Sicilian Landscape as Contested Space in the First Century BC: Three Case Studies

Dustin Leigh McKenzie

BA (Hons), Dip. Lang.

A thesis submitted for the degree of Master of Philosophy at

The University of Queensland in 2018

School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry ii

Abstract

Sicily was made the first overseas Roman province between 241 and 212 BC, and became known as the ‘bread-basket’ of the Republic due to the island’s famously fertile farmlands. The island, with its history of pre-Roman conflict, second century slave revolts, and use as a military stronghold in the civil wars of the first century, never dissociated itself from conflict. As such, its construction as a ‘contested space’ was popular in the literature of first-century Rome, employed as a symptomatic topos of the state of Rome – the closer Roman Sicily resembled its pre- annexation state, the greater the perceived threat to the Republic, and vice-versa. This construction of Sicily and its landscape was employed by authors such as Cicero, Diodorus Siculus, and Virgil to great effect, as they engaged with, reinforced, or challenged the major contemporary discourses of imperialism, the impact of civil war, and food security. Cicero’s In Verrem presents its audience with a Sicily that has been purposely constructed to deliver the most damning image of Verres, the infamously corrupt governor of Sicily from 73-71, the most sympathetic and familiar image of the Sicilians, presented as virtuous and stoic farmers, and a Sicily that has been reduced to a war-torn desert under Verres’ rule. Through his construction of Sicily as contested space, Cicero secured his win against Verres in court and demonstrated to his audiences the danger Verres’ actions presented Rome, threatening the stability of the relationship between Sicily and Rome. Diodorus Siculus’ work of universal history, the Bibliotheke Historika, adopts the construction of Sicily as contested space at a time when the future of the island was uncertain. A Sicilian himself, Diodorus places a primacy on Sicily in his compilation, foregrounding his home’s importance not only to Rome’s imperial hegemonic success, but to the development of the world. Diodorus’ use of Sicily as a contested space highlights his subtle critiques of Roman rule, which evidently owe much to his identity as a Sicilian Greek living at Rome through the tumultuous 40s and 30s. Virgil’s Aeneid, which features a dual-construction of Sicily across two books, employs Sicily as a contested space in reaction to this same period, and the contemporary anxieties of the 20s. In the wake of decades of civil unrest, many Romans were unsure whether the sole rule of Augustus would hold, or whether the state would be plunged back into civil war. Virgil addresses these anxieties through his construction of Sicily. In Book iii

Three, Virgil presents Sicily as an adversary of Aeneas and as symbolic of pre-Roman Sicily, held by hostes. In Book Five, the once-contested Sicily is depicted as a settled space due to the presence of Rome. This comparative construction recalls the events of the 30s, reflects the anxieties of the 20s, and presents Virgil’s support for the Augustan peace in clear terms for his audience: just as the presence of Aeneas, and the defeat of Carthage, brought peace to Sicily and Rome before, so too will Augustus’ victory over Sextus Pompeius (and so, Sicily) continue to bring peace to Rome in the 20s. This thesis, through the analysis of Sicilian landscape in three separate literary works of the first century, demonstrates that Sicily’s appearance in the literary record of the Late Republic is not merely as a location of historical or mythological events, but a reaction to contemporary events and personal literary goals, resulting in a Sicily that is constructed as symptomatic of the stability of the Roman state and emblematic of Empire. iv

Declaration by author

This thesis is composed of my original work, and contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference has been made in the text. I have clearly stated the contribution by others to jointly-authored works that I have included in my thesis.

I have clearly stated the contribution of others to my thesis as a whole, including statistical assistance, survey design, data analysis, significant technical procedures, professional editorial advice, financial support and any other original research work used or reported in my thesis. The content of my thesis is the result of work I have carried out since the commencement of my higher degree by research candidature and does not include a substantial part of work that has been submitted to qualify for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or other tertiary institution. I have clearly stated which parts of my thesis, if any, have been submitted to qualify for another award.

I acknowledge that an electronic copy of my thesis must be lodged with the University Library and, subject to the policy and procedures of The University of Queensland, the thesis be made available for research and study in accordance with the Copyright Act 1968 unless a period of embargo has been approved by the Dean of the Graduate School.

I acknowledge that copyright of all material contained in my thesis resides with the copyright holder(s) of that material. Where appropriate I have obtained copyright permission from the copyright holder to reproduce material in this thesis and have sought permission from co-authors for any jointly authored works included in the thesis.

v

Publications during candidature

No publications.

Publications included in this thesis

No publications included. vi

Contributions by others to the thesis

Stewart Junor: design and creation of ‘Figure 1: Map of Sicily, with key locations’.

Statement of parts of the thesis submitted to qualify for the award of another degree

None.

Research Involving Human or Animal Subjects

No animal or human participants were involved in this research. vii

Acknowledgements

My utmost thanks go to all those who supported my research over the last few years. Thanks to Assoc. Prof. Tom Stevenson and Dr. Caillan Davenport for their expertise, guidance, and supervision in the research and writing of this thesis, and to Dr. Janette McWilliam, Dr. Shushma Malik, Dr. Amelia Brown, and my fellow postgraduates for their feedback and support at various stages throughout my candidature. Further thanks go to Prof. Rhiannon Ash and Dr. Peter Morton for their insights and email correspondence.

I am eternally grateful for the friendship, love, and time of Elisabeth Neilsen, Peter Reichelt, Oscar Goldman, Stewart Junor, Damien Paddick, Charles Partridge-Langdon, Shari Hooper, my parents Sue and Geoff, and siblings Lachlan and Ali, who have supported me outside UQ, and are always polite when listening to my ramblings and grievances.

viii

Financial support

This research was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. Additional travel funding was provided by the Osiecki Travel Scholarship for Classics Research and the University of Queensland School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry. ix

Keywords rome, sicily, cicero, diodorus, virgil, landscape, imperialism, grain, aeneas, syracuse

Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classifications (ANZSRC)

ANZSRC code: 210306, Classical Greek and Roman History, 100%

Fields of Research (FoR) Classification

FoR code: 2103, Historical Studies, 100%

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Table of Contents

Abstract ii

Acknowledgements vii

Figures xii

Abbreviations xiii

Introduction 14

1- A Geographical Survey of Sicily 17

2- Literature Review

a. Cicero’s In Verrem 21

b. Diodorus Siculus’ Bibliotheke Historika 23

c. Virgil’s Aeneid 27

d. Modern Sources: Geographic History, Roman Sicily, and Imperialism 30

Chapter One- Representations of Sicily in Cicero’s Verrine Orations 35

1- The Historical Context of the Verrine Orations 36

2- Farmlands 40

3- Henna 51

4- Syracuse 57

5- Messana 64

6- Conclusion 70

Chapter Two- Representations of Sicily in Diodorus Siculus’ Bibliotheke Historika 72

1- The First Century and Diodorus Siculus 73

2- Farmlands 79

3- Eryx 89 xi

4- Syracuse 92

5- Agyrium 99

6- Conclusion 105

Chapter Three- Representations of Sicily in Virgil’s Aeneid 107

1- Sextus, Octavian, and the East Coast of Sicily 109

2- Pax Sicilia: Eryx, Segesta, and Trojan Heritage 121

3- Conclusion 136

Conclusion 138

Bibliography 142

Ancient Sources 142

Sourcebooks 147

Modern Works 147

xii

Figures

Figure 1: Map of Sicily, with key locations

xiii

Abbreviations

CIL. Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, 1863-

FGrH Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker. 1923-

Inscr. Ital. Fasti Capitolini. ed. A. Degrassi. Torino: G. B. Paravia, 1954.

OCD Oxford Classical Dictionary

OLD Oxford Latin Dictionary

LSJ A Greek-English Lexicon. eds. H. Liddell, R. Scott, H. Jones. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1843-

RIC Roman Imperial Coinage. ed. H. Mattingly, E.A. Sydenham et al. London: Spink, 1923-

RRC Roman Republican Coinage. ed. M. Crawford. 2 vols. London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1974.

References to other classical works are abbreviated according to The Oxford Classical Dictionary 4th edn. 2012: xxvi-liii.

Names of mythological figures reflect the perspective of the source discussed, e.g. Cicero says Ceres, Diodorus Siculus says Demeter.

14

Introduction

The island of Sicily, coming under Roman control between 241 and 210, became the first provincia of the burgeoning Empire.1 Rome relied on the importation of Sicilian grain to feed its people. The island’s fertile volcanic soil and location in the centre of the western Mediterranean gave the

Republic a powerful foothold in the Hellenistic world. In exchange, Rome offered Sicily a degree of security. Back-and-forth warring between Sicilian city-states, Greeks, and Carthaginians had plagued the island for centuries, but under Roman rule the island’s (in)famous tyrants and Punic inhabitants had been expelled. Control of Sicily was a prize many had sought, and Rome ultimately won. However, Sicily remained unsettled. The death of Hiero II in 215 brought about the rise of his tyrannical grandson Hieronymus, and the subsequent fall of the kingdom of Syracuse. Large- scale slave revolts in the second century resulted in the deployment of Roman legions in the province for the first time since the Punic Wars. Provincial mismanagement plagued the Late

Republic, and the island was often used as a political tool to increase one’s wealth or power in the first century. As such, Sicily never escaped its associations with conflict, and despite the projected stability of Roman rule, the island is presented as a ‘contested space’ in the literary record of the

Late Republic. The ‘contested Sicily’ exists in a state before Roman rule, threatening the stability and security of the Republic, and can only be returned to a harmonious state by the presence of

Rome. As the ‘breadbasket’ of the Late Republic and the first province of the burgeoning Empire, the fates of Sicily and Rome were seen to be irrevocably intertwined.2 Rome had other grain-fields to call upon in the Late Republic, such as those in Sardinia and Africa, but Sicily’s fertility, cultural

1 All dates are BC, unless otherwise stated. 2 Cic. Verr. 2.2.5; Diod. Sic. 23.1.1. 15 association with grain, and role in the history and development of the Roman state placed it at the forefront of this discourse.3 Thus, conflict and instability in Sicily threatened the physical, psychological, and political state of Roman hegemony, and political or social unrest at Rome often resulted in conflict in Sicily. This connection between the fates of Sicily and Rome was used by authors in the first century to capitalise upon or understand contemporary events, often writing at times when conflict on Sicily paralleled the island’s pre-Roman history and the future of Rome was unclear, unstable, or under threat. Thus, this thesis argues that Sicily’s construction and presentation as ‘contested space’ became a topos in Late Republican literature, across all genres, designed to emphasise the danger that a given event or movement presented to Rome – the closer

Roman Sicily resembled its pre-annexation state, the greater the perceived threat to the Republic.4

The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate that the constructions of Sicily and its landscape in

Late Republican literature reflect the instability and insecurity of the Roman state and the anxieties of its peoples. Through three case studies across three chapters, I argue that the literary constructions of Sicily as a ‘contested space’, employed in selected works of the first century authors Cicero, Diodorus Siculus, and Virgil, are used to contextualise contemporary (and often negative) events at Rome and in Sicily, and frame the authors’ own attitudes and concerns towards

Roman imperialism, civil unrest, and food security. Moreover, I argue that this construction of

Sicilian landscape transcends the bounds of genre (which enhanced the intentions behind the implementation of constested space), and was used alternatively to engage with, reinforce, or challenge contemporary audiences and discourses in the face of a politically unstable Rome.

3 Cic. Leg. Man. 34; Plut. Vit. Pomp. 49-50; Suet. Aug. 16.1; App. B Civ. 5.18, 66-9, 71-2; Wilson 1990: 189; Erdkamp 2005: 208; Sulimani 2011: 225. 4 Nicolet 1991: 8, 30; Habinek 2001: 3, 88; Dueck 2012: 10, 14, 32. 16

Before presenting these case studies, this thesis will present a brief geographic survey of

Sicily, to establish key locations and regions that will be regularly discussed, followed by a literature review. Chapter One analyses Cicero’s In Verrem, wherein the Sicily Cicero presents his audience is one that has been constructed to deliver the most damning image of Verres, the infamously corrupt governor of Sicily from 73-71, the most sympathetic and familiar image of the

Sicilians, presented as virtuous and stoic farmers, and a Sicily that has been reduced to a war-torn desert under Verres’ rule. When combined, these three constructions provided Cicero with a powerful prosecution against Verres, guilty of not only the crimes levied against him by the

Sicilian plaintiffs, but of endangering Rome itself. Chapter Two offers the provincial view of the

Roman rule of Sicily. Hailing from Agyrium, in the central-northwest of Sicily, Diodorus Siculus places a primacy on Sicily in his work of universal history, the Bibliotheke Historika, promoting the centrality and importance of his homeland at a time when few could argue that Rome was exercising a benevolent rule over its most crucial province. To Diodorus, the greatest danger to the future of Roman imperial rule is itself, and the Sicily he presents his audience reflects this belief. Finally, Chapter Three explores the adaptation and reversal of the ‘contested Sicily’ in

Virgil’s Aeneid. Written during the first decade of Augustus’ rule, a period of uneasy peace in the shadow of the bloody Triumviral period, the two Sicilys of Books Three and Five of the Aeneid represent a Sicily before and after Roman rule, with Augustus at the centre of the transformation.

Romans in the 20s were anxious about a return to civil unrest should the Pax Augusta fail, and it is to this anxiety that Virgil addresses Books Three and Five – just as the presence of Aeneas and the defeat of Carthage previously brought peace to Sicily, and Rome, so too will Augustus bring peace to Rome now. This thesis will demonstrate that Sicily’s appearance in the literary record of 17 the Late Republic is not merely as a location of historical or mythological events, but as symptomatic of the stability of the Roman state and emblematic of Empire.

A Geographical Survey of Sicily

Situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, off the southern coast of the Italian peninsula,

Sicily is some 300 kilometres across and has a land area of c.24,000 kms2. The island is comprised of rolling fertile plains in the highlands and along the eastern, western, and southern coasts, mountainous terrain along the northern coast, and is divided by numerous rivers which commonly run north-to-south, collecting on the northern ranges and depositing into the Mediterranean along

Sicily’s southern and northern coasts. The eastern coastline is dominated by Mt. Etna, which has remained active since pre-Classical times. The geographical and topological features of Sicily have changed little since the Classical period, though the island has become more arid over the last two millennia and was more wooded in pre-Classical times.5

Messana lies in the north-eastern corner of Sicily, separated from the Italian mainland by the famously turbulent Strait, which is between two and four kilometres across. By the Roman period, the turbulence of the Strait, caused by competing sea currents and seismic activity, was conflated with the mythological monsters Scylla and Charybdis. Established as a Greek colony in the eighth century, Messana, originally Zankle, was a trading port between the Greek colonies to the south and those on the Italian mainland.6 The city was famously one of the chief instigators of the First Punic War, when the Mamertines, who had seized control of the city in 288, petitioned

Rome for protection against their enemy, Hiero II of Syracuse, in 264. Rome responded, and since

5 Leighton 1998: 4. 6 Holloway 2000: 122. 18 the Mamertines had previously petitioned Carthage for the same protection, Rome believed its hand to be forced, fearing a Carthaginian stronghold so close to home. Because of this alliance,

Messana was awarded special allied status after the First Punic War, and later citizenship, and enjoyed benefits from this status long into the Imperial period.7

The eastern coast of Sicily, in antiquity and today, is the most famous part of the island.

The slopes of Etna can be seen from Messana to Syracuse to Henna in the centre of the island, and this physical dominance is reflected in the literary record. The Greek record concerning Etna, especially myth, depicts the mountain pinning down the titan Typhon, and weeping ‘streams of fire’ for Ceres/Demeter’s sadness after the abduction of Persephone/Kore.8 While there was an awareness in antiquity of the power and danger of Etna, the link between Etna’s volcanic activity and the surrounding region’s fertility was tenuously understood – Strabo only notes that farmland in the area is particularly rich, and exploited for wine production and pastoralism.9 The region itself also has the longest history of Greek colonisation on the island, with Thucydides identifying

Naxos as the first Sicilian Greek colony, founded by the Chalkidians from Euboea in 734, followed by Syracuse, Zankle, Leontini, and Catania.10

Syracuse, a Greek colony of Corinth, was the key Greek political and military power in

Sicily from the fifth century, fighting several wars against Carthage for control of the island.

Located in a strong natural harbour, the city itself was famous in antiquity for its size and wealth

– Diodorus labels the city a tetrapolis, while Cicero stated ‘so vast is the city that it is said to be

7 Plin. HN 3.14. 8 Pind. Pyth. 1-29; Aesch. PV 343-75; Hom. Hymn Dem. 49-52; Diod. Sic. 5.5. 9 Strabo 5.4.8; 6.2.3. 10 Thuc. 6.3.1-4; Holloway 2000: 45. 19 four of the greatest cities standing together.’11 The circuit walls that circumvented the city proper were reportedly 180 stades long, or roughly 33 kilometres, and Cicero gives the population at its height as 200,000.12 Of its wealth, Strabo reports that ‘Syracuse fell into such exceptional wealth that the name of the Syracusans was spread abroad in a proverb applied to the excessively extravagant — “the tithe of the Syracusans would not be sufficient for them.”’13 Perhaps more than its size and wealth, Syracuse was famous in antiquity for its harbours, and the island that separates the two – Ortygia. This small island separated the Small Harbour from the Great Harbour, where the former faced the sea directly, and the latter was somewhat protected from the sea proper by Ortygia.14 (In)famously defensible, Ortygia is the site of the original colony of Syracuse, and from at least the Late Republic, no Syracusan was allowed to live on the island, due to how easily defensible it was.15 At its height, Syracuse’s territorial influence was bounded by Leontini and

Catania in the north, Gela to the west, and Camarina in the south, all of which at some point were dominated by or tributary to Syracuse, lending Syracuse effective control over the entire Hyblaean tablelands from the time of Gelon in the early fifth century.16 The kingdom of Syracuse remained an independent client-kingdom until 210, 30 years after Roman annexation, with the death of Hiero

II’s grandson Hieronymus and the siege of Syracuse.

Henna is the historical, mythical, and near-geographical centre of the island. Henna was touted in antiquity for both its beauty and defensibility, thanks to its flowering meadows and precipitous cliffs. By the Republican period, these same fields were believed to be the ones from

11 Diod. Sic. 26.19.1; Cic. Verr. 2.4.118. 12 Cic. Verr. 2.5.65; Evans 2009: 10. 13 Strabo 6.2.4. 14 Diod. Sic. 4.23.4, 5.3.4; Ov. Met. 5.407-464. 15 Cic. Verr. 2.5.84, 98; Holloway 2000: 54. 16 Evans 2009: 29. 20 which Pluto enacted his rape of Persephone/Kore.17 The Himera (modern Salso) River flows north and south from Henna, which stood as the boundary between the Greek East and Punic West of the island following the Second Sicilian War of 410-340.18 30 kilometres northeast of Henna is

Agyrium, a relatively small city, notable for being the birthplace of Diodorus Siculus.19

The west of Sicily is home to Drepanum, Segesta and the sanctuary to Venus Erycina atop

Mt. Eryx.20 Drepanum was a Punic harbour to the west of Eryx, and the location of Rome’s greatest naval defeat of the First Punic War.21 By at least the fifth century, there was an established tradition that placed Trojan refugees – the Elymians – in the north-west of Sicily, and by the fourth, the

Latins had adopted a tradition citing Trojan origins, in which the Latins sought a connection with the Greek East and Hellenic culture.22 The impact of this trend was felt most keenly during the

First Punic War. In 263, Segesta, previously an ally of Carthage, defected to Rome, citing their joint Trojan heritage as the reason to accept their alliance.23 The Romans accepted, and the alliance proved a great boon to their campaign against Carthage for the control of Sicily. The sanctuary to

Venus Erycina, atop Mt. Eryx, west of Segesta, was a key religious/strategic location to the

Sicilians, Greeks, Carthaginians, and Romans. The Roman sanctuary was established over its

Punic predecessor during the First Punic War to win the support of Western Sicily, a key theatre

17 Diod. Sic. 5.3. 18 Livy 25.6. 19 See Chapter Two. 20 On the goddess’ name, see Hor. Carm. 1.2.33; Ovid. Her. 15.57; Pont. 15; Sulimani 2011: 199 n.114. 21 Cic. Nat. D. 2.7; Goldschmidt 2013: 115. 22 Thuc. 6.2.3; Paus. 5.25.6; Strabo 13.53; Galinsky 1969: 102; Gruen 1992: 28-31; Powell 2008: 113; Hardie 2014: 121. Thucydides’ source was most probably Antiochus of Syracuse, a Sicilian Greek. It stands to reason that Sicilian writers promoted the westward migrations of Greek heroes for their own benefit: Gruen 1992: 14. 23 Cic. Verr. 2.4.72, 2.5.93, 2.5.125; Thuc. 6.2.3; Plut. Vit. Nic. 1.3; Galinsky 1969: 173; Gruen 1990: 12-13; Gruen 1992: 45; Prag 2011b: 186-9; Goldschmidt 2013: 116. 21 of the war, and was tied to Roman creation myths through Aeneas’ presence in the west of Sicily.24

During the Second Punic War, following their disastrous defeat at Lake Trasimene in 217, Rome established Venus Erycina on the Capitoline hill, in the belief that Venus aided their victories and that she would again assist Rome against the Carthaginians.25 The sanctuary’s wealth and importance is noted by multiple ancient sources, playing host to a permanent Roman garrison of

200 soldiers.26

The cultural landscape of Sicily is made up of many more cities of Punic, Greek, and

Roman origin, but those mentioned above have been highlighted due to their importance to this thesis.

Literature Review

Cicero’s In Verrem

Cicero’s invective against Verres was driven by various motives, chief among them being

Cicero’s need to establish himself among the Roman elite. Early 20th Century scholarship argued that Cicero’s case was driven by politics, motivated by Pompey behind the scenes to support the passing of the lex Aurelia in late 70 and undermine the Sullan constitution.27 Modern scholars conclude that this is not the case, and argue instead that Cicero’s primary concern was his own political and oratorical advancement.28 The focus on provincial mismanagement and the securing of the Sicilian grain trade in the Actio Prima reflects the key concerns of the senatorial jury to

24 Cic. Verr. 2.4.72, 107-8; RRC 424/1; Sacks 1990: 155; Gruen 1992: 42-7. 25 Schilling 1954: 246. 26 Thuc. 6.46; Cic. Verr. 2.2.35, 2.5.124; Diod. Sic. 4.83.1, 5-7, 23.5; Prag 2011a: 87-8. 27 Syme 1939: 20; Badian 1958: 279-84. 28 Vasaly 2009: 103-6; cf. Mitchell 1979; Steel 2005; Lintott 2007. 22 which the Prima was addressed, and Cicero’s own need to enact a swift conviction.29 In comparison, the Actio Secunda was published after Verres fled into exile, and so has a wider target audience with popularis concerns at its centre, such as immoral behaviour and food security.30

Lintott accurately highlights that it was important for Cicero, still early in his career, to maintain a malleable political persona.31

Cicero’s construction of landscape is central to his argument, informing his comparison of the virtuousness of the Sicilians against the immorality of Verres. Much ink has been spilled on the topic of virtue, immorality, and luxury at Rome, and its use in rhetoric.32 Indeed, scholarship recognises that Verres was probably not the immoral monster Cicero makes him out to be, and it is debatable to what degree Verres’ actions were illegal, as opposed to unprecedented.33 Vasaly identifies Cicero’s construction of Sicily as an extension of Rome, and more than just another provincia, through the blurring of lines between geography, character, and evidence.34 She concludes correctly that Cicero’s constructions of space ‘did not constitute artificial proof’, but produced a similar effect on his audience, and that ‘Cicero’s constant endeavour was to connect things and places with religious and patriotic themes’ – a powerful approach that grabbed his audience’s attention.35 The blurring of the boundary between Sicily and Italy informs Cicero’s successful construction of the Sicilians as rustic farmers, rather than luxurious Greeks, thanks to

29 Tempest 2007: 23; Vasaly 2009: 118-22. Cf. Vasaly 2009: 111-12 for the need to complete the trial before 69, when Verres’ allies would be in power. 30 Steel 2001: 23; Frazel 2004: 128-33. 31 Lintott 2007: 17. Cf. Gruen 1968: 255-8; Vasaly 2009: 134, 212; Tempest 2011: 52. 32 Dunkle 1967; Edwards 1993; Phang 2008; Zanda 2011. The implications of these constructions are explored at length in Chapter One. 33 Steel 2007: 42-5; cf. Vasaly 1993: 107; Alexander 2002: 13; Powell 2007: 8-18; Frazel 2009: 106-7. 34 Vasaly 1993: 107, 132; Erdkamp 2005: 210. 35 Vasaly 1993: 128, 255. 23 the conflation of the Sicilians with their landscape.36 This argument agrees with contemporary thought in landscape studies, which prioritizes the relationship between people and environment.37

Finally, of all the works analysed in this thesis, the Verrine Orations are the most in need of a 21st Century translation. The most accessible complete translation of the text is Greenwood’s

1928/35 translation for the Loeb Classical Library, which is showing its age. Some modern works offer translations of selected books, such as Berry’s Oxford World Classics entries, though the middle books of the Actio Secunda remain overlooked. This need is evident in the body of Chapter

One, where multiple passages have been adapted by the author.

Diodorus Siculus’ Bibliotheke Historika

A monumental 40-book work of Graeco-Roman-Sicilian history, Diodorus Siculus’

Bibliotheke is the only surviving extended work of historical prose in Greek from the first century.

Furthermore, Diodorus is one of only three Hellenistic writers to survive at length, alongside

Polybius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus – were it not for the method in which he compiled his universal history, he might have been considered one of our foremost sources of the Hellenistic period. The work is prone to inconsistencies, contradictions, and factual errors that earned it a scathing reputation well in to the 21st Century.38 Indeed, until its 1996 reprinting, the Oxford

Classical Dictionary listed the work as ‘a compilation only as valuable as its authorities’, though conceded that ‘certain themes recur throughout the Bibliotheke independently of Diodorus’ current

36 Vasaly 1993: 215-16; Richardson 2008: 184. This is analysed at length in Chapter One. 37 Shipley 1996: 1-13; Spencer 2010: 1-4. 38 Rawson 1985: 226; Stylianou 1988; Rubincam 1989: 39-61; Sacks 1990: 170, 200; Green 2006: 10; Most 2011: 170; Muntz 2017: 219-21. 24 source.’39 As a result, much of the scholarship before Sacks’ 1990 landmark Diodorus Siculus and the First Century engaged almost exclusively in Quellenforschung, more interested in what

Diodorus can tell us about his sources than Diodorus’ work itself. Schwartz highlights the contemporary 20th Century attitude to Diodorus with his now (in)famous conclusion that Diodorus’ inclusion of Sicilian history was ‘specielle Geschmacklosigkeit’ – ‘especially tasteless’.40 More recently, Stylianou wrote that Diodorus was a ‘second-rate epitomator’, whose work was ‘hastily and incompetently carried out.’41 Sacks’ aforementioned work is now seminal to the field, with an emphasis ‘not on discovering which particular traditions he followed, but on demonstrating that at specific moments Diodorus must have written independently of them.’42 An example of such a contribution that was previously unattributed, according to Sacks, is the fragmentary comment before the speeches of Claudius Marcellus and Hiero II: ‘Sicily is the noblest of all islands, since it can contribute to the growth of an empire.’43 Traditional scholarship attributes these speeches to

Philinus, though he was writing far too early to know of the role Sicily would come to play in

Rome’s empire.44 Thus, Sacks argues, this judgement must be that of Diodorus.45 Some modern commentaries are also working towards rehabilitating Diodorus, focusing less on what can be ascertained of Diodorus’ sources and more on how and why the author chose the passages he did.46

Alongside the continued rehabilitation of the author, modern scholarship is focused on the impact

39 OCD2 s.v. ‘Diodorus Siculus’; cf. Green 2006: 1-2; Sulimani 2011: 6. 40 Schwartz 1957: 36; cf. Sacks 1990: 123-4; Schmitz 2011: 251. 41 Stylianou 1988: 1, 132. 42 Sacks 1990: 4-7, 123-4; cf. Prag 2009: 134; Schmitz 2011: 237. 43 Diod. Sic. 23.1.1. 44 Sacks 1990: 130. 45 See also Sulimani 2011: 6. 46 Compare Green 2006 with Stylianou 1998. 25 and influence of first century Rome on this provincial Sicilian Greek, the originality contained in the first pentad of the work, which is accepted as more ‘originally Diodoran’ than much of the rest of the text, and his place within the tradition of moralising universal history. Sulimani’s treatment of Diodoran ‘culture-heroes’ as exempla and Muntz’s recent discussion of Diodorus’ historical context represent well the aims and directions of the discourse, as do recent works on historiography in the Late Republic.47 Diodorus’ identity as a Sicilian Greek living at Rome from the 50s to 30s, and his ‘Sicilian bias’, has also drawn the attention of scholars, who argue for the importance of this viewpoint on contemporary events, such as the Pompeian-led Sicilian revolt of

43-36, and Diodorus’ place in the universal historical tradition.48 Archaeological studies of the

Sicilian east coast have provided additional contextual understanding for this period, which has led to much debate over dating with texts versus with archaeological evidence.49 This chapter adopts the revisionist stances of Sacks, Green, Sulimani, and Muntz, accepting that while

Diodorus’ main contribution is through the preservation rather than the creation of a historical tradition, the overall shape and themes behind the Bibliotheke are constructed by Diodorus, while the structure of his work and his selection of specific traditions over others reflect his didactic goals, worldview, and Sicilian Greek ethnicity.50

Throughout this thesis, the authors studied grapple with the contemporary issues of Roman imperialism and Sicily, and Diodorus is no different. The actions of Octavian on Sicily after the defeat of Sextus Pompeius underpin much of his moralising worldview, urging rulers to act with

47 Most 2011; Schmitz 2011; Sulimani 2011; Muntz 2017; Yarrow 2006; Hau 2016. 48 Rawson 1985; Clarke 1999; Yarrow 2006; Prag 2012; Hau 2016. 49 Stone 1983: 11-22. For debate, see Rubincam 1985: 521-2; Reinhold 1988: 32; Sacks 1990: 168; Prag 2010: 306, Sulimani 2011: 37; Muntz 2017: 236. 50 Sacks 1990; Green 2006; Sulimani 2011; Muntz 2017. 26 clemency, moderation, and humanity (expressed in the key terms ἐπιεικεία and φιλανθρωπία).51

This message is amplified by the contemporary discourse around moral decline as stemming from

Rome’s lack of metus hostilis.52 Metus hostilis is central to Diodoran thought, heavily influenced by the Polybian historical tradition and the contemporary attitudes and responses to the chaos of the Late Republic.53 Polybius suggests that it is only through clement behaviour that a state can assure loyalty from its subjects.54 Cicero and Sallust both support Rome’s need for metus hostilis.55

Posidonius’ stance on the utility of history as moral exempla, and that unjustified mistreatment of subordinates leads to uprisings, also find a home in Diodoran thought.56 Thus, Sacks is right to conclude that the Bibliotheke is, in many ways, ‘a document substantially reflecting the intellectual and political attitudes of the late Hellenistic period’, and Hau argues that ‘the first century BC moral didacticism was an ingrained part of the genre of historiography.’57

This worldview arrives at a climax in the Bibliotheke as a subtle critique of contemporary

Roman rule, perceived as immoral and arrogant by Diodorus and other ancient and modern authors.58 As a contemporary provincial author, Diodorus offers a unique viewpoint, which permeates and influences his entire text – Sacks is right to argue that Diodorus ‘was less concerned

51 LSJ s.v. ἐπιεικεία II, φιλανθρωπία; Stone 1983: 11-22; Rubincam 1985: 521-2; Sacks 1990: 7; Hau 2016: 74-6. 52 Diod. Sic. 37.3.1-2; Sacks 1990: 79; Green 2006: 7, 23; Lintott 1972: 626; Osgood 2006: 310-11; Hau 2016: 121. 53 Diod, Sic. 37.2.1, on the cause of the Marsic War, establishes Diodorus’ stance on metus hostilis well. See also Rawson 1985: 224; Sacks 1990: 43-6; Green 2006: 23; Hau 2016: 75. For moral decline in the late Republic, see Earl 1967 and Edwards 1993. 54 Polyb. 10.36.6-7; Hau 2016: 76. 55 Sall. Cat. 2.4; Cic. De Off. 2.26-9; Sacks 1990: 43-4. Muntz 2017: 193-6. For Sallust, see Earl 1961 and Schmitz 2011: 237. 56 Green 2006: 24. 57 Sacks 1990: 5; Hau 2016: 121. 58 Polyb. 10.36.6-7; Sall. Cat. 2.4; Cic. De Off. 2.26-9; cf. Sacks 1990: 43-4; Muntz 2017: 193-6. 27 with what occurred within Roman society than with how Rome treated its subjects.’59 Suffice it to say that Diodorus’ relationship with Rome was a complicated one, and the discussion of his relationship with Rome forms a cornerstone of the modern discourse.

