MACQUARIE ANCIENT HISTORY

An offprint from

Studies in Honour of Margaret Parker

Part II

A Special Issue of

ANCIENT HISTORY:

RESOURCES FOR TEACHERS

Vol. 38 No. 2 - 2008

MACQUARIE ANCIENT HISTORY ASSOCIATION

ANCIENT HISTORY:

RESOURCES FOR TEACHERS

Vol. 38 No. 2 - 2008

MACQUARIE ANCIENT HISTORY ASSOCIATION

ANCIENT HISTORY: RESOURCES FOR TEACHERS

A publication of Macquarie Ancient History Association

Macquarie University

Editor: Dr J. Lea Beness

Editorial Board: Professor S.N.C. Lieu (Macquarie University), Dr Peter Brennan (University of Sydney), Hugh Lindsay (University of Newcastle), Associate Professor Iain Spence (University of New England)

Reviews Editor: Dr C.E.V. Nixon

Reviews Assistant Editor:

Dr Peter Keegan

Editorial Assistant: Anne Irish

All articles in this journal are peer reviewed.

Copyright 2008, Published 2011 Macquarie Ancient History Association and the Authors

Published by Macquarie Ancient History Association Faculty of Arts, Macquarie University, NSW 2109

Ancient History: Resources for Teachers ISSN 1032 3686

CONTENTS

Parts 1 & 2

Bruce Harris The University Then and Now: Some Fundamental Questions

1

Boyo Ockinga The Non-Royal Concept of the Afterlife inAmarna

16

Graham Joyner Greek Pottery in the Museum of Ancient Cultures, Macquarie University

38

Lea Beness and Tom Hillard

From Marius to Sulla: Part 1 56

Bill Leadbetter Mithridates and the Axis of Evil 84

Rosalinde Kearsley The Imperial Image of Augustus and his Auctoritas in Rome

89

Tom Hillard Augustus and the Evolution of Roman Concepts of Leadership

107

Edwin Judge Who Wants Classics in a New World? 153

Doug Kelly Donna Tartt’s Greek 171

Notes on Contributors

Bruce Harris Founding Editor, 1971–1974

Boyo Ockinga Editor, 1994–1995

Graham Joyner Editor, 1991–1993

Lea Beness Editor, 2005–

Tom Hillard Editor, 1974–1981, 1997, 2007

Bill Leadbetter Editor, 1996–1998

Rosalinde Kearsley Editor, 1988–1991

Edwin Judge Editor, 1980

Doug Kelly Editor, 1973–1974

EDITORIAL

hese two issues of Ancient History: Resources for Teachers are dedicated to Margaret Parker, a former editor of the journal between

1998 and 2004. It is not the custom for outgoing editors of the journal to be celebrated with an issue in their honour. Two anomalous occasions precede. The first was in 1986 when the issues of that year were dedicated to Associate Professor Bruce Harris, the founding editor of the journal, upon his retirement from Macquarie University. Articles were submitted by his colleagues and his former students. On the second occasion, a special number (27.1 [1997]) was dedicated to Margaret Hallo Beattie, whose health had compelled a premature retirement which left her colleagues feeling that the department had lost one of its more vital members. She had been, even given that sadly early retirement, the journal’s longest serving editor. Roman Studies offered to Margaret Beattie celebrated Margaret’s quick wit and intellectually sharp engagement with a number of articles by overseas scholars who recalled vividly the vitality of Margaret’s interventions and academic repartee.

T

This occasion is also unusual. It is customary for the editorship of this journal to be filled from within the ranks of the Department of Ancient History at Macquarie. Margaret Parker was the first to step up to the pitch from outside those ranks—and remains the only one. She did so when, for various reasons, no member of the department was available to take up the bat. The department has every reason to express its heartfelt gratitude. Margaret brought to the role an efficiency born of her long service in school administration, a meticulous editorial eye, and a knowledge of what it was that the Higher School community was likely to find interesting and what it was that was needed. This was the fruit of her own thirty-six year teaching career. Margaret Parker was born in Hay, far western New South Wales, and educated in a number of country state high schools. She did her teacher training at Armidale Teachers’ College, her BA at the University of New England (majoring in English and History) and her MA (by coursework in Ancient History) at Macquarie. Over her long teaching career she taught at several country primary schools, Petersham Girls’ High, Finley High (in far western NSW), Willoughby Girls’ High, Ku-ring-gai High, North Sydney Girls’ High, and was Deputy Principal at Macquarie Fields High, finishing as Principal of Bankstown

Girls’ High. After formally retiring she worked for the Department of Education on a part-time consultative basis for three more years. Until 2009 she worked for short periods each year for the University Admissions Centre assessing applications from disadvantaged students for special admission to university. Margaret was also a long-serving Secretary of the Macquarie Ancient History Association during which time she carried an enormous load since divided into a number of portfolios. Here we mark our appreciation of Margaret by having former editors of the journal offer diverse contributions, covering Egyptian, Greek and Roman topics, the university’s Museum of Ancient Cultures, the aims of tertiary education and Reception Studies. This collection also offers the opportunity for another fond remembrance. In the last week of his life, Graham Joyner, editor from 1991 to 1993, gave very gladly his permission to have a new collection of his earlier notes on various objects in the then Macquarie University Ancient History Teaching Collection added to this bouquet for Margaret. The contribution is a timely reminder of Graham Joyner’s legacy in that most of the objects described were on loan from his own private collection and are now part of the Museum’s holdings. I know that Margaret will especially value his contribution. Margaret Beattie was unable, because of ongoing illness, to contribute an independent offering in the collection, but joins me here in wishing Margaret Parker all the best for future years.

J. Lea Beness Editor

AUGUSTUS AND THE EVOLUTION OF ROMAN CONCEPTS OF LEADERSHIP*

Tom Hillard

The competitive ethos of the Roman nobility

“Ego — is not a Dirty Word”, sang the Skyhooks in 1975. Indeed, it’s not. In fact, it’s a Latin one. And as much as the Romans may have buried the word within their inflected verbs, Latin speakers were not thereby expected to hide their light under a bushel. Light was sought. It was claritudo, or renown. This was only a slightly more rhetorical form of nobilitas.1 Roman principes sought fame, and to get to the top. Self-advertisement and the proclamation of achievement were essential tools in the armoury. Students are often struck by the superabundance of first-person pronouns in the English translations of Augustus’ Res Gestae (there is no way around that in English), but they come to see that there is nothing unusual in it (except its length [!]—and, of course, the extraordinary achievement of Augustus). The inscription is simply a climax of the Roman Republic’s eulogistic tradition.2

* Much of this paper was delivered at a conference on Velleius Paterculus at the University

of Leicester in 2009. I wish to thank the other participants both for comments and for three exciting days of intellectual stimulation; and Lea Beness for the attention she has subsequently given to my thoughts and to the submitted manuscript. I would also like to pay tribute, Margaret, to Edwin Judge who was critical of this line of thought when I first voiced it so many decades ago in a postgraduate presentation. I remain fundamentally in his debt. It was with unalloyed joy that I saw the publication of many of his earlier papers in Jim Harrison’s collection E.A. Judge. The First Christians in the Roman World: Augustan and New Testament Essays (Tübingen 2008) after I had returned from the Velleius conference; and I am delighted to be able to incorporate references to so much previously unpublished (or virtually inaccessible) work here. I know that you were as excited as was I, Margaret, at the appearance of the book. It has allowed us to relive ‘old times’.

Since the delivery of this paper, Cooley’s excellent new commentary on the Res Gestae (Res Gestae Divi Augusti. Text, Translation and Commentary [Cambridge 2009]) has appeared. A copy came into my hands only after this chapter was in proof, and whilst I have taken the opportunity to add references to Cooley’s observations at various places, this has not been effected systematically.

1 This is dealt with in the earlier article on Marius and Sulla (in the foregoing issue of

Ancient History. Resources for Teachers). 2 On all of this I feel I can scarce do better than to refer to a number of articles in the new

Edwin Judge collection: ‘Contemptu famae contemni virtutes: On the Morality of Self-advertisement among the Romans’, Mens Eadem (Sydney 1959) 24–29; ‘The Literature of Roman Political Self-Advertisement’, Proceedings of the 7th Congress of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association (Christchurch 1961); ‘Roman Literary Memorials’, Proceedings of the 9th Congress of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association (1964) 28–30; ‘Veni. Vidi. Vici, and the Inscription of Cornelius Gallus’, Akten des VI Internationalen Kongresses für Griechische und Lateinische

108 Hillard: Augustus and the Evolution of Roman Concepts of Leadership

But something had happened on the way to Rome’s ‘imperial’ period. Augustus was a master of self-advertisement and wanted to be celebrated for his successes, but claimed not to have wanted much of the power that others saw him as possessing. The classic statement of this, of course, is the one that comes almost at the very end of the Res Gestae, just before his proud concluding memory that he had been formally hailed in 2 BC (“in my thirteenth consulship”), by the Senate, the Equestrian Order and the People, Father of the Fatherland (pater patriae):3

After this time (“my sixth and seventh consulships”; i.e., 28 and 27 BC), I excelled all in auctoritas, though I had no more potestas than did the others who shared with me various magistracies. (RG 34.3)

With that reference to auctoritas, Augustus alluded to a form of moral authority based upon his ‘station’ as acknowledged by the community. Though this is an often-quoted passage, we must never be dulled by its familiarity to the point where we fail to recognize how remarkable a formulation it was. It was a claim to superiority that led quite naturally to the next (and climactic) item: the acclamation of him as Father. It was a claim not based on the tenure of any competively won magistracies with their inbuilt powers; it was not a statement of pride in the accumulation of honores, the usual goal of Rome’s political elite—though the Res Gestae certainly did not ignore those (see, by way of example, RG 4 and 7). The latter are simply superseded. Here Augustus is explicitly rejecting the notion of his potentia, and asserts only an influence that comes with high standing whether in the wider community or family, an influence stemming from the fact that others would not question that authority.4 This would be a

Epigraphik. München 1972 Vestigia 17 (1978) 571-573; ‘The Eulogistic Inscriptions of the Augustan Forum: Augustus on Roman History’, Papers of the Macquarie Continuing Education Conference for Ancient History Teachers (1980), 1–26 [reprinted in J.H. Harrison (ed.), E.A. Judge. The First Christians in the Roman World: Augustan and New Testament Essays (Tübingen 2008) 59–65; 66–68; 69–71; 72–75; 165–181, respectively].

3 We know how affected by this honour Augustus was. Suetonius (Aug. 58) tells us that he

shed tears. The inclusion there of reference to the Ordo Equester shows how keen Augustus was to underline the universal nature of the acclamation. In the fasti Praenestini (the calendrical lists which register the events meriting celebration in the Augustan period), we find that February 2nd was a holiday by senate resolution because on that day [in 2 BC], Augustus had been acclaimed Pater by the Senate and People. This probably reflects the official formulation.

Alison Cooley, Res Gestae Divi Augusti. Text, Translation and Commentary (Cambridge 2009) 274, also draws attention to this “striking modification of the traditional phrase”, suggesting that it reflects the increasing importance of the equestrian order under Augustus.

4 In The Anatomy of Power (Boston 1983), John Kenneth Galbraith discerns three major

ways in which an individual or party might effect his, her or its will. The first is by force (or threat of force) (this, Galbraith defines as “condign power”); the second by the offer of

Ancient History 38:2 2008 109

desideratum of most, but the competition between members of the office-seeking political elite was such that it entailed, as noted above, the accumulation of posts that they called honores. It is well known that their ‘race’ to the top was the cursus honorum, not a cursus officiorum (by which word, i.e., officia, the Romans have understood duties). The application of the word cursus to a career of service would have seemed nonsensical. The honores were awards granted by Rome’s People which automatically made the holders greater than others. This is implicit in the very word magistrate, as opposed to minister. Winning meant defeating others (electorally) and accumulating the greatest number of honores (and other trappings of success). Most will agree with the observation that Augustus was a master of what shall we call it? Spin? There will be disagreement as to the integrity of his claims. I prefer to follow the teachings of Edwin Judge that Augustus was so much in control of language that he could bend its specificity to say precisely what he wanted to say and to say what could not be gainsaid. Others, as I have acknowledged, will disagree; and it will have to remain a matter of judgement and opinion.5 But it is the shift in tone that I want to explore in this paper. Augustus disclaims power.

compensation or reward; and the third is by the kind of authority with which we are dealing here. This, he defines as “conditioned power”: “Conditioned power, in contrast [to condign and compensatory power], is exercised by changing belief. Persuasion, education, or the social commitment to what seems natural, proper, or right causes the individual to submit to the will of another or of others. The submission reflects the preferred course; the fact of submission is not recognized.” I can see ways in which this tripartite definition might be augmented and nuanced, but it serves here to clarify the point being made above in the text.

5 See, for example, the recent work of our friend Ron Ridley, ever the sharp critic of those

who abuse power: The Emperor’s Retrospect. Augustus’ Res Gestae in Epigraphy, Historiography and Commentary (Leuven 2003). The book is dedicated to Edwin Judge, but Ridley chooses to take a fundamentally different line of interpretation. The tradition remains strong at the University of Melbourne. He has been succeeded by Dr Frederik Vervaet who remains fundamentally suspicious of Augustus; cf. the recent publication (offering the proceedings of a stimulating symposium at that university), Andrew J. Turner, James H. Kim On Chong-Gossard and Frederik Juliaan Vervaet (eds), Private and Public Lies. The Discourse of Despotism and Deceit in the Graeco-Roman World (Impact of Empire series 11, Leiden 2010), a book which sports the image of a veiled Augustus on the front cover. Frederik provides his own unambiguous chapter to that collection: “Arrogating despotic power through deceit: the Pompeian model for Augustan dissimulatio” (133–166). Perhaps we can go so far as to agree with John Rich in his contribution to the same volume (‘Deception, lies, and economy with the truth: Augustus and the establishment of the principate’) that Augustus was indeed “economical with the truth”. Actually, Rich goes further; at one point at least Augustus crosses the line. He is willing to talk of Augustus’ “strategies of deception”.


