De Gruyter (2017) h/b 361pp £82.99. (ISBN 9783110533224)
This delightful book contains seventeen papers by leading experts in this field and gives us both breadth and depth in its analysis of the major writers of the Flavian period, of which this review can only provide tiny thumbnail sketches of the papers.
The book starts with Mario Citroni’s essay on Quintilian, looking at the whole question of generic worth and literary styles in a scholarly world still struggling to square the circle of tradition and originality. Thomas Baier in the second chapter sees literary history through the eyes of Quintilian with a focus on the use of exempla in the training of an orator and how imitatio is both an assessment of the past and an evaluation of what is useful in the present.
S. Citroni Marchetti next describes Pliny’s Naturalis Historia as characterising a ‘genre of peace’ as opposed to the military histories which privileged war and struggle: Pliny, it is suggested, promotes a ‘maternal ethic of care’ rather than the paternalistic domination of society and nature which was more common in Rome: in reading this paper I was often reminded of Lucretius’ imagery of Mother Earth and also of the Virgil of the Georgics. Andrea Balbo looks at rhetoric and the political flavour of forensic oratory in an age of emperors: two of Pliny the Younger’s letters (1.5 and 1.18) show us how he compared his own younger self lambasting Regulus with Cicero attacking Chrysogonus in the pro Roscio—both of them young men fighting the powerful men of the day.
Alberto Canobbio looks at what he calls the ‘bipartition’ and ‘non-distinction’ of genres as related in Martial’s Apophoreta. The simple division of ‘great’ (as in epic and tragedy) and ‘small’ (as in epigram) is shown to be subverted in Martial and also in Statius, whose Silvae resists any easy generic labelling (and whose epic is also imbued with ‘light’ touches amidst the heavy-duty epic grandeur). Alfredo Mario Morelli looks at Martial’s debt to Catullus with particular reference to his ironic makarismos poem 23. Martial more than once uses the ‘ridiculous poverty’ theme in his epigrams, with the echoes of his ‘genre-model’ adding authority and literary polish to his work.
Poetry has to (pretend to) be ‘about’ something and the occasional poem composed in response to an event—such as a triumph or a birthday—is as old as poetry itself. Dashing off a quick Gelegenheitsgedicht could be seen as showing fluency and natural talent quite unlike the lima involved in slow and painstaking work, and both Martial and the Statius of the Silvae have this facility and festinatio in abundance. Encomiastic poetry cannot wait for endless emendatio—if it is to do the job it has to be ready in time for the occasion. The Silvae of Statius is made up of 32 such occasional poems and is seen by Alessia Bonadeo as an attempt to construct a new canon complementary to the existing ones. Carole Newlands shows how influential this innovative approach was in the work of the 5th century poet Sidonius Apollinaris whose work plays with Statian material and manages to blend the occasional world of the Silvae with the timeless epic of the Thebaid, the later poet engaging with his predecessor rather like Statius himself had done with earlier poets.
The book moves next on to ‘straight’ epic—except that Flavian epic is never ‘straight’. Valerius Flaccus, for instance, cannot write an epic account of the Argonauts without taking account of earlier epic and tragic views of the tale, from Homer right up up Seneca’s Medea, as Jacqueline Fabre-Serris makes clear in a well-argued and persuasive piece. Valerius 1.234-6, for instance, echoes Virgil (labor omnia vicit in Georgics 1.145-6) and enables him ‘to valorize the exploit of the Argonauts as the first act initiating a new period in the life of mankind’ (191); but the tone of the epic also brings up Catullus 64 and Seneca’s Medea with their very different takes on the tale, centring on this notion of just how ‘golden’ the golden age really was. Finding intertextual references in Valerius is not difficult: the achievement of this essay is to show how Valerius uses ‘moral blurring’ throughout the poem to impair the fama of Jason while simultaneously promoting it, resisting the urge either to push a ‘moral decadence’ line (as in the closing lines of Catullus 64) or a more positivist view of heroic labor. For my money the labor which really is being pushed and which delivers omnia is the literary labor of composing poetry such as the Argonautica—and perhaps that is where we are left when the moral programme runs dry. Staying with Valerius Flaccus, Andrew Zissos looks at the figure of Hypsipyle as Valerius takes her over from Apollonius Rhodius. Hypsipyle’s rescue of her father Thoas from the general man-slaying on Lemnos is celebrated by the queen on a cloak which she gives to Jason—presumably to reassure him that men are safe with her if not with other Lemniades—but which the dozy hero throws on the funeral pyre of Cyzicus, thereby spurning the pietas which the cloak both depicts and guarantees. Zissos argues that Valerius’ Hypsipyle is more reminiscent of Virgil’s Dido than of Apollonius’ queen—although there is a lot of interplay also between all these texts and Ovid’s Heroides 6, and more could have been made of Valerius’ use of Ovid.