Virgil’s Aeneid

Chapter Three of this thesis presents a case study of Sicilian landscape in the Aeneid, analysing how and why the island shifts so dramatically in character between its appearances in

Books Three and Five. These books are conspicuously overlooked by many scholars and commentators, and the emphasis and narrative importance that Virgil places on Sicily has always stood out to readers – between the tragic arc of Book Four and the fantastical katabasis of Book

Six, Sicily seems out of place. The Sicilian episodes have been historically judged as ‘dull’, repetitive, or incomplete.60 Galinsky, whose 1969 book remains a seminal work on the topic, summarized the 20th Century argument well, writing that many consider Book Five a ‘superfluous, late, and ill-fitting appendage within the over-all design of the Aeneid’, while others pointed to the fact that there is no precedent for a return visit to Sicily in the earlier Aeneas legends to justify their claims of incompletion.61 Indeed, even the most recent scholarship on pax in the Augustan period – the Aeneid being strongly in support of pax – overlooks Books Three and Five.62

More and more, modern scholars recognise the dissonance between the importance of

Sicily to the text and the scholarly disregard for Books Three and Five, the use of collective memories and national identity by Virgil to support his constructions of Sicily, and the use of these

59 Sacks 1990: 52; Muntz 2017: 198, 224. 60 Nettleship 1880: 46; Allen 1951: 119; cf. Powell 2008: 87-8. 61 Galinsky 1969: 157; Williams 1960: xiii, 177. See Dion. Hal. 1.52-3 for lack of precedent. 62 Cornwell 2017. 28 constructions to assure his audience of the strength and purpose of the pax Augusta in uncertain times. The case for Sicily’s necessity in the Aeneid has been well argued, demonstrating the central role it plays not only in the narrative of the epic (developing Aeneas’ character and allowing a lacuna between Books 4 and 6), but in relating the Aeneid to its contemporary audience, through the invocation of the cultural memory of Sicily’s pre-Roman past alongside the collective memory of Sextus Pompeius’ blockades in the 40s and 30s.63 In the related field of memory studies, Seider argues that ‘memory in the Aeneid acts as a social and narrative mechanism for integrating a traumatic past with an uncertain future.’64 This is particularly cogent for this thesis, which adopts

Seider’s methods and applies them towards the memory and representation of Sicily in the text as the pivotal intersection of traumatic past and uncertain future in the early Augustan era, wherein

Sicily is an explicitly defined space closely associated with Roman collective memory.65 Thus, indicative of the state of Sicily under hostile rule in Book Three and analogous to the situation at

Rome under Sextus’ blockade in Book Five, Sicily is a ‘meta-Aeneid’, representative of the entire epic’s narrative.66 Galinsky and Smith argue that Sicily is the ‘place where various identities come together’ and a ‘training ground for Roman identity’, while Spence writes that ‘Sicily is… the liminal space in the text, the place of transformation between the old and new, Trojan and

Roman.’67 Sicily was, after all, the main theatre of the First Punic War, and the national identity that was forged from this conflict remained relevant and alive in the Late Republic, and beyond.68

This importance is reflected in the use of Sicily as a powerful strategic location, and in the political

63 Galinsky 1968, 1969, 2014, 2016; Powell 2008; Assmann 2011; Seider 2013. 64 Seider 2013: 4. 65 Seider 2013: 4, 18. Cf. Horsfall 1991, Gowing 2005, Rea 2007. 66 Drew 1927: 68-74; Spence 2002: 7; Spence 2005: 135; cf. Galinsky 1968: 183-4; Hardie 1986: 2. 67 Galinsky 1969: 184; Spence 2002: 75; Smith 2011: 124. 68 Serv. Praef. 5.114; Gruen 1990, 1992; Smith 1991; Smith 2011; Goldschmidt 2013. 29 discourse of Trojan ancestry in the Late Republic.69 Moreover, the island was the stronghold of

Sextus Pompeius from 44/3-36, a fact that many of Virgil’s first readers would not be remiss to forget.70 The Sicilian alliance with Sextus is seen by some as a final act of rebellion for Sicily, long exploited by Rome by the 30s and eager to support the son of Pompey the Great, a lifelong ally of Sicily.71 As such, Sextus, who is undergoing a rehabilitation himself, looms over both

Octavian’s early career and the Aeneid.72 This rehabilitation is supported by modern assessments of Appian and Cassius Dio, who respectively offer mediated and dismissive views of Sextus.73

More generally, pro/anti-Augustan readings of the Aeneid have long been a cornerstone of

Virgilian scholarship.74 Chapter Three, following the works of Galinsky, Powell, Spence, Seider, and Cornwell, proposes that the Aeneid should be read not necessarily as ‘pro-Augustan’, in the traditional political sense of the term, but as ‘pro-pax’, a uniquely charged term at the time of

Virgil’s writing.75 Virgil’s Sicily stands as ‘an emblem of Empire’ – Aeneas and Augustus both play a pivotal role in societal transition points, and Sicily stands at the centre of their stories.76 In particular, the view of Virgil as a partisan of Augustus has been argued convincingly in recent years by Powell, who concludes that Virgil was actively working to promote a unifying discourse around the pax brought on by Augustus.77 Seider’s conclusions support this stance, stating that

69 Galinsky 1969; Wiseman 1974; Gruen 1992; Powell 2008. 70 Powell and Welch 2002. See Chapter Three for the impact of this at Rome. 71 Stone 1983: 21-2; Gowing 2002: 201; cf. Cass. Dio 54.7.1; Strabo 6.2.7. 72 Hadas 1930: 1-2; Gowing 2002: 188-202; Powell 2002b: 103-5; Osgood 2006: 301-2; Powell 2009: 174-181; Welch 2012: 1-4, 14; cf. Syme 1939: 232; Welch 2012: 4-6. 73 Reinhold and Swan 1990: 158-60; Gowing 2002: 200-2; Welch 2012: 20. 74 Parry 1963: 68-71; Johnson 1976: 8-16; Kenney 1982: 299; Hardie 1998: 94; Stahl 1990: 179-82; Galinsky 1996: 4-5; Powell 2008: 10-12, 24-8. 75 Cornwell 2017. 76 Spence 2005: 139. Cf. Galinsky 1969; McGlashan 2003; Smith 2011. 77 Powell 2008: 18-20. 30 adherence to a binary reading of the Aeneid as pro- or anti-Augustan ‘deprives memory of much of its complexity and nuance’, and proposing that the importance of memory in Roman culture was not an Augustan mandate, but a natural response to uncertain times.78 Chapter Three supports these views in its argument that Virgil’s Sicily was symptomatic of the state of Rome, and a transformative space whose change from contested to settled can only be brought about by an

Aeneas or Augustus.

Modern Sources: Geographic History, Roman Sicily, and Imperialism

At the centre of this thesis are the views and methods established during the resurgence of geographical history in the late 20th Century, which favour the studying of peoples within a confined geographic region, and predominantly argue that geography and landscapes in ancient literatures should not be understood as a reality, but rather, as representations of that reality, constructed by contemporary peoples and influenced by context.79 This approach is particularly true of micro-regions, such as the Strait of Messana, wherein mutual visibility projects a sense of control over the region and aids the construction of a mutual identity.80 Several studies of recent years have engaged with these conclusions through identity studies, often focusing on a bounded region of the Italian peninsula.81 This thesis adopts the methodology of the micro-macro approach

– present in the works of Nicolet, Vasaly, Dench, and Prag – by analysing a small number of ancient authors to reveal, first, the ways in which the cultural, historical, and literary imperatives

78 Seider 2013: 3, 20. Cf. Jenkyns 1998: 20, Rogerson 2017: 202. 79 Nicolet 1991; Dench 1995; Habinek 2001; Brodersen 2010; Dueck 2012. Cf. Koelsch 2013: xix-xx for the rise, fall, and return of geographical history. 80 Horden and Purcell 2000: 126. 81 Vasaly 1993; Dench 1995; Curti, Dench, and Patterson 1996; Laurence and Berry 1998; Clarke 1999; Williams 2001; Bradley, Isayev, and Riva 2007; Fitzjohn 2007; Isayev 2007; Prag 2009, 2011a. 31 of the authors influenced their constructions of landscape, and second, the role the Sicilian landscape played in socio-cultural interactions between the island province and Rome.82 Across these four authors, three key methodological and argumentative approaches become clear ― the openness of ancient literature to a geographical reading, the considerations of the social, literary, and political contexts of ancient works, and the role of human agency within these geographical readings. Nicolet argues that geography and landscape in the ancient world should not be understood as a reality, but rather, as representations of that reality, constructed by contemporary peoples.83 More recent scholarship has rightfully argued that Roman writers use literature ‘to intervene in the distribution of power in their social context’, compounded by the powerful need for individuals in the Middle-to-Late Republic ‘to express conquest of space’.84 Vasaly takes a similar approach to her study of Ciceronian representations of the world, demonstrating that

Cicero’s efforts against Verres in the In Verrem reflect the relationship between Rome and Sicily, and the Sicilians and their landscape. At every point, she argues, Cicero draws connections between justice for the Sicilians and the larger issues of Roman interest in Sicily – its strategic location and fertile soils.85 Similarly, Dench criticizes Salmon’s Livian characterisation of the

Samnites as ‘uncouth mountain-men’, which echoes the prevalence of environmental determinism in the ancient literature.86 Instrumental in much of the ancient rhetoric between Sicilians and

Romans, environmental determinism in the ancient world has intimate ties with the separation of

‘the self’ from ‘the other’, brought about by relative geographical isolation, and compounded in

82 Nicolet 1991; Vasaly 1993; Dench 1995; Prag 2009. 83 Nicolet 1991: 3. 84 Habinek 2001: 11; Dueck 2012: 14. 85 Vasaly 1993: 212. 86 Dench 1995: 4-5, 126. Cf. Hdt. 4.1-82; Hippoc. Aer. 12-24; Cic. Verr. 2.3.47; Hor. Ode. 3.6; Vitr. De arch. 1.6; Livy 9.13.7. 32 the literary tradition by the associative relationship between geography and history.87 Preconceived notions of entire peoples and communities were contained in the socio-political consciousness of a society, constructions which were often reflective of the landscape in which those peoples lived.

To the Romans, the Gallic tribes were a reflection of the wild and untamed lands north of the Alps, the Samnites were as hardy and unforgiving as the Apennine range, and the Sicilians could be virtuous farmers or luxurious Easterners.88 This discourse was not merely a matter of self-imposed superiority, but a survival method to tie together the community and forge local identity.89 Thus,

Dench is right to conclude that it is irrelevant whether or not Livy and Salmon were correct in labelling the Sabines ‘mountain-men.’90 Rather, comments like these need to be considered within their social, literary, and political contexts. A precise, or correct, narrative is unimportant compared to the motivations behind a narrative, and modern authors are continuing to demonstrate that this frame of mind is being kept at the forefront of scholarship. 91 Thus, this thesis adopts the conclusions that the ancient authors were not aiming for geographic accuracy (in some cases explicitly trying to obfuscate the reality of a landscape to suit their own means), and that the relationship between geography, identity, and text in the ancient world is an intimate one that is heavily reliant on social constructions and contexts that cannot be divided.

This close-knit relationship between geography, identity, and text is reflected in the scholarship on Sicily and Roman imperialism. The scholarship on Sicilian history has seen a boom in recent years, spearheaded by Prag.92 Reconsiderations of the primary sources, particularly in

87 Vasaly 1993: 209-12; Dench 1995: 126; Rosen and Sluiter 2006: 30, 135; Tempest 2011: 60-1. 88 Livy 9.13.7; Woolf 1998; Williams 2001. See Chapter One for the duality of Sicilians. 89 Horden and Purcell 2000: 123-5; Bradley 2014: 61. 90 Dench 1995: 9-10. 91 Nicolet 1991; Clarke 1999; Habinek 2001; Spencer 2010; Dueck 2012; Koelsch 2013. 92 Prag 2007a, 2007b, 2009, 2011a, 2015; Prag and Quinn 2013. 33 regard to how their genres and historical and socio-political contexts shape their narratives, have been at the centre of this resurgence, aided by ongoing excavations and a general renewed interest in the island. Discussions surrounding identity are particularly pertinent when it comes to our understanding of Sicily post-annexation, as the island maintained much of its Greek identity into the Imperial period.93 Furthermore, the interest in Sicilian scholarship has been impacted by studies in Roman imperialism, reflecting the island’s importance as the burgeoning Empire’s first international province.94 Some argue that the Roman annexation of Sicily was an intentional and aggressive imperialistic move, while others contest that Rome initially ‘happened’ into its hegemony, before undertaking more deliberately imperialistic endeavours.95 In response to this discussion, some like Eckstein argue that Rome ‘should not be interpreted solely in terms of internal Roman features: context matters too,’ and that Roman imperialism must be contextualised within the highly competitive Hellenistic world.96 In addition, Clarke argues that the late

Hellenistic period in particular was one of re-evaluations of the world, and so a certain amount of fluidity can be found in the historiographical tradition.97 Thus, many of the irregularities within the provincia Sicilia, such as the taxation system adopted from Hiero II of Syracuse and the lack of the levying of soldiers, are reckoned to be results of Rome still learning how to administer an empire.98

93 Wilson 1990; Holloway 2000; Prag 2002, 2011a, 2013; Schmitz and Wiater 2011. 94 Salmon 1969; Harris 1979; Rich and Shipley 1993; Clarke 1999; Smith and Serrati 2000; Serrati 2001; Cornell 2004; Eckstein 2006; Richardson 2008; Stek 2009; Prag 2011a, Prag and Quinn 2013. 95 Serrati 2001: 3, 12; Prag 2011a: 84; Bradley 2014: 61. 96 Eckstein 2006: 237-8; cf. Prag and Quinn 2013. 97 Clarke 1999: 3. Cf. the popularity of cataloguing in the first century as an expression of stability, Sacks 1990: 77. 98 Erdkamp 2005: 210-11; Prag 2007a: 69-73, 2009: 136, 2011: 83. 34

In conclusion, modern scholarship in geographical history, identity studies, and Roman imperialism all take interest in Roman Sicily, and the current discourses focus on the experiences of human communities in localised contexts, the reception and interpretation of cultural identities, and the impact of Roman imperialism in the Hellenistic world. While the discipline of geographical history was heavily criticized and even cast aside in the 20th Century, it has returned in recent years to work alongside current research methods and themes in ancient history, advocating a micro- macro focus on human agency and multi-disciplinary theory – an approach which this thesis adopts. 35

Chapter One: Representations of Sicily in Cicero’s Verrine Orations

In 70, Cicero took to the stand on behalf of his Sicilian clients against Gaius Verres, the governor of Sicily from 73-71, who was facing charges of extortion. In a period of economic hardship, political unease, and corrupt provincial governance, Rome had a vested interest in maintaining peace and control in Sicily. Cicero, in his damning Actio Prima, argued that Verres’ crimes endangered the future of Roman Sicily by reducing the island to a contested space that it had not seen since the Punic Wars. Following three successive days of evidence and witnesses, Verres fled

Rome into exile, and the case was won.99 The Actio Secunda, containing five books of undelivered argument, were subsequently published and distributed by Cicero, with the intention of cementing his new-found primacy among the rhetorical elite and establishing a legacy for himself through the written word.100 Throughout the In Verrem, Cicero argues directly towards his two key audiences – the senatorial jury hearing the Actio Prima, and a wider Roman audience reading the

Actio Secunda. At Cicero’s behest, the senatorial jury, concerned with the stability of the Roman state and their place at the summit of Roman society, saw in Verres a scapegoat for decades of provincial frustration towards Roman rule, and the Roman people saw a Greek-styled tyrant who had stolen the Sicilian breadbasket from Rome, and reduced the island from a civilised Roman province to a pre-Roman contested space. Cicero’s audiences were aware of the importance of

Sicily to Rome, and it is this awareness that the orator capitalised upon – without a conviction,

Cicero promised that the economic and military security Sicily offered would be forever lost to

Rome, its future balancing on a knife’s edge.

99 For the unique approach of the Actio Prima, see Vasaly 2009: 110-2. 100 Frazel 2004: 128-9; Steel 2005: 23-5. 36

This chapter will thus explore how Cicero used the landscape of Sicily as a form of artificial evidence, supporting his constructions of the virtuous down-trodden Sicilians and the immoral and tyrannical Verres that formed the centre of his argument.101 In doing so, this chapter will demonstrate how Cicero constructed and presented his audience with a contested landscape torn between Verres and Rome, capitalising on his audiences’ conceptualisations of Sicily. First, the historical context of the Orations will be discussed, allowing for the establishment of Cicero’s intentions and audiences. Then, by analysing how Cicero constructed four key landscapes of Sicily

– the agricultural highlands; Henna; Syracuse and the Great Harbour; and Messana and its Strait –

I argue that the orator manipulated the landscape of Sicily and reduced it to a contested space, to capitalise on and cater to the contemporary discourses of senatorial corruption, morality, and food security, ultimately securing his conviction against Verres.

The Historical Context of the Verrine Orations

70 was a busy year at Rome. Pompeius Magnus had returned from a successful campaign against the rebellious general Sertorius in Hispania, the Third Servile War against Spartacus was ended thanks to the efforts of Marcus Crassus (and, belatedly, Pompey), and the city was filled with people present for the census, elections, and festivals.102 It was this audience that watched the recently elected aedile Cicero take to the stand against Quintus Hortensius, the elected consul of

69 and finest orator in Rome. Hortensius was defending Gaius Verres, the former governor of

Sicily, against whom the Sicilians had brought a suit for extortionate practices during his governorship. Despite Cicero’s opponents, his status as a novus homo, and the senatorial jury, the

101 Vasaly 1993: 25, 127-8, 255 for Cicero’s use of artificial evidence, combining topographia and evidentia. 102 Mitchell 1979: 128-40; Vasaly 2009: 105-10; Tempest 2011: 47. 37 public of Rome yearned for a conviction in spite of the now-infamous senatorial corruption.103

Provincial mismanagement was rife during the Late Republic, and governors used various tactics to extort a profit from the region that was ostensibly under their care.104 This practice was so common by the first century that Cicero comments:

It is difficult to put into words, citizens, just how hated we Romans are among foreign

peoples, because of the greed and the damage our governors, men sent by us, have

done in recent years.105

Difficile est dictum, quirites, quanto in odio simus apud exteras nationes propter

eorum quod ad eas per hos annos cum imperio misimus libidines et iniurias.

This reputation long predates Cicero. The quaestio de rebus repetundis, established in 149, was the first criminal tribunal established to hear cases against such criminality, allowing allied provincials to pursue and recover what had been unlawfully taken from them by Romans wielding imperium.106 Manned by a selection of non-senatorial members under the Gracchan laws, the

Sullan lex Cornelia of 81/80 reinstituted senators on the jury-panel.107 This re-structuring resulted in the clearly advantageous position for the courts to be manned by the same group of senators who were committing the crimes in the first place.108 Unsurprisingly, very few of these governors

103 Cic. Verr. 1.1.1-3, 43; Gruen 1968: 255-8; Badian 1972: 79. Cf. Cic. Pro Rosc. Amer. 9. 104 Badian 1972: 74-81; Lintott 2008: 82-3; Vasaly 1993: 213-14; cf. Cic. Fam. 5.20.9; Steel 2007: 47; Tempest 2011: 47. 105 Cic. Leg. Man. 65; cf. Cic. Amic. 128; Badian 1972: 11-16; Tempest 2011: 47. 106 Gruen 1968: 8-9; Lintott 1992: 10-29; Alexander 2002: 55; Lintott 2008: 81. 107 Gruen 1968: 284-7; Lintott 2008: 87. 108 Cic. Verr. 1.1-3, 43; Badian 1972: 82-84; Gruen 1968: 255-8; Tempest 2011: 51-3; cf. Cic. Pro Rosc. Amer. 9. 38 would suffer successful prosecution or condemnation. When Verres’ trial began in 70, the senate had already taken steps to repair this image – the passing of the lex Aurelia in December once more permitted non-senatorial jurors to man the courts.109 Aware of the political climate, Cicero established early in the Actio Prima the need for Verres’ conviction to redeem the senatorial elite in the eyes of the people:

For I have brought before you a man, by acting justly in whose case you have an

opportunity of retrieving the lost credit of your judicial proceedings, of regaining your

credit with the Roman people, and of giving satisfaction to foreign nations.110

Adduxi enim hominem in quo reconciliare existimationem iudiciorum amissam, redire

in gratiam cum populo Romano, satis facere exteris nationibus possetis.

The Actio Prima, delivered before the court, was targeted above all at the senatorial jury and argued the need for a conviction to restore faith in the judicial system. In taking up the easily-attacked stance of the prosecution, Cicero opened himself up to counter-claims of greed and ambitio.111

Thus, to counter-act this, he established himself as not only the champion of the senatorial elite, but also the people of Sicily and Rome – he was no longer arguing an In Verrem, but a Pro

Siciliensibus:

109 Mitchell 1979: 109-110; Lintott 2008: 90-1; Vasaly 2009: 103. 110 Cic. Verr. 1.1.2. 111 Lintott 2008: 81-2; Vasaly 2009: 118-22. 39

Although it looks like a prosecution it should be reckoned more as an act of defence

than of prosecution. For I am defending many men, many communities; in fact, I am

defending the whole province of Sicily.112

Quod haec quae videtur esse accusatio mea non potius accusatio quam defensio est

existimanda. Defendo enim multos mortalis, multas civitates, provinciam Siciliam

totam.

This provided the orator with a firm moral grounding for his argument, and the senatorial order with the scapegoat they needed in Verres.113 This stance, coupled with Cicero’s rapid-fire presentation of evidence and witnesses in the Actio Prima, was all Verres needed to hear – he fled the city into exile before Cicero delivered the remainder of the invective.114

As the Orations progress, the explicit target audience shifts away from the senatorial jury to a wider Roman readership. This structure is, broadly, as follows – Actio Prima is devoted to the idea of Verres as a danger to the stability of the senatorial judicial system, Books One-Three of

Actio Secunda demonstrate Cicero’s ability to argue from a popularis position whilst also supporting the interests of the elite, and Books Three-Five appeal most strongly to Roman moral sensibilities, contrasting the virtuous Sicilians against the immoral Verres.115 Moreover, each book of Secunda attacks a different aspect of Verres’ person or governorship to arouse the passions of his audience – his prior offices, abuses of judicial power, extortion of grain, plundering of art, and

112 Cic. Div. Caec. 5. 113 Cic. Div. Caec. 5, 64; cf. Cic. Quinct. 51; Cic. Off. 2.49-50, Dem. Meid. 21.6-7; Tempest 2007: 23; Vasaly 2009: 118-122. 114 See Cic. Verr. 1.3-17, 22-6; Mitchell 1979: 107-8; Alexander 2002: 27; Lintott 2007: 15; Lintott 2008: 91. 115 Steel 2001: 23. 40 abuse of imperium.116 Arguing to both the nobilis and popularis throughout the orations, Cicero

‘establishes for himself a powerfully competent political persona’, simultaneously able to argue from a fundamentally popularis position whilst also supporting the interests of the elite.117 From this position, Cicero constructs and manipulates key landscapes of Sicily to appease these audiences, taking advantage of their familiarity with provincial mismanagement, unfamiliarity with Sicilian geography, and the primacy of morality in the Roman socio-political discourse to argue his case in and out of the courtroom.

Farmlands

Cicero’s case against Verres was successful thanks to the moral argument that he placed at its centre, and the fertility of Sicily is a cornerstone of this argument. Engaging with the contemporary discourses of food security and provincial mismanagement, Cicero argues that

Verres endangered the priceless procession of Sicily, and that without the security of the grain imports Rome would surely starve.118 Cicero quotes Cato the Elder when contextualising the bond:

‘Sicily is the nation’s storehouse, the nurse at whose breast the Roman people is fed.’119 Indeed, to Cicero, Rome owes its very success in the Mediterranean to Sicily’s fertile landscape and prime strategic location:

116 Alexander 2002: 26-7. 117 Vasaly 2009: 134, 212; cf. Cic. Leg. Man. 65; Cic. Verr. 1.1-3, 43; Cic. Pro Rosc. Amer. 9; Gruen 1968: 255-8; Lintott 2007: 17; Tempest 2011: 52. 118 Cic. Verr. 2.2.5-7; Syme 1964: 45; Gruen 1992: 54; Vasaly 1993: 139, 211-12; Dench 1995: 9-10; Williams 2001: 4; Erdkamp 2005: 210; Reay 2005: 334-5; McDonnell 2006: 56; Prag 2011a: 86. 119 Cic. Verr. 2.2.5, cf. 2.2.1, 2.3.226-228. 41

[Sicily] was the first of all to receive the title of province, the first such jewel in our

imperial crown… for the great power of Carthage would never have been crushed so

readily had not Sicily been at our disposal, supplying us with grain and affording safe

harbourage to our fleets.120

Prima omnium, id quod ornamentum imperii est, provincia est appellata… Neque enim

tam facile opes Cathaginis tantae concidissent nisi illud et rei frumentariae subsidum

et receptaculum classibus nostris pateret.

This relationship informed and influenced all aspects of exchange between the island and Rome after its annexation, including the danger Verres presented to Rome’s survival.121 Cicero’s argument – that Verres’ immorality and abuse of his imperium over Sicily caused the desolation of the agricultural communities, fracturing the relationship between Rome and Sicily – is, logically speaking, inherently nonsensical (immoral behaviour cannot devastate crops). However, by constructing the Sicilians as virtuous, irrevocably intertwined with their landscape, and in opposition to the immorality of Verres, Cicero presents his audience with an inescapable conclusion – if the immorality of Verres is not answered, and the virtuous Sicilians do not receive justice, then Rome will lose Sicily for good.122

Cicero contends that it is the immorality and corrupt application of Verres’ imperium that has led to the desolation of the previously fecund lands:

120 Cic. Verr. 2.2.2. 121 Cic. Verr. 2.2.9, 2.3.5. 122 Frazel 2009: 195. 42

… it had to my eyes the look we associate with countries that have been the seat of a

cruel and protracted war. The fields and the hill-sides that I had once seen green and

flourishing, I now saw devastated and deserted...123

… sic mihi adfecta visa est ut ae terrae solent in quibus bellum acerbum diuturnumque

versatum est. Quos ego campos antea collisque nitidissmos viridissimosque vidissem,

hos ita vastatos nunc ac desertos videbam…

Cicero’s claims that Verres reduced Sicily to a ruin permeate the orations, with the farmlands often described as having been deserted (exinanio, vasto, desertas, inanis).124 Moreover, the state of the land is reflected in the desperation of the Sicilians themselves:

… they determined either to avenge themselves... or… to leave their cities and their

homes, since they had already left their fields, having been driven out of them by his

injuries.125

… hoc statuerunt… aut… urbes ac sedes suas relinquere, quandoquidem agros iam

ante istius iniuriis exagitati reliquissent.

