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Alice König: ‘ and Frontinus, under and ’ Working Papers in Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.11 (1/8/13)

Martial and Frontinus, under Nerva and Trajan1

Martial’s Epigrams might seem a world away from Frontinus’ treatise on land surveying or his account of the ins and outs of ’s network, but in fact they share some common concerns; they were read by (and written for) overlapping sets of readers; and Martial (like , and , and a number of other contemporary writers) appears to have drawn on at least one of Frontinus’ texts to articulate some of his own ideas about Domitianic, Nervan and Trajanic Rome. This paper aims to unpick some of the threads that link them. It will examine Martial’s engagement with Frontinus – and what it is about Frontinus that prompts Martial to engage with him – as a way of looking afresh at both authors, and at the wider literary (and political) context in which they were working.

10.48 Frontinus crops up (arguably) three or four times in Martial. He makes his first appearance about half way through Epigrams 10, that intriguing book that was first issued under in 96 and then revised and republished under Trajan at the end of 98.2 In 10.48 Martial reworks a familiar trope, the dinner party invitation, to assemble a group of poets and patrons for a supper of home-grown leaves, mackerel and chopped eggs, sow’s udder soaked in fishy brine, a young goat ‘snatched from the jaws of an inhuman wolf’, meat morsels, workmen’s beans, uncooked young greens, a chicken, and a three-day-old ham. The makeshift, muddled nature of this feast complements ideas touched on in the preceding poem (and elsewhere), where Martial identifies components of the happy life, including ‘land that is not unyielding’ and a table sine arte (‘without finesse’).3 But, as Emily Gowers has shown, the food in this poem (as in many of Martial’s Epigrams) also serves as a metaphor for Martial’s poetic style, celebrating his crude, salacious wit, the festive licence that courses through his books, and his penchant for surprising readers with a jumble of seeming inconsistencies.4 With the table set, Martial looks ahead to what he will serve his sated guests for dessert: ripe fruit, and lee-less wine from a Nomentan flagon, which turned twice three years old in the year of Frontinus’ consulship (18-20): …saturis mitia poma dabo, de Nomentana vinum sine faece lagona, quae bis Frontino consule trima fuit. For most commentators, this reference to Frontinus simply helps Martial draw attention to the age of his wine.5 But in fact, Frontinus’ presence in the poem raises

1 I am grateful to Victoria Rimell for her helpful feedback on this piece. 2 Frontinus’ absence from Books 1-9 is consistent with the impression we get from other sources that his career enjoyed a quiet spell between his Proconsulship of (84/5) and his appointment as Curator Aquarum in 97; it is perhaps characteristic of Martial that his interest in Frontinus coincides with the time when Frontinus began to emerge as an influential public figure (and potential patron). Cf. Balland 2010: 63, 108-112 and 169, who identifies the Fronto of Ep. 1.55 as our Frontinus. 3 Spisak 2002: 137. 4 Gowers 1993: 255-64; and 245-9 on other epigrams (including 10.45 and 59) in which Martial uses food and/or drink as a metaphor to explore his poetic style. 5 E.g. Peachin 2004: 158.

1 Alice König: ‘Martial and Frontinus, under Nerva and Trajan’ Working Papers in Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.11 (1/8/13) questions about dates and dating that extend beyond the comestible; indeed, Martial’s mention of him, like his description of the dishes that the wine will accompany, prompts reflection on the nature of his poetry, and in particular upon the age – or the vintage – of the poems that make up the second edition of Epigrams 10. Time is made to matter in the poem right from the start. The eighth hour is announced before we discover anything else; and it brings with it both closure (of the Temple of Isis – in line 1) and change-over (in line 2), as one cohort returns to camp and another comes out on duty. Nuntiat octavam Phariae sua turba iuvencae, et pilata redit iamque subitque cohors. The next two lines elaborate on the merits of Martial’s chosen hour, emphasising its relative coolness in comparison with steamy seven and scorching six o’clock. temperat haec thermas, nimios prior hora vapores halat, et immodico sexta Nerone calet. This helps Martial to set the not just the scene but also the tone for the dinner party to which – in line 5 – he invites his literary guests: it proclaims a preference for temperateness generally and a rejection of anything that is drainingly, or even dangerously, hot. But his weighing up of time here does not just contribute to the construction of Martial’s poetic or private persona; it also contains a political subtext. The ‘Nero’ of line 4 is shorthand, of course, for Nero’s Baths; but Martial’s description of them as immodicus inevitably evokes the emperor himself6 – and that invites us to look for political allusions in the rest of the passage. When one does, the language of ‘temperateness’ jumps out, for (as a quick scan of Pliny’s Panegyricus confirms) temperantia was celebrated as a key Trajanic virtue.7 In this light, the three hours that Martial discusses begin to resemble (perhaps) Rome’s three imperial dynasties. The sixth, that smoulders with immoderate Neronian heat, conjures up the Julio-Claudians, who self-combusted in the wake of some sizzling imperial antics and a very real fire (think, too, of representations of Nero as the sun – the sixth hour of course, was when the sun was at its height).8 The seventh, with its excess of steam, represents the Flavians, who rose to power amid the flames of civil war and whose last incumbent had a particularly fiery reputation (for book burning, among other things).9 And the eighth, which tempers the heat of what has gone before, embodies (perhaps) the present regime, cool and calming – at least in comparison. One might also read politics into the opening pair of lines. The cult of Isis, for example, seems to

6 Cf., e.g., Tac. Ann. 15.23, where Nero’s reaction to the birth and death of his daughter is characterized as immodicus. As Gowers 1993: 256 puts it, ‘Nero’s baths loom over the dinner like an immoderate tyrant.’ 7 See, e.g., Pliny Pan. 2, 10, 41, 55, 76, 79, 80, 82 (where Trajan behaves with admirable temperantia/temperamentum), and also 3 where temperamentum characterizes the new register which the Senate must adopt in addressing Trajan. 8 Balland 2010: 88: ‘l’expression immodico… Nerone… peut rappeler qu’au milieu de l’année 64 (où Martial arriva à Rome) les chrétiens, accuses d’être coupables de l’incendie de la Ville, brûlèrent transformés en torches vivantes; les jardins de l’empereur, au Vatican, furent ainsi symboliquement et atrocement illumines.’ 9 Admittedly, Domitian can be credited with restoring some of the buildings that burnt down during the chaos of AD 69 and other fires (e.g. Suet. Dom. 5 and 20); but he was also associated with tyrannical uses of fire against opponents and writers (e.g. Suet. Dom 10; Tac. Ag. 2).

