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Countercultural responses to the crisis of masculinity in late republican Rome

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Countercultural responses to the crisis of masculinity in late republican Rome

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Content COUNTERCULTURAL RESPONSES TO THE CRISIS OF MASCULINITY IN LATE REPUBLICAN ROME by E. Del Chrol A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (CLASSICS) August 2006 Copyright 2006 E. Del Chrol UMI Number: 3237762 3237762 2007 Copyright 2006 by Chrol, E. Del UMI Microform Copyright All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346 All rights reserved. by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. ii DEDICATION To my parents who taught me how to live and to Jenna who ensures I do it well iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Through a series of happy accidents I wound up in the perfect place at the perfect time for my training. USC Classics in the early 2000s has been a model environment: the cooperative and collegial tone among the graduate students, and the creativity and rigor of the faculty have contributed to an overall sense of belonging to a community of cutting-edge scholars embedded in a deeply-rooted traditional-discipline. It is to the fiery seminars, informal interactions in doorways and receptions, discussions after lectures, and many late night conversations I owe much of the shape of this work. There are other tangible debts I must acknowledge. First and foremost, I am indebted to my advisor, Thomas Habinek. Substantial portions of the third and fourth chapters arose from seminar papers inspired by or written for him. More importantly, he always afforded me the latitude to pursue a project of which some were initially skeptical, as well as calling me back when I flew too close to the sun. Next, Amy Richlin has always been an inspiration of clarity and precision, impressing upon me the importance of my work and the importance of what we do to academia and the outside world. Leo Braudy’s staggering array of scholarly interests, as iv well as his poise as a public intellectual, has encouraged me to broaden my perception of horizons open to a professor. Beyond my committee, a few others have had direct influence on my work. Clifford Ando turned me on to law, Bryan Burns on to recent masculinity theory; Claudia Moatti encouraged me to look at inscriptions, and Kevin van Bladel to astrological texts; Laurel Fulkerson was essential to my understanding of Ovid. Finally, P. Sidney Horky is the best friend a scholar could have: he always takes me seriously yet never loses his doubt. Ultimately, the praise for this manuscript belongs to many, the censure to me alone. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication ii Acknowledgements iii Abstract vi Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Chapter 2: Fighting With the Dead: The Legacy of the 48 Middle Republic Chapter 3: The Hegemon and the Philosopher 89 Chapter 4: Waiving Their Manhood: Lewdic Elegy 139 Chapter 5: Conclusion: Experts and the Occult 191 Bibliography 228 vi ABSTRACT Countercultural Responses to the Crisis of Masculinity in Late Republican Rome, is a cultural history of elite men who envisioned and attempted to implement alternatives to the hegemonic system of gender performance. These alternatives coalesced into distinct countercultures, ones that engaged in a dialectical relation with the dominant ideal and produced the sweeping transformations in masculinity of the Principate. Ultimately, this dissertation complements current readings of the fall of the Roman republic by demonstrating that there was a greater breadth of acceptable masculine practices in the last century BCE than heretofore thought. Chapter One introduces the concepts of performative gender and countercultures, and through them reads the fall of the Republic. Chapter Two adduces literary, epigraphic and architectural evidence from the 3 rd and 2 nd century BCE to establish the middle republican masculine ideal. Chapters Three addresses the creation of the philosophical counterculture and how it presents itself as more masculine than traditional masculine practices. Chapter Four treats the creation of the elegiac counterculture and how its inverted masculinity reveals anxieties present in hegemonic masculine practice and attempts to coexist with the hegemonic script. vii Chapter Five analyzes the rise in various classes of experts in the final century BCE and how they strive for acceptance as acceptable masculine practice. 1 I. INTRODUCTION Heu, heu, quotidie peius! - Satyricon 44 Ganymedes’ words, spoken at Trimalchio’s banquet, echo one of the commonplaces of Western literature, that contemporary society is inferior to the societies of the past. 1 This trope is called in the rhetorical handbooks the locus de saeculo, or “commonplace about the generations.” 2 What rhetorical scholars have heretofore failed to recognize is that the locus is longer lived than oratory, and one particular subsection of it, the connection between failed masculinity and the degradation of society, is present from our earliest Western texts. Consider Nestor’s claim for authority as he tries to settle the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon at the outset of the Iliad: a)lla\ pi/qesq': a)/mfw de\ newte/rw e)sto\n e)mei=o: h)/dh ga/r pot' e)gw\ kai\ a)rei/osin h)e/ per u(mi=n a)ndra/sin w(mi/lhsa, kai\ ou)/ pote m' oi(/ g' a)qe/rizon. ou) ga/r pw toi/ouj i)/don a)ne/raj ou)de\ i)/dwmai, 1 Or to misquote Charles Dietrich, founder of the addiction recovery community, Synanon, “today is the worst day of the rest of your life.” 2 Sen. Contr. 1.Praef.23 2 oi(=on Peiri/qoo/n te Dru/anta/ te poime/na law=n Kaine/a t' )Eca/dio/n te kai\ a)nti/qeon Polu/fhmon Qhse/a t' Ai)gei/+dhn, e)piei/kelon a)qana/toisin: ka/rtistoi dh\ kei=noi e)pixqoni/wn tra/fen a)ndrw=n: ka/rtistoi me\n e)/san kai\ karti/stoij e)ma/xonto fhrsi\n o)reskw/?oisi kai\ e)kpa/glwj a)po/lessan. kai\ me\n toi=sin e)gw\ meqomi/leon e)k Pu/lou e)lqw\n thlo/qen e)c a)pi/hj gai/hj: kale/santo ga\r au)toi/: kai\ maxo/mhn kat' e)/m' au)to\n e)gw/: kei/noisi d' a)\n ou)/ tij tw=n oi(\ nu=n brotoi/ ei)sin e)pixqo/nioi maxe/oito: kai\ me/n meu boule/wn cu/nien pei/qonto/ te mu/qw?: a)lla\ pi/qesqe kai\ u)/mmej, e)pei\ pei/qesqai a)/meinon: Now listen, since both of you are younger than me: indeed, once I ran with men more martial than you and they never disregarded me. I have and never will again see men of this kind, like Perithoos and the leader of the host Dryas and Kaineus, and Exadios, and godlike Polyphemos and Aigeus’s boy Theseus, who resembled the deathless ones; strongest of men did these grow upon the earth; and as the strongest they fought with the strongest beasts of the mountains and destroyed them utterly. I was friends with them, coming from Pylos far off at the end of the earth, and they themselves summoned me; and I fought on my own; and yet none of those mortals now upon the earth could fight with them; and surely did they meet with my advice and keep my counsel; and now obey, even you, since it is better to obey. 3 Nestor’s concern about the state of manhood is a concern about the state of society, and his attempt to patch the rift between Achilles and 3 Iliad 1.260-73. Unless otherwise noted all translations are my own. 3 Agamemnon over Briseis relies upon a value system of martial virtue, good counsel, glory, homosociality, and shared effort. Because of his fellowship with men who better exhibited these virtues, Nestor stakes the claim that his currently wilted manhood is nonetheless superior to that of his more robust comrades and therefore gives his opinion greater weight. An Iron Age audience hearing a bard reaching into the heroic past to ventriloquize Nestor, who himself was reaching further back in order to criticize the heroes around him, might draw three conclusions. First, there were shared values among men descending from legendary history to the current day; second, there was an equivalence of the values of elite manhood with the values of society, with the relations between men as a barometer of the health of society; and third that, if men were already enfeebled by the time of the heroic past, the state of manhood in Geometric Greece must be ghastly. In other words, manhood is eternal and essential, yet imperiled and degraded. It is not only Archaic Greeks who wistfully looked at the men of the past while despairing for their own age. From Classical Athens to Rome, throughout the West into today, 4 we hear about the terrible state of 4 For current expressions of despair, consider the sentiment expressed by graduates of West Point from the 1990s regarding the classes in the 2000s, as summed up in the phrase “Corps has [gone to hell].” Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky, in his striking 2003 study of the school, Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point, notes this phrase has been in use for 4 masculinity, 5 its increasing debasement, and the consequent damage to society. But though often the terms used to describe the degradation sound remarkably like those of the Biblical Fall, 6 there is little agreement on what has caused such a fall. 7 Perhaps contemporary manhood is indeed reflective of a continuous slip from a pre-Homeric height (despite the testimony of Olympic records or the efficiency of our armed forces). It is more plausible that the motif of eternal yet imperiled masculinity is used as a rallying cry, a method for an author or group to define a community following an unarticulated ideology by an appeal to essentializing values. upwards of thirty years. For a rather comprehensive recent study of the transformations of masculinity see Braudy 2003. For a contrary opinion, namely that the state of manhood is eternal and perfectly fine, see Newell 2001. Newell believes that there is an “unbroken pedigree in the West in the conception of what it means to be a man” and has produced his epitome to “inspire honor, heroism, and integrity.” I find it telling that Amazon.com gives a discount if Newell is bought with Podles 1999: The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity. 5 My working definition of “masculinity” is the body of characteristics, morals, habits and attitudes that exhibit to a community an individual’s consonance with the values and expected roles of men in that community. I will treat more fully detail the performativity of gender later in this chapter. 6 This is true at least in contemporary America. See Prothero 2003 or Kimmel 1996. 7 For a particularly vivid, broad and stochastic series of reasons detailing the connected crises of manhood and society in America in general and the African-American community in particular, see the hundreds of pages, graphs, and graphics on blacktown.net “The website black women love to hate.” I, who consider myself a feminist theorist, was particularly moved by the section proving how feminists are lesbian witches. Despite the varied reasons for the fall given, the solution is simple: “…to claim, tame, train, and dominate the blackwoman to make her his queen once again!!” 5 In order to illustrate these two ideologies, first of the equivalence of men to society, and second of the mystification of changing masculinity by defining it as stasis, I turn to the elder Cato and the elder Seneca. Both are elite Roman men who reflect and reflect upon the state of masculinity in their eras. The elder Cato (234-149 BCE) is iconic for traditional republican virtue, so much so that a particular style of censorious austerity (using one’s own continence as a scourge for others) was named for him. This native of Tuscany distinguished himself in the cursus honorum, in battle, and in his extreme conservatism and cultural chauvinism. Allegedly without formal rhetorical training, he spoke sparsely and with an untrained tongue. Despite having a slave of considerable educational talent, Cato chose to educate his son himself. His reported reason was to maintain the hierarchy of the home and the boy’s status as a freeborn man. “He did not think that his son, as he himself says, should be rebuked at the hands of a slave, or to have a yanking of his ears when learning too slowly, nor to owe gratitude (xa/rin o)felei=\n) to a slave for finishing his education.” 8 As many teaching slaves were Greek, 8 Plut. Cat.Mai. 20.3. Plutarch wrote 250 years after the death of Cato. Because of the distance between the two authors, and that these were the stories told about Cato, it demonstrates how essential the censorial personality was to his memory. 6 the rejection of using a slave to teach his children may provide further evidence of Cato’s xenophobia. Also, Cato was wed to the soil, claiming farming was the best way of making money and men: Est interdum praestare mercaturis rem quaerere, nisi tam periculosum sit, et item foenerari, si tam honestum. Maiores nostri sic habuerunt et ita in legibus posiverunt: furem dupli condemnari, foeneratorem quadrupli. Quanto peiorem civem existimarint foeneratorem quam furem, hinc licet existimare. Et virum bonum quom laudabant, ita laudabant: bonum agricolam bonumque colonum; amplissime laudari existimabatur qui ita laudabatur. Mercatorem autem strenuum studiosumque rei quaerendae existimo, verum, ut supra dixi, periculosum et calamitosum. At ex agricolis et viri fortissimi et milites strenuissimi gignuntur, maximeque pius quaestus stabilissimusque consequitur minimeque invidiosus, minimeque male cogitantes sunt qui in eo studio occupati sunt. From time to time it is beneficial to make living by trade, if it were not so dangerous, and likewise by usury, were it honest. Our ancestors believed it so, and so codified it in the laws: that a thief be fined double but a usurer quadruple. How much worse a citizen they believed a usurer than a thief one can glean from this. And when they used to praise a good man, they praised him thus: he was a good farmer and a good cultivator; they considered him praised best who was praised thus. I deem the merchant, though, vigorous and diligent in seeking out business, but, as I said above, too much of a risk taker and prone to disaster. But both the bravest men and most vigorous soldiers come from farmers, and the most godly profit comes from farming, also the most stable and least drawing the evil eye, and those who think least evilly are those who are busied in this pursuit. 9 9 Cato de Agri Cultura Pr. = Ernout 125. Compare Cicero quoting Cato at de Officiis 2.25: Ex quo genere comparationis illud est Catonis senis: a quo cum quaereretur, quid maxime in re familiari expediret, respondit: "Bene pascere"; quid secundum: "Satis bene pascere"; quid tertium: "Male 7 In this passage Cato valorizes male reproduction, strength, and martial valor, along with steady, sanctified, yet socially minded gains (pius…minime invidiosus). By invoking the maiores, he ties his authority to ancestor worship; by antithesis, he undercuts the virtues of vigor and diligence (autem…verum), and even abrogates them for the farmer (mercatorem…strenuosum but ex agricolis…milites strenuissimi gignuntur). He prefers his native Italic knowledge of cabbage poultices and rustic magic, to foreign medicine (possibly killing off his wife and children in the process). 10 A strict cultural chauvinist, when in Athens he delivered his oration to the Athenians in Latin, and though he may have kept a pet philosopher at home to train his children, he was an outspoken opponent of philosophers, objecting to the Athenian embassy of Carneades, Critolaos, and Diogenes. Foreigners and foreign ideas he deemed a corrupting influence in Rome. Women were not to be trusted, either, Cato preferred that boys lie to their pascere"; quid quartum "Arare"; et cum ille, qui quaesierat, dixisset: "Quid faenerari?", tum Cato: "Quid hominem," inquit, "occidere?" (From this kind of comparison [of necessities] is that one of the elder Cato: When asked by someone what is most profitable in the affairs of the household: “To graze cattle well”; what was next: “To graze cattle adequately”; what was third: “to graze cattle poorly”; what was fourth: “to till the earth”; and when the asker said, “What about money-lending?” then Cato said, “What about homicide?” 10 See Plut. Cat. Mai 22.3. For an example of rustic magical medicine see Cato de Agri Cultura 157-160. 8 mothers about the transactions in the Senate. 11 He despised conspicuous consumption, early in his career fighting vainly against the repeal of the lex Oppia, a sumptuary law, and late in his career supporting the lex Orchia and lex Voconia, the former imposing limits on convivia, the latter on women’s spending. For Cato it was the duty of the masculine (i.e. the rustic, sparing, conservative elites) to rein in the feminine and effeminate (the intemperate and untrustworthy classes such as women, slaves, the lower class, foreigners and children). Born in Spain during the death throes of the Republic, the elder Seneca (54 BCE-39 CE) witnessed and successfully navigated transformations of both state and masculinity. He thought himself a good conservative, in the same vein as the elder Cato. 12 Like Cato he was interested in agriculture, 13 and concerned about the feckless effeminacy of contemporary youth: Torpent ecce ingenia desidiosae iuventutis, nec in unius honestae rei labore vigilatur: somnus languorque ac somno et languore turpior malarum rerum industria invasit animos; cantandi saltandique obscena studia effeminatos tenent; [et] capillum frangere et ad 11 As exemplified in his citation of the story of Papirius Praetextatus, mentioned in Gell. 1.23.1-13. 12 Griffin 1972: 19. 13 Griffin 1972: 6. 9 muliebres blanditias extenuare vocem, mollitia corporis certare cum feminis et immundissimis se excolere munditiis nostrorum adulescentium specimen est. Look how the natural talents of the idle youth grow sluggish, not awaken again in the toil of a single honest task. Sleep and sloth and, worse than sleep and sloth, a diligence for bad things has attacked their minds; the filthy pursuit of singing and dancing keeps them effeminate; to cut their hair and strain their voice towards a womanly charm, to rival women in the softness of their body and to refine themselves with the foulest refinements is the token of our young. 14 We see here the same contrast between sleep and vigor as above, but a deeper concern about the impact of feminine behaviors upon the traditional masculine body, defined as shaggy, deep-voiced, wall-flowered and cleanly unrefined (note the contrast of immundissimis…munditiis). There were major differences between Seneca and Cato, though. Seneca wrote texts on declamation, whose depth of detail demonstrates a new conscientiousness about performance in speaking, and the almost mechanical sophistication of contemporary rhetorical theory. Though he had a successful farm, he made his money from money. He positioned his sons well, deciding each of their careers: the first pursued the traditional public cursus, the second went into imperial government, and the third followed his 14 Sen. Contr. 1.praef.8. 10 father’s decidedly un-Catonian advice to become a philosopher. For him there were no problems with wealth (his son famously said “it is the province of the weak mind not to be able to endure riches”), 15 mobility (he traveled frequently from Spain to Rome), and formal education (his sons studied in Greece and Egypt). Both Seneca and Cato considered themselves proponents of conservatism and strove to uphold traditional Roman values. But in the hundred years between the death of Cato and the birth of Seneca what qualified as traditional Roman values changed considerably. So, what happened? The first major factor was Rome’s achieving supremacy in the Mediterranean. Once Rome had finished destroying Carthage it became a victim of its own success, losing the metus hostilis, the fear of an enemy that keeps a man sharp. Take the sentiment of Q. Caecilius Metellus, consul of 206 and dictator of 205, relayed by Valerius Maximus (7.2.3), on his anxieties at the conclusion of the Second Punic War: Q. Metelli cum gravis tum etiam alta in senatu sententia, qui devicta Carthagine, nescire se, illa victoria bonine plus an mali rei publicae adtulisset adservavit, quoniam ut pacem restituendo profuisset, ita Hannibalem summovendo non nihil nocuisset: eius enim transitu in Italiam dormientem iam populi Romani virtutem excitatam, metuique debere ne acri aemulo liberata in eundem somnum revolveretur. 15 Sen. Ep 5.6. 11 The opinion of Q. Metellus in the senate was both stern and profound, he who asserted that, now that Carthage was conquered, he didn’t know whether the victory brought good or ill to the republic, seeing that as it had been useful restoring the peace, so it had done no small harm in driving off Hannibal: for by his crossing into Italy the then sleeping manliness of the Roman people was aroused, and concern was in order lest it tumble back into that same slumber now it has been freed from a bitter rival. Metellus here questions whether peace was worth the price of manhood, fearing lest the loss of Hannibal prompt the evanescence of Roman masculinity, again represented by the contrast between being asleep and being awake. There are some unusual implications in Metellus’s argument. Hannibal’s invasion of Italy was an intervention in the steady decline of masculinity, the war a temporary solution to that crisis. By stating that Hannibal’s invasion of Rome awoke the virtus of Rome, he likewise is stating that contemporary masculinity is superior to that of earlier generations. As we have seen, stating the present is superior to the past is odd in this ancestor worshipping society, though the fear of manhood slipping away is not. 16 16 Taking Valerius Maximus at face value is problematic, to be sure. It is entirely possible that he is having Q. Caecilius Metellus espouse ideas about the conclusion of the Second Punic war present regarding the debate over the fall of Carthage after the Third Punic War 12 Connected to the conquest of Carthage, (as well as Macedonia, Greece, Dalmatia, Syria and other places in the second century) came an influx of money, luxury goods, and foreign ideas, something later historians of antiquity blamed for causing the fall of the republic. 17 Scholars like Krostenko 18 see the increased wealth as renovating values, creating a new system of cultural value in “aestheticism,” on a par with “manliness” or “military value,” 19 where before the aesthetic was the province of the entertaining class. There is some merit to his argument, but I believe his work is too universal and bright-line, tracing change without adequately accounting for the contestation of the groups or accounting for the gendered components of this performative change. I see things somewhat differently. in Sallust and Polybius 36.9.1-17. If, however, he is retaining an element true to the tradition of Caecilius Metellus, it would demonstrate that the concept of metus hostilis and the traditional date for the fall of Roman morals was fifty years earlier, rather than 146 as Polybius claims. This is also against Mellor 1999: 40-1, where he states Sallust paints a unique portrait of of Metellus. On the other hand, should Valerius Maximus be making a rhetorical point about the state of degraded manhood, the distance of the era would etiolate Metellus’s implications of a temporarily secure state of men. 17 Boyd 1987: 189 n. 18 “It is generally if not universally agreed that there are two schools of thought, as typified by Sallust and Livy on the reasons for Rome's decline: while Sallust emphasizes the end of metus hostilis as the turning point, Livy emphasizes the erosion of moral character through luxuria… Clearly, however, these are not mutually exclusive views: see Fornara [1983] 86-8, who observes that ‘the precondition of each theory was the primary cause of the other.’” 18 Krostenko 2001. 19 Krostenko 2001: 31. 13 My approach rather treats the problem of wealth as one of integrating newness into traditional structures, and as a conflict between two types of elites. Some embraced the new lifestyle, but Roman traditionalists objected to it through public austerity, like the Porcii Catones, and through sumptuary legislation. In the same year that M. Claudius Marcellus dedicated his spoils to create the of Honor and Virtue (205 BCE), Cato gave a speech wondering why people would want to despoil sanctuaries of statuary and keep them at home: miror audere atque religionem non tenere, statuas deorum, exempla earum facierum, signa domi pro soppelectire statuere 20 (“I am amazed at their daring and their failure to do their religious observance, that they erect statues of the gods, models of their faces, as statues at home for worship”). This process is something Krostenko describes as the “privatization of civic aestheticism” (27). Romans now deemed it proper to put formerly public statuary in their homes. Cato may have fought against excess, such as when he supported the sumptuary laws Lex Orchia and Lex Voconia, or when he threw an equestrian out of his class because he was he 20 Serv. on Aen. 4.244 = Malcovati 98, q.v. for this line. This practice was of continuing concern. See Beagon 2005:7 on HN 36.101-25, Pliny’s reaction to the “imprisoning of art” in private spaces. 14 was too fat 21 , or tried to restrain the fees of the publicani, or shamed those who made their money through business (above), 22 but many elite males felt it their choice whether to reject traditional Roman simplicity, hybridize the cultures, or integrate the new into older structures. Take the work on sumptuary legislation. Moralists would not have had to fight to keep the laws in place were there not resistance to them. Fifty years after Cato’s death this fight over the proper display of wealth was still current. M. Duronius, Plebeian Tribune of 97 BCE, argued forcefully for the free spending of money as a Roman virtue, and for the freedom to conspicuously consume not to be restricted to the upper class (Val. Max. 2.9.5): freni sunt iniecti vobis, Quirites, nullo modo perpetiendi. alligati et constricti esti amaro vinculo servitutis: lex enim lata est, quae vos esse frugi iubet. abrogemus igitur istud horridae vetustatis rubigine obsitum imperium: etenim quid opus libertate, si volentibus luxu perire non licet? These bonds cast upon you, Citizens, in no way ought to be endured. You are bound up and tied down by the bitter bonds of slavery: a law has been passed which bids you to be modest. Let us therefore revoke this command, thick with the rust of 21 Or perhaps in the interest of animal rights: sedere non potest in equo trepidante “It is not possible to sit on a trembling horse” as quoted by Servius on Aeneid 4.121. 22 This was the public persona. For Cato’s turning to agriculture after a successful financial run (including loan-sharking to his own slaves), see Plut. Cat .Mai. 21.5-9. 15 bristly age: indeed what is the point of liberty, if the willing are not allowed to die of opulence? Using vocabulary drawn from mastery (freni…alligati…constricti…amaro vinculo servitutis vs. libertate), Duronius advocates for the new, dubbing the old laws thick with bristly rust (horridae vetustatis rubigine obsitum). Pleading for the universality of Roman rights, even the poor should be allowed to die richly. What’s the point in having wealth if you can’t use it? And what’s the danger with wealth anyway? Conservative elite men held liberal spending as the province of women, the lower class, and slaves, and believed that incontinence with money effeminizes men and destroys the fighting spirit. For example, at Livy 23.45.2-3, Marcellus exhorts his troops to attack Hannibal: since Hannibal wintered in Campania, where the troops were allowed to drink, carouse, and enjoy the good life, they would be soft and easily taken. 23 It was the aristocratic general’s duty to keep his troops from their natural impulses towards pillage, rapine, and sloth. To return to Cato, he tried to lead by example (though hailed as Imperator by his troops he still drank the 23 qui pugnent, marcere Campana luxuria, vino et scortis omnibusque lustris per totam hiemem confectos. Abisse illam vim vigoremque, dilapsa esse robora corporum animorumque quibus Pyrenai Alpiumque superata sint iuga. 16 same wine as his rowers), 24 by force, and by selective gifts (“If someone had striven strenuously, I used to reward him liberally, so that others would want to do likewise, I would praise him in the camp meetings with lots of speeches” si quis strenue fecerat, donabam honeste, ut alii idem vellent facere utque in contione verbis multis laudabam). 25 A more extreme example, and one which demonstrates elites using plebeian proclivities as a weapon in their rivalry, comes from 167 BCE. Servius Sulpicius Galba was able to engineer the denial of a triumph to his rival L. Aemilius Paulus by tampering with Paulus’s legions. According to Livy (45.35.7), they were upset because Paulus “held his soldiers by an antique discipline; more gave out booty more sparingly than they had hoped from such a huge amount of royal riches, since, had he indulged their greediness, there would be nothing left which could be brought to the treasury” (Antiqua disciplina milites habuerat; de praeda parcius, quam speraverant ex tantis regiis opibus, dederat nihil relicturis, si aviditati indulgeretur, quod in aerarium deferret). Paulus deems it his duty to keep his 24 Pliny NH 14.91. Also cf. Plut. Cat. Mai. 10.3: kai\ ou\k ai)tiw=mai, fhsi\, tou\j w)felei=sqai zhtou=ntaj e)k tou\twn, a)lla\ bou/lomai, ma/llon peri\ a)ret$=j toi=j a)ri/stoij h)\ peri\ xrhma/twn toi=j plousiwta/toij a(milla=sqai kai\ toi=j filargurwta/toij peri\ filargu/riaj. Aristocratic officers sometimes adopted the habits and conditions of the rank and file in order to gain the respect and the loyalty of the enlisted, depriving themselves of fancy food, lodging, and marching along with the troops. In other words, elites are self-identifying with commoners from social utility. For more on this strategy, see Phang 2002. 25 M 35. 17 troops from the pollution of wealth, to restrain the greediness of the troops, and do service to the state, and his conservatism ultimately deprives him of his honors. Wars brought in wealth as much as they depleted the countryside of men, which in turn jeopardized the self-image of Romans as simple farmer warriors. For the final century of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire, Romans maintained an ideological connection to the land, even as it became progressively more problematic. The exigencies of political and social life transformed Roman nobles into absentee farmers, though a level of urbane rusticity was required for full elite masculine performance. 26 The land grab that created latifundia helped turn the landless masses into yet another blunt weapon in aristocrat on aristocrat combat, just as did Marius’ elimination of the property qualification for membership in the infantry further eroded the image of the farmer warrior. 26 Cf. Augustus’ re-establishment of the ideal of traditional simplicity with his self- presentation as a simple hick, wearing a homespun tunics and eating produce from his garden-plot at Rome in Suetonius’ Augustus 82 & 76. For a fuller discussion of the rural/urban problem see Eigler 2002; for attempts to contain and transform the slippage from the outmoded ideal in rhetoric see Connors 1997. Of course, assessing the amount of dirt the average land-bound aristocrat would have had beneath his nails is problematic. In Chapter 5 I will address the elite turn to experteeism and rationalization of farming as a means of reclaiming this arena of masculine display. 18 In addition to the wealth from conquest, Romans had to deal with the influx of new literary and religious ideas (such as the anxiety over the Bacchanalian conspiracy of 186 BCE) and the advent of philosophy (the traditional date being the embassy from Athens of Carneades, Critolaos, and Diogenes in 156/5). To anticipate my arguments regarding the Roman response to Greek philosophical and educational ideas in chapter two and non-state religions in chapter four, these foreign elements, like wealth, had an ambiguous and contested integration into Roman elite society like to that of wealth, with some elites embracing the new and others rejecting it. Rome herself became a locus of contestation. One scholarly trend of the past thirty years has been to address the impact of urbanization on individuals. 27 Thomas Habinek 28 addresses the impact of urbanization on the elite Roman male. He sees in the rise of Rome a shift in social bonds, contrasting the rustic, traditional, social- and familial-bonded erotics of Catullus with the new urban/e individual erotics of Ovid, which he sees as ultimately leading to the creation of the concept of heterosexuality. After 27 For two recent overviews, see Miles and Hall 2003 and Gottdiener and Budd 2005. For urbanization and masculinity in general, see White 1993, Prothero 2003 and especially Kimmel 1996. 28 Habinek 1997. 19 addressing the flux and atomization that characterizes the condition of the urban subject, he writes: The isolation of sex as a topic for analysis, the privileging of sexual pleasure as a criterion of personal fulfillment, the construction of distinctive sexual identities based on object choice, the association of sex with privacy, and the professionalization of advice about sex: all of these can be traced within the literature of the period and linked to other aspects of Roman cosmopolitanism. In particular, the poetry of Ovid, when compared with earlier Latin poetry on sexual or amatory subjects, records both the invention of sexuality as a distinctive discourse and the resistance such a radical development inevitably encountered. 29 One of the new coping strategies of late republican Romans, deracinated by civil war, confronted by the new burdens and opportunities, was this turn to experteeism, to professionals colonizing the natural realms and drawing them into rational framework. 30 In this way there is a consonance between Ovid’s imperialistic project of regulating nature to produce an urban/e elegiac subject and the totalizing systems of philosophy. 31 Here we can see what I will later describe as countercultural 29 Habinek 1997:27. Moatti 1997, Wallace-Hadrill 1997. 30 More on this in Chapter Four. Also see, Wallace-Hadrill 1997, Moatti 1997. 31 On the urban/e elegiac subject, see Conte 1989, Gross 1996, Fulkerson 2004, and especially Chrol 2005. On totalizing systems of philosophy, see Shaw 1985, Hadot 2002, and Chrol 2005. 20 scripts’ awareness of each other – Ovid as elegist coopting the vocabulary of natural philosophy to make his own ludic and ridiculous transformations plausible to those outside his system. The atomizing turn, the change in outlook among elites who were world-consumers in the world-city of Rome, was another radicalizing element putting pressure upon traditional Roman virtues. The most significant transformation at the end of the Republic was the end of the Republic itself. Many are the accounts of what prompted the civil wars and many are the explanations of how the final configuration came about. The lens I will use to address this period is that of masculinity, and I see the crisis of politics, economics, social structure as intimately bound up in a crisis of masculinity. The opportunities afforded by wealth, the confrontations with other cultures and beliefs, the atomization and flux of urbanization, the unrestrained freedoms afforded a superpower and its citizens all posed critical problems of integrating the contemporary world with traditional Roman gender models, and created a profound instability in the models of appropriate elite behavior. The monolithic model of middle republican masculinity was an ill fit in the world of the late republic. I define the middle Republic as from the beginning of the fourth century to the beginning of the second century. The fourth century saw a 21 concretizing of the image of elite masculinity as manifest in the inception of the funeral oration in the forum and the invention of the imago. 32 At this point Roman families developed a formal lexicon for publicizing themselves and describing how they merited their place in the elected aristocracy. 33 Middle republican elite masculinity was permitted to operate under generally the same conditions for the next two hundred years until the second century when the conditions detailed elsewhere in this chapter arose to destabilize elite gender identity. I trace the beginning of these conditions to Rome’s supremacy in the Mediterranean beginning at the end of the Second Punic War in 202 and the Second Macedonian War in 196. I side with the implicit argument of Valerius Maximus, in his attribution to Lucius Caecilius Metellus the speech expressing fear lest Roman manhood tumble back into slumber, 34 that it was the Second Punic, not the third (as Polybius traces it) that was the start of the decline from the loss of the metus hostilis. Indeed, Cato the Elder can do his Carthago delenda est dance, but I think he 32 Flower 1996:340: “since we know that the imagines existed by the end of the third century bc, it is logical to posit that they had developed about a century earlier because their purpose and use is similar to that of the new honorary statues and historical paintings which came into being then.” 33 Consider the story that the funeral orations were pretty standard for hundreds of years until Julius Caesar came along and introduced an innovation by eulogizing his aunt. 34 See p.9. 22 was just adventuring and expressing inherited prejudices. The late republic I’m defining from the early 2 nd century until 27 BCE when Augustus gains tribunician power and the empire begins in earnest. Most historians both today and in antiquity trace the fall of the Republic to the Gracchi brothers in 133 and 123/2 and count the late republic from then. 35 The time frame I have chosen for my dates may seem idiosyncratic, but I am concerned with larger social trends which may not accord with sharp dates. Figures like the Gracchi arose in a context of and as a result of the forces beginning in the beginning of the second century. As I will argue in chapter two, I believe that the Romans were shrewd gender theorists, and the major figures of the end of the republic, the Ciceros, Caesars and Catos, all were aware of the differences between the inherited middle republican masculine models and the exigencies of their world, manipulating elements of their gendered performance to gain power over other elites. In a sense, all the fears expressed above about the potential for a transformation in manhood creating a cataclysm do indeed come true, though I believe that it was not a failure of manhood which transformed society. Rather, manhood was transformed when the traditional masculine 35 Wheeler 1988: 177 is one of the few who comments on Cato’s concerns over the degradation of the republic in 190 BCE. 23 roles were played out to their logical extremes in extreme and untraditional situations. In the past fifty years historians and theorists of gender have demonstrated that our current configurations of sex, sexuality and gender are not natural, universal nor inevitable. In similar fashion did Roman elite men in the last century BCE see that their system was not natural, universal nor inevitable. The last generations of the Republic inherited a monolithic image of appropriate gender behavior, clear delineations of in- and out- groups, a common-sense ideology that mirrors modern biological determinism. However, when confronted with the complicating factors outlined above, when stymied by the competition for traditional honors, or, worse yet, when presented with the possibility that the free exercise of traditional prerogatives might very well cause a man’s death, some men explored non-traditional behaviors. This dissertation is a cultural history of those elite men who envisioned and attempted to implement alternatives to the hegemonic system of gender performance. These alternatives coalesced into distinct countercultures, ones that engaged in a dialectical relation with hegemonic masculinity and produced the sweeping transformations in masculinity of the imperial age and its concomitant mystification of innovation in terms of stasis. 24 First, some definitions. The five postulates underlying my model of ancient gender are: gender as a performative script; hegemonic maculinity; achieved masculinity; alternative masculinity; countercultural masculinity. Their definitions follow. My term “performative scripts” is an extension of Judith Butler’s idea of the “performativity of gender.” In her book Gender Trouble, Butler asserts that what is seen as a coherent body of practices and expressions that are an external expression of an essential masculinity of femininity, are actually the effect of society’s pressures and expectations. She takes gender as “manufactured through as sustained set of acts, posited through the gendered stylization of the body…what we take to be an ‘internal’ feature of ourselves is one that we anticipate and produce through certain bodily acts, at an extreme, an hallucinatory effect of naturalized gestures” (Butler 1999: xv). She writes (Butler 1999: 173. Emphasis in the original): In other words, acts, gestures, and desire produce the effect of an internal core or substance, but produce this on the surface of the body, through the play of signifying absences that suggest, but never reveal, the organizing principle of identity as a cause. Such acts, gestures, enactments, generally construed, are performative in the sense that the essence or identity that they otherwise purport to express are fabrications manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive means. That the gendered body is performative suggests that it has no 25 ontological states apart from the various acts which constitute its reality. This also suggests that if that reality is fabricated as an interior essence, that very interiority is an effect and function of a decidedly public and social discourse, the public regulation of fantasy through the surface politics of the body, the gender border control debate differentiates inner from outer, and so institutes the “integrity” gestures, articulated and enacted desires create the illusion of an interior and organizing gender core, illusion discursively maintained for the purposes of that regulation of sexuality within the obligatory frame of reproductive heterosexuality. In other words, there is no gendered core to a human, and what is seen as the most natural expressions of the interior of a person are actually naturalized and internalized from social expectations. Though she will later reject the idea that individuals are purely the precipitation of cultural expectations, 36 she has maintained in her other works the performativity of gender. In what sense does she mean gender is performative? She means it in two ways. (Butler 1999:xxv) …my theory sometimes waffles between understanding performatives as linguistic and casting it as theatrical. I have come to think that the two are invariably related, chiasmically so, and that a reconsideration of the speech act as an instance of 36 In the introduction to the second edition of Gender Trouble she writes (Butler 1999: xv), “Although I would deny that all of the internal world of the psyche is but an effect of a stylized set of acts, I continue to think that it is a significant theoretical mistake to take the ‘internality’ of the psychic world for granted.” 