R. Mayer, Neronian Classicism

Neronian ClassicismAuthor(s): Roland MayerSource: The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 103, No. 3 (Autumn, 1982), pp. 305-318Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/294474 .

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NERONIAN CLASSICISM

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that Roman literature fell asleep about the time of Ovid's death, but that it awoke to renewed vigour when Nero ascended the throne. What is not however so generally recognised is that this renascence of literature has a consistent purpose and character, which it will be the aim of this essay to identify and illustrate in its operation.' To put the matter briefly, Neronian poetry is a conscious revival in a number of departments of Augustan forms which, so far as we know, had lapsed into disuse in the mean- while. Above all, Neronian writers rediscovered Horace, and in imitating his genres raised him up to the status of classic, in which later ages confirmed him. But for this timely interest, Horace might have sunk without trace. These are the main propositions of the pres- ent essay.

But before approaching the poetry of Nero's reign, we must first glance over the condition of poetry up to that time, and our starting place will be about A.D. 16, when Ovid's fourth book of Epistulae ex Ponto was assembled. We must then go on to consider the reputation of the Augustans in the eyes of the generation which survived Ovid. The sixteenth poem of the fourth book of Epistulae ex Ponto is Ovid's defence of his reputation; in it he lists some of the celebrities of the day. Plainly only the currently living are there named, of whom some will have been roughly Ovid's age, others rather younger. These are the late-Augustans, and they are now regarded as transitional figures between the Golden and Silver ages.2 The list begins appropriately with epic, both the usual mythological stuff (e.g. Carus's Heracleis) and the traditional Roman historical epic, which was in effect a panegyric upon one man's military achievement (e.g., Rabirius's Alexan- drian War, Severus's Sicilian War3). In the list also appear at least one

1 The views here set out at some length were first sketched in the Introduction to my commentary on Lucan, B.C. 8.

2 More information on these somewhat shadowy figures will be found in Schanz- Hosius's Geschichte der romischen Literatur (1935), ?318 (hereafter S-H, cited by section and page). At ?319 other writers are listed. I am grateful to Mr J. C. Bramble for permis- sion to read his chapter in the Cambridge History of Classical Literature on 'Minor Figures,' (Cambridge 1982) II, 467-91.

3 Severus may also have composed a work on early Roman history, perhaps a continuation of the Aeneid; S-H ?317.

American Journal of Philology Vol. 103 Pp. 305-318 0002-9475/82/1033-0305 $01.00 ? 1982 by The Johns Hopkins University Press



ROLAND MAYER

didactic poet, Grattius, and one bucolic poet, who may have imitated

Virgil, Passer.4 But of greater interest are the departments of literature which find no representatives in Ovid's list. These appear to be two: satire and the short lyric, both the chosen field of Horace.5

From what Ovid says, it is clear that everyone was writing poetry in a wide variety of genres. What happened in the next fifteen years or so is hard to discern, but the few indications point to a possible shift of

emphasis, perhaps due to the taste of Tiberius. Alexandrianism had not yet died out in Rome. One of Ovid's friends, Proculus, avowedly imitated Callimachus ('Callimachi . . . molle teneret iter', P. 4.16.32), and another, Tuscus, may have harked back to the master's story of

Phyllis in the Aetia (P. 4.16.20, fr. 556 Pf.).6 Tiberius admired the

younger Alexandrians and is said to have composed on the model of

Euphorion, Rhianus, and Parthenius; moreover, he placed their works in the public libraries and so encouraged their study (Suet. Tib. 70). This had an effect upon scholarship, but we cannot say confidently that it had one on literature.7 If only the Culex or Ciris could be dated

4Passer is resurrected by Housman, Collected Classical Papers (1972) III.937ff. Ovid's mentioning Tityrus, P. 4.16.33, either points to direct recall of Virgil, or the name is chosen as ideally pastoral. Fontanus, who 'Naiadas a Satyris caneret .... amatas' (P. 4.16.35), is reckoned a bucolic poet in S-H, p. 272, but since Naiads and Satyrs have no considerable place in Theocritus or Virgil, Fontanus's bucolic world must have been new, perhaps in the tradition of the anonymous poem in Bucolici Graeci, ed. Gow, pp. 168f.

