined on one side with the mainland at the start of the Ptolemaic period by a long mole, the Heptastadion, lay beside a channel which opened into the great harbour of Alexandria.23 It is a natural inference then, given Lucan’s reference to a boat, to assume that it means some sort of chain blocking shipping from entering the harbour. The Romans were certainly aware of χραν !εμενος, περιπλει μετA τς Κλεοπτρας, κα4 τZλλα δ'μενος αKτP (“and he sailed along the Nile with Cleopatra with four hundred ships, seeing the sights of the country, and in other respects taking pleasure with her”). 19 Goldsworthy  –. 20 Gelzer  . 21 Canfora  . 22 For the structure here, see Berti  –. 23 For a general discussion of Pharos and the Heptastadion, see Fraser  i. –.

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this technology; there is a reference in Frontinus to chains being used to close the harbour of Syracuse and block the escape of a Roman consul in this way (Fron. Str. ..), while in Book  Lucan relates how the Cilician allies of Pompey used cables stretched underwater to entrap one of the rafts containing Caesar’s soldiers which was attempting to escape from the island of Curictae (Luc. .–). This is also how some translators have treated the passage in Book ; thus J.D. Duff who edited the LCL edition of , translated it as follows: “having bribed the guards to undo the chain across the harbour of Pharus.”24 The trouble with this is that there is no reference to such a boom being used in Alexandria; neither in the Bellum Alexandrinum, which provides a lengthy account of a sea battle between Caesar and the Alexandrians which took place all around the island (B. Alex. –), nor in relevant descriptions of the harbour in Strabo (Str. ..–), writing in the time of Augustus, and Josephus (J. B.J. .–), writing under Domitian.25 If a chain was never used in this way, a number of alternative interpretations of this passage suggest themselves. Firstly, Lucan may simply have been completely unconcerned with historical or geographic accuracy, and have invented the detail of a chain in order to embellish his account, building on his account in Book . Secondly, there may be an oblique description of an historical event here, but the phrase laxare catenas was used to convey by metonymy the idea of the guards being bribed to abandon their close watch and overlook Cleopatra’s boat entering the harbour mouth. A third, much less probable interpretation is provided in some of the scholia—these imply that Cleopatra had been imprisoned by her brother, but that she bribed her guards to release her chains.26 This explanation makes no sense in light of Caesar’s mock offer in Book  to send Cleopatra’s head as a present to her brother, and contradicts also the accounts of Plutarch and Cassius Dio, who state that Cleopatra had been driven into exile from Alexandria prior to her secret return to see Caesar, and that her forces were still waging war with Ptolemy’s; to understand

24 Duff  . Note also the translation of Bourgery and Ponchont  ii.  (“corrompt le gardien de Pharos, qui abaisse les chaînes”), and in particular n.  (“Ou Phari catenas, le chaînes fermant l’entrée du port d’Alexandrie”). 25 Berti   noted that there was no historical reference to a chain at Pharos, but argued that chains were used for this purpose in the ancient world, citing Frontinus inter alios. 26 Adnot. Lucan. .: a fratre Ptolemeo erat in custodiis derelicta (“she had been abandoned by her brother Ptolemy in prison”).

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Lucan’s text using this explanation in the scholia, we would have to assume that Cleopatra was imprisoned on Pharus. Like many other collections of scholia, the scholia to Lucan are inconsistent, and contain a mish-mash of information, including inspired guesses made by copyists at various stages;27 still, the interpretation cannot be rejected entirely, since Lucan elsewhere uses the verb laxo to describe chains being removed from a person,28 while as noted earlier, Livy is directly cited in the scholia as a source for some information, so that there are at least some reliable elements in them. Full account clearly needs to be taken of a number of factors which fall within the broad area of literary criticism before we can properly determine the true historiographical value of Lucan’s account, and here we encounter a new series of difficulties. As noted by Shadi Bartsch, much Lucan criticism, and particularly that from the twentieth century, has tended to be guided by two quite different interpretations of his intentions.29 Relying on the biographical tradition, which depicted him as politically active in the Pisonian conspiracy against Nero, one critical tendency saw Lucan’s poem as a deliberate challenge to the Julio-Claudian political establishment and a championing of republican and stoic values, embodied to some extent in the figures of Pompey and Cato. For example, the study of Patrick McCloskey and Edward Phinney argued that the way in which the tyrannous young Ptolemy was presented by Lucan implied strong, though indirect criticisms of Nero and his court.30 The opposite critical tendency noted by Bartsch, typified by John Henderson, was the view that Lucan’s work is essentially nihilistic in its intentions, and is only really concerned with playing highly sophisticated, but ultimately meaningless games with his audience.31 Dominant characters, such as Caesar or Cato, are only set up in order to be knocked down again. Many studies, including that of Bartsch, can be positioned between these two extremes, and a great deal of subsequent critical work has helped to elucidate the text much more clearly, and show the importance of textual models, particularly Virgil, for understanding how the text would have been received by its audience. The opening remarks by

27

For discussion, see Werner . Cf. .–: astrictis laxari uincula palmis imperat (“he orders the chains to be loosened from the tightly-bound hands”). 29 Bartsch  –. 30 McCloskey and Phinney . 31 See e.g. Henderson  []. 28

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Christine Walde to a recent collection of essays also provide much clearer guidelines for understanding how the text might have been understood politically by the audiences reading it in the Flavian period; that is, as a highly specific criticism of Nero’s regime, rather than as a doctrinaire statement of republican values (although she also remarked that this still does not provide us with insight into Lucan’s own intentions with the poem, but rather to how a particular generation of readers read his work and reacted to it).32 Lucan’s Cleopatra, with her blatant use of her sexuality to obtain political power and her hedonistic, opulent life-style, ought to offer great scope for analysis of such aspects within Neronian Rome, but instead she receives remarkably short shrift in modern literary discussion. For Frederick Ahl, she was simply a minor character among many others, and he argued that she and Cato’s wife Marcia were used chiefly to supply an additional color to their respective partners.33 More recently Concetta Finiello discussed the relationship of the witch Erictho (see .–) to other female figures in Lucan, and asserted, contrary to Ahl, that Cleopatra is one of a series of major historical female figures who appear in the epic, along with Marcia, Iulia, and Cornelia, and that she is linked with this group by Lucan through his characterization of her as a feralis Erinys, a death-bringing Fury (.); unfortunately, she excluded her from the main discussions because she appears after the appearance of Erictho at the battle of Pharsalus.34 Even in Andreola Rossi’s discussion of Book  in the same volume, Cleopatra was hardly mentioned, other than to state that she has many negative parallels to the figure of Dido in Book  of the Aeneid.35 In what is perhaps the most extensive critical examinations of Lucan’s Cleopatra, Zwierlein observed how the figure of Caesar changes noticeably in Book , becoming a slave of lust and luxury.36 He argued that the negative characterization of Cleopatra was projected backwards in time by Lucan and was in fact based on the extensive accounts by earlier Latin writers of her relationship with Antonius.37 Zwierlein gave two probable grounds for this negative characterization of Caesar and Cleopatra.

32 33 34 35 36 37

Walde  xv. Ahl  . Finiello  – and  n. . Rossi  –. Zwierlein  . Zwierlein  .

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Firstly, he saw it as a product of Lucan’s ethical dualism, which was guided by his Stoicism. The pair of Caesar and Cleopatra are meant to be juxtaposed in the minds of the audience with that of Cato and Marcia, and the luxury and hedonistic indulgence of the Egyptian court are directly contrasted with the abstemious way of life led by the stoics, who live in a modest dwelling, and only admit sexual relations for the purpose of procreation.38 The second ground advanced by Zwierlein was Lucan’s well-known aemulatio Vergiliana, emulation of Virgil. Cleopatra’s feast has many close parallels with the feast that Dido holds for Aeneas in Book  of Virgil’s epic (Verg. A. .–); both accounts lay great emphasis on the splendour of the feast,39 while like Aeneas, Caesar forgets his mission under the influence of love (the word oblitus is repeated in both works at key points).40 Comparison of themes in Lucan’s narrative with contemporary social issues and intellectual preoccupations provides another useful way for understanding how he arrives at his portraits of Cleopatra and her lover Caesar, and infuses them with such withering scorn. In his study of the peripheries of the Mediterranean world in Roman thought, James Romm discussed the speech to Caesar by Acoreus concerning the origins of the Nile; he showed how it related Caesar’s desire to explore the extremities of the known world directly to the futile attempts of Alexander, whose tomb Caesar eagerly visits at the start of the book, and of other reckless kings who attempted to do this before him (Luc. .–).41 Romm then suggested that Lucan may have wished to draw an implicit contrast between the megalomaniac desires of Alexander and Caesar to be the first to penetrate to the sources of the Nile with the expedition sent by Nero to discover them, which penetrated far into Ethiopia and which was recounted by Lucan’s uncle, Seneca, in his Quaestiones Naturales (Sen. Nat. ..–).42 The relationship between these two texts may in fact be 38

Zwierlein  –. Zwierlein  –. 40 Cf. Luc. .– pro pudor, oblitus Magni tibi, Iulia, fratres obscaena de matre dedit (“for shame! Forgetting Magnus, he gave you, Julia, brothers from a shameless mother”) with Verg. A. .–: oculosque ad moenia torsit regia et oblitos famae melioris amantis (“and he [Juppiter] turned his eyes to the walls of the palace and the lovers forgetting their better name”) and . [Mercury to Aeneas]: heu, regni rerumque oblite tuarum! (“alas, you have forgotten both your kingdom and your duties”). 41 Romm  –. 42 Romm  –. It is not recounted in the section on the sources of the Nile, although the end of this book (Book ) is lost, but rather in the discussion of earthquakes and their relationship to rivers. 39

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quite close; although Romm suggested that Acoreus’ revelations about the Nile amount to little more than a rehash of the Hellenistic geographer Eudoxus’ theories,43 Nigel Holmes argued that they were deeply indebted to lost portions of Seneca’s account in Book .44 But Romm’s conclusions about a positive view of Nero’s actions in Lucan (at least in respect of sending an expedition to the Nile) can only be accepted if we assume that Lucan was consistently positive about Nero’s rule and his contribution to contemporary learning; if instead we regard the poem as directly challenging the excesses of Nero’s regime and the social values it promoted, then Nero himself could be included implicitly in the group of tyrants Acoreus says are doomed to failure, such as the uaesanus Cambyses, who was reduced to cannibalism by the extreme privations of his journey (.–). In any case, if the sheer difficulty of exploring the Nile because of the immense distances and range of climates involved, as attested by Nero’s expedition, were common knowledge in educated Roman society, then Caesar’s expressed desire to explore it would focus attention back on the deep arrogance in his character, whereby he thought he had the ability to overcome natural problems which were in fact insurmountable. Contemporary concerns with luxury and ostentatious display, particularly by wealthy women, may also be a means by which Lucan could have stressed Cleopatra’s arrogance and excesses to a Neronian audience. Thus in the description of Cleopatra’s entrance to the feast in the royal palace, she is described as being covered in pearls from the Red Sea, and the account goes on to describe how she wears a dress of almost transparent fabric, most probably silk, that other great luxury import. discubuere illic reges maiorque potestas Caesar; et inmodice formam fucata nocentem, nec sceptris contenta suis nec fratre marito, plena maris rubri spoliis, colloque comisque diuitias Cleopatra gerit cultuque laborat. candida Sidonio perlucent pectora filo, quod Nilotis acus compressum pectine Serum soluit et extremo laxauit stamina uelo.

(.–)

The king and queen then lay down at the table with Caesar, who was the mightier power. The woman, decked out shamelessly in a deadly beauty, is not content with her own sceptre, nor her brother as husband. Full of the spoils of the Red Sea, Cleopatra wears a fortune on her neck and in 43 44

Romm  . Holmes  .

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her hair, and struggles with the weight of her adornments. White breasts gleam through the threads of her Sidonian garments, which an Egyptian seamstress had unpicked from cloth tightly woven by the Chinese loom, and had stretched out the threads for a covering which scarcely existed.

In general terms, this representation of the conspicuous display of wealth in Cleopatra’s court may not be wildly inaccurate or unhistorical, since such displays would naturally have been associated by Romans with it. Of particular relevance in this context is the story narrated by the Elder Pliny, writing a decade or so after the death of Lucan, of how Cleopatra bet Antonius that she could spend an impossibly large amount of money on one feast, and then dissolved one of the two largest pearls in the world in vinegar (Plin. NH .–); the historical veracity of this story may very well be questionable, but the presence of the remaining pearl in Rome, taken there as a trophy and split into two earrings for the statue of Venus in the Pantheon, would have provided tangible proof of the excesses of Cleopatra’s court.45 But the description will have had specific relevance to contemporary Rome as well. Consolidation of Roman rule in the East in the early imperial period had led to massive imports of luxury goods; pearls in particular became available in Rome in great numbers after the fall of Alexandria (Plin. NH .), and Pliny specifically cited them as contributing to moral corruption in Rome (NH .–, –). Pearls and silk are singled out in the literature of Lucan’s age as symbols of decadent consumption associated with aristocratic women: compare in particular the account in De beneficiis, where Seneca has the Cynic philosopher Demetrius, who flourished under Caligula, Nero, and Vespasian, deliver a ferocious attack on contemporary luxuria. Video uniones, non singulos singulis auribus conparatos: iam enim exercitatae aures oneri ferundo sunt . . . non satis muliebris insania uiros superiecerat, nisi bina ac terna patrimonia auribus singulis pependissent. Video sericas uestes, si uestes uocandae sunt, in quibus nihil est quo defendi aut corpus aut denique pudor possit: quibus sumptis parum liquido nudam 45 For discussion, see Becher  –. She argued that the story of the pearl dissolved in vinegar was connected with Cleopatra sometime between her death in  bce and  ce (when the Naturalis Historia was published), and that it developed from stories originally associated with an ostentatious Roman figure, Clodius son of Aesopus, mentioned by Horace (Hor. S. ..–) and Valerius Maximus (V. Max. ..); there was a progressive escalation in the monetary amounts associated with this story over the century. The pearl in the Pantheon may very well have been from Cleopatra’s treasury, but Becher suggested “daß Plinius eine aitiologische Erzählung wiedergibt, die erklären soll, warum man die Perlen halbiert hat” ().



andrew j. turner se non esse iurabit. Hae ingenti summa ab ignotis etiam ad commercium gentibus accersuntur, ut matronae nostrae ne adulteris quidem plus sui in cubiculo quam in publico ostendant. (Sen. Ben. ..–) I see pearls, not just one placed on each ear: for nowadays even the ears are trained to bear burdens . . . Women in their insanity have not subjugated their husbands sufficiently, unless they have hung twice or three times their inheritance from each ear. I see silk dresses, if they are to be called dresses in which there is nothing by which either the body or modesty is protected; when these are put on, a woman will not have the certitude to swear that she is not naked. These dresses are fetched for a huge sum from peoples not even known to traders, so that our matrons may show more of themselves in the streets than they do to their lovers in their bedrooms.

To summarize, Lucan’s extremely hostile portrait of Cleopatra and his account of her seduction of Caesar present an accurate portrait in terms of many small details which coincide with other accounts—for instance, her crossing the harbour of Alexandria and entering the royal palace secretly, also recounted by Plutarch. Given the generic disparity between this poem and our other, much later sources, which are almost all historical or biographical in form, this suggests strongly that Lucan had access to a good early source, since lost. But data which cannot be independently verified, such as the chains of Pharus, cannot be adduced without mention of literary conventions and the internal dynamics of the poem. Close consideration of these leads to a realization that Lucan’s hostile portrait is shaped and coloured by several elements, including a partial modelling on scenes and characters in the Aeneid, and an intellectual discourse about the corruption of Rome from outside, which is specific to the age of Nero. Understanding these problems in Lucan better and appreciating the role of literary and social conventions in shaping them can in turn lead to important new insights into what may be described as the romanticizing view of Cleopatra and Caesar in our later authors. The society they wrote for had greatly changed from that of Nero—Plutarch appears to have composed the vast bulk of his literary output under Trajan,46 Suetonius under Hadrian,47 and Appian and Florus fall either under Hadrian or Antoninus Pius.48 How widely their works circulated is poorly known; it

46

See Jones ; C.B.R. Pelling in BNP .–. See K.R. Bradley in OCD –. 48 Bessone  argued that the nature of Florus’ Epitomae made it far more likely that it was published under Antoninus than Hadrian (). 47

lucan’s cleopatra



has been argued that Appian’s works were not widely read in antiquity.49 Still, it is very noticeable that most if not all of these authors appear to have had contacts at very high levels in the Roman imperial system. Their views can be therefore taken as interacting with those of this elite at some level, reflecting them, or even helping shape them. How they depict Cleopatra, and which aspects of her history they choose to present and which to ignore, may therefore find strong resonances in contemporary issues and events.

49

Brodersen  , –.

DAMN WITH GREAT PRAISE? THE IMPERIAL ENCOMIA OF LUCAN AND SILIUS

John Penwill Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer . . . (Alexander Pope, Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot)

Both Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile and Silius Italicus’ Punica incorporate passages of extravagant praise for their respective emperors, Nero and Domitian.1 There has been much discussion about how these passages should be taken.2 To our mind the extravagance is so patent that there is no question of taking them at face value, i.e. as representing the genuine beliefs and aspirations of the poet who composed them; the tortuous ‘spin’ imposed upon history (at least in Silius’ case) and the assumption that after death the emperor will become so powerful a god as to eclipse all others in the pantheon are just too much to take. So what is going on here? Is this simply the poet paying the dues that had become normal practice, following a line from Virgil through Horace, Ovid, Calpurnius, Martial, Statius and no doubt many more, part of the “swelling sycophancy” 1

Respectively Luc. .– and Sil. .–. For Lucan see the bibliography cited at Bartsch   n.  with a useful summary of the main positions adopted by various scholars; a more recent but not so carefully annotated list can be found at Manzano Ventura  –. Cf. also Masters   n. , Esposito   n.  and the opening paragraph of Dewar  . The debate is polarised between those who read the encomium of Nero as ‘genuine / sincere’ (whatever those words might mean in this context) and those who read it as ‘ironic / satiric’. In the case of Silius the bibliography is far less, not merely because fewer scholars in the last  years have written on Silius than on Lucan but also because there seems little in his encomium to write about. Little attention has been paid to content or context, with opinions varying simply between whether the poet is expressing genuine admiration for Domitian (McDermott and Orentzel ) or just going through the motions (“un éloge obligatoire”, Spaltenstein  ; cf. Williams  ; Fantham  ). McGuire  – argues rightly that “[the Punica] employs several narrative strategies that create a critical perspective on both the Flavian principate and its connections to the past” (), but says virtually nothing about this passage, concentrating instead on deconstructing the other alleged encomium on Domitian at .– (–). Likewise Ahl, Davis and Pomeroy   offer the merest hint of a possible sub-text but do not pursue it. 2

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(gliscens adulatio) that Tacitus observed and decried as adjunct to the perpetuation of pax et principatus?3 In which case presumably we simply shrug our shoulders and pass on, since there is obviously nothing here worthy of attention. Or do we take the approach of scholars like Fred Ahl and Shadi Bartsch and look beneath these and similar examples of adulatio to find encoded in the text a meaning quite opposite to even as it exists alongside the superficial one?4 This has its attractions in that it enables us to restore our faith in these authors as persons of integrity, expressing in the only way possible their revulsion at the political circumstances in which they are operating and turning what appears to be their own surrender to them into trenchant (if disguised) oppositional statement. To say one thing and mean another is clearly a form of lying; we call it ‘equivocation’. But is that in fact what we have in these passages? Let us begin with Lucan:











3

quod si non aliam uenturo fata Neroni inuenere uiam magnoque aeterna parantur regna deis caelumque suo seruire Tonanti non nisi saeuorum potuit post bella gigantum, iam nihil, o superi, querimur; scelera ipsa nefasque hac mercede placent. diros Pharsalia campos inpleat et Poeni saturentur sanguine manes, ultima funesta concurrant proelia Munda, his, Caesar, Perusina fames Mutinaeque labores accedant fatis et quas premit aspera classes Leucas et ardenti seruilia bella sub Aetna, multum Roma tamen debet ciuilibus armis quod tibi res acta est. te, cum statione peracta astra petes serus, praelati regia caeli excipiet gaudente polo: seu sceptra tenere seu te flammigeros Phoebi conscendere currus telluremque nihil mutato sole timentem igne uago lustrare iuuet, tibi numine ab omni cedetur, iurisque tui natura relinquet quis deus esse uelis, ubi regnum ponere mundi. sed neque in Arctoo sedem tibi legeris orbe nec polus auersi calidus qua uergitur Austri, unde tuam uideas obliquo sidere Romam.

Tac. Ann. .. and ... See in particular Ahl  –;  –; Hinds  –;  –; Bartsch  passim but esp. –; Penwill . 4

the imperial encomia of lucan and silius



aetheris inmensi partem si presseris unam, sentiet axis onus. librati pondera caeli orbe tene medio; pars aetheris illa sereni tota uacet nullaeque obstent a Caesare nubes.  tum genus humanum positis sibi consulat armis inque uicem gens omnis amet; pax missa per orbem ferrea belligeri conpescat limina Iani. sed mihi iam numen; nec, si te pectore uates accipio, Cirrhaea uelim secreta mouentem  sollicitare deum Bacchumque auertere Nysa: tu satis ad uires Romana in carmina dandas. (Lucan Bellum Civile .–) But if the fates have found no other way for the advent of Nero, if the price for the gods’ attainment of eternal rule is ever high, if heaven could not be enslaved to its Thunderer except after war with the savage giants, then, o gods above, we have no complaint; those very crimes and unspeakable deeds are worth this reward. Though Pharsalia fill its dread plains and Carthaginian shades be sated with blood, though final battles be joined at deadly Munda, though to these fates, Caesar, be added starvation at Perusia, suffering at Mutina, the fleets overwhelmed at harsh Leucas, wars with slaves under burning Etna, nonetheless Rome owes much to civil wars because it was all done for you. When at some far distant time with your guard-duty completed you make for the stars, the palace of the heaven you prefer will receive you amid a rejoicing sky. Whether it is your pleasure to wield the sceptre or to mount the flame-bearing chariot of Phoebus and to range with wandering fire over an earth that has no fear of this change in the sun—every divine power will yield to you, and nature will leave it entirely up to you as to which god you want to be and where in the universe you want to establish your kingdom. But do not select a position in the Arctic zone, nor where the torrid sky of opposing Auster sinks down, from which you would gaze upon your Rome with slanting light. If you press down on a particular point of the measureless aether, the axis will feel the weight. Keep the weights of heaven in balance by occupying the middle zone; may that whole area of the sky be empty and clear and let no clouds stand in the way of Caesar. Then may the human race lay aside their weapons and take thought for themselves, may every people engage in mutual love, and may peace, despatched throughout the world, close off the iron threshold of war-bringing Janus. But for me you are already a divinity; and so if as uates5 I receive you in my breast I would not wish to trouble the god who reveals the hidden things of Delphi or to draw Bacchus away from Nysa: you are enough to give power for Roman song. 5 O’Higgins   n.  points out that the Latin is ambiguous: uates in line  can either be nominative, in which case it is Lucan, or vocative, in which case it is Nero. Tucker   assumes the latter, O’Higgins the former. While as will be apparent I agree entirely with O’Higgins (as do the translations of Braund, Little, Joyce, Duff

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In discussing this passage, Ahl comments that “every element admits of double entendre”,6 which certainly suggests that equivocation is what we have. Similarly Matthew Leigh invokes allusions to the Aeneid to show that what Lucan is expressing here as a price worth paying for Nero’s rule in reality serves to underscore a recurring theme in the poem, the fact that Caesar’s victory in the Civil War has made all Romans slaves.7 The claim that the crimes and unspeakable deeds of civil war are a price worth paying in that the ultimate consequence is the establishment of Nero as princeps is not in Leigh’s view sustained by the rest of the poem, and he concludes that “While the loss is ever visible, the profit is not there to be found”.8 Feeney goes even further, castigating the concept as “degrading mercantile metaphor” and remarking of the whole passage that “irony is too weak a term for this warped praise, since the subtext is virtually on the surface,”9 citing allusions to the conclusion of Ovid’s Metamorphoses to support his case. I am not, however, convinced that this is the way to read Lucan. Yes, we do need to contextualise, but I do not think that we are being invited to pick over the minutiae of Lucan’s language to uncover an anti-Neronian message lurking behind the apparent flattery, or to draw on those aspects of the poem which thrust anti-Caesarian rhetoric at the reader to ‘expose’ the ‘hollowness’ of the invocation. Lucan’s rhetoric is consistently ‘in your face’, plus quam from start to finish, and this passage like all the rest needs to be read and responded to in this light. So, let us contextualise—or, better, intertextualise. As has often been observed, a significant allusion in Lucan’s invocation is to the proem to Book  of Virgil’s Georgics (G. .–).10 Indeed, to my mind this, rather than the Aeneid or the Metamorphoses, is what Lucan is setting up as his primary key text. There Caesar (Octavian) is invoked as the final and and—for what it’s worth—Graves), I have tried to preserve the ambiguity in my translation. I have also left uates untranslated as there is no word in English that sufficiently conveys its semantic range (‘seer’ / ‘poet’); ‘bard’ is favoured by most translators, but to my mind lacks the full vatic force of the word. 6 Ahl  . 7 Leigh  –. 8 Leigh  . 9 Feeney  . 10 Cf. Bartsch   n.  for a list of scholars who have noted this (to which add Dewar  ; Narducci  ); as she says, the parallels with the Georgics are adduced as argument for the ‘sincerity’ of Lucan’s invocation (as with e.g. Thompson and Bruère  –). Fantham   notes that “Lucan’s dedication goes only a little further than Virgil’s”, but does not talk in terms of intertextuality or allusion.

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culminating element in a list of deities—Liber, Ceres, Fauns, Dryads, Neptune, Aristaeus, Pan, Minerva, Triptolemus, Silvanus, indeed “all gods and goddesses” (dique deaeque omnes, .) who look after the land, make it fertile and send rain—and then Caesar. They are neatly balanced: all the other gods get . lines (second half of . to .), Caesar  (.–). Caesar in fact is specifically invoked as a god-to-be, with four possibilities canvassed (earth, sea, sky, underworld, reflecting the fourfold division of the world alluded to by Poseidon at Il. .– ), each implying displacement of the current ruler of each domain. Moreover, it is clearly indicated that whichever it is to be it will be Caesar’s choice, not the gods’. At Luc. .– (quoted above) Lucan employs a similar conceit. And just as Virgil urges Octavian not to choose rulership over the realm of the dead, so Lucan proceeds to offer Nero advice about where to situate himself; it must not be too far north or south as he would then be a shining on Rome at an angle (the conceit of Nero as star or constellation echoing Virgil’s of Octavian taking up a position in the zodiac between Virgo and Libra). In order to maintain universal equilibrium, Nero must be at the centre (what we might call ‘pole position’). And finally there is the invocation of Caesar as Muse. For Virgil, this is figured as Caesar practising for his future divine role and he is simply asked to “grant me an easy passage and give assent to my bold undertaking” (da facilem cursum, atque audacibus adnue coeptis, G. .). At Luc. .– Lucan typically goes one better: for Lucan, Nero is already a god (sed mihi iam numen, .); Bacchus and Apollo, the Olympians traditionally regarded as the source of poetic inspiration, can now be summarily dismissed as irrelevant. You are enough to give strength to songs about Rome (tu satis ad uires Romana in carmina dandas, .).11 Now it is easy enough to poke fun at all this. It is easy enough, too, to say that Lucan intends us to do so. The emphasis on mounting the chariot of the sun as a possible future role for the emperor, on one reading turning him into a latter-day Phaethon,12 can be seen as allusion 11 Holmes  , citing Suet. Tib. ., notes that the cognomen ‘Nero’ in the Sabine language means “strong and vigorous” (fortis ac strenuus); it would appear that Lucan is playing on this to suggest that in supplying uires Nero is simply living up to his name. This injection of humorous word-play of course says nothing about ‘sincerity’ or otherwise. 12 On Nero as Phaethon cf. Hinds  –. Hinds draws attention to the phrase igne uago (“with wandering fire”) in Luc. . which could be read as imparting a Phaethonic frisson to otherwise seemingly impeccable tribute; but as he himself says this may simply refer to the fact that the sun’s fire does ‘wander’ over the sky as it veers between

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john penwill

to Nero’s own self-projection of which the Golden House statue will be the ultimate manifestation.13 And as Ahl and others have pointed out, the insistence on Nero positioning himself at the centre so as not to upset the equilibrium of the universe can be read as raising a laugh at the expense of an emperor already inclining towards obesity.14 Easy too to point out that Lucan twists Virgilian and Calpurnian prophecy into an implication that peace and harmony can return to the world not because Nero has come into it but because he has left it.15 But again I think this is missing the point. Let us go back to the Georgics. Immediately preceding the invocation to Nero Lucan gives us a passage which paints an equally surreal rhetorical picture:

the solstices. More importantly Hinds observes that line , immediately following the encomium, begins with fert animus, an obvious Ovidian allusion, which could be seen as a sign that what precedes should be read through an Ovidian lens—in particular the closing encomium of Augustus and the Great Paternity Lie (see esp. Ov. Met. .–, –). But it could just as easily be argued that this refers to what follows, drawing attention to the reversal of Ovid’s order of events (world emerging from Chaos as the first great metamorphosis Met. .– ~ world collapsing back into Chaos in the great simile of Luc. .–). In fact Luc. .– are rich in allusion—fert animus (Ovid) causas tantarum expromere rerum (Lucretius via Verg. G. .) immensumque aperitur opus (echoes of Virgil’s maius opus at A. .–)—heralding a poem that encompasses Ovidian metamorphosis (Republic to Empire / SPQR to Caesar), Lucretian didacticism (how did it all happen?) and Virgilian war narrative (itself an exposure of the Aeneid’s own Great Lie aeterna gentis in pace futuras, “peoples that would be eternally at peace”, A. .). And plus quam is again at work as rerum causas acquires the addition tantarum and Virgil’s maius becomes immensum (perhaps via Eumolpus’ ingens [Petr. .]: see O’Gorman  –). 13 Suet Nero : quia Apollinem cantu, Solem aurigando aequiperare existimaretur (“because he was thought to be Apollo’s equal in singing and the Sun’s in chariot-driving”); similarly Tac. Ann. ... See Champlin  –. Champlin argues that “Nero began to associate himself publicly . . . with the god Sol or Helios only in the year , after the great fire of Rome” (). Nero’s association with Apollo as musician dates back to the latter half of  (Champlin  ), but Champlin suggests that we should distinguish between Apollo’s role as god of music and that of sun-god, citing this part of Lucan’s encomium in support of his argument (Champlin  ): “Lucan has Nero replacing Apollo as the patron of poets immediately, but for Lucan his apotheosis as Phoebus lies in the future. This suggests that the two roles of divine citharode and solar charioteer were still separate, and that Nero was not yet playing the second one; indeed Lucan may have held out the tantalizing possibility of a new role for the aspiring charioteer.” As I will be suggesting later, Lucan and Nero are in a very real sense in this together. 14 Ahl   with n. , citing the scholiasts (Adnot. Lucan.; Comment. Lucan. .). Dewar   argues convincingly against this. 15 Luc. .–, with which compare Calp. Ecl. .–; cf. also Sen. Apoc. . Cf. Johnson  –: “When Nero is a god, peace will come to the earth, because of his cosmic beneficence (or because, until he leaves the earth, the earth can have no peace).”

the imperial encomia of lucan and silius at nunc semirutis pendent quod moenia tectis urbibus Italiae lapsisque ingentia muris saxa iacent nulloque domus custode tenentur rarus et antiquis habitator in urbibus errat, horrida quod dumis multosque inarata per annos Hesperia est desuntque manus poscentibus aruis, non tu, Pyrrhe ferox, nec tantis cladibus auctor Poenus erit; nulli penitus descendere ferro contigit: alta sedent ciuilis uolnera dextrae.



(Luc. .–)

But the fact that in the cities of Italy houses lie half-ruined, fortifications totter, huge rocks from collapsed walls lie fallen, homes have no-one to look after them, and even in the oldest cities there is only the odd inhabitant; the fact that Hesperia is bristling with thorn-bushes and has been unploughed for year after year, that labour is simply not there for the fields that beg for it—it is not you, fierce Pyrrhus, nor the Carthaginian who will be responsible for such disasters. To no other sword has opportunity been given to penetrate so far; these deep-seated wounds are from a citizen’s right hand.

Here Lucan is expanding on a passage from the end of Georgics  (G. .–, esp. –), where Virgil laments the fact that civil war has robbed the fields of their labourers and prays that the young Caesar will live to rectify the situation and enable georgic activity to resume;16 the poem’s overriding implication is that he will, that swords will revert to ploughshares and peace be brought to Italy.17 In Lucan’s text however there is no such prayer, merely juxtaposition: on the one side a rhetorical image of Italian cities in ruins and the countryside turned to wasteland, on the other the proposition that if this was the price to be paid for the advent of Nero it was worth paying. This is where the real balancing act is set up. The ruination of Italy is of course a metaphorical one, emblematic of the moral devastation adumbrated in the opening lines of the poem; the historical manifestation of this is the string of battles fought by citizens against each other catalogued at Luc. .–: Pharsalus to Munda and beyond to take in Perusia, Mutina, the war against Sextus Pompey in Sicily and Actium. It is this that Nero has to be built up to match, the rhetoric on one side vying with the rhetoric on the other, the weights striving to achieve equilibrium. We (and Nero’s detractors, and those who would include Lucan in that number) might note that there

16

An allusion noted by Narducci  . For another telling intertextuality between Bellum Ciuile and Georgics see Henderson   f. on Luc. .– ~ Verg. G. .–. 17

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is nothing in the invocation that suggests Nero’s reign has brought any benefit to Rome or its people (and here of course Lucan presents a marked contrast with Virgil); it is only the weight of a god that could suffice as counterbalance to the otherwise unending catastrophe that constitutes civil war and its aftermath. The aftermath and consequence of Pharsalus in this invocation is Nero’s deification and appropriation of the centre. Like it or not, you poor bastards, this is the god of the new age, the Octavian of our time, the saviour predicted by Calpurnius’ Faunus, and the only begetter of this poem. As I said, in your face—but you might note in passing how the confident future indicatives of Virgil’s Jupiter (A. .–) and Calpurnius’ Faunus (Calp. Ecl. .–) foretelling the restoration of peace to a shattered world have turned into slightly less assured optative subjunctives (consulat, amet, conpescat; Luc. ., , ).18 So where are the lies in all this? That the civil war produced the political circumstances which enabled Nero to come to power is perfectly true. But it also produced the poem; not only does it provide Lucan with the perfect subject matter on which to exercise his rhetorical skill, but it also provides the inspiration: to say that Nero is sufficient to inspire this Roman song is no lie either. Here of course we might discern ‘doublespeak’, the subtext being that Nero is such an appalling character that like Juvenal Lucan can’t help writing this poem the way he does.19 But that is too pedestrian. The lie is cosmic. Nero is both god now and god-to-be; now he is the numen the uates receives into his breast inspiring his oracular vision of civil war; in the future he will dominate the heavens either as Jupiter or as the Sun (with the clear implication that it will be the latter). The cosmic devastation that is civil war, graphically enunciated by Figulus at Luc. .–—itself another allusion to the Georgics (G. .–)— is balanced by the emergence of this new god who will shine upon the world from a cloudless sky;20 the (nuclear) winter of our discontent made 18 A point not noted by Thompson and Bruère   in their analysis of the relation between Verg. A. .– and Luc. .–. Narducci   preserves the subjunctive in his translation (“provveda . . . amino . . . riserri”) but his introductory comment is heavily future (“Lo stesso avverrà quando Nerone salirà al cielo”). Williams   goes so far as to regard this as the climax of the passage: “a prayer for universal peace and love”. But the very fact that it is a prayer (or better the expression of a wish) rather than the normal prophecy gives the reader something to think about. 19 Cf. Juv.  passim, esp. –, –. 20 Compare the way in which Atreus replaces the sun for the Chorus panicked by the disappearance of the real one and the consequent threat of cosmic dissolution in Sen. Thy. –.

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glorious summer by this salvific sun.21 It is a role that Nero, ever the showman, adopted with enthusiasm: the colossal statue of himself as the Sun adorning the Golden House,22 itself a replica of the palace of the Sun; his portrayal as charioteer on the theatre awning, the purple colour giving the impression of the sky as the sun shone through it (D.C. ..), thus bringing to life (the now dead) Lucan’s vision of him as Phoebus; coins displaying Nero radiate;23 the inordinate power given to his ‘Sunman’ freedman Helios, leading Dio to remark “at that time the Roman empire was slave to two dictators, Nero and Helios” (..)—all these attest to his absorption in and by this image.24 And reflecting as it were the dazzling brilliance of this Sun-on-earth, the sun, as Tucker shows, dominates the Bellum Civile as the “favorite aspect of his [Lucan’s] favorite god [Phoebus]”, acting as constant reminder of the god whom Nero is to / has already replace(d).25 Lucan and Nero engage together, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, feeding off each other, Lucan fabricating the image, Nero living it, both complicit in the lie no matter what motive each had for promoting it.26 Nero-as-Sun turns Lucan into a true uates, “prophet” (the meaning the word has in most instances of its use in the Bellum Civile),27 reifying Lucan’s own self-image at .– and linking him with Nero-as-Phoebus in another aspect, that of god of prophecy. And as Lucan’s vatic voice confers immortality both 21

With apologies to Shakespeare Richard III ..– (“Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York”). 22 Suet. Nero .: uestibulum eius fuit in quo colossus CXX pedum staret ipsius effigie (“Its entrance hall was one which could contain a colossal statue  feet high in his own likeness”). Champlin  – argues that all Suetonius is saying is that the uestibulum could have contained such a statue, not that it actually did. Latin fondness for the subjunctive often obscures the distinction between potentiality and actuality, so an ambiguity can certainly be acknowledged; but it seems improbable that Suetonius would say that the uestibulum was big enough to house such a statue if it did not in fact do so (or at least was designed to do so). But even if we admit that the statue was not completed in Nero’s lifetime it is reasonably certain that it was part of Nero’s grand design. 23 Examples described by Champlin  – with  nn.  and . 24 See Champlin  ; Bradley  –. 25 Tucker  –. 26 So Lucan will declare his complicity as uates with the Caesar of Pharsalus at Luc. .– in the famous o sacer et magnus uatum labor (“O sacred and mighty responsibility of uates!”), where it is you and me in tandem: uenturi me teque legent: Pharsalia nostra uiuet, et a nullo tenebris damnabimur aeuo (“Those to come will read me and you; our Pharsalia will live, and we shall not be condemned to darkness by any age”, .–). See Johnson  – for a short but illuminating discussion of the link between this passage and the dedication to Nero. 27 Listed at O’Higgins   n. .

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on this Caesar and the Caesar of the civil war, Nero will finally enter his sun-palace and maintain the pretence that he is really only a human being: eius modi domum cum absolutam dedicaret, hactenus comprobauit, ut se diceret quasi hominem tandem habitare coepisse. (Suet. Nero .) When his house had been completed after this fashion, at the official opening he expressed approval just so far as to say that finally he had begun to be housed as if he were only human.

The ambiguity of quasi is exquisite. Normally this is taken to mean “at last I have begun to live like a human being”; but the alternative translation suggests that this is a home fit for a god in mortal guise. This is not some inferior human entering like Ovid’s Phaethon to ask for confirmation of divine parentage by driving the chariot of the sun (and failing),28 not an Augustus claiming that he is under Apollo’s special protection as he moves him in next door; as far as Rome is concerned, Nero, the Great Artificer,29 is Phoebus, come to claim his own.30 This is the end-point of history, this the ultimate outcome and fulfilment of civil war. Virgil’s Octavian was just a prelude, a stage upon the way.31 The graffitist got it right: Rome will become the sun-palace, with no place for the old inhabitants.32 As Stephen Hinds remarks, “This is how things must be in

28

For Phaethon’s fatal visit to the Sun’s palace and its aftermath see Ov. Met. .– .. 29 And self-acknowledged Great Artificer, as shown by Nero’s ‘famous last words’ qualis artifex pereo (“what a star perishes here”: Suet. Nero ., Dio .., although it is only Dio who makes them his last words, and in Greek—perhaps appropriately). Cf. Bartsch  –; Edwards  –. It goes far beyond his performances on the stage . . . 30 On Nero as “nouvel Apollon” see Grimal  ; as more generally “roi-soleil” Arnaud  , –. Champlin   reads the Suetonius passage in the traditional way to conclude that “[Nero’s] interest in Apollo and the Sun was a matter of ideology, not of theology”, going on to argue that Nero never actually thought of himself as divine. No: he was an actor (see previous note). 31 Cf. Thompson and Bruère  . Note how the future tenses of Helenus’ and Jupiter’s predictions in the Aeneid (Verg. A. ., .: fata uiam inuenient, “the fates will find a way”) have become perfect: fata Neroni inuenere uiam, “the fates have found a way—for Nero”, Luc. .–. It is not just a case of Lucan “echo[ing] the confident assurance” of the Virgilian passages (Leigh  ); it is that Nero is what it was all leading up to. Tibi res acta est: “it has all been done for you” (Luc. .), segueing straight into the apotheosis that brings the scales back to equilibrium. Cf. Nicolai  : “La sua [sc. di Nerone] posizione determinerà la stabilità del cosmo.” It is indeed all a matter of weight—not just the counterpoise of astronomical bodies or commerce but of rhetoric. 32 Roma domus fiet; Veios migrate, Quirites, si non et Veios occupat ista domus (“Rome will become ‘the House’; get away to Veii, Quirites—unless of course that House has

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the world after Pharsalus”.33 Of course it’s a lie—a colossal lie, a plus quam lie—but what we admire is the dazzling rhetoric that juxtaposes this to the lie on the other side, that civil war prefigures cosmic dissolution. The sky has not fallen in; Italian cities and farms are as prosperous as ever; the (real) sun still rises and sets each day. Now to Silius’ address to the last of the Flavians:









at tu transcendes, Germanice, facta tuorum, iam puer auricomo praeformidate Batauo. nec te terruerint Tarpei culminis ignes; sacrilegas inter flammas seruabere terris, nam te longa manent nostri consortia mundi. huic laxos arcus olim Gangetica pubes summittet uacuasque ostendent Bactra pharetras. hic et ab Arctoo currus aget axe per urbem, ducet et Eoos Baccho cedente triumphos. idem indignantem tramittere Dardana signa Sarmaticis uictor compescet sedibus Histrum. quin et Romuleos superabit uoce nepotes quis erit eloquio partum decus. huic sua Musae sacra ferent, meliorque lyra, cui substitit Hebrus et uenit Rhodope, Phoebo miranda loquetur. ille etiam, qua prisca, uides, stat regia nobis, aurea Tarpeia ponet Capitolia rupe et iunget nostro templorum culmina caelo. tunc, o nate deum diuosque dature, beatas imperio terras patrio rege. tarda senectam hospitia excipient caeli, solioque Quirinus concedet, mediumque parens fraterque locabunt; siderei iuxta radiabunt tempora nati.

(Sil. .–)

[Jupiter is speaking] But you, Germanicus, will surpass the deeds of your relatives, dreaded already in your boyhood by the golden-haired Batavian. Nor shall the fires of the Tarpeian peak daunt you; amidst unholy flames you will be saved for the world, for a long partnership with me in our

designs on Veii too”, recorded at Suet. Nero .). Cf. Elsner  : “Not only was the Golden House represented as encroaching on the spatial integrity of the city, it was seen as having become the city”, although (a) Elsner gets the tense wrong (influenced perhaps by Mart. Sp. .– which is looking back) and (b) I do not agree with Elsner’s contention (–) that Nero’s major delict was to establish a “lavish rural villa . . . in the heart of Rome” thereby committing “[t]he outrage of rus in urbe”. Every house with a peristyle garden was doing that to some extent. The violation of natura was rather breaking down the boundaries between human and divine and setting up a rival to Jupiter at the other end of the Via Sacra. 33 Hinds  .

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john penwill world awaits you. One day the warriors of the Ganges will unstring their bows and present them to him, to him also will the Bactrians display empty quivers. From the Arctic axis he will drive his chariot through the city, and with Bacchus yielding to him will celebrate triumphs over the East. This same one will close off the Danube, fretting at being crossed by Dardanian standards, from Sarmatian territory. Moreover with his voice he will surpass those descendants of Romulus who have won glory through eloquence. To him the Muses will offer their hallows and Phoebus will marvel at his utterance, as he will surpass in song him for whom the Hebrus stood still and Rhodope moved. You see where my ancient palace stands? Well, he will build there on the Tarpeian cliff a golden Capitol, and will make the pinnacles of the temple reach our place in the sky. Then, O son and maker of gods, rule an earth happy under your fatherly command. Heaven’s hospitality will welcome you late in your old age, Quirinus will withdraw from his throne, and your father and brother will place you between them; and next to you will radiate the forehead of your starspangled son.

Here it should be noted at the outset that the poet is not speaking in his own voice but through the mouthpiece of Jupiter. The vision of Domitian is the culmination of a prophecy given by Jupiter to Venus (with obvious allusions to the corresponding prophecy in Verg. A. .–). It is a catalogue of earthly achievements (suitably exaggerated as befits such prophecies—compare e.g. A. .–), followed by intimations of future divinity. While he too will build a Golden House (though this time it will be a real temple to a ‘real’ god)34 and he too will supplant an existing god (Quirinus) when he ascends to heaven, the impression we are left with is that this is much more standard fare than what we were given by Lucan. Here it is very tempting to shrug the shoulders and move on, and most have; this is what the emperor expects (and got from Valerius, Statius, Martial and Quintilian),35 this is what the poet gives him. Formula writing, and so eminently forgettable, surely. However, I do not think we are meant to pass over the passage so lightly. Let us again contextualise. Silius has gone out of his way to

34 One might also add that this too was a rebuilding after a fire, and a fire at which Domitian was present and about which he would later (reputedly) compose a poem. See Tac. Hist. .–; Mart. .; Penwill  –; and for Nero’s own incendiary poetic composition, Tac. Ann. ., Suet. Nero .. 35 Of course all is not necessarily what it appears in any of these authors; see the discussion in Penwill  which deals specifically with these authors’ remarks on the emperor’s poetic talents. On p.  Penwill comments “Silius looks like simple flattery”; the following will show that this statement needs serious qualification.

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highlight the Virgilian parallel.36 In the Aeneid, Venus approaches Jupiter after Aeneas and his followers have been forced off course by the storm aroused by Juno; they are scattered and demoralised, castaways in an unknown land, the success of the mission looks more and more an impossible dream. It is a critical moment. Likewise in the Punica Juno, in a suitable display of Punica fides, has reneged on her deal with Jupiter in Aeneid :37 Saguntum has fallen, we have had the catalogue of the immense forces ranged against Rome (Sil. .–), Hannibal has brushed aside the barriers of Pyrenees and Rhone and he and his army have reached the summit of the Alps. Here too Venus approaches Jupiter to voice her doubts and anxieties: will there never be an end of troubles and wandering for the Aeneadae? And here too Jupiter replies with soothing words; just as in the Aeneid, this is all part of his grand plan, this time to toughen up the Romans by confronting them with a worthy opponent (a nod to the theodicy of the Georgics here perhaps—they have gone soft through having things too easy);38 and whereas in the Aeneid the culmination of this plan will be the rise of the Julian family, so here it will be the rise of the Flavian. All will be conquerors, extending the boundaries of the Roman empire, and at the end Domitian will exercise fatherly rule over an earth that will thereby be blessed (beatas imperio terras patrio rege, Sil. .–) before becoming the third element in the new Capitoline triad. As I said, it all sounds very familiar, and deliberately so. As is well known (and well known to Silius and his readers also), in the Aeneid Jupiter’s prophecy is the first of three major ideological passages, each of which represents Augustus as the end point of the Roman historical process (the other two of course are Anchises’ parade of future Romans

36

The whole conversation between Venus and Jupiter at Sil. .– contains obvious allusions to that between the same divinities at Verg. A. .–, as Spaltenstein   ad Sil. . observes. Note in particular the emphasis on Venus’ sadness (tristior, “really sad”, A. . ~ maesta, “mournful”, Sil. .), her plea for an end (quem das finem, rex magne, laborum?, “what end to their toils are you granting them?”, A. . ~ quis poenae modus aut pereundi terminus, oro, Aeneadis erit?, “what limit to punishment or end of destruction will there be for the Aeneadae, I ask?”, Sil. .–) and Jupiter’s role as comforter (parce metu, Cytherea, “leave off your fear, Cytherea”, A. . ~ pelle metus . . . Cytherea, “dispel your fears, . . . Cytherea”, Sil. .–). For a more detailed discussion of the relationship between these passages, see Giroldini  –. 37 Verg. A. .–. On the sinister ambiguities in Juno’s capitulation to Jupiter in this passage see Johnson  –, Feeney  – and Feeney  –. 38 See Verg. G. .–. The implication of course is that there should never be a finis laborum.

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in Book  and the description of Aeneas’ shield at the end of Book ). We will have parallels to each of these in the Punica, too, but they are very different. Were Silius’ shield to be the equivalent of Virgil’s, it would be given to Scipio, it would be the product of divine craftsmanship and it would feature scenes from Rome’s future with emphasis on the process by which the Flavians came to power. Virgil’s Battle of Actium would be replaced by the Capitoline War, to which Silius alludes briefly at .– .; and what better source for this could there be than Domitian’s own poem on the subject? Domitian’s poetic talent has been recognised at .–, so why not make use of it in the way that Virgil made use of the Iliad in his ekphrastic description of the frescoes on the temple of Juno at Carthage in Aeneid ? (Well, we all know that poem doesn’t exist, but we have to pretend it does.)39 But Silius alters the formula. The shield is given (and has already been given) not to Scipio but to Hannibal; it is the product not of divine but of human craftsmanship; and the scenes it depicts are from the past, not the future.40 The role this shield plays in the thematic design of the Punica is a significant one, but beyond the scope of this chapter; suffice it to say here that Silius has conspicuously avoided following the Virgilian precedent and so conspicuously rejected an opportunity for flattery that the readership—including the imperial readership—might have been expecting. Silius could of course respond that he can’t do a shield for Scipio as he has already used the device for Hannibal and had sound reasons for doing so. So what of the third element, the visit to the underworld? In fact Scipio’s communing with the spirits of the dead in Punica  is what most acutely problematises the issue. Here surely we are entitled to expect a rerun of Aeneid , given that Scipio’s impetus to make this journey is the desire to see his dead father, that his point of entry to the realm of the dead is Cumae, that he is assisted and advised by the current Sibyl Autonoe, and that one of his aims is to learn about the future, or at least the immediate future (noscere uenturos agitat mens protinus 39 As argued by Penwill  –. Roche   with n.  while accepting the proposition that Domitian’s youthful work may have been “unfinished [and] unpublished” is unwilling to go on to accept that it didn’t exist at all, a conclusion that he finds “unnecessary and unconvincing”. But since there is no evidence of anyone ever having laid eyes on this alleged magnum opus the conclusion that it did not exist is hard to resist. 40 The details of the shield’s decoration are described in the ekphrasis of Sil. .–. On the way in which the description reverses significant Virgilian themes see Pomeroy  –, with further bibliography at  n. . Cf. also von Albrecht  – .