26 power invariably draws attention to both its theatrical and linguistic dimensions. In Excitable Speech, I sought to show that the speech act is at once performed (and thus theatrical, presented to an audience, subject to interpretation), and linguistic, inducing a set of affects through its implied relation to linguistic conventions. If one wonders how a linguistic theory of the speech act relates to bodily gestures, one need only consider that speech itself is a bodily act with specific linguistic consequences….speech belongs exclusively neither to corporeal presentation nor to language, and its status as word and deed is necessarily ambiguous. There is an interrelation between how repetitive, stylized, socially legible actions produce the effect of gender in the mind of the actor (“performative” in the sense that Austin, Searle, and Derridas used it), and in the mind of the audience (“performative” in the sense that Gleason used it above). 37 Throughout her professional life Butler has always been concerned with using her theory in an activist way, not wanting her famously difficult prose to be solely the object for ivory-tower analysis but part of progressive politics and the dissolution of heterosexual hegemony. 38 Due to the different historical moments, different sex, gender, and economic systems of contemporary America and ancient Rome, her theory does not fit both 37 Austin 1962, Searle 1977, Derrida 1988 (1972, 1982), Gleason 1995. 38 On the autobiographical nature of her work, see Butler 1999: xvi-xvii. For Butler’s defense of her notoriously opaque writing style, see Butler 1999: xviii. 27 contexts equally well. In this work, Butler’s idea of the performativity of gender is extended in my theory of performative scripts. One of the themes of this dissertation is how much of an elite man’s life was scripted, stylized, ritualized. Here I do not refer simply to the series of religious observances a man completed throughout the day from the family hearth ceremony first thing in the morning to his offerings to his lares and penates at night; nor to the social rituals of morning salutatio, forum, baths, and dinner; nor to the deferential hierarchies in senate debate or the formulaic generic components of a speech, though all of these are part of it. In order to perform “Romanness,” to express his membership in his elite circles and compliance with their values, a man had a series of codes to internalize. Here is where Butler’s contemporary focus fails for the Romans. Her interest in an agent’s improvisation in different contexts suits the unique freedoms and oppressions of late capitalism in America. The strictures imposed upon an elite Roman republican male were more clear and direct. To anticipate the argument at the outset of Chapter 2, for middle Republican elite (and ambitious) men there was but one way to pursue his career. This is not to say there were no opportunities for creativity and excellence when fulfilling the stages of his life path, but a man was required to go on ten 28 campaigns as a youth, and earn office up to that of Aedile before earning his imago. Likewise, despite the myriad ways a young orator might decide the colores and divisiones of his controversia, he would still have to deliver the exordium, narratio, divisio, confirmatio, confutatio, and peroratio. Indeed, my ultimate argument is that during the late republic there were a polyphony of means of expressing masculinity, but this was only possible during the unique circumstances of that time. To illustrate my point I will draw from two ideas, ancestor worship and genetics. To a citizen of the United States, a place where advertising and rhetoric is often dependent on casting new products and ideas in terms of revolutions, the level to which the Romans were traditional may be surprising. The Romans had a strong sense that Rome was great because they followed the mos maiorum, a phrase difficult to translate. 39 The first element means something like “custom” and the second element is at once “elders” “betters” “greaters” “biggers”, and the concept outlined a body of acceptable practices. As I mentioned above in the section on how the world changed at the end of the Republic and the Roman anxiety about it, change 39 See Zecchini 2001, Linke 2000. 29 was bad, and we saw how that extended from politics to society to individual taste. The Romans also had a strong sense of genetic predisposition in accordance with clan habits. For example, as suggested in outline above, the moralizing strain of the Porcii (Porci) Catones was supposed to be as inbred as their red hair, as we saw with the two famous Catos above, and it was noted when one of the apples did fall far from the tree, as with M. Porcius M. f. M. n. Cato, consul of 114, who, according to Brutus 108 was supposed to be a mediocre orator and mediocre man. It may be objected here that the debate of nature vs. nurture is as old as literature in the west, and the Greek formulation phusis/nomos was well known to the Romans. I am using the term “genetic” as a convenient shorthand for the modern audience. Nonetheless, the practical effect of the difference in terms makes little effect: if the Porci Catones were moralists because of a special genetic predisposition or because the children were raised to revere censorious ancestors, it don’t really mattter, it was the reputation of the clan and those we know from it. In the Pro Murena Cicero has a quotation that bridges these two ideas of a person worthy of emulation and genetics. At section 66 he writes 30 sed te domum iam deducam tuam. Quemquamne existimas Catone, proavo tuo, commodiorem, communiorem, moderatiorem fuisse ad omnem rationem humanitatis? De cuius praestanti virtute cum vere graviterque diceres, domesticum te habere dixisti exemplum ad imitandum. Est illud quidem exemplum tibi propositum domi, sed tamen naturae similitudo illius ad te magis qui ab illo ortus es quam ad unum quemque nostrum pervenire potuit, ad imitandum vero tam mihi propositum exemplar illud est quam tibi. Sed si illius comitatem et facilitatem tuae gravitati severitatique asperseris, non ista quidem erunt meliora, quae nunc sunt optima, sed certe condita iucundius. But I shall lead you [Cato] back to your home. Do you think there was anybody more agreeable, more obliging, more temperate in every measure of character than Cato, your great- grandfather? While you were speaking truly and with weight about his outstanding virtue, you said that you had a home grown example that must be imitated. This is indeed an example exhibited for you at home, but even though the similarity of his nature could extend more to you who are descended from that man than to any one of us, nonetheless that model has been laid out for me to imitate as much as for you. But should you sprinkle his affability and ease upon your seriousness and severity, those elements of yours would indeed not be better which already are the best, but surely would be more pleasantly flavored. There are a couple elements of this passage worth remarking upon. Beneath the joke of calling Cato the censor agreeable, obliging and moderate, Cicero reinforces our earlier descriptions of the elder Cato as being inflexible and harsh. The younger Cato clearly has cashed in on the reputation of his clan being particularly moral and austere, as with Cicero’s referring to Cato’s self identification with his home-grown example. Cicero begins by asserting the possibility of character traits being passed from generation to generation 31 (similarity of nature extending more to those arising from his stock), but then says the genetic predisposition is not the key element – he is a figure who is a model for all people to follow, not just for the Porcii Catones. The publicity of the elder Cato made him remarkable and memorable. To conclude this section on performative scripts, our evidence demonstrates ambiguity over cause, but no ambiguity over effect. There was an expectation of a certain consonance of performance and embodiment of Roman characteristics in the individual men, and that this consonance was to resonate throughout the generations. Chapter 2 will detail the technologies that produced this consonance of gender performance. The second axiom of my argument is the concept of hegemonic masculinity. Connell 1995 40 describes the concept thus: The concept of ‘hegemony,’ deriving from Antonio Gramsci's analysis of class relations, refers to the cultural dynamic by which a group claims and sustains a leading position in social life. At any given time, one form of masculinity rather than others is culturally exalted. Hegemonic masculinity can be defined as the configuration of gender practice which embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of the legitimacy of patriarchy, which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the 40 Connell 1995. See also Hocquenghem 1978, Deleuze and Guattari 1983, Donaldson 1993, Walters 1997. For the contrary position, Carrigan 1985. 32 dominant position of men and the subordination of women. (77) In other words, hegemonic masculinity is the common sense response of an average person of a given class to the question, “What is a man?” In the context of late Republican Roman elites, this “currently accepted answer to the problem of the legitimacy of patriarchy” included the creation and maintenance of strict but volatile gradations of elite/non- elite/woman/slave. 41 The third postulate is that masculinity is achieved, not innate, and that effective masculine performance requires work from within as well as recognition from without. In Maud Gleason’s words: 41 An objection my be raised here as to how small a group would have belonged to this model, as the nature of the evidence I adduce, that of men who had the leisure and inclination to engage in poetry, philosophy, or the types of military, political and social activities I describe, skews our perception of the narrative of masculinity in Rome. The project of delineating all the strata of the coexisting and competing masculinities is a larger project than the one undertaken here. This dissertation will only address the model citizens, those whose behaviors get sufficient attention to set the performative scripts for the remaining men, both elite and aspiring. Consider Braudy 1986 on how famous individuals produce social cohesion and continuity (15): “The continued interest in the most famous is similar to our continued fascination with a great work of art or an important historical moment: The ability to reinterpret them fills them with constantly renewed meaning, even though that meaning might be very different from what they meant a hundred or a thousand years before. Such people are vehicles of cultural memory and cohesion. They allow us to identify what's present with what's past. By preserving their names, we create a self-conscious grammar of feeling and action that allows us to connect where we have been as a society and where we are going.” Our model men ghostwrote performative scripts that filtered down through the different social strata, and the evidence for those who were not penetrated by the text is scanty, and outside of the scope of this work. 33 Since, in accordance with the way gender roles were constituted in their society, manhood was not a state to be definitively and irrefutably achieved, but something always under construction and constantly open to scrutiny, adults needed to keep practicing the arts that made them men. Rhetoric was a calisthenics of manhood. 42 Gleason represents a trend in scholarship on classical masculinity that notes the anxiety ancient men had regarding the Sisyphean task of maintaining a gendered persona that, at any moment, due to an inappropriate word or gesture, or by even scratching with the wrong number of fingers, could slip away. Roman gender theorists (i.e. teachers, orators, handbook writers) played a double game that claimed both the existence of an inherent essential masculinity and the constant potential for social failure, in other words a covert awareness of the performativity of gender. 43 The fourth postulate is that elite males kept some classes out of the hegemonic group by attaching social opprobrium to their status, occupation, origin, sexual practices. These classes include slaves, cinaedi, foreigners, scurrae, each subgroup serving as scare-figures to determine the boundaries 42 Gleason 1995: xxii. 43 See Butler 1997, 1999 and Connell generally, though I treat this concept more fully later. 34 of the hegemonic ideal. By definition of type, members of these classes were perpetually constrained to the roles of failed masculine performance I dub “alternative masculinity.” The fifth and final postulate of my argument is the concept of countercultural masculinities. The extraordinary circumstances men endured while the Republic crumbled generated extraordinary psychic stress. Traditional gender models ceased being satisfying to some elite males, and as therapy or self-preservation some men chose to drop out of the mainstream, seeking out new realms satisfying for masculine performance. By the time the Principate is firmly established the hegemonic ideal lumbered into a new configuration; until that point, fast and energetic reinterpretations of the gendered ideal coalesced into countercultures. Theodore Roszak describes counterculture as a movement to “[r]ediscover new types of community, new family patterns, new sexual mores, new kinds of livelihood, new esthetic forms, new personal identities on the far side of power politics.” 44 I apply Roszak’s political analysis to 44 Roszak 1969: 44. It is with some trepidation that I have adopted the term “counterculture”. It is likely that the term is pregnant with too much meaning for one generation of scholars and void of meaning for the next. Nonetheless, I feel it best describes the motion of social forces at work during the era I discuss. The term “counter culture” comes into common usage at the end of the 1960s. Though the OED attributes its first use to 1970 (s.v. “counter culture”), there were already 35 masculinity theory in what I dub “countercultural masculinity.” Countercultural masculinity may be defined as a body of practices that presents itself as equally complete, internally consistent, and gender appropriate as hegemonic masculinity. The competing models follow the same internal logic, and have similar goals and patterns of policing their boundaries. In the interests of social marketing, an important portion of countercultural presentation is the appropriation of terms from the center by a peripheral group attempting to gain legitimacy in order to explain itself to “the straights,” both because it is in dialogue with the dominant culture and also as a marketing tool to potential converts. 45 two books published in 1969 with “counter culture” in the title, Roszak’s The Making of a Counter Culture, and Berke’s Counter Culture, demonstrating the term was already in common parlance. Each of the three, OED, Roszak and Berke, treat the term as indicative of a rebellion of youth against the older generation. In the historical context that gave rise to the term, it referred to hippie culture, and in Roszak’s formulation, the critical mass of members participating in a humanistic rebellion against totalitarian technocracy. My use of the phrase “counterculture” differs from that of Roszak, Berke and the OED in significant ways. The elite Romans comprising the classes I dub countercultural are drawn from different ages and stages in the cursus honorum, and do not make a sudden and sharp break with the mos maiorum. On the contrary, even those who were traditionally successful shifted their focus to countercultural ends. Also, the categories I dub countercultural developed slowly over time, coalescing as compensatory strategies for etiolated or dangerous masculine scripts. The key to my use is my opposition of the three terms “hegemonic,” “alternative,” and “countercultural,” as seen below. Also see Hallett 2002 (1973): n. 26. I will treat more fully Hallett’s persuasive exposition of parallel characteristics of elegists and 60s/70s counterculture, Chapter Four: 149-51. 45 cf. Hallett 2002: 340 on elegists as countercultural feminists: “By using the ‘mainstream’ language of conventional Roman careers to represent the devotion they bestow upon and the rewards which accrue to them from their mistresses, the amatory elegists are trying to 36 I wish to draw a distinction between countercultural masculinities and the alternative masculinities of my fourth postulate. The ideology of the center is that of a monolithic, undifferentiated masculinity which never changes nor innovates, and is as essential and totalizing as any biological practice. Men are seen as a species as fish are a species, and masculine behavior is as obvious and unchanging as a fish’s ability to breathe underwater. It is outside of the scope of this thesis to address the plurality of masculinities which were prevalent at Rome from the very beginning, and the alternative conceptions that we have from our earliest evidence. Let two comments suffice for the moment. First, “alternative” conceptions are couched in terms mirroring and legitimated by the hegemonic ideal. They are reactive to and reflective of the dominant culture, and ultimately are contained within it. Second, the presentation of alternative masculinities is always illustrative of failed masculine performance. Though there may be power in the parodic or dark reflection, the alternative lifestyle is stigmatized. Two examples provide illustration for this point. The first is of make their feelings understandable to ‘straight’ readers, those who have not undergone the same experiences that they have. They aim for comprehensibility, chiefly so that they can justify their life styles to individuals (and possibly even to portions of their own psyches) who subscribe to conventional assumptions, believing love and love elegy something worthless, ‘nequitia.’ Yet the Augustan elegists also appear to be struggling toward a greater goal: the conversion of others to their beliefs and behavior.” 37 the cinaedus. He was always at the party, always partying down, but his pathic practices were at the service of the dominant males. He became a useful scare-figure to demonstrate the boundaries of proper male practice, and, though male, was not masculine. Richlin’s argument for a possible male homosexual subculture at Rome 46 is useful here. She adduces evidence from law and literature to argue for the existence of a group whose sexual practices cause a sharp enough stigma to threaten them with social disability and loss of civic rights. Much in the same way that derogation of homosexuals socializes, naturalizes, and popularizes models for appropriate masculine behavior, 47 cinaedi defined the utter failure of masculine performance from sex to dress, top to tail, and through their failure helped define appropriate action. Richlin concludes (1993:530): “a free passive male lived with a social identity and a social burden much like the one that Foucault defined for the modern term ‘homosexual’.” Habinek downplays the significance of cinaedic sexual practice, instead viewing the matrix of negative stereotypes as constitutive of an excessive dark reflection of proper homosocial behavior (2005:292), 46 Richlin 1993. 47 For a rich treatment of the issue see Plummer 1999. 38 the antitype of the sodalist. His behavior carries convivial camaraderie too far; it constitutes the kind of explicit, sexually suggestive dancing that invites the hostility of orators and others who maintain a pose of upholding conventional ethics. It advertises hungers that mainstream ideology insists be kept in check. I do not wish to intervene in the argument over the materiality of the cinaedus, of whether there was an identifiable subculture, or the extent to which the law describes actual practice versus imagined communities, 48 but rather wish to draw from these two arguments to elaborate upon my definition of “alternative masculinitiy.” Cinaedi as a group, whether discursive, material or performative, were utterly and completely antithetical to the Roman hegemonic ideal. Since they are portrayed as such, they never (and could never) provide a socially appropriate performative masculine script, which is why I dub them “alternative” in my model and not “countercultural.” As a second example, I draw from satire. The satirist at first blush may appear to support a countercultural community, in that he derides contemporary culture and manhood. The satirist’s successful performances demonstrate the failed performances of the satirized. The satirist comes 48 See Gardner 1993 on functionalist approaches to citizenship through reading law. For a critique of this approach, see Bendix’s review of Gardner 1993 in BMCR. 39 across as the most potent member of society because his eye is most penetrating, and his texts orchestrate striking situations elucidating his type of morality. However, satire is not countercultural because the satirist’s reductive gaze serves an inherently conservative purpose. For example, Juvenal’s ninth satire has Naevolus recount to Juvenal a conversation he had with Virro detailing how Naevolus’s cuckolding did a service for both master and mistress. Adultery legitimated the senator’s public claims to masculinity in the senate and elsewhere, and Naevolus satisfied not only Virro’s wife but also Virro’s duty by the Julian laws and the general expectations of society through siring Virro’s male heirs. In this satire the adulterer is parasitic upon the dominant system. His self identity is entirely drawn from the language and ethics of the dominant culture with respect to sexuality. Furthermore, his masculine performance has enabled the continuance of the dominant system. He provides a darkly reflective yet ludic (lewdic?) ideal within the matrix. Despite the unconventional expression he is still a conventional man, and his agonism is completely legible in light of the hegemonic framework. Take also Juvenal’s complaint at 5.20-50, that the wine which petty clientes are served differs dramatically in quality from that served at the head table. This satire both describes the realities of the power relations between 40 cliens and patronus and also lampoons the excesses of modern wealth, ego, and expectation that has undermined the original convivial spirit. The betrayal of traditional ideals is manifest here in many ways, but perhaps most gallingly in the haughtiness of the slaves and their degradation of those at the lowest table (diners who may even have recently been freed from similar service from the same master). When a similar situation arises in one of Pliny’s letters and one of the co-convivialists gripes about the three gradations of wine served, Pliny used it as an opportunity to outline his philosophical position: cunctisque rebus exaequo, quos mensa et toro aequavi “for everything together do I make equal, for those whom I have made equal at the dinner table and couch” (Ep. 2.6.3). Pliny’s philosophical fortitude impels him to drink the same wine as everyone at his parties, including his slaves. 49 Where Juvenal’s reductive gaze seeks restoration to the golden age, Pliny advocates revolution. Juvenal is conservative, Pliny countercultural. Not all criticism is countercultural. 50 49 For a contrary reading of the Pliny passage see D'Arms 1990. 50 There is one other community that (unsurprisingly) falls on the border of hegemonic and countercultural, namely that of outlaws. The ideas present in Habinek 1998: Chapter 2 “Cicero and the Bandits” perhaps trouble my definition of countercultural societies with respect to the motion he describes of determining inside and outside, and thereby requires deeper study. My initial reaction is that the contestation of the Catilinarians is over naming community to legitimate exercising authority, where what I am concerned with is the naming of community to legitimate masculine performance. As such, Cicero’s bailing of the 41 Not all men who dropped out from the active life were counterculturalists. Some men were able to escape the active life without being aggressive about it. Men who dropped out to write history, for example, or scientific agriculture, could do it without the obvious self- exclusion of the counterculturalists, or without the same loss of social approbation as my “alternative” groups. 51 Dropping from view, avoiding all society necessarily debars a person from being countercultural, where the personal example of difference marked a key separation from those following traditional paths. Counterculturalists have to provide an equally acceptable alternative to the dominant view. Other scholars have noticed men dropping out of the active life. Take Della Casa 1962, addressing Turchi 1938 who believes Pythagoreans were such a group: Ma questo non significa che i componenti fossero avulsi dalla vita attiva, fossero solo una ‘corrente mistica’ che rappresentava, «in quell'epoca di massimo disordine politico in Roma, il rifugio per anime aliene dalla politica, che desideravano evadere dalla triste realità e refugiarsi in una religione di quiete spirituale, dove la speranza ultramondana sump from the ship of state is not applicable here. Counterculturalists pity and are concerned with failed men outside their circle, but they do not necessarily require expulsion of these failed elements. 51 i.e. men were criticized for how well they wrote history, not that they wrote history. 42 fosse esaltata, dove alla freddezza pomposa della religione statale fosse sostituito qualche cosa di intimo, che parlasse all’anima singola, dove l’afflato mistico non si appagasse delle rumorose e primitive esibizioni dei culti orientali trascinatrici dei sensi e care all pietà del popolo, ma sentisse lo spirito di idee attinte alla più del popolo alla più alta cultura del tempo e allegorizzate dalla mirabilmente varia mitologia della Grecia» 52 The explanations of Della Casa and Turchi are not completely satisfying. Neither deal with the gendered components of Pythagoreanism, such as the concepts of democracy and gender equity. Also they don’t fully appreciate what the significance of this dropping out would have been. They were dropping out not just because they were failures, but rather generating a counter society. I will discuss Pythagoreanism at length in the final chapter of this dissertation, but suffice it to say that some of the more visible members of the upper class were visibly seceding from normal patterns of behavior: not just disappearing, but being seen creating this counterculture. I can’t comment on Turchi’s idea of the increased spirituality of the Pythagoreans as opposed to the coldness of the state cult (something relating to fascism?), but will discuss the personal and political impact of these people. What, for example, would have been the social disability of a man who chose Pythagoreanism, adopting vegetarianism, and thereby 52 Della Casa 1962: 51. 43 denying himself the opportunity of participating in the highest level of state cult, the practice of sacrifice, with all its political and social benefits? To sum up, countercultural masculinities do appropriate the language of the center and respond to psychic pressures that are comprehensible to the hegemons. They do not, however, mirror nor parody it. Each counterculture is a rich, vibrant, and complex means of construction of masculine identity according to certain principles in an organized, programmatic body of practices, core beliefs and values, and as such has its own clearly defined boundaries. Despite having similar descriptive structures to analyze failed masculine performances, countercultural masculinities overlap their semantic and conceptual boundaries with dominant masculinity. They are not contiguous with nor identical to it. Again, perhaps to state the obvious, the solutions posed by counterculture and hegemony are different, despite responding to the same pressures. Building upon the concepts of performative gender, and countercultures, my theory of masculine countercultural performative scripts at Rome in the first century BCE addresses some of the more opaque questions about agency at the end of the Roman republic. Heretofore scholars have been able to identify transformations from republican to 44 imperial values, but have not adequately been able to provide the reasons for these transformations. Furthermore, my use of the concept of performative scripts, and the dialectical relations between hegemonic and countercultural scripts, better accounts for some of the choices authors and politicians made in their self presentation and works. Scholars have underutilized the dialectical motions in society produced by the way various perfomative scripts were aware of each other and competed for adherents. The shape of the remainder of my project is as follows: Chapter Two adduces literary, epigraphic and architectural evidence from the 3 rd and 2 nd century BCE to establish the middle republican masculine ideal. To describe the hegemons I present a lexicon of terms used by hegemons at the end of the Republic to define the boundaries of their group and account for the transformed valences of certain value terms in accordance with the social realities of this period. I go onto address the technologies of gender that produced this particular type of manhood: the formal and informal structures of army, forum, and rhetoric on the one hand, and family, convivia and sodalicia on the other. Once the hegemonic performative script has been established, this leads me to Chapter Three, on the creation of the philosophical counterculture. Because of the canonical nature of the texts of Cicero or 45 Seneca, or modern scholars’ identification with an educated man’s general understanding of philosophy as with Pliny, 53 is easy to overlook how contentious this technology of knowledge was to late-republican Romans (either that or credit the Romans with no philosophy at all). Another great mystery of the late Republic and early Empire is the question of why there is a flourishing of elegiac poetry then and at no other time? I believe one of the reasons elegy flourished at this time and no other 54 is as a response to the crisis of masculinity. In Chapter Four I look at love poetry, and address the development of the scripts of the hegemonic and the elegiac poet. The hegemonic poet views his elegiac counterpart with uneasy disdain, quite contrary to the elegiac support and underpinning of the hegemonic script. In this chapter I also treat the ethics of self-presentation, the level to which poetry has an effect upon the poet: put simply, can a man take his mask off? To answer this question I analyze the contrasts of love- slavery with assertions of traditional masculinity in poetry, and the parallels of the Commentariolum Petitionis to elegiac self-presentation. 53 Beagon 2005: 15 “Pliny’s Stoicism, however, was not the carefully worked-through theorizing of the specialist philosopher; it was the general back-ground knowledge of a well- educated man, a world-view in effect almost unconsciously absorbed and displayed. As such, it acts as a valuable indication of educated attitudes generally.” 54 Ov. Tr. 4.10.53-4 on the origins of Roman elegiac with Gallus. I follow Putnam 1973 and Miller 2004 in their trusting of him. 46 Finally, in Chapter Five I turn to non-traditional modes of knowledge. During the civil wars there arose sodalicia of occult or obscure knowledge. Experteeism and professionalism become prominent (already partly addressed by Habinek above), and individuals begin distinguishing themselves in the study of jurisprudence, rhetoric, and science. Antiquarianism became a counterforce to the transformations of the prior hundred years, though the levels of scholasticism were themselves non- traditional. Along with and tied to this trend of professionalism and antiquarianism is the rise in occult groups. I address three major groups of occult counterculturalists in this period. First, I talk about non-Roman types of divination, and the struggle of haruspicy and oneiromancy with astrology. Next I address men and magic, and the evidence that in this period we begin seeing men engaged in magical pursuits, and treat the various valences of carmina when applied to men vs. women, poets vs. priests. Finally, I turn to non-state religions, such as neo-Pythagoreanism. Strict adherents would have had particular social disabilities attached to their practice. For example, how could an elite Pythagorean gain the social and political benefits of one of the colleges of priests at Rome when precluded by his vegetarianism from participating in the major state ritual of sacrifice? I conclude with an analysis 47 Varro and use him as a model for the types of redefined masculinity that is successful in the principate. 48 II. FIGHTING WITH THE DEAD: THE LEGACY OF THE MIDDLE REPUBLIC scriptum reliquit decem maximas res optimasque, in quibus quaerendis sapientes aetatem exigerent, consummasse eum. voluisse enim primarium bellatorem esse, optimum oratorem, fortissimum imperatorem, auspicio suo maximas res geri, maximo honore uti, summa sapientia esse, summum senatorem haberi, pecuniam magnam bono modo invenire, multos liberos relinquere et clarissimum in civitate esse. haec contigisse ei nec ulli alii post Romam conditam. -Pliny Historia Naturalis 7.139-40 55 The above passage is what is left from the laudatio (funeral oration) of Quintus Caecilius Metellus, Consul of 206 and Dictator of 205, for his father Lucius, Consul of 251 and 247, and Dictator of 247. 56 It has been described by Flower as (1996:136) “the earliest extant piece of Latin oratory, as well as being the longest and richest extract from a public eulogy.” Quintus, who 55 “He left it written that he had totted up the ten best and greatest things, things in the acquiring of which sapientes spend their life. Namely, that he wanted to be a first-rank warrior, the best orator, the bravest general, to conduct affairs under his own auspices, to have the greatest honor, to be in the best sapientia (taste/wisdom), to come across great wealth by honorable means, to leave behind many sons and to be most famous in the state. And that these things applied to him and to no one else since the founding of Rome.” 56 On Quintus, see Chapter One: 9. 49 was to become one of the conservative heads of the Senate, learned his conservative values from his father. 57 For this funeral oration, delivered in the forum before a crowd of living and dead family as well as the general public, Quintus (ventriloquizing Lucius) catalogues a list of ten aristocratic virtues. The community he invokes is a little surprising. Lucius describes himself foremost as a sapiens before listing himself as a Roman, citizen, warrior, or politician. We do not have the actual text of the speech, just this excerpt, but in the context of this specific passage, Lucius wishes to be remembered (scriptum reliquit) as a man with practical intelligence, and other sapientes would identify with the subsequent characteristics. 58 Flower characterizes this piece as one following the elite life, beginning with the 57 Macedonius becomes a model of conservative values to later generations. For example, his censorial oration of 131 de prole augenda “On increasing the generations” (arguing that everyone should be married liberorum creandorum causa “for the sake of making babies”) was read out by Augustus as he introduced his social legislation. Macedonius, unlike Augustus, was able to practice what he preached, having four consular children. See Livy Per. LIX and Suetonius Aug. 89.2. 58 The primary work on the meaning of sapiens in this period is still Wheeler 1988. See also Beagon’s 2005 commentary on this passage and Flower 1996. Wheeler believes that Lucius did earn the cognomen sapiens for his use of stratagems in battle (188-92), but argues that the use of sapientes in the first line of this passage was an interpellation by Pliny (194): “Others have already proved that the sapientes of Metellus’ laudatio must refer to the nobiles, the senatorial class, rather than to designate boni viri…the plural sapientes implies the collectivity of a group, but we have already seen how few men gained the coveted title of Sapiens in the third century – too few and too scattered to qualify as a group to be identified with the nobiles. Thus sapientes must be taken as a technical expression not yet known in the third century, i.e., are an interpolation by Pliny’s source for the laudatio.” 50 military, politics, repute and resources, and progeny to carry them on, and Beagon boils it down to the four elements of aristocratic authority, auctoritas, dignitas, memoria and exemplum. I see in the listing a ranking in importance as well. Rome was a warrior culture, and the primacy of martial combat skills (primarium bellatorem) and leadership skills (fortissimum imperatorem), and strategic knowledge (summa sapientia), 59 as well as the additional ancillary character training of the military lifestyle, control (auspicio suo maximas res geri), honor (maximo honore uti), and fame (clarissimum in civitate). 60 A political career in this period was largely dependent on military activity. 61 Nonetheless, the public character of Lucius’ deeds and a life lived on behalf of the state is stressed, while his family receives nearly final billing. The emphatic positioning of Lucius’ final boast also has an agonistic charge. Not only has he achieved the summit of power, power earned and exercised on behalf of the state, but he has also achieved superiority over his fellow countrymen, and furthermore his victory has placed him at the head of the community of ancestors. 59 Wheeler 1988. 60 Cf. the image of Q. Fab. Max. Cunctator in Plutarch’s life of him at 1.4, in that he claims he trained his body for wars, speech for persuasion, form fitting the manner of his life: ou) ga\r e)ph=n w(raismo\j ou)de\ kenh\ kai\ a)gorai=oj xw/rij, a)lla\ nou=j i)/dion kai peritto\n e)n gnwmologa/ij sxh=ma kai\ ba/qoj e)/xwn. 61 Not necessarily success. See Rosenstein 1990. 51 One legacy of the middle republic and the limited tangible tokens of honor (imago, triumph), as well as the circumstances of the funeral oration (in front of fellow citizens and clansmen both living and dead) is a state- sponsored (and –benefiting) fight of the recently deceased against the living and the dead. The funerary speeches, which served as a combination rite of passage for young men of the clan, ritualistic remembrance for other members of the clan, propaganda for a particular clan to advertise their accomplishments and justify their position at the top of a meritocratic aristocracy, and for the people to see aristocratic competition as socially cohesive, put a public and political face to the death of an individual. Compare Quintus’ words with those of P. Licinius Crassus Dives Mucianus, Consul of 131 BCE: Is Crassus a Sempronio Asellione et plerisque aliis historiae Romanae scriptoribus traditur habuisse quinque rerum bonorum maxima et praecipua: quod esset ditissimus, quod nobilissimus, quod eloquentissimus, quod iuris consultissimus, quod pontifex maximus. Crassus has it recorded by Sempronius Asellio and several other writers of Roman history that he had achieved the five greatest and most indicative tokens of all morally upright signifiers: namely that he was the richest, noblest, most eloquent, most consulted about the law, and the Pontifex Maximus. 62 62 Gellius 1.13.10 quoted in Flower 1996:137 n 36. 52 The values Crassus valorized and had recorded in Sempronius Asellio, a contemporary historian, are rather different from those we just saw. What signifies success for Crassus is dominance in arenas pertinent just to the blue-bloods or morally upright (bonorum): his are not populist values. Crassus’ public face is downplayed, his family effaced. We have no indication of public works from his wealth, nor offices held on account of his eloquence. He did become Pontifex Maximus, leader of religious observance in Rome, and we hear elsewhere that he achieved initial public prominence through the free and ready offering of legal advice. 63 Nonetheless, first and foremost he says he is wealthy – his agnomen dives means “rich.” As we demonstrated above, in the spectrum of elite Roman virtues, the accumulation of wealth was ambiguously a good. Cicero (de Orat. 2.227) claims Crassus’ defense against Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus in the Senate on charges of luxury was the most serious (both in the sense of “dangerous to Crassus’s position” and in the sense of “least funny”) speech ever given. Finally, the clearest indication that Crassus embraced late (not middle) republican values is the utter lack of mention of military prowess. 63 Cicero Br. 29. 53 As we shall see over the course of this chapter, the prime signifier of masculine behavior for the middle republic is martial virtue, and the projected image of the model man is closer to that portrayed by L. Caecilius Metellus than that of L. Licinius Crassus 70 years later. The image that Crassus had recorded in contemporary histories like that of Sempronius Asellio evidences the shift of values as Rome slides from middle to late Republic. This chapter will first elucidate what I mean by “middle republican masculinity,” first by assessing the value of virtus, “manliness,” then addressing middle republican inscriptional, numismatic, architectural, and oratorical evidence to delineate the particular qualities of successful and failed elite men. The word for manhood is virtus, derived from the word for man, vir, etymologically the origin of our word “virtue.” By the late republic it will accrete the semantic range that will render it equivalent to “virtue,” “excellence” or “goodness,” and eventually get applied to women and inanimate objects as well as men, but our middle republican evidence demonstrates one primary definition of virtus, martial virtue. Here I generally follow the arguments of McDonnell 2003. After affirming the 54 martial primacy in virtus, McDonnell proceeds to address the morally ambivalent charge of manliness (208): …in the same way that the Roman gods aided not the ethically good but the ritually correct, and that Roman law assisted the person who followed correct legal procedure over the one who might have had the better claim, so too in judging the behavior of a public man ethical conduct was secondary to martial prowess. This is not to say that Romans regarded ethical behavior as unimportant, but that in regard to ideal manly behavior issues of right or wrong were not paramount. Ultimately he claims that the later ethical valuation of virtus is a “semantic calque” (241) from using the same term virtus to translate both andreia “manliness” and aret: “excellence,” crediting the contest over the value of virtus to a combination of factors ranging from translations of Greek comedies in the mid 2 nd c BCE to the socialization of senators after the advent of philosophy to Marius’ attempts to (in my terms) assert a middle republican masculinity in the late republican world. In support of McDonnell’s argument, let us consider briefly the opposition of virtus and fortuna in the legacy of the middle republic. I believe this opposition suggests a broader range of meanings of virtus than that presented by McDonnell as well as elucidates the social impact of opposing strong internal characteristics to the vagaries of external forces. First, consider the potential impact of class on the distinction drawn between virtus 55 and fortuna. Marius, enough of a self made man to mention it to whomever he could, dedicated a temple to Honos et Virtus “Honor and Martial Valor.” I suggest this was in the spirit of middle republican manliness, reflective of the temple of Honos first dedicated in 234 by Q. Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, 64 who defeated the Ligurians, and expanded in 208 to a double temple of Honos et Virtus by M. Claudius Marcellus, who sacked Syracuse. 65 Marius’ colleague, Catulus, whose successes were more limited, dedicated a temple to Fortuna Huiusce Diei (The Luck of This Particular Day). I suspect the contrast between the two temples may be a contrast between a popular and elite masculinity. Marius’ dedication invokes a Roman gumption, a manifestation of two qualities each Roman man understood as part of his character and attempted to exhibit. 