"Putting Cato the Censor's Origines in Its Place" in Classical Antiquity 23.2 (2004): 323-357

Putting Cato the Censor's "Origines" in Its PlaceAuthor(s): Enrica SciarrinoSource: Classical Antiquity, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Oct., 2004), pp. 323-357Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25011192Accessed: 28/07/2010 21:18

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ENRICA SCIARRINO

IY

Putting Cato the Censor's Origines

in Its Place

After reviewing current opinions about the social function of literature in second-century BCE Rome, I focus on two controversial fragments assigned to Cato the Censor's Origines. In the first, Cato portrays the ancestors in a convivial setting as they sing the praises and the manly deeds of famous men; in the second, he gestures towards the pontifex maximus' specialized use of writing and the functioning of the tabula as a locus of memory. By drawing on the field of performance studies, I identify the performative features inherent in both of these fragments and map out how these features inform the positioning of Cato in relation to the identity politics of his time, professionalism, and writing. The aim of this study is to return the Origines to its immediate socio-cultural purview, but working towards this aim will also entail a shift in perspective and a reassessment of our notions of "poetry" and "prose." In fact, by stressing the performance dimension that underlies the genesis of the Origines as a text, this article will also expose the shortcomings inherent in the hyper-literary approaches that have been so far adopted.

"Dunque tu sei prigioniero di quello che hai fatto, della forma che quel fatto ti ha dato ... eh sl! La vita stessa e un fatto!" -L. Pirandello, Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore, Tutti i romanzi, 2nd ed. (Milano, 1975), 2: 611.

While the status of Cato the Censor's Origines as the first example of Latin

historical prose continues to tantalize scholars, its fragmentary condition makes any close investigation extremely difficult. As a result, whoever seeks to grapple

T'his article is part of an ongoing project on Cato the Censor's invention of Latin prose and his use of writing as a representational tool. It is my pleasure to thank my audiences in Berkeley and in Christchurch, but especially those who more directly engaged with my argument and read the many drafts that have led to this publication: Nicola Di Cosmo, Thomas Habinek, James Ker,

David Konstan, Kathleen McCarthy, Melissa Mueller, Trevor Murphy, Mark Griffith, Jed Parsons. l'im Parkin, Dylan Sailor, and the supportive referees for Classical Antiquity. For all the errors overlooked and advice spurned I am, obviously, solely responsible.

Classical Antiquity. Vol. 23, Issue 2, pp. 323-357. ISSN 0278-6656(p); 1067-8344 (e). Copyright C 2004 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Rights and Permissions website at www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.

324 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 23/No. 2/October 2004

with its form and content must rely on the scattered testimonies of later authorities. Among these, Cornelius Nepos occupies a special position, since in his Life of Cato he dedicates to this work a long paragraph:

Senex (Cato) historias scribere instituit. earum sunt libri septem. primus continet res gestas regum populi Romani, secundus et tertius unde quaeque ciuitas orta sit Italica: ob quam rem omnes Origines uidetur appellasse. in quarto autem bellum Poenicum est primum, in quinto se cundum. atque haec omnia capitulatim sunt dicta; reliquaque bella pari

modo persecutus est usque ad praeturam Seruii Galbae, qui deripuit Lusi tanos; atque horum bellorum duces non nominauit sed sine nominibus res notauit. in eisdem exposuit quae in Italia Hispaniisque aut fierent aut uiderentur admiranda; in quibus multa industria et diligentia comparet, nulla doctrina.'

When he was an old man he began to write "histories." There are seven

books of these. The first contains the deeds of the kings of the Roman people, the second and the third the origin of each Italian state; on this

account, he seems to have called the whole work Origines. In the fourth, however, is the First Punic War, in the fifth the Second. And all of these matters are told in a summary fashion; as for the remaining wars, he

continued in the same way down to the praetorship of Servius Galba, who plundered the Lusitanians. And he did not name the leaders of these wars

but recorded the events without names. In the same books he accounted for the noteworthy events and sights of Italy and the Spanish regions; in these there is evident much industry and diligence but no learning.

Nepos' description has long been tested against the fragments that have sur vived, but it is almost impossible to determine what the Origines looked like independently from what he says. Although Nepos does not spell out what he means by historiae, critics have compensated for his reticence by adopting Greek historiographic precedents and later Latin works as investigative models.2

1. Nepos Cato 3.2-4. Note that in this article citations from Cato's works are from the edition by Cugusi and Sblendorio Cugusi 2001.

2. I do not know of any scholarly study concerning the Origines that does not take for granted that we are dealing with historiography without explaining what is meant by that, except for the attempts of Churchill 1995. See, for example, Kenney and Clausen 1982: 149: "It was Cato who founded Latin historiography as such with his Origines." Cf. also Conte 1994: 86: "Cato wrote the

Origines in old age, thus starting historiography in Latin." In the same context, Conte compares the Origines with Sulla's and Caesar's commentarii only to reject the comparison: "the case of

Cato, a politician of the first rank who wrote history, was fated to remain practically unique in Latin culture; autobiographical commentarii such as those of Sulla and Caesar are evidently different." The comparison is actually interesting in that both Sulla and Caesar fixed their achievements in writing just as Cato did. For the relationship between the Origines and the Greek tradition of the xtiLCsL, see

Gruen 1992: 58-60 and Meister 1992: 178. It should be noted, however, that De Stefani (1903: 98) had already highlighted the reference to the Origines as xTtc(Et, in an excerptum vaticanum de

mirabilibus. Against the connection, see Astin 1978: 227-28 and Kierdorf 1980: 210. Note that in the Catonian corpus the term historiae appears in the fragment preserved by Aulus Gellius 3.7.19 = Cato

SCIARRINO: Cato the Censor's Origines 325

As it turns out, these investigations continue to produce the same results: it is uncertain whether the first three books covered Roman events up to 270 BCE and whether these events were arranged in a chronological sequence. More over, there are clear signs of unevenness between this first part and what fol lows, which seems to have included a smoother narration of events.3 Moving away from the purely textual level, problems of interpretation come to the fore. The names of individual leaders are almost completely omitted from the frag ments (as Nepos underscores) and Greek cultural materials are sprinkled all around.4 Suppression of names is generally seen as Cato's resistance to the aristocratic practice of linking actors and actions to celebrate (or denigrate, as the case may be) individual leaders.5 While this resistance would mark Cato's status as homo novus, the inclusion of two of his own speeches indicates his

need for self-assertion.6 The presence of Greek materials, on the other hand, does not fit the anti-hellenist image of Cato to which we have grown accus

Orig. 4.88b.2: Leonides Laco, qui simile apud Thermopylas fecit, propter eius uirtutes omnis Graecia gloriam atque gratiam praecipuam claritudinis inclitissimae decorauere monumentis: signis, statuis, elogiis, historiis aliisque rebus gratissimum id eius factum habuere; at tribuno militum parua laus pro factis relicta qui idem fecerat atque rem seruauerat. ("The Spartan Leonidas did something similar at

Thermopylae and because of his courage the whole of Greece honored his glory and consecrated his extraordinary fame with monuments of outstanding splendor: indeed with portraits, statues, funeral inscriptions, histories, and in other ways Greece recognized his very welcome deed; upon the tribune, by contrast, scant praise, considering his deeds, was bestowed, although his achievement was the same and he even saved the situation)." The comparison between Leonidas' monumenta and the tribunus militum' s parva laus is meant not only to underscore quantitative differences, but also different cultural practices and media of preservation. I should also like to point out that Astin (1978: 332) recalls the information in Plutarch (Cato 20.7.25) regarding the "history" written in "big letters" for the son in relation to the supposed encyclopedia or writings that go under the heading Ad Filium, but does not link it to the Origines. Others have hypothesized such a connection; see Malcovati 1930: cxxviiii-cxxx. The connection is intriguing since it would testify to the use of writing as a way of preserving household knowledge. For a most recent and acute reassessment of the Origines in relation to other contemporary forms of "commemoration," see Gotter 2003.

3. See Astin (1978: 212-39) for a survey of how scholars have attempted to match the account of the origins in the earlier books with the seemingly more organic treatment of later events in books 5, 6, and 7, a difference already detected by Festus (216L). In this sense, Astin reports that capitulatim

could be interpreted as meaning either "under headings" or "by topic." For a more recent discussion of this problem, see Sblendorio Cugusi and Cugusi 1996: 135-40 and Cugusi and Sblendorio Cugusi 2001: 45-60.

4. Reference to the lack of names of generals is also in Pliny N.H. 8.1 1. As for Cato's use of

Greek materials, Nepos emphasizes his lack of learning and opposes it to his diligence and industry. Critics (e.g. Astin 1978: 223) have interpreted this last comment as an indication of Cato's lack of literary sophistication. Cf. also D.H. 1.11.1, 1.74.2. For the use of diligentia in Cato's written corpus, see De Agr. 1.4.4, where this term indicates effective management of resources; for industria and derivatives, see Cato Orat. 24.93, Orat. 4.5.

5. On this issue and its significance in relation to Cato's attention to the populus Romanus, see Astin 1978: 233, Letta 1984: 30n.155, and Gotter 2003: 124-26.

6. As for the speeches, the first is known as the Pro Rhodiensibus and should be placed in 167

BCE (it is preserved in large part by Gellius 6.3 = Cato Orig. 5.100-106); the other was directed against Servius Sulpicius Galba and performed in 149 BCE. Cicero (Brutus 89) asserts that Cato included the speech against Galba in the Origines just before his death. Cf. Cato Orig. 7.119-23.


tomed, but in more recent years various attempts have been made to justify the mismatch.7

As this brief survey of modern interpretations suggests, the challenges posed by the fragments are many and varied. More challenging, however, is to resist the tendency to map onto the fragments our own ideas of what this work is

supposed to be and say. This study views the remains of this work through the

lens of classical philology, but projects them against the cultural, social, and political backdrop of second-century BCE Rome in the light of performance and the performative. Observed in this way, what has survived to us appears as shreds of a text memorializing Cato's intervention in the debate surrounding the definition of a new elite during the transformation of Rome from a city-state among many to

the capital of one vast empire.

