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Liberalitas in Late Republican and Early Augustan Roman Poetry

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Liberalitas in Late Republican and Early Augustan Roman Poetry LIBERALITAS IN LATE REPUBLICAN AND EARLY AUGUSTAN ROMAN POETRY by Aven McMaster A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Department of Classics, University of Toronto © Copyright by Aven McMaster 2010 Abstract Liberalitas in Late Republican and Early Augustan Roman Poetry by Aven McMaster PhD Thesis, 2010 Department of Classics, University of Toronto Liberalitas forms one of the central frameworks for defining social bonds within Roman society, and was part of how Roman poets constructed the world. This is most explicitly evident in the poets’ references to “patrons” and benefactors, but it extends much further. The poets worked within a broad framework of social conventions and expectations which must be understood in order to see how their poetry uses and responds to the concepts associated with liberalitas. Cicero’s de officiis and Seneca’s de beneficiis are therefore useful, as they offer idealised, prescriptive views of liberalitas in Roman society. Many scholars have investigated the relationships between poets and their patrons, including Peter White, Barbara Gold, James Zetzel, and Phebe Lowell Bowditch. I argue that any true understanding of the role of liberalitas in Roman poetry must also comprehend its importance in other areas. This dissertation focuses on the poetry of Catullus, Horace, Propertius, Tibullus, and Virgil in the Eclogues. The introduction addresses traditional liberalitas as defined by Cicero and Seneca in their works on benefits and duties. Chapter one illustrates how Catullus, Horace, and Tibullus display ideals similar to those of Cicero and Seneca and use the conventions of liberalitas for praising and blaming members of their social groups. Chapter two addresses the problems of status raised by liberalitas and investigates the strategies used by Catullus, Horace, Propertius, and Tibullus to ii mitigate these problems and further their social, literary, and aesthetic aims. Chapter three demonstrates how the love poets used and redefined the terminology and ideology of liberalitas to construct an obligation on the part of their beloveds to reciprocate the gifts given by the poets but reject the gifts given by rival lovers. Finally, Chapter four examines the role of liberalitas in formulating and expressing a poetic program in Virgil’s Eclogues, which points to its function in mediating the connection between ‘real-life’ political and social concerns and the literary preoccupations of Roman poets. The various applications of this concept demonstrated in these four chapters present the study of liberalitas as a useful and productive tool in the investigation of the poetry of this period. iii Acknowledgements With grateful thanks to my infinitely patient supervisor and to all my immensely supportive family, especially my beloved husband Mark. iv Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ........................................................... iv Table of Contents ..............................................................v Introduction ..................................................................1 Chapter 1: Conventions and Expectations ..........................................20 Chapter 2: Redefinition and Rejection .............................................71 Chapter 3: Elegiac Love and the Failure of Liberalitas ...............................140 Chapter 4: Liberalitas and Literary Program .......................................184 Conclusion .................................................................221 Bibliography ................................................................229 v Introduction In Catullus’ poem 29, a condemnation of the unbearable greed, arrogance, and general degeneracy of Mamurra, and his masters Caesar and Pompey, Catullus uses the phrase sinistra liberalitas: eone nomine, imperator unice, fuisti in ultima occidentis insula, ut ista vestra diffututa mentula ducenties comesset aut trecenties? quid est alid sinistra liberalitas? (29.11-15) This is the only use of the term liberalitas in the poetry of Catullus, Horace, Propertius, Tibullus, or Virgil;1 the concept, however, pervades their poetry. Kenneth Quinn sees an ambiguity here, in that the sinistra liberalitas could refer to Mamurra or Caesar: “But is the generosity meant Caesar’s (in letting Mamurra amass such a fortune) or Mamurra’s (in squandering it)?” (Quinn 2007 179). Either reading demonstrates that the application of liberalitas is open to abuse; however, the strong association of Caesar with liberalitas elsewhere2 suggests that the phrase should be linked to him. The phrase is a paradox, of course; liberalitas is a virtue, and so should not admit the characterization of sinistra. As we will see below, Cicero explicitly applies the term liberalitas to morally and socially approved instances of generosity, and uses other words to refer to incorrect or harmful giving. The appearance of this paradox in one of Catullus’ invective poems about Caesar demonstrates that the proper conduct of liberalitas was an 1 The word, of course, does not fit into the dactylic hexameter or the elegiac pentameter. 