24 Friendship And Patronage David Konstan 1 Introduction Ancient

24 friendship and patronage david konstan 1. introduction. ancient rome was a deeply stratified society. from the time when latin

24
Friendship and Patronage
David Konstan
1. Introduction. Ancient Rome was a deeply stratified society. From
the time when Latin literature first began to be produced in the third
century B.C. (see Goldberg, Chapter 1 above), and indeed well before
then, the Roman census divided citizens according to wealth and
status, with the senatorial order at the top and proletarians, that
is, those whose wealth consisted solely in their children, at the
bottom rung. In these circumstances, the poor depended for security
and well being on powerful families, who in turn relied on them for
political support. Such relations, largely informal in the historical
period but sanctioned by custom, were what the Romans understood by
the terms ‘patron’ (patronus) and ‘client’ (cliens). In the late
Republic, clients were expected to vote for their patron if he ran for
office, while he in turn undertook to represent them, if necessary, in
legal proceedings (Deniaux (1993) 2-12, with bibliography; on judicial
patronage, David [1992]).
Friendship, in turn, was ideally a relationship between equals:
philotês isotês went the Greek jingle (Aristotle EN 8.5.1157b36; EE
7.8.1241b13): ‘amity is parity’. This does not mean that bonds of
mutual affection could not develop across class boundaries; there is
abundant evidence that they did, and that such relations were
recognized as true friendships. And yet, class lines are not so easily
erased, and there are indications that attitudes of deference and
condescension often persisted among such friends. One sign of this
self-consciousness is the practice of referring to friends of higher
social standing as ‘powerful friends’ (amici potentes), ‘great
friends’ (magni amici), and the like. Indeed, among cultivated people
the terms ‘patron’ and ‘client’ seem to have been avoided, and polite
usage insisted on the term ‘friend’ (amicus) even where the inequality
of the relationship seems to us glaring (Nauta (2002) 14-18).
This convention does not in and of itself mean that the friendships in
question were purely formal, with no element of reciprocal fondness.
Many scholars today, however, hold that even among equals, amicitia
was basically a matter of services rather than affection. Thus,
Michael Peachin (2001: 135 n. 2) observes that ‘the standard modern
view ... tends to reduce significantly the emotional aspect of the
relationship among the Romans, and to make of it a rather pragmatic
business.’ Some go so far as to treat Roman friendship as a formal,
institutionalized relation involving reciprocal obligations and
established on specific terms (Caldelli (2001) 22). On this view,
hierarchical friendships differ from those between equals chiefly in
respect to the kinds of services due. This surely overstates the
business-like character of friendship (see Konstan (1997) and (2002)
): there are numerous passages in Roman literature which reveal the
core of amicitia to be love or amor, as Cicero maintained (De Amicitia
26; cf. Partitiones oratoriae 88). Undoubtedly, personal interests
might compromise friendships, and differences in power opened the way
to exploitation of the relationship whether by the richer or the
poorer party. But such behavior, then as now, was an abuse of
friendship, not its essence.
Nevertheless, the association between friendship and patronage may
have blurred to some extent the distinction between genuine intimacy
and more pragmatic connections. If a humble man spoke of social
superior as his ‘friend,’ was he merely using a euphemistic formula
for ‘benefactor,’ or was he pretending to a mutuality beyond and above
the difference of station? Richard Saller [(1989) 57] affirms: ‘To
discuss bonds between senior aristocrats and their aspiring juniors in
terms of 'friendship' seems to me misleading, because of the
egalitarian overtones that the word has in modern English. Though
willing to extend the courtesy of the label amicus to some of their
inferiors, the status-conscious Romans did not allow the courtesy to
obscure the relative social standings of the two parties.’ I should
rather say that, just because the notion of friendship or amicitia
retained the sense of a voluntary affective tie, the ambiguity cannot
be eliminated. Cicero, writing in the persona of Laelius, the intimate
friend of Scipio Aemilianus (De Amicitia 19.69), gives the right
nuance: ‘in a friendship, it is crucial to be a peer to one's
inferior. For there are often certain outstanding cases, like Scipio
in our bunch, if I may put it so: never did he put himself above
Philus, or Rupilius, or Mummius, or friends of lower rank [ordo].’
Laelius adds (20.71) that ‘just as those who are superior in a
relationship of friendship and association should make themselves
equal to their inferiors, so too inferiors ought not to take it ill
that they are surpassed in ability or fortune or station.’ Class
differences are taken for granted, but Cicero does not on that account
dismiss such friendships as inauthentic. Roman friendship was thus a
loaded concept: it designated a selfless, loving bond, but it might
also connote a reciprocal expectation of services, whether between
equals or unequals, such as true friendship too afforded, albeit on
the basis of generosity and love rather than practical considerations
(Raccanelli (1998) 19-40).