Verres’ Sicily recalls the reality of war in the ancient world, wherein while the invading army approached, local farms were abandoned and the population retreated within the city limits or walls. Cicero often describes the Sicilian farming community as reliquus (survivor) in support of this construction, declaring that not even when Sicily was ‘laid waste by the wars with Carthage’

123 Cic. Verr. 2.3.47. 124 Cic. Verr. 2.3.122, 125, 2.4.114; Frazel 2009: 195. 125 Cic. Verr. 2.2.9; cf. Cic. Verr. 2.3.121. 43 or when ‘great bands of slaves roamed about the province’ were the farming communities reduced to the status of reliqui.126 The link Cicero draws between the Sicilians and the land is supported by the characterisation of the Sicilians as a people endowed with virtus:

…the character of the inhabitants [Sicilians] is such, judges, so hardy and virtuous and

disciplined, that it seems to appear to be closest to our stern old Roman ways, rather

than those which have come to prevail among us today. They have none of the failings

found elsewhere among Greeks; they are neither slothful nor self-indulgent; on the

contrary, they are highly industrious, for their own and for the public good; plain-living

and conscientious folk.127

Iam vero hominum ipsorum, iudices, ea patientia virtus frugalitasque est ut proxime

ad nostrum discplinam illam veterem, non ad hanc quae nunc increbruit, videantur

accedere. Nihil ceterorum simile Graecorum; nulla desidia, nulla luxuries; contra

summus labor in publicis privatisque rebus, summa parsimonia, summa diligentia.

Thus, according to Cicero, Sicilian identity is not only morally associated with Rome, but is also irrevocably intertwined with the Sicilian landscape:

126 Cic. Verr. 2.2.123-5; OLD s.v. reliquus 3b. 127 Cic. Verr. 2.2.7; cf. Pro Rosc. 74-5, Vasaly 2002: 94. 44

… the Sicilians, our oldest and most loyal allies, the Roman nation’s own cultivators

and farmers…128

… antiquissimi socii et fidelissimi, Siculi, coloni populi Romani atque aratores…

By bestowing virtus and similar virtues upon the Sicilians, and aligning the Sicilians and their landscape with the rustic Roman soldier-farmer ideal, Cicero demonstrates that the Sicilians, though they are ethnically and culturally Greek, deserve justice as they share more in common with ‘us’ than ‘them’.129 Cicero’s aim is not empathy or pity for the Sicilians, but a call-to-arms for the security of the state, achieved by aligning his audiences’ interest in Sicilian agricultural production and the fate of the Sicilians with their own security and well-being.130 Cicero continues, going out of his way not only to condemn Verres, but to demonstrate the links between the state of Sicily and his immorality:

Do you not see that, when your successor [Metellus] speaks of ‘surviving’ farmers,

can you not see what his letter expressly signifies — that these men are survivors not

of war nor of any similar visitation, but of your own cruel wickedness and pitiless

greed?131

128 Cic. Verr. 2.3.228. Cf. Cic. Verr. 2.2.117, 146, 168, where Cicero personifies Sicily, and Richardson 2008: 184, who argues that Cicero uses ‘provincia’ to conflate a geographic area with the people in the area controlled by a pro- magistrate. 129 Cic. Verr. 2.3.226; Alexander 2002: 76; Prag 2011a: 86. 130 Vasaly 1993: 212. 131 Cic. Verr. 2.3.126; cf. Cic. Verr. 2.3.123-5. 45

Non vides, cum is qui tibi successit aratores reliquos appellet, hoc eum diserte

scribere, reliquos hos esse non ex bello neque ex alique eius modi calamitate, sed ex

tuo scelere, importunitate, avaritia, crudelitate?

Verres’ immorality has not only reduced the province to a desert and contested space, but its agricultural community to that of the survivors of some event more harmful to the stability of the island than the Punic Wars. Thus, Verres finds himself on the receiving end of an argument probabile ex vita, becoming the antithesis to Sicilian and Roman virtue, and a fundamentally corrupt individual from the time of his early career.132

Cicero uses the public records of Sicilian communities to demonstrate how desolate the farmlands have become. According to the code of Hiero, an official return of the number of farmers within the area is to be made to local magistrates each year.133 In presenting these records to the court, Cicero demonstrates just how many farmers have abandoned their farms due to Verres’ actions: the Leontini district in the east dropped by 52 active farms in the three years of Verres’ governorship, Mutyca in the south by 101, Agyrium in the centre of the island by 170, and the unknown locale of Herbita by 132.134 It is only Metellus’ pleading with the remaining farmers,

Cicero tells us, that causes them not to follow suit with those who have not only fled their farms, but the island itself:

132 Rhet. Her. 2.3-5; Cic. Inv. 2.32-7; Cic. Verr. 2.2.7; Vasaly 1993: 26; Wallace-Hadrill 1994: 145; Alexander 2002: 64, 76-7; Vasaly 2002: 94, 134; Lintott 2007: 17; Powell 2007: 8-9; Frazel 2009: 105; Prag and Quinn 2013: 43. 133 Cic. Verr. 2.3.120. 134 Cic. Verr. 2.3.120-121. 46

But you will find that those whom Verres had left with nothing to lose fled not only

from their farms but from their countries.135

quibus autem iste nihil reliqui quod perderent fecerat, eos plane non solum ex agris,

verum etiam ex civitatibus suis profugisse.

Through the extortion that Verres perpetrated in Sicily, many farmers had no choice but to abandon their homes, some their communities entirely, and those that remained, ‘a bare tenth of the whole number’, were referred to by Metellus and Cicero as reliqui.136 Contrasts like these direct Cicero’s audience to see the landscapes that he wants them to see, not necessarily the ones that exist.137

Book Three of the Actio Secunda demonstrates Verres’ abuse of his imperium to extort from the agricultural communities, and Cicero’s continued construction of moral landscapes. The years

75-73 featured a grain shortage at Rome, leading to the passing of the Lex Terentia et Cassia frumentaria which restored the regular distributions of grain.138 Since Verres might have used this law for his own defence (as it authorised him to purchase grain beyond the requested tithe), Cicero demonstrated that the ways in which Verres applied the law were entirely corrupt.139 Cicero recounts several edicts passed by Verres that target the collection of the grain tithe. In the first of these Verres orders that the farmer must hand over whatever amount of grain is asked for by the collector, and that if the collector takes more than is due, the farmer has the right to sue the collector

135 Cic. Verr. 2.3.121. 136 Cic. Verr. 2.3.121. 137 Vasaly 1993: 132. 138 Frazel 2009: 195. 139 Cic. Verr. 2.3.112-3; Erdkamp 2005: 35-6. 47 for eight times the amount.140 While on paper this sounds like a fair deal, Cicero points out that this is false justice for the farmer:

You drag the poor fellow from his farm to the city, from his plough to a plaintiff’s

bench, from the familiar life of the countryside to the strange world of the law-

courts.141

Ex agro homines traducis in forum, ab aratro ad subsellia, ab usu rerum rusticarum

ad insolitam litem atque iudicium.

Such a journey was an expensive and time-consuming venture for the farmers, putting their livelihood at risk. Even if a farmer was to come to the city, Verres was certain to make sure that no such suit was ever successful:142

Verres ordained that a farmer must appear in court wherever the collector might

choose, so that Apronius [A tax farmer, and Verres’ right-hand man] might summon a

man to go for this purpose all the way from Leontini to Lilybaeum, and thus make a

further profit out of the unhappy farmers by bringing false actions against them.143

Statuit iste ut arator decumano quo vellet decumanus vadimonium promitteret, ut hic

quoque Apronio, cum ex Leontino usque Lilybaeum aliquem vadaretur, ex miseris

aratoribus calumniandi quaestus accederet.

140 Cic. Verr. 2.3.25-6. 141 Cic. Verr. 2.3.26. 142 Cic. Verr. 2.3.28. 143 Cic. Verr. 2.3.38. 48

Roughly six hundred kilometres long, this theoretical round-trip could take up to a fortnight, and would cost the farmer in both travel expenses and time lost on his farm.144 To avoid such a trip, the farmers would have no choice but to pay Apronius to withdraw the summons against them.

Cicero’s statement might be a hypothetical one, but that does not leave it without impact. The introduction to the narrative of tax-farmers, such as Apronius, allows Cicero to smooth over any inconsistencies in his argument and to appeal simultaneously to multiple audiences – too much money is being taken from the farmers (appealing to his Sicilian clients), and too little is reaching

Rome (appealing to his Roman audience).145 In direct contradiction of the code of Hiero, which stated that no man could be summoned to a court outside his own district, Cicero argues that Verres drew the farmers away from their familiar landscape and spaces, forcing them either to forfeit the grain that was taken from them unjustly, or risk great financial burdens in taking the case to court.146 Cicero’s continued manipulation of the average understanding of Sicilian geography only enhanced the perceived impact Verres’ actions had on the Sicilians.

Chapter 18 of Book Three opens with a letter from Lucius Metellus, Verres’ successor as governor, written to the surviving Sicilian farmers, entreating them to sow all the grain they are able to, and promising a return to just treatment of the tithe and their lands. Cicero is careful to note that Metellus sent letters to ‘every city in Sicily’ before declaring that:147

144 Scheidel and Meeks 2012. 145 Steel 2007: 47-8. 146 Cic. Verr. 3.14. 147 Cic. Verr. 2.3.46. 49

The grainlands of Herbita and Henna, of Murgentia and Assorus, of Imachara and

Agyrium, were for the most part so completely abandoned… and the land round Aetna

that used to be so richly cultivated, and that headquarters of grain-farming, the plain

of Leontini, whose aspect formerly was such that to see it under crop removed any

fears that grain would be scarce and dear – these were so wild and miserable a waste

that there, in Sicily’s most fertile regions, nothing reminded us of Sicily.148

Herbitensis ager et Hennensis, Murgentinus, Assorinus, Imacharensis, Agyrinensis ita

relictur erat ex maxime parte… Aetnensis vero ager, qui solebat esse cultissimus, et,

quod caput est rei frumantariae, campus Leontinus, – cuius antea species haec era tut,

cum obsitum vidisses, annonae caritatem non vererere, – sic erat deformis atque

horridus ut uberrima Siciliae parte Siciliam quaereremus.

In this passage, which Cicero opens with a pledge not to exaggerate the facts, the orator lists eight different districts, thereby implying that the entire island was in dire need. These eight districts, however, all lie within one hundred kilometres of one another, nestled between Leontini and Etna in the east and Henna and Imachara in the centre of the island.149 There are three possibilities as to how Cicero’s general readership understood this specific point of Sicilian geography: they had either never heard of these cities, and so could not conceptualise their location in relation to one another or on Sicily; or, they had heard of them, in which case it is unlikely that this would aid in the creation of a ‘mental-map’ of the Sicilian highlands, as the majority of Cicero’s readership did not conceptualise the world in this way; or, they knew the cities and their relative positions to one

148 Cic. Verr. 2.3.47. 149 See Figure 1. 50 another. This last group would have been in the minority.150 Thus, by citing numerous locations as ‘wild and miserable’, and prefacing the passage with Metellus sending letters ‘to every city’,

Cicero is able to stretch the plight of these towns across the island, despite their relative proximity.151 Cicero ends the oration with a call-to-arms to the senatorial court, declaring that:

… the utmost fertile and valuable province of Sicily is lost to the Roman nation, unless

you are ready to recover it by finding Verres guilty. For what is Sicily, if you take

away its agriculture, if you extinguish the farming population and the farming

profession?152

… amissam esse populo Romano Siciliam, fructuosissimam atque opportunissimam

provinciam, nisi eam vos istius damnatione recuperati. Quid est enim Sicilia si agri

cultionem sustuleris et si aratorum numerum ac nomen exstinxeris?

At the end of his argument, Cicero holds nothing back. He offers the court a false choice, constructing the Sicily that he wants his audience to see.153 In Cicero’s Sicily, Rome does not find itself the master of a bread-basket, but a war-torn and contested desert – the direct result of Verres’ immorality. The moral and hard-working Sicilians, who deserve the utmost respect from Rome for their rustic lifestyles and service to Rome, have been forced out of their homes like the victims of some great conflict. In turn, Cicero’s construction of Sicily as a contested space becomes the

150 Brodersen 2010: 827-30; cf. König and Whitmarsh 2007: 6-7; Spencer 2010: 4. 151 Vasaly 1993: 218-43; Steel 2007: 44. Cf. Caes. BGall. 1.2.3, 1.10.1 and Riggsby 2017: 68. 152 Cic. Verr. 2.3.226, adapted by the author. 153 Frazel 2009: 195. See Steel 2007: 37-48 for the complexity of Book Three: ‘The case in the third Verrine is weak, complex, and confusing: Cicero’s rhetorical transmutation makes it powerful, straightforward, and clear’, Steel 2007: 48. 51 centrepiece of the argument. He concludes that the fate of the island and its people is inseparable, and Verres is to blame for the potential loss of Sicily to the Roman people. In constructing this vision of Sicily for his readership, Cicero takes great advantage of the common knowledge of the

Sicilian agricultural landscape, exploiting the fact that many among his Roman audience(s) would be more familiar, if not only familiar, with the coast of Sicily rather than the central highlands.154

As the Actio Secunda progresses, the locations Cicero discusses become more familiar to his

Roman audience, with Verres’ actions at Henna, Syracuse, and Messana becoming increasingly more abhorrent to his wider readership.

Henna

As far as the Roman state was concerned, the theft of art was a relatively benign crime, reflected in the moral discourse surrounding luxuria at Rome.155 Book Four of Actio Secunda, concerning the thefts of art by Verres, forces its reader to care about such acts, as Cicero reveals that these are in fact cult statues, worshipped by the pious Sicilians. While the plundering of provinces was by no means a uniquely Verrine behaviour, Cicero, in line with his aims as prosecutor, presents the crime as damaging to the Roman state, reducing the civilized Roman province to a plundered territory. Thus, at Henna, Cicero aligns the religious and physical landscapes of Sicily, demonstrating the religious importance of the cult statues and the dangerous implications of a plundered Sicily to his wider Roman readership, while also striking to the heart

154 Butler 2002: 35-60. Cf. Dueck 2012: 34. 155 Wallace-Hadrill 1994: 145; Welch 2005: 102-5; Frazel 2009: 106. 52 of the issue among the elite – the presence of such works in Verres’ personal collection greatly increases his wealth and standing among the nobiles of Rome.156

Upon his arrival in Henna, the very ‘navel of Sicily’, Verres loots the temple of Ceres of its bronze cult statues.157 Cicero recalls the day in which he visited Henna to collect evidence, learning it was not the crimes from the preceding books that brought his audience to tears, but this ‘sin against the holiness of Ceres.’158 Indeed, Cicero places upon the Sicilians a ‘devotion to Ceres of

Henna that is quite astonishing’, writing at great length that portents and circumstances have dictated that ‘men think of her not only as caring for the island but as dwelling in it and guarding it in person.’159 Elsewhere in Book Four, Cicero tells his readers that the shrine of Ceres in Catina is ‘reverenced no less than such shrines at Rome, in other lands, almost throughout the world’.160

Through establishing Ceres’ worship as practiced not only across the whole of Sicily, but as respected across the Mediterranean, Cicero makes his charge against Verres powerful and explicit.

He has not simply plundered a cult statue from a temple, but Ceres herself from her home.161

The practical angle to Cicero’s focus and promotion of the Cult of Ceres at Henna was that it allowed the orator to shift the religious focus of the island away from the powerful sanctuary of

Venus at Eryx to Ceres at Henna.162 Verres had formed a powerful alliance with Eryx, using the sanctuary as a personal treasury and base of operations in the west of the island. Thus, Cicero

156 Frazel 2009: 106-7. Cf. the citrus-wood table Verres loots from Lutatius at Cic. Verr. 2.4.37, and Pliny’s notes on the price of such an object at HN 13.91-2. 157 Cic. Verr. 2.4.106, 109. 158 Cic. Verr. 2.4.111. 159 Cic. Verr. 2.4.107. 160 Cic. Verr. 2.4.99. 161 Cic. Verr. 2.4.109. 162 Vasaly 1993: 121. 53 focuses his argument on the cult of Ceres at Henna to avoid the issue of Verres’ alliance with the goddess, while also undermining the alliance by depicting Verres’ devotion to Venus in terms of his libido and cupido.163 Cicero spends one and a half chapters providing the religious context for

Verres’ crimes at Henna, demonstrating that ‘the island of Sicily as a whole is sacred to Ceres and

Persephone’, and eliding Venus Erycina.164 The orator mixes topology and mythology to introduce this narrative, emphasising the religious centrality and sanctity of Henna:165

They [the Sicilians] hold that these goddesses were born in Sicily: that the grain was

first brought to light in Sicilian soil… Libera, the one they call Persephone, was carried

off from a wood near Henna… known as the navel of Sicily… Henna… is built on a

lofty eminence, the top of which is a table-land, watered by perennial springs, bounded

in every direction by precipitous cliffs, round which are numerous lakes and copses,

and flowers in profusion at all seasons…166

Nam et natas esse has in iis locis deas et fruges in ea terra primum repertas esse

arbitrantur, et raptam esse Liberam, quam eandem Proserpinam vocant, ex

Hennesium nemore… umbilicius Siciliae nominatur… Henna… est loco perexcelso

atque edito, quo in summo est aequata agri planities et aquae perennes, tota vero ab

omni aditu circumcisa atque directa est; quam circa lacus lucique sunt plurimi atque

laetissimi flores omni tempore anni…

163 Cic. Verr. 2.4.72, 2.5.188; Vasaly 1993: 214. 164 Cic. Verr. 2.4.106. 165 Vasaly 1993: 121. 166 Cic. Verr. 2.4.107. 54

Henna, a land of apparent unparalleled fecundity, is presented not only as the physical centre of

Sicily and a fertile land, but as the religious centre of Sicily, where the landscape and the gods of the Sicilians are intertwined, and the locations of mythological events are definable.167 Much the same as the oral tradition of Homer finds itself weaving together cultural and social values with mythological origin stories, so too do ancient landscapes receive comment, undergo analysis, and become rationalised in terms of cultural value and belief. Thus, the relationship between mythology and landscape in antiquity is an associative one, wherein ‘landscape reflects mythic history, and mythic history defines the landscape’.168 The link that Cicero makes between Henna, the Sicilians, and Sicily’s relationship with Rome serves to blur the line between rhetoric and evidence once more, conflating the piety of the Sicilians with their fecund landscape. Mirroring his presentation of the agricultural land, Cicero contrasts the Sicilians against Verres:

So extreme was their [the Sicilians’] distress that one might fancy that the king of the

shades [Pluto] had come to Henna once more, and not abducted Persephone but carried

Ceres herself away… the countryside is a lonely wilderness, how the farmers have fled

from their farms, how the whole land has become a neglected and abandoned desert.

Though this is the result of many and various wrongs done them by Verres, yet in the

belief of these Sicilians the sacrilege committed against Ceres is the chief reason why

all the crops and fruits of Ceres in that part of the world have come to nothing.169

167 Cic. Verr. 2.4.107; Vasaly 1993: 121; Beard, North and Price 1998: 173. Cf. Diod. Sic. 5.3.2. 168 Dowden 1992: 122; Dueck 2012: 30-2; cf. Hom. Od. 75-140; Hom. Hymn Dem. 16; Aesch. PV 343-375; Pind. Nem. 1.1-15; Pind. Pyth. 1.14-31; Verg. Aen. 3.374-440; Ov. Met. 5.346. 169 Cic. Verr. 2.4.111-4. 55

Hic dolor erat tantus, ut alter Orcus venisse Hennam et non Proserpinam asportasse

sed ipsam abripuisse Cererem videretur170… solitudo esset in agris, quae vastitas,

quae fuga aratorum, quam deserta, quam inculta, quam relicta omnia. Ea tametsi

multis istius et variis iniuriis acciderunt, tamen haec una causa in opinione Siculorum

plurimum valet, quod Cerere violata omnis cultus fructusque Cereris in iis locis

interiise arbitrantur.

Cicero is not only sewing a narrative wherein Verres is again the conqueror of the Sicilians, but he is the modern parallel to Pluto, adding a new dimension to his construction of Sicily as a plundered territory.171 Just as the abduction of Persephone led to Ceres’ mourning and the wilting of crops, so too does Verres’ theft of Ceres from Henna result in the desolation of the crops – the entire narrative becomes an allegory for Verres’ rape of Sicily itself.172 These actions reinforce

Cicero’s construction of Verres as an immoral figure whose sexual libido and selfish avaritia are easily identifiable by Cicero’s audience as typical traits of the Greek tyrant.173 Indeed, not even when Henna was occupied during the slave revolts of 132 was the cult statue of Ceres disturbed.174

In a comparative case, Verres robs Segesta of its cult statue of Diana, a symbol of Roman power.175

170 Some texts, such as the Oxford Classics edition, supply ut Verres alter Orcus, which only serves to strengthen the argument presented here, cf. Greenwood 1935: 418. 171 Cf. Cicero comparing Verres to a boar, a natural disaster, and mythical beasts. Cic. Verr. 1.1.2, 28, 2.2.19, 121, 191, 2.3.124, and 2.5.146. 172 Hom. Hymn Dem. 305-14; Cic. Verr. 2.4.107; 109-114; Vasaly 1993: 124; Frazel 2009: 83-6. 173 Vasaly 1993: 122; Seager 2007: 35-6. Cf. Cicero’s emphasis on the ‘pious restraint’ of earlier conquerors, like Scipio Aemilianus (Cic. Verr. 1.11; 2.3, 86-87; 4.73, 93, 97; 5.124), Lucius Mummius (Cic. Verr. 1.55; 3.9; 4.4) and Marcellus (Cic. Verr. 1.11; 2.4, 50; 4.115, 120-23, 130; 5.84). 174 Cic. Verr. 2.4.112; Seager 2007: 39. 175 Cic. Verr. 2.4.72-7. 56

Scipio Aemilianus returned the statue to Segesta following the defeat of Carthage, his generosity a ‘justification for Roman rule’.176 Cicero argues that the movement alone of the Diana from one contextual landscape to another was not enough to tarnish its sanctity, since the sanctity of the statue was maintained through the piety of its owners.177 Verres, however, was far from pious, and the sight of the Diana inflamed not only cupiditas within him, but a state of amens.178 Being placed into such a state and driven by his immorality, Verres manipulated the elite men of Segesta in a similar way to his manipulations of the farming community, imposing burdens on them and demanding their presence all over the island.179 These men were bent to Verres’ demands, and the

Diana was carried off to the lamentation of the people of Segesta, mirroring Ceres’ mourning of the Rape of Persephone/Kore and the theft of Ceres from Henna.

Through this blending of the religious and physical landscapes at Henna, Cicero frames the theft of cult statues by Verres, an illegal if relatively benign activity as far as the Roman state is concerned, as an immediate concern to his readership that must be resolved. The Sicilian landscape, contested, deserted, and barren under Verres, is thus presented as the direct outcome of

Verres’ extortionate actions towards the agricultural communities and the impious thefts of cult statues. Cicero would have his audience believe that under Verres’ governorship, not only did the farmers flee the island, but so did Ceres herself, and the island was reduced from a civilised Roman province to a barren and plundered territory. Cicero’s use of landscape as a rhetorical tool continues in his constructions of Syracuse and Messana, where the divide between the virtuous

176 Cic. Verr. 2.4.80; Vasaly 1993: 120. 177 Cic. Verr. 2.4.72-7; Vasaly 1993: 107. Cf. Cic. Verr. 2.4.122 and Vasaly 1993: 105-6, where the religious significance of objects looted from Syracuse in 212 was restored thanks to the maintained peace and loyalty of Syracuse to Rome. 178 Cic. Verr. 2.4.75; ‘desire’ and ‘insanity’, respectively. 179 Cic. Verr. 2.4.76. 57

Sicilians and corrupt and tyrannical Verres is capitalised upon, and the reality of Sicily’s contested space is explored.

Syracuse

Of all the cities Cicero mentions in his invective, Syracuse is the one that his readership would have no doubt been familiar with – at the very least, they would be aware of its history and size:

You will often have been told that Syracuse is the largest of Greek cities and the

loveliest of all cities. Gentlemen, what you have been told is true. Its position is not

only a strong one, but beautiful to behold in whatever direction it is approached, by

land or sea. Its harbours are almost enfolded in the embrace of the city buildings, their

entrances far apart, but their heads approaching till they meet each other… so large is

the city that it is described as being four great cities joined together.180

Urbem Syracusas maximam esse Graecarum, pulcherrimam omnium saepe audistis.

Est, iudices, ita ut dicitur. Nam et situ est cum munito tum ex omni aditu vel terra vel

mari praeclaro ad aspectum, et portus habet proper in aedificatione amplexuque urbis

inclusos; qui cum diversos inter se aditus habeant, in exitu coniunguntur et confluunt…

Ea tanta est urbs ut ex quattuor urbibus maximis constare dicatur.

Comparatively, in addressing the jury, Cicero says ‘You have all heard of, and most of you have seen, the Syracusan stone-quarries’, which Berry suggests is an attempt by Cicero to flatter the

180 Cic. Verr. 2.4.117-8. Cf. Cic. Verr. 2.4.115; Diod. Sic. 26.19.1; Evans 2009: 9; Frazel 2009: 81. 58 jurors as educated and well-travelled men.181 Cicero’s constructions of the aspects of Syracusan landscape – the tetrapolis, the famously defensible island of Ortygia, and the Great Harbour – exploit this knowledge of geography in his readership and aid his depictions of Verres. This chapter will now demonstrate how Cicero inverts Syracuse in Book Five, constructing it as contested space to elicit an emotional response from his readership and demonstrate the reality of Verres’ tyranny as everything a bonus imperator should not be – an effeminate Greek-styled tyrant and conqueror of allies, who has stolen territory from Rome.

The narrative begins with the capture of a pirate cargo vessel by the hamstrung Sicilian navy, while Verres ‘was lying drunk on the sea-coast with those women of his.’182 Upon the vessels’ arrival into Syracuse, Cicero relates that:

Everyone was looking to see justice done; but Verres behaved less like a captor of

pirates than like a pirate receiving his booty. He treated as public enemies all of his

prisoners who were old or ugly; but he took away all who possessed any measure of

beauty, youth or artistic skill… The pirate captain himself, who ought to have been

executed, was nowhere to be seen…183

Exspectatur ab omnibus supplicium. Iste quasi praeda sibi advecta, non preadonibus

captis, si qui sense ac deformes errant, eos in hostium numero ducit; qui aliquid

formae aetatis artificiique habebantm, abducit omnes… Archpiratam ipsum videt

nemo, de quo supplicium sumi oportuit…

181 Berry 2009: 85. 182 Cic. Verr. 2.5.63. 183 Cic. Verr. 2.5.64. 59

While Verres sent the remaining pirates, and even Roman citizens, to the stone quarries of

Syracuse as a form of imprisonment, the pirate captain remained missing. Eventually, Cicero reveals the location of the pirate captain:

[He had been taken] to a place whose inhabitants had the least possible reason to feel

any fear or concern about the pirates, and had nothing to do with sea-faring or maritime

matters: to Centuripa, which has a wholly inland population… to whom no sea-going

pirate’s name had ever been a name of fear.184

Ad homines a piratarum metu et suspicione alienissimos, a navigando rebusque

maritimis remotissimos, ad Centuripinos, homines maxime mediterraneos… qui

nomen numquam timuissent maritimi praedonis, unum te praetore horruissent.

Cicero’s attention to geographical detail in this passage serves to highlight the corrupt application of Verres’ imperium through the governor’s inversion of Sicilian landscape. Not only has Verres harboured a hostis from Rome, but he has done so deep in the heart of Sicily, at Centuripae, where

‘no sea-going pirate’s name had ever been a name of fear.’185 Under Verres’ orders, pirates have penetrated the heart of Sicily. The issue of Cicero’s readership not being able to locate Centuripae geographically, as with the example of Cic. Verr. 2.3.47 above, is not an issue here – its people as maxime mediterraneos is more than enough for Cicero to get his point across. Verres continues the corruption of space by giving over command of the (admittedly dilapidated) fleet to

Cleomenes, a Syracusan, so that he might spend the summer on the island of Ortygia among his

184 Cic. Verr. 2.5.70. 185 In an amusing turn of phrase, Cicero notes that Centuripae’s ‘one and only dread… was that pirate chief of the dry land Apronius.’ Cic. Verr. 2.5.70. 60 women (including Cleomenes’ wife Nice) and linen-tents.186 In doing so, Verres inverts the legendary strength of Ortygia and the Sicilian fleet in one fell swoop. The island, once the most formidable location in Sicily, is now Verres’ personal pleasure palace, and the post of admiral of the Sicilian fleet, ‘a post of authority, dignity and power’, is given to a Sicilian, a non-citizen provincial.187 Cicero continues, framing these inversions in the light of Rome’s legendary ancestors:

Mark the contrast, Verres, between your weak wantonness and the strong judgement

of our forefathers, between your insane profligacy and their far-sighted wisdom. They

took from the Syracusans access to the shore, and you have conceded them command

of the sea; they refused to let a Syracusan live where ships could come, and you agreed

to let a Syracusan command the ships of our fleet; to the people whom they deprived

of part of their own city you have presented a part of our imperial power; the

Syracusans obey our commands because of the help our allies gave us, and you have

bidden our allies obey the commands of a Syracusan.188

Vide quid intersit inter tuam libidinem maiorumque auctoritatem, inter amorem

furoremque tuum et illorum consilium atque prudentiam. Illi aditum litoris

Syracusanis ademerunt, tu imperium maritimum concessisti; illi habitare in eo loco

Syracusanum, qua naves accedere possent, noluerunt, tu classi et navibus

Syracusanum praeesse voluisti; quibus illi urbis suae partem dedisti, et quorum

186 Cic. Verr. 2.5.83-6. 187 Cic. Verr. 2.5.84; Evans 2009: 14. 188 Cic. Verr. 2.5.85. 61

sociorum opera Syracusani nobis dicto audientes sunt, eos Syracusano dicto audientes

esse iussisti.

