Princeton (2024) h/b 463pp £38 (ISBN 9780691193144)
Note: this is a book of such importance that the editors have agreed to a review of far greater length than is customary on this site.
This is a most scholarly work de longue haleine on a man of whom rather little can be said with confidence to be known, and of whom no authentic likeness exists, but who has attracted no fewer than ‘four monographs in the past decade’. The book under notice deserves a much fuller account than can be given here, where no more than a modest number of its many worthwhile features can be highlighted.
Maecenas—who had no children and bequeathed his entire estate to Augustus upon his death in 8 BC—is best known as patron of Horace and Virgil (and Propertius), and (of course) as an aesthete of great wealth. His estate was on the Esquiline. Yet he was also appointed ‘guardian’ (vigil) of Rome during Augustus’ absences abroad (presumably the scope of his auctoritas, while substantial, was carefully specified), and active enough to have gone with—or at least met—Horace on that famous Iter Brundisinum: he was possibly under instruction from (the then) Octavian. His acquaintance with Octavian was close enough to lead to correspondence which could take on a semi-humorous, ‘joshing’ tone—e.g. Augustus calls him ‘moecharum μάλαγμα’ (note the termination of the Greek word: nouns ending in -μα tend to imply activity of some kind). Yet we have pitifully little of Maecenas’ own words, and we see him through the descriptions (often unflattering) of others. The poetry of Horace and Virgil is of course another important source, which, however, has frequently to be interpreted or decoded. That Maecenas remained an eques all his life perhaps shows shrewd commonsense.
The book is arranged in ten chapters and is followed by 34 pages of ‘References’ and an Index. Chapter One—‘The Parallel Lives of Maecenas’—develops the themes hinted at above: it is essential reading. G. writes of Maecenas’s confusion of public and private life (Seneca accuses him of conducting official business while wearing trailing robes and flanked by two eunuchs; Sir Ronald Syme describes him as an ‘effeminate and sinister [favourite word of Syme] descendant of Etruscan kings … who found refuge in silk, gems, and the ambiguous charms of the actor Bathyllus … vile epicure’.) But no contemporary accounts of Maecenas survive, except for what the poets tell us, and extracts from the correspondence of Augustus (if they are trustworthy). G. quotes in extenso from the most unflattering account given in Seneca’s Epistle 114, written under Nero, where Maecenas appears as a split personality; and we read further details in (for example) Pliny the Elder, Suetonius, Plutarch, Tacitus and Cassius Dio; the non-contemporary Laus Pisonis and Elegiae ad Maecenatem—both of unknown authorship, but flattering—can be adduced on the other side. Significantly, while poems addressed to Maecenas provide material that is ‘thin but hugely influential’, G. argues that the poets (sc. Horace, Virgil, Propertius) give him a role ‘far more significant than their brief name-dropping suggests’. This reader was struck by G.’s comment on the readiness of modern scholars to ‘parrot’ the verdicts of the ancient critics on the scraps of Maecenas’s own work—Eduard Fraenkel and Theodor Mommsen are cited, the latter memorably describing Maecenas as ‘den unleidlichsten aller herzvertrockneten und wortverkraeuselnden Hofpoeten’ (‘most disagreeable of all heart-withered, word-crimping court-poets’ is G.’s translation). G. argues convincingly that it is often a sense of exclusion or inclusion (sc. from or in Maecenas’ imagined poets’ circle) that determines whether he is admired or resented. Horace and Virgil are unmistakeably ‘in’—yet Maecenas is ‘startlingly minimized in their poetry’.
One trait in the character of Maecenas, as offered by post-Augustan writers, is mollitia, i.e. softness or effeminacy—a ‘contentious concept across all ancient moral discourse’, and one which was not necessarily negative: Maecenas, who rejected any traditional career path, yet, as Rome’s guardian (vigil) appointed by Augustus, and from time to time diplomat, wielded significant power—without being an Agrippa. G. sums up Maecenas as being ‘his own man’, a chameleon and a ‘mysterious tertium quid’; a speculative hypothetical Greek counterpart, suggests G., for inclusion in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, is Alcibiades: she lists eight ‘similar elements’, while admitting ‘obvious differences’: one may feel that the differences far outweigh the similarities.
