Professional Documents
Culture Documents
PLINYS PRAISE
PLINYS PRAISE
The Panegyricus in the Roman World
edited by
PAUL ROCHE
University of Sydney
Contents
List of contributors
Preface
1
page vii
ix
Paul Roche
29
Carlos F. Norena
45
Paul Roche
67
D. C. Innes
85
Gesine Manuwald
104
Contemporary contexts
Bruce Gibson
125
G. O. Hutchinson
142
John Henderson
175
Afterwords of praise
Roger Rees
189
204
206
Bibliography
Index locorum
General index
v
Contributors
viii
List of contributors
Preface
This volume was conceived in the belief that Plinys Panegyricus deserves
and will reward more concentrated scholarly attention than it has traditionally received. Neglect is a natural topos in scholarly prefaces, but it has
genuine substance here; in fact, neglect of the speech has not infrequently
sharpened into antipathy, but neither is justified. A professed cultural disdain for formal praise threatens to alienate us from a speech whose survival
makes it for us a unique specimen of early imperial senatorial oratory,
whose multiple agendas so easily and obviously (indeed explicitly: Pan.
4.1) transcend the mere delivery of praise, and whose political outlook
ranks it variously as a senatorial manifesto and a classic locus of imperial
public-image making. But this same aversion would likewise alienate us
from a vital witness to an emperor who self-consciously styled himself as
a kind of epitome of imperial rule, who occupies in more ways than one
a crucial liminal phase between the principates of the first and second
centuries, and whose early years as emperor would otherwise be almost
completely occluded to us. The Panegyricus is a key document in the evolution of imperial leadership ideals, but it is also a key text more generally
for comprehending early imperial Rome.
The original idea for this volume was to have represented in one place
examinations of the Panegyricus various historical and rhetorical contexts,
as well as studies offering critical engagement with the literary fabric of
the Latin text as we have it. I am very grateful to all of the contributors
to this volume: for agreeing to write for this project in the first place,
for the outstanding quality and care invested in their chapters, and for
their patience as the overall book took shape. I am equally grateful to
Michael Sharp for his constant encouragement over the course of the
books development, from the initial proposal through to the final form
of the manuscript. The two anonymous readers from the press offered a
wealth of advice, observations and encouragement which have improved
the quality and direction of the volume; it is a pleasure to thank them for
ix
Preface
their careful reading of the manuscript. In production, both the book and
the editor have benefited greatly from the assistance of Elizabeth Hanlon
and that of Christina Sarigiannidou, who has been a wonderfully helpful
production editor, and the acute copy-editing of Fiona Sewell, who has
eliminated many errors from the typescript and sharpened its clarity and
consistency throughout. Finally I would like to thank my colleagues in the
Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Sydney
for their warmth, collegiality and good humour: to work with them here
is a great pleasure.
chapter 1
And more: the pinnacle of the Roman social and political order, as Pliny constructs it in the speech;
see Norena, p. 38 in this volume.
3 See e.g. Braund (1998) 534.
See Gibson, pp. 10424 in this volume.
On which: Vollmer (1925); Crawford (1941); Kierdorf (1980).
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Plinys thanksgiving
devoted to (a) rendering thanks to the people in return for their beneficium,
and (b) praising the consuls own family (Agr. 2.1). A similar function to
that of the laudatio funebris thus emerges in Ciceros formulation, in that
the type and measure of the contribution made by the speaker to his familys
dignity were at issue.9 One significant departure from the funeral oration is
that the praise in this context was explicitly self-reflexive. This custom was
adapted in the imperial period. Now the new consuls rendered thanks, ex
senatus consulto (Pan. 4.1, cf. 90.3), both to the gods and to the emperor, in
essence, for the latters gift of their office.10 This new manifestation of the
consular thanksgiving was in place by the end of Augustus principate,11
and it endured throughout the early imperial period. This was, for example,
the type of speech (it seems) that Verginius Rufus was rehearsing for his
third consulship of 97 when he slipped and broke his thigh (Plin. Ep. 2.1.5).
Each year of the imperial period, then, every ordinary and suffect consul
or perhaps a representative from each pair delivered a speech in the
senate whose basic form, theme and intent would have been identical to
those of the Panegyricus. But we are not permitted to imagine that the
published version of Plinys speech is representative of this proliferation of
thanksgiving speeches. Plinys speech is, self-consciously, a radical extension
of the generic norms obtaining in the first century ce.
Formally prescribed discourses of praise were not, of course, unique to
the Romans. Isocrates makes a claim to being the original author of a prose
encomium in his Evagoras (c.370 bce). The most important axes on which
his claim rests are that his praise is expressed in prose rather than poetry, and
that its subject is a human being rather than a mythological figure (Evag.
8).12 He also qualifies his claim on primacy by a clause in which he claims
to have anticipated those who devote themselves to philosophy. Others
then may have anticipated these men in authoring prose encomia. In any
case, Isocrates claim is almost demonstrably false. Aristotle writes of an
encomium of Hippolochus of Thessaly (Rhet. 1368a17) and Isocrates own
Busiris displays through its tropes and methods that encomia were clearly
subject to prescription by professional rhetoricians.13 In fact, the restrictive
concessions that Isocrates has to establish in order to make a claim on
9
10
11
12
Cf. Agr. 2.1: Qua in oratione non nulli aliquando digni maiorum loco reperiuntur, plerique autem
hoc perficiunt ut tantum maioribus eorum debitum esse videatur, unde etiam quod posteris solveretur
redundaret. See further Manuwald, pp. 967 in this volume.
Cf. Talbert (1984) 2279; Millar (1993) 14: the Emperor is the auctor of the honor, and the consulship
itself is a gift (res data) which partakes of the maiestas of the giver (on the language of Ov. Pont.
4.9.6570).
Cf. Ov. Pont. 4.4.2342 on the consul of 13, and Pont. 4.9.4152, 6570 on the consul of 17.
13 Hunter (2003) 14.
A good, succinct overview at Hunter (2003) 1315.
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primacy in the Evagoras are indicative of the rich poetic and cultural
traditions of epideictic praise feeding into prose encomia in his day. A
close rhetorical and thematic nexus obtains between archaic (and especially
Pindaric) praise poetry and the Athenian epitaphios logos. Isocrates true
claim to generic primacy might more helpfully be seen as his fusion of the
two strands.14
The Panegyricus was thus the inheritor of a number of important cultural, political, rhetorical and literary contexts which had been developing
in specific modes and circumstances in both Greece and Rome for over
five hundred years prior to its delivery. The various functions and nuances
attending these precursors do make their presence felt within the rhetorical
fabric of Plinys speech in the contexts of its delivery, and in its modes of
production. But we are liable to mislead if we promote the importance of
these similar but distinct genres at the expense of the specific cultural, social
and political circumstances informing the moment of the speech itself.15
Each speech in the epideictic mode both constructs its own response to the
immediate circumstances informing its delivery and signals its own relationship with its perceived or declared precursors.16 It is the function of this
volume to examine Plinys Panegyricus against precisely these tendencies.
significance
The Panegyricus is an exceptionally important speech. This is a fact more
often conceded than celebrated in modern scholarship.17 It is our best
example of imperial eloquentia.18 It is the only complete speech to survive
to us from the last of Ciceros Philippics in 43 bce to the celebration of
the emperor Maximians birthday in 289 (Pan. Lat. x(2)), a speech which
itself draws upon the language and imagery of Plinys praise.19 We can
also assign importance to the Panegyricus irrespective of the accident of
its survival. It is innovative. Plinys is apparently the first of the consular
14
15
16
17
18
19
Braund (1998) 54: Like Pindar in his epinician hymns, Isocrates praises an individual; as in the
funeral oration, his subject is dead; cf. Hunter (2003) 15. On Isocrates and Pindaric encomium see
Race (1987).
Braund (1998) 55.
For a concrete illustration of this tendency see Rees, pp. 17588 in this volume.
The expressed disappointment of Syme (1938) 21724 (here endorsing and transmitting the aesthetic
criteria of his nineteenth-century predecessors), Syme (1958a) 114, 945 and Goodyear (1982) 660
has become totemic of the speechs modern reception. For two representative examples see Seager
(1983) 129 and Kraus (2000) 160.
Gowing (2005) 120.
Although the overall impact of the Panegyricus upon the XII Panegyrici Latini must not be overstated:
see Rees, p. 187 in this volume.
Plinys thanksgiving
Durry (1938) 38; see too Norena, pp. 401 in this volume.
For the immediate generic impact of the speech, see Rees, p. 176 in this volume.
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emperor should be, and because it embodies the values which a newly
ennobled member of the senate wished to be seen to endorse.
The following suite of advice has been assembled from those moments
in the Panegyricus when Pliny either commends Trajans actions whether
real, alleged to have happened, predicted, or claimed for Trajan by Pliny
or is explicitly prescriptive regarding the ideal behaviour of the princeps. In
order to arrive at this programme, Plinys varying statements of approval
have been recast into simple and impersonal admonitions. The following
duties of the good emperor emerge.
The emperor ought to sustain the notion of his own social parity with
his peers (2.3, 2.4, 22.12, 23.1, 24.2, 42.3, 48, 49.5, 60.4, 64.4, esp. 71,
78.4). His supremacy ought not to diminish or impair the dignitas of his
subjects (19.12, 22.2, 24.5, 77.4). The emperor ought to be accessible (23.3,
24.34, 47.45). He ought to be prompt and present in his help (80.3). The
emperor ought to prefer simplicity of appearance or taste, and cultivate
the appearance of his former status as a private citizen; he ought to disdain
artifice (3.5, 3.6, 20.1, 23.6, 24.2, 24.3, 43.2, 49.78, 81) and the extravagant
blandishments of previous emperors (7.3, 82.6, 82.9).
The emperor ought to refuse, or remain reluctant to accept, further
powers and titles (2.3, 3.5, 7.1, 9.4, 10.4, 11.4, 21.1, 55.9, 65.1) for himself
or for his family (84.6) or an excessive number of consulships (56.3,
57.15, 58, 79); he ought to discourage extravagant praise (54.34, 55), or
praise offered in or on inappropriate media, occasions, genres and contexts
(54.2). He must not descend into tyranny (45.3, 55.7) or corruption (53.15)
or inspire fear (46.1, 46.7). The emperors words and promises ought to be
trusted (66.5); he ought to be constant (66.6, esp. 74). He ought to bind
himself to the laws (65).
The emperor ought to participate fully in civic and political functions,
ceremonies and rituals (60.2, 63.13, 64, 77, esp. 77.8, 92.3). He must take
the consulship seriously (59, 93.1) and observe constitutional regulations
about the consulship (60.1, 6377, 76). He ought to allow the senate a
sensible and dignified function (54). He ought to listen to the senates
opinion; his choices and emotions ought to be mirrored in theirs (62.25,
73); he ought not to promote his own favourites against the senates choice
(62.6). He ought to encourage the senate to be free and to participate in
the running of the state (66.12, 67, 69, 76, 87.1, esp. 93.12); he ought to
treat the senate with respect (69.3, reuerentia); he ought to allow ex-consuls
to assist him freely and fully with their aid and counsel (93.3).
The emperor must attend to and accommodate senatorial requests or
prayers (2.8, 4.3, 6.4, 33.2, 60.4, implied at 78.1, 867), and prayers in
Plinys thanksgiving
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25
For an overview see Charlesworth (1937) 10538; Weinstock (1971) 22859; Fears (1981) 827948;
Wallace-Hadrill (1981) 298323.
Wallace-Hadrill (1981) 316: These are all social virtues, qualities of self-restraint. The focus is not
on the possession of power, but on the control of it in deference to other members of society.
There appear to be fifty-one; some of the abstractions in the following list may not meet everyones
definition of a virtue. They are abstinentia, auctoritas, benignitas, bonitas, candor, castitas, clementia,
comitas, consilium, continentia, cura, diuinitas, facilitas, familiaritas, felicitas, fides, fortitudo, frugalitas,
grauitas, hilaritas, humanitas, indulgentia, iucunditas, iustitia, labor, liberalitas, magnanimitas, magnitudo, maiestas, mansuetudo, moderatio, modestia, munificentia, opes, patientia, pietas, prouidentia,
pudor, reuerentia, sanctitas, sapientia, securitas, seueritas, simplicitas, suauitas, temperantia, tranquillitas, uerecundia, ueritas, uigilantia, uirtus.
26 See Braund (2009) 180 on Sen. Clem. 1.1.8.
See Roche (2003).
Plinys thanksgiving
and judges equitably discharge their responsibilities (TLL s.v. fides 679.4
70).27 Liberalitas and its near synonym, benignitas, encompass the personal
generosity of the emperor (TLL s.v. benignitas 1899.211901.32),28 while
cura and labor speak to his industry. Pietas pertains to various aspects of
his mediating role between the Roman state and the gods, his respectful
devotion and attention to the duties owed to the gods and state, as well as
his relationship with his family. All of these virtue terms are manifestations
of his basic, all-encompassing excellence, his uirtus. The density as well as
the variety of virtue terms in the Panegyricus is noteworthy and instructive:
these 13 most frequent virtues appear a total of 174 times throughout the
95 chapters of the speech.
A comparison with other prominent documents which are patently
concerned with promoting or evaluating imperial ideals the Res Gestae
(c.13), the Senatus Consultum de Pisone Patre (abbr. SCPP, 20 ce), Senecas
De Clementia (556 ce), and Suetonius De Vita Caesarum (early second
century ce) will assist both in offering context to the imperial ideals
featured in the speech and in measuring the degree to which Plinys choice
of virtues is either typical or idiosyncratic. Of the four virtues claimed for
Augustus on the clupeus uirtutis of 27 or 26 bce (ILS 81; RGDA 34.2)
uirtus, clementia, iustitia and pietas both uirtus (sixteen times) and pietas
(eleven times) are frequent in the Panegyricus, but neither could have been
omitted in praise of any emperor (and pontifex maximus). Consider their
frequency in the SCPP (pietas nine times; uirtus twice), in De Clementia
(pietas twice; uirtus fifteen times) and Suetonius (pietas eleven times; uirtus
twelve times). This would especially be the case for uirtus in its military
dimension (OLD 1b) in one who self-consciously cultivated the image
of himself as a uir militaris. It may surprise that clementia and iustitia
occur with relative infrequency in the Panegyricus (three times each), but
the discretionary and judicial nuances of moderatio,29 benignitas (TLL s.v.
benignitas 1899.211901.32) or liberalitas, upon which Pliny does place a
great deal of emphasis, may have obviated the need for stressing clementia.
Virtues which appear in Pliny as well as in the biographies of his friend
and contemporary Suetonius, but do not appear in these earlier documents,
are reuerentia (15), labor (14), pudor (11), grauitas (5), facilitas (4), opes (4),
sapientia (3), simplicitas (3), fortitudo (3), abstinentia (1), castitas (1), comitas
(1) and munificentia (1). Virtues which Pliny mentions in the speech but
which do not rate a mention in Suetonius are benignitas (10), frugalitas (5),
27
29
28 See Nore
See too Hellegouarch (1963) 2340.
na (2001) 1604.
For which see Braund (2009) 189 on Sen. Clem. 1.2.2.
10
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Plinys thanksgiving
11
31
32
33
34
35
For further comments on Plinys Domitian, see Hutchinson, pp. 12831 in this volume, who also
locates him within a rhetorical context (in the failed attempt at the sublime), and Henderson,
pp. 158 and 1612 in this volume, who discusses the figure of Domitian against the backdrop of
historical exemplarity in the speech.
See Craig (2004) 18992, who draws on Nisbet (1961), Suss (1975) and Merrill (1975).
Viz. embarrassing family origin; unworthiness of ones family; physical appearance; eccentricity
of dress; gluttony or drunkenness possibly leading to cruelty and/or lust; hypocrisy for appearing
virtuous; avarice; bribe-taking; pretentiousness; sexual misconduct; hostility to family (misophilia);
cowardice; financial embarrassment or the squandering of ones patrimony; aspirations to tyranny
or regnum; cruelty to citizens and/or allies; plundering of private and public property; oratorical
ineptitude.
Traditional loci of invective appearing in Pan. (first instances only follow in brackets): (1) physical
appearance (48.4); (2) gluttony leading to cruelty (49.6); (3) hypocrisy for appearing virtuous (11.1);
(4) avarice (41.2); (5) pretentiousness (24.5); (6) sexual misconduct (52.3); (7) misophilia (48.3); (8)
cowardice (11.45); (9) aspirations to tyranny or regnum (2.34); (10) cruelty to citizens and/or allies
(18.3); (11) plundering of private and public property (20.4).
Craig (2004) 191. It is worth noting the comparable length of all three speeches: Cic. Mil.: 105
chapters; Pis.: 99 chapters; Plin. Pan.: 95 chapters.
See too the vaguer references made at Pan. 63.3.
12
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meant to be among those emperors who, in their scorn for the citizenry,
were carried on the shoulders and bent backs of slaves to tower above their
peers (22.1, 24.5): an index of the emperors pretentiousness as well as his
aspirations to tyranny. So too, the emperors sexual misconduct, in the
form of his incestuous relationship with his niece, is referred to explicitly
and repeatedly (52.3, 63.7).
There are three loci upon which Pliny spends most space and time
in the speech. Domitians cowardice is illustrated with regard to foreign
enemies (11.45, 12); rebellious governors (14.5); the citizens of the capital,
in terror of whom he locked himself away in the palace (49.1); and even
amid the otium of his retreat at Alba Longa (82.1). Domitians aspirations
to tyranny are likewise illustrated under a number of diverse headings: his
appropriation of divine status (2.34, 52.3); the servitude of the senate (2.5);
the adulation he demanded through shows (54.1); his extravagant honours
(54.4, 58). Domitians cruelty receives the most frequent attention in the
speech: he unpredictably turned on and assaulted audience members at the
games (33.34); maiestas trials filled the coffers of the fiscus and aerarium,
the latter of which was a repository for the blood-soaked spoils of citizens
(42.1); he was surrounded by delatores (45.1); he massacred the citizen body
(48.3); he was armed with terror (49.3); he plotted exile and death for
the consuls (63.3); he threatened Pliny and Tertullus and massacred their
friends (90.5).
Plinys process of selection and his agenda in the Panegyricus emerge
more clearly in the light of those traditional invective loci appearing in
Suetonius Domitian and Cassius Dio book 67. In Suetonius biography
and in the other Flavian lives, fifteen of the seventeen loci are deployed.
Suetonius notes the obscurity of Domitians family origin (Vesp. 1.1) and
his early poverty (Dom. 1.1). He is completely explicit that he was unworthy of his family (Vesp. 1.1: gens Flauia, obscura illa quidem ac sine ullis
maiorum imaginibus, sed tamen rei p. nequaquam paenitenda, constet licet
Domitianum cupiditatis ac saeuitiae merito poenas luisse). He notes eccentricities of Domitians dress at the agon Capitolinus (Dom. 4.4). Suetonius
also claims that Domitians letters, speeches and edicts were composed for
him by others (Dom. 20.1), which can be classified under the locus of oratorical ineptitude. Two notable divergences occur between the Panegyricus and
the Life of Domitian. Pliny develops the notion of his menacing gluttony,
while Suetonius insists upon and illustrates his culinary moderation (Dom.
21). Perhaps most striking of all is Suetonius use of the locus of financial
embarrassment and the squandering of ones patrimony: he asserts that his
inopia had made Domitian rapax (3.2). The nearest Pliny comes to availing
Plinys thanksgiving
13
himself of the same locus is directed not at Domitian, but at Trajan, when
he wonders whether the resources of the empire can cope with Trajans
refusal of gifts of money, his disbursement of donatives and congiaria, as
well as his remission of taxes and dismissal of informers (Pan. 41). It is as
close to criticism of Trajan as Pliny comes in the speech, and it is directly
related to Plinys own career and reputation as an expert at the treasury.36
Because of his greater remoteness in time from the end of the first century
and the epitomized state of his work, it is less significant that Cassius Dio
also treats eight of the loci featured in the Panegyricus.37 He cites the locus of
gluttony leading to cruelty via an elaborate anecdote regarding Domitians
funereal dinner party, and widens the horizons of his sexual misconduct
to include debauching aristocratic women, but he is otherwise consistent
with the loci of invective found in Pliny. Of all seventeen loci, only bribery
is unmentioned in all three sources; in fact Suetonius notes the lengths to
which Domitian went to suppress it (Dom. 8.12, 9.3).
It is of course likely that the range of invective loci might have expanded
beyond the limits of the seventeen found in the practice of Cicero a century
and a half earlier. But most of Plinys choices of invective loci in the
Panegyricus are easily understood. His most insistently emphasized issues
cruelty, tyranny and rapacity are obvious polar opposites of an ideal
emperor. Perhaps Domitians oratorical ineptitude was deemed to be not
antithetical enough to the simple manner affected by the new emperor:
one thinks of the well-publicized, well-meaning ignorance promoted in
Trajans exchange with Dio of Prusa (Philostratus VS 1.7.488). Also there
was little scope in denigrating the Flavians as a family without drawing a
comparison with the even more obscure gens Ulpia.
Arguably the most important issue to arise from this discussion but
ultimately the least easily answered is that of sincerity and belief.38 Craig
assembled this list of invective loci in order to demonstrate the potentially marginal nature of credibility in Ciceronian invective. By invoking a
critical number of these traditional loci, Cicero might well have expected
his audience to recognize the formal rhetorical elements of an invective
exercise. In key speeches where the veracity of the charges is very much at
36
37
38
For more on this moment in the speech and on Plinys programme of self-definition in the Panegyricus, see Norena, pp. 301 in this volume.
Gluttony leading to cruelty (67.6.3); hypocrisy for appearing virtuous (67.1.34, 67.2.67, 67.3,
67.12.12); avarice (67.5.5); sexual misconduct (67.3.2, 67.12.12); misophilia (67.2.12, 67.2.5,
67.15.24); cowardice (67.4.1, 67.6.3, 67.7.2); aspiration to tyranny (67.4.3, 67.5.7, 67.7.2); cruelty to citizens (67.1.1, 67.2.5, 67.3.31 , 67.8.34, 67.9.16, 67.11.24, 67.13.23, 67.14.13).
A different aspect of the issue treated so well by Bartsch (1994) 14887.
14
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issue,39 the absence of these loci seems also to suggest a desire to steer his
audience away from conceiving the abuse as rhetorically informed rather
than authentically reported. Where, then, does this leave us with Plinys
Domitian? Should we conceive of Plinys audience as simply relishing the
vigorous application of rhetorics lash to the last of the Flavians? Or think
of Plinys rhetorical training as facilitating and framing his authentic memory of the Domitianic principate? Obviously this presentation of the issue
self-consciously polarizes it; but it is well worth considering the difficulty of
locating where along this spectrum a convincing compromise or combination of these two reactions might be constructed. The nature of the speechs
relationship with rhetoric and reality naturally prompts a consideration of
its more general evidentiary value.
the panegyricus and trajans rome
Plinys Panegyricus has always been considered both a very important document for recovering Trajanic Rome, and at the same time an immensely
problematic source of information on the events it purports to relate.40 It
provides us with a precious eyewitness report of a period which is documented with an almost singular poverty, and offers up a wealth of information albeit immersed in an obscuring and often misleading rhetorical
context on Roman society, politics and public affairs. The following
survey is representative rather than exhaustive.
Pliny alludes to Trajans developing career in the emperors service. This
is in accordance with the emphasis upon biographical or chronological
approaches to praise suggested in treatises and found in earlier examples
of the genre.41 We learn in the Panegyricus of the triumphal ornaments of
Trajans father for service in Syria the mid-70s (14.1; attested but without
context on ILS 8970); of Trajans own military tribunate under his father;
of the movement in January 89 from Spain to Germany of the VII Gemina
(of which Trajan was legate) in response to the revolt of Saturninus (14.2).
Note that we are misled by Pliny on Domitians inertia during this crisis
(cf. Cass. Dio 67.11.5). Enigmas, omissions and distortions remain. That
Trajan spent ten years as a military tribune (15.3) is an astonishing claim:
39
40
41
Plinys thanksgiving
15
46
16
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Plinys thanksgiving
17
Consider e.g. the nature of Trajans career under Domitian, as reconstructed from the Panegyricus
in the works of Bennett (1997), Birley (2000) and Eck (2002).
18
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Plinys thanksgiving
19
20
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in around 78 and his praetorship in 83 or 84, the fact that he did not
hold the consulship until 91 is noteworthy. It would normally have been
due to fall to him as a patrician a few years after his praetorship.63 It may
indicate a comparative cooling of affection between Domitian and the
family of Trajan, especially by contrast with his fathers spectacular career
under Vespasian.64 On the other hand, if he was born in 56, was quaestor
in 81 and praetor in 86 or 87 (he was a praetorius uir by 87: SHA Hadr. 1.4),
the appointment to the consulship of 91 came to him at 35 and thus would
seem about right for a patrician praetorius. He was appointed as legate of
the legio VII Gemina in Spain in 88, an appointment which could not have
been expected to accrue him much glory.65 In 89 he was summoned by
Domitian to Germany to suppress the rebellion of Saturninus (Pan. 14).
Saturninus had been killed and his mutiny dismantled by the time Trajan
arrived. Nevertheless, his conspicuous loyalty earned him the ordinary
consulship of 91, with M. Acilius Glabrio. If we accept an earlier dating
for Trajans birth, 89 may then mark a turning point in Trajans career
under Domitian.
Pliny is certainly careful to delineate his own career under Domitian into
two phases. In the first phase he claims that it prospered, but only before
that emperor demonstrated his hatred for good men (Pan. 95.3). After this
moment, Pliny claims that he halted his own advancement, preferring a
slower ascendancy over the short cuts to honores which were then on offer
(Pan. 95.4). In the early years of Domitians reign, Pliny served as military
tribune in the legio III Gallica, stationed in Syria. By about 84 he was
back in Rome, and serving as a seuir equitum Romanorum: an appropriate
post for a young and well-connected prospective senator.66 From the midto late 80s (perhaps as early as 8667 ), Plinys career shows evidence of
Domitians favour. Pliny now held the quaestorship as the emperors own
candidate. This was an honour which, it seems, was restricted to only two
of the twenty annual candidates (the other man in Plinys year was his
friend, Calestrius Tiro).68 Pliny retrospectively and inevitably sanitized the
honour as quaestor Caesaris (Ep. 7.16.2). After a few more years had elapsed,
Pliny ceased his activity in the court to be tribune of the plebs (in 88 at the
earliest). Note that his rise was steady rather than fast: his friend Calestrius
63
65
66
67
68
Plinys thanksgiving
21
anticipated him by one year owing to the ius trium liberorum (Ep. 7.16.2).
Nevertheless, with Domitians favour and by his special dispensation, Pliny
had closed the gap again in order to be praetor in the same year as Calestrius
(in 89 at the earliest).
After Trajans consulship of 91, it is possible that he held a further
appointment as a consular governor. One of the provinces of Moesia or
Pannonia have been proffered as options,69 but no evidence supports such
an appointment,70 and Eck is right to stress that Trajans credentials in
the 80s belie the notion that he was, in any sense of the word, a uir
militaris.71 Pliny seems explicitly to indicate that Trajan lived in Rome in the
mid-90s, when he states uixisti nobiscum, periclitatus es, timuisti, quae tunc
erat innocentium uita (you lived with us, you were in danger, you feared:
things which at that time were the life of innocent men, Pan. 44.1). On
the other hand, he speaks of campaign upon campaign for Trajan after 89
(Pan. 14.5).72 It is difficult to see how the two statements can accommodate
each other.
During the 90s Pliny served as prefect of the aerarium militare, the
military treasury, although whether he did so under Domitian (i.e. from
94 to 9673 ) or under Nerva (from 96 to 9774 ) is not completely certain. The
dating of this post is of the utmost importance for understanding Plinys
repeated claims to have been in danger in the last years of Domitians
reign. Pliny asserts that, with seven of his friends executed or banished,
he could foresee the same fate for himself (Ep. 3.11.3); that he had been
informed on by the delator Mettius Carus, and that Domitian would surely
have tried him had he survived longer (Ep. 7.27.14); that he was in danger
after the trial of Baebius Massa (Ep. 7.33.3); and that, in the evil years, he
was counted among those who grieved and feared (Pan. 95.5). While his
promotion to the prefecture of the military treasury need not necessarily
be mutually exclusive with Domitians displeasure, the earlier dating of
this post would seem to point to Plinys transparent revision of an earlier,
successful career under Domitian. The very transparency of this public
revision might give us pause. It seems simply not to have mattered (to
69
70
71
72
74
22
paul roche
Pliny) if we accept the earlier dating that his contemporaries could see
that this danger to which he laid claim was a fabrication.75
Following the death of Domitian, Trajan is attested as governor of
Germania Superior (when he was adopted by Nerva) in October 97 (SHA
Hadr. 2.5; Cass. Dio 68.3.4). His appointment is as remarkable as his
adoption, given his career in the 80s and 90s. Several factors help to explain
it. The immediate political catalyst for the adoption was the inherent
instability of Nervas rule, specifically the escalating tension between Nerva
and his praetorian guard (who would mutiny against him in the autumn
of 97), and the pressure being exerted by Cornelius Nigrinus, the governor
of Syria, who was emerging as a potential successor to Nerva. The two
groups may have colluded.76 Clearly exerting contrary pressure on Trajans
behalf at this time were the consular senators Sex. Iulius Frontinus (cos.
ii with Trajan in February 98; cos. iii ordinarius with Trajan in 100) and
L. Iulius Ursus (cos. ii with Trajan in March 98; cos. iii with Trajan in
January 100).77 Pliny alludes to their services to Trajan bene ac fortiter sed
in toga (well and bravely, but as civilians) at Pan. 60.5. After his adoption,
throughout his second ordinary consulship in 98, and even after the death
of Nerva on 28 January of that same year, Trajan remained in the north with
the armies. He toured Pannonia and Moesia, and only returned to Rome
as sole emperor in late 99. In this period at Rome, Pliny was prefect of the
treasury of Saturn, along with Cornutus Tertullus: from the first months
of 98 until he delivered the Panegyricus as suffect consul on 1 September
100 (cf. Pan. 92.12).
this volume
The following studies have emerged in response both to the importance
of the Panegyricus and to a modern neglect of the speech that is disproportionate to this importance. The chapters in this volume address three
broad areas of concern: the historical context of the speech; the rhetorical and generic contexts informing both this speech and panegyric more
generally; and what might be styled its interpretative potential and literary
fabric. These three categories are not to be conceived as hermetically sealed
off from each other. Naturally any one of the following discussions may
contribute to more than one of these areas or to other avenues of inquiry.
75
76
77
For more on this revision see Norena, p. 39 and refs there at n. 26 in this volume.
The thesis of Schwarte (1979) 14955.
Eck (2002) 219 rightly draws attention to the speed of the iterated second and third consulships,
unparalleled for persons outside the imperial family.
Plinys thanksgiving
23
Under the aegis of these three broad headings, a wide range of critical
approaches is represented. It is hoped that they collectively prompt further
consideration and discussion of this key text.
The volume begins, appropriately, with the construction of the author
himself. Carlos Norena argues that the written text of the Panegyricus
should be seen as an instrument for Plinys own self-representation.78 He
underscores Plinys role as an innovator in the sphere of self-representation,
and lays emphasis upon the implication throughout the speech that he is
an insider, close to the centre of power, and qualified to pass judgement on
both good and bad emperors. A number of important dynamics within
this programme of self-definition emerge. One is the display of technical
expertise and the promotion of the illusion of intimacy with the emperor
and the imperial court. Another is Plinys subtle and flexible use of the
first person plural, the rather fluid we.79 This is deployed to identify
Pliny with various exclusive and politically prestigious groups: the highly
cultured, landowning and (as Pliny constructs them) good or innocent
groups (i.e., in both cases, those claiming opposition to Domitian) within
the senatorial order. He thereby claims, along with membership of these
various groups, the cultural authority and economic pre-eminence as much
as the political, social and cultural capital attaching to them. Another key
dynamic isolated by Norena is Plinys representation of the consulship
itself to develop and lay claim to a particular kind of political authority and
status within the city as consul, a role which is developed from Trajans own
shifting status as citizen, senator, consul and emperor. Through developing
this trope, Pliny can suggest equivalency between the emperor and the
consul, and more: that, in high contrast to the emperors social obligation
to remain ciuilis, it falls to the consul to embody true pre-eminence over the
citizen body. Most simply and most urgently, the Panegyricus offered to its
author the opportunity to revise his own personal history, and to realign the
association of his own flourishing career from the now excoriated Domitian
to the new emperor Trajan: the comparandum offered in Tacitean posturing
of independence underscores the options available to Pliny in this respect.
In the light of this agenda, the Panegyricus can be seen as operating alongside
other classic Plinian loci of public self-definition, such as Ep. 3.11, 7.33 and
book 10.80
We proceed from the author to his urban context. The reception of
contemporary urban monuments in the Panegyricus offers the editor a
78
80
79 See p. 35.
Norena, pp. 2944.
The public utility of this last item was established by Norena himself (2007).
24
paul roche
significant and discrete locus for examining the nature of Plinys engagement in the speech with the public messages disseminated by Trajan and his
government in their first years.81 In the period 96100, Nerva, Trajan and
his family made a number of public claims on Domitianic monuments in
the city, since they could neither physically destroy the structures of Domitians building programme, nor eclipse him as builder with public works
of their own. Pliny unsurprisingly endorses the claim of his emperor on
these structures. But my discussion draws attention to both the manner of
his endorsement and its essential conditionality upon Trajan fulfilling and
allaying a number of senatorial expectations and concerns. The rhetorical
tradition in which Pliny was operating set the value of self-promotional
monuments beneath both the subjects own inner qualities and the immortalizing potential of praise. Pliny extends, amplifies and innovates within
this generic tradition by merging encomiums generic relationship with
monuments with the specific political context of the period 96100. His
rhetorical reception of the city allows him to move beyond the mere
commemoration of the emperor, and to widen the focus of his concern
to encompass senatorial anxieties, such as the new emperors continuing
accessibility, moderation and social parity with his subjects.
Next, a sequence of chapters locates the speech in its various rhetorical
and generic contexts. Initiating this sequence, Doreen C. Innes examines
the correlation of the content and themes treated in the Panegyricus with
the precepts espoused in rhetorical treatises and with rhetorical theory more
generally.82 In the first half of her chapter, Innes tracks encomiums constituent elements, objectives and dominant style from its place in the educational curriculum, via the progymnasmata (elementary exercises from the
school syllabus) and school texts, through to early exponents of encomium:
Plato, Isocrates and Xenophon. Quintilians prescriptions receive a detailed
analysis, in keeping with both his own status as a teacher of Pliny, and
encomiums greater profile in the socio-political culture and discourse of
the period in which he wrote.83 Quintilians adherence to schoolroom
examples stands in high contrast to the increasing profile of its use in
Roman public life. Context is also supplied via the third-century theorist
Menander II and a (perhaps) near-contemporary exponent of encomium,
Pseudo-Aristides 35. In the second half of her chapter, Innes maps the
organization of Plinys speech against this theoretical backdrop and his creative engagement with the tradition of encomium. Plinys foregrounding
of moral qualities in the speech is completely consistent with what Innes
81
82
83
Plinys thanksgiving
25
terms the central core of panegyric theory. A key notion emerging from
this chapter is Plinys judgement: his flexible adaptation of the precepts of
rhetorical theory to suit his own specific context and agenda. This versatility is utterly in keeping with rhetorical theorys own insistence upon the
pre-eminence of the orators discretion.