5 The larger lyric in imitation of Pindar may prove an exception, but we cannot be sure that Horace is the model for other Augustan Pindarists, such as lullus Antonius

(Carm. 4.2), and Titius (Epist. 1.3.10; he may be Ovid's Rufus at P. 4.16.28). In the first three books of his Odes, published about 23 B.c., Horace has some Pindaric poems, e.g. 1.12, but he claims allegiance mainly to Aeolic verse (Carm. 3.30.13 f.), and was hailed as Alcaeus (Epist. 2.2.99). It must have been clear that Latin had now been adapted to lyric measures. The door therefore stood open for anyone who might try to emulate choral

lyric (for in Aeolic lyric Horace was unrivalled). Titius, mentioned above, was composing along these lines by 20 B.c., if that is when the first book of Epistles was published. And lullus too ought to have tried his hand before Horace published the fourth book of Odes in 16 B.C. or so. My own view therefore is this: the Pindaric poems in Horace's late collection themselves reflect a growing fashion which he had in a small way inaugu- rated; but in this department he was not necessarily the model. Tiberius's dirge, com-

posed in 2 B.C. for L. Caesar, ought to have been Pindaric (Suet. Tib. 70.2). As for lyric in

general, Horace claims to have imitators (Epist. 1.19.19); Julius Florus is not necessarily one (Epist. 1.3.20-25), but Ovid's Perilla may be (Tr. 3.7.20).

6 'Nomen habet' does not mean that he called himself Demophoon (so S-H, p. 271) but that the poems made his reputation; cf. Ov. Ars 3.219.

7 It may have had an indirect effect. Manilius, writing still under Augustus, alludes to the Messeniaca of Rhianus at Astr. 3.14.

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to this period, then we could point to a renewed (or continued) interest in the epyllion, a form favoured by Euphorion.8 Remmius Palaemon, the teacher of Persius, was active under Tiberius, and his poems were composed 'uariis nec uulgaribus metris'; they seem to have been popular (Suet. Gramm. 23.3, Mart. 2.86.11 'scribat carmina circulis Palaemon'-if the same Palaemon is meant). 'Nec uulgaribus' ought to mean something other than sapphic, alcaic, or asclepiadic systems. This use of exotic metres recalls the Republican poet Laevius, or perhaps such compositions as Catullus's galliambics. But we have little other information about the sort of genres favoured in this period. For Germanicus and Manilius wrote at the very beginning of Tiberius's reign, and Phaedrus the fabulist continued into the time of Claudius.

From the first satire of Persius however we are given a glimpse of a revitalised Alexandrianism which was still popular with some poets well into the first half of Nero's reign. The themes of these poets are ridiculed, 'Phyllidas, Hypsipylas' (1.34); these may reflect an interest in Ovid's Heroides, or they may go back directly to Callimachus and Apollonius. At any rate the phrase 'uatum plorabile siquid' points to elegy, which is derisively named at line 31. Moreover the mythological heroines suggest something other than the subjective love elegy of the Augustans. In the same satire, in a section discussing style (92-106), thematic material is inevitably hinted at, and it is notable that Attis appears, a theme of Catullus, that a made-up line ends with 'cornua bombis' (99), a line ending also found in Catullus (64.263, where too a Bacchic rout is being described), and that Persius includes a spondaic hexameter (95), one of the hallmarks, as Cicero observed, of the once 'dolce stil nuovo' (Att. 7.2.1). Further evidence of contemporary taste is seen in the choice of Greek poets whose works were studied in the advanced school of Statius's father.9 The school was active, either at Rome or at Naples, during Nero's reign-this is plain from 'talia dum celebras' at 195 where Statius speaks of the burning of the Capitol in 69-and among the poets lectured on are Callimachus and Lyco- phron.'0 All taken in all-and it is not much-there are indications

8 A Culex, perhaps the one we possess, was known to Lucan (cf. n. 36 below) and Martial (14.185); it could have been composed at any time between 19 B.c. and A.D. 60. The date of the Ciris is discussed by R.O.A.M. Lyne in his edition (1978) 48-55.