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annos, “his mind was anxious to learn about the years thereafter to come”, Sil. .). Yet Silius seems constantly to resist following the Virgilian model.41 What motivates Scipio is not pietas but a grief as uncontrollable as that of Achilles for Patroklos or Orpheus for Eurydice; and the text to which Silius chiefly alludes is not Aeneid  but Odyssey : like Odysseus, Scipio waits on the fringes of the underworld for the dead to come to him; there is an Elpenor in Appius Claudius, and a Teiresias in the shade of the ancient Sibyl summoned up by the current one; and as in the Odyssey Scipio’s next encounter after the Teiresias figure is with his mother. The encounter with his father and uncle has much more affinity with Cicero’s Dream of Scipio than with the Aeneid; we then revert once more to the Odyssey as Scipio is granted a vision of a range of famous individuals from the past; there is even an Ajax in the figure of Hannibal’s father Hamilcar. But finally we seem to be getting somewhere: atque hic Elysio tendentem limite cernens effigiem iuuenis, caste cui uitta ligabat purpurea effusos per colla nitentia crines: “dic,” ait “hic quinam, uirgo? nam luce refulget praecipua frons sacra uiro, multaeque sequuntur mirantes animae et laeto clamore frequentant. qui uultus! quem, si Stygia non esset in umbra, dixissem facile esse deum.” “non falleris,” inquit docta comes Triuiae “meruit deus esse uideri, et fuit in tanto non paruum pectore numen . . .”

(Sil. .–)

And seeing at this point the figure of a youth [or the young man seeing a figure] whose hair hanging down over his gleaming shoulders was decorously bound by a purple ribbon: “Tell me,” he said, “maiden, who is this? For the man’s holy countenance shines with extraordinary brilliance, and many souls follow him marvelling and crowd round him with joyful cries. What a face! If he were not in Stygian shadow I would easily have taken him for a god.” “You are not deceived,” said the learned attendant of Trivia; “he has merited his godlike appearance, and in so great a breast there was no small divinity . . . ”42 41

I therefore disagree with Ahl, Davis and Pomeroy   in their claim that “Scipio’s necromancy . . . draws copiously on Vergil and Homer”. The “drawing on Vergil” is conspicuously uncopious. On several occasions during their discussion of Scipio’s journey to the underworld (–) they draw attention to the Homeric allusions but do not seem to notice that they are mentioning Homer far more frequently than Virgil. Von Albrecht  –, while acknowledging the fundamental importance of Odyssey  in this scene (“Der homerische Aufbau ist zugrundegelegt”, ), is also inclined to overstate the presence of Virgil; likewise Reitz  –. 42 Hardie   and McGuire  – highlight echoes of Verg. A. .–  (Marcellus) here, but there are other Virgilian echoes as Spaltenstein  –



john penwill

Are we at last getting what we will have been expecting all along, a vision of the future Domitian? The youthful looks (a nice ambiguity in the case of iuuenis),43 the purple ribbon,44 the hair (and we know how sensitive Domitian was about that—see Suet. Dom. ), the shining countenance, the thronging crowd of supporters, the godlike appearance would all tend in that direction. But no, this is not the future emperor but a poet: Homer, spiritual ancestor of Silius himself who even as we read is fulfilling Scipio’s wish expressed in response to this vision for a Homer to sing of Romula facta, “Rom(ul)an achievements” (Sil. .).45 And then we revert once more to the Odyssey as the Sibyl gives Scipio a vision of famous (and notorious) women. Only right at the end, after  lines of narrative, almost as an afterthought, do we find ourselves in Virgilian territory with the vision of souls yet to be born, drinking the waters of Lethe as they do in the Aeneid. It is short; there are four of them; and Domitian is nowhere to be seen. The four are Marius, Sulla, Pompey and Caesar, all notorious civil warriors. The end of the vision is bleak indeed: “quantas moles, cum sede reclusa hac tandem erumpent, terraque marique mouebunt! heu miseri, quotiens toto pugnabitur orbe! nec leuiora lues quam uictus crimina, uictor.” tum iuuenis lacrimans: “restare haec ordine duro lamentor rebus Latiis . . .”

(Sil. .–)

shows. But there is nothing of the gloom that pervades Virgil’s Marcellus passage; and the purple headband, which Hardie claims to be “the colour of youth and death”, might just as well be foreshadowing imperial status. 43 Hardie   takes iuuenis as I do as genitive; Duff  , as nominative. Cf. Spaltenstein  –. 44 Reitz   argues that purpurea should be translated as “glänzend”, citing OLD s.v.  and pointing to the Virgilian parallel niuea . . . uitta (“with snow-white ribbon”, Verg. A. .) worn by the blessed shades in the Elysian fields. But in fact what Silius is doing is again setting up a contrast with the Virgilian precedent, and purpurea needs to be taken literally. 45 On the significance of this phrase see Manuwald  . Ennius of course has been set up for this role by Apollo in the previous book (Sil. .–, where the god saves him from death in Sardinia). But there Ennius is compared not to Homer but to Hesiod; it is Silius who will inherit the mantle of Homer. See Manuwald  –; Ripoll  ; Deremetz  ; Reitz  ; von Albrecht  . McGuire   is right when he says that “the appearance of Homer . . . places Silius’ own vision of the epic tradition (and his relation to it) in a particular light” but I cannot agree with his conclusion that it “suppress[es] any promise of Rome’s own successor to Homer” ().

the imperial encomia of lucan and silius



[The Sibyl is speaking] “What upheavals will they create by land and sea when finally this place is opened up and they burst forth! Ah wretched ones, how often will there be war over the whole world! And you, conqueror, will pay for no less serious crimes than the conquered.” Then the young man, weeping, replied: “I grieve that in the harsh unfolding of things this is what lies ahead for the Roman state . . .”

We have seen the future, and it turns out not to be a Virgilian vision of greatness and the coming of the promised one (tibi quem promitti saepius audis Augustus Caesar, “the one you so often hear is promised to you, Augustus Caesar”, Verg. A. .–) but a Lucanic one of world-wide violence and civil war.46 Scipio weeps at the harsh reality here revealed. We may well join him. Once more, and far more pointedly, Silius has departed from his Virgilian text. Domitian and the future glories of his reign are not simply left out but are here replaced by something far more sinister.47 How should we read this? We could say that rather than encode a negative message into his version of Jupiter’s prophecy in Book , its essential hollowness is exposed by the lack of follow-up; the refusal to follow the Virgilian model and the Virgilian vision—after making sure we get the fact that he has followed it to the letter in the prophecy—for Scipio’s visit to the underworld is pretty blatant. Virgil’s set of three—prophecy, underworld, shield—are all there. It is not the case that Silius simply adopted the prophecy and left the others out; the fact that they are included and that Silius conspicuously passes up the opportunity to use the other two in the same way seems clearly designed to make a point. And it is a point that we will miss if we skip the prophecy, because it will only work if we take all three elements into account. It would appear that Silius’ epic is not so predictable and routine as scholars like Fantham make out;48 nor can I agree with Marcus Wilson when he says that “from Silius’ world contemporary politics are banished.”49

46

Retz  : “Zwei Paare, jeweils Protagonisten eines Bürgerkrieges, erinnern eher an Lucan.” 47 Ahl, Davis and Pomeroy   observe that “As Vergil shies from the grimmer days of Rome’s future, so Silius shies from its hours of glory”; they do not, however, draw what seems to me the obvious inference. 48 Fantham  –. Misinterpretation of Silius’ text is to my mind largely engendered by assumptions based on the younger Pliny’s review of his life and poetry in Plin. Ep. ., and thus constitutes yet another example of the ‘biographical fallacy’. Contrast Ahl, Davis and Pomeroy  –; Matier  passim. 49 Wilson  .



john penwill

But there is another aspect to this, too. Why did Silius turn to Lucan rather than Virgil for his vision of what lies in store for Rome? The consul of  ce would have been only too aware of what led to the upheavals of  and , and as a student of history also aware of the way in which history tends to repeat itself (Book , the account of Marcellus’ Sicilian expedition, shows that Silius knew his Thucydides). The circumstances of the later part of Domitian’s reign must have seemed disturbingly like those of Nero’s—an increasingly tyrannical emperor with pretensions to divinity, and one with no obvious heir—so that a repetition of the dreadful ‘year of four emperors’ was by no means out of the question. Domitian’s lack of surviving offspring is in fact pointedly referred to (with appropriate spin) in the last line of Jupiter’s prophecy: siderei iuxta radiabunt tempora nati, “next to you will radiate the forehead of your starspangled son” (Sil. .)—already a god because already dead.50 Lucan’s vision of the horrors of civil war in his Roman song inspired by Nero may to Silius have seemed uncannily and unhappily prescient. Both Lucan and Silius thus use intertextuality with Virgil to point up the lies which their respective eulogies present. Lucan revels in his rewriting of Virgil’s address to Octavian in Georgics , pushing every concept to the limit to emerge with the only image capable of counterbalancing the enormity of civil war and producing a dazzling rhetorical tour de force. Silius in his more methodical and circumspect way creates the expectation of a Virgilian triad of ideological glimpses into a future already present, but by conspicuously failing to follow up his rewriting of the first casts serious doubt on his endorsement of it. Indeed one might say that by putting this prophecy in the mouth of Jupiter rather than speaking in propria persona as the other Flavian poets do, Silius displays an understanding of Virgil’s own way of distancing the poet from the ideological position advanced and the problematic nature of that position.51 The final lie may be seen in the form of address employed for each emperor. Lucan addresses Nero as “Caesar” (Luc. .), yet as with Augustus (and I refer again to the Great Paternity Lie embedded in the conclusion to Ovid’s Metamorphoses)52 Nero’s right to be so addressed rests on an adoption 50 McDermott and Orentzel   remark: “The reference . . . to Domitian’s deceased son is a very personal touch, for Silius had lost his younger son (Mart. ., Plin. Ep. ..), and could especially sympathize with the emperor’s great grief.” This is all very touching, but the language Silius uses hardly smacks of genuine consolatio; nor is the poet speaking in his own voice. 51 On which see in particular Boyle  –. 52 See n.  above.

the imperial encomia of lucan and silius



which involved the disinheritance and elimination of Claudius’ son Britannicus; born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus,53 Nero was the descendant through his mother not of Octavian but of Mark Antony, the young Caesar’s opponent at Actium.54 Silius has Jupiter frame his foreshadowing of Domitian with a pair of -line apostrophes, the first of which addresses the emperor as “Germanicus” (Sil. .). Domitian acquired this title as a result of his campaign against the Chatti in  (Suet. Dom. ., .), but both Silius and Martial take the opportunity to suggest that he had already qualified for the accolade while still a boy (puer).55 At Dom. . Suetonius records a youthful expedition by Domitian “against Gaul and the Germanies” undertaken solely in order to try and emulate his brother;56 the undignified outcome of this was that Domitian was recalled, reprimanded and ordered to live with his father to keep him out of trouble. A poem celebrating the achievement of the first Roman general to merit a cognomen derived from the place of his greatest exploit57 could hardly fail to draw attention to the hollowness of the title appropriated by the last; to link it to Domitian’s youthful folly, itself subject to contrast with the courage displayed by the equally youthful (puer) Scipio at the Ticinus (Sil. .–), makes the point yet more plainly. Coins, statues and reliefs throughout the empire parade the titles and imagepromotion of the emperor; the poets by practising their arts of contextualising and intertextualising highlight their fundamental mendacity even as they seem enthusiastically to endorse them. Great praise can in its own way be as damning as faint.

53

The focus on Domitius later in the Bellum Ciuile (at Corfinium [Luc. .–] and Pharsalus [.–]) as an implacable opponent of Caesar further highlights the anomaly of his descendant becoming Caesar. On this issue see in particular Lounsbury  – and –. 54 See Plu. Ant. .–, where Nero’s ‘Antonian’ character is said to have nearly destroyed the empire. 55 Mart. ..: et puer hoc dignus nomine, Caesar, eras (“Even as a boy, Caesar, you were worthy of this name”); cf. Sil. .. See Giroldini  passim. 56 It is to this aspect of the action that Silius could be read as hinting in at tu transcendes, Germanice, facta tuorum (“but you, Germanicus, will surpass the deeds of your relatives”, Sil. .); it is more than merely hinted at in Mart. ..–. 57 Sil. .: deuictae referens primus cognomina terrae (“the first to bear the name of the land he conquered”). On the undeserving nature of Domitian’s triumph over Germany see Tac. Agr. ..

WHAT ‘LIES’ BEHIND PHAEDRUS’ FABLES?*

Enrica Sciarrino According to the standard modern literary accounts, Phaedrus was a freedman of Augustus who translated Aesopic fables into Latin senarii and, through them, expressed his resigned outlook on the treacheries that were rife in the households of the first two emperors.1 In an article published in  Edward Champlin has challenged the attribution of freedman status to Phaedrus and has moved chronologically forward the date of his collection of fables to somewhere between  and  ce. Champlin’s first argument takes as a point of departure the fact that the only evidence that Phaedrus was a former slave is confined to the title of the first book, standardized in modern editions to: PHAEDRI AVGVSTI LIBERTI FABVLARVM AESOPIARVM LIBER PRIMVS.2 How and when this title made it there remains unknown. Furthermore, the frequently cited reference to Sejanus, Tiberius’s prefect of the Praetorian Guard, in the Prologue to Book  (Phaed. . prol. –) does not imply that the author ran into political troubles under him. Rather, the allusion functions to characterize those who deny Phaedrus’ claim to poetic glory, and merely establishes  October  ce, the date of Sejanus’ execution, as a solid terminus post quem for that Prologue. Other references to historical facts cited as evidence for authorship under Augustus and Tiberius include a story in Book  which features a legal case involving Augustus, and which the poetic voice asserts he explicitly remembers (.), and an episode in Book  staged at Tiberius’ villa at Misenum (.). For Champlin, neither reference offers historical proof except, perhaps, that Phaedrus remembered the time of Augustus and lived in the reign of Tiberius. *

I owe special thanks to K.O. Chong-Gossard, Andrew Turner, and Frederik Vervaet for inviting me to a very enjoyable conference and to Robin Bond, James Ker, and Dylan Sailor who took the time to read a draft of this chapter and helped me make it better with their generous comments. I am also indebted to Laura Gibbs for having re-introduced me many years ago to Phaedrus’ fables. 1 Champlin  offers a review of scholarship; see also Mayer  , . 2 The earliest extant witness P (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M.A. -II), a ninth-century manuscript from Reims, gives this title as Fedri Augusti liberti liber fabularum, while the slightly later fragment D from Fleury (Vatican City, BAV, Reg. II) gives it as Phedi Aug. liber. I. Aesophiarum.



enrica sciarrino

At this point, Champlin’s chronological reconstruction becomes more intricate. In Seneca’s Consolatio ad Polybium, written during his exile (– ce) and not long before Claudius’ triumph over Britain in  ce, the philosopher speaks about the freedman’s literary talents (Sen. Dial. ..): he has composed fables (fabellas) and Aesopian tales (Aesopeos logos), a task—he says—not yet undertaken by a Roman mind (intemptatum Romanis ingeniis opus). Champlin takes Seneca’s testimony as an indication that Phaedrus’ fables did not exist before the reign of Claudius. In addition, he finds compelling evidence in what we know about the jurist Cassius Longinus who used to call a partnership in which one partner receives all profit and the other runs all the risk, a societas leonina, or leonine partnership.3 For Champlin, the terminology would allude to a fable ostensibly invented by Phaedrus and inserted in Book  in which a lion takes all the profits from his partnership with other animals (Phaed. .). Since in the Digest (Pompon. Dig. ...) we find that Cassius was exiled by Nero in  and died soon after being recalled by Vespasian, he fixes the terminus post quem for book  in  ce. Finally, Champlin stresses that the legalistic framework inherent in the fables provides further corroboration to the Roman aristocratic identity of their author and goes hand in hand with their satirical lineage. Thus, he concludes: Whoever he may have been, ‘Phaedrus’ was not a Greek freedman struggling against envious detractors to ennoble his humble artistic craft, he did not suffer for his art under Sejanus, and indeed he published nothing before the reign of Claudius. Rather, let us say that he was a Roman gentleman or aristocrat, a native of the city itself, and an author who flaunted his Romanitas by appropriating a minor Greek genre, subjecting it to Latin metre and shaping it with the two most Roman of high cultural inventions, satire and ius civile.4

By provisionally accepting Champlin’s redating and leaving aside the search for the specific identity of Phaedrus, I wish to pursue his argument about the aristocratic Romanization of the Aesopic fable that our author performs. For although Champlin highlights the aristocratic and Roman imprint of two generic components of Phaedrus’ fables, his discussion leaves unexplained why a Roman aristocrat living under Claudius and Nero would choose to write fables in the first place. In the first part of this chapter I chart how Phaedrus’ aggressive appropriation of the Aesopic fable bears on the aristocratic identity of the man who lurks 3 4

For the career and dates of Cassius Longinus, see PIR C . Champlin  .

what ‘lies’ behind phaedrus’ fables?



behind the storyteller. In the second part, I consider how his claim to poetic authorship dovetails with an exclusive use of the fable as an unconstrained space for reflecting upon the impact of autocratic rule on elite social relations and cultural practices alike.

Phaedrus and other Aesopic fables In the Prologue to Book , Phaedrus proclaims that fables are traditionally employed by slaves in order to express their sentiments while escaping punishment (Phaed. . prol. –). From a purely literary point of view, the slave genealogy unfolded by Phaedrus finds an expression in the way fables tend to make their appearance in the Greek and Roman literary tradition predating his work.5 Fables either attributed to Aesop, or closely approximating the Aesopic type, were traditionally embedded in compositions that represented or evoked a dialogue, and belonged to genres ranging from historical writing through to drama, lyric, philosophy, and satire.6 On the other hand, starting from the late fourth century bce and the now lost Aesopeia attributed to Demetrius of Phalerum, fables enjoyed a parallel life outside of mainstream literary genres in prose compilations.7 In light of these two precedents, what makes Phaedrus’ fables distinctive is that, on the one hand, they are free-standing literary compositions; on the other hand, they are characterized by a heavy authorial presence in the promuthion and epimuthion—namely, the glosses attached at the beginning or end of each fable. How this latter feature plays out in Phaedrus’ construction of the fable as an autonomous literary genre can be better appreciated if we take into consideration the functions that the epimuthion and promuthion appear to have had before. According to Ben Perry, at an earlier stage the epimuthion emerged at the end of the fable from a specific communicative context, and was never an end in itself. When embedded in a composition, the Aesopic fable usually served to illustrate a mistake made or about to be made. 5

A point made by Marchesi  –. See Van Dijk  for a survey of loci; for a rather compelling account of the impact of Aesopic fables on the development of Greek prose, see Kurke . For considerations about the elite appropriation of the fable, see also du Bois  –. For a cursory survey but informative review of fable material in early Roman satire, see Muecke  –; for a close analysis of the fable in Horace and Petronius, see now Marchesi . 7 For a discussion of Phaedrus’ relationship with the Hellenistic tradition, see Perry . 6



enrica sciarrino

In those contexts, the epimuthion (located at the end of the fable) called attention to the applicability of the witty moral expressed by one of the characters inside the fable (endomuthion) to the external communicative situation that had triggered the telling of the fable in the first place. Perry proposes that during the Hellenistic period, the Aesopic fables came to be decontextualized and gathered into collections for the convenience of writers and speakers who would use fables as occasional illustrations in a speech or an essay, in the same way in which earlier writers had used them before.8 By working with this aim in mind, the Hellenistic compilers would have then developed the promuthion, a gloss placed at the beginning of the fable. Far from being a moral explanation or a hortatory or didactic utterance, the promuthion worked as indexheading that served to facilitate the use of the collection as a reference book.9 Although Perry’s evolutionary trajectory is highly debated, it seems clear enough that Phaedrus developed the epimuthia and promuthia in very creative ways.10 In his work the epimuthion no longer has the significance it obtained from its insertion in a larger composition, while the promuthion falls short of illustrating the content of the fable for the convenience of future users. In both cases, the author develops them into forms that allow for self-reference. Indeed, I would argue that Phaedrus transforms the promuthion and the epimuthion into spaces in which he most freely expresses his subjectivity. Placed outside the fable and yet focusing on the fable either to come or already presented, these liminal spaces share in the real world perceived by the author and in the fictional world of the fable that the author manipulates. From them, the author takes the liberty to move in and out of the fictional world of the fable and offers his own version of the real world. To illustrate better the dynamics I have just described, let me turn to a later Greek version of the fable of the fox and crow (or raven) by the fourth-century fabulist Aphthonius, and then explore Phaedrus’ rendering of the same narrative:

8 Perry  –. In the Hellenistic collections fables were most probably organized in alphabetical order according to the first word of the fable. Note, however, that the evidence derives from collections produced after Phaedrus, the first of which consists of the Greek verse collection attributed to Babrius; see Gibbs  . 9 Perry  –. 10 For a critical appraisal of Perry’s evolutionary history and a discussion of the complexity of the question, see Adrados and Van Dijk  –.

what ‘lies’ behind phaedrus’ fables?



A STORY ABOUT A FOX AND A RAVEN WHICH URGES NOT TO TRUST THOSE WHO ARE DECEIVING. The raven seized a piece of cheese and carried his spoils up to his perch high in a tree. A fox came up and walked in circles around the raven, planning a trick. ‘What is this?’ cried the fox. ‘O raven, the elegant proportions of your body are remarkable, and you have a complexion that is worthy of the king of the birds! If only you had a voice to match, then you would be first among the fowl!’ The fox said these things to trick the raven and the raven fell for it: he let out a great squawk and dropped his cheese. By thus showing off his voice, the raven let go of his spoils. The fox then grabbed the cheese and said, ‘O raven, you do have a voice, but no brains to go with it!’ If you follow your enemies’ advice, you will get hurt. (Aphth.  = Helm b. Trans. Gibbs, slightly modified)

Aphthonius’ presentation of this fable follows pretty much the convention of the Hellenistic collection as described by Perry. At the very start we find a promuthion, a gloss that is rather neutral and generalized: while highlighting the lesson to learn from the fable there is nothing that betrays the subjectivity of the author as such. This fable features also an epimuthion attached at the end. Disconnected from a context, this epimuthion presents yet another generalized statement about the applicability of the fable’s message. Moreover, when we turn our attention to the fable itself, the following typically Aesopian features emerge.11 First and foremost, the characters in the story belong to the animal world; second, the focus is on the fox and her cleverness in finding a way whereby to achieve her goal: the seizure of the cheese; third, the fable ends with a witty statement (endomuthion) pronounced by the fox, illustrating and praising her cleverness. Fourth, the fable exposes the mistake exemplified by the behavior of the raven: she falls for the fox’s trick and loses her cheese. Let us now turn to Phaedrus’ translation of the same fable: Qui se laudari gaudet verbis subdolis, fere dat poenas turpi paenitentia. Cum de fenestra corvus raptum caseum comesse vellet, celsa residens arbore, vulpes invidit, deinde sic coepit loqui: ‘O qui tuarum, corve, pinnarum est nitor! Quantum decoris corpore et vultu geris! Si vocem haberes, nulla prior ales foret.’ 11 For a thorough discussion of the difficulties in identifying exactly what makes an Aesopic fable, see Gibbs  and her insightful review of Van Dijk  (Gibbs ).



enrica sciarrino At ille stultus, dum vult vocem ostendere, lato ore emisit caseum; quem celeriter dolosa vulpes avidis rapuit dentibus. Tum demum ingemuit corvi deceptus stupor.

(Phaed. .)

He who takes delight in being praised by means of deceitful words is bound to pay the penalty with shameful punishment. A crow had snatched a piece of cheese from out of a window and sitting up high in a tree prepared to eat the cheese; but a fox put his envious eyes on what was happening, and began to speak as follows: ‘O crow, how splendid are your feathers! What a graceful body you have and what a fine face! If only you had a voice to match, no bird would outrank you.’ And that foolish crow opened his mouth wide, wishing to display his voice and he dropped the cheese; the deceitful fox seized the cheese quickly with her greedy teeth, and only then did the astonished crow bewail how he had been tricked. (transl. Gibbs, slightly modified)

The fable opens up with a promuthion; rather than simply summarizing the core message of the fable to come, the gloss conjures up specific social types through the employment of highly charged juridical and moralistic language (dare poenas, “to pay the penalty”; subdolis verbis, “deceitful words”, and turpi paenitentia, “shameful punishment”). Furthermore, the promuthion shares the same metrical structure of the fable, thus bridging the divide between the two parts of the poem—between the real world as the author perceives it and the fictional world of the fable that he manipulates. And, in fact, once we move our attention to the fable we can see the author crossing the gap and invading its narrative space. First, he takes the witty statement away from the clever character (the fox); second, he colors the interaction between the two animals by way of qualifying their morality: the fox is deceitful, the crow is foolish, the fox has greedy teeth, the cheated crow stands in a stupor. Our author is not interested in the fable as a contest of cleverness, and does not really try to expose a mistake and explain the applicability of the fable to a particular situation. By crossing into the world of the fable, he uses the Aesopic material in order to communicate a specific view on reality. His negative moralization of the stronger animal character does away with wit, and the juridical language through which he couches its interaction with the weaker character serves no didactic purposes per se. Rather, the author guides the reader’s attention to the ways in which the weaker is tricked and victimized, highlighting his perception of social relations anticipated in the promuthion. Let me expand on this latter element by looking at yet another fable, namely, the fable of the eagle, the crow, and the turtle:

what ‘lies’ behind phaedrus’ fables? Contra potentes nemo est munitus satis; si vero accessit consiliator maleficus, vis et nequitia quicquid oppugnant, ruit. Aquila in sublime sustulit testudinem: quae cum abdidisset cornea corpus domo, nec ullo pacto laedi posset condita, venit per auras cornix, et propter volans ‘Opimam sane praedam rapuisti unguibus; sed, nisi monstraro quid sit faciendum tibi, gravi nequiquam te lassabit pondere.’ promissa parte suadet ut scopulum super altis ab astris duram inlidat corticem, qua comminuta facile vescatur cibo. inducta vafris aquila monitis paruit, simul et magistrae large divisit dapem. sic tuta quae Naturae fuerat munere, impar duabus, occidit tristi nece.



(Phaed. .)

No one is sufficiently well armed against the powerful, and if there is a malicious advisor involved as well, then whatever is assaulted by violence and criminality will come to ruin. An eagle carried a turtle high up into the air but the turtle’s flesh was hidden inside a home of horn, tucked away safely inside so no harm could come to it. A crow then arrived on the scene and as she winged her way past the eagle she said, ‘Well now, you have grasped an excellent prize in your talons, but unless I show you what to do with it, its weight will exhaust you to no avail.’ When the eagle promised to share with the crow, the crow advised her to drop the hard shell from the starry heights down onto the rocks. After the shell had been shattered, the turtle’s meat would be easily consumed. The eagle was persuaded by the crow’s clever advice and carried out the plan, generously sharing the feast with her teacher. Thus, even something protected by a gift of nature was no match for these two, and the turtle died a pitiful death. (transl. Gibbs, slightly modified)

This fable presents a promuthion in which the authorial voice once again delineates social types against a highly hierarchical scenario by deploying juridical as well as moralistic language. The potentes are characterized through the emphasis placed on the defenselessness of the weak, while the maleficus consiliator—who stands above the weak and joins in partnership with a potens—is denoted by the dismal violence and criminality (vis and nequitia) that he helps create.12 Just as in the fable of the fox and the crow, the insertion of the promuthion is accompanied by the absence of the witty statement of the type traditionally pronounced by one of 12 For a recent discussion of potentes and potentia in relation to the Dialogus de oratoribus which provides a useful frame of reference here, see Gallia .



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the animal characters. In addition, this fable presents something of an epimuthion that points back to the opening and restates how this particular partnership uproots nature and denaturalizes hierarchical relations. As opposed to the previous example, here the heavy authorial presence at the beginning and the end of the fable is counterbalanced by a more restrained authorial intrusion into the narrative. No ancient sources exist for this fable, yet Laura Gibbs acutely notes that, if we take out the promuthion at the beginning and the quasi-epimuthion attached to the end, the underlying Aesopic framework is easily detected: within the traditional Aesopic framework, this was a story about a foolish eagle tricked by the crow, with no attention paid to the turtle at all . . . Phaedrus has seized upon an utterly unimportant character in the story, the turtle, and made him the focal point of the reader’s attention.13

At this point, the obvious questions that arise are: how should we explain such a narrow focus on the victims of injustice, and how would this focus fit with the aristocratic identity of our author that Champlin proposes? If former generations of critics used to explain away Phaedrus’ attention to the weak and his moralized view of the world by invoking his freedman status, the possibility that our man may have been a member of the Roman aristocracy who experienced the reigns of Claudius and Nero complicates the answer in more than one way.

Contextualizing Phaedrus’ Romanization of the Aesopic fable In many ways, our author’s appropriation of a form of speech closely identified with slavery, the self-possessed way in which he deploys juridical and moralizing language, and the liberty that he takes to intrude in and out of the fable’s fictional space, constitute signal expressions of his aristocratic subjectivity. Phaedrus’ game of allusions with Horace’s satirical precedent renders this fact particularly conspicuous not simply because it inserts his fables directly into the Roman tradition of satire, as Champlin envisions; but more importantly, because our author’s selfassurance stands in sharp contrast to Horace’s hesitating use of fables in his Satires and Epistles.14 As Ilaria Marchiesi has shown, the theme of

13

See Gibbs  . On the numerous allusions to Horace that we find in Phaedrus, see Champlin  – with attached bibliography. 14

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

slavery looms large over Horace’s satirical project and the fable plays a key role both in qualifying Horace’s own self-perception as the son of a freedman and the obligations that patronage imposes on his poetic activities. By surveying the appearance of the fable in both collections, Marchesi concludes: evoked initially only obliquely in the first book of the Sermones, then displaced onto other speakers of servile status in the polyphony of the second book, and finally embraced as the idiom most fitting his satirical discourse in the Epistles, the language of fable appears to accompany Horace’s growing confidence in his position as a self-appointed moralist poet. As the personal stigma receded into the past, the process of Horace’s poetic selffashioning could dismiss it and incorporate the charged language of the fable into his authorial identity.15

Marchesi’s inquiry into the use of fable material and zoomorphic language in Petronius substantiates her finds further: for a freedman simply to evoke either of these was enough to undercut the public image he was trying to project. In the world of the Satyricon, Marchesi notes, “the emergence of the language of the fable is accompanied by an unwelcome recollection of the servile origins they strive to repress.”16 Marchesi’s analysis bears on our interpretation of Phaedrus’ fables in at least two ways. First, it implicitly confirms the slave genealogy of the fable that Phaedrus articulates in the Prologue to Book ; and second, it throws into further relief Phaedrus’ self-indulgent engagement with the fable.17 In my view, both factors not only sustain the elite subjectivity of our author but they also explain his aggressive manipulation of the Aesopic material. In this respect, the Prologue to book  is revealing: Aesopus auctor quam materiam repperit, Hanc ego polivi versibus senariis. Duplex libelli dos est: quod risum movet, Et quod prudenti vitam consilio monet. Calumniari si quis autem voluerit, Quod arbores loquantur, non tantum ferae, Fictis iocari nos meminerit fabulis. 15

(Phaed.  prol.)

Marchesi  . Marchesi  . 17 With respect to the questions of the currency and usage of fables within contemporary public discourse, Rebecca Edwards made the pertinent observation in a paper delivered at the American Philological Association Convention in Montreal in  that “the very genre of fable seems to have been close to the heart of Tiberius”. 16



enrica sciarrino The matter which Aesop, the initiator, found, I have polished into senarii. A double dowry comes with my booklet: it moves to laughter and warns about life with wise counsel. If anyone should choose to engage slandering, since trees speak too not animals alone, let him remember that I am playing with made-up fables. (transl. Perry, slightly modified)

The Aesopic fable is nothing more than “pure matter”, which the author unapologetically uses in order to assemble his libellus, his booklet. In turn, the booklet is imagined as a proper bride and her dowry is qualified as duplex. Commenting on the latter adjective, Martin Bloomer has suggested that every dowry was duplex since on marriage this fell under the control of the husband but could revert back to the wife. Phaedrus’ adoption of images related to marriage practices is particularly noteworthy because, as Bloomer rightly points out, it strongly deviates from the way Horace handles the theme of publication and that of the dowry.18 In Ep. . Horace dramatizes his separation from his book of poetry as if speaking as a master to his manumitted slave. While reproaching the book’s eagerness to cross the threshold into the public eye, he comes to equate the circulation of his poem to prostitution. In this way, Horace admits that the publication of a poetically manufactured text is bound up with acts of appropriation performed by a readership that the author cannot fully control. Horace’s abbreviated biography attached at the end of the poem reinforces the message. By claiming that he has been able to win the favor of eminent men despite his freedman origins, Horace asserts his social superiority over other non-eminent individuals but betrays the failure of his poems to promote their author to the same social level as his chosen readers and addressees.19 Viewed in this light, Horace’s refusal of a dowry and a dowered wife constitutes an assertion of freedom from the allurement of material possessions, and serves as a strategy of male self-fashioning by rejecting the demeaning subjection to a moneyed wife as a means of obtaining social advancement.20 Bloomer proposes

18

Bloomer  –. Oliensis . 20 Bloomer  – cites the following passages as exemplary of Horace’s attitude to dowry: Carm. ..–, .–; S. .., .–. The dowered wife is a well known literary topos, examples include Pl. As. ; dowered wives are also characterized as bossy in Plaut. Cas. , –; Cic, Parad. . As K.O. Chong-Gossard correctly points out, the topos can be found in Euripides, Phaeton fr. , Melanippe fr. , and Andromeda –. 19

what ‘lies’ behind phaedrus’ fables?



that through the metaphor of the double dowry Phaedrus preempts hostility by warning that use but not ownership of his fables is possible;21 however, I believe that the precedent of Horace reveals something more. Phaedrus’ representation of his collection as a dowered daughter and wife-to-be contributes to the fashioning of himself as a pater familias and a man of means, and that of his readers as social equals and prospective kinsmen. While the type of marriage and, therefore, the ownership rights associated with it are nowhere made explicit, it is clear that the imagery itself invokes a close alliance based on mutual obligations and interests.22 In turn, Phaedrus’ emphasis on the utile and dulce that the dowry provides is deflated by the possibility that someone may miss the game of fiction that helped him construct his book in the first place and, therefore, engage in unfounded slander. As such, the author seeks to communicate with the readers through play and disguise, asking them to pursue a cognitive understanding that requires an effort to see through both. Later in the collection, Phaedrus takes the game further by inviting single individuals to be partners in his poetic game. These are identified with the servile names of Eutychus (Phaed. . prol.), Particulo ( prol. and epil.), and Philetus (.).23 In relation to these named addressees, the metaphor of the book as a dowered daughter and wife-to-be located at the start serves to establish a new genus that is both social and literary. Although disengaged from the rules of patronage, this genus is not independent of aristocratic disdain, as Bloomer suggests; on the contrary, it thrives on it.24 But in order to see this element it is necessary to assess how Phaedrus positions himself in relation to both emperors and poets. In a recent paper, Brigitte Libby points out that the representation of imperium in the fables as an undesirable combination of kingship and authority that leads to cruel abuses of power stands in sharp contrast with Phaedrus’ fabrication of two fables featuring Tiberius and Augustus (. and .).25 She rightly suggests that this contradiction invites the readers to choose between two paths of interpretation. On the one hand, they can use the negative lesson learned in the animal fables in order to color the reading of the human emperors; on the other, they can distinguish the 21

Bloomer  –. On the legal and cultural aspects of Roman marriage, see still the fundamental work by Treggiari . 23 On Phaedrus’ dedicatees, see Champlin   n. ; Henderson  –; Bloomer  –. 24 Bloomer  –. 25 For a list of these fables, see Libby   n. . 22

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animal world from that of humans and hold that this separation validates the power wielded by the emperors, and leaves just the animal kings open to censure. After reviewing the numerous elements supporting the first interpretive path, Libby chooses to pursue the second, demonstrating that Phaedrus bestows on Augustus and Tiberius the same hermeneutical qualities that he claims for himself as a fabulist, which become more pronounced in the later works, taking him progressively further away from Aesop as we move forward in the collection. Following this trajectory, Libby argues that in . and . the poetic authority of the fabulist and the political authority of the emperor tend to overlap. In a world full of deception and obscurity, the development of hermeneutic sophistication becomes vital, and the diametrically opposed positions of power that the fabulist and the emperor occupy end up both offering an equally powerful insight into reality. As such, political authority comes into play by validating the fabulist’s perception of the world and the ways in which he goes about it.26 For my purposes the greatest strength of Libby’s argument is to point to the numerous interpretative possibilities that the author lying behind Phaedrus creates in order to confront autocracy and circumvent any undesirable reception by the regime at the same time. Just like with other imperial writers, so too with Phaedrus’ fables the readers enter the realm of what Frederick Ahl calls ‘figured speech.’27 Any subversive or disapproving observation concerning the political status quo that our author communicates is mediated in such a way that the critical links between it and the real world are left to the readers to make. Ancient readers may indeed have interpreted . and . as a sincere praise of the emperors; however, they may have also concluded that Tiberius and Augustus, together with Aesop and the other human characters we find in the fables, were simply materia in the hands of the author. Accordingly, they could have also seen in his strategy of inclusion an underhanded attempt to jettison emperors from the social and literary genus that the author sought to establish. The viability of this reading in the case of Phaedrus becomes evident if we fully acknowledge the construct of his book as a dowered daughter and wife-to-be together with the juridical and morally loaded framework that our author imposes on his fables. As Aldo Schiavone has argued, the history of ius should be understood as 26

Cf. Libby  –. Ahl , especially . For an expansion into “doublespeak” see Bartsch ; with a focus on Tacitus, see Sailor . 27

what ‘lies’ behind phaedrus’ fables?



the slow and multilayered construction of a network of rules that takes as a point of departure the regulation of social relations among patres, including patrilinearity, reciprocity, marriage, and exchange of goods.28 Accordingly, by representing in his fables a great variety of situations in which ius is breached our author evoked a long-lost social reality in order to reestablish proper social relations with the complicity of his readers. This relationship would have excluded all emperors a priori and would have recaptured the social hierarchies that the Principate had obliterated. As a result, no matter how we look at it our author presents autocracy as a constant factor in each and every interpretative equation performed by the readers. With this in mind let me turn to some critical lines of the Prologue to Book  where we see our author toying with the gap that exists between himself as a social agent and the persona of the fabulist: Servitus obnoxia Quia quae volebat non audebat dicere, Affectus proprios in fabellas transtulit, Calumniamque fictis elusit iocis. Ego illius pro semita feci viam, Et cogitavi plura quam relinquerat, In calamitatem deligens quaedam meam.

(Phaed. . prol. –)

Slavery, so exposed to harm, since it dared not say what it wished to say, translated its own feelings into fables and eluded slander by made-up games. I, in turn, have built a highway in his [i.e. Aesop’s] pathway, and I have thought up more things than he had left, choosing some to my own damage. (Trans. Perry, slightly modified)

Just as in the opening poem, emphasis is placed upon play and fiction. The disenfranchised translated their personal feelings into fables to elude slander. Our author is playing with fiction too; but rather than helping him elude slander, his toying with fiction has made him a victim of slander in turn. In a way the different outcome points to our author’s aristocratic subjectivity—a subjectivity that is explicitly revealed here through the allusion to the pristine Roman imperial practice of building wide roads out of narrow paths. In turn, the whole passage leads the readers to wonder about the troubles that he has suffered. Interestingly, any guesswork on the part of the readers becomes inextricably bound with our author’s game of disguise and the criteria by which he establishes his intimacy with them. This fact can be glimpsed, for example, from

28

Schiavone  –, –.

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the quasi-epimuthion attached to the enigmatic fable that follows the Prologue to Book  and generally known as “What the Old Woman Said to the Wine Jar” where Phaedrus proclaims: hoc quo pertineat dicet qui me noverit (“anyone who knows me will tell what this pertains to”, ..). On the other hand, that guesswork and disguise is what our author and his work are about is made even more explicit in the lines that close the Epilogue to the same book: Excedit animus quem proposui terminum, sed difficulter continetur spiritus, integritatis qui sincerae conscius a noxiorum premitur insolentiis. Qui sint, requiris? Apparebunt tempore. Ego, quondam legi quam puer sententiam ‘Palam muttire plebeio piaculum est,’ dum sanitas constabit, pulchre meminero.

(. epil. –)

My feelings have carried me beyond the limit I have set; but it is difficult for a man to contain himself when, aware of his untouched integrity, is pressed hard by the insolence of those who mean harm. Who are they, you ask? They will be revealed in time. I, on the other hand, shall keep well in my mind a maxim I read when I was a child, at least as long as my sanity remains: ‘it is a sacrilege for a man of low birth to murmur in public.’ (transl. Perry)

Once again, Phaedrus professes to have suffered harm at the hand of ill-intentioned individuals, leaving their identity unstated. This time, however, he fully articulates the question of identity that looms over the readers and, after making the ominous statement apparebunt tempore, he reverts back to disguise by donning the mask of the underclass. By insistently stating that he has survived through unspeakable dangers and mischief, Phaedrus invites the readers to think that he has engaged in the game of play and fiction as a means of protecting his life, although—as he suggests some lines above—he has gone a bit too far to his own damage. With this, readers are cajoled into finding signs of the author’s perils in the unreedeemedly bleak world of the fables. In this world violence, insult, and fraud exacerbate natural hierarchies, and interlopers coming between the strong and the weak make things even worse.29 In the midfifties Attilio De Lorenzi took as a point of departure Phaedrus’ supposed servile origins and put together a somewhat heroic biography through

29

Cf. Bloomer .

what ‘lies’ behind phaedrus’ fables?



clues found in the fables.30 Critics have rightly rejected De Lorenzi’s reconstruction, since the only explicit biography that we have is the longwinded one encoded in the Prologue to Book .31 Regardless, it is still important to note that his reading strategy most faithfully reflects the tendentious game played by our author. For Champlin the biography inserted in the Prologue to Book  stands far from attesting to the Greek and slavish origins of Phaedrus; if anything, it proves to be literary in nature and betrays that our man was born and raised in Rome: Quamvis in ipsa paene natus sim schola, Curamque habendi penitus corde eraserim, Nec Pallade hanc invita in vitam incubuerim,32 Fastidiose tamen in coetum recipior.

(. prol. –)

Although I was almost born in the school itself, and have entirely blotted out from my heart any interest in possession, and have laid myself down to dream with the great encouragement from Pallas (Minerva) concerning this life, nevertheless it is only with distaste that I am admitted into the society of poets. (transl. Perry, slightly modified)

Champlin argues that the only building that would have a school and a space for inspired poetic dreams is the Temple of Hercules and the Muses located in the Campus Martius at Rome. What Champlin misses out—and yet it reinforces his argument—is the reference to the favoring Minerva. Established by Marcus Fulvius Nobilior in the early second century bce, the Temple of Hercules and the Muses came to house the poets’ guild from the temple of Minerva, the place in which the guild had been originally located.33 Interestingly, the cold welcoming that the coetus poetarum reserved for him points to an anecdote recounted by Valerius Maximus and involving Caesar Strabo (V. Max. ..). One day Strabo visited the collegium, but the poet Accius did not stand up to greet him. Valerius Maximus explains that Accius refrained from showing his respects not because he was unaware of Strabo’s aristocratic status, but because he was Strabo’s superior in the poetic pursuit. While some read

30

De Lorenzi . For rejection, see Currie   n. ; Champlin   n. . 32 The Latin text cited here is that of Perry from his LCL edition of , although the transmission is troubled and full of heavy editorial interventions. The reading nec in  comes from Heinsius, while Pallade comes from Bentley; P reads et laude invita in hanc vitam. 33 Sciarrino . 31

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Accius’ behavior as a sign that he felt threatened by poetic competitors, others suggest that he felt disdain for an aristocratic dilettante.34 In reality, neither interpretation does justice to the underlying scenario, for they both rely on the idea that Roman poetry was an unquestionable and unquestioned elite activity. Although Roman aristocrats had engaged in poetry since the mid second century bce not only as beneficiaries and readers but also as composers themselves, poetry was primarily and originally a professional pursuit.35 In light of this genealogy, the anecdote thematizes how the poets attempted but failed to guard their profession against elite encroachments, while our author’s evocation of the anecdote gives away his subjectivity. He is the aristocrat encroaching on poetry, and the poets who aloofly accept him are his inferiors; by relying on his social superiority he overrides the authority of the coetus poetarum and proposes the fable as a new space of aristocratic influence.36 But to appreciate the implications of this positioning, we need first to come to grips with the social secondariness of poetry and from there consider the impact that the Principate had on aristocratic identity and their approach to literary practices. In his analysis of the ludus poeticus as depicted in texts ranging from Catullus to Horace, Thomas Habinek argues that poetry was construed primarily in relation to external factors including social patronage, metrical laws, and the labor of writing.37 Through physical efforts the poet entered an empowering process to establish his own autonomous and, therefore, authoritative voice; however, transcending bodily constrictions was not so easily achieved. In this respect, Horace’s representation of his poetic efforts and indeed his handling of the fable make especially

34

Dugan  , with references in n. . The earliest evidence about elite involvement in poetic practices is in Terence’s prologues. See especially, Ter. Ad. –. 36 The viability of this reading is reinforced by our author’s claim that in order to find acceptance among the poets he erased from his heart “any interest in possession.” On one level, this claim is yet another assertion of freedom from the allurements of glory, honors, and money that we find scattered throughout the poetic tradition as a prerequisite for the practice of poetry. On another level, it plays with the juridical differentiation between possessio and dominium: whereas a man enjoying full Roman citizenship rights who relinquishes possessio does not necessarily loses dominium, possessio alone does not establish dominium. For an introduction to the problems associated with Roman conceptualization of ownership, see Birks . 37 Habinek . A recent parallel to his argument can be found in Farrell  – , which discusses poetry’s dependence on corruptible writing materials, and how this material nature of text weakens the importance of authorship. 35

what ‘lies’ behind phaedrus’ fables?



evident that for a real poet poetry was not ludus at all; rather, it situated him in a state akin to enslavement, or rather, in that of a freedman.38 The same did not hold true for aristocrats, at least up until Augustus’ establishment of the Principate. In the Republican period poetry was ludus, understood as a transitional space that looked to the mastery of speech-making and oratorical pursuits, or else as an activity that helped strengthen homosocial relations outside the sphere of negotium.39 The Principate changed the way in which aristocrats perceived themselves, and the literary sphere offered them a way to articulate and redress the problems associated with their changed self-perception. In the last two decades or so the crisis of elite identity brought about by Augustus’ establishment of the Principate has been the subject of renewed attention.40 As Dylan Sailor has recently put it “to the extent that a princeps was merely what the word implied, that is, the ‘first citizen’, elite men could be imagined still to operate by their own light and to be citizens, not subjects. But to the extent that a princeps was instead the master presiding over a state and an empire that were de facto his domestic property, and the inhabitants of which were thus his slaves, elite men were no more in command of their own persons and actions than were slaves.”41 The obsessive concern that Sailor describes and the servitude model through which it was articulated found a further and practical expression in the increased elite involvement in the literary sphere and the development of the new cultural practices among which the recitatio constitutes the most conspicuous example.42 The author who lies behind Phaedrus tackles head-on the loss of traditional libertas perceived by aristocrats and the servitude model that emerged from it by versifying Aesopic fables in the manner of Socrates during his last days in prison.43 If this were not enough, he puts on the mask of an 38

Habinek  –. See Cicero’s Pro Archia; but also the trajectory that haunts Cicero’s progressive construction of oratory as an aesthetic artifact. Cf. Dugan . 40 Some recent and important discussions include Hopkins and Burton ; Eck ; Habinek ; Roller , especially –; Sailor . 41 Sailor  . 42 Dupont . 43 In this sense, the Consolatio Ad Polybium that Seneca addressed to Claudius’ powerful freedman during his exile provides more than just information for dating the collection. In the context of Seneca’s consolatio Polybius’ translation of Aesopic fables represents an extreme case of lighthearted literary activity that someone might undertake as a form (or a proof) of self-consolation. Although Seneca is addressing Polybius who mourns the loss of his brother, the comparanda evoked are also Seneca himself who grieves his 39



enrica sciarrino

underclass person and produces a type of poetry that he represents as meeting the scorn of professional poets. This prima facie self-defeating stance, however, is foiled by the regenerative power that he instills in his fables and the collection as whole. By constructing a negative rejection on the part of professional poets, our author proposes an aristocratic engagement with literary practices that undermines the validity of their judgment and insulates it from their encumbering presence. Moreover, he does not produce a reference book containing raw fable materials to be used by an indiscriminate readership as occasional illustrations to insert in other types of literary compositions. On the contrary, he draws on Aesopic materials in order to create a set of exclusive exempla. Featuring speaking animals interacting with each other, these exempla tend to focus on the way in which one of them is victimized. Like traditional exempla, actions and words are performed before a judging audience.44 In our case this audience is made up of readers who, by being interpellated as patres familias and prospective kinsmen, are called upon to act on the rules of ius through which our author characterizes the speaking animals and evaluates their exchanges. In turn, he offers his collection as a monumentum of the unspeakable dangers and mischief that he has endured and survived. From our perspective, to assess the truth of these assertions is less important than to recognize the extent to which Phaedrus guides his chosen readers to use his collection as an unconstrained mimetic space for reflecting upon their collective and individual positioning in the face of the collapse of social relations brought about by autocracy.

banishment from Rome and, by extension, Socrates who spent his time in prison versifying Aesop’s prose fables (Pl. Phaed. b–b). I owe this suggestion to James Ker from one of our email exchanges. 44 For a schematization of the sequential operations that make up exemplarity, see Roller : – and .