Finally, we may note that Roman social relations were governed by a
refined sense of etiquette that enabled men to preserve their face or
dignitas in the intensely competitive and status-conscious world of
the Roman aristocracy. The elaborate expressions of good will and
affection in which these courtesies were encoded are not signs of
insincerity, but rather forms of civility that were ‘a necessary
prelude to social transactions’ (Hall (forthcoming); cf. Hall 1996,
1998). Politeness was, indeed, so integral to Roman conversation that
even the most intimate expression of affection necessarily made use of
the same coinage. Thus, Cicero writes to Atticus (Ad Atticum 12.3.1):
‘I imagine you are the one person less ingratiating [blandus] than I
am, or else, if we are both so from time to time toward someone, at
least we never are among ourselves. So listen when I tell you this
matter-of-factly: may I cease to live, dear Atticus, if not just
Tusculum, where I am otherwise content, but even the Isles of the
Blessed mean so much to me that I would be whole days without you.’
Cicero employs the formulas of gracious hyperbole even as he fears
that his affirmation ‘may appear indistinguishable from the polite
effusions conventionally exchanged between aristocrats’ (Hall,
forthcoming). Nor were such courtesies confined to exchanges between
members of the upper classes; the young Marcus Cicero, while studying
in Athens, employs the same conventions in a letter written to his
father's freedman and secretary Tiro (Ad Familiares 16.21; Hall,
forthcoming).
The preceding discussion indicates the complex context in which
literary relationships of friendship and patronage must be understood.
To this we must add the further consideration that these relations
changed to some degree over time, and especially with the
transformation in Roman social life that accompanied the shift from
Republic to Empire. The best procedure, accordingly, is to respect
chronology and follow the evolution of literary patronage and
friendship, beginning with the earliest Roman writers.
2 : Patronage and friendship in early Roman literature. The first
author of whom we hear (see Goldberg, Chapter 1 above) is Livius
Andronicus, who composed tragedies and comedies and translated Homer's
Odyssey into the archaic Saturnian meter. Information concerning
Livius' social status is largely late and contradictory, but it seems
he had been a prisoner of war, was subsequently freed, and worked as a
school teacher in Rome. It is conceivable that he was a client of the
Livius clan. The historian Livy reports (27.37) that Livius was chosen
to compose a choral poem for girls in the year 207, a critical moment
during the second Punic War. Livius Salinator was one of the consuls
in that year, and it is plausible that he acted in the role of patron
to the poet, at least to the extent of granting him the commission.
It is remarkable that not just Livius but all poets active in Rome in
the century following him appear to have been foreigners, with none
belonging to the highest level of the aristocracy. Gnaeus Naevius, who
composed an annalistic epic on the first Punic War as well as
tragedies and comedies, came from Campania to the south of Rome (Aulus
Gellius 1.24.2). He seems to have mocked the Metellus family, one of
whom was consul and another praetor in 206, and to have paid for this
indiscretion with a stint in prison (Plautus Miles Gloriosus 209-12
may allude to this episode). Evidently, his social position was
precarious; whether he had a patron on his side is moot.
Ennius, who, like Naevius, wrote an epic history of Rome along with
tragedies and comedies (and works in various other genres), was born
in Calabria and brought to Rome by Cato the Elder, according to
Cornelius Nepos (Cato 1.4). Ennius accompanied Marcus Fulvius Nobilior
on his campaign to Aetolia (189), perhaps with a view to celebrating
his achievements, and he acquired Roman citizenship thanks to Fulvius'
son, Quintus. Aulus Gellius (12.4) quotes some verses from the seventh
book of Ennius' Annales for their depiction of the ideal relationship
between a man of lesser station and an upper-class friend (hominis
minoris erga amicum superiorem), which he regards as constituting
veritable laws of friendship. The passage had been taken by the
first-century B.C. antiquarian Aelius Stilo to reflect Ennius' own
relationship with Fulvius:
‘He summons a man with whom he often shares his table and conversation
and takes counsel on his affairs, after having spent the better part
of the day deliberating on the highest matters of state in the wide
forum and hallowed senate.... A learned, loyal, gentle man, pleasant,
content with his station, happy, cultivated, saying the right thing at
the right time, amenable, of few words...’ (cf. Goldberg (1995)
120-23).
Were the Fulvii, then, Ennius' patrons? Yet Ennius was also on
intimate terms with the Scipios. Cicero (De Oratore 2.276) records an
anecdote in which Scipio Nasica once knocked at Ennius' door and was
told by the maid that Ennius wasn't at home; when Ennius dropped by at
Nasica's a few days later, Nasica himself answered that he was out.
Ennius protested that he recognized Nasica's voice, and the latter
replied: ‘Insolent fellow: when I was looking for you I believed your
maid that you weren't home, and you don't believe me in person?’
