Juvenal's Satirical Mechanics by Timothy Michael Haase BA
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Watching the World Unravel: Juvenal’s Satirical Mechanics By Timothy Michael Haase B.A., Fordham University, 2005 Dissertation Submitted in partial fulfillment for the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Classics at Brown University PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND MAY 2013 © Copyright 2013 by Timothy M. Haase This dissertation by Timothy Haase is accepted in its present form by the Department of Classics as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date John Bodel, Advisor Recommended to the Graduate Council Date Joseph Reed, Reader Date Kirk Freudenburg, Reader Approved by the Graduate Council Date Peter M. Weber, Dean of the Graduate School iii CURRICULUM VITAE Timothy M. Haase was born on June 3, 1983 in Metairie, Louisiana, USA. He first began Latin at the age of 13 in his first year at Jesuit High School in New Orleans, LA, starting Greek a year later. He continued his studies of Latin and Greek at Fordham University in Bronx, NY; he excelled there, a member of the highly select Honors Program and elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year (2003-4). He graduated from Fordham in 2005 summa cum laude, in cursu honorum, with a major in Classical Languages and a minor in Classical Civilization, having completed an honors thesis (advised by Harry B. Evans) entitled “Amor and Rape: Sexual Violence in Ovid’s Fasti.” He immediately began his graduate career as a Ph.D. student at Brown University in the fall of 2005, having been awarded a Jukowsky Fellowship upon his admission. During his graduate career, he held several positions of service to his department and the graduate school; in particular, he served, with Lauren Donovan (Ph.D., Brown ’11), as Co-Coordinator of Professional Development for Graduate Students in the Classics Department. He has presented several papers at graduate student and professional conferences, mostly related to the interplay between content and mechanics in Greek and Latin texts. In addition, since 2011 he has been a Visiting Instructor of Classics at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work would simply not exist without the presence of friends, colleagues, and loved ones who have supported me throughout its long gestation period. First and foremost is John Bodel, whose tireless support and encouragement has given me a following wind ever since my arrival in Providence. My work has also become much more rigorous and incisive as a result of the insightful comments of my readers, Jay Reed and Kirk Freudenburg. A final thanks is owed to the entire faculty and staff of the Brown Classics Department, especially those who have helped improve my writing and thought over the years via thoughtful commentary on other projects. A second debt of gratitude is due to all my graduate student colleagues whom it has been my pleasure to befriend and engage with since 2005. I have been blessed to enter as encouraging and fruitful an intellectual atmosphere as the Brown Classics Department. Though it would be impossible to list all those from Classics and affiliated programs who have somehow helped bring this project to fruition through intellectual or emotional support, a few figures deserve to singled out for especial recognition: Lauren Donovan (one could not ask for a better cohort), Leo Landrey, Cynthia Swanson, Mitchell Parks and Scott DiGiulio. One last figure who deserves to be singled out for her assistance in helping me formulate, refine, and express my thought about Juvenal as this project coalesced is Robin McGill; answering her probing questions on our commute together to Wheaton College was a necessary step in defining the boundaries and goals of this dissertation. Gratitude is likewise due to the unstinting support and respect of my parents and the surrogate families that have adopted me since my move to the Northeast 12 years ago (especially the Ciarcias, the Griffins, the Brunos, and the Giulianis). Finally, endless love and thanks are due to my wonderful and caring wife and “executive producer,” Delphina Ciarcia-Haase, without whose patience, selflessness, and devotion this project could never have been realized. v TABLE OF CONTENTS pg. Introduction and Orientations: From “Voice” to “Vision”………..............…....1 A. Will the “real” Juvenal please stand up? .................................................6 B. Orientations: Vision in Ancient Rome………………..........……........... 14 C. Visualized Meaning in Juvenal………………………………….............22 D. What are we looking at? Meaning and Representation in Juvenal’s World………………………………………....................... 30 Chapter 1. A Panopticon of Vice: The Rhetoric of Exposure in Juvenal 2….... 