9Siluae 5.3.146-58; A. J. Gossage, Romanitas 6-7 (1965) 171-79. 10 The young Statius learnt his lessons well and borrowed a phrase from Callima-

chus, as Mr P. J. Parsons kindly pointed out to me: F. Bornmann ZPE 31 (1978) 35 and Atene e Roma 23 (1978) 187. Yet Statius is no Callimachean, however many phrases he may owe to him.

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that Alexandrian themes and techniques and models were still a strong influence in this intermediate period. On the other hand, there is no evidence at all that Augustan poets however much they were admired exerted any such influence over poetic composition, with the possible exception of Seneca, whose tragedies will be dealt with in due course.

We are inclined, not unreasonably it will appear, to regard the immediate post-Augustan period as arid. But a contemporary opinion opposes our own. The history of Velleius Paterculus appeared in about A.D. 30, some fourteen years after Ovid's letter from Pontus. Velleius is given to reflecting upon literary history, and in a famous passage at 2.36 he digresses to treat of the flowering of literature in what he regards as the 'Tullio-Augustan' age (he can so define it, since Augus- tus was born in Cicero's consulate). He regards himself as living in its latter half: 'nostri aeui.' He lists the glories of this double age, starting with Varro of Atax, who closely imitated Apollonius, even to the extent of writing just four books, and Catullus. Closer to his own time he exalts Virgil, Rabirius, Livy, and Tibullus, the only elegiac poet named as such; Ovid is probably included for poems other than the erotic ones which prompted in part his relegation. Tibullus is called

'perfectissim(us) in forma operis sui.' The notable absentee from this list is Horace. Velleius has cut his list short, not out of the sense of a lack of comparable modern talent, but so as not to offend the living: 'nam uiuorum ut magna admiratio ita censura difficilis est.' 'Magna admiratio' is not the judgement of a man who believes that he lives in a period of decline."

Despite Velleius's satisfaction with the literature of his own day, the period after Ovid's death, we cling with justice to our opinion that his age was fallow. The silence of Quintilian, later in the century, is our guarantee.12 His list of epic poets, for example, at 1.0. 10.1.89-91, though not chronological, shows a gap between the late-Augustans, Pedo, Rabirius and Severus on the one hand, and Lucan on the other. Now either the intervening poets gave up the long epic as artistically invalid, or their compositions were feeble. Likewise in his discussion of satire, Quintilian passes straight from Horace to Persius (I.0. 10.1.94),

"And yet this is the view of G. Williams in Change and Decline (1978) 8-10. Velleius however says nothing that bears out the assertion. His refusal to name living writers reflects an Alexandrian critical practice followed also by Quintilian (I.0. 10.1.54).

12 Quintilian is however so highly selective that he does not judge Seneca's tragedies, though he knows of them (I.0. 9.2.8). We must weigh his silence carefully, but it is almost total in respect of this period between the death of Ovid and the accession of Nero.

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and again there is a gap in lyric between Horace and Bassus (I.0. 10.1.96). In fact Quintilian names but one poet whose activity falls in this period, the tragedian, Pomponius Secundus, and he is dismissed with little praise (I.0. 10.1.99). Martial too is of use in this matter, with his list of books given as gifts: we find Virgil, Propertius, Tibullus, the Metamorphoses of Ovid, Catullus, and Lucan (Epig. 14.186, 189, 193, 192, 195, 194). In a word, nothing between Ovid in Velleius's 'Tullio- Augustan' age, and the reign of Nero. It may therefore be said of the literature composed after the death of Ovid that its appeal did not last. It seems to have taken the traditional line, as reinforced by Tiberius's example, and pursued fresh Alexandrian conceits. But these were played out: Persius attacked the taste, and Quintilian and Martial show no interest in the period. It must be stressed that, whatever his admired contemporaries may have been about, Velleius has a great respect for the achievements of Augustan poetry.13

We turn now to the second preliminary consideration and ask to what degree this respect was shared. Caligula, as usual, went his own way. Perhaps out of a personal dislike of Augustus and in honour of his grandfather, Mark Antony, he disparaged those arch-Augustans, Virgil and Livy; his attack on Homer may be related to this, for Homer was Virgil's model, and together these poets inspired a great deal of writing connected with Trojan matters.'4 These judgements moreover may not have been mere crotchets. For Persius, in his first satire, points at some modern poets who despised the Aeneid as rough-hewn (96f.). There were other 'obtrectatores Vergili' whose attacks were turned by Asconius (his Ciceronian studies were started under Nero, but the Virgilian defence cannot be dated).15 Therefore, so far as reputation was concerned, the Augustans were not yet wholly above reproach, and some openly criticised them. Horace is neither attacked nor defended, but worse, he is, so far as we know, ignored. The poets themselves at this time appear not to have turned to the Augustans as models. (It