MENDACIA MAIORUM: TALES OF DECEIT IN PREREPUBLICAN ROME

Parshia Lee-Stecum Rome may have stood, as Ennius claimed, on its ‘ancient customs and its men’, but, according to the Romans’ own accounts of the founding and early history of their city, one of those mores was a talent for deceit, and those viri were frequently liars.1 Narratives of the period from Romulus’ foundation of the city until the establishment of the Republic are intense investigations of both who the Romans were and what it was in Rome’s distant past that precipitated its present.2 From Romulus’ first augury to the election of Lucius Junius Brutus and Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus as consuls ( years by Varro’s reckoning),3 the basic social, political and religious institutions of Rome were delineated, and key exempla of Roman behaviour were set. The mores antiquae (the mores maiorum) had come into being. This, at least, was the tradition firmly established by the first centuries bce and ce.4 So too was the prominent role of lies and deceit in these aetiologies and exempla. This chapter seeks to determine whether that role is represented as positive or negative, in what

1

Moribus antiquis res stat Romana virisque: Enn. fr.  (Skutsch) = Aug. Civ. .. The classic statement of the importance of origin myth for communal identity (couched in terms of national and ethnic identity) is still Smith  . For “mythic genealogies” as the “broad common ‘language’ of ethnic identity in the ancient Mediterranean” and Rome specifically, see Dench  , and  n. . 3 Varro’s chronology was probably established in his De Gente Populi Romani (see Rawson  –) and Books – of his Antiquitates Rerum Humanorum (see Grafton and Swerdlow  ). 4 See Fox  , writing of Augustan period texts: “The tendency to find in the regal period the origins of later Rome, and the fertile traditions of aetiologies which surrounded them, explains why the period was open to so many interpretations.” The formation of the mores maiorum by no means stops with the foundation of the Republic. But the aetiological intensity of the monarchical period makes it a dominant source for Roman customs. 2

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circumstances deceit is brought into play, and what the utility of deceit in the narratives of this formative period indicates about Rome and Roman identity. The aim of this study is not to reconstruct attitudes or events of the monarchical period itself or to assess how accurately the surviving texts portray pre-Republican Rome, but rather to illuminate the discourse of the period in which these texts were written. The narratives examined in the most part date to the late Republic and early Imperial periods, not only because the greatest number of surviving treatments of the monarchical period cluster around this time.5 It is also at least arguable that anxieties about deceit were becoming particularly acute at this time as the scope and implications of both public and private duplicity were being transformed. These anxieties surface from time to time in more explicit parallels between past and present deceit. The contexts in which deception is deployed during the monarchical period make issues of its function and value even more central, since they are the fields where Roman distinctiveness was often most readily identified: warfare, government (the old aristocratic pairing of domi militiaeque),6 and the individual’s public performance (what we might understand as the projection of character or personal image).7

Lies at War: Deceit and Victory At first glance, deceit in war, established early in its pre-Republican history as one of many Roman martial qualities, seems the most clearcut. Its obvious utility and target suggest it as a positive and effective 5

Cicero, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Livy, Ovid, Virgil and Propertius all write of the period of Roman foundations in significant detail, as did Varro, who probably wrote more widely and influentially on the period than any contemporary writers, but whose works on the subject are now almost entirely lost to us: see Fox  –. The considerable problems involving the early sources on which these writers drew (particularly Livy) are beyond the scope of this chapter, which focuses instead on the literary discourse of this later period. 6 See, for example, Liv. . praef. : ad illa mihi pro se quisque acriter intendat animum, quae vita, qui mores fuerint, per quos viros quibusque artibus domi militiaeque et partum et auctum imperium sit. 7 The early, foundational role of deception in Roman socio-political performance is particularly striking given the importance Roman aristocratic discourse attaches to authenticity in these areas. As Erik Gunderson writes of Quintilian’s ideal orator: “This performance is not merely the donning of a mask or semblance, but a performance that ought to lend credence to the notion of a truth, of an essence underlying appearances.” (Gunderson  ).

tales of deceit in pre-republican rome



form of Roman duplicity. For example, Romulus is the first to use insidiae (ambush) and simulated flight (fugae quoque, quae simulanda erat) in Livy’s account of the conquest of Fidenae (..–).8 These are tactics which will be used again by the Romans, and against them, many times over the course of their history.9 While there is no explicit discussion of the moral value of these moves by Livy at this point, Romulus’ successful use of deceit against an explicit enemy would seem unproblematic and, indeed, even to form an aition of the Roman military ingenuity which is to serve them well in future campaigns. Deceiving the enemy in battle is good Roman generalship, as later military textbooks by authors such as Frontinus make clear.10 But lies are also utilised in the field of warfare in more complex ways by the early generals of Rome. Tullus Hostilius, third king of Rome, is often viewed as the purest mythic distillation of Roman martial qualities.11 While deficient in other areas, Tullus Hostilius provides an exemplum of the Roman warrior and war leader. He is depicted in a variety of sources as an exponent of deception in battle. But Tullus’ use of deception is different from the Romulean ambushes. Tullus deliberately deceives both the enemy and his own Roman troops. Threatened by the unexpected withdrawal of their

8

On references to insidiae as part of Roman military stratagem, see Wheeler  –. 9 The most famous use of feigned flight was by the Carthaginian army at Cannae. As described by Appian (App. Hann. ) not only did the Carthaginian centre feign withdrawal, but a contingent of Celtiberians also feigned desertion as a means of moving behind the Roman lines (Hann. ). Livy and Polybius, however, do not explicitly describe the Carthaginian retreat as pretence: Liv. .; Plb. .. But it is clear from their accounts that Hannibal, if not his troops, expected the retreat to happen. While Cannae, like the famed fleeing shot of the Parthians (see, for example, Verg. G. .; Hor. C. ..–; Prop. ..–; Ov. Ars .–; and the fallax Parthus of Sen., Oed. –), might suggest the characteristic deceitfulness of a foreign enemy (for further instances, see Fron. Str. .), the Romans could certainly boast of using feigned terror and flight as an effective military tactic themselves: see, for example, Caesar’s description of Labienus’ defeat of the Treveri (Gall. .). 10 See, for example, Fron. Str. . (De Occultandis Consiliis); . (De Insidiis); . (De Dissimulandis Adversis); . (De Fallendis His Qui Obsidebuntur); . (De Simulatione Regressus). 11 For a view of Tullus Hostilius (especially in Livy) as a reassertion of a “Romulean thesis” of “physical (i.e. military) strength . . . devoted to war” after the reign of Numa, see Penalla . Penalla’s argument corrects a simpler view of Tullus, and not Romulus, as the essential representative and founder of Roman martial force. This view derives largely from Dumézil, who draws on Florus’ description of Tullus: hic omnem militarem disciplinam artemque bellandi condidit (Flor. Epit. ..). See Dumézil  ; and Penalla   n. .



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Alban allies in the face of a combined Fidenate and Veientian force (itself a deceitful act), Tullus Hostilius addresses his troops loudly in the presence of the enemy with a blatant lie, claiming it was all part of his master plan, while at the same time literally hiding the actions of the Albans with a cavalry screen (Liv. ..). The Romans are encouraged by this, while the enemy is panicked and Rome is victorious. Deceit once more wins the day. Lying directly to the Roman citizen army might appear a problematic erosion of trust between leader and people. But this is clearly mitigated by the successful effects of the lie, which effectively saves the very army that is deceived. Subsequently Tullus admits the falsehood and his reasoning for it to his army. He reveals that the master plan he had claimed was in process, was actually imperii simulatio (..). The particular form of Tullus Hostilius’ deceit here is important for two reasons. Firstly, it becomes the paradigm of the so-called salubre mendacium’s use as a military tactic in a number of texts12 and parallel episodes occur in later books of Livy’s own history, such as Quinctius Servilius’ lie to his own troops that the Volscians were retreating in Book  (..). Secondly, and of more direct interest for my concerns in this chapter, it also provides a model for deception of the Roman populace by their leaders on the domestic front (as militiae, so domi); see below. One final, and potentially more problematic instance of deception in warfare which blends to some extent military and domestic affairs is raised by narratives of Sextus Tarquinius’ deception and capture of Gabii. Deceit in this case is on a large scale as Sextus effectively cons the Gabians into accepting him as an exile, and advisor and eventually a leader of their community.13 This episode is most interesting for the diametrically opposed valuation placed on Sextus’ actions by different Roman sources. Valerius Maximus groups it with Hostilius’ imperatoriae artis consilium (..) as the second of his exempla of praiseworthy shrewdness in war, far removed from all criticism (illa vero pars calliditatis egregia et ab omni reprehensione procul remota, .. praef.). Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ long narration of the episode also presents Sextus’ strategy in positive, or at the very least neutral, terms (#πτης κα4 φενακισμο , ..). Livy, on the other hand, begins his narration of Sextus’ stratagem with a particularly strong characterisation of it as fraus ac dolus of a specifically un-Roman nature: 12 For Tullus Hostilius’ paradigmatic salubre mendacium see: D.H. ..–; V. Max. ..; Fron. Str. ... See also Wheeler  . 13 Liv. ..–.; D.H. .–.

tales of deceit in pre-republican rome



Excepit deinde [eum] lentius spe bellum, quo Gabios, propinquam urbem, nequiquam vi adortus, cum obsidendi quoque urbem spes pulso a moenibus adempta esset, postremo minime arte Romana, fraude ac dolo, adgressus est. (Liv. ..)

What precisely is the problem here? There are several possibilities for Livy’s conception of Roman as opposed to un-Roman deceptive practices raised by his treatment of the Gabian episode. There may be a distinction here between use of trickery on the battlefield itself and the non-martial, social undermining which Sextus performs: a distinction between a tactical, operational deception and a broader strategic unscrupulousness which Valerius, in contrast, does not recognise. Elsewhere, Livy does seem to acknowledge that propagated falsehood has a broader role in warfare than impromptu battlefield tactics. Interestingly, it is the eventual breaker of fides, Mettius Fufetius who suggests that professed reasons for going to war, even when presented with the scrupulous self-justificatory fetial rituals the Romans initiate in the monarchical period, can be mere speciosa dicanda: Iniurias et non redditas res ex foedere quae repetitae sint, et ego regem nostrum Cluilium causam huiusce esse belli audisse videor, nec te dubito, Tulle, eadem prae te ferre; sed si vera potius quam dictu speciosa dicenda sunt, cupido imperii duos cognatos vicinosque populos ad arma stimulat. (Liv. ..)

Warfare as a whole can be an act of deception. But there is potentially more to the fraus ac dolus of Sextus than the fact he attacks social structures rather than armies in the field. Sextus actively misrepresents himself, his character and his motivation. But the representation of a false identity in itself is not necessarily negatively valued either, as Livy’s later account of the foundation of the Republic makes clear (see below). More plausibly, the true character of Sextus and his father may form part of Livy’s negative assessment of the Gabian stratagem. Bad character and positive actions are not irreconcilable in Livy’s history, or in Roman historical discourse generally.14 But, as a rapist and a tyrant respectively, Sextus’ and Superbus’ treatment of Gabii can easily be seen to reflect their treatment of Rome itself. 14 An interesting comparative case in Livy’s history is provided by Marcus Manlius Capitolinus who, like Sextus and his father, aspires to a tyrannical power, but who also saves the Capitol from Gallic attack. The Romans’ conflicted responses following Manlius’ execution suggest that the mixture of good and bad actions and characteristics, while certainly not unknown, could still be difficult for Roman public discourse to assimilate: see Liv. ..–.

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The other account to represent the capture of Gabii in a negative light is Ovid’s Fasti which describes it as an ars turpis: Ceperat hic alias, alias everterat urbes, et Gabios turpi fecerat arte suos.

(Ov. Fast. .–)

The episode stands as introduction to the section of the poem dealing with the Regifugium (February ), and Sextus’ massacre of the Gabian principes hangs as an implied threat over the Roman aristocracy that finally ousts the Tarquin regime in the passage which follows. The ars turpis of Gabii is part of the description of tyranny and the justification for the abolition of the monarchy. In fact, Sextus’ infiltration of Gabii also directly parallels his later infiltration of the domus of Collatinus and rape of Lucretia: as Livy’s Lucretia describes it, Sextus is the hostis pro hospite (..). Ovid makes the parallel between Gabii and Lucretia even more explicit, as Sextus in Fasti  uses Gabii as an exemplum to encourage his assault upon the matrona: Viderit! Audentes forsque deusque iuvat. Cepimus audendo Gabios quoque.

(Ov. Fast. .–)

In Livy’s account the threat to Rome in the episode at Gabii is heightened, as part of Sextus’ currying of favour with the Gabians involves leading raids on Roman land during which, supposedly, Roman lives and property are lost. This is a detail absent from Valerius’ and Ovid’s accounts, and although it is mentioned briefly by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (..) he specifies that Tarquin’s father had left the raided areas unguarded, or else placed in them citizens he particularly wanted to be killed. While Livy does not make much of Sextus’ raids on Roman land, it is certainly consistent with the general tendency of the Tarquins, both in Livy’s account and elsewhere, to play fast and loose with the welfare of Roman citizens in pursuit of their own ends. Sextus’ insidious playacting is directed against an enemy in the context of a declared war for the explicit benefit of Rome, or, as Valerius puts it, to add to Roman imperium (Romano imperio adiceret, ..). It is thus recoverable as an exemplum of positive and productive Roman deceit. But it is also the act of a father / son team whose characters are established, by Livy’s text and traditionally, as detrimental overall to Rome. Livy assimilates the Gabian episode to that characterisation, privileging underlying character as a determinant in the assessment of deception’s moral value: whether it is positive consilium or negative fraus. This is a determining factor which will come to the fore again at the final moment of the monarchy’s fall.

tales of deceit in pre-republican rome



Lies at Home: Techniques of Government Deceiving the Sabines: Romulus’ Stratagem The utility of deceit in war is echoed by its use as a tool of internal Roman social governance in accounts of the pre-Republican period. In fact, a transitional case (part external hostility and part domestic social governance) is provided in accounts of the rape of the Sabine women. The rape is described in several accounts as a de facto military operation. The element of active deceit on Romulus’ part is clear, although it can be variously emphasised. Livy, Dionysius and Plutarch all put emphasis on Romulus’ deceptive luring of visitors to Rome by the proclamation of games to be held at the site of the Circus Maximus. In Livy’s account, Romulus actively hides his true feelings (Romulus aegritudinem animi dissimulans, ..) and special effort is made in the preparations of the ludi to create great anticipation among the populations of neighbouring towns, luring them to the event as the army of Fidenae are lured into Romulus’ insidiae in the later campaign: Cui tempus locumque aptum ut daret Romulus aegritudinem animi dissimulans ludos ex industria parat Neptuno equestri sollemnes; Consualia vocat. Indici deinde finitimis spectaculum iubet; quantoque apparatu tum sciebant aut poterant, concelebrant ut rem claram exspectatamque facerent. (Liv. ..–)

Various details of the context and conduct of the rape itself further parallel deception on the battlefield. The deity of the festival is variously represented as Neptune, in his aspect as deity of horses, and Consus, the eponymous deity of the Consualia, on which festive day the rape is said to have taken place. Plutarch conflates the two, suggesting as one alternative that they may be names of the same deity (Plu. Rom. .). Although modern scholars have disagreed, Plutarch records a tradition that Consus was the god of consilium.15 Consilium in itself has both a domestic / political and a military function, and can be used of deception, as in Valerius Maximus’ characterisation of Hostilius’ battlefield lies as

15 The association of Consus with Neptune / Poseidon is suggested by Liv. .. and reported, although not directly advocated, by D.H. ... For the scholarly acceptance of this identification, and the etymological grounds for doing so, see Noonan . For Consus as a deity of consilium, see also Festus (deus consilii: Festus p.  [Lindsay]) and D.H. .., who cites a Nτερον . . . λ'γον that, while the festival honours Poseidon / Neptune, the altar was erected later to honour an unnameable deity “of hidden counsels” (βουλευμτων κρυφων). This interpretation is discussed by Noonan  –, who views



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imperatoriae artis consilium. Plutarch underlines the sense of specifically hidden consilium by detailing the ritual involved at the Consualia: the uncovering of an altar to Consus / Neptune which is hidden at all other times and revealed only at the ludi: Διεδ'!η λ'γος /π’ αKτο πρ"τον 5ς !εο τινος #νευρκοι βωμ&ν /π& γς κεκρυμμνον. \ν'μαζον δ: τ&ν !ε&ν Κ"νσον, ε9τε βουλα3ον ]ντα (κωνσλιον γAρ @τι ν ν τ& συμβο$λιον καλο σι, κα4 το(ς /πτους κνσουλας, ο^ον προβο$λους), ε9!’ _ππιον Ποσειδ". Κα4 γAρ 7 βωμ&ς ν τD" μεζονι τ"ν πποδρ'μων στν, #φανς τ&ν 8λλον χρ'νον, ν δ: το3ς ππικο3ς #γ"σιν #νακαλυπτ'μενος. ο δ: κα4 Lλως φασ4 το

βουλε$ματος #πορρτου κα4 #φανο ς ]ντος /π'γειον οKκ #λ'γως τD" !εD" βωμ&ν γενσ!αι κεκρυμμνον. (Plu. Rom. .–)

One interpretation of this altar, which Plutarch’s account implies was built precisely to facilitate Romulus’ plan, is that it reflects secret and hidden consilium. The context of the Consualia, then, is appropriate to the Sabine rape’s nature as both a military / political consilium for the benefit of Rome, and as a deception hidden from the duped visitors. Plutarch in fact goes further, aligning the imagery of the festival with the signal Romulus gives to start the rape, which itself involves an uncovering and re-covering as he takes off, then puts back on his cloak (.). Although usually not as detailed as this, the signa which initiates the rape is almost always a prominent feature of narratives of the episode and is itself suggestive of military command. Even Ovid’s brief description of the rape in Ars Amatoria , which exploits the common elegiac motif of militia amoris, foregrounds the Romulean signa (.).16 Of course, the rape does eventually lead to literal war, the outcome of which brings an even greater augmentation of the Roman populace than Romulus had planned. The conflation of Romulus’ deceitful ambush of the Sabine women with a military operation demonstrates the manner in which lies and deceit in a non-military context can be validated by the same criteria which determine their morally positive use in the military sphere. The rape could be represented as an infringement of the expected obligations of hospitality, a breaking of good-faith or fides, and even fraus in the legal

the ancient association of the Consualia with Romulus’ consilium in tricking the Sabines as “naïve”, and instead associates the festival’s name with “Romulus’ reformed censualia” consequent upon the Sabines joining the Roman citizenry. 16 On Ovid’s treatment of the rape, see Myerowitz  –. On militia amoris in elegy generally, see Murgatroyd .

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sense, as the Sabine men certainly seem to view it in all accounts.17 But, from the Roman point of view, the criteria of positive and productive deceit are there. The deception is wrought against a non-Roman target, one which, by their rejection of marriage alliance with Rome, has effectively put itself in a state of hostility with the Romans.18 Most importantly, the deceit is for the good of Rome as all accounts emphasize. The addition of the Sabine women quite simply allows Rome to continue, as well as introducing and providing an aetiology for the virtues of the Roman matrona through the Sabine women’s subsequent behaviour.19 The fact that an extraordinary intervention is required to resolve the Sabine / Roman conflict which follows may reflect the problematic nature of Romulus’ actions, and Roman texts can express some mild disquiet about his methods: Cicero’s Scipio in the second book of the Republic describes the rape as a novum . . . et subagreste consilium (Cic. Rep. .). But its positive outcomes for Rome, and its importance as an act of good government are not in doubt: as Cicero’s Scipio puts it, it is ad firmandam novam civitatem. In this case, the strength and survival of Rome is dependent on deceit.

Lying to the People: Proculus Julius and Numa Pompilius While still maintaining some of the same justification, other traditions of the pre-Republican period depict the utilisation of lies and deceit as tools of internal governance in ways which diverge from the clear analogy with military tactics we see in the case of the rape of the Sabine women. A case with particular contemporary resonance in first century texts is the deification of Romulus. Some accounts, including Livy’s and Cicero’s explicitly describe the deification of Romulus as a deliberate deceit designed

17 Fraus is used in Roman legal discourse to refer to both the deceit itself and the damage it does to fides (the breach of faith). It has predominantly negative connotations suggesting intent to harm and potentially eliciting a penalty (poena): see Ulp. Dig. ... In this it differs from a term such as dolus which must be qualified (dolus malus) in order to convey harmful intent: see Wheeler  –. 18 For this rejection see Liv. .. (the rejection is delivered in insulting terms), and D.H. .. (the rejection is simply because the Romans have not yet established themselves by wealth or deeds). Cicero and Plutarch omit explicit reference to a formal offer of marriage before the rape. 19 On the rape of the Sabine women as an aetiology for Roman marriage and female virtues see Miles  –, –, –; and Vandiver .

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to avoid conflict between the Senatorial class and the rest of the people of Rome who suspect Romulus’ otherwise mysterious disappearance is the result of assassination by the Senators. Scipio Africanus in Book  of Cicero’s Republic suppresses or passes over several other deceitful or problematic elements of pre-Republican tradition. Even in the account of Romulus’ deification, there is no out-right statement that the witness of the deified Romulus’ epiphany, a farmer called Proculus Julius, lied. But the implication is clearly that the Senators devised and initiated Proculus’ statement as a functional fabrication: Sed profecto tanta fuit in eo vis ingenii atque virtutis, ut id de Romulo Proculo Iulio homini agresti crederetur, quod multis iam ante saeclis nullo alio de mortali homines credidissent; qui impulsu patrum, quo illi a se invidiam interitus Romuli pellerent, in contione dixisse fertur, a se visum esse in eo colle Romulum qui nunc Quirinalis vocatur; eum sibi mandasse ut populum rogaret, ut sibi eo in colle delubrum fieret; se deum esse et Quirinum vocari. (Cic. Rep. .)

Livy is more explicit, and assigns the initial idea and motivation for the tale of epiphany to Proculus Julius personally, following a version also found in Plutarch that Proculus was not a farmer but a patrician himself (Plu. Rom. .).20 The tale of the epiphany which results in final acceptance of Romulus’ deification is described as a consilium . . . unius hominis appropriate to a “weighty authority in all matters, however great,” such as Proculus: Fuisse credo tum quoque aliquos qui discerptum regem patrum manibus taciti arguerent; manavit enim haec quoque sed perobscura fama; illam alteram admiratio viri et pavor praesens nobilitavit. Et consilio etiam unius hominis addita rei dicitur fides. Namque Proculus Iulius, sollicita civitate desiderio regis et infensa patribus, gravis, ut traditur, quamuis magnae rei auctor in contionem prodit. (Liv. ..–)

This lie is not directed towards an enemy community but towards those non-Senatorial sections of the Roman citizen body (plebem exercitumque) who suspect and may act against the Senators: Mirum quantum illi viro nuntianti haec fides fuerit, quamque desiderium Romuli apud plebem exercitumque facta fide immortalitatis lenitum sit. (Liv. ..)

20 Plutarch also lists Proculus as one of the two ambassadors sent to offer Numa the kingship. Proculus represented the “people of Romulus” and a certain Velesus represented “the people of Tatius” (Plu. Num. .–).

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The deceit of the Roman people by their leaders, or one of their leaders, for reasons which suggest at least some vested interest might seem a problematic exemplum of the utility of lies. In Livy’s case, the contemporary parallel of the deification of Julius Caesar adds a further dimension to this.21 The name of Proculus Julius was established in the tradition before the events of  bce, although perhaps not long before.22 But Livy is the earliest surviving source to promote him from farmer to patrician. Regardless, the engineering of popular acceptance of a leader’s deification by a vested interest group at a moment when civil dissension is threatened could very easily suggest Caesarian apotheosis and imply a common basis of deceit.23 But there are several aspects to the utility of deceit here which establish its characteristically Roman credentials. Firstly, as with the other cases discussed, the aim can be construed just not as the continued entrenchment of senatorial power (which from an aristocratic point of view, of course, might be a moral positive in itself), but the maintenance of concordia among the Roman orders. Put simply, deceit in this case is for the good of Rome. Secondly, as with Hostilius’ salubre mendacium to his troops in battle, there is a hierarchy of deception at work which facilitates and legitimises the use of lies. At the top of the hierarchy stand the leaders of Rome, including kings and senators. Beneath them the plebs and army. Beneath those are nonRoman peoples generally; and at the very bottom the active enemies of Rome. While deceit by those above to those below, if directed for the benefit of the Roman community, can be morally positive and an element of considered consilium, it is almost inconceivable that deceit of those above by those below could be represented positively.24 While the relation between Romans and non-Romans is most frequently expressed in the 21 Ogilvie’s contention that ‘[a]fter  bc the accounts of the death of Romulus are modelled on the murder of Caesar’ is plausible: Ogilvie  . While Romulus does not disappear on the Ides of March, Plutarch does date the event to “the Nones of July, as they now call Quintilis” (Plu. Rom. .). 22 The name is first found in Cic. Rep. . and Leg. ., texts begun around  bce. Ogilvie speculates that the story of Proculus Julius “was certainly older than the heyday of the gens Julia in the first century, for it is found in Cicero . . . but seems to have been a Julian tale invented to square the Alban origin of the Julii . . . with a proper feeling that a member of the family must have played a prominent part in the birth of Rome.” Ogilvie  –. 23 Suetonius attributes the deification of Caesar non ore modo decernentium, sed et persuasione volgi (Jul. ); Plutarch specifically states that Caesar’s apotheosis was an attempt to keep the peace (Caes. ); see also D.C. .. 24 The exception is Brutus the Liberator, although he too is eventually revealed as a leader of Rome. See below.

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military sphere, class difference is also encoded within the representation of the usefulness of deceit in Roman internal affairs. Thirdly, both Livy and Cicero make it clear that while the words of Proculus may well be a lie, they, and the effect they have, reflect a truth. Already in his preface, Livy has suggested that it is right for the founder of Rome to be considered the son of Mars, as this is a direct reflection of the reality of Roman martial superiority (. praef. ). Later, the readiness of the people to believe that Romulus has become a god is in part an expression of their admiration and awe for him as a man (admiratio viri et pavor praesens, ..). For Cicero’s Scipio, too, belief in the deification of Romulus is a direct result of the man’s eximia virtutis gloria (Cic. Rep. .) and vis ingenii atque virtutis (.): Ac Romulus cum septem et triginta regnavisset annos, et haec egregia duo firmamenta rei publicae peperisset, auspicia et senatum, tantum est consecutus, ut cum subito sole obscurato non conparuisset, deorum in numero conlocatus putaretur; quam opinionem nemo umquam mortalis adsequi potuit sine eximia virtutis gloria. (Cic. Rep. .)

While this is not the literal truth the people of Rome seem to require and take comfort in, it asserts a form of truth which provides some justification for the senatorial lie. This truth is socially relative. Those of the lower Roman classes, or non-Romans, invest truth in literal fact extrapolated directly from appearance, whether experienced or reported. The leaders of Rome, like the aristocratic readers of Livy, see truth as a reflection of broader, socio-political power-relations and achievements. The relationship of deceit to practical governance is further emphasised by Numa’s lie. The religious innovations of the second king of Rome are often represented as a form of social engineering. They are introduced to prevent a moral deterioration of the Roman people in time of peace (ne luxuriarent otio animi, as Livy puts it at ..). But in order to achieve this a lie is necessary. In this version, Numa invents a divine authority, the goddess Egeria, who, he claims, directs his religious inventions. Dionysius of Halicarnassus records a potentially broader motivation for the lie: to ensure acceptance of all the laws that Numa might pass as divinely inspired. Dionysius himself chooses not to comment on the reliability or otherwise of this version of Numa’s relationship with Egeria; but Livy is explicit that Numa pretends the relationship (simulat, ..), deliberately creating a commentum miraculi to ensure deep acceptance of the institutions and rites he introduces:25 25

See Penwill  , –, who also discusses the evidence that neither Ennius or

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. . . ne luxuriarent otio animi quos metus hostium disciplinaque militaris continuerat, omnium primum, rem ad multitudinem imperitam et illis saeculis rudem efficacissimam, deorum metum iniciendum ratus est. Qui cum descendere ad animos sine aliquo commento miraculi non posset, simulat sibi cum dea Egeria congressus nocturnos esse; eius se monitu quae acceptissima dis essent sacra instituere, sacerdotes suos cuique deorum praeficere. (Liv. ..–)

Plutarch describes this δρμα (as he terms it), and other tricks employed by Numa, as directly modelled on Pythagorean philosophy and practice in order to entrench his doctrines more fully (Plu. Num. .–). While the Pythagorean connection is generally dismissed by Roman texts,26 the utility of deceit is the same in both versions. Numa is a figure who is generally morally scrupulous, as traditions about his efforts to ensure ratification of his election as king demonstrate.27 Some aspects of his mythography are suggestive of the trickster-hero, most notably his exchange with Jupiter concerning onions, hair and sprouts detailed by Plutarch and Ovid.28 In this episode Numa arguably demonstrates the sort of metis most closely associated in Greco-Roman mythology with Odysseus.29 By word-play, Numa obstructs Jupiter’s attempt to extract human sacrifice from Rome. But in this encounter Numa is not being deceitful. What’s more, finishing Jupiter’s sentences for him, while obviously a bold stratagem, involves an entirely different relationship (mortal and god) and purpose (diverting a direct threat to Roman life) from Numa’s fabrication of Egeria. The difference is just as clear in Numa’s consequent decision to fabricate multiple copies of the ancile to be given to Rome by Jupiter as a pignus imperii (Ov. Fast. ., –).30 This certainly Varro represented Egeria as a deliberate fabrication (Enn. Ann. fr.  [Skutsch]; Varro, Antiquitates Rerum Divinarum  fr. IV [Carduans] = Aug. Civ. .). 26 This connection is comprehensively attacked by Cicero’s Scipio: Rep. .–. Scipio, as a descendent of Pythagoras through the Aemilii (see Zetzel  ), is an especially effective critic of the link. See also Cic. de Orat. . and Tusc. .; Liv. ..–; and D.H. .. On the possible origins and development of the tradition, see Gabba  –; and Gruen a –. 27 Cic. Rep. . (ratification by law); Liv. ..– (ratification by augury); D.H. .., and Plu. Num. .– (ratification by both assembly vote and augury). 28 Plu. Num. .–; Ov. Fast. .– (cf. also D.H. ..). 29 Another story recounted by Plutarch describes Numa catching and restraining the shape-shifting Picus and Faunus in direct reminiscence of Menelaus’ restraint of Proteus: Plu. Num. .; compare Hom. Od. .– (also used as a model for the adventures of Virgil’s shepherds [Ecl. .–] and Aristaeus [G. .–]). Ovid combines the encounters with Picus, Faunus and Jupiter by depicting Picus and Faunus as the sources of the knowledge that draws Jupiter down to earth: Ov. Fast. .–. 30 See also D.H. ..; and Plu. Num. .–.

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does involve deception. But in this case it is an attempt to deceive potential enemies (supposedly non-Romans) who might wish to deprive Rome of its god-given guarantee of empire. While furthering Numa’s characterisation as a trickster, the lie about Egeria involves an audience and context distinctly different from the encounter with Jupiter and the multiplication of the ancilia. It is presented as a deliberate, pre-meditated act of government and social control similar to other public deceptions during the monarchical period. It is employed for the benefit of Rome: its moral improvement and strengthening, as both Livy and Plutarch claim, albeit in different ways. But it is a lie directed by a leader towards his people. In fact, the relationship between deceiver and deceived in this case is even more paternalistic than other examples, since Numa acts in part because of a perceived crudeness among the Roman people: in Livy’s words, Numa chooses his particular technique because the Romans are a multitudo imperita et rudis (..). So, as well as a clear social hierarchy between ruler and ruled, there is a suggested hierarchy of cultural and moral sophistication which justifies the deceptive technique. As with the deification of Romulus, there may also be an underlying truth facilitated by the lie, although more implicit in this case. The innovations of Numa are correct and appropriate ways of honouring the gods and administering Roman civic religion.31 All these elements combine to legitimise an effective and necessary deception.

Lying for Power: Servius Tullius This is not to say that all lies by leaders to their people are unproblematic acts of good governance in the narratives of pre-Republican Rome. One of the more ambiguous is the lie which ensures the ascension of Servius Tullius. The lie is a response to the assassination of Tarquinius Priscus at a moment when the line of succession is unclear and potentially in dispute. In this context, the death of Tarquin is temporarily concealed. Beneath the lie that the king is only injured and has deputised Servius to act in his stead, Servius fulfils the functions of king:

31 But see Penwill  , who suggests the possibility that Livy’s Numa does not even believe that his religious innovations are based in truth.

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Itaque per aliquot dies cum iam exspirasset Tarquinius celata morte per speciem alienae fungendae vicis suas opes firmavit; tum demum palam factum est comploratione in regia orta. Servius praesidio firmo munitus, primus iniussu populi, voluntate patrum regnavit. (Liv. ..)

This lie is problematic in a number of regards. Firstly, some versions give the initiative for the falsehood to Tanaquil, the wife of Tarquinius Priscus. Livy even gives details of the queen’s play-acting and speech to the Roman crowd in order to dupe them about the king’s health, as well as her words to Servius directing his course of action (Liv. ..–).32 There are two ways of interpreting this. Giving the initiative to Tanaquil might work to excuse Servius himself of the deception. But, equally, the passing of initiative to a woman, especially in public matters, cannot help but place Servius in an invidious, passive position in terms of Roman gender roles.33 Secondly, the lie is problematic because its aim is personal power. Deception engineered by a woman in the pursuit of personal power foreshadows the rise of the tyrant Tarquinius Superbus, as well as arguably providing a model for any number of scheming imperial women in later texts by Suetonius and others.34 Cicero attempts to recover Servius’ deception by emphasising that, while his ascension may have been constitutionally suspect it was still supported by the consent of the people:

32

Florus similarly describes Tanaquil as the cause of the deception and Servius’ accession: ergo inter Tarquinii mortem adnitente regina substitutus in locum regis quasi in tempus, regnum dolo partum sic egit industrie, ut iure adeptus videretur (Flor. Epit. ..). See also D.H. .–, who also gives Tanaquil a lengthy speech. 33 For the possibility of “two antithetical interpretations”, see Feldherr  –. Feldherr also suggests Tanaquil may be a necessary mediator between public and private: Feldherr  . 34 For similarities between Tanaquil and later depictions of imperial women such as Livia (Tac. Ann. .; D.C. ..) and Agrippina (Tac. Ann. .–; Suet. Cl. ; and Aur. Vict. Caes. ., where the actions of Agrippina are directly compared with those of Tanaquil), see Charlesworth , who denies any direct modelling on Tanaquil; Ogilvie  –, who argues that Tacitus at least is directly modelling his Livia on Tanaquil; and Bauman , who argues that the link between Livia and Tanaquil “goes in the opposite direction,” with Livy basing the queen’s depiction on the “genuine facts of Livia’s concealment” (Bauman  ). Bauman also demonstrates that concealment of a ruler’s death can be found “in fairly plentiful supply in the Hellenistic tradition”: Bauman  . For further discussion of the depiction of imperial women in Suetonius, and the ways in which these portraits reflect contemporary concerns as well as the biases inherent in their sources, see the contribution of K.O. Chong-Gossard in this volume.

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parshia lee-stecum sed cum Tarquinius insidiis Anci filiorum interisset, Serviusque ut ante dixi regnare coepisset, non iussu sed voluntate atque concessu civium, quod cum Tarquinius ex vulnere aeger fuisse et vivere falso diceretur . . . (Cic. Rep. .)

But for Livy it is only successful completion of war with Veii which establishes Servius as haud dubius rex in the opinions of both plebs and patres: In eo bello et virtus et fortuna enituit Tulli; fusoque ingenti hostium exercitu haud dubius rex, seu patrum seu plebis animos periclitaretur, Romam rediit. (Liv. ..)

Triumph in war confers a legitimacy which over-rides the dubious strategy of the lie. Servius is certainly represented as making positive contributions to Rome: in particular the maximum opus of the Roman class structure and census.35 The lie about Tarquin’s assassination effectively gives Servius the time to establish his credentials as a good monarch. But the ramifications of deception may not be so easily resolved in this case. The ambiguities about the deceptive nature of his ascension, which interestingly mirror ambiguities in the sources about his possible slave status,36 provide a dubious exemplum for less beneficial rulers in the future.37 While none of the accounts represent Servius’ eventual murder and replacement by Tarquinius Superbus as a direct punishment for his own ascent to the throne, it is appropriate that he should suffer from a coup initiated and engineered by a ruthless woman (in this case Tarquin’s wife, Tullia) just as he had benefited from the same at the start of his reign.38

Lying in Person: Brutus There is one other form of lie prominent in narratives of the preRepublican period. It provides an exemplum for the utility of deceit and its moral valuation which aligns public and private personae, suggests 35 For Servius’ contribution to the Roman constitution, people and city, see Cic. Rep. .–; Liv. ..–.; and D.H. .–. 36 On Servius’ slave origins (obviously related to his name), see Cic. Rep. ..; D.H. ..–; Liv. ... See also Ogilvie  –. 37 Avoiding the possibility of being used as a negative exemplum, even in spite of one’s personal innocence, is an explicit concern in Livy’s first book as Lucretia’s rationale for suicide makes clear: nec ulla deinde impudica Lucretiae exemplo vivet (Liv. ..). 38 Feldherr  .

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philosophical justifications for deception, and resonates with issues of personal integrity relevant among the Roman aristocracy of the first centuries bce and ce. This is the false persona of Brutus the Liberator. Brutus’ public persona is a lie. It is a deceptive identity reflected in his very name. He pretends to be stupid as a strategy of self-preservation: as Ovid phrases it in the Fasti, stulti sapiens imitator (Fast. .). As both Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus explain in detail, Brutus assumes the mask of stupidity when his brother and other Roman aristocrats (including in Dionysius’ version his father) are executed by Tarquinius Superbus in order to eliminate potential rivals. Dionysius specifically states that Brutus’ elder brother was killed because his true spirit was evident (φρ'νημα διαφανοντα, ..) and suggested that he might avenge his father. Under a tyrant, display of spirit and initiative can have fatal consequences, so in response Brutus hides his true character. Livy describes this in terms of almost putting on a costume (simulationem induerat, ..), taking a character name (the cognomen, Brutus) and performing a part (imitationem stultitiae, ..) far different in appearance from his true ingenium: comes iis additus L. Iunius Brutus, Tarquinia, sorore regis, natus, iuvenis longe alius ingenii quam cuius simulationem induerat. Is cum primores civitatis, in quibus fratrem suum, ab auunculo interfectum audisset, neque in animo suo quicquam regi timendum neque in fortuna concupiscendum relinquere statuit contemptuque tutus esse ubi in iure parum praesidii esset. Ergo ex industria factus ad imitationem stultitiae, cum se suaque praedae esse regi sineret, Bruti quoque haud abnuit cognomen ut sub eius obtentu cognominis liberator ille populi Romani animus latens opperiretur tempora sua. (Liv. ..–)

The justification for the deceit in this case is survival when the legal protections due to a true and good character have been removed: contemptuque tutus esse ubi in iure parum praesidii esset (..). Deceit in the cause of self-preservation against illegal threats had been linked with the use of deception against enemies of one’s community and represented as justifiable by Stoic thought from at least the third century bce.39 Although Roman legal writers were debating what exactly might or might not constitute a dolus bonus (or good deceit) well into the first century ce and beyond, Livy’s choice of words here seems to be alluding 39 See Quint. Inst. ..–, who concludes his brief summary of Stoic views on praiseworthy lying with the words: ut hoc, quod alias in servis quoque reprehendendum est, sit alias in ipso sapiente laudandum. See also Stob. ., . These views are usually attributed to Chrysippus (third century bce).

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to these notions of the justifiable pretence.40 When Dionysius’ Brutus finally reveals his true nature after the suicide of Lucretia, he feels it necessary to explain why he has behaved deceptively, and Lucretius, Collatinus and the others present are all impressed by Brutus’ wisdom (D.H. ..). Livy at this point in his narrative simply states that the apparent change in Brutus’ ingenium was a miraculum (Liv. ..). It is important, too, that Brutus’ pretence is only temporary. His true character, that of liberator, is simply waiting for the right time to reassert itself: sub eius obtentu cognominis liberator ille populi Romani animus latens opperiretur tempora sua (..). Dionysius in fact gives Brutus a brief, but florid, little speech at the moment that he finally reveals his true character and takes the lead in the rebellion against Tarquin. In this speech he calls upon Zeus and all the gods to witness that the time he has been waiting for, and for which he has been falsifying his character for so long, has finally come: ` Ζε κα4 !εο4 πντες, Lσοι τ&ν #ν!ρπινον πισκοπε3τε βον, Zρ γ’ 7 καιρ&ς κε3νος bκει ν ν, cν γ0 περιμνων τα$την το βου τν προσποησιν φ$λαττον; Zρα ππρωται UΡωμαοις /π’ μο κα4 δι’ μ: (D.H. ..) τς #φορτου τυραννδος #παλλαγναι;

Brutus does not simply deceive for the sake of his own survival; he deceives until a time when his true qualities can be put to use for the good of the community. While Dionysius attributes the conscious purpose of liberation to Brutus’ deceit, and Livy presents it only as an outcome, probably not planned, the fact that Brutus’ deceit is for the good of Rome is not in dispute. The utility of deceit in this case is clear. Brutus’ pretence stands in direct contrast to Sextus at Gabii. Whereas Sextus hides an essentially bad character beneath a false show of allegiance and support, Brutus hides an essentially positive character beneath a dull and weak appearance. This is symbolised by the golden rod encased in cornel wood he dedicates at Delphi (Liv. ..). As with Livy’s critical assessment of the episode at Gabii, it may not be the deceit itself which determines its moral value, nor even simply its consequences (although they are important), but the underlying character of the deceiver. This criterion comes to the fore again with another deception employed by Livy’s Brutus. Accompanying the sons of Tarquin to

40 See Ulpian’s reference to discussions of the term by Servius Sulpicius Rufus (who died in  bce) and Marcus Antistius Labeo (who died in  ce): Ulp. Dig. ..–, briefly discussed by Wheeler  –.

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Delphi, Brutus overhears the oracle’s answer to their question of who will be the next ruler in Rome. The answer is that he who will first kiss his mother will next hold imperium summum Romae (..). Only Brutus, of the listeners, interprets the oracle correctly and kisses the earth, mother of all things. But to do so he must pretend that he has fallen, facefirst, on the ground: Ex infimo specu vocem redditam ferunt: imperium summum Romae habebit qui vestrum primus, o iuvenes, osculum matri tulerit . . . Brutus alio ratus spectare Pythicam vocem, velut si prolapsus cecidisset, terram osculo contigit, scilicet quod ea communis mater omnium mortalium esset. (Liv. .., )

The play-acting in this case is supposedly to hide his correct interpretation of the oracle from Tarquin’s sons, Arruns and Titus. But the motivation for the action which necessitates the deceit is more ambiguous. It is not specified that Brutus understands summum imperium Romae to mean anything but kingship, as Arruns and Titus clearly do, or that he has anything like the consular role he eventually assumes in mind at this stage. The pretence, therefore, might hide his own bid for personal power, a potentially less reputable purpose for deceit than the liberation of the Roman community. But, as possibly with the case of the lie which smooths Servius Tullius’ rise to power, the true character of the deceiver and the service he will do to Rome may legitimise even this act. Mythological and historiographical considerations may also encourage emphasis on Brutus’ masquerade and other examples of pre-Republican deceit. The narrative of Brutus, for example, redeploys several components of the Romulean narrative. Brutus rouses the people to oust an illegitimate king, just as Romulus leads the Albans to oust Amulius.41 A rape is the catalyst for Brutus’ ‘re-birth’ as his true self, just as Romulus’ birth is the result of a rape. Brutus’ pretence allows him eventually to reassume his true identity, just as Romulus ultimately assumes his true identity as prince of Alba. In both cases unpredictable events precipitate the revelation. There may even be a hint of the simple, rustic life of Romulus (pre-revelation) in the cornel wood that encases the gold rod of Brutus’ Delphic dedication. Brutus assumes a mask of simplicitas, just as Romulus lives a life of simplicitas before his and Remus’ recognition. While Brutus chooses his mask and Romulus, initially, is ignorant of the truth, in both

41 Miles  : “Brutus followed in Romulus’ footsteps when he attained authority by leading an insurrection against a tyrannical usurper of the kingship.”

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cases the masquerade is forced upon them due to a tyrant’s direct threat upon their lives. In furthering the narrative parallels with Romulus, Brutus’ deception works to suggest a parallel role and outcome. As Romulus established Rome, so Brutus establishes the Republic. Brutus, replaying the role of Romulus, acts as a founder (conditor).42 In both cases, deceit is strategically vital to the success of the founder and, consequently, his foundation. The end of Brutus’ deception at the moment the Republic is founded might also suggest that such lies are a thing of the monarchical past. Livy’s and Cicero’s accounts of some pre-Republican lies provide historiographical support for this interpretation. Cicero describes Romulus’ deception of the Sabines as novum quoddam et subagreste consilium (Rep. .). Likewise, Livy explains Numa’s recourse to deception as motivated by the Roman people’s lack of sophistication at that time (rem ad multitudinem imperitam et illis saeculis rudem efficacissimam, Liv. ..). Although Cicero’s focus is on the character of the deceiver (Romulus) and Livy’s is on the character of the deceived (the Roman people), deceit in both cases demonstrates the primitiveness of an earlier age. A propensity for lies, or a susceptibility to (even need for) lies, forms part of a historiographical model for distinguishing the unsophisticated, distant past from the more sophisticated present.43 However, the aetiological significance of the period prevents a simple interpretation of deception as an archaic, out-dated Roman trait. More specifically, deception of the Roman people by their leaders is inherent in some cornerstones of the mores maiorum: the establishment of marriage and family, the acceptance of formal state religion, the rise to power of the architect of the census, the foundation of the republican system of government and republican libertas. The characterisation of the key founders of Roman society as liars has immediate significance for Roman self-identity in any period. As Gary Miles has argued:

42 Brutus is represented not as re-founder of Rome but as “founder of Roman libertas” (conditor Romanae libertatis) at Liv. .. where Livy is paraphrasing a speech of Lucius Papirius Cursor. For Brutus in the context of other conditores in Livy’s early history, including Romulus, Numa and Servius Tullius, see Miles  –. Augustus is firmly set within this sequence of conditores by Livy, who refers to the princeps as conditor explicitly at ..: see Miles  –. Given the dependence of the achievements of the original conditores on deception, this might suggest a continuing role for deceit in the contemporary, Augustan (re-)foundation. 43 See Fox  –, on the primitiveness of Numa’s people.

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Association with founders sets certain institutions apart from the rest as central to Roman identity and as sources of vital continuity between past and present. They can be compromised only at risk to the very survival of the Roman people; they call attention to the important role of the individual, and they help to emphasize the self-made character of the Roman people.44

In depictions of pre-Republican Rome, the suggestion of historical development and difference goes hand in hand with a similarity of social, political and religious context that asserts the continuing legacy, and utility, of deceit.45 The lies of the Roman past are the sine quibus non of the Roman present.

Conclusion: Lies of their Forefathers The narratives of the pre-Republican period present deceit as quintessentially Roman. Although differently treated and differently emphasised by different texts, numerous exempla from this formative period demonstrate that lies can be positive, effective and even necessary tools of warfare, government and self-preservation. They suggest that lies which act for the good of Rome, concord with established social hierarchies, and are committed by men of good character are legitimate and admirable acts of consilium and ingenium. It follows that any debate about the appropriateness and moral value of deceit in public life or in personal behaviour involves an assessment of aims, status and character rather than of any absolute judgement of the right or wrong of deception in itself. The lies of their ancestors provided Romans with a rich series of paradigms for the utility of deceit and a potent discourse for examining its moral and socio-political ramifications.

44

Miles  . Fox describes Livy’s representation of the monarchical period as “on one hand, a picture of a society that contains features recognizable from later history . . . On the other hand, he carefully places this society within a historical context, which even though not described in detail, is sufficiently apprehensible for these social structures to appear as an organic part of a wider picture of human development.” Fox  . 45

IS THERE AN ANTIDOTE TO CAESAR? THE DESPOT AS VENENUM AND VENEFICUS

Cristina Calhoon Venena (poisons) loom large in the literary portrayals of Caligula and Nero, whom the main sources (Tacitus, Suetonius and Dio Cassius) depict as poisoners on an unprecedented scale. This discussion will examine the interactions of venena and despotism to illustrate the ways in which the former signify despotism’s fundamentally deceptive and subversive nature. Caligula and Nero’s brand of autocracy stood in sharp contrast to that of their predecessor Tiberius, and its characteristics are informed by the symbolic polyvalence of venenum, a vast and varied category, which subsumed not only deadly drugs and remedies, but also instruments of seduction, deception and magic, whose shared end was change and transformation. For the Romans change (res novae) was traditionally fraught with apprehension and dangers, viewed as the fruit of a negative transformation of private and public morals that led to political tyranny. Hence historians’ and biographers’ voyeuristic interest in the personal lives of the ruling class, and of the Julio-Claudians in particular. As the first Roman dynasty, their reign exemplified the benefits and the pitfalls of dynastic rule, and their private family struggles for supremacy emblematized this rule’s inherent dangers: the Julio-Claudians’ individual peculiarities and private behavior therefore came to illustrate imperial virtues or tyrannical vices uniquely capable of determining the welfare and continuity of the empire. The affinity between Caligula and Nero, often stressed by our main historical sources, went well beyond their family relation as uncle and nephew.1 Both had overcome the precariousness of their early years by mastering the art of dissembling and deception:2 wearing a mask— 1 Suet. Ner. . (Seneca dreamt he was tutoring Caligula); . (Nero’s prodigality), and cf. Cal. , Ner.  (youthful hooliganism and use of disguises); Tac. Ann. .; D.C. ..–. 2 Suet. Cal. .. Nero’s deceptiveness was both natural (factus natura) and acquired through practice (consuetudine exercitus), Tac. Ann.... Nevertheless, this habit was probably strengthened in his early years, when, after Agrippina’s relegation (Suet. Cal. ., D.C. ..–), his day-to-day existence depended on his aunt Domitia’s favor, his survival on Caligula’s whim.

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as it were—had ensured their survival. This personal skill (ars) was intertwined with the performing arts both emperors were exceptionally fond of: while Caligula’s acting skills never made it to the public stage, Nero’s travesty was both private and public, and he was never more dangerous than when he openly displayed charm and affection.3 Caligula and Nero also shared an uncommon propensity to use poisons. The main sources4 suggest that they were serial poisoners on a scale unmatched in Roman imperial narrative: in doing so the sources overstep to some extent the boundaries of factual truth5 in favor of allegory. It is this peculiar constellation of role-playing and poisoning, so dominant in the two emperors’ depictions, that prompts my research. Despotism combines brutality with showmanship and persuasion: it is theatrical, grandiose, enthralling and deadly, and it works in insidious, paralyzing ways. Its influence is pervasive, sapping and morally disfiguring: the Romans applied these traits to the art of the poisonersorcerer and to that of the actor.6 The ‘arts’ of poisoning and magic presented analogies with acting because they all were mimetic activities which tainted and transformed—albeit in different ways—not only the intended targets, but also their manipulators. The artistry of their practitioners disrupted and crossed gender boundaries: the feminized sounds and gestures of ambiguous performers stirred the passions and unmanned the Roman audience,7 so that the theatre’s space, designed 3 Tac. Ann. .. (last embrace to Agrippina), .. (hugs and kisses to Seneca). See Betensky  . 4 Dio Cassius is less emphatic than Suetonius and Tacitus about Caligula and Nero’s poisoning schemes, even though he mentioned Caligula’s murders of gladiators, charioteers and horses (..) and his chest of poisons (..). For Nero, he reports Britannicus’ poisoning (..), that of Burrus (.) and Domitia (.). 5 It was hard to reach an accurate diagnosis of poisoning due to lack of forensic medicine and to the incorrect combination of ingredients and doses. In some cases purported medicines resulted in (possibly) unintended deaths, as in Liv. .. For the so-called proofs of death by poison, see Suet. Cal. .. See also Horstmannshoff  – and Cilliers and Retief  . 6 Ducos   and Aubrion   on terms for infamy, moral turpitude and corruption associated with theatrical activity. See also Curry  – for the invasive, paralyzing and unmanning aspects of poisoning and the artistic side of it. Santoro L’Hoir  for the seductive rhetorical sorcery of despotism. 7 Plin. Pan. . praises the manly gladiatorial combats at Trajan’s games—an inspiration to courage—in the context of Trajan’s re-establishment of traditional values after the demoralizing effects of Domitian’s tyranny, emblematized by the unmanly stage performances of Domitian’s Greek-style ludi Capitolini (.). See also Tac. Ann. .. for effeminate gestures and Edwards  , ,  n.  and  and Aubrion  – on the tainting of eloquence through theatrical artifices.

