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To Augustan Rome EMPIRE OF THE IMAGINATION : THE POWER OF PUBLIC FICTIONS IN OVID ’S ‘R EADER RESPONSE ’ TO AUGUSTAN ROME by Nandini B. Pandey A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Classics in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Kathleen McCarthy, Chair Professor Erich S. Gruen Professor Ellen Oliensis Professor Albert Ascoli Spring 2011 © Nandini B. Pandey May 2011 ABSTRACT Empire of the Imagination: The Power of Public Fictions in Ovid’s ‘Reader Response’ to Augustan Rome by Nandini B. Pandey Doctor of Philosophy in Classics University of California, Berkeley Professor Kathleen McCarthy, Chair The idea of an ‘Augustan discourse’ represents a valuable step forward from the twentieth-century belief that Augustus ruled through patronage and propaganda, insofar as it better accommodates the polyvocality of the literature of his age as well as the delicacy of the princeps ’ political position between republic and empire. I seek to expand on this approach by drawing literary works into more thoroughgoing dialogue with contemporary ‘texts’ in other media, including coins and architecture, and by treating all these as examples of reader responses to Augustus that both construct and reflect public interpretations of the emperor. This work focuses in particular on Ovid’s readings of the visual iconography of the principate, arguing that these influenced both ancient and modern historians’ conception of Augustus as the master architect of his own public image. My project is inspired by poets’ creation of a sense of professional rivalry between themselves and the princeps , particularly Ovid’s portrayal of Augustus as a fellow manipulator of fictions. However, individual chapters deconstruct this idea by examining how specific ‘pro- Augustan’ icons cannot be regarded as a tool of propaganda, but rather, exist only within individual representations that often embed critical, evolving, and dialogic perspectives on the emperor. The first chapter analyzes historical evidence for the appearance and interpretation of a comet over Caesar’s funeral games in 44 BCE, as well as representations of this sidus Iulium in Roman coins and the poems of Vergil, Horace, Propertius, and Ovid. I argue that the imagistic metamorphosis of the sidus from a star into a comet over the course of Augustus’ reign reflects the growth of an ahistorical sense that the young Octavian took a proactive role in deifying Caesar, and a larger tendency to retroject Augustus’ mature power onto his early career. My second chapter interweaves an analysis of the archaeological remains of Augustus’ temple complex on the Palatine with close readings of Horace, Propertius, and Ovid’s literary responses to its architectonics; I argue that these poets’ reappropriations of public space for private purposes, particularly Ovid’s critique of the Palatine iconography and urban topography, have encouraged modern scholars to overread triumphalist intentions into the Augustan building program. In my last chapter, I compare visual and verbal representations of the triumph ceremony, culminating with Ovid’s use of the subject to explore how ritual may be extended 1 through time and space, how writing may be employed to serve empire, and how readers may intervene in a text’s creation of meaning. Building on this latter idea, a brief conclusion explores how Ovid’s exile poems treat Augustus himself as a text – that is, as a publicly circulating representation of power that was potentially unrepresentative of reality, subject to audience interpretation in defiance of authorial intention, and beholden to the imaginative participation of reader-subjects throughout the empire. Ovid also gives Augustan readers the tools by which to take interpretive control over texts and to examine their own complicity in constructing Augustan power. This parallels my broader theme that modern scholarly interpretations of the period cannot be disentangled from these subjective reader responses to Augustan Rome, and thus become part of a succession of imaginative rereadings and reinterpretations of the figure of Augustus. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments ……………………………………………………………….............. i Chapter 1............................................................................................................................. 1 Introduction: Fictionality, Reader Response, and the Power of Public Image in the Augustan Text Chapter 2………………………………………………………………………………….. 27 Inventing Augustus’ Self-Invention: The Evolution of the Sidus Iulium within Augustan Discourse Chapter 3………………………………………………………………………………….. 79 Reading Resistance into the Palatine: Poetic Revisions and Revisitations of Augustus’ Architectural Text Chapter 4………………………………………………………………………………….. 