Whatever the truth of this story, Cicero thought it plausible, and it
presupposes an easy comradeship between the poet and the patrician.
Plautus, the earliest Roman writer whose works, or at least some of
them, survive entire, came to Rome from Umbria. According to Varro
(cited in Aulus Gellius 3.3.14), he made money in the theater, lost it
in commerce, and earned it back again by writing comedies, which were
so successful that he could live off the proceeds of his art. There is
no mention of a patron or other personal relations in the biographical
tradition, which in any case is of dubious value. With Terence,
however, the case is different. His cognomen, Afer, makes it at least
plausible that he was brought to Rome as a slave from the area round
Carthage, as Suetonius claimed (Vita Terenti 1). Later, he was on
intimate terms with Scipio Aemilianus, Laelius, and their crowd, and
was selected to present a play at the funeral celebration for Aemilius
Paulus, Scipio's father (one sees the importance of individual
sponsorship). What is more, malicious rumor had it that powerful
friends helped Terence compose his comedies (Suetonius De Poetis 11;
other references in Courtney 1993: 88). In the prologue to Adelphoe
(15-19), Terence himself affirms (via one of his actors):
‘As to what those spiteful fellows say, that noblemen help him and in
fact constantly write together with him, they may consider this a
terrible insult, but he [Terence] deems it the greatest praise if he
pleases men who please all of you and Rome’ (cf. Heautontimoroumenos
22-26; on their identities, cf. Gruen (1992) 197-202).
In Cicero's De Amicitia, moreover, Laelius speaks of Terence as his
familiaris (24.89), which suggests that (in Cicero's view) he regarded
the playwright as an intimate.
Of other comic writers, it is known that Caecilius Statius came to
Rome as a slave and prisoner of war, and lived for a time with Ennius.
Among tragic poets, Pacuvius, the nephew of Ennius, was born in
Brindisi, and Accius, who first performed in Rome in 140 and wrote
also annals and other works, hailed from Pisaurum in Umbria and was a
client of Decimus Junius Brutus.
Evidently, the Roman aristocracy of this period disdained to write
poetry, at least in the popular forms of drama, epic, and commissioned
lyrics. As Cicero puts it (Tusc.1.1.3), ‘poets, then, were recognized
or received among us late, even though it is stated in [Cato's]
Origines that guests at feasts used to sing to the flute about the
virtues of distinguished men; yet a speech of Cato's asserts that
there was no honor accorded even to this kind [of poetry]’ (1.2.3; cf.
Aulus Gellius 11.2.5; Krostenko (2001) 22-31). I cannot help wondering
whether the insinuation that powerful friends helped Terence compose
his comedies was more a slur against aristocrats who stooped to
writing poetry than the literary incompetence of their protégé (contra
Gruen (1992) 202).
In contrast to the foreign and relatively humble origins of the
earliest playwrights and epic poets, Cato himself inaugurated the
publication of history and speeches in Latin (see Kraus, Chapter 17
above, and Berry, Chapter 18 above), and these genres remained the
province of the highest echelon of society; as Cicero says, ‘we
quickly embraced oratory’ (Tusc.1.3.5; cf. Sciarrino 2004). While the
powerful might patronize professional poets, they distanced themselves
from them by composing a different kind of literature.
Surviving Roman comedies (see Panayotakis, Chapter 9 above) are based
on Greek models, and tend to reflect Greek social relations.
Friendships are generally respected in the plays; the few cases where
a friend is suspected of a doublecross (Plautus' Bacchides and
Epidicus, Terence's Andria) turn out to have rested on a
misapprehension. It also looks as though the Roman playwrights
themselves created or amplified these scenes (on Bacchides, del Corno
(2001) 42-44, Raccanelli (1998) 79; on Andria, Donatus ad 997), which
may suggest that tension between friends was a more congenial theme to
Roman dramatists than to Greek.
It is generally agreed that Plautus expanded the roles of clever
slaves and wily parasites over his Greek models, sometimes adapting
them to the pattern of Roman clientship. Conceivably, the scene in the
Miles Gloriosus in which the wealthy bachelor Periplectomenus
describes his slave in the throes of thinking up a plot (200-17)
evoked for a Roman audience the relation between a patron and a client
poet. True friendship between a master and slave was also a
possibility; in Plautus' Captivi, the slave Tyndarus, who has switched
roles with his master Philocrates, reminds the latter: ‘be faithful to
one who is faithful: keep me as your friend forever, be not less
faithful to me than I have been to you, for you are now my master, my
patron, my father’ (439-44, abridged). Terence is more of a purist in
this as in other respects, although he too imports Roman customs into
his plays; in Adelphoe, for example, a character inquires in a scene
clearly inspired by Roman legal conventions: ‘have you no client,
friend, or guest-relation [hospes]?’ (529).
3 : Patronage and friendship in the literature of the later Republic.