The obsession amongst scions of the Roman nobility with unprecedented achievement and self-advancement is well known, and I have elaborated on it in a forthcoming paper.6 They wanted to ‘equal the deeds of their fathers’, to ‘surpass the exploits of their ancestors’, to be the first or the only individual to have done something and to outstrip the records set by others. It was an obsession that underlay the success of Rome’s imperial Republic, but it would also have dire consequences for the Republic’s political survival. They sought, in fact, principatus: the recognition of being Rome’s First Man. I am obviously not saying that a sense of officium was absent from the discourse of public life; and I am not denying commitments to ideology.7 But I am saying that Scipio Aemilianus, and possibly Cicero, would have found nothing shocking in the motto of our University’s first Chancellor. In 1970, when the latter attained the honour of Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George, along with the mantle of saxon-blue satin and scarlet silk lining—and the gold and enamel collar of the Order (to be returned to the sovereign upon death), he was entitled to a Coat of Arms. He chose as its motto ‘Strive with Courage to Achieve’, leaving a bemused biographer, to ask ‘Strive with Courage to Achieve What?’8 How many Roman nobiles would have felt constrained to fill in the gap?9

6 ‘Velleius Paterculus and the Reluctant Princeps: the evolution of Roman perceptions of

leadership’, in E. Cowan (ed.), Velleius Paterculus. Making History (Swansea 2011, forthcoming). See especially the opening section of that chapter ‘The quest for primacy’.

7 On the latter aspect of public life in republican Rome, see T.P. Wiseman, ‘Roman History

and the Ideological Vacuum’, in Wiseman (ed.), Classics in Progress: Essays on Ancient Greece and Rome (Oxford 2002) 285–310. For the language of ‘responsibility’ with regard to republican magistracies, see J. Béranger, Recherches sur l’aspect idéologique du principat (Schweizerische Beiträge zur Altertumswissenschaft 6, Basel 1953) 201–2. (The sources adduced are relatively late.)

8 D. Marr, Barwick (Sydney, London and Boston 1980), 226.

G.S. Sumi, Ceremony and Power. Performing Politics in Rome between Republic and Empire (Ann Arbor 2005) 3: “A Roman aristocrat’s principal objective in his career was to acquire political power and prestige (dignitas), wealth and status, and to bequeath as much as possible to his descendants. For a Roman aristocrat, the surest path to public distinction was service to the state.” For the Roman political elite, a life of struggle in the public domain was service to the state. A debate as to what constituted the best form of service was unnecessary. An exploration of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ambition belongs to the new era.

9 To the extent that Cicero talked about the burden of office and ‘public service’, see my

paper cited above (n. 6), notes 29–30. I also commend to teachers, for a broader perspective (and a different approach), E. Asmis, ‘The Politician as Public Servant in Cicero’s De Re Publica’, in C. Auvray-Assayas and D. Delattre (eds), Cicéron et Philodème, La polémique en philosophie (Études de Littérature Ancienne 12, Paris 2001) 109–128.


The principes in waiting were avid for glory. The metaphor which sprang to mind was that of hunting dogs, hungry for the kill.10 They would achieve by damaging others. They were Homeric (and from the period that Rome had embraced Greece so aggressively, the members of the Roman nobility, some of them, at least, knew their Homer). Scipio Aemilianus thought of Homer’s lines instinctively; we have specific instances.11 But what was the more general and more profound message that Roman elite youth took from the pages of Greek epic? Was it the image of desolation that more sensitive modern scholars see in the work? I do not think so.12 Was it not rather the sheer joy which the bristling face of war brought to the swelling breasts of the courageous? This was an elation accompanied by a recognition that now was the time to swallow hard and accept one’s allotted fate, ensuring through one’s individual action that one’s name survived. I am thinking, in particular of Sarpedon’s exhortation to his cousin Glaukos at Iliad 12. 310–28:

“Why are we two honoured above other men in Lycia ... Why do all men look up to us as gods?”

A review of material benefits follows: food, wine, land and status.

“Because of these honours we must always be to the fore ... in the heat of battle; the Lycians will say ‘Our kings who rule over Lycia enjoy the best meat and wine, but they are indeed glorious and mighty, for they fight in the forefront of the Lycians.’”

Then, an arresting admission:

“My friend, if a safe escape from this war meant that we should be for ever ageless and immortal, I would not fight in the front line myself nor urge you into the battle where men win glory. But, as it is, death awaits in a thousand forms, no mortal can escape it.”

10

Plut. Aem. Paull. 22.7 and Luc. 1.2. In the field and in the forum, it was the same to the Roman elite; cf. T.W. Hillard, ‘Res publica in Theory and Practice’, in K. Welch and T.W. Hillard (eds), Roman Crossings. Theory and Practice in the Roman Republic (Swansea 2005) 3–4.

11 Polybius 38.21; Diodorus Siculus 34/35.7.3; Plut. Life of Tiberius Gracchus 21.7.

12 This is not to say that a Roman reading of the Iliad was unreflective. In one of those

instances cited above (Polyb. 38.21) we see that Scipio Aemilianus contemplated the passing nature of a civilization’s grandeur (the mutability of human affairs) and was deeply moved by the thought, even whilst exhalting over the utter destruction, under his command, of Carthage. The answer was to win lasting fame.


The nub (for Sarpedon):

“Let us go forward then—and either bring glory on some other man or win it ourselves.”

It is a zero sum game; Sarpedon, of course, gets killed that day.

The reluctance of Augustus

Contrast the attitude above with Augustus’ professed reluctance to embrace power. He wanted his contemporary public and posterity to believe that he desired neither the trappings of power nor any unnecessary (but real) power of which those trappings were the manifestation. Regard the events of 23 and 22 BC, when Augustus’ nebulous position developed dramatically during a period of crisis.13 In 23, there was a serious corn shortage in Rome. Augustus stepped in, issuing corn at his own expense. He records this amongst his many benefactions at Res Gestae 15.1.

... in my eleventh consulship I bought grain with my own money and distributed twelve rations apiece ... These distributions of mine never reached less than 250,000 individuals.

The respite provided was temporary, and another shortage occurred into 22 (aggravated by a serious flooding of the Tiber and by widespread disease), and the panicking populace attributed this to Augustus having laid down the consulship. Popular agitation led to the dictatorship being offered to him.

The following year, in which Marcus Marcellus and Lucius Arruntius were consuls, the city was again submerged by the overthrowing of the river and many objects were struck by thunderbolts ... The pestilence raged throughout all Italy so that no one tilled the land, and I suppose that the same was the case in foreign parts. The Romans, therefore, reduced to dire straits by the disease and the consequent famine, believed that these woes had come upon them for no other reason than that they did not have Augustus for consul at this time also. They accordingly wished to elect him dictator, and shutting the senators up in their meeting place, they forced them to vote this measure by threatening to burn down the building over their heads. Next they took the twenty-four rods [sc. the fasces] and approached Augustus, begging him to

13

For an invaluable overview of Augustus’ powers and their development across time, see Dexter Hoyos, ‘The Legal Powers of Augustus: some modern views’, Ancient Society. Resources for Teachers 13.1 (1983) 1–57. (He discusses “The ‘Great Settlement’—23 BC and aftermath” at 28–40.) Discussion of the topic continues. More recently, John Rich, ‘Making the Emergency Permanent: Augustus and the Establishment of the Principate’ (forthcoming).


consent both to being named dictator and to becoming commissioner of the grain supply, as Pompey had once done. He accepted the latter duty under compulsion, and ordered that two men should be chosen annually, from among those who had served as praetors not less than five years previously in every case, to attend to the distribution of the grain. As for the dictatorship, however, he did not accept the office, but went so far as to rend his garments when he found himself unable to restrain the people in any other way, either by argument or by entreaty ... (Dio 54.1.1–4; trans. Foster)

The performance was a dramatic one.

... And when the people pushed him to accept the dictatorship, he fell down on one knee, with his toga thrown over his shoulders, begging with bared breast to be excused. (Suetonius Divus Augustus 52)

Look at the way in which he portrays those events in the Res Gestae.14

The dictatorship, both in my absence and in my presence, offered to me by both the senate and by the People, in the consulship of M. Marcellus and L. Arruntius, I would not accept (non recepi) (RG 5.1)

He saved the emphatic rejection until the end of the sentence, building up the honour (and the enormity) of the offer, and then abruptly dismissing it. It was not a casual or one-off turn of phrase; he does the same two sentences later:

And at that time, the consulship, to be held annually and perpetually, when offered to me, I would not accept (non recepi) (RGI 5.3)15

Sandwiched between those two items of emphatic refusal (at RG 5.2), we find his willingness to take up the burden—at that very time. Here, he emphasises his readiness with the main verb.

I did not decline in (this) great shortage of grain, the oversight of the corn supply (curatio annonae), which I so administered, that in a few days all citizens were liberated from fear and danger—at my own cost and my own concern (impensa et cura mea).16

14

For a fuller discussion of the events, and for Augustus’ depiction of his actions, see Cooley (n. 3) 127–130.

15 What is highlighted here is the “curt note of the refusal”; E.A. Judge, ‘Augustus in the Res

Gestae’, Papers of the Macquarie Continuing Education Conference for Ancient History Teachers (1979) 3–43 [= (slightly modified) in J.H. Harrison, (ed.), E.A. Judge. The First Christians in the Roman World: Augustan and New Testament Essays (Tübingen 2008) 193].

16 Cf. Béranger (n.7) 190, with an extended discussion of the text and the nuances of cura at

192–3; and J. Scheid, Res Gestae Divi Augusti. Haut Faits du Divin Auguste (Paris 2007).


He is talking, in effect, about control of the whole Mediterranean. Dio gives the game away. The post was similar to the overriding commission given to Pompey in 57 BC Back then, such a commission had been highly controversial (and I shall elaborate below). Times had changed. But for Augustus it was all a matter of him being willing to take up a burden.

The reluctant Aeneas

The ideology of service—and something much more, reluctance—was embedded in ‘Augustan’ projections. The poet Virgil’s portrait of the archetypal Aeneas is central. The survivor of Troy’s fall is, famously, the Roman hero recast. The extent to which Virgil who, it would seem, wrote the epic Aeneid at Augustus’ behest wrote with Augustus looking over his shoulder and was (accommodatingly?) cognizant of that pressure throughout is a matter for debate, but the ‘relevance’ of Aeneas was not in doubt for ancient readers, critics and commentators. Readers were meant to contemplate Aeneas’ attitudes to heroism, leadership and duty (and they were meant to think about Augustus).17 Virgil’s Aeneas does not attack life with enthusiasm, and he is not avid for glory. He cannot die heroically; he has to live. He is, above all, burdened. He is not, like an Homeric hero, ‘head and shoulders above his fellows’—because he has someone on his shoulders.

17

Suetonius’ Life of Virgil (a work found in Tiberius Claudius Donatus’ commentary on Virgil, and often assigned by modern scholars to Suetonius) reports that the epic was a mirror to both epics of Homer, but “contained at the same time an account of the origin of the city of Rome [very obliquely I might add] and of Augustus, which was the poet’s special aim.” (21; trans. J.C. Rolfe). Donatus, in the preface to his commentary on the Aeneid Book 1, wrote that Aeneas had to be depicted in such as way that showed him as “a worthy first ancestor of Augustus, in whose honour the poem was written.” The fourth-century Maurus Servius Honoratus in the introduction to his commentary on the Aeneid asserts that one of Virgil’s intentions was “to praise Augustus by means of his ancestors.” On all this, see the still useful paper by R.D. Williams, ‘The Purpose of the Aeneid’, Antichthon 1 (1967) 29–41 (both for these references and for a more nuanced interpretation of the poet’s craft). Suetonius’ Life (31) reports that Augustus, on campaign in Spain, sent Virgil ‘requests’ “in either entreating or even ‘jocosely’ threatening letters” (supplicibus atque etiam minacibus per iocum litteris) for ‘something’ from the poem.

The ancient commentators pointed (sometimes quite adventurously) to a number places in the epic where the reader was meant to think of Augustus (see, e.g., Servius commenting on Aeneid 1.292 and 5. 556); cf. Jasper Griffin, ‘The Creation of Characters in the Aeneid’, in Barbara Gold (ed.), Literary and Artistic Patronage in Ancient Rome (Austin 1982) 118–134—again, suggesting a far more nuanced view of Virgil’s intentions, but allowing the unmistakable messages aimed at contemporary audiences. Griffin quotes Syme (with approval): “The poem is not an allegory, but no contemporary could fail to detect in Aeneas a foreshadowing of Augustus.” (Roman Revolution [Oxford 1939] 463) As Griffin rightly insists, this observation should not be pursued in any simplistic and reductionist fashion, but the foreshadowing permeates a reading of the Aeneid.


Teachers will be familiar with the traditional iconography of Aeneas carrying his aged father out of Troy. The depiction of Aeneas and his ‘precious burden’ is an old one, going back (at least) to the sixth century—and it is Greek. We see him carrying his father on black figure vases.18 But few would deny that Virgil makes Aeneas over. This hardly needs to be laboured (no pun intended); I take it to be the consensus view (even if no one reading of the Aeneid will satisfy all readers). Homeric heroes tend to act according to their nature rather than duty—nature, or a sense of self-interest (as we have seen in the case of Sarpedon above). Aeneas’ journey, as Virgil tells it, is one of suppression of instinct;19 as a man under ‘holy obligation’, he is characterized by a sense of duty, but more importantly, at the outset of the epic, by a reluctant sense of duty. I am taken by the portrait that Viktor Pöschl offers of a man suffering from historical fate. He can never live the moment, because, in him, we see past, present and future. Aeneas is heroic because his burden (as much psychological as anything) is one that would cripple most men.20 It is hardly an insight to observe that pietas is his distinguishing feature. What needs to be emphasised is his brand of pietas. Gaius Gracchus can have been said to have been motivated by pietas. For Cicero, that was one of Gracchus’ defining qualities.21 But Gracchus took to it with a vengeance, so to speak. His pietas, in terms of family obligation, led him to seek and to wreak revenge on his enemies, those whom he deemed responsible for his brother’s death. Aeneas has been called upon to put vengeance aside.22 He has, instead, a divinely ordained mission. We first

18

F. Canciani, ‘Aineias’, Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, I 1 (Zürich and München 1981) I 1, 381–96; cf. I 2, 296–309.