As will become immediately clear, my approach is bound to and oriented by both specific and general ongoing discussions. At the more specific level, I have benefited a great deal from recent investigations of early Roman literary practices and their compelling insights into the professionalism that characterized them. Among the more general discussions are the theoretical issues underlying interdisciplinary investigations. A related concern is the usefulness of perfor

mance studies in the exploration of textual and often fragmentary materials, a

quite problematic but (I hope) potentially fruitful development. In what follows, I will begin to lay the foundations for my reading of Cato's

Origines by reviewing current critical opinions about the social function of literature in second-century BCE Rome. Then, I shall map out the performative features inherent in two important and controversial fragments-in particular, how these features inform the positioning of Cato in relation to the identity politics of his time, professionalism, and writing. The aim of my contribution is to return

the Origines to its proper context, but working towards this aim will also entail

a reassessment of our notions of "poetry" and "prose." Through a close textual

examination, this study will ultimately seek to connect the genesis of the Origines to a dimension of performance that escapes generic categorizations based on a

strictly literary framework.

LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS

As recently pointed out, Latin literature was "invented" in the late third and

early second century BCE by professional writers and performers coming from

newly conquered lands and sponsored by the ruling Roman elite.8 Among these

7. See especially Gruen who thinks of Cato's anti-hellenism as "purist posturing" (1990: 116 17) and interprets the Origines in general as a "vehicle to advertise the Roman national character '

(1992: 52-83). 8. Here I am referring especially to the treatments by Habinek (1998a: 34-68), Krostenko

(2001: 22-35), and Rupke (2000: 31-52).


professionals we find the poets generally associated with the early phases of Latin literature: Livius Andronicus, Plautus, Naevius, Ennius, and Terence. In this view, literature was a consequence of Rome's expansion, but also one of the means whereby the Roman aristocracy addressed the identity crisis that it had to face when suddenly presented with the difficult task of managing a vast empire.

The development of a literary tradition, however, was not as painless as we tend to think. In fact, literary practices competed with previous forms of acculturation that hinged on aristocratic musical performances and encroached upon convivial gatherings, social settings traditionally kept exclusive.9 Accordingly, the presence of alien professionals in the urbs produced a double phenomenon. One, the governing class employed these new cultural agents to expand public festivals through dramatic spectacles and to celebrate the supremacy of Rome and its ruling body in the Mediterranean. Two, individual members of the upper class recruited these professional figures in order to put them on display during their banquets. While reclining on their couches and sharing food with their guests, they watched and listened to these professionals who sang Greek poetry or recited from their own texts. Moreover, these elite members started to claim literary knowledge not only through professional performances but also by engaging in imitations of similar practices. Accordingly, professional shows and elite displays of new cultural materials during convivial occasions came to serve two significant functions, namely, the augmentation of individual prestige and the articulation of a new and quite distinct class of rulers.

The greatest contribution of this recent scholarship is an understanding that the poets who flowed into the city produced new cultural forms (written com positions shaped after Greek precedents) and introduced new cultural practices (performances based on compositions previously written down). Furthermore, the emphasis placed on the performance aspect of literature makes clear that con

vivial gatherings had always provided a context for the production of culture. But when professional writers and performers encroached on them, they also became the sites in which the elite contended with each other by showing off the latest

novelty coming from Greece or introduced to Rome by professionals. In this sense, the fragments of texts that have survived from the works of the early poets

conspicuously point to the interest that the elite had in the cultural patrimony

of their subordinates, although they are only telling half the story. Professionals

facilitated a cultural transfer from Greece into Rome through their creations; but

the elite who invested in them by sponsoring private spectacles and by imitating

their performances put their mark of ownership on the Greek cultural patrimony

and professional creations at the same time.

This study argues that Cato the Censor's Origines testifies to and participates

in this contest of ownership fought over the cultural capital that was becoming

9. For the pre-literary tradition, see especially Zorzetti 1990, 1991.


available through the mediation of professionals and the plundering of books.10 Yet it also pinpoints how, through the Origines, Cato attempted to circumscribe professional agency and to define elite uses of writing.11

Particularly relevant to my argument are two controversial fragments. The first portrays the ancestors in a convivial setting as they sing the praises and the

manly deeds of famous men; the second alludes to the tabula on which the pontifex maximus wrote the events that interested the community. These two fragments embody representations of highly authoritative rituals. The first draws authority from the presence of the ancestors in the act of singing during a banquet; the second gestures towards the pontifex maximus' specialized use of writing and the functioning of the tabula as a locus of memory. Far from being inconsequential snapshots, these representations do something and it is against the theoretical framework developed in the field of performance studies that we can begin to grasp what it is that they do.

It has become a matter of common knowledge that performances function as a means by which knowledge, memory, and identity are transmitted through bodily and/or speech practices that are distinct from those informing everyday life. This is the case in a number of events such as theatrical plays, rituals, political rallies, funerals, dances-that is, happenings that involve a visual component and event appropriate behaviors. On one level, performances of this type can be objects of perusal not only because they can be isolated from those around them, but also

because they often have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Therefore, when we say that something is a performance not only do we claim the finite status of an

event, but we also link this event to a particular spatial and temporal backdrop

marked out from the rest of everyday life. On another level, "performance" is also

a methodological tool that allows the analysis of certain events as performance."2 Citizenship, gender, and ethnicity, for example, are rehearsed and performed in everyday life. Being inherently fluid, these events can be isolated only by the analytical eye and made sense of only if observed alongside or in relation to other socially meaningful acts. Like a dramatic performance or a civic ritual,

they are temporally and spatially localized but-as opposed to the former types they are comprehensible only if perused within an immediate environment and in connection with a number of surrounding issues.

For the sake of this discussion the differentiation between an event that is a performance and an event that can be viewed as a performance is doubly

important, for we have social actors (professionals and elite) who participate in the same spatially and temporally marked contexts (festivals and banquets). Yet

10. In this respect, it is worth remembering that after the victory at Pydna in 168 BCE Aemilius Paullus shipped Perseus' library to Rome and made it his own personal possession. Cf. Plutarch Aem. 28.1 1; Polybius 31.23.

11. In this sense, my reading identifies in more detail the censorial attitude inherent in Cato' s interventions underscored by Bloomer 1997: 18-37.

12. For a treatment of this distinction, see Schechner 2002: 30-32.


these same social actors constituted their identity by doing distinctively different things. Whereas the social identity of the professionals was linked to the act of writing and performing scripts, the members of the elite constructed their socially dominant position primarily through political and military activities. This implies that although these two groups met around performances taking place in temporally and spatially marked contexts, separate from other daily events, their relationship was hierarchically underscored by the daily activities that defined their social status. On the other hand, scholarly explorations of the complicated layers of referentiality inherent in the word "performance" provide further (and even more productive) insights.

Critics coming from philosophy and rhetoric (such as J. L. Austin, Jacques Derrida, and Judith Butler) have introduced the terms "performative" and " per formativity" in relation to the power of language. A performative utterance, for

Austin, refers to cases in which "the issuing of the utterance is the performing of

an action." 13 To exemplify this statement, he uses the framework of the marriage

ceremony and the words "I do" pronounced by the groom and the bride. In his

view, the conventionality and the markedness of the ceremonial procedure affect the power of the words pronounced, so that in saying "I do," the bride and the

groom become an entity legally (and/or religiously) bound. Uttering these words, then, produces two different effects: illocutionary and perlocutionary. Their il locutionary effect can be seen in the moment of saying, and specifically in the

transformation of status of two people from single to married. Their perlocu

tionary effect, by contrast, relates to what follows, namely, to the fact that these

two people will afterwards share a residence, children, and so on. Put in this

way, the illocutionary and the perlocutionary effects of an utterance pertain to

two different moments, the now and the after. Others have built upon Austin's

notion of the performative. Derrida, for example, goes further in underscoring the importance of the citational and iterable components in the "event of speech," stressing that these sustain the efficacy of a statement.'4 Citationability and it erability, in fact, make it possible for every mark (that is, any sign, trace, word,

or gesture) to be repeated and to remain meaningful in a new context, even if

this new context is completely cut off from the original one.5 Judith Butler,

on the other hand, explores performativity in the process whereby gender and

sexual identities (for example) are formed through the regulation of citational

practices. Although moving away from context-specific analyses and into the area of as-performance investigations, she points out that the "moment" in rit

ual is "a condensed historicity, it exceeds itself in past and future directions, an

effect of prior and future invocations that constitute and escape the instance of

13. Austin 1975: 6. 14. Derrida 1982: 326. 15. For an interesting critique of Derrida's conception of citationability, see Miller 2001: 63

139.

330 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 23 /No. 2 /October 2004

utterance." 16 Taken together, these contributions offer the theoretical tools neces sary to analyze Cato's invocations of authoritative rituals in the two fragments

mentioned above. Let us consider the first fragment (quoted below, p. 331) and the invocation

of ancestral convivial practices that it includes. Simply put, Cato here gestures towards a pre-literary situation in which those who belonged to the highest spheres of society enjoyed exclusive traditions that were produced, circulated, and transmitted through musical performances carried out in convivial settings.

Moreover, the gentilician structuring of archaic Rome makes it quite plausible that the socio-politically dominant did not foster any other cultural forms besides those that each gens and associations of gentes (sodalitates) developed and transmitted in embodied form. Comparison with archaic Greek culture makes this feature of exclusivity that much more distinctive. In fact, while in the Greek world the socio-politically dominant enjoyed professional (Homeric and Hesiodic poetry) as well as more elitist forms of musical production (lyric), the groups that ruled the Roman community developed different and yet homologous musical traditions that they jealously kept from circulation.'7

By acknowledging the preexistence of these embodied traditions and by view ing Cato's fragment from a performative perspective what we can observe is that

Cato was citing one of these traditions and iterating its practical features. More over, through citation and iteration Cato condensed historicity. Accordingly, he re-presented the past and prefigured the future. The immediate (or illocutionaty) effect of his utterance is the reconstruction of a performance setting that excludes contemporary developments, namely, the participation of professionals and elite imitations of professional performances. Its consequent (or perlocutionary) effect is the re-proposition of a paradigm of performance for the time to come. As I shall

discuss in more detail, the reconstruction of an ancestral performance setting through the power of the word will affect Cato's claims of ownership over new

cultural materials, his communication with the Roman elite, and his invention of prose.

16. Butler 1997: 3-4. 17. Note that the scenario that I am suggesting here draws on the insights of Zorzetti (1990.

1991). To be sure, Zorzetti's hypotheses present numerous problems. In this regard, Cole (1991: 37-38) is right when he asserts that Zorzetti does not clearly distinguish "real memories" from "later reconstruction." His criticism, however, falls short when he reduces this theoretical problem to a need for "greater clarity about the level of sophistication that the Romans attributed to their early musico-poetic tradition." It may be much more sensible to recognize the impossibility of our tracing the development of pre-literary traditions in any detail and to admit that chronological jumbles in the sources are due in part to the embodied and exclusive nature of these very traditions. I should finally like to note that Zorzetti's model (together with some of its weaknesses) is now being adopted in handbooks; see Suerbaum 2002 and the review by Gildenhard 2003b. Let me make clear that despite its shortcomings, one of the greatest virtues of Zorzetti's contribution is to have challenged the highly questionable tendency to equate civilization with writing and to have recognized the importance of embodied practices in Roman society.