119 Ovid and the Triumph of the Imagination Chapter 5………………………………………………………………………………….. 177 Conclusion: Ovid and the Authorship of Augustus Works Cited………………………………………………………………………………. 184 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my supervisor Kathleen McCarthy, whose sensitivity and subtlety of thought have helped me grow as a scholar within and beyond this work; my mentor Erich Gruen, who has been and will always remain an inspiration and intellectual father to me; and my advisers Ellen Oliensis and Albert Ascoli for their creative and critical perspectives on the big picture as well as the small. I also extend heartfelt thanks to the friends and family whose love and support have sustained me over the course of my graduate career – especially Anna Pisarello, Virginia Lewis, Athena Kirk, Erin Beeghly, and my mother Kulwant. They and many other friends, colleagues, and advisers have contributed in countless intellectual, emotional, and practical ways to the writing of this dissertation, and never once let me forget my love of my subject or the people with whom I share it. I attribute any success I have attained to the above individuals and to the academic communities of which I have been privileged to be a part, at Swarthmore, Oxford, Cambridge, and especially Berkeley and the College of Wooster; I also gratefully acknowledge the latter institutions for generously underwriting my doctoral research. The virtues of this work belong to many; its errors are mine alone. Finally, I dedicate this dissertation to the memory of Corinne Crawford, Anna Woodiwiss, and Gunars Zvaigzne, dear friends and guiding stars to those who knew them. i CHAPTER 1 FICTIONALITY , READER RESPONSE , AND THE POWER OF PUBLIC IMAGE IN THE AUGUSTAN TEXT …. posito triumviri nomine consulem se ferens et ad tuendam plebem tribunicio iure contentum, ubi militem donis, populum annona, cunctos dulcedine otii pellexit, insurgere paulatim, munia senatus magistratuum legum in se trahere, nullo adversante … Casting off the title of triumvir, he [Augustus] carried himself about as consul, claiming he was content with a tribunician’s power for protecting the people; meanwhile he seduced the army with gifts, the common people with grain, and everyone with the sweetness of peace; and little by little increased his strength, absorbed the offices of the senate, officials, and laws into his own person, with no opposition. – Tacitus, Annales 1.2 I. Introduction Roman historians from Tacitus to our own age have held that Augustus manipulated public opinion in order to gain and maintain power. In the middle of the last century, for instance, Ronald Syme made the influential argument that Augustus marshaled all aspects of society to convey his public image and rhetoric; though this idea has since met with resistance from some scholars of Augustan literature, it continues to influence approaches to the politics, religion, art, and archaeology of the period. 1 This dissertation, however, argues that Augustus’ public image was not constructed by the princeps himself, but rather, emerges from a dialogue between texts in a variety of media that reflect subjective, evolving, and sometimes critical responses to the principate. In fact, both ancient and modern perceptions of the princeps have been mediated as much by these subjective responses as by historical evidence. 2 I make this argument by examining the evolution, over the course of Augustus’ reign, of three specific icons associated with Augustus’ power: the sidus Iulium , the Palatine complex, 1 Syme devotes a chapter of The Roman Revolution (1939) to Augustus’ “organization of opinion,” though his cynical idea of Augustus as an autocrat prevails throughout. Some scholars, for instance Galinsky 1996, have since recognized that his analysis was strongly shaped by his own experience of twentieth-century fascism, and there is a whole volume devoted to La révolution romaine après Ronald Syme (2000). Yet many others, too numerous to review thoroughly, have continued to default to this position long after it has proven inadequate. Walker and Burnett, for instance, declare that Augustus organized “a concerted propaganda campaign aimed at dominating all aspects of civic, religious, economic and military life with Augustus’ person” (1981: 25). Wallace-Hadrill notes that the most potent propaganda is the kind that “coalesces unnoticed with the existing values of a society,” but sees Augustus as an “aggressive and uncompromising … intruder [who] inserted himself into every corner of Roman life and consciousness, transforming it in the process” (1987: 223). More recently, Hannestad writes that “most of what we normally perceive as art during the Roman period may be
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