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The Rhetoric of Corruption in Late Antiquity

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The Rhetoric of Corruption in Late Antiquity UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE The Rhetoric of Corruption in Late Antiquity A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Classics by Tim W. Watson June 2010 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Michele R. Salzman, Chairperson Dr. Harold A. Drake Dr. Thomas N. Sizgorich Copyright by Tim W. Watson 2010 The Dissertation of Tim W. Watson is approved: ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In accordance with that filial piety so central to the epistolary persona of Q. Aurelius Symmachus, I would like to thank first and foremost my parents, Lee and Virginia Watson, without whom there would be quite literally nothing, followed closely by my grandmother, Virginia Galbraith, whose support both emotionally and financially has been invaluable. Within the academy, my greatest debt is naturally to my advisor, Michele Salzman, a doctissima patrona of infinite patience and firm guidance, to whom I came with the mind of a child and departed with the intellect of an adult. Hal Drake I owe for his kind words, his critical eye, and his welcome humor. In Tom Sizgorich I found a friend and colleague whose friendship did not diminish even after he assumed his additional role as mentor. Outside the field, I owe a special debt to Dale Kent, who ushered me through my beginning quarter of graduate school with great encouragement and first stirred my fascination with patronage. Lastly, I would like to express my gratitude to the two organizations who have funded the years of my study, the Department of History at the University of California, Riverside and the Department of Classics at the University of California, Irvine. Special thanks are also due to the University of California Multi-Campus Research Group in Late Antiquity whose Intercampus Student Exchange program enabled me to participate in a course at the University of California, Santa Barbara. iv ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Rhetoric of Corruption in Late Antiquity by Tim W. Watson Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in Classics University of California, Riverside, June 2010 Dr. Michele R. Salzman, Chairperson Faced with the ubiquitous presence of immorality and corruption in the written sources of the late Roman empire, modern scholars have often viewed such accounts as direct reflections of conditions during this period. The historian Ramsay MacMullen, for example, attributes to the fourth-century expansion of the imperial bureaucracy the spread of an ethos of venality and the displacement of aristocratic networks of patronage by the indiscriminate exchange of favors for money. Christopher Kelly, on the other hand, sees such descriptions as merely a rhetorical manifestation of elite anxieties over their loss of influence in an increasingly heterogeneous society. I argue that neither of these views is wholly correct. Instead, the rhetoric of corruption served the traditional upper classes of the empire as a tool of fashioning self and group identity. This can be seen in the writings of three contemporary elite authors, the conservative Roman senator, Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, Antioch’s official teacher of rhetoric, Libanius, and the v bishop of Constantinople, Gregory of Nazianzus. In his letters and speeches, Symmachus focuses primarily on two classical vices, corrupt solicitation and luxury, in order to re- establish the boundaries of proper senatorial conduct. In constructing corruption in this manner, he demonstrates the appropriate mixture of business (negotium) and leisure (otium) in a senator’s life, and clarifies what constitutes a dignified otium. Libanius uses the language and imagery of corruption as a means of reinforcing the traditional connection between education and virtue. The self-control developed specifically in the labors of rhetorical training curbed the inclination to turn public office into a source of personal profit. Lastly, Gregory of Nazianzus interweaves Christian imagery and biblical references into classical depictions of corruption and vice in order to fashion the ideal bishop as a philosopher and thereby grant special distinction to the hierarchy of the Christian church. Yet, in spite of their differences, central to the rhetorical strategy of all three authors is a conception of nobility that privileged virtue over wealth and birth. Ultimately, then, the rhetoric of corruption served as a means of assimilation in an era of unprecedented social mobility. