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Sex and Gender
A.M. Keith
1. Introduction. Throughout its history, Latin literature was produced and consumed largely by men of the Roman upper classes (Habinek 1998). Latin literature therefore exhibits a class and gender bias that tells us a great deal about how the Roman governing elites, by definition male, viewed themselves in relation to society. Of particular concern in my discussion will be the ways in which this literature codifies relations between the sexes. I shall argue that Latin letters were, from the outset, harnessed to the didactic project of training the (male) children of the Roman aristocracy in the codes and conventions of elite Roman masculinity. Formal Roman education centered on training in public speaking, which the elite male needed to master for use in the law-courts, Senate, and military camps, not only among his peers but also among his social superiors and inferiors. This rhetorical education played an early role in shaping the elite Roman man’s understanding of the world he was socially destined to govern, by naturalizing and legitimating social hierarchies of class, nationality, age, and gender.
2. The Didactic Impulse: Fathers and Sons. Suetonius identifies the earliest teachers of Latin at Rome as Livius Andronicus and Ennius, whom he notes were both poets and half-Greeks (Suet. Gram. 1). Livius was the author of an Odyssia, adapted from Homer’s Odyssey, which was still taught in Horace’s youth (Epist. 2.1.69-71). Like its Homeric model, Livius’ poem seems to have opened with a statement of an avowedly gendered subject: ‘the man full of stratagems, goddess, tell me of him’(fr. 1, adapting Hom. Od. 1.1). Livius’ translation of Homer’s andra by the Latin uirum is faithful to the dual class and gender bias of the Homeric epics and implicitly encodes those foci at the foundation of Latin literature, which emerges as written for and about an elite (rather than base-born) and male (rather than female) audience. This is the audience addressed by Ennius in his Annales, which took as its subject ‘the greatest deeds of the fathers’ (Enn. epigr. 45.2 Courtney) and attributed the pre-eminence of the Roman state to her ancient traditions and men (Ann. 156 Sk), in a line whose first four words begin with the letters that spell out the name of Mars, the Roman god of war.
Implicit in the design of these early Latin epics (see also Goldberg, Chapter 1) is the characteristically Roman social project of celebrating moral exempla in a ‘poetry that trains men’ by inculcating the ‘values, examples of behavior, [and] cultural models’ with which which Rome won and governed her Mediterranean empire (Conte (1994) 83). If this project necessarily entails an imperial narrative of foreign conquest and external expansion, it also requires a domestic narrative of internal hierarchy and social cohesion that documents the establishment and maintenance of orderly relations between generations, classes, and sexes. Thus we find embedded in Ennius’ record of foreign conquest passages that delimit the social contributions of the statesman’s trusted confidant (Ann. 268-86 Sk) and the good woman (147 Sk), as well as passages that underscore the importance of military discipline even when it conflicts with intra-familial loyalties such as those between father and son (156 SK) or brother and sister (132 Sk). Of particular importance is the emphasis in these poems on exemplary military courage and manly conduct in the context of their use as teaching texts for the sons of the Roman elite.
Early in the Principate the Annales and other early epics were displaced from a central place in the curriculum by Vergil’s Aeneid (see also Hardie, Chapter 6 above). Like Livius’ Odussia, the Aeneid takes as its focus a singular man, Aeneas -- ‘arms and a man I celebrate’ (Aen. 1.1) -- while like Ennius’ Annales, Vergil’s poem displays a profound commitment not only to the generational succession of father by son but also to the instruction of son by father. Mercury appeals to Aeneas’ love for his own son when instructing him to quit Carthage: ‘if no glory of so great an empire moves you, consider growing Ascanius, Iulus’ expectation as your heir, to whom the kingdom of Italy and the Roman land are due’ (4.272-6). The paternal love Aeneas demonstrates for his son by leaving North Africa in book four is parallelled by the filial love he shows for his father in his descent to the underworld in book six.
In this context, it is especially significant that the three great prophetic set-pieces in books 1, 6, and 8, are founded on orderly sequences of genealogical descent deriving the Julians from Ascanius/Iulus (1.267-88) and the Romans from Anchises (6.679-83, 754-886) and Aeneas respectively (8.626-731). All three scenes, moreover, enact the principle of generational succession in their context as well as in their content: Jupiter instructs his daughter Venus in the future hegemony of his grandson’s descendants in book 1; Anchises instructs his son Aeneas in the exploits of their progeny in book 6; and Vulcan forges a shield for Aeneas (at Venus’ request) that documents Rome’s warrior heroes. In its celebration of Roman martial valour and the father-son relationship, the Aeneid also continues the tradition of self-reflexive attention to the pedagogical context in which Latin epic was first encountered. Aeneas relies on the advice and guidance of his father Anchises throughout the first half of the poem, and offers both to his own son Ascanius-Iulus (12.435-40):
‘Learn courage, son, and true toil from me, luck from others. Now my right hand will keep you safe in war and lead you into the midst of great rewards. See to it that you remember my deeds, when adulthood comes upon you, and that your father Aeneas and your father’s brother Hector inspire you to live up to the examples of your ancestors’.