Gesine Manuwald next examines the context offered by Ciceronian
praise, and thereby isolates key material for assessing Plinys Panegyricus
as a successor to the epideictic culture of late republican Rome.84 As the
political landscape altered around him, Ciceros varied negotiation of his
own position vis-`a-vis the dominant political figures of his day represents
an important transitional stage in the genre at Rome and exerts a structural
influence on Pliny, who further develops and adapts Ciceronian methods
and strategies within his own more stable, imperial context. De Lege Manilia
comprises fulsome praise of a third party who does not yet possess but is
to receive unlimited powers. It aims to motivate to action not the laudand
himself, but the audience of the contio, who can ratify his wide-ranging
powers. Pro Marcello marks a further step towards Plinys own context.
Now the laudand is already in power and the persuasive agenda of the
speech turns on motivating Caesar to a course of action. Even in the
Philippics, basic strategies of praise are continued, although the goal of
dispensing power, the absence of the laudand, and the authorizing role
of the audience return us to the rhetorical strategies of De Lege Manilia.
The liminal nature of these moments in the evolution of panegyric emerges
from their form, application and underlying ideology. Ciceros career began
with praise of individuals in clearly defined contexts (such as court cases);
these were well within established Roman conventions. As he became more
involved in political life, praise became for him a powerful political tool.
When it met with his own political objectives, he did not demur at praising
individuals in order to help endow them with power which transcended
the limits of the republican framework, and to influence their wielding of
this power.
The rhetorical contexts of the Panegyricus extend to more than a continuation of republican strategies and tropes. As Bruce Gibson demonstrates,85
the Panegyricus must be located not only within the flourishing and evermutable contexts of praise and blame in the early imperial period but, more
precisely and more urgently, within its more specific, Trajanic moment as
praise oratory. The ubiquity of praise and blame in a very wide variety of
genres and discourses speaks to its centrality at the turn of the first century.
84
85
26
paul roche
87
See p. 137.
88
27
Plinys thanksgiving
90
See p. 143.
91
28
paul roche
demonstrably knew Plinys work, and Pliny (in contrast to Cicero and
Hortensius) is never cited by name in the collection. Pliny in fact never
attained the status of a canonical archetype which demanded emulation
in late antique Gaul;92 rather his legacy was in the creation of a literary
form out of imperial protocols. In Rees summative formulation, Plinys
Panegyricus became in late antiquity a model example of what imperial
panegyric could be, but not what it had to be.93
92
See p. 185.
93
See p. 188.
chapter 2
For the publication of the text and the relationship between the written and spoken versions,
including both the original actio and subsequent recitations of it to friends, see below, p. 40; in what
follows, I will refer to the text as a speech, but will treat it primarily as a written document addressed
to a community of readers.
29
30
carlos f. nore na
for granted.2 Indeed, the very context of the gratiarum actio, in which those
taking up the office of consul thanked the emperor for his support, will
have obviated the need to trot out such credentials.3 But trot them out
Pliny does. Note, for example, his insistence both at the beginning and at
the end of the speech that he is, in fact, speaking as consul, a reiteration to
which we will return. Equally telling is his evident concern to demonstrate
possession of the sort of knowledge that would only be available to true
insiders.
Administrative and fiscal expertise constitutes one such body of knowledge. Consider the extended discussion of Trajans policies on taxation and
inheritance (3741). The regulations concerning the liability of new citizens to the uicesima hereditatum were no doubt important, but Pliny goes
into greater detail, and at greater length, than this subject, in this context,
would seem to demand.4 It was an opportunity for self-display that was just
too good to pass up. As a former prefect of the aerarium militare, he could
freely pontificate on the fiscal implications of Trajans generosity in this
matter, even going so far as to lecture his senatorial audience on its underlying rationale prefaced by the claim that he was actually magnifying the
emperors benefaction in so doing (augeo, patres conscripti, principis munus,
cum ostendo liberalitati eius inesse rationem, 38.4). Towards the end of the
discussion he draws further attention to his proficiency in the subject of the
states finances. Commenting to Trajan that he is simply showing consular
concern and apprehension (cura et sollicitudo consularis, 41.1) a typical
reminder of his own grave responsibilities over such matters Pliny notes
the emperors refusal to accept monetary gifts (collationes), his monetary
distributions to soldiers and the urban plebs, his banishment of informers
and his reduction of taxes, and then, after wondering aloud whether Trajan
has properly added up the empires revenues, asks a potentially provocative
question: an tantas uires habet frugalitas principis, ut tot impendiis tot erogationibus sola sufficiat? (Does the emperors thrift by itself have enough
resources to cover so many expenses and payments?, 41.1).5 Embedded in
a long section of the speech on Trajans generosity and prudence, this question is surely not meant to be alarming. In fact, Pliny explicitly assures his
readers that the states finances are in good order (41.2). But that assurance
2
3
4
5
Plinys career: PIR2 P 490 (L. Vidman), with Birley (2000) 517.
See briefly Talbert (1984) 2279 for the speeches of thanks, addressed to the emperor and delivered
in the senate, given by incoming consuls and, on occasion, by other officials, such as provincial
governors.
In general on the uicesima hereditatum, a 5 per cent inheritance tax levied on Roman citizens (but
only within certain degrees of kinship), see Neesen (1980) 13541.
Calculation of revenues: interrogandus uideris, satisne computaueris imperi reditus, 41.1.
31
only carries weight because he has just made such a virtuoso display of his
own competence in this complicated subject.
Access to the exclusive world of the imperial court represents a different
body of insider knowledge, the possession of which Pliny is especially
insistent on demonstrating. Sometimes he pursues this goal in an oblique
manner, by drawing contrasts between Trajan and Domitian in a way that
implies his familiarity with their daily routines. His ostensible purpose
in comparing everyday court life under Trajan and Domitian (48), for
example, is to praise the former at the expense of the latter, but only a daft
reader would have missed the point that such a comparison could only be
made by a regular visitor to the Palatine complex. He underscores this point
by noting, in passing, that he and his friends now spend a lot of time in the
imperial palace, as if in a communal house (ut in communi domo, 48.3).6
The contrast between the two emperors dining habits (49.48) functions
in a similar way. Because dining practices were felt to be sensitive indicators
of taste, status and character, the details of Trajans banquets were not only
not trivial, but could also serve, once again, to imply that Pliny was one of
the emperors regular companions.7 So, too, the long discussion of the two
emperors very different leisure activities (812). The picture of Trajans
recreation is patently stereotyped, to be sure, and most readers would have
recognized in it the standard markers of ideal character hunting as an
indication of uirtus, private visits to sacred groves as a reflection of sincere
pietas, etc. but this particular perspective on the emperors character is
nevertheless focalized by Pliny, which inevitably draws attention to his
putative familiarity with the emperor.8 It should be noted that this section
on imperial leisure is followed by extended praise of the emperors wife,
Plotina, and his sister, Marciana (834), a detailed (if again stereotyped)
exposition that further enhances Plinys status as one close to the inner
circle of the imperial regime.
This whole tactic reaches a crescendo of sorts in the celebration of
Trajans capacity for friendship (85). Following a scathing critique of the
blanditiae and amoris simulatio (flattery and feigned loved, 85.1) that
6
7
32
carlos f. nore na
Such tributes were less platitudinous than most of the praise in the Panegyricus. Friendship, in fact, was never a prominent theme in the extensive Greek
and Roman literary tradition on monarchy, and only seems to emerge as a
part of the discourse on good kingship in the early second century ce.9 So
Pliny appears to be innovating in this passage. In any case, the implication
of his own friendship with Trajan is very close to the surface here. For
how else could one praise the emperor as a friend? And this gives added
significance to a comment made earlier in the speech, that Trajan chooses
his friends ex optimis (from the best men, 45.3). That Pliny belongs to
that group goes without saying (but he will say it anyway, as we are about
to see).
These rather different displays of knowledge served to enhance Plinys
insider credentials in at least two ways. Recent work on the sociology of
knowledge in the early Roman empire has stressed the numerous connections between knowledge and power during this period, as well as
the cultural authority that different kinds of technical knowledge could
bestow.10 It is not unreasonable to see in Plinys lengthy demonstration of
administrative and financial expertise a public claim to a body of knowledge that was not only vital to the functioning of the central state, but
also confined to its most experienced administrators.11 The motives behind
9
10
11
See esp. Dio Or. 3.86116 with Konstan (1997); cf. M. Aur. Med. 1.16.10, 6.30.13 (on Antoninus
Pius). The theme was also picked up in some of the later panegyrics (e.g. Pan. Lat. x(2) 16.1, xi(3)
18.4, 21.2). For affection as a bulwark of royal power, see also Sen. Clem. 1.13.45, 1.19.6.
See e.g. the essays collected in Konig and Whitmarsh (2007). See also Wallace-Hadrill (2005)
an updated and revised version of a chapter first published in 1997 a concise discussion of the
increased autonomy, and cultural authority, of various bodies of knowledge, some technical, in the
period of the Augustan revolution; for further elaboration of these points, see now Wallace-Hadrill
(2008) ch. 5, esp. 23158.
Other efforts to display administrative or technical knowledge include the reference to the senatus
consultum that provides for the delivery of a gratiarum actio (4.1) and the analysis of drought
conditions in Egypt (302). The published correspondence, of course, is also filled with implicit
claims to administrative and legal expertise.
33
the insinuation of his own proximity to the emperors inner circle, and
the further implication of social intimacy with Trajan, are even more
transparent. Because aristocratic participation in the world of the imperial
court necessarily conferred both social prestige and political power, Pliny
could effectively elevate his place in the social and political hierarchy by
demonstrating his regular access to Trajan, his family and his courtiers.12
In Roman imperial society, in fact, familiarity with the emperors domestic
and private life was perhaps the ultimate form of insider knowledge.
But what sort of insider was Pliny really claiming to be? That he was
a wealthy, landowning aristocrat and member of the senatorial order was,
after all, a given, and did not really need to be communicated in this
speech, especially since his initial audience, and many of his potential
readers, belonged to the same class. Yet there are multiple indications
throughout the speech that Pliny was not content to represent himself
in it as merely another senator many of whom could naturally claim
similar bodies of insider knowledge for themselves. One of his principal
goals, I would like to suggest, was to highlight his own distinction within
Romes social and political elite, which was highly stratified and still very
competitive.13 Two broad strategies are employed to this end. The first is
the use of the first person plural, us or we, woven throughout the speech
in a subtle and flexible manner that ultimately casts Pliny in a positive light.
The second strategy, more innovative, is the articulation of a typology of
political authority in imperial Rome in which the consulship now held,
of course, by Pliny himself is revealed as the true linchpin of the civic
community.
He thinks he is one of us, Pliny announces near the beginning of the
speech, and in this he is all the more conspicuous and remarkable, since he
thinks that he is one of us (unum ille se ex nobis et hoc magis excellit atque
eminet, quod unum ex nobis putat, 2.4). The larger group to which both
Trajan, as addressee, and Pliny, as speaker, are here alleged to belong is rather
ambiguous. For in the next clause, Pliny lauds the emperor for realizing that
he is simply a man who governs other men (hominibus praeesse), suggesting
that the us in this passage refers to mankind in general; at the beginning
of this passage, however, he characterizes how a consul and a citizen should
12
13
Spawforth (2007) offers various perspectives on the nexus between social participation and political
power in the monarchic courts of the ancient world; for the emergence of a court society in the
Roman world, under Augustus, see discussion in Wallace-Hadrill (1996). For the Roman imperial
court in general, see Winterling (1999).
Our understanding of senatorial competition and self-representation under the early empire has
been transformed by a series of seminal studies by Eck, e.g. (1984, 1997, 2005, 2010; cf. Eck and
Heil (2005); further discussion and references below, pp. 3842.
34
carlos f. nore na
speak about the emperor (2.1), suggesting two other collectivities, consulars
and Roman citizens, to which both Trajan and Pliny belong. Perhaps he
was referring to the senatorial order. That is certainly the impression one
gets from a number of passages in the speech: the reference to the struggle
between us and Trajans modesty over the title Father of the Fatherland
(21.2); the declaration that, following the banishment of the informers, we
ourselves and not our slaves are the emperors friends (42.3), or that we
gather around the emperor, safe and happy, no longer fearing the slaughter
of the most renowned citizens (48.13); the observation that the emperor,
refraining from the confiscation of wealthy estates, shows moderation with
us and with the treasury (55.5).14 In these passages and others like them,
context leaves little doubt that us and we refer to the community of
Roman senators, and that Pliny is self-consciously identifying himself as
a member of that group. This is consistent with the markedly senatorial
perspective that pervades the entire speech, frequently noted by modern
scholars.15
The logic of some passages, however, implies broad differentiation within
the senatorial order as a whole. Praise for Trajans banishment of the
informers (delatores), for example, may be read as thinly veiled criticism of
bad senators:
quantum diuersitas temporum posset, tum maxime cognitum est, cum isdem
quibus antea cautibus innocentissimus quisque, tunc nocentissimus adfigeretur,
cumque insulas omnes, quas modo senatores, iam delatorum turba compleret;
quos . . . in aeternum repressisti. (Plin. Pan. 35.2)
Then indeed we knew how times had changed; the real criminals were nailed to
the very rocks upon which many an innocent man had been nailed; the islands
where senators were exiled were crowded with the informers whose power you had
broken for all time.16
The sharp contrast drawn here between the informers (real criminals),
on the one hand, and the senators (innocent men), on the other, though
rhetorically effective, is, of course, tendentious, since many of the most
prominent informers active under Domitian were themselves senators.17
14
15
16
17
21.2 nobis cum modestia tua pugna; 42.3 non enim iam serui nostri principis amici sed nos sumus; 48.1
sed securi et hilares cum commodum est conuenimus; Trajan does not behave like Domitian, who used
to emerge from his hiding places in the palace to destroy high-status visitors (se ad clarissimorum
ciuium strages caedesque proferret, 48.3); 55.5 quo temperamento et nobis et aerario.
For the Panegyricus as representative of a specifically senatorial outlook, see e.g. Durry (1938) 214;
Radice (1968) esp. 1667; Leach (1990) 37; Seelentag (2004) 21496; Flower (2006) 264.
Translation Radice (1969) (modified).
See discussion in Rutledge (2001) 12935; cf. 2730 for senatorial delatores in early imperial Rome.
35
Pliny was surely conscious of this overlap, and probably assumed that most
of his readers were conscious of it, too and that they would take the point
that he was to be associated not with these bad senators, but with the
good ones. That there were some senators who were indeed superior to
the rest could also be made explicit. Describing Trajans ceremonial arrival
in Rome, to take just one example, Pliny observes that the new emperor
was surrounded by the flower of the senatorial order (senatus . . . flore,
23.3). The whole tenor of the speech conveys the impression that it was
this select subset of the senatorial order for which Pliny was speaking.
Equally illuminating are those comments, usually made en passant, that
strategically demarcate certain informal groupings within the Roman imperial aristocracy. Pliny reports both on the attitudes of those who are devoted
to culture (quisquam studia humanitatis professus, 47.3), for example, and on
the expenditures of those sufficiently wealthy and well connected to purchase estates in Romes suburbs (hortos . . . suburbanum licemur, emimus,
implemus, 50.67). In characterizing the outlook and experience of such
groups, each of which connotes a type of achieved status cultural authority, on the one hand, economic pre-eminence on the other he effectively
identifies with those groups. Contrast the treatment of those who belong
to the old nobility (69.56), an ascribed status to which he had no claim.
The passage concludes with the statement that Trajan not only preserves,
but also creates, the nobiles.18 Even the nobles, in other words, depend
ultimately on the emperors favour which Pliny, as consul, already has.
In general, then, Pliny speaks in several complementary voices throughout the speech, associating himself in a flexible manner with the imperial
aristocracy in general, with the senatorial order in particular, and, more
particularly still, with several informal subsets within Romes political and
social elite: the good senators, the lovers of culture, the owners of suburban estates, and the like. In each case, the implicit identification with
an exclusive and high-status group adds to his political, social and cultural
capital. And what emerges over the course of the speech as a whole is the
impression, carefully crafted through the deployment of the rather fluid
we for whom he claims to speak, that he belongs to the uppermost tier of
Roman imperial society.
One of the principal ways in which Pliny underlines his distinction is by
drawing attention to the importance, prestige and unique character of the
18
69.6 sunt in honore hominum et in ore famae magna nomina ex tenebris obliuionis indulgentia Caesaris,
cuius haec intentio est ut nobiles et conseruet et faciat. It is worth noting that Trajan, like Pliny, was
not a member of the old nobility yet another way in which the group memberships of emperor
and senator align (as Dylan Sailor pointed out to me).
36
carlos f. nore na
consulship. Because this office remained beyond the reach of most senators,
the very fact of delivering a speech on the occasion of his accession to the
suffect consulship was enough to advertise his political prominence and
high social status.19 Repeated reference to the fact that he was speaking as
consul, especially at the beginning and end of the speech (1.2, 2.1, 93.3, 94.1),
keeps his own consulship in the foreground, and anchors the otherwise
shifting identity that he assumes. But he goes well beyond this reiteration
of his new consular rank, developing a typology of political authority and
civic status in imperial Rome that is not only arresting and novel, but also
patently self-serving. The main vehicle employed to develop this typology
is the formal addressee of the speech, Trajan, whose composite status as
citizen, senator, consul and emperor provides Pliny with an opportunity
for subtly redefining his own status and identity.
The long section in the middle of the speech devoted to Trajans consulships (5662) his acceptance of a second and then a third consulship;
his moderate and respectful behaviour as consul; his consular colleagues
is the axial moment in this rhetorical programme. Prior to this section,
Trajan is mainly identified, and praised, as a private citizen. Though he
left Rome as a priuatus and returned an imperator, Pliny writes, he remains
the same person, equal to everyone else, but nevertheless greater because
better.20 He has not changed his habits since becoming emperor (24.2,
43.2), and walks, metaphorically and literally, amongst us (24.5). Just like
everyone else, he lived through the terror of Domitians tyranny (44.1). In
such passages, the emperors personal character, behaviour and experience
are very much those of the priuatus he was before becoming emperor.21 By
the end of the section on Trajans consulships, by contrast, he is increasingly
identified either as a fellow senator (e.g. 62.4, 63.6) or, more to the point,
as a consul. In presiding over the senate, for example, he behaves as if only
a consul (ille uero ita consul, ut si tantum consul foret), rightly thinking
himself no higher than a consul (76.6), while those who approach him
as he dispenses justice in the Campus Martius are told that he is not an
emperor, but a consul (77.3). At one point he is even likened to candidates
for the consulship (princeps aequatus candidatis, 71.4). These passages do
not simply celebrate Trajans ciuilitas. They imply a virtual equivalence
between emperor and consul.
19
20
21
On competition for the consulship in the high empire, Alfoldy (1977) is still fundamental.
21.4 ut reuersus imperator, qui priuatus exieras, agnoscis agnosceris. Eosdem nos eundem te putas, par
omnibus et hoc tantum ceteris maior quod melior.
See briefly Norena (2009) 2778 for the trope of the good emperor whose character is unchanged
by his accession to the imperial purple.
37
23
It should be noted that some manuscripts omit the phrase quam simillimum esse priuato, consulem
quam; cf. the app. crit. of Mynors (1964), who prints this passage, which does have support from
other manuscripts.
90.1 scio, patres conscripti, cum ceteros ciues, tum praecipue consules oportere sic adfici, ut se publice
magis quam priuatim obligatos putent. Note that in distinguishing between the public and private
capacities of those who hold the consulship, Pliny is segregating two categories, the public and the
private, that he normally seeks to conflate, both in this speech cf. Bartsch (1994) 1503 and in
the letters cf. Riggsby (1998) 83; Norena (2007) 24551, 2547, 26970.
38
carlos f. nore na
The message is clear: life is short for all men; among men, it is only
the best who should aim to leave their mark on posterity; and among
optimi, it is not the emperor, but the consul, who is truly able to do so.
Though this argument is ostensibly mobilized to persuade Trajan to accept a
fourth consulship, it is difficult to overlook the way in which it constructs
the consulship, which Pliny now holds, as the pinnacle of the Roman
social and political order. Plinys rightful place on that pinnacle stands
confirmed.
There are several concrete ways, then, in which Pliny engages in rhetorical self-fashioning in the Panegyricus. The display of technical expertise and
the illusion of intimacy with Trajan and the world of the imperial court
both serve to demonstrate insider knowledge and underline his position
close to the centre of power. Strategic identification with good senators
and other exclusive subsets among the imperial elite elevates his social
and political status. And while the putative equivalence of imperial and
consular authority effectively aligns Pliny, the consul, with Trajan, the
emperor/consul, the subtle hints about the superiority of the consulship go
further, endowing Plinys office with an honour and status all of its own.24
These are all specific examples of how he takes advantage of the gratiarum
actio to project a carefully crafted literary representation of himself. But
there is a much simpler and ultimately more significant way in which this
24
Note, however, that when it suits his case, Pliny can openly acknowledge the emperors power to
grant the consulship (59.2, 63.2, 77.78); he also says that the consulship is elevated and becomes
greater (attolli et augescere) when Trajan holds it (57.5).
39
speech or, rather, the publication of it served Pliny as a useful instrument of literary self-fashioning.25 Because his political career had flourished
under Domitian, universally condemned as a bad emperor (but only after
his death, it is worth noting), it was very much in Plinys interests to be
associated by contemporaries, and in the judgement of posterity, with a
different emperor, a good one.26 Having reached the consulship under
Trajan, the occasion of the gratiarum actio presented him with a golden
opportunity not only to cement his notional association with Trajan, but
also to contribute actively to the positive construction of the new emperors
public image, an image from which he himself stood to benefit. The idealized literary portrait of Trajan that Pliny painted in the speech, and then
put into circulation in its written version, should be seen mainly in this
light.
That Pliny had enjoyed imperial favour and political advancement under
Domitian, and that after the emperors death he sought through his writings to distance himself from the legacy of the hated tyrant, downplaying
the rapid progression of his career during Domitians regime and even more
or less concealing his tenure of specific posts, is now well understood.27
Analysis of this rhetorical effort has focused almost exclusively on Plinys
literary self-representation in his correspondence, and in particular on the
literary letters collected in books 19. There is no question that these
letters were the primary vehicles used by Pliny for the purpose of public
self-fashioning, addressing a wide range of topics including the trajectory
of his political career and the character of his friends and enemies.28 This
self-fashioning was not, however, limited to the first nine books of his
correspondence. In a previous study I suggested that book 10 of the correspondence, the collection of official letters sent between Trajan and Pliny
during the latters governorship of Bithynia and Pontus, was also exploited
25
26
27
28
The argument that follows was adumbrated in Norena (2007) 2689, and is further developed here.
Under Domitian, Pliny was an imperial quaestor (in 89 or 90), tribune of the plebs (90 or 91),
praetor (93) and prefect of the aerarium militare (from 94); evidence and dates in PIR2 P 490. For
two different approaches to the problem of Domitians contemporary vs. posthumous reputation,
see Saller (2000) and Wilson (2003); see also Flower (2006) 23466 for sanctions against Domitians
memory. In general on Plinys relationships with Domitian and Trajan, see Soverini (1989).
See e.g. Syme (1958a) 7585, esp. 82 on the failure to mention anywhere in the letters the prefecture
of the aerarium militare, a post which came unusually quickly after the praetorship and wholly at
odds with the claim in the Panegyricus (95.34) that he called a halt to his career under Domitian;
Giovaninni (1987a); Shelton (1987) esp. 12932; Leach (1990) 18, 36; Bartsch (1994) 1679; Ludolph
(1997) 449; Hoffer (1999) 58; Strobel (2003); Flower (2006) 26370.
In addition to the works cited in n. 23 above, see Riggsby (1995, 1998); Ludolph (1997); Roller
(1998); Henderson (2002); Morello and Gibson (2003); Marchesi (2008).
40
carlos f. nore na
Norena (2007); for two other recent studies sensitive to the rhetorical and ideological currents in
book 10, see Stadter (2006) and Woolf (2006).
We know of earlier gratiarum actiones, but there is no indication that any of Plinys predecessors
had published their speeches. Evidence and discussion in Durry (1938) 38.
For some informed speculation, see Mesk (1910); cf. Syme (1938) 217.
Pliny discusses these three stages of production actio (speech), recitatio (recitation) and oratio
(published text) in Ep. 1.20.9; see discussion in Picone (1977) 1223. For the Panegyricus in
particular, see also Fantham (1999), detecting some residue of orality in the written version; cf.
Picone (1977) 12932. On the nature of publication in the Roman world in general, see Starr (1987);
Fedeli (1989b).
41
34
35
36
37
Ep. 3.18.2 primum ut imperatori nostro uirtutes suae ueris laudibus commendarentur, deinde ut futuri
principes non quasi a magistro sed tamen sub exemplo praemonerentur, qua potissimum uia possent ad
eandem gloriam niti. He also shows some pride in the literary and stylistic qualities of the speech
(3.18.810), suggesting another possible reason for publication. In general on Ep. 3.18, see Marchesi
(2008) 199203.
E.g. Durry (1938) 214; Radice (1968) 1667, 169; Leach (1990) 37; Braund (1998) 5868; Fantham
(1999) 231. See also Seelentag (2004) 21496, arguing that the speech served mainly as a mechanism of
symbolic communication between emperor and senate, expressing a specifically senatorial statement
of consensus in Trajans rule.
Plinys practice of poetic recitation and publication, and the epistolary valuation of this type of
negotium, was also an innovation for a senator; see discussion in Roller (1998).
The latest secure reference is to the first Dacian War of 1012 (Pan. 16.3). There is also an apparent
allusion to the Dacian triumph, held in winter 1023, but this may be proleptic; see briefly Syme
(1938) 21718. Woytek (2006) argues, on linguistic grounds, that the speech post-dates the publication of Tacitus Dialogus and Histories, and should be dated to the second half of 107. Though
plausible, the argument is ultimately subjective.
There were, in fact, troubling signs about the potential of a military autocracy, including the manner
in which Trajan was adopted (Eck 2002), and the unsettling delay in his coming to Rome from
the frontier, which hindered the senates role in legitimating the emperors power: Seelentag (2004)
4853, 11329.
42
carlos f. nore na
39
See Sailor (2008) 650 and passim, esp. 911, 2435 on the nexus between autonomy (personal and
literary), prestige, imperial power and elite self-representation. This was a later development, though;
note that the preface to Agricola, written at around the time that Pliny delivered his gratiarum actio,
also seeks to imply distance from Domitian and adherence to the new order: Sailor (2008) 712.
40 See above, n. 27.
Greenblatt (1980) 9.
43
44
carlos f. nore na
his final comment: ego reuerentiae uestrae sic semper inseruiam, non ut me
consulem et mox consularem, sed ut candidatum consulatus putem (I will
always submit to the respect due to all of you not, however, thinking
myself a consul or a consular, but rather a candidate for the consulship,
95.5). Only a consul could say something like that.
chapter 3
The paired issues of discontinuity and renewal were hot topics in the
years following Domitians assassination. Both Nerva and Trajan had been
intimately connected with the Flavians and with Domitian in particular,1
but because of Domitians uncompromising treatment of the senatorial
aristocracy, it was expedient for his former courtiers to advertise a break
from Domitianic policy, however distant this pretence was from political
reality;2 and the emperors subjects were keenly observing the public maintenance of this pretence. We have a partial glimpse of this phenomenon in
an anecdote preserved from after 97 ce:
Idem apud imperatorem Neruam non minus fortiter. Cenabat Nerua cum paucis;
Veiento proximus atque etiam in sinu recumbebat: dixi omnia cum hominem
nominaui. Incidit sermo de Catullo Messalino, qui luminibus orbatus ingenio
saeuo mala caecitatis addiderat: non uerebatur, non erubescebat, non miserebatur;
quo saepius a Domitiano non secus ac tela, quae et ipsa caeca et improuida feruntur, in optimum quemque contorquebatur. De huius nequitia sanguinariisque
sententiis in commune omnes super cenam loquebantur, cum ipse imperator:
Quid putamus passurum fuisse si uiueret? Et Mauricus: Nobiscum cenaret.
(Plin. Ep. 4.22.46)
He [Junius Mauricus] spoke no less bravely in the presence of the emperor Nerva.
Nerva was dining with a few companions. Veiento was nearest to him and virtually reclining in his lap. I said it all, really, when I named that man. Catullus
Messalinus came up in our conversation. He had been deprived of his eyesight,
and this handicap of blindness had intensified his savage inclination. He was
unafraid, unashamed, unpitying: for that reason he was often launched by Domitian not unlike spears which themselves are hurled blindly and with no sense of
1
2
Both were prominent amici of Domitian: Champlin (1983) 25764; Jones (1992) 524, 59; Murison
(2003) 14850.
On administrative continuity: Waters (1969) 385405; Jones (1992) 1968: if we separate the reality
of the Nervan senate from the facade created by the official propaganda, we are left, as far as most
people were concerned, with a Domitianic senate inefficiently led (197); Grainger (2003) 5265. On
rhetorical continuity, especially within formal discourses of praise, see Gibson, pp. 10424 in this
volume, who also considers the following anecdote from Pliny at p. 123.
45
46
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forethought against all the best men. Everyone at the table was discussing his evil
nature and his bloody influence, when the emperor himself asked What do we
think he would have suffered had he survived? Mauricus replied Hed be dining
with us.
I leave aside whether Nerva was looking for this answer, as suggested by Syme (1958a) 6: the truth may
be, not that Mauricus was brave and Nerva innocent, but that the Emperor, more subtle than some
of the company, quietly laid a trap, elicited the answer he wanted, and extinguished a conversational
topic that had often been heard before.
5 See Griffin (2000) 8496; Grainger (2003) 4551; Varner (2004) 11135.
Jones (1992) 7998.
47
Monuments were moreover a traditional subject to be treated in panegyric. The genre had from its beginning enjoyed a natural, and naturally adversarial, relationship with physical monuments. It was natural,
in that architecture had been both a long-standing metaphor for literary
production6 and a perennial expression of the rulers benefaction. It was
naturally adversarial, in that panegyric and physical monuments were competing modes of permanent commemoration. Monuments built by, or in
honour of, or associated with the laudand are present in prose panegyric
from its inception onwards. Thus, for example, Isocrates in the Evagoras mentions the Panhellenion built in Aegina to honour Aeacus (15).7
Evagoras equipping of Salamis with walls and further structures in such
a manner that it was inferior to no other city in Greece is also recounted
(47), but note that Isocrates claims Evagoras inner qualities, his principles,
as a precondition of the physical amplification of his city (48). The statues
erected to Conon and Evagoras in Athens are also celebrated, and styled
memorials to the men, their friendship and the greatness of their benefaction (57). But these notices compete with a concern to devalue the physical
monument in favour of panegyric as a means of commemorating the laudand. Nicocles honouring of his fathers tomb is presented as being less
desirable than an encomium, since a fine speech would make his excellence
immortal (15). Statues are likewise acknowledged as fine memorials, but
less effective at conveying images of the deeds and character of the laudand
than a well-composed speech (73). Isocrates ultimately argues that a speech
of praise is better than a statue on the grounds that (a) honourable men
are revered more for their deeds and intellect than their physical beauty;
(b) statues remain in the city, but encomia can be published abroad; and
(c) it is easier to imitate the character and thoughts represented in speech
than the physical beauty captured in statues.
This tendency resonates throughout later prose encomia. Xenophons
Agesilaus illustrates the kings rejection of wealth as an index of power
by the simplicity of his house: its ancient and unimproved doors at once
prove his moderation and affirm his Herculean genealogy (8.7). Note
again the emphatic devaluation of statues here. Agesilaus would not allow
statues to be erected in his honour, despite the desire of many, but worked
unceasingly on the monument of his mind (tv yucv . . . mnhmea, 11.7).
This tradition is also detectable in the Latin laudatory tradition at certain
6
7
Cf. e.g. Pind. Ol. 6.14; Pyth. 6.714; possibly Callim. Aetia fr. 118 Pf.; Verg. G. 3.13; Hor. Carm.
3.30; Wilkinson (1970) 28690; Thomas (1983) 979.
For the generic importance of Isocrates Evagoras, see Introduction pp. 34.
48
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12
For contemporary responses to civic euergetism in praise literature, see Gibson, pp. 11920 in this
volume.
10 See Paribeni (19267) 2.2358; Bennett (1997) 1438.
Syme (1930) 5570.
Note the near-total absence of contemporary monuments from Plinys letters; this in high contrast
with e.g. their abundance in Ciceronian epistolography: see Clark (2007). I am grateful to one of
the Presss anonymous readers for drawing my attention to this paper.
On the republican contexts for Augustus assertion see Cornell (2000) 50.
49
strongly intimated by Pliny when he claims a safer Rome, now free from
the dangers of building materials being transported through the city:
Itaque non ut ante immanium transuectione saxorum urbis tecta quatiuntur; stant
securae domus nec iam templa nutantia. (Plin. Pan. 51.1)
The walls and roofs in the city have stopped shuddering as they did at the passage
of huge blocks of stone; our houses stand safe and secure and the temples are no
longer threatened with collapse.
So, at least, Gsell (1894) 95 n. 3; cf. also the terminus offered in Martial books 7 and 8, containing
between them three poems on the structure, dated to 92 and after 93 respectively: Galan Vioque
(2002) 18 (December 92); Schoffel (2002) 29.
50
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Non consummata sed tantum commutata is the key: the unavoidable fact was
that Trajans building activity had borne very little fruit in the period of
the speechs composition. Pliny names what dedicated structures he does
see around him in the city. The list reduces to a single item: the Circus
Maximus, itself a restoration and continuation of a Domitianic project.
