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Alice König: ‘Reading Frontinus in Pliny Epistles 5.1’ Working Papers on Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.21 (17/6/14)

Reading Frontinus in Pliny Epistles 5.1 Alice König (St Andrews), 17/06/2014

5.1 celebrates a legacy Pliny has just received, primarily so that he can reflect upon an inheritance dispute connected with it in which he once arbitrated (one Asudius Curianus had been disinherited by his mother, in favour of Pliny among others, and had asked Pliny to help him reclaim at least some of the money). In narrating the story Pliny makes much of his own integrity, transparency, sense of justice and disinterestedness: ‘I replied that it was not in my nature to do one thing in public and another in private’ (palam… secreto); ‘besides, it was not honourable – honestum – to give money to a rich and childless man’; it would only be right to waive his claim (he says he told Curianus) if he could be sure that Curianus had been disinherited inique (‘unjustly’). As a result, Curianus persuaded Pliny to hold a formal inquiry, whose integrity Pliny was again careful to insist upon (he reminded Curianus that he would not hesitate to decide in favour of his mother, if his faithful opinion – his fides – led him to that conclusion); and we hear Curianus affirming his trust in Pliny’s sense of fairness (‘ut voles’ ait, ‘voles enim quod aequissimum’). Pliny adds that he invited (or ‘summoned’ – adhibui) a couple of elder statesmen, Corellius Rufus and Frontinus, to the deliberation, to act as counsellors and fellow judges; and his description of them as ‘two of the most admired men in the state at the time’ (duos quos tunc civitas nostra spectatissimos habuit) further enhances the authority of his inquiry.

These two figures also play a wider role in the letter beyond the immediate context of the inquiry, however, in so far as they contribute to Pliny’s broader characterisation of himself and, especially, to the relationship he is keen to establish between himself and the period in which the inheritance dispute took place – which becomes the ultimate focus of this letter. As it turned out, the inquiry that Pliny headed did find against Curianus – so the latter took the case to court; and in his discussion of that development Pliny makes clear the date and political context of these events. He depicts his coheirs as anxious suddenly to settle out of court, ‘not out of any lack of confidence in the case itself, but through fear of the times’, metu temporum, a phrase that immediately transports us to Domitianic (and offers a stark contrast with the atmosphere of benevolent honesty and fairness that pervades Pliny’s description of his own inquiry). ‘They feared what they had seen happen to many others, that they would not escape from the Centumviral Court without a criminal case against them.’ Reference to Gratilla and Rusticus (whose respective exile and execution Pliny bemoans in Epistle 3.11) underlines the seriousness of the trouble they foresee and date the episode firmly to the latter, most oppressive phase of ’s reign – to the height of what survivors would look back on as his persecution of the elite. But even in this atmosphere of menace and anxiety, Pliny’s authority, sense of justice and humanity shone out – and prevailed. For (he tells us) he effected a mutually satisfactory, even generous out-of-court settlement, thus bypassing and triumphing over the potential corruption and danger of the Domitianic court system.

The letter ends with Pliny’s celebration not just of the legacy he subsequently received from a grateful Curianus but of the boost the whole business has given to his reputation – his fama. And in case we are in any doubt, Pliny identifies explicitly

1 Alice König: ‘Reading Frontinus in Pliny Epistles 5.1’ Working Papers on Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.21 (17/6/14) which aspect of his character it has foregrounded (with an appropriate flash of modesty along the way): his behaviour, he suggests, was notable for being antiquus – ‘traditional’, ‘old-fashioned’, the kind of behaviour characteristic of men in the good old days. As he closes his account, in other words, Pliny makes it clearer than ever that he belongs to or represents a different, purer, more principled age from the one in which this inheritance dispute took place; in fact, he emerges (rather as Agricola does in ’ biography1) as both old-fashioned and ahead of his time, since the emphasis he places earlier in the letter on transparency and justice chimes with some specifically Nervan and Trajanic rhetoric. 5.1 is one of several letters, in other words, in which Pliny has a slight brush with Domitianic danger (in this case, only the slightest of brushes, in fact, since he was not included on the charge that Curianus tried to bring to court) but also attempts to distance himself from Domitian’s reign.