The allusion to the pontifical tabula in the second fragment (quoted below, p. 350) works in just the same way. In fact, by citing the pontifex maximus in the act of writing Cato conveys authority onto his own writing activities and by reiterating the preservative features of the tabula he re-proposes the written medium as a tool for rescuing the memory of peculiarly elitist activities. Furthermore, by memorializing the delivery of his own verbal interventions in writing (the Origines as a whole and two political speeches of his) Cato distances

himself from the professional use of writing as a means for composing a script

to be performed. Ultimately, Cato claims that a member of the elite constitutes

his social identity by performing in a number of contexts (convivial, military, and political) and by using writing as a tool for preserving the memory of these

performances.

EVOKING THE ARCHAIC CONVIVIUM

In a passage from Tusculan Disputations 4.3, Cicero asserts:

Grauissimus auctor in Originibus dixit Cato morem apud maiores hunc

epularum fuisse, ut deinceps qui accubarent canerent ad tibiam clarorum uirorum laudes atque uirtutes.

That most sober author Cato said in the Origines that during banquets

there was this custom among the ancestors that, when reclining, they

would sing in turn the praises and expressions of manliness of famous

men to the sound of the pipe.

In this passage Cicero situates Cato's invocation of archaic convivial practices

within the Origines, but does not clarify at which point. By interpreting Nepos'

definition of this work as historiae within a purely literary framework, philologists

have found the reference to a pre-literary tradition quite problematic and hard to

fit it in. Peter, for example, placed the fragment among the Incertorum Originum Librorum Reliquiae;'8 Jordan, on the other hand, situated it in the seventh book, just before a fragment preserved by Servius in which Cato reports the austerity

of the archaic banquet.19 More recently, Letta proposed placing it within the

Preface, and argued for this relocation by adducing as a parallel the opening

of Tacitus' Agricola.20 In her 1986 edition Chassignet followed the previous

interpretative tradition, but in a recent publication of Cato's fragments Paolo

Cugusi and Maria Teresa Sblendorio Cugusi have built upon Letta's suggestion

18. Peter 1914. 19. Jordan 1860: lix. The passage from Servius (ad Aen. 1.726) is: nam ut ait Cato, et in atrio et

duobus ferculis epulabantur antiqui. 20. Cf. Tacitus Agr. 1.1: clarorum uirorum facta moresque posteris tradere antiquitus usitatum.

Letta (1984: 25-27) picks this up from the suggestion of Tacitean scholars.


and have definitively integrated the fragment within the Preface.2' The reception of this fragment among the opening passages of the Origines raises a number of questions. Two are especially crucial: what did it mean to evoke the archaic convivium in the second century BCE? And, how does this evocation affect our understanding of the Origines as a whole? As I have already pointed out, Cato's invocation of the archaic convivium must be viewed within a performative perspective. It is an utterance whose illocutionarv effect is the reconstruction of an exclusive context that undermines the increasing value of professional performances and their effect on the intra-elite articulation of personal status. Its perlocutionary component, on the other hand, contributes to the re-proposal of a paradigm of performance opposed to the paradigm offered by professionals. This opposition, in turn, informs the verbal strategies by which Cato addresses his audience. In exploring these strategies it emerges that Cato attempted to foreclose the legitimacy of poetic intrusions in elite contexts and yet participated in the expropriation of cultural goods produced by poets and literary knowledge encoded in books captured in war.

In the opening passages of his Tusculan Disputations, Cicero speaks about the Origines in relation to the issue of poetry:

Sero igitur a nostris poetae uel cogniti uel recepti. Quamquam est in Originibus solitos esse in epulis canere conuiuas ad tibicinem de claro rum hominum uirtutibus; honorem tamen huic generi non fuisse declarat oratio Catonis in qua obiecit ut probrum M. Nobiliori quod is in prouin

ciam poetas duxisset. Duxerat autem consul ille in Aetoliam, ut scimus, Ennium.22

Therefore poets were known or accepted late by our people. Although we find in the Origines the information that guests at banquets used to sing to the sound of the pipe about the manly deeds of famous men, a

speech of Cato makes clear that there was no social prestige attached to

that genre since he reproaches Marcus Nobilior for taking poets with him to the province. In fact, as we know, when consul he had brought Ennius

to Aetolia.

In this passage Cicero sketches out a history of poetry in Rome. First, he asserts

that the ancestors welcomed poets quite late. Afterwards, he cites the passage

from the Origines in which Cato invokes ancestral convivial practices. Finally, he links this invocation to a speech that Cato pronounced against Fulvius Nobilior. In this speech Cato blamed Fulvius Nobilior for including poets in general, and

Ennius in particular, in his Aetolian campaign of 189 BCE, and argued that poetry

21. Cugusi (1994) and Churchill (1995) had already accepted Letta's suggestion, although disagreeing at various points.

22. Cicero Tusc. Disp. 1.3; cf. also Cicero Pro Archia 27.


was an activity incurring no social prestige.23 What stands out in Cicero's account is that the beginning of poetry in Rome is associated with the acceptance of

a specific category of people which Cicero names by adopting the Greek term

poeta. Furthermore, by using a Greek term Cicero alludes to (but does not dwell on) the fact that in the second century BCE "poetry" stood for performances carried out by elite "others" based on scripts and therefore distinct from those that used to

inform ancestral banquets.24 Cato, on the other hand, articulates in more detail the link between poetry and non-elite individuals in the carmen de moribus. In this context, he comes back to the subject of poetry and expresses his judgment

in terms similar to those that, according to Cicero, he used in his attack against

Fulvius Nobilior. Furthermore, he describes poetic practices in relation to the convivial context:

Poeticae artis honos non erat. Si quis in ea re studebat aut sese ad conuiuia

adplicabat grassator uocabatur.25

There was no prestige in the poetic profession. If someone dedicated himself to it or applied himself at banquets, he was called a "mugger."

Not only does Cato evaluate poetry by asserting that no prestige is reaped from the

activities that revolve around it but he also confirms that poetry is a profession, a

techne, by using the Latin equivalent, ars.26 Moreover, he legitimizes his judgment by invoking the opinion of the ancestors and associates the poetae with the

ancestral grassatores. Through this link, Cato reinforces the subordinate position

of the poets and substantiates the exclusive character of convivial occasions.

Festus' etymology of grassator confirms this perception:

Grassari antiqui ponebant pro adulari. grassari autem dicuntur latrones

uias obsidentes; gradi siquidem ambulare est, unde tractum grassari,

uidelicet ab impetu gradiendi.27

The ancients used grassari to mean "fawn upon." And grassari is used

of thieves who lie in wait on the roads, since gradi means "walk" and

grassari was derived from this-clearly, with reference to the violent

force of the walking.

23. Martina (1981: 64) places the speech in 179 BCE, the year of Fulvius Nobilior's censorship. 24. Gruen (1992: 72) comments: "although Cato's Origines spoke of banquet verses that sang

the praises of famous men, his speech against Fulvius pointed out that this form of praise-that is, the type Fulvius was presently encouraging-had not been welcomed." I think that Gruen points up an important fact. In his attempt, however, to reduce Cato's anti-hellenism, he remains very vague about differences between praises produced by elite members and those articulated by non-elite individuals. On the other hand, Habinek (1998a: 38) correctly points out that Cato is not making distinctions among literary genres and emphasizes that poets made poetry for profit.

25. Gellius 11.2.5 = Cato Carmen de moribus 2. I draw the translation of grassator as "mugger"

from Habinek 1998a: 38. 26. See also Habinek 1998a: 38 and Romano 1990. 27. Festus 86L.


While scholars generally focus on the association of grassari with adulari, "fawn upon," more compelling is the association of grassari with the activities of those thieves who loiter on the streets, ready to jump on unsuspecting passers-by.28 The link between the grassator and the street situates this individual in the position

of a subordinate outsider who attempts to force his way into places from which he

is excluded. The verbal strategies that Cato adopts in the speech against Fulvius Nobilior

and in the carmen de moribus stress the exclusion of poets and poetic practices from elite contexts. In the former, Cato scorns the inclusion of poets in the military entourage of a Roman general; in the latter, he disparages those who engage in

poetic activities and try to introduce themselves into convivial gatherings. By excluding poets from wars and banquets, Cato discursively claims that war

and banquets are sites connected to each other and solely reserved for elite

performances. On the other hand, the evocation of the archaic convivium in the

Origines articulates most clearly the ideological link between these two contexts. War is one of the places in which elite individuals affirm their position in the

highest spheres of society by commanding over an army. The convivium, by

contrast, is the context in which these same individuals sing what the best of

them accomplished. In this way, Cato defines sites exclusively reserved for elite performances (the military and the convivial contexts).

What Cato, then, seems to be doing is to differentiate between two types of

what I would call "paradigms of performance" in relation to the social identity

of the performers. Within banquets, "convivial" performances are carried out by those who contribute to the ascendancy of the Roman state and are modeled

after the ancestral paradigm. "Poetic" performances, by contrast, are excluded

from banquets and are carried out by those who make a living from them.

Accordingly, by differentiating the convivial (or ancestral) paradigm from the poetic (or professional) paradigm Cato aimed to foreclose the encroachment of

non-elite individuals into the mechanisms that had always regulated the intra-elite

distribution of prestige and the reproduction of the ruling elite. On the other hand,

the opposition between these two paradigms of performance informs the ways

in which Cato addresses the elite itself.

According to the testimony of Pompeius, the Origines began:

Si ques homines sunt quos delectat populi Romani gesta discribere.9

If there are men whom "describing" or "writing" the deeds of the Roman

people pleases.:o

28. This is a widely discussed passage. For a survey of various interpretations (besides Gruen 1990: 115, 1992: 72, and Habinek 1998a: 38), see Peruzzi 1998: 159-61; Goldberg 1995: 45:

Martina 1980: 161-64; Preaux 1966: 710-25; Till 1940: 165-66. 29. Pompeius Ad Donatum GL 5.208, 13 ff. = Cato Orig. 1.1.

