Hedgehogs and Profound Thoughts...

I'm currently reading "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" by Murial Barbery, which was originally written in French but I'm reading the English translation. Prior to buying the book I read a review that said it doesn't particularly suit British tastes because it has no obvious plot. That's pretty true, and it's rather just a series of musings from two somewhat related but independent commentators.

They comment on a great deal of things and are keen to philosophise. Sometimes I find how it's presented rather distasteful, but it's occasionally beautiful and provoking (although I'm constantly wondering if the turn of phrase really conveys the meaning intended by the original French or if it's a best fit scenario).

One of the "profound thoughts" (the chapter really has this name) is that the world is run by "weak" men. They are the masters of language but they couldn't protect their own garden, kill an animal for food or any other more "primal" activities. This immediately led me to think about Cicero - does he qualify as a "weak" man, insomuch as he was a true master of language but not famed for his warrior spirit (in the primal sense of the word, anyway)? I suppose the answer is - yes.

The book considers this somewhat perverse or contra to something vital. I partially agree, but in the context of Cicero it's worth remembering that he's somewhat of an exception. Most of the figures of the later Republic that Cicero rubbed shoulders with were also experts in the realms of language yet were also great warriors (or Generals, at least). Caesar, for example (as he always is!), displays an amazing ability for clearness in his use of Latin and his warrior attributes are well documented.

Many ancient Romans, then, seem to combine both a mastery of language and primal abilities that is lacking in the brokers of power in modern times. Times have changed. Skill in speaking and sneakiness has outstripped more "honest" and primal ability (this may be the natural order of things, I don't know) but I do hark for what was before. I don't like quite so much talk. In this respect, I think the book has tapped into something interesting.

What is (intrinsically better) power through strength or power through eloquence? The question is then begged, though, can't you have both? I think many ancient Romans did, and accepting one as better than the other (but considering them independent) as Barbery does is missing the point a little.

Back from Caledonia.

Late last night I arrived back here in Pilsen, CZ, after my whirlwind trip back home to Scotland. Generally the "holiday" was all too short with too much to do and not enough time to do it in. Still, though, it was refreshing to see some familiar faces and visit a country which speaks my native tongue.

More related to this blog, though, I managed to get reacquainted with my long lost book collection. Weight restrictions (most cheap(er) airlines only have a 15KG base limit now) meant I couldn't bring too much, but I managed to get back with a reasonable number.

Like I mentioned below, Cicero was packed in, but Gruen, alas!, had to be left. I also managed to bring Route 66.A.D, which I'll be re-reading for the umpteenth time and posting about in the near future.

Access to a large British book store also allowed me to pick up a copy of Minerva, which has a whole wealth of things I found interesting and will consider posting about. That very same book store also provided me with a copy of a rather fascinating book on bad science, which is utterly brilliant, and has inspired me to make a post linking some of the points within it to the classical world.

The travelling (one week, four planes, four trains, endless car journeys and a tonne of walking) also allowed me to listen to some more of Robert Garland's lecture series about Greco-Roman culture, and I'm about ready to make post part II on it. It won't be as long as I had originally thought because I, rather stupidly, left my notes on the plane from Prague to Paris and don't have time to re-listen to jot them down again.

All in all, a pretty good break, which has refreshed my brain a little, and given me much to post about.

Caledonia My Patria.

On Monday I'm heading back to Caledonia for a short holiday, just to check in with some family and friends. Ergo, I probably won't be able to post much over the next nine days or so.

One of my plans during my visit is to get in amongst my large collection of books and hunt out the classical authors I'd like to re-read, along with some other select texts.

I think Juvenal, Livy and Cicero are top of my list, and for more modern works I'd like to get my hands on Erich Gruen's Last Generation of the Roman Republic and a work on the Ancient Novel. I'll no doubt think of others once I'm there, but these are the ones up there at the moment.

My plan will be to post about these particular works once I'm back and have managed to settle down and read them. I'm especially excited about Cicero, because I've not read too much of him recently.

The frontier of the Empire, here I come.

Also, for a bit of flavour, here's a picture of me beside Hadrian's Wall taken last year when I made a quick, lonely rain sodden visit:

Some brief further thoughts on Lucan.

It occurred to me this past week, after my previous post, that Lucan was extraordinary in one way (many, actually, but this post is related to just the one) - he died extremely young (age 25 - 39-65 C.E - as a result of the Pisonian Conspiracy against Nero).

This means, in contrast to most of our other extant classical authors (Cicero, Caesar and Vergil, among many others), that he wrote such a mature work, The Pharsalia, as such a young man. Vergil composed the Aeneid in his later life, most of Cicero's great writing comes from his later years, and the same with Caesar (indeed some of his youthful compositions were suppressed by Augustus). That Lucan composed the Pharsalia before his 25th year was a remarkable achievement.

