Constructing a genre: Lucilius and the origins of Roman satire Jackie Elliott: Application for a Humboldt fellowship

Transcription

1 Introduction One of Roman satire s original claims to fame is that, unlike all other genres of Roman literature as the Romans understood them, it had no direct precedent among the Greeks: satura quidem tota nostra est ( satire is exclusively Roman ), Quintilian famously wrote (Institutio Oratoria ). Such claims, however, are not accompanied by an abundance of straightforward ancient evidence about the origin and early history of Roman satire neither in terms of what we can tell early generations of Roman readers thought about these matters, nor in terms of the information with which the full transmission record for early Roman satire leaves us. That record is a fragmentary one: the works in question, the satura of Lucilius (d. 103/2 BCE) and perhaps of Ennius ( BCE), survive only through quotation in the works of some fifty later authors who quote early Roman satire for their own purposes. These quoting authors range in date from c. 1 BCE, with Varro and Cicero, to c. 7-8 CE, with Bede, and various glossaries and scholia whose coalescence into the forms in which we have them we date even later. The present project sets out the complex and fascinating story of the ancient transmission, circulation and reception of early i.e. second century BCE satire as a whole. In part, it takes advantage of the methodology I developed in the course of my earlier study of another second century BCE Roman poem, Ennius epic Annales, to do so. The aim is to make a substantial contribution to the current surge in interest in the early history of a genre that the Romans themselves considered unique, by means of the peculiar skills and interests that I have developed in the course of my career as a literary historian to date. The ancient account that has been determinative for histories of satire from ancient times to the present day is Horace s, and Horace makes the poet Lucilius and no other the masteroriginator of Roman satire (Serm , 57, , 64, , 29, esp. 62; etc.). Several factors complicate Horace s account for us, however. I here name three. First, Horace s account is given in the course of his own breathtakingly successful foray into the genre a genre renowned for its complex use of irony, above all when Horace is its practitioner. To take Horace at his word on this score, then, would be to dismiss the reading habits in which he himself consistently trains us. Second, antiquity recognised in Ennius, a second century poet writing a generation and more before Lucilius, a more ancient practitioner of poetry termed satura; and this is something for which Horace fails (at least in any obvious way) to account. Thirdly, Lucilius own transmission record fails to underwrite Horace s claim (to be explained in the course of the proposal below). This project therefore proposes to interrogate Horace s narrative by taking account of other aspects of the ancient evidence for early Roman satire, as revealed by analysis of the early transmission, circulation and broader reception of the genre beyond Horace. It thus brings to light the weaknesses and strengths of the record as a whole on which our modern understanding of Roman satire rests. Author s experience and preparedness to take on the project, as illustrated by previous publications; methodology; state of author s research; project description, incl. principal questions to be addressed In my first book, Ennius and the Architecture of the Annales (Cambridge 2013), I explored what we know of Rome s most determinative epic poem prior to the Aeneid and how we come to know it, beginning with a study of our 46 sources for the poem. One of the principal findings of that study was that our understanding of the epic tradition at Rome, and in particular

