EXEMPLARY GOVERNMENT IN THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE Michael Peachin* “I predict, and I am sure my prediction is correct, that your histories will be immortal. And so all the more – I openly admit it – do I want to be included therein.” This is the entreaty with which Pliny the Younger began a famous letter to his friend Tacitus.1 The senator from Comum was angling for inclusion in what he supposed would be a monumental work of literature. By what means, though, did Pliny imagine himself to have earned a place in Tacitus’ Histories? The story went like this. Pliny and Herennius Senecio had been engaged by the senate to prosecute a former governor of Baetica, a man named Baebius Massa. At a given moment during the proceedings, Massa complained that Senecio had acted with malice, and he thus requested a countercharge of, as Pliny puts it, impietas against Senecio.2 However, the fact that Massa wanted to go against Senecio alone raised something of a ruckus, which Pliny describes thus: Amidst the general consternation I began to speak: “Most noble consuls, I am afraid that by not including me in his accusation Massa’s very silence has charged me with collusion with himself.” These words were acclaimed at once and subsequently much talked about; indeed, the dei ed emperor Nerva (who never failed to notice anything done for the good of the State even before he became emperor) sent me a most impressive letter in which he congratulated not only me but our generation for being blessed with an example (thus did he write) so much in the best tradition. Whatever the merit of this incident, you can make it better known and increase its fame and importance, but I am not asking you to go beyond what is * I should like to thank my colleague, Michèle Lowrie, for her most perceptive and helpful comments on a draft of this paper. Thanks are also due to audiences in Heidelberg, Zurich, and Cologne (in 2002), as well as at Yale and Princeton (in 2006), for their contributions to successive versions of my arguments on this topic. 1 Plinius Minor, Epistulae 7.33. All translations of Pliny are those by Betty Radice from the Loeb edition, with some minor changes. 2 It seems likely that the charge was, to be precise, maiestas. See C. Jones, ‘A New Commentary on the Letters of Pliny’, Phoenix 22 (1968), 134–135. Michael Peachin - 9789047420903 Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 02:41:32AM via free access 76 michael peachin due to the facts. History should always con ne itself to the truth, which in its turn is enough for honest deeds.3 Now, we would perhaps nd that Pliny has moved toward the outermost fringes of modesty with this petition; and, to our taste, his dictum prob- ably does not seem so terribly impressive anyhow. But be that as it may, the epistolographer’s objective is plain: by retelling the facta and dicta of this clash with Baebius Massa, Pliny has recorded himself, and has done so regardless of Tacitus’ eventual response, and regardless also, for that matter, of anything written to Pliny by Nerva, as an exemplum.4 This was a matter obviously very dear to Pliny’s heart.5 And yet, it is only in relatively recent years that scholars working on the Roman world have developed their own signi cant fondness for exempla.6 Now, 3 Plinius Minor, Epistulae 7.33.8–10: Horror omnium; ego autem “Vereor” inquam, “clarissimi consules, ne mihi Massa silentio suo praevaricationem obiecerit, quod non et me reum postulavit.” Quae vox et statim excepta, et postea multo sermone celebrata est. Divus quidem Nerva (nam privatus quoque attendebat his quae recte in publico \ erent) missis ad me gravissimis litteris non mihi solum, verum etiam saeculo est gratulatus, cui exemplum (sic enim scripsit) simile antiquis contigisset. Haec, utcumque se habent, notiora clariora maiora tu facies; quamquam non exigo ut excedas actae rei modum. Nam nec historia debet egredi veritatem, et honeste factis veritas suf\ cit. Vale. 4 An exemplum could be de ned in various ways, for instance: Rhetorica ad Herennium 4.62, exemplum est alicuius facti aut dicti praeteriti cum certi auctoris nomine propositio; Quintil- ian, Institutio Oratoria 5.11.6, . exemplum, id est rei gestae . commemoratio . Some useful modern de nitions are: T. Habinek, The Politics of Latin Literature: Writing, Empire, and Identity in Ancient Rome (Princeton 1998), 46: “An exemplum is something ‘taken out of ’ (eximo) a group in order to serve as a standard by which other instances of the type can be evaluated (existimare)”; J. Chaplin, Livy’s Exemplary History (Oxford 2000), 3: “any speci c citation of an event or an individual that is intended to serve as a guide to conduct;” M. Roller, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 01.07.03 (a review of Chaplin): a persuasive, authorizing move, embedded deeply in performative acts (I paraphrase Roller here). While it is essential to keep the ancient de\ nitions in mind, it seems to me that these modern descriptions are, on the whole, more useful to any scholarly investigation of this phenomenon. Pliny, of course, claims several times in his letters, that he is teaching others by offering up the exemplum of himself: Epistulae 1.18.5; 2.6.6; 7.1.7. Notice also the sentiment at Epistulae 8.18.12: Nam cum aures hominum novitate laetantur, tum ad rationem vitae exemplis erudimur. For a parallel to what Pliny was up to, see B. Reay, ‘Agriculture, Writing, and Cato’s Aristocratic Self-Fashioning’, Classical Antiquity 24 (2005), 336–340. 