13 A point to be noticed, for J. Perret, who in his Virgile (1965) 150 rightly noticed the continuation of Latin Alexandrianism, assumed an eclipse of Virgil's reputation at this time. Velleius tells against such a view.

14 E.g., Macer's 'pre-Homerica,' Camerinus's 'post-Homerica,' Largus's Antenor, Lupus's Return of Helen and Menelaus, Tuticanus's Phaeacis, Pomponius Secundus's Aeneas, and perhaps a work of Abronius Silo, quoted by Seneca Suas. 2.19.

15 Virgil's critics are dealt with in S-H ?246, but it is far from clear when they lived (except that some are known to Suetonius). For Asconius's work on Virgil, S-H ?476, p. 733.

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should be stressed that the later poets may well have admired Augustan writers, but not enough to imitate them.)

The schools, however, might be thought to be upholders of

Augustan standards (a point to which Professor E. J. Kenney kindly directed my attention). For is it not commonly stated that Q. Caecilius

Epirota, the freedman of Atticus and client of Gallus, first introduced lectures on Virgil and other modern poets into Roman education?16 But this statement is misleading in that it sets aside some valuable details included by Suetonius in De Grammaticis 16. Here is what Suetonius says: 'post deinde damnationem mortemque Galli scholam

aperuit sed ita ut paucis et tantum adulescentibus praeciperet, praetex- tato nemini. .. .' Two observations can be made. First, when he began to lecture on Virgil his texts can only have been the Eclogues and

Georgics. (And since we do not know when Epirota died or at any rate

gave up teaching, we cannot be sure that he ever used the Aeneid.) Secondly, his school is for young adults, and its exclusiveness reminds one of Mrs Pipchin's establishment at Brighton. Epirota was not

attacking, but supplementing, the traditional curriculum.'7 He offered an advanced training to budding poets, as a verse quoted from Marsus

by Suetonius shows. How soon did such an advanced school bring about a revolution in the 'grammar' schools? We cannot say, nor should we attempt to. It is clear that about a century later in Quin- tilian's day, Virgil was established as a set text for children (1.0. 1.8.5). Suetonius has tried to pinpoint the date of his introduction. Our own

knowledge of educational reform would suggest that the process will have been very slow (but, as I should like to believe, accelerated by Neronian taste). At any rate we cannot turn to education in the early principate for a reliable picture of literary taste at this time.

The fashion was challenged as soon as Nero came to the purple in A.D. 54. His accession, for instance, is promptly greeted by two bucolic

poets, Calpurnius Siculus and the anonymous writer of the Second Einsiedln Eclogue. These are the first bucolic poets we know of since, some forty years previously, Ovid mentioned Passer (P. 4.16.33). More

significantly Virgil's Eclogues are the model. Calpurnius for example seems to have read Theocritus, but the Greek inventor of the genre is

16 So, inter alios, S. F. Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome, (1977) 213. 17 H. D. Jocelyn, The Tragedies of Ennius (1967) 54: 'it is doubtful whether

. . . tragedies long survived the attack of such partisans of modern poetry as Q. Caecilius Epirota.'

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now far less important for imitation than his Roman follower.'8 Virgil's lead is followed in another department too, didactic epos, and the Georgics find, not so much an imitator, as a continuator in Colu- mella. His work on agriculture appeared in the middle 60s. It will be recalled that Virgil declined to sing of gardens and left the task to one who should come after him (Geor. 4.147f.). No-one took the hint until Columella's friend Silvinus urged him to pick up the tale where Virgil had left it. Thus two of Virgil's productions must be seen to be the inspiration of Neronian writers.19