19 Readers may have recognized in the above the influence of Viktor Pöschl (The Art of

Vergil. Image and Symbol in the Aeneid [Eng. trans. Gerda Seligson, Ann Arbor 1962])—though I perhaps belong to a more pessimistic school. Modern scholarship on the subject is vast, and I am reluctant to offer much of a bibliography here for fear of giving unintended offence by omission. Generally, I must acknowledge also the influence of various contributions by R. Deryck Williams. (I recommend to teachers Williams’ Aeneas and the Roman Hero [London 1973]; it is a fine introduction to his thinking.) For useful surveys of scholarship, see R.J. Tarrant, ‘Poetry and power: Virgil’s poetry in contemporary context’, in Ch. Martindale (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Virgil (Cambridge 1997) 186–7; and S.J. Harrison (ed.), Oxford Readings in Virgil’s Aeneid (Oxford and New York 1990), 1–20. For Aeneas struggling against his nature, see also R.O.A.M. Lyne, ‘Vergil and the Politics of War’, Classical Quarterly 33 (1983) 188–203 [= Harrison 1990, 321]. For Aeneas’ ‘makeover’, particularly with regard to pietas, see G.K. Galinsky, Aeneas, Sicily, and Rome (Princeton 1969) 3–61. What is striking is how ‘recent’ that makeover may have been; ibid., 50–55; 60–61.

20 Pöschl (n.19) 38–40; cf. P. Hardie, Virgil’s Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium (Oxford 1986)

135 (‘Aeneas is a man living in a state of siege’). 21

Cic. de har. resp. 42. 22

In Book 2 where, in retrospect, we see Aeneas in his first historical appearance (as opposed to his appearance in the poem), his normal heroic qualities are to the fore. He thirsts for


meet Aeneas, ninety-two lines into the poem, where he offers his first speech (93ff.).23 Caught in a terrible storm, characteristically all too human, his limbs have gone loose with terror, and he cries out to the heavens, wishing that he was dead. He implores. ‘Why me?’ is a refrain for the first six books. He has, of course, been implicitly introduced on the first line. He is ‘the man’ (arma virumque cano—“Of war and the man I sing”)—and all readers knew of whom the poet spoke when he alluded, on the tenth line, to the insignem pietate virum (1.10) and to whose toils he referred—tot labores (on the same line): “a man outstanding in his pietas, facing so many toils, so much labour.” I underline that word labores (to which we shall return).24 And we note too that the unnamed hero has been introduced as a victim.

“Tell me, Muse, the reason, whereby the Queen of the gods, thwarted in her will or in anger, [brought such a good man] to face so many reverses, so many labours. Can there be such anger in Heaven?” (1.8–11; Jackson Knight trans., my italics)25

We return to Aeneas’ first speech (and his desire for restful death).

“How fortunate were you, thrice fortunate and more, whose luck it was to die under the high walls of Troy, before your parents’ eyes!”

revenge; he is ready to kill and to die. This, and his lapse in Book 10 (to which I return below), almost give the impression that they are there to establish his basic manhood such as it would be understood by a Republican readership. On that subject generally (and therefore with scarce reference to Aeneas), see M. McDonnell, Roman Manliness. Virtus and the Roman Republic (Cambridge 2006); see esp. 181–5 on ‘training manliness’.

On this passion in Book 2 (which he must learn to suppress or at least to manage), see Jeffrey Fish, ‘Anger, Philodemus’ Good King, and the Helen Episode of the Aeneid 2.567-589: a new proof of authenticity from Herculaneum’, in D. Armstrong, J. Fish, P.A. Johnston and M.B. Skinner (eds), Vergil, Philodemus and the Augustans (Austin 2004) 111–138.

23 And it is in his speeches that we can trace the development of the man; C.J. Mackie, The

Characterisation of Aeneas (Edinburgh 1988). 24

For a survey of the seventy-nine times labor appears in the Aeneid, see J. Stachniw, ‘Labor as a Key to the Aeneid’, Classical Bulletin 50.4 (1974) 49–53. Its most frequent use is in the first Book; it is part of the scene- (and character-) setting; and not surprisingly the labours are qualified as burdensome.

There is nothing original in underlining this aspect of Aeneas’ mission. I note that Rose Williams’ irreverent but enthusiastic gloss of the epic is entitled The Labors of Aeneas: What a Pain It Was to Found the Roman Race (Wauconda, Il. 2003). The cue, of course, comes from Aen. 1.33: tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem (“how heavy the weight of founding the Roman race”). On this line, see Philip Hardie (n.20) 135.

25 I’m using here, as I do a number of times elsewhere, the prose translation of Jackson

Knight; Peter Wiseman has shown us that Jackson Knight knew what Virgil wanted to say (or was at least getting advice along those lines); Talking to Virgil. A Miscellany (Exeter 1992) 171–209, see esp. 199–206.


And so on and so on. Understandably, there were readers in antiquity who were dissatisfied with this, thinking that it was no way to introduce a hero (Servius in his commentary on the Aeneid 1.92 was one of them).26 Aeneas has to be cajoled, exhorted, goaded and encouraged—because he is just a man. His readiness to be discouraged is still there in the second half of Book 5. Another storm, and the Trojans have been driven on to the shores of Sicily; the women have set fire to the ships (they are sick of the endless journey). Aeneas is near breaking point. And, at this point, he is again pius because he feels the pressure:

Then pius Aeneas rent the garment off his shoulders, stretched forth the palms of his hands, and called on the gods for aid: “Jupiter Almighty, if you do not yet look on every Trojan with hatred, and if your loving kindness, shown of old [he challenges Jupiter here to remember antiqua pietas], can still take note of humanity’s suffering (labores), permit our fleet, even now, to escape the flames, O Father, and wrest Troy’s slender hope from death. Else, if I so deserve, cast the remnant left of us down to death by your own angry bolt; overwhelm me, by your own hand, here.” (Virg. Aen. 5.887–92)

Aeneas is virtually saying: “Lord, I’ve had it!” The prayer is answered with a drenching storm (this time a delivering one), but Aeneas is still shaken to the core.

But pater Aeneas, deeply shaken ... pondered over his deep anxieties, turning his thought in his heart one way and another. Should he settle in Sicily, forget destiny foretold, or should he press on to Italy? (Virg. Aen. 5.908–913)

A good dose of stoicism dolloped out by aged Nautes (one of Aeneas’ companions and considered to be of singular wisdom) gets him moving again, but not without lingering doubts—and uncertainty.27 Aeneas’ abiding reluctance (in the first half of the epic) makes it possible for a modern commentator (and a good one) to say—in two separate instances: “This is the point at which the mission is most nearly abandoned.”28 This merely reflects

26

Mackie (n.23) 20 provides references to modern discussions. 27

In glossing the text in this fashion, I would like to acknowledge that once again I am following in the footsteps of Deryck Williams.

Nautes: Servius, in his commentary on the Aeneid 704, tells us that, according to the antiquarian M. Terentius Varro, Nautes, from whom sprang the patrician Nautii, was the one who brought the sacred Palladium from Troy to Italy.

28 Williams says this with regard to Book 5 (and the episode glossed above); (n.19) 44. He has

already said that of Book 4: “This is the book in which Aeneas comes nearest to abandoning his mission.” (41)


how closely Aeneas comes so often to letting it all go at so many points (up until Cumae and his vision of the future). Virgil is concerned as much as with anything else to underline the cost to Aeneas: the cost of leadership.29 There is an almost Braudelian twist to this interpretation of greatness, except that Fernand Braudel’s great man is an opportunist who discerns and rides the wave (embracing, you might say, his confinement within ineluctable rhythms), not a man almost crushed by his awareness of duty and driven forward by a tragic sense of responsibility to make history happen.30 It would never be easy for Aeneas. Even after the marked turn in his resolve midway through Book 6, he must struggle with his instincts—not always successfully. Faced with armed opposition in Latium (in the books which follow the pivotal turning point of Book 6), the old Aeneas seems to resurface; he is ‘‘tossed about on a great ferment of anxieties’’ (magno curarum fluctuat aestu; Virg. Aen. 8.19). It is, however, the newly evolved statesman that we see so troubled. He would prefer a pacific solution. His anxieties, his hesitancy are all aimed at finding the right way forward.

And the hero of Laomedon’s line, seeing all that passed, was tossed on a heaving tide of anxieties. Rapidly his mind leapt this way and that, in the hurried search for different viewpoints to help him think out all his problems: like the quivering light from water, swaying in a basin, struck by the sunlight or reflecting the moon’s rays from its surface, and flitting everywhere and ranging far till at last it leaps in the air and hits the panels in the ceiling overhead. (8.18–25 [trans. Knight])

But Aeneas must struggle with other instincts, and they are the traditional signs of manliness that the new age cannot accommodate. Turnus is the

29

I borrow here a line of thought from John Bishop (The Cost of Power. Studies in the Aeneid of Virgil [Armidale 1988]), though Bishop explores the sense of cost in so many more ways than I do here.

30 “I would conclude with the paradox that the true man of action is he who can measure most

nearly the constraints upon him, who chooses to remain within them and even to take advantage of the weight of the inevitable, exerting his own pressure in the same direction. All efforts against the prevailing tide of history—which is not always obvious—are doomed to failure.

So when I think of the individual, I am always inclined to see him imprisoned within a destiny in which he himself has little hand, fixed in a landscape in which the infinite perspectives of the long term stretch into the distance both behind him and before. In historical analysis as I see it, rightly or wrongly, the long run always wins in the end. Annihilating innumerable events—all those which cannot be accommodated in the main ongoing current and which are therefore ruthlessly swept to one side—it indubitably limits both the freedom of the individual and even the role of chance”; F. Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of the Philip II Vol. 2 (1949, rev.ed. 1966; Eng. trans. S. Reynolds 1973) 1243-4.


Homeric hero, to the extent that some have seen in him the hero of the epic. But Turnus represents what Aeneas must overcome, psychologically. The heroic Turnus, as a triumphalist killer, shines at 10.441–443: “It is time for you [Lausus, son of Mezentius] to rest from battle: I and I alone am going to deal with Pallas, to me and me only is he due—I wish his father were here to see it”. He will show no mercy. Virgil indeed offers editorial comment (on the killing and despoiling of Pallas at 10. 500–505); Turnus is unaware of fate and fortune, unable to show moderation in triumph. And here is the instinct that the poem challenges Aeneas to put aside. The anguish caused by this very event triggers the killer in Aeneas. He is now himself Homeric. He rages through the battlefield; and he boasts over the dead (10. 510–604; 755–820); he hacks down everyone in his path, he cuts a broad swathe through the enemy lines:

when once his sword has tasted blood, he rages victorious over the field ... (10. 569–70).

It is almost (as noted above, n. 22) as if this episode is there to prove that Aeneas is not, after all, a wimp. If there is an Augustan leader reflected here, it is the young Octavian in his moriendum esse mode (Suet. Aug. 15).31 But by the 20s BC, we have moved on; the world has different needs—and Maecenas has worked his wiles.32 Likewise, reason returns to Aeneas; he feels revulsion at his own lack of control. He groans deeply in pity, and holds out his hand (10. 821–24); he becomes again, in his own consciousness, pius Aeneas (10.826). Aeneas is not perfect—but, significantly, he is shown as flawed when he demonstrates that he can be a Homeric hero. He is ‘manful’ enough; the tide of battle turns with his re-arrival on the scene at 10. 258–75. But in so far as Virgil celebrates arma virumque he indicates they are not worthy of celebration if the arms are in the wrong hands.33 We see the type 31

I refer to the period in which those who sought mercy from Octavian received the chilling answer: “You must die.”

32 I am thinking of the undated occasion upon which Maecenas, observing Augustus in a

mode of condemnation, casually tossed into his friend’s lap a tablet reading “Rise, at last, executioner” (Dio 55.7)—to great effect, we are told. Dio indicates that such was Maecenas’ influence generally. Virgil came from this camp.

33 Hence the impact of the poem’s powerful ending (which I am not going to dwell on here).

Instinct, and the lack of a superhuman control, are never far away. It makes the mission all that more hard. That is my reading, and I am aware it will not be shared by all.

Servius (ad Aen. 12. 940) believed that the killing of Turnus redounded to Aeneas’ credit. Arguing the same, see the weighty article of H.P. Stahl, ‘The Death of Turnus: Augustan Vergil and the Political Rival’, in K.A Raaflaub and M. Toher (eds), Between Republic and Empire. Interpretations of Augustus and His Principate (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London 1990) 174–211. For a different interpretation, Bishop (n.29) 241–50; 324–6; cf. 209–11. Lyne (n.19) 188–203 [= Harrison (n.19) 316–338] sees an ‘appreciation’ of the necessary conflict between natural instincts and the ideal, whilst giving full recognition to


of man required in Aeneas’ solemn oath before the final battle (12. 176–194); it is the pledge of a resolute statesman-in-waiting. And it is not grasping; he claims no kingdom for himself (nec mihi regna peto; 190).34

Pius Augustus

This powerful rewriting of what it meant to be great was not one individual’s vision; it was not left to Virgil alone. Augustus worked at its propagation through other media, and he did not leave the portrait of pietas at one of analogy. He had long foregrounded his own. It was recognized by the Senate—and recognized early, in 27 or in 26, when the clupeus virtutis (the ‘shield of valour’) was awarded by the Senate and People (RG 34.2), to be set up in the curia, possibly alongside the statue of Victory, on account of his virtus, clementia, iustitia and pietas.35 As qualities in leadership, virtus and iustitia cause no surprise; they are traditional. Clementia had become something of a political slogan, and was here requisite.36 It was in pietas that Augustus augmented the image of the leader.37 And in the marble copy found at Arles, it is pietas that is expanded upon: clupeum virtutis clementiae iustitiae pietatisque erga deos patriamque; it is pietas “with regard to the

the elusive nature of the Aeneid. I cite only three out of so many readings here because to go further would be to open the floodgates.

34 And Aeneas is pius Aeneas at 175. Cf. Mackie (n.23) 194: “the emphasis is on giving rather

than receiving”. 35

On the shield and the chronology, see Scheid (n.16) 88–9. Also on the shield and its copies, see P. Zanker The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Eng. trans. Alan Shapiro, Ann Arbor 1988) 95–97 (and figs 79-81); cf. Scheid (n.16) 90–91 for further references. For references and discussion of Augustan pietas, M. Spannagel, Exemplaria Principis. Untersuchungen zu Entstehung und Ausstattung des Augustusforums (Archäologie und Geschichte, ed. Tonio Hölscher, 9, Heidelberg 1999) 201–204. As Zanker remarks, the shield, a familiar form of honour from the Hellenistic world, became something of a mystic symbol (95). The virtues inscribed thereupon came to define both the ruler and what was expected in a good ruler.

