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Publicity, Privacy, and Power in Neronian Rome by Harriet H. Fertik

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Publicity, Privacy, and Power in Neronian Rome by Harriet H. Fertik Publicity, Privacy, and Power in Neronian Rome by Harriet H. Fertik A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Classical Studies) in the University of Michigan 2014 Doctoral Committee: Professor David S. Potter, Chair Associate Professor Basil J. Dufallo Professor Elaine K. Gazda Professor Celia E. Schultz Associate Professor J. Mira Seo, Yale-National University Singapore College © Harriet H. Fertik 2014 ii Acknowledgments I have long looked forward to this opportunity to thank the people who have supported me as I worked on this project. The Department of Classical Studies at the University of Michigan has given me a rich and fulfilling experience as a graduate student. My advisor, David Potter, always pointed me towards bigger and more interesting questions and helped me start to answer them. I learned a great deal from Elaine Gazda, who provided invaluable guidance in my efforts to make use of material evidence. Basil Dufallo and Mira Seo gave me thorough and incisive criticism on my work, and I have turned to Celia Schultz for her straightforward advice on many more issues than I can list here. I also thank Ruth Scodel, for her generosity and counsel, and Arthur Verhoogt and Michelle Biggs, who made my path much smoother than I expected it to be. I have been very fortunate at Michigan to have colleagues who are not only thoughtful and inquisitive scholars but also decent and generous human beings. I am especially grateful to my cohort, Clara Bosak-Schroeder, Ellen Cole, Matthew Newman, Jonathan McLaughlin, Graham Claytor, and honorary member Evan Lee, and to Emma Sachs. They all challenged my thinking and enriched this project in many ways. I could not ask for better friends than the ones I made during my time here. I received valuable comments from participants in the Public and Private in the Roman House Workshop at New York University in 2012 and the Seneca panel at the annual meeting of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South in 2013. Financial support from the iii Rackham Graduate School allowed me to travel to archaeological sites and museums abroad. Lynley McAlpine and Emma Sachs shared their photographs with me and helped me figure out how to use them. Finally, I thank my parents, Elizabeth and Philip Fertik, for their unwavering acceptance and willingness to listen, and my husband, Isaac Epstein, my partner and true friend, for his confidence in me and for his good humor and equanimity through just about everything. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................................... ii List of Figures............................................................................................................................... vi Introduction................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1. Power in the Public Eye: Palaces and Emperors.................................................. 17 I. Introduction....................................................................................................................................... 17 II. Death in the Public Eye................................................................................................................... 19 III. Public and Private in the Emperor’s House ................................................................................ 25 IV. Power, Publicity, and Vulnerability in the De Clementia ........................................................... 43 V. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 57 Chapter 2. Visibility and Power: The House on Stage ............................................................ 59 I. Introduction....................................................................................................................................... 59 II. Theater in the House ....................................................................................................................... 61 III. The Royal House on Seneca’s Tragic Stage................................................................................. 76 IV. Conclusion....................................................................................................................................... 94 Chapter 3. Family, Court, and State......................................................................................... 97 I. Introduction....................................................................................................................................... 97 II. Household and Court .................................................................................................................... 100 III. Defining the Family...................................................................................................................... 107 IV. Family and Community in Seneca’s Tragedies ......................................................................... 125 V. Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 137 v Chapter 4. Fantasy Tours and Power Trips: Three Case Studies on the Empire in the House.......................................................................................................................................... 139 I. Introduction..................................................................................................................................... 139 II. Imperial Fantasies in Villa A at Oplontis.................................................................................... 142 III. Touring the Empire in the Cena Trimalchionis......................................................................... 150 IV. Cosmos and Claustrophobia in the Bellum Civile .................................................................... 162 V. Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 182 Chapter 5. Intimate Politics: Ruler and Ruled in the Roman House and the Bellum Civile ..................................................................................................................................................... 185 I. Introduction..................................................................................................................................... 185 II. Intimacy in the Roman House ...................................................................................................... 188 III. Intimacy, the Crowd, and One-Man Rule in the Bellum Civile ............................................... 197 IV. Conclusion..................................................................................................................................... 225 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 227 Figures........................................................................................................................................ 234 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 237 vi List of Figures Fig. 1. House of Augustus on the Palatine, adapted from Carettoni (1983) and Quenemoen (2001)...........................................................................................................................................234 Fig. 2. Domus Aurea (Colosseum valley section), adapted from Boëthius and Ward-Perkins (1970) and Panella (1996) ...........................................................................................................235 Fig. 3. Remains of foundations, Domus Aurea............................................................................235 Fig. 4. Alcestis and Admetus, House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii (VI.8.3)/Naples National Archaeological Museum No. 9026 ..............................................................................................236 1 Introduction This project began with the observation that the house and family played a prominent role in literary texts of the Neronian period, especially the houses and families of rulers. In a period of significant political and social change in the Roman world, and during the rise of monarchic and dynastic rule, Seneca, Lucan, Petronius, and (at a later date) Tacitus pay special attention to domestic life, the physical space of the house, and family bonds. The house and family, moreover, are fruitful objects of inquiry for the ancient world because we possess not only literary records but also material evidence for how the imperial family was identified and honored, as well as domestic art and architecture for numerous social classes and geographical locations. Yet the domus is also a particularly challenging category, because the Roman conception of “public” and “private” is very different from what we know or assume in the modern West. While it is not quite right to say that the Romans had no conception of privacy in the house, it is also well established that the house was not primarily a space of refuge, but a place where the dominus, the master of the house, could display himself to the community on his own
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