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Jerome's dates for Gaius Lucilius, satyrarum scriptor*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Geraldine Herbert-Brown
Geraldine Herbert-Brown
Affiliation:
Macquarie University
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Extract

The Chronicle of Jerome states that Gaius Lucilius was born in 148 B.C. and died in 103 B.C. in his forty-sixth year. The Oxford Classical Dictionary (1996) says that Gaius Lucilius was probably born in 180 B.C. and died in 102/1 B.C.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , December 1999 , pp. 535 - 543
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1999

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References

1 Lucilius poeta nascitur (p. 143e H). Gaius Lucilius satyrarum scriptor Neapoli moritur ac publico funere effertur anno aetatis XLVI (p. 148e H). This means, of course, that Lucilius was forty-five when he died, not forty-six, as most scholars read it. R. W. Burgess reminds me that scholars far too frequently make the error of translating (e.g.) XXX aetatis anno (in his thirtieth year) as ‘thirty years old’. Scholars who adjust Jerome's death date for Lucilius to 102 B.C. to match the ‘XLVI’ (and there are many) have clearly made this very common error.

2 OCD2 (1970), on the other hand, says that the date of birth is unknown but he died an old man in 1021/1 B.C. Both the second and third editions of the OCD have not taken into account that Jerome's dates for Lucilius are consular dates: there is no need for ‘102/1’.

3 Sellar, W. Y., The Roman Poets of the Republic (Oxford, 1889), 229.Google ScholarCichorius, C., Untersuchungen zu Lucilius (Berlin, 1908), 7–14;Google ScholarKappelmacher, A., RE 13.2 (1927), 1617–18;Google ScholarHelm, Rudolf, Hieronymus' Zusätze in Eusebius' Chronik und ihr Wert für die Literaturgeschichte (Leipzig, 1929), 24–5:Google ScholarWarmington, E. H., Remains of Old Latin, vol. 3 (Loeb Classical Library, 1961), ix;Google ScholarKrenkel, W., ANRW 1.2 (1972), 1240–59;Google ScholarKnoche, U, Roman Satire, trans. Ramage, E. S. (Indiana, 1975), 33;Google ScholarHellegouarc'h, J., Velleius Paterculus: Histoire Romaine, tome II, livre II (Paris, 1982), 154;Google ScholarCoffey, M., Roman Satire (Bristol, 1989 2), 35;Google ScholarGruen, E., Culture and National Identity in Republican Rome (Ithaca, 1992), 274–6 at 275:Google Scholar ‘Jerome provides ostensible exactitude—only to create insuperable difficulty’.

4 An exception to this list of unbelievers is Christes, J., ANRW, 1.2 (1972), 1185–95,Google Scholar who defends Jerome's date of 148 but without scrutiny of the sources. Nothing stands against 103 B.C. as the date of death for Lucilius.

5 These external obstacles are all that prevent scholars from accepting Jerome's chronology. There is nothing in the content of Lucilius' satires to contradict it. It is generally accepted by critics that Books 26–30 were the earliest written (Coffey [n. 3], 40), and as they address events or personalities prominent in 131 B.C. or later, we know that they were written after Lucilius returned from the Numantine War. In the first book (i.e. Book 26), a friend urges Lucilius to commemorate Scipio's victory in the Numantine War: hunc laborem sumas, laudem qui titi ac fructum ferat: I percrepa pugnam Popili, facta Corneli cane (620–2, M = 713, 714, 691, W). In the same book he parodies the concept of mandatory marriages (678–9, 686, M = 644–5, 646, W), a concept which Q. Metellus Macedonicus, as censor 131 B.C., urged on the Romans in his speech de prole augenda (Gellius 1.6.2) liberorum creandorum causa. As Lucilius was apparently writing before the death of Scipio in 129 B.C. (Ciccro, de fin. 1.7; Horace, Sat. 2. 1. 66), the satirist was seventeen or eighteen when he began his compositions. By the reckoning of the OCD3 entry, however, Lucilius would have been fifty years old when he began his literary career.