Helen Lovatt contributes a powerful piece on the ‘beautiful face of war’ in Flavian epic: not an easy call when one recalls the sort of grisly violence in these poems (think for example of Tydeus’ cannibalism in Thebaid 8). This essay foregrounds the literary and aesthetic qualities of the text even when—especially when—the content is gruesome. The ‘beautiful face’ of the young hero is seen as an emblem of the tragedy of war and also the heroic stature of epic combatants, ‘glory interwoven with terror’ (252). R. Joy Littlewood looks at the pivotal passage of Silius’ Punica 10 where Hannibal, who has defeated the Romans at Cannae and now fantasises about taking Rome herself, is visited by Somnus and made to dream ominously. The passage, she argues, draws on the Διὸς ἀπάτη of Iliad 14 as well as the Morpheus-Alcyone dream in Ovid Met.11, as Hannibal is terrified and made to ‘resemble one of Ovid’s most vulnerable women’ (262). Jupiter’s warning words at 10.366-7 also (I would suggest) echo Apollo’s warning to Patroclus at Iliad 16.702-9 (as do Juno’s words at Punica 12.703-25) as both attempt to pull a man of ambition back from disaster. The fact that Juno playfully alludes to the Διὸς ἀπάτη is another example of the Flavian ability to make very interesting bricks from the straw of earlier literature. Nothing shows this better than Punica 14, which is, as Raymond Marks demonstrates, a peripheral book in the narrative but a positive Aladdin’s cave for commentators with its intertextual treasures. The point being made is not that Silius is just a derivative poet—that old chestnut was long ago shot down—but that he sees and expresses the sense of place and the historical unity of his poetic world in literary as well as mythic and topographical terms. Alison Keith turns to the tantalizing fragment which is all we have of Statius’ Achilleid and shows how Statius’ account of a young Achilles (in drag) tutoring Deidamia draws on lyric sources, especially Horace. Statius the poet—and Achilles his character—both produce a hybrid of lyric and epic which undermines conventions of genre and gives a whole new image to this warrior hero.
The final two chapters concern themselves with epic and historiography. Silius is an obvious candidate for the title of ‘poet historian’, and Antony Augustakis brings out how the burial scenes show interplay between the different genres, drawing on Livy and Polybius to see Silius making poetry out of history. Silius mentions funerals a good deal, and it is apt that when great men die heroically they are given a great send-off: so Paulus and Tiberius Gracchus are buried with full honours by Hannibal who thus claims the laudem humandi (12.478). Marcellus’ death in an ambush comes in for criticism from Livy (he should have known better at his age not to get caught like that) and even worse from Polybius (he brought it on himself by ‘behaving like a simpleton’). Virgil (Aeneid 6. 855-9), of course, has this same Marcellus in his Heldenschau with no hint of an embarrassing demise, and Silius’ Hannibal (15.385) also praises his dead enemy as the Ausonii columen regni, presumably to give himself more glory for defeating him. Silius has it both ways—Hannibal would wish to exaggerate the qualities of his dead enemy to magnify his achievement in killing him, and Silius is not keen to present his illustrious forebears as idiots either—but there is more to it than that. Hannibal’s use of lavish funerals for his enemies marks his own anxieties about his own eventual destiny also, and hints are dropped that in the epic the events are sub specie aeternitatis so that what for the historian is just a stupid mistake is for the poet a tragic ἁμαρτία.
In the final chapter Christiane Reitz argues that—in the tradition of the old opposition of poetry and philosophy—Statius presents Capaneus as a flawed Epicurean. Capaneus is the old-school superum contemptor (Thebaid 3.602) who trusts his own fortitude rather than the gods, built and equipped like a giant, a dragon-slayer and a superb boxer as well as a warrior of Achillean proportions. His aristeia is the last one before the climactic duel of the brothers in book 11. He died as he lived, undaunted even by the thunderbolt of Jupiter and waiting for more blows to hit him (10.939), every bit the hero even as he goes up in a blaze of epic lightning. Reitz (322) makes much of Thebaid 10.827-36 with its contrast of human and superhuman origins of furor and wishes to find Epicurean resonance here, but in her argument that the poet is imitating the Lucretian ‘appeal to the Muses’ she confuses three Lucretian passages. The Muses are alluded to (but not invoked) in DRN 1.921ff, while it is Venus who is asked to be sociam scribendis versibus (1.24). The best parallel for her purpose here is the address to the (singular) muse Calliope (6.92-5). Statius in fact nicely elides the Platonic θεία μανία (amentia [10.830]) with the epic hero’s furor (10.832). Reitz suggests that Capaneus is a bad Epicurean who challenges the gods and gets epic come-uppance, thereby restoring the primacy of epic over philosophy. She makes much of the fact that Jupiter is not credited with throwing the fulmen which kills him, although Jupiter does not usually do his own dirty work in epic. This last paper could have been amplified with more on how Lucretius started this epic ball rolling with his own imagery of Epicurus as a victorious general storming the heavens (e.g. DRN 1.66-79). Statius is perhaps playing the earlier poet at his own game.
The book contains very few minor typographical errors and is lavishly produced in the best De Gruyter style, although there is no index, which is a pity. Each paper is also available for purchase separately online. Authors such as Statius and Silius were in the past mostly read solely as unseen translation, and the whole era was damned with the faint praise of being ‘silver’. No more: this book proves (if proof were needed) that Flavian literature is every bit as rewarding to study as anything else, and we owe a huge debt of gratitude to these seventeen scholars for sharing their insights with us in such a well-written and accessible style.
John Godwin