Toward the end of the second century B.C., members of the upper
classes began to dabble in new forms of poetry, though not yet epic or
drama (one exception perhaps proves the rule: Gaius Julius Caesar
Strabo produced tragedies, but seems to have been disdained by his
potential associates in the collegium poetarum; Valerius Maximus
3.7.11; cf. Asconius on Cicero Pro Scauro 22). . Most notable among
them was Lucilius, who was credited with the invention of satire (see
Goldberg, Chapter 1 above and Morgan, Chapter 12 above). Lucilius was
a friend of the Scipios; though he kept out of politics himself, he
was independently wealthy and his brother became a Roman senator.
There are no references to patrons or clients in the 1300 verses that
survive of his work, but Lucilius does observe that ‘a friend should
give good advice and take good care’ (quoted by Nonius 372M.26), and
he contrasts the friend, who is interested in the other's mind or self
(animum), with the parasite, who cares only about his wealth (Nonius
331M.27). Mario Citroni (1995: 44) argues that, unlike the writers of
dramatic, lyric, and epic poetry who composed for a broad public, ‘the
author of a 'new' genre like satire is ... free to establish the scope
of his own readership,’ and could now address himself to an
aristocratic audience whose level of literary culture had expanded
enormously since the time of Ennius (some scholars suppose that epic
poems were recited at aristocratic convivia [Rüpke 2001: 49-53],
though I am inclined to believe, with Leo (1967) [orig. 1913] 73, that
they were disseminated principally in schools: cf. the career of
Livius Andronicus, above). Several members of the nobility also tried
their hand at epigrammatic verse, including Quintus Lutatius Catulus,
who was consul in 102; as Courtney (1993) 75 remarks, ‘the willingness
of a member of the highest aristocracy to toss off imitations of
Hellenistic sentimental erotic poetry ... is a new phenomenon in Roman
culture at this time.’ Lyric, epigram, and other miniature genres of
poetry became a serious avocation among the Roman aristocracy,
however, only with the so-called ‘neoteric’ movement in the mid-first
century B.C., whose chief representative was Catullus (see also
Harrison, Chapter 13 above).
The ‘new’ poets adopted a Callimachean aesthetic of brevity and
learned wit. Catullus congratulated his friend Cinna on his miniature
epic, Smyrna (poem 95), and admired the three-volume universal history
of Cornelius Nepos for its concision. In turn, he lambasted turgid
poets like Volusius (poem 36), who composed verse annals. The
sophisticated Suffenus, who was unrefined only in his poetry, wrote
tens of thousands of lines of verse, according to Catullus, but
perhaps these consisted of many short poems rather than one or more of
epic length (the same may be true of Hortensius, in Catullus’ poem 95;
cf. Cameron (1995) 460-61). When his friend Calvus sent him as a joke
a short collection (libellus) of bad verse, Catullus assumed that
Calvus had received it from a client of his, or else from a
schoolteacher (poem 14). Perhaps we may detect, behind the partiality
for an urbane muse, a lingering prejudice against the traditionally
popular genres of national epic and drama (cf. Citroni (1995) 57-60).
Friendship is at the heart of Catullus' poetry : even love was ideally
modelled on amicitia (poem. 109), and nothing offends Catullus more
than betrayal (e.g. poem 30). His friendship with the orator and poet,
Gaius Licinius Calvus, was legendary (poem 50; cf. Ovid Amores
3.9.61-62), and in general his poems project a comfortable familiarity
with the most prominent figures of his day. In these verses, as also
in Cicero's letters to his friends, one glimpses how friendships based
on shared tastes bound together the Roman elite (Citroni (1995) 185
compares Cicero's Ad Fam. 7.22, in which Cicero describes an evening
he spent with the jurist Trebatius Testa, to Catullus poem 50 on
Calvus). Catullus' family was distinguished enough to have played host
to Caesar in Verona. Nevertheless, as a newcomer to Rome, Catullus may
have felt the need for a patron; hence the dedication of his book to
Cornelius Nepos as patronus in poem 1, on the reading adopted by Goold
(1983). Yet he freely attacked such powerful men as Caesar and Pompey.
Whereas Naevius was humbled for an affront to the Metellus clan,
Catullus carried on an affair with the wife (if it was she) of the
leading Metellus of his day (Quintus Metellus Celer).
