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The Emperor's New Clothes, Or, on Flattery and Ecomium in the Silvae

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The Emperor's New Clothes, Or, on Flattery and Ecomium in the Silvae University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Departmental Papers (Classical Studies) Classical Studies at Penn 2013 The Emperor's New Clothes, or, on Flattery and Ecomium in the Silvae Cynthia Damon University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/classics_papers Part of the Classics Commons, and the Near Eastern Languages and Societies Commons Recommended Citation (OVERRIDE) Damon, C. (2013). The emperor's new clothes, or, on flattery and ecomium in the silvae. In J. F. Miller, C. Damon, & K. S. Myers Vertis in usum (pp. 174-188). München : Leipzig : Saur. DOI: 10.1515/ 9783110956924.174 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/classics_papers/44 For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Emperor's New Clothes, or, on Flattery and Ecomium in the Silvae Disciplines Arts and Humanities | Classics | Near Eastern Languages and Societies This book chapter is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/classics_papers/44 THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES, OR, ON FLATTERY AND ENCOMIUM IN THE SILVAE• BY CYNTHIA DAMON In the first letter of his ninth book Pliny urges his friend Maximus to hurry on the publication of a work in which Maximus attacks a certain Pompei us Planta. Planta has just died, but Pliny maintains that if Maxi­ mus (who has been working on this piece for some time) gets it published promptly, it will have the same effect as if it had been pub­ lished while its victim was still alive: in defunctum quoque tamquam in uiuentem adhuc editur, si editur statim (Ep. 9.1.4). This is obviously wishful thinking, a willful dismissal of a fact of life, or, more precisely, of the fact of Planta's death. And, be it said, a public display of wishful thinking on Pliny's part, since he himself selected this letter for his collection. Both the publication of Pliny's letter and the envisaged publica­ tion of Maximus' book assume that the book's readers will align themselves with this mode of thought; will agree, that is, that the dis­ tinction between defunctus and uiuens can be willed away. On the evidence of the Siluae, written a decade or so earlier, the assumption was perfectly justified. For these poems everywhere bespeak a taste for the collective suspension of disbelief and indulge that taste with paradoxes far bolder than Pliny's. Thus when Tacitus comes along with his insistence on distinguish­ ing between species and reality and getting behind appearances, he is rather like the small boy in the story alluded to in my title, the boy who sees (and says) that the emperor's new clothes aren't new and don't clothe him. Which, of course, makes the Siluae out to be lavish descriptions of those non-existent clothes. My first task, then, is to jus­ tify implying in the title that the Siluae are both fanciful and insubstantial. But my second is to show that Statius means his insub­ stantial fancies seriously. In order to reduce this topic to a manageable compass I have lim­ ited it in two ways. First, I only treat poems that Statius wrote for patrons outside of the imperial household (the priuati); and second, I 'My thanks go first to audiences at the Statius Conference in Dublin, Brown Uni­ versity, and the University of Arizona, whose questions helped me sharpen my argument. But foremost to Ted Courtney, under whose tutelage I first read the Siluae. THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES 175 focus on one particularly problematic kind of praise in those poems, namely, competitive comparisons, or Uberbietungen, in which Statius sets real Romans in competition with mythological Greeks.1 I. COMPONERE MAGNIS PARVA Siluae 3.1 provides our first examples. The poem celebrates the con­ struction of a temple to Hercules on the shore of Surrentum by a favorite priuatus, Pollius Felix. The effort Pollius put into the project is twice declared a Herculean labor, the second time by Hercules himself (3.1.166-70;2 cf. 19-22): 'macte animis opibusque meos imitate labores, qui rigidas rupes infecundaeque pudenda naturae deserta domas et uertis in usum lustra habitata feris foedeque latentia profers numina.' Meos imitate labores, though not precisely a comparison, sounds a com­ petitive note, and the list of Pollius' achievements (domas ... uertis in usum ... profers numina) aligns nicely with the themes of Hercules' contributions to civilization. Another of Hercules' claims to fame is evoked earlier in the poem, where the young priest of the temple, prob­ ably Pollius' grandson, is said to resemble Hercules in his youthful serpent-strangling phase (46-48): hie templis inscriptus auo gaudente sacerdos paruus adhuc similisque tui cum prima nouercae monstra manu premeres atque exanimata