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Augustan Poetry and the Life of Luxury

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Jasper Griffin
Jasper Griffin
Affiliation:
Balliol College, Oxford
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Extract

The object of this paper is a reconsideration of the relationship in the Augustan poets between experience and convention, between individual life and inherited forms of expression. The problem, which haunts the Sonnets of Shakespeare and the poems of the Romantics no less than Horace and Propertius, has notoriously been answered in very different ways at different times. Scholars like Zielinski and Wili, for example, created romantic stories about Lydia and Cinara, and worked out Horace's feelings for them, the chronology of the affairs, and the way it all ended. In revulsion from these excesses, some influential modern writers go to an opposite extreme; they distinguish on the one hand ‘Greek’ or ‘Hellenistic’ elements, which are ‘unreal’ or ‘imaginary’, from ‘Roman’ ones which are ‘real’. Thus, to give a few examples at once, Professor G. Williams, in his important book, writes that ‘Horace's erotic poems are set in a world totally removed from the Augustan State’, while Professor Nisbet and Miss Hubbard, in their indispensable Commentary, say ‘The “love interest” of Horace's Odes is almost entirely Hellenistic’, and, of Odes I. 5, ‘Pyrrha herself is the wayward beauty of fiction, totally unlike the compliant scorta of Horace's own temporary affairs’. The argument here will be that this view is over-schematic and makes a distinction false, in this form, to the poets and to their society. It will, I think, prove possible to argue the point without falling into sentimentality or self-indulgence. The aim is not to reconstruct the vie passionelle of the poet, but to discover the setting and the tone in which he means his poems to be read.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 66 , November 1976 , pp. 87 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © Jasper Griffin 1976. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Zielinski, Th., Horace et la société romaine du temps d'Auguste (1938), 169 ffGoogle Scholar.

2 Wili, W., Horaz und die aug. Kultur (1948), 184 ff., 191Google Scholar.

3 Williams, G., Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry (1968), 557Google Scholar.

4 Nisbet, R. G. M. and Hubbard, M. E., Commentary on Horace, Odes Book I (1970), xivGoogle Scholar.

5 ibid. 73.

6 Thus Williams, loc. cit., 102: ‘A more reasonable explanation of the recusatio-poems is, not that Maecenas and Augustus kept nagging at leading poets to write epic’, but that this was ‘an invention’, and that the poets chose the Callimachean form ‘to make political statements in verse’. It is clear that we must be very careful as to whose conception of ‘reasonableness’ is being applied. Ockham's razor may shave the flowing locks of a poet too short. Cf. also n. 223.

7 Contrast Williams, op. cit. 44, who believes in a real friendship: ‘The historical evidence of that friendship is sufficient to make its insertion in the picture obligatory,’ with Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. xxi:‘scholars tend to take too literally Horace's courteous protests (sic) of affection. One cannot detect in the relationship any of the equality required by essayists on amicitia.’ The implication, that ‘essayists on amicitia’ are better evidence, in an individual case, than Horace's poems or Maecenas' will (‘Horatii Flacci ut mei memor esto’), is a striking one.

8 e.g. Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. 71 (on Odes I. 4): ‘The homosexual implication has no bearing on Sestius’ actual behaviour but is a conventional motif derived from Greek erotic poetry.’ Cf. Williams, G. in JRS 52 (1962), 39Google Scholar; Tradition and Originality, 556.

9 This paper will have little to say about another influential view: that forcibly expressed by Cairns, F. in his very interesting book Generic Composition in Greek and Roman Poetry (1972)Google Scholar. The argument of this work is that ‘the whole of classical poetry is written in accordance with the sets of rules of the various genres’ (31), and that ‘a writer working in accordance with genre patterns … cannot, for instance, draw his inspiration directly from individual incidents and experiences in his own life’ (98). Here it must suffice to say that the first of these assertions seems a great exaggeration, as is suggested by the facts that Cairns has himself to invent and name many of the genres he finds, and that some poems prove recalcitrant to his treatment; and that the second follows from it only if ‘directly’ is interpreted to mean ‘absolutely immediately’. And probably very little poetry, in any language, has borne that relation to individual experience. An exaggerated use of this method of ‘generic studies’ drives too great a gap between poetry and life, of a sort akin to that here criticized. Cf. also nn. 181 and 316 below.

10 Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cat. (n. 4), 109.

11 ibid. 216.

12 ibid. 226.

13 K. F. Smith on Tibullus I. 2. 93–7.

14 idem on Tibullus I. 2. 1–6.

15 See Nisbet and Hubbard, XV: ‘These of course were Roman institutions as well, but their repeated mention in such poems owes much to the convention of the genre’.

16 See for example Snell, B. in Gnomon 19 (1943), 71Google Scholar: as Germany in 1800 was ‘voll von lauter Werthern’, so we know from Aristophanes that young contemporaries emulated Euripidean characters: ‘so sehr war und ist die Selbstinterpretation der Menschen und damit ihr Handeln und ihr Charakter abhängig von vorgebildeten Gestalten’. Also Boyancé, P. and Bayet, J. in Entretiens Hardt II (1956), 41 f.Google Scholar

17 Vie de Henry Brulard (Paris, edn. Le Divan, 1949), 483Google Scholar. Of his love, Stendhal writes: ‘La femme que j'aimais, et dont je me croyais en quelque sorte aimé, avait d'autres amants, mais elle me préférait á rang égal, me disais-je! J'avais d'autres maîtresses…’ It could be Propertius speaking.

18 Fineshreiber, W. H. jr., Stendhal the Romantic Rationalist (1932), 27Google Scholar.

19 Delacroix, E., Journales for 11 May 1824Google Scholar: ‘Rappelle, pour t'enflammer éternellement, certains passages de Byron; ils me vont bien.’ In his Correspondance générale I, 85 (of 20 October 1818)Google Scholar we find him writing of the imitation of Rousseau by some of his friends: ‘Ensuite un ami qui écrivait la tête dans ses mains, non pas pour rendre les élans de son cœur, mais pour les rendre d'une certaine manière et pour faire du Rousseau…’

20 Starkie, E., Baudelaire (1957), 47Google Scholar.

21 Baudelaire: A Sainte-Beuve.

22 e.g. Moss, A and Marvel, E., The Legend of the Latin Quarter (1964), 142Google Scholar. A further twist is added by the fact that Du Maurier later included a character, recognizably Whistler, as ‘Joe Sibley’ in the first version of Trilby, his novel describing artistic life in Paris; the publishers were made to apologize, and the offending chapters were omitted. The combination of biography and literature in all this is indissoluble. Murger's novel was a romanticized version of his own life …

23 Listed by Hillscher, A., ‘Hominum literatorum Graecorum ante Tiberii mortem in urbe Roma commoratorum historia critica,’ Jahrb.für klass. Phil., Suppl. 18 (1892), 335–40Google Scholar. See also Bowersock, G. W., Augustus and the Greek World (1965)Google Scholar; Heinze, R., Die august. Kultur (1930), 65–76Google Scholar. For example, the historians Diodorus of Sicily, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Nicolaus of Damascus, Strabo and Timagenes all visited Rome and worked there.