Considering the rebellions, civil wars, and unrest in the years leading up to the trial, Cicero’s final line no doubt gripped his audience, and instilled the fear of a Sicilian rebellion in them, thanks to the (in)action of Verres.189 More damningly, the transfer of imperium from Verres to Cleomenes steals away Sicily from Rome – if the island is not under the imperium of Rome, then it is no longer a provincia, and if it is no longer a provincia, the food and military security of Rome are at risk.190

This fear is a driving motivator behind Cicero’s most impactful construction of the Syracusan landscape.

The Great Harbour of Syracuse was reckoned to be the centre of the city in antiquity, as the island of Ortygia almost completely cuts off the harbour from the Mediterranean proper.

Sailing out from the Harbour, Cleomenes catches sight of Verres, now the archetype of an effeminate Greek tyrant:

That Roman governor stood there on the shore in slippers, wearing a purple Greek

cloak and a long-skirted tunic, and leaning on one of his women…191

Stetit soleatus praetor populi Romani cum pallio purpureo tunicaque talari muliercula

nixus in litore…

189 Cic. Verr. 2.5.18. 190 Richardson 2008: 183-4. 191 Cic. Verr. 2.5.86. 62

Prior to this description, Cicero has spent five books constructing Sicily as a contested space, removed from the positive influence of Roman rule. Now, his readers are introduced to the ultimate symbol of a Sicily devoid of Roman rule – the return of the Syracusan tyrant. Tyranny was a popular form of government at Syracuse up until the death of Hieronymus, grandson of Hiero II, and the passing of the Syracusan kingdom to Rome in 210. The trope of the Roman noble who indulges in Greek luxuria has been well covered by modern scholarship, reaching a climax in the

Republican period with Octavian’s smear campaign against Marc Antony.192 Of note to this characterisation is the placement of this tyrant in Syracuse itself, where the image of the immoral

Roman is heightened by the contextualising landscape of the city and its history.193 That Roman rule brought peace to an eternally embattled Sicily was accepted in the first century, and so Cicero argues that Verres has not only endangered the relationship between Sicily and Rome, but he has so corrupted the landscape that he has single-handedly returned tyranny to Syracuse.194

Shortly after departing the Harbour (but not before running out of supplies and being forced to feed on ‘the roots of wild palms’), the small fleet of Cleomenes is ambushed by pirates and forced to flee. They are ultimately chased down, and the fleet is burned by the pirate captain

Heracleo.195 The pirates, realising the rare opportunity afforded to them by Verres’ incompetence, make for Syracuse:

192 Edwards 1993: 23; Phang 2008: 272; Zanda 2011: 3-5, 11. For Roman reception of Sicilian tyrants, see Dunkle 1967 and Lewis 2006. 193 Gowers 2010: 73-4. 194 See Diod. Sic. 19.1.5 for provincial gratitude to Rome for quashing Sicilian tyrants. 195 Cic. Verr. 2.5.87, 91. 63

And when I say that these pirates entered the harbour… [they] reached a spot that the

renowned fleets of Carthage at the height of her naval power… never succeeded in

reaching; a spot to which the glorious navy of Rome… was never able to penetrate.196

Cum in portum dico… Urbis accessit, quo neque Carthaginiensium gloriosissimae

classes, cum mari plurimum poterant… aspirare potuerunt, neque populi Romani

gloria illa navalis… penetrare potuit…

As a direct result of the corrupt application of Verres’ imperium, a small band of pirates were free

‘to sail to and fro’ where the great fleets of Carthage, Athens, and Rome could not.197 The legendary strength of Syracuse’s Great Harbour, and the protection offered by Ortygia, were reduced to little more than entertainment for the hostes of Rome. Adding insult to injury, the pirates are not chased out of the Harbour, but instead simply leave when they have had their fun mocking the Syracusans.198 This idea of ‘the enemy at the gates’, indeed, ‘inside the walls’ would have provoked yet another emotional response from Cicero’s readership, particularly in conjunction with Verres’ presentation as a wholly Greek tyrant.

In these constructions of the Syracusan landscape, Cicero aligns the fear of military defeat and the loss of a stable food supply for Rome with the immorality of Verres. Indeed, the entire situation Cicero presents his readers is an inverted one – pirates inhabit the harbours and highlands of Sicily, non-citizen provincials command the Roman navy, and the man upon whom Rome and the gods bestowed imperium has restored tyranny to Syracuse. This final construction of Verres,

196 Cic. Verr. 2.5.96-8; Evans 2009: 14-21; Seager 2007: 27. 197 Cic. Verr. 2.5.97. 198 Cic. Verr. 2.5.98-9. 64 influenced and shaped by Cicero’s constructions of landscape, is capitalised upon at the climax of

Book Five, at Messana.

Messana

Following the First Punic War, the special relationship between Messana and Rome led to a

‘conspicuous social divide’ between the city and the rest of Sicily. The coastal city often received special treatment from Rome, and was specifically targeted by powerful Romans if they needed to get the rest of the island on-side.199 As such, Verres granted Messana tax-breaks and established it as his base of operations in Sicily. While such a deal was ostensibly good for the people of

Messana, Rome lost an annual 60,000 pecks of wheat each year, a ship, and military troops.200

Cicero’s constructions of the landscape of Messana respond to this alliance, working to undermine

Verres’ strength in the city and assassinate the governor’s character.201 This chapter will now demonstrate how Cicero employs his construction of Verres the tyrant to achieve these goals, by showing his audience how the governor stole Sicily from Rome and reduced it from a land of freedom to a land of slavery.

Cicero, in Book Four and Five, argues that Verres has stolen Sicily from Rome through his alliance with, and actions at, Messana. Cicero felt the effect of this alliance first-hand, receiving a hostile reception from the populace when he was attempting to collect evidence for the trial.202

Compared to the coup de grâce that is the climax of Book Five, this insult was a minor

199 Cic. Verr. 2.4.20; cf. the governorship of Sicily by Pompey the Great in 82/81, which was relatively magnanimous apart from his harsh treatment of Messana, Sacks 1990: 129-30. 200 Cic. Verr. 2.5.43-50 for Verres having the Messanians build a ship for himself instead; Frazel 2009: 194 for more on pecks. 201 Cic. Verr. 2.4.23; Frazel 2009: 80. Cf. Cic. Verr. 2.5.59. 202 Cic. Verr. 2.4.23, 25-6, 59. 65 inconvenience for the orator. Presented in full in Book Five, the execution of Publius Gavius, a

Roman citizen, completes Cicero’s character assassination of Verres and the corruption of the

Sicilian landscape at his hand. Gavius, having been wrongfully imprisoned in the stone quarries, escaped and made his way to Messana, seeking passage across the Strait and back to Italy. Before he escaped the island, however, Gavius was caught by Verres’ men, dragged into the forum, and beaten with the rods of Verres’ lictors – the misuse of the fasces yet another example of Verres’ corruption.203 Following this, Verres accused Gavius of being a spy of the rogue general Sertorius

(his default claim to do away with troublesome citizens) and sentenced him to death by crucifixion overlooking the Strait, the border (both symbolic and literal) of Verres’ imperium, despite Gavius’ desperate plea – ‘I am a Roman citizen! [Civis Romanus sum!]’204 Typically, such a declaration would provide a Roman citizen with certain rights anywhere within Rome’s territory, such as provocatio and the right to a trial, but in Cicero’s construction of Verres’ provincia, Sicily has been reduced to a land of slavery:205

That is the only cross, gentlemen, ever set up in this spot in all of Messana’s history;

and now you see why. This place with its view of Italy was deliberately picked out by

Verres, that his victim, as he died in pain and agony, might appreciate that the rights

[ius] of liberty and of slavery [servitutis ac libertatis] were only separated by a very

narrow [perangusto] channel…206

203 Cic. Verr. 2.5.161-3. 204 Cic. Verr. 2.5.162; Richardson 2008: 29; cf. Hdt. 9.120 for the act of crucifixion overlooking a strait. 205 Richardson 2008: 90, 183-4; Cic. Verr. 2.3.43 for Cicero’s condemnation of Verres’ treatment of his provincia; OLD s.v. provocatio 3, 4. Cf. Gruen 1968: 72, 81-2, 106; Lintott 1999: 11, 33. 206 Cic. Verr. 2.5.169, adapted by author. 66

Itaque illa crux sola, iudices, post conditam Messanam illo in loco fixa est. Italiae

conspectus ad eam rem ab isto delectus est, ut ille in dolore cruciatuque moriens

perangusto fretu divisa servitutis ac libertatis iura cognosceret…

The intention behind Verres’ actions is clear. The Strait of Messana that separates Sicily from the toe of Italy is an average of four kilometres across, granting Messana a constant line of sight to

Italy. Despite this proximity, Messana is decidedly not part of Italy. Gavius was forced to look upon libertas (Italy and the res publica of his home), while he endured servitus (Verres’ Sicily and the punishments of slavery). Cicero’s phrasing reflects the narrow quality of the Strait, with the conjunction ac, placed between servitutis and libertatis, the shortest conjunction available to

Cicero.207 Earlier in the Orations, Cicero emphasized that this proximity is one of the greatest features of Sicily, providing Roman citizens with an opportunity to engage in ‘honest and profitable’ ventures close to Rome.208 Now, what was once a beneficial provincia in which ius operated (and which magistrates such as Verres were supposed to uphold and protect) is now a divided land ruled by an impious Greek tyrant, where a Roman citizen is not given his due rights and the will of the gods is betrayed.209 Under Verres’ imperium, Sicily has become enslaved.

Despite the benefits that Messana gained from its location and history with Rome, the Strait stands as evidentia of Verres’ guilt – its vivid description as perangusto fretu divisa servitutis ac libertatis

207 OLD s.v. atque, ac 10b; ac is used instead of et to denote pairs of opposites, rather than a simple copulative conjunction. 208 Cic. Verr. 2.2.6-7; cf. Thuc. 4.1.24 for the advantages and disadvantages of such a perangustum channel; Gowers 2010: 75-6. 209 OLD s.v. ius 6; Richardson 2008: 29, 90-1. As imperium is authority derived from the gods, Verres’ impiety is even clearer. 67 iura is now the dividing line between communities that are so close they can see one another.210

In antiquity, line of sight – such as that between Italy and Messana – created a much more cohesive socio-cultural identity between communities than existed between those groups that were in relative geographic isolation, a fact that neither Cicero nor Hortensius would have overlooked in court.211 Hortensius, given the chance to address the court, might have argued that it was Verres’ military skill that prevented Spartacus’ slave revolt and piratical action from reaching Sicily in

71.212 In 71, the six thousand captured slave survivors of Spartacus’ rebellion were crucified along the Appian Way, but not before Spartacus’ forces attempted to cross the Strait of Messana into

Sicily, seeking to escape the Romans on the mainland and find support for their cause in Sicily.213

As Sicily was under Verres’ imperium at this time, Hortensius would have had a clear line to victory in court if he had been able to present Verres as a bonus imperator, who played a crucial role in the quelling of Spartacus’ rebellion and the saving of Sicily from yet another slave rebellion.

Argument from military service was a powerful tool in Republican rhetoric, famously employed by Marius during his first consular elections, and a proven method of depicting oneself as morally upright.214 To block such an argument, and others like it, Cicero constructed a Verres who is wholly incapable of performing such a deed on behalf of the res publica, since he is overcome by immorality, luxury, and impiety, as argued throughout the orations. Cicero continues:

210 See footnote 110 for topoi as inartificial proof. 211 Horden and Purcell 2000: 123-6; Prag 2011a: 86; Bradley 2014: 61. 212 Cic. Verr. 2.5.2; Steel 2001: 24. 213 App. B Civ. 1.120; Plut. Vit. Crass. 10.1-3; Cic. Verr. 2.5.6. 214 Sall. Iug. 85.29; Evans 1994: 68-78; Evans 2003: 21-2. 68

… and that Italy might gaze upon her native son [alumnum suum] murdered by the

most painful punishments appropriate to slaves alone.215

… Italia autem alumnum suum servitutis extremo summoque supplicio affixum videret.

In this pathos-fuelled passage, Cicero places Italy as the active agent, much as he does with Sicily when trying to induce a similar reaction from his audience.216 He goes on to call Gavius not simply a son of Italy, but an alumnus or native son.217 This specific choice of noun pays off for Cicero in the following passage:

Not satisfied with all the cruelty I have told you of, ‘Let him be in sight of his native

land’, he [Verres] cries, ‘let him die with justice and freedom before his eyes’ …. for

he picked out the corner of his province that should be most like Rome in its

populousness, and nearest to Rome in its position; he would have this memorial of his

abandoned wickedness stand in sight of Italy, at the entrance-gate of Sicily, in a place

where all who came or went that way by sea must pass close by it.218

‘spectet,’ inquit, ‘patriam’; in conspectu legum libertatisque moriatur,’… non tu hoc

loco Gavium… sed communem libertatis et civitatis causam in illum cruciatum et

crucem egisti… quod enim his locis in provincia sua celebritate simillimum, regione

proximum potuit, elegit; monumentum sceleris audaciaeque suae voluit esse in

215 Cic. Verr. 2.5.169, adapted by author. 216 Cic. Verr. 2.2.117, 146, 168; cf. Cic. Catil. 1.7.17-8, wherein the patria rises to berate Catiline. 217 OLD s.v. alumnus2 2; cf. Cic. Leg. 2.5; Spencer 2010: 37. 218 Cic. Verr. 2.5.170. 69

conspectu Italiae, vestibulo Siciliae, praetervectione omnium qui ultro citroque

navigarent.

In these final lines, Verres’ corruption of the landscape of the Strait is complete, and Sicily has firmly become a contested space. Gavius is not merely made to look at Italy, but at his patria – a term with which Cicero’s audience would empathise.219 The ancient understanding of sight

(emission theory – that we can see because of the light that leaves our eyes) adds to Gavius’ pain, as his eyes can ‘touch’ Italy, but he cannot.220 Cicero continues, describing the Strait as the vestibulum of Sicily. The vestibule of the typical Roman house was the small interior entrance hall that formed the portal from the outside to inside worlds, from the public to private spheres.221

Through his placement of Gavius’ crucifix in the vestibule of Sicily, Verres taunts his victim with an unreachable patria, and inverts everything that the Strait stands for in the minds of Cicero’s

Roman audience – connectivity, trade, and the relationship between Sicily and Rome.222 Cicero, through this construction of the Strait, reveals to his audience the final inversion of place. The

Strait is no longer a welcoming entrance-way, but a closed gate. Under Verres, the physical link between Rome and Sicily has been destroyed, and unless the court finds Verres guilty, the jurors risk also destroying the relationship, alliance, and goodwill of Sicily, and losing the key resource of the land itself – the grain.223

219 OLD s.v. patria. Cf. Cic. Catil. 1.7.17-18; Livy 22.60.27; Verg. Aen. 12.236. 220 Rudolph 2015: 36-7. 221 OLD s.v. vestibulum 1c; cf. Sall. Iug. 4.5-6, Wallace-Hadrill 1994: 17-37; Flower 1996: 4, 37; Ellis 2000: 36-7. 222 Cic. Verr. 2.2.6-7; Vasaly 1993: 114-8; cf. Thuc. 4.1.24. 223 Cic. Verr. 2.3.226. 70

Conclusion

Delivering the Actio Prima of the In Verrem before the senatorial jury, and publishing the

Actio Secunda for the wider readership of his elite Roman audience, Cicero presented his audience(s) with a contested, deserted, and war-torn Sicily that had been stolen from Rome. This

Sicily that Cicero constructed for his audience was not intended as an accurate depiction of a geographical reality, but rather, it reflects the preconceptions of his audience(s) about Sicily, and manipulates the landscape accordingly. Early in the piece, Cicero establishes the moral framework of his argument – that thanks to their intertwined relationship with the land, the Sicilians are a moral people, deserving of justice. Verres is presented as the immoral antithesis to the Sicilians, and Cicero spends the entirety of the Actio Secunda driving this point home. In the agricultural highlands of Sicily, Cicero found the basis for his moral argument, linking the fall of Sicily from fructuosissimam atque opportunissimam provinciam to agri deserti to the immorality of Verres.

At Henna, the geographical and religious centre of the island, Verres’ corrupt application of his imperium served to cement the link between his immorality and the deteriorated landscape of

Sicily, which becomes a plundered territory rather than a Roman province. The landscape of

Syracuse, at Verres’ hand, was completely inverted, thus proving to Cicero’s readership how far

Verres was from being a bonus imperator, more similar now to those ancient Greek tyrants of

Syracuse. Finally, at the Strait of Messana, Cicero revealed how dangerous Verres’ actions were to the continued alliance between Sicily and Rome, with Sicily being stolen from them and reduced from a land of freedom to a land of slavery. In engaging with the contemporary discourses of senatorial corruption, the proper application of Roman rule, and food security, Cicero presents his audience with a Sicily that has been reduced to a contested space and stolen from the Republic by the actions of Verres. Cicero makes it clear to the senatorial jury hearing the Actio Prima and his 71 audience reading the Actio Secunda that the only way to restore Sicily to Rome is to convict Verres, lest Rome risk permanently losing the political, economic, and military security Sicily offers, and the emblem of their empire. This construction appears again in later authors of the first century, such as Diodorus Siculus and Virgil, who are writing contemporaneously with events that once more placed Sicily at the centre of events that threatened the security of Rome’s future.

72

Chapter Two: Representations of Sicily in Diodorus Siculus’ Bibliotheke Historika

Living and writing at Rome in the 50s to 30s – one of the most unstable periods of the Republic –

Diodorus Siculus’ position among the elite of Roman society, and in the historiographical tradition, is a unique one. An independently wealthy Western Greek from Agyrium, in the central highlands of Sicily, Diodorus is our only native Sicilian source to survive into the modern day. Influenced by his contemporary political and literary concerns, Diodorus’ additions to, and treatments of, his sources reflect the political, intellectual, and moral attitudes and events of the first century, particularly those that affected his homeland. Thus, this chapter investigates how Diodorus engaged with, reinforced, and challenged the contemporary discourses of his time through the construction and representation of his homeland of Sicily as a contested space.224 It argues that the

Sicily presented in the Bibliotheke is one that was not simply recorded for posterity, copied straight from the pages of its sources. Rather, Sicily in the Bibliotheke was constructed by Diodorus to support the aim of the Bibliotheke as a work of moral universal history, promote the virtues and importance of his home in the face of its waning and uncertain status in the Late Republic, and critique the actions of contemporary Roman imperialism. Ultimately, Sicily as a ‘contested space’ manifests itself in the Bibliotheke in the ways Diodorus presents myth and place, informed by

Diodorus’ status as a Sicilian, and reflected in his attitude towards the punitive actions of Octavian against Sicily after the defeat of Sextus Pompeius in 36.

This chapter will first discuss Diodorus’ life and the state of Sicily during his lifetime, arguing that Diodorus’ own experiences at Rome as a Sicilian Greek and the tumultuous events that concerned and affected Sicily during his lifetime motivated his literary constructions of the

224 This chapter avoids engaging in Quellenforschung. See the Introduction above. 73 province. Then, it will present four case-studies of the landscape within the Bibliotheke. First, the benefaction that Sicily’s agricultural lands provided Rome will be explored with regards to the island’s mythological associations and the boom of specialised agricultural production that followed the Roman conquests of the second century, bringing with it seemingly inevitable immoral rule and social decay. Second, the religious significance of the island will be demonstrated by analysing Eryx and the temple to Venus Erycina, and how Diodorus uses this space to reaffirm the primacy of Sicily in the Western Mediterranean by preferring the Sicilian

Greek tradition of the region over the Roman. Third, the construction of Syracuse and the Great

Harbour as a didactic landscape and critique of Roman imperialism will be analysed, intended by

Diodorus to be read as a lesson in proper imperial rule. Fourth, and finally, the inclusion of

Diodorus’ hometown of Agyrium will be shown to be more than a product of Diodorus’ Sicilian bias, but a lens through which to view the impact of the Late Republican civil wars upon a provincial subject. Diodorus’ treatment of Agyrium is a product of self-promotion during uncertain times, within a culture that emphasised one’s heritage. These case-studies together demonstrate the varied ways in which Sicily and its landscape were used by Diodorus to remind his audience of the necessity of Sicily to Rome’s empire, and highlight the fact that Rome had not met the preconditions of benefaction in quite some time.

The First Century and Diodorus Siculus

Diodorus grew up during the notorious governorship of Verres, during which his hometown of Agyrium, in the highlands of eastern Sicily, suffered.225 Decades later Julius Caesar extended the Latin franchise to Sicily before his death in 44, with Marc Antony raising the grant

225 Cic. Verr. 2.2.91-100, 3.18, 120, 4.38-41, 80, 89; cf. Chapter One. 74 to full citizenship shortly after.226 From 43-36 Sicily was under the control of Sextus Pompeius, who used the island as a base of operations to blockade the grain trade to Rome and oppose

Triumviral rule.227 The island province became a symbol of opposition against Octavian, and a safe-haven for those fleeing Rome in the wake of the proscriptions. Archaeological evidence suggests that Sicily was prosperous under Pompeius’ rule, with much of the island willingly backing the son of Pompeius Magnus, a long-time ally of Sicily.228 In 36, Octavian defeated the

Pompeian fleet at the Battle of Naulochus and won full control of Sicily.229 As punishment for backing Pompeius, Sicily (save Messana) was stripped of its citizen rights, fined with an indemnity of 1,600 talents, and large-scale confiscations of land and mass relocations of peoples were carried out.230 Taxation was reinstated, and large areas of the central and eastern farmlands remained depopulated.231 Morgantina, nearby to Diodorus’ Agyrium, was totally destroyed in 35 by

Octavian, and Tauromenium on the east coast had its population displaced as punishment for siding with Sextus.232 As noted by Green, ‘Agyrium lay at the very heart of the area that Octavian devastated.’233 Moving to Rome between 55 and 46, and remaining there until his death in the late

30s, Diodorus experienced first-hand one of the bloodiest periods in Roman history. Consequently,

Diodorus’ attitude towards Rome is ambivalent at best, more concerned with Rome’s treatment of

226 Cic. Att. 14.12.1; Phil. 13.5, 12.12; Diod. Sic. 13.35.3, 16.70.6; Rawson 1985: 226-7. 227 The full account of the Bellum Siculum will be explored in Chapter Three. 228 Stone 1983: 11-22; Rubincam 1985: 521-2; Sacks 1990: 207-10; Muntz 2017: 236. 229 App. B Civ. 5.127. 230 App. B Civ. 5.29; Cass. Dio 48.48.6, 49.11.5, 49.12.5. For the relationship between Sicily, Rome, and Messana, see Cic. Verr. 2.4.20; Sacks 1990: 128-30; Prag 2011a: 85. 231 Strabo 6.2.6; Plin. HN 3.8.88-91; Scramuzza 1937: 344; Goldsberry 1973: 520-21; Sulimani 2011: 36-7. 232 Strabo 6.2.4 on Morgantina; Diod. Sic. 16.7.1; App. B Civ. 5.109; Cass. Dio 49.12.5 on Tauromenium; Stone 2002: 139-44. 233 Green 2006: 7; Sacks 1990: 192. 75

Sicily than Rome itself.234 As a Sicilian provincial, his critique of Rome’s harsh behaviour towards its subjects is subtle yet persistent. He suggests that ‘there was no remedy for the rush into evil’ in the Late Republic, though he does not go so far as to seal the Roman state’s fate – he lets his readers come to their own conclusions through the exempla presented to them in the Bibliotheke.235

However, Diodorus does admire Rome’s ability to succeed in their mastery of Sicily where other powers had failed, and is in general thankful that Roman rule put an end to the string of persistent tyrannies that had long plagued the island.236 He offers a description of the Empire as the ‘most brilliant and greatest’, but this primarily serves as a point of comparison for contemporary Romans, who are decadent and lack the ability to rule effectively or morally.237 Despite his complicated attitude towards Rome, Diodorus was proud of the role Sicily played in the growth of its empire, frequently referring to the benefits it granted Rome.238 To Diodorus, Sicily is at the centre of historical causation, and so it is not surprising that Sicily, ‘the largest and most powerful of islands’, endowed Rome with the gift of imperialism, only for Rome to squander this gift with immoral rule.239

This judgement Diodorus expresses towards the state is extended to key contemporary figures. He holds a positive view of Caesar and Pompey and a negative view of Octavian,

234 Sacks 1990: 52; Muntz 2017: 224. 235 Diod. Sic. 37.3.5; Earl 1967: 11-58; Lintott 1972: 626-38; Sacks 1990: 6-7, 52, 117, 47, 146; Green 2006: 4-6; Yarrow 2006: 152-5, 200; Gorman and Gorman 2014: 326-50; Muntz 2017: 194-7, 213. 236 Diod. Sic. 19.1.5. 237 Diod. Sic. 32.4.4, 37.2.1; Sacks 1990: 121; cf. Polyb. 1.1.5; Dion. Hal. 1.2.1; Sacks 1990: 120; Muntz 2017: 198. 238 Diod. Sic. 23.11; Sacks 1990: 130. Cf. Cic. Verr. 2.2.2, where Cicero credits Sicily with teaching Rome about imperialism. 239 Sacks 1990: 123-4; Dench 1995: 51. Compare Diod. Sic. 11.23.2, 24.1 with Hdt. 7.166 and Arist. Poet. 1459a.24- 7. 76 motivated by their treatment of provincials and their contemporary public images.240 Both Caesar and Pompey treated Sicily favourably, with many of Caesar’s virtues, such as his practice of clementia, reflecting the Diodoran moral tenets of ἐπιεικεία and φιλανθρωπία.241 Pompey’s incorruptible and reserved character during his governorship of Sicily in 82/1 is explicitly noted by Diodorus.242 The only explicit reference to Octavian occurs in Book Sixteen, where Diodorus notes that he expelled the people of Tauromenium, ‘a city of great renown’, and established a colonia there.243 Diodorus passes no explicit judgement on this event, though there is an anger towards, and implied critique of, Octavian, as he breaks in the middle of his narrative to deliver this aside, and criticizes similar actions elsewhere in the text.244 Considering the contemporary political climate, Diodorus may not have felt comfortable directly criticizing a man who had assumed the title of divi filius in 42. Similarly, Diodorus claims in Book One that he will write his history down to 60 and, reflecting his universal view of history, cites the Olympic festival,

Athenian archonship, and the beginning of the Gallic War in 60 as a suitable end.245 However, in the next passage, he contradicts himself, claiming that he will end his history with the 730th year after the first Olympic festival – 46.246 What goes unstated in the former passage is that the following year, 59, was the consulship of Julius Caesar and the establishment of the First

240 Rawson 1985: 226-7; Sacks 1990: 73-5, 128-9, 192-6; Green 2006: 14; Most 2011: 170; Sulimani 2011: 36-8, 293- 5; Welch 2012: 11. 241 Diod. Sic. 37.27.3; Cic. Fam.13.36.1; Att. 14.12.1; Sulimani 2011: 64-108; Muntz 2017: 185-9. 242 Diod. Sic. 38/39.20; Cic. Verr. 2.3.16.42; Leg. Man. 9.30, 20.61; Plut. Vit. Pomp. 10.2. 243 Diod. Sic. 16.7.1. There is debate over whether the colonia was founded in 36 or 21. Rubincam (1985: 521-2) and Sacks (1990: 168) argue the former, while Stone (1983: 11-22) argues the latter based on archaeological evidence, cf. Reinhold 1988: 32; Prag 2010: 306, Sulimani 2011: 37; Muntz 2017: 236. 244 Diod. Sic. 27.17.1, 32.4.5; Sacks 1990: 104-7, 195; Muntz 2017: 236. 245 Diod. Sic. 1.4.7, 20.43.7. See Clarke 1999: 114-16 on Diodorus’ universal view. 246 Diod. Sic. 1.5.1. 77

Triumvirate, and by eliding the years 60-46, Diodorus avoids almost the entirety of Caesar’s career.247 Diodorus probably intended to end his history in 46 as stated, but later changed his mind to avoid writing about recent events – a notoriously difficult approach to the writing of history, and a common hesitancy among the Greek intellectuals of the Late Republic.248

Living at Rome from the 50s, Diodorus states that he established himself in the city due to its wealth of primary materials.249 Once at Rome, Diodorus was seemingly uninterested in engaging in rhetoric or the socially and financially beneficial position of tutor to the youth of the

Roman elite.250 Such a position was common for Greek intellectuals at Rome during the Late

Republic, affording them an income and the potential to engage in the socio-political machinations of the state that now ruled much of the Mediterranean.251 His apparent seclusion has been viewed as wilful ambivalence towards the increasingly Imperial state that had continued to mistreat its non-citizen subjects, as stemming from independent wealth, or an argument from absence, as potential patrons he may have been courting met their end in the proscriptions.252 This last suggestion, championed by Muntz, is perhaps closest to the truth, as it is clear that Diodorus had access to some of the great personal libraries at Rome, which necessitated a degree of personal connections.253 Despite his apparent lack of patrons or allies, Diodorus remained wealthy, politically independent, and alive throughout both triumvirate periods and the resulting civil wars,

247 Muntz 2017: 221. 248 Plin. Ep. 5.8.12-14; Weinstock 1971: 399; Rawson 1985: 64; Rubincam 1989: 39-61; Sacks 1990: 160, 169-72, 195, 200; Green 2006: 10; Most 2011: 170; Sulimani 2011: 37; Muntz 2017: 219-221. 249 Diod. Sic. 1.4.2-3, 44.1; cf. Diod. Sic. 1.83.8-9; Green 2006: 4-6 for discussion of the terminus ante quem of Diodorus in Egypt and his work. 250 Diod. Sic. 1.4.2. 251 Rawson 1985: 66-83; cf. Juv. 7.5-7, 98-105 for historians begging for food, if they were not willing to teach. 252 Sacks 1990: 188; Muntz 2017: 215-16. 253 Muntz 2017: 216. 78 an almost unique achievement in the political maelstrom of the Late Republic. Whatever the cause for Diodorus’ seclusion, his purpose for writing the Bibliotheke is clear. In line with the universal histories of his predecessors, Diodorus claims that the Bibliotheke is a work of moral utility:

The acquisition of knowledge of history is of the greatest utility for every conceivable

circumstance of life.254

διὸ καὶ πρὸς ἁπάσας τὰς τοῦ βίου περιστάσεις χρησιμωτάτην ἄν τις εἶναι νομίσειε τὴν

ταύτης ἀνάληψιν.