Since the Aeneid came to occupy a central position in the Roman school curriculum, the exemplary exploits Aeneas instructs his son to remember were taught as those for emulation by Roman school-boys, especially the sons of the Roman governing class.
Quintilian endorsed the pedagogical practice of his day, which introduced students to reading through instruction in the epics of Vergil and Homer, precisely for the perceived moral exemplarity of the genre (Inst. 1.8.5):
therefore the established practice, that reading should commence with Homer and Vergil is best ... let the boy’s mind be elevated by the sublimity of heroic verse, derive inspiration from the greatness of the subjects, and be imbued with the best sentiments.
The rich commentary tradition on Vergil that survives from late antiquity demonstrates the long durée which this principle enjoyed. Of particular interest are the Interpretationes Vergilianae dedicated by Tiberius Claudius Donatus to his son, a prose paraphrase of the entire poem with discussion ‘which father passed on to son without deceit’ (TCD 1.2.6).
It is very likely that the circulation of the early Latin epics was restricted to the upper classes and so these texts may only have represented elite concerns, although the wide dissemination of the Aeneid after its appearance in c.19 bce meant that anyone with the least education would in practice have been exposed to the poem. Nonetheless we are fortunate to possess several popular dramatic works of mid-Republican date (on such comedies in general see further Panayotakis, Chapter 9 above) which display a similar attention to the relationship between fathers and sons, especially in terms of the moral education of the latter by the former, and confirm the significance in Roman culture of the principles of paternal guidance and male generational succession. In Terence’s comedy Adelphoe, for example, the two brothers Micio and Demea exemplify rival educational theories in the upbringing of their sons. The urban sophisticate Micio propounds a doctrine of indulgence towards his (adoptive) son Aeschinus (64-77), in contrast to his brother Demea’s strictness with his son Ctesipho. For most of the play, Demea and his strictures are held up to mockery and derision by the other characters, but the final scenes stage his recovery of the moral high ground in the exposition of an ideal educational program in which father checks son’s waywardness but avoids the excesses of either severity or indulgence (986-95). This is a paternal educative code which all can endorse; as Micio himself says, ‘that’s the right way’ (997).
Plautus too highlights the father’s responsibility for educating his son in a number of his comedies. In Trinummus, for example, Lysiteles acknowledges his father’s role in forming his character, in a passage which highlights the advantages he has received from following paternal precepts (301-2, 314-19):
Lysiteles. Fom the beginning of my adolescence to my present age I always obeyed your commands and precepts, father .... By my modesty I have ever held your precepts wind-tight and water-tight. Philto. Why are you reproaching me? What you did well you did for yourself, not for me; indeed my life is nearly over: this matters most for you.
Here Plautus illustrates the pragmatic familial and social goals that led father to educate son. More frequently, however, he mocks and subverts the traditional paternal role in a son’s education in his comedies. Thus in Mostellaria a wastrel son reflects on the responsibility of parents for their children’s education (118-128):
parents are their children’s builders: they construct their children’s foundations; they raise them up, carefully make them strong, and neither spare material nor think outlay there an expense in order that their children be productive and attractive to the public and to themselves; they groom them: they teach them literature, statutes, laws, and strive by cost and labour to make others want similar children for themselves.
The comedy of the passage resides in the spendthrift character of the youth who enunciates these principles, since the play focuses on his efforts to conceal from his father the depradations he has made on the paternal estate in the course of his parent’s absence.
Latin epic and comedy are not alone in displaying both a didactic impulse and a prominent emphasis on the generational transmission of the exemplary standards of Roman manliness from father to son. These features also characterize the earliest Latin prose writing, by Cato the Elder (see further Goldberg, Chapter 1 above). In the preface to his treatise on farming, for example, Cato declares that farmers make the bravest men and most energetic soldiers while their occupation is the most honourable (Agr. pr. 4). The association of farming with the core values of exemplary Roman masculinity -- bravery and military service -- both underlies and authorizes this didactic treatise on farming. Moreover Cato seems to have promoted the same principles in other works no longer extant. In the Origines, for example, he expounded the origins of Rome and other Italian cities and documented her rise to domination of the Mediterranean through the collective accomplishments, primarily in warfare, of the Roman people (defined as the male citizen body). We also hear of a series of works addressed to his son Cato Licinianus on agriculture, medicine, and rhetoric (sometimes referred to compendiously under the title ‘Precepts to his Son’), which exemplify the Roman father’s special role in educating his son. Plutarch records that Cato himself not only taught his son to read but even wrote histories for him in large characters in order to instruct him in the exemplary exploits of their ancestors and fellow-countrymen (Cat. Mai. 20.7).