24 After Parthenius of Nicaea, whose importance is rightly stressed by Clausen, W. V., ‘Callimachus and Roman Poetry’, GRBSt. 5 (1964), 181–96Google Scholar, for example Antipater of Thessalonice and Crinagoras of Mitylene, who lived in the Imperial household.

25 Strabo 675, Rome is Ταρσέων καΙ Ἀλεξανδρένων φιλολόγων μεστή. Cf. Fraser, P. M., Ptolemaic Alexandria (1972) I, 474Google Scholar.

26 e.g. Athenodorus the Stoic, influential with Augustus (Strabo 674; see also Grimal, P. in REA 47 (1945), 261CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ibid. 48 (1946), 62); and Areius Didymus, whose consolatio to Livia is quoted by Seneca, ad Marciam 4. 5. Augustus' literary output included hortationes ad philosophiam (Suet., D. Aug. 85).

27 Allbutt, C., Greek Medicine in Rome (1921)Google Scholar; Scarborough, J., Roman Medicine (1969), 110 ffGoogle Scholar. on the prevalence of Greek doctors in upper-class households.

28 Fraser, op. cit. (n. 24), 425: ‘The migratory movement of Alexandrian scientists and grammarians to Rome, so noticeable in the fields of grammar, medicine, and philosophy …’.

29 A. Bouché-Leclercq, L'Astrologie grecque, ch. xvi; Cramer, F. A., Astrology in Roman Late and Politics, Mem. Amer. Philos. Soc. 37 (1954)Google Scholar. Cramer remarks, p. 88, on the ‘astounding familiarity with astrology among his readers' assumed by Propertius IV. 1. I should not share the confidence of some scholars (Critical Essays on Roman Literature: Elegy and Lyric, ed. Sullivan, J. P. (1962), 191Google Scholar), that the astrologically inclined Leuconoe of Hor. C. I. 11 is ‘an imaginary person with a Greek name’.

30 Suet, D. Aug. 29. It is striking how little the poets have to say about the Library.

31 Kroll, W., Kultur der ciceronischen Zeit (1933, repr. 1966), 160 ff.Google Scholar; Cic., ad Att. I. 19. 8: ‘odia autem ilia libidinosae et delicatae iuventutis quae erat in me incitata sic mitigata sunt comitate quadam mea, me unum ut omnes colant’ (a typical piece of optimism from 60 B.C.); cf. Cat. II. 23: ‘in his gregibus omnes aleatores, omnes impuri impudicique versantur. hi pueri tam lepidi ac delicati non solum amare et amari neque saltare et cantare, sed etiam sicas vibrare didicerunt …’ In de Off. I. 106, he contrasts two ways of life: one is to live ‘parce, continenter, severe, sobrie’; the other, ‘diffluere luxuria et delicate ac molliter vivere’. The contrast is already a stock one by Terence's time, cf. Adelphoe 863 ff., Donatus on Adelphoe 9. In Lucilius, e.g. 1058 M: ‘imberbi androgyni, barbari moechocinaedi’, rightly explained by Housman, , CQ I (1907), 156Google Scholar = Collected Papers II. 693, as ‘dissolute young men of fashion’.

32 Sallust, Cat. 10–17, 23, 25, etc. Cicero presents such a way of life from a hostile stand-point in the Philippics, and from an apologetic one in the pro Caelio, a speech exploited in this connection by Guillemin, A., ‘L'élément humain dans l'élégie latine’, REL 18 (1940), 95 ff.Google Scholar The standard elements are listed, in connection with Hannibal in Capua, by Livy XXIII. 18. 12: ‘somnus et vinum et epulae et scorta balineaeque et otium.’

33 On it, see Bayet, J. in Entretiens Hardt II (1956), 4 ff.Google Scholar

34 cf. p. 98 below.

35 e.g. Mostellaria 22: ‘dies noctesque bibite, pergraecamini, | amicas emite liberate, pascite | parasitos, obsonate pollucibiliter’.

36 Frederiksen, M. W. in The Romans, ed. Balsdon, J. P. V. D. (1965), 160Google Scholar, of the schematic layout of Roman towns: ‘Most likely the idea came from the Greeks.’ Architects still came regularly from the East to Rome in the time of Trajan: Pliny, Ep. x. 40.

37 As for the aqueducts, the idea of course was Greek’, Boethius, A., The Golden House of Nero (1960), 77Google Scholar. He emphasizes (p. 30) that once Roman soldiers had seen the Greek cities of the East, they had to be given similar luxuries in the Western military colonies.

38 Named after the στοὰ βασιλική of the Hellenistic city. All four sides of the Forum had been provided with this convenience by 169 B.C. They were good places for picking up girls, in literature (Prop. II. 32. 11, Ovid, Ars I. 67, 492 etc.), and doubtless in life too. So were the theatres: Ovid, Ars I. 100: ‘ille locus casti damna pudoris habet’; Amores II. 2. 26 ff.

39 The first big ones were built by Agrippa: Heinze, R., Die aug. Kultur, 69Google Scholar, ‘Die ersten Roms, dessen Bewohner sich bis dahin schämen mussten, wenn sie in den Grossstädten des Osten überall die herrlichsten Badeanlagen sahen …’

40 e.g. in the Porticus Metelli famous Hellenistic statues; Ovid, , Ars I. 70 ff.Google Scholar, the Porticus Octavia is ‘externo marmore dives opus’, and the Porticus Liviae is ‘priscis sparsa tabellis’.

41 Suet., D. Aug. 28.

42 ‘As regards comfort, beauty, and hygiene, the cities of the Roman Empire, worthy successors to their Hellenistic parents …’, Rostovtzeff, SEHRE, 2 143.