2 Ennius place within it, is in significant part the product of ancient scholarship on Vergil s Aeneid. Post-Vergilian scholarly sources, as principally represented by Macrobius, Servius, the Danieline scholia to Servius, are the conduit by which 20% of our fragments of the Annales survive and an articulate and readily interpretable 20% at that, since these sources, unlike many others, tend to quote in sense-units, to correspond to the Vergilian sense-units that they are elucidating. Without these post-vergilian scholarly sources, Ennius use of the Greek hexameter would still define him as a point of transition between the epic traditions of Greece and Rome. Far more obscure to us, however, would be the mechanics of Ennius relationship to Homer and Vergil, the detail and consistency with which he replicated Homer on both small and large scale and was in turn replicated by Vergil; and it is our knowledge of this aspect of his text that does most today to substantiate and explain the literary historical rank that antiquity attributed to Ennius. The post-vergilian scholarly sources thus not only underwrite but in some significant sense supply the vision of the Annales place in literary history that is the primary one with which we operate today: they unveil the means by which Ennius operated as the crucial hinge between the related Greek and Roman epic traditions in particular as Vergil treated them, since it is his intense engagement with Ennius Annales, as pointed out to us by ancient scholars, that effectively makes the latter poem so critical to the tradition as we find it. At the same time, my study revealed that that same vision was by no means accessible from any pre-vergilian source. In summary: the two principal pre-vergilian sources are Varro and Cicero. As far as his manner of and interests in quoting the Annales are concerned, Varro is the first visible representative in our record of the grammatical tradition that supplies the bulk of our fragments and many booknumbers (although he himself, interestingly enough, provides none such) but that supplies no form of context and typically quotes without respect for sense-units. For Cicero (who singlehandedly preserves 15% of our extant remains of the Annales), the epic functions primarily as a form of access to the Roman past and thus as a testament to Rome s core identity effectively, then, as part of the historiographical tradition of Rome (see also e.g. my article The epic vantage-point: Roman historiographical allusion reconsidered in Histos 9 [2015], ). The functions of the text we can extrapolate from these pre-vergilian sources have much value in their own right as documents of how the Annales were read by the first generation of their readers to whom we have access, but they have very little to tell us about the place of the Annales in the epic tradition of Rome as we behold it from a post-vergilian perspective. The method that I used in my study of Ennius was new (although it has in a related, nondiscursive form simultaneously been adopted by the editors of the new Tragicorum romanorum fragmenta, M. Schauer, G. Manuwald, et al. [Göttingen: Vols. 1, , Vols. 3, 4 forthcoming]; and by T. J. Cornell et al. for the new Fragments of the Roman Historians [Oxford 2013]); and it led to new results. I began by assembling all known fragments of the Annales (whether attributed to the text by ancient evidence or by modern conjecture a difference that I highlighted throughout, however, given its methodological implications) and by re-organising them according to their sources, in chronological order according to the date of the source (or as near to it as our imperfect knowledge allows). This format makes the influence of individual sources on our record more visible than they usually are, by revealing which sources are responsible for the survival of the greatest numbers of fragments and by making everything that a given source has to say in quoting the text available in one location. This allows readers to come to their own conclusions about the fragments interrelationship and to observe the forces promoting their survival. This approach has freed the Annales from a series of reigning

3 orthodoxies, opening up discussion of the functions of the text in antiquity among the different generations of readers whose views of the text we can still access. I am applying this same method in my approach to the fragments of Lucilian (and Ennian) satire, although this will not be my only mode of approach (for reasons to be explained below). I have completed the task of re-organising the fragments of both Lucilian and Ennian satire according to source, along with initial research and reading. I am thus ready to launch into the work of writing up a detailed analysis of the information thus made available. What my research to date shows is that, unlike with Ennius Annales, the sources for Lucilius do not support the dominant (i.e. in satire s case, Horatian) account of Lucilius place in literary tradition in general and in the tradition of satire in particular. For, even though the sources for Lucilius are, with few exceptions, represented by the same individuals and traditions as are the sources for Ennius Annales, there is no analogue in the Lucilian transmission record for the fact that the post-vergilian scholarly sources for the Annales essentially construct the literary history of the genre for us from their particular post-vergilian perspective. Ancient scholarship on satire s later representatives Horace, Persius and Juvenal has little to say about Lucilius, and it supplies only a tiny part of our record (only just over two percent of reliquiae of any kind: contrast the 20% of high-quality material for the Annales supplied by the scholarly tradition on Vergil, as cited above). Thus, the late (?c. 5 CE) redaction in which Pomponius Porphyrio s commentaries on Horace are extant is the sole or primary source for only 22 reliquiae, while the scholia to Horace supplement this with only a further 3. The scholia to Persius and Persian Vita combined supply only 3, as do the scholia to Juvenal. This gives a total of 31 reliquiae out of a record consisting of around 1,400 such. It is an interesting corollary to this that ancient scholarship on Vergil supplies as much or more of the Lucilian record than does ancient scholarship on satire s later representatives. (Thus, for example, Servius is our sole or primary source for 9 of our Lucilian reliquiae, Macrobius for 5, the Danieline scholia to Servius for 20, and other Vergilian scholia for another 2.) Whether this is to be explained by the idea that Vergil was simply a far more important author for ancient scholarship in general than any other, regardless of genre, or whether other factors are at work, is a question that this project aims to investigate. It could be that, while Vergilian epic treats tradition as its critical source of authority, satire distinguishes itself by constantly effervescing with new language and motifs, so that commonalities in those terms, the stock-in-trade of ancient scholarship, are simply not there for the ancient scholarship to quote although that still leaves us with the fact that, according to what the transmission tells us, Vergil co-opted as much Lucilian material as did Horace, Persius and Juvenal combined. There is doubtless much to be uncovered here, but the matter at any rate highlights the reach of Vergilian poetry across genres; along with that, it highlights ancient scholarship s awareness of Vergil s generic versatility. The latter awareness is one worth investigating in its own right: the project explores the terms in which ancient scholarship on Vergil operates when it shows the poet to be reaching across to Lucilian satire for motifs and language, and it discusses what those terms can tell us about how both Vergil and our ancient authors of satire were read in antiquity. Perhaps the most central question this transmission-picture places before our eyes, however, is the following: if the particular construction of the history of satire with which we operate today the version that makes Lucilius the critical, originary forefather of the genre is demonstrably not a function of our transmission record but is instead, as appears, the product of Horace s narrative of satire s literary history, what explains the differences between these accounts? To what extent are those differences a function of the interests and working methods