6 See Helm (n. 3), Iff. Jerome's chronology has often been deemed unreliable (e.g. for Plautus, Lucretius, and Catullus) or dubious (Livy and Varro): see Syme, R., Sallust (California and Cambridge, 1964), 13–14.Google ScholarJeffreys, Roland, ‘The date of Messalla's death’ CQ 34 (1985), 140–8,CrossRefGoogle Scholar has defended Jerome's death date for Messalla Corvinus (A.D. 12) against Helm, Syme, and others by taking into account the independent testimony of Frontinus. However, he rejects Jerome's birth-date for him (59 B.C.) on the grounds that Messalla would have been too young to have prosecuted Aufidia in 44 B.C. or to have played a leading role at Philippi. Jeffreys believes that Messalla was more likely to have been born around 65–4 B.C. The problem is, however, that Jerome knew that Messalla was seventy-one years old when he died (anno aetatis LXXII), which tallies with the dates he provides. As R. W Burgess informs me, Jerome does not make up such figures. The mystery remains.

7 For example, his dates for Persius coincide with the evidence of Suetonius (A.D. 34–62), as does his date for the birth of Vergil (70 B.C.) and the birth of Horace (65 B.C.). He is one year late for the death of Terence (in 159 B.C.), one year late for the death of Vergil (in 19 B.C), and one year early for the death of Horace (in 8 B.C.). Suetonius' Vita of Ennius is not extant, but the biographer probably recorded his birth- and death-dates (in 239 and 169 B.C. according to Cicero, Brutus 72 and 78), because Jerome does too: one year out for both. Suetonius does not know the birth date of Terence, nor any date of Tibullus. Neither does Jerome, who does not mention Tibullus at all. R. W. Burgess draws my attention to the fact that Jerome's dates, if consular, are rarely more than a year out. He also points out that where Jerome is dreadfully wrong (e.g. Plautus), we are often not in a position to know what his source said. We cannot be sure, in other words, whether it is the source, or Jerome, who is out. We assume too often that Suetonius was always right when it could be he who was sometimes making the errors. This, and the question of Jerome's relative dates derived from Suetonius (and his other sources), are addressed in his forthcoming publication on Jerome's Chronicle.

8 Helm (n. 3), 26 noticed that, where other authors' full names are supplied in the Chronicle at their date of birth (e.g. Horatius Flaccus, Quintus Ennius, Gaius Valerius Catullus, Vergilius Maro), and whose single, familiar names only are supplied at the date of death (Horatius, Ennius etc.), the opposite is true in the case of Lucilius (see n. 1). Based upon this observation, he suggested that Jerome found Lucilius' death-date and his age at death in Suetonius, made the entry, then counted backwards to 148 B.C. and entered the poet's birth on that date in his Chronicle. If Helm's suggestion is in fact the case, then Jerome, counting back forty-five years from 103 B.C., could be out by one year. If Lucilius died in his forty-sixth year, before his birthday in 103 B.C., he could have been born in 149 B.C.

9 Gellius (citing the late Republican History of Tubero) provides the distinction between pueritia, iuventa, and senecta which reflected an official assessment of a male's fitness for military service. Men between the ages of seventeen and forty-five inclusive (iuniores) were deemed eligible. Below or above that age they were too young or too old.

10 We read in Censorinus (7.3) that puberty occurs after fourteen years in some, but by the seventeenth year in all youths: … post quartum decimum annum nonnullos, sed omnes intra septimum decimum annum. Cf. Ovid Met. 3.352 where Narcissus, in his sixteenth year, seemed either boy or man: poterat puer iuvenisque videri. Livy (21.46.7) says that the young Scipio was, at the age of seventeen, tum primum pubescens.

11 Livy 27. 11. 15 confirms the minimum of ten years service.

12 Palmer, R. E. A., ‘Bullae insignia ingenuitatis’, AJAH 14 (1989), 1–69 at 20–1.Google ScholarBroughton, T. R. S., ‘M. Aemilius Lepidus: his youthful career’, in Curtis, R. I. (ed.), Studia Pompeiana et Classica in Honor of W. F. Jashemski, vol. 2 (New Rochelle, 1989), 13–23 at 15.Google Scholar

13 See Ovid, Fasti 6.83–8, 5.59–79; Macrobius, Sat. 1.12.16.

14 Valerius Maximus (7.6.1) relates that, at the time of the Second Punic War when the armed youth of Rome was exhausted following several calamitous wars, slaves were recruited. Quanta violentia est casus acerbi! he laments. He says that the disaster at Cannae so confounded the City that spoils taken from enemies and dedicated to the gods were taken down from the temples for the service of the Wars, boys still in their childhood togas were inducted, and 6,000 condemned criminals were also conscripted out of necessity.