43 Cumont, F., Les religiones orientates dans le paganisme romain4 (1929), 78Google Scholar. The ladies of elegy incline to the cult of Isis, e.g. Prop. II. 33; Tibull. I. 3. 23: Ovid, Am. 18. 74.

44 McKay, A. G., Houses, Villas and Palaces in the Roman World (1975), 114 ffGoogle Scholar.

45 Boethius, op. cit. (n. 36), 96: ‘The villa acquired more and more luxurious features, many of them borrowed from Greece’; Balsdon, J. P. V. D., Life and Leisure in Ancient Rome (1969), 206Google Scholar.

46 ‘L'architecture dans l'Éinéide’, Mnem. 7 (1939), 225–36Google Scholar.

47 Aymard, J., Essai sur les chasses romaines (1951), ch. 2Google Scholar.

48 Grimal, P., Les jardins romains2 (1969), 69Google Scholar: ‘Sans l'influence grecque, jamais un art des jardins digne de ce nom ne serait né a Rome’.

49 D'Arms, J. H., Romans on the Bay of Naples (1970), 41Google Scholar; RE s.v. ‘Piscina’, 1783. On the piscinarii of the late Republic, Syme, R., The Roman Revolution (1939), 23Google Scholar. Ibid. 410, Vedius Pollio: the type did not die with the Republic.

50 ‘Die bildenden Künste hatten ihren Einzug in Rom an die Viergespanne der Triumphatoren gefesselt gemacht’, Saalfeld, G. A., Der Hellenismus in Latium (1882), 105Google Scholar. Even new trees were led in triumph, Pliny, , NH XII. 111Google Scholar: ‘clarumque dictu, a Pompeio Magno in triumpho arbores quoque duximus’. The sources on the visual arts at Rome are collected by Vessberg, O., Studien zur Kunstgeschichte der röm. Repubtik (1941)Google Scholar See also Jucker, H., Vom Verhältnis der Römer zur bildenden Kunst der Griechen (1950)Google Scholar.

51 Vessberg gives the evidence for the looting of Syracuse, 211 B.C.; Capua, 210; Tarentum, 209; Eretria, 198; Macedon, 194; Aetolia and Ambracia, 187; Asia, 186; Macedon again, 168; Carthage and Corinth, 146; Athens, 88; etc. Sulla removed everything from Olympia as well as from Delphi, Epidaurus and Athens. Lucullus, after his rich triumph over Mithridates, incurred ‘great expenses’ (Plut., Luc. 39) in collecting Greek art. Other collections, such as that of Verres, continued to be formed on the older, cheaper method.

52 Livy XXV. 40. 1.

53 Livy XXXIX. 6. 7–9. A cool view of this assertion: Lintott, A. W. in Historia 21 (1972), 626–38Google Scholar.

54 Polybius XXXI. 25. 4–8.

55 Pliny, , NH XXXVI. 113Google Scholar. Cicero loves to make the association: Pro Flacco 71: ‘Graecorum luxuria’; Pro Murena 12: ‘habet Asia suspicionem luxuriae quandam’; Pro Flacco 5: ‘Asiae luxuries’; Verr. II. 7.

56 e.g. Boucher, J.-P., Études sur Properce (1965), 41 ff.Google Scholar; Bartholomé, H., Ovid und die antike Kunst (1935)Google Scholar; Rothstein's edition of Propertius, index, s.v. ‘Kunst, bildende’.

57 Propertius has an elegant variation on the motif of ‘corrupting works of art’ at 11. 6. 27 ff.: obscene pictures corrupt girls.

58 It is plausibly argued that even the realistic portrait statues of Rome were actually made by Greeks: so e.g. Richter, G. M. A., ‘Who made the Roman Portrait Statues—Greeks or Romans?’, in TAPhA 95 (1951). 183 ff.Google Scholar

59 Pöschl, V. points out, Entretiens Hardt II (1956), 95Google Scholar that in Greece Horace will have heard real Greeks singing. That has its implications for his lyric poetry.

60 Syll 3 II, 609.

61 e.g. Livy XXXVII. 54. 20; XLV. 27; Polyb. XXX. 10. 3–6.

62 As P. Rutilius Rufus, in exile at Mitylene and Smyrna (Cic., Rab. Post. 27). Milo went to Massilia: on the refinements of that city, and its popularity with Roman grandees, Strabo 181.

63 Like T. Pomponius Atticus.

64 Suet., D. Jul. 42.

65 Suet, D. Aug. 66.

66 Suet., Tib. 11–13. He apparently led a Greek life there: 11. 1 … ‘sine lictore aut viatore gymnasio interdum obambulans mutuaque cum Graeculis officia usurpans prope ex aequo’; 13. 1 … ‘redegitque se deposito patrio habitu ad pallium et crepidas’; 11. 3: ‘cum circa scholas et auditoria professorum assiduus esset…’

67 Hor., Ep. 1. 11. 21, ‘Romae laudetur Samos et Chios et Rhodos absens’.

68 Prop. III. 22.

69 Bowersock, G. W., Augustus and the Greek World (1965), 74Google Scholar.

70 Cic., Rab. Post. 26.

71 Cic., pro Planc. 65; Strabo 246.

72 Hor., Epode v. 43.

73 Virgil, , G. IV. 563–4Google Scholar: ‘illo Virgilium me tempore dulcis alebat | Parthenope, studiis florentem ignobilis oti.’ The wording is a bow—not without irony—to the ultra-Roman view of such matters as poetry as a ‘waste of time’.

74 Baiae in reality: Cicero, pro Cael. 35; ad Att., I. 16.10; D'Arms, Romans on the Bay of Naples, 119 ff. Baiae in poetry: Prop. I. 11; III. 18; Hor., C. III. 4. 24; Ep. I. 1. 83; [Tibull.] III. 5. 3; Ovid, , Ars I. 255 ff.Google Scholar

75 D'Arms, op. cit. 56.

76 Suet., D. Aug. 98; Vell. Pat. II. 123. 1. The games were Italica Romaea Sebasta Isolympia: Bowersock, 83.

77 Cic., ad Fam. VII. 12. 1.

78 Virgil, G. IV. 125 ff.

78 Prop. II. 34. 67.

80 Hor., C. II. 6 fin.

81 Pliny, , NH XIV. 87Google Scholar.

82 Cato, RR 105; 112.

83 Pliny, , NH XIV. 94Google Scholar.

84 Susemihl, , Geschichte der griechischen Literatur I, 840Google Scholar.

85 cf. Rostovtzeff, , SEHRE2 I, 19Google Scholar on the introduction of Hellenistic methods into Italian husbandry.