And what of the Aeneid? The relation of Lucan's Pharsalia to the Aeneid is problematic, and there are as many opinions as there are students of the two poems. One of the chief causes of our difficulty in gauging the tone of Lucan's epic is that he only published three books, probably the first three, and was prevented by Nero's jealousy from publishing more. It follows from this that whatever plan Lucan had in mind when he began his poem, perhaps in 60 or 61, was likely to have been altered, if only in detail, so as to reflect his doubtless changed attitude to the Julio-Claudian house. It may however be hesitantly suggested that Lucan's original plan was complementary to the Aeneid. To put it crudely, the Aeneid is a national poem, set however in the age of Homeric myth; at various important stages in the poem the reader is reminded that all of Aeneas's hardships (and the hardships of those who oppose him) will issue in the foundation of Rome and in the establishment of his own line in the person of Augustus. Lucan's poem is also on a national theme, the civil war fought between Caesar and Pompey (it is not therefore the usual sort of historical epic, which was in effect an extended panegyric upon a contemporary military hero). At the very beginning of the poem Lucan makes it plain that the issue of all this bloodshed in the reign of Nero was worth it:

quod si non aliam uenturo fata Neroni inuenere uiam..... iam nihil . . . querimur. (1.33-37)

multum Roma tamen debet ciuilibus armis quod tibi res acta est. (1.44f.).

18 Calpurnius's knowledge of Theocritus was seen by Wilamowitz as evidence of Neronian date; Textgeschichte der griechischen Bukoliker (1906) 111, n. 3. I should have referred to this when discussing the date of Calpurnius in JRS 70 (1980) 175f.

19 Such Maronolatry is often noticed (e.g. by E. E. Sikes in CAH 11.708) but what is striking is the apparent absence of imitation before this period.

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Lucan's glib acceptance of the suffering of others is repellent in its heartlessness, but that does not entitle modern critics with tenderer sensibilities to assert that the poet is not convinced of the justice of his own vision of history. Lucan's rhetoric cannot be peeled off to reveal the poet's true sentiments, and it must be recalled that he had no personal stake in a war fought a century before. It has been suggested not implausibly that the tone of the first book of the Pharsalia is so mild that the poem itself might have issued in praise of the Augustan settlement, a restored republic under Nero's protection.20 If this view is worth entertaining, then it may be suggested that Lucan intended, at least when he was beginning his poem, not an anti-Aeneid, such as we now find in parts of the Pharsalia, but rather a complement to Virgil's mythological poem, set in historical times, and praising another Augustus. (That Nero saw himself as another Augustus is a point to which we shall return.)

This view of the relation of Lucan to Virgil is too speculative to convince many. But we can point to a revived interest in Homer and the Trojan saga which must be ascribed to the influence of the Aeneid. Labeo translated the Iliad, probably not before Claudius's reign. Sta- tius's father composed a prose paraphrase of Homer.21 The Ilias Latina was composed about this time; its strict metrical practice points to Neronian date. Lucan composed an Iliacon, and Nero's own poetic monument was his Troica (it will be recalled that in his early youth he had pleaded before Claudius on behalf of the Trojans; Suet. N. 7.2). In the Satyricon Petronius has Eumolpus require the aspiring poet to read Roman Virgil (118.5), and there is also an iambic reworking of the opening of Aeneid II (89). Even in the Pharsalia itself Lucan inserts a pointless visit of Julius Caesar's to the site of Troy (9.961-79).

Subjective love elegy was fashionable among Augustan poets. They seem not to have found immediate successors after Ovid. It will be recalled that Velleius singled out Tibullus. In the Neronian age Nerva, the future emperor, must have imitated erotic elegy, perhaps in the bucolic, non-mythological Tibullan mode, for in one of his own poems Nero hailed Nerva as the Tibullus of the day (that however may

20 A. Momigliano in CQ 38 (1944) 96-100 = Secondo contributo alla storia degli studi classici (1960) 459.

21 St. Silu. 5.3.159-61; the practice is illustrated by G. Giangrande in Eranos 60 (1962) 152-54.

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only mean he was felt to be as good as the best; Mart. 8.70).22 Tibullus was of course still being read: Calpurnius imitates a line (3.88 = 1.3.81), and Seneca, in a late work, the Naturales Quaestiones (4.2.2), quotes a verse-which he gives to one of his more familiar poets, Ovid! (Does that suggest a recent interest in an as yet unassimilated poet?)