66 Catulus’ dedication connects him with luck and therefore divine favor, a characteristic discussed above as a means 64 Honor in this context is “The honor due to military prowess or sim. virtues, personified as a god.” (OLD: Honor 2 ) 65 Ashby and Platner 1929: 258-60. For the impact of this dedication on later masculine codes, consider Cicero’s 4 th Verrine Oration: “Verres, who dedicates his vows not to Honor and Virtue, but to Lust and Greed.” (Verres qui non Honori neque Virtuti…sed Veneri et Cupidine vota deberet. Cic. Ver. 4.123). Note here that Cicero’s joke relies upon connotative (not denotative) antithesis, demonstrating the shifting semantic range of virtus in the late republic, as honor and virtus are not exact antonyms for Venus and Cupido. 66 Cf. the dictum attributed to Appius Claudius Caecus in [Ps-]Sallust’s ad Caes. sen. de rep. 1, 1, 2: in carminibus Appius ait fabrum esse suae quemque fortunae. “In his sayings, Appius said that each is the craftsman of his own fortune.” or Plaut. Trin. 363 sapiens . . . ipsus fingit fortunam sibi. “The wise man…creates his own fortune.” 56 for elites to justify their position in the aristocratic meritocracy. Marius’ connection is with the men in general society, Catulus’ is with aristocrats and the extra-social numinous community. This distinction will play itself out again when self-made plebeian Marius meets up with, leads, and eventually wars with down-and-out patrician Sulla, who gave himself the cognomen felix, or “lucky.” Turning to an individual level, Pliny considers the relation of virtus to fortuna in his analysis of virtus as fortitudo at HN 7.100-06. His greatest example of the superiority of courage over calamity comes in 7.104-06 where he details the vicissitudes of Marcus Sergius Silus. 67 Sergius was wounded 23 times, became lame in both hands and feet but kept campaigning. He escaped from Hannibal twice, and, after learning how to sword-fight with his left hand, had an iron prosthetic right hand made in order to increase his lethality. Pliny’s source is a speech made by Sergius against colleagues who were attempting to debar him from sacrifice on account of his disabilities. 68 It is possible that Pliny is suggesting that Sergius’ courage was inferior to his competence with a weapon, considering that on so many campaigns he was 67 Also see Livy 32.27.7, 31.6, 33.21.9, 24.4. 68 HN 7.105: quae omnia ex oratione eius adparent habita cum in praetura sacris arceretur a collegis ut debilis. 57 wounded so brutally. I believe instead that Sergius is an example of state- focused martial valor persevering despite Fortune’s best attempts to the contrary. 69 To return then to virtus as “martial virtue:” to students of the middle republic, this definition is no surprise. In Pliny’s investigation of virtus as fortitudo in the section culminating in M. Sergius’ remarkable story (HN 7.101-06), every example of military exploit and bravery is taken from the middle republic, even after detailing the successes of Caesar and Pompey in the section immediately prior (7.91-99). For middle republican elite men there was a closely scripted path for a male to be a man: he had to wed military with political exploits. Polybius informs us that at this time political service was foreclosed to those who had not completed a decade of service in the army. 70 Higher political offices usually involved military campaigns. To reiterate the arguments of my first chapter, the cursus honorum is one aspect of the narrowly circumscribed script of the elite man’s life. In order to manifest a legible masculinity to his contemporaries, a man had to inhabit a persona that accorded with the audience’s expectations. In middle 69 Cf. Flower 1996:19 n 6. 70 6.19.4: politikh\n de\ labei=n a)rxh\n ou)k e)/cestin ou)deni\ pro/teron e)a\n mh\ de/ka stratei/aj e)niausi/ouj $)= tetekw/j. 58 republican terms, the political and social script involved certain public aspects, such as strict adherence to the cursus honorum, participating in ten campaigns, accumulating public glory through good works, and a reserved agonism with other elites, i.e. one subsuming personal enmities to the good of the state. As we shall see elsewhere in this chapter, personal demeanor and physical disposition were molded by these structures and behaviors. I wish to digress briefly on the topic of reserved agonism. I don’t wish to imply that all aristocrats were perfect citizens. The judgments of historians in antiquity are straightforward regarding the lessons we ought to learn regarding appropriate elite competition, and read our middle republican evidence in light of the collapse of the republic. In Chapter One (16) we addressed the story at Livy 45.35.7 of Servius Sulpicius Galba who was able to engineer the denial of a triumph to his rival L. Aemilius Paulus by tampering with Paulus’s legions, and the censure he received in later history. One who was invoked as a foil to Marius, another famous for his sour grapes, was Marcus Claudius Marcellus. He was a novus homo, consul five times and proconsul twice, and fought Hannibal during the Second Punic War. Sections 24-5 of Plutarch’s life of him recount the conflict between the bold Marcellus and his cautious co-consul, Quintus Fabius. Marcellus’ political enemies arranged for him to declare his co-consul, 59 Quintus Fabius, dictator, which he did to keep the state focused on Hannibal rather than his private conflicts. This is a particularly magnanimous move, considering that the prior year the Augurs had refused his suffect consulship. Also of interest is the tale in section 22 that Marcellus’ enemies refused him a Triumph despite earning the spolia opima, on the grounds that the campaign in Sicily was uncompleted. He settled for an Ovation. Despite the merits of his claims, Marcellus was willing to put aside his grievances for social stability. To return to my argument, what I wish to stress here is that elite Roman males are not recorded as a positive example to posterity, nor do they receive the positive valuation of their ancestral community, for pursuing paths different than the ones I outlined above or by transgressing the rules to attain success. Four different types of evidence lead me to this conclusion. First: family archives. There were archives maintained by every elite family, some of which were used as sources for mainstream histories and instruction of the youth. 71 The tales told within a family might also diverge from the public versions of events, as Cicero complains at Brutus 62: 71 See for example Flower 1996 and Beagon 2005 on the phrase scriptum reliquit in the quotation heading this chapter. On family histories and the annalistic tradition, see Flower 1996:141-48, Habinek 1998:53 esp. notes 52-3. On the utility of laudations for education see Cicero Brut. 61. 60 Et hercules eae quidem exstant: ipsae enim familiae sua quasi ornamenta ac monumenta servabant et ad usum, si quis eiusdem generis occidisset, et ad memoriam laudum domesticarum et ad illustrandam nobilitatem suam. quamquam his laudationibus historia rerum nostrarum est facta mendosior. multa enim scripta sunt in eis quae facta non sunt: falsi triumphi, plures consulatus, genera etiam falsa et ad plebem transitiones, cum homines humiliores in alienum eiusdem nominis infunderentur genus; ut si ego me a M'. Tullio esse dicerem, qui patricius cum Ser. Sulpicio consul anno x post exactos reges fuit. And, by gum, these [laudations] are indeed extant: the families themselves preserve them just like ornaments and monuments and for this purpose, if someone of their clan should die, both for recollecting praise of the household and for the illustrating of their own nobility. Nonetheless, in these laudations the history of our events has been made more mendacious. For many things are written in them which were not done: false triumphs, multiple consulships, indeed false clans and transformations for plebeians, when lower class men were insinuated into a family not their own; just as if I should claim that I was descended from Manius Tullius, who was the patrician consul with Servius Sulpicius, the consul ten years after the time when the kings were driven out. Cicero’s novus homo pique is understandable, as the use of stories of celebrated ancestors was social marketing for clans to maintain their political hegemony. For the purpose of this argument, note what gets lied about: traditional masculine roles. Second, imagines. This element of family history could not be faked. Rules were strict for earning the imago, a wax life-mask of a man who 61 achieved at least the aedileship. It served as a concrete symbol of a man achieving aristocratic social expectations and successfully presenting a masculine persona. It is one thing to make false claims in stories, quite another to make a false mask of an ancestor. A standard way of condemning transgression was by suppressing a man’s imago, and Polybius 6.53-4 describes imagines as a significant goad toward right action for the youth. Indirectly, by the strictures on what it took to earn one, imagines reinforced the limited path men trod to be worthy of memory. Third: histories. A reading of the early period in histories like Livy and the Roman Antiquities presents the same monolithic image of what was worth praise and blame. 72 Fourth: inscriptions. The inscriptional evidence presents the same general codes of value as those outlined above, and if a man gained fame for works outside of the code, it was done as elaboration upon already established and completed scripts of martial and political success and in the same vein of public service, and aristocratic competition. 72 Zerba 2002, like those she relies upon (Wood 1988, MacKendrick 1948, Meador 1970 and Michel 1948) attempts to draw a broad, diachronic definition of the bonus vir, quoting from Cato, Cicero and Quintilian. As will become evident over the course of this chapter, I believe that whatever similarities there are between the middle and late republican and imperial definitions are a traditional holdover, and the differences in the later periods are a reflection of the interplay of hegemonic and countercultural definitions during the period of the civil wars. 62 The evidence of family archives, imagines, histories and inscriptions suggests the middle republican man had limited options for masculine expression. It is to the inscriptions I now turn in order to elaborate upon what in particular were the qualities defining model male performance. More than imagines, funerary inscriptions were omnipresent reminders of the successes of past men and goads towards good behavior. 73 I will proceed from funerary inscriptions (Scipionic then others) to dedicatory offerings (stelae then buildings). Our first is of Cornelius Lucius Scipio Barbatus, censor of 290 BCE. His epitaph is found in Rome, near the Porta Capena, inscribed ca. 200. 74 Van Sickle 1987 following Zevi 1970 asserts that the Scipionic tombs were situated so as to be prominent in many contexts: “the Via Appia tangibly represents Roman ambition to expand towards southern Italy and beyond, and … the choice of Appius Claudius' new road as the site for a 73 e.g. the casual reference to the famous tombs right outside the Porta Capena at Cicero Tusc. 1.13: an tu egressus porta Capena cum Calatini, Scipionum, Serviliorum, Metellorum, sepulcra vides, miseros putas illos? “Should you go out the Capenian gate, when you see the burial places of the Calatini, Scipios, Servilii, Metelli, do you consider them wretched?” 74 For the dating of the inscriptions I follow Coarelli 1972. 63 family sepulcher must have had a politico-cultural import.” The elogium is written in Saturnians, a native italic metrical form 75 (CIL 1.2.6-7): Cornelius Lucius Scipio Barbatus Gnaivod patre | prognatus, fortis vir sapiensque, quoius forma virtutei parisuma | fuit, consol censor aidilis quei fuit apud vos, Taurasia Cisauna Samnia cepit, subigit omne Loucanam opsides abdoucit. Cornelius Lucius Scipio Barbatus begotten from his father Gnaeus, a man strong and smart, whose beauty was equivalent to his virtus, he was consul, censor and aedile among you, he took Taurasia, Cisaunia and Samnia, he pacified all Loucania and lead away hostages. Note how we have the three part Roman name, with the burly nickname “Beard-y,” 76 and the emphasis on the descent from his father. Barbatus is 75 Van Sickle (1987), however, believes that all the elogia were influenced by Hellenistic epigram because they are short, there is a unity to paired lines, and because they address the passers-by. 76 This cognomen is more vexed than a modern might believe. Take Bowersock’s argument reinterpreting a bearded Dionysus as young, not old as conventional scholarly wisdom believes (1995:12): The mistake has been to assume that a beard must indicate an old man. On the contrary, in a Roman context, the beard indicates a younger man, as Aulus Gellius tells us in connection with young men under forty who wore beards in the time of the younger Africanus [n. 33: Gell. NA 3.4] The beard-wearing age was subsequently lowered by the time of Augustus, who led a fashion to become smooth-shaven as early as the age of twenty-four. [n 34: Dio Cass. 48.34.3] It is clear from Ovid, in his work on the art of love, that an attractive young man in his early twienties should have a well-trimmed beard. [n.35 Ovid Ars Am. 1.518 sit coma, sit trita barba resecta manu.] It is equally clear from the sixth satire of Juvenal that having a smooth-shaven throat (radere guttur) was a sure sign of being old. [n. 36 Juv. 6.105]. 64 described with two good martial adjectives: fortis (“brave”) and sapiens (“smart”) which, as we discussed at the head of this chapter, primarily denoted practical military knowledge. It has been proposed that Barbatus is trying to connect to Greek ideas of nobility, the kalos k’agathos, by linking his forma to his virtus. This is not a plausible explanation, since at this time in the early third century there must have been contacts with Greece, but the whole So the bearded Dionysus at Naples must have been, as his epithet would suggest, a young Dionysus, but a young Dionysus after the growth of a beard, a post- pubescent Dionysus. One piece of evidence Bowersock doesn’t address is that of Livy 5.41. When describing the fall of Rome to the Gauls in 386 BCE, Livy describes the evacuation of the city by most of the able bodied, but many of the senators stay, dressed in their finery, sitting on chairs outside of their houses. They are described as looking like statues in a temple, they are so austere, noble, august, and (I suppose) still. Then: ad eos uelut simulacra uersi cum starent, M. Papirius, unus ex iis, dicitur Gallo barbam suam, ut tum omnibus promissa erat, permulcenti scipione eburneo in caput incusso iram mouisse, atque ab eo initium caedis ortum, ceteros in sedibus suis trucidatos; post principium caedem nulli deinde mortalium parci, diripi tecta, exhaustis inici ignes. While they (the Gauls) were standing facing towards them (the Romans sitting in their chairs) just like statues, Marcus Papirius, one of those men, it is said, once a Gaul plucked his beard (as was the style at that time), to have moved Papirius to anger and was smacked on his head with Papirius’ ivory scipio (staff), and thence rose the beginning of the slaughter, the others struck down in their seats; after the initial slaughter there was thence no mortals were then spared, the houses were stripped and flames were thrown into the empty buildings. And so this leaves us with multiple interpretations of the cognomen Barbatus. Since no later inscriptions have it I conclude that it was not an inherited cognomen like Macedonicus or Africanus. Does it mean that Bowersock is right and Barbatus maintained a beard beyond when it was fashionable? or Barbatus perhaps accomplished exceptional deeds early on in his career, i.e. when he was still bearded? Or rather might Bowersock be wrong and Barbatus had a particularly long or well kept beard? Because of the line quoius forma virtutei parisuma fuit I believe the latter. The linking of beauty with martial virtue suggests that the beard was seen as a particularly distinctive and manly ornament. Least likely of all is that he is being insulted as ugly and cowardly, though this remains a possibility. 65 hellenophilia/phobia we associate with negotiations of identity of the Roman upper class is something that won’t bloom for another 150 years. 77 Furthermore, the phrasing suggests a connection of two terms usually in antithesis. Then there is the list of offices and the reminder of the public sphere, the illusion of the face-to-faceness of Rome (apud vos). The final two lines list his military successes, though the terms fortis, sapiens, and virtutei resound to the martial sphere as well. Barbatus’ son, Lucius Cornelius Scipio, censor of 258, has a similar epitaph, inscribed ca. 240-30 78 (CIL 1.2.8-9); L. Cornelio L. f Scipio [a]idiles cosol cesor honc oino ploirume consentiont R[omai] duonoro optumo fuise viro Luciom Scipione. Filios Barbati Consol censor aidilis hic fuet a[pud vos]; hec cepit Corsica Aleriaque urbe, dedet Tempestatebus aide mereto[d] For Lucius Cornelius Scipio, son of Lucius Aedile, Consul, Censor 77 Wheeler 1988: 189. 78 The son’s inscription was indeed written before that of his father, the father’s inscribed over an erased earlier inscription. For the potential reasons, see Coarelli 1972 and as potential evidence for the strength of aristocratic archives, see van Sickle 1987. 66 This one, Lucius Scipio, most at Rome agree was the very best noble man. Son of Barbatus he was consul, censor and aedile here for you; he took Corsica and the town of Aleria and he gave a temple to Storms as a return for a benefit. Lucius also stresses paternity, offices, and martial virtue. His focus is slightly different from his father’s. In addition to foregrounding his presence as an elected officer of the people localized in Rome (Romai, at Rome (locative); hic, here; apud vos, before you), he also emphasizes his position at the foremost of the aristocratic community. By popular acclaim (ploirume consentiont R[omai]) he is the optimal aristocrat (duonoro optumo fuise viro), duonoro = bonorum, 79 a term denoting aristocratic value. In addition, we see the appearance of temple dedication and a connection to the divine. The use of meretod, an archaic ablative for mereto, “with merit” i.e. “in return for services rendered,” indicates that at some point he promised a temple to Storms or Winds (perhaps on the trip to Corsica?), and because the goddesses kept up their end of the bargain, he started their worship. The privileged connection of the aristocrats to the divine (such as holding all the major state priesthoods) was another technique to justify their rule. 79 OLD: bonus. 67 Three dead Scipionic youths follow the basic pattern of their adult forebears (CIL 1.2.10-13). Each died in the mid second century, and only one was able to achieve the first rung of the cursus honorum, that of Quaestor. All three stress similar types of excellences and a concern with how their merits are valued in their communities. For Publius Cornelius Scipio, in brief compass he exhibited what is best in life CIL 1.2.10.: mors perfe[cit] tua ut essent omnia | brevia, honos fama virtusque | gloria atque ingenium, quibus sei | in longa licu[i]set tibi utier vita, | facile facteis superases gloriam | maiorum. Death brought it about that everything of yours was cut short, nobility, good repute, masculinity, glory and inborn talent, by which qualities, should it have been permitted for you to use a longer life easily you would have accomplished it that you outstripped the glory of the ancestors. Publius Cornelius had the big five of aristocratic martial virtue (honos fama virtusque | gloria atque ingenium). 80 His epitaph shifts the focus to the merit of these virtues among the community that really matters, the ancestors. Note the agonism of not just wanting to fit in, to express the virtues traditionally valorized, but the expectation that masculine competition extends into the afterlife as well. 80 Brenk 1986: 222 “In these, virtus, honos, fama, gloria, factis must certainly suggest military efficiency.” 68 The epitaph of another young dead man is less concerned with the way a man is represented before his fallen ancestors, but rather with the implicit accusations of the community of Romans who may be passing by: Magna sapientia | multasque virtutes aetate quom parva | posidet hoc saxsum. Quoiei vita defecit, non | honos, honore is hic situs, quei nunquam |victus est virtutei, annos gnatus XX is | l[oc]eis mandatus. Ne quairatis honore |quei minus sit mandatus. This rock contains the great wisdom and great virtues greater than his brief age. Whose life failed, his honors did not, with honor he lies here, who never was conquered in manly virtue, at 20 years of age he was committed to this place. Let you not ask why he was committed shorted in honor. Because he died early, he could not achieve public office. Nonetheless, despite not having other public expressions of his honor, he was able to exhibit those qualities he ought as a good Scipio: he maintained his honor (mentioned three times) and remained undefeated in his manly virtue. The latest of the Scipionic epitaphs I believes brings home the arguments I am making regarding the relation of public and military success with that of social and generational competition. The peregrine praetor of 139 Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Hispanus (CIL 1.2.15) had his monument erected fifty years after that of Publius Scipio, added to the original complex 69 of tombs. Van Sickle’s description of it suggests that it was the meagerest of them as well (1987: 43 n.9): “In a new section of the sepulcher, an unadorned sarcophagus composed of slabs of Anio tufa, but the front composed of two slabs of peperino and inscribed with the offices and two elegiac distichs.” Its text reads: Cn. Cornelius C. f. Scipio Hispanus pr. aid. cur. q.tr.mil.Ii Xvir sl. iudik. Xvir sacr. fac. Virtutes generis mieis moribus accumulavi, progeniem genui, facta patris petiei. Maiorum optenui laudem, ut sibei me esse creatum laetentur; stirpem nobilitavit honor. Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Hispanus, son of Gaius, praetor, curule aedile quaestor, military tribune twice, decemvir for trials, decemvir for sacrifices By my ways I have increased the virtues of my clan, I fathered progeny, I sought the deeds of my father. I have earned the praise of my ancestors, such that they are happy I was born; my honor has ennobled my stock. Hispanus also emphasizes his public successes, his military service and his connection with the divine. He casts his rivalry both in terms of his father and in terms of his ancestors, both of whom look favorably upon him, so much so that they rejoice that he was born. He has managed to further the worth of an already well esteemed clan, a clan well represented in the 70 complex surrounding his tomb. Interestingly, his epitaph is written in elegiacs, one of the new meters in Rome, perhaps as a sign of his Hellenism. The Scipionic epitaphs utilize a vocabulary of martial and aristocratic virtue, demonstrating their virtues as at once socially cohesive and competitive. Their presentation of the ideal man and makeup of society tracks with other epitaphs of famous men as well. As an example, take that of Appius Claudius Caecus, censor of 312 (CIL I.1.i.x): Appius Claudius C F Caecus censor cos bis dict interrex CCC pr CC aed cur CC q tr mil CCC com plura oppida de Samnitibus cepit sabInorum et tuscorum exerci tum fudit pacem fierI cum pYrrho rege prohibit incensura viam appiam stravit ei aquam in urbem adduxit aedem bellonae fecit. Appius Claudius son of Gaius, the Blind Censor, consul twice, dictator, three times interrex twice praetor, twice curule aedile, quaestor, thrice tribune of the army he took several towns of the Samnites, trounced an army of sabines and tuscans, forbad a peace to be made with king Pyrrhus, in his consulship he paved the Via Appia, and lead water into the city and made a temple to Bellona. 71 In the first third of the epitaph he stresses his elected political offices, the second third his military successes, and the third his public works. Each of these thirds has a strong military component, the politics reinforced by the campaigns he went on as consul and dictator, and the public works capped off by a temple to an archaic Roman war goddess, Bellona. One of his innovations was adding to the columns clipea, or shields with the faces of his ancestors painted on them. This temple not only reflected his own martial prowess but was meant to elucidate the martial prowess of his whole clan. 81 In my reading of these texts I have stressed the competition of the living with the dead. Here I differ somewhat from Habinek 1998 and Flower 1996. Habinek: 50-53 addresses the Scipionic elogia and elite funerary practice. He writes (52): While the concentration and interconnectedness of the epitaphs invite the reader to imagine the continuity of the Scipionic tradition, the allusions to a judging audience, either living or deceased, suggest that the force of tradition must be reinvented and reasserted in each succeeding generation and, furthermore, that the reader is instrumental in the validation of the tradition. 81 On clipea, see below, 78. Though we cannot know if his ancestors themselves dedicated a temple to Bellona or any other goddess, Piny’s description of the clipea as innovations suggests not, and that Caecus’ triumph was also over his ancestors. 72 Social replication and reinforcement are key to both our readings. But, writing about the eulogy he describes it thus (53): The eulogy, if surviving fragments and allusions are an accurate reflection of the general tenor, consists of an attempt to reconcile the life of the recently deceased to the standards and expectations established by the prior history of the clan – a defense of the dead man, as it were, before a jury of his ancestors. Elite epitaphs and eulogies served to replicate Roman society while framing the debate over values in terms best exemplified by the clan which was conducting the funeral and erecting the inscription. In a sense, the dead man had to pass a final entrance exam to join the coterie of noble and remembered dead. However, I extend the arguments of Flower, 82 who sees two levels of competition at play surrounding the death of an elite: the funerals provided the opportunity for one clan to gain supremacy over other clans, and for elites in general to maintain their dominance over the lesser orders. I see in our evidence a third level of competition between the new dead and the old dead. For example, in Hispanus’ inscription he notes that his ancestors are happy he was born (ut sibei me esse creatum/ laetentur), because Hispanus’ honor nobilitavit (“ennobled”) his stock, i.e. extended it 82 Flower 1996: 10-12 and esp. ch. 7. 73 beyond what previously existed. Regarding the dead youth P. Cornelius Scipio it is claimed that, had he lived, facile facteis superases gloriam | maiorum, “easily would [he] have surpassed the glory of the ancestors.” At the head of this chapter we saw Quintus Caecilius Metellus claim superiority over the communities of the living and the dead by asserting: haec contigisse ei nec ulli alii post Romam conditam “[the listed aristocratic values] applied to him and to no one else since the founding of Rome.” Perhaps the most hyperbolic expression is the extant portion of the eulogy for Scipio Africanus by his former legate, C. Laelius Sapiens, Consul 140 (M 121.V.22): quiapropter neque tanta diis inmortalibus gratia haberi potest, quanta habenda est, quod is cum illo animo atque ingenio hac e civitate potissimum natus est, neque tam moleste atque acre mi ferri quam ferundum est, cum †eo morborum temovit† et in eodem tempore periit, cum et vobis et omnibus, qui hanc rem publicam salvam volunt, maxime vivo opus est, Quirites. On this account it is neither possible for the gods to be thanked as much as should be done, because this man in particular was born from this citizenry with that mind of his and his natural talent, nor is it possible for me to bear it as wretchedly nor bitterly as it ought to be, since †with that one of the dead he went away† and he died at that very same time, when both you and everybody who desire this republic to be well had most need of him alone. 74 Though the speech is aimed at an audience of contemporaries, it presents Scipio as transcendently perfect, not just one man supremely fitting an age, but an age defined by one man. I am arguing, then, that, in addition to the eulogy being “a defense of the dead man, as it were, before a jury of his ancestors” (Habinek 1998: 53), it is also a competition with those ancestors before a third group, perhaps judging the past before the present, or perhaps to a universal audience. I think it plausible that the agonism of late-middle republican inscriptions, such as that of Hirrus in 102 (see below, 79) can be read into the middle republican evidence: quod neque conatus quisquanst neque [post audebit]/nosce rem, ut famaa facta feramus virei (“know the affair that nobody attempted nor will again/ that we may bear forth the famous deeds of this man”). Ultimately, I think it likely that the competitive qualities of middle republican Roman elite culture have been underestimated, perhaps from trusting in their presentation of social cohesiveness by the elites (see above). To turn now to more direct forms of personal marketing, consider inscriptions erected by elites during their lifetimes. In addition to leaving behind inscriptions delineating how elites followed traditional Roman practices of being a man, some designed 75 by the man himself, 83 some clearly not, 84 elite men would also dedicate their spoils to abstract beliefs they revered and believed they themselves embodied well. 85 I have already treated Q. Fabius Maximus Verrucosus’ temple of Honos (55), its expansion into Honos et Virtus by M. Claudius Marcellus, and Marius’ own temple of Honos et Virtus. I have also mentioned (70) that Appius Claudius Caecus, victor of many campaigns, dedicated a temple to Bellona, an archaic Roman war-goddess. Sometimes an anthropomorphized god was adopted as a patron deity. Hercules was a favorite dedicatee, 86 such as with Lucius 83 Though the evidence is later than the period discussed in this chapter, it is recorded that Varro orchestrated his funeral practices in accordance with Pythagorean beliefs, and we of course have Petronius’ immortal description of the care Trimalchio put into his funeral. 84 It is now believed that Barbatus’ initial inscription was effaced for the sake of the one extant, composed at least 70 years after his death. See Coarelli 1972, Warmington. 85 I am passing over here dedications to concrete but un-anthropomorphized deities, such as the temple to the winds in L. Cornelius Scipio’s epitaph above, Tuditanus’ restoration of rites to the river Timavus in 129, or Calvinus’ general restoration: sei deo sei deivae sac. | G. Sextius G. f. Calvinus pr. | de senati sententia restituit. Whether this is sacred to a god or a goddess, Gaius Sextius Calvinus, son of Gaius, praetor, in accordance with the wishes of the senate, has restored it. As I argued earlier, these works are not dedicated through some special connection to an individual’s characteristics, but as part of the general campaign of elites to justify their privileged position through a superior connection with the divine. 86 Appius Claudius Caecus is credited with making the worship of Hercules public. Nonetheless, he persisted as a popular private god for all classes. e.g. CIL 1617 Herculei | sacrum | C. Marci. C. l. Alex. fecit; servos | vovit liber solvit.| “Gaius Marcius Alexander, 76 Mummius’ temple of 142 (the temple is lost but the inscription in Saturnians remains.): L. Mummi L. f. cos. Duct. | auspicio imperioque |eius Achaia capt. Corinto |deleto Romam redieit | triumphans. Ob hasce |res bene gestas quod | in bello voverat | hanc aedem et signu. | Herculis Victoris | imperator dedicat. Lucius Mummius, son of Lucius, Consul With him as leader under his auspices and direction he captured Achaia and with Corinth destroyed he returned to Rome triumphing. On account of these well done deeds, this which he swore in war, this temple and statue of Hercules Victor the general dedicates. Above (7) I treated the significance of Fortune to the upper classes. Marcus Furius made a dedication to both Fortune and Mars in this column from Tusculum from 225 BCE (CIL 48-9): M Fourio C f tribunos [milita]re de praidad Fortune dedet. M Fourio C f tribunos [milita]re de praidad Maurte dedet. Marcus Furius, son of Gaius, military tribune dedicates this to Fortune from the spoils. Marcus Furius, son of Gaius, freedman of Gaius, made this dedication to Hercules; a slave he vowed it, as a freedman he accomplished it.” 77 military tribune dedicates this to Mars from the spoils. Extant are many such columns dedicated from booty taken from various peoples, an eternal triumph over locals. A long inscription, set up in 260 BCE, commemorates C. Duilius’ naval victory over the Carthaginians. He claims he was the first Roman to perform a naval exploit, and repeatedly mentions his defeats of Hannibal. These many different inscriptions indicate a common vocabulary of expression from famous members of the middle republic for effective masculine performance, a vocabulary that will reappear in the late republic. Mammoth building projects were also useful for advertising a clan. The two oldest basilicae in Rome, the Basilica Porcia of 184 BCE and the Basilica Aemilia/Paulli of 210-190 BCE, both located in the forum, were imposing physical reminders of the success of each clan. 87 The late 87 Platner and Ashby 2002 (1929) believes the Basilica Porcia is the oldest of its kind in Rome. Steinby 1993:83-87, 163-68 and Richardson 1992:54-56 disagree, claiming the Basilica Aemilia is. Steinby disagrees with Richardson and Platner, believing there were two basilicae, one Aemilia that received the clipea, and one Paulli, built (not just refurbished) by L. Aemilius Paullus and finished by his son L. Aemilius Lepidus Paullus in 34 (after his father’s proscription). I am not qualified to weigh in on the priority of the Basilica Porcia or whether the Basilica Aemilia becomes called Paulli after renovation instead of there being two basilicae. For the purposes of my argument, it is the initial construction, adornment with clipea, and legacy that are significant. In addition to the Pliny passages above, on the temple see Plut. Caes. 29; App. BC 2.26; Cass. Dio 49.42; Stat. Silv. 1.1.30. For an interesting and catty interpretation of the later renovation, one claiming that it was cheapness, not a sense of history that caused L. Aemilius Paullus to use the old columns in the renovation of the new temple, see Cic. ad Att. 4.16.14. 78 republican implications of the middle republican building programs are clear. In the highly competitive environment of the late republic, M. Aemilius Lepidus, Consul of 78, commissioned a phase of renovation, one that included the posting of clipea, or shields bearing the portraits of famous Aemilii. Clipea, Pliny informs us (HN 35.4), were a special reward for martial manliness: origo plena virtutis, faciem reddi in scuto cuiusque, qui fuerit usus illo “The origin was full of virtus, to have the face rendered upon the shield of each man who had used it,” and this reward had been in use for hundreds of years. In addition to reminding the people at Rome of the military, political and social successes of the clan, perhaps M. Aemilius Lepidus was architecturally alluding to Appius Claudius Caecus, whose building was the first to have clipea (Pliny 35.3). Re-advertising to the public of the martial virtue of his clan (and his father’s public mindedness), Lepidus’ son Lepidus, triumvir monetalis of 65, minted denarii of the basilica with the clipea distinctly depicted (#1.450/238). 88 Furthermore, in 54 (partially funded by Julius Caesar’s Gallic War booty) L. Aemilius Paullus redid the basilica and made it the most magnificent one in Rome, listed second in Pliny’s eighteen great buildings 88 Also see Flower 1996, Appendix C: Moneyers Using Ancestral Themes on their Coins. 79 (miracula/magnifica) in Rome (after the Circus Maximus and before the Forum of Augustus – HN 36.24). The 60,000 sesterces Paullus was given indeed glorified his clan: nihil gratius illo monumento, nihil gloriosius “Nothing is more pleasing, nothing more glorious than that monument.” 89 And so, through the building programs of the basilicae we can see the initial social ramifications of middle republican construction, as well as its enduring significance. 90 To conclude this section on inscriptions let’s turn to the late Republican inscription of Hirrus. It was dedicated at Corinth in 102 (CIL #2662): quod neque conatus quisquanst neque [post audebit] nosce rem, ut famaa facta feramus virei: Auspicio [Ant]oni [M]arci pro consule classis isthmum traductast missaque per pelagus. Ipse iter eire profectus Sidam. Classem Hirrus Atheneis pro praetore anni e tempore constituit. Lucibus haec pauc[ei]s parvo perfecta tumultu magn[a qu]om ratione atque salut[e bona] Q[u]ei probus est, lauda[t], quei contra est invidet illum;] invid[ea]nt, dum q[uot cond]ecet id v[enerent]. Know this business, which neither anyone before nor ever will again 89 Cic. ad Att 4.16. 90 As a coda to this, the building burned in 14 BCE and was rebuilt by the Aemilii Lepidi under the auspices of and using the money of Augustus (Cass. Dio 54.24). 80 attempt, so that we might bear the famous deeds of the man: Under the authority of the proconsul Marcus Antonius a fleet was dragged across the isthmus and sent into the sea. He himself set out on the journey to go to Sida. Hirrus assembled the fleet at Athens as propraetor at that time of year. In a few days it was accomplished with little ruckus with great intelligence and good health. The man who is upright, praises, and the one who is not, looks askance let them envy, provided that they revere what’s right. Hirrus has constructed his audience of worthies, men who are proper and upright. He doesn’t wish to be praised by those below him. 91 Also, he has attained supreme success, so much so that it is of a unique type and can never be repeated. Hirrus’ epitaph also paints aristocratic competition as positive, spinning the evil eye (invideant) into a happy rivalry (even if there is not a chance of beating him). Indeed, the language of this passage, with its aggressive archaizing (utilizing forms believed to have been in use before though not in current fashion, such as famaa for famE, virei for viri, eire for Fre), also demonstrates his attempts to take himself out of the present and 91 The word probus is a class-independent value. Consider the inscription for a scurra, a professional buffoon and parasite, set up by his old master and patron (CIL 1.2 #1378): …. o L. l. scurrae homini | [probi]ssumo maxumae | [fidei] optumo leiberto | [patronus] fecit “His patron erected this for a scurra, a most upright person, supremely trustworthy, the best freedman” 81 instantly make him part of the community of ancestors, a community he wishes to envy him. We have thus far been presented with a coherent script of behaviors valorized by Roman elite men. I wish here to sketch out some of the remaining contours of what qualified as a failed masculine performance in the middle Republic. Because the Senate had Censors, we can see through censorial notae how the boundaries of the aristocracy were defended. We’ve already seen some of this, such as concerns over appropriate ways of making money (7 n.9); and improper use of wealth making a man soft (15-18). 92 We have censorial harangues regarding the appropriate level of affection for mothers (Ch. 1: 7 on sons vs. mothers); wives (Cato expelled Manilius from the senate: “because he kissed (katephil:sen) his wife in broad daylight while his daughter watched. He said that for him never except when there was great thunder did he embrace (periplak:nai) his wife” Plut. Cato Mai. 17.7); and masculine society (Q. Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus M 6): si sine uxore vivere possemus, Quirites, omnes ea molestia careremus; set quoniam ita natura tradidit, ut nec cum illis satis commode, nec 92 Sometimes literally. See 20. Also cp. Gell 4.20.11 where P. Scipio Nasica and Marcus Popilius demoted a nameless eques to aerarius status because he was overweight while his horse was underweight. 82 sine illis ullo modo vivi possit, saluti perpetuae potius quam brevi voluptati consulendum est If we could live without a wife, fellow citizens, all of us would lack something obnoxious; but since nature made it so, that neither can we live sufficiently well with them, nor without them in any way, we have to look to our ongoing health rather than our temporary pleasure. Men also received the censorial nota should their property be insufficiently tended (Gell 4.12.1-3 = M 124 of Cato): si quis agrum suum passus fuerat sordescere eumque indiligenter curabat ac neque araverat neque purgaverat, sive quis arborem suam vineamque habuerat derelictui, non id sine poena fuit, sed erat opus censorium, censores aerarium faciebant. item, si quis eques Romanus equum habere gracilentum aut parum nitidum visus erat, ‘inpolitae’ notabatur; id verbum significat quasi tu dicas ‘incuriae’. If someone had permitted his field to go rough from neglect and he tended it indiligently and neither tilled it nor cleared it, or if someone had his tree or vine in a state of neglect, it was not without punishment, but was the duty of the censors, the censors made him an aerarius [of low rank]. Likewise, if some Roman Equestrian was seen to have a skinny or insufficiently tended horse, it was noted as “unpolished”; this word means what you might say as “uncared for.” Also, Cato railed against Q. Minucius Thermus for abusing his power over allies. This presented a bad face to the world and was shameful in the senate (Gell 10.3.17): Dixit a decemviris parum bene sibi cibaria curata esse. Iussit vestimenta detrahi atque flagro caedi. Decemviros Bruttiani verberavere, videre multi mortales. Quis hanc contumeliam, quis hoc imperium, quis hanc servitutem ferre potest? nemo hoc rex ausus est 83 facere; eane fieri bonis, bono genere gnatis, bonis consultis? ubi societas? ubi fides maiorum? insignitas iniurias, plagas, verbera, vibices, eos dolores atque carnificinas per dedecus atque maximam contumeliam, inspectantibus popularibus suis atque multis mortalibus, te facere ausum esse? set quantum luctum, quantum gemitum, quid lacrimarum, quantum fletum factum audivi! servi iniurias nimis aegre ferunt: quid illos, bono genere gnatos, magna virtute praeditos, opinamini animi habuisse atque habituros, dum vivent? He said that the food was insufficiently well taken care of by the Decemvirs. He ordered their clothes to be stripped off and for them to be struck with a whip. The Bruttani beat them, many men saw it. Who can bear this indignity, who this dominion, who this slavery? No king dared to do this; should these things come about for good men, born from good stock, of good consideration? Where is the fellowship? Where is the trustworthiness of our ancestors? Infamous injuries, whippings, beatings, welts, those pains and tortures in accordance with disgrace and the greatest outrage, with their own people looking on and many other people besides, is it that you dared to do this? But what grief, what groans, what tears, what weeping did I hear! Slaves can barely stand injustice, but those men, born of good stock, endowed with great virtue, what do you think they felt and shall feel about it, as long as they live? At another time Cato took on this same Thermus on another abuse of power (Gell. 13.25.12): tuum nefarium facinus peiore facinore operire postulas, succidas humanas facis, decem capita libera interficis, decem hominibus vitam eripis indicta causa, iniudicatis, incondemnatis You demand to cover up your nefarious crime with a worse crime, you made human being into cuts of meat, you slay ten free souls, you have snatched the life from ten men on an untried case, unjudged, uncondemned. 