TITLE PAGE. Proposal Title: Representing Roman Plague. Internal Grant Program: Humanities. Principal Investigator: Hunter H.

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1 TITLE PAGE Proposal Title: Representing Roman Plague Internal Grant Program: Humanities Principal Investigator: Hunter H. Gardner Rank: Associate Professor Department: Languages, Literatures, and Cultures College: Arts and Sciences Contact Information: Amount Requested: $9,564 Project Period: May

2 Grant Awarded: During the Spring of 2013 I received a Humanities Grant from the Office of the Provost in the amount of $9,564, beginning May of The grant was awarded to provide summer support for research on my book project on representations of plague in Latin literature (working title: Representing Roman Plague); the grant also funded my travel to Italy to complete research on the physical evidence for plague in ancient Rome and examine visual representations of plague in Renaissance Venetian paintings as a testimony to the lasting influence of Roman plague narratives (for chapter seven of the book, on reception). Description of project and work completed during period of summer support: This project examines representations of plague in the Latin literary tradition and identifies specific contributions of those representations to western plague narratives; its expected outcome is a seven-chapter monograph, detailed below, available for press submission in Roman innovations in nosological (or disease ) discourse have been largely overlooked in studies of contagious disease as a visual and literary signifier. These studies have occasionally looked to antiquity as a source of representations linking plague to the dissolution of the social bond, though discussion is largely confined to Greek models, especially Thucydides account of the plague that struck Athens in the 5 th century BCE. In turning my attention to innovations in Latin representations of plague, I have identified a revival of plague narratives during the late Roman Republic and early Empire (c. 55 B.C.E.-8 C.E.), offered as self-conscious representations, rather than purported eye-witness accounts, of outbreaks of pestilence. I examine the role that Roman representations of contagious disease, and its accompanying physical and moral deterioration, play in rehabilitating and stabilizing the larger civic body. It is my contention that we can locate a common creative impulse that links Roman fictions of disease to a more widespread tradition of apocalyptic and dystopian narratives. Interpreted within the Roman historical context, accounts of plague in Lucretius, Vergil and Ovid appear to offer an evolution of responses to the breakdown of an aristocratically governed res publica in the mid-first century BCE and the reconstitution of stabilized government under the Augustan Principate (31 BCE-14 CE). Using support from my Provost Humanities Grant, during the summer of 2013 I completed an article on two of these narratives, those found in Vergil s Georgics and Ovid s Metamorphoses, and submitted it to the journal Vergilius, where it has been accepted for publication (forthcoming December 2014, acceptance letter in PDF of supporting documents). This article provides material for two chapters in the book project (chapters three and four). In addition, I spent a three-week period of summer support researching Livy s reports of plague in Ab Urbe Condita (material for chapter one); I also compared his report of Syracusan plague during the second Carthaginian war with a poeticizing account of the same incident in Silius Italicus Punica; this material was included in a paper given in April 2014 at the annual meeting of the Classical Association of Middle West and South (program listing in PDF). Two weeks during the same period of summer support allowed me to begin preliminary research for an abstract and paper given at the 2014 meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association (March 2014) on Kristeva s concept of the abject in Lucretius treatment of Athenian plague (for chapter two; program listing also attached). Finally, before travelling to Rome, I was able to begin research on the Renaissance reception of Latin treatments of plague: this section of the project was aided immensely by a 2005 catalogue for an exhibition on Hope and Healing: Painting in Italy in a Time of Plague , organized at Worcester Museum 2