2 Alice König: ‘Martial and Frontinus, under Nerva and Trajan’ Working Papers in Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.11 (1/8/13) have been especially popular with the Flavian emperors,10 so the temple’s closure (triggered by the striking of eight o’clock) might signal the end of Domitian’s reign. The change-over of cohorts, meanwhile, perhaps evokes a hand-over of command at the imperial/dynastic level – though interestingly, one body of men is replaced here by another of identical appearance (a point emphasised by the fact that redit and subitque share the same subject, the singular pilata… cohors). Martial’s characterisation of the hour for his dinner party, in other words, introduces the possibility that this epigram is not just about food, Martial-style, and its literary meaning, but also about regime-change – a theme that is particularly topical, of course, for the second, revised edition of Book 10. If we choose to follow up the hints embedded in lines 1-4, we understand that the feast to which Martial’s guests are invited will start at the eighth hour in the age of Trajan. Age is then a recurring theme in the description of food that follows. A kid and fresh young greens contrast with ripe apples and ‘a ham that has already survived three dinners’ – cenisque tribus iam perna superstes. Its placement at the end of a line (paralleling the position of rudes in the verse above) draws attention to the word superstes, which we have met once already, in Epigram 10.2, where Martial celebrates the likely immortality of his poetry: …lector, opes nostrae: quem cum mihi Roma dedisset, ‘nil tibi quod demus maius habemus’ ait. ‘pigra per hunc fugies ingratae flumina Lethes et meliore tui parte superstes eris. marmora Messallae findit caprificus, et audax dimidios Crispi mulio ridet equos: at chartis nec furta nocent et saecula prosunt, solaque non norunt haec monumenta mori.’ (10.2.5-12) The comparison that Martial draws here between the fate of his poetic monuments (which will escape death) and that of physical memorials does not simply channel (among others);11 it evokes (among other things) the destruction of statues and erasure of inscriptions that accompanied the recent demise of Domitian12 – and in so doing it returns us to the theme of political rewriting with which Epigram 10.2 begins. For 10.1-4, of course, announce that what we are reading is a revision: it is a book that has been recalled (nunc revocavit), trimmed back with an up-to-date file (note the stone-working metaphor: lima rasa recenti), and renewed in large part(pars nova maior erit). Some commentators read awkward back-tracking and anxious re-positioning in Martial’s decision to reissue Epigrams 10; it is seen as an acknowledgement that his praise of Domitian might make him unpopular with the new dynasty and an

10 Jones 1992: 101 argues that the cult of Isis was popular with all the Flavian emperors, but that imperial interest waned after Domitian’s death. The Temple of Isis must have been among the buildings on the Capitol that Domitian restored following the great fire in AD 80 (Dio 66.24.2; Suet. Dom. 5). He was also rumoured to have taken refuge in that temple during the civil wars of 69, and to have saved himself when it was set on fire by disguising himself as a worshipper of Isis (Tac. Hist. 3.74; Suet. Dom. 1.2). 11 And (Amores, 1.15.41-2; 3.15.19-20; Met. 15.871-9), as Rimell 2009: 68-71 and Hardie 2012: 327-9 discuss. 12 Fitzgerald 2007: 158; Rimell 2008: 71-2; Hardie 2012: 329.

3 Alice König: ‘Martial and Frontinus, under Nerva and Trajan’ Working Papers in Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.11 (1/8/13) attempt to reinvent himself as a poet who will appeal to a Trajanic readership.13 But this interpretation overlooks the irony inherent in his juxtaposition, in 10.2, of that declaration of renewal with the claim a few lines later that his poetry cannot be destroyed: running through his introduction to the second edition, in other words, is a tacit acknowledgement that, though cut out, the poems of his first edition still (and always will) survive. Martial did not necessarily need to republish Epigrams 10; he had already published book 11, whose opening few poems hail Nerva’s accession,14 and he could have left 10, as he left books 1 to 9, to fade from view (or continue to circulate) in its original state.15 Arguably, his republication draws attention not to his new Trajanic identity but to the very difficulty of forging one, to the challenge that faced authors who ended up straddling these two, supposedly distinct political eras. Indeed, it draws attention to Martial’s (deliberate?) failure (after the tentative efforts of Epigrams 11) to reinvent/re-present himself substantially. Even as it introduces a revised, Trajanic-era edition, 10.2 reminds readers that traces of the old will (always) linger amid the new.16 The word superstes, then, conjures up a political problem: for being a ‘survivor’ (or a ‘left-over’) in AD 98 is a complicated position. Martial’s use of the same word in 10.48 to characterise a ham might look innocuous, but it calls 10.2 to mind (not least because the food at this dinner party invites readers to reflect on the kind of poetry that Martial is writing) and weaves a subtext about

13 E.g. Coleman 1998: 338-9, 355; Spisak 2002. Cf Holzberg 2002: 144ff, who challenges the widely accepted view that Ep. 10 was republished in 98. 14 On Martial’s engagement with Nervan ideology in Ep. 11, see, e.g., Fearnley 2003: 622-6. Like, e.g., Kay 1985: 5, Rimell 2009: 6 identifies the new liberty that Rome can enjoy under Nerva as one of the book’s core themes; but see also 162-4, where she emphasises the complexity of Martial’s portrait of Nerva and his . Sullivan 1991: 47 also notes Martial’s ‘new, if guarded, loyalty’ in Ep. 11. 15 The continued existence of Martial’s earlier books (which contained poems in praise of Domitian) was not necessarily as insurmountable a problem under the new regime as, e.g., Spisak 2002: 130 suggests. 16 On this point, see Rimell 2009: 67-8; also Epigram 12.4, where Martial draws attention to the parallel existence of different (abridged and unabridged) versions of Books 10 and 11; and Fowler 1995: 209 and Fitzgerald 2007: 158-160, on the layers of complexity which the existence of these different editions adds for the emperor and Martial’s readers. Hardie 2012: 329 proposes an interesting reading of 10.3, in which Martial complains about a poet who is passing off his own vulgar poems as Martial’s: ‘Could we see in 10.3 [Martial’s] guilty conscience about his previous implication in elevating the fama of Domitian, and in the “witticisms of home-bred slaves” and “foul taunts of a peddlar’s tongue” Martial’s own abjected attempt to exorcise his past through self-abuse? The skulking poet may be Martial himself. The low-class badmouthing is perhaps a retrospective reflection of the malicious and dangerous talk that circulated through the court of Domitian…’. If this is the case, Martial’s discussion of it brings such Domitianic discourse to the fore, rather than papering over it. Alternatively (and this is a reading which has something in common with Freudenburg 2001: 238-9 on 1), Martial could be satirizing contemporaries’ attempts, post-Domitian, to dissociate themselves from Domitianic-style speech/publications. In either case, previous/Domitianic/out-of-control poems make their (continued) presence felt in the edition which we have just been told (in 10.2) has been cleansed of out-of-date/inappropriate material.