Epistle 5.1, then, is not simply about fama, but specifically about the fama that one had under – or emerges with after – Domitian (or that one would like others to think one had and now has, at any rate). And Pliny does not assert his exemplarity in a vacuum but in relation to other well-established paradigms: in particular, as I have noted, to Corellius Rufus and Frontinus, but also (in passing) to Gratilla and Rusticus, who contrast with Corellius and Frontinus in thought-provoking ways. Pliny had identified closely with these unfortunate victims of Domitianic tyranny in Epistle 3.11, even floating the possibility that he might have shared their fate: ‘…I did this [visited a philosopher and helped to pay off his debts] at a time when seven of my friends had been put to death or banished – Senecio, Rusticus and Helvidius were dead, and Mauricus, Gratilla, Arria and Fannia were in exile – so that I stood amidst the flame of thunderbolts dropping all around me, and there were certain clear indications to make me suppose a like end was awaiting me.’2 In fact, as we know, he survived and even thrived under Domitian (despite what he sometimes claims); and that is why, in 5.1, Corellius and Frontinus become the more significant paradigms, with whom Pliny is keen to be seen collaborating. For they (if Pliny is to be believed) were not only highly respected by their fellow citizens (civitas nostra) under Domitian (tunc); they have also appeared earlier in his letter collection (and elsewhere) as admirable post- Domitianic figures, men who made the transition between Domitianic and Trajanic successfully. Epistle 4.8 marks a moment early in ’s , and in it Frontinus features not just as a long-standing supporter of Pliny but also (especially if we bear the publication of his De Aquis in mind) as a specifically Nervo-Trajanic senatorial role-model, a leading light in early Trajanic Rome. And when we first meet Corellius, in Epistle 1.12, he too emerges (just about) as a post-Domitianic exemplar, or – more accurately – as an anti-Domitianic one: Pliny famously tells how he went to visit the ailing Corellius ‘in the time of Domitian’, and found him determined to outlive ‘that robber (isti latroni), if only by a day’ (which he did by some time, in fact, if Epistles 4.17 and 9.13 are anything to go by3). Like Pliny, as he presents himself in Epistle 5.1 (and the eponymous hero of Tactius’ Agricola), Corellius is seen here not fitting with the time in which he lives: a man more at home in a non-Domitianic world.

1 König, A. (2013) ‘Frontinus’ Cameo Role in Tacitus’ Agricola’, CQ 63.1: 361-76. 2 Trans. B. Radice (1969). On this point, see esp. Whitton 2012: 353-5. 3 In the former, we see Corellius praising Pliny to the emperor ; and in the latter, he is clearly still alive in 97 when Pliny decided to pursue his prosecution of Publicius Certus.

2 Alice König: ‘Reading Frontinus in Pliny Epistles 5.1’ Working Papers on Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.21 (17/6/14) In fact, Corellius’ death scene in 1.12 is reminiscent of the way in which Tacitus analysed his father-in-law’s death in the Agricola (who, by contrast, did not outlive Domitian, but died before the worst excesses of his reign).4 His striking description of Domitian as a latro, meanwhile, might recall the only picture that Frontinus paints of the emperor in the De Aquis (118), where he celebrates the fact that, under Nerva, money owed to the treasury that had been finding its way into Domitian’s personal coffers was successfully restored to the state (there are many other things that Corellius might have called Domitian, after all).5 The Corellius and Frontinus who appear in 5.1 are not only fleshed out by their appearances and relationship to Pliny in some of Pliny’s earlier letters, in other words; it is possible that there is some loose triangulation with other texts that contributes to their identity in Pliny’s corpus generally and in 5.1 specifically. There is no clear-cut intertextuality evident in 5.1, but the subtle contrast that emerges between survivors Corellius and Frontinus on the one hand and victims Gratilla and Rusticus on the other may (with the help of Epistles 1.12 and 3.11) bring Tactius’ Agricola back to mind here, setting Pliny’s exploration of his own position under Domitian and his subsequent fama in dialogue with that other seminal discussion of Domitianic and post-Domitianic exemplarity. Moreover, the Agricola’s presentation of Frontinus as a paradigm who had something in common with Agricola himself – but who, of course, survived to reinvent himself under Trajan – may in turn (and with the help of Epistle 4.8) prompt thought of the De Aquis too, in a way that feeds further into Pliny’s engagement with Frontinus in 5.1.6 (In fact, Pliny’s self-serving claim that Frontinus was highly regarded under Domitian may itself be something of an anachronism, a retrospective superimposition of the Frontinus who become so prominent under Nerva and Trajan, thanks in part to the publication of his treatise.7) Corellius’ and Frontinus’ significance for Pliny in 5.1 as paradigmatic survivors of Domitian is potentially mediated, in other words, through a network of other texts that inform and gloss each other.8 The links and overlaps are too nebulous to be characterised as reference or allusion, but arguably they do amount to a degree of literary interaction or intertextuality that adds depth to the letter.