84 Personal disposition was also significant and was deemed an external expression of internal characteristics. For example, there was seen a connection between over-fine dress and maintenance of the self with bad morals. Scipio Africanus, a man called back from his command in Spain on account of licentia et luxuria: he took the line that he despised it in others. In a section of Gellius describing the changing fashions of long vs. short sleeved tunics he reports Africanus’ attack on P. Sulpicius Gallus thus (6.12.1-4 = M 124): nam qui cotidie unguentatus adversus speculum ornetur, cuius supercilia radantur, qui barba vulsa feminibusque subvulsis ambulet, qui in conviviis adulescentulus cum amatore cum chiridota tunica inferior accubuerit, qui non modo vinosus, sed virosus quoque sit, eumne quisquam dubitet, quin idem fecerit, quod cinaedi facere solent? For one who daily perfumed is dressed before a mirror, whose eyebrows are shaved, the kind of one who walks about with beard plucked and with legs tweezed, who in convivia as a young man in a long sleeved tunic with his lover lay below him on the bench, who not only is a drunkard, but also is a man- ard, should anyone doubt that this man, does the same things that cinaedi are accustomed to do? Romans deemed themselves solemn. Scipio tossed a man from the Senate for yawning (Gell. 4.20.7-10), and had no compunctions about demoting men who made bad jokes (4.20.5-6): 85 Qui iurabat cavillator quidam et canicula et nimis ridicularius fuit. [the censor asked] “ut tu ex animi tui sententia uxorem habes?” “Habeo equidem,” inquit” uxorem, sed non hercle ex animi mei sententia.” tum censor eum, quod intempestive lascivisset, in aerarios rettulit, causamque hanc ioci scurrilis apud se dicti subscripsit. The man who was swearing was a certain kind of joker and little bitch and too much a jester. When the censor asked him, “and do you in the opinion of your mind have a wife?” “I sure do” he said “have a wife, but, by gum, not one of my mind.” Then the censor, because that man had been frivolous out of order, made him an aerarius [a low rank] and noted that the reason for this was the scurrilous joke made before him. Though this tale may be apocryphal, the maintenance of stories of this type indicate how Romans presented themselves to themselves. In addition to the elements of public socialization of forum and battlefield mentioned above, there were some traditional elements of private education to socialize elite males into proper forms of behavior. There is extensive bibliography on the ways young men were habituated into following these structures. 93 I will have more to say about education in Chapters Three and Five, where I describe how education gradually becomes transformed after the advent of 93 The bibliography is far too long to go into here as most social historical gender work touches upon this issue, and throughout this work are lots of citations to works for particular issues. Let it suffice to enumerate the ones I found most useful: Wyke 1994, Gardner 1995, Gleason 1995, Habinek 1997, Richlin 1997, Gamel 1998, Gunderson 2000, Parker 2001, Phang 2002, Richlin 2003, Miller 2004, Richlin (forthcoming). 86 philosophy. The traditional compass of authorized knowledge was fairly circumscribed. We addressed above the Roman sense of practicality and practical wisdom. 94 Roman schooling was quite practical, focusing on weights and numbers, 95 basic grammar, learning the twelve tables by heart. Rhetorical training was something not strictly desired until the mid 2 nd c BCE; we hear into Cicero’s day people proud of their unschooled tongues (and the success or failure of them). In addition to school, the house was a great place of socialization. There were informal techniques of socialization of seeing fathers interacting 94 Wheeler 1988 contra Gruen claims Roman practicality extended beyond simple plodding, but to crafty plotting as well (stratagems in battle and treaties), and that it wasn’t until the second century there was the backlash against the perceived image of the slimy Greeks and an attempt to prove Romans to be the “people of fides” (Wheeler 1988:177). I agree with Wheeler and extend his argument with two other areas, first the range of terms applied to the Greeks, either Achaians (a neutral term), Hellenes (their own term), or eventually Greeks or its diminutive Graeculi (a derogative term, especially in the diminutive). The Graeci were a backwards tribe in Laconia, and the term has the same feel as our contemporary term “trailer trash” or “rednecks.” All in all, an odd fit considering the Roman rivalry about intellect. My point is the negative terms don’t come in until the third century, when this contestation over Roman terms came to the fore. I furthermore agree with Wheeler considering the continued enjoyment of riddles. The iconic locus for the traditional enjoyment of riddles is V. Ecl 3.104-07. To be sure, Dix 1995, Wormell 1960, and Taylor 1945 are correct that Virgil has written a rather complex riddle, one to keep scholars busy for two millennia now, what I am concerned with is the legibility of the image of bucolic riddling to the audience, as well as the inclusion of the riddle in Virgil’s poem as evidence for the persistence of the enjoyment of riddles at Rome. We also have riddles in Cicero, Catullus Juvenal, and Suetonius. If the Romans were eminently practical as scholars as Gruen thinks, the sideways thinking of the riddle does not seem as if it should be as popular as it was. For the similarities of oracles to riddles, see the bibliography in Taylor. 95 On the difficulty of learning the ponderous reckoning system, see Bonner 1977: 167, 187- 88. 87 with mothers and slaves and other children, and seeing his father holding court in the morning salutatio. There were the public/private actions of small groups at commissationes, roughly equivalent to the symposia. There were the family archives mentioned above, with stories of greatness and right action, public service and its benefits for the clan. Flower treats in some length the pressures upon an elite man imposed by the staring of the imagines from their boxes in the atrium: “It makes sense for a culture based largely on shame to construct for itself an ‘audience’ which watches its member in his own home. Such an audience is virtually ever present as the conscience of the individual member is also assimilated to it. 96 ” Late republican Roman children also listened to mythological stories and legendary stories of heroes not covered by their family archives, whose characters provided models worthy of emulation. The active virtus of a Manilius or Cincinnatus, especially paired with the passive virtue of a Lucretia, reinforced separate spheres of activity for boys and girls, and through this indirect learning, structuring their predispositions and habits, reinforcing the character types we have seen so prevalent throughout this chapter. As we shall see in the next chapter, at Rome there was also a 96 Flower 1996: 14. See also 10, 15, 59. 88 tradition of paternal praecepta, or maxims, functioning much like a home- grown philosophizing, whose simple assertions of fact starkly delineate the underlying rules of the world and the position of humans in it. 97 Last but not least is the power of the mother. 98 Let us now turn to higher education. 97 Habinek 1989, Inwood 2000, Zerba 2002. Related to this is riddling. See above n. 94. 98 On mothers holding the traditional role of gatekeepers of morality see Hallett, Dixon. Also see Leon 1951 for traditional matronality. 89 III. THE HEGEMON AND THE PHILOSOPHER Quam ob rem hortor omnes qui facere id possunt, ut huius quoque generis laudem iam languenti Graeciae eripiant et transferant in hanc urbem, sicut reliquas omnes, quae quidem erant expetendae, studio atque industria sua maiores nostri transtulerunt…quod si haec studia traducta erunt ad nostros, ne bibliothecis quidem Graecis egebimus. - Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 2.2.5, 6 99 The initial salvo of the second Tusculan, Cicero’s exhortation to his readers to make Greek philosophy Roman, reads like a general’s harangue before a big battle, or a speech to raise troops before going out on campaign. The prior sexual, military and aesthetic conquest of the impotent/flaccid Greeks (languenti 100 ) was left incomplete – Romans had left the citadels of learning un-stormed. There was no reason why the technologies of learning should be any different from the other moveable property (reliquas omnes) the ancestors (maiores) thought worthy of carting over to and incorporating into Rome (in hanc urbem). Rome can be self-sufficient in this area as well (ne 99 “Wherefore I encourage all those who can do it, to snatch away the praise of this sort from the impotent Greeks, and to bear it into this city, just as our ancestors bore in all the other ones, the ones which indeed had to be sought out, by their own zeal and industry… if these pursuits are dragged over to our side, we will not even need the Greek libraries.” 100 Adams 1982:46. 90 bibliothecis quidem Graecis egebimus). The verbs eripere, transferre, and traducere were often used in connection to enslavement and plunder, rapere and its compounds were regular terms for rape, as traducere may have been as well. 101 Philosophy is made to be as burly and manly an activity as any. What all this talk of rape and plunder cloaks is just how radical a statement Cicero is making. As we have seen in Chapter One, the project of philosophy is one Romans felt ambiguously about. On the one hand, there was value to the training given by philosophy and its attendant rhetoric, but there was the risk that turning away from the practical traditional learning of the Romans to the abstract learning of the Greeks might make a stout Roman as languens as a Greek. Cicero does identify an ongoing problem of the Greekness of philosophy and rhetoric: Cicero’s philosophical predecessor Lucretius laments the “difficulty of illuminating in Latin the dark secrets discovered by the Greeks”; even a century later Quintilian would have to introduce rhetorical figures in Greek first, then in Latin. 102 Nonetheless, the 101 Adams 1982:175 “Rapio is a simar type of euphemism to duco: both express the taking off of someone for unspecified purposes. But rapio had a strong implication that the act was carried out against the will of the victim.” 102 “Difficulty…Greeks” Lucretius DRN 1.135-6, translation Leonard & Smith (1970:217), cf. Farrell 2001: 41. Also cf. 1.831-2, 3.260, 4.1. On Quintilian’s assertion of the primacy of Greek over Latin education, both in the sense that it should be studied first and in the sense that it is the origin of Roman knowledge, see, for example, Inst. 1.1.12 or 1.4.1. On his assertion of the superiority of the Greek alphabet to accurately represent the sounds of 91 absurdness of the image of the philosopher in combat evidences Cicero’s need to justify and market the philosophical project to his contemporaries in terms of traditional masculine imagery. This double game – the suspicion of philosophy while recognizing its utility – is at the heart of one contested area of elite manhood where middle republican models of masculinity fit poorly with the realities of the late republican world. I believe Cicero’s choice of martial terminology validates the inherited middle republican ideal of masculinity, which is the late republican hegemonic ideal as delineated in the last chapter. To modern readers of the empire it may appear at first blush that Cicero’s aim prevailed. I suspect many would read without pause Beagon’s assessment of Pliny’s Stoicism (2005:15): “[it] was not the carefully worked- through theorizing of the specialist philosopher; it was the general background knowledge of a well-educated man, a world-view in effect almost unconsciously absorbed and displayed. As such, it acts as a valuable speech, see 1.4.6-17. For examples of his use of both Greek and Latin terminology, see Inst. 1.1.35, 1.1.37, 1.4.18, 1.4.24, 1.5.4 et passim. Cicero elsewhere laments the limitations of his native speech, such as De fin. III.1.3, but his optimistic boosterism also speaks to the contrary (De Fin. 1.3.10, quoted in Leonard and Smith 1970: 217): ita sentio et saepe disserui Latinam linguam non modo non imopem, ut vulgo putarent, sed locupletiorem etiam quam Graecam. “I feel and often have expounded thus that the Latin tongue not only isn’t poor, as is commonly believed, but indeed more abundant than the Greek one.” On the trope generally, including modern precipitations of Latin as the “poor relation of Greek,” see Farrell 2001: Ch.2. 92 indication of educated attitudes generally.” Shaw 1985 is a rightly famous article detailing the utility of philosophical language to permit the governing Romans to communicate with their subject peoples, and D’Arms 1990 describes Pliny’s philosophy as a gentle way of chastising his contemporaries at convivia to practice good old-fashioned egalitarian Roman morals. Stockton’s commentary on Ad Fam. 4.5, Servius Sulpicius Rufus’ letter of consolation to Cicero on the death of Tullia, fits this same mold (1991 (1969): 188): “This delicate agnosticism was typical of many members of the Roman upper classes of Cicero’s day…Cicero himself normally shared this agnosticism; but the pain and grief of Tullia’s death would not allow him to persist in it, and led him to argue that the human spirit was immortal.” And Griffin 1995: 329-30 describes how hard it is to discern from the fourteen men in Cicero’s letters who use philosophical language which considered themselves disciples of a particular philosophical sect and which were “men sympathetic to high-sounding morality without regarding themselves as adherents of a school.” I shall argue in this chapter that Beagon’s contrast between the “specialist philosopher” and the “well-educated man” makes bloodless and cool what was still often a political act in Pliny’s time, one still retaining a share of the competitiveness (though not the bloodlust) of Cicero’s call to 93 intellectual arms. As we shall see, Romans will deploy the technology of philosophy as a weapon against themselves, as a technique to define a self- selected class of more elite elites. Here I could talk about literal weaponry, such as that used in the “philosophical death” of the younger Cato, or raised in the Stoic underpinnings of Paetus Thrasea’s defiance of Nero, the Pisonian conspiracy of 66, or Rubellius Plautus’ conspiracy against Vespasian. Rather, I will focus upon the metaphorical weaponry engendered though philosophy’s aggressive appropriation of the masculine metaphors of the center, a center claimed as its own. It is this turn towards specialization that has its roots in an agonistic and exclusionary performative script, one arising in the last century of the Republic, that of the countercultural philosopher. Much of the work of this chapter will be concerned with Cicero’s writings. In addition to the voluminous amount of philosophical text he generated, he is a significant source for the sociological/psychological impact of philosophy upon elite Roman males in the late republic. 103 I will be using him as a touchstone for this chapter for these two reasons; for his 103 As well as a gauge for his contemporaries’ knowledge about philosophy. See Griffin 1995. 94 eclecticism and ability to present the arguments of philosophical schools of this period; 104 and, more importantly, for his awareness of social codes. In Chapter One we saw how the elder Cato was able to make the transition from being a rustic advocate and novus homo to an icon of Roman morality through his public embrace of what he dubbed traditional austerity. In Chapter Two we saw how Marius attempted to define himself as a savior of Roman manhood by returning to a populist virtus of martial virtue. Both these men latched on to what they perceived as a fracture in the façade in the codes separating traditional aristocratic masculinity from the masses, and worked that seam until they gained entry. Cicero’s own spectacular rise to power is in a large way dependent upon his awareness of the codes of behavior as they can only be known to an outsider who desperately wants to be part of the inside. 105 Or, in Corbeill’s formulation (2002: 182-3), “Marcus Tullius Cicero was a prominent speaker and politician born outside of Rome who became established as an important member of the urban elite, first by 104 Cicero believed himself an extremely shrewd epitomizer of philosophy, more so than those to whom he ascribes arguments in his dialogues; see Att. 13.19.5. White 1995: 245 credits Cicero’s reportage over invention: “[Cicero’s] thought is not long on originality.” 105 Feeley (2006) touches upon some of these themes, though her focus is primarily political while mine is social. 95 absorbing and then by perpetuating its most deeply held notions of the role of the citizen in the state.” Cicero was a good code-worker, and he knew it. This theme of the outsider knowing better is a common one in Cicero. Take the passage at the beginning of Book 5 of the de re Publica. He compares the mos maiorum to a faded painting (d.r.P. 5.1-2): Moribus antiquis res stat Romana virisque, quem quidem ille versum vel brevitate vel veritate tamquam ex oraculo mihi quodam esse effatus videtur. Nam neque viri nisi ita morata civitas fuisset, neque mores, nisi hi viri praefuissent, aut fundare aut tam diu tenere potuissent tantam et tam fuse lateque imperantem rem publicam. itaque ante nostram memoriam et mos ipse patrius praestantes viros adhibebat, et veterem morem ac maiorum instituta retinebant excellentes viri. Nostra vero aetas cum rem publicam sicut picturam accepisset egregiam, sed iam evanescentem vetustate, non modo eam coloribus eisdem, quibus fuerat, renovare neglexit, sed ne id quidem curavit, ut formam saltem eius et extrema tamquam lineamenta servaret. Quid enim manet ex antiquis moribus, quibus ille dixit rem stare Romanam? quos ita oblivione obsoletos videmus ut non modo non colatur sed iam ignorentur. Nam de viris quid dicam? Mores enim ipsi interierunt virorum penuria, cuius tanti mali non modo reddenda ratio nobis, sed etiam tamquam reis capitis quodam modo dicenda causa est. nostris enim vitiis, non casu aliquo, rem publicam verbo retinemus, re ipsa vero iam pridem amisimus. “The Roman state stands upon antique morals and men” is a verse which that man [Ennius] either on account of its brevity or truth seems to me to have uttered as if from some kind of oracle. For neither could men, unless the state were thus endowed, nor customs, unless these moral men were preeminent, either found or retain so long a republic ruling so widely and broadly. And so before our time not only did these very same ancestral customs produce outstanding men, but also did the excellent men retain the antique customs and things established by their elders. But, although our age had 96 received the republic just like an outstanding picture, but one evanescing already from age, our age not only neglected to restore it to the same colors which had been there, but it didn’t even care enough to preserve at least its shape and the edges even though just lines. Indeed, what remains from the antique customs, upon which that man said the Roman state stood? We see them so worn out with forgetfulness that not only are they not tended to but have already been forgotten. And what should I say about men? Indeed the customs have perished from the poverty of men, and the reason for an vil like this not only must be explained by us, but indeed in some way ought to be prosecuted as though on capital charges. Due to our own vices, not from some other mischance, we retain the republic in word, but indeed have cast it off already in deed. Cicero’s political iteration of the locus de saeculo, spoken in his own voice (not through one of the famous interlocutors), 106 has sharp implications for the elites. Starting his passage with a tag from Ennius (Moribus antiquis res stat Romana virisque), Cicero establishes his artistic and political pedigree. 107 One conclusion we may draw from Cicero’s shift of artistic media is that he is able to see more clearly what those who have been in control of it, the inheritors of those famous ancestors, cannot. Elsewhere Cicero claims that he was encouraged to write the de re Publica because of his special knowledge and literary abilities. While he was holding a listening party for de re 106 Aug. de Civ. Dei 2.21 on this passage: Sicut etiam ipse Tullius non Scipionis nec cuiusquam alterius, sed suo sermone loquens… 107 Also see Stemmler 2000. 97 Publica’s first two books at his Tusculan retreat, Sallustius objected to the dialogic format (Ep. ad Q. Fr. 3.6.1): admonitus sum ab illo [Sallustio], multo maiore auctoritate illis de rebus dici posse, si ipse loquerer de republica, praesertim cum essem non Heraclides Ponticus, sed consularis et is, qui in maximis versatus in republica essem. Quae tam antiquis hominibus attribuerem, ea visum iri ficta esse … I was advised by Sallustius, that it was possible to speak about these matters with much greater auctoritas, if I myself were to speak about the republic, chiefly since I’m no Heraclides Ponticus, 108 but a consular and one who was experienced in the greatest matters of the republic. Since I had attributed these ideas to men so antique, the ideas would seem to be made up [by them]… Sallustius then proceeds to explain that the dialogic format of the de Oratore didn’t give enough credit to Cicero even though he devised everything himself, 109 and that Aristotle’s use of the first person in his de republica and praestante viro would provide precedent. In other words, even to his aristocratic audience, regarding public affairs Cicero’s personal auctoritas was more significant than that of Scipio Africanus, Laelius, Philus, Manilius, P. Rutilius, Q. Tubero, Fannius and Scaevola. Furthermore, there was a real 108 Philosopher and political theorist of the 4 th c, also known for his dialogic format. 109 Shackleton Bailey 2000 (1980): 218: “The argument is noteworthy as implying that readers of de Oratore were expected to believe that the dialogue was at least in part based on real conversations.” Cf. above n.7. 98 danger that the message of Cicero’s work would fall by the wayside if ascribed to that motley crew. As he wrote the beginning of d.r.P. 5 in propria persona, it appears that Cicero took Sallustius’ advice, and concluded that, though a novus homo, Cicero is the real Roman, he knows what the state should look like, and he is the one who can restore it to its pristine beauty. 110 The image of the faded republic is one Asmis 2005 connects to one of Cicero’s letters claiming his consulship as the last instance of good governance in the Republic (Ad Fam. 4.18.12, tr. Asmis): Amisimus, mi Pomponi, omnem non modo sucum ac sanguinem sed etiam colorem et speciem pristinam civitatis. nulla est res publica quae delectet, in qua acquiescam. ‘idne igitur’ inquies ‘facile fers?’ id ipsum. recordor enim quam bella paulisper nobis gubernantibus civitas fuerit, quae mihi gratia relata sit. We have lost not only the life-blood of the state but also its former color and appearance. There is no state for me to delight in, to rest in. You say: do you bear this easily? I do. For I remember how beautiful the state was for a short time when we governed it and what gratitude was bestowed on me. 110 Cf. Cicero’s anxiety and use of imagines in his oratory (sources collected in Flower 1996: 283-91). Of particular interest is his commending himself to the people on the basis of his merit and the good taste of the voting public (de Leg. Agr. Con. Rull. 2.1, 2.100), contrasted with In Pis. 1 (tr. Flower): obrepsisti ad honores errore hominum, commendatione fumosarum imaginum, quarum simile habes nihil praeter colorem “You stealthily insinuated yourself into public office as a result of the voter’s mistake, on the recommendation of your smoke- stained masks, with whom you share nothing in common except your [dark] complexion.” 99 Cicero is the last man who is capable of seeing what the republic has become, and was the last man who was able to guide according to ancient principles. It’s a bold gambit, but one necessary for Cicero. I believe Cicero a shrewd and intelligent reader and participant in his own culture, spurred in large part by his ambition and desire to fit in. In sum, the psychology of the novus homo is demonstrates what is at stake with the shifting political customs at the end of the republic, and what is at stake in the choices he makes in his public persona, in this case in the publishing of philosophy. 111 As we shall see, philosophy will be a secondary lifestyle choice, and one for which he feels a good deal of shame, and one for which he doesn’t primarily wish to be recalled. 112 How Cicero reacts to fortune’s vicissitudes and presents the life of contemplation reflects the horizon of appropriate behavior for an elite 111 We do hear of many of the biggest names of Roman history philosophizing. As mentioned above (Griffin 1995 on p.4) fourteen of Cicero’s correspondents used philosophy in Cicero’s letters. Also, each of Cicero’s dialogues was a fictional conversation between various elite men of substantial social weight. Furthermore, we know that Caesar dropped by Cicero’s villa for a little academic conversation (Ad Att. 13). Both Catos, the Scipios, Maecenas, and Atticus, to name a few more, all have the reputation of engaging in philosophy. Nonetheless, after Cicero it is not until Marcus Aurelius that we have substantial philosophical output of an executive in propria persona. The contrast I am drawing here as throughout this chapter is between the philosopher and the philosophaster (a person who plays with philosophy), manifest in this example by Cicero’s writings. I am aware this is an argumentum ex silentio, complicated by Cicero’s complaints regarding the large volume of lousy philosophy in Latin (Tusc. 1.4); the following note; and the way Cicero treats Metellus Numidicus, detailed below. 112 Fortunately for Cicero, in Pliny’s panegyric of him (NH 7.115) no mention of Cicero’s philosophical writings is made. 100 man, and when he valorizes new behaviors he cloaks those behaviors in the mantle of tradition. 113 But to unpack Cicero’s anxieties about this, let’s introduce another historical actor to the stage who had to make similar decisions, Metellus Numidicus. In 100 BCE a fight broke out between Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus, the Patrician Censor of 102, and his former legate Marius, who was completing his fifth Consulship and campaigning strongly for a sixth. 114 There had been some prior enmity between the two arising from the Numidian campaign (which Metellus Numidicus began but Marius completed), and, by this point in his career, Marius (Plut. Mar. 28.4): pa=si me\n ou)=n prose/kroue toi=j a)ristokratikoi=j, ma/lista de\ o)rrwdw=n to\n Me/tellon h)xaristhme/non u(p )au)tou= kai\ fu/sei di) a)reth\n a)lhqh= polemou=nta toi=j ou) kata\ to\ be/ltiston u(poduome/noij ta\ plh/qh kai\ pro\j h(donh\n dhmagwgou=sin... ran up against the whole aristocracy, especially fearing Metellus, with whom he was out of favor, and, by nature, on account of his true manly virtue, warring with those striving not with the most honorable way for the masses and being demagogues with a view to sensual pleasure… 113 Such as with the intellectual outsiders Varro and Nigidius Figulus. See Chapter Five 215- 27. 114 Ancient narratives for this story are Appian BC 1.28-33; Plut. Mar. 28-34; Velleius Paterculus 2.15.4 ff.; Cic. post Red. in Sen. 36-8, post Red. ad Quir. 6, 9-10, pro Plancio 69, 89, de Dom. 82, 87, Sest. 37, Ad fam. 1.9.16. 101 Coming to Marius’ aid, the fellow demagogue, Saturninus, included a provision in a land redistribution bill that the senate should swear not to challenge the will of the people once the measure passed. This was a poison pill to Metellus Numidicus. He was the only senator willing to stand up for good government in the traditional style, and was exiled because he refused to swear the oath. He chose to go to Rhodes to study philosophy. After his children and friends importuned all who were present in the forum over the the next two years, Metellus Numidicus was recalled to great fanfare and huge crowds. 115 There is some dispute regarding the motivation for Metellus Numidicus’ departure. The rider protecting the will of the people from the senate was neither common nor extraordinary but the exile was. 116 Our ancient commentators concur that Metellus Numidicus left for his philosophical jaunt at Rhodes as a self imposed exile arising from moral rectitude and a desire to preserve the state. In Plutarch’s eyes, Metellus Numidicus was “true to his principles (e)mmenw=n tw= h)qei/), and prepared to suffer any evil rather than to act dishonorably” (Mar. 29.6) and, 115 Appian BC 1.33. 116 Carter 1996, Badian 1984, Gruen 1965. 102 despite his friends and the people rallying to his side, “would not allow any civil disturbance to break out on his account” (30). In Appian, Metellus Numidicus “adhered fearlessly to the chosen course” (1.31) and, when a dagger-bearing host of urban plebs grabbed him, he “thanked them, commended them for their views, and declared that he would not allow any danger to threaten his country on his account. And with these words he left Rome” (1.31). Cicero takes a different tack. Utilizing Metellus Numidicus as a model for his own behavior, Cicero recounts Metellus Numidicus’ successes and claims (Pro Planc. 26.89) tu id in me reprehendis, quod Q. Metello laudi datum est, hodies est, et semper erit maximae gloriae? quem, ut potes ex multis audire, qui tum affuerunt, constat invitissimis viris bonis cessisse nec fuisse dubium quin contentione et armis superior posset esse. You cast this in my teeth, that which has been a source of praise for Q. Metellus, is today, and ever will be representative of his greatest glory? As you can hear from many people who were then present, it is well known that he left though the boni were unwilling he leave, and nor was there any doubt he would have won in armed contest. Though he was in the right, and had adequate force, Metellus Numidicus chose to think of the health of all morally upright men (viri boni) and adopt the indignity that would (eventually) generate his legend. 103 Many scholars 117 adopt the interpretation of Plutarch, Appian, and Cicero against the protestation of Gruen that “It is well to remember that there are no other known examples of voluntary exile except under threat of capital punishment,” and therefore an opportunistic Saturninus probably proposed death and not exile as punishment for Metellus Numidicus’ intransigence. 118 I will not quarrel with Gruen’s eikos argument regarding the circumstances of Metellus Numidicus’ exile, nor with the other historians of the period who have viewed the exile and return though the lenses of politics and class warfare, or as prologue to proscriptions and decline. 119 For the purposes of this portion of this chapter, however, two other questions are of greater interest. First, when Metellus Numidicus the Consul, Censor, and Triumphator was confronted with his choice to swear or flee, what did he consider the horizon of possibilities appropriate for elite masculine display? Second, to what extent did Metellus Numidicus become a symbol for proper elite manhood in times of stress? 120 It is my contention that the events of 100 117 CAH 9.100, Badian’s articles on Metellus Numidicus in OCD II and III, Scullard 1982: 59. 118 Gruen 1965: 579. 119 Politics: Lintott 1968: 136ff; class warfare: Badian 1984: 140 and CAH 9.100; prologue to proscriptions: Scullard 1982. 120 To be sure, the motivations for Metellus Numidicus’ defiance arose from a thick admixture of social, historical, and personal forces as well as the force of gender, and many 104 not only reflect the struggle between aristocrats and demagogues for control of the state, but also the intra-elite struggle for control over hegemonic masculinity. Metellus Numidicus takes philosophical pursuit to a new level, responding in a heretofore unknown way for Romans, and in my view he is in the vanguard of the urban/e countercultural philosophical movement. In many respects, the ancients construed Metellus Numidicus’ principled defiance as squarely within the common tropes of traditional elite Roman masculinity. Plutarch has Metellus Numidicus deliver a withering rebuke to the other members of the Senate before leaving for Rhodes (29.6): “…it is certainly sordid to do the wrong thing, and anyone can do the right thing when there is no danger attached; what distinguishes the good man (a)/ndroj a)ga/qou) from others is that when danger is involved he still does right.” Indeed, violence is not new to the political or social landscape in the time of Marius: the six hundred fifty years since the founding of Rome had seen an expulsion of the monarchy, secessions of the plebs, intra-elite warfare (such as with the Gracchi), institutionalized regular good-hearted of these which wouldn’t have been known to the man himself. Nonetheless, I agree with Bourdieu 1990 and 2001 that gender is the primary metaphor to describe appropriate social and ethical behavior. As such, gender is implicated in all aforementioned forces. One focus of this work is to assess the manner in which concerns of masculinity affected and effected the motivational process, and how agents like Metellus Numidicus are individual instantiations of a broad social transformation. 105 punch-ups (such as over racing affiliations), low-level street violence, ritual warfare (such as the annual savagery between the Suburans and the Via Sacrans at the Equus October), not to mention the second order aggression- through-surrogates of gladiatorial combat, constant military conquest and the like. 121 Retreat on behalf of preserving the state and preventing the full scale internecine warfare that would become characteristic of the Marius- Sulla years was also not new. Early on, when the system seemed about to shatter upon shoulders grown too large, the hero cedes the contentious office despite the loss of status, 122 or leaves politics for that traditional Roman fortress of solitude and bastion of the state, the ancestral farm. 123 It is Metellus Numidicus’ adoption of Rhodes as his new home and philosophy as the new focus of his considerable energies, however, that is not just a 121 Lintott 1968. 122 Such as with Claudius Marcellus Marcus, a novus homo, who was consul five times and proconsul twice, and fought Hannibal during the Second Punic War. Sections 24-5 of Plutarch’s life of him recount the conflict between the bold Marcellus and his cautious co- consul, Quintus Fabius. Marcellus’ political enemies arranged for him to declare his co- consul, Quintus Fabius, dictator, which he did to keep the state focused on Hannibal rather than his private conflict. This is a particularly magnanimous move, considering the prior year Augurs refused his suffect consulship. Also of interest is the tale in section 22 that Marcellus’ enemies refused him a Triumph despite his earning the spolia opima, on the grounds that the campaign in Sicily was uncompleted. He settled for an Ovation. Metellus Numidicus, on the other hand, took his triumph and triumphal name “Numidicus” even though Marius would be the man to finish Metellus’ war. 123 Such as Cincinnatus setting down the mantle of dictatorship and taking up a plow. 106 departure from Italy but from tradition as well. 124 However, that he, when confronted with the threats of Saturninus, chose to gain the honor and esteem of the effete intellectual Greeks, 125 and shortly after his triumphal return to Rome, not to capitalize upon his popularity but rather to retire from public life, demonstrates a subtle shift in what was acceptable for an elite man to do. The departure of Metellus Numidicus from public life is surprising to contemporary scholars as well as the ancients, probably for the same reasons. Metellus Numidicus’ return occasioned Marius’ flight, presumably out of 124 CAH 8.475 “In 148 probably no Roman, of the upper class at least, had thought to pay an extended visit to Athens or Rhodes for serious study with the best Greek masters of rhetoric or philosophy, or, unless he happened to be there already on public business, had gone sightseeing in Greece. Exiles withdrew to the cities of Latium or Etruria, not to the Greek East. It was barely respectable for a noble to write verse, certainly not for him to abandon public ambitions altogether for a life of study, as a few men of prominent family did in the first century.” 125 Plut. Mar. 44. We have no definitive evidence under whom Metellus Numidicus studied. The most famous philosopher in residence at Rhodes around this time was Posidonius of the Stoics, though we do not have any specific records of his being there in 100. One clue might lie in the history Posidonius wrote. The CAH’s commentary on the feud reads: “In the longer term the story became a legend initially because it was grist to the mill of historians hostile to Marius like Rutilius Rufus and Posidonius” (100). The moralizing of the tale may perhaps imply a personal connection, or drawing from a biased source, Metellus Numidicus himself. Regardless, I mention the school Metellus Numidicus may have attended because it may be objected here that Stoicism accorded well with Roman elite ideology (cf. Shaw 1985), and that Metellus Numidicus was thereby being traditional as opposed to countercultural when he decided to study it. I believe to the contrary that the Roman acceptance of the philosophical persona is a later development, partially generated by the cultural authority of Metellus Numidicus. Also cf. Jocelyn 1977 and Gleason 1995. For the idea that exile was far from arduous, see Shaw 1985: 47, esp. n 49. 107 fear for the repercussions. Marius’ star was on the wane, in the broad sense because of his ineptitude with deliberative government and in the particular sense from his treatment of Metellus Numidicus, as it “brought odium on Marius among the aristocracy and among other opponents of Saturninism, which was to be exploited in due course.” 126 Metellus Numidicus, the relatively young Consul, Censor and Triumphator, back by popular demand, surely had the power and perhaps even the mandate to exact some measure of revenge upon his old enemy Marius. To compare, eleven years after Metellus Numidicus’ return Marius marched on Rome and published his proscription lists. 127 Perhaps his behavior evidences the transition from a generation agitated but at peace to one committed to civil war that Metellus Numidicus again took the peaceful route. Badian interprets the retreat thus (140): In 98 Metellus returned. As Marius had foreseen, his return became the occasion for a spectacular display of support for the res publica and for what some called the factio nobilitate of which he starred as a symbol…Yet Metellus had had enough of politics. Although he can only have been about fifty-five, we 126 CAH 100. 127 Furthermore, anthropologists might consider Metellus Numidicus’ actions contrary to the unwritten laws of the feud-driven Mediterranean culture. See the review of anthropological materials and argument in Horden and Purcell 2000, Ch. XII, esp. sections 3-6. See however the claim of Fisher 1998 of situational specificity for instantiations of "Mediterranean” honor and shame violence. 108 don’t hear of him again. He probably preferred otium cum dignitate to the hazards of political activity in the changed res publica. Whether he was enacting a traditional response of restraint, reacting from fear, or living a life of leisure, Metellus Numidicus retreated from becoming a standard bearer or a weapon for his aristocratic peers. In the following generations Metellus Numidicus was reanimated into a symbolic role, and, as symbol, was reified and refined. I have already touched upon how Metellus Numidicus was utilized as a model for ethical behavior in the selections of Appian and Plutarch above. He also becomes a mighty symbol of sang froid and masculine reserve to that other victim/victor/victim of fortune’s wheel, Cicero. Metellus Numidicus appears in five orations and one epistle of Cicero, pro Cn. Plancio, pro Sestio, de Domo Sua, post Reditum ad Quirites, post Reditum in Senatu, Ep. Ad Fam. 1.9. I find it indicative of Cicero considering Metellus Numidicus a gender model and not intellectual model that, despite also practicing philosophy while in exile, Cicero neither includes Metellus Numidicus in his philosophical works nor mentions his philosophizing. Also, the fact that Cicero never recaps in detail the trials and tribulations of Metellus Numidicus, it suggests that Metellus Numidicus’ citationality was still current to Romans. 109 The parallel Cicero draws between himself and his exiled forebear is complex and subtly competitive. As we saw above, the pro Plancio utilizes Metellus Numidicus to claim reserve and resistance in the face of danger as essential elements of masculinity. 128 Elsewhere in this same text, Cicero cites Metellus Numidicus as a paragon of piety and obligation to friends in order to justify taking up Plancius’ case. 129 Cicero also cites Metellus Numidicus agonistically, in that, in each section paralleling the return of the clarissimus and nobilissimus vir 130 Metellus Numidicus to that of Cicero, Cicero makes a point of mentioning that his was effected spontaneously through a upsurge of senatorial and of popular support, even of the whole world, not relying upon family or tribunes like Metellus Numidicus, and that whereas it took two years of constant importuning for Metellus Numidicus’ supporters to gain the momentum necessary to effect his recall, Cicero’s return was taken 128 Cf. de Dom. 22.87: Q. Metelli praeclarum imperium in re militari fuit, egregia censura, omnis vita plena gravitatis: tamen huius viri laudem ad sempiternam memoriam temporis calamitas propagavit. “Q. Metellus was an outstanding commander in military affairs, an outstanding censor, his whole life was full of gravitas: nevertheless it was the ruin of the day that propagated the praise of this man to eternal memory.” 129 de Dom. 28.69. 130 post Red. in Sen. 36 and post Red. ad Quir. 4.9. 110 up immediately. 131 Cicero furthermore claims that he endured exile in a superior fashion to Metellus Numidicus, writing Lentulus (ad Fam. 1.9.16): In quo ego spem fefelli non modo invidorum, sed etiam inimicorum meorum, qui de uno acerrimo et fortissimo viro meoque iudicio omniuim magnitudine animi et constantia praestantissimo, Q. Metello, Luci filio, quondam falsam opinionem acceperant; quem post reditum dictitant fracto animo et demisso fuisse – est ver probandum, qui et summa voluntate cesserit, et egregia animi alacritate abfuerit, neque sane redire curarit, cum ob id ipsum fractum fuisse, in quo cum omnes homines, tum M. illum Scaurum, singularem virum, constantia et gravitate superasset – sed quod de illo acceperant aut etiam suspicabantur, de me idem cogitabant, abiectiore animo me futurum… But in this I deceived not just the hope of my ill-wishers, but also of my enemies; those who had received a particular false report concerning that most fierce and brave man and, in my reckoning, most outstanding of all in depth and firmness of will, Quintus Metellus, the son of Lucius; namely, that they frequently say Metellus Numidicus, upon his return, was of a broken and downcast spirit – it must be proved true that a man who left his country with the utmost willingness, and was gone with outstanding chipperness, and clearly didn’t care if he returned, when on account of this very exile was to have been shattered, in which he surpassed in firmness and decorum both all men and especially that M. Scaurus, an extraordinary man – but since they believed (or at least suspected) it about Metellus Numidicus, they were in the habit of thinking it about me – that I would be in a rather depressive state … Even though Cicero didn’t believe the great Metellus Numidicus was broken by exile, apparently legend had it he was, and Cicero’s allusion reinforces the 131 post Red. in Sen. 37-8, post Red. ad Quir. 3.6, pro Sest. 16.37, ad Fam 1.9.16. 