30. This is just a working translation of the fragment drawn from philological treatments.


In 1988 Luca Cardinali claimed that in Pompeius' text homines is a gloss that

was added by later grammarians to explain the rare and archaic form of ques.3'

Accordingly, he proposed to elide the word and to recognize the presence of a spondaic hexameter:

Si ques [homines] stunt quos detlectat populi Romatni gesta discribere

Cardinali argued for his emendation by reminding us that spondaic hexameters appear at the beginning of later historiographic works and by providing numerous examples of the phrase si ques.32 Critics do recognize the presence of hexametrical patterns in later historians but continue to defend the preservation of homines in this context by proposing less convincing arguments.33 Not only do I find

Cardinali's reading philologically sound, but I also think that Cato's metrical

choice was informed by a novel poetic development and by the contest of cultural

ownership in which he participated. Those were the years that witnessed Ennius' importation and celebration of

the hexameter through his Annales. Its presence in the opening of the Origines constitutes an important piece of evidence in relation to the circulation of En

nius' new epic in the highest echelons of Roman society. At the same time, it

demonstrates that, although occupying distinct social tiers, poets and elite acted on the same logic of cultural expropriation. Ennius secured his living by framing

the achievements of the Roman elite within a culturally loaded rhythmical device

"translated" from Greece;34 Cato, by contrast, transferred the ownership of this

31. Cardinali 1988: 205-15. Other examples of ques are Pacuvius' Medus (221 R3) and the indefinite form quesdam in Accius' Neoptolemus (447 R3). Cf. also quemquam in Cato's De

Consulatu suo = Cato Orat. 4.5-39. 32. Sallust lug. 5 (bellum scripturus sum quod populus Romanus); Livy 1.1 (facturusne operae

pretium sim), and, finally, Tacitus Ann. 1.1 (Urbem Romam a principio reges habuere). For an analysis of hexametrical structures in historical prefaces, see Viparelli 1992. In her study, however, she does not consider the opening of the Origines. In the same way, Conte (1986: 78-79) considers the presence of hexametrical patterns in the prose of later historians (Tacitus especially) and speculates about the generic crossing between epic and historiography.

33. Cugusi 1994: 265-66; Sblendorio Cugusi and Cugusi (1996:146-70) claim that the presence of homines in other places of the Catonian corpus supports its retention here. By contrast, Churchill 1995 follows Cardinali's suggestion. Rather than eliding homines, he chooses the variant in Pseudo Sergius Expl. Art. Donat. 1 = GL 4.502 where homines is placed after sunt (si ques sunt homines) and compares it to Serv. ad Aen. 1.95: denique Cato in Originibus ait si ques sunt populi. In this way, it would appear that several words dropped out between sunt and populi. Churchill points out that we

would then have a hexameter that breaks the line in this way: si ques sunt homines quos delectat populi Ro / mani gesta discribere.

34. It must be remembered that Ennius' innovations stemmed from his participation in Nobilior's Aetolian campaign. Nobilior's victory led to the foundation of the temple of Hercules of the Muses and to the general's rededication of statues representing the Muses, which he had captured in Ambracia. Next to these statues, Nobilior placed the shrine of the Camenae, attributed to Numa. This double intervention sustained and legitimized Ennius' poetic innovations. I treat this aspect in "A Temple for the Professional Muse: The Aedes Herculis Musarum and Cultural Shifts in

Second-Century BC Rome," in A. Barchiesi, J. Rupke, and S. Stephens, eds., Rituals in Ink: Literary and Religious Discourses in Roman Culture (Stuttgart, forthcoming). For the relationship between


device to himself by mimicking the rhythm of Ennius' epic.35 Cato's claim of ownership, however, takes a precise turn. As he seizes the Greek-made hexam eter that a professional poet had rendered available, he simultaneously refuses the legitimacy of professionals as mediators in intra-elite relations by excluding them from the convivial setting that he reconstructs. What is more striking is that Cato's undertaking to disavow poetic mediations by means of the ancestral paradigm encompasses this fragment as well, and seeps through its lexical and syntactical layers. Let us focus first on Cato's lexical choices by considering the

meaning of the verb discribere. Although Cato's language is often at the center of scholarly discussions, no

attention has been paid to this verb. As a result, Catonian scholars take for granted its meaning as "to describe" or "to write." For example, Jordan corrects Pompeius' lectio difficilior by writing describere.36 In similar ways, Cugusi and Sblendorio

Cugusi compare the use of discribere with the verb perscribere that appears in later historiographic texts, and translate discribere with "scrivere." 37 Discribere, however, does not indicate the act of writing. Its meaning, by contrast, is deeply implicated in Cato's citation of the ancestral paradigm of performance. In order to disentangle these implications, I propose to consider Nevio Zorzetti's insights on Roman pre-literary practices.

In his investigation of Roman pre-literary practices, Zorzetti hypothesizes that in the fourth century BCE Roman aristocrats moved some of their convivial

performances from exclusive ritual banquets to the space of the city. Zorzetti argues for this shift in performance context by considering Cicero's comments on the carmina convivalia in Tusculan Disputations and Livy's treatment of the

archaic satura.38 Cicero's remarks follow the reference to Cato's Origines, that

is, the fragment we have already considered. The whole passage, in turn, proceeds

from a discussion about King Numa's contributions to Roman culture, in which Cicero confronts the belief that Numa had been a follower of Pythagoras. In

tracing the manner in which this conviction took root in Rome, Cicero pinpoints the traits that make Pythagorean practices similar to the traditions attached to the

name of King Numa:

Ennius' Annales and thefasti and the list of consuls and censors that Fulvius displayed in his temple. see Gildenhard 2003a: 94-97 and Gotter 2003: 123-24.

35. After all, according to Nepos (Cato 1.4), Cato brought Ennius to Rome. Cicero (Sen. 10) asserts also that Ennius was Cato'sfamiliaris. Astin (1978: 16n. 18) defends this tradition, followed by Boscherini 1987: 399. Contra, Badian 1971: 148-208. Cato's sponsorship of Ennius and Cato's "familiarity" with him is in line with how the elite used poets to augment their own prestige in the eyes of their peers. In my view, Cato's insistence on the exclusion of poets (Ennius included) from intra-elite relations is not contradictory at all but rather underscores their instrumentality in the politics of elite identity of the time.

36. Jordan 1860. 37. See Cugusi and Sblendorio Cugusi 2001 and their translation ad Cato Orig. 1.1. 38. It is surprising that Zorzetti points out the connection between the two texts only in a

footnote, Zorzetti 1990: 296n.25 and very briefly in Zorzetti 1991: 319-20.


Nam cum carminibus soliti illi esse dicantur et praecepta quaedam oc

cultius tradere et mentes suas a cogitationum intentione cantu fidibusque ad tranquillitatem traducere, grauissimus auctor in Originibus dixit Cato

morem apud maiores hunc epularum fuisse, ut deinceps, qui accubar ent, canerent ad tibiam clarorum uirorum laudes atque uirtutes; ex quo perspicuum est et cantus tum fuisse discriptos uocum sonis et carmina.39

For as it was their habit [i.e. the Pythagoreans'], as we are told, to pass

down (tradere) in the form of verses (carminibus) certain instructions (praecepta) rather secretly, and through song and the lyre to lead their

minds away from intense concentration and toward tranquillity, that most

sober author Cato said in the Origines that there was the following custom

during banquets among the ancestors: those who were reclining would sing in turn to the sound of the pipe the praises and the manly deeds

of famous men: from this it is clear that both songs (cantus) and verses

(carmina) were produced in tune (discriptos) to a musical scale (uocum sonis).

Cicero, here, corrects the belief of an actual encounter between Pythagoras and

Numa by proposing a comparison between the Pythagorean and the Roman

musical traditions. As he takes for granted the exclusivity of both, he also

emphasizes the musical nature of Roman convivial practices by reporting Cato's

invocation of the archaic convivium in the Origines. Finally, he comments that songs and verses used to be produced in tune to a musical scale. To describe the

act of matching words to musical patterns, Cicero adopts the verb discribere.

In his famous discussion about the beginning of drama in Rome, Livy uses the

verb discribere in the same way, to describe the matching of words to a musical

tune:

Sine carmine ullo, sine imitandorum carminum actu ludiones ex Etruria

acciti, ad tibicinis modos saltantes, haud indecoros motus more Tusco

dabant. imitari deinde eos iuuentus, simul inconditis inter se iocularia

fundentes uersibus, coepere; nec absoni a uoce motus erant. accepta

itaque res saepiusque usurpando excitata. vernaculis artificibus, quia

ister Tusco uerbo ludio uocabatur, nomen histrionibus inditum; qui non,

sicut ante, Fescennino uersu similem incompositum temere ac rudem

alternis iaciebant sed impletas modis saturas discripto iam ad tibicinem

cantu motuque congruenti peragebant.40

39. Cicero Tusc. Disp. 4.3. The translation I use for "uocum sonis" relies on Zorzetti's insights. Note that the variant descriptos in Cicero's text is Seyffert's suggestion.

40. Livy 7.2.4-7. It is not completely clear in Livy's text whether the relative pronoun qui refers back to the iuuenes or the artifices. I tend to believe that Livy is referring back to the iuuenes after explaining the lexical shift from ludio to histrio in relation to non-elite individuals engaging in dances and musical performances. There is, I think, a great deal of anxiety running through this passage in relation to singing. The Etruscan ludiones do not engage in singing, they just dance to the sound of the flute. Moreover, the iuuenes imitate the dancing of the ludiones, but have the


Summoned from Etruria, professional performers (ludiones) danced to the accompaniment of the flute: they did not sing nor acted out any

imitation of songs (carmina); their movements were decorous and in the Etruscan style. Then, the youth began to imitate them, at the same time

uttering jests among themselves in uncouth verses. Their movements were not separate from the voice. Once accepted, through repetitive exercises their quality improved. Native professionals, because ister was the Etruscan word for ludio, were named histriones. And, no longer did they utter verses akin to crude Fescennines, but rather began to perform

medleys (saturas) full of musical measures by means of songs matched to (discripto) the sound of the flute and by moving in accordance.