In the following discussion I consider Plinys engagement with the citys
monuments in the Panegyricus. That he endorses the claim of his emperor
on these structures is of course unsurprising. But much can be revealed
by both the manner of his endorsement and its essential conditionality
upon Trajan fulfilling and allaying a number of senatorial expectations
and concerns. The rhetorical tradition in which Pliny was operating set
the value of self-promotional monuments beneath both the subjects own
inner qualities and the immortalizing potential of praise. In the Roman
imperial context this formulation was advantageous, in that this praise was
the preserve of the emperors subjects rather than the emperor himself. We
will observe that Pliny extends, amplifies and innovates within this generic
tradition by merging encomiums generic relationship with monuments
with the specific political context of the period 96100. His rhetorical
reception of the city allows him to move beyond the mere commemoration of the laudand and to widen the focus of his concern to encompass
senatorial concerns, such as the new emperors accessibility, moderation
and social parity with his subjects. The structures of Trajans Rome are
invested with both positive and negative metaphorical and symbolic content. This invested content (more easily than the structures themselves)
could then be both periodized discontinued or initiated at the death of
Domitian in 96 or of Nerva in 98 and made conditional upon Trajans
continuing policy of deference and moderation towards his subjects.
the metaphorical monument
One strategy that Pliny pursues in relation to pre-existing monuments is
to depict them as casting off the specious semblance of themselves and
assuming their true nature as a result of sound Trajanic policy. Thus,
speaking from the vantage point of a former prefect of the treasury, Pliny
opines that the aerarium in the Temple of Saturn had been restored to that
version of itself current in the days before delation had become widespread
(36.1), because it was now no longer a repository of the goods of the
condemned. These goods are framed by Pliny as pollutants, as bloodsoaked plunder (spoliae ciuium, cruentae praedae). Trajans banishment
of informers, emphatically treated by Pliny immediately preceding his
51
15
Cf. 1.6 omnibus quae dicentur a me, libertas fides ueritas constet; 16.3 [Trajan] imperator ueram ac
solidam gloriam reportans; 33.4 [Domitian] demens ille uerique honoris ignarus; 49.7 sincera omnia et
uera et ornata grauitate; 54.5 tua ueritas; 55.3 ingeniosior est enim ad excogitandum simulatio ueritate,
seruitus libertate, metus amore; 55.8 scis enim ubi uera principis, ubi sempiterna sit gloria; 63.4 O praua
et inscia uerae maiestatis ambitio; 67.1 [Trajans] inadfecta ueritas uerborum; 71.4 [the senates] uera
acclamatio (again at 75.5); 73.4 lacrimarum tuarum ueritas; 74.1 uera felicitas; 80.3 O uere principis
atque etiam dei curas; 84.1 tua ueritas; 84.8 uerus honor; 91.4 Trajans estimation of the senate. On
the true nature of things to be aspired to or achieved under the influence of the laudand, cf. e.g.
Cic. Marc. 19 uera laus; Cic. Man. 10 uera laus.
Itself a trope of the genre and of contemporary and late Flavian examples of panegyric: see Innes
and Gibson in this volume.
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Elsewhere in the speech, gold and silver are emblematic of the unsuccessful
claims to supremacy and respect made by Domitian via physical monuments and objects, in high contrast to the easy security and love Trajan
achieves through his innate qualities and accessibility. At 49.7, gold and
silver plate served at public banquets are outshone by Trajans own suauitas
and iucunditas, and by the fact that the occasion is marked by sincerity,
truth and dignity. So far from Plinys picture of Domitian carefully noting down the behaviour of his guests and of exotic and low-born court
53
personnel crowding the emperors table (49.6, 8), Trajans table is characterized by its open access and its freedom of speech (benigna inuitatio et
liberales ioci et studiorum honor, 49.8). Note too how ritual is thus made to
assume its true form under Trajan, as a result of this inclusivity. At 52.3, the
gold and silver statues of the incestuous Domitian had comprehensively
polluted the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, in contrast to the few
and bronze statues which Trajan permits to stand (only) in the vestibule
of the temple (52.3): a reflection of his simple veneration, and the fact that
he does not aspire to divine status (52.3).
The central paradox of the speech that by moderating his claims on
power and status, Trajan will enjoy them all the more effectively is then
illustrated by the prediction that these few images of Trajan will enjoy an
existence which (like Horaces Odes at 3.30) will be co-terminal with the
Capitolium itself. On the other hand, Domitians countless golden images
have already been gleefully destroyed by his quondam subjects (52.4). At
55.68, bronze images of Trajan in secular contexts invoke his similarity
to republican paradigms of tyrannicide. Here Pliny elides out of existence
Trajans former friendship with the Flavians. The mere fact of Trajans
accession after Domitians death is airbrushed into a picture of Trajan
actively ridding Rome of Domitians tyranny:
illi enim reges hostemque uictorem moenibus depulerunt, hic regnum ipsum
quaeque alia captiuitas gignit, arcet ac summouet, sedemque obtinet principis ne
sit domino locus. (Plin. Pan. 55.67)
For they [Brutus and Camillus] expelled kings and a victorious enemy from the
walls of Rome, he [Trajan] dispels and keeps away tyranny itself and what captivity
begets: he occupies his imperial seat to prevent it being a tyrants place.
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the circus maximus
Trajan restored and extended the Circus Maximus (Suet. Dom. 5; Cass. Dio
68.7.2). This project was with almost absolute certainty Domitianic in
origin,16 but its completion was claimed by Trajan in 103 in a number of
media. Two separate coin issues of that year feature the new Circus (BMCRE
3.827, 8536): one with the emperor addressing the people therein, and
another as viewed from the Palatine residence. The political exploitation of
this project considerably predates these coin issues. The removal of stone
materials from Domitians Naumachia somewhere iuxta Tiberim for the
later stages of the Circus restoration is noted by Suetonius (Dom. 5). That
the biographer knew the source of the material speaks to its deliberate
dissemination. Either this publication, or the spectacle of this transferral,
may have played its own role within a wider Trajanic attempt to dissociate
the Circus restoration project from Domitian, by the destruction of a public
structure possessed of strong associations with that emperor.17 A glimpse at
the unpopular public sentiment attaching to the Domitianic Naumachia
survives in Cassius Dio, and this may help contextualize Trajans destruction
of the edifice in the service of the Circus restoration:
ka n kain tini cwr naumacan petlese. ka pqanon n at pntev
mn lgou den o naumacsantev, sucno d ka k tn qewmnwn eto
gr pollo ka ceimnov sjodro xajnhv genomnou oden ptreyen k
tv qav pallagnai ll atv mandav llassmenov kenouv odn
ease metabalen ka k totou nshsan ok lgoi ka telethsan. j
pou paramuqomenov atov depnn sjisi dhmos di pshv tv nuktv
parsce. (Cass. Dio 67.8.24)
and in a new place he produced a naval battle. At this last event practically all the
combatants and many of the spectators as well perished. For, though a heavy rain
and violent storm came up suddenly, he nevertheless permitted no one to leave
the spectacle; and though he himself changed his clothing to thick woollen cloaks,
he would not allow the others to change their attire, so that not a few fell sick and
died. By way, no doubt, of consoling the people for this, he provided for them at
public expense a dinner lasting all night.
The anecdote distils Domitians lethal self-interest, and may preserve traces
of the gradual embellishment of the story, as it proceeds from the original
day of the event itself and the emperors lack of concern for his subjects
welfare, to the later consequences of this absence of interest in the deaths of
16
17
55
those exposed to bad weather, to the emperors attempt later still to remedy
indignation via public largesse. Later in his reign, Trajan would build his
own Naumachia.
The Circus restoration was promoted as a significant gesture, and the
public transcript of this event was made unmistakably clear:18 it embodied
Trajans liberalitas. In the same year as the numismatic advertisement of
the restoration, the dedicatory inscription of a statue in honour of Trajan
explicitly tied this work to Trajans personal liberalitas:19
IMP. CAESARI DIVI NERVAE F. NERVAE TRAIANO AUG. GERMANICO
DACICO, PONTIFICI MAXIMO, TRIBUNIC. POT. VII, IMP. IIII, COS. V,
P. P., TRIBUS XXXV, QUOD LIBERALITATE OPTIMI PRINCIPIS COMMODA EARUM ETIAM LOCORUM ADIECTIONE AMPLIATA SINT. (ILS
286)
TO THE EMPEROR CAESAR, SON OF THE DIVINE NERVA, NERVA
TRAJAN AUGUSTUS GERMANICUS DACICUS, PONTIFEX MAXIMUS,
IN THE SEVENTH YEAR OF HIS TRIBUNICIAN POWER, HAILED
IMPERATOR FOUR TIMES, CONSUL FIVE TIMES, FATHER OF
THE FATHERLAND, THE THIRTY-FIVE TRIBES [DEDICATE THIS]
BECAUSE, THROUGH THE LIBERALITAS OF THE BEST OF EMPERORS, THEIR PRIVILEGES HAVE BEEN MADE GREATER BY THE ADDITION OF PLACES.
On public transcripts see Scott (1990) 14; applied to the Panegyricus by Bartsch (1994) 14887, esp.
14854.
On which see Norena (2001) 1604.
Elsewhere Trajan would frame his dissimilarity to Nero in explicit terms: Nec ille Polyclitus est nec
ego Nero (Plin. Ep. 6.31.9). Trajan was patently interested in Neros principate (cf. Aurelius Victor,
Epitome 5.2).
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paul roche
For the consul there was a ready causal link waiting to be exploited between
Trajans accommodation of 5,000 further seats in the Circus Maximus and
the distribution of largesse which had marked Trajans accession and was
distributed towards the end of 99:
Nullam congiario culpam, nullam alimentis crudelitatem redemisti, nec tibi bene
faciendi fuit causa ut quae male feceras impune fecisses. Amor impendio isto,
non uenia quaesita est, populusque Romanus obligatus a tribunali tuo, non
exoratus recessit. Obtulisti enim congiarium gaudentibus gaudens securusque
securis; quodque antea principes ad odium sui leniendum tumentibus plebis
animis obiectabant, id tu tam innocens populo dedisti, quam populus accepit.
Paulo minus, patres conscripti, quinque milia ingenuorum fuerunt, quae liberalitas principis nostri conquisiuit inuenit adsciuit. Hi subsidium bellorum ornamentum pacis publicis sumptibus aluntur, patriamque non ut patriam tantum,
uerum ut altricem amare condiscunt; ex his castra ex his tribus replebuntur, ex his
quandoque nascentur, quibus alimentis opus non sit. (Plin. Pan. 28.4)
You were trying to redeem no fault by your congiarium, no cruelty by your alimenta,
nor did you intend that this kindly act buy you immunity from former crimes.
You sought your peoples love by this expense, not their pardon; the people of
Rome were beholden to your tribunal, they did not withdraw from it exhausted
by prayers. For rejoicing and secure you bestowed the congiarium upon them in
their joy and security; and what previous emperors used to cast before the swelling
anger of their people in order to lessen their hatred, you gave to your people and
they received, both in innocence. Senators, there were just short of 5,000 freeborn
children which the liberalitas of our princeps sought out, found and enrolled. These
children are raised at public expense to be a bulwark in war and an ornament in
peace; they learn to love their country not so much as a fatherland, but as a wet
nurse; from these the camps and tribes will be replenished, from these will be born
children who have no need of alimenta.
57
21
22
23
24
Cf. TLL 7.2.1298.3350 for liberalitas and its easy attachment to congiaria; Norena (2001) 1634
establishes the connection between liberalitas issues and congiaria in the period 117235.
Cf. esp. 26.327.4, 29.132.4.
Cf. Norena (2001) 162 (applying the terminology of Veyne (1976) 62142): This [ILS 286] is the
first securely dated inscription to commemorate this particular imperial virtue, and a prime example
of what Veyne calls a fausse evergesie, a routine administrative decision of the Roman state for
which the emperor automatically receives credit simply by virtue of being emperor.
Cf. esp. 5.34, 8.2, 9.2, 11.5, 16.13, 17.14, 22.2, 23.4 Trajan after he advents mounts the Capitol,
23.6 evoking the conclusion of the triumph.
58
paul roche
contueri; dabitur non cubiculum principis sed ipsum principem cernere in publico, in populo sedentem, populo cui locorum quinque milia adiecisti. (Plin. Pan.
51.35)
itself [the Circus] no less to be seen than those things which will be seen there,
but equally to be seen is the fact that there is an equal place for plebs and princeps.
There is but one appearance for the whole arena; all things continuous, equal;
the seating is no more Caesars as he looks on than the things which he observes.
Therefore it will be permitted to your citizens to look upon you in turn; it will be
possible to behold, not the emperors couch, but the emperor himself, in public,
seated among the people, the people for whom you have added five thousand
seats.
That this is alluding to the emperors box, the puluinar, and to some
modification of it in the Trajanic reconstruction is apparent from Plinys
mention of the cubiculum principis in the subsequent sentence of the
speech (51.5). But the specific nature of the change to the emperors seating
arrangement is couched in language which is very far from clear.
Some commentators take this innovation to mean that Domitian
favoured watching the races from the Domus Flauia; Humphry suggests
that cubicula principis was the name of the apartments in the Domus Flauia,
south of the Hippodrome, from where (he posits) Domitian was accustomed to view the races in the Circus Maximus.25 But when Suetonius
recounts Domitians habits in relation to the spectacula (e.g. Suet. Dom.
4), he omits to mention the viewing area from the palace (a habit not
passed over in the case of other bad emperors26 ), and if we locate his
questioning of a puerulus about the Egyptian prefecture of Mettius Rufus
(4.2) within the Circus Maximus, Domitians presence and visibility amid
the people are more readily understood than his absence; Martial 8.11 is
explicit on the entry of Domitian into the Circus (and cf. 7.7.9f. on the
malaise of the spectators in the Circus when Domitian is absent from
Rome).
Trajans reconstruction of the puluinar does not automatically lend itself
to the egalitarian interpretation favoured by Pliny. In fact, Trajan seems to
have moved the puluinar further up into the seating from the Augustan
position of ground level (in fronte prima spectaculorum, Suet. Cl. 4.3), i.e.
at the very front of the grandstands fronting onto the arena itself. Either
under Augustus or (perhaps less likely) by Trajanic innovation, the puluinar
was in essence a small temple: it was hexastyle; it had a gabled pediment;
25
26
59
it had its own staircase distinct from the seating arrangements in front of
it; its side walls recessed back to the inner wall of the facade.27
Plinys response is basically sophistry: the emperor was now no more or
less visible than before. The visibility of the Augustan puluinars occupants
is apparent from Augustus concern that Claudius not watch the races from
it:
spectare eum circenses ex puluinari non placet nobis; expositus enim in fronte
prima spectaculorum conspicietur. (Suet. Cl. 4.5)
that he should view the games in the Circus from the puluinar does not meet with
my approval; for he will be conspicuous if exposed to full view in front of the
spectators.
The consul is complicit in the Trajanic branding of the Circus, but deftly
woven into the fabric of the public script is his concern to foreground the
emperors presence among his subjects and his open accessibility. Pliny is
careful to read straight past the potentially self-aggrandizing interpretation
of the restoration of the puluinar to render it a symbol of parity.
27
28
See Humphry (1986) 80. The archaeological evidence for the Trajanic puluinar consists of frag. 8g
of the Severan Marble Plan; the mosaic from Luni; and a third-century gem from Geneva, all cited
in Humphry (1986) 81 figs. 35a and 35b, 123 fig. 55, 2434.
See Van Den Berg (2008) 25766; at 265: The Puluinar was understood not only as a site to worship
traditional state gods during a religious festival, but also as a place intended for worship of state
consecrated diui, both present and future.
60
paul roche
the domus flavia
31
32
For the date: Plin. Ep. 10.8 (JulyAugust 99: Sherwin-White (1966) 573) with Seelentag (2004) 198
n. 2 for discussion.
Particularly the rumours surrounding his divorce of Domitia and his incestuous relationship with
his niece: cf. Juv. 2.2933; Tac. Hist. 1.2; Suet. Dom. 22.1; Cass. Dio 67.3; Plin. Pan. 53; Philostr. VA
7.7; Griffin (2000) 62; Roche (2009) 37880.
Roche (2002) 41, 60.
On this tendency to centralize all achievements within Trajans family to Trajan himself see Roche
(2002) 446.
61
62
paul roche
but even the cubicula and the most hidden recesses, it exposes and unfolds to
rumour every secret for her knowledge.
Domitians use of the palace, on the other hand, had been an aberration
(49.1). He had fortified himself inside, but locked in with him were the
seeds of his own destruction: deception, conspiracy and vengeance against
his own crimes. When Pliny alludes to the assassination of Domitian within
the palace in terms of a personified Poena, he repeatedly emphasizes that
emperors isolation from his peers, in terms both of his pretensions to
divinity and of his withdrawal to those parts of the palace which Vitruvius
considered propria loca patribus familiarum, and which were, in an imperial
context, debarred to all but court insiders:
Dimouit perfregitque custodias Poena, angustosque per aditus et obstructos non
secus ac per apertas fores et inuitantia limina irrupit: longe tunc illi diuinitas
sua, longe arcana illa cubilia saeuique secessus, in quos timore et superbia et odio
hominum agebatur. (Plin. Pan. 49.1)
Vengeance displaced and smashed through the guard, and flew through those
narrow hallways and barriers just as if through open doors and inviting thresholds:
no help to him then his divinity, no help then those secret chambers and savage
recesses into which he was driven by his fear, his arrogance and his loathing of
humanity.
63
This description has specific relevance to the private chambers of the palace
to the southeast of the main peristyle, where the assassination transpired
(Cass. Dio 67.17.1).35 Plinys account distorts the facts of Domitians assassination, in that nobody breached the guard, or swept through the halls:
the emperor was killed by members of his own court (Suet. Dom. 17.1012;
Cass. Dio 67.1518).36 Domitians death had actually nothing whatsoever
to do with living life in the public eye or his treatment of senatorial peers,
and everything to do with isolating members of his own household. But
to Pliny it is a useful counterpoint with which to promote his vision of
the Trajanic court: safer, more secure, built on love rather than cruelty
(reprised at 85.1), and above all rejecting the solitude of the cubiculum for
the crowded gatherings in the public rooms of the palace (49.2).
Pliny now extends the lesson from accessibility to benevolence:
Discimus experimento fidissimam esse custodiam principis innocentiam ipsius.
Haec arx inaccessa, hoc inexpugnabile munimentum, munimento non egere.
Frustra se terrore succinxerit, qui saeptus caritate non fuerit; armis enim arma
irritantur. (Plin. Pan. 49.3)
We learn by experience that the most reliable guard of the emperor is his own
guiltlessness. This is the impenetrable citadel, this is the unstormable rampart: to
need no rampart. He surrounds himself with terror to no effect who has not been
surrounded by affection; for arming oneself merely provokes a response of arms.
For further remarks on Plinys treatment of Domitians assassination, see Hutchinson, this volume
pp. 1289.
See Murison (2003) 153; Collins (2008) 392.
I am very grateful to one of the Presss anonymous readers for drawing my attention to De Clementia
here.
64
paul roche
Placido tranquilloque regi fida sunt auxilia sua, ut quibus ad communem salutem
utatur, gloriosusque miles (publicae enim securitati se dare operam videt) omnem
laborem libens patitur ut parentis custos; at illum acerbum et sanguinarium necesse
est graventur stipatores sui. (Sen. Clem. 1.13.1)
For a calm and peaceful king, his own guards are reliable, since he uses them for
the protection of the community. In their eagerness for glory, the soldiers, because
they see that they are working for the security of the state, willingly endure all
kinds of toil as the protectors of their Father. But the ruler who is harsh and
bloodthirsty inevitably finds that his own bodyguards resent him.38
This policy has a kind of regenerative effect upon the nobility. Pliny presents
it as an architectural reflection of the restoration of appropriate dignity for
the upper orders of society. Just as the decay of the houses of the old nobility
is a physical manifestation of the social inappropriateness of being owned
by freedmen (habitator seruus, 50.3), so too their newfound lustre reflects
a restoration of social ordering and of Trajans affinity with the original
builders of these great houses:
38
65
Datur intueri pulcherrimas aedes deterso situ auctas ac uigentes. Magnum hoc
tuum non erga homines modo sed erga tecta ipsa meritum, sistere ruinas solitudinem pellere, ingentia opera eodem quo exstructa sunt animo ab interitu
uindicare. Muta quidem illa et anima carentia sentire tamen et laetari uidentur,
quod niteant quod frequententur, quod aliquando coeperint esse domini scientis.
(Plin. Pan. 50.4)
It is possible to look upon those splendid houses now that their site has been
cleansed growing and thriving. This is a great service of yours, not just for the
owners, but for the houses themselves: to halt this ruination, to drive off this
solitude, to save these great works from destruction, is to exhibit the same spirit
with which they were erected. And those inanimate, insensate houses nevertheless
seem to understand this, seem to rejoice, because they gleam, because they are
frequented again, because at last they are the possessions of appreciative owners.
This is more than conservation. Pliny recasts freedmen owning these properties in terms used exclusively elsewhere in the speech of the bad emperors
self-imposed isolation from his peers (solitudo, 50.4; cf. 34.1 of Domitianic
informers, 48.5 both Domitian in the palace and the destruction he causes
when he emerges, 49.2 the haunts of the Domus Flauia which Trajan
rejects for its public spaces). Just as surely their purchase by members
of the aristocracy is cast in terms evoking Trajans transformation of the
palace (frequentare, 50.4; cf. 48.2 on senators eager to visit Trajan in the
palace, 49.5 the crowd accompanying Trajan in his leisure hours). This is a
domestic, personal, urban manifestation of Trajans reform of the imperial
court.
Both Trajan and Pliny were surrounded by monuments whose bricks
were stamped with the name of Domitian; and this could function as an
appropriate metaphor for the men themselves. In each of the individual
monuments, Pliny works hard to delineate a positive or potentially positive
Trajanic meaning to offset against their Domitianic legacy. In the case of the
Circus Maximus, Pliny exploits Trajans own claims to liberalitas in order
to deflate the potentially offensive claims made by Trajans restoration of
the puluinar. The emperors own residence is collapsed into a metaphor
for the emperor himself open and accessible rather than fortified and
secluded and establishes the preconditions of his continuing safety. And
the wider community of aristocratic houses is reinvigorated under their
newly appropriate owners after their sad existence under the tenure of
freedmen. In the Panegyricus, the monuments of Trajans Rome are viewed
shimmying beneath a spectrum of varying metaphorical and literal content:
now clearly discernible under a light film, now almost completely abstracted
66
paul roche
into the superlative virtues Pliny would prescribe for his emperor. In each
case, and taken collectively, the physical environment housing the people,
senate and princeps is transformed into an exemplary metaphor of the
integration of all three, and for the benefit of an emperor who at the
moment of its delivery was very much an unknown quantity; after all, who
could have predicted two years into his reign that the exemplary relations
between Domitian and the senate would sour?39
39
For the harmonious relationship between Domitian and the senate in the period 81 to September
87, see Eck (1980) 55; Syme (197791) 7.560.
chapter 4
The repeated use in the opening section acts as a marker to identify the speech: 1.2, 1.3, 2.3, 3.1, 3.3,
3.4, 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3; cf. Ep. 3.13.1, 3.18.1.
The Greek term panhgurikv originally described a speech given at a public festival, panguriv,
but was also used more widely as a synonym of encomium, gkmion, to describe a formal speech of
praise. Neither term is fully naturalized in Latin. Cicero uses panegyricus only as the title of Isocrates
speech (De Orat. 37), and Quintilian only to identify the title of speeches at 2.10.11, 3.4.14 and 10.4.4
(in the latter two cases referring to Isocrates speech).
Invective is the mirror image of encomium, sharing the same headings and topics but reversing
the content (e.g. Cic. De Orat. 2.349; Quint. Inst. 3.7.19). Panegyric exploits topics of invective in
comparisons, as in Plinys contrast of Trajan with Domitian.
The division is Aristotelian (Rhet. 1.3) and is the standard later theory. Quintilian, for example,
supports it on the grounds of logic and best authority (3.4.11). But we know of broader definitions
of epideictic, even to the point of including all literature except forensic and deliberative (Hermog.
Id. 404 Rabe). Modern discussions also rightly emphasize the flexibility and intermingling of the
three genres of oratory from the beginning: see Carey (2007) 23752. The forensic De Corona of
Demosthenes, for example, includes extensive self-praise, while Isocrates Panegyricus was formally
67
68
d. c. innes
deliberative but in practice a panegyric of Athens (Quint. Inst. 3.4.14, Nicolaus 48 Felten). Eulogy
was useful in all forms of oratory (e.g. Cic. De Or. 2.349).
Cf. Plin. Ep. 2.5.3 ornare patriam et amplificare (in praise of his home-town Comum). For Ar.
Rhet. 1368b269 amplification (axhsiv) is particularly suited to epideictic since the content is
uncontroversial, so you need only invest it with grandeur and beauty.
Basic rhetorical texts: Ar. Rhet. 1.3, 9; Rhet. Alex. 35; Rhet. Her. 3.1015; Cic. De Inv. 2.1778, De
Orat. 2.437, 3419, Part. 7082; Quint. Inst. 2.4, 3.7; Theon, Progymnasmata 8 (see next note);
Pseudo-Dionysius, Art of Rhetoric 17; Menander I and II, On Epideictic Speeches. General surveys:
Russell and Wilson (1981) xxxxiv; Pernot (1986, 1993); Russell (1998); Rees (2007a).
For Theon see Patillon and Bolognesi (1997), conveniently keeping Spengels pagination. It has the
original order of the exercises and substantial additional content from the Armenian. For English
translation of Theon and others, see Kennedy (2003). Theon is very probably the earliest extant
Greek author of progymnasmata, roughly contemporary with Quintilian (but for a much later date,
in the fifth century, see Heath (2003) 1419). On progymnasmata see Bonner (1977) 25076; Cribiore
(2001) 22030; Reinhardt and Winterbottom (2006) 747.
Hoffer (1999) 17793; Rees (2007b). This letter of recommendation is the closest to a formal eulogy,
but 2.9, 2.13, 3.2 and 7.22 suggest a template of family, money and qualities of character and a greater
amount of detail than is found in Cicero (so Rees (2007b); cf. also Hor. Ep. 1.9, 12, 224).
69
as early as Rhet. Alex. 35 and draw on still earlier speeches which served
as models. Particularly influential were Agathons praise of Love in Platos
Symposium (194e197e) and two speeches in praise of a recently dead king,
Isocrates Evagoras and Xenophons Agesilaus.9 Agathons speech is clearly
articulated into separate headings, including the four cardinal virtues of
justice, modesty, courage and wisdom, and runs riot with a richness of style
said to echo Gorgias (Symp. 198c).10 Isocrates claims to be the first to write
a prose encomium of a contemporary (8), begins with Evagoras origins
and early life, shapes much of the praise to show his virtues, and sets him
up as a model for his son to imitate.
Isocrates also established the panegyric style, a style characterized by
pleasing elaboration and richness, especially in sentence structure. It has a
smooth flow (hiatus between words is avoided) and an abundance of prose
rhythm, rounded periods and clearly patterned assonance and antithesis.
Again our sources agree, as in Cic. Orator 3742 and already Ar. Rhet.
3.12, where epideictic suits the lxiv grajik, the style for written texts
(cf. Quint. Inst. 3.8.63). But such a style might readily become flat and
monotonous and was not suited to emotion, as Dionysius warns (Dem.
20). So too for Longinus (On the Sublime 9.3), panegyric may be grand and
sublime but for the most part it lacks emotion. It is a style which needs
to be varied, as is stressed by Pseudo-Dionysius (260 U-R), for example
by simplicity for narrative and grandeur for emperors or gods.11 Richness,
grandeur and sublimity also characterize the delivery advised by Quintilian
(11.3.153 specifically including the gratiarum actio).
Pliny echoes this tradition in his two letters on the revision of the
Panegyricus. In Ep. 3.18.810 the genre of epideictic supports his own
preference for a richer style (laetioris stili), even if others admire his passages
in a plainer style (which he may someday come to appreciate). And in Ep.
3.13.34, he complains that there can be no originality in content and
the reader will therefore concentrate on style (elocutio).12 But he hopes
9
10
11
12
See Russell and Wilson (1981) xivv; Pernot (1993) 1925; for Evagoras: Braund (1998) 568.
Prose encomium began with the fifth-century sophists, who were in turn influenced by earlier poetry
of praise, as Gorgias implicitly acknowledges (Helen 2). Poetic encomium continued: for praise of a
ruler see e.g. Stat. Silv. 4.1 on Domitians seventeenth consulship (with Coleman (1988) esp. 625);
and Gibson in this volume.
Cic. Orator 96 is only an apparent exception in categorizing it under the middle style. It aims to
please (cf. Orator 37) and that is why it has been rejected by the grand style, which Cicero has
defined in terms of exciting emotion.
He makes obvious use of the traditional five parts of rhetoric (cf. e.g. Quint. Inst. 3.3.1). He
ignores memory but refers to content (inuentio), structure (dispositio), style (elocutio) and delivery
(pronuntiatio).
70
d. c. innes
his structure, transitions and figures will also attract attention.13 After
all, even the uneducated can sometimes find good material and deliver
it impressively (inuenire praeclare, enuntiare magnifice), whereas skilled
expertise is needed for appropriate arrangement and a varied use of figures
(disponere apte, figurare uarie). Variety of style is also needed: it cannot
always be grand and sublime (an indication it mostly will be) but needs
some lower tones just as light needs some shadow. Pliny clearly prided
himself on his mastery of style and organization. I shall focus on the latter
and say little on style.14
Since he was Plinys teacher (Ep. 2.14.9, 6.6.3), it is natural to look more
closely at Quintilians discussion of epideictic (3.7). Within a dialogue
setting of 91 bce Cicero had seen panegyric as essentially Greek (De Orat.
2.341), and for Rhet. Her. 3.15 it was rarely found in real life. But by
Quintilians time epideictic was a regular feature of Roman public life and
he begins by recognizing this change, emphasizing that Roman custom (mos
Romanus) has found a practical use (3.7.2). The senate may, for example,
assign a magistrate to give a funeral oration, as Pliny illustrates in a letter
describing the funeral of Verginius Rufus in 97: the oration was given by
the consul Tacitus, a most eloquent eulogist (laudator eloquentissimus, Ep.
2.1.6). Speeches, Quintilian continues (3.7.3), do exist which are purely for
display, such as the praise of gods and heroes of the past. But even here he
refers to a conspicuous and recent Roman example, the praise of Jupiter
Capitolinus at the sacred contest (which Domitian established in 86).15 He
does not mention gratiarum actiones, though there might be up to a dozen
each year by consuls elect and consuls entering office: it was indeed while
he stood rehearsing one that Verginius Rufus fell, broke his hip and never
recovered.
Yet within his actual analysis of encomium Quintilian scarcely touches
on real oratory. In his main account, on praise of men (3.7.1018), he
notes only that sometimes we praise the living (3.7.17; so too in invective
3.7.22).16 But the final item, honours after death, is unusually long and the
initial group of examples, deification, decrees and statues at public expense,
suggests real public oratory (3.7.1718).17 This may then recall the end of
the preceding section, praise of gods, where he refers to mortals who were
deified because of their virtue and pays a cautiously worded compliment
13
14
15
16
71
to the piety of the current emperor (3.7.9). This overt flattery of Domitian
is itself parallel to the earlier allusion when he cited the sacred contest at
the end of his introductory section on Roman public oratory (3.7.4). If we
include the examples of honours after death we have three closural allusions
to imperial panegyric, a subject under Domitian much too sensitive for the
schoolroom.
One further example is from real oratory, within the brief account
of praise of places (3.7.267). Quintilian cites Ciceros praise of Sicily
(Ver. 2.28), and since Cicero cites this very passage (Orator 210) to prove
the usefulness of the epideictic style within real (i.e. forensic) oratory,
Quintilian can expect his readers to recall that context. It proves an earlier
point (2.1.11): that encomium and invective are useful within forensic
oratory. He also terms it a digression at 4.3.13 and 11.3.164.
With these exceptions Quintilian keeps to the usual schoolroom menu of
Greek and Roman gods and heroes, the type of encomium he described as
composed for show and not practical use (3.7.3). This disjunction between
adult use in Roman public life and schoolroom training recurs in his
more extensive account of deliberative oratory (3.8). The analysis and
examples are again geared to the schoolroom, but Quintilian explicitly
draws attention to its usefulness in later life: his pupils will be able to apply
what they have learnt cum aduocari coeperint in consilia amicorum, dicere
sententiam in senatu, suadere si quid consulet princeps (once they begin to
be called into consultations by friends or deliver an opinion in the senate
or advise the emperor if he consults them, 3.8.70). The same will be true
for epideictic, and since it is a simpler genre, it is suitably studied before
the student progresses to deliberative and forensic. This may be why in 3.7
Quintilian does not mention the proem or the style of epideictic, reserving
them till he turns to deliberative and can compare the differences (3.8.79,
63).18
The basic form of eulogy, the default case as it were, is the praise of
famous men (3.7.1018), and this includes praise of kings and emperors
(ut in regibus principibusque, 3.7.13).19 I will compare especially Quintilians main source, Cic. De Orat. 2.3428, and Theon.20 I have already
18
19
20
72
d. c. innes
summarized Ciceros list at 342, and all three share the same standard headings of origins and other external circumstances, things to do with the
body and things to do with the mind. This trio appears already in Ar.
Rhet. 1360b248, and Pliny deploys it at Pan. 82.6. But Quintilian adds
an overarching structure of a different set of three headings: things before,
during and after the persons life. This is unusual in extant texts, though
hardly original;21 it usefully recognizes that the standard list of separate
items is in its skeleton a biographical approach, a laudatory or invective
review of a life from beginning to end.22
Quintilian lists the following:
(a) things before birth (i.e. origins): the traditional items of country, parents
and ancestors;23
(b) things during life, listed under three headings:
(i) qualities of the mind (courage, justice, modesty and all the other
virtues),
(ii) qualities of the body (e.g. beauty and strength), and
(iii) external circumstances (luck, power, wealth and influence);
(c) things after death (this is rarely available): honours such as deification,
decrees and public statues, the verdict of posterity and fame from
descendants.24
He emphasizes, as do Cicero and Theon, that we will praise origins, qualities
of the body and external circumstances not for their possession but as a
test of character in how they are used (so already Ar. Rhet. 1367b2830;
Rhet. Alex. 35). Praise of the mind, virtue, is the true praise. In later writers
particularly this is often treated under the four cardinal virtues of courage,
justice, modesty and wisdom (the four already used by Agathon in Platos
Symposium), but this was not universal. Quintilian lists three of them but
implies a longer list. Theon 110 Sp. lists the four cardinal virtues but then
adds others, piety, generosity, greatness of mind and the like. Cicero, in
De Oratore 3437, discusses a long and varied list.
For this, the most important part, praise of the mind, Quintilian outlines two approaches. Neither is intrinsically better than the other; the
21
22
23
24
Orat. 2.348 Cicero may list it either as a standard heading of eulogy in standard position at the end
(so already Isoc. Evag. 659) or as the next independent item as in Theon.
He shares some common source with Menander II (see below on 413 and 435 Sp.).
See Pernot (1986) on this crucial point.
He includes omens of birth: cf. e.g. Isoc. Evag. 21; Menander I 371.9 Sp. Omens and the like are also
among the embellishments (ornamenta rerum) in Cic. Part. 73. Pliny uses this topos in the omens
surrounding Trajans rise to power: see below.
Honours after death: already Isoc. Evag. 702; Ar. Rhet. 1367a12. But it is not in De Oratore and
gets only brief mention at Part. 82, Rhet. Her. 3.14, Theon 110 Sp. On Quintilians unusually lengthy
treatment, see above, p. 70.