36 For a recent treatment, wherein will be found references to earlier works on the subject,

M.B. Dowling, Clemency and Cruelty in the Roman World (Ann Arbor 2006). Chapter 2 provides the most pertinent discussion to the point here, but see also 89–105 for Virgil and his Aeneas.

37 Cf. Zanker (n.35) 96.


gods and the fatherland.”38 The Roman iconography of Aeneas with his precious burden, numismatically attested, preceded any program of Augustus. It can be found, for instance, on a denarius of Caesar dating to 47–46 BC, and advertised Julian ancestry.39 But under Augustus the imagery became the coinage, so to speak, of the realm. Moreover, the Aeneas-Anchises-Ascanius group appeared on private walls, and was used as a personal symbol of commitment. It was sufficiently established to become the butt of humour.40

The burden-bearing Leader

This dutiful aspect of Augustus’ great ancestor was a feature of Augustus’ new forum, a veritable showcase of Roman leadership.41 On the face of it, Augustus chose to look backwards; he wanted to be judged by the standards of the past—thus, his own parade of heroes in the Forum Augusti to echo that

38

We see the shield advertised in various media, in stone relief, on coins and cameos; Zanker (n.35) 96, figs 80 (a)–(b) and 81. Cf. T. Hölscher, ‘Historiche Reliefs’, in W.-D. Heilmeyer (ed.), Kaiser Augustus und die verlorene Republik. Eine Ausstellung im Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin 7.Juni–14.August 1988 (Berlin 1988) 387–390 [no. 216]. Augustus’ was not the pietas of a Gaius Gracchus (see above); it was not a pietas that tied him to his father, and it did not embrace ultio. On this, see Welch, ‘Why Pietas? How and why to advertise the avoidance of despotism in 29BCE’ (forthcoming).

39 For the denarius, M.H. Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage (Cambridge 1974) 471 [no.

458]. The coinage deserves fuller treatment than can be given here. But Octavian came to utilize the imagery early; cf. Zanker (n.35) 35.

40 For a range of depictions on coins, gemstones and reliefs, see Spannagel (n.35) tables 4,

figs 1–11; 5, 1–7 & 11; 6, 1–2; cf. 458–9. For a catalogue of depictions, ibid., 365–396; for a detailed discussion of the fleeing group, 90–131 (anticipating some of the material with which I wish to deal below).

Private walls: see the shop façade in Pompeii (Pompeii IX 13, 5), further references to which will be found below; cf. Zanker (n.35) 202, fig. 156 for an illustration. As a token of loyalty, a symbol of pietas, see Zanker (n.35) 210 (and for a photograph of the illustrative tombstone of Petronia Grata, 209, fig. 163). Familiar enough to be subverted or caricatured: witness the canine version of the group on a wall in Stabiae. The dog-faced Aeneas is ithyphallic and his dog-faced father carries on his lap a dice-box rather than the palladium. It is seen as anti-Augustan by Paul Zanker ([n.35] 209), but might represent a simple gesture of wit (and one with literary nuance); B. Kellum, ‘Concealing/revealing: gender and the play of meaning in the monuments of Augustan Rome’, in Th. Habinek and A. Schiesaro (eds), The Roman Cultural Revolution (Cambridge 1997) 158–181, at 174–5. For illustrations, Zanker (n.35) 209 fig. 162; Kellum, 175 fig. 10.

41 I refer teachers to a study which appeared at the same time as Harrison’s edition of Edwin

Judge’s papers; and which came late into my hands: Joseph Geiger, The First Hall of Fame; A Study of the Statues in the Forum Augustum (Leiden 2008). The work emphasises the originality of the concept, its centrality to Augustus’ self-imaging, and the importance of Augustus’ selection of specific individuals.


of Virgil in Aeneid 6.42 Next to the immortal gods, Suetonius reports, Augustus honoured the duces who had extended Roman imperium. Their statues were displayed ‘in triumphal form’ (triumphali effigie) on either side in the porticoes of the forum, an accompanying elogium pointing to the salient achievements and qualities of each; and an edict announced that Augustus wished to be judged, and he wished the leaders of future ages (insequentium aetatium principes) to be judged against their collective exemplar (omnium exemplar).43 But there was a revisionist sense to Augustus’ view of the past. The landscaped space of the new Augustan Forum provided a powerful message. The most plausible reconstruction of its layout suggests that Aeneas carrying his precious burden headed one gallery of Julian (or Alban/Julio-Claudian) principes whilst on the other side of the Forum, in the facing exedra, Romulus carrying the spolia opima, the first spolia opima, headed a gallery of those upon whom principatus had fallen at critical times.44 I choose my words carefully here. On the one hand, some of the principes viri may have been present simply because of their triumphal achievements (and this is the

42

Whereas Virgil had cast his parade as a prophecy (one of the three great prophecies of the epic), Augustus cast his as a retrospect. Both had their minds firmly on the present. Cf. P. Frisch, ‘Zu den Elogien des Augustusforums’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 39 (1980) 93–98.

43 Suet. Aug. 31.5; cf. 29.1–2; Dio 55.10; cf. Judge, in Harrison (n.2) 98–99; 167.

44 For such a reconstruction, see P. Zanker, Forum Augustum, das Bildprogramm (Tübingen

1968); (n.35) 201–205, 209–215; K. Galinsky, Augustan Culture: an interpretive introduction (Princeton, N.J. 1996) 197–213; Spannagel (n.35) 86–255 (on Aeneas and Romulus). For a general discussion, see also A.M. Gowing, Empire and Memory. The Representation of the Roman Republic in Imperial Culture (Cambridge 2005) 138–145, with his nn. 15–16, 19–21 for further references.

The principes of yore: Iuleae nobilitatis avi (et) viri (sc. clarorum actorum) (cf. Ovid, Fasti 5.564-6); maiores at RG 8.5; duces… triumphali effigie at Suet. Aug. 31.5; summi viri at HA Alex. Sev. 28.6; cf. E.A. Judge, ‘The Eulogistic Inscriptions of the Augustan Forum: Augustus on Roman History’, Papers of the Macquarie Continuing Education Conference for Ancient History Teachers (Macquarie University 1980) 1–26 [= Harrison (n.2) 173].

One must imagine spectators drawn into these galleries in another way. It should not be forgotten that at the time of their construction the twin hemicycles which housed this display were unique in Graeco-Roman urban design; P. von Blanckenhagen,‘The Imperial Fora’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 13 (1954) 25; A. Frazer, ‘The Imperial Fora: their Dimensional Link’, in R.T. Scott and A.R. Scott (eds), Eius Virtutis Studiosi: Classical and Postclassical Studies in Memory of Frank Edward Brown (1908–1988) (Hanover and London, National Gallery of Art, Washington 1993) 416.


aspect of the Augustan parade which struck later observers). The accompanying elogia of many, however, point to a highlighting of the fact that these men played fateful roles at various critical junctures in Roman history.45

45

I owe this insight to Edwin Judge, offered orally almost a generation ago. As I said in the first footnote, I rejoice to see it now in wider print circulation. Generally, on the forum, Judge (n.44): the elogia “were not the innocent product of antiquarianism”, but “taught a deliberate doctrine of Roman history” (167). For fateful roles, see Judge, op.cit, 169: “In most cases one can readily see … that attention must have been focused not on the magistracies and triumphs as such, but upon some peculiar episode in the man’s career. It typically shows him confronted with a crisis of the Roman state itself. Rome’s very future may even be in jeopardy. Other magistrates may have failed. Only an unprecedented, personal initiative will save the day. Sometimes the leader must sacrifice time-honoured principle, or personal dignity, for the higher good. … This political crisis management and not military victory as such, then, is what makes a man the leader of his age.” Cf. M.M. Sage, ‘The Elogia of the Augustan Forum and the de viris illustribus’, Historia 28 (1979) 192–210, see esp. 194 (though Sage concentrates on a contribution to Rome’s expansion as the criterion for inclusion); J.C. Anderson, The Historical Topography of the Imperial Fora (Coll. Lat. 182, Soc. d’Études latines, Brussels 1984) 83–85 (emphasizing the potential for comparison with Augustus); and B. Severy, Augustus and the Family at the Birth of the Roman Empire (New York and London 2003) 165–180. On the degree of Augustus’ attention to the wording of these elogia, compare also T.J. Luce, ‘Livy, Augustus, and the Forum Augustum’, in K.A. Raaflaub and M. Toher (eds), Between Republic and Empire. Interpretations of Augustus and His Principate (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London 1990) 127 n.14 and 137–38. Luce sees the Augustan selection of data as independent of prevailing historical tradition (though this is rather too artificially narrowed to the Livian). Luce envisages Augustus accepting the suggestions of those to whom he had delegated the aggregation of data. I, like Judge, see Augustus’ involvement as more hands-on (and for that as a current assumption, see S. Walker, ‘The Moral Museum; Augustus and the city of Rome,’ in J. Colston and H. Dodge [eds], Ancient Rome. The Archaeology of the Eternal City [Centre for Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies, Trinity College, Dublin; Oxford University School of Archaeology Monograph 54, Oxford 2005] 66). Cf. M. Humm, Appius Claudius Caecus. La République accomplie (BEFAR 322, Rome, École Française de Rome 2005) 49–60 on the elogium of Ap. Caecus (assuming that the inscribed remembrance was a blend of material found in Claudian ‘archival sources’ [the family’s oral tradition and privata monumenta] and elements promoting Augustan ideology). For an example of the fine hand at work, see Mary Beard’s observation of the expert reticence in the text of the elogium honouring Marius; ‘Vita Inscripta’, in W-W. Ehlers (ed.), La Biographie antique, Foundation Hardt Entretiens 44 (Vandoeuvres-Geneva 1988) 88 (in a study generally devoted to recognizing in inscriptions the very deliberate choices made in the selection of material). Again, observe the elogium of Ap. Caecus, which omitted any reference to electoral reform to the advantage of the libertini (Humm 60; cf. 54), a controversial contribution to Roman politics.


Aeneas and Romulus, however, presided.46 Their representations may have provided a model in a number of ways.47 Emblemata were prominent. There are hints that other statues were similarly ornamented by personal honores and/or striking attributes. We know that the statue of M. Valerius Maximus Corvus/Corvinus (mil. trib. 349) sported on its helmeted head the raven from which the man drew his cognomen.48 The statue of Scipio Aemilianus probably displayed the corona obsidionalis (siege-breaking crown) which he was awarded as a military tribune in 149;49 that of the ‘new man’ Marius was possibly conspicuous in the patrician boots specifically mentioned in the surviving inscription;50 and it is tempting to think that the statue of M’. Valerius Maximus (dictator 494) showed him seated in the curule chair, an item also mentioned in his elogium. The presence of Camillus, Rome’s saviour and second founder, would have been especially important to Augustus. He was, in Virgil’s parade at Aen. 6.825, referens signa, ‘standards-bearing’.51 Virgil’s parade precedes that of the Augustan forum by about two decades, but it evokes the visual image that one might associate 46

V. Kockel, ‘Beobachtungen zum Tempel des Mars Ultor und zum Forum des Augustus’, Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archaeologischen Instituts (Römische Abteilung) 90 (1983) 446, suggests on the basis of a marble fragment of larger footwear (see fig. 121, 1, contrasted with 121, 2) that these two central statues may have been almost twice the size of the others. H.I. Flower, Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture (Oxford 1996) 234, takes this up as a given. It is a sensible way in which to imagine that the larger central niches were filled; cf. J.W. Rich, ‘Augustus’ Parthian Honours, the Temple of Mars Ultor and the Arch in the Forum Romanum’, Papers of the British School at Rome 66 (1998) 93. For their accompanying elogia, see the brief discussion seven notes below (n.53) and Rich, 94-5.

47 The use of statues had its own particular force; cf. A. Gregory, ‘Responses to Portraits and

the Political Use of Images in Rome’, Journal of Roman Archaeology 7 (1994) 80–99, see esp. 87. For an interpretation of the strong visual cues (not one that I would necessarily endorse), A. Barchiesi, ‘Learned Eyes: Poets, Viewers, Image Makers’, in G.K. Galinsky, The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus (Cambridge 2005) 281–305, at 285–88. Barchiesi plausibly sees Ovid engaging in the “game of interpretation” prompted by the striking symmetry of the two central statues.

48 Gell. NA 9.11.10; cf. E. Papi, ‘Statua: M. Valerius Corvinus’, in E.M. Steinby (ed.),

Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae IV (Rome 1999) 372. 49

Plin. NH 22.6.13. For further references to this honour, see T.R.S. Broughton, Magistrates of the Roman Republic (Cleveland, Ohio 1951) 1, 459. Cf. Flower (n.46) 234–36.

50 Surviving fragments of statuary show an interest in footwear. For a striking example,

Zanker (n.35) 212, fig. 165 (and Kockel [n.46] fig. 121, 2). For a fuller range of examples, see J. Ganzert and V. Kockel, ‘Augustusforum und Mars-Ultor-Tempel’, in W.-D Heilmeyer (ed.), Kaiser Augustus und die verlorene Republik. Eine Ausstellung im Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin 7.Juni–14.August 1988 (Berlin 1988), 196–7, figs 86–91 (and 199); and S. Rinaldi Tufi, ‘Frammenti delle statue dei summi viri nel Foro di Augusto’, Dialoghi de archeologia 3.1 (1981) 69-84, at 80–82 [nos 12, 16, 17, 20, 23, 25; figs 18, 22, 23, 26, 29, 31].

51 et referentem signa Camillum; cf. N. Horsfall, ‘The structure and purpose of Vergil’s

Parade of Heroes’, Ancient Society. Resources for Teachers 12.3 (1982) 12–18.


with Camillus—and it is tempting to think that this is the way in which Camillus was iconographically depicted in the Forum. (There were any number of ways in which Virgil may have drawn inspiration from material that similarly inspired the Augustan imagery.)52 If this is true, then each, or at least many, of the statues would have been visually individual. The young Velleius Paterculus, newly arrived at manhood (he must have been about seventeen years old), carried away from the Forum many lessons with regard to the definition of principatus. Visual markers were particularly memorable. Augustus, he said, had dazzled “the minds and eyes of the Roman people” with the accompanying spectacles (2.100.2). Aeneas’s shoulders were burdened; those of Romulus burdened in another sense altogether, one might say adorned.