This is furthered when one realises the possibility that the work may have been published in parts, and thus begun that publication well before Lucan's 25th birthday. In this respect Lucan really is unique in the classical corpus.

Typically, writing was the concern of older senators with time on their hands or political ends in mind, which may explain why our extant work usually comes from writers in their "golden" age and not when they are much younger.

Back to Lucan, there is, of course, the question of whether, had he lived, would he have produced a "greater" work (or works) that would have eclipsed the Pharsalia, and as a result reduced the status of the latter to a more immature work. That said, the Pharsalia is a wonderful piece of poetry, and regardless of the work an older Lucan may have produced, but never could, it still stands high among the extant works for content and style, perhaps moreso for the fact that it was completed not by a Cicero, Caesar or Vergil at the height of his powers, but by a young man who had many years of artistic development ahead of him.

Augustus' Social Legislation: a case study.

The following small case study on Augustus' social legislation was prepared by me several years ago to be presented in a Masters tutorial class. I have edited it only very slightly, and so the text seen here represents, essentially, the presentation as it originally was. Generally speaking, I still like the small commentary, and I think the views therein, while hardly controversial, are quite correct. Tasked to overhaul it entirely, I may write it somewhat differently, but generally I'm quite happy with it even in this form.

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The social legislation of Augustus is one of the defining characteristics of his reign, although it is problematic in many respects. There has been a tendency in the sources and in scholarship to glaze over the entire Augustan period as having a cohesive and systematically planned objective. Zanker, for example, speaks of a “goal orientated cultural program” enacted by Augustus throughout his reign. Ostensibly, it would seem, that the purpose of this program was to heal Rome from the wounds of civil war and strife.

The aim, according to this view, is to regain the pietas of a bygone age (albeit perhaps an idealised and imagined one) – the age where Romans were real men, their women loyal and their masculine domination of Rome’s neighbours rigid and complete. The consensus was that Rome had become decadent and immoral (a view espoused by moralising writers such as Livy and Sallust) and that it was this immorality – of which adultery and debased sexuality were a feature – that had caused the gods to abandon their favoured city of Rome and allow her to almost destroy herself.

The Augustan answer to this problem was in 18 and 17 B.C.E (followed later by a revision in 9 C.E) to enact legislation making adultery a public offence, and through a system of punishment and reward to induce higher birth rates and suitable marriage among the desirable peoples of Rome. Narrowly these laws are referred to as the Lex Julia or the Julian laws.

The ancient sources for this legislation are somewhat hazy. Suetonius mentions Augustus’s revision of old laws or enactments of new ones on “extravagance, adultery, chastity, bribery and on the encouragement of marriage among the various classes”, but he doesn’t really go into the specifics, preferring, instead, to paint Augustus’s seriousness on these matters by not conceding to complaining Romans in the theatre about the strictness of these laws.

In fact Suetonius has Augustus bring out Germanicus (his grandson, through the marriage of Agrippa and his daughter Julia) and his family as an exemplar, seemingly saying nothing other than epigrammatically sitting with the children on his lap (thus using the young man as a example for all to follow). The only specific Suetonius does mention is that, a revolt upon some of the law’s provisions resulted in increased rewards for childbirth and the allowing of a three year exemption on the obligation to marry following the death of a husband or wife.

That these laws were challenged in some form attests to the difficulty in glazing over the Augustan period as one in where Augustus systematically introduced planned reform across the entire social and public strata(s) to great applause and uniform acceptance.

Some more specifics for these laws can be garnered in the Digest of Paul (as part of a greater compendium of Roman law ordered by Justinian in the 6th century). One of the main aims of these laws was to punish the extramarital affairs of women. A father (a legal paterfamilias- Head of the family) was now allowed to murder his married daughter and her lover, if caught in his house or his son-in-laws committing adultery. Although he must kill both, for if only one was killed then he may be tried for murder.

The law also stipulated that a husband could not kill his wife if he found her committing adultery, but he could kill the lover without repercussions, but only if he was a criminal, actor, prostitute, slave and perhaps if he was a freedman. Furthermore, where he could kill the lover he was also allowed to injure him. If the lover was killed the husband had to divorce his wife within three days and instigate adultery charges against her. If he didn’t then he could be charged himself (it’s all rather complicated). Nevertheless, essentially adultery became a public offence, and was no longer to be dealt with privately, as such permanent law courts were set up to deal with it.

Moreover, the legislation also covered who could marry whom. The essential thrust of this legislation was to prohibit senators and up to their 3rd generation descendants marrying ex-slaves.