111 common currency of the tale. Since all of his cohort could see Cicero strutting down the gangplank perky and ready for action, he demonstrates he is the superior man. This quotation is surprising to those of us who associate Cicero’s exile with whining lament and implied thoughts of suicide. 132 Nonetheless, the quotation suggests three conclusions regarding what later Romans considered appropriate about masculine performance in the legend of Metellus Numidicus. First, Metellus Numidicus’ immediate citationality to the rising generation of elites is broad and complex enough that it transmits both positive (magnitudine animi et constantia praestantissimo, the implied superiority over M. Scaurus who did swear Saturninus’ oath) and negative elements (fracto animo, demisso). The complexity of the transmitted image arises from a conflict between middle-republican signifiers of success (as a Consul, Censor, and Triumphator) but what will come to be a late-republican response to a personal crisis (retreating to study philosophy, evacuating 132 ad Q. Fr.1.3.1-2: Atque utinam me mortuum prius vidisses aut audisses, utinam te non solum vitae sed etiam dignitatis meae superstitem reliquissem! sed testor omnes deos, me hac una voce a morte esse revocatum, quod omnes in mea vita partem aliquam tuae vitae repositam esse dicebant. qua in re peccavi scelerateque feci. nam si occidissem, mors ipsa meam pietatem amoremque in te facile defenderet… “And would that you’d seen or heard of me dead earlier, would that I had left you a remainder not only of my life but of my dignity! But I swear to all the gods that I was called back from death by this one argument, namely because everyone said that some parts of your life depended on mine. In this I sinned and behaved shamefully. For had I died, my death would easily have defended my devotion and love for you…” 112 from public life). This mixed image provided a gender appropriate exit strategy for men who are caught on the horns of civil war. Second, Cicero’s competition with Metellus Numidicus, especially in light of his return to politics after exile, exemplifies the hegemonic, middle republican position. When exiled from the dominant sector, Cicero may flirt with the countercultural reinterpretations of masculinity provided by philosophy, but he makes it clear that he is shamed by his changed lifestyle choice. Take for example Tusc. 2.1.1-2: Neoptolemus quidem apud Ennium philosophari sibi ait necesse esse, sed paucis; nam omnino haud placere: ego autem, Brute, necesse mihi quidem esse arbitror philosophari; nam quid possum, praesertim nihil agens, agere melius? sed non paucus, ut ille. Difficile est enim in Philosophia pauca esse ei nota, cui non sint aut pleraque aut omnia: nam nec pauca nisi e multis eligi possunt nec qui pauca perceperit non idem reliqua eodem studio persequetur. “Indeed, in Ennius Neoptolemus says that it is necessessary he philosophize, but in few ways; for it scarcely pleased him in any way: I, however, Brutus, deem it necessary that I must philosophize; for what can I do better, especially while doing nothing else? But not a little bit, like him. For it is difficult for but a few things to be known to a man in philosophy, for which it would not be either many things or everything: for neither can a few things be chosen out unless from the many, nor will he who has learned a little bit not hunt down what reamains with that same zeal.” 133 133 For more on this passage, see Chrol 2001. 113 The Tusculans were an attempt to put a good face on a bad situation. 134 Also, compare this with a letter from Oct. 54 to his brother bewailing the loss of the structure of the state and the evanescence of the power of the state (Ep. ad Q. Fr. 3.6.4): …aut forensi labore iactari, aut domesticis litteris sustentari; illud vero, quod a puero adamaram, pollo\n a)risteu/ein kai\ u(pei/roxon e)/mmenai a)/llwn, totum occidisse …either I putter around in forensic labor, or I am uplifted by literature at home; but that tag, which I had been enamored of from childhood: “to be the best by far and to be the leader of others” has died completely. His philosophical pursuits (and this is how I take litteris, since the head of this passage claims he is incapable of writing poetry 135 during this period of his life) are a secondary choice and solace, suggested by its juxtaposition with iactari, Cicero would rather be back in the action. In a telling passage from 46, Cicero writes the polymath Varro, encouraging him to lie low in scholarly studies during the current crisis (provided nobody thinks him shamed or a coward by it), but be poised for action (Ep. ad Fam.9.2.5): 134 The use of prasertim nihil agens leads me to disagree with Douglas 1995: “Nor…is it easy to find in the Tusculans any trace of the ‘defense’ he makes elsewhere (Acad. Post. 11; Div. 2.6; Off. 2.4) that he wrote philosophy because in the last resort he had to fill his time somehow.” Also see Smith 1995. 135 Perhaps de faciendis versibus (3.6.4) refers to writing tragedy, see 3.6.7 and Skydsgaard 1968:100 n.47. Regardless of the genre, Cicero’s not doing it, see 3.4.4. 114 modo nobis stet illud, una vivere in studiis nostris, a quibus antea delectationem modo petebamus, nunc vero etiam salutem; non deesse, si quis adhibere volet, non modo ut architectos, verum etiam ut fabros, ad aedificandam rempublicam, et potius libenter accurrere; si nemo utentur opera, tamen et scribere et legere politei/aj; et si minus in curia atque in foro, at in litteris et libris, ut doctissimi veteres fecerunt gnavere rem publicam, et de moribus ac legibus quaerere. Let only this stand firm with us, to live as one in our studies, by which we merely sought pleasure earlier, but now surely health; not to be absent, if someone should want us to be present not just as architects, but indeed as the craftsmen for the building of the republic, and moreover to freely run to help; if nobody should use our works, nevertheless both to write and read “Political philosophy”; and if not so much in the senate house and in the forum, nonetheless in words and books, as the most learned ancestors had done to bring about the republic, and to inquire into its customs and laws. Contrasting architectos with fabros we can see how dirty the scholarly hands should get – their work won’t be theoretical but the manual labor of statecraft. Cicero assumes that the antiquarian labors of the old war-hero Varro would also be secondary to politics, and a helpmeet to return to it. 136 Eventually Cicero will seize the opportunity to return to the hegemonic fold and forsake his literary life: shortly after writing his Tusculans he returns to public life, fighting until his death. To return now to 136 Elsewhere Cicero provides a gentle criticism of apolitical academics (and possibly Varro’s response to Cicero) in Ep. ad Fam. 9.6.5: Quod nos quoque imitamur, ut possumus, et in nostris studiis libentissime conquescimus. Quis enim hoc non dederit nobis, ut, cum opera nostra patria sive non possit uti sive nolit ad eam vitam revertamur, quam multi docti homines, fortasse non recte, sed tamen multi etiam reipublicae praeponendam putaverunt? More on Varro’s response to the crisis at the end of the Republic in Chapter Five. 115 Metellus Numidicus, the picture Cicero presents is clear: by executing a masculine performance better able to handle the burdens of exile and of return with respect to traditional hegemonic values, Cicero implicates Metellus Numidicus as a failed performer in an illegitimate arena. Metellus Numidicus is a satisfying model only so far, but as far as Cicero was concerned, the return to the traditional pursuit of masculine honors was key, philosophy wasn’t even worth mention. Third, much in the same way Cicero is unable to believe the worst of Metellus Numidicus, the indecorous elements of Metellus Numidicus’ character become effaced in later historians. The struggle of Metellus Numidicus and Marius, aristocrat and demagogue, happy and unhappy ending for man and state, foregrounds hegemon-appropriate gender and ethical behavior while the difficulty of the choice evanesces. Metellus Numidicus gradually becomes an unproblematic and idealized hero of ethical behavior, a polished bust to instruct the youth. This happens, however, at a much later point, when engaging in a philosophical project was no longer a big deal, and, rather, part of the finishing of an aristocrat’s education. 137 137 CAH 8.475 in n. 124 above. 116 Before turning to philosophy’s place in the late republican educational system, let me conclude with Metellus Numidicus. He is a useful test case for assessing the how the forum of gender appropriate behavior evolves, as prompted by the civil wars; his actions were representative of the new compensatory strategies employed by men stymied in traditional masculine pursuits. Metellus Numidicus chose to remove himself from the political game and pursue philosophy. In this way he was not on the losing end of contemporary history/society, but rather was engaging in behaviors that would make him a more rarified and elite elite. In other words, he was one of the first to shift the terms of debate, fighting for supremacy in a new realm, one opened up by philosophy. And to pick up from my third conclusion, let’s turn to philosophy and how it fit into the late republican education system. Elite masculinity replicated itself through education, and the Roman interpretation of philosophy capitalizes upon predominant themes in education to create a rarified elite and a counterculture. 138 Because of the 138 On educational philosophy and social replication, see especially Bourdieu and Passeron 1990. For a more detailed theoretical articulation of how education conditions habitus in the “structuring structures” of gendered existence, see Chrol 2002. 117 deep anxieties over the impact of early childhood education, much of it was standardized and stayed constant for hundreds of years in Rome, as well as franchised throughout the empire as it expanded. 139 As I mentioned at the end of Chapter Two, the gender identity of boys and girls is in-formed initially through formal and informal aspects of home- schooling, before being impressed by the semi-formal state apparatuses of the educational system. Both home-schooling and primary education were concerned with presentation of appropriate gender models (through myth, legendary stories, paterna praecepta, or “Daddy’s Maxims,” and observation of the interactions of parents with each other and with the slaves), and appropriate bodies of knowledge (basic literacy and recitation of the XII Tables). Quintilian, for one, is particularly concerned with the impact of early education on the soft manhood of children (1.2.4,6,8): Corrumpi mores in scholis putant…Utinam liberorum nostrorum mores non ipsi perderemus! Infantiam statim deliciis solvimus…Nec mirum: nos docuimus, ex nobis audiunt…fit ex his [our own actions] consuetudo inde natura. discunt haec miseri, antequam sciant vitia esse; inde soluti ac fluentes non accipiunt ex scholis mala ista sed in scholas afferunt 139 Bonner 1977 and Hock 1984 and 2004 claim that our extant progymnasmata and chreia show little variation over time. Habinek 1998: 109 credits the slow evolution of the canon to the need to purge any disruptive potential from new authors. For a biomaterialist explanation, see recent work by Habinek. 118 They think that the mores [of the children] are corrupted in the schools…Would that we ourselves did not destroy them! We steep the infant straightaway in luxuries …[list of delicacies and the kids doing unmasculine things] It is no wonder: we have taught them, they hear of these things from us…habit thence nature arises from these actions. The wretches learn these habits before they know that they are vices; thence drenched and steeped they do not get these evils from the schools, but rather they bear them into the schools. Students are contaminated by bad behavior at home, and bring their effeminizing behaviors to school. Though he is an author later than my study, Quintillian more eloquently expresses concerns present elsewhere in the Roman educational corpus. For an earlier example, consider also Scipio Africanus’ objection to the style of education modern youths have gotten, contained in a speech arguing against the Gracchan agrarian legislation (Macr. 3.14, 6 = M 133): docentur praestigias inhonestas, cum cinaedulis et sambuca psalterioque eunt in ludum histrionum, discunt cantare, quae maiores nostri ingenuis probro ducier voluerunt: eunt, inquam, in ludum saltatorium inter cinaedos virgines puerique ingenui. haec cum mihi quisquam narrabat, non poteram animum inducere, ea liberos suos homines nobiles docere, sed cum ductus sum in ludum saltatorium, plus medius fidius in eo ludo vidi pueris virginibusque quingentis, in his unum (quod me rei publicae maxime miseritum est) puerum bullatum, petitoris filium non minorem annis duodecim, cum crotalis saltare, quam saltationem impudicus servulus honeste saltare non posset. They instruct shameful tomfoolery, alongside tiny cinaedi with their little horn and lute they go into the actor’s studio, they learn to sing, which our elders wished to be considered shameful for our free-born youths: they go, I say, into the 119 dancing school, virgin girls and native sons among the cinaedi. When someone was telling me this, I wasn’t able to imagine it, that upper-class men teach their children these things, but when I was led into a dancing school, dear gods! in that school I saw more than five hundred boys and girls, among whom (and this made me lament most of all for the republic) was a boy with a bulla, the son of a politician, not less than twelve years old, dancing with castanets, a dance which some unchaste little slave couldn’t dance without shame! First you teach the youth to dance, then next thing you know, they’re introducing agrarian reform and challenging the power of the upper class. Also, it was common for orators to play upon the lasting impressions of informal education by implying that the child who played the pathic role would have profligate proclivities as an adult. 140 As students moved from elementary to rhetorical school, they also transitioned from naturalizing and internalizing deep structures of gendered existence to applying the implications of those structures in the outside world, and from mastering a standard body of knowledge to the generation of products from the student’s will. This formative period is one with 140 Gutzwiller and Michelini claim that (1991:66) “the ancients could not perceive the gendered structure of their own culture,” meaning that there elite manhood was viewed as the only correct form of human practice, and they were incapable of thinking outside these naturalized categories. I believe that passages like the ones in this passage, as well as the evidence of development of countercultures at the end of the republic demonstrate that, though they may not utilize sophisticated gendered terminology, Romans were acutely aware of the gendered structure of their culture, and took great care to naturalize and mystify these structures. 120 greater individual choice for the young men, and thereby fraught with peril. Fragile manhood, not yet hardened into the formal adult persona, becomes a locus of great anxiety and attention. 141 This anxiety is manifest in myriad ways. There was concern for bodily comportment. 142 Concerns over appropriate style for or school of declamation were cast in sexual terms. 143 Oratory is not predicated upon rote memorization, as in primary education. Though the students memorize rhetorical terms, the appropriate arrangement for their speeches, precedents and the like, they are the structure upon which the students elaborate, and the elaborations were policed for signs of effeminacy. Also during this time students had their first experiences with military practice, the first opportunity to attempt the proper expression of virtus in the public arena. 144 141 Richlin 1997. 142 Such as the famous distinction between scratching one’s head with one finger being effeminate, but with the whole hand, manly (Sen. Ep. 52.12, or Cicero’s deadly mischaracterization of Caesar at Plut. Caes. 4.9)). See Quint. Inst. 11.3, Cic. de Off. 1.128, Gleason 1995, Corbeill 1996, Richlin 1997, Corbeill 2002. 143 Such as Cic. Tusc. 2.1.3 versus Diog. Laert. De Ant. Orat. Praef 1-2. See also Gleason 1995, Richlin 1997, and Gunderson 2000 and 2003. 144 During Cicero’s day there were still some men who were proud of their lack of education. For some it worked out, like the home-schooled C. Scribonius Curio (both father and son), famed for their pure diction and natural eloquence (Father: Cic. Brut. 210, son: Brut. 280), and the Gracchi brothers (Brut. 211), all four famed for their splendidissima verba. We can contrast this with L. Licinius Lucullus who, uneducated as a youth, was also rude as a youth, but eventually saw the light and became one of the most educated and cultured men 121 This is where philosophy had its opportunity. It did not attack the gendered knowledge, one earliest learned, most natural and closest to the skin. It rather assaulted the most vulnerable portion of the Roman manhood, that learned later in life and one more open to debate and interpretation. The content of core early education is not negotiable, however much the application of those tools may be. The types of learning which philosophy professes are those of the scientific and natural, how the world works, the proper roles of its component parts, including humans. 145 And so, since the initial pedagogic work inculcates a sense of Romanitas, virtus and gender- appropriate behavior (domestic behavior, proper spheres of knowledge, bodily comportment), then a sense of the proper expression of Romanitas, virtus and gender appropriate behavior arises from later educational attempts, those based in personal choice. These later pedagogical efforts are thereby vulnerable to tinkering as the boys go off to Athens for additional philosophical training. Even if, as Epicurus wrote, “neither is there an age of his day (Cic. Ac. Pr. 2.1). Perhaps the most telling indication of Rome’s ambiguous feelings about education can be summed up in the tradition attached to Spurius Carvilius Ruga, a freedman who purportedly invented: the letter “G,” school, and divorce. For these innovations he was, in turn, admired, celebrated, and despised. See Plut. Quaes. Rom. 54, 59; Gell Noc. Att. 4.3.1; Dion. Halic. Ant. Rom. 2.26.2, Val. Max. 2.1.4. 145 For a theoretical explanation of the Stoic version of a totalizing naturalistic system, see Shaw 1985, especially 33-4, 45, and 49. For elite men and women turning to Epicureanism as a rejection of fatalistic astrology, see Cramer 1996: 28. 122 too early nor one too late for the soul’s health” 146 (he was reported to have begun at the age of 14 147 ), Roman males generally turned to philosophy later in life. Athens served as a low impact eschatos, or a finishing school for young men before they were reintegrated into adult male society, and gave the boys their first opportunity to live independently. 148 The remoteness of the learning (both spatially and methodologically) was part of its utility, and Romans maintained a sense of philosophy’s alienness, right from its traditional origin story. The traditional story of the advent of philosophy in Rome involves an embassy from Athens to Rome by the philosophers Carneades, head of the New Acadamy, Critolaos, head of the Peripatos and Diogenes the Stoic in 156-5. 149 As the story goes, Carneades staged a demonstration of the power of philosophical reasoning and rhetoric, by arguing on one day on behalf of 146 Diog. Laert., 10.122. 147 Diog. Laert., 10.2. 148 Of course, the independence is not absolute, as evidenced by Cicero demanding his son Quintus change philosophers because he was enjoying himself (and racking up more debt) more than was appropriate. See Bonner 1977:90-6 and notes for references. 149 Gell. 6.14.8-11, 17.21.48; Plut. Cat. Mai. 22-3, Philostratus Lives of Sophists 17.23, Pliny HN 7.112, Lactantius Inst. Div. 5.14.3-5. 123 justice and natural law, the next day that justice was folly. 150 This virtuoso performance of moral relativism and the force of dialectic caught fire with the youth, who are described as being “possessed” by philosophy (e)nqousiw/si peri\ filosofi/an). This new intellectual vogue and hellenomania disturbed Cato (Cat. Mai. 22): o( de\ Ka/twn e)c a)rxh=j te tou= zh/lou tw=n lo/gwn pararre/ontoj ei)j th\n po/lin h)/xqeto fobou/menoj mh\ to\ filo/timon e)ntau=qa tre/yantej oi( ne/oi th\n e)pi\ t%= le/gein do/can a)gaph/swsi ma=llon th=j a)po\ tw=n e)/rgwn kai\ tw=n strateiw=n But Cato, right from the beginning, when the zeal for discourse was rushing into the city, became annoyed, fearing lest the youth turning their love of honor in this direction should fall in love with the glory of talking more than with that of deeds and of martial valor. Even some of the senate was swayed: Gaius Acilius, who wrote a history of Rome in Greek (and apologized for the quality of his Greek in his preface) served as a translator for the philosophers. Plutarch claims Cato’s anxiety boiled over and he gave the philosophers a diplomatic bum’s rush, encouraging the Senate to vote on the embassy as quickly as possible o(/pwj ou(=toi me\n e)pi\ ta\j sxola\j trapo/menoi diale/gwntai paisi\n (Ellh/nwn, oi( de\ (Rwmai/wn ne/oi tw=n no/mwn kai\ tw=n a)rxo/ntwn w(j prote/ron a)kou/wsi. 150 Lactantius (Inst. Div. 5.14.4) describes Carneades as speaking like a rhetorician and not with what he deems the stable sobriety of a philosopher. 124 So that these men turning themselves back to their schools might philosophize with the children of Greece, while the young men of Rome might listen to the laws and the lawgivers as before. And with that he rushed these men from the city. We know that philosophers had been present in Rome for many years prior to the delegation of 156-5. In addition to the regular cultural exchange we would expect from contact with other Mediterranean cultures, we have recorded expulsions of philosophers in 173, 151 and a senatus consultum expelling foreign philosophers from Rome in 161. 152 Nonetheless, it is with the delegation of 156 that philosophy hits the big time in Rome. 153 That the story of Carneades is seen as the traditional introduction of philosophy in 151 Such as Athenaeus 547a: kalw=j a)/ra poiou=ntej (Rwmai=oi oi( pa/nta a)/ristoi )Alkai=on kai\ Fili/skon tou\j )Epikourei/ouj e)cebalon th=j po/lewj, Leuki/ou tou= Postoumi/ou u(pateuontoj, di ) a(\j ei)shgounto h(dona/j. He ties these expulsions to a pan-Mediterranean hatred of luxury and fear lest youth become rebellious, both of which were connected to philosophers. Other examples he adduces were the Messenians expelling Epicureans (547b) and King Antiochus of the Seleucids exiling all philosophers and having the children who frequented them beaten (547c). According to Athenaeus, serious conversation and learned discussion was pursued in a convivial atmosphere, but eventually the dialectic ceded to debauch, and philosophers used their big brains to devise new luxuries (547c-548). He blames not just Epicureans, such as Anaxarchus, Clearchus of Soli, and Lycon the Peripatetic, who was legendary from his drunkenness and his whoring. Also, contact with Greek literary and material output is attested in Rome from the 4 th c. on. For bibliography see notes in Habinek 1998 on Chapter 2. 152 Suet. de Rhet 1; Gell. 15.11.1; Athenaeus 12.547a. Moatti 1997 and 2004 take these expulsions, like others of later times, as having no real world impact. 153 PW describes the embassy as “naturaliz[ing]” philosophy at Rome, q.v. entry on Carneades. 125 Rome illustrates a few elements of the character the Romans ascribed to themselves: they saw themselves as men of practical wisdom and morality, in Cato’s view seen as the contrast between learning from professors and from magistrates; abstract reasoning is morally dangerous and introduced into Rome by foreign agents; youth must be protected from such un-Roman ambiguity; and it is the complicity of certain elites who sheltered these aristocrats who pose a great danger to the state. Indeed, perhaps that is the crux of Cato’s problem with Carneadean philosophical trickery – it was practiced out in the open. Here the rhetor was doing what rhetors do: he was speaking to the people, merging rhetoric and philosophy. This technology of philosophy was more dangerous because all comers were able to bear witness to its power. It was not something put away by the elites for their own benefit, nor something practiced in secret. The upper limits of education were something for elite males to practice in private, by themselves, without women and without the lower classes. State religion was in the hands of elite males, and education was to be as well. That’s one of the reasons there were expulsions of Latin schoolteachers much 126 earlier than of Greek ones, because the danger was of class strife. And so, Carneades doing the public thing was very dangerous, and Cato knew it. 154 This is not to say that middle republican Rome was without philosophy, or that Romans identified themselves as without it. Philosophia was a Greek loanword, first appearing in the Tusculans. As we saw in relation to the passage on the Scipios in chapter 2, sapientia, sometimes translated as “wisdom,” early on had the connotation of practical wisdom, not the type of airy theorizing we associate (as did the ancients) with certain famous Greeks. Indeed, the Greekness of Greek philosophy allowed it to be used for that type of investigation. In this way it is analogous to the treatment of the Greeks in every other arena, or as Habinek put it (1998:34): For the Romans, Greek culture, like the Greek population and Greek material wealth, was a colonial resource to be exploited and expropriated; to the extent that Greek culture was admired, it was as much for its potential to augment Roman power as for any immanent qualities or characteristics. Though the Romans didn’t have a home-grown term for philosophy, there was still the same manner of theorizing that we have in Greek philosophy. The negative connotations attached to the word come from a mixture of 154 Here we may compare with Cato’s expulsion of Manilius from the Senate for kissing his wife in front of their daughter (Plut. Cat. Mai. 17.7, addressed Chapter Two: 81). The public nature of the act along with the impact on youth is key. On education, philosophy, and literature as a commodity dangerous until controlled by the elites see Habinek 1998. 127 cultural chauvinism in both directions, the Romans over the effete Greeks who market their type of reasoning as superior and democratic, and the Greeks who considered the Romans barbarians. So what kind of philosophy did the Romans have? As mentioned at the end of Chapter Two, they had precepts, a type of practical theorizing. 155 Also, their maxims were a type of covert philosophy, naturalizing Roman elite philosophy through simple and straightforward brief maxims. One of the most famous promoters of this type of wisdom was that paragon of middle republican masculinity we met earlier, Appius Claudius Caecus, whose recorded literary output was maxims, his auctoritas lending credence to the maxims, and their truth reflecting glory back on him. 156 The structure of the maxim is also close to oracular pronouncement, and Romans prided themselves on their divinatory science, divining the structure of the world through livers and birds. Also, as we shall see in the final chapter, 157 Romans believed in and treated Pythagoreanism as a home- 155 For Roman home-grown knowledge and the attempts to demonstrate its kinship to Greek modes of knowledge, see Momigliano 1984, Brunt 1989, Habinek 1989, Moatti 1997, Gale 2000, Inwood 2000, Zerba 2002. On Cicero being the main force to make Latin also a philosophical language, see Powell 1995. 156 Also, compare the rags-to-riches story of Publilius Syrus, whose skill at sententiae earned him his freedom and a spot in the Latin canon. 157 Chapter Five: 211-14. 128 grown philosophical/mystical farrago, one permeating the laws and character of Rome from its very beginning. For example, Numa was believed to have been a Pythagorean, the early laws of Rome were believed to have descended from Pythagoras’ teachings, and Numa’s books (if they ever existed) might have also been Pythagorean. Modern scholars may recognize that Pythagoras was primarily associated with southern Italy in the fifth century BCE, but tradition held that seventh century Numa learned under Pythagoras himself, and, as we hear in Gellius, Pythagoras was alleged to have founded one of the great clans of Rome. The flavor of Roman philosophy is different from the Greek. Elite Romans appropriated philosophy in order to generate a more effective ruling class, a more elite elite. It is in this capacity that philosophy provided an outlet to stymied men threatened in civil conflict. Philosophy’s virtues, namely endurance, clarity of thought, and constancy of character, are virtus virtues, and the hyperdetermination of these internal qualities while eschewing external needs as pandering to the crowd, or irrelevant to the care of the self, helped create an equally satisfying reinterpretation of masculinity. The implicit disdain of philosophers by Roman elite male writers and explicit disdain by satirists well into the second century C.E. demonstrates that elegant elite philosophy and action were not coterminous with the body 129 of practices done by the vast majority of elite men. What I wish to argue is that there was a shift in the tenor and intensity of the Roman philosophical project in the last generations of the republic, where it passes from being an initially denigrated and suspect project, though being a tool and background of the elite education and means of being superior to the masses, to being another tool by which to make the elite even more elite. There persists a minority traditional line that philosophy is suspect, but for the vast majority it becomes syncretized into elite culture. I mentioned above that speeches like In Pisonem and Pro Murena expected, if not a passing acquaintance with Epicurean philosophy, at least an acquaintance with the stereotype of the Epicurean philosopher found in the satirists and in traditional stories like the elder Cato’s wishing Epicureanism on Rome’s enemies. 158 Brutus 12 suggests that there was indeed a trend among the loosest living elites towards faux philosophy to cloak their passions. 159 We have also touched on Cicero’s denigration of the interlocutors in his dialogues as not being able to handle philosophy as strong as he ascribes to them, and on Tusculan 1.4 criticizing contemporary philosophy for its lack of clarity and style. For a few men, 158 de Sen. 43. Also, in Pis. manifests his looseness through physical deportment, q.v. Corbeill 2002: 193. 159 Also see Griffin 1995: 333. 130 however, philosophy is given priority, and these hardcore philosophers, opposed to the philosophasters of the hegemonic main, become a counterculture. Greek philosophy is a unique form of social reproduction, one which aims to produce primarily more philosophers, but when it is appropriated by Roman elite families, creates a more restrictive class of elite. In one sense, it was a safe form of rebellion, because it did not actually affect the Roman social order. The changes it effected were internal to its adherents, not ones dangerous to society at large, and did not concretely nor on a large scale affect the traditional outward tokens of manly virtue. It may denigrate these outward tokens, but as a general rule, it didn’t advocate rebellion. 160 I find it telling that the image of the scruffy philosopher is valorized but not practiced by the elite Roman adherents of philosophy: enacting a life of abstruse reasoning and deprivation was not a valid expression of internal masculinity. 161 In the Roman context it was possible to uphold philosophical ethics with very little collateral damage to a man’s career. Indeed, the 160 At Chapter Five: 213-22 I address how Neo-Pythagoreanism can have more social disability for the strict adherents than other types of philosophical practice. 161 For two later but noteworthy examples, compare Seneca’s call for stealth philosophers, and the second half of de Ira justifying his comfortable life. Also see Phang 2002 (op. cit. Chapter One: 24 n.14) for a parallel contextually circumscribed deprivation and endurance. 131 aforementioned internal transformations intensified and hyperdetermined many of the masculine qualities we saw in Chapter Two. So, what was the model of masculinity that was being portrayed? Roman philosophy is not as effete as Greek, and has the benefit of intensifying traditional masculine intensifiers. Let’s begin with a general shape portrayed in the Tusculans. Philosophy shares qualities with soldiery and “the busy life,” the life of the forum, in that a little can have great benefit (…in vita occupata atque, ut Neoptolemi tum erat, militari pauca ipsa multum saepe prosunt et ferunt fructus 2.1.2), but the philosophical enterprise wins out over forensics because it lacks a desire for popular support, and its merits are judged by a few qualified men (est enim philosophia paucis contenta iudicibus, multitudinem consulto ipsa fugiens eique ipsi et suspecta et invisa 2.1.4). He alludes to earlier works where he has defended philosophy from its detractors, and claims that philosophy is lively, esteemed, and thriving (viguisset) from the heavy contestation of its warring schools (2.2.4). The good philosopher was a master. One of Seneca’ pithiest sententiae defines the good effect Stoicism has on a man as producing “an unconquered force of mind, experienced in affairs, cool in action with great humanity and care for those it has dealings with” (invicta vis animi, perita rerum, placida in actu cum humanitate multa et conversantium cura. dVB 4.2). This mirrors the 132 maxim of Cato regarding the perfectus orator: a good man experienced in speaking (vir bonus dicendi peritus). Philosophical training promoted a type of reserved hypermasculinity which fit well with the controlling and, in a word, burlier aspects of the Roman character, stressing endurance, fortitude, freedom, and appropriate sexual fixation. Socrates became the quintessential philosopher and his abilities at endurance were renowned. The philosopher was the only free man, as Seneca quoting Epicurus writes, “It is vital that you be a slave to philosophy so that true liberty may touch upon you” (philosophiae servias oportet, ut tibi contingat vera libertas, Ep. 8.7). As we shall see, a man who rejects the traditional outward expressions of Roman masculinity is free to live and to enjoy his life. Primary education taught a boy to be a good citizen, rhetorical education taught a boy self-presentation, but philosophical education taught a young man reason. Lucretius writes (drN 3.308-10, 319-22): sic hominum genus est: quamvis doctrina politos constituat pariter quosdam, tamen illa relinquit naturae cuiusque animi vestigia prima… illud in his rebus video firmare potesse, usque adeo naturarum vestigia linqui parvola quae nequeat ratio depellere nobis ut nil inpediat dignam dis degere vitam. This is the race of men: although learning makes some men (seem) equally polished, nevertheless it leaves behind the original traces of the character of each man’s nature… 133 I see that it [philosophy] is able to shore it up [the soul] in these matters and that the traces of nature that are left behind are so tiny, that reason is unable to drive them out of us, so that nothing blocks us from living a life worthy of the gods. Philosophy was the tonic for what ails the soul. 162 The philosopher is steadfast as any of the traditional heroes of Rome who faced death with a steely eye. Lucretius writes that greed, lust, and lawbreaking, “these wounds of life/ are nourished in not the least part by the fear of death” (haec vulnera vitae/non minimam partem mortis formidine aluntur, 3.63-4). The beginning of the second Tusculan describes the elimination of the fear of death as one of the prime benefits of philosophy. Like the traditional austerity valorized in Chapter One, the major philosophical schools denigrated the accumulation of wealth for its own sake. Despite the stereotype of the philosopher on the make, especially that of Epicureans, 163 Epicurus’ fifteenth doctrine states “The wealth required by nature is limited and is easy to procure; but the wealth required by vain ideals extends to infinity.” Compare with the joke of Cicero to Trebatius (Ad Fam. 7.16.3) as to whether he will become rich as Romans call it, meaning 162 White 1995. 163 See the Athenaeus fragment above. 134 accumulating material possessions, or as Stoics do, meaning enjoying nature. 164 Philosophy also seriously questioned the Roman political pursuits, rejecting public approval, the social fluidity that it entailed, the quest for wealth, military success, and social success. We already saw the Stoic rejection of the crowd in the Cicero passages above. Epicurus casts the draw of fame as one born of fear. His seventh doctrine states, “Some men want fame and status, thinking that they would thus make themselves secure against other men. If the life of such men really were secure, they have attained a natural good; if, however, it is insecure, they have not attained the end which by nature's own prompting they originally sought.” Political success required gaining large hordes of clientes and being political even with one’s friends. The philosophers argued against that type of social fluidity, as evidenced by Epicurus’ twenty seventh doctrine, “Of all the means which wisdom acquires to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is friendship.” An important portion of the Stoic training was the anachoresis, or personal retreat, which involved personal contemplation and discussion with a picked group of close friends. The 164 q.v. Griffin 1995:331. cf. drN 5.1118. 135 friendship was valuable enough to cause a man to meet his death for his friend (pro qua [amicitia] moriuntur, Sen. Ep. 6.2). Warfare was not a natural good. Campaigning might be part of one’s duties to the state to the Stoics, but was not inherently beneficial. Military success was argued against most forcefully by the Epicureans, such as in (drN 3.1090-4): mors aeterna tamen nilo minus illa manebit, nec minus ille diu iam non erit, ex hodierno lumine qui finem vitai fecit, et ille mensibus atque annis qui multis occidit ante. That eternal death nonetheless will always remain, and that man will not-be for any less time who makes an end of life from very day, than that man who died many months and years before. Lucretius makes many arguments against the waging of war, and claims that military turmoil is insignificant when viewed with the eternity of the world. A clear indication of the Roman philosophical redefinition of gender lies in its sex. Philosophy did not preclude sexual activity, nor marriage, nor even love, but both the Epicureans and the Stoics concentrated their efforts on making sure their adherents had the appropriate fixations for their love and lust, and are “selective and reflective in their behavior…but not 136 obsessive and possessive.” 165 Lucretius writes that love is a bother (4.1060-4), and a nuisance (4.1130ff), but if you do it, do it with an appropriate and reciprocal object of desire (4.1141ff). The Stoics even advocated a stealthy membership in society, saying it was appropriate to have sex and get married, but just not to let it get in the way of philosophical pursuits. As with the rest of the philosophical trends, Seneca presents a nodal point for these trends started in the late Republic. His characterization of the way other people do philosophy, as a game without truly understanding, is eloquent and damning (Seneca Ep. 108.6-7): Quidam veniunt ut audiant, non ut discant, sicut in theatrum voluptatis causa ad delectandas aures oratione vel voce vel fabulis ducimur. Magnam hanc auditorum partem videbis cui philosophi schola deversorium otii sit. Non id agunt ut aliqua illo vitia deponant, ut aliquam legem vitae accipiant qua mores suos exigant, sed ut oblectamento aurium perfruantur. Aliqui tamen et cum pugillaribus veniunt, non ut res excipiant, sed ut verba, quae tam sine profectu alieno dicant quam sine suo audiunt. Quidam ad magnificas voces excitantur et transeunt in adfectum dicentium alacres vultu et animo, nec aliter concitantur quam solent Phrygii tibicinis sono semiviri et ex imperio furentes. Rapit illos instigatque rerum pulchritudo, non verborum inanium sonitus. 165 Nussbaum 1994: 171. 137 There are those who come to hear – not to learn – just like when we take ourselves to the theater for the sake of pleasure to treat the ears with speech, singing, or stories. You will see the largest part of the listeners for whom the philosophy school would be a motel of leisure. They don’t do this to do away with the faults of their life by it, to take some rule of life by which might expel their bad habits, but to be delighted as an amusement for their ears. Others even come with notebooks, not so they can get the meaning, but just the words, the sorts of words which they will say to another without profit as much as they heard it without their own profit. Some people are stirred up towards those magnificent voices and pass into affection for the speakers being excited in face and manner, agitated in not otherwise than those Phrygian half-men are by the sound of the flute, and raving out of their control. The beauty of the things grabs them and gets them going, not the sound of the empty words. Dialectic is not delectation. His criticisms are straightforward. These philosophasters don’t understand the point of philosophy. They focus on pleasure over utility. Men are swayed by beauty of oratory without grasping the message underneath. As with the pleasures of the theater there is no permanent impact upon their lives, the rigor not taking hold. The only impact the philosophers make is in changing the manly fixed demeanor of an elite Roman man. The message is lost, the words at best recorded and forgotten. Seneca’s ultimate characterization is the most damning of all. Romans who attend philosophy for the show are just like foreign effeminates. 138 This passage from Seneca demonstrates how Roman philosophers have adopted the language of the center to present their own work as that of the real man, and philosophic animus imbued with virtus. For those looking for an acceptable alternative to the masculine ideal, philosophy provided a gender appropriate model. But what of men who wished to play with the codes of acceptable masculine deportment? 139 IV. WAIVING THEIR MANHOOD: LEWDIC ELEGY Te bellare decet terra, Messalla, marique, Ut domus hostiles praeferat exuvias; Me retinent vinctum formosae vincla puellae, Et sedeo duras ianitor ante fores. Non ego laudari curo, mea Delia; tecum Dum modo sim, quaeso segnis inersque vocer. … Hic ego dux milesque bonus: vos, signa tubaeque, Ite procul, cupidis volnera ferte viris, Ferte et opes: ego conposito securus acervo Despiciam dites despiciamque famem. - Tibullus 1.1.53-8, 75-9 166 The above lines are from the climax to the first poem of Tibullus’ first book of poetry, published before his death around 19 BCE. 167 The poem lays out the 166 It’s fitting that you, Messalla, wage war on land and sea, so your house can show off enemy spoils; The bonds of my beautiful girl will hold me latched fast, and I sit as doorman outside her heartless doors. I don’t care to be praised, my Delia; provided that I be with you, I beg to be called lazy and indolent. … Here I am the good general and soldier: you, standards and trumpets, go forth, bear wounds to lusty men, and bring home booty: I, safe on my heaped up store, will look down upon riches and hunger alike. 