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to represent visually Rome’s social and power hierarchy, was also where disorder and despotism became most evident.8 In analogous fashion venena—drugs and charms, as well as poisons—debilitated their targets and altered their bodies and minds in seductive or repulsive ways, betraying a body’s internal corruption by unmistakable signs. Caligula and Nero, whom some sources compared to venenum (Suet. Cal. , Juv. .–, Pliny Nat. .), were portrayed as crossing boundaries in ways that mixed the seduction of the crowds with the sinister aspects of their rule. Their reported eccentricities and their frequent recourse to literal and metaphorical poisons externalized the moral emasculation of the state, the rot that undermined it while at the height of its power. The ideas of tainting and decay propagated by venena both real and symbolic are furthermore brought together by venenum’s semantic associations with the terminology of dyeing and imbuing. These concepts, implicated both in the aesthetic sphere and in the medical diagnosis of infection and contagion, play a prominent role in the depiction of our two emperors as sources of symbolic corruption and miasma.

Caesar Veneficus “Is there an antidote to Caesar?” With these words Caligula reputedly sealed the fate of his cousin and colleague Tiberius Gemellus, suspected of using cough medicine to “immunize” himself against Caligula’s poisons (Suet. Cal. ., .). The incident, reported only by Suetonius (under the rubric of verbal atrocitas), is likely fictitious,9 designed to emphasize this emperor’s trademark effrontery. Condemned for having allegedly prayed for Caligula’s death, Gemellus had good reason to live in fear of being poisoned by the emperor. Its presumed fictitiousness notwithstanding, the anecdote is instructive not only for its insight into Caligula’s quirky brand of gallows humor10 and for revealing the paranoia ensconced in the seat of power, but more importantly, it unmasks the very nature of this emperor’s rule as a metaphorical poison (venenum) against which there is no apparent remedy. The Julio-Claudians had been portrayed by Tacitus as both victims and manipulators of literal and 8 Suet. Ner.. (Nero encourages and contributes to violence). Ducos  ; Bartsch  –,  n. . 9 Hurley  ; Balsdon , ; Wardle , . 10 Barrett  –, .

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metaphorical poisons and antidotes. No longer just a secretive instrument of usurpation used by imperial women and their associates,11 with Caligula and Nero poison moved steadily center-stage as the distilled essence of their tyrannical rule. Caligula and Nero differ from most Roman emperors because they were explicitly compared to poison and were assumed to rely on poisoning more than any Roman ruler. Tiberius had apparently referred to Caligula as natrix, a “viper” he was rearing for the Romans.12 An aphrodisiac, one of the articles subsumed in the category of venena, was the supposed cause of Caligula’s tyrannical derangement (Suet. Cal. ., J. AJ. .). In Juvenal’s sixth satire poison, Caligula and the aphrodisiac potio become one: the overpowering potio rules as emperor, unleashing its fury on senators and knights.13 Nero, whose misdeeds recalled those of his uncle Caligula, was defined as the alterum venenum which Agrippina gave to herself and to the world, after the one she had given to Claudius (Plin. Nat. .). Caligula was also the first emperor portrayed as a serial poisoner, a dubious honor subsequently extended to Nero. Keenly interested in the study of poisons (Suet. Cal. ., .; Ner. ), both were conveniently held responsible for the sudden deaths of relatives, associates, victims’ heirs and—in Caligula’s case—even of the horses and charioteers of rival teams.14 Rumors attributed to them much larger schemes: Caligula’s large chest of deadly drugs was eventually sunk by Claudius at the expense of untold quantities of fish. Nero may have thought about mass-poisoning the entire senate at a banquet (Suet. Ner. ). In support of his activities, Nero kept at hand the notorious Locusta, unofficially elevated to “palace poisoner” and mistress of a similarly unofficial “training school” (Suet. Ner. .; Tac. Ann. ..). These two emper-

11

For suspected and real murder in the imperial domus, cf. Tac. Ann. ., ., .– , ., .–, ., .–, .–, ., .; Suet. Tib. , Cl. . Discussed in Santoro L’Hoir ,  and ; Horstmanshoff . 12 Suet. Cal. ; Hurley  . 13 Juv. .–: haec poscit ferrum atque ignes, haec potio torquet, haec lacerat mixtos equitum cum sanguine patres (my emphasis). See Hurley  ,  for the scapegoating of Caesonia, and Wardle  . 14 For Caligula, Suet. Cal. . (Tiberius), . (Antonia), . (individuals who made him heir), . (the gladiator Columbus); D.C. .. (horses and charioteers). For Nero, Suet. Ner. . (failed attempt on Agrippina), . (Burrus and the freedmen), . (children of condemned men); Tac. Ann. . (Britannicus), .. (Burrus), . (powerful freedmen), .. (attempt on Seneca).

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ors were therefore venefici15 (poisoners) according to the specifications of the lex Cornelia (Dig. ..), since they not only possessed and used deadly drugs against others but also actively promoted their production. As a general term of abuse, veneficus also defined a sorcerer, whose misdeeds included mala sacrificia (unholy sacrifices), incantations and magic whisperings (susurris magicis).16 Nero’s more esoteric endeavors delved into magic and necromancy,17 while Caligula’s attempts to transform sulphur of arsenic into gold failed.18 These foreign practices straddled an area between quasi-scientific enquiry and occultism which had attracted members of the Roman elite since Cicero’s times.19 On a related level, Caligula’s self-aggrandizing familiarity with the gods resembled magical practices to control divine powers, examined later in this study. The evident similarities between the literary portrayals of the two emperors were not entirely due to the adverse tradition of the tyrant’s stereotype:20 they shared tastes and attitudes, and Nero consciously imitated his uncle’s behavior, and with more success.21 Both reacted against, and competed with, the governing style of their mature predecessors: Caligula and Nero’s youthful impatience with the process of creating a personal legacy impelled them to use traditional sources of popularity in unorthodox ways. Hence their spectacularly innovative style, theatricality and conceptual audacity, reviled after their deaths as mental derangement and tyrannical hybris.22 A short-lived blossoming 15

Even though, in practice, the term was never used by the sources. Cf. Dig. ..; Just. Inst. ..; Dickie ,  (the term of abuse stresses sorcery),  (ambiguities of the Cornelian law),  (the Cornelian law’s progressive extension to unsettling types of sorcery). 17 For Nero’s stint as a pupil of the Magi, see Plin. Nat. .– [–]. 18 Plin. Nat. . [], cited by Hurley   n. . Barrett   explains that Caligula’s scheme was designed to raise revenues. 19 Dickie  –. 20 Hellenistic precedents: Mithridates in Plin. Nat. . []; Cleopatra in Plin. Nat. . []; Plu. Ant. .; Attalus in Plu. Demetr. .. See Barton  –; Borzsak ; Dunkle . 21 Caligula’s reign lasted roughly four years, Nero’s fourteen. Nero’s figure retained popular favor for a long time after his death and damnatio memoriae, cf. Champlin  –; Eberl . 22 Caligula and Nero’s pioneering of new cultural and ideological avenues was often distorted as uncontrolled desire for extravagant novelties detrimental to the state (Suet. Cal. , , ; Ner. , ). Yet, the very actions subjected to later moralizing scorn also manifested large-scale imperial generosity in the traditional patronage of the common people. The posthumous popularity of both emperors suggests the success of some of these policies. See Goddard ; Barrett  xvi–xvii, , ; Champlin  –; Elsner and Masters  ; Alcock , especially . 16

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condemned their achievements to sterile transience.23 Despotic and perverse emperors were not rare in imperial narratives, yet not all autocrats—even those who shared Nero and Caligula’s propensities for scandalous anti-conformism and for dissimulation—were referred to as poison or were rumored to have used poisons as extensively as they did.24 The metaphor of the emperor as poison was fairly rare: to shed some light on the rationale behind Caligula and Nero’s enduring representation as “poisonous” emperors the symbolic valences of venenum need to be examined.

Venena Venena belonged to a protean category that defied accurate definition and diagnosis, continually oscillating between life and death, creativity and destruction, aesthetics and putrefaction. Associated with deception,25 venenum was an intensely charged term, for which our English translations as ‘poison’ and ‘drug’ prove woefully insufficient, as they fail to convey the Latin’s varied range of ideas, uses and effects. Healthful remedies, medications, sleeping potions, deadly drugs, aphrodisiacs, cosmetics, luxury dyes, abortion drugs, magic spells and incantations were venena.26 Not necessarily harmful per se, venena as drugs

23

Elsner and Masters  . For discussion of the precocious blossoming and transience of literary and artistic new trends of Nero’s period and the metaphor of decoction as the cause of metaphorical putrefaction, corruption and sterility, see Gowers  – , in particular –; also Wardle  – on the impermanence of Caligula’s astounding bridge over the bay of Naples, and  on Caligula’s unrealized plans to build a city on the Alps. 24 Elagabalus, whose vices most resembled those of Caligula and Nero, was not a poisoner, nor was Tiberius, the dissimulator-in-chief. 25 Verg. Ecl. .: fallax herba veneni, A. .: fallasque veneno; Sil. .–: fraudisque veneno aggreditur mentes, .: fraudum . . . veneno. Stepmothers and adulterous women were associated with the deadly art of poisoning (Rhet. Her. ..; Sen. Contr. ..().; Quint. Inst. ..; Verg. G. .–, .–; Ov. Met. .) as well as with that of wily entrapment: see Dig. .. for novercalibus delenimentis. See Santoro L’Hoir  for the terminology of feminine seduction and entrapment in dynastic narrative, and Dutsch   for prostitutes’ snares. 26 RE . – (Venus); RAC .– (Gift), especially –; Forcellini  .– (venenum) and  ,– (medicamen, medicamentum); TLL .– medicamen and – medicamentum share the same comprehensive range as venenum and were used as synonyms. Forcellini . and –, OLD  and : potio and poculum (noxium, toxicum, amatorium) refer to medicinal, deadly and

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differed from poisons mainly in their effects, and even then quite fortuitously.27 For the law venenum was anything that caused a change, “that which—applied to something—changes its nature” (Dig. ..),28 including any substance whose effects may be unpredictable and work against its nature, even without immediate lethal results.29 Hence the relation to magic, by definition the “art of going against nature.”30 The transformative and unnatural connotations of venenum manifested themselves in the visible alterations of the body produced by drugs, poisons, cosmetics and dyes, in the mental and physical derangement caused by aphrodisiacs and spells, or as the simulated symptoms of ailments and slow degeneration.31 Passions and vices were also poisons32 that weakened and feminized the male, while luxuria even transformed some women into parodies of males.33 The despot was especially susceptible to passions and vices, since his flaunted self-indulgence proclaimed his exceptional power to transcend human and natural laws: Caligula and Nero’s hybristic behavior and their reported gender-bending externalized their nature as simultaneously poisonous and poisoned. The ambivalence of venenum complemented that of art, also a word which in Latin required a variety of modifiers. Ars meant ‘skill’ as well as ‘art,’ thus further definitions were necessary, ars dicendi (eloquence), ars imperatoria (generalship), ars medendi (medicine), to cite just a few. Magic was variously qualified as artes pravae, malae, nefariae, secretae, aphrodisiac draughts, but not to cosmetic and fabric dyes. Philtrum (OLD ) was a love potion only. Forcellini .: virus denoted thick and slimy plant juices, stench and poison, but not dyes, spells or incantantions. See Rayment . 27 Dig. .. : Qui venenum dicit, adicere debet, utrum malum an bonum; Cic. Clu. ; Gel. .. . Horstmannshof  –. 28 Eo nomine continetur, quod adhibitum naturam eius, cui adhibitum esset, mutat. 29 Cf. Quint. Decl. Min.  and , based on plots where cold water, administered to a fatally sick person against medical recommendation, causes death, or a sleeping potion causes a brave soldier to neglect his duty, exposing him to charges of desertion. 30 [Quint.] Decl. .. 31 Tac. Ann. .. (spells cause insanity); Juv. . – (mental derangement caused by aphrodisiacs), . (corpse’s coloring). For Britannicus’ poisoning simulating epilepsy, see Tac. Ann. .; Suet. Ner. ..–. Plu. Luc. : Lucullus’ slow death and mental degeneration were alternately attributed to old age and disease or to an aphrodisiac. See also Horstmannshof  –. For cosmetics’ role in hiding / displaying the female body, fundamentally tainted and in constant need of modification: Richlin  and Carson . 32 Sal. Cat.  (avarice), Gel. . (avarice), Sil. .– (indolence), Verg. A . (love). . – (hatred and fury); Pers. . – (libido). See Kissel  –. 33 Sal. Cat.  (Sempronia), Sen. Ep. .– (masculine women). See also WeidenBoyd  –.

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interdictae34 and more. Poisoning itself, when done so well that it disguised its symptoms as those of other ailments, could be a form of art, not simply a skill: an expert poisoner such as Tacitus’ Locusta was an artist (artifex), even if a perverse one.35 Ironically Locusta’s employer, Nero, referred to himself as an artist just before committing suicide: “What an artist dies with me!” (Qualis artifex pereo!; Suet. Ner. .). Abandoned and hunted down, he had sought in vain his box of poisons to kill himself. Nero the artist and Nero the poisoner were finally reunited in his grotesque end. Commonly derived from Venus,36 venenum bespoke its aesthetic and erotic connotations tied to intrigue and seduction: ultimately traced to the Indo-European root, wen (desire), venenum was both desire and the means to realize it. Artes shared this semantic area to some extent: used alone, i.e. without modifiers, it meant ‘traps,’ ‘artifices,’ ‘fraud,’ often in conjunction with blandimenta (‘flattery,’ ‘alluring speech’, but also ‘remedy,’ ‘cure’).37 Eyes and ears were particularly affected by them by becoming conduits of figurative venena (poisons and charms), debilitating and corrupting even when not deadly. Natural beauty, youth and charm were venena (allurements),38 but so were cosmetics, which granted borrowed splendor by means of repulsive smears. Both natural and artificial beauty were often allied with immorality: beautification consisted in the artful creation of false appearances (ars faciem dissimulata iuvat; Ov. Ars .) hiding an unflattering reality, a process of adulteration that led to adultery, a theatrical façade.39 34

Butler and Owen   n. . Tac. Ann. ..; see Currie  . 36 See Ernout and Meillet  s.v. 37 Tac. Ann. .. (Poppaea’s seduction of Nero per blandimenta et artes) and .. (Agrippina); discussed in Santoro L’Hoir . See also Verg. A. .–: At Cytherea novas artes, nova pectore versat consilia, –: tu faciem illius . . . falle dolo, and : fallasque veneno. Venus’ master plan for Dido’s ruinous passion blends the deceptive artificiality and the mimetic and insinuating characteristics of desire (in the person of Cupido) with the deadly invasiveness of poison. 38 Cf. Afran. Com.  and see Richlin . 39 There is a paucity of examples of beauty combined with virtue, and they are mostly fictional: Lucretia, Psyche in Apuleius’ Met., Chariclea in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica, Leucippe in Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Cleitophon. A few funerary inscriptions also mention the deceased’s beauty and virtue (CIL ., .). In historical narratives and rhetoric, however, beauty is problematic: Tac. Ann. . (Livilla), ..– (Poppea), .. (Agrippina); Sal. Cat. .  (Aurelia Orestilla),  (Sempronia); Quint. Inst. ... On the process of adultery / adulteration, see Ov. Ars .–, Rem. –; Juv. .–. In Ov. Ars .– the successfully made-up woman should resemble a theatre’s gilded images: a shining exterior covering dull wood. 35

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With beauty went also lies and blandimenta (coaxing words, flattery and guile): these essential components of mercenary love were also symbolic venena mastered by prostitutes and madams also reputedly expert in veneficia, love magic and the casting of spells.40 Ingratiating speech was tainted, contagious and “infected” its male users:41 Tacitus, for example, defines the effeminate Otho’s duplicitous letters to Vitellius as ‘drenched / infected with feminine flattery’ (muliebribus blandimentis infectae; Hist. ..). The words of Greek parasites were especially poisonous distillations, according to Juvenal (.–): a tiny drop in the ear of a Roman patron would nullify a Roman client’s years of loyal service. Roman hangers-on were outmatched—Juvenal explains— because they lacked the Greeks’ protean capacity to use their faces as masks mimicking the patrons’ expressions: Greece was a nation of actors (natio comoeda est, .), who excelled at role-playing, especially in the female parts (.–). Yet, for all their ambiguity they were sexually insatiable and indiscriminate in their lust (.–): so was also the stereotypical tyrant, whose mind was “infected” by the scalding venom of lust (dira libido . . . ferventi tincta veneno, Pers. .–). Juvenal’s Greek sycophants combined the poisonous verbal magic of the courtesan with the corrupting skills of the stage actor, themselves a type of insidious and contagious venenum42 which destabilized speech and gender boundaries. The theatrical arts exercised a pernicious influence on public speaking, which, according to Tacitus’ Messalla (Dial. )—they had transformed from a male rhetorical arena into a hybrid and effete form of entertainment: “very many boast that their speeches are recited and mimed . . . whence derives the absurd—but frequent—exclamation: ‘How voluptuously our orators speak!’ ‘How eloquently mimes dance!’ ”43 The moral degeneration externalized in feminized rhetoric, he asserted, seemed to begin almost (paene) in the womb, where the passion for actors and performers had insinuated itself and was transmitted from mother to offspring (Dial. ). Moreover, the stereotypical gender-bending and indiscriminate lust of the stage actor betokened those of the theatrical despot in a fitting circular pattern, since tragic

40

Dickie  –. Dutsch  –. 42 They may not be literally referred as such, but their effects are similar. 43 Plerique iactant cantari saltarique commentarios suos. Unde oritur illa foeda et praepostera, sed tamen frequens . . . exclamatio, ut oratores nostri tenere dicere, histriones diserte saltare dicantur. 41

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tyrants had supplied the model for republican political invective and anti-tyrant rhetoric,44 which later writers adapted to their own portrayals of despotic emperors. Tacitus assimilated the histrionic and recherché effects which tainted contemporary rhetoric to the outlandish and ambiguous garb of the prostitute and of the actor, the one artificially dyed bright red (fucatis et meretriciis vestibus), the other neither feminine nor masculine (ne virilis quidem cultus est, Dial. ). This sartorial eclecticism also distinguished despots like Caligula and Nero: Suetonius, in particular, described Caligula’s attire as unique, neither masculine nor even mortal (ne virili quidem ac denique humano, Suet. Cal. . ), at times definitely feminine (aliquando sericatus et cycladatus) but also theatrical (in . . . coturnis). Nero’s clothing, while not respectable and certainly unmanly by Roman standards, was more theatrical than feminine. The ambiguity of the actor’s gestures and speech surface in Nero’s ‘private’ performance in Ann. ., where the poisonous arts of flattery, acting and dissembling mingle with rhetorical skill in ways that straddle the gender divide. Rebutting Seneca’s appeasement, Nero overcomes his tutor in a ‘masculine’ rhetorical duel, but also displays affectionate, soothing and insincere ‘feminine’ behavior (complexum et oscula . . . velare odium fallacibus blanditiis).45 Rather than deceiving Seneca, Nero’s charade is meant to emphasize Nero’s command of his skills, and the independence he has finally achieved from his former tutor: the hugs and kisses seal the final farewell.46 Yet, despite the many disguises and artful lies devised by the poisoner’s mimetic artistry, venenum was a paradoxical instrument of deception and intrigue which—in the end—unmasked its own lies by revealing its true color.

44

Dunkle  –. Tac. Ann. .: Nero’s pleasure at countering promptly and impromptu his teacher’s prepared arguments (meditatae orationis) while pretending to pay him a compliment. Nero’s reply shows him fully aware of his tutor’s motivations and playing with Seneca’s apprehensions. 46 Betensky   (Tacitus’ Neronian narrative stresses the gap between gestures and words and the feelings and desires they are supposed to express), –. The scene invites comparison with Nero’s farewell to Agrippina, where Nero demonstrates his mastery of her techniques ( n. ). 45

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The Color Purple The verb venenare and its synonyms medicare and inficere meant not only “to poison” but also “to dye,” i.e., to imbue and stain with color. The adjective infectus, origin of our word “infection,” and the adjective venenatum (tinted) referred in particular to the bright red color of the Flaminica Dialis’ veil, while venenum combined with adjectives of nationality (Assyrium, Tarentinum, Puniceus), indicated purple or violet dyes much sought-after for luxury fabrics and cosmetics.47 The chromatic spectrum of venenum ranged from red to deep, bluish purple,48 ironically suggestive also of the hues of infectious discolorations and of the decay, corruption and putrescence caused by poison, usually revealed by livores (purple discolorations), maculae (spots) and dark coloring of the corpses (nigros maritos, Juv. .).49 Livid color also characterized vices, shameful passions and crime: the dark poison of the vipers, food for Ovid’s Envy,50 saturates not just her tongue, but her home as well. Infected by ruinous lust, the mind of Persius’ tyrant is inflamed by scalding venom (ferventi tincta veneno, Pers. .). Purple symbolized the power of political office, and was increasingly— and almost exclusively—identified with the emperor, becoming also a byword for tyranny.51 Wielding a power that had indeed been radically altered by the purple, Marcus Aurelius admonished himself not to become completely caesarized, that is, ‘stained through-and-through by the purple’ (M. Ant. .: me baphes), an image that combines the corruption of absolute power and that of poison. Likewise, Plutarch cited baphe, the poison / stain / infection of tyranny (Plu. Moralia c): in both cases the terms used correspond to the meaning of inficere / venenare, and

47

Serv. A ., .; Verg. G . ; Hor.Ep. ..; Ov. Am. ... Pl. Mos. – (purpurissum); Isid. Orig. .. (the ancients originally called vinum venenum, eventually discriminating between the two because of the latter’s deadly aspect). 49 Plu. TG .; Suet. Cal. .; Gal. De Loc. Aff. [Kuhn vol. ] ., .; Scrib. Lar. Comp. , , , ; Cic. Clu.  []. The deaths of Cleopatra and of the poisoner Martina (Tac. Ann. ..) seemed unusual for the absence of reputed signs of poisoning. See also Stevenson  –. 50 Ov. Met. .–. See also Verg. A .  (Allecto infecta venenis) and  (caeruleis . . . de crinibus anguem), where dusky blue is the unifying color of the Fury and of her snaky hair, drenched in poison. 51 Forcellini  vol.   n. ; Hor. Carm. ..: purpurei tyranni. Suet. Ner. .– (interdiction from wearing purple; “tyrannical” behavior) and Cal.  (Ptolemy executed because of his splendid purple garment). 48

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define both infection and staining with color. Infected and marked by the venom of despotism, the emperor becomes poison, tainted and tainting, and reveals his own, and the state’s inner corruption on his body and in his actions.52 Caligula’s mind was infected and poisoned by his jealousy (livor) of past heroes and of contemporaries (Suet. Cal. –). Dira libido, the baleful and empoisoned lust of the tyrant (Pers. .), spreads to the body the miasma of the despotic mind: as the emperor acts out his indiscriminate lusts, he becomes the source of moral and physical contagion. Caligula and Nero’s eclectic sexual experiences made them “defiled in every part” of their bodies, “corrupted by every lust, natural and unnatural,” “unsparing of their own chastity, and of the chastity of others”.53 Nero regarded admitted illicit sexuality in others as an odd form of honesty, while to him chastity was a clever dissimulation of vice (Suet. Ner. ). The filthy emperor, to whose body the adjectives contaminatus and foedatus were freely applied, was the catalyst for openly condoned infractions of public decency, encouraging and celebrating with his filthy entourage (contaminatorum grege; Tac. Ann. ..) all sorts of behavior usually covered by darkness. Caligula had anticipated these excesses by supposedly opening a widely advertised, high-class bordello in the imperial palace, to raise revenues (Suet. Cal. ): in similar fashion the wellborn allegedly prostituted themselves alongside common whores at Nero’s extravagant festivities.54 The tyrant as pimp and procurer was a not infrequent cliché in Roman historiography,55 complementing that of the sexually insatiable pathic despot. Hence a ruler like Nero, surrounded by corrupt enablers, was in his own element in the midst of the conluvies (sewage) released by his festivities. Sexual immorality was physically and spiritually soiling and disfiguring,56 and Nero’s appearance had an affinity for maculae of vari52

Aret. CD .. Dyeing can also assume a positive meaning, as in M. Ant. .. (“dyed with justice to the core”); it further indicates absorption, assimilation and transformation (M. Ant. .: “the soul is dyed by its imaginations; dye it, then, in a succession of images like these”). Liddell-Scott  . 53 Suet. Ner. , Tac. Ann. .., Suet. Cal. .. 54 Suet. Ner. ., Tac. Ann. ... Champlin  – situates these events within the context of theatrical role-playing: the noblewomen were “ersatz” innkeepers. 55 Wardle  . See also Barton  , and Edwards  . Both note the parallels between Caligula and Nero. Suspicions of incest: Caligula’s with his sister Drusilla (Suet. Cal. ), in addition to the other two, whom he also prostituted to his minions. Nero’s incestuous tendencies, see below. 56 Polluere (to stain with dirty liquid, to infect), OLD , Forcellini  vol. 

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ous origins: his body was maculoso et fetido (spotty and stinking),57 while his alleged incestuous desire for his mother was betrayed by maculae on his clothes (Suet. Ner. .). The exterior of the imperial body denounces the moral rot festering inside and unmasks the emperor, author of the empire’s welfare, as the contaminant: Nero’s bath in the spring of the Marcian aqueduct, source of Rome’s purest water, polluted it with his body (corpore loto polluisse: Tac. Ann. ..). His ensuing sickness was interpreted as a divine sanctioning of Nero’s infamia: the same water fed the city’s public baths without incidents.58 The ritual pollution of matricide and the ensuing involvement in magic practices also possibly prevented Nero’s participation in the mysteries of Eleusis.59 The polyvalence of illicit sex, corruption and poison increased the pathos of Britannicus’ death: the last of the Claudians, poisoned by Nero, had also been victim of his sexual violence. Stupro prius quam veneno pollutum is Tacitus’ succinct verdict (Ann. ..): unable to convey the impact of such a lapidary statement, an English translation must separate the idea of sexual defilement from that of poisoning, so sparingly conveyed by pollutum. The defiled poisoner Nero is also defiler and poison. The deadly duplicity of poison betrays even its manipulators by offering the clues for its own discovery. Nero’s literal attempt to whitewash his crime—by whitening Britannicus’ corpse with gypsum— was foiled by a rainstorm that washed the body clean: thus the poison’s tell-tale dark coloring was revealed (D.C. ..). The instrument of death and decay became a testimonial to the truth.

; contaminare (to soil by physical contact, to infect) Ernout-Meillet , OLD , Forcellini  vol.  ; foedare (to stain, soil, disfigure, dishonor) OLD , Forcellini  vol.  ; vitiare (to mark permanently with a physical blemish) Forcellini  vol.  , Ernout-Meillet  (vitium); corrumpere (to cause to rot, to infect, to spoil by admixture, to taint) OLD . 57 Suet. Ner. . Plin. Nat. .., on the other hand, seems to ignore this: referring to the Magi’s fraudulent excuses for their necromantic failures, Pliny mentions freckles as a hindrance to divine manifestations. He says that Nero’s body, however, was free from blemishes (nihil membris defuit). 58 Furneaux   n. . Tacitus places this incident after the murder of Agrippina, so the taint of matricide probably added to Nero’s pollution. Muller , : possible direct causes for Nero’s “impurity” were his participation in the rituals of Dea Syria and the violation of a Vestal virgin. Champlin   n. : for violation of Vestal as antityrant cliché, see also Hist. Aug. Heliog. . (Elagabalus marrying a Vestal). Suetonius’ is the only mention of the Vestal’s rape. 59 Suet. Ner. . (pollution from matricide); D.C. . .– (fear of the Furies); Dickie  –.

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Despite their negative connotations venena and blandimenta could also be remedies, which is how Caligula and Nero appeared at first: the cure for the empire’s ills. Caligula had been acclaimed as the symbol of renewal, while the Nero’s rule had positive aspects:60 both were young men succeeding old, physically and morally impaired rulers, whose unscrupulous associates had precipitated the principate into dominatio. Both had embodied the hopes and desires of senators and commoners because they had seduced the public with honorable words and actions which belied their true, nasty traits.

Spellbinding mimesis An unprecedented wave of enthusiasm and affection, projecting popular love for Caligula’s parents Germanicus and Agrippina, saluted the new emperor’s assumption of power. In this euphoric scenario the young ruler reciprocated the people’s goodwill by actively courting the crowds’ affection.61 Similar popularity informed Nero’s reign: some of his actions were not only not reprehensible, but actually praiseworthy—by Suetonius’ admission (Ner. –). In fact, both Nero and Caligula even exceeded expectations in some respects (Suet. Cal. –, Ner. , ). The main sources, however, recast auspicious episodes as atypical, contrived and designed to disguise these rulers’ true nature, which nevertheless is destined to emerge: thus the venenum of a faulty aphrodisiac radically altered Caligula’s mind (Juv. . –) or perhaps brought the real Caligula to light, while Nero’s role-playing was intimated by his unprecedented appropriation of another’s eloquence: Seneca’s (Tac. Ann. ..). Caligula’s initial hold on crowds and senate revealed itself later as lenocinia, meretricious pandering and enticements.62 Nero’s was the result of his inborn and acquired duplicity (factus natura et consuetudine exercitus, Tac. Ann. .), which found an outlet in his dissimulation and acting. In both cases these emperors’ modus operandi combined the characteristics of acting, prostitution and incantation in a form of paralyzing psychological poisoning which blended the prostitute’s cajolery 60 Suet. Cal. , Ner. , . The chronology of Nero’s five years of good government, praised by Aurelius Victor in Caes. ., has been the subject of debate: see Champlin   n.  and Griffin  –, –. 61 Suet. Cal..: incendebat et ipse studia hominum omni genere popularitatis, and see cc. – for worthy behavior. 62 Cf. Suet. Cl. ; Wardle  : Caligula’s counterfeit virtues.

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with the actor’s simulation and the sorcerer’s spellbinding technique. In all these instances enticing, soothing words and the performer’s body language and posture played an important role in charming and ‘tying’ the irrational side of the soul.63 These ‘arts’ were practiced by anyone, high or low, who understood that coercive power was most effective under seductive and persuasive disguises: Suetonius’ Augustus requested a final applause for his successful performance in the farce (mimum) of life,64 while Tacitus’ Augustus seduced army, senate, commoners and provincials with ‘spellbinding’ persuasion which made of his ensuing dominatio the ‘ultimate form of binding magic.’65 Tacitus’ special emphasis on how the Julio-Claudians lured and trapped their victims by word-magic, play-acting and poison66 is aptly enacted in Nero’s murder of Agrippina. This episode supplies an ironic counterpoint to Caligula’s question ‘Is there an antidote to Caesar?’, illustrating the poisonous seduction and the mesmerizing effects of mimesis and play-acting. When Nero’s literal poisons failed to eliminate his mother, who had immunized herself with antidotes, it was his artful performance, which had assimilated her own strategies and permutations of body language, that overcame Agrippina’s suspicions. Nero’s affectionate demeanor and speech (blandimentum)— between boyish intimacy and confidential seriousness67—penetrated her defenses, and upon leave-taking his behavior oscillated between a loving son’s and a lover’s: tight embraces and fond gazing into his mother’s eyes as a last piece of dissimulation (Tac. Ann. ..), and salacious kisses on the breasts (Suet. Ner. .).68 Blandishments were generally meant to annul the distance between seducer and intended victim, leaving him / her open to the poisonous incantations of endearing words and affectionate touch, which ‘infected’ the target and brought him / her 63

Apul. Apol. .. Dutsch . Graf  –. Santoro L’Hoir . Suet. Aug. . 65 Santoro L’Hoir  discusses Tacitus’ use of pellexit and in se trahere at Ann.. . in the thematic context of politics, magic and seduction. 66 Santoro L’Hoir . 67 A slight adaptation of Grant  . Dutsch  –, observes that blandimenta are originally associated with inarticulate and comforting attitude (eventually speech) and, as such, they belong to the language of the nursery (nannies and little children). Nero’s behavior here seems to revert to a boy’s intimacy with his mother. Agrippina herself had exploited her vicinity as Claudius’ niece to gain control over him through seductively affectionate behavior. 68 Suet. Ner... Betensky  – on Nero’s mastering of feminine techniques of seduction / obfuscation. 64

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under the seducer’s control.69 Agrippina, no naïve victim of seduction,70 was nevertheless psychologically incapacitated by her son’s figurative poisons, absorbed through her eyes, ears and touch: the rumor of reconciliation, which played on Agrippina’s feminine credulity (Tac. Ann. ..), his warm embraces and gaze (Tac. Ann. ..) and his kisses on her hands and eyes (D.C. ..) dispelled her apprehensions. Nero’s seductive treachery faithfully imitated the tactics she had successfully used against her uncle Claudius and had tried to use against Nero himself, including the incestuously suggestive body language.71 Just like the figurative venena of her blandimenta and inlecebrae had trapped Claudius before poisoning him, Agrippina’s own antidotes were no protection against the metaphorical poison her son deployed against her. Acting and dissembling were not only ‘central metaphors in ancient representations of Nero:’ they were the core of the principate itself, a system based on deceptive appearances and a false sense of stability, which forced both high and low to disguise thoughts and feelings.72 Seduction and magic also played an important role, even if less acknowledged: they enabled their practitioners to ‘impose their own fictions upon the world’ and transformed the victims into spectators of their own demise.73 The principate, the theatre and venena all relied on imitation, simulation and false appearances to cover up and disguise unappealing realities: they also fatally transformed, corrupted and poisoned. The despot’s courting of the public was both seductive and ‘theatrical,’ a performance that masked his absolute power: everyone must participate, either as performer or spectator, and those unwilling to follow his script or to be silent became actors in a deadly spectacle.74 Yet this power was not as unilateral as it may appear: the manipulator of illusions may also become victim of self-delusion, manipulated by the very flattery of his 69 Dutsch  –, Betensky  . Contact is insidious, spreading real and symbolic contagion and poison: contagio,-onis, contagium,-i and contamino,-are are all related to touch (Forcellini, vol. . –, Ernout-Meillet . See also Pliny Nat. .: alleged poisoning with aconitum spread through genital contact). 70 She was aware of her son’s attempts to kill her (auditis insidiis, an crederet ambiguam): indeed such an outcome had been prognosticated and Agrippina had embraced it (Tac. Ann. ..: Occidat . . . dum imperet). 71 Suet. Ner. , Tac. Ann. .., .., D.C. ... 72 Edwards  , Malissard  –, – and Bartsch   on Tacitus’ stress of theatricality in representations of power. 73 Currie  –, . Greenblatt . Renaissance and Self-Fashioning. Cited in Bartsch  . 74 Suet. Cal. . Aubrion   (Nero).

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subjects, an antidote to the tyrant’s poisoning of reality.75 The audience of despotic theatre found itself in a position similar to Agrippina’s: somewhat aware of the manipulation, present yet passively playing along, in ways similar to the victims of venena, who became ‘puppetized’ by losing control of their bodies.76 Thus in the course of spectacles exalting Rome’s power the citizens watched and enacted their own decline, reflected in the degradation of their social betters.77 Whether the bare-faced, unmasked elites performing for the amusement of the urban crowds did so spontaneously to follow the imperial lead or were bribed,78 the sight of the upper crust making a spectacle of themselves with unmanly and disgraceful movements (Tac. Ann. ..; Juv. . –) advertised the demise of Rome’s traditional values, as performing skills supplanted nobility and reputation for virtue, while military and political success attracted attention, but also danger.79 Nero’s spectacles and the increasing number of his performances were portrayed as a particularly corrupting model, emblematic of a general devolution: the emperor’s trespass on the stage upended traditional notions of propriety and status, manifested the totalitarian bent of his rule and actively promoted types of entertainment (musical theatre, Greek-style competitions) that were considered morally sapping and unRoman (Tac. Ann ..). Roman laws threatened with infamia free persons who exhibited themselves on the stage as actors, singers or dancers, activities regarded as tainting,80 not the least because they involved the crossing of gender boundaries.81 Imperial ‘encouragement’ of these 75 Bartsch  –: a flatterer is aware of the truth, but fools the performer into believing his audience is unaware of the sham. 76 Currie  –, . 77 Malissard  , . See also Champlin  : civis Romanus became homo spectator. 78 Tac. Ann. .–. The extent of imperial coercion—if there was any—is debatable: Juv. .  (nullo cogente Nerone). Champlin  – stresses its lack; somewhat in agreement is Griffin  –, . Griffin attributes the negative tradition to Nero’s impatience with Roman traditionalism and anti-Greek bias. 79 D.C. ..– (the talented general Corbulo, eliminated by Nero—despite his loyalty—for his family ties with presumed conspirators. Dio however mentions Nero’s apparent unease to be seen by Corbulo in his lyre-playing attire); Tac. Ann. ..– (Rubellius Plautus); Suet Cal. – (Caligula’s jealousy of others’ fame). 80 Ducos  –, –. Actors and performers belonged to diverse social categories, which were not all penalized in the same way. Highly trained and specialized slaves, skilled performers among them, were protected by the law and enjoyed a somewhat privileged status. 81 Juv. .  (effeminate Bathyllus dancing Leda), .– (Greek actors in women’s parts); Suet. Ner. . (Nero plays Canace in childbirth). Edwards  ,  n. .

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activities—by compulsion / bribery and by setting a personal standard— advertised the despot’s power as the only arbiter of citizens’ reputation,82 while the cheering and applause enforced by the Augustiani (Nero’s thuggish claque) created the appearance of consensus. Performers and audience were all equally defiled and transformed: in the harangue to her troops Dio Cassius’ Boudicca derided not only the effeminacy of Nero the performing artist, but also that of the Romans who submitted to him. ‘Art’ had transformed Nero into a queen, a tyrannical female83 who—siren-like, despite his less-than-stellar singing—sang a degenerate populace into slavery (D.C. ..–). Finally, much like a corpse’s livid discolorations signified the poison’s inner havoc and brought the crime to light, the performing arts, like venena, could allude to the tyrant’s offenses, broadcast them to the public and suggest the truth hidden beneath the official version. Thus, some of Nero’s stage roles (Orestes and Alcmaeon the matricides, incestuous Oedipus, Hercules insane, even Canace in childbirth) were perceived to refer to some of his crimes: indeed, they could even be interpreted as hybristic flaunting of his offenses and vices.84 Nero’s most serious transgression, however, seems to have been to blur the distinctions between stage and reality in ways that undermined Roman identity and social hierarchy (Juv. . –, –): more generous, recent studies suggest that perhaps he aimed at transforming Rome’s military leadership into one of intellectual and artistic primacy as the inheritor of the Greek cultural tradition. From this perspective his personal example—far from being poisonous and corrupting—would then prove an incentive for the upper classes to compete in a comprehensive esthetic reeducation of the Roman public according to Greek models.85

82 Ducos  : Caesar’s compulsion of Laberius to perform in public, and his subsequent removal of his infamia, present a certain analogy in the abuse of absolute power to remove from or return a citizen to worthy status. 83 The last in a list of tyrannical female rulers, from Nitocris to Agrippina (..–). 84 Bartsch  –. A very different view is put forth by Champlin  –, who highlights the fact that Nero’s public stage performances began after Agrippina’s death. Hence, Nero’s preference for these roles—the matricides in particular—was essential for the emperor’s self-presentation as a suffering, redeeming hero. The role of Canace in childbirth, played after Poppaea’s death with a Poppaea-like mask, became a tribute to his enduring love for her. 85 Griffin  –, . Alcock .

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Lovers of the Impossible Incredibilium cupitor (lover of the impossible) is Tacitus’ designation of Nero in Ann..., as the historian relates the emperor’s plans to rebuild Rome after the fire on more practical and esthetically pleasing Hellenistic city plans. The impossible creations Tacitus refers to, however, are the ‘hybristic’ Neronian architectural wonders, the Domus Aurea and an ambitious navigable channel to connect the Tiber with Lake Avernus, which Tacitus dismisses as vestigia inritae spei (traces of ineffectual hope). The capacity to translate the impossible into reality manifested a ruler’s power, unhampered by material constraints, to improve and enrich the life of his subjects. It could also become a symbol of oppression, blatant evidence of tyrannical arrogance and selfishness, whose doomed vestigia either did not survive the ruler’s demise or else proclaimed his ultimate defeat and obliteration. Caligula and Nero strove for unheard of feats by conquering and manipulating the landscape through technical and artistic means and by aspiring to god-like power: in Nero’s case this also involved work on human flesh. The final part of this study will focus on their attempts to conquer the impossible through forays into magic, and on Nero’s unnatural recreation of Poppaea in the body of the boy Sporus. Caligula and Nero’s overarching desire was to affirm their mastery over nature and art in a number of ways, the most noticeable of which was to erect impossible buildings in impossible places, in defiance of nature and of naysayers.86 Although striving for unachievable goals87 belongs to the tyrant’s cliché, it also alludes to the sorcerer as magus, a different type of radical innovator who defies divine and natural order with unprecedented deeds. This makes Caligula and Nero venefici of a different sort.

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Suet. Cal. , . Tac. Ann. .. (quae natura denegavisset, per artem temptare). Elsner  reassesses the bias by stressing the instability of ancient discourse’s criteria vis-à-vis imperial building degeneracy and the influence of an emperor’s retrospective fame on the validity of his building program. Grandiose construction projects were expected from each new emperor, who was caught between the emulation of his predecessors and the need to create his own personal style. Griffin  –, – illustrates Nero’s concern for the welfare of the people as a motivation for his building program. 87 Barton   n. : Lunam deducere (to bring down the moon) expresses the desire for things impossible, as well as indicating sorcery.

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Drawing down the moon, bringing back the dead, communicating with the gods to control them, changing people’s shapes were loci of the sorcerer’s powers. Although not unknown in Italy,88 magic was a foreign ‘infection’, according to Pliny (infecto . . . commeaverat mundo: Nat. ..) spread by the Persian magus Osthanes on the heels of Xerxes’ invasion of Greece. Divorced from its original geographical and cultural context,89 the doctrine of the Magi became increasingly associated with quackery and black magic, incantations, human sacrifice, necromancy.90 Although the practitioners of magic were for the most part geographically and socially marginal aliens or women,91 whose liminality attracted literary curiosity, the philosopher-magus of ‘Pythagorean’92 bent, scientific curiosity and occultist interests greatly appealed to erudite and wealthy Roman males. ‘Magic’ as such had a variety of uses, from harmless dinner-party tricks to scientific enquiry to alleged necromantic conjuring: its main purpose was to master nature and to harness divine powers to fulfill personal goals.93 The gods could supposedly be compelled to do the will of one who pretended to be their equal or superior by ‘temporarily assuming a supernatural identity,’94 and who commanded them through murmured incantations (susurris magicis), powerfully alluring foreign sounds, beautiful words,95 even quotations from Homer or the main Latin poets.96 Ancient magic was fluid and open to change,97 so that there was great creative freedom in charms and magic utterances to communicate with the gods.98 The compelling power of the sorcerer resided in the combination of sounds and words more than in that of ‘magic’ ingredients, therefore archaic, strange or 88

Dickie  –, a Greek ‘import.’ Cf. Apul. Apol. .– (Magi originally learned priests, in charge of the Persian king’s instruction). 90 Ogden  –. 91 Dickie  –. 92 Cf. Plin. Nat. ..–; Apul. Apol. : the ranks of the so-called ‘magicians’ were eventually swelled by the inclusion of Socrates and Plato, Democritus and Empedocles, regarded as divulgers of the Magi’s wisdom because of their travels abroad. 93 Dickie  –. 94 Luck  . 95 Apul. Apol. . (incantations are made of beautiful words). At . Apuleius pronounces a list of Greek names of aquatic animals which, to the unlettered, may sound like magical sounds. This faux-spell is designed to make fun of his accusers’ ignorance. Cf. Butler and Owen   n.  for examples of magical jargon. 96 Versnel  –, , , . 97 Versnel   n. : ‘innovative and dynamic.’ 98 Graf  , ; Versnel , –. 89

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new words, onomatopoeia mixed with literary formulas or threats created a resonance suggestive of privileged communication between the conjurer and the divine powers.99 While Caligula was not explicitly associated with magic, a few significant instances of his behavior present analogies with a sorcerer’s. His whispered conversations with Capitoline Jupiter, often referred to as an example of his derangement, are instructive. Suetonius states that Caligula ‘used to speak in secret, now in whispers (insusurrans) . . . now more clearly and without insults (modo clarior et sine iurgiis), and on one occasion was heard threatening: “Either you lift me or I will!” ’ (Suet. Cal. .). Caligula’s threat is a Homeric line from the wrestling match between Odysseus and Ajax, which he uses as a literal challenge to Jupiter.100 A conjurer may rely on the alternation of incomprehensible whisperings with clear-voiced threats and the use of poetic lines out of context, as he or she saw fit.101 This episode follows the insomniac Caligula’s invitations to the full moon to come share his bed: aside from its more common interpretation as imperial ‘lunacy,’ lunam deducere (drawing down the moon) was also one of the typical feats of the literary sorcerer. This arrogation of power seems consistent with Caligula’s unprecedented establishment of his own cult, characterized by exotic offerings, and with the architectural ‘transgressions’ that formed the framework for his divine image, particularly the expansion of his palace to encroach upon sacred space (the temple of the Dioscuri became the vestibule to his palace) and the joining of Palatine to Capitol through a bridge (Suet. Cal. ).102 Since the pretension to supernatural nature was part of the conjurer’s persona, Caligula’s ‘divine’ delusion may be viewed as an aspect of his literary construction as ‘would-be’ sorcerer.

99 Versnel  –. The ingredients with ‘magic’ properties are still needed, but the compulsion comes from the verbal formulae. 100 Wardle  : Jupiter’s thunder ruined Caligula’s pantomime, which may have employed a thunder machine. 101 Ogden  – (initial polite address followed by threatening spell and / or promises; shouting to attract the ghosts’ attention); Luck   (Medea’s threatening voice),  (secret whisperings with the lamp) – (Erictho’s variety: unknown words, mimickry of animal and nature’s sounds, murmurs, then clear words; she eventually “barks” in rage and threatens). 102 Other unprecedented actions that suggested assimilation with a god’s identity were the substitution of gods’ heads with Caligula’s portrait, the gold statue of Caligula in a temple—possibly his own, whose clothes were changed daily to reflect those of the emperor. See Elsner  –; Wardle  –.

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Nero’s interest in the magic arts was no literary construction, as he had zealously patronized experts, to command the gods—according to Pliny—to lay to rest the vengeful ghost of Agrippina—according to Suetonius (Plin. Nat. . []; Suet. Ner. .). The failure of his attempts, however, persuaded him of the futility of magic and of the fraudulence of its performers.103 Magic may have a certain shadow of truth, since it was related to medicine and religion, but its power derived from the fatally deceptive art of the poisoner (veneficas artes). The sorcerer and the tyrant both pursued unnatural transformation and the creation of novelty in analogous ways, and Caligula and Nero had distinguished themselves in the search for novelty by devising new types of spectacles and excesses, new avenues of self-presentation, innovative architecture.104 Nero, however, was the one who exhibited his desire for innovation in the most hybristic, daring and ultimately fragile of his endeavors: the attempt to hold on to the physical image of his beloved Poppaea by recreating it in the body of his freedman Sporus.105 Suetonius’ use of the verb transfigurare with reference to Nero’s attempt is not casual: the verb indicates a radical transformation and an unnatural commingling such as gods or nightmares may bring about106 and which, unlike emasculation, aims at reconfiguring the body—in this case, a male’s into a female’s (in muliebrem naturam). Since the word natura refers to the organs of generation, the change envisioned by Nero was as far-reaching as one could imagine, despite the suggestion that the emperor’s ‘marriage’ to the new—or fake—Poppaea Sabina was meant as a grotesque joke.107 Suetonius cites Sporus’ transformation as one of Nero’s escalating sexual infractions which undermined fundamental social and religious hierarchies: the sexual exploitation of free-born boys, the rape of a Vestal, the alleged incest with Agrippina, the attempted marriage with his freedwoman Acte, the sham ‘marriage’ to the freedman Pythagoras, in which the emperor played the virginal bride’s role.108 103 Plin. Nat. . []: no better than the knowledge of pimps and prostitutes, and this is not just Pliny’s judgement. Prostitutes and their madams were regarded as knowledgeable in magic. 104 Suet. Cal. ., ., .–, ., .–, , , Ner. ., ; Tac. Ann. ., .. 105 Suet. Ner. , D.C. ..–, ..–. 106 Suet. Ner. .; Hyg. Fab. .. 107 Champlin  –: the exhibition of Sporus / Poppaea during the Saturnalia. Either way, Nero assumes the role of the creator / conjurer. 108 Suet. Ner. –. Barton  – on standard political invective for the literary models of Caligula and Nero’s deviance.

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Caligula’s transgressive behavior had also straddled the genders: he impersonated both gods and goddesses,109 had alternated effeminate performing roles (singer and dancer) with masculine ones (charioteer, gladiator), and had played active and passive sexual roles (Suet. Cal. .). Even his clothing style had defied definition, and gender.110 Yet Nero and Caligula’s unstable gender roles were freely chosen and did not impair or transform their identity, in fact the ability to pick-and-choose manifested their power to transcend natural distinctions and contradictions, in ways comparable to the hyper-masculine hero Hercules, who could also be represented in feminine garb.111 Sporus’ feminization, on the other hand, was final (exsectis testibus) and his sexual identity was imposed on him. His relationship with Nero was puzzling, as Nero did have a new wife, Statilia Messalina: yet Sporus / Sabina was exhibited wearing Poppaea’s jewels and addressed as ‘empress.’112 Possibly there was a theatrical component to this ‘marriage’, which had taken place in Greece with all due formality during Nero’s tour: Sporus’ impersonation of Poppaea may recall male actors’ performance in women’s roles on stage. In Nero’s blurred vision of a reality whose boundaries no longer conflicted with stage artifice Sporus played Poppaea without requiring a mask.113 His story perverts and distorts the Cinderella-like tale of a virtuous humble girl transformed into a queen: here the son of ex-slaves is remade into a dead empress in the grotesque farce of a self-deluded despot ‘married’ to a eunuch nicknamed ‘Seed.’ Yet there seems to be more here than hybristic perversion: there is a pathetic quality in Nero’s obsession with Poppaea, in his attempts to deny Death’s power over her body by embalming and refashioning it. Yet Sporus’ tragic persona also alludes to the feminization and denaturation of the Roman people, whom Nero was also trying to transform, and who—like Sporus—were trapped into a tainting role which encapsulated the essence of tyrannical veneficium. Sporus’ subsequent fate was a testament to the disconcerting and mystifying effects of Nero’s metaphoric veneficium (sorcery). It was the fake Poppaea Sabina, rather than Nero’s last wife Statilia, who was taken 109

Suet. Cal.  (gods / goddess),  (‘feminine’ performances vs. ‘masculine’ ones). Suet. Cal. : neither traditionally Roman, nor masculine or even mortal. 111 Loraux . For a different appraisal of the story of Hercules and Omphale, see Kampen . 112 Nor was this relationship one of Greek-style pederasty, despite Nero’s philo-hellenism. 113 D.C. .–. Champlin  . Unlike Nero, who performed female characters wearing Poppaea-like masks. 110

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as a consort by Nero’s former associates Nymphidius Sabinus first, and then Otho, both with short-lived imperial ambitions. One year after the demise of the scaenicus imperator (Plin. Pan. .; Tac. Ann. .) Sporus committed suicide rather than being forced to exhibit himself on the stage as Persephone ravished,114 thereby claiming the final word in the matter of tyrannical deception vs. truth.