In this period, some poets consented to celebrate the achievements of
great men in hexameter verse, sometimes on what seems like a
commission, other times as a favor to friends. Publius Terentius
Varro, who came from Atax in Gaul, wrote a poem on Caesar's conquests
in that province, as well as an adaptation of Apollonius' of Rhodes'
Argonautica, an Alexandrian composition that would have commended
itself to the ‘neoterics’ (on such combinations, cf. Courtney (1993)
199-200). Gnaeus Matius, who rendered the Iliad into Latin and was the
first to compose mimiambi at Rome, also wrote an historical epic on
Caesar in at least two books, very possibly as a gesture of
friendship. Furius Bibaculus, also from the north, composed annals on
Caesar's Gallic wars in at least 11 books (Macrobius Saturnalia
6.1.34; cf. Courtney (1993) 197), but was evidently unafraid to assail
Octavian much as Catullus had maligned Julius Caesar (Tacitus Annales
4.34). Atticus himself had commemorated Cicero's consulship in Greek
(presumably in prose), though the result was not entirely to Cicero's
liking (Ad Atticum 2.1.1). Cicero also put pressure on the Greek poet
Archias (and perhaps on Thyillus), who evidently failed to produce,
even though Cicero had assumed the role of patronus and defended him
in court (Ad Atticum 1.16.15). In desperation, Cicero, who had himself
translated Aratus' Phaenomena in the neoteric manner, celebrated his
own consulship in verse. Perhaps such works on living subjects were
regarded as the poetic equivalent of a prose historical monograph, of
the sort that Cicero had attempted to exact from his friend Lucceius (Ad
Fam. 5.12; cf. Hall 1998), or else a kind of panegyric rather than
narrative epic proper (Cameron (1995) 463-71).
4 : Patronage and friendship in the literature of the Augustan age. It
is, however, with the Augustan principate, and the emergence of
powerful sponsors of poetry such as Maecenas, Messalla, and Augustus
himself, that something like formal, state-centered literary patronage
first appears (see Farrell, Chapter 3 above). While recognizing their
vast power, one must be careful to determine what role these men
played in the literary activity they encouraged, without importing
anachronistic notions of political censorship and control in
evaluating their role.
None of the major poets of this epoch was of the senatorial class. The
two greatest were of relatively humble origin. Horace was the son of
an ex-slave, or maligned as such [ Williams (1995)], and Virgil, who
came from Mantua in the north, was helped out by Asinius Pollio after
his property was confiscated in the civil wars. Horace, indeed,
addresses a certain Virgil as a ‘client of noble youths’ (Odes
4.12.15). Some scholars have hesitated to identify this figure with
the famous poet, despite apparent allusions to his verses (Putnam
(1986):205 n. 13; cf. Mayer (1995) 288-89), but it is not implausible
that Horace is referring here to the dead Virgil at a early stage of
his career (Johnson (1994) 51-55,62-64). It is these two who undertook
to compose a national epic (the Aeneid) and an officially sponsored
lyric poem (Horace's Carmen saeculare), genres associated particularly
with the professional poets of the third and second centuries B.C.
How did such men gain access to the privileged literary circles in
Augustus' court? Horace gives us the following description (Satires
1.6.45-64):
I now come back to myself, son of a freedman father, whom they all run
down as son of a freedman father.... I couldn't say that I was lucky
in that it was an accident which allotted you to me as a friend,
because it was certainly not chance that set you in my path; some time
ago the good Virgil and after him Varius told you what I was. When I
came face to face, I gulped out a few words, because tongue-tied
shyness stopped me speaking out further, and told you not that I was
the son of a distinguished father, not that I rode round my country
estates on a Tarentine nag, but the facts about myself. Your reply,
after your fashion, was brief; I left, and nine months later you
called me back and bade me be numbered amongst your friends. I
consider it a great distinction to have found favour with you -- who
can tell the honourable from the base -- not because of an eminent
father but because of integrity of life and character (trans. Brown
1995: 65).
The complexity of the term amicus is apparent here. It has been
suggested that Maecenas literally inscribed Horace's name in a list of
welcome visitors, and that admission to his circle was no more a
matter of affection than achieving membership in an exclusive club.
Brown (1995: 156) notes that ‘amicus is here also appropriate in its
technical application to either party in the patron/client
relationship.’ Horace was certainly aware of the price to be paid for
connections to secure political advancement. He warns a bold young man
just entering upon such a career: ‘Cultivating a powerful friend seems
nice to those who have not experienced it; one who has fears it’ (Epistles
1.18.86-7). As Mayer (1995: 291) puts it: ‘Lollius seemed to need
advice on treading the narrow path of true independence within a
hierarchical aristocracy now transforming itself into a royal court.’
Only when he has achieved the psychological independence that
Epicurean philosophy confers will Lollius be ready to engage in true
friendships with the rich and powerful, although even then, tact will
be essential (Satires 1.3).
And yet, Horace's relationship with Maecenas, like that with his
fellow poets, was or soon became one of genuine friendship. Horace's
own poems indicate the quality of the bond, as in his description of
the trip he took with Maecenas and others to Brindisi (Satires
1.5.31-44):
Meanwhile Maecenas and Cocceius arrive and together with them Fonteius
Capito, a character of tailored perfection, second to none in his
friendship with Antony.... The next day's dawn was easily the most
welcome, because at Sinuessa Plotius, Varius and Virgil met us -- no
fairer spirits has the earth produced, and no one's attachment to them
is closer than mine. How we embraced and how great was our joy! While
I'm in my right mind, there's nothing I'd compare with the pleasure of
friendship (trans. Brown (1993) 55-57).