5 Indeed, the exemplum was, just generally throughout Roman society (i.e., not only in aristocratic circles), an extremely important mechanism for the molding (or description or perception) of conduct. As we are told by the Senatus Consultum de Cn. Pisone (lines 155–158), the plebs followed the example of the equestrian order during that imbro- glio. Or, note the self-laudatory inscription of a soldier, which ends with the following assertion (CIL 3.3676 = ILS 2558): exemplo mihi sum primus qui talia gessi. 6 I cite just a few items, by way of example: M. Bloomer, Valerius Maximus and the Rhetoric of the New Nobility (London 1992); K.-J. Hölkeskamp, ‘Exempla und mos maiorum. Überlegungen zum kollektiven Gedächtnis der Nobilität’, in H.-J. Gehrke and Michael Peachin - 9789047420903 Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 02:41:32AM via free access exemplary government in the early roman empire 77 underlying most of this scholarship is, in Matthew Roller’s words, a sense of, “the aristocracy’s utter saturation with exemplary models for action transmitted from the past, whether through narratives, commemorative statuary and other monuments, social spectacles like triumphs and funeral processions, or other cultural forms.”7 In short, scholarly occupation with exempla and exemplarity has tended, thus far, to reveal the ways in which this device functioned within the formal boundaries of literature and art, or, moving beyond the con nes of these particular creative fora, how it served in the broader cultural context to shape society’s morals and likewise to mold the behavior of individuals (viz. private citizens).8 In the present paper, I want to consider exemplarity from another angle. I want to draw attention to the ways in which exempla contributed, and did so roughly on a level with acts that we would comfortably cat- egorize as statutory (e.g., decrees of popular assemblies, senatus consulta, or formal edicts issued by emperors), to what we would perceive as the constitutional foundation of the imperial government. In particular, I will concentrate on the emperor and his powers. What things was he ‘of\ cially’ competent to do, and how might exempla have played a role in establishing something approximating what we could view as a ‘legal’ or ‘constitutional’ rationale for his undertaking these things? And of A. Möller (eds.), Vergangenheit und Lebenswelt. Soziale Kommunikation, Traditionsbildung und historisches Bewußtsein (Tübingen 1996), 301–338; D. Wardle, Valerius Maximus. Memorable Deeds and Sayings. Book 1 (Oxford 1998); A. Weileder, Valerius Maximus. Spiegel kaiserlicher Selbstdarstellung (München 1998); I. Oppermann, Zur Funktion historischer Beispiele in Ciceros Briefen (Leipzig 2000); F. Wittchow, Exemplarisches Erzählen bei Ammianus Marcellinus. Episode, Exemplum, Anekdote (München 2001); M. Koortbojian, ‘A Painted Exemplum at Rome’s Temple of Liberty’, Journal of Roman Studies 92 (2002), 33–48; M. Roller, ‘Exemplar- ity in Roman Culture: the Cases of Horatius Cocles and Cloelia’, Classical Philology 99 (2004), 1–56; C. Kraus, ‘From Exempla to Exemplar? Writing History around the Emperor in Imperial Rome’, in J. Edmondson, S. Mason and J. Rives (eds.), Flavius Josephus and Flavian Rome (Oxford 2005), 181–200; F. Bücher, Verargumentierte Geschichte. Exempla Romana im politischen Diskurs der späten römischen Republik (Stuttgart 2006). 7 Bryn Mawr Classical Reveiw 01.07.03. 8 Michèle Lowrie will take things a step further, and will argue that exempla often functioned so as to shape the workings of history altogether: ‘Making an Exemplum of Yourself: Cicero and Augustus’, in S. Heyworth, with P. Fowler and S. Harrison (eds.), Classical Constructions. Papers in Memory of Don Fowler, Classicist and Epicurean (Oxford 2007); The Exemplum, the Exception, and Self-Authorization in Cicero, Caesar, and Augustus (book in progress). For the ways in which exempla thoroughly shaped historical writing and historical thinking during the Republic, see the ne treatment by U. Walter, Memoria und res publica. Zur Geschichtskultur im republikanischen Rom (Frankfurt 2004), especially 51–70 and 374–407. Michael Peachin - 9789047420903 Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 02:41:32AM via free access 78 michael peachin course, in the end, we shall want to ask for what reasons the Romans might have chosen to operate in the fashion I shall argue they did.