167 Evidence for dates of publication and death are slim. On Tibullus’ death, see Levin 1967 and Powell 1974 for a review of the material. Scholarly consensus is that Tibullus first published his works around 28 BCE, see Putnam 1973 and Powell 1974. 140 poetic program for Tibullus’ elegiac world-view, opposing the life of the active man (adsiduus 1.1.3), full of adventure and profit with Tibullus’ own ideal of contented bucolic simplicity, rustic lovemaking, and dying before his hopefully-not-soon-to-be-miserable lover, Delia (1.1.59-68). Four aspects of Tibullus’ approach in the above lines elucidate the way the elegiac counterculture relates to hegemonic culture. 168 First, Tibullus adopts language from the center and the standard canon of Roman male experience to discuss his poetic project, using metaphors from the military, and from mastery, wealth and farming. Second, Tibullus reinforces the centrality of the dominant values. Tibullus deems it fitting (decet) for Messalla and other men to chase after plunder and praise. The mastery over want through successful farming is also cast in military terms: Tibullus can achieve the full range of military experience as both effective commander and ranker (dux milesque bonus) while maintaining his small plot. Delia as domina keeps Tibullus as ianitor chained up to the metonymically cruel (duras) doors, reinforcing the slave system, the characteristics associated with mastery, as well as an imbalance in power in male-female relations. On a more abstract level, Tibullus 168 I address Hallett 1973 and other scholars who discuss counterculturalism in elegy below, 156-58. 141 connects the active life and accumulation of goods to praise (laudari) while opposing it to laziness (segnis inersque). Tibullus upholds the image of the worthless slave. Furthermore, by not engaging in the practices authorized by the center, Tibullus recognizes that he runs the risk of being tarred with the lazy brush. Third, in his valorization of the dominant value system Tibullus nonetheless agonistically tweaks that system. Though other men are able to manifest their manliness through domination and combat, one masculine ideal, Tibullus will be able to fulfill another traditional ideal through his embracing of simplicity and the rustic life. 169 Ultimately, though, while the lusty or greedy (cupidis – a word with both positive and negative connotations 170 ) men are out enjoying their campaigns and booty, Tibullus will be at home enjoying their women. The final couplet questions the profit of profit, with our poet perched on his heap (acervus is a term appropriate to heaps of grain as well as spoils 171 ) looking down upon (despiciam) riches and hunger alike, both in the physical sense of spying from a height and in the 169 On farming and poverty as Roman virtues, see Chapter One: 17-18 and references there. On the aggressiveness of the elegist’s poverty as a return to traditional values see Conte 1989. On the bucolic setting for elegiacs see Cairns 1981, Boyd 1984, Veyne 2002. 170 OLD: cupidus §§ 1.a, 3, 5. 171 OLD: acervus § 1. 142 emotional sense of despising. He disentangles the cluster of elite values and pursuits, and detaches the elite pursuit of conquest from happiness: Tibullus doesn’t need to risk his life to avoid starvation or get lucky. The bucolic/poetic/servile life (quietly) triumphs over military life. Fourth, the countermodel of the elegiac poet, a countermodel predicated on status, economic, gender, sexual and literary inversions, admits of multiple acceptable paths of masculine expression. Unlike the hegemonic ideal, which only recognizes a singular traditional mode of expression along the tracks of politics and the military, or the philosophical counterculture, which supplants the traditional ideal to position itself as a superior path, the elegiac counterculture is not exclusive. It recognizes multiple acceptable masculine scripts, considering itself one of many. As we shall see throughout the course of this chapter, much of the play of the elegiac counterculture is based upon a sober appraisal of, denaturalization of, and demystification of masculine codes. Elegists engage in sophisticated play, reinforcing yet unmasking the underpinnings of society. Elegists are obsessed with what Robert Germany calls “the ethics of self-presentation” in the way elite Roman men interact with Roman society. Through their poetry, elegists question the naturalness of masculinity, virtue, social hierarchy, and the meritocratic cast of the aristocracy. The world of 143 Roman elegy is a dark, modern parody of an idealized traditional Roman world of elite masculine privilege. In the elegiac world, power is in the hands of the abject, and virtue is palimpsestic. Kristeva calls the abject a (2002 (1980): 230) “jettisoned object…radically excluded… and yet from its place of banishment, the abject does not cease challenging its master.” I extend her view of the abject from the psychoanalytic to the social. The realities of aristocratic privilege in the last century BCE, just like in the six centuries years preceding it, put the lion’s share of power in the hands of elite males, and their dominion extended over women, slaves, freedmen and foreigners. In the elegists’ world, however, these dominated groups can in turn dominate the masters. Virtues are “palimpsestic” to elegists because elegiac poets make frequent claims to see the subtext elite masculine ideology has tried to efface: though the metaphorical page has been scrubbed clean, and hegemons have written a text declaring masculine virtue as natural and as the foundation for a meritocratic aristocracy, the elegists can see the original script underneath, that virtue, like manhood and society, is a construct. Ultimately, though, the elegiac world, like other parodies, lives beside and complements the Roman hegemonic world. To return to the passage heading this chapter, the conclusion of Tibullus 1.1 indeed supports 144 the priority of the hegemonic script, but at the same time attempts to carve out an equally acceptable space of its own. This chapter investigates the elegiac counterculture and its exploration of the ethics of self presentation. The elegiac script is overtly artificial and direct. The role is composed from stereotypical behaviors taken from the stage and literature indicating the actor as a lover and poet and not as a traditional elite man, utilizing class, status and gender inversions. By utilizing characteristics of the abject, the elegiac counterculturalist gains power, and consequently delivers an effective and equally acceptable masculine performance. This chapter will pursue the elegiac script through three stages, first by delving more deeply into its characteristics; then by analyzing palimpsestic virtue through comparing the Commentariolum Petitionis with the Ars Amatoria; and finally by discussing the implications of adopting abject characteristics in the trope of love-slavery. But first, I would like to discuss the question of “why elegy at all?” During the final years of the republic, a time of great energy and introspection, it is fitting that the genre of elegiac poetry appears and the persona of the elegiac poet flourishes. Paul Allen Miller begins his 2004 work Subjecting Verses with the questions: why does the genre of Elegy 145 flourish from Catullus to Ovid, less than a century; why did such a short- lived genre have such a great impact on later literature? He sees in the collapse at the end of the republic the development of the “lyric consciousness” (4): Indeed, as I (1994) have argued before, Catullus represents the beginning of that uniquely interiorized voice that I term lyric consciousness and of which erotic elegy can be seen as a subgenre. What Hellenistic Literature offered at the end of the first century B.C.E. was not a model to be slavishly copied but an alternative value system to the Roman Republic's traditional mos maiorum (Gutzwiller and Michelini 1991: 75). Catullus and the elegists would exploit this resource, but from the unique subject positions offered by a Roman ideological system in the process of collapse and restructuration.… Nonetheless, the unique position of the first-person speaking subject in elegy, its constitution as the site of contradiction and aporia, of temporal complexity and personal depth, remain unprecedented. What this book wants to explore is not the thematics or plot of elegy...but the historical conditions of possibility for elegy's specific instantiation of what I (1994) call lyric consciousness. He then details the psychoanalytic impact of the fall of the Republic and sees in the distance between the Symbolic and Real the space for such lyric and personal expressions, the development of the individual voice in literature. When treating the de Officiis he notes that Cicero’s description of the “principled but nonetheless effeminate (mollis) withdrawal from public life is almost the exact image that the elegists project for themselves” (18). 146 Though many of the conclusions we reach are consonant, Miller and I approach the evidence from different foundational principles. Miller believes in a world-spirit; through the trauma to this spirit, the precipitations of this spirit – individuals – can act, not as part of a political movement, but as individual expressions of the larger forces affecting this world spirit. Like most followers of Bourdieu, I tend to view the “world-spirit” as instead a social context, and instead of treating individual elegists as symptomatic of psychoanalytic crises, I treat individual elegists as precipitations of social crises. The distinction I am trying to draw is between an approach that views social phenomena as external manifestations of deep structures of the human psyche (an outward motion from individual to society) as Miller and other psychoanalysts hold, and an approach that views psychological phenomena as internal impressions of larger social forces (an inward motion from society to individual), as I hold. As we work through the evidence in this chapter, I see our forces as localized in a particular social context, in that individuals are coalescing along scripted lines to create the elegiac counterculture. I am wary of attributing to this period a new interiority in literature as manifest in the symptomology of elegy. Perhaps Miller’s “world spirit” is indeed my “society” and the processes we perceive, though different, describe the same end product. 147 This may explain why I don’t find it surprising that elegy flourishes during the last generations of the republic and that it stops again once the empire gets humming. If the crumbling republic encouraged the development of countercultures to investigate alternatives to the dominant ideal, and the elegiac script provided a means for individuals to achieve psychic satisfaction in the face of horror and shifting situations, then the settlement of the insecure political situation would terminate the need for elegy and its redefinition of masculinity. 172 I in this way think that there is indeed something Roman about the flourishing of elegy, and not just a ham-handed intensification of Greek tropes. Wray 2001 characterizes the poetic predecessors of Catullus thus (167): Code models form part of the speech and gestural lexicon of Catullan self fashioning, as markers for individually recognizable modes of Catullus' poetic performance of manhood: an Archilochian mode, characterized by aggressively hypermasculine invective…; and a Callimachean mode, standing - or appearing to - at the antipodes of the Archilochian, fragrant with the sophistication of erudition and with the manhood of a “feminine” delicacy, but ultimately no less agonistically performative of its own excellence. 173 172 Perhaps this could be an argument that the empire didn’t begin in earnest until Tiberius, as our last elegiac output appears at the beginning of his reign, the genre dying with Ovid. 173 Or, as Zerba 2002 describes it (304) “what counts most in the end is performative excellence.” 148 Wray is dealing with the difficult problem of tracing the roots of a new genre in Rome, and turns to Catullus’ Hellenistic predecessors. The strains of aggression and delicacy Wray identifies as prevalent in Neoteric poetry become all the more complex when unpacking what is particularly Roman about the Neoterics’ work. My reading of elegiac countercultures complements Wray’s traditional generic criticism by drawing from a broader social reading of elegy. Wray is concerned primarily with the function of Hellenistic codes within the elegiac genre and sees Catullus’ problematic masculinity as growing from the dissonance between Hellenistic literary values and Roman cultural values. I rather see this dissonance as cultivated; the social disruption of the period made Hellenistic literary models an attractive countermodel to dominant Roman hegemonic culture. 174 The 174 Because of Catullus’ early dates, ca. 84 to ca. 54 (Quinn 1970: xiv-xv), I must disagree with one of Fear’s conclusions. He writes (2004: 33), “This theorization of the variable reception of elegiac narrative can also be applied to its production. The ideology of the emerging principate involved the incorporation and negotiation of culturally significant and resonant terminology…The manner in which these concepts were consolidated into the ideology of the principate was not natural but a process of naturalization. In this context, we might consider elegiac narrative as a literary strategy for negotiating a response to the emerging cultural hegemony of the principate and Augustanism. For elegy as a contemporary cultural practice necessarily was part of the process by which such a hegemony was articulated, negotiated, and contested.” Catullus and his non-extant neoteric coterie exemplify the same type of disaffected youth culture upon which much of Fear’s analysis rests. Elegy’s rejection of dominant culture has earlier roots than those Fear adduces. 149 choice of elegy as a genre partly stems from a response to the crises at the end of the republic; the elegiac persona is not just a reiteration of Greek tropes in a Roman context. 175 As we shall see, the characteristics adopted by elegists did not just bear fruit in an abstract, literary, hellenocentric realm. There were concrete and specific benefits accrued by an elegist in the realities of late Republican Rome. Defining Roman elegists as “counterculturalists” is neither new nor surprising. The most famous use of the phrase was by Judith Hallett in her 1973 article “The Role of Women in Roman Elegy: Counter-cultural Feminism.” 176 She writes (2002 (1973): 340): By using the ‘mainstream’ language of conventional Roman careers to represent the devotion they bestow upon and the rewards which accrue to them from their mistresses, the amatory elegists are trying to make their feelings understandable to ‘straight’ readers, those who have not undergone the same experiences that they have. They aim for comprehensibility, chiefly so that they can justify their life styles to individuals (and possibly even to portions of their own psyches) who subscribe to conventional assumptions, 175 Or, in the words of Habinek 2005:2, “reading Roman culture as a deficient variant of Greek.” 176 Hallett 2002 (1973) is the first to call the elegists “counter-cultural” per se, though she is by no means alone in the sentiment. Some of the more interesting works are Gutzwiller and Michelini 1991, Wyke 1994, and indirectly Sharrock 2002. Contra elegists as counterculturalists, see Myers 1999. 150 believing love and love elegy something worthless, ‘nequitia.’ Yet the Augustan elegists also appear to be struggling toward a greater goal: the conversion of others to their beliefs and behavior. Hallett and others recognize the interplay between dominant and subordinate values, and the potential social disabilities inherent in adopting a contrary stance. As articulated in Chapter One, 177 my slant on designating elegists as counterculturalists is different from hers and that of other scholars, mainly in my application of the term scripts. Rather than predicating a loose, coalitional resistance to the dominant powers, one advocating radical reappraisal of traditional values, similar to the resistance in the West of youth culture during the 60’s and 70’s, I see the elegists as expressing their resistance in a way both restricted and prescribed (both generically and socially). In comparison to modern youth culture, Roman elegists were relatively conservative, “the generic fluidity that characterizes amatory relationships in elegy was not only confined to the realm of poetic fantasy but also very often redirected within the poems themselves towards an ending that reasserted the accepted order of things.” 178 I concur with 177 34-6, esp. n. 44. 178 Valladares 2004: 236. 151 Hallett that there is an element of social marketing present in elegy, though I would push further her ideas that there is a good deal of complexity in the issue of how one becomes a poet in general, or an elegist specifically. Even though our last proponent of the elegiac lifestyle will literally write the book on how to be a lover and perhaps a poet, 179 the evidence we have bears out that the critical feature of elegists’ use of dominant ideology is not for marketing or legibility of their choice: instead elegists are concerned with establishing multiple acceptable paths of masculine expression. In this sense, the elegists play a double game with their position. On the one hand, they declare they are elect and special, captured and enslaved by love or genre; on the other hand they reveal the constructed nature of their society, the elements of choice in their “election.” There is great consonance between the portrayals of the elegiac persona found in Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus and Ovid. 180 Suffice it to say: our suffering elegist must be patient, enduring, willing to engage in status 179 Or perhaps not: Fulkerson 2006, Chrol 2006. 180 The obvious exception is Sulpicia, on whom see below. For a unifying view of the different takes on the elegiac persona and subject position, see Miller 2002 and 2004. Also see Sharrock 2002a, 2002b and Hallett 2002. 152 and gender reversal, to be his puella’s slave, her doctor, husband, and master. 181 We have rules regulating proper modes of dress, coiffure, skin- tone, speech, and belief in the gods. The elegists’ rules generate an urban/e existence, rejecting rusticitas, 182 a flexible term connected to ideas both abstract (castitas, simplicitas, pudor), and concrete (shagginess, being ill- bathed, having bad breath). 183 The heart of this performance is the enactment of stock amatory characteristics from literature and the stage readily recognizable to the elegists’ fellow citizens to demonstrate the actor as separate, special, and in love. 184 As Ovid puts it, if a man looks poor, wan and thin, weeps often and act moody, people will assume that he is in love: 181 On age reversal, see Fear 2005. On class reversal, see Boyd 1984, Conte 1989, Gross 1996, Myers 1996, Veyne 2002, Vallardes 2005. Analysis of gender reversals in elegy has been particularly prominent in recent scholarship. See Conte 1989, Myers 1996, Sharrock 2002, Greene 2005, Vallardes 2005, and especially Wyke 1994 and Miller 2004: Chapter Five. On the way in which performing the elegiac persona ruins a man for anything else, see Fulkerson 2004. 182 Even in the passage that heads this paper we see that Tibullus at his most bucolic is never rustic. On the bucolic fantasy in Tibullus, see Cairns 1979, Chs. 7, 8, Putnam 1973: 49-50, Veyne 2002. On rusticitas and castitas, see Gross 1996. On Roman bucolic elegy generally, Boyd 1984, Conte 1989, Reed 1997. 183 On the resignification of the mos maiorum and stereotypical bodily presentation for the elegiac context, see Conte 1989. 184 On the stage parallels, see Myers 1996: 12. On the differences between the elegiac and comedic personae, see Conte 1989: 445. On elegiac performative elements more generally, see Skinner 1993, Gamel 1998, Habinek 2005. See also Dupont 1997 on the Roman attempts to separate the recitatio from the theatrical, which she dubs (51) “the other pole of ludism.” Fear 2005 applies theories of subcultures (Hebdige 1991, Muggleton 2003) to claim the behaviors of elegists marked them as disaffected youth. 153 “be miserable,/ so that the person who looks at you can say ‘You are in love’” (miserabilis esto,/ ut qui te videat dicere possit “amas,” 1.718-9). Here Ovid is introducing a means for members of this group to signify their participation as lovers without having to resort to spouting poetry. It is quite likely that, just as there were formulaic styles of speech and gesture bound to the genres of oratory, drama, comedy and mime, formulae to identify character types and registers of speech to the audience, the performance tradition of elegy demanded certain formulaic stylization as well. The passages in our elegists policing good behavior – from the rough in Catullus’ implications that offensive sexual practices cause offensive body odor (25, 39, 42, 71, 80, 96, 97), to the refined in Ovid’s punctilious description of the middle road between too much and too little grooming (Ars. 1.550ff) – may have been means to open the performance context of their work to the broader world. As elegy ostensibly attempts to manifest internal states through a communicative medium , 185 “loving” must take place in the public eye. Elements of the elegiac counterculture are dangerous to the social order. They are dangerous not because there was a threat that elegiac 185 Or secluded external states: Cat. 32. 154 personae were going to rise up and overthrow the hegemonic symbolic ideal – indeed, as mentioned above, the elegiac script is conservative and admits of multiple expressions of masculinity. The threat comes in the way elegists demonstrate an awareness of masculine scripts and the social construction of society, and denaturalize common sense, common coin concepts of essential masculinity, unmasking the artifice and artificiality of the dominant scripts. Perhaps most threatening of all is the way elegists demonstrate that they know there is contemporary debate over the social construction of masculinity, despite the protestations of orators, educators, and philosophers to the contrary. I will assess the threat of the elegiac position by adducing parallels between the Commentariolum Petitionis and the Ars Amatoria. It may seem odd to pair an early Imperial era elegiac poem that instructs men and women on how to claim and keep a lover with a late Republican work on electioneering. Nonetheless, the similarities between the two texts demonstrate that one of the heretofore unrecognized cultural predecessors of the Ars is the Commentariolum. Ovid will come to a different conclusion than Quintus, 186 but they both use the same terms to make their claims. 186 See Chrol 2006 and the bibliography there. 155 The Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris together constitute a four book didactic poem published right around the turn of the eras. 187 The ostensible subject matter of the Ars is the generation of romantic and sexual fulfillment, and of the Remedia is what to do when romance fails. However, the four books are primarily concerned with reproducing the elegiac paradigm of the beaten-down lover and the haughty mistress. Ovid lays down performative scripts to generate two types of readers. For men he advocates the enactment of an elegiac poet’s persona (hangdog, servile, poor) yet one that does not write elegy (because women actually hate poetry). For women he advocates the enactment of a cool demeanor in order to garner the appropriate amount of affection and gifts, and to gain a worthy lover. Ovid’s radical, ridiculous and outrageous views employ a “language that suggests an analogy between seduction and the common skills and practices by which man extends his dominion over nature.” 188 Seduction is couched in hegemonic masculine terms, is just like all the other things men were doing, demonstrated by Ovid’s range of metaphors from everyday life, as well as from hunting, fishing, agriculture, medicine, animal husbandry, soldiery, mastery, slavery, conviviality, commerce, sailing, gambling, religion, 187 Murgia 1986. 188 Leach 1964:19. 156 mythology, history, and perhaps even rape. The metaphors Ovid employs that touch most upon the ethics of self presentation are those taken from politics. The Commentariolum Petitionis, or “Tiny Tract on Electioneering,” is ostensibly a letter from Quintus Cicero to his more famous brother Marcus that gives Marcus concrete and pragmatic advice on how to campaign for the consulship in 64. Indeed, the level of pragmatism in the letter is sufficiently bold that it has caused some scholars to question its authenticity: 189 Quintus teaches Marcus how to smear opponents generally (54), and his competitors Antony and Catiline specifically (8-12), and how to sway election-bribery groups (17). 190 Prissy scholarly concern over whether Quintus’s revealing 189 Henderson 1950: 12. Henderson remains the standard argument against authenticity, with Balsdon 1963 as the standard refutation of Henderson. Balsdon does not argue for authenticity, but argues that the case against authenticity has not been sufficiently proved. The debate is still alive. For the most recent bibliography see Morstein-Marx 2004. Ultimately, I side with Shackleton Bailey in his 2002 revision of Henderson’s introduction to the Loeb. He, like Balsdon, believes the case is not sufficiently proved against authenticity, and, regardless of whether the text is authentic, it demonstrates a deep understanding of late Republican politics. The anxieties I will address in this section, the ethics of self- presentation and the vocabulary of seduction, render this debate of little interest to my project: if the Commentariolum was written by Quintus, all the better, if by a contemporary to slander Marcus (Nisbet 1961: 85) or another late Republican/early Imperial writer, the issues are deeper and more pervasive than my cautious bounds. Also, for the sake of readability I will give him the benefit of the doubt and will call the author of the Commentariolum “Quintus” and not “[ps.-]Cicero.” 190 On sodalicia as anything but election-bribery groups, see Shackleton Bailey 2002: 765. 157 the seamier side of politics would have been seemly neglects what I see is the most troubling aspect of Quintus’ advice. 191 Throughout the Commentariolum Quintus advocates performing a masculine script at odds with conventional Roman masculinity. He recommends that Marcus adopt a persona that lies easily, makes base friends, promises without delivery, at once accepts betrayal with clemency and good will while making an enemies list, and praises his opponent with one Janus head while insulting him with the other, i.e. one that adapts to every situation and every comer. Quintus’ callous acknowledgement of political expediency may not seem unusual in an age where philologist- Presidents quibble about the temporal extent of what “‘is’ is,” yet he touches upon deep-seeded anxieties glossed over in our Roman sources: whether there is an essential and unchanging core to a man, both with respect to masculinity and personality; whether performance can affect the actor, and a corollary concern over what the difference is between an actor and an orator; and whether it is ethical to treat fellow citizens, both individually and as a whole, as objects of seduction. The types of shameful acts the politician must execute are of no real concern only if there is no impact upon a politician’s 191 For contemporary examples of bragging about dirty tricks to gain social capital see Clinton strategist Ed Rollins, Bush strategist Karl Rove, or the otherwise inexplicable career of ex-felon and conservative radio host G. Gordon Liddy. 158 character, if there is no deepening consonance between persona and person, or, more simply, if, upon the successful completion of the campaign, the political actor can remove his mask. Quintus and Ovid utilize what I call a palimpsestic concept of aristocratic virtue. The meta-recognition of performative scripts and responses programmed in their audience provides the prospective lover and candidate with power over the symbols of masculinity. As we have seen, the elegists do not expel but rather resignify feminine and abject elements in a masculine cast and acknowledge a palimpsest of social layers. I have also already argued that philosophers and hegemons also acknowledge a gap between ideal forms of virtue and actual masculine practice, and utilize slippage from the ideal to police the boundaries of their groups and gain moral authority over their antagonists. The difference in the case of poets is that slippage is not a source of lamentation but rather a source of power. The Commentariolum concurs. In competition over lover or office it is not necessarily the best trained, most worthy, or most skilled man who wins. The implication is that hegemons and philosophers who police virtue are intentionally mystifying larger social forces. Though Quintus does not go so far as the other elegists in advocating complete servility in order to win an 159 election, like the elegists he does recommend undoing certain cardinal aristocratic virtues. So, how is the petitor like an amator? Both have need of the same talents. The Commentariolum at section 41 lists the skills needed to deal with the people: …ea desiderat nomenclationem, blanditiam, adsiduitatem, benignitatem, rumorem, speciem in re publica… [Campaigning among the people] needs a skill for remembering names, flattery, presence, generosity, fame, and looking good in the state. Each of these skills has an analogue in the Ars. I’ll treat the two most morally suspect ones here, blanditia and benignitas. Apparently, the pleasant deportment worthy of a member of the Roman elite (comitas...quae bono ac suavi homine digna est) is not sufficient for victory, but the candidate needs (42): …blanditia, quae, etiam si vitiosa est et turpis in cetera vita, tamen in petitione necessaria est. etenim cum deteriorem aliquem adsentando facit, tum improba est, cum amiciorem, non tam vituperanda, petitori vero necessaria est, cuius et frons et vultus et sermo ad eorum quoscumque convenerit sensum et voluntatem commutandus et accommodandus est. …ingratiation, which, even if it is rife with vice and repugnant in the other areas of life, nevertheless is essential in canvassing. Even so, when it makes some person worse by toadying, then it 160 is shameful, but when it makes him more friendly, then it’s not so worthy of recrimination, since it is necessary for the candidate, whose countenance, expression and speech must shift and suit the feelings and desires of all of those who meet up with him. Quintus claims that fawning is potentially damaging to both parties, not just to the flatterer who must contort and twist himself, but also to the man being flattered (hence deteriorem). This ingratiation is particularly bad: blanditia is a term generally kept away from elite men, applied rather to lovers (in this case, elites engaging in status reversal), slaves, and fawning animals, 192 and here our author is demanding it be adopted by the reader in relation to the general populace. Nonetheless, the shame of the situation is worth the cost if it wins the object of desire. Ovid picks up the morally suspect issue of blanditia and plays with it. He recommends letting a husband maintain a monopoly on quarrels and other unpleasantnesses (2.151-55); instead, the cuckold-aspirant should lay ambushes (insidiis) through always being gratifying (2.159-60): Blanditias molles auremque iuvantia verba adfer, ut adventu laeta sit illa tuo. Bring soft blandishments and helpful words to the ear, so she might be pleased at your arrival. 192 OLD: blanditia § 1.a, b. 161 The already morally questionable term blanditia is intensified by the adjective mollis, which, as we have seen earlier, is a term of effeminacy. Despite his protestations of the legitimacy of his work at Tristia 2.237-52 (quoting Ars 1.31-4) and 2.347-60, in this section Ovid is drawing a sharp contrast between legally sanctioned love (that of the husband), and that required by his reader. Elsewhere he affirms the amoral use of blanditia as well. At 1.439-40 he advises ingratiation by means of falsified love: Blanditias ferat illa tuas imitataque amantem Verba; nec exiguas, quisquis es, adde preces. Let her bear your blandishments and words that counterfeit a lover; And, whoever you are, top it off with no paltry prayers. At 1.480 blanditias are sufficient to compel an unwilling woman; at 1.529, immediately after telling women that lying men often come to believe their own lies (Ars 1.615-19), the praeceptor he advises men to undermine women as water does a cliff. On the other pole is benignitas, “benevolent generosity,” a term normally present in the aristocratic constellation of appropriate virtues but in the Commentariolum taken to an ugly extreme. In section 44 Quintus recommends having the reputation for benignitas (benignitas autem late patet), 162 advertised through your friends, clients, convivia, and the impression of an open-door policy of house and heart: curaque ut aditus ad te diurni nocturni pateant, neque solum foribus aedium tuarum sed etiam vultu ac fronte, quae est animi ianua. take care that entrances to you lay open all day and night, and not just in the doors of your house, but also in your expression and countenance, which is the doorway of your soul. He claims that if your face is shut, it doesn’t matter if your door is open. Demonstrate this openness by acceding to the wishes of every comer. Promise the world, the people like that (44). It’s particularly important to make lavish and noble promises (large atque honorifice), and not just for the things you were already planning on doing. You must also make promises you never intend to keep (45-6): illud difficilius et magis ad tempus quam ad naturam accomodatum tuam, quod facere non possis, ut id aut iucunde <neges aut etiam non>neges; quorum alterum est tamen boni viri, alterum boni petitoris…sic homines fronte et oratione magis quam ipso beneficio reque capiuntur… whatever is more difficult and pertains more to your situation than to your nature, the sort of thing you cannot do, either refuse it pleasantly, or, better yet, don’t refuse; the former is the province of a bonus vir, the other the province of a bonus petitor…in this way men by mien and speech more than by the service or deed itself are taken in… 163 Quintus then proceeds to tell the story of C. Cotta, consul of 75, who would assent to every request because, as Cotta reasoned, the anger of the man immediately refused was sure, while the anger of the man eventually neglected was not. The implications are clear: Quintus directly states that the bonus petitor is not the same as the bonus vir, in this case borne out in issues of duplicity and social promiscuity. His house and mien must give the impression of penetrability and access to all men, goodies open for the taking. In this passage as well Quintus implies that Marcus is the paragon of traditional virtue, the bonus vir, not (yet) the sleazy politician, and has to be told how to work against his own nature in order to seduce the electorate. In this technique as well the bonus petitor is the same as the bonus amator. Ovid’s praeceptor gives similar advice to lovers of both sexes to promise as much as they can. The main difference, though, is that Ovid doesn’t think the lover should ever follow through. After detailing the financial ruin of giving in to a woman’s desire for presents (1.399-436), Ovid commands pledging until it hurts (1.442-54): promittas facito: quid enim promittere laedit? Pollicitis dives quilibet esse potest. Spes tenet in tempus, semel est si credita, longum: Illa quidem fallax, sed tamen apta dea est. Si dederis aliquid, poteris ratione relinqui: Praeteritum tulerit, perdideritque nihil. At quod non dederis, semper videare daturus: 164 Sic dominum sterilis saepe fefellit ager: Sic ne perdiderit, non cessat perdere lusor, Et revocat cupidas alea saepe manus. Hoc opus, hic labor est, primo sine munere iungi; Ne dederit gratis quae dedit, usque dabit. See to it that you promise: for what harm is there in promising? Anyone can be rich in promises. Hope hangs on for a long time, once it has been entrusted: Although she is a lying one, nonetheless she’s a suitable goddess. Once you give something, you can reasonably be ditched: She bore off the loss, and lost nothing. Yet what you haven’t given, always seem to be about to give it: In this way often does a barren field deceive its master: Thus, lest he lose, the gambler does not cease from losing, And often dice call back greedy hands. “This is the work, this is the toil:” to be joined with her without giving first; So that she won’t have given gratis what she gave, she yet will give. 193 Ovid recasts the Sibyl’s monitory words to Aeneas (hoc opus, hic labor est = Aen. 6.124), deflating the nobility of the Roman project by equating it with scamming. Additionally, the amator is connected to deceptive fields and bad gamblers. This intensifies a trope present in western literature, namely of the debtor’s ability to capitalize on his current debts in order to lead on lenders and secure more debts, a trope stretching from Aristophanes’ Clouds to Gary Coleman’s ads for CashCall. Regardless, it’s ignoble. 193 Cf. Tib. 1.4.21-26, 57-61, Cat. 110. 165 Since Quintus repeatedly tells us that the sleazy behaviors necessary to win the consulship are against Marcus’ nature as a bonus vir, how does he do it? Deinde id quod natura non habes induc in animum ita simulandum esse ut natura facere videare. Thence, that which you don’t have by nature, make up your mind that it must be faked so that you seem to do it by nature. Quintus’ advice skates dangerously close to advising the petitor to cross the boundary from orator to actor, and the use of videare stresses the artificiality of the imitation (simulandum). The word videare also serves as a pivot, though, distancing the behavior from the actor. Marcus could still be the bonus vir; he’d only be faking all these bad behaviors. He only has to play the part of the politician, he doesn’t actually have to be one, and the scripted behaviors, recognizable from the stock characteristics of the persona of the politician, will bear him the prize. The opening gambit of the work as a whole stresses the temporal bounds of Marcus’ performance (1): Quamquam plurimum natura valet, tamen videtur in paucorum mensium negotio posse simulatio naturam vincere. Civitas quae sit cogita, quid petas, qui sis. Prope cottidie tibi hoc ad forum descendenti meditandum est: “Novus sum, consulatum peto, Roma est.” Although nature has control, nevertheless it appears in an affair of a few months it is possible to conquer nature by a falsely assumed appearance. Contemplate what state this is, 166 what you seek, who you are. Nearly every day when going down to the forum, you ought to meditate on this: “I’m a new man, I seek the consulship, this is Rome.” The contrast between recommending a daily affirmation on the nature of this man and his relation to his fellow citizen, written in short, sharp phrases (Novus sum, consulatum peto, Roma est), and advocating cloaking that nature (simulatio) is striking. I see in the daily affirmation an acknowledgement of the threat that simulatio might become natura. After all, as we saw in Chapter Two, Roman boys received their masculine habitus through precise and rigorous training in voice, deportment, rhetorical tropes, the military. By enacting questionable behaviors, by adopting a questionable mien these formulaic actions may corrupt our political actor. This is Ovid’s point. The former passage, Commentariolum 42, looks like Ars 1.611-12, though their implications are different. Est tibi agendus amans, imitandaque vulnera verbis; Haec tibi quaeratur qualibet arte fides. “Loving” must be performed by you, and wounds imitated by words; this trust ought to be sought by you by whatever art you can. Ovid here stresses the performative artifice of the romantic pursuit, utilizing the terminology of the theaterin agendus and imitanda, and in describing the 167 aim of effective performance, fides. In Conte’s words, “‘playing the part of a lover’ is not a generic formula; it means, literally, putting on the costume of the lover of elegy, that is, of a character whose part is already written in the pages of the elegiac poets.” 194 Again, by invoking recognizable elements from the script of the lover, Ovid’s reader will bear off the booty. Ovid disagrees with Quintus in relation to the implications of performance upon performer. He continues (Ars 1.615-19): Saepe tamen vere coepit simulator amare, saepe, quod incipiens finxerat esse, fuit. Quo magis, o, faciles imitantibus este, puellae: fiet amor verus, qui modo falsus erat. Nonetheless, often the faker has begun to love truly, Often what at the beginning he had pretended has come to be. Whereby the more, ladies, be easy with the imitators: He will become a true lover, who just now was false. The danger of simulatio (as even Plato will tell you) is that performance affects the performer. 195 Ovid states directly what Quintus adumbrates: if acting changes the actor, masculinity may not be essential nor innate. 194 Conte 1999: 459. On elements of New Comedy and Roman Comedy in the persona of the elegist see Myers 1996. Fulkerson 2006 addresses the Roman elegiac lover in relation to the structures of his genre. Also, see Chrol 2006 for a full treatment. 195 Chrol 2006. 168 As we can see from the comparison of the two passages, aristocratic virtues are not aristocratic virtues. Take constantia, or “steadfastness of character.” 196 In hegemonic and philosophical contexts constantia is a virtue. In the encomiastic portions of Cicero’s citation of Metellus Numidicus in Chapter Three, Metellus Numidicus is credited with extraordinary constantia (i.e. constantia praestatissimo “of most outstanding steadfastness” ad. Fam. 1.9.16), and his exile is portrayed as arising from devotion to his principles. The philosophers also deem constancy a quality to be cultivated, whether in relation to friends, the self, or position in nature. Both these camps argue that self knowledge and the maintenance of an inflexible (or “essential”) core are essential to effective masculine performance, i.e. to being a good Roman. A man who is true to his nature (as in Seneca’s “Surely it is our motto to live following nature” (Nempe propositum nostrum est secundum naturam vivere, Ep. 5.5) is also true to his socially constructed and proscribed roles, and stands fast upon his naturalized codes. 197 The poets, on the other hand, exalt the malleability of the poet’s core, which enables him to bend to his mistress’s needs and whims. 196 On constantia as an aristocratic virtue see Pascal 1984, MacKendrick 1989, Kaster 2002, and most recently Feely (Unpublished Dissertation) ch. 3. 197 See Chapter Three: 127. Also stated by Nigidius Figulus, see Chapter Three: 127 n. 155. 169 And this is the crux of the difference between the two approaches. Quintus would have us believe that a political actor can put the mask down at the end of his performance. Whether the iron will of the hegemonic man was softened through the heat of passion instead of tempered in the forge of politics is not a conclusion I am willing to draw here, but the positions of our authors are clear. Quintus’ repetition of temporal elements indicates that once winning office Marcus will be able to go back to being the same sweet man he was before, and all posterity will remember is his great deeds as consul. 198 Ovid disagrees, repeatedly claiming that performance of the elegiac persona corrupts the player. 