Tragedy deserves a word. Seneca's nine tragedies cannot be dated.23 He may have written them while in exile, or even while keep- ing an eye on Nero. If ever they could be dated to a late period of his career then they would admirably illustrate the chief proposition of this paper. As it is, however, we can only see them as much indebted to Augustan poetry, especially to Ovid, for themes, and to Horace for lyric metres (and occasionally matter too). Seneca's Medea and Thyestes perhaps look back to productions of Ovid and Varius (Lucan too tried his hand at a Medea).24

We turn now to Horace's writings. Nowadays we regard Horace as the classic Augustan poet after Virgil. In antiquity too, such a view is found, and Martial and Juvenal link their names (1.107.4, 12.3.1; 7.227). But it would be rash to assume this pairing was always taken for granted. For Horace, it will be recalled, was not mentioned by Velleius. The Elder Seneca has nothing to say of him. Phaedrus alludes to the Aeneid, but ignores the arguably more relevant Sermones and Epis- tulae. Finally, Seneca never quotes him in his Dialogues, some of which were composed early in his career. This strongly suggests that Horace was not yet a standard author. Suddenly, under Nero, this neglect is compensated for with interest. After eighty years Persius revives satire; the life of the poet says that reading Lucilius converted him: however that may be, Horace is his model. Even some Odes are laid under contribution (our first quotation from an Ode at this time is in Seneca's Apocolocyntosis25). This revived interest in the satires spread, for Seneca now has recourse to them, and quotes from them in his late Epistulae Morales. It will be recalled that Persius's sixth satire

22 Tacitus says that Nero gathered young poets about him in late A.D. 59 (Ann. 14.16). If Nerva was then included, we can roughly date his poetic activity.

23 M. Coffey in Lustrum 2 (1957) 150. 24 Seneca's overall debt to the Augustans is handled by R. J. Tarrant in HSCP 82

(1978) 258-63. 25 Carm. 2.13.34 is quoted at Apocol. 13.3. Since this was composed in late A.D. 54 it

is clear that at least Seneca's interest in Horace is pre-Neronian. (Arnold warned against too rigidly defining literary epochs by reigns.) I have no doubt that Horace was read and admired before Nero's day. But imitation is another matter.

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is, to be formally correct, a letter to Caesius Bassus; it opens with an explanation of where the correspondents are. So we can point to a tentative revival of a form invented by Horace, the verse epistle on a moral theme. 'Orazio satiro' is not the only subject of revival among the neo-Augustans of Nero's reign. The older friend of Persius, Caesius Bassus, took Horace's lyrics in hand, and his own productions won some praise from Quintilian (1.0. 10.1.96). His interests were scholarly too, and he wrote a treatise on Horace's metre, which he dedicated to Nero.26 We owe Horace to these Neronian writers. Thanks to them, he entered the mainstream of Latin letters and took his place alongside Virgil. After this epoch he finds fresh imitators in Passennus Paulus and some unnamed lyrists praised by Quintilian; to Tacitus he is a standard author.27

So far we have been looking at contemporaneous revivals of sev- eral departments of poetry strongly associated with Augustan poets. Let us turn with circumspection to those parasites upon the bodies of the Muses, scholars. There are two stumbling blocks. First, since scholarship is generally known of from late compilations we cannot always define the character of a scholar's interest or work. Secondly, dating is not possible. We know in our own day that scholarly enthusiasm for Propertius preceded his vogue among poets like Ezra Pound. So it is possible that the work of scholars upon Augustan texts preceded and perhaps even induced the new rage for imitation. We cannot say. At any rate Bassus's work on Horatian metre is certainly Neronian. Vir- gil's Aeneid was edited posthumously by Varius; the next scholar to work on the text was Probus, certainly active in the Neronian age. Perhaps all he did was mark-up a private copy for study.28 That never- theless is a fresh departure, comparable to Bentley's Milton, in so far as the text of a recent poet is seen to deserve a scholar's scrutiny. Probus was said to have 'edited' Horace too. Annaeus Cornutus, Persius's Stoic

26 S-H ?385. Bassus was composing lyrics in 62, as the opening of Persius's sixth, and presumably last, satire makes plain. We do not know when he began his work.

