Leisured Resistance by Michael Dewar;

Author:Michael Dewar;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Villas, Literature and Politics in the Roman World
ISBN: 9781472504128
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2019-11-23T00:00:00+00:00

4

Juvenal and the Tyrant: Power Equal to the Gods

If the emperor was ‘one of us’ it could hardly be thought surprising if he, too, owned splendid villas in which to spend his leisure in a cultured fashion. Nor was it surprising if he sought to win glory in literature. True, such was his status that he could count on a measure of literary fame without any effort on his own part, as the recipient of dedications and verse eulogies from the pens of others. Some, however, wanted more, and would have sympathised with the swelling pride of Queen Victoria who, when copies of her Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands were being bought up by an eager and loyal public, was gratified to hear from the lips of Mr Disraeli those precious words, ‘We authors, Ma’am’.

Not every emperor aspired to authorship, but the catalogue of those who did is extensive, beginning with the first, Augustus. Suetonius (Aug. 85) records that he wrote mainly in prose, including works on philosophical subjects and an autobiography. His output in verse was, it seems, slighter, but Suetonius knew of a hexameter poem with Sicily as its subject, and of a book of epigrams. The latter, as befits work in a genre traditionally thought of as occupying a place very low down in the scale of seriousness, was largely composed during his time at the baths, the liminal period between the day’s business and the relaxation of the evening. Rome’s most successful epigrammatist, Martial, quotes a spectacularly obscene example of the Divine Emperor’s talent, six lines in elegiac couplets scathingly declining a supposed offer from Mark Antony’s wife Fulvia to transfer her attentions (Epigrams 11. 20. 3–8). Would we had more. Augustus’ grandnephew Claudius had ambitions to be an historian, and in his youth he wrote in Latin on the subject of the wars that followed the assassination of Caesar. That was rather too delicate a subject for the imperial family, however, and his mother Antonia and grandmother Livia persuaded him to give it up (Suet., Claud. 41). As emperor he wrote eight volumes of autobiography, which Suetonius thought lacking in judgement but not in elegance. Nor did he confine his talents to his native language, but wrote lengthy histories in Greek of two neighbouring peoples, the Etruscans and the Carthaginians (Suet., Claud. 42). Suetonius also informs us that he once presided over the Augustalia in Naples, probably in AD 42, an earlier celebration of the festival from which Statius had just come when he arrived at the Surrentine villa of Pollius Felix (Silv. 2. 2. 6–10). On that occasion Claudius submitted for the competition in Greek comedy a piece from the hand of his revered brother Germanicus, who had died over 20 years before. His fraternal piety met with its due reward when, in accordance with the instructions of the judges, he gave it the crown of victory (Suet., Claud. 11. 2).

The most infamously literary Caesar was, of course, Germanicus’ grandson Nero.

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