199 In this way, both our texts are meditations upon the Roman anxiety regarding essentialist versus socially constructed/perverted masculinity. 200 Both our texts exemplify a shrewd meta-recognition of their respective scripts, but Ovid believes there is an impact upon the reader who practices his lessons. In their respective eyes, Quintus’s student will not become a sleazy politician, but Ovid’s student will become a sleazy lover. 198 Or to play off that old historian’s saw, “To the victor belong the [family] archives.” 199 Ovid does deny the impact of his poetry upon his reader in Tristia 2.347-52, though I have shown elsewhere how his claims are disingenuous and ultimately undercut themselves. Also see Conte 1989, Ahern 1990, Green 1994, Gibson 1999, Williams 2002, and Fulkerson 2004 & 2005. 200 Chapter One: 7. 170 To turn now from palimpsests to the abject, the elegiac script also poses a different type of problem through the elegists’ use of the servitium amoris, the practice of slavery to love. The model Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid portray presents a countercultural idea of masculinity in their poetic (and amatory) pursuits through use of sexual and gender reversal in relation to their female lovers. In addition, our elite elegists manufacture parallels between their situation and the abject – slaves, children, wounded soldiers – the permeable class. The elegiac lover seems driven by two complementary compulsions. One is to persist in his tortured bondage to his beloved; the other is to write voluminously about it. These two aims function reciprocally. The beloved’s ill will towards the poet provides him with fit material for his reproving poetry, which in turn sours her opinion of him and encourages her to find more pleasant and secure lovers. The elegiac script is predicated on a lover behaving badly, nothing too surprising in a world of elite masculine privilege, yet in the world of the elegists the repercussions for elite men are dire. Though the term slavery (servitium) only appears 5 times in his corpus (1.4.4, 1.5.19, 1.12.18, 2.20.20, 3.17.41), the concept of love-slavery is prevalent throughout Propertius’ work, and from the beginning. In the first line of the 171 Monobiblios he is ensnared (Cynthia prima suis miserum me cepit ocellis). Cynthia has seized him, and her henchman Amor in the third and fourth lines has troden Propertius down and struck away his haughty mien (tum mihi constantis deiecit lumina fastus/ et caput impositis pressit amor pedibus), and by the end of the first stanza Propertius perceives himself as oppressed by hostile gods (adversos deos). The dominant theme applies not just to Propertius’ interactions with Cynthia but for men in general. Tibullus, speaking through Priapus, advocates grown men doing, if not a slave’s duties, those of a freedman (officium, obsequium, operae) for his boy (4.39-50) Tu, puero quodcumque tuo temptare libebit, Cedas: obsequio plurima vincet amor. Neu comes ire neges, quamvis via longa paretur Et Canis arenti torreat arva siti, Quamvis praetexens picta ferrugine caelum Venturam anticipet imbrifer arcus aquam. Vel si caeruleas puppi volet ire per undas, Ipse levem remo per freta pelle ratem. Nec te paeniteat duros subiisse labores Aut opera insuetas adteruisse manus, Nec, velit insidiis altas si claudere valles, Dum placeas, umeri retia ferre negent. You – whatever it’s pleasing to your boy to try, yield to it: love will conquers the most by obedience. And don’t refuse to go as his comrade, although the long road lies before you and the Dogstar bakes the fields with dusty thirst, Although covering the sky with bluesteel tinct the cloud-bearing bow predicts the coming flood. 172 Or if he wishes do go through the blue waves in a skiff, drive the light ship through the straits with an oar yourself. And don’t let it repulse you to undergo hard labors or that work wears down the unaccustomed hands, Nor, should he wish to enclose steep glens with traps, Provided you are still pleasing, let your arms refuse to bear the nets. We know that our lover is not a hearty man, hands unaccustomed (insuetas) to heavy work, spirit potentially daunted by the prospect of long travel. In addition to the other suggestions of slave labor, the final line of the quotation, provided you are still pleasing, is suggestive of age reversal of the pretty-boy and our lover. Catullus is vaguely more optimistic regarding elites enslaved by love, in that the only slaves who appear in his work are receptacles, but lovers are never happy nor have the same freedom of action as the beloved. 201 Though he never uses the term servitium amoris, the concept of love-slavery is also present in Catullus’ corpus. In Ariadne’s lament she cries (64.158-163), 201 Unhappy lovers: 8, 30, 35, 51, 76, 85, 92, 99; freedom of movement and sexual partners: 11, 37, 58, 72, 87. The marriage poems, 61 and 62 (even outside of the Fescinnine sections) are thick with anxiety over the power imbalance and war of the sexes in married life, see 61.46-7, 79-86, 98-104, 129-38, 215; 62.40ff. The story of the iconic dumped woman Ariadne, is on a wedding gift to Peleus and Thetis. Also to note is that the happy loves (including 45 with happy lovers wasting away mutually) are not experienced by Catullus or any other poet mentioned. Catullus wouldn’t believe it, anyway, as whenever his lover professes undying love, Catullus doesn’t buy it: 70, 75, 109. 173 si tibi non cordi fuerant conubia nostra, saeua quod horrebas prisci praecepta parentis, attamen in uestras potuisti ducere sedes, quae tibi iucundo famularer serua labore, candida permulcens liquidis uestigia lymphis, purpureaue tuum consternens ueste cubile. If our marriage was not dear to your heart, because you shuddered at the fierce commands of an aged parent, nonetheless you could have led me to your home, where as a slave I would have slaved away for you in happy labor, soothing your chalky soles with clear waters, or turning down your purple coverlet on your bed. Quinn notes that famularer serua is an echo of Euripides’ Andromeda (Fragment 133 N), and hearkens to the epic practice of taking foreign slaves as concubines, and comments that in 162-3 (1970: 323), “Washing feet and making beds are tasks commonly performed for men by female slaves in Homer. But the imagery effectively exploits the inherent pathos of the idea of 161.” Catullus distances love-slavery from himself by writing in Ariadne’s voice, yet he affirms the model of servile and unhappy love. 202 Some evidence would suggest that a lover’s bondage arises from maltreatment of the beloved. Catullus’ protestations of the innocuous nature 202 The premise underlying the claims of scholars like Greene (2004: 61) “Of the elegiac poets, Propertius is often considered to be the inventor of the image of servitium amoris” is not likely to be correct. 174 of his poetry (104.1-2: Credis me potuisse meae maledicere uitae,/ ambobus mihi quae carior est oculis?) seems disingenuous, considering how much of the elegiac toil for the character of Catullus is predicated on proving his love for Lesbia despite, as he frames it, how big a liar she is or how easy her virtue is. Tibullus 1.5 details the ways he tried to make up for his being rough (asper eram) with Delia. At 1.5 Propertius tells Gallus that if he tries to treat Cynthia as frivolously as the other women in Gallus’ life, she will treat him as she does the men in her life, binding him (alligat una viros 203 1.5.12), and compelling him to learn her heavy service (grave servitium nostrae cogere puellae /discere 19-20). Also 1.17 has Propertius declaring he has brought his miserable condition of abandonment upon himself because he tried to flee from his girl (et merito, quoniam potui fugisse puellam,/ nunc ego desertas alloquor 1.17.1-2). This thought, however, is undercut by the poem following, another shipwreck text, in which he claims that whatever misery he has merited (merui 1.18.9) has come from assiduously pursuing all of Cynthia’s wishes (1.18.25-32). Also, in 2.26 the speaker asserts that he will be declared mighty 203 Una viros plays off univira, a term of utmost respect applied to a Roman matron who refuses to remarry after her husband’s death. The significance of the pun is in positioning Cynthia as opposite to an esteemed position in proper society, which is appropriate to her casual status, but also as opposite to women in general, because her actions mirror Gallus’ own treatment of his lovers. Cynthia’s perfidy (e.g. Cynthia, perfida 1.15.2) with Propertius echoes Gallus’ own renown (e.g. Galle…perfide 1.13.2-3 and deceptis augetur fama puellis 1.12.5). The implicit parallel and competition of Gallus the rake and Cynthia the mistress demand closer scrutiny. 175 because he has enslaved a girl by his poetry (tam mihi pulchra puella/ serviat et tota dicar in urbe potens, 2.26.21-2). Though this example has the unusual case of a girl who has fallen in love, dissimilar to our other models, it still demonstrates that the romantic paradigm is one of bondage for the lover, and power for the beloved. Furthermore, bondage for the lover is not simply a quirk or kink of the elegist, but rather indicative of the condition of loving, or rather the lesson imparted by our experienced poets. Propertius 2.23.23-4 states Libertas quoniam nulli iam restat amanti, nullus liber erit, si quis amare volet Since freedom is left these days to no lover, no man will be free, if he wishes to love. Propertius 2.34.54 declares that in order to learn how to be a lover “you must be tamed/enslaved by [the poet]” (a nobis dominandus eris). The slavery is chosen and cultivated, and servility adopted. Ovid’s work in the Ars is to regularize and make over the messy (i.e. instinctive) elements of love into a neat, comprehensible, system of heterosexual bondage. 204 He brags at Rem. 9- 10: Quin etiam docui, qua posses arte parari, Et quod nunc ratio est, impetus ante fuit. 204 Leach 1964, Habinek 1997, Sharrock 2002a, Sharrock 2002b, Fulkerson 2004. 176 But indeed I taught by what art you [Cupid] could be readied, and what now is science before was impulse. Ovid’s didactic project is overtly an extension of the work of his forebears. 205 Ovid’s regularization of the model of dominance and submission treads an ambiguous line in his own work. Early in the Ars he credits women with having naturally dominant and unpleasant natures, according to the evidence provided by other authors in the erotic tradition (e.g. 1.417ff), yet he also spends much of Book Three prescribing behaviors to insure women continue their domineering behavior. 206 Part of his regularization may have to do with the elegists’ palimpsestic view of gender relations and social roles. An elegist calling his mistress a domina suits my argument thus far regarding the overlap of love with slavery, as it is the proper term for a 205 Ovid’s innovation is that he calls himself Praeceptor Amoris, not magister as Tibullus and Propertius did. On magister in Tibullus and Propertius, see Wheeler 1910. On the roots of praecapio see OLD. The distinction in terms between doctor and praeceptor attains higher relief in his defense of self in Tristia 2. Upon introducing the concept of carmen et error, and refusing to address the error, he writes, “The other part remains, where I am accused of becoming the instructor of obscene adultery in base song” (Altera pars superest, qua turpi carmine factus/ arguor obsceni doctor adulterii, Tr. 2.210-11) . I believe the shift in Tristia 2 to applying forms of praecipere only to his elegiac predecessors, and the one use of doctor to be symptomatic of the distancing of artist from persona and of work from affect and vital to his self defense. See Chrol 2006. 206 Conte 1989: 441 177 woman who wields power over her slaves. In poetry domina clusters with negative adjectives, such as dura, iniura, incerta, periura, crudela, saeva, tarda, turpis, infama. Generally it is a domina who abuses the lover, and not a puella. Puellae are generally positively modified, being rara, certa, pulchra, casta, ruda. Puellae, not dominae are called Romanae. It is true that sometimes puellae are negative. At Propertius 1.17.16 a puella is both dura and rara, though this might be emotional residue from the use of domina in the line previous. Also, Propertius suggests at 2.4.17 that the best way to harm an enemy is to let him love a puella. Generally, though, there is a contrast between the mature and threatening domina and the immature and genial puella. Much work has been done on the status of the puella and domina, but one aspect yet neglected is the visual component. In Propertius we have a sharp distinction between internal and external personae of the mistress. Frequently Propertius utilizes the term puella when the girl is being viewed, and domina for when she has her man in private. For example, 1.10 has Propertius recounting the night when he observed Gallus falling in love with his puella. Good puellae can become corrupted upon the shores of Baiae in 1.12.29, especially when they lose their chaperone (1.12.15), and it is a puella who awaits her man on a park bench reading Propertius’ poetry at 3.3.20. When Cynthia is at a party and playing the lyre, she is a docta puella, and 178 when she (here probably referring to her public persona) is the death of Propertius, she is a dura puella. On the other hand, the domina is the one who is behind the speaking door (1.16.9, 17, 28), a domina Propertius refuses to allow into his bed while Cynthia is gone (2.10), and it is Cynthia as domina he surprises alone and asleep in 1.3.17. If this is a conscious distinction which Propertius is applying, then it has a great depth of subtlety. Propertius 2.3 extols the beauty of his Cynthia, a domina, whiter than whom no lilies are (lilia non domina sunt magis alba mea 2.3.10), and a puella shining in Arabian silk (Arabo lucet bombyce puella 2.3.15). The pale skin is appropriate to the witness of the bedroom and the shimmering gossamer is appropriate to being seen by the public. Propertius’ play of the two terms reveals a conscious awareness of the palimpsestic ideology of Roman elite relationships, a recognition of overt and covert roles played in relationships. The demure and deferential beauty has no power in the public (male) sphere, lacking political and social control, and thereby enacts the traditional image of the mistress plaything. I don’t believe it a coincidence that the term puella is a term for female slave, the way puer (“boy”) is applied to male slaves. 207 However, behind doors in the 207 OLD: puella § 4. 179 private (female) realm she can wield all the stereotypical tools of sex and tears to objurgate and direct her man. Down to the microscopic level of the word Propertius is putting into play all the situational valences of the overlap between man and woman, master and slave, public and private, lover and beloved which appear on the macroscopic level of the elegies in general. Despite protestations of being elect or oppressed, such as those in Prop. 1.1, there is a strong element of choice in being a lover: Cat. 51, 78; Prop. 2.20, the premise of the Ars. 208 So, why would an elite man choose to be a slave? Slavery can’t be entirely bad, though, as Propertius also presents himself as enjoying the security of his position. Poem 1.4 responds to Bassus’s request that Propertius shift his affections by asking, “Why don’t you permit me to lead whatever more of my life there is in my accustomed slavery?” (quid me non pateris vitae quodcumque sequetur/ hoc magis assueto ducere servitio, 1.4.2-3). The use of accustomed (assueto) in the question does suggest at first blush that there is the possibility for change to another lover; however, other evidence suggests that Propertius cannot. He counts fortunate (felix, 1.12.15) the man who is able to transform his desires (potuit 208 Fulkerson 2004 disagrees. 180 mutare calores, 1.15.17) and take up the happiness of slavery shifted to another (translato gaudia servitio, 1.15.18), but he himself is incapable of loving another or of stopping his romance with Cynthia (mi neque amare aliam neque ab hac desistere fas est, 1.15.19). The use of fas might be illustrative of the force of compulsion exercised on Propertius, as its root meaning is that of divine propriety. 209 It might be sacrilege to give up his mistress, which in turn resonates back to the oppression of the hostile gods noted in 1.1 above. This is a theme explored in Tibullus as well, who credits his effective servility as the hook by which he maintains his relationship with Venus (1.2.97-8): At mihi parce, Venus: semper tibi dedita servit Mens mea: quid messes uris acerba tuas? Yet spare me, Venus, always has my mind, given over to you slaved away: why do you harshly burn your own crops? Along with job security and the delicious heaven of an old hell, our elegists also actively enjoy their torture and forego opportunities for escape. Enacting the practices of the Remedia Amoris, a text ostensibly written to free the reader from an inappropriate mistress, actually reinscribes the reader into elegiac bondage. 210 In Fulkerson’s words (2004: 220, 222): 209 OLD: fas. 210 Conte 1997, Fulkerson 2004 and Chrol 2006. 181 While the three books of the Ars have as their explicit goal the teaching of men and women how to love, they also teach that love is inescapable, a message confirmed in the Remedia, which sends the lover directly back to the Ars…. Finding a new lover to replace the old is the best advice the Remedia gives because it has trained its reader to be useless for everything but love…. His obfuscating rhetoric serves to mask, but simultaneously lay bare, the fact that it is simple: the way to 'cure' yourself of love is to recognize that there is no cure at all and so to throw yourself into the lifestyle (as O does in the first three poems of the Amores); resistence is futile. And why not? Propertius 2.20.20 describes his slavery as genial or pleasant (servitium mite…tuum), and when he offers to write grand verse for Bacchus, the request for release from his haughty bondage (servitio superbo. 3.17.41) is immediately followed by the plea to cover with sleep his worried head (sollicitum vince sopore caput 3.17.42), a head worried on account of the anger of his mistress. He doesn’t wish for any substantial transformation of his position. Indeed, in Cynthia’s birthday poem, 3.10, he wishes that Cynthia’s “reign may always stay resolute over my life” (inque meum semper stent tua regna caput, 3.10.18). For whatever reason, Propertius believes that there are other romantic realities besides the one in which he has been placed, such as the one Gallus enjoys before he has become ensnared in love, but Propertius will not extricate himself from his situation. Elegists don’t want mutuality. Amores 1.3 begins with the invocation: 182 Iusta precor: quae me nuper praedata puella est, aut amet aut faciat, cur ego semper amem! a, nimium volui—tantum patiatur amari; audierit nostras tot Cytherea preces! I beg for justice. The girl who recently snared me as booty either let her love or make it that I know why I should always love! Alas, I wish for too much – let her only endure being loved May Cytherea hear our many prayers! The masculine lover is actively passive. In the vast majority of the elegies, the tortured lover is an elite male. 211 Propertius’ advice on surviving a relationship is directed to men, and proposes that survival is based upon a cultivated servility. The advice he gives the slave aspirant is of this sort. One must strive for a lowly status, and be forever deferent, always keeping a pleasant mien and obeying each whim (1.10.21-4). The more you endure, the more humble you become and more subject to love, this much more effective one will be in love and the more benefits one will enjoy (quo sis humilis magis et subiectus amori/ hoc magis effectu saepe fruare bono 1.10.26). I have already noted that 1.17 depicts becoming a fugitivus as a bad choice for the lover and slave. I also commented above on 1.34.54 in which Propertius tells the would-be lover 211 The exceptions are marginal, like Catullus 35 and the plea of Tibullus 1.4 that boys would indeed fall for poets. 183 Lynceus that he must be tamed or dominated by the poet’s words in order to catch his girl. He likens the lover to the wild bull who must be roped before he can pull the plow. The thought that a willingness to endure the yoke made slavery more bearable is a common topos of elegiac literature, echoed elsewhere in Propertius, such as in the first ten lines of 2.4. Propertius might also be alluding to the maxim, “If you don’t like being a slave, you will be miserable; but you won’t stop being a slave.” 212 Connected to the status reversal of the elite lover is the apparent permeability of the body of the lover. Love is a rapist, and the lover has to play the pathic role to his beloved. As Cynthia goes off on one her jaunts, Propertius informs her that she need not worry about any other potential admirers of him, that “no other women could seduce/corrupt/violate me” (me non ullae poterunt corrumpere 2.8a.21). The word corrumpere is difficult to translate in this context. It can apply to run of the mill seduction, and has a strong flavoring of despoiling, but can also be applied to sexual violence. 213 Indeed, many of the terms which are regularly deployed in descriptions of Cupid and Cynthia, such as iniuria and violasse, are those of forcible 212 Pubilius Syrus 616. 213 Adams 1982: 198, 223. 184 defilement. 214 The initial metaphor of Amor in 1.1.4 depicting Cupid as removing the haughty fire from Propertius’ eyes by stepping on Propertius’ head (caput impositis pressit Amor pedibus) achieves a sexually maculate valence when compared to one of the other four uses of amor and pressit. For example, 1.13.21-2 depicts the rape of Tyro by Neptune (Haemonio Salmonida mixtus Enipeo/ Taenarius facili pressit amore deus.) On the one hand, sexual license with one’s slaves was a commonplace, 215 and so it might be unusual if the poet did not use such terms when describing the sexual relationship of a poet with his domina. On the other hand, Propertius might be toying with the fiction that women enjoy sexual violence, as exemplified by his feelings as feminized and servile actor. Either way, Propertius does not characterize himself as the active partner in the metaphorical sexual act. In summary, the elegiac script is predicated upon cultivating characteristics of abject classes (slaves, women, and children), and enduring their disabilities (cruelty, domination, permeability). Through the artifice of 214 It may be in this sense that Propertius uses the word nota in 1.18.8 in the phrase notam in amore tuo. He could both be playing with the idea that he has been branded like a fugitive slave but that he also has been marked with sexual defilement. A male elite who adopted or played the pathic role would in turn earn the nota of the Censor, and as a consequence be infamous, even if against his will. Cf. Sen. Contr. 5.6, Richlin 1993, 2005. 215 A wide ranging trope. Compare, for example, Livy’s account of the elimination of debt bondage at 8.28 or Trimalchio’s defense that no action is shameful if the master orders it at Satyricon 63. 185 being intensely personal, the poetry uncovers the “reality” of social interactions in Rome, and the fiction of elite male power. The world of the elegist is a dark reflection of the world of the elite Roman male. Having described how love-slavery works in the elegists, I would like to suggest some reasons why love-slavery is a cornerstone of the elegiac counterculture. My first suggestion is that slavery provides protection against the consequences of late-republican political upheaval. Our poets witnessed the death of the Republic and inhabited a world where the traditional political outlets for masculine competition were transformed into arenas for the bloody purging of one’s enemies. Gallus, an elegist who both sang and fought, earned the displeasure of Augustus for his military successes in Egypt and committed suicide. Catullus lived long enough to see the First Triumvirate and the beginning of the end. In Propertius’ case, he saw his father’s land taken to settle the veterans of Antony and Octavian. The middle republican signifiers of appropriate masculine performance were unsafe. Slavery is safe. The Romans believed that the word servus originated from generals saving (servare) subjugated enemies from death. 216 Choosing 216 Digest 1.5.2, in Wiedemann (15). 186 the alternate lifestyle of slavery instead of the elite political life into which he was born might save the life of the elegist. A second suggestion is that status reversal and liminality are common to rites of passage, and the writing of elegiac poetry is a young man’s game. As Fear notes (2004: 13) “[the elegiac narrator] is characterized as a male on the threshold of adulthood and … such masculine liminality is an essential ingredient of elegy…” and “builds up a picture of a permissible temporal space of youthful aberration for the elite Roman male that precedes adult responsibility.” Love is a dangerous substance, appropriate to liminal states and young men. We have seen Cato expelling a fellow member of the senate for uxorious behavior (81). The hegemonic ideal portrayed in Chapter Two had no erotic elements, and, though the sources in Chapter Three acknowledged that eros exists, it was at best an issue to be dealt with soberly (Seneca) and at worst to be avoided (Lucretius). Our poets are able to gain power by exploiting their position in the liminal realm. By using their position on the borders of society they are in a privileged position to observe and unmask the mystified and constructed elements of Roman society. It is in this vein I take the agonistic tweaks of the system (as with Tibullus 1.1 at the head of this chapter), and our elegists’ protestations of the artifice of their work. Catullus’ hypermasculine poem 16 187 (pedicabo ego uos et irrumabo) conveys the message that his verses are mollis, but Catullus is all man, sufficiently so that he can force his detractors to fellate him. 217 The corpus of Tibullus is littered with the powers given to the lover, including invisibility (1.2.41-2), magic (1.8.5-6), endurance and deceit (1.6.41). The Tibullan lover can overcome the hegemonic man with little effort. Ovid as well doesn’t believe that softness of poetry translates to softness of men, even if they wrote the poetry. One of Ovid’s defenses in Tristia 2 is that if the soul were corruptible by art, then why hasn’t his lusty muse (lascivia Musa, 2.313) corrupted him and caused rumors to stick to his name? The lyrical I is not the same as the personal I: “my character is separate from my song” (distant mores a carmine nostri, 2.353), and “a book is not a disclosure of the mind, but rather a respectable delight” (nec liber indicium est animi, sed honesta voluptas, 2.357). 218 Here, in contrast to the Commentariolum, we have our poet trying to play both sides – performance corrupts performer, but words are but words. The youthful focus of the elegists help ensure the conservatism of the elegiac system. Our poets assure us that once they complete their rite of 217 Richlin 1981. 218 Compare Cat. 16.5-6: nam castum esse decet pium poetam ipsum, uersiculos nihil necesse est 188 passage, once they grow up, they won’t be a threat anymore. Catullus states that he was incapable of writing poetry anymore once he passed to adulthood on the death of his brother (68.15). The invocation of Ovid in the first book of Ovid’s Amores and the beginning of his poetic career details the fight between elegy and epic. Propertius’ poetry, his love for Cynthia, and his bondage can be interpreted similarly as well: poetic pursuits will be put aside when he has become a man. 2.10.7 sets out the poet’s intended life program: “Let the first blush of youth sing of Loves, let the end of life sing of turmoil” (aetas prima canat Veneres, extrema tumultus). This sentiment is picked up in 3.5 where he claims he will now change his theme to more sober matters (3.5.19-23): Me iuvat in prima coluisse Helicona iuventa Musarumque choris implicuisse manus…; Atque ubi iam Venerem gravis interceperit aetas, Sparserit et nigras alba senecta comas, Tum mihi naturae libeat perdiscere mores. It pleased me to have tended Helicon in my early youth And to have interwoven my hands in the choruses of the Muses… But when burdensome old age will have cleft off love from me, And white old age will have salted my black hair, Then let it please me to learn natural philosophy. Certain elements then separate Propertius’ fourth book from the first three. Domina only appears once in all the poems, and it is a funerary reference to 189 an inheritance given to his nanny, not to apply to his mistress. The slow trickle of mature verse in the first three books comes to a flood in the fourth, where even the declaration that Propertius is going to be incapable of writing only erotic verse is undercut by the paeans proper to a mature poet. Erotic poetry is left behind as well as his mistress once Propertius passes through the liminal period, the time of status inversion, and becomes an adult Roman man, able to navigate the new complex masculinity of the Principate, and inheritor of the poetic tradition of Rome. This would be a satisfying ending to our chapter, but Propertius and Catullus’ growth and exit from the elegiac realm do not accord with the overall career of Ovid, who in his last years claimed he tried to teach elegy to barbarians, or Tibullus, who has seen old men don the myrtle wreath and chase boys, or with the overall concerns of the elegists regarding the ethics of self presentation. Habinek 2005, Chapter 4 treats the concept of ludus, explaining that play is incorporated into the Roman system, and is a constitutive element of the Roman worldview: play is dependent on seriousness and vice versa. In the works of elegy we have observed in this chapter we can see the danger of being aware of this reciprocal dependence. Our elegists do the same work as lyricists and mimes, but in the vocabulary they choose, and in the topics they explore, they play too hard. 190 V. CONCLUSION: EXPERTS AND THE OCCULT Sapiens existimari nemo potest in ea prudentia quae neque extra Romam usquam neque Romae rebus prolatis quicquam valet. - Pro Murena 28 219 Cicero was concerned about the future of forensic authority, whether it would remain in the hands of those trained in oratory, like himself, or would fall instead to those trained in law. In the Pro Murena, Cicero’s anxieties become manifest in his derision of jurists. Here in section 28 he claims that the specialized training in civil law is too circumscribed by time and place to be of any use. As we saw in Chapter Two, 220 sapientia is a very traditional, very Roman virtue, connected with martial excellence and the bluest of the blue-bloods. Here Cicero uses an the emotionally and traditionally rich term sapiens as a boundary stone to distinguish his intellectual expertise from that of the alien, ignoble, effete expertise of the legal scholar. Cicero goes on in section 30 to link the orator to the imperator as the two pursuits that bring a 219 No man can deemed a wise man in this skill which neither is useful outside of Rome ever nor at Rome when there are holidays. 220 Chapter Two: 48-9, 51-54. 191 man to the highest echelon of importance (quae possint locare homines in amplissimo gradu dignitatis). Much of the Pro Murena is obsessed with the ignobility of the jurist, the ease of his profession, its impartiality, its inability to participate in aristocratic exchange. From where he stood, the increasing prestige of this autonomous profession signaled to Cicero the potential collapse of a profession he worked had so hard to master. Yet, as we shall see, Cicero’s anxieties over the control of the courts is part of a much larger concern over the control of public masculinity. The passage from which the above is excerpted is worth quoting at length (Mur. 28, 29): Itaque, ut dixi, dignitas in ista scientia consularis numquam fuit, quae tota ex rebus fictis commenticiisque constaret, gratiae vero multo etiam minus. Quod enim omnibus patet et aeque promptum est mihi et adversario meo, id esse gratum nullo pacto potest. Itaque non modo benefici conlocandi spem sed etiam illud quod aliquamdiu fuit 'Licet consulere?' iam perdidistis. Sapiens existimari nemo potest in ea prudentia quae neque extra Romam usquam neque Romae rebus prolatis quicquam valet. Peritus ideo haberi nemo potest quod in eo quod sciunt omnes nullo modo possunt inter se discrepare. Difficilis autem res ideo non putatur quod et perpaucis et minime obscuris litteris continetur. Itaque si mihi, homini vehementer occupato, stomachum moveritis, triduo me iuris consultum esse profitebor…. Itaque mihi videntur plerique initio multo hoc maluisse, post, cum id adsequi non potuissent, istuc potissimum sunt delapsi. …qui oratores evadere non potuerint, eos ad iuris studium devenire. Magnus dicendi labor, magna res, magna dignitas, summa autem gratia. 192 Etenim a vobis salubritas quaedam, ab eis qui dicunt salus ipsa petitur. Deinde vestra responsa atque decreta et evertuntur saepe dicendo et sine defensione orationis firma esse non possunt. And so, as I said, never was there consular dignity in that expert knowledge of yours, which wholly consists of made up and invented matters, much less, indeed, any benefit. And since it lies open to everyone and impartially is accessible to both me and my opponent, it can in no way be influential. Therefore, not only have you already squandered the hope of securing a benefit but also that thing which at another time was “is it permitted to consult?”. No man can be deemed wise in this wisdom which neither is useful outside of Rome ever nor at Rome when there are holidays. Likewise no one can be considered experienced because in law, something everyone knows, there can be no disagreement in any way. Likewise the affair can not be thought difficult because it is contained in very few and hardly opaque documents. And so, if you move me to anger, a man extremely busy, in three days I will declare myself a jurist…. and so it seems to me that many from the beginning rather preferred [oratorical advocacy], but later, when they couldn’t succeed at it, then as a preference sunk down to that profession of yours….Those who couldn’t march forth as orators, they settle on the study of law…Great is the work of speaking, great is the matter, great is the dignity, and greatest of all is it in conferring benefits. And surely from you a certain safety is sought, but from those who speak, salvation itself. Thence do your opinions and rulings get overturned often by oratory and without the defense of oratory nothing can be upheld. Cicero’s Pro Murena was in a sense a rear-guard action against the tessellation of aristocratic power at the end of the Roman republic, and the diminution of aristocratic polymaths’ totalizing manhood. In the last century BCE we see the weakening of the ability for an aristocrat’s knowledge to be 193 the measure of all things (auctoritas = polymathy), the strengthening of specialist classes, the “transfer of authority from aristocrats to technocrats,” 221 the “shift from consuetudo to ratio,” 222 and the waning of ars and waxing of scientia. 223 As political power concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, and middle-republican signifiers of masculine success became harder to achieve, individual subcultures of experts redefined what qualified as masculine success. The attitudes expressed in Pro Murena are indicative of a conservative anxiety over the narrowing of political and moral authority at the end of the republic, and the shifting value over what it meant to be a man from the “Roman” “elite.” Many of those who came to prominence were of unfamiliar provenance, be they from recently enfranchised portions of Italy after the Social Wars, as many jurists were, 224 to Caesar’s stacking of the senate with Gallic senators in the early 40’s BCE. The venues of traditional elite success, politics and the military, and the measurement of traditional elite success, esteem from fellow aristocrats and from the populace, no 221 de Brauw 2006. 222 Wallace-Hadrill 1997: 18. 223 Following Wallace-Hadrill 1997 contra Skydsgaard 1968: 89. 224 Lenel 1956: 73. 194 longer were of primary value to members of expert subcultures. For example, a successful jurist was one who garnered praise within his specialized community and according to its particular rules. 225 The passage above, Pro Murena 28-9, is particularly hard on the rise of the autonomy of law and the legal profession. 226 As a man who has worked his way to the top of his society through giving and receiving gratiae – benefits conferred, favors done with the expectation of return – mobilizing a social and political network of clientes, Cicero was understandably threatened by the democratic prospects of law. The autonomy of law removed it from the socially elite and placed it in the hands of specialists who served (perhaps) society and (primarily) the law itself. Contrary to Cicero’s desire to maintain a socially embedded discipline dominated by charismatic elites like himself, civil law becomes an “autonomous discipline that was insulated by its professionalism from directly contending social pressures.” 227 As a reified, abstract, socially disembedded system, law and 225 Mur. 28 Si id quod oportet responderis, idem videare respondisse quod Servius; sin aliter, etiam controversum ius nosse et tractare videare. For an analysis of the broader trope of “The Emptiness of Public Fame” see Braudy 1986: Chapter Two. 226 Here I am describing the jurists of civil law; aristocrats maintained control of religious and political law: Kunkel 1967: 5. 227 Frier 2003. 195 legal advice is impartially open to either side (omnibus patet et aeque promptum est mihi et adversario meo). This type of practice (Moatti 1997: 302) “valorisent moins leur contenu que les practiques sociales qui leur étaient attachées.” It is also very particular to Rome and Roman work days (neque extra Romam usquam neque Romae rebus prolatis quicquam valet), and thereby separate from the circulation of elites and their universalizing aristocratic culture and knowledge. The impartiality of the jurist destroys that pillar of the patron- client relationship, gratia, both in favors done and received and in the gratification of having your client wait for hours in the atrium to ask Licet consulere?. 228 Cicero also denigrates jurisconsulting as something easy to gain proficiency in, since it is text based (not argument based) and relies on a few inflexible texts at that (quod et perpaucis et minime obscuris litteris continetur). What Cicero is alluding to is the change in the praetor’s edict of 91, which greatly streamlined the way legal cases were tried by relying more heavily on the wording of the law in question and on the opinions of jurists. In the 228 Recall the example of Crassus who gained his initial popularity by dispensing legal advice to all comers. The difference between Crassus and a late republican jurist is that Crassus’ advice was general and those who saw him were personally dependent on him. Kunkel 1967 argues that before the advent of the technically trained jurist (41) “Die Jurisprudenz [war] der Monopol der principes civitatis,” and notes Crassus as one of the last elites who was a famous generalist jurist, before law became specialized and autonomous. 196 thirty years between this change in the praetor’s edict and the Pro Murena there came a rise in the prominence of the jurist, and it became a profession appealing to socially ambitious equestrians. Through devotion to legal training and knowledge of the law social and economic mobility was possible. At the same time, during the last century of the Republic there came a steep decline in the benefits accrued by elites who pursued judicial advocacy. 229 Bruce Frier has well documented the reasons for this collapse, and, though he is not a historian of gender, his work on the sociology of law obliquely touches upon themes central to this dissertation. Frier 1985 argues that a gentle and gradual abrogation of power by equestrians begins in the last century of the Republic, as senators attempted to use jurists as weapons in the ever escalating conflict between aristocratic men. Through the use of these human tools and ceding them authority in the courtroom, elites decreased their efficacy as advocates. The type of rhetoric elite men deployed was too cumbersome and flashy for the pressures of an increasingly litigious society, and likewise the technical training in civil law did not have much room for oratorical flourish. 230 229 Only one jurist achieved the consulship in the last century of the Republic, and only after a failed attempt and eleven years inbetween. See Frier 1985: 254-5, Kunkel 1967: 41. 230 Frier 1985: 278-79. 197 Despite Cicero’s claims that he could become a master of civil law over the course of a bad weekend (Mur. 28: Itaque si mihi, homini vehementer occupato, stomachum moveritis, triduo me iuris consultum esse profitebor), the payoff was not worth the investment to most elites. It is Frier’s contention that the case oriented, rhetorically elaborated, personally motivated style of defense yielded to an abstract, iterable and universal set of norms, primarily for speed and efficiency in adjudication as a result of the skyrocketing amount of trials. Ultimately, it is the law’s complexity, abstraction, and use of those who mastered legal arcana that, in Frier’s eyes, subtly cuts in and waltzes off with the power of legal reasoning, leaving senators with the making of law and not its interpretation. The rise of equestrians in law is just part of the tessellation of elite masculine proficiencies occurring at the end of the Republic. It seems that part of what Cicero condemns about jurists is similar to the social sleight of hand he himself perpetrates throughout the Pro Murena. As Alston 1998: 211 observes, Cicero is one of a relatively new breed of man in the last century BCE, one who is able to gain power primarily as a man of letters, not as a successful general. In section 30 Cicero makes the orator and imperator separate but equal tracks: 198 Duae sint artes igitur quae possint locare homines in amplissimo gradu dignitatis, una imperatoris, altera oratoris boni. There are, then, two arts which can place men in the most impressive echelon of dignity, the one of the general the other of the good orator. By detaching the two halves of the middle-republican masculine ideal, Cicero is taking advantage of the changed circumstances at the end of the republic to redefine masculinity. By focusing on his skill in oratory to define his own successful performance of the elite script, Cicero is utilizing the same particularization and intensification of one aspect of elite masculine performance he condemns in the jurists. And that is the point. Cicero’s presentation of the hegemonic position provides a false comparison. The middle republican masculine script is irrelevant to this particular counterculture. Success in the insular field of civil law is not predicated upon the same bases of military success and political clout. The flipside of only one jurist joining the register of consuls in the last century BCE, and of the vast majority of jurists deciding to keep to the private sector and forego the outward symbols of masculine success detailed in Chapter Two, is that men were able to gain enduring memory for their judicial opinions, down to the time of Justinian’s codification of the laws. The script of the jurist – ancillary to the hegemonic political script yet 199 autonomous, with success predicated upon expressions of particular technical knowledge to other experts – provides validation to its practitioners, but not in hegemonic terms. The issues Cicero raises in Pro Murena are applicable to the third group of countercultures analyzed in this dissertation, and ultimately to the (mostly) successful redefinitions of masculinity as Rome transitions to empire. The image of masculinity in the late republic attempts to maintain a monolithic image of essential traditional middle republican values though individual facets of the hegemonic masculine ideal are pried away. New realms of competition come to the fore, challenging aristocratic polymathy in increasingly specific areas. The imperial project of pacifying the known world was in large part predicated on larger cultural movements towards rationalization of the known world, and may indeed have been a product of it (Frier 1985: 281): “The factors that caused the rise of the Roman jurists are thus broadly similar to those that created and shaped the Principate.” The Julian calendar was a grand leap forward not (simply) because of the eternal wisdom of Caesar’s numinous powers, but because it was based on the best science and research imported from the East – and it was genuinely 200 effective. 