Perhaps like Seneca (cf. n. 25) his interest pre-dates the new reign. His fragments show un-Horatian metres, not surprisingly. The late metricians only had recourse to him for what could not be found in Horace. Thus what is left to us may not be typical of Bassus's

output. 27 Plin. Epist. 9.22.2; 1.0. 10.1.96; Dial. 20.5 28 So P. L. Schmidt in Kl. Pauly 4.1147; S-H ?734, p. 735. A fuller discussion is given

by J. E. G. Zetzel in 'Latin textual criticism in antiquity,' (diss. Harvard 1972), 48ff.

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master, also dedicated some of his study to Virgil29; reference has already been made to Asconius. Not until Flavian times, perhaps, did Horace find commentators in Aufidius Modestus and Claranus.30 But these scholars inherit the Neronian interest, which has now taken firm root.

It should now be clear that the Neronian poets established their Augustan predecessors as models to be imitated. But one other important literary figure of the Augustan age may be touched upon by the way, just because he alone was held up as an 'exemplum uitandum': Maecenas. Seneca's Epistle 114 is a well-known attack on the great patron's loose morals and prose. It was long ago suggested by P. Lun- derstedt (in Comm. Jenens. 9.1911) that this attack was topical because Maecenas's prose works had perhaps just been published; if true, that would be another instance of the keen interest taken in the earlier and now classic age. Others have gone on to suggest that Seneca's attack inspired (if that is the right word) the defense found in the Elegiae in Maecenatem; this takes speculation very far, since the date of these poems is uncertain (J. C. Bramble sets out the most important contri- butions, note 2 above, p. 475). Leaving aside the date of the Elegiae and of the publication of Maecenas's prose, Seneca's interest is another aspect of the neo-Augustanism of Nero's reign. Indeed, Seneca may have cast himself in the role of the new Maecenas (if he was the patron of, say, Calpurnius Siculus); he had, after all, been as close to the princeps, but he could claim nicer morals and smarter prose: imitation became, as so often, emulation.

It is time to ask to what causes this flood of imitation may be due. One feature of the Neronian literary scene, which recalls the Augustan age, is the friendship that linked the various writers. Persius and Bassus, the restorers of Horace, were closely bound by affection. Persius and Lucan are said to have sat at the feet of Cornutus for instruction in Stoicism. (Indeed Cornutus may have been a freedman of Lucan's father, Annaeus Mela.31) Lucan's uncle, Seneca, was always devoted to Virgil and must have exercised great influence upon the literary taste of

29 S-H ?451, p. 678, and A. D. Nock in RE suppl. 5. 995-1005. Dr Zetzel, whose work is cited in the previous note, treats of Cornutus on pp. 41-44. But it is not, as he says, chronologically impossible that Cornutus wrote after Probus, which is implied in the structure of the DS scholium to Geor. 1.277.

30 Cf. Mart. 10.21.1 f., RE 2.2294 and S-H ?475a, RE 3.2627. 31 So Nock (as cited in n. 29 above).

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the Neronian age; it has been suggested that he was the patron of

Calpurnius, disguised under the name Meliboeus. Nerva moved in those court circles (to which Calpurnius sought entrance), with Lucan and Seneca, Bassus and Cornutus (only Persius seems to have had no connection of any sort with Nero). Columella, a Spaniard from

Baetica, the homeland of the Annaei, shows some slender knowledge of Seneca (3.3.3); he is however the odd man out. A loose community of

literary interest can be detected at work. To some degree it centred around Nero, who regarded himself from the beginning of his reign as a new Augustus. Of course both Tiberius and Claudius had also claimed to be walking in the footsteps of the first princeps, but Nero took his Augustanism even further, perhaps, in his early days, under the guidance of Seneca. In his first address to the Senate Nero stated that he would work within Augustus's guidelines (Suet. Nero 10.1). His devotion took some odd forms: after his victory in A.D. 60 at the Neronia he honoured the statue of Augustus, and rode in his chariot

after returning from Greece (Suet. Nero 12.3, and 25.1); he gave his wife

Poppaea the name Augusta and formed a special troop of 'Augustiani equites' (Tac. Ann. 15.23.1 and 14.15.8). This goes far beyond the pol- icy of Nero's predecessors. It may therefore safely be said that for Nero