4 Alice König: ‘Martial and Frontinus, under Nerva and Trajan’ Working Papers in Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.11 (1/8/13) imperial saecula-risation (and recycling) into the menu – a subtext which Frontinus’ appearance brings out. Two whole verses are devoted to Martial’s description of the wine, more than for any other single item at the feast: we are meant to look closely at it. And the elaborate phrasing of line 20 prompts us to think particularly hard about it’s age. Bis applies to trima, but it also jokingly reminds us that this is Frontinus’ second consulship, and therefore draws attention both to the present (AD 98) and to the past (the six years during which the wine has been maturing). In AD 98, Frontinus was not just emerging as one of Rome’s most prominent statesmen: he was also closely connected with both Nerva and Trajan, and may even have been viewed (not least because he was busy parading himself thus) as a poster boy for the new regime (certainly, Tacitus and Pliny’s engagement with him seems to point that way). Reference to his second consulship, then, places Martial’s dinner party (and the epigram itself: it is one of the few in book 10 that we can securely identify as belonging to the second edition17) firmly in the Trajanic ‘new age’. The phrase sine faece (‘without dregs’) in line 19 may even reinforce the Nervan/Trajanic ‘vibe’. For it could be read as a witty allusion to Frontinus’ concern in the De Aquis with purification and transparency,18 a concern that allies him with the new dynasty’s rhetoric of reform. When coupled with Frontinus’ name, in other words, the absence of lees in the wine helps to give it a particularly Nervan/Trajanic ‘flavour’. However line 20 also makes it clear that the wine is Flavian in origin: indeed, it is good to drink now because it was laid down towards the end of Domitian’s reign.19 It thus crosses political eras – and in so doing embodies a message about Martial’s poetry and the times in which he was writing. For, if the laxative mallow and burping mint symbolise the provocative crudity of his humour, and the hotchpotch of hors d’oevures (served all in one go) draws attention to the sometimes incongruous variety of his epigrams, the hybrid nature of the wine reminds us that the book we are reading is itself (inevitably) a Domitianic-Trajanic blend.20 It may (like the contents of Martial’s Nomentan flagon, and Frontinus’ career for that matter) have taken on a new dimension with the accession of Trajan; but its foundations were laid in the previous regime – and not even the removal of out-of-date ‘dross’ will alter that. It is not simply that a residue of the old lingers on in the new; this Domitianic vintage, that is ripe for drinking at the start of Trajan’s principate, reminds us that the past is often an integral basis of the present. Martial’s description of the wine in 10.48 thus returns us to a tension that we saw picked out in 10.2 between

17 Peachin 2004: 157; Balland 2010: 87. 18 This is a possibility that John Henderson suggested to me (pers. comm.). Frontinus claims credit for cleansing various aqueducts of noxious sediments, for weeding out corrupt water men and problems with waste, and for clarifying the network’s correct distribution figures, after finding them clouded with errors when he took up his new post: e.g., Aq. 9, 33-4, 64, 74-7, 89-93, 130. 19 Note that in 10.49.3 Martial connects the youth (as well as the provenance) of a wine with poor quality: the ‘leaden’ Sabine wine is modo conditum (recently laid down). 20 As Rimell 2009: 81 puts it, Epigrams 10 ‘experiments in a galaxy of ways with flicking between past and future, before and after, first and second editions, death and living on.’

5 Alice König: ‘Martial and Frontinus, under Nerva and Trajan’ Working Papers in Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.11 (1/8/13)

(supposed) political change and poetic continuity. Moreover, together with the closing lines of the epigram it may even invite speculation about some possible political continuity. For much of 10.48, we (and Martial’s guests) are transported to the sanctuary of a private home, whose detachment from public life is underlined by references to the outside world in the frame of the poem. Gowers has argued that the ‘convivial licence’ of Martial’s dinner couch is contrasted with the ‘threatened liberty’ of this wider world only at the epigram’s ‘furthest margins’, in lines 1-2 and 24.21 But Martial’s mention of Frontinus’ second consulship ensures that politics intrudes well before the poem (and the party) have begun to wrap up. Indeed, his evocation of AD 98 and the imperial upheavals that surrounded it overshadows the epigram’s final four lines, and in so doing alerts us to the possibility that Martial’s private, poetic world is not as insulated from public/political life as the poem’s structure initially suggests. Lines 21-4 discuss the kind of conversation that is likely (or ought) to accompany dinner. Martial’s pronouncement that there will be ‘jollity without malice’ (sine felle ioci), ‘freedom that brings no regrets the following morning’ (nec mane timenda libertas), and ‘nothing you would wish you had kept to yourself’ (nil quod tacuisse velis) on one level simply reinforces the festive, light-hearted, even licentious atmosphere that his menu has established. More specifically, it references a recurring topos in satire and invective, whereby poets explore the balance between anything-goes, Lucilian-style frankness and a less acerbic self-restraint; and in doing so, it pursues the on-going analogy between Martial’s dinner party and his epigrams to reinforce a claim he makes elsewhere (not altogether seriously, of course) about the (relatively) innocuous nature of his writing. But, following his reference to Frontinus and – through him – to the poem’s political context (both of which are picked up by the echo in sine felle of sine faece), this discussion of conversational/literary register also takes on a political dimension – and not a reassuring one.22 For, with regime change in mind, the juxtaposition of timenda and libertas and allusions to silence and self-censorship inject a troubling note. Lines 21-2 may appear to promise free speech, but they surround it with a sense of anxiety and caution that might remind us of the way in which Domitian’s reign was often described. And the poem’s final word – reus – also threatens to transports us not just to the law courts but back to the world of informers and treason trials from which Rome, thanks to Trajan, is supposed to have escaped.23 For Gowers, Martial’s closing injunction to his readers to talk of chariot-racing, lest drunken discourse puts anyone on trial, celebrates the fact that the guests at his dinner ‘are free to

21 Gowers 1993: 256. 22 Cf Hor. Serm. 2.1, where, at the end of a discussion about the advisability of continuing to write in the satiric vein, Horace’s suggestion that he can rely on the emperor’s support raises questions about the (oppressive?) extent of imperial power and (its impact upon) freedom of speech (Lowrie 2005: 405); and Juvenal 1.150-71, where writing satire/invective, freedom of speech and imperial power are also brought into (a potentially uncomfortable) dialogue with each other, which hints at continuities as well as differences between past and present (Delignon 2008: 452-3). 23 Balland 2010: 87 notes the incongruity of this closing word in a piece ‘consacrée à une réunion amicale’.