231 The legal authority of the emperors evolved not just because a “cowed and craven senate…fawningly ceded their traditional authority to tyranny” (Byrd 1995: 182) but also because the emperors subsumed the authority of jurists as well as other experts into their court. 232 As we have also seen in the Ars, no aspect of the natural world was safe from rationalization: “And what now is science, used to be impulse” (Et quod nunc ratio est, impetus ante fuit). 233 In the shadow of the totalizing manhood of the Princeps, narrowly focused countercultures of experts and occultists provided arenas for experimenting with untraditional expressions of masculine authority. In this chapter I build on work of authors like Moatti and Wallace- Hadrill who see in the end of the republic both unifying and particularizing trends in relation to knowledge. Moatti writes (1997: 301): Si «la philosophie est la recherche que fait un homme d’une forme capable d’exprimer tout ce qu’il sait», selon les mots de Paul Valéry, alors la société tardo-républicaine a fait cette 231 Cramer 1996: 28 takes the Julian calendar not as a top-down rationalization of the Roman calendar, another sphere colonized by the Roman elite, but rather claims it “represents the symbolical climax of the gradual conquest of Rome in this interval by eastern astronomy, accompanied inevitably by its illegitimate daughter, Hellenistic astrology.” 232 Frier 1986: 284, Wallace-Hadrill 1997: 14. 233 Ov. Rem. 9, Chapter Four: 175-76. On other types of rationalizations, see, for example, Leach 1964, Farrell 1991, Habinek 1997, Gale 2000, Fulkerson 2004, and especially Chrol 2006. 201 expérience-là. Perdue dans le labyrinthe des choses, partagée entre le fragment et la masse, entre la factio et la multitudo, elle a cherché des repères abstraits, lignes codes, catégories générales, susceptibles de lui rendre le monde intelligible. A l’heure où il lui fallait, sur le fonds d’une crise de la culture, inventer une unité politique, une mémoire même, la pensée formelle, c’est-à- dire la logique, que les Grecs avaient les premiers dissociée du langage, a été un formidable instrument d’unification. The aristocrats who took a chance on abstract knowledge, on viewing the world through universal terms, on transcending the particular for the universal further undermined their position as aristocrats. Moatti identifies how the transition to rationality served to threaten upper class privilege (302): Dans une société où la sagesse traditionnelle avait incité l’écote à ne cultiver que les connaissances utiles, valorisant moins leur contenu que les practiques sociales qui leur étaient attachées, où les mêmes hommes détainent savoir et pouvoir, où tous les domaines étaient liés (la connaissance du droit et l’eloquence, par exemple), bref où le code de conduite de la noblesse fixé par la tradition exigeait une multitude de compétences, toutes immédiatement efficientes, voilà que l’on commençait en effet à faire des distinctions. Wallace-Hadrill 1997 also addresses the way the rise in rationality shifted social power relations, yet he is particularly sensitive to contemporary modernistic approaches to these late republican innovations (12): The common theme in each area is that what seems to us in retrospect an inevitable adoption of superior civilization and 202 rationality also involves a redefinition of authority: a collapse of the authority of the Republican ruling class, a shift in the control of knowledge from social leaders to academic experts; and an appropriation of that authority by Augustus. I concur with Moatti and Wallace-Hadrill over the general motion and shift in world-view that comes with the rise in technical disciplines. What I contribute is an understanding of how particular subsets of the elite work within this cultural upheaval, endeavoring to establish new countercultures of masculinity. What both Moatti and Wallace-Hadrill are missing is the potential agonism underlying the choices of our expert actors. During what Wallace-Hadrill sees as an (6) “overarching coherence: a transformation from one cultural system to another” the friction between the two systems caused particular elite countercultures to spark up. This chapter will be a bit of a farrago, stretching from the technical (law, architecture) through the spiritual (neo-Pythagoreanism) and the occult (divination and magic), concluding with renovated traditionalism (antiquarianism). What unifies the strategies presented in this chapter is a common interest in taking heretofore unauthorized or unpopular modes of knowledge and attempting to use them to broaden conceptions of acceptable elite male behavior. 203 The gendered basis will be more theoretical in this chapter, and dependent upon that of the earlier chapters. The type of masculine redefinition present in this chapter is quieter than in the past ones. We don’t have the same kind of name calling or chest thumping by those attempting to preserve the boundaries of the hegemonic, philosophical or (through reverse psychology) elegiac countercultures, though the same struggle over masculine signifiers is present. My analysis of the Pro Murena section above elucidates the conflict over what is valid for a man to do: Cicero presents a conflict between hegemonic elite male practice, namely engaging in politics and the military, in valid types of argumentation and speech, 234 versus what the jurists do. By ascribing terms imbued with traditional value to his behaviors, and by eliding the audience with himself, Cicero wedges jurists from the hegemonic fold. Why are jurists paralleled to Chaldeans at Mur. 25? They are bizaare and egregiously un-Roman. The conflict in this chapter will take place in connotative realms. In sum, in this chapter I present some of the ways masculine subcultures provided their own valuations of elite Roman manhood. 234 Mur. 27 criticizes philology. 204 The Vitruvian elite man has taken a banausic field and demonstrated how it accords with aristocratic values. Though Vitruvius’ social class is unclear, his validation of elite knowledge is clear, as is his attempt to define his pursuit in hegemonic terms. 235 Vitruvius’ de Architectura, a work of the early 20’s BCE, returns periodically to the primacy of conquest (particularly under the banner of Augustus) in the constellation of masculine practice. The preface to his first book begins by claiming he waited until Caesar was done campaigning before troubling him with architectural matters (1.pr.1), and his captatio is predicated on his and his friends’ having gained recognition through the creation and maintenance of siege weaponry (1.pr.2): Itaque cum M. Aurelio et P. Minidio et Cn. Cornelio ad apparationem balistarum et scorpionum reliquorumque tormentorum refectionem fui praesto et cum eis commoda accepi. And so, along with Marcus Aurelius and Publius Minidius and Gnaeus Cornelius I was ready for the provision and repair of ballistae and scorpions and the remaining siege machines, and with them I received accolades. 235 I am not fully convinced by the arguments of Masterson 2004 that Vitruvius had to be a member of the apparatores class, one somewhat below that of the eques. He and the authors he cites don’t fully address the arguments of Baldwin 1990. I concur with Baldwin’s ultimate conclusion (433): “For all the inventiveness of modern accounts, Vitruvius ultimately remains an enigma in terms of precise knowledge of his identity, chronology and career.” In addition to Baldwin’s arguments, I see many of the slanders against the jurists, such as taking pay for work, having a technical bias to their trade, and working for others, analogous to the concerns over status and practice in de Architectura; as noted above, many jurists were equites and a few were senatores as well. 205 Military still takes center stage before other pursuits, and Vitruvius’ early successes come in a military arena. Vitruvius also downplays the physicality of architectural practice by playing up its intellectual facets (1.1.1): Architecti est scientia pluribus disciplinis et variis eruditionibus ornata, quae ab ceteris artibus perficiuntur. Opera ea nascitur et fabrica et ratiocinatione. The science of the architect is replete with many disciplines and diverse modes of learning, which must be accomplished by other arts. These efforts are born both of manual labor and by mental exertion. Vitruvius piles on terms from aristocratic learning: scientia, disciplina, eruditio, ratiocinatio. By coloring architecture thus he demonstrates it as not simply fit for some technically trained slave but rather according with a liberal elite education. It “assimilates him to his elite employer” (Masterson 2004: 389). Interestingly, the architect needs to have a broader education than the average middle republican elite man. Vitruvius writes (1.3.2): Itaque eum etiam ingeniosum oportet esse et ad disciplinam docilem. Neque enim ingenium sine disciplina aut disciplina sine ingenio perfectum artificem potest efficere. Et ut litteratus sit, peritus graphidos, eruditus geometria, historias complures noverit, philosophos diligenter audierit, musicam scierit, medicinae non sit ignarus, responsa iurisconsultorum noverit, astrologiam caelique rationes cognitas habeat. And so it is fitting that he have natural talent and be pliant to learning. Indeed neither is natural talent without learning or learning without natural talent able to produce the perfect 206 master of an art. And let him be well read, experienced with the drawing tool, learned in geometry, let him know more than a little history, let him have listened to the philosophers diligently, let him have learned music, let him not be ignorant of medicine, let him be familiar with the interpretations of the jurists, and let him have awareness of astrology and the laws of the heavens. The architect must have inborn talent (ingeniosus) and be well educated, though not just in the usual colonized provinces of Italic elite knowledge, such as literature, history, philosophy, music and law, but also in eastern and servile knowledge, such as in using drawing tools, mathematics, medicine, and astrology and cosmology. Masterson (2004: 388), drawing on Cic. Off. 150-51, credits architecture with a respectable social status just like medicine, and argues (393) that the system of education detailed above was part of a centuries old encyclios paideia. This is mostly true, but I wish to point out that in the Roman context, facility with tools (peritus graphidos) and astrological phenomena (astrologiam caelique rationes cognitas habeat) is quite unusual. 236 Even skills which the Romans felt ambiguous about, like music, 237 are never far from Vitruvius’ foundation of middle republican military ideals. For example, he claims the study of music is necessary to “correctly tune” siege 236 Cramer 1996: 28. 237 Such as with Quintilian’s lengthy defense of leaning music at Inst. 1.10.2-33. See also Chapter Three: 119. 207 engines (1.6 ballistarum, catapultarum, scorpionum temperaturas possit recte facere). Vitruvius’ particular style of experteeism extends aristocratic values through types of knowledge heretofore denigrated as banausic or foreign, and bridges hegemonic ideals of masculinity with the specific ideals of his profession. Vitruvius’ valorization of astronomy and astrology in books 1 and 9 is unusual. We know indirectly that traditional Roman interest in the heavens stopped at quartering the sky for augury. At the battle of Pydna in 168 BCE, either C. Sulpicius Gallus or Aemilius Paulus 238 gained the upper hand in the battle by delivering an impromptu lecture on celestial mechanics to inoculate the troops from superstitious fears that might arise from an impending eclipse. Even though he had what we might call a scientific foreknowledge of the eclipse, Gallus or Paulus nonetheless offered the requisite sacrifices to propitiate angry gods whose anger might make itself manifest by in an eclipse. Cramer interprets the sacrifice thus (1992: 49): His behavior typified the reluctance of this Roman generation to accept completely the wholly rationalistic Greek explanation 238 The sources are in conflict over which of the two knew about the eclipse. For Gallus, see Polyb. 8.37, Livy 44.37, Plin. HN 2.53.83, Plut. Marcellus 19.4-6. For Paulus, see Plut. Aem. Paul. 17.5, Livy 44.40, Cic. drP 1.23. See Cramer 1996: 48-9 for discussion. 208 of natural phenomena. He thus continued to offer traditional sacrifices to appease the heavenly powers, although he was already familiar with the mechanical theory of lunar eclipses. Our expert syncretized and made complementary otherwise opposed and exclusionary modes of thought – scientific and religious, Eastern and Italic, non-elite and elite – to save the day. Two aspects of this tale deserve deeper consideration. The first is that our expert gains power not just for Rome, but over his fellow man as well. In Livy’s account, Gallus appears semi-divine to his troops (Romanis militibus Galli sapientia prope diuina uideri, 44.37), and in Cicero’s account, Tubero is amazed that Paulus could even instruct his uneducated troops (“ain tandem?” inquit Tubero; “docere hoc poterat ille homines paene agrestes, et apud imperitos audebat haec dicere?” drP 1.23). Second, the type of reasoning deployed at the battle of Pydna was correct but not normally within elite prerogative. This example is repeatedly held up as an exceptional triumph of scientific knowledge over religione et metu (Cic. drP 1.23). It may praise the wisdom of Gallus or Paulus, yet it is nearly unique – the only other example of this type is that of Drusus using the same trick two centuries later to quell 209 a rebellion (Tac. Ann. 1.28). 239 Despite the efficacy of Gaullus/Paulus’ application of Eastern astronomy, stargazing persisted in being a suspect pursuit for aristocrats. 240 Though a suspect practice, eastern astrology and astronomy eventually become a serious threat to traditional Italic modes of viewing the world. Cramer 1996 observes that one of the byproducts of conquest and empire and the concomitant rise in foreign slaves is the resultant rise in foreign religions and foreign modes of divinatory practice. From this he concludes that these foreign ideas slowly corrupted the upper classes, and that the final century BCE was one of the major battlegrounds for competing divinatory and religious practice, culminating in Augustus’ adoption of the Capricorn as a personal symbol of power. Cramer’s language of contamination and implicit class-snobbery may give pause to scholars who view the proliferation of eschatological, religious and philosophical systems among the upper class as a byproduct of the cosmopolitanization of Rome, and potentially empowering and spiritually satisfying to elite men and 239 A plausible objection may be raised here that Gallus/Paulus and Drusus were in unique positions and Roman troops never at any other time had to deal with eclipses. I doubt it, since Gaullus/Paulus knew the appropriate propitiatory sacrifice for an eclipse, and Romans campaigned frequently. 240 Such as with Cicero’s anxious defense of stargazing at the end of dND. On Cicero’s loss of faith in the whole divinatory process, stars and all, see Momigliano 1984. 210 women. Some types of eastern religious practice were already mediated and filtered through Greek interpretations of the rituals (CAH 8.475): “In religion, the forms of divination and the cults that the Greeks had adapted from the east proved, in this adapted form, irresistible even to many members of the upper class…” Nonetheless, the Oriental flavor of horoscopy, numerology, omenology and oracular pronouncement carried a fair amount of social opprobrium. 241 The competing needs of an elite appetite for new types of knowledge with a fear of the East contributed to the success of Neo-Pythagoreanism. 242 The Neo-Pythagorean revival syncretized many different belief systems without feeling tainted by Eastern pollution. In Della Casa’s words (1962: 110), “È chiaro che, pur nella loro posizione di anti-orientali, i senatori romani arrivarono ad accettare Pitagora, ma negavano tutto quello che troppo apertamente montrava l’influsso dell’Oriente.” Though a mystical/religious/philosophical farrago, Pythagoreanism had a long 241 Take, for example, Plutarch’s criticism of Augustus as frivolously superstitious at Mar. 42.8, where Augustus took the advice of the Chaldeans and delayed setting out from Rome, nearly missing a battle, and the rumor that Augustus’ corpse was found with a Chaldean astrological chart. Also see Hor. Odes 1.9. Prejudice against the Eastern-ness of certain religions is persistent, stretching from Cat. 63 to the conclusion of Ap. Met. 242 I use the term “Neo-Pythagorean” to refer to the type of Pythagoreanism practiced in the last century BCE, particularly by those connected to Nigidius. The ancients only used the term “Pythagorean”; the term “Neo-Pythagorean” is a nineteenth century coinage (OED). 211 association with Italy, especially southern Italy. Aristotle elides the terms )Italikoi/ and Puqago/reioi (Met. 1.987a). Even though its roots were in Magna Graecia, the Romans had strong cultural affinity for Pythagoreanism. Cicero, at the outset of the fourth book of the Tusculan Disputations, describes the impact of Pythagoreanism on Rome. He argues that as Pythagoreanism spread out from Magna Graecia it is only plausible that it diffused into (permanavisse 4.2) Rome, and then claims that it is obvious from the evidence before his eyes that Pythagoreanism is at the root of many Roman practices. 243 Numa, though he lived hundreds of years before Pythagoras, was believed to have been a Pythagorean, and Appius Claudius Caecus was credited with creating a book of sententiae drawn from Pythagoras, and, according to Humm 1994, reorganizing Rome along Pythagorean lines. We see from the pro Ligario the reputation that Pythagoreans have as ascetics and moral men. Kahn 2001 observes (86) “it was almost an act of patriotism for a Roman to invoke the wisdom of this local sage” and (88) “Pythagoreanism was always in vogue in Rome.” 243 The abruptness of a Pythagorean interlude that Cicero himself says has nothing to do with his present work (quoniam non id agitur hoc tempore, Tusc. 4.3) is curious. Following the implications of Della Casa’s reasoning on ad Fam 4.13, perhaps Cicero is trying to rehabilitate to a broader audience a religio-philosophical tradition (or, more likely, its most famous adherent, Nigidius) that has fallen into some disfavor. 212 In the battles over authorized and appropriate realms for elite expertise, Pythagoreanism was at once liminal and central. Kahn, dubbing Pythagoreanism “patriotic,” overstates the case. Some facets of Pythagoreanism could not be syncretized into standard Roman state religion nor traditional Roman elite masculine practice. Pythagorean indoctrination worked like other mystery cults, demanding long-term training in private, unlike the public face of Roman state religion. Pythagoreans were egalitarian, and this egalitarianism precluded slavery and permitted women, plebeians, foreigners and other non-elite individuals to achieve leadership roles in the cult. 244 Vegetarianism was a fundamental practice, and those practicing it were unable to participate in sacrifice, a foundational ritual for Roman state cultic practice. 245 In Sorabji’s words (1993: 172): “To oppose 244 A parallel for the concerns over egalitarianism and private sacrifice can be seen in the Senate-mandated renovations to the cult of Bacchus after the Bacchanalian conspiracy of 186. The aristocracy was anxious whenever religion wasn’t directly in their control and out in the open. See Takács 2001. Beard, North and Price 1998: 91-96 find the greatest potential threat of the Bacchanal cult, motivating the Senate’s action, to be the possibility that Bacchants might have a personal loyalty to the Bacchanal cult rather than corporate loyalty to state cult. In turn, this might be another possible parallel for the Neo-Pythagoreans. 245 Despite Gregerson’s assertions (1994: 25) of “The Great Pagan Vegetarian Revival in the Greco-Roman West” with Ovid leading the charge through the figure of Pythagoras (Met. 15.110ff.), vegetarianism is usually seen as subversive. Kahn’s analysis of Sen. Ep. 108 pertains (2001: 93): “In describing his experience with the Sextians, Seneca tells the story of how he, as a young man, was persuaded by Sotion to give up meat, which he did for more than a year. He abandoned this meatless habit when, under Tiberius, it seemed dangerous to be seen practicing a foreign cult. Under these circumstances Seneca's father, who disapproved of a vegetarian diet because (says Seneca) of his hatred for philosophy, had no 213 animal sacrifice or meat-eating was especially tricky, because it was necessary to make clear that one did not oppose religion.” Pythagoreans were in a more vulnerable position than Stoics or Epicureans who chose to give up meat on ascetic grounds, as vegetarianism was central to Pythagorean practice. 246 Being a good Pythagorean carried with it potential social disability. It was not seen as a mainstream religio-philosophical tradition; consequently, for an elite male to call himself a Pythagorean was, I believe, a move similar to those outlined in the previous chapters, an attempt to drop out of the mainstream and establish a counter-hegemonic masculinity, particularly at the end of the Roman republic. difficulty in convincing his son to return to a fuller lifestyle. What is striking here are the strongly symbolic connotations of a meatless diet: the elder Seneca sees it as a commitment to (Pythagorean) philosophy; the suspicious emperor will perhaps see it as the practice of an alien cult and hence as conspiratorial behavior. In any case, after Seneca we hear no more of the Sextians.” Indeed, Pythagoras’ demand that his adherents adopt vegetarianism was one of the techniques he used to separate his ideal community, the Cenobites, from the polis (Iamblichus, Life of Pyth. in Guthrie 1987:64 tr. Guthrie): “The best polity, popular concord, community of possessions among friends, worship of the Gods, piety of the dead, legislation, erudition, silence, abstinence from the eating the flesh of animals, continence, temperance, sagacity, divinity, and in brief, whatever is anxiously desired by the scholarly, was brought to light by Pythagoras.” For a different perspective on politics and sacrifice, consider the treatment of Marcus Sergius Silus (Pliny 7.105; above, Chapter Two: 57), whose many wounds and loss of hands in combat caused his domestic enemies to attempt debarring him from sacrifice and consequently shut down his political career. 246 Compare Sorabji 1993: 124-25 and 172-4 for Roman examples and references. 214 The picture is further complicated yet reinforced by the actions of Nigidius Figulus, the face of the Neo-Pythagorean revival. His flavor of Neo-Pythagoreanism as well as the actions of his coterie, the sodalicium Nigidianum, demonstrate how elites attempted to use non-authorized modes of knowledge in order to further themselves, and the potential danger of a counterculture. Nigidius Figulus was a plebeian senator who had modest conventional success. He served as a tribune, praetor and one of the conservative subscriptors to Cicero’s writ against Catiline. He was famous as a grammarian and polymath, 247 remembered in our ancient sources as the most learned man in Rome (next to Varro). 248 Much of Nigidius’ work is concerned with syncretizing Roman knowledge with other traditions, such as those of the Etruscans, Samothracians, Greeks and Easterners, as well as extending Roman knowledge. 249 His knowledge of astrology and his 247 Swoboda 1889 is still the best collection of his fragments. 248 Cicero ad Fam. 4.13: doctissimi et sanctissimi. Gellius: homo iuxta M. Varronem doctissimus NA 4.9.1, cf. 19.14.1; civitatis Romanae doctissimus NA 17.7.4, hominis in disciplinis doctrinarum omnium praecellentis NA 13.26.1, cf. 11.11.1, 4.16.1; homo impense doctus NA 13.10.4; hominis eruditissimi NA 15.3.4; also cf. Serv. ad Aen. 10.175 Nigidius autem solus est post Varronem; licet Varro praecellat in theologia, hic in communibus litteris: nam uterque utrumque scripserunt. Cf. Cicero ad Fam. 4.13. 249 Etruscans: Arnobius adv. Nat. 3.40.p.138.5. (Swoboda 68); Samothracians: Arnob adv. Nat. 3.41 p 139.2 (Swoboda 70) and Schol. Germ. 68.18 (Swoboda 91); Greeks: his sphaera Graecanica 215 solution of the “twin problem” gave him the epithet “Figulus.” 250 Most of what remains of his works are fragments of his grammatical treatises, preserved by later grammarians, and preserve a naturalistic view of language (cur videri possint verba esse naturalia magis quam arbitraria, NA 10.4.2). For example, Gellius records the following from one of Nigidius Figulus’ grammatical commentaries (NA 10.4.4, Swoboda 41): ‘vos,’ inquit, cum dicimus, motu quodam oris conveniente cum ipsius verbi demonstratione utimur et labeas sensim primores emovemus ac spiritum atque animam porro versum et ad eos, quibuscum sermocinamur, intendimus. at contra, cum dicimus ‘nos’, neque profuso intentoque flatu vocis neque proiectis labris pronuntiamus, sed et spiritum et labeas quasi intra nosmet ipsos coercemus. Hoc idem fit et in eo, quod dicimus ‘tu’, ‘ego’ et ‘tibi’ et ‘mihi’. nam sicuti, cum adnuimus et abnuimus, motus quidam ille vel capitis vel oculorum a natura rei, quam significat, non abhorret, ita iam his vocibus quasi gestus quidam oris et spiritus naturalis est. eadem ratio est in Graecis quoque vocibus, quam esse in nostri animadvertimus. [Nigidius Figulus] says: when we say “you,” we use a particular motion of the mouth suitable for the demonstration on explaining names and stories of constellations; Eastern: his sphaera Barbarica, likewise about constellations; extending Roman knowledge: his work on brontoscopy efh/meroj brontroskopi/a topikh\ pro\j th\n selh\nhn in Ioann. Laur. Lydus de ostentis 57ff (Swoboda 83). 250 The story, preserved in Aug. de Civ. Dei 5.3, is that Nigidius attempted to explain in astrological terms how it could be that twins would have different destinies despite being born on the same day. He spun a potter’s wheel (figulus), dipped his finger in ink and touched the wheel twice in what appeared as the same spot. When the wheel stopped, the two marks were on opposite sides of the wheel. The analogy he drew was that the spinning wheel was like the spinning of the heavens, and the speed of it causes two children who appear to be born at once to actually be born under different celestial conditions, and thereby to be allotted different destinies. Augustine of course uses this tale of Nigidius to ridicule the veracity of astrology. 216 of this very word, and we gradually move out the tips of our lips and breath and exhalation turned away from us and toward those we intended, with whom we are making conversation. Contrariwise, when we say “we,” neither is the breathing of the voice poured out or directed, nor do we speak with out-jutting lips, but we contain both the breath and lips as if among just ourselves. Likewise does this arise even in that time when we say “you,” “I,” and “for you” and “for me.” And it’s this same case when we nod yes or no, 251 indeed the motion of the head or eyes does not differ from the nature of the thing, which is intended, and thus in these words there is a sort of natural sign of the face and spirit. This very same mode is in Greek words, too, that we observe in our own tongue. This passage is not curious when taken in light of the contemporary Stoic interest in the natural origins of language, as well as in light of Nigidius’ interest in magic and its direct connection between signifier and signified. But these grammatical fragments are preserved by later authors. What brought Nigidius and his sodalicium fame in his own day was their resurrection of Pythagoreanism and wedding it to occult practice, with the emphasis falling on the occult grounds. 252 Current scholarship is in agreement that Nigidius Figulus is only the metaphorical midwife to the 251 In Mediterranean cultures assent is signified the head nodding forward, negation with the head thrust back or with the eyes rolled back, hence the prefixes in abnuo and adnuo. 252 Guthrie 1987: 40 “The first word that we have concerning a renewed interest in Pythagorean thought comes from Cicero, regarding his friend Nigidius (98-45 B.C.E.), who was attempting to revive Neo-Pythagoreanism in Rome. It appears however that Nigidius was less interested in abstract philosophy than in integrating astrological, ritual and a variety of occultist beliefs.” See also Carcopino 1927 and Della Casa 1962. Musial 2001 believes Carcopino and Della Casa too credulous. 217 rebirth of Pythagoreanism, despite Cicero’s assertions. 253 Yet even Nigidius’ Neo-Pythagorean beliefs were less famous than his occult practices. He was famous for his skill as a prophet. Apuleius (de Mag. 42) attributes to Varro a story that a man who lost a great deal of money came to Nigidius to find out where it went, and that Nigidius, through the use of magici pueri, divined its location. More importantly, Nigidius was the man who reportedly cast a horoscope immediately after hearing the time of Octavian’s birth, predicting that Octavian would either be the ruler of the world (Suet. Aug. 94), or of the Romans (Dio Cass. 45.1). In the Dio Cassius version, Nigidius was such a skilled prophet (a)/ristoj of the horoscopists 45.4), that when he approached Octavius and declared “you have begotten a ruler over us” (despo/thn h(mi=n e)ge/nnhsaj), Octavius was so disturbed that he prepared to run home and kill the infant (45.5). Nigidius had to restrain the father by saying 253 For the contemporary view, see Getty 1941, Della Casa 1962, Traglia 1977, Momigliano 1984, Kahn 2001, and the CAH 2 9.707. Dillon 1996 believes it possible Nigidius did try to re- found the Pythagorean school, as in building a new specific physical location. Cicero’s introduction to his translation of the Timaeus rather claims Nigidius resurrected the philosophy (Swoboda 136.VIIII): denique sic iudico post illos nobiles Pythagoreos, quorum disciplina exstincta est quodam modo, cum aliquot saecula in Italia Siciliaque viguisset, hunc exstitisse, qui illam renovaret. I wish to note here that not since Della Casa 1962 has there been a book length analysis of Nigidius, and the majority of anglophone scholarship has centered on his brief astrological prophecy in Lucan 1.658-63. Despite the singularity of his personality and the impact he had on his contemporaries, no substantial gendered reading of Nigidius exists in modern scholarship. Furthermore, works like Musial 2001 or Petit 1998 focus on the political or philosophical implications of the Neo-Pythagorean revival, inadequately treating its social ramifications. 218 prophesied fate could not be avoided. Lucan plays with Nigidius’ skill at prophecy to have him foretell Pompey’s fall at BC 1.639-57. 254 Nonetheless, Nigidius is not reported to have stopped at non-Italic modes of divination. In Suet. fr. 85 (Swoboda 136.8), he is called a magus (Pythagoricus et magus in exilio moritur), a pejorative term applied to eastern mystics. His sodalicium gained a bad reputation as well. Sallust is impugned by [Ps-]Cicero as not just prone to youthful indiscretions, but also as having been caught up in the sodalicium sacrilegii Nigidiani later in life (Inv. 2, 5.14). In his speech against Vatinius, Cicero claims that Vatinius used the cloak of erudition and Pythagoreanism to cover deviant religious behaviors: et quoniam omnium rerum magnarum ab dis immortalibus principia ducuntur, volo ut mihi respondeas tu, qui te Pythagoreum soles dicere et hominis doctissimi nomen tuis immanibus et barbaris moribus praetendere, quae te tanta pravitas mentis tenuerit, qui tantus furor ut, cum inaudita ac nefaria sacra susceperis, cum inferorum animas elicere, cum puerorum extis deos manis mactare soleas, auspicia quibus haec urbs condita est, quibus omnis res publica atque imperium tenetur, contempseris, initioque tribunatus tui senatui denuntiaris tuis actionibus augurum responsa atque eius conlegi adrogantiam impedimento non futura? And since the beginning of all great things derive from the gods, I want you to respond to me, you who were accustomed to call yourself “Pythagorean” and to present the reputation of a very learned man as a cover for your monstrous and barbaric 254 Dick 1963 claims that Nigidius’ prophecy in Lucan is muddled because Caesar was born so great he even broke the heavens. Beard, North and Price 1998: 152 calls Lucan’s portrayal of Nigidius a “brilliant parody.” 219 habits, what great perversion of your mind laid hold of you, what great madness, when you undertook unheard of and unholy rites, when you were accustomed to draw out the spirits of the underworld, while you were accustomed to worship the gods of the dead with the entrails of boys, and despised the auspices upon which the city was founded, by which the whole republic and empire are held together; and from the beginning of your tribunate you announced to the senate that the findings of the augurs and the presumptiveness of that college would not be a block to your actions? Forensic oratory need not be true to be plausible or damning. The in Vatinium relies upon drawing strict distinctions between Roman and non- Roman augural and religious practice. The authority of the college of augurs is tied to senatorial authority, and their responsa to the republic and just rule (res publica atque imperium). Neo-Pythagoreanism, on the other hand, is connected in the minds of Cicero and his audience with occult practice. 255 Regardless of whether the Neo-Pythagoreans actually tried to raise the dead or raise hell, they had that reputation, as the scholiast on this passage informs us (Schol. Bob ad Cicero In Vatin. 5.2, p. 317 = Swoboda 136.10): fuit autem illis temporibus Nigidius quidam, vir doctrina et eruditione studiorum praestantissimus, ad quem plurimi 255 Depending on how widely the initiation practices of Pythagoreans were known, Cicero might have elicited laughter with the line inaudita ac nefaria sacra susceperis. Neophytes spent the first five years in silence listening to Pythagorean teachings. 220 conveniebant. haec ab obtrectatoribus veluti factio minus probabilis iactitabatur, quamvis ipsi Pythagorae sectatores existimari vellent. Moreover, at that time there was a certain Nigidius, a man outstanding in learning and in the erudition of study, around whom many men used to throng. This group was gossiped about in public by their detractors as a faction hardly commendable, although they themselves wanted to be thought of as adherents of Pythagoras. This passage is unspecific as to what the particular problem is with being in the sodalicium, though it has led scholars to some fairly wild surmises. They range from Getty 1941, who believes the confusing prophecy in Lucan reveals an attempt by Nigidius to utter consciously false prophecy in order to change the future, to Della Casa 1962, who sees necromancy (21): Ora, se pure in tutto il periodo di agitazioni e di anarchia che si estende dall’età dei Gracchi ad Augusto, tutte le «superstizioni», anche le più malfamate, ebbero libero campo, e si permetteva a ciascuno di svolgere le esperienze negromantiche più abominevoli, non si può escludere che, in certi casi, l’ordine antico fosse osservato. Musial 2001 calls into question the evidentiary bases for any of these claims, but goes too far in my view by dismissing any political connections of the sodalicium. What we do know is that Nigidius fought against Caesar with the Pompeians, that he had a coterie of men who followed his flavor of Pythagoreanism, and that he was famous enough in his use of the occult to 221 have one man seek him out for help and to drive another nearly to infanticide. Most significantly, he is one of the few men who were unable to use the famous clemency of Caesar and wound up dying in exile. Cicero ad Fam 4.13 is a long letter of consolation to Nigidius, assuring him that Caesar is well disposed to recalling Nigidius from exile, and that Cicero will do his best to ingratiate himself with those who can expedite Nigidius’ return. If Caesar is so kindly minded to Nigidius, why does Nigidius die in exile? In this I am persuaded by Rostagni who credits Nigidius Figulus’ Pythagoreanism as one of the reasons he didn’t receive Caesar’s pardon. He argues that Caesar as Pontifex Maximus couldn’t brook these outside traditions, and was maintaining the purity of elite religious practices. Beard, North, and Price caution us in how we might categorize the actions of the sodalicium and Nigidius’ appellation as a magus (1998: 154): “’magic’ is not a single category at all; but a term applied to a set of operations whose rules conflict with the prevailing rules of religion, science, or logic of the society concerned.” I find it plausible that the occult nature of Nigidius’ brand of Neo-Pythagoreanism made it suspect to hegemonic elites like Caesar. The factional nature of Nigidius’ band, its occult practices coupled with the elements of Neo-Pythagoreanism that couldn’t be integrated into state 222 religion, made the prospect of recalling him too great a threat. 256 Whatever it was they did, the sodalicium potentially posed a dangerous alternative to state religion. So, where is the gender in this? Nigidius wasn’t the only man who failed to be recalled from exile; along with many others, two of his fellow magicians also died in exile. Magic to the Romans always reeked of the East and was gendered female. Nigidius and his two compatriots were able for the first time (and only time, at least until the east, cross-dressing and magic became provisionally accepted to Romans in the personage of the emperor Elagabalus) to gain acceptance in the mainstream for his magical practices. His death in exile demonstrates that Nigidius Figulus – friend of Cicero, intellectual rival of Varro, enemy of Julius Caesar – was a charismatic, appealing, but ultimately failed exemplar of countercultral masculinity. 256 Here I disagree with Phillips 1991, who objects to contemporary arguments that contemporary definitions of magic as (262) “unsanctioned religious activity” are Judeo- Christian constructs, and loosely parallel to Justice Potter Stewart’s “But I know it when I see it” definition of pornography (260, 263-4). Phillips’ strict legalistic definition is in many ways correct but too narrow. He argues for the period I analyze that there were only ten expulsions of astrologers from Rome (264) and calls it a “relative infrequency.” Phillips’ restriction to the few legal examples reveals a legal, class, and non-Roman bias, in that he ignores examples like Nigidius and other Roman occultists, who, though providing indirect and circumstantial evidence, nevertheless demonstrate a larger discomfort with countercultural reinterpretations of appropriate religious behavior. 223 To draw this chapter and this dissertation to a close I wish to speak briefly about a man who was able to successfully integrate countercultural themes of masculinity into his self presentation and negotiate the changed value of masculinity at the end of the republic and into the principate. Many of the men whom I describe as recasting masculinity for personal satisfaction and social power – Cicero, the younger Cato, Nigidius Figulus, and Ovid, to name a few – wind up dying at the hands of their enemies or in exile. Marcus Terentius Varro Reatinus made as many missteps as any of these men, yet wound up embraced by Julius and Augustus Caesar. As we saw above, Varro and Nigidius were often paired as the most learned men in Rome. In a way, Nigidius comes off as the evil twin of Varro. Both men pursued traditional careers, serving in the military as youths, following the cursus, and becoming tribune, quaestor, curule aedile and praetor. Varro had great military success, and under Pompey was the first to win the naval crown in the war against the pirates. Neither were retiring men; each was charismatic and active, interacting with men at the top echelons of power. 257 The scholarly interests of both men were quite similar, encompassing matters divine and human, and both were interested in 257 Skydsgaard 1968: 95: “The term "bookish" is applicable to very few Romans, and a brief synopsis of Varro's career will prove that he is no exception." 224 philology and etymology. Varro, after passing through Platonism and Cynicism, also became a Pythagorean. Both men fought alongside Pompey against Caesar. Varro, though, was able to secure a return from Caesar, and though proscribed by Antony, achieved reconciliation and more with Augustus. Varro’s works were better preserved, and Varro died at home with a stilus in his hand. Why did these two scholarly twins achieve different fates? Varro was saved three different times. As an outspoken defender of the republic, Varro wrote against the First Triumvirate in his satire Trika/ranoj. This work was so ill received by the Triumvirs that Varro was in danger, and, after reconciling with the Triumvirs had to retire from public life, instead working on the Land Commission. He did return to politics (Astbury 1967: 408): Old loyalties -- or another miscalculation -- caused him to join Pompey in the Civil War, but as soon as he realized the hopelessness of his position he capitulated and was reconciled with Caesar, winning great favour with him. Caesar implies that Varro’s heart wasn’t in fighting his old friend, and as a sign of Caesar’s clemency, he appointed Varro head of Rome’s first public library. Then, when he fell afoul of the Second Triumvirate, Antony had him proscribed, and, though Varro kept his head, he lost his library and much of 225 his property. Despite his advanced years, Varro was still deemed a threat. Nonetheless, he had a happy ending, whereas Nigidius did not. I see in Varro evidence of a negotiation of the type of manhood that can thrive in imperial times. Varro’s value comes in his utility to the dominant powers. His antiquarian work served Augustus’ project of rebuilding the state. Like the jurists’, Varro’s work was a para-formation to the hegemonic track, his work assisting the aims of those truly in power. Like the Vitruvian man, Varro resignified untraditional and eastern modes of knowledge, retooling them for the Roman context. And his Pythagoreanism was quiet enough to allow him personal satisfaction without threatening the state. Varro was an exceptional masculine figure, not “exceptional” in the sense of being egregiously aberrant, though he does engage in practices which middle republican senators would deem bizaare, but in the sense of being an outstanding example of the quiet redefinition of masculine signifiers that takes place as the broken world of the late republic reforms in the Principate. BIBLIOGRAPHY Adams, J. N. 1982. 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Creator Chrol, E. Del (author)

Core Title Countercultural responses to the crisis of masculinity in late republican Rome

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