Here (Mars) sees Aeneas laden with his precious burden, and so many ancestors of Julian fame; here he sees Ilia’s son (sc. Romulus) bearing on his shoulders the arms of the (conquered) general, and the splendid record of their acts beneath (the statues) of the men arranged in order. (Ovid Fasti 5.563–66)

Note that Ovid chooses to distinguish Aeneas’ burden. Aeneas is oneratum pondere caro (“laden with his precious burden”); Romulus is depicted arma ferentem (“bearing arms”). Aeneas bears the weight. The distinction is apposite. The poet has picked up the cues. Via the visual juxtaposition of Romulus and Aeneas heading their respective lines of heroes, Aeneas’ burden has been elevated to an honos, and the traditional notion of honores has been deftly subverted.53

52

On Virgil’s parade being reminiscent of visual presentation (and suggesting a common source), cf. N. Horsfall, ‘Virgil, Varro’s Imagines and the Forum of Augustus’, Ancient Society. Resources for Teachers 10.1 (1980) 20–23, and also Horsfall, ‘Virgil, history and the Roman tradition’, Prudentia 8 (1976) 73–89, esp. 80ff.

53 Visualizing the juxtaposition is made all the more easy for us by two frescoes found in

Pompeii on a wall of a fuller’s shop (Pompeii IX 13, 5) representing twin images of Aeneas and Romulus in just these guises—and it has been suggested that the two statues in the Forum served as models for the paintings (V. Spinazzola, Pompei alla luce degli scavi nuovi di Via dell’Abbondanza I [Rome 1953] figures 183 and 184) which might most conveniently be found in Hardie (n.20) plate 7 (at end) (cf. his text at 375–6); Zanker (n.35) 202, fig. 126; Flower (n.46) Plate 4 (a) and (b) (cf. her text at 234–5); Rich (n.46) 71–128, at 94–5, figs 4 & 5; Severy (n.45) 174, fig. 7.6 (cf. her discussion of the imagery at 172–5) and/or Barchiesi (n.47) 286–87, figs 50–51. Cf. M. Hofter, ‘Die Statuen der summi viri vom Augustusforum’, in W.-D. Heilmeyer (ed.), Kaiser Augustus und die verlorene Republik. Eine Ausstellung im Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin 7.Juni–14.August 1988 (Berlin 1988) 200, figs 88 (a) and (b). And see also Galinsky (n.19) 8–9, and fig. 5, on the terracotta group (he styles it a “replica”) found in Pompeii’s forum.

For Aeneas as quintessentially burdened, prompting speculation as to Herculean and Atlantean analogies, see Hardie (n.20) 369ff., esp. 372–5. It would be helpful to know what


But there were still other ways in which Augustus formally articulated, in the most elaborate ways, the burden of leadership—indeed, the costs. Upon his death, twin bronze stelae on his mausoleum proclaimed in around 170 lines what it was that he considered the most memorable features of his public life. The Res Gestae is the shorthand title by which this extensive elogium goes today. As is well known, its heading, if we can trust a surviving copy, was considerably longer: Res Gestae divi Augusti, quibus orbem terrarum imperio populi Romani subiecit, et impensae quas in rem publicam populumque Romanum fecit. That is, even as an abbreviated title, it should read Res Gestae et Impensae: ‘Deeds Done and Expenses Incurred’ (and from this point on, I shall appropriately abbreviate it as RGI).54 The latter—the expenses—were no mere addendum. They are elaborated. They occupy nine sections of the inscription (that is, approximately a quarter of the text) and

qualities were highlighted in the elogium. If the fragments of two elogia found in Pompeii (one of Aeneas, the other of Romulus) reflect those of the Forum, it would come as no surprise that the finale of both was a notice of the heroes’ final elevation to divine status (Inscrip. Ital. 13.3.85 & 86). That of Aeneas (CIL 10. 8348) survives in four fragments, providing two (restored) parts. Neither, it seems, makes reference to his burden. Perhaps that was left to the more striking visual image. Or perhaps there was a footnote to the image. A place has been spotted for a reference to his safe transfer of the penates (A. Degrassi [ed.], Inscriptiones Italiae, 13, 1 Fasti Consulares et Triumphales [Rome 1947] 69). But Degrassi is cautious of presuming a parallel between the Pompeian inscriptions and those of the Augustan forum: “no evidence indicates [that this was the case]”. Indeed, he cites reasons for caution. Beard, on the other hand, ‘assumes’ that they were copies ([n.45] 88).

54 The prominent reference to impensae (rendered as doreai) remains in the foreshortened

Greek version at Ankara. This brings us to the vexed question of the original title, obviously scripted after the death of (the divine) Augustus. Suetonius (Div. Aug. 101.4) and Dio (56.33.1) both saw only the deeds (ta erga in Dio), suggesting that there had set in, by the beginning of the second century, the same tendency to careless abbreviation as prevails in the modern era. I have no doubt that the title as we have it reflects Augustus’ will; pace Mommsen and Hohl. (See Scheid [n.16] vii–ix and xx–xxi, for a discussion of and allusion to previous scholarship.) No subordinate (at whatever level) would have tampered so significantly with the programmatic intention of the inscription’s pronouncement. After Augustus’ death only one man (no longer subordinate) was in a position to do so (or so it might be thought); Michael Rostovtzeff suggested that Tiberius had added the title. Edwin Judge adds another who may have had the temerity (at least with regard to setting up the text in the East whence come the only surviving texts—and to give the authorization as well of a Greek translation, produced, it can be shown, locally rather than in Rome): Germanicus (a paper delived to the Australasian Society for Classical Studies Annual Conference, Newcastle-upon-Hunter, 2007, unpublished). Would Germanicus have been as inclined, on his own initiative, to foreground the burden of expense? On the extent to which the register of expenses was designed to reveal Augustus’ perception of his rôle, and more importantly the way in which the themes of res gestae and impensae are intertwined, Cooley (n.3) 34–5. On the rare use of an adjective at RGI 20.1 to underline the extent of expenses, Cooley (n.3) 23. On the possibility that such an intent might be traced back to Pompey, 32–3.


they precede the eight sections in which the military and diplomatic achievements are elaborated. They provide an account book reckoning of Augustus’ principate—the public accounts anyway: largesse; building programs; the number of times he topped up the treasury. In all, according to the ‘appendix’ of the inscription, 2,400 million sesterces to the treasury and the People. The burden which Augustus wished to be seen as ready to shoulder went beyond the financial. The self-advertisement opens with the fanfare and rhetorical colour that one would expect of self-eulogy—and is, in one way, breath-taking in its embrace of his singularity.

At the age of nineteen, and at my own expense/on my own initiative, I raised an army …

There, by the way, is that word impensa again, privata impensa. The vindication of such unilateral action–one might say insurrectionary activity–is cushioned (although cushioned is hardly the word for such assertive language) by party-polemical vocabulary;55 and by compression and the skilful omission of unnecessary detail.56 Then an interesting thing happens. As soon as the rewards begin to flow (premature enrolment in the senate; the ius sententiae [the right to give his opinion amongst the consulars]; imperium propraetore [formal recognition of his military command]; the consulship [at the age of nineteen]; and finally membership of the triumvirate), the inscription switches to a passive construction—that is to say, the first person verb gives way, repeatedly, to the third, with himself (sc. Augustus) in the accusative or dative.

(1) ... exercitum ... comparavi ... rem publicam ... vindicavi .... (2) ... senatus … me adlegit …. imperium mihi dedit.

55

He was championing the liberty of the state; it is language duly echoed by Velleius 2.61.1: torpebat oppressa dominatione Antonii civitas. Velleius (2.61–2) offers somewhat of an abbreviated elaboration of the opening claims of the Res Gestae et Impensae, where Augustus claims to be liberating the state from the domination of a faction. On the polemical nature of the word factio, R. Seager, Tiberius (London 1972) [= 2nd ed., Oxford 2005] 53–8.

56 This is a subject taken up in some detail by Ridley (n.5) though in his elaboration of

Augustan ‘lies’ (159–227), he parts company in a considerable way from the “peerless analysis” of Edwin Judge to which he pays homage in his preface (xi). Rich (n.5) puts slightly more emphasis on the ‘bending’ of, and—to take Edmund Burke’s phrase—‘economy with’, the truth. Taking a cue from Beard’s observation of one of the “expertly reticent” elogia in the Augustan Forum (Beard [n.45] 88), Gowing draws the obvious parallel with the RGI at this point ([n.44] 143).


(3) [senatus] ... me propraetore ... iussit. (4) Populus ... me consulem ... et triumvirum ... creavit.57

The agent has become the recipient. In the next sections (RGI 2-3), he (Augustus) returns heroically to the active role. The following section (RGI 4) tallies honores in the expected fashion: two ovations, three curule triumphs, twenty-one salutations as imperator, twenty-five thanksgivings to the gods on account of victories, 890 days of thanksgivings, nine kings (or children of kings) led in triumph, thirteen consulships, and 37 years of tribunician power. But as the writer and reader approach the consolidation of power, abiding power, the tone changes. This is at section 5, in which Augustus deals with the events of 22 BC, and with which we have dealt at the beginning of this essay. But let us re-read these cascades of honours, which serve to highlight, as Edwin Judge points out, the “curt note of refusal”.58

The dictatorship, both in my absence and in my presence,

offered to me by both the senate and by the people, in the consulship of M. Marcellus and L. Arruntius,

I would not accept (non recepi) (RGI 5.1)

And at that time, the consulship,

to be held annually and perpetually, when offered to me,

I would not accept (non recepi) (RGI 5.3)59 And as we remarked earlier, sandwiched between those two items of recusatio (an expression of unwillingness, a demurral, a withholding of consent), at RGI 5.2, we find his readiness to shoulder responsibilities—at that very time. He would not ‘decline’ at this time of crisis the oversight of the corn supply (curatio annonae), and he would do this at his own cost and make it his own concern (impensa et cura mea).60

57

(1) I raised an army, ... I championed the State; (2) the Senate enrolled me, ... gave me command; (3) the Senate ordered me as propraetor ...; (4) the People elected me consul and triumvir.

58 Judge in Harrison (n.15) 193.

59 On these passages, see now Cooley (n.3) 127–131.

60 Cf. Béranger (n.7) 190, with an extended discussion of the text and the nuances of cura at

192–3; and Scheid (n.16).


In effect, Augustus is claiming to have done all that the populace demanded of him, without taking up power. It is all to be expressed in terms of expense and cura. But lest there be any doubt as to what was entailed in his ‘administration’ of this problem, it is as well to remember the special commission that was awarded to Pompey in September, 57—and the controversy which was aroused by handing over such control of Rome’s supplies and Mediterranean shipping lanes to one man. On that occasion, there was hot debate. Clodius had accused Cicero of betraying the auctoritas senatus (Cic. Dom. 4) and of proposing extraordinary powers to Pompey (Cic. Dom. 18–21). Nor was Clodius alone in his concern (he had a personal reason for resenting Pompey’s intrusion upon the corn supply). Only two consulares presented themselves in the Senate for the debate. Cicero wrote to Atticus (4.1.7) that the others were afraid to attend; perhaps, but that did not prevent a senatus frequens (a packed House) the next day. (The leading members of the senate had surely wished to avoid being compromised.) Plutarch (Pompey 49.4) saw this for what it was: command over all the sea and land under Roman dominion. This is not an overstatement. The consular law drawn up in accordance with the senatorial resolution gave Pompey full control over the corn supply of the whole world for five years (per quinquennium omnis potestas rei frumentariae toto orbe terrarum). It got worse. The tribune C. Messius proposed before the people an alternative plebiscite giving Pompey control over the treasury (omnis pecuniae ... potestatem), a fleet, an army and maius imperium in provinciis (“superior powers of command in the provinces”). Even Cicero baulked at that (Cic. Att. 4.1.7). But Messius’ extravagant proposal had its benefits. ‘‘Our’’ bill, Cicero says (illa nostra lex consularis), now seemed modest by comparison (nunc modesta videtur). In private correspondence with Atticus, and with that now, Cicero admits much. Prevailing feeling on this occasion ensured that Messius’ promulgated bill was allowed to drop. But the grand command, the cura annonae per quinquennium, went ahead (Liv. Per. 104).61 Such was the ‘burden’ which Augustus did not refuse to take up. By any other name ...?62

61

On all this, see R. Seager, Pompey the Great (Oxford 1979; rev. ed. 2002) 107–8. 62

The collocation of items in section 5 of the RGI stand notably apart, and it is worthwhile reflecting on the fact that the paragraphing of the document is, from the Anatolian copies that survive, part of the original design—they are not imposed by modern editorship. (I thank John Rich for the observation.) The position of RGI 5 and 6 is stark; Augustus in his arrangement of material wanted these items to stand alone. See the useful discussion of these passages by Judge (in Harrison [n.15] 190–3), particularly for the speculation that we have here an insert into the (hypothetical) third version of the text which would previously have jumped from 4.4 to 7.1, an insert that reflected on the limits of the power of Augustus.


This projection of his image (his reluctance to grasp at honores, but readiness to shoulder burdens) was not one of Augustus’ reflective and revisionist old age; it was, as we saw at the beginning of this essay, projected at the time.63 The same tone was employed by Augustus in the following section of the Res Gestae et Impensae (6) with regard to the honores and powers of 19, 18 and 11 BC.