6 Alice König: ‘Martial and Frontinus, under Nerva and Trajan’ Working Papers in Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.11 (1/8/13) discuss the circus, a subject removed from serious political slander.’24 But it may also hint that his guests are only free to discuss such frivolities – that more serious topics are off the menu, because talking now, in 98, is still a potentially hazardous enterprise.25 If that reading is right, 10.48 does not follow its own advice: for, under cover of licentious, poetic frivolity, it takes the (potentially dangerous) liberty of making a serious political point. Far from maintaining a distance between private and public, convivial/poetic and political, it collapses those worlds – and in the process draws attention to overlaps between eras and dynasties too. The epigram’s ring composition thus takes on a potentially sinister thrust, as time threatens to become cyclical rather than progressive – and as the ‘temperate’ eighth hour starts to feel a little less refreshing. For in the light of the continuity that we glimpse not just in the wine and Martial’s poetry but also in the political atmosphere that invades the epigram (and the dinner), that change-over of cohorts back in line 2 acquires an unsettling significance, in so far as it reminds us that transition does not always involve transformation. Frontinus, that prominent Flavian survivor who reinvented himself so successfully under Nerva and Trajan (and whose De Aquis proclaims – and probes – some of the reforms that they are supposed to be ushering in), plays a pivotal role in pointing this out. For the questions that his association with the wine raises about ages, vintages and the relationship between old and new not only introduce a political note into the supposedly sheltered dinner-party (and poem); they help to expose a fallacy inherent in political periodization, and Epigrams 10, and indeed the De Aquis itself: namely that, despite the efforts that emperors and authors made to advertise change, new eras (and editions) were not always so very different from what had gone before.26

10.58 The central poems of Epigrams 10 are typical of Martial’s writing, both individually and collectively. By turns boisterous and melancholic, lewd and philosophical, outward-looking and introspective, 10.49-57 baffle the reader with the variety of their styles and subjects (food and drink, death and age, glory, sex, clientship, city versus country, negotium versus otium); but they also tantalise us with faint verbal and thematic connections (for example, a shared interest in measuring, as in 10.50, 53, 55 and 57), which invite us to trace patterns and subtexts across and between them, while

24 Gowers 1993: 263. 25 Balland 2010: 88 reaches a similar conclusion: ‘la conclusion de l’épigramme témoigne clairement de la persistence de la lourde atmosphere qu’entraîna l’exécution du gendre de Faustinus, la deportation de sa fille à Pandateria, et peut-être ce qu’on appelle “la persecution de Domitien”.’ 26 Fearnley 2003 notes the relative paucity of epigrams on imperial themes in Ep. 10 (which compares starkly with other books), alongside possible ambiguities in poems that do mention Nerva or Trajan (10.6, 7, 34 and 72, on which see below), and argues that Epigrams 10 as a whole refrains, conspicuously, from endorsing the new regime whole-heartedly. Of course, Frontinus’ De Aquis does not endorse the new regime in entirely uncontroversial/simplistic ways.

7 Alice König: ‘Martial and Frontinus, under Nerva and Trajan’ Working Papers in Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.11 (1/8/13) eluding attempts to pin any firmly down.27 The ‘safe’ topic of conversation that Martial recommends for his dinner party at the end of 10.48 – the chariot-racer Scorpus – pops up twice, in 10.50 and 10.53; and his shock death not only engages with other poems in Epigrams 10 where mortality, achievement (especially poetic) and the value and transience of fame are debated but also reminds us – if reminder were needed – that what might seem light-hearted in Martial one moment can change in an instant and feel suddenly serious.28 10.59, meanwhile, returns us to the book’s opening epigram and revokes the suggestion given there that we pick and choose what we read (10.1: ‘If I seem rather too long a book, with too late a full-stop, read a few poems only – legito pauca: I shall then be a little book. Quite often my small pages end with the end of a poem. Make me as short as you want me to be – fac tibi me quam cupis ipse brevem.’). Employing the metaphor of dining once more to talk about his poetry, Martial here demands readers with large, wide-ranging appetites, not fussy eaters who merely trifle with titbits: consumpta est uno si lemmata pagina, transis, et breviora tibi, non meliora placent. dives et ex omni posita est instructa macello tibi, sed te mattea sola iuvat. non est nobis nimium lectore guloso; hunc volo, non fiat qui sine pane satur. In so doing, he complicates the experience of reading his epigrams. The ground shifts beneath our feet, as an approach that was approved at the start of the book is replaced half way through by a conflicting model. By calling to mind as well as contradicting his introductory poem, 10.59 thus marks a caesura in Epigrams 10, which kick-starts the second half of the volume by making us look back over what (and how) we have been reading and by raising more questions than it answers about how to proceed.29 The distinction that Martial draws at 10.59.2 between brevity and quality might encourage us to pay particular attention to his longer poems. As it happens, 10.48 is the second longest of the book (reason itself, perhaps, for unpicking it carefully); and the longest, 10.30, introduces a theme (the hassles of life in Rome, set against the pleasures of a country retreat30) which is picked up by two other relatively

27 On this feature of Martial, see, e.g., Spisak 2002; Garthwaite 2006: 407-8, 416; Fitzgerald 2007: 4-6, 80, 106-7, 198-9; Rimell 2009: 12-15. As Rimell 2009: 66 points out, Epigrams 10 particularly ‘chews over the passage of time, celebrating birthdays, and debating what it is to think about and approach mortality at crucial life junctures.’ 28 Indeed, the death of Scorpus so soon after he has been recommended as a ‘safe’ topic of conversation might even signal the death – or at least the dearth – of such ‘safe’ topics. That possibility is complicated by the fact that he returns from the dead to speak himself in 10.53. 29 In this sense, it mimics the effect of Epigrams 10 as a book, which Rimell 2009: 65 describes as ‘a fault line in Martial’s twelve-book epic tome, which teaches us to keep looking backwards and forwards, to (re) read everything differently.’ 30 On this theme in Ep. 10, see esp. Spisak 2002: 132-4; Fearnley 2003: 630-1; Merli 2006a: 259-61.

8 Alice König: ‘Martial and Frontinus, under Nerva and Trajan’ Working Papers in Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.11 (1/8/13) long pieces – 10.51 and 10.5831 – the second of which not only sits right next to that though-provoking caesura but also brings us back to Frontinus. The first four lines of 10.58 focus on place, transporting us to ‘the calm retreat of coastal Anxur’, where Martial revels in a ‘seaside villa, a grove untroubled, even at the height of summer, by inconsiderate crickets, and free-flowing ponds’: Anxuris aequorei placidos, Frontine, recessus et proprius Baias litoreamque domum et quod inhumanae cancro fervente cicadae non novere nemus, flumineosque lacus dum colui… These verses, and especially the epigram’s first two words, closely recall 10.51.7-10, where Martial similarly celebrates Anxur’s ‘watery’ delights (o nemus, o fontes solidumque madentis harenae/ litus et aequoreis splendidus Anxur aquis…), inviting us to read the two poems as a pair.32 And because 10.51 compares the charms of Anxur with the topography of Rome, where days are stolen (lines 5-6: quos, Faustine, dies, quales tibi Roma… abstulit!) and men become weary and resentful (‘lines 15-6: dicere te lassum quotiens ego credo Quirino: ‘quae tua sunt, tibi habe: quae mea, redde mihi.’), an implicit (and unfavourable) contrast with Rome is immediately triggered at the start of 10.58 too. It’s evocation of temperate tranquillity is reminiscent, too, of the ‘not stagnant water’ (nec languet aequor), ‘the living quiet of the sea’ (viva sed quies ponti) and the light breezes (leni… vento) of 10.30, another Rome-rejecting poem.33 But Martial’s lyrical rewriting of a scene he has painted (more than once) before also draws attention to his poetic talents, which is fitting because this version of the city-country contrast concentrates particularly on the constraints, or demands, which life in Rome imposes upon poetic production.34 First Martial sketches his poetic ideal (in lines 5-6); and the gently moving waters and absence of harsh heat and noise that introduce it embody both the benign literary freedom that he claims to have enjoyed at Anxur (where he had leisure to cultivate the learned Muses with Frontinus: doctas tecum celebrare vacabat/ Pieridas) and the kind of authentic, unadulterated, free-flowing, pleasant-sounding poetry that we are invited to believe he composed as a result. In Rome, by contrast, he finds himself ‘tossed about in the city’s depths’ and forced to ‘waste’ his life in ‘fruitless toil’ (poetic images which underline, with deliberate irony, the ignominy of his un- poetic situation):