Moreover, Diodorus calls for peoples and rulers to act with ἐπιεικεία and φιλανθρωπία, while blaming the fall of empires on the arrogant and the unjust.255 This stance is one that became common in the tumultuous Late Republic, as Rome continued the harsh treatment of its non-citizen dependants. Less concerned with Roman society itself and more with how Rome treated its subjects, Diodorus’ belief in the necessity for a ruling state to practise ἐπιεικεία and φιλανθρωπία over its subjects was only strengthened during the 30s, with Octavian’s harsh treatment of Sicily.

Diodorus’ attitude towards Rome is ambivalent yet critical, indicative of the uncertainty of the long period in which he wrote, and the events that no doubt impacted on his own life.256 These events were instrumental in shaping Diodorus’ worldview, as he engaged with the contemporary discourses surrounding imperialism, morality, and the treatment of imperial subjects through the

Bibliotheke. The following case studies argue in support of this claim – that Diodorus compiled his history with the message that rule by ἐπιεικεία and φιλανθρωπία are mandatory if an imperial

254 Diod. Sic. 1.1.4; cf. Rawson 1985: 224. 255 Diod. Sic. 32.2, 37.3.1-2; Sacks 1990: 7; Hau 2016: 74-6. 256 Muntz 2017: 224. 79 power is to survive – demonstrating that when Diodorus discusses the history of his homeland, his own voice and provincial allegiance comes to the fore. Less concerned with Rome than Rome’s treatment of its subjects, Diodorus seeks to glorify Sicily and its role in the growth of empire, place the island in a position of primacy within Mediterranean history, and critique the immoral actions of contemporary Roman rule that have, to his mind, returned Sicily to a pre-Roman contested space.

Farmlands

The cornerstone of the relationship between Sicily and Rome, Sicily’s fertility is its most significant trait in the Bibliotheke. Aristaeus chose to spend time in Sicily due to ‘the abundance of the fruits on the island and the multitude of flocks and herds which grazed there.’257 Trade of fruit and grains with Libya funded the monumental temple complex at Acragas, and the bounty of wild fruits in the Heraean Mountains supported a starving Carthaginian army.258 The fertility of

Sicily is presented by Diodorus in support of a core belief – that ‘Sicily is the noblest of all islands, since it can contribute to the growth of an empire.’259 This quote is a Diodoran invention, revealing the perspective of an historian who knew of the island’s importance to Rome by the first century, explicitly highlighting the author’s Sicilian bias.260 Diodorus frequently notes the importance of

Sicily to Roman expansion from the third century onwards, so much so that the island itself parallels the cultural heroes of Books One to Five – as Dionysus brought wine to Greece, and

257 Diod. Sic. 4.82.5. 258 Diod. Sic. 13.81, 4.84. 259 Diod. Sic. 23.1.1. 260 Sacks 1990: 130-1. 80

Demeter brought wheat, so did Sicily bring empire to Rome through its fertile agricultural land.261

This relationship of benefactor to subject is threatened by immoral Roman rule, which, according to Diodorus, brought about the second century slave revolts that returned Sicily to a state of contestation.

The plain of Leontini, at the foot of Mt. Etna, was famous for its fertility above all else. On his travels through Sicily, Hercules stopped there and ‘marvelled at the beauty of the land’.262 In

Book Five, Diodorus records that wild wheat grows there to this day, quoting Homer in support:

Unsown, unploughed, the earth teems with all they need,

wheat, barley and vines, swelled by the rains of Zeus

to yield a big full-bodied wine from clustered grapes.263

ἀλλὰ τά γ᾽ ἄσπαρτα καὶ ἀνήροτα πάντα φύονται

πυροὶ καὶ κριθαί, ἠδ᾽ ἄμπελοι, αἵτε φέρουσιν

οἶνον ἐριστάφυλον, καί σφιν Διὸς ὄμβρος ἀέξει.

It is this same fertility that the Athenians coveted in 427, when Leontini called for their aid against an aggressive Syracusan offensive. Athens gladly accepted the proposal, and sent an allied force to the Leontines, ‘offering as their excuse the need and request of their kinsmen, whereas in fact they were eager to get possession of the island.’264 Indeed, according to Diodorus, the imperial machinations of Athens were not only to aid their victory over the Lacedaemonians but, after doing

261 See Sulimani 2011 for culture heroes in the Bibilotheke. 262 Diod. Sic. 4.24.1, 30.3; Munson 2001: 19. Cf. Cic. Verr. 2.3.47, 104. 263 Hom. Od. 9.109-11; Diod. Sic. 5.2.4. 264 Diod. Sic. 12.54.1. 81 so, to take Sicily as its own.265 Earlier in the same book, Diodorus reports how Athens came to the aid of the Corcyraeans, who had asked for assistance against Corinth.266 Diodorus amends this narrative twenty chapters later, adding that Athens only sided with Corcyra because of its advantageous position on the Sicilian sea route.267 The Athenian interest in Sicily during the fifth century is not surprising, considering the power of the πόλις and the fertility of Sicily in comparison to the rocky hills of mainland Greece.268 To Diodorus, this fertility of the Leontini plain, and the island at large, is owed to Demeter.

An ongoing theme throughout the first pentad of the Bibliotheke is the role of gods and heroes as benefactors of culture, or culture-heroes.269 The relationship of benefaction between culture heroes and mortals, and veneration for exceptional service, is a cornerstone of Diodoran thought, and central to Hellenistic social and political philosophy.270 Mortals give offerings and displays of piety to individuals, and in return receive benefactions in the form of new technologies or cities. These individuals are often then elevated to godhood in return for their benefaction, which happens almost seventy times within the first pentad.271 Contemporary practices no doubt shaped

Diodorus’ constructions of culture-heroes. Under the Hellenistic monarchies, kings were expected to undertake acts of beneficence and goodwill.272 This expectation is paralleled by the systems of

265 Diod. Sic. 12.54.3; Thuc. 6.1; Evans 2009: 75. 266 Diod. Sic. 12.33. 267 Diod. Sic. 12.54.3. 268 The Athenian Expedition to Sicily is discussed again below, cf. Syracuse. 269 Momigliano 1984: 83-4; Blundell 1986: 196; Sacks 1990: 62-9; Sulimani 2011: 304-6; Muntz, 2017: 104-105, 133-5. 270 Sacks 1990: 69; Sulimani 2011: 64-6, 337; Muntz 2017: 134-89. 271 Sacks 1990: 71. 272 Diod. Sic. 1.90.3, 2.28.7, 34.4.4. 82 patronage and public acts of euergetism among the Roman elite.273 The culture-heroes of the

Bibliotheke reflect this practice, venerated by Diodorus for the ‘very great benefactions’ they bestowed on man.274 Prometheus is a cultural hero for bestowing the gift of fire, Dionysus wine,

Demeter grain and laws, and Hercules a whole manner of rituals, cults, and genealogies.275 These narratives align with Diodorus’ own anthropology of his world, with necessity (χρεία) and benefaction (εὐεργεσία) mutually contributing to the development of all civilization(s), including

Rome.276 The deification of mortal rulers who expressed these values is integral to Diodorus’ historical framework, wherein ‘the deified culture bringers are the most inspirational and beneficial leaders of them all’, providing absolute exempla for his readers.277 Despite its perceived decline,

Rome is still able to produce its own exempla. Mortal Romans who upheld the moral standard of a just rule over provincial subjects are utilised by Diodorus as exempla, unsurprising given

Diodorus’ provincial status.278 Caesar was deified because of his deeds and their magnitude.279 M.

Scaevola and L. Asyllius are noted for their beneficent terms as provincial governors in Asia and

Sicily respectively, an appreciably rare occurrence according to the contemporary attitudes towards governors.280 Thus, culture-heroes such as Demeter and Hercules, and just Romans, such as those above, were good for Diodorus’ Sicily, as they justified the island’s importance and

273 OCD s.v. ‘euergetism’, ‘patronus’, ‘cliens’. 274 Diod. Sic. 4.1.6. 275 Diod. Sic. 4.1-3, 8-39, 4.15.2, 5.68-9. 276 Sacks 1990: 68. 277 Diod. Sic. 1.2; Muntz 2017: 148. 278 Muntz 2017: 194. 279 Diod. Sic. 1.4.7; 5.21.2; 32.27.1, 3; Muntz 2017: 185-9; Sulimani 2011: 70-1. 280 Diod. Sic. 37.5.1, 8.4. See Chapter One on attitudes to provincial governorship, and above for Julius Caesar and Pompeius Magnus as exempla. 83 relevance during its uncertain future of the 30s, providing moral counterpoints to many contemporary Romans.

As befits Diodorus’ Sicilian bias and the mythology of Sicily, the Bibliotheke records that the Sicilians were the first to receive the gift of grain from Demeter.281 He notes that the island was sacred to Demeter and Persephone/Kore ‘from the earliest time,’ and reasons that:282

It would be strange indeed for the goddess to take for her own, so to speak, a land

which is the most fertile known and yet give it, the last of all, a share in her benefaction,

as though it were nothing to her, especially since she has her dwelling there…283

ἄτοπον μὲν γὰρ ὑπάρχειν εὐκαρποτάτην αὐτὴν ὡς ἰδίαν ποιῆσαι, τῆς δ᾽ εὐεργεσίας ὡς

μηδὲν προσηκούσῃ μηδ᾽ ἐσχάτῃ μεταδοῦναι, καὶ ταῦτ᾽ ἐν αὐτῇ τὴν οἴκησιν ἔχουσαν…

Thus, Diodorus explicitly conflates the goddess and his home – any benefaction from one is implicitly a benefaction from the other. Following the Rape of Persephone/Kore by Hades,

Demeter departed Sicily in search of her daughter, in turn dispersing wheat from Sicily to the rest of the world.284 Diodorus records that:

Upon the men who received her with the greatest favour she conferred benefactions,

rewarding them with the gift of the fruit of the wheat.285

281 Diod. Sic. 4.3. Cf. the creation of writing, which Diodorus allows several origins. For matters concerning Sicily, Diodorus allows no such uncertainty. Diod. Sic. 1.9.2, 16.1, 69.4, 3.3.4-5, 67.1, 5.40.2, 74.1; Sacks 1990: 63. 282 Diod. Sic. 5.2, 5.3.1. 283 Diod. Sic. 5.69.3; cf. 5.2.5. 284 Diod. Sic. 5.5.1 for a preserved poem of the tragic poet Carcinus on this topic. 285 Diod. Sic. 5.4.3. 84

τῶν δ᾽ ἀνθρώπων τοὺς μάλιστ᾽ αὐτὴν προσδεξαμένους εὐεργετῆσαι τὸν τῶν πυρῶν

καρπὸν ἀντιδωρησαμένην.

Of all the cities and countries visited by Demeter in the search for her daughter, Athens expressed the kindest welcome, and so the Athenians were the first after the Sicilians to be gifted wheat, which they then shared with the world.286 Thus, Demeter became sacred at Athens, and it is in her honour that the Eleusinian mysteries were founded.287 In both accounts, Demeter does not bestow the gift of wheat until she has been adequately welcomed by both peoples, and is in turn honoured by the whole world for her gift:

Since Demeter has been responsible for the greatest blessings to mankind, she has been

accorded the most notable honours and sacrifices, and magnificent feasts and festivals

as well, not only by the Greeks, but also by almost all barbarians who have partaken

of this kind of food.288

μεγίστων γὰρ ἀγαθῶν ἀνθρώποις αἰτίαν γενομένην ἐπιφανεστάτων τυχεῖν τιμῶν καὶ

θυσιῶν, ἔτι δ᾽ ἑορτῶν καὶ πανηγύρεων μεγαλοπρεπῶν, οὐ παρ᾽ Ἕλλησι μόνον, ἀλλὰ

καὶ παρὰ πᾶσι σχεδὸν τοῖς βαρβάροις, ὅσοι τῆς τροφῆς ταύτης ἐκοινώνησαν.

It is by her benefaction that the world was introduced to grain, and Diodorus is sure to remind his audience of the unbreakable bond between the goddess and Sicily. This is a fact that would not

286 Diod. Sic. 5.4, 69. 287 Diod. Sic. 5.4.4. 288 Diod. Sic. 5.68.3. It is of note that ‘ἐπιφανεστάτων τυχεῖν τιμῶν’ is incredibly formulaic throughout the Bibliotheke, and very nearly unique to the work, cf. Sacks 1990: 71. 85 have been lost on his Roman audience, who relied on the importation of Sicilian grain. Equally as important to the mythological and agricultural narrative of Sicily is Demeter’s daughter,

Persephone/Kore, and her home in the fields of Henna.

Due to Persephone/Kore’s associations with Demeter and agricultural and fertility rites, the region around Henna is constructed in Book Five as one of the most fecund in all of Sicily.

Diodorus’ description of Henna is very like that of Cicero in the Verrine Orations. Both accounts make mention of the ‘navel’s’ striking beauty, its precipitous cliffs and deep grottos, sacred groves, and flowering fields, and the grotto from which Pluto effected the Rape of Persephone/Kore.289

Mythological associations like these resonate throughout the text, laying the groundwork for

Diodorus’ assertion of the importance and centrality of Sicily. As discussed above, the associations between mythology and space in antiquity were powerful, resolute, and evocative, and Diodorus utilises them to place a primacy on Sicily in the creation and history of the world. The prosperity and benefaction that Demeter/Sicily brings to the Mediterannean, and later the Roman empire, is ultimately endangered by immoral Roman rule, which Diodorus presents as a direct cause of the

Sicilian slave revolts of the second century.

Following the end of the Punic wars and the Roman annexation of Sicily, the island enjoyed an unprecedented period of prosperity. Owing to this peace and Rome’s need for Sicilian grain, the Sicilian economy boomed, and many of those in the agricultural economy became wealthy off the back of the grain tithe owed to Rome. However, Diodorus is quick to turn Sicily’s wealth upon its head to deliver a moral lesson to his audience. With their newfound stable industry, and a great influx of slaves into Rome from the second century conquests, Diodorus reports that the Sicilians

289 Diod. Sic. 5.3; Cic. Verr. 2.4.107. See Rawson 1985: 225 and Pearson 1987: 58-9 for these authors both drawing on Timaeus. 86 bought ‘an abundance of slaves’ to work the ager publicus.290 These slaves were not provided with adequate food or clothing, and their masters were severe, so many of them turned to robbery to survive. This ill-treatment forced a portion of the slave population to revolt against their masters, triggering the First Sicilian Slave War in 135.291 The reforms proposed by Tiberius Gracchus in

133 attempted to curb the large estates that led to these violent conditions by distributing public land among free citizens, though he was murdered for his efforts.292 Owing either to the presence of land-owning Roman equites, or the economic impact upon land-owning Sicilians, the Sicilians are depicted by Diodorus as victims of wealth-driven immorality, brought about by Roman rule:

Because of the superabundant prosperity of those who exploited the products of this

mighty island, nearly all who had risen in wealth affected first a luxurious mode of

living, then arrogance and insolence… [and] the Sicilians who had acquired much

wealth were now rivalling the Italians in arrogance, greed, and villainy.293

Διὰ γὰρ τὴν ὑπερβολὴν τῆς εὐπορίας τῶν τὴν κρατίστην νῆσον ἐκκαρπουμένων ἅπαντες

σχεδὸν οἱ τοῖς πλούτοις προκεκοφότες ἐζήλωσαν τὸ μὲν πρῶτον τρυφήν, εἶθ' ὑπερηφανίαν καὶ

ὕβριν… Διὸ δαὶ τοσοῦτο τῶν οἰκετῶν ἐπέκλυσε πλῆθος ἅπασαν Σικελίαν, ὥστε τοὺς

ἀκούοντας τὴν ὑπερβολὴν μὴ πιστεῦσαι.

Recent scholarship argues that the events that triggered the slave revolts of the second century were ‘a struggle between different classes of the same population, rather than between conqueror

290 Diod. Sic. 34/35.2.1, 27, 32; Urbainczyk 2008: 10-14. 291 Diod. Sic. 34/35.4.1, 34; Strabo 6.273; App. B Civ. 1.7.9. 292 App. B Civ. 1.2, 8; Plut. Vit. Ti. Gracch. 14, 19.5; Roselaar 2010: 223-9. 293 Diod. Sic. 34/35.2.26-7. 87 and subject’, and that the inclusion of the Italians and Romans into the narrative carries a ‘ring of apology for the Sicilians.’294 Since those who treated the slaves with respect went unharmed or were brought to safety by the slaves themselves, Urbainczyk adds that Diodorus’ account of the slave revolts is clearly moralising and sympathetic to the slaves.295 Moreover Diodorus states that:

Not only in political life should the powerful behave humanely towards those who are

of humble condition, but also in private life the right-minded should not be too harsh

on their slaves. For as in states where arrogant behaviour leads to civil dissension

amongst the citizens, so in each private home, such behaviour provokes the slaves

against their masters, and gives rise to terrible disorders in the cities. For when those

in power act cruelly and wickedly, the character of their subjects is inflamed to reckless

action.296

Ὅτι οὐ μόνον κατὰ τὰς πολιτικὰς δυναστείας τοὺς ἐν ὑπεροχῇ ὄντας ἐπιεικῶς χρὴ

προσφέρεσθαι τοῖς ταπεινοτέροις, ἀλλὰ καὶ κατὰ τοὺς ἰδιωτικοὺς βίους πράάως

προσενεκτέον τοῖς οἰκέταις τοὺς εὖ φρονοῦντας. Ἡ γὰρ ὑπερηφανία καὶ βαρύτης ἐν

μὲν ταῖς πόλεσιν ἀπεργάζεται στάσεις ἐμφυλίους τῶν ἐλευθέρων, ἐν δὲ τοῖς κατὰ

μέρος τῶν ἰδιωτῶν οἴκοις δούλων ἐπιβουλὰς τοῖς δεσπόταις καὶ ἀποστάσεις φοβερὰς

κοινῇ ταῖς πόλεσι κατασκευάζει. Ὅσῳ δ' ἂν τὰ τῆς ἐξουσίας εἰς ὠμότητα καὶ

παρανομίαν ἐκτρέπηται, τοσούτῳ μᾶλλον καὶ τὰ τῶν ὑποτεταγμένων ἤθη πρὸς

ἀπόνοιαν ἀποθηριοῦται.

294 Gruen 1968: 80-90, 293-6; Badian 1972: 135; Yavetz 1988: 15-44, 67-82; Sacks 1990: 145-54; Urbainczyk 2008: 41; Morton 2014: 21-2. 295 Urbainczyk 2008: 82-3. 296 Diod. Sic. 34/35.2.33. 88

Diodorus’ implications are clear: ‘if masters treated their slaves well, and if the Romans were merciful to their subjects, they would be loved not hated.’297 Through the narratives of the slave revolts and Sicilian agricultural practice, Diodorus engages with the contemporary discourse around moral decline and provincial mistreatment. The conflating of Demeter and Sicily, and the construction of Sicily’s agricultural spaces as contested, dictates to Diodorus’ audience that the

‘preconditions for the appearance of a benefactor’ of virtue and pietyhave not been met by Rome in some time, and highlights the need for Rome’s return to moral rule if it wishes to continue to garner benefaction from Sicily, and thus maintain its empire.298

Ultimately, Diodorus’ concentration on the agricultural landscape of Sicily serves several purposes. First, it presents the island in line with the way it is perceived by the first-century Roman readership – namely, fertile and prosperous, but also frequently contested. Second, it provides origin myths to bolster the importance behind this perception, placing Sicily at the centre of cultural, historical, and imperial advancement. Third, as with the Slave Wars, it affords Diodorus the opportunity to nest moral lessons within historical narratives, furthering his literary purpose.

Thus, Diodorus justifies the importance of Sicily to Rome at a time when its future is uncertain and lands contested and, as Cicero argued before him, the reduction of Sicily to a contested space threatens the future of both Sicily and Rome.

297 Urbainczyk 2008: 87. See Diod. Sic. 34/35.2.13, 40; Sacks 1990: 145; Muntz 2017: 210-14. Cf. Walbank 1985: 176-8; FGrH 87 F7-8 for Athenaeus confirming that social decay drove the slave revolts in Diodorus’ source, Posidonius. 298 Diod. Sic. 5.4.3-4; Sacks 1990: 62; Hau 2016: 87. 89

Eryx

In most accounts of Hercules and Sicily, such as those found in Apollodorus, the hero enters the island from the toe of Italy and makes it as far as Eryx, in the north-west of Sicily, in search of a bull that has broken away from the rest of Geryon’s herd.299 Hercules finds the bull in the possession of Eryx, king of the Elymians and son of Poseidon, who has incorporated it into his own herds. Eryx challenges Hercules to a wrestling match for the fate of the bull. Predictably,

Hercules defeats Eryx so soundly that he kills him. Hercules takes the bull back to the rest of the herd, and continues towards Greece to complete his Tenth Labour. In the Bibliotheke, while the fate of Eryx remains the same, Hercules’ motivations, travels, and influence on Sicily are quite different. After crossing the Strait of Messana, Diodorus’ Hercules sets out to Eryx ‘wishing to make the circuit’ of the island.300 Highlighting the primacy Diodorus places on Sicily, Hercules now visits not out of necessity, but out of desire. Moreover, through the Bibliotheke, we can see the impact of the Tenth Labour of Hercules upon the Western Mediterranean. Hercules’ journey to retrieve the cattle of Geryon from the Western edge of the world is one that is long-winded, almost Odyssean, in its undertaking. The journey is filled with detours, and is by no means the quickest or easiest path. Hercules’ route is both created by, and the result of, the opportunity for an epic narrative that the Western Greeks can hang their own traditions on.301 The Doric Temple to Hercules at Acragas, erected in the late sixth – early fifth century, provides some insight into

Hercules’ role as a mainstay of Western Greek cult worship, with the city itself only being founded some 100 years prior.302 By the first century, the hero’s journey to Sicily has evolved from

299 Apollod. Bibl. 2.110-1; cf. Hyg. 260. 300 Diod. Sic. 4.22-3; Sulimani 2011: 224-5. 301 Rawson 1985: 250-2. 302 Cf. Cic. Verr. 2.4.94. 90 retrieving the errant bull, to a tour of the island, reflecting the need of the Western Greeks to establish their place within the foundational myths of the Greek and Hellenistic worlds.

When Hercules does reach Eryx, Diodorus reports that king Eryx challenges Hercules to a wrestling match, betting his kingdom against the cattle of Geryon. Following his victory over Eryx,

Hercules gives the land over to the native peoples, free to gather the fruits of the land until such a time that his descendants should appear to colonise the land. Eventually the descendants do come, under the banner of Dorieus the Lacedaemonian, who founds the city of Heracleia.303 Later,

Diodorus returns to the topic of Eryx, to elaborate on the famous Temple of Aphrodite/Venus

Erycina.304 Diodorus reports that the original sanctuary was founded by King Eryx, son of

Aphrodite and Butes, the Argonaut who fell to the Sirens’ call and was delivered to Sicily by

Aphrodite. Reflecting the temple’s importance to Rome, the Olympian progenitor of Eryx has shifted from Poseidon in Apollodorus, to Aphrodite in Diodorus.305 Eryx is acknowledged in the

Aeneid as a brother of Aeneas through Aphrodite/Venus, though Virgil does not attribute to Eryx the foundation of the temple or city.306 In other ancient accounts, the foundation of Eryx and other major cities of the north-west, such as Segesta, is attributed to the Elymians, a local people who are always of Trojan descent.307 In placing the foundation of the sanctuary back into the hands of

Eryx, Diodorus demonstrates his awareness of the ancestry contest taking place at Rome, subordinating the claims powerful Roman families (such as the gens Julia) were making to the sanctuary and Venus, and defending his cultural heritage by making the goddess the property of

303 Diod. Sic. 4.23.3; cf. Hdt. 5.41-8, Pearson 1987: 59-60. 304 Diod. Sic. 4.83.1-2. 305 Diod. Sic. 4.83.6. On Poseidon and Aphrodite, see Apollod. Bibl. 2.111 and Diod. Sic. 4.83.1. 306 Verg. Aen. 4.24, 412. 307 Thuc. 6.2; Strabo 13.53. 91

Sicily.308 With Sicily at the forefront of the Erycinian narrative, Diodorus gushes over the sanctuary:

And a man may well be filled with wonder when he stops to sum up the fame which

has gathered about this shrine; all other sanctuaries have indeed enjoyed a flush of

fame, but frequently sundry happenings have brought them low, whereas this is the

only temple which, founded as it was at the beginning of time, not only has never failed

to be the object of veneration but, on the contrary, has as time went on ever continued

to enjoy great growth.309

θαυμάσαι δ᾽ ἄν τις εἰκότως ἀναλογισάμενος τὴν περὶ τὸ ἱερὸν τοῦτο γενομένην δόξαν:

τὰ μὲν γὰρ ἄλλα τεμένη ἀνθήσαντα ταῖς δόξαις πολλάκις διὰ περιστάσεις τινὰς

τεταπείνωται, μόνον δὲ τοῦτο τῶν ἐξ αἰῶνος ἀρχὴν λαβὸν οὐδέποτε διέλιπε

τιμώμενον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὐναντίον ἀεὶ διετέλεσε πολλῆς τυγχάνον αὐξήσεως.

Diodorus continues, providing accounts of benefactions to the temple by Aeneas, Sicanians,

Greeks, Carthaginians, and finally the contemporary Roman state, who are credited with giving the greatest benefactions of all to the temple, but not ownership over it or its patron goddess.310

Reflecting Diodorus’ moralising aims, the consuls and praetors who visit the sanctuary are also exempla of pietas. They show the utmost piety for the goddess, and ‘embellish the sanctuary with magnificent sacrifices and honours’ while ‘laying aside the austerity of their authority’.311

308 Sacks 1990: 157; Sulimani 2011: 199. See Chapter Three for the contest of heritage in first century Rome. 309 Diod. Sic. 4.83.2-3. 310 Diod. Sic. 4.83.4. Cf. Thuc. 6.46.3; Paus. 8.24.6. 311 Diod. Sic. 4.83.6. 92

As with Demeter and the agricultural landscape of Sicily, Diodorus utilises the heroic wanderings of Hercules to cement Sicily’s place of primacy in the Greek West and the greater

Mediterranean basin. His promotion of the Sicilian Greek narrative over that of the Roman owes both to his ethnicity as a Sicilian Greek and negative attitude towards contemporary Roman imperialism, whose practitioners had reduced his homeland and punished it undeservedly.

Departing Eryx, Hercules next arrives in Syracuse, which affords Diodorus the opportunity to establish a moral framework through which to critique contemporary Rome.

Syracuse

Diodorus’ Hercules arrives in Syracuse during his circuit of the island shortly after departing Eryx. In Syracuse, Hercules founds the sacrificial rites to Persephone/Kore. Upon learning of her rape by Hades’ hand, Hercules dedicates a bull in Persephone/Kore’s name and casts it into the Cyane spring, which feeds into the Great Harbour.312 Diodorus thus brings Hercules to yet another important geographical landmark in Sicily: The Great Harbour at Syracuse. Owing to the famed Athenian Sicilian Expedition of 415-413, Marcellus’ legendary siege of the city in

214-212, and Syracuse’s own status as a once-great πόλις, the importance of the harbour would not have been lost on Diodorus’ audience. As seen in the previous chapter, Cicero uses common knowledge of the harbour’s history and location to great effect in his construction of Verres as a tyrant. Similarly, Diodorus presents Syracuse as a location steeped in morality, though he offers a different perspective from Cicero – where Cicero’s Syracuse was a passive victim of Verres’ predations, and emblematic of one man’s crimes, Diodorus’ πόλις is an active landscape that tests the morality of those who seek to conquer it. The Romans of the third century pass the test, but

312 Diod. Sic. 4.23.4, 5.4.2; Ov. Met. 4.409-12; Sulimani 2011: 282-3. 93

Diodorus is clear in his belief that contemporary Roman rulers no longer hold themselves to such standards.