3 (College of the Holy Cross). The contributors provide an excellent overview of the spiritual, intellectual and artistic climate that prepared me for my trip to Italy, where many of the paintings discussed permanently reside. The current book overview is as follows, with underlined sections referenced in preceding paragraph nearly complete: Part I: Introduction, plague as reality and metaphor Chapter one: theoretical preliminaries (Kristeva, Sontag, Girard, Artaud); historiography of plague in Rome (Livy; with sub-section on comparable material in Greek historiography) Part II: Experiments in Dystopia Chapter two: Lucretius: plague and the social order Chapter three: Vergil: plague and civil war (Georgics; small section on Aeneid) Chapter four: Ovid: relapse and recovery of the civic body Part III: Receptions Chapter five: Imperial maladies (Seneca, Lucan, and Silius Italicus) Chapter six: contagion and Christianity (Augustine and Endelechius) Chapter seven: Renaissance Receptions: (Apollo s arrows, Sebastian s wounds) (or Transmission of Roman Plague in the West ) Work completed with funds used for travel to Rome and Venice (August 2013): One of the key contributions of this study is its identification of topoi common to Latin accounts of plague that have made an impact on representations of bubonic plague in 16 th c. and 17 th c. Italian visual and literary arts. An early visual depiction of bubonic plague, Raimondi s Morbetto (based on Raphael s Plague of Phrygia [1520 s]), draws from the horror of Vergil s brief but pointed narrative of plague that strikes the Trojans who are attempting to settle on Crete (Aeneid ). The engraving is perhaps most well-known for its introduction of startling and influential iconography that foregrounds a child attempting to nurse at the breast of its deceased mother (I should add that my research has convinced me that the infant at breast of deceased mother motif is drawn from Lucretius De Rerum Natura). In the engraving, as in roughly contemporary visual (Tintoretto s St. Roch Ministering to the Plague Victims, 1549) and literary discourses (Caesare Ripa s Iconologia, first published 1593), we are asked to consider a number of social pathologies that are exacerbated by contagion while also imagining opportunities for renewing the social order. I offer here a detailed list of the Renaissance and early Baroque art that I was able to examine during my time in Rome and Venice: Rome: Brandi, St. Charles among those stricken by Plague, c Basilica of SS. Ambrose and Charles on the Corso. Antonio Carracci, St. Charles Giving Communion to a Victim of the Plague, c This painting is especially significant for its foreground depiction of an infant expiring over the lifeless body of its parent. San Bartolomeo all Isola (Tiberina), built over foundations of ancient temple of Asclepius (see further below). Venice: 3

4 Tintoretto, St. Roch Struck by Plague, (Chiesa) Scuola Grande di San Rocco. Tintoretto, St. Roch Ministering to the Plague Victims, Scuola Grande di San Rocco. Staircase of Scuola (right, leading up to the sala capitolare), Zanchi Antonio, Virgin Appears to the Plague Victims, Staircase of Scuola (left), Negri Pietro, Virgin Mary Rescues Venice from the Plague in 1630, Titian, Saint Mark Altarpiece (with image of stricken St. Roch), c S. Maria della Salute. Baldassare Longhena and Giusto le Court, High Altar with St. Mark, Lorenzo Guistiniani and Venetia, who implore the Virgin and Child to expel plague (personified as old woman) who flees their attack (sculptural ensemble), c S. Maria della Salute. Rome, the ancient city: My travel to Rome also provided an opportunity for research that will be incorporated into chapter one of this project (on the historiography of Roman plague). The topography of the ancient city was littered with monuments built as a response to contagion, especially the first temple of Apollo and the temple devoted to the god Asclepius (=Aesculapius, god of healing and medicine) on the Tiber Island. The island itself had provided a natural opportunity to isolate victims of contagious disease; we have various accounts (Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, books 10 and 11 [epitome]; Ovid, Metamorphoses 15) of the introduction of the temple after plague struck the city, 291 BCE. While the church of San Bartolomeo now stands over the site of the ancient temple to Asclepius, the substrata have been partially excavated and (thanks to the very helpful staff and clergy at the church!) I was allowed a glimpse of the ancient foundations. I discovered that builders of the 10 th c. Christian church considered the site both holy and therapeutic: the modern church retains a well that was used in Roman times and whose water was said to have healing properties. About two centuries before the temple to Asclepius was built, the god Apollo, associated with bringing and remedying disease, had been imported for a similar purpose. Livy reports a vow to build a temple in Apollo s honor (4.25, 433 BCE, completed in 430 BCE), where a temple to Apollo Medicus (the healer) still stands. The three surviving columns are from a firstcentury BCE reconstruction of the temple; the more recent incarnation, while not as intimately connected with devotion to a relatively new god as remedy against plague, may have important political ramifications: its likely builder, Sosius, was perhaps contending with Augustus for proprietorship of the god and his healing properties during the aftermath of civil war. The completion of these initial stages during the summer of 2013 left me in a good position to apply for a sabbatical (for fall of 2014): I am currently using this summer to revise chapters two-four (the bulk of which, as noted, has already been completed), and send out a book proposal, along with sample chapters, to a publisher. During my fall sabbatical I plan to finish chapter one and complete the chapter on early imperial receptions. I also plan to apply for an NEH summer stipend, which would allow me to use the summer of 2015 to complete my chapters on Christian and Renaissance receptions (chapters five and six). My manuscript should be ready for submission to a publisher by the end of

5 Budget: Summer 2013 Salary Supplement ($4000, plus fringe) $4940 Lodging in Italy, July 2013 $1750 (7 days in Rome, plus 3 days in Venice) Per diem in Rome and Venice $1,230 (7 days in Rome, plus 3 days in Venice) Round trip air fare to Italy (arriving in Rome) $1544 Rail fare to Venice (Chiesa de San Rocco; Scuola Grande de San Rocco) $100 Total Budget $9564 5