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Alice König: 'Reading Frontinus in Pliny Epistles 5.1' Working Papers

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Alice König: 'Reading Frontinus in Pliny Epistles 5.1' Working Papers 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 Rome (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 Domitian’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 Tacitus’ 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 Trajan’s principate, 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 Nerva; 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.
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