31 At sixteen and fourteen lines long respectively, these two stand out from the poems immediately surrounding them, which are all eight lines long or shorter. Other epigrams which touch on this theme include 10.10, 12, 13, 47, 74 and 96. 32 Balland 2010: 63 notes other similarities between the two poems, too, including metre and length. 33 Martial’s attitude to both city and country is more ambivalent and fluid, of course, than some of these poems seem to suggest (on the allure of the city in 10.51, for instance, see, e.g., Rimell 2009: 203-4; Spisak 2002: 137; and on the complexity of Martial’s approach to the city-country topos across all of his Epigrams, Merli 2006b. Merli 2006b: 338-40 argues that the city-countryside contrast in Book 10 specifically is even ‘more complex and less stereotypic’ than in previous books: ‘The imminent return to Celtiberia allows the idyllic dream to become more concrete and detailed than in Books 1 and 2, but it also highlights the richness of Roman cultural life and especially the close relationship of Martial with the public of the capital.’). 34 Merli 2006a: 266; Spisak 2002: 138.

9 Alice König: ‘Martial and Frontinus, under Nerva and Trajan’ Working Papers in Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.11 (1/8/13)

…nunc nos maxima Roma terit. hic mihi quando dies meus est? iactamur in alto urbis, et in sterili vita labore perit… (10.58.6-8)35 The specifics of his complaint become clear in lines 9-14, where he argues that the need to support himself financially (in particular, the need to dance attendance upon patrons) compromises his poetic endeavours (and dignity): after all, ‘such a waste of time does not befit a bard’ (12: nec vatem talia damna decent). This, then, is his kick against Rome in 10.58: it is not simply that it keeps him away from rustic delights (as in 10.30 and 51), but that the social and economic demands that it makes ruffle the waters – and disturb the integrity – of his (idealised) poetic existence.36 It is not just any old Rome, however, that is complained about here; it is Rome NOW, as opposed to Anxur THEN. 10.30 depicts both Rome and Formiae in the present tense: Apollinaris flees, admires, desires; breezes blow, fish are caught, Rome keeps men captive, and bailiffs reap the benefit. 10.51 similarly focuses on ‘now’ (iam, line 1): Rome may have stolen days in the past, but Faustinus is depicted (still) resisting its hazards in the present, and Anxur is as vibrant as ever. In 10.58, by contrast, the poetic retreat of Anxur is consigned to the past (dum colui… vacabat) by the present force of ‘mightiest Rome’ (nunc nos maxima Roma terit). And, given Frontinus’ presence in the poem (and the reference to his second consulship in 10.48, and the questions about time, ages and dynasties which that raises), it is hard not to read something political into this – something which potentially runs counter to the ways in which other authors (for instance Tacitus, and Frontinus himself) talked about literary production in post-Domitianic Rome.37 On one level, of course, Frontinus functions simply as a representative patron, through whom Martial is able to articulate some of his (timeless) frustrations with the hassles of being a client. Frontinus is useful to explore this topic with, because he has only lately emerged as a (very influential) patron; indeed, the transformation takes place almost before our eyes. He begins the poem as a literary companion, immersed in Martial’s poetic world, quite literally surrounded by its placidos recessus and doctas Pieridas. But as the demands of Rome break in, first person plurals become (ironically) poetic (while iactamur in line 7 might apply to both men, pascimus applies to Martial alone), and the budding statesman and poet begin to go separate ways. An anonymous rival threatens to drive them further apart by exposing Martial’s lack-lustre attendance on his patron (lines 11-12). And the epigram ends with a (defiantly poetic) avowal of Martial’s devotion to Frontinus, that re-unites them but

35 On this imagery (and the echoes it contains of Aen. 1.3 and Horace Ep. 2.2), see esp. Rimell 2009: 89 and 199. 36 Of course, as Merli 2006b: 340 notes, ‘maxima Roma described in many epigrams as chaotic and exhausting provides also the setting for a happy and fertile relationship between poet and readers’, which Martial claims to miss once he has left Rome in Epigrams 12 (epist.); ibid. 344: ‘The traditional antithesis of official-otium is at least in part being counterbalanced by the one between the cultural life of Rome and the narrow-mindedness of the provincials (10.2; 103).’ 37 E.g., Peachin 2004: 159: ‘…is it possible to read anything into Martial’s nunc (i.e., about AD 98) nos maxima Roma terit? That is, does it at all reflect the reality of (especially) Frontinus’ stressful occupation with the water supply?... Or is this the typical plaint of being harried by Rome?’

10 Alice König: ‘Martial and Frontinus, under Nerva and Trajan’ Working Papers in Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.11 (1/8/13) also captures the gulf that has opened up between them, and the unequal footing on which (we are to imagine) their relationship now rests.38 Frontinus’ emergence as a patron, however, was tied up with recent political developments (and due in no small part to the imperial patronage that he had lately come to enjoy). So, inevitably, the trajectory that he takes in the epigram also recalls his wider political career – his move from the leisurely margins of public life to the very heart of Roman politics, where – under the auspices of Nerva and Trajan – he was now setting a new blueprint for Rome’s governing class. And that adds an extra dimension to the use that Martial makes of him (as an insider, who is helping Martial to define his outsider-status). For in progressively distancing himself from Frontinus as the poem develops, Martial is not simply rejecting negotium per se but the Nervan/Trajanic model of negotium that Frontinus NOW/nunc, in AD 98, embodies. The closing words of the poem perhaps underscore this. For the striking phrase non officiosus amo corresponds to language that Frontinus himself uses in the De Aquis to characterise his (very Nervan) approach to public office. He compares his diligentia and amor with the emperor’s in the text’s opening paragraph, for instance, and is at pains throughout (e.g. Aq. 1, 2, 77 and 130) to show that he goes above and beyond the call of duty in the exercise of his new .39 In this light, Martial’s happiness to profess ‘devotion’ (amor) but reluctance to act officiose does not simply align him with a long-standing Catullan/elegiac tradition but (potentially) spurns some of (what Frontinus himself is helping to establish as) the defining rhetoric of the new age; and that makes Martial’s liminal position (or not even liminal – he refuses to haunt thresholds!) not merely a poetic but also a political stance. Martial’s nostalgia for Anxur’s ‘riverlike lakes’ (the flumineosque lacus of line 4) may also feel faintly political, or polemical, in connection with Frontinus. For, in a climactic section of the De Aquis (Aq. 87-93) – a section that would have been one of the most widely-read bits of the treatise – Frontinus foregrounds Nerva’s decision to separate a river and lake, that together had been polluting much of Rome’s water supply, as evidence of the transformative effect that Nerva’s (and of course Frontinus’) cura and diligentia were having – not just on the aqueducts themselves but on the very health of the whole city.40 The allusion is vanishingly subtle (so