Some critics have seen a difference in tone between Horace's formal
mention of the political grandees and the warmth he expresses in
respect to his fellow poets (Estafanía 1994, citing Fedeli 1992). But
no doubt his friendship with Maecenas ‘soon transcended a relation of
clientship and was transformed into a mutual and sincere affection’
(Estafanía 1994: 9). When Horace came to publishing his Odes, it is
significant that the first three were so arranged as to address in
turn Maecenas, Augustus, and Virgil.
Friendship as a theme is pervasive in Horace's verse, as one might
expect of an adherent of Epicureanism, the philosophical school that
most prized this bond (for the attitude of Roman Epicureans to
friendship, cf. Cicero De finibus 1.20.65; De officiis 1.66-70). This
was a notion of friendship predicated on autonomy and
self-sufficiency. In a letter almost certainly addressed to his fellow
poet Albius Tibullus, Horace writes (Epistles 1.4.12-16):
In a world torn by hope and worry, dread and anger,
imagine every day that dawns is the last you'll see;
the hour you never hoped for will prove a happy surprise.
Come and see me when you want a laugh. I'm fat and sleek,
in prime condition, a porker from Epicurus' herd
(trans. Rudd 1979: 138).
Horace projects a life of private ease, which he invites his friend to
share (cf. Odes 2.18). No doubt he brought a similar attitude to his
relationship with Augustus and Maecenas.
The elegiac poets Cornelius Gallus, Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid,
along with some lesser figures such as Lygdamus, were of the
equestrian class, the census rank below that of senator. Rather than
compose epic or drama, they limited themselves (with the exception of
Ovid) to short, Callimachean compositions, that were new to Rome and
dealt largely with personal erotic themes (see Gibson, Chapter 11
above), sometimes even pointing up the tension between servitude to a
mistress and service to the state (Tibullus 1.1.1-6, Propertius 2.7).
Nevertheless, Augustus and his ministers enlisted Tibullus and
Propertius, as they had Virgil and Horace, in support of their
political and social program. In this context, a new sub-genre of
Latin poetry came into being: the recusatio, or ‘refusal,’ in which a
poet protested his incapacity to write epic eulogies of Augustus'
achievements in war and peace (Virgil Eclogues 6.3-8; Horace Odes 1.6,
2.12, 4.2; Propertius 2.1, 3.1, 3.9, 2.10, 3.3; Ovid Amores 1.1).
Though the device goes back to Callimachus, who declined to treat the
hackneyed themes of mythology, the ‘Augustan poets ... give this a
completely new twist,’ professing that their talents are insufficient
for ‘the great affairs of contemporary Roman history and, in
particular, the deeds of Augustus’ (Williams (1968) 46-47; cf. Cameron
(1995) 454-83). Propertius finally lent his voice in support of the
regime (4.6), while Tibullus squared the circle by commending the
peace which Augustus had made possible as the condition for the
harmonious relationship between lovers (1.7, 1.10). The extreme case
was Ovid, who was punished with exile for the licentious character of
his early poems; not his divinization of Julius Caesar in the
Metamorphoses, nor his half-finished poem on Rome's sacred calendar,
nor again his tearful verse epistles to infuential friends and
acquaintances (of whose loyalty he often despaired) sufficed to have
the sentence repealed (cf. Grebe 1998).
Apart, perhaps, from Ovid, the coin in which these patrons exerted
their pressure on the poets was not direct coercion, nor again the
overt purchase of their services, just as the poetry they demanded or
inspired was not mere flattery or propaganda. The ties of friendship
on which patronage rested entailed subtler forms of commerce, more
analogous to the exchange of gifts than to hired labor [Bowditch
(2001)]. These poets wrote for an elite public, and their aim was not
so much to doctor history as to articulate a vision of the principate
in which they and their peers might believe. It is here that the
modern ‘conceptual separation of 'literature' and 'politics'‘ (Kennedy
(1992) 37) is most misleading’.
Outside the court, Gaius Asinius Pollio, who was sympathetic to
Augustus' regime, also patronized good poets. Pollio himself was
famous as a historian and orator, but he too composed erotic poems in
the Catullian manner (Virgil Eclogues 3.86: Pollio et ipse facit nova
carmina) as well as tragedies, as did Ovid, Varius, and others, though
whether they were intended for the popular stage is moot. Pollio held
readings in his house, anticipating the vogue for recitals both public
and private in the following century.