4 of Lucilius sources, and the proportions in which they quote Lucilian material? To what extent are they, conversely, the product of Horace s distorting agenda, for the purposes of which Lucilius may have been the most effective straw man available? In the latter case, what about Lucilius transmission, reception and circulation history to date made him so useful? (We know, for example, that Lucilius poetry immediately became an object of study, first at the hands of Lucilius familiares, Laelius Archelaus and Vettius Philocomus [Suet. Gram. 2.2] and soon at the hands of serious literary men, including Pompeius Lenaeus, Curtius Nicias, and the poet Valerius Cato [Suet. Gram. 11, 14, 15]). In broaching these questions, it is surely worth noting that, while Vergil effectively constructed the originary status of Ennius Annales implicitly, by tacitly re-using language and motifs that contemporaries readers knew to be Ennian and that ancient scholarship informs today s readers to be such (thus generating a fifth of the Ennian transmission record) Horace s approach was an explicit one: in casting Lucilius as the problematic genius responsible for founding the chaotic genre that he, Horace, was slyly adopting, he repeatedly names Lucilius, thus providing a clear point of departure for all later historians of the genre, ancient and modern. This only makes it the more intriguing that the transmission record, that might have been susceptible to influence by Horace, does so little to support him. However we might ultimately analyse the cause of this state of affairs, the result is that Lucilius tends to be reconstructed on the basis of what Horace has to say about him. Horace himself, and his place in literary history, is then assessed on the basis of this Lucilius that he (Horace) has done so much to construct. The resulting circularity is clearly, then, a problem not only for the study of Lucilius but also for the study of Horace. Part of the point of looking in detail at how the transmission record differs from or mediates Horace s account(s) for us is to try to escape the bounds of that circularity and to add detail to our account of how Lucilian satire functioned for those ancient readers of his, besides Horace, whose works survive until today. Cicero s role in both the transmission and the reception of Lucilius also warrants extended analysis. Cicero is responsible for about twenty direct quotations of Lucilius, only three of which are known to the later tradition (one to Pliny the Elder, one to the scholiast to Hor. Serm and one to Nonius). Besides this, Cicero also paraphrases Lucilius nine times and mentions him a further seven times. He is thus responsible only about 2% of our present access to the text (so again: much less than in the Ennian epic scenario), and we can also see that he is also not a major conduit for knowledge of Lucilius work for later generations at least not for those whose work has reached us. But Cicero remains invaluable as a source of information, because he is a direct reader of the Satires, which he treats as a work of literature (contrast his contemporary Varro, whose effects on the record limitations of space preclude me from discussing here). Quotations from or paraphrases of Lucilius occur ten times in the De Oratore, seven times in the De Finibus, four times in the Epistulae ad Atticum, twice in the Brutus, twice in the Orator, twice in the Tusculan Disputations, once in the Academica, and once in the De Natura Deorum. My project analyses this distribution and the social and rhetorical functions of Lucilian poetry in the multiple visions of the work with which Cicero presents us. Crucial is the question of how Cicero s version(s) of Lucilius intersect with those of Horace, his other early, fully invested and (to us) fully accessible literary reader. I am especially concerned to discover whether there was a live relationship between Cicero s view of Lucilius and Horace s whether as a result of direct influence or, perhaps yet more interestingly, because both authors testify to a larger, conglomerate, decipherable view of Lucilius in the first century. Deciphering the earliest stages of Lucilian literary reception, and differentiating it from later stages in the ancient reading