73
choice depends on who is being praised and what the audience will find
most congenial. There may be a chronological narrative, beginning with
the early years, another standard item (cf. Isoc. Evag. 22; Cic. Part. 82), or
alternatively there may be a list of separate individual virtues, each in turn
supported by acts from the persons life. Division by virtues is more usual,
but Theon is aware of the alternative, rejecting narrative as more appropriate to history, and Cicero (Part. 75) gives two chronological methods as
well as division under the virtues: we may move forward from the past or
move back from the present. Cicero had himself chosen a chronological
structure only a few years earlier in Philippics 2.44119, an invective against
Antony from boyhood onwards (a puero, 44). He used the alternative, a list
of virtues, in the inset praise of Pompey at De Lege Manilia 28: the ideal
general has four qualities, namely knowledge of military matters, courage
(uirtus), authority (auctoritas) and good luck.25
Quintilians emphasis on flexibility is repeated in Plinys advice to the
consul elect Severus (Ep. 6.27) on how Severus might handle his gratiarum
actio. Pliny recalls his own (never published) gratiarum actio as consul
elect. Trajans virtues give abundant material for praise, and Pliny chose to
highlight Trajans hatred of flattery (a key theme also in the Panegyricus).
But there can be different approaches, to suit personal taste and changed
circumstances, and Severus may find scope for new material in Trajans
recent exploits (the conquest of Dacia). Pliny chose from the emperors
personal nature, Severus might choose deeds of war. The importance given
here to different approaches is a useful corrective to any over-reliance on
the lists of theory. The need to adapt to the audience is also important,
and is again something Pliny will have learned from Quintilian: in Sparta,
for example, an interest in literature will be less honoured than in Athens,
and endurance and courage will appeal more (cf. Ar. Rhet. 1367b711); and
there are similar differences between individuals (Quint. Inst. 3.7.235).
When he discussed the progymnasmata, Quintilian postponed the treatment of encomium and invective (2.4.201), and he gives the promised
fuller account when he discusses the whole epideictic genre (3.7). At the
end of his general preface (61 Sp.) Theon conversely calls his account of
encomium a simplified schoolroom version, reserving a precise technical analysis, tecnologa, to its appropriate place.26 Yet the shared links
25
26
74
d. c. innes
between Quintilian and Theon indicate that the basic theory of encomium
was already learnt at the earlier stage. Quintilian also cites no sources in
his treatment of the headings of encomium and invective (3.7.622), a sign
that the content was uncontroversial and unoriginal.27
What then was this more advanced tecnologa? The obvious answer
is the detailed handling of specific types of encomia. This is strongly
supported by a passage in a fifth-century Greek writer of progymnasmata,
Nicolaus (49 Felten).28 He notes that the elementary schooling did not
tackle the headings for individual subtypes (edh), speeches suitable for
occasions such as weddings, address to a provincial governor, praise of
Apollo at the Sminthia festival, or any other festival speech or hymn to
a god (piqalmiov prosjwnhtikv sminqiakv llov lwv p
ortav legmenov lgov mnov qen, Nicolaus 49 Felten). Such treatises
survive only much later than Quintilian and Pliny, in Menander I and II
(third century) and Pseudo-Dionysius (not earlier than the late second
century). But similar texts will have been known already by the time of
Pliny and Quintilian.
Quintilian in fact already gives a separate analysis of two of these later
subtypes, the hymn and praise of places.29 For both, he is our earliest
extant source but he was hardly the originator. He begins with the praise
of gods (3.7.79), a topic with abundant comparative material from the
conventions of hymns in poetry and Agathons praise of Love in Platos
Symposium.30 He also outlines how to praise places like cities (3.7.267),
and some common Greek source will lie behind the essential similarity
with the later accounts of Menander I 34467 Sp., Menander II 3828
Sp. and Pseudo-Dionysius 257 U-R.31 Quintilian tells us that it is handled on similar lines to the praise of men, except that it has its own
individuating characteristics (illa propria), its position and its buildings.
Significantly, he already knows the principles underlying the subtypes
found in the later critics: identify the individuating topics (t dion or
t dizon . . . kejlaion), then adapt them as appropriate to the basic
27
28
29
30
31
there may be a garbled memory of Theons reference to the funeral speech (109 Sp.) and his promise
of a more technical work; Heath (2003) 1523 is cautious. Even so, the subtypes of encomium need
not be attributed to Theon.
Elsewhere, on the nature and audience of epideictic, he does cite sources: 3.7.1, 23, 25, 28.
See Russell and Wilson (1981) xxxvi and Heath (2004) 220. Inclusion of the Sminthia festival
suggests Nicolaus knows or shares a common tradition with Menander II, who ends with this
example (43746 Sp.).
But Quintilian need not know praise of place as an independent speech, since his example is an
inset praise, that of Sicily at Cic. Ver. 2.28 (see above).
On prose hymns see Pernot (1993) 21638 and Russell (1990a) esp. 20715.
Full discussion in Pernot (1993) 178215.
75
33
Menander II is made much of in the influential study of Cairns (1972) 10020. He analyses
Theocritus 17 (the Encomium of Ptolemy), a poem in praise of a living ruler, in terms of acceptance
or rejection by Theocritus of Menanders headings. Against his over-schematic and anachronistic
approach, see Hunter (2003) 824 and Russell and Wilson (1981) xxxixxxiv.
Compare the speech on the arrival of a new governor: any comparison of the situation under his
predecessor should not criticize him but simply describe the previous suffering (378 Sp.). But what is
prudent for a Greek (cf. Dio 3.12) is different for Pliny, who openly compares Trajan and Domitian,
a contrast sanctioned by Domitians damnatio memoriae and its use a few years earlier in Tac. Agr.
44.545.2.
76
d. c. innes
it (429 Sp.), and in the speech of an envoy pleading before the emperor a
single virtue, his moderation (jilanqrwpa), will be amplified throughout
(423 Sp.).34 The advice of such repeated themes is an interesting parallel
for Pliny.
The order of the headings may also vary. The informal speech (lali)
lacks the regular textbook structure (txiv . . . k tcnhv, 392 Sp.), and
on any theme you can order the virtues as you see fit and as suits the
sequence of your argument (380 Sp.). Strikingly, in the consolation speech
and the funeral monody (413, 435 Sp.), the need for emotion changes the
usual order and the sequence of the four virtues is replaced by the three
chronological periods, past, present and future.35 You should begin with
the present since it will be more emotive to start with the age or manner
of death (435 Sp.). Clearly the very conspicuous fourfold division under
the virtues is too overtly artificial for such emotion. Panegyric also has
its own brief inset encomia, such as praise of a city (396, 417 Sp.), praise
of the emperor within the praise of a provincial governor (379, 415, 426,
429 Sp.), or praise of the emperors wife (376 Sp.). Compare Plinys praise
of Trajans wife and sister at Pan. 834.
The choice of speaker and the reason for that choice can also be significant. There is little in Menander II, mostly on the more private occasions
of departures, weddings and funerals (399, 407, 419, 434 Sp.). But the
envoy bringing a golden crown to the emperor or pleading before him for
a city in trouble represents his city (179, 181 Sp.). The speaker issuing an
invitation to a governor will begin The city has sent me, and if he is a
man of some distinction (xwma) he will refer to himself (424, 4267
Sp.). Pseudo-Dionysius is more interested in the choice of speaker and says
that in addressing a governor you should explain at the beginning why you
have been chosen and come back at the end to add some personal note
(273, 276 UR). It is a common topos in Greek panegyric proems, as often
in Aristides, and Pliny makes significant use of his own role as consul in
the proem and epilogue.
A relatively close following of Menanders advice is found in PseudoAristides 35.36 Like Pliny, the unknown author praises an emperor who
34
35
36
Filanqrwpa is also variously translated as generosity and humanity. It is the virtue of a superior
who treats others fairly, and it covers much of the same range as Latin moderatio, including
accessibility. It is listed under justice at 385 Sp., perhaps also at 374 Sp. (but see Russell and Wilson
(1981) 279).
See above on chronological structure allowed by Quintilian and Cicero.
Author and date are disputed. Aristides can be excluded on linguistic grounds, and it is most often
dated to the third century (Korner 2002). Librale (1994) links it to Trajan, but Trajan had no son and
the address to a son at the end cannot plausibly refer to Trajan himself, as Librale suggests (12768).
77
37
38
39
40
A striking lack of specific detail makes it impossible to identify any specific emperor, and I incline
to see it as a real speech pruned or adapted to provide a generic model, and this pruning would
explain the clumsiness of the abrupt beginning and end. The setting is baldly a feast and sacred
festival (1), but near the end it is clearly a festival to Demeter: now festivals are more splendid and
feasts dearer to the gods, now the fire of Demeter is brighter and more sacred (37).
Pliny and Pseudo-Aristides both use a preliminary narrative to show that the emperor deserved to
become emperor, following the model of Xen. Ages. 1.52.
Cf. Tac. Agr. 39.2: military leadership is the imperial virtue (imperatoriam uirtutem).
There is also considerable variety in the panegyrics of Aristides: see Pernot (1993) esp. 32131, a
comparison of Aristides 1 (Panathenaicus) and 26 (To Rome).
Quint. Inst. 6.5.12 notes the impossibility of teaching judgement. All he can do is guide judgement
by his advice on what to do or not do in specific cases. For Pseudo-Dionysius 363.1120 U-R (of
argumentation), it shows a schoolmaster (grammatikv nr) to follow the traditional headings
from alpha to omega.
78
d. c. innes
To anticipate, he deploys significant manipulation of the epideictic headings to produce a closely interwoven web of key themes. These run through
the whole speech and are carefully prepared in the proem and brought
together at the end. Trajan is the ideal best emperor, optimus princeps, and
as such he has all the virtues. He shows courage in war, and among his
civic virtues particularly moderation. A series of antitheses dominate the
praise. He is not a god or tyrant but a fellow-citizen, one of us, sharing
and respecting the values of the senate (e.g. Pan. 2.34). He is favoured by
Jupiter but behaves like a traditional senator and consul. He is the best,
Domitian the worst of emperors. These various antitheses have been well
treated elsewhere,41 and I will not rehearse them all here, but they concern
the central core of panegyric theory: the moral qualities. Instead I shall
focus on how Pliny helps build up that portrayal of Trajan as the ideal
emperor by his use of the other panegyric headings, proem and epilogue,
family, physical qualities, comparisons and good fortune.
Pliny chooses a roughly chronological structure (the alternative structure
we saw allowed by Cicero and Quintilian).42 This allows greater flexibility
for repeating and interweaving key points at various stages of the narrative, and it fits the constant antithesis of present and past, Trajan and
Domitian.43 I would also suggest that it seems more natural and straightforward. Had Pliny chosen carefully separated individual headings and
a formal parade of specific virtues, his speech would have been overtly
artificial and instantly recognizable as panegyric. This might weaken his
claim to tell the truth without flattery to an emperor who dislikes flattery.
Apparent spontaneity is desirable (Pan. 3.1).
In an important and stimulating study, Bartsch discusses Plinys repeated
emphasis on truth and flattery in terms of a problem whether praise can ever
be distinguished from flattery after the excessive and hypocritical adulation
of Domitian.44 But literature of praise was too normal and acceptable a
literary form for such public anguish.45 Pliny does not, I think, reveal a
credibility gap but simply exploits the contrast of truth and flattery to
41
42
43
44
45
See Fears (1981); Wallace-Hadrill (1981, 1982); Braund (1996, 1998) 5868; Levene (1997); Rees (1998,
2001).
Add a wish to emulate Tacitus Agricola? Biography was a genre strongly influenced by epideictic,
and after the shared opening headings of origins and early life the main account was essentially
chronological, as in the Agricola and Plutarchs Lives, or a list of independent headings, as in
Suetonius.
Similarly (see above, p. 76) present sorrow and happy past shape the structure of funeral speeches
in Menander II.
Bartsch (1994) 14887.
For contemporary contexts of praise, see Gibson in this volume.
79
serve his own rhetorical purposes. The content of imperial praise is, as
Pliny recognizes, conventional and banal (nota uulgata, Ep. 3.13.2), and
his problem is to find an original twist or color. A new and very different
emperor allows him to emphasize sincerity and lack of flattery, and by the
choice of this particular color, truthful speech is made a proof of Trajans
worth.46 For example, Trajans refusal to allow private gratiarum actiones
(Pan. 4.2) is no mere detail: Pliny uses it to turn to address the emperor for
the first time, and he does so in a significant juxtaposition with what will be
Trajans prime virtue, moderation, Caesar Auguste, moderate (Pan. 4.3). A
standard proem topos becomes a major theme, and this is why Pliny repeats
it, deploying it later to mark out important transitional points (535, 715).
The proem begins from the occasion, audience and speaker: an address
to the senate by the consul as its representative. Pliny emphasizes the
traditional Roman nature of his initial prayer, and links speaker, senate and
the whole state in offering thanks to the best of emperors, optimus princeps
(1.12).47 The proem introduces many of the major themes, the role of
Jupiter, the contrast of truth and flattery, and particularly the emperors
virtues. Right from the beginning he is set up as optimus princeps (1.2) and
contrasted with the unnamed Domitian: his courage and a sense of duty,
clemency and moderation entitle him to be called optimus (2.6), and, in a
longer list of virtues and contrasting vices (3.4), he earns honest praise for
civic virtues like moderation and, in final position, energy and courage.
These two lists of virtues also serve a structural purpose. Courage is first
and singled out on its own at 2.6, and it ends the list at 3.4.48 Pliny begins
his narrative with Trajans military career, with particular emphasis on
his courage and energy (519).49 Only then does he turn to Trajans civic
virtues, especially moderation, as Trajan arrives in Rome.
The consulship is another major theme introduced in the proem and
used in the overall structure. It serves as a linking thread throughout 56
79, particularly the extended treatment of Trajans third consulship. Trajan
shows moderation by his respect for the consulship (and by extension for
the senate and good constitutional government) in his behaviour both as
consul himself and towards those he appointed consul. But it is particularly
46
47
48
49
See above, p. 73 for the same strategy in another gratiarum actio (Ep. 6.27); for Trajans dislike of
flattery cf. Cass. Dio 1.26, 3.2.
Prayer also ends the speech. Compare Dem. De Cor. 1 and 324 for this conventional topos, and for
concluding prayers e.g. Menander II 377 Sp. Plinys initial prayer also echoes Cicero, who as consul
similarly began his Pro Murena.
Courage is also set apart from the rest in the epilogue, optime principum fortissime imperatorum
(best of emperors and most courageous of generals, 91.1).
But also moderation: see 16.12.
80
d. c. innes
prominent at the end (905) when Pliny returns to his own role as consul
in a double epilogue, first (903) the traditional personal debt of the two
consuls and then (94.195.5) a final prayer to Jupiter for the emperors
safety (94) and a final address to the senate with his personal pledge of
service as consul (95). Yet even in the more personal details of his career
Pliny emphasizes that things are no longer as they were under Domitian
(90.56, 92.4, implicitly at 93.1), and at the very end of the speech he links
himself to his recurrent contrast of the best and worst of emperors: I love
the best of emperors as much as I was hated by the worst (95.4).
A proem alerting us to the main themes of the speech seems unusual for
epideictic.50 Pliny may have been influenced by Ciceros invective Philippic
II, which followed his usual forensic and deliberative practice. As Cicero
advised in De Oratore, you should begin from the very entrails of the case,
ex ipsius uisceribus causae (2.31819).
After the proem we might expect origins, physical appearance and early
years. Pliny follows rhetorical theory in showing that it is their use, not
their possession that matters, and the only true praise is praise of the
mind. But he avoids the usual series of independent early sections, weaving
them instead into his wider narrative. On physical appearance Pliny is
very brief,51 but places it conventionally enough near the beginning (4.7).52
Trajan is a consistent whole, embodying the inner qualities but also the
outer qualities of a true emperor. He is tall and dignified, he has a fine head
and noble face, he has the strength and vigour appropriate to his age, and
his premature white hairs add a dignity which shows divine favour. But his
strength then becomes a recurrent theme, both literal and symbolic. Thus
after his adoption the elderly Nerva leans on him, putting the weight of
empire on his shoulders, drawing on his youth and strength (8.34), and
these symbolically strong shoulders recur in the speech (at 10.6, 57.5, 82.6).
50
51
52
It is not in the relatively detailed list of proem topoi in Rhet. Her. 3.1112, and Pernot (1993) 303
cites only Menander II 378 Sp. There a speech welcoming a new governor may begin You have
arrived with favourable omens from the emperor, brilliant like a ray of the sun sent down from on
high. Pernot takes this to anticipate a tripartite structure: the occasion, praise of emperor, praise
of governor. But this gives too much weight to a simple proem topos, a conventional comparison
between governor and emperor. Quint. Inst. 3.8.79 notes only that epideictic proems can be very
loosely relevant.
Menander II 372 Sp. is also brief and mentions only beauty at birth. But beauty fits a young man
(cf. Isoc. Evag. 22), and when at 2.6 the unnamed Domitian is acclaimed for beauty and Nero for
his actors gestures and voice (cf. Dio 3.134), these are inappropriate for an emperor. Bartsch (1994)
276 n. 18 wrongly sees a contradiction between 2.6 and 4.7: Trajan has the right physical qualities,
Domitian (and Nero) the wrong.
Cf. e.g. Plut. Cic. 3.7, Ant. 4.13. In biography it may appear late, as in Tac. Agr. 44.2 and regularly
in Suetonius (except for Titus 3), but in early position, as in Pliny, it seems to be linked to character.
Cf. Wardman (1967).
81
The date of delivery excludes Trajans Dacian triumph but Pliny introduces it as an imagined future
(16.317.4).
Cf. Menander II 372 Sp., which cites Isoc. Evag. 223.
See Braund (1996) and Rees (1998) 7983. Accessibility and even humility mark out the good ruler,
as in Trajans modest entry into Rome for the first time as emperor (Pan. 224).
Cf. Tac. Agr. 45.2. Red colouring is an attractive feature of the proposed bridegroom cited at p. 68
in Plin. Ep. 1.14.
They are also what Agricola achieved (Tac. Agr. 44.3).
82
d. c. innes
59
The three families embody three virtues, modesty, wisdom and piety: the title optimus embraces
these and every virtue. For more on historical exemplarity in the speech, see Henderson in
this volume.
For comparison with Zeus/Jupiter, cf. e.g. Theocritus 17.14 (Ptolemy), Cic. Pro Rosc. Am. 131 (Sulla)
or Hor. Carm. 3.5.14 (Augustus).
83
61
62
On indirect advice and covert criticism see Ahl (1984); Schouler (1986); Bartsch (1994) on Pliny.
Basic ancient texts: Demetrius, On Style 28795, Quint. Inst. 9.2.66 (writing under Domitian, he is
significantly silent on contemporary politics) and Pseudo-Dionysius 295358 U-R.
E.g. Syme (1958a) 3142, 578 a senatorial manifesto; Braund (1998) 66.
Fears (1981) 91024 notes the close links between Pliny and the reliefs on the arch of Trajan near
Beneventum, such as Trajans arrival on foot in Rome and the figures of Freedom, Concord and
Moderation. Fears argues also that the use of the title optimus is aired and tried out first in Pliny
before it appears on coins.
84
d. c. innes
Katherine Clarke reminds me of the varying interpretations of the senates praise of the emperor
in the Tiberian decrees (e.g. Cooley 1998). I should like to thank her and Donald Russell for their
helpful comments.
chapter 5
1
2
85
86
gesine manuwald
Ciceronian praise
87
imperial panegyric (71) and Ciceros De Lege Manilia proto-imperial panegyric (745). She thereby
highlights similarities between these speeches and later imperial ones, while they are not placed within
a broader development or related to their republican context. That Ciceros Pro Marcello was an
important source for Plinys Panegyricus had already been observed by Suster (1890), even though he
interpreted this relationship as the great Cicero having unwittingly inaugurated the decline of Roman
oratory. On the other hand Morford (1992) 5789 denied that Pro Marcello was a true forerunner of
the Panegyricus, while other scholars have confirmed this relationship: Fantham (1999) 228 sees Pro
Marcello as a double precedent, being both a speech of thanks given in and for the senate, and the
first such speech to an autocrat. Radice (1968) 170 thinks that the prototype for the treatment of the
subject is that of Cicero in the Pro Marcello. Levene (1997) esp. 823 observes a continuity of theme
between Pro Marcello and Pliny: more than a century of the development of Roman ruler-cult does
not seem to have made a fundamental difference to the way in which rulers are praised.
The rhetorical genre of epideictic includes both praise and its opposite, blame (e.g. Rhet. Her. 3.10;
Quint. Inst. 3.7.1). Since what is at issue in this context is the possible effect on Plinys Panegyricus,
this chapter will focus on praise and panegyric, which ancient rhetoricians regarded as the more
important element (on the relationship between epideictic and panegyric cf. Cic. De Orat. 2.3419,
Part. 10, 70; Quint. Inst. 3.3.14, 3.4.1214). For some aspects of praise and blame in Roman oratory
cf. Smith and Covino (2011).
It is hoped that this study might thereby also make a contribution towards a history of ancient
epideictic oratory, which does not yet exist (cf. Carey (2007) 250: A dedicated study of the evolution
of epideictic oratory is still awaited). For an overview of Greek epideictic oratory, cf. Carey (2007).
88
gesine manuwald
otherwise it would have been even more difficult for Cicero to talk about
his successes and his desire for them not to be forgotten.
Yet Cicero not only voiced such intentions for himself, but also presented
the desire for glory, defined as someones widespread reputation combined
with praise (Inv. 2.166 gloria est frequens de aliquo fama cum laude), as
a general aim, using it as an argument in various public contexts: on
several occasions he identified winning glory in exchange for virtuous
achievements as a main goal (e.g. Arch. 14, 26). Cicero even described
praise and glory as the only reward sought by virtue and the sole motivation
for outstanding achievements, possibly involving great dangers (e.g. Arch.
289, Rab. Perd. 29, Phil. 5.35). His engagement with the issue is also
demonstrated by a treatise De Gloria, written towards the end of his life,
which has not survived (cf. Att. 15.27.2, 16.2.6, Off. 2.31).
This brief selection shows that Cicero regarded being praised and winning glory as important elements in public life, which spur people on and
may function as arguments and influences.9 This raises the questions of
how these features materialized in the context of the Roman republic and
what role they played in republican oratory. An attempt at approaching
these on the basis of Ciceros preserved orations will be preceded by a
brief look at the theoretical background, since in the case of Cicero, who
was a versatile and prolific orator as well as a writer of rhetorical treatises,
praise/panegyric makes its appearance in both theory and practice.
Discussion of praise and rhetoric in Cicero
Given the importance that Cicero attached to praise as a motivation in
public life, it may come as a slight surprise that he gave less space to
the discussion of its rhetorical equivalent, the epideictic or demonstrative
genre of oratory, than one might expect.10 But this seems to agree with the
conventions of both ancient rhetorical theory and Roman society.
In what he says about epideictic, Cicero basically followed the ancient
rhetorical tradition first attested in Aristotle (cf. Arist. Rh. 1.3; cf. also
Rhet. Alex. 1.1, 1.3). In this tradition, there are three types of oratory; the third of these is the demonstrative/epideictic, also called the
9
10
However, Ciceros position became more qualified towards the end of his life, when he, probably
influenced by contemporary political conditions, acknowledged that glory could be misunderstood
and that an individuals passion for glory might ruin the republic (cf. Cic. Off., esp. 1.68; on this
issue cf. Long (1995)).
Cf. e.g. Cic. De Orat. 2.437, 2.3419, Inv. 2.1778, Part. 6982, Orat. 3742; cf. also Rhet. Her.
3.1015; Quint. Inst. 3.7.
Ciceronian praise
89
On the genres of rhetoric cf. e.g. Kennedy (1997); on rhetorical theory and panegyric, see Innes
in this volume.
Translation: May and Wisse (2001).
90
gesine manuwald
unreservedly be called epideictic in its entirety.13 And as for other orators from the republican period, there are a number of fragments and
testimonia pointing to funeral orations,14 but none that clearly indicates
laudatory orations in other contexts. This does not mean that epideictic
was non-existent in practice. In fact, it occurs rather frequently in speeches
that would primarily be assigned to the judiciary or deliberative genres,
yet include epideictic aspects or passages (cf. also Rhet. Her. 3.15; Quint.
Inst. 3.4.11).15 This fusion of oratorical genres might already suggest that
in Roman society the employment of panegyric tended to be political and
rarely merely celebratory.16
The Ciceronian speech that is mentioned most frequently as an oration
exhibiting markedly epideictic features and even some imperial characteristics is Pro Marcello, delivered in the senate in 46 bce (cf. Fam. 4.4.4, 4.11).17
Despite its title, this oration is not a forensic, but rather a deliberative
speech in terms of setting and addressees:18 Cicero thereby expressed his
and the senates gratitude to Caesar for having saved and reinstituted M.
Claudius Marcellus (cos. 51 bce). As the decision had already been made by
the time of Ciceros speech, he praised the person affected only marginally
(Marc. 4).
13
14
15
16
17
18
Ciceros lost and fragmentary speeches include examples of the limited type of epideictic, mentioned
by Antonius in De Oratore, namely character evidence (Testimonium in P. Clodium Pulchrum,
Testimonium in A. Gabinium). His speech In Senatu in Toga Candida contra C. Antonium et L.
Catilinam Competitores could be regarded as an oration of self-praise and blame of others. Further,
there are addresses to citizens or rulers of foreign towns or nations (Ad Ciues Hennae, In Concilio ad
Ariobarzanem III, Regem Cappadociae), which could be classified as epideictic in a broad sense; yet
they seem not to have been focused on extensive praise of the people addressed or other individuals
involved.
Cf. Q. Fabius Maximus Cunctator, Laudatio Funebris Quinti Filii; M. Claudius Marcellus, Laudatio
Funebris M. Claudii Marcelli Patris; Q. Caecilius L. f. Metellus, Laudatio Funebris L. Caecilii Metelli
Patris; Q. Fabius Maximus Allobrogicus, Laudatio P. Scipionis Africani Minoris; Q. Lutatius Catulus,
Laudatio Funebris Popiliae Matris; T. Pomponius Atticus, Laudatio Funebris Caeciliae Matris; C.
Iulius Caesar, Laudatio Iuliae Amitae, Laudatio Corneliae Uxoris; M. Iunius Brutus, Laudatio Ap.
Claudii Pulchri, Laudatio M. Porcii Catonis Uticensis; M. Antonius triumvir, Laudatio Funebris C.
Iulii Caesaris. See the conspectus operis in Malcovati (1976).
For some thoughts on Ciceros exploitation of the epideictic mode for forensic and political purposes
cf. also Dugan (2001). Standard formulae of praise in referring to people and institutions (e.g. uir
clarissimus) have been disregarded here since they have become conventional and do not carry a
particular meaning.
Cf. also Braund (1998) 55: Moreover, it [i.e. Latin panegyric] is characteristically rooted in highly
specific socio-political occasions.
Ciceros other Caesarian speeches (Pro Ligario, Pro Rege Deiotaro) are similar to some extent in
that Caesars reaction is crucial, but they do not contain as much obvious panegyric because of their
different aims and circumstances. Hence Pro Marcello will serve as the most significant example in
this context. On these speeches cf. Gotoff (1993, 2002).
Cf. e.g. Gotoff (1993) 1112, (2002) 219; Levene (1997) 67.
Ciceronian praise
91
Instead, Cicero used the occasion for a return to politics after an enforced
withdrawal during the preceding civil war (e.g. Marc. 13, Fam. 4.4.34), to
make a political statement and to commit Caesar to a republican policy.19
For these purposes Cicero praised Caesar for his military achievements,
exclusively due to Caesars outstanding abilities (e.g. Marc. 510, 28), and for
a variety of moral and intellectual virtues, including humanity, clemency,
moderation, generosity, magnanimity, prudence and wisdom (e.g. Marc.
1, 19).20 Thus Cicero tried to ensure a positive reception of his speech and
to establish a favourable attitude to his own future activities on the part of
Caesar (cf. Fam. 4.4.4).21
This provided the basis for a more wide-reaching political aim: Cicero
could not deny that Caesar had become all-powerful in Rome, and he
therefore did not argue, for instance, for a complete return to preCaesarian republican conditions. Instead, Cicero pointed out that the
republic depended on Caesars welfare and efforts or, in other words, that
its survival was guaranteed by Caesar. He emphasized that Caesar had preserved Marcellus for the res publica, that this action was brought about by
Caesar together with the senate, that Caesar aimed at keeping the constitution and that he placed the authority of the senate and the dignity
of the res publica above personal resentments (e.g. Marc. 3, 9, 13). Cicero
thereby tried to commit Caesar to being active for the benefit of all citizens
rather than for his personal advantage, while he insisted on the important role of the senate, argued for maintaining the republican constitution
as governing even Caesar, and outlined expectations for the future in a
reunited community under Caesars leadership (e.g. Marc. 18, 20, 216,
2732).22
19
20
21
22
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Ciceronian praise
93
This new style of speaking probably does not refer to the fact that Cicero introduces epideictic or
laudatory elements (so Dugan (2001) 43), since these had become common by his time; it rather
describes the fact that Cicero is talking extensively about literature and the accomplishments of a
poet in a court of law (see n. 27 below; on the style of this speech cf. Gotoff (1979) esp. 81).
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praise to the orator (e.g. Man. 3, 13, 278, 3642, 51).27 Pompey is said to
possess the four attributes of a perfect general (Man. 28: scientia militaris,
uirtus, auctoritas, felicitas), of which his previous achievements provide
ample testimony. And what is more, he has all the other qualities that are
required for a commander and any outstanding individual besides. There
is some praise of the proposer of the bill, C. Manilius, and the audience,
who are to vote on the bill (Man. 69), so as to bring them round to Ciceros
assessment of the matter. The audience is the entity to be influenced; yet
this is achieved mainly by heaping praise on the object rather than on the
addressee.
Technically, De Lege Manilia would have to be classified as a deliberative
speech, since Cicero was trying to persuade the assembly of the Roman
people to vote for a particular law. Cicero, however, did not attempt to
achieve this aim by rational, political argument: instead, he praised the
young Pompey elaborately in order to prove that he was qualified for
an extraordinary command, which was in fact unconstitutional. Cicero
thereby eschewed discussion of this delicate political issue (Man. 604),
while the overwhelming qualities of Pompey made his cause seem convincing. The speech is therefore a prime example of laudatory oratory used
in politics, and it also demonstrates that at this early stage in his career
Cicero was already willing to assign great power to private individuals if he
approved of them and thought that the measure was in the interest of the
republic (e.g. Man. 678).
In an even more sophisticated way Cicero argued for conveying farreaching powers to individuals at the end of his life, in the corpus of
the Philippics. In these speeches, delivered in 4443 bce after Caesars
assassination, Cicero tried to make clear distinctions between the two sides
confronting each other and to spur the senate and the Roman people to
decisive action by, on the one hand, praising the young Octavian and others
who were working for the republic, in Ciceros view,28 and, on the other
hand, denigrating the opponents, the later triumvir Marcus Antonius and
his followers.
27
28
The phrase in hac insolita mihi ex hoc loco ratione dicendi (Man. 3) does not point to the epideictic
elements of this speech and define them as unusual for Cicero; instead it indicates that this is
Ciceros first speech as a magistrate in front of the Roman people (see n. 26 above).
The qualities attributed to Octavian in the Philippics and the language used (e.g. Phil. 3.3, 4.3, 4.4,
5.23, 5.43, 5.47, 5.50, 13.1819; cf. Ad Brut. 1.3.1) are reminiscent of De Lege Manilia (e.g. Man. 28, 33,
36, 49). Like Pompey in that speech (e.g. Man. 41, 48, 612), Octavian is presented in the Philippics
as a promising young person sent by the gods who unexpectedly saves the republic from a crisis
(Phil. 5.23, 5.43, 12.9, 13.18, 13.46, 14.25).
Ciceronian praise
95
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After the customary religious ceremonies at the start of a new year, the new consuls used to hold
a senate meeting on 1 January, which was dedicated to the general political situation and during
which they made their inaugural speeches. Only in a few instances was a specific issue dealt with
on these occasions as it was in 63 bce (cf. Cic. Red. Pop. 1115, Sest. 725 for 1 January 57 bce,
Phil. 5 for 1 January 43 bce). At any rate the tradition that consuls made inaugural speeches is not
an imperial invention, but goes back to republican times, while there is, of course, a difference in
the bodies responsible and the actual power of the consul (cf. Nixon and Rodgers (1994) 3: For
example, it is clear that the gratiarum actio became panegyrical at an early stage. In the republic,
it was customary for consuls to deliver a speech of thanks to the senatus populusque Romanus for
their consulship. By Augustus day the incumbent thanked the gods, and Caesar (Ov. Pont. 4.4.35
39). Plinys Panegyricus merely happens to be the first of such speeches to have survived). Pliny
remarks that both institution and topics had become hackneyed by his time (cf. Ep. 3.13.2, 3.18.1,
3.18.6).
Ciceronian praise
97
30
Levene (1997) 678, 77 seems to have been the only one so far to connect Ciceros speeches after his
return from exile with his Pro Marcello and Plinys Panegyricus in the sense that all of them can be
regarded as gratiarum actiones, while at the same time rightly distinguishing between praise for the
people and that for individual rulers.
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cicero and pliny
Pliny mentions Cicero several times in his letters and compares himself
to this model in a variety of respects.31 For instance, besides the obvious
issue of writing, he notes that they were both consuls, augurs and patrons
of poets (Ep. 3.15.1, 4.8.45). In these areas Cicero is Plinys model as he is
for his writing in general (Ep. 4.8.45). More precisely, Pliny justifies his
making of verses, which apparently had been criticized by contemporaries,
by the fact that, in addition to practising other, more serious genres, Cicero
also produced verses (Ep. 5.3.5, 7.4.36). In letter writing, Pliny as well as
his correspondents regard Cicero as a model, even though Pliny thinks that
his situation is so dissimilar that Ciceros standard is unattainable for him
(Ep. 9.2).
In oratory too Cicero is among Plinys major stylistic models (Ep. 1.2.4,
1.5.1113, 1.20, 9.26.8). Yet, as regards oratory, Pliny talks only about style
with reference to Cicero, but not about topics, genres or occasions. Nevertheless, it is clear that he was thoroughly familiar with Ciceros works and
composed his own oratory in relation to them. So it would hardly be
surprising if in the Panegyricus, his sole extant speech, some influence of
Ciceros oratory was detected.32
The evidence on Cicero presented so far suggests some conclusions on
the relationship between Plinys Panegyricus and Ciceronian praise: just
as Cicero had done at the start of his consular year (and again after his
return from exile), Pliny gave an inaugural speech as consul and praised
the body that had appointed him. Obviously, election and appointment
practices as well as the actual political influence of consuls had changed
by imperial times. Therefore Cicero as the incoming magistrate was able
31
32
On Plinys relationship to Cicero (with respect to the letters) cf. e.g. Wolff (2004); Marchesi (2008)
20740. In this context one must bear in mind the cautionary remarks of Riggsby (1995) 132
n. 19: The potential for conflict over just what Cicero stands for points up the fact that Plinys
model is a particularly early second-century construct which need not correspond to either ours or
Ciceros own versions of Cicero (note particularly Plinys Ciceros commitment to neoteric-style
poetry), nor even to other possible contemporary versions. The study of such versions, or the
earlier ones reflected in Quintilian or Seneca the Elder, are the topic of another essay. Similarly, the
reconstruction of Catullus and the neoterics implied in Pliny would be an interesting, but again
distinct, area of study. But if one concentrates on issues comparable in Cicero and Pliny without
putting too much focus on Plinys evaluation of his model, the problem is perhaps sufficiently
sidestepped.