Perhaps what is most interesting about Pliny’s engagement with these exemplars in 5.1, however, is the fact that he does not simply draw on their (textual as well as historical) reputations to craft his own: he is keen, too, to move beyond them (rather

4 Syme 1958: 1.121; Marchesi 2008: 191-7. Whitton 2010 underlines Pliny’s sustained engagement with Tacitus’ Agricola also in Epistles 8.14. 5 It is implied at Aq. 118 that it was Frontinus himself who corrected this unlawful diversion of money. 6 The rhetoric of transparency, integrity, and humanity combined with strict justice that pervades Frontinus’ De Aquis finds a parallel here with Pliny’s persona in 5.1. 7 On Frontinus’ career, see esp. see esp. W. Eck, ‘Die Gestalt Frontins in ihrer politischen und sozialen Umwelt’, in Wasserversorgung im Anitken Rom, vol. 1 (ed. Frontinus-Gesellschaft, Munich, 1982); 47-52; R.H. Rodgers, Frontinus. Urbis Romae (Cambridge, 2004): 1-5. 8 It must have been difficult to separate Frontinus from the persona he crafts for himself in his De Aquis after that text was published; equally, it is hard not to read Tacitus in Pliny after all the encouragement we get to do so from Ep. 1.6 onwards. My analysis here, however, perhaps begs the question ‘When does literary interaction or intertextuality start and stop?’.

3 Alice König: ‘Reading Frontinus in Pliny Epistles 5.1’ Working Papers on Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.21 (17/6/14) as he hopes in 4.8 he will ultimately do in relation to both and Frontinus). Despite what he says about their eminence, it is clear (at least as he tells the story) that Pliny took the chair in the inquiry he held into Curianus’ disinheritance (we see him seated in his private chamber, with Corellius and Frontinus on either side); and it is only Pliny’s voice we hear in the account, first putting the case for Curianus’ mother and then pronouncing the judgement that the inquiry reached. Corellius and Frontinus clearly contributed to that judgement (we are told that they withdrew together, and what Pliny pronounces is presented as being ex consilii sententia), but his suppression of their involvement is striking (we could imagine quite a different letter, in which Pliny details their respective arguments at length, and is even swayed by them). They may (as Pliny claims) have been two of the period’s most highly regarded statesmen: but in this letter, we see Pliny moving past them, shunting them out of the limelight (as soon as he has drawn on their authority to increase his own), before staking a claim in the second half of the letter to be regarded as one of the era’s great(est) movers and shakers himself.9 In pairing Frontinus with Corellius in this epistle, Pliny signals even more clearly than he did in 4.8 that Frontinus is to be regarded as one of his (collection’s) core circle of exemplars (which also includes , Vestricius Spurinna and Verginius Rufus).10 But, as some recent scholarship has shown, Pliny becomes increasingly interested in the limits of their exemplarity as the collection progresses, as a way of distinguishing his own identity. In their most recent volume on Pliny’s Letters, Roy Gibson and Ruth Morello identify Epistle 9.13 (which looks back on Pliny’s attempt to force the prosecution of Publicius Certus, who under Domitian had allegedly been involved in the prosecution of the younger Helvidius) as a key moment when Pliny conspicuously leaves Corellius behind, for here Pliny explains (to a younger orator, to whom Pliny is clearly meant to function an exemplar himself) that he did not consult Corellius on this occasion, despite being in the habit of referring everything to him, because he was afraid he might forbid him to proceed, ‘being rather hesitant and cautious’.11 Even in 5.1, however, I think we can see signs or the start of Pliny’s move away from Corellius – not least because Corellius is paired with Frontinus, who (as I have noted) has already figured as an exemplar with limits in 4.8, a patron and role model beyond whom Pliny seeks to climb.

