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1 the Role of Eloquence in Tacitus David Erich Merkel Holdenville, OK 1 The Role of Eloquence in Tacitus David Erich Merkel Holdenville, OK M.A., University of Virginia, 2011 B.A, University of Oklahoma, 2009 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Classics University of Virginia May, 2015 2 Table of Contents Introduction 3 Chapter 1 – Maiestas and Delation 4 Chapter 2 – The Dialogus 32 Chapter 3 – The Histories, Part One: Senate and Soldiers 68 Chapter 4 – The Histories, Part Two: The Batavian Revolt 147 Chapter 5 – The Annals, Part One: The Reign of Tiberius 198 Chapter 6 – The Annals, Part Two: Claudius and Nero 287 Epilogue – The Dialogus Revisited 359 Bibliography 370 3 The important position occupied by rhetoric in ancient literature in general and historiography in particular is too well known to require much introduction. This work will attempt to trace the boundaries of that position more accurately. This project originated in asking a very simple question: Given that the primary function of a speech is to persuade its audience, do the numerous speeches in Tacitus' works actually fulfill that function within the narrative? Do the speeches aimed at calming a mutiny or acquitting a defendant in fact achieve that aim? Overwhelmingly, they do not. Then why not? This work will therefore examine how Tacitus portrayed the functional role of eloquence under the Principate by looking at many of the speeches in Tacitus' historical works and the part they play in the larger narrative. With Tacitus, of course, we are fortunate enough to have a work concerned with this exact theme, the Dialogus; but the Dialogus, we shall see, is far from straightforward. In the end, it will become clear that Tacitus devotes so much narrative space to oratory precisely because it no longer works as it should: eloquence, as he portrays it, has no real function under the Empire. This is especially evident if one examines the treason trials of the Annals, which represent the most conspicuous failure of oratory to live up to its traditional role in Roman society. Chapter 1, then, will be a brief historical overview of maiestas and how it was seen in the Roman historiographical tradition. Chapter 2 will examine the Dialogus, and will argue that the Dialogus can only be fully understood by reading it alongside Tacitus' other works, and comparing what the interlocutors say to what Tacitus tells us actually happens. Chapters 3 and 4 will cover the Histories: Chapter 3, oratory's failure in the Senate and and its inability to control the soldiery, and Chapter 4, a revealing exemption to this pattern of failure in Julius Civilis, a Germanic chief leading a rebellion against Rome. Lastly, Chapters 5 and 6 will look at the Annals: Chapter 5, the reign of Tiberius and the beginning and growth of maiestas accusations, and Chapter 6, further developments during the reigns of Claudius and, finally, of Nero. 4 Chapter 1: Maiestas and Delation, Historical Background A large part of what follows will be concerned with ancient perceptions of maiestas and the delatores. It will therefore be necessary to explain precisely what these concepts are, their historical origins and their development up into the time of the early Principate. Thus we will begin with an historical overview of maiestas before continuing on to delation, in both cases trying to stay as close to the facts as possible. For the imperial period itself, however, the bulk of our evidence comes from the often biased ancient authors themselves, and scholars have understood the role of the delatores only by criticism and reappraisal of these sources; the historical overview will thus be followed by a careful description of the ancient perception of these issues, and then by a discussion of recent scholarship reevaluating and in a large degree correcting that perception. We will conclude with a summary and synthesis of the various viewpoints. Maiestas is an inherently nebulous concept, difficult to define, and so too must be the crimen maiestatis minutae (often itself simply called maiestas or translated simply as “treason”).1 It derives from maior and expresses the idea of absolute superiority, and in its earliest usage maiestas is the possession of the gods alone.2 By extension, it describes those who are like the gods, and in the Republic was the only word fit to assign to the greatness of the assembled populus Romanus: by extension again, it is the (temporary) property of the Roman magistrates, who ultimately derive it along with their authority from the vote of the populus.3 It is perhaps easiest to see what maiestas is if we observe what a violation of it could consist of.4 The crime of diminishing the maiestas of the Roman 1 For everything that follows concerning maiestas, we must emphasize at the start how little is known for certain: the judicial authors who discuss the subject come later, after it is clear that much (but not how much) had changed. Everything we say is based at best on probability, but still clouded by a more or less heavy fog. 2 Drexler (1956) 196, Bauman (1967) 1-4. Drexler catalogues a large number of the uses of the word in a wide variety of Latin authors. 