86 Pliny, , NH XIV. 48–52Google Scholar.

87 NH VIII. 190.

88 RR VII. 2. 3.

89 cf. Frank, Tenney, Economic Survey V (1940), 164Google Scholar.

90 ibid. 201, n. 42.

91 Prop. I. 2. 1–4; II. 1. 4; 16. 18; IV. 5. 22; 5. 57; Hor., Serm. I. 2. 101; C. IV. 13. 3; Epp. I. 12. 21; Tibull. I. 9. 67; II. 3. 53; Ov., Ars II. 297, etc. Byssus came from Cilicia. Egypt and Syria.

92 Suet., D. Jul. 43.

93 Marquardt, , Röm. Privatleben2, 603Google Scholar.

94 e.g. corymbion, galerus, galericulum, calliblepharon, psilothra.

95 Ovid, Ars. III. 133–68; Prop. I. 2. 1; I. 15. 5; Hor., C. I. 5. 4; Epode XI. 28, etc.

96 Hor., S. II. 7. 55; C. III. 19. 25; Epp. I. 14. 32; Prop. II. 4. 5; Tibull. I. 8. 9; Ovid, , Ars I. 505 ff.Google Scholar

97 Prop. I. 2. 19; II. 18. 23; III. 24. 8; Tibull. I. 8. 43; Ov., Am. I. 14 etc.

98 e.g. Prop. 11. 29. 17; m. 10. 22; Ov., Am. III. 1. 7; Her. XV. 76.

99 Mostell. 43; ‘non omnes possunt olere unguenta exotica.’

100 Pliny, , NH XIII. 24Google Scholar.

101 For Berenice, Callimachus fr. 110; for Arsinoe and Stratonice of Pergamum, cf. Athenaeus 689a.

102 NH XII. 84: ‘tanti nobis deliciae et feminae constant.’ He lists Eastern sources of perfumes, XIII. 4–8.

103 cf. Colin, J., ‘Luxe oriental et parfums masculins dans la Rome alexandrine’, RBPh 33 (1955), 5–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

104 The stage was perfumed at theatrical performances, Lucret. II. 416, Brandt on Ov., Ars. I. 104. Trimalchio had unconventional ways of distributing perfume to his guests, Petron. 60. 3; Nero, with what seems even worse taste, could spray perfume on his from the ceilings of the Domus Aurea (Suet., Nero 31).

105 Livy XXXIX. 6.

106 Athenaeus 658e ff.

107 Athenaeus 661 e: οὐχ ἁρμόττειν φασὶ δούλουσι τὴν μαγειρικήν, ἀλλ᾿ οὐδὲ τοῖς τυχοῦσι τῶν ἐλευθέρων.

108 Geschichte der gr. Lit. I, 879.

109 Athenaeus 101 f.

110 Still worth reading is Friedländer, L., Roman Life and Manners (English translation) II, 146 ff.Google Scholar: ‘The luxury of the table and the importation of foreign foods.’

111 Cic., Fam. IX. 20, 25, 26. At the last of these Cicero found the celebrated Cytheris, see below p. 96.

112 Hor., Serm. II. 8.

113 Prop. I. 8. 39; 14. 2; II. 16. 17; III. 4. 2; Tibull. II. 2. 15; 4. 30; III. 3. 17; Hor., C. III. 24. 48; Ovid, , Ars I. 251Google Scholar, etc.

114 Suet., D.jul. 43.

115 ‘The jewellery of the early Empire may be regarded merely as a continuation of Hellenistic jewellery … the chief centres of production were probably in the first place the old Hellenistic centres of Alexandria and Antioch, in the second place Rome itself. The Roman craftsmen, as in the other arts and crafts, were doubtless to a large extent immigrants from the East’: Higgins, R. A., Greek and Roman Jewellery (1961), 178, 181Google Scholar.

116 Tenney Frank, op. cit. (n. 86), 211. Cf. Vollenweider, H. M.-L., ‘Verwendung und Bedeutung der Porträtgemmen für das politische Leben der römischen Republik’, Mus, Helv. 12 (1955), 96–111Google Scholar.

117 Pliny, , NH XXXVII. 11–12Google Scholar.

118 ibid. 10.

119 Suet., D. Aug. 50.

120 ‘Most of the signatures on gems of the early Roman period are in Greek and with Greek names … their techniques, materials and subjects … remained basically Hellenistic Greek’: Boardman, J., Greek Gems and Finger Rings (1970), 362Google Scholar.

121 Of the seventeen celebrated argentarii and caelatores listed by Pliny, , NH XXXIII. 154–7Google Scholar, all have Greek names. Cf. Prop. I. 14. 2, ‘Lesbia Mentoreo vina bibas opere.’

122 Richter, G. M. A., Ancient Furniture (1926), 117Google Scholar, ‘there were few original contributions’ (sc. from Rome). ‘The pre-Hellenistic house must have been simply, even sparsely, furnished with basic articles … However, a revolution in taste and design attended the sudden entry of Rome into the main stream of Hellenistic history …’, McKay, A. G., Houses, Villas and Palaces in the Roman World (1975), 136Google Scholar. The same is true of mosaics: ‘Roman pavements in the first two centuries are almost entirely Hellenistic in inspiration.’

123 ‘Nun (sc. in the first half of the first century B.C.) begegnen wir auch unter den Schauspielern am meisten griechischen Namen,’ RE, s.v. ‘Histrio,’ 2120.

124 Plutarch, Sulla 36; cf. ibid. 2.

125 Cicero, , Philippic II. 20Google Scholar, VIII. 26, etc.

126 Hor., Serm. I. 2. 2, 56, 58.

127 ILS 5180–276, tituli pertinentes ad ludos, is rich in Greek names.

128 Suet., D. Aug. 45 and 74. Already for Lucilius cinaedi and dancers are proverbial: fr. 32 M. ‘stulte saltatum te inter venisse cinaedos’; and the boast of Periplectomenus at Plaut., Miles 668, ‘tum ad saltandum non cinaedus malacus aequest atque ego.’

129 Juvenal XII. 39: ‘vestem purpuream, teneris quoque Maecenatibus aptam’; cf. Martial X. 73.

130 Augustus' letter, ap. Macrob. Sat. II. 4. 12 = Epistula XXXII, in Imp. Caesar Augustus, Operum Fragmenta, ed. Malcovati5.