Corellius and Frontinus thus emerge as paradigms whom Pliny wants to be seen outshining. And interestingly, in Frontinus’ case that might even represent a response or challenge to Frontinus’ textual persona and activities, not just his social/political reputation. Pliny engages competitively with a host of other contemporary authors across the Epistles, of course; and he devotes a huge amount of time also to circumscribing (not just promoting and idealising) different aspects of literary activity, and to patrolling (as well as exploring) the boundaries between ‘literary’ and ‘non-

9 This letter asks us to admire Pliny as such, to see him as someone who should be spectatissimus as Corellius and Frontinus were in their day. 10 On Pliny’s core set of elder exemplars, see esp. Gibson, R.K. & Morello, R. (2012) Reading the Letters of : an introduction, Cambridge: 104-135. In 4.17 Pliny specifies the way in which Corellius has supported his career as suffragator et testis… deductor et comes… consiliator et rector; this parallels (up to a point) the relationship that he sketches between Frontinus and himself in 4.8. 11 9.13.6; Gibson and Morello 2012: 130-1; see also Gibson, R.K. (forthcoming) ‘Not Dark Yet…: Reading to the End of Pliny’s Nine-Book Collection’ (to be published in I. Marchesi (ed.) Pliny the Bookmaker: Betting on Posterity (OUP, 2015).

4 Alice König: ‘Reading Frontinus in Pliny Epistles 5.1’ Working Papers on Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.21 (17/6/14) literary’. Frontinus’ De Aquis was itself potentially innovative (or destabilising, depending on one’s perspective) in ‘literary’ not just political terms.12 For, for all its technical details and administrative focus, it flirts with a range of more canonical genres (Frontinus explicitly invites us to read his historical section as a rewrite of , for instance), and raises questions not just about its own literary status but about readers’ expectations13 and the context (private, public; political, or specialist) in which it should be approached or understood (in that respect, it has something in common with the Epistles themselves, of course). In addition, the De Aquis did not merely advocate a new relationship between emperors and senators for the new age; it also promoted a new (close, harmonious and mutually beneficial) relationship between writing and public life (at a time when Tacitus in the Agricola and in Epigrams 10 were also musing on the overlaps between political and literary activity). Frontinus’ De Aquis might be said, in other words (like Tacitus’ Agricola), to embody a new vision for literary activity in the Trajanic era, one that is significantly different from the image and ideals that Pliny promotes in the Epistles.14 As I have said, there is no specific allusion or intertextuality with Frontinus’ writing in 5.1; in fact, 5.1 is even more conspicuous (if that is possible) for its lack of reference to or identifiable engagement with Frontinus’ ‘literary’ output than Epistle 4.8. That might even be part of the game, however. For just as Pliny’s tunc at 5.1.5 situates Frontinus’ and Corellius’ social and political eminence firmly in the (Domitianic) past, so the letter’s distance and difference from Frontinus’ ground-breaking writing might also signal the latter’s lack of relevance (now) to an author such as Pliny, who belongs to a later generation that is working in a subtly but significantly different political atmosphere.