2 Manning points out Cicero’s repeated linking of the term with Caesar in his speeches and letters: “inter alia we may cite Ad Fam. 1l.9.12 and 18; 4.9.4; 7.5.3; 7.7.2; 7.8.1; 7.10.3; 7.17.2 and 3; 9.13.4; Ad Att. 9.11A.3; Pro Rab. Post. 41; Pro Lig. 6; 23;31; Pro Marcello 16” (76 n.4). Sallust also highlights the quality of generosity in his summing up of Caesar’s character (Cat. 54) and uses liberalitas itself in connection with Caesar elsewhere (Cat. 49.3; 52.11-12). 1 2 important element of the Roman statesman’s behaviour; and it shows us a poet making a judgement about the degree to which an individual has succeeded or failed in the demonstration of this virtue. In particular, Caesar was famous for the related virtues of generosity and clemency, and Catullus’ attack on his generosity is therefore especially pointed, bringing into question one of the fundamental ways that Caesar had built up a network of friends, allies, and dependants. This dissertation will examine the ways in which liberalitas and its related concepts function in the poetry of the late Republic and early Augustan period. This examination casts new light on individual poems from this period, and continues the ongoing expansion of our understanding of the interaction of poets with the larger Roman community of which they formed a part.3 All poets rely upon, and exploit, both the cultural and the literary expectations of their audience.4 In this study, I am interested in the ways in which poets could, and did, exploit the cultural expectations surrounding liberalitas. Poetic negotiations of the concept of liberalitas are situated within the wider context of Roman society. In order to understand fully how each poet employs and manipulates the concept, it is therefore necessary to understand contemporary Roman views on the subject: what is liberalitas? How, why, and by whom should it be exercised, and what concerns surround it? What, in other words, was the ideal expression of liberalitas in late Republican Rome? An additional question, of course, is how actual historical instances of liberalitas compared to this 3 Ian M. Le M. Du Quesnay (1981) clearly states the necessity of such understanding: “A reader can properly make sense of a poem only if he is as familiar with [the] paralinguistic codes as with the rules and conventions of the language in which it is written” (30). 4 Here again I am indebted to Du Quesnay’s formulation of this concept (though he is particularly concerned with generic conventions in the Eclogues): “Vergil, like any other speaker or writer, is able to exploit the expectations of his audience about what sort of things may be appropriately said in such circumstances in order to communicate economically with them and, to some extent, he relies upon their sharing with him a common framework of expectations in order to communicate at all” (1981 53). 3 ideal. This is harder to recover, since it is obscured by the generally prescriptive nature of the texts discussing such interactions, but it is instructive to compare the idealised prescriptive accounts of liberalitas with some of the individualised descriptions of particular instances. In this introduction I will first give a basic working definition of liberalitas and a brief anthropological background for the concepts of gift-exchange and generosity; I will then attempt to establish one set of contemporary standards against which the poetry of the late Republic and early Augustan period can be viewed, using Cicero and Seneca to represent the philosophical ideals of the elite Roman society of the period.5 The word liberalitas is derived from liberalis, which in origin meant simply “of or relating to free men,” and then by extension “worthy or typical of a free man” (OLD s.v. liberalitas 1, 2). This meaning is never completely lost, and can be exploited or developed by authors when desired, both in this form and in words derived from it.6 However, it developed the further, related meaning of “Free in giving, munificent, generous” (s.v. 5).7 It is this sense that leads to the primary meanings of liberalitas: “Generosity, nobility, kindliness, magnanimity” and “Munificence, open-handedness, liberality” (s.v. 1, 2). The word can also describe the actions involved in such generosity: “An instance of generosity, a gift, donation,
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