In Chapter 2—'Maecenas the Patron’—G.’s ‘overarching assumption (is) poets construct their patrons on the page, and (that) Maecenas’s individuality is not recoverable from their works’. This is one of the most important chapters of the book, with all the nuances of the delicate patron-client relationship coming under scrutiny—starting, naturally, with Maecenas and Horace, when the potential patron takes his time, according to the poet’s account, before admitting Horace to his circle—in what is a ‘fantasy of power reversal’. G.’s superb account of the reciprocal relationship (especially pp.51-4) is compulsory reading (on p.54 the word exemplis has dropped out of a quotation from Propertius). Notable, as G. says, is how ‘those inside patronage relationships tend to idealise them, replacing rank, dependence, obligation and payment with equality, autonomy, abstract “bounty”—and friendship’ (amicitia), a word which G. examines with care: ‘the performance of amicitia in Horace’s textual relationship with Maecenas explores every sense of that term’.
If Maecenas’s relationships with Horace and Augustus are relatively well understood (but why the reported ‘cooling off’ with Augustus? The Murena conspiracy of 23 BC? Or Augustus’s affair with Maecenas’s wife Terentia?), his relationship with the Georgics is far from being so clear. Indeed, just why did Virgil compose the Georgics? Was Hesiod and/or Lucretius in his thinking? G. of course discusses this subject before going on to the even more puzzling question: what role does Maecenas play in the four books (in each of which his name appears at or relatively close to the beginning, but not again)? G. looks at this question in a depth which defies abridgement here (but see especially pp.111-114), arguing that Maecenas remains loosely ‘present’ throughout as a ‘principle of constant changeability, a barometer of poetic mood, a fellow-consciousness, a fish out of agricultural water’.
G. then (Chapter 3: ‘Maecenas the Landlord’) examines Maecenas’s role in each of the Georgics in turn: in G1, despite his appearance in line 2, Octavian has soon ‘hijacked’ most of Maecenas’s functions, reclaiming the authority ceded to Maecenas during his absence abroad … ‘from this point Maecenas seems to disappear, as already superfluous’; in G2, Maecenas is linked with Bacchus—one the god of fertility, the other the bountiful patron. The argument becomes more complex, and G. suggests that towards the end of the book Virgil adopts a ‘sour grapes’ attitude to urban civilization, whereas rural Italy offers the quiet of broad estates; and, if rustication offers the appealing combination of hard graft mixed with leisure, it is hardly likely that it will be Maecenas who wields agricultural implements. In G3 G. argues that Virgil divides his attention differently between his patrons—Octavian (official priority) and Maecenas ‘beloved afterthought’, whom Virgil teases as notorious for his dissolute habits and who is constructed as a companion for the poet’s own impulses. G. then takes us back to the anecdote about the first reading of the Georgics, where Maecenas took over when the poet’s voice failed. And there may be a later indirect reference to Maecenas when ‘no cares disturb the healthy sleep of cattle’, unlike the troubles that beset Maecenas, the feasting insomniac of the later biographies. In G4, G.’s account, with the battle of the bees, is of the first interest: in conclusion, while Octavian forges ahead, Maecenas lingers in the interstices. Whether, as G. suggests, Maecenas’s ‘presumed unreceptiveness to agricultural training ‘has been a ‘crucial stimulus’ is perhaps open to debate.
Chapter 4 (‘Maecenas the Lyric Tyrant: Horace’s Odes’) is rightly placed at the centre of the book. Of outstanding quality, it could easily be presented as the introduction to a commentary on the Odes. ‘For all his protestations of sameness, “twinned souls”, Horace manipulates Maecenas however he requires, to enhance his own identity: he is light to Maecenas’s heavy, clear to his cloudy, poor to his rich, free to his troubled’. As for Maecenas, his ‘hard-soft, male-female, Roman Etruscan personality infuses the entire collection’. Was Maecenas fond of luxury, but also obsessed with illness and death (so Francis Cairns)? As G. observes, portraits of Maecenas are fragmentary: gaps are plugged by commentators who import a rounded personality with material extrapolated from the Odes. G. gives all the evidence, and the reader ultimately will make his/her mind up. Maecenas is witness to Horace’s lyric ascent: one might bluntly say that Maecenas was mortal, but Horace is immortal.