My suggestions here are based more on speculation than concrete evidence, and perhaps owe more to modern scholarly reading habits than anything else; but that in itself raises important questions about the tracing and interpretation of literary interaction and intertextuality.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY Eck, W. (1982) ‘Die Gestalt Frontins in ihrer politischen und sozialen Umwelt’, in Wasserversorgung im Anitken Rom, vol. 1, ed. Frontinus-Gesellschaft, Munich Fowler, D. (1997) ‘On the Shoulders of Giants; Intertextuality and Classical Studies’, Materiali e discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici, no. 39 (Memoria, arte allusiva,intertestualità): 13- 34 Fowler, D. (2000) Roman Constructions. Readings in Postmodern , Oxford Gibson, B. (2011) ‘Contemporary Contexts’, in P. Roche (ed.) Pliny’s Praise: The Panegyricus in the Roman World, Cambridge: 104-124 Gallia, A. (2012) Remembering the ; Culture, Politics and History under the Principate, Cambridge

12 Nothing else quite like it survives. 13 Frontinus oscilates between inviting readers into the De Aquis (presenting it as a huge story, of Livian proportions, about the new regime no less) and excluding them from it (presenting it as a text written for his eyes only, to instruct him in the technical nitty gritty of his new post). 14 Gibson & Morello 2012: 25-6.

5 Alice König: ‘Reading Frontinus in Pliny Epistles 5.1’ Working Papers on Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.21 (17/6/14) Gibson, R.K. (forthcoming) ‘Not Dark Yet…: Reading to the End of Pliny’s Nine-Book Collection’, to be published in I. Marchesi (ed.) Pliny the Bookmaker: Betting on Posterity (OUP, 2015) Gibson, R.K. (forthcoming) ‘ and the uiri illustres of Pliny the Younger’, in R. Gibson & T. Power (eds) Suetonius the Biographer, Oxford Gibson, R.K. & Morello, R. (2012) Reading the Letters of Pliny the Younger: an introduction, Cambridge Gibson, R.K. & C. Steel (2010) ‘The indistinct literary careers of Cicero and Pliny the Younger’, in P. Hardie & H. Moore (eds) Classical Literary Careers and their Reception, Cambridge: 118- 137 Hardie, P. (2012) Rumour and Renown. Representations of Fama in Western Literature, Cambridge Hinds, S. (1998) Allusion and intertext. Dynamics of appropriation in Roman poetry, Cambridge Johnson, W.A. (2010) Readers and Reading Culture in the High . A study of elite communities, Oxford König, A. (2013) ‘Frontinus’ Cameo Role in Tacitus’ Agricola’, CQ 63.1: 361-76 König, A. (2013) ‘Martial and Frontinus under Nerva and Trajan’, Working Papers on Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.11 (http://arts.st-andrews.ac.uk/literaryinteractions/?m=201308) Marchesi, I. (2008) The Art of Pliny’s Letters: a poetics of allusion in the private correspondence, Cambridge Marchiesi, I. (2013) ‘Silenced Intertext: Pliny on Martial on Pliny (on Regulus)’ AJPh 134.1: 101-118 Noreña, C.F. (2007) ‘The Social Economy of Pliny’s Correspondence with Trajan’, AJPh 128: 239-77 O’Gorman, E. (2009) ‘Intertextuality and Historiography’, in A. Feldherr (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians, Cambridge: 231-42 Peachin, M. (2004) Frontinus and the curae of the curator aquarum, Stuttgart Rodgers, R.H. (2004) Frontinus. De Aquaeductu Urbis Romae, Cambridge Stadter, P. (2006) ‘Pliny and the Ideology of Empire: the Correspondence with Trajan’, Prometheus 32: 61-76 Syme, R. (1958) Tacitus (vol. 1), Oxford Whitton, C. (2010) ‘Pliny, Epistles 8.14: Senate, Slavery and the Agricola’, JRS 100: 118-39 Whitton, C. (2012) ‘Let us tread our path together’: Tacitus and the Younger Pliny’, in V.E. Pagán (ed.) Blackwell Companion to Tacitus, Malden: 345-68 Whitton, C. (2013) ‘ in brief: modes of intertextuality in Pliny’s Epistles’, Working Papers on Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.6 (http://arts.st-andrews.ac.uk/literaryinteractions/?p=452) Woolf, G. (2006) ‘Pliny’s Province’, in T. Bekker-Nielsen (ed) Rome and the Black Sea Region; domination, romanisation, resistance, Aarhus: 93-108

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