5 of the text, is a major goal of my project, one necessitated not least by the sharp divergence between the views of Lucilius with which the literary reception and the transmission record present us. It is this that means that transmission history, however crucial, can never give us a fully satisfying account, in the absence of other approaches to the problem of satire s early history. Our record for Ennian satire, earlier by a generation and more, is far more shadowy yet than is our record for Lucilian satire but our modern account of it has nevertheless to be integrated into what we think we know about the history of this genre. If our record of Lucilian poetry is the largest on record for the second century (by a factor of 3), our record of Ennian satire is exiguous: Russo s authoritative 2007 edition knows of only 24 reliquiae for works circulating under or attributed to that title. Yet they remain a necessary part of any inquiry into the origins of the genre. Many questions remain. The term satura itself, definitively used as a title for poetry, appears late in the record, raising the question of when and under what circumstances Ennius and Lucilius works were first placed into relation with each other by use of a common title. And satire is important not only for its own sake but also because it marks several starting-points. It is the first moment at which we see the introduction into poetry of a personal voice, and as such it represents an important predecessor both for the neoteric and the proto-neoteric poetry, as best we can access it. Lucilius (not Ennius) is also the first Roman poet of high social standing (he was an eques); as such, he inaugurates the long era during which poetry was a preserve of the élite. There is thus much at stake in what we find to say about the obscure, early history of this original Roman genre. State of the field; relevance of the project today New work on Lucilius proceeds apace today. Johannes Christes and Giovanni Garbugino s bilingual edition of Lucilius appeared in 2015, while Anna Chahoud s edition for Cambridge University Press ( orange series), in addition to her Lucilian contribution to the new Loeb series (Harvard), will appear within a few years. A large and diverse new volume, Our Lucilius. Satire in Second Century Rome, edited by Brian Breed, Rex Wallace and Elizabeth Keitel, is in preparation for Cambridge University Press. But absent from this work and currently all other, above all in the Anglophone scholarship on Lucilius, is a detailed, comprehensive analysis of the transmission of Lucilian satire of the kind I am proposing, including the process by which and, so far as we can discern them, the reasons for which the work became fragmented. As the work of the aforementioned edited volume exemplifies, scholars working today are eager to interpret the social, ethical and cultural concepts and values to which the fragmentary corpus appears to give us access, and to analyse it in terms of register and style. Yet there remains a tendency either to ignore the fragmentary status of Lucilius or else to regard it as unproblematic at least outside the specialized work of editors who themselves of course represent a variety of approaches to problems of method in their approaches to the fragments: some, like Christes and Garbugino, showing considerable methodological awareness, not all of which, however, is fully explicated so as to reach concerned but less specialized readers; others, especially those representing the older school, regarding the process of editing the fragments as more of a transparent one of compilation and historical investigation. The present project seeks to respond to this state of affairs and to enter into productive dialogue with the work by other scholars that is underway.

6 My host Ulrich Schmitzer (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) is aware of these plans and approves them. With fellow literary researchers in Berlin, he has an application pending with the German Research Foundation (DFG) to start up a Research Training Group on the topic Kleine Formen, in which I would hope to participate. Should this application to the DFG be successful, it will only make Berlin all the more appropriate and productive an environment in which to conduct the research for this project. Thank you for considering my application.