Conclusion The literary portrayal of Caligula and Nero as bad emperors exploits their use of venena in the fullest sense of the term’s wide semantic range: the rule of these two despots relied not only on poison’s death-giving qualities, but also on its more seductive and no less dangerous connotations as an instrument of intrigue, deception and political transformation. Venenum’s connections to desire, the fulfillment of which they facilitated in a number of ways, from the fatal to the frivolous, made them appropriate means for the realization of these emperors’ disproportionate and rampant desires, which in their intensity contravened the traditional emphasis on the sense of measure essential to the good ruler. The deceptive quality of venena, which partook of the characteristics of art and overlapped to a certain extent with artistic ambiguity also made them appropriate metaphors for the ‘arts’ of deception and intrigue practiced by Caligula and Nero, whose partiality for the performing arts added a theatrical dimension to their crimes, spectacles enacted by imperial actors under the eyes of a captive audience. The thralldom of the metaphorical audience—the Roman people—was made possible by the spell-binding connotations of venena as instruments of the conjurerdespots, creators of deceptive novelty in their love for accomplishing the impossible. Venena paradoxically revealed what they concealed, belying deceitful appearances: thus the spectacle of Caligula and Nero’s power eventually revealed itself as a sortilege whose dazzling appearances could not conceal its fundamental corruption.

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Champlin  –.

WHO SLEPT WITH WHOM IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE? WOMEN, SEX, AND SCANDAL IN SUETONIUS’ CAESARES

James H. Kim On Chong-Gossard Charles Tesoriero of the University of New England was our colleague at the very inception of our Australia Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project on ‘Private and Public Lies in the Roman Empire’. Before he passed away in , he wondered what would happen if someone made a chart of ‘who slept with whom’ in the first century of the Roman empire— not merely a stemma of marriages and children, which is more traditional, but actually a chart of who was reported as sleeping with whom? If we limited the chart to a single author, such as Suetonius, what might such an exercise tell us about the scandals of the first century ce, or about how Suetonius constructs the past? The theme of sexual extravagance was not new to Suetonius; many Roman authors of the first century ce critiqued their own times (Horace and Seneca the Younger spring to mind) and lamented the luxury and outrageous sexual license of men and women in their day. Suetonius, however, was writing in the second century about events that he did not live through (with the exception of the reign of Domitian, when Suetonius was a young man). An examination of his interest in ‘who was sleeping with whom’ against the backdrop of second century propaganda regarding the Trajanic and Hadrianic imperial families indicates that his prurience was characteristic of his own generation and of his audience, rather than of the generations described by his texts. It is now uncontroversial that Suetonius’ style of presenting imperial sexual liaisons is informed by the rhetorical genre of invective, whose roots go back as far as the fourth century bce and Athenian forensic oratory. Krenkel’s study of the erotica in Suetonius as topoi of psogos and vituperatio, Richlin’s work on sexuality in Roman humour (including the lampooning gossip of biography), and Barton’s analysis of inventio and rhetorical structure in the Life of Nero, have demonstrated how any appreciation of Suetonius as a writer (as a literary genius or a mediocre failure) must take account of how the sex life of an emperor is offered

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as being crucial to an evaluation of him.1 What I intend to add to this scholarly conversation about sex in Suetonius falls in three parts: first, how the private sexual liaisons of the Julio-Claudian and Flavian emperors were described as facets of their public power, or as strategies in obtaining power; second, how the lives of Julio-Claudian and Flavian women (such as Livia, Messalina, Agrippina the Younger, Domitia Longina, and Julia daughter of Titus), with stories involving probra, inlecebrae and blanditiae, function in Suetonius’ narrative; and third, how these two aspects are directly related to cultural phenomena in Suetonius’ own day, the second century—specifically, ideologies about the adoptive emperors and their succession based on merit, and the propaganda about imperial women of the Trajanic and Hadrianic courts, in particular their chastity and marital harmony, despite their childlessness. Suetonius’ inclusion of salacious gossip about women and emperors from the previous century in his Caesares indicates that he expected his audience to have an interest in such gossip—very likely because they continued to spread gossip about the imperial family of their own day, which official propaganda (coins and inscriptions and dedications) were intended to counteract.

Sexual Liaisons of the Emperors: Julio-Claudians and Flavians Where do we begin with the Caesares? If we start with the subjects of the biographies, we can ask, who was each emperor sleeping with, and how does Suetonius construct the role of sex in imperial life, or indeed, in the “discourse of despotism”? A full chart appears at the end of this article as an appendix. Suetonius includes stories about a wide range of sexual partners with whom the Roman emperors engaged themselves:

1 Krenkel   interprets Suetonius as an unreflective spreader of gossip along with fact, since his erotic invective topoi should not be taken at face value. Richlin   argues, “As a general rule, stories about vice seem to have been part of the necessary material for biography . . . Many of the stories were apocryphal or deliberate fabrications, but their genre was concerned not with truth but with edification.” Barton’s  examination of the rhetorical nature of the Life of Nero finds parallels in extant invective (Cicero, Quintillian, and Polemo of Laodicea). Her study begins with an overview of negative valuations of Suetonius’ literary merit or historical usefulness (–). But it ends with a reluctance to propose that Suetonius’ use of an invective genre invalidates the historicity of his account of Nero’s life; indeed, she sees “the world of invective as a world of ‘virtual reality’, where illusion creates substance” ().

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wives (legitimate marriages to women with whom children would also be legitimate); other sexual partners at court (including concubines, i.e., long-term consensual relationships, often a substitute for marriage); incest (in Suetonius, incest is sometimes consensual, sometimes not; and the chief forms of incest are between brother and sister, mother and son, or uncle and niece); flirtation; seduction; sexual violence (including assault and abuse); and stuprum, that wonderfully generic Latin term for illicit sexual activity, ranging from rape to adultery to homosexual relations. Stuprum will be left untranslated throughout this study. As has often been observed, Suetonius’ biographies are constructed around thematic subject matter, rather than chronological narrative; this is not so much a shortcoming as it is a standard feature of the genre.2 Suetonius typically arranges his biographies under various headings or rubrics (per species, Aug. ), including virtues (virtutes) and vices (vitia). There is often a section on the emperor’s sexual habits, so that sex is discussed as a facet of the emperor’s ‘character’, and his sexual tastes are evidenced by the people he sleeps with. Sexual activity becomes a criterion in what Wallace-Hadrill described as the “ethical dimension to his portrayal of a Caesar in his public capacity”.3 As a result, there emerge ‘good’ emperors and ‘bad’ emperors, as has often been noted. Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, and Domitian are notoriously ‘bad’ emperors, and their sexual extravagance parallels their other bad characteristics in terms of government, cruelty, morals, etc. Augustus, Vespasian and Titus (all of whom were deified after their deaths) are in general ‘good’ emperors, who have the least amount of sexual rumours connected to them. Notably, Suetonius habitually draws attention to how the scandals he narrates are rumours, and how they may be false (although he significantly reports them anyway). For example, Suetonius records the ‘rumour’ that the ‘good’ emperor Titus had an adulterous affair with his brother’s wife Domitia Longina, then argues this is patently untrue, since:

2

Cf. the comments of Carter (“Events are told not simply because they happened, but in order to bring out some aspect of the character of the individual. This is the basis of the distinction between biography and history.”  ) and Warmington (“The lack of chronological detail for which Suetonius is often criticised is in fact common to all ancient biographers.”  x). 3 Wallace-Hadrill  . He goes on: “Was he virtuous or vicious? . . . Continent, or self-indulgent, luxurious and lustful? These are the polarities in terms of which emperor after emperor is judged.” See also Richlin  – for an overview (similar to mine, but much briefer) of the characterization of emperors through their sexual practices.

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james h. kim on chong-gossard Domitia swore most solemnly that she had had none; and she would scarcely have denied it, if there had been any relationship at all; nay, she would rather have gloried in it—a thing which came most readily to her in all her scandalous activities (in omnibus probris).4 (Tit. .)

Two emperors whose private sexual ‘tastes’ are related to their general ‘character’ are Claudius (also deified) and Galba. In the briefest of comments, Suetonius describes Claudius as having extreme lust for women, and totally lacking in experience of males (libidinis in feminas profusissimae, marum omnino expers, Cl. .); yet this is hardly a compliment, since he is otherwise extremely dull (in the same passage, he is said to have often fallen asleep while holding court in the daytime and could barely be roused), and the sex scandals of his reign have to do with the flirtations and adulteries of his four wives or his extended family. As for Galba: Galba was a lusty fellow, too much inclined towards men, and only those that were super-strong and mature (exoleti).5 In Spain they used to say (ferebant) that Icelus, one of his old concubines, when he was announcing the death of Nero, was not only openly greeted by him [Galba] with the closest kisses, but was begged that he be shaved [in the private regions] without delay, and was seduced. (Gal. )

This Galba passage is a particularly good example of Suetonius’ method; he includes sex as a facet of the emperor’s private ‘taste’ in concubines (indeed, it is his inclination towards older men that is unusual), but prefaces the tale with the disclaimer, ferebant in Hispania, marking it out as a bit of local gossip, which Suetonius in this case neither confirms nor denies. More often, however, Suetonius uses stories of sex to highlight how an emperor’s desires cross the boundaries of private life and intrude into his public actions. In many cases, sex is power. Suetonius is often conscious of the social status of the emperor’s sex partners, and is explicit about whether a partner or victim was from a consular family, or a freedman, 4

All English translations are my own. The Latin word used by Suetonius for ‘mature’ is exoleti, which he employs elsewhere in the sense of ‘obsolete’ when referring to language and words; but it means ‘grown up / mature’ with respect to men, always carrying a hint of sexual deviance. It is the word Suetonius chooses to describe the spintriae who perform in threesomes for Tiberius on Capri (Tib. .); for Caligula’s boyfriends that he lets sleep with his sisters (Cal. .); the troop of inverts and eunuchs that Titus was rumoured to own (Tit. .); and the perverts who inhabit King Nicomedes’ court (Jul. .). See also Parker  – on Claudius and Galba as examples of men with a “peculiarity of taste” rather than a “sexual orientation.” Parker translates exoleti as “past their prime” (). 5

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prostitute, actor, or magistrate. An emperor’s desires can lead him to exert physical power over all others—male and female, young and old, slave and free—as in the lives of Tiberius and Caligula: Moreover it is said that once, while sacrificing, Tiberius was taken with the beauty of the acolyte who carried the incense casket, and could hardly wait for the ceremony to end before escorting him out and committing stuprum upon him and his brother (constupraret simulque fratrem eius), the sacred trumpeter; and when they jointly protested at this behaviour, he had their legs broken. (Tib. .)

This violent account is followed immediately by the story of Tiberius’ attempted rape of Mallonia, which is even worse, since she is a woman of high birth (feminarum . . . illustrium, Tib. ); after being put on trial and asked “whether she is sorry” (ecquid paeniteret), she returns home and stabs herself, but not without loudly declaiming the “hairy and smelly old man” (hirsuto atque olido seni) for his mouth’s obscenity (Tib. ). For the ancient reader, the social importance of Tiberius’ violation of boundaries was clear. Not only can Tiberius inflict pain (physical violence or public disgrace) on those who resist his desires, but the taboos he breaks (violating participants in a sacred ritual and defiling a matron) are distinctly ‘Roman’. ‘Recreational’ sex is also reported in such a way that it reflects on the emperor’s public character. Tiberius’ famous pisciculi or “minnows” (little boys who nibble his private parts as he swims, Tib. .) and spintriae (girls and mature men who were monstrosi concubitus repertores, Tib. .) do not merely indicate his private sexual depravity and power over children and old men; they also symbolize his lack of leadership and disillusionment with politics, since these sexual extravagances take place in his isolated hideaway on Capri where he has given up care for public affairs (rei publicae quidem curam usque adeo abiecit, Tib. .). In contrast, the witty and sober emperor Vespasian’s concubitus with a certain woman who declared she was dying for love of him is described as a simple matter of quid pro quo; when the emperor gives her , sestertii afterwards, he tells his dispensator to enter the expense in the accounts as “To Vespasian, object of a passion” (Ves. ).6

6 As a further example of Vespasian’s sober sex life, Langlands   n.  suggests that his private quip to Licinius Mucianus, governor of Syria and well known for impudicitia, at Ves.  may imply “that Vespasian had been having sex with this man, and is unembarrassed to have this known.”

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Stuprum that is reciprocal (which one might suppose would indicate consent and therefore a purely private aspect of an emperor’s life) is nonetheless negative by virtue of being stuprum, and it is invariably a subset of ‘sex as power’. In the Life of Caligula: [Caligula] had no regard for chastity (pudicitia), either his own or that of others. He is said to have enjoyed Marcus Lepidus; Mnester the pantomime dancer; and certain hostages by the exchange of reciprocal stuprum (commercio mutui stupri). (Cal. .)

Caligula is a kind of pan-sexual, enjoying mutual stuprum with men in both the upper and lower strata of society, and playing both active and passive roles in sex. As emperor he is the princeps of society; but sexually, he enjoys both the height and depth of power, sometimes on-top and more often on-bottom.7 Moreover, a young man of consular family (consulari familia iuvenis), Valerius Catullus, revealed publicly that [the Emperor] had been buggered by him (stupratum a se), and that [Catullus’] limbs were quite worn out from sleeping with him. Besides his incest with his sisters, and his notorious passion for the prostitute Pyrallis, [Caligula] held himself back from scarcely any woman of rank. (Cal. .)

As a result, the diversity of social positions in Tiberius’ and Caligula’s scandals is as salacious and varied as their sexual positions. Similarly in the Life of Vitellius, mutual stuprum reflects on how the emperor is easily persuaded to act against his better judgment by his social inferior: . . . for the great part of his reign, Vitellius did not rule without the advice and judgment of every vile man among the actors and circus-charioteers, and especially of his freedman Asiaticus. This man, who as a boy had received stuprum in mutual lust (mutua libidine constupratum) . . . on the first day of his reign [as emperor], Vitellius presented him with the gold ring [of the equestrian order] at dinner, even though earlier that morning, when everyone had been demanding this very thing, he had most strongly spoken against such a stain on the equestrian order. (Vit. )

7 Langlands   writes insightfully of Caligula, “The phrase mutui stupri is interesting: it is more shaming to be penetrated by someone who has also been so degraded as to have first submitted to you . . . there is no longer any attempt to make stuprum covert: it is no longer nocturnal, or secretive, or hidden away from the coercive powers of state and family, or shrouded in a sense of shame. It is open and boastful.” Langlands’ study is on the occurrence of pudicitia in Roman literature. Although Suetonius does not use the word pudicitia again after Nero, he does describe mutual stuprum in Otho and Vitellius (to be discussed below).

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Once again, the events of the emperor’s private life affect his public decisions and indicate his political weakness. In this case, the beloved freedman is able to manipulate the man in power, and the man in power is under the control of men of low status. Most importantly, Suetonius chooses to relate details about the imperial succession, and how emperors manipulated themselves into power through sex. Even the divine Augustus is not spared the rumour mill: Marcus Antonius [alleged that Octavian’s] adoption by his (great)-uncle [Julius Caesar] had been obtained through stuprum; likewise Marcus Antonius’ brother Lucius [alleged] that, just as his chastity (pudicitia) had been spoiled by Caesar, Octavian then spread himself beneath [the consul] Aulus Hirtius in Spain for , nummi, and was accustomed to singe his legs with hot nut-shells, so that the hair would stand up more softly. (Aug. .)

Suetonius adds that even Augustus’ friends did not deny that he practiced adultery, but excused it since he did so “not from lust, but from strategy” (non libidine, sed ratione, Aug. .) in order to discover his enemies’ plans through their women. Since Augustus is one of the ‘good’ emperors, Suetonius takes care to mention that Augustus himself later proved these rumours of his impudicitia false by means of his castitas (Aug. .); but the implication of such politically-motivated attacks is that sex with one’s superiors (or at least the intimates of one’s rivals) is assumed to be a price for advancement. Another emperor who used sex to ensure his succession is Caligula: In order to strengthen this [claim to the succession], when [his wife] Junia had died in childbirth, Caligula seduced (sollicitavit) Ennia Naevia—the wife of Macro, who at that time was in charge of the praetorian cohorts— to stuprum, even promising to marry her, if he should gain possession of the empire; and he gave security for this, both by oath and in writing. After insinuating himself through this woman (per hanc insinuatus) into Macro’s favour, he approached Tiberius with poison. (Cal. .)

Seducing the right woman—the wife of the emperor’s chief bodyguard— enables Caligula to poison his predecessor. Suetonius adds the delicious detail that the woman is not gullible, but demands both verbal and written promises that she will indeed benefit from her relationship with an unscrupulous man. Otho uses a similar tactic to get close to Nero, but takes it one step further: Then after his father’s death, Otho—in order to more effectively pay favour to an influential freedwoman at court—went so far as to pretend to be in love with her, although she was an old woman and practically decrepit.

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james h. kim on chong-gossard After insinuating himself through this woman (per hanc insinuatus) into Nero’s favour, he easily held the highest place among [Nero’s] friends, by means of the similarity of their habits, and as indeed some say, by means of intimacy of reciprocal stuprum (consuetudine mutui stupri). (Otho .)

The parallelism here with the Caligula story is noteworthy, echoing the phrase per hanc insinuatus (“insinuating himself through this woman”) followed by a proper name in the dative.8 But the brevity of the account is tantalizing. Who is the decrepit freedwoman that has such influence over Nero, is she susceptible to Otho’s charms because she is old, and should she be jealous of Otho’s sexual intimacy with Nero? A less overt example of imperial seduction appears in the Life of Galba: [Galba] courted (observavit) above all the empress Livia, by whose favour (gratia), while she was living, he fared extremely well, and by whose will, when she was dead, he narrowly missed being enriched; [in the will] he had fifty million sestertii, the largest sum among the legatees. But because the sum was expressed in figures, and not in words at length, (Livia’s) heir Tiberius reduced the bequest to five hundred thousand, and even this he never received. (Gal. .)

The tale is a window into Galba’s knowledge of the Julio-Claudian court and his ability, when a young man, to gain the favour of older women. It also labels even the monumental Livia as another imperial woman not immune to the seductive attentions of a younger man.9 The verb observavit, describing Galba’s relationship with Livia, can mean ‘he courted / was charming to’, similar to the use of the infinitive observare in Ner. . where Nero in singing contents is ‘charming’ or ‘alluring’ to his rivals, quasi plane condicionis eiusdem (‘as though wholly on the same level,’ or ‘as equals’), before criticising them behind their backs.10 In addition to seduction for the gaining of power, Suetonius provides stories of outright sexual performance:

8 Similarities of presentation between lives have often been noticed. See Barton   (“Of the emperors, Caligula’s antics are again most similar to Nero’s”), and Richlin  – on Aug. . and Cal. . as being “suspiciously alike”. 9 This story also builds upon the narrative of Tiberius’ rocky relationship with his mother (Tib. ), even beyond the grave. Apparently unable to control Livia in life, Tiberius is at least able to control her property after her death—or more precisely, he is able to countermand her intentions on how to distribute her own money. 10 Shotter   on Gal.  notes that “Galba’s respect [to Livia] was shown by his commemoration of her on his coinage in ad  (RIC I2. pp.  and ) which also helped to establish an idea of his connection with the family of Augustus and thus his claim to represent a legitimate continuation of the principate.”

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Vitellius spent his boyhood and early adolescence on Capri among Tiberius’ prostitutes, and himself was known by the enduring nickname ‘Spintria’ and was thought (existimatusque)—for his body’s sake—to have been the beginning and cause of incrementa (rise to public office) for his father. (Vit. .)

Again, strategic sexuality is related to political position; it not only helps advance the career of a family member (in Vitellius’ case), but ultimately prepares all these men for their brief reign as emperors. The damning rumour is also prefaced with a non-committal existimatusque, a technique that Shotter rightly describes as ‘typical’.11 Similar in tone of accusation and vagueness of source is the tale of Domitian’s dalliance with men of influence: It is said that he spent the time of his puberty and early adolescence in such poverty and such disrepute that he had no silver plate to use. It is sufficiently accepted (satisque constat) that Clodius Pollio, a former praetor . . . had kept and often would show off a hand-written note [of Domitian’s], offering him a ‘night’ (noctem). Nor is there a shortage of those who claim that Domitian was also abused (corruptum) by Nerva, who would soon (mox) be his successor. (Dom. .)

As Michael Charles explains, Suetonius’ use of mox could not only highlight the sudden transformation from Nerva being ‘on-top’ in bed to being ‘on-top’ in the state, but also indicate that their sexual relationship occurred during Domitian’s reign, and therefore when he was an adult and did not need to prostitute himself. In contrast, Suetonius seems to suggest that Domitian’s alleged poverty was one motive for offering Clodius Pollio a ‘night’.12 In any case, the assumption that Domitian was the passive partner in a sex-act with Nerva shows a full-circle with Augustus being buggered by his great-uncle as the price for adoption. In Suetonius’ retelling, sex between a ruler and his predecessor is taken for granted (Otho and Nero, Vitellius and Tiberius, Domitian and Nerva); whether one is ‘on top’ or engaged in mutual stuprum, sex with the emperor prepares one, as it were, to be an emperor oneself.

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Shotter  . Charles  . Charles also suggests how the story might comment on the virility of the partners, in that it “reflects badly on Domitian, who is cast as effeminate and unworthy of his position—perhaps more so when Nerva did not exactly enjoy the most virile of reputations” (). “For the attuned reader, the locus might even be interpreted as ‘he was even sodomized by that old woman Nerva, who soon afterwards succeeded him’ ” (). 12

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james h. kim on chong-gossard Sexual Liaisons of the Emperors: Suetonius’ Own Day

The connection between sex and political advancement, and the public’s desire to contrast its leaders’ private sexual liaisons with their public actions, are familiar phenomena in many historical periods. But why was Suetonius sharing his gossip when he did, in the reign of Hadrian?13 His prurient interest in who the emperor slept with is not characteristic of other biographies of the period, which were more interested in drawing moral and philosophical lessons (e.g., Tacitus’ Agricola, or Plutarch’s Parallel Lives). This indicates a social phenomenon that led Suetonius to expect that his second century audience would be interested in salacious facts about first century emperors. This phenomenon is a combination of efforts from the top-down (the public image of the emperor Hadrian and the women of the imperial family) and from the bottom-up (the Roman audience avidly evaluating their princeps) and revolves around contemporary concerns regarding the limitations of the private conduct of those in power and the nature of the imperial succession.14 There are many ways in which the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian were decidedly ‘different’ from what had gone on before. Certainly the provincial and non-patrician origin of Trajan and Hadrian’s families, and the fact that the succession was secured by adoption, relieved them

13 One of the most influential answers to this question, Carney , has over the years been quite thoroughly dismissed. Carney argued that Suetonius’ chief ‘relevant issue’ was Hadrian, and that in order to ‘get back’ at the emperor for having been fired, Suetonius systematically critiques Hadrian through allusions to his personal interests (including his love for Antinous), military decisions, philhellenism, and even the vocabulary used in Hadrian’s propaganda. Noreña   has a cogent reply: “the notion that the Roman state would dignify rumors about the sexual life of the emperor with a formal response transmitted by an official medium of imperial publicity is not very plausible.” For myself, I doubt the veracity of the story of Hadrian firing Suetonius; the only source is Hist. Aug. Hadr. ., stating that Hadrian “gave successors to” (i.e., found replacements for) Suetonius and many others (including the prefect of the guard) because “without his consent (iniussu eius), they had been conducting themselves more familiarly with his wife Sabina than the etiquette (reverentia) of the princely court demanded”. It sounds too apocryphal, since it would be easy for the Scriptores to accuse Suetonius the gossipmonger of such a social faux-pas, and his alleged behaviour at court conveniently matches the prurience in his writing. 14 pace Wardle : “No work on the Roman emperors could ever be value-free, so the sense exists in which the Caesares cannot fail to have embodied implicit recommendations as to conduct, but that is hardly worth saying.” Wardle’s general argument is that the antiquarianism of Suetonius is simply a scholarly interest in the past; I think he goes too far in arguing that it has no direct relevance for the period of Hadrian.

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from the burden of maintaining the dignity of an old Italian dynasty.15 Trajan’s adoption by Nerva was praised by Pliny as an innovation meeting unanimous approval (Plin. Pan. .–). And if the Historia Augusta and the epitome of Dio Cassius can be trusted, Hadrian’s position as Trajan’s adopted son and closest male relative was itself not enough to have been named Trajan’s imperial successor.16 Part of the appeal of the Caesares, then, was that it underscored a contrast between the second century’s innovation of appointing emperors based on merit with good results, and the first century’s practice of choosing successors based on royal lineage with disastrous results. Suetonius’ inclusion of rumours about emperors sleeping with their predecessors or successors, or men like Caligula and Otho using sex to “get near” to their predecessor, is all the more poignant given that it was so different from the political transition from Nerva to Trajan to Hadrian. The dynamics of this difference operate in two ways: on the one hand, the propaganda of Suetonius’ times could envisage how the Trajanic and Hadrianic succession was a ‘better’ arrangement, with a successor being chosen based on merit rather than blood, while at the same time his position was legitimated through adoption and dynastic marriage (viz., Hadrian marrying Trajan’s great-niece). But on the other hand, the propaganda of this seamless transition might mask a prurient interest on the part of the Roman reader. Was the average Roman snickering, “surely Hadrian spent a night with Trajan as a price for his adoption? Maybe Nerva and Trajan . . . ?” Interestingly, at various times throughout his reign, denarii were minted at Rome depicting Pudicitia on the reverse and a portrait of Hadrian on the obverse, advertising not his wife’s chastity, but Hadrian’s own.17 Whoever was designing Hadrian’s public image for 15 It is true that the Julio-Claudian emperors Tiberius, Caligula and Nero were ‘adopted’ by their predecessors; even Augustus was the adopted son of his great-uncle, Julius Caesar. But such adoption replaced a pre-existing blood relationship (stepson, greatnephew, nephew), whereas Nerva and Trajan were not related by blood. 16 According to Hist. Aug. Hadr. ., Trajan and Hadrian were first cousins once removed, and Trajan adopted the orphaned Hadrian at age ten (Hist. Aug. Hadr. .) as his closest male relative. But Hadrian owed his succession as emperor to the machinations of Trajan’s wife Plotina, who allegedly either smuggled someone in next to Trajan’s deathbed to impersonate his feeble voice, naming Hadrian as his successor (Hist. Aug. Hadr. .) or herself signed Trajan’s letters to the senate announcing Hadrian’s adoption while keeping Trajan’s death concealed for several days (D.C. ..). 17 Pudicitia types on Hadrian’s coins appeared between – (a few years after his accession), – (oddly enough, when Antinous was alive and in the emperor’s entourage), and –. See Noreña  for a full study. Among the “broad contexts” which Noreña argues allowed Pudicitia—elsewhere associated with female obverses—to

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dissemination through the coinage was concerned that the emperor’s sexual life should achieve a virtuous reputation, by either pre-empting or counteracting scandalous rumour. Scandalous rumour was indeed what later generations openly delighted in when making their account of Hadrian’s life. Both the Historia Augusta and Dio Cassius record that Hadrian, like Caligula and Otho, owed his success to the favour of an older woman, Plotina, who had a passion for her husband’s adopted son. It is to Plotina’s favor and studium for him that Hadrian owes his appointment as Trajan’s legatus in the Parthian expedition in  and as consul for the second time in  (Hist. Aug. Hadr. ., ), not to mention his securing of the imperial throne in . Dio Cassius adds that Plotina acted ξ ρωτικς φιλας (D.C. ..) and later describes her as the woman δι’ dς @τυχε τς #ρχς ρσης αKτο , “through whom he had obtained the imperial rule because she loved him” (..). The Historia Augusta also has its share of sexual gossip about Hadrian himself. “Opinio multa firmavit” that he “had courted and often had intercourse with Trajan’s boy favourites” (curasse delicatos eosdemque saepe inisse, Hist. Aug. Hadr. .) whenever he was an intimate member (familiarior) at Trajan’s court. What is more, in addition to “the things which they claim regarding his passion for adulterers (adultorum amore) and his adulteries with married women, to which he is said to have been addicted” (Hist. Aug. Hadr. .), Hadrian was criticized for using the frumentarii to spy on his friends’ secrets (occulta) and private life (vitam, Hist. Aug. Hadr. .). Interestingly, Hadrian in the Historia Augusta emerges both as prurient as Suetonius in his biographies, and as much the object of rumours concerning his sex life as the subjects of the Caesares. It is naturally hard to gauge where these rumours originated, whether—as in the case of Suetonius—they are a product of the times of the authors (the unknown fourth-century Scriptores), or whether the authors are trying to outdo Suetonius in the genre of salacious biography. Regardless of the truth, Suetonius expected his readers to be familiar with rumours that promotion through sex—what today we might call sexual harassment—was a real part of imperial politics.

be associated with Hadrian, is a new focus in early second century literature on “human qualities as constituent elements of the ‘good’ emperor”, in which Suetonius has a role (–); however, for Noreña, “the literary evidence for this argument is suggestive rather than probative” ().

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Scandalous Imperial Women: Julio-Claudians and Flavians The other aspect of “who slept with whom in the first century of the Roman empire” involves the imperial family, specifically the women.18 ‘Imperial women’ include wives on the one hand, and blood relations of the emperor (daughters, granddaughters, sisters, mothers, nieces) on the other.19 Riemer has argued that the women mentioned in Suetonius are mainly used to reflect on the negative characteristics of an emperor. The bad emperors have the most tales of women, and their relationships to and treatment of women reflect the weakness and depravity inherent to their characters. Women become a function of men in the biographies, and Suetonius is interested in them only when they serve the goal of his narrative. The salaciousness of the women’s persona varies according to the judgment being passed on any particular emperor; but this ultimately confirms the overall importance of women in imperial court life.20 While in principle Riemer is right, I suggest that the recounting of sexual

18 This emphasis on women is partly due to historical accident. The Julio-Claudian emperors and the emperors of  (except for Vespasian) simply did not have sons or brothers whose sexual exploits were worth reporting. 19 Interestingly enough, not many emperors had adult-age daughters. The only one whose daughter and granddaughter were notoriously convicted for adultery was the emperor Augustus; yet Suetonius says very little about their crimes, except that they were ‘guilty of every form of vice’ (omnibus probris contaminatas, Aug. .). At Tib. ., Julia is described as having desired Tiberius even while married to her former husband (at least, Suetonius reports this as the opinion of the vulgus); this is a kind of precursor to the libidines atque adulteria for which Julia is eventually banished (Tib. .). Claudius while emperor also had adult-age daughters, Antonia (by Aelia Paetina) and Octavia (by Messalina). Neither commits any sexual crimes during Claudius’ life, but Antonia’s marriage is as much a disaster as her father’s. Antonia’s first husband Gnaeus Pompeius is stabbed while having sex with a young male favourite (in concubitu dilecti adulescentuli, Cl. .). Since this incident occurs in a section describing Claudius’ actions when uxoribus addictus, Claudius himself presumably ordered the murder of his son-in-law (perhaps under the instigation of Messalina), and the in flagrante delicto circumstances of his death may be salacious serendipity (see Hurley  ). Also, few emperors had sisters. Augustus’ sister Octavia, once the wife of Marcus Antonius, receives no characterization by Suetonius. Caligula’s three sisters (Drusilla, Julia and Agrippina) are not independent characters in his biography, but are instead the victims of his passion. Caligula takes Drusilla away from her husband and publicly treats her as his lawful wife (in modum iustae uxoris propalam habuit, Cal. .) until she dies; then he condemns the other two sisters for plotting against him, even after prostituting them to his favourites (Cal. .). 20 Riemer  –.

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scandals of women during the reign of emperors who are long dead serves another purpose: to satisfy the hunger of Suetonius’ readers who are eager to gossip about the imperial women of their own day, by contrast or comparison with women from the past. Interestingly, it is with mothers, wives and nieces that Suetonius relates the juiciest details. Part of this is due to historical serendipity (a certain emperor had a mother living when he was ruling; another emperor happened to marry his own niece). Yet it is significant that these roles (figurative ‘mothers of the nation’, wives, and nieces) are precisely those that became important in the imperial propaganda of Suetonius’ own times. Nero’s relationship with his mother Agrippina is described in terms of a contest for control, with the added salaciousness that she is also one of the persons the emperor sleeps with. Out of jealousy for her affection for other men, Nero violates (per vim conspurcasset) the young Aulus Plautius before killing him, declaring that Plautius was loved by Agrippina and thereby impelled to hope for the imperium. Although clearly motivated in part by fear of conspiracies against him, Nero’s violation of the boy is tinged with the pettiness of a jilted lover, since Nero calls upon his mother to come and ‘kiss his successor’ (Ner. .). Yet, in general, Suetonius even considers this incestuous aspect of Nero’s character as open to some debate. In the midst of a long section (– ) on his sexual depravities, including the establishment of rows of brothels staffed by matronae along the shore at Baiae, making prostitutes out of free-born boys and concubines out of brides, raping a Vestal Virgin, having mock-marriage ceremonies with the puer Sporus and the freedman Doryphorus, and in general prostituting his pudicitia by every means, Suetonius adds a few sentences on Agrippina: That he even desired concubitus with his mother and was deterred by her detractors, lest the arrogant and ruthless woman (ferox atque impotens mulier) gain power (praevaleret) by this kind of relationship, no one doubted (nemo dubitavit), especially after he admitted a courtesan, who was said to look like Agrippina, among his concubines. Even before that, whenever he rode with his mother in a litter, they say (affirmant) that their incestuous relations (libidinatum inceste) were betrayed by the stains on his clothes. (Ner. .)

As with his tale of Galba’s desire for Icelus, the source for Suetonius’ claim that Nero might have slept with his mother in their litter is the result of a vague affirmant, whereas general knowledge (or more precisely, general lack of disbelief, nemo dubitavit) holds that fear of Agrippina’s power and influence enabled courtiers to keep son and mother

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apart.21 Suetonius ensures that such anxiety about Agrippina ne praevaleret is eventually justified, for her psychological influence over Nero resurfaces as both cause and consequence of her murder. Nero’s harassment by his mother (gravabatur at Ner. .) mirrors that of Tiberius, who is harassed (gravatus) by his mother Livia who “was claiming for herself, as it were, an equal share in the power” (velut partes sibi aequas potentiae vindicantem, Tib. .). One gets the impression that Tiberius and Nero cannot endure being treated like children while adults. Agrippina is another Livia, a royal mother who is constantly enquiring into and reprimanding (corrigentem) whatever her son says and does. But Agrippina is a woman whose greatest power comes from her son. When Nero wants to expose her to public invidia, he threatens—in a Suetonian use of quasi with the future participle (quasi cessurus, Ner. .)— to quit the government and retire to Rhodes himself ; it would be an embarrassment to Agrippina because it was she who essentially put Nero in power in the first place. Nero also “deprived her of every honour and power” (et honore omni et potestate privavit, Ner. .) and took away her personal bodyguard of Roman and German soldiers, which had been a sign of her extreme status. When her threats and violent behaviour convince Nero that she must die, Agrippina proves not only uppity; she is also shrewd enough to expect to be poisoned, and therefore fortifies herself with antidotes (Ner. .). She enters a kind of catand-mouse game with her son, but playing both roles: the pursued victim when alive, and the pursuing ghost after she loses the game, for after her murder he is hounded by her spirit and the whips and flaming torches of the Furies. He even attempts with the help of the Magi to summon her Manes and entreat them (Ner. .).22 But her role

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Warmington   on Ner. . adds that Tacitus and Dio Cassius, in their accounts of Nero and Agrippina’s incest, also “just manage to avoid committing themselves to saying that it actually happened.” See also Barton   on how the incident of the stains (Ner. .) is an ironic fulfilment of an earlier account of filial devotion, viz., Nero’s habit to ride with his mother in a litter soon after his accession (Ner. ). See Ginsburg  – for an extended study of the presentation of Agrippina as the ‘sexual transgressor’ in Tacitus, Dio Cassius, and Suetonius; the crux of her argument is that the ancient evidence itself suggests “that the consistency of the tradition on Agrippina’s sexual mores is no guarantee of its reliability” (). At the same time, “The allegations that Agrippina had incestuous relations with her brother Gaius and made incestuous advances to her son Nero and the insistence that her marriage to Claudius was an incestuous union may be read as a critique on the Julio-Claudian policy of endogamy” (). 22 See Baltussen  on the importance of Greek tragedy and the myth of Orestes for the narrative of Nero and Agrippina.

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as lover is significantly not forgotten in the rumours from “not untrustworthy authorities” (nec incertis auctoribus, Ner. .), and it is a sickly comical touch for the inebriated Nero to view his mother’s corpse and inspect the very limbs he had supposedly studied intimately many times before. As for wives, not every emperor had a wife while he was emperor. Tiberius, for example, was twice divorced when his reign began, and he never remarried; Galba was a widower and never remarried; Titus was divorced and never remarried; Vespasian was a widower (his wife, Flavia Domitilla, died before Vespasian even held a magistracy), but had a long-time concubine named Caenis, a freedwoman of Antonia (mother of the emperor Claudius); and in Suetonius’ words, Vespasian as emperor kept Caenis “wife in all but name” (paene iustae uxoris loco, Ves. ).23 Of those emperors who were married during their reigns, five wives stand out from the crowd—Livia (the wife of Augustus), Urgulanilla (first wife of Claudius, before he was emperor), Messalina (third wife of Claudius), Agrippina the Younger (fourth wife and niece of Claudius), and Domitia Longina (wife of Domitian). These women stand out partly for their independent spirit (Livia, being the first empress, set the standard for everyone else), and partly for how their husbands dote on them, so that the emperors Claudius and Domitian especially come across as rather hopelessly ‘uxorious.’ This characterization of these two men parallels the depiction of Messalina, Agrippina and Domitia as notorious flirts and seductresses. Livia manages to escape such vilification, so that her sexual proclivities are absurdly chaste, such as the story that she would procure young girls (virgines) for her husband Augustus to deflower (Aug. .), presumably when he had lost interest in her, and she wanted to make him happy. Even a random rumour (Cl. .) that Livia’s younger son Drusus (who was born three months after her marriage to Augustus) was actually fathered by Augustus through adulterous intercourse (per adulterii consuetudinem) and that this gave rise to a Greek saying (“for the fortunate, children in only three months!”) serves not to denigrate Livia, but to elevate the nobility of Drusus and, by extension, his son Claudius. In contrast, the emperor Claudius was not happy in his choice of wives, beginning with Urgulanilla, whom he married in  ce but divorced in  “for lustful scandalous behaviour” (ob libidinum probra) and “suspicion 23 Suetonius adds that Caenis died during Vespasian’s reign, after which he had several mistresses with whom he would take a nap during each day (Ves. .).

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of attempted murder” (ob homicidii suspicionem, Cl. .). It is unstated whom Urgulanilla was thought to have attempted to murder,24 but what followed was the birth of her daughter Claudia five months after the divorce. Claudius claimed that it was fathered by his own freedman Boter and left the baby at Urgulanilla’s door (Cl. .). Claudius’ later wives had an even more flirtatious nature. In the Life of Vitellius, Suetonius includes a tale of Vitellius’ father in Claudius’ time trying to curry favour with the empress Messalina and the emperor’s freedmen, Narcissus and Pallas: As for Claudius, who was obsessed (addictum) with his wives and freedmen, he [Lucius, father of Vitellius], in order to leave no artifice untried, asked Messalina as the greatest favour that she permit him to take the shoes off (excalciandos) [some MS read exosculandos, “kiss”] her feet; and the right slipper, once removed, he wore constantly between his toga and his tunic, often kissing it. He also worshipped golden images of Narcissus and Pallas among his household gods. (Vit. .)

The story indicates, among other things, that in the days of Claudius, a man could go places if he flirted with the empress; and Messalina’s little flirtation is seen on par with lavish sycophancy to Claudius’ freedmen. The vagaries of the Julio-Claudian court were apparently well known to Vitellius’ father, who was able to manipulate them in order to rise to power; indeed, Vitellius himself (as discussed earlier) served his father’s interests in this respect by being forced to spend his early adolescence on the island of Capri among Tiberius’ boy-prostitutes. On the other hand, this passage and others that demonize Messalina more dramatically also confirm Claudius’ dim-wittedness, that he is hopelessly unaware such flirtations are going on, or that he does not care. Unsurprisingly, then, Messalina goes so far as to commit bigamy by marrying another man, Gaius Silius, while she is still married to Claudius. In a brilliant praeteritio, Suetonius reports that one story “is beyond all belief ” (omnem fidem excesserit), namely that Claudius was duped into signing the contract for Messalina’s dowry at this marriage to Silius (Cl. .); it was beyond belief, but of course Suetonius reports it anyway. Elsewhere, when describing Claudius’ fears of conspiracies (Cl. ), Suetonius reports that the emperor set aside his “most ardent love” (amorem flagrantissimum) for Messalina out of fear that Silius aspired to the throne, rather than because of the “unseemly conduct of her insults” (indignitate contumeliarum), which would apparently have been the more reasonable

24

Perhaps her brother’s wife? See Levick  –.

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cause. Messalina’s bigamy gets her arrested and eventually executed (Cl. .), but Claudius is such a dullard that he doesn’t remember ordering her death, and asks where she is when she fails to arrive for dinner (Cl. .). Agrippina the Younger, Claudius’ th wife (and his own niece), is also demonized in more than one biography. Suetonius tells us that even before she became Claudius’ empress (but presumably at the start of his reign), Agrippina had a reputation for lasciviousness and made a pass at Galba, who decades later would himself become emperor: In truth, when his wife Lepida died, and his two sons by her (died), he continued in unmarried state, nor could he be tempted by any further match, not even with Agrippina, who, when she had been widowed by the death of Domitius, had tried to tempt Galba as a husband—even when he was not yet unmarried!—by every means, to such a degree that, at a meeting of married women, she was rebuked with a quarrel and was even slapped by Lepida’s mother. (Gal. .)

Morgan has proposed that Suetonius’ point in this passage was that Galba’s marriage to his wife Lepida was a loveless one, and that Agrippina knew this; and that what Agrippina had to offer Galba was her ancestry from the imperial family; but, when Galba became a widower, he could not be persuaded to remarry, even to someone as well-born as Agrippina.25 Agrippina’s ancestry was indeed surely a powerful bargaining chip for marriage; one can speculate that mention of it was a subtle comparatio to the emperor Hadrian’s celibate marriage to Sabina, another woman whose ancestry, as great-niece of Trajan, made her a powerful consort. But the salacious account of Agrippina causing a scene with Galba’s mother-in-law is a significant addition to what might well be an apocryphal story, and it is followed by the account of Galba’s more successful courting of Livia (Gal. ., discussed earlier). Whereas Galba emerges from the narrative as a clever man of ambition, Agrippina is a seductress. This story of Agrippina’s seductiveness ties in with another story about how she became empress: In truth, after he [Claudius] was enticed into love by the charms (inlecebrae) of Agrippina, his brother Germanicus’ daughter, through her privilege of kissing him and the opportunities she took to caress him (blanditiarum occasiones), he put pressure on some members of the senate to

25

Morgan  –.

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make a motion at the next senate meeting that he should be compelled to make her his wife, under pretence that it was in the state’s greatest interest (quasi rei publicae maxime interesset), and that pardon should be given to all other men in such marital unions, which up to that time had been considered incestuous. (Cl. .)

The need for an emperor to invent a noble lie to disguise his own uxoriousness is repeated in the tale of another imperial wife, Domitia Longina, who was independent enough to fall in love with an actor and get a divorce: Not to go into every detail, after having sex with the wives of many men (contractatis multorum uxoribus), he even married Domitia Longina who was the bride of Aelius Lamia. Then his wife Domitia [ . . .] he complimented {with the title of} Augusta; but he divorced her, since she was desperately in love with Paris, the actor; but within a short time afterwards, being unable to bear the separation, he remarried her, under pretence that the people were demanding it (quasi efflagitante populo). (Dom..; .)

Domitia is so much the object of Domitian’s desire that he remarried her and tried to put a political spin on it—namely, that the people missed her—expressed with quasi (plus the ablative absolute) just as Claudius’ grounds for marrying his own niece were introduced by quasi (plus the subjunctive). Suetonius’ readers learn less about Domitia’s say in all of this, and more about the emperor’s dangerous passions and his determination to lie about them publicly. Domitia is an enigmatic figure in Suetonius, since in the Life of Titus (quoted earlier) she is said to glory readily in all her scandalous activities. What precisely are Domitia’s scandalous probra, warranting the same vague phrase omnibus probris used to describe Augustus’ daughter Julia (Aug. .)?26 Finally, another Julia should be mentioned: Titus’ daughter. In a section devoted to Domitian’s sexual habits (including his depilation of his concubines), his abuse of his niece Julia is narrated:

26 Jones   on Dom.. discusses Domitia Longina’s possible political connections as the daughter of Nero’s general Corbulo, concluding that “marriage with her was consistent with what was to become standard Vespasianic practice: disavowal of any Neronian ties (unless they could be seen as respectable) together with rehabilitation of his ‘victims’.” It has been suggested that Domitia Longina was a direct descendant of Augustus through an unbroken line of daughters, and therefore a second cousin twice removed of Nero. Suetonius significantly chooses not to mention any such political or dynastic aspects of Domitia Longina’s marriage.

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james h. kim on chong-gossard His brother’s daughter (Julia), who when still a young girl was offered to him in marriage, and whom, since he was enamoured of Domitia, he persistently refused to marry, not long afterwards, when she was given to another, he seduced (corrupit) her, and what is more, even while Titus was living! And later, when she had lost both father and husband, he loved her most passionately and openly, so that he even was the cause of her death, when she was forced to abort a child conceived by him (coactae conceptum a se abigere). (Dom. )

Julia is less a character in her own right, and more a victim of Domitian’s sexual depravity. True to pattern, in each case of a scandal involving an imperial woman, Suetonius reveals more about the man than the woman; yet the woman’s influence on the man is a sign that something is wrong with the man’s self-control. At the same time it is a sign that the woman’s position, her ability to influence the emperor in the way that she does, and even her desirability, are dangerous. Finally, a study of scandalous women in Suetonius would not be complete without mentioning the nameless Roman women who represent cases of sexual impropriety which various emperors choose to resolve. Tiberius permits the relatives of matronae who had prostrated their pudicitia to punish them by consensus, and allows a Roman eques to divorce his wife after catching her in stuprum with their son-in-law (Tib. .). After Claudius encourages the senate to legalize marriage between uncle and niece, only a freedman and a chief centurion (primipilaris) follow suit and marry their nieces; Claudius and Agrippina both attend their nuptials (Cl. .), and the reader is left to wonder if the rest of society is still horrified at such incest. Claudius is also praised by his freedmen for a legal enquiry (cognitio) “in which he condemned a certain woman guilty of adultery” (Cl. .); unfortunately this comment causes him to lament his own marriages. In the time of Vespasian, when “libido and luxuria were unrestrained”, the emperor wrote a senatorial decree that any woman who “had joined herself ” (iunxisset) to another person’s slave (servus) should be considered a slave-woman (ancilla) herself (Ves. ). Domitian, in his role as censor perpetuus, punished the incest of various Vestal Virgins and exiled their lovers, buried alive the chief-Vestal Cornelia, and publicly beat the majority of her lovers to death with rods in the Comitium (Dom. .–).27 Suetonius’ meticulous inclusion of these stories depicts a Roman world beset with licentiousness (especially that 27 In the same passage, Domitian’s censorial duties were directed against men as well, of both social orders, specifically those who had violated the mysterious lex Scantinia.

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of women), whose only hope for moral change must come from the princeps himself, either through his example or his rule. But in the cases of the ‘bad’ emperors, their exercise of censorial duty is a hypocritical sham—a public lie—that overtly contradicts their private life.

Scandalous Imperial Women: Suetonius’ Own Day Is there, then, a particular second-century discourse about the prescribed behaviour of women within which Suetonius’ Caesares fits? Luckily a considerable body of literary, epigraphic, and numismatic evidence survives to enable scholars to assess the social position of imperial women in Suetonius’ own times, in particular Trajan’s wife Plotina, Trajan’s sister Marciana, Trajan’s niece Matidia the Elder, and Hadrian’s wife Sabina (Trajan’s great-niece), all of whom were honoured with the title Augusta.28 Much effort from the centre was devoted to providing a consistent public profile for these women, one that Mary Boatwright described as “quiet, subservient, and self-effacing.”29 Propaganda came in the form of inscriptions testifying to how these women donated their money or were the recipients of independent dedications in shrines (Boatwright), or iconography and slogans appearing on coinage in these women’s names. With regard to the latter, Minerva Keltanen’s study of the coinage of the Augustae Plotina and Sabina concluded that it emphasized not so much the domesticity or retiring nature of these women, but rather their visible role as part of a conjugal pair and, at the same time, their chaste sexual role.30 For example, in  (the fifteenth anniversary of Trajan’s accession) Plotina was given the right to issue coins in her own name and image from the state mint. Plotina’s coins often depicted on the reverse the virgin goddesses Vesta (veiled, holding a sceptre and palladium in her role as Vesta of the Palatine) or Minerva (one of the Capitoline Triad). Sabina, who had been married to Hadrian from the year  onwards, began to issue coins in her own name in  (at about the same time Suetonius might have been writing the bulk of the Caesares). The reverses of Sabina’s coins depict Vesta (in the same type as 28 Plotina and Marciana were refusing the title Augusta at the time of Pliny’s Panegyricus ( ce), but they accepted it in . Matidia the Elder received the title in  (the year Marciana died). Sabina received it as early as  (the year Matidia the Elder died) or as late as , when her coins began to be issued. 29 Boatwright  . 30 Keltanen  , .

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Plotina’s coins), Juno (the goddess of marriage, but also one of the Capitoline Triad, sometimes armed with a spear), Venus as Genetrix (ancestress of the Roman people), and Indulgentia (in the sense of “parental indulgence” or “kindness to children”).31 These choices are significant, since they emphasize Sabina’s nominal role as mother of the nation, even though she herself was childless. As Temporini argued, the association of Vesta in particular with these Augustae suggested the continuity of the imperial dynasty, inasmuch as Vesta was a symbol of Rome’s aeternitas.32 In Keltanen’s own words, “If the emperor was pater patriae, ‘Father of the Motherland,’ the empress was in a way mater patriae.”33 Even more significant in the numismatic propaganda of these imperial wives are the concepts of pudicitia, fides, and concordia. Plotina was the first empress whose coins bore the legend pudicitia (‘chastity’), in the form of an ‘altar of chastity’ (ARA PVDIC), and the only empress whose coins bore FIDES AVGVST(a), or ‘the imperial fidelity’ (which can mean sexual loyalty).34 Keltanen suggested that Fides was the only reverse type of the sestertii of Plotina, with the result that her “fidelity was the most important virtue propagated to the public,” since sestertii were coins with the largest circulation.35 CONCORDIA AVG (or, ‘the harmony of the imperial family’) is a common legend on Sabina’s coins, and the figure of Pudicitia, though less common, does appear on the reverse of a denarius of Sabina.36 The message seems clear; in Keltanen’s words, “The imperial couple acted as a ‘team.’ Wives were not separate from their husbands. They were propagated as consorts of the emperors.”37

31 Keltanen  –. See also Nicolai  –, a very comprehensive chart of Sabina’s coinage in the eight years between  and ; the various goddesses on the reverses (including Juno Regina, Ceres, Vesta) all relate to Sabina’s role as chaste wife. 32 Temporini  . See also Roche  . 33 Keltanen  . However, Plotina and Sabina were by no means the first women ever whose coins depicted such goddesses. Around – ce, Caligula issued a coin depicting his three sisters (who were named) in easily recognizable iconography as Securitas, Concordia, and Fortuna (Wood  ). In the Flavian period, coins of Julia daughter of Titus employed reverses with figures of Vesta, Venus, Ceres, and the personification Salus; and Domitia Longina’s coins had Venus Augusta on the reverse (Nicolai  , ). But Plotina and Sabina were the first women—and wives of the emperor, no less—whose coins had such iconography since the end of the Flavians, indicating a twenty-year-gap between the minting of Julia’s and Plotina’s coins. 34 Keltanen  –, Roche  . 35 Keltanen  . 36 Keltanen  – (Concordia), – (Pudicitia). 37 Keltanen  .