Chapter 5 ‘(Maecenas the Pacemaker’) takes us to Propertius’s Elegies. The poet, obsessed with Cynthia, while begging to be admitted to the imagined circle of Callimachus and Philetas, still has Maecenas as a role model and a ‘mirror for the ambidextrous relationship of elegiac poetry to the (notionally) separate worlds of love and war’. Maecenas is mentioned by name on only four occasions, and the poet is not mentioned by Horace (except highly speculatively) or, understandably, in Virgil; the reviewer notes that he is rather curtly dismissed by Quintilian (‘sunt qui Propertium malint’ sc. to Tibullus, and why the subjunctive?). G. argues that ‘Maecenas is much more than simply a patron figure in Propertius’s poetry. He is also an authoritative role model’. However, there is a rival candidate: Tullus (adamantly denied by Stephen Heyworth). G. examines the evidence, concluding that it is not possible to decide retrospectively whether Tullus is just a friend or specifically a patron. There is much more to consider in this chapter: when Propertius writes of Cynthia gliding along in Coan silks, is there a coded reference to Philetas of Cos? Or to Maecenas, whom Seneca describes as sauntering in ‘flowing robes’? (G. writes of how Maecenas and Cynthia ‘leak’ into each other in ‘curious ways’; but perhaps the word should have been ‘leach’, a relevant term used in the textile business).
One other matter calls for attention: in his Book 4, Propertius sings of the Etruscan god Vertumnus, with ‘manifold powers of transformation’: one example is ‘Put me in Coan silks, I will become a yielding mistress’ (4.2.23). Is this a reference to the versatility of Propertian elegy? Or to the Etruscan Maecenas, as Pierre Grimal argued long ago (one is almost reminded of Simon Hornblower’s decrypting of Cassandra’s ravings in Lycophron). G. brings us back to reality: ‘I do not suggest decrypting Vertumnus as Maecenas’; ‘Maecenas may have made Augustan poetry various … but Augustan poetry made him various as well’. (This fascinating and deeply argued chapter contains much more, including references by the poet to Tibullus and to Callimachus’s Aetia, and even to the jewel, beryl, which ‘glints at the centre of Maecenas’s gem collection’!
Chapter 6: ‘Maecenas as a Figure of Style’. Everyone agrees (says G.) that Maecenas had a distinctive way of moving and being in the world: habitus, vultus, incessus, cultus, as well as for his eccentric literary style (oratio). These affectations are bitingly summed up in Seneca’s Ep.14 (cited here at length) with the later Quintilian exemplifying transgressiones (one of which is made possible by the fact that Latin has cases, an accusative appearing here rather elegantly out of position). The surviving amount of Maecenas’s actual output of prose and verse is tiny; verse in hendecasyllables, hexameters, Priapeans, galliambics recall the neoterism of the 1st C BC; vocabulary is often ‘prissy diminutive, overtly affectionate’. Sections of this chapter are headed ‘Maecenas and Controversy’, ‘The World of Declamation’, ‘Maecenas the Critic’ (e.g. from the Elder Seneca’s Suasoriae, Maecenas supports—by clever selection—Virgil’s relatively restrained handling of sublime topics); other examples from the Elder Seneca mark ‘a half-way stage on Maecenas’s downward trajectory, a critical point for his critical standing’—for, ‘a generation on, the Maecenas who appears in the younger Seneca … is virtually unrecognizable: the esteemed patron has become a decadent rake, a spineless abject figure—in short a broken man’. In Seneca, ‘Maecenas emerges as a mincing figure hard to recognize from his portraits in Augustan poetry … but all too easy to align with the victims of republican invective’. Ironically, says G., Epistles 114 is ‘our best source for Maecenas’s prose writing’, and p.262 gives an extended example: G.’s commentary follows, illustrating irrational metaphors and syntax, neologisms, pathetic fallacy, with instances ‘redolent of the decadent life that the letter condemns.’ (In this section we find that familiar phrase ‘novae cacozeliae repertor’ [doubtless coined by one of the obtrectatores Virgilii] in an anecdote about Virgil as Maecenas’s ‘substitute son’). Seneca’s Maecenas is as promiscuous and perverse as his flamboyant style: we shall see him having a long afterlife, says G., not only as Tacitus’s Petronius, but as Aubrey Beardsley, Oscar Wilde, Des Esseintes in Huysman’s A rebours, (and perhaps Proust’s Baron de Charlus).
