Asellius Sabinus: Culture, Wit, and Power in the Golden Age of Gastronomy
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
AsELLIUs SaBINUs: CULTURE, WIT, aND POwER IN THE GOLDEN AgE OF GasTRONOMY Abstract: A highly speculative biography of a man about whom we know almost nothing might read as follows. Asellius Sabinus was born some- time in the latter half of the first century BC and he died in the 30s AD. His family was senatorial, they and he flourished under and through the patronage of Augustus and Tiberius, and he moved easily in aristocratic circles. He was wealthy. His culture was that of the intellectual and social elite of his day. His aristocratic wit was considered the height of sophis- tication by a most knowledgeable critic. He was committed to real ora- tory, even to the point of teaching it, but indulged as well in the contem- porary craze for the imaginary, that is, in competitive declamation. He had a sincere interest in food and its preparation, another passion of the day. And he conveyed that interest in a gastronomic poem replete with epic overtones, a clever parody which both satirized and enshrined that passion. The poem (not a word of which survives) was a serious literary creation with a long pedigree, a work both refined and erudite, and it was handsomely rewarded by another most knowledgeable critic. In person he was charming and urbane, a Noel Coward avant la lettre. “Variegated by origin, habits, and style, the declaimers formed a noisy menagerie. … For some, declamation became a way of life, not a train- ing for the law courts, where a paladin of the schools might fail miser- ably. It also furnished social betterment, and the chance of notoriety and promotion. Of the performers registered by Seneca, the majority are small town careerists, with few senators or sons of senators. Many of them were crude and brutal in style and argument.”1 In his Controversiae the Elder Seneca vividly recalled scores of declaim- ers whose sententiae, good and bad, he remembered so well. He seldom failed to criticize even the best of them, often acerbically. Yet there was one in whom he openly delighted, Sabinus, urbanissimus homo, the most urbane of men, and venustissimus inter rhetores scurra, the most charming of wits among the rhetors. His only censure of the man, leveled twice, was that he could not resist a joke.2 1 Syme (1986a) 354. My thanks for comment to R.A. Kaster, J.T. Katz, M. Peachin, B.D. Shaw, and A.J. Woodman. I have profited from the good advice of many anonymous readers for journals over the years, but none has been more helpful than the referee for this paper. 2 Scurra is of course here “wit”, not “buffoon”. Urbanissimus homo: Controversiae [hereafter C] 9.41.17. Venustissimus … scurra: Suasoriae [hereafter S] 2.12. Ill-timed jokes: Illud non probavi, quod multa in re severa Ancient Society 47, 159-196. doi: 10.2143/AS.47.0.3242721 © 2017 by Ancient Society. All rights reserved. 160 E. CHaMpLIN Seneca does not ascribe urbanitas lightly — indeed he does not award the quality to any other declaimer at all — but Sabinus reminds him of it no fewer than three times (urbanissimus, urbanitate, urbanas res). Urbanitas is elegance, sophistication, refinement — in a word urbanity, civilization, the very antithesis of the rustic and the foreign — and it is frequently expressed through wit. It routinely conveys an attitude of supe- riority, even of arrogance. An urbane joke is more often than not exclu- sive, an in-joke: indeed it is often an insult, a zinger. But in Seneca’s friend urbanitas is combined with venustas, charm. The man was a jester but his jokes were charming and they usually did not sting.3 He first appears in a long and curious digression very late in the Con- troversiae, at 9.4.17-21. We are listening to the elderly Seneca as he dic- tates rapidly, quoting and misquoting from memory. His thoughts tumble out, his Latin is often awkward, frequently obscure, and notably repeti- tious. A literal translation might look like this:4 (17) I remember this controversia5 being declaimed well also by Asil- ius Sabinus. “Describe,” he said, “describe the slaying of the tyrant and your being escorted from the citadel with enormous glory. O you par- ricide, if you do not understand, even after the tyrannicide, how much more honorably your brother died than you slew.” What I did not approve was that he tried to speak wittily in a serious context. But he was a most urbane man, as I have often told you, so that whatever was lacking to him in eloquence he made up for in urbanity. (18) I remember that when Vallius Syriacus, a fluent man, was pros- ecuting and seemed likely to undergo a charge of bringing a false accu- sation, he [Sabinus] appeared with a sad visage around the spectators temptavit salse dicere (C 9.4.17); cum movisset homines et flebili oratione et diserta, redit tamen ad sales … (9.4.21). 