The defeat of the Carthaginian forces at Syracuse in 396 is presented by Diodorus as a direct result of their impiety and cruelty, and an act of divine vengeance for their vices.313 This kind of divine punishment is common in the Bibliotheke for those who do not practice ἐπιεικεία and φιλανθρωπία in victory, or are otherwise impious.314 The warning Diodorus is giving his

Roman rulers – that immoral and cruel empires crumble – is quite clear. After capturing the suburb of Achradine, Himilcon, general of the Carthaginian forces, ordered the plundering of the Temples of Demeter and Persephone/Kore, and when establishing the Carthaginian camp around the

Olympieion west of the city, Himilcon ‘practically destroyed all the tombs in the area.’315 ‘For which acts of impiety against the divinity’, Diodorus reports, ‘he quickly suffered a fitting penalty.’316 To Diodorus, a rightful punishment came when the Carthaginians were defeated in all skirmishes against Dionysius, and a plague swept through their ranks.317 As to the cause of the plague, Diodorus writes:

Over and above the disaster sent by influence of the deity, there were contributing

causes: that myriads of people were gathered together, that it was the time of year

which is most productive of plagues, and that the particular summer had brought

unusually hot water. It also seems likely that the place itself was responsible for the

313 Diod. Sic. 14.73-6. 314 Hau 2016: 81, 88-9. 315 Diod. Sic. 14.63.3. 316 Diod. Sic. 14.63.1, 70.4. 317 Evans 2009: 94-6; Hau 2016: 89-95. 94

excessive extent of the disaster; for on a former occasion the Athenians too, who

occupied the same camp, had perished in great numbers from the plague, since the

terrain was marshy and hollow. First, before sunrise, because of the cold from the

breeze over the waters, their bodies were struck with chills, but in the middle of the

day the heat was stifling, as must be the case when so great a multitude is gathered

together in a narrow place.318

συνεπελάβετο δὲ καὶ τῇ τοῦ δαιμονίου συμφορᾷ τὸ μυριάδας εἰς ταὐτὸ

συναθροισθῆναι καὶ τὸ τῆς ὥρας εἶναι πρὸς τὰς νόσους ἐνεργότατον, ἔτι δὲ τὸ ἔχειν

ἐκεῖνο τὸ θέρος καύματα παρηλλαγμένα. ἔοικε δὲ καὶ ὁ τόπος αἴτιος γεγονέναι πρὸς

τὴν ὑπερβολὴν τῆς συμφορᾶς: καὶ γὰρ Ἀθηναῖοι πρότερον τὴν αὐτὴν ἔχοντες

παρεμβολὴν πολλοὶ διεφθάρησαν ὑπὸ τῆς νόσου, ἑλώδους ὄντος τοῦ τόπου καὶ

κοίλου. πρῶτον μὲν πρὶν ἥλιον ἀνατεῖλαι διὰ τὴν ψυχρότητα τὴν ἐκ τῆς αὔρας τῶν

ὑδάτων φρίκη κατεῖχε τὰ σώματα: κατὰ δὲ τὴν μεσημβρίαν ἡ θερμότης ἔπνιγεν, ὡς ἂν

τοσούτου πλήθους ἐν στενῷ τόπῳ συνηθροισμένου.

The marshland around the Olympieion stands diametrically opposed to the hot springs of Himera and Egesta, encountered by Hercules in Book Five. While the brackish waters of the Olympieion marshland are stagnant and promote illness in the summer heat, the running waters of the springs were soothing and medicinal.319 Thus, reflecting Diodorus’ didactic moralising, time spent at the former soothes the body, while the latter poisons the body and mind:

318 Diod. Sic. 14.70.4-6. 319 For healing properties of springs, see Diod. Sic. 5.10.1; Plut. Vit. Sull. 26; Plin. HN 31.4, 59-61; Strabo 5.45, 6.2.9 C 275; Sulimani 2011: 183 n.61. 95

The plague first attacked the Libyans, and, as many of them perished, at first they

buried the dead, but later, both because of the multitude of corpses and because those

who tended the sick were seized by the plague, no one dared approach the suffering…

not only did any not akin abandon one another, but even brothers were forced to desert

brothers, friends to sacrifice friends out of fear for their own lives.320

ἥψατο μὲν οὖν ἡ νόσος πρῶτον τῶν Λιβύων, ἐξ ὧν πολλῶν ἀποθνησκόντων τὸ μὲν

πρῶτον ἔθαπτον τοὺς τετελευτηκότας, μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα διά τε τὸ πλῆθος τῶν νεκρῶν καὶ

διὰ τὸ τοὺς νοσοκομοῦντας ὑπὸ τῆς νόσου διαρπάζεσθαι, οὐδεὶς ἐτόλμα προσιέναι

τοῖς κάμνουσιν… οὐ γὰρ μόνον οἱ μηδὲν προσήκοντες ἀλλήλους ἐγκατέλειπον, ἀλλ᾽

ἀδελφοὶ μὲν ἀδελφούς, φίλοι δὲ τοὺς συνήθεις ἠναγκάζοντο προΐεσθαι διὰ τὸν ὑπὲρ

αὑτῶν φόβον.

Taking advantage of their ailing state, Dionysius moved against the Carthaginians. Ultimately the

Syracusans were victorious, lighting the Punic ships ablaze in a final act of divine-styled vengeance. 321 The plague that affected the Carthaginians also levelled the Athenians of the Sicilian

Expedition in the preceding book of the Bibliotheke, though in this account there is none of the moralising of the Carthaginian episode. After a series of back-and-forths with Syracuse, the

Athenian army found itself encamped in the Olympieion marsh, open to the same conditions that would befall the Carthaginians 20 years later.322 However, as the Athenians have not committed

320 Diod. Sic. 14.71.1-4. Omitted from this quote is a lengthy description of what form the plague took, in pathos- inducing detail. See Hau 2016: 86 for Diodorus ‘moralising through pathos’. 321 Diod. Sic. 14.72.6. 322 Diod. Sic. 13.12.1. 96 an act of impiety, they are not deserving of the same divine vengeance as the Carthaginians would be:

… their affairs had taken a turn for the worse and a wave of pestilence had struck the

camp because the region round it was marshy… when the epidemic greatly increased,

many of the soldiers were dying and all regretted that they had not set out upon their

return voyage long since.323

τῶν πραγμάτων αὐτοῖς ἐπὶ τὸ χεῖρον ἐκβάντων καὶ διὰ τὸ τὸν περικείμενον τόπον

ὑπάρχειν ἑλώδη λοιμικῆς καταστάσεως εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον ἐμπεσούσης… τῆς δὲ

νόσου μεγάλην ἐπίτασιν λαμβανούσης πολλοὶ τῶν στρατιωτῶν ἀπέθνησκον, καὶ

πάντες μετεμέλοντο διὰ τὸ μὴ πάλαι τὸν ἀπόπλουν πεποιῆσθαι.

The vice of the Carthaginians in Book Fourteen is to be contrasted with the virtue of the Syracusans in Book Thirteen, as the statesman Hermocrates argues that ‘more noble than victory is bearing victory with moderation’ during the debate on the fate of the captured Athenians.324 The speech

(one of the few in the Bibliotheke) shows the reader that they are meant to side with ἐπιεικεία and

φιλανθρωπία over impiety and cruelty.325 When these cardinal virtues of Diodoran thought are applied to Syracuse, Diodorus’ world-view of cities and technologies as monuments to civilisation and human progress, and the moral implications of their razing, come to the fore.326 In Book

Thirty-Two, Diodorus states that:

323 Diod. Sic. 13.12.1, 4. 324 Diod. Sic. 13.19.5; Hau 2016: 115. Note Diodorus’ continued construction of Sicilians as virtuous. 325 Diod. Sic. 27.13-18. 326 Momigliano 1984: 83-4; Blundell 1986: 196; Sacks 1990: 55-82; Sulimani 2011: 304-6. 97

Because of their surpassing humanity, therefore, kings, cities, and whole nations went

over to the Roman standard. But once they held sway over virtually the whole

inhabited world, they confirmed their power by fear and by the destruction of the most

eminent cities. Corinth they razed to the ground, the Macedonians they rooted out, they

razed Carthage and the Celtiberian city of Numantia, and there were many whom they

cowed by terror.327

Τοιγαροῦν διὰ τὴν ὑπερβολὴν τῆς ἡμερότητος οἵ τε βασιλεῖς καὶ αἱ πόλεις καὶ

συλλήβδην τὰ ἔθνη πρὸς τὴν Ῥωμαίων ἡγεμονίαν ηὐτομόλησαν. Οὗτοι δὲ σχεδὸν τὴν

ἀρχὴν πάσης τῆς οἰκουμένης ἔχοντες ταύτην ἠσφαλίσαντο φόβῳ καὶ τῇ τῶν

ἐπιφανεστά των πόλεων ἀπωλείᾳ. Κόρινθον γὰρ κατέσκαψαν καὶ τοὺς κατὰ τὴν

Μακεδονίαν ἐρριζοτόμησαν, οἷον τὸν Περσέα, καὶ Καρχηδόνα κατέσκαψαν καὶ ἐν

Κελτιβηρίᾳ τὴν Νομαντίαν, καὶ πολλοὺς κατεπλήξαντο.

For many of Diodorus’ audience, the language in this passage is critical enough of Roman imperialistic expansion. Those familiar with the rhetoric of metus hostilis would further recognise these events as happening during or following 146, the traditional terminus post quem for the moral decline of Rome. Comparatively, Diodorus’ account of the Siege of Syracuse in 214-212 paints the Romans in a positive light compared to those who previously tried to conquer the city, owing to the morality of Claudius Marcellus.328 By the first century, the literature concerning the siege oft-referenced the morality of Claudius Marcellus, who reportedly cried when he realised he was

327 Diod. Sic. 32.5. 328 Serrati 2001: 12. Diodorus is not overly critical of the Romans for being successful in what many others had attempted beforehand. 98 to bring ruin to Syracuse, grieved over the death of Archimedes, and demanded a degree of restraint from his men in their looting.329 What survives of Diodorus’ account positions Marcellus as an exemplum of correct behaviour in the face of a defeated opponent, sparing the lives of freeborn

Syracusans and confiscating their property as booty instead.330 These Syracusans then sold themselves into slavery as they could not afford to eat, though Diodorus does not place blame on

Marcellus for this situation, instead stating that ‘Fortune imposed defeat upon the defeated

Syracusans.’331 Thus, Diodorus presents the history of Syracusan sieges as a moral test of character, one which the Romans pass before the loss of metus hostilis, but fail by the second century razings of Carthage and Corinth.

Diodorus’ Syracuse serves several purposes, all of which assist him in his critique of

Roman imperialism. First, when introduced in the first pentad, it affords Diodorus the opportunity to link geographic reality with a mythic history and provide a foundational myth for a location he deems geographically and culturally important to Rome and the Mediterranean world. Second, it is a key location of major historical events, events to which the author can attach a moralising lesson and critique of Rome. Third, Diodorus is able to introduce his audience to the city to which all other Sicilian cities are compared, particularly Diodorus’ hometown of Agyrium. Through these constructions, Diodorus presents the contested space of Syracuse, not as a Ciceronian victim, but as a test of character, through which an imperial state is able to prove its worth. To Diodorus, the

Rome that first annexed Sicily was worthy of such a prize, but after centuries of immoral rule, he questions whether the empire still deserves ‘the jewel of its imperial crown’.332

329 Diod. Sic. 26.18; Plut. Vit. Marc. 19.1; Sacks 1990: 136; Rossi 2000: 56-66. 330 Diod. Sic. 26.20.1; Plut. Vit. Marc. 19.2. 331 Diod. Sic. 26.20.2. 332 Cic. Verr. 2.2.2. 99

Agyrium

The inclusion of Agyrium in the Bibliotheke is interesting, to say the least. The city lies approximately 30 kilometres north-east of Henna, sitting atop a natural outcrop on the edge of the

Salso river valley. Presumably Agyrium was originally a Sicel city, owing to its inland hilltop location, though in 339/8 the town was recolonised by the Syracusan Timoleon. Following his victory at the Battle of Crimisus and making peace with the Carthaginians, Timoleon continued with his desire to free Sicily from all tyranny (and, ipso facto, placing it under the rule of himself and Syracuse).333 As per the terms of the peace, the Carthaginians were not to give aid to the tyrants who were at war with Syracuse.334 This included Hicetas of Leontini, Nicodemus of Centuripae, and Apolloniades in Agyrium, all of whom Timoleon proceeded to defeat. Of the victory over

Apolloniades, Diodorus notes that Timoleon ‘gave Syracusan citizenship to its freed inhabitants’ and ‘ten thousand [settlers were sent] to Agyrium, because of its extent and quality.’335 Following the peace concluded by Timoleon in 338, the east of Sicily was restored to its former glory, since:

For many years, because of domestic troubles and border wars, and still more because

of the numbers of tyrants who kept constantly appearing, the cities had become

destitute of inhabitants and the open country had become a wilderness for lack of

cultivation, producing no useful crops.336

333 Diod. Sic. 16.77-82. 334 Diod. Sic. 16.82.3. 335 Diod. Sic. 18.82.5. 336 Diod. Sic. 16.83.1. 100

ἐκ πολλοῦ γὰρ χρόνου διὰ τὰς στάσεις καὶ τοὺς ἐμφυλίους πολέμους, ἔτι δὲ τὸ πλῆθος

τῶν ἐπανισταμένων αἰεὶ τυράννων αἱ μὲν πόλεις ἔρημοι τῶν οἰκητόρων ἦσαν, αἱ δὲ

χῶραι διὰ τὴν ἀργίαν ἐξηγρίωντο καὶ καρπῶν ἡμέρων ἄφοροι καθειστήκεισαν.

The economic boom brought with it the opportunity for large-scale construction projects within the cities, and again Diodorus singles out the success of Agyrium:

Among the lesser cities is to be reckoned Agyrium, but since it shared in the increase

of settlers due to this agricultural prosperity, it built the finest theatre in Sicily after

that of Syracuse, together with temples of the gods, a council chamber, and a market.337

ἐν δὲ ταῖς ἐλάττοσι πόλεσιν, ἐν αἷς ἡ τῶν Ἀγυριναίων καταριθμεῖται, μετασχοῦσα τῆς

τότε κληρουχίας διὰ τὴν προειρημένην ἐκ τῶν καρπῶν εὐπορίαν, θέατρον μὲν

κατεσκεύασε μετὰ τὸ τῶν Συρακοσίων κάλλιστον τῶν κατὰ Σικελίαν, θεῶν τε ναοὺς

καὶ βουλευτήριον καὶ ἀγοράν.

This account, which does not appear in the Timoleon biographies of Plutarch or Cornelius Nepos, serves three ends.338 First, it exalts Agyrium. The city, whose lands remain note-worthy even after so many years left untended, is depicted as powerful even in defeat and, in Diodorus’ account, the return of agricultural productivity to Agyrium results in an economic boom that put its civic centre on par with that of Syracuse.339 Second, it serves as an analogous parallel to the events of the first

337 Diod. Sic. 16.83.3. 338 Cf. Plut. Vit. Tim. 32-5; Nep. Timol. 2-3. 339 Talbert 1974, Revermann and Wilson 2008, and Bosher 2012 offer excellent introductions to the role of the theatre in fourth century Sicilian politics. 101 century, wherein civil war had devastated farmland across Italy and Sicily, and landscape was ‘a heavily loaded component of the Roman image-repertoire.’340 Third, Diodorus presents his audience with an example of a proper ruler in Timoleon, whose virtuous actions restore the crops and economic stability to the city, furthering the intended contrast between this event and imperialistic Roman behaviour under the Triumvirs. Furthermore, this construction of Timoleon as a virtuous ruler parallels that of Agyrium, which is presented as a major city in the Sicilian landscape, exercising the strength, influence, and freedom it lacked in the Late Republic. Diodorus ends the year 339/8 with the success of his hometown, and it is a seminal example of how Diodorus constructs Agyrium. Despite the city’s relative non-existence within the historical record,

Diodorus refers to his hometown multiple times throughout the Bibliotheke, and each time it is met with a glowing reception.341 Agyrium is constructed in the context of the virtue of its citizens, who are pious, beneficent, and militarily strong, and its surrounding landscape, which is always

κάλλος.342 Indeed, when Diodorus is given the opportunity to describe the fecundity of the Heraean mountain chain, he holds nothing back, as Agyrium rests on the edge of this chain.343 In addition, these references often appear at the end of a chapter, leaving a positive impression of Agyrium in the readers’ minds before the narrative shifts.344 Comparatively, the city only garners mild attention in the Verrine Orations, and appears again only briefly in later catalogues: it is recorded by Pliny as enjoying Latin rights, and is listed in Imperial and Byzantine encyclopaedic texts such as those by Herodian and Stephanus Byzantius.345 This overt inclusion of Diodorus’ hometown is

340 Connolly 2001: 113-14. 341 Diod. Sic. 4.24, 14.95, 16.82-3, and 22.13 mark the major occurrences of Agyrium in the text. 342 Diod. Sic. 4.80.5, 14.95.2-5, 16.83.3, 22.13.1. 343 Diod. Sic. 4.84.1-2. 344 Diod. Sic. 4.24, 80, 14.95, 16.82-3. 345 Cic. Verr. 2.2.25, 3.47, 67-8, 76, 120-1, 4.17, 50; Plin. HN 3.14; Hdn. 3, 1.258.12; Steph. Byz. 1.52.1. 102 far more than an example of the author’s Sicilian bias. Rather, its appearance is a reaction to, and critique of, contemporary events, and an expression of the anxiety Diodorus felt for the future prosperity and survival of his homeland.

Hercules, upon reaching Agyrium in Book Four, was met with honours equal to those of an Olympian god, with sacrifices, festivals, and games held in his name. Diodorus explicitly notes that this is the first-time Hercules allows such behaviour, since ‘the deity was giving intimations to him of his coming immortality.’346 In return for their favours, Hercules builds a lake outside the city, four stades in circumference, and founds the aptly named Geryon and Iolaus districts within the city. Like the land offered to the Elymians, and the sacrificial rites instituted in Syracuse,

Hercules offers a benefaction to those whom he deems worthy of a mark of gratitude.347 Through the construction of Hercules as a benefactor of mankind and culture hero, Diodorus is able to present the people of Agyrium as not only pious, but canonically as the first true worshippers of

Hercules, once more placing a primacy on Sicily within the greater Mediterranean context.348

Diodorus takes this a step further, applying this framework to his hometown to glorify its place in history, and its relevance in the first century.

In 392 the Carthaginians marched once more into Sicily, 80,000 strong and commanded by Magon.349 Magon made his way through Sicel towns and successfully convinced many to defect from Dionysius of Syracuse, until he reached Agyrium. Magon was forced to camp on the banks of the Chrysas River, near the road to Morgantina, since he was unable to enter an alliance with the Agyrinaeans, and he had received news that Dionysius had marched out from Syracuse himself.

346 Diod. Sic. 4.24.1-4; Sulimani 2011: 282-3. 347 Sulimani 2011: 256-7. 348 Sacks 1990: 179; Green 2006: 14; Sulimani 2011: 256-7. 349 Diod. Sic. 14.95. 103

Despite mustering as many Syracusans and mercenaries as he could, Dionysius approached the

Carthaginian camp with an army that was outnumbered four-to-one. He thus sent word to Agyris, tyrant of Agyrium, who possessed the ‘strongest armament of any of the tyrants of Sicily at that time after Dionysius.’350 Promising him a large portion of neighbouring territory, Dionysius managed to convince Agyris to join him against Magon. The Carthaginians thus found themselves in a terrible position, caught between the Agyrinaean forces of the north and the Syracusan forces of the south-east. Diodorus notes the particular effectiveness of Agyris’ forces, who were able to set successful ambushes and continually disrupt the Punic supply lines thanks to their knowledge of the landscape.351 Again Diodorus places Agyrium at the forefront of Sicilian cities, second only to Syracuse, within the context of its military power, boasting a strength of twenty thousand citizens. Later, in the 280s, Agyrium is not only the first city to revolt from the tyranny of Phintias of Acragas, citing the ruler’s bloodthirsty nature, but is the inciting member of the tyrant’s reformation.352 This apparent primacy of Agyrium within the political landscape of Sicily is also demonstrated by its beneficent nature. The Cretans of Sicily, following the death of Minos, established the city of Engyum. According to Diodorus, this city was famous for its temple to the

Mother Goddesses.353 He notes that the temple is marvelled at due to its size and the cost of its construction, since they imported stone from Agyrium when their local stone proved unsuitable.

While the promise of payment does somewhat contradict a true beneficiary relationship, as seen in the Hellenistic courts, the continued primacy that Diodorus offers Agyrium justifies its presence

350 Diod. Sic. 14.95.4. 351 Diod. Sic. 14.96.1. 352 Diod. Sic. 22.2.3; Sulimani 2011: 92. 353 Diod. Sic. 4.80.4-6; Plut. Vit. Marc. 20. 104 again in this narrative, as it is apparently a strong and wealthy enough city to undertake the transport of stone to a city ‘nearly one hundred stades apart’ from itself.

Agyrium stands out in the Bibliotheke, and in the historical record, largely because

Diodorus has made sure that it does. Each appearance of Agyrium in the historical record affords

Diodorus the opportunity to exalt his hometown as one of the most fertile, most pious, and most influential of cities – all values which it lacked in the wake of the young Caesar’s punitive actions in the 30s. Moreover, thanks to these traits, Diodorus presents Agyrium as worthy of benefaction from gods and mortals alike, establishing a clear parallel between his hometown and the contemporary Roman state.354 Diodorus, in response to the atrocities committed against his homeland by the younger Caesar, believes Rome has not met the necessary preconditions for benefaction of virtuous and pious behaviour in quite some time, simultaneously critiquing the actions of contemporary Roman rulers, exalting his homeland, and highlighting the necessity of moral rule if Rome wishes to continue to garner benefactions from Sicily. When one considers

Diodorus’ historical context, it is easy to understand why he has placed so much emphasis on this otherwise minor city. Sicily of the first century was used as a strategic piece in the game of Roman rule, and the region around Diodorus’ hometown had lost much of its land and influence during his lifetime, ultimately devastated by Octavian in the late 30s. The fighting over Sicily in the first century paralleled the pre-Roman conflicts between major powers, reinforcing the literary construction of Sicily as a contested space. The future security and prosperity of his homeland being uncertain, Diodorus felt it was necessary to demonstrate to his audience the primacy and necessity of Sicily and his hometown.

354 Diod. Sic. 5.4.3-4; Sacks 1990: 62; Hau 2016: 87. 105

Conclusion

Diodorus’ Bibliotheke is a vital source for understanding that rare viewpoint of a provincial in first century Rome, reacting to a ruling state and political environment that decidedly does not have his homeland’s best interests at heart. He lived and wrote at Rome at a time when Sicily was a tool of political and military power, recalling the state of the island prior to Roman annexation, and his constructions of Sicily reflect this situation. By viewing Diodorus’ Bibliotheke through a revisionist lens, this chapter has argued that Diodorus’ hand can be seen in the construction of the

Sicilian landscape throughout the text. These purposeful constructions of landscape, through original addition or selective use of sources, were employed by Diodorus to achieve two goals.

First, by viewing landscape through the philosophical, political, and historiographical lenses of the late Hellenistic discourse, Diodorus could use the Sicilian mythological and historical narratives to further his literary goal of producing a universal and long-lived moral didactic – a text which points subtle yet critical barbs at the immoral attitude and destructive behaviour of the Roman imperial state toward its provincial subjects. Indeed, Diodorus asks his audience to consider whether Rome is still deserving of the benefaction of such a great island, believing the empire has squandered its right to rule Sicily, though wary to take such a critical stance during the political maelstrom of the Triumviral period. This critique can be seen through his constructions of the agricultural landscapes of Sicily first and foremost, and through select narratives of war, such as the Carthaginian, Athenian, and Roman sieges of Syracuse. Second, throughout the text Diodorus constructed key landscapes of Sicily – namely, Eryx, Syracuse, and Agyrium – in such a way as to glorify his homeland in the face of recent imperial actions that were not motivated by ἐπιεικεία and φιλανθρωπία, extol the virtues of Sicily as they pertain to the mythological foundations of the

Greco-Roman world and the success of imperial rule, and draw parallels between the deified 106 culture-heroes and Sicily in support of this need. Less concerned with Rome than Rome’s treatment of its provincial subjects, Diodorus presentation of Sicily as ‘contested space’ adds to the resonance of his work as a Sicilian and reflects the uncertainty of the period in which he wrote.

107

Chapter Three: Representations of Sicily in Virgil’s Aeneid

The popular conception of Sicily in Roman literature in the latter half of the first century was symptomatic of the state of Rome and emblematic of Empire, irrevocably intertwined with its landscape and its history.355 Civil war had devastated farmland across Italy and Sicily, leaving landscape ‘a heavily loaded component of the Roman image-repertoire.’356 A long history of powers fighting over Sicily, corrupt governance, slave revolts, and civil wars all served to reinforce

Sicily’s contested image that was propagated through the literary tradition about the island, as seen in Chapters One and Two. Virgil, writing the Latin epic Aeneid in the shadow of decades of civil war, turned this tradition on its head and brought peace to Sicily.

By the time he came to write the Aeneid, Virgil was an established poet in Rome and found himself in the circle of Maecenas.357 His first work, the bucolic Eclogues, was penned under the patronage of Maecenas between 42-37, and reflected the anxiety at Rome over land ownership and seizures in the wake of the proscriptions and Philippi.358 Virgil began his next work, the Georgics, in 36, and addressed the politics of agriculture and food-production through a series of complex and prominent metaphors.359 With the defeat of Sextus in 36 came the settlement of the conflict over land seizures that began with the proscriptions in the late 40s – the farmers who had been displaced by the Triumvirs, and who had subsequently sided with Pompeius, had lost, and the

355 Spence 2005: 139. 356 Connolly 2001: 113-14. 357 Syme 1939: 459-75; Smith 2011: 34. 358 App. B Civ. 4.31, 5.27, 72; Cass. Dio 47.17, 48.19; Connolly 2001: 113-14; Powell 2008: 183; Powell 2009: 189; Smith 2011: 34. 359 Powell 2008: 254-5, 284; Smith 2011: 28. 108 insecurities over land-holdings had gone with them.360 Following these successful works, Virgil moved on to epic. Virgil worked on the Aeneid for eleven years, and did not consider it complete upon his death in 19. It was published posthumously by Augustus that same year. The Aeneid received wide renown and praise almost immediately upon its release, and became a cultural cornerstone of Augustan Rome. The epic achieved an unprecedented amount of cultural penetration, and swiftly replaced the earlier epics of Naevius and Ennius as standard teaching texts.361 Sicily is a prominent location in the first half of the text, appearing in Books Three and

Five, undergoing a dramatic transformation between its first and second appearance from a contested space into a unified one.362

This chapter argues that the duality of Sicily in the Aeneid – the dangerous, morose, and contested landscapes of Book Three, and the happy and optimistic events of a settled Sicily in

Book Five – is purposely constructed by Virgil to promote the pax and public image of Augustus at a time when many were uncertain of the state’s stability, or whether Rome would once more collapse into civil war. In doing so, Virgil engages with the contemporary discourses and anxieties among Augustus’ inner-circle and the Roman people, particularly regarding morality in warfare, food security, and political stability, recalling the recent history and popular image of Sicily at

Rome before and after the defeat of Sextus Pompeius at the Battle of Naulochus in 36. Through the analysis of the landscapes of Sicily in Books Three and Five, this chapter will demonstrate that the contemporary rhetoric of pax in the 30s and 20s was central to the transformation of Sicily in the Aeneid from a contested to an uncontested and settled space, providing reassurance and

360 App. B Civ. 4.31, 5.74; Cass. Dio 47.17; Garnsey 1988: 204-18; Powell 2009: 188-9; Smith 2011: 31. 361 Hor. Ep. 2.1.53; Suet. Gram. et rhet. 16.3; Goldschmidt 2013: 113; Hardie 2014: 7. See also Pompeian graffiti punning on the Aeneid, i.e. CIL IV 9131 – Fullones ululam e[go] cano non arma virumq[ue]. 362 Powell 2002a: viii; Welch 2012: 12; Cornwell 2017: 14, 49. 109 distraction at a time when the future of Roman security and peace was uncertain. Furthermore, this chapter will demonstrate that the contrast between the two Sicilys worked to exonerate the faults of Octavian that continued to plague Augustus into the 20s – the impiety of the proscriptions and his reputation as a coward in battle chief among them – and undercut the mortal threat that Sextus

Pompeius had presented to Octavian up until his defeat and death in 36/35.363

Sextus, Octavian, and the East Coast of Sicily

As the breadbasket of the Republic, crucible of the Roman national identity, and stronghold of Sextus Pompeius between 43 and 36, Sicily was central to the discourse around pax in the

Triumviral and early Augustan periods, its political status reflected in the anxieties at Rome.364 In

43 Sextus, son of Pompeius Magnus and vocal opponent of the Caesarian regime, found himself on the list of Triumviral proscriptions.365 He found refuge in Sicily, where the family name still garnered much goodwill, and well aware of its strategic importance.366 Soon after his arrival,

Sextus established a base of power in the northeast of the island, took the resisting Messana without bloodshed, and utilised a fleet under his command as praefectus classis et orae maritimae, manned by allies, Sicilian mercenaries, and proscription refugees to throttle the grain trade to Rome and blockade Italy.367 The pressure that this blockade caused on the Triumvirs was two-fold: it restricted their naval movements through the Mediterranean, since Sextus controlled the Strait at

363 Powell 2002b: 115; Powell 2008: 103, 142, 285. 364 Galinsky 1968: 184; Powell 2008: 284. Cf. Verg. Aen. 6.852 and Cornwell 2017: 199 – ‘[pax] came to represent not just the internal stability of the state, but an empire-wide security to be imposed.’ 365 Plin. HN 7.147; Suet. Aug. 9.1. 366 Cic. Verr. 2.3.42; Cic. Leg. Man. 11.30; App. B Civ. 4.39-52; Plut. Vit. Pomp. 10, 39.1; Cass. Dio 47.12; Powell 2002b: 103, 109; Welch 2002: 18. 367 App. B Civ. 4.84-5, 5.70; Cass. Dio 48.17; Welch 2002: 109, 135-6; Welch 2012: 10-11; Cornwell 2017: 91. 110

Messana, and the resulting grain shortage at Rome led to riots and pressure on the Triumvirs to come to a settlement with the Pompeians in 39.368 Appian stresses that the plebeians and urban poor blamed Roman leaders rather than Sextus for their hardships, and, as a result of these pressures, the ‘Treaty of Misenum’ was signed in 39, making Sextus the master of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica.369 The settlement was short-lived, and Octavian was blamed for the rekindling of war.370 By 38, open hostilities between Sextus and Octavian had resumed, with Sextus once more throttling the grain trade to Rome. Sextus’ victories over Octavian in the late 40s and early 30s were a source of continuing embarrassment, and over the course of six years Sicily had become a symbol of opposition to Octavian’s rule, supported by Sextus’ popularity, the blockading of the grain exports, and his welcoming of refugees from the Triumviral proscriptions.371 Sextus remained master of Sicily until 36, when he was finally defeated by Agrippa at the Battle of

Naulochus, though not before he had defeated Octavian in a naval battle off Messana in 37, and seriously wounded Octavian’s spirit and reputation in a battle near Tauromenium in 36.372

Octavian’s victories over Sextus in 36 and Marc Antony and Cleopatra at Actium in 31 may have secured his place as absolute ruler of Rome, but the Pax Augusta of the 20s was tenuous.

