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The Other Greeks: Metaphors and Ironies of Hellenism in Livy’S Fourth Decade

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The Other Greeks: Metaphors and Ironies of Hellenism in Livy’S Fourth Decade THE OTHER GREEKS: METAPHORS AND IRONIES OF HELLENISM IN LIVY’S FOURTH DECADE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University By Douglas S. Freeble * * * * The Ohio State University 2004 Dissertation Committee: Professor Erik Gunderson, Adviser Approved by Professor Kirk Freudenburg, Co-Adviser ___________________________ Professor Sarah Iles Johnston Adviser Greek and Latin Graduate Program Copyright by Douglas Freeble 2004 ABSTRACT Already in the Praefatio of Livy’s work the metaphor of the importation of foreign influence is apparent. Livy chooses the annalistic narrative style as the most Roman form possible and a self -construction as an author who valorizes traditional Roman values. These authorial decisions on the modality of the narrative are intimately linked to tropology and the manufacturing of the metaphors and ironies that frame Livy’s text in books 31-45. Roman control in Thessaly is asserted by manufacturing communities in its image. These collapse miserably when the guiding Roman metaphors are questioned. The failure of Roman institutions is depicted as evidence of the restless nature of the Thessalians. A representative image of Thessaly is given in the character of Theoxena, a Thessalian exile who kills herself at a festival of Aeneas. Her story allows Romans to form an emotional bond with the Thessalians, although it maintains their essential alterity. The Galatian campaign of Manlius Vulso shows the dangers of Rome’s encounter with Hellenism. The Galatians are presented as Gallic-Greek hybrids who are no longer the great Gallic warriors of the past. Manlius defeats them, but the anecdotes of extortion and rape show that the Roman general is corrupted by his encounter with Asia. In the end, his methods are indistinguishable from those of his Galatian opponents. These themes are ii emphasized in the speech of the Commissioners against Manlius’ request for a triumph. The Bacchanalia shows Hellenism as a contamination that spreads through Italy and infects Rome. Throughout the narrative, Hellenism is depicted as a virus that threatens Rome. Its source is an ignoble Greek, and it eventually infects the Roman nobles. Eventually the consul reasserts Roman control in Italy through a bloody purge. The story shows the close connection of home and abroad or city and empire. Similar themes of infectious Hellenism are described in the story of Cato’s censorship and the discovery of Numa’s books on the Janiculum. These metaphors of Hellenism as an infectious hybridity culminate in the Macedonian ironies of book 40. The description of Perseus and Demetrius involves an implicit contrast to the rivalry of Romulus and Remus. Their antagonism is placed in a ritual context that invites comparison to Roman customs. The story conveys differences between Rome and Macedon, as if to dissolve the hybridities that threaten Roman purity. These are particularly shown as a threat to empire in the career of Marcus Philippus, whose deceptive foreign policy is depicted as embodying Hellenistic rather than Roman values. This reading shows the unity of Livy’s narrative of the Macedonian wars. Its theoretical use is shown in an examination of a Livy’s story about a lunar eclipse before the battle of Pydna and the defeat of Macedonia. iii Dedicated to Josephine, Julia and Gina iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank the members of my dissertation committee, Erik Gunderson, Kirk Freudenburg and Sarah Iles Johnston for their intellectual support. I thank David Hahm and Victoria Wohl for their encouragement. I benefited greatly from the criticisms of Will Batstone and the musings of Andras Eder. I am grateful to Dave Johnson and Paul Brown for the resolution of serious computer woes. I also wish to thank Tess for her patience. v VITA December 10, 1965………………………Born- Willoughby, Ohio 1996………………………………………B.A. Classical and Medieval Studies, Cleveland State University 1998………………………………………M.A. Classics, The Ohio State University 1996-present………………………………Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University Major Field: Greek and Latin vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………ii Dedication………………………………………………………………………………v Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………………..vi Vita………………………………………………………………………………………vii Chapters: 1. Antique Soul: Livy’s Home Remedies……………………………………..1 2. Thessaly Defined…………………………………………………………….33 3. Manlius in Galatia: A Narrative of Hybridity……………………………….79 4. Contaminating Rome: The Bacchanalia…………………………………..123 5. Macedonian Ironies………………………………………………………….168 6. After Words: The Eclipse……………………………………………………207 Bibliography………………………………...........