Another facet of the laws would seem to paint them as reactionary to the increasing immorality and influence of women. Sempronia in Sallust and Clodia in Cicero, for example, highlighted the growing promiscuity of women. Indeed the moralising here understands these women as immoral and to be acting utterly outside the correct parameters for female behaviour. Although this leads to an extensive debate on gender tensions, for the sake of this small commentary it is enough to highlight the notion that the legislation can also be read as – at least partly – reactionary to the antics of women in the recent past (the past which the laws set out to fix).

Overwhelmingly these various pieces of social legislation seem to form a cohesive policy. The stimulation of marriage and reproduction between desirable Romans and the continued chastity and security of the unions there built seems to be its aim. It’s perhaps a little dangerous to buy into that picture wholesale, though. Our knowledge of the laws is scattered, and the fact that they encountered resistance points towards the idea that implementing them was not a smooth process (indeed that a revision was required in A.D 9 also suggests this).

I think any attempt to understand the laws needs to understand the context surrounding their enactment. The idealised view is of a streamlined cultural policy enacted by Augustus as part of his greater reorganisation of the Roman state into a monarchy. The reality, I think, is a great deal muddier.

For example, the bringing back of traditional Roman pietas which in the Res Gestae Augustus tells us he instigated (8.5) by the restoration of the practices of their ancestors and the idea that Rome was born again after her dissent into moral debasement - espoused in Horace’s Carmen Saeculare, for example, where he speaks of Rome being reborn and the return of faith, peace and ancient modesty, even asking the Gods to help bring to fruition the new laws on marriage and birth – is often accepted as an imagined fiction. Analogously, even today people imagine the past as a bastion of moral excellence, and the same mechanism drove the Romans to be forever imagining their stern and masculine forebears that honoured the gods and brought many peoples under their dominion even if they may never have genuinely existed.

Even if the enactors of the laws and those affected by it believed this moral revolution tale, I think it still highlights a problem for us in fitting the legislation smoothly into the Augustan period.

Augustus’s apparent seriousness over the laws is well attested, the example Suetonius relates about the family of Germanicus in the theatre being one such example. Suetonius also tells us (89) that Augustus read a speech to the senate by a Censor called Metellus from 131.B.C about increasing the birth-rate “as if it had just been written” (the links between the past and the Augustan period in relation to social policies being highlighted). Furthermore, Tacitus tells us (3.24) that Augustus exiled his own daughter Julia (his only natural child) for breaking the adultery laws, and Tacitus also seems to feel that Augustus was perhaps overly harsh in his treatment – which could indicate just how seriously he took the laws and their enforcement.

Nevertheless, the idea that Augustus was coerced in some ways to enact these laws is also prevalent in some sources. Cassius Dio (54.16.3) suggests that Augustus only instituted the legislation under pressure from the senate and Ronald Syme (Roman Revolution, pg 453) posits the idea that the provincial elites were putting pressure on him also. These ideas conflict with the notion of Augustus being in complete charge of implementing a policy of social change and suggest that perhaps the “Augustan Party” that Syme speaks of played a larger role in seeing the laws come to fruition.

Suetonius (69) even suggests that Augustus was an adulterer, which again sets the smooth conception and enforcement of a homogeneous social policy against a rather more complex and greyer background. That he was seemingly exempt from the laws himself (he only had one daughter – Julia), highlights not only the difficulty in understanding the laws, but also the nature of Augustus’ rule – he was above everyone else – the rules, even his own ones, did not apply to him. This idea is powerfully argued by Werner Eck in the work reviewed below.

Further to these difficulties, Tacitus sees the laws as somewhat sinister (Annals. 3.28) mentioning the “tightening of the shackles”. Although Tacitus is a notorious sympathiser for the Republic, the idea he highlights about the legislation being perhaps too oppressive is reflected in Suetonius’s mention of “open revolt” and the subsequent revision of the 18/17 B.C laws in AD.9.

Overall, the social legislation of Augustus is problematic. It doesn’t quite fit into the period as easily as first understood. It is rather a mix of reactions to the period directly before Augustus secured sole rule and a mode to fix (what it believes) are the problems that caused the Civil Wars. I think they must be understood as part of a fragmentary whole. The laws were not smoothly accepted, and it’s possible that Augustus himself was not quite the moral beacon he intended to be (explaining, maybe, his treatment of his daughter in her exile and the way in which he brought her back to a more comfortable life in Italy some years later). In concluding, in abstract terms, I think it’s reasonable to see the laws as cohesive, they do seem to set out with the same ideas in mind, but with many things, once they are set into the context of genuine human relations and interaction they became much more complex.