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Propaganda about these women’s chastity was not limited to visual iconography. Dio Cassius records a story that when Plotina first went into the palace, she turned to the people and declared, “Indeed I enter here such a woman as I wish to be also [when I] depart.”38 And Pliny the Younger (a master at writing what he thought Trajan wanted to hear) in  ce praised Plotina’s unobtrusive clothes and jewellery, describing her as the work of a husband who shaped and formed her habits (mariti hoc opus, qui ita imbuit, ita instituit, Pan. .). Pliny also included propaganda about imperial women’s contentment in their own household, praising the ability of sisters-in-law Plotina and Marciana not to engage in jealous rivalry with each other over their status; the result was contentment (moderatio) and constant security (perpetua securitas, Pan. .; the double-meaning of securitas as ‘freedom from care’ and ‘freedom from danger’ is surely operative). Furthermore, the sisters-in-law knew modesty (modestia) and valued the honour that derives from the opinions of men (in iudiciis hominum, Pan. .). A contrast to the imperial women of Julio-Claudian and Flavian days is surely intended, since Pliny goes on to describe how friendship (amicitia) had disappeared in the previous regime (Pan. .). Such propaganda existed for a reason. Temporini argued that Plotina’s positive image was closely linked to a comparison with her predecessors (in particular Domitia), and that the objective of portraying Plotina as virtuous was to enhance the stature of Trajan.39 While true, the necessary correlation is that Pliny expected the Roman people not only to need reassurance about Trajan’s stature (indeed, Temporini argues that the dynastic principle was reinstated in Trajan’s time), but also to believe they could judge their princeps based on the conduct of his wife (Pliny is explicit on this matter at Pan. .), and that Plotina needed an overdose of ‘spin’ regarding her personality.40 Are the stories of imperial women in Suetonius’ Caesares also political propaganda? Vinson has argued (at least in the case of Domitia and Julia) that, in the writings of Suetonius, Tacitus, Juvenal, and Dio Cassius, the slander of women of the past is all part of the traditional propaganda plot, whereby a new ruler legitimates his rule by systematically vilifying 38 τοια$τη μντοι ντα !α σρχομαι ο_α κα4 ξελ!ε3ν βο$λομαι, D.C. ... Dio Cassius also adds that Plotina conducted herself throughout the whole reign in such a way “that she would obtain no censure” (Bστε μηδεμαν πηγοραν σχε3ν). 39 Temporini . 40 See also Roche  , whose study of the ‘public image’ of Trajan’s family concludes “that Pliny was summarizing a program of imagery that was determined at a governmental level.”

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his immediate predecessors. In comparing Pliny’s letter describing Domitian’s abortion of Julia’s baby (as a comparatio with Domitian’s hypocritical execution of the Vestal Virgin Cornelia on the grounds of incest) with Tacitus’ narrative of Nero’s divorce of Octavia, and Dio Cassius’ narrative of Domitian’s divorce of Domitia, she concluded that there was a “fundamental similarity between sexual and political activity” in which lie “both corroboration and proof of his unworthiness to rule. Domitia’s adultery is thus of a piece with Julia’s abortion; both stories are equally false and function in a similar way to discredit Domitian by vilifying his personal life.”41 Yet, although this kind of vituperatio is at the heart of most imperial propaganda, in the coinage and in certain literary genres like panegyric, Suetonius is not overtly a political writer or an analytical historian (and Vinson herself barely discusses Suetonius as a writer). If anything, he is a collector of gossip, and the veracity of the stories is never of great importance. They are truly “private and public lies.”42 The Caesares operates instead as a kind of counter-propaganda, tapping into the worries that a Roman audience continued to have about the private life of their ruling house. Most scholars agree that it is inevitable that, in any retelling of the past, one imposes issues relevant to oneself and one’s own times. In Keith Bradley’s analysis, Suetonius is not reacting specifically to Hadrian, but rather reiterating ideals of marriage (and, I would add, any sexual conduct) which were traditional in Rome, but which became associated with emperors because of the “lack of distinction between emperors’ public and private lives, itself the product of their preeminent position of authority.”43 Indeed, as Pliny himself argues in his Panegyricus: High position (magna fortuna) has this chief characteristic: that it allows nothing to be hidden, nothing to be concealed; truly it opens up not only the houses (domus) but even the very bedrooms (cubicula ipsa) of princes, and the intimate recesses (intimosque secessus), and it exposes and spreads out for Rumour all secrets to be known. (Pan. .)

41 Vinson  . Compare also Ginsburg’s comments on Agrippina the Younger: “The potential for the sexual transgressions of an imperial woman to cause damage to an emperor’s moral and political standing was only intensified by the increasing tendency to view the imperial family and the state as synonymous” ( ). 42 I tend to agree with Wilson  –, who criticizes the revisionist historical approach (the approach that says “Maybe Domitian wasn’t such a monster after all . . .”) and rejects the notion that Suetonius is merely praising his own times by systematically lambasting the past. 43 Bradley  .

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Even though Pliny immediately transitions into praise of Trajan for a public and private life so spotless that it would incur no gossip, such lavish praise is only effective if the general statement about magna fortuna is true. The members of the imperial family were the second century’s celebrities. From the Republican period onwards, the nobility were the celebrities of Rome and maintained their status by being talked about.44 In the imperial period, this was certainly enhanced by the ability of members of the imperial family to put themselves on display (not just in art and on coinage, but also physically by traversing around the empire) and to sponsor huge spectacles that could be associated with them (such as Hadrian’s Olympic games at Athens), even spectacles which centred on the emperor’s private life (such as Hadrian’s initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries). The existence of propaganda designed to reassure the Roman people publicly that the emperor’s wife was chaste and happy in her childless marriage, implies that the people needed such assurance—that they had a cultural memory of previous regimes where an emperor and his wife (or other women in his court) did not share such harmony; or more precisely, in the past women did not know their place, and disaster ensued. In the words of Susan Wood: The survival during the Flavian and subsequent dynasties of the iconography that honors imperial women could hardly have derived from any nostalgia for the recent past. Rather, the visual imagery . . . that represents Plotina as an exemplum of chastity and matronly respectability, like the early portraits of Livia, must have succeeded because the imagery appealed to strongly held popular emotions and sentiments about the appropriate role of a woman in an elite family.45

In the new world of the ‘adopted emperors’, Sabina and Plotina were imperial consorts, not mothers of imperial heirs. They could not be accused of being a Livia or an Agrippina who bullied and dominated her adult son. Marciana and Matidia the Elder (sister and niece of Trajan), being mothers of girls only, were even further removed from accusations of uppitiness.46 In Boatwright’s words, “The biological role of women in the transfer of power was obsolete . . . A woman’s power in the imperial house could not be justified or tied automatically to her function as the 44 My thanks to Kathryn Welch for suggesting this angle to me. See also Bradley   on Sal. Cat. .– as a Republican example of the “price of celebrity”. 45 Wood  . 46 See Roche  – on the minimal numismatic profile of Marciana and Matidia the Elder; the latter is depicted in imitation of the goddess Pietas, protecting two children.

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mother of the caesars or the mother of the state.”47 Yet at the same time, they were highly venerated, with the official title Augusta and the right to have coins minted. It is in just such an environment, where there existed a concern for maintaining the chaste public face of the empress (even though, or perhaps because, she was not going to have children), that Suetonius’ gossip-laden biography about uppity women from the past would have found its most receptive audience.48

Conclusions Suetonius’ stories of Julio-Claudian and Flavian sexual decadence fit very well in a regime whose propaganda was geared to protecting the imperial family from accusations of infidelity or marital discord, and to promoting the household as one where concordia existed and there was no need for strategic sex. The propaganda of Hadrianic times (with its buzzwords of ‘marital harmony’ and ‘chastity’, including Hadrian’s own) indicate that the imperial family knew it was being scrutinized, and that the Roman people did not distinguish between the emperor’s public and private life. Hadrian himself notoriously played into this tendency by elevating his private favourite Antinous to the status of publicly worshipped god. Inquiring Roman minds wanted to know if the emperor was sleeping with anyone—and in looking back at the lives of previous rulers, Suetonius could satisfy inquiring minds by focusing on sex (or chastity) as a key to a man’s character and sex as a useful tool in a monarch’s rise to power. It is impossible to tell how many of Suetonius’ audience were attracted to stories about imperial women like Agrippina because they felt assured that things had improved after sixty-odd years; or, how many of his audience wanted to read such stories because they gossiped about exactly the same sort of things with regard to Plotina and Sabina. Perhaps there was a great deal of contemporary gossip circulating orally about Plotina and Sabina, which the Historia Augusta, discussed earlier, might preserve traces of. Indeed, the very story of Hadrian’s dismissal of Suetonius seems 47

Boatwright  . But cf. Bradley  : “Suetonius’ imperial ideal should perhaps be sought not so much in contemporary imperial conduct as in various conventions which had always characterized marriage in the Roman upper class.” Even so, Bradley also concludes regarding the emperor: “as the leading citizen he had come to be expected to preserve the old standards of private morality” (). 48

who slept with whom in the roman empire?



intended to reflect on Sabina more than anyone else; not only is Suetonius merely one of many who conduct themselves rather familiarly with the emperor’s wife, but the implication is that Sabina allowed or encouraged it, since the next sentence in the narrative states that Hadrian “as he himself said, would have even dismissed his wife on the grounds of being peevish and bitter, if he had been a private citizen”.49 Perhaps it was this kind of unkind gossip about an unhappy marriage which her coinage tried desperately to counteract. Or perhaps not, for we will never know for certain all the dynamics of Suetonius’ audience. Nonetheless, the official propaganda regarding Plotina and Sabina’s pudicitia, concordia, and participation in an imperial husband and wife “team” does go handin-hand with Suetonius’ tales of salacious and murderous wives like Agrippina and Messalina, and stories of divorced aged emperors like Tiberius, or nuts like Caligula, or emperors who are besotted with their wives and nieces (like Claudius and Domitian). The propaganda machine of Hadrian’s court and Suetonius’ work mutually inform each other; the propaganda indicates that the Romans wanted to gossip, and Suetonius gave them what they wanted, albeit deflected safely onto a previous era. As Barry Baldwin rather wryly observed, “Hadrian was neither uxorious nor specially fond of the opposite sex.”50 But in the context of the alternatives, such a bland reputation in the second century surely would have been a compliment! Suetonius’ Caesares spoke to a society that was still deeply concerned about an emperor’s marriage, the potential dangers of his being influenced by the women in his household or by the person he slept with, or indeed the danger of him sexually violating others—and above all, his need to spin public lies about his private life.51

49

uxorem etiam ut morosam et asperam dimissurus, ut ipse dicebat, si privatus fuisset (Hist. Aug. Hadr. .). See also Baldwin  , who suggests that the phrase iniussu eius (see n.  above) should be interpreted that it was without Sabina’s consent that Suetonius and others acted familiarly. For a general overview of Sabina’s reputation, see Opper  –. 50 Baldwin  . 51 My eternal thanks are due to Tom Atkinson, my research assistant and former student of Charles Tesoriero; to the Australia Research Council for funding our project for four whole years; and to my fellow triumviri and collegae, Andrew Turner and Frederik Vervaet.

. Claudia (unconsummated and divorced) . Scribonia (mother of Julia) . Livia Drusilla (no issue with Augustus; rumour of paternity of Drusus by adultery with her before marriage, Cl. .)

. Vipsania Agrippina (daughter of Marcus Agrippa, mother of Drusus the Younger; divorced) . Julia (his stepsister; no issue with Tiberius, divorced for adultery)

AUGUSTUS  /  bce –  ce

TIBERIUS – ce

Wives

Concubines / slaves

Augustus banished his daughter Julia and granddaughter Julia omnibus probris contaminatas (Aug. .)

son Drusus the Younger was poisoned by his wife Julia Livilla, the Elder, who was committing adultery with Tiberius’ right-hand-man Sejanus

– *stuprum with greatuncle Julius Caesar as the price of adoption (Aug. .) – *Aulus Hirtius (Aug. .) – Tertullia, Terentilla, Rufilla, Salvia Titisenia (all accusations by Mark Antony, Aug. .) – girls collected by Livia for Augustus to deflower (Aug. .) mother of Lucius Otho (many thought he was Tiberius’ bastard son, Otho .)

an ex-consul’s wife, whom he dragged during a banquet from the triclinium into the cubiculum, in front of the husband’s eyes, and brought her back blushing and hair dishevelled (Aug. .; an accusation by Mark Antony)

– the “Spintriae” (conquisiti puellarum et exoletorum greges monstrosique concubitus repertores) on Capri, Tib. . (included the future emperor Vitellius, Vit. .) – the Minnows (“Pisciculi”) on Capri, Tib. . – Mallonia, matron summoned to his bed, stabbed herself (Tib. ) – stuprum on an acolyte and sacred trumpeter; when they complained, he had their legs broken (Tib. .)

incest with his daughter Julia, producing Agrippina the Elder (a claim by Caligula, Cal. .)

Other scandals in the family

Rumoured liaisons (* = proven false)

Victims

Incest

appendix

 james h. kim on chong-gossard

GAIUS (Caligula) – ce

. Junia Claudilla, died in childbirth (Cal. .–) . Livia Orestilla (wife for a few days), who was supposed to marry Gaius Piso but got dragged off (Cal. .) . Caesonia, who was accepted as a wife after she bore a daughter, Julia Drusilla (Cal. .)

Wives

Concubines / Slaves

Rumoured liaisons – Ennia Naevia (wife of Macro, commander of Tiberius’ Praetorian Guards), was seduced to struprum so Caligula could get close to Tiberius and poison him – mutual stuprum with Marcus Lepidus, Mnester the pantomime, and certain hostages (Cal. .) – Valerius Catullus, who wore himself out by buggering the emperor (Cal. .) – Pyrallis, prostitute for whom Caligula had “notorious passion” (Cal. .)

Victims – Lollia Paulina (wife of Gaius Memmius), an abused victim ‘because somebody had remarked that her grandmother was once a famous beauty’ (Cal. .) – various married women at banquets, which he would disappear with (Cal. .)

Incest Cum omnibus sororibus suis consuetudinem stupri fecit (Cal. ), who were: – Drusilla, sister whom he ravished as a child, died during his reign (Cal. .–) – Julia Livilla and Agrippina the Younger, sisters whom he liked so much less that he let them sleep with his boyfriends (‘exoleti’) (Cal. .)

Other scandals in the family

who slept with whom in the roman empire? 

CLAUDIUS – ce

. Plautia Urgulanilla, divorced for “scandalous misbehaviour and suspicion of murder” (Cl. .), mother of Drusus (choked on a pear when a teenager after betrothal to Sejanus’ daughter) and Claudia (disowned as illegitimate and abandoned on mother’s doorstep) (Claud .) . Aelia Paetina, consulari patre, divorced for ‘slight offenses’ (Cl. .), mother of Antonia . Valeria Messalina, executed for bigamy and treason in  ce, mother of Octavia and Britannicus . Agrippina the Younger, his own niece, mother of Nero by previous marriage (Cl. .)

Wives

Concubines / slaves

Incest

Victims

Rumoured liaisons

– wife Messalina flirted with Lucius Vitellius (father of future emperor) with her shoes (Vit. .); committed bigamy with Silius (Cl. .) – Claudius’ daughter Antonia married twice (Cl. .): . Gnaeus Pompeius, whom Claudius had stabbed to death while in bed with an adulescentulus (Cl. .) . Faustus Cornelius Sulla Felix, Messalina’s half-brother – Antonia was executed by Nero (whom she refused to marry), charged with rebellion (Ner. .)

Other scandals in the family

 james h. kim on chong-gossard

. Octavia, stepsister, divorced for barrenness, although he had tried to strangle her on several occasions; but the divorce was so unpopular that he had to banish Octavia and then execute her adultery (Ner. .–) . Poppaea Sabina, mother of Claudia Augusta, who died in infancy (Ner. .) . Statilia Messalina, whose previous husband was murdered by Nero (Ner. .).

Lepida (Gal. .)

NERO – ce

GALBA – ce

Wives

Incest

male concubine: Icelus, who had sex with Galba when the death of Nero was announced (Gal. )

– Nero nearly married his rumoured incest with Agrippina, his mother own freedwoman Acte (Ner. .) (Ner. .) – Nero played the bride in two mock-weddings, one to the eunuch Sporus (Ner. .), another to the freedman Doryphorus (Ner. )

Concubines / slaves Otho—mutual stuprum (Otho .)

– various married women forced to pose as prostitutes; or senator’s wives (Ner. .–) – assaulted free-born boys (Ner. .) – assaulted Vestal Virgin Rubria (Ner. .) – assaulted Aulus Plautius, whom he then put to death and accused of being Agrippina’s beloved (Ner. .)

Galba refused the advances of Agrippina the Younger (Gal. .); but apparently won the favour of Livia Drusillla and received a bequest in her will (Gal. .)

Rumoured liaisons

Victims

Nero’s father, Domitius, charged with committing incest with his own sister Lepida (Ner. .)

Other scandals in the family

who slept with whom in the roman empire? 

pseudo-wives: Poppaea Sabina (Nero’s nd wife)—Otho “went through a form of marriage with her” (Otho .); Statilia Messalina (Nero’s widow), whom he had intended to marry, and to whom he wrote a letter before his suicide (Otho .)

. Petronia, mother of Petronianus (who later died of poison) . Galeria Fundana, mother of a stammering son, and a daughter (Vit. )

Flavia Domitilla, mother of Titus, Domitian, and Domitilla (who died young). Flavia died before Vespasian even held a magistracy (Ves. )

OTHO  ce

VITELLIUS  ce

VESPASIAN – ce

Wives

– “once a woman declared that she was desperately in love with him, and he took her to bed with him; she had got , gold pieces out of him; told the accountant to itemize it as ‘passion for Vespasian.’ ” (Ves. ) – an intimate (perhaps sexual?) relationship with Licinius Mucianus, governor of Syria (Ves. )

– Otho pretended a passion for an influential freedwoman at court, and thus insinuated himself into the position of Nero’s leading favourite (Otho .) – Nero—mutual stuprum (Otho .)

Rumoured liaisons

– Caenis, a freedwoman of Antonia, who “remained his wife in all but name even when he became Emperor.” (Ves. ) – several mistresses (after Caenis’ death); would nap with them each day (Ves. )

Victims

the emperor Tiberius (Vitellius was one of Tiberius’ “Spintriae” on Capri, Vit. .)

Incest

Asiaticus, Vitellius’ slave and lover, to whom he gave the gold ring of the equestrian order (Vit. )

Concubines / slaves

Vitellius’ father Lucius flirted with Claudius’ wife Messalina (and her shoes, Vit. .)

Other scandals in the family

 james h. kim on chong-gossard

. Arrecina Tertulla, daughter of a Roman knight who commanded the Guards (Tit. .) . Marcia Furnilla, divorced after she bore a daughter (Tit. .)

was rumoured to depilate Domitia Longina—he his female concubines carried her away, even himself (Dom. ) though she was the wife of Aelius Lamia (Dom. .); he divorced her because of her love for the actor Paris, then took her back on the pretext of yielding to the people’s wishes (Dom. .)

DOMITIAN – ce

Concubines / slaves

TITUS – ce

Wives

Julia (his niece); Domitian seduced her even when Julia’s father Titus was alive; and when Titus had died and Julia’s husband was dead, Domitian got her pregnant; she died as the result of an abortion (Dom. )

Incest

Victims

– affairs with many married women (Dom. .) – swam with prostitutes, and called sex “bedwrestling” (Dom. ) – Clodius Pollio—was promised a ‘night’ by Domitian (Dom. .) – Nerva (future emperor – ce); rumoured to have abused Domitian (Dom .)

– *rumoured to “own a troop of men (‘exoleti’) and eunuchs” (Tit. ) – to have notorious passion for Jewish Queen Berenice, whom he promised to marry (Tit. ) – *to have committed adultery with his sisterin-law Domitia (which Suetonius disbelieves because Domitia never admitted it, and she would have if it were true!) (Tit. .)

Rumoured liaisons (* = proven false)

Other scandals in the family

who slept with whom in the roman empire? 

THE LATER EMPIRE

FROM PRIEST TO EMPEROR TO PRIEST-EMPEROR: THE FAILED LEGITIMATION OF ELAGABALUS

Martijn Icks Among the emperors of Rome, Elagabalus is famous—or rather, infamous—for his devotion to an exotic god, whom he worshipped with extravagant rites and placed at the head of the Roman pantheon, usurping Jupiter’s supreme position.1 Moreover, the ancient literary sources accuse the so-called priest-emperor of just about every sort of scandalous behaviour and malpractice imaginable, from corruption and cruelty to a whole range of sexual escapades.2 After a spectacular rise to power in ad , the emperor managed to hold the purple for less than four years before he was brutally murdered. His decapitated body was dragged through the streets on a hook and finally thrown into the Tiber. As the case of Elagabalus demonstrates, power does not equal invulnerability. Even the ruler of the Roman world could fall victim to the aggression of disgruntled subjects. Ja´s Elsner has made this point eloquently: Power is, then, a far more complex and mysterious quality than any apparently simple manifestation of it would appear. It is as much a matter of impression, of theatre, of persuading those over whom authority is wielded to collude in their subjugation.3

To maintain power, in other words, one has to persuade; to persuade, one has to play roles, to deceive. Obviously, Elagabalus did not play his role right—or perhaps, chose the wrong role altogether. In contrast to Augustus, Trajan and other beloved predecessors, he failed to convince his subjects that he was the best man for the job. What strategies did the imperial administration employ to ‘sell’ Elagabalus to the Roman public? And why were these strategies ultimately unsuccessful?

1 2 3

For more on this, see Frey ; Icks a –. For more on this, see Sommer ; Icks a –; Icks b. Elsner  .



martijn icks The False Antoninus

On the th of May, ad , the history of the Roman Empire took an unexpected turn. The previous night, a fourteen-year-old boy had been smuggled into the camp of Legio III Gallica, which was stationed at Raphanae in Syria, by one of his tutors. The boy, named Varius Avitus Bassianus, came from the nearby town of Emesa, where he acted as high priest of the local sun god Elagabal. The ritual dances Varius performed for his deity had attracted the soldiers’ attention, not least because of the boy’s striking good looks. A rumour had spread that he was a bastard son of the emperor Caracalla, who had been murdered the previous year. Now, young Varius was presented to the troops in clothes that Caracalla had worn as a child. At dawn, the enthusiastic soldiers proclaimed him emperor (cf. D.C. ..–). The proclamation must have come as a nasty shock to emperor Macrinus, who was residing in Antioch, some  km away. The crisis was dealt with by his praetorian prefect, Julianus, who attacked the camp of the rebellious legion. It was to no avail, for, as the contemporary historian Cassius Dio relates: (. . . ) they carried Avitus, whom they were already styling Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, round about upon the ramparts, and exhibited some likenesses of Caracallus when [he was] a child as bearing some resemblance to the boy, at the same time declaring that the latter was truly Caracallus’s son, and the only rightful heir to the throne. “Why do you do this, fellowsoldiers?” they exclaimed. “Why do you thus fight against your benefactor’s son [τD" το εKεργτου /μ"ν /ε3]?” By this means they corrupted all the soldiers who were with Julianus, the more so as these were eager to revolt, so that the assailants slew their commanders, with the exception of Julianus, who escaped in flight, and surrendered themselves and their arms to the False Antoninus [τD" ΨευδαντωννDω].4 (D.C. ..–)

The passage is interesting for two reasons. Firstly, the rebellious soldiers call Caracalla their ‘benefactor’, revealing an important motive for their revolt. Caracalla had been very much a military emperor, launching campaigns against the Germans and the Parthians and spending most of his time with the troops. Moreover, he had raised the soldiers’ pay and had granted them many privileges. Macrinus, on the other hand, had bought off a truce with the Parthians, reduced wages and withdrawn the privileges granted by his predecessor. He was not a member of the Severan 4

Translations of Cassius Dio in this article are taken from the edition of Cary .

from priest to emperor to priest-emperor



dynasty, to which Caracalla had belonged, but a usurper who was little loved by the senate and the legions. By turning to Varius—more commonly known as Elagabalus, after the sun god whom he worshipped— the men of Legio III Gallica probably hoped for a return to Caracalla’s military policy. Secondly, while Cassius Dio records that Elagabalus took the name Marcus Aurelius Antoninus—which had been Caracalla’s official name as well—the historian does not believe the boy’s dynastic claim at all. He persists in calling the young pretender the ‘False Antoninus’ and claims that Elagabalus’s real father was Varius Marcellus, a Syrian nobleman who had died sometime before ad  (D.C. ..). The sarcophagus of Marcellus has been found at Velletri, Italy. It bears an inscription dedicated by Julia Soaemias, who was Elagabalus’s mother, cum filis, “with her children”.5 Soaemias was Caracalla’s cousin, related to him through Julia Domna, Caracalla’s mother and Soaemias’s aunt. Her son Elagabalus was therefore Caracalla’s first cousin once removed. In all likelihood, the story that Elagabalus was Caracalla’s bastard son was no more than a ruse—especially since the same claim would later be made by Severus Alexander, Elagabalus’s cousin and successor.6 Still, many soldiers were more than happy to join the uprising. Whether they truly believed that their champion was Caracalla’s son or whether they merely regarded the story as a convenient excuse for rebellion, is irrelevant: within a few weeks, Macrinus was beaten and Elagabalus had gained the throne. The senate had no choice but to accept him as the new emperor. Of course, invented claims were an oft-used weapon in gaining and maintaining the purple. Hadrian, according to one story, had succeeded Trajan by means of a posthumous adoption, engineered with the help of an impersonator who was smuggled into the imperial bedroom (Hist. Aug. Hadr. .). Several decades later, Septimius Severus opted for a less secretive strategy: he sanctified his usurpation by having himself adopted as the son of the late Marcus Aurelius and the brother of the late Commodus, neither of whom objected to this bold move.7 However, Hadrian and Severus were grown men who had already been active in public life before they made a bid for the throne, and had managed to build considerable political and military support. Elagabalus, on the 5 6 7

ILS  (= CIL .). ILS , . D.C. ..; ILS  (divi M. Antonini (filius), divi Commodi frater).



martijn icks

other hand, seems to have been put forward as a puppet by his family and those who wished to see the Severan dynasty restored. He may have been virtually unknown to the soldiers before ad  and had nothing to distinguish himself but a false dynastic claim. Coins minted by the new administration proclaim the name Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, as do imperial inscriptions. By using this name, Elagabalus did not only stress his descent from Caracalla, but also associated himself with the ‘good’ emperors Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. He was divi Magni Antonini Pii filius, divi Severi Pii nepos; son of the divine Caracalla, grandson of the divine Severus.8 The latter, as we have noted, had adopted himself into the Antonine dynasty. Interestingly, an inscription set up by veterans from the colony Sitifis in Mauretania Caesariensis traces Elagabalus’s descent all the way back to the first-centuryemperor Nerva.9 Apparently, the veterans put pride in the dynastic continuity between the founder of their colony and the current emperor. The visual arts were also employed to strengthen Elagabalus’s claim. Early portraits of the young ruler show great similarities with later portraits of Caracalla. The form of the head, the forehead and the mouth are nearly identical. In addition, both portrait types sport a short-cropped military haircut, expressing affinity with the troops.10 Many of the coins Elagabalus minted in ad – have military themes, bearing legends such as MARS VICTOR, VICTORIA AVG(VSTI) and VICTOR(IA) ANTONINI AVG(VSTI).11 A new Caracalla had risen, a young and energetic emperor who had defeated the usurper and would bring back the good old days of his father’s reign. All legions were united in their unwavering loyalty to their new commander, as expressed by coin legends such as FIDES EXERCITVS, FIDES MILITVM and CONCORDIA MILITVM.12 Reality, however, was less rose-tinted. Cassius Dio describes the chaotic situation after Macrinus’s defeat, recording the executions of Verus and Maximus, two commanders of Syrian legions, for treachery. He continues:

8

ILS , , ; AE , no. ; , no. ; , no. . ILS ; AE , no. . 10 Early Elagabalus portrait: Fittschen and Zanker , no. . Later Caracalla portrait: Fittschen and Zanker , no.  (Pl. –). 11 BMC , Elagabalus, nos. –, –; nos. *–†, –; nos. –, – . 12 BMC , Elagabalus, nos. –, –; nos. *–, –; nos. –. 9

from priest to emperor to priest-emperor



To such an extent, indeed, had everything got turned topsy-turvy that these men, one of whom had been enrolled in the senate from the ranks of the centurions and the other of whom was the son of a physician, took it into their heads to aim at the supreme power. I have mentioned these men alone by name, not because they were the only ones that took leave of their senses, but because they belonged to the senate; for other attempts were made. For example, the son of a centurion undertook to stir up that same Gallic legion; another, a worker in wool, tampered with the fourth legion, and a third, a private citizen, with the fleet stationed at Cyzicus, when the False Antoninus was wintering at Nicomedia; and there were many others elsewhere, as it was the simplest thing in the world for those who wished to rule to undertake a rebellion, being encouraged thereto by the fact that many men had entered upon the supreme rule contrary to expectation and to merit. (D.C. ..–)

Although some of these examples are more credible than others, it seems many usurpers made a bid for the throne. Messages underlining the loyalty and unity of the legions should therefore be seen as wishful thinking, celebrating an ideal situation which did not exist. Once again, this shows how unstable the position of Elagabalus really was. Having won the throne by deceit, the young ruler and his advisers deliberately misrepresented the politico-military situation to convey the image of a strong, self-confident leader with unquestioned authority. The opposite was probably closer to the truth.

Introducing Elagabal Elagabalus and his court stayed in the East for the rest of the year, spending the winter of ad  /  in Nicomedia. It seems likely that the god Elagabal, who was worshipped in the form of a conical black stone, travelled with the emperor. Several coins minted in the East show the black stone in a quadriga, surrounded by standards.13 According to the contemporary historian Herodian, the young emperor “straight away (. . .) began to practice his ecstatic rites and go through the ridiculous motions of the priestly office belonging to his local god in which he had been trained” (Hdn ..).14 While doing so, he allegedly wore “the most expensive types of clothes, woven of purple and gold, and adorned himself with necklaces and bangles”, complemented by “a crown 13

BMC , Elagabalus, nos. , –. Translations of Herodian in this article are taken from the edition of Whittaker . 14

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in the shape of a tiara glittering with gold and precious stones”. The effect of this exotic attire, Herodian continues, “was something between the sacred garb of the Phoenicians and the luxurious apparel of the Medes.” Apparently, Elagabalus loathed Greek and Roman clothing because it was made from cheap wool. He preferred Chinese silk (..–). Herodian’s account gives a strikingly different portrayal of the emperor than the ‘new Caracalla’ messages sent out by the imperial administration. The historian presents Elagabalus as an ‘Oriental’ whose strange religion and luxurious tastes stand in bold contrast to Roman values and traditions.15 He underlines this point by the story that Elagabalus refused to wear a toga when entering Rome. Instead, the young ruler had an enormous picture made which showed him sacrificing to Elagabal in the customary dress. The picture was sent ahead to the capital and hung in the senate house, so that the senate and the people of Rome could get used to his appearance before he arrived.16 It is impossible to determine whether or not this story is true. Hans Baldus has pointed out that an antoninianus which was minted at Rome in ad  shows an image which is similar to the picture described by Herodian.17 In the foreground, we see a figure—presumably the emperor—sacrificing at a small altar. In the background, Elagabal is depicted in a quadriga, seen from the front. Could this unusual image have been inspired by the portrait that allegedly hung in the senate house? All we can say for certain is that the emperor wanted to present his god to the Romans. Elagabal is even called CONSERVATOR AVG(VSTI), the emperor’s divine protector. However, it was only at the end of ad  that the sun god from Emesa would really be brought to the fore. At that time, Elagabalus placed Elagabal at the head of the Roman pantheon.18 From now on, he included his priesthood of the deity among his imperial titles, styling himself sacerdos amplissimus dei invicti Solis Elagabali in inscriptions— “most elevated priest of the invincible Sun god Elagabal”.19 Although he still styled himself pontifex maximus as well after ad , inscriptions 15 For a general treatment of Roman stereotypes about Syrians, see Isaac  – . For images of Elagabalus as an ‘Oriental’ in particular, see Sommer  –; Icks a –; Icks b –. 16 Herodian ..–. 17 Baldus . 18 I have discussed Elagabalus’s religious reforms and their impact on his representation in: Icks . 19 ILS , , , .

from priest to emperor to priest-emperor



show that the title sacerdos amplissimus took precedent: the emperor is consistently styled sacerdos first and pontifex second.20 Coins were struck showing Elagabalus sacrificing to Elagabal in peculiar priestly dress, with legends such as INVICTVS SACERDOS AVG(VSTVS), SACERD(OS) DEI SOLIS ELAGAB(ALI) and SVMMVS SACERDOS AVGVSTVS.21 But that was not all. The emperor divorced his first wife, the Roman noblewoman Julia Paula, and married Aquilia Severa, high priestess of the Vestal Virgins. Possibly, this was an attempt to forge a close, personal bond between the cult of Elagabal and traditional Roman state religion. Cassius Dio mentions the event with great indignity, remarking that the emperor “plumed himself over an act for which he ought to have been scourged in the Forum, thrown into prison, and then put to death” (D.C. ..). The historian also records the ‘extreme absurdity’ that the god Elagabal was married to the Punic goddess Urania, exclaiming: “as if the god had any need of marriage and children!” (..). Until Elagabalus’s murder in March ad , the invincible sun from Emesa would play a prominent role in Rome’s public life. A large temple was built on the Palatine.22 Although it was erected on the emperor’s private territory, it occupied an important and highly visible place in the urban landscape. Herodian records: Each day at dawn he [i.e. Elagabalus] came out and slaughtered a hecatomb of cattle and a large number of sheep which were placed upon the altars and loaded with every variety of spices. In front of the altars many jars of the finest and oldest wines were poured out, so that streams of blood and wine flowed together. Around the altars he and some Phoenician women danced to the sounds of many different instruments, circling the altars with cymbals and drums in their hands. The entire senate and the equestrian order stood round them in the order they sat in the theatre. The entrails of the sacrificial victims and spices were carried in golden bowls, not on the heads of household servants or lower-class people, but by military prefects and important officials wearing long tunics in the Phoenician style down to their feet, with long sleeves and a single purple stripe in the middle. They also wore linen shoes of the kind used by local oracle priests in Phoenicia. It was considered a great honour had been done to anyone given a part in the sacrifice. (Hdn ..–)

20

The exception to the rule is ILS , which has pontifex maximus first. BMC , Elagabalus, nos. –, , , ; nos. –, –; nos. – , –. 22 Broise and Thébert ; Thébert and others . Recent Catalan excavations on the Palatine have added to our knowledge of the Elagabal temple: Mar  –. 21

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Although Herodian’s account is too detailed to be dismissed completely, it is possible that he is exaggerating about the frequency of the ritual and the number of people who had to attend. Nevertheless, the mandatory presence of senators and knights at public sacrifices to Elagabal seems to fit well within the new religious order Elagabalus was trying to establish. After all, Elagabal was now the chief deity of Roman state religion. When Elagabalus was sacrificing as its high priest, he was acting as a state magistrate. Herodian also records a second Elagabal temple in the suburbs, which may have been located in Trastevere.23 He adds that the black stone was moved from the Palatine to the suburban temple each year at midsummer, describing how “the god was set up in a chariot studded with gold and precious stones” and was preceded by the emperor, holding the reins and walking backwards, and a procession of people carrying the imperial standards, temple treasures and the images of other gods. The cavalry and the army had to join in, as well (Hdn ..–). Afterwards, Elagabalus made sacrifices to Elagabal and then climbed on to a high tower, from which he threw down presents to the crowd: gold and silver cups, all kinds of clothes, fine linen and even domestic animals (..).

A new role The religious reforms of Elagabalus are hard to explain. Although the emperor had come to power as the son of Caracalla, he chose a very different path from that of his alleged father. Elagabalus’s acts as high priest of Elagabal were certainly not in accordance with the role that an emperor was traditionally expected to play, i.e. that of a moderate, benign prince who upheld Roman traditions. A personal devotion to a foreign god was unproblematic; placing that god above Jupiter was not. What caused these striking and unprecedented reforms halfway through the emperor’s reign? Elagabalus’s age may be an important part of the answer. At the end of ad , the emperor was no longer a fourteenyear-old boy, but a young man of sixteen or seventeen. It seems possible, if not likely, that Elagabalus refused to be treated as a puppet any longer and started to make decisions of his own. Perhaps he was influenced by the

23

Herodian ...; Chausson  –.

from priest to emperor to priest-emperor

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Emesene priests who must have travelled to Rome with the black stone. As far as we can tell, the emperor’s devotion to Elagabal certainly seems sincere. Whatever the cause, Elagabalus’s religious agenda presented the people in the imperial administration with a problem. To ensure the continued survival of their reckless ruler, they had to sell Elagabalus’s role as high priest of Elagabal to the Roman public—in particular to the senate and the praetorians. Considering the extent to which the young man’s acts were at odds with traditional expectations of a ‘good’ emperor, this was by no means an easy task. As has already been pointed out, imperial coins presented Elagabal as CONSERVATOR AVG(VSTI), divine protector of the emperor. This title was usually attributed to Jupiter, but had been granted to other gods as well.24 By styling Elagabal as such, the emperor’s exotic god was, to some extent, incorporated into the familiar territory of Roman tradition. Moreover, according to Coins of the Roman Empire in the British Museum, there are only two coin types for the period ad – showing an image of the black stone.25 In contrast, no less than twelve coin types depicting an anthropomorphic Sol were struck during this period.26 Two of these even style the god CONSERVATOR AVG(VSTI), which may indicate that they are referring to Elagabal.27 However, the name of the Syrian sun god does not occur on any coins depicting an anthropomorphic Sol, leaving the exact identity of the depicted deity ambiguous—which was probably the intention. Most coins did not show Sol or Elagabal, but the emperor sacrificing as high priest. Although Elagabalus’s priestly dress is very different from the traditional toga, the iconography of the image is strikingly similar to depictions of emperors sacrificing as pontifex maximus. The pose of the figure, the altar or tripod, and the hand with the patera, about to pour a libation, are all depicted the same way. Even Elagabalus’s priestly dress is less outlandish than it may appear at first sight. Rather than the ankle-long chiton and tiara-shaped crown Herodian mentions, we see the

24 See for instance: BMC , Commodus, nos. – (Cybele as conservatrix); nos. – (Serapis as conservator). Later in the third century, Sol would often appear on imperial coins as conservator. 25 BMC , Elagabalus, nos. –. The RIC has a third type (., Elagabalus, no. ). 26 BMC , Elagabalus, nos. –, –, , †, –. Depictions of an anthropomorphic Sol had already become common on the coinage of Caracalla. 27 BMC , Elagabalus, nos. –.

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emperor wearing trousers and a long-sleeved short tunic, sometimes with a chlamys on top. Instead of a crown or tiara, he wears the conventional imperial diadem.28 This outfit, Lucinda Dirven argues, is not identical with any of the Syrian priestly garments known to us. It probably represents a Roman adjustment of the original costume, if not a complete innovation. She speculates that it may have been designed to appeal to the troops, since long-sleeved tunics, trousers and mantles became common dress for Roman soldiers in the third century.29 Moreover, Dio records that Caracalla wore Germanic dress (consisting of the aforementioned articles of clothing) during his eastern campaigns.30 By presenting himself in a similar outfit, Elagabalus may have attempted to evoke associations with his ‘father’. Dirven suggests that his depiction as sacerdos amplissimus could be seen as an appeal to the troops, proclaiming military invincibility.31 The coin legend INVICTVS SACERDOS AVG(VSTVS), ‘invincible priest-emperor’, explicitly links Elagabalus to Elagabal, granting the priest a share in the invincibility of the god. Although the nicknames Elagabalus and Heliogabalus suggest otherwise, there is no reason to assume that the emperor was supposed to be regarded as the earthly incarnation of Elagabal: he is never depicted as Sol and wears a radiate only on coins with ‘double value’.32 Nevertheless, Elagabalus’s close, personal bond with Elagabal may well have suggested a superhuman status. This, then, was the emperor’s new role. As the supreme mediator between the human and the divine world, he occupied a unique and important position. Like a pontifex maximus, the sacerdos amplissimus— note the similarity between both titles—did not make sacrifices on his own behalf, but on behalf of all his subjects, whose well-being depended on the favour of the almighty sun god. Only Elagabalus, high priest of Elagabal, could obtain that divine favour and secure peace and prosperity for the realm.

28 Dirven : ; Herodian ..; ..–; BMC , Elagabalus, nos. – (Pl. , –); RIC ., Elagabalus, nos.  (Pl. II, ),  (Pl. II, ), . 29 Dirven  –. 30 D.C. ... For a discussion of ‘German clothing’, see Croom  –. 31 Dirven  –. 32 There are no contemporary sources calling the emperor Elagabalus or Elagabal; those names are only attributed to the god, whose earthly incarnation was the black stone.

from priest to emperor to priest-emperor

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Conclusion Despite their best efforts, the members of the imperial administration failed to boost the emperor’s prestige. The cult of Elagabal proved too foreign to be acceptable, the offence against Roman tradition too grave. In addition, Elagabalus’s lack of auctoritas may have undermined the success of his religious reforms. Whereas Constantine, a hundred years later, would ‘prove’ the strength of the Christian God by defeating his opponents and reuniting the empire under his rule, Elagabalus had no similar achievements to boast of. As a boy-emperor who commanded little respect, he could make no credible case for Elagabal as an acceptable alternative to Jupiter.33 Messages proclaiming the emperor’s invincibility and superhuman status did not deceive the praetorians. In March ad , they revolted. Elagabalus, his mother and many of his associates were butchered, their bodies mutilated. A damnatio memoriae sealed the young ruler’s bad reputation. It is tempting to see the reign of Elagabalus as a clash between the Syrian ‘East’ and the Roman ‘West’, with the emperor’s downfall as the inevitable result. Fergus Millar has pointed out that “the representation of the cult [of Elagabal] was accompanied by features which deliberately accentuated its ‘Oriental’, ‘Syrian’ or ‘Phoenician’ features”.34 However, as we have seen, attempts were also made to ‘sell’ the cult to the Roman public, using concepts and images with which the Romans were familiar. Elagabalus himself may or may not have cared about Roman sensibilities, but the people in his administration certainly did. In presenting their ruler as the ‘invincible priest-emperor’, they tried to reconcile Elagabalus’s religious reforms with the expectations of his subjects. Nothing of this can be found in the ancient literary sources. Herodian in particular paints a picture of Elagabalus as a stereotypical ‘Oriental’ who forced his cult upon the Romans without any willingness to compromise. The image persists to the present day. Rather than going down in history as the new Antoninus or the glorious champion of Elagabal, posterity has come to know Elagabalus as yet another of Rome’s crazy despots. Ultimately, it was the priest-emperor himself who was deceived.

33 34

Thanks are due to Lukas de Blois for suggesting this argument. Millar  .

CONSTANTINUS TYRANNUS: DAS NEGATIVE KONSTANTINSBILD IN DER PAGANEN HISTORIOGRAPHIE UND SEINE NUANCEN

Bruno Bleckmann Konstantin war innen- und außenpolitisch erfolgreich, seine Herrschaft wurde von seinen Kindern übernommen und er wurde nach seinem Tod konsekriert. Nach den traditionellen Maßstäben suetonischer Prägung hätte er mit dieser Bilanz zweifelsohne zu den „guten“ Kaisern gehört. Durch die ideologische Polarisierung, die Konstantins religionspolitische Entscheidung mit sich brachte, setzten jedoch neue und bisher unbekannte Möglichkeiten in der Differenzierung des Kaiserbildes ein. Aus diesem Grund erscheint Konstantin nur in der christlichen Tradition (mit einigen Nuancen) als vorbildlicher Kaiser. Dagegen ist das Bild bei den Anhängern der traditionellen, der so genannten „heidnischen“ Religion sehr uneinheitlich. Es gab auf heidnischer Seite zu Lebzeiten und eine Generation nach dem Ableben des Kaisers zwar positive, durchaus mit Eusebios von Kaisareia übereinstimmende Urteile über Konstantin, nämlich bei Praxagoras und bei Aurelius Victor.1 Mit der Regierung Julians setzte allerdings eine deutliche Umbewertung ein. Durch den Dynastiewechsel von  nahm die Distanzierung zu, trotz der Heiratsverbindung zwischen dem Thronfolger Gratian und der Tochter des Constantius II. Auch konnte die Unumkehrbarkeit der lange Zeit einfach verschwiegenen konstantinischen Wende auf heidnischer Seite nicht mehr dauerhaft ignoriert werden. Aus diesem Grund rechnete die heidnische Geschichtsschreibung des ausgehenden vierten Jahrhunderts Konstantin nunmehr trotz der eindrucksvollen Länge seiner Regierung und der Größe seiner Erfolge den mittelmäßigen oder den schlechten Kaisern zu.2 Konstantin, der sich in seinen Verlautbarungen deutlich von seinen zu Tyrannen diskreditierten Mitregenten und Kontrahenten

1

Zu Praxagoras s. Bleckmann ; Smith . Eutr. .., mit der Interpretation von Neri . Das lange Zeit absichtsvoll nicht zur Sprache gebrachte Faktum der Bekehrung zum Christentum wird in der Historiographie des fünften Jahrhunderts dann explizit festgehalten, s. Polemius Silvius (Mommsen  ) zu Konstantin: Ab hoc imperatores Christiani esse coeperunt. 2

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distanziert und das Thema der Befreiung von der Tyrannis zum Leitmotiv seiner innenpolitischen Programmatik gemacht hatte,3 wurde postum selbst den Tyrannen angeglichen. Im folgenden wird es darum gehen, einige der teils bekannten, teils weniger bekannten Elemente zusammenzutragen und anhand einiger Aspekte zu beschreiben, wie diese Charakterisierung als Tyrann in der Geschichtssicht der heidnischen Bildungselite erfolgte. Deren sicher nicht völlig homogenes Konstantinsbild kann aus dem vollständigen Bericht des Zosimos und der Epitome de Caesaribus rekonstruiert werden. Zusätzlich sind dabei die wenigen Rückverweise bei Ammianus Marcellinus, ferner die Anspielungen in der Historia Augusta, die Fragmente Eunaps, einige Spuren einer spätantiken Tradition bei Zonaras, dem salmasischen Johannes und einigen Parallelquellen sowie vereinzelte Splitter bei Sidonius Apollinaris, Johannes Lydus etc. zu berücksichtigen.4 Sie sind wiederum mit dem Zeugnis Julians in Beziehung zu setzen, der nicht nur in allgemeiner Form, sondern auch in vielen Einzelpunkten der Themengeber konstantinfeindlicher Traditionen war.