In the consulship of M. Vinicius and Q. Lucretius, and afterwards in that of P. and Cn. Lentulus, and thirdly in that of Paullus Fabius Maximus and Q. Tubero, faced with a consensus of the senate and people of Rome that I be appointed curator legum et morum summa potestate solus (sole supervisor of laws and morals with supreme power), no magistracy, offered contrary to the ways of our ancestors, would I accept (nullum magistratum contra morem maiorum delatum recepi)

Those things (the tasks) which the senate wished me to bear, wished me to carry the weight of, I undertook by virtue of tribunician power, in which

63

The crisis of a grain shortage, to which Augustus makes implicit reference at RGI 5, had arisen the year before (i.e., in 23), and we may pause here to contemplate the lessons being served up to Augustus’ eventual successor (successor, that is, in terms of historical continuity). It was a year Tiberius would have remembered well. He was a quaestor—and thus partially responsible for whatever actions were taken. A noisy sector of the populace, as we saw, associated the problem with the fact that Augustus had virtually, or at least apparently, abdicated in that year (though he had taken control of the immediate crisis by distributing grain—bought at this own expense (privatim coempto; RGI 15.1). In the face of food shortage, libertas was the last concern of the populace. (How far we have come from 75 BC; cf. Sallust Histories 2.47M.) Violent protests lay behind the Senate’s pressured offer to Augustus of the dictatorship (and perpetual consulship). Augustus, on the other hand, sought to dissuade popular enthusiasm for demanding such an elevation, and he went to some dramatic lengths (as we saw earlier); cf. Suet. Aug. 52; Dio 54.1. Recusatio flourished in 22 BC—and the nineteen-year-old Tiberius was on hand to take careful note. He also saw what lay behind (in terms of the infrastructure required to alleviate public concerns). Velleius Paterculus, so admiring of Tiberius, has, when covering this incident, nothing to say of the political theatre, but much to say of Tiberius’ administration of the crisis. Acting on the orders of his stepfather (mandati vitrici), Tiberius so skillfully managed the difficulties of the annona that he relieved the inopia at Ostia. His service ‘illuminated’ (and thus presaged) his future greatness. (Vell. 2.94.3)

Frederik Vervaet (n.5) would go so far as to say that Augustus had manipulated and/or aggravated the crisis cum grain shortage (based on the speed with which the situation was turned around and upon Clodius’ suspicions [or at least, we might say, Clodius’ allegations] that such an artificial crisis had been manufactured in 57 BC by those who wanted to see power in Pompey’s hands). It is not an implausible thesis, but it cannot be proven; cf. P. Garnsey, ‘Famine in Rome’, in Garnsey and C.R. Whittaker (eds), Trade and Famine in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge Philological Society Suppl. Vol. 8, Cambridge 1983), 59 and 61. If the allegation is correct, Tiberius must have been an accomplice. There are ramifications, therefore, for the way in which we read Tiberius’ subsequent recusationes.


power I asked, on my initiative, from the senate a colleague five times—et accepi (and I received them). (RGI 6)64

There we have, at last, acceptance, but representing voluntary disempowerment.65 And there we have the new discourse of principatus.66

Reluctant heroes in the past

I am not claiming that there were no Republican precedents for such reluctance67—or that Republican luminaries did not see themselves

64

Cf. Judge’s commentary (in Harrison [n.15] 191–3). Augustus has tied himself up in a complexity of explanation.

65 There has been some suggestion that Augustus has been less than honest here, but it

depends on which way the account is spun, and read. See Peter Brunt’s satisfactory explanation of the way in which Augustus could be telling the truth here; P.A. Brunt and J.M. Moore, Res Gestae Divi Augusti. The Achievements of the Divine Augustus (Oxford 1967) 45–6; cf. Béranger (n.7) 207 (stressing the nuances of Augustus’ wording); Scheid (n.16) 36–7; and Ridley (n.5) 101–8 (stressing the ambiguities, implicitly deceitful, that require a guarded reading).

66 These passages have been noted, of course, by others; cf. A. Powell, ‘The Aeneid and the

embarrassments of Augustus’, in Powell (ed.), Roman Poetry and Propaganda in the Age of Augustus (London 1992) 141–73, n.30 (adding for consideration RGI 10.2).

In the short term, the Res Gestae et Impensae captured the record, and it is interesting to chart its relationship with the next generation of historians. Velleius Paterculus seems to have imbibed it. It is highly likely that he was familiar with the document and more than probable that he was familiar with its text; cf. J. Hellegouarc’h and Cl. Jodry, ‘Les Res Gestae d’Auguste et l’Historia Romana de Velleius Paterculus’, Latomus 39 (1980) 803–16, pointing to certain echoes of Augustan formulae, and drawing particular attention (815–16) to a chronological error of Velleius (at 2.61.1) when he refers to Octavian’s levying of an army (privato consilio: the same phrase occurs in RGI 1.1) as Octavian entered his nineteenth year. Some editors have preferred to emend the text (cf. M. Elefante, Velleius Paterculus. Ad M. Vinicium consulem libri duo (Hildesheim 1997) ad loc., rejecting that option), but Hellegouarc’h and Jodry see Velleius as having been led into that error by an all too hasty reading of the RGI.

67 Perhaps one of the earliest for which we have record is that of L. Aemilius Paullus in 169

BC, professing reluctance to run for the consulship (with the expectation that he would take command of the Macedonian war); cf. U. Huttner, Recusatio Imperii: Ein politisches Ritual zwischen Ethik und Taktik, Spudasmata 93 (Hildesheim 2004) 440 n.93. Pressed by the multitude, the sixty-year-old protested that he had no obsession with honour (philotimia); Plut. Aem. Paull. 10.2–3. Ultimately, he capitulated, consenting to stand (and being accompanied to the campus as if already the victor). Thereafter, Gaius Gracchus famously professed an initial reluctance to engage in public life. He claimed that in a dream his brother appeared to him, observing that however much he wished to hesitate, there was no escape; his fate beckoned. Gaius relented with resignation. The evidence is contemporary—and firsthand (Coelius Antipater, HRR 1, 174, frg. 50 [= Cic. Div. 1.56; Val. Max. 1.7.6]); cf. Huttner, loc.cit. (though I would not date Gracchus’ resignation to his fate as late as does Huttner; Gracchus was active in 129).


shouldering burdens by way of officium.68 Nor am I claiming that Republican luminaries had not used feigned reluctance as a subterfuge—or as a way of deflecting the invidia which dogged high achievement. At least two examples will surely spring to mind (and they serve to further underline the type of contexts in which such reluctance will be performed). One fell during the twilight of Marius’ controversial third consulship—controversial in the sense that it had been awarded in absentia as had the second which had immediately preceded it (and which itself had followed on without a break from Marius’ first three-year tenure of consular imperium) and in the sense that it was drawing to a close without any decisive action having been fought against the northern tribes, the ostensible reason why this extraordinary break from tradition had been countenanced in the first place. Controversy was compounded by the fact that Marius might be seen to be making himself available for the immediate tenure of a fourth consulship. On this occasion, however, Marius had come himself to Rome—to preside over the elections at which “many good men had professed candidature” (Plut. Mar. 14.7). Marius’ plans required subterfuge, at least according to Plutarch. He had suborned the services of Saturninus who pressed the case for a reiterated consulship. Marius affected to decline the office, whilst Saturninus ‘denounced’ him as a traitor for refusing command when the fatherland was in such grave danger. Plutarch says that the charade was obvious but that the People recognized Marius’ ability and good fortune were what were required at this juncture (allowing to hoi polloi more nous than Plutarch normally would). Here Plutarch (or his source) is in no doubt that this was a piece of theatre; all we can safely say is that Marius publicly professed reluctance and was pressed to take up an extraordinary post.69 (Interestingly, Velleius Paterculus, writing in the era of Tiberius [who, as we shall see at the close of this paper, refused principatus for as long as he could (a fact of which Velleius, again as we shall see, makes much)], does not treat this aspect of Marius’ continued tenure of imperium; in his account, it is a simple case of

68

Duty made demands that could not be avoided. It excused certain actions. See Cicero’s condescending allowances to the men who were attacking M. Caelius Rufus in 56: “Atratinus ... has the excuse of duty, of necessity or of his age (vel pietatis vel necessitatis vel aetatis). If he wanted to bring this accusation, I attribute it to pietas (that is to say, a sense of duty); if he is under orders (iussus est), to necessitas; if he had any hopes (of making a go of this), to his youth.” (Cael. 2)

In the same speech, Cicero famously claimed reluctance to attack a woman of noble birth when in fact he was about to do so with all the stops pulled out. His duty to his client made him do it (Cael. 31).

69 Cf. Liv. Per. 67. Apparently, Livy expressed scepticism; here was a place where the

historian might have played with dangerous nuances. Velleius did not (see above, in the text).

We come perhaps a little closer to the historicity of contemporary acquiescence at Cic. de prov. cons. 19. (I thank Frederik Vervaet for drawing this item to my attention.)


the Roman People being convinced of Marius’ pre-eminent credentials—“the Roman people believed that no general was better qualified than Marius to confront such great enemies.” (2.12.2) There was only one man for the job in this crisis, and that was that.) But I would suggest that Velleius’ account of Tiberius’ recusatio (see below) indicates that the Assembly was not meant to greet Marius’ profession of reluctance in such a cynical or worldly-wise fashion as Plutarch suggests.70 The other example is as instructive. It is provided by two episodes—both setting a show of reluctance in the context of unusually extensive commands. Dio (36.24.5–6) suggests that Pompey performed reluctance in 67 BC when 70

Another unexpected item must be noted. One would not think of Sulla as a shrinking violet, yet Appian (BC 1.103) records that when in 80 (when Sulla was holding the consulship for the second time), the People, to pander to him, would have elected him consul again, Sulla refused, declaring instead Servilius Vatia and Ap. Claudius Pulcher as consuls. (This declaration should probably be taken as the declaration of the presiding electoral officer rather than as an indication that Sulla simply nominated alternatives.) The question of Sulla’s retirement is a vexed one that need not be settled here; but the incident remains of interest. Huttner (n.67) discusses Sulla’s abdicatio at 397–403 (references to other scholarship will be found there)—and this particular passage at 400–2. Appian clearly associates Sulla’s refusal to accept a third consulship with his abdication of the dictatorship—which is surely not the issue; Sulla was refusing a consulship, pure and simple. Even if one does not subscribe, with Keaveney (Sulla. The last republican [2nd ed., London and New York 2005] 164–167), to the belief that Sulla had stepped down from the dictatorship by taking up the consulship on January 1st, 80 BC (which is difficult to reconcile, despite Appian’s other confusions here, with Appian’s explicit statement that Sulla remained dictator whilst consul [loc. cit.]), Sulla’s gesture was a recusatio. All the same, Sulla’s renunciation of office was not such as need concern us here in that it provided no precedent, and so no emulation (except in the rhetorical schools, on which see Quintil. Inst. 3.8.53). Silius Italicus has Scipio predict in the Underworld that none will follow Sulla’s lead in this regard (Pun. 13.858–60). By the Flavian period, Sulla’s abdication was singular; cf. A. Thais, ‘Sulla the weak tyrant’, in S. Lewis (ed.), Ancient Tyranny (Edinburgh 2006) 240.

A curious and unelaborated item in Dio (40.63.2) records that L. Calpurnius Piso was elected censor for 50 BC “against his will” (kaitoi me bouletheis). One would like to know more. (Huttner registers this item; loc.cit.). It seems to me to be a case of an individual, for whatever personal reasons, genuinely wanting to avoid an appointment in particular circumstances, as with C. Valerius Flaccus, inaugurated unwillingly (invitus) as flamen Dialis in 209 (Liv. 27.8.4–5). There is more to be said on this, but insufficient space here. It is worth remembering, however, that Piso embraced Epicureanism. The relevance of that observation will become clear six pages on.

Others seem to have had reluctance thrust upon them. It is intriguing to think of a later revisionist historiography imposing a reluctance on leaders who had not professed it at the time. P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica Corculum (cos. 162, 155) had, according to the author of the de vir. Ill. (44) and Ampelius (19.11), refused the title of imperator and rejected the offer of a triumph after victories in Dalmatia in his second consulship. A fragment of the fasti triumphales (E. Pais, I Fasti di Roma. I Fasti Trionfali del Popolo Romano [Turin 1930] 186; 333; 345; Degrassi [n.53] 82–83; 557) proves that this was not the case.


it was suggested he take up a command against the pirates (and, in effect, military control of the whole Mediterranean).71 It was, Dio says, Pompey’s habit—and this is accepted by Robin Seager (citing Dio).72 It is plausible, but Dio is the most likely of the sources to have been contaminated by retrospective assumptions (and exposure to what became the ritual of recusatio). He was, we know, sceptical of Augustus’ ‘game-playing’ in 27 BC (53.11.1–5).73 Pompey, whilst still in the field (in 66) and informed that he had been awarded another extraordinary command (in highly contentious circumstances), smote his thigh and bemoaned “in the tone of one who was already oppressed and burdened with command” the fact that he could never take his rest.74

Alas for my endless tasks! How much better it were to be an unknown man, if I am never to cease from military service, and cannot lay aside this load of envy and spend time in the country with my wife. (Plutarch, Pompey 30.6; trans. Perrin)

Plutarch reports that those around him were scarcely taken in by this piece of theatre—and thought it unseemly. They knew his ambition.75

71

Cf. Dio 36.27.2, where Dio has Gabinius protest that Pompey is not avid for honour, and that his hesitation is a sign of prudence.

72 Seager (n.61) 1979, 34 [= 2002, 44]. Two other items might be cited here, one proclaiming

the genuine nature of Pompey’s ‘modest’ aims; the other, dissimulation. Sallust puts on the lips of C. Licinius Macer (trib. pl. 73) the belief that Pompey seeks to be princeps through the wishes of the populace and that he will not partake of the dominatio of the post-Sullan oligarchy (Sall. Hist. 3.48 [orat. Macri]. 23). In mid-51, Caelius observed that Pompey was wont to think one thing but say something else but that he did not quite have the talent to hide what it was he wanted (Cael. Ap. Cic. fam. 8.1.3); cf. Béranger (n.7) 157–8, on the “pose of humility” and “the modesty—true of false—dispelling the spectre of tyranny.”

73 An early example of Pompey’s hesitancy might be seen in his slowness to take up the

cognomen Magnus (Plut. Pomp. 13). The concern here, Plutarch says, was to avoid giving offence.

74 His lot, he complained, was that of “endless tasks” (see the quotation which follows)—

though they are here athloi, and thus contests with a prize in sight at the end. 75

Cf. Dio 36.45.1–2 (where Pompey is charged with pretence and is said to have accused his opponents of loading him with tasks in the hope that he would fail). I thank Lea Beness for drawing my attention to this item. Something similar occurred when Pompey awaited the outcome of the different proposals that would go before the people concerning his great Corn Command of 57, discussed above. He professed, Cicero wrote to Atticus (4.1.7) to prefer the more modest consular one; his friends said he preferred the other (Messius’ radical bill). Cicero here hints at insincerity.