Comparing these two accounts, Zorzetti claims that discribere has nothing to do

with "melodies written out" and points out that "both Cicero and Livy speak

of mousike as a ritual behavior of high moral character." 4" While the musical

meaning of this verb is corroborated by Servius' comments on a passage of Virgil's

Aeneid,42 I would argue that the moral charge that accompanies the memory of

archaic convivial practices as well as fourth-century BCE musical performances

draws on the social identity of the performers. In fact, just as within the archaic

convivium, so too in the space of the urbs, the performers, at least initially, were

members of the aristocracy or (in the worst case scenario) individuals who had

acquired a certain degree of social legitimacy. What all of this implies is that

discribere in both Cicero and Livy marked two dimensions at once: the musical

and the authoritative. Accordingly, Cato does not use discribere to mean "to

describe" or "to write." On the contrary, he plots these two dimensions onto

his speech act and exemplifies them through the image of the ancestors sitting

at a banquet in the act of singing. This suggests that in the opening fragment

Cato does two things at once: he takes possession of the Greek-made hexameter

"translated" by Ennius and pushes forward the ancestral convivial paradigm.

According to this paradigm, those who belong to the highest spheres of society

meet at banquets and sing without the mediation of poets or scripts. As such, this

type of banquet excludes professionals as well as elite individuals who imitate

competence of singing as well. Their singing, in turn, evolves and becomes more sophisticated with the beginning of the saturae. See Oakley 1998: 41 and 42n.1. Brown (2002: 26n.4) rightly notices a contradiction in Oakley's commentary (who does not seem to decide whether the histriones are professionals or amateurs) and maintains that Livy is talking about professionals.

41. Zorzetti 1991: 320. For interpretations of discribere as referring to the act of singing from melodies written out, see Landolfi 1990: 33 and more recently Oakley 1998: 41.

42. Servius ad Aen. 6.643-46: NUMERIS rhythmis, sonis ut numeros memini si uerba tenerem. SEPTEM DISCRIMINA [VOCUM] quia omnes chordae dissimiliter sonant ("NUMERIS with beats, sounds as in 'I remember the numeros if I mastered the words.' SEPTEM DISCRIMINA because all the strings sound differently"). I find the dictum quite intriguing if we think of the famous Catonian one, "rem tene, uerba sequentur," which has been interpreted on the basis of stylistic and rhetorical arguments. Cf. Churchill 1996: 22-63. I owe the reference to Servius' commentary to Zorzetti 1991: 320n.49. Surprisingly, no discussion of discribere is included in the fundamental work of Wille 1977.


them. This additional rule of exclusion emerges from the syntactical component of the first line.

Let us look again at the opening fragment:

Si ques sunt quos delectat populi Romani gesta discribere

As scholars have long noticed, in its most archaic phases, Roman authoritative language makes extensive use of conditional sentences.43 Furthermore, in order to sustain the elision of homines from Pompeius' testimony, Cardinali uses as parallels other texts that present the form si ques. As it turns out, most of the

examples that Cardinali gathers consist of senatorial pronouncements.44 Among these pronouncements, most compelling is a passage from the 186 BCE Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus:

sei ques esent qui sibi deicerent necese esse bacanal habere.

If there were any who said that they had to have a bacchanal

In the context of the Senatus consultum the if-clause summons those who find it necessary to have a bacchanal. By contrast, in the opening of the Origines,

Cato uses the same authoritative phrase in order to convene a group of people

who find pleasure in discribere, that is, in performing as the ancestors used to

do. This implies that imitating professionals deviates from the ancestral model as

much as allowing professional performances at banquets. The difference between these two mimetic behaviors emerges most poignantly when we compare Cato's

characterization of Caelius, a tribunus plebis, with the convivial image included in the Origines. In a speech delivered in 184/183 BCE Cato asserts:

Praeterea cantat ubi collibuit, interdum Graecos uersus agit, iocos dicit,

uoces demutat, staticulos dat.45

Moreover he sings when it pleases him, or from time to time performs

Greek verses, tells jokes, changes the pitch of his voice, or moves

languidly about.

The context in which this speech was delivered is obscure, but the vignette

that emerges conjures up a member of the ruling elite in the act of imitating

professionals during some sort of convivial situation. By placing this vignette

43. See Costa 2000: 46n.145. with most significant bibliography. Note also how in the carmen de moribus, Cato uses the if-clause to signal the authoritative judgment of the ancestors.

44. See the numerous examples gathered by Cardinali (1988: 210-12). 45. Macrobius Sat. 3.14.9 = Cato Orat. 22.85. Cugusi and Sblendorio Cugusi (2001: 304-309)

attribute the fragment to the speech named "si me M. Caelius tribunus plebis appellasset" and offer an ample and considered survey of scholarly interpretations. For disorderly behaviors which resemble professional performances, see also Cato Orat. 22.84 : descendit de cantherio, inde staticulos dare, ridicularia fundere. Moreover, Cato blames Caelius for his unrestrained speaking and accuses him of being willing to pay an audience (Cato Orat. 22.81) or being paid to keep silent (Cato Orat. 22.82). Note how the blame is based on a link between his behaviors and market-like dealings.


next to the image that Cato invokes in the Origines, we cannot fail to notice

how Caelius' varied and histrionic behaviors most dramatically clash with those adopted by the ancestors. In that image, in fact, the banqueters sit composedly at the table and sing the praises and the manly deeds of the best among them;

moreover, each banqueter waits for his turn of performance. This clash is what underlies Cato's address to the Roman elite in the opening line, but it is through

pervasive citations of authoritative speech acts that he finally co-opts an audience that is keen to calibrate its behavior to its dominant position in society. In deploying the implications inherent in Cato's metrical, lexical, and syntactical choices in the opening fragment against the performance backdrop that Cato reconstructs, his own positioning becomes very clear. By framing his opening

words within a spondaic hexameter, Cato asserts his possession of a Greek-made formal device that Ennius, a professional poet, had transferred to Rome. At the

same time, he recovers the musical and authoritative dimensions that used to attend

aristocratic performances by choosing the verb discribere. Finally, by adopting a syntactical structure typical of the Senate's pronouncements, he compels those of the elite who adopt professional poses to evaluate their performances against the convivial paradigm that he conjures up. In this way, Cato participates in the

contest over the appropriation of new cultural commodities made accessible by professionals, but undermines their legitimacy in intra-elite relations. Indeed, he does so in two ways: by excluding them from the performance context that he

reconstructs and by including those of the elite who perform after the ancestral paradigm.

SINGING LIKE THE OLD ROMANS DID

IN SECOND-CENTURY BCE ROME

So far I have argued that Cato participates in the elite contest over the

ownership of new cultural commodities and reconstructs an exclusive context

of performance by evoking the musical and authoritative features that belonged

to ancestral convivial traditions. This reconstructed context disavows the social

legitimacy of professionals in intra-elite relations and includes elite performances modeled after the custom of singing the praises and the manly deeds of famous

men. Finally, Cato goes on to perform a discriptio gestorum populi romani. No traces of musical or rhythmical patterns are identifiable in the remaining

fragments; what we face, by contrast, is a most conspicuous invention of Latin

prose.46 This is surely puzzling: on the one hand, Cato advocates the re-production

of ancestral singing; on the other, he disembeds his speech from all sorts of

46. With this, I find it important to remark that Ennius' Euhernerus. which Courtney (1999: 37-38) considers as the first work of literary prose produced in Rome, is a translation of a Greek prose text produced by a non-elite. As such, it is a cultural expression inherently different from what we read in the texts attributed to Cato.


rhythmical and/or musical patterns.47 One way to make sense of this contradiction would be to point to Cato's underlying desire to imitate the Greek tradition of historical prose writing. But to do so would mean to impose on Cato our own

desire to find a literary model for the Origines. Much more fruitful, I think, is to read this choice as a further attempt to take an authoritative position through

performance. Accordingly, I suggest that after claiming his ownership of the hexameter, Cato "speaks in prose" in order to restate the distance that stands between his own performance and those of professionals.48 As a matter of fact, he

implements this strategy of distinction by acting on another meaning linked to discribere, namely, assigning by dividing.

In his work Space, Geography, and Politics in the Early Roman Empire,

Claude Nicolet points out that the basic meaning of discriptioldiscribere relates to the act of assigning by dividing.49 Nicolet explores the meaning of this verb in relation to Augustus' geographical work and the division of Italy into eleven regions. The employment of discribere in relation to Augustus' initiative interestingly parallels its use in the narratives that focus on Servius' reform of the census (Livy 1.43 and Cicero De Republica 2.39).5? In all of these accounts,

discribere designates the act of organizing society carried out by individuals who

occupy authoritative positions. The fact that discribere subsumes both a musical and a political dimension should not surprise classical scholars. We can compare,

for example, Gregory Nagy's remarks in his treatment of the archaic lyric tradition

in Greece:

Just as nomos as "local custom" refers to the hierarchical distribution or apportioning of value within a given society (root *nem- as in nemo

"distribute"), so also nomos as "localized melodic idiom" refers to hi

erarchical distribution or apportioning of intervals within the melodic patterns of song.5'

In the Roman context, the ideological link between the political and the

musical dimension of discribere may not appear as obvious. Nevertheless, it emerges in one of Horace's Odes. In Ode 2.13, after being almost killed by a

47. See Habinek 1998a: 20, 1985: 187. 48. For the markedness of prose in theoretical terms, see Habinek 1998b: 67: "SONG, defined

as speech in the special context of myth and ritual, can be accompanied by movement and instru mentation and is frequently, although not necessarily, constrained by rhythm and/or melody. Just as singing constitutes a marked version of speaking, so too within the sphere of SONG, poetry, marked for the absence of melody, can be differentiated from song-types more generally. And within poetry a differentiation can be made between unmarked poetry ... and prose, which is marked for its lack of meter."

49. Nicolet 1991: 174. 50. See also Cicero Tusc. L)isp. 4.1; D.H. 4.16-18, 4.14. For references to the historical

problems, see Zetzel 1995. 51. Nagy 1990:88.


falling tree, Horace meditates on the prospect of the underworld. In his imagined underworld, Aeacus dispenses judgments and assigns seats. Next to him, Sappho and Alcaeus perform songs:

et iudicantem uidimus Aeacum sedesque discriptas piorum et

Aeoliis fidibus querentem Sappho puellis de popularibus, et te sonantem plenius aureo, Alcaee, plectro dura nauis, dura fugae mala, dura belli.

And I saw Aeacus dispensing judgments and the seats assigned to the pious, and Sappho lamenting on the Aeolian lyre about girls from her native land, and you, Alcaeus, with golden plectrum, resounding more fully the hardships of navigating, the cruel duress of exile, the hard life of war.