Der direkte Vergleich mit schlechten Kaisern Es ist unbekannt, aus welcher Tradition Sidonius Apollinaris geschöpft hat, als er vom angeblich von Ablabius verfaßten Epigramm berichtet, in dem das saturnische Zeitalter Konstantins als „neronisch“ verspottet wird.5 Es ist jedenfalls kaum zeitgenössisch, sondern ein später Beleg für die Angleichung Konstantins an schlechte Kaiser, die bereits in den Caesares Julians beginnt, in denen Konstantin zwar im Unterschied zu Kaisern wie Nero oder Elagabal zum Wettstreit zugelassen wird, aber doch deutlich guten Kaisern wie Mark Aurel gegenübergestellt wird. Die Distanzierung von den guten Kaisern hat die Quelle des Petros Patrikios dem Konstantin explizit in den Mund gelegt.6 Eine besonders inter3

Vgl. hierzu Grünewald , –. S. im einzelnen auch Bleckmann ; Zinsli . 5 Sidon. Epist. ..: Saturni aurea saecla quis requirat? Sunt haec gemmea, sed Neroniana. 6 Excerpta de sententiis, Nr.  (Boissevain  ): „Konstantin wünschte die Werke seiner Vorgänger zu verdunkeln und versuchte, deren Tugenden durch irgendwelche Zunamen lächerlich zu machen. Augustus nannte er ein ‚Schmuckstück des Glücks‘, Trajan eine ‚Mauerpflanze‘, Hadrian eine ‚Malerwerkstatt‘, Markus ‚lachhaft‘, Severus . . . (der Text bricht ab, Anm. d. Verf.)“. Vgl. Ps. Aur. Vict. Epit. .: Hic Traianum herbam parietariam ob titulos multis aedibus inscriptos appellare solitus erat. 4

constantinus tyrannus

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essante, in ihren Dimensionen und ihrer Intention allerdings nicht ganz deutliche Angleichung von Konstantin an Elagabal, einem schlechten Kaiser par excellence, bietet die Vita Heliogabali, in der bekanntlich Elagabal als „précurseur“ Konstantins erscheint.7 Deren Anspielungen auf Konstantin (Entwendung des Palladiums, Verweigerung des Aufstiegs zum Kapitol, Plan der Errichtung einer inwendig begehbaren Säule mit dem Sonnengott an der Spitze, Zerstörung von Gräbern auf dem Vatikan, Edelsteinverwendung, Diadem) sind im Verhältnis zur Menge dessen, womit Elagabal in der Historia Augusta insgesamt charakterisiert wird, allerdings eher sparsam. Auch ist der Bezug zu Konstantin nicht immer mit letzter Sicherheit herzustellen. Was die Parallelen zwischen den religionspolitischen Experimenten des jungen Syrers und der Zuwendung Konstantins zum Christentum betrifft,8 so ist das Element der karikierenden Rückprojektion noch schwieriger zu ermitteln. Denn es gibt auch faktische Berührungspunkte zwischen der Politik beider Kaiser, nur dass Konstantin bei seinen religionspolitischen Neuerungen bereits auf eine lange Phase kaiserlicher religionspolitischer Interventionen zurückgreifen konnte und für die reichsweite Verehrung seines neuen Schutzgottes mit den Christen über eine grosse Anhängergruppierung verfügte. Eine einfache Art und Weise, Konstantin negativ von anderen Kaisern abzugrenzen, wäre die Rehabilitierung der von Konstantin besiegten oder sonst überwundenen kaiserlichen Konkurrenten gewesen, nämlich des Maximianus Herculius, des Maxentius, des Maximinus Daia und des Licinius, analog zum Programm, das die Historia Augusta zum Gegenstand einer fiktiven Ansprache ausgerechnet an Konstantin macht (Hist. Aug. Heliog. .). Die negative Charakterisierung der Regierung Konstantins hat in den Quellen insgesamt nicht dazu geführt, den Leumund der von ihm besiegten Kaiser zu verbessern.9 Relativ farblos, aber noch einigermaßen positiv wird lediglich bei Zosimos der Kaiser Licinius dargestellt, der als ein Opfer der Aggressionen Konstantins erscheint. Und auch die Epitome de Caesaribus bietet zumindest ein ambivalentes Bild des Licinius. Sie lobt dort einige Züge dieses Kaisers, wo eine implizite Kontrastierung zu negativen Eigenschaften Konstantins möglich ist.10 7

Turcan . Cracco Ruggini . 9 Bei Jul. Caes. a wird durch den Hinweis auf die Energielosigkeit des Maxentius und das Alter des Licinius die Leistung des Bürgerkriegssiegs relativiert. Das könnte auch ein Thema der Darstellung der Quelle des Petros Patrikios gewesen sein. 10 Ps. Aur. Vict. Epit. .: militiae custos ad veterum instituta severissimus. Damit verkörpert Licinius die Gegenposition zu den kühnen Militärreformen Konstantins, die 8



bruno bleckmann Usurpation und Illegitimität

Der Regierungsantritt Konstantins im Juli  erfolgte unter den neuen Bedingungen des von Diokletian geschaffenen Mehrkaisertums. Nach dem Tode des Constantius Chlorus hätte der verbliebene Augustus Galerius das Ernennungsrecht für die freigewordene Kaiserstelle gehabt. Als privatrechtlicher Erbe beanspruchte aber Konstantin ohne Rücksprache für sich die Stellung seines verstorbenen Vaters. Während die christlichen Quellen, wie schon Konstantin selbst, deutlich die Legitimität des Regierungsantritts betonen, ist das Bild in den paganen Quellen differenziert. In positiver Weise hat etwa Eutrop die Übernahme der Regierung durch Konstantin charakterisiert: Constantinus . . . in Britannia creatus est imperator et in locum patris exoptatissimus moderator accessit (Eutr. ..). Auch die paganen Quellen, die Konstantin dem Tyrannenschema angleichen, betonen zwar die Machtgier des späteren Kaisers, die dessen Flucht zu seinem Vater erklärt, lassen sich aber auffälligerweise die Tatsache, dass Konstantin in der Art eines Tyrannen die Macht usurpatorisch an sich gerissen hat, entgehen. Selbst bei Zosimos hat man den Eindruck einer relativ regulären Aktion, in der Konstantin aufgrund seiner Eignung und nur in zweiter Linie aufgrund der Aussicht auf Donative von Soldaten zum Kaiser erhoben wird: „Es traf sich, dass der Kaiser Constantius gerade in diesem Augenblick verstarb. Da die Soldaten am Hof aber sahen, dass keiner von den legitimen Kindern für die Kaiserherrschaft geeignet war, dass aber Konstantin eine gute körperliche Verfassung hatte, und sie gleichzeitig durch die Hoffnung auf großzügige Geschenke bewegt wurden, umgaben sie ihn mit der Würde des Caesars“.11 In der Darstellung des Zosimos wird dabei aus der Tatsache, dass Konstantin im Unterschied zu seinen Halbbrüdern aus einer illegitimen Verbindung stammte, nicht abgeleitet, dass er diese Halbbrüder usurpato-

von Zos. . beklagt werden. Ps. Aur. Vict. Epit. .: Spadonum et aulicorum omnium vehemens domitor, tineas soricesque Palatii eos appellans. Das ist das Gegenteil des Hofes Konstantins und seines Sohnes Constantius, an dem das Eunuchenwesen angeblich besonders blühte. Vgl. den Kommentar bei Festy . 11 Zos. ... Dabei wird in dieser Erzählung sogar vorweggenommen, dass Konstantin, der sich als Augustus hatte erheben lassen, von Galerius innerhalb der tetrarchischen Ordnung nur als Caesar anerkannt wurde. Konstantins Erhebung, wie sie von Zosimos beschrieben wird, fügt sich deutlicher in die tetrarchische Ordnung und hat daher den Anschein höherer Legitimität, vgl. Anon. Vales. . (Mommsen  ): et Constantinus omnium militum consensu Caesar creatus und Paneg.  ()...

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

risch von der ihnen eigentlich zustehenden Regierung verdrängt hätte. Dieses von Julian angerissene Thema hat sich in der konstantinfeindlichen Historiographie offenkundig nicht durchgesetzt. Die Betonung der illegitimen Herkunft Konstantins trägt aber dazu bei, ein immerhin zwielichtiges Bild des Kaisers zu konturieren.

Luxusliebe und Effeminierung Das Thema der Verschwendungssucht und der Luxusliebe Konstantins ist in der spätantiken paganen Historiographie besonders intensiv ausgestaltet worden. In allgemeiner Form beschuldigt bereits Julian seinen Onkel, sich der Truphê und der Zuchtlosigkeit ergeben zu haben. Grundthema ist vor allem die angebliche Raffgier und Verschwendungssucht am Hofe Konstantins. Zum Prinzip seiner Lebensführung erklärt Konstantin in den Caesares Julians: „Indem man viel ansammelt, dafür zu sorgen, dass man den eigenen Begierden und denen der Freunde zu Diensten ist“ (Jul. Caes. b). Die materielle Großzügigkeit gehörte eigentlich eher zu den positiven Eigenschaften eines Kaisers, die dementsprechend in der konstantinfreundlichen Literatur auch kontrastierend dem Geiz des Licinius gegenübergestellt wird.12 Konstantin hat durch reiche materielle Zuwendungen die Loyalität seiner Gefährten im Bürgerkrieg abgesichert, insbesondere aber auf diese Weise eine neue, in Konstantinopel angesiedelte Elite für sich gewonnen. Diese sicher politisch durchaus zweckvolle Großzügigkeit, für deren organisatorische Durchführung das Amt des comes sacrarum largitionum ausgestaltet wurde, geriet bereits ins Zwielicht, als nach dem Tod Konstantins von  Günstlinge des Kaisers wie der allmächtige praefectus praetorio Ablabius ihr Ende gefunden hatten. Spuren dieser Kritik an der Begünstigung der Falschen sind selbst in der Vita Constantini Eusebs zu greifen,13 aber auch in der gegenüber der konstantinischen Dynastie sonst loyalen Darstellung des Aurelius Victor.14 In der konstantinkritischen Tradition des ausgehenden vierten Jahrhunderts wird die Bereicherung der Freunde und allgemein die maßlose Verschwendungssucht des Kaisers dann zum

12

Vgl. Aur. Vict. Caes. .. Eus. Vita Constantini .–.. 14 Aur. Vict. Caes. .: cunctaque divino ritui paria viderentur, ni parum dignis ad publica aditum concessisset. 13



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Kennzeichen seiner besonders schlechten letzten Regierungsjahre.15 Zonaras, der aus dieser konstantinkritischen Tradition schöpft, dann aber wegen ihrer verleumderischen Haltung gegenüber dem ersten christlichen Kaiser erschrocken innehält, bemerkt, dass die maßlose Bereitschaft des Kaisers, Geld zu sammeln, die maßlose Bereitschaft, Geld auszugeben, sogar überschritt und dadurch die Großzügigkeit sehr relativiert war.16 Die von Zonaras hervorgehobene Gegensätzlichkeit von Geldausgeben und Habgier entspricht genau der vom Anonymus de rebus bellicis als typische Eigenart des zeitgenössischen Staates hervorgehobenen profusio vel avaritia, die angeblich mit der Regierung Konstantins einsetzte. Dabei meint der Anonymus unter avaritia vor allem den Erwerb materieller Mittel durch die Konfiszierung von Tempelschätzen, was ihm eine indirekte Beurteilung der Religionspolitik Konstantins erlaubt.17 Die Verschwendungssucht Konstantins äußert sich in den Augen seiner Kritiker nicht nur in sinnlosen largitiones für die Freunde und den politischen Anhang, sondern auch in der luxuriösen Lebensführung. Die Details, mit denen dieser Luxus für andere schlechte Kaiser in der Art Neros und Elagabals geschildert wird, fehlen für Konstantin. Anhaltspunkte sind vor allem die für alle Zeitgenossen sichtbaren Veränderungen im kaiserlichen Ornat und in der Selbstdarstellung. Einen revolutionären Bruch in der zeremoniellen Überhöhung der kaiserlichen Person hat Konstantin bekanntlich nicht vollzogen, sondern seit Diokletian vorhandene Ansätze konsequent weiterverfolgt, indem zum Zeremoniell der adoratio, dem Edelsteingebrauch an Schuhen und Kostüm noch das reich dekorierte Diadem und vermutlich auch der goldene, zunächst nur Jupiter vorbehaltene Thron hinzukamen.18 Der übermäßige Gebrauch von Perlen und Edelsteinen sollte, wie dies etwa in der Beschreibung des Auftretens Konstantins im Konzil von Nicäa deutlich wird, den Kaiser als ein zwischen dem Diesseits und dem Jenseits vermittelndes Lichtwesen darstellen (Eus. Vita Constantini ..–). Der Tendenz alles, was zum Kaiser gehörte, mit Edelsteinen zu übersäen—wie sie etwa auch bei der persönlichen Standarte, dem Labarum, offenkundig wurde—folgte sehr schnell auch das Diadem, das ursprünglich als einfaches Band-

15 Ps. Aur. Vict. Epit. .: decem novissimis ‹annis› pupillus ob profusiones immodicas nominatus. 16 Zonaras ... 17 Anon. de mach. bell. [= de rebus bellicis] ., vgl. dazu Brandt , –. Zur Konfiskation der Tempelschätze vgl. Metzler . 18 Kolb , –.

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

diadem eine Siegerbinde nach hellenistischem Muster darstellte, dann aber sehr schnell als Perlen- und Edelsteindiadem ausgestaltet wurde. Der Gebrauch von Edelsteinen im zeremoniellen Kontext und das ununterbrochene Tragen eines Diadems wurden in der negativen Darstellung der Regierung Konstantins als Zeichen tyrannischer Habgier und Liebe zum Luxus umgedeutet. In der Epitome de Caesaribus wird das mit Edelsteinen geschmückte Kostüm Konstantins als regius, also als königlich-tyrannisch, bezeichnet und auch der Hinweis auf den beständigen Gebrauch des Diadems muss als negative Charakterisierung19 betrachtet werden: Habitum regium gemmis et caput exornans perpetuo diademate (Ps. Aur. Vict. Epit. .). Besonders deutlich wird das Thema der Edelsteinliebe Konstantins in einer byzantinischen, aber aus spätantikem Quellenmaterial schöpfenden Tradition zur Sprache gebracht. Dort wird nicht nur die allzu aufwendige Edelsteinausstattung des neuen Diadems geschildert, sondern selbst der Ausbruch des römisch-persischen Konflikts am Ende der Regierungszeit Konstantins mit dessen Edelsteingier erklärt: Konstantin sei durch die Lügen Metrodors irregeführt worden und habe vom Perserkönig die von Metrodor in Wirklichkeit unterschlagenen Edelsteine eingefordert.20 Diese tendenziöse Version vom Ausbruch des persisch-römischen Kriegs muß sich, wie ein Rückverweis zeigt, auch bei Ammian gefunden haben.21 Prunkvolle Gewandung, Edelsteinschmuck und Diadem konnten in Verbindung mit dem neuen kaiserlichen Schönheitsideal, wie es in der gegenüber der Tetrarchie veränderten Haar- und Barttracht (längere Haare und glatte Rasur) zum Ausdruck kam, als Zeichen der typisch tyrannisch-großköniglichen Verweichlichung gedeutet worden.22 Auch dieses Motiv ist zunächst bei Julian entwickelt, der zwar selbst das Diadem trug, aber den Bart wieder einführte. Julian schildert, wie Konstantin von seiner Leitgöttin Truphê in „bunte Gewänder“ gehüllt wird, bevor er zur Göttin der Ausschweifung Asôtia, geführt wird (Jul. Caes. a). Er verhält sich wie ein Geldwechsler—ein Seitenhieb auf die Intensivierung 19 Der Kontext der Sätze, wie er in der Quelle der Epitome de Caesaribus vorhanden gewesen sein soll, ist oft durch die Kürzung nicht mehr erkennbar. 20 Symeon Logothetes . (Wahlgren  .–). Eine der Redaktionen der Logothetenchronik entspricht „Leon Grammatikos“, der in der nun obsolet gewordenen Bonner Ausgabe als Autor figurierte. 21 Amm. ... S insgesamt zur Metrodor-Anekdote Bleckmann . Vgl. auch Amerise . 22 Edelsteinschmuck als „weibisch“ abgewertet bei dem Anon. Paneg. Iul. Imp. .– (Guida  ).



bruno bleckmann

der Geldeinnahmen und Ausgaben unter Konstantin23—gleicht in seiner Lebensführung einem Koch und einer Zofe und interessiert sich also— wie alle schlechten Kaiser—für das Essen und die äußerliche Aufmachung, was sich zu seinen Lebzeiten—hier zitiert Julian die Ilias (.) am „Haar und am Gesicht“—zeigt (Jul. Caes. b). Aus einem ursprünglich konstantinfeindlichen Kontext, der ganz zu der von Julian entwickelten Thematik passt, stammt eine von Polemius Silvius nur halb verstandene Passage, in der Konstantin das Diadem aus frisurtechnischen Gründen erfindet, um die langen Haare aus der Stirn zurückzuhalten und zu diesem Zweck auch eine nach ihm benannte parfümierte Pomade (sapo Constantini) gebraucht: vel Constantinus senior . . . diadema capiti suo propter refluentes de fronte propria capillos (pro qua re saponis eiusdem cognomenti odorata confectio est, qua constringerentur) invenit; qui modus hodie custoditur.24 Zum Bild des verweichlichten und effeminierten Kaisers gehört auch seine Erfolglosigkeit in militärischen Angelegenheiten, ein Motiv, das in der römischen Historiographie von Caligula bis Gallienus reich entwickelt worden ist. Julian muss, um die Anpassung an dieses Bild zu entwickeln, wider besseres Wissen die Erfolge Konstantins relativieren, indem die Bürgerkriegssiege als Scheinerfolge über den unfähigen Maxentius und den alten Licinius ausgegeben und die Erfolge über die Barbaren als lächerlich, weil nur durch Tribute erkauft, dargestellt werden (Jul. Caes. a). Der militärische Glanz Konstantins verblaßt und verwelkt angeblich so rasch wie die „Gärten des Adonis“.25 In der Historiographie wurde die militärische Erfolglosigkeit Konstantins in der Spätzeit seiner Regierung ausgemalt. Der verweichlichte und militärisch unfähige alte Konstantin residiert untätig in Konstantinopel, nachdem er gegen die Taifalen eine blutige Niederlage erlitten hat.26 In systematischer Weise vernachlässigt er die Grenzen und fördert damit sogar die Sache der Barbaren, ein Vorwurf, der sich nicht nur bei Zosimos, sondern auch noch bei Johannes Lydus findet.27 23

Vgl. Zonaras ... Polemius Silvius (Mommsen  ). S. hierzu Callu . 25 Bei Jul. Caes. .b-d werden zwar die Bürgerkriegserfolge und militärischen Erfolge Konstantins hervorgebracht, aber mit den „Gärten des Adonis“ als nur kurzfristig wirksame Scheinblüten entlarvt. 26 Taifalenniederlage: Zos. .. mit Bleckmann  –. Verweichlichtes und unkriegerisches Leben Konstantins in Konstantinopel: Zos. ... 27 Lyd. Mag. . und . (Wünsch  , ). Zur Erklärung der Passagen s. Bleckmann  –. Generell zu den konstantinfeindlichen Gemeinsamkeiten zwischen Zosimos und Johannes Lydus: Maas  –. 24

constantinus tyrannus



Grausamkeit und Familienmorde Die Grausamkeit tyrannischer Kaiser richtet sich in der Art Caligulas und Neros auch und gerade gegen die Angehörigen der eigenen Familie. In der Interpretation der bereits oben zitierten angeblichen Verse des Ablabius stellt Sidonius eine Verbindung zwischen Nero und Konstantin in einer Erklärung dadurch her, dass Konstantin seine Verwandten umgebracht hat: quia scilicet praedictus Augustus isdem fere temporibus extinxerat coniugem Faustam calore balnei, filium Crispum frigore veneni.28 Julian hatte in seiner antikonstantinischen Propaganda aus verständlichen Gründen noch vor allem die Morde unter den Söhnen Konstantins, insbesondere diejenigen des Constantius II., in den Vordergrund gestellt.29 Der Bezug zu Konstantin selbst erfolgte bei Julian vor allem durch den Verweis auf das schlechte Vorbild für seine Söhne und auf seine schlechte Erziehung, während auf die Morde von  nur vage angespielt wurde: Die Begeisterung Konstantins für Jesus erklärt sich damit, dass dieser Mördern Sühne und Verzeihung gewährt (Caes. a–b). Die Ermordung des Crispus und der Fausta wurde dann vor allem zum zentralen Thema der konstantinfeindlichen Historiographie des ausgehenden vierten Jahrhunderts. Aurelius Victor ignoriert die Verwandtenmorde noch völlig, während Eutrop unter der neuen valentinianischen Dynastie die Verbrechen erwähnen kann und damit die Zeit der Alleinherrschaft Konstantins unter ein düsteres Vorzeichen setzt. Konstantin, dem seine großen Erfolge zu Kopf gestiegen sind, primum necessitudines persecutus egregium virum filium et sororis filium, commodae indolis iuvenem interfecit, mox uxorem, post numerosos amicos (Eutr. ..). Die Tatsache, dass Eutrop auch die Ermordung des Sohnes des Licinius und der Constantia, des Licinius iunior, erwähnt, hat dabei gegenüber anderen spätantiken Darstellungen der Verwandtenmorde Konstantins einen singulären Charakter. Sie dient offenkundig dazu, Konstantin als Serientäter erscheinen zu lassen. Die viergliedrige Mordserie—Crispus, Licinius iunior, Fausta, zahlreiche Freunde—ist mit der Mordserie zu vergleichen, die Eutrop für die Vita Neros erwähnt (während er für andere

28 Sidon. Epist. ... Die Version, Crispus sei durch Gift umgebracht worden, ist ein Unikat. Die Reihenfolge der Morde ist verändert worden: Crispus stirbt vor Fausta. 29 Jul. ad Ath. c–d; Or.  (d–b). Auf die Existenz des Crispus spielt nur die vage Angabe an, dass Konstantin mehrere Frauen hatte, die ihm Söhne und Töchter gebaren (Or.  [d]).



bruno bleckmann

Kaiser, wie etwa Tiberius oder Caracalla, zum Thema der Verwandtenmorde schweigt): Parricidia multa commisit, fratre, uxore, sorore, matre interfectis.30 Ab dem ausgehenden vierten Jahrhundert war dann die Erzählung von der Ermordung des Crispus und der Fausta durch Konstantin auch in romanhaften Details ausgebildet. An diesen ist jenseits der Tatsache, dass Crispus und Fausta auf Geheiß Konstantins getötet wurden und daher spurlos aus der kaiserlichen Propaganda verschwinden, wohl wenig authentisch.31 Die Epitome de Caesaribus bietet die Kurzfassung einer offenkundig bereits ausführlichen Erzählung, in der der Protest der Kaiserinmutter Helena nach der Ermordung des Crispus dazu führt, dass Fausta im Bad getötet wird.32 Philostorg reflektiert im beginnenden fünften Jahrhundert eine Erzählung, die weitere Details bot, wie etwa zum Verhältnis der Fausta zu einem cursor und die genaue Art und Weise, in der Konstantin einen Badeunfall vortäuschen ließ.33 In der antikonstantinischen Tradition wurde dann die Geschichte vom Familienmord mit der Bekehrung des Kaisers verbunden, indem Konstantin nur bei den Christen Sühne für seine Untaten habe erlangen können.34 Diese Version ist im erhaltenen Quellenmaterial erst mit der Erzählung des Zosimos belegt, aber eindeutig älter, da schon Sozomenos explizit gegen sie polemisiert (Sozomenos ..–).

Rechtsbrüche und Gesetzlosigkeit Tyrannische Herrschaft ist ungesetzmäßig und Rechtsbruch in Permanenz. Das Thema Konstantin als Rechtsbrecher wird von der konstantin-

30

Eutr. ... Die Übersetzung des Paianios, die hier vielleicht den ursprünglichen Text des Eutrop erhalten hat (sorore ist nach Paianios ergänzt), stellt im gleichen Satz der Ermordung der Verwandten die Ermordung von Senatoren voran. Das würde der Kategorie numerosos amicos entsprechen. 31 Vgl. dazu Frakes  –. 32 Ps. Aur. Vict. Epit. .. Vgl. Zos. ... 33 S. zur Version Philostorgs, die anscheinend Konstantin gegen die Vorwürfe heidnischer Traditionen verteidigen wollte, Bleckmann . F. Paschoud, „Fausta en nouvelle Phèdre. Étude d’un modèle interprétatif “ (Paschoud  –), nimmt durchaus plausibel an, dass auch der cursor selbst, mit dem Fausta ein ehebrecherisches Verhältnis eingeht, von Philostorg aus apologetischen Gründen eingefügt worden sein könnte. 34 In allgemeiner Form wird dieser Aspekt des Christentums bereits bei Jul. Caes. a–b als attraktiv für Konstantin dargestellt, ohne dass bereits konkret auf die Familienmorde hingewiesen wird.

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

feindlichen Tradition in verschiedenen Varianten beschrieben: So werden die Familienmorde explizit als Verstöße gegen die Gesetze der Phusis gegeißelt.35 Bereits der Krieg gegen Licinius erscheint als Verstoß gegen familiäre Verpflichtungen. Als Aggressor und aus der Begierde zu herrschen eröffnet Konstantin, wie Eutrop betont, gegen Licinius den Krieg, quamquam necessitudo et affinitas cum eo esset.36 Der Vertragsbruch erklärt, warum Konstantin auch von der Epitome de Caesaribus für die Regierungsjahre von  bis  als latro bezeichnet wird. Die Kriege gegen Licinius sollen als räuberische Übergriffe erscheinen.37 So wie der Kampf gegen Licinius mit einem Vertragsbruch beginnt, endet er auch. Gegen die explizite und vertraglich festgelegte eidliche Zusicherung, die von der eigenen Schwester Konstantins erwirkt worden ist, läßt Konstantin Licinius als Privatmann in seiner Residenz Thessalonike umbringen.38 Die von ihm zu verantwortenden Traditionsbrüche werden ebenfalls als Gesetzesverstöße, nämlich als Verstöße gegen die Gesetze der Väter, beschrieben. Dieses Thema war bereits in der julianischen Propaganda dominant, indem Julian das Andenken Konstantins ut novatoris turbatorisque priscarum legum et moris antiquitus recepti schmähte (Amm. ..). Die Hinwendung zum Christentum wird dementsprechend auch in der späten heidnischen Tradition vor allem als absichtlicher Verstoß gegen die väterlichen Riten hingestellt.39 Wegen Gesetzlosigkeiten dieser Art wird dann Konstantin, wie alle schlechten Kaiser, von den Trägern der römischen Tradition, von Senat und Volk, gehaßt.40

35

Zos. ..: Konstantin läßt Crispus umbringen, „ohne auf das Gesetz der Natur Rücksicht zu nehmen“. 36 Eutr. . (für das bellum Cibalense). Vgl. Zos. ... 37 Ps. Aur. Vict. Epit. .. Zur Verbindung der Periodisierung in der Epitome de Caesaribus mit den Decennalien und Vicennalien Konstantins s. Bleckmann . Räuberische Übergriffe, vgl. Ps. Aur. Vict. Epit. . zum Überfall des Constantinus II. auf Constans. 38 Vermittlung der Schwester bei den Kapitulationsvereinbarungen: s. z. B. Ps. Aur. Vict. Epit. .: Dehinc Constantinus acie potior apud Bithyniam adegit Licinium, pacta salute, indumentum regium offerre per uxorem; inde Thessalonicam missum paulo post eum Martinianumque iugulari iubet (entgegen der pacta salus!). Verletzung des Eids (contra religionem sacramenti): Eutr. ... S. auch Zos. ... 39 Zos. ..; ..–. 40 Zos. ...



bruno bleckmann Zusammenfassung

Insgesamt war die Regierung Konstantins zu prägend und von zu großer Individualität und hatte die über zwei Generationen wirksame konstantinfreundliche Geschichtsschreibung zu deutliche Konturen entwickelt, um die Stereotype des Tyrannenbilds undifferenziert auf Konstantin übertragen zu können. Die Erfolge Konstantins konnten auch in den konstantinfeindlichen Quellen nicht völlig verschwiegen, sondern allenfalls in komplizierter Form relativiert werden. Bei den Ausführungen über Habgier, Prunksucht oder Verschwendung konnte nicht mehr einfach das bekannte Tyrannenrepertoire, das man für Gestalten wie Elagabal, Gallienus oder später auch noch für Constantius Gallus ohne weiteres benutzen konnte, hinzugezogen werden. Vielmehr musste aufgrund der Tatsache, dass die Charakterisierung Konstantins als Tyrann erst sehr spät, nämlich zwei Generationen nach dem Tode des Kaisers durchgebildet wurde, an bekannte Fakten aus der Regierung Konstantins angeknüpft werden, etwa an die Einführung des Diadems, die Militärreform, die Gründung Konstantinopels oder die sich am Ende der Regierung abzeichnende Auseinandersetzung mit den Persern (Metrodoranekdote). Wegen der Besonderheit, in der sich diese Tradition erst nach zwei Generationen entwickelt hat, kann mit der tendenziösen Literatur zur Regierung Konstantins anders umgegangen werden als mit dem Anekdotenmaterial zu anderen schlechten römischen Kaisern. Die tendenziöse Literatur zu Konstantin ist kein völlig taubes Gestein, sondern sie enthält trotz der Angleichung an Tyrannentopoi den einen oder anderen Edelstein wertvoller historischer Information. Das gilt etwa für die in der christlichen Tradition verschwiegenen Morde an Crispus und der Fausta. In den unmittelbar zeitgenössischen Quellenzeugnissen kann man nur das plötzliche, offenkundig auf kaiserlicher Ungnade beruhende Verschwinden der beiden Mitglieder des Kaiserhauses konstatieren. Die späte heidnische Überlieferung verweist dagegen immerhin darauf, dass hier eine innerdynastische Auseinandersetzung durch Tötungsbefehle des Kaisers entschieden wurde, auch wenn die Details höchst verdächtig bleiben müssen.

JUSTINIAN, PROCOPIUS, AND DECEPTION: LITERARY LIES, IMPERIAL POLITICS, AND THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF SIXTH-CENTURY GREECE

Amelia Brown Every scholar of Late Antiquity must confront the challenge posed by the deceptions of Procopius of Caesarea. Though without a doubt the most important historian of the emperor Justinian’s very long reign (– ), his chronology, intentions and accuracy continue to be widely questioned. He is notoriously slippery on dates, and along with endorsements of Justinian and his policies in his History of the Wars and Buildings, he also wrote the notorious Unpublished or Secret History, criticizing and mocking the emperor, his wife Theodora, his wars and his buildings.1 Whatever one accepts as closest to the truth, which Procopius always claims to be writing, we must rely on him as the only source for most sixth-century political history, and confront his deceptions by placing him in his historical and literary context. For sixth-century Greece, in particular, a few paragraphs of Procopius remain at the heart of long-running debates about the end of the ancient city and its institutions, not to mention the relationship between ancient literature and archaeology. Procopius credits Justinian with constructing fortifications at Thermopylae and Corinth in his Buildings, but many archaeologists question this attribution. Then in his Secret History Procopius makes Justinian deliberately destroy civic life at Corinth, Athens and elsewhere, curtailing spectacles and public services, and limiting public life to the Christian church. Was Justinian really intending to eliminate ancient civic traditions? Beyond this, how do we reconcile the earthquakes, plague and other natural disasters which Procopius blames on Justinian and the wrath of God with the realities of Greek geology and excavation? Addressing these questions demands a clear understanding of the chronology and context of Procopius, and a careful balance between his evidence and that of archaeology.

1 The works of Procopius are abbreviated as follows: History of the Wars (Bell.), Buildings (Aed.) and Unpublished or Secret History (Arc.).

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Now Procopius tells us that he was in imperial service from the very outset of Justinian’s accession in , as secretary to the general Belisarius, who was then Dux of Mesopotamia, and later magister militum.2 After campaigning against the Persians in the East, the Vandals in Africa and the Goths in Italy, Procopius settled in Constantinople in the early s, published his History of the Wars, and probably died in the early s, before Justinian.3 His eight books on the History of the Wars employ Thucydidean language, dating conventions and claims of personal autopsy, and they immediately established his reputation during his own lifetime as the pre-eminent political historian writing under Justinian.4 These books are without a doubt finished works published between  and , and as Averil Cameron has argued, strong on description and imitation of Classical models of historiography, but short on convincing historical interpretation of causes and effects.5 Procopius seems to have followed the History of the Wars by beginning to write an encomium of Justinian’s construction projects in Constantinople and elsewhere in the Eastern empire: the Buildings. This work survives as six books of region-by-region architectural praise, mainly focusing on imperial churches and military fortifications, and ranging from elaborate ekphraseis of individual structures to bare lists of construction projects without any narrative framework. The Buildings is far 2 Procopius variously calls himself adviser (ξ$μβουλος) and companion (πρεδρος) to Belisarius, from the time the latter was appointed Dux of Mesopotamia in  (Bell. ..–, .., ..). Martindale   (PLRE IIIB, Procopius ) takes these terms to mean that Procopius served as consiliarius and assessor to Belisarius. The Suda calls him Belisarius’ secretary (/πογραφε$ς). 3 Procopius was back in Constantinople by spring of , if his account of witnessing the plague there is true (Bell. .–); he may have been briefly with Belisarius in the west again after that, or always in the capital city. The Suda identifies our historian as holding the rank of illustris; thus he is probably the Procopius called patrician and prefect by John of Nikiu (.), and possibly the City Prefect of Constantinople of that name who served in  /  (7 @παρχος τς π'λεως in John Malalas  and fr. , Theophanes AM ). I am not persuaded that Procopius died in the s, as I explain below. 4 There is widespread agreement on publication of the first seven books of the History of the Wars in  / , because Book  ends in . However, in Book  Procopius abandons his Thucydidean chronological and geographic scheme and expands his focus, but ends his description of events for good in . The majority of scholars thus see Book  published separately in  / : Bury  .; Stein  .; Rubin  ; Cameron  ; Greatrex ,  –; Croke  . Yet Evans ( , a ) continues to argue that Book  was published in  / , as Procopius makes it eleven and a half years after the beginning of payments to the Persians in  (Bell. ..). I am not sure that a separate later publication of Book  apart from the rest of the History of the Wars is justified, although it is assumed in all modern scholarship. 5 Cameron .

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more complete for Constantinople, North Africa and the Levant, places familiar to Procopius, and least complete for the Balkans and Greece. Some place its publication in , pointing to its silence concerning the Samaritan revolt of  or the collapse of St. Sophia’s first dome in . However it can hardly be the published work of the author of the History of the Wars as it now stands, and the Suda does not mention it at all. If Procopius wrote it in Constantinople in the s, making reference to his past experience of the places concerned, then it makes sense that it includes buildings with a wide range of construction-dates. But its reference to the Sangarius bridge near Nicomedia, under construction in other sources from about  through , makes it very likely a longterm project of Procopius left unfinished at his death.6 About the same time as he was praising Justinian in the Buildings, however, Procopius must also have been at work on a sort of supplement for his History of the Wars, an alternative eighth book as it were, which became for later Byzantine readers his ‘unpublished’ ninth book. This is what the tenth-century Suda encyclopedia calls “the so-called Anekdota,” the ‘Unpublished’ (history, things, or books), which has come via Latin translation to be called the Secret History.7 Προκ'πιος, QΙλλο$στριος, Καισαρε(ς κ Παλαιστνης, Cτωρ κα4 σοφιστς. @γραψεν UΙστοραν UΡωμαϊκν, Xγουν το(ς πολμους Βελισαρου πατρικου, τA κατA UΡμην κα4 Λιβ$ην πραχ!ντα. γγονεν π4 τ"ν χρ'νων QΙουστινιανο το βασιλως, /πογραφε(ς χρηματσας Βελισαρου 6

Stein  . and his followers (Cameron  – ; Greatrex , , ; Croke ) favor a date of publication of  /  for the Buildings, pointing to the unmentioned collapse of St. Sophia’s first dome in , the Samaritan revolt of  and the succesful use of the Chersonnese Long Wall in . Yet these are arguments from silence, and I follow those who favor circa  for the writing of the Buildings, since Procopius makes clear reference to the Sangarius bridge as under construction at Aed. ..–: Haury  –; Bury  .; Downey  – (who argues strongly for the unfinished state of Aed.); Whitby ; Evans a –. The Sangarius bridge, near Nicomedia in northwest Anatolia, cannot have been started much before Theophanes mentioned it in  /  (Theophanes AM , in De Boor  .:–), and the bridge was finished by  (Agathias in AP .; Paul the Silentiary Ecphrasis .). Otherwise only Procopius’ mention of the rebuilding of the walls of Topirus in Thrace following a Slavic sack in  (Aed. ..–, Bell. ..–) and the building of the walls of Chalchis in Syria in  /  (Aed. .., ; Prentice  nos. –) can be securely dated after . Evans (;  –; a ) prefers to see Aed.  on Constantinople as an encomium delivered before , and the remainder of the work as finished by . 7 The Secret History is a translation of Arcana Historia, the Latin title coined by Alemannus (Nicoló Alemanni), editor, abridger and translator into Latin of the editio princeps, which first appeared in print in  in Lyon.

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amelia brown κα4 #κ'λου!ος κατA πντας το(ς συμβντας πολμους τε κα4 πρξεις τAς /π’ αKτο συγγραφεσας. @γραψε κα4 Nτερον βιβλον, τA καλο$μενα QΑνκδοτα, τ"ν αKτ"ν πρξεων: 5ς ε=ναι #μφ'τερα βιβλα !’. Lτι τ& βιβλον Προκοπου τ& καλο$μενον QΑνκδοτα ψ'γους κα4 κωμDωδαν QΙουστινιανο βασιλως περιχει κα4 τς αKτο γυναικ&ς Θεοδρας, #λλA μν κα4 αKτο Βελισαρου κα4 τς γαμετς αKτο . (Suda s.v. Prokopios, Π )

Procopius, illustris (in rank), from Caesarea in Palestine, advocatus (Arc. .) and sophist. He wrote a Roman History (of the Wars), which concerned the campaigns of the patrician Belisarius, and what was done regarding Rome and Libya. He lived in the era of the emperor Justinian, serving as secretary to Belisarius and follower, accompanying him on all his campaigns and writing down all his deeds at first hand. He also wrote another book, the so-called Anekdota (Unpublished), about these same deeds: so there are  books all together. (One should know) that the book of Procopius which is the so-called Anekdota (Unpublished) contains invective and satire of the emperor Justinian and his wife Theodora, and also even Belisarius himself and his wife.

The author of the Suda thus characterizes the Secret History as recounting the same events as Procopius’ History of the Wars, but with invective and satire, ψ'γους κα4 κωμDωδαν, of Justinian, Theodora, Belisarius and his wife Antonina. This does not necessarily imply falsehood, but rather a different rhetorical stance taken towards the events of the History of the Wars and these four figures. This calls to mind Old Comedy and Aristophanes, the author most frequently referenced in the Secret History. By his use of quotations from the comic playwright par excellence of Ancient Athens, Procopius encouraged readers to connect his own work with Aristophanes’ contemporary political comedy; as Kaldellis observes, to understand the multiple Justinians of Procopius we must recall the Socrates of Aristophanes, of Plato and of Xenophon.8 In the Secret History’s very first paragraph, Procopius repeats the opening lines of Book  of his History of the Wars, then admits to lying to readers of his previous books out of fear of arrest, torture and death. In this new book, he declares, “it will be necessary to reveal the events which have remained untold along with the causes of the events already revealed” (τA . . . 8ρρητα μεναντα κα4 τ"ν @μπροσ!εν δεδηλωμνων ντα ! μοι το λ'γου τAς α)τας σημναι δεσει; Arc. .). He thus admits omission of important events and causes in his History of the Wars, but with a renewed commitment to telling what he later calls the 8 Kaldellis  –, . For widespread knowledge of Aristophanes’ plays in the sixth century see Dover .

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necessary truth. He tries to recover his readers’ good faith by promising that his account will surely be corroborated by contemporaries, and act as a helpful warning to future leaders and readers by revealing God’s punishment of the wicked. We, his readers, must put aside the guarantees of truth made in the History of the Wars (Bell. ..–), and the repeated assurances of God’s firm approval for Justinian in the Buildings (e.g. Aed. ..). Procopius’ common authorship of all three works—History of the Wars, Buildings and Secret History—has long been established, and I support it, along with dating of the Secret History to  / , following (most recently) Roger Scott and Brian Croke.9 When Procopius states four times in the Secret History that he is writing in Justinian’s thirtysecond year of rule, the evidence overwhelmingly supports the interpretation that he means Justinian’s regnal year of  / , rather than  / , thirty-two years from the accession of his uncle Justin in .10 Though Justin did give his nephew Justinian new power at court in Constantinople, Procopius is elsewhere quite consistent in his use of proper regnal years for Justinian beginning in . It also makes good sense to put the Secret History’s composition after that of the whole History of the Wars, when the emperor was over seventy years old, and Procopius probably not much younger. He speaks of Justinian always in the past tense, and promises in his very last sentence that: “when Justinian either, if he is a man, departs this life, or, as being the Lord of the evil spirits, lays his life aside, all who have the fortune to have survived to that time will know

9

Arguments for dating the Secret History to  / , from Justinian’s accession, are made by, among others: Gibbon  ..–; Dahn  ; Comparetti and Bassi ; Downey  –; Evans , ; Scott ; Cataudella  – ; Croke . Many, however, still follow the influential suggestion of Haury in interpreting the  years as indicating  / , dating from the accession of Justin, though Procopius never otherwise does this in his surviving works: Haury  –; Bury  .; Dewing ; Stein  .–; Rubin  ,  .; Cameron  – ; Greatrex , ; Evans a; Signes Codoñer . Kaldellis  ,  basically ignores the question of both absolute and relative dating of the works of Procopius as immaterial to his literary study. Evans b –, after previously coming down on both sides, now accepts Scott’s arguments for a  /  ban on celebrating Passover before Easter and thus apparently the  /  date for Justinian’s thirty-second year, but concludes most recently that the Secret History is an unpublished “malevolent commentary” on Procopius’ own work, begun after Theodora’s death in  but added to over the years up to the author’s own death circa . 10 References to  years by Procopius: Arc. ., ., ., .. Justinian’s reign began April ,  (cf. Just. Nov. , issued in ), as Procopius always accepts and employs elsewhere (e.g. Bell. .., ..).

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the truth.”11 So Procopius sees the disparity between his written works, but plans for the truth he desires to appear after Justinian’s death, and, as it probably happened, his own. Though it circulated in Middle Byzantine Constantinople, and manuscript copies continued to be made into the th century, the Secret History was not actually printed until the early th century, and then without a passage concerning Theodora’s early life, restored only in the th century. The printed th century edition, and translations and other editions which swiftly followed, immediately provoked re-examination of the long-famous works of Procopius, the History of the Wars and Buildings, and indeed of Justinian’s entire reign and character. At first most took the Secret History’s content as fact, Gibbon included.12 But by , other scholars had counter-attacked: if Procopius hated Justinian then he could have easily invented whatever he wanted to fulfill his slanderous, deceptive goals; or, perhaps the Secret History was not by Procopius at all. Early twentieth-century scholars portrayed Procopius largely in psychological or positivistic terms, and strove to separate out his historical truth from false gossip and spurious scandal.13 Dewing thought Procopius wrote the Secret History, but is typically skeptical of its content in the introduction to his  Loeb translations of the works of Procopius: “the very extravagance of the calumny makes it impossible to be believed; again and again we meet statements which, if not absolutely impossible, are at least highly improbable.”14 Since then, most scholars have accepted Procopian authorship, accepting some allegations and rejecting others, on the basis of their experience of modern political history and their assumptions about Procopius’ character and goals. Kaldellis is fairly typical when he calls the Secret History the inevitable product of a creative and educated author achieving a balance of “dissent and orthodoxy” in an oppressive tyranny, preserving his life and satisfying his desire for the truth.15 He and other scholars have also increasingly pointed out the traditional nature of the criticisms 11

Arc. ., translated in Dewing . Gibbon  ..–. 13 Bury  –, for example, argued for only a skeleton of facts and rejected “the damaging scandals themselves as incredible, or at least improbable,” discredited particularly by being told by an enemy who is inconsistent, and thus (for him) probably not Procopius. 14 Dewing  x. 15 Kaldellis   and  n. , following Rudich , helpfully compares Procopius with authors writing under Nero, and particularly with Seneca, who praised Claudius in To Polybius on Consolation and scorned him in Apocolocyntosis. 12

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leveled against Justinian by Procopius.16 Aside from the charge of walking around without a head, moralizing statements and condemnation of imperial hubris occur in most ancient histories. The poet Claudian won a statue in Rome for his scathing invectives of high eastern officials only a century before, calling Rufinus a demon in disguise like Justinian, and slandering the eunuch Eutropius with sexual perversions far beyond those ascribed to Theodora.17 But whether she was mocked by Procopius for performing in lewd theatrical productions, or for her actions behind the scenes as a courtesan, Theodora suffered sexually-charged slights typical of ancient rhetoric and invective. Generic conventions stretching back at least to the plays of Aristophanes dictated that she, as well as Antonina, should be mocked as sexually immodest and voracious, while Justinian and Belisarius came in for criticism on account of marrying such women. It remains hard for historians to balance the Secret History with the seemingly more sober History of the Wars and the unfinished yet panegyrical Buildings. In the History of the Wars, Procopius does in fact blame Justinian for Roman military defeats in Italy in the s, as his distraction with Christian doctrine supposedly prevented him from sending needed troops. The Secret History then goes a step further, however, and says he actually wanted to kill as many people in Italy as possible. Furthermore, Procopius claims that his own reasonable-sounding causes of barbarian invasions given in the History of the Wars were all false; Justinian himself caused sixth-century barbarian invasions by paying too much to barbarians inside the Roman Empire without reason, causing new greed for those outside (Arc. .–). Yet Justinian’s handouts were well within centuries of imperial tradition; by Gordon’s calculation he even spent less on this sort of tribute than his predecessor Anastasius, less than   of imperial income.18 When we move outside the works of Procopius to consider other contemporary literary sources, however, they add their own problems of authorship and bias to the variety present in the works of Procopius himself. For example, the other main contemporary historical narrative on Justinian’s reign is book  of the Chronicle of Malalas, which contains brief yearly entries enumerating major events, mainly in Constantinople; this particular book is written in a very different style from the rest of Malalas’ universal history, though, while its content is said to derive 16 17 18

Rubin ,  –, –; Tinnefeld  –. Cameron ; Levy ; Long . Gordon .

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mainly from official imperial propaganda.19 Also, in the History of the Wars Procopius says that “suspicion arose” about Pope Silverius negotiating with the Goths after the occupation of Rome, so Belisarius exiled him to Greece and appointed Vigilius in his place (Bell. ..); this seems a reasonable action for a man protecting Rome from Gothic recapture. But when Procopius places Antonina behind a plot to exile and eventually kill Silverius, it seems unrealistic and misogynistic to the modern reader, while the Liber Pontificalis Life of Silverius traces the plot explicitly back to Theodora herself.20 It is thus just as hard to reconcile Procopius with himself as with a nearly contemporary source like the Liber Pontificalis, supposedly at its most reliable in its entries for this era, and composed only decades later from official papal archives. The fact that Procopius both assigns every building project he can to Justinian and then characterizes him as deceptive above all things clearly impedes understanding of the truth of the Buildings, and imperial patronage throughout the empire. Justinian is treated at length in the Secret History, with Procopius employing almost every term relating to deception in the Greek language. Though he says the worst of Justinian’s DEEDS are murder, robbery and their encouragement, when it comes to CHARACTER, he was “an evil-doing and easily-led man, the sort they call both stupid and evil, never telling the truth to those around him” (#νρ κακο ργ'ς τε κα4 εKπαργωγος, cν δ μωροκακο!η καλο σιν, ο6τε αKτ&ς #λη!ιζ'μενος το3ς ντυγχνουσιν; Arc. .). He broke oaths like a tortured slave, betraying friend and enemy alike; a φλος #ββαιος, χ!ρ&ς 8σπονδος (Arc. .). Justinian’s character, for Procopius, caused the previously-unequalled destruction of life and wealth across the Roman Empire. But was Justinian really such an exceptional liar for a Roman Emperor? As primary evidence, Procopius says Justinian and Theodora secretly agreed on all things, including deception, pretending to hold opposite opinions on important issues to divide their subjects and keep them from revolt (Arc. .). When Justinian was not in agreement with Theodora, she persuaded him with sorcery in any case (Arc. .), a far cry from the claim expressed in the Novels that Justinian acted in legal matters “receiving as an equal in advice the most pious consort given to us by God” (participem consilii sumentes eam quae a deo data nobis est reuerentissimam coniugem; Just. Nov. .). Procopius makes their main ‘pre19 20

Scott . Arc. ., ; Gesta Pont. Rom. ..

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tended’ disputes over Christian doctrine, punishment of factional crime, and prosecution of the wealthy to take their money. This tells us at least that these things were controversial during their reign, and that the ruling couple did not always behave publicly in a united way; their ‘private’ beliefs or intentions remaining a source of speculation (Arc. ). Regarding Christian doctrine, contemporary writers express confusion about Theodora’s ‘real’ doctrinal beliefs, but confirm that from ca. , until her death in , Theodora hid Monophysite (non-Chalcedonian) clergy and monks in the imperial palace, and sent out Monophysite missions of conversion to Arabia and Nubia, in the latter case in competition with a Chalcedonian mission sent by Justinian.21 In the case of prosecution of the wealthy, cash-hungry emperors had long used forgery (of wills and letters), insurance fraud, or claims of conspiracy to snare senatorial property, but also needed to maintain upper-class support, leading inevitably to court intrigue and party politics.22 Yet among the accusations brought by the emperor against his subjects are some genuinely new crimes: polytheism and Christian heresy, sex with nuns and membership in the Green faction. A comparison of Justinian’s novels with Procopius shows that he did in fact legislate against all of the things he is accused of in the Secret History, and he also appointed two new officials to bring accusations alongside the city prefect, just as Procopius claims (Arc. .– ). Procopius also seems justified in accusing Justinian of intentionally debasing the value of his gold coinage, at one point to one seventh of its original value (Arc. ., .–). Scott connected this passage with Malalas’ debasement of March  which caused riots, and resulted in reversion to the old system as Justinian blamed a lower official.23 Others think he is referring to Alexander ‘the Cutter,’ the treasury official or logothete who supposedly cut the sides off of coins to decrease their value (Bell. ..–). Numismatists have securely established that lightweight gold coins were minted by Justinian, and circulated widely in the West.24 However, on allegations like whether or not Justinian told 21 Evagrius HE .; John of Ephesus Lives of the Eastern Saints ; Ps.-Zachariah Rhetor HE ., along with other sources for Theodora’s support (perhaps with Justinian’s blessing) of the emerging Monophysite (or non-Chalcedonian) church, and thoughtful analysis, collected by Menze  –. For Theodora as herself a Monophysite: Evans ; Foss . 22 Cf. Arc. .–, .–, .. 23 Scott . 24 Hendy  –.

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both Liberius and John Laxarion that each was the true Governor of Alexandria, provoking armed conflict between them, and the death of John (Arc. .–), we may never know the truth. Finally, Procopius makes Justinian not only a deceiver, but himself highly vulnerable to deception, and incapable of using it like a proper Roman emperor. Thus Justinian cannot resist the sophistry of referendarii (petitioners or lawyers) who argue cases before him, or himself determine the truth of accusations (Arc. .–, and on the office see Bell. ..). He fails to pay proper spies to go to Persia and investigate their army and intentions, as demanded by both tradition and military necessity (Arc. .–). And, of course, Justinian the master deceiver was himself deceived most of all by his loyal court historian Procopius, as we are able to read the Secret History today. These layers of authorial and imperial deception are particularly vexing for the study of Greece, where Procopius is by far the most significant literary source for the sixth century, and where the architectural and cultural changes in this era are so noteworthy.25 By Greece or Hellas the place, Procopius, like most Romans for centuries before him, meant the province of Achaia, roughly modern mainland Greece south of the pass of Thermopylae. But the term Hellene, or Greek, once geographic and ethnic, was ambiguous and contested in the sixth century, as, after centuries of cultural use and imperially-enforced Christianization, it was often used as a synonym for polytheist, or pagan. Procopius is clearly aware of this semantic ambiguity, and turns it to his aid in writing the Secret History. First he criticizes Justinian for torturing and seizing the property of Hellenes “as they are called,” acknowledging that he means traditional polytheists (or pagans) by explaining that many only took the name of Christian, and were later arrested at “libations and sacrifices and other unholy acts.”26 However just a bit later he calls Justinian to task for prosecuting soldiers for being Hellenes, “as though it were wholly impossible for any man from Greece to be a decent man.”27 Here he is clearly using the term in its geographic sense, as a way of willfully misrepresenting Justinian’s accusations.

25

For a summary of Procopius’ references to the country of Greece, see Gregory . Arc. ., translated in Dewing . Procopius also refers to the ‘old faith (δ'ξα) which people now call Hellenic,’ and the ‘gods worshipped by the Hellenes’ at Bell. ..–... 27 Arc. ., translated in Dewing . 26

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By far his longest references to Greece as a place involve the pass of Thermopylae, but whether this is due to good Herodotean precedents or some real interest on the part of Justinian is debatable.28 In the Buildings, the whole chapter on Greece is devoted solely to military fortifications, and about a third of that to Thermopylae alone, where Procopius claims that Justinian walled high passes, repaired the fort at the main pass, and installed cisterns, granaries and a two-thousand-man garrison (Aed. ..–). This was a great improvement on the peasants who previously: “when the enemy came down, would suddenly change their mode of life, and becoming makeshift soldiers for the occasion, would keep guard there in turn; and because of their inexperience in the business they, together with Greece itself, proved an easy prey to the enemy.”29 South of Thermopylae, he credits Justinian with repairs to local city walls, especially, and with a further nod to Herodotus, those of Plataia, Athens and Corinth; furthermore he mentions a new curtain wall across the Corinthian Isthmus, with forts and garrisons there (Aed. ..–). In the Secret History, Thermopylae gets the most attention as well, but for a very different reason. Procopius first credits the hapless peasants of his own Buildings with capable service in times of war, and then condemns Justinian for approving the wasteful decision to station two thousand troops there (Arc. .–). But even more terrible to Procopius, Justinian paid for this not from the imperial treasury, but rather from “the entire civic funds and the funds for the spectacles of all the cities of Greece, on the pretext that these soldiers were to be maintained therefrom, and consequently in all Greece, and not least in Athens itself, no public building was restored nor could any other needful thing be done.”30 Thus Justinian’s cleverness in construction and concern for the safety of his subjects in the Buildings is contrasted with a lack of need for the garrison and disastrous misuse of civic funds in the Secret History. Procopius further accused Justinian of stripping all his other cities in Greece and outside it of their civic and spectacle funds, depriving them of public servants like teachers and doctors, public services like street lamps

28 For Procopius and Thermopylae see Mackay ; for the long legacy of the battle at Thermopylae in Greek and Western culture see the papers collected in Bridges, Hall and Rhodes . 29 Aed. .., translated in Dewing and Downey . 30 Arc. ., translated in Dewing .