131 Suet., , Nero 38. 2Google Scholar: ‘turris Maecenatiana’.

132 e.g. Suet., D. Aug. 72. 2, Tib. 15. 1.

133 ‘Vina Maecenatiana’, Pliny, , NH XIV 67Google Scholar.

134 Pliny, , NH VIII. 170Google Scholar (attempt to introduce a new dainty: young donkey).

135 Dio Cassius LIV. 30. 5; Plut, Amat. 427.

136 ‘See p. 100 below.

137 Of Verres, Cic. Verr. V. 33; of Catiline, Cic., Cat. II. 23; of Antony, Phil. II. 67 etc. Cicero likes to associate dicing with mimi and lenones and adulteri: e.g. Verr. II. 1. 33; Catil. II. 23; Phil. VIII. 26.

138 Hor., C. II. 7. 25; Prop. II. 24. 13; IV. 8. 45; Ovid, , Ars II. 205Google Scholar. It would not be unfair to say that the Propertian and Ovidian passages associate dicing with just the same things as Cicero does; Horace goes no further than drunkenness.

139 ‘In all classes of Roman society gambling and gaming (alea) were favourite relaxations, borrowed in every one of their many forms from the Greeks’, Balsdon, J. P. V. D., Life and Leisure, 154Google Scholar.

140 We are not well informed about the laws on gaming: cf. RE, s.v. ‘alea’, 1359; Denniston on Cic., Phil. II. 56. Horace in one of his puritanical poems calls it ‘vetita legibus alea,’ C. III. 24. 58.

141 Suet., D. Aug. 71: ‘Aleae rumorem nullo modo expavit, lusitque simpliciter et palam … praeterquam Decembri mense, aliis quoque festis et profestis diebus.’ The chapter goes on to quote letters of Augustus on the subject of his gaming.

142 cf. p. 100 f. below.

143 ‘It sets out to redress the imbalance in favour of Greek music, which has tended to eclipse the Roman achievements,’ says E. K. Borthwick in his review (C.R. n.s. 19 (1969). 343).

144 CIL VI. 3926–4326, columbarium of Livia; 4327–4413, familia of the children of Nero Drusus; 4414–4880, familia of Marcella; 4881–5178, 5179–538, 5539–678, others of Tiberian and Claudian date; 8639–9101, officiales ex familia Augusta. Some names also turn up elsewhere.

145 Weaver, P. R. C., Familia Caesaris (1972), 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

146 e.g. Augustus himself is not adequately represented.

147 In opposition to the view of Tenney Frank and Kajanto (recently in Latomus 27 (1968), 517–34Google Scholar), that all Greek cognomina show Eastern provenance, L. R. Taylor argued that they showed servile origin only (AJP 82 (1961), 127). Probably H. Chantraine is right to take the ‘resigned view’ that the preponderance of Greek names is an indication of Eastern origin for most of these people, but that for individual cases certainty is impossible (Freigelassene und Sklaven im Dienst der röm. Kaiser (1967), 135). But in the cases here dealt with the special skills greatly add to the likelihood of Eastern extraction.

148 Suet., D. Aug. 73 on the parsimonia of his furniture; Tacitus, Ann. V. 1: ‘sanctitas domus priscum ad morem’. This is not all hindsight in the light of later excesses. Augustus' women-folk made his clothes, and his daughter was given an austere upbringing (Suet., D. Aug. 64).

149 Rightly emphasized by Boulvert, G., Esclaves et affranchis impériaux (1970), 24Google Scholar; cf. Weaver, op. cit. (n. 138), 228.

150 Thus we have a praepositus cellariis but not a cellarius.

151 Boyancé, P. in Entretiens Hardt II (1956), 170Google Scholar. This essay on Propertius handles the question of Greek influence with much more subtlety than it sometimes receives. In the same volume p. 250, L. P. Wilkinson: ‘Educated Romans lived in a half-Greek social atmosphere.’

152 W. Kroll, op. cit. (n. 30), 160 ff.: ‘Das Liebesleben.’ Also Grimal, P., L'amour a Rome (1963)Google Scholar; La Penna, A., Orazio e la morale mondana europea (1969), 91 ff.Google Scholar: ‘Vita galante della capitale.’

153 cf. e.g. Cichorius, , Untersuchungen zu Lucilius, 161Google Scholar ‘… die eleganten Courtisanen. Mit solchen, meist Griechinnen, hat schon damals die vornehme römische Jugend länger dauernde Verhältnisse zu schliessen gepflegt…’

154 Fr. 888; 894; 940; 1115; 1193; 517; 925; 1065 Marx.

155 Fr. 272–5 Marx. These were their real names, according to Apuleius, Apol. 10.

156 e.g. fr. 72; 418–20; 730; 851–69; 1058.

157 e.g. fr. 88 ff., (Albucius); 15–6; 184–8.

158 Cichorius, op. cit. (n. 146), 48 speaks of his ‘völliges Durchtränktsein mit hellenischer Bildung, hellenischer Wissenschaft und hellenischen Anschauungen.’ The exclusive emphasis on Callimachus as a source, in Puelma-Piwonka, M., Lucilius und Kallimachos (1949)Google Scholar, seems to me much too one-sided.

159 Plut., Sulla 2. She was κοινὴ μέν, εὔπορος δέ.

160 Cic., Verr. I. 104 etc. According to Cicero, she was the real power during Verres' praetorship. In Sicily he consoled himself with one Tertia, significantly the daughter of a mime-actor named Isidorus, Verr. II. 3. 78; 5. 31.

161 ad Fam. IX. 26.

162 She was said to have recited the sixth Eclogue of Virgil: Serv. in Buc. VI. 11. Wille, G., Musica Romana, 226Google Scholar, accepts the story.

163 Kultur der ciceronischen Zeit II, 45.

164 Williams, G. in JRS 52 (1962), 42Google Scholar.

165 op. cit., 73.

166 Williams, , Tradition and Originality, 556Google Scholar.

167 Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 4), pp. XV, 71.

168 Critical Essays on Roman Literature: Elegy and Lyric, ed. Sullivan, J. P. (1962), 194Google Scholar.

169 Correspondance générale VIII. 365.

170 So translated by Starkie, E., Baudelaire (1957), 367Google Scholar.

171 E. Starkie, ibid. 108.

172 Williams, in JRS 52 (1962), 40Google Scholar, quoted with approval by Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. 71; cf. also Tradition and Originality, 555.