45 A. The Hair Down There………………………………………...................49 B. The Translucent Show: Laronia and Creticus…………………….......... 55 C. Behind Closed Doors………………………………............................... 63 D. Monsters and their Mates: Gracchus on Parade…………………........... 67 E. Bottom Floor: Ancestors and Perverts…………………………..............75 Chapter 2. The Mirage of “Nobility”: Reference and Negotiation in Juvenal 8...78 A. Home is Where the Hatred is…………………………………................82 B. What’s in a Name(d)? ………………………………………..................88 C. Let’s Talk It Out: Rubellius and Ponticus………………………............92 D. Liminality and the Immoral Show of Rome………………………........ 103 E. The History Lesson………………………………………….................. 119 Chapter 3. Laughter and Myopia: the Worldview of Juvenal 10….................... 126 A. Who’s Laughing Now? ……………………………………....................133 B. Have You Heard the News About Sejanus? ……………………............142 C. All the King’s Horses and All the King’ Speeches……………….......... 151 D. …Long After the Thrill of Living is Gone………………………...........168 E. Eye of the Beholder…………………………………………..................187 F. The Answer Behind the Curtain………………………………...............197 Chapter 4. The Devils Inside: Female “Threats” to Roman Satire in Juvenal 6...203 A. She Takes Just Like a Woman… …………………………….................210 B. Ugly on the Inside: Women, Cosmetics, and Deception…………..........223 C. The Bleeding Heart Show……………………………………................ 231 D. You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet………………………………….................247 Conclusion.................................................................................................................255 Appendix: Juvenal and Modern “Self-Consuming” Literature...........................262 Bibliography…………………………………………………..................................271 vi Introduction and Orientations: From “Voice” to “Vision” You walk for days among trees and among stones. Rarely does the eye light upon a thing, and then only when it has recognized that thing as the sign of another thing: a print in the sand indicates the tiger’s passage; a marsh announces a vein of water; the hibiscus flower, the end of winter. All the rest is silent and interchangeable; trees and stones are only what they are. Finally the journey leads to the city of Tamara. You penetrate it along streets thick with signboards jutting from walls. The eye does not see things but images of things that mean other things: pincers point out the tooth-drawer’s house; a tankard, the tavern; halberds, the barracks; scales, the grocer’s. Statues and shields depict lions, dolphins, towers, stars: a sign that something—who knows what?—has as its sign a lion or a dolphin or a tower or a star. Other signals warn of what is forbidden in a given place (to enter the alley with wagons, to urinate behind the kiosk, to fish with your pole from the bridge) and what is allowed (watering zebras, playing bowls, burning relatives’ corpses). From the doors of the temples the gods’ statues are seen, each portrayed with his attributes—the cornucopia, the hour-glass, the medusa—so that the worshiper can recognize them and address his prayers correctly. If a building has no signboard or figure, its very form and the position it occupies in the city’s order suffice to indicate its function: the palace, the prison, the mint, the Pythagorean school, the brothel. The wares, too, which the vendors display on their stalls are valuable not in themselves but as signs of other things: the embroidered headband stands for elegance; the gilded palanquin, power; the volumes of Averroes, learning; the ankle bracelet, voluptuousness. Your gaze scans the streets as if they were written pages: the city says everything you must think, makes you repeat her discourse, and while you believe you are visiting Tamara you are only recording the names with which she defines herself and all her parts. However the city may really be, beneath this thick coating of signs, whatever it may contain or coneal, you leave Tamara without having discovered it. Outside, the land stretches, empty, to the horizon; the sky opens, with speeding clouds. In the shape that chance and wind give the clouds, you are already intent on recognizing figures: a sailing ship, a hand, an elephant. (“Cities and signs. 1.” from Invisible Cities [Calvino 1974: 13-14]) Juvenal was supposed to be the easy Roman satirist. The reader does not have to attempt to stitch together tatters from what was clearly a variegated satiric quilt, as he does for Lucilius. Juvenal likewise seems to lack the self-consciously multi-dimensional irony that defines the work of Horace (hexameter, iambic, and lyric alike) nor is he clouded by the obscuritas and motley imagery that pervade Persius. In the scholarship of 1 the last several decades, Horace remains the detached, ironical teacher;