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Valerius Maximus on Vice: a Commentary of Facta Et Dicta

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Valerius Maximus on Vice: a Commentary of Facta Et Dicta Valerius Maximus on Vice: A Commentary on Facta et Dicta Memorabilia 9.1-11 Jeffrey Murray University of Cape Town Thesis Presented for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Classical Studies) in the School of Languages and Literatures University of Cape Town June 2016 The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgement of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Published by the University of Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University of Cape Town Abstract The Facta et Dicta Memorabilia of Valerius Maximus, written during the formative stages of the Roman imperial system, survives as a near unique instance of an entire work composed in the genre of Latin exemplary literature. By providing the first detailed historical and historiographical commentary on Book 9 of this prose text – a section of the work dealing principally with vice and immorality – this thesis examines how an author employs material predominantly from the earlier, Republican, period in order to validate the value system which the Romans believed was the basis of their world domination and to justify the reign of the Julio-Claudian family. By detailed analysis of the sources of Valerius’ material, of the way he transforms it within his chosen genre, and of how he frames his exempla, this thesis illuminates the contribution of an often overlooked author to the historiography of the Roman Empire. 1 Acknowledgements In the course of writing this thesis I have accrued a number of debts of thanks. First and foremost, I wish to acknowledge the support of my supervisor and friend, David Wardle. He has been exemplary in his role as supervisor, and his own commitment to scholarship a worthy model to imitate. Any infelicities that remain in this work are undoubtedly the result of my own stubborn refusal to pursue all of his suggestions. I also wish to thank my friends and colleagues in the Classics section of the School of Languages and Literatures at the University of Cape Town. Mention must be made of Clive Chandler, Roman Roth, Gail Symington, John Atkinson, Berenice Bentel, Vanessa Everson, and especially Matthew Shelton. Many happy months of research were spent, both in 2011 and 2014, as a visiting member of the Centre for the Study of Greek and Roman Antiquity at Corpus College, Oxford thanks to the magnanimous invitation of Stephen Harrison, and made possible by the generous support of the University of Cape Town via the Baron Hartley Scholarship for International Travel. In this regard, I wish also to thank Aneurin Ellis-Evans and Lydia Matthews for their assistance and hospitality. Elke Steinmeyer and Alan Ross provided help with particular points. I owe debts of gratitude also to Christopher Mallan, Jorg Rüpke, Helen Scott, and Eva Valvo, who all assisted me in obtaining key bibliographic items, as well as Jane Bellemore, who provided me with a copy of a forthcoming publication, and Sarah Lawrence, who sent me a copy of her unpublished PhD thesis on externality in Valerius Maximus. A doctoral scholarship from the National Research Foundation as well as a doctoral grant and the Frances Arnold and Esme Clarke bursary provided by the University 2 of Cape Town must be acknowledged for the munificent financial support which enabled me to undertake this research. Finally I wish also to thank my friends and family for their ongoing support and encouragement. I dedicate this thesis to the memory of my father, Boyd William Murray (1949 – 1992). 3 Contents Abstract 1 Acknowledgements 2 Abbreviations 5 Introduction 7 Beyond Bloomer: Recent Approaches to Valerius Maximus 10 Valerius Maximus: Biography, Date, Context 16 Valerius Maximus on Vice 31 The Sources of Valerian Vice 35 A Canon of Vices? 41 A Valerian Voice 47 Commentary 52 Bibliography 275 4 Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors and works are given according to the fourth edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford, 2012). Journal abbreviations follow those set out in L'Année philologique. For the text of Valerius Maximus I follow John Briscoe’s edition in the Teubner series, Valeri Maximi Facta et Dicta Memorabilia (Stuttgart, 1998), printing consonantal u as v; any significant textual deviations, particularly in relation to D. R. Shackleton Bailey’s 2000 Loeb edition of the text, are highlighted within the commentary. Further abbreviations are listed below. ANRW H. Temporini and W. Haase (eds.