3 Drexler (1956) 197, Bauman (1967) 12-13. At Livy 2.7.7 (discussed by Bauman), the consul Valerius Poplicola, founder of the Republic, has his fasces lowered when he addressed the populus, symbolically demonstrating the relative inferiority of his own position. Cf. Aulus Gellius 13.13.3: quoniam [quaestor] magistratus populi Romani procul dubio esset et neque vocari neque, si venire nollet, capi atque prendi salva ipsius magistratus maiestate posset. 4 Drexler (1956) 201. 5 people could be committed both by a private citizen against a magistrate (the representative of the populus) or by a magistrate himself acting in an illegal or shameful way; in the former category, it could be maiestas minuta physically to restrain a tribune from speaking, or even for one tribune to continue speaking after another tribune had interposed his veto, as this was a slight against the maiestas of the representative of the people;5 among the acts of a magistrate that could constitute maiestas minuta (in the last few centuries BC), Bauman enumerates: unauthorized warfare and departure from a province, military failures, cowardice, ill-treatment of allies and enemy prisoners, disregard of the auspices, and unfair division of booty; retention of office beyond the due term; bias in the administration of justice; neglect of sacral duties; misuse of public funds … and breaches of duty by legates, senators, and private individuals who undertook services on behalf of the State.6 As even this short list shows, maiestas can cover a wide variety of actions that were viewed in some way as diminishing the honor or dignity of the Roman people or the Roman State. A problem arises, however: the relationship between maiestas and perduellio. Perduellio, properly referring only to high treason and militarily bearing arms against the state, is far the older of the two, and many of the early examples of maiestas may actually have been perduellio – may have been, because the connections and differences are far from clear, and there is still much debate. There was no actual lex defining maiestas minuta as a crime until the lex Appuleia of 103 or 100 BC; before that everything must have followed the procedure of perduellio:7 in the absence of a lex defining the crimen and assigning a court, every indictment for perduellio was made before the full comitia 5 Bauman (1967) 31, discussing the case of C. Flaminius (tribune 232 BC) mentioned by Cicero, De Inventione 2.52. Crawford (1994) 65-70, on the fragmentary Pro Cornelio of Cicero 6 Bauman (1967) 21-22. Also p. 82: a magistrate might be guilty of maiestas for doing something a private citizen could lawfully do, such as if a praetor visited a brothel in his official capacity. 7 The word maiestas may or may not have been used before the lex Appuleia: Bauman (1967) 38 thinks so, but Ferrary (1983) 556-572 considers this terminology anachronistic. 6 centuriata of the people, and every conviction – far from a judicial decision by a court – was effectively a legislative act, a decree that so-and-so was guilty of treason.8 Such a procedure is implicit in Diodorus 24.12.1-3, where the Atilii were accused by the tribunes because their cruelty to a prisoner disgraced Rome; and in Cicero, De Officiis 3.112, where the dictator L. Manlius was accused by the tribune M. Pomponius for illegally extending his term of office: the fact that the tribunes summoned them to court in their official capacity as magistrates (Cicero has diem dixit) implies that the “trials” were really ad populum.9 In these circumstances, perduellio consisted of whatever a majority of the people agreed it to be at any given time; it thus covered a very broad and wide-ranging category of offenses.10 The lex Appuleia, the first maiestas law, changed this only somewhat. It set up a permanent quaestio to deal with the crime of maiestas minuta, but left the crime itself undefined, only proclaiming in the style of republican laws that those who did certain acts would be considered guilty of maiestas.11 This did not limit maiestas to those offenses covered by the law, but only codified a small subset of the acts that had long been (and continued to be) considered perduellio; thus the quaestio only applied to those charged with maiestas according to the lex Appuleia, while in theory one could still be indicted before the comitia centuriata for perduellio.
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