Another, non-political epideictic speech by Pliny is his funeral oration on the son of his friend
Spurinna. Therein he follows the Roman tradition, albeit adapted to imperial conventions, in that
such speeches were written up and recited on occasions distinct from the actual event (cf. Ep. 3.10;
cf. Fantham (1999) 227). For some examples of epideictic in Plinys letters cf. Aubrion (1975). For
an attempt at distinguishing between different types of panegyric or propaganda in the epistles and
in the Panegyricus cf. Hoffer (2006).
Ciceronian praise
99
to outline his political programme for his time in office and to ask the
audience to contribute to it by praising them. This option was not open to
consuls in Plinys time even though in his speech Pliny retained the senate
as his primary addressee33 and thereby kept to republican conventions on
a formal level.
As for the role of panegyric in the area of contents, Pliny instead praised
the emperor, i.e. the individual who had appointed him and who was
the only one who actually influenced politics. By this strategy Pliny tried
to commit the emperor to a policy of which he approved and which
he regarded as beneficial to the political community. Hence this praise
basically has a hortatory function and gives the speech the character of a
speculum principis (e.g. Pan. 4.1, 45, Ep. 3.18.23).34 Cicero had used a similar strategy of praising people to trigger certain actions in De lege Manilia,
Pro Marcello and the Philippics. These were not the inaugural speeches of
a consul, but they were given in contexts in which Cicero accepted that
powerful individuals were needed or that powerful individuals made decisions. Therefore he followed a strategy later used towards emperors: as he
had identified empowering and influencing these people as the only way
to shape politics, he did so by means of praise.
Both orators, therefore, combine praise and political purposes in particular speeches and use praise as a tool in politics when other methods
fail to promise success, because of the distribution of power and the role
of the orator in the political framework. Plinys political strategy is similar
to Ciceros procedure in particular speeches: Pliny too accepts the existence and pre-eminent position of a single powerful individual (cf. also
Ep. 3.20.12); at the same time he makes requirements of this individual
as to his morals and behaviour. His political concept also overlaps with
Ciceros, since he attempts to integrate the emperor into a constitutional
framework and tries to retain elements of the republican constitution in
emphasizing the role of libertas and the important position of the senate; if
the ruler does not strive towards his own personal advantage, but acts for
the common welfare and subjects himself to the needs of the community
and the constitution, the res publica and its ideals can continue, as it were
33
34
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(e.g. Pan. 626, 76, 93).35 Just as Cicero does in the Philippics in view of
Caesars preceding dictatorship, Pliny welcomes the regained freedom of
speech and the opportunities for political intervention after the reign of
Domitian (esp. Pan. 66.45).
The powerful mens virtues that are highlighted in the Ciceronian
speeches and in the Panegyricus necessarily change according to the occasion, and the rhetorical style of such political speeches of praise develops
according to the conventions of each period and each orators preferences. Yet the functional use of praise as an influence on a single powerful
individual and the attempt thereby to pursue ones own political agenda
with a republican background are the same. Cicero thus prepared the way
for Plinys Panegyricus not only by providing a paradigmatic example of
sophisticated political oratory, but also by showing strategies of employing
panegyric as a political tool within a political framework dominated by
individuals.
conclusion
Overall, therefore, the examples of Ciceronian panegyric discussed suggest that Plinys Panegyricus is not something radically new, but rather a
logical further development of an existing oratorical genre under altered
circumstances. This concerns both the circumstances of the speech and
the political strategy employed: while basic occasion and function remain
similar, the republican gratiarum actio of a new consul has developed into
a vote of thanks to the appointing emperor combined with praise; and
presenting ones own policy has changed into an attempt at influencing the
emperors policy.
Hence in Plinys Panegyricus the element of praise of individuals for
political purposes comes to the fore; still, the ideal of the republican constitution is not completely abandoned, and therefore, in this respect too,
there is a logical development from republican speeches praising individuals. This means not merely that there are single speeches that could be
regarded as forerunners of imperial panegyric, but that all these instances
have to be placed within a wider context and a broader development.
Even the earliest forms of panegyric at Rome are rarely dissociated
completely from a political context: if someones ancestors or a deceased
member of the family are praised at a funeral, this is advantageous to the
35
Cf. also Radice (1968); Kuhn (1985) 6; Morford (1992); Fantham (1999) 2301; Ramelli (1999);
Barbu-Moravova (2000).
Ciceronian praise
101
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to fight M. Antonius and thus save the republic (in Ciceros view). The
difference in the Caesarian speeches is, of course, that the individuals talked
about are not present and the praise is designed to move the audience to
authorize their deeds, which rather reminds one of De Lege Manilia.
Yet the argument itself and the qualities Cicero praised in individuals
are reminiscent of imperial categories: by singling out individuals and by
claiming that those who were active in the best interest of the republic (as
judged by Cicero) needed to be given unlimited powers and had the right
to act independently without constitutional backing, he prepared (perhaps
unknowingly and unwittingly) the ideology of the principate (esp. Phil.
11.268).
So one might venture to conclude that in the speeches of Cicero, whose
lifetime coincided with the beginnings of the gradual change from the
republican to the imperial period, a transition from republican panegyric
to imperial panegyric can be seen, both in form and application and
in the underlying ideology. Cicero began with praise of individuals in
clearly defined contexts such as court cases, well within established Roman
conventions. By the time he started to become more involved in political
life, he used praise as a political tool, and when he regarded it as politically
expedient, he did not hesitate to praise individuals to endow them with
superior power beyond the republican framework and to influence their
wielding of this power.
Cicero therefore proved to be an influential model for later orators since
he had not only become a canonical and paradigmatic representative of the
genre, but also showed ways to develop and adapt the traditional (originally
Greek) conventions of oratorical panegyric to a changing environment, to
use the genre of epideictic as a political tool and to pursue ones political
goals, if one relies on others, by exploiting praise. Therefore it is not surprising that Pliny, as a diligent reader and excerptor of previous writers, could
not only find a precedent for this type of speech in Cicero (his inaugural
speeches as consul), but as an attentive student could see paradigmatic ways
to participate in politics under monarchical conditions by means of praise.
It therefore does not come as a real surprise that his orations sincerity in
comparison with other texts of the period has been stressed:36 Pliny does
not just deliver obligatory praise, but pursues a serious aim as he tries to
influence politics in imperial times.
Some of Ciceros speeches on the threshold of the principate can therefore
be seen as an important step in the development of political panegyric at
36
Ciceronian praise
103
Rome and thus as a structural influence on Pliny. Living at the time of a fully
established principate, Pliny further developed the methods indicated by
Cicero and applied them successfully to contemporary circumstances. As
he thereby completed the development inaugurated by Cicero and adapted
the typological model established by Cicero to the altered conditions, his
speech could become a convenient and ready-made model for later Latin
writers.
chapter 6
Contemporary contexts
Bruce Gibson
104
Contemporary contexts
105
more to say about forensic and deliberative oratory. From Plinys own time,
Quintilian, for example, is very clear on the place of epideictic as the third
part of oratory (Inst. 2.4.21), and this is reflected in the scarcity of coverage
which is found in other rhetorical manuals of a whole range of periods
(compare for instance the brief treatment of epideictic in the anonymous
Rhetorica ad Herennium, 3.103.15). However, in spite of the slight emphasis
on epideictic as a separate form in rhetorical treatises, it is important to bear
in mind that praise and blame very regularly spill out of pure epideictic
into other types of oratory, as noted in the Rhetorica ad Herennium (3.15).1
It is also the case that praise and blame might be felt to have a central role in
genres outside oratory, such as epic or historiography, especially as they are
genres where the representation of speech is a significant feature.2 Hence
we find in the late antique commentator on Virgil, Servius, the assertion
that Virgils intention in writing the Aeneid was to imitate Homer and to
praise Augustus.
From Plinys own time, there is much material which points towards
the importance of praise and blame in discourses and genres of all types.
The pervasiveness of epideictic influence in the Greek world has been
demonstrated by Alex Hardie, in his work on Statius and the culture of
professional poetry, especially in Greek-speaking areas of the empire.3 And
in the culture of the Latin world, we can note that Quintilian believed
that it was appropriate for those learning to speak to be trained in exercises
consisting of praise and blame (Inst. 2.4.20).4 Quintilian also emphasizes
the fact that epideictic speeches could be regarded as setting a high value
on entertainment of the audience, which might well be achieved through
extra stylistic flourishes:5
nam et in iis actionibus quae in aliqua sine dubio ueritate uersantur sed sunt ad popularem aptatae delectationem, quales legimus panegyricos totumque hoc demonstratiuum genus, permittitur adhibere plus cultus, omnemque artem quae latere
plerumque in iudiciis debet non confiteri modo sed ostentare etiam hominibus in
hoc aduocatis. (Quint. Inst. 2.10.11)
1
2
3
4
5
For further discussion of epideictic, including its capacity to blend with other types of discourse, see
Innes and Manuwald in this volume.
Note too that historiography more generally might be viewed in terms of praise: thus Tacitus,
commenting on the remoteness of the Second Punic War as subject matter, remarks that it does not
matter whether one praises Carthaginians or Romans more (Tac. Ann. 4.33.4): for the possibility that
Tacitus is referring to Silius Italicus here, see Woodman (2009a) 37. For the general association of
praise and blame with historiography, see Woodman (1988) 415, 958.
Hardie (1983).
See Reinhardt and Winterbottom (2006) 199100 ad loc. for further examples. For more discussion
of the place of encomium in school training, see Innes, p. 68 in this volume.
Reinhardt and Winterbottom (2006) 1723 ad loc. offer useful discussion of this passage; cf. Quint.
Inst. 3.4.14.
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For even in those speeches which are certainly involved in some aspect of real life,
but are designed for the peoples pleasure, such as are the panegyrics that we read
and the whole of this kind of epideictic writing, it is permissible to bring to bear
more of ones stylistic qualities, and not only to own up to all that skill that one
should generally keep hidden in forensic speeches, but even to put it on display
for those summoned for the purpose.
Equally, one should not ignore other types of examples from outside oratory. The Letters of Pliny himself are an important place to see how this
diffusion of praise and blame operates on the ground, with Pliny regularly
seeking to praise his friends and sometimes also casting aspersions on his
enemies. The Letters also contain evidence for the way in which epideictic
concerns could affect other types of literary work: thus we hear of C. Fannius three books on the deaths of famous men (Plin. Ep. 5.5.34), where
what is at stake is clearly laudation of those who have died.6
The centrality of praise as a feature of public life in Rome, even under the
republic, is also something which needs to be noted. As early as the second
century bce, Polybius noted the effects of laudatory oratory on listeners
at the funerals of distinguished public figures (6.53.23, 6.54.12).7 With
regard to praise of the living, the late republic furnishes an example such
as the Pro Marcello of Cicero, where Caesar, already very close to the role
that would later be occupied by the emperors, is praised for his unique
qualities and his role as the healer of the problems of the Roman state.8
And it should not be forgotten that Plinys Panegyricus is part of a tradition
whereby the holder of a consulship would express his thanks (gratiarum
actio). This is a custom which goes back to the time of Augustus, since, as
Marcel Durry noted in his commentary, the earliest certain evidence is in
Ovids Epistulae ex Ponto at 4.4.3542, which suggests that the practice was
already in place around the end of Augustus reign.9
oratory in the age of trajan
Though Tacitus Dialogus (usually dated to the period in which Plinys
speech was delivered and then written up for publication10 ) famously
6
7
8
9
10
See further Coleman (2000) 224; Ash (2003) 2223; Marchesi (2008) 158, 17189 on the obituary
letters in Pliny, and the wider tradition of biographies and literature on the deaths of famous men.
On the tradition of funerary oratory in Rome, see Kierdorf (1980).
For Ciceronian praise and blame, see e.g. Levene (1997) 6877; Manuwald, pp. 8797 in this
volume.
Durry (1938) 34.
The precise chronological relationship between the two works has generated a lively controversy:
on the dating of the Dialogus and the publication of the Panegyricus, see e.g. Murgia (1985); Brink
Contemporary contexts
107
begins with the aim of investigating the idea that oratory was in decline
after its heyday in the time of Cicero, there are more positive testimonies
with regard to the standard and quality of contemporary oratory. The
anecdote in a later biography of the emperor Hadrian (SHA Hadr. 3.1) to
the effect that he was laughed at for rustic pronunciation of Latin in the
senate, whilst holding office as quaestor during the reign of Trajan, points
to an underlying concern that standards should not deteriorate. More
concretely, we can note Plinys interest in his letters in giving an account
of oratorical performances, both in a courtroom setting and elsewhere.11
Plinys letters (Ep. 2.11 and 12) on the trial of the notorious Marius Priscus
in 100, before the delivery of the Panegyricus later in the same year, illustrate
well how important forensic oratory was to Pliny and his readers;12 the fact
that Trajan is reported to have presided as judge in public cases (Cass. Dio
68.10.2) will have increased the prestige available to orators. The gloomy
picture of oratory evoked by Tacitus Dialogus must therefore be treated
with some caution.
But the importance of praise too should not be underestimated. One
example of the kind of evidence which we have (which also reflects the
significance of discourses of praise in the elite culture of the early empire)
is Plinys Ep. 2.1, relating to the death of Verginius Rufus, who, remarkably,
held the consulship three times in the course of an extraordinary career
which had seen him refusing the throne offered him by his own legions
in the aftermath of Neros death in 68. Pliny strikingly goes on to note
in this letter how Verginius was praised after death: laudatus est a consule
Cornelio Tacito; nam hic supremus felicitati eius cumulus accessit, laudator
eloquentissimus (his encomium was delivered by the consul Cornelius Tacitus, for this final pinnacle was added to his great fortune, that he had a
most eloquent encomiast, Ep. 2.1.6). It is striking that it is Tacitus, whose
own work on oratory had pointed to decline, whom Pliny declares to be at
the forefront of contemporary oratory.13 Furthermore, the detail at Ep. 2.1.5
that Verginius died as a result of complications arising from an accident
sustained whilst preparing a speech of thanks for his third consulship in 97
11
12
13
(1994); Mayer (2001) 227; most recently, Woytek (2006) has argued powerfully for publication of
the Panegyricus in 107 ce. For Plinys own account of the process of revision of the speech, Ep. 3.18
is a key text, on which see now Marchesi (2008) 198203.
Mayer (2003) is a key treatment of the importance of oratory and Plinys use of his letters as a means
to emphasizing his own role as an orator.
Coleman (2000) 25 suggests that the role of Pliny and Tacitus in this trial may be comparable to
the activities of the delatores under Domitian.
On Ep. 2.1, see Marchesi (2008) 18999.
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bruce gibson
under Trajans predecessor, Nerva (reigned 968), perhaps hints at the prestige accorded to such praise oratory, and the expectation that even such
a venerable and respected figure as Verginius was nevertheless supposed
to put in a high-quality performance, however frequent such speeches of
thanks must have been.
Praise of Trajan is also at stake elsewhere in the letters of Pliny, as in
Ep. 6.27, where Pliny, safe in the glory of his own panegyric of Trajan,
responds to advice on how his correspondent Vettenius Severus as consul
designate should speak in praise of Trajan. While the occasion of this
speech is likely to be different from the timing of the Panegyricus, which
Pliny delivered on his actual assumption of the consulship, it is striking
how Pliny in his letter evokes themes also found in his panegyric: he
explains how he had wanted to draw a contrast between good and bad
emperors (Ep. 6.27.3), but then, significantly, adds that perhaps the times
have changed, and there is therefore scope for praising new achievements
of Trajan (Ep. 6.27.45; cf. Pan. 2.3). This letter therefore points again
not only to the importance of imperial praise, but also to the difficulties
involved in covering suitable material. It is also a reminder that, even within
a narrow span of years (Severus held the consulship in 107, only seven years
after Pliny), Pliny was prepared to acknowledge that the conditions for
imperial panegyric might well have changed, suggesting that panegyric,
far from being a stale and fossilized mode of utterance, was constantly
having to adapt itself and change in order to be viable. Given the prestige
still accruing to oratory which Plinys letters attest, speakers of imperial
panegyric, one of the most conspicuous types of speech made by the
senatorial class, had to do everything to avoid giving the impression of a
stale and predictable discourse. A generation or so later, we can observe the
excitement with which Fronto contemplates the prospect of his speech in
praise of Antoninus Pius, and the possibility that it will not lie forgotten
in the archives of the senate (Ep. 2.4.1 Van Den Hout).14
other writing in the age of trajan
It is also important to recognize that Plinys praise of Trajan has other counterparts elsewhere, not only in oratory, but also in other genres. Prefaces are
one place where we can get an idea of prevailing trends. Tacitus celebration
in the preface to the Histories of the liberty of thought and expression which
characterized the reigns of Trajan and his predecessor Nerva we have already
14
Contemporary contexts
109
seen, but the preface to his Agricola is also a text which, like the Panegyricus,
draws attention to the chronological divide separating itself off from the
prior Flavian era that had come to an end with the murder of Domitian
(reigned 8196).15 As well as constructing the antithesis between good rule
(Trajan) and bad (Domitian) that is familiar from the Panegyricus, Tacitus
strikingly sees the earlier period in terms of a failure of utterance (and
perhaps even memory) in response to the tyranny of Domitian (Ag. 2.34),
who had not hesitated to persecute literature which was deemed offensive
(Ag. 2.12). This in turn allows Tacitus to present his work on Agricola
as part of a new process of slow and hesitant literary revival under more
favourable political conditions, non tamen pigebit uel incondita ac rudi uoce
memoriam prioris seruitutis ac testimonium praesentium bonorum composuisse
(it will not, however, be displeasing even with an unformed and rough
voice to have composed a memoir of prior servitude and a testimonial
to present good fortune, Ag. 3.3). And so, in the opening chapter of the
Histories, Tacitus regards Nerva and Trajan as appropriate and agreeable
subjects for him to work on in his old age. The sense of literary revival is of
course closely bound up with the concept of intellectual freedom, a topic
which Pliny in the Panegyricus makes much of, reporting that the need for
flattery of the emperor in both private and public discourse has gone (Pan.
2.13), whilst acknowledging as well the way in which Trajan has done
much to enhance rhetorical and philosophical studies (Pan. 47.13).16
A perhaps somewhat unexpected, but nevertheless important, parallel
for the Panegyricus is also provided by the monograph by Julius Frontinus,
consul for the second and third time in 98 and 100,17 in two books on
aqueducts.18 This text is most likely to have been begun under Nerva, but
to have been completed after Trajans accession,19 and gives a flavour of
how praise of the emperor might be presented even in a highly specialized
context. In the preface, for instance, we can note Frontinus initial emphasis
on the delegation of authority by the emperor (Fron. Aq. praef. 12), which
is perhaps of a piece with Plinys emphasis on Trajans desire not to trespass
15
16
17
18
19
Woodman (forthcoming a) offers a full treatment of the Agricolas preface and its treatment of time.
For a positive view of Trajans intellectual capacities, see Moles (1990) 3001 and n. 15. For the
rhetoric of literary revival under Trajan, cf. Plinys remarks on Titinius Capito at Ep. 8.12.1, though,
as Coleman (2000) 37 notes, this kind of thing can be found in the era of Domitian as well: see the
praise of Manilius Vopiscus at Stat. Silv. 1. praef. 235.
Frontinus first consulship is probably to be dated to 73: see Rodgers (2004) 1.
On the flurry of technical writing which is likely to have been composed under Trajan, see Coleman
(2000) 278. Key recent studies of Frontinus include the commentaries of Del Chicca (2004) and
Rodgers (2004), as well as Peachin (2004) and Konig (2007).
For the date, see Rodgers (2004) 58, Konig (2007) 179 and n. 17.
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22
23
24
Though note that in fact Domitian too appointed the equestrian Titinius Capito to the post of ab
epistulis (which he would continue to hold in the succeeding reigns): see further Saller (2000) 11.
On the use of the title optimus in the Panegyricus, see e.g. Rees (2001) 1602; Seelentag (2004)
2407; Gibson (2010) 1303. For optimus as a title given to earlier emperors, see Woodman (1977)
245 on Vell. 2.126.5.
See e.g. Woodman (1977) 241 on Vell. 2.126.3.
For Trajans earlier career before becoming emperor, see Roche, pp. 1822 in this volume.
Though note that if Woytek (2006) is right to put the publication of the speech as not before 107,
the audience of the published speech would therefore have been familiar with Trajans final conquest
of the Dacians.
Contemporary contexts
111
Rome,25 and his response to the failure of the Nile to flood in Egypt
(Pan. 2932). Similarly, when Frontinus discusses the economics of how
the workforce of the citys aqueducts is paid, great emphasis is laid on how
there is a clear distinction between the civic treasury (the aerarium) and
the emperors own funds (fiscus) with regard to the sources from which
emoluments are drawn, but Frontinus is also careful to emphasize how the
emperor funds material expenses as well (Aq. 118).26 In the same section,
Frontinus also makes it clear that funds accruing through payments for
water-rights, which had previously gone to Domitian, were remitted to
the people by Nerva. These two strands, a transparent distinction between
imperial and private funds, and the euergetism of the emperor, illustrate
the kinds of rhetoric which were possible about the domestic achievements
of Nerva and Trajan. In the Panegyricus, they find their counterpart in
chapters 3641, where Pliny speaks first of the absolutely clear distinction
between the state treasury and Trajans private funds, and then of Trajans
measures to reform taxation. Frontinus, it is true, does not include Plinys
emphasis on the manner in which the privy purse obtained much of its
funding under Domitian as a result of confiscations (Pan. 42), but the
focus in both texts on imperial benevolence and the distinction between
different kinds of funds is an important one. We can see too, as we take our
leave of Frontinus, how the signature keyword of Plinys speech, optimus
(best), is also a gambit used, though less expansively, by Frontinus at the
start of book 2 (Aq. 64) when referring to the foresight of the best and most
diligent emperor (prouidentia optimi diligentissimique Neruae principis).27
A quite different kind of praise literature is represented by the Greek
oratory of Dio Chrysostom, most notably in the four celebrated kingship
orations (Or. 14).28 These speeches are certainly from the period after
Domitians death,29 but have a different series of approaches and emphases.
In one sense, the career of Dio of course represents a very different path
from that of Pliny, since he typified the Greek-speaking elites of the eastern
25
26
27
28
29
Vell. 2.126.3 similarly notes the benign pricing of corn under Tiberius: see further Woodman (1977)
241 ad loc.
Of course such claims relating to an emperors use of his personal funds may also reflect (or indeed
be reflected in) a regimes own rhetoric: cf. ILS 293, from North Africa and dating from 112, referring
to a new bridge built by Trajan: [pon]tem nouum a fundamentis [op]era militum suorum et pecunia
sua [p]rouinciae Africae fecit.
Rodgers (2004) 227 deletes optimi and -que here, comparing prouidentia diligentissimi principis at
Aq. 87.2, but even in the Panegyricus Pliny uses the word optimus of Nerva (together with Trajan) at
Pan. 7.4.
Moles (1990) is an essential treatment of these speeches; see also the discussion in Swain (1996)
1926.
Desideri (1978) 297 suggests that the Third Oration may refer to Nerva, rather than to Trajan.
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empire, being a member of a leading family at Prusa in Bithynia in northwest Asia Minor. On the other hand, Dio offers some striking intersections
with the world of Pliny the Younger. Perhaps the least significant aspect
of this, oddly, is Dios own encounter with Pliny, recorded in Ep. 10.81
and 82, which deal with a dispute involving Dio which is presented before
Pliny, with the orator being blamed for not presenting due account of
his management of a public building project and being accused of having
located a statue of Trajan in the same place where members of his family
were buried.30 Trajans reply emphasizes the need not to press the charge
of maiestas.
Though the juxtaposition of Pliny and Dio may appeal to those who
pursue literary prosopography, Dios career is of more importance to the
Panegyricus if we reflect that he too had had a difficult time under Domitian,
having been exiled at an early point in the reign for offending the emperor;31
while his likely connections with the earlier Stoic Musonius Rufus,32 who
had been exiled under Nero, remind us furthermore of the way in which
philosophy could sometimes fall foul of imperial circles. It is interesting
that Fronto includes the philosopher Euphrates, lauded by Pliny in Ep.
1.10, alongside Dio himself in a list of pupils of Musonius Rufus.33 On the
other hand, the presence of philosophy in Dios kingship orations is much
more marked than anything remotely comparable in Plinys Panegyricus.
This can be seen, for instance, in the presence of philosophic myth as a
means of writing political theory: thus the First Oration has a long section
(1.5684) in which the god Hermes takes Heracles to see the twin female
personifications of Kingship and Tyranny, in a manner which directly
recalls the tradition going back to Prodicus that reported a choice made
by Heracles between Virtue and Vice.34 Even less directly about Trajan
is the Second Oration, which is cast as a conversation between Philip II
of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great about Homer, which then
leads into a discussion of kingship which is largely conducted through
30
31
32
33
34
Contemporary contexts
113
36
37
38
39
40
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addressed as dominus et deus, as is alleged in Suet. Dom. 13.2 (the issue is not
straightforward),41 we can note the way in which Zeus is a present force in
the orations, just as a role is given to Jupiter in the Panegyricus of Pliny.42 In
both cases, we can see the role of the traditional Olympian as reflective of
the desire to pull back from the way in which Domitian had too obviously
assumed various aspects of Jupiter in his self-presentation. Assuredly, there
are complexities to the presentation of Domitian in earlier periods, but
what is important here is the way in which Jupiter and Zeus are brought
back to prominence in Pliny and Dio. In Pliny it might be argued that
there are some disquieting moments in the treatment of Jove and Trajan.
Thus Jupiters cult title of Optimus Maximus, used by Pliny at the start
of the speech, is perhaps made problematic in the rest of the speech, since
the title optimus is so relentlessly used of Trajan himself, even though at the
time of delivery optimus was only an unofficial part of Trajans titulature.
When Pliny invokes Jupiter at the end of the speech through his Capitoline title, it is almost as if the model of the emperor as an equivalent
of Jove, already something with a long history in the poets, is somehow
creeping back in, with the hint that optimus is Trajans title now, especially
as Pliny has already suggested that Trajan is somehow acting for Jupiter
(Pan. 80.45).43 By contrast, in Dio the distinction between Zeus and the
good king is portrayed with a much clearer hierarchy: thus, in the Second
Oration, a discussion of the bull simile applied to Agamemnon in Iliad
2.4803 leads to the not unexpected comparison between a bull and a king
(Or. 2.6572), but this pattern of rulership is made more complex by the
way in which Dio adds a further dimension, suggesting that the relationship between Zeus and a king is analogous to that between herdsmen and
bull, with the salutary additional reminder that the herdsmen do not allow
a bad bull to continue to cause trouble (Or. 2.738).44
The second area of overlap between Dios orations and Plinys Panegyricus is the taste for the antithesis of good and bad king. To some extent this
is of course a traditional theme, and Dios treatment in the Third Oration
(3.429) of the basic three types of government (kingship, aristocracy and
democracy) and the corrupt forms that often ensue may be felt to evoke
Polybius celebrated treatment of the mixed constitution in book 6, even
41
42
43
44
See e.g. Jones (1992) 1089; Nauta (2002) 3823; Gibson (2006) 923.
Levene (1997) is a fundamental treatment of divinity in the context of imperial panegyric.
Cf. Bartsch (1994) 1634 on divine comparisons in the Panegyricus; Levene (1997) 812; Rees (2001)
164; Gibson (2010) 126.
On this section of Oration 2, see Moles (1990) 3456. Oration 1.3749 is a further treatment of Zeus
and the issue of kingship; cf. Moles (1990) 31618.
Contemporary contexts
115
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exemplary and ideal for those who are to come. Hence the greater emphasis
on directness of praise in Pliny, whereas in Dio the philosophic guise in
which the speeches are couched creates distance, and a sense of something
generalized, which nevertheless is in spite of all Dios protestations
generally favourable and even flattering towards Trajan.
a new kind of praise?
The way in which Pliny, as we have seen, cannot help evoking the equation
of emperor and Jupiter which Dio is much more successful at controlling
should remind us that Trajanic praise may not always be so straightforwardly innocent when set alongside its Domitianic predecessor. To this
extent, it is useful to consider what the nature of the contemporary context
itself is, as a means of seeing how far the divide set up by Pliny between
the age of Domitian and that of Trajan is actually successful. Dios remark,
mentioned above, that he was someone who told the truth both in the past
and in the present under Trajan (Or. 3.1213), is a useful passage to bear in
mind when probing the extent to which Trajanic rhetoric may or may not
succeed in its anxious task of self-definition against the previous age.
Pliny in particular wants to see a clear divide. This comes through most
clearly when he establishes a link between the nature of the age and the
type of discourse which it produces: discernatur orationibus nostris diuersitas
temporum, et ex ipso genere gratiarum agendarum intellegatur cui quando sint
actae (let the different quality of the age be marked out in our speeches, and
from the very type of thanks that are to be expressed, let it be understood
who is being given them, and when, Pan. 2.3).47 At a stroke Pliny conveys
how Trajan leads to new kinds of utterance (cf. Tac. Hist. 1.1.4, quoted
above).
Inevitably, given the damnatio memoriae which was applied to Domitian
after his death,48 there are no surviving examples of oratory from his reign,
though we do at least hear of the trials that are documented as having taken
place under him; examples include the trials of figures such as Arulenus
Rusticus and Herennius Senecio mentioned by Tacitus in the Agricola (2.1,
45.1). What we do have, however, is evidence of various types of writers
who bridge the gap between Domitian and Trajan. For the orators, we
should note that the contemporary context includes Pliny and Tacitus,
47
48
Contemporary contexts
117
For the suggestion that Tacitus fame as an orator goes back to Domitians reign, see Syme (1958a) 66,
though Tacitus extremely successful public career will in any case have required oratorical expertise.
Coleman (2000) is a crucial treatment of the continuities and differing shadings of emphasis that
characterize the literary output that follows on from Domitians death.
Cf. Bartsch (1994) 1502 on Pan. 2.12.
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tu limite coepto
tende libens sacrumque latus geniumque potentem
inrequietus ama. (Stat. Silv. 5.1.1868)
Go gladly on the path you have started, and tirelessly adore the sacred presence
and the powerful godhead.
Contemporary contexts
119
Martial is keen that Domitian should not be worn down by too much
laudation:53
quam [sc. materiam] quidem subinde aliqua iocorum mixtura uariare temptauimus, ne caelesti uerecundiae tuae laudes suas, quae facilius te fatigare possint
quam nos satiare, omnis uersus ingeret. (Mart. 8 praef. 69)
this material at least I have from time to time attempted to vary with a certain
leavening of jests, lest every verse heap upon your heavenly modesty its praises
which could more easily tire you rather than sating me.
Similarly, the idea of the emperor actively restraining praise, one that is so
important in Pliny (see e.g. Pan. 4.2, where Trajan is praised for preventing private expressions of thanks, and only allowing public thanksgivings
because they are at the behest of the senate), can in fact be found in Statius
Silvae, where he describes the peoples acclamations for Domitian:54
tollunt innumeras ad astra uoces
Saturnalia principis sonantes
et dulci dominum fauore clamant:
hoc solum uetuit licere Caesar. (Stat. Silv. 1.6.814)
They raise countless voices to the stars that ring out the emperors Saturnalia, and
they shout out that he is their master with sweet expression of favour: this is the
only thing that Caesar forbade them to be allowed.
Whilst it is true that the occasion is the Saturnalia, which might have some
relevance to this incident, it is nevertheless the case here that Domitians
action in refusing and moderating praise, even if it may only have been
momentary, is seen as praiseworthy in the context of the poem.
Another disconcerting (from a Plinian perspective) example of Domitianic modesty is found at Silv. 4.2.423, where Statius describes being
present at a banquet given by the emperor and having the chance to see
the emperor modestly lowering the standards of his own fortune (summittentemque modeste / fortunae uexilla suae).55 The example is particularly
striking as it comes from a significant Domitianic grouping, the first three
poems of Silv. 4. For reasons of space I shall confine my remarks here to
the first two poems, but it should be noted briefly that the third poem,
53
54
55
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At much greater length, Pliny describes Trajans desire not to be consul for
a third time in 99 and then in 100 ce (Pan. 5760), and the appeals that
were made to him to reconsider. Within this passage, Pliny even points
out that the manner in which Trajan refused the consulship was different
from the way others had done so, since others rejected the office as being
too unimportant, whereas Trajan rejected it as if it were the greatest thing
56
57
For such scenes of the return of a leading figure to a city, see Woodman (1977) 1301 on Vell.
2.103104.1.
See Bartsch (1994) 164. Coleman (1988) 68 on Silv. 4.1.10 rightly points out that feigned refusal
to hold honours was characteristic of numerous Roman rulers; cf. Woodman (1977) 213 on Vell.
2.122.1.
Contemporary contexts
121
(Pan. 59.1). But when Pliny describes how Trajan changed his mind, the
parallel with Statius language of victory over a modest emperor is striking:58
His tot tantisque rationibus quamquam multum reluctata uerecundia principis
nostri tandem tamen cessit. (Plin. Pan. 60.4)
Though it had struggled greatly with these reasons that were so many and so
important, all the same the modesty of our princeps at last gave in.
The passage dealing with the request for Trajan to hold a fourth consulship
in 101 is similar (Pan. 789), and one can note there how Pliny places the
emphasis on the fact that it is the senate which is putting pressure on Trajan
to hold the office, just as Statius had referred to the curia in connection
with Domitian (Silv. 4.1.10). Within the same poem, we can also note how
Statius uses the device of comparison with predecessors in relation to their
conduct whilst holding consulships, just as Pliny does. Thus at Silv. 4.1.27
33, Statius says that there has been nothing to compare with Domitians
consulship before, and then challenges Vetustas (Antiquity) to produce
examples worthy of Domitian: Augustus is then dismissed with the remark
that he only came to deserve his consulships late on (sero, 32). Pliny offers
something similar in Pan. 57, where he describes first how two consuls
nominated in Neros final year, 68, were deprived of the consulship, so that
Nero could hold it himself (Pan. 57.12), and then mentions how even
under the republic in its heyday there were those who held the consulship
five or six times, before then mentioning Augustus and Caesar (admittedly
without the note of censure of Augustus imparted by Statius).
If we turn to Silv. 4.2, dealing with Statius presence at a banquet given
by Domitian, it might appear on the surface that there is little in common
between Statius poem, which might seem an easy target for criticism as
servile flattery, and Plinys speech. When Statius claims that the experience
of dinner in Domitians palace makes him think that he is reclining in the
presence of Jupiter (Silv. 4.2.1012), we might seem to be very far from
Plinys picture of the more modest Trajan, especially when Statius asks
whether he is even able to look at Domitian, when he is reclining at his
table:
tene ego, regnator terrarum orbisque subacti
magne parens, te, spes hominum, te, cura deorum,
cerno iacens? (Stat. Silv. 4.2.1416)
58
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Is it you that I see as I recline, ruler of the earth and great father of the conquered
world, you, the hope of men, you, who are a care to the gods?