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung (Berlin, 1972–). BGU Berliner Griechische Urkunden Ägyptische Urkunden den Königlichen Museen zu Berlin (1895–). BMC British Museum Catalogue of Coins of the Roman Empire (London, 1923–). BNP H. Cancik and H. Schneider (eds.), Brill's New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World (Leiden, 2002–). CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (Berlin, 1863–). CRRBM H. A. Grueber, Coins of the Roman Republic in the British Museum (London, 1910). EJ V. Ehrenberg and A. H. M. Jones (eds.), Documents Illustrating the Reigns of Augustus and Tiberius (Oxford, 1976)2. FGrH F. Jacoby (ed.), Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Berlin, 1923–). FRHist T. J. Cornell et al. (eds.), The Fragments of the Roman Historians (Oxford, 2013). ILS H. Dessau (ed.), Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae (Berlin, 1892-1916). 5 IRT J. M. Reynolds and J. B. Ward Perkins (eds.), The Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania (Rome, 1952). Lewis and Short C. T. Lewis and C. Short (eds.), A Latin Dictionary (Oxford, 1879). LSJ H. G. Liddell, R. Scott, and H. S. Jones (eds.), A Greek-English Lexicon9 (Oxford, 1940). LTUR M. Steinby (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae (Rome, 1999- 2000). MRR T. R. S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic (New York, 1951-1986). OCB B. M. Metzger and M. D. Coogan (eds.), The Oxford Companion to the Bible (Oxford, 2012). OCD4 S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth (eds.), The Oxford Classical Dictionary4 (Oxford, 2012). OGIS W. Dittenberger (ed.), Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae (Leipzig, 1903-5). OLD P. G. W. Glare (ed.), Oxford Latin Dictionary2 (Oxford, 2012). ORF4 H. Malcovati (ed.), Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta4 (Turin, 1967). PECS R. Stillwell et al. (eds.), The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites (Princeton, 1976). RE A. Pauly, G. Wissowa, and W. Kroll (eds.), Realencyclopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft (Berlin, 1893–1980). RRC M. H. Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage (London, 1974). SEG Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum (Amsterdam, 1923–). SIG3 W. Dittenberger (ed.), Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum3 (Leipzig, 1915-24). TLL Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (Leipzig, 1900–). 6 Introduction ‘Who writes commentaries? Who reads them? Why? And perhaps most importantly, what for?’ These were the questions posed by a collection of essays edited by Gibson and Kraus in 2002 in a volume on classical commentary writing.1 The answers to these questions are as varied as the scholars who set out to write modern ‘classical commentaries’, a genre of literature that seeks to elucidate Greek and Roman texts to their readers through a variety of approaches, theories, methodologies, and practices. These include textual criticism, philological analysis, historical and literary criticism. The approaches themselves are often also as diverse as the authors who practice them. It is prudent, therefore, to set out briefly what the aims are that I have set out for my own commentary on 9.1-11 of the Facta et Dicta Memorabilia.2 My focus is historical and historiographical. To declare one’s commentary to be both ‘historical’ and ‘historiographical’ in emphasis could appear at first sight a redundancy – or merely tautologous rhetoric.3 But a careful and necessary 1 Gibson and Kraus 2002: ix. The bibliography on the practice of writing classical commentaries is rapidly growing; see also the essays collected in Most 1999, Henderson 2006, and Kraus and Stray 2016, for examples of some of the best self-conscious reflections about the task of the commentator. 2 Within the scope of this thesis I have focused my discussion on chapters 1-11, breaking off commentary after the rhetorical and extended diatribe against an unnamed conspirator from Tiberian Rome (9.11.ext.4). This exemplum, dealing as it does with Sejanus, provided a neat ‘break’ in the text at which point I was able to limit my discussion, principally on the basis of space. It will be obvious to any readers of Book 9, however, that the final four chapters include further words and deeds that fall within the ambit of immorality (e.g. 9.13; 9.15), but that, however, also include sections that could be considered miscellaneous (e.g. 9.12; 9.14). In the same way, sections outside of Book 9 could have also fallen, quite easily, within the category of chapters dealing with vice (e.g. 3.5; 5.3; 7.8; cf. also 6.2.praef. for words and deeds that fall somewhere between virtue or vice). The section 9.1-11 has been marked off as a unit by a number of scholars, cf. e.g. Römer 1990: 106; Wardle 1998: 8; Lawrence 2006: 114; Morgan 2007: 130. 3 See Rhiannon Ash’s (2002: 269-294) excellent meditation on the role of the commentator on Latin historians. There is, however, some slippage in Ash’s approach. She begins by setting out ‘historical’ 7 distinction may be drawn between these two categories. I use ‘historical’ to signify aspects of the commentary which deal with history, that is, for example, who the characters are mentioned in an exemplum, when the events described took place, whether or not the events occurred as Valerius presents them, and so on. Whereas by ‘historiographical’ I denote those elements which explain the way that V.
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