15 It is because of the generally accepted identification of M. Aemilius Lepidus (cos. 187, cens. 175, pont. max. 180–152) that the incident has been dated to the period of the Hannibalic war, as the date of the incident itself is unrecorded. See Crawford, M. H., Roman Republican Coinage (Cambridge, 1974), 443–4;Google ScholarEvans, R. J. and Kleijwegt, M., ZPE 92 (1992), 192;Google ScholarHarlan, M., Roman Republican Moneyers and their Coins 63 B.C-49 B.C. (London, 1995), 28–30; Palmer (n. 12), 21–3.Google Scholar

16 Crawford (n. 15), no. 419.

17 Broughton (n. 12), 21, n. 17 calculated that, like Lepidus, Scipio Africanus and T. Quinctius Flamininus probably began their military service while under-age also: at fourteen (in 221 B.C.) and at fifteen (in 213 B.C.) respectively.

18 Plutarch, C. Gracchus 5.

19 See Astin, A. E., ‘The Lex Annalis before Sulla’, Collection Latomus 17 (1958), 49–64 at 60–1Google Scholar and Sumner, G. V., The Orators in Cicero's Brutus: Prosopography and Chronology (Toronto, 1973), 58Google Scholar (R 57); Broughton (n. 12), 22, n. 34.

20 Astin (n. 19), 61, n. 2. Sumner (n. 19), 70 (R78), says Gaius' service must have counted ‘as beginning at the age of 15’. He also points out that not all of Gaius' military service can have been actual service, ‘if he spent any time at all on his duties as a land commissioner’.

21 Gaius' prohibition of the conscription of those under seventeen was thus not merely reasserting ‘the existing state of the law’, as proposed by Rich, J. W., ‘The supposed manpower shortage of the later second century B.C.’, Historic 32 (1983), 319.Google Scholar Rich does not find the enlistment of under-age assidui plausible, yet the evidence speaks against him.

22 Astin, A. E., Scipio Aemilianus (Oxford, 1967), 171;Google ScholarBrunt, P., Italian Manpower (Oxford, 1971), 407,Google Scholar n. 2; E. Badian, ANRW 1.1.685, n. 48.

23 Appian, Iber. 84; Livy, Per. 56.

24 Plutarch, Mor. 201A = Apophth. Sc. Min. 15. Appian, Iber. 84 says it was because many wars were being waged at the time, and because there were plenty of soldiers in Spain.

25 Appian, Iber. 84; cf. 89; Livy, Per.x 56;

26 Scipio could distribute only seven denarii each to his men (Pliny, N.H. 33.141), so the wealth of his volunteer recruits was no doubt far more important as a criterion of acceptance than their age.

27 Lucilius was apparently of senatorial stock for it seems he was uncle of Lucilia who was stirpis senatoriae and who became mother of Pompeius Magnus (Vell. Pat. 2.29.2). For further references, see Gruen (n. 3), 277, n. 24.

28 Cf. Plutarch, Marius 3.2 where we are told that Marius first served as a soldier in the war against the Celtiberians, when Scipio Africanus besieged Numantia. But Marius was twenty- three—not young for a new army recruit seeing action for the first time. Badian, E., ‘Marius and the nobles’, DUJ 25 (1963–4), 141–154,Google Scholar at 144, n. 6 notes that ‘Plutarch, rather interestingly, calls Marius a “youth” (meirakion) at this stage—clearly judging from the fact that he was doing his first military service.' Sallust, too (lug.63.3: ubi primum aetas militiae patiens fuit, stipendiis faciundis) calls Marius a youth when he entered the army.