173 Williams, , JRS 52 (1962), 40Google Scholar, ‘the epigram of Callimachus of which this is a translation.’ In fact, Catullus, Epigram I Morel stands to Callimachus IV Gow and Page, as Catullus 70 stands to Callimachus XI.

174 ‘The poem Odes IV. 10 to Ligurinus is consequently imaginary’, Williams op. cit., 41.

175 ‘male … marem.’ Cf. Tac., Ann. XI. 2. 2, Valerius Asiaticus, accused of mollitia corporis, retorts to his accuser: ‘Interroga, Suilli, filios tuos; virum esse me fatebuntur.’ This illustrates the nature of mollitia (Catullus vs. 4 ‘versiculis meis … quod sunt molliculi’), and also what was, and what was not, felt as really degrading. Boys and girls are offered at the same price in Pompeii—and with Greek names, too: CIL IV. 4592: ‘Eutychis Graeca moribus bellis assibus II’; ibid. 4024: ‘Menander bellis moribus assibus II’. Cf. also nos. 2189, 2191, 2268, 2273, 2278, 2450, 4150, 4441, 5338, 5345.

176 In Satire XXIX: cf. Cichorius, op. cit. (n. 146), 157 ff., with the corrections of Fraenkel, E., Festschrift für R. Reitzenstein (1931), 121 ffGoogle Scholar.

177 See Knoche, U., ‘Erlebnis und dichterischer Ausdruck in der lateinischen Poesie’, Gymnasium 65 (1958), 146–65Google Scholar.

178 In C. III. 4. Cf. A. La Penna, op. cit. (n. 145), 7 ff.: ‘Una autobiografia quasi simbolica.’

179 Serm. II. 6.

180 The contrary view seems to involve saying that the Romans did not understand their own literature. Valerius Maximus VIII. 1. 8 tells of Valerius Valentinus, who lost a law-suit because the jury were disgusted by a poem (quite irrelevant to the case), ‘quo puerum praetextatum et ingenuam virginem a se corruptam poetico ioco significaverat.’ (Cichorius, op. cit. n. 146, 343, dates die case c III B.C.) The plea which must ‘sufficiently protect the conqueror of the Cimbri’ seems in this case to have been unavailing; and later poets seem not to have taken warning from it. When Ovid, in his exile, harps on the distinction between his poetry and his morals (Trist. I. 9. 59; II. 353 ff.; III 2. 5.; Ex Ponto II. 7. 47; IV. 8. 19), we detect the pressing motive. Before his disaster, he was proud to call himself ‘ille ego nequitiae Naso poeta meae’ (Am. II. 1. 2): is one more ‘real’ than the other? If so, which?

181 The point is not missed by Boyancé, Entretiens Fondation Hardt II (1956), 169 ff.Google Scholar, 195.

182 As London courtesans in the nineteenth century might have French noms de guerre, and Swedish ones today.

183 Where Cicero's son, for example, took to a life of dissipation.

184 To tibi tamque dabit formosas Roma puellas/ “haec habet” ut dicas “quidquid in orbe fuit” … Quot caelum Stellas, tot habet tua Roma puellas,’ Ovid, , Ars I. 55 ffGoogle Scholar.: a rewarding passage. The commentators point to the parallel of Alexandria, cf. Herodas I. 26 ff. and Headlam ad. loc.

185 van Berchem, D., ‘Cynthia ou la carrière contrariée,’ Mus. Helv. 5 (1948), 148Google Scholar points this out; and also that Catullus himself, like Propertius' friend Tullus, took at least the first step in such a career by going out to a province in the cohors of a governor.

186 See Epodes VIII, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV; Serm. I. 2, II. 2, II. 3, etc.

187 Phylarchus FGrH 81 F. 40, ap. Athen. 536e: trans. Loeb.

188 Thus CIL IV. 5090 (Pompeii): probably no better than she ought to have been.

189 It is also adjacent to a ‘philosophical’ theme, that of ‘simple food in simple surroundings’: e.g. Augustus' boasts of his simple country fare, Suet., D. Aug. 76, and Seneca, Epp. 87, ‘culcita in terra iacet, ego in culcita … de prandio nihil detrahi potuit. …’

190 Syndikus, P. H., Die Lyrik des Horaz (1972), 188Google Scholar, who does not deal with the fête champêtre theme, yet rightly says of the poem: ‘Gewiss ist auch für unser Gedicht die oben skizzierte Lebenswirklichkeit die Grundlage, auf der es gewachsen ist, aber es ist keine Darstellung einer Realität, sondern ihre Stilisierung, ihre Sublimierung in die Ebene der Kunst.’

191 op. cit. (n. 145), 17 f.

192 Cairns, F., Generic Composition, 89Google Scholar thinks C. I, 25 is a κῶμος and means ‘therefore let me in now, before it's too late’: (‘since no other hypothesis gives Horace a reason for saying what he says to Lydia, it may be presumed …’). This will surely be one of the curiosities of scholarship; did anyone ever hope to soften a girl's heart by telling her that soon, tortured by unsatisfied lust, she will be vainly accosting men in the street? The inadequacy of the generic method to answer all questions about these poets is here strikingly apparent (‘since no other hypothesis gives Horace a reason …’).

193 JRS 52 (1962), 41Google Scholar.

194 Critical Essays on Roman Literature: Elegy and Lyric, ed. Sullivan, J. P. (1962), 188Google Scholar.

194a Cic., ad font IX. 26.

195 JRS 52 (1962), 40Google Scholar. One notes that the jurors at the trial of Clodius were swayed, according to Cicero, not only by ‘noctes certarum mulierum’ but also by ‘adulescentulorum nobilium introductiones’ (ad Att. I. 16. 5).

196 Tac., Ann. I. 54. 3, ‘Augustus dum Maecenati obtemperat effuso in amoreni Bathylli …’ Cf. Syme, R., Roman Revolution, 342Google Scholar; Dio Cassius LIV. 17. 5.

197 Suet., D. Aug. 69; Martial XI. 20 = Augustus, Carmen IV ed. Malcovati. Martial, no mean judge, is impressed by the Rontana simplicitas of Augustus' obscene verses; Cassius Dio LI. 8. 1, trans. Cary (Loeb). It is not easy to see when this would have been invented, if not true.

198 Epistulae fr. XXXII, ed. Malcovati.

199 ibid. fr. XLI.

200 Schanz-Hosius I, 210.

201 ‘Fanni centussis misellus,’ fr. 1172M.