5 : Patronage and friendship in the literature of the empire. After
the death of Augustus, the emperor remained, or was perceived to be,
the chief source of poetic patronage (see Mayer, Chapter 4 above and
Gibson, Chapter 5 above). Juvenal goes so far as to affirm that only
the emperor was prepared to support poets, whereas the aristocracy had
turned its back on them. Juvenal notes that Lucan was wealthy and
independent (Satires 7.79-80), but Statius is treated as an
impoverished poet who failed to obtain gifts, despite the enormous
popularity of his Thebaid (7.82-90; cf. Nauta (2002) 3-4). In his
Silvae, Statius wrote occasional poems for various members of the
aristocracy, with whom he was on intimate terms (Nauta (2002)
193-248). Lucan, on the contrary, wrote a bold epic on the civil wars
that was critical of Julius Caesar (see Hardie, Chapter 6 above);
despite the inclusion of a eulogy to Nero, he was condemned to death
by the emperor for his ostensible part in a conspiracy. In the hands
of an aristocrat, epic was a potentially subversive genre (so too,
perhaps, were the tragedies composed by Lucan's uncle, Seneca). For
Juvenal, Lucan's high status is a figure for his poetic daring. Poets
of lesser station, like Statius and Silius Italicus (made consul by
Nero), were poor but safe: conventional epic was still a client's
genre.
Juvenal, writing under Trajan, was looking back at an age that seemed
dominated by tyrannical emperors such as Tiberius, Nero, and Domitian,
where writers feared to speak openly. Pliny the Younger, in his
Panegyricus to Trajan composed in the year 100 (when Pliny shared the
consulship with Tacitus), placed an unusual emphasis on the new
ruler's capacity for friendship (44.7, 85.5; cf. Dio of Prusa's third
Oration on Kingship; Konstan 1997a). Like Juvenal (Satire 4), Pliny
was insisting on the right relationship between patron and dependent
as one of amity rather than domination. Pliny prided himself on his
friendships, and his correspondence breathes a spirit of affection for
his intimates (Epistles 1.14.10, 2.7.6; de Blois (2001) 130). He
describes to Trajan how a friendship between a superior and inferior
party evolves (10.87.1):
‘My lord, Nymphidius Lupus served with me as chief centurion, and when
I was tribune he was prefect; that is when I began to feel a warm
affection for him. Afterwards, there developed a love based on the
very duration of our mutual friendship.’
His letters to Trajan, composed chiefly while he was governor in
Bithynia, betray an obsequious dependency on the emperor's judgment,
but his deference does not entirely smother the personal warmth that
evidently obtained between the two, while Trajan, for his part, calls
him ‘My dearest Pliny’ (mi Secunde carissime, 10.16.1, cf. 10.21.1,
10.41.1, etc.). As a poet, Pliny limited himself to lyric poems in the
style of Catullus.
Pliny enjoyed encouraging the literary activities of others, including
Martial (cf. Watson, Chapter 14 above), whose expenses he helped
defray for his trip back to his native Spain (Pliny Epistles 3.21).
Martial unashamedly adopted the pose of a poor poet, economically
dependent on the generosity of wealthy benefactors (12.3):
What Maecenas, a knight sprung from ancient kings [cf. Horace Odes
1.1.1], was to Horace and Varius and the great Virgil, loquacious fame
and ancient records will declare to all races and peoples that you,
Priscus Terentius, have been to me. You create inspiration for me; you
make possible whatever I seem able to accomplish; you give me the
leisure that belongs to a free man.... To give, to provide, to
increase modest wealth and grant what gods when they are generous have
scarcely bestowed, now one may do lawfully. But you, under a harsh
ruler and in evil times, dared to be a good man.
Martial traced his literary ancestry to Catullus (10.78.16), but he
does not imitate Catullus' easy interaction with the powerful, whether
for good or ill. Barbara Gold [(2002) 591] observes (with a little
exaggeration): ‘There is not single subject that receives more
attention in Martial's epigrams than the troubled relations between
amici ('friends') or patrons and their clients.’ Martial not only
writes for or under patrons; he makes patronage the theme of much of
his verse.
The role of friendship in patronage is central to Martial's thoughts.