At the end of the Republic Cicero produced an even more voluminous body of prose-writing in rhetoric and oratory, philosophy and letters (see also Levene, Chapter 2 above). Like Cato in his agricultural and historical works, moreover, Cicero seems to have been moved by a didactic impulse in the composition of his numerous rhetorical and philosophical treatises. In Brutus, for example, he traces for his young protégé Brutus (the tyrannicide) the history of oratory at Rome from its origins to his own day. As a record of the evolution of oratory in ancient Rome, the dialogue contains a chronological series of biographical sketches of famous Roman politicians, culminating in Cicero’s autobiographical account of his own rhetorical training. With its teleological schema celebrating successive generations of prominent Roman orators along with its paternalistic dedication, the Brutus reads like the rhetorical equivalent of the pageant of military heroes reviewed by Anchises in Aeneid 6. Unfortunately Brutus proved an unsatisfactory ‘son’, resisting Cicero’s ‘Asianist’ teleology to remain firmly in the ‘Atticist’ camp.
Cicero seems to have been more successful in instilling his rhetorical and moral principles into his own son, whose education he supervised and to whom he dedicated his last treatise, the three books ‘On Duties’. In the proem Cicero asserts the rhetorical utility of both his philosophical treatises and his speeches (Off. 1.1-3):
you will make your Latin discourse fuller by reading my works indeed .... Therefore I encourage you especially, my son, to read carefully not only my speeches but even those books on philosophy which are now nearly equal in number to them -- for the force of speaking is greater in the former, but an even and moderate style of discourse must also be practised.
Of particular interest is Cicero’s advice to his son to immerse himself in his literary, which is to say rhetorical, style. For Cicero here undertakes to train his son in rhetoric by harnessing retrospectively all his speeches, forensic and political, to the project of young Marcus’ education. But it is not only as a stylistic model that Cicero claims value for this work. At the end of the preface he emphasizes the utility for his son’s education of the theme of duty (Off. 2.1):
But when I had decided to write something for you ... I wanted especially to start with something most suitable for your age and my authority. For although many weighty and useful subjects in philosophy have been treated carefully and fully by the philosophers, those precepts which have been handed down concerning duties seemed to have the widest significance. For no part of life -- neither in public nor private, neither in legal work nor domestic, neither if you are transacting business by yourself nor if you are contracting with another -- can be free of duty; every honourable pursuit of life lies in its cultivation, every disgrace in its neglect.
The younger Cicero seems to have learned his father’s precepts well. Although he was in Athens studying philosophy at the time of Cicero’s murder in 43 bce, he went on to enjoy a distinguished political career under Octavian, serving as his colleague in the consulshipin 30 bce and was eventually appointed governor of the province Syria and proconsul of Asia.
3. Between Men: Homosocial Intercourse in Latin Literature. The intimate connection between fathers’ education of their sons and Roman rhetorical training recurs in the writings of the elder Seneca, who dedicated to his three sons, ostensibly at their request, his ten books of Controversiae celebrating the declamatory culture of the early principate (Contr. 1 pr. 1, 4, 6, 10). Seneca pater self-consciously cites the elder Cato in his preface, implicitly taking the Republican censor as his own model for educating his sons in rhetoric: ‘What then did that famous man say? “An orator, Marcus my son, is a good man, skilled in speaking”’ (Contr. 1 pr. 9). Like Cato and Cicero, the elder Seneca asserts the social value of rhetoric in his history of Roman declamation (Contr. 1 pr. 6):
But, my young men, you are pursuing an important and useful matter because, not content with the examples of your own day, you wish also to know those of an earlier generation. First since the more examples one examines, the greater the benefit to one’s own eloquence.
In the dedication to his sons, moreover, Seneca explictly includes a broader (elite Roman male) audience for his reminiscences: ‘So much the more happily shall I do what you ask, and I shall dedicate to the public whatever eloquent sayings of illustrious men I remember, so that they do not belong to anyone privately’ (Contr. 1 pr. 10). Seneca envisions his work in circulation among the Roman political elite (Bloomer [1997] 120), which enjoyed privileged access to rhetorical education and gained political office through competitive displays of eloquence (Gleason [1995] xx-xxiv). Seneca thus makes explicit the paternal role in initiating sons into the male homosocial network central to Latin political, rhetorical, and literary culture.
The adjective ‘homosocial’ describes social bonds between members of the same sex in such arenas as ‘friendship, mentorship, entitlement, rivalry, and ... sexuality’ (Sedgwick [1985] 1). Seneca’s handbooks can be seen to articulate male homosocial bonds along all of these axes. Thus in broadening his prospective audience from his sons to the public, Seneca assumes the role of mentor to the sons of the Roman elite. In recalling the declaimers of a previous generation, moreover, he privileges the performances of his Spanish friends Latro and Gallio in the private halls of Roman aristocrats while ignoring a host of Greek teachers and practitioners (Bloomer [1997] 115-135); his work thereby exemplifies the homosocial bonds of elite Hispano-Roman male friendship and implicitly documents the social and political entitlement of that class. Finally the format of the treatises, in which Seneca lists seriatim the interventions of the declaimers on each side of a given theme, exposes the social and professional alliances and rivalries that animated declamatory teaching and practice in the early Principate.