202 ‘legem vitemus Licini,’ fr. 1200.

203 Plut., Sulla 35.

204 Cic., Att. XIII. 7. 1: Caesar announces his intention to stay in Rome, ‘ne se absente leges suae neglegerentur sicut esset neglecta sumptuosa.’

205 Brunt, P. A., Italian Manpower, 558 ff.Google Scholar: the Lex Julia apparently, although it aroused bitter resentment, did not have the effect intended; and even after the law of A.D. 9, ‘the copious testimony to the later prevalence of celibacy and childlessness attests its continuing failure’ (565).

206 Two more examples: the decree of the Senate in A.D. 15 that pantomimes might only be performed publicly, not in private houses. ‘This soon became a dead letter,’ Friedländer, , Roman Life and Manners II, 110Google Scholar. And (Wille, G., Musica Romana, 219Google Scholar): ‘the censors of 115 B.C. banned foreign music from Rome; in the following year, M. Junius Silanus and Q. Curtius struck a coin with a Cithara on one side …’. M. H. Crawford (RRC no. 285) dates the coin to 116 or 115; the contrast is perhaps not much less striking, even so.

207 Williams, , Tradition and Originality, 551Google Scholar.

208 cf. Mommsen, , Staatsrecht II, 618Google Scholar. Heitland comments gruffly (edn. of Cic. pro C. Rabirio (1884), 9): ‘It is clear that this antiquated form of trial was revived simply as a convenient means of securing a triumph for the so-called “popular” party.’

209 ad Fam. VIII. 12. 3, ‘Impudentissimi homines summis Circensibus ludis meis postulandum me lege Scantinia curarunt. vix hoc erat Pola elocutus, cum ego Appium censorem eadem lege postulavi. quod melius caderet nibil vidi,’ etc.

210 S., and Webb, B., Soviet Communism: A New Civilization? (1935)Google Scholar: on the question, Is Stalin a Dictator?: ‘First let it be noted that, unlike Mussolini, Hitler, and other modern dictators, Stalin is not invested by law with any authority over his fellow citizens … He has not even the extensive power which the American Constitution entrusts for four years to every successive president. … In this pattern individual dictatorship has no place’ (431–3). On the purges, ‘Every decision regarding a Party member must be concisely “motivated”, and the minute has to be accompanied by documentary evidence of the charges. … There is, from every decision, an effective right of appeal.… This appeal may be pursued right up to the Central Cleansing Committee in Moscow…’ (381). And: ‘the constitution of the USSR provides for the active participation of the people in the work of government in more than one way’ (3).

211 It appears from the Statuta for 1963, for example, that in that year members of the University of Oxford could be punished for failing to step out of the path of the holder of a higher degree; that ‘walking idly in the street’ was also a punishable offence; that all undergraduates must be in their Colleges by nine o'clock, and might not enter any building where alcohol or tobacco was sold; that the University officers had power to enter the houses of citizens at any hour of the day or night, to see if members of the University were there improperly; that gladiatorum spectacula might be given in Oxford only with the consent of the Vice-Chancellor, who might imprison gladiatores who contravened this; and so on. All this, needless to say, was the merest fantasy.

212 Die Kultur der ciceronischen Zeit, 177 ff.

213 op. cit. 71: after declaring that, in C. I. 4, ‘the homosexual implication has no bearing on Sestius' actual behaviour, but is a conventional motif derived from Greek poetry’, they go on: ‘In fact, the practice was widespread (Cic. Cael. 6–9, RE XI. 905 f.), and at least where slave boys were concerned seems to have provoked little censure …’

214 CIL I2, p. 236 = Inscriptions Iteliae XIII. 2. 17, of A.D. 6–9. ‘Ceteris fastis quos habemus hi Praenestini et magnitudine lapidum quibus inscripti sunt et copia rerum adnotatarum longe praestant’, Degrassi p. 141.

215 cf. die curious anecdote in Valerius Maximus VIII. I. 12.

216 It is notable that his commentators largely ignore this: nothing in Heinze, Lejay, Tescari, Wickham.

217 Serm. II. 3. 325. Cf. Cic., ad Att. I. 16. 5, quoted in n. 184.

218 Serm. I. 2. 117. Ovid has a characteristic reason for liking boys ‘less’ than women: Ars II. 683 f.

219 e.g. Williams, , Tradition and Originality, 553Google Scholar.

220 Propertius II. 4 fin.; Juvenal VI. 34. 7; perhaps already in Lucilius (Marx on fr. 866: referred to women instead by Cichorius, , Untersuchungen, 162Google Scholar); boys are less trouble and less demanding than women.

221 ‘Les Anciens s'appliquaient à éliminer de leurs expériences ce qu'elles pouvaient avoir de trop personnel, pour dormer à l'expression de leurs sentiments une valoir plus genérate,’ Van Berchem, Mus. Helv. 5 (1958), 138. See also Syndikus, H. P., Die Lyrik des Horaz (1972), I, 188 f.Google Scholar

222 Wilson, Harriette, Memoirs 234Google Scholar, describes her horror at getting accidentally into a position where she is treated in this way: cf. the ‘common harlots’ with whom Propertius contrasts Cynthia (II. 23, II. 24), and the togatae recommended by Horace, Serm. I. 2. 82 ff.

223 (Shortened) edition by Lesley Blanch, 1964.

224 Lucretius IV. 1166 ff.; Martial X. 68; Juvenal VI. 185; Boyancé in RÉL 34 (1956), 125.

225 ‘Music I always had a natural talent for. I played well upon the pianoforte’ (Memoirs, 29). Cf. also William Hickey's account of Fanny Temple (Memoirs of William Hickey, ed. Quennell, P. (1960) 54Google Scholar): ‘She was a mistress of music, had an enchanting voice, which she managed with the utmost skill, danced elegantly and spoke French assez Men …’ Epitaphs of Roman women with musical skills: Wille, G., Musica Romana, 218 n. 91Google Scholar, and ibid. 316–24.