From Chapter 7, ‘Missing Maecenas’, onwards we enter (and shall cover more briefly) his Afterlives. We have seen the unflattering description of Maecenas given by Seneca, and Juvenal (1.64-8), who mentions Maecenas only once, gives a brutal snapshot of a Maecenas lookalike, but in the, two Elegiae in Maecenatem (probably of the 1st C AD, author(s) unknown) a more appealing figure emerges, a man living a life of otium, after a life of service to Augustus; the praise is laid on even more thickly in the hexameter Laus Pisonis (date and authorship alike uncertain), in which we are reminded, not for the first time, that the tragedian Varius—of whom no trace survives—was another to come under the patronage of Maecenas. After all, says Martial, only the existence of great patrons can guarantee the existence of great poets. Finally, the Capito generously praised by Pliny (Ep. 8.12.1-2) is christened by Ronald Syme ‘the Maecenas of his age’—rather implausibly, as G. amply demonstrates.
Chapter 8, ‘Jewels and Seals’, need not detain us long: while ‘there is no reliable evidence for any gem collection, jewels and seal rings have long encrusted the textual memory of Maecenas’; Dio Cassius tells us how Maecenas (and Agrippa) received seal rings from Augustus; a hendecasyllabic fragment of Maecenas himself contains a recusatio of any potential gift from Horace of (a list of) jewels, including his especially favoured beryl; but far more interesting is the humorous letter from Augustus to Maecenas (pp.326-7)—where more jewels are mentioned, but where, suggests G., ‘Augustus is harping on Maecenas’s uncertain status: exotic rarity or homegrown fake?’ Yet Maecenas’s textual associations with gemstones ‘tell us nothing about his real-life habits as a collector’: so G., but the reviewer may perhaps be permitted to doubt.
Chapter 9, ‘The Gardens, the Tower, the Auditorium’. But was there a tower? Evidence initially comes from Suetonius, who describes Nero reciting ‘The Sack of Troy’ ‘e turre Maecenatiana’; but, says G., it is ‘almost the only ancient testimony for the existence of a tower at all’; Cassius Dio puts Nero on ‘the roof of his place’, while Tacitus’s Nero ‘strums on a private stage’. Even the adjective employed by Suetonius may imply nothing more than a (or the) tower that stood in the Horti Maecenatiani. It hardly matters: ‘the tower has had a rich afterlife, especially in the Italian Renaissance, and continues to have a solid presence in classical scholarship’; nor need ‘molem propinquam nubibus arduis’—Horace at Carmina 3.29. 9-12—mean more than a tall townhouse. G. considers such other theories that are on offer, but there is ‘no concrete evidence that the palace included anything that resembled a physical tower, or, even if it did, that it was built by Maecenas himself’: for more ‘elements of fantasy’ in the quest to locate and visualize the tower, see pp.347-8, while engaging illustrations of the ‘Horti Moecenatis (sic) cum turri’ by Fabio Calvo (1558) and Giacomo Lauro (1612) are given on p.351. The remainder of the chapter concerns sculptures, gardens, and the auditorium, again with illustrations.
Chapter 10, ‘The Afterlives of Maecenas’, takes us through a scattered history of literature in which Maecenas plays roles of varying plausibility and interest. The reviewer suspects that the section entitled ‘Maecenas goes to America’ will find the keenest readers, especially the study of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, which ‘vies with Citizen Kane as the twentieth century’s supreme fictional portrait of the triumph and failure of a self-made man:’ yet Maecenas is mentioned only in passing. Far more direct is Professor Brichot’s quotation of Carmina 1.1.1 at the salon of the upstart Verdurins, with reference to the (present) Baron de Charlus: Brichot has to explain that Maecenas was ‘un dandy qui était la fleur du gratin’ as well as a bookworm (rat de bibliotheque); Charlus himself claims that Maecenas was nothing less than the Verdurin of his day, John Buchan called Maecenas ‘the physician who watched over the soul and spirit of Rome’, and for Syme in 1939, he was the ‘chief of propaganda’. G. closes with the reflection that Maecenas has always represented to artists the hand on the shoulder, the intimate meeting of eyes and minds, the open but exclusive space for creative possibility; thus, a tool of the imagination, predicated on its being an ungraspable dream.
This an exceptional book, the product of vast reading combined with high scholarship—and, miraculously, readability. It would be an impertinence for the reviewer (whose knowledge of Maecenas has been immeasurably widened by Emily Gowers) merely to recommend it: it deserves to be bought widely throughout the respublica litterarum.
Colin Leach