29 Velleius' record of the lifespan of Sisenna poses some problems. Cicero, Brutus 228 says that he was younger than Sulpicius (b. 124 B.C.) and older than Hortensius (b. 114 B.C). Silverberg, J. C., ‘A Commentary to the Roman History of Velleius Paterculus (Book II 1–28)’, unpubl. diss. (Harvard, 1967),Google Scholar 127 says we can limit his birth date to some time before 118 because he must have been at least forty in 78 to hold the office of praetor urbanus (following Peter, H., Hist. Rom. Rel. 1.2 [1914]).Google Scholar Sumner (n. 19), 24, makes a similar deduction based on mimimum age. Hellegouarc'h (n. 3), 155 assigns his birth ‘aux environs de 120 avant J.-C’ Yet we must take Sisenna's birth-date back to 122 B.C. if he is to be regarded as iuvenis (seventeen or older) by the end of the Jugurthine War in 105 B.C. This is not impossible, of course. If Silverberg and Sumner have deduced his age correctly, however, then he was only eleven-thirteen years old, and would not qualify for the category of iuvenis at this time. Even Hellegouarc'h's date of 120 B.C. does not fit. As he himself says (p. 155): ‘II faut entendre tum et post aliquot annos dans un sens assez large, car Sisenna … n'aurait eu qu'une quinzaine d'années à la fin de la guerre contre Jugurtha et il y a une vingtaine d'années entre cet événement et la fin des guerres syllaniennes (88–82 avant J.-C).’ Sisenna died in 67 B.C. This poses no problem, for whether he was born as early as 123 or as late as 115 B.C., he was still more than forty-five or forty-six years in 67 (minimum forty-eight, maximum fifty-six), so did indeed make the senior category. But we must agree with Hellegouarc'h that Velleius is very free with his linking of temporal phrases.

30 Atellan Farce was known as early as the mid fourth century B.C. (Livy 7.2.11–12); Silverberg (n. 29), 132; Hellegouarc'h (n. 3), 155.

31 According to both Horace (Sat. 1.10.43, 2.1.62–8) and Quintilian (10.1.93), Lucilius was inventor of a genre untouched by the Greeks.

32 For example, at 2.1.3 Velleius describes the Numantine War as gravius than that against Viriathus, which itself was triste et contumeliosum. As Silverberg (n. 29), 13 points out, the idea of ‘disgrace’ is the dominant theme throughout Velleius' narration of Rome's wars in Spain in this chapter. The same theme is also dominant at 2.90.3 where Velleius, looking back from the Principate of Augustus, returns to the subject of the Spanish Wars and refers to the terror Numantini belli.

33 Velleius later describes Marius as hirtus atque horridus (2.11.1). And Plutarch (Marius 2.2) was disgusted (naturally) with his deliberate ignorance of Greek literature and learning.

34 Silverberg suggests (n. 29), 127 that it is an allusion which Velleius cannot resist making, as it brings to mind two future historical personages, Jugurtha and Marius, whose early military experience was to have an impact on later Roman politics and whose dealings with one another in the Jugurthine War form the content of 2.11 (see also Gruen [n. 3], 276, n. 20). Silverberg also suggests that Velleius wishes to demonstrate the strange workings of fortune; cf. his similar interest in another example of former colleagues-in-arms turned adversaries in 2.12.1 (Marius and Sulla).

35 For a list of ‘young’ senes, ranging in age from forty to fifty-six, see Cameron, A., Callimachus and his Critics (Princeton, 1995), 177–9.Google Scholar

36 See n. 9. Senecta at forty-six is corroborated by Polybius 6.19.2; Cicero, De sen. 60; Varro ap. Censorinus 14.3; Dion. Hal. 4.16.3; Livy 43.14.6.

37 Livy says that as puer Hannibal was a soldier, as iuvenis an imperator, and as senex (at age forty-five) a victor (30.28.4). At 30.30.10 he has the forty-five-year-old Carthaginian tell Scipio that he was now (in 202 B.C.) a senex returning to the homeland he had left as (a nine-year-old) puer.

38 Cf. Cicero, De nat. deor. 3.89; Horace, Ode 1.5.13–16; Ars Poetica 20–1. For further examples of tablets hung in temples to commemorate an escape from danger, see Nisbet, and Hubbard, , Commentary on Horace's Odes I (Oxford, 1970), 78Google Scholar on 1.5.14.

39 It is difficult to justify this statement without a more detailed reading of this poem. However, there is not the space for such a reading here.

40 This Satire, although positioned at the beginning of the second book, is commonly accepted as being the last composed: Fraenkel, E., Horace (Oxford, 1957), 147;Google ScholarRudd, N., The ‘Satires’ of Horace: a Study (Cambridge, 1966), 131;Google ScholarMuecke, F., Horace Satires II (Warminister, 1993), 100.Google Scholar

41 Fraenkel (n. 40), 151–2 notices the incongruity between the portrait of Lucilius in this satire and that in Horace's earlier satires.