Erik Gunderson's confident new book seeks a perceptive reader attuned to the complex relationship between aesthetics and politics. In Martial's Epigrams and Statius’ Siluae, politics and art can never be ‘tidily separated’ (3); rather, power-and-poetry coalesce into a fundamental dyad. G. analyses the protean relationship between this pair, in conversation with other concepts including freedom and constraint, form and content, poet-and-prince, as part of a larger argument against becoming a complicit reader. His metapoetic, theoretically informed readings follow specific routes through the texts, offering a chronological overview of Martial and thematic approach to Statius. G. demonstrates how both poets practise an ‘art of complicity’, speaking to, and about, power and the powerful. Martial and Statius emulate the absolute power of Caesar and their praise poetry allows them to achieve their own poetic ambitions; their ideal reader submits to the power of both poet and Caesar. While the power of Martial's poetry is unrecoverable after the death of Domitian, Statius becomes a ‘consummate artist of complicity’ (25). This witty, expansively argued book is sure to become essential reading for those interested in Domitianic poetry and how to write successfully under a tyrannical regime.
Ch. 2 charts a chronological journey through Martial's Epigrams, and G. argues for ‘both … and’ rather than ‘either … or’. Martial is both poet and poetic persona, Martial and ‘Martial’, at the centre of his poetry; his poetry is fact and fiction; Caesar is his ideal reader, but also a showman like the artist himself. G. warns against becoming the complicit reader of Epigram 1.1 (lector studiose, Ep. 1.1.4), for this is a non-critical reader who allows for the creation of non-political poetry, and we must be smarter than that. In launching a poetic project that already has a complicit reader and a famous author, Martial initiates a playful poetry whose Callimachean scope provides a contrast to Caesar's greatness. Throughout his Epigrams, the portrait of power is never simple or singular, but rather constantly shifting. Ganymede serves as allegory and not allegory, a ‘Domitianic tic’ linked to the narrator's sense of self and his project (47). Martial is the unharmed rabbit in the lion's maw (Book 1), but also the lion, spectator and editor; the lion both belongs to Caesar and is Caesar himself (50). G.'s chronological arrangement allows us to see Caesar the Master Censor become the Great General of Book 5, the Obscene Father of Book 6, a frightening figure in Book 8, the addressee of Martial's humble suppliant books, a conqueror similar to a god, a master whom the immortals might envy. Particulars of the historical context and the realities of court life emerge piecemeal, although Domitian's decree ending castration has especial relevance for G.'s analysis of Domitian's pet, the eunuch slave boy Earinus. In Book 9, the issues associated with the emperor become associated with the poet, culminating with Earinus and a ‘discourse of castration’ (118). Earinus offers a lock of hair as a substitute depositio barbae celebrating a transition into manhood, but he will never become ‘a real man’: as subjected subjects of Domitian, Martial implies, we have all been castrated (133). In Book 10 and beyond, Daddy Domitian is dead, and Martial's self-presentation shifts dramatically as the conversation between Martial, the reader and Caesar becomes a conversation between Martial, the reader and Rome. The poet becomes alienated under Trajan, and the power of his Domitianic poetry is lost: G. concludes, ‘The art of complicity has turned into the mere kitsch it always was’ (188).
In ch. 3, G. considers the extent to which Statius’ Siluae is similarly Domitianic poetry. Despite his self-presentation as an epic poet at play, Statius presents a relationship with Caesar that is ‘highly convergent with that we can see in the Epigrams of Martial’ (190). Similar scenes and motifs populate his poetry, and the lion of Siluae 2.5 and Earinus of Siluae 3.4 offer comparative narratives and meditations on sex, power and freedom. Through Earinus, we get the most vivid look at the ‘historico-politico-aesthetic nightmare’ that is the ‘unparalleled glory of the Domitianic age’ (23). Statius does not have the Catullan charm of Martial, instead offering lofty, layered poetry characterised by a particularly ‘Domitianic modernism’ composed for the Domitianic ‘smart set’ (207). Statius’ Domitianic world has a particular grammar: words of marvelling inhabit his present, and his poetry declares a state of happiness. Nouns are qualified: libertas is not Republican libertas, and faith can be a marker of fiction. The Siluae evoke an ‘ecstatic present’ while illustrating the impossible condition of the poetry as ‘fresh, new, glorious, astounding, dominated, derivative, sordid, …’ (267, 270). In elucidating the grammar of Statius’ art of complicity, G. teaches us to become resistant rather than complicit readers, even though the poems themselves proclaim these are ‘errant’ readings (194). In six closing case studies, G. demonstrates Statius’ mastery of the submission game, from poems in which Statius does Martial (2.4 and 2.5) to an extended reflection on the Earinus poems, which place high poetry on display.
In his conclusion, G. offers a reappraisal of the ethics of reading and reprises the dangers of complicit criticism, asking, ‘what sorts of complicities await critics themselves?’ (358). It is a question worth considering under any autocratic regime.