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements iv Abstract of the Dissertation v Introduction: Towards a Rhetoric of Corruption 1 Chapter 1: The Bounds of Ambition: 16 Symmachus and the Aristocracy of Service Chapter 2: The Business of Leisure: 68 Symmachus and the Aristocracy of Virtue Chapter 3: The Feebleness of the Logoi: 109 Corruption and Paideia in the Writings of Libanius Chapter 4: Gold, God, and Envy: 164 Gregory of Nazianzus and the Corruption of the True Philosophical Life Conclusion: The Rhetorics of Corruption 215 Bibliography 226 vii Introduction Towards a Rhetoric of Corruption Corruption permeates the ancient sources, both Greek and Roman, poetry and prose. In classical Athens, the Peloponnesian War and the corresponding accumulation of wealth and proliferation of στάσις provoked some to reflect on the “disintegration and degeneration” not only of the political system of democracy but also of the institution of language itself.1 During the succeeding century, prominent politicians frequently accused their opponents of bribery in the law courts and endured allegations of venality in the performances of the comic poets.2 Rome, too, was witness to vivid descriptions of systemic and individual corruption. There was a consensus among Roman moralists that the wealth initially derived from imperial expansion in the second century BCE infected the Republic with ambition and greed, rendering the senate and people of Rome susceptible to bribery, exposing the conquered provinces to extortion, and ultimately resulting in violence and civil war.3 During the principate, the educated elite of the Roman empire viewed the threat posed by venality as no less potent, focusing their anxiety in the figure of the emperor.4 Greed and luxury became attributes of the 1 See Kallet 2001 on Thucydides and Euben 1986 on Euripides’ Orestes (quote from 224). 2 Strauss 1985 and Taylor 2001a and b. 3 Lintott 1990. 4 Switala 1979. 1 rhetorical bad emperor, who spread his personal corruption through his courtiers to the city of Rome and the empire as a whole. Indeed, many of the sources of the late Roman empire, both Greek and Latin, as well as pagan and Christian, depict the culmination of this process, describing a state that had completely succumbed to the temptation of venality from its two-fold core, the imperial court and Roman senate, to the provincial periphery.5 Modern scholars, faced with the ubiquitous presence of immorality and corruption in the sources, have been inclined to view such accounts as descriptions of real behavior. The frequency of accusations of venality in Athens meant that the Athenians were indeed venal, and the laments of the Roman moralists are conclusive evidence of widespread decadence in ancient Rome. The most significant proponent of this interpretation in late antique studies is Ramsay MacMullen. Although his impressive Corruption and the Decline of Rome has now passed the twentieth year since its publication, MacMullen has reiterated his adherence to this earlier thesis in a recent discussion of the effectiveness of Roman government under the emperors.6 Thus, he continues to maintain the existence of a shift from the responsible exercise of influence by the Roman elite on behalf of friends and dependents during the early empire to the indiscriminate exchange of favors for money under the later Roman empire of the fourth and fifth centuries. MacMullen sees the reasons for the increasing dominance of this “ethos of corruption” in the late empire 5 MacMullen 1988. 6 MacMullen 2006. MacMullen’s thesis has recently been introduced to a much wider audience through Murphy 2007: 91 – 120. 2 as twofold: first, the expansion of the size and influence of the Roman state during and after the third century, and second, the occupation of many of these newly-created governmental posts by common soldiers and freedmen. Such practices as bribery and extortion had always existed among the “slaves, freedmen, supply sergeants, and petty accountants” of the empire, he argues, but only in the Roman imperial government of the fourth and fifth centuries do such individuals occupy positions of substantial authority.7 The resulting treatment of public and private power as sources of profit drastically reduced the efficiency, and therefore the effectiveness, of the Roman state in both the administration and the defense of its empire. Although MacMullen’s general exploration of the exercise of power in the Roman empire is instructive and has marshaled behind it the author’s vast and impressive command of the primary source material, his specific thesis has provoked considerable scholarly criticism over the last two decades. Recent scholarship has urged caution when employing such a morally laden term as “corruption” and emphasized the necessity of examining this theme within its proper cultural and historical contexts.8 Indeed, in his study of late
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