38 This may function as a genuine appeal to Frontinus, not simply for patronage but for indulgence over Martial’s unorthodox approach to clientship; but it mischievously finds a way around the system, too, by replacing the physical door-stopping that interferes with Martial’s muse with a literary salutation that might well find favour with a former poetic partner. And in the process it also forms part of a wider network of epigrams that lay the whole system of patronage (not just Martial’s response to it) open to scrutiny. On patronage in Martial, see esp. Gold 2003. 39 (e.g. Aq. 1, 2, 77 and 130) 40 Aq. 87-93 represent a (welcome) pause, after lists of incorrect and correct distribution figures (which Frontinus himself acknowledges may seem ‘not only dry but also confusing’, Aq. 77) and before the text’s closing discussion of the laws and practices relating to the aqueducts’ maintenance; this is one of the (few) sections of the text that would really have grabbed the general reader, because it is here that Frontinus brings aqueduct administration into dialogue with contemporary politics. Nerva’s decision to move the source of the Anio Novus so that the river can no longer muddy the lake’s clear waters is foregrounded as the highlight of his celebrated reforms (which themselves, we are to understand, are emblematic of his wider approach to government); indeed, such is the impact of his separation of river and

11 Alice König: ‘Martial and Frontinus, under Nerva and Trajan’ Working Papers in Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.11 (1/8/13) elusive, in fact, that some commentators have marvelled at Martial’s failure to refer to Frontinus’ activities as curator aquarum in this epigram41), but together with the suggestive phrasing at the end of the epigram and the contrast that is drawn between past and present part way through, this coupling of flumen and lacus may toy (provocatively) with the (almost unthinkable) idea (post-Domitian) that Rome’s poets had once enjoyed a pre-Nervan ‘idyll’. Or at least it may hint at a certain scepticism about the vision of a Rome revitalised (and refreshing) that the De Aquis itself presents us with. Like most of Martial’s epigrams, 10.58 is open (simultaneously) to lots of different readings. It feels personal and pessimistic, at the same time as being playful and perhaps parodic. And its range of moods and possible meanings is enhanced by the fact that Martial engages with Frontinus in more than one guise – as a sometime- poet, patron and politician. His presence does not make a political interpretation inevitable, then; but signposts within the poem do point us towards one if we choose to follow them up; and overlaps with several surrounding epigrams have a similar effect. In the wake of his appearance in 10.48, for example, Frontinus does not simply politicise time in 10.58 (turning a comparison between then and now into an opportunity to reflect on differences between imperial eras); he also contrasts more sharply than he otherwise might have done with Faustinus, Martial’s addressee in 10.51, and in so doing brings the theme of dynastic change into dialogue with Martial’s concerns about poetic freedom. For while Faustinus belongs firmly to Martial’s literary circle and seems equally committed to a life of cultured leisure,42 Frontinus figures as an outsider (in 10.48 he is not one of the epigram’s invited poet- guests, but an intrusion from public life into a private party) and an emerging member of Rome’s (new) governing elite. And, thanks to the consequences for Martial which his defection from literature/Domitianic Anxur to politics/Nervan-Trajanic Rome supposedly has, he therefore comes to represent the (growing?) threat to poetic production posed by the world that he embodies. Given its similarities with 10.51, there has been some debate about whether or not 10.58 was originally addressed to Faustinus – or whether Frontinus should be taken as the recipient of both.43 In fact, the difference in addressee helps these

lake that a new inscription has been set up, celebrating Nerva as the aqueduct’s new founder (Aq. 93). (On the possibility that Trajan is the emperor named in this inscription, see Rodgers 2004 ad loc.) 41 See, e.g., Baldwin 1994: 485: ‘if Martial’s poem is addressed to our man, he seems to have missed a golden opportunity… for neatly pointed flattery by not contrasting the waters near which Frontinus takes his leisure with those to which he devotes his working days. The same goes for his failure to mention any of Frontinus’ public offices or military achievements.’ Cf. White 1975: 295-6, n. 41. 42 As Nauta 2002: 67 points out, Faustinus (who is the recipient of nineteen epigrams) ‘is never praised for any kind of oratorical, political, or military activity; what does receive attention is his literary production and his life of cultured leisure at his villas’; on Faustinus’ identity and role in Martial’s epigrams, see also Balland 2010: 39-91, esp. 55-65. 43 On the question of 10.58’s addressee, see esp. White 1975: 295-6, n. 41; Baldwin 1994: 485; Nauta 2002: 55, n. 51; Peachin 2004: 158-9. The likelihood that it was addressed to the same Frontinus mentioned in 10.48 seems to outweigh arguments that have been advanced to the contrary. On the possibility (generally discounted) that

12 Alice König: ‘Martial and Frontinus, under Nerva and Trajan’ Working Papers in Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.11 (1/8/13) epigrams to function more effectively as a pair (or as part of a trilogy with 10.30), for the change in personnel enables Martial develop their common themes in thought- provoking ways.44 In conjunction/comparison with Faustinus, Frontinus adds an extra piquancy to a series of epigrams that set out Martial’s detachment from (especially Nervan/Trajanic) Rome. And he may even draw attention (not for the first time) to differences and also an unsettling degree of continuity between the first and second versions of Epigrams 10. For if 10.51 belonged to edition one (as a reference to the Templum Gentis Flaviae perhaps suggests),45 Martial’s on-going (if not increased) frustration in 10.58 with the disruptive impositions of (post-Domitianic) Rome hints both that the literary climate ushered in by Nerva and Trajan was no more favourable (and perhaps even a little less so) than what went before it, and that the revised volume of Epigrams 10 was not as in tune with the rhetoric of the new dynasty as some poems within it might suggest.46 The most controversial aspect of what I am suggesting here is that, as well as engaging with Frontinus the man (in all of his dimensions), Martial is also engaging with and responding to some of Frontinus’ writing – and, indeed, to the literary model (or phenomenon) that Frontinus represents. For Frontinus’ De Aquis does not just celebrate Nerva’s administrative reforms (and the new scope that they might give to ambitious senators); it also asserts a harmonious and mutually beneficial relationship between writing and public-and-political life (one that goes beyond the easing of tensions between authors and emperors and the tentative literary revival that we see explored, for instance, in Tacitus’ Agricola). In plotting his (and Frontinus’) journey from the learned Muses to the prosaic maelstrom of civic duty as a narrative of literary degeneration, Martial is (perhaps consciously?) challenging that. Epigram 10.58 is not just another variation on the ‘Rome-makes-(good)-writing-difficult’ theme, in other words, but a fascinating counterpoint to Frontinus’ De Aquis (and other texts like it), which prompts reflection on the diversity of contemporary literary (and perhaps not-so-literary) activity, and on the variety of stories that could be told about the relationship between literary production and the civic and political world.

