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Eumaeus, Evander, and Augustus: Dionysius and Virgil on Noble Simplicity*

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Eumaeus, Evander, and Augustus: Dionysius and Virgil on Noble Simplicity* Eumaeus, Evander, and Augustus: Dionysius and Virgil on Noble Simplicity* Casper C. de Jonge Introduction Eumaeus might not be the first character to come to mind when we think of Homeric epic as Princes’ Mirror. To be sure, Eumaeus is of royal descent: his father was Ctesius, son of Ormenus, king of the island Syria.1 But Eumaeus is also a slave: as a child he was sold to Laertes and, having been raised together with Odysseus’ sister Ctimene, he became the family’s swineherd.2 Eumaeus is one of the lower-status figures to which the Odyssey pays more attention than the Iliad. Like Eurycleia, the other prominent lowly character, Eumaeus is portrayed as a loyal servant. During Odysseus’ absence he takes good care of his master’s animals (Od. 14.5–28, 524–533), although he is defenceless against the suitors, who continually force him to send in pigs for their feasts (Od. 14.17– 20). The detailed description of Eumaeus’ pig-farm (Od. 14.7–22) brings out its modesty in comparison with the luxurious palaces of kings like Menelaus, Alcinous, and Odysseus. But with its vestibule (πρόδομος), courtyard (αὐλή), and defensive wall the farm adequately fulfils its function.3 When Odysseus arrives in Ithaca, Eumaeus gives him hospitality and offers him a double meal (Od. 14.72–111 and 14.410–454) and a bed (Od. 14.454–533), not yet knowing that his guest is actually his master. The next day the host and his guest share * The research for this paper was funded by a grant awarded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (nwo). I wish to thank audiences at Ghent, Eichstätt, and Yale for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper. I am also very grateful to Baukje van den Berg and Jacqueline Klooster for their useful suggestions. 1 Od. 15.413–414. Eumaeus offers his autobiography in Od. 15.403–484. On the Homeric charac- terization of Eumaeus, see Thalmann (1998) 84–100, De Jong (2001) 341–342, and Thalmann (2011). 2 Od. 15.483; 363–370. 3 Bowie (2013: 19–20) compares Eumaeus’ farm (Od. 14.6–20) with the palaces of Menelaus (Od. 4.71–75), Alcinous (Od. 7.81–132), and Odysseus (Od. 17.264–271). On Alcinous and Eumaeus, see also Bakker (2013) 31. The words in which Homer describes the farm of Eumaeus also invite comparison with the palace of king Priam in the Iliad (6.242–250): see Bowie (2013) 19–20. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004365858_010 158 de jonge another evening meal (Od. 15.301–302); they are having breakfast (Od. 16.1–3) when Telemachus appears. It is debated at what moment Eumaeus precisely recognizes the real identity of the beggar; but he consistently shows his loyalty to his master, and in Book 22 he efficiently assists Odysseus in the fight against the suitors.4 Eumaeus (‘seeker after good’) is explicitly characterized as pious, hospitable, and devoted to the family of Odysseus.5 In the formulaic language of the Homeric epics he is called ‘noble’ or ‘excellent’ (δῖος) and ‘leader of men’ (ὄρχαμος ἀνδρῶν).6 The Homeric narrator shows an intriguingly warm interest in the swineherd: Eumaeus is the only character in the Odyssey whom the narrator addresses in the second person.7 All these features of the Homeric Eumaeus were of course noticed by ancient readers of the Odyssey; but it was especially his moral excellence and his ambiguous status—both a slave and nobly born—that allowed the swineherd to become an influential model of what we may call noble simplicity. This paper seeks to demonstrate that the Eumaeus character received spe- cial attention from both Greek literary critics and Latin poets at the end of the first century bc in Rome. It will suggest that the literary fascination with Eumaeus’ humble and honest lifestyle mirrors the discourse of Augustan Rome, which favoured such qualities as moral excellence (virtus), justice (iustitia), and piety (pietas).8 I will argue that the reception of the Homeric Eumaeus in Greek and Latin texts of the Augustan Age draws attention to some of the qualities that were attributed to good rulers. Octavian was not a swineherd, but he would be happy to be associated with the generosity, unpretentiousness, and indus- triousness that characterize the Homeric servant. Exploring the Eumaeus motif in Augustan literature, we will start from the Greek rhetorician, literary critic, and historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who was active in Rome under Augustus. Homer’s swineherd is mentioned remark- ably often in the examples cited in Dionysius’ rhetorical treatise On Composi- tion. In the same period, but in a very different way, Eumaeus implicitly turns up 4 See Roisman (1990) on Eumaeus’ ‘covert recognition’ of Odysseus. 5 For the etymology, see Frisk (1973) 161 s.v. μαίομαι and Thalmann (2011) 270; for Eumaeus’ ‘moral rectitude’, see De Jong (2001) 341. 6 For δῖος, see Od. 14.3; for ὄρχαμος ἀνδρῶν, see Od. 14.22, 121. Note that Eumaeus himself owns the slave Mesaulius (14.449–451). 7 See De Jong (2001) 345 on Od. 14.55. In the Iliad several characters are addressed with apostrophe. 8 See Galinsky (1996) 83–90: apart from virtus, iustitia, and pietas, he also mentions clementia (clemency)..
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