3 Quintilian discusses a list of nouns and adjectives conveying various aspects of humor at IO 6.3.17-21: urbanitas, venustus, salsus, facetus, iocus, dicacitas. Urbanitas implies city words, tones, usage, and the assumption of tacit erudition in the conversation of learned men. Venustus describes something acted or spoken with grace, charm, and wit. (The evolution of the word and its meanings is splendidly set out at Krostenko (2001) 40-51, 99-111, 308-309.) The rare combination of urbanitas and venustas in wit has a distinctly Ciceronian flavor, as in De Domo 92 and De Oratore 2.228, cf. 1.17: also at Catullus 22.2; but not elsewhere. 4 The text here is that of Håkanson (1989). Winterbottom’s graceful English transla- tion (also 1989) is far more elegant than Seneca’s Latin. 5 “Who shall have struck his father, let his hands be cut off. A tyrant summoned a father and his two sons to the citadel; he ordered the young men to beat the father. One threw himself down, the other performed the beating. Afterwards he was accepted into the tyrant’s friendship, he slew the tyrant, and he accepted a reward. His hands are sought; his father defends.” AsELLIUs SaBINUs 161 at the trial, and whenever he ran into Syriacus (who was moving about) he would enquire what his hopes were. Then after the trial, when Syria cus thanked him because he had shown such concern for him, “By Hercules,” he said, “I was afraid that we would have one more rhetor.” And once, brought as a witness, when he was asked whether he had received [….] sesterces from the other side, he said that he had received them. Did he have them? He said he did not know. Then, when asked whether he had a charge of bringing a false accusation, “You,” he said, “are familiar with my carelessness: I do not know whether I have it, but I know that I received it.” And against Domitius, a man of most noble birth who during his con- sulship had built baths overlooking the Sacred Way and then had begun to go around the rhetors and declaim, “I,” he said, “knew that you would do this, and I said to your mother when she complained of your laziness: [in Greek] first swimming, then letters.” (19) I cannot pass by two of his urbane actions. He had accompanied the proconsul Occius Flamma to the province of Crete. The Greeks began to demand in the theater that Sabinus should undertake the highest magistracy. Now it is the custom for the magis- trates of the Cretans to let their beard and hair grow. Sabinus got up and imposed silence with a gesture. Then he said, “I have twice under- taken this magistracy in Rome.” For he had twice pleaded a case as a defendant. The Greeks did not understand, but they blessed Caesar and requested that Sabinus also undertake that office a third time. (20) After- wards the entire cohort of companions then offended them. They were attacked in the temple by the whole crowd, which demanded that Sabi- nus should go to Rome with Turdus (he was among the most infamous and hated men). When Turdus promised to go, so that he might get out of there, Sabinus imposed silence and said, “I am not about to go to Caesar with a tidbit.” Afterwards it was brought up against Sabinus when he was pleading his case. I remember the man spoke fluently when he had been brought from prison into the senate to ask that he might receive his daily rations. Then he said, complaining of hunger, “I do not seek anything burdensome from you, but that you decide that I either die or live.” He also said this, “Do not, I say, listen haughtily to a man of many sorrows: often he who could have pitied begs for pity.” (21) And when he declared that there were wealthy Sejanians in the jail, “Though a man,” he said, “not yet sentenced, I beg parricides for bread that I might live.” Although he had moved men by a speech both pitiful and fluent, he returned nevertheless to witticisms. He begged to be transferred to the Stone-Quarries, “Not,” he said, “that the name Stone-Quarries (Lautumiae) might deceive any of you, for the thing is far from sumptuous (lauta).” I have related this both that you might come to know the man himself to some extent, and that you might understand how difficult it was to escape from his own nature. How could it be got from him not to jest in declamations, one who used to 162 E.