12.8 and 12.50 I want to end by fast-forwarding to Book 12, where we may glimpse Frontinus in two more epigrams. Epigram 12.8 builds on a series of poems that appear (at least on the face of it) to celebrate the new Nervan/Trajanic age. In addition to the sequence of poems at the start of Epigrams 11, for example, 10.6 celebrates Trajan’s accession by imagining the happy anticipation of the people of Rome at the prospect of his home-coming; and

10.51 may have been addressed to Frontinus, see Damon 1997: 162, n. 37; Nauta 2002: 68, n. 98; Peachin 2004: 158, n. 8. 44 Balland 2010: 63 sees 10.58 as ‘dans une large mesure une retractatio de X.51.’ 45 10.51.14: quaeque intent caelo proxima templa suo. Nauta 2002: 68, n. 98 reads this line as laudatory, and therefore evidence that the poem dates to the Flavian not the Nervan/Trajanic dynasty; see also Balland 2010: 63 and 65-6, who likewise notes the ‘Flavian’ feel of 10.51 and similarly dates it to the first rather than the second edition of Epigrams 10. 46 On this point, see e.g., Fearnley 2003: 618 (esp. n. 14, where she argues that ‘[t]he last thing Martial seems to be doing in this book is trying to “ingratiate himself with the new government” [Sullivan 1991: 48]’) and 626-9.

13 Alice König: ‘Martial and Frontinus, under Nerva and Trajan’ Working Papers in Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.11 (1/8/13)

10.7 revels in Trajan’s (and Rome’s) successes on the Rhine, enjoining that river (in the name of the Tiber) to send the emperor back to his own. 10.72 and 12.5, meanwhile, compare the principates of Trajan and Nerva respectively with the reign of Domitian, adopting the rhetoric of the new regime as they extol the return of ‘rustic’ truth (10.72), upright integrity, cheerful leniency, and the cautious exercise of power (12.5).47 12.8 develops 12.5 by detailing not just the joy but also the pride that Rome feels in the emperor Trajan: Terrarum dea gentiumque Roma, cui par est nihil et nihil secundum, Traiani modo laeta cum futuros tot per saecula computaret annos, et fortem iuvenemque Martiumque in tanto duce militem videret, dixit praeside gloriosa tali: ‘Parthorumque procere ducesque Serum, Thraces, Sauromatae, Getae, Britanni, possum ostendere Caesarem; venite.’ There is something that makes this epigram stand out, however, from others in the same vein; and that is that its opening pair of verses closely recalls De Aquis 88.1, where Frontinus rejoices that Rome, ‘the queen and mistress of the world, who is goddess of the lands (quae terrarum dea consistit), and to whom there is no equal and no second (cui par nihil et nihil secundum), senses the care of her most devoted emperor and prince Nerva each day.’ Some commentators explain this by arguing that, rather than it being a case of Martial borrowing from Frontinus (or vice versa), the phrases in question were interpolated into the De Aquis (from Martial) by a later editor – for example, the mediaeval copyist Peter the Deacon.48 That theory is prompted by the difficulty they have in accepting that the author of a practical, administrative work might have shown some occasional poetic flair (as the scholar Justus Lipsius put it in 1598, ‘the sober and learned pen of Frontinus does not approve of or like the playfulness of poets’49), and also by an assumption that Martial was unlikely to have read a text like the De Aquis. But the De Aquis is not as dry, stylistically, as many suppose. It not only concludes its account of the ’s aqueduct network with a grandiloquent (and much-quoted) exhortation to ‘compare, if you will, all these useful structures carrying so much water with the redundant pyramids or the celebrated but purposeless inventions of the Greeks!’ (Aq. 16), but sets the tone for that section at its start by referencing with the phrase (the title of his monumental history of Rome).50 Other rhetorical and poetical flourishes recall the likes of , Virgil,

47 See also, e.g. 12.5, where Martial celebrates the transfer of treasures from Domitian’s private palace to the temple of Capitoline Jupiter. (As the likes of Coleman 1998: 337-8 have long pointed out, of course, the variety and complexity of interests and agenda in Martial’s Epigrams, coupled with the slipperiness of his poetic personae, make political subversion and panegyric equally hard to prove.) 48 E.g. Rodgers 2004 ad loc.; Dederich 1839: 108-9. 49 Lipsius 1598: 1.2: vereor ut allitum adscriptumve alieno manu sit, et gravis atque eruditus reliquus Frontini stilus non probat aut amat lasciviam poetarum. 50 Aq. 4 (DeLaine 1995: 121-3).

14 Alice König: ‘Martial and Frontinus, under Nerva and Trajan’ Working Papers in Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.11 (1/8/13)

Horace and Statius, demonstrating Frontinus’ versatility.51 Moreover, if 10.58 were not enough to convince us, Frontinus’ political prominence, and what we know about the reading habits and publication practices of their generation, makes it highly unlikely that Martial would have been unaware of the De Aquis.52 There is no need, in other words, to turn to a mediaeval copyist in order to explain the parallels between De Aquis 88.1 and Martial 12.8.1-2. It is just as likely (if not more so) that this is an instance either of Frontinus echoing Martial or (much more likely, in view of publication dates) of Martial reusing a phrase from Frontinus.53 If that is so, 12.8 acquires new layers of meaning. On its own it looks ahead, optimistically (laeta), near the start of Trajan’s reign, to what his principate may bring. And in characterising him primarily as a soldier-emperor (in lines 5-6), its boast to the chieftains of Parthia, Serica, and other far-flung places (‘I can show you a : come!’) particularly conjures up the prospect of great military campaigns – and conquests.54 Association with De Aquis 88.1, however, deploys other aspects of the regime’s propaganda, by pointing us back to some of its founding rhetoric (Nerva’s diligent and patriotic concern for civic reform, which was often contrasted with Flavian mismanagement and corruption). In other words, in their allusion to the De Aquis, the epigram’s opening lines extend the scope of our look at Trajan, not just by setting one picture of him alongside a different feature of his imperial persona, but also by turning our thoughts to the origins of his principate, as well as its potential destination. And Martial’s echo of Frontinus may even prompt reflection on the very evolution of imperial imagery – and the role that texts themselves play in it. For by transporting us from one laudatory text to another and back again, 12.8.1-2 draws attention to the power that literature has, both to shape (and complicate) a reader’s view of the emperor. Epigram 12.50 potentially complicates our picture of Trajan – or at least Trajanic times – still further. In books 10, 11 and 12 (and in earlier volumes too),