What I find significant in this passage is that Horace uses discribere to represent an authoritative figure in the act of hierarchically organizing the underworld society and, next to him, poets engaging in musical performances. Although the division of labor envisioned by Horace rests upon a crucially different paradigm from the one re-proposed by Cato, it is important to emphasize how the political dimension of discribere is nicely marked by its musical surrounding.52 Differences, however, do matter. In fact, according to the ancestral paradigm of performance the

individuals who used to sing were the same individuals who dictated the principles whereby the community was organized.53 Cato models his performance precisely after this paradigm but feels compelled to intervene in it in order to cope with the

reality that he faces. This reality involves non-elite individuals performing songs in contexts from which they should be excluded; furthermore, the elite who should sustain and embody the principles by which society is organized have become keen to imitate those who sing for a living. Therefore, since musical and/or rhythmical features have come to be linked to "professionalism," Cato divests his speech act of these features in order to further mark out his performance. At the same

time, he reinforces his "singing" by performing a distribution of value (something implicit in ancestral singing, specifically in the allotment of praises) and enlarges the scope of his act of distribution by systematizing the deeds of the Roman

people. In this way, he encompasses the political dimension that informs Servius' legendary reform of the census and, later, Augustus' division of Italy into eleven

regions. In stressing the association of discribere with the authoritative act of

52. For a discussion of discriptas sedes in Horace's text, the variants in the manuscript, and the allusions to Augustus' theatrical policy, see Bowditch 2001: 91-93.

53. It may be worth recalling that discribere (often printed in the form of describere) appears in Horace Epist. 2.1.154 in relation to the laws contained in the Twelve Tables which regulated the production of various types of carmina. See Fedeli 1997 ad loc.


distributing by dividing, Cato produces a catalogue-like composition that bears highly distinctive features.

As scholars have noticed, it is difficult to demonstrate that Cato used chronol ogy as an overarching principle for organizing the Origines. On the other hand,

it has often been emphasized that the fragments that belong to the second and

third book especially project an interest in the Italian people.54 Letta surmises that Cato deployed two diverse notions of Italy: a geo-strategic one that extends

to the whole peninsula, and a moral one that excludes Gallia Cisalpina, Etruria,

and the Greek cities.55 Chassignet, on the other hand, applies an imperialistic reading to Cato's interest in the Italian people and argues that in the fragments

which focus on the populations and the territories of the western area (that is,

on places not profoundly Hellenized) Cato illustrates how they can be exploited.56 I find these two contributions compelling because they obliquely provide us with a way to think about Cato's discriptio as a catalogue and to explore what this

catalogue does."7 Cato accounted for human, material, and symbolic resources by arranging them within a geo-strategic pattern, as Letta suggests. At the same

time, I think that Chassignet's imperialistic reading should be extended to Cato's catalogue altogether. Within this catalogue, Italian behavioral habits do not add up to the formation of a separate "moral" notion of Italy, but are reckoned among

the symbolic and human resources upon which the Roman elite can rely in their

politics of expansion. But I would go further than that. By including in his cata

logue information derived from competing traditions (the Greek one and its poetic derivatives), Cato furthers his involvement in practices of cultural dispossession.

The fragments that occupy the first books of the Origines show that Cato

names and situates the people who occupy the Italian territory, traces the lineage

of each, measures up their contribution to the res publica, and identifies their

exploits and behavioral habits. For example, in one of the very first fragments,

he names the original people of Italy and briefly notes the events that coincided

with the changing of their name:

Cato in Originibus hoc dicit cuius auctoritatem Sallustius sequitur in

bello Catilinae, primum Italiam tenuisse quosdam qui appellabantur

54. For a discussion of the supposed political conception underlying this interest, see Astin 1978: 217-18 but also Ando 2002: 126-27. For a survey of the scholarly discussion about the conceptualization of Italy during the second century, see Sblendorio Cugusi and Cugusi 1996: 140-41 and n.74.

55. Letta 1984: 416-18. He deduces these two notions from Servius ad Aen. 9.603. 56. Chassignet 1987: 285-300. Sblendorio Cugusi and Cugusi (1996: 143) respond to Chas

signet's imperialistic reading by suggesting that Cato was rather expressing "interesse etnografico e curiosita nei confronti di admiranda" (ethnographic interest and curiosity in relation to admiranda).

With admiranda they allude to Nepos' final comments on the Origines. 57. Dench (1995: 19) refers to Cato's "cataloguing" and suggests that it may be seen as "an

appraisal of a newly perceived geographical entity made up of peoples closely involved with, or subject to, the Romans."


Aborigines. hos postea adventu Aeneae Phrygibus Latinos iunctos uno nomine nuncupatos.58

Cato in the Origines says this and Sallustius follows his authority in the Catilinarian War, that certain people first occupied Italy and they were named Aborigines. After the coming of Aeneas they joined with the Phrygians and were called by one name, Latins.

In another fragment, he deploys an etymology based upon sound similarities to identify the origins of the Sabines; at the same time, the etymology points towards habits that the populus Romanus ultimately inherited:

Cato autem et Gellius a Sabo Lacedaemonio trahere eos (Sabinos) orig

inem referunt. Porro Lacedaemonios durissimos fuisse omnis lectio do cet. Sabinorum etiam mores populum Romanum secutum idem Cato dicit.59

Cato and Gellius report that the Sabines derive their origin from Sabus

the Spartan. Surely every lesson teaches us that the Spartans were the

toughest. The same Cato says that the Roman people followed the customs

of the Sabines.

Where customs are not mentioned, 60 the material additions to the res publica in

terms of land are specified.61 In some cases such land additions are also measured.

So, for example:

Cato enim in Originibus dicit Troianos a Latino accepisse agrum qui est

inter Laurentum et castra Troiana. Hic etiam modum agri commemorat et

dicit eum habuisse iugera HIDCC.62

For Cato in the Origines says that the Trojans received from Latinus the

land which is between Laurentum and the Trojan camp. He also recalls to

memory the dimension of the land and says it was 2,700 iugera.

In other cases, he names people and reports their civic configuration,63 explains the performance of rituals,64 offers information about the productivity of a given

58. Servius ad Aen. 1.6 =Cato Orig. 1.6.

59. Servius adAen. 8.638 = Cato Orig. 2.59. But note also D.H. 2.49.2 = Cato Orig. 2.58*. For a discussion of this passage, see Letta 1984: 418-24, Gruen 1992: 60, Gotter 2003. In the scholarly discussion the focus is often on whether or not Cato would accept such an enormous Greek import in the foundation of Italy.

60. As, for example, in Nonius 306.32 = Cato Orig. 2.36 concerning the ways in which the Libii (probably a tribe of the SalluviiISallui) gather and carry wood.

61. So, for example, see Macrobius Sat 1.10.1 = Cato Orig. 1.19*. 62. Servius ad Aen. 1L.316 = Cato Orig. 1.1 1.

63. For example in Pliny N.H. 3.15.116 = Cato Orig. 2.48 in which Cato asserts that the Boi had 112 tribes.

64. Servius ad Aen. 5.755 = Cato Orig. 2.21a.


place,65 and gives brief accounts of battles.66 In some cases he is very specific

about the behavioral characteristics of the people under scrutiny, as when he deals

with the Ligurians:

sed ipsi unde oriundi sunt exacta memoria, inliterati mendacesque sunt et uera minus meminere.67

Although the memory of where they are from has been lost, they do not

use writing and are mendacious and do not remember what is true.

Ligures omnes fallaces sunt, sicut ait Cato in secundo Originum libro.68

All the Ligurians are liars, so Cato says in Book 2 of the Origines.

In the same vein, he accounts for the customs followed by the Gallic populations:

Pleraque Gallia duas res industriosissime persequitur, rem militarem et argute loqui.69

Most of Gallia pursues two things most industriously, the art of war and

clever talk.

The note-like character of these fragments fits very nicely Nepos' use of capit ulatim in his description of the Origines. By the same token, the composite nature of the first three books foils modem attempts to interpret this text within a generic

framework that emphasizes narrative and unity. The shift into the catalogue-like perspective that I am proposing makes the texture of the first books less prob

lematic; more important, however, is that in accepting this shift in perspective we can come to grips with the principles that sustained the process of composition.

Cato accumulated and systematized information on the geo-strategic configura tion of Italy. In so doing, he also accounted for the contributions of the Italian

people to the supremacy of Rome and assessed the type of resources available

for exploitation. This reading implicates Cato's imperialistic interests right into the texture of the Origines, but it also captures this text in performance. In this

respect I believe that it is crucial to explore what performing a catalogue does and

to consider how the context that Cato reconstructs affects the social interpretation

of the information that he enters in his catalogue.

Although from a modem perspective making a catalogue may seem sterile,

we should consider that in cultures of performance this act often proves the

65. For example in Varro RR 2.4.2 = Cato Orig. 1.44*; Varro RR 1.2.7 = Cato Orig. 2.47. Both fragments refer to the Gallic regions.

66. Especially in the fragments contained in Origines Book 1. 67. Servius ad Aen. 11.715 = Cato Orig. 2.34. 68. Servius ad Aen. 11.700 = Cato Orig. 2.35.

69. Char. gramm. I, p. 202 K = Cato Orig. 2.38.


performer's bravura and authority.70 As opposed to the performer of narrative, the performer of a catalogue cannot rely on the content and the sequence of events in order to recall to memory the exact words; instead, he deals with a

sequence of items related to each other in paradigmatic rather than syntagmatic form. If a catalogue has already reached a fixed status and the performer is

not a composer as well, the audience judges the performance according to its knowledge of previous catalogues and evaluates the performer in relation to his ability to reenact them. When, however, the performer is also a composer and a catalogue has not reached a fixed status, the performance consists of the

reenactment of previous catalogues as well as of the addition of new features or items. In this case the audience judges the bravura of the performer also in relation to his ability to add these new elements within the restraints dictated by the rules of performance. Moreover, in the moment of performance the repetition of items or features derived from other traditions enacts their appropriation, while any novelty instantiates a competition with previous composer-performers. When, moreover, the audience is composed of the very people who perform and compose, the whole performance and its competitive mechanisms confirm the social standing of the participants and the knowledge that circulates within such a context becomes their exclusive possession.7"

It has been well demonstrated that in the first three books Cato includes information derived from a wide spectrum of texts concerned with Roman origins and historical events. Included are Greek texts written by Greeks,72 Latin texts written by professional poets (such as Naevius and Ennius),73 and Greek texts written by Roman aristocrats (Q. Fabius Pictor and L. Cincius Alimentus).74 Rather than adopting a philological approach towards the relationship between Cato and his sources, I would like to tackle this issue by situating the catalogue that

occupies the first three books within the context that Cato reconstructs. In doing so, it is possible to explore how the introduction of items derived from competing traditions reinforces the logic of dispossession that shapes Cato's interventions.