There is of course nothing in the Panegyricus comparable to Statius expression of wonder at his ability to look at Domitian.59 However, the other
elements of Statius praise of Domitian here can be paralleled in the speech:
Pliny refers to Trajan in terms of universal rule at Pan. 12.1 (at nunc rediit
omnibus terror et metus et uotum imperata faciendi, but now terror and fear
has returned to all, and the prayer that they may do what they are ordered
to), in the context of a general discussion of how barbarian nations are obedient to Rome. Pliny also calls Trajan parens, noting indeed that parens is a
word that can be used of Trajan whereas before Domitian was accustomed
to be called dominus: nusquam ut deo, nusquam ut numini blandiamur:
non enim de tyranno, sed de ciue, non de domino, sed de parente loquimur
(nowhere let us flatter him as a god, nowhere as a divinity: for we are not
speaking of a tyrant, but of a citizen, not of a master, but of a parent,
Pan. 2.3).60
This usage, however, to which Pliny so frequently has recourse, can
be uncomfortably paralleled in Statius and Martial, but with reference to
Domitian:61 it is of course even more striking that Plinys general point
in Pan. 2.3, that the old flatteries are no longer needed, is also a move
made by Martial 10.72 (note especially dicturus dominum deumque non
sum, I am not about to speak of a lord and god, 10.72.3). Similarly, the
incentive for citizens to have children under Trajan is marked out with a
quadruple repetition of spes at Pan. 27.1,62 where Trajan gives parents hopes
of sustenance, donatives, liberty and freedom from care; comparable too is
the end of the Panegyricus, where, without using the word spes, Pliny makes
his closing prayer to the gods for Trajans continued well-being, remarking
that simplex cunctaque ista complexum omnium uotum est, salus principis
(everyones prayer is simple and embraces all those things, the safety of the
59
60
61
62
For Plinys experience of dining with Trajan, see Ep. 6.31.13, emphasizing Trajans modest habits.
Other sections of this letter (2, 1314) are, however, more lavish in their praise of the days spent
by Trajans consilium with the emperor at Centum Cellae; see further the suggestive discussion of
Norena (2007) 255.
Durry (1938) 86 on Pan. 2.3 laconically but rightly (pourtant Pline, dans ses lettres, dit a` Trajan
domine) notes the manner in which Trajan is addressed as dominus in Plinys Bithynian correspondence in book 10: see e.g. Ep. 10.2.1, where Sherwin-White (1966) 5578 perhaps over-anxiously
explains that dominus also had a function in social usage, and was a natural term of address from
the equestrian procurators to the Princeps, and easily adopted by the legates, and see also Bartsch
(1994) 166 and n. 41.
For parens applied to the emperor, cf. Mart. 7.7.5, 9.5.1; Stat. Silv. 1.2.178, 4.1.17; Pan. 4.2, 6.1, 10.6,
21.4, 26.3, 29.2, 39.5, 53.1, 67.1, 87.1, 87.3, 94.4.
For this topos, see the references collected by Woodman (1977) 135 on Vell. 2.103.5.
Contemporary contexts
123
princeps, Pan. 94.2). And the allied idea of the emperor as a concern for the
gods, a cura deorum, as Statius phrases it in the passage above, is also found
in Plinys speech, when Pliny opens the Panegyricus with the observation
that Trajans accession resolves the question of whether or not rulers are
given to the earth by chance or by fate, since Trajan was chosen with the
active involvement of Jupiter (Pan. 1.46).63 This passage is incidentally
the opposite of Tacitus bleak observation at the outset of the Histories that
the events of the civil war demonstrated that the gods were concerned not
for human safety, but for taking vengeance on mortals (Tac. Hist. 1.3.2).64
Thus even a passage in Statius which appears to contain a flagrant example
of the kind of flattering hyperbole which Pliny is so anxious to distance
himself from in the Panegyricus nevertheless contains a number of elements
which can all be paralleled in Plinys speech.
What emerges from a consideration of the kinds of crossover that are
illustrated here between Domitianic literature and the Panegyricus is that
the Plinian attempt to control and define notions of what is contemporary
and what is past is doomed to failure. However much Pliny attempts to
differentiate present and past modes of discourse, the sheer intertextuality
of language itself and the commonplaces of praise mean that his praise
of Trajan cannot help but recall praise of Domitian. And of course, more
widely, the attempt to draw a line under the Domitianic age at 96 ce,
popular not only in antiquity but in much scholarship too until only very
recently, was not likely to work. K. M. Coleman has rightly noted how
the anecdote in Plinys Ep. 4.22.6 of the emperor Nerva asking where the
notorious Catullus Messalinus would be if he was still alive, and getting
the answer from one of his companions that he would be having dinner
with them, points to the personal continuities,65 but the story may be seen
as reflecting other kinds of continuity as well, that one emperor might well
act or be treated in the same way as another would be. Ultimately, if we
are thinking of the contemporary contexts of the Panegyricus, we have to
63
64
65
Compare too the reference at Pan. 94.3 to the cura which is already attributed to Jupiter in respect
of Trajan: nec uero nouam tibi iniungimus curam. tu enim iam tunc illum in tutelam recepisti. At Pan.
80.3, Pliny suggests an overlap between imperial and divine cares: O uere principis atque etiam dei
curas, reconciliare aemulas ciuitates, tumentesque populos non imperio magis quam ratione compescere;
intercedere iniquitatibus magistratuum, infectumque reddere quidquid fieri non oportuerit; postremo
uelocissimi sideris more omnia inuisere omnia audire, et undecumque inuocatum statim uelut adesse et
adsistere!
Damon (2003) 97 ad loc. compares Pan. 35.4 diuus Titus securitati nostrae ultionique prospexerat
ideoque numinibus aequatus est.
The anecdote is quoted in full by Roche, pp. 456 in this volume. Coleman (2000) 27. On Plinys
own career under Domitian, see e.g. Syme (1958a) 7585; SherwinWhite (1966) 735; Bartsch
(1994) 1679.
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reflect that the process of drawing the line which determines what is and
what is not contemporary was an ideological one in Plinys time, and that
to some extent we are unable to escape from that contingency. Thus Plinys
attempts to suggest that the literature of the new age is something different
from what has gone before are perhaps to be treated with some caution.
chapter 7
How does the thought of the Panegyricus relate to the aesthetics that
underlie it? The question has been little explored; but what we have is
a version of the speech which Pliny circulated partly as a work of art.
Oratorical art involves aesthetic ideas; in seeing how those aesthetic ideas
are realized, we will see in turn how the political ideas are realized, in an
ill-comprehended achievement of Roman prose. 1
Nec uero adfectanda sunt semper | elata et excelsa | (nor should one strive
perpetually for lofty and exalted effects, Ep. 3.13.4). So Pliny on this speech.
The passage indicates that elevation is important, even dominant, in the
speech. Formally Pliny is emphasizing his artful variety, a value that matters
to him (cf. 3.13.4 with e.g. 5.17.2); likewise he stresses his expression and
technique rather than his speaking magnifice grandly (3.13.23). But we
need not be very experienced readers of Pliny or students of negatives to see
that Pliny is with modest indirectness pointing our attention precisely to
the sublime element in his speech (we shall return to the word sublime).
Other letters make it clear that sublimity in oratory is a vital concept for
Pliny. Its permissibility is the focus of controversy; but the controversy is
in Pliny another indirect mode of self-display. There is every reason, then,
to explore the nature of sublimity in the Panegyricus.2
It will give some useful pointers if we begin from modern ideas of the
sublime, not to import anachronism, but for stimulation and contrast. The
1
I am grateful for help from Mr H. Day, and Professors P. Cheney, P. R. Hardie, A. Laird, C. Martindale
and J. I. Porter.
Because of space, this chapter will concentrate on Plinys approach, not its context in controversy
(cf. Gamberini (1983) 1226); there Cicero and the Atticists, Quintilian and the Senecans, play
parts in oratorys perpetual tug-of-war between restraint and daring. On the Panegyricus style more
technically, see Gamberini (1983) 377448. This chapter also omits epideictic and panegyric traditions,
dealt with by other contributors. Within this chapter, the symbol | denotes a rhythmical close: i.e.
one of x , , , ; a final may be replaced by a breuis in longo, any other by .
denotes overlapping rhythmical closes. For more detail see Hutchinson (1995); cf. Fedeli (1989a)
4201.
Ep. 3.13.4 on shade commending light suggests the superior importance of elevation there.
125
126
g. o. hutchinson
idea has been loaded with vast, and shifting, significance from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries. Some overlapping sources of sublime
experience have been: art; nature; historical events; human nobility; the
divine. Events have become particularly important in recent discussion,
with huge and spectacular atrocities creeping into the place of nature, so
important in the eighteenth century; overwhelming shock and horror at
these extraordinary events are seen as sublime emotions. Events and nobility are combined in the question of the sublime in politics. So National
Socialism is held to have aimed at a sublime and anti-rational effect. It has
been argued that for Michelet in the nineteenth century the Terror of the
French Revolution produced a false sublime. Less a matter of projected
image is the sublimity for Schiller of freedom and struggles for freedom.
All this will prove of interest for the Panegyricus.3
A relation between politics, history and sublimity is evident in much
ancient discussion. Longinus, whenever he is writing, introduces a philosopher to argue that sublimity requires the great men whom democracy can
nurse: freedom encourages both the aspirations of the great-minded (t
jronmata tn megalojrnwn) and competition for oratorical eminence. Imperial rule is contrasted, so the reference (44.3, 5) to just slavery
suggests; competition perhaps especially evokes the fourth century bce.
Maternus in Tacitus Dialogus presents a related view. The tumult of the
Greek fourth, or the Roman first, century bce is formally viewed as undesirable; but it kept Demosthenes (?) from any low utterance (36.1), and
left oratory tanto altior et excelsior | (all the higher and loftier, 37.8). The
amplitudo (importance) of events made Demosthenes and Cicero great
(37.6; cf. Ann. 4.32). Cicero implies the Philippics show a semnterov et
politikterov (grander and more politically minded) Demosthenes than
his law-court speeches (Att. 2.1.3; cf. Orat. 111, Ad Brut. 2.3.4). A relation
between politics and sublimity in a speech on the emperor who allegedly
restored freedom seems eminently plausible.4
This is the moment to look more closely at the idea of sublimity in Pliny.
He uses terms of height, size and divinity to express what we might call an
3
The sublime and Nazism: Hoffmann (2006) 2523; Michelet: Peyrache-Leborgne (1997) 3945;
Schiller: Barone (2004) esp. 21519. Events: Ray (2005) e.g. 5, 10; Shaw (2006) 12030. More widely
zek (1989); Ashfield and de Bolla (1996); Hartmann (1997);
(often with discussion of Longinus): Zi
Frank (1999); Zima (2002); Gilby (2006); Till (2006).
Bartsch (1994) 2046 discusses the relation of Longinus 44 and Maternus; but Heath (1999) radically
places Longinus in the third century ce. Hermog. Id. 1.9 pp. 2667 Rabe involves political freedom
in the splendour (lamprthv) of Dem. 18.208; cf. Long. 16.2. For Tac. Dial. 36.1, cf. Gungerich
(1980) 156, and note Quint. Inst. 10.1.7680. Panegyricus and Dialogus: Bru`ere (1954); Gungerich
(1956); Brink (1994) 2659; Mayer (2001) 235; Woytek (2006) 11556; but Tacitus priority has not
in my view been established.
127
elevated element in oratory. Ep. 9.26 contains his longest discussion. Here
it seems that he is particularly concerned with expression: the quotations
from Demosthenes are not all marked by elevation of content. But the
magnificence of Demosthenes political stance, and to some degree of
Aeschines, is not readily excluded; and the aesthetic risk run by the orator is
also seen as sublime. Sublimity contains an element that goes beyond merely
grandiose utterance: it involves an artistically triumphant trespassing of
boundaries. Demosthenes and Ciceros daring (8 audeat, 9 audacia; contra
13 timidum) is not simply daring to be like poetry (cf. 8 minus audeat: as
if Cicero dared less than poets!). Since the risk is of aesthetic disaster, fine
judgement is relevant, as it would not be in nature: the focus of the ancient
category is particularly on art. But it is clear that within art nobility and
events are sources of the sublime for Pliny. So in Ep. 8.4 the elata . . . materia
(exalted subject matter), which requires the poet Caninius to rise high,
is Trajans Dacian campaign; its greatness includes the king pulsum regia,
pulsum etiam uita . . . nihil desperantem (driven from his court, driven from
his life, but never despairing, Ep. 8.4.2). This moral elevation in the midst
of external collapse, captured too in Trajans Column, will translate into
sublime poetry, if Caninius can match its level and vastness. The idea
of daunting challenge shows that more than mere dignity of language is
required.5
Demosthenes is central in Ep. 9.26, and a crucial model for Pliny: cf.
1.2 (other end of the series), 6.33.11, 7.30.5. Demosthenes 18, like Ciceros
Second Philippic and In Pisonem, must be a significant overall model for
a speech contrasting a good and a bad figure, even if the Panegyricus
detailed intertextuality is built mainly from Latin, as often in this period.
At all events, Demosthenes 18 makes a rewarding comparison with Plinys
strategy of the sublime, especially in its treatment of Aeschines. Demosthenes Aeschines to some degree embodies attempts at grandeur which
are aesthetically unsuccessful and politically deceptive: he is to semnolgou toutou (this speaker of grand words, 18.133, cf. 19.255), followed
by logria dsthna meletsav (having practised your wretched little
speeches; cf. also 18.258). His words are pacqev (ponderous as well
as tiresome, 18.127), full of tragic and moral bombast (127), from the
5
On the Dacian War and its context see Stefan (2005); more briefly: Gazdac (2002), 202. The death
of Decebalus is scene cxlv on Trajans Column (Lepper and Frere (1988) 1767; Settis (1988) 526;
Coarelli (2000) 215); the theme is widely diffused on pottery, including lamps (Stefan (2005) 692).
For sublimity and elevation in Ep. 9.26 and elsewhere, cf. Quadlbauer (1958) esp. 1079 (I could not
see Quadlbauer (1949), but cf. Fedeli (1989a) 418); Cova (1966) esp. 3747, 1415; Picone (1977) esp.
7283; Armisen-Marchetti (1990); Hutchinson (1993) esp. 1215; Cugusi (2003); Delarue (2004).
128
g. o. hutchinson
Overall models: even on Ciceros Philippics cf. Manuwald (2007) 1356. For Demosthenes reputation
cf. Drerup (1923) 10413; Pernot (2006) esp. 20620 for sublimity; Kremmydas (2007). For the
aesthetic element in Demosthenes encounter with Aeschines, cf. e.g. Cic. De Orat. 26; Dion. Hal.
Dem. 558. Caecilius had written a work comparing them (Suda k 1165.9 Adler; Ofenloch (1907) 1).
For Demosthenes depiction of Aeschines cf. Dyck (1985); Easterling (1999); Worman (2008) 26072.
Domitian in Pliny: e.g. Orentzel (1980); Molin (1989) 7878; Soverini (1989) esp. 53940; Strobel
(2003).
129
For Poena cf. esp. Hor. Carm. 3.2.312; also Aesch. 1.1901. The speech presents Domitians image
of himself as his own creation. This chapter does not discuss actual resemblances between Plinys
praise of Trajan and earlier writers praise of Domitian, for which see Gibsons excellent discussion above, pp. 10424. In my view, within the speech any consciousness of that earlier praise
will be turned to account: either the speech will encourage a selective and distorted impression
130
g. o. hutchinson
of that praise, or it is to be seen as making truly points which earlier praise had made falsely
(cf. p. 135 below).
Danube and Euphrates on Trajans coinage: RIC nos. 100, 642 (plates 8.142, 11.191); BMCRE
nos. 3959 (plate 15.6), 103340 (plate 42.4); Belloni nos. 108, 466 (plates 5 and 24), Banti (1983)
nos. 2831; Richier (1997) 6012, 605 (plates 3.2, 3.4). Rhine on Domitians coinage: RIC no. 362
(cf. Stat. Theb. 1.19 on Rhine and Danube). Cf. also Opp. Hal. 2.6789. For Pan. 12.34 note the
paradoxographical [Arist.] Mir. 846b2932.
131
On Trajan and divinity in the Panegyricus cf. Bartsch (1994) 14; Braund (1998) 634; Methy (2000)
397400. For the divine and the sublime (and semnthv grandeur) cf. Hagedorn (1964) 303.
132
g. o. hutchinson
quod bene facias muneris esse qui te dedit | (you say that it is it to him we
owe whatever we owe to you: it is thanks to him who gave you that you
do well). The indicative dedit at the end suggests a move from Trajans
thought into Plinys. The simple language of te dedit, with no nobis, rises
into grandeur, made more sublime by the preceding renunciation and Trajans understated bene facias. We can see the grandeur from 80.5, where
te dedit comes again, of Jupiter, but in an exalted passage where Trajan
is made Jupiters earthly equivalent, and likened to a swift star (cf. 35.5
of the sun, and also 19.1). In this passage Pliny pushes sublimely at the
limits he sets himself: o uere principis atque etiam dei curas | (ah! these are
truly the concerns of a princeps and even a god, 80.3). The uere in theory
applies to dei too, though etiam marks the stretching; the genitive permits
a mere comparison with a god, though the parallel with principis hints
towards an assertion. The exclamation connects the utterance to a surge
of emotion; the talia esse crediderim | (such things, I would think) comparing Trajans actions to Jupiters (80.4) locates the comparison in Plinys
subjectivity.11
Events and nobility together take us to the heart of the paradoxical
sublime which Trajan embodies, a sublime based on his denial of the
sublime.12 It is part of this paradox that apparently slight occurrences, as
well as historically momentous happenings, can be full of importance.
We may start, however, with Trajans crucial entry into Rome in 99 ce.
In the background stand Horaces depictions of Augustus returns, and
Ciceros proud portrayal of his own return and contrast with Pisos (Pis.
515, moving into attack on Pisos philosophical defence of his modestly
avoiding a triumph). Pliny exploits the imagery of height often used for
the sublime. Trajan, unlike other principes, was not carried in on mens
shoulders.
11
12
Cf. Pan. 4.34. In 78.4 it is the whole senates subjectivity; Pliny has just set noble action against
the brevity of life (78.2, cf. Dem. 18.97), and contrasted the false belief of some principes in their
own divinity. As to Jupiter, Trajan actually takes over Domitians most extreme coin-type, in which
he holds a thunderbolt: BMCRE2 Domitian nos. 381, 410 (plates 75.8, 77.5), Trajan no. 825 (plate
30.4); Carradice (1983) 114, 144 (plate 10.4). For neither princeps will the type suggest identity with
Jupiter (there seem to me problems with the traditio fulminis alleged on the Beneventum arch, left
attic panel, city side (De Maria (1988) 131 and plate 11.1) and RIC Trajan no. 24950, BMCRE 4937
(plate 17.16)). For Jupiter as CONSERVATORI PATRIS PATRIAE protecting Trajan see RIC nos.
619, 643; BMCRE nos. p. 959, p. 1013, p. 1016; Belloni (1973) no. 130; Banti (1983) nos. 3941;
Fell (1992) 778 (cf. IOVI CONSERVATORI at e.g. BMCRE2 Domitian no. 354 (plate 73.10)).
Poetry referring to Domitian figuratively as Jupiter should be read with an awareness of genre and
tradition (cf. esp. Ovids exile poetry).
Cf. p. 131 above.
133
His own natural height, without display, gives him a symbolic elevation;
he vanquishes pride, but in doing so gains a mental triumph.13
Trajans rising above others is like that of allegorical abstractions, quasidivine but not separated from men: emines excellis ut Honor, ut Potestas,
| quae super homines quidem, hominum sunt tamen | (you rise above us
like Honour or Power, which, while they are above men, yet belong to
them, 24.4). Pliny has already brought in the laws as a comparison (for
the personification, cf. Dio Chrys. Or. 1.75, and note megaljrwn, greatminded). The final thing that raises Trajan above the principes is libertas
(freedom, 24.5): politics and the republic are deeply involved in his elevation. The concluding clause plays on apotheosis, with finely concrete
paradox: te ad sidera tollit humus ista communis | et confusa principis uestigia (you are lifted to the stars by this ground which you share, and by
the footprints of the princeps mixed with those of others, 24.5). Joining
himself with humanity raises him to near-godhead. We may contrast the
Horatian uirtus (Virtue) which stands for Augustus and spernit humum
(scorns the ground, Hor. Carm. 3.2.24; cf. Virg. G. 2.4734). The passage
is also set against the triumph in which Trajan will be raised sublimem
(aloft, 17.2) over conquered enemies: but these are not Romans, and the
triumph is still (within the speech) in the speakers imagination. Trajan has
done something magnum . . . , magnum (great . . . , great, 16.2) precisely
by refusing to cross the boundary of the Danube and win a triumph.14
The theme of height is similarly exploited in an incident which appears
of much less historic significance. When Trajan had named the consular
candidates, he got down from his curule chair to ground level and kissed
13
14
Cf. proceritas corporis | (tallness of body) in 4.67. On the right attic panel, city side, of the arch
at Beneventum, Trajan is taller than the consuls, and the same height as the gods (De Maria (1988)
232, plate 11.2). This is evidence, as other panels show, not for the physical stature of Trajan but
for the symbolic significance of height. On Trajans arrival cf. Roche (2003) 4334; it is depicted on
the Beneventum arch, city side, bottom pair of panels, De Maria (1988) 232, plate 10. For Plinys
treatment of Trajans ciuilitas cf. Braund (1998) 5868. Great battles are Demetrius first instance of
magnificence (t megaloprepv) in subject matter (Eloc. 75).
On the last passage, cf. Belloni (1974) 111416. Plinys speech as it develops plays down (cf. Picone
(1977) 1801) the militarism so conspicuous in Trajanic sculpture. Despite Pan. 59.2, see De Maria
(1988) 295 and Palombi (1993) for the arch of RIC Trajan nos. 41920; BMCRE Trajan no. p. 733;
Banti (1983) nos. 3323 (100 ce).
134
g. o. hutchinson
them (71.1); the whole senates paradoxical cry tanto maior, tanto augustior |
(that makes you all the greater, all the more august, 71.4) is developed by
Pliny:
nam cui nihil ad augendum [augescendum coni. Hutchinson15 ] fastigium superest,
| hic uno modo crescere potest, si se ipse summittat | securus magnitudinis suae. |
(Plin. Pan. 71.4)
He who has got no summit left for growth can grow in only one way: lowering
himself, without fears for his greatness.
For principes need have no fear of humilitas (lowness; contrast 4.5, and
cf. Dem. 18.108, 178). The paradox is made vivid by the image in se ipse
summittat |; a grandiose ethos is imbued into it by securus magnitudinis
suae | (cf. 19.13). The senates cry recalls Nerva when he adopts Trajan:
repente solito maior augustiorque | (suddenly greater and more august than
usual, 8.3). The speech characteristically draws greatness from seemingly
limited material.16
In 61 Pliny again focuses on a meaningful moment; he stresses his
subjective impression: equidem illum antiquum senatum | contueri uidebar |
(I, at least, thought I was beholding the famed senate of old, 61.1). A
consul designate awaiting his third consulship was asked his opinion when
another third consul (Frontinus) was present as well as Trajan. The moment
embodied Trajans generosity to others with the consulship: quanti tunc illi
quantusque tu! | (how great they were then, and how great were you!, 61.1).
In 61 the language of size and of height again mingle. Trajans figurative
height could have made others look less, like corpora quamlibet ardua et
excelsa procerioribus admota (bodies, however high and lofty, when brought
next to loftier ones, 61.2):
illos tamen tu, | quamquam non potuisti tibi aequare cum uelles, | adeo in edito
collocasti | ut tantum super ceteros | quantum infra te cernerentur. | (Plin. Pan.
61.3)
15
16
The imagery and superest require a point the person could grow to, not a fastigium that could
be grown (so translators). An intransitive augeo is unlikely in Pliny: Sall. Hist. fr. 77.6 M; TLL
2.1357.4756.
For a raised chair indicating Trajans exalted status cf. e.g. (curule) RIC nos. 3801; BMCRE
nos. 712, 767, 769 (plates 25.4, 27.11); Belloni (1973) no. 194; Banti (1983) nos. 425, 4750. On
Nerva in the Panegyricus (and Trajanic coinage) cf. Soverini (1989) 54852; Roche (2002) 446, 524.
He naturally appears, with many other imperial figures, on the attic facade of the East Colonnade
in the Forum of Trajan (Packer (1997) 103 fig. 57, 3801). On the kiss, cf. Roche (2003) 435; even
if Trajan explicitly asked Pliny to mention these aspects, their role in the aesthetics of the speech is
not diminished.
135
But although you could not put them on a level with yourself, despite wanting to,
you put them in such an exalted position that it could be seen they were as much
above all others as they were beneath you.
The wish for the quasi-physical elevation of others is proof of his own
ingentis animi | (mighty spirit, 61.4): it is characteristic of greatness uelle
quantum possis (to want nothing less than one can do). It is further
and paradoxical proof of Trajans greatness that he cannot make others
match him. Earlier, magnanimitas (greatness of mind) is expetito semper
honore abstinere | (abstaining from an honour that people always seek,
58.5); striving for perpetual honour as consul is liuor (jealousy, 58.4). The
beginning of the republic is explicitly recalled (58.3).17
Trajans principate as an event is the restoration of liberty, which his
specific actions renew: it thus returns Rome almost to the republic, and at
the same time repeats the great moment when the kings were expelled. A
more weighty event in Roman history could not be found. It is deployed
in urging Trajan to take a fourth consulship (reciperata libertas |, freedom
when it was just recovered, 78.3). The sublime implications of freedom
have already been seen. Pliny paints an exhilarating picture (66) of Trajans restoration of liberty in his first appearance in the senate as consul.
Intriguingly, the moment is externally a repetition of the usual deceit from
emperors (66.3); what makes this different is Trajans mind. In turn, his
action elevates the mind of the Romans. From an inglorious if excusable
state of terror et metus et misera . . . prudentia (fear, dread, and wretched
caution) the senate is returned to caring and speaking about the res publica
(66.45; a Demosthenic and Ciceronian source of elevation). The paradox
in iubes esse liberos: erimus | (you bid us be free; we will be) should not at
first be pressed too hard; iubeo can have the sense bid, and another clause
follows. But the idea is turned round when the senate iussit told Trajan to
take his fourth consulship: imperi hoc uerbum, | non adulationis | (this is a
word of command, not flattery, 78.1). Such is their freedom, and such is
17
Cf. with magnanimitas megaljrwn (great-spirited) used by Cass. Dio (Xiph.) 68.7.2 of Trajans
restrained inscription on the Circus Maximus. Trajans and Frontinus names as consuls both
followed by ii or iii will have made a striking sight: cf. e.g. CIL 6.2222, 13.7711, 16.42 (Lorincz
(2001) 155); Frontinus second consulship began 1 February 98 (Fast. Ost. Fj; Vidman (1957) 45, 93,
plate 7). For Trajans treatment of Frontinus, see Fein (1994) 2056; Bennett (1997) 108. But one may
doubt arguments to Domitians own contempt of fellow-consuls from omissions on inscriptions
by others (Carradice (1983) 144, 151): see esp. CIL 12.2602 (post-Domitianic; Vespasian also named
without colleague, Nerva without his colleague Domitian).
136
g. o. hutchinson
the noble action and mind of Trajan, whose plan is ut libertatem reuoces ac
reducas | (to call, and bring, Freedom back, 78.3).18
The return of the Romans from an unelevated mentality is taken on to
the level of personal relationships (85). Again, what seems less momentous
historically and politically is no less important a source of elevation for
Pliny. After flattery and peior odio | amoris simulatio | the pretence of
love, worse than hatred (85.1), amicitia Friendship like libertas has been
brought back by Trajan: tu hanc pulsam et errantem reduxisti | (85.12 you
have brought her back; she had been driven away and was wandering).
Friendship is described in exalted and physical terms, and linked with
freedom and a readiness to make demands: neque est ullus adfectus | tam
erectus et liber | et dominationis impatiens, | nec qui magis uices exigat | (no
other emotion stands so upright and free, or will so little tolerate masterlike despotism; none insists more on a return, 85.3). Trajan should not
think such closeness to others humile (low), as it is implied Domitian
would have (85.7).
Demosthenes emphasizes in himself and his speech the absence of falsehood, and the presence of straightforwardness (e.g. 18.58 plv simply; contrast 159, 276). In Pliny, Trajans simplicitas (simplicity) is more
paradoxical, a quality one might expect to clash with grauitas (weightiness, 4.6). His simplicitati . . . ueritatique (simplicity and truthfulness,
54.5) enable the senate to escape from miserae adulationis | (wretched
flattery, 54.1), and mark him out as unique among principes (54.6). The
paragraph ends with sublime negatives to convey the glory of his rejecting
glory: quod ego titulis omnibus | speciosius reor, | quando non trabibus aut
saxis nomen tuum | sed monimentis aeternae laudis inciditur | (I think this
is more glorious than any inscription, when your name is cut, not on architraves or rocks, but on monuments of praise that will last for ever, 54.7;
cf. 84.8).19
18
19
For iubes esse liberos cf. Livy 45.22.3, 26.12 senatum populumque Romanum Illyrios esse liberos iubere
that the senate and people of Rome bade the Illyrians be free, 29.4. Trajans acceptance of a fourth
consulate appears on coins from October 100 on; cf. Belloni (1973) xvixvii. Relevant to the republic
is Augustus slight place in the Panegyricus: cf. Lyasse (2008) 33742. Nervas principate is not itself
the real restoration of liberty: note the deft phrasing at 8.1. On the late appearance of Libertas in
Trajans coinage, cf. Belloni (1974) 108990; contrast LIBERTAS RESTITVTA from at least 70 in
BMCRE2 Vespasian 525, 549 (plates 19.15, 22.1).
With simplicitati tuae ueritatique | cf. 84.1 and Dio Chrys. Or. 1.26 tn mn on plthta ka
tn lqeian getai basilikn ka jrnimon ([the good king]) thinks simplicity and truth is
something kingly and wise). Note also Cass. Dio (Xiph.) 68.6.2 pleston gr p te dikaithti
ka p ndre t te plthti tn qn diprepe ([Trajan]) stood out particularly in justice
and courage and in the simplicity of his manners).
137
The monimentis are undefined; they suggest obliquely the mighty oration
which is now being heard or read. Trajans own oratory is not praised chiefly
as oratory, rather as an embodiment of his fides (trustworthiness), seen
in the inadfectata ueritas uerborum (unaffected truthfulness of his words)
and the whole manner of delivery (67.1). At the moment when Trajan and
Pliny might seem to come closest, Pliny draws significance from what for
Trajan is straightforward and transparent. As ever, he stages revelations of
Trajans self-effacing greatness. The speech is built on a contrast not just
between Trajan and Domitian, but between Trajan and Pliny, somewhat
as in Cicero the pressing and intelligent orator is set against the simple
Roscius or the pressing and emotional orator is set against the sublimely
impassive Milo. The contrast with Pliny, like that with Domitian, makes
the praise more vivid and more tolerable. It brings out that Trajan does
not strive for glory; adulation is precluded. The gifted orators writing
in its continual freshness and surprise averts (for the careful reader) the
monotony of unseasoned laudation. Underlying the writing is the same
elegance of paradox and subtlety of thought as in the letters. The overall
sublimity of impact is not a matter of endless straining for extremes, but
a convergence of Trajans unstrained nobility and Plinys intelligent and
unobvious praise.20
We should finally look in more detail at some of this writing. We will
take parts of a typical passage which does not use such obvious sources or
imagery of the sublime as those so far discussed. This will show us how
what we may now see as sublimity is locally in constant alternation and
dialogue with other sorts of writing; it should also give us a fuller idea of
the general sublimity which emerges.
27.3 quocirca nihil magis in tota tua liberalitate laudauerim, | quam quod congiarium das de tuo, alimenta de tuo, | neque a te liberi ciuium | ut ferarum catuli
sanguine et caedibus | nutriuntur; | 27.4 quodque gratissimum est accipientibus, |
sciunt dari sibi | quod nemini sit ereptum, | locupletatisque tam multis | pauperiorem esse factum | principem tantum. | quamquam ne hunc quidem: nam cuius
est quidquid est omnium, | tantum ipse quantum omnes habet.
28.1 alio me uocat numerosa gloria tua. | alio autem? quasi uero iam satis ueneratus
miratusque sim | quod tantam pecuniam profudisti | non ut flagitii tibi conscius
| ab insectatione eius | auerteres famam, | nec ut tristes hominum maestosque
sermones | laetiore materia | detineres! | . . . 28.2 amor impendio isto, | non uenia
quaesita est, | populusque Romanus | obligatus | a tribunali tuo, non exoratus
recessit. | 28.3 obtulisti enim congiarium | gaudentibus gaudens | securusque
20
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g. o. hutchinson
securis | . . . 28.7 dabis congiaria si uoles, praestabis alimenta si uoles: | illi tamen
propter te nascuntur.
29.1 instar ego perpetui congiarii | reor adfluentiam annonae. | huius aliquando |
cura Pompeio | non minus addidit gloriae | quam pulsus ambitus campo, | exactus
hostis mari, | Oriens triumphis | Occidensque lustratus. | 29.2 nec uero ille ciuilius
| quam parens noster | auctoritate consilio fide reclusit uias, | portus patefecit,
itinera terris | litoribus mare litora mari reddidit, | diuersasque gentes | ita
commercio miscuit | ut quod genitum esset usquam, | id apud omnes natum
uideretur. | 29.3 nonne cernere datur | ut sine ullius iniuria | omnis usibus nostris
| annus exuberet? | . . . 29.5 inde copiae, | inde annona de qua inter licentem
uendentemque conueniat, | inde hic satietas | nec fames usquam. | (Plin. Pan.
27.329.5)
27.3 Hence I would like to praise nothing in all this generosity of yours more
than your giving the largesse and the maintenance from your own resources.
The children of citizens are not being fed like the young of beasts on blood and
slaughter. 27.4 They know, as is most welcome for those who receive things, that
what they are being given has not been snatched from anyone else, and that when
so many have been made rich, the only one who has been made poor is the princeps.
Though not even he has been, they know: the man who has whatever all have,
himself has as much as all do.
28.1 Your glory, with its many aspects, calls me away elsewhere. Elsewhere? As
if I had yet sufficiently revered and wondered at your pouring forth so much
money with no aim of diverting rumour from attacking a crime you knew you
had committed, or occupying peoples grim and gloomy conversations with a
more cheerful subject!. . . . 28.2 It was love, not pardon which you sought with
that expense; the Roman people left your tribunal obliged, not won over. 28.3 You
gave your largesse with shared joy, shared freedom from care. 28.7 You can give
largesse if you like, and provide maintenance if you like; but those children are
born because of you.
29.1 Like a continual largesse, I believe, is the abundance of the corn-supply. Taking
this on gave Pompey long ago no less glory than driving bribery from the place of
elections and the enemy from the sea and traversing east and west with triumphs.