51 As Baldwin 1994, 503-4 notes: ‘Nature in her many wonders frequently inspires Frontinus to elevated and poetic heights of expression’; Baldwin sites phrases at Aq. 4, 7, 15, 73 and 93 as examples, pointing to some parallels in Virgil’s Georgics, and also suggests that the phrase regina et domina orbis at 88 is reminiscent not just of Cicero (de Off. 3, 6, 28) and Horace (Ep. 1, 7, 44 and Odes 4, 14, 44) but also Martial 7, 50, 1 and Statius Silv. 2.2.12, concluding that ‘Frontinus might be regarded as writing in the poetic idiom of his own day.’ Even Rodgers 2004: 249 accepts the phrase regina et domina orbis (Aq. 88.1) as original ‘despite its flourish’. On the De Aquis’ ‘literariness’ more generally, see also DeLaine 1995: 121-9. 52 Frontinus, Martial, Pliny, Tacitus and their various contemporaries interacted with each other regularly, in literary as well as social and political contexts. Moreover, the subject matter of the De Aquis would have ensured a widespread circulation among Rome’s elite. On the likelihood of Martial having read at least some of the De Aquis, see esp. Peachin 2004: 159. On social and political as well as literary interactions between Martial, Frontinus and their overlapping circles of acquaintances, see esp. Balland 2010. 53 This is the conclusion reached by, e.g., Kappelmacher 1916: 183-5; Grimal 1944: 89; González Rolán 1985: ix-x and 59-60; Nauta 2002: 55, n. 51; Peachin 2004: 156-7. 54 Given the connection which lines 1-2 have already established with Frontinus’ De Aquis, and the assertion in them that Rome has no equal, this closing address to other nations may even remind readers of De Aquis 16, where Rome’s superiority is also stressed.

15 Alice König: ‘Martial and Frontinus, under Nerva and Trajan’ Working Papers in Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.11 (1/8/13) poems apparently in praise of the emperor are accompanied by others that often seem to undercut, or at least muddy, them.55 11.7, for instance, contrasts the days of Domitian (when the emperor’s depravities could provide a handy cover for a wanton woman) with Nerva’s reign (‘under the emperor Nerva, you may be a Penelope’, 4-5). But, in pointing out that its addressee does not want to reform – Paula is still lustfully promiscuous, despite the demise of her Domitianic excuse – it draws attention to a continuity of vice that underlies (and undermines) the moral change that Nerva’s accession is supposed to herald.56 Epigram 12.50 is not obviously in the same category. It makes no mention of the emperor himself, or of the times in which it is set; rather, it satirises a private villa for its unpractical extravagance. But in describing the sound, everywhere, of streams of water going to waste (et pereuntis aquae fluctus ubique sonat, 12.50.6) it uses a phrase that resembles one in that hopefully now familiar section of the De Aquis where Frontinus celebrates the transformative impact of Nerva’s ‘diligent’ reforms – in this instance, the fact that not even waste waters go to waste: ne pereuntes quidem aquae otiosae sunt (Aq. 88.3). It may be a coincidence. But even if it is, in recalling that particular chapter of the De Aquis it potentially evokes not just Frontinus’ praise of Nerva but also Epigram 12.8, where our view of Trajan is expanded by it. And in so doing, in investing Martial’s description of a rich man’s property with a faint political twist, it perhaps invites comparison between Nervan/Trajanic rhetoric and the reality behind it. Indeed, like Epigram 11.7, it may prompt readers to reflect on the fact that, despite Nerva’s thrifty providence (and despite Frontinus’ De Aquis), private (Domitianic-style?) profligacy still persists.57

Conclusions Martial’s engagement with Frontinus enriches a number of his epigrams, helping him to trigger various political reflections in particular, and to do a bit of self- positioning along the way. It must also have impacted on (and not just engaged with) Frontinus’ own self-positioning: by cementing (and not just exploiting) his reputation as a model Nervan/Trajanic statesman, for example; and by nuancing readers’ responses to some of Frontinus’ writing, by contextualising and interrogating some of the claims that the De Aquis makes. In the process, it serves as a useful reminder (for Martial novices, like me, at any rate) that Martial’s literary interactions and interests ranged well beyond the world of verse – and that he expected his readers’ to do so, as well. Literary production and consumption clearly crossed (or even collapsed) genre boundaries in a

55 On this feature of Epigrams 9, for instance, see, e.g., Garthwaite 1993 and 2009: 422-6, Boyle 1995: 265-6, and Fearnley 2003: 620-1; also, e.g., Wolff 2009 and Garthwaite 1990 on ambiguities in (esp.) Ep. 6. Sullivan 1991: 48 notes the way in which Martial’s ‘somewhat ambiguously expressed determination to return to Bilbilis’ undercuts his ‘highly approving comments’ about Trajan in Ep. 10; see also Fearnley 2003: 622-9 on the potential ambiguity even in the epigrams ostensibly in praise of Trajan in this book (10.6, 7, 34 and 72), and Delignon 2008: 459-62 and n. 43 on ambiguities in 8.55, 9.3, 10.72 and 10.101, inter alia. 56 In fact, Ep. 11.2, 3, and 4 are not necessarily as positive as they might appear: on the ambiguity of Martial’s praise of Nerva as reborn in Ep. 11.3, for example, see Rimell 2009: 168. 57 Pace Delignon 2008: 458, who argues that Martial does not invite readers to see public/political subtexts in epigrams about private vice.

16 Alice König: ‘Martial and Frontinus, under Nerva and Trajan’ Working Papers in Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.11 (1/8/13) way that modern assumptions sometimes overlook. It also raises questions about the profile, and status, of Frontinus’ De Aquis –and texts like it. Just how widely read was it? And how marginal or pivotal a reference-point did it become for other authors who were attempting to make sense of the times? Where in the literary scheme of things was it thought to sit? In what literary light did Frontinus, Martial and their contemporaries regard it – where does administrative writing stop and ‘literature’ start – and do (or did) literary interactions play a part in the determining the (inevitably fluctuating) answer to that question? Pliny’s tenth book of Epistles are one place I might go to think further about that particular issue, not least because I think that they must themselves be influenced by and be in (retrospective) dialogue with Frontinus’ De Aquis (among other things). And of course, there is more to be teased out of Pliny’s interactions with Frontinus in other Epistles and in the Panegyricus. They, like Tacitus in the Agricola and Aelianus Tacticus in his Tactica Theoria,58 engage with Frontinus both as an author and as a statesman (in different, but interlocking ways), and point up (among other things) the fact that literary interactions are often (if not always) part of a wider web of cultural, social and political interactions.

Alice König ([email protected]) St Andrews, 1st August 2013

58 On which, see König 2013 and 2012 respectively.

17 Alice König: ‘Martial and Frontinus, under Nerva and Trajan’ Working Papers in Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.11 (1/8/13)

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