The context of performance that Cato reconstructs dictates that social equals contribute to the overall convivial occasion by performing a solo and respecting

the rule of taking turns. This exclusive context of performance has rippling effects

70. For a discussion of catalogues and intertextual effects via performance, see Martin 2001: 23-33. My argument here has been triggered by the paper that Richard Martin delivered at Stanford in Fall 2000 (many thanks to him for providing me with a copy of the article).

7 1. It is, by now, an anthropologically recognized fact that the political and social potency of a group relies on a continual effort "to capture someone else's inalienable possessions, to embrace someone else's ancestors, magic, power and transfer parts of these identities to the next generation, The processes of cultural reproduction involve the heroic ability to reproduce more of one's self or one's group through time by asserting differences while defining an historical past that looks unchanging" (Weiner 1992: 48).

72. In this sense, it is enough to check the long list produced by Letta (1984: 11-14). 73. See Astin 1978: 223-24. 74. For the annalistic production during Cato's period, see Frier 1999: 206-14.


on the social interpretation of the items that Cato incorporates and that he draws from previous texts and competing traditions. In deriving cultural items from texts written or performed by his social equals, Cato enters into competition

with his peers. But since these items would be fixed within a composition that is allegedly performed and shared with equals, the composition as a whole becomes a possession shared by the elite as a group. By contrast, the elements that derive from texts written by either professionals or aliens would be completely expropriated from them and converted into yet other components of an exclusive cultural repertoire. The exclusive context in which this performance takes place, in other

words, effects a change of ownership and transforms the cultural patrimony of the subjected into an admissible resource meant to sustain a preexisting elite lore. Considering the first three books of the Origines in this way allows us to acknowledge Cato's crucial participation in practices of cultural expropriation, but it also forces us to recognize how his interventions bear on the articulation of the elite as a distinct group within Roman society. If the composition as a whole provides information crucial to the imperialistic project of the Roman elite, performing this catalogue does something even more decisive. In fact. Cato's performance of this catalogue within an exclusive elite context divests the conquered (the Greeks) of their knowledge as well as its bearers (the poets), and transforms this knowledge into a resource from which only the elite can draw.

Thus, Cato provides the elite with a paradigm of performance to be adopted at

convivial gatherings and downplays the mediating function of poetry and poets in intra-elite exchanges and in the mechanisms that regulated the reproduction of the elite. Finally, by preserving this catalogue in written form, Cato asserts that writing should be the preferred medium for preserving elite convivial performances and their services to the state.

WRITING THE ORIGINES

Cato foregrounds his claim that writing should be used as a means for

preserving convivial performances and elite services to the state in a very famous fragment included in the Preface and preserved by Cicero in the Pro Plancio:

Etenim M. Catonis illud quod in principio scripsit Originum suarum, semper magnificum et praeclarum putaui, clarorum hominum atque mag norum non minus otii quam negotii rationem exstare oportere.75

Indeed I always deemed magnificent and outstanding what Cato wrote at the beginning of his Origines, that no less an "account" of leisure time

than of work time of famous and great men ought to remain.

75. Cicero Pro Planc. 66 = Cato Orig. 1.2. Imitated with variations by Cicero Ad Att. 5.20.9; Symmachus Epist. 1.1.2; Ennodius Carm. 1.9.3; Columella RR 2.21.1.


Scholars often focus on this fragment for two reasons: one, because it supposedly echoes the opening of Xenophon's Symposium,76 and, two, because it is one of the earliest occurrences of the word otium.77 These readings touch on important issues, namely Cato's reliance on Greek materials and his participation in the creation of an ideology of leisure based on the production of literature. As I have demonstrated, however, Cato does not depend on the Greek cultural patrimony but makes use of the patrimony conveyed by professional mediators or encoded in plundered books to negotiate his position within the elite. Furthermore, before asserting that Cato used his time away from affairs to write literature, I find it necessary to consider how Cato perceived writing as a medium of representation in the hands of the elite.

In dealing with this fragment Till argued that the expression rationem exstare alludes to the durable existence of a ratio.78 Till's insight obliquely touches on the

issue that Cato addresses in this fragment, namely, the loss of memory of elite performances in a variety of occasions (otium and negotium). In this respect, Cato suggests a way to prevent the Roman elite from forgetting the performances of its

most outstanding members and acts on this suggestion by preserving the Origines in writing. The fact that we can still read the Origines, albeit in fragments, makes the efficacy of his intervention incontrovertible; but in order to understand what a ratio is and does we need to turn to the De Agricultura.

In section 2.1-10 Cato talks about the arrival of the pater familias at his

farm and enumerates the duties that he must fulfill. He needs to find out about

the condition of the land, what work has been completed and what still needs

to be done; moreover, he must call the overseer and ask him about the general

state of business. After this survey, the paterfamilias must produce an account

(inire rationem). This suggests that the paterfamilias establishes his identity by performing a series of duties; these duties include an economic calculation of his

assets. Cato hints at the "material" (i.e. written) nature of this account when he

addresses the next duty that the paterfamilias must fulfill, that is, confronting

76. Cato's dependence on Xenophon Symp. 1.1 has been doubted by few (see Barwick 1948: 128n.2; Garbarino 1973: 339). Cf. Letta 1984: 12n.53. The passage reads: &'XX' E'ot 8ox6t T&Y)v XOa)Sov X&Y-OcV &V6pV E`pya 1a p1tsx& GTroUi(5; 7pOTt6v &&LOpViVrpOVEUI6 E6LV riv a XcX& L Tx Es

TOC5 7tcL0&CX ("It seems good to me that the deeds of the best men are worth being remembered. those carried on both in time of business and in time of leisure"). A comparison between the two texts suggests that it is Cicero who embeds the citation from Cato into a structure that resembles

Xenophon's passage (thanks to Leslie Kurke for pointing this out to me). Cicero, in the context of the Pro Plancio, may aim to cite two authorities at once.

77. Letta 1984: 24-30 (where the reference to otium is interpreted as literary activity in very abstract terms). In this respect, see discussion in Gruen 1992: 60-61 and Churchill 1995: 95-96. Gruen uses the supposed citation to argue for Cato's knowledge of Greek sources. According to Churchill (1995: 95-96), Cato would be asserting "the responsibility of an important man to make use of leisure time which will stand up to serious scrutiny." For other discussions of otium in Cato, see Alfonsi 1954: 163-68; Andr6 1966: 45-49.

78. Till 1940: 170n.28. Cf. also Schroder 1971: 53. Letta (1984: 27n.138) argues that Cato is claiming the necessity of documenting the otium of clari uiri, with the exclusion of himself.


the overseer with the account in hand. If the overseer should offer excuses that do not coincide with the master's calculations, the master should handle the overseer in the following manner:

Ad rationem operum operarumque uilicum reuoca.79

Make the overseer turn back to the account of workers and work done.

In this scene, the paterfamilias forces the overseer to justify himself against the account, which, in turn, mediates his assertion of authority over the overseer. In a way, then, the scene presents the ratio as the end product of an authoritative

performance (in this case, the paterfamilias's appraisal of his farm's productivity) and as the means by which a person in a position of authority exercises his

dominance over others. But it is only when Cato describes what the paterfamilias

is supposed to do before departing from the farm that economic reckoning, authority, and writing are explicitly connected:

Ubi cognita aequo animo sint qua[u]e reliqua opera sint, curare uti

perficiantur; rationes putare argentariam, frumentariam, pabuli causa quae parata sunt; rationem uinariam, oleariam, quid uenerit, quid exactum

siet, quid reliquum siet, quid siet quod ueneat; quae satis accipiunda

sint, satis accipiantur; reliqua quae sint, uti compareant. Si quid desit

in annum, uti paretur; quae supersint, ut ueneant; quae opus sint, locato,

locentur; quae opera fieri uelit et quae locare uelit, uti imperet et ea scripta

relinquat.80

When he (i.e. the paterfamilias) has examined with a fair attitude what

still needs to be done, he has to see to it that it is done. He has to make an account of the money, of the grain, and of what has been prepared for the

animals; an account of the wine and the oil, what has been sold and what

has been received, what still has to be received and what is to be sold; if

the conditions are satisfactory, these conditions are to be accepted; what

remains has to be made clear. If there is something missing in order to

complete the year, this has to be bought; what is left over needs to be

sold; the manpower that needs to be hired will be hired; what work he

wants to be done directly and what he wants to be done by hiring, all

of this he has to command and must put in written form.

What both scenes point out, then, is that through his rationes the paterfamilias

manages his extended household and exerts his power over his subordinates,

either directly (as when he confronts the overseer in person) or indirectly (as

when he leaves the written orders behind). Accordingly, the appearance of the

term ratio in the opening passages of the Origines suggests that Cato drew on

79. Cato De Agr. 2.2. 80. Cato De Agr. 2.5-6. The best treatment of Cato's De Agricultura in relation to the

"textualization" of agriculture and its impact on the formation of the elite is Reay 1998: 31-80.


the field of economics to signal that producing an "account" of one's own life is an

authoritative act that demonstrates the dominant position that one has occupied in life. But the Origines, as a written text, does not preserve economic calculations nor does it mediate the communication between two individuals of unequal social standing. By contrast, it represents other types of authoritative performances and is addressed to Cato's peers. This implies that Cato must carefully calibrate the trajectory of his claim concerning the necessity of leaving a ratio by clarifying

further his writing activities and the nature of his Origines as a piece of writing.

Cato adjusts his positioning in relation to writing in the so-called "second

preface" placed at the beginning of Book 4:

Non lubet scribere quod in tabula apud pontificem maximum est, quotiens annona cara, quotiens lunae aut solis lumine caligo aut quid obstiterit.8'

Writing what is on the table at the public home of the pontifex maximus

is not pleasing, I mean, how often there was a crisis in grain prices,

how many times we had an eclipse of the moon or the sun or something

hindered it.

As Catonian scholars have noticed, this fragment disrupts the texture of the Origines. Indeed, at this point Cato seems to be adding more specific narrative

items starting from 270 BCE. As he reports these narrative items, Cato leaves out

the names of Roman leaders and identifies them solely by their standing in the

hierarchy of office, as Nepos remarks.82 Finally, when it comes to events that

include his own achievements, he inserts two of his political speeches. In arguing

for the ways in which this fragment signals a change in narrative style, scholars

generally maintain that by distancing himself from the astronomic and economic information fixed in the tabula, Cato rejected the pontifical way of compiling information. By extension, he also refused the aristocratic matrix underpinning the annalistic tradition in Greek (Fabius Pictor, Cincius Alimentus).3

While the relationship between the Roman annalistic tradition in Greek and

the pontifical tabula is still an object of controversy, Cato is nowhere here pointing

to annalistic works.84 As a matter of fact, by turning his attention away from some

of the information recorded in the tabula, he gestures towards the writing rituals

of the pontifex maximus and the double nature of the tabula as a master template

for every elite "account-making" and a locus of memory.

