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Negotiation and the Construction of Intimacy in the Letters Between Fronto and Marcus Aurelius Sarah C

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Negotiation and the Construction of Intimacy in the Letters Between Fronto and Marcus Aurelius Sarah C University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations Spring 4-2-2018 Negotiation and the Construction of Intimacy in the Letters between Fronto and Marcus Aurelius Sarah C. Keith University of New Mexico Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/fll_etds Part of the Classical Literature and Philology Commons, Comparative Literature Commons, French and Francophone Language and Literature Commons, and the German Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Keith, Sarah C.. "Negotiation and the Construction of Intimacy in the Letters between Fronto and Marcus Aurelius." (2018). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/fll_etds/128 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Sarah C. Keith Candidate Foreign Languages and Literatures Department This thesis is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication: Approved by the Thesis Committee: Professor Osman Umurhan, Chairperson Professor Monica Cyrino Professor Lorenzo F. Garcia, Jr. Negotiation and the Construction of Intimacy in the Letters between Fronto and Marcus Aurelius by Sarah C. Keith B.A., Latin and Classical Studies, Randolph-Macon College, 2015 THESIS Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico May 2018 This book is dedicated to my father Mark Keith, whose love of the Classics inspired my own, and in whose footsteps I proudly walk. iii Acknowledgements First of all I would like to thank the professors with whom I have had the pleasure of working here at the University of New Mexico. Professor Osman Umurhan, I could not have had a better advisor. Thank you for your encouragement, your important questions, and your dedication to keeping everything in perspective. Professor Monica Cyrino, thank you for taking me under your wing, for your careful edits and suggestions, and for your invaluable insight into scholarship and life as an academic. Professor Lorenzo F. Garcia Jr., thank you for all the references, suggestions, and deadlines, without which my time here and this project would not have been the same. A thank you also goes out to Dr. Luke Gorton, whose advice and ideas often helped me reconsider and reframe my own work. The time and effort of each professor in Classics spent both on this project and in many classes and seminars made earning this degree a wonderful and very special time for me. I could not have completed this degree, or written this thesis, without my cohort, the fab four. Ben John, thank you for always having an ear for listening, and for your perspective on what really matters in life, and in Classics. Luke Lea, thank you for your humor and your steadiness, without which this program would have been very different. Molly Mata, thank you for the countless hours we spent talking, laughing, and commiserating. Thank you for sharing your dog, answering my Greek questions, and listening to all my thoughts, no matter how spontaeneous. You have become one of my closest friends, and sharing an office with you has been a joy, an honor, and a privilege. My other colleagues here at UNM have made my experience priceless. Ruochen, thanks for being our honorary fifth cohort-member, and for always being down to clown. Hannah, thank you for being an excellent office mate, and a great new friend. Jordon, thank you for your iv strength of character and your compassion. Beth, Christine, and David, thanks for laughing at my jokes, and for the insights each of you has shared about the Classics. Thanks must also go to my very supportive parents and grandparents. Your encouragement and ceaseless optimism about my work have buoyed me throughout this process, and I would not have made it here without you. v Negotiation and the Construction of Intimacy in the Letters between Fronto and Marcus Aurelius by Sarah C. Keith B.A., Latin and Classical Studies, Randolph-Macon College, 2015 M.A., Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, University of New Mexico, 2018 Abstract This project analyzes the letters between Marcus Cornelius Fronto and his student Marcus Aurelius as works of literature, rather than merely sites for historical mining. The letters, I argue, contain carefully constructed tropes of rhetoric and feature intentional polish that serve as opportunities for discussion about the virtues of philosophy and rhetoric during the Second Sophistic. Topics of discussions between both parties range between the imagery of sleep, and intimate spaces, like bedrooms, to substantive allusions to Plato’s philosophy and his dialogue Phaedrus. By looking beyond the identification of concrete names and dates to the literary, referential, and personal world of Aurelius and Fronto’s correspondence, the reader is afforded a valuable window into the development of letter writing, rhetoric, and education in the Antonine period. vi Table of Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Fronto’s Reputation ................................................................................................................................... 2 Chapter Summaries ................................................................................................................................... 9 Chapter 1 Dream a Little Dream of Me: Sleep and Persuasion in the Letters of Fronto and Marcus Aurelius ............................................................................................................................ 12 Assumed Sincerity .................................................................................................................................. 14 A Biographical Reading .......................................................................................................................... 15 Scholarship on Sleep and Health ............................................................................................................ 17 Persuading with Sleep ............................................................................................................................. 20 Sleep as Metaphor ................................................................................................................................... 28 Sleep Personified ..................................................................................................................................... 34 Rhetoric and the Ideal Ruler ................................................................................................................... 38 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................. 44 Chapter 2 A Convenient Philosophy: Fronto’s Use of Philosophy in his Letters with Marcus Aurelius ......................................................................................................................................... 46 The Anti-Philosophical Fronto ................................................................................................................ 48 The Philosophical Fronto ........................................................................................................................ 55 The Philosopher Fronto? ......................................................................................................................... 64 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 73 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................. 77 vii Introduction Marcus Cornelius Fronto (ca. 90/95-167 CE) can be found on very few, if any, graduate reading lists, and is likely taught in very few Latin courses. Fronto, rhetorical tutor to Marcus Aurelius (121-180 CE), has been largely neglected by scholars since the discovery of a corpus of his letters and those of his student, by Cardinal Angelo Mai (1782-1854 CE) in 1815. Since then, Fronto’s unpopularity has been fueled by several misconceptions, or overstatements, promoted by scholars as early as Fronto’s rediscovery: first, that the letters contained in the newly discovered manuscript are entirely frivolous, concerned only with hangnails and stories of personal ill health;1 secondly, that the letters portray a passionate romantic relationship between Fronto and Aurelius, ruffling the feathers of the scholars and their Victorian sensibilities at the time of the letters’ discovery;2 the third misconception is closely tied to the second, that where scholars hoped for an Antonine-age Cicero to shed light on the political matters of the day, Fronto was found instead, uninterested in contemporary politics, and concerned most of all with his relationship with Aurelius;3 the fourth is more subjective, Fronto simply doesn’t write good Latin.4 Some of these objections ring true, Fronto indeed had no time for politics, and spends little ink on it. However other issues are overstated, primarily because of the strength
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