Another spectacular item beckons. Valerius Maximus reports (4.1.6a) that Scipio Africanus had been offered the perpetual consulship and dictatorship, but that he would not


The Origins of the new ideology

By the time of Augustus’ principate, a number of factors had come together to consolidate this evolution of the concept of Roman statesmanship, a celebration of those who were ready to take up the burden of public life and of recognizing (or rather underlining) the officia in honores.76 There is no space here to give each its due, but they may be adumbrated. Peter Wiseman discerned, four decades ago now, an ideology of novitas.77 It does not in itself explain the affectation or profession of reluctance, but it is (possibly) one source of the notion of burden and obligation. The ‘new men’ who pushed their way into the Roman senate in the late Republic (in Marius’ case he was said to have broken in rather than entered—irrupit magis in curiam quam venit; Val. Max. 6.9.14) professed traditional values but emphasised a new vocabulary: labor and industria (and here we are reminded of the labours of Aeneas as a theme in the Aeneid). The novi were not shy of sweating. And they thus proclaimed their difference from the nobility of their day.78 A key text, of course, is the consular speech accorded to Marius by Sallust at bJ 85. At the very beginning of that address to the People, Marius protests the difference in his own behaviour and in that of his aristocratic competitors. “Just as the state and community (univorsa res publica) is greater than any consulship or praetorship, so to that same degree ought the cura invested in the administration (of a magistracy) be greater than the effort put into seeking it.” (85.2) It was what one did in office that was important, not the gaining of it—the officium, not the honos. The popular vote was a great benefaction. In the liber beneficiorum, then, it was marked up as an unpaid account. The beneficiary thus carried a great responsibility until this commission was discharged (and Marius insisted that he was all too aware of the charge): neque me fallit, quantum cum maxumo beneficio vostro negoti sustineam (“Nor am I unaware how great a task I am taking upon myself in accepting this signal favour (maximum beneficium) of yours”) (85.3; J.C. Rolfe trans.). He would not shirk labor (85.40). He asked those who would

countenance either, showing himself as great in refusal as he was in deserving the honours. This is almost certainly apochryphal. Livy (38.56.1) reports finding much told of Africanus’ later life that he could not bring himself to trust; at 38.56.12, this item surfaces as part of a speech by Ti. Sempronius Gracchus against Scipio. It is surely rhetorical invention, but it is interesting that it may well be a reflection of the epoch of transition. All this is discussed in a forthcoming paper by John Marincola (in Cowan [n.6]).

76 On cura and concern with the public weal, see the extended discussion by Béranger (n.7)

169–217, see esp. 186–217. 77

T.P. Wiseman, New Men in the Roman Senate 139 B.C.– 14 A.D. (Oxford 1971) 107–116. 78

Sallust (BJ 4.7) thought that even this drive of the novi homines had become contaminated; cf. Wiseman (n.77) 116. But the ideology had made its mark. On labor, see also Béranger (n.7) 179–183.


stand with him to embrace sweat and dust and the rest of it (sudorem, pulverem et 79alia; 85.41).

Marius was seen to have been granted powers by being willing, however reluctantly, to shoulder them. It is as if he were saying: “Come on, give it to me, I can take it! I can bear it!”80—the burden of command and the glistening sweat of a novus.81 Another factor which ought to be taken very seriously (again, not explaining the profession of reluctance, but as a source for the notion of obligation) is the inspiration provided by Hellenistic models of good kingship. This finds expression in too many forms to be registered here; it appears both in official language and in philosophical discourse. With regard to the latter, reference might be made to the works On Kingship by Diotogenes and pseudo-

79

It makes scarce difference to the present discussion if this ideology of novitas was relatively new (cf. McDonnell [n.22] 320–332); it was a distinctive part of the discourse by the end of the free Republic. Even Caesar came to speak of his military campaigning as a labor (Caes. b.c. 1.32). In his first address to the Senate, after marching on Italy, he boasted of his patientia (l.c.)—here a reference to his restraint, but the language of endurance is interesting. In the same passage, he speaks of his readiness to take up the onus of state administration. He invites the Senate to join him but makes it clear that he is ready to go it alone, if they hold back from fear. Ovid (Tristia 4.10.35–7) instinctively associated the senatorial life with labor and patientia. Well, perhaps not ‘instinctively’, but he knew what to say. Cf. Béranger (n.7) 176.

The ‘new man’ Cicero, writing when his novitas was still fresh, a quaestorius who was aedile-elect, imagined himself castigating his rival Hortensius, the latter, in 70 BC, basking in his recent election to the consulship. That election was not enough, says Cicero, honor though it was. Hortensius may feel that he is now free from any concerns regarding his long-term reputation (existimatio); but such ‘ornaments’, together with the beneficia bestowed by the People, are no less ‘business’ to retain as to win: ornamenta ista et beneficia populi Romani non minore negotio retinentur quam comparantur (2Verr. 5.175). One’s good name depends on what one does with offices won, rather than on winning them. The passage echoes ‘Marian’ sentiment (which, of course, has not been articulated in the form we have it until well after this). One senses Cicero forging a new way of regarding public office.

80 Marius fell foul of inconsistency. He in fact revelled in the honores, and did not on

occasions know when to dissimulate. One ‘first’ he could claim was that of entering the senate house in triumphal dress: Marius triumphali veste in senatum venit, quod nemo ante eum fecerat. That was of sufficient note to make it into Livy’s epitome (Per. 67). We know why. It caused grave offence (Plut. Mar. 12.5). On that occasion, Marius quickly changed tack—and dress (ibid.). Perhaps the lesson gave rise to the later performances (which, I would suggest, the People took seriously).

81 It is interesting to see in the merging ideology of the new era, through the Compendium of

Velleius Paterculus, a strong appeciation of industria and labor. For an elaboration of this, see Hillard (n.6).


Ecphantus (which have, at the very least, Hellenistic roots).82 But that is not all by any means; exciting material came to light at Herculaneum (in the ‘Villa of the Papyri’) in the mid-eighteenth century, and it brings us into more direct contact with Hellenistic texts (see below). With regard to the official discourse, I am thinking in particular of the Memphis Decree of 27th March 196 BC (more popularly known as the Rosetta Stone). Ptolemy is honoured because of benefactions.

Whereas Ptolemy has conferred many benefits to the temples, consecrated for the temples revenues in food and wine, has borne great expenses to bring peace to Egypt and to establish order in sacred matters, has been generous to all his forces … etc.

There ought to be no surprise here; the link was established as members of the Roman elite became, if not captive to, entranced by their increasingly Greek education.83 It was a role of (later) Hellenistic philosophy to accommodate kingship; Roman thinkers could assimilate it. Scipio Aemilianus had the Greek philosopher Panaetius and the Greek statesman/‘political scientist’ Polybius constantly by his side, and Xenophon constantly in his hand (Velleius Paterculus 1.13.3; Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 2.62).84 Xenophon’s work (of which Scipio was so fond) was, we know, the Cyropaedia, and it had had its effect on the thinking of Hellenistic monarchs.85 It is also worth noting that a passage of which Scipio Aemilianus was particularly fond focussed upon the relative toils of the leader and the soldier. Timè (honours) made toils (ponoi) lighter (for the Leader, at least)—or, in Latin gloss, honos made the laborem imperatorium

82

See esp. Diotogenes 61 and [Ecphantus] 64. These texts illustrating Hellenistic justifications of Kingship can be found most conveniently by teachers in the source collection of Jane Gardner, Leadership and the Cult of Personality (London and Toronto 1974) 65–73. Cf. E. Goodenough, ‘The Political Philosophy of Hellenistic Kingship’, Yale Classical Studies 1 (1928) 55–102, esp. 98–102 (arguing that “the epithets regularly used in the official titles of Hellenistic kings, particularly Soter [‘Saviour’], Epiphanes [‘Manifest’] and Euergetes [‘Benefactor’] not only have both a religious and political significance, but, as it were, epitomize the doctrines expounded in Diotogenes and Ecphantus of the king’s relation to God and to his people, and his role as both intermediary and as model”). [Gardner’s gloss].

83 The two works on monarchy cited above were Neopythagorean; even those resistant to the

allure of Greek thinking found Pythagoreanism compatible with the Roman moral tradition; cf. Plut. Cat.mai. 2.3.

84 Polybius was not one to denigrate monarchy as a matter of course. Monarchia was indeed

‘natural’; and basileia was its polished form, corrected of defects (6.4.7). In this higher state, it was to be judged according to its merits, and in this regard in particular its engagement with the people (6.4.2); cf. Béranger (n.7) 153.

85 For the Cyropaedia as an anticipation of Hellenistic political thought, J.J. Farber, ‘The

Cyropaedia and Hellenistic Kingship’, American Journal of Philology 100 (1979) 497–514.


levior (Cicero). (The apophthegm is from Cyropaedia 1.6.25.) Scipio was thus aware of relative burdens (and the consequent responsibilities)—though, as a general, he regarded labores literally. The inspiration provided by actual models of Hellenistic kingship need not have been direct.86 I have no doubt that when Caesar proclaimed himself non rex sed Caesar it was in a tone of superiority (as regarded his personal stature).87 But the influence of philosophical contemplation of Kingship should not be doubted.88 I have in mind, inter alia, the amount of attention

86

The evidence suggests that the Roman nobility found little to admire in the specimens of kingship with which they came into contact in the second and first centuries BC. Prusias of Bithynia set a tone of abasement in 168 (Polyb. 30.18). In the same year Antiochus IV set one of obedience (Polyb. 29.27; Liv. 45.12.3). If anyone was open to Greek thinking it was Scipio Aemilianus. During his tour of the East, we are told, by contemporary Greek observers, that Ptolemy Physcon’s corpulence excited Roman derision; Diodorus Siculus 33.28b.1-3; Plut. The Apophthegms of Scipio 13 [= Moralia 200E-201A]; Justin, Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus 38.8.8-10; Athenaeus Deipnosophistai 12.549d-e [= Poseidonius FrGrHist 87, F 6]. We are asked to believe by Heinz Heinen that Scipio failed to appreciate that Ptolemy’s obesity was ritual (a Dionysiac embodiment of his country’s prosperity); H. Heinen, ‘Der tryphe des Ptolemaios VIII. Euergetes II. Beobachtungen zum ptolemäischen Herrscherideal und zus einer römischen Gesandtschaft in Ägypten (140/39 v.Chr.)’, in Heinen et al. (eds), Althistorische Studien. Hermann Bengston zum 70. Geburtstag dargebracht von Kollegen und Schülern (Historia Einzelschriften 40, Wiesbaden 1983) 116-130, esp. 119 & 127-8. For another (and similar) discussion of Ptolemaic tryphè, see F. Dunand, ‘Les associations dionysiaques au service du pouvoir lagide (IIIe s. av. J.-C.)’, in L’association dionysiaque dans les sociètès s anciennes. Actes de la table ronde organisè par l’école française de Rome (Rome 24-25 Mai 1984) (CEFR 89, Rome 1986) 102-103. As enticing as Heinen’s idea is, I am not so sure. Even so, Scipio is shown as unappreciative of Hellenistic royalty.

87 E. Rawson, ‘Caesar’s Heritage: Hellenistic Kings and their Roman Equals’, Journal of

Roman Studies 65 (1975) 148–59 [= Rawson, Roman Culture and Society (Oxford 1991) 169–188].

88 See, inter alia, J.A.S. Evans, ‘The Aeneid and the Concept of the Ideal King: The

Modification of an Archetype’, in R.M. Wilhelm and H. Jones (eds), The Two Worlds of the Poet. New Perspectives on Vergil (Detroit 1992) 146–56 (wherein will be found further bibliography). One of the important points made by Evans is that the channels of influence ought not be too tightly defined: “I have long suspected that some of this speculation about ideal kings [sc. of Xenophon, Plato, Isocrates and Cicero] helped shape the character of Aeneas, and Francis Cairns’ new book, Virgil’s Augustan Epic, has now placed my suspicion beyond doubt. The problem of making Aeneas into an ideal king, however, is very like the old problem of making him into an ideal Stoic: he does not quite fit either archetype.” (147) The discussion has moved on considerably since the publication of Evans’ paper (see above, in the text which follows), but the caution of that passage quoted above remains a useful model. (Ultimately, Evans is not all that chary of hypotheses. He has his own solution—that Virgil has used the archetype of the ideal king but made significant alterations to suit his own purpose in having this foreign Eastern king [Aeneas is rex


now being awarded to the tract On the Good King According to Homer (PHerc 1507), the charred remains of which were discovered in 1752 in the ‘Villa of the Papyri’ at Herculaneum (thought by many to have been the villa of L. Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus [cos. 58 BC], Caesar’s father-in-law)—a work drawing upon Homer for indications of the virtues that a good king should possess and the vices to be avoided. It is identified as the work of the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus.89 The interest in Philodemus’ influence seems to have intensified in the last decade or so—though the surviving part of the text has been available since 1844,90 and an English paraphrase (a ‘synopsis’ with running commentary) was provided in 1965 by Oswyn Murray.91 Murray suggested in that study that the work was an ingenious adaptation of Hellenistic kingship theory to the needs of Roman politicians: (in Murray’s words) “a description of the duties and moral behaviour of a princeps in private and public life.”92 A good part of the current interest is generated by a debate, so relevant to the current discussion here, as to the extent of Philodemus’ influence on Virgil himself, and upon Virgil’s depiction of Aeneas.93 At the 112th Annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America (January 6th, 2011), Jeffrey Fish, who has taken a leading role in this debate, delivered a paper entitled ‘Is There an Epicurean

(‘king’) at Aeneid 1.544] absorbed by the Latins [see esp. 152–53]; I am not here to push that particular thesis.)

89 Perhaps a question mark might be retained over the authorship of some of the works

discovered here; cf. Dirk Obbink, Philodemus. On Piety 1 (Oxford 1996) 96. 90

A Teubner edition appeared in 1909. Forty-four columns survive and thus more than half of the original.

91 O. Murray, ‘Philodemus and the Good King According to Homer’, Journal of Roman

Studies 55 (1965) 161–82. The standard text now is that of Tiziano Dorandi, Filodemo, Il buon re secondo Omero (Naples 1982).