doleres. Pollius' wife, Palla, has her own connection with the Hercules tale; besides meriting one of the apples of the Hesperides, the fruit of his 11th labor, she would, were she still young, make Hercules her slave just as Omphale did (158-62): si tibi poma supersunt Hesperidum, gremio uenerabilis ingere Pollae, 1 E. R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. W. R. Trask (Princeton 1953; German edition Bern 1948) 162-66. The poems that Statius wrote di­ rectly or indirectly to the emperor's address have many Obcrbietungen of their own, of course. According to Si/uae 3.4, for example, Domitian's cupbearer Earinus has a better head of hair than Nisus or Achilles (3.4.84-85), both of whom, along with Apollo, arc the regular mythological exempla for outstanding hair. But exaggeration in the praise of an emperor and his creatures is notoriously difficult to assess: when docs it cross over the line from the merely fulsome to the subversive? This is an important question, but one that I prefer to approach indirectly, i.e. by looking at Statius' manner in praising priuati. 2 The text used for the Siluae is, of course, our honorand's 1990 OCT. 176 CYNTHIA DAMON nam capit et tantum non degenerabit lzonorem. quodsi dulce decus uiridesque resumeret annos, (da ueniam, Alcide) fors hie et pensa tulisses. In these passages the honors are about even; Statius refrains from show­ ing Hercules defeated by the present in a poem about his own temple. Other heroic figures, however, are treated less tenderly. Thus Pollius' construction project, in addition to being a Herculean labor, is like Amphion's raising the walls of Thebes with his lyre, and like the labor of Apollo and Neptune on the walls of Troy, but swifter than ei­ ther: non Amphioniae steterint uelocius arees Pergameusue labor (115-16). Then the sheer noise of the project requires another double compari­ son (130-33): non tam grande sonat motis incudibus Aetne cum Brontes Steropesque ferit, nee maior ab antris Lemniacis fragor est ubi flammeus aegida caelat Mulciber et castis exornat Pallada donis. And a still longer list of comparisons describes the dedication ceremony, a ceremony worthy of Olympia's Zeus or Delphic Apollo (140-42 nee ... aspernetur) and better than those associated with Poseidon and Nemean Zeus: eed'}t laerimabilis Isthmos, I eedat atrox Nemee: litat hie felieior irifans (142-43).3 Turning to the poems for another priuatus, Claudius Etruscus, the successful son of a successful imperial freedman, we see more compe­ tition with the mythological world. In Siluae 3.3, a poem on the death of Etruscus' aged parent, the competition comes at the patron's request: Etruscus had asked Statius for a song to surpass the Sirens'song, a la­ ment that would out-swan the swan song and out-mourn Procne's mourning for Itys (173-76): hie maesti pietas me poscit Etrusci qua/in nee Siculae moderantur carmina rupes nee fati iam certus olor saeuique marita Tereos. In the poem itself Etruscus' mourning is likened to Theseus' grief at Aegeus' death: baud aliter gemuit per Szmia Theseus I litorn, qui falsis decepernt Aegea uelis (178-79).4 And finally there is Etruscus' boast that 3 Lacrimabi/is and atrox refer to the games' foundation stories, each commemorat­ ing the death of a child (sec G. Laguna, Estacio Si/uas Ill: lrztroducci6rz, edici6rz crftica, traducci6rz, y comerztario [Madrid 1992) ad loc.). Pollius' games, by contrast, have a happy occasion (142 nil his lriste Iocis) and a lucky child (143). For cedere in competitive com­ parisons sec Laguna ad 142 and Curtius (above n. 1) 162 n. 65. 4 Statius must assume here that his audience will accept the boundaries he sup- THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES 177 he, with his filial affection, had a better claim than Orpheus to retriev­ ing a loved one from the underworld: !zoe quanta melius pro patre liceret! (194). A poem written for the happier occasion of the opening of Etruscus' baths, sounds a lighter, but still competitive, note. How to convey the character of the new baths? By saying that Aphrodite would prefer to have been born here, that Narcissus would see his reflection more clearly here, that Hecate would wish to bathe here even if she had to put up with spectators (1.5.54-56). In poems written for a third priuatus, Atedius Melior, we hear that his recently deceased puer delicatus Glaucias could have taken Hyacinthus' place with Apollo, or Hylas' with Hercules (2.1.112-13 Oebaliderz illo praeceps mutaret Apollo, I Alcides perzsaret Hylall; cf. 140- 45). And also that Glaucias would have softened the hearts of the mythological exempla of hard-heartedness towards children (2.1.140-45): hunc nee saeua uiro potuisset carpere Procne nee fera crudeles Colchis durasset in iras, editus Aeolia nee si foret iste Creusa; toruus ab hoc Athamas insanos flecteret arcus; hunc quamquam Hectoreos cineres Troiamque perosus turribus e Phrygiis flesset missurus Vlixes.
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