Recurring famine and grain shortages were a painful reminder of the conditions under Sextus’ blockades.373 Augustus spent much of the decade away from Rome, and the people, when not

368 App. B Civ. 5.72, 80, 92; Powell 2002b: 113-5, 116-7, 220. Welch 2012: 226. 369 App. B Civ. 5.68; Cf. App. B Civ. 4.85, 5.25; Erdkamp 2001: 99-100; Powell 2002a: viii; Welch 2012: 240; Cornwell 2017: 91. 370 App. B Civ. 5.74, 80, 9; Cass. Dio 48.37; Powell 2002b: 113-115; Welch 2012: 240, 266-8; Cornwell 2017: 91. 371 App. B Civ. 4.3.12-6.51; Cass. Dio 47.3-15, 12-13.1, 48.19.3; Stone 2002: 136; Powell 2002b: 113-8; Powell 2008: 127. 372 App. B Civ. 5.110. 373 App. B Civ. 5.67-8, 74; Suet. Aug. 16.1; Cass. Dio 48.18.1, 31, 54.1-6; Garnsey 1988: 218-20, 227-8; Powell 2002b: 116-7; Watson 2002: 220. 111 suffering from grain shortages and famine, grew increasingly anxious over Augustus’ absence, and openly hostile when he refused the honours they gave him.374 At Rome, the fear of famine was often enough. The anxiety of the period culminated in 23/2 with another grain shortage, and the sudden death of Marcellus, the presumptive heir to Augustus.375 Augustus himself took ill unexpectedly in 21, and in giving his signet ring to Agrippa and official documents to his co-consul

Piso, it seemed that the princeps was on his death-bed.376 With no successor appointed, nor provisions in place to prevent the power vacuum that would inevitably follow his death, the people of Rome feared that the death of Augustus would plunge the state back into civil war. It is to this audience that Virgil addresses the Aeneid – intending to reassure the people of the stability

Augustus and the gens Julia provide – and these contemporary concerns of security and stability that shape the constructions of space and narrative within the text are reflected in the contrasting constructions of Sicily between Books Three and Five.

The Sicily of Book Three is a landscape inhabited by hostes, intended to be read by Virgil’s contemporary audience as an analogue of Sicily before Naulochus.377 Book Three features many of the traditional mythological views of Sicily as a home to monsters, dangerous to man, and generally unwelcoming. The Strait of Messana, home of Scylla and Charybdis, Mt. Etna, pinning down Typhon/Enceladus, and the cave of Polyphemus make up the landscape of this hostile landing which echoes (in narrative terms) and anticipates (in chronological terms) the Libyan landing of Book One.378 Before their unhappy landing, the seer Helenus warns the Trojan fleet of

374 Garnsey 1988: 30-1, 198-203. 375 Garnsey 1988: 227-8; Erdkamp 2001: 99; Rogerson 2017: 200-2. 376 Suet. Aug. 28.1; Cass. Dio 53.20.2. 377 Powell 2008: 127. 378 Verg. Aen. 3.1.157-79; Galinsky 1968: 159; Jenkyns 1998: 59-62. 112 the immediate dangers that the Sicilian waters hold, and advises that it is best to sail around the southern cape of Sicily in order to reach Italy, rather than risk passing through the Strait of

Messana. The Trojans take this advice seriously and, upon first sight of Sicily, the rough conditions at sea forewarn their approach to the Strait:

Then in the distance out of the waves appears Trinacrian Aetna, and from afar we hear

the loud moaning of the main, the beating of the rocks, and recurrent crash of waves

upon the shore; the shoals dash up and the sands mingle with the surge… we mount

up to heaven on the arched billow and again, with the receding wave, sink down to the

depths of hell… thrice we saw the showered spray and the dripping stars.379

Tum procul e fluctu Trinacria cernitur Aetna,

et gemitum ingentem pelagi pulsataque saxa

audimus longe fractasque ad litora voces,

exsultantque vada atque aestu miscentur harenae…

tollimur in caelum curvato gurgite et idem

subducta ad Manis imos desedimus unda…

ter spuman elisam et rorantia vidimus astra.

The seascape is presented as primordial and impossibly large, still suffering the convulsions that first split Sicily from the mainland:

379 Verg. Aen. 3.554-67. 113

These lands, they say, of old broke asunder, torn by force of mighty upheaval… the

sea came in force between, cut off with its waters the Hesperian from the Sicilian coast,

and with narrow tideway washes fields and cities on severed shores.380

Haec loca vi quondam et vasta convulse ruina…

dissiluisse ferunt, cum protinus utraque tellus

una foret; venit medio vi pontus et undis

Hesperium Siculo latus abscidit, arvaque et urbes

litore deductas angusto interluit aestu.

The mortal danger that the waters present reflect not only the mythological presence of Scylla and

Charybdis, but Octavian’s own experience in the Strait. Repeated defeats at the hands of Magnus

Pius Sextus Pompeius and unseasonal storms hindered Octavian’s plans to take Sicily from the

Pompeians in the 30s, reinforcing the popular contemporary narrative of an impious and cowardly

Octavian, born from his non-appearance at Philippi four years prior.381 In 38/37, following his ambush and defeat at the Battle of Messana, Octavian watched on from Scyllaeum as a storm ruined much of the remainder of his fleet.382 Having leapt from his ship onto the shore at the start of the engagement, Octavian surveyed the damage the following day, before a great storm dashed the remainder of his fleet:

The ships of Octavian were again shattered on the rough and inhospitable coast,

dashing against the rocks and against each other…for the narrowness of the place and

380 Verg. Aen. 3.414-17. 381 Suet. Aug. 70.2; App. B Civ. 4.138; Cass. Dio 47.39.1-3; Watson 2002: 214; Powell 2008: 97-8; Welch 2012: 4. 382 App. B Civ. 5.88-90. 114

its naturally difficult outlet, together with the force of the waves, the rotary motion of

the wind, caused by the surrounding mountains, and the whirlpool of the deep, holding

everything in its grasp, allowed neither tarrying nor escape… The disaster so far

surpassed their experience that it bereft them of the hope of saving themselves even by

chance… The fury of the tempest surpassed the memory of the oldest inhabitants.383

αἱ δὲ τοῦ Καίσαρος νῆες αὖθις περὶ τραχεῖαν ἀκτὴν καὶ δύσορμον ἀρασσόμεναι ταῖς

τε πέτραις καὶ ἀλλήλαις ἐπεφέροντο… ἡ γὰρ στενότης ἡ τοῦ χωρίου καὶ τὸ φύσει

δυσέξοδον αὐτοῦ καὶ κλύδων ἐπιπεσὼν καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα, ὑπὸ τῶν περικειμένων ὀρῶν ἐς

θυέλλας περικλώμενον, καὶ ὁ τοῦ βυθοῦ σπασμὸς ἐπὶ πάντα εἱλούμενος οὔτε μένειν

οὔτε φεύγειν ἐπέτρεπε… καὶ τὸ δεινὸν οὐδ᾽ ὑπὸ τῶν ἐγχωρίων ποτὲ τηλικοῦτον

ἐμνημονεύετο γενέσθαι…

Appian notes that Octavian ‘sustained two severe calamities together’ at the Strait, and it was only through achieving a renewed alliance with Marc Antony, delivering with it a new navy of 300 ships, that Octavian was delivered from his resulting despondency.384 In the following year, a second unexpected storm resulted in the loss of six of Octavian’s heavy ships, 26 lighter frigates, and a ‘great number’ of galleys.385 Moreover, the storm cost Octavian the chance to launch his offensive in July, an ideologically significant month to the triumvir, and pushed his campaign into the following year.386 Later in 36, Octavian suffered a major defeat at Tauromenium, barely

383 App. B Civ. 5.88-90. 384 App. B Civ. 5.92. The impact of these events on Octavian, as reported by Appian, appear more powerful if Appian used Augustus’ own memoirs as his source for this period. See Powell 2009: 186. 385 App. B Civ. 5.99.411. 386 App. B Civ. 5.97; Hadas 1930: 125; Welch 2012: 273. 115 escaping with his life after his army was caught off guard, believing Agrippa had defeated Pompey at Mylae the day before.387 Octavian made for the ocean, lowering his general’s ensign and hoping to go unnoticed by Pompey at sea. Once more, Octavian’s actions compounded his reputation for cowardice.388 Through the night, much of Octavian’s fleet was either captured or burnt, and

Octavian washed up on the harbour of Abala ‘shattered in body and mind’, accompanied by only a single arms-bearer.389 Octavian’s cowardly image is thus reworked in Aeneas’ flight from the

Strait. Opting to heed Helenus’ warning rather than try his luck, the retreating Aeneas appears throughout the Aeneid as one of the Trojan’s defining images – flight from danger, re- contextualised as piety towards his father and gods.390

Fleeing Scylla’s wrath, the Trojans make their way south rather than test the Strait, and before long find themselves drifting towards a still harbour at the foot of Etna, which is no kinder a sight:

… Aetna thunders with terrifying crashes, and now hurls forth to the sky a black cloud,

smoking with pitch-black eddy and glowing ashes, and uplifts balls of flame and licks

the stars – now violently vomits forth rocks, the mountain’s up-torn entrails, and whirls

molten stone skyward with a roar, and boils up from its lowest depths… All that night

we hide in the woods, enduring monstrous horrors…391

387 App. B Civ. 5.110; Welch 2012: 274-5. 388 Appian, whose history is generally pro-Augustan, declares that the hiding of his ensign was ‘customary in times of extreme danger’, though the reputation Octavian earned through this, and similar, actions, saw him labelled a coward at Rome. See Powell 2009: 186. 389 App. B Civ. 5.112; Powell 2008: 104. 390 Powell 2008: 93-100, 104-7; Welch 2012: 294-7. 391 Verg. Aen. 3.570-84; cf. Verg. Aen. 8.184-215: Cacus monstrum; Galinsky 1968: 159-60. 116

… sed horrificis iuxta tonat Aetna ruinis,

interdumque atram prorumpit ad aethera nubem,

turbine fumantem piceo et candente favilla,

attollitque globos flammarum et sidera lambit;

interdum scopulos avulsaque viscera montis

erigit eructans, liquefactaque saxa sub auras

cum gemitu glomerat, fundoque exaestuat imo…

noctem illam tecti silvis immania monstra

perferimus nec…

The tumult caused by Etna, like that of the Strait, stands in stark contrast to the stillness of the harbour, ‘unstirred by the wind.’392 Like the waves of the sea undulating between heaven and hell,

Etna’s rage engulfs the entire world in its chaos, from the stars to the lowest depths, symbolic of the total loss of Sicily in the hands of a hostis, and the danger the island presents to Rome in such a state.393 The symbolic use of Etna as an ill-omened portent is not unprecedented.394 This passage is itself a reworking of Etna’s appearance in the First Georgic, where Etna is highlighted as a threatening portent to the young Octavian:395

392 Verg. Aen. 3.570. 393 Hardie 1986: 263-6. 394 Galinsky 1968: 160; Powell and Welch 2002: 138. 395 Powell 2008: 108. 117

How oft before our eyes did Aetna deluge the fields of the Cyclopes with a torrent

from her burst furnaces, hurling thereon balls of fire and molten rocks.396

…Quotiens Cyclopum effervere in agros

vidimus undantem ruptis fornacibus Aetnam,

flammarumque globos liquefactaque volvere saxa!

Virgil’s Etna rests on top of the titan Typhon/Enceladus, who was cast beneath the mountain by

Zeus, and whose thrashing beneath the mountain stirs up the volcanic action. His presence, already a threat to the Trojans, also ‘taints the island with the aftermath of failed rebellion’, adding to the contested image of Sicily.397 Surviving the night, the Trojans are met by the Ithacan

Achaemenides, an original Virgilian character and formerly a member of Odysseus’ crew, who pleads for rescue from the lands of the Cyclopes. Achaemenides recounts his sorrows to the

Trojans, revisiting events that Virgil’s audience would recognise.398 Polyphemus himself appears shortly after, his eye still bleeding from his encounter with Odysseus. Though now blind, Virgil does not present his audience with a pitiful character, but a ‘huge, shapeless, and horrible’ monster

(monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens.)399 The parallels between the Enceladean Etna and

Polyphemus are striking: both are destructive and large monsters (monstrum, horrendum) who vomit up their bellies (eructans) and bring ruin in their wake (horrificis ruinis), representative of a state of disorder or conflict that must be overcome. Taking aboard Achaemenides, the Trojans

396 Verg. G. 1.471-3. 397 Powell 2008: 108, 191. Cf. Pind. Pyth. 1-29. 398 Verg. Aen. 3.630-6. 399 Verg. Aen. 3.658; Johnston 1996: 60. The harsh elisions used here to describe Polyphemus recall Corydon at Verg. Ecl. 2.25, whose characterisation Virgil builds from Theocritus’ Polyphemus. Cf. Clausen 1982: 307-8. 118 flee, and though he is unable to catch them, Polyphemus releases a roar ‘at which the sea and all its waves shuddered and the land of Italy was terrified far within, and Etna bellowed in its winding caverns.’400 Through their mutual fear of Polyphemus, the Greek Achaemenides and the Trojans work together to escape the Etnean harbour, while Polyphemus’ bellow jointly terrifies Italy and

Sicily – a ritual ‘bringing-together’ that is paid off in Book Five.401 The mood of gloom and danger that Virgil establishes on the east coast is maintained throughout the periplus around Sicily and catalogue of cities, which serve to envelop the whole of Sicily in this construction.

The final hundred lines of Book Three follow the Trojans’ journey clockwise around Sicily, from the Etnean harbour to Drepanum, at the foot of Mt. Eryx.402 This catalogue description has no precedent in the Aeneas legends, nor are there any associations between the cities mentioned and Trojans.403 Rather, they serve to invoke the Punic wars, adding to the morose mood of the

Book and Virgil’s own construction of Sicily as contested space and Sextus as hostis. The majesty of Syracuse (or, rather, Syracuse-to-be) causes the Trojans to undertake an act of worship, recalling the piety of M. Claudius Marcellus following the sack of Syracuse during the Second Punic War.404

Camarina, a Carthaginian stronghold during the First Punic War, is invoked with the solemn ‘Fate forbade that she ever be disturbed’, alluding to both the Greek apocryphal story of the city’s downfall and the disastrous loss of life Rome suffered after another one of its fleets was sunk by

400 Verg. Aen. 3.672-4. Cf. Hom. Od. IX. 395-9, where the Cyclops’ bellows do not go beyond his cave. 401 Galinsky 1968: 163; Powell 2008: 284. 402 Verg. Aen. 3.692-708. 403 Galinsky 1968: 164-5; cf. the catalogues of Hom. Il. 2.494-759 and Hdt. 7.58. For the popularity of cataloguing in the first century, see Sacks 1990: 77. 404 Verg. Aen. 3.692-7; Livy 25.24.11-15; Plut. Vit. Marc. 19; Gruen 1983: 94-103; Gowers 2010: 80; Goldschmidt 2013: 113. 119 storms off the city’s coast in 255.405 The final ports of call, Lilybaeum and Drepanum, centres of

Punic Sicily, are characterised by their hostile coast and unhappy shores, reflecting the experience of the Roman fleets sailing in these unfamiliar waters, and foreshadowing the imminent death of

Anchises in lines 708-13.406 These conspicuous mentions and the terms in which they are invoked support the sombre mood of Book Three, while the allusions to the Punic Wars add to the mood, and increase the myth’s association with Rome.407 The educated members of Virgil’s audience would recognise these cities, and their associated histories, from the earlier Latin epics of Naevius and Ennius, and from Rome’s monumental landscape.408 The Punic Wars left an indelible mark on the socio-political consciousness of Rome, shaping much of the culture of the Late Republic – including the subject matter of the pre-Virgilian epics.409 Naevius’ Bellum Punicum and Ennius’

Annales were the canonical historical epics before the Aeneid, used as teaching texts until the

Augustan age.410 Written in the third and second centuries respectively, the epics recall similar periods of Roman history – Naevius covers Aeneas’ travels through Sicily, Carthage, and Italy down to the First Punic War, and is cited as the first author to recognise the connection between

Aeneas and the foundation of Rome, while Ennius extends his epic down to the middle of the second century.411 While the impact of the Punic Wars was fading from Rome, to be replaced shortly by the exploits of emperors, the adoption of this subject matter was expected from Virgil,

405 Verg. Aen. 3.700-1; Polyb. 1.37; Diod. Sic. 23.18; Livy Per. 18; Goldschmidt 2013: 115 n.40. 406 Verg. Aen. 3.708-13; Goldschmidt 2013: 113-15. 407 Galinsky 1968: 179. 408 Earl 1961: 18-27; Galinsky 1968: 190; Zanker 1988: 101-263; Edwards 1996: 30; Gowing 2005: 152; Flower 2006: 44-55; Goldschmidt 2013: 9; Seider 2013: 16. 409 Polyb 1.63.4; Smith 1991: 27; Goldschmidt 2013: 9, 12, 102-5. 410 Galinsky 1968: 189; Goldschmidt 2013: 113. 411 Galinsky 1968: 123-4; Goldschmidt 2013: 12. 120 writing within an existing literary tradition. In doing so, Virgil strengthened his construction of

Sextus as hostis by aligning him, however allusively, with the Carthaginians, and building on the traditional relationship between Sicily and Rome.412 This construction supported the Augustan tactic of reworking the narrative of the 30s at a time when the Pompeian name still garnered great respect.413 Thus, as he does with Scylla’s irresistible pull, Typhon/Enceladus’ thrashings, and

Polyphemus’ rage, Virgil uses the associations of space, history, and myth to draw parallels between the Trojan’s mythical hostes, the Carthaginians, and Octavian’s own Sicilian opponent,

Sextus – all of whom, Virgil suggests, endangered the well-being of Sicily and, by extension,

Rome.414 The invocation of these sites presents Sicily as a contested space, and immediately calls to mind Sicily before the Battle of Naulochus for Virgil’s audience, when Rome was blockaded, food was short, and there was little to no security in Italian land ownership.415 This image contrasts with that of a settled Sicily after Naulochus, which fed the city, settled veterans, and was freed of the purported piratical presence of Pompeius. Powell states that ‘[t]he prospect of a fertile Italy, a well-fed population, flowed demonstrably from Naulochus’, and it is this demonstration of the beneficial reality of Caesarian rule at Rome that Octavian sought to highlight and promote after

36.416 Upon the Trojans’ return in Book Five, Virgil’s audience finds no trace of gloom and horror, and are instead greeted by the unified and civilised province promised by Augustus, from which a secure peace and food supply flows.

412 Goldschmidt 2013: 109-110, 113, 115. 413 Plut. Vit. Caes. 56.7-9; Plin. HN 36.114; Welch 2002: 18. 414 Cf. Cicero’s construction of Verres in Chapter One and Diodorus’ critique of Roman immorality in Chapter Two. 415 Spence 2005: 139. 416 Powell 2008: 261; cf. Powell 2002b: 127-9; Powell 2009: 189-90. Also, Verg. G. 2.150. 121

Pax Sicilia: Eryx, Segesta, and Trojan Heritage

Upon their arrival at Drepanum, at the foot of Mt. Eryx, the Trojans are greeted by Acestes, himself a Trojan on his mother’s side, and king of the Elymians. Virgil’s audience is quick to note a change in the seascape itself, from inlaetabilis (unhappy) to fidus (friendly).417 On its face, this change in the landscape’s mood and the lighter tone of the book is a respite from the heavier tones of Books Four and Six, and presents a feeling of victory or reprieve that follows conflict (war), now that Aeneas (Rome/Augustus) has ended his affair with Dido (Carthage/Sextus) – the Punic

Wars loom over Book Five.418 Gone are the monstra, the hostes, and allusions to civil war and unrest, replaced by the laetus and fidus shore at Drepanum. Virgil’s audience, practiced in reading contemporary historical events in literature, would immediately recognise this Sicily as the one that was brought into concordance with Rome after the Battle of Naulochus and defeat of Sextus

Pompeius in 36.

Following the news of Sextus’ death in 35, Octavian’s initial reaction was to hold a public celebration, though he later claimed to have deliberately spared Sextus and blamed Antony for his death in accordance with the public mourning of Sextus’ death.419 Octavian’s victory over

Pompeius – the first solo one of his military career – became a cornerstone of his public image, despite the civil nature of the conflict, the popularity of Sextus at Rome, and the embarrassment that numerous Pompeian victories had caused Octavian.420 This victory secured Octavian’s powerbase in the western Mediterranean, and finally gave Octavian a positive connection to the

417 Verg. Aen. 3.707, 5.24. 418 Goldschmidt 2013: 103, 122-3. 419 Cass. Dio 49.18.6, 50.1.4; Powell 2009: 185-6. 420 Suet. Aug. 16.1; App. B Civ. 4.36, 39, 85, 5.72-4, 90, 143; Cass. Dio 47.12.1-3; Powell 2002b: 113-8; Osgood 2006: 205-7; Powell 2008: 64-75. As with most of his military victories, Augustus’ own name is synonymous with that of Agrippa. 122 issue of food security at Rome, after being considered by the people to be responsible for the grain shortages.421 Actium would provide Octavian a less messy victory (Antony became much easier to vilify than the son of Pompeius Magnus), but that was still five years away, and in 36 there was a belief that civil war had been brought to an end.422 Thus, Octavian stressed the victory in terms of pax – it was not a victory over a Roman general, but an achievement of pax terra marique.423

The palmam dedit for Octavian’s ovation preserves a victory ex Sicilia, rather than ex Pompeio, and the columna rostrata Octavian erected in the Forum Romanum in 36 in celebration was decorated with beaks and anchors, topped by a golden statue of himself, and bearing the inscription, ‘Peace, long disturbed, he re-established on land and sea’.424 By the end of his life,

Augustus had replaced the uncomfortable and embarrassing reality with the much more agreeable narrative presented in the Res Gestae – that the civil war against Sextus Pompey, which had almost cost the young Caesar his life and caused starvation and riots at Rome, was a victory over mere

‘pirates’ to secure pax, and that Sextus represented only the interests of slaves.425 Despite this rhetoric, Augustus went to great lengths to punish those cities on the east coast which had supported Sextus, displacing thousands of Sicilians and re-founding cities to settle his veterans during the 20s, firmly turning Sicily’s focus towards Italy thereafter.426 Though Octavian might

421 Powell 2008: 254-5; Cornwell 2017: 92. 422 App. B Civ. 5.130-2; Gowing 2002: 188-9; Powell 2008: 19; Cornwell 2017: 91-2. 423 Cornwell 2017: 83-6, 92-3. Cf. Augustus’ triple triumph of 29, Livy Per. 113; Suet. Aug. 22; Cass. Dio 51.19.1-3, 52.21. 424 Inscr. Ital. XIII 1.86-7, 342-3; App. B Civ. 5.130; RIC I2 271; Richardson 1992: 96; Jenkyns 1998: 20; Osgood 2006: 300-1; Welch 2012: 298; Seider 2013: 16; Cornwell 2017: 86, 92. Cf. CIL I2.00025, the Column of Duilius, restored by Augustus and erected in honour of Duilius’ victory over the Carthaginians off Sicily in 260, which served as a model for Octavian’s monument, Serv. Ad G. 3.29; Plin. HN 34.20; Cornwell 2017: 93-6. 425 RG 25.1; Hor. Epod. 9.9f; App. B Civ. 5.132; Cornwell 2017: 91-2. 426 Cass. Dio 49.12.4-5; Strabo 6.2.4-7; Serrati 2000a: 113; Stone 2002: 135-47; Gowers 2010: 74; Welch 2012: 10. 123 have come out on top in the war with Sextus, it is clear that Sicily and the events of the war influenced the triumvir and his public image – ‘It is safe to say that in no other war did he meet more or greater dangers.’427 To this end, the second Sicilian landing of Book Five addresses ‘an enduring set of contemporary problems.’428 Octavian had spent more than a decade linking pax with a subdued Sicily and a stable grain supply, and so instability at Rome during the 20s, coupled with Augustus settling his veterans in Sicily during this period, brought with it uncertainty of the continued stability and security of the still-new pax Augusta. Importantly, this change between the

Sicilys is divided in the text by Book Four, Carthage, and Dido. Famously, Book Four’s tragic end is reached as Aeneas chooses pietas over Dido, electing to leave Carthage and continue his divinely-appointed journey to found Rome. As discussed above, Virgil works throughout Book

Three to align Sicilian monstra, the Carthaginians, and Sextus, and now through the ‘defeat’ of

Dido, this construction is paid off.429 Virgil introduces his audience to the ideal Sicily, one which is laetus, fidus, and settled, and only achievable, for the benefit of Rome, through the defeat of a great enemy – Aeneas’ Dido, Rome’s Carthage, and more recently, Octavian’s Sextus. Thus, the positive change in Sicily between Books Three and Five offered Virgil’s audience security in the past, in the face of an uncertain future.430

Soon after their arrival, Aeneas realises it has been a year since Anchises passed away at the end of Book Three, and the funeral games for Anchises commence. This act is perhaps Aeneas’ second largest act of piety towards his father in the epic, next to the escape from Troy when Aeneas carried Anchises on his shoulders out of the burning city. Thus the primary contextual framework

427 Suet. Aug. 16.3; Welch 2012: 12. 428 Serrati 2000b: 120; Powell 2008: 284. 429 Galinsky 1968: 165-8; Powell 2008: 87-9. 430 Seider 2013: 4; Cornwell 2017: 14. 124 for the Sicilian landscape of Book Five is made clear – pietas.431 The virtuous context of Book

Five is identified by Kenney, who states that ‘the contests in the funeral games in Book Five illustrate some of the characteristics which can prevail in the sterner context of real life.’432 Virgil’s second Sicily serves to retake pietas from Sextus Pompeius, who advertised himself as Magnus

Pius, and ‘apologise for Octavian’s pre-eminent defect’ that was his violation of pietas with the

Triumviral proscriptions.433 The contest for ownership of pietas between the two was long, and important to the people of Rome in times of civil unrest. Their overwhelmingly positive reaction to Marcus Oppius’ illegal act of carrying his proscribed and bed-ridden father from Rome to safety in Sicily says as much, as does the appearance of the Catanean brothers on Sextan coinage.434

Powell states the need for pietas during civil war best, asserting that in times of turmoil, unpredictability, and insecurity, pietas ‘spoke to the need for predictability and social cohesion.’435

It is these needs that Virgil strives to provide for his audience through the Sicily of Book Five, and so, just as Aeneas’ propensity to flee from danger is employed by Virgil to redeem Octavian’s cowardice, so too is pius Aeneas employed throughout the Aeneid to take ownership of pietas from the Pompeians. Thus, Virgil’s constructions of northwest Sicily, in conjunction with its long- standing Trojan tradition, seek to remind his audience of the stability that the gens Julia brings to

Sicily and Rome, by restoring the pietas of Augustus through his Trojan analogue, and aligning

Aeneas with foundational, transitional moments of Roman history. The first act of Book Five, the

431 Spence 2005: 134. 432 Kenney 1982: 335; Powell 2008: 64. 433 Galinsky 1969: 8-10, 50-3; Powell 2002b: 115-120; Powell 2009: 190; Welch 2012: 10-11. 434 App. B Civ. 4.41.172-4; Cass. Dio 48.53.4-6; RRC 511/3. Not to be outdone by Octavian’s descent from Aeneas, Sextus’ coin features twice as many pious individuals, who date back to at least the 4th Century – see Lycurg. Leoc. 1.95; Sen. Ben. 3.37.2. 435 Powell 2008: 54. 125 funeral games, begins this process by contextualising Sicily as an arena for competition, paralleling the island’s pre-Roman history and the recent conflict between Octavian and Sextus.