Augustus was a model to be imitated. This fact ought to have had some

influence upon the writers of his day, whether or not they aimed to

secure the emperor's notice and move in his company. Moreover the

practice of reciting recently composed works would help to spread the

revivalist fervour of imitation among the new poets. If we are correct in identifying Neronian literature as a new and

self-conscious imitation of the forms and standards of Augustan litera-

ture, then it is appropriate to read Neronian texts generally in this

light. Surprises may be in store. For example, the character of Eumol-

pus in the Satyricon needs reassessment. So far as the plot of the novel

is concerned Eumolpus is morally deplorable. But the value of his

literary views, as set out at 118, has been hotly debated (and my own

opinion has long been that most of what he says is common sense). One opinion is that Petronius intends this degraded rhetorician to be

an example of threadbare traditionalism. But Eumolpus quotes Horace, and requires a knowledge of his poetry.32 We have seen that Horace was

not, up to now, much referred to, and that he is in fact the principal

32Eumolpus quotes Carm. 3.1.1, a reference omitted from the testimonia by Klingner.

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beneficiary of the Neronian renascence. By praising Horace, Eumolpus shows himself to be in the vanguard of current taste; so too his praise of Homer and Virgil, and his sense of their value as models, again indicates modern critical views. Moreover he does not praise Alexandrian authors (he links to Homer the lyric poets), nor for instance their Roman adherents, Catullus or Varro. It may therefore be the case that Eumolpus is after all only a mouthpiece at this point for Petronius's own views, a theory that has been put forward before now. The first satire of Persius may also need reconsideration. Recently it has been said to uphold traditions in a decadent period of innovation.33 But Persius is the innovator, and he attacks a sort of composition long traditional in Rome.34

To sum up: if by a classic we mean a literary work regarded as suitable for imitation, then it was the poets of Nero's reign who, by imitating their works, accorded to the Augustans that classic status to which they aspired-'quodsi me lyricis uatibus inseres.' Nero's reign is moreover a watershed in Latin literature. Up to that time Greek poetry provided the only classics. Whatever use a Roman made of early Latin or even of his nearer contemporaries the models which he aimed to rival were Greek. So Augustan poets hailed each other as Alcaeus or Callimachus (Hor. Epist. 2.2.99-101, Prop. 4.1.64); or they claimed that the Iliad was soon to meet its match (Prop. 2.34.66). After an apparent relapse into comfortable Alexandrianism, the new poets under Nero were the first to appreciate that Rome now had in the Augustans her own classic poetry. This change of attitude is epitomized by Nero's hailing Nerva as the Tibullus of the day (Mart. 8.70). Now and hence- forward, Roman poets are the chief models of Roman poets.35 Lucan, it will be recalled, saw himself as rivalling Virgil, not Homer.36 This change of direction is clearly at work among Flavian poets (many of whom were of course alive in Nero's day). The Flavians now look to Augustans and Neronians as models. Valerius Flaccus reads Apollo- nius so as to know which Argonautic episodes to omit (because already

33 M. Coffey, Roman Satire (1976) 112. 34 Thus J. C. Bramble in Persius and the Programmatic Satire (1974) 183 is closer to

the mark in describing Persius as an 'aspiring classicist.' But Bramble is perhaps too sanguine about the depth of admiration of Virgil (184).

35 The point is not new (cf., for example, Momigliano, n. 20), but it does not seem to have been appreciated that the change was sudden and complete.

36 Reference is made to his boast (such it appears to be) that he had started his epic before Virgil wrote the Culex; uita Suet. apud Hosius p. 332.

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handled), and his inspiration for new episodes is Virgilian.37 Statius,

despite a Greek education, seems to owe very little to any one Greek

source, and he openly avows his debt to the Aeneid.38 The standard is now set by Romans for Romans. This critical volte-face was the work of the Neronian poets.

ROLAND MAYER

BIRKBECK COLLEGE,

UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

37 W. C. Summers, A Study of the Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus (1894) 18-41. 38 Th. 12.816; for sources S-H ?408, p. 536. D.W.T.C. Vessey in Philol. 14 (1970) 118

denies even acquaintance with Antimachus.

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