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and fountains, and, most dramatically, public spectacles (Arc. .–): “the theatres and hippodromes and circuses were all closed for the most part—the places in which, as it happened, his wife had been born and reared and educated. And later he ordered these spectacles to close down altogether, even in Byzantium, so that the Treasury might not have to supply the usual sums to the numerous and almost countless persons who derived their living from them. And there was both in private and in public sorrow and dejection, as though still another affliction from Heaven had smitten them, and there was no laughter in life for anyone.”31 The archaeological evidence for closure of theaters is in fact uneven, and Justinian issued one Novel supporting theatrical performances early in his reign (Just. Nov. , ). Nevertheless, one looks almost in vain for evidence of civic funds or spectacles in Greece in the sixth century. Funds and spectacles tied to traditional religion mostly disappear in the early fifth century, while most of those for civic or imperial festivals do not survive into Justinian’s reign. On the other hand, there are literally hundreds of new churches constructed all over Greece under Justinian, along with repairs in some cities to public stoas, fountains and baths as well as to military fortifications. Surely the entire public funds of every city in Greece could not have been taken for the support of one small garrison. Even if so, it was a very short-lived commitment, for these troops were sent to Croton from Thermopylae just a few years later to aid in the war against the Goths in Italy (Bell. ..–). Beyond Thermopylae, Malalas and several later chroniclers note that ‘the wrath of god’ fell upon the city of Corinth in  / , and that relief for the city was then sent by the emperor Justin (Malalas . []). This seems to be the only corroboration for the “terrible earthquakes which had happened” at Corinth, which Procopius refers to when he lavishly praises Justinian in the Buildings for rebuilding Corinth’s quake-damaged city walls.32 In the Secret History, however, he claims that both the earthquakes at Corinth and other cities, and the plague, were due to Justinian’s demonic nature or God’s wrath at Justinian’s rule (Arc. .–).33 In 31

Arc. .–, translated in Dewing .

ν Κορν!Dω μ:ν σεισμ"ν πιγενομνων ξαισων; Aed. ..–; an earthquake west of Corinth is also mentioned by Procopius at Bell. ..–, though Corinth itself is not here said to have been damaged. 33 Here, Procopius also specifies that he means both the era of Justinian’s administration (under Justin) and Justinian’s reign as emperor. This allows Procopius to include the maximum number of natural disasters (including the quake which probably struck 32

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the History of the Wars, Procopius had given an extended description of the plague’s emergence in Egypt and spread to Constantinople and every other land, according to him killing many in and after the year , but he had not blamed it on Justinian (Bell. .–). Corroborating legal evidence for the plague can be found in a number of Novels of Justinian, primarily one of  assisting bankers, because all know there is currently “a danger of death spreading in every place” (mortis enim periculum per omnia loca propagatum; Just. Edict.  pref.), and in others issued soon after, legislating on those who died without heirs, and battling increases in both prices and wages.34 The ‘Justinianic plague’ of  /  continues to attract attention in scholarship and beyond, as archaeologists search for solid evidence of its impact, and historians use comparative approaches to expand our understanding of it beyond the literary and legal texts.35 Most agree that it was bubonic plague, the killer of as much as a third of the population in some cities, and a serious factor in the decline of the Eastern Roman Empire’s economic complexity and military potential.36 Corinth is one of a number of cities which Procopius seems to link with severe effects from the plague, when after a list of ‘most-populous’ cities devastated by earthquake under Justinian’s administration and reign (including Corinth), he concludes that the plague carried off half the remaining population (Arc. .–). This perhaps indicates that despite the earthquake of  / , in  the city was still the sort of densely populated and maritime-oriented city most affected by the plague. Thus it is likely that in Corinth, as in Constantinople, the plague would have recurred throughout the rest of the sixth century, further reducing the population.37 Yet papyrus business documents in Egypt, the source of the plague, scarcely

Corinth in  / , before Justinian’s reign), and should be taken as further confirmation that when Procopius speaks more generally of Justinian’s reign he means his reign as emperor. 34 Cf. Just. Nov.  (issued ),  (issued ). 35 For attempts to connect archaeological evidence with this plague, see the evidence for a slight rise in dated epitaphs in Palestine between  and  presented in Meimaris  –, –, or the articles in Little , particularly that of Kulikowski  discussing the mass inhumations in Valencia and Cartagena in Spain of early to mid-sixth century date. 36 See most recently Little ; also Conrad ; Stathakopoulos , ; Meier  –; Kaldellis . 37 In Constantinople the plague recurred in  (Malalas . []; Agathias .) and  (John of Biclar Chronicle  [CCSL A.]; Agapius of Menbidj Universal History [ed. Vasiliev  (PO )], ).

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show any change at all in the s, and some of the comparative studies undertaken recently suggest that loss of manpower can actually have a stimulating effect on the economy of a city.38 At Corinth, the most notable evidence of Justinian himself comes in the form of at least three churches erected during his reign, one monumental and adorned with Proconnesian marble.39 Gravestones with Christian epitaphs proliferate using the new indiction system of dating, and restoration of public fountains and shops took place in the Corinthian Agora.40 The circuit wall of the city is poorly preserved and only a small section has been excavated, which could be the work of Justinian or a fifth-century emperor.41 We do, however, have one sure piece of evidence for Justinian at Corinth, and it casts important light both on Procopius as a source and Justinian as an imperial patron. Monumental Greek inscriptions once adorned the wall across the Corinthian Isthmus which Procopius credits to Justinian in the Buildings, and two of these were read and understood throughout history, even if the wall itself was not always in good repair. Today the construction of this Hexamilion or six-mile wall across the Isthmus is largely assigned by archaeologists to the reign of Theodosius II (–), on the basis of items in, underneath and against it, and Justinian’s exact contribution is hotly disputed.42 There is no denying, however, who took the credit for the Hexamilion Wall in Antiquity: Justinian had his name writ large upon the stones which survive.43 One block echoes the Nicene Creed: Φ"ς κ φωτ'ς, Θε&ς\ #λη!ιν&ς κ Θεο #λη!ινο ,\ φυλξη τ&ν ΑKτοκρτορα\ QΙουστινιαν&ν κα4 τ&ν\ πιστ&ν αKτο δο λον\ Βικτορ3νον, jμα το3ς\ ο)κο σειν ν UΕλδι το(ς κ(α)τ(A) Θε0ν\ ζ"ντας

Light from Light, True God from True God, guard the emperor Justinian and his faithful slave Victorinus, along with those who dwell in Greece living according to God.

The other block adds: 38 Casanova  (Egypt); Sarris  (economy). I thank Guy Sanders for these references. 39 For the Late Antique churches of Corinth see: Pallas ; Sanders . 40 Scranton ; Sanders . 41 Gregory ; Sanders and Boyd . 42 Gregory ; Frey . 43 Monceaux ; Fraenkel  – (nos. –; pl. .); Bees  – (nos. –); Kent  – (no. ); Feissel and Philippidis-Braat  –; Feissel  –; Papaphotiou  –; Cuomo  –.

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UΑγ(α) Μαρα Θεοτ'κε, φ$λαξον\ τν βασιλεαν το \ φιλοχρστου QΙουστινιανο \ κα4 τ&ν γνησως\ δουλε$οντα αKτD"\ Βικτωρ3νον σ(ν το3ς\ ο)κο σιν ν Κορν!Dω κ(ατA) Θε0ν\ ζ"ντας

Holy Mary, Theotokos, guard the empire of Christ-loving Justinian and Victorinus who serves him wisely, along with those who dwell in Corinth living according to God.

Thus between the death of Theodora in  and the writing of the Buildings in the later s, Justinian made his blessing clear: only the inhabitants of Corinth and Hellas who accepted his God, his Mary Theotokos and his Creed would be blessed by protection from his Wall. And whether or not Justinian’s official Victorinus or a previous emperor really built the wall, Justinian got the credit for all time. Moreover these inscriptions clear Procopius of at least one charge of deception.44 When he groused in the Secret History that Justinian and Theodora referred to their high officials as their slaves (Arc. .), he clearly wasn’t making it up.

44 I owe this suggestion on the significance of the slave metaphor under Justinian to Charles Pazdernik, who discussed these inscriptions and Just. Nov. , , in a paper titled “Ho Gn¯esios Doulos: The Master-Slave Metaphor as Evidence of Theological and Political Cross-Pollination in the Early Sixth Century,” presented at the th Meeting of the American Philological Association in San Francisco in January .

THE BROADER CONTEXT

DESPOTISM AND DECEIT: YES, BUT WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE AND AFTER?

Ron Ridley This volume has brought together contributions from many scholars of the Classical World. They have told us of Greece and Rome. My own last book was much concerned with deceit, if not despotism.1 It seemed useful therefore to offer some examples of the perennial link between despotism and deceit from both before and after the world of the Greeks and Romans, to provide a broader context.

The Amarna Revolution and its aftermath One of the most remarkable rulers ever to sit on the throne of Egypt was Akhenaten (– by standard chronology). He is remarkable for two things: his religious policies (or revolution) which replaced the traditional pantheon headed by Amon with an exclusive solar cult, and his portraiture, a total departure from classical representations both of the king himself and the royal family. Modern interpretations of this king have varied from James Henry Breasted’s “the first individual in human history”, to Étienne Drioton’s and Jacques Vandier’s “dreamer incapable of concentrating his mind on the practical necessities of government”, to Alan Gardiner’s fanatical monotheist, to Donald Redford’s totalitarian voluptuary, to Nicholas Reeves’ summation: “In seventeen years of dictatorial rule, dominated by his paranoia of an Amonist conspiracy, the king had brought the country and its people to the brink of disaster.”2 Most of these views are simply the parroting of the Amonist orthodoxy which triumphed after Akhenaten’s death. Akhenaten’s religious policies built on the most basic cult of the Egyptians, that of the Sun god Re, the orthodox creator god. This had been 1

Ridley . Breasted  ; Drioton and Vandier   Gardiner  –; Redford  –; Reeves  . 2

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highlighted in the form of the sun disk, the Aten, under Akhenaten’s father, Amenhotep III. Akhenaten went much further, and in his fifth year moved his capital from Thebes, home of the great dynastic god Amon, more than  kms as the crow flies north to Middle Egypt, to Akhetaton, the ‘Horizon of the Aten’. At the same time he changed his name from Amenhotep (IV) ‘Amon is pleased’ to Akhenaten ‘Serviceable to the Aton’. This can only be interpreted as a total break with Amon and its priesthood, which had become all powerful, thanks to Egypt’s lucrative military excursions into Asia, as far as the Euphrates. His new cult seems to have been exclusive: names of other gods were deleted from inscriptions. The principal text of the new cult is the Aton Hymn from the tomb of Ay at Amarna, a joyous celebration of the benefits of the sun to mankind: Beautifully you appear from the horizon of heaven, O living Aten who initiates life— For you are risen from the eastern horizon and have filled every land with your beauty; For you are fair, great, dazzling and high over every land . . . When your movements vanish and you set in the western horizon, The land is in darkness, in the manner of death . . . But the land grows bright when you are risen from the horizon; Shining in the orb in the daytime, you push back the darkness and give forth your rays, The Two Lands are in a festival of light . . . All flocks are content with their pasturage, Trees and grasses flourish, Birds are flown from their nests, their wings adoring your Ka, All small cattle prance upon their legs. All that fly up and alight, they live when you rise for them. Ships go downstream and upstream, every road being open at your appearance . . . Who gives life to the son in his mother’s womb, and calms him by stopping his tears . . . When the chick is in the egg, speaking in the shell, You give him breath within it to cause him to live.3

It is commonly agreed that this hymn is the poetic creation of Akhenaten himself. It does not seem to be the language of a tyrant. He is, indeed, not known to have put anyone to death during his seventeen years’ rule.

3

Murnane  (a splendid anthology) –.

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What happened to him after his death we can only speculate. He was buried in the ‘Royal Tomb’ at Amarna, but it is unlikely that his body survived the hatred of his enemies. A ‘composite’ tomb was found in the Valley of the Kings (KV ) in , containing a shrine belonging to his mother Tiye, a sarcophagus originally meant for a woman and which contained a mummy identified initially as a woman, then most commonly a man in his twenties and more recently a man in his thirties, and canopic equipment belonging to Kiya, Akhenaten’s second wife. His monuments were dismantled and used as filling and foundations—but returned to our sight more than three millennia later in the s. He was succeeded by the boy king Tutankhaton, soon to be Tutankhamon, signalling the return to Thebes and orthodoxy. He reigned for only eight years, dead at about eighteen years of age. Every few years another theory is proposed to explain his death—remarkable, considering that we have his body. There followed the ephemeral reign of an old man, Ay—perhaps the father of Nefertiti—then the throne passed to a general, Horemhab, the last of the th dynasty—and not a member of the family. How many times in history have we seen a ruthless military figure step in in such circumstances ‘to restore order’? And we have a text. A stela from Karnak, home of Amon (Cairo ), tells the story. It was issued in Tutankhamun’s name, then usurped by Horemhab. Suffice to say, the sentiments are not those of a ten years old boy. A ‘good ruler’ has expelled deceit throughout the Two Lands and reestablished justice, and made lying an abomination. Under Akhenaten everything was ‘topsy-turvy’: the temples were in ruins, so that the gods turned their backs on the land, the army met with no success, no prayers were answered. How was everything set right? Statues of the gods were made— of gold, and every costly stone—their temples were rebuilt, their daily offerings reestablished, as were the priesthoods, increasing their property ‘without limit in any respect’, double, triple, even quadruple. In short, ‘the good times have come’. The priesthoods were more than restored, the army under the general-pharaoh returned to pride of place. History could even be rewritten: Horemhab wiped out decades of history, declaring himself the successor of Amenhotep III. Order and the status quo had been restored. Deceit had been expelled.

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ron ridley Assyrian annals: rex semper invictus

There may be argument about the precise status of the pharaoh (I am in a significant minority which raises questions of method against the upholders of a strictly divine status, which at least some of his subjects certainly asserted), but there is no claim that the Assyrian king was divine. He was the agent of the gods, notably the principal deity, Assur. But was he a despot? Reading the Assyrian texts, one might certainly think so. The kings went to enormous trouble to decorate their palaces with marvellous reliefs accompanied by a full commentary to illustrate their deeds, and so often they seem to practise what has been dubbed by Albert Olmstead ‘calculated frightfulness’.4 An example is the boasting of Sennacherib (–) on his Elamite campaign: Humbanundasha, the field-marshal of the king of Elam, a trustworthy man, commander of his armies, his chief support, together with his nobles, who wear the golden girdle dagger and whose wrists are encircled with heavy rings of shining gold—like fat steers who have hobbles put on them—speedily I cut them down and established their defeat. I cut their throats like lambs. I cut off their precious lives (as one cuts) a string. Like the many waters of a storm, I made (the contents of) their gullets and entrails run down upon the wide earth. My prancing steeds, harnessed for my riding, plunged into the streams of their blood as (into) a river. The wheels of my war chariot, which brings low the wicked and the evil, were bespattered with blood and filth. With the bodies of their warriors I filled the plain, like grass. (Their) testicles I cut off, and tore out their privates like the seeds of cucumbers in the month of June. Their hands I cut off.5

Thus the battle of Halule, to which we shall return. And Ashurbanipal’s (–) treatment of the enemy: flaying them and hanging out their skins on the walls, dismembering bodies and feeding them to animals, hanging the severed heads of the enemy on the backs of the living, and putting chains through the jaw of a defeated king and tying him up in a kennel at the gate of Nineveh.6 Even if we discount half of this as rodomontade rather than historical fact, it still betrays a cast of mind which is the begetter or the product of despotism. The Assyrian empire was a military machine which terrorised surrounding lands and ransacked them for booty. A more precise proof of despotism is the fact that the Assyrians invented the technique of mass deportation, deliber4 5 6

Olmstead  . Luckenbill  .. Luckenbill  ., , , .

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ately and forcibly removing populations en masse from one side of the empire to another.7 This is advertised from the time of Sargon (–). Tens of thousands of people were uprooted to undermine any opposition: deported from the Taurus to southern Babylonia, from lake Van to Syria, from the eastern mountains to Phoenicia.8 In the midst of such brutally frank despotism, where is the deceit? The Egyptians were the first people to set out historical records in annalistic form (that is, year by year).9 The first to follow them in Mesopotamia were the Assyrians (from c.  bc). In a pioneering discussion in , Olmstead demonstrated how the Assyrian kings reissued their annals over the course of their reigns, usually embellishing the record, so that, contrary to standard interpretations, the latest version was the least reliable (what is now called ‘Olmstead’s law’).10 A common example is Shalmaneser III at the battle of Qarqar (). Enemy casualties are first given as ,, but later rise to ,.11 And of course, defeats are not admitted: see below. Another method of analysis is where we have Babylonian sources to control Assyrian ones. Albert Kirk Grayson analysed four cases of what he quaintly termed ‘problematical battles’.12 The last two will suffice to illustrate. At the beginning of his reign, in , Sargon fought the Elamites at Der ( kms NE of Babylon)—and naturally claimed victory.13 The Babylonian Chronicle,14 however, which by the way admits Babylonian defeats, states that the Elamites won, and the Babylonian king’s inscription claims that he defeated Assyria.15 Sargon later admitted, in fact, that the Elamite king assisted a ‘rebel’ king of Babylonia to rule for no fewer than eighteen years,16 thus totally contradicting himself. There is no evidence, on the other hand, that the Babylonian king was present at the battle (note Sargon’s silence), so he was probably the instigator of, but not the participant in, the Elamite attack, and thus also guilty of mendacity. 7

Oded . Luckenbill  ., , , , , , , . 9 Ridley . 10 Olmstead . See also the highly useful essay by Grayson . There is little about this in van Seters . 11 Luckenbill  ., . 12 Grayson . 13 Luckenbill  .. 14 Grayson  . 15 Brinkman  . 16 Luckenbill  .. 8

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The other example is the battle of Halule (on the middle Tigris?) in , between Sennacherib and again an Elamite-Babylonian coalition. There is again a contradiction between the king’s annals and the Babylonian Chronicle. Sennacherib claims that he won, while the chronicle claims that the Assyrians retreated.17 Once again the clue to the truth is the fact that the Babylonian king remained on his throne. Some have wondered whether the Assyrians’ boasted brutality is to be believed. Events in the twentieth century should convince us to credit it. Assyrian despotism, at least to enemies and subjects, seems to have produced a mentality which could not face reality and so required deceit, tampering with the historical record.

Darius insists how he came to be king The kings of Persia also were not gods on earth, but agents of their deities, most notably Ahuramazda. Despite their being the worst documented of the great eastern empires in terms of native texts, there is no doubt about the despotism of their powers and the ruthlessness required to rule one of the most extensive and heterogeneous empires ever known, from the Aegean to the Indus. That empire had been founded by Cyrus the Great (–). He was succeeded by his son Cambyses (–), of whom we have such a dramatic—and such a misleading—portrayal in Herodotos, who may well have been drawing on Egyptian sources: they were no friends of their conqueror. In Herodotos, Cambyses is a madman, who died in Syria—of an accidental sword wound—on hearing of revolt in Persia. He was succeeded by Darius (–), who has left us a long and detailed account of his succession. The Behistun inscription, so called from its site (Bagastarna = abode of the gods),  kms NW of the capital, is carved in three languages so high on the rock face that no human eye can read it. Henry Rawlinson risked his life in  to make the first copy.18 According to Darius, Cambyses killed his own brother Smerdis: “the Lie waxed great in the country”. He then went off to Egypt, which allowed an imposter (the false Smerdis) to usurp the throne, on hearing of which Cambyses committed suicide. Everyone feared the imposter: only Darius

17 18

Luckenbill  .–; Grayson  . For a modern translation Kuhrt  .–.

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dared oppose him. ‘With a few friends’ to help, Darius slew the false Smerdis in Media. By the favour of Ahuramazda (repeated thirty-one [!] times) Darius thus became king. He restored the sanctuaries of the gods (where have we heard that before?) and the property of the people. Then, lo and behold, what ingratitude: no fewer than eight rivals rose up to challenge him: in Elam (twice), Babylon (twice), Media, Sagartia (N. Media), Sogiana (near Bactria), and Persia. The refrain becomes monotonous: “Thereupon we joined battle. Ahuramazda bore me aid. By the favour of Ahuramazda I slew that army of X exceedingly.” Darius sums up by claiming that in one year (so he repeats five times) he put down all these rivals in nineteen battles. The most detailed and complicated chronology is offered—which could not be understood until the Fortification Tablets from Persepolis in  gave us a list of Persian months! The account is also very complicated, because of overlapping events, and one is not supposed to realise that Darius is not at the head of every Ahuramazda-inspired crushing of a rebel. In fact he took part in crushing only two of the ‘rebellions’: the false Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon (no. ) and the major threat, the false Phraortes in Media (no. ). Nor are we told where he was when Cambyses died. The conclusion is an exhortation: “The Lie made them rebellious . . . let kings who come after me punish the Lie followers”. Then, stunningly, “you who shall read this inscription, let that which has been done convince you: do not call it a lie.” Some secrets of success and rule are, in fact, revealed. “The man who cooperated with my house, him I rewarded well; whoever did injury, him I punished well.” And we know what that meant: he could flay you alive and hang out your hide stuffed with straw, or cut off your nose and ears and put out one eye, keep you bound at the palace entrance, then impale you. Must we believe the despot? Were his enemies the ‘Lie followers’, the practisers of deceit? He begins by stressing his ancestry, going back to Achaemenes, founder of the dynasty, five generations earlier. “From long ago our family have been kings”—yes, but another branch of the family, the line of Cyrus. He claims to be ninth in succession—but never names his predecessors as kings. His own father, Hystaspes, was still alive, a mere provincial governor. It is, however, the unanswered questions which give gravest reasons for disquiet. Most importantly, if Darius was the legitimate king, why were there eight revolts over the most important parts of the empire? How was it possible that so many of them were not only ‘rebels’ but also imposters?

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In all the welter of dates, why none for Cambyses’ death? Did Cambyses really kill his brother? Who was the Smerdis who succeeded him: the true son of Cyrus? How could an imposter have remained undetected for more than half a year? (Herodotos understood the problem!) Did Darius lie? If not, why does he protest so vehemently that he told the truth (four times: , , , ). Why did he take so much trouble to distribute his account on tablets and parchment throughout the empire ()? In fact, we know that he did lie, because from the death of Smerdis in September , when he became king, until the defeat of the last rebel in Babylon in November , counting the intercalary month, was  months.19 What an irony that moderns have argued so fiercely trying to save Darius by omitting events at the beginning or end of his series of rebels!20

Bonaparte and the battle masterminded in retrospect In a series of successes in N. Italy in  against the Austrians and Piedmontese, Bonaparte established the Cisalpine Republic; other generals overran Rome and Naples in . By  all that was unravelling, and Italy had to be reconquered in . The way to it was opened by the battle of Marengo,  June. It was all another example of meticulous planning, mastery of strategy and tactics, combined with very self-conscious dramatics: another crossing of the ice-bound Alps after reading Livy’s account in the monastery of St Bernard. The French advanced towards Alessandria in Piedmont, and Bonaparte assumed that the Austrians were at Genova and sent out detachments to find them. To the contrary, they were right in front of him at Alessandria, whence they marched out on  June, divided into two columns. The southern one, under Melas, pushed back Victor, in the face of fierce resistance. To the north, Otto fought Lannes, where the French were also forced back; Monnier’s reserves were useless. A desperate recall was sent to Desaix, on his way to Genova. His return allowed the French

19 For a useful chronological table, Kuhrt  .–. Little did Darius know that he was following an old Mesopotamian tradition: Naram-Sin of Agade (c. –) declared that he was victorious in nine campaigns in one year. “I swear before Ishtar and Enlil that this is true and no lies.” Foster  , . 20 See Olmstead  –; Cook  –; Briant  –; Kuhrt  .–.

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to regroup and attack again. Desaix fell in the van. Kellermann’s cavalry were decisive. Bonaparte had been caught completely unprepared, and Desaix saved the day, at the cost of his life. What is most significant is that we have no French sources from – June, save an official Bulletin. The French are said to have retreated four times and regained lost ground as often. When the battle ‘appeared lost’, the Austrians were ‘allowed’ to advance to S. Giuliano, where Desaix was ‘waiting’. Even so, it was not his presence but that of Bonaparte which inspired the victorious charge. Perhaps the most eminent historian of these events, James Matthew Thompson, stated that “the Marengo campaign has been so overlaid with legends that the historian is almost afraid to credit Bonaparte with his most fortunate victory.”21 The myths which Thompson listed include the story of Bonaparte’s sticking a pin into a map three months earlier to show where he would defeat the Austrians; that he crossed the Alps on a prancing steed rather than on a mule, and nearly fell to his death—but David bears the main responsibility there; that the army tip-toed past him while he slept on the roadside at Albaredo; and that he had the slightest concern for Massena, who was besieged by the Austrians in Genova. Bonaparte’s main concern in invading Italy had been purportedly to rescue Massena, but after  May nothing more is heard of that. He established a base at Milan for three weeks, and Massena was to be left to his fate. He surrendered on  June and Bonaparte lied to the French government that he was marching to help. On  May he had claimed that it would all be over with the retreating Austrians in ten days. He was sure that Melas would not attempt to cross the Bormida river, but that is exactly what he did do, catching Bonaparte with his troops scattered. The uncovering of all this deceit was a masterpiece of historical investigation. Count Jean Cugnac reconstructed the missing documentation of the battle in –, two fat volumes of  pages, and then reconstructed the battle in : La campagne de Marengo.22 In short, Bonaparte rewrote the history of Marengo to steal the credit of the victory from Desaix and Kellermann. “He would take every opportunity, even at the expense of truth and generosity, to build up the legend 21

Thompson  . Jean Gaspard Marie Bene, comte de Cugnac (–), commander of the th or th Division (infantry) in the First World War, then General in the Reserve. The author is clearly no admirer of Bonaparte, but his historical work is impeccable. 22

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of his invincibility and human kindness. So do most dictators.”23 This was the man who would go on to betray the revolution, crowning himself emperor, and bringing a further fifteen years of war to the whole of western Europe, leading hundreds of thousands of men to their deaths in Russia, from which he, of course, escaped, and after a further series of disasters being forced to abdicate, only to attempt to resume power so that his final overthrow cost a further European war.

The Katyn massacre In April and May  the Soviet Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) ordered the massacre of nearly , Polish officers and policemen taken from three POW camps and more than , others taken from prisons in Belarus and the Ukraine. The , from one of the camps were buried in the Katyn Forest outside Smolensk, from which the victims are all named, and where their bodies were found by the Germans in April . The motive was simple: Stalin wanted to destroy Poland’s elite, in preparation for a subsequent occupation. The Polish army under Soviet domination, when the Communists took over in , was in fact commanded by Soviet officers. The Soviets claimed that German guilt for the massacres was recognised at the Nuremberg trials. Martini, the anti-Nazi prosecutor in Krakow, refused to set up a show trial, and was murdered in . The Poles, however, became increasingly convinced that the Soviets and not the Germans had been responsible. And so a fundamental tension emerged. The Soviet-backed Polish government put their masters ahead of their nationalism, and saw the reopening of the question as a challenge to their authority. The Polish leader Wladyslaw Gromulka went so far as to declare in  that Poland must remain silent on this matter.

23 Thompson  . The classic Chandler  – noted that Bonaparte was badly misled by bogus intelligence, although there was ‘continuous commotion’ in Alessandria the night before. Even after the Austrian attack began, he still believed that it was only a cover for their retreat (!) and further weakened the Reserve by sending off Lapoype to Valenza. So Connelly  . Esdaile   stated that ‘the campaign was badly bungled by Napoleon’s standards.’ Haythornthwaite   admitted that Bonaparte rewrote the story. The most recent detailed account, Hollins  , makes the extraordinary assertion, quoting nothing earlier than , that “little has been written about the battle of Marengo”.

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Great stimulus was given to its reopening, in fact, by a proposal in London in  to set up a monument to the Katyn victims. The Soviets protested loudly, and the Foreign Office feared loss of trade—but the monument was unveiled in Gunnersbury cemetery in . Pressure meanwhile built up in Poland for answers in the s. In  the Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnaze proposed to Gorbachov that he admit the truth. Historians were, in fact, allowed finally to enter the archives, and began uncovering documents. TASS in April  admitted Soviet responsibility and Mikhail Gorbachov handed over some documents to the Polish PM Jaruzelski. Exhumations began. Boris Yeltsin opened the archives in  and gave the documents to Lech Walesa in October . The truth had finally been fully revealed, more than half a century after the crimes. Three volumes of documents were published in Warsaw in ,  and , and there were supposed to be three corresponding volumes published in Moscow—but only one appeared. The archives closed down again. Yeltsin’s position collapsed, and democratization was stifled. And the last great deceit was conjured up: prosecution of those responsible was ruled out, to be replaced by commemoration of the victims. And what next? Historians can guess. Russians began denying the conclusive evidence about the perpetrators and their motives, even claiming that the documents were forgeries. The deniers had arrived again. This is one of the most perfect examples of the oscillating path of deceit, following the trajectory of despotism.24

Fascist rhetoric and reality There were few despotic regimes as reckless with words as Mussolini’s Italy. The more histrionic the rhetoric of the strutting mountebank, the greater the chasm from reality, the greater the deceit (one may contrast Nazi bestiality with Italian fascism’s infantility). No one has put this into words more perfectly than one of Australia’s best historians: 24 There is now a splendid account for the non-Slavic specialist: Sanford . One may look back, for example, on Coates  –, who accepted Nazi guilt and blamed the Polish government in exile in  for daring to doubt it, quoting Stalin’s assurances of ‘good neighbourliness’ with Poland after the war. They also quoted the Soviet investigation of  finding papers dated  on the bodies! The Times  April  ridiculed Nazi innocence. In his famous account Davies  . stated that ‘Stalin was outpacing Hitler in his desire to reduce the Poles to the condition of a

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ron ridley Despite the boasted revolution, the fact was that every one of the great slogans of Fascism had turned out to be false. Mussolini, anything but the greatest statesman of the twentieth century, had not proved himself to be always right. His people had not marched straight ahead. The plough had not been the guarantor of the nation’s economic future or the sword the weapon of modern choice, and in any event battle mostly brought death and dishonour, not gain. The world was not destined to belong to the Fascists. Life was scarcely sustained merely by book and rifle. Given the enduring power of the structures of life, it was absurd and impossible to contemplate living one day as a lion. Italians, both under the dictatorship and after, were more suspicious than believing. They were by no means automatically obedient to the rules either of their social betters or their party chiefs. If doubtless able to kill, they were never fighters and merely that. Plainly, the best formula for happy times was not ‘win, win, win’. Every message had to be decoded, rearranged and denied . . . For all their blatant ferocity, Fascist words were regularly open to negotiation and amendment in their meaning. Moreover, words apart, Fascism did not proffer a sunlit third way to its people but instead visited upon them the Second World War, humiliation in Greece, the casual loss of the Liberal and Fascist overseas empires, mass murder in Slovenia and other Balkan territories, the withering away of the nation on  September  and the death toll of the [Salò Republic], German and Allied occupation and a kind of civil war which was prolonged for some months after Mussolini’s death. It was an appalling record but one that was as meretricious as it was vile.25

The classical world can show many examples of the close connections between despotism and deceit, but in the fourteenth century, in Pharaonic Egypt, a king had dared to promote one god above, and at the expense of, all other deities. He was followed by the ephemeral rule of a boy king and then an old man, until finally an unrelated army general took power to reestablish law and order—an order which had not broken down, except that groups long used to power and wealth had lost their primacy. Every trace of the heretic king was to be expunged, and preceding history rewritten. The kings of Assyria in the eighth and seventh centuries boasted of their brutal power and absolute control over a mighty empire. That was, however, not enough: they had to claim also perpetual victory and in that cause again history was rewritten. The kings of Persia similarly made no secret of their absolute power. When slave nation incapable of ruling itself.’ Lukowski and Zawadski   compliment Gorbachov for his statesman-like admission of guilt. The most devastating parallel, however, is offered by Halecki  : the Soviet incitement of the Polish Resistance to rise in July , whereupon the Soviet army watched impassively from across the Vistula. 25 Bosworth  –.

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Cambyses died in controversial circumstances, Darius, from a distant branch of the family excluded from power, appeared to take control, only to be almost universally opposed. More than a year’s civil war ensued. No wonder he felt the need for an extensive apologia, wherein all the important questions are unanswered, while he is at pains to stress his honesty. In more modern times, Bonaparte’s crucial battle in his early career was another ‘close run thing’. As a harbinger of his later despotic position as self-crowned emperor and inflicter of a generation of war on all of Europe, the infallible leader had to be the mastermind ensuring inevitable victory, but that again required a flagrant rewriting of history. The massacre of more than twenty thousand potential Polish leaders in  was uncovered in , and became a battleground of blame between two despotisms: the Germans and the Soviets. With increasing democratization, the latter finally admitted responsibility in , but then in concert with a return to authoritarianism, resorted again to denial. Mussolini’s Italy, finally, perhaps better than any other regime, demonstrates the integral interdependence of despotism and deceit. As brutality increased, with all opposition beaten to death or driven into exile, so did the empty rhetoric, which finally stood truth exactly on its head. The conclusion to be drawn is clear. Despotic regimes take control politically, socially, economically, militarily, and finally see no reason for artificial frontiers. If all the other parts of society are in the hands of one person or a party, why not history as well? What the despot never understands, however, is that historians have a vital interest in uncovering the truth, however long it takes.

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INDEX Achaia,  Aesop, Aesopic tradition, –, , , –, –,  Agathocles, , , –, – Agrippina (the Younger), , – , , , –, , , – Akhenaten, – Alcibiades, ,  Alexander III of Macedon, , – , –, , –, ,  Antonina, , – Mark Antony (M. Antonius triumvir), , –, –, , , , –, , , –, , ,  Apollo (also Phoebus), , , – , –, –, , , – , –,  Apotheosis (deification), , , –,  Appian, , , , , , , , –, , , –, , , –, – Architecture, , –, ,  Aristophanes, , , ,  Aristotle, –, , , –, ,  Arrian, –, –,  Athens, –, , –, , , –, , , , , , , ,  Auctoritas, , ,  and n., , ,  Augustus (see also Octavian), , –, –, , , , , , –, –, , , –, –, –, –, –, –, , , , , , –, , –, , , , , , , , ,  Autochthony, –

Barbarian, Barbarians, –, – , –,  Belisarius, , , – Britannicus, , ,  Brutus (see Iunius), Caligula, , –, , , –, , –, , , –, –, , , –  M. Calpurnius Bibulus (cos. ), ,  Campania, Campanians, , –, , ,  Caracalla, –, , , ,  Carthage, Carthaginians (see also Punic), –, –, , ,  Cato (Cato Uticensis, the Younger), , –, , –, –  Cicero, , , , , –, –, , , –, –, , –, –, –, , , –, , , –, , , ,  City (also polis), , , , , , , , ,  Claudius (imp.), , , , , , , –, ,  Cleon, ,  Cleopatra, , –, , –  P. Clodius Pulcher, –, , – , ,  Coins, coinage, , , , , , , –, –, – , , –,  Colonies, –, , –, , , 



index

Comitia, , , , , , ,  Constantine, , – Constantinople (also Byzantium), , , –, , –, –, – Consular office (elections, abnormal appointments), , , , – , , –, –, – , , , , –, , , , –,  Consular powers (judicial, legislative, military), –, , , , , , –, , , ,  Contio, , –, –,  Corinth, Corinthians, , , , , – P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus, , –,  P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, , –,  Cumae, –,  Curatio annonae, , , , , , , –,  Darius I, , –, , –,  Darius III,  Delian League,  Delphi, , , , –, –, , , , – Demetrius of Phaleron, ,  Demosthenes, –,  Dictatorship, , , , –, , , –, –, , ; (modern) , ,  Dio Cassius, , , –, – , –, –, , , –, , , –, – , , , , –, – , –, ,  Diodorus, –, , –, ,  Dissimulation, –, , – , –, –, –, , , –, , , , , , –

Domination (political), , , , –, , –, , , –, , –,  Domitia Longina, –, , –, – Domitian (also Germanicus), , , –, –, , , , , –, , ,  Earthquakes, , , – Economy with the truth, – Effeminacy, , , ,  Elagabalus, –, –,  Ephialtes,  Eumenes, – Eutropius, , ,  Fregellae, , , – M. Fulvius Flaccus, , – Gabinian law, –, – A. Gabinius (trib. pleb, ), , – , , – Galba, , , , , ,  Gelon, , – Genre, , , , –, , , ,  C. Gracchus, , , , – Ti. Gracchus, –, , ,  Hadrian, , , –, –, , , –,  Hannibal, , , – Harmodius and Aristogiton, –,  Heresy,  Herodian, –,  Herodotus, –, , , –, , ,  Hieron I, –,  Hieron II, , –,  Hieronymus of Cardia,  Himera, –,  Historia Augusta, –, , –

index Historiography, , –, , –, , , , –,  Horace, , , , –, ,  Imperial household (domus), , , , , – Imperium, –, , , , –, , , , , , , , , ,  Infection, , , –, ,  Inscriptions, epigraphy, –, , –, , , , , , –, , –, , –  Interregnum (see also consular elections), , , –,  Intertextuality, , – Isonomia, – Dec. Iunius Brutus,  L. Iunius Brutus cos., , , , – M. Iunius Brutus pr., , , –  Julia (daughter of Augustus),  Julia (daughter of Titus), , – ,  Julian (Flavius Iulianus imp.), – , , –,  Julius Caesar (C. Iulius Caesar dict.), , –, , –, –, –, , , –, , –, –, , , –, , , , –, , , , , ,  Justinian, – Juvenal, , , ,  Katyn forest, – Late Antiquity, , , , , 



Lepidus (M. Aemilius Lepidus triumvir), , , , , , –,  Liberation, , , , , –, –, , , , ,  Livia, , , , –, ,  M. Livius Drusus (the Younger), – , – Livy, , , –, , , – , , –, –, – , ,  Lucan, –, –, ,  Q. Lutatius Catulus (cos. ), – ,  Luxury, –, –, , , , , – Magic, –, –, , , –, – Mamertines, , – Manilius (trib. pleb. ),  C. Marius, , ,  Mimesis, – Monarchy, –, , –, , , , –, –, , , –, –, , –, , , , , , , – , , ,  Mussolini, – Napoleon Bonaparte, –,  Nero, , –, –, – , , , –, , –, –, , –, –, –, , , ,  Octavian (see also Augustus), –, , –, , –, – , –, –, –, –, , –,  Olympia, –, ,  Onomarchos, – L. Opimius, ,  Otho, , , –, –, 



index

Parmenion, – Peace, pacification, , , , , , –, –, –, , –, ,  Pericles, , –,  Phaedrus, –, –, – ,  Philip II of Macedon, –, ,  Philip V of Macedon, ,  Philomelos, – Phocia, Phocians, – Phoenicia, Phoenicians, –, , , , , –, ,  Pindar, , , , ,  Pisistratus, the Pisistratids, –, –, , ,  Plague, , – Plataea, , ,  Pliny (the Elder), , ,  Pliny (the Younger), , – Plotina, , –, – Plutarch, –, , , , –, , , , , , –, –, , , , –, , –, ,  Poison, , , –, , , ,  Polybius, –, , , , ,  Polytheism (or paganism), – Pompey (Cn. Pompeius Magnus), , , –, –, – , –, , –, , –, –,  Sex. Pompeius, –, , , –,  Poppaea Sabina, , – Q. Poppaedius Silo, – Princeps, , , , –,  and n., , , , , , ,  Procopius, – Propaganda, –, , , , – , , , , –, , , –, –,  Ptolemy I (Soter), – Ptolemy II (Philadelphus), –

Ptolemy XIII, , –, –  Pudicitia, , –, , , , ,  Punic,  and n., , ,  Pyrrhus, –, ,  Recusatio imperii, , –, –, , ,  Religion, , , , –, , , ,  Res Gestae Divi Augusti, –, , –, , –, – ,  Res publica, , , , , , , , , –, , –, , , ,  Romulus, , , , , – , , , – Rumour, , –, , , , , , –, , , , – , , ,  Sabina: see Poppaea, Vibia, Scipio: see Cornelius, Seduction, , , , , , –, , –, –, , ,  Seianus, – Seleucus I, – Seneca (L. Annaeus Seneca, the Younger), –, , , ,  Sexual transgression, , , , , , , –, – , –, –, –, , –, , –, ,  Sicily, , –, –, –, , ,  Silius Italicus, , – Silk, –,  Solon, , – Sporus, , –,  Stoics, Stoicism, , ,  Stuprum, , , –, , –, –

index Suetonius, , , , , – , –, , , , , , , –, –, – , –, –, –,  Sulla (L. Cornelius Sulla dict.), – , –, –, , – , , , –, , ,  Syracuse, –, , –, ,  Tacitus, , , –, , – , , , , , , , , –, , , , , – Tarquinius (Superbus), , , –  Sex. Tarquinius, – Theatre, public spectacles, , , –, , , , , –  Theodora, , , –,  Thermopylae, , , – Theseus, – Thucydides, , , –, , , ,  Tiberius, , , , , – , , , , –, – , , –, 



Timaeus, , , –,  Timoleon, , – Titus Vespasianus, –, , –,  Trajan, , –, –, , , , , ,  Trebonian law,  Tribunicia potestas, , – Triumvirate, second, , , , , , , –, –,  Tullus Hostilius, – Tyrants, tyranny, –, –, , , –, –, –, , – , , , –, , , , , , , , , , –, , , , , – , –, –, –, –, , , –, , ,  Valerius Maximus, , – Vespasian, , , , , , ,  Vibia Sabina, , –, – Victorinus, – Virgil, , , , , –, , – Vitellius, , , , , 

INDEX LOCORUM (Quoted passages only. Square brackets [ ] indicate works of doubtful authorship.) Aeschines (Aeschin.) .  Aeschylus (Aesch.) Suppliant Maidens   Ammianus Marcellinus (Amm.) Res Gestae ..  Aphthonius (Aphth.) Fabulae   Appian (App.) Bellum Civile (BC) .  .  .  .  .  .  n. .  .  .  . ,  . ,  . – n. .  n. .  .  Aristeas [Letter of Aristeas] –

Aristophanes (Ar.) Acharnians –  Knights –  –  Wasps     Aristotle (Arist.) [Constitution of the Athenians (Ath. Pol.)] .  .–  Politics (Pol.) .. [b]  .. [b]  .. [a]  a  Arrian (Arr.) Anabasis (An.) praef.  .. ..– ..

 n.  ;  n. 

Asconius (Asc.) Pro Cornelio (Corn.)   Athenaeus (Ath.) Deipnosophists . [a] 



index locorum

Aurelius Victor (Aur. Vict.) De Caesaribus (Caes.) .  n. [Epitome de Caesaribus (Ps. Aur. Vict. Epit.)] .  n. .  n. .  n. .  n. .  .  n. Bacchylides (B.) Epinician Odes .–  Bellum Africum (B. Afr.) .  n. Caesar (Caes.) Civil War/ Bellum ciuile (Civ.) ..  Gallic War (Gal.) .  n. Cicero (Cic.) Epistulae ad Atticum (Att.) ..  ..  n.;  .. – ..–  ..  n. ..  De Domo Sua (Dom.)  – n.     n. selections  Epistulae ad Familiares (Fam.) .. ,  .. – ..  ..  n. De haruspicum responsis (Har.) selections 

Pro Lege Manilia (Man.)   n.  , n.  , n.;  Pro Milone (Mil.)   selections  Pro Murena (Mur.)   n. Philippics (Phil.) .  .– – .  n. Epistulae ad Quintum fratrem (Q. fr.) ..  n. ..  n.;  .. , n.;  ..  n.;  n.; ;  ..  post Reditum ad Populum (Red. Pop.)   post Reditum in Senatu (Red. Sen.) selections  Republic (Rep.) . ,  .  .  .  Pro Sestio (Sest.) selections  Cicero, Quintus (Q.Cic.) Commentariolum petitionis (Pet.)       Corpus Juris Civilis Digest (Dig.) ..  n. ..  n. ..  Novels (Just. Nov.) . 

index locorum Curtius Rufus (Curt.) History of Alexander the Great ..  ..  Demosthenes (D.) .  Dio Cassius (D.C.) Roman History ..– – ..  n. ..  ..  ..  n. ..  n. ..  n. ..  n. ..–.  ..  ..  n. ..– – ..–  ..–  ..– – ..  ..  n. ..–  ..  ..–  n. ..  ..  n.;  n. ..  n. ..  n. ..  .. – ..–  ..  ..  n. ..  ..  ..  ..–  ..–  ..  .. 

Diodorus Siculus (D.S.) Bibliotheca historica ..  .–  .. ,  ..  ..  ..  ..  ..  ..  ..–  n. .  ..  ..  n. ..  n. ..  Dionysius of Halicarnassus (D.H.) Roman Antiquities ..  n. ..  ..  ..  Ennius (Enn.) fr.  (Skutsch)  n. Ephorus (Ephor.) FGrH  F   n. Eutropius (Eutr.) Breviarium ..  ..  .  ..  Florus (Flor.) Epitome of Roman History (Epit.) ..  n. .. 





index locorum

Herodian (Hdn.) History .. – ..–  Herodotus (Hdt.) Histories .  ..  . – ..  Historia Augusta (Hist. Aug.) Life of Hadrian (Hadr.) .,   .  .  n.,  n. .  .  Horace (Hor.) Odes (Carm.) ..  n. Satires (Sat.) ..  Isocrates (Isoc.) Epistles (Ep.) .–  n. Julian (Jul.) Caesares (Caes.) a b–d b a

  n. ,  

Justin (Iust.) Historiarum Philippicarum libri XLIV ..–  ..  ..  n. Juvenal (Juv.) Satires . 

. .– .

  n.  n.

Livy (Liv.) Ab Urbe Condita . praef.   n. ..–  ..–  ..  ..–  ..  .. , ,  ..– – ..  ..  ..  ..  ..  ..–  ..  ..,   ..  ..  n. ..  ..  n. ..–  ..  n. ..  n. ..  n. ..  Periochae (Perioch.)     n.   n.   n.   n. Lucan (Luc.) Bellum Ciuile .– .– . ., ,  . . .–

 –  n.     n.

index locorum .– .– .– . . .– . .–

 n.  n.  n.    n.  n.  n.,  n. .–  .  n. .– – .–  Schol. ad .  n. Lucian How to Write History  v Manutius Commentary on Cicero ad Fam. (Comm.)   n. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (M. Ant.) Meditations ..  n. .  n. .  Martial (Mart.) Epigrams ..  n. Ovid (Ov.) Ars Amatoria .  Fasti (Fast.) .– – .–  .  .–  ., – 



Persius (Pers.) Satires . , ,  Phaedrus (Phaed.) Fabulae  prol. – . – .   prol. –   prol. –  ..   epil. –  Pindar (Pi.) Pythian Odes (P.) .–  Schol. ad .b  n. Schol. ad . – Schol. ad .  n. Plato (Pl.) Epistles (Ep.) [.a] .d

  n.

Pliny the Elder (Plin.) Natural History (Nat.) ..  ..  n. Pliny the Younger (Plin.) Panegyricus (Pan.) .  .  .  .  .  Plutarch (Plu.) Life of Caesar (Caes.) .  .  n. .  n. .  n.



index locorum

Plutarch (Plu.) (cont.) Life of Numa (Num.) .–  n. Life of Pericles (Per.) .  Life of Pompeius (Pomp.) .  n. .  .  .  n. .–  .  n. . ;  n. .  .  .– – n. Life of Pyrrhus (Pyrrh.) –  Life of Romulus (Rom.) .–  Life of Timoleon (Tim.) .  .  .  .  .  Polyaenus (Polyaen.) Strategemata ..  n. .  Polybius (Plb.) Histories ..  .b.  n. ..  Procopius (Procop.) Buildings (Aed.) ..  ..–  n. ..  Secret History (Arc.) .  .  . 

.  .  .–  .  . – History of the Wars (Bell.) ..–  ..  ..–..  n. ..  ..  Quintilian (Quint.) Institutio Oratoria (Inst.) ..–  n. Seneca the Younger (Sen.) De beneficiis (Ben.) ..– – Consolatio ad Polybium (Dial. ) ..  Sidonius Apollinaris (Sidon.) Epistulae ..  ..  n. Silius Italicus (Sil.) Punica .  n. .–  n. .–  n. .  .– – .–  .  .–  n. . – .  n. .–  .  .– – .  n. Solon fr.  W

, 

index locorum fr.  W fr.  W fr.  W

  

Statius Siluae ..–

v

Suda s.v. Prokopios Π  – Suetonius (Suet.) Life of the Deified Augustus (Aug.) .  n.;  n.   n.   n. .  n.,  .  .  . ,  . ,  Life of Gaius/Caligula (Cal.) .  n. .  .  n. .  .  n. .  .  Life of the Deified Claudius (Cl.) .  . – . – .  .  n. .  .    .  Life of Domitian (Dom.) .  .  .  .   



Life of Galba (Gal.) .  .    Life of the Deified Julius Caesar (Jul.) . –;  n. .  .    n. Life of Nero (Ner.) .  .  .  n. .  .  .  .  . – n. .  n.,      n. Life of Otho . – Life of Tiberius (Tib.) .  n. .  n. .  .  .  .    .  Life of the Deified Titus (Tit.) .  Life of the Deified Vespasian (Ves.)       Life of Vitellius (Vit.) .  .    Synesius Calvitii encomium –  n.

 Tacitus (Tac.) Annals (Ann.) .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . . .. .. .. Dialogus (Dial.)  Histories (Hist.) .. ..

index locorum

–  –   ,  n.   n.   n.      n.  –  – n.

Theocritus (Theoc.) Idylls .–  Thucydides (Thuc.) Peloponnesian War ..  ..  ..,  – ..–  .  ..  ..  ..  Valerius Maximus (V. Max.) Memorabilia .. praef.  ..  .. 

Velleius Paterculus (Vell.) Histories ..  ..  n. ..  n. ..  n. ..–  n. ..  n. Virgil (Verg.) Aeneid (A.) . . . .– .– . .– . . .– . . Eclogues (E.) . Georgics (G.) . .

 n.  n.  n.  n.  n.  n.,  n.  n.  n.  n.   n.  n.  n.  

Xenophon (Xen.) [Old Oligarch—(Ath.Pol)] .  .  Hellenica (Hell.) ..  Symposium .  Zosimus (Zos.) Historia Nova ..  ..  n. Inscriptions Bisitun/Behistun –, –

index locorum Darius Nakshi Rustum b (DNb) § b  n. § a–b  n. Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, ed. Dessau (ILS)     n.      ,    n.    ,  Res Gestae Divi Augusti (R.Gest. div.Aug.) .–. 

 . . .,    . . . .– .



   n.  n.     n.  –  n., ,  Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum, rd ed (Syll3.) a –