…………………………………..215 vii CHAPTER 1 ANTIQUE SOUL: LIVY’S HOME REMEDIES Now I imagine myself like those wading in the shallow water near the shore who are drawn into the sea, since howsoever much I shuffle forth, I am carried into a deeper depth and even as the deep sea is crossed the work almost seems to grow, although it seemed to be diminishing when I had completed the first parts.1 When Livy turned from the theme of the second Punic War to the Second and Third Macedonian Wars at the beginning of his thirty-first book, he visualized the narrative as a sea spread before him. He, as the writer, was wading into this sea. He uses the image as a metaphor for the expansion of his narrative, which expanded in detail as it progressed towards his own time, the era that is of the most interest to Livy’s prospective reader, as he himself acknowledges in his preface.2 This narrative expansion is a result not only of its movement towards more recent events, but its mimesis of imperium itself in the course of narrating it. As the empire grows, Livy’s narrative slows and grows in detail. The image of the sea also mimes the coming narrative- Rome itself must cross a sea and establish its imperium in Greek lands. Livy’s narration of the Macedonian wars 131.1.5: Iam provideo animo, velut qui proximis litori vadis inducti mare pedibus ingrediuntur, quidquid progredior, in vastiorem me altitudinem ac velut profundum invehi et crescere paene opus, quod prima quaequae perficiendo minui videbatur. 2 Praef. 4: et legentium plerisque haud dubito quin primae origiines proximaque originibus minus praebitura voluptasis sint, festinantibus ad haec nova, quibus iam pridem praevalentis populi vires se ipsae conficiunt. 1 terminates in the organization of northern Greece into four units. Roman administrative space is imposed on Macedonia. Yet on a more mythic level, the sea suggests unformed matter, or matter lacking content. Livy’s goal is to provide form to the content of this stage of Roman imperium. This is accomplished by the enframing rhetoric of Livy’s tropes, especially the synecdoche of the annalistic method, which shows human experience as the Roman experience.3 Nor are the Others, the marginal and the defeated Greeks, effectively Romanized (or Hellenized) in a comfortable multi- ethnic humanitas, but they retain their difference in the domination of Roman discourse. Their difference becomes their essential attribute in Livy’s tropes. The hybridity of the other represents a dangerous contagion, which is controlled by the inscription of the text in a purifying ritual similar to that of the recording of prodigies by the pontifex maximus, Livy’s ultimate predecessor and model (the rest of the annalists are a mere turba scriptorum). Livy’s sea in a sense is history, which must be rendered as a Roman narrative. The sea is unformed matter, a place of dangerous mixing, clear and filthy. Therefore the sea is the tomb of the hermaphroditic births recorded by Livy in the prodigy lists, which precede the second Macedonian wars. In Livy’s list of unfavorable prodigies, he writes: There were seen all manner of foul and deformed things, the alien offspring of nature gone astray. Loathed above all were the hermaphrodites (abominati semimares) and orders were immediately given that they be thrown into the sea, just as recently 3 That is, contra Galinsky (1996) 280: “He viewed the Roman experience in terms of the human experience” But the annalist in fact views human experience in terms of the Roman experience. 2 when Gaius Claudius and Marcus Livius were consuls a similar ominous birth was banished.4 Like Livy, here we may find a precedent as well as an exemplum. The hybrid as an error of nature is banished to the sea (repeatedly), the receptacle of hybridity whose content itself is formless. Plato and Cicero connected the sea “with moral decline and racial mixture”.5 By crossing this sea Livy masters- and contains- the dangerous hybridities, which threaten his construction of Roman identity. Yet Livy’s cosmogonic act is compromised by irony, perhaps even loathing. The author shows an odd reluctance to begin his narrative, as he wades into the water, waving or drowning. He quickly resolves this irony by a comparison of the Greek conquests to the Punic wars, thus resolving both conflicts in a synecdoche of Roman history, itself understood as gloria, the metonymy that replaces destiny for agent.6 A similar use of the metonymy is title for man, a technique used by Cato in his Origines. The office has replaced the man whose entire being is now authoritative, even though the metonymy has erased the individual personality. Furthermore, this anonymous marking may be transformed into epiphany by the 4 31.12.5-10: Foeda omnia et deformia errantisque in alienos fetus naturae visa: ante omnia abominati semimares iussique in mare extemplo deportari, sicut proxime C. Claudio M. Livio consulibus deportatus similis prodigii fetus erat. 5 The conception of the sea as a receptacle of the hybrid is related to the pouring of ritual remnants and waste into a body of water. A related aspect is the function of water as a dividing medium, “a religious notion which developed into a juridical concept”. Gabba (1981) 57, also notes that Plato and Cicero (Laws 705a; Rep.
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