29.2 Nor did he behave more like a citizen than did our Father, authoritatively,
strategically and dependably, in unclosing roads, opening up ports, giving back
journeys to the land, the sea to the shores, the shores to the sea, in mixing different
races through trade so that what was produced anywhere seemed to have been born
everywhere. 29.3 Have we not been granted to see how the entire year abounds
for our purposes, without anyone suffering wrong? . . . 29.5 This [purchase by the
fiscus] is what produces abundance, and a corn-supply that bidder and seller can
agree on; this is what produces abundance here and hunger nowhere.
Trajan gives largesse to encourage the birth of children, and his own
nature makes people want to have children in his world, as they would not
139
in Domitians. The image of the ferarum catuli (27.3) would demean the
human and Roman beneficiaries, but suggestions of an epic simile, and the
impressive sanguine et caedibus |, convey a kind of dark historical sublimity
from terrible events. Conversely, the impoverishment of the princeps (27.4)
seems to associate an almost amusingly undignified idea with Trajan, for
a moment; but it impressively displays his simple generosity. A twist then
reminds us of the greatness of his position, but suggests a moral basis:
not just that he owns everything, but that he enters into the happiness
of all.21
The apparent transition (28.1) presents a striking personification: the
inanimate gloria acts on the rapt person, with a Horatian exaltation (cf.
Carm. 3.25). But with a fine reversal, the transition is undone (contrast
18.1), and Pliny enhances the glory and the subtlety. Not merely the fact of
generosity but the motive of innocence is brought out through a contrast
with the machiavellianism of other principes: auerteres famam | (effectively
ordered) and tristes . . . maestosque sermones | . . . detineres convey in the
negative an ignoble attitude. After more such negatives (omitted here),
the positive amor (28.2) begins a sentence; it lights up the discourse with
the simple and ardent emotion that governs Trajans relations with the
Roman people. A searching distinction between participles brings out that
earlier principes were really at the mercy of the people an ignominious
position. The polyptoton in 28.3 shows the emotional equality of people
and princeps; the intensity of the figure creates an elevated depiction of
what Trajan has created. The whole section ends (28.7) with a grandiose
dismissal of the financial aspects; the simple talis es (27.1, you are such a
person) now rises into the powerful simplicity of propter te nascuntur. Here
is the Trajanic sublime.22
The actual transition (29.1) works through neat metaphor; the metaphor,
with perpetui, gives the impression of raising us to a still higher pitch. (gloriae takes up gloria in 28.1.) Now instead of praise through contrast with a
21
22
Trajan receives the globe from Nerva (or the senate) on RIC Trajan no. 28, BMCRE Trajan
nos. 535 (plates 10.34). Belloni (1973) 2 describes the act cautiously. With the significant de
tuo (27.3), cf. Sen. Ep. 77.8. For locupletatisque cf. locupletatori ciuium in CIL 6.958, 405001 (108
ce). On Domitians financial crisis see Carradice (1983) 15966. Pan. 258 are discussed by Aubrion
(1975) 10910.
Children are very prominent in Trajanic material; Trajans alimentary scheme for them begins soon
after this speech (on it see Woolf (1990); Lo Cascio (2000); CIL 6.40497 (note the urban context),
9.1455 (Ligures Baebiani, 101 ce), 11.1147 (Veleia, late 102 or later)). Cf. the Beneventum arch,
inside right: De Maria (1988) 131, 233 plate 13.1; Kleiner (1992) 224, 226; Molin (1994) 71920; on
coins e.g. RIC no. 474, BMCRE no. 920 (plate 35.10), unusually with ROMA REST; Belloni (1973)
nos. 111, 1245 (plate 5); Banti (1983) nos. 313.
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g. o. hutchinson
negative, we have a complicated device. Trajan is likened to a great republican figure, who (from one perspective) championed the senate against
Caesar, and was lauded in Ciceros Pro Lege Manilia. Pompeys achievement is matched with deeds of his which themselves rise into sublimity;
they grow in space and reach a spatial sublime (cf. Orientem Occidentemque
conectit | joins east and west, 32.2). Trajans action is then presented formally through Pompeys (29.2): ciuilius seems an unelevated word; but it
points to Trajans republican and unassuming attitude (cf. 2.7) towards what
was in fact a spatially magnificent achievement. A trio of abstract nouns
suggests the qualities of a republican leader in parens noster; the vigorous
verbs reclusit and patefecit show the power of his action; land and sea give
the grandeur of space, while litoribus mare litora mari | ingeniously brings
out a double benefit. usquam and apud omnes portray a transformation
of the world. A shorter sentence (29.3) brings us directly into the present,
with question and deixis. A poetic phrase concludes it, annus exuberet |; the
transgression of prose norms in this combination helps express the transgression of normal temporal limits. The whole year (omnis is in forceful
hyperbaton) has the fruitfulness associated with a part. But added to this
splendour is the moral point sine ullius iniuria |. As with Trajans handouts,
no one suffers. The final sentence (29.5) creates a tricolon which at first
seems to heighten the style then to descend as we proceed to commercial
agreement, with the prosaic licentem uendentemque then to rise with the
vision of hunger absent from the world. The spatial grandeur has a moral
dimension. This leads into a passage (301) where Egypts boasts and the
mighty Nile are excelled.23
When the speech is given the intent and reflective reading which it
demands, it can be seen to fluctuate continually in its stylistic level, and yet
to present overall a glorious sublimity. This sublimity is political and moral,
but can only be realized through Plinys art. It separates itself forcefully from
the false sublime of other principes. On Trajans side, it springs paradoxically
from an avoidance of aspiration towards sublimity; on Plinys side, it
rests not only on truth but on penetration, on an ability to see through
23
Annona appears on Trajans coinage, as on Nervas and Domitians (Carradice (1983) 112, 114); cf.
e.g. with prow of ship and cornucopiae, RIC Traj. nos. 4924; BMCRE Traj. nos. 7813 (plates
28.5); Belloni (1973) no. 49 (plate 2); Banti (1983) nos. 1802. They also depict Trajans port at Ostia:
RIC nos. 471 (plate 11.189), 631; BMCRE no. 770A (plate 28.1); Banti (1983) nos. 824A; Meiggs
(1973) 1616; cf. also ILS 298 (Ancona, 11415 ce). Parens noster avoids but alludes to the official
pater patriae (cf. Methy (2000) 3834); though granted to both Nerva and Domitian, that title has
republican roots. It is evidenced early in Trajans coinage, and is ubiquitous in documents, cf. e.g.
Pferdehirt (2004) no. 8 (plates 1011; 99 ce); Eck and Pangerl (2004) photo p. 234; AE 2004 1913
(100 ce).
141
chapter 8
introduction
Pan[egyricus] is addressed through the senators in session (patres conscripti,
1.1). Thanksgiving is directed to the gods for their gift of an Optimus
princeps before the speech turns towards parens noster for allowing the
event: Caesar Auguste (4.3). A secundary function, thanksgiving by the
speaker for appointment to the consulate, is subjoined, in a doubly selfreflexive address on behalf of Pliny and his colleague Cornutus Tertullus
(90.3); and here the performance thanks Trajan both as consul on behalf
of the Roman state and on Plinys, too (tu . . . , suo quoque nomine, 91.1; cf.
90.3). Trajan and his new pair of (suffect) consuls give and get the glory
generated over again whenever recitation of the speech evokes another
here and now for its we and this. Besides these protagonists, Pliny will
find cause to name a clutch of figures from Roman history:1 on the one
hand, heroes of the republic, pegged to the earliest phase through the
Hannibalic War and into the second- and first-century finale Fabricii,
Scipiones, Camilli (13.4); Bruti, Camilli again (55.6); Papirii and Quinctii
(57.5); Pisones, Laelii and Metelli (88.6); 2 on the other, the proto-emperor
Pompey (29.1). The line of emperors from Augustus to Domitian receives
citations (Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius, Vespasian, Titus and Domitian,
11.1; Augustus, 4.5, 88.10; Nero, 53.4; Titus, 35.4; Domitian, 20.4; nowhere
1
2
Panegyricus loci on history are listed in Durry (1938) 378 (with several errors); see too Innes in this
volume, esp. p. 82.
For the classic tabulation of Roman historical exempla, see Litchfield (1914). For modern revaluation,
see essays in Coudry and Spath (2001) esp. for Camilli and Fabricii. For Scipiones cf. e.g. Henderson
(1997) 336; Bruti and Metelli: Henderson (1998) 73107, 10911; Papirii Cursores: Oakley (2005)
1757; Quinctii: Ogilvie (1965) 399400, cf. 51617, on Quinctius Capitolinus; for Pisones (a pinsendo,
Plin. Nat. 18.10) and Laelii, see below on Pan. 88.6.
142
143
For disappearing the other in invective, see Henderson (2006) 1437 on Cic. Pis.
For accession panegyric: Braund (1998) esp. 658; post-assassination: Hoffer (2006) esp. 804 on
Pan. 510.
For the all-enveloping Trajan made from paradox: Rees (2001).
For the logic of naming/entitlement: McCulloch (1989). On Roman naming: Salway (1994); cf.
Wilson (1998) esp. Part i. Ancient Rome.
On Pans manipulation of history and exempla: Molin (1989) 78991.
For parodic nostalgia on historical exempla within Roman onomastic discourse, see Henderson (1997)
on Juv. 8.
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john henderson
euphemous hyperbole had become a ploy in the repertoire of clans competing for honours and predominance in the stakes of the republic, so it
inflated to mark successive bids to outsize those stakes, expropriated to
glamorize the would-be autocrat and deliver him soi-disant ascendancy. As
master-signifiers of mastery concretized around the emergence of Caesar
as the self-perpetuating gentilician core of a panoply of transcendental titulature, Imperator, Augustus, reinforced by deification of dead autocrats
realized as divine affiliation, diui filius, the first dynasty of Julio-Claudian
emperors had created an elaborate, yet notably elastic, impro-system that
demonstrated the intrication of any individual reign within longer-term
stakes for obedience;9 after the rapid-fire disruptions and abortive shifts of
the failed bids to found the second dynasty, the Flavians had resumed the
nomenclature and fatherson model of succession ready-made, but also
recapitulated the pattern of step-up sublation to valorize unprecedented
majesty in fresh hype.
The New Man Plinys New Dawn for a New Emperor will launch the
bid to found a third dynasty on a selective review of names for power
in Latin that extend from traditions from way back when elected consuls
brokered between their predecessors and their prospective replacements
to boss Rome. But his target will be to clinch, on top of an underlying
continuation of positive spin from adherence to exemplary heroes and
accredited emperors, dissociation from the demonized Domitianic negative
plus an overlay of charismatic bedazzle for Trajans annunciation.10 Abusive
trashing of the tyrant must mesh with gentle backgrounding of the catalyst
enabler Nerva. But Pans blazoned solution to the terminological challenge
hands Rome and its latest Caesar Augustus the blankestest cheque available
to Latinity, exhaustively unpacking the indefeasible subsumption within
its bravura modesty of all actual or imaginable forerunners. It would catch
on, too, later in the reign (on diplomas from 114 ce).11
Plinys very first word (bene) already cues us in, his first proposition
homes on the beatitude (optimo principi), and his first lesson self-enacts
its conferring by senatorial decree here and now facilitated by the consuls
voice amid senatorial felicitations (Optimi cognomen, 2.7). All the speechs
negotiations with earlier precedents in naming power felix and magnus,
9
10
11
145
For the reworking of Panegyricus according to Plin. Ep. 3.18, see Henderson (2002) 14151; Habinek
(2007) 21415.
For the public script realized through the rhetorical performance of sincerity, see the classic account
in Bartsch (1994) ch. 5.
For Pans manipulation of principatus, see Ramelli (1999); Gowing (2005) esp. 12031.
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to Jove as Preserver of the Empire.15 Adding and adapting, the speech must
befit Iuppiter Optimus, live up to consulate, senate and emperor alike. This
consul heads, speaks but also stands for all citizens, who shall, henceforth,
match Jupiter in openly and presently declaring their thoughts. [2] But to
achieve this they must avert and exorcise adulation, be rid of the voices of
the past, their own words, of insincerity, untruth, slavery:16 May we say
nothing of the kind we said before (cf. 75.6 below; an excitable twist on
the stock panegyric stance, where there is No call to avoid what others
have put into their speeches before, Isoc. Pan. 9).
Wishing away the past powers the present by foregrounding epochmaking as prime duty of all our speeches: demarcation of Now by
antithesis with Then is the conceptual principle underpinning the baseline
dynamics of thanksgiving as epideictic genre, anchoring and motivating the
invention, conceptualization and marshalling of continuities and ruptures
between the past/s into and as (if ) given epochs, eras, periods, regimes;
and their definition of the present through negative antithesis. For you can
tune in to the way thanks deliver depending on who it is being thanked;
there has to be a corresponsion, since a tyrant is not a fellow-Roman, a
slave-owner is no father. Our princeps is not a god, not a divinity? So dont
fawn on him as if he is. As one of us, he learned, as wisdom has it, same
place we did, that Hes only a human in charge of humans (meminit). Ponder: you can tell lots from the way that the people of Rome come up with
customized epithets to chant at each princeps from Yesterdays Beaut,
to Todays Braveheart, other times What moves, what uox versus Trajans Respect! Frugality! Courtesy! Then there is the senate. Harder to lay
down the law here How about us? but how does the house habitually
behave (solemus)? This Emperor of ours is not (is he?) hailed as divine, but
chorused for being human, adjusted, obliging: so to the rhetorical cap we
have been steered towards, so we get there as if tentatively, with a follow-up
question, a rider. So now: what is there as appropriately citizen-amongcitizens and senator-to-senator as that nickname weve pinned on you:
Best? (Optimi cognomen, 2.7).
Weve got this far without dignifying any of them with their names,
Domitian, Nero, whatever, and spotlight the strategy right here, dropping
the quizzical feint and out with it: What made this emperors prerogative
and monopoly was the way his predecessors grabbed all they could (2.8).
To get the feel of the honorific quotient of Optimus is clearly vital since we
15
16
147
148
john henderson
149
For the strategy of chronological narration, see Innes in this volume, esp. p. 78.
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151
69 ce-style (Tac. Hist. 1.14, 48); Pliny is not going to call up by mention
this misfire into downfall atrocity, and blots out the prompt his Anchises
overdub harbours to terminal crisis with oratorically enacted muting: And
lo! In a trice down sank all hubbub. Sh! All down to the adoptee utter
contrast, how could we ever/so soon forget?, with the trouble that did
not die down but arose from the immediately preceding episode of imperial succession-adoption: Domitians abortive promotion to next-in-line of
Flavius Clemens short-lived sons, restyled Domitianus and Vespasianus,
the last-ditch arrangement cancelled in the sudden arraignment and execution of their father shortly before Domitians assassination (oblitine
sumus . . . ?, 8.5). Picking Trajan did the trick for Nerva: Lo! In a trice:
son Caesar imperator partner in tribunician sacrosanctity.
910
The titles all rolled into one packed magic moment of grace where not
so long before a true father only ever bestowed titles on one of his two
sons (namely, the other one Titus). As Pan backs his embryonic dyarchy
model, history shudders through. On the cue imperator, Pliny turns to
make hay with the imperial title Germanicus: not the adopted son of
Tiberius, named for his fathers conquests; not Plinys patron and honorary
parent Verginius Rufus, proud to lead the legions in Germany to suppress
revolt without being tempted to march south at their head and seize
the throne (Ep. 2.1, 6.10, 9.19: affiliation, commemoration, vindication);
and not the vanity of Domitians self-styling as Germanicus. Quite the
reverse, as this commander of Germany was sent the title from Rome, at
the frontier, ordered to accept the package while still unroyalled, so far as
he knew, and therefore honour-bound by the grand traditions of military
discipline to obey orders from his at once imperator, princeps and father
(mos a maioribus traditus, 9.5). [10] Icing on the cake: he had to obey
the more because others were disobeying; and supersession of said cake: it
wasnt Nervas pick but the Roman consensus, SPQR, which Nerva got to
first, thats all. Everyones prayers answered. So they were at the mercy of
this marshal; he did spare Rome (moderatus es, 10.3).
This cat slipped out of the bag with the elevation to imperator, a matter
of more than the name, the icons, the insignia, in Trajans case active
physical leadership in camp, the original and still, clearly, the patent core
to the title (10.3). When this soldiers soldier became Caesar in Germany,
he was driving straight for the top, all too like the original, Julius, and only
restrained by his own preference to keep his new name of son, opting
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153
For discussion of the generalizing plural in Latin, see Henderson (1997) on Hor. C. 1.12 at 2932
with 97114.
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Historical exempla gave oratory in court terrain for battle with and over
malleable, appropriable, deniable narratives drawn from an archive without
155
156
john henderson
Which Punic outranked Hannibal as planner, hero and high achiever? He fought
it out single-handed with our legion commanders over decades, for supremacy
and fame both. His people threw him out, whereas we watch glorification of our
foe in Roman pages and memories. So let us imitate our Brutuses, Camilluses,
Ahalas, Deciuses, Curiuses, Fabriciuses, Fabiuses, Scipios, Lentuluses, Aemiliuses,
and the myriads who built the republic strong. Them I lodge sure in the company
and roster of the immortal gods.
Boomerang
Now (tradition also knows to say, of itself, as a traditional feedback loop
of self-policing) a lot of this goes a long way; mantra easily spills into
inanition. Lips can curl when saints form a queue:
dicet aliquis: Haec est igitur tua disciplina? . . . ego, si quis . . . hoc robore
animi atque hac indole uirtutis atque continentiae fuit, ut respueret omnes
uoluptates . . . nihil in uita expetendum putaret, nisi quod esset cum laude et
cum dignitate coniunctum, hunc mea sententia diuinis quibusdam bonis instructum atque ornatum puto. ex hoc genere illos fuisse arbitror Camillos, Fabricios,
Curios omnesque eos, qui haec ex minimis tanta fecerunt.
uerum haec genera uirtutum non solum in moribus nostris, sed uix iam in
libris reperiuntur. chartae quoque, quae illam pristinam seueritatem continebant,
obsoleuerunt. (Cic. Cael. 3940)
Someone will ask So this is what you call discipline, huh? . . . I say, anyone with
the strength of mind and constitutional courage and control required to repudiate
all pleasures . . . and recognize as a life target only the concomitants of repute and
honour, he gets my vote for his distinguished panoply of divine blessings. The ilk,
I warrant, of the Camilluses, Fabriciuses, Curiuses and all who once built Rome
from nothing to grandeur.
But. This idiom of excellence is today hardly to be found in the Roman make-up,
or even in the library. Even the pages that formerly enshrined the old puritanism
have faded away.
Pliny too is citing the citation system, as such (as if incidental, automatic
and, no less, exempli gratia), for all that his multiplicate trio do prosecute their rhetorical mission, of smoothing the nobody upstart Spaniard
ne Ulpius Traianus into self-inventing son and heir of diuus (Cocceius)
Nerva, latest of the Caesars, the Augustuses, as the latest product from
the factory belt. But he is also using it to incubate his hero as a bornout-of-time education on legs to all budding Romans to come. That is,
Pan freshens up here by going militant, anti-intellectual, book-trashingly
censorious, as Plin laments the passing of live militarist culture in favour
of academic theory, fun where fatigues belong, inspirational bemedalled
157
1415
So the thanksgiving narrative plumps for parsimonious deployment of
the exemplary heritage, with such good cause. Right here, the maiores
are summoned to open its new chapter for the storybooks, starring the
incunabulation and kindergarten of Plinys version of Trajan: The Early
Years (`a la Tac. Agr. 5). Writing Trajan from his start at his fathers side
in Parthia, then his call from Spain to go do Domitians dirty work for
him in Germany (already deserving the Germanicus badge), re-launches
his journey to the summit, kitting the boy out with seven-league boots borrowed from that indefatigable son of Jupiter who strode to Spain and back,
bestrode the globe eastwest in fact on his dragon-slaying ordeals/crusades.
By Hercules (14.5)! The blatant hook was Spain; the topic remains the
soldier-imperator; hereabouts formative training tours us up through the
career steps, when Trajan learned his song well so he could teach it, ten
years of geopolitical coursework, travelling, earning spurs . . . Plinys text
does it, too: showing/teaching us how reading this hagiography is, as its
destiny, to generate echelons of would-be clones. [15] Boys will get the
bug from Pan (as from Lives/Annals of Trajan proper) and want to visit
the heritage sites wherever Trajan toiled, rested, guested. Instead of Virgils
Evander guiding Aeneas round the future location of the city of Rome,
already memorializing the inspirational heroics of Hercules on site, now
Rome the world empire hosts its posterity on the Trajan Trail (tectum magnus hospes impleueris, 15.4: aude, hospes, contemnere opes . . . angusti subter
fastigia tecti | ingentem Aenean duxit, Verg. A. 8.3646).
Again, the process of enculturation is here an open book, even to Roman
schoolboys, laying out the dynamics of hero-fiction even while applying
the craft to tailor its specific commission and deliver. Because the prince
who became royal grew up a priuatus, he could project straight onto the
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john henderson
legendary champions that won the world before royalty. The story of his rise
would incapsulate and reiterate the mythistory of Rome; so far, no Caesar
born to reign had made it, but the maximal contrast with the Trajanectory
was the non-story of Domitian, non-achieving teenager, back-up prince
in reserve, then unintended heir, turning into sagaless progenitor of zilch.
Foregone conclusion, nothing gone nowhere. Pliny makes Trajan transume
all Wannabes after his lead, tracking and tracing Trajan across the empire
just the way the hallowed footprints of mighty leaders were pointed out
to you in the same places back then.
This in the present (speech), for the future (tracking back over Trajans
transition to exemplary status, for replication, for good). To make our
consummate historical exemplum-to-be, we resume our traipse through
the emperors past, catching up with that mucking-in soldierly c.-in-c.
(commilito, 15.5 13.3). With the topic of military governance, the consul
traces out on behalf of the House what emperor they will be thankful
to have had, and to have recommended to him, them, and his and their
successors.
1624
The line is drawn at the Danube bank between crossing over to glory-hunt
a triumph (transeas, 16.2) a` la Domitianic mock-up, and [17] waiting in
beautiful Trajanic non-aggression for the real thing to come, with mighty
chieftains names on display (ingentia ducum nomina nec indecora nominibus
corpora, 17.2). [18] Meantime, retrieving lapsed camp discipline traditions
from the flawed previous era ( Sall. Iug. 45; Tac. Ann. 13.35), Trajan gets
officers licking troops into shape, on guard against enemy not emperor,
no longer dreading the guys more than the other side; [19] without overshadowing them, he fuses control with the common touch (imperatorem
commilitonemque, 19.3) until [20] the home trip called, from and in peace,
like some great commander you! heading out to the front, achieving
total polarity against that transit, no, not transit, but the scorched earth
trail of a certain recent Caesar (quam dissimilis nuper alterius principis transitus, 20.4). Here (as I think) Pliny names and shames Domitians March,
as he outdoes Ciceros branding of his bete noires non-iter-sed-calamitas that
first made his name as Demosthenic scourge (Cic. Ver. 1.46). The specific
prompt here to future emperors, like it or not, to know, and know good,
The Tab To Their Own Cost, models the Domitian/Trajan divide as
the permanent acid test:
159
[21] Still en route, Trajan indulged in no new honours, new titles rigmarole, and lo! still deferred the obligatory coronation entitlement to
the label pater patriae, concurrent with the rest of the purpling package
(nomen illud, quod alii primo statim principatus die ut imperatoris et Caesaris
receperunt, 21.2). [22] His day one was the Entry to Rome, not charioted
by a white triumph team, not shouldered high and haughty, as per predecessors (priores . . . solebant, 22.1). [23] Instead he went walkabout for this
introitus, the son treading in his fathers footsteps (isdem uestigiis, 23.5),
[24] the very optimizing epitome of imperial promise (talis denique quales
alii principes futuros se pollicentur, 24.1) where pre-Ulpian emperors had
lost the use of their feet and so were shouldered above the likes of us; the
common ground, blurred imperial footprints, reached Trajan for the stars.
2532
The thanksgiving speechs longeurs road matches the multitude of favours
to acclaim, globe-shrinking handouts for army and [26] populus worldwide
matched by child benefit investment in citizens of the future, [27] backed
by the personal panache that spells reassurance, not incurable diseases
afflicting an emperor, featuring rage. [28] Freebies in high-rolling profusion, not to be confused with previous sweeteners to lessen dislike (antea
principes, 28.3), [29] flood into quasi-unending state subsidy in the form
of grain prices, once the source of as much glory for its controller Pompey
the Great (Magnus non minus) as his cumulative successes with the
lex Pompeia dismissing bribery and affray from elections, his sweeping of
piracy from the Mediterranean, and his triumphal processions sanctifying
the world all the way from the rising to the setting sun (29.1) (Asia to go
with Africa and Spain). Now Pliny is using this uniquely extended historical
exemplum to bridge from dole through corn supply to relief for Egyptian
famine to spread Trajanic munificence planet-wide. The only Great with
a term as daily bread czar to rank up there with world conquest (cf. Cic.
Att. 4.1.67) is worth it despite the reminders of this losers assassination
and decapitation at the Nile Delta in Civil War against the first of the
Caesars, Julius, because Latin annona debouches so easily into miraculous
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for being fortunate. . . . On this person heres luck, in the present case, I shall treat
in toned-down style, not to claim Fortune is put in his power, but to come over as
mindful of the past and hopeful of what remains, so my speech wont come across
as either hated by the gods or thankless.
But here the brash ethos suits bold tribunician agitation pushing the envelope and sports street legal Marius for cred. with plebeian orthodoxy. There
is none of the senior consular resonance of Cicero coming out, on the back
of the Marcellus pardon, from boycotting the senate to bespeak the senates prerogative of declaiming in the name of Rome: there he defines live
enthymemic parameters within which Caesar could deserve and so retain
admiration and cooperation.
3355
But Rome did not live on bread alone. Generous but to no fault, Trajan
supplied circuses (as well as panem): beautiful spectaculars with none of
the bring-down negatives familiar from when that Psychopath ran the
show(s), when dislike for a gladiator would become a trial for disloyalty,
fans became human torch exhibits on the end of a hook, and paranoid
readings of support given or withheld were the order of the day. [34] One
(one-off ) beautiful special rounded up the hangover vermin from those
days, informers (delatores) and suchlike cancer in the body politic.23 [35]
The nautical wheeze now was to herd them on a boat and push it out, at the
mercy of wind and wave, onto whatever rocks they deliver them (detulissent, 35.1). This purge allusively riffs on Ciceros exorcism of the Catilinarian
conspirators (excidisti intestinum malum, 34.2; Cat. 1.5), but civilizes
and entertains by forgoing execution of those left to lurk and instead
substituting bloodless stagecraft; but up front it melodramatizes that seachange in The Times (quantum diuersitas temporum, 35.2), while unleashing vitriolic spite, crowing, terror in virtually Domitianic (tooth for a tooth)
vindictiveness. This topic, of a thousand sanctions on the parasites, springs
that heaven-bound Titan of an emperor Titus on us for his moment,
tightly knitted in as trailblazing provider for our security and retribution
(ingenti animo, 35.4 ingentia . . . animos, 34.3; securitati, 35.4 secura,
34.1, securitate, 35.1; ultioni ultionem, 35.4; cf. 36.2; prospexerat, 35.4
prospectare, 35.1). [36] Titus may be good and a god, though (a) Flavian:
but since his edict on the penalties for false informing cannot have worked
even as the ascension he had earned was granted (sc. by Domitian), since
23
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the informers fastbred (sc. under Domitian), and though Nerva beefed it
up apparently to the full and to everyones satisfaction, now Trajan has
excogitated so much, its as though he dreamed it up out of thin air! So
Titus bit-part makes him a less than exemplary extra, walking on to be cut;
he can, however, stand in for the before (sc. before Domitian) recovered
for the proprieties of civil law today. Further profuse generosity is backed
by silencing the racketeers, sh!, the way we were before informers.
[3752] Administration, administration, administration: the fine-print
budgeting, tax calculus, social programme, daily regime of consultation,
work and rest, public works and monuments that amount to our security
choke the speech along between sporadic reminders of uncanny bonding
with Nerva, optimal emperor as optimal father (37.6, 38.6, 43.4), as against
rapacious earlier tyrant emperors blanked as if they never were (39.2;
40.3; ut regum ita Caesarum, 43.5; 50.2), and above all that unforgotten
bent emperor, that gargantuan beast With No Name tormented in his
own (Cyclops) cave, the sex-crime emperor statuefied in every niche,
sadistic slave-driver (42.4, 48.35, 52.3, 52.7). [45] Constructing what
we need, our exemplum (45.6) for history well and wisely, surfing on the
backwash of remembered adversity shared with us (44.1), will deliver on the
top-down copycat compulsion represented by impacting follow-my-leader
paradigm by optimization (optare . . . meliorem . . . melior . . . non . . . nisi
Optimum, 44.3; cf. 52.3; proximating Jupiter Optimus Maximus, 52.6; 53.2).
It already is, on paper: melius homines exemplis docentur (45.6; cf. 47.6). A
hard act, Pan hopes and says, to follow.
Meanwhile excursions into historicality are starved earlier emperors
with the exception of your father, oh plus one or two (no, thats too many)
enthused over bad subjects, preferring slaves: defining despotism. Who
they? Augustus? Titus? Really? [46] Closure of degrading pantomime turns
the clock back to the Hollywood emperor charade (scaenicus imperator
Tac. Ann. 15.50.4). [53] So, dict. sap., Pliny elaborately editorializes the
whole dynamic of his running comparison between best and bad emperors, spicing it with pot/kettle sarcasm on Neros recent revenge, when
Domitian executed his assassin, to clinch the symmetry with future malefactors and their prospective retroactive cursing by posterity (sub exemplo
praemonere, 53.5). Pans every word operates the enthymeme that a rebuke
for the last emperor delivers the best praise of the one living: Silence on a
bad emperor from posterity is proof positive that the one they have behaves
the same way.
[54] Which is tantamount to registering that adulation shadows puny
panegyric as evil twin, just as showbiz, the major arts, poetry and history
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(annales) are haunted, along with senatorial debate and all decision-making
discourse, by the duty to assign honorific formulae and nominations, aka
pandering: e.g. a month to rename, several months, why not?, per Caesar
(54.4). The classic unsung hero paradox has Pliny make a meal of it proving
that the loveliest title ascribed to Trajan ordains him the refuser of titles:
[55] that will go down the ages, There once was an emperor who . . .
(contrast earlier times; more sapientia; and prolixe . . . cumulateque selfdescribes, as it enacts, its text). Yet or yes the odd tribute makes it
through, like the odd statue (cf. unam alteramue et hanc aeream, 52.3):
quales olim ob egregia in rem publicam merita priuatis dicabantur; uisuntur eadem
e materia Caesaris statuae qua Brutorum qua Camillorum. (Plin. Pan. 55.6)
just like the ones once upon a time dedicated to citizens to mark exceptional
service to the state: pilgrims visit Caesars Trajans made of the same material as the
Brutuses and Camilluses.
56.12
With this belaboured climax to the onslaught of administrative items
building towards the arrival of Trajan at the consulate (diuisio at 41.1),
the broadest sweep of Roman historicality served to crown Pans portrait
for eternity of the lovable living statue facing the senates gaze. Arrival at
the climax/rhetorical bridge to the section is marked by self-commentary
flourish (diuisio here): You must have spotted long since, my first
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readers/senators, that my treatment is not selective but instead holistic construal of An Emperor, purpureus pannus.24 You, imperator auguste and Pans
hi-fidelity narration cannot skip or finesse, or miss a moment (uel transilire
uel praeteruehi, 56.2; quod momentum, quod . . . temporis punctum . . . omnia,
56.2). Of optimization (nisi Optimus non, 56.1; optime . . . laudasse, 56.2).
It was with the sermonizing topic of the inscribed monument that
Pliny stretched his humdrum epistolary corpus to support that history of
the presents solitary showcase for historical exempla: excused and accommodated as involuntary outrage expressed through sarcasm, the context
is the official award of honorary insignia plus a big cheque to a satisfied
Claudius freedman secretary with the pretentiously evocative royal name
of Pallas (Ep. 7.29.2; as if straight from the Aeneid, another Arcadian son
of Evander, cf. Tac. Ann. 12.53.3).25 This prompts the follow-up explosion
on the trail of the original decree of the senate, which made the epitaph
seem modest even self-deprecating:
conferant se misceantque, non dico illi ueteres, Africani Achaici Numantini, sed
hi proximi Marii Sullae Pompei (nolo progredi longius): infra Palladis laudes
iacebunt. (Plin. Ep. 8.6.2)
Come for the comparison, mingle. Not you, from Antiquity, Africanuses,
Achaicuses, Numantinuses, but you, from next door, Mariuses, Sullas, Pompeys
No! I refuse to go down that road. Far enough. All of them will lie flattened
beneath panegyric for Pallas.
For Plinys pride in the ordo . . . et transitus et figurae on show in Pan, see Ep. 3.13.3, with Henderson
(2002) 133; on style and composition in Pan, cf. Gamberini (1983) 337448.
Pallas in Plin. Ep.: Henderson (2002) 334.
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The Epistles writes down its negative historical exemplum by summoning up,
first, honorific titles won by the second-century generalissimos of the worldconquering republic who fought for Rome: both Scipio Africanuses
one of them dumb-cluck counted twice, for Numantinus was the second
triumphal agnomen won by Scipio Africanus Minor (Aemilianus; see above
on 13.4); plus Mummius Achaicus, who sacked rebel Achaean Corinth
the same year as Scipio Aemilianus sacked Carthage (146). And, second,
the first-century republic-conquering generalissimos who also fought for
Rome, but did it their way: Marius fighting it out with his former lieutenant
Sulla; then Pompey the Great (whose missing partner would be Julius
Caesar, link between Aeneas Trojans, Venus, Jupiter and every ever-after
Roman emperor, including Pallas eventual executor, Nero). Where the
first names were acquired extras, Rome trampling the other (Carthage,
Spain, Greece Achaea in central Hellas, including Arcadia), the second
triad made their given names name fame, whether Rough Diamond New
Man Marius, Faded Aristo Cornelius Sulla, or son of a general from the
backwoods Pompey (Sullae Felices did recur up to Claudius reign; Pompeii
and Magni went their separate ways to oblivion). Feel Pliny deconstruct =
rip apart (M. Antonius) Pallas identity, between slave turned emperors pal
and chief minion and self-styled scion of a legend from the first paragraphs
of Romes foundation myth. Burst balloon flat as a pancake. The next
note will receive a certain book from Tacitus, as teacher to pupil (8.7.1).
With, and in (it declares), an impossibly strained outsize hyperbaton . . .
56.262
Under two years narrated, and Pan heralds arrival at the pinnacle topic of
purple consulates with mock-despair at the speechs near-infinite diffusion
( Liv. 31.1.5). Trajans first doesnt count (a mention: under Domitian in
91); the second was Nervan but held in absentia, at the front as they used
to do when it was traditional to switch costumes, consular robes for commanders cloak, and chase down uncharted lands for victory (56.4; sc. back
when consuls stayed in Rome before their mission abroad as proconsul,
before Sulla, even before the mid-second century). Throw in a lovely and
duly elaborated scenario not seen for centuries when the paraphernalia
of capital and camp met together and acclamation as imperator Traianus
was hailed live, for scorning, not for taming, the foe.