81. Gellius 2.28.6 = Cato Orig. 4.81. 82. The brief narrative concerning the exploit of a tribunus militum is preserved in Gellius 3.7 =

Cato Orig. 4.88. 83. Cf. discussion in Sblendorio Cugusi and Cugusi 1996: 137-39, but see also Cugusi and

Sblendorio Cugusi 2001: 48-52. According to these two scholars Cato's choice was dictated by his meeting with Polybius.

84. The best discussion of the tabula and its relation to the annalistic tradition is still Frier 1999: 69-135.


The sources take pains to describe the rituals that surrounded the pontifical act of writing on the tabula. In De Oratore Cicero points out:

res omnis singulorum annorum mandabat litteris pontifex maximus ref erebatque in album et proponebat tabulam domi, potestas ut esset populo cognoscendi.8"

The pontifex maximus wrote down all matters of individual years, reported them on a white board and placed this board before his public home in

order that the people might have the power of knowing.

Moreover, Servius asserts:

tabulam dealbatam quotannis pontifex maximus habuit, in qua praescrip tis consulum nominibus et aliorum magistratum digna memoratu notare consueuerat domi militiaeque terra marique gesta per singulos dies.86

Each year the pontifex maximus had the white-washed board on which, besides writing down the names of the consuls and the other magistrates,

he also used to take note of the deeds worthy of being remembered,

accomplished at home and in military campaigns, on land and at sea,

systematized by day.

These passages describe a two-step procedure. First, the pontifex maximus pro duced in writing a yearly "account" of events that concerned the whole community,

including the configuration of the elite in active service and their achievements. Afterwards, the pontifex maximus exposed the tabula that preserved his "account" before his public home to confer on the people the power of knowing. In evoking

the pontifex maximus in the act of writing on the tabula, Cato models his writing

activities on those of the pontifex maximus and employs writing as a means for

preventing a loss of memory. In so doing, he distances himself from the poets

once again, since they used writing to compose texts to be performed later; but

as opposed to the pontifex maximus, he provides knowledge to a specific sector of Roman society.

Cato's Origines, as a written text, preserves the performance of a convivial

catalogue together with some of the military and political performances that have

sustained the supremacy of Rome. In fixing these performances in writing, Cato

suppresses individual names and includes his services to the state by introducing

two of his speeches. Furthermore, the Origines, as a written text, speaks to

the same restricted audience that Cato addresses in the beginning. In this sense, I

would argue that Cato leaves out names to extend the exclusivity that characterized

his reconstructed banquet to the entire Origines as a written text. Finally, in

85. Cicero De Or. 2.52. For an analysis of Cicero's judgment of Cato's work in negative terms in relation to Q. Fabius Maximus and L. Calpurnius Piso and subsequently corrected in Brutus 66 and 293-94, see Cugusi and Sblendorio Cugusi 2001: 56-60.

86. Servius ad Aen. 1.373.


preserving his political speeches within the Origines, Cato aims to elicit his peers' recognition and to further his claim that the elite should use writing to safeguard the memory of those activities that mark their dominant position in society.

A fragment cited by Aulus Gellius and attributed to the sixth book of the Origines provides us with a way to pinpoint Cato's strategy of suppressing names

in relation to the exclusive features of the Origines as a written text. According to

Gellius, Cato asserted:

Itaque ego cognobiliorem cognitionem esse arbitror.87

Therefore I think that the information is more intelligible.

In this enigmatic fragment, Cato seems to conclude that the information becomes something more intelligible (cognobilis). Besides explaining cognobilis as "in telligible, understandable," ThLL and OLD make sure to point out that we are

dealing with a hapax. As it turns out, the reasons that Gellius adduces for citing

Cato complicate the meaning reported by ThLL and OLD, as well as the transla

tions offered by scholars. These same reasons, however, make it possible to grasp how Cato's choice of writing as a means of preservation informs his strategy of

suppressing names. Gellius cites this fragment in a passage of his Attic Nights. In this passage

he reports on Aristotle's writings and points out that Aristotle divided his writings between a'XpOTLX& and E'OTEpLX&, that is, between texts that speak to an

exclusive audience from texts addressed to a wider audience. Afterwards, Gellius reports an epistolary exchange between Aristotle and Alexander the Great and translates the epistles into Latin. In his letter, Alexander reproaches his old teacher for having published his acroatic (or esoteric) texts. These texts preserved

Aristotle's lectures and Alexander complains that their publication would make known to commoners the knowledge that set him apart from the rest. In this way,

the knowledge that marks his social position would become common property. Aristotle, in turn, replies:

LOGL OUV OLTOUV XciL EX8E:8OlVOU; XO(L LT EX8E8VOEIVOU4. iUVETOl yO(p ElGlV pJOVOLG 7OlS (pROV 0tXU(70GlV.

Gellius translates the passage into Latin as follows:

[acroaticos libros] neque editos scito esse neque non editos quoniam his

solis cognobiles erunt qui audiuerunt.

87. Gellius 20.5.13 = Cato Orig. 6.118. Cugusi and Sblendorio Cugusi (2001) translate the fragment " Pertanto io ritengo che la notizia sia piii intellegibile." Moreover, they notice the similarities to the language used by Cato in other speeches (specifically Cato Orat. 4.5 and 32.119). I could not find any other comment on this interesting fragment.


Know that the acroatic books ... have neither been published nor unpub lished, since they can be understood only by those who have listened to

my lectures.

Commenting on his Latin prose composition, Gellius explains that he found it difficult to render the phrase tuvErto Ei'Lv and that he chose the word cognobilis from Cato's sixth book of the Origines. By choosing cognobilis, Gellius obliquely throws light on what led Cato to invent this adjective. In fact, Gellius needed to find an adjective in Latin that would embrace the meaning of "understandable" inherent in iuv:roL and reinforce its connection with the exclusive "us" marked by

Aristotle's phrase, p6VOL~ TOlG f[JWV XXOUcaaLv. In this way, Gellius discursively points to the fact that Cato toyed with the morphological composition of cogno bilis, that is co-(g)nobilis. This, in turn, implies that Cato used cognobilis to mean "shared by those who are nobiles." Moreover, the comparative form that Cato uses, co-(g)nobilior, is a nice pun on Fulvius Nobilior's name, the very person whom, according to Cicero, Cato attacked for having included professionals in his military entourage.88 By expanding on the interpretative potential inherent in Gellius' citation and by situating Cato's Origines within its proper cultural and social context, even the word cognitio assumes a specific meaning. In fact, cognitio indicates the acquisition of knowledge but also the act of recognition. Terence, a contemporary of Cato, provides supportive evidence for this meaning, when he uses cognitio twice in order to indicate recognition of identity.89 These elements offer compelling grounds for interpreting the suppression of names in relation to Cato's use of writing.

Cato projects the performance of his catalogue against an exclusive social context by citing ancestral singing and by addressing a restricted audience. More over, just as Aristotle preserved his lectures in writing to share them with an

exclusive group of people, so too Cato uses writing to preserve his convivial per formance as well as other types of performances to grant knowledge exclusively to nobiles. Just as exclusivity bears on the reconstructed context in which Cato performs his catalogue, so too the whole Origines as a written text bears highly

exclusive features. In this fragment Cato is specifying that the authors of the gesta that he is reporting will be recognized only by those who are truly nobiles.

Nobiles, then, would be people who, by virtue of their engagement with ruling, will be able to identify the authors of the deeds he reports from the ways in which

they performed. Moreover, since Cato preserves in writing two of his speeches in a text strictly addressed to the elite, the people who take part in elite activities will

be able to evaluate Cato's achievements by comparison. Thus, Cato claims that

88. This further pun on Nobilior's name should be added to the nobilior/mobilior preserved in Cicero De Or. 2.256 = Cato Orat. 27.106*.

89. OLD indicates that the word cognitio translates the Greek technical term &VcayVWpLcFLx to indicate recognition in theatrical performances and adduces examples from Terence Eun. 921 and

Hec. 83.


to be truly nobilis means to memorialize in written form the convivial, military, and political performances that sustain one's position in society and to share the

memory of these performances exclusively with one's own peers. In this way, other nobiles will be able to judge individual performances by looking into the texts that preserved these performances and each individual who performs will contribute to the growth of an exclusive store of cultural wealth in written form.

Accordingly, while performances would remain a source of individual distinction, the written texts fixing them would become objects that transcend the transient individual and feed the social reproduction of the Roman ruling class.

BACK TO THE BEGINNING

In the second century BCE Roman convivial gatherings provided a context for the production of culture and hosted an elite contest over new cultural

commodities. The ruling elite who had recruited professionals to expand their civic festivals was now becoming keen to sponsor and imitate professional

performances in the privacy of their homes. No amount of evidence as to the

elite affection for or intellectual interest in individual poets can contravene the

economics underlying elite sponsorship and imitation. While poets facilitated the relocation of the Greek cultural patrimony into Rome, the elite seized poetry

or, rather, the "art of the professionals" (their models, their creations, and their

performances) to use it as a vehicle for individual and class distinction. Not only

did Cato engage in practices of cultural dispossession as the rest of his peers did, but he also undermined the social legitimacy of poets and their encroachment in

intra-elite relations by invoking past and present authoritative rituals. In trying to disentangle the complex interplay between realities and invoca

tions, this study analyzes the performance/performative layers that underlie the production of the Origines as a written text. Not only does this analysis account for

many of the textual idiosyncrasies inherent in this work, but it also sheds light on

Cato's invention of prose and his socially meaningful use of writing as a medium

of preservation. If this study has failed in any way to provide an elucidation of

Cato's Origines as the first example of Latin historiography, I hope that it has at

least succeeded in highlighting the benefits that philological investigations can draw from the field of performance studies.

University of Canterbury-Te Whare Wananga o Waitaha

Christchurch, New Zealand enrica.sciarrino @canterbury.ac.nz


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Documents

"Putting Cato the Censor's Origines in Its Place" in Classical Antiquity 23.2 (2004): 323-357