226 ‘I know not how to praise the poet as he merits. Yet few, perhaps, among the most learned, have in their hearts done more honour to some of the natural beauties of Shakespeare than I have’ (Memoirs, 57). Cf. 353, her letters to ‘poor dear Lord Byron’. This point is worth dwelling upon because it is often assumed that, in the words of Nisbet and Hubbard (p. xv), ‘the blonde and musical girls owe more to the conventions of erotic writing than to the realities of Venus parabilis.’ If you wanted girls who possessed or simulated musical and poetical interests, it is impossible to doubt that they were forthcoming; just as they were in the Quartier latin in the 1850's. Cf. Wille, G., Musica Romana, 234 ffGoogle Scholar, ‘Horaz in der Musik der Antike.’ He believes that Horace's poems were sung; and that for instance C. IV. 11. 34 ff., ‘condisce modos, amanda/voce quos reddas’, is to be read in the light of the fact that Horace did in fact teach the choir to sing the Carmen Saeculare. As for the blondeness, both hair-dye and wigs feature in the poets (e.g. Nisbet and Hubbard on C. I. 5. 3), as they did in life.

227 Cf. Grimal, P., L'amour à Rome, 153Google Scholar.

228 E. Burck, Gymn. 70 (1963), 89 = Vom Menschenbildin der röm. Lit. (1966), 238: ‘Propertius 1.4 shows unambiguously that she was a meretrix’. So too Camps, edn. of Propertius I (1966), 6.

229 Williams, G., Tradition and Originality, 528 ffGoogle Scholar. ‘Come se lecito non fosse presso i Romani il divorzio!’ is the comment on this of L. Alfonsi, Studi Calderini-Paribeni I (1956), 200Google Scholar.

230 Luck, G., Gnomon 34 (1962), 156Google Scholar.

231 G. Luck, ibid., ‘Wir besitzen in l. 16 ein untrügliches Zeugnis für Cynthias vornehme Abkunft.’

232 Copley, F. O., Exchisus Amator = TAPA Monograph 17 (1956), 103Google Scholar, ‘Delia, like all the women of elegy, was a liberta.’

233 Cairns, F., Generic Composition, 156Google Scholar, ‘Foreigners such as elegiac mistresses. ….’

234 ‘Adhuc sub iudice lis est,’ Guillemin, A., REL 18 (1940), 100Google Scholar.

235 L. Alfonsi, op. cit. (n. 224), 199.

236 In poetry, for example, Prop. II. 6, ‘Non ita complebant Ephyraeae Laidos aedes,’ and Horace, C. II. 11. 21, ‘quis devium scortum eliciet domo Lyden?’

237 Plut., Lucullus 6.

238 Hor., Serm. I. 2. 64, cf. Münzer in RE s.v. ‘Cornelius’, nr. 436. Also Fulvia: RE s.v. ‘Fulvius’, nr. 112, ‘Eine vornehme aber ganz sittlose Frau’: Sempronia (Sallust, Catiline 25), etc.

239 A phrase used in conversation by Sir Ronald Syme.

240 Harriette Wilson's friend Julia Johnstone came of a distinguished family but ruined herself by an early indiscretion and lived as a kept mistress.

241 cf. Syme, R., ‘Bastards in th e Roma n Aristocracy,’ PAPhS 104 (1960), 323–7Google Scholar. He points out that we hear surprisingly little of such people, who must have existed. It seems not to occur to scholars that Cynthia, if descended from the poet Hostius, might be so by the left hand.

242 Entretiens Fondation Hardt II (1956), 27 ff., 186 ff.Google ScholarAlfonsi, L., L'Elegia di Properzio (1945), 15 ffGoogle Scholar. shows that the dolorosa vita dell'amore is for Propertius less violent and more langorous than in Catullus. Propertius himself regarded the ‘neoteric’ poets as his predecessors, II. 25. 4; 34. 85 ff., where he lists Varro of Atax, Catullus, Calvus and Gallus.

243 Tradition and Originality, 102, cited in n. 6 above. Hubbard, M. E., Propertius, 99Google Scholar: the poets ‘pretend that Maecenas wanted them to celebrate Augustus’ exploits … That was formal and conventional, and everybody knew it’. She means by ‘pressure’ something more forcible than I think was applied (‘Even after Maecenas’ fall the progress of suppression of opinion was not swift … in the twenties poetry was not yet under pressure …’ (p. 100)). The striking fact remains that in Book I of Propertius, where we have no Maecenas, there is no question of writing epic about Augustus, and no mention of Callimachus; but in the first poem of Book II, addressed to Maecenas, both these things appear at once. Thereafter they tend to remain together in Propertius' work (II. 10; 34, III. 1; 3; 9), and until Book IV Callimachus serves exclusively as a device of recusatio. If there was no real question of an epic, the pattern seems to remain inexplicable.

244 cf. Cicero, pro Archia, passim. Cicero had to write his poem himself in the end. Some such laudatory epics really were produced: Annales Belli Gallici by Furius Bibaculus, Bellum Sequanicum by Varro of Atax, etc. Cf. Schanz-Hosius II, 281 f.

245 E. Norden points out, Kleine Schriften, 399 ff., that VV. 16 ff. seem to promise the reverse of the Aeneid, not a poem on Troy with glimpses forward to Augustus, but a poem on Augustus with glimpses back to Troy; and that Propertius II. 34. 61 ff. seems to envisage the production by Virgil of that poem. The curious manner of the Georgic prologue, at once profuse and evasive, is certainly not against the supposition that the poet was conscious of a considerable difficulty.

page 105 note 1 Even the ‘Latin library’ seems to have been staffed by Greeks, cf. 5189: ‘Julia Acca mater Callisthenis Ti. Caesar. Aug. a bibliothece Latina Apollinis, et Diopithis f. eius a byblioth. Latina Apollinis.’ Also 5884: ‘Antiochus Ti. Claudi Caesaris a bibliotheca Latina Apollinis.’

page 105 note 2 Another dispensator, Diomedes, showed cowardice when walking with Augustus, Suet., D. Aug. 67—a charming story.

page 105 note 3 cf. Cicero, ad Att. I. 12. 4: ‘eram in scribendo turbatior. nam puer festivus, anagnostes noster Sositheus, decesserat meque plus quam servi mors debere videbatur commoverat.’

page 105 note 4 These secretaries were important. Suet., D. Aug. 101, Polybius and Hilarion wrote Augustus' will; ibid. 67, a story of Thallus.

page 105 note 5 cf. Cic. ad Att. XV. 1. 1: ‘O facturn male de Alexione! incredibile est quanta me molestia adfecerit, nec mehercule ex ea parte maxime, quod plerique mecum “ad quem igitur te medicum conferes?” amorem erga me, humanitatem suavitatemque desidero.’

page 105 note 6 Apparently not a maker of mosaics but a servant who passed on orders to other servants (Boulyert, p. 34). The existence of such a position underlines the size of the household.