The first event of the games, the boat race, is held in the harbour off the coast of Eryx. The connection between this regatta and the chariot race of the funeral games for Patroclus in Iliad 23 has often been highlighted by scholars.436 As with all Virgilian landscapes, however, there are multiple allusions working in tandem, referring to contemporary Roman history. The regatta has been interpreted as a direct reference to Augustus’ Actian games at Nicopolis, specifically commemorating the victory at Actium and serving as a triumphant reclamation of the seascape that Sextus stole from Octavian, when Sextus staged a celebratory sea battle following his victory over Octavian’s general Salvidienus Rufus in 40, while some draw links to the Circus Maximus and the funeral games Octavian held for Caesar in 44.437 In any event, the placement of the regatta off the coast of Drepanum evokes the great naval losses and victories that took place off the coast of north-western Sicily. The loss to Carthage in 249, famously due to P. Clodius Pulcher’s impious act of throwing the sacred chickens overboard, almost saw the entire Roman fleet destroyed and the war lost.438 The Battle of the Aegates Islands, which took place some fifteen kilometres from

Drepanum, won Rome the war in 241, and the area saw activity again during the Second Punic

War.

The participants in the race add to these contemporary allusions. Mnestheus, who pilots the

Pristis and founds the plebeian gens Memmia, races respectfully and avoids disgrace, as befits the

436 Hom. Il. 23.262-652; Anderson and Dix 2013: 3-4; Goldschmidt 2013: 122. 437 Verg. Aen. 5.148-50; Cass. Dio 48.19.1-2; Humphrey 1986: 73-4, 262; Hardie 1987: 166; Cairns 1989: 236-46; Feldherr 1995: 248; Stone 2002: 135-8; Anderson and Dix 2013: 5, 19; Goldschmidt 2013: 122. 438 Cic. Nat. D. 2.7. Cf. Goldschmidt 2013: 115 on the burning of the fleet at Verg. Aen. 5.604-99, which foreshadows this battle – both defeats nearly destroy Rome, figuratively and/or literally. 126 progenitor of many popular political figures, such as C. Memmius, tribune of 111, whom Sallust depicts as fiercely opposed to elite corruption in the Bellum Iugurthinum.439 In contrast, Sergestus, piloting Centaur, is wrecked on the rocks and limps into port. He goes on to found the gens Sergia, whose descendant L. Sergius Catilina equally wrecked the family name with his famously catastrophic coup of 63. The arch of the Sergii, commemorated by the tribune L. Sergius Lepidus following the Battle of Actium, restored the family name, allowing the gens to limp back to relevance.440 Presiding over the race, of course, sits Aeneas, alluding to Augustus’ place as the civilis princeps, and placing the gens Julia above all others.441 Thus, the boat race establishes a

‘recognizably Roman character… alluding evocatively to contemporary Roman history, monuments, and experience.’442 The next event, the boxing match, continues with these allusions to transitional moments in Roman history.

Immediately after the announcement of the boxing match, the Trojan Dares enters the ring and declares his previous victories, which include one over ‘Butes, offspring of Amycus’

Bebrycian race.’ 443 This victory, contextualised by the immediate landscape, in the shadow of

Eryx, is far more than a brag. The Bebrycian Butes shares a name with the father of Eryx, that

Sicilian king (and half-brother to Aeneas by Venus) who was defeated by Heracles in a boxing match.444 Thus, Virgil connects Dares with Eryx, and by extension his opponent, Entellus, who is

439 Sall. Iug. 27. 440 Smith 2011: 121. 441 McGlashan 2013: 58. 442 Anderson and Dix 2013: 15. 443 Verg. Aen. 5.368-74. 444 Diod. Sic. 4.23, 83. Cf. Aeneas’ blood ties with Eryx at 5.24, 412, 630. The King of the Bebryces, Amycus, was also a boxer, and was famously killed in a boxing match with Polydeuces – in Ap. Rhod. Argon. 2.1-94 and Cass. Dio 1.9.20 – or with Turnus in Verg. Aen. 12.509. 127 a native Sicilian and Eryx’s own student.445 Entellus, a great boxer now past his prime, is goaded into facing Dares by Acestes. Entellus enters the ring, with the very gloves that Eryx wore in his match with Heracles.446 The gloves, ‘still stained with blood and spattered brains’, garner much reverence and fear, and the boastful Dares is ready to back down from the fight until Entellus suggests that both boxers fight with evenly matched gloves provided by Aeneas.447

Through allusion and reference, Virgil connects the fighters and their cultures – Dares’ victory over Butes associates him, ostensibly, with Eryx and Entellus, calling to mind the contest between Eryx and Heracles. If history is to repeat itself, then Virgil’s audience ought to expect the younger Trojan fighter to make easy work of the older Sicilian – twice in Homer’s epics the prouder or younger fighter wins.448 Unfortunately for Dares, Entellus has the backing of the outcome of the First Punic War and Virgil’s didactic intent on his side:

Solidly stands Entellus, motionless, unmoved in stance, shunning blows with body and

watchful eyes alone. The other, like one who assails some high city with siege works

or besets a mountain stronghold in arms, tries now this approach and now that, skilfully

ranges over all the ground, and presses with varied but vain assaults. Then Entellus,

rising, puts forth his right, lifted high; the other speedily foresaw the down-coming

blow and, slipping aside with nimble body, foiled it. Entellus spent his strength on air,

and in his huge bulk this mighty man fell in his might to earth…449

445 Smith 2011: 122. 446 Verg. Aen. 5.400-6. 447 Verg. Aen. 5.412-20. 448 Odysseus vs. Arnaeus in Hom. Od. 18; Epeios vs. Euryalos in Hom. Il. 23. 449 Verg. Aen. 5.437-47. 128

Stat gravis Entellus nisuque immotus eodem,

corpore tela modo atque oculis vigilantibus exit.

Ille, velut celsam oppugnat qui molibus urbem

aut montana sedet circum castella sub armis,

nunc hos, nunc illos aditus omnemque pererrat

arte locum et variis adsultibus inritus urget.

Ostendit dextram insurgens Entellus et alte

extulit; ille ictum venientem a vertice velox

praevidit celerique elapsus corporse cessit;

Entellus vires in ventum effudit et ultro

ipse gravis graviterque ad terram pondere vasto

concidit…

Fighting at the foot of Mt. Eryx, and in remembrance of its hero, Entellus is compared to ‘some high city’ and a ‘mountain stronghold in arms’, while Dares attempts in vain to assail his heights and find a weakness, foreshadowing the Punic Wars.450 In 244, Hamilcar took the town of Eryx that lay between the Roman garrisons at the top and the bottom of the mountain. The conflict that followed became a major theatre and lasted until the end of the war, with the Carthaginians laying siege to the Romans.451 Polybius describes the conflict as a fight to the death¸ comparing the competitors to boxers.452 While the siege itself was never decided of its own accord (it ended with the war in 241), it was with the aid of nearby Segesta that Rome gained the upper hand over

450 Traill 2001: 408-11; Goldschmidt 2013: 120. 451 Prag 2011a: 87. 452 Polyb. 1.58.5, 7. 129

Carthage during the First Punic War. Once more, Virgil cites the Punic Wars and their history to highlight the importance of a space, and remind his audience of the importance of Eryx to Rome.

After his fall, Entellus rises to his feet with Acestes’ assistance, and soundly defeats Dares, with no small amount of wrath.453 Entellus’ fall elicits a gasp of shock from the whole mixed crowd of Sicilians and Trojans, whom Virgil presents as intermingled throughout Book Five: ‘Eagerly the Teucrians and men of Sicily rise up; a shout mounts to heaven…’454 He is helped by Acestes, our moral Sicilian analogue, while Aeneas presides. Recalling the legendary match between Eryx and Heracles, and foreshadowing the fight for Eryx during the First Punic War, Virgil brings the

Sicilians and Trojans together, placing Aeneas at the centre of this unified Sicily. Moreover, the fight instructs Virgil’s audience about the emphasis Augustus places on virtue. Dares, though he is a Trojan, was defeated because of his individual boastfulness and pride, character traits that many contemporaries believed fuelled the civil wars, and have no place in Augustan Rome.455 Like the contemporary allusions of the boat race, the moral lesson contained in the boxing match

‘establishes a recognizably Roman character.’456 Virgil’s setting of the games in the northwest of

Sicily, between Eryx and Segesta, where there was a traditional Trojan presence, carries this character throughout the Book, in turn deciding the contest for ancestry in contemporary Rome that influenced much of the conflict between Sextus and Octavian.

453 Verg. Aen. 5.451-4. 454 Verg. Aen. 5.450. See Verg. Aen. 5.293-301, 450, 530 for mixing of ethnicities. Cf. the archery contest at Verg. Aen. 5.492-9, where the ethnicity of the competitors is left intentionally obscure. 455 Kenney 1982: 335, 339; Cairns 1989: 228. 456 Anderson and Dix 2013: 15. 130

The rise of individual power in the late second and first centuries heralded a return to relevance for Trojan heritage discourse.457 Increased social competition among the elite fostered an environment that promoted the parading of one’s ancestral heritage and genealogy, in order to bolster one’s social standing, justify a political stance, or impress an immediate audience.458 The

Sergii claimed descent from the Trojan Sergestus, the Fabii from Heracles’ visit to the site of Rome while driving the cattle of Geryon, and the Julii from Venus, through Iulus/Ascanius, son of

Aeneas.459 The competition of ancestry between Sextus and Octavian drove much of their rhetoric and public image, including the aforementioned contest over pietas.460 Sextus drew ancestry from

Neptune, and made the connection clear in his coins.461 One minting features the Pharos of

Messana, topped with Neptune, on the obverse, and Scylla about to bring an oar smashing down, on the reverse.462 This link amplified his naval success over Octavian, which was not only a sign of superior martial prowess, but divinely supported – the contemporary justification for the storms that wrecked Octavian’s fleet in 37 was divine intervention.463 Octavian had made a sacrifice of blood and wine to Neptune before setting sail in 37, requesting safe passage from the god, from whom he desperately wanted support. After the storm, it was clear that Neptune’s allegiance remained with Sextus, who adopted the sea-blue cloak to reflect this relationship.464 Pompeius’

457 Serv. Praef. 5.389, 704 notes that Hyginus and Varro each wrote de familiis Troianis, and Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.85.3 says that there were fifty Trojan families at Rome during his day, cf. Gruen 1992: 50; Anderson and Dix 2013: 17-19. 458 Wiseman 1974: 159-64. 459 Wiseman 1974: 153-4. 460 Powell 2008: 42-56. 461 RRC 511/1, 2. 462 RRC 511/4. 463 App. B Civ. 5.90, 98; Powell 1992: 155-7; Powell 2002b: 115. 464 App. B Civ. 5.98-100; Cass. Dio 48.48. 131 descent from Neptune was widely popularised, and Octavian longed to separate the two, though for his part he took the hint.465 Suetonius reports that, possibly following this event, he was determined to win the war ‘in spite of Neptune’, and it was not until after the defeat of Sextus in

36/35 that Octavian again attempted to adopt Neptune, in the meantime placing emphasis on descent from Venus through Aeneas and the Julii, which was popularised by Julius Caesar.466 The competition of heritage is ultimately settled by Virgil through the landscape of Elymian Sicily, constructed as an arena of competition that parallels the struggle between Octavian and Sextus, with the exception that Rome, and its princeps, has always been the victor. Towards the end of

Book Five, Aeneas founds the sanctuary to Venus Erycina ‘on the crest of Eryx’.467 In doing so,

Virgil not only explicitly aligns the gens Julia with that famous and powerful temple, placing

Aeneas as its founder, but emphasises the pietas of Aeneas, who is establishing the shrine not just for a goddess and for Rome, but for his mother.468 The final event of the funeral games, the Lusus

Troiae, features Ascanius and several other youths performing intricate cavalry drills for the mixed crowd of Trojans and Trinacrians.469 Leading two of the troupes are Ascanius/Iulus and Atys,

‘from whom the Latin Atii have drawn their name – little Atys, the boyish love of the boy Iulus.’470

Not only does Virgil support the Caesarian claim to Trojan heritage throughout the text, but in the shadow of Mt. Eryx he establishes for Augustus a dual-heritage: on his adopted father’s side, he is descended from Venus, and now on his mother’s side, the gens Atia can draw heritage through

465 Welch 2012: 273. 466 Suet. Aug. 16.2; RRC 458; Zanker 1988: 189; Welch 2012: 273. 467 Verg. Aen. 5.759-60. 468 Goldschmidt 2013: 120. Cf. Diod. Sic. 4.83 and Galinsky 1969: 64-5. 469 Verg. Aen. 5.545-603. This passage is the best surviving example of the equestrian event, revived by Julius Caesar in 46/45. Suet. Iul. 39; Cass. Dio 43.23.6. 470 Verg. Aen. 5.568. 132 the Roman kings back to Sicily. Thus the gens Julia is placed at the centre of two more Roman institutions – Capitoline Venus and the Lusus Troiae – which serves further to align Aeneas with

Augustus, Rome with Sicily, and their unification with pax.471 The long-established tradition of

Trojans in the northwest of Sicily gives Virgil the opportunity to make these links, on the back of a tradition that had been cultivated by Rome since the third century.

Like the western travels of Hercules explored in the previous chapter, Trojan westward migration is a product of colonization activities and expanding intercultural relations. For the

Western Greeks, such myths were appealing, providing the opportunity to weave their own traditions and foundation myths into the greater epic tradition. Many commentators are quick to express a cynical view about the Roman attitude to Trojan heritage, first seen in the First Punic

War and Segesta’s defection to Rome. Some cite Rome’s (ab)use of their joint heritage with

Segesta as exploitation of the legend, or as a ‘fine pretext… for the interference in the affair of

Asia Minor’ in the second century.472 Others suggest that while Rome readily accepted Segesta’s defection, there is no reason to assume that Rome instigated the use of a joint ancestry – ‘To this point only the Greeks were playing that game.’473 Gruen argues that the earliest associations of

Aeneas with the founding of Rome stem from Sicilian authors like Alcimus, who were continuing to adapt their own myths and legends in a Hellenistic world that now included the Romans.474

Pyrrhus, ‘playing that game’ during his Sicilian venture, attempted to contrast the Trojan legends of the Sicilian north-west with the Heracles legends associated with the Doric colonies in the

471 Smith 2011: 120. 472 Galinsky 1968: 180; Momigliano 1984: 453; Bremmer and Horsfall 1987: 21; Gruen 1992: 44-6. 473 Gruen 1992: 45. 474 Gruen 1992: 15. 133 region.475 Upon capturing Eryx from the Carthaginians in 277 BC, he held a festival in honour of

Heracles to celebrate the victory.476 While Pyrrhus had attempted to align himself with the Sicilians through a single ancestral tradition, the Romans were explicit in linking themselves with the two mainstream traditions of Heracles and the Trojans, recognising the co-existence of the legends on

Sicily.477 The Roman-Segestan alliance is projected backwards into the Aeneid, and treated as one that was always meant to be. Ilioneus tells Dido in Book One that the Trojans have ‘cities and arms’ at their disposal in Sicily, long before the Trojan arrival and foundation of Segesta in Book

Five.478 Through the undertaking of games, and the placing of Aeneas at the centre of events,

Segesta’s role in the future of Sicily and Rome is central to the understanding of the landscape.

McGlashan concludes that the games are ‘an act of filial piety, but, with their Roman religious observances and colourful mix of peoples, [they] look more like the ritual uniting of a nation,’ as foreshadowed by the Polyphemus episode in Book Three.479 Thus, the funeral games parallel the real-world image of Sicily as an historical arena for competition, further cementing Rome in the centre of the meta-narrative. Segesta itself is founded in very Roman terms – forum, patribus, transcribunt:480

They enrol the matrons for the town, and set on shore the folk who wish it so…

Meanwhile Aeneas marks out the city with a plough and allots homes; this he bids be

Ilium and these lands Troy. Trojan Acestes delights in his kingdom, proclaims a court,

475 Galinsky 1969: 172-3; Gruen 1990: 11-12; Gruen 1992: 44-5. 476 Plut. Vit. Pyrrh. 22.5-6. 477 Galinsky 1969: 97, 172-3. See the previous chapter on Diodorus Siculus for the Heraclean tradition on Sicily. 478 Verg. Aen. 1.549-50. 479 McGlashan 2003: 46; cf. Cairns 1989: 118, 222-3; Smith 2011: 124. 480 Galinsky 1968: 169. 134

and gives laws to the assembled senate. Then, on the crest of Eryx, a shrine, nigh to

the stars, is founded to Venus of Idalia…481

Transcribunt urbi matres populumque volentem

deponunt…

interea Aeneas urbem deisgnat aratro

sortiturque domos; hos Ilium et haec loca Troiam

esse iubet, gaudet regno Troianus Acestes

indicitque forum et patribus dat iura vocatis.

Tum vicina astris Erycino in vertice sedes

fundatur Veneri Idaliae…

Aeneas’ foundation of Segesta anchors the link between the city and Rome, which in turn highlights the achievement of Augustus’ ‘unification’ of Sicily and Rome and the peace that followed. Indeed, the foundation of Segesta by Virgil is a much more benign construction of

Roman imperialism than those seen in Cicero and Diodorus. This positive retelling of Augustan resettlement in the early 20s, symbolically anticipating that of Rome and Lavinium, reveals much about Virgil’s authorial intention, in a discourse where Cicero is forced to avoid discussion of the

Sicilian northwest due to Verres’ influence over the Erycinian sanctuary, and Diodorus promoted the founding of the region by Eryx in protest against the Roman-Trojan narrative.482

Regardless of whether Rome instigated the use of ancestral rhetoric or adopted it, by the end of the third century, Rome had readily accepted the discourse of Trojan ancestry as a powerful

481 Verg. Aen. 5.750-60. 482 Galinsky 1968: 169; Cairns 1989: 118; Serrati 2000a: 113; Stone 2002: 146-7. 135 political tool. The installation of Venus Erycina atop the Capitoline beside Jupiter in 217-216, an

‘unmistakeable signal that she represented the national heritage’, the oracular warning of Cannae from the seer Marcius, revealed after the fact in 212, which refers to Romans as descendants of

Troy, and the introduction of the cult of Magna Mater from Mt. Ida (the birthplace of Aeneas) to the city in 205 make this public identification and overt sanction by the state clear.483 Like the

Western Greeks and Latins before them, Rome utilized the existing discourse of Trojan ancestry to engage in and associate itself with the greater Hellenistic Mediterranean, before taking advantage of this association to support its image as rightful ruler off the back of its third century conquests. Scholarship notes a decrease in allusions to Trojan heritage from the second century, owing to a decreased need by Rome to assert its place in the Hellenistic world – its military conquests and socio-political impact in the Hellenistic world now spoke for themselves.484 With the resurgence of ancestral heritage discourse in the first century, Virgil takes advantage of the

Trojan tradition in Sicily, and the island province’s relationship with Rome, to forward his construction of Augustus as pius. The reclaiming of pietas from Sextus, for the betterment of

Augustus, is ultimately central to Virgil’s intentions, as he wishes to promote among his readers the stability and social cohesion that the pax Augusta brings to Rome.485

Book Five ends with Aeneas finally ready to leave Sicily and found Rome, though not before one last aspect of Sextus is reclaimed for the betterment of Augustus: Neptune. Before the Trojans depart, Aeneas gives the same offering of blood and wine that would ruin Octavian’s fleet in 37.486

483 Livy 25.12.1-10; Serv. Praef. 1.720; Galinsky 1969: 189; Gruen 1992: 46-8, 229; Beard, North and Price 1998: 1.197-8. 484 Gruen 1992: 50. 485 Powell 2008: 18, 53-5, 64. Cf. Cornwell 2017: 199. 486 Verg. Aen. 774-6. 136

Venus, on Aeneas’ behalf, asks Neptune to deliver the surviving Trojans safely to Italy, to which

Neptune replies, ‘In safety, as you pray, shall he reach the haven of Avernus.’487 The invocation of Avernus is a powerful one, and perhaps the most explicit in all of Book Five. Avernus was constructed by Agrippa in the Bay of Naples specifically for the war, and the monumental earthworks undertaken to achieve such a feat did not go unnoticed, or unappreciated. Virgil himself was familiar with Avernus, having observed Agrippa marshalling a navy against Sextus Pompeius at Avernus.488 Beyond the narrative reasons for katabasis in Book Six, the chief reason for Aeneas to go from the north-west of Sicily to Cumae, overlooking Avernus, is to link physically the two key locales in the war against Pompeius: the naval battle that defeated Pompeius off the coast of

Sicily in 36, and the marshalling of the fleet off the coast of Cumae.489 Avernus, and the conquests that stem from that port, was the avenue through which Octavian conquered Sextus, and subsequently allowed the restitution of the physical, psychological, and political damage the

Pompeian had done to him. Sicily, pietas, and finally, Neptune, are all reclaimed through the

Aeneid, and as Octavian’s dealings with Sextus end at Avernus, so too does Aeneas’ Sicilian journey.490 The Trojans depart Sicily, and, through the events of Book Five, the ritual uniting of

Sicily and Rome is complete. The island is no longer contested, but settled and unified.

Conclusion

This chapter has shown that Virgil’s constructions of Sicily and its landscapes are a reaction to the author’s own historical and political context. The contrasting dual constructions of Sicily in

487 Verg. Aen. 5.813. 488 Verg. G. 2.161-4; Welch 2012: 269-71; Anderson and Dix 2013: 11. 489 Anderson and Dix 2013: 12. 490 Verg. Aen. 5.813. 137 the Aeneid as dangerous and dark in Book Three and welcoming and joyful in Book Five are intended to reflect the state Sicily brought upon Rome before and after the Battle of Naulochus in

36, and parallel Sicily’s pre-Roman history. Naulochus sealed the fate of Sextus Pompeius’ revolt against Octavian Caesar, placing the young Caesar in firm control of the Western Mediterranean.

The contemporary climate at Rome while Virgil was writing the Aeneid in the 20s was an uncertain and anxious one, frequently presented with moments where the famines and instability of the civil wars threatened once again to plunge the city into turmoil. The Sicily of Book Three, with its dangerous shores and hostes-filled landscape, intends to reflect this reality and these anxieties, presenting its audience with a view of Sicily out of the control of Rome. Allusions to the Punic

Wars serve to enhance this construction, and draw parallels between the Sicilian monstra, the

Carthaginians, and Sextus – the three hostes whom Virgil wishes his audience to conflate.

Historically, it is only through defeating these opponents that Sicily was to be settled by Rome, and so Book Four’s Carthaginian episode separates the two Sicilian interludes. Having ‘defeated’

Carthage, Aeneas returns to the welcoming Sicily of Book Five. Now amenable to a Trojan presence, Virgil utilises the long-established Trojan heritage of the Sicilian northwest to redeem and apologise for Octavian’s impious behaviours, recovering Neptune, pietas, and ultimately

Sicily itself from their previously Pompeian associations. Ultimately, the eye-catching transformation of Sicilian space in the Aeneid was intended to promote the security of pax and the public image of Augustus, and remind Virgil’s contemporary audience that it was Augustus’ actions in 36 that lifted the food shortages and anxieties over land ownership. No matter how bad it gets, Virgil assures his readers, Augustus will restore peace to Rome.

138

Conclusion

Sicily may have been under total Roman control by the end of the third century, but it maintained a contested and unsettled pre-Roman image, in one form or another, for another two hundred years.

After centuries of international powers vying for control of Sicily, Rome’s victory over Carthage in the First Punic War and the absorption of the kingdom of Syracuse in 212 gave the Republic direct control of all the island’s fertile agricultural lands. Now the bread-basket of the growing empire, tasked with feeding the people of Rome and her armies, the influx of agricultural infrastructure and slave labour into Sicily led to the slave revolts of the second century, and made the island ripe for provincial mismanagement by avaricious governors. By the end of the Republic, the province was widely recognised as a key political and strategic location. It served as the stronghold of Sextus Pompeius from 44/3, and the ensuing war between Sextus and Octavian once more brought large-scale conflict to the island, paralleling Sicily’s pre-Roman history. This thesis has argued that Sicily’s appearance in first century literature reflects the ongoing unrest on the island and at Rome, constructed as a ‘contested space’ across multiple genres. This construction was used by authors, such as Cicero, Diodorus Siculus, and Virgil, alternatively to engage with, reinforce, or challenge major contemporary discourses that concerned them, such as Roman imperialism, the impact of civil war, and food security. Thus, I conclude that the status of Sicily and its landscape, and its close relationship with Rome, was used as a topos in first century

Republican literature to emphasise a given danger to Rome, in turn commenting on and/or intervening in the discourses of Roman imperialism, civil unrest, and food security. Across all three case studies presented above, the island province was not presented as the mere location of events, but as symptomatic of the stability of the Roman state and emblematic of its burgeoning 139

Empire, revealing contemporary anxieties about Roman rule held by Romans and provincials alike.

Cicero understood this relationship when he took to the stand against Verres in 70. At the centre of his invective he placed the contrast between Verres’ immoral behaviour and the virtuous, down-trodden Sicilians, emphasising the impact Verres’ actions had on the stability of Rome.

Already a powerful argument from morality, Cicero supported his construction of the Sicilians by presenting them as irrevocably intertwined with the landscape they inhabited and worked. Thus, when Verres extorted money from the farming communities, or stole works of art from local temples, he was not just committing a crime against Sicilians, but against the security of Rome itself. The Sicily that Cicero constructed for his audience is one that was never intended to be an accurate description of a geographic reality, nor was it in support of a resistance narrative to Roman imperialism. Rather, it reflects his audiences’ hopes for the case – that Verres’ conviction would restore legitimacy to the senatorial order and secure the Sicilian grain imports that fed Rome. As befits the text’s purpose as legal invective, Cicero constructs the post-Verrine agricultural landscape as agri deserti, linking the illegal and immoral actions of Verres with the wilting of crops. The theft of art, a relatively benign crime, is transformed into the return of Pluto to Sicily, ready once more to carry off the island’s fertile presence. Through his actions in Syracuse and

Messana, Verres was shown to be little more than an effeminate Greek tyrant, wholly incapable of upholding Roman law or protecting the interests of the state from piracy. Through his construction of Sicily as contested space, Cicero demonstrates to both his audiences the very real danger Verres’ actions present to Rome – under his rule, the island has been returned to its pre-Roman state.

Equally interested in the parallels between contemporary and pre-Roman Sicily, though for a very different purpose, Diodorus Siculus adopts the construction of Sicily as contested space in 140 the Bibliotheke Historika to extol his homeland at a time when its future was uncertain and critique what he believes to be the failings of contemporary Roman rule. This approach owes much to his identity as a Sicilian Greek at Rome and contemporary of the Triumviral period. A rare provincial voice in the Late Republic, Diodorus wrote down to the 30s, when the island was the centre of conflict between Sextus Pompeius and Octavian. In the face of this uncertainty, and as befits his literary goal of writing a work of universal history, Diodorus used the Sicilian mythological and historical narratives he compiled to justify the centrality of Sicily in his history and its importance in his own day. In noting the parallels that a contested Sicily invited, Diodorus pointed subtle barbs at the immoral behaviour of the Roman imperial state, notorious in the first century for its mistreatment of its provincial subjects. Diodorus writes in the belief that Rome owed its success as an imperial state to the economic, military, and social benefits Sicily granted, and that it had long since squandered this gift. His critique is a subtle one (appreciatively so, considering the contemporary power of Octavian-Augustus), but is eminently revealing of the contemporary provincial attitude towards Roman imperialism. This stance informs Diodorus’ constructions of myth and space in the Bibliotheke, presenting his audience with a Sicily that is contested because of the actions of contemporary individuals who do not fit his mould of a proper ruler.

Sicily as contested space comes to the fore in Virgil’s Aeneid, employed as a reaction to the poet’s historical and political context, in support of the Augustan redefining of the Roman imperialism discourse. In the wake of decades of civil war, Virgil’s contemporary political climate of the 20s was an anxious one, and many were uncertain whether the apparent peace that followed the defeats of Sextus Pompeius in 36 and Marc Antony in 31 by Octavian would hold, or whether the state would once more be plunged into chaos. The contrasting dual constructions of Sicily in the Aeneid are a response to this unease. The Sicily of Book Three is dangerous, dark, and inhabited 141 by hostes, the very pinnacle of pre-Roman Sicilian contested space – an intentional parallel to the

Sicily that existed before Roman rule and the Sicily held by Sextus from 44/3-36. In contrast, the welcoming fields of Book Five reflect the state of Sicily after it has been freed from the hostes of

Rome, the monsters, Carthaginians, and Pompeians – three enemies of the gens Julia and Rome whom Virgil wishes his audience to conflate. This eye-catching transformation of Sicilian space, from contested to settled, from pre-Roman to post-Augustan, promoted the security of the pax

Augusta and the return of Roman food security to the city after Octavian’s victory at the Battle of

Naulochus in 36. Virgil took the contested space paradigm of Sicily and resolved the matter, firmly placing the continued security of the Roman state in Augustus’ hands, re-affirming the reality of the uncontested Sicily that had been pushed by Augustus since 36.

As the definition and boundaries of imperium changed under Augustus, so too did the discourse around Sicily and Roman imperialism. Power was no longer expressed by Rome’s control over specific territories (such as Sicily, the conquested territory par excellence) but by the pax terra marique of the princeps. Following the annexation of Egypt in 30 and the establishment of the Principate, Sicily became a backwater of the Empire. The Augustan colonies on the east coast of the island were fully inaugurated by 21, and thereafter the island’s focus was turned solely towards Italy. Sicily remained an important production centre of grain and other goods throughout the Empire, though it never regained the political, cultural, and military power it held under the

Republic. Over two hundred years after its annexation, Sicily was finally perceived by the Roman people as uncontested, no longer symptomatic of Roman anxieties, and an unchallenged emblem of Empire.

142

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