92 Murray (n.91) 178; and in the general description of Murray’s judgment I have paraphrased

D.P. Fowler, ‘Homer and Philodemus: a Review of Dorandi’s Filodemo’, Classical Review 36 (1986) 81–85 with regard to Murray’s characterization of the tract. For succinct sketches of the work, see also Tiziano Dorandi, ‘Filodemo. Gli orientamenti della ricerca attuale’, in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 36.4 (Berlin and New York 1990) 2328–2368, at 2335 (where it is suggested that Philodemus provides his patron with a speculum principis, enriched with Homeric examples); and Elizabeth Asmis, ‘Philodemus’ Epicureanism’, in ANRW 36.4 (Berlin and New York 1990) 2369–2406, at 2406 (where it is suggested that the work presses the need for rulers to be gentle and conciliatory, “to avoid war, especially civil strife”); Geert Roskam, ‘Live Unnoticed’. Lathe Biōsas. On the Vicissitudes of an Epicurean Doctrine (Leiden and Boston 2007), 123–125 (exploring the relationship between philosopher and politician).

93 See the collection of essays in David Armstrong, Jeffrey Fish, Patricia Johnston and

Marilyn Skinner (eds), Vergil, Philodemus and the Augustans (Austin 2004), generally seeking to establish the link between Philodemus, Virgil and other poets of the Augustan age. The dust has not settled. For an indication of how the matter will be challenged, tested and debated every inch of the way, see L.N. Quartarone’s review of the work in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review (2005.04.64) and Armstrong’s response (bmcr 2005.05.47).


in this Villa? Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus as Epicurean Statesman’, in which he argued that he could discern in a new reading of the carbonized remains of Philodemus’ treatise Epicurean directives with regard to the pursuit of glory—to the effect that “pleasurable triumph over enemies be avoided and ‘profitable reputation’ replace Homeric glory.” Fish took this further, suggesting that Aeneas’ distress at “war’s furious emotion” might be interpreted in this light.94 No uncompromising statement with regard to the Epicurean presence in the Aeneid is necessary here.95 Suffice it to say that Roman contemplation(s) of kingship was (were) enough in circulation to have played a major part in the way that (some) Romans viewed their leaders. Leadership might entail privileges and responsibilities. Honours were granted and grace was expected. One of the qualities of the Good King embodied in both Hellenistic ceremony and praised in philosophy was that of the caring shepherd. From the burdens and responsibilities borne by the Royal Benefactor followed divinity.96

94

The degree to which such a doctrine penetrated Augustus’ inner circle will, of course, be of major interest, but again cannot be covered thoroughly here. Interest attaches to Maecenas’ advice to Octavian in Dio Bk. 52—though Tiziano Dorandi, ‘Der “gute König” dem Philodem und die Rede des Maecenas vor Octavian (Cassius Dio lii, 14-40)’, Klio 67 (1985) 56–60 recommends caution (rightly despairing of finding the historical Maecenas in that piece of political counsel; and failing to find the incontrovertible proof of the Epicurean links he seeks).

95 Not that we should trust Cicero when in full rhetorical and polemical flight, but it should be

noted that when Cicero attacks L. Calpurnius Piso for his conversion to Epicureanism—based, Cicero insists, on Piso’s attraction to the buzz-word voluptas, he suggests that Piso would have nothing to do with those benighted philosophical souls who went on and on about officium, virtus, labor, and industria; Piso’s one interest was pleasure (Cic. On his Return in the Senate 14). The implication would seem to be that the former set of virtues were those peddled by the Stoics (and perhaps Academics and Peripatetics) as opposed to the Epicureans; cf. M. Griffin, ‘Piso, Cicero and their Audience’, in C. Auvray-Assayas and D. Delattre (eds), Cicéron et Philodème, La polémique en philosophie (Études de Littérature Ancienne 12, Paris 2001) 85–99, at 95. A similar placement of officium, with other desirable qualities, amongst the virtues of the Peripatetics and Stoics as opposed to the words found on Epicurean lips, is found at Cic. de finibus 2.76.

96 For the ruler cult as it developed in Hellenistic courts, see, conveniently, P. Green,

Alexander to Actium. The Hellenistic Age (London 1990) 396–406, and A. Chaniotis, ‘The Divinity of Hellenistic Rulers’, in A. Erskine (ed.), A Companion to the Hellenistic World (Oxford 2003) 431–445. I am taken with the development of the idea of the Shepherd and the religious associations emanating from that. The idea of a king as ‘shepherd of the people’ goes back, of course, to Homer. See R.J. Cunliffe, A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect (2nd ed., Norman 1963) 344 for references to the poimen laōn—“a Homeric commonplace”, as Moses Finley observed, “that had none of the Arcadian image in it”; M.I. Finley, The World of Odysseus (Harmondsworth 1954; 2nd rev. ed. 1967) 112. The


Velleius Paterculus certainly depicts Octavian’s return to the city in 29 as that of a saviour god (2.89). I am not suggesting that Velleius has the imagery of Hellenistic monarchy in mind, but it fits glove-like—and Woodman appropriately underlines the fact that Octavian’s benevolence is seen by Velleius as god-like.97

As for Caesar’s return to Italy and to Rome ... all this would be impossible adequately to describe even within the compass of a formal history, to say nothing of a work so circumscribed as this ...

Octavian’s magnificence outstrips the boundaries of a breviarium; Velleius offers his own literary recusatio here.98

... There is nothing that man can desire from the gods, nothing that the gods can grant to a man, nothing that wish can conceive, nothing good fortune bring to pass, which Augustus on his return to the city did not bestow upon the republic, the Roman people, and the world. (2.89.2)99

Brian Bosworth goes further. Augustus in the RGI presents a catalogue of achievements and euergetism that is in the best Roman tradition, but simultaneously echoes Hellenistic tales of apotheosis. This serves, Bosworth argues, to justify Augustus’ deification.100 That goal was to be sought by shouldering the load and dispensing benefaction.101 It is interesting (but

concept of pastoral care followed in its wake. For the notion of a people prospering under a righteous king, see Odyssey 19. 107–14; cf. Finley, 112-13.

97 On benevolence as divine, I.M. Le M. DuQuesnay, ‘Virgil’s first Eclogue’, Papers of the

First Liverpool Latin Seminar 3 (= ARCA Classical & Medieval Texts, Papers and Monographs 7 1981) 102–6; on Octavian’s divinity in benevolence, A.J. Woodman, Velleius Paterculus. The Caesarian and Augustan Narrative (2.41–93) (Cambridge 1983) 251.

98 Velleius returns to this recusatio at 2.89.6.

99 I have basically followed the Loeb translation here, except that Shipley gagged on the

overdose of adulatory anaphora—trimming it, no doubt, in the interests of good taste. 100

A.B. Bosworth, ‘Augustus, the ‘Res Gestae’ and Hellenistic theories of apotheosis’, Journal of Roman Studies 89 (1999) 1–18. On Hellenistic parallels to the RGI (and the distinct differences), see Cooley (n.3) 34; cf. 41.

101 The distinction between human and divine had been blurred already in the Roman political

context, and notably within the popularis tradition. This paved the way for the imperial cult, and linked it to the notion of popularly-recognized dispensation of benefactions. See the honours paid posthumously to the Gracchi (Plut. CG 18.3). Note that after the victory over the Cimbri that libations were poured to Marius (Val. Max. 8.15.7), a blurring of the line that Marius did not altogether discourage (Val. Max. 3.7.6). The celebration of Marius Gratidianus was a significant development in that regard; cf. Béranger (n.7) 210–215; T.W. Hillard, ‘Vespasian’s Death-Bed Attitude to his Impending Deification’, in M. Dillon (ed.), Religion in the Ancient World. New Themes and Approaches (Amsterdam 1996) 195–6; F. Marco Simón and F. Pina Polo, ‘Mario Gratidiano, los compita y la religiosidad popular a fines de la república’, Klio 82 (2000) 154–170.


hardly surprising) that beneficientia, a word which H. Bolkestein asserts was a coinage by Cicero (the chief user of it in surviving Latin literature), is used so frequently by the panegyricists.102 In the blending of the ideology of novitas and the philosophical concepts of the good king as ultimate benefactor, I see a curious chemistry at work. Beneficia imply an unequal relationship; the recipient was the lesser partner in the transaction. The process of giving has a long history in Rome, entrenched as it was in the institution of patronage and clientship. That remained an unavoidable element of Roman life. The lesser party reciprocated with gratia, fides and officia.103 It is thus a vertical relationship. Cicero, however, in the de officiis, underlines the horizontal aspect of humankind’s sociability, as well as the traditionally vertical aspects of society104—and we recall the way in which the speech put into the mouth of Marius by Sallust (see above) problematizes the very notion of a beneficium for the receiver of an honos who has been blessed with the favour of the populus. I am not suggesting that this was a thesis of Cicero, but such a fusion of concepts opened the way for those who would lessen the invidia of power and high office. Gloria Vivenza, discussing Roman attitudes to benevolence and the Ciceronian evidence, insists that whilst Cicero was “imbued with Greek philosophy … we cannot forget that he also had the greatest concern for Roman traditions”.105 All of this is incontestably true, but I would add that we cannot forget that Cicero is also a (highly self-conscious) New Man who was actively engaged in the re-definition of values. A third factor was, of course, one to which allusion has already been made. And here lay a clear reason for the expression of reluctance. National battle fatigue. The readership to which Horace directed his second ode (Odes 1.2) simply did not want to see a prolongation of aristocratic competition if it was to lead to a continuation of the two decades of bloodshed through which the survivors had lived.106 It is a poem worth reading and re-reading from an

102

H. Bolkestein, Wohltätigkeit und Armenpflege im vorchristlichen Altertum (New York 1979) 313; cf. G. Vivenza, ‘The Classical Roots of Benevolence in Economic Thought’, in B.B. Price (ed.), Ancient Economic Thought (London and New York 1997) 198.

103 See J. Hellegouarc’h, Le vocabulaire latin des relations et des partis politiques sous la

République (Paris 1963) 149–50 (on benevolentia) and 163–9 (on beneficium); cf. Vivenza (n.102) 198–9.

104 Cf. Vivenza (n.102) 199, citing in particular Off. 2.11–15 (on the benefits of mutual

support) and 2.52–8 (which deals specifically with beneficentia, and in which passages virtus stands side by side with industria). A sense of the vertical prevails. Off. 2.85, also cited by Vivenza here, makes manifest a sense of noblesse oblige.

105 Vivenza (n. 102) 198.

106 This observation will be a well-recognized one. Christian Meier, for instance, speaks of

aristocratic claims to rank and honour elevated to a perversion, and civil war unleashed essentially for Caesar’s personal dignity; Ch. Meier, Res Publica Amissa (Wiesbaden 1966)


historical point of view. Iam satis, it begins. “Enough Already!” It thus starts off as a complaint worthy of the travel-weary pius Aeneas—and ends in a virtual prayer (to Augustus)! The bemoaning of natural disasters segues into an admission of guilt. Brothers have carried swords against brothers; our elders have sinned. (Horace makes reference here to the ‘flaw’ of our parents: vitio parentum). To which of the gods can Rome turn? Are they listening? After an anguished survey, Horace lights upon Mercury, messenger of the gods, enjoining him to adopt the shape of a young mortal and come and live amongst them. Enjoy on earth, the glorious titles and triumphs. Be content to be known as Caesar’s avenger (patiens vocari Caesaris ultor). The identity of this saviour god’s mortal avatar is hardly veiled here. And note that he is called upon to be patiens, not so much patient but ‘enduring’. The recipient of the prayer is left in no doubt in the last line. Rome’s problems will be solved, te duce Caesar (you being [our] leader, Caesar).107

Concluding Remarks

The new mood required of Roman leadership moderation, even hesitancy, and something more than the quest for glory. The leaders would need to be beseeched to take the lead. Moreover, Augustus and Tiberius took this further. They refused, or professed to refuse, honores and the power that went with them—and Tiberius had sought to refuse principatus itself. Teachers will be aware that Tacitus depicts Tiberius’ hesitation as so much

304. Contemporaries were not blind to the same thought. We have lost the Republic because of our vices, said Cicero (Rep. 5.2; cf. Meier, 306).

107 One other factor should be considered, and it is a surprising one: Sextus Pompeius, the

younger of Pompey’s two sons, who was a military force with which to be reckoned up until 36 BC took up the sloganry of pietas, and used it effectively. It is commonly agreed that he projected his role as that of someone consigned to an inherited task; he was Sex. Pompeius Magni filius Pius. To the extent that so relatively little is heard of Sextus it is the result of his erasure from the record in terms of the serious threat that he had been. Octavian/Augustus had much ground to make up in the winning of hearts and minds. On all this, see Powell (n.66) 141–73; Powell, ‘“An island amid the flame”: The strategy and imagery of Sextus Pompeius, 43–36 BC’, in A. Powell and K. Welch (eds), Sextus Pompeius (London and Swansea 2002) 103–134; and Powell, Virgil the Partisan. A study in the re-integration of Classics (Swansea 2008) 31–131. I thus do not elaborate further. It will be explored further in the forthcoming biography of Sextus by Kathryn Welch.

Pietas (and its cognate, duty undertaken) would be Octavian’s. Velleius Paterculus, as a friendly source, has Octavian taking up the weight of the war against Sextus (Caesar molem belli eius suscipere statuit: 2.79.1). Octavian, according to this version of events, had not competed for domination; he had sighed, and done what he had to do. For more on this, see my ‘Velleius Paterculus and the Reluctant Princeps: the evolution of Roman perceptions of leadership’ (n.6).


play-acting—and worse, sinister.108 Tiberius’ contemporary (and a most sympathetic source), Velleius Paterculus, took it very seriously, and celebrated it. Tiberius Caesar could also claim a singular distinction. It was in the avoidance of leadership:

There was, however, what we might call a wrestling in the state, as the Senate and the Roman People fought with Caesar to induce him to succeed to the position of his father (statio paterna), while he, on his part, strove for permission to play the part of a citizen on a parity with the rest rather than that of Princeps. At last he was prevailed upon by reason rather than by honour (i.e., the honour of the position)—magis ratione quam honore victus est (he was overcome)—since he saw that whatever he did not undertake to protect was likely to perish ... (Vell. Pat. 2.124.2)

Here was Tiberius’ claim to primacy:

He is the only man to whose lot it has fallen to refuse the principate (recusare principatum) for a longer time, almost, than other men had fought—under arms—to secure it. (Vell. Pat. loc.cit.)

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