[57] The third was refused at the start of Trajans reign, though several
new emperors (Gaius, Otho, Domitian) would keep transferring consulates destined for others to themselves, while one (Nero) even at the end
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of his reign seized and stole a consulate he had himself bestowed though it
was almost over (57.2; from rebel Julius Vindex). Was Trajan shy of a third
consulate or his first as emperor? In a state that had seen consuls v and
even vi [see below] not those that were installed as liberty breathed her
last, through force and uprising, but those in retirement and absence who
had consulates brought them on their farms the emperor of the human
race turned down a iii, as, huh, too heavy? (57.4):
tantone Papiriis etiam et Quinctiis moderatior Augustus et Caesar et pater
patriae? (Plin. Pan. 57.5)
Is being Augustus/Caesar/pater patriae rolled into one more restrained than being
one of the Papiriuses/Quinctiuses?
On the bona fide elected quintuple consulate mark were the late fourthcentury Papirius Cursor, early third-century and late third-century Fabii
Maximi, and late third-century Claudius Marcellus; on the sextuple,
mid-fifth-century Quinctius Capitolinus. Consuls summoned from the
plough were late fifth-century Quinctius Cincinnatus26 and mid-thirdcentury Atilius Regulus. Bracketing (non-Virgilian) Papirius and Quinctius together here heads up Cursor and Capitolinus in these generalizing
plurals, excluding e.g. Cursors son and, among Quinctii, Cincinnatus,
Flamininus et al. The men of violence would be Marius (vii) and Caesar
(v). [58] But Pliny tears away from his chronological procession, skipping
appeal for comparison to the one whose serial consulates created a long
and undifferentiated year (58.1) and so fading out Augustus (xiii, with
ix continuous 3323 bce) and Vespasian (ix, with viii in 709) to collapse
emperor excesses into the hate-object of comparison Domitian (x, with
vii in a row 828). By facing Trajan with his own contemporary luminaries
among consular senators: Fabricius Veiento (iii: possibly now dead?) and
those others granted to open and so name their year (Cornelius Palma,
Cornelius Senecio), the orating consul blurs us from his New Era back to
the New Republic: This is the way at the expulsion of the kings the year
of freedom began; the way once upon that time throwing off enslavement
brought unroyal names into the consul lists (58.3).
[59] Through this potted history of republican imperium, we all but
catch up with the moment, lobbying still against the emperors recusatio
for his cos. iii. (Teach future emperors their duty). [60] But Trajan has
by now conceded, for when he could be present, i.e. for the present term,
to be cos. iii together with unroyal coss. iii: Frontinus iii ordinarius from
26
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follow: Caesar + A hard example to follow, Caesar (69.3). Cue (a) train
of aristocrats great names summoned up by Caesars kindness from the
darkness of oblivion (69.5) accelerated back into the limelight, to their
ancestors level (Cornelius Dolabella Metilianus, Cornelius Scipio Salvidienus Orfitus, Pinarius Severus . . . ). [70] And (b) our New Man from
Novum Comum, cos. Pliny, risks orating an anecdote to match, on a
certain quaestorian candidate well known to the rest of the House (and
to Ep. 8.4: Sex. Quinctilius Valerius Maximus), encouraged to make his
descendants as noble as their parents made those aristos. His origins in
Asian Mysia on the Troad made him a good lesson for provincials when
he governed a province. (As good a lesson as a certain New Man hailing
from Italica in Baetica, presently governing this very provincials selection
process.) [71] Again matching sequel to prequel, Trajan presents an archaic
sight for our sore eyes: an emperor stood on a level with the candidates
(71.3). Calling the names over set wheels of optimization in train (faciebas
ergo, cum diceres optimos, 71.1). [72] And the ceremonial prayers, after so
long, too long (72.2), saw emperor and senate as one, whereas for sure the
demise of previous emperors has taught that only those loved by people are
loved by the gods! (72.4). Not that the prayers changed scripts along with
the prayers fortunes; rather (so Pan self-reflects), the same words are meant
differently (72.7). [73] But the novelty of joyous pandemonium around a
blubbing emperor has burdened, will burden, future emperors and our
descendants, the latter requiring they deserve to hear the same prayers, the
former cross at not hearing them (73.6). [74] Amid felicitations to Trajan
and to Us, the House rang with more pithy skill and solemn wisdom
(sapienter et grauiter, 74.2): in the gnomic crede nobis, crede tibi (Trust
us/Trust your self, 74.2), they could even tell a Trajan to look to his laurels,
and with what forfeited the worst emperors trust, win the bests (74.3).
[75] Business opens with the business of this one oration, beggared
by its oral matrix, in live acclamation, and the transumption of both into
published articles and onto inscribed monuments. The rhetorical Panfare
acclaims here and now, on this page for each successive us, the fact that the
scriptural fanfare was possible for this occasion, unlike past equivalents, and
does the nation good and proud to go out to the masses and be forwarded
to the future (75.3). Pliny pursues and syllogizes these details: (a) get the
world in on the act; (b) prove verdicts on emperors good or bad need not be
posthumous; (c) demonstrate in agendo the previous ban on thanksgiving,
now lifted (a) negatively, so as not to suppress our enthusiasm and/for
Trajans deserts; (b) positively, so as to think ahead for History to come
through Exemplarity. Well to be wise, as Pliny lays down the generic law
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171
merito tibi ergo post ceteras appellationes haec est addita ut maior. minus est
enim imperatorem et Caesarem et Augustum, quam omnibus imperatoribus et
Caesaribus et Augustis esse meliorem.
ideoque ille parens hominum deorumque Optimi prius, deinde Maximi nomine
colitur. quo praeclarior laus tua, quem non minus constat Optimum esse, quam
maximum.
adsecutus es nomen, quod ad alium transire non possit, nisi ut appareat in bono
principe alienum, in malo falsum, quod licet omnes postea usurpent, semper
tamen agnoscetur ut tuum.
etenim, ut nomine Augusti admonemur eius cui primum dicatum est, ita haec
Optimi appellatio numquam memoriae hominum sine te recurret, quotiensque
posteri nostri Optimum aliquem uocare cogentur, totiens recordabantur quis
meruerit uocari. (Plin. Pan. 88.510)
Being called Lucky would have worked? No, that doesnt reward ethics, it rewards
fortune. The Great would? No, the jealousy factors higher than the beauty. Your
were adopted by a gent./the best emperor for his own, but the senate adopted you
for the title of The Best.
This is your own property as well as your fathers legacy to you. Its no more
specific, or more diagnostic, a nomenclature if you are addressed as Trajan
rather than The Best. Its like Pisos getting fingered in the old days for being
Frugal, Laeliuses for Wise, Metelluses for Good Boys. And all those qualities are
simultaneously subsumed in your single name, given that the only person who can
look the best is the one who is out ahead of all the best in their own particular
category of distinction.
So you deserve to have this form of address pinned on you to complete the set:
for the extra greatness. Its plainly less great to be Imp./Caes./Aug. than to better
all of the Imps./Caesars/Augustuses.
And that is why The One who is Father of the Human Race and the Gods
is worshipped first by the name The Best, and then The Greatest. Hence your
distinction is the more dazzling as the one who, beyond dispute, is no less the
best than the greatest.
You have acquired a name which cannot trajansfer to anyone else if not to
stand revealed as someone elses property in the case of a good emperor, and as
counterfeit in a bad one; and even if all emperors ever after usurp it, it will still
forever be recognized as yours.
Plus: the parallel with the name Augustus, which tells us to think of the one first
hallowed by it, means that this form of address as The Best will never present itself
again to human memory without you. Every time Roman posterity are obliged to
call anyone The Best, they shall remember each time who it was that earned the
right to be so called.
Did and does every Roman not think Sulla with every felicitation in the
book (see on 56.12 above: reburnished aristo turned butcher neo-con)
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Cornelius Sulla?30 And (the automatic pairing for prime examples of honorific ad hominem title, e.g. Liv. 30.45.6) was every great a cue to think
Pompey, and Pompey (see on 29.1 and 56.12 above: backwoodsman
turned Alexander then all-time loser),31 and Pompeys? What to make of
the slide from optimus, gent., to Optimus, Perfection, as we are making
it happen, when we pan down the speech, re-registering/pre-registering as
we go every single bonus, melior, optimum in the book, together with all
their doubles, pessimus, peior, malus? Founding the dynasty by adopting
Trajan may be the core trajansaction, but every Latin sentence henceforth
valorizes the new value system, engrossed and disseminated around the
trajanscendental signifier of Value.
To think cold fusion of TrajanOptimus, Pliny turns to three specimens
of those dubbed Good Guys, Calpurnius Piso Frugi (cos. 134: as tribune,
first successful legislator against extortion (Cic. Font. 39); recycling the
nickname through Ciceros son-in-law and the cos. 15) and, involving an
oneiric polarity, to the generalized Laelius Sapiens (cos. 140: allegedly
so called from Wise-ly dropping a land-redistribution bill before the fan
was hit (Plut. Ti. Gracch. 8.3); to his friends, Philosophicizing Adviser
to Scipio Aemilianus (Cic. Am. 7); otherwise bare of cognomen, son of
a nouus-and-Scipio Africanus Maior lieutenant); and, to clinch a saintly
tricolon, Caecilius Metellus Piuses (cos. 80: successful lobbyist for his
fathers pardon from exile (Val. Max. 5.2.7); matched for Piety by his
adoptive son Metellus (Pius) Scipio). Shades of the republic at, and tipping
from, its zenith, this triangulated omenclature models for the multiplicity
and plurivocality of mundane republican ideology, long absorbed into the
monoeidic ontology of celestialized autocracy. This is, no doubt, how the
logic of abstraction gets going, as spectacularly enshrined in the (fatally
flawed, and newly vicious) myth of The Artists synthetic statue of Perfect
Beauty (cf. on 4 above). In the short version of Uncle Pliny (Nat. 35.64),
Zeuxis was to make a statue for the city of Acragas to dedicate in the temple
of Hera Lacinia, so he held a beauty parade of their girls and chose five
of the best, so his painting would reflect the feature in each of em that
got most votes (quod in quaque laudatissimum esset). In Ciceros elaborated
prooemial set piece (Inv. 2.13), Zeuxis was handsomely commissioned by
the city of Croton as the maestro to adorn the temple of Hera, including a
portrait of Helen, to embody the surpassing beauty of the female form. He
got them to volunteer to send him their most beautiful girls; he chose five,
because he reckoned it impossible to find everything he was looking for to
30
31
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chapter 9
Afterwords of praise
Roger Rees
Plinys intention that the oratio (i.e. the written version, Ep. 1.20.9) of
his Panegyricus be available to posterity was explicit (Ep. 3.13, 3.18).1 So if
his self-important aspiration that the speech prove directly instructive to
future emperors (Ep. 3.18.23; Pan. 4.1) was not to be realized, it was not
for lack of effort on his behalf, since his conscious attempt to revise and
expand the original version and to secure the speechs survival through
distribution seems to have been an ambitious and original project.2 This
process of revision and publication was in keeping not only with Plinys
general practice in publishing his oratory, but also perhaps with his longterm commitment to publish his letters.3 As his own literary agent for his
speeches and letters, Pliny was bold and innovative, but if he would have
been pleased with the reception of his Panegyricus in later antiquity, it was
perhaps not what he would have imagined.
Forty-three years after Plinys suffect consulship, Fronto was to take similar office, in July and August. In a letter to Marcus Aurelius in early July
143 ce, prompted by a question from the Caesar, Fronto explained that
he was postponing delivery of his gratiarum actio to Augustus Antoninus
Pius for the consulship until 13 August.4 As part of his explanation, Fronto
disclosed that the many speeches of praise he had delivered in the senate to
Marcus Aurelius grandfather Hadrian still maintained an interested readership, sunt orationes istae frequenter in omnium manibus (those speeches
are often in everyones hands, 1. p. 1105 ), and that he had similar hopes
for the speech under preparation to Antoninus, laudatio mea non in Actis
1
2
3
4
5
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Afterwords of praise
177
of Plinys role was either superfluous or unimpressive. In sum, the relationship between Pliny and Fronto as imperial panegyrists seems to have been
complicated: Fronto seems to have quietly assumed Plinys reification of
panegyric as an acceptable literary form for discussion and publication, but
at the same time to have downplayed that very influence. This ambivalent
relationship between Pliny and Fronto was to play a further role in later
antiquitys reception of the Panegyricus.
Another century and a half on, in the spring of 297, an anonymous orator
addressed a panegyric to the Caesar Constantius, probably in Trier.10 The
year before Constantius had overseen the reconquest of Britain after about a
decade of separatist rule, and the speech is dominated by a narrative of that
campaign. The orator draws a favourable comparison between Constantius
active involvement in the reconquest and the distant role Antoninus Pius
had played from Rome in the recovery of southern Scotland all those years
before. This comparison is introduced by reference to Fronto:
itaque Fronto, Romanae eloquentiae non secundum sed alterum decus, cum belli
in Britannia confecti laudem Antonino principi daret, quamuis ille in ipso Vrbis
palatio residens gerendi eius mandasset auspicium, ueluti longae nauis gubernaculis
praesidentem totius uelificationis et cursus gloriam meruisse testatus est. at enim
tu, Caesar inuicte . . . (Pan. Lat. viii(4)14.23)
And so, when Fronto not the second but the other ornament of Roman eloquence praised Antoninus for completing the war in Britain, even though the
emperor had delegated command while himself staying in his palace at Rome, he
swore that he had deserved the glory for the whole naval launch and expedition as
if he had been in charge at the long-ships helm. But you, unconquered Caesar . . .
It may be that the panegyric the orator cites was in fact the same gratiarum
actio for the consulship that Fronto discusses in his letters.11 The orators
patient rehearsal of some of Frontos speechs details perhaps suggests that
he could not assume of his audience a very close recall of the panegyric.12
But at the same time, his confident designation of Fronto as Romanae
eloquentiae non secundum sed alterum decus (a phrase itself echoing Marcus
Aurelius characterization of Fronto in a letter of 143 as decus eloquentiae
Romanae, 1. p. 130) indicates the availability of at least some of Frontos
output in northeast Gaul in the late third century, and his excellent reputation there at the time: the equal, the orator implies of course, of Cicero.13
10
12
13
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Perhaps this commendation received allusive affirmation too: Klotz identified more than a dozen intertexts which give the speech what now seems
a distinctively Ciceronian patina, and speculated too that the orator elsewhere alluded to Frontos now lost panegyric.14 Without sufficient extant
material, moderns cannot evaluate the orators favourable judgement of
Fronto, but the claim, which in its inflation of Marcus Aurelius phrase
significantly elevates Fronto from an ornament to the other ornament, is
nonetheless an arresting one in consideration of later antiquitys reception
of the Panegyricus. There is, it seems, no reminiscence of Pliny.15 This is
remarkable precisely because the Gallic speech was preserved in the very
collection which had at its head Plinys Panegyricus.
The Panegyrici Latini is a late antique collection of twelve speeches, many
of them anonymous, spanning nearly three hundred years, from Plinys
Panegyricus to a speech by Pacatus to the emperor Theodosius in 389.16 It
is in this context that the complete Panegyricus survived antiquity, to be
rediscovered in Mainz in 1433.17 The Panegyricus is first in the collection
in date and in manuscript sequence, but thereafter the speeches are not in
chronological order.18 The second in manuscript sequence is the latest
in date that of Pacatus which among other arguments has led to the
now orthodox assumption that Pacatus himself, a professor of rhetoric
at Bordeaux, put the collection together sometime soon after 389.19 The
preference for Cicero and Fronto explicitly articulated by Constantius
panegyrist in 297 should deter any assumptions about the pre-eminent
status of the Panegyricus in late antiquity that the speechs position as
first in Pacatus collection may prompt. The commendation of Fronto
in a collection fronted by Pliny crystallizes the problematic status of the
Panegyricus in late antiquity, for like Fronto himself the century before, the
orator of 297 does not put Pliny on a pedestal.
Pacatus own approval of Plinys speech extends beyond his inclusion
of it in the anthology to intertextual engagement. A few examples, from
two early chapters of Pacatus speech to Theodosius (Pan. Lat. ii(12)): in
14
15
16
17
18
19
Klotz (1911) 5447; Nixon and Rodgers (1994) 126 n. 37; cf. Van Den Hout (1999) 383.
Klotz (1911) 5468, with varying conviction.
For texts, translations and historical commentaries on the speeches after Plinys, see Nixon and
Rodgers (1994); for other complete editions, see Mynors (1964), Paladini and Fedeli (1976) and
Lassandro (1992).
Winterbottom in Reynolds (1983) 289; Lassandro (2000) 2532; Garca Ruiz (2006) 389.
Hence the dual reference system with Roman numerals denoting manuscript sequence and Arabic
numerals chronological order; see Rees (2002) 20.
On Pacatus life and work, see Turcan-Verkerk (2003); on his role as editor, Pichon (1906a) 137,
(1906b) 2447; for a reading of Pacatus possible editorial intentions with the Panegyrici, see Rees
(forthcoming a).
Afterwords of praise
179
Against Nixon and Rodgers (1994) 449 n. 5, who call this latter intertext hackneyed and familiar,
it seems to me precisely calqued upon Pliny.
Ronning (2007) 13944.
180
roger rees
Afterwords of praise
181
(by moving a man [sc. Theodosius] to the states helm, 3.5): between
them there is a chain which enhances the anthologys sense of collectivity.
In a section of his speech to Constantine in 307, an orators apostrophe
to the emperors late father Constantius quanto nunc gaudio poteris (how
much pleasure you now have, Pan. Lat. vii(6)14.4) in diction and thought
is indebted to Plinys exclamation to the deified Nerva quanto nunc, diue
Nerua, gaudio frueris (how much pleasure you now enjoy, Pan. 89.1).26
In a speech of 310 and perhaps less distinctively, non fortuita hominum
consensio . . . te principem fecit (no chance agreement amongst men made
you emperor, vi(7)3.1) recalls Plinys non te propria cupiditas . . . principem
fecit (no personal desire made you emperor, Pan. 7.1).27 It is such intertexts
that make it certain that the Panegyricus was known as early as the late
third century. Perhaps it was their acquaintance and engagement with the
Panegyricus that commended it or their own speeches (or both) to Pacatus,
when, a century later, he composed his own panegyric and compiled his
anthology.
However, any status the Panegyricus is granted by its position at the head
of the collection, and by the scattered intertexts within it, is complicated
by the summoning of Roman literary ghosts other than Plinys at various
points and with differing urgency throughout the anthology. This gallery of
great names which populates the collection, by means of allusion through
intertext, direct quotation or even name-dropping, is extensive. Fronto and
Cicero, so appreciatively invoked in the phrase from 297, are joined across
the collection by others, such as Sallust, Caesar, Livy, Velleius, Florus,
Seneca and Tacitus.28 Further, it should immediately be conceded that
the Plinian intertexts in the eleven speeches with which the Panegyricus is
preserved are hardly their most conspicuous literary quality. Even if some
such intertexts are considered marked, it should be noted that others are
not, and that some speeches, such as that of 297 mentioned above, feature
none.29 Nor can we account for any one orators inattention to Pliny by
assuming the Panegyricus was unknown to him, as we can with the Letters;30
for, just as we have seen that the author of the speech of 289 knew and
admired the Panegyricus to the extent that he adapted certain phrases for
inclusion in his own speech, so too the orator of 291 knew the speech
of 289, as multiple similarities make absolutely clear (and have convinced
26
28
29
30
182
roger rees
some readers that they are, in fact, the work of the same hand).31 However,
unlike the speech of 289, that of 291 features no echoes of Pliny beyond
what Klotz identified as a certain similarity of thought.32 Likewise, the
author of the speech of 297 knew the speeches of 289 and 291 and drew on
them variously, but the Plinian element in x(2) is completely overlooked.33
The silences about Pliny are, it seems, quite deliberate.
If after his own headline act, Pliny has to jostle for time under the
spotlight in the Panegyrici Latini, Cicero has the lead role. Ciceronian
intertexts far outnumber Plinys, from the speech of 289 to Pacatus a
century later.34 And much as by position it is the Panegyricus that Pacatus as
editor privileges, it is not the descendants of Pliny whose critical judgement
he confesses to fear himself, but those of the republican orators Cato, Cicero
and Hortensius (1.4).35 Throughout the anthology, Ciceros works, his
panegyrical speeches, particularly the Pro Lege Manilia, find most echoes;
four of the collection draw on that speechs proemium as if to assert their
own rhetorical and wider cultural credentials from the start, and the orator
of 297 uses the Pro Marcello similarly cogently.36 Meanwhile, Plinys name
never features.37
A further concession must be that whatever debts or attitudes the later
speeches intertextual engagement with the Panegyricus may reveal, stylistic
and other literary differences between Plinys speech and them are as many
and as conspicuous as the political and ideological differences which distinguish Trajan from the various emperors addressed in the later panegyrics.
The orators individual preferences and idiosyncrasies are apparent across
the collection, but the risk of oversimplifying notwithstanding, they all
stand apart from Plinys. Pacatus speech is the next longest of the twelve
after Plinys, but even so it is only half the length of the Panegyricus;38 most
are very much shorter.39 Whereas Pliny revised and expanded his speech
for publication, the later works seem to have been published as delivered.40
The late antique panegyrists were quick to illuminate their speeches with
literary embellishments from far beyond Plinys compass some of their
prose reading has been mentioned already, but the speeches also include
31
32
33
35
37
38
40
Afterwords of praise
183
43
44
184
roger rees
50
Pabst (1989) 130 n. 38; see also Pabst (1989) 128 n. 19, 135 n. 85.
Note also the loaded commilitones, Symm. Or. 1.19 and Plin. Pan. 15.5; and the play on priuatus
princeps, Symm. Or. 1.2 and Plin. Pan. 9.3.
Cameron (1965) 2958.
Recalling Plin. Ep. 4.14, itself quoting Catul. 16; Green (1991) 5245, xxi.
On Plinys poetry, Hershkowitz (1995). The question of its survival to late antiquity is complicated
by the attribution of a line of Martial (1.4.8) to Pliny in Ausonius MSS (Green 139 l.3); Cameron
(1965) 295 sees the mistake as Ausonius, Green (1991) 524 as a scribes.
Green (1991) 537 assumes Ausonius familiarity with Plinys speech.
Afterwords of praise
185
Pliny is not named, and although the panegyric is long, it lacks the stylistic
flair of Plinys speech.51 There may be instances of topoi where Ausonius
drew on Pliny, but none is celebrated as such, and verbal reminiscences are
not striking.52
Ausonius, however, is not unaware of his panegyrical ancestry, but again,
like the orator of 297 before him, it is to Fronto that he turns when he
addresses a question to himself in dramatized outrage in tanti te ergo oratoris
[sc. Frontonis] fastigium gloriosus attollis? (Do you arrogantly raise yourself
to the heights of such an orator [as Fronto]?, 8.33). Ausonius invokes
Fronto as the only appropriate model for himself as consul and tutor to
an emperor, unica mihi et amplectanda est Frontonis imitatio (the only one
I must imitate is Fronto, 7.32). Of course, Pliny had not been tutor to
Trajan, so was not a possible model for Ausonius according to his logic,
but the artifice of the argument that Ausonius frames again signals Frontos
high stock in late antique Gaul, and imitatio of him extended, it seems, to
the same suppression or downplaying of Plinys Panegyricus that, I argued
above, Fronto himself had practised two hundred years earlier.53 Meantime,
when Pliny could conveniently have been cited as a precedent for a man
grateful for the consulship, he isnt, while Ciceros name is happily dropped
(6.25), and his work is also suitably paraphrased (12.58, recalling Cic. Pis.
1). It seems, then, that the Panegyricus was available to Symmachus and
Ausonius, but as was the case for the authors of the Panegyrici Latini, their
evocations of it varied but never amounted to treatment of it or Pliny
as a canonical archetype which demanded emulation.
Confronting the position that Plinys Letters were unavailable in late
antiquity until they were rediscovered by Sidonius Apollinaris in the later
fifth century,54 Alan Cameron argued that his correspondence was in fact
known in the late fourth century.55 In contrast, the intertextual record
establishes beyond any doubt that the Panegyricus was available to orators,
at least in Gaul, from as early as the first Latin speech to survive to us
after Plinys, that of 289. But the lack of uniformity in the legacy of the
51
52
53
54
Green (1991) xxiii on the speechs ponderous amplitude; on the style of the gratiarum actio see
Green (1991) 538 and ad locc.: e.g. 539 on the disarmingly simple opening.
Green (1991) 537 and e.g. 540. Uotis pro tua salute susceptis nam de sua cui non te imperante securitas?
(with wishes for your well-being for with you in power, whose property is not secure?, 1.3) perhaps
draws on Plinys non te distringimus uotis. non enim pacem, non concordiam, non securitatem, non
opes oramus, non honores: simplex cunctaque ista complexum unum omnium uotum est, salus principis
(we dont strip you with our wishes; we dont pray for peace, or harmony, or security or wealth or
honours: everyones simple and sole wish, which covers all those things, is the emperors well-being,
Pan. 94.2), but the force is considerably diluted by Ausonius much plainer style.
On Fronto in late antiquity, see Macr. 5.1.7 siccum [genus dicendi]; Sid. Ep. 4.3.1 Frontonia grauitas.
55 Cameron (1965).
The view was established in Merrill (1915) and Stout (1955).
186
roger rees
Notable exceptions would be the consistently high regard for Virgil, despite Fronto, and Frontos
own work.
Morford (1992) and Bartsch (1994); Gibson, pp. 11624 in this volume.
Ronning (2007) 142.
Afterwords of praise
187
to complement the rhetorical treatises that were, no doubt, also in circulation. The speech was available to orators, but without any of the sense
of magnetic imperative that drew late antique authors towards Cicero and
Virgil.59
The varied record of verbal reminiscence of the Panegyricus in late antiquity, therefore, might suggest that the speechs most durable legacy was
less textual (or political) than generic Plinys creation of respectable belles
lettres out of imperial panegyric seems to have been held up as a decisive
milestone in Roman rhetorical history. With Plinys example behind them,
Fronto, Symmachus and Ausonius could confidently intend their panegyrics for publication as works of literary interest. Similarly, the Constantinian period saw the collation of an anthology of seven of the panegyrics
which Pacatus was to include in his collection of twelve.60 Who compiled
this earlier anthology, or why, or even how it then reached Pacatus are matters for speculation, but overall we can posit a fourth-century culture of an
intellectual readership of imperial panegyrics after their original delivery.
The availability of Plinys Panegyricus throughout those same decades is
hardly likely to have been coincidental, and Pacatus summa manus the
re-publication of Plinys speech at the head of the new anthology, at the
same time as Plinys Letters were enjoying a revival would, inter alia,
have underlined the respectability of the principle. After Pliny, the genre
of panegyric, and not just his Panegyricus, could hope for later readers.
At the same time, the record of verbal reminiscence indicates that Pacatus major role in the ancient afterlife of the Panegyricus may have a distorting effect on appreciation of the speechs reception in late antiquity.
Pacatus decision in 389 to quarry the Panegyricus himself, and soon afterwards to extend the practice of anthologizing panegyric, and to privilege
Pliny in his new anthology, may combine to misrepresent the influence the
speech had exerted at a stylistic level throughout the fourth century. Pacatus intervention brings the Plinian element to the surface, and decisively
enhances the speeches emulative and collective characters; but the belatedness of these effects must also be remembered. Perhaps Pacatus decision to
anthologize the Panegyricus was not so much a recognition of the status the
speech already held but, in part, an attempt to secure for it the appreciative
audience Pacatus felt it deserved but lacked (and in so doing, of course,
enabling wider appreciation of his own allusive engagement with Plinys
speech).
59
60
Despite the absence, in some cases, of Plinian intertexts, note the claim of Cameron (1965) 295 n. 4
that all panegyrists of the later empire [were] perfectly familiar with Plinys Panegyricus.
Rees (2011).
188
roger rees
On the other hand, lack of enthusiasm for the text of Plinys Panegyricus,
if correctly identified in a lack of verbal reminiscence of it, or in appeals to
Cicero and Fronto as authorities, did not turn Pacatus against speeches
from the previous hundred years, despite his own commitment to it.
As orator and editor, Pacatus comes over as decisive in his own tastes
but tolerant of others; and for all the potentially flattening effects of
courtly protocols and rhetorical conventions, the variety in late antique
oratorys response to the Panegyricus reveals the considered eclecticism of
which the genre was capable. Ultimately the synergy of the XII Panegyrici
Latini draws upon more than the charge between its first two speeches.
The Panegyricus first place in the collection reverently enshrines it as an
admirable precursor, but the texts that follow frame it as a model example
of what imperial panegyric could be, but not what it had to be. As the
original, literary imperial Latin prose panegyric, the Panegyricus boasts the
genres acceptability, its grandness, its stature, its need to be read seriously;
it provided the fundamental premise, the bedrock from which Pacatus
anthology could develop a more varied aesthetic and ideological range. If
intertextual glances to the Panegyricus bring authority and credibility, the
tradition it is seen to begin is one that tolerates even encourages this
development, variety and adaptation. This is a case not of cloning but of
generic modification. The Panegyricus is the ideal start to authorize the
showcasing of rhetorical flair, for while an orator speaks of his emperors
incomparability and his novelty, he himself needs to renew, and so emerges
a tension between the authority of the pasts legacy and each generations
need to be up to date.
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203
Index locorum
4.5, 10
68, 14851
910, 1512
1011, 152
11.23, 131
1213, 1524, 1567
13.4, 153
13.5, 157
14.1, 130
1415, 1578
15.4, 118
16.5, 130
1624, 1589
20.6, 159
22.2, 133
25.5, 130
2532, 15961
27.329.5, 13740
28.4, 56
31.4, 130
3355, 1613
35.2, 34
3741, 301
47.449.4, 60
48.349.1, 129
49.1, 62
49.3, 63
50.2, 64
50.4, 65
51.1, 49
51.2, 49
51.3, 49
51.35, 58
51.5, 56
52.3, 117
52.7, 128
55.6, 163
55.67, 53
55.7, 163
55.9, 52
55.11, 52
Aristotle
Rhetorica
1.9.36, 5
Cassius Dio
67.8.24, 54
68.7.3, 59
Cicero
De Imperio Cn. Pompeii (Pro Lege Manilia)
23, 160
De Oratore
2.347, 89
Pro Caelio
3940, 156
Pro Marcello 1112, 51
Pro Sestio
1423, 155
Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae
286, 55
Isocrates
Evagoras
8, 3
Martial
8 praef. 69, 119
Panegyrici Latini
viii(4)14.23, 177
Pliny the Younger
Epistulae
3.13, 40, 69, 79, 125, 175
3.18, 1, 5, 40, 67, 69, 83,
175
4.22.46, 45
8.6.2, 164
8.6.15, 164
9.26, 1268
Panegyricus
12, 1458
35, 148
204
Index locorum
56.12, 1635
56.262, 1657
5662, 367
57.5, 166
59.6, 37
60.4, 121
61.3, 134
6380, 1679
71.4, 134
75.6, 169
78.12, 38
819, 16974
83.1, 61
85.25, 32
88.510, 171
903, 95, 423
905, 174
Quintilian
Institutio Oratoria
2.10.11, 105
3.7, 704
12.2.2930, 154
12.4.12, 155
Seneca the Younger
De Clementia
1.11.4, 63
1.13.1, 64
Statius
Siluae
1.6.814, 119
4.1.910, 120
4.2.1416, 121
5.1.1868, 118
Suetonius
Claudius
4.5, 59
Vitruvius
De Architectura
6.5.1, 2, 62
205
General index
206
General index
Quintilian on, 705
style, 6970
epitaphios logos, 2, 4
Fabricii, 1534
Fabricius Veiento, Aulus Didius Gallus, 46
fire of 17, 48
Frontinus, De Aquae Ductis, 10911
Fronto (Marcus Cornelius Fronto), 177
and the Panegyrici Latini, 1778
preference for republican literature, 186
Galba (Servius Sulpicius Galba), 15, 19, 148,
150
Gratian (Flavius Gratianus), 183
Hercules, 157, 169
invective loci (as per Craig (2004)), 12, 13
Isocrates, 1, 3, 47, 69, 75, 82, 83
Evagoras, 3, 4, 47, 69, 75
Iunius Mauricus, 45
Jupiter, 17, 43, 53, 70, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 114, 116,
117, 121, 123, 131, 145, 150, 157, 165, 173, 174
laudatio funebris, 1, 2, 3, 175
Laudes Messallae, 48
libertas (freedom), 7, 99, 133, 135, 136
Longinus, 69, 126, 130
Marcus Aurelius, 175, 177
Martial (Marcus Valerius Martialis), 11819
Maximian (Marcus Aurelius Valerius
Maximianus), 4, 180
Menander I, 74, 75
Menander II, 74, 75, 76
Naumachia of Domitian, 545
Nerva (Marcus Cocceius Nerva), 15, 22, 51, 80,
81, 82, 109, 149
and Domus Flauia, 60
claims on Domitianic monuments, 48
connected with Domitian, 45
principate, 15
reign, 15
Nicolaus (49 Felten), 74
Nile, 111, 118, 130, 140, 159, 160
Oratory in the age of Trajan, 1068
Pacatus, 178, 179, 180, 182, 186, 187, 188
Pallas (Marcus Antonius Pallas), 164, 165
panegyric and physical monuments, 478
Panegyrici Latini, 1878
207
Panegyricus
admonitory programme, 510, 67
aesthetics, 12541
and contemporary praise culture, 10424
and genre of prose panegyric, 5, 1878
and metaphorical monuments, 503
and monuments of Rome, 4566
and negative exemplarity, 1014
and rhetorical theory, 6784
and strategy of antithesis, 53, 69, 78, 109, 114,
115, 146, 147
and the first person plural, 335
and the sublime, 12541
consulship in, 7980
elevation, 125, 127, 131, 133, 135, 136, 149
evidentiary value, 1418
friendship in, 136
gold and silver in, 52, 53
historical exemplarity in, 14274
imperial virtues in, 810
legacy in antiquity, 1878
occasion, 1
Optimization, 162, 164, 168, 170, 173, 174
organization of material, 70, 77, 180
precursors and predecessors, 14
proem, 71, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81
publication, 45, 401
significance, 45
sincerity and belief, 1314, 17, 212
style, 6970
time in, 146
title of, 67
Trajans family in, 812
Platos Symposium
Agathons speech in praise of Love, 69, 74
Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus), 18
Pliny the Younger (Gaius Plinius Caecilius
Secundus)
administrative expertise, 2933
and knowledge of the imperial court, 31
and the character of the consulship, 36
as consul, 378
as insider, 335
career, 1822, 39, 413
friendship with Trajan, 312
his consulship, 44
insider knowledge, 2933
self-fashioning, 2944
supporter of Trajan, 413
Pompeia Plotina, 31, 60, 61, 149, 170
Pompey (Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus), 73, 93,
94, 101, 129, 138, 140, 142, 159, 160, 165, 172
progymnasmata, 68
Pseudo-Aristides 7, 76, 77, 81, 82
Pseudo-Dionysius, 69
208
General index