~'t,fA From RomanPoetry and Propaganda in the Age of Augustus. n'l~ Anton Powell, ed. London 1997. that readers of texts are caught up in a collusive relationship with those texts, a relationship in which interpretation deemed valid involves the reproduction of the terms and criteria on which the original reception 2 of the text was based. Reproduction involves recontextualisation, and recontextualisation involves change of meaning, however subtle and im• perceptible that may be. The politics of August;an poetry is inextricabl~' linked with the politics of talking about it. A recurrent theme of this 'Augustan' and 'Anti-Augustan': paper will be the way in which the meaning ,of the term 'Augustus' Reflections on Terms of Reference changes as it takes on the ideological colouring of the context in which it is invoked, and continues to be the point of intersection of contesting ideologies here and now, as competing interests attempt to exercise Duncan F. Kennedy control over the discourse of the past. Let us start by reflecting on the English word 'term'. It is etymologi• When we read a classical text and pass a judgement upon it as to cally cognate with the Latin te17llinus, a boundary-stone, suggesting a whether it is 'Augustan' or 'anti-Augustan', there is a tendency to think model of language in which terms are boundary-stones which divide up conceptual space within fixed and defined limits. At first sight, this is that we are doing an obvious and straightforward thing. The 'common• sensical' view is that we are separated from the Romans by two thou• rather reassuring, implying that language is firmly rooted and our con• ceptual space carefully mapped out into neat lots. Language could be sand years, and that this huge chronological gap allows us to adopt the stance of detached observers passing judgements according to a stable figured in other ways with different metaphorical entailments,:! but the set of criteria and in an agreed set of terms. That is, a situation deemed prevalence of the property metaphor (seen, for example, in 'define', 'determine', 'conceptual space', 'limits', 'mapped' in the last two sen• historically determined is studied in accordance with terms and criteria tences alone) indicates how one particular view of what language is, thought not to be so determined. This is an oversimplitication, but not a radical misrepresentation of much of what gets written on the topic of rather than any other, is already inscribed in the very language we use to 'Literature and Politics in the Augustan Age'. But we should pause for describe language, directing our attitude to it and predetermining cer• thought. A term like 'literature', automatically invoked in such a dis• tain guiding assumptions in such a way as to allow them to be taken for cussion, has emerged from a very complex process of development and granted and not examined.3 To use any word is to step into a world in carries in it traces of the forces that have determined its meaning; 1 and which myriad interpretations have already been made on our behalf.4 the Romans had no term which represented the range of meanings that This model of language and the preconceptions it encodes, of language have become associated with the English word 'politics'. Words cannot bF; as static and with fixed referents, underpins not the mode but one mode taken for granted or as something given, but themselves have a history of interpretation, as it happens the one that recently has been dominant and are involved in history. Granting them a history involves consider• over other contending modes. But the questions it is possible to ask ation of what are the determinants of their current usage. Language, about property rights can also be asked about conceptual terms.5Why is and views of what language is and how it operates, are part of the a particular boundary stone set where it is and not in some other place? context which language seeks to describe. In what follows, I shall By whom, and in accordance with what criteria, was it put there? By examine some of the ways in which the context of our interpretation, its what authority does it remain where it is? Whose interests does it serve, in its placing where it is, and whom is it meant to exclude? Property social, political, and cultural presuppositions, the institutions within which such interpretations are produced and the norms they impose, rights can come to seem so natural that they are not challenged; the:' are part of that interpretation and govern what sorts of explanations ,are observed equally by those whom they exclude as by those who critics are prepared to accept and describe as 'valid' or. 'natural' or -:.benefItfrom them. But the siting of property divisions where the~':lre is 'obvious' or 'true', and what terms are deemed 'appropriate' or the result of a long process of conflict and contestation, and is regulated to the finest detail by the massive institution of the law. Thc stability of 'proper'. Thus the discussion will be as much about 'us' as it is about 'them'; but the validity of this distinction also, itself an issue of ideologi• these divisions, their naturalness or rightness, is temporary, conditional, cal contestation, will be put under scrutiny in a consideration of the way even illusory; at any moment they might become subject to challenge or 26 27 [q eA?p '] transgression and be moved (or even suspended) as a result.6 Similarly statuary and the visual arts,12 T.P. Wiseman on topography and archi• the word 'term' gives an initial impression of something not open to tecture,13 and Andrew Wallace-Hadrill and Mary Beard on calendars14 dispute, but again this emphasis on stability suppresses the long process have brought out how symbolic associations were mobilised to promote by which particular terms were shaped into their current usages, be• the image and authority of the man whose name they would immedi• came acceptable and thought of as natural or objective 7 - it suppresses ately bring to mind, Augustus. However, language is involved in media• their history, that is, whilst serving the interests of some people at the ting. these associations, and it is difficult, and methodologically problematic, to disentangle it. Words are the principal medium through expense of others. Words no less than property raise questions of pos• session, title, right, authority, and power, and are no less subject to which meaning acts to develop, enact, and sustain relationships of institutional regulation (primarily that of the educational system and the power. 15 academy),9 all the more powerful for not being seen as such (cf. pp. Speaking and writing are social acts, and what gets said or written is 36-8 below). subtly moulded and modified by the context of the utterance and the The boundary stone image of language suggests that terms are neatly anticipated conditions of reception, whether it will meet with consent, circumscribed. On a more technical level, the image constitutes opposition, defiance, or whatever. Every utterance, whether those in• meaning asa static set of autonomous categories based on a system oi volved realise it or not, thus enacts a relationship of power, challenging inclusions and exclusions which are ideologically determined, lOapower• or confirming su~eriority or inferiority, exercising 'a gentle, invisible ful mode of thought which moulds our preconceptions in a process that form of violence', 6 which can be at its most effective when it is not seen even shapes the institutions we work in. In this mode of thought, Lan• in terms of authority and compliance, but concealed under titles such as guage is an autonomous category and the inclusions and exclusions it 'politeness', 'deference', '~propriateness' etc. Relations of power are represents can be seen, for instance, in the preconceptions underlying thus part of the meaning1 of every utterance. When taken on a large the proverb 'actions speak louder than words'. Words are no less part scale, acts of speech and writing will tend to mobilise meaning in one of social action and interaction than deeds, though this mode of thought direction rather than another, to the interests of particular individuals tries to. impose a boundary between the two,11a boundary which has or groups rather than others, and so cumulatively produce the social manifested itself in the different ways the ancient world has been inter• structures and hierarchies of a particular society. Politics are thus in• preted. On the one hand, there is social interactionism, in which lan• scribed in language-in-use as part of its meaning, and create their ef• guage and symbolic systems play little or no part in the analysis; and on fects partly by their ability to conceal their presence. Radical shifts of the other, linguistic formalism, in which language and texts are analysed power within a society are effected not only by force of arms, but more with little or no reference to the specific social and historical conditions subtly by changes in the direction of this mobilisation of meaning in thF• (often consigned to the margins as the 'background' or 'context') in interests of different individuals or groups. which their production and reception were, and are, involved. Institu• Linguistic formalism is a very elaborate methodology which, in its tionally, this distinction is reflected in the division, now becoming less characteristic process of categorisation ('language and power', 'politics emphatic, between historians and literary critics in classical studies and and poetry'), enacts the suppression of the explicitly po!itical in its IJ' object of study. As the dominant methodology of Latin literary studies, classical departments.