On his ascent up the Esquiline hill to visit the rich Paulus, who had
already gone out for the day, Martial complains (5.22.13-14): ‘Shall
the faithful client ever be cultivating unconscionable friends? Unless
you stay abed, you can be no patron of mine’ (trans. Shackleton
Bailey). Amicus here is all but a euphemism for patron (cf. 10.19). Or
again (3.36): ‘You bid me, Fabianus, to provide you with what a new,
recently made friend provides you’ (1-2), upon which Martial
enumerates the services he performs, such as waiting outside his
patron's house at the crack of dawn. He next protests: ‘Have I earned
this over thirty Decembers, to be forever a new recruit to your
friendship?’ (7-8)? The final couplet suggests he should be granted a
veteran's discharge. The point is that after so long an acquaintance,
the demeaning routine of a client is inappropriate; there is thus a
subtle hit at the hypocrisy of patronizing friends (cf. 3.37 on rich
‘friends’ who get angry so as not to have to compensate their poor
acquaintances; also 3.41, 2.74.6). In 3.46, however, Martial contrasts
the services of a client, which he proposes sending his freedman to
perform, with those of a friend, which, he says, is all that the
freedman cannot perform (11-12). So too he exclaims (2.55): ‘You want
to be toadied to [coli], Sextus; I wanted to love you. I must obey
you: you shall be toadied to, as you order. But if I toady to you,
Sextus, I shan't love you.’ Again (9.14): ‘Do you believe that this
man, whom your table, your dinners have made your friend, is the soul
of faithful friendship [fidae pectus amicitiae]? He loves your boar
and mullets and udder and oysters, not you. If I should dine that
well, he'll be my friend’ (on the value of a true friend, cf. 9.52,
9.99, 10.44). Martial distinguishes (4.56.7) between giving
unconditionally (largiri) and giving with a view to gaining or
receiving in return (donare; cf. 10.11, 10.15). John Sullivan [(1991)
120] observes that the picture of Roman patronage as a system of
duties and benefits is blurred because it ‘is forced to overlap with
the concept of friendship’; but Martial is clear that the two ideas
are ‘theoretically distinct’ and may simultaneously describe his
relationship to a single individual.
Sometimes Martial laments the lack of a generous Maecenas (11.3; cf.
1.107, 4.40, 8.55, 12.36); at other times he claims to be indifferent
to whether his poems profit him (5.15.5-6). Most often his complaints
of poverty have nothing to do with poetry at all (e.g., 12.53.1-5; cf.
Holzberg (2002) 74-85). In all, Martial's pose is that of a gossip
columnist whose livelihood depends on access to the rich and famous;
that is why he needs to be invited to aristocratic dinner parties --
for material, so that he can expose their petty avarice and sexual
deviance (cf. 10.4). Martial explicitly distances himself from learned
Alexandrian poetry like Callimachus' Aetia, part of which his own
Catullus translated (poem 68). Catullus too could represent himself as
poor (e.g. poem 10), but he is the equal of the aristocrats to whom he
addresses his verses. Martial, however, writes as an interloper, who
must constantly seek entry to the world whose foibles he amusingly
reveals. It is from this self-conscious posture that Martial teases
out the values of friendship and patronage, as he adapts the
traditionally haughty Roman epigram, as cultivated by poets since
Catulus and Catullus, to a poor man's lampoon.
I conclude this survey of attitudes toward patrons and friends with a
cynical epigram ascribed to Seneca, though in all likelihood written a
century or so after the time of Martial:
‘Live and avoid all friendships:’ this is more true
Than just ‘avoid friendships with patrons.’
My fate bears witness: my high-ranking friend ruined me,
My humble one abandoned me. Shun the whole pack alike.
For those who had been my equals fled the crash
And abandoned the house even before it collapsed.
Go then and avoid only patrons! If you know how to live,
Live for yourself only -- for you'll die for yourself.
Guide to Further Reading
========================
In treating patronage and friendship, this chapter brings together two
themes that are in reality distinct, though related. Konstan (1997)
provides a survey of ancient friendship in general, and argues that it
was conceived as a bond based on mutual affection rather than
obligation. This view has not won universal acceptance; for criticism
of it, see (among others) the essays in Peachin (2001), with the
review by Konstan (2002). For friendship as a political relationship
in Rome, see the chapter on amicitia in Brunt (1988).
Patronage is a different kind of relationship, based on the reciprocal
obligation between a superior and inferior party. At an early stage,
the dependency of clients upon their patrons was probably compulsory,
but in the historical period it was largely customary; for the
evolution, see Deniaux (1993), and for the special sense of patron as
legal counsellor, David (1992). The best introduction to Roman
patronage is Saller (1989); see also Saller (1982), White (1993).
Literary patronage in the modern sense is a distinct issue; for
general discussion, see Gold (1987) (on Greece and Rome). Bowditch
(2001) discusses Horace's relationship to his imperial patrons; White
(1993) treats patronage in the Augustan period generally; while White
(1978) and Nauta (2002) provide a detailed account of patronage in the
early imperial period, with special attention to Statius and Martial.
A further issue is the role of friendship within poetry; for
friendship in Plautus' comedies, see Raccanelli (1998), who offers a
balanced discussion of affection and duty in Roman friendship
generally; for Horace and his friends, see Kilpatrick (1986); and for
Pliny, de Blois (2001).
How patronage and friendship interacted remains a disputed question.
Were both characterized more by obligation than by affection, or were
they radically distinct? If so, could patron and client be true
friends? The above studies indicate the nature of the problem, but
work remains to be done.
17